Talking Is Not Overrated

I’ve been listening to a book series by Vince Flynn on my drive to and from work. The series is based on a CIA agent named Mitch Rapp. I’m about five books in to the 22-book series and I find myself enjoying the books so much that I’m excited for the drive. Rapp is a non-nonsense agent that is the CIA’s most effective and lethal agent.

In one recent book, in the middle of a discussion with another agent, Rapp made the comment, “Talking is overrated.” When I heard him say this, it brought me back to an interview I participated in last season with Channing Frye of the Phoenix Suns.

For the past 15 years I’ve worked part time for the NBA’s Utah Jazz. On January 18, 2019 after the Utah Jazz beat the Phoenix Suns, I was in the visiting locker room doing postgame interviews. It was near the end of the interview session and I was just about to leave when I heard a booming voice. I turned to see who was talking and it was Frye. It’s not uncommon for players to speak in a low voice, but Frye spoke so everybody could hear him. Once I joined the fray, one reporter asked him how his teammates respond to his mentoring and the feedback he provides. He was quick to respond, saying.

“… My biggest thing that makes me upset, more like furious is, and the only thing that I pretty much yell at is we don’t talk to each other. I think that’s the most frustrating thing for me because you know, as a shooter, you can have nights where you’re just not making shots and I think, let’s be real, we’re not the best defensively whether it’s because we’re too small, too hurt, whatever it’s a lot of excuses, but at the end of the day if we talk it’s going to solve a lot of problems. I know I talk a lot and I try to talk a lot when we’re out there and it solves a lot, it slows the game down. Good teams talk. Their team (the Utah Jazz), we call a play, all of them relay that play and then everybody’s like send it this way, this guys gonna roll and then boom, boom, boom and so like we need one guy within the group, maybe two, shit, maybe even three that know their plays, that’s studying that film and that’s going to help us out there. I know some of this stuff, but I’m only out there two times, three times a month so we need guys to become good defenders and just know guys plays and tendencies. That’s what a good defender is, just take percentages. So, I think that’s the next step for us…”

There were other questions during the interview and I remember walking away so impressed with him and thinking that I wanted to be friends with him. If he never hit a basket for the team that entire season and just talked to the younger players about the finer points of being a professional, he would easily eclipse the value of his contract.

I’ve thought about what he said ever since that Winter day.

Good Leaders Communicate

I recently read an article previewing the NFL season, specifically the Green Bay Packers and the relationship between their star quarterback, Aaron Rodgers and their new head coach, Matt LaFleur. The article highlighted how well things are going between the two and how the relationship they’re building now will benefit them and the entire team during the upcoming season.

The two met in the Spring to discuss expectations and get to know each other better. Recalling that meeting months later, Rodgers said there were two important things to getting their relationship off to a good start.

“What I’m expecting from him and what can he expect from me,” Rodgers continued. “What kind of approach do I have? What do I like? What do I not like? What has worked for me in the past? What maybe hasn’t worked as well in the past and just what kind of guy I am.”

Good Communicators are Also Good Listeners

I have a friend that is an incredible listener. When you talk to him he makes eye contact, and hangs on your every word. Others may try to interject and he never wavers. If there is an interruption, when it’s time to pick the conversation back up, he always knows exactly where you left off. He’ll often come back to the conversation and say something like, when we got interrupted you were saying … and he’ll repeat the last sentence or few words where you left off.

Going back to the article I read about the Green Bay Packers, Rodgers said: “Two things I think are really important: listen and communicate. Everybody, in general, wants to know that what they’re saying is important and that people care about what they’re saying, and the best way to do that is listen. I wanted to get to know who he (Coach LaFleur) is and what makes him tick and what’s important to him.”

Good Communicators Get What They Want

A friend of mine always says, “If you don’t ask, you’ll never get what you want.”

I’ve found that to be true. It’s just as true in your personal life as in your business life. The most effective communicators are straightforward, direct and quickly get to the point. Their ability to ask for what they want often allows them to get exactly what they want, when they want it.

Contrast that to poor communicators that are passive in their communication and lack the confidence to come right out and ask for what they want. As a result, they struggle to get what they want.

Communication Slows Things Down

In my experience, good communication is an effective way to make things slow down. When you’re trying something new or that you’re not experienced in, things seem to move fast. Once you gain experience or start to feel comfortable with a situation, things slow down and are easier to handle.

In my interview with Frye, he was asked why his team doesn’t talk?

He said, “I think the game is moving very fast for everybody. Like I said, it takes a long time for the game to slow down. It took like three or four years for the game to slow down…”

So often, when a problem arises, you hear the people involved say something along the lines of, “It was due to a lack of communication.” That’s more fact than it is an excuse. Effective communication will eliminate the frustrations and anger when communication is lacking.

Fear + Intimidation Does Not = Leadership

Several years ago, while I was directing the public relations (PR) activities for a Utah based PR agency, my boss came in and asked me if I thought my team was afraid of me. I gave her a quizzical look and quickly replied that I sincerely hoped they weren’t.

She proceeded to tell me that the team wasn’t afraid of me and then tried to explain to me why that was a problem for me. She rationalized to me, that if the team wasn’t afraid of me, they would never get things completed the way they needed to be done.

As we debated this topic and I defended my position that fear and intimidation didn’t always equate to effective leadership or improved results, she said she could prove her standpoint. She proceeded to have me follow her down to the office managers office. Our office manager was a retired Marine Master Sargent. He ran the office like he ran his teams in the Marine Corps for 26 years and was a no-nonsense guy that said what he meant and meant what he said.

When we got to his office, my boss asked him if he thought my team respected me. He quickly responded that, “Yes, the team loves working for Jeremy.” Deflated, our discussion ended temporarily. I say temporarily because as I recounted the experience to my wife later that night I told her that by tomorrow, my boss would come back with a counter argument so she could prove her point.

Sure enough, as I arrived at work the next day, my boss greeted me with round two. This time she said she had personally interviewed each member of my team and it was unanimous that they weren’t afraid of me. Later that day as I talked to various members of my team, it became evident that she hadn’t talked to anybody and had made up her one-on-one discussions with them. In fact, a couple of them caught wind of what she had said from other sources and without prompting from me, volunteered to let me use them as an example and help my cause.

I appreciated, but declined their offers. This experience served as a good reminder of the leadership characteristics I look for in a leader and that I feel have made me an effective leader over the course of my career.

Build Trust

I believe in getting to know each individual member of my teams on a personal level. It’s not something I force because I’m their leader, but something I like to do. I enjoy getting to know new people and understanding what their interests are outside of work, their career goals and what makes them tick. It sounds cliché, but everybody has a story and I love discovering these stories.  Doing this is also a highly effective way to build trust.

From a leadership perspective, knowing these types of details can help you gain a deeper understanding for what motivates them and know how to work with them more effectively. In one instance, I knew a member of one of my teams was deeply committed to his young daughter. In talking to him, he told me that he wanted to be there for certain events and activities. He explained that growing up his father worked such long hours that he wasn’t able to attend many of his activities. He wanted to be different than his father and make it so that his daughter would never be wondering if he would show up or be in attendance for activities she thought important.

Knowing this, I made it clear to him that as these events came up, if he let me know in advance, I would make sure he had the time he needed to participate in and experience these activities with his daughter.

Set the Vision

If nobody knows what the vision is, they’ll have no way of knowing what their role is or how they can contribute to success. An effective vison will help identify goals for achieving the vision and establishing roles for each team member to contribute to the success and realization of these goals.

In my experience, once the team buys into the vision, they’ll start to take ownership of their role and find creative and innovative ways of getting to where you want to be. In one memorable example, when I first started working with FanX Salt Lake Comic Convention, we knew we needed to educate the media and general public about what a fan convention like this is. The vast majority of media had never heard of a comic con or fan convention of this type and as a result were uncertain about how to cover it. Similarly, the general public were unfamiliar as well.

Understanding the vision of the founders, I took the public relations component and recommended something that had never been done before to our knowledge. I arranged for celebrity attendees to do pre-event interviews over the phone and in person a few days before the convention started. I also recommended we do a kickoff press conference and invite celebrities to attend and do media interviews. I told the founders it would be much like Super Bowl media day. Both recommendations were incredibly successful.

Lou Ferrigno who played the Hulk on the original TV series The Incredible Hulk came out a few days in advance and did interviews with every local media outlet. After the show he told FanX founders that in more than 20 years of doing these fan conventions he had never had a more successful event or made more money than he did at FanX. The following year, the agent for Barbara Eden, the actress that played Jeannie in I Dream of Jeannie called and asked me to do for Barbara what I had done for Lou the previous year.

Similarly, the kickoff press conference was a smashing success. We had more than 150 media attend and 12-15 celebrities that did interviews for an hour before the show opened. Word spread among the comic con circuit and now just about every comic con in America copies FanX and does a kickoff press conference.

Trust and Empower Your Teams

Nobody likes to be micromanaged or have every decision and move they make questioned or evaluated by their boss.  I had a colleague years ago that I assigned to work with the agency owner on a number of accounts. I placed him on these accounts due to previous experience that tied in nicely with these accounts.

After a few weeks I met with him to catch up and see how he was transitioning into the accounts and the agency. As we met, he was excited about the agency, specifically his colleagues and the culture. As we discussed the accounts, he had some concerns. It turns the agency owner told him to take the lead on these accounts and to just run with things. He told her what his strategy was and she gave him the green light. As he began executing on his strategy, she lurked in the background constantly questioning him and second guessing his work. The client was excited by results but the agency owner clearly didn’t trust him. As a result, he found himself constantly looking over his shoulder and doubting his every move. He was miserable.

Check Your Ego At The Door

I worked for the Salt Lake Organizing Committee for the Olympic Winter Games of 2002 (SLOC). I was fortunate to work closely with Mitt Romney. I learned from Mitt that you don’t have to know everything to be the CEO or a true leader. He used to say all the time that he wasn’t the expert or most knowledgeable person in every aspect of the Olympics. He was however, smart enough to hire the best and most talented people.

He would ask questions to understand people’s recommendations and challenge them in an effort to poke holes in or find weaknesses, but he wasn’t concerned with being right all the time. His main priority was finding the right answer, not proving his answer was the best. He was confident in himself and his role that he didn’t need to prove himself the smartest person or the one that always came up with the best idea.

These four leadership characteristics have served me well over the course of my career. What qualities do you like in the leaders in your life?

Four Tips to Overcome Failure

I like to listen to sports radio in the mornings. The other day while listening to The Dan Patrick Show, Dan Patrick, the show host shared a story about Carl Lewis.  For those of you who don’t know or remember him, Lewis is one of the greatest American Olympians of all time.  He was a sprinter during the 1980’s and over the course of his career won nine Olympic gold medals and one Olympic silver medal.

Failing Big

After retiring from Olympic competition, he made news by launching a music career. I was surprised at this news. I had no idea he was a singer. Apparently, I wasn’t the only one. In one of his first public performances, he sang the national anthem at a basketball game. It was a rough outing. People made fun of him and this one moment that many might call a failure made him the butt of jokes for a while after it happened.

Flash back to the present day. Well, at a least a couple weeks ago. Patrick recounted the story of an interview he did with Lewis while he was still working for ESPN. This is not Patrick’s exact words, but his story went something along the lines of: As they were getting set up for the interview, Lewis’s brother was there. Patrick began talking to his brother and brought up the national anthem. More along the lines of wondering if Lewis still gets asked about it.

His brother told him that he did and that he really couldn’t understand why. By the time of this interview, a significant amount of time had passed since the failed national anthem attempt. Lewis’s brother wasn’t upset but was more curious as to why people still wanted to bring it up after so many years, especially when Lewis had accomplished so many other incredible things in his career. Lewis had moved on but others hadn’t and seemed to take pleasure from making him relive one of his worst professional moments.

Lewis said he was glad it happened because it’s a part of his journey. He says it’s created interest and more knowledge about his track career amongst the younger generation. When he’s interviewed and reporters laugh about it, he’s good natured, but quick to point out that his anthem has been viewed by more people (more than 2.5 million views on You Tube) than have seen or heard their show. He also points out that he has two albums and a gold record. He says that if that’s how people want to define him, then that’s fine. In his mind, it helps define the type of people you’re around. If people choose to define you by one bad moment, that’s on them. He says the one thing he always wanted to be was Carl Lewis and he’s been that for fifty-seven years so he’s the lucky one.

Hearing Patrick tell this story got me thinking about failure. In life, things happen. Good and bad. There are disagreements and quarrels and sometimes bad blood is left as a result. Other times there are wonderful things that happen and unfortunately, in my opinion, the good is often forgotten or overlooked.

Over the course I’ve my career I’ve had experiences that I don’t care to relive or have people know about. I think we all have. I’ve failed and I’m ok with that because it’s helped me learn and become the person I am today.

Advice from the GOAT

Michael Jordan talks a lot about failure. He once said, “I can accept failure. Everyone fails at something. But I can’t accept not trying again. I’ve missed more than 9,000 shots in my career. I’ve lost almost 300 games. Twenty-six times, I’ve been trusted to take the game winning shot and missed. I’ve failed over and over and over again in my life. And that is why I succeed.”

While failure is never fun, here are four tips to help alleviate the toll failure takes and overcome it to become successful.

• Have a short memory. In basketball or sports of any kind, coaches talk about having a short memory. What this means is that you’re going to miss shots. That’s ok. It’s even expected. You can’t let a few misses stop you from competing or derail your career. In basketball the best shooters have a mindset that the next shot is going in. It doesn’t matter how many shots they’ve missed, they always believe the next one is going in and aren’t afraid to keep shooting.
• Be honest. My mother always taught me that, “Honesty is the best policy.” I believe that to be true and I counsel my clients to keep that in mind when dealing with the press. Even if the truth is embarrassing or unflattering, it usually only hurts once whereas lying and being caught in a lie can lead to more embarrassment and questioning of character.
• Set goals. I look at goals as a challenge for the things I want to accomplish each week, month or year. Writing them down makes them feel more real. They’re not just in my head, I’ve expressed them and made them tangible. Once I‘ve written them I become obsessed with accomplishing them. I’ll often set long-term, monthly goals and then smaller goals to help me arrive at and achieve these goals. I also set goals that will take me out of my comfort zone and force me to extend myself. An easily attainable goal is boring for me. I want to challenge myself and stretch my capabilities. If for some reason I don’t accomplish my goals I’ll review them and reevaluate them if necessary. I don’t like excuses, but I do like to know and understand what prevented me from achieving my goal. In my experience, goals help keep me focused on what I want and what’s important most.
• Measure and review progress. Sometimes in the hustle and bustle of everyday life we forget to stop, review and appreciate not only the journey but the accomplishments. On a day-to-day basis it can be difficult to see how much progress you’ve made and how far you’ve come. About four years ago I began running again. The first week or two was rough. I could only run for short distances before becoming fatigued and wanting to stop. As I started running again, I created a calendar to track my runs. I track distance and time. In the beginning, I would also track how many times I stopped and what point along the course I was stopping. Early on it was pretty easy to track progress as I was consistently running for longer periods of time. It was invigorating and motivating to have instant access to the progress I was making. Once I got into better shape, the progress was more difficult to track. I had to pay attention just to notice even little improvements. At times I wondered if I was progressing. At the end of each month I sit down and review my calendar and monthly goals. It’s at these times that I can see the progress I had made during the month. I would not only hit goals, but often exceed them. I remember at one point my family and I drove to Disneyland. As we drove I tracked the mileage and realized as we were arriving in Anaheim that the distance we drove was roughly the distance I had run to date that year. It was an eye opener and a significant realization of just how far I had come. To this day, I still track my daily runs on a calendar and still find myself surprised and at times impressed with what I’m accomplishing on a monthly basis.

I find that when I am doing these things, when failure happens I’m able to meet it head on and grow from it.  It’s still not easy, but I’m able to approach it from the perspective that it’s part of my journey to becoming the best version of myself.

Book Review: A Good Walk Spoiled

By John Feinstein

I’ve read a number of John Feinstein’s books and have loved them all. I love playing golf and had heard about this book from other friends. Knowing that Feinstein wrote it I immediately added it to my list of must reads.

This book took me a while to read as I was starting a new job my kids started school. I found myself reading 10-15 pages at a time and missing several days here and there between readings. However, when I did read it, I loved it.

The book follows a handful of professional golfers and their journey between tournaments and in some cases as they try to qualify for the PGA Tour during the early 1990’s. The book was long enough and detailed enough that Feinstein was able to provide insights into the players’ gold games as well as their private lives, including family issues and the challenges they faced trying to stay at the top of their games.

I watch golf and am familiar with many of the golfers chronicled. I think what we see on TV is the guys playing and competing and it’s easy to forget that they are more than just professional golfers. I work part time for the Utah Jazz and have access to players that most don’t and athletes in any sport are more than what we see from them as they compete.

In golf, players aren’t on teams and it’s entirely up to them on how they perform and how they earn a living. There are no guaranteed salaries in golf and the mental strain of competing and remaining consistent is one of the most challenging in all of sports.

The players feel it every tournament, every week and in many cases, every day. What stood out to me is that the pressures they face to earn a living doing what they love is invigorating while maddening all at the same time.

These players work tirelessly to improve their game and be prepared for each tournament. In any profession I feel people do that and face frustrations and questions about their ability and desire to continue working in their chosen profession. It was comforting in some aspects to read about the challenges these guys face. It humanized them in a way I hadn’t considered before.

What was equally fascinating to me was how they attacked and approached these challenges. Yes, there were frustrated. But in the majority of the cases, they did what I do, buckle down and work harder to improve and get their confidence back.

Many of these golfers are wealthy, and in many cases millionaires. Their wealth didn’t present them form working their tails off to remain at the top of their games or to be immune from losing their confidence.

In addition to reading about the way they handled adversity, I enjoyed getting to know more about their individual personalities and their personal interests. Stories about interactions between the golfers at tournaments and between tournaments was especially interesting.

These professional golfers are no different than any other person. They love what they do. They want to be the best and have challenges in their personal lives. I enjoyed the book enough that I’d like to turn around and start it all over again. This was a fantastic read and one that I highly recommend.

Book Review: Split Second

Book Review: A Split Second

By David Baldacci

I listened to this book on CD in my car on the way to and from work. My mom lent it to me and recommended it.

The book is a crime fiction novel about an ex-Secret Service agent named Sean King. King was let go from the Secret Service after a presidential candidate he was protecting was murdered.  Eight years later, after starting his life over again, the incident comes back into his life and he’s forced to relive and investigate it all over again.

I enjoyed the book. It was intriguing and at times predictable but it kept my interested and made my drive home seem to go by quicker and be a little more enjoyable. One of the things I like about audio books is the people that read them and the different ways they voice the characters. This was read by Ron McLarty and he did an excellent job.

After having read it, I found myself hoping that it would be made into a movie. I could easily see it making its way to the big screen. I’d pay to go see this in movie form.

Overall, excellent book. I enjoyed it and recommend it.

Book Review: A March To Madness

Book Title: A March to Madness

Author: John Feinstein

Pages: 456

I’ve read a number of John Feinstein books in the past and loved them. The way he tells the story and paints the picture is incredible. He writes a lot of books about sports topics, but I think he could take any subject and make in interesting.

I actually came across this book at a used book sale at the city library about five or six years ago. I had never heard of it, but since it was John Feinstein, I bought it knowing that it would be good. When I purchased it, I had every intention of reading it immediately but had other books that, for various reasons I read first. My delay was not an indication of my interest level at all.

Some of it was the fact that the book was “old.” The book provides a behind the scenes look at the 1996-1997 college basketball season, specifically the fiercely competitive Atlantic Coast Conference (ACC). The ACC is home to one of my favorite college basketball teams, Duke as well as North Carolina, Clemson, Maryland, Wake Forest, Virginia, Florida State, Georgia Tech and NC State. It’s the conference that has produced spectacular players such as Michael Jordan, Grant Hill, Christian Laettner, Kenny Anderson and in this particular season, Tim Duncan.

For this book, Feinstein has rare access to ACC coaches, players, practices and games. He begins the book as the NCAA tournament ins ending in the 1995-1996 season and chronicles the ins and outs of the 1996-1997 season, including the challenges individual coaches and players deal with as well as their fears and insecurities.

He begins the book with an introduction to each team, specifically through the coaches. He includes a recap of the previous season and the coaches’ history and how they got to where they are. Some of the coaches are household names such as North Carolina head coach Dean Smith and Duke head coach Mike Krzyzewski. By the end of the 1996-1997 season, Smith wins his 875^th game to become the winningest coach in college basketball history.

Tim Duncan is in his senior season at Wake Forest and on his way to being named the college basketball player of the year.

What really stood out to me is how, even with all their accomplishments and success coaches and players can still doubt themselves and obsess over the what-ifs. I think sometimes there is a perception that once you hit a certain level of success that the fear and doubts go away. That’s not he case at all with these coaches and plyers. I don’t think that’s the case in any business or professional environment.

To me, the competitiveness, the will to be better and maintain continued success breeds some of this doubt and insecurity. The difference in a successful person is their ability to navigate and create strategies that enable themselves and the people they work with and lead to rise above the challenges and overcome difficulties and be successful.

I said earlier that I like Duke. It’s not so much because of the players that they have or that they consistently rank in the top teams in college basketball. It’s because of its head coach, Mike Krzyzewski. Feinstein describes him as self-confident. Not cocky or arrogant, but incredibly self-confident. He’s also very honest and direct. If you ask a question, he’ll answer it honestly and directly. It doesn’t matter if it’s the media asking or another person. He’ll always been honest and wont skirt a question.

He wants to be successful and works very hard to be successful. Since this book was published, he’s passed Dean Smith as the winningest basketball coach in college basketball history. However, during the 1996-1997 season he had a number of challenges that he had to overcome. No doubt he’s had other challenges since that season, but I found it fascinating to read the details about those challenges and how he developed the strategies to overcome them and achieve the success he wanted.

It wasn’t always easy and required a lot of hard work, but he was willing to put in the work. The 1996-1997 season didn’t start off the way he had hoped but by the end he had led his team to the best record on the ACC and the number one seeding in the ACC tournament. He had a highly successful year and by the end of the season admitted that he wasn’t sure he still loved coaching, but that the challenges and the way his team handled them invigorated him and showed him how much he loved coaching.

One of my favorite quotes from the book came from Krzyzewski when he was talking about the challenges of the season. He said: “You see, sometimes in life, you have to embrace adversity. You just don’t want to become too intimate with the sonofabitch.”

While not every team and every coach achieved what they wanted during the 1996-1997 season, I appreciated their openness to sharing their struggles, successes and the hard work and dedication to their crafts. This was a wonderful read that I felt taught a number of lessons about the ups and downs we all face as we strive for greatness. I highly recommend this book and plan on passing it on to my son so he can read it.

Book Review: The Power of Negative Thinking

Book Title: The Power of Negative Thinking

Author: Bob Knight with Bob Hammel

Pages: 223

I’ve had this book for more than three years. I started reading it and stopped several times. I didn’t stop reading it because it wasn’t good. I kept coming back to it because I found it interesting, I just had other books that I found more interesting and wanted to read more than this one.

I’ve always liked to read, but business books like this, while interesting, have always been challenging for me to just read straight through. Again, I want to emphasize that I didn’t dislike this book. If you look through this blog at the books I’ve read and reviewed over the last three years, I just found other books more fun and entertaining.

With that said, I’m glad I finished this book. It had some interesting insights and advice. I can admit that I’ve never been a huge Bob Knight fan. Based on what I know about him and have read about him, I’ve always thought of him as a bully. There is also no doubt that he’s had great experiences and is a talented coach and motivator. His insights and the lessons he’s learned over the course of his career were highly instructional.

A couple things Knight shared in the book really resonated with me, specifically:

Talking about practice, Knight said: “Practice is the best of all instructors, if the person running the practice knows what the hell he or she is doing. Improvement, especially towards perfection, comes only if the practice is demanding, well-thought-out and constructive, by a coach who realizes that absolute perfection is unattainable – but is always the objective.”

On having a plan, Coach Knight wrote: “Every successful endeavor starts with a plan. Know that some things will go wrong. Adjust is one of the great works in the English language. Always, no matter how meticulously something has been thought out and planned, an effective leader has to be ready and willing to adjust.

I learned quickly in my early days as a head coach at Army that the title of basketball coach didn’t carry much clout at West Point. I would call an officer at the academy, and the noncom or corporal taking the call would ask, ‘Who’s calling?’ For a time, I said, ‘This is Bob Knight, the basketball coach,’ and invariably I would get back some version of, ‘He’s unavailable right now. Try again later.’

Then one day I read that there were 450 active generals in the Army at that time, and I figured, ‘Eisenhower and MacArthur couldn’t know all of them.’ I saw an active list, ran down it, and came up with one name that wasn’t present. So I invented No. 451.

From there on, I’d make my calls, and when I got the identification question, I’d snap, ‘General Webster.’ And I’d hear, ‘Yes, sire!’ and get right through.

Adjust is a vitally important word.

Coach Knight talked about leaving one job for another and shared advice about how to do it the right way:

“I was very good about how I handled leaving West Point. I had chances to leave every one of my six years there. A lot of things were involved when I was in that job., including my appreciation for the opportunity I was given there when I had no credentials at all as a head coach. And I loved coaching there – enjoyed the challenged or working with the great kids that an academy gets. I knew that eventually I would have to leave, but I waited until it was just the right set of circumstances, the exact right place to go, and that’s what Indiana was when I went there. There’s no question: It was a great place for me, the absolute right place, for a long, long time.

You can get overwhelmed with sentimental thoughts: Nice people here, they have been awfully good to me. Bet when it comes to life decisions, it’s got to be what’s best for you and your ability to do your job, not getting swayed by the things that have nothing to do with your profession. Comfort enters into decision-making, and that’s always dangerous. You have to decide what is the best thing to do, not what is the ‘right’ thing, in a theoretical sense.”

These three points are things that I’ve thought about over the course of my career. I appreciated the way Coach Knight articulated his thoughts and the way he shared his expertise. It made sense to me and provided some insights into specific topics that I find relevant in issues and things that I’m currently dealing with. These insights came at just the right time for me and helped me navigate and strategize some real life topics in my life.

I recommend this book to others. Whether you sit down and read it in a couple days or over the course of three years, It’s an insightful book well worth the reading.

Book Review: Michael Vey: The Final Spark

Book Title: Michael Vey: The Final Spark

Author: Richard Paul Evans

Pages: 316

The Final Spark is the seventh and final book in the Michael Vey series. As I’ve written reviews of the other books, I’ve mentioned that I got into this series because of my son. He started reading the books and after he had read the third or fourth book he started telling me about it and asked me to start reading it. I did and have loved the series.

This book actually came out last September (2017). My family and I were invited the book release party at Cottonwood High School in Salt Lake City. I had been invited to the book six launch party but couldn’t make it due to other commitments.  The party was great. Richard Paul Evans gave my family VIP access which gave us access to a pre-launch party. At the party, we got a free copy of the book and a photo with Evans. After we took the picture he personalized the book for my kids and autographed it.

As I talked with Evans, I mentioned that I work with a friend of his from high school. I told him her name and he told me that Michael Vey’s friend is based off of my work colleague.  The next day at work I ran into her office and asked her if she knew this? She confessed that she did and it’s been fun to read this book knowing that it’s based off of my colleague. It’s added a new, fun twist to reading it. It’s almost like I have the inside scoop and actually know one of the characters.

Even though the book came out in September, I just got my chance to read it. I always let my son read the books first and this was no different. He started it and I got busy with other projects and didn’t ask about it again until about a week ago.

My son admitted that he hadn’t read the entire book yet didn’t’ know when he would due to some demanding school projects. I told him I couldn’t wait any longer and asked him for the book. I’ve got to be honest, I was so excited to read the book and see how it ended. At the same time, there was a little hesitancy to read it because I didn’t want the series and all the fun to come to an end.

Book 6 ended with a huge cliff hanger. Micheal and his Electroclan were in a battle with hatch and the Elgen to save the world. The battle ends when Michael essentially takes on so much electricity that he explodes and destroys the majority of the Elgen army. After the explosion, the Electroclan is regrouping and discovers that Michael is nowhere to be found. It’s uncertain if he survived or not.

While I won’t tell you what happened and ruin the book, I will say that once I started reading it, I couldn’t put it down. It didn’t disappoint. It held enough intrigue to keep me on my toes and hoping certain things would happen. At times, I was worried about the characters and their fate and at other times I found myself cheering for them and hoping that they would be successful.

They way Evans tells the story was incredible. I felt like I knew Michael and his friends and that we were actually friends. Several times during the book I caught myself thinking, “No way, this isn’t happening,” or, “This can’t be happening.”

Towards the end of the book, one sentence caught my attention and gave me hope that one day Evans will come back to the series and write more Michael Vey books. I don’t know anything, but the fanboy in me is really hoping that it will happen.

A couple lines from the book stood out to me. In one chapter, Jack and Ostin apologize to each other for things they felt sorry about doing to each other before they got to know one another and become friends. Another character overhears it and Jack and Ostin are embarrassed by it. I loved the response, “No, that was good. People say things too late.”

Later, as the villain in the book is trying to destroy the good guys, he is unable to do so and one of the characters says, “Only a fool thinks he can keep doing the same thing and get different results.”

And, lastly, at the end of the end of the book, one of the characters says, “I once heard it said, there are no great men, just great challenges.”

I don’t want to give attribution to these quotes from the book for fear of giving too much away. I liked these quotes as they were referenced on the book. I also think they’re great as standalones.

One of the things I’ve enjoyed most about the Michael Vey series is reading it and talking to my son about it. He hasn’t read the book yet and I’m dying for him to read it so we can talk about it. I’m as excited for him to read it as I was to read it myself. With the series coming to an end, I’m hopeful that my son and I can find another series that we can enjoy as much as this one.

I can’t recommend this book and the series enough. I’ve been reading the series to my 12 and ten-year-old daughters and it’s been fun to relive the book with them. I’m having just as much fun reading it to them and discussing it with them as it is with my son. The book is appropriate got kids and adults of all ages. My kids and I have been trying to get my wife to read the series and I’m hoping she’ll give in and join the fun.

How I Got Into Public Relations

I was recently asked how I got into public relations (PR). The story behind it is not the usual story of finding a career. Growing up I always loved sports. I played sports, I watched sports and I talked non-stop about sports.

When I got to a certain age and realized I was never going to play in the NBA, I decided I wanted to still be involved in sports. It didn’t take long to decide that sports broadcasting was the path I wanted to pursue.  My sixth-grade teacher, Mrs. Richins thought that made sense since she could never get me to shut up.

As I graduated high school the yearbook staff passed along the typical notes asking seniors what they wanted to be and where they thought they’d be in 10 years. I boldly replied that I would be broadcasting NBA and NFL football games for NBC Sports. This was before ESPN became the powerhouse that is now.

As I entered college, I rushed as fast as I could through the pre-requisite classes so I could get to the communications and broadcast classes. During my senior year I did an internship at a local all-sports radio station. I did interviews with coaches and players and even had the chance to be on a weekend sports show covering high school basketball. I was on air and was making my first demo tape.

My goal was to hook up with an NBA team, spend the season with them and then when that ended work with an NFL team or MLB team until the next basketball season started. I was committed to that goal until I met and started dating a girl. This wasn’t any girl, she was and is amazing. As we dated and got more serious, my dream of being on the road with sports teams started fading.

When it became obvious that we were going to get married, I knew I wanted to be with her more than I wanted to be on the road and that I needed to change my career plans.  I had a couple friends that were studying PR and the way they described it sounded cool. I started looking into PR and found that I could still get my Broadcast Journalism degree and get a job in PR.

As I was finishing my degree, I got an internship with a local PR agency. During the first week on the internship, one of the guys I reported to asked me to write a press release. I said no problem. As he left my desk he added, “And don’t forget to include the boilerplate.”

Suddenly there was a problem. I had no idea what a boilerplate was. I had never heard the word before in my life. Google didn’t exist at the time so I couldn’t look it up there. I decided that this wasn’t really a problem. I could figure it out.

I wrote the press release and as I finished it, I turned to the other intern and started a conversation. Without her knowing that I didn’t know what a boilerplate was, I tricked her into explaining what one was. With this new knowledge, I found the appropriate boilerplate and quickly added it to the press release before submitting it for my boss’s review.

I was quite proud of my ingenuity and creative way of finding out what a boilerplate was.

I enjoyed the internship and learned a lot. I especially liked that ability to be creative and to write.  I finished this internship about the same time as I graduated and began applying for jobs with every local PR agency I could find.  I simply grabbed the yellow pages and began calling every PR agency to find out who I could send my resume to. I kept detailed notes, especially of the names I was given.

A few weeks after mailing my resume out to every agency, I got a call from one of them. The man on the other end of the line said the name of the agency so quickly that I wasn’t sure which one it was. I did catch his name though. We set up an interview for the next day and as I told my wife about it she asked which agency. I told her I didn’t know which agency but that I did manage to catch the guy’s name. When I got home that night I looked at my notes and was easily able to identify the agency.

I got the job and have been in PR ever since. I’ve had incredible experiences and worked with some amazing companies and individuals. People ask me about school and specific classes. I’m always honest when I tell them that I never took a PR class in my life. It wasn’t the most traditional route, but I wouldn’t change a thing. I’ve never been a real book study guy. I’ve always done better just jumping in and learning through experience.  My PR education worked for me and played to my strength.

I’ve never been afraid to try new things and learn new things. I’ve always believed that I can learn and be successful by being curious and having a good work ethic. My parents taught m early on to be the solution and instilled in me the belief that I can accomplish whatever I set my mind to. For me, PR was no different. It sounded interesting and I went for it. The rest as they say, is history.

My Most Memorable Job Interviews

Here’s my third installment of blog entries based on the current book I’m reading. This blog is supposed to focus on my worst or most embarrassing job interview I ever had. I haven’t had a lot of embarrassing job interviews but there have been some memorable ones so I’ll focus on those for this entry.

You can see my first entry on my ideal job by clicking here or my second blog entry on value I’ve added at work during my career here.

The one embarrassing interview I can recall happened when I was still in college. I’m not sure how I found out about the opportunity, but I remember getting the call to come in for an interview. When I arrived, it turned out to be a “group” interview. Without giving too much information, the guy conducting the interview gave an impassioned speech about the company and the opportunity and got the entire group fired up and excited.

He said the next phase was one-on-one interviews. He cautioned that not all of us would be selected for one of these one-on-ones, only the elite. When my name was called for an interview I was pleased. I went in and was interviewed. I was still unsure what the position and opportunity was but was excited that I was still in the running.

It wasn’t until the end of the interview that I found out it was to sale “high-end knives and cutlery.” As he explained the opportunity in further detail it was apparent what it was, a crappy sales job where you hit up friends and family to listen to your pitch for an hour. You get paid even if they don’t purchase, but since nobody could pass these knives up, sales come easy and you make a ton of money.

I lost interest real quick, but the guy was persistent and wasn’t going to just let me walk away. He had spent a good hour “interviewing” me and didn’t want to lose me. I remember finally giving in just so I could leave and go home.

Once home, I resolved to call him and tell him I had a change of heart and wasn’t going to accept the offer. He was clearly disappointed. I was relieved.

It was a quick lesson and reminder to ask better, more detailed questions about the opportunity when called for an interview. Most times I’ve known or had a pretty clear idea what the position is. In cases where it’s vague and questions are not encouraged I am now very hesitant and will immediately pass on opportunities that have even the faintest hint of this knife selling opportunity.

Several years later after I was married and had kids, a friend invited me to an “event” with some work colleagues. He was vague on the details but since he was a trusted friend I wasn’t too worried. Turns out I let my guard down because it was a friend and found myself stuck in another similar situation. I forget what this sales opportunity was, but I knew within seconds of walking in what it was. My friend had driven so I was stuck.

I had made up my mind after the first instance that I would never go through another similar experience again. While I had to wait for the meeting to end, I didn’t have to sit through the entire pitch. Much to my friends chagrin, I made it very clear right at the start that I was not interested. I wasn’t rude, but I was firm. The guy hosting the event was disappointed in my friend for bringing him such a bad lead, but I didn’t care. I wasn’t about to get caught up in another long, drawn out, high pressure sales pitch for something I had no interest in. I removed myself and waited in the lobby for the meeting to end.

After the meeting ended, I was polite to my friend but told him in no uncertain terms to never pull that crap again on me. We remained friends and to his credit, he never brought it up again.

I’ve also had the opportunity to participate in a number of interviews. I’ve found these instances to be highly entertaining.

As a PR professional, I do a lot of writing. Most PR people do. In one memorable interview experience, I was interviewing a recent PR graduate. We talked about what she liked and didn’t like about PR. Her dislike was one that caught me completely off guard. She said she didn’t like to write. Not only did she not like to write, she hated it.

I remember looking at her and thinking, “Did she just say that out loud?” Needless to say, she didn’t get the job.

In another instance, while interviewing another recent PR graduate, I asked if he had some writing samples. This is a very common question in the PR field. He indicated that while he didn’t have any press release samples, he did have a recent sermon he wrote and gave to his church congregation that he was proud of and was happy to share with me. Not exactly what I was hoping for or expecting, but I agreed to look at it, mainly out of curiosity.

It was a fine sermon, but didn’t provide the insight into his professional writing skills.

During another interview, I asked the candidate what his career aspirations were. Without hesitation, he looked me dead in the eye and told me he wanted my job. He felt confident that within a year he would replace me. Not advance to my level, but replace me. The interview ended pretty quickly. While I admired his confidence, it was a weird way to express it.

One of the most important things I’ve learned from interviewing for jobs and interviewing potential candidates is that both parties are interviewing each other. If I’m unimpressed with a company I’m interviewing with or don’t like their culture, I’m probably not going to accept the job if they offer it to me. The job and the candidate have to be good fits from both sides. If they’re not, it’s probably not going to work out long-term.

The other important thing I’ve learned is that most people blow an interview with the first question. Most don’t even realize or understand that the interview has started. I had a friend that was a career counselor point this out to me years ago. I was skeptical at first so demonstrated the point and I’ve been a believer ever since.

She said that more than 70 percent of candidates can’t answer the first question and are out of the running at that point. The first question is usually, “Tell me about yourself.” It doesn’t sound like a question and most people think it’s just small talk, but the majority of people can’t answer that or tell somebody about themselves.

The response usually begins something like, “Well, my name is … I’m from Utah and, and uh, I went to this college. Uh, Um, I’ve been doing PR for about XX amount of years and um …” Not a very good first impression.

What should happen is a brief description of your background, expertise, interest in the position, goals for the future and an explanation of how your experience can contribute to and solve the company’s pain points as well as contribute to the company’s ongoing success.

I’ve found that interviewing for a new job is a great opportunity. Preparation is vital and can make a huge difference. I’ve found them to be an enjoyable way to find out if an opportunity is something that I’m truly interested in and if I feel I can contribute to and add the company’s immediate and long-term success. While I’ve had a few that didn’t go as planned, I feel like I’ve learned from each one and become a stronger interviewer and more capable of expressing the value I add as a result.