Three Things I Learned In SaaS, Sports, Tech & Live Events 5.15.23
Learnings on culture in youth sports, Dawn Staley on adversity, Beth Dutton on winning, Taylor Swift's impact on the stock market and a good joke
Three Things I Learned This Week In SaaS, Sports, Tech & Live Events
"Do not let yourself be deceitful, arrogant, or resentful." We don't get anywhere tearing people down. In fact, what we'll get are friends and a community who agrees with tearing others down as a normal thing to do. So what will they do to us when we stand out? Sat at a youth sports event with a friend I admire. They were bought into a match their kid was watching and I asked why? “That boy won’t play with my son so we (notice he said "we" not "he" - making it clear this was a household belief and not the child's) need to beat him.” I asked why the other kid wouldn't play with their son and they didn't know. Never asked. Never wanted to understand others. Just immediately went to tearing others down for not doing what they wanted. It happens in our business every day- we've even shared in a past three things how many will make competition into bad people so they can self-justify crummy behavior. Stay away from people who quickly move to tearing others down. It's lazy. As Tony Robbins says: "If we see a big beautiful building we have two choices: 1) Build our own. That's really hard. Or 2) Tear theirs down. Much easier." Find the builders. Spend time with them. Join a company who views the world through the building and understanding lens. Life's better there. For more, check out Chapter 11 in "Beyond Order" by Jordan Peterson. Terrific reading.
"I love you enough to allow you to fail." South Carolina Women's Basketball super coach Dawn Staley offered a terrific piece of advice/constructive criticism to parents of the next generation. And just about every psychology book reaffirms her position. When I was 21 years old I fell ass-backwards into a job with a phenomenal boss - my now friend Roger Stewart. Everyone was gone one day and I had to enter the specs for a newspaper print ad in the northeast (I realize how old I am as I type this). I made a big mistake. It cost the company over $100k. For reference, I was being paid $36k/year. I was mortified. When Roger returned, he walked into my cubicle. I froze. He put his hand on my shoulder and told me it was an honest mistake, I clearly cared and had learned from it, and we were never going to talk about it again. We didn't. I've employed the same approach on a number of occasions here at TicketManager. What terrific wisdom from a perennial winner in Staley.
"Winners are never judged by how. They save that for the losers" - Beth Dutton. We've had GOD teach us quite a lot of lessons here over time. One of them: You have to learn how to lose, and what it feels like, before you can win well. By well, we mean with humility, grace and gratitude knowing those wins are much less about what we did and much more about the circumstances, and people, around us. Dutton's claim is too common in today's world, where winning, wealth, power and the like are once-again conflated with favor. It's the opposite. Winning can be the ultimate tool to erode a soul. Winning at all costs comes at a tremendous cost.
The LeBron Swift effect. Years ago, Bill Simmons penned an argument for why LeBron James was worth 10x what he was paid due to the impact he had on the economy around him. Think Deloris Jordan saying "The NBA isn't going advertise Michael Jordan, it's going to be the other way around." Earnings coming out the past month for the major public ticketing players shows just how much impact Taylor had on the primary and secondary market. She's the biggest live event money maker of our lifetime. What she does driving commerce changes the market by staggering numbers. Just go have a look.
"People usually relax when you tell them to." A good laugh.