The Business of Being the Best

Inside the World of Go-Getters and Game Changers

Molly Fletcher

• Publisher: Jossey-Bass
• Year: 2011
• Print ISBN: 9781118060100
• eBook ISBN: 9781118150917
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Business
• Subtopic: Business General
• Index: Business

How the very best get to—and stay at—the top

From the arenas of professional sports to the boardrooms of major businesses, a thin slice of peak performers dominates every field. What is their secret to success? Few people know what drives these world-leaders like sports agent Molly Fletcher. Not only has Fletcher herself risen to the top of a tough, male-dominated field—CNN dubbed her "the female Jerry Maguire"—but she has also represented hundreds of successful athletes, coaches, and broadcasters in baseball, golf, basketball, and football. Her experience reveals exactly what it takes to play like "the best."

• Breaks success into accessible strategies like smart negotiation, likability, and personal brand-building
• Features interviews with such notables as Home Depot cofounder and Atlanta Falcons owner Arthur Blank, future Hall of Fame pitcher John Smoltz, and football legend Roger Staubach
• Connects high performance to values by showing how the best give back

No matter what you do or what game you play, Fletcher's authoritative and inspirational look at the top 1 percent will help you win.

Chapter 1

The Quest to Become the Best

Success is a journey, not a destination.

—Ben Sweetland

From the locker room to the boardroom, the practice field to the field of life, and the highlight reels to the business deals, the best are those who excel, succeed, and win both personally and professionally. They share a common set of traits and characteristics laced with passion and persistence that drives their success and fuels their inextinguishable flame. The best never stop striving for something far greater than the goals they have already reached. They never rest on their laurels, and they aim beyond the finish line. The finish line represents an end in sight, but the best see far beyond it to new possibilities. They understand the rapidity of change, and no matter how good they are, they always see room to improve.

What that tells us is that a critical core of a strong foundation, work ethic, intellect, persistence, and attention to details promotes a standard of excellence. Those who succeed in becoming the best work for every inch of success and accomplishment. An inch can be the difference in winning a game or losing it, and it is the same in business. The inches add up to the difference between where you are and where you want to be.

It is not luck or coincidence when you see a Major League Baseball (MLB) player hit a game-winning home run that sails over the outfield wall, a PGA golfer sinking the tournament-winning putt on the eighteenth hole, a coach leading his team to a world championship, or a CEO build a successful and profitable company out of his garage. These accomplishments are the result of diligent practice, dedication, and the hard work and determination it takes to get to the next level. The people who achieve these feats value hard work, are constantly fine-tuning their skills, and recover from adversity quickly. Their results come from consistently working hard at their trade.

Defining Your Own Version of Extraordinary

People who are the best in their field are relentless in their journey to become extraordinary. They have a strong desire to excel and succeed at what they do—selling, negotiating, hitting, kicking, throwing, or hosting. Why? They are competitive and love to win. And they want to win over and over again.

Through managing and working with the best, I have observed strong and experienced people fall from greatness, and I have seen newcomers rise to the pinnacle of record-breaking success. Although everyone has a unique path to achieving greatness, their stories, many of which I share in this book, are inspirational. We have all been told to try our hardest and do our best, and we all have our own definition of greatness. But it is possible to outperform even your own expectations and redefine your personal greatness to something more than you ever imagined. It is only by changing the way you think about success that you can fully embark on the quest to become the best.

In order to redefine your idea of personal greatness, begin by considering these questions:

• Why do you want to be the best?
• What does “being the best” mean to you in a year? Or in five years?
• How can you become the best?

Answering these questions will help you start your journey to becoming the best. The answers to some of these questions will come from within. Only you can decide why you want to be the best or what your inspiration is to improve and grow personally and professionally. But the stories surrounding the go-getters and game changers in this book will help you answer the question pertaining to how you can make it happen. Each of them has worked hard to become the best, and their insight and experiences will help you reach heights you have only imagined thus far.

Before you can hone your skills and refine your abilities, you have to build a strong foundation, so let's focus on the foundation that the best share. Through my work with successful executives and athletes, I have learned that all people who achieve extraordinary success in their field carry a set of similar qualities that enables them to put the rest in place. And the good news is that it's possible to learn from the best and apply their lessons in your own life and career. With a full understanding of these skills and characteristics, you will be able to grow into a successful businessperson, coach, community leader, entrepreneur, authority, doctor, lawyer, or future leader of your generation and generations to come.

We'll start this book by taking a look at what makes the best the best.

The Best Kick It Up a Notch

Being great means finding the top, and then kicking it up one or more levels. If you want to achieve greatness, you can't see ceilings, obstacles, or limitations as roadblocks. The best do not allow themselves to feel safe and comfortable; rather, they use every day as an opportunity to become a trailblazer and redefine success and the cutting edge. The most successful people in this world, no matter what area they are in, have a unique outlook on how they run their business, manage their employees, carve out niches, and manage their careers. Tom Izzo, head basketball coach of the Michigan State Spartans, missed an important free throw during his youth, and as a result, his team lost the game. To this day, Tom often finds time in his schedule to shoot and make fifty free throws a day. This kind of grit and intensity translate to success on the court and in his profession. Tom is now among the elite in his industry: he has won a National Collegiate Athletic Association (NCAA) championship, six Big Ten regular season titles, and two Big Ten tournament titles.1

Tom's dedication to being the best was clear in his behavior after his team won the national championship in 2000. Once the horn sounded the end of the game, he was cutting down the net, doing a media conference, and celebrating with his team and fellow coaches for hours. But he didn't bask in the victory for very long. The next morning he was already strategizing ways to persuade a recruit to come to Michigan State the next year. Tom could have relaxed and celebrated his success for a while, but he knew that if he was not focused on success in the future, his competitors would be. Kicking it up a notch means having a sense of urgency. Tom clearly has that.

Tony Conway, founder and owner of A Legendary Event, an award-winning special events company, said, “To be successful in business you need to have a taste for the unexpected … and an unending desire to make people happy.” Tony has flourished and prospered as one of the leaders in the catering industry because he has a vision that few others have. He believes in the power of making people happy and that the most important part of his job is to create lasting and memorable experiences for his clients. His driving desire to be a groundbreaker in his industry is demonstrated in his attitude toward every event he puts on, and he has over twenty-five hundred of them every year. He believes that every guest who attends one of his events plays a vital role in his success. If he impresses each of them with his attention to detail and unexpected surprises, he will have one more sales rep pushing his product to the consumer industry—and that adds up to twenty-five thousand sales representatives around the country every year, who multiply the talents of his fifty employees in his company. He attends as many of his own events as possible.2

Tony has taken the concept of entertaining others to an entirely new level. He says that he separates his company from others by focusing his time and energy on making sure that the memories of the party will live forever in the minds of the guests. He meticulously studies every detail that goes into his events to ensure they are innovative and unmatched by anyone else in the industry. From something as small as the color schemes of a tablecloth to ensuring the band has the playlist that his client requested, no task is too big or too small for his attention. Understanding and anticipating what his customers want and need, sometimes even before they do, is the next level for him. Tony does that not only by being in the trenches himself but teaching others to see things the way he sees them, to solve problems the way he might, and to attend to his clients with the same vigor and passion that he does minute by minute. Tony surely would not be able to instill this level of customer service into his staff by sitting in a corner office on the top floor of a high-rise building. Tony exemplifies what I mean by going the extra mile, kicking it up a notch, and blowing the competition out of the water every day.

The best kick their momentum into high gear after they reach a milestone, as Tom did by starting his recruiting process the morning after his team won the national championship. They don't relax and pat themselves on the back when they accomplish something. When everyone else takes a break, they move forward. Once they have a taste of success, they want more and more and will work hard to get it. There is always more to be done, ways to improve, and higher goals to reach.

The best do not take their accomplishments for granted. They work hard to reach high levels of success, take great pride in their achievements, and find enormous pleasure in their triumphs. They hold on to the qualities that got them where they are and continue to build on their strong foundation.

The Best Adapt and Are Flexible

Game changers know that there are numerous routes to get to any destination, and sometimes they have to deviate from their planned path to achieve their desired results. Without the ability to adapt to changing circumstances, it is impossible to reach greatness. If you cannot be flexible when you encounter problems or difficulties that stand between you and your goal, you will never reach them. This is why the best make sure to adapt whenever the tide may turn.

When Roger Staubach, professional football player, Hall of Famer and Super Bowl Most Valuable Player quarterback, began Purcell High School in Silverton, Ohio, his coach, Jim McCarthy, immediately put Roger in the position of quarterback even though he previously had played various positions and had little experience as a quarterback. Nevertheless, he welcomed the opportunity. When asked why he made the change, McCarthy said that Roger's teammates listened to him, and the quarterback position would fit his strengths perfectly. Roger adapted to the position and excelled in it, and in the process, he learned at a young age that being flexible in life yields a number of advantages. Rather than fight the change to quarterback, he embraced it, and it led to a prosperous career as one of the best quarterbacks in National Football League (NFL) history. From a position change in football, to the jump from college football to the NFL, and the drastic change from retired NFL player to successful businessman, Roger has always been able to adapt.

It would have been easy for Roger to retire when his NFL playing days came to an end; he had, after all, been a football player his entire life. Instead he chose to adapt to the business world, and he built a business much like he had built a successful career as a football player: through hard work, dedication, and determination. In 1982, he founded the Staubach Company, a real estate development firm that he built from the ground up and sold in 2008 to Jones Lang LaSalle for several hundred million dollars. And he had a positive impact on a lot of lives along the way.3

In business as in the rest of life, things do not always go exactly how you plan. Detours and obstacles can close roads and force you to explore other paths. If you remain flexible and open, you will find endless opportunities to improve your life.

The Best Act As If They Have Been There Before

The best embrace success with anticipation. When they succeed, it appears as if they knew it was going to happen all along, whether or not they did. This reaction and attitude is part of what makes game changers so effective. Success doesn't come as a surprise to them because they always expect it, and even if they aren't completely certain of an outcome, they carry themselves with a confidence that makes others think they are. This confidence supports future success because it instills trust in and inspires others. People want to work with those who are familiar with achievement and understand how to accomplish what they set out to do.

One of the greatest running backs in NFL history and a game changer, Barry Sanders, exemplifies this. Every time Barry touched the ball, it felt to him as if something amazing could happen, and often it did. Yet he retired before he broke every major rushing record. It was not that he didn't have it in him to break those records; rather, he felt that he had accomplished all he set out to do. For him, that was success. From an everyday perspective, the greatest accomplishment for a running back is scoring a touchdown. In fact, scoring more points than the other team is foundational to football. And Barry scored a whole lot of touchdowns in his nine-year career—109, in fact.4 This is a staggering number of touchdowns for any position, especially in the ten years that he played professional football.

Barry will be remembered as a touchdown machine but never as a spectacle in the end zone. When he scored a touchdown, he did not celebrate or dance or pat himself on the back as most other players do. Rather, once he reached the goal line and proceeded into the end zone, he quietly and politely handed the ball to the referees. Tom Landry, a famous NFL football coach, once said, “Act like you have been there before.” That was Barry's attitude. He was a running back and supposed to score touchdowns. He knew he belonged and expected to reach the end zone.

The same is true in business. The best are not surprised by their successes and truly believe that success will continue. They hold themselves accountable and behave as if it would be strange if they were not successful. This attitude breeds success. I tell my clients that they should always strive to maintain a level of composure no matter what the situation. If they fail, they need to act as if it is only temporary—a speed bump in the road. And when they succeed, they should act as if this is not the first taste of success they have ever experienced. They should be grateful but believe in their ability to do it again.

Because a fair amount of emotion is involved in both athletics and business, it is natural and only human for athletes and top executives to react when they fail or succeed. But in our society, how you react to your successes and failures is just as important as whether you actually succeed or fail. Thaddeus Golas, a famous writer from the early twentieth century, said, “What happens is not as important as how you react to what happens.” The best have all experienced exhilarating highs and plenty of lows too. Few successes, in fact, come without a series of disappointments and failures along the way—the inevitable bumps in the road. In fact, the failures actually help you succeed. How you react to these highs and lows is more telling of your character and heart than the height of the high or the depth of the low.

The best expect to hit the game-winning home run, or the last-second shot, or close the big business deal. They work for the promotion, but are not surprised when they receive it.

Acting as if you've been there before means keeping your composure and reacting to both successes and failures in a positive way. In fact, the simple act of maintaining co...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Praise for The Business of Being the Best
• Title Page
• Copyright
• Dedication
• Preface
• Chapter 1: The Quest to Become the Best
• Chapter 2: Negotiate Everything
• Chapter 3: Communicate Your Way to Success
• Chapter 4: Develop Your Likability
• Chapter 5: Give Back
• Chapter 6: Lead Like the Best
• Chapter 7: Build a Personal Brand
• Notes
• Acknowledgments
• About the Author
• Index