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Championing a Winning Culture: Wisdom from Joel Goldberg
72 Plays1 year ago
With a career spanning over 25 years, Joel Goldberg has become a trusted voice in the world of baseball, specifically known for his deep connections with the Kansas City Royals. Beyond the glitz of victories and championships, Joel's storytelling skills unveil the human side of the game, capturing the essence of resilience, leadership, and teamwork. His unique journey from a local sports anchor to a nationally recognized figure reflects his unwavering commitment to his craft. Joel Goldberg not only narrates the triumphs of baseball but also imparts invaluable lessons, making him a sought-after speaker, mentor, and storyteller. Explore the unique dynamics of a championship team, discover the secrets of cultivating a winning culture, and unravel the parallels between the baseball field and the business arena. Joel's engaging anecdotes and lessons learned provide a valuable playbook for success in sports, leadership, and life.
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https://joelgoldbergmedia.com/
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Transcript
Meet Joel Goldberg
00:00:00
Speaker
On this episode of the Facility Playbook, I got to sit down with Joel Goldberg. He's not only a motivational speaker, but he's a longtime television broadcaster for the Royals, who got started years and years ago, but it was also there during our amazing historic run to the World Series in 14 and then winning it in 15.
00:00:16
Speaker
I loved hearing about how he equates what he's learned on the field, interviewing the players at all the different facilities and different stadiums he's been to, to how you can manage your business, how you can manage your facility, and how you can manage your team. Hope you enjoyed this episode of the Facility Playbook with Joel Goldberg.
00:00:36
Speaker
Do you own or manage a facility? Well, you are in the right place.
Facility Playbook Podcast Introduction
00:00:39
Speaker
Welcome to the Facility Playbook. I'm Luke Wade, founder and CEO of Facility Ally, and this podcast is about helping facility managers and owners learn from pioneers and veterans in the industry who have built and managed successful sports facilities, entertainment venues, and clubs.
00:00:54
Speaker
Did you know that most of those facilities I just mentioned use between four and six different softwares to manage their memberships, lessons, reservations, camps, clinics, and more? Revolutionize your facility with Facility Allies all in one system. Learn more at facilityally.com. And today I'm really excited to have Joel Goldberg, a motivational speaker and longtime television broadcaster here in Kansas City with us today. Hey, Joel, thanks for coming on. Luke, thanks for having me on. Before we jump in, I'd love to hear a little bit about your background and what led you to where you are today.
Joel's Career Journey
00:01:25
Speaker
Well, I'll give you the short version of the 29 years, but pretty much grew up always wanting to be on TV talking about sports, which really means I could talk. It wasn't a great athlete, pursued that, landed in television news, small market, pretty quickly doing sports, local high school sports, all that type of thing.
00:01:45
Speaker
and kind of climbed the ranks eventually made it to regional sports which was much better than news because it was all sports all the time and then that eventually led to the Royals job that I've had for the last 16 years a light bulb went off about seven years ago where I always had the question of what do I do with my off seasons and it would be occasional this occasional that a game here a game there nothing really to to make a lot of money on but just something to get me out of the house
00:02:11
Speaker
And a friend of mine suggested that I start a speaking business, which I had no idea that such a thing even existed. And I'd spoken to rotary clubs, church groups, things like that, which you do in my role for community outreach and realize that that all the lessons that I was learning in sports and team building through through every sport, but especially baseball applied and applied to pretty much any profession.
00:02:39
Speaker
any group that I could possibly talk to wants to build better teams and better people. And so that's where I'm at. That's how way back when I met you and so many others, and really it's led me down all these other paths. And I kind of, I kind of think that I have these two jobs, one A, one B, baseball, which is set in stone. Here are the games I'm doing every single year, and I know where I'm going to be. And the rest of it is I'm going to be somewhere I don't know where, and you wake up every day and it's something different.
00:03:13
Speaker
Glad I got to have you on. I learned from the best watching you do some podcasting now. Here I am with my own. So appreciate you coming up back and supporting that. So I'd love to hear a little bit actually just about, you know, you've been obviously in the sports world, commentating for a long time. And then you transitioned into something new.
00:03:26
Speaker
That's
From Broadcasting to Motivational Speaking
00:03:29
Speaker
Like you said, you didn't even know speaking existed as like another job opportunity. So what are some things that maybe just transitioning into something new that you didn't expect that you learned that you kind of didn't expect would happen?
00:03:32
Speaker
awesome. Yeah. And I actually, uh, when I got to meet you, I had the pleasure of being on your podcast a long time ago.
00:03:40
Speaker
Yeah, I mean, I think there's a lot there, Luke, and I think I would start with just we all, for the most part, maybe not everybody, we're wired, whether it's starting something new, a new project, something we've always wanted to do, a bucket list item. I think that we're so wired internally to wait for everything to be perfect.
00:04:02
Speaker
And that's certainly, you know this, you've got a lot more entrepreneurial experience than me. I think the best of entrepreneurs just go. And that doesn't mean that you're reckless, some are, some aren't, right? But sometimes you gotta go and you figure it out along the way because if you're gonna wait for everything to be perfect, I think the most successful people would tell you nothing's ever gonna be perfect.
Entrepreneurial Mindset
00:04:24
Speaker
And so I've thought about that a lot along the way because I still have a long ways to go with my speaking career and I look at where I'm at now versus where I started and it's a different world and so much further yet I still always feel like and this is definitely an entrepreneurial thing.
00:04:40
Speaker
Oh my gosh, I've done nothing yet. I've got so much further to go. The list never ends, right? And I'm speaking as someone that doesn't have the employees that you've had and all of that kind of stuff. It will consume you every moment of the day if you wanted to, if you let it. But if you're going to wait for all of those things that are going to consume you to be perfect, you're never going to get there.
00:04:59
Speaker
I think the other piece to me was that while I really had no business background and so I didn't know what so many of the roles in these companies did, I knew teams, I knew people and so just trusting your instincts I think was a big deal as well. And then the most important part and you will hear me say this over and over again during this podcast is every bit of this is about people.
00:05:23
Speaker
And so early on for me, you know, I met you. I met so many others. It was about keep meeting more people, more people, more people and just keep meeting them. Not with a I have to get this out of them. I really my goal was just to learn from people. And if along the way, somebody wanted to hire me or introduce me to someone that might hire me great. But I think once I got into my head that not everything had to be transactional and that wins didn't need to be measured like that.
00:05:50
Speaker
that everything started to fall into place. So, I mean, there are a million things, but I think for starters, that's it. Yeah, I remember that was one of the accidental successes I've had is, you know, back in the day when I was young and single and just getting started with my entrepreneurial journey is I took every meeting I was ever asked for with no purpose, no goal, just like, hey, how can I help you? And I connected them to somebody else or connected and made a connection that really helped them and just took a couple minutes of my time.
00:06:15
Speaker
I can't do that as much anymore with a two-year-old and a four-month-old and all these businesses, but that has compounded and compounded over the last 11 years of me starting my businesses of more and more people coming back and saying, hey, you did this for me back then. Are you connecting me to this person? I want to connect you to them. So I can definitely relate to that. It's always been about people for me as well.
00:06:33
Speaker
Yeah, just real quick to add to that because I think this is something that I'm thinking along the lines of the way I do my podcast and what people would find informative that what you just said there is something that I wrestle with all the time. And so I'm guessing a lot of people do is that for those of us that like being around people and those of us that said, the more people I meet, the better.
00:06:54
Speaker
I'm constantly amazed at those that still after all these years can do that. It sounds like you don't have as much of the time to do that anymore because of kids, because of growing business and all that. And you have to take back control of that calendar. I found that to be very hard to do because early on I did go with that mindset of, you know, I want to meet everybody because you never know. And I still hear people I'm amazed by them. We know people like this that I don't know how they find enough hours on the calendar because there aren't enough.
00:07:24
Speaker
that they say, you never know. And I'm at a point now where I say, I don't, I don't know you're right, but I don't have the time always. And so how do you figure out what makes sense and what doesn't cause you don't want to leave money on the table or relationships on the table or whatever it is. I found that to be more challenging than anything early on.
00:07:42
Speaker
Yeah, I, you know, it's, it's really difficult. I think at the end of the day, you know, where I'm at now is I've set goals and I've set priorities and I've multiple businesses now. And so I know each goal and each priority and each value for every business. And so when someone comes in to me, if it's a cold email, most of the time I don't take the, I don't take it. I don't show them, you know, but if it's a referral of someone I know and trust, then most time I'll take it. I just tend to push it out for a while, depending on what the priority of the meeting is and what's going on. But,
00:08:09
Speaker
You know, a lot of times if it comes in and it's something that my other team, you know, Casey Crew or my media agency can help with and that's their goals and their priorities, then I pass it and make the connection to them. Sometimes it'll circle back to me, but at least it got through that process of vetting it and, hey, Luke, we do need you on this. But yeah, nowadays, I think it's a lot of FOMO on my end. Even when I pass that off, I'm like, man, I wish I could be in that meeting because I might have ideas that no one else will have or I could see something that no one else does. But at the end of the day, you know, we're both one person, we're one entrepreneur, one business person.
00:08:39
Speaker
We can't do it all, and you gotta learn to be happy with what you can do, which I struggle with every single day as well. Yeah, agreed. Cool.
Becoming a Royals Broadcaster
00:08:47
Speaker
Well, I'd love to hear since we're Kansas City, you know, we're here in KC and we love it so much. How did you get started with the Royals? How did that come about?
00:08:54
Speaker
Yeah, it came about a little bit accidentally, but maybe still a reminder that relationships matter. I was working in St. Louis before here. I had been there about coming on nine or so years. My first six years in St. Louis, I worked for the local Fox station, which was
00:09:15
Speaker
Great. You know, I mentioned that I'm happy to be out of news. I just think the news industry has changed a lot. But one thing that we always in my 10 years of local television news was that.
00:09:26
Speaker
You only miss is true to this day. You only get so much time for sports. I mean, weather, breaking weather news and then all the bad things going on in the world, that stuff sells unfortunately. And so, you know, as much as I would argue, probably people love sports more than anything else. That was the end of the news and you got your three minutes and that was it. That's all I knew. And then when I left,
00:09:47
Speaker
And I covered, I mean, I covered two Super Bowls, you know, World Series, NHL hockey playoffs. And the experience I got at the Fox station in St. Louis was transformational. But then to be able to move down the street and cover pretty much St. Louis Cardinals and St. Louis Blues every single day without that three minute limitation was great. My role in St. Louis
00:10:11
Speaker
There were, so for people that know what I do here right now, I host the pre and post game show and I'm also the in-game reporter. There were three of us that did all those roles. We shared those roles in St. Louis. So I worked with a couple other guys and I, I knew the guy that, that, that got the most air time, the guy that was the main host. He wasn't leaving anytime soon. And I think he ended up leaving like seven years later. So I was definitely at a dead end there. If I wanted to grow more,
00:10:39
Speaker
At around that time in 2007, I'd gotten to know, and this will be a name certainly people in Kansas City know, Brian McCray, the son of Hal McCray, and Brian of course played center field for the Royals among other teams. And Brian's father at that point, Hal McCray, a legendary Royal, was the hitting coach of the St. Louis Cardinals.
00:11:00
Speaker
And Brian was doing some work for MLB. At the time, I think it was like MLB. Now it's MLB.com or whatever it was. They were really just starting. Now MLB.com or MLB app is a huge thing. And he was kind of like an analyst doing some stuff for MLB. And we ended up together, I feel like in San Diego or something like that, covering Cardinals playoff game or series.
00:11:23
Speaker
Or maybe it was a year before, I don't know, but we got to know each other. And he said to me, because he was living in Kansas City, hey, did you know that Fox is taking over the Royals rights next year? And I had no idea. It's not like my bosses in St. Louis would say, hey, oh, by the way, I want to let you know we're starting something new. You know, I was in my little world and they were doing their thing. And I thought, wait a minute.
00:11:43
Speaker
that could be a good opportunity that could be an opportunity to get more air time and to advance my career and oh by the way my wife grew up in kansas city she moved away but her sister had moved back and we were at least twice a year coming to kansas city from st louis for the birth of my niece the birth of my nephew holidays birthday so i thought wait a minute this is this is an area that i'm kind of familiar with um i don't know if it'd be a good place to live or all that but
00:12:10
Speaker
I'm interested. And so I started pushing really hard and it was the greatest move I ever made because I, you know, I came here 16 years ago and with the exception of a couple of out of town assignments or one death in the family or my son graduating from high school, I've pretty much done every pregame show, post game show and in game report that we've had in 16 seasons. And I'm lucky enough that
00:12:33
Speaker
They're, you know, I wish we had NHL or NBA or both here, but we don't. And NFL's a national, for television, NFL's all national. And so we don't really have other sports. If I go to Minnesota, Detroit, even St. Louis, where they have Blues, their staffs are bigger because they rotate people in and out, you know, give somebody a break, take a break from this sport. I came here and it was baseball all the time. There's no time off, but I know that every day,
00:13:02
Speaker
uh for fans better for better or worse i'm gonna be the guy and um so there there was an incredible consistency to that and then the really cool part is that somewhere along the way i don't know where i had that moment because in my career and maybe this is true for everybody else in my business i should say
00:13:20
Speaker
people always want to ask you what's next. And I think that's probably universal for everything, right, in life, you know. Where are you going after you graduate high school? Where are you going to college? When are you getting married? When are you having kids? When's your next promotion? When's your next? That's TV as well. And I hit a point in Kansas City where I'm like, you know what, I don't think that I could get an opportunity like this with the responsibilities I have anywhere else. I'm good. And maybe the only thing that was holding me up is, you know, when you do the same thing for so long, as amazing as baseball is,
00:13:50
Speaker
Maybe you get a little bored here and there. Then the speaking business started and I've never had a boring day because every day I go to the ballpark, even on a slow time or a losing streak, I'm finding some kind of lesson I could share with others. So a very long part long of that story is that I ended up in Kansas City. I went after it hard. I got it. It was the best decision I ever made.
00:14:10
Speaker
That's awesome. And I love that you still think about helping others, even though, you know, someone look at you as like on TV for the Royals and like, Oh my gosh, you know, he's, he's the, you know, superstar, right? And you're still thinking about it as like, how can I learn from this? How can I help others? How can I go out and, you know, give back?
00:14:27
Speaker
I mean, I think there's a selfish piece to that too. And I hope that I'm always looking to help others. And that's one of the fun parts about being a speaker is you can get on stage and truly making an impact in someone's life at all. Like if I just help one person, I really hope that it's more than that. And somebody comes back to you later and says, hey, you said that one thing to me that really inspired me to do this. And he thought, wow.
00:14:50
Speaker
I did that. And I never got into all this for that. That's kind of the deeper purpose we find. I think as we get older and we start to see that our job is more than just fill in the blank. For me, it's more than just a win or a loss. It's more than just a baseball game. But I think also people will say, man, how do you survive the grind of a season?
00:15:08
Speaker
So a lot of it is just I've done it so long. I know how to pace myself. I know how to ride the ups and downs. I know how to make the wins and losses on emotional, which is a very counterintuitive thing to do for someone that loves sports. But I think it's a survival mechanism for me and allows me to be on my game every day. But once I started realizing that I could look for little pieces, little lessons to learn, little things that
00:15:32
Speaker
that might help others, they helped me too. I mean, I know that probably sounds a little cheesy, but it started giving me a little bit of a deeper purpose, a deeper meaning of just paying attention a little bit more. And then in doing that, we're all storytellers and you don't know where it goes. So to me, it's
00:15:52
Speaker
You know, there've been good years, bad years, all that type of stuff. But like we just came off of 106 loss season tied for the worst of all, all time and franchise history. And I found it to be at least just for me to be one of the more entertaining and fun seasons. And so clearly I'm not talking about wins and losses, but the personalities, the people that I met, new coaching staff, uh, you know, pitch clock, new innovation in the game. So I think there is a lesson for everyone there that that would include running a facility to that.
00:16:22
Speaker
But there's more, if you're really paying attention, there's more than just what we think is a win and a loss. Well, and yeah, and you're absolutely right.
Winning Mindset in Sports and Business
00:16:29
Speaker
I think there's also that true winners slash sports mentality that you have to have, right? It's like the memory of a goldfish, right? You can't keep dwelling on the losses and all those things. You can't think about the last shot. You got to learn from it and move on. And the same thing with entrepreneurship. I always say fail forward, right?
00:16:44
Speaker
You're going to fail, fail forward, learn from it, move forward. And I actually had one time I told somebody, I don't feel like I've ever failed. And he was a mentor. And so he actually was like, no, Luke, you've failed. You just learned every, you look at it as a learning opportunity and move forward. And that way it doesn't resonate as a failure to you. And so I think that's great. Like you said, you know, a losing season in Kansas City. I'm sure you had a lot more winning seasons in St. Louis with everything going on over there.
00:17:07
Speaker
But overall, happy being here. I just love that mentality because that's truly how you find success in life is thinking about the ups and moving forward and helping others. And even helping yourself when I started KC Carew, I did it to meet other people and meet friends. I didn't know it was going to turn into a business and connect 50, 60,000 other people in the way that it has. And so we can all be a little selfish as long as we can see the opportunity to help others and move forward from time to time.
00:17:34
Speaker
And the beauty of it is it takes you down paths that you couldn't have seen coming. And so if that's the selfish aspect that you get that and others get that, what a, what a, what a great way to, to go about things really. And so, I mean, I just, I think that there's so much of that out there for paying attention for paying attention to it. And if we're intentional with the things that we do, even if we're not necessarily knowing what the results are going to be. And, um, you know, look, I sports.
00:18:01
Speaker
at least in terms of what goes on on the field on the court. It's tricky because
00:18:08
Speaker
at least at the highest levels, you're measured by one thing, you're measured by wins and losses. So I recognize that, but one of my mentors, Paul Splitorff, the late Paul Splitorff Royals, all-time wins leader, and one of my first broadcast teammates when I moved here, and I was lucky enough to be around Split for four years before cancer took his life. He pulled me aside one night, and I was a sports fan. I'm still a sports fan. I have such a different perspective now.
00:18:37
Speaker
I'm not an irrational sports fan. My wife reminds me all the time. You have to let people be irrational. You have to let them. This is what they're coming to the games for. This is why they're paying attention. They're allowed to say crazy things and you don't need to be the wet blanket on their fire. This is what they're enjoying, right? I mean, that's part of sports. But for me,
00:18:58
Speaker
Paul Splendorff said to me, he actually said it to my partner, Jeff Montgomery as well, because we've discussed this walking out in the middle of a losing streak and we hear his voice. He'd say, there are a lot of important people that are paid a lot of money to lose sleep over the losses and you're not one of them. And I think about it all the time, not in a matter of don't care. I want them to win every single night. Life is easier for me when they're winning. More people are watching, more people are interested. That's all, that's fine.
00:19:27
Speaker
But if very few people are watching, it's never that few. But I still have to do a job. There's somebody that is laying in a hospital bed. There's someone that's stationed overseas. There's someone that that yes, they'd rather their team win. But right now, just watching that broadcast is the only good thing that they have going for them. So they don't want to see me moping. They don't want to see a bad attitude. They don't want to see me being all down and in the dumps.
00:19:51
Speaker
And so I feel like I have to bring in energy every single day, even if that energy means, you know what, that was one of the worst losses of the year. I can't believe it. Let's talk about it. But there's a way to go about it. And, you know, I just think that as a fan, you're going to let the losses get you down. You should. I just can't. Yeah.
00:20:13
Speaker
That's great. So love the mentality. Let's talk a little about facilities. You have been to how many stadiums and what are some of your favorites and why?
Stadium Experiences and Preferences
00:20:23
Speaker
So I always forget the number and I could count it out, but I won't do that. I can go through all the teams, but I think probably in the course of my life. So we're talking about a lot of stadiums that no longer exist.
00:20:34
Speaker
I think it's for Major League Baseball. I think it's probably upper 40s, maybe 50. There's obviously 30 right now. I've been to all 30. And then when you start adding in other sports, I traveled a lot for NFL, so I've probably been to about 15 of those. And I traveled a decent amount for NHL and probably been to another 15 of those. And so in baseball, and I always say this,
00:20:58
Speaker
Like let's just take Kaufman Stadium out of it because if I say it's my favorite, you're gonna be like, oh, you're just being a Homer. And if I don't say it's my favorite people, people are gonna say, well, how could you not list that as it? But that's like saying, you know, I want you to drive up and down like the really nice street in whatever city and say, which one is your favorite house? And then, you know, combine that with yours. And it's like, well, your own house is different. So let's take Kaufman Stadium out of it.
00:21:25
Speaker
The easiest lesson on this one is always the worst stadium, that's Oakland. And then you can debate, you know, what after that and that could be anything from Tampa to the White Sox. And I'm not saying anything that people haven't heard before. I try to be, you know, fairly play a political game and not insult people because
00:21:44
Speaker
You know, it's never nice to insult someone else's house. It's somebody else's house. But I can definitively say that Oakland is the worst stadium. I grew up outside of Philadelphia before moving to Chicago. Veteran Stadium is one of the biggest dumps to have ever existed, but it was my dump growing up and it was my favorite stadium and it was all my childhood memories. As far as current stadiums, hands down Fenway Park will always be my favorite. But, you know, and Wrigley is close too. But I always say Fenway and Wrigley are like,
00:22:14
Speaker
those two and then 28 others. Maybe you could put Dodger Stadium in there since that's been around since I think the early 60s, 50s when the Brooklyn Dodgers moved out to LA. Those three are like going back in time, especially Fenway and Wrigley. I can actually feel something when I walk into Fenway Park.
00:22:34
Speaker
I mean, that stadium opened, I think, the week that the Titanic sank. So the first thing I would tell people is if you're ever in the Boston area and it's baseball season, just go whatever you have to do. Get in there because it's a truly unique experience. And I think you could say the same for Wrigley. I like Fenway a little bit better. The newer stadiums, I love Seattle. I love San Diego. Those are two of my favorite. San Francisco is incredibly beautiful on the Bay.
00:23:05
Speaker
So those are some of my favorites and then, you know, they're obviously great ones in all the other sports. You know, going up to a Lambeau field is like a religious experience. Going to a hockey game in Montreal is like a religious experience. It's all anyone's talking about everywhere you go on the streets. I could go on and on, but in terms of baseball, I think, you know, outside of the old ones, San Francisco, San Diego and Seattle are probably my three favorite. Baltimore also, I love Baltimore too.
00:23:33
Speaker
So what would you say? I want to talk about both of those old ones, right? Obviously there's history there, but what specifically about the old ones, like give me a couple of things about them that make you feel something. And then maybe what is it that you love about the new ones? Okay. So I think that for the older ones, and I think this, this is a pretty good discussion for, for your podcast and your audience as well. Um, they've done a great job at Fenway and Wrigley.
00:24:00
Speaker
of making them modern stadiums while still giving you the feel of going back in time. And so that's a really hard thing to do. I mean, you're sitting right now in the old Kemper Arena, and I didn't grow up here, but I still hear from people that say, as different as it is now, and think about the amount of innovation and what they've done at Hy-Vee Arena now, and that it's not just the basketball courts or the volleyball courts behind you, right?
00:24:29
Speaker
There's so many other things in businesses and it's so interesting what they did there. But yet I believe when I've talked to some friends that grew up here, when you walk in, you still get a little bit of that feel that brings you back to your childhood. And so that to me tells me that they still found a way to preserve some of the history. You don't walk in there and be like, wait, this used to be what? But yet it's still something different.
00:25:01
Speaker
Look at Fenway Park. I mean, there were never seats on top of the monster. Now it's 100% expected that you're going to sit up there. And not everybody, but I mean that you have that option. I know that every time I work at Fenway, instead of doing a report down by the camera wall, I always do a report. My first report of every game is in the second inning.
00:25:24
Speaker
And a lot of times it's just by the dugout, by the camera wall. It's just the most convenient. You don't need to mess with the range of microphones and receivers and all that. But when I'm at Fenway, I tell them I need to do my report from atop the monster. And it may not have anything to do with the monster. It may not have anything to do with left field. So here's this innovation of these seats.
00:25:48
Speaker
that never existed before, but yet sitting on top of one of the most iconic structures in all of sports. And when you look at the seats at Fenway, they're not all quite pointed the right direction. They're not, you know, you kind of got to angle yourself and look this way. They were made back then. So there's a little bit of
00:26:10
Speaker
You know, it doesn't have all the comfort that some of the newer stadiums do, but they've done everything to make that stadium as modern as possible. Same thing for Wrigley Field and, you know, you got to make sure you still have good scoreboards and good fans expect and players expect to be able to have the best.
00:26:31
Speaker
So if you are going to take stadiums like that and modernize them, well, that's it. You have to be able to modernize them. And so when I look at Fenway, when I look at Wrigley, they're not dumps. The old Yankee Stadium was a dump.
00:26:48
Speaker
Now, it was a dump by the time it was done with the history of Babe Ruth and Joe DiMaggio and Mickey Mantle and on and on. And one of my complaints about the new stadium, which is a palace and has been around now well over 10 years, closer to getting closer to 15, I think, is that it doesn't have the feel of Old Yankee Stadium.
00:27:14
Speaker
It just feels like a billion-dollar palace. However, I have felt, and it's interesting, I always run this stuff by my broadcast partner, Jeff Montgomery, and he agreed with me on this. I feel like it's starting to get worn in a little bit more. It's starting to get a little bit more character to it. It's starting to feel less of a pristine, perfect palace, and it's starting to get some of those warts. But Yankee Stadium has every possible modern amenity and comfort
00:27:44
Speaker
that you could ever, ever want. And that's kind of where things have gone. I think that's probably true in your industry too. There's an expectation from customers, from clients, from fans that we want to live in modern times. And that's true when you hear about
00:28:04
Speaker
locker rooms, clubhouses being redone. They've done an amazing job redoing clubhouses, a Fenway and Wrigley and all that. Fans may not care about that, but guess what? The guys that are going on the field that are the ones playing for you feel a lot better about coming to work every single day.
00:28:21
Speaker
when they like their home. And that's true in all of sports. I mean, I remember doing some college hockey some years back and talking to different coaches. And they said, as long as we have the modern technology and all the cool stuff that the kids want, they'll consider coming here. But if we don't have it, that's great that it's an old rink. That's great that it's an old barn, an old arena, an old gym. Take Allen Field House.
00:28:48
Speaker
You know, Alan Fios is a great example with Wrigley or with Fenway. But it's not what it was back then, but you still feel like it was, but you still have the amenities and I haven't been in the locker rooms there, but I guarantee you that any player coming to KU to play has every amenity and then some that any other program would have and probably more. They have to have that, but yet they've maintained the integrity of what makes it so cool.
00:29:13
Speaker
Yeah. It's just an interesting balance of keeping the history because obviously that's the nostalgia for people like us and every kid coming through there, right? Growing up is going to have that nostalgia. So how do you keep the history alive so that everybody has that feeling, but like you said, how do you modernize it, make it better and better? Cause everybody wants the.
00:29:29
Speaker
the comfort of all the new things. So that's actually, I'm glad you brought up the players because that was my next question is, you obviously have a different perspective from the outside, commentating, being around all the fans, but you're also around all the players as well. So have you heard of what some of the players like their stadiums, what the best stadiums that they like are and what matters to them when it comes to those stadiums?
00:29:52
Speaker
There are a few things here and you're going to get a different answer from every player and you'll see some common themes. But in terms of a home stadium, they want a good clubhouse. That's where they're living most of the time. I mean, you're on the field for three hours for the game and a little bit more for batting practice. If you're at work for eight to 10 hours a day, you're spending over half of it in that clubhouse.
00:30:19
Speaker
you know you go to now you're not always going to get the same as a visiting team but the old days of the tiny little blocker those are over for the most part you want to be comfortable you know it's it's your home it's your office and and for most of these guys
00:30:37
Speaker
Unlike the old days, they're not from here. They're here for six months a year and they're going elsewhere. In the old days, you pretty much lived here year round because the money wasn't good enough to have multiple homes. They all can afford to have a second place, even if it's modest for some of the lower end paid players who are still paid pretty well by normal standards of our lives.
00:31:02
Speaker
But they, you know, they want to be comfortable when they're away from their families and their homes and all that type of thing. Although the irony of that to me, Luke, is that in the old days, guys hung around longer. They'd stay after games and have beers and hang out. And now it's like, you know, you get in, you do your thing and you leave. It's just a different generation. That's a whole different discussion on
00:31:28
Speaker
kind of where we're at in the world with, especially post pandemic, everybody's isolated, right? Everybody's on their phones. But Clubhouse matters, but I think the other piece too that really matters, and this is again different for every player, is certain, I know everything is supposed to be regulated, certain mounds for pitchers feel better than others, certain mounds feel worse.
00:31:53
Speaker
Picking up a ball in the backdrop in a certain stadium is easier for some hitters and not for others something as simple as remember i think that i'm back still happen to do that pitching lane from from the mound. To home plate they have that like that path of almost that base path of dirt some guys found out to be.
00:32:14
Speaker
easier to pitch with. I mean, you know, like sports beyond just superstition, guys know what works for them and what doesn't work for them. And I could go and ask my partner, Jeff Montgomery, OK, what was your favorite place to pitch? And well, it was this and this and this. And then I could ask Jeremy Guthrie, oh, I love this mound. I always did this year. You go look up their numbers and sure enough. So why do they like that stadium? Because they had success.
00:32:39
Speaker
Do they like something specific because they had success? Did they have success because of something specific? Sometimes they know, sometimes they don't. But a lot of it is just that. It's just a history of doing well there and you get comfortable and why does any guy do well against a certain team or a certain pitcher or in a certain venue and it gets into their heads in a good or a bad way and that ends up really affecting us.
00:33:05
Speaker
Do, are there any facilities that you are stadiums, I guess, obviously baseball, I know you've been a lot more, but, you know, everybody talks about how loud Arrowhead is and how it'll mess with the, you know, the game, right? And the other teams not used to it. Is there anything like that around baseball or any other sports that you've seen where it's like this stadium makes you feel a certain way? Yeah. I mean, I think as, as anti roof, I was going to say dome, there really aren't a whole lot of domes anymore, but, um,
00:33:32
Speaker
I don't love indoor baseball, although I find myself loving indoor baseball more if the roof is retractable and it means that we're gonna play versus being postponed. But when you close some of those roofs, Houston gets as loud as any place that I've seen. And part of getting loud is not just having the roof closed and all that noise trapped, it's having big crowds.
00:33:57
Speaker
I think everybody in the country that's a baseball fan outside of anyone that's an Astros fan hates the Astros because of the cheating scandal. But they've been the most successful team in the last six, seven years, which means that they draw massive crowds every single night.
00:34:14
Speaker
That certainly beats playing in front of 7,000 fans when you're playing in front of 35,000 rabid fans. And you can't help but feel that excitement, the energy level in the place. I mean, it's hard to duplicate that.
00:34:29
Speaker
Philadelphia this summer and now they're outdoors, but Philadelphia fans are everything that people say in terms of their reputation. And it was just three thrilling games. The Royals actually won the first and they'd had a player.
00:34:44
Speaker
Trey Turner, who's making massive money and was struggling, and Philadelphia fans decided that weekend that they were going to cheer him on, which is the most un-Philadelphia thing I've ever heard of, because even though they're the city of brotherly love, they don't give out a whole lot of love. Maybe it's this generation we're in now. I know when I grew up outside of Philadelphia, not only would the fans get after the players, they would get after their family, they would get after, you name it, and I'm not saying that was right, but that's the way they did it.
00:35:14
Speaker
Now they're going to cheer on a guy that is struggling mightily hoping it might affect his confidence. And while we were there playing the Phillies, it happened. He hit a home run and you would have thought they won the World Series in that moment. And that place was just so raucous all weekend long. I love that. I love going to Yankee Stadium now because you're as much as it can be, you know, look at us.
00:35:38
Speaker
the bright lights or the Yankees, you're not, at least in my head, that's the way it always feels, you know, that small market inferiority complex. The big stage is fun. And so places like that get big crowds every night. And unless they're getting completely shut out, which is even better from our standpoint, it just gets very, very electric. And so that's fun. But I think any of those places that can close a roof,
00:36:07
Speaker
and have a big crowd, it can be hard to hear yourself think sometimes. Awesome. Have you worked with many of the facility managers? Do you have any insight on what it looks like to run a facility of that magnitude? No, I mean, I think probably the guys that I talk to, and I think this is interesting, the guys that I probably talk to more than anyone at different stadiums, men or women, are sometimes the head groundskeepers.
00:36:34
Speaker
So that's at a lower level than running the whole stadium. I certainly know the guy that runs the Royal Stadium and have known him for a lot of years and I'm always amazed at just
00:36:46
Speaker
the amount of detail and the amount of everything that's going on. Certainly at a level of a professional stadium and a major league baseball stadium, you start to think about all of the different elements that are going on, everything. Not that they may all fall under his leadership, but anything from
00:37:05
Speaker
the engineers and the carpenters that seem to be constantly fixing something every single day to security, to fan engagement, to on and on and on. And it's interesting to me because not that I know everybody at Kauffman Stadium far from it. I think I probably know a lot of most faces
00:37:35
Speaker
And there are people that are working there that may not even care about baseball, which is fine too. They're working hardworking people, working their jobs, whether it's in concessions or security or whatever it is. But I think, and I mentioned earlier, everything comes down to people. You got a lot of people trying to make a lot of things happen at once. And it's one thing to run a baseball team.
00:38:02
Speaker
You're talking about 26 players and then another 14 that are part of your 40 man roster. And then all the others that are part of your organization in the minor leagues that may or may not get called up at a certain point. And all the coaches and all the staff and all the trainers and everybody that comes along with that, that's just the baseball side of it.
00:38:24
Speaker
What about everybody that falls under the operations of that stadium or that facility? That to me is such a bigger thing that is going on, such a bigger scale than whatever sport is being played.
00:38:39
Speaker
Yeah, so many different moving pieces, so many different moving parts that definitely can't, hard to imagine, right? Like you said, I'm in Hy-Vee Arena and this place is huge, but the number of people and things and all the things going on at a baseball stadium, football stadium, sports stadium, it's kind of unfathomable to some degree.
00:38:58
Speaker
I
2015 Royals' World Series Reflections
00:38:58
Speaker
want to talk a little bit about the 2015 when the Royals were good, not having the worst season ever. Let's talk a little about the 2015 World Series run, you know, what it was like with the team, the broadcasters in the city. I didn't know you at the time, but I actually, that's actually what made me a Royals fan. I moved up here from around St. Louis.
00:39:16
Speaker
and never really was a Cardinals fan, but all my family was definitely been the Cardinals games. When I moved to Kansas City, I was like, you know, Royals what, you know, never really cared. And then just seeing what it did to the city really turned me into a fan. So I'd love to hear about it from somebody who's on the front line.
00:39:30
Speaker
You know, just a magical time as magical for us, for the players, for the coaches, for the staff, for their families, for everybody working around the stadium. I mean, you know, we get back to facilities too. I mean, anybody that was working at Coffman Stadium was pulled into the excitement of this.
00:39:48
Speaker
And the chaos too. I think most people in whatever their job would say that they would rather be busy and worn out than bored and nothing going on. And so when you look at every night, if it wasn't a packed house, it was a big crowd. It was exciting. It was what I was talking about with some of those other teams.
00:40:13
Speaker
You know, I think to me what was so special about 2015 is that everyone else around the country thought that what happened in 14 was just a little fluke.
00:40:24
Speaker
They came back and they did it again and they did it even better. And I remember getting to spring training and it was like, there was just a different look on the face of these players. Look, I've never covered a spring training and I've now covered spring training in some form or another for 24 years, I think, going back to my Cardinals days and I've never heard a team.
00:40:47
Speaker
whether they're expected to go all the way or whether they're expected to be in last place that ever started out spring training by saying, you know what? We're just, we're going to suck this year. We're not going to be very good. You know, I've never heard that. They always say, uh, you know, hope Springs eternal or something like that. Right? I mean, everybody thinks even the worst teams,
00:41:11
Speaker
If this, this, this, and this could go right, maybe we could get hot and then we could, you know, that's what everybody at least hopes for. And then the good teams say, we want to win it all this year. But everybody thinks that they got a shot. But there was a little something different about that team in 15. They came back with a chip on their shoulder. They came back pissed off. They came back saying, you know, we still have unfinished business. That's one thing to say it.
00:41:36
Speaker
It's another thing to do it. And it's another thing to do it when you have a target on your back. And it felt like everywhere we went that year, other teams were trying to push the Royals buttons to knock them off. And they assume they were going to do it because this small market team, cute little story,
00:41:57
Speaker
Whatever will knock them off never hear from them again, and they just wouldn't go away They just got better and better and better. So I think that's the one thing that I remember I mean I had somebody last night at a speaking engagement asked me what my favorite moment of 15 was and I said I really need to go back to 14 because
00:42:13
Speaker
The Wild Card is the greatest playoff game in Royals history. A few days before that, the Royals had clinched their first playoff berth in 29 years. I forget a lot of plays, but I'll forever remember Salvador Perez catching a foul ball to end the game in Chicago on a Friday night.
00:42:31
Speaker
No big deal, really. It's just a foul out to end the game. But that clinched their first berth since 1985. Fans had come from Kansas City to hang out in Chicago for the weekend and go to the games. Not difficult to get a ticket for Royals White Sox. And it was like one massive party. That was the moment where everything started. And so in many ways, I look at 14 before I look at 15. But they just came back seasoned, a little bit bitter, more hungry, more together.
00:42:59
Speaker
And that's really, really hard to do in sports. There aren't a whole lot of teams that have gone back to back with, with, with pennants in baseball in recent years. And so I just, and then the other piece to it, I think to Luke is that.
00:43:14
Speaker
I'm learning this more as we go along. I fully believe the Royals here to be good again. I don't know if it's this year, next year. I see the pieces in place. I'm excited about their foundation. This year was extremely disappointing, but I see them on the rise. I really do. I can't tell you for the life of me if they will ever do again what they did back in 14 and 15. That's the goal.
00:43:35
Speaker
But to assume that it'll happen again is to assume that everything falls into place right. And so I find myself the more distance I get from 14 and 15 just reflecting on.
00:43:47
Speaker
what a unique and special occurrence that was, not just for the small market Royals for any franchise. The Yankees and the Royals have won the exact amount of championships in the last 20 years. So you want to talk about an ROI there. Now you can argue that the Yankees have plenty of ROI with their fan base and with the merchandise and with on and on and on. But, you know, they've won one title in the last 20 years. The Royals have won one title. I'm not suggesting that the Royals have the same record as the Yankees. I'm suggesting that it's really hard to do this.
00:44:16
Speaker
And they did it. And I think when you start looking at guys, I mean, OK, you're a transplant. I'm a transplant. But when you start looking at the names of those guys, Eric Hosmer, Mike Mustakis, Alcides Escobar, Greg Holland, Wade Davis, Adonana, right? Salvador Perez, of course, Danny Duffy, Jordano Ventura.
00:44:40
Speaker
will never have that group again. That's a very obvious statement. Maybe there'll be another group that does something that they did, but you'll never have that collective group again. And what's really cool in getting off track is that 2024 is the 10 year anniversary of that, that American league championship. 2025 is the 10 year anniversary. And a lot of those guys have now retired or are just starting to retire.
00:45:04
Speaker
And we're going to start seeing them now in a different way and it's going to be very reflective and very memorable and the stories are going to be exaggerated and they're going to get bigger and bigger and all that. So we still have a lot of that fun stuff coming up too. Yeah, it's a man. I can't believe it's been 10 years. It's so crazy. But
00:45:23
Speaker
Yeah, so let's talk a little bit about the work you do with companies. Cultivating championship culture and a winning playbook is something that you talk about. So let's hear a little bit about how you're able to, for facility managers out there, what have you learned from baseball that you're now helping companies with?
Cultivating a Championship Culture in Business
00:45:38
Speaker
Yeah, and this absolutely plays into everything and certainly a little bit of what I just touched on with the amount of moving parts and running a facility, which I think you would know better than me, Luke,
00:45:52
Speaker
whether it's something the size of Kaufman Stadium, whether it's something the size of Hy-Vee Arena or it's something a little bit smaller, unless it's the tiniest little thing, it's not a one person show, right? I mean, you have a lot of people and moving parts. And so I think the first thing, again, I'll go back to this because it's really part of everything that I do with my speaking, is everything you do is about people, whether it's your own people, whether it's the people that you serve, and we should be serving our own people as well.
00:46:21
Speaker
So I talk about this a lot. Every day you have opportunities to build trust.
00:46:28
Speaker
And trust to me, like I tell people all the time, I'm not in the baseball business, I'm in the people business. If you're in the people business, you're in the trust business, if you're getting it right. And trust is something that you could throw away in a moment, very easy to do, right? I mean, you talked about people reaching out to you, I don't remember how you said it, the cold call or the, you know, whatever, and okay, I'm not meeting with them.
00:46:55
Speaker
How often do those people reach out and suggest to you that they pick a spot, that you pick a spot on their calendar without ever asking whether you're interested?
00:47:04
Speaker
Right. We see that a lot on LinkedIn and on this. Hey, I've got this for you. Why don't you pick a time where we could talk. You've already violated my trust because you haven't even asked whether I'm interested. You haven't even really built a relationship yet. So I think to me, I see this on the baseball level in the clubhouses, on the field, throughout the stadium, is that you have to build relationships and trust with your own people and externally. And that takes effort every single day. That's the number one thing I talk about is
00:47:34
Speaker
If I'm not building trust and relationships with our players every day, I'm going to get the worst interviews of all time. And look, sometimes they are bland. Sometimes we live in the, you know, it's a lot safer to be bland to give the, you know, the cliche answers.
00:47:52
Speaker
But when I'm doing my job right, there's a reason why Salvador Perez gives me so much good stuff. And yes, he gives a lot of people great stuff because he has that big personality. But I can promise you right now, if you ask Salvi, do you trust Joel, he would say yes. And I would say the same about him. I've been with him for 13 years, which is tied for the longest I've ever covered any player along with Alex Gordon is 13. But I work on that every single day.
00:48:19
Speaker
So I think making sure you understand your people, making sure that you trust your people, that they trust you, making sure that you're listening to people. When we talk about everything with these stadiums and innovation, this all comes from not just saying, hey, let's try this and do this. Hopefully it comes from listening to your clients, your customers.
00:48:41
Speaker
What are you interested in? What would you like to see? And if you're paying attention enough and you're listening enough and you're genuine enough about it, you're going to find answers of what people want, what people need. And so that's, that's to me, the key to everything is we talked about this a little bit before. It's, you know, it's, it's making everything about everyone else and what, what, what could we do to help others? And so I think that's the biggest key is taking these teams
00:49:11
Speaker
And then I think the other piece too in building that trust is just understanding what everybody else does, especially in the standpoint of a facility. You know, the groundskeeper at the Royals doesn't need to necessarily understand how the broadcast works or accounting or whatever it is. But if I have a better appreciation for how you go about your business and what you need to do to be successful,
00:49:40
Speaker
At the minimum, I could stay out of your way and not make things more difficult. Right. And so when you start to build those relationships, when you start to build that trust, when you start to be able to understand others and they're willing to open up to you a little bit more, you can make their lives better. They're going to make your lives better. I think that's the biggest thing for me. And that's something that I try to do every single day. And I'll I'll add one more thing to it. And it's important. You've probably heard me talk about it before is. When I walk into a baseball clubhouse or a locker room, we call it a clubhouse.
00:50:11
Speaker
And I think this is important for all of us. I recognize most people will never walk into a baseball clubhouse, but I'm not in their fraternity, so to speak. All right, I didn't play the game. And even if I did, it's a different generation.
00:50:27
Speaker
So it's their house, it's their place. So I walk in there every day wanting to respect what they're doing, what their routines are. And this isn't just true for players. This is reading people, this is reading the room. And so I take a lot of pride in trying to read that body language and say, is this the right time? Is this the wrong time? Because most of us are uncomfortable saying no. And so if you can prevent someone from having to be uncomfortable,
00:50:57
Speaker
If you could prevent them from saying no by recognizing in the moment that this may not look like a good time to bother them because they're getting ready to go work out, they're getting ready to go to the cage or in every other day life, they look like they're about ready to jump on a phone call or they're dealing with something at home and now they have to deal with you. Guess what's going to happen every time that you walk up to them?
00:51:19
Speaker
They're going to probably run the other way. So my mantra every time I walk into the clubhouse is that when I walk into the clubhouse, I don't want players walking the other way. And you do that by respecting them, by reading them, and then by communicating with them, whether that be with our English speaking players or guys that are bilingual or guys that only speak Spanish, but I can communicate a little bit with them. And always being what you say you're going to be, being where, be where you're going to be when you say you're going to be there, meaning
00:51:50
Speaker
Hey Luke, do you got a moment to do a quick interview? Sure. I only need 30 seconds to a minute, but I see all the rest of the media back there. There's the chance if I start this, they may come running over. Are you okay if it goes more than a minute? I'm kind of busy. Can we go do it somewhere else? Or do you have a better time to do it? What works for you? And when I, I've made it a point of doing that my whole career. And so guys never pushed me away. Very rarely do they push me away. So it's,
00:52:20
Speaker
Everything we do is about putting other people in a place to succeed. That's not a television broadcast thing. That's true no matter what we do. And if you can regularly and consistently do that and be who you say you're going to be, people will talk to you all the time.
00:52:35
Speaker
Yeah, I think it's important, like you said, just key respect. You know, I'm sure for these guys, they get treated like, you know, these superstars and, you know, people just come up, sling questions at them, ask for photos without really asking them if it's okay, respecting them. And so when they get treated like a normal human being, right, with respect and communication, I'm sure it feels really good to them, which is how you say you build trust. And I think that's important. And that goes a long way with
00:52:59
Speaker
You know, the janitor of a facility, the groundskeeper, right? Your employee who is the manager, right? Just respecting their time. And the same thing, like you said, works for them, right? If they're having a bad day, or it's not a good time to meet, or they're busy, you know, respecting that as a manager and owner will go a long way with those employees as well. And
Building Effective Teams with Respect and Trust
00:53:15
Speaker
the other thing too, like, look, there are some, there are some managers and owners, I'll focus on them, that remember every name and face. And there are others that don't remember anyone.
00:53:29
Speaker
That doesn't have to be a you're a good guy or a bad guy thing. Some of us are good at that and some of us aren't. I recognize faces. I don't remember a lot of the names and especially for me where everything can be so out of context where I'm walking around the stadium and I'm seeing fans.
00:53:46
Speaker
my head spinning because I'm maybe listening to the game in my ear or producer and I'm looking for this and I'm chasing that. And then the next day I'll have a friend that'll be like, Hey, it was good seeing you yesterday. I'm like, did I, you know, so I get that. But with all that said, my point on that is just that, you know, some people are better at this. Some people aren't is that when you take a genuine interest in people, it's always gonna, gonna work out well for you and be, and like,
00:54:12
Speaker
I saw this, I knew this, but it was really reiterated to me this year. The Royals new manager last year, Matt Quattro, who I still think probably most fans, average fan, if he walked down the street, they wouldn't know who he is yet. I mean, he's only been here one year. He's certainly the nicest baseball manager I've ever worked with. But beyond that,
00:54:32
Speaker
I saw it, he did this with me early on in the off season, and then I watched him do it with people throughout the year. Hey, what's your story? How did you get here? Where did you come from? I remember he asked me that I think last January. I had interviewed him once when he got hired in November for five minutes on live TV. My only encounter with him was on live television. It's not like we had sat down. And I reintroduced myself to him. And he goes, I know who you are. You've been here forever. And I'm like, oh, okay, yeah. Hey, tell me your story. How did you get here?
00:55:02
Speaker
Boy, I never really had a manager ask me that before. And I'm not expecting anyone to ask me that. They got enough stuff on their plate, right? The owner has enough stuff on his plate. The manager at the facility has enough stuff on their plate. But imagine what happens when that manager or that owner wants to know not just how is the janitor doing? Hey, how are you doing today? That's nice.
00:55:28
Speaker
Hey, how long have you been here? Or how did you get here? Or where did what's your story? Wow, they're taking an interest in me. That's a that that's very powerful. I watched back which arrow do that. We'd be waiting to start an interview. And we've got a lot of people we pick up on the road, you know, crew crew members and, you know, this one woman,
00:55:49
Speaker
Our role is just to help with the gear and make sure the gear gets from here to here. And you need a new microphone cable. She's going to run and get it. The job is called a runner. It's not a glamorous job. And we're waiting to start this interview with some of the media coming over. And he goes, hey, what's your name? What's your role here? What's your story? I mean, that's pretty powerful to me. And so something that I try to remember as well, I need to be better at it.
00:56:19
Speaker
That's a great way to build trust in relationships when you actually take an interest in someone. Yeah, definitely. So if you started all over today, what would you do differently? Two things, well, probably a lot of things actually, but the one, and this is just silly, so I don't know that it's going to really help anybody, is that I would have studied Spanish in high school instead of French. It would have had me so much further along.
00:56:42
Speaker
same. I did the same thing. I even took French in college. I'm so mad I didn't do Spanish. Yeah, I was good at it too. But you know, you're younger than me, but I hopefully you'll agree with me on this one. It's harder to learn this stuff when we get older. And I'm still trying every day I do a little bit of Spanish, but
00:56:58
Speaker
such a mistake. So I think I could have been fluent in Spanish and I'm never going to be. So that's a big regret. And then I just think the other thing is, and this is probably true for all of us. I asked this question a lot to veteran ballplayers. I remember asking it to CC Sabathia once at Curtis Granderson. What would the older you tell the younger you? It's a kind of cliche question, but I think it's an informative one as well. And the older version of me would tell the younger version of me a little bit of what we said about not making everything perfect. Just go do it.
00:57:27
Speaker
Just go do it. And I was so hung up in my younger years where I wasn't the main guy. I don't know if I'm the main guy now, but I host every show. So I'm the main guy in terms of hosting the show. And in my younger years, I was the fill-in host. I was the backup anchor. If the weekend sports anchor was on vacation, I'd fill in for the weekend.
00:57:49
Speaker
And I felt like in those three days, I had to make it completely perfect because that was the only way I was going to move to the next step. And everything had to be right. And I put so much damn pressure on myself that I was terrible. And what I try to tell everybody, not just in TV, is just go do it. The more you do things over and over again. I mean, people ask me all the time, do you get nervous on TV? And my response is, why would I do it every night?
00:58:14
Speaker
But the younger me was sweating bullets. And the older me, when I make a mistake, I just move on to the next one. And the younger me, it sat with me for a week, a month, days. And a really bad one now might sit with me until I fall asleep. But for the most part, I don't even remember what I did 10 seconds later. And that's a good thing to do. So I think that's it is just stop putting so much pressure on ourselves. Let it happen. And repetition is everything.
00:58:40
Speaker
Yep, that's amazing. Thank you for sharing that. So what does the next three years look like for the Royals, Joe Goldberg, and then the Speaker?
Future of the Royals and Motivational Speaking Goals
00:58:48
Speaker
Yeah, I mean, you know, the Royals will keep getting better. I don't know. I certainly hope they can't get worse. I mean, I guess you can always record wise get worse, but that would be historical. And I'm really excited for what the Royals are doing because
00:59:05
Speaker
It starts with Bobby with Junior. They have one of the most exciting young players in all of baseball. And does that mean that he's going to lead them to a championship? I have no idea. But he is hands down the most talented player that I've seen here in my 16 years. And he's 23 years old. So I think that that is really exciting. And there's some other really nice pieces around him. So I'm excited about that. I don't know what the next three years looks like, not just in wins and losses, but in terms of
00:59:32
Speaker
You know, television is changing. We still have streaming issues and all kinds of things that hopefully as we get further along are going to be solved. You know, you know, are we talking about a new stadium at some point? I think we are, but we're not there yet. Whether people like that or don't like that, we're going to see a lot of change and the game is changing. So I mean, it has to change, too. I mean, the younger generation doesn't want to see the way it was in the past. They want, you know, they want what they want now.
00:59:58
Speaker
So I'm excited just to see what that looks like. And the one thing I will say, no matter what, even if I can't predict it, Luke, is that they'll always be stories to tell. And hopefully I get to keep telling those stories on the speaking side. Just keep growing and just keep, you know, keep.
01:00:14
Speaker
Keep touching more people, keep waiting more people. When I started this thing, it was almost all local and I had to let people know I was doing it. I still feel like a lot of people don't know that I'm doing it. And it's not just a little show up in a cute little 15 minute speech. It's a lot of work and hopefully in terms of ROI, everybody in attendance is getting a lot. And it's been every type of profession.
01:00:41
Speaker
athletics, to education, to engineering, to healthcare, to, I mean, you name it. I've done it, but what's been really cool the last couple of years post-pandemic, and it keeps growing, is it's been a lot out of town. And as much as I'd love to stay here in Kansas City to be able to go and think that somebody actually is interested in what I have to say and that I can help people in a place where they don't know me,
01:01:03
Speaker
is extremely humbling and that just keeps growing and growing and so we'll see what it can do. I hope that I could build some bigger long-term relationships with some bigger companies where I get past just that one keynote and then maybe you see them again five years later that maybe there's more consistent work with that. But we'll see where it goes and I don't know that I need to know exactly where it's going. I'm just gonna kind of embrace the journey. I know a lot of people say that and see where it takes me.
01:01:33
Speaker
Well, thank you so much for being on and sharing today. If you're out there and you're looking to hire an amazing speaker, I highly recommend Joel. Make sure you connect with him on LinkedIn. We'll have some information on the page. And if you're looking to revolutionize your facility for memberships, lessons, leagues, camps, clinics, and more, check out facilityallie.com. We'll see you next time on the Facility Playbook.