Ashley Adamson and Yogi Roth: Top Teams and the Power of Connection

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Welcome to Barron's The Way Forward. I'm Greg Bartalus, and my special guests are Ashley Adamson, an Emmy Award-winning broadcast and Big Ten football host, and Yogi Roth, a Big Ten Network college football analyst, filmmaker, author, and podcast host. Together, they will discuss how advisors can harness the power of connection. Welcome to the podcast.

Thank you. It is awesome to be here. I just want to say Yogi and I have been on each other's podcasts maybe, I don't know, a dozen, 20 times. You come on a lot. I come on a lot.

When in doubt, call Ashley.

And this is the first time we've been interviewed on someone else's podcast together, so— That's awesome. Maiden voyage for us.

Well, I heard one of those podcasts, and it was very cool to hear your chemistry and how you guys just bounce right off of each other. So, you also have a long history of working together. Now, let's go back for listeners and just let's provide, you know, talk about your background, how you work together, et cetera.

Well, Ashley and I met, ironically, here we sit in LA, a couple miles away from where we are right now in downtown LA. 13 years ago, Pac-12 Network's head launch was a conference-owned television network. And they hired two fresh faces, one coming from the Midwest all the way across to the West Coast. And literally my first day was when I landed on a plane, got here, and all of a sudden we met each other in some like musky old bar where it was like kind of a meet and greet where you met all of your new colleagues. And for whatever reason, I mean, you were the only person I think I talked to the entire night. And we just vibed immediately.

I think one of those, It was one of those things. I had come up through local news and I had moved around. And when I got hired, a little bit sight unseen, the joke is always I would say that I was the only host that got hired without an actual audition. And if I had auditioned, they never would have hired me because I was very green. But I felt a little out of place for a lot of reasons. And for whatever reason, Yogi and I just, we ended up meeting that night. And I was like, I think he feels out of place too. And so we just started chatting. And I think when you talk about it, I know we're going to talk about connection and teammates and all the rest, but there are just some people when you meet them, you feel like you've known them your whole life. And Yogi was one of those people. It's been special to spend 13 years of a career together.

That's amazing. Well, what did you do, just briefly, what did you do before you guys met?

Yeah, well, for me, I had played football in college at Pitt, and then I moved overseas to Australia and played over there for the Gold Coast Stingrays, fell in love with the ocean. And when I came back to the US, I was like, whatever it takes to get to the West Coast, I need to get to the ocean. And at the time, my greatest mentor in my life was a guy named Pete Carroll, who was the head coach at USC. Called me up in the middle of the night one night and said, do you wanna come out and join our staff? And I said, yeah, as long as you pay for my master's degree and I don't wanna coach. And he said, sure, just get out here. I was on the next flight out and 2 weeks later, of course I was coaching. I was sleeping on the couch, living in the office, but I was getting my master's degree and just kind of fell in love with football. But if you rewound it to my playing career at Pitt, I'd always meet broadcasters and I love that. And I'd meet them and be like, what, Ashley, you're a broadcaster? You're not like a teacher on the side? You don't have all these other jobs? Like, this is what you do? And I would meet like Bob Davey and Kirk Herbstreit, personalities like that. And that's really became a north star for me of, I wanna tell stories and I wanna talk about college football every weekend. A bridge to that was my time at SC. When that ended, like everybody who comes out from the middle of nowhere in Pennsylvania, you fall in love and you never leave the ocean. So whatever it took to stay in LA, I was gonna do. And that led to broadcasting. And I've been doing that now for 18 years.

That's awesome. I mean, it's so great that you played and you married your passion for the sport by doing that, which you also love on air. That's great. And you were from Michigan, is that right?

Yeah, so I was born in Denver. I lived in Michigan for about 10 years in Ann Arbor. And then I went back back to Denver for high school. And then I went back to the East Coast for college. I went to Boston College. I ran track for a hot minute there.

Hall of Famer.

I lasted for a year, played a little rugby. Yeah, and I think when I look at sort of my trajectory, I fell in love with sports really early on, thanks to my dad. He went to Notre Dame, so like the brainwashing started very early on. He would take me to Notre Dame football games as a little girl. And he was the one who planted the seed for me. He just said, you know, I knew I was never gonna be good enough to play sports professionally. But I just loved them. I loved being on a team. I loved what everything that it represents. I think sports is one of the most beautiful things we have in this life. And so it was like, how can I stay around sports if I'm not gonna be good enough to play at the professional level? And that was sort of the answer. He said, well, have you thought about sports broadcasting? I'm like, yeah, who's gonna listen to me talk about sports? So, you know, I ended up going to Boston University for grad school. I got my master's there in broadcast journalism. Go Terriers. And I just started the local news route. I moved all over. I spent all the hotspots in my 20s: Albany, New York; Syracuse; Indianapolis; and then finally San Francisco.

And there was a story I believe I came across. There was a fateful game you attended, and it was like whoever won, you would move— fill in the blanks.

Yeah, this was kind of— I'll try and give without getting too deep into my family history, but so my dad and mom got divorced when I was young, and that was when we moved. My mom and I moved to Michigan with my older brother, and we lived in Ann Arbor where she was getting her master's, and her family's from Michigan. And the agreement was that whenever we got to high school, we could decide if we wanted to stay in Michigan or if we wanted to go back to Denver and live with my dad and go to high school out there. And so, when it came time for my brother to decide, he went to, he moved back to Denver, and it crushed my mom. And I remember when it became time for me to decide where I was gonna go, I felt like, well, I can't leave, I can't also leave my mom. So, unbeknownst to me at the time, she had gone to Colorado for undergrad, and then she, like I mentioned, she went to Michigan for her master's. Colorado came in to play Michigan in 1994. And I don't know if there are any College Football Busters fans that are listening to this podcast, but I'm sure everyone remembers that game very well. They call it the miracle at Michigan. And what I didn't know is that my mom said, you know what, I don't want Ashley and her brother to grow up apart. So whoever wins this game, that's gonna be the sign from God that that's where we're gonna live. And she said that towards the end of the game, when it was gonna be that Michigan was gonna win, she started feeling really sad. And she said, maybe that was the sign that I needed was that I didn't want to stay in Michigan. I wanted to go to Colorado and have them be together. And then all of a sudden, Cordell Stewart throws a Hail Mary bomb to Michael Westbrook, and they win on a walk-off Hail Mary. And I think, I remember she came home that day, and she was just a Twitter, and she said, "We're moving to Colorado." I'm like, "What are you talking about?" So sports have played a very pivotal role in my life for a lot of different reasons.

That's great. That's an awesome story. And, you know, being literally on the front lines with broadcasting, I mean, you're up close seeing teams, and I think, You really have a sense of what's in common with successful teams and those that are not. And, you know, it's often said there are connections with sports and, you know, other facets of business, but it would seem to be true. And I definitely wanna dig into a little bit of that. Let's talk about something that I know you two are keen to discuss, which is the power of connection and how powerful that is. So take it away.

Yeah, I think when you think about what makes a good broadcaster, we'll just start there. I think it is how quickly can you feel connected to somebody that you either do or don't know in a moment? Because all of the great broadcasters, that's what they do. They make you feel like you've known them for forever. And so part of that is the prep and the homework to get to know somebody before you interview them, but really it is about just being present with somebody and actually listening to what they're saying. And I think the power of connection, and it's true both within teams, like you see the really good teams that are super connected, they know each other's story. Like they understand where the guy or the gal sitting next to them came from. There's a deeper level of understanding rather than just— I think we live a lot of our lives on the surface. I think everybody feels more comfortable at the superficial level and the, "Hi, how are you?" and we stay up here. And I think when you really do the work, and there is a beautiful thing about curiosity, and I think it's both an innate trait, but I also think it's a learned skill. When you can learn to be curious, genuinely curious about other people, I think it's a total gift. And I think to me, that is ultimately what breeds connection. But that every great team I've been on, that has been the common thread. I would say there is just, they have a connection that is hard to explain, but when you've been around it, you can, you can feel it.

You moderated a session earlier today that I went to that was, it was really dynamic. And yet they put us into these small groups. And in our group, we talked about like what the best teams have done in our time. And I immediately went back to the floor of a locker room. And I can remember from growing up in a town of 2,500 people in the middle of nowhere, I could see the gym floor right now. And after a hellish practice, that's when me and my teammates would connect. Then I think of the locker room at Pitt, the locker room at USC, and now we spend our careers in locker rooms. I'm literally going to Columbus, Ohio tomorrow to call their spring game for the defending national champions. You talk to players in locker rooms and that's when all the walls are broken down. You can just sit back and be like, yo, where you from, man? "Tell me a little bit about your story. How'd you overcome some adversity?" And there's a beautiful connection there. I think when it comes to leadership and when it comes to organizations or the hierarchy, even of a team, the higher you go, the less you are willing to sit on the proverbial locker room floor. I've had coaches like that. I've been around coaches that have done that and the inverse of that. It's very easy to look at success and say, this is the one that's been willing to get down to that level again. So whether you wanna use the term vulnerability, which I never knew what that term was until Brené Brown said it. We were doing it in locker rooms, but now I love the fact that it's really front and center. And you've got young coaches, you've got older coaches, they're reframing how they look at sport, also reframing how they look at business. I mean, look at business right now. The world's chaotic when it comes to the financial world. The best, to me, financial corporations, industries, brands, you name it. We work with a guy named Dane Burkeholder. He's an American. He's got a group out of Pennsylvania and they have the ability to break down those walls and be like, all right, what matters to you? Let's talk about that. And then let's make decisions based on that. And I think in my entire sporting life, honestly, Greg and Ash, like the best teams, and that's why we vibe, 'cause we've been on that locker room floor after a celebratory win or after a dramatic loss. And I think if I could urge any CEO, leader, whatever, is the higher you go, compete to be able to get to that place, or you will lose the team. And then you become transactional. And that is to me when everything fundamentally never achieves or maximizes its potential.

And Yogi, I think you should share, I mean, Pete Carroll is someone who, you know, you mentioned gave you your first job in coaching and has made a couple of phone calls to you, but you said he was the best coach you've ever been around because why?

Oh man, when I moved out to LA, I called all of my old teammates and I was like, God, bro, I wish you got to play for Pete. And really simply because everyone felt seen and heard. I mean, this was the Prince of LA at the time. Now he's doing that in Las Vegas. He did it in Seattle. And as a head coach or a CEO of a Fortune 500 company, you are— you got a lot going on and a lot in your head, but can you compete to be present? And that's where he was magical. He— everyone that was across from him, whether it was 2 minutes or 20, you felt seen and heard. You felt like you had a voice.

I think that's incredibly important for team leaders, really, in all facets of business, because yesterday we came across a fact that 23% of employees are not fully engaged, or only 23% are fully engaged. So part of that is just like, yeah, people, as you mentioned, they don't feel seen and heard. And it does not require a Herculean effort to open your eyes and your ears and say, what's going on? What's your story? What are your challenges? And, you know, it really is in the interest of the people running teams and companies to do this. It's like you're self-defeating if you don't listen to your team. And if you don't— because it's like you talk about vulnerabilities, you were doing it before they put a name on it. But that's only going to be helpful holistically in the context of a company or organization because you're, you're getting people to say, hey, I got an issue here. And you're like, oh, let's find a way to solve it. So it's a great thing. I mean, it's strange, it almost has a negative connotation, right?

Yeah, and I think that true confidence, and this is sort of the inverse of how people think, but I think you have true confidence when you can be vulnerable. I think it's the willingness to be able to say, "Hey, I don't know how to do this," or, "I'm not comfortable with this," and that's how you're gonna get help and grow, instead of pretending, like a lot of us do. Like, I had imposter syndrome for sure when I first started in this business, and it lasted for a long time, where I felt like I constantly had to prove myself, and I had to show why I was here. And finally, when I started to just be able to ask questions, Yogi was one of those people that I could ask real questions about that it allowed me to be more confident, which it sounds like it's sort of the inverse of what it should be, but vulnerability is the key. And I think, back to the point of just leadership, is when you take the time to understand that everything is a relationship business, every single thing, and when you are trying to retain talent, and when you're trying, there's always gonna be somebody that's gonna be able to pay somebody a little bit more. There's always gonna be something shiny somewhere else,, but you'll have loyalty when people feel like they matter to you. And you need to make sure that they do matter.

Yeah, I steal that from her all the time. I was just in Tuscaloosa. I got to speak and spend some time with their football team. I said, the greatest currency is what? And it's a slide I throw up that 100% is a rip from Ashley. And it's the currency is relationships. And whether you're an athlete in the media, whether you're a leader in your organization, and I think vulnerability is like the door in, But what allows you to have the success, I think, is discipline. So, it's not the discipline of like, let's get a workout in every morning at 5:00 AM. But if I told you, Greg, hey, let's just pretend I was your doctor and I called you after this podcast and I said, hey, man, you're a type 2 diabetic. You better change your lifestyle real fast. You gotta walk a mile a day, you gotta cut out complex carbs, and you need to meditate at least for 15 minutes a day, or you got a much shortened lifespan and you're not gonna be around the people that you love. What would you do?

Right.

You flip it in a heartbeat, right? So I think when you talk to a leader about that, of like, discipline, it's hard. I got a lot going on. I don't know if I could really create the time and the space to make somebody feel seen and heard or ask them a simple question like, what's your story? What are your kids' names? I'm talking like the littlest minimal effort elements. They're like, I don't know. And you're like, well, do you have discipline or not? Because the best teams, I've done this research, man, like the best teams have clarity around the things that matter most. They're confident in that clarity. And then they have a discipline in how they go attack it.

No, I was just gonna say, what I have found in interviewing people, and Yogi and I, you know, we each have had different podcasts, and I had one for a couple of years where I would interview people, and every time it just amazed me that you'd be so grateful to them for their time, but really, like, the guest is getting the gift, and they would always say, I remember there was one mom in particular, she was our first guest, it was Sam Darnold's mom, and at the end, I just said, "Thank you so much for coming on and taking a chance on us. We don't know what we're doing," and she was like, I'm like, thank you for asking, because nobody ever asks. Like, nobody ever asks. People are dying to share their stories, but we don't ask. And I think it's because we feel like we're overstepping, or we don't wanna go there. But I see it all the time in locker rooms. Chris Peterson, the former head coach at Washington, who is just a phenomenal all-time human being, who stepped away and said, this is too much, I'm not doing it anymore. But he said that he would always do something called story time, where he would get up, he'd share 5 minutes about himself, his life. And he goes, and then we'd go around the room, and the stuff that would come pouring out of these kids kids. He goes, "We did it for 15 years. There was only one player in my entire career that didn't share. Every single other hundreds and hundreds of guys, and they always, that was the one thing they always wanted more. Let's do more story time." Let me ask you something.

I'm curious, because a lot of people don't— everyone, all right, first, we all acknowledge everyone has a story, but a lot of people don't even think of, and I'd imagine in their head, thinking of their own narrative, but then if someone's on the spot and says, "Tell your story," and it's like, for some of them, was that a new experience where they kind of on their feet had to kind of think a little bit about—

That is the hard hardest question. What's your story, I think, is one of the hardest questions because it's like, I don't know, what is my story? And this is something that I'm gonna share in our keynote that Yogi and I are doing tomorrow, the wrap-up session, but it's pretty ironic because, and maybe a little bit hypocritical, I've spent an entire career thinking about the power of story and helping other people share their stories and seeing what it can do when you actually are able to tell your story in a way that other people can hear it. And up until the last, like, 3 months, I hadn't done all that much work on my own. And it became pretty clear to me that that was the case. So, it is hard. And like, the whole, "What's your story?" I can tell you what I do for a living. I can tell you that I'm a mom and a wife and a— but like, "What's your story?" That's a whole other question. So, I usually like to try and couch it in, "Tell me something that you struggled with." Because to me, what your story is, what challenges have you faced, What choices did you make to overcome those challenges? And then who did you become as a result of that process? Like, what's the transformation? And when you help people think about it in that way, but again, it's easy to ask other people their stories all day long, but it's a lot harder to make the time and the space to do the work yourself.

And then they need to, I assume, obviously trust you to divulge that. So you have to create an environment where it's like, look, you're safe, share it, and we're all in this together.

And you start by going first. I think that is a big thing, right?

Exactly, lead by example. Yeah, yeah.

I've always felt that when you ask that question and we ask it in locker rooms all the time, you're right, you're kind of stunned. It's like a little jab. Whoa, whoa, I didn't— but then you come up, let's just pretend we're in Hollywood for a second. Hey, give me the elevator pitch. Hey, what's the series you want to go sell? Like, there is a craft around that. It's the same thing in recruiting. Are you going to get a job offer? Baron's interviewing you to host this podcast. Like, you have to have some of those elements. And I think to Ashley's point, there's a lot of real cool, you know, what we would coin the lonely work to get into that. So a common question I'll ask locker rooms or teams is, how many of you by a show of hands feel awkward when you hear your own voice, your own voicemail, watch yourself on TV? 90% of the hands go up. And then the next question is, how many of you think you're a storyteller? Boom, maybe 5 hands. And then of course the follow-up was, how many of you have TikTok, Instagram, some form of social media? Like, you're always telling a story, right? And then people recognize like, oh wow, yeah, I better begin to unearth a couple elements of my story because whether I realize it or not, and this is the Pete Carroll in me, like every day you're telling people who you are, the way that you walk, the way you talk, how you run, how you look people in the eye, if you shake their hand, like you are constantly telling a story, the way you dress, like, and if you don't recognize it, it's still happening.

Like you're actually happening. You're right. And yeah, your biography implicitly tells a story of sorts too without a lot of the details, but there's, You can even often patch together, like, you came from here, you did this, then you suffered this, then you rose to that. Like, wow, I already know something special happened here.

And I think the other thing is, is what, what is personal is universal. That's why I think sharing your story is such a gift and being vulnerable and talking about what you struggled with, because guess what? Like, the majority of us have all struggled with a lot of the same things, even if it's not the exact same thing. I'll give an example of this session that we did earlier that Yogi alluded to. Brett Ledbetter was leading it, and he asked people to talk about what thing in your life caused you shame that now gives you confidence, which was like a pretty intense question for 9:45 AM in the morning with a bunch of financial advisors. I'm like, I bet you guys wish you had walked into a different room, don't you? But it was incredible to see what some of the people talked about come out. And there was a guy that said, you know, I grew up in a house where I had an older brother who was really smart, really academic, and I felt like I constantly We were rewarded for achievement, and so I felt love from my parents if I was achieving. So I would find myself, you know, maybe embellishing some different things I did, but I was constantly trying to show them my achievements. And that resonated with me. And I don't think it's by any fault of anybody, you know what I mean? Like, we've got so much stuff that we get from the people that come before us. But I really think that hearing him say that, I was like, oh my God, I still embellish to my dad what I'm doing. Like, I want— you want that approval. And so hearing somebody else name it can be so powerful because I think you start to identify some of your own story and some of the different things that you've been through when you hear somebody else's.

Right, it's like directionally similar, details might be different.

That's a pretty cool point. Like, so in the quarterback world, like here comes the NFL draft in a matter of weeks, common question asked to every quarterback in the world is, or any NFL draft pick is, when in your life have you met adversity? How did you overcome it? And what's unique is that we could take two athletes, just pretend you two are elite quarterbacks, 'cause I know you both can spin it.

We could be.

Right? But you're maybe, you come from a really challenging environment and you came from a very affable environment. The story that you tell yourself can elicit the same strength to come through adversity. I always go to Jared Goff. Jared Goff is one of my favorite guys in the NFL, favorite guys of all time. Ashton and I covered his career as a freshman at Cal. Now he's with the Detroit Lions, and I think one of the top quarterbacks in the league. You would ask Jared, whose dad played Major League Baseball, hey, when did you overcome adversity? And he'd say, well, it's not like we were struggling at home. It's not like I didn't know where every meal was coming from, but I went 1-11 as a freshman. That built up a reservoir of adversity and how to navigate it. I got traded by the Rams after leading to a Super Bowl. My point is that like everybody has one. They tell themselves, and even as you guys did that exercise, Ash, that's where my head went of like, all right, what is it? It's gotta be so personal. And it doesn't have to be like the quote unquote rags to riches or the most, like whatever your adversity is, is part of your story. Narrative, and it's on the leaders to get back to what makes a great team, to create that environment, or just ask that question.

Yeah, you know, there's a great sports example of adversity. Well, not so much— Pete Rose, Pete Rose, all-time hits king, he— the scouting report on him apparently was really, really negative. They were like, this guy is short, he doesn't have power. It was just kind of like, And he, he, he, that was a chip on his shoulder. And that his resentment about that, about that scouting report really motivated him.

And he— Part of his story.

Part of his story. And he was like, I'm going to prove these guys wrong.

You know what's pretty cool about that? Just because I think that a lot of people that are listening probably have a very competitive bone in their body. And I think a lot of times competitors live a version of that narrative. I'm gonna go prove you wrong. I got a chip. You told me I wasn't good. I mean, I lived that wholeheartedly. To me, elite performance, like in terms of can you compete in a state of flow? Can you find the purest form of your story, right? To own and gain true mastery around, or at least begin the road to it. It's when you flip that, I believe, and you go, instead of I'm gonna prove her wrong 'cause she criticized me, instead I'm gonna prove myself right. And there's a different confidence. There's a different way you carry your story, you own your story. I haven't seen, Tom Brady is like the ultimate chip on the shoulder, 8 Super Bowls, or whatever it's been, but most athletes that navigate that, and I've never asked Tom Brady this, I'd love to, but most of them have never found true peace because they're trying to prove everybody wrong.

Right, and I think another, yes, yes, 100%. And I think complacency is the very worst thing. The day that you're an elite performer, regardless of what vacation. The day you say, "Yeah, you know, like, I own this. I'm awesome." That's the day you become complacent and you let down your guard and you'll be slaughtered. I think a little insecurity is always a healthy thing.

So, Greg, it's so interesting that you use that word because complacency is a word that has, like, tormented me my whole— like, I literally got coaching over my relationship with complacency because I was so afraid to feel like, am I doing enough? Like, am I getting complacent? But I think there's also— it sits right next to contentment and peace. And we're always striving for that thing, that next shiny object, like the goalpost. The hardest thing in life is to get the goalpost to stop moving. Absolutely. We spend our life thinking about some time in the future, then that thing arrives, and what do we do? We just reset to the next thing.

It's like those Wall Streeters who say, "My number is $5 million," then again, "Well, now it's $10 million." It's never enough.

It's never enough. Like, we're all living a version of our lives that the younger versions of us dreamed about, right? Like, we have a paycheck that at one point that I would have thought would have solved all of my problems, and guess what? You just, you spend more money, you make different choices, you're never, the mountaintop just keeps getting bigger as you climb it, and so I think the way that I finally landed on contentment versus complacency, because I really struggled with it, is that the way that you draw that line is with gratitude. If you constantly are paying attention to what you have instead of what you don't have or what you're feeling like you should have, you will live a life of contentment. And that doesn't mean sitting back and going, "Okay, I'm done. I've done my thing." Like, you always need to be growing and working, but I think that's a huge part of it is the gratitude.

So my take is I bet that's true. I don't know if I do it enough, but like, what would you say? I think many people may have heard that, but many people do not do that. Like, do you have any recommendations into maybe how people can cultivate that act?

Yeah, I mean, I think it's as simple as, I think it's just like stopping and realizing when you are feeling like, "Oh my God, I gotta get that other thing." There's always someone who's gonna have more money, who's gonna have a better job, who's gonna have a bigger platform, or whatever, a better portfolio, better clients. And it's a cliché, but it's so true, like, comparison is the thief of joy. So, I think it is constantly reminding yourself, what do you have? 'Cause you have enough. We all have way more than we need. And it's the people who you have in your life, it's what you actually have, and then it's just being able to verbalize that. That gratitude. One of the things that I try to do every single day is something that is a kind— a point of connection, some moment of connection, where I'm reaching out to somebody for no other reason than I'm just thinking about them, or I want them to know that they had an impact on me in some way. And I will send people— I send people the most random texts. Like, people that I know from like 8th grade are like, "Why is Ashley Adamson texting me right now?" Because I'm like, I just think we don't tell people what they've— how they've impacted us. And I think it can change people's trajectories.

And I think they love that. They probably love it because you know full well, when people come out out and then from out of the blue, there are a lot of people and to be like, hey, how you doing? Good buddy. By the way, you think you could do A, B, and C for me?

And you're like, always, that's when you get people reaching out of the blue.

Yeah.

Yeah.

And I'm like, that's almost generally what happened. But would you, that's the, because a lot of times I get that impulse, a kind thought will come to mind. And usually people don't act on it. Like, this is a little weird. I'm not going to do it.

But that is it right there. I think that we all have these things. And when I say whenever there's someone that pops up in your head, just, if you can, stop what you're doing or make a note and make sure that you actually go back and just send them a note, because there's a reason, I believe, that they are in your head. And anytime that I reach out to somebody and send 'em, even if it's just something small, or you're checking in, you're not checking in because you need something, but because you're thinking about them and you wanna tell them specifically, "Hey, thanks for that thing," or "I never told you enough about X, Y, or Z," or "I think you're amazing because this." People are like, "You don't know how much I needed that today." That's what they all say.

Right, and that's the seeming paradox, that that message, which is technically of little consequence, might mean the most, actually.

Yeah.

100%. That's so interesting. So I want to— one thing that you both have in common, like, you are real bona fide storytellers. And I don't mean just from broadcasting. But Yogi, you've done a lot of work with film documentaries, and you have an audio legacy company. And I want to talk about that a little bit because they're both really, really interesting. In no particular order, I mean, Yogi, you want to talk a little about Life in a Walk and your other film projects, because you've done a lot of work there.

So yeah, happy to. It's kind of fun because I'd always loved story, and I got exposed to when I was in LA at USC. Coach Carroll allowed me to tell— or I created the first-ever football blog, access blog, called uscripsit.com. And I was like, oh, this kind of moves the needle. Let's tell a little bit of behind the curtain. And I started doing documentaries, and that was really fun because you got to tell stories that live forever. And then it wasn't until one night where I was sitting in my house by myself and it hit me that my dad was diagnosed with prostate cancer when I was in college and I had never dealt with it. And I said, "Ooh, this isn't good. Like I have to navigate this thing." And I was watching a movie at the time called "The Way," which is about this famous walk called the Camino de Santiago, which is a very spiritual pilgrimage throughout Europe. And I booked a flight, flew to New York to see him at my sister's old apartment in Brooklyn. And I'll never forget this, Dan. I walked in and I said, "Dad, let's go for a walk." And he said, "Sure, where do you wanna go?" I said, here's the ticket. We go to Madrid in 2 weeks and we're gonna go walk the Camino de Santiago. And the point was that I realized that I had not navigated, even faced the thoughts about losing someone that I have always had a great relationship with. And I was afraid of learning more about him at a celebration of his life than in real life. So away we went and 15, 20 miles a day, we would walk. Now, as a storyteller, I'm pitching, I'm hustling. Ash knows I'm trying to sell shows all the time. I met with the production company and they were like, hey, your footage on your phone is okay of you traveling the world. I'd been to 20-some countries by then by myself. Can we come on your next trip? And I was like, oh, heck yeah, let's do this. We're gonna do this walk. So we have 2 cinematographers and audio people with us. There's a little 4 of us, my dad and I and those 2. And we just walk for a couple weeks. And every day we would stop and I would interview him about a different decade of his life. And I get to ask the questions. And I have a rule as an interviewer, I only ask questions I don't know the answers to. So it's like, how'd you meet mom? What was the first date really like? What was it like when you guys lost, they had a set of twins that died at childbirth. What was it like and how'd you navigate that? When you got laid off from your first job, all the things that now in my early 30s, I was like, I don't know this stuff, man. And of course he flipped it right back on me of like, well, how come you don't have a girlfriend? Like, what's up with you, man? And I started to verbalize the things that I really wanted in my life. And I came home and put together the trailer, And the production company said, hey, cool film, but yo, take it. We don't think it's gonna be very commercial. And I said, all right, no problem. Put the trailer online and it went viral within like 2 days. Couple weeks later, we're in like feature in Men's Health. And what it did is it struck a nerve. And what I love about that film, 10, 11 years later since we released it, is that I have men reaching out to me all of the time saying, this movie was a catalyst to have a conversation with my father, with my son. And that's all I think Ashley and I ever yearned to be is just a nudge. A nudge to see football a little differently in a broadcast, a nudge to see a story a little differently, a nudge to see your family history a little bit, just a nudge, just a nudge. And I love that. And I think the greatest compliment I could receive as a storyteller is, I got lost in your story 'cause I was thinking about my own. And I think that's what Life in a Walk did. And it's continued to lead me, as Ashley referenced, down a road of curiosity, especially around performing cultures all around the world. But to me, it really began with myself. And it fundamentally— Ashley knows me because she met me right around that time. She came to one of the premieres up in San Francisco. And that film absolutely changed my life now as a father and a husband, as hopefully as a colleague, et cetera. So, definitely a catalyst for my life.

Yeah, no, I think that's great. There's the obvious discovery for you and then for your father to learn about you. And then, as you said, as a nudge or inspiration for others. In their own way to learn from their parents. So, I think it's very cool on all those levels.

You know what's so interesting, and Greg, this is why, like, thank you for giving us this space, because every time I feel like I know Yogi very well, and I know his story very well, and he knows mine, but until I heard him talking about that did I realize that kind of a lot of what I'm doing right now and thinking about in the future is linked to exactly that point you just made, that like we don't ask the people that we love the most the questions that really matter, and we always think there's gonna be more time.. And my dad used to always say, people save their best stuff for the eulogies. Like, why not tell them now when you can? And my dad had a stroke a year ago, almost exactly a year ago. Next Thursday, it'll be a year. And I was in LA about to work for the USC Spring Game, and I was gonna do it with Yogi. And I remember it was like, you know, everybody has those moments where the world sort of gets shook underneath you. And he's okay. He survived it, and he's worked through a bunch of stuff. But I remember in that moment when we weren't sure if he was gonna come out of it, I had done an interview with him for this company that I started, this audio storytelling company that you alluded to, Greg. And I had this obviously overwhelming grief and sadness, and I also had a major part of me that was like, if I don't get to talk to him again, it's okay because we've said everything. And he's always been so good about leave nothing unsaid. And I got so many answers to questions. There's always more that you can ask. But I sat with him for 2.5, 3 hours, and I have it on record. Like, I'm going to have that piece of him and us together. And where I got that idea from was when I had my mom on my podcast, and I started asking her questions, and she's answering things, and I'm like, "I thought I knew all these answers." Like, I'm the opposite of Yogi. I'm like, you don't really want to ask a question that you don't know the answer to, because you don't know what you're going to get. But I really— that opened my eyes, and I'm like, wait, why don't we— I interview people all the time for a living, and I love it. Why don't I interview— so I started interviewing everybody in my family, and it's led me to a really cool place.

Yeah, and so Tamber, you started one a couple years ago?

Yeah, about a year and a half ago, and with, by the way, we should shout out Guy Haberman, who is your broadcast partner, and he is my work co-founder for Tamber, which is an audio storytelling company where the goal is that we try and capture people's life stories in audio form so that they can be preserved for generations to come.

That's fantastic. In my family, there's been some personal storytelling, but it was recorded in slightly different ways. So my mom, she generally has written lots of stories, you know, important stories, silly stories, etc. And she's also quite a good visual artist, so usually accompanied by drawings, paintings, etc. So these, she'll put them in binders and make copies and send them to her 3 sons as well as to grandchildren. So that's the way she's, you know, securing our family history and having it pass on. And it's just— so that's really great. And then with my father, a good friend of mine about 15, 20 years ago, he was running a video legacy company. And so we did like a 3-hour interview with my father. Gave my buddy lots of videos of my dad from all parts of his life, a bunch of photos, and then he put together a couple-hour multimedia thing. So it's just great. I just think however you do it, audio, video, writing—

Yeah, there's so many different ways to do it.

Yeah, because all these great stories, when the person's gone, the stories are gone often. So yeah, it's just important.

There's a saying that when somebody dies, that their library burned, and the only way that you can prevent your library burning is to share the stories that you have, and it's hard to share them when people don't ask. And so I I think, yeah, I'm very passionate about it, and I feel like it's never been easier than it is now, and yet it's really hard. People really struggle to sit down and make time to do it, but don't wait.

So we're nearing the end, but I just wanted to ask you about now storytelling and teams. I mean, I think one thing you often see with teams is a shared sense of mission, like we're all on the same page and it's internalized. You don't have to remind people like, hey, we're here to do A, B, and C. Everyone knows the marching orders, but that also involves the story, the history of where you came. Still pride and ambition. Can you add anything to that maybe, or?

I think the culture to me is when you can connect your story to the organization's story, whether it's the team or the company or whatever. When you can see how your story fits into the larger story, that to me, ultimately, is culture. And I think one of the things that you see when teams thrive or when teams fall apart, it's when they lose track of their story. And it's hard because you forget, especially as a founder, somebody who's been there from the beginning, that the new people coming on, they don't have have that institutional knowledge about what has come before. And so it takes constant dedication. There's a story that I like to tell that Navy SEALs, when they— when a new Navy SEAL joins a certain team, like let's say SEAL Team Six, there is a team historian whose job it is to sit down with them, and there is a book for every team, and they will go through and they will share the stories, and it's honoring the men and women who have gone before them, many of whom have, you know, maybe some who are here and who aren't, and it's the stories of the missions and the And all of a sudden they feel so connected and so much more loyalty because I think the thing that we're not rewarded for these days, especially in college athletics, and I'd say probably in almost any business, is loyalty anymore. Because there's always somebody else who can probably pay you more. There's always some other, again, I'll keep using that phrase, like another shiny object somewhere else. And so you get loyalty when people feel like they are part of something and see how they fit into the whole.

Totally. And I mean, that makes total sense and provides that immediate context. Yes. Like here's, yeah, the context as opposed to parachuting in without knowing anything.

Right.

Understanding. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah, I think it's interesting what you said of like, you lose the elements of staying connected to your story and totally co-sign on that. That's so spot on. You're just thinking all the teams. And I would add a little to that of like, you lose the opportunity to own your story. I think now in the world, especially in the media, right? In every industry, this isn't just sports, right? It's finance, it's politics, you name it. A story is being bestowed upon you and you have the opportunity to wear that label or say, no, this is what I am from within. And that's why, like, we'll go through the exercise with the group here when we do our keynote of like, can you identify the things that matter most to you? Like I said earlier, the best teams, organizations, they chase what matters. They have clarity around what matters most, and then they own it. It's not just the right thing to say. My family, my kids, my employees, like, what is real? If it's only about making money, then everybody, to your point, knows it's the Wolf of Wall Street. Let's just go make another million, whatever it might be. Like you have to have it and you have to own it. And then, as I referenced you earlier, like then there's the discipline around it. So when someone is trying to project the story upon you, no, no, no, no, this isn't us. I'm going to Ohio State tomorrow, college football, defending national champions. They were told who they were. They lose to their arch rival Michigan. I know there's a lot of Michigan alums that are listening to this that are probably really proud and you should be, but Ohio State had to decide at that point, like, are we gonna live the story that's told about us? Are we gonna have a little ownership on it? And I think that, I think that's a big example, but the same thing to like, I'm a youth flag football coach. We've practiced tonight. Are we gonna let the story of someone else define us? Or these 9 and 10-year-olds can own a little bit themselves. It's gonna be playful, it's gonna be more fun. But I think those elements are always constantly at bay and right in front of us. And the great leaders see it and they get out in front of it. The ones that to me are not elite are the ones that are just super reactionary to what other people are saying about them.

And can I use that as a way to shout you out, Yogi, because you talk about this chasing what matters and have clarity and confidence to go and the discipline to go do that. But you're at this conference, you're meeting all these people, you got a bunch of invitations to go to happy hour and dinner tonight, but no, you're going back to coach the practice of the flag football team that you could not miss. And I just think there's a lot of people that would make a different choice. So it's those little things that actually matter most.

Yeah, and you're proving it with action, not just words.

Yep. Yeah, I hope my son thinks that. He probably likes when dad isn't at practice.

All right, good dad, enjoy your dinner. Yeah, come on late too.

Exactly.

All right, well, thank you so much for joining us. Total pleasure.

Thank you. You know what's cool? If I can finish on this. So I grew up, as I referenced, in the middle of Pennsylvania. We had a barn in our backyard, this massive barn. And my dad was a stockbroker in his second career. He was a social worker and then a stockbroker, 17 years apiece. And upstairs in the attic of this barn, in the barn, he had stacks of Barron's newspapers. So to your earlier point of like, would the kid in you be like, yeah, you're gonna be at this Barron's conference on the Barron's podcast. Like there's no chance I would ever think that. So enjoy it. Oh no, this has been a blast. I've enjoyed it all. So the young 9-year-old in the attic of a barn in the middle of Pennsylvania says, thank you.

That's awesome. Thanks for sharing that. It's great. Okay, my guests were Ashley Adamson and Yogi Roth. I'm Greg Barth. For more podcasts and the latest wealth management news, visit barons.com/advisor. You can listen to this podcast on iTunes, Spotify, and Amazon, and be sure to check out The Way Forward: Next Generation, a new Barron's Advisor podcast that shines the spotlight on the emerging leaders who are shaping the future of financial advice. For The Way Forward, I'm Greg Barthelis.

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