Stu Crum - Applying lessons from sport to leadership

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[00:01:12] Hey and welcome back to Resilience Unravelled. And it's my joy to be joined today with a guest who has done me the honour of having one of the shortest names on record.

[00:01:24] And, you know, this is a name that's easy to pronounce. It's easy to spell. I mean, what an obliging person. So, welcome first of all to Stu Crum. Stu, hi.

[00:01:35] Hi. Russell, thank you so much. And you're right. It's a nice short name and it makes life easy.

[00:01:42] And your first name's Stu. So, I'm guessing that's an abbreviation of Stuart or is that...

[00:01:47] Exactly. Abbreviation for Stuart. Yes.

[00:01:50] Very good. Didn't like Stuart or what was that about?

[00:01:53] You know, there's a whole story behind it, but actually as an athlete, my name through the press changed at 17 years old.

[00:02:00] I went from Stuart to Stu and a bunch of articles started getting written back in my athletic days and literally it just stuck.

[00:02:07] It wasn't by my choice actually.

[00:02:09] Yeah.

[00:02:10] Well, it's interesting. So, you've already given us a bit of a clue what we're going to be talking about today. We're going to be talking about sports. And as you know, I'm famously completely uneducated in the subject. So, I'm looking forward to it.

[00:02:23] But first of all, by those deep, rich, juicy tones, I can actually spot that you're from over the pond. So, where in the world are you?

[00:02:30] Yeah, I'm in Houston, Texas. Oh, okay.

[00:02:33] I'm not a Texan by birth. I'm originally from California, but you know, through a lot of transfers in the corporate world, I eventually ended up in Texas. So, I'm a Texan this year.

[00:02:44] That's very impressive. So, you'll be following those... I mean, Elon Musk is following in your tracks and by the sounds of it.

[00:02:49] Yeah, that's right. He decided to move from California, got tired of California. He's moving to Texas as well. Exactly.

[00:02:55] I'm sure it has nothing to do with the 0% tax rates in Texas.

[00:02:59] Nothing. Nothing, of course.

[00:03:01] Well, look, I'm whilst being jocular, that's all very well and good. But why don't you tell us a little bit about yourself and a little bit about your backstory before we get into the meat of the podcast?

[00:03:12] Yeah, you know, I try to keep this as short as I can. I grew up as a young man. I actually grew up in St. Louis, Missouri.

[00:03:19] So, I grew up in a lot of different places in the United States, but former years in St. Louis and grew real love for athletics, in particular kicking a football.

[00:03:28] I was a football player slash soccer player. We call it soccer in the United States, of course.

[00:03:32] And I moved to American football kicking a football.

[00:03:37] And those are my former years. I wanted to be a professional athlete. That was my dream as a young man.

[00:03:42] And I was fortunate enough in the States, of course, universities are very, very big in sports and got a football scholarship and then ended up being drafted by the New York Jets as a young man.

[00:03:52] I played off and on for three years as a professional athlete and then moved on to business and been very fortunate for the last 40 years of my career.

[00:04:00] So, I've been working now for quite some time and I'm in my fifth chief executive officer role.

[00:04:06] And I've taken what I've learned from sports and as a leader and as a competitor, and I've moved it into leadership and business.

[00:04:14] So, that's a quick story about myself.

[00:04:17] Yeah, it's very interesting.

[00:04:19] So, I don't want to unpick all of NFL because I'm not that familiar with the whole thing.

[00:04:25] I watch enough and I know that New York Jets, isn't it Gary Vanacek who went to the big, he's desperate to buy them, but they're doing too well now or something.

[00:04:33] So, he's gone off the idea.

[00:04:35] But, so you told me earlier that you were the kicker.

[00:04:38] So, what's the role of a kicker in the team?

[00:04:41] Well, the role of a kicker is if you don't score a, I'll call it a try, which would be a rugby term.

[00:04:46] I lived in New Zealand for four years and became a huge rugby fan.

[00:04:49] But, if you don't score a try, you end up kicking what's called a field goal.

[00:04:53] And a touchdown try is worth six points.

[00:04:56] A field goal is worth three points.

[00:04:58] And if you pass 50 yard lines and it's 60 yards or less, typically you will try to kick at those points if you don't score a touchdown.

[00:05:06] And after touchdowns in the US, you actually do kick a point after touchdown.

[00:05:11] So, your role is to put as many points on the board when the team can't score touchdowns.

[00:05:16] Ah, makes sense.

[00:05:17] Makes sense.

[00:05:18] So, it's a strategic choice to kick rather than to go for tries and such like.

[00:05:23] So, and of course what you're doing is completing the extra points from a try.

[00:05:27] Exactly.

[00:05:28] That's a rugby term again.

[00:05:29] Yeah, yeah, yeah.

[00:05:30] And because I'm very familiar with rugby, exactly right.

[00:05:33] And it is very strategic sometimes.

[00:05:34] Sometimes you actually go for the field goal and not for the touchdown in different points of the game.

[00:05:39] So, a lot of strategy involved in it.

[00:05:41] Okay.

[00:05:42] Now, I know a lot of Americans are very shy and keep their, you know, their successes hidden away from us all.

[00:05:48] But I mean, and there's a reason for this question.

[00:05:50] But I mean, how good were you?

[00:05:54] I was very good at the university level.

[00:05:57] I was average at the professional level.

[00:05:59] Right.

[00:05:59] So, some of it had to do with choices I made.

[00:06:04] A little bit had to do with tearing a hamstring.

[00:06:08] My first year as a professional athlete.

[00:06:10] And as a kicker, you tear a hamstring.

[00:06:12] It certainly has a way of getting in the way of kicking the ball very far.

[00:06:17] So, but no, I wasn't.

[00:06:19] Listen, I think all people are athletes or legends in their own minds.

[00:06:23] But I wasn't a great superstar in the US.

[00:06:26] Yes.

[00:06:26] But what I did do is it taught me a lot about perseverance, difficulty and resilience in making and missing balls.

[00:06:41] So, you know, I look back on those three years as a professional athlete very fondly because it taught me to be what I think is a strong leader as an executive.

[00:06:53] So, it's interesting because the reason where I was going with this was that there are a lot of people in sports and I was in the music world who get to a level, a professional level.

[00:07:02] It's something we've wanted to do all of our lives.

[00:07:04] We get to a certain place and then for whatever reason we decide to stop or we can't continue.

[00:07:09] And for a lot of people, there's two things can happen.

[00:07:12] They can find themselves a bit lost.

[00:07:14] And they can also find themselves never having that particular rush that you get from being professional sports or, you know, in the performance world.

[00:07:24] And I just wonder if any of that happened to you.

[00:07:26] It did.

[00:07:27] You know, my first six months, I think so much of our ego gets tied, you know, you're walking on the street and people recognize you.

[00:07:34] Yeah.

[00:07:34] They asked for an autograph.

[00:07:35] They want a picture and or a photo.

[00:07:38] And and so, yes, but but but for me, I got over myself pretty quickly.

[00:07:44] In fact, six months, I realized that life had to go on.

[00:07:48] I couldn't make, you know, some professional athletes are so good that they spend their whole life playing off their name.

[00:07:54] I couldn't do that.

[00:07:56] I wasn't that good.

[00:07:57] So I took the lessons I learned from sports and I I use some of them, not all of them, because not all of them were great lessons, but I use many of those as a leader.

[00:08:08] So it was hard the first few months.

[00:08:10] But but once again, I got over myself very quickly and moved on and moved into my career.

[00:08:17] Yeah.

[00:08:18] So before we go in there, can you sort of tell me what it's like to miss a point?

[00:08:21] Because I'm guessing and you often see crunch points, don't you, where someone scores a field goal or misses a field goal right at the beginning or end of the game.

[00:08:29] And, you know, what's what's going through it?

[00:08:31] What runs through your mind?

[00:08:32] What do you miss?

[00:08:33] Well, and I guess that's one of the great lessons I learned is in being a resilient leader is, you know, none of us are perfect.

[00:08:43] And it's hard.

[00:08:44] I mean, I can think of a particular game where I missed a 47 yard field goal, which lost the game.

[00:08:52] And it was an important game.

[00:08:53] And and it was devastating at the time.

[00:08:57] But it teaches you that that there's a first of all, it is a sport and we got to be really clear about it.

[00:09:03] It's just sport, right?

[00:09:04] It's not life and death.

[00:09:05] For some people it is.

[00:09:06] But for me, it was always a sport.

[00:09:07] And and and I learned that I you learn to have a very short memory.

[00:09:15] You have to have a very short memory if you're going to be a great athlete or be a great executive.

[00:09:19] You just have to because nothing things don't always go our way.

[00:09:23] And so I learned to have a short memory and I put it behind me and I'd go out and try the next one.

[00:09:28] And and the next one actually in that particular instance, I think I kicked 19 out of 20 in a row after I missed that one field goal that that lost the game.

[00:09:36] So.

[00:09:38] Yeah, it taught me how to deal with failure in the right way.

[00:09:43] Yeah, because I always think that the point of failure is the lessons you learn rather than the event itself, isn't it?

[00:09:48] And that's and I'm guessing you learned that in your world as well as me learning and then the performance world.

[00:09:54] Sure.

[00:09:55] Absolutely.

[00:09:55] The truth.

[00:09:56] Absolutely.

[00:09:57] Otherwise, you just you learn if you learn nothing, then resilience is pointless.

[00:10:01] But it's also interesting that what you talk about here is in sport, I think, is more interesting in the sense that it's a whole team sport.

[00:10:09] And the fact that you had to kick a field goal to win means that there'd be insufficient points created in the earlier in the game.

[00:10:15] And people forget that as well, don't they?

[00:10:17] Well, they do.

[00:10:18] And I think the hard thing about team sport and I love team sports because they taught me a lot about leadership is, you know, you have, you know, in a typical American stadium, you'll have between 70 and 100,000 people in a stadium.

[00:10:29] So they're rooting for you or against you.

[00:10:31] You've got a team that you're playing for.

[00:10:33] Then you've got a TV audience that's watching.

[00:10:34] And and we all know what craziness happens in sports.

[00:10:40] It's just so you need you need to learn to just to put everything in buckets, because if your whole bucket is about winning and making those field goals and you live and die by that the rest of your life can sometimes be pretty incomplete.

[00:10:55] So so, you know, there's far more to life than just, you know, winning and losing.

[00:11:02] I mean, it's it's how you win and lose.

[00:11:05] I think once again, American politics, there's been a lot around that today because we've got a lot of people don't like admitting that they lost.

[00:11:12] Yeah, we'll come back to that in a minute.

[00:11:14] Yeah.

[00:11:15] I like the concept of the book.

[00:11:16] I think it's really clever.

[00:11:18] But what you talked about here is a lot.

[00:11:20] So there was perspective, isn't it?

[00:11:22] But did you have that perspective then or did you gain that perspective by getting older, having more wins and losses on the on the score sheet?

[00:11:31] Or did you have that sort of was that in you somehow already?

[00:11:35] It I started developing that perspective.

[00:11:38] It was very hard as a young man in my teenage years.

[00:11:41] I took it far more difficult than I did in my early even 20s.

[00:11:45] So and then and I end up, you know, ending my career 25.

[00:11:50] So but I would say, you know, from the time I was 13 to 25, I started developing that perspective.

[00:11:57] And and and that helped me abundantly as I as I've matured, just because perspective is such an important thing in life.

[00:12:07] Yeah.

[00:12:07] And so many people lose perspective, unfortunately.

[00:12:10] And because they've lost that perspective, they even make bad decisions as a result of that.

[00:12:15] And perspective comes from having other ways of looking at the world, isn't it?

[00:12:18] And bigger, bigger ways of looking at the world.

[00:12:21] And I think that's quite interesting, isn't it?

[00:12:22] You've got to widen your perspective to have perspective, I guess.

[00:12:26] No, you do.

[00:12:27] And you had mentioned just earlier, I've recently written a book and I started when I wrote the book, I started as a leadership book.

[00:12:35] But what I realized is, is actually my success or failure is as much about raising children.

[00:12:42] And and I've been married for 39 years.

[00:12:45] So my marriage and I have a faith and how that faith fits into my marriage and fits into my family, fits into business.

[00:12:51] So so those are the things that really allowed me to have the right perspective, because my family is far more important than making a field goal.

[00:12:59] And my wife and my marriage is far more important than scoring three points.

[00:13:03] And, you know, and those are the things that really matter in the very end, at least to me.

[00:13:07] And it's fascinating today, isn't it? Because, of course, we lose perspective by being, you know, really drilled into these echo chambers and social media and people living their life in a false reality.

[00:13:17] And they're being infected by people whose only motive is to make money out of them or or to drive them in a particular sense of.

[00:13:28] Objective.

[00:13:30] I feel very fortunate to a degree that I didn't grow up in the social media, you know, 40 years ago, it didn't exist. Right.

[00:13:37] I happen to have a daughter in law that has that's that is a full time influencer.

[00:13:41] She has 600000 followers and and I have actually seen up up close and personal how that can affect her, because people on social media actually are are very nice.

[00:13:54] They're actually very, very mean and they boy.

[00:13:56] And so, you know, keeping perspective in everything you do in life, I think, allows you to have peace and harmony and and and and and have a satisfying life.

[00:14:08] And those people that can't do that, I think we we've seen over and over and over the end result of that.

[00:14:15] And many times it doesn't end up very good for them.

[00:14:18] Yeah. Fascinating.

[00:14:19] So going back to when you finished or you come to the end of your career, how did you make the transition from being as effectively having the identity of an athlete or a football player into doing something else?

[00:14:31] So you said took six months, but did you did you do that in a conscious way?

[00:14:35] Did you stumble into something else?

[00:14:37] No. You know, so when I was in university, the great thing about American university sports is you're a semi professional athlete in university because, you know,

[00:14:48] you know, today they're actually paid. But when I was in school, we weren't paid.

[00:14:52] But my university college was all paid. Everything was paid for me.

[00:14:56] And I realized that at some point my my career is going to end.

[00:15:01] And I had a father that was a businessman. I had two older brothers at the time that were already out of university and good careers.

[00:15:07] And so I I very early on realized there was going to be life after football whenever it came.

[00:15:13] I didn't know when it would come. And so I was actually a very good student and I was very active in my university outside of my sports.

[00:15:21] I was the businessman of the year, my senior year at the university that I attended.

[00:15:26] And and and I was acting a lot of things outside of my sport, which was not which was atypical.

[00:15:32] I will tell you of many of the athletes I played with. I was probably atypical, but I had at a very early age.

[00:15:38] I knew that it was going to end. I actually wasn't even that guy. I thought I was gonna play professionally.

[00:15:43] So I thought it was a very fortunate to play professionally. So it was pretty easy for me to once I realized that, you know, people aren't going to care who I am anymore.

[00:15:53] That was the biggest thing is is people didn't care if I could kick a fifty eight, sixty yard field goal. They just didn't care.

[00:15:59] Yeah. All they cared about was can I deliver business results for business?

[00:16:03] I went to work for and and it was pretty quick and it was a pretty hard and quick lesson to realize that very, very early on.

[00:16:11] So my perspective came in a flash.

[00:16:15] So did you did you take the usual route of going from sport into sales? Is that is that was that your sort of transition?

[00:16:21] Because it seems to happen to a lot of people because you can you can make a big name for yourself very quickly in sales, can't you?

[00:16:26] You know, I didn't though. I actually went into operations.

[00:16:30] So I was actually I was actually hired by a company at the time, Texaco.

[00:16:36] Texaco was sold to Shell Oil years later. But but I was running at the time their service stations.

[00:16:43] And and after a six month training program, I was running six of the stores.

[00:16:47] And, you know, four years later, I was running one hundred and twenty and ten years later, I was running four hundred.

[00:16:53] But but, you know, the fact is, is it was very operational and so very disciplined and process and systems and all those things that I developed.

[00:17:02] So I did. I was never a sales guy. I used sales leadership skills and motivating my team and and and developing some leadership skills.

[00:17:12] But but I was always very operationally focused.

[00:17:14] So fascinating. So what are the big?

[00:17:17] I know this. Sorry, forgive me. This is really awful question.

[00:17:19] And I hate myself asking it.

[00:17:21] But what are the sort of big leadership messages that you brought from sports into into writing the book?

[00:17:27] And we'll get into the book in a second. But what are the sort of big things that you really hang your hats around?

[00:17:31] I probably the biggest thing was being intentional.

[00:17:34] OK, I mean, literally being intentional about what you do, because intentional just means what is your purpose and what are your priorities?

[00:17:45] And and how are you going to accomplish what you need to accomplish?

[00:17:49] You know, intentional means setting goals for yourself. Right.

[00:17:51] And I think those are things as an athlete.

[00:17:54] You become very focused on for me as a 13 year old.

[00:17:59] It was making the high school in our country, the high school football team.

[00:18:04] And then it was getting a university scholarship and then making the university team, then becoming a professional athlete.

[00:18:09] It was and I did that same thing in business.

[00:18:11] And I was very intentional about how I did to set goals up for myself.

[00:18:15] And, you know, one of the biggest things I learned is at a very early age, I wanted to be a chief executive officer.

[00:18:22] Well, a lot of us do. But but I realized that that a CEO is a journalist.

[00:18:26] And so I had to be good at operations. I had to understand finance.

[00:18:31] I understand H.R. I understand M&A or real estate.

[00:18:34] And so my first 10, 15 years of my career, I try to be as good as a lot of different things so that when the time came and get my first break to run something big that I knew a lot about little things.

[00:18:48] Yeah. Very intentional about that.

[00:18:51] Now, that's really interesting because it's only it's only 20 years ago or so where CEOs came out of a function and they were not generalists, weren't they?

[00:19:00] It's interesting that you brought that up because there was a sort of there was a there was a cult, maybe the 80s and 90s, where you had these charismatic ex sales and marketing leaders.

[00:19:08] And then you had engineers as leaders. And then you had then it was, you know, when things got tough, suddenly everybody who was a leader had been the accountant.

[00:19:16] And it's and it's actually quite a modern thing, isn't it? To have this sort of specialist generalist role as a CEO.

[00:19:23] So what's your view on that? Well, you know, maybe I was just a little ahead of my time.

[00:19:29] Yeah. No, I just realized as I saw my bosses, the folks that are leaders, when I sat in meetings with them, I just noticed that they could speak a little bit about each of the subjects.

[00:19:42] If finance and accounting was doing a presentation, they they had a grasp of that when the real estate people came in and talked about, you know, a deal they want to do.

[00:19:51] They had a grasp when there was the H.R. function.

[00:19:55] And so I quickly realized that being a generalist, maybe I was specific.

[00:20:01] I'm really I think I'm really good at operations. Right.

[00:20:03] So that was something I was very good. But but I also think being a generalist and knowing a lot about a lot of things goes a long way.

[00:20:11] And that and it's not just in business, by the way, that's in life.

[00:20:15] I mean, I take those same principles in business.

[00:20:20] And I've applied them to to raising a family and I've applied them in 39 years of marriage, because I think there's a lot of things you got to do well to be successful at at whatever it is you're trying to be successful at.

[00:20:34] And so that's where I say intention. I was very intentional at a very early age in my life on the things that I did.

[00:20:43] That's really interesting. And I wonder if it's a feature of being an executive in a large corporate, because often you'll see that the the sort of wheeler dealer entrepreneur, you know, starting off their small, tiny businesses.

[00:20:54] They they've got to they've got to be something, haven't they?

[00:20:58] So but it's the benefit. I always think when you talk to people who've worked in large organizations, they have a real thorough grounding so that you're being quite self-deprecating here because I'm guessing you're a pretty good account, pretty good finance guy, pretty good ops guy, pretty good sales guy.

[00:21:13] And I think that's, you know, you often talk to people who've been through graduate programs in rank or the big organizations, and they're often very, very classy because I've had a lot of developments and they really do know their stuff because it's it's not an easy thing to run a huge organization with many, many moving parts, especially oil and gas, because you've got all those different, you know, the whole life cycle of oil and gas is absolutely massive, isn't it?

[00:21:35] Right, it is. And, you know, and I've run the biggest company I've been president CEO of is a four billion dollar company.

[00:21:42] Yeah, and the smallest company I've been I've been the CEO of is a hundred million dollar company, which I have.

[00:21:47] Yeah, right. Still big. But right now I'm running. And that was I went from public traded companies to private equity.

[00:21:53] I've done private equity now the last 10 years. And these are companies that are building and selling.

[00:21:57] But what I found interesting is many of the skills that I learned at Shell Oil, Behemoth Shell Oil, which was a four hundred billion dollar company.

[00:22:08] And I was running a division for Shell when I was there. But I'm still using those things and still implementing those things running this hundred million dollar company.

[00:22:19] The principles are the same. You've got to be a little more entrepreneurial in these small businesses.

[00:22:24] You have to watch your cash a little more in these small businesses or certain things you've got to do a little differently.

[00:22:28] But but the principles at a high level really aren't any different.

[00:22:32] But what's also interesting is the culture that PE firms create, because they're, you know, when a PE firm pulls a small organization,

[00:22:40] a big function out of a larger company, what it's doing is betting on its ability for that management team to deliver a better result.

[00:22:46] And to be able to sell it down the line. So it's a it's a much it's a much tougher environment as well sometimes, isn't it?

[00:22:53] Oh, it certainly is. I wake up with, you know, a little feeling in my stomach since I've been in PE that I didn't have at the publicly traded company,

[00:23:03] because when I was at this publicly traded company, I knew that every year earnings were going to be good.

[00:23:06] And I knew that the stock was going to improve. And I mean, not always the case.

[00:23:10] But I mean, you know, you didn't have that same kind of stress that you feel that, you know, you have shareholders that own this private private equity is owned by a bunch of limited partners.

[00:23:19] And and they invest that. Let's say they invest a million dollars and they expect to get a two or three times return on that investment.

[00:23:25] Yeah. Well, I'm responsible for that return. Now, I also have a piece of that.

[00:23:29] So so if it when the business sells, if it sells well, I get a return on that asset as well.

[00:23:37] But but certainly the tip's a lot sharper working for private equity than it was working for a publicly traded company for me.

[00:23:46] Yes. Yes. There's no hiding. Well, I know you decided to write a book.

[00:23:49] So what was the motivation behind the book? Was this part of your legacy or is this a workbook handbook?

[00:23:55] Or you just thought one day everybody's writing books. There must be room for one more.

[00:24:00] You know, Russell, it's the reason it's really a good question is because I've never really thought of myself as this person's got all kinds of wisdom I need to share with the world.

[00:24:10] But the real life thing happened about 24 months ago is I was running a private equity backed company.

[00:24:18] Goldman Sachs owned the company that I was running and we are up for sale.

[00:24:22] And we end up selling the business to a company called Coostar Circle K.

[00:24:28] And it's a it's actually it was a car wash business that I was running at the time.

[00:24:32] But one of the people on the deal team from Circle K said, you know, and you get to know these guys in these negotiations pretty well.

[00:24:39] Now, after about six months and the deal was was finally closed at Stu, you had a really fascinating life.

[00:24:44] You should write a book. And up to that point, and this is the honest to goodness truth, I never thought about it.

[00:24:50] What I had been doing, though, in the last 10 years as a CEO, every week I write a note to my organization.

[00:24:57] It's usually inspirational. It's a thought provoking note, something for them to think about.

[00:25:00] And I've got I had one hundred and twenty five pages worth of notes.

[00:25:04] So I took his idea of writing a book and then I put these notes together and came up with one hundred twenty five pages.

[00:25:13] Now, to go on from there, it started as a leadership book.

[00:25:17] But what I realized is, as I looked at this book is you can't be a great leader if you don't have your family act together.

[00:25:25] Well, some people don't have great families, but I thought to be a successful leader, I need to have a good family balance in my life.

[00:25:33] And so I talked quite a bit about, you know, family and life, work life balance.

[00:25:36] And and then I talked about my faith in the book and how that helped keep me grounded in some of the things I did.

[00:25:44] And out came a book called Aim for the Uprights, the intentional playbook and success for faith, family and business.

[00:25:49] And and what started as a leadership book kind of became an all encompassing book about life in general.

[00:25:54] I like that you called it a playbook. So can you tell me why you chose that?

[00:25:58] Because I know what a playbook is in sport. It's the yeah, it's the it's the game plan, effectively, isn't it?

[00:26:03] Well, yeah, it is. And the reason why it's a playbook is I have 18 chapters in the book.

[00:26:07] And at the end of each chapter, there's actually a lesson that I think whether you're 15 or or 95, there's some I it's not just.

[00:26:18] You know, here's my life and look how neat I am. That is kind of a valueless book.

[00:26:23] It's here's what I've learned in my life through business and family.

[00:26:27] I talk about my wife's my wife is a cancer survivor.

[00:26:31] And then at each of these chapter is actually kind of something for people to think about and and challenge them.

[00:26:39] And what are they doing on that particular subject?

[00:26:41] And there's 18 different subjects. And and and and those all came from, by the way, the 10 years worth of notes I've been writing on a weekly basis.

[00:26:48] So really, it was fun to put put the book together.

[00:26:52] And who did you write it for? I mean, what what was the intended audience, I guess?

[00:26:57] Well, you know, the intended audience was really kind of 25 to 50 year olds.

[00:27:02] And the reason I say 25 to 50, you can go to 20 and 50 is is people that are starting in their career or in the middle of their career that are looking for balance,

[00:27:12] that are trying to figure out how do I become a successful blank?

[00:27:16] Whatever that, you know, whether you're in a trade or whether you're a business or whether you're an educator, doesn't matter.

[00:27:21] How do I how do I be successful at at at whatever my career aspirations are while at the same time being successful in the home front?

[00:27:32] And and so, you know, at 70, it's kind of too late. Right.

[00:27:38] Well, maybe it's never too late. But I thought if I had this target of 25 years,

[00:27:44] I can help some people think through and navigate their their lives, maybe being a little more thoughtful about their approach they took to life.

[00:27:52] Yes. And what is your relative? Who's the influence? I think of it.

[00:27:56] What's my daughter in law?

[00:27:58] Sorry, I just forgotten which which relative it was.

[00:28:00] Yeah, you know, it's my daughter in law. And and and she's already promoted it on her.

[00:28:05] She's very appreciative. You know, she's a daughter in law. That's actually a daughter. Right.

[00:28:08] I mean, she's a daughter in law that that she and my son met while they were in high school.

[00:28:14] So they were young, married for 10 years. And and she's very, very proud of me.

[00:28:20] And she has promoted my book as well. But but yeah, I think I think for a lot of the audience, they've appreciated my and I'm very, very open to the book.

[00:28:31] So I talk about, you know, some of the struggles that I had as I went through my career and I was very transparent.

[00:28:37] And a lot of people, you know, think life's easy with no problems.

[00:28:41] We know that's not true. So I'm very, very transparent in a lot of stories I share.

[00:28:45] Yeah. And I notice actually, I mean, you talk a lot about control, don't you?

[00:28:53] And choices and such like. So you talk about the power to choose kindness, empathy and understanding.

[00:28:59] And I've always been a big fan, you know, that choice and control is really a lot of what our lives are about, isn't it?

[00:29:05] And actually being accountable and responsible for those choices and and for the consequences of those choices.

[00:29:10] Right. And you learn from those choices as well, don't you? And that's and that's the point of it.

[00:29:14] And I think I thought you were going to come down and say that is your biggest lesson.

[00:29:18] But but intentionality is quite interesting as well.

[00:29:20] And I think that sense of purpose moving through life is quite fascinating from you.

[00:29:25] But there are a lot of people out there who who don't have a sense of purpose,

[00:29:28] they're sort of lost and they're sort of wandering around.

[00:29:31] I mean, so especially especially I think now with the way the education's gone and the sort of examples and social media.

[00:29:39] So, I mean, if you have to sit down and say to someone, this is how I become intentional,

[00:29:44] you sort of mentioned goals and plans. Could you just flesh that out a bit for us?

[00:29:47] Yeah. And, you know, I just you said something that triggered a thought in my brain.

[00:29:52] I'm going to answer your question. But, you know, I said that this book is written for 25 to 50 year olds.

[00:29:58] And actually, I'm intentional. I'm 64 now and I'm very, very intentional.

[00:30:03] Sixty four. I'm intentional grandfather now. Right.

[00:30:06] I'm very, very intentional. My wife and I live in the same town as our children.

[00:30:11] I don't think I'd pick Houston, Texas to live if given a free drop.

[00:30:17] But we live here purposely because our grandchildren are here.

[00:30:20] Yes. We have a bigger than usual house so that we can have grandchildren, their friends over.

[00:30:26] So that's back to the intentionality. To answer your question, you know,

[00:30:30] I have eight steps to I say to be intentional.

[00:30:33] And I don't want to, you know, that's a whole 20 minutes on itself.

[00:30:39] But the eight steps I have are purpose, priorities, distractions, harmony, self-reflection,

[00:30:44] responsibility, grit and smile. I know that was very quick.

[00:30:47] That makes sense.

[00:30:49] And but but you've got to have grit.

[00:30:52] And one of the biggest things I think in intentionality is at the very, very end,

[00:30:55] you've got to have fun and smile. I had and I had a board member at a recent company I was CEO of said,

[00:31:05] Stu, you're too nice of a guy. You're just too nice of a guy.

[00:31:08] And you've got to be tougher. And I'm thinking, man,

[00:31:12] I think you can be a tough guy and be really nice, too, at the same time.

[00:31:17] Right. So so my intentionality has been those eight things that I said very, very quickly.

[00:31:21] And I know there's not a time to go through them, but but each one has a sub category behind it.

[00:31:28] And and and I've done that once again through my business career.

[00:31:33] I did it raising a family and I've got grown children now, grandchildren.

[00:31:36] And I've done it with my wife for 39 years.

[00:31:39] We're still very intentional. We still have dates and we still do things because it's important for us to keep that flame alive,

[00:31:46] even as we get older. Right. It's all about intentionality.

[00:31:51] So, yeah, it's it's it's probably, you know, I'm not sharing anything that probably people haven't heard before.

[00:31:59] But I think I put in the book a number of steps to think about as you're going through your life.

[00:32:04] Yeah, I like it. It's like a proper business planning process, isn't it?

[00:32:07] And you talk about distractions as well. But your book's called Aim for the Uprights,

[00:32:12] which I found was quite interesting because I would have thought you'd be gaming for the gap between the uprights.

[00:32:16] I know nothing about sports. So this is a two minute story.

[00:32:21] We got two minutes. Of course, you've got as long as you need.

[00:32:23] I've got two minute story and I tell you why I named it this.

[00:32:27] And it's it's been a metaphor for my life.

[00:32:30] So in in in in the NFL, they have what's called combines.

[00:32:35] They bring the top players that are in university to different places.

[00:32:40] And the New York Giants, which is another NFL team, was very interested in me two weeks before the NFL draft,

[00:32:47] before they picked players. And he came out to the field and put 10 balls across on the 30 yard line,

[00:32:52] which is a 40 yard field goal. Right.

[00:32:54] And he said, Stu, want you to kick?

[00:32:57] I said, this is great. I kicked a 60 yarder that year or 57 yarder that year.

[00:33:01] So I 40 yards was short for me.

[00:33:03] He says, but I don't want you to kick it through the uprights to the goalposts.

[00:33:07] I want you to actually hit the right bar that's going up.

[00:33:10] It's called the upright. I want you to get that.

[00:33:12] I said, what? I'm 40 yards out. It's three inches in diameter.

[00:33:15] There's no way to hit that. But by golly, I was going to do it.

[00:33:18] And so I swung the foot and I kicked the ball and I literally hit the right upright.

[00:33:22] Well, I'm not sure who is more surprised, him or me.

[00:33:25] Yes. We're both surprised because doing that is really I mean,

[00:33:29] the accuracy of doing that. Beckham would have a hard time doing that.

[00:33:32] I mean, it's it's hard to do. Right.

[00:33:34] And I kicked nine more and I missed nine more.

[00:33:36] But then he said, Stu, why do you think I asked you to do that?

[00:33:38] I said, coach, I have no idea. He says, well,

[00:33:40] what I've noticed kids going from university to professionally is they aim for good.

[00:33:45] They aim for the goalpost. If they miss a right or a little left of it,

[00:33:49] he says they missed their three points.

[00:33:51] We teach people in the NFL to aim for something very,

[00:33:53] very small in the middle of that goalpost.

[00:33:55] And that's what you're aiming for.

[00:33:57] And if you miss a little right left, you still make your three points.

[00:34:00] He says, yes, I'm going to teach you to go aim from good to aim to great.

[00:34:04] You've been aiming for good your whole life, Stu.

[00:34:06] I want you to aim for great.

[00:34:08] And so that became the metaphor for my life.

[00:34:11] Stop aiming for good. Stop aiming for mediocre.

[00:34:14] Aim for greatness in everything you do.

[00:34:16] So aim for the upright.

[00:34:17] That's aiming for greatness as opposed to aiming for the goalpost.

[00:34:20] So as a young 22 year old man,

[00:34:24] that story has resonated with me for the last next last 42 years as an athlete,

[00:34:30] as a professional executive, as a father and as, as a, as a friend.

[00:34:36] I mean, aim for great, don't aim for good.

[00:34:38] So that's, that's the name of the book.

[00:34:39] And even Jim Collins actually wrote a whole book on good to great, didn't he?

[00:34:42] So he was on the thing.

[00:34:44] But it's interesting as well.

[00:34:45] Interesting as well.

[00:34:46] How a coach or a teacher can make such a massive impact by just one single,

[00:34:49] single statement.

[00:34:50] And you've operationalized that idea, haven't you really?

[00:34:53] Absolutely.

[00:34:54] Metaphorically, it changed my life and it wasn't about football anymore.

[00:34:57] Yeah.

[00:34:58] Very good.

[00:34:58] So how do people get their paws on the book?

[00:35:01] What's it called?

[00:35:02] Where do you find it?

[00:35:03] Well, it's called Aim for the Uprights by Stu Crum,

[00:35:05] the intentional playbook for success and faith, family and business.

[00:35:08] It's on Amazon.

[00:35:10] It's actually hit a bestseller category in one item.

[00:35:16] And, and, and, and, you know,

[00:35:18] if people are looking for something to help them think about, you know,

[00:35:22] how they want to spend the next 20, 30 years of their life,

[00:35:25] and they've never really thought about it in detail.

[00:35:27] I've kind of created a little playbook in this book through a lot of stories.

[00:35:31] And I think it might be interesting for certain people.

[00:35:35] So Amazon.com, easy to buy.

[00:35:38] And even Amazon.co.uk as well, because I've just been looking.

[00:35:41] Yes.

[00:35:42] Arrable on all good Amazons near you.

[00:35:45] Stu, it's been a delight.

[00:35:46] I've just realized the time has flown by and I said it was going to be a

[00:35:50] certain amount of time, but it's been more.

[00:35:52] So thank you so much for indulging us today.

[00:35:54] And I wish you all power to your elbow with the book.

[00:35:57] I think it's, it sounds fantastic.

[00:35:59] Russell, thank you so much.

[00:36:00] I appreciate it.

[00:36:01] And all my friends back in the UK, I give you a shout out.

[00:36:04] I've got a lot of friends.

[00:36:05] No worries.

[00:36:06] You take care.

[00:36:07] All right.

[00:36:07] Thank you.

[00:36:09] Hi, thanks for listening.

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