Carl Banks discusses how lessons from his NFL career apply to business leadership. He emphasizes maintaining standards despite setbacks, contrasts the immediate feedback of sports with slower business cycles, and describes building his broadcasting career while still playing by finishing his degree and creating shows.
Chapters
Next quarter is three months in business. Next quarter in sports is in 12 minutes or 15 minutes. Right. Leadership at the pro sports level or at the. At the organized sports level is different because in business there are no referees.
What would you say is one of the biggest struggles you have, growing your company, 75 employees and the time that you've done over 30 years, it's a long time.
The things that you can't predict, right? How do you, how do you respond to things that you have no idea are coming? If you have injuries, they don't cancel the season. Right. You still got to play the game and you still got to try to win. Right. In business, it's the same way, like if, if there's a disruption, somebody's going to do the business. Probably 100 kids nationwide that are making a lot of money, made playoffs 10 out of 13 years. You know what it takes to be a high achiever and falling short of the mark, but always having a standard of never falling below the mark that you're at already. So I think that's the key to consist. I don't let bad plays become bad days. You know what I mean? So we figure it out.
Okay. So I'm excited to have Carl Banks, a former linebacker in the NFL, played for the New York Giants, the Redskins, the Browns. He played college football at Michigan State. I'm from Cleveland, so pretty familiar and looked you up even more so knowing that I was going to get an opportunity to talk to you. So welcome and really appreciate you joining me.
Thank you for having me. I'm thrilled to be here.
All right, sounds good. So I want to start off with just a little bit of the transition. You made it this big transition from this, you know, NFL world to the business world. And I'm curious to know if you could just give us a little bit of background and some context just when that was and how hard that was.
Yeah. So my transition literally started my second year as a New York Giants football player. My first year after that off season, I went back and finished my communications degree at Michigan State. And then I was ready to hit the ground running. So I had two, two really big objectives when I realized I'm going to be playing professional football. One was to pursue opportunities in the communications field. And I started that process right away of developing a pregame and a post game show. And I went out and found my own sponsor. And that kind of was the gateway into me being the Giants analyst today, color analyst today. But this was long before players were doing these types of things. I went out and number one, found a sponsor, but number two, I would go on radio after a game. Win or lose, I would be on. And so that was the, the beautiful part about, you know, just kind of looking forward and not knowing what my, my career would hold in terms of years. And then the other piece of it, I was a starter athlete, starter, had just gotten into the sidelines for the NFL, and I was one of the players that was one of their brand ambassadors, spokespeople or whatever. And I'm looking and I got a chance to meet David Beckerman on many occasions, and just his passion for the sport and how sports should be viewed through the lens of fashion in the Runway.
