The Truth About Championship Culture

Build a strong foundation of your organization, whatever organization it is, business, sports, whatever. Build that strong foundation, continue to build upon that foundation, and surround yourself with amazing people. And if you do that, the odds are you will be more successful than the guy next to you that doesn't do what you're doing.

You didn't build your clinic to feel like an employee in your own business. I'm Matthew Cologli, and on Out of the System, hosted by Dr. Talks, we challenge the broken rules holding healthcare entrepreneurs back. Hear from clinic owners, rebels, and builders who are creating bold, profitable, patient-centered practices and doing it their way. So I'm sitting here with Steve Gubbett. For those of you are wondering who the heck this bald guy with the big bushy beard with the funny Canadian accent is, peace. Uh, he's a longtime friend of mine. Uh, it's 30 years, right, that we've known each other? It was 30 years ago, right about now that I hired you.

30 years. Would that mean 1996?

1996, right? Yeah, it's 30 years. It was probably right about April, May because you guys were still in the playoffs.

Yeah.

Wow. Because remember, you gave me tickets. Yeah. That's a long time ago. This is like our anniversary. Should we hug?

No.

No? Naked?

No.

Okay. Steve is a— if you are a lacrosse fan, there's a pretty good chance you know the people that Steve has hung out with. You might even know Steve's name. But Steve is actually like this guy. I like to say that you are like the guy— I give you a lot of shit, but you are the guy. You are the straw that stirs the drink.

I like to think of myself as the John Adams of lacrosse.

You are the— Number 2.

Nobody likes— everybody loves George Washington.

Lincoln.

But John Adams, like, you know, he was the, he was the guy that pulled the fabric together and made it all—

Yeah, that is a really good analogy for who you are. So he was—

I like Paul Giamatti, so.

Yeah, well, that's a good— yeah, Paul Giamatti's pretty good. You kind of look like him.

Ooh.

So Steve, 4-time World champion with the Wings? Indoor lacrosse league?

It was 3 with the Wings, and then 1 with the Mammoth as a GM. And yeah.

So only 4 or 5?

Only 4.

I thought you had 5.

I technically kind of had another one with the Wings as the GM.

Okay, so that's where the 4 comes from. 4 with the Wings, 'cause 1 was as the GM. And if you know lacrosse, one of the legends and the pioneers of the game is Gary Gait.

He is.

And you played with him? I did.

He's now the head coach of Syracuse University lacrosse, who is about to go into the Final Four this weekend. So that's exciting for him. That's cool.

And then who was the goalie?

Dallas Elyak.

Dallas Elyak. Yeah. You've played with some pretty stellar dudes.

I played with an unreal team. And, you know, we were joking earlier about, you know, making sure that you have the good teammates to prop you up. Like, I didn't have a good teammate yesterday in my golf match, but I had played with a number Of wonderful teammates across a lot and, you know, and building teams, right?

Yeah, which we'll talk about.

And the process is all about finding that, you know, the tapestry to weave together a culture of, you know, good teammates.

Yeah.

Whether they're good teammates in the roles, and I say this a lot, it doesn't matter what your role is, right? If your role is to go pick up trash in the corner, do that really well.

What was your role on the wings?

Pick up trash in the corner.

The corner? Set picks so Gabe could score?

Yeah, I mean, there was—

And then pick up penalty minutes? There was a lot of that. I mean—

Hit guys before they went across the floor? It's amazing. Like, when I played, we had this— it's so stupid. We had this t-shirt, and the t-shirt said, 14 grinders, 2 playmakers, 1 stopper, 1 superstar. And it outlined who the team was. And I was super proud to be a superstar, but I wasn't. I was actually one of the grinders. Yeah, I was going to say, you were a superstar in college. I was one of the grinders. Yeah.

And you know what?

We actually— the 14 grinders, seen guys on that list that were grinders, wore that with an amazing badge of honor. And so when you start to build teams or think about building teams, you need people to be grinders and enjoy it and love it and understand their role and execute their role to the best of their ability. And that's not to say that when the times are tough or times are down or chips are down or whatever, that those same people who have a role can extend their role and do more or deliver more in You know, kind of key moments. You see that all the time, you know, in, in the NHL playoffs or the NBA playoffs or whatever. You see guys kind of overextending what their traditional role is, and that's great. But you get— it gets delicate when you try too hard to overextend your role. But if you do deliver in those scenarios, that usually creates championship moments.

Were you, when you were growing up playing lacrosse, In Canada. And then when you— Radford, right? That's where you went to college, university. Were you the superstar?

No, far from it. I was, yeah, I was, I was just a kid that, you know, I, I went in the corners and got loose balls and, and I did a lot of the, you know, quote unquote dirty work, right? Not George Washington.

John Adams. John Adams. Yeah.

You know, and, and it was, Not flashy. And I kind of made a career out of, you know, some of this, but I've made a career about not flashy.

Yeah, you've made, you've done, I give you a lot of grief.

I try not to be, I, we joke about being the center of attention, which is more of a joke than anything else, but I try to be the guy that kind of pieces the fabric together behind the scenes so that someone else can be the star. And there's, you know, there's a lot of that.

Where does that come from? Where do you—

Yeah, good question. I don't know. I mean, I have—

Was your dad that way? Was it instilled in you as growing up?

So my dad, World War II veteran.

Yeah. Well, there comes with all kinds of issues with that.

There is.

I got the son of one too.

Yeah. But he also was a guy, as you know, son of a World War II veteran, right? They don't talk a lot about it.

No.

But there was hundreds of thousands of those guys that went over, kept their mouth shut, did their job.

Yeah.

Right?

Yeah.

And so maybe some of that was instilled in me from a work ethic perspective, like, you know, hard day's work for an honest day's pay type of, you know, meat and potatoes, like, upbringing. And that you show up for your teammates, You don't quit. You're not late, right? You do, you say what you're gonna do and then you do it. Like it's, yeah, it's not a hard structure.

But why is it, why is it so hard today?

Because I think it's, the philosophy's not difficult, but actually the execution of it is a bit of a challenge for people. 'Cause I think saying what you're gonna do and doing it are, and people get, you know, there, there's a lot of distractions. Yeah. I think in the world today. Yeah. That people get pulled in a lot of different directions. Whether it's socially, whether it's digitally, whether it's, you know, your connection. I think the more intimate connections you have with friends, right?

Right.

So we talked a little bit about this on the golf course yesterday, but the intimate connection you have with people as friends has waned somewhat in recent years.

Yeah, absolutely. Right.

Like you're not connecting with individuals and And, and I truly don't think, and this is like, oh, the kids, young whippersnappers today.

Listen to a couple of late 50-year-olds.

They don't know what the hell they're talking about. No, but I, I like, I like to pick up the phone and talk to my friends. Yeah. I'll call them.

Yeah.

Right. Yeah. Or text them and say, I miss you. Let's connect. Right. Yeah. And so the connections of keeping in touch have become very sterile. Yeah. Very antiseptic. And I think, you know, and, and you in your business, right, in the medical field, it's become even more sterile and more antiseptic with doctors.

Oh, yes.

And, you know, the medical community that can stay an arm's length away, right, with specialties. Like, I don't know my practitioner anymore, right? I don't know the guy that's going to operate on my knee. I just get a referral and I go in, I see the doctor for what?

7 minutes is the average time, by the way.

And then you're out.

You can't even have sex. I mean, you can have sex in 7 minutes, but it's not very good.

Depends on who you are.

Yeah.

And who you're with. Depends on which party you're with.

Yeah, it depends on who you are and where you're with and who you're with. So yeah, okay, never mind. It was a bad analogy.

Point being, right, is like the interconnectedness of personal relationships and getting to know people and getting to know what's important to them and You know, like what kind of music do they like? And remembering that, like, I guess it's hard for some people.

Yeah.

I've never found that difficult is I just think the personal connections and making sure that you have some, and I'm not saying, by the way, I'm perfect at this because I have disregarded those empathetic feelings and said, you know, screw it at times. But for the most part, if you're building teams, it's about Making sure you understand the people in those structures, making sure— and this was like a tenet of mine that is odd. I was fanatical about this, that if something good or bad or benign and indifferent, you should not read about that in the press. You should not read about that on a social media post. You should not read about that or see it on YouTube or whatever, right? You should hear it from me. Good news, bad news, whatever, right? As the GM of a team or the coach of a team—

A captain or a key player.

Yeah, you shouldn't have to read about news about yourself without somebody picking up the phone and having a conversation, saying face to face. And sometimes, you know what that led to in a lot of cases, or some, you know, some cases, really uncomfortable conversations.

Is that lost? Do we have— have we lost the ability to have the uncomfortable conversation?

Yeah, because you text people bad news.

Or you post about it.

Yeah, or you post about it. Like, honestly, this is kind of funny that we're sitting in here with microphones, but any idiot with a microphone can have a voice.

Oh yeah, that's— that is— yeah, I've always said the problem with free speech is everybody has it.

Yeah.

Including the idiots and the racists and the knuckleheads.

Which is a complete departure from the conversation that we're having, but ultimately it's like just because you have a microphone or just because you have a platform or a piece of paper to write on or whatever doesn't make you a journalist. It doesn't give you journalistic integrity.

That's so true.

It doesn't give you the protections of journalism. Yes, it's free speech. Yes, it's protected. I get all that. But sometimes there's just a common decorum of, of having a Picking up the phone and saying, hey, man, you're traded. Hey, you're cut. Sorry, we're breaking up. That's not for a text.

Right.

Right? And so—

That answers a lot of questions.

No, I'm kidding. Yeah. Maybe if you had—

No.

No, no, no.

Well, it was interesting because when we got done yesterday, I went back to the hotel and I had to pick up the phone and have a lengthy conversation with a really good friend of mine about a very difficult topic. And you know what he said to me? He said, shut the hell up. No, no, no, no. I've known this guy 15 years. He's a very good friend of mine. And he said, I really admire the fact that you took the time to pick up the phone and talk to me about this and not just blow it off.

Yeah.

Because it was, and it was, it was, it was more of a, hey, this is what I'm feeling. Me, right? I'm concerned we could go down this path, and my friendship with you is not worth going down that path if that's the case that we're going to— meaning just with some stuff that we're working on and some stuff that we're involved in. And he was like, yeah, I really appreciate you bringing— I hadn't thought about that perspective. Let me— and he's the type of person that needs to sit on things for 24 to 48 hours, as I am as well.

Which is fair.

And he goes, can I process this over the next— I said, absolutely, go for it. Like, that's what we, you know— and I think what has happened today into society is everything is so— it's like if you're not rapid fire and have the immediate solution, it's almost like you're viewed as like weak. You've got to come back with the witty response.

Yeah, if you're not, yeah, comedic or, you know, satire or, or just straight up a rough— yeah, yeah.

And, you know, I'm happy to do that sometimes when I You mean like how you were needling me just before we got on here about how I didn't contribute anything to the golf game yesterday?

It's funny because I'm going to use an analogy, and you and I have always kind of understood each other's analogies. But when I coach kids, whatever sport, doesn't matter, kids that are 8, 10 years old, right? Youth, they don't remember a whole lot about their youth sports experience.

No.

I don't remember wins and losses. You know what I remember? Running up and down the hall on hotels, on trips, jumping in the pool, doing stupid shit with teammates. I don't remember the games. I don't remember the wins and losses in the passes. So your friend that you had a conversation with yesterday, And a number of other people that I have engaged in difficult conversations with, they don't remember what the content of those were 5, 10, 15 years later. The content is irrelevant. The fact that you had the conversation. I remember when we talked to each other on this day, right at this time, and it was tough, but I don't remember what we talked about. I just remember that you took the time to talk to me.

Yeah.

Right.

Yeah, absolutely.

Like the memory of interaction is not about the content in most cases, in my opinion anyway. I mean, it's more about the interaction that you have and the fact that the regard you have for someone else in the process. Have the conversation, pick up the phone.

What were the locker rooms like on those championship teams with the Wings? What was it when you guys Like, what was it about that locker room that was different than, I don't know, a .500 team that you—

Yeah.

At the Mammoth?

That's a really, really good question. And my immediate thought process goes to every team thinks they have good chemistry. Every team thinks they're a good, close group of guys.

Yeah.

Right? Every team thinks they're a family. Right. And then they lose. And the other team that won said, so this is kind of the myth of pro sports. And I'm just going to—

I want to go here.

Is, is because everybody starts the season, right? Baseball, spring training, grass is green.

It's beautiful.

Everybody, everybody's zero, you know, zero and zero, but they're going to be 182 and 0, right? And chemistry and team camaraderie and culture and all those things, everybody has one, right? Some might be— they're all different.

They're all—

and some might be better in some ways and worse. And sometimes you win. One team wins at the end of a year, at the end of an endeavor, right? But you can't sit there and say that every team that lost had bad culture or bad chemistry or bad camaraderie or bad locker room. It's not the only thing. It's not the only thing.

You've got to have talent too, right? Yeah, that helps.

And you've got to play well together. I think some of this, the teams that I played on that were winners or have been involved in as winners all had great chemistry. But if we had lost, we still would've had the same chemistry. Right.

Okay.

And so at the end of the day, the chemistry matters in the long term to put yourself in a position. It's just not a— it's not magic. It's not a— it doesn't happen just by accident.

Yeah.

I mean, there's moments that create chemistry.

Like what?

Yeah. A certain win or a loss in a situation where you needed a win, but it galvanized you to go win the next time. Right. The Game 6 loss, relevant today. The Montreal Canadiens lose in Game 6 to the Buffalo Sabres, but then they go to— at home and then they go to Buffalo.

Right.

Chance to close out. Then they go to Buffalo and they win in overtime, right? Game 7.

In Buffalo.

In Buffalo, enemy territory. They win in Game 7. Well, that doesn't mean that Buffalo didn't have good chemistry, 'cause, you know, by chance, one shot goes in in overtime, right? But then we compare, well, they had great chemistry, but they didn't. That's bullshit, right?

Right.

It's an overarching kind of activity that goes on over the years. Now, you know, when you have bad chemistry, But there's moments that create good chemistry or good culture.

What are some moments that create good chemistry? Because I think from a sport, as observers of sports, most people are observers of sports. Very few, half of 1% of people in the world have been able to win at a sustained level. And I know you joke about the fact, oh, it was indoor lacrosse league, but you still won multiple world championships. And I mean, you've been on multiple World Cup teams and you're in multiple Hall of Fames for lacrosse, right? So you clearly understand this, but what are some of the things that create great chemistry? Not good, but great. Like if you were starting a team today, and I know you've started a couple of teams, how do you do it?

Yeah, well, it's an architecture, right? It's a structure, a platform to build from the beginning, and there's pieces that you have to put together. So I say this, And I've said this a lot of times, I'm not in the business of stacking chips.

Okay?

I'm in the business of putting a puzzle piece together. It's a flat structure, right? The puzzle pieces have to fit together because ultimately it's not about stacking chips. Like, I can't have all the number one and I can't have 5 LeBron James, right? You couldn't have had 5 Michael Jordans on a team, right? They all would want the ball, right? Right. Going back to the conversation about this silly t-shirt that I was talking about, 14 grinders, 1 superstar, right? All that stuff. It's about finding the people that will dedicate themselves to the role that you need them to dedicate themselves to in this current situation. They may have more talent or more skill level to do on another team might be different, but what's expected of them here? And then to check that ego at the door when they walk into the locker room and say, you know what? I have a big ego. I'm a really good player, but this is my role on this team, and I'm going to do this. That, to me, develops a chemistry when everyone acknowledges that.

Yeah.

And superstars still have to be superstars. They still have to be great players. But there is no sport that I know of Other than individual sports where, you know, the individual's heart, talent, blah, blah, blah, can carry you to a victory.

Right.

Carry you to a championship.

Right.

Anybody can win one game, right? Any monkey can win one game once or do one thing once. It's about a sustained expertise and excellence and a dedication and focus to— and your question was, it's a very complex one because you can't simply pinpoint one thing.

You can't just say, so you don't have like a checklist for chemistry?

No.

Is it a gut feeling inside of you?

It's a gut feeling to, like I said, fit the puzzle pieces together. Yeah, right. But if you don't know the personnel, if you don't know the menu of personalities that you're selecting from, getting them to do the right thing or getting them to mesh together is not the job of the leader.

Whose job is that?

The individuals included in this structure. You have to, again, it's like building any team. You have to have faith in the fact that what you've done is right and then let it coalesce. Let it, let the chemistry is chemistry because it's about a connective, right?

Is it about the patience too?

Sometimes. And sometimes you don't have patience sometimes. And by the way, I've made plenty of wrong decisions.

Yeah. Well, of course. I mean, nobody makes 100. Right.

And so you find a person, you think that person's going to be great, and then all of a sudden, You know, they, they act differently than what you expected, right? It's an evolving process. We make decisions based on the history, right? The history of a player, the history of, of, you know, the markets, the history of, of whatever happened, right? And, but you're, I've, I always said this, this was the hardest part about my job is I'm placing my success. And you and I had this conversation a long time ago.

Yeah. About golf.

Yeah. But you're, I'm placing my success, winning and losing, team culture, team chemistry in the hands of adolescent boys.

Yeah.

In my case.

Yes.

Right. It might've been easier with a women's sports team because they're much more mature, but adolescent boys at the pro level, right, are, they're adolescent boys and they do stupid shit sometimes.

Yeah. Well, they're not, the brain isn't fully developed until what, age 33?

Yeah. And then they've been hitting the head a lot. But yeah, you used to, you and I used to talk about the golf business.

Like I can do everything.

to set the table as a general manager of a golf course or a pro of a golf course. You can do everything to set the table for a tournament, an event, and then it rains outta your control.

Yeah.

Right? Yeah. That doesn't mean you didn't do the right things. That did— doesn't mean you didn't have chemistry. That doesn't mean that you didn't have, you know, culture in your room. It just means that there's circumstances that sometimes cause success and failure outside of your control. I mean, You can't build championship teams every year. Nobody does it. Right.

Right.

Everybody is competing. The other team's getting paid too.

Yeah.

Right. And that's, you know, like, like, oh, we didn't play very well. Well, maybe the other team played better than you did. Maybe they executed better. Maybe they had better team chemistry. Like, that's why I think this whole culture and chemistry thing is, is such a nebulous kind of, it's, it's unobtainable. We had great chemistry. Yeah, everybody does. And then you win. And sometimes you need luck. Sometimes you need luck to—

Or you don't know what great chemistry is until you've been part of an organization or a team that has great chemistry.

Yes.

Or— Because it's kind of like being in love, right? Like, you don't— we were talking about my historic love life yesterday on the golf course, and you— like, I didn't realize really what love was until I met Christine. It's no disrespect to the other women in my life, in my life, right? But it's like, oh, oh, so this is what they meant. I want to know what love is like. Oh, it's this. Like, and I think a lot of people don't really understand when you've been part of a championship team. It's like this intuitive thing. You can't— is it? It's sometimes hard to explain.

For me, it is very hard to explain because, like, and it's wily and Right.

Because when I was at Seaview at Marriott, I was a really great team. I mean, if you look at the people that were there, like one guy runs Trump Golf. I mean, like the other guy runs Ritz-Carlton Golf. Like it was an amazing organization. We won 4, our version of national championships were 400, you know, 4 national mer— or 2-time national merchandiser of the year. And like, you know, 5-star, like top Marriott golf facility, all of that. And then we were at our other golf company, Golf South, and that was not necessarily a great culture organization.

But the foundation is important.

Yeah.

Right. In order to, you can't build culture. It's, it's like a house. You can't put a roof on a shitty foundation. And I think the, the, the basis of the foundation is a tenet or belief system, right? A set of edicts or, or, you know, the, the belief that you have, you know, this is how I'm going to build it based on this structure. And again, sometimes you make mistakes based on the pieces that you bring in. Sometimes you make mistakes, but over time, the theory is your foundation is correct. And when you start to feel any corrosion of that foundation, you have to make those decisions. The decisions to bring in good people are relatively easy. It's what do you do when you find out that the person you thought was the right person is not? How do you respond to that? How fast, how quickly do you cut out the cancer? How quickly do you identify it? Because it's not about cutting out the cancer specifically. It's about the cells around it and how they react.

Have they been infected?

Right.

Yeah. Yeah.

Have they been infected and how do they react to you? They're looking at you. You're the leader. They're looking at you saying, Are you going to do something about this? Because you keep saying foundation is important, right? You keep saying culture, blah, blah, blah, it's important. But this piece, this cancerous cell needs to be cut out. Are you willing to do the shitty, hard, ugly work to do it?

Yeah.

Right? And that's ultimately what these guys, these other actors, in the mix, the other cells in the mix, how they're responding to what you do, and then how do they respond after that? Did you take too long? That can have a lasting effect. You did it, but it took too long, right?

Mm-hmm.

The ones that are really difficult are when you know it and maybe the other people don't. You know that you've got to cut something out and you do it before they realized that it needed to happen.

Yeah.

Because then they, there's some resentment or some, right? And sometimes you see something from afar or above or, or below or around, you get feedback and, and that becomes the harder question because you're doing something that they don't quite understand.

Understand. Yeah.

But I, I will tell you this, this is, this is one thing that I, I, I also, there is so much more value In learning how to win after you lose.

Ooh, talk about that. Well, how do you—

you don't know how sunshine, how lovely, beautiful, and wonderful sunshine is unless you spent all night freezing in the dark. Right? And sometimes you have to freeze in the dark. If you win early, these guys that win as rookies and think, well, this is the only world. Right? But Athletic endeavor is interesting. We talk about business a lot. Business is every day.

Yeah.

Business is you wake up every day, right? 9 to 5, right? You're there all the time. And a lot of athleticism happens every day, right? Where nobody's watching and nobody's paying attention and their athleticism, they're getting better at their craft every day that you don't see, but you see when the lights come on, You see them score in the spotlight, but they're really working super hard elsewhere. And I just think coming out of a loss, you learn a lot more than when you win. When you're successful, right, you think it's because of you.

Yes.

Successful.

Yeah.

Right? Might not have had anything to do with you. It might have been The circumstances, the environment, the market.

You know, Nick Saban said it's rat poison. Yeah.

Yeah. I mean, there, there's this whole construct of, of these people that, that are kind of breaking their arms, patting themselves on the back going, oh, look, we're successful. Right. But they had nothing to do with it and they don't really pinpoint what was important. But when you lose, when you struggle in business, when you are hurt, you Refine and you get much, much more laser acutely focused on what's the problem. And so you get better. And so sometimes over time you'll see improvements to that. I mean, I hate to throw teams under the bus because I don't know all their circumstances, but there are perennially teams that are basement dwellers.

Yes.

Right?

Yeah.

That could be ownership, but they change a lot of things. quickly, easily trying to find the fix. Right. And maybe it's ownership, but they perennially lose. And then you have other teams that are perennial winners that— All right.

I, I— well, they always pinpoint culture like, oh, they've got a better cult— like the Rockies, Colorado Rockies. They've lost for a long fricking time.

Yeah, man.

They're awful.

They are.

They're just a horrible organization.

But, but again, the circumstances are, you know, you look, we're in San Diego today. You look at the Padres versus the Dodgers. Why do the Dodgers win? Why do the Padres don't? I don't know. I can't answer the question specifically because I don't know enough about baseball. But the Padres seem to be a pretty well-constructed team. They have a pretty strong roster.

What, 97 games last year?

Spending a lot of money, right? In any other division, they might be running away with it, but they're next to the Dodgers. Circumstances are dictating their success. Now, can you get over the hump with it? I mean, the Dodgers seem to find a way to get over the hump, right? But the little brother that lives in San Diego that's kind of battling against this big behemoth from the North and the Dodgers, right? It's not to say that there's bad chemistry on either team. They have all kind of the right pieces put together, but they're just not kind of making that so— Over time, who's working harder? Hard to say, right?

Right.

Are the Dodgers working harder because they're winning? Are they spending more money? Do they have more kind of intelligence, more analytic intelligence, more kind of emotional and personal intelligence with their management? And so again, it's like this, I'd say tapestry because you have no clue in business or sports, or what is going to be the catalyst that made you get over the hump, whatever the hump is, right? Whether it's regular season wins or playoff wins or championships, or you never know. You don't know. I think basketball is easier because 1 or 2 players can affect frequently the outcome.

You need a superstar and 2 really great high-paid— And then a bunch of role players coming off the bench.

Exactly.

That's all you need.

So in basketball, it's a, maybe a little simpler, but there are still basement dwellers in basketball that can't seem to find a way to get over the hump.

Yeah. New owners, doesn't matter. Like the Clippers, right? I mean, Steve Ballmer, all the money in the world, right? Yeah.

New building.

Different than Donald Sterling, right? You know, like completely different kind of owner, and yet they're stuck in the mediocrity. Do you think it's— do you think that's an environmental thing? Like, do you think that there's some teams are cursed? Do you feel like—

I don't believe in that.

I don't believe in curses. Yeah, I didn't think you did, but I'm just curious.

I think there is a scenario. A lot of it's circumstantial. Can you pull yourself out of the circumstances? Sure. I'm the same GM. That's not true because you can never kind of dip your toe in the same water twice, right? In the same river twice. But you grow and you evolve. But my philosophies and tenets were the same every year. And those are, well, I mean, a lot of it is what we've already talked about, right? But yeah, but my point is every year I'm the same guy. Yeah. So I'm coming at it right from my personal perspective, right or wrong, good or bad. What I believe in is what I pour into the organization and hoping that I get the same reciprocal contributions from all interested parties.

Mm-hmm.

Right? And that's what you hope. But you can't take in the national— we used to joke about the National Cross, like, yeah, I'm putting my hands in the 21-year-old adolescents. But I also, like, you don't know what's going to affect your team. The plane might be late, the bag might get stuck, right?

Yeah.

The snowstorm does whatever. A guy working his weekly job or whatever gets hurt. Yeah. Right.

And freak accident.

You're like, I did this. But then all of a sudden the positive outcome is some guy steps in that's never had a chance and he delivers in a big way. Or there's a gaping hole there because this person is hurt and you can't recover from that. Like there's, there's just circumstances. So all you can do is control the controllables, right? Like every other opportunity.

Everybody does the same thing. Control the controllables.

And be consistent. Yeah. Right. And the organizations that have, I mean, we talk about luck, right? But the organizations that have things that kind of go their way seem to, I make my own luck.

Yeah. But everybody at that level, I'm not sure exactly. I'm not sure really what that means because at the highest levels, let's just take the NBA. All the owners are successful. You don't buy an NBA team unless you are successful, like having some level of Luck. Yeah. Right. Joe obviously built a great company, right?

Yeah.

And I'm sure there was some luck along the way, right?

I'm sure there was.

Right. Is he no different than the Reinsdorfs that own the Bulls? Like, from the standpoint of they're all successful people, so they've all got successful habits, they've all got successful tenets, they've all built successful companies, and yet it's hard to translate that. Not everybody wins the championship. You think that, you think that they put too much, like, is there too much emphasis on winning the championship in sports? Because, you know, in business there's not a—

No, because that's the point.

There's not a, there's not a podium in, in business.

Yeah. That's, so you measure your successes in different ways.

Yeah.

Right. Wins and losses are, are, are much kind of differently measured in the structure of, you know, day-to-day business. I used to tell people, you know, when you, you're a president of a a team, it's the same as the business that you run. Revenues, there's expenses, and the delta is the measurement of your success. Yeah, right. It's whether it's a positive or a negative, that's the measurement of your— it's no different.

Neither business can survive in loss.

However, you inject this competitive nature, competitive structure into your It's an entertainment vehicle right now, especially sports. It's sportainment, right? It's, we're injecting competition into our structure. And so there's 2 sides to the business and these super, I've seen it a number of times, these super successful business owners, right? That have generated vast amounts of wealth. feel like that they can apply that same logic to the competitive side.

Okay. Tell me about that.

It's an interesting structure. And I mean, I'm not talking about anybody in—

Yeah, yeah. I know. I know.

I'm talking about kind of the guy that made his money in medical device production, whatever he did, right?

Yeah.

He looks at this in a very kind of binary way and analytical way and And believes that you can then build a team that way. It just doesn't work that way. It's a very intimate, small group of people that drive your success. And I always used to say from a business perspective, so the, on the business side of, of team structure and entertainment and sports, you're trying to sell tickets, right? You only have a very limited amount of revenue streams, right? Sponsorships, right?

Tickets, merchandise.

You know, food and beverage depending on the building, right? All these other things that you can make money on. But, but there's a finite amount of revenue because it's kind of like time. We talked about this with tee times, right? It's if you don't sell the tee time today, it's gone tomorrow. It's gone, right? It's fleeting.

Yep.

And same with a ticket in a building to a game, to a special game. And once you've sold it out, you've maxed your ability to generate revenue, except you can create ancillary per capita type of things with more food, more—

Right.

merchandise, those types of things, more sponsorship, all those things. But at the end of the day, winning and losing affects the number of people that come to your building, which is interesting. You're a Chicago guy. The Chicago Blackhawks for a long time sold out their building. They were awful, terrible, but they sold out the building, which is fascinating to a lot of people. Why? Because they created a great experience. Whether they won or lost, you walked away and said, I had a great time.

Yeah.

It was affordable, it was fun, it was exciting, it was interesting. And then when started to win, they started to win Stanley Cups. Now it was like, oh, they got great culture, they got cam— they're a great business. Well, they were a great business before.

A better business before.

Yeah.

I, I would bet, I would say that they were probably more profitable.

100%.

I don't know the numbers for fact, but like, because the old man, uh, Wirtz, you know, threw nickels around like manhole covers was the saying, right?

Exactly.

Dollar Bill was his name, was his nickname.

So, but then you start to inject this concept of winning and losing into your business kind of pro forma, and you're thinking about the structure of, I'm once again putting the hands of my success into variables that I don't have a lot of control over. Did that guy get out of bed and work out, or did he get out of bed and have a donut?

Right?

Like, like—

Eko Arski.

Yeah. Yeah. Have another donut. So, you know what I'm saying? Right? Like, it's, it's one of those Scenarios where it's very difficult as a regimented business analyst, business leader, to understand what it takes to win and lose in these scenarios. And you say, well, Robert Kraft is a genius. I mean, he might be, but he did have the luxury of a duo of people for many, many years, right? Belichick and Brady that made him look like a genius. Yeah.

And Brady rarely got injured and yeah. Yeah.

They, I mean, so circumstances, this, and it's, this is, this is silly to say, well, what's the formula? Well, I'm just telling you that there's a matter of luck here, but the key is to keep yourself grounded in the concept of value your tenets, whatever those are. Right? They don't have to be mine. Value your foundation. Build a strong foundation of your organization, whatever organization it is, business, sports, whatever. Build that strong foundation. Continue to build upon that foundation and surround yourself with amazing people. And if you do that, the odds are you will be more successful than the guy next to you that doesn't do what you're doing. That said, Sometimes you need a little luck.

Yeah.

And you'll win. But that's not the championships. While we measure those success, Dan Marino never won a championship. Is he still a Hall of Famer?

Those questions, right?

Absolutely. Yeah, absolutely. 100%. He's one guy. Yeah. But again, the, we measure teams and championships and that's wonderful. And I'm, I'm, I feel like that's great. Okay. And you celebrate those and everybody cheers, but there's a lot of teams that are, do a lot of great work. They all work hard.

Yeah. They're all working hard.

Right? Those players are all working hard. And sometimes they find every— like I said, every team has a chemistry.

Yeah.

It might be better in— it might over-index in some areas than it does in others, and that helped them win. And then another team, completely different team, has a completely different chemistry. There's no one chemistry that wins every year.

Right, right.

And so I just think it's It's a bit of a— it's very hard to chase, but it's a bit of a fallacy, right? To think, oh, well, what's the championship culture and how does it work? Well, it's not that easy.

I think a lot of times people try to borrow people's championship cultures. We talk about culture a lot with our doctors because they don't know anything about this. Their idea of leadership is, we'll do it because I told you to, because I'm the doctor. That's their form of leadership. And I'm oversimplifying it, but that's Basically what they're taught. And then I think a lot of times businesses, what they try to do is they try to borrow— sports is what I love about sports, no matter what the sport is, is everybody feels like they can relate to it and everybody feels like they could do a better job running it. Everybody's got an opinion about how to run some kind of sports team or something like that. Okay. Or they should make this move or do that move, or the fucking GM doesn't know what he's doing because they got this guy. I could have told you that guy was going to be a train wreck. Right. But then they try to apply how you build a sports team to how you build a business team. Now, the closest I've ever come to winning a championship ring is my friendship with you.

Okay? That's really sad.

Yeah, but I'm 5'7 and I'm slow.

But you can hit the shit out of a golf ball.

I can hit the shit out of a golf ball, but golf is singular. I just gotta manage. Golf is, golf is so different because with golf, I, I've won golf. Like I've won, like I've played very well. I've played at a decent level. Not a, I'll never say a high level.

Yeah.

But I played at a pretty decent level. Golf is so different than this team sports that I've been in.

Oh, 100%.

I mean, your golf team, the only thing you did together as a team was ride the bus. Like, that's it. Yeah. You know?

Yeah.

Like, because how Joe plays over here in his temper tantrums really has zero bearing on how I play.

Yeah.

Right. Because golf is such— golf is between the ears. It's— oh yeah, it, it's nothing more than that. Believe me, I'm well aware. It's managing fucking emotions. Yeah.

You didn't manage your emotions well.

You were on your edge. I'm like, wow, he's kind of hot shit.

That was pretty light.

I'm like, can I crack a joke? Probably not. He did lead the league in penalty minutes.

Probably not.

But, and I think we try to take what we see in our sports teams and we try to take those rules and apply them. to the business. And I can tell you, business feels vastly different because 100% vast. You guys have training camp, then you have preseason, then you have games, then you, you have an arc, you have a clear end, you have a defined goal of what it looks like to win. Yeah. Okay.

Yes.

In business, there is no— the beginning is today. Every day is the beginning, right? Like, yeah, you can say it's a month or you can say it's a quarter, but you know, at the end of the day, You don't have an offseason.

No.

So when you were then building business teams, so you go from being a player to then being a GM to then being president where you're handling all the day-to-day ops. How did you translate that experience from winning championships to the business side of it? Because, and now I know the business is about winning the championship, But you said something yesterday when I said, hey, do you miss running the day-to-day of the SEALs and being involved? And you're like, I kind of get the sense that you'd done it for so long that you were tired of it because it had kind of worn you out because there's no season. It's always, it's every day.

Yeah, you're the on-season, but that's business, right?

Yes.

Yes. But you couple that with the roller coaster ride, roller coaster ride of wins and losses. And it's, it's, I've never been great at managing that roller coaster.

Clearly. I saw that yesterday. Yeah.

It's hard.

It's fucking hard.

Yeah.

No, it's really hard.

It's very hard.

I agree. It's hard as hell.

And it's hard when, you know, you're losing and you're trying to figure it out and you're trying to, I think most fans and most observers of pro sports think that When they, when their team loses and maybe loses again and again and again, that the front office or the business people or the coaches or whatever aren't doing anything. Oh yeah, these guys are not doing a thing.

They're not doing a thing to fix it. These knuckleheads, what are they doing? Hey, they're not fixing the problem.

They're not fixing the problem.

They gotta get 'em out. See?

And, and again, I, I go back to understanding the structure of And people, while trading partners and different things, there are certain challenges, collective bargaining and all the rest of it. I'm not doing a very good job of answering the question.

That's okay.

All I can tell you is what was most difficult for me is that I always responded to hard coaching. I always responded to crack of the whip, right? And it was, and maybe it just made me a very simple kind of being, right? If it was like, get your ass in gear. Okay, I will do that. Right. And, and so what was difficult for me when you get into the business structure is, especially now, is hard coaching isn't—

No, hard coaching is not acceptable.

It's not acceptable anymore.

Nick Saban will tell you one of the reasons why he left is because if I coach him, my words, not his, if I coach him too hard, they're going to leave the next year for a bigger payday at another school. So I've got to balance all that now too.

But hard coaching of players is still accepted, right? In this case with Nick Saban, I understand there's a creep starting to happen into athletics into players who are evolving into a different animal, into a different receptor of the coaching structure. So coaches now, and this is in my opinion, coaches that are evolving with that and understanding that, that are young and maybe coming right out of playing and that understand that model. are more effective than the old school.

Yeah. Yeah. You're seeing it. Yeah. You're seeing it across all college sports, especially. Yeah.

100%.

They're like, I can't control the player.

So coaching has evolved. Yeah. Right. I'm not sure I evolved with it as much as I would like to think that I did or didn't do.

But does it really mean that you didn't evolve or maybe you just You had your time in the sun.

Potentially. But some of that is, is your evolution as a leader, right? Has to continue to evolve. You have to continue to know the trends, right? And again, I go back to like picking up the phone and talking to players and having the relationship with people to understand what makes them tick and what's important to them. Because what was important to players and staff and personnel 20 years ago, 25 years ago, is not the same as what it is today. Right. And so if you are not evolving, you are devolving. And so, so the point I'm trying to make is this. I tried to apply a lot of philosophies, hard coaching type philosophies to the business metric. Some people responded to that, others didn't.

Oh yeah.

Right. And so trying to find a way to navigate The people that didn't, and then modify behavior and to fit the mold. It became to me, and I'm not saying I hated it, I loved it, but it becomes challenging.

Yeah.

And I guess that's why people that begin to advance in years across every sport or business, Maybe losing touch with the most important people in your structure are your employees, and whether they be players or otherwise. And if you lose touch with that, then you're out of the mix. And so maybe I have.

It's the hardest part I've had in leadership is evolving. So when we worked together 30 years ago, I mean, It was just expected as the GM, you're just kind of an asshole, a hard ass, right? That's just, that's how you coach, right? Today, Mavericks, this startup, my company is, we have, let's just call it 7 or 8 full-time equivalents. Okay. And it's a virtual company, which is a whole different thing, by the way.

Mm-hmm.

It's infinitely more complex to run. Everybody's like, oh, virtual companies are great. You can hire anybody from anywhere and, you know, they get to work from home. But you don't have any relationship. You don't get to know— you can't imagine having a marital relationship on Zoom.

You don't go out for beers. Right.

Yeah. Play golf. And so, and my team now is 85% women. Vastly different than if I think about leading a team of men, which was basically what we had except for Tara and the Bevcart girls.

She was a man.

Yes, she was. She was great.

But yeah, she was a man. She passed away.

I know. ALS. Did you know that?

I know. Sorry.

ALS. No, I know.

We can edit out later.

No, we can't. No, I talk about everything. So yeah, I mean, cuz I'm still connected to her daughter. Just horrible. Yeah. Like when you're 6 months, she was done.

Done. Done.

Fucking life is short.

God bless her.

So the, the thing is, the way I've had to evolve as a leader is like, if I compare to like what we had at Princeton Meadows, and then going to Perdido and running U Club and all that stuff. And then what I have to do today, I mean, my team is across— I'm in 2 countries. I have a team in the Philippines. I have my chief operating officer and business partners in Wichita Falls, Texas. Like, I was on the phone with her this morning at 6:30 this morning talking about some stuff, like, for an hour, right? It's so different.

Yeah.

Because not only have people evolved and expect something different about what they think life should be, You have people that come into the business that have very little business experience, but they have this preconceived notion of what they think it should be and what it should look like. And you and I both know that, like, that ain't going to fucking work. And yet you have to manage this of, yeah, maybe it will. Let's give it a try. Well, hey guys, let's kind of hedge our bets over here because we know that this thing isn't necessarily going to work out as well. It's really interesting. It's really hard.

I, it's, this is so funny and I don't know why I just thought of this story, but it's just a story. I had an employee worked in ticket sales. I had an office that had a window and then there was an exit near, near my windows. And so I was in my office and every day this particular guy would leave at like 3:30.

Every day.

And I'd see him walking by and not a direct report, right? He worked for somebody in the, the director of ticket sales. And every day this guy would walk out and he's walked by. And finally I said, you know, we work until like 5 o'clock, right? And he goes, well, you told me I could leave to go see my son's game one day. I'm like, one day?

Is there a game every day?

And so he— and I actually, if you get your stuff done, if you work your tail off or you come in at 6:00 AM and stay till 3:00, I'm cool. Right? I'm very much Just get your shit done.

Right.

And I'm cool with you— family, very important, right? Go pick up your son, do your thing. But maybe you should tell us. Yeah.

Yeah.

And this guy got so upset that he quit because I pointed out that he was leaving every day at 3:30.

Was there a game every day?

Well, I don't know why he was going. I don't know all the— and maybe I should have learned the reasons, and maybe I should have been more compassionate to what was happening. Right?

How long ago was this? Is it 10 years ago?

2 years ago.

2 years ago?

Yeah.

Oh God.

And I was like, you know, so my response— I was a bad guy for this. I was a terrible guy, you know, goes on the Glassdoor, whatever, and tells everybody what a terrible manager I am because I merely pointed out to him that Hey, we work till 5 o'clock, you know? And there was obviously, we were coming out of a time, right, when COVID changed the workplace a lot.

Yeah, it did.

And it was like some people were virtual and other people were on site, and then there was some that were doing this and this, but different jobs required different kind of structure. But the virtual workplace is an interesting structure nowadays. I watch my, some of my family members in this virtual space, in my own, right? I just happened— I get up early and I do a lot from like 6 o'clock to like 10 o'clock, and I go play golf, and then I come back and I get back on my computer and I hammer out more stuff now that I'm working in this virtual environment with a virtual company like yours doing different things.

Yeah.

But I just happened to map out what schedule that I want. And I just find that very fascinating. Like, we never played golf in the middle of the day.

No. Like, we just—

you ran a business.

We stood around at Penn's. Didn't matter if we were slow. It's like, we got to keep working.

Yeah, you got to do stuff.

Got to be there for meetings. Go clean something. It's like, go. Yeah. Like, you have to be there. You're not going to be successful unless you work 10 to 12 hours a day. I'm like, God Almighty, I should have gone out and played a lot more golf.

I was having a conversation with my wife last night, and it's like, I do sound like an old guy. Hey, get off my lawn.

But you live in a condo, so you can't tell them to get off your lawn.

Hey, boomer. But it's one of those things, like, I have people that work for me that, like, they'll do nothing until I tell them what to do.

Yeah, that's fascinating to me. Right? It's just, we're fucked if we get invaded.

It takes more energy for me to come up with shit for you to do than for me To not have you. I'll just do it myself. And so that's part of a challenge of this whole leadership structure is like, okay, what do you do yourself?

Yeah.

And then what do you kind of delegate?

Right.

But then your delegation takes time until you get somebody to the point where they're self-sufficient. Getting them up to that point is a really interesting process because you're distracting yourself from all the things that you know need to get done, and your tether starts to— like, you don't know where to manipulate or, or angulate the, the tether, right? And it's like, okay, like, if I do this, it's gonna take me 2 minutes, it's gonna take them 20, metaphorically, right?

So anyway, it's, you know, and with salespeople, I find it fascinating because, you know, it, it's very clear to have a, a KPI, or we call it a signal in our company, About whether or not the sales and marketing team is doing their job, right? If we've got 20 appoint— 20 sets, which is an appointment, you know, and then 16 of those wind up with, you know, qualification calls and we wind up with 7 membership applic— you know, people that join. Those are very clear metrics. There are very clear metrics in the financial side of things.

Okay. Mm-hmm.

What are our ratios? All that stuff. In operations, there's not. So like, I don't really care. I've, I've had all kinds of different salespeople.

Mm-hmm.

And I've had this, I've had one where this person, like, I swear to God, they get out of bed, they've gotten it. Like, they'll get out, they would get out of bed at like 10 AM. They would surface around 11:30, 12 o'clock. And they fucking nailed their numbers and beat them. Like, they were the number one salesperson and they beat them. Like, and they, it was never one of these things like the last week they didn't have a flurry. It was just every day, bam, bam, bam, bam.

Do you care about their process?

I don't give a shit at all. Well, let me rephrase this. I do care about their process as long as they have one that's definable, because I think you have to have a definable process. And I think that process comes from understanding how you're made. So, for example, what I've realized in the last couple of years, one, I never should have been day-to-day operations running a club. That was never, ever something. That's not who I am.

Okay?

And the second thing is that I always thought that I had to be always on and always working. And my design is actually that I'm a hermit. I actually, I need significant downtime because that's where the downloads come from. Like, you know, we finished playing golf, we went back to the hotel, had to have a conversation, took a shower, had some dinner, you know, went out with some of the docs. But I was back in the hotel by like, I don't know, 8 o'clock or 8:30. And I have that downtime and literally I start getting downloads of like business frameworks. I've been up since, I don't know, I was up till 1:15 and then I was up, I've been up since like 3:30, like just getting these downloads. But I never would've allowed myself to operate that way because I never knew how I was really truly made. And what's really cool about today is we can learn how people are made and what the rhythms are supposed to be more so than we ever have, which then allows us as a leader to create the space and the container for them to operate in their best and their fullness. So I don't care if my salesperson comes in at noon.

I don't— Maybe you're outcome-driven.

Yeah.

So you just want championships. You don't care how they get there. So why do you keep asking me questions?

Because you're here.

You're asking about culture and chemistry. You don't give a shit about the chemistry. No, you don't. You care about the outcome.

No, because I realize that to get the outcome, you have to— the outcome is not a standalone thing.

Okay, so let me ask you a question about this particular salesperson. Okay? In the context of how that cell— we talked about cells before— how that cell interacts with the other cells, You don't care, but the other cells are— No, I do. But the outcome's what matters. Okay. And, and I'm using this as a metaphor. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

I know, I know.

I'm not taking this as a personal affront.

Well, it's a personal affront. Okay.

Relax. Keep coming over the table. Okay. But the point I'm trying to make is—

For the record, I would die. I would lose.

Yeah.

I don't care how big the team is.

But my point is, right? My point is on a team, and we're talking about team structure, again, in a virtual world, this might be easy because most people don't watch Salesman A who gets up at noon and does his job and then blows his numbers out of the water.

Mm-hmm. Right.

But in a, on a team structure, in a locker room, right? If Player A walks in, doesn't work hard, doesn't train hard, doesn't get better at what he's doing, doesn't enhance the people around them, right? And all he does is show up and score goals. The outcome, the output is there, but is he positively influencing a locker room? So when you talk about chemistry and culture and those things, how much better could Salesman A be if he actually got the fuck out of bed at 8:00 AM and did all the things that he does? And could he actually sell 5 times as much if his effort was blah, blah, blah?

Right.

So we put Salesman A or Player A on a pedestal because he creates outcomes. And yet, what's he doing to the collective consciousness or chemistry of his coworkers or people around them? Now, in your case, you're virtual, so probably people don't see them.

Yeah, it's not—

But when you inject that into a locker room scenario, that becomes very important. And if you don't see it as a leader, this guy, yeah, he's delivering. But what these guys see, or girls see, when they're watching the performer, they're going, well, he could be so much better if he did this.

So how would you handle that in your role?

Well, that's a method of communication and constant communication. I've had endless hours of conversation with players who I thought could be that are superstars that could more positively enhance their relationship with their teammates. Right? And again, this is all about the interconnected tapestry, the interconnectedness of my role, the puzzle piece. Right? It's not a stacking of chips. I'm not the top chip.

Right. Yeah, it's the puzzle piece.

It's the puzzle piece. I might be a corner on this team. I might be a middle on this team. Right. I might be the blue sky on this team in the puzzle. I might be the brick wall down here. You have to figure out where your role is in that structure as a leader, right? Because you might have a team of superstars. Open the gate, let the horses run.

Yeah.

Right. You might have to put the whip to the horse in certain scenarios. The hard part with a multiple player team. They're all different humans. They're all different ages. They're all different stages of their lives. They all— some of them have kids, some of them have girlfriends. Like I said before, guy lost his luggage, guy broke up with his girlfriend, guy, right? He, you know, guy's, you know, Gatorade deal went sour.

Yeah.

There's a tapestry that goes on here, and there's a puzzle that you're continuing and constantly trying to I use the word manipulate, it's probably not the right word, but—

But it is. I mean, you are.

Yeah. You continue to move the puzzle. And the puzzle, by the way, the pieces, the shapes of the pieces are changing daily.

Yeah.

Right? So when you talk about why teams win, don't win, it's the leader and then the cohorts, the players, the staff that constantly find ways to make those puzzle pieces fit better. Because again, the shapes are constantly evolving on the puzzle piece. Again, we don't stack chips because you can have all the best players, but it doesn't work that way. It's about finding the right people. And I think I said this to you yesterday, and it's a line from the Broadway musical Rent.

And it's— Wow. The 3rd Broadway musical we've covered. We're going all over the place.

Mormons.

Yes. Spamalot.

But it literally— I'm looking for baggage that goes with mine. Everybody's got baggage.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Everybody's got baggage.

I'm looking for baggage. It goes with my baggage.

Yeah.

And now you, if you introduce 25 people on a team or 60 people on a football team, by the way, or coaches or, right, multiple levels of different actors in the mix, it's about how do you continue to, and if you don't know these people, if you're just merely kind of looking from your perch at who they are and what they do, and you're measuring their output by contributions to the bottom line, which is important.

Right.

But if that's all you're measuring by, you struggle because you can't pinpoint distractions when they come up or negativity or the guy that wanted to play credit card roulette and then skipped out on the meal after a lunch and what that does to a chemistry. of a team, speaking from personal experience.

There's got to be a good story behind that.

There's a good story, but it happens. And that's what I think becomes exhausting over a 20-year career.

It becomes very exhausting.

Is you're constantly on, and there's no way to be virtual in sports. Everything is—

Right there.

Person to person. It's right in front of you. Right. So, yeah.

Do you like running a virtual company?

It's much— it's interesting. I really like the industry. I think the industry is fascinating. And I'm producing trading cards and collectibles at this point. I just started this company a couple of years ago and fascinated by the margins and the business, the growth of— I was mentioning to the people here that trading cards are a $50 billion company.

What?

It's a $50 billion industry.

Are you kidding me?

When you think about Pokémon and a number of other iterations of games and cards and trading cards and sports and fantasy and all the world of trading cards, $50 billion.

And it is fascinating. In a digital world, it's still the physical cards.

I had a conversation this morning. It's amazing. A conversation, we're talking Major League Pickleball. And the young lady I spoke with today, incredibly intuitive and had just come from a conference last week about experiential marketing and how using experiences to drive your product levels higher. And she was saying, that the current trend in experiential marketing is very analog because people are reconnecting to the analog as opposed to the digital.

Yeah. Yeah.

And it's fascinating to hear the people want to touch.

Yeah.

They want to feel. They want the visceral sound of the engine, you know, that whatever that engine is, they want to engage. And so collectors, has become a new commodity. And I find it fascinating. I knew nothing about trading cards. I had trading cards as a kid and hockey cards. We used to throw them against the wall, flip cards to see who won the cards. And so I didn't collect them. I didn't save them. I didn't put them in—

Yeah, you played with them.

Yeah, I played with them. They were playing cards. It's the same way. And I mean, I think Pokémon's the same way, but now you're going into a structure where the pyramid structure of this And the collectibility platform. And then it's a lottery. It's legalized gambling is really what it is now. It's fascinating.

Really?

To create a card, a lacrosse trading card that is a 1-of-1 trading card that sells, you know, 2 weeks, gets graded. And 2 weeks after we release it, it gets graded and it's put up on eBay. And they got $10,000 for a card that we created.

out of thin air. Well, you're creating your own scarcity, your own authority. Yes, 100%.

The rarities, the scarcity, it's a supply and demand issue. And it's fascinating.

It's like Beanie Babies.

100%.

They just manufactured them. You do realize they controlled it and they manufactured how many of those were made to create the scarcity.

On purpose.

Yeah, on purpose. They made billions of dollars.

And so what is happening now, like Pokémon, which is a Fascinating business. Fascinating. They're fantasy characters. They do not exist.

At least with baseball, it's real people. So these are made-up people. So you can make up anybody you want.

They're made-up characters. And there is, by the way, an interesting world that we're in right now where AI is beginning to kind of— not beginning, it's taking over, right?

Yeah, it is taking over.

unbelievable injection of art by AI as a structure for the foundation of a lot of these collectibles is a really interesting world right now. So we're creating this TCG game, which is a trading card game, and it's basically, I don't want to go into it a lot, but I needed an artist to do the work. And so I found an artist, talked about virtual worlds, artist in Russia, who's doing the work. We're printing in China, right? We're printing in Italy. We print trading stickers in Italy. We have a printer in Denver. And talk about how do you like working virtually? I love the interconnectedness of what we've brought together from the world.

Yeah.

We had a printer in Pakistan and navigating just language and navigating The people, it's harder, but it's, I can pick the people I want to work with.

Yeah. It's really fascinating. Yeah. I've been, I've been doing the virtual business thing for 12, 15, 15 years, better part of 15 years aside from the time that I had the clinics. Right. Because that was, I was in the virtual world. It wasn't as sophisticated as it is now. Then I went back to the brick and mortar. That was really interesting to go from the space of leaving the golf business, starting my first business. And, you know, back then it was like, You're on the phone, right? And if you hire, oh, really cool, I can hire somebody in Nevada or Mexico right now. It's when you— and I've gone back and forth between this a couple of times, and it really— the virtual world is fascinating. You actually, in my view, you actually suspend this energy that you put into creating a culture because—

Yeah, you don't need it.

You don't need it. It's really fascinating to me.

Until your employees tell you you do.

It's funny, my Filipino employees like it more than my US-based employees. Yeah.

Interesting.

Well, because that's like their world. It's a whole patriarchal world.

Let me ask you a question. How much do you use AI in your business?

A lot.

How many AI employees do you have? You asked this question.

Yeah. So I don't, I haven't quantified it. I would tell you that I've probably cut my overhead, my head. If I didn't have AI, I'd probably have, instead of 7 key employees, I'd probably have 12.

Yeah. Interesting, right?

And it's going to go down because we're building a whole marketing suite for our doctors. I have a social media manager here soon.

Yeah.

I haven't had one. It does it for you. Yeah, it does it for me and it's going to cost me $5 a day or $5 a month.

Which the deterioration of the entire economy based on AI could be an interesting—

But it's always been that. I mean, they said this about, look, industries come and go. Every industry has a lifespan. My mom was a travel agent. She was at the tail end of when I mean, travel agents were obliterated, right?

Yeah.

But our unemployment rate didn't go up. In fact, our unemployment rate went down.

Different industry.

And the economy went up. So I don't buy this that nobody else is going to have a job and people are, people are always getting replaced, but they, but we're, the difference for us is we know how to adaptively manipulate our environment to our, to our ability to survive. Yeah.

I mean, totally different conversation.

Yeah. That'd be the next one that we have when you come up to LA and play golf. You're gonna play better golf next time?

I had 5 birdies.

Yeah, I know, but you were worthless.

I know, but you're, you're like—

look, I'm not a guy that makes a lot of birdies.

That doesn't fucking matter.

Yeah, whatever.

You're hurting my chemistry.

You, uh, you need to go play golf. What's, uh, you're playing golf again today?

I'm playing again.

How many days in a row have you played?

Uh, I don't play a lot.

You know everybody there.

They know me.

And you are America's guest.

I, I am. So yeah, no, I like to play, I like to play golf.

Okay.

But that doesn't, you know, I, I work in very, uh, interesting time zones.

Yeah.

So I'm able to kind of manufacture that opportunity. So yeah. God bless cell phones.

God bless. Uh, anything you want to pimp while you're here? Like for people to go buy something and make you money?

Well, I, you know, if, if you're interested in, in you know, kind of learning a little bit more about our trading card business. It's TFLSport.com. TFLSport.

Okay.

No S. So check that out if you want to. Yeah, man, I'm, it's a really intriguing and interesting business and we're having a ton of fun doing it. But—

And what's TFL? What's this?

TFL.

What is this?

That's, that's Total Fucking Legend.

Total Fucking Legend. All right. Thanks for coming over, buddy. Good to see you.

You too.

Always a blast.

Yeah.

All right, everybody. Peace out. We'll see you. If this episode got you thinking differently, hit follow and share it with someone stuck in the system. Please leave a review.

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