Mike Tirico & The Hartford Whalers? What Did They Teach Us?

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Transcript

Why Mike Tirico Matters

0:00

Let's get into this. Mike Tariko and the Harper Whalers. What did they teach us? What can we learn from them? Well, the other day, I was watching the NBA playoffs. And listen, I'm a I'm a Dallas Mavericks fan and a Toronto Raptors fan. So the NBA playoffs has not been on the top of the watch list for me this season. But I'm watching the NBA playoffs. And granted, I have to say the NBA playoffs have been fantastic, especially the Western Conference Finals, the Eastern Conference Finals. Despite the fact that the New York Knicks swept the Cleveland Cavaliers, it was a fantastic series, minus the last game. And then the Oklahoma City Thunder and the San Antonio Spurs was just a fantastic series. And so I'm watching this game between the Oklahoma City Thunder and the San Antonio Spurs, and it's on NBC. And so NBC got the rights to broadcast the NBA this season, and that's new. The NBA has not been on the NBC for decades, going all the way back to my childhood. And of course, Mike Tariko is hired by NBC. And so most of you probably probably know Mike Tarico as an NFL announcer. He previously did a decade of Monday night football when he was with ABC and ESPN. And now he's hired by NBC. He did the Olympics. He's the Sunday night broadcast, Sunday night football broadcaster with Chris Collins were. So guaranteed, you have watched, if you've watched any NFL on Sunday nights, you've heard Mike Tarico broadcast the game. And personally, I think Mike Tariko is just one of the greatest announcers of all time, specifically play-by-play announcers. Just fantastic at his job. But I tune in to the NBA playoffs, and there's Mike Tariko doing the play-by-play. And as I'm watching this game, because I'm not really a fan, so I'm not emotionally invested into the outcome of the game. You know, it's just kind of like, yeah, it would be fun to see the Spurs knock off the defending champs. But I'm listening to Mike Tarico, and I'm like, this guy is unreal at how good he is at doing the play by play. Now, mind you, I'm just saying this in my head. I never said it out loud or to anybody in the room. I'm just thinking it to myself. And I watch this game and I'm so impressed with how well he could call this game, despite the fact that I've watched this man call so many different sports, and he's known to be an NFL play-by-play guy. But here he is calling NBA, which is a completely different speed of the game. There's different gaps that you have to fill in as an announcer in comparison to an NFL game. You know, as an NFL play-by-play announcer, you can pretty much just lean on this short four-second play and then let Chris Collinsworth

Calling NBA Like A Pro

3:00

go, well, there's a guy named Patrick Mahomes, you know, and let him do his thing. But in NBA, the back and forth, the speed of the game, he's got two color commentators with him. And so the handoffs, the transitions, the way that he was naturally handling this announcing was fantastic. And so I just think to myself, man, what a what a true all-time great play-by-play announcer. And then the next day I see a post on Facebook about what makes Mike Tarico great. Now, before I share the post with you, I want to go just read off some some statistics here. Mike Tarico has been announcing professionally for 39 years. Okay, he started his broadcasting career in 1987 in Syracuse, New York. And then, of course, he spent the majority of his career with ESPN and ABC, Monday Night Football, some people put in the Masters, and it just primarily, though, inside the world of the NFL. And then in 2016, he joined NBC, which has allowed him to do so many different aspects inside of the sports world. Okay, so 40 years of announcing, four decades. Okay. Now I want you to think about that in comparison to how long you have been wholesaling and where you think you are in your training and in your skill sets, where you need to develop. Because I'm watching Mike Tariko and I'm blown away by how well he's handling all of these different aspects of sports, sitting down with gold medalists and interviewing them about figure skating and bobsledding and the skeleton and ice hockey, all of these gold medalists that he's interviewing, and he handles it so well. And so I see this post on Facebook. Mike Tariko told me his secret. It wasn't talent, it wasn't luck. It was what he does on every flight home. A few years ago, I met him at a restaurant bar in Indianapolis during the Big Ten tournament. So the Big Ten college basketball tournament. One of the biggest voices in sports. He didn't lead with his resume. He introduced himself. He asked questions. He cared about every person in the room before anyone cared about him. Eventually, I asked Mike what made him great. And he said after every game he calls on the flight home, he pulls up the broadcast and watches it back, listens to his own voice, hunts for the missus, the dead air, the calls he wishes he could have over. Every game, 20 plus years in. He wasn't born world class. He worked his way there one flight at a time. The best in any room are usually the ones still grading themselves the hardest. World class isn't a personality, it's a habit. What a fantastic post and lesson for us to learn about greatness. Because I've had the honor of training and coaching thousands of wholesalers. I've been in the industry for over a decade at this point. I've seen some of the all-time greats. Just like I started this with talking about the fact that for the past four weeks, I get to sit down with one of the greatest wholesalers ever in Jerry Norton and listen to him talk to sellers. But when I really look at it as at us wholesalers as an industry, is anybody really putting the work in to be world class at what they do? Is anybody working as hard as Mike Tarico does to be the world-class play-by-play announcer that he is? Are you truly going back and listening to your seller calls and looking for the questions that you missed, the opportunities that presented themselves inside of seller calls? Are you putting in the work to become great? Or are we solely focused on today's place? What's going to happen? Today's call. That's it. We're just constantly putting in work and we're never trying to improve and look at what we can do better for our sellers and for our futures as wholesalers. It's rare for me to ever go back and talk to someone and say, How often are you reviewing your own calls? And I hear that it's happening regularly. Maybe every now and then they will. Maybe if they're a titanium university member, they'll say, Well, yeah, I submit calls to you, RJ, and I let you go grade them for me. But are you putting in that extra work? Are you taking time after your shift? Whatever that is, remember, you're creating your own reality. So that shift is however long you dictate it to then work on your skill sets to get better. So I just did a little bit of research to see how long does

The Flight-Home Review Habit

8:50

Mike Tarico prepare for his games. He spends approximately 50 to 60 hours preparing for a single football game broadcast. Okay, so now think about this. For one three and a half hour segment, where that includes commercial breaks. So let's say less than three hours that he is actually going to be playing the game, he prepares 60 hours for that. And then immediately following that, on the flight home, he is literally reviewing what he did to then prepare for the next broadcast. This is how you become world class. This is how you become the best at anything that you want to be the best at. And to be honest with you, I have yet to see anyone in the wholesaling industry giving 1% of this kind of effort to be great at what they're doing. But yet, I have had plenty of people tell me they do not need to learn how to be better on the phones. They do not need to be better at acquisitions, they don't need to be better at comping and underwriting. I don't need RJ Bates to listen to my seller calls to tell me what I did right or what I did wrong. In fact, these people think they don't even need to go back and listen to their own calls. Their memory serves them so well that they're developing the skills as they played the game. But yet, when you look at someone that is operating on a world-class level, he doesn't believe that. Mike Tarico looks at it and says, I absolutely need to go back and review myself. Where was the dead air? Where were the calls that I missed? What could I have done better? Why are wholesalers not asking themselves, what could I have done better? We think we've made it already. That we as an industry think that with just a little bit of training and a little bit of knowledge and maybe watching some podcasts or YouTube videos, that suddenly we no longer need to train. We no longer need to get better. We don't need to see the gaps in our plays. We just think we've made it. Despite this is just one example, Mike Tarico being one. And I love this example of Mike Tarico because to be honest with you, the majority of us have the ability to do what Mike Tarico does. I'm not taking anything away from his God-given talent, but the man talks for a living. This isn't Kobe Bryant, where it's like, okay, Kobe Bryant was gifted with size and athleticism and skills that I could never, no matter how hard I work, ever accomplish. But Mike Tarico talks for a living. He watches something and he conveys a message. I think the majority of us would look at it and say, Well, I could probably get to pretty decent if I started training in that. What are we doing as wholesalers? We're listening, we're asking questions, we're conveying a message to the seller. We're offering a solution. So when you look at this example, this analogy of what Mike Tarico does and what we do as a wholesaler, why wouldn't we take something from one of the all-time greats who has been doing something at a top-notch level for over four decades and say, maybe there's something that I can learn there? Maybe I need to start looking at myself a little bit different and say, I need to, I need to work on myself instead of just one more dial,

What Wholesalers Refuse To Do

12:51

one more day of not analyzing what's going right, what's going wrong. Maybe you need to slow down and listen to yourself and truly analyze it and look at the game film and say, what could I do better here? And I'm not saying stop taking action. You get it. I I am totally the person that is always about taking massive action. You need to put in your dials, you need to put in those reps. But every now and then you need to slow down and you need to look at what those reps actually look like. What do they actually sound like? What are those missed opportunities? Because I can guarantee you, every single one of you that have chosen to click on this random thumbnail, this random title from a wholesaler talking about Mike Tariko and the Hartford Whalers can absolutely get better at what you're doing day in and day out. And it's not by sitting there and listening to me or Jerry Norton on the phone. It's about you listening to you talking to a seller. You need to sit down and analyze where are the gaps, where are my faults? What do I need to be better at? If you can't answer that, that is a problem. You need to be able to know exactly where the holes in your game are. So every single day you are working to get better at that facet of your business and your skill sets. So that's the Mike Tarico side of this. Now let's transition over to the second thing that popped up on my feed that made me just think a little bit about the Hartford Whalers. So today is June 2nd, 2026. And for those of you that do not know, the Hartford Whalers are now the Carolina Hurricanes. Well, the Carolina Hurricanes are embarking on the Stanley Cup finals that begin tonight on June 2nd, 2026. They'll be fighting for the Stanley Cup against the Vegas Golden Knights. Now, I'm not a Carolina Hurricanes fan, and I'm not a Vegas Golden Knights fan. So again, this sucks. Ghost Stars. We'll get there eventually. But some things have happened with the Hartford Whalers in the past. Okay, now let me get rid of this little banner that I got here so you guys can see this full post. So this was posted by sportslogos.net this morning. On this day, June 2nd, 1992, the Hartford Whalers unveiled their new blue uniforms and silver logo. Part of the reason for the change, now, mind you, before this, they had solid green jerseys with just that same whaler logo in white. The Quebec Nordiques owner had apparently said the Whalers looked little in their green road uniforms. So Whaler's owner, Richard Gordon, unveiled the new navy blue and silver uniforms, saying the team wanted to keep some of the past and also show some of the future. Interesting. So the Hartford Whalers had an owner that bought the team in 1988 for 31 million dollars. Okay, Richard Gordon and Donald Conrad bought the Hartford Whalers in September of 1988 for 31 million dollars. And then on June 2nd, 1992, so roughly four years later, after the competition said, you know, your green jerseys make you look small, they make you look little. So two years minus one day later, they sold the franchise

Preparation Hours And Skill Growth

17:55

for 47 million dollars. So they bought it for 31, they sold it for 47 million. Okay. Two years later, or three years later, three years later, the Hartford Whalers moved from Hartford, Connecticut to Carolina. Raleigh, North Carolina. Now, just common sense tells you it doesn't make a whole lot of sense to move a franchise from the Northeast to Connecticut, where hockey is is life. You grow up, you're a kid, you're playing hockey. You're gonna sell out your stadiums. It's a given. To Raleigh, North Carolina, where hockey is not life. NASCAR is life, basketball is life. But they moved the Carolina Hurricanes or the Hartford Whalers down and became the Carolina Hurricanes. And tonight they're gonna be playing for their second Stanley Cup. They have won one in the past. The other thing that's interesting about this is remember, June 1st, 1994, this team was bought for $47 million. As of today, the Carolina Hurricanes are worth $2.66 billion. Purchased for $47 million in 1994, worth $2.66 billion. And tonight, they will be playing game one of the Stanley Cup Finals. And I say all this to say because it's obviously changed ownership hands a couple of times along the way. But this owner that came in in 1988 and bought this franchise showed how weak of a vision he had for what he wanted to accomplish with the Hartford Whalers the day that he let his competition say, your green jerseys, your logo, your look, your branding makes you look small, little, weak. And he caved into that and changed everything about that franchise. Two years later, gave up on it, sold it. That visionary came in and said, We're moving to Carolina and we're going to turn this into a multi-billion dollar organization over the next couple of decades and win championships like they have done. And as entrepreneurs, I sit there and I think to myself, how often do we allow outside voices influence us and what we feel like we should or shouldn't do, and what our true vision is for what we're trying to accomplish. Because, see, the Hartford Whalers had no vision with that ownership

Hartford Whalers And Weak Vision

20:50

that came in for six years, obviously. They did nothing besides buy the team, lose games, change the logo and their jerseys, and then sell to someone that did have a vision. And it's funny because I see people come into wholesaling and they fail. And they they blame it on the industry. They say wholesaling doesn't work, or it's extremely difficult because it's difficult for you. But if we were to go back and we were to ask the people that bought the Hartford Whalers for $47 million and then owned it, I believe all the way up until 2018 and sold it for hundreds of millions of dollars. Is it difficult to run an NHL franchise? Was the investment worth it? If we go back and we ask Richard Gordon and Donald Conrad, would they give the same answer? Would they have love and joy for what it was like? Probably not. Not near as much as the people that now own this franchise for $2.66 billion, or in fact, some. Someone just sold a percentage of their ownership, 12.5%. And that's where the valuation came from of $2.66 billion. And as wholesalers and entrepreneurs, we sit there and we allow these outside influences, or maybe we even listen to people's prior experiences inside of wholesaling, dictate how we feel about the industry. I'll tell you, both of these things I'm extremely passionate about. Both the Mike Tarico and the Hartford Whaler example. That's why I wanted to make this video. Trust me, I'm going to make 365 videos this year. I for sure know this video is not going to be the one that has the most views. But I do think that if you care about my perspective, my thought process of what I feel is important as a business owner and as an entrepreneur, this is going to be one of the ones that is the most important to me. I don't give a flying shit about what anybody thinks about the wholesaling industry, how hard it is, the quality of leads, what's difficult about it, what's not difficult about it. I have a vision for where my company goes, where it's going to be, how long it's going to last. When I have people inside of the industry, my competitors attack me the same way the Quebec Nordiques attacked the Hartford Whalers. I'm not changing what I do because my competition said I'm wrong or I'm not doing something correct. Because it has zero impact on me and my plan and my vision. That's who I am as a business owner. I know where we're going. I know what we do works. Yes, I hear them. I see them make their reels where they make me look like a clown and all these different things. It's okay. It has zero impact on me whatsoever. I'm not going to go change our jerseys or our plan or our path because of what somebody else said. When I see people talking about how wholesaling is dead or wholesaling is changing, and we've got to adopt novations and creative finance, and this is the new future. I'm not buying into that. I'm not believing into that until it's something that I personally see myself, and I know that it's what we have to do to change as a business. Because right now that's not the case. The reality of it is that now is one of the best times that I've experienced in wholesaling over the past decade. Lead generation has never been more simple. The softwares that we have available are more amazing than anything we've ever had in our industry in the past decade. These were hurdles that we have to used to have to get over, that we don't have to anymore. So I'm not listening to what other people are saying about my future, what my company is going to do. I am solely focused on our path, our vision, and what we are going to do. And then when I think about Mike Tarico being an all-time great and the work that he puts in to be great, I want to mirror that inside of my team, inside of my operation. It's why now my team works together all day

Ignore Noise And Build World Class

25:35

inside of Discord, where we can hear each other. We can hear the calls, the conversations. We are immediately reviewing that game film in live time together as an organization. Here's the pivot that you need to make. You didn't catch this question, you didn't catch this response. Here's how you can be better. Because it is what is necessary and it's a weakness inside of our industry. So as a competitor, if you're looking around and you're thinking about how can I capture a little small percentage of gain on my competition? Because if you think wholesaling is saturated now, you're incorrect. It used to be saturated, but now it's a lot easier than it used to be. But if that's something you're feeling, then you need to be trying to find that small percentage of gain, that difference that you can have on top of your competition. Reviewing that game film, finding the gaps in your game, not worrying about what your competition is doing, but worrying about what you're doing. How can you be better? How can you become world class at what you're doing? To be honest with you, I don't know if there's anybody in this industry that actually desires to be world class. Because they look at it and just say, we're just wholesaling real estate. It's so simple. Think about the message that we tell ourselves every single day. You can get into this industry with no money. It's easy, it's not hard. It's just talking to sellers, just low ball sellers. These are the things that as an industry we have told ourselves for decades now. It's embarrassing. And it's why we're not trying to achieve being world class. See, when Mike Tarico looks at himself, he thinks somebody has to become world class. Millions of people watch him on every single one of his broadcasts. He's analyzing every single breath, every single enunciation, every single choice of words that he makes. But us lowly wholesalers, well, we don't need training past just the basics. We don't even take the time to even think about going back and listening to our own calls and our own plays. And that's the difference. I don't care about my competition. I don't care about what they think about my vision. I only care about where we're going and what that vision looks like. And I'm not going to change who I am as an organization because of

The Challenge To Your Ego

28:30

somebody else. I'm not going to be weak like the Hartford Whalers. I'm not going to look back two and a half decades from now and say, look at that wholesaler that went out and created something that became world-class operation. I'm focused on what we are going to do. We're going to put in that work. We are going to analyze ourselves, and we are going to become world class. Where do you fit into that? Is that something that you want? Is it something you even think about? Do you try to become better? Or are you so arrogant and conceited that you think I don't need to work to be better? It's too simple, RJ. It's just wholesaling. If that's your thought process, that's your problem.