Q1 2020 Texas CEO Magazine

Q1 2020

THE BUSINESS OF

TEXAS

SPORTS

TILMAN

TELLS IT

LIKE IT IS

No-Nonsense Business Lessons

from the “Billion Dollar Buyer”

COWORKING

WITH THE

COWBOYS

A Chat with Jerry Jones Jr.

CATCHING

UP WITH

MARK CUBAN

7 Questions for the Legend

THE

RELAUNCH

ISSUE

Warren is cleaning up Texas–

and KEEPING IT SAFE.

Warren Paynes | Lead Residential Driver | Texas Disposal Systems, Inc.

Warren Paynes doesn’t just make Texas a cleaner place — he makes it a safer place. As a driver for Texas Disposal Systems, he knows that driving safe

protects him, his route partner and everyone around them. He stays focused, performs inspections on his vehicle and puts his cell phone away.

Warren takes his driver safety training seriously, and that’s why Texas Mutual is proud to support him and all the Texans who make the road their

workplace. Texas Mutual is changing the way workers’ comp works for you. See Warren ON THE JOB at WorkSafeTexas.com/OnTheJob.

© 2019 Texas Mutual Insurance Company

Letter from the

OWNER

Great CEOs create great jobs. And meaningful work is something

almost everyone craves. That’s why I have always felt that building a

business is a noble cause. By creating and running great businesses, we

satisfy our need to help others even as we provide for our own needs.

This dynamic is, in large part, why we are excited to relaunch Texas

CEO Magazine with the mission of helping CEOs across Texas grow

their businesses and master their role as head of the organization.

Whether that organization is public or private, for-profit or nonprofit,

large or small, we all face similar challenges. We hope that Texas

CEO Magazine can become your best and most trusted source for

information on the CEO role and the state of business in Texas—and

become a part of your personal CEO journey too. We intend to do

this not only through ideas and insights in the magazine but through

events, podcasts, and newsletters that allow you to access our content

in whatever way is most convenient for you.

Texas is one of the great states for sports, and that’s one reason we

chose sports as the theme of our relaunch issue. Here, football is king:

We’re the state of Friday Night Lights, epic college football rivalries,

and the Dallas Cowboys (the world’s most valuable sports team, worth

an estimated $5 billion). But that’s only part of the Texas sports story.

Whether it’s our forthcoming third Major League Soccer team or our

growing esports scene, Texans love sport of all kinds—and spend a lot

of money on it. There’s also an even deeper connection between sport

and business. Great coaches and great athletes hold lessons for every

CEO, about leadership, strategy, endurance, and so much more. We will

explore a few of those lessons throughout this issue.

WE WOULD LIKE

TO INCLUDE YOU IN

THE CONVERSATION. DON’T

HESITATE TO REACH OUT

IF YOU HAVE STORY IDEAS,

CEOS YOU THINK WE SHOULD

PROFILE, OR CEO ISSUES YOU

WANT US TO COVER.

As Texas CEO Magazine moves forward, we would like to include you

in the conversation. Don’t hesitate to reach out if you have story ideas,

CEOs you think we should profile, or CEO issues you want us to cover.

Get in touch anytime at info@texasceomagazine.com.

Leading an organization is a challenging endeavor, and we look forward

to being alongside you in your journey to becoming the most effective

CEO possible.

TexasCEOMagazine.com

3

INSIDE Features

Q1 2020

Publisher

Lauren Daugherty

Editor

Aaron Hierholzer

Operations

Tamara Trammell

Graphic Design

Michele Rodriguez

86

LISTEN TO TILMAN!

A Conversation with Tilman Fertitta, Landry’s CEO,

Houston Rockets Owner, and the “Billion Dollar Buyer”

8

LEADERSHIP LESSONS

FROM A TEXAS RANGER

A Conversation with Hank Whitman,

Former Chief of the Texas Rangers

18

THE EYES OF TEXAS

ARE UPON US

A Conversation with Chris Del Conte,

Athletics Director at the University of Texas

22

WHAT CEOS

CAN LEARN FROM

EXCEPTIONAL

COACHES

John Thornton, PhD

24

STARTUP SUCCESS:

HOW MUCH SHOULD WE RAISE?

Gordon Daugherty

28

7 QUICK QUESTIONS

WITH MARK CUBAN

A Lightning Round with the Legend

30

WANT TO WORK

FROM COWBOYS HQ?

HERE’S YOUR CHANCE.

A Conversation with Jerry Jones Jr.

35

CEO ACTIVISM

AND THE CLOAK

OF SOCIAL RESPONSIBILITY

Bill Simon and Blaine McCormick, PhD

Contributors

Wade H. Allen

Akira Asada, PhD

Craig Casselberry

Ed Curtis

Gordon Daugherty

Tasha Eurich, PhD

J. Michael Godfrey, PhD

Lisa Jaster

Blaine McCormick, PhD

Gary Oden, PhD

Timothy J. Quigley, PhD

Bill Simon

Tony Streeter

John Thornton, PhD

Kirk Wakefield, PhD

To subscribe to the print or digital edition of

Texas CEO Magazine, please visit our website:

www.texasceomagazine.com

and click subscribe.

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CEO Magazine. All rights reserved. The

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4 Texas CEO Magazine Q1 2020

INSIDE Departments

6 [MANAGEMENT]

OUTSIDER CEOS

GENERATE MORE

EXTREME RESULTS


14

THE BODYGUARD

A Conversation with Mike Ramirez,

Personal Protection Expert

29 [ENTREPRENEURSHIP]

THESE

ENTREPRENEURS

ARE MAKING

SAN ANTONIO SAFER

Showcasing Safety Innovation

in Alamo City

41 [PERFORMANCE]

DESIGNING AN

EFFECTIVE SALES

PROMOTION:

LESSONS FROM TEAM

SPORTS MARKETING

Kirk Wakefield, PhD

43 [SELF-AWARENESS]

THE NEGLECTED

KEY TO STRESS

MANAGEMENT


47 [SELF-AWARENESS]

SELF-AWARENESS

AND THE CEO

Tasha Eurich, PhD

51

WHAT’S MY CMO

TALKING ABOUT?

Tony Streeter

53

THE SPORT OF

RELOCATION

Ed Curtis

56

LEGISLATIVE

FOOTBALL,

TEXAS-STYLE

Craig Casselberry

60

BUILDING A

BRIGHTER FUTURE

FOR CENTRAL TEXAS KIDS

A Conversation with Richard Tagle,

CEO of the Andy Roddick Foundation

65

WHAT HAS ANDY

RODDICK LEARNED

SINCE STARTING

HIS FOUNDATION?

68

BUILDING

THE ESPORTS

SKYSCRAPER

A Conversation with Jason Lake,

Founder and CEO of Complexity Gaming

72 [RESOURCES]

CRAFTING

THE BLUEPRINT

FOR A SUCCESSFUL

EXECUTIVE SEARCH

Wade H. Allen

74

TICKET TO

THE LIMIT

A Conversation with Randy Cohen,

Founder and CEO of TicketCity

77

CATCHING THE

PERFECT PASS

A Conversation with S. C. Gwynne,

Best-Selling Author of The Perfect Pass

80 [CULTURE]

IS YOUR

EMPLOYEE WELLNESS

PROGRAM WORKING?

Gary Oden, PhD

84 [PERFORMANCE]

UNITY VS. UNIQUENESS

IN SOCIAL MEDIA MARKETING—

WHICH IS MORE EFFECTIVE?

Akira Asada, PhD

90 [LEADERSHIP]

MISSION, PRIDE,

PEOPLE:

3 KEYS TO MILITARY AND

CORPORATE SUCCESS

Lisa Jaster

94

BRINGING

A RENEGADE

SPIRIT TO XFL 2.0

A Conversation with Grady Raskin,

President of the Dallas Renegades

96

THE BUSINESS OF

COLLEGE ATHLETICS

A Conversation with Judy MacLeod,

Commissioner of Conference USA


5

[MANAGEMENT]

CEO SUCCESSION RESEARCH

OUTSIDER CEOS

GENERATE MORE

EXTREME RESULTS


When a firm replaces a CEO, everyone involved typically

goes through a period of high stress. The board faces a highly

consequential decision, the organization faces uncertainty,

and the newly appointed CEO faces a fresh challenge—all

under the watchful eye of shareholders and the market.

One of the most frequently studied factors in CEO succession

is whether the new CEO is promoted from within or appointed

from without. After dozens of attempts, researchers have come

up with little conclusive evidence that either of these profiles, the

insider or the outsider, typically outperforms the other. Absent

in much of the literature is the acknowledgment that each type of

candidate has its pros and cons. While insiders are familiar with

the firm’s current state and resources, they are also more likely

to preserve the status quo. Outsiders, on the other hand, bring

fresh blood to the top of the organization and are usually more

willing to rock the boat, but they also may have blind spots and

incorrect assumptions about the firm, which can lead to errors. 1

Nevertheless, CEO succession remains a worthy subject of

study, not least because of the “CEO effect”—the measurable

effect a particular CEO has on performance. 2 We know that,

generally, the CEO accounts for around 25 percent of variance

in a firm’s performance. That may not be as large a number as

you expect, but it is clearly significant enough to warrant the

board’s careful consideration of CEO candidates. We also know

that, while most CEO appointments are inconsequential (with

no major effect on firm performance upward or downward), a

minority are quite consequential—either negatively or positively.

Rather than revisit the issue of whether insider or outsider

candidates are “better,” I, along with my coauthors Donald

Hambrick, Vilmos Misangyi, and Alessandra Rizzi, recently

set out to give the issue of insider-outsider CEO succession a

new frame: that of risk-taking (see “CEO Selection as Risk-

Taking,” Strategic Management Journal). Instead of asking

the usual question of which type of CEO delivers better

results, we hypothesized that outsider CEOs were more

likely to deliver more extreme results, whether positive or

negative, as compared to the more neutral results delivered

by an insider CEO. That meant that boards, making the call

between an insider or outsider candidate, actually faced a

risk-taking problem. Would they prefer to bet on an outsider

in the hopes of outsize performance, with the concomitant risk

of large losses, or play it safer with an internal candidate?

Testing Our Prediction

To test our expectation that outsider CEOs delivered more

variable performance, we examined 1,027 CEO successions of

small, midsize, and large public companies in the United States.

Of these successors, 43 percent were outsiders. We wanted to

see how much the firm’s performance (measured, like most

succession studies, by return on assets) changed relative to its

previous performance and to industry-wide performance.

Multiple analyses revealed that our prediction was correct. The

insider CEOs were generally safer bets, while outsider CEOs

were risker, producing either higher or lower results than

inside hires overall. The figure below shows the post-succession

performance-change scores for the full sample of incoming


CEOs; as you can see, the outsiders’ scores are distributed

more widely across the spectrum, signifying a broader range of

outcomes, while the insiders tend to cluster toward the middle.

Distributions of performance-change scores for insider and outsider successors

To prevent the possibility of other factors, such as recent

performance, skewing this comparison, we performed several

other analyses. One involved finding “matched pairs” of

similar firms in the same industry who hired outsider or

insider CEOs in the same time period. For these “lookalike”

comparison firms, we found the same results: there was more

variance (up or down) when the successor was hired from

outside. We also used another form of matching that compared

firms with similar pre-succession probabilities of hiring an

outsider CEO against each other. Again we found the same

trend: When these firms chose an insider CEO, there was a

greater chance of neutral performance changes. If they chose

an outsider CEO, on the other hand, variance in performance

was more likely to be more extreme in either direction.

Why Are Outsider CEOs a Riskier Choice?

There are several reasons why outsider CEOs tend to generate

more extreme results—and thus represent the riskier choice for

a board of directors. First, outside appointments are somewhat

more common when the company is in distress and needs a

fresh perspective, while inside promotions are more common

when company performance is stable and healthy. Clearly, if the

company is already unstable, extreme outcomes are more likely.

(Our analysis took this into account and found that outsiders

are still riskier, showing that this is not the sole factor.) A

second and related cause is the fact that outside CEOs may be

less constrained by their history with the firm and more likely

to take bigger and bolder action than someone promoted from

within, thereby causing more extreme outcomes, up or down. 3

Third, there is always “information asymmetry” when a

board seeks to hire an outside successor to the CEO. In other

words, while the board is likely to be familiar with an internal

candidate currently serving as COO or president within the

firm, they will likely know very little about a candidate who is

new to the company. Outsider CEO candidates also know much

more about themselves than the board knows about them—

and the candidate has an incentive to misrepresent or inflate

their capabilities during the hiring process. Because of this

information differential, the board may make errors in judgment

regarding the successor. When a board chooses an outsider,

they often use the logic that they want a world-class executive to

lead the company—and what are the chances that that executive

is currently employed there? But in the process, they may

overestimate the outside candidate’s capabilities, cultural fit,

and other factors, leading to lower-than-expected performance.

Or they may miss a significantly beneficial characteristic

of the CEO, leading to unexpectedly high performance.

When we combine these factors—considering that outsiders

are more likely to take the helm in times of crisis, more likely

to make sweeping, decisive moves, and may not be as capable

(or may be more capable) than the board expected—it’s not

surprising that a CEO plucked from outside the company is

more likely to cause larger swings in firm performance.

The Takeaway

Understanding that outsider CEOs are more likely to

deliver extreme results does not necessarily make the

board’s job of overseeing succession any easier. On the

other hand, it can help if boards consider the succession

decision and source of the new CEO in the frame of risktaking,

much like any other important strategic decision.

Understanding this dynamic, the board can consider follow-on

questions such as: “What is our tolerance for surprises right

now, whether welcome or unwelcome?” “Is the company in

a state that we need to take the relative risk of an outsider?”

and “What attributes, capabilities, and experiences may

we be overlooking in this outsider candidate?” And with

internal candidates: “Are there impediments the board can

remove to ensure they are able to see and take appropriate

risks?” Because the CEO role is so unique, it will remain

difficult to predict how any one candidate will fare. But,

viewing the insider-outsider choice through the frame of

risk-taking is one way to empower the board of directors to

make more informed and confident succession decisions.

Timothy J. Quigley is an associate professor at the University of

Georgia’s Terry College of Business. His research is focused on CEOs, top

executives, and managerial discretion. More specifically, Dr. Quigley’s

interests lie in understanding how and when CEOs and other top

executives impact organizational outcomes, the causes and outcomes of

CEO succession, and how these have changed over the course of time.

Dr. Quigley received his PhD in Strategic Management from Penn State

University and is on the editorial board of Strategic Management Journal.

1

A. W. Gouldner, Patterns of Industrial Bureaucracy (Glencoe, IL: Free Press, 1954); R. H.

Guest, “Managerial Succession in Complex Organizations,” American Journal of Sociology,

68(1), 47–54 (1962); W. Shen & A. A. Cannella, “Revisiting the Performance Consequences of

CEO Succession,” Academy of Management Journal, 45(4), 717–733 (2002).

2

Timothy J. Quigley, Donald C. Hambrick, Vilmos F. Misangyi, and G. Alessandra Rizzi, “CEO

Selection as Risk-Taking,” Strategic Management Journal, 40, 1453–1470 (2019).

3

D. L. Helmich and W. B. Brown, “Successor Type and Organizational Change in Corporate

Enterprise,” Administrative Science Quarterly, 17(3), 371–381 (1972); A. Karaevli and E.

J. Zajac, “When Do Outsider CEOs Generate Strategic Change?,” Journal of Management

Studies, 50(7), 1267–1294 (2013).


7

Leadership Lessons

Tintype of Chief Hank Whitman

by Brigham and Jenna Mayfield

FROM A

TEXAS RANGER

Former Texas Rangers

chief Hank Whitman

on his transition from law

enforcement to head of the Texas

Department of Family and

Protective Services

In his long career, Hank Whitman

not only spent eleven years with the

Texas Rangers, rising to become

chief of the agency. He also, most

recently, held what he describes as

an even tougher job: overseeing

the Texas Department of Family

and Protective Services. When

Whitman retired from DFPS

last June, Governor Greg

Abbott recognized his service,

saying he’d “helped create a

safer future for Texas.”

We spoke with Whitman

about his time as a Ranger,

the leadership challenges he

encountered at DFPS, and

the fulfillment of his role in,

as he describes it, protecting

the unprotected.

Feature

Did you know when you were small that you wanted to be a

Texas Ranger? No, I didn’t. I’ll tell you that I didn’t have a real

long career with the Texas Rangers. I only did 11 years. I don’t

think anybody’s ever made it to chief that quick, but things

happen quickly within our division. I was a police officer in Corpus

Christi for ten years before I came to DPS, where I was later

promoted into the Criminal Intelligence Division. I completed my

graduate degree and was promoted into the Rangers in 2001.

Before the governor asked me to be the commissioner of

the Texas Department of Family and Protective Services, I

thought being the chief of the Texas Rangers would be the

pinnacle of my career. But this whole new family [DFPS] that

I took on for the last three years really captured my heart.

It’s two different worlds. The Rangers are completely apolitical.

They do a lot of public corruption work and investigate mostly

high felony crimes. Public corruption cases are a huge part

of their daily work and are often referred to the Rangers by a

district attorney or a law enforcement agency head. Those cases

are sensitive and sometimes controversial and, understandably,

should not be investigated by the local law enforcement agency.

On any given month, we’re also working 40 to 60 homicides

around the state. But this latest job [with DFPS], I went from

overseeing a $22 million Ranger budget and a $20 million

border budget to an almost $3 billion budget. A large increase

in personnel too. DFPS has 12,250 employees while the Rangers

now have 150. There really aren’t that many Rangers. When

I came on to the Rangers, there were a little over 100.

Wow. That’s not many for a big state like Texas. That is true!

But I had to learn how to deal with politics in the new job

at DFPS. Something that I didn’t have to do in my previous

position. Lawmakers would either be hugging each other

from both sides of the aisle or arguing. It was tough and that

is a big understatement. I met with lawmakers on a regular

basis. A lot of them were fantastic to work with. Many I

consider personal friends. Obviously, I didn’t see eye to eye

with all of them, and likewise they didn’t with me at times.

But I don’t think I left that capitol with any enemies. We all

respected each other. They too have a very tough job.

It was difficult to see our caseworkers get pounded on a daily

basis, when they’re doing the best job they can with very

limited resources and funding. If a legislator would start

yelling at me in a hearing, I would think, “Well, I’m going to

yell back too. I may be an appointed commissioner but I’m a

citizen of this state too.” Fortunately, I had nothing to lose—I

didn’t apply for the job. So, I thought, “Well, I’m going to

yell back. Fire me! I don’t care. I’ll go home right now.”

I was mindful of not crossing the line too far and knew

I had to maintain a professional demeanor for my

employees. It wasn’t about me. It was about them and to

this day, I say they have the hardest, most thankless job in

government service. I’m proud to have been their leader for

those three years. They have saved so many children and

elderly people from abuse, neglect, and exploitation.

What were some of the first challenges you faced when you

took on the commissioner job at DFPS? One of the things I

asked the governor was, “Will you allow me to build my own

executive team?” He said, “Absolutely.” There was no influence

from above. There was no “Hey, you need to do this or that

or consider this person or that person.” We were allowed to

develop sound policy that was proven, develop an effective,

dedicated executive team, and challenge the status quo.

The generals underneath the executives were a different challenge.

About half of them were engaged, and the other half were like,

“We’ve seen cowboys ride in here, but eventually they ride off

into the sunset. We’ll watch this guy ride off into the sunset

like the rest.” That attitude did not sit good with me at all.

When I called all the field leaders in for a face-to-face meeting,

I could tell which ones despised me even being there. And I

understand that. Here’s a guy coming into their world who

doesn’t even have an inkling of knowledge about child welfare

or adult protection services. I respected that wholeheartedly.

I’m not a caseworker. I’m not a social worker. I was a cop

and I didn’t want them to think I was arrogant and not

respectful of what they do. But I do know public administration

and I have a solid understanding of human behavior.

One of the things I noticed was that there was a lot of complacency

in upper and middle management—middle management being

the hub of a successful agency. They weren’t the ones getting

yelled at by the lawmakers, so they saw no need for change.

How did you handle that situation? I said, “Accountability

is big to me, and no more are we going to blame the

caseworkers when you, as their supervisors, oversee the cases

yourself.” We’re supposed to be leaders and mentors, not

just people filling leadership roles. Two different things.

Boy, did that change the agency immediately. I picked up six

new enthusiastic regional directors, and the other six would

not return. Those six great new leaders were like, “Put me in,

coach. I’ve been sitting on the bench waiting for this.” Some

people still saw me as an outsider, but I wasn’t the enemy. “We’re

going to be bold,” I told them. No more status quo. “We’re going

to change, and we are going to change big.” Surprisingly, the

changes we made proved to turn the ship in a big way. DFPS is

like a huge aircraft carrier—you can’t turn it on a dime. But it

turned, and it turned in the right direction. It still needs lots of

improvements, as any agency does, but it turned for the better

because of its dedicated employees and a new direction.


9

Tintype of Chief Hank Whitman and Mike Ramirez

by Brigham and Jenna Mayfield.

Read Ramirez’s story starting on page 14.

I would make each of my executive

team members take over in each weekly

executive meeting. I wanted to watch how

they made decisions. In this manner, I

was able to build a succession plan and

they got to know how I operate. One

thing they noticed was that I didn’t talk

a lot. I listened. A lot of CEOs need to

do more of that, especially when they

have good experts. Sometimes they

would even forget I was sitting there.

Did it help that your leaders at DFPS

were presumably drawn to the work of

helping these kids and families? Yes. We

were all affected by that. On any given

day, the state of Texas has 30,000 kids

in our conservatorship. Thirty thousand.

It was horrifying for me to even see


those numbers. It was also tough and

heartbreaking to see kids who age out of

foster care without being adopted. Our

biggest push was to get them into college

or vocational school. Every foster child

in the state of Texas can go to any state

college or vocational school tuition free. No

school loans to worry about. Unfortunately,

fewer than 7 percent take advantage of it.

Wow. We’ve raised that number now. They

often don’t take advantage of it because

they’re mad and don’t trust the system. We

as a community, not just DFPS, weren’t

doing a good job of mentoring those kids.

Because that’s all they need—someone

to be there for them. These kids have

never lived a normal life, and we want

them to have that life of normalcy.

It made my job as chief of the Rangers

seem like a cakewalk. The normal

life expectancy in the position of

commissioner is 18 months, so I

surpassed that, with three years and

two grueling legislative sessions.

There was one commissioner who

completed four years, but it’s not a

position people hold for a long time.

What did you tell your successor on

your way out? What did you learn? As I

told the governor’s staff when I decided

to retire, “I want the next person to

do ten times better than what we did.”

And they’re going to want the next

person to do that. I’m confident that

will happen. When I retired, I got a lot

of good feedback on the changes we

Feature

implemented. People told me, “It worked.

We didn’t like it. But we understand now

that it worked.”

What were some of those changes you

made? One thing my crew learned quickly

was that I hold people accountable. I take

notes. I don’t forget. When I first came

in, there was a lot of what I call “slow

rolling.” Every project was estimated

to take six months or a year. “Really?”

I’d say, “I think that’ll take three weeks.

I’ll give y’all one month.” Well, hell,

they’d have it done in two weeks.

I also noticed in executive meetings that

we had these employees lined up all

around the walls. They were “subjectmatter

experts.” They attended the

executive meetings in case one of the

executives needed them. As far as I

recall, they never talked at all. After

the first couple of meetings, I asked if

they really needed to be there. I found

out they were doing it that way because

they’d always done it that way. And

they all dreaded it. So, I told them to

go back to work and we’d call them if

needed. It saved everyone time, and for

us productivity was critical. Of course,

we did call them in when we needed to

hear from them. Those subject-matter

experts are your successors. You’re

mentoring them to move them up.

There’s a saying I learned when I went

through Police Staff and Command

School many years ago: “Either move

them up or manage them out.” At first,

I found that to be very distasteful, but

the goals and objectives of a department

like DFPS must be met or children and

elderly suffer or possibly die. If they’re

good, you promote them and continue

to mentor them. And if they’re not

making it after all attempts are made to

make them good, productive employees,

then you have to manage them out.

How did you know who to manage up

and who to manage out? One thing was,

I did a lot of ride-alongs. I’d say, “Okay

team, I’m heading to the field to do

some ride-alongs with the caseworkers.”

“Well, Commissioner, where are you

going?” people would ask. I wouldn’t tell

them. Because if I did, they might want

to call the field: “Hey, Commissioner’s

out. Make sure you clean up the place.”

The first time I did it, I did tell them I

was going to San Antonio. Well, hell, it

was like a reception when I got there.

Everything but the flowers. But those

ride-alongs were important. They let

the field know that I wasn’t the Wizard

of Oz in a big tall white building

behind a curtain. They knew even the

top guy was willing to come out and

work with them from time to time.

I encouraged my executives to do ridealongs

too. I made it part of their annual

evaluation. I told them they were required

to ride along twice a year. Each one of

them got a profound appreciation for

what a caseworker does on a daily basis. I

recalled that my CFO had never been on a

ride-along. After completing his first one

he told me, “Now I know why they keep

asking for the funding they need. I get it.”

We did a lot of things right, and

sometimes we didn’t. When we fell

through, we’d work with the Office of

Consumer Affairs to look at what went

wrong and how not to make the same

mistake again. When we saw that a case

wasn’t handled correctly, I’d look at that

person’s annual evaluation. Sometimes

it would say they were great, and then

I’d know the evaluation wasn’t being

used correctly. So I’d have that talk

with the supervisor and let them know

how critical the annual evaluation is to

their success as an effective leader.

Eventually they understood that

everybody’s accountable, including me.

I take full responsibility for everything

they do. But everybody’s going to be

accountable for themselves too. That

was a whole different concept to them.

If I’m going to fight for you, I told them,

then I have to know you will take care

of our children and vulnerable adults.

And I didn’t run the Ranger division

any different when I was chief there.

What were some differences between

leading the Rangers and leading the

DFPS? With the Rangers, I had seven

commanders, and they were proven

leaders of their own command. But

the biggest difference is the nature

of the work. At the Rangers, we lived

in a very intense investigative world.

Most of the cases we dealt with were

homicides. But we didn’t have to worry

about keeping kids safe, healthy, and

away from harm. That’s a tougher job!

So there’s a lot more urgency at DFPS.

On any given day—seven days a week,

365 days a year—our 7,000 caseworkers

are having to lay eyes on children within

24 hours. It’s not like the Rangers, where

we can start working once we get there—

unless there’s a shootout, of course.

It’s two different levels of stress. The

Rangers live in a stressful world too, of

course. Rangers work independently.

They do not have an assigned partner.

You can only imagine the Ranger who

walked into the scene at the church in

Sutherland Springs [site of the 2017 mass

shooting in Wilson County that killed

26 and wounded 20 more]. One of the

first ones who walked in there goes, “I’m

going to need a lot of help.” Even those

guys had difficulties seeing that gruesome

scene because of the children and the

elderly who were shot and killed in there.

Just because you’re wearing a Ranger

badge, it doesn’t mean that all of a

sudden you have no emotions. You do,

and they too go through PTSD like other

first responders. Every police officer

does, and so do my caseworkers.

I bet. They suffer from an extreme

amount of PTSD. A lot of them mask

it, but that’s one of the things we

implemented: a peer group to keep an eye

on those who lose a child on their case.

That’s almost a career killer for them,

not in that they’re going to be dismissed

necessarily. More often they just say,

“I quit. This baby just died under my

care and case supervision.” Well, true

in a sense, but they were usually doing


11

everything they could. Society forgets

that caseworkers are human and they,

like police officers, cannot predict what

a person will do with a child despite

having followed all the directions of

the court and despite the services

they provide the parent or parents.

When critical incidents of that magnitude

happen, I would personally call them:

“Are you okay? You doing all right?”

It helps. But I also knew when it was

time to get them mental health services.

These houses they’re going into, they’re

not mansions. You’re looking at some

very difficult situations. They’re going

into homes I wouldn’t go into as a cop

unless I had backup with me. And

they’re doing it with no weapon. They

often have no sense of fear. They just

do it. They get called all kinds of names.

At times assaulted, threatened, and

stalked. It’s awful. It’s the hardest job in

government service without a doubt.

Some of these caseworkers, they’ll be

sitting in a client’s home, have a roach

fall on their shirt or watch a rat run by,

and they’ll just go back to talking to mom

or dad. It’s like, “They don’t scare me.”

I’m sure some people would start and

then immediately say, “This isn’t for me.”

My predecessor, Judge [John] Specia,

was instrumental in redeveloping the

academy’s training process for new

incoming caseworkers. He started

putting trainees in the field right off

the bat. Instead of doing three months

in the classroom before they went out

to the field, they now go two weeks in

the classroom, one week in the field,

three weeks in the classroom, and so

on. I wish the colleges that teach social

work would start doing that. Let them

intern with us, so that they can get that

fear factor out of the way. Now, if we’re

going to lose them, we’re going to lose

them real quick, and then we don’t spend

tens of thousands of dollars training

them just to have them walk out.

I also overhauled how we promote

supervisors and that helped with turnover

too. Before, it was the fellow supervisors

and program directors who selected

upcoming supervisors. I brought everyone

in and had them explain the process to

me. And I said to them: “Truly, it’s the

‘good ole boys’ system, right?” They

all looked at me like, “Well, yeah.”

I knew we needed to stop that

immediately. Supervisors were picking

their favorite person, and it wasn’t always

a person who had leadership qualities.

The other unit members saw that—and it

was destructive to the entire unit. I called

all my training people in and said, “I

want your team to develop a 120-question

test for every role of supervision in

this department, with 1,000 questions

in a computer bank. I want it to cover

everything from leadership to the job

itself to the family code.” For those who

desired to become a supervisor, they were

required to take the exam and make at

least an 80 percent score. To my surprise,

we had a one-in-three failure rate.

Wow! That would have been a third of

personnel who were not prepared to lead.

Second, I told them that we were going

to put together a promotion board.

The candidates would be required to

answer a series of critical questions

pertaining to their field of supervision.

The board would not consist of anyone

they would directly work for.

Their faces were turning white listening

to this. I said, “There’s going to be

a proctor in the room, too. They’re

going to take the score sheets from the

interviewers and put them in a sealed

envelope.” I didn’t want people looking

at each other during the process or

knowing how the other evaluators were

scoring. I wanted it to be a fair process.

When we implemented that, my

supervisor turnover went from 28 percent

to 7 percent. That 7 percent was due to

normal retirement turnover. Caseworkers

in the field were happy because they knew

their supervisors were now competent

and went through a fair process—it wasn’t

just the ‘good ole boys’ system anymore.

Of course, that didn’t go over real well

with the existing supervisors—“Oh, God,

I have to take this test,” they said. But

I once sat in a room with 700 of them

at a conference, and I said, “Can I see a

show of hands of how many of you got

promoted under the new system?” Threequarters

of them raised their hand.

Not one out of them in that category

have I ever had to demote or dismiss.

Where did you learn to hire and train

like that? DPS. That’s the way we did

it in DPS. It’s a fair system. If your

middle management isn’t working,

that’s like the engine of a huge truck

freezing up. That’s what was happening.

The previous promotion process

was gumming things up, and our

engine was running very sluggish.

I take being promoted very seriously.

On the last Tuesday of every third

month, every person who is a newly

promoted supervisor comes to Austin

with his or her family and attends

a formal promotion ceremony. Our

promotion ceremony is broadcast

throughout the state on our intranet,

so all employees can watch from

their phone or office computer. We’d

have a guest speaker and the new

supervisors would take pictures with

their families, friends, and coworkers.

They went home with a feeling of, “I’ve

accomplished something. I’m a leader.”

After we implemented that, morale

just kept going straight up. Then I

implemented the commissioner’s award

of excellence. It’s the highest award

that can be bestowed on an employee or

outside stakeholder. In the three years

I was there, I awarded 70. The award

ceremony was televised, and again, we’d

have the recipient up with their whole

family. I’d invite them up to see my

office and visit with the executive team.

Their kids really enjoyed it as well.

These caseworkers save lives daily. It

didn’t cost anything to recognize them

and bring their morale up. An employee

wants to be told when they’re doing good.

Pay is good, but that recognition is more

important. Every CEO needs to know that.


P O D C A S T

Each week on Ask a CEO, veteran tech CEO Joel Trammell explores a challenge

of one of the least understood jobs in business—that of the CEO.

Some topics we’ve covered:

• TAKING A COMPANY PUBLIC

• MASTERING WORK-LIFE BALANCE

• THE DIFFERENCE BETWEEN

MANAGEMENT AND LEADERSHIP

• BEST PRACTICES FOR

COMPENSATION

Do you have a topic you’d like to

hear discussed? Or a question

about an issue you’re facing?

Let us know at

ask@texasceomagazine.com.

SUBSCRIBE NOW on Apple

Podcasts or Google Podcasts.

SPONSORED BY:

THE

BODYGUARD

In 2020, personal and diplomatic security protection isn’t just for heads of state. Increasingly,

businesspeople are enlisting the help and services of professionals like Mike Ramirez, who provide personal

and executive security protection in dangerous situations and places, whether at a conference abroad or in

a warzone. We asked Ramirez to tell us about his job—and what business leaders should know about it.

How did you get into the profession of personal protection?

I grew up about an hour southeast of San Antonio in a small

town called Kenedy, Texas. From a young age I always knew

that I wanted to be a Marine. In my senior year of high

school, I contacted a recruiter who then came to talk to me

about the Marine Corps at my parents’ house. After about

an hour of the recruiter telling me all about what the Marine

Corps had to offer and all the places I would get to travel

to, I signed my contract, and the path to where I am today

began. I spent the next four years as an Infantry Marine and

a Security Force Marine. In the mid-1990s, I got my first

taste of military personal protection while on a special duty

assignment providing armed protection for a high-ranking

officer. At that time, it wasn’t called “personal protection”—

you were just a military enlisted man assigned to an officer

because their rank warranted protection by a Marine.

After four years in the Marine Corps, I came back to Texas

and went to work for the Texas Department of Corrections.

I worked in a maximum-security state penitentiary in my

hometown of Kenedy. My first year, I worked in administrative

segregation, where offenders are locked up 23 hours a day

because of hostile behavior or because they had threats

on their lives. You’re worried about your own personal

protection at that point. Needless to say, it was not a very

cordial environment, but I learned a lot in my first year at

the penitentiary. For one, I learned how to read people very

quickly and that no two situations are ever the same. Nothing

is what it appears to be when you walk into a cell block.

After my first year in administrative segregation, I took

another position as a correctional field officer. As a CFO,

you ride on horseback every day and take offenders

to work out in the fields. The penitentiary I worked at

sat on a large amount of land, so the prison used the

offenders to do the labor and farm the land. We would

take a squad of anywhere from 25 to 50 offenders per field

officer and have them plant seeds and harvest crops.

Later, I was promoted to K-9 sergeant. My job was primarily

breeding, raising, and training dogs to track humans. If

an offender tried to escape from our prison or any other

prison, we would deploy our human-tracking dogs to

track and capture them. We also assisted local and state

police with our K-9s. If they conducted a traffic stop and

someone bailed on them, they would call us, and we’d

take our dogs out and assist in capturing the suspect.

That sounds a little more pleasant than administrative

segregation. It was! It was one of the most rewarding

jobs and if I ever win the Lotto, I would go back and

do it for free. Getting to ride horses all day and work

with dogs was a very rewarding experience.

Around 2003, the war in Afghanistan had been going for

a couple of years and the war in Iraq had started, I was

still working for the penitentiary. I kept in touch with

guys I had been in the Marines with. When I shared with

them that I was working at a penitentiary, they would say,

“Man, that sounds like a dangerous job for not very much


money.” They went on to share with me about private

military contracting. They informed me that the US

government was paying former military guys, like myself,

good money for the skills the Marine Corps taught us.

I thought, “Well, I’ll go give it a year, save that money,

and come back and decide what I want to do next.” I went

through the extreme vetting and grueling selection process,

then headed to Iraq. Before I could blink, I’d been there 10

years. My first clients that I provided personal protection

for were US civilian contractors who were rebuilding

the infrastructure, water-treatment facilities, and power

plants that had been damaged in the bombings during the

beginning of the Iraq War. From there I went on to providing

diplomatic protection for US ambassadors, secretaries of

state, diplomats, senators, congresspeople, and many other

government officials traveling in, to, and around Iraq.

We also provided 24/7 protection for the US ambassador

assigned out of the embassy in Iraq. We conducted the

advance surveys and risk assessments, coordinated the routes

we’d be taking, put together evacuation and emergency

plans should we come under attack, which we did on many

occasions. When the war in Iraq kicked off, there became

a need for former military guys like me with special skills

to provide protection for designated government officials

because our military was doing the offensive missions,

tracking down terrorists and fighting the war on terror.

Looking for the bad guys wasn’t our job. Our job was to

protect those who we were assigned to. We weren’t looking

for an engagement. Our job was to get the person we were

assigned to protect to their meetings safely, keep them out

of harm’s way and return them back to a secure location.

When it comes to diplomatic protection, we figured out

over time that in some cases, depending on the mission

and the location we would be traveling to, that it was better

to have the diplomat travel without the four or five black

Suburbans and two helicopters—“little birds”—flying above.

It’s kind of announcing the target. Yes, you could say that.

In the beginning, the thought process was to overwhelm our

attackers with our physical presence, sirens and lights and men

with superior firepower. With time, we realized that wasn’t

enough. The would-be attackers were getting braver and their

tactics were changing. They started identifying our Suburban

motorcades and using IEDs [improvised explosive devices] on

the sides of the roads or in dead animals. We had to adjust our

tactics and ways of moving our clients around the country.

The decision was made at the higher level that a new method

of transporting clients needed to be developed. My team and

I were tasked with that adjustment. We implemented using

vehicles commonly used in that area so we would blend in

more. We started dressing like the locals and concealing

our weapons when out in public. It proved to work well.

This method is still used to this day in many different

countries as a way of transporting diplomats around cities

in combat zones and hostile areas in a low-profile status.

During that time, I was recruited and switched gears from

diplomatic protection to intelligence and counterintelligence

work. This work took me in a whole new direction. After about

10 years of doing private military contracts, both diplomatic

protection and intelligence, I was ready to slow down and

returned home to the US.

I was fortunate enough to bring those security and personal

protection and intelligence skill sets back with me from all

my years in combat zones and hostile areas and put them to

use in corporate America. In this day and age, the need for

personal protection here in America and abroad is in much

greater demand than when I started in this business. Many

more private families, business professionals, and company

leaders are seeking professional protection services.

It’s very rewarding work, whether it’s a businessperson or a

family, making sure they can go about their business and not

have to be concerned for their security.

What causes somebody to say, “I need to hire professional

protection”? There are many reasons for an individual or

a company to decide that security and personal protection

is needed. A lot of times the requests come if there’s been

a direct threat against themselves or to their business.

If a company’s executives must travel, they may want

protection, especially if it’s a speech or event in a public

forum and there may be protesters or activists who could

potentially cause them harm. It could even be simply so

the protected person does not have to travel alone.

Other times, there is no specific threat, but if they’re traveling

for example in Mexico or South America, danger can arise

at any time. Kidnapping for ransom and maintaining a

positive public image are a big concern in those areas.

It could even be something like the client wanting some private

time or to avoid business pitches while traveling abroad. If

someone recognizes him or her and starts doing a pitch or

asking to borrow money, it’s easier for me to be there and

step in to handle the situation. Beforehand, we would have

already established our code words and signals, so they can

signal that they want out of the situation and I can intervene.

What makes a good client? Someone who’s open-minded

and willing to listen to our recommendations instead of

putting themselves in bad situations. That happens in some

industries more than others, especially when you compare

people in the business world to those in the entertainment

world. When people are willing to listen to our advice and

expertise, it allows us to do a better job for the client.


When you get a new client, how do you assess their needs?

We start by scheduling a conference call or a sit-down,

where I ask questions so I can have a better understanding

of what the person’s needs and concerns are: What is

the purpose for the travel? Is this business or personal?

Who do you plan to meet? How long are you going to be

there? Are there known threats against you? Why are you

requesting security? Are you being proactive, just wanting

to travel safely, or has something recently happened?

Once I get the information, I can start devising a security

plan specific to their needs and begin reaching out to my

network of security professionals. I have a large network

in this industry that I utilize for real-time intelligence and

security information in just about any part of the world.

If it is multiple people traveling that require security, I

will put together a team of security professionals to travel

with the clients. If requested or warranted, I will send

someone ahead of time to conduct an advance of the area

and places that we will be taking the client to. One person

cannot provide adequate security for multiple people.

Is there anywhere people don’t use security where you

think they should? Many Americans go to Mexico and

think, “Oh, Mexico is okay.” Honestly, Mexico is one of the

most dangerous countries in the world today. People just

don’t realize it. Americans can be targeted for kidnapping,

extortion, or just plain robbery. The cartels have been

jockeying for control over different parts of Mexico for

years and it has caused so much turmoil. You can be at the

wrong place at the wrong time and get caught up in a bad

situation with the continuous fighting among the cartels.

If they’re traveling in Mexico or anywhere in Central and

South America, I recommend that CEOs and companies take

the time and spend the money to ensure the security and

safety of their personnel. It’s much better to have a security

plan and team in place and not need it than to need it and

not have it. The cost will be a lot less than it would be to

pay a ransom. A lot of times it comes down to dollars, but

when it’s time to save money, it shouldn’t come from your

security. Businesspeople shouldn’t have to be concerned

with their security and safety when traveling. They should be

focusing on the business and representing their company.

Do you see yourself doing this for 20 more years? Whether it

be on the physical side of protection or overseeing operations

and passing my knowledge to the next generation, I will

continue bringing an undeniable passion and great value

to the table for many years to come. I’m very thankful to

have had all these years doing this work operationally.

At some point I’m probably going to have to step back

and allow the younger men to keep doing the handson

work, and I’ll take more of a management role and

continue to pass on the knowledge to the younger men. I

will squeeze a few more years out of the operational side

by continuing to stay in shape physically and mentally,

training on a regular basis, and keeping my network going.

How do you handle privacy issues? Do people worry about

having some guy standing a foot away every time they go

down to the beach on their vacation? That comes up a lot,

whether the security is for a family or corporation. People

struggle with losing their sense of privacy and personal

space. And it’s understandable. No one wants to have private

conversations with some stranger hovering around. I try

to make it clear to potential clients that there are several

ways of conducting personal protection and security.

We go over this in client assessments. It’s always tailored

to the client’s needs. There’s the up-close-and-personal

protection where I’m dressed in a suit walking a foot

away from the client, always by their side, opening the

door to let him in and out of the vehicle, and there’s

no doubt that I am there to protect that person.

There’s also what’s called low-profile protection, where

security is going to dress down and blend in more with the

people of that area. We will travel a little more low-key,

probably utilizing the same types of vehicles everyone else is

driving in that area. When we get to where we’re going, the

client will open their own door. I may have another security

person already at the location. Once you exit the vehicle, I’m

going to hand you off to the security member already at the

location. Security will give the client plenty of space depending

on the circumstances and have little to no contact with the

client unless the situation requires it, or the client requests it.

And then there’s what we call shadow security or protection,

where we never have contact with the client in public unless

the situation calls for it. This way of protection requires

multiple security team members in order to have men prestaged

in the locations the client will be traveling to as well

as to provide several security personnel to follow the client in

separate vehicles. The client drives themselves in their own

vehicle and we follow in different vehicles. Another example

of shadow security—let’s say you’re on vacation in Cabo

San Lucas with your family. We’ll have established where

you’re staying, how you’re traveling, and security will have

men on the ground before you get there. Security will be in

place around the house and they’ll look like locals from the

area. If a client is hanging out on the beach, a security team

member or members might be getting sun, wearing shorts

and hanging out like everyone else just a short distance away,

and unless security identifies a threat or we get the code word

or signal from the client, we’ll give them some room so they

don’t feel like they have lost their personal space. So, as you

can see, there are several ways to provide security and still

maintain the client’s sense of personal space and freedom.


17

The Eyes


Feature

OF

TEXAS

ARE

UPON

US

University of Texas

athletics director Chris

Del Conte on servant

leadership, the future

of collegiate sports, and

what it takes to run an

institution representing

nearly 30 million Texans.

By most accounts, Chris Del Conte has revitalized Longhorn athletics.

Since his hire in December 2017 as vice president and athletics

director at the University of Texas, he’s not only overseen a recordbreaking

$219 million in annual revenue—he’s also led the charge

on building new sports facilities, amped up game day with a festival

concept on Bevo Boulevard, and found time to run one of the most

responsive Twitter accounts out there. (Seriously, try tweeting at

him. He’ll probably respond.) We recently spoke to Del Conte about

leading an organization that entertains millions of spectators even

as it prepares its student-athletes for success—on and off the field.

To start off, can you give us an idea of the scope of UT Athletics?

We’ve got about 400 full-time employees, 2,000 part-time

employees, 523 student-athletes, and a budget of $225 million.

We’re the front porch of an institution that has 52,000 students

and about 500,000 living alumni. Plus, there’s about 30

million people in the state of Texas that the University of Texas

represents on a daily basis. The eyes of Texas are upon us!

You ran smaller operations before you got to the University of Texas.

What were the big differences moving to a larger institution? I’ll

go back to the movie Hoosiers for a moment. When I was director

of athletics at Rice, it was a lot like the town of Hickory, Indiana,

in Hoosiers. It was a small town, 3,000 students, and you have

basically 30,000 living alumni and an $11 million budget. You

know who your constituents are. When I moved to TCU, it was

like the sectionals in Hoosiers. It was a bigger stage, where you

have 8,000 students and 50,000 living alumni. And now I’m at the

University of Texas, with a lot more than that. But at the end of the

day, the fundamentals of the game are the same. It’s still a 10-foot

rim, it’s still a 15-foot free throw, and it’s still a 94-foot court.

At the end of Hoosiers, they take the whole team into that big

gymnasium and they’re all looking around at the size and scope of

the place. But the dimensions of the court are the same as anywhere

else. In the same way, the football field is the same at Rice as it is

at TCU as it is at the University of Texas. It’s just the size and scope

of the operation that’s bigger. With that comes all the challenges

of a larger organization, but the basic footprint is the same. And in

all three institutions, we’re educating young people, helping them

get a degree through their interests on the playing field. It’s just

the size and scope of who you represent and the complexities of the

institution that are magnified when you move to a larger institution.

Photos courtesy of Texas Athletics

Finding good jobs for your student-athletes is a key priority of yours.

What do you want Texas CEOs to know about your student-athletes?

When they come to our school, every one of our student-athletes believes

that they’re going to be a pro athlete in whatever sport they participate

in. But there’s always that “aha” moment where they realize it’s about

more than that. Our job is to say, “A sport is what you do—it’s not who

you are.” When you come to college, we’re going to find and accentuate

who you are. Every one of our kids has tremendous grit. They are driven

to be the very best. They have put their entire efforts into athletics and

they know what time management is, they know what hard work is.


19

THERE’S A

SAYING IN OUR

WEIGHT ROOM: “THE

WINNING TRADITION

OF THE UNIVERSITY

OF TEXAS SHALL NOT

BE ENTRUSTED TO

THE TIMID NOR THE

WEAK.” TELL ME WHAT

EMPLOYERS WOULD NOT

WANT TO HIRE SOMEONE

WHO’S BEEN TRAINED

UNDER THAT MOTTO?

The American dream of bettering one’s life

is always predicated on education. That’s

exactly the opportunity we’re offering at

the University of Texas. We’re getting

young people to come change the world.

That’s what we say here: “What starts here

changes the world.” We truly believe that.

When you get a degree from the University

of Texas, from the finest faculty the land

has to offer, you are then prepared to

change the dynamics of any institution

you go work for based on that educational

background at the University of Texas.

So, an employer getting a student-athlete

from the University of Texas can be sure

that person has been tested under the

eyes of Texas. The pressure of being a

student-athlete is not for the faint of heart.

There’s a saying in our weight room:

“The pride and winning tradition of the

Texas Longhorns will not be entrusted

to the weak nor the timid.” Tell me what

employers would not want to hire someone

who’s been trained under that motto?

The athletics director position has a lot

of similarities to the CEO position. One

unusual aspect of it is that you are often

not the face of the organization. It’s

often the coaches who are most visible,

and the success of the institution might

be externally judged on their success.

How do you deal with that? I think of

my role as one of servant leadership. It

should be about our coaches and our

student-athletes. My job is to be the

wind beneath their wings, whether it

be our coaches, our student-athletes, or

our constituents at large. When you put

them before you, that’s the greatest form

of leadership—serving your community.

That’s what team sports are all about.

It’s a collective group that makes your

team successful, not an individual.

As athletics director, I’m running an

economic enterprise based on people’s

passion. No one has to buy a season ticket.

No one has to buy a T-shirt. No one has

to come to the games. We’re providing

an opportunity for people to form a sense

of community around the University of

Texas. We invite 100,000 people to come

back to campus to celebrate the University

of Texas through the eyes of sport. That

makes us the front porch, like I said, but

the most important thing is the house—the

university. The house has transformed

lives and bettered the community through

education. Then Texas Exes is the back

porch, where we invite people to the

barbecue to relive the glory days.

When you’re running an enterprise

based on passion, whether it’s the

passion of the kids on the field or the

coaches or our donors or our students

or the state of Texas as a whole, you’d

better have a servant mind and heart.

You will not be successful if you think

it’s about you. It is always about the

University of Texas first and foremost.

You had a “lemons into lemonade”

situation this year, where you had to


replace a coach in the middle of the

year. The team rallied and then ended up

winning a national championship. How

do you handle a situation like that? You

always put the student-athletes first. Kids

are resilient. That particular issue was

difficult to deal with, but the kids knew

they wore that burnt orange and white

across their chest and were going to rally

around each other and the university. We

were already having a successful season,

so that was a bump in the road. But it was

an opportunity for them to realize that

together they can do something special.

As you look five, ten years down the

road at collegiate athletics, do you see

any big changes? Do you see the esports

craze getting folded into intercollegiate

athletics? Are you worried about the

struggles people are having with football

injuries? It’s ever-changing every day.

The enterprise has always gone through

big shifts since it was established over a

century ago. The football program here was

established in 1893, but college athletics

in its current form really took hold in the

early 1900s. One thing that we’ve always

had is change, whether it be changes in

conferences or rules or affiliations. You just

have to be able to adapt to the changes.

As far as the two trends you just

mentioned, some of those are politically

motivated. I don’t know if esports will

ever take hold in the South. But it’s

happening in other cities and states,

so you have to be aware of that. And

the safety of the game has always been

paramount. Hell, that was paramount

when Teddy Roosevelt was president.

You’re always going to have these dynamic

topics. They’re always going to be there.

My job is not to be rigid in thought but

to be malleable for the betterment of

the institution and our program.

WHEN YOU’RE

RUNNING AN

ENTERPRISE BASED

ON PASSION, YOU’D

BETTER HAVE A

SERVANT MIND AND

HEART. YOU WILL NOT

BE SUCCESSFUL IF YOU

THINK IT’S ABOUT YOU.

What do you tell people about what it’s

like to work for you? I expect you to do the

job! You’re the expert in your particular

field, so do your job. As a leader, I don’t

need to be a jack of all trades—I hire

experts to do their job. It’s like in football,

where you’ve got 11 people on the field and

if each of them does their job, the team will

be successful. You’ve got to hire the right

people, give them the tools necessary to be

successful, then stand back and let them

work. That’s what a leader should do. If

you’re manipulating every little thing as a

leader, then you’re not allowing people to

grow. If you hire someone to run an area of

your organization, let them run that area.

At the University of Texas, our goal is to be

a top-10 team in every one of our sports,

so collectively we give our staff and our

coaches all the tools necessary to be great

and then we let them do it. And we hold

them accountable to that standard. Period.

If I worked for you, what stories would

I hear? What has influenced you

throughout your career? I have mentors

I constantly work with, but probably my

biggest mentor was my dad. Growing up,

he always told us: Be humble, be honest,

and serve people. If you do those three

things well, you will be successful. But

if you don’t do one of those three things

well, then life will be difficult for you.

Those three things are important to me

and I always carry them with me. And my

dad and mom lived those things. When I

was a kid, they started a children’s home

in New Mexico, where they helped look

after over a hundred and fifty foster kids.

Did you know that athletics director

was a job you wanted at a young age, or

did you stumble into it? It wasn’t one of

those things I knew from the beginning.

When I was in college, a house parent at

the ranch I was at became a team doctor

at Washington State, and he gave me

a job in the maintenance department.

I worked my way up from there. But I

always knew that I wanted to be around

an organization that was giving something

good to humanity. Outside of the GI Bill,

more kids go to college for free through

athletic scholarships than anything else.

It doesn’t matter where you’re from or

your socioeconomic background—through

sport you can change your paradigm

because you got a free education.

Feature

But to me it’s always been about being

humble, being honest, and serving others—

those three traits my father instilled in

me. Those are always going to be with

me. I was always going to do that type

of work. Sport just happened to be the

arena that galvanized my interest.


21

WHAT CEOS

Can Learn from

EXCEPTIONAL

COACHES

John Thornton, PhD

I have always been fascinated by the coaches who have “it”—that

X-factor that separates exceptional coaches from the also-rans.

What do they do differently as they put together a staff, organize

practice, recruit talent, and manage high-stakes games? While a

favorable bounce here and there helps out, it’s become obvious over

my forty-plus years in athletics that consistent winning happens

by design. In some form or fashion, the exceptional coaches all

had a system, a routine that worked for them. John Wooden, Pat

Summitt, and Paul “Bear” Bryant—with their respective Pyramid of

Success, Definite Dozen, and Junction Boys—are the stuff of legend.

Each is absolutely authentic. Each put in the vast amount of time,

expertise, and effort it takes to achieve success.

My interest in great coaching runs through my entire career, from

my early involvement in high school coaching to my experiences

with intercollegiate coaching and administration, ending with

my time as interim athletics director at Texas A&M University.

It continues through today in my role as executive professor and

director of the Texas A&M Coaching Academy, where I deal with

the complexities of directorship over intercollegiate athletics

programs. If I have learned anything, it’s that the job of building

a successful athletic program is not for the faint of heart. As the

homespun Coach Bum Phillips once said, “There are two kinds of

coaches: those that are fired and those that are going to be fired.”

The exceptional men and women who succeed in this highpressure

role have my utmost respect. They must channel their

players’ competitiveness, please their donors, and persist through

public scrutiny and the incessant chatter of social media gurus.

And as my mentor Coach Shelby Metcalf—hall of famer and the

winningest coach in the Southwest Conference—was fond of

saying, they do all this with “a scoreboard tied to their ass.”

Does that sound familiar? Perhaps a little like the CEO role?

Indeed, coaching within a Tier One athletic program like Texas

A&M—with its seven-figure revenue and nearly 600 studentathletes—is

a lot like leading in corporate America. Leaders in both

settings face the same pressure to perform, the same responsibility

to deliver wins through other people. And I believe that each role

has much to learn from the other.

Here are five characteristics of the exceptional coaches I have

known, each of which translates to consistent winning in the

business realm.

1. Exceptional coaches define and embrace their

uniqueness. Exceptional coaches are special: They stand

out in some way, whether you call it their style, their persona,

or something else. They might be folksy, hard-ass, nononsense,

or mystical, but whatever they are, they are totally

themselves. They find the authentic core of themselves, share

it with their teams, and use it to separate themselves from

the merely average coaches. This authenticity fosters the

kind of trust and loyalty that—to again quote Coach Metcalf—

prevents fans “from naming a street after you one year and

running you out of town on it the next.”

2. Exceptional coaches are consumed with their

profession. For better or worse, exceptional coaches live

their job every day. They have an unrelenting, laser-like

focus. They constantly fight for what they and their teams

need to win. As an administrator, dealing with these passionfilled

firebrands could get tiresome at times, but I had to

realize that this was a part of what made them good. They

take no days off. They are always striving for excellence.


Feature

3. Exceptional coaches are competitors. The best

coaches I know hate to lose more than they enjoy winning.

They attract players with that same competitive drive, which

can be a curse or blessing depending on your perspective.

Recruiting, developing talent, and scheming up the x’s and o’s

all contribute to game-day success, but as Coach Metcalf also

says, “talent that doesn’t compete gets you fired.” Coaches

that recruit competitors—and develop the competitive nature

of their teams—are the ones who win consistently.

4. Exceptional coaches develop a culture you can

feel. Just as exceptional coaches have their own unique

style, they also build a unique team identity. They make

players feel like they are part of something special. Whatever

the specifics of that culture are, players are motivated by the

sense of belonging and shared identity. They know that their

coach and their teammates have their back.

5. Exceptional coaches surround themselves with

talent. Great coaches don’t just focus on the one or two

superstars—they make sure they have talent in every role.

That goes for the MVP, the “glue guy” (who holds the team

together), and everyone in between. They are not afraid

to tinker with the process to ensure that talent is properly

utilized. And they do not have a problem making the tough

call and benching the underachievers.

In my time at Texas A&M, I have seen exceptional coaches perform

incredible feats. One coach inherited a team that hadn’t won

a game in conference play the entire year before—but after six

months of preparation, he helped the team qualify for postseason

play and set the stage for six straight NCAA appearances.

Other coaches recently led Texas A&M teams to three national

championships, a feat this institution had not achieved since

1939. These exceptional coaches, to a one, displayed the five

characteristics I have outlined, which is why I strive daily to impart

them to future and current coaches.

I also believe that these characteristics are not confined to the

world of athletics. Like exceptional coaches, exceptional CEOs do

all of the above: They find their authenticity as a leader, build their

passion for the business, harness their competitive spirit, build a

strong culture, and surround themselves with top-level talent. It is

no surprise to me that so many business leaders draw inspiration

from the world of sport. At the heart of leading, coaching, and

winning lie many of the same principles—principles that can

inspire us to higher performance, whether we are pursuing a

national championship or building a world-class business.

John Thornton is the inaugural director of the Texas A&M Coaching

Academy. He earned his doctorate degree from Texas A&M in 1997 and

received the 1998 Academic Inspiration Award by a vote of the Texas A&M

Scholar-Athletes of the Year. Previously, he served as Senior Associate

Athletics Director and Interim Athletics Director at Texas A&M.


23

STARTUP SUCCESS:

A STARTUP FUNDRAISING SERIES

HOW MUCH

Should We Raise?

Gordon Daugherty

For most startups, the decision to raise

money is made out of necessity. The

entrepreneur needs more funding to

continue pursuing their dream, whether

the money will be used just to survive

a while longer or truly shift a gear and

move into the next stage of evolution.

Other startups pursue funding out of

want more than need. Usually, this is

because they either want to get more

aggressive in their growth or because

there’s some opportunity they want

to exploit sooner than when they

might otherwise organically. These

startups are in the fortunate position

of turning down the funding if the

terms, timing, or amount isn’t right.

But regardless of whether the

entrepreneur is pursuing funding out

of necessity or desire, they still face a

difficult decision: how much to raise.

Not only is the decision critical to the

startup’s own planning and forecasting,

but investors will want to understand

why the entrepreneur has chosen to

raise the stated amount of money.

The ability to demonstrate that they

determined the right amount of funding

for the company at its particular stage

is important for establishing credibility

with the investor. The entrepreneur

will essentially become the steward of

the investor’s money through multiple

rounds of funding, until they eventually

exit and the investor gets a return. Thus,

the investor needs to see a cohesive

fundraising strategy that doesn’t just let

the startup survive for a while longer but

rather allows them to reach future key

milestones for continuing to get funded

and eventually grow a great company.

Investors typically get a lot of unacceptable

responses when they ask why the desired

amount of funding is the right amount,

such as “Most other startups at our stage

seem to raise that amount,” “It’s the

most we think we will be able to raise,”

“It only dilutes us 25 percent,” and “It

gives us one year of runway.” These

responses might be true, but they are

all also terrible. This article provides a

framework for determining how much


a startup should raise and how they

should describe that to investors.

The basic formula

For startups seeking growth, the figure

below summarizes the first major steps for

deciding how much to raise. As you can

see, the amount of money raised affords

the startup a combination of time and

resources. And with time and resources,

they can accomplish things (outcomes).

The basic concept is simple. And since

we are trying to solve for the right

amount of funding to raise, let’s analyze

the other variables a little further.

Time and resources

When I say time, I actually mean an

amount of time the money will last, or

what is often referred to as runway.

The amount of runway needed varies

widely for each venture but usually

gets longer with subsequent rounds of

funding and later stages of evolution.

The most obvious type of resource is

the one every founder obsesses about,

additional headcount—regardless of

whether they are part-time or full-time.

“If we only had two more developers, we

would be in great shape.” In the same

category as headcount are contractors,

consultants, and various service

professionals like lawyers and accountants.

What many early-stage startups don’t

think about are things like increased

spending for marketing programs,

specialty tools, and software systems.

These are usually important resources that

are also needed to advance the business.

For startups, time and resources are in

competition with each other. In other

words, a startup could use all of the new

funding to gain time, but that means

not adding headcount to the team,

not adding more contractors, and not

spending more on programs, tools, and

the like. Instead, they could use all of

the new funding to aggressively dial

up headcount and spending, but that

means they’ll almost immediately have

to raise more money. Part of the trick

is dialing in the optimal combination of

extra time and extra resources in order

to achieve the desired outcomes.

Figuring out the best combination involves

creating a financial forecast model that

allows experimenting with various

assumptions and alternatives. For a preseed

or seed round of funding, the startup

will have lots of assumptions that have

no support from prior results. Because

of this, the investors will really want to

understand any information or insights the

startup has to support their assumptions.

Later, the prior track record will serve

as a basis for many of the projections.

Outcomes

Outcomes are discretely identifiable results

the startup hopes to achieve with their

newly raised funds. How about acquiring a

certain number of new customers to reach

the next meaningful revenue milestone,

or significantly reducing your average cost

to acquire a new customer? How about

securing a strategic partnership that will

provide significant leverage, or getting final

approval on a patent filing? What about

launching a new product or entering a new

market? These are outcomes that reduce

the investor’s risk or increase their upside

potential when the startup eventually exits.

The best way to understand the formula

is the way it is diagramed above, left to

right. But the best way to actually go

about the exercise of figuring out how

much money to raise is to work backward,

starting with the desired outcomes. It is

those future outcomes that the investors

want the company to achieve and,

therefore, the things they want to fund.

Once the desired future outcomes are

determined, the startup simply needs

to use their financial forecast model to

determine the best combination of time

and resources needed to generate the

outcomes. With this, they can determine

how much funding is needed for that

combination of time and resources.

Feature

There are pretty dramatic differences

in the outcomes Silicon Valley investors

expect and the outcomes investors in most

other places in the country expect. A set

of projected outcomes that are exciting

to an investor in Memphis, Tennessee,

or Denver, Colorado, could easily seem

way too safe and conservative to a Silicon

Valley investor. There is much more of

a swing-for-the-fences, build-a-unicorn,

global-world-domination mentality in

Silicon Valley, and fundraising startups

should understand this philosophical

difference in risk tolerance as they go

about setting their desired outcomes.

Time for the first

check and balance

Why not just raise enough money to last

a long time, like three or four years?

Well, ignoring whether the startup could

be successful raising that much, the

answer relates to the valuation they’re

able to negotiate with investors.

Let’s assume $10 million would fund a

particular venture for four years. The

question is, What sort of valuation can

the company earn at the time they raise

that money? As you can see in the figure

below, today’s valuation is mostly based

on the state of the business today. If

investors will only agree to a $5 million

valuation, for example, the company

will experience significant dilution and

immediately give control to the investors

due to the amount of equity they will get.

The amount of money raised compared

to the valuation they’re able to negotiate

provides a check and balance.

Because of this, the process of figuring

out how much money to raise is often

iterative. First, an uncontested look into

the crystal ball allows the startup to figure


25

out how much to raise in order to accomplish a desired set of

outcomes. Next, a test-drive with investors helps inform whether

the valuation they’ll be able to negotiate derives reasonable

dilution or if they’ll need to adjust the amount, either up or

down. If they adjust the amount down, the significance of the

projected outcomes will also be adjusted down. That might cause

the round of funding to seem less exciting for investors, and an

adjustment may be necessary. These iterations continue until

the startup finds the right balance of outcomes and valuation.

Multiple rounds over time

Now that you understand the basic formula and framework,

let’s project forward to see how multiple funding rounds tie

together. As you can see in the figure below, with each round of

funding, the projected outcomes eventually become the state of

the business in the future. That is what the company uses to gain

the desired step-up in valuation for the next round of funding.

This cycle continues again and again until the company is either

self-sustaining or experiences an exit (acquisition or IPO).

Evolving from a bootstrapped startup to a funded one is a big

and important transition. A startup might end up as a funded

one out of need or want. If they don’t need funding, then

they have alternatives. Most startups eventually need outside

funding and, once that happens, many things change. One of

those things is they get to accomplish more and grow faster,

assuming they have a scalable business. But they will also

experience a change in accountability. No longer are they only

accountable to the founding team and other team members;

they suddenly have to answer to their new investors, who

might have different interests, beliefs, and motivations than

they do. The more investors they take on over time, the more

varied those interests, beliefs, and motivations will be, and the

more they’ll have to accommodate or negotiate with them.

Like many things in business, up-front time and effort spent

on fundraising strategy can pay huge dividends later. It

translates to increased odds of raising the right amount of

money to reach the next significant milestone for making

another want-versus-need decision and generally controlling

their destiny. Surely, they know things won’t play out exactly

as planned, but that doesn’t relieve them from the obligation

to start with a strategy. After that, they can do what every

great entrepreneur does—adjust and adapt as necessary.

Iterations to fundraising strategy may also happen as you

test-drive ideas and assumptions with investors before

actually launching the fundraising campaign. That takes place

during the planning phase of fundraising—and is the topic

of my article in the next issue of Texas CEO Magazine.

Gordon Daugherty is a seasoned business executive, entrepreneur, startup advisor, investor, and the best-selling author of Startup Success: Funding the Early Stages of Your

Venture. A proud native Texan, Daugherty graduated from Baylor University. He has vast experience with early-stage fundraising from both sides of the table, making more

than 200 investments and raising more than $80 million in growth and venture capital as a company executive, fund manager, board director, and active advisor.

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Improve Your

PROFIT MARGIN Via...

• Process Automation

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Case studies on the aforementioned can be found at:

ylconsulting.com/tx

7

WITH

Feature

Mark Cuban

Quick Questions

We don’t need to introduce Mark Cuban, do we? Entrepreneur,

investor, author, Texan, Dallas Mavericks owner, Shark Tank

star—you know the drill. We threw seven quick questions to

Cuban. Let’s see what he had to say.

1. YOU HAVE THE RESOURCES TO LOCATE ANYWHERE

IN THE WORLD. WHAT KEEPS YOU IN TEXAS? The people.

The energy. The business climate. And of course my favorite

basketball team.

2. WHAT DO YOU THINK CAUSED YOU TO GO DOWN THE

ENTREPRENEURIAL PATH? My parents always encouraged me

to try new things, and more importantly, they were insistent that

if I wanted something, I had to find a way to earn the money

for it. That pushed me in the direction of selling everything and

anything a little kid could.

3. WHAT WERE THE FORMATIVE EXPERIENCES THAT

DEVELOPED YOUR MANAGEMENT APPROACH? Lots of

mistakes. Recognizing that if my vision wasn't aligned with

those of my employees and customers, nothing works.

I have to add that management is a skill that requires constant

developing. Managers have to be adaptive to what is happening—

not just in their marketplace but also culturally. And they have to

always learn from their mistakes.

4. WHILE THE MAVERICKS ARE A PRIVATE BUSINESS, THEY

OPERATE VERY PUBLICLY. WHAT ADVICE DO YOU HAVE FOR

CEOS WHO FIND THEMSELVES MOVING INTO THE PUBLIC

LIMELIGHT? There is nothing like running a sports team. For

any other CEO that finds themselves moving into the limelight—

or wishing to move into the limelight—develop relationships

with any and all media that impacts your industry. It could be a

blogger and Instagram influencer or it could be a magazine.

Don’t wait for them to come to you. Go to them and let them

know that your knowledge can help them create content and

make them look better at their job.

5. YOU LOOK AT A LOT OF DEALS AND VISIT WITH A

LOT OF ENTREPRENEURS. WHAT ARE YOU LOOKING FOR

TO MAKE YOU THINK THEY WILL BE SUCCESSFUL? I want

to see deals where my first reaction is “Why didn't I think of

that?” I want entrepreneurs who are agile. Always willing to

learn. Always willing to sell. Always willing to connect with

people and be nice. Nice is a very underrated skill.

6. IS THERE A PART OF BUSINESS YOU WISH YOU HAD

SPENT MORE TIME LEARNING ABOUT EARLY IN YOUR

CAREER? Video editing. It would be fun to be able to whip up any

video anytime, so I don't have to wait on others to get things done.

7. IS THERE A NEXT ACT FOR MARK CUBAN, AND WHAT

MIGHT IT BE? I haven’t had my first act yet. Stay tuned.

Kathy Hutchins / Shutterstock.com


Josh Ramos, Rick Narpaul, John Adams, and Beto Altamirano

[ENTREPRENEURSHIP]

THESE

ENTREPRENEURS

ARE MAKING

SAN ANTONIO

SAFER

Plenty of innovators have made our

lives more convenient, productive, and

connected—but for some, the primary

concern is making our lives safer.

Each of these four San Antonio

entrepreneurs developed a new way to

keep people safe from preventable harm,

at home, at work, or on the road. The

world may still be a dangerous place, but

these Texans are making it a little less so.

Rick Narpaul

Founder & CEO, Mach1 Services

Ever been stranded on the side of the road

thanks to a blown tire, a drained battery,

or an empty gas tank? Even if you have a

membership to AAA or other insurance,

you still have to wait for someone to

dispatch help from a call center, which

seemingly takes forever. When you’re in

that stressful situation with cars and trucks

speeding past you, you want help as soon

as possible.

The Solution:

Rick Narpaul describes Mach1 Services

as “the Uber of roadside service.” With

the Mach1 app you can access roadside

assistance dispatched automatically,

connecting you to the closest service

provider that can help. This cuts down

your wait time and lets you track the help

that’s on the way in real time. The process

is simple for service providers too: Receive

the request, follow turn-by-turn directions,

and arrive at the driver in need. The service

is currently available in San Antonio,

Austin, Houston, Dallas/Fort Worth, and

Corpus Christi.

Next up for Mach1 is expansion across the

US and into more automotive services.

Users will soon be able to use the app

to order a mobile mechanic to do oil

changes, trip inspections, and lots more,

right at their home or workplace.

www.mach1services.com

Download the iOS or Android app

Josh Ramos

Founder & CEO, RMS Innovations

Josh Ramos usually begins his elevator

pitch with a number: eight. As of 2019,

Ramos explains, eight children in the US

are shot in their own home accidentally

every single day. Gunlocks may seem

the obvious solution, but they have their

flaws. Many can be easily unlocked

with the universal keys available at any

Home Depot or Walmart. Some guns

can still be discharged with the lock

in place. And the traditional key or

combination dial mechanism can prevent

the firearm owner from quickly using

the gun in an emergency situation.

The Solution: Ramos’ solution is twofold.

First, biometrics allow the owner to unlock

the spring-loaded mechanism in less than

half a second by pressing their finger on

the sensor. Second, the RMS gunlock uses

a dual-rod blocking mechanism, which

ensures that accidental firing doesn’t

happen while the lock is engaged (setting

it apart from dangerous single-rod trigger

gunlock). When Ramos’ gunlock hits the

market soon, it will fit about 80 percent of

rifles, shotguns, and handguns.

John Adams

Founder & CEO, RubrixAiD

For 60 years, since the inception of the

modern EMS and 911 phone system,

citizens have only had one major response

to crisis in their homes or in the street:

call and wait. Most people—even trained

ones—are not always mentally ready or

equipped to deal with injury as it happens.

EMS is not readily available on every street

corner, so time is a factor. Seconds count,

so proper and immediate aid could make

the difference in saving limbs or life.

The Solution: For the first time in human

history, RubrixAiD has developed and

manufactured an automated first-aid

kit that helps users with medical care,

anytime, anywhere. RubrixAiD walks

the user through emergency non-critical

first-aid care, whether it’s minimizing

blood loss, stimulating breathing, or

mending wounds. The interface is visual

and intuitive, meaning that even a preteen

can offer on-the-spot, potentially

life-saving assistance. RubrixAiD uses

the latest and greatest technology on the

market, including artificial intelligence

and machine learning, to accomplish this

feat in real time across any geographical

location. As it works to offer safety and

care to the public, the company has

garnered significant attention, including

strategic partnerships and working

relationships with companies such as

Google, T-Mobile, and Twilio.

www.rubrixaid.com

Beto Altamirano

Cofounder & CEO, Cityflag

Let’s say you see a pothole, an abandoned

car, vandalism, or any other unsafe area

in your neighborhood. What’s your best

option for getting it fixed? Most likely,

it’s calling 311, having a drawn-out phone

conversation, and simply hoping that your

local government is able to follow through.

The Solution: As cofounder and CEO of

Cityflag (and one of Forbes’ “30 Under 30

Social Entrepreneurs”), Beto Altamirano

is using mobile technology to open up

the lines of communication between

citizens and government—and get issues

resolved quickly and more efficiently. With

Cityflag’s 311SA mobile app, San Antonians

can instantly report issues in their

neighborhood to the city. It’s a 15-second

task rather than a 20-minute call. The app

has already drawn 20,000 users, who have

generated over 40,000 requests. Bringing

the agility of the tech world to bureaucratic

and risk-averse government may not have

been easy for Cityflag, but it’s now paying

off in saved time, saved taxpayer dollars,

and increased civic involvement.

www.cityflag.co


29

Want to Work

from

COWBOYS HQ?

HERE’S YOUR CHANCE

Feature

A CONVERSATION

WITH JERRY JONES JR.

The Dallas Cowboys have the most loyal fans in the NFL. We

didn’t just make that up—an Emory University poll from last

July proved it. In the 30-plus years since Jerry Jones bought the

legendary franchise, he and his family have grown it into the

most valuable sports property in the world.

Recently, we had the great privilege of chatting with Jerry Jones Jr.,

who serves as the Cowboys’ executive vice president and chief

sales and marketing officer. He told us how his operation

capitalizes on Cowboys fans’ legendary enthusiasm,

especially through Formation, a new collaborative workspace

in the team’s world headquarters. Formation opened its doors

this past summer, offering open workspaces, dedicated desks,

and private offices to individuals and entrepreneurs. Get a seat

at Formation and you’ll not only hitch your business to the

excitement of the Dallas Cowboys—you might find yourself in

the lunch line next to an NFL legend.

The Dallas Cowboys World Headquarters at The Star has been open for a

couple of years now. What was the process of building the headquarters

like? When we built our stadium [AT&T Stadium in Arlington, Texas,

completed in 2009], we were all asked what our biggest challenge was.

In our minds, that challenge was meeting the expectations of our fans for

what the home of the Dallas Cowboys should be. That was the approach

that we took to build AT&T Stadium and create an experience for our fans.

Five years ago, when we got the opportunity with the City of Frisco

to build The Star as the future headquarters of the Dallas Cowboys—

business operations, training and practice facility, and a lot more—

we wanted to create yet another way our fans could experience

the Dallas Cowboys in ways they hadn’t before. We sat there

really whiteboarding different ideas of what that might mean and

how we could take advantage of the Dallas Cowboys brand.

Photos courtesy of Formation

At the time, we had more than 25 years of experience to draw

from, things we had done with our sponsors, their customers, and

our fans. It’s from those conversations that The Star evolved and

became what it is today. The things we have done there are things we

believe in 100 percent, things like the Omni Hotel, Cowboys Fit [the

health and fitness center at The Star], Cowboys Club, and work we’ve

done with Baylor Scott & White on health protection and injury

prevention. Those ideas were all whiteboarded long before they came

to fruition, using the concept of leveraging the Cowboys brand.


31

Our approach, starting with Jerry

Sr., has always been to leverage the

passion and excitement of the Dallas

Cowboys. We’ve found we can use that

tradition, history, and brand affinity to

help sponsors like Pepsi, Ford, or the

Miller Brewing Company. By leveraging

the association with the Dallas Cowboys,

you really create an uneven playing

field, and that’s what we’ve done here

with Formation [the new collaborative

workspace]. Our family has always been

passionate about entrepreneurship and

business and now, with Formation, we

have the chance to help foster success

with everyone from entrepreneurs to

CEOs of up-and-coming businesses.

My understanding is that

Formation is already highly utilized,

even though it’s only been open since

last August. How did that business come

about? It really grew out of our focus

on the culture and environment at The

Star. As we were collecting ideas for

what we wanted our headquarters at

The Star to be, we weren’t looking


at sports training facilities like we

did when we were building the

stadium. We looked for ideas all over

the place. We studied corporations and

their headquarters, places like Apple and

Google. We went and saw what some of

our sponsors, like Ford Motor Company,

were doing. In looking at those places,

we wanted to see how they treated

corporate environment and culture.

In building The Star, we focused

on the atmosphere, the look and feel of

everything from the players’ cafeteria

to business operations. We had to think

WE REALLY

DIDN’T LOOK

AT IT AS COWORKING

AS MUCH AS WE

LOOKED AT IT AS AN

ENTREPRENEURIAL

MEMBERSHIP CLUB.

about not only what the experience for

our fans was like, but how we could

ensure that our employees and our

football team had a great experience

as well. What setting could we give

them that would make them thrive?

That really bled to the idea

of a coworking space, which then led

into the development of Formation. The

concept was picking up steam and a lot

of people were jumping into that industry,

but we really didn’t look at it as coworking

as much as we looked at it as an

entrepreneurial membership club. What

does that mean? It means you have an

opportunity to leverage the Cowboys the

very way that our family does. Formation

really lets people tap into the history,

the passion, and the excitement of the

Cowboys brand as well as the dynamic

of a family-run operation. With

Formation, we had a chance to let

people access those amenities and

take part in that very excitement of

being a part of the Cowboys family.

That’s what Formation represents.

Feature

TO THINK

THAT YOU’RE

GOING TO LUNCH AND

RIGHT NEXT TO YOU IN

LINE IS DAK PRESCOTT

OR JAYLON SMITH?

THAT IS PRICELESS.

What is the appeal for individuals or

companies that take advantage of

Formation? Leveraging the Cowboys

brand makes a big difference. It lets the

guard down in a business dynamic. We’ve

done that very thing for the last 30 years

by giving our business partners access

to the brand. To me, that’s what we’re

emphasizing with Formation. It’s why

Formation is more of an entrepreneurial

club than a typical coworking space.

Its connection to the Dallas Cowboys,

The Star, and our family has allowed

it to stand out from similar spaces and

provide a unique edge in business.

Our headquarters at The Star is 400,000

square feet. The Dallas Cowboys are only

in 70,000 of that square feet. What’s

going on in the other 330,000? Those

are companies like FM Global, Bank

of America, Merrill Lynch. And we

just announced Keurig Dr Pepper’s

new 350,000-square-foot Texas

headquarters adjacent to our building,

on another side of the practice field.

When those companies invite a client

to come to have a discussion, they

walk through the main entryway of the

Dallas Cowboys headquarters. There

are five Super Bowl trophies sitting

there, five Super Bowl rings, a tribute to

the Cowboys Ring of Honor. They feel

like they’re visiting the Cowboys even

though they’re going over to have

a meeting at Merrill Lynch. Those

companies have seen what a brand

association with the Dallas Cowboys

does for their business.

Now, with Formation, smaller operations

can get in on that and really benefit in

the networking and relationship-building

space—whether you’re an entrepreneur

just starting out on your own or a CEO

of a newly launched corporation. In fact,

our open workspaces are designed for

maximum flexibility and connectivity with

others. We also provide many ongoing

opportunities for relationship-building

like weekly happy hours, monthly network

huddles, a monthly series called “The

Cowboys Way,” in which our front office

executives share professional insights, and

periodic keynote addresses for members.

That’s the opportunity Formation

gives. If I were starting up a company

and my name wasn’t Jerry Jones Jr.,

that’s where I’d be officing. It’d be the

best chance to get that uneven playing

field that I’ve been fortunate enough to

have throughout my business career.

Another topic that’s come up a lot lately

is esports. I know you’ve done some

partnering in that arena. Where do you

see that going? It’s a really interesting

industry, especially with Complexity

Gaming now headquartered here on our

campus. I’d say that right now it’s a really

broad-strokes term. When someone

says “esports,” they’re often being too

general. Which part of esports are you

talking about? What video game is it?

But there are still a lot of uncharted

waters out there. We’ve had discussions

with high schools, with UILs, with

school districts about this becoming a

high school sport and a college sport

that’s no different from rowing or

lacrosse. We’re certainly staying

educated on it, we see the opportunity,

and we’re putting a chip on the table if

you will, seeing what will transpire.

The younger generations are following

it closely. When we first started

discussing esports, my boy was 11 and

he definitely knew more about it than my

brother and I did—how you could watch

and how influencers worked related to

esports. It was a good education for us.

Your brand is obviously associated with

the Dallas metro area. What do you see

happening there that has you excited

about business going forward? We all

know the great environment that the state

of Texas creates for corporations, not just

in sport but in any industry. You see big

corporations moving to Austin, you see

them moving into Dallas, you see them

moving to North Dallas especially. Back

in 2013, we had to make the decision to

make a huge financial commitment here.

As we sit today, we have over $1.5 billion


33

invested into The Star development,

and that’s with only two-thirds of it

being developed. We still have 30-

plus acres of the 90 acres to go.

But you get comfort in seeing the growth

of North Texas and Texas overall. There’s

no better place to do business right

now. We felt that Frisco really was the

heartbeat of all that when we made the

commitment to bring The Star here,

and now we’re doing the same with

Formation. We’ve created an uneven

playing field with the Dallas Cowboys

name and fostered an energy there

that has allowed businesses to thrive.

We’ve also found that several of our

members see Formation as the perfect

way to extend their business into the

growing north corridor of Dallas.

With growth often come challenges. Are

there any major challenges in the DFW

area or Texas in general you think we

should be leery of as we continue to

experience this significant growth? Well,

I can tell you one thing you see when

there’s growth everywhere, especially as

we look at North Texas and the DFW area:

In the development phase, construction

costs usually go a little higher than you

had budgeted for, because there’s that

kind of demand for contractors. When you

have growth throughout, that becomes

a real issue. But it’s also a good problem

to have, because it creates a stimulus

in that area for thriving economics.

These high costs for new construction are

yet another reason why coworking is often

a good option for businesses. Formation,

for example, offers an elevated level of

hospitality and aesthetic that is truly

unmatched in this market. We’ve also

seen firsthand how our workspaces are

well-liked by any level of professional—

from an entrepreneur to a seasoned CEO.

And, better yet, Frisco is the ideal place to

be, as one of the fastest-growing suburbs

in Texas and in the US overall. When

you combine this with The Star campus

and Dallas Cowboys organization, there’s

truly no better place to do business.

The workforce is probably the numberone

concern we hear from CEOs. How are

we going to keep filling the pipeline with

workers? They’re hard to come by.

At Formation, one of the lures of the

workplace is how closely it is tied to

the Dallas Cowboys organization. To

think that you’re going to lunch and

right next to you in line is Dak Prescott

or Jaylon Smith? That is priceless.

It’s also all about the amenities.

Formation is located next to more than

30 restaurants and just steps from

fitness, entertainment, and business

innovations. Members also have special

access to presales for select AT&T

Stadium and Ford Center events, and

unique members-only events created by

Dallas Cowboys staff with opportunities

to hear from in-house experts. There

are many other particularly unique

membership perks, like professional

headshots from a team photographer,

an on-site barista, notary services, lunch

delivery from the team chef, and more.

And secondly, as big as we have

grown, between my brother,

my sister, myself, and of course

Jerry Sr., we’re still a family-run,

hands-on operation. In today’s

workplace, the more you look at your

colleagues and employees as family

members, not just as tools to a bottom

line, the better culture you’ll have.

Because you ask—how would you

manage them if they were your own

children, your own siblings, your own

parents? If you take that approach

of trying to invest in them and take

satisfaction in their growth and success—

even if it ultimately means they leave for

a bigger opportunity somewhere else—

you ought to take pride in that. That’s

our approach, and so far it’s working well.


CEO

Activism

& THE

CLOAK OF

Social

Responsibility

Bill Simon & Blaine McCormick, PhD

In August 2005, when Hurricane Katrina ravaged Florida

and the Gulf Coast, leaving unprecedented destruction and

human misery in its wake, Walmart was one of the first

companies on the scene. Springing into action, the company

used its emergency management team and renowned logistics

capabilities to bring relief efforts to ravaged parts of New

Orleans and Mississippi. Walmart representatives arrived on

the scene long before most government agencies could react.

In an October 2005 speech entitled “Twenty First Century

Leadership,” then-Walmart CEO Lee Scott asked of his

company, “What would it take for Walmart to be that company,

at our best, all the time? What if we used our size and resources

to make this country and this earth an even better place for

all of us: customers, associates, our children, and generations

unborn? What would that mean? Could we do it? Is this

consistent with our business model? What if the very things

that many people criticize us for—our size and reach—became

a trusted friend and ally to all, just as it did in Katrina?”

Using the experience with Katrina as a springboard, Lee

Scott led Walmart to take an active role in the environmental

sustainability movement. Walmart, by most measures, has had

a significant impact in moving sustainability to the mainstream

consciousness of the consumer.

Taking a stand on something like Katrina, or even the


35

environment, still allows a company to avoid some measure

of controversy. After all, who is opposed to hurricane relief?

Further, the sustainability movement is seen favorably by most

Americans. However, since Lee Scott moved Walmart into

sustainability in 2005, CEOs have increasingly taken more

controversial positions on issues that historically have been off

limits. We have seen Target take a position on gender identity

and bathrooms, CVS on cigarettes, and more recently, Walmart

and Dick’s Sporting Goods on guns.

Though the issues may be new, American business leaders have

been engaging in social issues for well over a century. In 1914, Ford

Motor Company announced that it would pay a minimum wage of

$5 per day—more than double the industry wage at the time—and

later reduced the workday from nine-hour shifts to eight-hour

shifts. Contemporaries praised founder Henry Ford as a great

humanitarian, but Ford claimed that humanitarianism had nothing

to do with it. He was setting policies to attract and keep the best

possible workforce he could—and refused to frame his business

decisions as socially responsible. In his memoir, My Life and Work,

he explains, “The payment of high wages fortunately contributes

to the low costs because the men become steadily more efficient on

account of being relieved of outside worries. The payment of five

dollars a day for an eight-hour day was one of the finest cost-cutting

moves we ever made, and the six-dollar day wage is cheaper than

the five. How far this will go, we do not know.” In 1915, however,

Ford would start taking controversial activist stances on how to end

World War I, would run unsuccessfully for Senate in 1918, and in

the 1920s would publish anti-Semitic material in his newspaper,

The Dearborn Independent.

CEOs are not the only activists in the business community,

though. Author Jeff Gramm contends that shareholder activism

has been alive and well in the United States since Benjamin

Graham clashed with Northern Pipeline in 1927, pressuring

the company to distribute excess cash to shareholders. Gramm

chronicles that history in his recent book, Dear Chairman.

Shareholder activists can be very pro-shareholder like Benjamin

Graham or more pro-consumer like Ralph Nader, who grew

toward shareholder activism in his later years. Milton Friedman

captured some of the history between activist shareholders

and activist CEOs in his now 50-year-old essay, “The Social

Responsibility of Business Is to Increase Its Profits.” Specifically,

he noticed how corporate executives would raise wages “to be

a socially responsible business” when it was clearly in their

self-interest to raise wages to attract better talent and reduce

shrinkage or sabotage. He also observed that, more blatantly,

executives frame corporate donations as efforts to improve their


Feature

A convoy of Walmart trucks waited to enter New Orleans on Sept. 1, 2005,

after the city was battered by Hurricane Katrina. Government agencies said the

massive storm taught them that big-box retailers need to be an integral part of

hurricane preparation and relief efforts.

Nicholas Kamm/AFP/Getty Images

communities rather than as self-interested gifts that maximize

their tax deductions. In his essay, Friedman coined the term “the

cloak of social responsibility” to describe how CEOs transform

self-interested actions into exercises in social consciousness.

So, CEOs taking positions on social issues and committing

corporate resources to support these positions is nothing

new. The relationship between CEO and shareholders took

its most recent turn on August 19, 2019, when 181 CEOs

signed the Business Roundtable’s “Statement on the Purpose

of a Corporation.” The statement posits that a company has

stakeholders beyond its shareholders and that profit and return

is not its only objective. This is an extreme departure from the

historical objective of a company: it has long been held that

fiduciary duty to the shareholder is the driving factor in the

strategic objectives of a company. Some even argue that acting

on behalf of “stakeholders” who are not shareholders may

violate that fiduciary responsibility. Yet at least one signatory

of the agreement has doubled down on its commitment to

social responsibility. Almost two months after the release of the

“Statement on the Purpose of a Corporation,” Amazon created

a webpage outlining “Our Positions” on a wide variety of social

issues, including the minimum wage, climate change, and

immigration.

What would motivate CEOs and their respective companies to

take controversial positions? Companies, especially publicly

traded companies, live and die on quarterly and annual results.

A few percentage points on the top or bottom line can mean the

creation or destruction of billions of dollars of value. Many of the

controversial issues that are in the public eye today reflect the

split that exists in our country. The split is not only political—that

is, Democratic or Republican—but also geographical: the two

coasts versus the vast middle. We see a bifurcation in our cities

versus our rural areas, in our age demographics, and in our racial

makeup. Against this backdrop, taking a position on an issue

could have a massive impact on a company. Companies taking

positions on political issues (or politicians) can find themselves

on the wrong side very quickly. Since World War II, the majority

party in Congress has changed seven times (even more if you count

only one party controlling either the House or the Senate) and the

presidency has changed parties nine times. If you are going to take

a position, be sure it is one that you can stand on, because recent

history has shown that political cycles are much shorter than

business cycles.

Across two centuries of American business history and

thousands of executives, CEO activism remains a relatively rare

activity, with only a handful of CEOs—public or private—ever


37

5 Things

TO CONSIDER BEFORE TAKING AN ACTIVIST STANCE

Before jumping into the activist role, here are

some things you should consider:

1. CEO activism remains a rare phenomenon. Despite lots

of press to the contrary, CEO activism remains an exceptional

activity. In 2018, researchers at the Stanford Graduate School

of Business surveyed 3,544 CEOs and found that the vast

majority never go on the record regarding social or political issues

in a meaningful way. Only 12 percent of S&P 1500 company

CEOs engage in activism, and much of this activity was less

controversial (i.e., surprisingly mainstream) than headlines such

as “The New CEO Activism” might suggest. And the Stanford

researchers surveyed only publicly traded companies, not the far

more numerous group of private businesses, where CEOs can

more easily avoid publicity. So, if you’re not receiving outside

pressure to engage in CEO activism, don’t let your internal team

talk you into it without clear and compelling reasons.

2. Potential backlash requires preparation. Activist executives

go at least as far back in American history as Thomas McKenney

and John Jacob Astor’s differing views on Native Americans and

the fur trade of the early 1800s. The difference today is the speed

at which social pressure can be brought to bear. Social media and

the 24-hour news cycle have changed the model. CEOs almost

immediately know when something has gone viral as tweets and

retweets begin to rain down in indescribable quantities. Protests,

email campaigns, and boycotts can organize in an instant and

have an impact not only on business but on organizational morale

and dynamics. Several years ago, Target responded to internal

and external pressure and made an activist decision regarding the

use of restrooms by transgender individuals. A boycott followed

swiftly and Target would spend $20 million to install private

bathrooms in stores. Thankfully, CEO statements and company

positions can also be disseminated in seconds, changing the

narrative instantly. Being prepared is key. The blade of corporate

activism swings in both directions, but the speed at which it does

can be dizzying.

3. CEOs can advocate for state or national economic issues

instead. CEO activism is framed as a political activity, even

though it is far removed from the political decisions made by

executive, legislative, and judicial players in Texas or Washington,

DC. In fact, the Stanford survey intentionally disregarded CEO

advocacy on matters such as trade negotiations, tariffs, and

corporate tax rates. Yet these are the very things that CEOs can

address far more effectively than political actors can. It’s almost

like asking CEOs to do the job of Congress and vice versa. Who is

speaking out to create economic environments where businesses

can flourish? Texas is such a place at present, but so was

Michigan at one time. Rather than becoming embroiled in social

issues, you might consider speaking out on an economic issue

that’s important to you or your business. Be mindful, however,

that even seemingly benign topics can be met with resistance.

Walmart’s recent efforts to encourage US manufacturing have

been a contributor to the resurgence of US-based production.

Surprisingly, some critics accused Walmart of trying to minimize

its reliance on Chinese imports. Others said that those were not

the kind of jobs we wanted back in the US. Even when you think

everyone will be on board, activism will often result in criticism.

4. Private ownership affords special freedoms. Founded in

1972, Hobby Lobby had almost 200 stores when it initiated its

policy of closing on Sundays in 1998. The company later noted

that it estimated $100 million in lost sales when it made the

decision. Company leadership could have put on the “cloak of

social responsibility” and stated that they did this for the sake

of climate change (reduced energy usage and less car travel to

their stores) or to take a stance against war (by promoting peace

and mindfulness among its workforce). But, largely because it

is a privately owned company, Hobby Lobby’s leadership felt

comfortable clearly communicating that they implemented this

policy for religious reasons—the least favorably regarded category

of corporate activism according to the Stanford survey. Similarly,

Chick-fil-A’s religion-based decision to stay closed on Sunday

would be very difficult if it were a public company. As a private

company, Chick-fil-A can make the decision to forgo its Sunday

earnings without pressure from shareholders.

5. The cloak of social responsibility increases the risk of

political capture. The objective of any CEO activism should be

to take a position that benefits the corporation as well as society

as a whole. As Friedman pointed out, CEOs often don the cloak

of social responsibility to earn public goodwill for decisions

that ultimately serve the interests of the business. These two

things can be very difficult to separate. Friedman would argue

that when CEOs allow “social responsibility” to dominate

their decision making, the result is to “extend the scope of the

political mechanism to every human activity”—meaning that the

corporation becomes a tool for certain social interests and can

thus open itself to political influence. Why, for example, would

legislatures pass potentially controversial gun control legislation

when they could pressure CEOs to take their preferred stances

instead? CEOs can minimize the risk of political capture by using

the cloak sparingly and being up front about the benefits of this

activity to their companies.


Feature

announcing a public position on a political matter. Though some

headlines claim that CEOs are “breaking with tradition” and

taking stances on social issues, ours are not the first corporate

executives to assume the cloak of social responsibility.

For years, Harry Potter was forced to live in a cupboard under

the stairs while his hosts blamed him for all manner of their

unhappiness. Along the way, he goes to wizarding school,

hones some of his powers, and is given a Cloak of Invisibility.

Ultimately, he realizes that he’s a very powerful wizard who

doesn’t really need a Cloak of Invisibility to succeed—though that

cloak certainly proved useful on several occasions. Somewhat

like Harry Potter, US corporations live in a cupboard under

the stairs, are blamed for all manner of societal evils, and are

often reminded of their status as guests. Note that the Business

Roundtable’s “Statement on the Purpose of a Corporation”

starts and ends with the hosts: “Americans” and “our country,”

respectively. Like Harry Potter’s invisibility cloak, the cloak of

social responsibility might prove useful from time to time when

troubles come—so use it as you must. However, our hope is

that US corporations remember that their true power remains

in generating long-term value for shareholders. The ultimate

statement a CEO can make is staying in business.

Bill Simon is the former President and CEO of Walmart, US. He is currently a Senior Advisor with KKR and Executive in Residence at Baylor University.

Blaine McCormick is Chair of the Department of Management at the Hankamer School of Business at Baylor University.

4 APPROACHES TO CEO ACTIVISM

PUBLIC

COMPANY

PRIVATE

COMPANY

ACTIVISM-INCLINED

The Cloak of Social

Responsibility

(e.g., the 2019 Business

Roundtable statement)

Engagement Strategy

(e.g., Patagonia and

environmental activism)

ACTIVISM-DISINCLINED

Maximize Long-Term

Shareholder Value

(e.g., Apple during Steve

Jobs’ 1997–2011 tenure)

Separation Strategy

(e.g., Chick-fil-A and

LGBTQ+ issues)

Imagine a product that has an 18-month lifecycle and is constructed

with many rare-earth (or “conflict”) metals. The product is not

easy to recycle given the complexity of its construction, and

the company continues to raise the price of newly introduced

models. Further, the product’s company gives virtually no money

to charitable causes. Its leadership states that it is the company’s

product, not tax-deductible donations, that will make a difference

in the world. You’ve probably guessed by now that this is Apple

Computer and the iPhone during Steve Jobs’ tenure. During that

time, Apple created billions upon billions of dollars of value for

shareholders by focusing on two fundamentals: making insanely

great products and delighting customers. At his best, Ford took

a very similar approach, stating, “Most certainly business and

charity cannot be combined; the purpose of a factory is to

produce, and it ill serves the community in general unless it does

produce to the utmost of its capacity.” These are both examples

of one approach to the issue of CEO activism: focus squarely on

maximizing long-term shareholder value while taking no substantive

positions. This is just one of four places a CEO might find himor

herself on the above matrix. Let’s explore the other three:

Separation Strategy: After navigating a period of intense criticism

centered on founder S. Truett Cathy’s support for “traditional

marriage,” Chick-fil-A released this statement in July of 2012:

“We are a restaurant company focused on food, service, and

hospitality; our intent is to leave the policy debate over samesex

marriage to the government and political arena.” As a private

company, they clearly showed that they will separate business

and political issues and not allow others to force their integration.

Though Cathy did dip his toe into activism, the company has

since modeled the Separation Strategy to distance itself from

criticism. At present, they have pretty much stayed focused

on “food, service, and hospitality,” even as protests roiled

restaurant openings throughout their expansion into Canada.

Engagement Strategy: For decades, Patagonia has leveraged its

position as a private company to say and do things important

to its founder, Yvon Chouinard. The company is clearer than

ever that “we’re in business to save our home planet.” In a

recent interview, Chouinard even noted that when it comes

down to two candidates for a job, they hire the person most

committed to saving the planet. Fully engaging in social

activism has associated costs and benefits, but Patagonia

works hard to align company activities with its core values.

The Cloak of Social Responsibility: The 2019 Business Roundtable

statement is a good recent example of the “cloak of social

responsibility,” often worn to relieve political pressures or

to transform self-interested activities into something that

seems less shareholder-focused. CEOs of public companies

can and have used the cloak in tough situations. CEOs might

find that it promotes both brand loyalty and employee loyalty

but increases the risk of being captured by political actors.


39

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DESIGNING

AN EFFECTIVE

SALES

PROMOTION

Kirk Wakefield, PhD

LESSONS FROM

TEAM SPORTS

MARKETING

When a fan buys a ticket to a professional sporting event, they

have learned to expect some form of promotion. This trend

reflects a larger shift in the sports world, as promoters work to

make the experience more entertaining rather than relying solely

upon team performance to attract fans. Today, promoters are

on a continual search for the next big promotional idea and, so

far, the most effective appears to be . . . bobbleheads. Seriously.

Past and current research on the effects of single-game

promotions in Major League Baseball finds that the following

have the strongest effects on attendance (in order):

• Bobbleheads

• Combination of giveaway and special event

• Combination of two or more special events

• Giveaway valued at $5 or more

• Giveaway valued at less than $5

• Price discounts

• Single special event 1

What is the common denominator here? All but one of the items

in this list (price discounts) add value to the experience.

Bobbleheads, for example, give fans the opportunity to exhibit

the passion they have for the team when they put them on

display at the office or at home. Giveaways can add value

to the experience as well. Fans prefer giveaways that are in

some way related to the event (e.g., bats, gloves, and caps for

baseball) 2 —this fuels the fantasy and feelings they associate

with the experience. Special events like concerts or celebrity

appearances, especially when combined with giveaways

or another event (e.g., a pre-game concert and post-game

fireworks), also have great impact on the experience.

The idea is to make promotional events truly memorable

experiences that excite fans rather than just offering another

forgettable promotion. Assuming a brand sponsors the promotion,

the extent to which the experience provokes strong internal

(sensations, feelings, and thoughts) and behavioral responses

determines the benefit to the brand. 3 Not surprisingly, again, price

discounts come near last in the previous list, as the price cut offers

only economic and no direct emotional or experiential benefits.


41

The Characteristics of a Well-Designed Promotion

Adding value is important to think about in designing any sales

promotion, whether for a sports event or not. But it’s only one of

the factors to think about. Well-designed sales promotions have five

characteristics, which you can remember with the acronym CASES:

Clear target and objective

Adds value

Simple

Experiential

Sponsored

The best way to see how this plays out is to look at an example.

Lexus hits all the above points with a promotion offering Lexus

owners complimentary valet parking at Globe Life Park in

Arlington for all Texas Rangers home games. This promotion:

• has a clear target and objective; in this

case to reinforce loyalty to its brand among

Lexus owners who attend Rangers games.

• adds value by offering a service perceived to be

worth the $30 charged all other car owners (but

does nothing to reduce perceived ticket value).

• is simple to understand: “I give them my car

before the game and I pick it up after the game.”

• is experiential: “Wow, I can drop myself off

at the gate and walk right into the game.”

• is clearly sponsored with prominent signage and

Lexus uniformed attendants at drop-off and pickup.

Over the years since initiating this popular promotion, Lexus

has improved the process by requesting mobile phone numbers

via text and generating social media engagement, as well as

connecting the promotion directly to the local Lexus dealer.

Ideally, a well-designed promotion should also include data

capture. While it’s always desirable to collect customer contact

information (cell phones, emails, or social media), it is not

always feasible. There may be a trade-off between offering a

simple service and adding a complicating factor that aids data

capture. Proper positioning of the data capture request can

assist in the process. For example, attendants could inquire

among new visitors, including non-Lexus owners who pay for

the valet, “May we exchange mobile phone numbers to make

certain we provide you with the best service possible? Here is

our number at the valet station. Check the box on the form if

you want to hear about other great service offers from Lexus.”

Adding Real Value

As you design your own sales promotions, remember that adding

value—the A in CASES—does not mean reducing prices. That said,

the perception of value is in the eye of the beholder. Focus groups

or online panels can help you gauge fan or customer reactions

before you spend valuable resources on ineffective promotions.

Sometimes sponsors and corporate salespeople come up with

ideas that might have made sense on the golf course or at dinner

with perhaps one too many drinks, but ultimately don’t add value

to the experience. Too often these “creative” promotions have

poor perceived value due to a variety of reasons, including low

payout odds and associated low payoff value. Take the time the

Detroit Pistons partnered with Arby’s. The promotion involved

giving away small curly fries if (1) a player scored a tripledouble,

(2) fans printed out the box score from the paper, and

(3) then went to Arby’s to redeem. Fans waited over nine years

until Greg “Curly Fries” Monroe recorded a triple-double. The

point is that marketers must develop promotions that deliver

certainty of positive outcomes and experiences at the event.

Crazy promotions such as this may add some entertainment value,

but they do less to reinforce loyalty to the team and organization.

The promotions that add real value are typically experiential. Shirt

giveaways for a “color-out,” with all fans wearing the home-team

colors, add value to the experience at the event. So do promotions

where sponsoring retailers offer tickets to team practices held

at outside facilities (e.g., WNBA teams practicing at a college to

generate interest), which add value in an experience all its own.

The primary thing to remember about the sales promotion—

and the lesson every CEO can take from sports promotions—is

that the strongest offers add value to the experience. You

want to help your customers create lasting memories they

associate with your brand, not just give them a chance to pocket

the money from a discount and forget about it forever.

Kirk Wakefield is the Edwin W. Streetman Professor of Retail Marketing and executive director of Sports Sponsorship & Sales at Baylor’s

Hankamer School of Business. His research in retailing, covering more than two decades, focuses primarily upon sports psychology, team sports

marketing, entertainment marketing, and fan and consumer response to pricing and promotional tools. He has conducted fan research in almost

every venue in sports, including the NBA, NFL, MLB, MLS, NHL, and NASCAR. Wakefield is the author of Team Sports Marketing, now widely

used in universities nationwide and available online at www.teamsportsmarketing.com.

1

Thomas C. Boyd and Timothy C. Krehbiel (2006), “An Analysis of the Effects of Specific Promotion Types on Attendance at Major League Baseball Games,” Mid-American

Journal of Business, 21 (2), 21–32.

2

Kirk L. Wakefield and Victoria Bush (1998), “Promoting Leisure Services: Economic and Emotional Aspects of Consumer Response,” Journal of Services Marketing, 12 (3),

209–222.

3

Zarontonello & Schmitt (2013), “The Impact of Event Marketing on Brand Equity,” International Journal of Advertising, 32 (May), 255–280.


THE

NEGLECTED

[SELF-AWARENESS]

KEY

TO STRESS

MANAGEMENT


Meet Nathaniel. Nate wants to be successful and respected

at work but not lose himself, his family, or other things

he values in the process. He’s hardworking and was very

successful in his job. As a result, the board promoted him

to CEO, which seemed glamorous to Nate, and he was sure

it would bring money, prestige, power, and recognition.

He looked forward to greater happiness and success.

IF YOU WANT TO

MANAGE STRESS TO

YOUR ADVANTAGE, ESTABLISH

A SOLID FOUNDATION OF

GROWING SELF-AWARENESS.

Very soon, Nate found himself facing the realities of the job.

He was paying less attention to his self-care and his family.

He struggled to get everything done. After about 16 months

in the new position, Nate was depressed, having panic

attacks, and showing all the signs of burnout. He was irritable

and impatient with his family, and angry more often than

usual. He had headaches often, wasn’t sleeping, and had a

cold he couldn’t shake. He had more trouble concentrating

and paying attention than usual and he frequently lost

track of important things. He came to tears more quickly

than typical for him. Disenchanted, he was not sure why

it had to be this way. There ought to be a better way.

How Has It Been for You?

How has being CEO been for you? Challenging and fulfilling?

Stressful?


43

Who gave you the heads-up on the unrelenting stress of the

CEO job—the demands of global business, the requirement

to be “always on,” and the travel involved? How about the

frequent frustration, disappointment, irritation, overwhelm,

isolation, loneliness, and the effects of all this on your health

and well-being? How about the pressure on your family life?

to pay undivided attention to what you are experiencing in the

moment, in the various aspects of your being—as objectively as

possible—and being open to new experiences of growth. Such

attentiveness is a disciplined process that one must learn. As

awareness grows, you can take time to understand the source(s)

of these experiences as well as their present and potential effect.

Do you recognize stress when it shows up in you? Do you

know the essentials of managing the stress of the job?

To Manage Stress, Increase Self-Awareness

If you want to manage stress to your advantage, establish a

solid foundation of growing self-awareness. All other stress

management efforts are built on this foundation. Yet, many stress

management techniques skip over self-awareness and treat only

symptoms. As a result, they do not yield long-term results.

I work with people like Nate (and like you) in coaching

relationships to

support their growth

in self-awareness

and help them

manage the stress of

the CEO job. They

learn to increase

their self-awareness,

critically examine

their situation, and

implement stress management strategies and techniques that help

them put stress to work for their advantage. They come out on

the other side with a clearer focus, a better pace of life, increasing

quality in their relationships, and ultimately, greater success.

Pay Attention to Your Whole Being

The term self-awareness is most commonly used to refer to a

person’s awareness of their inner states and how those states

express themselves, which is very important in leadership

and life. Some have suggested that self-awareness is “both a

tool and a goal” and I agree that it is just that important and

beneficial. 1 “The ability to reflect on and accurately assess one’s

own behaviors and skills as they are manifested in workplace

interactions” is a characteristic of high-performing managers,

according to the organizational psychologist Allan Church. 2 And

self-awareness can improve your overall sense of well-being. 3

Here, I am using a broader idea of self-awareness, one that

involves your whole being—physical, emotional, mental,

spiritual. This type of self-awareness is foundational

for the management of your stress, for improving your

persistence in distress, 4 and for living and relating well.

Helpful self-awareness is not neurotic rumination about an

issue or getting stuck in the negative; that dynamic can lead

to greater anxiety and depression. 5 Helpful self-awareness

involves getting to know yourself more deeply by taking time

A growing self-awareness can help you learn to recognize

signals of stress and appreciate them for what they are.

Then you can choose a positive, helpful path of action.

If you are not self-aware, you can miss these signals. Then, stress

can become unhealthy, leading to burnout, ineffectiveness, and

depression with accompanying low energy. If allowed to continue

unmanaged, the stress can wreck your health and even kill you.

If you have been in the red zone of stress for a while now, you have

likely come to accept it as a “new normal.” You may not be aware

of how far you have driven yourself up the distress ladder until it

seriously affects your

health, relationships,

and work

effectiveness. Most

people wait until the

train is completely

off the tracks

before thinking

of getting help.

A GROWING SELF-AWARENESS

CAN HELP YOU LEARN TO

RECOGNIZE SIGNALS OF STRESS AND

APPRECIATE THEM FOR WHAT THEY ARE.

Stress Is Natural and Normal

Stress is a natural and normal part of being human. You

need a little stress all the time to assist you in meeting the

demands of life and work. But you can get too much of a

good thing. Your brain does countless things without your

conscious knowledge, and one of these is to trigger the

stress reaction based on your unique version of reality. 6

Your brain is always on alert, rapidly scanning the environment,

checking to see if you are safe or in danger and working to

minimize danger and maximize reward. Five times per second,

life events trigger nonconscious emotions. 7 As it scans your

surroundings, the brain may predict that danger is present

and “throw a switch,” so to speak, to prepare you to fight, run,

or hide. All of this happens outside your consciousness.

When your brain throws the switch, your first awareness will

be a feeling. Physically, you will feel it in your gut and your

chest, and through physical symptoms such as rapid heart rate

and elevated blood pressure. Emotionally, you will feel it as

anger, fear, or frustration. These experiences can range from a

little discomfort to a full fight, flight, or freeze reaction. 8 Once

you have this conscious feeling, which is about half a second 9

after the brain “throws the switch,” you are in a position to

choose how you will behave. You can let the fight-flight-freeze

reaction run its course, or you can choose another behavior.


The brain sometimes makes good predictions that are helpful

and even lifesaving. In cases of physical threat, the fight-flightfreeze

reaction is essential and must run its course if you are

to react fast enough to escape danger. But the brain often

makes bad predictions and erroneously prepares our bodies to

fight, run, or hide. Bad predictions can occur in interpersonal

relationships, in various social settings and situations, and

in response to other issues such as schedules, deadlines,

disagreements, and personality or style differences. In these

cases, the fight-flight-freeze reaction is not necessary, productive,

or helpful. It is better to engage your problem-solving abilities

to make a different choice than fighting, running, or hiding.

Stress Is Like Fever

Just as you don’t choose to have a fever, you don’t choose

to have stress. Your body produces it automatically when

needed. It’s a signal, a symptom, showing that something

unusual is present—a perceived threat, something unfamiliar,

something that pushes the limits of your capacity.

As with fever, once you recognize your stress as a symptom,

you don’t panic every time it happens. Instead, you can use this

self-awareness to manage the situation with problem-solving

skills, trying to get back to “normal.” In the future, you can avoid

whatever precipitated your stress and hopefully prevent it.

But if your stress remains unchecked, it can become contagious,

affecting not only you but also those around you—your

spouse, children, colleagues, and others. Your stress can

create distress for them as they witness your misery, dodge

your defensive behavior, or catch the brunt of your fury.

Cognitive Impairment and Stress

When you are in a stressed, defensive posture (feeling

the urge to fight, run, or hide, which for some of us

is most of the time), your brain is channeling your

mental and bodily resources away from critical thought,

problem solving, and self-management. As a result:

• Your ability to concentrate, learn, think, hear,

communicate, and see problems clearly declines

dramatically.

• A demand for certainty replaces curiosity and creativity.

• Your perspective narrows. You tend to

oversimplify, minimize, and neutralize problems,

and you lose the big picture as a result.

• You look for a scapegoat to blame when things go wrong.

Imagine how these things can affect your leadership, especially

in times of crisis. Fortunately, if you are growing in selfawareness,

you will learn to recognize these symptoms

of stress and choose better, more rational responses.

How to Improve Your Self-Awareness

• Practice mindfulness. To be mindful is to pay deep,

intentional attention to what’s going on in the moment,

inside and around you. It means paying attention to

what’s going on in your mind (not just your brain) 10 —

to your thoughts, motives, defenses, emotions, physical

states, and how all of this might affect you and others.

Increased reflection results in increased self-development.


45

• Use reflection questions.

o Reflect on your practice. At various times during

the day, especially at the end, take time to think back

through your interactions. Examine the beliefs you

espouse compared to beliefs you act out, your thoughts,

sensations, reactions, and emotions. Ask “what” and

“how” questions to understand how these played out.

o Reflect in your practice. Monitor the above aspects

of your being while you are working and interacting

in real time. Present-tense versions of your endof-day

questions work well to guide real-time

reflection. Find questions for reflection here:

https://discoveryourtruecourse.com/

resources/questions_for_reflection.

• Exercise discipline.

o Throughout the day, take breaks and replace thoughts

of work with positive thoughts about something

or someone you appreciate. Be grateful for them.

o Stay present during interactions with others. Pay

attention to what others say without judging them,

letting your biases distort the message, or having

an inner side conversation with yourself. Avoid

jumping to quick conclusions, correcting, or

trying to fix. Stay curious. Be open to new

and unfamiliar ideas and ways of doing things.

o Practice behavioral agility, which is the ability

to modulate your behavior, especially stress

behavior, to best serve a particular situation.

• Learn how others see you.

o Have conversations with others you trust to

see if your beliefs about yourself are accurate.

You may not feel comfortable opening up to your

coworkers, your board, or even at home. If so,

get a coach, a counselor, or a trusted advisor.

o If you think others may be guarded in their

opinion, engage a third party to facilitate

a qualitative 360° interview process.

• Be courageously honest with yourself, even

if it’s painful. Celebrate the good. Correct

thoughts and actions as required.

• Try keeping a journal of your thoughts and reflections.

A FEW OF MY FAVORITE

REFLECTION QUESTIONS

In any specific situation:

• How else could I look at this?

• What were my clear expectations?

• What impact did my inner conversations have on

my effectiveness?

• How open am I to learning?

• How stuck am I in my way of thinking?

• How true am I to my values?

• What triggered the emotions I experienced?

• What positive impact did I have?

The CEO job is stressful, but that doesn’t mean you have

to be constantly miserable. You don’t have to give up your

sense of self, your family, or the other things you value.

Any solution for stress management, as I have outlined

above, always starts with self-awareness. As you build

your self-awareness and lower your stress, remember

that few of us, if any, can grow our self-awareness on our

own. Once you find that trusted person or people to be

your partner in building self-awareness—and to hold you

accountable for sticking to the process—you have taken the

critical first step to managing stress in the long term.

J. Michael Godfrey, DMin, PhD, PCC, is the founder and president of True Course. He supports leaders to be more, see more, and achieve

more that matters in their personal lives and professional lives, and helps them posture themselves to finish without regret. True Course

supports executives as they lead their organizations to become places where people love to work, serve, and be customers. He is the author

of Without Regret: Be More, See More, Achieve More that Matters and Put Stress to Work: Turning Headaches into Advantages. For more

information visit DiscoverYourTrueCourse.com. Contact Dr. Godfrey at discover@discoveryourtruecourse.com.

1

Fenigstein, A., Scheier, M. F., & Buss, A. H. (1975). “Public and Private Self-Consciousness:

Assessment and Theory.” Journal of Consulting and Clinical Psychology, 43(4), 522–527. http://

dx.doi.org/10.1037/h0076760

2

Church, A. H. (1997). “Managerial Self-Awareness in High-Performing Individuals in

Organizations.” Journal of Applied Psychology, 82(2), 281–292. http://dx.doi.org/10.1037/0021–

9010.82.2.281

3

Kelly Richards, C. Campenni, and Janet Muse-Burke (2010) “Self-Care and Well-Being in Mental

Health Professionals: The Mediating Effects of Self-Awareness and Mindfulness.” Journal of

Mental Health Counseling: July 2010, Vol. 32, No. 3, pp. 247–264. https://doi.org/10.17744/

mehc.32.3.0n31v88304423806

4

Feldman, G., Dunn, E., Stemke, C., Bell, K., & Greeson, J. (2014). “Mindfulness and Rumination

as Predictors of Persistence with a Distress Tolerance Task.” Personality and individual

differences, 56, 10.1016/j.paid.2013.08.040. doi:10.1016/j.paid.2013.08.040

5

Trapnell, P. D., & Campbell, J. D. (1999). “Private Self-Consciousness and the Five-Factor Model

of Personality: Distinguishing Rumination from Reflection.” Journal of Personality and Social

Psychology, 76, 284–304. http://dx.doi.org/10.1037/0022-3514.76.2.284

6

Barrett, L.F. (2017). How emotions are made: The secret life of the brain. New York: Houghton

Mifflin Harcourt Publishing, p. 25–29 (Kindle Version).

7

Gordon, E. (2016). The Brain Revolution: Know and Train New Brain Habits. Indianapolis: Dog

Ear Publishing, p. 11–12.

8

For more on stress symptoms see Godfrey, J. M. (2016). Put Stress to Work: Turning Headaches to

advantages. Willmington, DE: Thomas Noble, chapter 3: How Stress Shows Up to Work, pp. 23—32.

9

Gordon, pp. 11–12.

10

Lisa Feldman Barrett suggests that the “mind” is “a computational moment within your

constantly predicting brain.” Barrett, L.F. (2017). How Emotions are Made: The Secret Life of the

Brain. New York: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing, p. 280 (Kindle Version).


SELF-AWARENESS

[SELF-AWARENESS]

AND THE CEO

How do we gain insight about ourselves

when people are reluctant to tell us the truth?

A stranger approaching you in the street will in a second’s glance

see you whole, size you up, place you in a way in which you cannot

and never will, even though you have spent a lifetime with yourself . . .

Tasha Eurich, PhD

and therefore ought to know yourself best of all.

—Walker Percy

The saying that “feedback is a gift” is such a painful cliché that

we often forget how true it really is. As leaders, we need not only

the self-awareness that comes from looking inward—we also need

what I call “external self-awareness.” That comes from turning

our gaze outward to understand how we are seen. And no matter

how hard we try, we simply cannot do this on our own. We need

that gift of feedback from the people around us, whether it’s an

employee, a board member, a CEO at a different organization,

or even a total stranger. Unfortunately, though, learning how

others see us is usually thwarted by one simple fact: even the

people we’re closest to are reluctant to share such information.

We all need the “gift of feedback” for one simple reason: other

people generally see us more objectively than we see ourselves.

Psychologist Timothy Smith and his colleagues powerfully

demonstrated this in a study with 300 married couples in which

both partners were being tested for heart disease. They asked

each participant to rate both their own and their partner’s levels

of anger, hostility, and argumentativeness—all strong predictors

of the illness—and found that people’s self-ratings were infinitely

less accurate than those of their spouses. Another study asked

more than 150 Navy officers and their subordinates to rate the

officers’ leadership style, and found that only the subordinates could

accurately assess their bosses’ performance and promotability.

WHETHER OR NOT WE RUN

A MULTIBILLION-DOLLAR

COMPANY, PROTECTING OUR FRAGILE

EGOS BY DECIDING WE ARE RIGHT AND

OTHERS ARE WRONG CAN BE RISKY.


47

Three Actionable Strategies

for Building Self-Awareness

360º

FEEDBACK

THE RIGHT

FEEDBACK

PROCESS

THE DINNER

OF TRUTH

nearly instantaneously he noticed that something was different.

Casual chatter had a habit of going silent whenever he entered the

room. He was getting mostly good news and hardly any bad news.

And his team was no longer inviting him to their social gatherings.

The most popular and

well-known method

for soliciting feedback

in the business world—

and worth every CEO’s

time as a tool for

understanding how

they are perceived.

It’s not the “be-all,

end-all,” though: the

numeric outputs can

sometimes be difficult

to interpret and put

into action.

All feedback is not

created equal: we have

to choose the RIGHT

people, ask them the

RIGHT questions,

and use the RIGHT

process to get valuable

information.

Find the “loving critics”

in your life—the people

who care about you but

are willing to be brutally

honest—and then ask

them specific questions

to solicit real insight.

Josh Misner, a professor

and a prominent member

of the Good Men

Project, recommends

a practice for gaining

self-awareness in our

personal lives.

Invite a friend, family

member, or mentor to a

meal, and ask them the

thing that bugs them

most about you. Tell

them that anything is fair

game—and that you will

listen with openness, not

get defensive.

Catmull didn’t like this very much. He didn’t feel like a different

person than University of Utah Ed or New York Tech Ed. But he

realized that his new role as The Boss, coupled with his increasing

prominence in the academic community, had changed the way

people perceived him. He told me, “I recognized that, okay, this

is the way it is, and it will probably get worse over time.” The

reluctance to speak up was presenting a giant obstacle not just in

his own performance, but to the collective self-awareness of his

team. Since then, Catmull has made it a top-tier priority to combat

this reluctance and seek the honest truth, not just about himself

as a leader, but about the challenges and issues his company is

facing. And it has made quite a difference. He now says that one

of his core tenets is what he calls “leading by being self-aware.”

Developing external self-awareness becomes particularly critical,

yet infinitely more difficult, when you’re the boss, and especially

when you’re the CEO. Studies show that self-aware leaders are

more successful and promotable, and some research has even

shown that self-awareness is the single greatest predictor of

leadership success. The problem is, the higher up you are on the

corporate food chain, the less likely you are to be self-aware, an

affliction that’s been labeled “CEO Disease.” After all, who really

wants to tell the boss that his management style is alienating

people, or that her latest staffing choices are causing friction,

or that his clients find him controlling? Complicating matters,

the overconfidence that results from past successes can make it

challenging for leaders to hear and accept difficult feedback—

and thus make their employees more reluctant to give it.

Pixar president Ed Catmull has witnessed this reluctance to speak

truth to power firsthand. Years before he co-founded his company

and became president of Disney Animation Studios, he was a young

PhD student at the University of Utah’s nascent computer graphics

program. He adored the comradery he had with his professors and

fellow graduate students—there were no strict hierarchies, they worked

independently, and everyone generally got along. Catmull liked this

environment so much that he created a similar structure in his first

job out of school. As the head of a small computer animation research

team at the New York Institute of Technology, he hired smart people,

treated them as equals, and let them do their thing. As a result, they

told him pretty much everything that was going on. He was involved

in social activities and was basically one of the guys—it felt good.

But when Catmull was hired to lead Lucasfilm’s brand-new computer

division, he realized that he’d need to rethink how he managed people.

His new team would be bigger, better resourced, and have a much

higher profile. To achieve George Lucas’s ambitious vision of bringing

computer technology to Hollywood, Catmull reasoned, he would need

to adopt a more formal, hierarchical structure with a manager running

each of the graphics, video, and audio groups. And when he did that,

Whether or not we run a multibillion-dollar company, protecting

our fragile egos by deciding we are right and others are wrong can

be risky. Nevertheless, we fall back on the same old excuses. We tell

ourselves we’re doing fine and don’t really need the feedback. Or we

tell ourselves that asking for feedback would be weak. Or, perhaps

most understandable of all, we rely on the excuse that we just don’t

want to ask for feedback. After all, it’s scary and uncomfortable.

The good news is that we can decide to pull our heads out of the sand

and recognize that others’ opinions are just as important for insight

as our own. The best leaders push through their fear, defensiveness,

and vulnerability and go for it anyway. As U.S. President Franklin

Delano Roosevelt once opined, “Courage is not the absence of fear,

but rather the assessment that something else is more important

than fear.” In our case, that “something else” is insight.

Take the Insight Quiz

Looking to get a high-level snapshot of your own

self-awareness—and how it matches up with

how others see you? Take this 5-minute quiz, and

choose a friend to fill out the same survey for you.

You’ll get the results when both sets of data are in!

Access the quiz at www.Insight-Quiz.com.

This article is adapted from Dr. Tasha Eurich’s book, Insight: The

Surprising Truth About How Others See Us, How We See Ourselves,

and Why the Answers Matter More Than We Think (Currency). An

organizational psychologist and sought-after keynote speaker, Eurich

gives leaders around the world the tools they need to succeed in an everchanging

world. Visit www.TashaEurich.com to learn more about her.


Early bird registration (until Jan 31, 2020): $299

Regular registration (after Jan 31, 2020): $399

Registration fee includes the reception

Friday evening and lunch on Saturday.

Baylor University Executive MBA Program - Dallas

Louise Herrington School of Nursing – Academic Building

333 N. Washington Ave, Dallas, TX 75246

Have questions?

Email us at info@texasceomagazine.com and we’ll respond promptly.

To register, visit texasceomagazine.com/mar20

DO YOU ASPIRE TO BECOME A CEO?

THIS ROLE IS VERY DIFFERENT FROM EVERY OTHER C-SUITE

POSITION AND YOU NEED TO PREPARE DIFFERENTLY FOR IT.

DALLAS

Aspiring CEOs Seminar

FRIDAY, MARCH 20: 6:30 PM TO 8 PM, RECEPTION AND INTRODUCTION

SATURDAY, MARCH 21: 9 AM TO 4 PM, SEMINAR

To help aspiring chief executives, seasoned tech CEO Joel Trammell has taken his CEO training course and adapted it specifically for them.

Joel’s leadership as CEO has resulted in successful nine-figure acquisitions by two Fortune 500 companies. As CEO of network

management software firm NetQoS, he delivered 31 consecutive quarters of double-digit revenue growth and a $200 million valuation.

CA Technologies acquired the company in 2009, generating more than 10x return on capital to its private equity investors. In 2010, he

cofounded Cache IQ, a storage software company that NetApp acquired two years later.

Joel is committed to using his experience to help current and aspiring CEOs. Join us for this crash course in excelling in the CEO role—

and learn valuable lessons that will advance your career.

TESTIMONIALS:

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Trammell. I learned tactics that I now put into action every day.”

—Chuck Gordon, CEO, Storable; former CEO, SpareFoot

“The CEO seminar was not only insightful and thought provoking on leadership styles and successful business constructs; it also afforded a unique opportunity

to interact with my peers across a variety of companies. I learned lessons I still refer to today in managing people and the culture of an organization.”

—Melanie Kalemba, former CEO, Movero Technology

HOSTED BY:

SAVE THE DATE!

October 3, 2020 • 1 pm

Come shoot clay pigeons with Texas Rangers at a private club in Austin, Texas.

This event will benefit the Texas Ranger Hall of Fame and Museum in Waco, Texas.

To put your name on the waitlist for tickets, or to inquire about sponsorships,

email us at info@texasceomagazine.com.

WHAT’S MY CMO

TALKING ABOUT?

Tony Streeter

As head of the entire organization, the CEO is expected to have a working

knowledge of each functional area of the business. But as technology

evolves at dizzying speeds, it’s not always easy to keep up. You may have

thought, for example, that you understood marketing nomenclature, but

now noticed that it’s getting harder to differentiate between a conversation

with your CMO and your CIO. Let’s take a brief tour of some of the words and

phrases your CMO is probably using these days—so you can

have an informed conversation about how the marketing

department fits into the strategic plan of your organization.

Martech (1) is the buzzword created to describe the combination

of marketing activities with technology. Although traditional

methods of advertising and marketing (billboards, ads, radio,

TV, sponsorships, direct mail, etc.) are still effective, the digital

boom has paved the way for the development of a number of

sophisticated digital tools that provide a depth of insight for the

savvy marketer. Mass marketing via standard approaches has

now been surpassed by digital marketing practices that allow for

highly targeted campaigns and detailed effectiveness reporting.

Integrating data analytics (2) with your internal customer data—

typically held in a customer relationship management (CRM)

(3)

database—and third-party data now gives you the ability to

(1) get a profile of your customer (what they buy, when they

buy, how much they are willing to pay) and (2) understand

who is buying (demographics such as age, gender, income,

and education level); where they are buying from (geolocation),

and what motivated them to buy (discount, incentive,

bundle, online content, testimonials/endorsements, etc.).

In the past, marketers relied on laborious multivariate

testing (MVT) (4) to gauge prospective customers’ reactions

to different offers, different content, and so on. Now, with

prescriptive analytics (5) , market testing has largely been

automated. Prescriptive analytics uses both descriptive

analytics (data about the past) and predictive analytics

(modeling and forecasting of what may happen in the future)

to arrive at recommended courses of action, especially

when combined with sophisticated propensity models (6) .

Machine learning (ML) (7) can also be used to automate

multivariate testing by first performing a cluster analysis that

groups variables before placing them into a multinomial logistic

regression—essentially, a method of predicting probable outcomes

given a certain set of variables. So instead of waiting weeks or

months to see what actual customers do, the proper data analytics

techniques can tell you what they are most likely to do in minutes

or seconds. Of course, the accuracy of the recommendations

depends heavily on the accuracy of your internal data and

the stringency of your data governance (8) practices.

Here are some other digital tools your CMO may be talking about:

IP Address Hyper-Targeting

Here’s a neat little development that came out around the 2016

election: IP address hyper-targeting. Every household that has

an Internet connection has a unique IP address. The digital

advertising tactic known as IP address hyper-targeting delivers

personalized content to a website user’s mobile device or desktop

based upon its physical location. IP targeting is better than

traditional geo-fencing (9) in that it targets specific households or

businesses. So, for example, a political message can be directed


51

toward a target audience’s IP addresses (based upon voter

addresses in a database) while avoiding those who don’t wish to

see or hear it. It works by converting physical addresses into IP

addresses and then messaging to mobile devices and desktops

that use those IP addresses. Let’s say you run a B2B business

and are trying to win favor with a particular company; you can

determine their IP address and put your message in front of every

employee registered at that IP address when they go online. (For

more about how this works, take a look at www.eltoro.com.)

Converting Analytics into Directional Leads

Google Analytics can tell you a lot about how your

website is received by the general public. It can tell you

the number of sessions you’ve had, the number of unique

visitors, your bounce rate, your most popular pages, the

average time spent on your website, etc. However, this

information doesn’t directly convert into leads.

There are online sales intelligence tools that will allow you

to uncover more about your anonymous website visitors and

can help you turn Google information into directional leads.

Tools like Leadfeeder integrate with both Google and LinkedIn

and take in IP address information to provide a customized

dashboard that furnishes insights on who’s visiting your site.

The lead dashboard will show you the names of the companies

associated with the IP addresses that are visiting your website

(important for B2B companies). And, although it can’t tell you

the exact individual who visited, it can tell you what they looked

at, how long they looked, and on what date. Software can also

provide, via integration with LinkedIn, a list of the company’s

employees, their titles, and their email addresses. So, let’s say

someone from Company X spent six minutes looking at one

of your services. You could infer that Company X may have a

need for that service. Next, you would go through the list of

company contacts and select the individual or department that

would most benefit from your service, then reach out to them.

GLOSSARY

(1) Martech - A portmanteau of marketing

and technology, most often used to

describe projects and campaigns that use

technology to achieve marketing goals.

(2) Data analytics – The practice of examining

raw data sets with the objective of identifying

patterns and arriving at conclusions.

(3) Customer relationship management

(CRM) – Customer relationship

management (CRM) tools offer companies

a system of record for storing data about

and interactions with their future and

current customers.

(4) Multivariate testing (MVT) - A

technique for testing how prospects and

customers react to different combinations


of multiple variables. Similar to A/B

testing, but uses more than one variable to

arrive at the best combination of variables.

(5) Prescriptive analytics – A form of

analytics that makes prescriptions or

recommendations for future actions. While

predictive analytics can model possible

future outcomes based on historical data,

prescriptive analytics advises organizations

on the best path to take.

(6) Propensity models – A tool for

forecasting customer behavior, involving

scoring likely future customer behaviors

numerically. A higher number means the

customer is more likely to engage in the

behavior in question.

Competitor Monitoring

Competitor monitoring and analysis can be an arduous

undertaking. In the past, sporadic information would

come in from a number of sources. Sales may have known

something about a competitor’s pricing. Marketing may

have snagged a competitor’s brochure at a trade show.

Whatever was culled together told a patchy story at best.

Today, with most of a company’s information online, competitive

data can be gathered, organized, and presented more easily.

Software platforms like WatchMyCompetitor.com can now pull

product information (pricing changes, launches, availability,

retiring products), marketing information (promotions, events,

website layout changes, banner changes, online ads), social

media information (impactful posts and videos), and company

information (personnel changes, restructuring, financial results,

investor updates, new partners, new locations) and put all

of it into a concise, personalized dashboard. In addition, the

information is consistently updated, and you can set alerts for

strategic changes. You no longer have to be caught unaware.

It’s worth every CEO’s time to learn the basic language,

approaches, and tools of the modern CMO. Once you have a

working knowledge of the latest developments in marketing

technology, your conversations with your head of marketing

will be a lot less confusing—and significantly more productive.

Tony Streeter is the Chief Marketing Officer, SVP, at Y&L Consulting

Inc. in San Antonio, Texas. He has led new product development,

ecommerce marketing, and integrated platform marketing initiatives

for major companies such as Harland Clarke, Deluxe Corporation,

and RR Donnelley. Currently, Streeter leads marketing and branding

initiatives for Y&L Consulting, a comprehensive IT services and

solutions company specializing in IT development, data analytics,

emerging technologies, and help desk services.

(7) Machine learning (ML) – A subset

of artificial intelligence dealing with

computers’ ability to learn from data,

recognize patterns, and adapt to new

situations without human intervention.

(8) Data governance – The management of

an enterprise’s data, including its integrity,

security, and the various rules that govern

how it is handled.

(9) Geo-fencing – The practice of using

GPS or radio frequency identification

(RFID) to create a boundary around a

geographic area, then trigger responses

when a device enters that area.

THE SPORT OF

RELOCATION

Ed Curtis

Anyone doing business in Texas knows that the competitive landscape is changing. Out-of-state-based

businesses, from a wide array of industries, are looking to set up shop in Texas. According to the YTexas

Relo Tracker, 2018 and 2019 brought over 50 corporate headquarter relocations into the Lone Star State. If

you were to include corporate expansions, the number is well into the hundreds. Leading industries include

technology, advanced manufacturing, consumer packaged goods, and professional service firms.

In recent years, another industry has emerged in the world of corporate relocation and expansion. It’s the

sports industry. Here are six sports-related relocation and expansion projects that will shape the future

of the Lone Star State.

PGA of America — You would think Palm Beach

Gardens, Florida, would be the home of all things golf. Not so

anymore. While still maintaining a presence in South Florida,

the PGA of America is relocating its corporate headquarters

to Frisco, Texas, after more than a half century of operation.

That’s only the tip of the iceberg. The HQ will be part of a 600-

acre mixed-used development that is projected to include two

championship golf courses, a short course, Class AA office space,

and a 500-room Omni resort, to include a 127,000-squarefoot

conference center and a whole lot more. Rumor has it

there is a possibility that the PGA will bring a future Ryder Cup

to Texas. Meanwhile, the PGA Championship is slated to be

played at PGA Frisco in 2027 and 2034. Since the area hasn’t

hosted a PGA Championship since 1963, that is a big deal. This

relocation will create a ripple effect on the economy, creating

a market ripe for vendors, suppliers, players, and residents

close to the game of golf. The project will reside near US 380

and the Dallas North Tollway. When will we see this? Believe

it or not, not in the too distant future. Could be as early as

2022—with the hotel and convention center not far behind.

“PGA Frisco is destined to become the future home of American

golf,” said PGA chief operating officer Darrell Crall. “We are

working collaboratively on every step, on roads and design, making

sure we are all committing to the community and executing in a

way that everyone can be proud of. Frisco is a perfect match for

our corporate culture. The PGA of America is thrilled to bring

our headquarters and championship golf to Northern Texas.”


53

Austin FC — In 2021, Major League Soccer

(MLS) will have a home in Austin. The Austin FC

team will be the first top-division major sports

team in the Austin area. Anthony Precourt, previous

owner of the Columbus Crew, brought Austin’s first

major league team to the city in January of 2019,

when he sealed a deal with the City of Austin to bring

the 27th MLS club to the state capital. The club is building

a new state-of-the-art soccer park and multi-use stadium

for the team in a public/private partnership with the city at

McKalla Place, near the Domain mixed-use development. The

club will also build a $45 million training facility called St.

David’s Performance Center in Northeast Austin, which will

have four full-size soccer fields and first-class amenities for the

club’s first team and academy teams. Both the stadium and St.

David’s Performance Center are scheduled to open in 2021. For

a town that falls short of a professional sports franchise, this

is huge for Austin. Season tickets can still be reserved with a

$50 refundable deposit at austinfc.com. Go get ’em.

Envy Gaming — Look no further than Dallas,

Texas, for the next wave of esports teams sweeping

the nation. Envy Gaming, which moved to Dallas

from Charlotte, North Carolina, in 2017, was recently

named the eighth most valuable esports organization

in the world. Envy acquired the Dallas Overwatch

League franchise spot in 2018, launching its Dallas Fuel

franchise. In 2019, Envy Gaming raised an additional

$20 million in VC funding and also acquired the Dallas

Call of Duty League team spot, which will debut the Dallas

Empire team in the 2020 competitive season. Esports has

exploded in popularity in recent years, with fans filling arenas to

watch players square off in popular multiplayer video game

competitions. Envy Gaming will host seven home weekends of

live esports competition in various stadiums across North Texas

in 2020. It is estimated that there are over 50 million registered

players of popular video games in the US, which creates a market

for tremendous growth. For more information, visit Envy.gg.

United States Tennis Association Texas

— If you’re a tennis fan in Texas, and that would include

me, then get ready to make some trips to Central Texas.

The United States Tennis Association (USTA) Texas is

planning to relocate its headquarters to Cedar Park, Texas.

The development project will bring around 40 outdoor and

six to eight indoor courts and be part of a 150-acre mixeduse

development. The new HQ will anchor a multibilliondollar

project (Indigo Ridge) that will encompass over five

million square feet of mixed-use development, including

dining, retail, and entertainment. The facility will be in

earshot of the major Apple expansion and will be an added

draw for more corporate relocations to the area. If this will look

anything like the USTA HQ in Florida, we’re in for a real treat.


Perfect Game — Nestled in the Austin suburb of Hutto,

Texas, will be the largest baseball development the state has

ever seen. Iowa-based scouting organization Perfect Game

is partnering with the city and other investors to anchor an

$800 million development in the City of Hutto. In addition

to the baseball facilities, the new development will feature a

200,000-square-foot indoor sports and events center designed

to seat 13,000, and a convention hotel. The organization is already

talking with major sports franchises and universities about

expanding opportunities for children to advance in the sport.

Yes, the Field of Dreams will still remain in Iowa, but about 24

baseball fields used to train students of the game will soon be here

in Central Texas. When will it be done? Some say as early as 2021.

Dallas Renegades and Houston

Roughnecks — If you are wondering if there is

any more room for football in Texas, the answer is an

astounding yes. The XFL, financed by the chairman and

CEO of the WWE, Vince McMahon, chose two of the eight

markets to launch in Texas. The two Texas teams join

Seattle, Los Angeles, New York, St. Louis, Tampa Bay,

and Washington, DC, as the league’s inaugural cities.

Texas nemesis and former OU head coach Bob Stoops

is head coach for the Dallas Renegades, with much of

the leadership coming from other Texas sports franchises,

including the Dallas Stars and Texas Rangers. The team will play

its home games at Globe Life Park in Arlington, which is being

repurposed as a football venue after its previous tenant, Major

League Baseball’s Texas Rangers, relocates to the newly built

Globe Life Field. The Houston Roughnecks will be led by former

SMU coach June Jones, with their games being held at TDECU

stadium on the University of Houston campus. The opening

season, beginning on February 9, will have a 10-week season,

with each team hosting five home-field games. What’s interesting

is that the game will feature a few new, tested rules for a faster

pace that should complete in under three hours. The league will

draw from former college and NFL players, many of whom have

talent to show the world. My analysis—the talent level will be top

notch. Season tickets start as low as $20 per seat, and premium

seats can be purchased for less than $100 at xflrenegades.com

and xflroughnecks.com. You’ll definitely be seeing me at one of

these games.

Sports bring a healthy sense of competition to our neighborhoods

and build strong communities. With a growing population, ripe

with future talent and a fan base eager for entertainment, sports

will continue to expand in our great state. Will there be a new

NFL team making it to Texas? Well, that may be a longshot. Only

time will tell.

Ed Curtis is the founder and CEO of YTEXAS. He launched YTEXAS after 20

years in banking and private sector business, where he held various positions

such as Market CEO, Chief Lending Officer, and Chief Executive Officer.


55

LEGISLATIVE

FOOTBALL,

TEXAS-STYLE

Craig Casselberry


There’s an adage in football, now America’s favorite sport (at least

if you believe the TV ratings), that winning comes down to the

fundamentals. If you block and tackle properly, success will follow.

Members of the 86th Texas Legislature certainly did a lot of

blocking and tackling. They filed more than 7,300 bills in 2019 and

enacted over 1,400 into law, addressing some difficult issues and

coming away with some big wins.

The “Big Three” in Texas state government—Governor Greg Abbott,

Lt. Governor Dan Patrick, and House Speaker Dennis Bonnen, all

Republicans—focused their legislative energies on fundamental

policy issues like property tax relief and school finance reform, and

largely avoided the more divisive social issues.

Why the newfound synergy? Look no further than the November

2018 elections; Republicans lost 12 House seats, two incumbent

senators, and two incumbent congressmen, and other statewide

elected officials survived closer-than-expected elections.

It was apparently enough to scare Republicans straight. What

resulted was a more “moderated” leadership team and a Legislature

that focused more on issues like taxes and education reform and

less on social issues, as they had previously done with the so-called

“bathroom bill.”

While it was pragmatic politics, let’s also give credit where credit

is due—the 86th Legislature solved some longstanding, thorny

issues. And, importantly to our state’s CEOs, they didn’t tread on

the nation’s leading economy, which continues to create jobs in

record numbers.

Highlights

State Budget. House Bill 1 establishes a two-year balanced

state budget (as required by the Texas Constitution) with $250.7

billion in overall spending. This is an increase of more than 16

percent over the prior biennium, made possible by a healthy Texas

economy and growth in the energy sector.

Much of the new spending went to the top legislative priorities:

$6.5 billion for public schools and $5.1 billion to “buy down”

Texans’ property tax bills (more on that in a moment).


57

The Legislature also authorized a record-breaking $6.1 billion

withdrawal from the Economic Stabilization Fund (or “Rainy

Day Fund”) for large-scale infrastructure projects and Hurricane

Harvey recovery.

Economic Incentives. The Texas Enterprise Fund—the

governor’s “deal-closing” fund to attract large companies and their

jobs—received a whopping $535 million boost. Texas Enterprise

Fund projects are centered largely in the big cities. Some will

argue that rural Texas needs and deserves similar attention.

The Texas Film Incentive program, which had languished

and lost pace with other states for the past several years, was

increased to $50 million dollars.

Property Tax Reform. The Legislature (via Senate Bill 2)

barred cities, counties, and special districts from increasing

property tax collections more than 3.5 percent in any year

without a vote of the public; school districts are capped at 2.5

percent, a major reduction from the current cap of 8 percent.

School Finance Reform. The Legislature accomplished

something many insiders thought impossible—enacting

wholesale school finance reform without a court mandate.

The legislation provides a total of $11.6 billion in new state

funding for public education:

(i)

(ii)

$4.5 billion for a 20 percent general increase in

per-student baseline funding, and targeted funding

increases for pre-kindergarten programs, third-grade

reading proficiency, and dyslexia;

$2 billion for an average salary increase of $4,000 for

teachers, librarians, nurses, and counselors; and

(iii) over $5 billion for “buying down” school districts’

maintenance and operation tax rates to provide

taxpayer relief (an average of 8 cents per $100

property valuation in 2020 and an additional 5 cents

per $100 property valuation in 2021).

House Bill 3 will also provide future school tax relief by limiting

local school property tax growth to 2.5 percent per year (absent

voter approval). And because state government is increasing

its share of public education funding from 38 percent to 45

percent, it is decreasing the “Robin Hood” recapture payments

required from wealthy districts by $3.6 billion per biennium, or

47 percent overall.

Even with the passage SB 2 and HB 3, Texans are unlikely to see

their property tax bills fall in absolute terms, as increasing home

values will continue to drive those bills upward. But the reform

package should prevent the dramatic increases Texans have been

seeing in high-growth areas.

State vs. Local Control. The revenue limitations in SB 2 and

HB 3 are fairly extreme examples of state preemption over local

control. On the other hand, cities were successful in defeating

legislation that would have removed their ability to enact local

ordinances requiring employers to provide paid sick leave or

regulating short-term rental companies like Airbnb.

In November, Texans went to the polls and passed Proposition 6

to fund the Cancer Prevention and Research Institute of Texas

(CPRIT) for another decade. Not only has CPRIT played a

role in reducing cancer-related mortality; it has also spawned

companies that create innovative technologies and related jobs.

Propositions 1 and 7 to fund infrastructure projects in areas

impacted by Hurricane Harvey were also approved by voters.

Legislative Interim

Soon, Texas legislative interim committees will begin hearings

on issues expected to be debated in the 87th Legislature,

including the impact of business taxes on job creation and the

nation-leading Texas economy.

For example, the Senate Finance Committee will be examining

business personal property taxes, among 20 total issues with

varying impact on the business community. Where and how to

tax distribution of online purchases will also be examined.

Chapter 313 of the Texas Economic Development Code—which

allows for local property tax abatements to attract jobs—will also

be scrutinized in the interim year.

What’s Next?

The 2020 elections will determine who controls the redrawing of

legislative district lines (a.k.a. redistricting) when the 87th Texas

Legislature convenes in January 2021, so every competitive race

will be hotly contested. Those elections will also influence the

approach to a variety of issues important to the Texas business

community.

If the economy continues to flourish and property tax bills stay

at least level, expect the Legislature to stay close to its current

composition. But the state’s demographics are changing rapidly,

with a growing Hispanic population and in-migration from more

liberal states that could change our politics—and our policy—

faster than anticipated.

Either way, these once-a-decade redistricting sessions have

always included fireworks. 2021 will be no exception.

Craig Casselberry is founder and CEO of Quorum Public Affairs Inc. and

a 30-year veteran of Texas policy and politics. He is a former aide to two

Texas governors and has provided government and public affairs services

to companies, issue coalitions, and economic developers since 1994.


GLOBAL FORECASTING

LUNCH

featuring Dr. George Friedman

DATE AND TIME

Tue, February 11, 2020

11:30 AM – 1:00 PM CST

LOCATION

Baylor University’s

Executive MBA Campus

3107 Oak Creek Drive

Austin, TX 78727

ONE OF THE MOST IMPORTANT TASKS FOR

A CEO IS PREDICTING THE FUTURE. JOIN US

FOR A LUNCH WITH EXPERT FORECASTER

DR. GEORGE FRIEDMAN.

ABOUT THIS EVENT

What global and domestic events will affect markets that impact your

business? How will you be prepared for these? How will you maneuver

to help your business survive and thrive?

Your ability to predict the future and plan for it greatly impacts your

business. To help you get the insights you need for success, Texas CEO

Magazine and YTexas are hosting this exclusive lunch with Dr. George

Friedman. We invite you to join us as he forecasts the future and

answers your questions.

EVENT DETAILS

This event will be held at the Baylor Executive MBA campus in north Austin.

Parking is free and convenient, right outside the building.

A gourmet lunch will be provided.

Space is very limited, so book your tickets early!

ABOUT DR. FRIEDMAN

Dr. George Friedman is an internationally

recognized geopolitical forecaster

and strategist on international

affairs and the founder and chairman

of Geopolitical Futures.

Dr. Friedman is a New York Times bestselling

author. His most popular book,

The Next 100 Years, is kept alive by the

prescience of its predictions. Other bestselling

books include Flashpoints: The

Emerging Crisis in Europe, The Next Decade,

America’s Secret War, The Future of War, and

The Intelligence Edge. His books have been

translated into more than 20 languages.

Dr. Friedman has briefed numerous

military and government organizations

in the United States and overseas

and appears regularly as an expert on

international affairs, foreign policy,

and intelligence in major media.

For almost 20 years before resigning

in May 2015, Dr. Friedman was

CEO and then chairman of Stratfor,

a company he founded in 1996.

Friedman received his bachelor’s

degree from the City College of the

City University of New York and

holds a doctorate in government

from Cornell University.

TO GET YOUR TICKETS, VISIT TEXASCEOMAGAZINE.COM/FEB11

HOSTED BY:

SPONSORED BY:

BUILDING

A BRIGHTER FUTURE

FOR CENTRAL TEXAS KIDS

A CONVERSATION WITH RICHARD TAGLE,

CEO OF THE ANDY RODDICK FOUNDATION

For 20 years, the Andy Roddick Foundation has worked to give youth in low-income communities across

Central Texas access to education and learning opportunities. Richard Tagle was born and raised in Manila

and built his career in DC, but he’d only been to Texas twice when he accepted the job as the Andy Roddick

Foundation’s CEO. Richard talked to us about his DC-to-Texas transition, the unique challenges of the

nonprofit CEO, and how his passion for data gives him an edge—and, sometimes, gets him in trouble.

WHETHER YOU’RE

A DEMOCRAT OR

REPUBLICAN IN AUSTIN,

YOU’RE STILL OPEN-MINDED

ABOUT THINGS. YOU STILL

CARE ABOUT WHAT HAPPENS

IN YOUR NEIGHBORHOOD

AND COMMUNITY.

How did you get into this interesting position as a nonprofit

CEO? I was born and raised in the Philippines, in Manila. I

was groomed to be an investment banker because most of my

aunts and uncles were in investment banking. But at 16, I left

the Philippines. I basically ran away. I love my family, but it

was “This is the college to go to, this is the right course to take,

this is the right girl to date.” Those expectations weren’t what I

wanted for myself. I was ready to get out and go see the world.

So I counted my Christmas money and my money from my

summer job and got a one-way ticket from Manila to Hawaii

to see my grandmother. I asked her if I could stay there. She

said, “You can’t run away from home and live with me. Dignify

it. If you really want to see the world, then see the world.”

So I moved to San Francisco. Later, in graduate school in

Washington, DC, I shifted gears from finance to public

administration, then later on to social policy. I became more

and more curious about how nonprofit organizations work and

how communities change. Up until then, I had no idea what a

nonprofit organization was or the role it played in civil society.

For my first foray in nonprofit work, I worked for the

United States Conference of Mayors. I was 22, and I

had to go to 88 of the poorest towns in the South to

oversee the grants that USCM forwarded to them.


IF WE CAN MAKE OUT-OF-SCHOOL

LEARNING A POSITIVE EXPERIENCE

FOR YOUNG PEOPLE, THAT’S GOING TO BE

COPIED BY THE REST OF THE COUNTRY.

When the Andy Roddick Foundation

contacted me many years later, I had

lived in Washington, DC, for 27 years,

doing educational lobbying, running a

middle school academic program, and

doing nonprofit consulting. I’d only been

to Austin twice prior to coming here

for this job. It was March 2013 when

they showed me around. I remember

it because everything was so green.

Right—you were probably picturing

West Texas and tumbleweeds. That’s

right. When I met with the staff and

the board, I was really impressed—with

them, with Andy, with the city. I said I

could move in summer, which probably

was the wrong thing to say. When I

left the airport, it was 106 degrees.

We have a lot of companies moving to

Texas. As someone who came here from

DC, what would you tell somebody who’s

thinking about relocating to Texas? I

was surprised by the open-mindedness

here. Prior to moving to Texas, I’d

always had this understanding that

Texas is conservative and Republican.

Having lived in DC for 27 years, a town

that’s 98 percent Democrat, I really had

hesitation. “Am I going to fit in there?”

But the number-one thing that surprised

me is, whether you’re a Democrat or

Republican in Austin, you’re still openminded

about things. You still care about

what happens in your neighborhood

and community. People really want

their schools to be great. They have

different ideas of what level of investment

there should be, and how to make that

investment, but at the core of it, they

really care about the children and the

community. It’s the same for health,

education, workforce development. I

thought everybody here was like, “No

government spending. No taxes. Nothing.”

The second thing that surprised me was

the level of diversity. Everybody was

telling me, “Oh, it’s not diverse. As a

Filipino, you’re going to stand out.” But

in my neighborhood, I live across from

an Indian couple, two doors down is a

Chinese family, next door is a Korean

family. It’s become more diverse in the

past decade. I still go to places where

I’m the only person of color. That still

happens. But the diversity is becoming

more pronounced, especially in more

affordable pockets of Central Texas.

As we address housing affordability

and as more companies move here, I

think that the diversity will increase.

Are there any special challenges working

in nonprofit education in Texas? The

burden on Texas is that we are actually

more diverse in some key ways. California

may have more kids—they have eight

million—but we have a bigger ruralurban

divide, and our kids are speaking

more languages. Thanks to our size,

whatever we do in this state is going to

be the barometer of what the country has

appetite for. So if we can make out-ofschool

learning a positive experience

for young people, that’s going to be

copied by the rest of the country. We’re

beginning to convene all of these folks

and explore how we make sure that

there is learning support for the 5.4

million kids in our schools. We have

the second-largest school population in

the country. One of every 10 students

in the country attend a Texas school.

When you talk to donors, how do you

convince them that making a donation

to the Andy Roddick Foundation is

worthwhile? There’s a lot of good

nonprofit organizations out there. But

I can tell you three things the Andy

Roddick Foundation is set up to do.

The first is that we pay close attention

to where the need is. It’s not about what

we want to do; it’s about what we need

to do. I’ll tell you a story. Andre Agassi,

Andy’s mentor, built a foundation focused

on charter schools, and Andy wanted

to do the same thing. During that first

board meeting I attended, Andy was

talking about this charter school. It just

so happened that KIPP was right next

door to our donated space. I said, “Andy,

just look outside the window. There’s

a charter school right there. Why build

something when you can just give money

to that one?” I used my newness as the

chip. I told them I didn’t know Austin, but

that we should explore opportunities like

that. For the rest of 2013, we did nothing

but talk to families and other foundations

about their needs and where the gaps

were. That’s when we found out summer

learning was a great need, especially

in East Austin, and why we designed

our own summer learning program.

For afterschool, rather than just

duplicate programs, we spend hundreds

of thousands supporting other

organizations that are aligned with us.

That’s how we scale kids’ opportunity

to be exposed to high-quality programs.

We bring these partners into the fold

and expand our reach that way.

The second thing is that we know how we

are making a difference. I’m the research

guy. I want data. I want to see that the

needle is moving. We count everything

from the level of family engagement in

our programs to how often the kids come

to our program on a daily basis. We can

tell you our six-week retention rate during

the summer, our daily attendance rates,

the academic skills we start with and

the academic skills we end up with. We

publish an annual report showing how our

kids are doing in schools participating

in our program in comparison to kids

who have the same profile but don’t

participate in our programs. The

school district helps us with that.

I was the same way when I was running

Higher Achievement. I raised $3.2


million for a six-year randomized study

that compared 500 kids who went into

our program and 500 who couldn’t get

into our program. Half the parents in DC

loved me because their kids got in, but

the other half hated me. But now we have

data to tell you that the program produces

results. The US Department of Education

uses that as the flagship research for

the value of academic programs after

school. Those parents are probably still

mad at me, but seven million other

kids will benefit from that research.

The third thing would be our commitment

to continuous improvement. We use

the data to improve: We do one thing

in the first school, learn how we can

make that more efficient in the second

school, then even more so in the third

school. If people share their resources

with us, they can trust it will address

real needs, that we will track the data,

and that we will use it to continue

our efficiency and effectiveness.

What were some of your aha moments on

this journey as a nonprofit leader? Well,

one is that a lot of people throughout

Texas still don’t see the value of highquality

out-of-school programs. There’s

a notion that schools can do everything.

But children spend just 20 percent of

their waking day in school, and the data

shows that children who have extra

learning support outside school do

better. Yet a lot of people are hesitant

to invest in afterschool programs.

“Why are we having reading mentors

come at three o’clock? Shouldn’t we

have done that during school time?”

We want to change that way of thinking.

One teacher in a class of 28 students

can’t respond to 28 different learning

styles, so you do need community

resources outside of school to facilitate

that kind of learning support. Now, I’m

not saying that out-of-school time should

replace schools, but many students

need that personalized attention.

Schools can’t have volunteer teachers,

but our program can have volunteer

mentors to work with those kids.

The other counterintuitive thing I learned

is that operations doesn’t necessarily

get cheaper the more you grow. That’s

probably true with McDonald’s and

Coca-Cola, when you have the same

product to manufacture, but as we

grow as a nonprofit, there is also more

personalized attention and time we’re

adding. At my previous job, at Higher

Achievement, we thought things would

be cheaper if we went to multiple cities

as fast as we could. We wouldn’t have

to hire another CEO to run Nashville,

another CEO to run Richmond. But I

learned that if I’m based in Washington,

DC, I couldn’t go to Nashville and raise

money there. We needed to build the

infrastructure that would facilitate

relationships. You’re always seen as the

DC guy coming here raising money for

his program. The relationship aspect

of this work is what makes it effective.

Once a kid realizes I forgot his or her

name, that breaks down that relationship.

So you have to grow smartly.

What do you think about the role of

technology in learning? Obviously, there

was great hype around technology in

education a while back. Then we went

through what Gartner calls the Trough of

Disillusionment. Then we came out the

other end with things like Khan Academy.

Technology is never a silver bullet, but

there are times when technology attracts

students’ curiosity. You can use that when

it’s appropriate. A teacher can use a video

to attract students’ attention and curiosity

as they learn coding, for example. And

you can have a laptop in front of you

to follow the instructions right there.

When you’re talking about art and

creativity, you can use technology, but

sometimes a kid banging an African

drum is just as important. So to me,

the key to technology is knowing

when it’s the most appropriate and

when it will spark curiosity.

I know you’ve focused on East Austin, but

what do you see the foundation’s scope

being like in five years? We started with

East Austin because of the opportunity

gap that still exists there. But we’re in

the middle of a strategic plan to double

the number of students we serve directly.

I want to see all 11,800 kids in East


63

I OFTEN HAVE MEETINGS WITH

HIM WHERE I SAY, “WHAT DO

YOU THINK?” HE LOOKS AT ME AND SAYS,

“YOU’RE THE CEO—YOU TELL ME.”

Austin thinking about going to college

or being ready for college regardless of

their family’s income or background.

the West Side and two on the East Side.

Everyone was going where it was easiest,

not necessarily where it was needed.

The second week we had a chef from

Hilton teach the kids how to make

sushi. This time Raul starts thinking

he might want to be a chef. He asks me

if chefs make a lot of money, and if he

can be an architect and a chef. “The

world’s your oyster,” I told him. Then

the third week we built solar-powered

cars out of matchboxes and reflectors.

Now Raul wants to design cars.

For the past 20 years, the foundation

has been a philanthropic grant-making

institution. When I started, Andy told

me he wanted the foundation to really

be embedded into the community, so

people know we’re not going away.

People were always telling us that

they didn’t like working with outside

organizations because they would

leave when they ran out of money. The

principals would have to explain to

the kids, “Oh, you’re not going to have

that reading program anymore.” Andy

told me he wanted to assure kids that

we will be there for the long haul.

That’s a great goal. Besides taking

fundraising to the next level, what are

the other bottlenecks to your growth

and success? It’s very hard to find staff.

I have a great team, but as we grow,

it’s harder to find the combination of

passion and brains and wit and ability

to relate to people. It’s tough to entice

those great people to work in the

nonprofit sector rather than the forprofit

sector with its higher salaries

and sometimes greater benefits.

I think the other challenge is how

competitive the nonprofit sector is. And

I say this as a sharer of resources with

other nonprofits. In Central Texas, I

think there’s a nonprofit for every seven

people. It’s seen as a zero-sum game.

My number-one pet peeve is when

organizations don’t collaborate. Not

just in sharing resources but also in

addressing challenges, and strategies that

can overcome those challenges. When

we don’t all work together to figure out

how to serve these kids, we end up, as

we did in 2013, with 127 programs on

Most athletes wait until the end of their

career to start a foundation. But Andy

started very early in his career. He and I

have talked about this several times. He

had a conversation with Andre Agassi

that I think really opened his eyes to how

much time he’d need to figure things

out. Andy is very much the keeper of the

vision, but I often have meetings with

him where I say, “What do you think?”

He looks at me and says, “You’re the

CEO—you tell me.” One of the things he’s

learned is to ask the right questions.

I also give Andy a lot of credit for creating

an inquisitive board that doesn’t just

rubber-stamp everything. They ask the

right questions: “Why is that the strategy

to get us there as opposed to alternatives?”

“Why this school and not this school?”

It’s a lot of very smart people, including

our staff, asking questions of each other.

I could probably write a case study on

every board discussion we’ve ever had.

How big is the board? The board is 15

people. We just recruited three new

board members. Now half are women

and 30 percent are people of color.

We have very broad perspectives,

different business backgrounds.

Do you ever work directly with the

kids? What’s that like? I do. In 2015, I

mentored four second-grade boys. One

boy, Raul, didn’t know what he wanted

to be when he grew up. The first week

we had architects come and teach them

how to build the wonders of the world in

Asia—Taj Mahal, Great Wall of China. As

we were cutting cardboard and learning

proportion, Raul goes, “Mr. Richard,

I think I want to be an architect.”

I said, “You know, you can be

anything—you just need to focus. What

are your math grades right now?”

He said, “Oh man, I hate that subject.”

I told him, “If you want to be an architect,

you need math. If you want to be a chef,

you need math. You need to know the

difference between two ounces and two

and a half ounces. All these people, they

have high-paying jobs because they did

their math homework and all that stuff.”

Raul’s family certainly couldn’t afford

a math tutor. But we actually funded

an afterschool STEM program in his

school, so he started in that. That kind of

interaction with that second grader to me

is why I do this. Raul and I were able to

explore different futures, different worlds,

different things that he would never

have imagined, especially in a subject he

hated so much. Now he’s embracing it.

If that kind of curiosity is being sparked

in each and every one of these kids in

East Austin, it’s going to be one of the

most promising neighborhoods. A lot

of people think you need to move away

from your neighborhood in order to

get a bright future. When I first spoke

with the board, I said, “This is one of

those things I want to demystify,” this

idea that you have to move out of a

poor community to have a better life.

I want them to experience growing up

in East Austin as something positive,

as a community that gave them all

the tools they needed. Then they

might stick around and, in that same

community, raise their family.


WHAT HAS

ANDY RODDICK LEARNED

SINCE STARTING HIS FOUNDATION?

Andy Roddick founded his namesake foundation at a remarkably young age—when he was just 18 years

old. Today, the foundation gives low-income children in Central Texas opportunities to discover their

passion—whether it’s sports, solar power, or sushi—by maximizing their out-of-school time. We asked

Roddick a few questions about what it was like to start and grow this one-of-a-kind charitable endeavor.

What moved you to start the Andy Roddick Foundation so

early in your career? On a plane ride beside Andre Agassi, I

asked him what his biggest regret was, and he told that he

should have started his foundation sooner. That got me into

thinking about how I wanted to make a difference. It also

got me thinking about setting up my foundation so I didn’t

say the same thing when I was asked the same question.

What’s the primary way ARF is changing kids’ lives today?

We look at the time when kids are not in school and we

use that to make a difference. We provide high-quality

out-of-school-time learning programs and opportunities.

The lack of access to these opportunities contributes

a great deal to the achievement gap between affluent

students and students in low-income communities. Poor

students often lag behind because of the absence of quality

out-of-school-time support or lack of access to it.

What kinds of activities do kids do in ARF programs? We

expose them to a variety of learning activities—academics,

STEM, arts, enrichment, sports, and fitness. Our idea is

that you present young people with a variety of programs

and activities so they can discover what they are passionate

about. They code, they learn cricket, they build solar-powered

cars, they write their own comic books and draw their own

superheroes, they learn how to make sushi from a five-star

chef, they learn about opera, 3-D printing, African drumming—

and all of these activities are provided in a learning-centered,

engaging way, so they get to discover what excites them.

What is your current involvement with the foundation

like? I chair the board and I make sure we have a dynamic

board that guides my thinking. We have an excellent staff

that oversees the operations and the programs on a daily

basis, but I ask a lot of questions. One good thing I did


65

was to surround myself with people smarter than me about

operations, programs, and running a nonprofit. Our board

is very strategic in its thinking, and our staff knows the best

practices out there. We did win the Excellence in Summer

Learning Award from the New York Life Foundation and the

National Summer Learning Association this year, after all.

How has the foundation changed in the years since you founded

it? What surprised you most about its evolution? When we first

started, we did a lot of good things in a bad way, meaning all we

did was act as a pass-through. We raised money and distributed it

to a lot of worthy causes. But beyond that, little impact was seen.

Now, we piloted our program in 2014 with 78 students in one

school and we really focused on providing quality programming,

being strict about what outcomes we wanted to generate, and

how we generate them. We wanted to be intentional about the

results we wanted them. Almost six years later, in 2019, we

had benefited over 7,000 students through our own programs

and other programs we supported with funding and quality

assistance. We see the impact. We are becoming one of the go-to

leaders in the field when it comes to quality, and as such we are

helping other programs also reach that level of high quality.

Have you found that any skills translate from the tennis court

to successfully overseeing a charitable organization? Just

like playing tennis, running the foundation requires focus.

I can’t just do it by ear or by winging it. It requires strategy,

assessment, calculations for improvement. It needs to be very

intentional. In tennis though, when I do it right, I win. When

the foundation does it right, a whole community wins.

Any advice for people who are considering starting their

own foundation? No matter what the cause or mission is,

you have to be focused on what kind of difference you want

to make. There are many ways to get there, but if you don’t

know what your North Star is, it will be difficult to reach it.


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BUILDING

THE

ESPORTS

SKYSCRAPER

JASON LAKE,

FOUNDER AND CEO

OF COMPLEXITY

GAMING, ON THE

EXPONENTIAL

GROWTH AND

SKY-HIGH FUTURE

OF COMPETITIVE

VIDEO GAMING

Think esports is just a bunch of kids playing video games? Think

again. In 2020, competitive video gaming is a billion-dollar

industry, and Jason Lake of Complexity Gaming is in the vanguard.

Complexity, founded in 2003, was acquired by Jerry Jones and

John Goff in 2017 and since then has relocated to Cowboys HQ and

rebranded to align with the franchise.

Lake likes to describe his work in the esports industry as “building

skyscrapers,” edifices that take considerable time and effort to build,

but that generate returns for generations. If you’re unfamiliar with

the whole “esports thing,” read on for a crash course—and to find out

why every business leader should be paying attention.


THE ESPORTS

INDUSTRY IS VALUED

AT ABOUT $1.1 BILLION

WITH EXPECTATIONS OF IT

REACHING PROBABLY $1.8

OR $2 BILLION BY 2022.

How did you get into esports to start with? I grew up as a

football player who was also a video game player. Back in the

1980s, that was kind of a unique thing. You were either a jock

or a nerd. But I was a bit of both. I discovered esports around

2002 and saw that competitive video gaming was a thing, and it

was the perfect synergy for me. I founded Complexity 16 years

ago, in 2003, so I’ve been in esports since the beginning.

How do you think about esports? How do you see it fitting into

the current landscape? Esports is essentially competitive video

gaming. It takes the form of organized multiplayer video game

competitions between professional players. All esports are video

games but not all video games are esports. So the age-old debate

has been: “Is this activity a sport?” Personally, I’m not really

super interested in that debate. Any time there’s an activity that

billions of people around the world enjoy, there’s going to be a

certain percentage of those people who like to watch excellence

in that activity. Esports is no different. Video games have

become ubiquitous to virtually all cultures around the world, so

watching excellence in those games is the natural progression.

I think a lot of our CEOs would be surprised about the size

and scope of the esports market and the amount of money

involved. Esports is growing quite rapidly. Currently, it’s

estimated there’s over 450 million active global fans of

esports. Seventy-nine percent of those are under the age of

35. Some estimates have that number ballooning to over 600

million globally in the next couple of years. As far as dollar

signs, the esports industry is valued at about $1.1 billion

with expectations of it reaching probably $1.8 or $2 billion

by 2022. It’s becoming quite mainstream in the digital era,

due to the evolution of technology and the growing consumer

preference toward new forms of competitive events.

We see traditional rock stars like Post Malone doing different

activations with esports teams. You see a cross-collaboration

with a lot of notable athletes who all grew up playing

video games and admire their professional counterparts

in the esports world. You see influencers like Ninja going

on Jimmy Fallon regularly. I think esports is becoming

ingrained into the sports and media and entertainment

culture all around the world. It’s fascinating to be a part of.

Is the US the leading esports market or are there bigger ones?

Esports was originally founded in the Korean market, then

caught fire in Europe before it really started to grow in the US.

If you had to pick one market that’s probably going to be the

world’s largest over the next decade, that would be China.

You’ve recently associated with a major sports franchise in the

Dallas Cowboys. Tell me what that’s been like. It’s been fantastic.

Complexity was acquired by Jerry Jones and John Goff in

2017. We’re really one of the first ever esports teams to truly be

integrated with a sister traditional sports team. Both Complexity

and the Cowboys are headquartered at The Star in Frisco,

Texas, and that enables us to have seamless coordination and

integration with that organization. We work with the legal team,

the marketing team, the accountants, the social media team, the

coaches, the health and welfare departments, and the charity

departments of the Cowboys. We’re really quite integrated across

the operations. We have a gaming zone in AT&T Stadium. We set

up a gaming trailer at training camp out in Oxnard, California,

for the players. Players come through our new headquarters

quite often and pick up a hoodie and play video games with us.

So I think we’re by far the esports team that’s most integrated

with a traditional sports franchise anywhere in the world.

Obviously we’ve had esports for a long time, as you mentioned.

What do you think is driving the dramatic growth in the last few

years? Great question. The exponential growth really started

with the rise of Twitch, which is a streaming platform that

enabled anyone to turn on their mobile device or computer

and watch these events live from anywhere in the world. Once

that took off and the viewership data was filtering in, we saw

an influx of investor cash, which really propelled the industry

to a much larger level than it was just five years ago. That

exponential growth makes this sector one of the more interesting

of any sports entertainment product anywhere in the world.

As the world changes and young people become more

sophisticated with what ads they want to consume and what

activities they’ve chosen to spend their discretionary income

on, gaming time and time again tops those lists. As advertisers

and marketers have a harder and harder time reaching new

generations through traditional methods of marketing, many of

them have found esports to be a quite compelling way to do that.

Is there anything particular about Texas that is hot for esports?

Definitely. Dallas is arguably the second-hottest city for

esports in North America next to Los Angeles. For us, the

partnership with the Cowboys makes Texas the perfect place.

There’s so many synergies. Complexity is able to leverage the

existing brand partnerships of the Cowboys and to create a

mutually beneficial relationship. We’ve signed top endemic

brands [which sell products used directly in esports, such

as gaming equipment and energy drinks] and non-endemic

brands like MillerCoors, GameStop, Baylor Scott & White,

Mamba Sports Academy, and others—and we couldn’t have

done that as quickly without the support of the Dallas Cowboys

across the street. There are other organizations that have


69

ANYONE WHO

OVERLOOKS ESPORTS

OR DERIDES IT AS SILLY VIDEO

GAMES FOR YOUNG PEOPLE

IS REALLY MISSING THE

TRAJECTORY OF THE FUTURE.

relocated to Dallas as well, and there’s an esports stadium

out in Arlington. I think Texas is going to continue to be a

very critical place as American esports start to grow out.

Not a whole lot of people necessarily remember this, but

Western esports was actually born in Dallas back in the early

2000s. There were a couple of events a year, QuakeCon and

CPL, and gamers from all around the world would fly to Dallas

and compete. That was in a way the birth of Western esports.

So it’s pretty appropriate that all these years later, Dallas is

once again a leading center for esports growth in America.

Most of us who have kids, we’ve learned the traditional

sports ritual—the twice-a-week practices, the games on

Saturday, etc. Is the same sort of thing developing in esports?

Are there local clubs that kids get involved in? There are.

First of all, esports is really an umbrella term. Complexity,

for example, fields gamers in ten different games right now.

Where the Dallas Cowboys play just football, Complexity is

in multiple games [such as Counter-Strike: Global Offensive,

Call of Duty, Madden, and Fortnite], similar to how a

university is in multiple sports year-round. Each game has

its own ecosystem, with its own fan base and player base.

Generally speaking, one of the more interesting things

we’ve seen over the past 24 months is the rise of collegiate

esports and scholarships, which has then filtered down

to high school esports programs because of course if

you can qualify for a scholarship via any activity, high

schools are interested in that for their students.

So whereas traditional sports started at the grassroots level

and then grew up to the pro level, esports grew backwards.

We started at the pro level and just now we’re establishing

our root system down into college and high school esports.

All the major universities around Texas, to the best of my

knowledge, are exploring or have already started esports

programs, many of which include scholarships.

What’s the future of esports? We’re creating multigenerational

billion-dollar sports properties for teams like Complexity. The

phrase I use is “We’re building skyscrapers,” and skyscrapers

take time and money to build, but then they return revenue

for generations. Once they’re built out, the top esports

franchises like Complexity are going to experience similar

fandom and international stardom to the Dallas Cowboys,

the Los Angeles Lakers, the New York Yankees. It’s a digital

sport for a digital era. As we look around ourselves, we have

supercomputers in our pockets and electric cars that drive

themselves. Esports are part of that transformation.

I think anyone who overlooks esports or derides it as silly video

games for young people is really missing the trajectory of the

future. I like to say, like Gretzky, that you want to skate to where

the puck is going, not to where the puck is. If you’re taking a

good look, in the entertainment and sports worlds, it’s pretty

obvious to all observers that the puck is moving toward esports.

Is the biggest misconception about esports that it’s just a bunch

of kids playing video games? Yeah. The age-old perception by

people who don’t educate themselves is that all esports players

and fans are 25-year-old boys living in their parents’ basements,

with very unhealthy lifestyles and no social lives. Nothing

could be further from the truth. Many of our professionals

were all-state sports athletes when they were in high school.

Our entire narrative and mission moving forward is centered

around the health and welfare and performance of our gamers.

Our gamers live in luxury apartments about a mile from

where I’m sitting. They have breakfast and lunch five days

a week at the Dallas Cowboys training table, which is the

same place the players get their nutrition. They have free

memberships to the Cowboys Fit gym here on the property.

They have physicals and preventative medical care at the

Baylor Scott & White sports therapy hospital, also on the

property. Then they have the opportunity to come over and

train in what is probably the world’s best headquarters.

When most people come to visit us, I think they expect to walk

into a room with a lot of computers and some neon lights.

But we’ve built out a next-generation esports infrastructure

system that closely mimics traditional sports, including how

they care for the whole well-being of their athletes. We call this

esports 3.0. We’re really proud to be at the forefront of it.

Is there a Super Bowl of esports in the United States that people

should be aware of? Since esports is an umbrella term that

encompasses multiple games, each gaming title for the most part

has its own system. Some are franchise systems where there’s an

upfront cost of up to $40 million to own a franchise, and some

are open ecosystems. So each game has its own structure and its

own “Super Bowl.” League of Legends is generally considered

the world’s largest esport, and they host their world finals at

different locations around the planet each year. Millions of

people at home also tune in and watch. It’s a very interesting

space to be in because it’s really 24/7/365. And since different

cultures celebrate different holidays, I generally work a bit on

Christmas Day. It’s nonstop. It’s very global. We spend a lot of

time on airplanes. It’s a very exciting space to be a CEO in.


The thing I find with older folks who start investigating our

space is they don’t understand the attraction of going to a

stadium to watch people play video games. I say, “Well, you like

to play basketball and you drive to a stadium and drink a beer

and watch Luka Dončić play. It’s basically the same thing.”

At its core, video gaming—and this is what a lot of people

don’t understand—is a very social and communitybased

activity. When my son gets home from school,

he doesn’t hop on a computer and play by himself.

He hops on a computer to play with his friends from

around America. This is where they socialize, where

they learn teamwork, where they learn leadership.

When you have a large stadium event, it’s a really unique

opportunity to go out and meet all these other people who

are passionate about the same game, the same tournament

you are—and maybe have some nachos and a bottled water

and enjoy the event. These events can pack out 10-, 20-,

30-, 40-, or 50,000 people at cities around the world.

Where would I go to find an event like this in Texas? We typically

have three to four midsize events here in Dallas a year. Since

we have the Ford Center here at The Star that seats up to

16,000 people, I’m always speaking with event organizers,

looking to bring more esports to the great state of Texas.

From an advertising perspective, what should a CEO interested

in reaching your market do? Esports fan engagement is

massive, both online and offline. As I said, the global esports

audience is projected to grow to upwards of 600 million in

the next year. Brands recognize that large audience. It’s an

audience that’s very difficult to reach via traditional means,

because they’re not sitting down and watching traditional

sports like they used to. They’re computer savvy, generally

college educated, generally middle class, and they also use

ad blockers because they don’t like to be bothered by ads.

The question as a savvy advertiser or marketer is “How do

I reach this generation before they start developing brand

loyalties?” Esports is definitely a viable vehicle for that.

You can meet the community and these new consumers

in an area they’re passionate about. A lot of companies

that have done so early have reaped great benefits.

We’re seeing a virtual who’s who of blue-chip corporate

America getting involved at some level at this point.

This is not a virtual sport in the sense that people are all

congregated in the same location for the event, correct? Yes,

absolutely. The teams or the players go to the location, say

a stadium. The fans buy tickets and concessions just like a

traditional sporting event. There are giant screens where you

can watch the players play, and that is also broadcast around

the world on Twitch or YouTube or other streaming platforms.

Any parting advice for CEOs? My advice to any leader who

looks at the esports space and rolls their eyes or would

like to ignore it is to have an open mind. The world is

changing very quickly, and it’s only a matter of time until

esports intersect with your business in some way, shape, or

form. Have at least a cursory understanding of the space.

That’s just common due diligence for a leader today.


71

[RESOURCES]

CRAFTING

THE BLUEPRINT

FOR A SUCCESSFUL

EXECUTIVE SEARCH

Wade H. Allen

Great organizations do not happen by blind luck. Greatness

depends on alignment within the organization, from culture

to chemistry, from values to purpose, from skills to beliefs.

When you embark on a search for a new executive

leader, it’s vital to ensure that this internal alignment is

already in place. Unless you have proactively built a great

organization, you will struggle to attract executive talent—

or to even know what to look for in the first place.

Just as in building a home, the project of building a great

organization requires a blueprint. A home’s blueprint

must include plans for the foundation, the framework,

and the buildout. All are required, and there is an order

in which they must be executed, even though you can

work on different pieces independently before they’re

assembled if you adhere to the specifications.

As you build and align the organization, all of this remains

true. Let’s see how it works, starting with the foundation.

The Foundation: Culture

In a home or a business, the foundation supports everything

else. In building a home, whether you are starting from

scratch or modifying an existing dwelling, the foundation

drives what can and can’t be done. In building a business,

your foundation is the culture—the set of values that

guide how people interact, work, socialize, and feel

at home, like this is their place and their people.

Clearly, culture is not the physical facility or amenities—it is

a sense of belonging, team, and unity. It’s something you feel

rather than touch. Values define culture, and the behavioral

norms you expect from your employees must be consistent with

those values. Hiring starts with culture, too, or at least a vision

of it. A common fallacy is that hiring great talent starts with a

job description or knowing someone who can probably handle

the job. The real starting place should be a strong culture,

communicated simply and clearly in a way that attracts talented

people. Yet too often little time is spent here.

To get the most from your payroll expense, every employee

must fit the culture. There is an exponential return on

cultural alignment for individuals up the ladder, who may

now lead 100 or 1,000 people and set the strategy for a

whole team, group, or company. Ensuring culture fit does

not mean building a company of clones, though—you

need different talents and skills, as well as diversity and

inclusion, to truly meet the needs of your chosen market.

The CEO is always responsible for creating, articulating, and

maintaining the corporate culture, the foundation of the

business. This is not something to be handed off to the head of

Human Resources; it is your job to make sure it happens. The

way you act and work must be consistent with that message—no

exceptions. Let’s be blunt—the buck starts and stops with you!

The Framework: Leadership

The framework of a home defines its structure and layout

and guides everything that goes within the building. This is

much like the leadership capability within your company.

Good leadership clarifies everyone’s job responsibilities

and eliminates unnecessary busywork. It offers the

essential framework for what happens day to day.

A cabinet that’s 4’1” wide just won’t fit on a 4’ bathroom

wall—even though it’s pretty close. On the other hand,

a 2’ cabinet will look out of place on the same wall and


won’t maximize the storage space. This is why getting

the framework—the leadership—of your business right

matters so much. Your leadership determines what fits

and what doesn’t in the workings of the organization.

It’s not just the CEO’s leadership that defines the framework.

The leadership of your executives and managers matters as

well. While the CEO provides the structure and layout for

the entire home, other leaders are essential to providing

the framework for each of the rooms. These leaders must

help their teams understand why they are there and the

reason for working hard. They must foster the unity that

motivates a team to win together. This takes time, planning,

asking, and listening. It takes serious, dedicated effort.

Developing people who have potential to be good leaders, next

year or three years out and beyond, requires time and money,

but you will pay for it now or later. If you already have people

with the required leadership potential in-house, then by all

means grow and promote from within. However, If you don’t

have the right leaders to support your current business needs,

don’t just promote someone to quickly fill the slot so you can

concentrate on other urgent things—this will undoubtedly

come back to haunt you. The same goes for hiring your CFO’s

cousin or an old college roommate just to fill a position.

Yes, providing the leadership framework takes time—something

that’s in short supply for the CEO every day. But again,

offloading this responsibility isn’t an option. You understand best

which leaders are needed, and it’s your job to make sure you get

them in place. To be blunt again—the buck still stops with you!

The Buildout: Talent

Once you have the foundation (culture) and the framework

(leadership) in place, it’s time for the buildout—so you can

start to see what the finished product, your home, will look

like. Many different skilled workers are needed to complete this

buildout. In other words, this is where talent comes into play.

In the buildout phase, talent must be carefully coordinated.

Electricians need to run the wiring before the Sheetrock is

installed; nice wooden floors will be ruined if big industrial

equipment still needs to be hauled across them. Define what

is needed for the long term so you hire appropriately up front.

Don’t replace floors that were damaged because you cut corners.

The buildout requires finding the right talent and

ensuring that they understand the framework to follow.

And like it or not—the buck still stops with you!

Success Requires Planning

Apple’s product marketing teams spend a significant amount of

time and money trying to determine what products customers

want—often before their customers even realize they want them.

Before the iPod was introduced, people had no idea that they

absolutely had to have one. This is planning—understanding

what is needed to get ahead of the game and succeed long-term.

As CEO, this is a good model to follow in your search for executive

talent. It’s up to you to identify what the organization needs long

before the need is pressing. The problem is the tyranny of the

urgent. Too often, the planning stage looks like this:

“We need a VP of sales now! Grab a job description

off the Internet and start looking. I want to see candidates

next week. Of course we know what we’re looking for!”

As leaders within the same company, we often take alignment

for granted because we’re around each other so much. But

is everyone else on your team on the same page? For 25-

plus years, we’ve seen at least one such internal disconnect

on almost every executive search we’ve performed.

Maximizing ROI requires maximizing alignment.

Your sales, marketing, finance, and strategy departments

should plan like Apple design does, anticipating the future

needs of the organization. You must understand what skills,

experiences, and background are truly required versus

simply preferred, as well as what is needed in the next six

to 18 months to remain successful. Does the candidate fit

the requirements? Does the candidate fit the culture? A no

to either of these is a decision made: pass and move on.

During an executive search, it’s also important to surround

yourself with great leaders who can provide insight into your

own potential blind spots. Planning requires candid, open

discussions so that you end up with the right hire—and with

honesty about your own abilities and potential. In this spirit,

you should also be open to replacing yourself. If you determine

that one of your key employees can’t take the company to the

next level, then the same rules should apply to you. If you want

and require the best talent, then you must lead by example.

Passing the buck on an executive search is so enticing.

Don’t! Make sure there is a clear vision of a great culture

that attracts people who want to be part of a long-term

endeavor. You need great leadership, starting with

yourself, to establish that culture and the supporting

initiatives that motivate people to succeed. Now you

are in a perfect position to hire and retain talent.

So we see it’s all about talent, leadership, and culture—

what we affectionately call TLC. Time to get moving!

Wade H. Allen has been president and CEO at the executive placement

firm Cendea for over 25 years. Since 1994, Cendea has provided seniorlevel

executive search solutions for businesses that have high goals and

require impact leaders who can take them to the next level. You can

reach Cendea at TxCEOMagazine@Cendea.com.


73

TICKET

TO THE

LIMIT

If you ask Randy Cohen, founder of the Austin-based

ticket broker and online marketplace TicketCity, the

letters “CEO” mean something different.

For decades, Cohen has referred to himself as

TicketCity’s Chief Energizing Officer. Within seconds

of meeting him, you see that the moniker fits. In our

fast-talking chat, he explains what it means to be the

chief energizer, how his endless energy helped him

conquer countless challenges—from police chases to

livid ticket buyers—and how he built TicketCity into

a trusted fixture of the industry.

Tell us a little about your early days in the ticket business.

How did you get started? It started in the late eighties, when

I took my life savings of $1,200 and bought 200 seats for

the big Texas vs. Arkansas basketball game at $6 a piece.

I thought for sure the game would sell out. Arkansas was

number one in the country, and Texas was number three—this

was during the “BMW” years of Blanks, Mays, and Wright.

And . . . it didn’t sell out. So I go down to the stadium with

200 seats in my hand—couldn’t believe I was about to lose my

life savings. Then, all of a sudden, sure enough, from the box

office comes the news: It did sell out. And there I was, saying,

“Hello everybody! Stand back, nonbelievers! Here you go!” I

sold all the $6 seats for $15 a piece. That’s $1,800 profit.

And you decided the ticket business was for you? It beat

waiting tables! Not that the next time went so well. I took

that profit and bought a bunch of seats for the Sweet

Sixteen tournament in Dallas. Sure enough, same thing:

It didn’t sell out. So I’m down there selling tickets on the

street when somebody comes up and says, “Hey, what

you got going on?” I told him I was selling tickets.


He pulls out his badge and goes, “Well, you can’t do that.”

I’m like, “Why not? They’re my tickets!”

But he took my money and my tickets. I had a few seconds to

make a decision then, and I made the wrong one. I took the

money and tickets back and ran out of there. I knew I could

beat the cop on foot. But then all of a sudden I hear, “We’ve

got a runner! We’ve got a runner!” I came to a corner as they’re

chasing me, and if I would’ve made the right turn, I would’ve

been home free. I made the left, and my feet came out from under

me. Money and tickets everywhere. I spent the night in jail. I

thought that was ridiculous. I should be able to sell tickets I own.

That taught me a real lesson: Make sure you know the rules

and ordinances. From there, things slowly started to happen,

and when I started TicketCity full time in 1990, I’d learned the

rules. Later, we’d put together associations like the Texas Ticket

Brokers Association. There’s a lot of scammers out there in the

ticket world, but it’s trust that has made TicketCity so successful,

as a reputable ticket company that’s been around for 30 years.

So how did you get from being chased by cops to a reputable

business? It’s been a heck of a journey. I was doing the ticket

business on the side while I had a sales job, selling labels and

ribbons and mailers for a commercial printing company. But

in 1990 we were doing enough business that I could quit my

day job. And sure enough we started getting some traction.

By the mid-nineties, the Internet was really going. We

were one of the first companies out there to put together a

secondary-market software and real-time ticketing. We did

have trouble getting everybody to jump on that software

at the time—“Cohen’s going to steal my information.”

But I started buying tickets to all the college football teams around

the country, all the NFL teams, all the NBA teams, all the MLB

teams. I had so much inventory grandfathered in. And I still have

a lot of that today, even though it’s a different ballgame. We’re still

able to make a lot of money off having the right to buy, say, UT

tickets or tickets to ACL or the US Open or the Kentucky Derby.

What’s the process of managing your ticket inventory like?

At TicketCity, I like to say, “It’s not sold out until we say it’s

sold out.” Because we have access and relationships, so we’re

able to get seats even though something might be sold out.

In today’s day and age, all the tickets are online, obviously.

Today it’s all about eyeballs, so I’m putting my inventory

not just on the TicketCity site—I’m putting it on StubHub,

I’m putting it on Vivid Seats. We don’t care who sells them.

I just want to get them sold and maximize my margin.

But for the individual, the question is, What do you value

more? “Do I have more money or do I have more time?

What’s my stress level worth?” Many times you can get

a better deal waiting until the last second, but then one

out of 10 times it will blow up and really be sold out.

When do sellers typically drop those last tickets? Well, today,

the market stays higher for longer. I’m in control of my inventory,

so I can decide whether to lower the price or be the last man

standing. If I have World Series tickets and the game is in a few

hours, I can still sell them up until game time and just transfer

them to your phone. But usually the last six hours before a

game or event—that’s where the best potential deals are.

We like to have, say, a hundred tickets or less on the day of the

game. That’s the inventory we can play with. But in general

you make more margin by selling early. At the end of the

day, it’s supply and demand on the game. You might have a

bunch of LSU fans who bought season tickets from UT just

to make sure they had a ticket to the game—well, now they

might be selling their tickets themselves. We do the best we

can to keep the market up. We’re the market makers for some

events, like the US Open. We have a lot of tickets there every

year. But we’re not the market makers for everything.

If I’m trying to buy tickets, how do I recognize a scam? There are

a lot of shams out there in the ticket world, and the shammers

are smart. It gets tricky. I’d say that a deal too good to be true,

is. Recently, you had people walking hundreds of kids into ACL

for 50 bucks. Those guys ended up getting thrown in jail.

There are plenty of people on Craigslist who offer sham

deals. I see tears at these events all the time from people

who don’t get in. At the end of the day, it’s about whether

it’s worth the stress to get a good deal. That’s what makes

TicketCity so successful: We’re a reputable company that’s

been around for 30 years. We’ve earned people’s trust. If

there’s an issue, we’re going to handle that issue right away.

You’ve been to just about every major sporting event that

exists in the world. If you had a year to live, what are you going

to make sure to catch? Man, the World Cup is amazing. The

Ryder Cup is tremendous. The Davis Cup is tremendous. The

opening ceremonies of the Olympics too. In fact, the Olympics

are where I got one of my big epiphanies. I got a call on opening

day of the 1996 Summer Olympics in Atlanta. We’d set up an

office there. We’d been preparing for years. Now this lady is

asking, “Hey, do you have any opening ceremonies tickets?”

“Yeah, we have great seats,” I tell her. “How many do you need?”

She says, “Well, I just need one. But the thing is I don’t have a

ride.” That was a big moment. I’m thinking to myself, “Randy,

you’ve got to do this. This is what you talk about—doing the

right thing long after the feeling of doing it leaves you.” So I

said, “Ma’am, it’s your lucky day. I’m coming to get you.”

I went and rented a black Lincoln Continental and I picked up this

75-year-old grandmother about an hour and a half outside the city,


75

and we drove to the Olympics. She was so excited. She couldn’t

believe she was going to check something like this off her bucket

list. She was sparkling and delightful and excited. We walked in

and watched Muhammad Ali light the cauldron, we saw all the

Olympians walk in with all their colors. She had such a good time.

The next day, back in the office, word starts spreading

around. “Did you hear what Cohen did? He blew off his

plans and took a grandmother to the Olympics.” And the

rest of the team starts following suit, going above and

beyond for our customers. It trickles down from the top.

That was a big epiphany on being customer-centric.

What sports are popular these days? Where is demand going

up or down? Esports is coming on strong. There’s definitely a

market. A lot of money’s being spent. We’ll sell tickets there

if we see an event that we think is going to sell out. Wrestling

is still in there too. People like WWE and cage stuff.

How involved is TicketCity in the ticket-buyer’s whole

experience? Do you offer other services? Some people want to

rent a nice house or get a great parking spot, so we have a lot of

that contracted. So we do some hospitality. But times are changing.

You have to have your specific laser-like focus on what you want to

be good at. If you try to do parking, hospitality, hotels, and tickets

. . . it’s a lot. Our focus is still on acquiring and selling tickets.

The business is changing at the speed of light, though.

They don’t sell nearly as many season tickets anymore. You

have big companies that try to aggregate all the inventory

and then keep the market high. But I think the pendulum

will swing back the other way and season ticket holders

will start to buy packages again. History repeats itself.

Ever since I’ve known you, you call yourself the Chief

Energizing Officer, not the chief executive officer. Why is

that? One of my big roles has been to put together a great

team, rally the troops, be the marketing guy. I have a lot of

energy. When I come in, I’m high-fiving and chest-bumping

my people. I’m there for them any time they need me. They do

the heavy lifting, and I’m there as a Chief Energizing Officer

in case of emergencies. I’m almost like an insurance policy.

I’ll give you an example. At the Seattle Super Bowl, people had

ordered a bunch of seats from people who put spec inventory on

our site. Some of those had sold at $3,000 but the day of the game

comes and the market is at $10,000. So now we get the call: “I’m

sorry, Randy, our tickets didn’t come through. We can’t deliver.”

“What?”

As TicketCity, I’m still responsible for all these tickets. One guy

was like, “You don’t understand. I sold these to a drug dealer in

Costa Rica and he’s going to kill me.” And that guy was sitting there

at our office in Phoenix for three days, crying, hoping to get his

seats. And we were able to get him his tickets. But there are tons

of stories where we just didn’t have the inventory, from people

wanting to propose at a game to people fulfilling lifelong dreams.

As Chief Energizing Officer, I don’t run from those problems.

You’ve got to meet with every customer head-on. And, at that

Super Bowl, we ended up giving everyone all their money back,

plus an additional $2,000 a person, per ticket. And I threw a

big party out there for them. All the food and booze included.

So they didn’t get to go to the game, but I was there, they were

able to lash out at me and yell at me. It was overwhelming. It

was the best-worst experience of my life. But we got everybody

taken care of. Sometimes it takes extra energy to go, “Woo,

woo! Stand back, nonbelievers. Let’s make this happen!”

So that’s a bad day at work. What’s a good day at work at

TicketCity? What gets you up in the morning? I still love what

I do. We make dreams come true. We put a lot of smiles on

people’s faces. We show up and help make sure people get the best

experience they can, with the right seats that fit their needs. We

even coach them, help them get exactly what works best for them.

What about from the employee perspective? Is it easy to hire

people into the ticket industry? I’ve been really lucky. The

average TicketCity management employee has been with us

twenty-something years. They’re still here. They’re still fighting

the good fight. We have some legends in the ticket industry. And

I’m considered one of the godfathers of the ticket business now.

Is the legal landscape pretty stable right now for the ticket

business? There’s always battles, man. It’s yin and yang.

After calling us the scalpers of the world for a long time, now

it’s more like “If you can’t beat ’em, join ’em.” But there’s

always legislative battles. We fought things from Texas to

Canada. But the law in Texas is pretty wide open. You can

sell a ticket for whatever here. It’s not like in New York,

where you could only sell 20 percent over at one point.

People aren’t selling from the street anymore. There’s

a lot of companies out there, Gametime or SeatGeek,

where you’re able to actually sell tickets online.

Companies have basically taken the street scalper out of

the loop. They’re still out there, but not as much.

Since you’re probably one of the world experts on UT athletics,

how do you feel about where the program is headed? I’ll steal

a phrase from our athletics director, Chris Del Conte: “Ladies

and gentlemen, the bar is open.” People are excited. You can feel

the energy. And the money’s flowing into that program.

Any final thoughts? I tell people all the time, “Love what you do.

Do it well. And keep on doing it.” I’m still showing up and fighting

the fight and trying to get 1 percent better every day. That’s what

we preach around here. How do you get your company getting 1

percent better every day? How do you be the best you can be?


CATCHING

THE PERFECT PASS

Innovation often springs from the unlikeliest of places. Take the unnoticed football program of Iowa

Wesleyan in 1989, where head coach Hal Mumme and assistant coach Mike Leach developed an

offensive strategy that would change the sport forever. New York Times best-selling author and Pulitzer

finalist S. C. Gwynne tells that story in The Perfect Pass, delivering a portrait of two unconventional

minds at work. Gwynne spoke with us about why the story of Hal and Mike caught his attention and

what management lessons may lie in their reinvention of offensive strategy. Gwynne’s latest book,

Hymns of the Republic: The Story of the Final Year of the American Civil War, is available now.

You’re known as a historian. How did you happen on this story

about football? It started with a Texas Monthly article that I

wrote about Mike Leach, who had his great run at the national

championship in 2008 with Texas Tech. That game against

Texas in Lubbock, the Crabtree catch, that was the greatest single

game in the history of Texas Tech. Period. Everybody at Tech

can tell you what happened in that game second by second.

I went out to cover Mike and the team with the idea that we

would put him on the cover, as we did. We put him on the

cover in September 2009 with a pirate patch on his eye. I was

hanging out, reporting the story, talking to Mike, the coaches,

and everybody. I wanted to understand the offense, because I

didn’t. And I knew hardly anybody else did, either. Mike would

routinely put up large numbers of points against you, and you

couldn’t figure out how he was doing it. And you couldn’t stop it.

Before that, there had only been one significant article written

about Mike Leach. Michael Lewis, one of my absolute favorite

writers, had written a cover story about Leach in the New

York Times Magazine, “The Most Offensive Mind in Football.”

Lewis did a lot of things in that article, but he hadn’t gotten

into where the Air Raid offense came from. And so I asked.

Mike starts telling me about Iowa Wesleyan back in the

eighties and this guy Hal Mumme who I’d never heard of. The

thing that really caught my ear was when he said: “In the off

season, Hal and I would get into this old car and we’d drive


77

across the frozen wastes of the Midwest, talking to high school

coaches, JUCO coaches, CFL coaches, World Football League

coaches—anybody who would tell us about the pass.” They

ended up in Lindy Infante’s office in Green Bay. They ended

up in Dennis Erickson’s office in Miami. Any high school or

junior college where someone was throwing, they went.

I thought, wow, this sounds like a buddy movie, like the Lord

of the Rings—going out in search of the perfect pass. And

they found it. Iowa Wesleyan did unprecedented things. And

because they were a tiny college in the middle of nowhere,

nobody had any idea that they had done it. Mumme and Leach

then proceeded to do the same thing at Valdosta State, which

earned Hal the head coaching job at an SEC school, Kentucky.

I wanted to tell that story of Hal and Mike, but I also needed to

know how Air Raid worked. I knew I was going to depart from

most football books. I was going to do x’s and o’s, show people

how their plays actually work. One in particular, called “mesh.”

Because if you know how mesh works, you understand Air Raid.

I spent so many hours with Hal. I had a dry-erase board and a

camera setup. I would go through and ask Hal to tell me how

different passes worked. He’d draw them out, arrows here and

arrows there. I couldn’t keep up. I made him break it down

second by second. I did probably a hundred total interviews

for the book, many focused on how the black magic worked.

In order to tell their story, I also had to go back into the history of

football, and America’s weird relationship with the forward pass.

You show in the book that Hal Mumme didn’t invent anything

per se. He just integrated other things. Nobody ever invents

anything. Ever. No such thing. Not even Walter Camp [the

“Father of American Football,” who developed the system of

downs and the line of scrimmage]. And as soon as you say that,

eight people raise their hands and go, “Oh no, actually, in Abilene

in 1922 they were doing that.” Hal was a great synthesizer, as are

all great coaches. And some of his stuff was absolutely radical.

That’s often the case in business as well. It’s the integration

of different ideas, packaged up in a certain way, that’s

where the “aha” is. In this case, spacing the linemen wasn’t

revolutionary, for example. Yes. I would argue, however, that

nobody had done “hurry-up, no-huddle” since the nineteenth

century. Boomer Esiason doing a no-huddle—he was just trying

to make the defense unable to substitute. In the twentieth

century, nobody did hurry-up, no-huddle until Hal did, which

I think is a pretty significant innovation. The nineteenth

century is a long way away. Nobody knew how they did that.

They didn’t have tape back then. And they didn’t huddle,

because there was no such thing as huddle. But yes, everybody

repackages. When Emory Bellard invented the triple option,

versions of that had been around going back to the nineteenth

century. On the other hand, it was a hell of a great offense.

One of the things about this type of innovation—and this transfers

to business—is they didn’t accept the premises of the game that

everybody else did: that in a game your offense typically has

65 plays, or that the line of scrimmage is a certain prescribed

length, or that three is the number of plays you get to make a

first down before having to punt or kick. Hal and Mike didn’t

accept that the power centers of the field would be concentrated

in the middle linebacker. They spread out the power vortexes.

The time and space of the game were completely different.

For a lot of coaches, the goal of the game was time of possession.

If you controlled it, you would win. Hal and Mike didn’t care

how long they controlled the ball. They thought the concept was

irrelevant. They would score 65 points on you with 20 minutes

of possession and have fun with the rest. They had short, lighthitting

practices. No one was doing any such thing back then.

Before, there was this idea that you ran a specific play that

was mapped out precisely beforehand. It turned out that if

you have people who can adapt to what the defense shows

you, you have a huge advantage. That’s exactly true. In a lot of

ways, the most radical thing they were doing was option offense.

That meant teaching your players how to read the field on the

fly. Opposing teams did not understand this at first. A receiver

would be trained to read coverage and react in different ways,

and the quarterback was trained in the same way. Which meant

that even the offense did not know exactly what was going to

happen. Mike Leach’s great receiver at Texas Tech Wes Welker is

a perfect example of an option receiver that no one could cover.

The other management lesson here is that Hal came up

with an idea of radical simplicity in a world that was getting

phenomenally complex. Hal’s world was so simple. In a world

of telephone-directory-sized playbooks, he did not have one.

At times his teams had less than 10 plays, designed in such

a way that they looked complex. From his opponents’ point

of view, it looks like they’ve got 18 angry hornets coming at

them. Their offensive linemen had exactly two coverages. In

that era, Paul Brown was famous for his 500-page playbook.

It was a badge of honor. It was supposed to take years to

understand the complexity of the NFL, and all you ever did was

go to clinics and pick up plays. All the options were thought

out. The other teams were living in this enormously complex

world. But for Hal’s guys, the world was extremely simple.

And this was a constant fight. Several different times, the Air

Raid started to get too complex. Hal would sit down with his

coaches and just ruthlessly go through and cut out plays.

If there’s one single overriding lesson, it’s this: If

you can be simple in a complex world, you win.

It’s a great point. A key talent of the best CEOs is simplifying

the business for the team. The team’s in the middle of

the details every day and they can get lost. You have to

say, “These are the three objectives we’re chasing, not


the thousand other things we could be chasing.” It’s like

SpaceX. Talk about simplicity. They have one goal: “We’re

going to Mars.” It’s utter simplicity. Everybody there has

the light in their eyes. They all know why they’re there.

Besides developing the Air Raid offense, what other factors

were part of Mike and Hal’s success as coaches? One of the

things they were best at was spotting talent. I have written about

recruitment in the business world and I have to say that the

Air Raid guys are some of the best at it I have ever seen. Most

coaches want that typical quarterback, a six-foot-five, 230-pound

guy with a big strong arm. But Leach says you probably don’t

want that guy. He’s looking for two things in a quarterback right

away. One is extreme accuracy. The assumption is usually that

if you find the big strong guy you can teach him accuracy. Leach

says no: If he isn’t accurate in high school, he’s never going to

be. That’s completely against what everybody else thought. The

second thing was a great release. Have you seen the ball come

out of Pat Mahomes’ hand? That’s an Air Raid quarterback.

That’s what Leach is looking for. Extreme accuracy and a release

like that. Nobody else was looking at that. His quarterback this

year at Washington State, Anthony Gordon, was a junior college

quarterback no one wanted. He’s leading the nation in passing.

Leach has been able to spot quarterbacks like nobody’s

business. When Bob Stoops hired him as a coordinator in 1999

at Oklahoma, everyone was really skeptical. Then Leach goes

up to Snow Junior College and gets this guy who had been a

washout at Weber State and has a sore arm. Not only that,

Leach says, “We’re going to throw the ball 60 times a game”—

and we’re doing it with this guy from Snow Junior College

who was a washout at Weber State and has a sore arm.

This is Josh Heupel. Leach takes the offense from 111th to fifth

in one year. It’s so brilliant that Tech hires Leach. And the

next year, running the Air Raid with Heupel as quarterback,

Bob Stoops wins his only national championship. Leach

saw Heupel. Nobody else saw Heupel. He pulled him out of

nowhere, and he keeps doing that over and over again.

In the business world, people often look more for experience

than talent, even though it may be experience in being

mediocre. They’ll take the person who’s done the job

for 10 years and shown no exceptionalism. It’s the same

principle as hiring the six-five quarterback. You can’t be

blamed if he fails. He looked the part. One of the reasons

I love Moneyball so much is they said, “Wait, look at his

on-base percentage,” which people weren’t doing.

How much is classic Air Raid still used today? Mike

Leach is still running the Iowa Wesleyan offense.

Nobody else is doing that. They’re all mucking with

it. But you can see its influence everywhere.

But it took a long time to get there. The resistance to what

Mike and Hal were doing was just unbelievable. They fired

Hal at Iowa Wesleyan. I would argue that the only reason

anybody ever hired him was he went to work for the worst

college in America with the worst facilities and the worst

football team. There was resistance every step of the way. It

was like, “You can’t do that.” But Mike and Hal aren’t in any

box. They’re not thinking outside the box. There is no box.


79

[CULTURE]

IS YOUR

EMPLOYEE

WELLNESS PROGRAM

WORKING?

Employee wellness isn’t just about fitness. Use these six tips to create a holistic wellness program that

improves your bottom line, no matter how large or small your firm is.

Gary Oden, PhD

Over thirty years ago, I took a headfirst dive into the world

of employee wellness programs. I was working on my PhD in

Applied Exercise Physiology at Texas A&M when the director

of our lab came to me with a question: Was I interested in

working on an evaluation of the wellness program at the

big Westinghouse plant down the road in College Station?

This plant, employing over 2,000 people to create radar

components for fighter planes, had recently launched the

program, with a beautiful new fitness center as its centerpiece.

“Sure,” I said.

Thus began my eight-year involvement with Westinghouse,

measuring the profitability and effectiveness of their employee

wellness program and consulting them on improvements.

And thus began a career that would later see me consulting

on several other large-scale employee wellness programs,

from Norwegian shipbuilders to the State of Texas.

If you lead an organization of more than 200 employees,

it’s likely you already have some sort of employee wellness

program (around 90 percent of US businesses above this

size offer one). But all wellness programs are not created

equal, not by a long shot. You may also lead a smaller

company and wonder how you can get one started without

blowing your budget. Either way, it’s worth assessing how

your organization supports employee wellness. Especially

today, a smart, well-run wellness program can be a major

asset, improving everything from your healthcare spend to

employee engagement to your appeal to talented job seekers.

Here are my top six tips for optimizing your employee

wellness program, gathered over three decades of

work evaluating and consulting on them.

1. The CEO must be on board.

For any wellness program to be successful, the CEO has got to

take an interest. This is obvious from a financial standpoint.

The day will come when decisions must be made about

whether certain resources are allocated toward the program

or not. If the CEO is unwilling to devote any resources

(even if it’s just employee time), the program will fail.

But, more importantly, the CEO and the executive team are

also critical in setting an example when it comes to prioritizing

wellness and participating in the program. For example,

when I first came to Sam Houston State University, where

I still teach, the health and kinesiology center was seldom

used by faculty. Across the whole campus, there were maybe

half a dozen people who you’d see in the faculty locker room

consistently. But then we got a new president. He was a big

advocate of fitness, and he visited the health center no fewer

than three days a week. Suddenly, the faculty locker room

was bustling with people working out and being active. The

president’s participation was contagious, and faculty wanted

him to see that they shared his enthusiasm for fitness.

The same will be true at your business. If the CEO and

executive team don’t have buy-in and involvement in

the program, if they never talk about it and aren’t seen

participating themselves, it is likely to come across like an

HR afterthought. And you will see limited benefit from it.


2. It’s not just about fitness.

Probably the most common mistake I see when I’m brought in

to evaluate an employee wellness program—especially at larger

companies—is the mindset that “employee wellness” equals

“fitness.” Many leaders are narrowly focused on the construction

of a fitness center or the purchase of workout equipment.

I myself am a big advocate of fitness, but there’s much more

to a holistic employee wellness program. In fact, fitness is just

one of three pillars, the other two being nutrition and stress

reduction. These other two carry just as much weight as fitness

when it comes to delivering the outcomes we care about.

We’ve known since the time of Hippocrates that we should let

food be our medicine, and more than ever, stress is reaching

epidemic levels in terms of the impact on employee health. A

great wellness program recognizes each of the three pillars.

Fortunately, implementing the stress and nutrition components

usually gives you a much bigger bang for your buck—costing

significantly less than purchasing fitness equipment and building

exercise facilities. In fact, if a board came to me today and asked

where they can get the most value from a wellness program, I’d

point them immediately toward stress-reduction programs.

3. Partner with the community.

As I mentioned, you don’t have to lay out a ton of money to put

together a great employee wellness program. If you lead a smaller

company and don’t have budget for wellness staff or facilities,

there’s still plenty you can do, especially by drawing upon the

resources already in your company and your community.

First, find a person (or small group of people) in the

company who is already wellness-minded. See if they are

interested in spearheading your wellness program. Once

you find your internal point person, relieve them of some

of their regular duties to make room for this initiative.

The next step is to help your point person seek out health

resources in the local community they can plug your organization

into. You would probably be surprised by how many organizations

are willing to do health screenings and educational programming

at your company for a nominal fee, whether it’s the American

Heart Association, the American Cancer Society, or even local

hospitals and health systems. Any time these organizations

can get their name in front of a decent-sized group of people,

they will usually be eager to do so. That’s something you and

your wellness point person can take advantage of as you put

together a low-cost program. It’s a win-win for both parties.

4. Measure success.

When I was at Westinghouse in the 1980s, we had the advantage

of working in a highly regimented plant environment where we

could measure productivity in a fairly objective way. As employees

produced parts for fighter planes, they logged their progress

in a computer system, so I could see a wealth of productivity

data for each person. I could see that Joe Smith, for example,

completed X number of boards from August until January with

THREE COMPONENTS

OF EMPLOYEE WELLNESS

• ACCESS TO EXERCISE FACILITIES

AND EQUIPMENT

• GYM MEMBERSHIP PROGRAM

• ON-SITE CLASSES (YOGA, ETC.)

• COMPANY-SPONSORED SPORTS

LEAGUE PARTICIPATION

• STANDING DESKS

FITNESS

• ON-SITE SCREENINGS

(BLOOD PRESSURE, BLOOD LIPIDS, ETC.)

NUTRITION

• LUNCHTIME SPEAKING SERIES

FROM NUTRITION EXPERTS

• HEALTHY SNACKS AVAILABLE IN

OFFICE

• CHOOSE HEALTHY OPTIONS FOR

COMPANY-SPONSORED LUNCHES

• HEALTHY-RECIPE-SHARING

PROGRAM

STRESS REDUCTION

• TEACHING RELAXATION

TECHNIQUES (MEDITATION, MUSCLE

RELAXATION, ETC.)

• COURSES IN STRESS MANAGEMENT,

TIME MANAGEMENT, AND MONEY

MANAGEMENT

• INCREASED WORK-FROM-HOME

OPTIONS

• MANAGERS TRAINED IN THE

IMPORTANCE OF WORK-LIFE

BALANCE


a Y percent rejection rate, and I had tremendous access to all

the granular underlying data. And I could see whether Joe’s

productivity went up, down, or stayed the same as he attended

the fitness center and took part in other health initiatives.

In the decades since, a lot has changed in the corporate world.

Today, it’s very rare to find an objective measure of productivity.

Employees are increasingly doing knowledge work, and their

productivity often comes down to their supervisor’s subjective

opinion. But there are plenty of other things you can still track.

Far and away, controlling healthcare costs is the metric most

leaders care about when they implement a wellness program.

Tracking these costs is indeed an effective way to measure

how a wellness program is doing (even though many other

factors, of course, affect healthcare cost). I recommend

having a system that shows how a certain employee or

cohort of employees’ participation in the wellness program

correlates to their healthcare cost over the long term.

Beyond healthcare cost, I also recommend tracking

metrics like absenteeism, employee engagement (via

survey responses), employee turnover, and percent of

employment offers accepted—all of which can be positively

affected by a great employee wellness program.

Any efforts you make to support employee wellness will

almost certainly have a positive effect, even if it’s small and

hard to measure. But it is important to track the outcomes

you care about most to determine how your wellness

program is performing and how it might be improved.

5. Incentivize participation.

In a perfect world, your staff would be intrinsically

drawn to participate in your wellness program. But in

reality, you’ll get the best results from kick-starting

participation by strategic use of incentives.

Fortunately, you don’t have to drop a lot of money. At several

companies, we gamified the process through a points system.

Once employees rack up a certain amount of points, they

get special recognition and small prizes like a water bottle

or T-shirt. Don’t underestimate the usefulness of these

measures. It’s shocking what people will do for a T-shirt. At

other companies, we saw significant traction from allowing

people to earn paid time off through participation.

But there’s one other incentive that I’ve found to be the

most significant. Which leads us to the final tip . . .

6. If you have wellness staff,

they need to be excellent.

In larger companies that have full- or part-time wellness

staff—whether it’s nutritionists, trainers, wellness directors,

or otherwise—the quality of these individuals is probably the

biggest factor in employee participation and the overall success

of the program. If these people aren’t well-trained professionals

that employees actually want to be around, the program is not

going to be successful. Period. I’m currently working with the

Texas Department of Criminal Justice as they hire, train, and

certify a new team of wellness professionals, and getting great

people with a personal touch is at the forefront of our minds.

Ultimately, it’s up to you, the CEO—in partnership

with your executive team, HR team, and/or appointed

wellness point person—to create a wellness program

that fits your organization’s culture, work environment,

budget, and goals. But keeping these six tips in mind

will help you avoid the pitfalls I’ve seen many times.

One final word for the CEO: Don’t forget about your own

wellness. You have a tremendous amount of stress placed on

you. Being able to handle that stress—whether it’s by running

three miles a day or going to a progressive muscle relaxation

class—is critical not only for modeling wellness for your

workforce but for keeping yourself at the very top of your game.

Gary Oden is a professor in the Department of Kinesiology at Sam Houston

State University. In addition to serving as Corporate Wellness Director for

Westinghouse Corporation, Dr. Oden has served as a wellness-program

consultant for MetLife, Aker Kvaerner, Memorial Hermann Health System,

and the State of Texas. His current research focus is speed and agility

training techniques, and he is currently conducting research comparing

speed and agility training equipment.


83

[PERFORMANCE]

MARKETING RESEARCH

UNITY VS. UNIQUENESS

IN SOCIAL MEDIA MESSAGING—

WHICH IS MORE EFFECTIVE?

Akira Asada, PhD

Dr. Akira Asada tested social media marketing strategies for two MLB teams.

The results have implications for any brand, sporting or otherwise.


When people love a brand, they often form a community around

that brand. People who love Harley-Davidson may form groups to

ride motorcycles on weekends, for example, and people who love

Apple may create an online forum to discuss the new iPhone.

The concept of brand community is not new in the sports world.

For many decades, sports fans have boasted about their favorite

teams, shared unique fan experiences, and developed a sense of

belonging. People’s attachment to these sports fan communities

often has a significant influence on their behaviors. In fact,

research published in the Journal of Sport Management found

that a person’s attachment to a sports fan community is a better

predictor of consistent game attendance than attachment to the

team itself. 1 Therefore, to develop a sustainable fan base, sports

teams should create strong connections among their fans.

Social media is, of course, one of the most effective tools for

strengthening connections among fans of a team (or any

brand). Sports teams often post pictures and videos depicting

their fans wearing team jerseys and cheering together. These

images make fans feel closer to other fans and promote unity.

Sports teams also use hashtags to increase bonding among fans.

For example, the Detroit Lions use the hashtag #OnePride,

which fans use to share their pride in being part of the Lions

community. Fans who learn about other fans’ personal stories

with the team feel a stronger attachment to the community.

However, this approach may ignore one important market:

potential fans. When existing fans create a strong bond, it

may create a boundary that alienates potential fans. But

if a sports team wants to build a strong fan base, it has

to engage both markets, using social media not only for

engaging existing fans but also for attracting potential fans.

I was curious about which social media strategies are most

effective for speaking to these two groups, so I conducted

an experiment in which I tested two approaches. In the first

approach, a team emphasizes unity among its fans by showing

the fans wearing team apparel and cheering for the team

together. In the second approach, a team emphasizes the

uniqueness of each fan by showing individual fans enjoying

games in various ways.

I tested the effectiveness of these two approaches for two

Major League Baseball teams: the Tampa Bay Rays and the

St. Louis Cardinals. The Rays are one of the least popular

MLB teams, ranking 29th among 30 teams in average

home game attendance, whereas the Cardinals are among

the most popular, ranking second place in average home

game attendance. 2 I recruited 206 US residents on Amazon

Mechanical Turk. Each of the research participants was

randomly exposed to one of four types of social media posts:

1. Rays posts emphasizing high unity among the fans

2. Rays posts emphasizing high uniqueness of each fan

3. Cardinals posts emphasizing high unity among the fans

4. Cardinals posts emphasizing high uniqueness of each fan

After seeing the posts, the participants indicated their intention

to support the team using a 7-point scale from 1 (very unlikely)

to 7 (very likely).

The findings revealed an interesting difference. For the

less-popular Tampa Bay Rays, the uniqueness approach

resulted in greater support intentions (M = 4.12) than the

unity approach (M = 3.30). When a team is not very popular,

potential fans psychologically put themselves in a different

category than the team’s existing fans: “They support the

team because they are fans. I am not a fan, so I do not

support the team.” In this case, unity among the fans makes

that distinction more overt, so potential fans would be more

hesitant to support the team when seeing “unity” messages.

By contrast, social media posts emphasizing the uniqueness of

individual fans of a team like the Rays were more effective.

For the very popular St. Louis Cardinals, I found that the

opposite also holds true. For this team, the unity approach

resulted in greater support intentions (M = 5.75) than the

uniqueness approach (M = 4.87). Why? When a team is very

popular, potential fans think that supporting the team is

something common in their community of residence, and

they perceive supporting the team to be part of social norms

shared by residents: “They support the team because they

live here. I also live here, so I should support the team.”

In this case, unity among fans clarifies and emphasizes

the social norm and creates greater social pressure to

support the team—resulting in a more effective social media

strategy than emphasizing the uniqueness of each fan.

These findings have unique implications for non-sports

businesses as well, because many businesses, like sports

teams, run social media accounts that speak to a broader

brand community. If you own a relatively new company that

needs a wider customer base, you may want to take the Rays

approach, showing how the company’s product satisfies various

individual customers in various ways. By contrast, if you own a

large company that focuses on maintaining existing customers,

more like the Cardinals, you may want to show how customers

share similar experiences and enjoy a sense of belonging.

The bottom line: Unity and uniqueness are both effective

social media messages for fostering brand support. But

to harness them most effectively, choose the message

that best fits the current stage of your brand.

Akira Asada is an assistant professor in the Department of Kinesiology and

Sport Management at Texas Tech University. He conducts quantitative

social research with a focus on sport consumer behavior, particularly

within the areas of word-of-mouth and sport consumer socialization.

1

Yoshida, M., Heere, B., & Gordon, B. (2015). “Predicting Behavioral Loyalty Through Community:

Why Other Fans Are More Important Than Our Own Intentions, Our Satisfaction, and the Team

Itself.” Journal of Sport Management, 29, 318–333.

2

ESPN, MLB attendance report, 2019. Retrieved from http://www.espn.com/mlb/attendance.


85

Listen

In his recent book, Shut Up and Listen!, Tilman Fertitta lays out hard-hitting business advice like only the

Billion Dollar Buyer could. In addition to starring in his own CNBC reality show, Tilman is a Houston native,

“the richest restaurateur in the world” according to Forbes, and sole owner of Fertitta Entertainment, which

owns Landry’s, the Golden Nugget Casinos and Hotels, and the NBA’s Houston Rockets.

What’s Tilman’s best advice for Texas CEOs? We asked him that—and a lot more.

You came out with a book late last year. How was that process for you? It’s harder

than a lot of people think, and very different from being an entrepreneur. It was

from a great process. It was interesting how HarperCollins approached it. They

said, “Hey, we don’t want a life story. We want you to take this part of your world

and put it in a silo.” We stuck it into about 170 pages. HarperCollins told me and

my team that we were more involved in the book than they’ve ever seen.

You were one of those people who knew at a very early age you wanted to be an

entrepreneur, correct? One hundred percent. I say this in the book: I think God

gives a gift to everybody and you’ve got to find out what that gift is. A lot of people

don’t take time to realize what their gift is. Some people have a great music ear,

some people are great artists, some people are great athletes—you’ve got to figure

out what it is. I feel that he gave me a business mind and an entrepreneurial

brain, so I took that and ran with it.

Do you think a lot of people are still drawn to entrepreneurship and business?

Everybody wants to be a businessperson. It’s funny. I’ve had the opportunity to

meet so many people, from television stars to movie stars to professional athletes,

and they start making money on other things and then realize, “God, I want to be

a businessperson too.” And there’s as much respect out there for the entrepreneur

and the businessperson as there is for anybody.


Feature

TO TILMAN!

Photos courtesy of Fertitta Entertainment


87

You’ve realized your dream of owning a sports franchise, the

Houston Rockets. That’s got to be a unique challenge. There’s two

scoreboards there: the business scoreboard and the scoreboard

of how the Rockets are playing. It’s definitely a balance. The

two do go together in the sense that if you’re a successful team,

you’re going to have more sponsors and more butts in the seats.

And you’re going to make more money. The number-one goal is

to always have a very competitive team, but at the same time you

want to be careful about the business and make sure the other

aspects you go into are successful.

With your position in restaurants, in casinos, in the NBA, I would

think you get a good pulse on the economy. What are you seeing

right now? Things seem to be strong, but everybody seems to be

worried at the same time. We’ve been waiting for the economy to

blow up now since around 2015 or 2016, since it runs in eight- to

10-year cycles. But we’ve had a great run here for 12 years. At

some point, the consumer does get full. They’re not going to buy

any more houses or cars or TVs. But we continue to build condos

and cars and TVs until we’ve overbuilt everything. That’s what

really causes a consumer recession. So we’re just going to have

to watch and see. That day is coming. We just all hope it doesn’t

come next year—or the year after.

But you’re seeing nothing in your businesses today that has you

worried about the near term? I see a little bit, but it’s also the

labor inflation that’s happening. I’m in a business with 60,000

employees. With these cities passing crazy minimum wages, it’s

tough. And at the same time, I’m in a business that everybody

wants to be in and that everybody thinks they can do. But all

businesses are tough. Every business is competitive. The strong

survive and the weak don’t.

You mentioned having 60,000 employees. How do you find good

people? I bet you’ve got a lot of jobs to hire every month. Two

things really help: having a strong HR department and being the

type of company that people want to go work for.

You’ve leveraged debt throughout your career. Some people

are very anti-debt, some people pro-debt. What are your

recommendations for CEOs to use debt in a responsible, effective

way? You have to know your business and what kind of debt

you can handle. A lot of people don’t do that research to see

what they can handle and what they can’t. I have no fear of debt.

I look at the amount of money I’ve borrowed as my greatest

accomplishment, because I have the credibility to go to Wall

Street and borrow that amount of money. It doesn’t bother me. I

wouldn’t be where I am if I didn’t believe in debt.


Feature

Doing Billion Dollar Buyer had to be an interesting experience,

especially seeing so many different types of businesses. What

did you learn from seeing such a wide swath? There are so many

young entrepreneurs out there today, and they all think they

have a product better than everybody else’s. And they don’t

necessarily. It’s important to be a realist and know if you have

something special or if you don’t have something special. That’s

something that entrepreneurs and even CEOs need to always

remember. Just because it’s yours, that doesn’t mean it’s special.

You write in the book about the 95:5 Rule, which is about paying

attention to the 5 percent that makes the real difference in the

business. In your restaurants, that can be tiny details like a drink

served without a napkin or fans running at different speeds. Do

you find you can teach that in your employees, or do some people

have it and some people don’t? You can absolutely teach it. I’ve

taught it at this company. Most of my people are homegrown,

and it’s a culture that I’ve developed in the company. The best

way is leading by example. When people see you do things as the

CEO, then they do it.

“Be plappy” is one of the phrases in the book I hadn’t heard

before. Could you explain what that means? It means to “play

happy.” It’s something I heard 35 years ago when we were doing

a premeeting for waiters. One of them was unhappy, and you

could just see it on their face. We said, “Hey, everybody has

issues and everybody has problems. But sometimes you’ve got to

come to work and be plappy”—just “play happy.” The customer

doesn’t care that your dog chewed up your wallet or that your

wife or husband is mad at you. In the hospitality business, the

customer experience is all that matters.

You mentioned having a lot of people who work with you for a

long time. What’s your secret for getting people to stick around?

I think I’m very fair. You always know where you stand with me.

I think if you talk to most people, they’d tell you I’m very difficult

to work for, but they wouldn’t want to work for anybody else.

Everybody knows that we’re going to “be the bulls,” as I say. When

times are tough, we’re going to be the acquirer. We’re not going to

be the one being acquired. That’s just the way we operate.

Any parting advice for fellow Texas CEOs? Don’t count on

your CFO to know your numbers. You need to know your own

liquidity. Great companies fail all the time because leaders are

expecting somebody else to understand the liquidity of their

company. Just because you’re the boss, that doesn’t mean you

don’t need to focus on the numbers yourself.

A FEW SAMPLE TILMANISMS

“Tilmanisms” are the phrases and ideas Tilman says over

and over. Find a lot more in Shut Up and Listen!

• There are no spare customers.

• Never put your lifestyle ahead of the growth of your business.

• Consultants can consult you straight out of a business.

• No matter the circumstance, be the bull.

• And of course . . . shut up and listen!


89

[LEADERSHIP]

MISSION, PRIDE, PEOPLE

3 KEYS TO MILITARY

AND CORPORATE SUCCESS

Military lessons don’t always translate to the corporate world. Here are three that do.

Lisa Jaster

Every few months, a former servicemember writes a new

leadership book and the general public eats it up. Many of us

in the military are baffled by the popularity of these books.

When every military leadership book that rolls off the press is

a best seller, I think what we’re really looking at is the lack of

meaningful leadership exposure the civilian sector receives.

To their credit, these books can be exciting reads. What’s better

than gritty tales of tough situations and leadership challenges

in combat? After a few stories, these books typically take

combat successes and then reverse-engineer them. Here the

reader gets a behind-the-curtain view of how military training

yielded teamwork, blind trust, and confidence in commanders—

presumably so they can apply these lessons in their own lives.

Unfortunately, you can’t just read Extreme Ownership over the

weekend and expect people to follow you on Monday like you’re

Jocko Willink. Number one: You’re not Jocko. Number two:

Your 40-year-old mother-of-two coworker may not be ready for

a Jocko around the office. As alluring as it sounds, you’re just

not going to take the leadership lessons learned in Al Anbar

and walk that straight into the corporate world. Those worlds

are just too far apart. The military pay structure is rigid and

standardized. There’s no such thing as a 40-hour workweek, and


there’s no overtime. Most members of the Armed Forces join for

specific reasons and hold similar values. Whatever differences

we start off with get marched out of us in our initial schools.

Another dynamic specific to the military is direct authority.

There are plenty of opportunities to leverage indirect authority

in the military, but when influencing skills fail, the soldier,

sailor, airman, or Marine leader can always fall back on

“because I said so.” In the military, there’s the potential

for severe penalty for not doing what your boss says.

All that said, it is possible to leverage military leadership

techniques in the civilian world, but they need a bit of massaging

to fit the corporate environment. A great place to start are

three factors that successful military units and successful

corporate enterprises already have in common: a shared

mission, pride in their unit, and a “people first” mentality.

Shared Mission

Shared mission is simple in the military. It’s part of our oath

of office and the second paragraph of every military order.

Every US Army soldier, officers and enlisted, raises their right

hand and states, “I, [their name], do solemnly swear (or affirm)

that I will support and defend the Constitution of the United

States against all enemies, foreign and domestic.” The oath

continues to talk about allegiance, obligation, and duty. The

second paragraph of a military operations order, which is the

standard mode of tactical communications in the US Department

of Defense and most other military forces, is actually called

the “Mission” paragraph. It includes the task that needs to

be accomplished by the unit and the purpose for doing it.

Simulating that in corporate America is possible if the company’s

leadership has built the organization around a shared “why”

that they can articulate and motivate their employees to adopt.

documents and organization, allowing for a “cowboy”

mentality that feels good. That freedom can remain within the

boundaries of a standardized system of communication. In fact,

the format often increases free thought and brainstorming,

as long as you allow for flexibility in the “how” within the

confines of the “what” (purpose) and “why” (intent).

This brings us to the second point: The mission must include

a purpose and intent that is clear enough to communicate the

end state but open-ended enough to allow people flexibility to

figure out how they will achieve it. I currently work at a rapidly

growing engineering firm that has doubled in size every five

years over the last 20 years. The owners enjoy the growth but

want the customer to continue to feel like they are working with

a small, community-based company. Our “what” (purpose) is

to be a full-service engineering firm providing a one-stop shop

for customers in the Hill Country and surrounding areas. Our

“why” (intent) is to create relationships with each client that

allow them to feel comfortable calling us for a wide variety

of needs—and that make them want their family and friends

to call us as well. That purpose and intent leads me, as the

Director of Civil Engineering, to build a “how” around our

company leadership’s guidance that differs slightly by each

technical division, branch office, and type of client. I am allowed

to be more creative because I have some solid guidance.

Third, the company needs to live and breathe that mission

in all they do. This is truer for the highest and lowest levels

of employees than mid-level management. The junior-most

employee has the most contact with the customer, so their

behavior directly impacts client relationships and influences

the organization’s reputation. The highest level of leadership

Two key components of every military mission statement are

purpose and intent. What is the goal and why is that our goal?

There are plenty of companies out there that just sell a product

in order to make money. That’s okay, and that alone might pay

the bills, but it is not the foundation for building a brand and a

cohesive employee base that wants to drive the company to the

next level of success. The employees may even believe in the

product, but without a mission, they can’t have a vision. Without

a vision, they cannot operate independently. Each soldier, after

receiving their operations order brief, knows what they need to

do to prepare for the next phase of the operation and begins their

preparation accordingly. This way of operating is so ingrained in

the military mindset that even the most junior officer in the office

of the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff uses the same format.

If a CEO wants to leverage this hard-won military knowledge,

they need to make a few critical decisions and stick with them.

First, identify the form of communication that works for the

company and includes all critical topics and subtopics. Make sure

this new standard is scalable so it can be used at every level of

the organization. Many companies shy away from standardized


91

cannot profess a mission and expect those below to follow

it without seeing the example. Professional appearance is

an excellent example of this, both in and out of uniform.

It takes practice and consistency to communicate a mission

that (1) includes enough detail to drive behaviors, (2) includes

few enough details to allow for free thought and creative

solutions, and (3) is understandable at the lowest possible

level. But it is possible, especially if the leader him- or herself

lives the mission through their actions. Leadership through

penmanship does not work. Words on a website do not drive

behaviors. Leaders must uphold the standards themselves.

Unit Pride

I think it’s safe to assume that everyone who joins the military

has a bit of a patriotic streak, which gives uniformed leadership

a surefire motivator from the onset. As I mentioned, individuals

raise their right hand and pledge to support and defend the

Constitution of the United States against all enemies on their

first day of work. That’s a bit extreme to expect someone to do

for most jobs. It’s critical to turn that job into a career for that

employee and help them find what they can be proud of at the

smallest level—be it a team, an office, a department, or even just

a project group. What product or service does that small section

provide that the employee can brag about to their friends?

Soldiers in the US Army wear a patch on our left shoulder to

demonstrate what major command we belong to. And inside

each major command, we have mascots and team names for

every military subgroup, down to a squad or team. We paint

our symbol on trucks, put it on memos, and decorate our work

areas with it, just as corporate America does with logos. We have

coins, stickers, hats, and T-shirts to demonstrate our esprit de

corps. But the military takes it one step further: We encourage

individuals to see that the mission of their small team makes the

larger team’s mission possible. Without me, the squad couldn’t

succeed. Without the squad, the platoon, company, battalion,

all the way up to the military as a whole, wouldn’t succeed.

A manager must instill a similar unit pride in employees by

showing people that their individual actions are somehow

adding to the whole. At my current company, where we

want to be a full-service engineering firm, it is imperative

that we ask our clients about items outside our direct scope.

This way, we help the client solve their overarching problem

rather than just putting a Band-Aid on the immediate

issue. We build trust and a lasting relationship. Doing

that together, across the team, grows our unit pride.

“People First” Mentality

One advantage civilian organizations have over military

organizations is in the people department. Although I believe

that soldiers, sailors, airmen, and Marines are some of the

best humans alive, they are also assigned—they are rarely

chosen. Usually, the available person fills a military job and

then learns what they need to do through on-the-job training.

In a business, you have an opportunity to interview each

employee and chose your teams based on capabilities and fit.

But no matter how good or bad the staff might be, a group

of bitter, isolated people will never succeed. That’s why it’s

critical in either environment to have a “people first” mentality,

placing relationships between humans front and center.

At West Point, we took PL300, a class in military leadership from

the Behavioral Sciences and Leadership department. The big joke

back in 1998 was that the correct answer for any unit-cohesion

issue was to hold a mandatory barbeque. Oddly enough, that

lesson was truer than my 21-year-old brain could comprehend. A

person spends one-third to one-half of their waking hours with

their coworkers. If the individuals can’t socialize at the lowest

level—at lunches, coffee-pot and water-cooler discussions, and

so on—then they will never be able to work as a team. Making

sure that someone is a character fit for the company or team

isn’t enough. Each employee must feel like they are getting

something back for the time they spend away from their personal

life. I have found that there are three major drivers of work

happiness: money, location, and job satisfaction. I am finding out

as I get older that job satisfaction, which prominently includes

my relationships with my coworkers, has now replaced money

as my top priority. Knowing that your employees likely feel the

same, and helping them develop positive relationships with

each other, will keep your turnover low and productivity high.

One thing “people first” doesn’t mean is that you must treat

everyone exactly the same. I learned a hard lesson in Ranger

School: There are a lot of amazing soldiers who just aren’t

meant for certain types of missions. Since corporate America

has the right to hire and fire people, find those who fit within the

company and nurture them, but let go of those who aren’t driving

toward the same end state or aren’t motivated by the company’s

“why.” That way, both you and that employee can find a better fit.

In Conclusion

Military leadership offers plenty of lessons for corporate America,

but those lessons must be taken with a grain of salt. The base of

the organization—people—is significantly different in military and

civilian environments. But regardless of which type of group you

stand in front of, there are three critical drivers of success. Each

organization must have a clear mission, a sense of unit pride, and

a “people first” mentality. Build these three in your team and you

will see success, whether it’s on the battlefield or at the office.

Lisa Jaster is the Director of Civil Engineering for M&S Engineering and

a lieutenant colonel in the US Army Reserve. After graduating from West

Point in 2000, she was commissioned as an engineer officer and served on

active duty until February 2007. During her time in the military, Jaster

deployed to Afghanistan and Iraq, earning two Bronze Star Medals, two

Meritorious Service Medals, and a Combat Action Badge, to name a few

of her awards. She is also one of three women to earn the army’s coveted

Ranger Tab out of the initial integrated Ranger School in 2015.


AUSTIN

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FRIDAY, FEBRUARY 21: 6:30 PM TO 8 PM, RECEPTION AND INTRODUCTION

SATURDAY, FEBRUARY 22: 9 AM TO 4 PM, SEMINAR

To help aspiring chief executives, seasoned tech CEO Joel Trammell has taken his CEO training course and adapted it specifically for them.

Joel’s leadership as CEO has resulted in successful nine-figure acquisitions by two Fortune 500 companies. As CEO of network

management software firm NetQoS, he delivered 31 consecutive quarters of double-digit revenue growth and a $200 million valuation.

CA Technologies acquired the company in 2009, generating more than 10x return on capital to its private equity investors. In 2010, he

cofounded Cache IQ, a storage software company that NetApp acquired two years later.

Joel is committed to using his experience to help current and aspiring CEOs. Join us for this crash course in excelling in the CEO role—

and learn valuable lessons that will advance your career.

TESTIMONIALS:

“Joel Trammell’s CEO seminar is a must, especially for any first-time

CEOs. You will learn what to expect as a CEO and the ins and outs

of building a powerful team through Joel’s real-life experience and

candid feedback. You will also hear from and network with some

of the more successful executive leaders in Austin. I pull from this

experience with every challenge I face—especially the ones I never

expected. Go do this!”

—Denver Fredenberg, owner, Harvest Rain; former CEO, Hyperwear

“The CEO seminar was a great experience because it gives you a

chance to step back from your day-to-day and think strategically

with the help of Joel Trammell. I learned tactics that I now put into

action every day.”

—Chuck Gordon, CEO, Storable; former CEO, SpareFoot

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Registration fee includes the reception

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Have questions?

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“The CEO seminar was not only insightful and thought provoking on

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a unique opportunity to interact with my peers across a variety of

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and the culture of an organization.”

—Melanie Kalemba, former CEO, Movero Technology

HOSTED BY:

BRINGING A

RENEGADE SPIRIT

TO XFL 2.0

Dallas Renegades president Grady Raskin on staffing an office, drafting a football team, and appreciating

all that North Texas has to offer.

Did you know you wanted a career in sports from an early

age? From an early age, sports were my life. Whether I was

watching with my father or playing with my friends, sports

was always the center point in my life. It wasn’t really until

college that I realized I could have a career in the area I

loved so much. Timing and opportunity came together in

several instances, and I like to think I took advantage of it.

How did you land the role as Renegades president? What was the

process like? As in many high-level sports opportunities, recruiters

played a huge role. Over my career, I made sure to connect with

as many recruiters as possible. When approached about the role,

the recruiter encouraged me to speak with the XFL league staff

and allow them to show me what XFL 2.0 would be all about. All

conversations with the XFL were direct and honest. Everyone from

the HR team to Oliver Luck and Jeffrey Pollack were amazingly

passionate and made me want to jump on board. I was humbled

to be considered for the role and excited to get the ball rolling.

How would you define your role as president of the Renegades?

What were your priorities going in? Initially, my role was

recruiting a front office staff. We are nothing without good

people. Since we are a lean staff, I had to make sure we had

strong directors in all areas and that they have the proper

support staff. I am happy to say that we staffed up pretty

quickly and each hire is proving to be a home run. Now, I

do all I can to provide support and relay information from

the league. Ticket sales and brand awareness are our top

priority, so all activity focuses on these two crucial areas.

As you put together that front office, what were you looking for in

people? My approach was to find genuine, selfless individuals who

truly understood what it might take to create a football team in a

new professional football league. I wanted confident, not cocky.

Since we have such a lean staff, everyone will need to focus on their

own particular areas but will also be called to collaborate in other

areas. We need to take advantage of the intelligence and experience

of the entire staff and everyone needs to be open to suggestions.

Lastly, with the short timetable and enormous amount of

work to be done, an electric energy and positive attitude

was a must. We may not always agree on a thought or

direction, but we will deal with each other positively

and respectfully. No time to be anything else.

What, to you, is the most exciting aspect of the new iteration

of the XFL? So many exciting aspects of XFL 2.0. In fact, the

only similarities between what was done in 2001 is the name and

ownership. This go-around, it is all “for the love of football.”

So much research has been done to find out what people would

want out of a new professional football league. We surveyed fans,

officials, coaches, and others. It was clear that the overriding

theme was to make the football fast, fun, and affordable. Less stall

and more ball. Low on gimmicks and high on genuine football.

It will look and feel like the current football that Americans love

to watch on Saturdays and/or Sundays but will have some subtle

tweaks to help speed up play and create amazing new experiences.

What was the draft process like? Over the summer, each

market conducted showcases where invited players came out to

show their skills. From those Summer Showcases, we created

a pool of players who were eligible for our draft. Each player

received a non-binding commissioner’s invite to participate

in the draft. Over two days, each team drafted 71 players.


Remember, we’re drafting entire teams, not just filling in

a few holes. The experience was amazing, and I have to

give props to our football operations team, who did their

homework, were amazingly prepared, and stayed incredibly

upbeat and positive for every single pick. It was a long two

days and every team should be proud of their efforts.

I would also note that we had a supplemental draft in

November to capture any unique talent that had come on

the market. Like any professional league, our rosters will

constantly evolve, and we are doing everything we can to

have the best players available playing in the XFL.

Why the Renegades as a name? The XFL combined their

internal brainpower with an outside agency to come up with

all the names and logos of each team. They created a short

film to show where the inspiration came from. Our short film

shows the eclectic, diverse nature of North Texas, including

visuals of cowboys, a graffiti artist, motorcycle enthusiasts,

and more. While we see the voice of the Renegade to be

unconventional, courageous, relentless, and a trailblazer, it

will truly be defined by what our team does on the field and

the traditions created by our fans in the years to come.

You’re a born and raised Dallasite. What keeps you in North

Texas? Why would I want to leave North Texas? It’s just a

wonderful part of the country with hardworking, positive

people. The corporate climate is extremely strong, and the

cost of living provides people the opportunity to experience

all the sports and entertainment that this area provides.

It also helps that my entire family is here. I married another

Dallasite, so her parents, as well as my parents and my

sister and her family all live nearby. We are fortunate

to be able to get together for all holidays. I never take

for granted how fortunate I am to be able to do this.

What’s the number-one lesson you’ve learned over your

leadership career? What would you tell someone looking

to get into a leadership role today? I believe that everything

begins with honesty and humility. If you hold yourself

accountable for the same things you ask of your team,

it is hard to go wrong. Something will surely go wrong

at some point, but dealing with the issues directly and

honestly seems to always get the best result. I am a very

direct person and appreciate this being reciprocated.

This may be redundant, but I would add to always

deal with things in a timely manner. Holding off on

tough decisions or conversations will only add to

the difficult nature of what needs to be done.

What are you looking forward to most this season? I am looking

forward to watching football in February, March, and April. I’m

excited about watching a fast-paced form of familiar football that

many will enjoy. I can’t wait to provide some amazing access to

our fans at Globe Life Park and to our viewers on FOX, FS1, ABC,

and ESPN. All of this done with extremely affordable pricing

to allow everyone in North Texas the opportunity to watch

professional football and create new memories of their own.


95

THE BUSINESS OF

COLLEGE ATHLETICS

A CONVERSATION WITH

CONFERENCE USA COMMISSIONER JUDY MACLEOD

When Judy MacLeod became the third commissioner of Conference USA in 2015, her appointment was

historic: She is the first and only female commissioner of a Football Bowl Subdivision athletics conference.

She came to the Dallas-headquartered conference in 2005 after 15 years at the University of Tulsa,

including 10 as athletics director. We talked to MacLeod about her backstory, the financial side of collegiate

athletics, and what’s exciting at the four Texas schools representing Conference USA.

Your career began in athletics and you’re still there. Did

you know at an early age that you wanted to be in the

business? I did not. I played basketball in college and

actually was planning on going into the finance industry. I

didn’t even realize I could have this kind of a career. I got

offered an assistant coaching job right out of college and

I thought, “If I ever want to do it, I should try it now.”

I decided to get into administration when I took a job with

the Goodwill Games in Seattle. I ran a couple of sports in

the 1990 Goodwill Games. When I tell young people that

now, they look at me like I

have two heads. “What’s a

Goodwill Game?” I’m like,

“Oh, I am old, aren’t I?”

After that, I had to make

a decision: Do I want

to pursue coaching or

administration? I thought

I might be better suited for

administration. So I decided

to go back to grad school

and moved to Oklahoma

for a graduate assistantship at the University of Tulsa.

A little change there from Seattle. Had you ever even been

to Tulsa? No. My friends and family might’ve thought I’d lost

it, but I was like, “It’s two years. You can do anything for two

years.” After a year, they hired me full-time. I was still finishing

up my master’s. Five years after I arrived, I became the athletics

director. People are like, “This isn’t a real story.” And sometimes

it doesn’t even sound real when I tell it, but it happens.


So you were young and inexperienced when you took that

job. Tulsa’s not a Division III school. They could have done a

nationwide search. Why do you think they took a chance on

a young person? A lot of it was the circumstances. They made

me interim AD first. When they later hired Dr. Bob Lawless

from Texas Tech [as university president] and introduced

me to him as interim AD, he probably looked at me like,

“Are you kidding me?” And to his credit, he spent about 10

months evaluating me. Those 10 months under Dr. Lawless,

every day was a test. And I guess I eventually passed.

WE SAID, “IT’S GREAT IF

YOU’RE AN OKLAHOMA

STATE FAN, BUT IF YOU LIVE IN

TULSA, AND OKLAHOMA STATE’S

NOT PLAYING TULSA, WE NEED

YOU TO BE A TULSA FAN.”

When he offered me the job,

I thought, “Well, I’m already

doing it. Tons of people work

their whole careers to be an

AD. Why would I not?” So, I

took it. He was the best boss

I could ever ask for. Just

incredibly supportive, helped

me grow so much. I consider

him and his wife friends to

this day. It’s unbelievable,

really, to get that opportunity

at 31 years old.

The AD position has some similarities to the CEO role,

but it’s not the highest paid or most well-known position,

especially compared to some of the coaches. How did

that work? Honestly, that dynamic was perfectly fine

for me and my personality. I would prefer to not be

the one in the spotlight. It’s about the young men and

women who are putting in the work, and the coaches.

Those are the people who deserve the recognition.

As an AD I’m there to lead, but also to

serve those people and give our coaches

what they need to do their jobs and

create a great experience for the studentathletes.

It was never an issue. Obviously,

I had coaches and administrators who

were older than me, who made more

money than me, but we were all pulling

on the same rope. The more basketball

was excelling at Tulsa during those

times, and the more credit they got, the

better I was, as far as I’m concerned.

There’s a certain challenge to not being

the preeminent, best-known university

in a particular state or region. How did

you deal with that? Tulsa is a small

private school. Within a two-hour drive,

we had Oklahoma, Oklahoma State, and

Arkansas. There were more alums from

those places in the city of

Tulsa than from University

of Tulsa. It was always a

challenge, but we did our

best to be Tulsa’s team. We

said, “It’s great if you’re an

Oklahoma State fan, but if you

live in Tulsa, and Oklahoma

State’s not playing Tulsa, we

need you to be a Tulsa fan.”

The success obviously helped.

We finally got football going. We’d been

to a couple Sweet Sixteens and an Elite

Eight in men’s basketball. So things

were moving pretty well, but it was still

a challenge. We didn’t even have the

challenge we do today, where people can

watch every game on TV from their couch.

How does the revenue break out at

smaller schools—not just at Tulsa but

in Conference USA overall? All of our

schools’ athletic programs receive

funding from their university, whether

it’s an allocation or driven by student

fees. That’s one of the misconceptions,

that there’s so much money flowing. Our

schools do not bring in enough revenue

to support their expenses, so they’re

subsidized by our universities. That’s

a choice the institutions have made,

because athletics are important and

bring many things to campus—alumni

engagement, publicity, exposure. But

it’s not like there’s so much money that

we don’t know what to build next.

Or that you have all this money to pay

every student-athlete a living wage. How

do you see that issue developing? For

a long time we’ve all said, “This is too

hard. How would it work?” And it is hard,

but that can’t be the excuse not to try to

figure it out. Whatever we do, it’s got to

be uniform. We can’t have different laws

in different states. We need guidelines.

We’re working on it diligently—I say

“we” because the NCAA is a membership

organization. I can’t tell you that the

answers are easy or that everyone’s going

to like them, but it’s something we have

to figure out. We have to move with the

culture and the modernization of things.

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For a while in college athletics, it felt

like you had to get the new list of

who’s in the conference every year. For

the last three or four years, it seems

like we’ve steadied. Do you see that

staying in place, or is there going to be

another big upheaval? I do think things

have stabilized. In some of the larger

conferences, the individual schools have

signed over television rights and other

media contracts. With that stabilized at

the top, it’s a domino thing. It eventually

affects everyone, though I would never

say it’s never going to happen again.

For some of us, high school and college

sports were a big part of growing

up. Now many kids would rather

play Fortnite than go to a football or

basketball game. Are we going to see

video gaming within the NCAA umbrella

down the road? They’ve talked about it

and studied it for a while. We’ve talked

about it within our conference. We

haven’t gotten to that point of having a

league championship in esports. I don’t

know if it fits under an NCAA umbrella

or not. But I definitely think it’s not

going away. It’s remarkable, some of the

facilities that have been built for esports.

You’ve got four Texas schools

representing Conference USA—North

Texas, Rice, UTSA, UTEP. What are

the exciting things happening at those

schools? The overarching thing I

would say is the leadership at all four

schools. From the presidents to the

ADs, they’ve been very aggressive in

marketing and improving things.

All four of them have exciting things

going. North Texas has gone through

an explosion of growth with

their football facility and

indoor practice facility, used

by football, track, softball,

soccer, and other sports

when there’s inclement

weather. Their women’s

soccer team won their third

consecutive conference

tournament championship

and play in a brand new

soccer stadium, and they

recently announced a new golf facility.

At Rice, especially on their women’s side,

they’ve had tremendous success. Last

year, their women’s basketball team went

undefeated in the league and captured

both the regular season and conference

tournament championships, and

participated in the NCAA tournament.

And they should be very good again.

Their volleyball team is nationally

ranked, defeated Texas in the regular

season, and participated in the NCAA

tournament. Under second-year head

coach Mike Bloomgren, the football

program showed dramatic improvement

this season. The football team was one

of only seven programs to be honored

by the AFCA for recording a perfect

APR for 2017–18. The men’s basketball

program is in its third year under

Scott Pera and is currently 6–3 with

some good wins in the early going.


97

At UTSA, their AD is in her

second year and doing some

great things down there.

Their football program

is still relatively young,

but there’s tremendous

potential if they can get it

going. The interest is there.

When they first started

football, they had quite a

few people coming to the

Alamodome, and it was a

great atmosphere. They

were picked second in the

preseason poll for men’s

basketball. Steve Henson’s done a really

nice job. They’ve got a couple of players

who are on our preseason all-conference

team. They recently hired a new baseball

coach in Patrick Hallmark, who brings

an excellent pedigree to their program.

UTEP’s still rebuilding in football, but

they are another team that’s continuing

to play hard. They have a brand new

president and a fairly new AD and are

continuing to upgrade their facilities.

I would watch out for their men’s

basketball team. Coach [Rodney] Terry

is in his second year and they’ve already

had wins against New Mexico State and

New Mexico, both of whom were very

highly regarded going into the season.

I think we’re going to see some noise

from them on the men’s basketball side.

Conference USA seems to have an

advantage when it comes to the

game-day experience. When you go

see a UT football game, it’s a daylong

commitment, with getting there and

parking and all that. Your fans’ ability to

park right at the stadium, sit in a good

seat, without a lot of fanfare—that’s

appealing to people, right? Our ADs

have made a concerted effort to think

about the experience, from the time

somebody leaves their house to when

they return to their house—how do we

make it the easiest and best? Granted,

we’re not dealing with 100,000 people,

so inherently it’s going to be easier.

But we still work to make it a great


YOU DON’T HAVE

TO BE AN ALUM OR

AFFILIATED WITH ONE OF OUR

SCHOOLS TO COME OUT AND

ENJOY HIGH-LEVEL COLLEGE

BASKETBALL IN A FAMILY-

FRIENDLY ENVIRONMENT AT AN

ECONOMICAL PRICE.

experience, and you are going to see

a good football or basketball game,

because we have really talented young

men and women in our programs.

So you can have a great experience

at our games for a less expensive

price and with more convenience.

Figuring out where all your schools go

during bowl season has to be one of

the most challenging duties you have.

How does that process work? That’s

one of the more interesting processes

we go through. It doesn’t change day

to day—it changes every five minutes,

from one phone call to the next. We’ve

been really successful though. Last

year, Conference USA won the trophy

for the highest winning percentage in

bowls. The year before last, we had 10

bowl-eligible teams and were fortunate

enough to find places for nine of them.

I wish we could have found 10, but the

system is constrained. There’s a limit.

We work with our bowl partners.

We talk with our ADs. At the end of

the day, it’s really the bowl’s choice.

But number one, we try to create

match-ups that are appealing. If we

have a 10–2 team, we don’t want to

match them up with a 6–6 team.

We also work really hard to make the

games make sense geographically. Now,

that’s not going to happen 100 percent of

the time. But we’ve done a really nice job

of having bowls in great locations. We

play in Hawaii sometimes.

We play in the Bahamas

every year. We play in

Florida, obviously, in the

Metroplex. It’s just a puzzle,

putting it all together.

You can’t make 100 percent

of teams or fans happy, but

we try to do the best we

can. I think our coaches and

ADs realize that any bowl

is a good bowl. You get to

spend extra time with your

kids, and your fan base and

community gets excited.

Conference USA is making moves

locally with the conference basketball

tournament here in Texas at The Star

in Frisco for the third consecutive year.

How has that helped your league’s

profile? Please give us some insight on

how y’all are approaching this event.

We partnered with the City of Frisco,

Visit Frisco, the Dallas Cowboys and

Baylor Scott & White to bring one of

our premier events to Frisco. We have

four days of tremendous basketball

with 12 men’s and 12 women’s

teams competing for an automatic

bid to the NCAA tournament.

The unique setting, playing two games

under one roof simultaneously, the

Fan Fest we have created on the plaza,

and the surrounding restaurants,

hotels, and retail have combined

for a great experience not only for

our teams, but also for the fans.

Similar to what we talked about earlier,

you don’t have to be an alum or affiliated

with one of our schools to come out

and enjoy high-level college basketball

in a family-friendly environment

at an economical price. With the

help of our local vendors, corporate

sponsors and the other contributors

already mentioned, we have created

a great tournament atmosphere,

while delivering substantial economic

impact back to the surrounding area.

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Q1 2020 Texas CEO Magazine

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