Webinar: An Interview with Jamey Rootes – Houston Texans President

The following transcript was auto-generated from the video version of the webinar. Please excuse any typos / inaccuracies.

Keith Wolf:

Let’s go ahead and get started. I want to thank you, Jamie, Jamie Rootes for joining us today. Very excited about this, my pleasure. This really combines my personal to two passions. So this is a little bit selfish on my, on my part business and sports. I mean, that’s that anybody who knows me, they know that’s, that’s really what I live for. So I’m really excited. Thank you for coming on. It’s going to be a little different than what our normal webinars are. Normally, it’s a presentation by the speaker in this case, it’s more of interview style. So we’re going to, I’m going to ask a bunch of questions and I’m really going to be talking a lot about your new book. So congratulations on that. I’m already a bestseller. There you go. The winning game plan. So I I read that loved it. And I, you know, I hope everybody who joins is going to have a chance to read it and talk a little bit, Jamie let’s let’s just start there for a second. I do want to get your bio just second, but just talk about where the proceeds of the book go because I think it’s amazing what you’re doing there.

Jamey Rootes:

Well great to be with you, Keith, and great to be with all of your guests. And I assume these are all business people. So if you’re in business and Houston, Texas, and you don’t know me, you you’ve been living under a rock, right? So very, I was, it was a great process, exciting process. Something I’ve wanted to do for a long time. I’ve always believed that that God puts in you, things that you are to do, and you need to listen to that. It’s never scared me wrong. And this was one of them. I spent really 30 years having incredible mentors and access to tremendous learning opportunities, great experiences, and, and really just felt compelled to pass those things along in order to help a new generation of, of leadership broadly, particularly sports leadership

Keith Wolf:

You know, and get out of it, whatever they can. Perfect. So, and so to your point, most folks know who you are. That’s why they’re on the call today, but you’ve been in, you’ve been a leader of the Houston taxes for 20 years now. You started your career at IBM and you went to P and G you were before that you played a lot of soccer. I know that’s a passion of yours. You did that at Clemson, but just give people a little bit of a little bit of a background. I know a lot of folks, when they talk to people who sort of made it, you know, they want to know what their career was, how they got to, where they were. So if you can kind of fill that in for us, that’d be helpful. Well, that’s interesting. Cause you know, I had done a lot of studying of leaders and there was an award that was bestowed on me and 15 years ago and the keynote speaker and I were having dinner before the award presentation, you said you interviewed leaders.

Jamey Rootes:

And I said, sure. So what do you ask him? I asked him, how did you get here? He said, don’t ask them, then ask them what they had to give up to get there. And it speaks to a concept that I talked about in, in the winning game plan of passion and the importance of, of passion and definition of passion. There’s you know, the passion of Christ, you know, in church, I just couldn’t figure it out. I was like, that just does not look like a lot of fun. But it’s because I didn’t understand what passion meant. The root word for passion is adding the ATI and it’s a Latin word and Patty beings, the willingness to suffer and sacrifice for what you hold dear. And so I think back on my life, everything I’ve done, I’ve done with tremendous passion, whether that’s playing soccer and developing as a soccer player.

Jamey Rootes:

My first year at Clemson, it was clear to me that professional sports was not going to be in my wheelhouse. Although, I mean, I did, I played on two national championship teams was all ACC first team midfielder, but that wasn’t going to take me anywhere. So I turned to go passion and academics and then didn’t find passionate at IBM or Proctor and gamble knew I wanted to be in a sports business. And then, you know, fortunately a lot of the people that I’ve met along the way and done informational interviews with gave me a shot, particularly Lamar hunt back in 94, there was I worked at the world cup in 94. There was an idea that, that major league soccer might start after that. So I was at Procter gamble and learned a lot there, but I knew that wasn’t my passion.

Jamey Rootes:

So I have two friends one guy Don Rawson, who was coached with me at Indiana and Tim Connolly, who was the business manager of the Kansas city chiefs. So Tim called me and said, if you want to come up with Columbus, Ohio and, and interview with Lamar hunt who was starting the, the part of major league soccer that should sure. That sounds great. So I spent a full day with them and I’m driving back, you know, that drive from Columbus to Cincinnati. It’s not that long, but I had some time to think. And the only thing I could think was, I think I got the job, but I had no idea what job they were interviewing me for. So I get back to P and G and going through another training class. And you went through that as well. And I got a phone call from from Tim and he said, boy, interview went great. You didn’t super job. We don’t know whether this league is going to make it or not. So why don’t you sit tight? And if it works out, we’ll call you,

Jamey Rootes:

That’s it. That’s all well and good, but I’m not staying here. Okay. I got a job offer from Don Rossen to run the global category for soccer at Reebok. So if you’re not prepared to offer me a job, now I’m going to go do that. So he says, go sit by your fax machine. So a fax machine starts how, and I can see the Kansas city chiefs logo on the letterhead and an offering to be the general manager of a, a, yet to be determined, major league sports franchise at about 70% of what I was making at Proctor and gamble. And I said, this is the greatest opportunity of all time. There’s only one problem. I have no idea what a general manager does, but I figured it out. And so launching the team was great. Lots of naysayers. In fact, there was one article that I’ve kept where I had another sports owner in Columbus said, well, when they got to stop being so bullish they they’re thinking they’re going to dry 18,000 people to these games.

Jamey Rootes:

They’d be lucky to get 1800. We did have 18,000. We did play for four years, I think at Ohio stadium. And then Ohio stadium was undergoing a renovation. And so we were kind of forced out. And fortunately I knew tons of people just like in Houston. I knew like everybody in Columbus that particularly the folks at the state of Ohio. And so one of the guys there called and said, Hey meet me out at the fairgrounds. I said, okay, so that about the fairgrounds. And he said, but make sure you turn right. Not left. And so I did, I turned right. And I was like, what’s this, there was the Ohio state patrol building. And then there was like this 70 acre field. And so he’s sitting there and I said, so what, what, what do you have me over here for?

Jamey Rootes:

He said, well, this acres gets used two weeks. A year is owned by the state of Ohio. If you pay me $50,000 a year to lease this ground and I’ll let you build your stadium on it. So we built the first soccer specific stadium in the United States. It was called Cruz stadium. I actually had a naming rights deal for it. Before I had came here to Houston, but they rejected it. It was a company called American Eagle Outfitters. They were located in Columbus. And then, so I got a call from a head Hunter. Hey would you like to work in the NFL? Her name’s Buffy Phillip bell. And I said sure, but I think that’d be great. She said, how about Houston NFL? I said, that’d be great, but they don’t have an NFL team. So they’re going to this guy, Bob McNair is going to buy the rights and he’s going to start the team up. I don’t know of many people that have started a sports franchise from scratch. I’d like for you to come down and meet with Bob. So I did, he was kind of like had me at hello moment, right? I that his integrity and his values and his spirit and humility and all of that was just obvious to see. And so I spent the last 20 years here.

Keith Wolf:

That’s amazing. That’s it? It’s an amazing process to find where you are. And you mentioned informational interviews early on. She’s write a book, right? Exactly. We’ll talk a little bit, or talk a little bit about those informational interviews, because we get asked about that a lot. How did, how did you approach that? Yeah, so I actually I spent about four months after I left IBM. I re I retired. So in order to go back to graduate school, but I had this break. And so I drove across the country and just every, there’s something called a trip tip that you, I mean, you just, you Google it now, but used to have to go to AAA and they would tell them the route you want to take and print these books out. And so I had this big trick, tick book that had every place that I wanted to meet with somebody.

Jamey Rootes:

So I packed up my Acura and I put my skis on the top and I put my bike on the back and just drove across the country and stayed with friends and anybody that would visit with me, I did it visited with Tim Connelly during that trip. My uncle lives in Kansas city. And Tim had some friends that worked at at IBM in Greenville where I was, he actually used to work at IBM in Greenville. So that got me in the door. And I remember the day I visited with them, I only spent like 10 minutes. So this is the guy who eventually got me my start in sports. But he that day he was really busy. They were trying out Joe Montana and he needed to go watch that dry out. So anyway, they’re just, I’m just calling people.

Jamey Rootes:

It’s just amazing when you don’t want, I wasn’t looking for a job. Yeah. I just wanted to learn how the industry work and to this day, I still will honor any informational interview request that comes in from anybody. So you start, you started the Texans, there’s, there’s no team when you get there. Right. I mean, they’re playing yet. So what were your first priorities when you joined and how did you sort of prioritize how you spend your time? That’s fine. Yes. Good question. There were about six employees when I started and we worked downtown at depends on liability and out of the Gates. It was a little Rocky. So I was working for a guy named Steve Patterson and Steve worked with Bob to get the franchise rights. Steve was the general manager of the, of the rockets at one point in time, and then of the Houston arrows.

Jamey Rootes:

So one day Bob called me and Steve up to his office and with Phillip [inaudible], who is vice chairman of the team and very top of benzo tower, Bob sitting behind his big desk. And he said, gentlemen, I don’t like the way this has a roll out. I’m making a change. We both kind of looked at each other, said  Jamie  Steve, you’re the only one who has the relationships and the understanding to build the stadium. So you’re going to go do the stadium JB. You’re going to take care of everything else. You’re going to get the business rolling. That’s what we did. And so from that point on, I was calling the shots previously. I was not calling the shots  you know, subject to Bob’s approval, but it didn’t take long for me to gain his trust. And the same thing has happened with gal.

Jamey Rootes:

I mean, I try to always be honest, always tell the truth, always, you know, regardless of whether it makes somebody matter, that’s what they’re paying me for. So first thing we had to do was build all the revenue streams and doing that at a level that was far superior to, to where the Oilers ever worked. So every meeting was first about who we are, what we’re going to try to, what we are going to create. And to make it really clear, this is, this is something totally new oil was great. It was a wonderful run. This is going to be very different and then found people that had values that were consistent with ours, from a corporate perspective, whether that’s sponsors or suite holders, our naming rights partner the ticket side was relatively easy because it was so exciting to have the NFL back now, keeping them was going to be, I knew it was going to be a challenge, right?

Jamey Rootes:

Cause first few years we weren’t going to be very good. But you know, the re building relationships in the community, getting all of our revenue streams lined up, you’ve never had one thing that I learned in Columbus. And we only had about maybe eight months to start the Columbus group. We had almost three years. So that was like a dream. Yeah. All the challenges and everybody we’ll see you, but you gotta, you gotta deliver constantly at the highest level in order for this franchise to be successful. Unfortunately worked out that way. And you know, slowly but surely we built all the true North, you know, things that we need, whether it’s what we call the three imperatives, which is all we work on when championships create memorable experiences and do great things for Houston or our culture, which

Jamey Rootes:

Is contained to the acronym impact. I am PAC T people are innovative, memorable, and passionate, accountable, courageous and team-oriented and all those things just slotted in. And every year we just pull back the onion, peel back the onion a little bit more and try and get better. So when you beat Dallas, the first game did, did you, did you thought to yourself, this is going to be easy, right? We played Dallas in a scrimmage game over at Robertson stadium a couple of weeks before that. And it looked like Texas playing

Jamey Rootes:

Love, Presbyterian school, that something like that, it was not good. And somehow we figured out a way to get a win. But I thought, you know, the next day and the Chronicle, it lists the 10, most memorable moments in Houston, his sports history. And I think we were either number one or number two, like where do you take it from here? Right. So the challenge was what we do next, but you know, it’s been a dream. We have, we’ve sold out every game we’ve ever played. We have a wait list of 30,000 and a, an incredibly supportive fan base. And we work hard to earn their trust.

Keith Wolf:

Well, let’s talk about leadership because that’s a big part of the book and you talk about your three habits, right. Having the expectation, having an inspection, how they reward. So can I talk about that philosophy and how you implement that?

Jamey Rootes:

Yeah. So, I mean, in anything you get what you expect. So you have to have set very clear expectations. You get what you inspect. So you can’t just say, this is where we’re headed, but you have to check and not check too. Sometimes you’ll have to correct, but more and more, you want to check your reward because whatever behavior is rewarded will occur again. And if it’s not recognized, it will be extinguished. People stopped doing it. So I do spend a lot of time looking for that, people doing great things and then publicly praising them because they feel good about it. And they know they’re headed in the right direction. And everybody else around them understands where we’re headed and how we operate. Yeah. It’s a key component to culture builds.

Keith Wolf:

Can you talk a lot about that in the book? Can you talk about some leaders and I know I’ve been guilty of this, you know, you’re kind of careful about praising because maybe the job’s incomplete or you don’t know that it could be the best it could be, or could you talk about sort of taking the other, the other side of that is just praising freely, not being so careful to, to praise and that’s really a big part of your leadership approach.

Jamey Rootes:

Yeah. And that’s, that’s one of them. The other thing is that maturity thing where yeah, I, early on in my career, I was like, who am I to say somebody who’s doing a great job. Right. But when you’re the boss, there’s nobody else to do it. And if you don’t do it, it doesn’t happen. And and I’m a big believer in that, in a quote that people need to be reminded more much more often than they need to be instructed. Right. Particularly at this level, if you don’t have it, you know, you’re probably not going to get it here. Yeah. This is the best of the best. And so my job is to provide an environment that inspires them, rewards them, recognizes them, they, and in an effort to ensure that they never look for a job anywhere.

Keith Wolf:

Yeah. And you also talk about you know, not feeling like you have to know everything. Right. I think a lot of leaders struggle with that because they can’t know every answer. And you know, you sort of feel inadequate if you don’t, but you, you sort of came to terms with that. And how did you do that?

Jamey Rootes:

Well, I’ll tell, I’ll tell you the answer to it. The answer to it is the question asking questions. When somebody comes into your office and they say, what am I supposed to do? What do I do about this? What the easiest questions, what do you think you ought to do about it? Well, what do you mean, boss? What are your options? Okay, well, I can do this. I can do this. I can do this. What do you think? The pros and cons of each one of those are, well, this one’s, this, this was that this was this. Occasionally I’ll give them a tool to evaluate it, but they better not come back in again with that same question. So okay. Of those three, what do you think the right thing is to do? I guess number twos. Right? Sounds good to me. There you go. Oh, he answered my question.

Keith Wolf:

He’s a genius. Yeah. Yeah. No, that’s great. That’s great. Yeah. And that helps it sort of alleviates a lot of pressure as a leader that you feel right.

Jamey Rootes:

Well, they’re closer to it than I am. Yeah. All I do is lead them through a decision-making process that I know works.

Keith Wolf:

Yeah. Let’s talk about we’re recruiting from, we spent a lot of time thinking about how people recruited, how they hire, what their process is. Talk a little bit about your process and your philosophy around finding great people.

Jamey Rootes:

Yeah. So I was just thinking about that, cause I was right, right. In some love on it that we, we have three non-negotiable talents and every time we’re hiring somebody, that’s my only questions I figure their skillset has already been evaluated 10 times to Sunday. Do they have a great work ethic? Do they have a winning attitude, positive, optimistic team oriented and are, do they have a demonstrated commitment to the values of this organization? And if they have those three things, we can teach them whatever, you know, we’ll teach them whatever they need to know the way we stock our talent pool. I hate to hire from outside. So I’m sorry. I don’t think I’m a likely customer for you because we have, what’s called our draft class. We have 12 intern slots that we recruit the very finest graduating seniors that we can find, particularly in the state of Texas.

Jamey Rootes:

We really try to stay in the state of Texas as a, you never know if people, I mean, there are so many variables when you bring somebody from New York or Boston or California, are they going to like Houston aloe? And I don’t want to run that risk. Right. I w I want them to be Texans at heart. So we get this 12, 12 draft class members at least spend nine months with us. They’re in varying departments. And every couple of months, my leadership team will do a complete review of every, every one of the draft class members and provide insight to their strengths and their weaknesses and ask the question, Hey, would you hire them again? If you had the chance and we try to identify the stars. And if somebody comes out as being a star, we try to find a full-time job for them.

Jamey Rootes:

My hope is all the stars and the draft class. And there’s usually out of 12, we have a hit rate of about 70%, 70% wind up being stars. And we can find a place on the bus for them. And even if they’re like my president’s office intern, she’s run this entire book project. So she’s a star and she’s not going to make it to full term. So she’s, and she had her choice of jobs where she wanted to go. And she’s going to pick the one that makes the most sense for her. It’s an amazing asset to building culture that you can, you get it, get an eyeball test. It really, the concept came to me by you know shake shack, that restaurant. Yeah. So Danny Meyer was the was the creator of shake shack. Danny Meyer will not allow a full-time employee to start until they’ve run a couple of shifts and they’ve gotten a chance to see who they are. That’s the draft class. So you can fake it in an interview. You can’t fake it for nine months, you know, w who you are, is going to come out,

Keith Wolf:

What kind of roles are they supposed to go into? All of them,

Jamey Rootes:

The PR marketing, finance, HR across the board.

Keith Wolf:

I love that. I love that. And I know that you put a lot of emphasis on you know, building a winning culture and then having your brain, an employer brand and, and even go far as, you know, going for the awards, the best places to work and talk a little bit about that, because I love the way that you survey your employees and kind of build up to that. Yeah. Jack Welch, who brand GE for years, one of the legendary CEO, or as I was listening to a podcast from him long time ago, and he said, whatever you want to know about your business, you can get it through a survey. I was like, wow, what a simple concept, but what are we going to survey for? So we we use Gallup’s 10 elements of great managing, so that there’s these 12 levels of workplace health and your easy questions rating on a scale of zero to 10. I know what’s expected of me every day at work. And then it layers up from there for these 12 questions. They’re the only questions you need to ask. And then at the end have open-ended comments. So the 12 questions give us a good gauge of, you know, we got the baseline. And then every two years we do the survey to see, are we getting better? Are we getting worse? And if we are getting worse, where, and how do we do something about it? But the the, the,

Jamey Rootes:

The writing, the verbatims are what are magic, right? That’s we, we enhanced our paternity and maternity plan most recently, a couple of years ago, based on direct feedback from our employees, you’re out of touch. And so we did the research. We said, you’re right. We changed it. And and reported back. The other thing that’s important, the survey is important, but if people don’t know that you listened and you took action, or you listened and you decided not to take action, both of those are fine. If you don’t report out, they don’t know that their suggestions are making a difference. So going back and reporting and saying, we listened to your survey, we have five things we’re going to get done between now and the end of the year. And then periodically reporting out until you have none left. Thanks for your feedback. We’ll be asking again and we’ll develop our hit list.

Jamey Rootes:

That’s so I mean, it’s just really powerful and it empowers employees. They, they realize nobody wants to be, nobody wants to be told what to do. They want to be in charge. And we really put them in charge, except for the fact that, that the, I believe you can, you have the, you have the right to have a voice, but you don’t have a right to get what you want. So we may or may not be able to do it. And everybody’s a free agent at that point, you got a choice to make, even on salary, I’ll put it to you. This is what I’m going to pay you. Why don’t think that’s enough. Okay. I valued your contribution to the organization and that’s, this is what it is. And so, you know, everybody’s a free agent and I don’t have the obligation to keep anybody on payroll,

Keith Wolf:

Right? Yeah. Well, what would you say? So let’s just say, hypothetically, you know, sports is a sexy industry. You can attract the best of the best. I mean, a lot has to do with how you’re running your organization, but let’s just say, you know, your run of the mill business owner to non-sexy environment, and you want it to be a best place to work. I say that was important. What would Jamie do? Kind of coming in day one and that sort of environment. Okay. So no business is not, every business can be a sexy business,

Jamey Rootes:

Just have to tap into the human needs that you’re satisfying of your employees. And there are lots of companies that are great examples of that. Amegy bank is a great example. I mean, they don’t talk about money, how much money they’re making do your employees don’t care how much money you make. They care how much they make, but they don’t care how much you make. They want to make a difference. So Amegy bank is unlocking the dreams of small business owners. I can get inspired to get up every day to do that. They’re changing people’s lives in the work that they do. It’s all in the way you think about your work. That’s what inspires people

Keith Wolf:

Of while we’re, while we’re talking about interviewing and finding great people. I’m always curious, what are some great questions, even if it’s just one and hopefully, you know, you’re not going to give away any tip that somebody is going to know the right answer to and be able to practice before you interview them. But I just love hearing what questions people ask in. What’s something that you asked that you, that you found very effective over the years. You know, I’ll take it in a different direction. And I feel this way about our, our coach and GM search that the least reliable tool in evaluating a candidate candidate is the eyeball test. As humans. We are just crazy flawed individuals and we make bad decisions. The second is a, a reference from a trusted source. Somebody who will latch will not steer you wrong. The third

Jamey Rootes:

Is an objective test calibrated towards the job that you’re hiring this person for caliper. The caliper test, I think, is gold in any business. I mean, anytime I’m making a senior hire, they’ll all be caliber. And then caliper has an advisor that’s assigned to each of their clients. And I call her the sorting hat. I’ve never better. All we do is conference calls, but you know that Harry Potter, the sorting hat that the sorting hat knows which house you’re supposed to be in. She looks into people’s souls and, and she’s never been wrong. Wow.

Jamey Rootes:

Wow. Okay. So, so less about the interview, more about the assessments. I will tell you the best interview question. I got back from a candidate. I was a young lady and they was Kendall and she was a superstar. She when I was interviewing her at the end, she said, I said, do you have any questions for me? And she said, yes, what do I need to tell you to convince you that I am perfect for this job? I said, all you have to do is ask that question. Got it. Wow. And just, you can do a good job. She was amazing. Wow. That’s great. That’s great. So, so let’s say somebody doesn’t work out. They come in and they don’t work out for whatever reason. And you talk in the book about you compare it against, you know, gardening and weeding. What’s the importance of that. You know, because I know a lot of business leaders have to make those difficult decisions of letting people go and they may be great performers, but not a great fit for the team. How do you approach that decision?

Jamey Rootes:

Well, I mean, I give people a thousand chances. I am, I am patient beyond belief, but I’m not passive. The challenge sometimes is people mistake. My, my patients for, for being passive shouldn’t you shouldn’t mistake my kindness for weakness because when it’s time to make a tough call, I’m going to do it. I’m there. And I’m very clear on what’s expected of everybody. One of the principles we talk about in the book, and these are the people on my watch, I re I have almost entirely, my leadership team is almost entirely the same that started with the organization. And I have been able to teach them along the way, what my expectations are, how they can become great leaders, how they can become better managers and one that, you know, the managing or leading in four directions. Okay. So once you get on at my table, you must lead well in all four directions, leading up, you’re building trust with me, leading out, becoming a respected voice outside of the building, leading down, being very clear with your employees, what success looks like and being a great manager, and then leading a cross, being a great teammate.

Jamey Rootes:

If you can’t be great in all four of those, I’m going to give you plenty of time to come up to speed. Eventually, if you can’t get it, you know, sometimes if you can’t change the people, you have to change the people.

Keith Wolf:

So do you, do you do internal coaching, set them up with an external coach, set them up with training? What are some of the resources? The HR team does a great job, particularly in this COVID window in that people are a little bit, had a little bit of excess capacity because normal things we are doing what happened. I mean, they were just firing out training opportunities all over the place. So that was really one of the great lessons of this pandemic that we’ve gone through. So that all happens through HR. If somebody requests some kind of development opportunity outside of the organization. That’s great. Most of it is just mentoring. I I’m a firm believer that you know, I’ve got 12 direct reports and I meet with each of them every two weeks for an hour. And I can, I keep the action items so I can control what what we’ve talked about.

Jamey Rootes:

My assistant sends that sends those out the day after, and then two weeks later, we’re going to talk through that again and we’re add to the action item list. It just it just keeps me plugged in, gives them regular access to me, makes it so I don’t have to walk down the hall and bother them. If something comes up that I want to talk to them about, I put it in their file and it’s right there when I meet with them. So those are my development opportunities. I’ll usually think about, all right, what are they missing? What, what can, what can I do? What can I send them? How can I help them? What can I give them? You know, what would help them to develop EKU or, or the leading in four directions or the soft management technique or whatever it is.

Keith Wolf:

Got it. Okay. Perfect. And you’ve had changing, changing directions. There’s a little bit, I mean, you’ve had so much success right in your career. And I think from the outside one would think that they didn’t know you, that you probably have never failed, you know, so I, I’m sure you have not knowing what those balers are, but how do you approach failure and your own career? What lessons do you try to learn? What’s your, what’s your approach that I, in the book, you talk a little bit about burdens, and I know that’s more about adversity, but burdens and blessings, but I don’t know if that dovetails into that at all, but in general, like you never have a bad day. Like, well, occasionally I do. And it’s usually this, the burden deal that there’s something weighing on my mind and that blessing and burdens technique is just magic.

Jamey Rootes:

You know, figuring out all the great things going on in your life, then, then you build, build that up so big that the couple of things aren’t going, right. Just create a plan to address them. And that, that that’s really simple, but in terms of failure, I just don’t dwell on it. And failure is a necessary path to success. There’s a joke that you’ve probably heard that a very successful businessman was asked you know, what’s the secret to your success? You said good decisions. Well, how, how did you learn Oh huh. How’d you learn to make good decisions, experience, how’d you get your experience, bad decisions. It’s just that it’s part of the process. Right. And you just have to sit down, learn from it, commit to yourself. I’m not doing that again. And just get back on the horse.

Keith Wolf:

Yeah. So let’s, let’s talk a little bit about this concept of raving fans. You have a whole chapter about it, and you talked about the importance of it, and some, some ways that you do that. And he also talked about Disney, which is, I know one of your favorite brands and kind of talk about your approach to creating raving fans and just kind of curious about how you’ve expressed that. Well, you think about your Procter and gamble experience, right? So the only two things that that building does is drag trial and loyalty. So there’s nothing that kills a bad product quicker than great advertising. So it really is the experience of the product and getting repeat purchases and telling other people is the key to business success. There is no shortcut areas, there’s no smoke and mirrors. And so our create raving fans is the personification of in a sporting world of brand building, you know, great brands create tremendous value, having a raving fan base.

Jamey Rootes:

And the way you create a raving fan is doing something so exceptional that they are compelled to go out and tell somebody else we celebrate these raving fan moments with our staff, because it just it’s crazy when you, when it becomes clear that that’s the goal, that’s the standard that everybody, you know, may they may or may not may or may not deliver a raving fan, but they’re, they’re, they’re going to try, they’re going to do everything within their power. And so that, that’s what it’s all about. It’s just, it’s about loyalty building it. And you know, you’re in the, obviously in the sports industry, how is it different? I mean, being in the public light, you know, everybody caring about your job, you know, nobody cares what I do every day. Everybody cares what you do every day and how you, when you come in and if this team losing or winning, what’s different about the sports industry and then what are some, what are some challenges with that?

Keith Wolf:

So the difference is sports. Like when I was at IBM, February 12th, look just like October 16, it was the office, you know, with Michael, you know, that show right around. That’s what it was like. And it drove me nuts. I ha I’m an adrenaline junkie, right? I’ve been on sports games all my life. I, you know, I love winning, but losing is important in that it, it reminds you that you’re alive, the pain that you feel. And so that’s the difference is depending on the day, you’re either way up here or wait out here depending on the season. So this or this, there’s none of this. But the goal that I have to achieve from a business perspective is get everybody’s mind off that always remain even keel. That’s a tough job, but I really enjoy it. And in the book I talk about the foreplay’s for handling all adversity and foreplay’s for handling success.

Keith Wolf:

And that came to me about about 12 years into being with the Texans. That that’s what we do every week. We’re either handling adversity or we’re handling success. And they’re both really hard, but handling success, it’s harder because it’s not clear and present it. Doesn’t smack you in the face. It’s a silent assassin. Dom capers used to always say for every 10 players that can have a handle adversity. There’s only one that can handle success because it’s very difficult to run with a full cup of success. So, so a season like this season where you’re not having on the field, the season that, you know, obviously people want, how do you still internally feel that it’s accessed? How do you, and how do you evaluate from a business standpoint, whether it’s been a successful season parking what’s may, may not be happening on the field?

Keith Wolf:

Well, we’ve, we’ve had, we’ve had good years on the field, bad years on the field this year is the only anomaly the only one for 20 years, because we can’t have fans at our games. And so the economics this year are just disastrous. I don’t know if you know this or not, but it’s a terrible year to be in the mass gathering business. So it’s, it’s really been tough. But the reason I wrote the book that the, the last straw for me was I was sitting across from Greg Beatles. So Greg is the executive vice-president of the Atlanta Falcons. And this is the way the owners meetings work. We get together like four or five times a year, and we’re in different conference rooms all over the country, but they’re always set up exactly the same way. And every team sits in exactly the same place. So for 20 years, I’ve been sitting across from Greg beetles. So at the end of the December meeting last year, Greg says, Hey, can you hang out for a minute? I said, sure said, you know, you guys have had good years and bad years, like all of us, but you’re at the top of the business metrics every year. How have you done that? And I gave him some kind of

Jamey Rootes:

BS answer, but as I was flying home, I said, I really have to write this down there. There is something very special happening here. You can’t defy gravity every year and have it not be something special. And so those are the principles that I put into this book, because I believe that these same, very fundamental elements, very hard to, very hard to execute, but really easy to understand lead to continuous success.

Keith Wolf:

Well, let’s talk a little bit about the challenges of COVID. So how has your approach, I know you guys, like most companies, you had to go virtual very quickly, basically in a weekend, you talked about the bug, you, you told the CIO, can we, we’re going to go virtual by Monday and he’s like, no, it’s impossible. You’re crazy. And then you guys did it. So talk about, talk about the challenges and then talk about how you had to adjust and look at maybe other revenue streams in this you know, crisis. And there’s that Chinese symbol that they say is for crisis, which is the combination of danger and opportunity. And the danger is really obvious, right? Cause I mean, you’re seeing it on that TV every day. And so you’ve got to deal with that. And so in dealing with the danger, the first priority for us was our staff. We have this incredibly talented group of people that we’re going to need in 2021. And so the last and we have to execute now. So the last thing that I want them to do is to lose focus. So as you’re reading about this team and that team and furloughs layoffs and blah, blah, blah, I have communicated with the McNair. So I said, look, here’s my instinct on this. I need to be very clear and direct with the staff that we are not doing that.

Jamey Rootes:

And they said fine. And so I did got everybody together, said, look, you can rest easy. You know, whether you’re working or not, I don’t care. You’re all going to be paid as normal. You’re going to get your salary change. You’re going to get your bonuses. You’re going to be rewarded because you know that this, this year doesn’t matter. This is a Mulligan year and next year we’re going to get back after it. The second thing was all of our relationships. So our suite holders, our sponsors, our broadcast partners, our ticket holders, how do we be enlightened this environment? How can we be overly fair to them? How can we put the gun in their hand? Which is the words that I use, but the gun in their hand, let them choose how this could, should go down this year, because we’re not thinking about this quarter.

Jamey Rootes:

We’re thinking about the quarter century. We want to be around here for a long time. Then there was, you know develop our team. So all of the activities of the off season program, the draft free agency, free agency was a little Rocky. I understand. But but all the things we needed to get done to develop our team, we were able to get accomplished was it was different, but we got it done. Supporting our community. You know, we, at times of crisis, you know, w we are, we’re like, we’re like firefighters, you know, firefighters are the guys that run to the burning building. That’s what the Houston Texans like to do. When we see crisis, we run towards it. What can we do to help? How do we get people out of pain and discomfort, then how do we lead by example?

Jamey Rootes:

You know? So those are some of the things that we were focused on, and that was the first couple of months. And then we pivoted back to our priorities for the year, you know, the things that we wanted to get accomplished back in March and just slowly but surely waited as long as we could to make decisions. But once it was time to make a decision, we did decisively and just moved forward. And now we’re thinking about 20, 21, which could be a really, really special season. I’m going to, you’re going to see a resurgence. It’s just great to see where the economy is. I know there are a lot of people out of work and that’s really unfortunate, and I am glad the government has done so much to you know, provide for people. And we do our part through the United way, particularly. But but I do think 20, 21 is going to be much better.

Keith Wolf:

Yeah. Yeah. And we’re already seeing that. I mean, for us, for us, December is typically pretty slow because not a lot of companies are hiring because they’re waiting for the new year, but we’ve seen a lot of hiring so far in December, which bodes well for next year. Awesome. And if people have questions, I have a lot of the questions I’m answering were submitted to me. So I’m trying to get to those, and hopefully I’m addressing those with folks, but if you have questions, put them in the Q and a, and we’ll try to get to those as well. Something that I’m personally, just always curious about what I talked to really busy people is how they manage their time, what tools or processes they use. You know, I I’m, I was struck when you and I have emailed you email right back. Right.

Keith Wolf:

And I’ve noticed that the busier somebody is the higher up somebody is in the company. Typically the more responsive they are. And, you know, you’ve done that. I’ve had that same experience with others. Mark Cuban is famous for that. Steve jobs was famous for that emailing personally, when people would have questions. So how do you manage your time? What processes do you use? I’m curious about that. Well, the most important component I think of managing my time is hiring great people and giving them tons of responsibility, giving them growth opportunities, not being selfish and maintaining my set of responsibilities, just because I’m in the comfort zone. Know once I’ve mastered it, I want to teach somebody else how to do it so I can go master something else. And I do think your calendar is the key to victory. You know, this is just one example periodically, you need to sit down and look a month out and think about all the things that have to happen that month. So once a month sitting down and saying, here’s all is what’s coming up. So if you have a big meeting that you’ve got to prepare for you not only have to put the meeting on there, you got to carve out time to prepare for that meeting. And then, so you start in

Jamey Rootes:

The things that are most important to you your family, your personal life and your business. And then, so once that’s layered in, there’s not a ton left available for anybody else. So when you get that invitation to a dinner that you definitely don’t want to go to, then you look, and it’s blocked out for something with your family. Gosh, I’m so sorry. I can’t do it. But as humans we’re compelled, when somebody asks us to go do something we’re compelled to say yes, but your calendar being mapped out. But if you are open, okay, I can say yes, but you wind up not sacrificing things that are really important for things that aren’t as important. Right. Got it. That makes a lot of sense. Let’s just talk about career advice because we have, I don’t actually, I don’t care where somebody is.

Keith Wolf:

Everybody loves this question because like you said, we’re all free agents. So what advice let’s just start, maybe I know you’ve got a son in, in college and what advice would you give him? Or what advice would you give someone who’s just starting off in their career? Yeah. Well, I think I’m giving advice like, like, you know, not knowing at all I think the questions are the answers. So there are three questions that I think anybody graduating needs to have good answers. And for everybody, the answer is different. What is it that you love to do? What do you have a passion for? What will you suffer and sacrifice? What can you do every day, all day long for the rest of your life and never get bored. And that’s where your passion, what makes you special? What talents do you have that other people don’t?

Jamey Rootes:

And I think we’re all pretty humble. So we like to think that we’re not, you know, not that great, but we really undersell our personal assets. I know there are a lot of things I’m not good at, but one thing I am good at is being creative and being able to see opportunities that other people don’t see. But a lot of things I can’t do and everybody needs to figure out what it is that they’re really good at. And that’s why being at Proctor and gamble didn’t work for me, the creativity was not available. IBM, creativity was not part of the mix, but you start up with professional professional sports franchise. Creativity is integral, right? So what, what are you great at? And the thing that one thing that can help you in identifying what your strengths are, the things that come to you most natural are typically where your strengths are. And then number three is, and maybe most importantly is who thinks you’re special, who are your raving fans, who are the people that are going to be the stones beneath you, beneath your feet, as you walk across the water. And if you have good answers to those three things, then life works out. If you don’t, it’s time for you to get good answers to those streets.

Keith Wolf:

And kind of little

Keith Wolf:

Bit of a little bit of a term, but I’m curious, I don’t want to, I don’t want to end this interview and we still got about 10 minutes, but I don’t want to end it without you talking about Bob McNair, Lamar hunt and the lessons you’ve learned and their mentorship and what they meant to you. I’m just always curious. You’ve been around a lot of successful people, but I know those two meant a lot to you. So they’re different people. But their character their humility

Jamey Rootes:

They’re concerned for others, their kindness, they’re the things that really matter were exactly the same with Lamar. I got an MBA in sports management. I didn’t know what I was doing. I didn’t know what I didn’t know. And he was able to fill in all the gaps for me. And then with Bob, it was really another NBA. Bob was such a smart man, a tremendous entrepreneur. And I mean he knew finance like the back of his hand and really that’s that his feet is where I learned finance. So in any way that they, they both were very important to me for different reasons.

Keith Wolf:

Love it. Okay. I’m going to sort of rapid fire, a few, few additional questions. You ready? Yeah, sure. I’m curious if you weren’t president of Houston Texans, what do you think you’d be doing right now? I, I,

Jamey Rootes:

The book thing is probably going to be plan B whenever that comes. Yeah, I’m glad I’ve gotten to this point. So maybe writing another book, maybe creating a platform of the winning game plan proven PR proven parent’s playbook for continuous family success, you know, because the principles are exactly the same, but just, you have to look at them from a different perspective. And so that’s probably what I do.

Keith Wolf:

Okay. Who’s your favorite athlete? Non-Text and it won’t be on the spot to name your favorite taxing, but your favorite non Houston, Texas athlete.

Jamey Rootes:

Wow. My favorite nine Houston Texans athlete. Russell Westbrook, really? I just love his Moxie. I could, if I, if I had that kind of guy as a teenager, man, I’d run through a brick wall. Hmm.

Keith Wolf:

I love it. Okay. But he just got graded. He didn’t, he didn’t like that too much. Oh, that’s more you’re, you’re an organization or a company that from a distance you admire. I, I think I know one of them from the book, we’ll just say Disney, of course, ESPN they’re part of Disney. I mean, they’re just people that lead their category, that they’re a completely different thing. Disney and six flags. They are not the same thing makes, makes memories. And Disney is about

Jamey Rootes:

Even in their theme park rides, it’s about storytelling. And I like to think that we follow that same model that we’re complete. We’re something completely different. We’re a sports team. We, we win championships, create memorable experiences,

Keith Wolf:

Great things for our community. I love that. Well, we had a question come in about your favorite book about leadership, which

Keith Wolf:

There are lots of them, but I’d say extreme ownership because I think accountability is so important. And being accountable for everything. I think the challenge that people have with accepting responsibility and being accountable is they, it’s a definitional issue. They’re mixing up fault with responsibility just because it’s your responsibility doesn’t mean it was your fault, but it is your responsibility. And just go take care of it. A friend of mine last week said to me, yeah, that’s great. You know, people ask if I’m a glass half empty or glass half full guy, I don’t care. Fill the glass.

Keith Wolf:

Right. Love that. All right. So what, what are you some of your priorities for next year? Kind of, as we’re thinking about, I don’t know if you think they had that far or think about it,

Keith Wolf:

We’re just now starting to put those things together, but a couple of things that I’ll mention, and this relates to the COVID that COVID you know, I talked about crisis being a common issue, combination of danger and opportunity. We also saw the opportunity we’ve wanted to open fitness facilities for a long time. 24 hour fitness goes bankrupt as part of COVID. So the Houston Texans are sitting there wanting to do this, and we got amazing leases that would have taken us a decade to put together. I think we now have five locations called Texans fit, train. Like the pros will be we’ll be adding more. It seems like every day we get another call. Hey, can you take over this lease? And a great partner, a guy by the name of Mark Mastrov, who actually was the Bounder of 24 hour fitness. And so we bring the brand and all of the identity and they bring the the fitness training expertise.

Keith Wolf:

And it’s a great marriage, so that we’re going to work really hard on that next year. Another thing that I know we’re going to do is at an appropriate time, figure out what, what happened during COVID that we want to keep doing like Keith, you and I were talking these things you used to do in person, but this opens up to a whole bunch, more people. And we have another example of that. We have something called a team luncheon, which we have about a thousand people come out, but we did it this year virtually, and we had tens of thousands. And so maybe we’ll still do the live event, but we’ll do a made for TV production out of it. So we can expand the region.

Keith Wolf:

That’s perfect. Well, you couldn’t go a whole hour without getting a football question. So here we go. So hiring a GM or coats first, and think I’ve, I’ve heard each one of you guys are going after first, but what’s the approach and sort of the benefits of, of each approach. So do you hire the GM or the coach first? And the answer is yes.

Jamey Rootes:

I mean, it’s all about availability. You know, the league’s got very strict tampering rules and you can’t get the majority of candidates that would be on our radar are unsuccessful until their team quits playing. And so right now we’re spending a lot of time. I like Abraham Lincoln said if I had eight hours to chop down a tree, I’d spend seven hours sharpening my ax. So right now we’re sharpening our ax. So when there’s time, it’s time for us to strike at the tree. We’ve already got exactly the candidates in mind that we want to pursue, because there’s going to be a musical chairs, you know, the music’s going to stop and everybody’s going to be jumping for the chairs and we want to be, have our tails in the chair. First,

Keith Wolf:

You guys just put together the advisory group, right? So that’s a, it’s a pretty unique, how do you guys think about how you were putting that together and the different backgrounds of those folks?

Jamey Rootes:

Well, they, they all share one thing that they’ve achieved greatness in, in a, in a team environment, Andre Johnson is going to be a hall of Famer, Jimmy Johnson. I mean, he won more super bowls than than he has rings for because Barry Switzer got one on his watch, right. We left the Cowboys. And you know, the, the wildcard would be would be RC Buford, who was with the first, but RCS. I mean, they built, sustained success over a long period of time. That’s what we’re looking for. I mean, there’s no reason to get into this and do a one and done. We want to be great for a long time.

Keith Wolf:

Right. All right. Well, you know what? I think we’ve asked all the questions. If anybody’s got a final question for Jamie, you can shoot real quick, but we’re right up against it. And I just, I cannot thank you enough. I’m going to make a little statement, a little pitch, the best Christmas gift you could give to anyone who is a sports fan, Texans, fan leadership, fan family fan. All the things in here will absolutely knock your socks off. And the best part about it is this is not a money maker for me, all of the proceeds of the book benefit the Houston Texans foundation and our champions for you initiatives, it’s available on amazon.com. I Kroger is going to be carrying it very soon. Barnes and noble will be carrying it. So, and in January, we’ll come out with the audio book being voiced over by Mark.

Keith Wolf:

Vandeveer the voice of the Texans. And he’s going to put in gain calls into it and all that. So January ought to be really exciting for our fans. It’s a great book. Like I said, I read it. It’s a, it’s a relatively quick read. I mean, if you like sports, you like business, you’re going to be flying through it because you have a lot of analysts in there. And anybody who loves sports will be really interested if you’re in need of some inspiration and who’s not right now. Right. Right. Exactly. So we have a comment. The book has already been added to my list. It just sent a message to Santa that I want your book. Great talk, go Texans. Awesome objections fans. Definitely. Well, thanks, Jamie. Really appreciate it. Thank you so much for taking the time. All right. I’ll talk to you and your family. You too. Thank you. Appreciate it. Thanks everybody.