Noob School - Episode 85: The Voice of Elon - Taylor Durham

Episode Date: November 6, 2023

On this episode of Noob School, John sits down with Taylor Durham: the voice of Elon College's sports division, from football to basketball to baseball. They discuss the journey leading up to his career in broadcasting, and give some insight to the inner workings of the field. From there, Taylor delves into his sales career, giving great advice along the way. Little wins can turn into huge ones! I'm going to be sharing my secrets on all my social channels, but if you want them all at your fingertips, start with my book, Sales for Noobs: https://amzn.to/3tiaxsL Subscribe to our newsletter today: https://bit.ly/3Ned5kL #noobschool #salestraining #sales #training #entrepreneur #salestips #salesadvice

New School. All right, welcome back to Noob School. I've got a great friend with me today, Taylor Durham. Taylor is the voice of Elon, as if I have to tell you. He does the football, the basketball, and the baseball games for Elon and graduated from Elon too, right? Yep, 96. So you've had quite a run with Elon so far. Well, first off, John, it's great to be here, as we like to say, longtime listener, first time caller.

Yeah, I graduated in 96. My brother went there from 84 to 88. Wes and I are the only two children of our parents. And so, as I like to tell people, they didn't have to recruit me very hard to go to school there. Wes and I are separated by seven and a half years. I'd go up and spend a random weekend on a college campus. Wes was doing the football and basketball games on the campus radio station at that time. And I'd go up and had a blast.

He lived with great guys, lived on campus, lived off campus with great guys. And I just really enjoyed the atmosphere and really enjoyed everything about that at the time, Elon College now, Elon University. and yeah, just sort of worked out in 92. I knew exactly where I wanted to go to school. Didn't apply to many places. Applied to one. Got in and was off and running and 96 graduated and came back professionally in 2009 on the broadcast side and March of 11 on the partnership side and had been there since.

So you come from a famous family of announcers or would you call it play by play? Yeah. A play by play folks with your brother who does he does the Falcons? Wes does the Falcons and he is also involved with the ACC network and with ESPN. He was the longtime voice at Georgia Tech, was the voice of the yellow jackets and then got an eye opportunity, got an opportunity in 2012 to move into the television side with at the time it was Fox Sports South and Raycom and it has since moved to the ACC network and I can't be more proud of him and he's done an amazing job he's he's a fantastic brother a

fantastic broadcaster and then luckily both he and I had a really good guy to learn from. A fantastic got to learn from. Our dad was the voice of the Tar Heels at North Carolina for 40 years. Wow. Yeah. So we had a fantastic guy to learn from. So I can't do the math in my head.

When would that have started? Started in 70, 71. It was his last year. His last year was 2010, 2011. Okay. So you would have been there for Macadoo. Yeah.

Oh, yeah. No, yeah. I mean, he was there. Walter Davis, Phil Ford. It's funny. People gather and they'll visit with Wes or myself and they'll ask it's okay, well, who was your favorite Tar Heel growing up? It had to be like Michael or James Worthy or anything else.

And Wes will go down. Y'all are way off. West with Bobby Jones and Walter Davis. And then I tell people this all the time. When I was growing up, five, six, seven years old, I saw Al Wood play. And the 81 and 82 teams and guys, and certainly Michael's on those teams.

But Al Wood, Jimmy Black, James Worthy, Sam Perkins, Matt Dardy, man, those are great. And then luckily I got to know some of the guys in the early 90s. And then it's been fun being with Elon and doing the basketball games and now being in the CAA. And now Monmouth is in the league. And King Rice is the head coach there. And Derek Phelps and Brian Reese are on that staff.

And so having a chance to visit with King and Derek and Brian after our basketball game up there this past year was really special. Yeah. So you and Wes grew up in an announcer family. Did you know you wanted to do that? I would tell you I had an inkling in high school, but I will also tell you that I think Wes and I had our aha moments. I grew up playing junior golf tournaments.

I grew up thinking I could go play at some level on the pro side. and was very misguided in that thought. But I had that vision. And then I think everybody in their life has an aha moment where you're not as good as you think you are. I originally went to Elon to play golf, signed a small scholarship, but signed a scholarship to play for Bill Morningstar.

and I went up there my freshman year and third qualifying around. I'd been okay the first two. I hadn't been great, but I was sitting there still thinking, you know, it'll turn. It'll turn. And I played pretty well the third day and a guy playing in front of me who lived on my dorm floor shot 68 and made it look easy. And I remember having that moment of going, Okay, wait a second.

I may not be as good as I think I am. So let's figure out how I can take what I really like about the competitive side and what I really like about being involved in college athletics. And let's see how I can bring everything together. And I had traveled with my dad. That's the thing and there's several things that you think back on now.

brother and I both got to travel with our father and stand behind him in press boxes and stand behind him at the top of Carmichael and yeah being on air was great but it was watching how he prepared watching how he prepared for a football Saturday from Sunday to Friday that was really neat and really sort of special yeah and then I was able sophomore year spring of my freshman year after I figured the college golf probably wasn't going to be the route. I was able to talk my way into being involved in Elon football and Elon men's basketball as a student on the broadcast side, my sophomore, junior and senior year. Now, had Wes had that moment before you?

Oh, yeah. But when did he have his? Well, you probably know the name. Richard Morgan, who played at Virginia. Okay. My brother was six foot two at 12 years old and was convinced that I'm going to be 6-6, 6-5, 6-6. I'm going to be a winged guy. I'm going to be able to play.

And he went to Carolina basketball school in Chapel Hill, and Richard Morgan dunked on him. and Richard Morgan, who later went to play at Virginia, not dunked on him, but dunked it in a game. And Wes said that he turned around and thought, wait a second. I can't do that. And let me figure out how I can go get involved. Let me find out how this works. And Wes went to Elon, knew exactly what he wanted to do. and Wes was involved freshman through senior year

and then when he left, his first opportunity on the professional side was at Radford with Oliver Ferdnell, who's now at Clemson. Yes, yeah. Or who was at Clemson. And yeah, went Radford, Marshall, Vanderbilt, towards attacking now now. Wow, okay.

So you made the transition when you figured out you weren't going to be a PGA player. You do have a sweet golf swing. I wasn't going to be Payne Stewart or I wasn't going to be. I wasn't going to be Fred Cupples or anything else. Swing it. I've seen you swing it.

I'll say this also. You mentioned about the preparation for the announcing. Of course, most of us have no clue how that works. You have to work so much to learn all these names and backstories on people, I suppose, and all that stuff.

But the first time I saw you do a game was at the Citadel, and I was there. And I was like, oh, you're going to be there. I'm going to be there. I said, I'll come see you before the game. You're like, okay. So like an hour and a half before the game, I went down there, and you were rustling around your area.

And you just briefly said, like, hello, John, good to see you. And you went right back to what you're doing. And I got the message that you were working. You know, you weren't just going to be joking around with me for an hour and a half as we waited for tip off. And so I understand a little. little bit more now that you have to that's how you know all these names and

all that kind of stuff right? Yeah and it's also you get into a routine and you get into a rhythm you're you really can get into the routine side quickly like for example I know that 90 minutes before a tap at a home game for basketball I'll get up out of my spot, walk down a tunnel, and go spend 15 minutes with our head basketball coach to record our pregame.

Because that's a time that just works. And it's just become part of the fabric of what we do on the game day. I know that the day before a football game, I have certain standing meetings. And you just get into the routine and you get into the rhythm. But I've also learned a decade. later from us being in at the Citadel that night that if I don't know it 90 minutes before there's a fairly good chance I'm not going to know it in 90 minutes yeah and so now a lot of the stuff that I'll get done is football prep starts on Sundays Mondays we do a weekly

luncheon on Monday so that's kind of of centers everything early in the week and then we do meetings throughout the week we do a production meeting on Wednesday nights which is very vital for me because it allows me to kind of figure out storylines and then kind of finish out the prep that I'm doing for Wednesday night Thursday and Friday and then also and the one One thing that I tell people is our broadcast works because of the people that I work with. I'm very, very fortunate. I have an incredible crew and an incredible group of people that I work with in football.

Kyrie Walker, who's a former defensive tackle, is our analyst, and Rebecca Fiorentino is our sideline person when we do games on television. And then at Elon, one of the things that I'm most proud of, John, is that we've been able to bring a student into the broadcast. And we use a student for home men's basketball games in the analyst role. And my hope is that it's given an opportunity for them to be able to hit the ground running when they graduate. And I've seen that. One of the guys, Javik Blake, graduated early in January and has moved on for the Biloxi Shuckers, which is a minor league team on the Gulf Coast.

So I hope we're giving some opportunities, but I learn more from being around them and learn more from the technology side. But I'm very fortunate to have a great team. That's great. Well, one thing that another, yet another thing I didn't understand about the life of a play-by-play person, a successful person like yourself, is the announcing is just part of the job. The biggest part of the job, I would say, but the other part of the job almost equally as important is you work with all of your partners or sponsors that are sponsoring the broadcast and trying to get your listeners to buy their. stuff or right yeah so that's the sales part of things I wanted to ask you about how does all that work John I would tell you that the on-air stuff is while certainly can be viewed as the biggest part the own-air stuff for me is the passion side of this now every passion side has

something that you've got to pay and I would not tell you that the sponsor side is or the partner side is the pay side but the partner side allows you to pursue the passion side. We're very lucky and very fortunate and very blessed that we have a great group of partners. We've been able to grow the property. I've worked with great people in the GM role. Jeff Salisbury now is the GM at the property in Tyler Keyes been there the last five years. Tyler came to us from a NASCAR background. But I've had other guys who have gone on

to work at other properties. And working with our partners, a lot of what I've learned in the early sales jobs. Crawford Keyes was here earlier. And Crawford's obviously one of my great friends, one of your great friends. But Crawford hired me and Crawford a guy named Tom called.

Yeah. Hired me to go sell. Crazy Tom called. That is the one and the only. Hired me to go sell college campus telephone yellow pages. The summer after my junior year at Elon. And that was the first time I'd ever sold. First time I'd ever sold.

And it is exactly what Crawford told you sitting in this chair. It is come to Chapel Hill. It's a five-day training session. And then it is best of luck to you and yours. And my property was at Duke. I sold Duke and sold it the first summer. And then they asked me to come back. Crawford and Tom and Ben Lawrence, who was in that group,

Andy Pedersen, and a good. group of people had left to go do other things but they asked me to come back and help to lead a property and I learned a lot that summer but yeah those that that was my first sales job and I tell people this all the time that Crawford Keys and Tom call got me in this and I was never bright enough to walk out the back door in this thing they got me in this and I just stayed Yeah. Well, that company, university directories... An amazing story.

Amazing, amazing company. And they did this every summer, all college kids, and they would go to a different school and sell out the directory, which listed stuff on campus and whatever. And then you made commissions. You actually made pretty good money if you were successful. But so many of those people I got to know through Crawford, including you, have gone on to be very good salespeople.

Yeah. And I tell young salespeople or wannabe salespeople all the time, get a commission job while you're in college. You know, do this, do what Taylor did because you'll be so far ahead of the game. So anyway, so you did that. And then how did you get from college into a professional announcing work? Well, I graduated from school and probably a lot like what some of your name. noobes go through, I expected there to be a job. Hey, I got a piece of paper.

Where's a gig? Yeah. And I took a job for less than a year in a place called Clinton, South Carolina, in between Spartanburg and the Capitol, over on 26, Lawrence County. I tell people this all the time. Small AM radio station in Clinton, WPCC. I was hired to go sell. I wound up helping to do Presbyterian women's basketball,

men's basketball and football. I wrote for the Clinton Chronicle. not sure how much sales work I did in the 10 months, which is why it was only 10 months. And wound up learning a great deal personally. I think every job ought to teach you something. And I think that job taught me that I wanted to be involved in the broadcast side. I wanted to be involved in college athletics. I knew that.

I had that sort of retrenched. And I also knew that I thought I could sell, but I didn't know if I could sell radio. And I left Clinton not knowing. And just wrong place, wrong time. The one thing I tell people is that I took a job, because it was the first job offered. Yeah.

Yeah. And I think the one advice I would give any noob is you don't have to take the first job offered. Right. If the job's what you won't, and if the job is really good, take it. But you don't have to take the first job on the board. So came back to Chapel Hill, a tail between my legs for about 90 days. went to work for a think tank I was the guy smiling and dialing

calling people and filling out surveys on a computer so as I like to tell people I was the time life operator selling you the chess piece that you could buy on the infomercial for like $25 and buy three chess pieces and all that did that for 90 days and then there was a gentleman in Lexington, North Carolina,

Gig Kilton Jr., who owned three radio stations. Included in that was 100,000-watt FM, whose tower was on a mountain in western Roan County, and just outside of Charlotte. And he called me and asked me to come up and talk to him. And I went up there, and for two and a half years, I did a little bit of everything in Salisville. and learned how to sell.

Learned how to sell radio in Salisbury. Steve McCready, who went on later to work for a sales firm, the Brooks Group out of Greensboro. Steve kind of taught me the basics of selling air, of selling something that somebody can't see. And it was invaluable. And then in 2000, the opportunity to kind of put everything together came in 2000, John. A guy named Ben Sutton, who you and I have talked about before. Ben Sutton was the founder and CEO of ISP Sports.

And ISP Sports has since become IMG College, Learfield, IMG College, and now it's Learfield. Ben Sutton is one of the great minds that I've ever been around and was fortunate to work for him for 11 years. Longer than that. Ben was looking for a person that he could hire that could go talk to local radio stations. At the time, ISP was 12 properties. They had just signed Southern Miss to a multimedia. media rights deal and he he said I want to find somebody that can go talk to radio stations so that the guys running the properties don't have to do that so that they can focus on sales

they don't have to focus on building radio networks I want to go find somebody that could go do that right place right time Ben Sutton new My father knew my brother, and we knew of each other. I drove to Winston and met with him and met with a guy named Chris Ferris, who is a great friend. Chris is the executive vice president now for broadcast operations for Learfield.

And Chris asked me, did I wanna come on board as the director of affiliate recruitment for 12 schools? and I said I wasn't quite sure. And Ben Sutton's great line is, why haven't you signed yet? And I said, well, we're figuring things out. And he said, do you want to travel? And I went, yeah, he said, we'll sign.

I did 36,000 miles in either my car or a rental car over the next nine months. Wow. Building networks. Yeah. and had a blast. Did it for 11 years. The last two years I did that, plus did the games over at Elon. And then in 11, ISP, it became IMG College, was going through a staff changeover at Elon.

And Elon was looking for some stability on the sales side. and knew of my interest in wanting to be there. Yeah. And it worked. And it worked, and it's worked for the last 12 years. And fortunately, they keep asking me to come back. That's great. Well, it's an interesting story for people.

I coach the noobs a lot of times on career, kind of career coaching. And, you know, I think people get caught up and wanting to know exactly what they want to do. and rarely do we. There's not many Tiger Woods out there that are three years old. They're going to be a golf pro. But you knew you wanted to be in college athletics, right? You kind of figure that out kind of in your sophomore year or so. And everything you did for then until now have been kind of around the ball,

meaning it's in this ecosystem of college athletic. to say, well, I'm not the voice of Elon yet, but I am selling advertising for a radio station, which is very similar to selling advertising for school. Yeah. Right? So you're kind of picking up a lot of the same people, so your network's growing. So you're not dead on it, but you're kind of in the area. And what's happened to you is you finally got right on it.

Yeah. You're right on it now. John, I left in 96. and graduated in 96 and I will tell anybody that I asked that I wanted to come back immediately and

wanted to do the games there. There was not an opportunity to do that. And when I got involved in Salisbury and working for Mr. Hilton, I wasn't sure if that opportunity was

going to exist. and present itself and everything else. And I have a tremendous amount of respect and a tremendous amount of gratefulness and thanks for ISP sports because it was the exact thing that I needed because A, it was a tremendous opportunity, still is to this day. yeah um it's a tremendous opportunity but the one thing that it did was it allowed me an opportunity to see a spot where okay i can be involved and not be on air um or not be the voice of yeah um we ran like i said earlier when i got there 12 schools when we were

merged with IMG. We were at 68 schools. So within the span of nine years, we grew 56 schools. It's an amazing business story. It's an amazing success story. What that group of people did in Winston, and also what that group has gone on to do. Doug Gillen's the Director of Athletics at Appalachian State, and he's one of countless stories. But when I got involved with that group, Chris Ferris came to me one time and said, have you ever thought about being a scoreboard host? I have a broadcast that needs a scoreboard host with the Southern Miss broadcast. Have you ever thought about doing that? Chris, I'd love to.

And I was the Southern Miss Studio host. And that led to working on the two-lemsons. Lane broadcast and it led to four years with Brian Estridge at TCU and Brian Estridge and John Denton are two of my best friends in the industry. It led to working with Tulane with Sean Kelly who's now the voice of the Florida Gators who was at ESPN for a while. But it also taught me preparation, which I thought I knew. I did not. And it taught me John how to write. The first time I ever did a scoreboard, I did it just off the cuff. It was horrific.

It was the worst thing I think I had ever done on air. But it was a learning moment because from that moment it was I write stuff. and I write 90% of what we do in a pregame now I write. And you saw that that night at the citadel is that I have a script. And it's not because I don't think I'm going to remember the words or anything else, but it has become a comfort level now with regards to what I do. And it's a way to get an easy win. And that's something that you and I have talked about before,

and something that you've helped me realize is that if you can go into something, broadcast, sales presentation, partner meeting, whatever. And if you can try to pile up little wins, as soon as the meeting starts, then at some point the little wins become a big win. And the script thing for me is a little win. And it's the opportunity to win in the first five minutes. Now, I'm blanking on the name, but the coach for the 49ers. Bill Walsh.

Did he script like the first? Script the first 15 place. First 15 place. So the team was really, really prepared for those 15 plays. And after that, jump all, right? Well, and you and I have been around enough people, head coaches, offensive coordinators, defensive coordinators, who will bring a quarterback in a room or will bring a middle linebacker in a room, will show them a white board that has got 20 plays, 25 plays on it, and we'll go,

all right, what do you like? Okay, what don't you like? And then they'll tell them what they don't like. chances are what they don't like is not going to be in the script on Saturday. Right, right. Because it's an opportunity for them to have a comfort and for them to win. So roughly how many partners do you have for, let's say, Elon football? I would tell you that right now, and we are in the middle of a renewal cycle,

and we are in the middle of new business prospecting. but I would tell you right now we are somewhere in the ballpark 55 to 65 partners year round that's pretty good yeah that's a good number yeah we've been very lucky and so you're always fighting the attrition and how many fall off how many we bring on kind of thing yeah yeah I think that the I think one of the things that is so important to learn and it took me I'm not quite sure at 49, I still know this.

But I think the one thing that's so important to learn for anybody is that, yes, you're representing a product. That product you think is a fit for anybody, or you wouldn't be representing that product. And you're really good at telling people how it may be a fit for them. but understand that evolution is a thing not only from the stone ages to now but also for businesses year over year and marketing directors change and everything changes and the evolution of a business means that sometimes your product that you think is tremendous can go from being a fit to not being a fit and it's not personal. It's a business decision.

And you've asked the company to make a business decision by joining you. You've got to understand their business decision when they turn around and tell you, we'd like to look at doing other things. Well, I'm sure you do it well. Every now and then. As we finish up, I want to ask you just a few more things. What's your favorite all-time movie? Well, I think Bull Durham's great because I know half of the places that the movie's filmed in.

Tequila Sunrise is a movie you probably don't hear a lot of. That's true. Mel Gibson, Kurt Russell, Michelle Pfeiffer, back in the late 80s and early 90s. One of those just... movie that you can just sit down in front of for about two hours and just get lost. I might have to watch that one. It's been a long time. Yeah, it has been a long time.

And how about a favorite book? Favorite book? I tell you what, a good walk spoiled book that John Feinstein wrote about the grind and the journey of the PGA tour. because I think he writes really good stuff. But I tell you what, in terms of a guy that grew up wanting to be on the pro-golf side of things, there's a guy who we lost a few years back who wrote for Golf Digest Golf World, and he wrote books. And Dan Jenkins from Fort Worth, Texas.

We were talking earlier about movies. If you've ever got two hours to kill and you just want to laugh. And it is about as old school a movie as possible, and the only place you can find it now is like YouTube. Somebody uploaded the entire movie. It's a movie called Dead Solid Perfect. Randy Quaid is playing the Journeyman Tour Pro. and it is about the book that Dan Jenkins wrote.

And if you understand kind of the life of the tour pro in the late 80s and the early 90s or the mid 80s now, it's one of those moments where you just start laughing. And it is. It is an early 80s, mid 80s in terms of the quality now, kids. It's not HD. And there's nothing HD or I'm mad. about it now it's about as basic I mean it's like somebody's gone out and taken their portable video camera out there and the real they don't have the technology that's in

this room okay and then the last question is what's your favorite word possibility possibility everything everything carries a possibility yeah I love that would be my favorite word I love it I love it possibility and Yes. Yes, yeah. I like that one too. A big fan of yes. Yeah, I like that too.

Well, I'm so glad that you came down today from Elon to be on the podcast and share. This has been a long time coming. That's been a long time coming. Once Crawford came, you decided you had to come too. Well, and I am, and let me just say this, I'm thrilled for what you're doing. You and I have, I am fortunate enough that I have been a long. longtime friend with Crawford Keys and that has opened up several doors of friendships. But I've gotten to know you and gotten to know Dan and gotten to know several others that are in the group.

You guys are some of my favorite people. And when you develop this idea, I was thrilled for you. And I can't tell you how proud I am of everything that you're doing to help people that want to get into the business. Also to help those of us that are still in the business that need a refresher course. Because I think the advice you're giving people, and I'll admit that I've read the book, I think the advice you're giving people is a valued resource, whether you're year one or year 23 or whatever. Well, I appreciate that. I appreciate the friendship as well.

So thank you for being here, and maybe you come back next year and give us an update. I would love to. Okay, thank you. Wonderful. Thank you, Kyle. All right. You got it.