S2Ep31 Kent Sterling, Sports Media, Author "Oops!: The Art of Learning from Mistakes and Adventures"

What is the roadmap to defeat self sabotage, negative thinking and learned helplessness in these unprecedented times, you must get connected, get growing, get certain and Get Attitude. The Get Attitude Podcast. And welcome to the Gap the Get Attitude Podcast. I am your host, Glenn Bill, the award winning Get Attitude Podcast, international best selling author and speaker and founder of the University of Attitude. And we are in season two with influencers and innovators. And our guest today is an influencer. I'm a huge fan of his and an influencer in the sports media market. Has been in the sports media market for 30 years, I would guess fair and has been. Well, we're gonna let him tell you what he's done, but we are with the one and only Kent Sterling today, who is author of the Art of Learning. This is why you come to this podcast from Mistakes and Adventures, right? Is it adventures?

Yeah, it's not all mistakes. I don't have 37 chapters of mistakes. There's some adventures in there too. So I didn't want to make it sound like it was nothing but a litany of my foibles. Who would buy that book?

Well, I think one thing that you have in common, our audience, we call them gappers, is that we are all full of mistakes and adventures. So I think if you guys want to get to Amazon, buy his book, he's done some readings. I've checked it out. It's really fun. It's really a lot of quipsical or whimsical things and it's an easy read.

I'm not capable of a complicated read. I can't write complicated now.

I thought it was funny. I know when you were writing it and so many people always say, how did you write a book? How did you do it? Because we've. All right, we've all said and we want to do it. And you got it done, right? What, what's your advice to the. The half the audience that's going, yeah, I'm going to write a book someday, but I probably won't.

You grind a piece a day.

There you go.

You know, that's all you do is grind through it. And there were days when I wrote three chapters and there were days when I really struggled to write one and then kind of wrote it in my head and would transcribe it myself and kind of learned about the process as I did it. But I think that that's how you do it. You do it one. You know, you build a house of brick at a time. You wr a word at a time.

And so you actually got down, hit the keys and wrote it that way.

That's it.

Okay? Because I have friends of mine, Jeffrey Gittermer, who's written 13 books, he talks to his books. They transcribe them. I'm like, well, there's a hell of an idea. So he comes up with a thought. He talks, he transcribes, and he edits from there. I'm like, that would have saved me some time.

It would, right? But then you're dealing with somebody who transcribes. And the less cooks in the kitchen for me, the better. I wanted this just to be me, mistakes and all. I had a proofread. I didn't have it edited. Maybe I should have, but there it is. It just exists. And because it exists, you know what I am, Glenn?

An author.

An immortal.

An immortal.

The book will outlast me forever.

That is a question. I don't know. I forget. One of these games that you play with the families who will live. It's a legacy piece, right? You got your legacy. Are you going to write another book?

I find that difficult to fathom. What I'd kind of like to do, I'd like to take a stab at writing a novel, but I don't know whether I have the intellectual bandwidth to do it. But I'm going to sit down and I'm going to see how it goes.

You're going to take it out. You can find Kent on his YouTube channel, Kentsturling.com I will tell you that I listen to Breakfast with Kent every morning. So here in central Indiana. But listen, if you guys are in Honduras, if you're in San Diego, why not listen to Kent Sterling? Breakfast with Kent. Talk to me a little bit about Breakfast with Kent, how it started and how it's going for you, and what is it like to do that every single day.

I like routine, so doing it every single day is a really good thing. It gives me a focus in the morning. I get up. That's what I do. The reason I did it is I used to work with a guy named Bernie Micklis. Bernie was a columnist for the St. Louis Post Dispatch, and he worked for me at 101 ESPN in St. Louis. And the Post Dispatch had him do a video in the morning called Breakfast With Bernie. So there was an alliteration. It really made me angry because I didn't think that Bernie did it as well as he could have. Bernie needed some guidance. It wasn't my place anymore to manage him. So what I did was did it the way he should do it, believing that maybe he would see it and then he would adjust his performance. And in that way, I could help Bernie. That's how it started. And I just kind of liked it. And I would do. I do tv. Periodically, people invite me on to talk about Indiana sports.

Sure.

And I wasn't very good on camera. The only way I get good at anything is relentless work at it. And so this mandated that I work at it a lot. And I've gotten better at it. At least by my meager standards, I've gotten better at it, and so I feel good about it.

So when we talk about relentless work ethic, that's one reason that I've always sought you out and tried to support what you do. Because I'm like, this dude is a grinder. And the media business, I know, is a grind. I teach on LinkedIn every day, and I got a certain amount of words that I got to do every day. I know how hard it is. Two questions for you. Number one, what is your definition of attitude? Number two, grinding is an attitude. Who gave you that work ethic, do you think? Where did it come from?

My dad never took a day off. My dad worked every day, every day of his life. He was never sick. I haven't taken a sick day since 1993.

Oh, my gosh.

So I just went. And that day I took a sick day because my son had his tonsils out. So I don't take sick days.

What did he do?

What do you mean?

What does your father do?

He was a salesman. He sold H vac stuff, but on a. Like a giant level.

Okay.

And so he was kind of a manufacturer's rep, and he got up every day and he worked and he worked, and I don't know if he ever enjoyed a day of it, but I thought, you know, what? If I can combine his work ethic with. With what I actually enjoy, that's got a win.

Right?

Right. So that's kind of where it came from. And then the attitude to me, and you believe in this, and this is why I'm a big believer in you, is that you can control it.

There you go.

You have that. That's me. Right. I can wake up and decide how I'm going to feel about me and about the challenges that face me during this day.

Yes.

And so I get up and I'm smiling, and it drives my wife nuts. Why are you always happy when you wake up? I said, because I woke up and I get to do what I love. What's to end? I'M next to you. What's to be unhappy?

Amen.

So, yeah, that's kind of. It's a choice. It's not. You're not kind of sentenced to have the attitude you have. You get to choose your attitude.

Absolutely. And so we've certainly heard that through the podcast. And so if you're listening to this and you have chosen to be negative and you're feeling a little bit down, understand, it just. I always tell people, how long does it take to change your life? And it takes a second.

Right.

All you gotta do is change it. So we were talking a little bit before the show, and David Ellson said, look, you are not a college coach unless you've been fired. You have been in St. Louis, Chicago, Indianapolis, I don't know how many other markets.

That's about it.

My guess is you've been fired in your 30 years or let go or downsized once, one time, and the rest of the time they never wanted you to leave, but you had better opportunities. Probably.

Yes. Well, I wanted to come home from St. Louis. My wife never moved out and she didn't like St. Louis. And frankly, I didn't like much about the city either. I loved my staff. The people there were wonderful, but the city, I didn't want to be there anymore. And so I came back after two years. But when I worked at EMIS Communications, I got fired.

Yes.

My boss died in July of 2009, and they hired another boss, and he decided that he wanted to bring his guys in, and he did. And that was over the top of some existing management. And that's the way it works in media. You know, I don't begrudge the market manager that decision. You pick who you want to work with and the people with whom you've established some measure of trust. You want to surround yourself with those people. I wasn't that guy.

Right.

So I had to go, despite the fact that I had given 17 years to that company. And. And it really took, you know, you build it brick by brick. It took a while to build that trust and to get the position that I had. But Tom passed, Charlie was hired. Charlie wanted, you know, David and Bob, and so out goes Ken.

And so when you were at WXNT when we first met, is that the same company or was that different?

So you moved that this was. I had, yeah. I got fired from Emma's.

Right.

Started my own thing.

Right.

Then St. Louis called and said, hey, come on over. And I said, well, I don't know. And they said, we'll Pay a lot of money. I said, okay, that sounds good. This is a nice amount of money. You know, we could clear out, because when you have a child, you're going to build up some debt because you don't want the child to do without. So you. You kind of. You make some financial adjustments. And this took care of all the financial adjustments and really got us free and clear. So it was very nice. But then I came back, I had lunch with a great guy named J.R. ammons. And this is a good idea, really an actionable good idea. Have lunch with a smart person once a week, just for no reason. And so I called JR and I said, you're a smart radio guy. He was the program director at all of the intercom stations, which include WZPL the Mix, and CBS Sports 1430. And so we went to lunch, and by the end of the lunch, he said, you know what? You should do afternoon drive for us. We don't have any money, but is there some. Some way you can monetize it on your own? Take some time from us, sell it and pay yourself that way? And I said, sounds great. So I did that for two years, and then they hired me as the program director and the afternoon host. Then they got sold. I don't consider this being fired. They didn't onboard anybody. Cumulus bought the intercom cluster here, and they didn't onboard any of us CBS Sports 1430. So it wasn't personal. It was just, you know, what are we gonna do with this Right. End of the AM band, you know, thing, Right? So Sterling's gotta go. This guy goes. All these people go. So I went.

And so. And that's what's amazing to me, is you're in this radio gig.

Yeah.

And radio gig. And now you're like, screw it. I'm gonna do what I do on my terms and start a YouTube channel.

Yep.

Right.

You know, it's easy. Radio is such an archaic technology. I hate to describe it like that, because I love radio. Radio is just endlessly fun. And you've got to be very spontaneous and innovative, and you have to be kind of borderline weird if you're gonna. Like Dan Dockic, we were talking about before, we went on three hours a day. He's talking about sports come hell or high water at 12 noon, off you go. It's really difficult. Yes, it's much more difficult than people would guess. And so you've got to be wired a little bit differently, but you can do that with social media, and you don't have to buy a transmitter. And you don't have to buy microphone processors or any of that. All you have to do is kind of fire up your laptop or your iPhone and off you go. It's just that simple. And I'm not big on spending. I don't like spending. And so I already had the equipment to do it.

Yes.

So why not do it? It's just then it's a matter of me doing it, and I can control that. Like we were talking about before.

Now, do you write a blog every day?

Not every day. I'd like to every day. Some days I don't.

And is that published? Where? Ken sterling.com Ken sterling.com always. Cool. Cool. And so you cover everything. You get media passes. You're a legitimate media pass guy.

Yep.

Doing your own thing without an official media thing. That's the other thing. That's cat. There's not many guys that could pull off getting a media pass to every media, to every sporting event in Indy when they are not affiliated with a radio station or a TV station. How the hell does that happen?

Well, you know, people. Yeah. Number one, you're there first. Right. And you had the. The media affiliation.

Okay.

And then I think there's a matter. There's kind of a pity that's lavished upon you because you got blown out. You know, let's take care of him and credential him, and that's gonna be okay. And then you. You develop a trust with those organizations.

Sure.

And you build relationships and off. Off you go. I was at the Big Ten Media days today downtown, and yeah, there aren't a lot of. Everybody's got from someplace. Mine said Moops Media, which is my llc. Moops Media from Seinfeld. Did George plan George playing Trivial Pursuit with a bubble boy? No. So sorry. It's Moops.

And there you go. I mean, I love that. That is absolutely off the chain. Okay, so getting back to Moops Media.

Right.

You're in here. Tell me about Big Ten Day. I'm just curious about that real quick. What goes on at Big Ten Day and how many. Is it now like it used to be? Is it totally different?

It's very similar, except they've got kind of built sets there. So like Dave Revson and Steve Bardo and the other guy, Robbie Hummel, was there. And so they bring up coaches and talk to them on set, but they do podiums for about 10 minutes. And it's the men's and women's coaches take turns and then you break down and like Mike Woodson over to a table and talks to people, and Matt Painter does. All the coaches do, and then they have two or three players for each team who answer questions. Yeah.

Did you get your own table today?

Oh, no, no. With COVID things have gotten a little bit more structured, and we really don't get, like, tight access to the guys when we could do that. You could sit down with Matt Painter and talk to him. Matt loves to talk, and so you can talk to him for 45 minutes or an hour, and if he's got nothing better to do, he'll talk basketball forever. I love it.

So let's talk about. You have obviously been doing this while. Let's talk about some of the interviews you've done. And I would even say, you know, whether it be sports figure or not, one thing I really want to know from you is, like, when it comes to broadcasters, let's start there, and then I'll move on. Like, did you pattern yourself after a broadcaster? Did you see a broadcaster and go, man, he looks good? Or is there somebody out there that you go, damn, he's good?

I say that a lot. But you can't. If you're going to be in media, you can't emulate anyone. You've got to be. There are four things you've got to be. You've got to be authentic. You've got to be relevant. You've got to have fun, You've got to be innovative. If you're those four things, you're going to win. Authentic is really, really important. You have to be the best version of yourself always. And if all you do is ape somebody else's style, and I'll give you a great for inst. He's passed now, but Rush Limbaugh, whether you agreed with him politically or not, he was brilliant as a broadcaster. And as he got popular, he had people who imitated his act.

Yes.

None of them worked out.

None of them took over his show.

We don't know any of them now. We couldn't mention their names, but they were going to be, you know, we've got to hire a Limbaugh type guy. This is how Adel Pated radio managers are. We got to find another one and another one. There. There isn't another one. And that's what made Rush brilliant. That's what makes Stern brilliant. That's what makes Dan Dakich the innovator and authentic guy that he is. And that's how broadcasting's done best.

Now. Did you hire Dan because you needed a guy to hire or did you go, I think this guy could maybe make something happen?

It's even more complicated than any of that. I needed a guy because I knew Colin Cowherd wasn't going to work in this market. He's too west coast. He's too college football, and he wasn't going to work. And we had. We had to keep him for nine months. So at the end of the nine months, I had to have a guy. And I had told Dan. I've known Dan for 30 years. And I told him when he was at Bowling Green, I said, you know what? If you ever want to go into radio, call me, because you're going to be great at it.

Wow.

Dan got blown out at iu.

Yeah, he had the four, when you think about it.

Right, Exactly. Exactly. Gets blown out at iu. And really, he needed insurance, health insurance for his family as much as anything else. And he called and said, you remember we had that conversation? And you said, call? And I said, yeah. I said, I got a spot. I need to fill a spot. Like, October 7th, if you're up for it, I can make it work. And because Dan had said yes a long time before to an internship with the same radio station I wound up working at with 14:30am when he was in college. He worked for the current boss, guy named Tom Severino, at that cluster. Tom knew him.

Wow.

And so I went to Tom and I said, dan Dakich. He goes, done do it.

So that was the interview process.

That was it, man. Boom. Phone call. Hang up, go talk to Tom. Call Dan back, say, we're in. You gotta come in and we gotta fill out some paperwork, and you go.

October 7th, and that show is exploding. Correct?

Yeah, yeah, yeah. He's really good. I mean, he's. If you go into, like, the Colts media room or the Pacers media room or anywhere where media people congregate, the first name you're gonna hear is Dan.

Really?

Everybody listens. Everybody takes what he says seriously. Everybody gets angry with him.

Yes.

Because sometimes he calls those guys out. But he's very shrewd in the way he does it, and he knows that He's. He's kind of. You know, he's probably.

He's probably raising everybody up. He's getting more attention for all the guys that he makes fun of.

They don't see it that way. They get very upset about it. But he is really, really good at it, great at what he does, and really, really smart guy. And what would you think?

What would you say? Well, there you go. I was gonna say, what is his attitude? Like, what would you say his attitude is?

Oh, you don't beat him. Like, when I got fired, I woke up the next morning and launched Kentsturling.com because SCRE people, they're not going to beat me. Right, right, right. Dan, same thing.

I love it.

Yeah, he ain't gonna get beat.

So the work ethic from grandpa to dad to son, I always know that we have a lot of people that listen to this with athletic kids. And you may or may not know that Kent's son played for Loyola. Not Loyola Marymount, but Loyola. Son and Holy Spirit. Sister Jean, talk to us about and the parents and the people that are out there. What does it take to raise a D1 kid? I'm guessing that attitude you just described had to do with it. So what does it take to raise that kid? And how do you handle. Or what do you think a good way to handle parents that think their kids are D1, but they're just not?

Well, sports parents are easily the worst part of the athletic experience. Whether you're an athlete, a coach, a referee, or. Or a peer player, parents are just the worst. Some of them. The first thing I would do is that when your kid and I asked Dan this, when Ryan was 8, he was really good. He could flat shoot. He was a good shooter right out of the womb. And I said, what do we do? And he said, you got to have your kid coached well when he's a kid. And you do. But as you choose the youth program that your kid's going to play for, whether it's a son or daughter, if you're going to start your own, choose the parents and teach your kids to play. If you've got good parents, they're not going to discourage the kids. They're not going to have terrible conversations in the cars on the way home, pick the parents and then teach the kids. I think that's really important.

Dan taught you that?

Yeah, yeah.

Wow.

And he was exactly right. And then you empower your kids. You know, you don't restrict your kid, you empower your kid. We never criticized Ryan for basketball ever.

Right.

The only thing that's not true, but we never criticized him for shooting. We're always like, you gotta shoot, shoot more. We never talked about a miss. Right. Ever. You know, effort, occasionally, defensive, like thought processes occasionally. But I think it's really important that you. What you keep your eye on is not the kind of the pot of gold at the end of the rainbow, but the process. Because what the process does is imbue the kid with a bunch of habits that he or she is going to take through their lifetime and have it be successful. And speaking of the Big Ten media day today, that's what I heard from a lot of the kids talking about process, getting 1% better, waking up with a goal that day, all of these things that a lot of people take a lifetime to learn. If they learn it, collegiate athletes and high school athletes get that drilled into them early, early, early. And that's why they wind up there.

Yeah. Interesting. So let's talk about. You have run some media stations, some radio stations from a management perspective. We have business leaders, entrepreneurs, small business owners that listen to this. What are your two or three attitude nuggets? Being a leader in what you did. Like, you know, what was it like to run a freaking radio station?

It's an enormous responsibility, especially a place like wibc, which is a news talk station, where people rely on you for their information. And most, I think, critically, weather information. Like, we took that very seriously because we saved lives. Right, Right. And you had to be ready to pivot at a moment's notice, like on a day like 9, 11.

Right.

You got a. You had one plan, that plan goes out the window, and you're a different radio station all of a sudden. So you've got to be nimble. And I think what's really important, and I think what people have gotten away from, especially in middle management, is they don't manage down nearly as well as they manage up. They are really good at kissing ass, but they're not really good at empowering their staff and putting them in a position to succeed. And I really think that that's kind of the ground from which all good springs is in, emp, your staff and not spending all your time, you know, smooching upstairs.

Right. And so when you think about empowering, whether it be a kid, an athlete, or an employee, what do you think are one or two keys to empowering people?

I talk about it every day on Breakfast with Kent. It's paying an honest and specific compliment.

Love that.

And doing it often. Open, don't open meetings. What a lot of people do in radio is they'll roll back tape.

Right?

Right. And they'll listen to a segment from a show and say, well, you really should have done this. You should have done that. Always lead with positives.

Yeah.

Play something that the guy or the woman did well. Right. And say, this is beautiful. Now, one thing you could do better. Right. Here's something you could do Better lead in that way. Be positive. You know, look, what are we trying to do here? We're trying to get from. From the birth canal to the grave and have a nice time doing it, you know, and do something that we feel is rewarding to society. Maybe if we're lucky, we get to do that. Don't make it miserable for somebody else because you're having a bad day.

I got it.

Make it great for somebody else. Make today great for people, and you're never gonna have to worry about them.

And that's the kind of positive stuff you get every single morning on breakfast with Kent. If you sign up for Kent Ster. True. Let's play positive and negative. I'm going to. Because you're a sports media guy, and sports are an integral part of our society. When you think of these leagues as a whole, I'd like you to tell me, like, the biggest positive and the biggest negative if this makes sense to you. So let's start with the NBA. Like, what's the biggest positive coming out of the NBA and what's the biggest negative that you think they're facing or challenging?

I'll make it a little more global. I think that the best thing about basketball is that an individual cannot succeed without the help of the other four people. I always say that basketball is like jazz and a great jazz quintet. They listen really well. And if you're going to be a great basketball team, you've got to pay attention to the four teammates around you and not just go get yours, but you got to figure out how to help them get theirs. I think the NBA more or less. I think the ESPNization of sports has taken us in the wrong direction in teaching those lessons. But I think overall, the NBA is really pretty good about showing it to us when we see it raw in person at a place like Gainbridge arena or Gainbridge Field House. Now, the worst thing is, you know what? When you get paid that kind of jack, you start to believe that you are a special person and that you are. You're not a player, and you're not. And you're not a teammate and you're not an employee. You're the CEO of your own little corporation, and you start to behave like that. That doesn't work for basketball, and it really doesn't work for fans who appreciate basketball at a high level. So I think the success of the NBA has led to contract that have led to some very selfish behaviors that are leading to the erosion of the quality of the brand.

And that would include not sprinting back on defense in transition.

Yeah, a little bit of that.

A little bit.

You know, taking days off. I got a load manage, Load management. Look at Michael Jordan's stats throughout his career. 82, 82. 82. 82, 82. You know, other than his second year when he had the foot issue, that guy played every night, and he didn't just play, he excelled every night, and he demanded it from everybody else. Those days, we don't see a lot of it.

It's crazy. So let's go to baseball in the middle of the playoffs right now. I think you're a pretty big baseball fan.

Love baseball.

And tell us the best of baseball, or mlb, if you want to go there. And then the biggest challenge or the biggest negative to baseball.

I think baseball has a problem in that baseball, and this is true for several sports. But it's the people who play and the people who manage and the people who touch the product every day who are determining the rules. So you've got a pace of play issue, because managers like Tony LaRusso, we're going to see him manage again tonight at the age of 77 for the White Sox against the Astros. God love him.

Dusty Baker.

Dusty. 72, right.

Watching that's 149 years. I thought that was so cool. I was watching it last night, just.

Going, oh, my God.

We should be like, I don't hear anybody talking about it.

We're in the flower of our youth, Glenn, for good sake.

Yes.

But those guys, you know, Tony was the guy who started in the seventh inning, bringing this guy in to pitch to this guy, and then bringing that guy in. And all of a sudden, games, instead of being two and a half hours, are three hours and 15 minutes long, and the pace is just agonizing. Can you watch an entire Major League Baseball game? I can't anymore. And I did when I was a kid all the time.

Interesting.

I can't watch it. Another bad thing is going to be offseason is they try to negotiate a new cba, new collective bargaining agreement. If there's a season next year, I'd be stunned. I think they're going to. Yeah. I think Manfred was hired as the commissioner for one reason, and that's for this negotiation. And he isn't going to back down from anything. And the players are going to walk, walk out of the room, and we're not going to have baseball, at least for a long time, next spring.

And then, best part of baseball for you, what's good about it for the country, what, you know, what's the positive there.

I think it's a wonderful heritage touch point. You know, like, my dad took me to Wrigley Field when I was 6, 7, 8. He'd take me out of school every day or every year once, because all the games were at 120. And so we'd go to a game, and it's just a wonderful tradition to go to Wrigley Field and walk up the same steps we did. And I took my son. We'd sit in the bleachers when he was a little kid, you know, two, three, four years old. And so it's kind of this. This generational hallmark for us.

That's true. And when you think about your dad and the hard worker and never taking a day off, did he used to run to the payphone to make a sale because he didn't have a cell phone?

No. That's true. That's true. But no. When dad took that time. That was time with me. He knew to spend time with me. And he was a really good youth baseball coach, too.

Okay.

We never won anything, but we had a great time and we learned a lot.

That's cool.

It's not about the wins.

Tell me about Grandpa Sterling and your grandparents. So much of our attitude comes from the great people that we had from a generation once removed. Love to know about them. Were you close with one? There's four, but were you close with one?

Two.

What did they teach you? What did your grandparents teach you?

Both my grandfathers passed on before I was born.

Okay.

But my grandmothers lived one until I was 18 and the other until I was 29.

Okay.

And from one. And I grew up in the northern suburbs of Chicago, an affluent little village on Lake Michigan. And my father's mother, affluent. Lived in the house that was built by the former CEO of Abbott Labs.

Oh, my gosh.

It was beautiful and had mahogany floors. And she was very elegant and very. It was a very conservative home. No drinking.

Yes.

No frivolity at all. My other grandmother. Not so much. My other grandmother. Irish Catholic, liberal. When they had election primaries in Lake Bluff, she never waited in line to vote because 4890 of the people there were Republicans. And she was one of the ten who were Democrats.

Oh, my gosh.

And every holiday was a party. There was. There were libations, there was singing. It was very frivolous. She taught me how to smile with my eyes.

I love it.

She said, always smile with your eyes. And she'd cover her mouth, and then.

That's a great.

Show me how yeah.

Cool.

My other grandmother, she did not teach me that. She was very loving, but in a very, like, proper way. Yeah. Wool dress, kind of.

What did your grandparents, your grandfathers do? I mean, I know they passed before. Do you know what they did?

One was a printer.

Wow.

And the other was. Was a publisher.

Interesting.

It worked for a publishing house in. In Chicago. And my grandfather on my dad's side ran a printing company. And then my Uncle Bob ran that printing company. And my Uncle Bob. Oh, my God, no, he lowered.

He had some attitude.

Judgmental, scary. Had two Dobermans.

Is he still with us?

Oh, my. No, no, no. You would hear him. You'd hear him from here at 660 West Grand. You would still hear Uncle Bob, but. Yeah, would deride anybody who wasn't born into the family. Like my uncles who married. Like my dad's sisters and Uncle Bob's sisters. He killed them at holiday parties. And it was hilarious and mean spirited and awful.

Did you have siblings?

I have a sister.

One sister. Okay, very good. Let's go ahead and shift. I always just like to get family background because I think it's important to understand people's mentality and where they come from. But you've been fortunate to meet some unbelievable people.

Yeah.

Who's the most famous person you ever met?

You know what? Here, I'll tell you a few. And these have to do with attitudes, too. In Chicago, I got invited to a thing that Harry Carey was at. At a brewery at Goose Island Brewery. And it was oddly, it was kind of a Budweiser event. And Harry walked around with a can of beer talking to clients. And I brought my son Ryan, who at that point was three. And I've got him by my hand. And Harry, in a crowd of about a half dozen clients, saw my son and waved Ryan over and talked to him for about three minutes. Wow. And could not have been more generous with his time to this little kid at the expense of the conversation he was having with sponsors, which was wonderful.

Wow.

That's kind of who he is and who he was. Tony Dungy is a wonderful human being, I think, and didn't really get to know him, but we had a conversation on the day that he announced his retirement at the Colts complex. I was bringing him from where he had made the announcement to where we were doing a radio show. And it's, I don't know, 150 yard walk. And I don't want to pass up an opportunity to, like, say something, so I say, you know, you're doing something that Nobody else gets to do. You're going out on your own terms. Nobody goes out on their own terms. Rocky Marciano is the only guy I can think of went on his own terms. And Tony Dungy stopped and he said, tell me about that. I want to know more about that. And I was just. I had to, like, replay back in my brain what I said. I had no idea he was listening. Would you be listening if you were retiring and some schlub is kind of herding you into a room for an interview? So he stood, and we Talked for about 3, 4, 5 minutes about how he was able to, in this moment, sort of walk away at the top of his game and without apology and without somebody taking his keys.

Yeah.

And that was fascinating to me, and I thought really kind of opened a window for me into who he is. Tony's a good listener and, you know.

Big attitude lesson in there.

Yeah, yeah. Just great. And, you know, I mean, millions of guys in. Or dozens of guys in media, I like having elevator conversations with people. If. If I get the opportunity, if I see a famous person and I don't know the person, I'll try to say something to them that leads them to the conclusion that somehow they should have known me but had forgotten who I was. I liked it. That's kind of a.

That's good. That's good.

So I did that with Andre Brower, who used to be. It is an actor, but he was on. He was on Homicide and. And did some other things. And he got on. On an elevator. I was like, andre, how you doing? And he said, good. And like, who's this guy? And I said, chicago's greatest actor. And the doors opened, and he walks the doorway, and he goes, I should know you. And the door closed. And I was like, yes, I got it done.

Did anybody teach you how to interview? And is there one question that you think is a great interview question?

Nobody really taught me other than, you know what. What was really good for me was in Chicago. And this is all about saying yes and having a good attitude, too. I took improvisation classes for three years and joined different improv groups. And some of the people have gone on and had really good careers in entertainment. And then I wound up here in radio. But that's okay. Yeah, that's a good thing. But what you learn through that is the power of listening. And as long as you listen, the next question is. I used to, when I'd interview somebody, I'd write down, like, five questions.

Yeah.

I never ever looked at them. They just made Me feel better when we started that I wasn't gonna, you know, just stop talking if somebody, you know, didn't give me good answers.

Right.

If people. If I ask a good enough question right at the onset, it just starts a conversation, and that's the best part.

Sure. Tell us about biggest failure or flub while interviewing somebody where you're like, I can't believe I asked him that. Or was there a time that you ever went and maybe it wasn't you, maybe it was equipment. Or maybe your biggest disappointment when maybe you were going to get to interview somebody and they stood you up or something like that.

You know, the first zoom call I did was with Mike Chappell, who's a local media guy and a great guy to talk to about the Colts. And he went out of his way to accommodate me, and so I did the interview, and we talked for about 17 minutes and got done. And I realized I hadn't hit the button to record it. I never told him if he watched. I'm sorry, Mike. I'm sorry you wasted 17 minutes of your life talking to an idiot who didn't know how to record. I saw you need a producer to take care of that sort of thing for you.

Oh, by the way, are we recording Jason? Oh, no. I saw that the Pacers were having a. There's an opening for the communications director. I'm wondering, did you apply? No, because why.

I knew I wouldn't get the job, which is important, and there was a person that I believed would be applying that I wouldn't want to take the job from.

Ah. Have they filled it?

So they did fill it. They filled it with a person from out of town, which is really unusual for them. They hired a guy who was the. The former guy with that job, media relations head with the 76ers. So. Wow, he came here and that's fine. I don't apply. I feel like things ought to happen organically, and so I don't apply for jobs. If somebody wants to hire me for something, that's great. I like being a member of a team. I don't really fit the culture of lone wolf kind of media guy. I'm not that person because I like to be around people. Yeah. There's nothing I enjoy better. Number one, I love hiring people. I love hiring good people and rewarding them. And I love getting a room of people together to solve problems that I love sitting by myself and solving problems and making a list. That's tedious for me. I do it, but it's joyless for me, it needs to be done so I can do all the other stuff. But I like having kind of a room of advocates who are all in behind the team product.

So tell us then with that biggest success story. When you talk about. I love solving a problem with a group of people or a team, what did that look like for you?

I think launching 1070, the fan, which has become 107.5 the fan, I think that that was. And I understand why they kind of abandoned ship from the direction that we had kind of charted it on. But I loved the direction of that radio stat and there's still remnants of it, including Dan, that that exist today. Michael Grady, working for the YES network in New York, loved working with, with Michael. Michael was a guy. Tom asked me when we were going to launch. He said, okay, you're the program director. What's your first hire? I said, michael Grady's going to be my assistant program director. I love him, I trust him and I think he's going to do a great job.

Cool.

So I enjoy that and enjoy that that radio station still exists and does well. The bad thing about radio is it's entirely temporary. It's in one ear, out the other. You know, it doesn't exist in perpetuity. So if you do a great show at 6 o', clock, it's over and it's gone.

Yeah. Right. You're only as good as your last sale. Right. And so, yeah, with that said, I still refuse to take 10:70am off of. I refuse.

I haven't either.

Dunno. Joe Koppel, you know, Joe and I went to grade school together. I'm sure you know Joe.

A great Trojan.

Great shitard Trojan. And I just. Yeah, just. It just isn't right not having 1070.

It is not. I don't like the way talk radio sounds on the FM dial. And I hit it with you. I was on my way over here And I hit 1070 and. And I was like, oh, yeah, right. But I. Yeah. And I was like, I'm never taking it off. I won't do it.

Okay. And then I'll. I'll finish. Then we'll go into knowledge through the decades. Either the toughest interview you've ever done or the worst you were ever treated by somebody that you engaged with as a media person.

Oh, boy. You know what? This is kind of arcane, but there were two cults back in the day and this is completely gone because Ballard doesn't put up with this crap like Ballard. Drafts and signs, really good people. And there isn't a bad guy in that locker room at this point. But the previous regime, Ryan Grigson just wanted guys who could ball and he had two guys. Laurent Landry was about as sullen and surly an individual who has ever existed. Forget about like the room or he's just a mean dude. And Antonio Moore Morrison, okay, Antonio Morrison was a linebacker. And then the Colts got a six rounder for him, dealt him to the Packers. I talked to him for maybe 40 seconds once and I was like, I am never going to that man's locker again. I'm just not going over there.

He was scary.

He was. He was scary. He had dead eyes, right? Dead eyes spook me. And. And he just looked like, maybe I'm gonna break this guy in two.

Oh, my gosh. Yeah. I would have to think that is somewhat intimidating with the wrong guy. I mean, when you pick the wrong guy, I get that.

And it can be intimidating. And it was at first to walk in, talk to a stranger. Hey, you got a minute? And then talk to a guy. And I don't know what I'm going to ask him because I don't know who's going to be available. So I don't prepare. You can't. And so I'm just. I got a microphone and I'm going and I'm hoping. And that's where the improvisational training really helped. Not in that I learned how to interview anybody, but in that, like if you go on stage ever in front of 300, 400 people and you don't know what the hell you're gonna do, but your responsibility is to make them laugh, that's the most terrifying thing imaginable. And so once you jump off that cliff. Yeah. Nothing else looks like it's as far down to the bottom.

I love it. Joe Bill in Chicago, one of the top improv ch trainers in Chicago. That's my brother, you know, Joe.

Joe Bill is your brother.

Did he train you?

No. Oh, but I knew. Is his ex wife Jennifer. Yeah, sure, Jennifer. One of the best. And now she's helping Mick Napier runs A Dear friend.

Yeah. They start well dollar started the annoyance theater with Mick and.

Exactly. Yeah. The. Who's the guy? The guy who plays the coach on Netflix. Yeah.

Jason Sudeikis.

He thanked Mick Napier on the Emmy Awards on live tv.

He thanked my brother on the Today show.

Mick Napier taught me this and this is a great lesson and it's a great attitude. I was auditioning for Second City and I said, mick, I don't know what I'M doing. I've never auditioned at this level. And he said, here's the thing. I've sat in on auditions and judged these same auditions. Do something, do anything. We're bored out of our mind. If you just do something, there's not better advice ever than do something. I love Mick and Jennifer and they're together, one of the best improvisers of all time.

That's so cool. I mean, how did we know? Yeah, it's crazy. So you knew because of those too?

I knew that they did double take down at iu.

Exactly.

And I saw an ad in the paper for Double take. I thought, this sounds great, I gotta do this. And I don't know, I got sidetracked. And then I told Mick, it's like your life might have changed.

So you were down there with my brother and Mick and all those guys.

Although I didn't know them then.

Yeah. And then. Did you know Mark Sutton at all?

No.

So Mark performs. They perform this thing called Bass Pro. And it's what they do, but we won't get into that. But Mick is awesome. Mick is incredibly direct on his Facebook posts.

Yes, quite direct. Yeah. At the very least. And still doing it and still training people up there. And it's a really good thing. I know we don't have really anything like it here, but it is a wonderful vehicle for learning not how to perform necessarily, but how not to be intimidated in the moment. It's just fantastic. It's paid unbelievable dividends for me in so many different avenues.

All right, shout out to my Chicago peeps. How cool is that? All right, so now we're going to do this thing called knowledge through the decades.

Yeah.

I'm sure that you may or may not remember when you were born, but what I want to do is think about the attitude lesson at these different stages of your life. And maybe you think about Ryan when he was born, but what's the attitude lesson from birth.

Boy, Soak it all in.

Soak it all in.

Right? Just learn. Just pay attention and inhabit the good habits and discard the bad.

I love it. Now I want to know a little bit about you were 10 years old, you're up in northern, northern suburbs, Lake Bluff, Chicago. You remember your teacher's name. Always like to give our 10 year old, our 4th or 5th grade teachers a hit on the attitude pie. What did you learn? What was your attitude lesson at 10?

I learned from me that doing nothing but aiming for laughter is a hollow pursuit. Like I look back at me when I was 10 Glenn, I'm going to tell you that my elementary school teachers. This is kindergarten through sixth grade. One of them remained a teacher the year they had me. My first grade teacher, Mrs. Anderson, remained a teacher. Mrs. Courtney, Mrs. Stewart, Mrs. Zimmer, Mrs. Georgevitch, Mr. Zerner and Mr. Hammond never taught again after you were.

They were dreading the Sterling kid.

I knew how to get under people's skin. Operating at their expense for the pleasure of my classmates was my favorite thing.

Do you get along with Jake? Query. Because he had a similar thing that went on when we interviewed Jake.

We have an interesting past. He thinks I fired him. I didn't even work for the radio station when he was fired. I. We've had this conversation a million times. I'm like, Jake, he said it on TV. He said it on Wish TV 8 one night. I said, I didn't fire you. I didn't even work at WIBC when you were fired. I didn't even know you were going to be fired. You won't believe it.

Oh my God. Media scuttlebutt. Okay, so then you go to 20, then you're 20 years old, you're at IU. Were you a frat guy?

No.

You were an off campus guy. Barb, dormant guy.

Off campus, off campus guy.

What was your attitude lesson at 20?

You know what? I did something really smart at that point. And I became a camp counselor in northern Wisconsin for a summer. It was an eight week camp, had the same kids and what I thought. And this came to me like an epiphany. I said, I am not going to pretend to be somebody that I not. I'm not going to exist to try to make these people laugh. I'm just going to be who I am and see how it goes. And if I wind up being a really repellent person, that's okay because I've only got like one week of prep and eight weeks of camp and I'm never going to see these people again. So I can just be me. And once I did that and they were cool with it because I'm not a. I'm not repellent.

Right.

I came back with a completely different attitude where I was really happy just to kind of let life come to me instead of try to attack it.

I love it.

And so yeah, that just out of the blue I applied for the job. I got it. And on my way up I had this thought, I'm just gonna be me.

There you go, Gapper. So those of you who are fighting against nature, stop it. Stop It. Because you ain't gonna win.

No.

Right. You're not gonna win. That's a great, great lesson. Let's go to 30 years old. Where were you at 30? What were you doing at 30? Do you remember your 30th birthday? And what was the attitude lesson at 30?

Great year. That was when we moved from Chicago to here and. And when I decided improvisation was not going to be a thing. And Chicago held no allure for me. Had no family up there at that point other than my wife. And. And so we had friends, college friends. But it was time to put the college life away and it was time to put my wife and son first. And so we moved from Chicago to here because the schools up there that we could afford, being a radio guy, they weren't very good. We could move down here, we could afford a home and get Ryan into some really good schools and put him and his. Well being ahead of mine own. Julie always did that. Julie's phenomenal.

And so how'd you meet Julie?

We met at Walnut Knowles in Bloomington. NIU at a party. We had the most convivial building at Walnut Knowles. We were in D building. Everybody got along great. Maybe seven couples.

Right.

Met that first week and got married. Oh, my gosh, eventually.

And what year did you graduate from IU?

86.

Ah, so you weren't there. You left right before 87 and you got there right after 81.

Yeah, well, I'm like the Mike Woodson of basketball fans.

Exactly. Man. Mike is attitude wise. He seems old. He seems uninterested in all the bs and I think he's just there to win kind of. I've heard stories about golf outings and this and that. They're like, you know, he's not, he's, you know, young guys are all, hey, I want to please. I want to please. I think he's. He's ready to just go win some basketball games and not worry about it.

He's not there trying to make his bones, that's for sure. Really, you know, he's. He's lived his life. He is a. He was a great success as a coach in Atlanta. That they fired him was just atrocious. He was a band.

Yeah.

And, you know, he could have ridden off into the sunset as an assistant coach, making a whole bunch of money and living a nice kind of chill life. But he wanted to come back and he wants to win, and I think he wants to have a real positive effect on these guys. So I think he's got. He's operating on two very parallel. Well, they intersect, so they can't be parallel. But these two tracks that intersect. Victory and Development. I think he's all about both.

Yeah. I wonder who instilled that in him. I've asked to get him on the podcast. We were fortunate enough to have IU's football coach on. It was unresponded to, but I would love. My house is right down the street from Broad Ripple. My brothers went to Broad Ripple, and I know a lot of people that know him, so certainly an interesting cat. And you're right. To take on IU basketball at this point of his career. Not that it's a step down, but isn't it kind of a step down? I mean, it's like, where did he get the ball?

Well, it's a ballsy thing, you know, because if he fails.

Right.

You know, like, first of all, what does Indiana do from there? Because it's always been, let's fill that job with an IU guy, somebody from the Night Tree. So now that's happened. If it doesn't work, he's responsible for it.

He ain't gonna fail.

I don't think so.

I cannot imagine it. Let's go to age 40, right? So we've gotten. Soak it all in. We've gotten. That antagonism probably isn't a good way to go. We've gone to. I just let go. We got to priority at 30 now. At 40.

40.

What was your. What's your attitude lesson at 40?

My attitude lesson at 40 was that it. I think it became. Because at that point, my son was 13, 14. It was all about trusting him. And that involves some letting go. But it really wasn't letting go. It was just kind of stepping back. He told me, he told my wife, he's studying, and Julie tried to help, and he said, this is mine.

Cool.

My schoolwork is mine. And we never interceded again. And we just. I think we just continued down the path of trying to be supportive, but not. We never, like, attached ourselves to him and felt like his accomplishments somehow defined us. We never got there. And that was at the moment where we could have.

Yeah. And then. Do you remember 50? Did you have a birthday party at 50?

50? I learned I didn't want to live in St. Louis anymore.

Right. So you said, I'm done.

Yeah. You know, at some point, you've just. And I've never really quit. Like, I hang on to, like, to a job like Grim death. In my 20s, I had a million jobs, but I usually put myself In a position where I didn't make the call right to get quit or to quit. I put them in a position where, you know, it's like, you're a nice guy, but, you know, it was like that. I think that at 50, I decided, you know what? Life's a little bit too short to live 237 miles away from my wife and my son. And I better have some balance in my life or I'm gonna have some problems.

I love it. I love it. Kent, you've been so nice with your time. We appreciate you being here. On the get out of Talk, we got a few comments from Renee Merrifield. What's up, Renee? How you doing? How you doing? Thanks for loving our podcast. We always like to end our podcast with just asking our guest. When you think about America today, when you think about the people that are listening to this podcast on the beach, in the car, wherever they are, we always just like you to, from your heart, from your gut, give a. Give a message of positive attitude. Or what do you want our gaffers to know? What is your message of hope for them? That you know what, things aren't going to come crashing out. The world's not going to end, whatever it's going to be. And I probably know what you're going to say because I listen to you every day. But what's your message of hope or your message of attitude? For those that are listening today, it's.

About understanding that you are not the most important person on the planet. And that if we all together make a commitment to each other, to lift one another, yes, this is going to be a whole hell of a lot better place to live than it is now. I always go back to this movie, A Beautiful Life, about John Nash, the Ron Howard movie, and John Nash and these three other guys, these geniuses. There are five women, and one is hot, smoking hot, and the other four are kind of ordinary. And John Nash figures out Russell Crowe as John Nash. You know what? If the four of us ignore the hottie and we go after the other four, we're all going to get happy. But if we all go after the hottie, right, Nobody's going to get happy. That, I think, is a really. That is such an interesting lesson to me that can be extrapolated and really should be extrapolated. Not applied in that specific kind of thing, sure. But extrapolated to where we understand dealing with each other in a positive way is just really, really important. Important and being covetous of what everybody else is covetous of. Doesn't do any of us any good.

Yeah, I love that. That's so good. And that gets into finding the value in every human being that you see.

Oh, absolutely.

Which is given honest and sincere compliment. And people go, well, I do this when I keynote speak. I always say, okay, I want you to turn and give a fake compliment to somebody around you. And the room goes crazy, and everybody feels good. Good. I'm like, now, how many people felt good getting a fake compliment? 100% did. How many people felt good giving a fake? So I said, well, what the hell's the difference?

Right? Right.

Give it. But an honest and specific compliment is even better.

People are not in your way. I have to remind myself of this at the Kroger. All the time I'm standing and people are jacking around with their coupons, and they don't care. Once they get to where they're checking themselves out and I'm thinking, what are you? What am I?

Right?

I'm standing here, I'm waiting. And then I think, what's the matter with you? Wait an extra 40 seconds and be a human being or on the highway. They're not trying to get in your way. That's not what they're doing. Yeah, they're a little bit indifferent to your plight, but nobody's perfect. We all live flawed lives.

I love it. Well, Ken Sterling, thank you so much for being nice. Thank you so much for giving us part of you today, part of your family, your history, and most of all, your attitude. This is Glenn Bill signing off for the Get Attitude podcast with the one and only Ken Sterling. This podcast is a part of the C Suite Radio Network.

For more top business podcasts, visit c-suiteradio.com.