Tag: personal growth

Transparency spooks! From ghosts to football, an economic shift to the apocalypse.

Transparency spooks and how it’s moving forward in football, business and life. Apocalypse now?

If you’ve missed me of late, I’ve been blogging about the latest sponsorship news and best practices.  We also took a quick “secret shopper” trip to the thriving metropolises of Nephi/Ephraim/Nebo, Utah, stopping at one of the more said-to-be haunted destinations of the area in Leslie’s Family Tree where the Mormon pioneers of yesteryear clashed with the Native Americans.  I’ve done the research and I’m a believer in transparency – which goes beyond unexplainable paranormal phenomenon, but is increasingly and readily applicable in the sports business and our collective impending future.

“The Game” & Beyond

I just got off the phone with a friend and client of mine in Glenn “Shemy” Schembechler, son of the legendary Michigan coach Bo.  Bo learned everything he knew while coaching under Woody Hayes, who would later become his biggest rival.  Both Michigan and that one state school in Ohio largely played the same way for many years.  Everyone knew that both teams were most likely to run the ball on 1st and 2nd down and throwing if need be on 3rd down.  No frills or surprises, they’re going to rely on brilliant strategy and execution to beat you with tough, talented athletes who believe in their schools’ and coaches’ native credos.  Stop it if you can (sorry, the numbers say you likely won’t as both schools are at the top of the alltime recordbooks).

Shemy, who soaked in all that football leadership along the way and utilized it as an NFL scout, has launched GES Advisory Company, designed to utilize the aforementioned institutional knowledge to benefit aspiring high school football players.  His goal is to give high school athletes the chance to play the sport they love in college (he can be reached at: gesadvisory@gmail.com).  Compared to other recruiting services, he goes much deeper when it comes to taking athletic measurements, gauging mental “make-up” and academic interests, and finding a scholastic fit from the “Power 5” schools on down the collegiate chain. 100% success ratio.  To maximize effect from both a hand-to-hand combat success coupled with today’s demands of information transparency, he’s partnered with Sport Testing, a Canadian company with hockey (including NHL) success stories to build on, patent-pending and coming to you soon.  Sport Testing, “the leading provider of sport specific player testing and a developer of athletic assessment technologies,”has developed equipment shown to be the most accurate in gauging athletic performance. It also has created a database to share this data, serving both the athletes and properties.

Man, I wish it existed back when I was playing!  I was always in-season playing a different ball sport and wasn’t taught the right track technique to run a good 40.  My recruiting service was my grandfather with our team highlight VHS tape knocking on the doors of his alma mater to get me a meeting (not that I would’ve made a different school choice).  5 Star football players who get a verbal offer don’t realize that it has no legal binding, nor does that official offer they received. Now, the gap is being bridged.

The Interview

I just mustered the best 30 minute phone interview perhaps I’ve done to date with Project FANchise to be President of the Salt Lake Screaming Eagles football team by mapping out and checking off what I deemed were the success criteria necessary for the position of my dreams. With the CEO in call 1 before he had seen my resume.  I didn’t do it to work with just another minor league team – this is the 1st ever fan run team.  Everything has been voted on by the fans from the city (they’ll be playing at the Maverik Center, where I worked and of which I had the endorsement of the President I was under) to G.M., head coach, logo and even play calls.

This group (an entrepreneurial mix of tech entrepreneurs, digital, NFL and sport business vets) has crowdfunded opportunities for fans all over the world to get involved with the Screaming Eagles.  Yes, the opposing team might know what’s coming, but can they stop it?  The point is, it opens up the dream of getting involved in what you were/are most passionate about to the masses, where the barriers to entry are the most extreme of perhaps any industry.  Typical sports jobs field hundreds if not thousands of resumes per open position.  This doesn’t even touch on how hard it is to become a professional athlete nor begin to speak to the struggle to excel once you get in on the business side when you’re making peanuts while competing with the hopes of countless others to be G.M., etc. someday let alone keep your current job.

What Project FANchise is doing is to utilize digital transparency that social media has provided us all to develop a competitive advantage – it’s giving live “recruiting tape” to not only to the players, coaches and G.M.’s looking to make a pro impact and move up the ranks, but also to Joe Schmo the fan as well (who can be G.M. for a day for $500).  As the Bo’s of the world have stated, “those who stay will be champions.” Brilliant execution can open up big doors of opportunity.

 

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Salt Lake Screaming Eagles – brought to you by the fans

Apocalypse Now?

All over the place, transparency has become apparent and the effects are rampant. It’s what went into the food we eat and the companies making it.  It’s social media.  It’s the manual processes in life that are being replaced by automatic processes that can share valuable data seamlessly.  We’re starting to realize that sitting in traffic for an hour to commute to shuffle papers and sit in abusively boring meetings all day isn’t always the most productive or efficient way of doing business.

According to the Martin School at Oxford, 47% of today’s jobs in the U.S. will be replaced by artificial intelligence and robots within the next twenty years.   Like the farmers of yesteryear, collaboration will likely create new opportunities.

Or, maybe Terminator was correct and machines are coming to bring about the apocalypse.

Maybe I wasn’t named the 1st President of the Salt Lake Screaming Eagles (someone else got the gig who had been a Minor League Baseball CEO).  I know where I align when it comes to complaining vs. solving come the next apocalypse.  How about you?

Maybe you’ll become the next lost soul tragically left behind to walk between worlds.

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The Terminator fighting the apocalypse with automatic weapons

 

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“The Woman of Bachelor’s Grove”

 

Recapping Travels: Backwards & Forwards

2 weeks, 8 flights, 20,000 Fitbit steps and approximately 7 miles per day, numerous shuttles, metro rides and even a few Uber and Lyft rides thrown in, my girlfriend and I have returned safely to Utah.  Just with feet and cankles that feel like a whale carcass off of Guadalupe Island after the Great Whites found it. Long live #SharkWeek, I will refrain from mentioning shoe brands for fear of losing future endorsements.

A story of the new meets the old.

Our family on my mom’s mother’s side arrived in this country in Maine in 1607.  Thanks to elaborate genealogical research done by the family, we’ve traced relatives who arrived to Casco Bay off of the Portland coast (part of the Calendar Islands, 365 in sum), not to mention more than a few from the Mayflower. While I joked with my mom about the recipe to a great nap being playing the audiobook on the Mayflower settlers in the car, it was fun to share lobster with generations of the Furlong, Leighton, and Knowlton clans dispersed across this great land. We commemorated my legendary grandfather, who passed last summer and had adopted Maine as his, for reasons we grew to know well every summer growing up.

After a quick Boston visit, reuniting with Study Australia study abroad friends in the South End and Back Bay, it was off to Europe.  TAP Portugal, along with Norweigan have offered great deals from certain locations (keep an eye out on Twitter for these), which we capitalized on over Hawaii or South America.

To avoid ridiculous roaming charges, it was Airplane Mode from then on (except for emergencies).  Here’s to testing the claim that millennials can’t operate without consistent WiFi and outlets.

Chebeague Island, one of the Calendar Islands located in Casco Bay outside of Portland Maine. Genealogically traced relatives back to the Mayflower. This group landed in Maine in 1607.
Washington spotted at the Boston Common.
Starý královský palác – the old palace at Prague Castle looms, like the clouds. Our relatives moved from Bratislava before the Czech/Slovakia split two generations ago.
Wandering through Barri Gotic (the Gothic Quarter) of Barcelona.
Taking aim at the unknown at São Jorge Castle in Lisbon.

Although my Airbnb “mom” in Prague might tell you otherwise, it worked out okay without WiFi in foreign speaking lands, despite being a 1st timer on a number of fronts.

Once a property of the U.S.S.R. with major city statues of Stahlin, Czechoslovakia split from the red grasp in 1989 and a few years later, the Czech Republic and Slovakia (where my father’s mother’s Demovic relatives hailed) split from each other a few years later.  Not more than a few years ago, Prague was supposed to be the place to go to live like a king on the cheap.  Not so much anymore as the secret is out.  The history and architecture is amazing, walkable, and German-like food and beers are still cheap though (under $2 at most places for premium local beers).

On to Barcelona, where we felt the ramifications of an airline services strike that started in France (see previous blog post).  Thanks to Marriott Rewards, we stayed at a hotel so modern that we didn’t figure out how to turn on the lights until we checked out.  Glass, Palm tree motif and live foliage throughout.  My kind of place minus the uppity service. And oh, the pool:

We spent five nights soaking in the infectious laid-back culture, the modern (read: oh-so topless) beaches, tapas (too many good places to rely on recommendations) and Gaudi influence of all the different neighborhoods and their tiny, walkable corridors. We met some newlywed Americans while wearing my authentic Nike USA Soccer polo (from Team USA), Californians in Portland who happened to be big Timbers fans that checked out Camp Nuell (F.C. Barcelona stadium) backstage.  No peanut gallery comments while taking US&A photos around town. My New Orleans Hornets dry fit the day before got more banter from an enthusiastic NBA fan yelling across the Metro stop for 20 minutes about his love for basketball, us, and mostly himself.

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Our Barcelona Renaissance hotel & pool view.

Because our flight was round-trip via Prague, we had to fly back there despite our Lisbon connection being only an hour away.  We made the best of it by stocking up on more Czech Absinthe.  We were pretty worn by the time we touched down in Lisbon, and the WiFi-less Metro to walk all over a town filled with cobblestones with slopes like San Francisco to find our Airbnb was a chore.  We made the best of the next morning, checking out an ancient castle in scenic Lisbon, grabbing a local bite, a few gifts and a real sweat before our flight of which we made by the narrowest of margins after getting lost on the walk back.

My takes? Yes, millennials can survive in unfamiliar lands (nearly) devoid of WiFi.  With a little bit of Spanish, some luck and a sense of adventure, we proved that.  The Spanish and Portugese are tremendous folks, but lack the sense of hospitality that we have here (it wasn’t just that I was wearing my new FC Barca shirt on the TAP Portugal flight back with Portugal just making it to the Euro Cup Championship).  Using plastic is a chore unlike in the States.  Living like a local via Airbnb is the way to go, doing more than the tourist traps even if it means getting lost in a neighborhood etc. while getting to know the Metro to save $.  Airports were much easier to navigate there then here (I didn’t have issues until having to go through Security twice in Boston on the way back). JetBlue rocks kind of like Southwest used to.

It was quite the adventure, getting acclimated with the lineage on and mostly off-the-grid.  With a good international cell/WiFi service, a Tim Ferriss “4-Hour Workweek” lifestyle can be had rich in life experiences in places where you can find new perspectives, which was fully put into view when arriving back in a country full of mass shootings and race wars.

Obrigado (“thanks” in Portugese).