Hi folks!

In this newsletter, I’m combining sports and business, focusing on my lessons learned on why working sports into business is a good thing. I’ll share my practical ‘real world’ experiences (good and not so good!) over the years. 

So my five lessons: 

1. Building teams and esprit de corps 

For most of my business career, I’ve always worked sports into business. In my younger years, I was always in sports. In a previous newsletter, I spoke about my early years on my small town golf course in Belle Plaine, Iowa, and life and business lessons I learned from those days.  

In high school, I played competitive golf, wrestled and played football. We didn’t have a tennis team, but we also played a lot of tennis in the summer months. Belle Plaine was quite good in golf and wrestling - winning state championships in both golf and wrestling two years, and placing in the top two or three in the state during the other years I was in high school. Growing up, all of my friends were athletes, and it was second nature to me that friendship, team-building, and sports all go together. 

Some sports translate well into later life - golf and racquet sports in particular. Some others not so much! 

For example, football and baseball - sure it's great to throw around the ball - even have a game. Same with basketball. But wrestling - nope! It's one of the oldest sports in Earth's history - dating back to the Greek era (hence 'Greco-Roman' style wrestling).

Wrestling was huge in Iowa and still is. I wrestled my first year at the University of Iowa, as did my Dad when he was at Iowa. I learned a lot about endurance and tenacity from wrestling that helped me later in law and business.

But adults shouldn't wrestle, just say'in...

Also, how about 'Professional Wrestling’? Unlike pro golf, basketball, baseball, hockey, etc, it has little similarity to the amateur version of the sport.

But hey, it certainly worked for Dwayne Johnson, Hulk Hogan, and even Jesse ‘The Body’ Ventura.

I digress so let’s get back to my topic! 

I was fortunate that my favorite sport - golf - translated well in later life. However, golf is very time consuming. At best 18 holes of golf takes over four hours to complete. Needless to say, working golf into your daily work routine might not be a ‘career enhancing’ move! But in moderation, like most things, it works ‘pretty, pretty well’! 

Then CEO of Meredith Corp. Bill Kerr who hired me had a good perspective on golf and business.

Each Wednesday around 4 pm, we and other business colleagues would play nine holes at Wakonda Club in Des Moines; and then have dinner. Bill was a formal guy, so we all showered and put our suits back on for dinner, even in the middle of the summer! It was a great way to catch up on things and relax (relatively speaking!) Bill was pretty intense - some would say difficult - in the office, but on the golf course he was fun.

It would be generous to say that Bill’s golf game was ‘challenged’ - I still recall some of his wild shots ricocheting off caddie shacks! But Bill enjoyed the game - and I have fond memories of those times.

As I mentioned in a previous newsletter, every golfer, even the pros, terrible shots. Check these shots out!

Charles Barkley has even made a lucrative business from his.

I have known some CEO’s who probably played too much golf and there’s been research studies on this.

Bottom line: if you want to work sports into business, there needs to be more than golf.

Golf is time consuming and it only works if the weather allows.  

So, I started turning to additional sports activities in business. At First Data and then at Meredith, I started running - a lot. Running is something you can do in 45 or so minutes and as long as you dress appropriately you can run in just about any climate condition.  

When I formed the Development department at Meredith in the mid 2000’s, we also started traveling a lot. It was easy to throw running gear into your travel bag. As we scoped out acquisition targets, business partners and did speaking engagements, we regularly started every morning with a run.  

We tracked some cool international places along the way, too:

And more frequently, in the U.S. cities that we regularly traveled to:

My favorites tended to be on the West Coast:

The great thing about the West Coast, is that you typically get up by 5 am Pacific, so it’s easy to get in a nice long run before breakfast!

These running routines are still some of my fondest memories of business trips  - you get out of a conference room and actually experience the cities. They also made very lively conversation at dinner meetings at the end of the day!

These routines were key in team-building and developing an esprit de corp! 

2. Developing better business relationships

There is no question that working sports into business significantly improves your relationships with clients and partners.  

To mix things up, we frequently tried different types of sports activities on business trips. Sometimes things didn’t go quite well…. 

For a few years when we traveled to Colorado, we organized mountain-biking excursions. We tended to revolve around the Boulder area near the Flatirons.

Boulder is one of the most elite sports towns in the U.S. - full of athletic types who crave new (and sometimes dangerous) sports activities. We got a little caught up on this a few times, renting ‘29er Mountain Bikes’ and going up and down the technical boulders in the Flatirons.  

We had a great time until once, I was careening down the boulders and wiped out flat on my back.

My good colleague and buddy Jim Sawtelle - one of the best litigators I’ve ever known - was right behind me, and exclaimed “Woah dude! That’s a cool wipe out!”

After that, we went back to simple running in the mountains! 

Another time, we were meeting with partners from Brazil in Miami.

We decided to charter a boat and deep sea fish off the coast of South Beach. Our talented international licensing agents Cueball LLC - John Cabell and Mike Greehan - both great college track athletes in their day, joined us. My colleagues Doug Olson and David Johnson were also onboard.  

It was a beautiful sunny day in Miami but as we sailed about 15 miles off the coast, high winds came up - and the waves grew to over ten feet, rocking our medium sized boat greatly!  

It didn’t take long for most of the passengers other than a few of us, to get terribly sea sick. The Brazilians came first - so ill that they were begging to have the captain return to shore. At about that time, I got the only bite of anyone on my hook - turning out to be a seven foot swordfish that took me 45 minutes to reel in!

I literally had bruises all over my body - getting rocked by the boat waves and reeling that damn fish in (which the captain cut the line off on before we got a picture! I couldn’t believe it!). 

When we finally got back to shore, most everybody was sick, we had no fish, I was bruised and didn’t even get a picture!

I got called back early the next morning to fly back from Miami to buy Allrecipes.com in Seattle. At that time. Allrecipes was our largest and most successful digital acquisition. This acquisition was named 'Digital Deal of the Year' in 2013, and served as the launch pad for several other digital acquisitions.

In 2017, I went on the IPC Media Pension Board in London following our acquisition of Time Inc. Although there is probably nothing more tedious and dry than United Kingdom statutory pension laws - which the Board of Trustees was obligated to monitor and understand, our Chair Person, Susan Andrews, always organized a fun event during the evenings of the board meetings. 

One of the recent events was at The Swingers Club in London. No, it was not that kind of a ‘swingers club’!

It’s important to note that when I first joined the Board of IPC, the pension was significantly underfunded, the relationship with the other trustees was horrible, Meredith had assumed terribly onerous provisions resulting from the 2017 Time Inc acquisition, and there was zero level of trust.  

Within a few years, we developed wonderful relations with the other trustees, became fully funded and successfully removed all the onerous trust provisions.

We did this in part from the camaraderie built through activities like the Players Club.

3. Replacing tedious meetings 

Over the years, I found nothing worse than sitting through tedious corporate meetings especially internal staff meetings. These meetings, in my view, are way over used in organizations and produce little tangible value. Unfortunately, in many of these meetings, there are always a few characters who simply want to wax on about everything they did the previous week that no one really wants to hear about.

We all know these folks!

I talked about lawyers in a previous newsletter - there are a high quotient of these folks in the legal profession!  

Well, to the extent I could, I devised an approach on meetings that were under my control. Instead of a weekly one or two hour tedious and unproductive staff meeting, we all put on running gear and ran outside - three or four miles, nothing too intense.  

An interesting thing happens when you run: you get short of breath... so if you want to talk, you need to be brief with your words!

What a wonderful development this was: more concise staff meetings, while raising your endorphins: which are well proven to make people happier, and improve memory and task skills!

4. Allowing you to do two things at once 

Technology can be a wonderful thing. The Apple AirPod is a good example.

We take it for granted but it was only a few years ago that if you wanted to use earbuds you had to plug a cord into your iPhone. This was cumbersome especially if you wanted to swing a golf club! 

This all changed when Apple launched the AirPod late in 2016. With the AirPod Bluetooth technology, you could be anywhere and take business calls while having free movement. 

I've forgotten the many times I negotiated deals while on the golf course - all thanks to the AirPod! 

In theory, you can also run, play tennis, or do some other sport. However, that’s practically difficult (see my discussion above about running and talking). But, golf is especially suited for this. There are, of course, some country clubs that ban the use of cell phones on the course. I admire these clubs - but most of the best courses in the world allow you to use your iPhone as long it doesn’t disrupt play.

I have a particular recollection of negotiating the sale of Viant (NASDAQ: DSP) (remember MySpace? Viant owned it but subsequently it morphed into an AdTech platform). 

Meredith's ownership of Viant was extremely complex and convoluted thanks to our predecessors at Time Inc that constructed the deal. Simply stated the co-founders of Viant - the Vanderhook brothers - owned 40 percent of the business, and we inherited 60 percent. Long story short - our best path was to sell our 60 percent back to the Vanderhook's. 

Our negotiations were protracted - and we had what would be the final deal discussion set on a Friday. I always played golf on Friday so like I did many times before, I teed off and played while AirPods in ears negotiating final deal terms with the Vanderhook's. As was usually the case when I had AirPods in ears and negotiating, I played pretty well that day. There's something about golf - focusing and keeping your composure - that helps deal negotiation.

In limited circumstances, ‘business’ is a good excuse to not play golf. I’m not talking about somebody saying ‘Oh, I’d love to play but I have too much work to do.’  This happens all the time - and I always found it somewhat annoying when executives repeatedly cannot pull themselves away from the office on Friday afternoon to play golf.

I’ll save that discussion for another newsletter! 

I’m talking about something more tactical. Let me give an example. 

In September 2021, we were in London at the IPC Media Board meetings. At that time, we were in confidential negotiations with IAC (NASDAQ:IAC) on the sale of Meredith’s National Media Group, which was ultimately publicly announced on October 6, 2021. After the IPC Board meetings, fellow board member Doug Olson and I headed up to Scotland for a few days to play golf. On the first day (a Saturday), we played Kingsbarns Golf Links, a wonderful Scottish seaside track. It was a very nice calm day.

On Sunday, we played Carnoustie Golf Links. Carnoustie is infamously known as “Car-nasty” because of its extreme cross wind conditions, hazards and rugged terrain. It was a sunny day but the wind gusts were swirling at 30 miles per hour.  

As we marched through the rugged fairways and wind with our caddies (two very interesting blokes!), we made the turn and reached the dreaded number 10, a 450 yard par 4 with the wind directly against us. Number 10 is called ‘South America’, because according to local lore, a caddie announced he was emigrating but he got so smashed at his going away party, that he made it only as far as number 10 before passing out and ending his quest!

After having been beaten up thoroughly on the front nine, I decided I needed a break! I said to my caddie ‘Sorry mate, I’d love to play this hole, but I need to do a quick business call to the States, so I’ll just walk this hole!’ My caddie responded ‘Understand mate, you Yanks work on Sunday!’ 

There was no urgency to a call, but I rung up my counterpart at IAC to check in to see how things were going. We had a nice chat while I had an enjoyable walk up number 10. This gave me the needed break to plow through the rest of the back nine!

So the lesson: sometimes ‘business’ can be good reason to take a break from sports! 

5. Having more fun! 

If there is a central theme to the above lessons, it’s this: 

Working sports into business allows you to have more fun, while maximizing productivity, building team-spirit and achieving your business objectives.

I’ve learned from many years in business and law that if you are not having fun in your work, you probably should change jobs, or figure out what you can add to your work to make it more fun. Working sports into business was a way that I did this. 

One of my favorite comedians is Larry David. Larry regularly works sports (specifically golf) into his ‘business’: Curb Your Enthusiasm.

Larry has some ‘pretty, pretty good’ golf scenes that I append. So think like Larry… but you might NOT want to do some of the things he does on the golf course!

I’m just sayin’… 

See you next time!