Transcript for Paul Epstein Interview on the Beyond Speaking Podcast
In this episode of the Beyond Speaking Podcast, Paul Epstein, a 15-year NFL and NBA executive, shares his leadership journey, from navigating adversity to turning pain into purpose. Learn about his “Confidence Formula,” the Head-Heart-Hands decision-making framework, and his insights on fostering trust and resilience in teams. Discover how to lead with purpose and make better decisions faster in any environment. Perfect for leaders, sports enthusiasts, and anyone seeking actionable advice on personal and professional growth.
Podcast Episode · Beyond Speaking · Dec 3, 2024 · 28m
Paul: A formula I always think about is Confidence = Values x Action. And the multiplication is the consistency by which you do it. So Confidence = Values x Action. Do we know our values? Are we consistently acting on them? Jed in this case was, and for everybody listening, when a storm strikes, it's about locking in on our inner game and then consistently acting on those values.
Intro: Welcome to the Beyond Speaking podcast from Premiere Speakers Bureau, featuring in depth conversations with the world's most in demand keynote speakers.
Brian: Hi, I'm Brian Lord, president here at Premiere Speakers Bureau, and this is the Beyond Speaking Podcast. Our guest today is Paul Epstein. He's a 15-year NFL NBA executive. He's the author of two books, the most recent of which is Better Decisions Faster, which releases this fall in September. He's spoken to companies like Amazon and NASA and all over the board on leadership, culture, decision making, and a whole lot of stuff. So Paul, thank you so much for coming on and being here on the Beyond Speaking podcast.
Paul: Thank you, Brian. Fired up to be here.
Brian: Well so we have a lot of athletes on here. You're in professional sports in a different way.
Paul: Yes, five nine and a buck eighty doesn't get you very far unless you can kick the ball.
Brian: But yeah, so how did you get involved with sports?
Paul: Here's what's crazy. All right, starting at my undergrad graduation from USC, the anchor man himself delivers a commencement speech. So Will Farrell is up there. And he left me with a single thought that started to inspire my every dream goal and ambition from that point forward. He said, Like me, Will Farrell, you too can marry your passion to your day job. And that resonated, kind of like that lasso inner spirit of belief. I felt it to be true.
And it wasn't immediately. So for a year, year and a half, I'm an outside territory sales manager for a Fortune 10 organization. And I'm driving a cool sporty Dodge caravan in my territory. And as a sports fan my entire life, of course, I've got it on ESPN radio. So for those, even if you're not a sports fan, there is an NFL draft guru. His name is Mel Kuyper. So if you are a sports fan, you know Mel. If not, Mel is a high energy guy. Like, so he is like, he's fired up on all cylinders, right?
So Mel comes on the first commercial break and he says, Have you ever wanted to work in sports? Have you ever dreamed of working for your favorite NFL, NBA? And I'm speeding down the highway. Yes, yes, yes. And then the call to action was call 1-800-SMWW now. SMWW stands for Sports Management Worldwide. I made the call eight weeks later, on an online course, with impressive professors. They said, Where do you want to work? I said LA. And they said, awesome.
Do you like the NBA? I said, yes, we know the perfect people. So here I was talking to my family, and this is like the Kobe Shack era of the Lakers, and like, brother, you made it. Like you're gonna be hanging out with Jack and the Lakers girls, you know, like it was that piece. Well, I did not work for the Lakers. I was across the hall for the Clippers. As an entry-level sales guy, a year before I start, ESPN says you're the worst brand in sports.
My second week on the job, the front cover of Sports Illustrated says, worst franchise in sports history. There's three fans on the cover, each with a paper bag over their head and a message. One of the messages was, just shoot me. I can't make this up, folks. But that was my start. And it was one of those beautiful birthplace learning insights of in a defensive environment like that, where you're not supposed to win that game, how do you play offense?
And that started this fast track of 15 years from an entry to an executive level, most recently chief revenue officer for the 49ers. But between that, I went to the NBA team in New Orleans, and almost lost a team to permanent relocation. Go to Sacramento, and I'm in charge of company culture. And then bang, league-wide labor lockout. Fast forward to my time at the Niners, calling Kaepernick Neils. And I and my team were responsible for sales and service to face 70,000 fans in the aftermath of one of the bigger controversies in sports history. And I'm not here to be political or social. I'm here to just share a story of what it was like to be on the inside. And all of those different experiences were just different testing grounds for how you play offense in a defensive environment.
Brian: Mm-hmm. And that is one of those things. I mean, like how do you do that? I mean that's not the easiest place to be, to sell, to work in those difficult situations from a lot of different aspects. You know, what were the kind of tools that got you through that, you and your teams through that? I know you're in a leadership position with a lot of them.
Paul: For sure. And I think a lot of this comes from knowing that we're speaking to a big event community and speaking community. We always talk about navigating change and navigating uncertainty. One of the truths about change and uncertainty is that it's inevitable. So it becomes borderline predictable. And so when you say things like controlling the controllables, as an entry-level sales leader, I always said work ethic, positivity, coachability. My job is to hire the best talent. Whether it's sales or marketing or accounting, I am here for the skill. But what is the will that needs to exist? Because when I can put my hard hat on and bring my lunch pail in every single day with these controllables like work, ethic, positivity, coachability, that becomes the DNA of the team. That becomes what we call the championship culture. And of course, the higher up a food chain and an org chart you go, it starts to elevate and escalate.
But I really do think that there's a couple of mindset shifts that we always locked in on, besides controlling the controllables. One is adversity is a call-de-sac, not a one-way street. So one bad thing doesn't need to lead to another, one negative event doesn't need to lead to another. It's a turnaround opportunity, but you need to be anticipating that first storm and then just not let it in sports terms, don't let one loss become a losing streak. And that's the problem in business and work and life, one bad day typically leads to another, but part of that is on us.
And so it was just this kind of resilience mindset of I almost, I wouldn't have said this at the time, especially in front of my team, but I almost expected us to lose. Like, not the business, because that's what I was responsible for. I expected the team on the court or the field or the ice. Right? Fourteen out of 15 years I worked in sports, only one playoff experience. Fourteen losing years. Fourteen years where the fans are ticked off at the end.
And a team president once told me, in this business, you sell one of two things, hope or results. If your team wins a lot of games, you get to sell the results. Your team loses, you gotta figure out how to sell hope. Well, 14 out of 15 years, how to figure out hope. They started to call me the hope dealer.
And those are just a few things, but I really just do think that there are these inevitable pieces. 2020 is a great reminder to all of us that storms do come in different shapes and sizes. And yet some people locked in on this belief that you've been here before. Maybe not a pandemic, maybe not a 10-game losing streak, but you felt fear, you felt anxiety, you've been stressed. So how did you overcome those feelings in the past? And then you adopt a playbook.
So we were very tactical in sports. This is what I love to bring to a stage. Yes, inspiration, but how do you win Monday? How do you apply it on Monday morning? And so for us, it was always a matter of, okay, cool. Like you went through this storm now. What's the playbook for how you overcame the adversity of the past? Take that playbook, bottle it up, those insights, apply it to the adversity of the present, and now you have your armor on for the adversity of tomorrow. So it's this past, present, future teaching where it becomes normal.
Brian: So let's say you're a leader, you're coming in, adversity has just hit, it's your Monday morning. How do you get the team started?
Paul: For one, I think if that's where you're starting, it's too late because the work's already been done. Let me give you the quick background on post-Colin Kaepernick kneeling. Again, not getting political or social. This is a story of what our owner, Jed York, did in the aftermath. So Colin Sunday afternoon kneels during the national anthem. Uproar from the military community, law enforcement, 80% of our fans. Cut them from the team or we're out. Cut them from the team, or I'm never paying another invoice.
The team president calls me that night, what's the damage? It's fresh, back in the aftermath, tens of millions of dollars, maybe a hundred million if everybody holds true to their word. He says, fine, get everybody in the boardroom, 8 a.m. Sales team, service team, Jed wants to talk to them, our owner. I expected a CYA message. I expected a bit of crisis management. I expected a business decision to get made.
And here's what I mean by that. I'm not proud of saying this, but unlike business, traditional business where we can play the long game and it's a healthier way of leading and operating. Sports don't always work that way. It's a very short-term game. You're not worried about winning tomorrow, you're focused on winning today. And that attitude of the playing field comes into the boardroom. So here's what I expected. When something controversial happens in sports, it's not only what they did, it's who did it. Tom Brady does something controversial, he'll be fine. I'm not proud of saying that. But that's the truth. Colin Kaepernick, a couple years removed from peak performance, declining, fringe starter, takes the knee, does something controversial. So if you're leading the franchise and if you could make a single decision that could save you tens of millions or prevent you from losing a hundred million dollars, what would you do?
Brian: Yeah. I mean it's tough for those things, you know, trying to figure that out from those reasons.
Paul: Yeah. And to answer your question of what's the first thing you do, here's what Jed did, and it anchors on a very cool insight for all of us to pull from. He got up at 8 a.m. in front of all of us and we were expecting the business decision to get communicated. But instead, he says, We at the 49ers believe in the human right of freedom of expression. I don't care if you're in sales, marketing, accounting, or you're our quarterback. We will forever support that human right. So go out and chase the storm, return your phone calls and texts and emails. Tell them the values that we stand for. And if they're not happy, make me, Jed, available. I look to my left, I look to my right, and I could see people's chest pumping out like this crazy amount of pride.
And here's what it taught me: adversity does not build character, adversity reveals character. So for everybody. Adversity is not the character builder, adversity is the character revealer. And for me, this was such a cool thing of when you know your values, whether as an individual or as a team leader or as a company, and you consistently take action on your values, then you have the confidence required to endure the storm.
A formula I always think about is confidence equals values times action. And the multiplication is the consistency by which you do it. So confidence = values x action. Do we know our values? Are we consistently acting on them? Jed in this case was, and for everybody listening, when a storm strikes, it's about locking in on our inner game and then consistently acting on those values.
Brian: When you're writing these books, I know you're talking about you know turning you know playing offense and defensive game, better decisions faster. Where do you think those ideas came from? What are those things that you were brought up with? Did you have a particular mentor? Where does your Paul Center come from?
Paul: Playing offense in a defensive environment, that was my decade plus journey in sports of walking through fires. I'd love to tell you that I was molded and raised to get through adversity. Now, now that said, life is a tricky beast. Life, there's a lot of things that happen and a lot of things you wouldn't wish on your worst enemy.
And so for me, I've already experienced the worst day of my life. I lost my dad at 19 years old. And I'm an only child and my dad's my hero. So for me, a losing streak, come on now. 14 out of 15 losing seasons, come on now. Like it's just the callous is there. And so I think for a lot of us, it's about reflecting on I don't wish that on anybody, I don't hope that on anybody, but I also understand that like I because I talk about purpose a lot, and we've all experienced pain. And to me the two are inextricably linked.
But there's a bridge. Pain can lead to purpose once healed. Pain can lead to purpose once healed. So the pain that I felt from this devastating experience and this purpose, which my why is to make my dad proud. Was I saying that a year after he passed? No. When I get off a stage today, is that my measurement of success? Hell yes. It is. Because that connects me to him. His legacy has become my purpose.
And so when you think about going through all of these different adversities and writing a leadership playbook like The Power of Playing Offense, a lot of it is just marrying our mindset and our grid and our resilience to our actions. And I think about my worst day, I think about how I've grown, how I've evolved since then, but it's not about me. It's about How does this apply to you? How can you take this playbook?
So literally, when I'm on a stage, my closing call to action in several of my talks is I tell the story of my dad in much more color than I just did. And I share how he was my hero and how from his former students they said, Your dad was the first person that ever believed in me. Your dad gave me a reason to think that tomorrow is worth it. And then I shine a light on the audience and I say, Who's the most important person in your life? Whether still with you, I hope, or like me, in memory. Dedicate the rest of this year to that person. Because you will let yourself down before you let the most important person in your life down.
Brian: Yeah, that's an incredible sentiment. I mean it's you know it kind of makes you think of what you do every day with that particular purpose and that's definitely something that you can take away with that. I know you've mentioned this already a little bit with the 49ers owner. What do the best leaders do that you've seen whether it's on the field or off the field?
Paul: Cool, cool opportunity to share this. It also comes from the Niners. And it was not necessarily a single moment like somebody kneeling about adversity, but it was definitely the lowest culture moment that I can remember. Because I was there for about four and a half years, and there was about a two-year split between two different regimes. The older regime was a low trust environment. All the employee surveys and focus groups in the 360s, low trust, low trust, low trust.
So the challenge for us was how do you grow from a low trust to a high trust organization? And so we go through what we call listening sessions. And these listening sessions had three questions. A consultant came in from the outside and said, What do we need to do more of? What do we need to do better? What do we need to do differently? So more, better, different. And the listening sessions exposed a trust gap. But he said, I can't solve for trust. It's too broad. I don't have a wand to fix trust.
Give me an example, give me an example, give me an example. Why don't you trust the company, your leader, your boss, whoever. Why don't you trust? And the number one example came back to, fondly, what was my favorite place in the 49ers, which was the players' cafeteria.
So I'll tell you a story. This has been told all throughout, this is like NFL folklore here. It's told at every league meeting. It's awesome. Okay, so let's say we're 49ers team members. So I'm talking to everybody listening in right now. You work for the 49ers. So the way it works is, you scan your badge and they take five bucks out of your next paycheck. And if you have time, you sit down, you congregate, you break bread, there's players, there's coaches, there's business folks, there's your colleagues. It's awesome. And then sometimes you don't have time to sit down and hang out. So you still scan, but instead of eating there, you grab a to-go box, you pack home, you pack up your food, and off you go to the next meeting.
Well, in an organization of about 250 people, there were five bad apples that would do this. They would sit down, they would hang out, they would congregate, and then after they were done, they would grab a few boxes to take home that night's dinner. Not the intent of the boxes. So maybe a lot of us have felt this. Have you ever been in a situation where 95% of people did it right, 5% did it wrong, and then 95% get penalized?
Yeah. Well, that's exactly what happened because the director of security had the camera over this area, saw what people were doing. He's like, they're stealing food. So what do you think the head of security does? Gone are the to-go boxes. So now let's go back to the boardroom with these listening sessions. And I'll clean up the language just a little bit. But there was some emotion in the room. There was some emotion in the room.
And the way that they said it to the consultant, when he said, Give me an example, why don't you trust? Why don't you trust? They said they took away the to-go boxes. It's like, what? Like we know the five people that were doing it. They were stealing food, but you penalize the 245 of us. Do you know how many days I'm running on empty? I have a 10 a.m., an 11 a.m. a 12 pm, a 1 p.m. a 2 p.m. meeting, all in service of the company, and I'm getting worked to the bone here. And I used to go in, grab my box, and fuel it for the afternoon. Do you know how many afternoons I'm now running on empty? And again, I cleaned it up a lot.
So where this goes is, the consultant, after hearing this from so many people, aggregates all the data points, all the qualitative feedback, puts together an organizational health assessment, and gives it to the 49ers team president in a nice, polished way. And on the side he says, Hey, I'm just curious, like, why'd you take away the boxes? And the team president looked at him and said, What the hell are you talking about? He had no idea. Yeah. But now he's aware.
Three weeks later, all hands meeting, steps up to the podium, team president, and he says, Ladies and gentlemen, to-go boxes are coming back. An hour later, at the same time, me and him are grabbing a beverage on the side, and he leans over and he says, Paul, I don't know if I've ever heard a louder standing ovation than that. Folks, this is an NFL team president. And it was a to-go box. But it happened and it's real. And to be in the room, it was magical.
It was so much bigger than a box. People felt listened to, they spoke truth to power, and they started to positively influence the environment we asked them to dedicate themselves to. It was so much bigger than a box. And for everyone listening to this, there is a to-go box inside your team and inside your organization that you don't even know about. I promise you. I promise you.
And so listening turns out to be when I ask folks what great leaders do. 90% of the time, top five responses, in every workshop that I'm a part of, global, domestic, doesn't matter how you slice or dice it, listening is a top five response. And my theory is it feels amazing when somebody genuinely and empathetically listens to you, but we experience it so rarely. So when you want something and it feels so special and then it's so infrequent, it puts it higher on the list. And so you ask what great leaders do, they listen. It's simple, but it's hard. Because we're going fast and we're doing and it's so complex around us. So this isn't new advice, but that story of the power of listening about a lunchbox. So part of when I do talks, when I'm being asked to do the deeper work, training or consulting, people say, I want you to help us find our lunchbox. And it's because of that.
Brian: Wow. That's great. That's great. I mean that is one of those things, like, I hate being hungry. I'm kind of those grumpy people. And you understand that like that's such a small thing. You're like, holy cow, you have all these things that you focus on and it's you think it's paycheck or you think it's the lighting or you think it's the you have a fußball table or whatever. And it's a lunch box. So no, that's awesome. And you know, speaking of decision making, you know, part of it that goes into that, you talk about better decisions faster. How do you do that when you're talking you know, as you mentioned, we're crazy busy. Yeah, it's hard to listen. How do leaders make sure they do that?
Paul: Yeah, so this is really not only the book, but the talk, everything that goes with it. It's the 2.0 of really what I've been doing the past handful of years, which is helping folks understand and learn and apply this methodology of how do you play offense in a defensive environment. So what happens is you always get asked the question, Paul, just boil it down to one simple thing. What do people, teams, and organizations that play offense do that those that play defense do not? And I didn't want to be irresponsible. I didn't want to just give my opinion. I actually wanted to base this on research and data and client work and really from the trenches.
And I emerged a few years later with a silver bullet separator and an answer that I would fall on the sword for. Those that play offense are ultra decisive and they are very comfortable with imperfect action because they understand that by moving forward, they will win or learn and evolve. Like that's the mentality, right? And so we don't struggle with paralysis. We don't get stuck in decision fatigue and decision overwhelm, which leads to the worst possible decision of indecision. And so when I broke it down, along with my team, we realized business and life are really as simple as this is a game of decisions. Even as an individual, if I asked you Brian, audit your past.
The quality of your decisions in relationships, in health, in career, that's the quality of life. So there's such high stakes, and we leave them to chance. So I wanted to, because this was not a conceptual thing for me. This wasn't just to shout out to the world, hey, we need to be better decision makers. I don't know how to apply that on Monday morning. So the how and the application inside of the book and beyond, I call it the head, heart, hands equation.
It's very simple. Head is mindset, heart is authenticity, and hands are action. The equation is head + heart = hands. So when deciding whether to take action, whether to use your hands, there's two checkpoints: head and heart. Do I think it's a good idea? Do I feel it's a good idea? And when both are on board, very familiar signal, we remember what is familiar. Green, yellow, and red. Both on board, that is a green light.
Take action when your head and your heart are all in there on board. Neither on board, red light, no action. And a lot of the challenges that we face in the workforce and beyond, burnout, I'm stuck, I'm lost, I'm fatigued, I'm not happy, I'm not fulfilled, I'm disengaged, those are not byproducts of running one red light.
That means we've been running red lights subconsciously for six, twelve, twenty-four, thirty, six, forty-eight months. The compounding effect of red lights, and then we ask ourselves, how do we get here? Now I'm raising the awareness level, so we stop running reds. So we want more green, we stop running red, and then this is the playbook for how you navigate the messy middle of yellow. So more green, less red, awareness of red will stop the red. And here's the playbook to navigate and conquer the messy middle of yellow.
And I believe that the head, heart, hands equation, it's our key to stepping into the most critical forks in the road of life, these really big decisions, with unshakable confidence. That's what I speak on. That's all.
Brian: Awesome. So one last question here. What do you hear the most from people after a speech?
Paul: Hmm. We talked about this a little bit off camera, but I'm happy to share. I didn't finish the thought with you, but here's what it is. So I understand the industry I come from. It's sexy. It's a sports industry. Everybody wants to talk to the sports guy. And again, sorry to disappoint you, I'm not the athlete. But the cool thing is I speak from the trenches. I've been in everyone's shoes.
So when I'm speaking to a leadership audience or a sales audience, yes, like I have struggled with the same things. I've had to overcome the same challenges. I've navigated the same uncertainty, and we've achieved some success and significance on the back end. We've driven impact. So these are nothing more than the insights that can all apply. But here's what people tell me. Paul, we thought this was gonna be different. Like you did tell all the sports stories, and it was amazing. And thank you for that backstage pass and thank you for that peek behind the curtain.
But that story about your dad, that story about the humanity of the workforce, that story about checking in with your heart because heart forward leadership wins. Just that level of pure, raw authenticity and vulnerability. It's like a cocktail of authenticity and vulnerability and reminding people what their purpose is. And here's what I always hear: everybody else talks about purpose like it's some distant Northshore. It's our reason for being. I don't believe that. Finding my purpose changed my life.
But it's because I applied it on Monday morning. And so it's purpose in action. Purpose is a 365 operating system. And so when folks come up to me after, they know that the job is not done. They know it's about what they do on Monday morning. And I literally will say from a stage, no sugar highs allowed. You know, because we've all been to those events and they're super inspiring and they're super awesome. And the best in the best speakers in the world. And then one or two weeks later, and you get back in your inbox and family and life and distractions, and then poof. It's a sugar high. And I say no sugar highs allowed because we're gonna win on Monday.
And so then we arm people up with this 365 growth plan. But to me, that's what people want. They just want to get 1% better. But you gotta get in the heart. You gotta get in the heart to be memorable. So sports gets me invited to the party. Sports is like, welcome in the home, aka the stage or the event or the conference or the summit.
But then at the dinner table, we talk about all these really raw human connecting things. And that's my favorite part. And I told you about my dad earlier. This is deep, but I mean it from my soul. My favorite part of being a speaker is that it reconnected me with my dad. I literally feel like the luckiest person on earth that I get to talk about my hero as a part of what I do. Like, if I would have talked about this in the sports show, I'd have been like, whoa, whoa, whoa, dude, you just went there. Like, come on, man, this is work.
But it's so beautiful. And I think I think that's really cool when people understand you're just one of us and you're just trying to help. I got a hero too. And because of you, I'm gonna dedicate the rest of this year and winning on Monday to the most important person in my life.
Brian: That's awesome. Well, thank you, Paul, for coming on for sharing your stories, you know, on leadership, on culture, on so many different things, decision making. And for you, if you are watching or listening, make sure to check out Paul's profile on premierespeakers.com and also make sure to subscribe, rate and review. So, Paul, thank you again so much for coming on and being part of the Beyond Speaking podcast.
Paul: Thank you. Loved it.
Outro: Thank you for joining us for the Beyond Speaking podcast. To learn more about today's guests, visit PremiereSpeakers.com. Make sure to subscribe and leave a review wherever you listen.
