SUBSCRIBE:
Apple | Google | Spotify | Stitcher | iHeart
FREE COACHING CALL:
Need some quick advice? Jump on a call with me, and I'll provide some insight and action. This is NOT a sales call where I try to get you to hire me. Promise!
Click here to schedule a call.
Episode Overview:
The podcast "Unlocking Business by Jumping First and Thinking Fast with Frank O'Connell" features an inspiring interview with Frank O'Connell, a seasoned business leader. Throughout the episode, O'Connell emphasizes the significance of adopting an entrepreneurial mindset and embracing change to thrive in today's fast-paced business environment. He shares valuable insights on making agile decisions, managing risks effectively, and building strong networks that foster growth and innovation. Drawing from his own experiences, O'Connell highlights the importance of learning from failures and setbacks as opportunities for personal and professional development. With practical advice and motivating anecdotes, he encourages listeners to unlock their potential, embrace uncertainty, and seize opportunities to succeed in the ever-evolving world of business.
Additional Resources:
I hope you guys are about ready to listen to some words of wisdom from somebody that has turned around huge companies for over 50 years. He has innovated, he has shifted, he has taken risks, and those things have helped shaped who he is today. This experience, whether it was at companies like Reeboks, Fox Video Games, HBO Video, SkyBox, Gibson Greetings, or Indian Motorcycles, those experiences, that knowledge is what he's sharing in his new book, Jump First, Think Fast. You can get that on Amazon right now and Barnes & Noble. There's a lot of gold in there.
We're going to share some of that gold on this interview that we have right here. Some experiences that he's had where, you know what? Didn't go so well, some of those failures. But what he made out of that, turning that around, resiliency, has brought him to where he is today and created the success that he experienced in his career. So I'm really grateful for Frank and the ideas that he shares here. So get ready for this interview. Here we come. Frank, it is an honor to have you on the show. Thanks for being here.
Frank O'Connell:
Thanks, Skot.
Skot Waldron:
Tell me what's been going on in your world. I mean, you have had quite the journey through your corporate career. Give us a little background into that, and then tell us what you're doing now.
Frank O'Connell:
Okay. Well, it's interesting. I always have to start with what was most important thing in my career was my start, growing up on a farm in Upstate New York. And my father, who was a farmer, died when I was two-years-old. My mother was a city girl, continued to run the farm. And by the time we could walk, we were outside working and then eventually built an incredible farming business, my brother and I. So that catapulted me really into the business world and entrepreneurial world at a very young age and gave me great self-confidence. Then, of course, I went to Cornell undergraduate and graduate school, and then started on this very crazy journey through all of these industries and companies.
So as you know, I went from a lot of time in the food industry, which I loved, and developed all sorts of brands and did crazy and wild promotions and things, and then made a big jump shift and I went to Mattel in the toy business, into video, into video games, and then to HBO Video and Reebok and Pump, and then trading cards with SkyBox and then greeting cards with Gibson. And then, of course, five years in the motorcycle industry. And that's what my sons, who call me the original millennial, and all of their friends, they were the inspiration for the book. They kept coming and saying, "Can you tell us more stories?" So that's how I really ended up writing the book.
Skot Waldron:
There's a couple things that you said in here. Number one is this thing I read where that belief, that upbringing for you instilled this belief that I can outwork anyone, and that's what you attribute to some of your success. Am I right?
Frank O'Connell:
You're right. And my mother had this saying: "The harder I work, the luckier I get."
Skot Waldron:
Tell me about that. What's that mean?
Frank O'Connell:
Yeah. Well, in every case, I certainly wasn't the smartest kid who ever went to Cornell. When I looked at my initial scores upon entry, it was amazing they took me. But then I ended up at the top of the class just by basically outworking everybody. But I also learned that same thing in business. I would go beyond always the expectation pretty much in the beginning of my career, and you stood out by virtue doing that. By going one extra mile, getting additional information, that hard work made you stand out. And then people were willing to take risks on putting you in growth situations. So, big factor, yeah.
Skot Waldron:
Interesting. So let me throw this one at you. People have said, "Work smarter, not harder." Right, Frank? Don't work so hard, work smarter. So how do you talk about those two things in the same world?
Frank O'Connell:
Yeah. Well, it's funny. I've had bosses, the head of companies, that told me I was working too hard. But that was just part of what was ingrained. Now, I'm a big believer in working smart, and I do everything I can to bring in that knowledge and information and hire very talented people. So it's really both.
But it's fascinating. Now, you know how much they're criticizing the millennials now for not working hard and the whole thing of quiet quitting? And it's interesting. That's not been my experience with them, and I've hired hundreds of them, and I just want to say that. Now, I'm careful when I hire. I know what to look for, I do the assessment. Have they got the drive and the willingness to work? But hard work still gives you the edge.
Skot Waldron:
It does. And that's what I think that this conversation's doing for me a little bit, is I think the smarter thing... We can all gather the data and that is part of it. We should be smart. Nobody's arguing that we shouldn't be smart with how we're running our business. But at the end of the day, if we're all on the same level of smart, what's going to be the differentiator? Well, it's going to be that work ethic. It's going to be that application of the things that you do to apply the things you've learned.
Frank O'Connell:
Yes. Yes, definitely.
Skot Waldron:
I love that. So let's about your career. Your profile is so fun. It's all over the map. So let's talk a little bit about now this book that you've written. The book is Jump First, Think Fast. You've gone from this career and now you're putting it into this book form. So what are we getting? What are we getting with this book that we're not getting from others?
Frank O'Connell:
Okay. Critical to me was I did not want to do another business book, which was the how-to thing. Here's the five steps, here are the 10 steps you follow. And I have to say, I either read a good deal of the books or at least scanned them or read the recaps on them. And I just feel that there are a lot of people that just don't simply learn by saying, "This is what you ought to do." And I never lecture, even in running companies. I motivate, but I never lecture.
So the book is based on my experiences, and hopefully entertaining experiences, in being in the trenches, making mistakes, succeeding, failing. As my friend said, "Frank, you always fall forward after a failure." But to me, the difference is I talk through my experiences, and then the audience and my readers can draw from that what really is relevant and interesting to them that's coming out of that situation.
But you also find a theme throughout is I talk about the importance of taking risks. A lot of it is you've got to take risks. You've got to understand what's holding you back in your own personal development or in the development of a company. So I'm very focused on trying to encourage people to take more risks.
Skot Waldron:
What do you say to people that are more risk averse? We've got a huge part of the population that is risk averse. They don't like taking the risk. It's scary. I can't control things. I want to be in control and I don't know what's going to happen. The unknown is scary. What do you tell people?
Frank O'Connell:
Well, what's really scary is not moving in an environment that's moving all around you at a high rate of speed. And sitting still, particularly in this environment, is really going backwards. But I try to show them through my own set of experiences and failures is that I never ended up with a failure, when I came out of that failure, that I didn't end up doing better and get to a newer and higher level.
When I'm running an organization, I try to remove the fear of failure, particularly a lot in new product development, because then I'm not going to get the best of people and their best ideas, and that they aren't going to come up with unusual strategies that may not work, but got a chance to have a huge breakthrough. So it's much easier for me when I'm running companies to do that. And I go through the annual assessment with all my management teams and whatever, so I know when someone's got the capability. I always say, "I see in you the possibility of a stroke of brilliance, but you've got to take some risks and go take some action."
Skot Waldron:
The possibility of a stroke of brilliance. Ooh, that's good. And when I'm talking to a lot of my clients and coaching them, I say when... Sometimes our people, we end up in the pit of despair, we call it. It's like this place where we wallow and we just feel like we're not good. We're defeated. We're down there, and we just feel... We just don't feel up. And I say one of the best things you can do as a leader is go speak vision into that person. And you just did that by telling people, "I see brilliance in you," right?
Frank O'Connell:
Yeah.
Skot Waldron:
It's so powerful.
Frank O'Connell:
Yeah. And a lot of what I do, is when someone comes to me on the inside or outside of the company, I try to help them on the self-assessment side, because I find that is a side that a lot of people still have never really done. They're still following peer group values and perceptions, et cetera. So I first start with, "Let's do what is necessary to get a good grip on who you are and what's unique about you. And then let's take that and get you in the right position." Even I will move people around in the company based on that self-assessment to help develop them.
One other thing that's interesting is frequently when somebody gets fired, they call me right away. I encourage them, "Before you go home, call me." And to the point of not taking risks, often I say, "They just did you the biggest favor they could have ever done for you, is they made a decision you should have made, and they made that decision for you. Now it's a chance to start over and go find the right position for you." I often call it like pushing someone over a cliff sometimes is a way to overcome the fear of failure, because then you've got to do something.
Skot Waldron:
That's true. That's true. Can I ask you, have you ever been pushed over a cliff or felt like you've been pushed over a cliff by someone that moved you into that next realm?
Frank O'Connell:
Well, yeah. I mean, the Reebok situation, which is... Everybody finds this quite unusual and it's pretty well known. I was brought into Reebok essentially by the board, who felt that the company needed a leader with a strong business background and marketing background. Paul Fireman had done a great job as an entrepreneur building into, at that time, an 800 million dollar company. But the company was losing share. It had no new product. It had long development cycles. It lacked discipline and professional management inside of the company.
So I was brought in, but I immediately had to get a new product on the board, because we were really getting killed by Nike at that point in time. And our share was dropping, and there was nothing in the funnel, in their new product development funnel, and it was taking them three years. This was what I call innovation on demand. So I oversaw the development of the Pump shoe, and also, of course, the high risk advertising campaign of the Bungee Jumping commercial, which has become one of the 10 best ever athletic commercials, but, I mean, at really high risk.
The company then goes into resurgence, the shoe sells out, et cetera. It actually did billion dollars in sales after that. And I was fired three months after that. So that's getting pushed over the cliff. So you're saying, "What?" What was the reason? Paul Fireman basically was afraid. He had been out of the company because he had been sick with a heart attack. As he said to me, "I want to come back in." Few entrepreneurs get a second chance at the crank. But he was most concerned because I had really shifted the culture into a very higher great professional people, and that was not comfortable for him. But that was getting pushed over the cliff.
But then I took that experience and went on to run and turn around other companies, and the next was really turning around. SkyBox had lost 40 million dollars. We spun it. I hired Magic Johnson right after. He was HIV positive, had a wonderful relationship with him, and we just skyrocketed the company and took it public. So coming right off of Reebok, we did an incredible turnaround. But yes, that was going off the cliff.
Skot Waldron:
That was going off the cliff, especially after... I mean, the Pump, please. I remember when my friend across the street got some Pumps, and I was like, "No way." I remember, we would just go over there and pump them up and then let them out and then pump them up. It was just so fascinating to us as young teenagers, that we were just like, "That's so cool." We were just all over that. So childhood memory, it's one of those things that will go down in history. We all remember that. And SkyBox, I mean, just the thing.
So catapulting into your career in different ways has just been... You adapted, it sounds like, to me. You could have sat there and wallowed. You could have sat there and complained how everybody's out to get me, but you didn't. You moved on and you created something great.
Frank O'Connell:
Yeah, yeah. and people often ask me, "How did you do this movement from industry to industry?" The big factor is I learned very early on the value of strategic planning, of immediately doing all the analysis of the company and the industry, coming up of alternative strategies, testing those strategies, getting your whole management team aligned behind a strategy with metrics that you translated into your organization, and then making the tough decisions on talent in your team. There were certain people that were going to make it and others that weren't, and you needed new talent. So I would say in every company I went into, the first thing was let's get a strategic plan together and get aligned.
Skot Waldron:
And one of the cool things I read about your idea behind a strategic plan is one of those first initial steps is knowing what business you're in. That was so cool for me. I read that and I was like, "That's so smart." And this idea of, for example, for Reebok. You weren't in the business of shoes.
Frank O'Connell:
Yeah.
Skot Waldron:
Right?
Frank O'Connell:
No.
Skot Waldron:
Can you talk about that idea?
Frank O'Connell:
Yeah, yeah. Really, what drove it was... What drives first the shoe is some new form of technology that ends up in great graphics, but you're really in the entertainment business, so the athletes and the other people that support your product. Like the initial thing was Cybill Shepherd and the aerobic shoe. She, in one night, turned the company and turned the whole aerobics thing into a craze. Well, that's entertainment. Yes, the shoe was nice and it was orange, but it was Cybill who drove it. And you had to really understand what... And you're in the business of... The inner city kids there had more impact on style and on getting a product rolling. So I would bring in inner city kids as part of my development process, and then we would introduce a shoe first in the inner city and let them chase it, and that got an incredible buzz. But that's an example.
And then, of course, the other one we love is we weren't really in the trading card business. We weren't in athletic trading cards. We were really into business connecting kids and their heroes. And when we discovered that, we went and looked for whole new groups of who were heroes to kids, including all the comic book heroes, television. And when I went to Hollywood and started wanting their Evergreen characters for greeting cards, they said, "What?" And they gave them to me for peanuts because it was a totally new business, as an example. That exploded the company.
Skot Waldron:
That's fantastic. Tell us, so your definition of success, what is that? I like this question. It's interesting. I had John Lee Dumas, he's the host of Entrepreneurs on Fire, and he's a big player in the entrepreneurial world, talks about success in his book. But what's your definition of success?
Frank O'Connell:
I think it varies by area and category, et cetera. But a true success is really when you generate either a product or create a category that ends up being sustainable, where there is long-term consumer demand for the product and you're able to perpetuate and build it. And the reason I want to mention that is... And I'm going to mention what I consider to be a failure. In the case of Reebok, Reebok, as you know, has gone up and down, up and down. I mean, Paul Fireman sold for 3 billion dollars to Adidas, and now it sold for just sold peanuts to a private equity firm. And it distresses me no end that it's losing all of its distribution and product brand awareness, et cetera.
What was the problem? The problem was we never found a unique positioning in the consumer's mind for Reebok. And Nike had this very strong it was the athletic performance shoe, and they had reinforced it in every way, shape or form. Reebok never had that. Now, I'll give you the risk I would've taken and what I tried to do. I thought that in all the research I did on Reebok, it was strongest with women. It had a very soft side. The aerobics business had exploded, et cetera. But Paul Fireman still couldn't get out of his mind that he was in a battle with Phil Knight. I mean, he just saw himself, so he had to have all the... I would've turned it into the women's premier athletic shoe. But that's just the case of what I would consider not being successful because of it not being sustainable.
The other part, I have other metrics, but those metrics are success in running a company, and it is the people and the development of the people. Is it considered one of the best places to work? Is it a very open environment? What's the culture that you create? I think culture is just so, so important. I did three turnarounds back-to-back, and they're tough, because the companies are sliding. You've got a certain time to turn them around. They're running out of cash. You've got to make very dramatic moves, including you have to lay off and terminate a lot of people if you're going in the wrong direction. And very few CEOs have ever had the experience of shifting culture. Strategy is much easier. You can get the strategy right, then the question is can you shift the culture to match that strategy and make that shift? That's the toughest one that takes the most energy and keeps you awake at night.
Skot Waldron:
Yeah, it's the people side of things. And I always tell people, business would be so easy if people weren't involved. It'd be so much easier, Frank. In this day and age, culture is so essential to what we do. What do you think is the biggest mistake companies are making when it comes to culture?
Frank O'Connell:
Here it is, and I'll give you another example of it. When the culture is defined by a few people at the top, when they say, "This is what the culture would be," and they then try to... If you will force it on the organization, okay? If the organization is not involved in defining the culture, then you're going to have problems. You're not going to have a lot of people who are on board. You'll have people who are waiting to see is the new strategy going to work or not work? There are other people who are going to quietly oppose it, et cetera. So you really have to take the organization through the development of the culture so they feel it is theirs.
Here's an example. When I went to Reebok, they were spending 40 million dollars on a human rights program, on a human rights tour with Peter Gabriel and Sting, et cetera, and they went to 50 countries. So they were trying to choose as a way of differentiating Reebok to be the human rights kind of brand, supporting human rights and freedom. But that was all developed at the top. If you talk to the people inside the company, it didn't resonate with them. Why are we spending 40 million dollars sending this group around the country? So it never became a part of the culture, and therefore, in my opinion, it never really succeeded.
Skot Waldron:
That's very interesting. I'm involved with a project right now where some of that was happening. We're doing some new, what I call brand foundation work, with vision, mission, values, purpose work with this company and they're relaunching some stuff. It was a couple of them in a room that developed the vision, mission, values, trying to... Basically, the way our approach was is we're not here to tell you what the values are, like what you should be. We're trying to capture what we are that makes us great and elevate that and say, "This is who we are and this is what makes us great and this is our guideline for staying the course."
Frank O'Connell:
Yeah, yeah. I'll give you... I love this positive example of this, is I was on the board of this great little Vermont company called King Arthur Flour. Now, if you were a baker and baked bread, you would know who this great company is, who educates and has just great flour for baking, et cetera. The interesting thing is it is an ESOP, which I had never encountered before, which is an employee stock ownership plan. The employees own the company. The board reports to the company, and they choose the management team. And I was on their board for eight years in the best place in Vermont to work. They managed through the pandemic unbelievably well. They do all this community work. The employees are so involved in the company and the culture of the company. And I won't go into the stock ownership part of it. But I wrote checks to people who had worked on the production floor for 16 years, checks for over a million dollars when they retired.
So that's another thing I'm intrigued with, is what I call employee ownership versus shareholder ownership. And I won't go into extremes there, but there's 7,000 ESOPs in the US.
Skot Waldron:
That's powerful. Yeah, a movement belongs to those who join it, not just those who lead it. And if you feel part of that thing, if you feel ownership, that loyalty's just blood, sweat, and tears all day.
Frank O'Connell:
Yes.
Skot Waldron:
That's fantastic.
Frank O'Connell:
Yeah, absolutely.
Skot Waldron:
Let me ask you really quick here as we round this thing up. We're going to wrap this thing up. Your experience is so, so vast, and you're boiling it down into your book, Jump First, Think Fast, and the knowledge in there is fantastic. But if you could offer a snippet of advice to companies now that may be struggling, that may be wandering... You've done these turnaround projects... what is it that you're recommending they do right now?
Frank O'Connell:
Get a strategic plan, and don't be confused by budgets and tactics and whatever. And when you develop the strategic plan, one, hire a professional outside firm. You just don't have the skill inside and the analytical tool boxes to both analyze your company, and secondly, industries that are moving fast in trends that are going to impact you. So you need outside horsepower.
And then the other critical thing is go deep in involving your management team in the development of that strategy. Your end strategy will only be as good as the ideas you come up with for alternatives to test. So there's a really important creative part in the development of that. But then if you get that strategic plan in place, then, of course, you then put the right organizational structure, you have to do the right talent, and then it's accountability through the organization.
And then the next is in today's world, agility. You can't review it every 12 months. You've got to review it every quarter, and you've got to be willing to make pretty radical shifts in today's environment to steer through these waters. I love the consumer. Somebody said to me, "What is your job?" It's predicting consumer behavior, but I always get tricked.
Skot Waldron:
It's tricky, those consumers.
Frank O'Connell:
Just when I think I got to figured out, something I never even thought about. Anyway.
Skot Waldron:
That's so funny. Yeah, it's tricky. It's like trying to figure out our kids, you know?
Frank O'Connell:
Yes.
Skot Waldron:
So that's funny. Obviously, your book launched here last fall. Where could people get ahold of that? Amazon, I'm assuming, just wherever books are sold. Is that correct?
Frank O'Connell:
Yeah, it's in Barnes & Noble, and in fact, Barnes & Noble's number one store for business books in New York is featuring it just when you walk in the door now. So Barnes & Noble is a good spot. But also you can go to my website, jumpfirstthinkfast.com, and it tells you where to get it, including... It's so funny... my local bookstore in Vermont, the Yankee Bookstore in Woodstock. Because people want me to sign the books, so they place an order there, and I go down every two days and autograph books that they then send out. But you'll see on my website. It lists all the places to go to buy it.
Skot Waldron:
That's fantastic. I love it. I love it. You go grab a coffee and then you go down and sign some books and there it is. There's a picture right there.
Frank O'Connell:
Now, I have just one last thing.
Skot Waldron:
Oh, of course.
Frank O'Connell:
Okay? I have mantras that people who work with me know, and I always try to lead with a mantra. And so my favorite mantra is have fun, be fun. It's just that people want to work with people who are fun and interesting and enjoyable, and you want the people in your life... I always say business is not life-threatening, okay? So have some fun with it.
Skot Waldron:
Oh, I love that. I love it. Yeah, I mean, people were able to understand that beautiful things come from both good and bad. What can we grasp from that? And I think that's what I've learned from this: resiliency, bounce back. Getting pushed over the cliff isn't the end of the world, right?
Frank O'Connell:
Exactly.
Skot Waldron:
It's what do we make of those things and how do we have fun doing it?
Frank O'Connell:
Yeah. I'm always influenced by reading other people. I just heard a quote from Branson, who said, "If your dreams don't scare you, they're not large enough."
Skot Waldron:
Ah, yes.
Frank O'Connell:
And the other one I had from racing, and I love racing, was, "If you're not marginally out of control, you're probably not moving fast enough."
Skot Waldron:
Marginally out of control. Yeah, I remember that, going down the hill on my bike and then feeling the thing, the... Uh, it's terrifying. Right? Terrifying. Well, Frank, this has been awesome. This has been a gift. Thank you for sharing your wisdom and thoughts and your life experiences with us. I know that I got something out of this and everybody else did too. So thank you for that. And good luck with the book and life, and have fun down there at Bike Week. Get that bike polished.
Frank O'Connell:
Great, will do. Thank you for inviting me on.
Skot Waldron:
I think one of the main ideas I got out of this was that idea of resiliency. The idea of taking risks, the idea of pushing and figuring things out, being strategic, strategic planning, strategic business ideas and the things we do to move forward. At the very beginning he said, "You know what? Sitting still is still moving backwards," says a person who likes to take risk and move forwards. That is the idea. And I think that if we adopt that mentality, then we will keep moving. As we move, we'll find out what works and what doesn't. If we're sitting still, it never happens.
Removing the fear of failure. So how can we do that? Whether it's us, ourselves, or whether it's we're removing the fear of failure from our culture. Are people afraid to fail because of the consequences? I don't know. Maybe they are. Are they afraid to fail? Are they afraid to bring up ideas because they're afraid they're going to be reprimanded for those things? That's part of what we need to be thinking about.
And also understanding that culture isn't just defined by the people at the top. The culture is what it is inside of your organization. Leaders define culture. Sub-leaders define subculture. And as we drill down, that culture is going to permeate throughout the entire organization. It's going to allow us to be successful or not. So thank you for that word of wisdom, Frank.
SUBSCRIBE:
Apple | Google | Spotify | Stitcher | iHeart
FREE COACHING CALL:
Need some quick advice? Jump on a call with me, and I'll provide some insight and action. This is NOT a sales call where I try to get you to hire me. Promise!
Click here to schedule a call.
Episode Overview:
In this podcast episode, Andrew Freedman, a culture and retention expert with years of experience in the field, joins Skot Waldron to discuss unlocking retention through understanding people. They delve into the three key components of retention: behavior, mindset, and emotion. Andrew shares his insights on using data to identify patterns and improve retention, as well as how companies can tap into the goals and aspirations of their customers or employees to create a sense of purpose.
The conversation then explores the emotional component of retention, with Andrew emphasizing the importance of creating a positive emotional connection with customers or employees. Throughout the episode, Andrew shares examples of companies that have successfully implemented these strategies to improve retention, making this podcast episode a valuable resource for anyone looking to understand and improve their retention efforts.
Additional Resources:
I hope you guys are about ready to listen to some words of wisdom from somebody that has turned around huge companies for over 50 years. He has innovated, he has shifted, he has taken risks, and those things have helped shaped who he is today. This experience, whether it was at companies like Reeboks, Fox Video Games, HBO Video, SkyBox, Gibson Greetings, or Indian Motorcycles, those experiences, that knowledge is what he's sharing in his new book, Jump First, Think Fast. You can get that on Amazon right now and Barnes & Noble. There's a lot of gold in there.
We're going to share some of that gold on this interview that we have right here. Some experiences that he's had where, you know what? Didn't go so well, some of those failures. But what he made out of that, turning that around, resiliency, has brought him to where he is today and created the success that he experienced in his career. So I'm really grateful for Frank and the ideas that he shares here. So get ready for this interview. Here we come. Frank, it is an honor to have you on the show. Thanks for being here.
Frank O'Connell:
Thanks, Skot.
Skot Waldron:
Tell me what's been going on in your world. I mean, you have had quite the journey through your corporate career. Give us a little background into that, and then tell us what you're doing now.
Frank O'Connell:
Okay. Well, it's interesting. I always have to start with what was most important thing in my career was my start, growing up on a farm in Upstate New York. And my father, who was a farmer, died when I was two-years-old. My mother was a city girl, continued to run the farm. And by the time we could walk, we were outside working and then eventually built an incredible farming business, my brother and I. So that catapulted me really into the business world and entrepreneurial world at a very young age and gave me great self-confidence. Then, of course, I went to Cornell undergraduate and graduate school, and then started on this very crazy journey through all of these industries and companies.
So as you know, I went from a lot of time in the food industry, which I loved, and developed all sorts of brands and did crazy and wild promotions and things, and then made a big jump shift and I went to Mattel in the toy business, into video, into video games, and then to HBO Video and Reebok and Pump, and then trading cards with SkyBox and then greeting cards with Gibson. And then, of course, five years in the motorcycle industry. And that's what my sons, who call me the original millennial, and all of their friends, they were the inspiration for the book. They kept coming and saying, "Can you tell us more stories?" So that's how I really ended up writing the book.
Skot Waldron:
There's a couple things that you said in here. Number one is this thing I read where that belief, that upbringing for you instilled this belief that I can outwork anyone, and that's what you attribute to some of your success. Am I right?
Frank O'Connell:
You're right. And my mother had this saying: "The harder I work, the luckier I get."
Skot Waldron:
Tell me about that. What's that mean?
Frank O'Connell:
Yeah. Well, in every case, I certainly wasn't the smartest kid who ever went to Cornell. When I looked at my initial scores upon entry, it was amazing they took me. But then I ended up at the top of the class just by basically outworking everybody. But I also learned that same thing in business. I would go beyond always the expectation pretty much in the beginning of my career, and you stood out by virtue doing that. By going one extra mile, getting additional information, that hard work made you stand out. And then people were willing to take risks on putting you in growth situations. So, big factor, yeah.
Skot Waldron:
Interesting. So let me throw this one at you. People have said, "Work smarter, not harder." Right, Frank? Don't work so hard, work smarter. So how do you talk about those two things in the same world?
Frank O'Connell:
Yeah. Well, it's funny. I've had bosses, the head of companies, that told me I was working too hard. But that was just part of what was ingrained. Now, I'm a big believer in working smart, and I do everything I can to bring in that knowledge and information and hire very talented people. So it's really both.
But it's fascinating. Now, you know how much they're criticizing the millennials now for not working hard and the whole thing of quiet quitting? And it's interesting. That's not been my experience with them, and I've hired hundreds of them, and I just want to say that. Now, I'm careful when I hire. I know what to look for, I do the assessment. Have they got the drive and the willingness to work? But hard work still gives you the edge.
Skot Waldron:
It does. And that's what I think that this conversation's doing for me a little bit, is I think the smarter thing... We can all gather the data and that is part of it. We should be smart. Nobody's arguing that we shouldn't be smart with how we're running our business. But at the end of the day, if we're all on the same level of smart, what's going to be the differentiator? Well, it's going to be that work ethic. It's going to be that application of the things that you do to apply the things you've learned.
Frank O'Connell:
Yes. Yes, definitely.
Skot Waldron:
I love that. So let's about your career. Your profile is so fun. It's all over the map. So let's talk a little bit about now this book that you've written. The book is Jump First, Think Fast. You've gone from this career and now you're putting it into this book form. So what are we getting? What are we getting with this book that we're not getting from others?
Frank O'Connell:
Okay. Critical to me was I did not want to do another business book, which was the how-to thing. Here's the five steps, here are the 10 steps you follow. And I have to say, I either read a good deal of the books or at least scanned them or read the recaps on them. And I just feel that there are a lot of people that just don't simply learn by saying, "This is what you ought to do." And I never lecture, even in running companies. I motivate, but I never lecture.
So the book is based on my experiences, and hopefully entertaining experiences, in being in the trenches, making mistakes, succeeding, failing. As my friend said, "Frank, you always fall forward after a failure." But to me, the difference is I talk through my experiences, and then the audience and my readers can draw from that what really is relevant and interesting to them that's coming out of that situation.
But you also find a theme throughout is I talk about the importance of taking risks. A lot of it is you've got to take risks. You've got to understand what's holding you back in your own personal development or in the development of a company. So I'm very focused on trying to encourage people to take more risks.
Skot Waldron:
What do you say to people that are more risk averse? We've got a huge part of the population that is risk averse. They don't like taking the risk. It's scary. I can't control things. I want to be in control and I don't know what's going to happen. The unknown is scary. What do you tell people?
Frank O'Connell:
Well, what's really scary is not moving in an environment that's moving all around you at a high rate of speed. And sitting still, particularly in this environment, is really going backwards. But I try to show them through my own set of experiences and failures is that I never ended up with a failure, when I came out of that failure, that I didn't end up doing better and get to a newer and higher level.
When I'm running an organization, I try to remove the fear of failure, particularly a lot in new product development, because then I'm not going to get the best of people and their best ideas, and that they aren't going to come up with unusual strategies that may not work, but got a chance to have a huge breakthrough. So it's much easier for me when I'm running companies to do that. And I go through the annual assessment with all my management teams and whatever, so I know when someone's got the capability. I always say, "I see in you the possibility of a stroke of brilliance, but you've got to take some risks and go take some action."
Skot Waldron:
The possibility of a stroke of brilliance. Ooh, that's good. And when I'm talking to a lot of my clients and coaching them, I say when... Sometimes our people, we end up in the pit of despair, we call it. It's like this place where we wallow and we just feel like we're not good. We're defeated. We're down there, and we just feel... We just don't feel up. And I say one of the best things you can do as a leader is go speak vision into that person. And you just did that by telling people, "I see brilliance in you," right?
Frank O'Connell:
Yeah.
Skot Waldron:
It's so powerful.
Frank O'Connell:
Yeah. And a lot of what I do, is when someone comes to me on the inside or outside of the company, I try to help them on the self-assessment side, because I find that is a side that a lot of people still have never really done. They're still following peer group values and perceptions, et cetera. So I first start with, "Let's do what is necessary to get a good grip on who you are and what's unique about you. And then let's take that and get you in the right position." Even I will move people around in the company based on that self-assessment to help develop them.
One other thing that's interesting is frequently when somebody gets fired, they call me right away. I encourage them, "Before you go home, call me." And to the point of not taking risks, often I say, "They just did you the biggest favor they could have ever done for you, is they made a decision you should have made, and they made that decision for you. Now it's a chance to start over and go find the right position for you." I often call it like pushing someone over a cliff sometimes is a way to overcome the fear of failure, because then you've got to do something.
Skot Waldron:
That's true. That's true. Can I ask you, have you ever been pushed over a cliff or felt like you've been pushed over a cliff by someone that moved you into that next realm?
Frank O'Connell:
Well, yeah. I mean, the Reebok situation, which is... Everybody finds this quite unusual and it's pretty well known. I was brought into Reebok essentially by the board, who felt that the company needed a leader with a strong business background and marketing background. Paul Fireman had done a great job as an entrepreneur building into, at that time, an 800 million dollar company. But the company was losing share. It had no new product. It had long development cycles. It lacked discipline and professional management inside of the company.
So I was brought in, but I immediately had to get a new product on the board, because we were really getting killed by Nike at that point in time. And our share was dropping, and there was nothing in the funnel, in their new product development funnel, and it was taking them three years. This was what I call innovation on demand. So I oversaw the development of the Pump shoe, and also, of course, the high risk advertising campaign of the Bungee Jumping commercial, which has become one of the 10 best ever athletic commercials, but, I mean, at really high risk.
The company then goes into resurgence, the shoe sells out, et cetera. It actually did billion dollars in sales after that. And I was fired three months after that. So that's getting pushed over the cliff. So you're saying, "What?" What was the reason? Paul Fireman basically was afraid. He had been out of the company because he had been sick with a heart attack. As he said to me, "I want to come back in." Few entrepreneurs get a second chance at the crank. But he was most concerned because I had really shifted the culture into a very higher great professional people, and that was not comfortable for him. But that was getting pushed over the cliff.
But then I took that experience and went on to run and turn around other companies, and the next was really turning around. SkyBox had lost 40 million dollars. We spun it. I hired Magic Johnson right after. He was HIV positive, had a wonderful relationship with him, and we just skyrocketed the company and took it public. So coming right off of Reebok, we did an incredible turnaround. But yes, that was going off the cliff.
Skot Waldron:
That was going off the cliff, especially after... I mean, the Pump, please. I remember when my friend across the street got some Pumps, and I was like, "No way." I remember, we would just go over there and pump them up and then let them out and then pump them up. It was just so fascinating to us as young teenagers, that we were just like, "That's so cool." We were just all over that. So childhood memory, it's one of those things that will go down in history. We all remember that. And SkyBox, I mean, just the thing.
So catapulting into your career in different ways has just been... You adapted, it sounds like, to me. You could have sat there and wallowed. You could have sat there and complained how everybody's out to get me, but you didn't. You moved on and you created something great.
Frank O'Connell:
Yeah, yeah. and people often ask me, "How did you do this movement from industry to industry?" The big factor is I learned very early on the value of strategic planning, of immediately doing all the analysis of the company and the industry, coming up of alternative strategies, testing those strategies, getting your whole management team aligned behind a strategy with metrics that you translated into your organization, and then making the tough decisions on talent in your team. There were certain people that were going to make it and others that weren't, and you needed new talent. So I would say in every company I went into, the first thing was let's get a strategic plan together and get aligned.
Skot Waldron:
And one of the cool things I read about your idea behind a strategic plan is one of those first initial steps is knowing what business you're in. That was so cool for me. I read that and I was like, "That's so smart." And this idea of, for example, for Reebok. You weren't in the business of shoes.
Frank O'Connell:
Yeah.
Skot Waldron:
Right?
Frank O'Connell:
No.
Skot Waldron:
Can you talk about that idea?
Frank O'Connell:
Yeah, yeah. Really, what drove it was... What drives first the shoe is some new form of technology that ends up in great graphics, but you're really in the entertainment business, so the athletes and the other people that support your product. Like the initial thing was Cybill Shepherd and the aerobic shoe. She, in one night, turned the company and turned the whole aerobics thing into a craze. Well, that's entertainment. Yes, the shoe was nice and it was orange, but it was Cybill who drove it. And you had to really understand what... And you're in the business of... The inner city kids there had more impact on style and on getting a product rolling. So I would bring in inner city kids as part of my development process, and then we would introduce a shoe first in the inner city and let them chase it, and that got an incredible buzz. But that's an example.
And then, of course, the other one we love is we weren't really in the trading card business. We weren't in athletic trading cards. We were really into business connecting kids and their heroes. And when we discovered that, we went and looked for whole new groups of who were heroes to kids, including all the comic book heroes, television. And when I went to Hollywood and started wanting their Evergreen characters for greeting cards, they said, "What?" And they gave them to me for peanuts because it was a totally new business, as an example. That exploded the company.
Skot Waldron:
That's fantastic. Tell us, so your definition of success, what is that? I like this question. It's interesting. I had John Lee Dumas, he's the host of Entrepreneurs on Fire, and he's a big player in the entrepreneurial world, talks about success in his book. But what's your definition of success?
Frank O'Connell:
I think it varies by area and category, et cetera. But a true success is really when you generate either a product or create a category that ends up being sustainable, where there is long-term consumer demand for the product and you're able to perpetuate and build it. And the reason I want to mention that is... And I'm going to mention what I consider to be a failure. In the case of Reebok, Reebok, as you know, has gone up and down, up and down. I mean, Paul Fireman sold for 3 billion dollars to Adidas, and now it sold for just sold peanuts to a private equity firm. And it distresses me no end that it's losing all of its distribution and product brand awareness, et cetera.
What was the problem? The problem was we never found a unique positioning in the consumer's mind for Reebok. And Nike had this very strong it was the athletic performance shoe, and they had reinforced it in every way, shape or form. Reebok never had that. Now, I'll give you the risk I would've taken and what I tried to do. I thought that in all the research I did on Reebok, it was strongest with women. It had a very soft side. The aerobics business had exploded, et cetera. But Paul Fireman still couldn't get out of his mind that he was in a battle with Phil Knight. I mean, he just saw himself, so he had to have all the... I would've turned it into the women's premier athletic shoe. But that's just the case of what I would consider not being successful because of it not being sustainable.
The other part, I have other metrics, but those metrics are success in running a company, and it is the people and the development of the people. Is it considered one of the best places to work? Is it a very open environment? What's the culture that you create? I think culture is just so, so important. I did three turnarounds back-to-back, and they're tough, because the companies are sliding. You've got a certain time to turn them around. They're running out of cash. You've got to make very dramatic moves, including you have to lay off and terminate a lot of people if you're going in the wrong direction. And very few CEOs have ever had the experience of shifting culture. Strategy is much easier. You can get the strategy right, then the question is can you shift the culture to match that strategy and make that shift? That's the toughest one that takes the most energy and keeps you awake at night.
Skot Waldron:
Yeah, it's the people side of things. And I always tell people, business would be so easy if people weren't involved. It'd be so much easier, Frank. In this day and age, culture is so essential to what we do. What do you think is the biggest mistake companies are making when it comes to culture?
Frank O'Connell:
Here it is, and I'll give you another example of it. When the culture is defined by a few people at the top, when they say, "This is what the culture would be," and they then try to... If you will force it on the organization, okay? If the organization is not involved in defining the culture, then you're going to have problems. You're not going to have a lot of people who are on board. You'll have people who are waiting to see is the new strategy going to work or not work? There are other people who are going to quietly oppose it, et cetera. So you really have to take the organization through the development of the culture so they feel it is theirs.
Here's an example. When I went to Reebok, they were spending 40 million dollars on a human rights program, on a human rights tour with Peter Gabriel and Sting, et cetera, and they went to 50 countries. So they were trying to choose as a way of differentiating Reebok to be the human rights kind of brand, supporting human rights and freedom. But that was all developed at the top. If you talk to the people inside the company, it didn't resonate with them. Why are we spending 40 million dollars sending this group around the country? So it never became a part of the culture, and therefore, in my opinion, it never really succeeded.
Skot Waldron:
That's very interesting. I'm involved with a project right now where some of that was happening. We're doing some new, what I call brand foundation work, with vision, mission, values, purpose work with this company and they're relaunching some stuff. It was a couple of them in a room that developed the vision, mission, values, trying to... Basically, the way our approach was is we're not here to tell you what the values are, like what you should be. We're trying to capture what we are that makes us great and elevate that and say, "This is who we are and this is what makes us great and this is our guideline for staying the course."
Frank O'Connell:
Yeah, yeah. I'll give you... I love this positive example of this, is I was on the board of this great little Vermont company called King Arthur Flour. Now, if you were a baker and baked bread, you would know who this great company is, who educates and has just great flour for baking, et cetera. The interesting thing is it is an ESOP, which I had never encountered before, which is an employee stock ownership plan. The employees own the company. The board reports to the company, and they choose the management team. And I was on their board for eight years in the best place in Vermont to work. They managed through the pandemic unbelievably well. They do all this community work. The employees are so involved in the company and the culture of the company. And I won't go into the stock ownership part of it. But I wrote checks to people who had worked on the production floor for 16 years, checks for over a million dollars when they retired.
So that's another thing I'm intrigued with, is what I call employee ownership versus shareholder ownership. And I won't go into extremes there, but there's 7,000 ESOPs in the US.
Skot Waldron:
That's powerful. Yeah, a movement belongs to those who join it, not just those who lead it. And if you feel part of that thing, if you feel ownership, that loyalty's just blood, sweat, and tears all day.
Frank O'Connell:
Yes.
Skot Waldron:
That's fantastic.
Frank O'Connell:
Yeah, absolutely.
Skot Waldron:
Let me ask you really quick here as we round this thing up. We're going to wrap this thing up. Your experience is so, so vast, and you're boiling it down into your book, Jump First, Think Fast, and the knowledge in there is fantastic. But if you could offer a snippet of advice to companies now that may be struggling, that may be wandering... You've done these turnaround projects... what is it that you're recommending they do right now?
Frank O'Connell:
Get a strategic plan, and don't be confused by budgets and tactics and whatever. And when you develop the strategic plan, one, hire a professional outside firm. You just don't have the skill inside and the analytical tool boxes to both analyze your company, and secondly, industries that are moving fast in trends that are going to impact you. So you need outside horsepower.
And then the other critical thing is go deep in involving your management team in the development of that strategy. Your end strategy will only be as good as the ideas you come up with for alternatives to test. So there's a really important creative part in the development of that. But then if you get that strategic plan in place, then, of course, you then put the right organizational structure, you have to do the right talent, and then it's accountability through the organization.
And then the next is in today's world, agility. You can't review it every 12 months. You've got to review it every quarter, and you've got to be willing to make pretty radical shifts in today's environment to steer through these waters. I love the consumer. Somebody said to me, "What is your job?" It's predicting consumer behavior, but I always get tricked.
Skot Waldron:
It's tricky, those consumers.
Frank O'Connell:
Just when I think I got to figured out, something I never even thought about. Anyway.
Skot Waldron:
That's so funny. Yeah, it's tricky. It's like trying to figure out our kids, you know?
Frank O'Connell:
Yes.
Skot Waldron:
So that's funny. Obviously, your book launched here last fall. Where could people get ahold of that? Amazon, I'm assuming, just wherever books are sold. Is that correct?
Frank O'Connell:
Yeah, it's in Barnes & Noble, and in fact, Barnes & Noble's number one store for business books in New York is featuring it just when you walk in the door now. So Barnes & Noble is a good spot. But also you can go to my website, jumpfirstthinkfast.com, and it tells you where to get it, including... It's so funny... my local bookstore in Vermont, the Yankee Bookstore in Woodstock. Because people want me to sign the books, so they place an order there, and I go down every two days and autograph books that they then send out. But you'll see on my website. It lists all the places to go to buy it.
Skot Waldron:
That's fantastic. I love it. I love it. You go grab a coffee and then you go down and sign some books and there it is. There's a picture right there.
Frank O'Connell:
Now, I have just one last thing.
Skot Waldron:
Oh, of course.
Frank O'Connell:
Okay? I have mantras that people who work with me know, and I always try to lead with a mantra. And so my favorite mantra is have fun, be fun. It's just that people want to work with people who are fun and interesting and enjoyable, and you want the people in your life... I always say business is not life-threatening, okay? So have some fun with it.
Skot Waldron:
Oh, I love that. I love it. Yeah, I mean, people were able to understand that beautiful things come from both good and bad. What can we grasp from that? And I think that's what I've learned from this: resiliency, bounce back. Getting pushed over the cliff isn't the end of the world, right?
Frank O'Connell:
Exactly.
Skot Waldron:
It's what do we make of those things and how do we have fun doing it?
Frank O'Connell:
Yeah. I'm always influenced by reading other people. I just heard a quote from Branson, who said, "If your dreams don't scare you, they're not large enough."
Skot Waldron:
Ah, yes.
Frank O'Connell:
And the other one I had from racing, and I love racing, was, "If you're not marginally out of control, you're probably not moving fast enough."
Skot Waldron:
Marginally out of control. Yeah, I remember that, going down the hill on my bike and then feeling the thing, the... Uh, it's terrifying. Right? Terrifying. Well, Frank, this has been awesome. This has been a gift. Thank you for sharing your wisdom and thoughts and your life experiences with us. I know that I got something out of this and everybody else did too. So thank you for that. And good luck with the book and life, and have fun down there at Bike Week. Get that bike polished.
Frank O'Connell:
Great, will do. Thank you for inviting me on.
Skot Waldron:
I think one of the main ideas I got out of this was that idea of resiliency. The idea of taking risks, the idea of pushing and figuring things out, being strategic, strategic planning, strategic business ideas and the things we do to move forward. At the very beginning he said, "You know what? Sitting still is still moving backwards," says a person who likes to take risk and move forwards. That is the idea. And I think that if we adopt that mentality, then we will keep moving. As we move, we'll find out what works and what doesn't. If we're sitting still, it never happens.
Removing the fear of failure. So how can we do that? Whether it's us, ourselves, or whether it's we're removing the fear of failure from our culture. Are people afraid to fail because of the consequences? I don't know. Maybe they are. Are they afraid to fail? Are they afraid to bring up ideas because they're afraid they're going to be reprimanded for those things? That's part of what we need to be thinking about.
And also understanding that culture isn't just defined by the people at the top. The culture is what it is inside of your organization. Leaders define culture. Sub-leaders define subculture. And as we drill down, that culture is going to permeate throughout the entire organization. It's going to allow us to be successful or not. So thank you for that word of wisdom, Frank.
Want to make your culture and team invincible?
You can create a culture of empowerment and liberation through better communication and alignment. We call these invincible teams. Make your team invincible through a data-driven approach that is used by Google, the CDC, the Air Force, Pfizer, and Chick-fil-A. Click here or the image below to learn more.
