In this week’s Uncaptive Agent, I’m joined by former NFL star and now professional private pilot Robert (Bob Christian)! Bob is a superstar on not taking no as a final answer and building a winning career. His best secrets? Bob kept going on faith, had supportive parents, learned goal-setting at an early age, experienced mentorship through coaching, and experienced the power of positive words.
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What’s the common factor behind these successes? Grit! Continuing to work hard, even when you don’t understand why you’re continuing down the rocky road of success.
The other secret ingredient to the recipe for building successful businesses? Courage! Bob and I discuss how courage plays a big part in continuing our momentum when it looks like there’s nowhere to go.
Bob discusses the type of training he undergoes now to keep on track as a professional pilot and who was the most influential person while he was getting his pilot’s license.
Most importantly, what happens if you’re pushed to your breaking point? This is a crucial point in our discussion because Bob and I know what that’s like from a personal and professional perspective. We know how much entrepreneurs need to know how to handle these moments when building successful businesses because you could see these points more than once. So, if you listen for no other reason, listen for this part of our discussion. There are some great takeaways:
- How stress empowers your growth
- Why you must avoid an overabundance of stress
- How a celebration of small wins can motivate you
- How caring for others helps build successful teams
- How providing credit where it is due builds a successful team because a successful business is an assembly of people, not just one person
- The importance of honoring the effort of everyone
- Why there must be a sense of team
- What really matters most in building a successful business
This is a conversation you simply cannot miss.
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Tony Caldwell:
Hi everybody. It's Tony Caldwell and welcome to a special edition of Uncaptive Agent. Typically, on this podcast, we're about the future of insurance distribution. Today is going to be a little different because we're not talking about insurance at all, and we're certainly not talking about distribution. Today I have as my guest Robert Christian, Bob Christian, as I know him and Bob is a former NFL football player and he's a professional pilot. And Bob and I got to know of one another because we've flown together. Flying as a two person crew is all about teamwork.
And so today I really want to talk about teamwork, and I think teamwork is critically important to building successful businesses, whether it's an insurance agency or a grocery store. Bob and I had a conversation a while back that I want to revisit today because I think it's really, really valuable. In fact, I've told Bob, I've told probably two or three dozen people about our conversation because it made such an impact on me, and that's why I wanted everybody else to have a chance to hear it, so welcome, Bob.
Robert Christian:
Well, thank you. I'm glad to be with you.
Tony Caldwell:
And you're somewhere in a hotel room.
Robert Christian:
In Texas right now. So I flew someone down here yesterday, got to fly them back tomorrow.
Tony Caldwell:
Well, I'm glad you can find some time in your schedule to jump on a quick podcast with me for our listeners and viewers. Let's talk a little bit about your athletic work because that's really part of the conversation I wanted to have. So where'd you play football in college?
Robert Christian:
I played at Northwestern University back in the late 80s through 1990 was the last season there.
Tony Caldwell:
Okay. So what that tells me is you were a smart athlete because Northwestern is a tough, highly competitive school. Now what did you study at Northwestern?
Robert Christian:
I studied electrical engineering.
Tony Caldwell:
Okay. Now you took a really easy major while you were playing Division I college football, right?
Robert Christian:
I think I'm just a glutton for punishment all around.
Tony Caldwell:
Well, if you're going to play professional football, you have to be. So tell us about your pro career. You left Northwestern and I think you played, you were in the back field, right?
Robert Christian:
Yeah. I was a tailback at Northwestern and then I got drafted in the 12th round. They don't have 12 rounds any more, but I got drafted in the 12th round by the Atlanta Falcons in 1991. They cut me and then I tried out that next spring with the London Monarchs of the World Football League, thinking I'd get some experience in the winter and have another chance next year. Well, they cut me and then I barely got another tryout that next summer with the San Diego Chargers and I pulled a hamstring and then they cut me. So at that point it was over and just by a literal miracle of God, somehow the Bears called me up and they signed me into their practice squad in 1992 and that was Ditka's last year.
And then I ended up playing the last two games of that year, played two more years there in Chicago playing mostly special teams, and then got drafted to Carolina in the expansion draft and played two seasons there. And then when I was a free agent, Atlanta came calling back after I guess I had gotten better and I switched to fullback when I was with the Bears. And then Atlanta brought me in when Dan Reeves took the job in Atlanta, and they signed me to be either fullback and I ended up starting for them for six years.
Tony Caldwell:
Wow. So I'm just struck as you're going through that, "And then they cut me, and then they cut me, and then they cut me, and then they cut me." So you kept coming back, you didn't take that lying down, you didn't take no as a final answer, that's interesting. Why was that? What motivated you? What powered you to keep going in the face of all that adversity?
Robert Christian:
Well, I'll be honest, there were a few things, first of all, my faith. Literally, one day I was running wind sprints and this was after the Colts who had said they were going to sign me for 1992, after I got cut by the London Monarchs, they basically dropped out. And at this point, everyone already had their camp rosters pretty much filled and I wasn't on any and I'm running wind sprints. Wind sprints are... I never liked it, I don't know anybody that really did. And I was feeling miserable and I was ready to throw in the towel, like, "What am I doing this for? This is stupid, all this hard work. And I'm not even going to get a tryout, much less make the team."
And then just it's kind of not weird, it just doesn't happen every day, but just this Bible verse I had read Proverbs 14:23 says, "All hard work brings profit but mere talk leads only to poverty." It just popped in my head and I was like, "But what profit are wind sprint's going to get me?" I was sending out my resume looking at engineering jobs. At that point I said, "Well, what profit can wind sprints bring to an engineering job?" And then there's another verse that says, "Trust in the Lord with all your heart, lean not on your own understanding." It just popped into my head too.
So literally I made a decision right there on the track, "Okay, this doesn't make sense to me, but I have to either walk in faith and keep going or follow what makes most sense to me and just leave all that misery behind." And so luckily I kept working. I will say a couple other factors: I had supportive parents that had always encouraged me and blessed me. And then also just to give testimony to the power of words and power of belief, as a coach, as a boss, when you believe in people it has a big impact.
One of the other things that kept me going was my high school running backs coach Randy Walker. After spring football, my freshman year he would sat down with us to go over goals I thought just for the upcoming season and he sat down, he said, "Hey, my goal for you is that when you get done playing here at Northwestern, you play on Sundays because I think you have what it takes."
And the fact that he believed that I could do it compelled me to some degree not to give up when things got tough too. So a combination of all those factors kept me going and fighting.
Tony Caldwell:
That's really an amazing story. And thank you for being willing to share. A couple things I want to unpack there. The first is obviously you didn't say this, but you had grit. You were working hard, running wind sprints when you didn't have any future in front of you to run them for. Entrepreneurs, business people, people who start going to business for themselves often have to do really similar things. They have to work really hard and they don't know that they're going to be successful.
And that grit, that work ethic powers them through from the time when they don't have anything really happening until they finally get successful. And what allows you to have grit, you talked about faith and I think that's really valuable, it's certainly been valuable in my own life. There's something else you didn't mention, Bob, which is courage, it takes guts to keep going when it doesn't look like there's a future.
I hope our listeners and watchers are getting that Bob, but you talked about something else too, which was the power of coaching and encouragement. And you, obviously, as an athlete, you had coaches. As a professional pilot now do you have coaches in your life that help you become better at what you're doing today?
Robert Christian:
We do training once a year. We do recurrent training, and I've had different... it's not been one person, each year, usually I get a different person. It just depends sometimes you get the same person twice, but I have a combination of people that have helped me. I still remember my first flight instructor that helped me get my private license, probably the most highly influential of all my flight instructors so I really appreciated him and what he taught me.
Tony Caldwell:
I'm sorry, I didn't mean to interrupt. I was just going to say we've had some similar training experiences because we go to the same place for training. And here's what I think is valuable about that, I'm just curious what you think, but you get put into situations that you typically wouldn't find yourself in, in an airplane.
Robert Christian:
We hope not.
Tony Caldwell:
And so it always seems to me like what the instructor's trying to do to you is push you until you break and then see what happens.
Robert Christian:
Right.
Tony Caldwell:
And I know having flown in the simulator with other pilots, sometimes they get pushed further than I do because they're better than me and they break later, but at the end of the day we all break. Or something breaks and then we get to find out how we handle it. And so thinking back to your athletic career, it seems like that's still part of it. You got pushed to the breaking point a whole bunch of times.
Robert Christian:
Oh, definitely.
Tony Caldwell:
Which made you a better player.
Robert Christian:
And that's the only way we grow. I know that right after I retired from football, I joined my brother's business training athletes and one of the things you learn is that it's the stress that creates the growth. And that's both in muscles and tendons and ligaments and bones even in cartilage stress will make you grow. Now, overstress causes breaks. So really we have to be pushed in order for us to grow and we have to put ourselves under stress.
Tony Caldwell:
So no business person builds a successful business over time without having some things that they think at the time is probably going to break them. We all have a cash flow crisis when we lose our best employees or the account that is a big chunk of our income or there are things that happen and you're tested. And my observation with entrepreneurs is that those are traumatic events but they're really the things that make you better that allow you to keep getting to where you want to go with your goals. And if you don't have them, then you never really end up being as good as you could otherwise be, so it's true in business, too.
Robert Christian:
Yeah, it is. And in fact, it's funny just this past year or maybe two years ago, I read Northwestern posted a study that they had done. They have one of the best business schools in the country; and they did a study. They found that one of the biggest markers of future success is failure early in one's career if you don't give up. People that fail early and don't give up, end up going further in whatever career they're in.
Tony Caldwell:
I've read similar studies in the past. And in my own experience, that's also really true. In fact, I think that failure is tuition for something else. The implication is, well, you got to go do something else. You got to take that failure, learn from it, and keep moving. I want to talk about the question that I asked you as we were droning along at 40,000 feet one day, watching the dials together. Because it was really, I loved your answer, I want to kind of unpack that, too. So my question was, and you played on some teams if I remember right that had losing seasons in the NFL, like four, five and eight or whatever.
Robert Christian:
Yep, 12 and five and 11.
Tony Caldwell:
Yeah. So you lost 11 times and you won five times and that has to be frustrating. I played in college, I played soccer and we had a season where we won two and lost 11 and those are character builders. Anyway, so you played on losing teams and then you got the chance to do what really in first place very few people get to play in college, much less in the NFL. And then it's a tiny fraction of professional football players that ever get to play in the Super Bowl and you did. And so by definition, you're playing on a championship, high winning team. And what I'm curious about is what was the difference? What was the difference in the losing team and playing on the winning team? Because everybody on both of those teams is super accomplished or they wouldn't be in the NFL, right?
Robert Christian:
Right. Yeah.
Tony Caldwell:
So you're talking about great players on both teams, it's not athletic ability it was something else, something different. What separated the losing from the winning team?
Robert Christian:
When I thought about this and obviously we talked about it then, it came out of another time that I put some thought into it and it really didn't take me too long, but I knew that the difference was that the championship teams I was on we really loved and cared for one another. The teams that ended up early exit from the playoffs and just trying to get the season over with. Those are the teams where we really didn't care about each other as much.
We didn't love each other enough to sacrifice for one another. It's a stark difference, really. It's funny. Love compels you to sacrifice, sacrifice hurts. And so it seems like, "Well, do I want to sacrifice?" But in the end, when you have a team that loves one another and everybody's sacrificing for one another, you go so much further and the team victory is so much better than any individual victories that you get.
Tony Caldwell:
So loving your teammates that's kind of touchy, feely, particularly for athletes and even business people. We don't talk about emotion very much, but obviously you feel like that was the key. Tell me loving and caring for your teammates: what did that mean to you? What was different about that experience compared to maybe not having that level of commitment?
Robert Christian:
Well, think about this: you love and you are energized and you'll give your energy to things you care the most about. So if you have a family, you have your kids, we spend all kinds of time and energy and money on our kids because we care about them. On a team, we could do the same thing if we invest emotionally...if we choose and it's a choice, we have to make that choice. If I choose to care about somebody else on my team or all my other teammates, on one hand, that's going to hurt me because I'm going to have to sacrifice.
You always end up sacrificing for what you love and care about. And so I might have to give a little extra, but that helps in so many different ways because every great victory requires that some people on that team go beyond what they think they're capable of. We didn't win World War II without going through more hell on earth than what people thought we could do.
It takes sacrifice. And so without that love for your teammates, sacrifice just for yourself it's kind of impossible because if your interest is to preserve yourself, you're not going to sacrifice yourself. So the only thing that motivates us to go beyond that is when we love one another. And then on top of that, we get our energy, like when we care about our teammates and we want them to see success, too. And so when they have success, we get energized because we're excited, because we've invested emotionally in those relationships and to see them have success it energizes us, and then that gives us energy for us to keep fighting.
If I don't love my teammate, maybe it's somebody that always is all about themselves and thinks they're better than the team and everything. And if they have success then it tends to demotivate me, I'm like, "Ah, now I'm going to hear about it all week." And so what you find is, love is a catalyst for more love and selfishness is a catalyst for more selfishness. So it's a battle within each team, which is going to win out over the course of the season or the time that that team's together.
In '98, we were like a bunch of brothers, we would fight hard for each other and we'd tease each other, like brothers do. But we were so tight knit and we believed in one another and we never gave up on one another. And you wanted to make a play not because, "Oh, I want all the glory." You wanted to make a play because you knew it was going to bless all your teammates and you wanted to get them excited. It was the best year of any sport that I've ever been in my whole life.
Tony Caldwell:
Wow. I remember you telling me I think that... So professional football teams, just like high school football teams, you videotaped your performance and the other teams, and you kind of dissect what you did well and what you need to improve on for the next game. And you told me a story about going into film after having a really good game yourself, but how you looked at it differently, do you remember that?
Robert Christian:
I'm trying to remember.
Tony Caldwell:
Well, I think what you told me was that you were really excited to go in and see a play or two that you'd made in the game the previous week, but what you were really excited about was to see the play of your teammates made.
Robert Christian:
Right. That's what we did in '98 and we always did it when I was playing for Dan Reeves. After every win, I think it was a Saturday morning before the next game, he would put together a highlight reel of all the highlights from the previous game and we'd watch it. We were celebrating the victories and it was a lot of fun to see because the team got so energized, especially somebody who doesn't normally get the limelight. There's a lot of positions, a lot of players that work hard all the time and they make us better and they don't always get the limelight. So when they get a chance and they make a big play the whole team because we love everyone on the team and we love those guys just as much as the guy who starts. And so we're even more excited and jacked up for them because they got that chance and we wanted that for them.
Tony Caldwell:
Sure. So in insurance and many of our listeners that's what they do for a living, they're building insurance agencies. It's the CSR or the accounting department that doesn't often get the attention that they deserve. And I see a lot of businesses that have goals, but they never really stop to celebrate. And you mentioned celebration has been really key because that's a motivation. Celebration motivates you to go win the next game.
Robert Christian:
I read a bit by a psychiatrist talking about the brain and the way the brain grows or the way it works. And one of the things is dopamine, which is the pleasure hormone, that when we experience pleasure it releases dopamine. And dopamine, what it does, it solidifies, it strengthens the neural processes that happen just before the dopamine hits. So, really, if celebration releases dopamine, so whenever we celebrate we'll improve, we'll continue. And so that's a good way as a coach and I'm coaching now, I try to celebrate when the players do things the right way, when they have the right attitudes, we need to celebrate that because that will make it easier for them to continue that.
Tony Caldwell:
And so you mentioned something else just a minute ago that I think I want to make sure we don't pass by, either. And that you mentioned when you played for Dan Reeves, it was different. So that was the head coach at that time, right? And so he did things differently, obviously, to facilitate the culture for the team that not only allowed for celebration, but encouraged this caring and sacrificing. So as the leader, what do you think was unique about what he did that helped make your team a champion?
Robert Christian:
Well, one, he cared. He's the only coach like in my whole career and I played with three different teams, we got cut by a few others. And most of the time the head coaches because they know they have to make cuts, they know that they bring 80 or 90 guys in the training camp and they keep 50 basically, and that's hard. And so most of the time, the head coaches, I noticed this, they would keep themselves apart, they wouldn't get attached to players, they wouldn't get to know them personally because it might hurt too bad if they had to cut them. Dan, he invested that care in each individual even the guy... I see him do it with kids that I knew. And everyone knew that the only way this kid is ever going to make the team is if we have catastrophic injuries in that position.
But he would get to know them. He'd ask about their family. He truly cared and he hired good coaches, too. One guy that was a big example to me, Wade Phillips, one of the things he always did and it was weird, kind of towards the end of my career it was like, "Hey, I want to play for Dan the rest of my career." But like, "Who else would I want to play for is there anybody else out there if Dan retired." And I said, "Wade Phillips, I'll play for him." And the reason is this, and it is almost solely on this.
Like whenever the defense played a really good game and Dan Reeves would let each of the coordinators talk about what their side of the ball did well or not, how they did evaluate. And Wade, whenever he had a great defensive day, in that meeting, when he got to talk, he'd always say, "Hey-" And he said it with all sincerity, you knew he wasn't just saying it, he'd say, "Hey, the only way we were able to do what we did on Sundays is because you guys gave us such a great look all week in practice, you offensive scout team guys that were giving us a good look. And it was only because of that we were able to come out and play so well."
And so that, to me, is so inspiring that a leader that is humble and spreads the credit, not hogging it, "It's all about me." No, you spread it and I thought about that, I said, "Why is that?" And part of it is if we're going for team success, when the team succeeds the team succeeds and the team is nothing more than the assembly of all the parts. And so you can't do anything without all the parts of that team and so the effort of... You say the kicker, you may say you don't work as hard. You don't, you don't carry the big loads.
But oh man, when it's the end of the game and you need that field goal and that field goal, if we make it, we win, we miss it, we lose. Oh man, you're totally dependent on that kicker. But the same way, we're totally dependent on the guys that are just... they don't play in the games, but they give us a look at the scout team because if they do a good job, it makes us better and then we're able to win. And so I feel like as leaders, I think leaders that honor the efforts and sacrifice of all the members of the team will find the most success. And I played for another coach that basically, he had half the team as the good guys and half the teams as the, well, we're stuck with you guys.
And the way he conducted things, it could be the stars that messed up, but because I guess they're untouchable because he paid them too much money. He would never say anything about that, but he'd blame the guy who couldn't stay on the block for 12 seconds on a kickoff return. That's like one of the hardest plays in football and he blamed the loss on one of those guys. And so that divided the team and everyone was selfish, everyone was just like, well, "Hey, I got paid." Everyone was just out for themselves, it's just a business, "I'm here to do a job," and there was no sense of team.
Tony Caldwell:
That's interesting, "I'm just here to do a job." Lots of businesses are full of people who are just doing a job. They come at 8:00, they go at 5:00, and what happens in between and the results of it. They don't really care because as you said they're getting paid, but they probably aren't playing on a championship team. And so just for a second, talk about, obviously in sports, when you win, everybody's super excited and there's a lot of celebration going on, it's a happier place. But is there anything else, between being on a team where everybody just got paid and didn't care about each other, versus a team that you know was winning but had that really tight knit relationship. How does that spill over into personal, not just the team success and what gets printed in the newspapers, but is there anything beyond that, that's really valuable that you take away from that experience for your life.
Robert Christian:
Right. Well, I guess the way I look at it is this way: if you're not going to basically develop a culture and foster a culture of a team, you're going to end up spending more. You can pay someone enough to get them to do what you want them to do, but it's going to cost you more. Because most people want to be a part of something bigger than ourselves. I think all of us are built that way. It's like it's not just all about me.
If the universe is all just about me, then man, I'm going to be depressed because that means it's pointless. But when you're part of a team and you feel a part of... And I always felt the term that always came to mind on the good teams I was on was family, it feels like family, where we care about one another. And you want to be a part of that, you want to be a part of a family, you want to succeed as a family. All the success in the world doesn't mean as much if you can't share that with your family. And so I really feel like the more you foster that feeling of a family in your businesses the more people will be motivated. They'll be motivated not just to work for themselves because money's good, but once you have enough money, "Oh, okay."
And I saw it all the time in the NFL. Guy signed a big contract, got the big signing bonus, and he was a beast the year before because it was his contract year. And then he signed the big deal and suddenly he's not as motivated anymore. But when your motivation is the family then it doesn't matter what you get paid to a point. Obviously, if you're getting shafted then you don't feel part of the family.
Tony Caldwell:
Right. Wow. Bob I'm even more inspired today from getting to have this conversation with you really again than I was the first time. And so I certainly hope folks who listen to the conversation feel the same way. Kind of just if I can recap really quickly. A team that matters more than the individual, it's about how you contribute to the team and how you feel about the players and the sacrifice that you're willing to make , because you feel like you're a part of something unique, you used the term family.
And that leadership is about caring for the whole team, but really creating a culture in which those things take place. And I think it works, it clearly worked in the NFL because the Falcons got to the Super Bowl and that's the pinnacle of success in that business. It's got to work in the insurance agency business just as well for those people who put those things into place. And so I really appreciate you being willing to have the conversation with me again and just real quick, any last thoughts you want to share with us?
Robert Christian:
I think you summed it up pretty well. I don't think there's too much else, it's pretty clear cut that when we love one another we fight for one another, when we don't, we don't. And everybody wants to be a part of a team where everyone loves one another. But we're all selfish, we want to make selfish decisions, too. So it's always, like I said, that battle between, "Am I going to sacrifice myself for the good of the team every day? Or am I going to, hey, just look out for myself."
And the more we can as a team, the more we can look out for the best of the team, then guess what we're going to have the most fun, we're going to have the most success, and it's going to be the most fulfilling job we can have, versus even if you get paid it doesn't mean nearly as much if you're all alone.
Tony Caldwell:
Yeah. Totally get it. Well, hey, Bob thank you so much for being with me today and let's go fly together sometime soon.
Robert Christian:
Yes. I can't wait. Thanks-
Tony Caldwell:
Bye.
Tony Caldwell:
I'm talking to independent agency owners about this all the time. If you'd like to have a more personalized conversation, click on the button or the link in the description and we'll make that happen. You can also reach out to me at tonycaldwell.net/contact.
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