Dan Beckerman, AEG

What's the day like for a CEO who has to manage a company that owns 11 sports teams, Staples Center, American Airlines Arena, LA Live district, The O2 in London, O2 World in Berlin, live-entertainment company promoting hundreds of concerts and events, and over 100 other different venues and organizations? Well, there is only one man who can answer this question and that man is Mr. Beckerman. Meet Dan Beckerman of AEG.

Dan was named a Chief Executive Officer of Anschutz Entertainment Group about 6~7 weeks ago and he came to UCLA Anderson to talk about his new job, his business, and his story.

Dan Beckerman, CEO of AEG

He was a student here at Anderson about 20 years ago and before that he was a tax accountant at Arthur Andersen. Coming into business school, he wanted to do something different after school and thought about what would be fun and what he really wanted to do. What did he think would be fun and something he really wanted to do? Sports Management. I, as 30-something year old male who loves sports, instantly understood how he could have arrived at such an answer. But how does one get into sports management? Lakers and Clippers recruit NBA players, but they don't certainly recruit MBA students and I do not know any of my classmates who are recruiting for sports teams. Is there certain process you can follow to get into sports teams or sports management?

Dan did not know how to get into sports management either. There was no internet back then, so he went to the bookstore and bought media guides that had names, phone numbers, and mailing addresses of every team, every league, and every sports. He quickly put together a resume so that it looked like he had some sort of sports experience and he wrote letters, more than 500 of them to different teams in different leagues. In those letters, Dan wrote that he really wants to get into sports, that he has a finance background, but he will do anything and whatever those teams can offer him. 

Then, he got rejection letters after rejection letters. He actually brought those rejection letters and showed one to us, one from Washington Bullets. He keeps these letters in his office and having them in his office makes him feel humbled and makes him realize how lucky he is. 

After all the rejection letters, he got one letter that was positive, and it was from Los Angeles Clippers. He interviewed with Clippers about 20 different times and they decided to take a chance on him and let him run Finance department of the Clippers. He took the job even though salary he made was less than what he made in his previous job and what he made in summer internship. His friends thought he was crazy to take the job with such low salary but he felt great about the decision and he reflected that it was the smartest thing he has done in his whole life. If anyone is thinking about making a career decision based on how much salary one can make, I would like to point that person to Dan's story. Ask yourself what you really want to do and be willing to do whatever it takes to do that, even if it takes writing more than 500 letters.

Dan was very happy with Clippers and he could have stayed with Clippers forever, but he met Tim Leiweke who completely hooked him in with his vision of what they can do together in AEG. Not just managing sports teams, but building arenas, and doing lots of different things. And Tim was right. They did million more things than Tim originally promised. They built Staples center, bought more sports teams, got into music business, built soccer stadiums, built arenas in Germany and London. With the owner Philip Anschutz's vision and backings, they helped AEG evolve to a company it is today, with real estate and venues side of the business that generates tons of cash flows and the contents programming side of the business with 11 sports teams and events and concerts that range from Coachella, Stagecoach, to promoting and managing tours of artists such as Rollingstones, Justin Bieber, Taylor Swift, and Bon Jovi. 

It was a great personal story as well as a great business story. So for those people who are inspired by Dan's career and want to build the next sports or entertainment empire, what can they do? From what I heard from Dan, it does not seem easy. Persistence seems to be a must-have quality because Sports and Entertainment world is very small community and very hard to break into. Also, you would need a game plan. Instead of going to a team and saying that "I just want to be in sports management", if you have a vision of what you want to do and how you can do it in sports management context, go after it in a strategic way and it will make the entry easier and allow you to have an easier conversation and better outcome with sports/entertainment organizations. 

Inflection Point: Thoughts On Our Career

Last week I read a book called “only the paranoid survive” by former Intel Chairman Andy Grove. In this book, Mr. Grove articulates the concept of inflection point and explains how to navigate through one so that a company can come out of it stronger and better on the other side. 

Mathematically speaking, inflection point is a point where slope of the curve changes sign, meaning it’s a point at which a curve stops curving one way and starts curving the other way. As shown to the left, inflection point, in a business context, is a point where profound and massive changes occur, where balance of forces shift from the old ways of doing business and the old ways of competing to the new ways of doing business and competing.

Actions a leader takes in and around that inflection point determines whether the business takes off and reaches new heights or whether the business declines and fades from our memory. Inflection point comes in many forms, be it a competition, a change in regulation, a change in technology, or even a change in a culture. 

An example of such inflection point for Intel was in early 1980s, when Japanese semiconductor companies started bringing in high-quality, low-price memories. Margins kept declining and declining, and Intel was at a crossroads of having to choose between continuing with memory business or focusing on Microprocessors. Through painful introspection and difficult decisions, Intel chose the latter and brilliance of that decision is evident still to this day when we think about how successful of a company Intel is today.

I think you would agree with me when I say that each person, every one of us, is like an individual business, that our career is literally our business, and that we are CEOs of our respective businesses. Just like the CEO of a big company, we will be faced with many inflection points throughout the course of our careers and whether our career path bounces upward or downward through such inflection points will depend on our actions in and around those critical inflection points. My hope in writing this post is that you become aware of what   career inflection points are, become sensitive enough to recognize one when you are confronted with one, and take proper actions to exploit inflection points to your advantage and ultimately have many successive upward bounces in your career inflection curve.

So how do you develop the ability to sense your career inflection point? First and foremost, be alert to changes in your environment and constantly ask questions about their implications. Be alert to changes in your organization. Let’s say there are rumors about reorganization. What does that mean for your career? Should you try to join a team that's newly being formed? Let’s say new employee with same skill set as yours just joined the company. Does your boss need two people with same skill sets? Can that new employee do the job better than you do? Let’s say your direct supervisor is not presenting any vision for your team. Should you jump the ship and join another team or leader with clear vision? These are valid questions to ask when such changes occur in your organizations or in your company.

Also be alert to changes going on in the world at large that are relevant to the business you work for. You must open up your mind to outside views. Read the newspapers. Attend industry conference. Network with people in other companies. You may hear about impending changes that may be relevant to your career. Listen to chatters from colleagues and friends. Let’s say that you read in the newspaper that there’s new super robot capable of writing software on its own or capable of doing your job. What would you do to prepare for the arrival of that robot? Let’s say there is a new wave of internet innovations and new technologies. How would those innovations and technologies change the way you and your team work?

Maybe you are in the right industry but you are in the company that’s in decline. Should you change the company to advance your career? Again, asking these questions about your career in the context of larger world is important to do. 

Lastly, Imagine and Experiment. Picture yourself in different roles, Read about these roles. Talk to people who are in them. Experiment your speaking skills and leadership skills in a variety of settings. Maybe you find out you have a real talent for managerial or PR positions and that could lead you to a different career trajectory. Maybe you can ask your boss to give you different assignment, which can lead you to a different career path. Through imagining and experimenting, you might find your true passion and a whole new career.

So in conclusion, my action points for you are three-fold: 
1) Be aware of career inflection points b/c they are sure to come in your career. 
2) Be alert to changes in your environment, in your industry, in the world at large. 
3) Imagine and Experiment in new roles and skills. 
I urge you to get in front of these career inflection points and change with them and I wish you much success on your career journey.