The Learning Leader Show With Ryan Hawk - 635: Rich Gotham (President of The Boston Celtics) - How To Build a Championship Organization

Episode Date: May 14, 2025

Go to www.LearningLeader.com for full show notes This is brought to you by Insight Global. If you need to hire 1 person, hire a team of people, or transform your business through Talent or Technical Services, Insight Global's team of 30,000 people around the world have the hustle and grit to deliver. Go to www.InsightGlobal.com/LearningLeader Rich Gotham is the President of the Boston Celtics. He is responsible for all aspects of the Celtics' business operations. In addition, he works closely with Celtics ownership, basketball operations staff, and the NBA on basketball-related matters, as well as team and league initiatives. He succeeds "Red" Auerbach as Celtics team President and serves on the NBA Board of Governors. Since joining the Celtics in 2003, he's helped grow team revenues by over 300%, and they've won two NBA championships. Notes: Must-haves when making hiring decisions for a leadership role: Work ethic, self-awareness, a catalyst for positive energy, purpose-driven, and care ("give a shit"). At the time, the Celtics were run like a mom-and-pop shop. Rich was brought in to help them run like a professional business. Rich was recruited to the Celtics by new owner (at the time), Wyc Grousbeck. 3 different people told Wyc that he should talk to Rich. – Add value. Leave people better than you found them. They will refer you to others for big jobs without you even knowing it. Celtic pride - grew up there, made you proud to be from Boston. "Different here." 18-time champs. Pressure from fans to win: It beats indifference. Making bets on potential - Hiring Brad Stevens. Danny Ainge did a great job selling it to Brad. Watching Payton Pritchard warm up. He cares. Working with the Bruins and Red Sox leaders – Lower the ego, put yourself in their shoes. Seek first to understand. And find a way to get it done. Rich went outside of the office to meet regularly with a leader of the Boston Bruins to get their lease squared away. That had been an issue for decades, and he helped get it figured out so both sides could win. Advice - You have to have self-belief, believe in your ability. Don't let that get chipped away. Why should they pick you? Be vulnerable. Leave others better than you found them.

This episode is brought to you by Insight Global. Insight Global is a staffing and professional services company dedicated to being the light to the world around them. If you want to learn more about the CEO, Bert Bean and Chief Revenue Officer Sam Kaufman, check out episode 424. We had a fantastic conversation talking about my partnership with the great people at Insight Global. If you need to hire one person, hire a team of people, or transform your business through talent or technical services, Insight Global's team of 30,000 people around the world have the hustle and grit to deliver.

Hiring can be tough, but hiring the right person can be magic. Visit Insightglobal.com slash learning leader today to learn more. That's Insightglobal.com slash learning leader. Welcome to the Learning Leader Show. I am your host, Ryan Hawk. Thank you so much for being here. Go to learningleader.com for full show notes of this and all episodes of the Learning Leader show.

Go to Learning Leader. Now on to the night's featured leader, Rich Gotham, is the president of the Boston Celtics. He is responsible for all aspects of the Celtics business operations. In addition to that, he works closely with Celtics ownership, basketball operations staff, and the NBA on basketball-related matters, as well as team and league initiatives. He succeeds the legendary Red Hourback as Celtics team president and serves on the NBA Board of Governors.

Since joining the Celtics in 2003, Rich has helped grow team revenues by over 300% They've also won a couple NBA championships. During our conversation we discuss Rich's non-negotiables when hiring for a leadership role, really good. And then how he balances running the Celtics business and working with the basketball leaders to win championships. And then what it was like going through the recent sale of the team for a record-breaking 6.1. billion dollars in his role in making that happen. Talk about that and so much more. Ladies and gentlemen, please enjoy my conversation with Boston Celtics president, Rich Gotham. So I want to start with Celtic pride. You're the president of the Boston Celtics. Like what a cool job. But at one point,

you said, I want the Celtics to be an organization of people who care. Whatever it is you're doing for the organization, I really want. want you to care about it. That is what Celtic pride is about. And I can't, as a leader, I can't expect that of other people if they can't see it for me. What does it mean to you to have Celtic pride into care? I grew up here with the Celtics, and Celtics always meant something to me. I was coming up in the 80s with the Byrd. Big three teams won a couple championships. The Celtics were something that made you proud to be from Boston. And the Celtics always represented something bigger than just a sports team, you know, starting with Bill Russell and Red Hour

back all the way through, you know, to Jason Tatum and Gerald Brown today and Brad Stevens and Joe Azul. And I've always felt a certain, like I've been a proud, I've been proud of to be from Boston and sort of from where in the Celtics from it. That makes any sense. I remember when I was younger, I'd travel anywhere in it for Boston. I was Celtics, you know, And I just felt like that was part of the civic pride here. And I always had that feeling. And I, you know, my biggest goal is to have all our fans sort of share that feeling, right? That they're proud of their team.

And in order for that to happen, we've got to instill that pride into people who work here. Now, and you've got to hire people who sort of have that in to begin with and who do really care. And it's important to them to be part of something that's bigger than themselves and kind of give themselves to that. And I think that's such a cool part of our culture. You know, it's really our marketing timeline last couple of years in the playoffs has been different here. But it is what makes it different. If you're working for the 18-time world champion Boston Celtics, that's different than working for any other team in sports.

And it's not to diminish any other team in sports. It's just something that we feel really proud of. We want our fans to be proud of. We want every person who steps into the organization to feel that they're a part of that. something special. What is it about Boston that's different? Different here you mentioned is the marketing tagline. I assume a lot of meetings and smart, creative people went into coming up with different here. What is it about Boston that's different? You know, it's in your blood here. It's sort of like you're born into it. It's not a choice. You know, you're born in the Boston area in New England and

the Celtics, the Bruins, the Red Sox, the Patriots. They're just like a big part of the culture of the city, and it means so much the people who live here, and it's pretty much all walks of life. It's not just people who would identify themselves primarily as sports fans. And it is part of the civic pride of the city, and people do care more about, and that brings a lot with it, good in, and sometimes not so good, right, because it's passion, and you don't win 100% of the time. It's not easy to be sort of a one of 30, that's standing at the end of every season. But it's great.

It's what fuels you, you know, it gives you that energy. And when you step into the garden on a playoff game night, like we'll be doing, you know, for game two tomorrow night, you can just walk in and you can feel the energy. And it's not like some arenas where it builds throughout the game. It's like, no, our fans, they show up and they're chanting before they're in their seats. And it just builds from there. And it's such a cool thing to experience and be a part of.

And I think if you've done that, he said, oh, yeah, this is, it is different here because I've been to every arena in the NBA. And I've yet to find one that feels like ours. So there's good and bad that comes with that. I know this as a guy who lives in Ohio, because Ohio State football fans probably have some similarities to Boston fans. You know, Kirk Herbstry, a fellow Ohio guy, him and I went to the same high school. Him and the Ohio State fans got into some fights this year. He called him the lunatic fringe at one point. because of some of the craziness that went on.

So I do, like, I see some of this. How is that both on the good end and the bad end? Now, you've had a lot of the good end, right? Because you guys win a bunch. But how has it been for you over the course of your career with all the pressure and the winning and losing that comes with being at a place like Boston? I mean, I think the big thing is that it beats indifference. Yes.

You know, and so you accept it. And I think you're feeling the same pain. that the fandoms are feeling I wasn't a fan and I wouldn't be in this job and I saw people listen when they're up through the door several says well

once you work in sports you stop being a fan and I'm like that can't happen you have to fit in by the fan you have to make your decisions you have to get you don't go understand the fan perspective and you have to accept it

through the bad now in between the fans and you do was the media and the media doesn't always represent what the fans think but they've got their

brand sort of take on things that they're kind of feed to the fans. And so you have to concern between what the media is saying and what a fan thinks and how they feel. But you've got to be tuned into it and you've got to be okay with that. And I think, you know, where you run into trouble in this city is where

you're not accountable to. You're not willing to sort of stand up to it and take the heat. When it's coming, whether you feel justified or not, you can't be defensive about it. It's really people care. Like that's being, what you're dealing with. It's like people are passionate. They take care about this and therefore,

you know, take the back. I want to dig into your personal career because it's really cool as I was reading up on the fact that you had a prior job, a role as a VP of sales and business development, and then you leave this high up job with a big company to then move over to work with the Boston and Celtics, can you go back to maybe tell a little bit of your career arc in that story from how you got some of those big jobs prior to the Celtics and then how you made the move over into sports? Yeah, it's not the usual path, that's for sure. I had a 15-year career in tech prior to joining the Celtics. And I was fortunate, I was coming up through the ranks when before there was an internet, before there was a World Wide Web, before people even were

emailing each other. And my first... first job out of college, I went to work for a company called NCR Corporation. They recruited me out of college. It put me into a high-tech sales training program with 80 kids from universities across the country out in Dayton, Ohio, as a matter of fact, and taught us high to be professional salespeople. I started college when I was 17. I graduated when I was 21, and I was out in the world selling multi-million dollar computer solutions and networks to Fortune 500 companies, you know, to people twice my age who knew a lot more about the product than the technology than I ever did or was interested to learn. But it was such a great foundation. Everything in my career

sorting was easier after that, was built off of that. And as my career evolved, I started to get a little bit closer and closer to what was more personally satisfying for me. That was more fulfilling. So I saw this internet technology coming up and I was on the business to business side. It was more interested in the business to consumer side. I was on the hardware side. It was more interested in the software side because software is a little bit more of an art than hardware. And then, you know, seeing how the internet was being deployed in business,

you could see where it could be deployed, you know, commercially in the world and started to catch on to a couple different companies who were, you know, ahead of the curve on that. And so I wanted to work for a small startup company. I guess like the Ethernet employee. We did that for a bunch of years, learned every aspect of the business. And then I sort of stepped up from there.

And the company I worked for before in the South, this was a company called Lytus, was a first generation search engine before there was a Google. You know, for Google was a verb. And I met the group of people who was, you know, who were running this company. I interviewed with them a couple times

and they would only interview me on weekends because they didn't have any time during the week. They were like not driven, not pushing it that part. And it just appealed to me that the technology, the product, the consumer-facing nature of it. And I could see how it was, you know, I'm not a visionary, but I could clearly see how this was going to change people's lives. And it was just a matter of time before kind of broadband internet penetration into households caught up with it. And when it did it, it just all went to Poon. You know, so it was a first generation internet company.

It's a big success. It just so happened. the guy, the lead investor for the Celtics, the guy in Wick Grosspec, who stole our team owner and CEO, and he put together an investor group to buy the team, but prior to owning the Celtics, he was a partner at a firm called Highland Capital, that was a venture seed company, seed capital company, into Likus where I had worked. So while I didn't know WIC and we had sold Likus and I took a self-imposed year off, said, I'm not going to work, I'm just going to reacquaint myself. my family, stop traveling, you know, sort of decompressed a little bit. I was about seven months

into it. Then phone ran one day. It was WIC. And he said, hey, Rich, I don't know if you've been following the Celtics, but I just put together an investor team to, you know, an investor group to buy the team. I said, yeah, I'm falling in close. I'm a huge Celtics. I'm like, well, I've been in three meetings this week and your name came up three times. And on the third time, I figured I'd just pick up the phone. I'd ask your number, pick up the phone and give you a call and see if you'd be interested in, you know, and take a look at what we've got going on at the Celtics. And this was probably two months after we bought the team.

And I said, well, geez, I think I can find the time for that. You know, it was such a unique opportunity that I needed to take a look at it. But, you know, I was kind of a made guy in another industry, right? So there was an opportunity cost kind of walking away from that. But he said, why don't you come down and take a look, meet the team down here, Tell me what you think of, you know, best case. Besides, you want to get involved, worse case. Maybe do a little consulting for me, and I'll put you some playoff tickets.

And, yeah, wait from there. It was pretty easy when I got invited before I said yes to the opera. I got invited into a game that was Michael Jordan's last game in the garden. And after the end, I got invited to present you. I'm worth a gift, a piece of the park gate floor, you know, and I'm like, hmm, I could probably get used to this. Wow. But it was a leap because it was a mom and pop shop at that point in time. It wasn't nearly the business that it is now, but it was too unique an opportunity for a Boston kid not to want to go do it.

Wait, how would the Boston Celtics be a mom and pop shop? Well, it was interesting in that I would say there was about 40 people. Everything was on paper, nothing. There was no customer database. There was no. Back in the early 2000s? Yeah. Wow. Okay. There was no notion of proactive, outbound, demand creation, sales and marketing.

There was no notion of sort of invest to grow. And actually, that was part of what made it really attracted because you could see the opportunity. And there were good people, by the way, you know, but what had happened was the team was really run through the CFO's office. And, you know, the owner would take money out every year. It was a profitable business. It wasn't a bad business, but it wasn't a business as I wanted to do the selfish, well, the business itself has to be raising bears. That's what it is.

And we're pretty far away from that. And you can say, well, you wait until the team gets good. You got to get lucky in the draft lottery. But that's not a strategy. So you could take a look at it. And you could say, well, this is one of the greatest brands in sports. They haven't won anything since 86. So it had atrophied the 90s where it's up decade.

for the Celtics, the sort of the premium that the brand once had. It baited a bit. And the mentality you kind of set in that, you know, I remember talking people saying, oh, it's not, you know, it's not a Celtics now. It's a Red Sox now. I'd say, well, wait a minute. Last time I checked, they played baseball from April through October, and we played the basketball from November through April.

Read that monopoly on professional basketball in our region, like, And it's the Celtics. This is, there's something, this can be a bigger, better, smarter business that it is. And that's not to discredit any when it came before. It's just sort of the way it was. And, you know, so we sort of instilled a little different way of thinking about the opportunity, invested in the product, which is, you know, stuff one. If you're not investing, you're not going to grow up.

What do you think it was that made three different people bring up your name to Wick? Yeah, it's interesting. I think about that because when I talk to younger people about kind of career, because I helicoptered in. You know, it's not the usual path, start as an intern and work your way up. I think a couple things. One, I love basketball. It was a basketball junk, you know, they know I love the Celtics. But two, and I think it's the most valuable advice, I sort of try to give people about the great dispensurate advice.

But most of your opportunities, you know, in business and in life, the result of someone saying something good about you. You know, and they're only going to say good things about you if they like you, they respect you. You treat other people well. You can be really good at your job. You can be really smart. You can have a lot of the success attributes. But if you don't have those things, people aren't going to go to back for you. So I think, you know, I don't know who the people were who, you know, had given me a reference.

And I was like, well, that made me feel great because those were the people who built Lycos, you know, who hired me. me to come on and I helped them grow that and and you know so and it came around in a way that I wouldn't have expected you know because you're really lucky if your you're your passion and your career can come together most people don't get that opportunity and people always say to me I was you got your dream job and I'm like I never dreamed of it I never thought it was possible right it just didn't ever occur to me I wasn't on the track but it was a good sort of lesson you know like yeah some some fortunately some people said some nice things about me and um Yeah, 22 years later, here I sit.

Wow. So now let's get into some of the details of your role. So you're president of the Celtics. So how much of that, and I know this is different probably team by team, sport by sport, how much of your job is let's make a bunch of money? And how much of your job is, let's work with Brad Stevens and the coaches and the players and help be a part of building a great team? I'm curious about what your day-to-day looks like and how much of both of those elements you're working on. Yeah, it's mostly the business side.

I mean, you know, it starts with revenue, right? So I think where do you want to be in sports if you're doing things the right way and you're, you know, have a little lot where you're running a strong business, which allows you to generate a strong top line that allows you to invest in your product. Your product is your team and your players. and all the supporting resources around that team and those players. And if you do that well, generally speaking, player payroll correlates with success. So you've got to be able to run a strong enough business to fund a strong player payroll, at least in the NBA, that's certainly true. And that correlates with success on the court.

And if the team wins, and if you're able to accomplish that, the team wins, then that drives the business. And it's kind of a virtuous cycle. So while I spend the bulk of my time managing a couple hundred people who are really good at their jobs on the business side, a good example is tomorrow. I'm going out to meet with a couple of our owners and Brad Stevens to go through sort of a longer, bigger picture view, long-term view of, you know, a basketball. A bunch of, you know, things we're thinking about and decisions we're going to need to make in the off-season things that, you know, I can't get into. But generally, my role with Brad is to help him think through this.

right because he's he's a coach he was a coach he's a smart person he's a thought person did all these success attributes but you know these are you sort of look at a lot of these decisions and they're all balancing short term with long term they're balancing opportunity costs to do this and that cuts off your ability to do this this and this so you've got to be right about this how do you make this decision but still lead yourself some optionality and some flexibility so you can keep getting better and you're not stuck. And that's all problem solving. And I kind of think business and sports,

a lot of it is problem solving. You know, so I'm not involved in Joe Missoula's game planning, but I'm involved in understanding what he thinks he really needs, you know, to have a championship caliber team and trying to make sure he has that around here, you know? And more of my involvement is at sort of the higher level

when we're making big decisions, whether it's, you know, trades, or free agent signings, transactions, and sort of thinking, I've got opinions on buyers and talent. I can't resist that. It's why I'm in the business. But that's not the expertise, you know,

that is needed from me. How do we build something that's sustainable and be good? And how do we sort of, what are we valuing when we're making these decisions, right? And I think that's a big part of the culture in who you are. It's not just sort of what you're doing is why, And so I'd like to think I help us think through that a little bit.

And really, you know, it's interesting because the sports side of it has grown so much. I mean, our team photo used to be, you know, 12 players, sport coaches, the owners, me and the general national house, like 60 people in it. And it's an army of coaches and strength and conditioning people and rest of recovery people, nutrition, mind wellness. It's everything it takes to sort of like optimize performance. And that's building an organization and building an org structure. So I spend a good amount of time with basketball side and sort of how to do that.

Not it's calling how to do it, but sort of being a sounding board for it, bouncing things around. And then there's obviously the budget cost because everything, you know, always, you know, inevitably ties back to money. And we've got to think through all of that together, you know, again, short term, long term. So that's sort of the area of overlap there. And so I keep an office in both places, but most of my time is spent with the business group for sure. So I'm also curious about your relationship with ownership. And we can get into the recent sale in a second.

But prior to the sale, right, you mentioned the ownership group recruited you. They wanted you. How much freedom do they give you with the budget? Because it's ultimately their money, right, that you're going to spend more of to invest in extra coaches or support or players or luxury tax. I mean, there's a million different things. How do you guys manage a budget in a multi-billion dollar business where it's, it's not just about the money because you want to win, right?

You want to win games. Like I think the warriors and others have gone deep into the luxury tax in order to get the players they needed to win. I mean, that's part of basketball at times. So how do you guys have like, what's that relationship like when it comes to money and trying to win, but also trying to make money for your owners. I mean, that's really the crux of it all. It really is, the Celtics, you know, the business of the Celtics is to win NBA

championship to raise bearers, right? So that's a pretty clear North Star. Now, you're not going to do that every single year. You don't want to delude yourself into thinking that. You want to be very realistic. And when you're in a window, when you're able to, for us, it's not about profitability. It's never been about profitability. It's been about winning.

And the good news about the NBA, if you're running a team, their well-run team, you can win and make money. But there are certain years where you're guaranteed to lose money by winning. Because in order to win at the highest level, as you reference Golden State, because our team currently is way, way into the luxury tax and the repeater tax is coming in the first and second apron. And what we've done is we've run a business that allows us

to do that because, you know, you're sort of, you run a financially successful enough business, then you can fund losses for a period of time. You can't do it in perpetuity, but you can decide to do it for a period of time. And the great thing about our ownership is, I think, when I tell you, I've been here 22 years. I've never had a conversation with anyone in our ownership group, particularly, you know, my boss, Wick and Steve Hallyuka, who's been involved for years about how do we make more, do you make more money for me? How does this team make more money? It's got nothing to do with that. It's like, how do we, you know, ideally it's how do we win and not lose money? But if winning means losing money, then we'll lose money. And my job is to sort of help on that. And then also

say, well, at a certain point, you know, we've got to make some decisions because it's not always going to be sustainable. And it's not because the owners are saying, well, we're cheap. We don't want to hey, it's because you run into not just financial penalties, you run into basketball penalties now with the new CBA. So you lose your outpigs. You get assets that are frozen. You really can't continue to improve your team. So what you do is you sort of limit your ability to get better.

And that will cost you in the long term. It's been a good situation for me personally because I've been given the freedom to just do my job and try to build this thing. And you know, you get that when the result. also there. But the ownership group has been really good. It's a very, you know, supportive group, a supportive board, not questioning. Why are you spending it on this place? It's more, okay, how do we, how do we win? And what's it going to take? And that means spending a ton of money, then we spend a ton of money. And there are some years when you could just say, listen,

we're, we're not there now. We've got to reload. We've got to rebuild. And you sort of duck under a little bit so you can then move forward again. And also, the, asset grows really well. And it's specifically for this ownership group, right? I think you correct me if these are wrong, but I believe they bought the team in 2002 for $360 million and just sold the team for $6.1 billion recently. Not bad, not bad. Not a bad investment in growth over over 20 years. Well, yeah, and particularly when they didn't buy it for that reason. I think they're all smart. investors. A lot of their investors in the group are private equity people, venture capitalists. They sort of understand sort of they've got a kind of undermanaged assets, plug in the right

people and invest in it and watch it grow. But yeah, I mean, professional sports franchises, NBA sports franchises have beat just about any market index you could imagine over the last 20 years. And the good news, IQ and I think this is, you know, our ownership group, they've been, it had been paid back in love of the game and joy, you know, being a part of it, winning a couple championships, like having it become such a like a civic asset, such an important part of the city, so important to so many people and being a part of that, having restored that, and all the enjoyment of it along the way. And then at the end, you're going to be like, oh, yeah, by the way, we can sell this thing for a lot too. And, but I can tell you, that's not what drove the sale.

It was, and I'd say right now, most of the people in the investor group would say, yeah, I'd leave the $6 billion on the table and keep enjoying the team. I'd make that trade. You know, at some point, you know, whenever it gets traded later, it'll trade for more. It's turned out to be a really good investment for some people who really enjoyed it along the way and got their payback in, you know, championship parades. Well, I mean, as a sports guy, I don't know if there's a cooler, rich guy thing to do to own a team. I mean, like, that would be the ultimate is that you get to be, have one of those franchises.

And that's, that's why I'm sure big part of the reason that they, they cost so much, right? It's because the supply is so low. A team rarely, rarely comes for sale because it's such a coveted thing to have. And then the Boston Celtics go for sale and you're like, wow, and that's why it breaks records in all franchises. What was your role throughout that process after they announced you win a championship, and then they announced, hey, we're open to potentially selling this thing. And, you know, a year later or less, what's your life been like through that process?

Yeah, it's been busy. It's been like having two full-time jobs. I'm not planning, but it's been a lot. You know, what we had to do, you know, it's a lot of things that has made me think. We rarely look backwards. Like, you don't look backwards at the previous 21 years. You look at the next year. Like, we're always like, how do we get better?

How do we win? How do we win? You know, how do we build a better business so that we can sustain winning? And the job, you know, with the sale of the team has kind of been, I guess, for lack of a better term, packaging it up. And that meant going back through 22 years of financials and presenting those out, you know. And there's the way we run the business operationally. And then there's a way that an investor, private equity, people, investment bankers look at an asset.

And you sort of have to say, how do we take our business and run it through this filter so that the people who are the potential buyers can understand it, right? And see it in the language that's familiar to them. I'm like, this is how our value assets, still are buy assets. But ultimately, and you said in a minute ago, it's really not what it's working. it's what someone's willing to pay because it is a rare asset. You know, whether it's, you want to compare it to an original work of art that's famous or, you know, beachfront real estate of which there's only so much, it's a scarce asset and one of the greatest brands in sports globally known.

And so our job was to kind of show all that. And not only that, but also demonstrate the future growth potential. No one wants to think they bought something at the very top. and there's no upside on it. And so we spent a lot of time sort of framing what we think the future looks like for the NBA as well as the Celtics and where our growth is going to come from in the future. And so it's been, you know, it's been a lot of work. It's really been, but I will say, you know, at the advanced stage of my career,

you don't have a lot of, I guess what I'd call really new learning experiences. And this has really been an interesting learning process to go through. And then it's been, you know, really cool. And I never thought of this, you know, because I've pitched it on my mind. It doesn't really work this way to sort of look back and say, wow, when we bought it, this is what it was and sort of look at it now. You know, it's not just the difference between what it was bought for then and what it's sold for. And then I was like, holy smokes. Look at all everything we did here because you just generally don't take the time to go back and say, well, we did this five years ago.

It was incredible. You know, and then you look back over and on, you're like, wow, this is, you know, You know, something you can feel proud of it. I think a big part of it, you know, for me I talked about, you know, sort of it being meaningful. You're kind of stewarding it for a period of time, right? You know, it's sort of cliche to say, well, it's not our team. The fans own it, not us. But big do.

You know, it's that it really is for the fans. And it doesn't exist without the, you know, without the support of the community. We can't do what we do. So it's been pretty cool. say, yeah, you know, during our time here, we've stewarded this thing from here to here, and we are, you know, I'm hoping to be around. But, you know, whenever that ends, you could look back and say, wow, we left this better than we found it. And we've kind of restored that what the Celtics really means to people. Well, much like Wick recruiting you, he understood that it takes

very strong leadership, high character, highly competent people in important positions to make a difference, to change the course of something. And one of the hires that you were, at least I assume part of, I don't know how much a part of it, that fascinated me at the time was Brad Stevens. He was coaching right at this. I live in Ohio, so he's right next to me in Indiana, at Butler, right? Not at a big school. You know, probably had opportunities to go to bigger schools, but never did.

also I believe a former medical sales guy. So maybe you guys have a little kinship there that you have some sales skills developed earlier in your career. But that was a strategic bet, right? That was betting on potential. That was betting on the future. He had never coached in the NBA. And you guys, you along with your general manager at the time, and I assume ownership, decided to make this big bet. What was that process like to hire someone who was unproven in the NBA who was young, who had never done.

it before and you have him coached the most storied franchise, one of the most storied franchises in all sports. Yeah, this would be a bit of a long answer, but it was interesting. We once ran out sort of an analytical study to try to understand what coaches really had an impact on winning, you know, because everyone will say, you know, it's a talent lead, got Michael Jordan, got LeBron, James, you got Larry Bird, you got Kevin Gardett, you're going to win. But we, we tried to, you know, run a regression to understand really what coaches and what characteristics of coaches would be most reliable in projecting future success. And there was really only two things that came out of it.

You couldn't really predict individually a coach. You could predict that if a coach had already previously won a coach of the year in the NBA, then they'd still be a good coach and they'd still have success. And you could predict pretty reliably that if a coach was coming from college into the NBA, they weren't going to be success. And it's partly because if you think, you know, Think back to a lot of that, I don't want to call them old school coaches, but these coaches, these huge names in college basketball. And, you know, it's about the coaches, less about the players.

Who's the coach? And that's who you know. And that's the name that sticks because the players turn over every four years, every one year now. And that didn't lend itself to going into a player's league, right, and being as effective. Danny A.N.C., who was our general manager at the time, was a wonderful. smart, competitive, you know, just awesome guy for me to work with. I'm really lucky. I've had two partners in this business, Danny and Brad, and they're just world-class people. But Danny said, you know, we knew Doc Rivers was leaving. We started a bit of a search,

and he was kind of coy about it. He didn't talk about Brad at all throughout. And then we got to it. He goes, well, I think I got a guy like at Butler. And so I said, Brett Stevens. I knew he took Butler to the final four. And he struck me as a smart, thoughtful guy, but, you know, only from a distance. And, you know, the story is Danny went down to a Duke Butler game, Steve Palutka, one of our honors as a Duke guy. And Danny, Steve, he's the best coach in college basketball. Steve says, oh, coach gay. And Danny goes, no, the other guy.

And so we zeroed in on Brad. And it was really Danny taking a risk, you know. And interestingly, have you ever been to that at Enko Fieldhouse? If where Butler plays, it is like field of dreams for basketball. It is just this exposed brick on the inside glass wall where the light comes like streaming through the glass onto the core. It's just like I walked in. I didn't go until last year when the NBA All-Star D was in Indianapolis and I went to see Butler play Creighton. And I walked out of there.

I was like, oh, no wonder it was so hard to fry Brad out of here. because he's a guy, it wasn't about money for him, you know. It wasn't about power. And, you know, he's enjoyed, like, having more resources, you know, to be able to say, oh, let's, you know, I've got resources to go figure out a lot of these things that I wanted to figure out when I was in college. I think to get Brad, it had to be, same thing, sort of purpose-driven thing, like the Boston Selfish meant something to him. You know, he's from Indiana, the cradle of basketball. you know, Larry Bird, country.

And I think he got it, you know. And so we were lucky because I know some other NBA teams had nibbled around with him before, and he just wasn't interested, you know. And then the timing was, I guess, right, for whatever reason for him to do it. I think he'd probably done most all of what he could at Butler. He probably could have had any college coaching job in the country, probably did have half-stroke coaching jobs in the NBA. And I said we're lucky we got them.

And, you know, I think with Brad, it was a comfort thing. It wasn't splashy, oh, we're going to make you famous. You know, we're going to make you the greatest country. Norfolk, you know, your family will love Boston. You know, you'll come here and you'll feel it the way you feel it in Indiana. And, you know, I wasn't the person given that recruiting pitch. That was, you know, Danny. And, you know, we're, yeah, we're really lucky that we got Brad because not only,

he's a great coach and a great basketball mind. He's been so great for culture. He's such a kind person. He really cares about people. He's humble. He's self-aware. All the sort of, he's a great communication skills. Treats everyone with respect.

No pretense. Just, you know, all these qualities. And you don't, you know, being around professional sports. You don't, on the talent side, you don't always see that, you know. And so he's been special and different. And people always ask me, how to be going to be coached at being, you know, the president of basketball operations and being so successful.

And how did you guys know? It's like, well, Brad's got the attributes and traits that are going to make him successful, no matter of ways. And if he stayed in business at, I think Eli Lilly, he'd probably be the CDL or he'd have some very big job there. You know, I think whatever he was going to do because he works hard, he's prepared. like he doesn't you know he does things the right way and so i you know i don't know what to go you know hopefully he retires with the Celtics but whatever it is next it would great at that too you know so good i i noticed this so i want to one of your games earlier this year when you played against the calves calves are having a great year and it was in cleveland i got there really

early i like watching it's maybe weird maybe it comes from my dad but i like watching how people prepare for things. I noticed this little guy that didn't, to me, he wasn't wearing a uniform yet. It didn't look like, he didn't look like an NBA player, but he was shooting. He must have shot a billion threes before the game. He had, he was upbeat, he was bouncing around.

He had rebounders who were like acting the same way. Like when you talk about work ethic and you talk about catalysts and positive energy and you talk about like really caring for your craft, it was Peyton Pritchard. and I just noticed like this guy shoots he honestly like he was shooting forever and he had this he wasn't like he was taking it serious but he was also having fun it seemed like in series at the same time as well as his rebounders he also like made him all basically and then he gets in the game and he did in the game what he does in practice and it to me it's just like god

it is just it's inspiring to me to see he wasn't the only one by the way but it was inspiring to me just to see a guy to care so much to prepare so that when he got his moment, because it's not a starter, right? When he got his moment, he was going to make the most of it. And that's like an example of a guy who just makes the most of the moment by being over prepared. And it's inspiring to see stuff like that. Yeah, it's great. It takes a special person, too, because, you know, he was a guy who had a little bit success early. Brad was his coach in his first year.

He started getting minutes. Brad had a bleep in him. Then he didn't hit things changed. We changed coaches. A new guy came in. He made a docket. He was more of a defense-first kind of guy, like big physical, strong, you know, tough defenders.

So, Dayton kind of fell out of the rotation a little bit. A year later, Joe Nizula comes in. Joe's coach in. Joe knows Peyton as an assistant coach. But we've got, at the time, you know, Malcolm Broadden, Marcus, smart, Derek White. He's had, like, good players in front of him, right? Jaylor Lombrow J.O.J. Staten, the wing players.

So there's not a lot of minutes. And the guy just kept working. just kept working, you know, and you think about like a basketball team, it's 15 roster spots, right? And, you know, so your impact is 1 of 15 is locked rating once a football team one of 45. But yet, you expect it, right? Like, and people who have that kind of drive and that kind of work ethic and other people see, it raises the standard. And for Peyton, and like, it's oxygen for him. It's breathing.

Like, I don't know what that guy would do without a basketball in his hand. So you just, it's who he is, you know. But it's great to see. And now, you know, he's up for NBA sixth man of the year this year. You know, he's had an incredible year. And he did, you know, two huge baskets in the finals for us last year. And, yeah, it's good to see the payoff. But you're right, you know, like it takes a certain mindset to be able to persevere and stay

positive and keep putting the work in even when you're not getting reward for. Yeah. Amazing. So I got some notes from your buddy, Anthony Kinsigley, who was a prior guest on this podcast. One of the things he said to me was that you do a good job of staying in close contact and our friends with your other fellow professional sports leaders for the Bruins and the Red Sox. How do you bounce ideas off of or how do you work with other leaders from other Boston franchises to do your job even better? Yeah. And when I got here, there was always sort of Celtics and Bruins tension and competition because they're both winter sports.

And then you sort of, you could see the dynamic that there were, I know, I guess I'd say at the working level, there were good relationships amongst the people at the teams. But the higher up you got, the more the egos got in the way and the war was, you know, competition for our mind share or, you know, headlines, whatever you want to call it, ego-driven kind of stuff. I came in, it was like, okay, they aren't the competition. You know, I don't have to steal Bruins fans and turn them into selfish fans. again, I've got a Boston Celtics. Monopoly on professional basketball in Boston. I mean, the whole region of New England, right? So, by the way, we work in the same building, right?

You know, there are landlords. And then you meet the people, and they're nice people. Like the Red Sox people, I love the Red Sox people. I've had friendships over there from the get-go. And the Bruins, it's interesting because early on we had some clashes. We had to kind of reset the relationship. And once it was reset, I mean, we had an alignment of incentives, like here's, here's how the Celtics help the TD Garden and hence the Bruins. And here's how the TD Garden helps the Celtics that allows us to help you.

And it all kind of, you know, aligns. It's been easy because it's good people. And, you know, there's always learnings because we're going through a lot at the same stop. And it's interesting because anyone who's been in one of these jobs sort of, the going's good. Everyone loves you. you know, it's all positive feedback. Hey, you're great, you know, hats on the back. Well, it seems to, when it's tough is when you actually need your friends in sports, you know.

And, you know, I'm, that's when you want to reach out to them and try to lift them up a little bit and, you know, say, hey, you guys, do want to write things. It's going to come. And there are certain specific things that are sort of chop talk that we need to talk about with each other occasionally. But even more so at the NBA level, you know, while we all kind of compete fiercely on the court, Off the court, it's the opposite. It's all best practice sharing across the teams. And I've got so many great people at the league and across the teams. But I think the common denominator was generally like, it is a labor or love for a lot of people.

Not every person, but almost all the people and certainly you can see the organizations where that's true. You know, we're in sports. It's supposed to be fun. There's supposed to be some joy. And it's supposed to be like, this is why I was wanting to be in sports if those things weren't true because you could probably make more money elsewhere, unless you're, you know,

and it's really been great over the years to kind of learn from others and observe others. And then when you get a chance to try to help them with some perspective, whenever, you know, whenever it's all the part. So it's been great. Yeah.

Anthony also told me that you were like the guy who helped activate like the entire area around your arena and like created this. new fan experience. And he said, as a construction guy, he goes, you have no idea how hard it is to get consensus when trying to do all of that type of stuff. And I find you now from our conversations before this as well as now as like you seem like a low ego, highly competent, easy to trust person, which just seems genuine. I don't know. Like that's just that that's the feeling I get. I'm curious, like, with all of that, how you're able to get consensus with people who maybe have

a variety of different incentive structures in place? Because I think this could be a potentially portable leadership lesson beyond sports or beyond being the president of a team. Yeah. Well, I mean, Bruce, I'd love to take the credit that Anthony's given me. But people have more to do with that. That was, but that's the reality of it, right? We don't own the land. So it wasn't our development to make. But we've been a partner in the success of the TD Garden and the neighborhood and the city. And I think, you know, I really do think a big part of it, which is easier for some than others is you do have to put the ego aside. It's not like I don't have an ego.

I've got an ego. But if you want to get something done, you've got to be able to see it from the other person's perspective. and you've got to be able to appreciate and respect that and not just bang your head against it. Even when you don't agree with it, you have to be able to say, okay, I understand it. I get it. Like, their incentives are different than ours. Their priorities are different than ours. Their culture is different than ours.

You kind of have to find, okay, but what brings us together? And, you know, the development of this neighborhood has been great to see, but I sort of go back further than that when we first bought the team and what his partner's bought. team and one of my first jobs was to try to get a new lease for the Southwitz because the one we were in we couldn't look at and say it's going to get us where we want to go and there were some pain points in it for the TD Garden in Delaware North and the Brills as well but I'll tell you what there were years and years of just clashing between your organizations just leveraging each other where they could say this lease allows us to inflict pain on each other but doesn't really line our incentives such that we can actually have success together.

And that was sort of my, so we went through like a bit of like, oh, like a disarmament. Like we had, me and another guy had like weekly meetings away from the office just to go sit and talk through, like, how do we get this to a different place? I'm like, I'm not Red Hourback. You're not Harrison. And like, we don't have to fight the battles or being fought for 40 years here. We can just sort of say what would make this better for both of us. and let's kind of try to dial in on that.

And, you know, the good news for me was I came out of tech, I had no history. So I didn't have the scar tissue that maybe would have prevented me from looking at it that way. What's they say, sort of seek first to understand and then to be understood. You take that approach to things, and it tends to help a little bit.

So, so good. Rich, I really appreciate your time being here, especially in the middle of the playoffs. One more question before we run, though, and you touched on this a little bit at the beginning, but I'd like to maybe bring it home even now. For that person who's a bit earlier in their career, who wants to leave a positive dent in the world like you're currently doing, but they're not exactly sure how or where or what they're going to do. What are some general pieces of life slash career advice you give to them?

Yeah, you know, it's interesting because I, I, I, I hesitate to try to get everyone's different. I hesitate to try to, even with my own children, I hesitate to try to say, hey, here's, how you got to think about this? I try to tell people, like, younger people, you have to have self-beliefs. You just, it's got to start there. You believe in yourself, right? And if you can solve for that, like, if you really say, all right, I believe in my ability,

I believe in my ability to get where I want to go, to have a positive impact, to do things in the world. You can't. Don't let that get chipped away at. And it can. There's a lot of things that chip away at it, particularly for younger people the last, you know, five years or so, 10 years. It's been a difficult environment, certainly a different environment than certainly what I grew up with. I mean, probably what you did as well, right? I try to, I can't walk in everyone's shoes, but I think such that self-believe. And then I think, I really say, you've got to sort of get to answer it. Maybe this is a self-belief thing, the question is just like, why me? So if you're a cross-being, the table from someone, whether it's a job interview or just I get to know your conversation, informational, or even if it's just someone who's in a role or in an industry that you're interested in, you want that person to leave that conversation feeling better than they did before it started. And you want them to sort of have some insight into you that would allow them to say, hey, I like this person, and here's why I like this person. And there's a lot of job

advice you could give people about networking. But I think fundamentally, when you get that at that, wherever it might occur, like, you've got to be able to, willing to share something about yourself. You want people call it followability these days. I just so give people a peek. Let them see who you are a little bit. So that helps people connect with you. And if they can connect with you, you know, they're more likely to say, I want to give this person an opportunity. And it's hard. Like, I have been evidently telling me that when I was coming up, and I'm not sure. I think I thought I'd have lucky for the couple people who saw that in me, maybe when I didn't know, I had it.

But I feel like this is where it starts. Yeah, I love it. It's like you mentioned it earlier, but if you intentionally go into every interaction with a person to leave them better than you found them, to add value to their life, that answer some of that, why me? They're going to say, I want that rich guy around. In fact, I just bought the Boston. Celtics, now everybody's telling me I need this rich guy to come run the show.

I'm going to call it, right? Because I'm guessing, right? And you didn't even say this. I'm guessing those people who told Wick that were people that you routinely added value to their lives. You performed. You had high character, right? High competence, all the things that developed trust.

And then that obviously earns results as well. And then that gets people talking positively behind your back. I think that's like an aspirational thing for all of us to think about is. How can I intentionally leave each person better than I found them add value to their life? You do that over and over and over. And that just becomes intuitively the way you operate. Probably good things are going to happen, right? Probably good things will happen for you.

Yeah. And I'm reticent to sort of give anyone a how to, you know, or hey, do what I did kind of thing. Because I, you know, we all find our own path, I guess. But I do think you can, and this is funny, whenever I, particularly when I need a younger person, you're doing soon interviews. I do a ton of information on interviews. And for kids coming out of college, you think they want to get into sports.

And I just remember the ones who just made me smile or laugh a little bit. And it's not always because they told the joke. It's just something that they said or shared that I could resonate with me a little bit. And I always are like, yeah, you know what? I like that. There's something there.

And that's different than someone who just kind of going through the motions. And I think when you're young, if you're lucky, you've got mentors who've been around you, people that you've observed, you know, in your family or in your close circle. You can say, I want to be more like that person. But most people don't have like someone to say,

hey, here's how you got to do this. And even if they do, you got to be who you are, right? So I think you got to find it in yourself a little bit and hope you do have enough people that you've been able to look around and say, hey, I wish I was more like that person. Yeah. So good. Well, again, Rich, thank you so much for doing this.

Thank you to our mutual friend, Anthony and Sigley, for making this introduction. He's the best. He's the best. How do you guys know each other, by the way? We played Pop Warner football together. Are you serious? Yeah. He went on and played college football at Harvard, and I did not.

The Conigley family is a big family in Milford, the time we grew up in together. So we knew each other when we were young. We were on the wrestling team in high school together, and he's not amazingly well-prim. So I've talked about taking a business that was like a local business and trying to get into an amazing business. and because I have friends who are employed there, like guys I went to high school with who, you know, work there now and they're like,

Anthony's just been great to me and to my family and how they treat people on a business where it's not, construction stock, not from soft, right? But they're really, yeah, they've really been a great job, and I'm glad Anthony you connected to us. Yeah, yeah, me too, me too. Well, I would love, Rich, to continue our dialogue as we both progress, a lot of big things happening in the future for you, too.

I'm excited. and would love to talk more as we go, man. That's great, Brian. It's really great. Getting to know you a little bit. I'm happy to do it anytime. It is the end of the podcast club. Thank you for being a member of the end of the podcast club.

If you are, send me a note, Ryan at LearningLeader.com. Let me know what you learn from this great conversation with Rich Gotham. A few takeaways from my notes. I loved how he was recruited to the Celtics by the new owner Wick Grouseback at the time. three separate people told Wick, hey, you got to talk to this Rich Gotham guy. He's super impressive. If you think about and go deeper as to why that is, it's because Rich was known, for one, just being a high character person, adding value to others, leaving people better than he found them, being results oriented while being a good person at the same time.

If you do that, people will speak kindly about you behind your back and refer to you for big jobs without you even knowing it. It's such a cool story. And then working with the Bruins and the Red Sox leaders, his fellow leaders within Boston, you got to lower the ego, put yourself in their shoes, understand it from their perspective, seek first to understand, and then find a way to get it done. Rich went outside of the office to meet regularly with the leader from the Boston Bruins, who they leased the arena from, to get the least squared away. This had been an ongoing issue for decades, and Rich and them found a way to get it done. Lower the ego. Put yourself in their shoes and seek first to understand. Once again,

I want to say thank you so much for continuing to spread the message and telling a friend or two. Hey, you should listen to this episode of The Learning Leaders Show with Rich Gotham. I think to help you become a more effective leader because you continue to do that. And you'll also go to Spotify and Apple Podcasts and you subscribe to the Learning Leaders show. And you write a thoughtful review and hopefully rate it five stars by doing all of that. You are giving me the opportunity to do what I love on a daily basis. And for that, I will forever be grateful. Thank you so, so much.

Talk to me soon. Can't wait.