33. How Former Athletes Excel as Successful Business Leaders w/ Jenna Posner and Brian Librach

Show Notes

In this special episode of OFFBounds, inspired by the recent 2024 Olympic Games, we explore the remarkable connection between athletic grit and business success. Host Paula Macaggi is joined by two former athletes who have transitioned into successful business leaders—Jenna Posner and Brian Librach. Together, they dive into how the qualities that drive Olympians to excel—resilience, discipline, and determination—are the same traits that can lead to success in the corporate world.

Listen in as Jenna, a former U.S. national rugby player, and Brian, who honed his skills on the baseball field, share their personal journeys from sports to the boardroom. They discuss how their athletic experiences shaped their leadership styles, decision-making, and ability to overcome challenges in the fast-paced retail industry.

Whether you're a business leader, an aspiring entrepreneur, or simply inspired by the Olympic spirit, this episode offers valuable insights and practical advice on how to apply the principles of teamwork, mental toughness, and perseverance to your professional life.

Tune in to discover why so many Fortune 500 CEOs have a background in sports and how you can harness athletic principles to elevate your career and achieve your business goals.

Creators & Guests

Host

Paula Macaggi

Informing Commerce Leaders | Founder of OFFBounds - #1 Podcast for Commerce Leaders | Speaker | Reta Awards Judge | Top Retail Expert 2024

What is OFFBounds?

OFFBounds is a podcast where commerce executives share their perspectives, successes, and lessons learned in their careers to inspire other global leaders in their journey and decision-making.

Every week, the host Paula Macaggi meets industry leaders to discuss business strategies, careers, and leadership in one-on-one conversations challenging the limits of borders and boundaries.

Paula unveils the person behind the leader and brings to her audience of commerce executives experiences to relate, motivate, and reflect on decisions that are shaping commerce.

OFFBounds is the first podcast recorded in person with audio and video featuring executives in commerce from around the world.

Paula Macaggi: 00:00

What athletes and business leaders have in common? Greed, resilience, determination, discipline, focus. These are some of the characteristics attributed to many athletes and successful CEOs, And there are several interesting papers that show correlation between playing sports and having a successful career. The Olympic Games of 2024 are unfortunately over. We witnessed more than 10,000 athletes competing for the most acclaimed award of their careers, showcasing everything they work for in their lives.

Paula Macaggi: 00:32

Their commitment, teamwork, and mental strength have a lot to teach us about leadership. In the 3rd episode of our summer series, we will discuss the similarities between playing on the field and growing a business, and how sports can actually make you a better leader. But you won't hear it just from me. I actually have 2 former athletes and retail executives joining me to tell us their personal experience. Jenna Posner and Bryan Lee Brock.

Paula Macaggi: 00:58

Here is Paula Maccage, and this is episode 33 of my show. Welcome to Of Pounds. The life of an athlete is really demanding. And the story of the gold medalist, Rebecca Andrade, shows how much effort she and her family had to put into training. As her family couldn't afford the public transportation, she had some time to walk 2 hours to her practice and the sacrifices actually paid off, leading to one of the most incredible moments of the Olympics.

Paula Macaggi: 01:26

When someone faces a tough challenge which could be developing a new business or training for a marathon, many people find the effort too overwhelming and decide to quit. But some push through staying committed even when there is no immediate reward. This difference is how we handle challenges has been getting a lot of attention lately. Research shows that those who persevere tend to have better outcomes in life, whether it is in their health, academics, or career success. And this is actually pure science.

Paula Macaggi: 01:58

There's an area in our brain called anterior mid cingulate cortex, which basically grows when you do things that you don't wanna do. So let's say exercise in the morning. When you wake up and you don't feel like doing it but do it anyways, this brain area grows. And then it gets more interesting. The anterior midcingulate cortex is smaller in obese people.

Paula Macaggi: 02:20

It's larger in athletes and it's especially large or grows larger in people that see themselves as challenged and overcoming these challenges and in people that live a very long time. Scientists are calling it the area of the brain that seeks the willpower. And if there are people being challenged and overcoming challenges often, these are definitely athletes and business leaders. Bryan Lee Brock built a phenomenal career in retail in his 35 years of experience in the industry, and he wrote the book Retail Leaders Roadmap, which was considered the retail gym to discover and unleash the retail athlete we think.

Brian Librach: 02:58

It's funny because most of my early childhood learnings came on the baseball field. Baseball was a sport that I was good at, until I was about 15 or 16, and I realized it wasn't gonna be a professional career for myself. And I also recognized that I learned a lot just by being 9, 10, 11, 12, 13 all the way up to 15 or 16 playing sports. And so to me working in retail was no different. And so the idea of like a retail athlete, that's just what I've been called by my supervisors.

Brian Librach: 03:24

You know, I've been called a retail athlete in the way that I think. Sometimes I get yelled at for using too many sports analogies to state examples of why things should be done. And there really isn't a dramatic difference. You know, one of the things that I found, and when you read my book you'll find I talk about character, connections, and planning. I talk about 8 very specific things that apply to athletes in no different way than they apply to retailers or business people and it could be a bit selfish I wanted to be an athlete so maybe I've created this output or I've created this plan to fit.

Brian Librach: 03:52

But the same things that are required of professional athletes are required of professionals. You know, you have to work hard and if you don't work hard then guess what? You're not gonna be the very best at what you do. And I think one of the linchpins is you have to be open to learning, like you have to be flexible, now more than ever. Right?

Brian Librach: 04:07

How do you use technology to like athletes are using technology to win, like it's no different. So what happens in business and what happens on the court or on the field really is the same. A lot of times people don't wanna look at it that way because they see a professional athlete and they look up to them. But if you are in the workforce, you know, either you should be looked up to or you should be looking up to somebody else as well.

Paula Macaggi: 04:26

Jenna Posner is a retail executive and one of the smartest people I know. She's not a stranger to off bounds. She's been with us on episode 2 talking about technology. But I invited her again because before she built her career in tech, she was playing rugby for the US national team.

Jenna Posner: 04:42

A friend of mine needed a ride to a regional tryout. I took her. I tried out. I made it. She didn't.

Jenna Posner: 04:47

It was kinda fun. It was kinda funny. And before I knew it, I was on the national stage playing in front of the US selection team and then on a plane to Canada to go play for the under 23 national fifteens team, and then it just kinda springboarded from there. So I was playing with some of the, you know, some of the women that were really breaking new ground here in the US and, you know, we weren't paid to play. And so many of us worked to play.

Jenna Posner: 05:09

Right? It's like we didn't really focus on our career so much. It was like, are we making enough money? We're making enough money to, you know, pay for the gym membership that we need in order to lift enough. Are we making enough money to buy enough chicken cutlets that we can eat to keep our muscle on because we're working so hard.

Jenna Posner: 05:23

Right?

Paula Macaggi: 05:24

The US rugby national team won the bronze medal in the Olympics, playing against Australia, which was a phenomenal achievement, and Jenna watched her country make history in a sport she could contribute to.

Jenna Posner: 05:36

It was amazing. And to see the world's reaction to it, right, to see how much attention and media coverage and support and funding they're now getting it. It feels like we've just unlocked the sport. You know, it felt like that in the 1st Olympics, rugby sevens was played. It kinda felt like, okay, US is on the map.

Jenna Posner: 05:50

It's in the Olympics now. We're gonna see it in middle school, and we're gonna see it in high school more. And we're I think, all of us that were doing this, you know, 10, 15, 20 years ago are just feel like it's all worth it. Everything that we did and how hard we worked and the pause button we put on big parts of our lives in order to help support this. In the smallest of ways, which I would put myself in.

Jenna Posner: 06:10

And being able to witness that and watch the world witness that on behalf of our country, it was, emotional to say the least.

Paula Macaggi: 06:17

Like Jenna and Brian, sports have contributed to the business success of many careers. It said that 95% of the Fortune 500 CEOs were athletes at some point in their lives. According to a research from Ernst Young, 7 in 10 women now occupying a c level position had participating in sports as a working adult compared to 55% of other female managers. On my LinkedIn feed, I often see people sharing their marathon pictures talking about so much they had to overcome to complete it. In a Forbes article, Christina Palmaka, president of SAP LatAm and Caribbean shares that she finished the disputed marathon circuit this year in Tokyo, and she started with the first one in Boston in 2005.

Paula Macaggi: 07:01

The article mentions her LinkedIn post where she wrote, not even the strongest legs can carry a weak mind. And that to develop a business today, it's necessary the same thing as to finish a marathon. Flexibility, resilience, determination, teamwork, and a lot of energy.

Brian Librach: 07:19

The first part of the book is build your character, and I think that is the most important part for an athlete or for anybody in business, for anybody trying to grow their career. You have to work hard. I refer to it as you have to outwork people. You have to put in the work, and you have to do it when nobody's looking. You have to be willing to learn, you have to be flexible, you have to be willing to take feedback, right?

Brian Librach: 07:35

Because you it's a skill. Whatever you're doing is a skill, and it's gonna require refinement, and what was good yesterday won't be good tomorrow. So you're gonna have to continuously be open to learning. No different than an athlete. You've gotta set an amazing example for the people that are around you.

Brian Librach: 07:48

Right? You have to be accountable for what you own, and you have to be disciplined. You have to do the things that you don't wanna do, but you know you need to do.

Paula Macaggi: 07:55

Lululemon CEO, Covey McDonald, is an elite 3 athlete. And in a men's health article, he said that he uses the training time to work through any mental roadblocks or challenges that he's facing and mentions that after the workout, his clarity allows him to be more present and focused in conversations throughout this day. And that's very interesting because exercising really does great things to our brains. The book Spark, written by John J. Ruddy, which I read this weekend, talks about how exercise works in the brain.

Paula Macaggi: 08:26

I don't want to get too technical but basically, once you exercise, you learn more and faster as well as get more creative. And the good thing is that you don't need to be an elite athlete to see the benefits. In the book, he also mentions how exercising controls the emotional and physical feelings of the stress and suggests that if you have a brainstorm session or have to work on something that demands a lot of concentration, you should consider going for a run before that. As soon as you finish, your brain will be sharp to perform. Sports also teach a lot about teamwork, and Jenna shares how she brought that from rugby to her tech career.

Jenna Posner: 09:05

We all have these qualities that allow us to these innate qualities that we work on ourselves, right, that that are what we bring to the field. Right? The value proposition that we bring into the boardroom. We bring with those things that are we don't know everything. We have so much to learn, and we have so much to learn from our teammates.

Jenna Posner: 09:20

And I think that the the real translator here here from being a a rugby athlete into being a tech executive or an executive or a high performing career person is that in the game of rugby, it's continuous play. So it's not like football where, you know, the whistle gets blown. We all come together and say, okay, guys. Let's get together. Here's what we're gonna do.

Jenna Posner: 09:37

Here's the play, and we've practiced this a 1000 times. That's not what this is. Right? This is about having continuous play where you have a someone that has the ball in front of you, and you've gotta watch them, and you've gotta read them, and they might make a choice that you wouldn't have made, but it doesn't matter. You gotta go all in with them.

Jenna Posner: 09:52

Right? You've gotta communicate and you've gotta be able to have vision and see the field in a way that maybe they don't right now because they've got a defender that's approaching them and communicates them. And there's just a skill, right? This ability to trust, to be fearless, to be gritty, you know, all in the face of getting dirt slammed in your face and a cleat to the head, like, just this wildly disruptive and distracting and brutal sport to just get up and do it again. And so I think about this kind of, like, rugby effect in my life, and I never would have gotten that from running or from field hockey a little bit.

Jenna Posner: 10:27

But this game of rugby, man, the ability to just see and pivot and be flexible and nimble and trusting of your counterparts, they might see something you don't. Right? I love that about the sport, and I love bringing that into my career and into the boardroom and into leadership and to my teammates. It empowers this way to congeal. I think you win those games, those tough, tough games.

Jenna Posner: 10:50

Right? You make those tough, tough quarters when everybody is coming together and playing the same game and trusting each other. And I could only learn that through my experience on the pitch.

Paula Macaggi: 10:59

Jenna has lived many Black Fridays as a CDO, and those are the moments when nothing can fail. But sometimes it does. And what she learned from rugby can be replicated.

Jenna Posner: 11:09

I think we've all had those glitches. Right? Those things that kind of go wrong, and you can either be paralyzed by the mistake or the tech failure or whatever it might be, or the inventory failure or the warehouse management system going down, whatever it is, you can be paralyzed by those moments where things don't go as you had planned, or you can come together and you can whiteboard it and you can figure out what is the next best path. And I think what's cool about rugby is that you're doing that in an instant. You're doing it with limited communication.

Jenna Posner: 11:32

You're doing it with physical signals. You're doing it with, you know, having the piece of the field or the vision that you have alongside the way your teammate is operating in front of you. And I think it creates a level of calm in some of those, you know, chaotic moments and faith and trust that you're gonna just figure it out. And that type of leadership and poise, I think, allows everyone to stay calm, right, stay clear, look at the field, and figure out what is the next best path for the team. But I will say something we learned in rugby and something I really pride myself on as a leader is doing the retros.

Jenna Posner: 12:02

Right? Looking back at the game and whether you won the game or you lost the game, watching game tapes a real thing can always be better. You could always take a gap at a different angle. You could have always set up a teammate a little bit smoother. Right?

Jenna Posner: 12:13

You could always do that. Right? So, you know, in rugby and in leadership, I love spending the time to look back at Black Friday. How did we handle it? Could we have handled it better?

Jenna Posner: 12:22

What should we do next time? So what's gonna happen is you're gonna your IQ, right, your field IQ is gonna get higher because you're gonna have to think less in that moment, the more you think. Right? That split second that you're thinking, you're missing an opportunity. So watching that game tape and being able to see the opportunity faster, understanding the angle that you should have taken, you just have to think a little less the next time.

Jenna Posner: 12:41

And the more you do that, the faster, the smoother, the more efficient you get, and the less problems you have and the less things you have to clean up. So I don't think that's any different from, you know, running a tech organization either. Looking at those implementations, those launches, those high velocity, high volume days, always look back whether it was smooth or not because it could have always been smoother, it could have always been better.

Brian Librach: 13:01

And one of the things that I think is really important about the the similarities between sports and business or in success outside of sports is individuals in sports fail more often than they win. You know, in baseball, if you get out 7 times out of 10, you're you're an all star. You know, in basketball, Steph Curry, he makes 40% of his shots, he's the best ever shooter. So individuals will lose more and you have to get comfortable losing, but teams can win more. Right?

Brian Librach: 13:27

A collective team can have a better winning record than a loss record, but individuals in sports usually don't. So it's a collective effort of everybody on the team and so in business it's no different. If you have an amazing CEO and don't have an amazing team underneath them, it's not gonna work. Underneath them, if 2 of the 4 are amazing, it's not gonna work. Each person has to play their role, but I think that learning agility and that ability to be okay failing in business, is extremely important, no different than it is in sports.

Paula Macaggi: 13:54

And I'm going to say that sports have played a huge role in my life too. When I was in school, I played football or soccer for American. I also engaged in ballet, karate, volleyball, and I kinda lost it when I went to college and had to work a full time job and study. During the pandemic, I picked it up again. I started the gym and it became a fundamental part of my well-being for both my body and mind.

Paula Macaggi: 14:19

Working out brings a different level of productivity and focus in my life. Since I started, I became better at prioritizing, at reading, at writing, at absorbing everything and every information. Today, I'm training to run a marathon that requires an incredible amount of discipline as sticking to a routine of eating healthy, sleeping early, and being consistent. And I will say even planning the long term for me reflects in business. Training for a marathon is really focusing on becoming 1% better until you get to your goal physically and also mentally.

Paula Macaggi: 14:55

You can rush it. It has to be slow and you have to put in the work.

Brian Librach: 14:59

And when I started running, I remember very specifically getting cramps. And I started to read up on it and they actually say more often than not, it's your mind trying to protect you, telling you you don't feel well so that you'll stop running. And the minute I thought that through and started to get cramps and think through them, all of a sudden I didn't get cramps, and I was able to continue the run. So it's interesting. I think so much of it's mental.

Brian Librach: 15:19

Obviously, there's a physical component to it, but so much of it's mental.

Jenna Posner: 15:22

Once an athlete, always an athlete. Right? You kinda just it's just kinda who you are. I mean, I've been an athlete my entire life. I still consider myself an athlete now in day to day and also on the pickleball court.

Paula Macaggi: 15:33

Athletes have incredible skills that can be used in business. Magic Johnson is a big example of resilience in and off the basketball course, and he had to deal with many challenges throughout his personal and professional life. If you watch the documentary, They Call Me Magic, you see that he used a lot of the greed and discipline to achieve his business goals after having to terminate his career as a player due to contracting HIV. His life is about never giving up and doing what it needs to be done. For every challenge and frustration, he puts in the hard work to overcome them.

Paula Macaggi: 16:06

At one point, he owed a 125 Starbucks coffee shops, and now the basketball hall of famer is worth $1,200,000,000. And there's an important aspect of sports that we haven't touched yet. None of the athletes who have gotten there without a coach. Coaches can also teach us a lot about teamwork.

Brian Librach: 16:26

To be a successful coach, you don't have to have been the best at what you're coaching. You have to be a good coach, it's a different role, right? The level of observation, the level of the way you approach it is differently as a coach and there's a lot of players that are the best players ever that have no business coaching ever in sports. Like they just don't have the temperament for it, they don't have the resolve for it, they lack the communication skills for it, the ability to influence. You know one of the reasons why I love Phil Jackson as a coach is because he found a way to get superstars to play on a team and not be selfish.

Brian Librach: 16:56

And that was all the way he approached it. He was a good basketball player but he wasn't the best, but people respected him because he had confidence in how he went about it. So for me there's a certain percentage of players that can coach, you know, and it has a lot more to do with their ability to observe, interact, and communicate than to actually do the job that they once did. Whether it's your boss or it's your peers or it's those that work for you, you have to know how to poke the bear or push the right buttons to get people to do certain things. If you can't, then you have no business leading other people.

Brian Librach: 17:25

Like, you have to be good at influencing. And so whether it's in retail or it's in business or it's in sports, a coach has to influence.

Jenna Posner: 17:32

Well, first of all, I played a lot with Emily Bywell. She's the US women's coach. I got to plan a number of teams with her. Not only is she a great athlete, but she is also a great coach. She's always had a very calming calming effect on any team that I've been on with her, and I think that's something that you really need.

Jenna Posner: 17:48

When you're at that level, your adrenaline is through the roof. There's no other scenario where your adrenaline is higher. And so having someone that can kinda bring everything down, like, a nice calming pace, really see and know the game so well because she played it for so long. Not only did she help build the sport, but now she's brought it to this next level and coached the team that delivered this medal back for the US.

Paula Macaggi: 18:09

And I love how Jenna brings the word calm to Wolfdom when she refers to leadership. I gotta say I also think calm is a great quality for many jobs that are so high paced.

Jenna Posner: 18:19

Bridgette Cooperman is definitely, the best leader that I have worked with. She's been in the game a long time. She's seen a lot. She doesn't claim to be an expert in everything, but she has a very similar quiet leadership, calming effect, trust instilling, and, a leader that really empowers you to get the job done, to take risks, to go hard, and to not be afraid of failure. I imagine Emily Biedelow as a very similar leader.

Paula Macaggi: 18:45

Athletes are a great source of inspiration for businesses. You've likely seen many corporate presentations that compare an organization's challenges to a tough match, especially during the Olympics or World Championships. Overcoming the challenges that business threw at us requires immense perseverance. Leaders need the willpower to wake up every day, push through obstacles, and keep going. They need the strength to keep moving, to fail, to learn, to adapt, and ultimately to win.

Paula Macaggi: 19:16

The good news is that we all have that potential to be athletes and develop these skills. Both sports and business demand strong minds, and strong minds are often forged through sports. See you next Tuesday.