S2E11- Scott Wagner chats Yale Football and lessons learned as CEO of GoDaddy

Welcome to your favorite podcaster's favorite podcast. I take your favorite athletes and I make them talk about their business endeavors and things they're doing off the court, the field, the arena. Imagine a scenario where you're a wide receiver, you run a slant route, you just get ran over. It kind of sounds like this. That sounded like it hurt. Fast forward years later, you're on the couch watching CNBC and Joining us this morning, Scott Wagner is the CEO of GoDaddy.

Scott, we were just talking with Andy Jassy about you. Good morning.

Yep, I had the pleasure of being joined by Scott Wagner, former CEO of GoDaddy.com and former free safety for the Yale Bulldogs. When we talk about American technology companies and brand names, GoDaddy has got to be at the top of the list. I'd say you have to have a pretty special combination of technical and leadership skills to run a platform that serves over 20 million customers utilizing domain names, hosting, building websites, and more. What's cool to me though is this is a win for athletes because Scott has an athletic background and it helped him with his leadership qualities, and we break it all down. It just goes to show you can get some interceptions out there and then end up running a billion-dollar business as long as you dream big, stick with it. My name is Noah Lack and welcome to Athletes and Assets. All right, Scott, let's skip the small talk. I'm gonna give you some Yale football trivia. Can you name me 3 Yale football alumni that have gotten drafted in the NFL?

Gary Fencik, Calvin Hill, John Spagnuolo are 3 right off the top of my head. The, uh, right off the top of the list, which are my vintage. And then the earlier guy, recent guys, uh, there's a kid who's on the Bears now, uh, there was a running back for the Colts named Tyler Varga, and Chris, and one other kid.

Uh, anyway, you know, I was, I was gonna give you 5, and you've already, you exceeded 5 as well. And like, I was gonna go easy with 3. So you aced that. That was too easy.

No, when you talk to an Ivy League guy, there's a big chip on everybody's shoulder recognizing it's, it's not Power 5, but there are guys who play in the NFL. And trust me, if you talk to anybody, it's not only their own school but the conference. Yeah, take a lot of pride in the guys who went to the NFL. And as a guy who had no shot at it, uh, it's awesome that those guys do, uh, go on to the NFL and have success.

As you know, there's different characters in a football locker room. Let's, let's, let's first say pregame. Pregame, you're about to play Harvard. There's your guys that might be rapping and dancing before the game. There's guys who are very stoic and they just sit still in their locker. There's like a fearful— there's like an aggressive piece about them. And then there's your guys in the locker room that might be the leaders that give the hype message. Which one was Scott Wagner? Early '90s, which guy were you in the locker room?

So Scott Wagner was the guy sitting in front of his locker, locked in, like super intense, but introverted. So I was in my own space and then walking around and with a little fist bump or some little acknowledgement of the hype guys. But I was definitely in my own, in my own head.

Yeah, that's a good question.

That's a good question.

Yeah, it's, there's always, there's always those type of groups in the football locker room because it's such a big team. So you have the different, different types of personalities. I've been to the Yale Bowl, iconic stadium. You ever sit back and just sort of take in the history that, that, that's brought in over the past century? I mean, it's one of the oldest stadiums in the country, but it has so much history that I still feel like is uncovered.

Yeah, so it was cool. And, you know, again, I'm now, my recruiting process and my time, I played in the late '80s, early '90s, and I'm from Chicago. And Chicago is a, it's a football town. And I mentioned one of the guys, but one of the stars of the mid-'80s Bears was a guy named Gary Fencik, who was from Chicago. who played at Yale and then was an All-Pro safety for the Bears. So every kid from Chicago who had a reasonable amount of intelligence and thought they were good at football wanted to be Gary Fencik.

Yeah.

So a little bit of the stadium and the experience to me when I was 17 was recognizing the school was awesome and had all this tradition and it looked You know, like it was something out of, you know, Hogwarts didn't exist at the time, but it was, it was super cool. And the fact that Gary Fencik was there, it's like, oh my God, I got to be a part of this.

That sounds like, you know, that was your, your sports, your football idol in a sense that, that helped you put yourself in, that you could see yourself in his shoes eventually, especially because he went to Yale and then went on to the NFL. I, I'm curious, You know, while you were at Yale, was there an alum or someone while you were playing that you looked up to in the professional field? Obviously, you didn't know, maybe you didn't know you were going to do the things that you did post-Yale. But was there an inspiration or a mentor that sort of, you know, sparked your intellectual curiosity?

This is probably similar to other athletes, not just at Yale or other schools like that, but around You know, most don't come from backgrounds where your parents are X profession and do XYZ. And so your role models, right, are the people that you're around and grow up with. And, you know, I was from a town in the suburbs of Chicago where, you know, I cut lawns for all through high school to make money. Like, it was 7 or 8 lawns.

Wow.

And I realized that the people whose lawns I cut were all lawyers. And so I thought I wanted to be a lawyer simply because, well, I'm cutting their grass, so that means like these guys must be doing okay.

Yeah.

And then for me, college was the first time that I was actually around, uh, different people, professions, situations that, you know, were You know, you see Wall Street and you see, you know, other companies. And, you know, the great thing about being part of a team in sports is, you know, the alum, the guys ahead of you go off and they do stuff.

Yeah.

And Yale was awesome because of the community. People who were there come back and you come back and have people say, wow, I'm doing this. And frankly, it was great because, you know, Not one alumni, but several came back and I kind of realized, ooh, I need the juice of building something with a team. And whether it's company or finance, it's something that's got a little bit more of a scoreboard than many of what you'd call service professions. And so that came straight from a whole bunch of alumni that would kind of come back to campus and just say what they're doing.

The alumni is super important. Obviously, it goes without saying.

And then, oh yeah. And then there's one thing that this is just kind of funny. And one of the biggest alumni there, and this is a while ago, but was a guy who ran, it was his, ran the company Playtex, you know, Playtex baby stuff, tampons. And so this was this really involved alumni. And so the Yale football summer job when I was there was he would get guys jobs being a merchandiser for Playtex. So it was very fitting and still humor and ridiculous that you'd have all these guys in every city around the country in the summer whose summer job it was to basically walk into grocery stores and put up tampon displays. So it's the, uh, it's probably the right sign of, you know, if you're at Alabama, you probably get all sorts of awesome summer jobs sort of that are the easy way of getting stuff. And at Yale, it's Playtex. It's like, all right, you know, you, as a part of this, you get to go around and you get to set up tampon displays. Yeah.

So what a privilege.

Thankfully, I didn't, thankfully I didn't pursue, you know, that, that one. It was a great, it was a good summer job, but it was not something that turned into a career.

Okay. So you, so when you were interviewing with GoDaddy, you didn't mention the Playtex. On your resume, you didn't talk about the—

You know, as I— it's— as you can show now, this was a good learning when you're 18 or 19 years old, which is when there's something that's uncomfortable that people are going to make fun of you for, you better own it, right? Like, you're— you better stride into it, you better own it. And there's no way around it. Nobody cares, right? Then, then it's funny. Uh, if you own it, you're okay with it, uh, then it's fine. And, you know, the ability to laugh at yourself gives you a lot of So, that might have been the first time I was also realizing, oh my gosh, all right, you can go one of two ways with this. It's either you shrink from it or you own it.

I appreciate you sharing that. That's an incredibly fun fact. I love that you have this sense of humility, you're able to laugh at yourself, but I'm sure once you graduated Yale, you had this sort of confidence to go out in the world and pursue something. And obviously it would be silly for me to think that upon graduating Yale, you knew you were going to be the CEO of a humongous, well-known American brand. Once you sort of got to GoDaddy, and I know you went from interim CEO and then stepped to a slightly different role, COO role for a bit, to go back to the CEO role.

Yeah.

But I just curious, you know, when you first started there, what did you draw on from your athletic experience that like, did you have any sayings from your coaches or any lessons that you were like, okay, just let's make sure I apply this here and let's see what happens?

So, a couple of things. One is the applied lessons. The other are the sayings and, you know, all the great— and there's definitely a ton of sayings that are sprinkled around, not only professionally, but even as a parent of 3 kids that get thrown around. But professionally, you know, that— so first off, walking into it, I really had a passion for what the company did, which is to get small businesses and individuals up on—

Yes.

You know, customers of GoDaddy were people that I grew up with. They might— they weren't sophisticated engineers in Silicon Valley. They were people with an idea. and it needed to get built online. And so that to me is something that I could wake up every day and be super fired up about. And drawing back, I'm not sure it's a lesson. Like, it wasn't something that I wrote down and applied.

Sure.

But I think there's a huge link between if you're into something, get fired up about it, right? Be super fired up about what it is, what you're doing, and then draw other people to it and around it. And, you know, it's something that, again, it wasn't a, oh, you know, be passionate, right? Like people talk about it in that way all the time, but you know it when you see it and you just have to be, you gotta be fired up about it. And I think that came from sports. You know, growing up, I would say that the one thing that I loved was playing sports. Yeah. And it brings out the best in not only you as a person, but other people. And, you know, I tried to draw on that at GoDaddy, which was something that I was excited about. You got to communicate that. And I'd say the second thing was, and this is more of a life habit, sports is an— it's a combination of ability and work. Like, it's one, and you need both.

Yeah.

Right. And one can make up for a deficiency in the other to a certain amount, right? But then you hit your level. But it's ability and it's work. And you can particularly control the amount of work you put into it and prep. And I, you know, way back when in college, spent more time watching film than anybody. Part of the only reason that I had maybe some level of athletic success was before there was software breaking down plays, I'd sit with our defensive coordinator and we'd plot out tendency of other teams and formations. And you know what? Turns out you can get a lot of insight out of that. And that habit applied to my professional life, which is you go try to figure out the couple things that matter that are going to give you an advantage. And it coming into a company, the link is, boy, there's a couple things we're going to do that are really going to matter to us all. And let's throw down on that. And so I'd say those 2 things were probably the biggest, the biggest thing, you know, where I could link football as a younger person to 25 years later running a company.

Well, how about this? This is, this, this is something that's very interesting to me. You as a free safety, I'm sure there's been There's a lot of situations where the only thing stopping a big play and a running back or receiver to get in the end zone is you making that last tackle. That's a lot of pressure that you have to handle. You know, being a CEO of GoDaddy, that's a lot of pressure you have to handle. And you have had to be a public figure to speak on company-wide issues and sort of be the spokesperson. And when you're the spokesperson of a giant company, you go on these shows like CNBC, man, do they grill the shit out of you? Oh my goodness. It is. I just— let's start. Let's, let's go right there.

Did you get—

did you have to receive media training for that? Like, that is— they go at you, you know, how do you handle that as a CEO?

Back to prep. So it's interesting because TV in particular, it is a different medium. You get to speak for 10 seconds. Like people don't totally think about this day in, day out, but questions are fast. You have a specific answer. People try to play gotcha, not all the time, but sometimes you're really trying to get somebody. And it's a very different method of interaction. And so I did go through some training Beforehand, largely because it's not something that I had done a ton of.

Right.

But I speak a lot, and as our comms person said, I will tend to speak longer, a lot. Something will come up, I want to share it, you know, kind of like this format. You can't do that on TV. You get one answer, maybe two, and, and that's all you get. Uh, and so I, I definitely did some prep. for those things that, you know, I'm not sure how well it helped me along, but, uh, it's something you definitely need to prepare for.

I feel like sometimes you might be saying— you might have a great thought you're sharing, and it's like, all right, time to go to commercial break. I mean, it just seems like a different animal.

Uh-huh. You get one little— you get one little response, and, you know, and then the other— the big part of it is you just need to smile, uh, and just smile, be comfortable in that medium is super important. The hard thing for me, which is when I speak, particularly publicly, I like to use my hands. Like, I'll use my hands, I walk around. It's just a way of movement and drawing people in. Well, if you use your hands on TV, you look like just— you look like a puppet. It looks ridiculous. You know, if you ever see somebody—

Yeah.

moving their hands around. And so at one point during the media training, I had my hands like duct taped together and just on and on anchored on the table to force myself, don't move, don't move your hands.

Yeah, 100%. 100%. It's, I mean, I'm sure you feel that GoDaddy was at a beautiful position, at a beautiful inflection point of small businesses getting their brand and their company online. You know, a lot has changed in the past 10 years. You know, when we talk about the landscape of online businesses and, you know, different mediums and platforms where companies can share their brand or product, at this point in time, where do you see, you know, GoDaddy in this field of platforms? And, you know, what are— and just overall, what are your observations and sort of remarks about how small businesses can promote themselves and build themselves as a brand, as a company now?

Well, 10 years ago, The way you got online was you got a domain name and a website and an email address, which was how you showed yourself to the world and how you interacted with people, which was really getting found by Google, right? So online, for all intents and purposes, was put up a website, interact with people via email, and Google is the method of interaction whereby people find you. And a lot of what the company did, not only for the, you know, almost 10 years that I was there, but the team that's, you know, there and doing an awesome job, is to extend not only that web presence to social presence. So where and how not only do you show up, but what content is somebody producing, whether it's through social media apps or now through podcasting, but it's the all-up. Yeah. Experience and then helping somebody transact, whether it's buy something or via an appointment. And I'd say, you know, the company over the last couple years has continued to do just a phenomenal job adding that part of commerce to, uh, to its services. So, you know, it's back, back to the world of if you've got an idea It has to be a whole bunch of different places, right? And your audience lives on, you know, every social platform and different mechanisms. And look, you got to be able to interact in all those different places.

Just amazing the transition the company has made through, you know, this, the past decade. And, you know, for you to have a huge hand in that is, it's really awesome. And once again, very humbling to, to be able to speak to you about it. I want to take more of a bird's-eye view, step back here and, and sort of think about an issue, not an issue, but something that is always on top of mind for me. There are so many Fortune 500 CEOs who played sports, but I bet you most college athletes don't know the statistics. And so therefore they don't see, like, a lot of people don't even get the chance to see that this could be their trajectory. Post-athletic career.

Do you—

how do you think about giving athletes more exposure to people like yourself to let them know, hey, whether you know it or not, you inherently have developed traits that as long as you build on this foundation can lead you to great things beyond, you know, your sport?

Well, exposure. I love, I love the word exposure, first of all, because Exposure when you're a college— when you're 18 to 22, when you're 22 to 25, exposure matters a lot because it opens up the possibility that you could go do something. If you're not exposed to it, then it doesn't exist and it's hard to discover it. And again, as a guy from the center of the country, tech is a perfect example where every kid who grows up in the Bay Area Technology's all around. It's easy kind of to go get a job at Apple and Google. Well, you know, if you're from Oklahoma or Kansas, that exposure is a different—

Yes.

Yeah, it's just a different level, right? And so back to exposure being an important point, uh, I, I think, you know, first off with schools, you know, I mentioned, you know, alumni both through Yale, but whether it's Santa Clara on your side or You know, somebody's at the University of Texas. Having alumni that come back and show athletes that there is a path is a really big and I think important thing for athletes.

Mm-hmm.

You know, and I'll give credit to the Yale coaches during the pandemic and a bunch of alumni in a more structured way have set up this 4 for 40 program, meaning 4 years for 40 years. where alumni come back through all different professions and just talk to the kids about what they do for a living. Real estate, technology, finance, sports management, university professors. Like, it's a range of things that are designed exactly that for exposure.

Yeah.

So, I think that's one big thing. And, I think the second thing, and this is a little bit more on both the kids and the programs that they're at. You know, college sports is a business. We were talking about it earlier before we started recording.

Yeah.

And it's, it's a business.

It is.

Now it's a business, but as a, as a student, it is an opportunity.

Yes.

And the single best thing you can do for yourself is to be the best you can be at your sport. Now, whether that translates into accolades or not sort of doesn't matter, but commit Yeah. And then do a good job at school. And if you do those 2 things, there's going to be a whole range of options open for you. Uh, and so at some level, that exposure is, boy, people coming back, uh, to show you what's possible. And then if you've committed to what you're doing on, you know, frankly, the sports and school front, boy, all sorts of possibilities open up.

Yeah, I couldn't agree more. And I like to tell non-Ivy student athletes this, like, go out and meet people outside of the athletics facility, go and meet people from different groups, because then you'll end up getting invited to cool stuff. And a lot of your peers will do cool things in the future, which will help you with the exposure part.

So it's a good— that's a really good— it's a great point and practical advice. Because again, a lot of— there's a lot of athletes who, you know, just don't have that exposure from their— whether it's backgrounds or, you know, in some ways, an acclaimed athlete is often, you know, kind of put into a corner at school by other students, sometimes of their own, which is like, oh, you're just here to play a sport. And, if you just get out, both meet people and explore some things, it'll just get you on a path. In some ways, I think sometimes athletes convince themselves they're just an athlete.

Right, the identity thing.

There's a hell of a lot more talent, intelligence, ability there than maybe they even give themselves credit for.

Absolutely. Absolutely. Well, thank you so much for touching on that. It's always so fun with these conversations because it's just an incredible blend of things that, you know, we've been in our direct shoes and then I can see the lessons and how you've been able to translate to the corporate level. And it's just awesome to talk about. So I really appreciate you breaking a couple of these topics down. Hard pivot here, Scott. We want to know, what do you like to jam to?

Oh, what am I listening to? So it is a combination. I got a lot of different genres, probably like a lot of people at this point, and, and I go through phases, uh, of music. And so if I'm driving in my car, I've, I've got a couple of things that I'm now, uh, really listening, listening One of which is I've gone back to early '90s hip-hop. So Tribe—

There we go.

Tribe Called Quest, Wu-Tang Clan, uh, just the early '90s stuff, which is phenomenal. And I have a high school junior, uh, who now loves it too. So anyway, that's like a big boy And then I've also started listening to— not started, but I'm going hard on Mary J. Blige, Alicia Keys. So a lot of R&B soul. I think there's a song Mary J. Blige does a cover of, One, which is a U2 song, which is phenomenal, by the way.

Yeah.

better than the original. Uh, would recommend it to anybody. And then bizarrely, uh, there's, uh, I just discovered that there's a guy who was the lead singer of Hootie and the Blowfish, which was this poppy band in the '90s, uh, that now is doing— has done country.

Yeah.

And I think I'm late to this. It's like he's been for the last decade, but I kind of rediscovered him. His name's Darius Rucker, and Yeah, of course. Really good. So I've got a combination of Darius Rucker country, uh, you know, Alicia Keys R&B, and, you know, '90s, uh, '90s hip-hop.

I'm, I'm really excited about this one because just the blend there. I mean, there's, there, there's a, there's a little bit of everything, sounds like, in this playlist. And, um, you know, for those listening who, who are going to, to be checking out the playlist, you know, don't complain about the lack of diversity here. There's, there's a lot going on here with Darius record, Alicia Keys, A Tribe Called Quest. I'm excited, I'm excited. And, and, you know, I personally listen to all my guests' playlists a couple times through, so I'm looking forward to that.

Uh, give me any feedback and I'll take any suggestions, you know. But like, as a tech guy, you know, the algorithms of you will like this— yeah, sometimes it works. And yeah, but often in the same way, this is a hard thing, you know, which is a much broader point, but because the algorithms are all like, they send you in a rat hole, you know, if you like anything with like a diverse range of stuff, you battle the algorithm. So yeah, on Spotify, I, you know, anyway, give me any suggestions. I'd love to, I'd love to, I'd love to take them. I think a human suggestion still adds value relative to the, you know, just because you like this, you'll like this other thing.

For sure. And actually, I'll have— I'll open up feedback, general open feedback for your playlist, see what anyone else suggests for you.

That'd be awesome.

I'd appreciate it. Yeah. Well, Scott, it's been an absolute pleasure getting to chat with you. Thank you so much for chatting today.

It was great. Thanks for having me, Noah. I really enjoyed it.

Thank you once again for listening. Progress is never a standstill. You're either growing or you're shrinking. Yeah, they're getting better, getting worse. And with your support and the growth of the podcast, I can continue to get awesome guests. So a like, a share, a follow on social media would really be appreciated. Please tell a buddy. Thank you so much, and, uh, be on the lookout for even more, more content.