How Does an Olympian Find Purpose and Direction?

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Today’s Manager Mojo Podcast  answers a great question: how does an Olympian find purpose and direction?   Far too often, big goals seem insurmountable.  We have a dream, yet we do nothing about it.  Join me on this podcast as I talk with Larry Myricks, Executive Director of the Corporate Challenge Network and Olympic Medalist.  Larry won the bronze media in the long jump at the 1988 Seoul Olympics.  Larry understands discipline.  He understands incremental improvement.  If you struggle with setting goals and sticking with them, his insights may prove invaluable.  Plus, you’ll hear how he’s translating his love for action and fun activities into building teams in business.

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Steve: Hello and welcome everyone. I’m so glad you’ve joined us on the Manager Mojo podcast and I’m really thrilled today that our guest is Larry Myricks. Now I’ve known Larry for an awful long time. We actually were in college together but Larry today is the executive director at the Corporate Challenge Network in the Atlanta area. Larry is an accomplished guy, and I love talking about this because I know when he was really working out so hard to accomplish a certain goal. You see, Larry is an Olympic medalist, having earned a bronze medal in the long jump at the 1988 Seoul Olympics.  Congratulations Larry!

 

Larry: Thank you Steve, I appreciate it.

 

Steve: We’re really proud of you and I know how hard Larry worked in order to get there. But today not only is he an Olympic medalist, he leads the Corporate Challenge, which is a volunteer driven Olympic style sports event for the business community.  It brings together employees, managers, and volunteers in friendly competition. I’m really looking forward to hearing Larry tell us more about that. But I want you to know that even before he did the Corporate Challenge Network, Larry had an extensive sales and sales management background.   He’s got a lot of stories to tell, so we’re going to dive right in and have some fun.  Larry Myricks, welcome to the Manager Mojo podcast. Glad to have you with us today!

 

Larry: Thank you so much Steve, it’s my pleasure. I appreciate the opportunity to come on and I’m looking forward to it.

 

Steve: Awesome!  One of the things that I want to start with is — would you tell our listeners a little bit more about the Corporate Challenge Network and what does that mean?  What do you do?

 

Larry:  Absolutely.  Let me say the Corporate Challenge Network came about from my looking for a way to be involved in corporate America and to weave my sports background into that whole mix.  Years ago I came up with an idea of putting together an Olympic style tournament where you got companies to register and allow the employees to participate in a variety of different sports and games like soccer, flag football, basketball, dominos, poker, spades, fishing. Just all kinds of activities that got them out of the office, got them talking to each other about things other than work, that got them active so they weren’t leaving work, going home, having dinner, sitting down and watching TV—you know doing no activity.  It got them moving a little bit.

And then I wove into that one of the things that was really cool that I did as an athlete.   We got to travel all over the world and in all the competitions that you are a part of and win, you make the podium.  You know if you’re one, two, three you make the podium and somebody puts a ribbon around your neck with a medal on it. That’s a special feeling, and that’s one of the things that we brought into this competition, because if the teams are one, two, or three in the tournament then they get to go on the podium and we put bronze, silver, gold medals on them. It’s a sense of pride for them, it’s a sense of accomplishment for them and it just helps build company pride and company morale. It’s great for teamwork and good team building activities.

I started here in Atlanta, and we did our first event in 2012.   We had ten or eleven companies that signed up.   The Corporate Challenge Network grew out of that and the network is becoming a group of cities that we’re targeting to do this kind of event in. As an example, we’ve done them in Jackson, Mississippi, in Birmingham, Alabama, and San Diego, California.   We’re working on one for Austin, Texas in a couple of weeks, in Minneapolis in September and Phoenix in November. You know my goal is to ultimately have 10-12 of these, at least one a month and just get people out, get them active, and create some team building and have some fun.

 

Steve: Oh that sounds awesome!  I know people will absolutely love that and have a good time doing it.  Well Larry, would it be safe to say that based on what you were telling me just a minute ago about getting people involved and getting them motivated that maybe that came about because you had a few experiences in management where people really didn’t understand motivation and teamwork? Is that possible?

 

Larry: You know what, that’s very possible. It did happen because I spent a lot of years in sales and I can remember times—I did a lot of team sales—on occasion I’d go out of the group, or maybe a couple of us, and we’d go out on calls together. And I remember the times going out and I might go out with somebody else and will wind up taking the lead in the sale, even though it was their account, their client, but they were just kind of laid back, not very aggressive. And so a lot of times I wound up taking the bull by the horns and running the appointment and getting the deal or getting the order or whatever it is and moving on to the next one. I think a lot of it happened because I’m a goal-setter and I worked mine down to daily goals.   I get up in the morning, sit down and look at the things I need to accomplish for the day.  Those daily goals all add up to a weekly goal or a monthly goal, or whatever kind of goal. But that’s kind of how I drive myself and I keep myself moving forward.

I know the ones who are successful; I know they’re goal-oriented people. I think the ones who flounder around, float here, float there and don’t really have necessarily any purpose or direction are the ones who may not quite get to where they could be if they were just a bit more focused and had some clear cut and well-defined goals that they were actually chasing after.

 

Steve: That’s such a great point. I believe that without goals, all you’re doing is dreaming. I think you have to break your life and your actions down into goals you can obtain. So I’m on the same page as you are and I believe most of our listeners really understand that and want to be good goal-setters. So that brings me to a question with regard to goals.   Do you have your own system that you follow and can you give us a couple of tips on how you translate your goals into those daily activities?

 

Larry: Okay I want to just kind of back up and just make a comment about what you mentioned just a few moments ago about the whole ‘dream’ thing. I agree with what you’re saying that if you don’t have goals you’re just sort of dreaming, just kind of wandering around. But ultimately everything starts with a dream.

 

Steve: It does, doesn’t it?

 

Larry: The only reason that dream changes is if you put action to it. You know when you establish those goals and then you start working towards it which would be the attainment or the accomplishment of that dream. It all starts with that dream.

 

Steve: Well you got to have that dream but so many people just stop there.

 

Larry: Right, right. That’s true! That’s true.

 

Steve: They don’t put any actions and work behind it. And then where do they go?

 

Larry: And that’s why they say faith without works is dead.

 

Steve: Exactly!  By being an Olympian and being a long jumper is—I mean man—growth in that event comes really in quarters of an inch doesn’t it?

 

Larry: It really does, it really does.  I believe more in longevity.  I believe in incremental improvements, because if you put your system in place and if you work at it every day, and you work on doing the right things every day, then you’re going to see positive results.  Now you may not have these huge accomplishments or these huge advancements but you’ll still see some progress and you’ll see yourself working towards the attainment and the achievement of that goal. Now you asked a question a little bit ago about how I go about obtaining or achieving or attacking goals. I’ll give you one example. When I decided to do my first Corporate Challenge, I started with an idea and I sat down and I made a list of all the things I needed to make that happen. Number one, I needed a website because I needed a place where I could put the information so the companies could go see it. Number two, I needed a database that I could start reaching out to companies from via email or cold-calling and those kinds of things. Number three, I needed a better understanding of how Corporate Challenges work, how they’re set up, how you run them, how you do tournaments—because I’d never done any of those things.

So first thing I did was I started building a website and I gave myself, I think I started January and gave myself until April to get the thing built. And I was done with the website by March and while I’m building the website, I’m also researching all the Corporate Challenges in the country. And I called and spoke to somebody at every challenge.   When we last checked I think I found about 10 or 12 really good sized ones—and when I say good sized they’ll have anywhere from 30 to about almost 200 companies participating annually in their events.  So I started picking brains and getting all the information and started putting mine together. I knew I needed to be able to contact the companies and for 2012, I started working January 2011 towards an event I was going to do in May 2012.  So after I built the website with all the information I gathered from all the other corporate challenges, I then needed a database. Now I couldn’t afford to go subscribe to Hoover’s or do those kinds of things so I took the Internet, I used Jigsaw and SalesForce.com and between June and December—and I gave myself those six months to come up with about a 10,000 email database that I could use. And so I sat at the computer five days a week, sometimes seven, and between Internet and phone calls, by December I had probably about 8500, almost 9000, emails for companies in the Atlanta area. And that became a marketing database.  So in January of 2012, I’m kicking out emails as I bring them in. But by then, I had emails all over Atlanta telling people about this Corporate Challenge and what it was all about. And the result of all that work was by March 2012, I had about 12 or 13 companies that signed up, which is actually very good for a first-go around.

So that’s how I did mine.   I give myself timelines with things I have to get accomplished by a certain period of time. And to me, it’s just like as a jumper.  I worked on my take-off, my landing, I worked on my approach, I worked on my technique in the air. I equate those things to building a database, building a website, learning more about what to do and putting everything into place—finding venues, looking for sponsors, all that stuff goes into a Corporate Challenge. Just like all those little things I did as an athlete went into that jump when I went to a competition.

 

Steve: That’s so awesome and thank you for sharing that Larry, because I know that alone is inspiration to a lot of people that are really trying to find the ways they can establish their goals. So many managers are struggling with trying to achieve team goals, and I try to encourage them by exactly what you were talking about—it’s all related to understanding how to plan out the timeline and what do you need to execute.

 

Larry: Absolutely.  I think personal goals are very much interwoven into the team goals, because you can give me a team goal, you can tell me what you want the team to do as a whole, but then for me it’s going to become, “Okay so what do I need to do to move the team closer to its goal?  What do I need to do personally?  What are my goals?” And I take the piece that’s going to be mine and that’s what I work towards.   Then I encourage the others around me, “You work towards this, because as a group we’re going to accomplish the same thing. But we’ve got to accomplish our personal goals.”  You have to have personal goals; you can’t flounder or walk around with blinders on.  You’ve got to have specific directions or specific things that you’re trying to get done or otherwise you’re just spinning your wheels. And if it falls in your lap, you catch it but if it falls anywhere else you miss it. You know what I mean?

 

Steven: Absolutely.  You know Larry, that’s so important that I really want to point that out again to people.  That is this concept of a team goal and everybody knows what that is. Usually it’s always published by the company but it means nothing until you break that team goal down into each person’s goals.   What does each person on that team have to do to own their part of achieving that team goal?

 

Larry: Absolutely. Can I give you an example?

 

Steven: Yeah I want to hear one, thank you.

 

Larry:  This is just a basic example, but let’s take a car.  Let’s talk about the way a car’s going to function.  The engineer designs it and everybody gets together to build it.   When they all put the thing together, the ultimate goal for the car is to be a vehicle that transports us from one place to another and back if we need it to.  Now they all put a lot of different pieces in this thing and it’s designed to work and function the way it supposedly was designed to if every little piece functions right. Because the ultimate goal is for this thing to run smoothly, you know to get to where you want to go, for the lights to come on when they need to come on, for the windshield wipers to do what they need to do when you turn the knob.

If any piece of that car goes awry, if anything goes wrong with it, it’s not going to function the way it’s supposed to. But you have to remember, each one of those individual pieces has a specific goal, a specific thing that it’s got to do. And that goes back to the team.  If the team’s got to grow your division or grow their piece of the pie by 25% or 30% next year, then everybody needs to look at themselves and say, “Okay how much do I need to grow my business to contribute to that?  What’s my piece of the business?”  And that’s how I always look at things.  Because of my athleticism, I’m a very competitive person. I’m always the guy who walks into the sales office when I get the job and my first question is, “Who’s the best salesman in the room?” Because that’s the guy I want to beat.

 

Steve: I love it.

 

Larry: You know that’s the guy I want to be better than and I know I’ve got to do a lot of work to do it.

 

Steve: I love it Larry. You and I are in the same boat when it comes to competition. It’s one of those things that really fires me up and motivates me.

 

Larry: No doubt, Steve.

 

Steve:  Let’s talk about motivation for just a second because I happen to know what a hard worker you are. And I know you get up early and you get busy and you do what you need to do.  A lot of people struggle in management.  They say, “Well look, I shouldn’t have to motivate other people.” And that’s true to a certain degree, but what have you found in the corporate world about motivation and what do you do to motivate yourself?

 

Larry: You know, I think because of that competitiveness in me Steve, I’ll stick a goal out that I know is probably—well nothing’s impossible—but I’ll stick a goal out because I know it’s going to take a lot of effort, a lot of work, a lot of sacrifice, a lot of commitment to reach. And I’ll get out there.

Here’s an example, when I was a jumper my goal was to be the first man to jump nine meters which would have been over almost 30 feet. Now, I never got there legally but I do know there’s a couple places I went where I had fouled jumps. And one in Germany I fouled by about a quarter of an inch and he measured it for me and it was about nine meters, five or ten centimeters—just something ridiculous. But I think number one it was me believing that I could get there and then just going about the work and doing the things I needed to get there.

I don’t need people to motivate me because I can do a good job of motivating myself. Because if I want it, then I’m going to do whatever it takes—within reason, I mean I don’t do illegal things—but I do whatever it takes to make it happen. And I reward myself along the way as I accomplish the little things. Because if I do that short-term, long-range, mid-range goal thing, as I hit the little ones I reward myself somehow and I just kind of keep pushing towards the next goal.

 

Steve: Thank you for sharing that. I think that’s awesome and it just brings up a thought for me.  I know you were in the corporate world for a long time—and I’ll bet you had some managers who weren’t as competitive as you were or they were just bad managers. Can you give us an example of an experience or two that you saw that others ought to avoid?

 

Larry: You know unfortunately some of them you can’t avoid because it’s one of those things where you don’t know what you’ve got until you get there, Steve. And I can give you one example of a job that I had—I was actually working for a placement agency. I was going out and sitting down with companies and looking at their book of requisitions to see what kind of people they’re looking to hire.   They were placing their jobs with me and I’d go out and find people—you know interview them, get resumes and all those kinds of things set up.  I’d set up interviews for them. And as it turns out when I interviewed, the lady I met she was really cool.  She owned the whole place and she was putting me in an office that was in a different city and it was basically me in an office by myself. And you know everything was cool, it all worked really well for a long time—for maybe a couple of months—I shouldn’t say a long time.  You know and we were getting things done.

So, I take seriously everything I do and I take advantage of all the things I’m supposed to, you know? When I go to work every day I’m supposed to get an hour for lunch, I’m supposed to get a break before and a break after because you need those things to recharge yourself.  And so this particular manager, I had made an agreement with her prior to taking the job that I would be able to leave early a couple of days each week.  Our office was 8-5.  So for me, leaving early was leaving about 4 o’clock, maybe 4:30, because I was training a couple of young kids and I wanted to still be able to work with them.   She agreed to it.

And when I started doing it, you know a couple times I’d get phone calls on those days I was leaving like, “Where are you? You’re supposed to be in your office.” Yeah I’m like, “Well, did you not recall the agreement that we made before I took the job?” And she became a very hands-on, micro-manager.  I’ll never forget the one day I left to go to lunch and I was sitting at this café having a sandwich and my phone rings and she says, “Where are you?”  I said, “I’m at lunch.”  She says, “Well don’t you know we have requisitions to fill?” I said, “Well you know we’re also by law supposed to have an hour of lunch every day.  I’ve got about another half hour and I’ll be back in the office.” So then she goes on this rant about “You’re not committed to the job and all this stuff.” And then after that day, I think a couple of days later I’m leaving to train the kids and she calls and just goes off on this ranting tangent and then she calls back the next day and she apologizes and says, “Okay my hormones must have been out-of-whack or something was going on.” And by this time—and now this was going on for probably about 3 1/2 , 4 months—so the long and short of it is I just one day decided I had enough because you can’t be productive when you’re like that. And I went to work one morning, cleared out my desk, cleared out the computer, and I left.  I locked the door, put the keys back through the mail slot, called her and told her, “I’m done. Your keys are inside the door.”

 

Steve: Oh what a great story!

 

Larry: There has to be a better way to do this.

 

Steve: Larry, what a great story! And you know you hit on all of the things that I teach people about the dangers of micro-management. It’s bad enough that you’re micro-managing, but when you’ve made a commitment to somebody and then you’re acting like you never made that commitment, it erodes trust immediately doesn’t it?

 

Larry: Oh it was gone. There was no doubt—none whatsoever. It left the first time she was making the phone calls going, “Where you at? Why aren’t you in the office?” And I think that as a manager you’ve got to hire people that you can empower to go out and do their jobs. If you’ve got to hover over me to make sure I’m doing my job, I’m not the right person for you.

 

Steve: Absolutely.

 

Larry:   Obviously I didn’t show you enough that you can trust that I’m going to do my job. That you just feel like you have to be in that much control, that’s not good.

 

Steve: No and I just can’t help but smile right now because knowing you like I do, for a guy that disciplines himself—he’s got every minute filled with productive work. This is the very kind of thing that managers are doing all over the country. And I see this everywhere Larry, where people don’t think employees should have any lunch time or break time and they shouldn’t have a vacation and they’ve got to have that phone on all the time. It’s like they’re so unprepared for trusting people and assigning goals the way they should be, that nothing good is happening.

 

Larry: And I think a lot of cases, Steve it’s really just overcompensating.  And I think in some cases it may be overcompensating for some their own shortcomings because where they think they can’t get it done and they’ll pressure their people and hope that their people will get it done. If you’re there cracking that whip all the time, I’m going to figure out how to make it happen, you know what I mean?

Now if I leave you alone and just give you some direction and let you go. If you need me, I’m here and I’m going to check with you on occasion just to make sure you stay on the right track and you’re doing the right things. But I’m not going to be standing over your back going, “How many calls did you make today? How many calls do you have to make today? Did you close anything today? Do you have anything in the pipeline?”  You know what I mean? That’s what drives you nuts.

 

Steve: Absolutely and not only does it drive you nuts, it drives that employee directly to another employer.

 

Larry: Exactly. That’s what it did to me.

 

Steve: It absolutely did. Thank you so much for sharing that story.  Let’s jump back for just a minute.  I want to talk more about the Corporate Challenge.   Share with us some of the reported outcomes that your companies are finding because they’re doing these great team events and they’re going these exercises. What are some of the things that they’re finding as valuable to them?

 

Larry: You know that old saying Steve that, “The best job to have is doing something that you love, that you enjoy, that you can actually make a living out of.” That’s the best job to have. I mean for me it’s not my job, it’s more a way of life because it’s what I do and when I market our events to the companies our selling points are we’re going to work on the team building, we’re going to work on making people feel better about working for you, being part of your company. That whole company morale, company pride thing. We’re going to hopefully effect the people in a way that makes them want to be more physically fit, more active. And if they do and their health improves as a result of that, in the long term, that’s going to save you money because it’s going to cut down on the health and the medical costs with insurance and all that kind of stuff.

So that’s what we talk them through in the beginning.  After we did the first year, the real cool thing is because of the athletic background a lot of people would come up and say, “Hey I’ve been thinking about working out but just don’t know where to start or what to do.” And when you say work out, it sounds like someone’s just going to break you down and have you just dead tired when you’re done. And nobody wants to do that so I just tell them, “Hey it could be as simple as go buy a pair of good walking shoes. Go walk for 30 minutes three times a week.” There’s nothing hard about that but it’s a place to start. And so I was able to share that kind of stuff with different people.

I had a couple HR managers actually tell me before we finished our first challenge here in Atlanta—they said, “Since we’ve been involved in this and we’re watching our people playing flag football, playing soccer, playing basketball, doing all these really active kind of events and seeing how at some point they’re all really tired and sucking wind and dragging. We realized that we need to encourage them to be healthier and to live a healthier lifestyle so we’ve started Health and Wellness programs at our companies.” And then on the flip side of that, we talk about relationships — your relationship as the manager, as an employee, as a boss.   When you’re inside the confines of an office that’s a certain kind of relationship. Now if you take the same two people from that same group of people and you put them somewhere else, that all changes.  I respect my boss, but I respect him more in the office. I wouldn’t disrespect him anywhere but I would respect him more in the office. But if you put him out on the basketball court, I’m seeing eye-to-eye with him.   He isn’t the boss anymore.  He’s my team mate and I expect him to score just like me because if he doesn’t, we’ve got a problem!

So you relate differently to people when you’re put in different situations in different places.  That’s a different kind of relationship that you’ve developed with that person.  I’ve had people say, “Hey you know what?  Since I’ve been doing the Corporate Challenge, I’ve met people who literally sat across from me on the other side of the cubicle.  I’d see them every day but never speak to them—never talked to them.  But because I was on the team that went out to do the fishing tournament or I did the spades tournament, I got to meet this person.  I talked with this person for three or four hours.  Now I know them and now they’re a friend.”  And those are the kinds of reports that we like to hear, because that’s our vision for this whole thing. And when people start feeding that back to you, you know its working and you know people are getting it. That’s awesome.

 

Steve: That is awesome and congratulations on that Larry.

 

Larry: Thank you Steve.

 

Steve: One of the things that, as we’re wrapping up here, I know that everybody has really enjoyed this so far, and if you don’t mind, please share with our audience the best way that they can get in touch with you.

 

Larry:   Our website is CorporateChallengeNetwork.com.

 

Steve: CorporateChallengeNetwork.com.

 

Larry: CorporateChallengeNetwork.com and my office phone is area code 678-880-8536, and of course if anybody wants to email me if you have questions or you want to talk about what we do, you can send it to me at [email protected].

 

Steve:  [email protected].   That’s awesome.

 

Larry: Yes sir.

 

Steve: Larry on behalf of the Manager Mojo listeners, I want to tell you that we’re proud of you, congratulations on your accomplishments as an Olympian, and congratulations on the Corporate Challenge Network. And thank you for all you’re doing to set a standard for people working together, not just at work but outside of work.

 

Larry:  Thank you so much Steve. I appreciate you having me on here and I’m a big believer that we don’t accomplish things on our own.  I was an athlete for a lot of years and I had a lot of success but a lot of what I accomplished probably wouldn’t have happened had it not been for that coach who was there with me day in, day out.  So if something big happened I never said “I did it.”  I’ll always say “We did it,” because it was a collaborative effort and it’s just that “no man’s an island” thing.  A lot of people feed things into us that help us to become the people that we are and to become successful. So you just can’t take life that serious and think you’re just that great that nobody helps you get where you are because people always feed into who we are and who we become and what we accomplish.

 

Steve: That’s so true and thank you because I think today we helped a lot of people.

 

Larry: I hope so.

 

Steve: I hope so too and thank you so very much.  I appreciate you being on the Manager Mojo show today. Our guest today has been Larry Myricks the executive director of the Corporate Challenge Network in Atlanta. I encourage you to reach out to him and if you’ve got a business that’s looking at organizing events to create teamwork.   Make sure you reach out to Larry.  Larry, thank you for joining us!

 

Larry: Steve, it’s been a big pleasure. Thanks for having me on Manager Mojo.   It was fun and I enjoyed it.