RESUMES CAN FOOL YOU. Look at mine today and you might think I had some master plan I followed, step by logical step, blending entrepreneurship and law to reach a leadership position in a major sport. But as I always tell people, when I got started I didn’t know what the heck I was doing. Instead, two things guided me to success. First were these rules I’m sharing with you now. Second was a group of loyal and talented people I’ve been blessed to know, people who treated my success and well-being like it was their own: my inner circle.
These people I refer to as my inner circle have provided the support, insight, honesty, and guidance that have made it possible to realize my dreams—and then some. They are people whose connections to me go much deeper than any one project or goal. I have been fortunate in my inner circle, but everyone has the makings of a powerful inner circle among the people they already know, whether family, friends, colleagues, or mentors. It’s a question of learning to tap into their true potential.
One of the most important people for me, someone who helped make possible many of my proudest achievements, was Reggie White, the great defensive lineman for the Philadelphia Eagles and the Green Bay Packers. I became his agent, and in time he helped me get to know the most important people in NASCAR, but the truth is that when we met, neither of us was talking about racing. We weren’t even talking about football. I want to tell the story of how my inner circle grew, and how he came to be part of it, because that had to happen before I could even begin to get where I am today. The story begins long before I met Reggie White.
Back in Indianapolis when I was a teenager, I was friends with a boy whose father took an interest in me because we both loved sports, especially baseball. Back then, I had no one to come to my games and cheer me on. My father had passed away, my stepfather wasn’t interested, and my mother had a house full of kids to manage. Somehow, Uncle Ronald, as we kids called him, took me in. Even on Saturday mornings, after he might have had too many beers on Friday night, he would still be at my game. He talked to me about my playing and my potential, and praised me because I wasn’t “all slang-talking,” as he said. He told me he admired me for conducting myself in a way that was “businesslike and respectable.” Acting as a kind of father figure, he encouraged me at every game. He told me I had the potential to go pro, and when I was offered a scholarship to Notre Dame, no one was happier. When I came back to Indianapolis to visit, I always called him. To this day, he says I might have had the potential to play in the major leagues, before the injury in college that put an end to my days as a ballplayer.
What it meant for me to have Uncle Ronald in my inner circle had two parts. First, it was support and encouragement I could count on, especially when I needed to play my best. I’ve come to see that I have two extremes in my personality; I have very thick armor, but once you penetrate this armor, I’m very sensitive. So I’ve always set very high standards. I’m my own worst critic as I work to be pleasing to God and to my family. But I’m a human being, too. I need that time with people who have my best interests at heart, people with whom I don’t have to worry about another agenda, because I know that they care about me.
The second blessing I found with Uncle Ronald, and in the rest of my inner circle since then, was honest feedback from those who see more in me, at times, than I can. That’s what makes an inner circle so powerful: the combination of support without any strings attached and honest feedback you can trust.
START CLOSE TO HOME
FOR MOST PEOPLE IT begins with a close friend or a family member. My wife’s inner circle began with her sister, who is her best friend. What matters is that it’s someone with no other agenda than focusing on your progress as an individual. My mother became another of the early and important people in my inner circle. From early on, we had an unusual relationship because I hadn’t seen her for seven years after my father took me away. When I came back home my relationship with her was difficult. In my heart, I always felt the bond with her, but I had left when I was a boy and I came back as a teenager. It was very awkward at first, but in time it meant she could be more like a friend to me than if I had been home in the usual way. She had limited education, but she was wise, candid, and outspoken. I always knew she would give it to me straight. She was the one who showed me how people would open up to you, whether the mayor or the local drug addict, if you showed you were interested in whatever made them tick. She made people feel comfortable and secure and everybody told her their business, and in this way she got an education in relationships that you couldn’t get at any school. I relied on her for that understanding as I started to launch my career.
Out of college, I worked for General Motors in a college-grad-in-training program. They identified me as a “high-potential candidate” and put me in a fast-track program. On my evaluations, I always got four out of four. Then I ran into a supervisor a few years older than me, and suddenly with her I couldn’t do anything right. She told me I had no communication skills. She told me my work was poor. I tried to talk it out with her and I got nowhere. This was probably the first time I had run into a problem with someone in authority that I couldn’t talk my way through. My work suffered. I became depressed. I told my mother I was ready to quit—I had several different offers out of college, and I thought I might try another company.
My mother had no corporate experience—she had worked as a singer and a nurse—but she knew about people and their ways. She told me, no, you’re not going to quit. You leave on your own terms—don’t let anyone drive you away. Because in every job you ever have, you’ll encounter that same difficult boss, just with a different name and face.
I wasn’t happy with her advice, but I knew it came from her pure desire for my success. So I decided to stick it out. Slowly I learned to work with that supervisor, and though it was never smooth or enjoyable, I wound up being promoted to district sales manager. I did quit, eventually, but I left on my own terms. And sure enough, when I got other jobs, now and then I had a similar difficulty with a supervisor, only I was in higher positions and the supervisor was a whole lot more important. But by the time I encountered those challenges, they were easier to take. I could better tolerate the criticism, and I knew how to make myself necessary to the supervisor and to the company. I think it became easier thanks to the maturity I had gained by taking my mother’s advice and sticking with that first job.
THE FOUNDATION IS TRUST
YOUR INNER CIRCLE IS your source for unconditional support and objective feedback; it’s also your help in regaining your personal focus and resolve when they start to waver. It may be the most valuable resource anyone has. How do you build your inner circle? Of course, you want the most insightful and experienced people you can find, but to begin, put all career calculations aside. Just like building a house, you have to start with a strong foundation or it doesn’t much matter what you put on top. The foundation of your inner circle, whether your concerns have to do with work, home, or spirit, is the same: trust. Find those people whose honesty, care, and commitment to your long-term success are as strong as your dedication to theirs. People who are like family—even if, like me, your family didn’t always act “like family.” Look for the people around you who treat you the way family should do, and then make sure you do the same.
Maybe you already have an inner circle that works for you in just the way I’ve described. In that case you are blessed indeed. But if as you read this you need to gather an inner circle around you for the first time, or if you need to reconsider whether the people who fill this role for you are still suited to your life situation and your career challenges today, let me offer a few suggestions. Let’s begin as if you have never had an inner circle, and you would like now to get started.
List your candidates.
Make a list of the people you have gone to for advice and help, whether recently or in the past. Consider every area of your life. It’s not as easy as it seems; you may need to come back to the list over a few days. Just keep writing down names.
Cast a wide net.
The only mistake at this stage is not being open-minded enough. Here are some things that are not required for members of your inner circle:
Include people you don’t always agree with.
It’s all right if you don’t always get along with the people in your inner circle. In fact, as I’ll explain, people you can argue with—respectfully and thoughtfully, without anyone holding a grudge in the end—are some of the most helpful people there are.
Go for straight trust.
What you need is people who have never betrayed you, who will take your side unconditionally and tell you the truth, whether you like it or not. The most important test is trust: once you have your list, go through it name by name and cross off everyone, even friends and family, who don’t pass that test. If they are prone to see your success as their loss, or if they have put their own interests ahead of yours, even some of the time, then although they may be important people whom you will love for your entire life, cross them off this list.
To help as you draw up your list and then whittle it down until there’s nothing but trust, here are some questions to help you picture each relationship clearly. Ask yourself:
Cut down your list until you feel certain about everyone on it.
You can have a big group, but you only need two to start, so be choosy. It’s better to have fewer people in your inner circle than to have someone who may be undermining or unworthy of your trust—even once in a while. Not sure about a name on your list? Then the answer is no. He or she may still be a good person, someone who will always be a part of your life, but not in this role.
As your list grows shorter, there will be close friends and family members who don’t make the cut. You may also find that someone who remains on the list has been out of your life too long. All this is valuable information. Keep cutting until you feel certain about the names that are left—again, one is too few, but two is enough.
How can you be certain you have the right people? I would like to give you the formula—exactly how to recognize what you need for your inner circle in others, and how to provide what they need in return—but there is no formula. It’s something you have to learn by feel, from the examples of the best people in your life. So as part of this exercise, let me tell a story about recognizing a key member of my inner circle where I didn’t expect to find him.
This was in the days after my father died and I was living with my sister Traci in Nevada, supposedly in the care of my stepmother but mostly on our own. Thanks to news of his funeral, my mother finally located Traci and me in Las Vegas, where my father had hidden us away from her. Now she made arrangements for us to fly back to Indianapolis to rejoin her family.
It was just the two of us kids on that airplane and neither of us wanted to go. As bad as things might have gotten for us, our life with our stepmother was what we were used to, and we didn’t want to leave it. But my mother had come to Las Vegas and made it clear that no one had a choice.
When we walked off the plane there seemed to be an ocean of people at the gate, people in all shapes, sizes, ages, and colors, waiting for us. It was frightening. We were supposed to be related to all of them, but my sister didn’t recognize a soul, and many were strangers to me, too. This wasn’t the kind of reunion where people were calling out to each other and hugging, full of joy. It was quiet. Tears were falling.
All those people who met us at the airport followed us home. The house—our house, now—was very small, two bedrooms for seven people, and we had a baby half-brother we had never met, and I think we both felt very alone. Finally, Traci began to feel some familiarity around our older half-brother, Jerry. He had often looked after us, the designated babysitter, before we were taken away. Jerry was the most levelheaded, calm, clear sibling, even in the times of hostility—the emotional glue that had held the family together. After my father took us away to Las Vegas, we missed him as much as anyone.
Now he sat on the couch with us, speaking to us again as he used to do in his soft voice and showing his heartfelt smile. Traci thought she might remember that smile. That night Jerry stayed up with us very late, until everybody else had gone to bed. When it was finally quiet, he sat with us on the couch, me on one side and Traci on the other. That’s when he brought out the letters. He had written them to us when we were gone, saying how much he missed us and how he didn’t want us to think that nobody cared that we had been taken away. He kept them so he could show us the postmarks on the envelopes, and how they had all come back to him stamped with “addressee unknown,” “return to sender,” and so forth. The letters were his way to prove that he never stopped trying to find us. He had taken our disappearance very hard.
Jerry read us the letters and we sat on the couch together and cried. We fell asleep there, my head on one of Jerry’s shoulders and Traci’s on the other. It was the first time that place felt anything like a home. I don’t think my mother could have been happier or more relieved to have us back, or that she could have tried harder to make things right, but it was Jerry who first made himself our ally, who helped us find our place again and began to stitch our torn family back together. He became a model for me of what an ally should be, a true member of my inner circle, and ever since I’ve looked for those qualities of dedication and honesty, and that sense that we stand or fall together.
MAKING THE MOST OF YOUR INNER CIRCLE
ONCE YOU HAVE YOUR list of people you know you can trust and benefit from having in your inner circle, you need to start making more use of this extraordinary resource. That means a conscious choice to reach out more often. These are the people who get you the most, so if you’re not in the habit of speaking to them, start finding the time. Get out your calendar. Pick up the phone. If you already speak to them often, be sure that you find opportunities to go beyond the usual banter and hanging out, so you can talk about the things that make you both tick. I’m not saying you need to go all serious on them and start asking formally for their advice. With some people, you do that, but with others you just talk, and no one can really say what part of the conversation is advice and what’s mentoring and what’s just hanging out talking about life. All that matters is that you each listen to understand what moves the other. The result is any number of benefits. To make the most of them:
EXPANDING YOUR INNER CIRCLE FROM PERSONAL TO PROFESSIONAL
SO FAR I’VE PUT the emphasis on how people with no special knowledge or qualifications can still be a source of great help and wisdom. I’ve stressed the value of trust. But as you progress in your career, you may find you need some people in your inner circle who understand the practical ins and outs of what you do, whether it’s running a business, operating a machine, serving customers, or raising a family. How do you make sure you know when that day has come?
Don’t confuse loyalty with skill.
I see it happen over and over, especially with professional athletes and artists. They surround themselves with an inner circle of dedicated people they can trust. In this they’re usually a big step ahead of people from more conventional business backgrounds, who may find out too late that they have no one at work, maybe no one in the world, for whom they come first. But often, when that athlete’s or artist’s career takes off, they may imagine that their inner circle has business skills equal to their loyalty. They may give their trusted advisor more practical credit than they should, based on the feelings between them. At that point, it’s time to ask what skills you can find among those in your inner circle, and what you need new members to provide.
Ask your existing inner circle to help add new members.
When you find that your inner circle needs to expand, don’t push away the people who are already close. As you identify people with the professional expertise you need, you will have to make sure they are as trustworthy and as committed to your success as those already in your inner circle. When you have a few candidates in mind, let people already in your inner circle spend time with you and the new people you’re considering. Even if they have no knowledge of the business issues, they may pick up on character, motives, and agenda.
In this way, the different members of your inner circle begin to create checks and balances. Over time, you will grow more comfortable going to different ones for different reasons, and they may each come to play very different roles. Some may never get as close personally but they know business or ideals. Frankly it’s rare to find someone who can do it all. The goal is to give each person in your inner circle the chance to do the best for you that they can, as you do the best you can for them. Appreciate each one for how the two of you can get where you want to be.
Listen for the limits of people’s skills.
When you are relying on people in your inner circle to handle things they are not qualified to do, there will be warning signs that you can hear; their lack of thorough knowledge, or their wrong fit with some aspect of your work, will lead them to say things that sound wrong. With my mother, for example, I came to realize that she would always speak authoritatively about whatever topic came up, whether she had the skill set to justify that confidence or not. If the question was medical, then she was a brain surgeon. If it was financial, she was a Wall Street financier. In our law office, where she was the office manager, she gave advice whenever she was asked, even to clients who thought she was one of the attorneys. But there were always moments in those conversations when she got out of her depth, and you could hear her straining to talk the way she thought an expert would talk. That was a small clue to what might have been a big problem if I hadn’t caught it in time. Although I still respected her sense of people, I began to make sure, quietly, that our clients understood her role in the office.
I had a similar experience once with a leader and educator from my church. He wanted to get closer to me professionally, outside of the world of our church, and Jennifer and I decided to invite him to spend some time with the family so we could get to know each other better. We had a good time, but the conversation kept going off. Jennifer noticed it first. At some point in the conversation, the subject of her age came up. Our visitor, who happened to be white, started complimenting her: “You’re so beautiful,” he said, which was very flattering. “You’re so lucky,” which was fine, too. And then, “Black women just don’t age!” That sounded strange to Jennifer, who, of course, ages like anyone else.
Then we were talking about my son Max’s basketball game. He had been on fire that day, scored six buckets, and this man says, “He’s the next Michael Jordan!” But we’re from Indiana, Larry Bird fans, with no special feel for Michael Jordan—and really, my son isn’t much like Michael Jordan at all. I suppose we were a little slow to smile. So he said, “But of course, he’s such a smart kid. I mean, he’s the next Barack Obama!”
It felt like this man, who as I say did a lot of good in the church, couldn’t quite see us as anything but examples of our race. I believe he meant well, but we didn’t feel the comfort, understanding, and respect that I would need to make him part of my inner circle. We realized the fit wasn’t right because of the wrong notes in the conversation.
Change your idea of mentors.
There’s no reason a mentor has to be older than you. The members of my inner circle are my mentors and my surrogate family; some are my peers and some are younger than I am. I’ve been mentored by someone in one area only to turn around and mentor that same person in a different area. Look for expertise, mutual goals, and a deep personal commitment to your success; nothing else matters.
HOW A BLACK MAN WITH A JEWISH NAME GOT TO NASCAR
I BEGAN THIS CHAPTER by saying that I would never have gotten where I am today, in a leadership position in the second biggest sport in America, if it hadn’t been for my inner circle—and especially for Reggie White, the football great who became my client, my mentor, and my close friend. That story is the best illustration I know of the power of an inner circle to take you farther than you ever knew you could go.
I first met Reggie together with his wife, Sara. The Whites had met in church, and now they were interested in starting a gospel label. They heard about my work, and we had a meeting along with two NBA stars who, like Reggie, were also ministers. About fifteen minutes into that meeting, I knew that these people could not work together. While they shared some worthy goals, each of the three ballplayers had a different way he wanted to go about running the label, and all of them were strong-willed.
Still, I had a sense for what made them tick—the passion for the church and the drive of professional sports—and I could see where they wanted to be, so I went looking for someone who could help them rise above their disagreements and realize their goals. I spoke with a good friend of mine who was a manager at Warner Bros. Records. He liked their basic vision and he could see how their celebrity could get the new company the attention it would need. He also saw that while they lacked business expertise, he could provide the guidance for the day-to-day operation of the company. He was also interested in funding the company as an institutional investor.
I told Reggie that I thought that bringing in outside money and outside expertise was the only way to go, but he and the other ministers weren’t comfortable with it. My friend at Warner Bros. was not African-American and not part of the church, and they didn’t want to let an outsider dictate to them how to realize a religious vision. Reggie told me he would rather do it himself: spend his own cash and run it his way.
At that point, had I been willing to go along, I could have made some money. Instead, I told him the straight truth: I didn’t think he could be successful with the gospel label. I said that I admired his vision but I didn’t think he had the expertise to make it a practical success. It was a friendly conversation, showing respect on both sides, but it was a dead end. We could only agree to disagree. He went forward without me.
They launched the record label without me or my contact at Warner Bros., and soon Reggie had lost well into seven figures. Still, there were plenty of people benefitting from his willingness to spend his own money, and they kept Reggie and me apart for several months, not wanting me to stop the gravy train. Finally, I was called back to take a look at how the business was being run, and on my advice he shut it down.
I suppose at that point, from a conventional business perspective, we were done—he had taken his shot in the music business, I had helped him cut his losses, and the project was finished. But Reggie’s prospects for founding a gospel label weren’t all that mattered to me. I took an interest in him, his needs, and his larger situation. Reggie was not just one of the greatest defensive players football had ever seen; he had a larger vision. From early on, he spent his Sundays preaching on inner-city street corners. He gave generously to Christian charities and was known for only showing his amazing ferocity on the football field. He didn’t fight and he didn’t curse; he treated everyone with respect. As he told Sports Illustrated, “I believe that I’ve been blessed with physical ability in order to gain a platform to preach the gospel…. I try to live a certain way, and maybe that’ll have some kind of effect. I think God has allowed me to have an impact on a few people’s lives.” It was this combination of his greatness as a player and his religious commitments that led to the nickname that stuck with him: the Minister of Defense.
From the day I met him, I wanted to get to know him as a person and not just how we might do business together. When we talked, we talked about our lives, our families, our dreams, and our aspirations. We talked about our passion for sports and our hope to see people of color succeed. We talked about wanting to live up to our values, which in Reggie’s case would lead him and Sara to build Hope Place—a shelter for unwed mothers near their home in rural Tennessee—and the Alpha & Omega Ministry, which sponsored a community development bank in Knoxville. Even while we were disagreeing about his scheme for his gospel label, and later when we shut it down, our conversations kept deepening. Our relationship grew stronger. I knew there might be potential for other business opportunities with Reggie, but the most important thing for me was to be true to him and to Sara.
One day I told him that Jennifer and I had gotten engaged to be married; Reggie insisted he would perform the ceremony. Although Jennifer and I had already set a date, the Packers could only give him a very limited choice of days off, so we changed our wedding day so he could officiate.
At a certain point after we shut down the gospel label, he told me that he wanted to make some changes in the way he handled his career and his public life. He said that I combined business skill, honesty, integrity, and a desire to help people of color grow, and for those reasons he wanted me to become his agent. I had become a part of his inner circle; now he was looking to expand his inner circle to promote his professional growth, and he wanted to include me there, too, in a formal role. (By contractual agreement, his current agent had to remain his official agent-of-record for life; technically, I became his co-agent.)
Even after I started working for him, we didn’t just talk about his career. We talked about everything, from business to marriage, from spirituality to family. One day, he called me up with a big idea I didn’t expect. He was always very proud of his daughter’s singing voice, he reminded me, and he wanted to help with her career. Now he told me he was going to make a record of his daughter singing while he played the harp. He had already called someone in the music business to find out which harp to buy, and he was taking lessons over the phone. Would I help him make the record? Did I think we would have a hit? I told him, “That sounds great, Reggie, but you’ve got to kill the harp. No one’s going to buy defensive lineman Reggie White playing the harp.” I would be lying if I said his feelings weren’t hurt at first, but he took it like a champ.
How does this story lead to me getting hired to run the best-known team in NASCAR? It doesn’t. The harp album was a complete dead end, and that’s the point. Reggie and I shared our ideas and dreams, big and small, smart and dumb. We stepped in when we thought the other was going to do something foolish and we worked together when we had an idea we both thought was good. That’s what it means to be part of someone’s inner circle. You’re in for life, you give your honest best, and you’re open to talk about anything.
The more we talked about racing, the more we felt that the way to make a difference in the sport was to launch a minority-owned team. It seemed the best place to be was in the bush league competition, like the minor leagues. One day on the phone Reggie suggested we meet to get started on our ideas for getting into NASCAR. I told him that I would love to meet, but not on the day he was available. My son had a tricycle race that day. The kids were going to meet in the schoolyard for their own Indy 500 and I had promised to be there to watch.
Suddenly Reggie wasn’t talking business. He was all excited about my son’s race. He announced that he was going to fly up for it, and sure enough when the day came, there he was, the great Reggie White, recently named to the NFL Hall of Fame’s All-Time Team, hanging with my little boy at his school like it was no big deal—like it was, for that moment, the most important thing in the world to him. Thinking of it today still brings tears to my eyes. Reggie understood how important it was for me to show up for my kids’ events, because my own parents were so rarely able to show up for me. Seeing Reggie do the same made me feel once again that I would do anything for him. That tells you more than anything why I was in Reggie’s inner circle.
After the kids were done racing, we talked about what we could do to convince the top people in NASCAR. We shared our best ideas freely, and we were free in our criticism when one of us had a “harp” idea. We were doing business but we were talking like brothers. And in the presentations we gave, I think our commitment and our vision, refined by this generous listening and talking, came through. We combined Reggie’s incomparable competitive experience and celebrity with my vision that in the twenty-first century, when the costs of running a sports team are so high, the owners must understand that they are in the entertainment business, because only succeeding in that business will cover the costs of a winning team. A lot of people have come around to that way of seeing now, but at the time it was something new, and I think that together we were able to convey the excitement and the promise of what we could do for this sport we both loved.
Sadly, Reggie passed away before these plans could bear fruit. He suffered a heart attack when he was only forty-three years old. But I continued to pursue our vision, drawing on the connections we had made, the ideas we developed, and the goodwill we spread together, and while NASCAR doesn’t yet have a minority-owned top-tier team, it has had its first minority president at the cup level. I said earlier that the power of an inner circle is that it’s stronger than any individual project or goal, and in this case the inspiration, the focus, the planning, and the commitment nurtured between Reggie and me outlived him. I owe my success to the dedication of my inner circle, Reggie foremost among them.