Don Yaeger is a New York Times best-selling author, award-winning keynote speaker, and leadership coach whose clients include executives in the banking, tech, and entertainment industries.
After graduating from Ball State, Don worked as a newspaper reporter before he was hired as a writer and associate editor for Sports Illustrated, the world’s most popular weekly sports magazine. Don parlayed his career at the magazine into a successful second career writing the life stories of some of the biggest names in sports.
In this episode, Don talks about how his youth took him from Hawaii to Muncie, Indiana, about the Ball State professor and staff member who were instrumental to helping him chart his life path, and what it was like to see his byline for the first time in the pages of Sports Illustrated.
Don shares the meaningful experience of writing the autobiography of his hero, Walter Payton, and what inspired him to start his own podcast, “Corporate Competitor.”
He also reveals the characteristics of greatness that he’s witnessed in many of the athletes he’s interviewed along with the advice he’d give to Ball State students pursuing their own fulfilling careers.
You can learn more about Don at https://donyaeger.com. You can follow Don on Twitter at @DonYaeger and President Mearns at @PresidentMearns.
If you enjoy this episode, please leave a review to support the show.
Don Yaeger is a New York Times best-selling author, award-winning keynote speaker, and leadership coach whose clients include executives in the banking, tech, and entertainment industries.
After graduating from Ball State, Don worked as a newspaper reporter before he was hired as a writer and associate editor for Sports Illustrated, the world’s most popular weekly sports magazine. Don parlayed his career at the magazine into a successful second career writing the life stories of some of the biggest names in sports.
In this episode, Don talks about how his youth took him from Hawaii to Muncie, Indiana, about the Ball State professor and staff member who were instrumental to helping him chart his life path, and what it was like to see his byline for the first time in the pages of Sports Illustrated.
Don shares the meaningful experience of writing the autobiography of his hero, Walter Payton, and what inspired him to start his own podcast, “Corporate Competitor.”
He also reveals the characteristics of greatness that he’s witnessed in many of the athletes he’s interviewed along with the advice he’d give to Ball State students pursuing their own fulfilling careers.
You can learn more about Don at https://donyaeger.com. You can follow Don on Twitter at @DonYaeger and President Mearns at @PresidentMearns.
If you enjoy this episode, please leave a review to support the show.
[GEOFF MEARNS]:
Today I’m back with another episode of my podcast, which we are calling our Call to Beneficence. And my guest today is Don Yaeger. Don is a graduate of Ball State University. He graduated in 1984, but he was born and raised in Hawaii. And after graduating from our university, he began an extraordinary career as a journalist, first as a newspaper reporter in Texas and then he went on to become a staff writer and an associate editor for Sports Illustrated, covering sporting events and athletes for the world’s most popular weekly sports magazine.
In 2008, Don left Sports Illustrated, really, to focus on his second career as an author. It was a career that actually began in 1990 when he was still at Sports Illustrated. And in the 20 or 30 years as a writer, he has written or cowritten more than 2 dozen books, including 11 New York Times bestsellers.
And so, in addition to his writing career, Don is also an award-winning keynote speaker and a leadership coach. His clients include executives in the banking, tech, and entertainment industries.
I’m going to talk to Don today about his experiences as a student at Ball State, and why some of the biggest names in sports and businesses ask him to help them tell their stories. And Don also has a podcast, and I’m pretty new at this, so I’m going to ask Don a few questions about how to get better at hosting a podcast.
So, Don, welcome and thank you for joining me.
[DON YAEGER]:
President Mearns, thank you so much.
[GEOFF MEARNS]:
Why don’t we begin at the beginning … let’s start with your childhood. As I mentioned in the introduction, you were born in Hawaii. Why were you born in Hawaii and what brought you here to the great state of Indiana?
[DON YAEGER]:
Isn’t Hilo, Hawaii, to Muncie, Indiana like the natural curve of [inaudible]?
[GEOFF MEARNS]:
It is, they’re almost indistinguishable.
[DON YAEGER]:
No one can tell the difference. [chuckles] So yes, my father was a Methodist preacher and the church sent him to a pastorate in Hawaii before I was born. I was born there. We lived there, our family did, until I was 11, at which stage an opportunity came up for him to take our family to Japan, where we went for two years. And then, the next stop in his professional journey was Indianapolis, Indiana. So, that’s how I end up in high school in Indianapolis at Lawrence Central.
[GEOFF MEARNS]:
And then from Lawrence Central, you came here to Muncie.
[DON YAEGER]:
I came to Ball State.
[GEOFF MEARNS]:
And tell me why—why did you choose Ball State?
[DON YAEGER]:
So, two things: number one, I had a strong sense before I went to college, which is that rare thing, I think, to know what you really want to do in life. Maybe as early as tenth grade, I knew I wanted to be a journalist. And Ball State’s journalism program, the communications department, was well regarded throughout the profession and so I knew that if I could go there, and not just take classes, but take classes and learn practical experiences, which the university offers a lot of, especially in that space, while I was there, that I would have a leg up over almost any place else I could attend, any other university.
That was answer number one. The second answer, probably not nearly as popular, is that I could afford it. I had no financial … my parents, none of my brothers or sisters had gone to college. So, I was the first, but I was going to have to pay for it. Ball State met that important criteria for me, in that I could afford it.
[GEOFF MEARNS]:
Well, you’re actually talking about the intersection of two things that are still very important: high-quality educational experiences at an affordable and accessible price.
But you’re a bit unusual. Many of our students have a sense of what they want to do after the graduate from college. How did you know even before you went to college that you wanted to be a journalist?
[DON YAEGER]:
So, random set of circumstances, we are moving our family from Japan to Indianapolis. I’m getting ready to become a freshman at Lawrence Central, and because my family had spent so much time around members of the military, I was pretty sure the military was in my future. So, I actually, coming into high school, signed up for ROTC as my one elective. And the night before classes were to start, the school counselor called the house and said, “Not enough kids signed up for ROTC, we’re canceling the program. But we have a slot for you on the student newspaper.” Which I had never considered before, but I went there and I realized that journalism really satiates probably the most important trait that I think I’ve worked to…I’m just curious about everything. And if you’re curious and you get paid to ask questions, that’s a pretty good gig. And so, not long after beginning writing and asking questions of people, I just realized it was something I could imagine doing for a lifetime.
[GEOFF MEARNS]:
And while you were at Ball State, getting your education, you were also a reporter, kind of an investigative reporter, here for our outstanding student newspaper, the Daily News. Tell us what was that experience like, what kinds of things did you cover, and what kinds of things did you learn from those experiences.
[DON YAEGER]:
I would say two of the most incredible things about being at Ball State was that we had this student newspaper that was, even though it was a part of the university system, it had an enormous amount of independence, much to the chagrin of some executives at the university, right? The newspaper had this independence. Which allowed me through opportunities to even ask questions that might make other people uncomfortable. And that to me, that experience, and not being quashed, right? When the opportunity came up to say, “Mr. President, I’d love to understand this…why are we doing this at this university. No other school in our state does this…why do we choose that path?” It was just a unique opportunity to a) allow me to grow and to not feel like I constantly had the pressure not to ask certain things.
[GEOFF MEARNS]:
Yeah, Jennifer and I had the good fortune and privilege to host you for dinner at Bracken House, maybe a couple years ago, and you said that, as a student, given some of the probing questions that you asked the administration, that you probably wouldn’t have been invited to the President’s house when you were a student.
[DON YAEGER]:
There were no invitations to a dinner at the President’s house when I was a student. So the fact I got to experience it with you, made it all the better.
[GEOFF MEARNS]:
Well, in all seriousness, it is very important to us. We do have an outstanding student newspaper, but what makes it outstanding is respecting the independence of the student journalists. And that tradition continues to this day.
[DON YAEGER]:
Which I think is such a gift to those students. And some of them may not appreciate it. I think you have to maybe have to have lived through or talk to people who don’t get that benefit from a practical opportunity to know that it’s really being done with basically the same freedoms that you would experience if you were doing this professionally.
[GEOFF MEARNS]:
And the independence of it is manifested in many ways. The television program that our students produce, they’ve invited me to do the weather, but I’ve been asking for four years to do the nightly sportscast and they haven’t taken me up on that request yet. So maybe that is in my future one of these days.
[DON YAEGER]:
I think you have it in your future.
[GEOFF MEARNS]:
Tell me, reflecting back on that experience, one or two professors or staff members who had a significant, enduring impact—influence—on you?
[DON YAEGER]:
I will. I thought about that when you and I were preparing for today. And there were two that really stand out: one was the advisor for the student newspaper, a guy by the name of David Knott. He’s long since retired, but David was so willing…when we talk about independence, independence doesn’t naturally happen right? Somebody has to defend it, and David was one who regularly took, you know…I don’t want to overuse the metaphor, but he took bullets for those of us who wanted to do what we were hoping to be able to do by defending us to other people. And I think an advisor, a professional who can sit and guide you, but at the same time be able to stand up for you, really, what a gift, again, that was to me and to my career.
But secondly, I love history, and history was my other major. We had a professor named Tony Edmonds who taught a series of classes, including a number about the Vietnam War that so impacted me because it taught me how much I could learn … you know, sometimes we think of history as boring, dry. When presented in an engaging fashion, when presented with energy, history can be the coolest thing ever. And I don’t think I appreciated that. I took the class because I was interested in him, and I added a major because I took the class.
[GEOFF MEARNS]:
And history, as you know, is the process of telling stories for people who have come before us. But your career as a journalist, and I want to ask you a question about Sports Illustrated, is really storytelling about recent events and recent people.
[DON YAEGER]:
It is. It is. The one thing that’s interesting, and I think you know this because we’ve discussed it, late in my writing career, so this is about six years ago, I had an opportunity, and I wrote my first-ever history book—a book about George Washington and the six spies who helped him win the Revolutionary War. Now, it’s a storytelling book, it’s just storytelling about someone I would never get a chance to interview, someone I could never actually learn from directly. So, it was a different level of storytelling. It went on to sell over a million copies, which is a crazy difficult number to achieve in book writing, and it lead to two more history books.
So, in that sense, I was able, late here in my career, to blend those two loves and interests.
[GEOFF MEARNS]:
So, the storytelling in particular for you professionally began at Sports Illustrated. So tell us, how did you get the job at Sports Illustrated and what was it like, that first day the magazine comes out and there’s your name in the byline?
I will tell you, you know, I grew up loving Sports Illustrated. It was my … my dad subscribed to it, I got a chance to subscribe to it when I was a teenager. I knew every Wednesday afternoon it was going to be in the mailbox. It was just awesome, right? I mean, it was old school, right? We’re talking about people who actually went to a mailbox and actually got a magazine. But, I loved it not because I ever imagined I’d work there, but just because I enjoyed imagining what it would be like to be in the presence of some of the people those writers got to be in the presence of.
So, yes, I’ve kind of worked my way through newspapering, uh, done pretty well. I wrote a book that was with another writer, a writer from Sports Illustrated. The two of us did a book together. And as a result, I became introduced to the staff. At the time, there were only 30 writers at Sports Illustrated in the whole world. So, it’s not … it’s a really small community. And I never imagined I would get that chance. But they did offer me that opportunity, first in a part-time role, which was fun. And then ultimately, they said, ‘Hey we have a slot, are you interested?’
Yes, the first time you see your name in Sports Illustrated, it was the equivalent of, you know, you mentioned a number of books … it never gets old, right? Every time I can open a case of books for the first time, and it’s a book that I’ve had a chance to participate in, there’s nothing like that first experience of that. And it’s just … it’s a new experience every time. I’ll never forget the first time I opened Sports Illustrated and saw my name. In my own little world, I felt like I had made it.
[GEOFF MEARNS]:
So, tell me, I want to turn to, in a moment, the books you’ve written. But tell me, is there a particular sporting event or athlete that you covered as a sportswriter for Sports Illustrated that you recall clearly, with either fondness or some other emotion?
[DON YAEGER]:
I will share … there’s one particular opportunity. It mixes the two worlds of book and Sports Illustrated. I was presented an opportunity to live with and write the autobiography of Walter Payton. Walter, my hero. I love Walter Payton—his jersey is hanging behind me here. I love Walter Peyton. He knew he was dying, and he wanted to write a book, and he asked me to write it with him. But in asking me to write the book, he invited me to live—his son Jarrett was a freshman at the University of Miami. I moved into Jarrett’s bedroom to be able to work on this book on a daily basis with Walter Payton. Sports Illustrated gave me the space to do that book, if I promised that, as Walter’s situation would come to some conclusion, would I write a cover story for the magazine? Which I did, and they had the unique opportunity to have the person living with Walter Payton write the cover story for the magazine the week Walter passed away.
And, so, that was incredible. Walter Payton…it doesn’t get any more special than that, in my opinion, in the most vulnerable stage of his life, right? Where he knew the words he was sharing with me, he’d never see, because they would appear in a book after he passed away. So there had to be this extraordinary level of trust that I was going to do right by him and by his story and by his family. All of that just played into this hyperemotional situation for me, that made it, um, maybe the greatest combination of … and a huge big cover story for the magazine, that made a difference um, that I’ll never—that hangs proudly on the wall of my house.
[GEOFF MEARNS]:
And he wasn’t the only extraordinary person that you had a chance to get to know well. You’ve written nearly a book of year over the last 30 years and your most recent—
[DON YAEGER]:
It’s a sign I’m old.
[GEOFF MEARNS]:
No, 30 books is pretty impressive. Your most recent one is called Best Seat in the House. It was released very recently. And in that book, you helped Jack Nicklaus the Second share stories and lessons that he’s learned from his father, the most legendary golf champion ever, Jack Nicklaus.
Tell us about the relationship that you had both with Jack Sr. and Jack the Second. Why did they trust you to tell the story of that personal and private relationship?
[DON YAEGER]:
Jackie had wanted to write a book and he ended up out on the golf course one day with a man named John Maxell. John C. Maxell is considered one of the great leadership, thought-provoking people on the planet, written a ton of books, and John and I are very close friends.
And so, he’s on the course with John and he’s telling John these stories, and he says I want to write a book one day and Maxwell said, “I’ve got the guy for you,” and he literally dials my number from the golf course and hands me the phone and I’m on the line with Jackie, Jack Nicklaus the Second, Jack is at the other golf course, right? And we’re just talking … and what you find is that all of these folks are extraordinary, right? But everybody has a story that they’d probably love to share, they just have to get in a partnership with someone who can help them make that easier, and that’s the role I play. So, I got comfortable with Jackie. Jackie invited me down to Jupiter where they live, down there in Broward, and ended up spending time with the family. Just dinner, and all this great stuff, right? And the more you get to know them, the more, as revered as they are in our minds—your mind and mine—they would be at dinner with us at your house, that amazing mansion, and you would never know that’s the greatest golfer of all time. Just a funny storyteller, and in the presence of his family, he’s a different guy. So that story, the glue really came quickly. But it was about, again, relationship and trust, relationship and trust, as all things are.
[GEOFF MEARNS]:
And so how, for a book like that, or one of the others you’ve written, how much time do you spend speaking with the person before you begin to write? What does that process look like?
[DON YAEGER]:
It’s about five months’ worth of conversation. But in the process, I will be formulating what I think is the model for the book. I usually take 20, I usually think of most books in blocks of 20. It could be 25 chapters, it could be 15, but 20 is about where I start. And as the conversations begin, you’re sitting there going, does that fit in a chapter? Or is that a chapter, right? As conversations grow, the outline essentially helps define itself. And then if I have a great outline, the writing becomes a lot easier.
[GEOFF MEARNS]:
And now I want to switch to the podcast. How do you go about identifying who are the types of people that you want to interview?
[DON YAEGER]:
So, the podcast really began for me last year during the pandemic, right? You mention I do a lot of corporate speaking, but much of that was starting to dry up because there was no meetings behind handled. So, it became … those I wasn’t doing virtually were being pushed out by a year, and I was looking for something fun to do and a podcast seemed interesting. It’s why you’re doing it…it’s a great way to engage somebody and learn from them in a wonderfully nonthreatening environment, right? And so, I had read a story that Ernst & Young had done some research about women who were executives at, C-level executives at Fortune 500 companies, and the number one thing they had in common was that most of, the majority of those women had played sports. Ninety-four percent of them had played sports in high school; fifty-two percent of them had played it in college. And so, the question became, what is it that sports teaches? What are the leadership lessons that sports teaches executives that we can all learn from? And so, my model was, I want to go find executives, I don’t want to talk to LeBron James, I don’t want to talk to … you know…all those folks are really great, but I want to talk to them about business. What did sports teach you about business?
You mentioned Jack and Jackie Nicklaus. I did a podcast with them that coincided with the release of the book, but it was about the business of being Jack Nicklaus, not the golfing of being Nicklaus that made it interesting. And so that’s where the two worlds are intersecting for me.
[GEOFF MEARNS]:
You mentioned a word just a moment ago, that these people are great. And I’ve heard you speak, and I’ve had a chance to read some of your work. That theme, that thread of greatness, and what you’ve learned about people who are great in one way or another is a consistent theme in your work. What have you learned, if you had to distill it down, because I’ve heard you do this presentation, if you had to distill it down, what is that common ingredient that makes someone great?
[DON YAEGER]:
I’ll tell you a couple that just I’ll throw off the top, that came up enormously frequently when I would ask these questions of great winners. One is that success—they believe is their birthright, if you will. They enter everything they do with the belief they are going to be successful. And that gives them, kind of, it squares their shoulders slightly different, right? It makes them just a little taller.
Failure, though, leaves a mark. And so, if you can take mistakes or moments when things don’t go your way, and instead of blaming them on somebody else, use them as food for growth, then you find yourself in special company.
Because most people, human nature is, if I don’t get what I came for, it’s someone else’s fault, right? I have to blame the referee. I have to blame the boss who didn’t listen to all my great ideas. I have to blame everybody else because it’s not my fault. The great ones don’t do that. They say, I’ll learn from my mistakes so I don’t make them again.
The second one is that the great ones are constantly evaluating who they surround themselves with. And, you know, I know it’s a common theme among parents. You’re never going to be better than the people you hang out with. The truth is that I hear that over and over again…John Wooden once told me, you’ll never outperform your inner circle. And if you want to be more extraordinary build a more extraordinary inner circle. And that became a real game change for me, it meant that I evaluated constantly, who do I give my time to? And as I made that evaluation, I made changes, and as I made changes, I made myself better.
[GEOFF MEARNS]:
On your first point, I recently heard an interview with a very young chess champion. I think this young man is maybe 11 or 12 years old, and he’s already had a remarkable run of success. And in the interview, the person asked him, “How do you feel when you lose?” and this young boy said, “I don’t lose. It’s a lesson. It’s a lesson, and I learned from that experience.” So, it was remarkable that this young man, at the age of 11 or 12, had really already embodied that characteristic.
[DON YAEGER]:
And it takes most of us 50 years to figure that out, right?
[GEOFF MEARNS]:
I’m still working. I’ve got more than 50 around the planet.
I’ve got a couple of final questions. One is, if you were speaking to students right now, and you might very well be, I hope some of our students will listen. What advice would you give to them beyond the two points that you just made—particularly those students who maybe want to be journalists or writers or historians?
[DON YAEGER]:
It’s funny because the theme of many of our little questions here, if you were to subset this conversation, it comes back to the art of storytelling, right? And to me, that is the coin of the realm, right? At Sports Illustrated we used to have a little sign in our writer’s room that said, “Storytelling is the currency of kings and queens.” And, you know, that the very best know that that’s where you go get … so if you want to be great, learn to tell better stories—about yourself, about those you’re interacting with, those you’re learning from. Learn people’s stories and imagine how you would tell it if you were living their life. And the better you become as a storyteller, the skill of actually sharing what matters to you, but not by just declaring it, but by telling someone a story.
If I told you a story of what really matters to me, I don’t even have to say, this matters to me, because the story will make that implicit. Be a better storyteller. That is, I will tell you, it’s almost like learning how to sell. To me, it’s the other gift. That if you can be good at that art, go study that art, look for people who are good at it, and then learn from them. What you’ll find is that that is game changing for any walk of life.
[GEOFF MEARNS]:
So, a final question. We speak, and I speak often, about our core mission, which is to prepare our students to have fulfilling careers—not necessarily successful careers, fulfilling careers, and there is a difference—to have fulling careers and to lead meaningful lives. And as you know well, Don, the iconic image of our great university is that statue, Beneficence. And “beneficence” means simply doing good—the act of doing good.
As you reflect on what is not just a successful career but an extraordinarily fulfilling career as well as a meaningful life, tell us what Beneficence —what doing good—means to you?
[DON YAEGER]:
You know, I love that question and the reflection around it. And I love that you ask this of your guests. So, one thing that Ball State instilled in me was that desire to try to figure out what above becoming successful, what above having a reputation of professional gift, can you become part of … and so I have loved that, over my career, I’ve had that opportunity. I’ve spent time trying to develop and get into opportunities to be beneficent, right? Currently, the one that’s kind of got my attention, you and I spoke about it that night at dinner with your wife, was I’m on the national board of Make-a-Wish, the charity. It’s my favorite charity in the world. I love the mission. But more importantly I love the interaction with the families who are gifted with these opportunities to experience a wish, whatever their child’s greatest wish is, we go to work to make it come to life. And all of that, really, the relationship with Make-a-Wish, the opportunities… all of those root back to things I learned while trying to understand what it meant to be successful in life, and I learned those things at Ball State.
[GEOFF MEARNS]:
Well, thank you, Don. Thank you for joining me for this conversation. Please know how proud we all are of what you have accomplished and how grateful we are for the service that you provide to our students, to our university. You serve as an inspiration—an inspiration for all of us, but certainly an inspiration for our students for what a Ball State education can do to empower them to have a fulfilling career and a meaningful life likes yours.
So, thank you very much. And Jennifer and I would love to have you back at Bracken House whenever you’re back here in Muncie.
[DON YAEGER]:
We are ready. Our family will come back. My kids loved getting a chance to experience the community and Homecoming. Which, I can’t wait until we have another one. It’ll be really cool.
[GEOFF MEARNS]:
It’s coming. So, again, thank you, Don. Take care.
Thank you.