Latest / Success Story with Scott Clary / [FEATURED] Superhero Leadership: Marvel's Former CEO & AthLife CEO on Creating Lasting Impact

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[FEATURED] Superhero Leadership: Marvel's Former CEO & AthLife CEO on Creating Lasting Impact · Success Story with Scott Clary

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  Hey everyone, today I am sharing something very special. It's an episode of the Super
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  Hero Leadership Podcast. It is hosted by Marvel's former CEO and legendary turnaround expert,
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  Peter Cunio. Each week, Peter is joined by top performers in business media and beyond,
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  leaders who have truly mastered the art of impact, resilience, and vision. Together,
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  they explore Peter's 32 leadership essentials, revealing what it really takes to rise,
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  inspire, and lead with purpose. And in this episode, John Harris, the CEO of Atth Life,
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  explores how leaders create lasting impact by empowering others, fostering empathy,
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  and embracing lifelong learning. From his journey, as DePaul Basque-Ball Captain,
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  to building programs to support athlete development off the field,
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  Harris shares insights on creating a service-driven culture, learning from failure,
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  and making space for others to lead on the court, in business, and beyond. Okay, here comes the
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  episode. You can find more Super Hero Leadership wherever you get your podcasts.
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  Welcome to the Super Hero Leadership Podcast, hosted by former CEO of Marvel Entertainment,
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  Peter Cunio. Listen as he explores outstanding leadership through the lens of successful Super Hero
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  leaders. Here's your host, Peter Cunio. Welcome to Super Hero Leadership.
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  Today's guest is someone who's been quietly changing lives in the world of sports,
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  education, and leadership for more than two decades. John Harris is the founder and CEO of
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  Athlete, an organization that supports current and former professional athletes as they navigate
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  life beyond the game. He works with all the major sports leagues, but John's journey didn't start
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  in the boardroom. It started on the court. He was a four-year letterman in Basque-Ball at DePaul
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  University, where he also earned both his bachelor's and master's degrees. His master's thesis explored
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  the role of higher education in helping NFL players transition to post sports careers,
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  work he's been living out ever since. He's a father, a mentor, a leader, and a true builder,
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  with ventures like at life unlimited and hustle that continue to push the intersection of sports,
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  business, and culture forward. Welcome, John. John, I'm fascinated by your career.
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  You've been involved in sports at various levels from amateur to professional your whole life.
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  Maybe this started just when you were growing up and you got interested in athletics.
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  What was it about your early life as a young kid? How were you raised? How did that affect?
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  I think your aspirations to be a leader. I grew up in Central New York, near Syracuse,
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  and Syracuse at the time was part of the Big East, and Basque-Ball was everything and grown up in
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  Central New York. You're not outside as much for about six months of the year, so Basque-Ball
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  was a thing, and I really fell in love with it. My size, I probably should have stuck with baseball,
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  but I had a brother who played college, a sister who played college, and athletics was really just
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  important to us. Ironically, my parents really weren't big into athletics. My dad actually
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  as a hobby-played musician, but at one point, they actually recorded an album.
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  It was interesting that my parents didn't really push that yet. That was really important to me,
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  and to my brothers and sisters, I was one of six, and we grew up in a really small house. Actually,
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  my first house was a trailer, so you had to learn to negotiate when you got to hate people in
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  a really small space, and I found that I just really liked people, and I liked to play, so I always
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  found myself getting everyone together in the neighborhood to play baseball or to play Basque-Ball.
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  I had a really good mentor in my high school basketball coach who really cultivated that with me,
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  and so I ended up being the captain of my JB team and then my varsity team, and I wasn't the best
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  player, but I think I have a positive can-do attitude, and I was really always trying to get people
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  together, and that led to some great success for me both on and off the court. I think they both
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  kind of feed each other. The poll is in Chicago. How did you get from upstate to
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  look to Chicago? There was a player, Rod Strickland, who was pretty good, and we got cable TV when
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  I was in eighth or ninth grade, and plus they were on NBC a lot. All those famous matchups
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  with Louisville in Notre Dame, and I just became a big fan. I got to see them as much as I got
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  see Syracuse play, and as I was exploring going to college, I really was thinking, man, I want to
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  go into city. I want to be in a city when I go to college, and I wasn't recruited by DePaul. I was
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  actually recruited by some smaller schools, and I reached out to Joey Meyer, who was just a couple
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  years off of being national coach of the year, and I said, hey, I want to be part of your program.
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  I want to be a coach. I don't know if I can be part of it as a player or not, but fortunately,
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  as a freshman, I was able to walk on, and by my senior year, I was able to earn a scholarship.
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  So, once in a star by any means, but the fact that I was able to get four years at a division
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  one school, and it really did open up doors for me, being able to play at a school like that,
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  really opened up doors for me, and a lot of ways in my life. You're coming out of school.
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  You want to be involved in sports maybe as a coach, or in some manner, and suddenly, you land
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  a job with the NFL. So, 1993 NFL collective bargaining agreement was kind of the official
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  birth of player development as the player said, hey, we're willing to give up some of our game
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  check money, but we want more financial education, career development, educational advising,
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  and employee assistance type programs. So, 1995, I graduate. The NFL didn't even know if all
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  that was going to work. So, they outsourced it to an organization called the National Consortium
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  for Academic and Sports, led by Richard Lapcheck, and Richard is, you know, his dad, Joe,
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  was the coach of the Knicks in St. John's, and Richard was a social justice warrior still is to
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  this day. I caught him as a dear friend still. So, his organization got that the Midwest Regional
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  Office happened to be housed at DePaul University. The guy who ran that office happened to be a
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  seasoned ticket holder. So, I was interviewing for that job for four years before I even knew it,
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  and that's one of the things we always try to talk to athletes is you never know who's watching.
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  And so, when I walked in for that interview, he had seen me, he had seen the work I'd put in and
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  how I carried myself, and I got an internship, and that opened the door for me. It wasn't a
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  foregone conclusion that he would hire me, but when he did nine months later, that was full time.
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  It was really working, and so he helped me figure out my boss, Tom Kowalski helped me figure out
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  what master's program I should go in, and he helped pay for some of that. So, I spent five
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  years. I still was thinking about coaching, so I was coaching high school on the JV level,
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  but I was also chipping away at my master's one course at a time, and I did that for, you know,
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  four and a half, five years, and when that all came around, the NFL said, this is really working.
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  We had a lot of players engaging and utilizing the service, so that's when the NFL said, hey,
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  we're going to bring you in-house. We're going to bring this in-house, and we're going to bring you
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  in to set it up and run it, which was, yes, I said, and the coaching stuff, you know, now I can
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  coach my kids, but I decided at that point, it was time for me to come to New York and take this
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  challenge out. Yeah. Well, you know, we often talk about here on Super Hero Leadership, that our
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  guests and my own experiences, there were times in my life when people believed in me, sometimes
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  even more than I believed in myself through it. They saw something in me, they saw something in
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  our guests like yourself, and gave us a break, gave us a push, in some cases, and the rest is
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  history. We often want to make the point with our listeners, with our viewers, that very often
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  take a risk, you have nothing to lose. If someone wants to support you, and you're not even sure
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  if you can live up to that promise, go for it. That's right. Our mutual friend Dan Buckley actually
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  did that with me, with starting the business when I did, and you know, he saw something in me
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  that I didn't see in myself, and he was certainly a major influence in me taking that step into
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  entrepreneurship. Yeah. So for people listening and viewing, Dan Buckley is a senior executive at
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  Marvel Entertainment, has been there a long time. He is the publisher of the comic books, but he's
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  also involved in other media efforts for Marvel, and he has worked, you know, with John to create,
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  and you might want to talk about this, John, to create some very unique promotional experiences
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  for fans and for players in the leagues, coupled with the Marvel characters. And that came along
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  pretty early on in my entrepreneurial journey. I left the NFL, there was really nothing
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  meaningful at the time being done for former players. So I would be working with current players,
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  and then they weren't working for the company anymore. So there wasn't any way to send them.
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  So while I was creating that, I was open to other ideas, and I had integrated an educational
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  technology to help athletes with retention that I had came across, and we were having lunch one
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  day, talking about it. He said, hey, you know, we're building out Marvel Kids.com. Maybe this could
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  work. So we did a little bit of that, and then this movie Iron Man came along, which is pretty good,
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  and he said, hey, we're going to go all in on this studio thing, which is a pretty smart idea,
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  but he said, I've always, he and a couple of the other executives there were always,
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  they love sports. And, you know, back in the day, you had to kind of sit in the closet and read
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  your comic books if you were an athlete, but he had this idea of kind of bringing the worlds together.
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  So I knew a lot of people in sport. I said, hey, we'll give it a try. And, you know,
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  it started off slow. We were just figuring out a few things, you know, do something with that
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  filled up Eagles into Miami Dolphins, and it turned into, last year we had over 200 activations
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  across sport. You know, we work, we've worked with everybody from the New York Giants and the New
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  York Yankees to the Eugene Emeralds. So anytime you see Marvel show up in sports like in a stadium,
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  celebrating a player, characters, we were able to do that. And now we do that with Mattel with,
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  you know, Barbie and Hot Wheels and we're doing some stuff with entertainers. So really,
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  been a really fun building now. We got a small team at Half Life that does that.
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  I'll be back in a moment with more of superhero leadership. Stay with us.
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  You work with literally thousands of athletes to help them make a very important, a life-saving.
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  I'm going to argue a life-saving transition successfully, easily. Unfortunately,
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  being human beings, there are going to be a few cases where it just doesn't work for them.
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  It may, and badly, even. How does that get to you? Or do you, do you feel it when you see that
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  there's a situation occurred with a particular athlete? It just did work for them and the whole
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  situation ended up poorly? Yeah. The team of advisors that we have carries very deeply about the
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  work and who they serve. We also, you know, philosophically, we're all aligned that we're not
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  going to do something for someone that they wouldn't do for themselves. So there is a level of
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  teaching that does go on in the process. And there are times where people they need to fail. Or
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  as we say, we give advice for living. There's financial advisors, there's doctors, there's all
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  kind of people who give advice. We really want them to take our advice, but they don't always take
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  their advice. It could be anything from they're applying for the wrong types of jobs or they don't
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  have the credentials for the types of jobs they have or their resume is terrible or they're
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  terrible at interviewing. And if they won't take the advice, then, you know, the best we can do is
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  is say, well, that may be one of the things that's getting in your way. What I do find, though,
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  is sometimes somebody goes on and maybe things work for maybe they don't work. They come back and
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  they say, you know, what I did try it my way. And it didn't work. So I think us holding our ground
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  in terms of philosophically making sure we're rooted in best practices, you know, all of our staff.
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  They're master certified career development specialists by the National Career Development
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  Association. We're always trying to, you know, educate ourselves and maintain, you know,
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  all the latest education so we can be the best of what we do. We're learning all about AI and
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  how that impacts the career transition process. And to your point at the end of the day,
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  sometimes people just don't take your advice. And it hurts your heart. And, you know,
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  we also give ourselves some grace that, you know, where we can't do everything.
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  Right. We often talk about the role of culture in a successful organization.
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  Any organization could be any kind. It could be for profit situation. It could be public company,
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  not public. It could be a nonprofit situation, whatever organization you're talking about, culture
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  matters. And in my situation, because I've done a number of turnarounds of distressed businesses.
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  And I always felt found going in that the culture was wrong. That the, and I'll define culture for
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  you the way I see it. Culture is, it has two parts. The first is how we treat each other in the
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  organization and how we treat the people outside the organization as well. As just as important as
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  our own employees, it could be, it could be a client. It could be a supplier. It could be an investor,
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  whatever form those outsiders take, how we view them and how we value them is very important.
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  I found in a lot of turnarounds, the culture was all wrong. It's shockingly all wrong.
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  And the second part is, okay, what's part of the culture? What do we need to do to be successful?
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  What matters? In our particular business, new products need to be 25% of sales every year.
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  Okay, how come we don't have a new products organization? Oh, we don't have our best people
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  in new products or what have you. Your situation a little bit different because you started the
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  company and you created the culture from day one. And it sounds like, and this is my question to you,
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  it, but it sounds like to me, it's the same today as it was those years ago when you started it.
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  Have you had to make any adjustments in culture? I feel like
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  who comes into the organization and who is attracted to the organization? They're very service
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  oriented. I can tell you great stories about how people ended up. And ultimately,
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  it's about having a can-do attitude. It's about having a servant leadership.
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  You know, that's something I know from I went to the Paul University and servant leadership,
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  was certainly something that I felt I had a piece of that in me, but they really
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  emphasized that from an educational standpoint. We went through an exercise when COVID hit where
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  I brought in a friend of mine who was a CMO and I had to really dig in with all the all the
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  stakeholders, not only people on our team, but people who pay us money to provide a service
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  and help us write a brand book and went through it with the team and talked about our
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  organizational philosophy and how there are times where somebody would want to partner with us,
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  but we wouldn't do it because it didn't fall in line with our organizational philosophy and how
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  important that is to us. And there are some there's every once in a while we've had somebody
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  come into the organization. It wasn't a fit and that's really hard, but it's very evident
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  when it happens. And so we've had to move on from a few people, but mostly who people have come in.
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  Mostly don't leave when they do. They go to wonderful opportunity. My old COO is now running
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  athlete services for the US OPC. So I could brag about all the great people have come into our
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  organization and the people that are there. Now I'd say on average it'd been their 10 years.
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  That's great. Yeah, I think culture is very important at Marvel. The great advantage we had
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  and the reason I always like to say that Marvel was so successful was yes, we made good move,
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  great movies and published great comic books, but even before that, the culture. The culture was
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  one of we go, I would say we're going to change the rules of the game. We were not going to make
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  movies the way Hollywood did. We were not going to publish and create comic books the way other
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  people in the industry did because we could see that various ways we could do it better. And in
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  some cases cheaper. And so we're always looking. And as a turnaround person, I'm always looking
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  for those opportunities. And at Marvel, we had a couple of other people on the board who were
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  similar to me would turn around types. And so I had a lot of support for these kinds of changes
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  from the board to change the culture. And you all did an incredible job with the turnaround coming
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  we remind people sometimes we were working with them that they were in bankruptcy. And that
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  the incredible turnaround it went from bankruptcy to selling to Disney to where they are now is in
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  again, created the opportunity for us to do to take all the great infrastructure that existed
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  within Marvel and all the incredible IP and storytelling and then applied in sport. We had a great
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  run. But I think it comes back to we were doing things differently, changing the rules of the game.
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  I have lots of stories about about that. And I can remember, you know, I'd have talent agents
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  calling me and saying you need to cast so and so in your movie. And so and so will cost a lot of
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  money and as well known star male or female. And I would always say we all we really care about
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  is the characters are we'll make the movie. We need good actors and actresses. And they're
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  going to be behind a mask a lot of the time anyway. So we hired people that weren't necessarily
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  huge household names and the rest is history because today they are household names, many of them.
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  So but we just wouldn't give in. And I can't tell you how many times an agent would say to me so
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  and so can make your movie. Meaning just by casting them there in it, you're going to have a
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  profitable movie, which I never believed. It was much more complicated than that. Yeah, people
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  probably don't remember that Mr. Tony Stark prior to being cast was was was coming out of a tough time.
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  Well, I have a story about that, you know, and the Robert Downey Jr.
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  talk about doing things differently. So when we cast him as Tony Stark, Iron Man,
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  he had his mug shot had been everywhere. I think it was about three months before. And
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  needless to say, Hollywood wasn't too excited about hiring him. And he did it, but he did a
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  screen test for us. And the board, including myself, and at this point, I'm vice chairman of the
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  board of Marvel, was very reluctant to hire him. And to the credit of the people running Marvel
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  studios, they said to us, well, we we thought you would feel that way. We understand and we got
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  Robert to screen test. The screen test, as I recall, was the first seven or eight minutes of the
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  movie. Okay, he's in a home V. He's smoking a cigarette. He has a cocktail and he's quipping him.
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  And Robert was, you know, on the script for the first three or four minutes, and then he just
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  as he can, he just went off. And he became Tony Stark. There are people today who still think
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  he's Tony Stark in real life. That's right. Hollywood was in shock when we announced. And we
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  really felt that there was no better male actor in the world at the time than Robert Downey Jr.
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  All right, flesh. This was in 2005. We cast him. The movie came out in 2007. It's now 20 years later.
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  Well, how has he done? He's doing all right. That trailer they dropped for for
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  Doomsday. Right. There were a whole bunch of chairs. Then there was him just doing this.
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  It was like 273 million views in a day or something crazy like that. He's still playing Tony Stark
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  20 years later. Yeah. He has done great. He's been on the straight and narrow. And he's made all
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  these other films outside of Marvel at well. It have done very well. Yeah. So I think we're all at
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  Marvel. Those of us who are involved are very proud of that particular moment when we
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  the board saw his screen test and said, do it. Yeah. You know, so
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  and I think sometimes particularly when you have to make radical changes in an organization,
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  you have to take a risk and you have to do things differently. We'll continue our conversation
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  with John right after this short break. You know, we were talking a little earlier before we
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  started recording and we talked briefly about the fact that in sports, the best athletes don't
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  necessarily make the best leader. Sometimes they do, but sometimes they don't. And so, you know,
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  leadership doesn't come naturally if you're great or even good or even average in a particular
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  sport. It comes, you know, it comes from from other places. It comes from your life's experiences.
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  What you've learned about other people, you've learned the instincts of leadership. And I'm
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  just wondering, you know, if there are any lessons you think you've learned in your life that you
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  might want to impart to the audience about leadership, about your successes, about your failures.
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  Yeah. It's something I've learned and I'm a lifelong learner. I'm always reading and something I
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  read that really stuck with me is don't read about a great leader and try to be that leader.
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  But different people lead different ways. You have to do what works for you. My team would agree
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  that I try to be a point guard. I try to give people opportunities to be successful and give them
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  autonomy. And, you know, there are times where I'm going to take the shot, right? But I do try to
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  lead with empathy, ask questions, listen, and at the end of the day, someone has to make the decision,
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  right? So trying to gather as much information and then make the decision. And I may be wrong.
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  And saying to the team, you may agree or disagree, but this is the direction we're going to go.
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  And I may be wrong and we're going to have to be okay with that. I do feel like the team does
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  feel valued. They feel heard. And I think that's part of the reason why people stick around. They're
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  doing very important and valuable work in all the verticals, you know, whether it's our foundation
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  or whether it's the athlete services or whether it's the support and entertainment. And they're doing
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  impactful work that, you know, and its service work and it reaches a lot of people. And when you
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  feel valued and you're doing, you know, work that you value and you're not going to get in trouble
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  unless, you know, you go off like way off our philosophy. But we, you know, we talk about our
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  athlete services. Like if if you're doing something and you're thinking about the person you're serving
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  first, that's defensible, you know, by me and by our partners. Current reform player might not
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  like it. But if it falls in line with our philosophical approach, then you're going to have all the
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  cover for me and from our partners because that's part of the conversation we have with our partners
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  is making sure we're all lined in and how we're articulating our value proposition in the market.
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  One of the things I find again, do we turn around with where things are very different.
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  One of the problems often is that the previous leaders were very poor communicators. They may not
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  have even communicated to the organization at all. If they did, it was not very often and it was
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  inconsistent what they said. And of course, that when when leaders are inconsistent, they don't say
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  the same thing, you know, the organization gets nervous, needless to say. And so communications
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  are, you know, are super important to any organization by whether it's a turnaround or
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  or not. And it sounds to me like you are a regular communicator. How many people do you have
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  in your organization? With the athlete services and the entertainment, there's 13 and then with
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  the foundation, we kind of have it set up differently where those folks are employed by the schools,
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  by the high schools. And then we help grant fund and support and train them. So that's over
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  a hundred people. They don't work for us, but certainly have an impact and influence on
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  the work that they do. Well, they're in effect an advocate for you. They're an extension.
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  They are, they are, yeah, I think they are dare I say, an apostles for your company. Yeah,
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  in the sense that, you know, and that we talked about how important culture is and what have you,
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  I think it's very key. I don't go back if I can though to your your early days in life for a minute.
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  I thought it was very interesting that you had six five siblings and you lived in a trailer
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  to start. Yeah. And so you had a diversity of experiences, it seems to me. You had to cope with
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  a lot of different people, a lot of different personalities. And we find that great leaders
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  have had very diverse lives in general as you study. They lived in, they may have been geographically
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  diverse, but certainly they dealt with a lot of different personalities with different backgrounds
• 28:32
  both in, you know, I'd say personal life and professional life. And I often say that and I think
• 28:41
  you'll relate to this. The greatest gift that my parents gave me in my siblings is we were raised
• 28:48
  with absolutely no prejudices about anybody. We never heard anything about someone's color, religion,
• 28:55
  sexual orientation, ethnic background, or whatever. I can't think of anyone who deals with a more
• 29:02
  diverse set of people than you do. Yeah. What was the atmosphere you grew up in? Was it similar to
• 29:09
  what I had where I just had to figure out who was good person and a bad person but had nothing to do
• 29:15
  with how they were born or what have you? I grew up and my mom in particular had us going to church
• 29:24
  every week. And I was an altar boy. I was very, I was very devout Catholic, I would say. And,
• 29:31
  you know, that's evolved for me. However, I think the thing that is most important. And I think
• 29:37
  it's important in any religion is that, you know, do one to others and treat others with respect and
• 29:42
  dignity. And I feel like I do. And I think that translates in the business. I think the most
• 29:50
  diverse place, the locker room is an incredibly diverse place. Athletics is very diverse. You know,
• 29:57
  being in the athletic department, being in the city of Chicago, being on a very diverse campus,
• 30:02
  like to Paul University, it is considered one of the more diverse college campuses in the country.
• 30:10
  So I've had that exposure through sport and through life that obviously live in New York City.
• 30:16
  And even now we're, we moved out to Huntington, New York and Long Island where my kids are the
• 30:21
  minority in the school. I go to public school and, you know, we're having our kids in, you know,
• 30:27
  in the same way experience. This is what the world is going to look like when you're older.
• 30:33
  And this is the world that we live in. We live me and my wife both work in very diverse environments.
• 30:39
  And being able to, whether it was with my brothers and sisters negotiating over that, you know,
• 30:46
  the second helping of dinner or in the locker room, you know, dealing with a guy who grew up on the
• 30:52
  South Side of Chicago in a really tough neighborhood, you know, being able to communicate
• 30:57
  effectively with them and build relationships is something. I think that's something that
• 31:04
  is one of my superpowers, if you will. Well, I love that actually. You know,
• 31:11
  when we talk about leadership again and I do speeches around the world and
• 31:16
  I would have you and my themes right now are twofold. The first is that we simply have less
• 31:22
  good leadership in the world than ever. And just turn on the news. I don't care what your
• 31:28
  political leanings are. It doesn't matter. It's chaos in many cases. And it's not just the US.
• 31:35
  It's everywhere. And I think that's very important. The second, you know, sub and what do we do
• 31:43
  about that? But the second theme is that young people are not learning leadership. And why not?
• 31:49
  And what can we do as parents, as grandparents, as well young people can do for themselves
• 31:55
  to learn leadership? My website is Peter CUNIOCUNIO.com. And I have a list of 15 things I
• 32:06
  recommend for young people starting at age five, by the way, and going up to age 30
• 32:11
  to breed the instincts of leadership. Because the only way, in my mind, you really
• 32:20
  learn leadership and I appreciate people are listening to us and watching us today and hopefully
• 32:26
  we can help with that with what we're doing right now. But 90% of learning leadership has
• 32:31
  face to face interactions with the diversity of other people in a diversity of situations.
• 32:38
  That's how you learn the instincts. Leaders in my mind are not born. This phrase about
• 32:44
  he or she is a born leader drives me crazy sometimes. It's not that way at all.
• 32:51
  We've got more leadership lessons for you after this break.
• 32:58
  And you're talking about your children and sounds like they've already
• 33:02
  you're probably practicing them with things on my list already. But I think, you know, again,
• 33:09
  letting your kids be exposed to a world of diversity. Whatever that brings is really important
• 33:16
  and it's not happening very often anymore. Our problem is that young people growing up
• 33:24
  don't have the opportunities for face to face that you and I had. Part of the problems
• 33:29
  technology. You can't learn anything about anyone off of a cell phone and in fact cell phones can
• 33:35
  be poisonous. The opposite problem is we all know unfortunately. A Zoom call is nice and I come
• 33:42
  on three or four Zoom calls a day, you know, and that's fine with people I already know. But I'm
• 33:49
  most of the time I'm actually meeting new people and I don't pretend that I really know them from
• 33:54
  a Zoom call at all. So Zoom calls are useful for conducting business and so on but you're not
• 34:03
  really going to learn much from the person on the other end of the call. So I think it's about
• 34:11
  that. It's about we have over parenting in my opinion in this country. Sometimes people call
• 34:18
  a gentle parenting. Parents for some reason want to be a friend to their kids, not a parent.
• 34:27
  And I want one of the things I say in my speeches is let your children fail.
• 34:33
  The problem with most young people and this is not their fault and it's really in a way I don't
• 34:38
  mean to demean parents because they're very well-meaning. They're very loving. They think this is the
• 34:43
  right thing to do. No one wants to make your child unhappy on purpose or whatever.
• 34:51
  But the way young people prosper is they learn their strengths and their weaknesses.
• 34:55
  We're all human beings. We all by definition have some weaknesses. And if you learn early
• 35:01
  enough in life to know yourself, you know your strengths, but you discover your weaknesses and
• 35:08
  you can work to get better or you can avoid either way might be appropriate for a certain weakness.
• 35:15
  But the kids today, a lot of them don't get that because they're never allowed to fail.
• 35:20
  They're never allowed to make even the most minuscule decision on their own.
• 35:25
  You know, I no matter what goes wrong, it's not their fault. You didn't make the elite.
• 35:31
  The sports team, it's the coaches fault. You got a bad grade on a test in school.
• 35:37
  It's the teachers fault. You're great. And it may be the coaches fault or the teachers fault.
• 35:44
  But guess what? Life isn't perfect. You're going to get there. I say it's screwed from time to
• 35:52
  time. We all have been in life. It just happens. Those are sometimes good life lessons.
• 36:00
  We see this with our kids that we encourage them to get online to get offline.
• 36:06
  Use it to find the opportunity to stick it out there. And I will say my wife does a great job
• 36:13
  of balancing that in the kids do get out there. And we thought a house with a big yard so
• 36:21
  the kids would be out there and they do use it. And I see what you say that we talk to the athletes
• 36:28
  we're working with. Can't just keep hitting apply on LinkedIn. You need to find those connections
• 36:33
  on LinkedIn. Get coffee with them. Go out and have lunch. Interact with them so they can cut
• 36:40
  through the paper to get to the people. And that is a challenge sometimes when we get an athlete
• 36:49
  that between the parent and the coach and the school and the professional team so much has
• 36:57
  been done for them that they hadn't had to go and do some of these things on their own.
• 37:02
  And it's not all of them. We were talking earlier about we have 47 former NFL players
• 37:10
  getting their doctoral degree. And even though they have scholarship money that they've collectively
• 37:16
  bargained, they're still doing this. And they're in their 40s and sometimes their 50s.
• 37:24
  That's an amazing commitment that they're making is an amazing commitment. I don't
• 37:31
  have time to do that right now, but yet they're finding time to do it. They're getting master's
• 37:36
  degrees. They're finishing undergrad degrees. They're getting certifications and real estate and
• 37:43
  finite financial advisors. So there are some people doing wonderful things. And one of the
• 37:49
  challenges is sometimes when you transition from being a player, let's say you did take care of
• 37:54
  all your money and you got $10 million in the bank. You're still going to do something. So figuring
• 38:00
  out what they're going to do and not spending years figuring that out because then you're spending
• 38:06
  money and not making money, then you lack that sense of purpose. So there are people doing
• 38:12
  wonderful things, former players and there's some that do struggle. And I think it does trickle
• 38:17
  down, you know, through our foundation work with a lot of high school athletes, very few of them
• 38:21
  make it to college and very few of them make it to the pro. I can count maybe on one hand the
• 38:25
  number of pros who then are connected back to the work we did, you know, through our foundation.
• 38:32
  We see really, really positive and we do see some of the things that you talk about where
• 38:37
  we're some of the kids really struggle and and you know, a lack of leadership. So we do a lot of
• 38:43
  it. We do a lot of leadership programming with our foundation to try to build that as well.
• 38:49
  But that's going to be, you know, that works going to continue for a while. I want to make it clear
• 38:53
  that I'm not knocking parents per se. It is much harder to be a parent than it was say when I was
• 39:01
  a parent or my parents, I mean, basically my life as growing up was more or less my father was
• 39:09
  a lieutenant New York City Fire Department. My mother was an EMT. And so they worked and they
• 39:15
  would give back type people. But basically, you know, and I did play sports and so on and whatever.
• 39:22
  But essentially, it was do your homework. Get back here for dinner at six o'clock at night.
• 39:28
  Get out there. That was that was it. Yeah, it's not managing the devices. And I mean,
• 39:34
  right. I mean, our kids, they have, you know, sports after school, they might have a little time
• 39:39
  to do their homework in between. And then it's dinner homework. And then, you know, lately,
• 39:45
  I've been with my kids to give them a little break. And then we're doing more math. We're playing
• 39:49
  catch up that I really feel like that the homeschooling during COVID, I mean, the statistics say that
• 39:56
  a lot of kids kind of got behind. And I see it with my with my older kids that some of their foundational
• 40:02
  math skills are. So we put in that extra work. Because again, I could point to
• 40:09
  there's nothing I can do about what happened there. What we can do is say we can either solve this
• 40:13
  or not. So we spend the time doing that together. But it takes a lot of work, you know,
• 40:19
  it's exhausting after a day of work to be honest with you to do that. But, you know,
• 40:25
  to your point about like having to navigate all of these other inputs that are coming in that I
• 40:33
  certainly didn't have as a kid, we didn't get cable TV. So I was like, it's great, right? So I
• 40:38
  didn't even have that distraction. I see how hard it is being a kid. So that's again, social
• 40:43
  pressures on the kids too. And so look, it's a, it's a real challenge for parents. They want to
• 40:50
  do the right thing. So I understand it. But if your kids, anyone's kids, grandkids,
• 40:58
  kids, whatever can learn to be effective leaders, they're going to crush it because they're not
• 41:02
  going to have a lot of competition. Unfortunately, I hope what I'm saying is wrong. Believe me,
• 41:08
  I do. But again, I would encourage all our listeners and people that are actually watching
• 41:16
  our podcast that go and take a look at the list that we have on ptacunio.com that we recommend.
• 41:24
  I think it'd be pretty clear. I don't think there's too much on it. It's a surprise.
• 41:29
  To some let your kids fail is a surprise, but, you know, there's some others. But for the most part,
• 41:36
  they'll get it. Just a good reminder to sometimes you get caught in at the easy thing to do is to do
• 41:41
  something for the kid and you're tired and it's been a long day and I could do that whatever for
• 41:48
  you. But, you know, if you can stick with some of the to your point, like not doing for them,
• 41:55
  my work is actually influenced my parenting, right? Me not doing for my kids what they can do for
• 42:01
  themselves, just like with the athletes not doing for them what they can do for themselves. And
• 42:06
  that's harder. I remember I had hired somebody who said, man, it would just be easier just to do the
• 42:11
  resume for them. Like that's not what we do. Exactly. Getting the feedback they have to own it
• 42:16
  so that way they can speak to it in the interview and they can modify it later. Otherwise,
• 42:22
  you're going to be doing this for them all long and they're all capable. They just haven't been
• 42:26
  challenged to take ownership of their own, you know, so trying to do that with your kids,
• 42:31
  I find that actually harder and have to remind myself of some of those things that I've learned in
• 42:36
  my day job. I also want Peter Cunio.com. We have something we call 32 essentials of super-hero
• 42:44
  leadership. And they are one-liners about instincts, philosophies, actions that I think I've
• 42:54
  learned over a long time of being involved in leadership. I'm a Vietnam veteran on, you know,
• 43:01
  I was a leader in college in blah, blah, blah, blah. But I also recommend these two people who
• 43:09
  are current leaders who want to get better or people aspiring to leadership. And you can use
• 43:15
  them if you're honest with yourself just as a report card. You don't need to show it to anyone
• 43:21
  else, you know, how are you doing? And I let people over and ask me if I started this over 20 years
• 43:27
  ago and people sometimes say, so you must give yourself an A on everyone. And unfortunately,
• 43:33
  I have to admit, no, I'm not an A on everyone. I'd love to be, but there's some of them the best I
• 43:40
  can do is a C. I have my various human flaws. And sometimes, you know, I have to fight them.
• 43:49
  And just getting a passing grade is really just about what I'm going to be able to do.
• 43:54
  Well, and being honest about those and surrounding yourself with people who aren't afraid to like
• 43:59
  remind you that maybe, you know, that's not the thing you're best at. So I got this point.
• 44:05
  Well, you know, again, one of the 32 says, find people who tell you the truth even when it hurts.
• 44:13
  That's right. And I think that's number 11 or so. I may not have the number right, but a lot of
• 44:18
  the things that you've mentioned actually apply directly to that list. I was thinking before,
• 44:23
  did John read the list? I did. I don't remember. But yeah, I embrace lifelong learning. And I'm
• 44:33
  always, okay, good. Yeah, I'm always trying to get better. Yeah. Another one which we've
• 44:38
  discussed today is remember your failures. Forget your successes. Because I think that people
• 44:46
  learn much more from their failures if they're, again, honest with themselves
• 44:51
  than from your successes. Well, John, this has been great. I really appreciate you coming by.
• 44:58
  I appreciate you really enjoyed it very much. You're actually most of the people we
• 45:04
  have talked with on this show in season one and now starting season two, where people I knew
• 45:10
  somewhat before you and I just met really face to face today. Yeah. Before we started doing this.
• 45:18
  And so I've really enjoyed it. You've taught me a few things. I've been listening very carefully.
• 45:24
  And I really do appreciate it. I appreciate you having me and a lot of good things about
• 45:29
  leadership from you today. Thank you. So again, thanks so much for being on and the best of luck to
• 45:35
  you and best of luck to all the professional athletes and the other people that you help.
• 45:40
  Thank you. Thanks again. That's it for this episode of Superhero Leadership. I want to thank
• 45:46
  John Harris for sharing his experiences. I hope you'll join me again next time. Until then,
• 45:54
  stay focused, stay driven and keep leading like a superhero with purpose, passion and integrity.
• 46:02
  I'm Peter Cuniel.