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- [00:01]
Micah Ruthers
Hi, it's Micah Ruthers. I want to share something with you. It's an episode of a podcast called Superhero Leadership and it is hosted by Marvel's former CEO and legendary turnaround expert, Peter Cuneo. Each week, Peter is joined by top performers from business, media and beyond. Leaders who have mastered the art of impact, resilience and vision. In this episode, John Harris, the CEO of AthLife, explores how leaders create lasting impact via empowering others, fostering empathy, and embracing lifelong learning. I think you're going to enjoy this, and if you do, you can find more Superhero Leadership episodes wherever you get your podcasts. Welcome to the Superhero Leadership Podcast hosted.
- [00:50]
Peter Cuneo
By former CEO of Marvel Entertainment, Peter Cuneo. Listen as he explores outstanding leadership through the lens of successful superhero leaders. Here's your host, Peter Cuneo. Welcome to Superhero Leadership. Today's guest is someone who's been quietly changing lives in the world of sports education and leadership for more than two decades. John Harris is the founder and CEO of Atholite, an organization that supports current and former professional athletes as they navigate life beyond the game. He works with all the major sports leagues, but John's journey didn't start in the boardroom. It started on the court. He was a four year letterman in basketball at DePauw University, where he also earned both his bachelor's and master's degrees. His master's thesis explored the role of higher education in helping NFL players transition to post sports careers work he's been living out ever since. He's a father, a mentor, a leader, and a true builder with ventures like ATH Life Unlimited and Hustle that continue to push the intersection of sports, business and culture forward. Welcome, John. John, I'm fascinated by your career. You've been involved in sports at various levels, from amateur to professional your whole life. Maybe this started just when you were growing up and you got interested in athletics. What was it about your early life as a young kid and how were you raised? How did that affect, I think, your aspirations to be a leader?
- [02:44]
John Harris
I grew up in Central New York, near Syracuse, and Syracuse at the time was part of the Big east and basketball was everything. And growing up in Central New York, you're not outside as much for about six months of the year. So basketball was a thing and I really fell in love with it. My size, I probably should have stuck with baseball, but you know, I had a brother who played college, a sister who played college, and athletics was really just important to us. And ironically, my parents really weren't big into athletics. My dad actually, as a Hobby, played musician, but at one point actually recorded an album. So it was interesting that my parents didn't really push that yet. That was really important to me and to my brothers and sisters. I was one of six, and we grew up in a really small house. Actually, the. My first house was a trailer, so you had to learn to negotiate when you got eight people in a really small space. And I found that I just really like people, and I like to play. So I always found myself getting everyone together in the neighborhood to play baseball or to play basketball. And I had a really good mentor and my high school basketball coach who really cultivated that with me. And so I ended up being the captain of my JV team and then my varsity team, And I wasn't the best player, but I think I have a positive can do attitude. And I was really always trying to get people together, and that led to some great success for me, both on and off the court. I think they both kind of feed each other.
- [04:28]
Peter Cuneo
DePaul is in Chicago.
- [04:30]
John Harris
Chicago, yeah.
- [04:31]
Peter Cuneo
How did you get from upstate New York to Chicago?
- [04:34]
John Harris
There was a player, Rod Strickland, who was pretty good, and we got cable TV when I was in eighth or ninth grade. And plus, they were on NBC a lot, all those famous matchups with Louisville and Notre Dame. And I just became a big fan. I got to see them as much as I got to see Syracuse play. And as I was exploring going to college, I really was thinking, man, I want to go in a city. I want to be in a city when I go to college. And I wasn't recruited by DePaul. I was actually recruited by some smaller schools. And I reached out to Joey Meyer, who was just couple years off of being national coach of the year. And I said, hey, I want to be part of your program. I want to be a coach. I don't know if I can be part of it as a player or not, but fortunately, as a freshman, I was able to walk on, and by my senior year, I was able to earn a scholarship. So wasn't a star by any means, but the fact that I was able to get four years at a Division 1 school, and it really did open up doors for me. Being able to play at a school like that really opened up doors for me in a lot of ways in my life.
- [05:40]
Peter Cuneo
You're coming out of school, you want to be involved in sports, maybe as a coach or in some manner, and suddenly you land a job with the NFL.
- [05:53]
John Harris
So 1993 NFL collective bargaining agreement was kind of the official birth of Player development as it the players said, hey, we're willing to give up some of our game check money, but we want more financial education, career development, educational advising, and employee assistance type programs. So 1995, I graduate. The NFL didn't even know if all that was going to work. So they outsourced it to an organization called the National Consortium for Academics and Sports, led by Richard Lapchak. And Richard is, you know, his dad, Joe, was coach of the Knicks in St. John's and Richard was a social justice warrior. Still is to this day. I count him as a dear friend still. So his organization got that. The Midwest regional office happened to be housed at DePaul University. The guy who ran that office happened to be a season ticket holder. So I was interviewing for that job for four years before I even knew it. And that's one of the things we always try to talk to athletes, is you never know who's watching. And so when I walked in for that interview, he had seen me. He had seen the work I had put in and how I carried myself. And I got an internship, and that opened the door for me. It wasn't a foregone conclusion that he would hire me, but when he did, nine months later, I was full time. It was really working. And so he helped me figure out. My boss, Tom Kowalski, helped me figure out what master's program I should go in, and he helped pay for some of that. So I spent five years. I still was thinking about coaching. So I was coaching high school on the JV level, but I was also chipping away at my master's one course at a time. And I did that for, you know, four and a half, five years. And when that all came around, the NFL said, this is really working. We had a lot of players engaging and utilizing the service. So that's when the NFL said, hey, we're going to bring you in house. We're going to bring this in house, and we're going to bring you in to set it up and run it. Which was, yes, I said, and the coaching stuff. Now I coach my kids. But I decided at that point it was time for me to come to New York and take this challenge on.
- [08:08]
Peter Cuneo
Well, we often talk about here on superhero leadership that our guests. And my own experience is there were times in my life when people believed in me, sometimes even more than I believed in myself. They saw something in me. They saw something in our guests like yourself, and gave us a break, gave us a push in some cases, and the rest is history. We often want to make the point with our listeners, with our viewers that very often take a risk. You have nothing to lose. If someone wants to support you and you're not even sure you can live up to that, to that promise, go for it.
- [08:49]
John Harris
That's right. Our mutual friend Dan Buckley actually did that with me with starting the business when I did. And, you know, he saw something in me that I didn't see in myself, and he was certainly a major influence in me taking that step into entrepreneurship.
- [09:09]
Peter Cuneo
Yeah. So for people listening and viewing, Dan Buckley, as a senior executive at Marvel Entertainment, has been there a long time. He is the publisher of the comic books, but he's also involved in other media efforts for Marvel. And he has worked with John to create. And you might want to talk about this, John. To create some very unique promotional experiences for fans and for players in the leagues coupled with the Marvel characters.
- [09:48]
John Harris
And that came along pretty early on in my entrepreneurial journey. I left the NFL. There was really nothing meaningful at the time being done for former players. So I would be working with current players, and then they weren't working for the company anymore. So they were. There wasn't anywhere to send them. So while I was creating that, I was open to other ideas. And I had integrated an educational technology to help athletes with retention that I came across. And we were having lunch one day telling him about it. He said, hey, we're building out marvelkids.com maybe this could work. So we did a little bit of that. And then this movie, Iron man, came along, which is pretty good. And he said, hey, we're going to go all in on the studios thing, which was a pretty smart idea. But he said, I've always. He and a couple of the other executives there were always. They loved sports. And, you know, back in the day, you had to kind of sit in the closet and read your comic books if you were an athlete. But he had this idea of kind of bringing the worlds together. So I knew a lot of people in sport. I said, hey, we'll give it a try. And, you know, it started off slow. We were just figuring out a few things. You know, did something with the Philadelphia Eagles and the Miami Dolphins. And it turned into last year, we had over 200 activations across sport. You know, we've worked with everybody from the New York Giants and the New York Yankees to the Eugene Emeralds. So anytime you see marble show up in sports, like in a stadium celebrating the player characters, we were able to do that. And now we do that with Mattel, with, you know, Barbie And Hot Wheels and we're doing some stuff with entertainers. So really been a really fun building that. We got a small team at ATH Life that does that.
- [11:36]
Peter Cuneo
You work with literally thousands of athletes to help them make a very important a life saving. I'm going to argue a life saving transition successfully, easily. Unfortunately, being human beings, there are going to be a few cases where it just doesn't work for them. It may end badly even. How does that get to you? Or do you, do you feel it when you see that there's a situation occurred with a particular athlete, it just didn't work for them and the whole situation ended up poorly.
- [12:10]
John Harris
Yeah. The team of advisors that we have cares very deeply about the work and who they serve. We also philosophically, we're all aligned that we're not going to do something for someone that they wouldn't do for themselves. So there is a level of teaching that does go on in the process and there are times where people, they need to fail or as we say, we give advice for a living, you know, and you know, there's financial advisors, there's doctors, there's all kind of people who give advice. We really want them to take our advice, but they don't always take their advice. It could be anything from they're applying for the wrong types of jobs or they don't have the credentials for the types of jobs they have, or their resume is terrible, or they're terrible at interviewing. And if they won't take the advice, then, you know, the best we can do is say, well, that may be one of the things that's getting in your way. What I do find though is sometimes somebody goes on and maybe things work for them, maybe they don't, or they come back and they say, you know what, I did try it my way and it didn't work. So I think us holding our ground in terms of philosophically making sure we're rooted in best practices. You know, all of our staff, they're master certified career development specialists by the National Career Development Association. We're always trying to, you know, educate ourselves and maintain, you know, all the latest education so we can be the best at what we do. We're learning all about AI and how that impacts the career transition process. And to your point, at the end of the day, sometimes people just don't take your advice and it hurts your heart. And you know, we also give ourselves some grace that, you know, where we can't do everything right.
- [14:05]
Peter Cuneo
We often talk about the role of culture in a successful organization. Any organization could be any kind. It could be a for profit situation. It could be public company, not public. It could be nonprofit situation. Whatever organization you're talking about, culture matters. And in my situation, because I've done a number of turnarounds of distressed businesses and I always felt found going in that the culture was wrong, that the. And I'll define culture for you. The way I see it, culture has two parts. The first is how we treat each other in the organization and how we treat the people outside the organization, as well as just as important as our own employees. It could be a client, it could be a supplier, it could be an investor. Whatever form those outsiders take, how we view them and how we value them is very important. I found in a lot of turnarounds, the culture was all wrong. It's shockingly all wrong. And the second part is, okay, what's part of the culture? What do we need to do to be successful? What matters in our particular business? New products need to be 25% of sales every year. Okay, how come we don't have a new products organization or we don't have our best people in new products or what have you, your situation is a little bit different because you started the company and you created the culture from day one. And it sounds like. And this is my question to you, but it sounds like to me it's the same today as it was those years ago when you started it. Have you had to make any adjustments in culture?
- [15:49]
John Harris
I feel like who comes into the organization and who is attracted to the organization, they're very service oriented. I can tell you great stories about how people ended up. And ultimately it's about having a can do attitude. It's about having a servant leadership. You know, that's something I know from I went to DePaul University and Servant leadership was certainly something that I felt I had a piece of that in me, but they really emphasized that from an educational standpoint. We went through an exercise when Covid hit, where I brought in a friend of mine who was a cmo and I had to really dig in with all the stakeholders, not only people on our team, but people who pay us money to provide a service and helped us write a brand book and went through it with the team and talked about our organizational philosophy and how there are times where somebody would want to partner with us, but we wouldn't do it because it didn't fall in line with our organizational philosophy and how important that is to us. And there are some. There's every once in a while We've had somebody come into the organization that wasn't a fit and that's really hard. But it's very evident when it happens. And so we've had to move on from a few people, but mostly who people have come in mostly don't leave. When they do, they go to wonderful opportunity. My old COO is now running athlete services for the usopc. So I could brag about all the great people who've come into our organization and the people that are there now, I'd say on average have been there 10 years.
- [17:33]
Peter Cuneo
That's great. Yeah, I think culture is very important at Marvel. The great advantage we had, and the reason I always like to say that Marvel was so successful was yes, we made great movies and published great comic books. But even before that, the culture, the culture was one of, I would say we're going to change the rules of the game. We were not going to make movies the way Hollywood did. We were not going to publish and create comic books the way other people in the industry did because we could see that various ways we could do it better and in some cases cheaper. And so we're always looking and as a turnaround person, I'm always looking for those opportunities. And at Marvel we had a couple of other people on the board who were similar to me, were turnaround types. And so I had a lot of support for these kinds of changes from the board to change the culture.
- [18:31]
John Harris
Yeah, and you all did an incredible job with the turnaround coming. I mean we remind people sometimes when we're working with them that, that they were in bankruptcy and that the incredible turnaround, it went from bankruptcy to selling to Disney to where they are now again created the opportunity for us to take all the great infrastructure that existed within Marvel and all the incredible IP and storytelling and then apply it in sport.
- [19:03]
Peter Cuneo
We had a great run, but I think it comes back to we were doing things differently, changing the rules of the game. I have lots of stories about, about that and I can remember, you know, I'd have talent agents calling me and saying, you need to cast so and so in your movie and so and so will cost a lot of money. And as a well known star, male or female, and I would always say we all we really care about is the characters are, will make the movie. We need good actors and actresses and they're going to be behind a mask a lot of the time anyway. So we hired people that weren't necessarily huge household names and the rest is history because today they are household names. Many of Them, so. But we just wouldn't give in. You know, I can't tell you how many times an agent would say to me, so and so can make your movie, meaning just by casting them, they're in it, you're going to have a profitable movie. Which I never believed. It was much more complicated than that.
- [20:09]
John Harris
Yeah. People probably don't remember that Mr. Tony Stark, prior to being cast, was coming out of a tough time.
- [20:20]
Peter Cuneo
Well, I have a story about that. You know, and Robert Downey Jr. Talk about doing things differently. So when we cast him as Tony Stark, Iron man, he had. His mug shot had been everywhere, I think it was about three months before. And needless to say, Hollywood wasn't too excited about hiring him. And he did it. But he did a screen test for us and the board, including myself, and at this point, I'm vice chairman of the board of Marvel, was very reluctant to hire him. And to the credit of the people running Marvel Studios, they said to us, well, we. We thought you would feel that way. We understand. And we got Robert to screen test. The screen test, as I recall, was the first seven or eight minutes of the movie. Okay. He's in a Humvee, he's smoking a cigarette, he has a cocktail and he's quipping and. And Robert was, you know, on this. On the script for the first three or four minutes, and then he just, as he can, he just went off and he became Tony Stark. There are people today who still think he's Tony Stark in real life.
- [21:28]
John Harris
That's right.
- [21:29]
Peter Cuneo
Hollywood was in shock when we announced and we really felt that there was no better male actor in the world at the time than Robert Downey Jr. All right, Flash. This was in 2005. We cast him. The movie came out in 2007. It's now 20 years later. Well, how has he done.
- [21:49]
John Harris
He's doing all right. That. That trailer they dropped for. For Doomsday. Right. There were a whole bunch of chairs. Then there was him just doing this. It was like 273 million views in a day or something crazy like that.
- [22:05]
Peter Cuneo
He's still playing Tony Stark 20 years later. Yeah, he has done great. He's been on the straight and narrow, and he's made all these other films outside of Marvel well, that have done very well. Yeah. So I think we're all at Marvel. Those of us that were involved are very proud of that particular moment when we, the board, saw his screen test and said, do it. Yeah. You know, so. And I think sometimes, particularly when you have to make radical changes in an organization, you have to take a risk and you have to do things differently. You know, we were talking a little earlier, before we started recording, and we talked briefly about the fact that in sports, the best athletes don't necessarily make the best leader. Sometimes they do, but sometimes they don't. And so, you know, leadership doesn't come naturally if you're great or even good or even average in a particular sport. It comes, you know, it comes from other places. It comes from your life's experiences, what you've learned about other people. You've learned the instincts of leadership. And I'm just wondering, are there any lessons you think you've learned in your life that you might want to impart to the audience about leadership, about your successes, about your failures?
- [23:29]
John Harris
Yeah. Something I've learned, and I'm a lifelong learner, I'm always reading. And something I read that really stuck with me is, don't read about a great leader and try to be that leader. Like different people lead different ways. You have to do what works for you. My team would agree that I try to be a point guard. Right. I try to give people opportunities to be successful and give them autonomy. And there are times where I'm going to take the shot. But I do try to lead with empathy, ask questions, listen. And at the end of the day, someone has to make the decision. Right. So trying to gather as much information and then make the decision, and I may be wrong and saying to the team, you may agree or disagree, but this is the direction we're going to go. And I may be wrong and we're going to have to be okay with that. I do feel like the team does feel valued, they feel heard. And I think that's part of the reason why people stick around. They're doing very important and valuable work in all the verticals. You know, whether it's our foundation or whether it's the athlete services or whether it's the sport and entertainment, and they're doing impactful work that you know, and it's service work, and it reaches a lot of people. And when you feel valued and you're doing work that you value and you're not going to get in trouble unless you go off, like, way off our philosophy. But we talk about our athlete services. If you're doing something and you're thinking about the person you're serving first, that's defensible by me and by our partners. Current or former player might not like it, but if it falls in line with our philosophical approach, then you're going to have all the COVID from me and from our partners, because that's part of the conversation we have with our partners, is making sure we're all aligned in how we're articulating our value proposition in the market.
- [25:41]
Peter Cuneo
One of the things I find, again, doing turnarounds, where things are very difficult. One of the problems often is that the previous leaders were very poor communicators. They may not have even communicated to the organization at all. If they did, it was not very often, and it was inconsistent what they said. And of course, when leaders are inconsistent, they don't say the same thing. The organization gets nervous, needless to say. And so communications are super important to any organization, whether it's a turnaround or not. And it sounds to me like you are a regular communicator. How many people do you have in your organization?
- [26:27]
John Harris
With the athlete services and the entertainment, there's 13. And then with the foundation, we kind of have it set up differently where those folks are employed by the schools, by the high schools, and then we help grant, fund and support and train them. So that's over 100 people. They don't work for us, but. But certainly have an impact and influence on the work that they do.
- [26:54]
Peter Cuneo
Well, they're, in effect, an advocate for you.
- [26:57]
John Harris
They're an extension.
- [27:00]
Peter Cuneo
They are, yeah. I think they are, dare I say it, apostles for your company in the sense that. And that we talked about how important culture is and what have you. I think it's very key. I'll go back, if I can, though, to your early days in life. For a minute, I thought it was very interesting that you had five siblings and you lived in a trailer to start in. Yeah. And so you had a diversity of experiences. It seems to me you had to cope with a lot of different people, a lot of different personalities. And we find that great leaders have had very diverse lives in general. As you study, they lived in. They may have been geographically diverse, but certainly they dealt with a lot of different personalities with different backgrounds, both in, you know, I'd say personal life and professional life. And I often say that, and I think you'll relate to this. The greatest gift that my parents gave me and my siblings is we were raised with absolutely no prejudices about anybody. We never heard anything about someone's color, religion, sexual orientation, ethnic background or whatever. I can't think of anyone who deals with a more diverse set of people than you do. What was the atmosphere you grew up in? Was it similar to what I had, where I just had to figure out who was a good person and a bad person, but had nothing to do with how they were born or what have you.
- [28:43]
John Harris
I grew up, and my mom in particular had us going to church every week, and I was an altar boy. I was a very devout Catholic, I would say. And, you know, that's evolved for me. However, I think the thing that is most important, and I think it's important in any religion, is that, you know, do unto others and treat others with respect and dignity and. And I feel like I do. And I think that translates in the business. I think the most diverse place, the locker room, is an incredibly diverse place. Athletics is very diverse. You know, being in the athletic department, being in the city of Chicago, being on a very diverse campus like DePaul University is considered one of the more diverse college campuses in the country. So I've had that exposure through sport and through life. Then obviously, living in New York City, and even now we moved out to Huntington, New York, and Long island, where my kids are the minority in the school and they go to public school, and we're having our kids in the same way experience. This is what the world is going to look like when you're older. And this is the world that we live in. Me and my wife both work in very diverse environments, and being able to, whether it was with my brothers and sisters negotiating over that, you know, the second helping of dinner or in the locker room, you know, dealing with a guy who grew up on the south side of Chicago in a really tough neighborhood, you know, being able to communicate effectively with them and build relationships is something. I think that's something that is one of my superpowers, if you will.
- [30:33]
Peter Cuneo
Well, I love that, actually, when we talk about leadership again and I do speeches around the world and what have you. And my themes right now are twofold. The first is that we simply have less good leadership in the world than ever. And just turn on the news. I don't care what your political leanings are. Doesn't matter. It's chaos in many cases. And it's not just the U.S. it's everywhere. And I think that's very important. The second, and what do we do about that? But the second theme is that young people are not learning leadership. And why not? And what can we do as parents, as grandparents, as well, young people can do for themselves to learn leadership? My website is petercunio c U-N-E o.com and I have a list of 15 things I recommend for young people, starting at age 5, by the way, and going up to age 30 to breed the instincts of leadership. Because the only way in my mind you really learn leadership. And I appreciate people that are listening to us and we watching us today. And hopefully we can help with that, with what we're doing right now. But 90% of learning leadership is face to face interactions with a diversity of other people in a diversity of situations. That's how you learn the instincts. Leaders in my mind are not born. This phrase about he or she is a born leader drives me crazy sometimes it's not that way at all. And you're talking about your children and it sounds like they've already. You're probably practicing things on my list already. But I think, you know, again, letting your kids be exposed to a world of diversity, whatever that brings, is really important and it's not happening very often anymore. Our problem is that young people growing up don't have the opportunities for face to face that you and I had. Part of the problem is technology. You can't learn anything about anyone off of a cell phone. And in fact, cell phones can be poisonous. The opposite problem, as we all know, unfortunately, a zoom call is nice. And I'm on three or four zoom calls a day, you know, and it's fine with people I already know, but most of the time I'm actually meeting new people and I don't pretend that I really know them from a zoom call at all. So zoom calls are useful for conducting business and so on, but you're not really going to learn much from the person on the other end of the call. So I think it's about that. It's about we have over parenting in my opinion, in this country, sometimes people call it gentle parenting. Parents for some reason want to be a friend to their kids, not a parent. And one of the things I say in my speeches is let your children fail.
- [33:50]
John Harris
That's right.
- [33:51]
Peter Cuneo
The problem with most young people, and this is not their fault, and it's really, in a way, I don't mean to demean parents because they're very, well meaning, they're very loving, they think this is the right thing to do. No one wants to make your child unhappy on purpose or whatever. But the way young people prosper is they learn their strengths and their weaknesses. We're all human beings, we all by definition have some weaknesses. And if you learn early enough in life to know yourself, you know your strengths, but you discover your weaknesses and you can work to get better or you can avoid. Either way might be appropriate for certain weakness. But the kids today, a lot of them don't get that because they're never allowed to fail. They're never allowed to make even the most minuscule decision on their own. You know, and no matter what goes wrong, it's not their fault. You didn't make the elite, the sports team. It's the coach's fault. You got a bad grade on a test in school. It's the teacher's fault. Okay, you're great. And it may be the coach's fault or the teacher's fault, but guess what? Life isn't perfect.
- [35:05]
John Harris
That's right.
- [35:06]
Peter Cuneo
You're going to get, dare I say it, screwed from time to time. We all have been in life. It just happens.
- [35:13]
John Harris
Yeah, those are sometimes good life lessons. And we see this with our kids, that we encourage them to get online, to get offline.
- [35:24]
Peter Cuneo
Right.
- [35:24]
John Harris
Use it to find the opportunities to get out there. And I will say my wife does a great job of balancing that. And the kids do get out there. And we bought a house with a big yard so the kids would be out there. And they do use it. And I see what you say that we talk to the athletes we're working with. Like, can't just keep hitting. Apply on LinkedIn. You need to find those connections on LinkedIn, get coffee with them, go out and have lunch, interact with them so they can cut through the paper to get to the people. So. And yeah, and that is a challenge sometimes we get when we get an athlete that, you know, between the parent and the coach in the school and the team, the professional team, so much has been done for them that they hadn't had to go and do some of these things on their own. And it's not all of them. You know, we have some, you know, we were talking earlier about, you know, we have 47 former NFL players getting their doctoral degree even though they have scholarship money. Amazing that they've collectively bargained. They're still doing this, and they're in their 40s and sometimes their 50s. And I gotta tell you, I. That's an amazing, like, the commitment that they're making is an amazing commitment. Like, I don't have time to do that right now, but yet they're finding time to do it. They're getting master's degrees, they're finishing undergrad degrees, they're getting certifications in real estate and financial advisors. So there are some people doing wonderful things. And one of the challenges is sometimes when you transition from being a player, let's say you did take care of all your money and you got $10 million in the bank, you're still gonna do something, right? So figuring out what they're gonna do and not spending years figuring that out, because then you're spending money and not making money, then you lack that sense of purpose. So there are people doing wonderful things, former players, and there's some that do struggle. And I think it does trickle down. You know, through our foundation, we work with a lot of high school athletes. Very few of them make it to college, and very few of them make it to the pro. I can count maybe on one hand the number of pros who then are connected back to the work we did through our foundation. We see really, really positive and we do see some of the things that you talk about where some of the kids really struggle and a lack of leadership. So we do a lot of leadership programming with our foundation to try to build that as well. But that's going to be. That work's going to continue for a while.
- [38:10]
Peter Cuneo
I want to make it clear that I'm not knocking parents per se. It is much harder to be a parent than it was, say, when I was a parent or my parents. I mean, basically my life as growing up was more or less. My father was a lieutenant, New York City Fire Department. My mother was an emt. And so they worked and they were give back type people. But basically, you know, and I did play sports and so on and whatever, but essentially it was do your homework, get back here for dinner at 6 o' clock at night, get out there. That was. That was it.
- [38:48]
John Harris
Yeah. It's not managing the devices. And I mean, I mean, our kids, they have, you know, sports after school. They might have a little time to do their homework in between, and then it's dinner homework. And then, you know, lately I've been with my kids, they give them a little break and then we're doing more math, we're playing catch up. I really feel like that the homeschooling during COVID I mean, the statistics say that a lot of kids kind of got behind. And I see it with my older kids that some of their foundational math skills are. So we put in that extra work because again, I could point to. There's nothing I can do about what happened there. What we can do is say we can either solve this or not. So we spend the time doing that together. But it takes a lot of work. You know, it's exhausting after a day of work, to be honest with you, to do that. But, you know, to your point about, like having to navigate all of these other inputs that are coming in that I certainly didn't have as a kid. We didn't get cable TV till I was like eighth or ninth grade, right. So I didn't even have that distraction. I see how hard it as being a kid.
- [40:00]
Peter Cuneo
So that's again, social pressures on the kids too. And so look, it's a, it's a real challenge for parents. They want to do the right thing. So I understand it. But if your kids, anyone's kids, grandkids, kids, whatever, can learn to be effective leaders, they're going to crush it because they're not going to have a lot of competition, unfortunately. I hope what I'm saying is wrong. Believe me, I do. But again, I would encourage all our listeners and people that are actually watching our podcast that, that go and take a look at the list that we have on PeterCunio.com that we recommend. I think it'll be pretty clear. I don't think there's too much on it. It's a surprise to some. Let your kids fail is a surprise. But you know, there's some others, but for the most part, they'll get it.
- [40:54]
John Harris
Just a good reminder too, sometimes when you get caught in it, the easy thing to do is to do something for the kid and you're tired and it's been a long day and I could do that, whatever for you. But you know, if you can stick with some of the. To your point, like not doing for them. My work has actually influenced my parenting, right? Me not doing for my kids what they can do for themselves. Just like with the athletes, not doing for them what they can do for themselves. And that's harder. I remember I had, we had hired somebody who said, man, it would just be easier just to do the resume for them. Like that's not what we do. We give them the feedback. They have to own it so that way they can speak to it in the interview and they can modify it later. Otherwise you're going to be doing this for them all along. And they're all capable. They just hadn't been challenged to take ownership of their own. So trying to do that with your kids, I find that actually harder and have to remind myself of some of those things that I've learned in my day job.
- [41:56]
Peter Cuneo
Also on PeterCunio.com, we have something we call the 32 Essentials of Superhero Leadership. And they are one liners about instincts, philosophies, actions that I think I've learned over a long time of being involved in leadership. I'm a Vietnam veteran I was a leader in college and blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. But I also recommend these to people who are current leaders who want to get better or people aspiring to leadership. And you can use them, if you're honest with yourself, just as a report card. You don't need to show it to anyone else. You know, how are you doing? And people often ask me, I started this over 20 years ago. And people sometimes say, so you must give yourself an A on every one. And unfortunately, 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 can do is a C. I have my various human flaws, and sometimes, you know, I have to fight them. And just getting a passing grade is really just about all I'm going to be able to do.
- [43:12]
John Harris
Well, and being honest about those and surrounding yourself with people who aren't afraid to, like, remind you that maybe that's not the thing you're best at. So I got this one.
- [43:23]
Peter Cuneo
Well, you know, again, One of the 32 says, Find people who will tell you the truth even when it hurts.
- [43:31]
John Harris
That's right.
- [43:31]
Peter Cuneo
And I think that's number 11 or something. I may not have the number right, but a lot of the things that you've mentioned actually apply directly to that list. I was thinking before, did John read the list?
- [43:44]
John Harris
I did.
- [43:45]
Peter Cuneo
I feel better now.
- [43:46]
John Harris
I don't remember, but yeah, I do. I embrace lifelong learning and I'm always, okay, good. Yeah, I'm always trying to get better.
- [43:54]
Peter Cuneo
Yeah. Another one which we've discussed today is remember your failures, forget your successes. Because I think that people learn much more from their failures if they're, again, honest with themselves than from your successes. Well, John, this has been great. I really appreciate you coming by.
- [44:16]
John Harris
I appreciate being here.
- [44:17]
Peter Cuneo
I really enjoyed it very much. You're actually most of the people we have talked with on this show in season one and now starting season two were people I knew somewhat before you and I just met really face to face today before we. We started doing this. And so I've really enjoyed it. You've taught me a few things. I've been listening very carefully and I really do appreciate it.
- [44:44]
John Harris
I appreciate you having me things about.
- [44:47]
Peter Cuneo
Leadership from you today.
- [44:48]
John Harris
Thank you.
- [44:49]
Peter Cuneo
So again, thanks so much for being on and the best of luck to you and best of luck to all the professional athletes and the other people that you help.
- [44:58]
John Harris
Thank you.
- [44:58]
Peter Cuneo
Thanks again. That's it for this episode of Superhero Leadership. I want to thank John Harris for sharing his experiences. I hope you'll join me again next time. Until then, stay focused, stay driven and keep leading like a superhero. With purpose, passion and integrity. I'm Peter Cuneo.