Lessons - Focusing On The 'Real Prize' | Steve White, President of Comcast

Welcome to Lessons episodes of Success Story, part of the HubSpot podcast network. These lessons episodes will be shorter conversations with past guests, valued members of the success story community, and myself. They'll be focused on teaching you actionable, insightful takeaways that you can use to upskill your personal and professional life. One of the things that I brought out from the book was focusing on the real prize, helps you avoid distraction and keeps you aligned with your purpose, excuse me. What does that mean? Yeah, what it means is there are a lot of distractions in life, and so this idea of focusing on the real prize, what lines up best with your purpose and your why, and stay focused on that. I'll share a story with you. My wife, Barbiet and I, we have a son, his name is Stevie, he's nine years old. Scott, we share the same birthday, December 18th, with my little son, whose name is Stephen Andrew White, the second, we share the same name. But like a lot of couples, we struggle to have children, and we lost a couple children along the way. So my wife and I moved 11 times through my career, and Scott, at every place we moved where it was a closet door or a bedroom, she would put a blue and a pink ribbon on that door, not because she kept envisioning that was going to be her child's nursery. And so that's where I call, focus it on the real prize, and so, and then as a result, whatever she had to do to help her body stay healthy and strong. So once she did get pregnant, she could go through the full term. That's an example. That is a very personal story of staying focused on the real prize, because a big part of her purpose was being a mom. And so that allowed her to stay focused on the real prize and not be distracted by naysayers, because you can imagine Scott, there were doctors saying, you know what, we're not sure this is going to happen. And you can easily fall into that, don't lose sight of your hopes and dreams, and put yourself in a position for success to happen. That's focusing on the real prize. Another point that you brought up that I thought was interesting, living life as a learning lab. What does that mean exactly? Because that's also another, I love the way you phrase some of these things, table of prosperity, learning lab, these are concepts that you're bringing out that are completely from your life that I think would serve people very well. Well this whole idea of live life as a learning lab is birth from pathway number four in my book, thinkin' act like a business. So Scott, people say, well Steve, how's it like to work for Comcast? I said stop. I work for Steve White Incorporated. This purchases my services, and I'm excited about that, and they've done that for the last 22 years. But let's be clear, Comcast has me as part of the company because they believe I can help them be successful. There's nothing wrong with that. So how do I make my company as strong as possible? How do I invest in it? How do I make sure my company is a stock that is on the rise and not on the going down? And the way you do that, you invest in your company. Athletes do it all the time. LeBron James, the famous basketball player, says he invests a million dollars a year in his body. Whether it's health related, massages, whatever, he invests a million dollars in his body every year. So by living life as a learning lab, you're on a constant journey of growth and learning by investing in your company, which only makes you more attracted to people who want to purchase your services. And so Comcast, we just turned it into a 22-year marriage and relationship because I was constantly investing in my company and they kept saying, I think you could help us more and we kept a green every year that this is a relationship that's working. So this idea of constantly investing in your company, constantly learning and growing is the path to success. I'll share a story with you as you can tell it's got our love stories. I love them. Well, I lost my dad early in life. My mom got remarried in my stepdad, six great education. His name is Evan Smith. He goes by Smithy. He was taking Spanish lessons at 75 and you're like, why are you doing this? Because he could see that the world was changing, that we were going to this one world environment and we're going to be exposed to all of these different languages. And if you want to be relevant and you only speak one language, your ability to be relevant is decreased. I think we all can agree to that. So this mindset of always finding ways to invest in your company is really, really smart. Bill Gates highlights nicely that whenever he is struggling in an area, he'll go purchase 12 books on that subject and he will read one a month. So by the end of the 12 months, he has read 12 books about one subject and don't you think if you read 12 really good books, you search and got feedback, you're going to be pretty good at something. And so this is the same concept, whatever you're working on as a leader, maybe you want to be more empathetic, maybe you want to work on your public speaking, whatever it is that's going to make your company stronger, go find a way through books, podcasts, whatever, go find a way to invest in your company and live life as a learning lab. And this becomes particularly important, Scott, if you're leading men and women because they mirror your behavior and if you're constantly displaying to them that you're working progress, then that's going to challenge them to do the same thing. When you mentioned that you embraced the crooked path, what does that mean for you and why are you, why is that so important? Because when I, when I listened to your story, you had a difficult, you had a difficult upbringing. Obviously, it wasn't ideal, but it seems like at a certain point in your career things started to fly wheel and to work out. But obviously, I know this because I know that this is the same for everybody. It wasn't so linear. There's obviously a lot of ups and downs outside of the time when you were fired and whatnot. So what other things did you have to navigate? Why was your life a crooked path? Why is that so important for you to teach over to others? Well, because it's one, it's never easy because the number of setbacks that I've encountered in my life, I lost out on certain jobs, we talked about being fired. I thought I should have gone to the higher levels faster they didn't happen. But Scott, if you would have told me that I would be sitting here working in the cable industry because remember when I started my career, cable was not even in existence. And when I joined the cable industry some 22 years ago, it was not an industry that was viewed in a very popular way. What is this cable thing? Why do I have to pay for it? Oh, if I do pay for the services awful, Jim Carey had a movie called The Cable Guy. Everybody hated The Cable Guy. So now who would have thought 22 years later companies like Comcastra in the center of what's happening, this idea of connectivity, the fact that we can all watch and see what's playing out in Ukraine because I have the ability to connect to Wi-Fi and others and now the whole world opens up to me. Think about how many women are being communicated to in Ukraine, it's through the internet. To realize that our companies right in the center of that and essentially making that happen, that's an incredible journey. Now no one could have predicted that. So that was not a straight line. There were a lot of crooked roads along the way to get to that point. And so that's why life is about not getting so caught up in a moment and being trapped by your circumstances.