Keep Leading!® Podcast 105 | Playing Offense as a Leader | Paul Epstein

Hello, everyone! Welcome to the Keep Leading!® Podcast, the podcast dedicated to leadership development and insights. I’m your host Eddie Turner, The Leadership Excelerator®. I work with leaders to accelerate performance and drive impact through the power of executive and leadership coaching, facilitation, and professional speaking.Unlike most of the men in my family, I don’t have an athletic bone in my body. However, as an executive coach, I find myself using athletic terms and examples often in working with my clients. Today, I would like to do the same with you, my audience. I want to talk about how we can play offense as leaders. To do that, I’ve invited the author of the forthcoming book The Power of Playing Offense – A Leader’s Playbook for Personal and Team Transformation by Paul Epstein. And this book is available for pre-order on Amazon.com.

Paul Epstein is an expert in leadership and organizational culture. He spent 15 years in professional sports as an executive working for multiple NFL and NBA teams. This is where he found his why, to inspire purpose in others so they can play offense in life.

Paul, welcome to the Keep Leading!® Podcast.

Appreciate you having me on, Eddie. Fired up.

All right. Paul, tell us more about your professional background.

Absolutely. So, you mentioned a piece of it and I look at it as I wouldn’t be where I am today without each and every step of the journey. So, coming out of school, I didn’t even know it was possible to work in a space that I call my dream industry. And so, I was a total kid in a candy store. I spent 15 years, when all was said and done, inside of professional sports, NFL league office, 49ers most recently and it was always in formal leadership roles. So, I was leading billion-dollar campaigns, national campaigns around the Super Bowl opening up different venues throughout different sports. And so, it was a total dream come true but I’ll tell you, Eddie, there was a moment and an experience that I had when I was in a leadership role at the San Francisco 49ers that changed my life forever. I could tell you specifically even the day it happened. Back on August 2, 2016, we all go off site and we found our why. Until that point, I was navigating without purpose. And I’ll tell you what, I went back into the office and folks were like “What did you drink at that offsite, what Kool-Aid, what punch because you are just oozing with some sense of energy that we’ve never seen you with, Paul? What’s going on?” And I couldn’t fully articulate it at the time but once I started to understand my personal mission and my North Star and now, I had concrete values. You see, I think all these values and purpose, it’s already inside of us but until we put it on paper and until we go through intentional exercises to find it, then how can we ever act on it. And even if accidentally we do, how can we be consistent about it? And so, what I started to do is I took my purpose, I took my why, I took my values and I started to use them as a framework and a lens for how I showed up every day, meaning my decisions, my behaviors, my actions. And one of those decisions, and for those familiar with the movie Jerry Maguire, it is a little bit of an oldie but a goodie, and I had a Jerry Maguire moment, Eddie. I had a Jerry Maguire moment where I took a leap of faith, I stopped being inspired by the day job and I started getting in a healthy way obsessed with my passion project which was to pay the gift of purpose forward. So, what that meant was I was taking my entire team off site helping them find their why. That created some water cooler buzz and then it spread throughout the 49ers organization to the point where some folks started to call me “The Why Coach.” And so, I’m coaching other people to find their why and that passion project turned into that obsession. And so, I spent the following two years of my life after this leap of faith in a leadership consultancy helping individuals, teams and organizations do just that – find your why, use purpose as the foundation for who you are from a character and a leadership perspective and then that propels you to then pay it forward for your team and your culture. And so, I was all in on people, all in on leadership, all in on culture. And that takes me to about the end of 2019 and then, for all the folks listening to this, we all know what 2020 was about. Depending where we are in the world, it was a year of a bit of a roller coaster, if you will. It had a lot of adversity. And needless to say, at the start of 2020, I founded my own company Purpose Labs and it was one of the biggest and most radical years I could have ever imagined because while there were certain trade-offs in the adversity, the impact was even greater than I could have ever imagined. And I’m not saying this to sound like a billboard. What I’m saying is because I had my purpose intact and I never swayed off of it, that’s what got me through the adversity. Purpose became the fuel for me to step into each day with more courage and more grit and more resilience, all at the core of leadership and I walked away writing a book, about to launch the podcast. I have so much scalable impact now through all of these online courses and that never would have happened had I not a) years ago found my why, b) the pandemic while keeping me home physically, it inspired me to ask myself how do I want to live and lead with purpose going forward. And so, that’s why we are here today, Eddie.

Thank you, Paul. Well, you’ve given us a lot to consider there. So, I just want to step back for a moment. You said you went from attaining your dream job to then later on identifying your why. So, I want to know a little bit more about that. So, I want to just dig into a couple of things. Number one, folks listening to you, it’s not easy to get a job in the professional sports leagues at all. You not only attained success in the NFL but also the NBA. How did you attain your dream job, number one? And then number two, tell us about the success you achieved.

Sure. So, my first break in, and I’ll give very specific context here because I think it all matters, so back when I was a really young buck just getting out of undergrad, so I’m in my early 20s, I was fortunate enough to be working for a Fortune 10 company while I was in school partly as an intern and then I leveraged that into a full-time opportunity my first year out of college. Now, what happened from there was that, and I’ll share this too because it’s important, I was doing quite well for myself both from a career track, from a brand track and even from a financial track to come out of college and have the opportunity to make six figures, I realized how blessed and fortunate I was. And so, then, I’m literally out managing my sales territory, which was my job at the time, and ESPN Radio comes on and it was Mel Kiper, NFL draft guru and literally, Eddie, I remember the words like it was yesterday. He said on this commercial during a radio break “Have you ever wanted to work for your favorite NFL, NBA, MLB?” and I just started accelerating and screaming “Yes! Yes! Yes.” And the call to action here was “Call 1877 SMWW now.” SMWW stands for Sports Management Worldwide, which I made the phone call. It turned out to be an eight-week online course and their promise was “If you’re one of the top students and you turn some heads in a good way, we’ll introduce you to our network.” And so, that program is what led me to an entry-level role selling tickets for the Los Angeles Clippers. Now, remember, I’m in a borderline six-figure job. Let me tell you about the new job. It was a four-hour part-time shift that you had to earn your way up to an eight-hour shift. Most folks, specifically 90%, don’t even make it to the second month because of the lack of pay. It was 7 dollars an hour, 3% commission, no chance for growth unless you are literally the top of a 20-person class. And I not only pulled the trigger and took that plunge. I’ve never looked back, Eddie.

Though it was low pay but the Clippers weren’t the Clippers they are today.

No, no, my friend, no. Even if you’re not a sports fan, let me paint a picture. There are 82 games in a season. When I worked for, them they won 19. That’s really bad.

Yeah. So, I want to make sure we give context. I don’t know what years they were but I know it wasn’t over the last couple.

No, it was tough. So, outside, everybody including my family thinking it was a crazy move because, again, I left stability and security and comfort but that taught me something and I could even connect it back to my current state which is, remember I was saying, my core values are the lens for how I make decisions. Well, lo and behold, years later, one of my core values is courage. And that decision to me resembles what at the time felt like a blind leap but now I see that it’s been a part of my story and my character ever since day one. So, that is how I broke in.

Let me just isolate that for a minute, if I can, Paul, because this is something I talk about with leaders all the time. Sometimes we get comfortable. And when we get comfortable, we become more risk averse and, in some cases, we even stop dreaming about what future potential we can still achieve. So, I love the fact that you took a chance. And, obviously, you put some calculation behind that and it paid off.

Yeah, it did pay off but I’ll say this. For me, I’ve got the shiny story to tell but I earned it, brother. When I say this, I started in a group of about 20 folks. Only two of us saw the second month of the job. I was the only one to get promoted from that four-hour shift to the eight-hour shift. And I share this with you with zero ego, full humility. I share it with you because at the baseline of a career, performance is the name of the game. And so, if it was not for me being able to express the performance through my strengths and my gifts and my talents which naturally sales suited me well at that time, I had to earn each and every step. And so, after I grinded my way through those earliest chapters where I’ll bring the conversation, to answer the second part of your question which is how did I grow my career, once I established that track record of early performance, how did I grow. And it was a really specific moment where I realized that there was a secret sauce of business. And it was two years after the moment that I just shared with you, after a couple of internal promotions, I finally get the call to manage the team that I once started in. So, all of a sudden, I go from individual contributor into formal leadership. No playbook to learn from. I wish I had a book like the one I just wrote at the time because my book is all about the people side of business and that’s where I’m going with this. I inherited a team of about 11 folks and it was a very talented team. Six months in, I look at the scoreboard, meaning our sales performance, and we were well below expectation. And so, one of my guys, his name is Eddie, he and I go out to lunch. He was older than me. Even though he technically reported in to me, I looked up to him whether he knows it or not and I’ve since shared this story a lot with him. And Eddie and I go off to lunch and I’d say “Eddie, dude, what’s going on? The team, we’re just not stepping up?” And after a bit of a back and forth, he said “What are we doing right now?” I said “Well, we’re having lunch.” And he goes “Exactly. We’re breaking bread. When’s the last time you ever did that with anybody else.” And I was like “Holy shoot, Eddie.” It floored me because he went there and I’m so happy he challenged me. Basically, if I cut through all the noise, he said “You don’t have a relationship with anybody on the team except for me. And you know what, Eddie, he was right. He was 100% right. And so, when I had that aha moment, and I’ll share this last point and then please hop back in, I had this role of inside sales manager for the LA Clippers for two years. Same product on the court. It’s not like they got good in wins and losses the following year. It was the same product we were selling. Out of 30 NBA teams that first year where this lunch happened right in the middle of that first year, we finished 28th in revenue. Pretty bad. The next year we finished second, number two out of 30, because I started to put people first. And yes, that sounds like a bumper sticker. I actually did it with actions and behaviors and I was super intentional about putting culture and people and being selfless and being a servant leader. I learned how to do it on the fly. It took me the better part of my first year after a lot of mistakes but I figured it out and that’s the moment where my career started to take off from one leadership role to the next.

Paul, that’s a powerful story. When you talk about still selling a losing product, still selling a product that hasn’t changed but you’re selling more of it, it sounds like you may also need to put out a new sales play book as well.

Yeah. And what’s the core of sales? The same as the core leadership. People. I think sometimes we out think ourselves in tactics and strategies. If you put people first and you do it from a place of care, brother, I think sky is the absolute limit.

And you had that success in the NBA, the National Basketball Association, for those who may not recognize the acronym because we have audiences all over the world here downloading this podcast. And then the National Football League, the NFL. And for other parts of the world, when they say football, they mean soccer, what we call soccer here, but where we throw the pigskin. Tell us about your success there.

Yeah. Well, in a similar theme, I’ll share this, so after the Clippers, I started to hop all around the country, always in elevated roles of leadership. So, I went from LA to New Orleans to Sacramento, then to New York. And New York is where I eventually, after a couple years there, found my way in the NFL league office. So, I shared that quick anecdote with you because technically, out of those four to five promotions that I just bounced around the country for, I only had to interview once. The interview was to go from LA to New Orleans. I had no favors called in. Strictly it was performance based. I had an out interview, if you will, a handful of amazing candidates that were beyond qualified, I could argue more qualified than me at the time but I got that break. And then from New Orleans to Sacramento, Sacramento to New York and then several promotions within New York, I never interviewed. And it goes back to relationships that I built early in my climb, early in my days of growth. I just started to treat people well. I didn’t put on a mask when it came to leadership. I didn’t put on a mask when it came to who I was at work. I was just Paul. And the more that I invested myself in helping others get what they wanted, then lo and behold, they started to open up doors for me as I was escalating. So, I just wanted to provide that context because sometimes you may call it luck but I call it something of being very … And some people say relationships are strategic. Then, to me, that lacks a little bit of authenticity. I didn’t do it strategically. I did it because of that early learning lesson that Eddie taught me and it paid it forward years and years later. So, then NFL was interesting. I go NFL league office, then my last stop. I spent over four years heading up sales at the San Francisco 49ers. Now, as much as I love to tell you that it was solely an amazing ride, I’d rather talk about the other side because on the surface, we opened up Levi Stadium, we achieved a 1.3-billion-dollar goal. And that was not easy but I went through my own roller coaster where if I could look at leadership from the time I was at the Clippers until the time I was at the Niners. Using a sports term, let’s say I had four quarters of a leadership journey. I loved who Paul was in the first and I loved who he was in the fourth. What happened in between was I started to chase success. I became obsessed with the numbers and the results and the goals and the KPIs and sometimes I didn’t always put people first. Now, remember, I built relationships above me which ended up helping me get these other jobs. I’m talking about the folks that if we were to put a hierarchy out there, I lost touch with my team again. So, I fell back down and it was a performance review while I was at the Niners that taught me this lesson, Eddie. Everything’s good. We’re surpassing goal. we’re exceeding expectations. I’m about to leave the team president’s office but something inside of me wasn’t right. I knew that things were imperfect even though he said that we were all good. So, I turned around and I said “Can you just give me one thing, one thing to get better at?” and he said “Absolutely, buddy. Have a seat.” So, in my mind, I’m thinking “Where the heck was this five or ten minutes ago?” Regardless, at least he was willing to go there. And he said “I’m going to tell you a quote from Roosevelt. And this is exactly where I think you need to improve.” He said “People don’t care how much you know until they know how much you care.”

That’s one of my favorite quotes of all time.

Basically, Eddie, and I love that it’s one of your favorite quotes, he told me the same thing that Eddie told me years before. And I just shared this because this is an NFL team president now talking to me. And I felt like I hit rock bottom because on the surface, and if you look at my LinkedIn profile, things look perfect but they were far from perfect. And the thing that I care most about is people but I sold out at some point, I sold out to hit goals and hit success. And at that moment, I said “I’m going to rededicate myself permanently,” emphasis on the word ‘permanently’, “to the Paul back at the Clippers once he figured it out there is no longer an organizational goal or a promotion that will ever become more important than the people that I work with and for in all three directions, above me, below me, to the side of me.” And that was that massive learning lesson and from there, Eddie, that’s what inspired me to pay it forward and create impact beyond the sports industry because I felt like I just figured out this massive gift and I also felt like in a humble way my story had enough success built in that I knew I would have credibility sharing this message because you look at my performance and you say “I’m going to listen to that guy” but I don’t come with a message of “Hit goals at all costs and when at all costs.” I come with a message of “The score will take care of itself if you put your people first.”

I love that. Thank you for sharing that, Paul. And organizations say “Here our number one asset is our people” but when times get going a little difficult, it’s the first thing they get rid of. So, I love how you’re sharing that what you learned, what you experienced, what catapulted you to meteoric success was how you took care of people and you got away from that and you were still having success but you realized the importance of going back to that. And the other reason I love that is because this is the Keep Leading!® Podcast and this is one reason I call it Keep Leading!® leading because you were leading but if we’re not careful, we can kind of fall back on to other habits that we might have once had. So, we can’t stay complacent. We must continuously lead and do the things that got us success.

Yeah. And, Eddie, can I just take two seconds here? I was chasing success but when I fell down, I had no significance. So, my argument is prioritize significance over success.

Prioritize significance over success. Well said, Paul.Well, I’m enjoying talking about playing offense as a leader with former NBA and NFL executive Paul Epstein. We’ll be right back with more right after this.

Okay, everyone. We’re back. I’m talking about playing offense as a leader and I’m doing that with a former NBA and NFL executive Paul Epstein. He is the author of Playing Offense: Leaders Playbook for Personal and Team Transformation.Before the break, Paul was telling us an amazing story about the journey of finding your why, your success in the NFL and the NBA. I have to ask the question. I see the cover of your book is an NFL field. You spent time as an executive in both leagues. Which one is your favorite?

I’m a football guy, Eddie. Frankly, from day one, and it’s the hardest sport to break into, so it wasn’t an accident that it took me about eight years to break in.

That’s a lot of truth to what you say. I’ve known a couple of folks who did eventually get in and they all say what you just said. It is a hard league to get into.

Yes. Nobody leaves. So, there ain’t an open seat. So, once you get there, you got to protect it and hold on and kick some butt in whatever it is you do but that holds your standards to a higher level.

I’m sure. So, you discovered your why and now you’ve written an amazing book. Tell us about the book.

Yeah. So, the book is essentially me sharing a lot of leadership insights that I experienced both from my 15-year run in the professional sports industry and also in the consulting and the coaching work that I’ve done ever since because I thought it was important to test a lot of these principles that I learned in sports but could it apply if you were, as an example, I’ve coached and consulted with navy seals, I’ve coached and consulted with Amazon’s leadership team, with Zoom’s leadership team, and I really wanted to make sure that the leadership principles were universally applicable. And I came out with a resounding yes and I came out with a consistent theme and mantra and I got to study the best of the best that I respected and admired the most in the leadership space. And if I could boil the thesis of the book down to one sentence, it would be “Before you lead others, you must first lead yourself.” And that is the awareness and perspective needed to play offense. On the surface, when I say playing offense, it’s taking a purpose-driven mentality into each day, it’s putting purpose at the forefront of your business model as well as your life because when you believe in each step of the journey, then when the adversity inevitably hits, you’re going to have more enduring qualities. And that’s really why I separated the book into five pillars. The first two are about leading self. The next two are about leading others. And then the fifth is about leading the future. So, the core theme of the first pillar is purpose and my inspiration there was how can you take a world that’s largely paycheck driven and transform them to be purpose driven. The second pillar, the core themes are about grit and resilience. So, my vision there was especially at a time like now where adversity is inevitable, how can you flip that on its head and take adversity into achievement. The third pillar is all about inclusion and helping others unleash their superpowers which I define as your strengths, your gifts, your talents, your passions. The challenge is if they don’t feel they have a seat at the table, that’s where the inclusion comes in, then they’re never going to step forward and unleash their superpowers and realize their full potential. So, that’s the third pillar. The fourth pillar is all about creating a culture that becomes your competitive advantage, which goes back to the people first message. So, gone are the days of commanding control. In are the days of camaraderie and connection. And then the fifth pillar, and imagine we’re just marching down the field, so now we’re in the red zone, we’ve made it through 80 yards and we’re in those final 20, I call this one “Leave it better than you found it” which is what transforms us from what we mentioned earlier, success to significance, from a life of self to a life of legacy. And if I was to say what is in the end zone waiting for you when you take that journey of playing offense where you feel alive at every single step, what’s waiting for you is the trophy of impact, meaning you made a difference of fulfillment because that is the ultimate prize and of legacy because my vision is why is that something we don’t think about until our elder years. What if you could start taking intentional actions tomorrow to build a legacy for how you’re eventually going to be remembered? And it’s got to go beyond the trophy case. So, that, in a nutshell, is the power of playing offense.

Very nice. I like that. Thank you for sharing that nice summary of the book for us and I know that listeners to the Keep Leading!® Podcast will enjoy reading that. Well, I have to ask you a couple of really important questions that I know that people are eager to get the answer to. Who’s going to win Super Bowl?

Oh, as much as I love to tell you my Niners, I don’t think this is the year. The injury bug got us. You know what, I’m thinking Aaron Rodgers might get his second one this year. Green Bay seems to be humming.

Boy, talk about a dark horse pick.

Yeah.

Okay.

All right.

All right.

Depending on when you listen to it, if it’s after February of 2020, let’s see if I’ve got the crystal ball.

Okay, NBA season starting up here after an abbreviated season pulled off. Talk about leadership, making the calls. So many organizations are having to make a tough call about do we continue business as usual. And if we do, how do we do it safely? The NBA successfully pulled off a season where very few players contracted the virus because of that bubble environment that they built. And with the Lakers getting the championship, will they repeat?

I’m going to say no but I think they’re going to take a year off and then they’re going to get back there because I do think the mental part of it’s going to be a little taxing this year. I’m going to go back to who was the hottest team going into the bubble and now that they have a chance to build momentum, I’m going to say the Milwaukee Bucks. So, note I didn’t purposely do this but I just said two Wisconsin teams and I swear to you I have no connection to Wisconsin, I have no skin in the game but that’s just my gut feeling right now.

Oh wow! Well, my Wisconsin listeners are no doubt are excited hearing this these predictions from you, Paul. I don’t know about the rest of the country but yes, we will see exactly how this unfolds but thank you for sharing your predictions with us. I really appreciate it.

And, by the way, Eddie, real quick, and I say this because I’m in LA, I could have easily said the Lakers are going to repeat but remember, earlier in the podcast you said that sometimes leaders and people in general get complacent, get comfortable and I think that is the challenge nowadays of the repeat and why it’s so difficult mentally. I think you see this all the time in life and in sport when you win the championship or whatever trophy you’re chasing after, there’s typically this inevitable letdown. You take your foot off the gas 5%, 10%, 20%, that hunger and that thirst you had to go get that first one. And that’s why I say I think the Lakers may take a year off because if they take 10% off the gas pedal but then I think they get back there because now they’re going to be a little ticked off that they took their foot off the gas. So, I’m just going based on the human dynamics that apply to business and sport all the same.

All right. Well, you used a phrase that I found interesting and I would like to ask you this as we head to our wrap-up here. As we look beyond the trophy case, you’ve had a chance to work for some great teams, what leadership lesson that shows up on the field can we take away to help us keep leading?

Well, it’s a great question. When I ask people in a team, group or organizational setting, and this applies in the sports industry I’ve done this as well as outside of it, I ask them to think of the greatest leader that they’ve ever had. So, right now, for everybody listening in, think of the greatest leader you’ve ever had, any walk of life. It can be personal. It can be professional. Cement that person in your mind right now. Then ask yourself why did you think of that person and specifically, what did that person do in order for you to think about them, by do meaning what actions or behaviors did they take on why you have such a positive feeling about them, they are the greatest leader you’ve ever been around. And Eddie, I asked this to people all over the globe whether in person or virtually and I’ll tell you there’s a usual suspect that finishes in the top five 90% of the time. And I’ve done this in every corner of both the country as well as the globe. I’ve asked this to a baby boomer and a millennial, public organization, private organization. I’ve asked it in for-profit environments, nonprofit environments. 90%, regardless of environment, and here’s the one characteristic and this is the one key to leadership and it’s not practiced anywhere near enough. Listening. We think that leadership is all about do, do, do talk, talk, talk when in reality, and this is part of what’s ailing a part of our world and maybe even our country right now, this goes from society to business, if we just sat back and empathetically listened, we would have a far better world, we would have a far better company and we would have a far better life.

Wonderful. Thank you, Paul.Paul, tell my listeners where they can learn more about you and your work so they can stay connected with you.

Of course. So, everything can be found online. ‘Paul Epstein Speaks’ is my handle on most social media. That’s also my thought leadership website. And if you want to check out the book, which I would totally be humbled and honored if you did, Eddie said it’s on Amazon. To learn more about it, PowerOfPlayingOffence.com. That’s where you can find all of the resources, see all of the folks that have been blessed enough to support the book and really my heart goes out because it’s very fitting for the current times. I think we all need to take a more playing offense mindset into each day because it’s going to benefit the lives and impact the lives of everybody around us.

Excellent. And I know that you have a new podcast launching.

Absolutely. Playmakers Impact Unleashed. We’re following the same thought process where we, using some of Eddie’s words here which we collaborated on, we look beyond the trophy case because a lot of podcasts focus on the what. We really drill in on the who, the why, and the how. And there are tons of tangible practices where every single episode, you’ll be able to implement something on Monday morning both in your business and your life.

Fantastic. So, we’re going to put all that in the show notes so folks can connect with you, purchase the book, listen to your show and learn how to execute the playbook and stay on offense as leaders. Thanks so much for being a fantastic guest, Paul.

Thank you so much. It was truly my honor.

That concludes this episode, everyone. I’m Eddie Turner, The Leadership Excelerator®, reminding you that leadership is not about our title or our position. Leadership is an activity. Leadership is action. It’s not the case of once a leader, always a leader. Leadership is not a garment we put on and take off. We must be a leader at our core and allow it to emanate in all we do. So, whatever you’re doing, always keep leading.