The Caitlin Mitchell Show
After nearly a decade in business, it's time for me to share what I've learned about building a business focused on service leadership to help you on your journey as a business owner. My goal is for you to walk away from each episode with one thing - one sentence, one thought, one perspective shift, one new idea - that has an impact on you, your business, or your life.
The Caitlin Mitchell Show
Navigating Success in Business with Steve Pence—Former US Sports Nike Camps President | Ep 5
Come along with me as I chat with my dad, Steve Pence, who has been my biggest mentor in both life and business. In our conversation, we explore the world of leadership as Steve shares the secrets of turning a love for sports into a successful career in business. Starting from his early days playing basketball to becoming a key figure behind US Sports Nike Camps, we uncover how coaching excellence and corporate success go hand in hand. Steve's story teaches us how to build a team-focused culture that brings out the best in individual talents, creating an environment where team achievements matter more than personal egos.
Ever wondered how to turn entrepreneurial energy into real business growth? Steve shares his decision to start Nike Golf Camps, highlighting how it emphasized the company's commitment to helping employees grow. Steve and I discuss our strategic approach to hiring and mentorship, focusing on nurturing talent while supporting team members as they pursue their career goals. This episode covers employee satisfaction, competitive spirit, and the satisfaction of supporting someone's career aspirations.
We finish by taking a honest look at navigating the unpredictable aspects of business finance and market changes. Using the Pareto principle and real-world examples, we explain how data-driven decisions and adaptability became our guide during uncertain times, such as the shift in camp preferences after 9/11.
Additionally, we share insights into financial literacy, explaining how understanding the basics of business finances not only keeps the company healthy but also demonstrates respect and responsibility to everyone involved. This episode is more than just a story—it's a valuable resource for anyone looking to guide their business through the challenges of industry changes.
Connect with me on Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/caitlindmitchell/
Well, welcome to this week's episode. I am so excited to be bringing a special guest onto the episode with you guys this week. It is none other than my dad, steve Pence, and dad is kind of. You're helping me out because I have COVID. I can barely talk, as you can tell in my voice, and at the 11th hour I called my dad up and said, hey, would you be willing to come on and do an interview with me so that you can do most of the talking? So thanks so much, dad, for being here. I appreciate it.
Speaker 2:You're welcome. You've pulled me off the golf course, but I'm happy to help you out.
Speaker 1:I love it. So before we dive into our episode today, I'd love for you to share with our listeners just a little bit about you, your background and your leadership skills and kind of where that all comes from, so that we kind of have an idea of who you are before we start asking questions about leadership and performance and motivation and all that stuff.
Speaker 2:Sure sir. Thank you, kaylin. Well, my name is Steve Pence. I'm 65 years old and retired. I was president and part owner of US Sports Nike camps from 1990 until 2021.
Speaker 2:And I grew up loving sports and always thought I was going to be a professional athlete and played all the sports in high school and a couple of sports in college and ended up becoming a teacher and a coach when my desire to play professional basketball or baseball ran out and I gladly landed in the Bay Area as a teacher and coach and then a vice principal, and I met an amazing guy that saw some promise in me with tennis at the time and his name's Charlie Hovler and he was running a company called US Sports Camps and, fortunately for me, in 1990, he decided to hire me full time and at the time we had roughly 15 camps and a couple thousand campers. We had two sports tennis and basketball and I believe we were doing about a couple million dollars in business and he thought I had a skill set that could help him grow and I was fortunate because I came in kind of on the ground level in the sports camp business, which really interested me, and over the course of my 30 years there we built the company up to a thousand camp locations. So a camp would be like Stanford University or Williams College or University of Virginia or Pebble Beach Golf. We had 16 different sports like tennis, golf, basketball, baseball and on and on and on. Our sponsor was Nike and we had 110,000 campers and we were doing 50 million in business.
Speaker 2:So we had an amazing run of adding staff in the office and directors out at the camp locations and the director was typically a college coach or a tennis professional or a golf professional, etc. And we had to do a lot with how we ran the business. We were doing everything by mail, then it was fax, and then the internet came on, and then it was search and on and on and on, and so in 2021, I retired and it was just an amazing life to be part of parents and coaches and kids and sports and around wanting to get better and to grow as an individual, make new friends. It was just a great healthy environment, one that I feel very fortunate that I was a part of for many, many years. I have great, fond memories of US sports, nike sports camps.
Speaker 1:Yeah, absolutely, as do I, dad, and I mean it was a huge part of my childhood watching you lead the company and take it to where it got to go and knowing Charlie and I think about, as you tell that story, how much would you say being a coach and being a teacher and playing sports impacted your ability to become a successful president of a company like that.
Speaker 2:Well, I was a point guard at a small school up in an app of alley Calistoga. I always felt like I was a leader of the team and that's when I kind of knew that I could motivate my teammates and was a leader. And it progressed into college and then it funneled into being a vice principal and a coach in Marin County and then when Charlie saw that leadership ability, he decided what I could bring as president in his leadership skills as CEO. Together we made a pretty good team and then the team that we built with us around us were amazing people and we made them feel as much a part of the leadership as we were. It was a collaborative, great effort together and adding good people and helping people grow, and that's how we were able to be successful. It took a lot of years, but Charlie was the head guy and he gave us a lot of freedom, so that's how it worked.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I'm curious about that. I was sitting on a call today with some developers for an app that we're working on. I had two of my team members there and I was just looking at and listening in the way in which my team was interacting with the developers and had our vision in mind and what we wanted to do, and I just sat there with such gratitude for these two people on my team who are a part of this incredible collaborative effort toward making this app happen, and just how thankful I am to get to have people working toward that vision with me. Do you know what I mean? I'm curious, dad, how did you foster a culture of collaboration and teamwork among your staff? How do you ensure that people's talents complement each other and that you don't have ego in the office and there's a lot of different personalities that we deal with and get to figure out how to lead as we expand our teams. Can you speak into that a little bit?
Speaker 2:Yeah, well, in our environment, at US sports camps, where we had five employees, then we ended up with 30 full-time employees and we were pretty much competitors with each other. We would farm out the business in terms of sports, so someone would be in charge of basketball, someone in baseball, tennis and so on. So how it worked is we would build teams within each of those sports silos and there would be a leader of the team, the boss of the team, and the boss would report to me or to Charlie, and then we would help those team members grow and teach them in terms of responsibility. But the best thing you could ever do is, one, be a great communicator of what you want them to do, and two is let them do it and let them make the mistakes. Charlie, let me make mistakes and I laugh at him now and often I'll say geez, charlie, I can't believe you, let me do that. And he just wasn't the type of person that was going to boss you around. He was going to lead by example, which then I did, hopefully, with all of our employees, and then, in turn, they would learn and then create their own environment. So, with 16 different sports, we probably had 10 different divisions and at the top of each division they would have a leader who then would have a team.
Speaker 2:And one of the biggest things that we ever did was Charlie created an environment where people would receive a bonus based on three things One, how their sport did and financially and also other factors. And two, how did that leader do individually? What did they bring to table? How many new camps did they land? How did they lead their team? And then three, there would be a company bonus and you put the three together and then they would be able to see what kind of bonus that they would achieve at the end of the year and during the year we would meet and we were constantly gauging how's the revenue coming in? How are the registrations coming in? How many new sites do you have? How's the team improving? And so each team was its own business unit at US sports camps, but it all funneled in to the mothership and we always communicated how the company was doing. We didn't really hide anything.
Speaker 1:And I'm sorry to interrupt you, dad, really fast, you can continue your thought. But I love that and I think that that's something a lot of entrepreneurs in the beginning stages of our business shy away from, of sharing that type of information with our teams. And I do find that when our team knows at EB academics that this is our overall revenue goal, this is our number of teachers goal, this is our goal for the company as a whole, this is what we're all working toward, because it's not about anything else other than seeing the company grow so that we can impact more people, so that we can hire more people onto the staff, so that we can grow as a team, so that we can provide bonuses for people to kind of get where I'm going with that. And I think that that is a struggle for a lot of beginning entrepreneurs as we start to hire one or two people on our team, that we don't want to share the revenue numbers with them because we feel nervous about it.
Speaker 2:Yeah, that's a natural feeling where it probably depends on the business. If you're a sole proprietor and you're the one that knows the revenue, knows how much that person's making, but then you have these employees and it's kind of a hush-hush thing. The great thing about Charlie is that he was an open book. We didn't share what people made in salaries and bonuses but we were very consistent and fair. Charlie and I knew ethically we were doing the right thing. But as far as the company overall goal, if a company is financially healthy, then that in turn allows leadership ownership to provide salary increases, bonuses.
Speaker 2:If the company is not healthy, then it's easier for an employee to understand well, this is rather than getting a cost of living increase or a 5% or 6% increase in my salary. Hey, these are the numbers. We're down 10% this year, we're down 20%, and so we've had years of US sports where there were no salary increases, which was rare because fortunately we pretty much kept growing every year. So it's a puzzle to put together a financially healthy company and if everybody kind of knows what's going on. What's the revenue goals? What are the expense goals? What are the gross margin goals? What are we spending on G&A expenses If we're all?
Speaker 2:on the same boat and we all know what we're doing together. That teamwork thrives and in the end you create a powerful product and you also create a financially healthy company, which then allows the ownership to release the reins a little bit to maybe hire more people. I know I'm rambling, but I used to ask some employees who would come and want to hire a new person. I would say well, would you rather me pay you more to do more, or do you want me to hire a new person? And because Charlie and I always wanted the company to think small, we didn't want to think oh gosh, revenue is up 10%, let's go ahead and add 10% more in salaries and bonuses. And next thing, you know, you wake up one day and the revenue doesn't come in and now, all of a sudden, you have to let people go.
Speaker 2:So we're always a little cautious in that regard. But hopefully I'm giving you the spirit of the company in how we had growth and we added people in a conservative way. So we wanted to take care of the people, so that when they went home at night whether it was the husband and the wife and said hey, here's how I'm doing in US sports, here's my paycheck, here's my bonus. Here's how the company did. And then we were fortunate enough and Charlie was a great guy who also then provided an opportunity for people to have ownership. So that's how it all blossomed.
Speaker 1:Yeah, and I love talking about this because that's really an extrinsic motivator right A financial incentive, and a lot of people are motivated by that. But that's not the only thing. People are motivated intrinsically as well. So what would you say that you kind of did, or what was your approach to motivating your staff and engaging your staff, helping them stay committed to your long-term goals outside of just their sport growing or whatever it might be? Were there any sort of special things that you did in the office, or can you talk into that a little bit for us, because I think a lot of people struggle with this aspect of leadership of how do you intrinsically motivate somebody.
Speaker 2:For me it all comes down to providing. So you talked about the finance, I talked about the financial part. You confirmed that that's a factor. But the other factor is employees want to know that they have an impact and if you provide them a path to have an impact on the company.
Speaker 2:I remember US sports in 1990 was predominantly tennis and then a handful of basketball camps. And for me, I was hired to help with growth and I was so pumped when I came up with the idea to start the Nike golf camps in 1993. I proposed the idea to Charlie and I had done a bunch of research behind the scenes during my time off and I made this proposal to him and bam, he said sure, steve, go ahead. And that spawned the second big sport at US sports camps and others came along. But as a young employee around 32 years old, 33, I had a young family house payment. I needed something that showed that I was creating value for the company.
Speaker 2:So how does that relate to an entrepreneur or a leader out there? You don't want to pigeonhole people with a no growth opportunity kind of a dead end, because it's pretty easy as a young employee, or even 30s or 40s, and you say well geez, where am I headed? How do I move up? Am I stuck here? And we try to always create a path that allowed them more responsibility, which in turn gave them that self satisfaction of because we're all competitors. Now, not everybody is a competitor and some employees want to fit into a slot and they're really happy, and you need those people too. But then you can identify those others, that they're leaders too, and you need to create that opportunity.
Speaker 1:I love that I once heard somebody say that your business's vision needs to be big enough to hold others' visions within it.
Speaker 2:Wow, Well, that's better than how I said it Well.
Speaker 1:I think you gave a great real life example of that because you're right.
Speaker 1:I mean we do have highly skilled staff and I think if someone just on my team in particular she's highly skilled and I know I have got to let her go and grow or she's going to go somewhere else and she's going to be super successful, the more that I just let her just do what she wants to do and do what she does best within the expectations that I set forth, and I think it's really cool to get to have people like that on your team. Can you talk to me a little bit, Dad, about any I don't know what you're able to divulge to us, but aspects of, like, your hiring process. How do you find great talent like that?
Speaker 2:So I had something about for that. But well, what we used to do is we would hire college kids that were looking for a summer job in the office and we would pay them. When you were there, I don't know in the 90s, you were probably making 12 or 15 bucks an hour, and then when I left, we were retired, we were probably playing 20, 25 an hour and the college kids would come in and they would fit into a division. A division would be like tennis or golf or basketball, and they had an opportunity during their summer months to prove that hey, they had the right stuff, that maybe they could find a full-time gig. And so that was our biggest source of hiring, because we had an opportunity to see how they handled the basic rudimentary skills in the office can they talk to parents, can they talk to college coaches, can they handle the phones and collect money.
Speaker 2:And just on the ground floor, outside of that, caitlin, sometimes we'd hire people and you go through the search companies, but we pretty much 90% would hire from within when we had the talent.
Speaker 2:In the summer that would then graduate from college and come in and work, and what's interesting is when people did come in and work for us full-time. Our turnover rate was very low. And now I know what I was going to say is you mentioned that maybe at EB you have an employee and you're trying to provide that path where they feel like they're just having an impact and they're being rewarded for that and they're getting pumped about their job. But if that person ever hits a ceiling and they got to go and they have to move on, I think one of the best things as a leader and you would hate to lose them is to provide a letter of recommendation and to wish them all the best and then they end up in an environment that then allows them to just go. And I have seen and heard over the years and it used to bug the heck out of me when a company would just not provide that path for them to leave the company and then have a great career.
Speaker 1:Yeah, absolutely. I couldn't agree more. And I think too, you know, just if there's ever someone on our team who's not a right fit, just in general, whether or not that's, we need to release them and let them go. Or they choose to leave or they've outgrown us. I always think about the fact that this is their life and what's their vision for their life. Like I've got to support that. Who am I to be the one to hold them back from being able to live into their fullest, you know, version of themselves? And so I think about it from that perspective.
Speaker 1:As hard as it might be to lose somebody who's great and in fact I just had a friend message me today saying that one of their employees just left and that she's, you know, having a hard time with it, and, of course, understandably so I think, if we take a step back and can remove our emotion from it as you know, business owners and we've got to deal with the repercussions and the fallout and how do we find somebody else and we're in a tight spot, or whatever it might be of looking at it from a place of love and caring about this person and helping them, you know, just be happy in their lives. So I think that's a great point that you bring up Dad.
Speaker 2:Well, that's beautiful, and my motto was always to try to operate from peace. I know it's happened that way, but what you just said, it's their life Now. As long as they handle the communication as far as leaving correctly and they didn't burn any bridges, then yeah, so anyway all right, great.
Speaker 1:I think this is a great conversation. Can you talk to me about I think you kind of touched on it of when Charlie gave you the opportunity to go after golf and bring that new sports division into the business? I think this is one of the things that a lot of us as entrepreneurs struggle with is these kind of bigger risks. You know, I'm going through this right now in the business with the build out of our new software platform and it's a lot of money, it's a lot of time, it's a lot of effort, it's a big risk that I'm taking. But I have a certain kind of frame of mind when I go into those types of things. Can you talk me through what it was like for you in terms of different industry shifts in the sports camps, business and kind of how the company grew and areas where you were like I don't know if this is the right decision, what your kind of decision making process is around certain types of risks like that that align to kind of strategic leadership and strategic vision of the business?
Speaker 2:Yes, as our board divisions would grow. We used to Charlie used to emphasize the Pareto principle. The sociologist Frederico Pareto came up with 80% of outcomes come from 20% of the causes, and how that applied to our camp business was 80% of our revenue was coming from 20% of our camps. Well, we were adding camps and camps and camps. Let me give you an example. If the Pebble Beach golf camp had eight weeks of camp and was doing a million in business, that was the big one. We needed to take care of that camp. We needed to market the camp, take care of the director and just make sure everything was lined up perfectly. But then the golf division was adding 99 other camps. Some of those camps were these little tiny. We used to call it the tail on a cat, the belly, and the body of the cat was the main business. But we were messing around on the tail of the cat where we were doing these little camps with 20 kids, 30 kids, maybe 10,000 in revenue. What we wanted to make sure of was that when you found a good camp and it had great revenue, you really had the ability to just focus when you the risk was adding all these other camps and adding people to support those camps, then if the revenue didn't come in, then you're stuck. It was trial and error. We learned over time. We went up to 30 full-time employees. We brought it down to 24. When COVID hit, we had 24 full-time people helping to create 50 million in business. Of course we had all the college coaches running the camps, et cetera.
Speaker 2:It's constant battle, trying to take a risk but also keeping the company financially healthy. I don't know if I've answered your question, but those are things I was constantly battling. I'd have a leader would come to me of a division and say, steve, it's just too much, we've got to hire somebody. Then that's when I would sit down with the CFO and Charlie. Then later on I would just make the decision myself. Well, let's look at the numbers together. What kind of revenue are you growing every year? If the business unit was flat and they wanted to hire a new person, we were stuck Because you hire a new person whatever the salary is plus the overhead. Next thing you know, if the revenue doesn't come in, you're letting the person go. I don't know if I did a good job answering that. Yeah.
Speaker 1:That's where I was leaning towards. A lot of the things that you said reminded me of some of the decisions that I've made for EB and some of the offers that I've let go and some of the strategy that I've had around where we've put our time, energy, efforts and attention in growing the business. My question to myself is always and what I share with the women in my mastermind is what am I willing to risk to see what happens? I think that was the question, or what you said was that it was kind of a just like let's play it out and see how it goes type thing I always like to look at from hiring someone new. Let's say it's a salary of X amount of money let's just say $65,000 a year. For this conversation, I'm like am I willing to risk $65,000 this year to see what happens with this role? If the answer is yeah, I'm going to do it.
Speaker 1:Yes, for example, of cutting off an offer in the business and, for you guys, maybe closing certain camps in the business. I'm not just making that a random decision. I'm looking at the numbers, I'm looking at the data. How much of our revenue is this? If this huge aspect of what we're putting our marketing efforts towards is only 2% of revenue in the business. Is that?
Speaker 1:really worth my time, energy, effort, money and attention. In doing that. I like to look at things in the same capacity that you do financially, strategically. And then also, I just love that question of what am I willing to risk, just to see what happens, because it comes from a place of curiosity as opposed to a place of I've got to make this happen, being fearful of whatever the outcome is going to be. It just gives you a different perspective as you head into something that's possibly scary or could be scary for other people.
Speaker 2:Another example, but far different from what we're talking about here, would be when 9-11 hit in the early 2000s, we were doing approximately 100% of our business with sleepover business. Parents would drop their kids off on Sunday. They picked the kids up on Friday, they'd sleep in the dorms and we had kids flying all over the country to different airports. We'd pick the kids up, they'd go to camp and it was a high-revenue, high-end type business. And 9-11 hit and parents all of a sudden wanted to bring their child closer to them. They didn't want to release them and they weren't flying their kids around as much. And I had a friend out in Utah, rich Francie, who said hey, let's start some Nike golf day camps. I, hey, richie, we're just a sleepover business. Ah, steve, let's try some day camps. And there was a risk there, because now the kids are younger, it's a day camp, it's not as much revenue, it doesn't fit into the financial model. What's the gross margin? How does it all work out? But we took a risk and we plugged in some day camps. The next thing, you know, we started adding day camps. Every year we were going from 80% sleepover to 70% sleepover to 60% and now I think the business is running 50% sleepover, 50% day camp. So that was a shift in the business spawned by 9-11, because parents were concerned about letting their kids go. They were just being more protective, which was understandable. And now thousands of kids are still sleeping in college dorms and parents love that opportunity for their child. But equally as many kids are going to day camps locally, where it's a step up from a park and rec type idea, and Park and Rec fills a great spot in the local community for camps. But then the Nike camps come in and it's a bit more expensive, but the staff and the quality of the camp is at a higher level.
Speaker 2:Now I do want to give you an example of taking a risk that didn't work. Where US Sports Nike camps. I came up with the idea well, we're going to go to the Park and Rec convention in Nashville and this was in the 90s and I'm going to fly a team in there. So for us flying five or six people, putting them in the hotels, two, three nights, and I gave this presentation with my team to a hundred Park and Rec directors hey, do you want to run Nike camps? And it was overwhelming, it was awesome, we were pumped. We're going to run Nike Park and Rec camps across the country.
Speaker 2:And then we came back home to Marin and just waited for the fax machine to start rolling in as to who wanted to run a Nike camp and five people, ten people, because the business model out at the Park and Rec. Once they went home, the Park and Rec directors and they realized well, this isn't going to work. And I can't remember exactly why, but it was a complete disaster and I probably spent $10,000 or $20,000, but we cut the cord and once you know you've made a mistake you need to laugh at yourself and hopefully it doesn't hurt the company financially too much. But we took a risk and it didn't work.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I think that's a great example for people to see. I mean, that happens all the time, and I think the more we're willing to risk failure fast so we can see like, oh, that doesn't work, let's try something else, the sooner we can move on and find the thing that actually does work.
Speaker 1:When you speak into. You touched on 9-11 and I'm assuming that there were some other struggles and challenges that you guys faced as a company over the 35 years that you were there. I heard someone say it's so much easier to be a leader when things are great, but where real leadership happens is when things are tough and when you're leading the team through the turbulence of difficult years or difficult moments or whatever it might be. Can you speak into any of those times within the history of the company or what you did as a leader to keep morale up when things were difficult? What would you do? How did you lead a team successfully through moments like that?
Speaker 2:Came down to communication. You don't want to hide things from people and COVID was a different animal, and so maybe I shouldn't speak too much to that, because no one really knew how to lead through that, because no one knew what was going to happen the next day, and so that was a real challenging time. But maybe I should use that as a perfect example, because what I immediately did was I knew that we needed to lay off a third of the staff, and the third of the staff that we laid off it was a kind of a natural progression. They knew, because they were new to the company or maybe they weren't full-time we weren't destroying families when we laid a third of the staff off and then the two thirds that were remaining these were things that I just communicated to them. We were cutting your salary by 25%, maybe it was 30%, and Charlie and I were taking a 40% 50% cut in salary. They knew that, and then I did the work for a little thing and everybody knew what everybody was supposed to do, and we were all scared.
Speaker 2:And I'm not going to say there weren't some dark times where I was on the phone with everybody, because that's when we were all getting used to Zoom. We were settling in in our homes and trying to navigate through it and some of the staff had opinions on Steve Pence and how he was handling it and he could have done this and that, but my gut was telling me that I was making the right decisions Intuitively. I knew that no one knew. You can't tell me that in a week or two everything's going to be fine. And then we eventually had to cancel all the camps for the summer and we had to refund $12 million. And it was a challenge as a leader if you're honest and you communicate and you're open to suggestions, but ultimately, as a leader, you have to make the final decision. That's how I handle that particular time in our company history?
Speaker 1:Yeah, and I think too. At the end of the day, dad, everything is fine, everything worked out, everything's OK. It was a very difficult moment for the business, for you as a leader, and at the end of the day, everything is OK, right. I mean what?
Speaker 2:do you think about it, and that's what.
Speaker 1:I try to tell myself too is what's the worst that's going to happen and what's the likelihood of the worst thing actually happening? And once I'm OK with that, I'm like, ok, I'm going to be fine. And having that perspective of no matter what happens, I'm going to be OK is incredibly freeing and being able to make decisions because nothing comes from fear anymore and you're not afraid of what's going to happen necessarily, so you can lead with conviction, with honesty, with kindness, with I love yours of operating from peace all the time, and that's what people respect. And my team has kind of voiced that to me recently is we're building this new app and kind of going through this change. I didn't really have a total plan yet of how we were going to roll it out and execute it this summer and the team keeps coming to me. They're like we kind of need answers from you. I'm like I don't have it yet.
Speaker 1:But as soon as I do I'm going to share, and the thing about the team that's special is they just trust me that, no matter what the decision is, that it's going to be good for the business, because they trust my decision making and to have that from your team is pretty special.
Speaker 2:That's fantastic. And if the team members know that they can offer suggestions, but they respect the fact that you have the ultimate decision making power, in that case that they'll respect that. One of the things that I used to love doing and I think, gained respect from the employees is that I would get in the trenches. Now, I don't know who's listening to this show, I don't know how big their businesses are, but in our case, charlie and I and all the leaders, we could get in the trenches, get on the phones, talk to customers, take the credit cards, handle problems. We didn't sit up at the top and dictate and then they did all the work. And if you can do that, so I would get to work at six and I would get a lot of done between six and seven. I'd answer the phones from seven to eight.
Speaker 2:Now, not everybody's an early riser, I don't have a problem with that. You need people to come in a little bit later. That's the way our business was, and then I would take my two hour break during the day, but I would like to stay late. I wanted to be the last one, the last person, and I always anybody who wants to walk into my office, or I'd walk around the office. Now there are no offices but at the end of the day, if your employees know you're approachable, you're not arrogant, you're not rude, you accept suggestions and you want to as much input as possible, they're going to respect that. And so now your personality dictates a lot as to what type of leader you're capable of being and earning the trust of your employees.
Speaker 1:Yeah, talk to me. That kind of ties into the last question that I wanted to wrap up with, and then, if there's anything that you want to share at the end, I'd love for you to give you the mic for that. In fact, dad, just so you know, I've probably mentioned you already three or four times on the podcast.
Speaker 2:So people are familiar with you.
Speaker 1:And just all of the life skills that you taught me over the years that I didn't realize you were actually teaching me until 25 years later.
Speaker 1:But talking about feedback, receiving feedback from the team I always tell my team this nothing offends me. Please give me feedback, please share with me. I'm not emotionally attached to anything, just share your feedback with me. But I think one of the things that's hard for us as entrepreneurs one is receiving feedback, and I can do a whole separate episode about that for you, as the leader, being able to receive feedback from your teams. But I'd love for you, dad, to speak into how did you provide constructive feedback for your staff. You know, I think this is hard for a lot of people and doing that with our teams when people don't maybe necessarily do things the way that we want it done or they're not rising to the occasion, what did you have in place to encourage that positive performance from your team?
Speaker 2:Well, the revenue of the division dictated really was one form of feedback as to how they were doing. So how many new camps did you have? How's the revenue coming along? We used to run meetings, just small little half hour meetings every two weeks, every three weeks per division, per business unit, but so they kind of knew how they were doing. But then the bigger feedback in my mind was so there was constant communication and we would make adjustments.
Speaker 2:A lot of the leaders of those divisions would want to know well, what does Steve think or what does Charlie think, before I make these decisions, and we'd give feedback. But then the feedback I don't know if you're tying into reviews here, but how I would do it is I would send a division manager a sheet of paper with like five questions. I don't even remember what the questions were, but basically I'd say hey, I want you to assess how did you do managing your team, how did you do with growth, how did you do? And then they would write out their feedback. And then I would also ask them to put together their financials, because they had access to the CFO and we would know exactly how. From year to year I mean these years go by and you know how that division is doing, and so then I knew what they thought before I met with them and they would sell themselves. But then I would have to come into that meeting and I would either agree with it or then I would know that I need to give them a more realistic assessment of how they're really doing.
Speaker 2:And frankly, that's very, very hard. In fact it may have been the hardest thing and the thing that maybe I wasn't the best at, because I wanna be like Switzerland. I want people to have fun and be like me and just trust me. But then, when you get down to the nuts and bolts of well, this is what you need to do, to get better, and I could have done that better too. We could have provided more continued education and encouraged that and paid for it, and we started to do that toward the end of my run there.
Speaker 2:But knowing where the employee actually thinks they are before I would meet with them was very helpful for me as their boss, and I never viewed them as their boss. Some of them loved to call me boss, but I always felt that we were equals, we were on the same plane and I projected that to them, and then we would walk through it together and that's how then I could really give them great feedback as to how they could grow and get better. Or, in many cases, hey, I agree with you. You're doing an amazing job, you're a competitor, you're growing. You did a great job with your staff. Here's your salary, here's your raise, here's your bonus. Let's go do it again. And in 2018, 2019, the thing just blew up. We just the whole team was just operating at a high level, and that's what we had our two biggest years.
Speaker 1:Yeah, we do that same exact thing. I have my team rate themselves on a variety of different things, largely our company core values, which I talked about in episode two of the podcast that you guys can go back and listen to. But it is actually really eye-opening, dad, when I did that, or when I do that on a yearly basis with the team, is people typically rate themselves a lot harder on these areas of what we're looking at in terms of their performance than I would, and it's also interesting too, if there is a discrepancy between my opinion and theirs listening to their reasoning for why they kind of answered the question the way in which they did, and it opens up my eyes to oh yeah, you know what you're right. You do actually do that, and I didn't think about that when I was looking back through your performance review over the last year. So I think that that's a great way and we can do a whole separate podcast episode just about performance reviews for you guys if you'd like.
Speaker 1:But I think that's a great way to give feedback on at least a yearly basis. But I like to give feedback on a consistent basis as well and I share with the team too, of where are my flaws, where are my things that I'm working on? And the fact that I do that with them allows them to feel safe that they can do that with me too, without the risk of feeling like they're gonna lose their job because they're struggling with X, y and Z and their role or whatever it might be. So that's helpful, dad, thanks for sharing that. Yeah, yeah, last question sorry, I have one other one that came up for me what are some of the intangibles that you would hire for on your team? What are you looking for in an A plus player or for US sports?
Speaker 2:I would think my response is when people would apply, the skill set typically was there. You know they didn't have to play sports, but were you a high school athlete, college athlete? But when they came to the table they were skilled. But what I really look for is do I wanna work with that person? Are they humble? Are they competitive? Are they appreciative? Are they somebody that you wanna be in the office with every day or be on a Zoom call or whatever? Are they fun? Are they? Can they laugh at themselves? Are they just witty or whatever? It might be that you look for in the qualities that you wanna be around, and that really comes down to the personality and, as the leader, those are the personalities I wanted to be around. So maybe that's not the best answer, but that is something that meant a lot to me is would they fit in and have fun?
Speaker 2:We wanted to work hard, but we wanted to have fun.
Speaker 1:Yeah, what is it that you tell? Will work hard, play fair, have fun, right? That's what you Correct Be nice Be nice and respect your teachers and coaches.
Speaker 2:I wanna say this before you end, caitlin, that as the leader, and depending on the type of business you have, you can have this high level skill set that knows how to work with people and manage people. But you wanna know the ins and outs of the financials of your business, and I'm talking about the entrepreneurs, the one that has the money at stake, the one that makes the final decisions. You need to know exactly how a business runs financially and if the business thrives and is financially healthy, really good things happen. But if a leader doesn't have a grasp of how the puzzle fits, then when you get to the end of the year and you say, well, what's my net income? And it's not the number you're looking for, then something's wrong with your margins up above and maybe it's your pricing.
Speaker 2:And I don't wanna take too much of your time, but these are the things that some leaders don't know and maybe they're in a business they don't need to know, but it's easy to learn. It's really easy to learn the financials of how a business comes together. There's so many resources on how to do that. Back in the day we needed to know just how to run an Excel spreadsheet. I'm not sure all leaders do, but you should and you should talk to a CFO and how do the margins work and what's pricing and what about growth, and you should be able to look out two, three years. And we didn't talk much about numbers. But if you're an entrepreneur and you're a leader and you expect people to respect you, then you need to know how financially healthy is your company.
Speaker 1:Talk to me. So this is an interesting conversation. I know we were close standing, but I think it's important. I'm sure people are wanting to hear more of what you have to say, so I don't wanna cut you off on this. Talk to me about how much, especially as an entrepreneur, how much of your own personal financial decision-making can impact the business finances.
Speaker 2:Wow, I'm not sure I understand the question.
Speaker 1:So, for example, if I'm like a solopreneur and I have a couple of employees, but I'm making personal financial decisions, like let's say, all of a sudden the business explodes and I'm like I'm gonna go build a mansion right Cause all of a sudden I have all this money personally, but that can impact the business because of the distributions that I'm taking. Or maybe I'm not protecting the business the way that I need to because of personal financial choices that I'm making. Do you get what I'm asking? I do?
Speaker 2:and I'm going to struggle with that question, because if it's a sole proprietor, they have the right to do what they want to do with their money. If it's a C Corp or an S Corp and there are multiple owners and there's a board, then the two are separated. There's the business and what kind of revenues and profits the business generates, depending on how much of that is distributed to the owners, then the owners are free to do whatever they want to do. I haven't really lived in that world, but the leader and the entrepreneur needs to take care of their employees first in order for that company to continue to thrive and be successful. What that entrepreneur chooses to do with their money, I think, is separate. I can't get my head around the question really.
Speaker 1:That's fine. It's just two different worlds. I just think about how sometimes what I've seen happen in just a variety of instances and conversations that I've had is the business isn't necessarily financially taking care of the way in which it should be. To your point of what you're talking about, of how important it is to understand the finances of the business, that sometimes the business can be seen as a cash cow for the entrepreneur and is not being protected necessarily for future growth per se.
Speaker 2:Well, that entrepreneur is going to figure out really quickly that they need to be more financially responsible. What are some?
Speaker 1:things in terms of finances as the leader that I should be looking out for or paying attention to, did you look at the numbers on a monthly basis, on a weekly basis? How did you ensure the success financially of the company?
Speaker 2:It depends on the business. I'm sure you have a lot of different people on this podcast that have different types of revenue generating businesses and what are their expenses. The basics are and you start looking at these year over year, this month this year versus this month last year, and then mid-year and end of year. But there's a thing called margin and you need to know what that gross margin is going to be, because then your company would be healthy. Let me give you a quick example, because I know you're wrapping it up.
Speaker 2:Bill Haneman taught me in the late 90s who was the dean of the admissions at the Stanford Business School. He ran Adidas in the 70s and 80s from a DFO standpoint and he was my predecessor as president of the company. He says, steve, the gross margin of US sports right now is 33%. What that means is all the revenue would come in, and then we would pay the directors, we would pay the colleges and universities, we'd pay for room board facility, and then there was this number, this percentage that was left. It was 33%. Out of that 33%, we then had to pay for marketing and administrative costs and what was left was profit. And he said, steve, don't let that gross margin go below 33% or your company's going to have a problem.
Speaker 2:And guess what it did? It went down to 30%, but we survived because when the margin was 33%, we were still printing a million brochures and we had all these overhead costs that were manual. But then the internet hit and that gave us efficiencies across the board which allowed us to still be financially healthy at 30%. There were some reasons why we dropped the 30%. Nike was a sponsor and we had to do some things that they're an amazing sponsor, by the way but we had some things that were beyond control. We were fortunate that then we didn't print any brochures. It was all an internet-driven business. I know I'm really going way back now. You guys are laughing but, that's what happened.
Speaker 1:I love it that you printed brochures. I remember your office a million.
Speaker 2:It was a typewriter.
Speaker 1:Oh yeah, yeah, typewriter Faxes coming in. I mean just the evolution Forex cheshire.
Speaker 2:Yeah, we mailed out every brochure by hand to start, and blah, blah, blah Wild, so anyway. Well, caitlin, you're so nice to have me on your show. I really appreciate the opportunity and it was a lot of fun. Yeah, thanks.
Speaker 1:so much, dad, for joining me. I appreciate it. You totally helped me out here with the COVID situation. I somehow came out unscathed for four years without getting it. Finally my time came around. Is there anything that you want to leave the listeners with? One last piece of advice, or any phrase, or saying that you want to share that you live your life by, or any words of wisdom?
Speaker 2:Yeah, I've already said it, but if you do work hard which is real, I mean work hard and our type of business we did play fair and it's a rule in sports, but we paid the college coaches well, we had to pay the facilities well, we had to treat the parents properly. We treated the child as a customer at camp. We played fair. We did the right thing work hard, play fair and have fun. We would have parties after work and Christmas parties or holiday parties and celebrate birthdays. You want to have fun and then, as a leader, bill Handeman also told me you can't be afraid to laugh at yourself because you're going to make some mistakes and don't be afraid to apologize if you make a mistake. Yeah, I love that. Okay All right.
Speaker 1:Thanks so much, dad. I appreciate you. Love you honey. Okay, yeah, you bet We'll see you later. Bye-bye, bye.
