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- Big Dinner at South Fork
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- Seth Godin and Pepper Bullock
Category Archives: Learfield
Me with two really smart guys
Pepper Bullock calls himself a “Change-Agent.” He has been advising senior management at Learfield (where I once worked) for years and I’ve gotten to know him a little. A really smart guy who happens to be really nice. That’s him on the right.
I was a little shy about getting my photo made with Seth Godin so Pepper dragged me up for this photo. (Thanks to Alan Blake for sending this along so promptly. He was one of the photographers at this event. A really nice guy, in addition to be a very good photographer.)
Seth Godin
I first heard Seth Godin speak at a Radio Ink conference in 2000 in Boston. He published Permission Marketing the year before and it was changing the way everybody thought about marketing.
That presentation was the best I had ever seen and I didn’t see a better one in the ensuing 13 years.
Mr. Godin was one of the speakers at an event held by the company from which I recently retired. I had a great seat down front and center and he did not dissapoint. Not sure how long he spoke but it seemed like 15 minutes (probably and hour+ in real time).
If I can get my hands on the audio or video I will take some notes and share them here. Sorry I can’t show you the video because watching how Godin used slides to help him tell his story was a thing of beauty.
My offices
While cleaning out my office yesterday, I reflected on the spaces in which I’ve worked over the past 40 years. During my radio days I spent most of my hours in a studio (on-air or production). When I came to Learfield they didn’t have a real office but provided a tiny desk on a tiny sun porch attached to the old house.
I don’t have a photo of my desk but it looked just like this one (in which Roger Gardner is hiding his face for some reason). I got a nicer space when Jim Lipsey and I each had a corner of a big old room in that same house.
We eventually built the nice building we’re in now and I had a nice office just a couple of down from our CEO. That proximity mattered in those days (perhaps it still does). The carpet was a different color in these offices to visually make the point we were special.
I suppose we once needed offices to put things like filing cabinets and typewriters and chairs for visitors. And we needed a private space to talk about things that others weren’t authorized to hear. My little office started feeling like a small prison cell (albeit with a big window).
In an era of smart phones and MacBooks, a building filled with little square rooms lining hallways seems… quaint. Hardly the best use of space. But then, where would I keep my stapler.
Learfield 2.0
Latest release dropped on Friday with the announcement that our company had been purchased by a private equity firm.
Learfield was founded (co-founded, actually) by Clyde Lear, forty years ago. He borrowed $24,000 from some local businessmen and grew the company by ploughing back profits and — later– borrowing from a local bank. A great entrepreneurial story.
For the first dozen years of the company (ver 1.0), Clyde managed everything. Around 1984, he started growing the company and needed to delegate some the work. I was part of that hiring spurt (ver 1.1).
It wasn’t long before our sports division took off and we opened an office in Dallas. Our news division was growing, too, but not as fast (ver 1.2).
Sometime in the 90s we had a major restructuring of management, with Clyde handing off CEO duties. This was Learfield 1.3 and as the dust settled, I slipped out the window and began easing myself down the corporate ladder.
A couple of years ago, Clyde shuffled the cards again and Greg Brown took over as President and CEO (let’s call this ver 1.8)
Learfield 2.0 is a major update. Clyde still has a “minority interest” in the company but prior to Friday, he had the final word on anything big (if he wanted it). That’s a big change for those of us that were personally brought into the company by Clyde. And doubly so for those charged with the running the new company.
Let’s just call this a soft reboot. Control+Alt+Delete.