The future may not be clear, but our commitment is so when you sit with an advisor at Merrill Lynch, we'll put your interests first. Visit mL dot com and learn more about Merrill Lynch. An affiliated Bank of America, Mary Lynch makes available products and services offered by Merrill Lynch. Pierce Federan Smith Incorporated, a registered broker dealer remember s I PC. This week on the podcast, I have two very extra special guests. Uh, this is really quite fascinating.
Byron Scott is a former l a Laker part of the Showtime Lakers, won three national championships as a player, went to the finals several times as a coach. Charlie Norris is the former CEO of McKesson Water as well as deer Park Water, who has a history of taking these damaged or or floundering companies and turning them around and selling them for a substantial uptick from from how
we found them. This is really a story of a fascinating friendship that developed over time, starting in an Equinox gym in Los Angeles where Scott used to work out
after his playing days. Um, this is really a fascinating tale of how these two gentlemen who could not look more differently if you were seeing them from across the room, and yet they turn out to be philosophically and temperamentally so similar, and a fast friendship develops with a lot of exchange of ideas in terms of how sports and business have all these overlaps, questions of leadership, questions of motivation, questions of threading your way through a variety of of
different challenges and how best to respond to them, And what ends up happening is a a lifelong friendship develops and at a certain point they kind of look at each other and say, hey, there's a book here. We really have to share what we've discovered. It's it's a lovely story. I found the two of them to be absolutely charming and delightful. My only regret is this interview is barely an hour. I could have chatted with them for another hour. They were They were just a blast.
So here are Charlie Norris and Byron Scott discussing corporate leadership in the modern age. This is Masters in Business with Barry Ridholtz on Boomberg Radio. My special guests today are Byron Scott and Charlie Norris Byron was a NBA player with the Showtime era Los Angeles Lakers, where he won three national championships, playing alongside Magic Johnson, James Worthy,
Kareem Abdul Jabbar. He went on to have a successful career as a coach where he got two more championship rings uh coaching the New Jersey Nets and the Milwaukee Bucks. Is that right, Hornets? That's right who eventually became the Charlotte Hornets and and his co author is Charlie Norris, who is a successful businessman. He is the former CEO and president McKesson Water. He helped take dear Park spring Water to a new level where it was subsequently sold
off to Clorox Water was sold off to Dannon. Both gentlemen co authored a book called Slam Dunk Success, Leaning from Every position on Life's Court. Gentleman, Welcome to Bloomberg. Thank you, Berry appreciate it. So we were talking earlier and I said, you know, I'm really not a big fan of business books using sports as a metaphor. They're always cliche and blab, but this was a really fun book. It's light and breezing, and it's filled with some really
smart insight. Tell us how this came about. Wow, Um, well, I mean to kind of get in it, I guess, real, real easily. From the beginning, Charlie and I met at Equal Nuts in West Los Angeles nine years ago, and a mutual friend introduced us. Uh, and after we met a couple of weeks later, we started to do some cardio workouts together and uh, you know, from then on we started lifting weights and and basically we really just started to get to know each other and workouts became
very intensified. And next thing you know, we're on the map one day after one of our unbelievable workouts, and we're both sitting there and Charlie says, b we should write a book. And at the time, Barry, we you know, we really looked at it, something very lightheartedly and maybe a little paperback book, and we thought we would have a bunch of pictures in there, and we were gonna call it how to work Out when You're fifty years
and older. So I have to ask a question. You said your workouts became intensified, sir, How did that happen when the two you guys are just you know, either of you are professional athletes. Any longer. You're both in your one of us never was. That's you're both fifty plus fifty and fifty five and sixty five along those those age range. Thank you for that. How why did the workouts become or at the time you're forty five and sixty fifty five? Why did the workouts become more intensified?
Why were you driving each other to work harder? Well, Charlie came to me and said, b I need to lose weight. And I said, all right, Charlie, we're gonna start lifting weights and we're gonna intensify the uh the cardio workout. And you know, being an ex athlete, I know how to work out, and I know how to work out hard. And having a partner like Charlie, my only problem at the time when we first got together was wondering if he could really keep up with me, and if if he could help me by pushing me
as well. I'm wondering if I could keep up with Charlie. That's that's a good question, that's question. What Byron didn't know is that I had run two marathons and I and I'm always goal oriented, so you're both competitive to say, and that did he push you? Did you have to work out her? I mean, you know, the thing was that he pushed me to be better and lift more weights and and do some things on the on the elliptical machine and a treadmill that I hadn't done before.
So it was a great match because we were able to really push each other. There's a wonderful story in the Bidding beginning of the book of how people just keep coming up to you and saying, what is this odd couple development? What was the general reaction to people for you two guys. I want to come back even a little further, because as we talked, I'm a Bostonian, Byron being from Los Angeles, so you guys are natural enemies.
And what he didn't tell what a surprise. But I was a Laker hater from when I was in embryo, and uh, then I have to ask, he's bragging on elbowing Danny Ainge in the chin and that was that was okay with that was okay with that. But I really I met Byron, but it wasn't love at first sight because honestly, I didn't know who Byron was and I was observing him at the gym where we work out. It has a couple of floors, and Byron would be
down on the first floor. I'd be up on the second on one of the cardio machines, and I'd watch him. And what really impressed me was he was serious about his workout, but if people came up to him, he took time too. He didn't just brush them off. He took time to talk to them, but kept going because he wanted to stay on his workout without being rude
about it. And when we first met and started to do things together, I was really impressed with the fact that he knew the names of the people picking up the towels in the gym, the people that were handing out food in the downstairs, in the in the dining area. He knew not only their names, but they're going to night school, if they had kids. He really cared about
the front line everyday people. So I what really attracted me to him was more than the question of his leadership style was one of getting to the hearts of people. It was it was obvious to me, which is mine. So back to your question, Uh, every day, five to ten people would come up and say, what do you two have in common? Why are you having so much fun? Be you're gonna kill that old man? Why? Why you? Why?
Why are you working out together? But they never asked the second question, which is, you know, it was sort of an ironic question and then they go off to whatever. But they never asked the second question, what do you really have in common? And on this particular day that that Byron is alluding to, when we were sweating away, there must have been fifteen people who asked that question and wandered off, And I said, there really is a book here, because the book is not only the workout,
but this unlikely friendship. And really you can't judge a book by its cover. Uh that we do have a lot in common, but nobody takes the time to really try to understand that. Coming up, we continue our conversation with Byron Scott of the Lakers and Charlie Norris of McKesson, discussing similarities between coaching a team and running a company. I'm Barry Ridholts. You're listening to Master's in Business on
Bloomberg Radio. My special guests today are Byron Scott of the NBA championship Los Angeles Lakers and Charlie Norris former CEO and president of McKesson Water and Deer Park spring Water. We were discussing the similarities between coaching a team and running a business. What are the not so obvious overlaps between these two endeavors and where do they differ. What was a great experience for me UH when Byron got the Laker coaching job. We started working out whenever they
were home. We started working out together virtually every day at the Laker facility, and he included me in UH film sessions with the players, coaches, meetings of the practices, and I really started to see how his leadership style in mind were aligned in in many ways. And one of the similarities is you win if your team wins.
And how you score in business is a little different than how you score in sport in our In our world, you score if you gain market share from the competition, and market share is a huge indicator both of how you're the consuming public views you, but also what you're doing better than the competition to be gaining share. If that's not you're not just buying it, you're gaining it, and your profitability is going up with it. And that clearly is a team exercise on a corporate level, it's
a total team exercise. And so back to an earlier question you asked about why it's important to get to be a people person and know what's going on with the people. Uh, A very high percentage of our frontline people, especially on the route, the route sales reps, they were former athletes. Yeah, they were. They were former athletes. A couple actually were former professional athletes, and they understand that you have to get to have the back of the
people around you. And by that, if somebody is sick one day, uh, the others would take over and make sure that their customers reserved. They would help each other, and sometimes they would move bottles from one truck to another if one guy was already his truck was already empty, and it was easier to have someone in the field given bottles rather than to come back to the manufacturing facility. And we wanted to make sure at every level people
understood that we're in it as a team. And so things that I would do with Deer Park, for example, even the union employees we gave a stock to. We gave stock to everybody because if we were going to be successful, UH, then we wanted the whole team to be seen everybody. So then how do you incorporate your then coaching the Lakers, how do you incorporate these big business principles to managing people? How does that apply to you know, I think of professional athletes as you know,
high strung, highest level. I it's a terrible um uh way to conceptualize it, but these are people competing at the very highest level of physical achievement. It seems that would be a very different set of rules. Then let's go sell more widgets today or am I completely wrong and not? I think the rules are pretty much the same. Like Charlie said, it's all about the teamwork and when you have a team of five on that floor and really it's a team of twelve or fifteen, because it's
the whole team. And one of the things that Charlie taught me is that, you know, you have to put the people, uh, the front line people at the top. You know, he has his upside down pyramid that we
talked about, and the coaches at the bottom. You know, so that twelve and at eleventh and tenth and ninth and eighth guy is just as important as the number one, number two guy on any team because at the end of the day, as a teammate, when I played the game of basketball, I didn't want to let my teammates down. So I had to make sure every night I came ready to play and do my part. And in turn, our guys all felt that way. And as a team also, you have to have it has to be one common goal.
You can't have all these guys have different goals because it's not gonna work. And our whole gold and the whole mindset was always win championships. Uh. We We didn't care about the individual achievements because we knew if we wanted as a team that everybody would win and everybody would would would prosper from that, you know. So it's very important for us to understand that the name on the front of the jersey is much more important than
the name on the back of the jersey. And that's how we kind of, you know, looked at it as we do in business. When you know, when I'm dealing with Charlie and we're talking business and I'm really just you know, grabbing his coat tel and listening every world he has to say. When I'm in these board meetings and in these bank meetings. I get a kick out of that because it's it's so much like basketball. You know, everybody has to be on the same page in order
for it too. You know, he's not. He's not on my coattail. In fact, what I found that is amazing to me. Uh, If I ask another consumer package goods guy, what do you think about this problem or this issue with that personnel issue that we might have, I'll get an answer that's probably pretty close to what my way of thinking is because we grew up with studying the same courses. When I asked Byron that question, I'll get a very different answer, and often times that answer will
turn on the lightbulb. Boy, I never thought about it that way. I've got to modify what I'm doing and incorporate what he's suggesting. You have to take these elite athletes and get them to perform really at the very highest level. When you're working with staff employees, you want them to do their best. But it's a very different set of parameters. So so where are the differences. What do you pick up from Byron that you can't get
from someone else in a package goods business. I can't, I can't say that and make a generalization around that. But all I can tell you is I've on on numerous occasions, said I'm having a problem with this person or this issue, and he'll say, you know, this is how I've done it in the past, and sometimes there's something that will click, and I'll say, you know, I'm gonna try to use that to see if I can motivate the person better than I've been motivating him or
her in the past. Uh. And that's the same thing with Charlie, where I've asked him a question that I know I can go to one of my coaches and ask, but I'm gonna get a I'm gonna get a basketball answer. And you know, he sees the game. You know, he's been in the meetings, he sees all the things that we're doing. But I'm gonna get a very objective answer from him that's totally different than what I would probably
get from my coaches. And the answer I would get from them is something I probably expect to get, you know what I mean. So Charlie puts it in a different form where again, like he says, it kind of clicks with me and it resonates and I can go to that player and put it in a different form where it makes sense. And we've used each other on number of number of occasions that way, and uh, I remember the last time we did that, you know, I was so giddy. I was like, Charlie, that is fantastic.
I'm gonna go use this and it it worked extremely well with the the young man I was talking to. So you know, it's great that we can bounce things off of each other because we're both getting a different perspective. I'm not giving him the old the old company you know, you know answer, and he's not giving me the old coach's answer, and I think that's what makes it really work. Coming up, we continue our conversation with Byron Scott of the Lakers and Charlie Norris of McKesson discussing what it's
like playing the game at the highest level. I'm Barry Ridhults. You're listening to Masters in Business on Bloomberg Radio. My special guests today are Byron Scott, formerly of the Los Angeles Lakers, and Charles Norris. He is currently chairman of Fresh Pet. Previously he was CEO of McKesson Water. Let's talk a little bit about playing the game at the
highest levels, be it sports or or business. Um, I'm a I'm a big fan of of hoops and I read not too long ago that Oscar Robertson has been pretty rough on on some current players, saying saying that they're soft today, that it's not like the old days where you had a man up and get hurt and play through the pain and what have you. What what's your view on this? Has the game changed? Are these modern players really soft? Yes? Really? Oscar is not pulling
any punches anybody never done. No, he never does. But you know a lot of us old school players feel that way, that the game has gotten a loss a lot softer. Uh. You know, the freedom of movement, you know, rule is totally different than it was back in the day. You know, every time you got up and down the court, you got hit. You know, back in the eighties and the seventies and the nineties, Uh, there was no freedom of movement. If it wasn't just every know, it was everybody,
I mean, everybody played by the same rules. Detroit just took it to the you know, to the limit, you know what I mean, and maybe sometimes a little over. But but that was a part of the game. You knew that you were gonna get hit when you went to the basket, and you you accepted it. You get up, you make your free throws, and you go down the court. So the game has gotten a lot soffer and I think for a lot of the reasons why is because the NBA wanted to open up the game a lot more.
They wanted to make it much more offensively friendly, because they know the more you score, the more fans are in there are in the seats, and the more fans are watching watching the television, so the viewer, the viewership becomes much more higher. So I understand it. Um. And obviously the game right now is in a very good place. Uh. And I do like the way the game is being played. I you know, it's totally different than when I played.
When it was inside out. Now it's outside in. And you couldn't have had in a Golden State doing what they're doing back in the eighties and nineties. Well they could have. I still think I'm not gonna take anything from those guys because Curry is a great basketballer, a big final Uh. But he would have been he would have been beat up a lot, you know, back in
the day. So it's it's a lot more uh leaning it towards guys that are that are smaller, and it's really brought the smaller guy back into play because if you could shoot it from deep and if you can handle the ball, then there's a place in the NBA for you. So I grew up in the era of Magic and Bird and Michael Jordan's and and and it was I thought it was, you know, a long suffering Knicks fan and the uh Starks Oakley uh era Patrick.
You know, of course it was. It was frustrating always getting to Chicago and you know, more or less one thing to roll away from making it into the finals. But I thought that was a fun game and it was a physical game. As much as it's fun to watch on TV, it's totally different than it used to be. It's it's yeah, it's faster. So have they ruined basketball or is it? Have they commercialized? Well, I think they've commercialized it a lot more. It's no doubt about that.
Ruined it is a is a very harsh word to use in the NBA. I think the game is still flourishing right now. You know, the game probably right now is more popular than it's ever been, especially with Yeah, especially with the fact that you know, from a social media standpoint, you can go globally and I'm not I don't think I would be crazy to say that there's going to be an NBA overseas somewhere in the near future. Um, you know, so the game is prosperous. I mean, the
game is doing extremely well. Uh, it's a great game to watch when you've got teams like Golden State in San Antonio, uh, Cleveland, teams that play what I call the right way. You know, they played, they played a win, and they're playing for individual glory. They playing the win championships.
And I think that's the beauty of basketball. So if Charlie, if Byron brings you to the NBA headquarters and they say, listen, we're having some concerns about the future of the game, what what would you recommend they do to uh take to the next level? From a from a corporate perspective, Barry, That's that's a really hard question because just fix I'm not anything challenging. Just take a billion dollar industry and
make it better. Uh. Still that that's a hard question when it comes comes to basketball, or what about their own internal management. What what do you think they do well? And what do you think they don't do well? I could tell you, am I allowed to say this? I've seen the four one k that the NBA has from their own players, and it's terrible for their own employees. Not that the players, but if you're an employee of the National Basketball Association, your four O one case. Thanks.
I was shocked at that, which made me wonder what else might they be doing well. I've had this conversation on innumerable times with Byron and other friends of mine who had played in the NBA, and it's shocking to me the percentage of players five years after they've retired who are totally bankrupt, to have no career direction. And clearly it's it's getting worse and worse because back in the day you had to be three years out of college.
Today year one year and you can and many many of the players go overseas for that year and don't do college at all. Coming up, we continue our conversation with Byron Scott and Charles Norris, authors of Slam Dunk Success, Leaning from every position on life's court, discussing the changing worlds of business. I'm very rich Halts. You're listening to
Masters in Business on Bloomberg Radio. My special guests today are Byron Scott of the l A Lakers and Charlie Norris, currently chairman of Fresh Pet former CEO of McKesson Water. Let's talk a little bit about the world of business today and and these are some questions that I pulled pretty much right from the book. You discuss the importance of being transparent and honest in every one of your interactions with clients with employees. How important is that sort
of transparency and honesty to to business today. I think it's hugely important. M My my view is there's no dumb person and everybody if you're the leader of an organization, and especially if you're a leader who's who gets out with the employees as much as I did. And I'll come back to that in a second. Uh, the employees are watching you, and they're watching what you say and how you behave and what what you do. And if you don't walk the talk, uh, they'll know it, and
they won't respond as favorably. And the in fact, they won't respond favorably at all if they think that you're you're up there and you're just raking in your your salary and your bonus, and you don't care what's happening to the business or happening to them in their own lives. So when I got to McKesson Water Products them there was one reserve parking space. There was one reserved parking space in the whole company, and it was mine. And the first thing I did in my first day on
the job was eliminate that one reserved parking space. Then, uh, did people recognize that and understand why you did that? Right away? We had fifty odd locations and consultants said we were like a an African village in terms of bongo drums, telling different systems, and oh yeah, and and i'd I'd say two days later, everybody in those fifty locations it heard some uh, some story around that somewhere
around that act. You said early in the book when you came to McKesson, if you didn't do something to restructure the company, all people would lose their jobs when the company went bankrupt. So you had to let go a thousand people. And Byron, you talk about what it's like being cut and what it's like to have to let a player go. How do you go about making those having those difficult conversations. What's the best approach for
for those sorts of things. Well, first of all, I was the new guy on the block, and there was several people internally who felt that they should have gotten the CEO role who were already there. I had a water background, but East coast, and I was coming to the West coast, so I were there East co West coast water battles like East Coast West Coast or is it? Well, I can imagine you know, this is this is this is an interesting story. On the East coast, it was
largely office delivery. On the West coast, over fifty of our sales were too homes, not just two offices. On the East coast it was large, at least with with Deer Parket was all Teamsters unions. On the West coast there was very there were pockets of union largely non union and on the West Coast. I was just shocked when I first got there that there were bulges in the pockets of our route sales reps. I was saying,
what are you, what are you? What are in your pockets? Well, they all had massive amounts of keys, and I'd say that up to half of their accounts. The people had given them the keys to their home, the house keys, house keys. If they weren't home, they could bring the bottle into the kitchen or wherever the water cooler was, take off an empty, put on a full, or put
it inside the house. And to take this to the next level, when we did research on how did customers who had a relationship with the route rep how did they view our company versus customers who didn't have a relationship and didn't see the route wrap on on a frequent basis when they were making deliveries. Well, if they saw the route wrap, the water tasted better, the road truck was cleaner, the water cooler, the water dispatched was
warmer and colder. Everything was better. The the quit rate amongst those customers who saw the route rep on a regular basis was dramatically lower than the quit rate was of people who didn't see the route. No substitute for pressing the flesh, none whatsoever. So back to this, I made sure that every one of our senior managers were out on a route at least every three months, and they had to deliver half the bottles, and they had to go to all the different parts of the country.
So they had to be in the summer in Phoenix, they had to be in the winter in Pennsylvania. They had to they had to live what those route reps were doing on on a daily basis. Every one of the senior managers had to be in the call center we were taking we had when I got toward the end of when I was there, we had over eight hundred thousand UH customers. We were taking hundred calls a day. They had to go in, answered calls with the customers, find out what the issues were, and really live what
the frontline people were experiencing. And all of a sudden, the people said, Wow, they really are paying attention to what we're doing. And across the board, the managers were much smarter about what needed to change from the policies we currently had in place. So, so you said I'm gonna I didn't answer, by the way, you're so, let's stay with that. Because so, how do you fire a thousand people and make it not be the most miserable
experience for everybody involved? Well, first of all, I had to paint the picture of what was wrong with the organization. Nobody is going to be comfortable with that level of staff reduction if there isn't a clear reason why you're doing it, and you describe in the book, you have two hundred thirty people in the finance division for a company with two thirty million dollars in sales, it's probably
ten times what you need to run that best. We the way the company was grew it was through acquisition, and there was never a time when they integrated all of the companies. It was a hodgepart so if if I wanted to buy another company, I would have to set up another SPU. So we had seven separate spu s strategic business units doing the same thing seven different ways, with seven separate chart of accounts, and a consolidation finance group that put it into language that could go to
McKesson Corporate. It was way way overstaffed, So so you paint a picture and you basically get everybody, if not to buy in, at least understand the company's going out of business. And if we don't make major changes, everyone loses their jobs. So it makes that easier how but there was one other thing. I didn't do this myself. A I had smart people around me, and we set up across the board task forces made up of the
frontline people to come back with their own recommendation. That was really interesting in the book What needed to Change, where some people said, hey, my own position is duplicated three places some of us. That's amazing to get employees to say you need to either fire me or fire people like me because there are too many of us for the amount of business we have. How does how do you do this? At a as a coach, you describe the exit you had from the Lakers after what
is it ten years, eleven years, three championships? So so you said that was like a graceful How often have you fired? And you'll get out and leave? But basically everybody done really good terms and as tearful as it was. What was the life lesson Jerry West tought you when you left? Well, you know the one thing you know, Jerry West the logo taught me as you don't burn bridges. The logo for people who aren't basketball fans, anytime you see the NBA logo, that is Jerry West. Jerry West,
and so his nickname the logo is the logo. We called him that very affectionately, but it was it was crazy because he brought me into the Lakers. He made a trade that was very unpopular at the time. Uh, and you know, we end up winning three more championships. And then when he brought you in, he pulls you aside and says, hey, everybody hates me for this trade, and in three years they're gonna call this the greatest
trade I've made. How does that make you feel? When you're nervous, your rookie, you're starting out, well, the first thing that does, Barry puts a whole lot of pressure on you, you know what I mean. And it was great for me because I knew that at that particular time that he had a lot of faith in me, and also knew that I wasn't gonna let him down, you know, because he stuck his neck out for me. So uh. It was a and it still is, an
unbelievable relationship that I had with the logo. Uh. But when he wanted to change directions, you know, it was very tearful for both of us. And I knew he was doing it because it's a business decision that had nothing to do with being personal about it. And I also knew that, you know, because of the way he had treated me or I was going to leave on very good terms. You know, even though I wanted to still be a Laker for life, I understood the business
of basketball. There's sometimes these decisions have to be made. We have been speaking with Byron Scott of the l A Lakers and Charlie Norris of Fresh Pet and McKesson Water. If you enjoy this conversation, check out our podcast after Us, where we keep the tape rolling. You can find that at Apple iTunes, SoundCloud, or Bloomberg dot com. Read my daily column at Bloomberg View dot com, or follow me on Twitter at rid Holts. I'm Barry Ridholts. You've been
listening to Masters in Business on Bloomberg Radio. What could your future hold? More than you think? Because at Merrill Lynch we work with you to create a strategy built around your priorities. Visit mL dot com and learn more about Merrill Lynch. An affiliated Bank of America. Merrill Lynch makes available products and services offered by Merrill Lynch. Pierce Federan Smith, Incorporated, a register broker dealer. Remember s I PC. Welcome to the podcast. Thank you guys for doing this.
It's it's a privilege and it's I find this sort of stuff a lot of fun. I really enjoy doing this. I know I only have you for a short period of time. There was one question I did not get to and this applies to both you. You tell the story Byron early in the book about after the trade, the Lakers make it through the Western Um Conference finals, and you go back into the locker room and you're ready to celebrate and their old business and the team
culture as we only sell celebrate winning championships. You sell Charles, you sell McKesson for over a billion dollars when you had basically taken over a company that was a mess a few years earlier. At what point do you after you achieve that level of success do you stop and say, now what I mean? Is it anticlimactic? How do you keep motivated after you do what you set out to do?
I remember reading about Michael Jordan's having, you know, the whole gambling discussion was he needed something else after the third or fourth or fifth or sixth championship. He needed something else to motivate him. How do you keep motivated after you achieve your goals? Well? For me, you know, uh, winning is the ultimate motivation factor for me um in that eight four when we got to the finals and I wanted to run in the locker room and celebrate and magic, and all the guys kind of looked at
me crazy. It's like, no, no, no, we we don't celebrate Western Conference champions We celebrate NBA champions And that year we lost to the Celtics, you know, my rookie year. So the next year was much easier, obviously to get wrapped up for because you just had a disappointing season and in our rise, you know, getting to the finals and losing wasn't you know, was it was a failure season for season for us. So the next year we
win the championship. And I think after every time that we won a championship, I wanted to win another one, you know. And and that's that's the the mark of of of a great champion is that you you're just not living on your laurels. You're not thinking about what you just did in the pass. You're worried about the next year and the next year and the next year. And the guys I played with, it wasn't very difficult
to get up for that next year. You know, those guys were all driven, just like I was, and we want to win. We wanted to win as many championships as possible. Ronney Lot, who I know, you know, a very good friend of mine, and when he was with the forty nine before they went on their championship runs, you know, we were talking one day and he asked me the same question, what keeps you guys going? And I said, but we only got a short amount of time in this profession, you win as many as you
can while you can take advantage of the situation. And I remember he did a Sports Illustrated story and told the guy the exact same thing that we had talked about, you know, So that was my motivation. Factors that nobody remembers, Barry how many points I scored in my career. But every time my name comes up in the conversation, they'll say how many championships did you win? Two? Or three? Four?
And they're always really close, you know, But if I asked them three as a players, didn't win As a coach, I went. I went to twice. But they always remember how many championships you won. Nobody remembers unless you are really a basketball history geek. That I scored over fifteen thousand points in my career, and I was on a team with three unbelievable Hall of famers, really four, because Bob was on the team as well. You started eighty two consecutive games? Was it three seasons? Is that? Is
that right? I think three out of four seasons started well today, Yeah, because guys rest all the time. You know again, going back un who seems to be running well, you know what, Lebron is the only guy to me and the league that can say if I need a day off, that nobody should ever question. And he runs more minutes than any other more more minutes per game than anybody. He's went to the final six straight years.
I mean, you know how hard that is, So nobody should ever complain if Lebron James came out and said, uh, you know what, guys, I'm gonna take the day off, there should not be one person in the world that says, oh, that and that's not right. He's the only guy to me right now in the NBA that can say I want a day off, and there shouldn't be a question about could he play back in your era? Do you think Lebron James could get in the time machine go
back to the eighties and be competitive in that time period. Absolutely, because a lot of players that you could say that about I don't either, you know, Kobe Bryant was one that I thought was a old school, you know type shack. Lebron James is definitely one of those guys that would still be uh in Hall of Famer in the eighties because he has all the skills. He has the magic Johnson skills of being able to see the floor, make players better that are around him, and when need be,
can take over games. So Lebron, yes, absolutely, So we were talking about not spiking it in the end zone. After you have a big success, What do you do after you sell a company for more than a billion dollars, you get yourself a nice paid a how do you not say, Okay, I'm the best, I don't need to do anything else. What what's the next step for you? Charlie? Well, in my case, I was exhausted through that whole process of turning around McKesson water sleepless nights you describe. It
was not easy. It's not easy, and you know, we were talking about eliminating a thousand positions. That was a horrible thing, right, but you still everyone has survivor's guild. UH. The company had UH certainly a culture of embracing, not uh willie nilly firing people. They always found a new home. And UH it was the whole that whole experience was just a really difficult one, UH on the heels of a similar thing with Deer Park. And so I took a year where I UH thought what did I want
to do next? And my family decided we we ended up having a set up a donor advised trust with the California Community Foundation because we wanted to become much more active in philanthropy. UH and UH during that year, I started to reach we we did a business plan for philanthropy, and my wife and my two kids and I each had our own areas and we started to go out and and look at uh different organizations to
see which ones we wanted to support. And in my case, I was involved with children at risk and job creation and we actually created a prototype of a UM operation that combined UH life skills training with sport and at the end of that if if the kids did both the life skills training and U participated in the work
at the sport workouts, which were basketball. We gave them a hundred hours of a paid internship at a company so they would start to get a feeling about what it was like working and they all ended up having better grades. And Byron is the poster childhood this as well, because he does tremendous work with a summer basketball camps and again is doing the same type of things. So
that was an area. Uh. And then I started to think about what I wanted to do next, and with the help of a friend of mine, Rick Kane, who um founded Kane Capital Advisors, we started to buy businesses and I started to get on boards, and I was still very active in business, but not the day to day responsible person for you know, running it. When you say, people look at you two is so different because visually you're different. But you know, I have the advantage of
having spoken with you for forty five minutes. It's pretty obvious why there's a friendship here, and there's an overlap and interest because you guys really are cut from the same cloth, even though you're coming from completely different places. I only have you that well, it's apparent just listening to you both talk with such enthusiasm about the things you're talking about and it makes you realize how people are superficial. He's a white guy in a black eye.
Oh they must be completely different people. Not really, but you know what with what we've done and and uh, Byron Um is brilliant about taking a moment, taking a deep breath, and then saying I'm going forward, I'm not going backward. And literally one day after his coaching with the Lakers ended, he was already into what where am I going next? What where am I going to do? And if if you're wired like that, I will never not be doing something and trying to do it at
the best that I possibly can. And Byron is a hundred like that. In the book, you reference getting to know the various people when you came into McKesson, and you reference knowing everybody who worked in the forum practically from the hot dog salespeople to the people swept the floor at night. What is the mean to running a business, running a company to really know your staff, your suppliers, your competitors, your clients. How important is that? Well? I
think it's extremely important. Um. And like Charlie said, I try to treat everybody the way I want to be treated. Uh So, getting to notice security guards at the form when we walk in and know their backgrounds and know their family members and know what type of uh things they have in store and what they want to achieve in life. Is getting them to understand that you do really care about them. And it's the same with your players. Uh,
it's the same with my coaches, you know. So I make it a point uh to get to know them on a personal level as well as a professional level. And you know what, to be honest with you, all these years that I had been doing that, I didn't know that that was a form of being a great leader. It was just something that came natural to me. And tell I met Charlie and we started writing down some of the things that we thought would make a great leader.
And when he started telling me, you know, we have to get to the heads and hearts of people and be you do it naturally, then I start really thinking about it. You know. But it was something that just really came natural to me because I think it was something that was instilled to me at a very early age by my mom and my dad. Uh, you know that old saying, Like my mom used to say, you know, you treat people the way you want to be treated,
and that's how I kind of took it. And so getting to know that the guy at the hot dogs stand, getting another guy us to selling the T shirts, getting to know the guy that's on the floor that's one of the security guys in the in the red jackets, getting to know Tony, our man at the at the security when we would come into the lake a facility to work out. You know, they appreciate that because now
you make them feel they're important, and they are. And I thought that was very important that every job that I've been to to get to know the other people. Are the people that really make the company running in in Charlie's case, or make that arena really work. Are the people that people don't see on an everyday basis. Now, I'll take it one step further, and I think this
supplies to Byron's world as well as mine. Um with mckets and Water Products Company, we had dread employees and a very high percentage of them touched the end user every single day. And if you can't have those people feel comfortable telling you whether your programs are working or not working, what needs to change If they don't feel that you care about what they're saying. Then you've lost it. You have no chance of being successful, uh, running that business.
And we got to the point where we stopped doing customer satisfaction surveys. All we did were employees satisfaction surveys because I knew if the employees were happy, if they felt that they were heard, the customer would would be happy with our product and service. Discipline basically brings different related ideas that you get to apply in a in a different way. Yeah, I'll give you an example of one thing that we talked about that because of timing
being never got to incorporate, but we were. We were one day talking about, uh, it's in many ways pot luck with the draft and and uh what uh uh the drafted player, how well that person might fit in with the organization once they're there. And I said, have you ever considered psychological testing of the prospective draftees before you actually go out and draft them? And he said, no,
we've never done that. And so we started talking about how we use it when we're hiring in business and and Byron thought, you know, this is something I really want to bring to what I'm doing. So that was that was an example, where uh, from my end to to his, it was clearly an opportunity that hadn't been considered before. So so what should the This is true
for professional sports. There was a big Sports Illustrated article about ten years ago about the number of football players were and this was before the whole um concussion trauma issue became Yeah, I mean in in the in the NFL, you have the issue of uh, the average lifespan of an offensive alignment is some ridiculously early twenty years exactly. I mean, so what should they What should professional sports leagues be doing two develop some financial literacy for for
their places. I know, I know what the problems are with the collective bargaining agreements, and I know what the agents are allowed to do are not allowed to do. But at some point I think it would be really important for the league to and for the unions to find a way to manage force players to uh manage
money better. Uh. Perhaps there'd be a way to hold back a certain percentage, like having a four oh one K or some other plan of that nature, and make it a forced requirement to ensure that the players have money five years or seven years after retirements. Easy enough to to build something like that well, But on the other hand, you want to treat everybody as an adult, and it has to be done in a way that
everyone believes it's in their best interest. And I think that's that's the hardest thing, to get them to feel that they're not going to live forever in play forty years in the NBA or in the NFL or whatever, that they have to do this to secure their future. Gentlemen, this has been an absolute pleasure. Thank you so much for being so generous with your time. We have been speaking to the authors of Slam Dunk Success, Leading from Every Position on Life's Court, written by Byron Scott and
Charlie Norris. If you enjoy this conversation, be sure and look up and entered down an Inch on Apple iTunes or Bloomberg dot Com or SoundCloud for our other hundred and forty nine or so of these conversations. I would be remiss if I did not thank my head of research, Michael bat Nick, my producer booker Taylor Riggs, my recording engineer Medina Parwana. I'm Barry Ridhults. You have been listening
to Masters in Business on Bloomberg Radio. Our world is always moving, so with Mery Lynch, you can get access to financial guidance online, in person or through the app. Visit mL dot com and learn more about Mery Lynch. An affiliated Bank of America, Mary Lynch makes available products and services offered by Merrill Lynch, Pierce, Feder and Smith, Incorporated or Registered Broker Dealer remember s I PC