The Iowa Way

Welcome to on the Job. On today's episode, we're speaking with Pete McMahon over in the Ames Iowa Express Office, who for the past two years has been working alongside his wife, Katie. And while working with a spouse might seem daunting to some, as we'll hear, Pete had a lot of experience being part of a team long before coming to Express. If you were to walk into the Express office in Ames, Iowa, you might find yourself thinking, geez,

Guy was six seven, two hundred and ninety pounds, you know, as a senior in high school, and back then that was pretty big. So that was attraction from the Iowa program.

As a born and raised Iowan, it had always been Pete McMahon's dream to play for the Hawk guys. But even as big as he was, that dream wasn't going to come easy.

For those that don't know what is being a walk on mean?

Okay, great question. So every year the university is allowed to give.

You know, so many scholarships, so they bring in the you know, they hand out those scholarships to the top players that they recruit, and then they bring on a handful of folks that are walk ons they call, which don't get scholarships, so you pay your own way. And then there's a group of those walk ons that are recruited.

We'll give you a uniform you can hold this tackling dummy. And that was me.

So I was not a scholarship kid. I wasn't even a recruited walk on. I was a first what way would call, first day walk on.

And in fact, Pete did do all that. After proving himself in the weight room and on the field, he was told that he'd made the team. Pete McMahon's dream of being a Hawkey had come true. Had you been in the stands as a fan when you were younger. Yeah, we went to a few games as a kid.

My dad was worked every Saturday, so it was hard for us to get there. But there were times, you know, went to half a dozen games growing up as a kid. But we always listened to it on the radio, always watched the game on Saturdays if we were home. So it was a great great to be you know, on the field and be part of what I grew up with.

But before you go thinking it was all gravy after that, you should know that making the football team does doesn't mean you get to play. In fact, Pete didn't see any game time until his sophomore year.

Ten guys got injured and I finally got hit and McMahon get in there or you know, go.

Fill in that spot.

I'm like, okay, So I run in and I you know, run a couple of plays, probably screwed up ninety percent of them, and but I got an opportunity to go in.

Pete didn't even get to eat with the scholarship guys.

I had to buy my own meal plan. Everybody else got to go to this you know, the training table, and they would it was for scholarship kids only.

Wow, that's I imagine they're getting like turkey carved up, and you're over there like prison style, pushing your tray along.

Yeah, pretty much.

Yeah, with all the with all the other kids, with all the with the general population.

It was even worse. It's a team won because on Sundays, following a Hawk Gys win, all the scholarship kids would be taken to this fancy athletic club for dinner.

Steak and lobster tale. That was the meal on Sunday nights. But I wasn't allow to go. I couldn't go. It was a scholarship only. All the scholarship kids get to go eat lobster tail and steak, and then all of us walk on.

Since we weren't allowed, we'd go to McDonald's.

I mean we would literally drive the opposite alight, Oh all right, we'll go get jees Burgers.

And well, I can't get over the injustice of that. Pete didn't seem to mind. If anything, it motivated him to work that much harder in the weight room and hit that much harder on the field.

You know, some folks get down, oh this is this is unfair or whatever, but other folks, you know, used his motivation, and I grew up in a blue collar family and you know, a working class family and all that stuff. If you didn't have something, you went out and you worked for it, you got it.

With that blue collar work ethic and the mentality that he continually had to prove himself, Pete McMahon came into his own as a Hawk guy and went on to have an impressive college.

Career, you know, as a team captain and you know, two Big ten championship rings.

We finished in the.

Time ten three years in a row, beat Florida in a bowl game.

My senior year.

Beat LSU on a last second touchdown pass.

So when it came time for graduation, there was no question in Pete's mind what was next.

You're gonna play at the next level. From day one.

You walk into the weight room and you see the pictures and the jerseys plastered everywhere of all the guys.

That came before you, that all played in the NFL.

So where were you during drafted?

Yeah, my dad's house back home, sitting on the couch in the living room, just glued to the TV.

Round one passes and Pete doesn't hear his name. Then round two goes.

By and I get a phone call from the Dallas Cowboys.

And he just just chatting, you know, hey, Pete just went to college.

Just touch base with you, I see how things are going. And I'm like, this is awesome. I think they're gonna pick me.

And they're like, okay, all right, great, thanks, good to chat, We'll see you later. And then the next pick was out of the University of Iowa, Sean Conson. I did. It was a friend of mine, nfllow teammate, and so there was a big high there. We thought, oh my gosh, it's going to be a third round pick and all this stuff, and nope, it wasn't me.

By the end of the first day of drafts, Pete still is unsigned, though this shouldn't be all that surprising because statistically speaking, only one point six percent of college players go on to play in the NFL. Yet despite those odds, Pete tries to stay positive as he settles

Do they still get the sixth rounds that comically giant check.

I didn't get the big No, they didn't do that for me, but I would have liked that.

So you turned pro and you go out West.

YEP. Kind of thought, all right, I got drafted, I'm gonna go to this team. I'm gonna be here for a couple of years.

We were looking at houses, then quickly realized it was California, so I'm not gonna be buying a house in California anytime soon.

So but we kind of.

Thought we were there and I was gonna, you know, get my car shipped and make a life there.

But only halfway into preseason training, Pete suffers a knee injury, and a bad one at that.

So that was a little bit of a of a curve ball, and then.

So had surgery, and very quickly Pete learns what it's really like in the pro league.

Two days later, they cut me, and on top of it, they didn't even tell me. I found out when my girlfriend at the time my wife now, she called me and said, hey, it's on the internet that you just got released.

So I called my agent and he's like, what's going on? And he calls up. I was like, oh, yeah, we released him, and so from.

Then on I kind of got that, had that mentality of hey, you got to look out for yourself and this thing.

Fortunately, soon after getting released from Oakland, Pete manages to get on with the Cleveland Browns and spends the season with them.

In that off season that summer, I had gotten married and we I was like, all right, you know, moving my wife, Katie, We're gonna move back to Cleveland. You know, you start a life. But if she's living with her parents at the time, had you know, half the wedding gifts and packed in the car, I'm kind of like, let's not take twelve sets of china to my one bedroom apartment in Cleveland. Just you never know what's going to happen. So we get there, we're there about a week.

So Pete and his wife arrived back in Iowa, and the very next day he gets a call from the New York Jets saying, pack your bags.

I look like a really good husband. Just took my law's daughter out of their house, brought her back.

A week later. Oh m. And in that time we bought a new puppy.

So now hey, I'm gonna bring your daughter back and with this new dog, and then I'm gonna I'm hopping.

On a flight to New York. So that was a little bit of a crazy time there.

So then Pete goes to New York in Buffalo and Miami and Jacksonville and New England and Hamburg, Germany of all places, and then back to Jacksonville.

You played for a lot of teams in the NFL.

Yes, I did. People ask me what teams do you play for? I'm like, I don't know, you name one. I probably was with them.

So you have a nice collection of jerseys in your closet.

Yeah, I do, I do. Yes.

But eventually Pete decides that as much of a dream as it was to play in the NFL, enough is an So when we come back from the break, we'll hear how Pete McMahon went from the gridiron to express employment.

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We're back with Pete McMahon, who, after a successful college career in his home state of Iowa, went on to play professional football, albeit for more teams than sometimes he can even keep track of.

You know, go to Buffalo, I go to Miami.

I think I went to Carolina on point.

So, as Pete was being shuffled from one team to the next, he started looking around for different opportunities, jobs that might not be as exciting as the NFL, but offered a stability that Pete hadn't yet known.

I studied economics in college and an economics degree, so I thought I might want to do something in the finance world.

But it's two thousand and eight.

Anybody that was around that time knows that was not the best time to look at going into the finance world.

And then so I looked around.

I'm like, I guess I'm a former college and professional athlete, what do they do? And I saw a bunch of guys that I knew were working in the medical device world. So I'm like, I guess I'll go do that.

So Pete starts reaching out to anyone and everyone in the medical device industry.

You reach out to them and they're like, yes, send over your resume.

You got a degree from University of Iowa, and then not my after that that's applicable to what.

You're applying to. Absolutely no, it was not. I did some I did some roofing and some substitute teaching while I was in between looking you know, for teams just to pay the mortgage. But yeah, I didn't have much on my resume.

In a way, you're sort of like a walk on for that job too. You didn't have a lot of business experience, had zero business experience. I had some life experience.

I had been knocked down a few times, and I think that's what I think. You know, employers want to see people who have faced some adversity and then how have they gotten through that adversity.

And we would just go on to these interviews and just talk and they wanted to know my story. Hey, how'd you get here? Today.

And just like with the Iowa coaches, Pete managed to prove himself to the interviewer and once hired, he ended up staying at that job for twelve years. And it must have given you a sense of stability.

That you didn't have in your football career.

Absolutely, I could unpack my bag, you know, I didn't.

Have to keep my suitcase packed.

Uh, and in the corner of my room there, and I was able to just relax a little bit and and you know, build a life and then started to you know, think about having kids and got three three kids here today and you know, get back into family and friends and community and all that stuff. So yeah, there was a there was a big kind of wait there, and that all kind of went into the decision like, hey, I'm done, I'm ready to move on to the next step.

And while Pete was working in the med sales industry, his wife Katie had gotten involved with Express Employment Professionals by buying an office in Ames, Iowa.

The plan was that Katie was going to be was going to stay at home, she was going to have the third baby, she was going to stay be a stay at home mount that lasted probably not even six months, so we moved back, we have our third kid, and we learn about Express through her brother who lives in Minneapolis. His neighbor is the developer and an Express owner, and he said, hey, you know, anybody in Eames that wants to buy an Express office, there's one for sale. And

But despite her lack of experience in the staffing industry, Katie dove in with Gusto.

She went in sold, she found her the team when you know, recruited her internal team. She went and got business and established herself in the community and really did it all all on her own.

So for the.

First seven in six and a half years, you know, she ran this thing and had some good success.

And that seemed to have worked well enough that it even inspired you to join in.

Absolutely no while that was her main focus, and you know, building this business, and I tried to be a part as much as I could, but it pretty much was bringing coffee and change light bulbs was kind of my job. But I always looked at it and said, oh, this is I would love to be a part of it. So I was I wouldn't say jealous, but I was always eager to learn and be a part of it.

Did you have any reservations about working with your wife?

You know, lots of people ask me that, you know, that seems to be a hot topic of discussion when I tell people that I work with my wife, you know, I mean honestly, no, We work really well together.

We always have.

I have just tried to be very cognizant of this is something that she's built and she's put her blood, sweat and tears in and I don't want to try to come in and act like I know anything or try to disrupt things. That was kind of the only thing that I was a little bit. I had to make sure I was not stepping on any tells. And the way we had it structured, there's really two businesses. You know, we can kind of separate, which is nice.

What's a day for you at Express?

My day is really revolves around that, supporting my team, my customers, and our candidates.

Katie and I are very I like and we are very.

Cognizant about how we do things and how we go about things, and we want.

To differentiate ourselves from the.

Competitors because, hey, we do this, but we do this with a little extra we do it with more support. We're going to make you feel better about our service as opposed to the next guy.

Interestingly, Pete has actually found that a lot of the things he learned in his football career have helped him in his role at Express.

What is the Iowa way and has it influenced your role at Express?

Absolutely doing things the right way always and preparing yourself to be the best. That's a reflection of what we do at Express, especially when we go to our leadership conference and you get to see all these other folks and people want to do things the right way. Everybody wants to strive to be the best. And sometimes your formula or what you do, how you do go about doing things isn't pretty or doesn't drive the results that you want, but you stick to it and you keep

And of course Pete McMahon knows firsthand what it's like to have little to show for yourself besides unwavering dedication. Is there something you look for in these people? Can you sort of tell if you're that football recruiter.

Now you're on the other side of it and you're seeing the potential in people.

Absolutely. I had.

You know, coaches in the past say hey, we want folks that are going to work hard and want to be there.

You teach them the rest.

So I kind of try to use that mentality, Hey do they want to learn?

Do they want to be here?

Are they excited to come in here every day and be better? It's a pretty cool thing when you see when somebody comes in and you give them an opportunity and they take advantage of it. You know, if they've got kids and they've got family members, you know, the fifteen dollars an hour job to somebody is extremely impactful to a family and community.

We're all about that.

We're all about giving people, you know, another chance to be successful.

So in essence, what Pete McMahon does at Express is look for people like himself, fellow walk ons just waiting for an opportunity to prove themselves for on the job.

I'm Avery Thompson,