Welcome to Alumni Live: The Podcast.

These are conversations with Grand Valley State University film and video

graduates about the industry, the film, video, major and alumni profiles.

Welcome to another episode of Alumni Live: The Podcast.

I'm Ashlyn Mendelsohn.

I'm a senior at Grand Valley State University, and today I'm talking with

Jeff Donehoo, who is the senior motion graphic designer and programmer for

Rocket Surgery in Denver, Colorado.

Jeff, thank you so much for taking the time to talk with me today.

Thank you.

Good to be here.

Can you tell us about your current job, what you do, and who you do it for?

Sure.

As you said, I'm a senior motion graphics designer and

programmer for Rocket surgery.

That's a creative services company for Ross Video.

They're a parent company.

Ross video is a company out of Ottawa, Canada, we make video equipment, mainly

it developed out of switchers but we've dove into a whole bunch of markets.

If you've seen spider cam, we have spider cam.

And one of our biggest products is Expression, It's a live graphic machine

solution that's also a 3D render.

And I design in Expression, utilizing motion graphics 3D, cinema 4D,

after effects, and then also program different Dashboards, which is a

Ross product, and workflows for control systems for doing that.

But specifically it's for sports and entertainment.

In particular the in-house graphics system, so everything on the

jumbotron, the fascia boards.

And that's been my area of expertise for over 20 years now.

Fortunate enough to be on a really, really smart team of designers, programmers.

The stuff that our team comes up with is amazing looking.

And, if you get a chance to go to YouTube and check out the Rocket Surgery demo

reel, I'm sure you'll be impressed.

I'll have to check that out for sure.

And then can you tell us about your career journey from Grand Valley

to where you're starting now?

So I entered into Grand Valley at fall of 97.

Graduated in December of 2001, so that was my time period there.

I was in the film & video major.

And I went to Grand Valley ' cause, to be honest with you, I didn't have

enough money to go to Indiana, and my parents told me no, they weren't

gonna let me take on the debt.

So Grand Valley at the time was very inexpensive.

And I have two kids that are about to be in college and it's a whole new

world, where things are right now.

So I was in the film and video program, made some friends, was

in some classes, enjoyed it.

While I was there, started the Grand Valley Water Polo Club,

which was very important to me.

Met a whole ton of friends, learned a whole lot about leadership, running an

organization, all those types of things.

Was coached up really well.

My good friend, who was our coach, he liked to challenge us, and just

created some lifetime friends there.

Through both the water polo team and the film and video program, we

got some really good experiences.

After school, I was working for an engineering company out of Lake Odessa,

which my brother-in-law set me up with, that was my job in college.

And then they hired me full time afterwards and it wasn't

really what I wanted to do.

I had an experience where I actually got in a car accident, rolled my Jeep

over, had a crisis of faith at that time, where I really wanted to do

something with my life and felt that God was pushing me to something more.

So in 2003, I got up everything that I had and drove to California 'cause I

figured I could find something in LA.

I really just wanted to be a video editor.

So step by step, piece by piece, went out there without a job, without a

place to live, and was completely fine.

Found all that, within a month or two, I mean, found a place to live

really quickly with a roommate who's a good friend of mine now, and then

found a place to live as a driver.

My experience was I had a working vehicle.

And then next thing I know, it was take this to this address and you're

taking tapes of Warner Brothers shows and you show up and all of a sudden

you're on the Warner Brothers lot.

Like, wow, that's quick and interesting.

Did that for about nine months and then the owner of it said, "What

do you really wanna do here?" And I said I wanted to edit.

And so he, allowed me to edit a couple things and he was very encouraging and

said, "you're, pretty good at this. Here, clean up this, clean up this."

I then was with a team of editors, and we just all trying to get the job done,

but we also built each other's skills.

That was the time Final Cut Pro was really big, so we were all trying to

learn that and get up the skills on that.

I was dating long distance with my wife, now.

I proposed to her, and she was living in Colorado, and

she did not wanna move to LA.

We wanted to start a family and all that, so I moved to Colorado, again,

with no job or no place to live, but could figure that out real quick.

But I had a demo reel with Hollywood stuff on it, and a lot of Warner

Brothers, some movies and all that.

So, sent that out to the Rockies and Fox Sports, Rocky Mountain at

the time, which became Root, which became AT&T, which is no longer.

Then I sent it to the Denver Broncos and just three of 'em,

and then heard nothing back.

Got to Denver and the day after I arrived, got a call from who would be my boss.

He mentioned, " Hey, a job just opened up.

We got your demo reel and a job just opened up." So they

interviewed me for about a month.

It was a longer process than I'd hoped, and then they hired me.

I worked with the Rockies for 16 years.

Shortly after COVID, and after the ' 21 All-Star game, I was presented with this

opportunity at Rocket Surgery, and I didn't think it was gonna go anywhere.

I kind of thought it was like, all right, that'd be nice and let's see what happens.

And the more I got to know about Ross and the people there and the

opportunity, I couldn't pass it up.

It was just too good.

And now I get to work on a whole ton of projects and a lot of dreams

I didn't know I had came true.

Like, I've been able to come home to Michigan to work on projects.

Last year I did Little Caesars Arena and I've done University of Michigan before.

I've worked with Michigan State a couple times.

I did the Detroit Lions this fall.

And not to mention a whole bunch of other projects.

I've worked with seven different baseball teams now.

I'm just really blessed and excited that I get to live this life.

It's a lot of fun.

It's a lot of work.

I mean, it's stressful, but, it's everything I could have ever hoped for,

more than I would've ever asked for.

I love that.

That's amazing.

Good way of putting it.

Did you do any sports work while you were at Grand Valley with the water polo team?

So when I was there, there was a requirement to do a couple of things

with a show that was on the downtown campus called Grand Valley Sports, and

I remember one of the first times that we had to get class credit for it.

The interview was the football coach, which was Brian Kelly at the time.

That was one of my first experiences.

I think I worked one basketball game that was an actual live broadcast,

and I remember leaving there and I think it was like a replay assist

and just got onto headset and said, "Hey, replay's ready" or something

like that, or, it was very simple.

But, I remember leaving after just being on headset, for one night and

I was just like, this is really cool.

This is incredible.

And I could just see that there was something there that I wanted to do.

I remember there was one Labor Day weekend, like I just moved to LA, on

ESPN2, they were doing a behind the scenes broadcast from the truck perspective.

It was a Washington Redskins game at the time, and I forget who they were playing.

But it was opening weekend and they just wanted to offer the real broadcast on ESPN

and then the behind the scenes on ESPN2.

And I remember just sitting there for four or five hours,

'cause it was not just that broadcast, it was going from thing to thing.

And I just walked away from there thinking this is everything that I wanted to do.

It was so cool to be on headset and there was an intuition of like, I

don't know what all those things are, but I understand the flow of this

and I can see how you go from one to the next and the different roles.

And it was very cool.

That's awesome.

I'm not sure if we actually still have that.

Was it a club at Grand Valley?

The Grand Valley Sports?

I think it was a weekly show on WGVU, WGVU something like that, on the PBS channel.

I'd be surprised if they still have it.

I mean, you could do everything on the internet now.

So, back then over the air broadcast had to fill time and I could see that

has gone away probably a long time ago.

Gotcha.

And then what do you love working in sports?

What's your favorite thing about it?

I don't know.

It's not what I, thought I would like.

It's changed over the years, I guess, right now I like doing things that

I haven't done before or seeing things that I haven't done before.

Cause I've seen a lot, I've been to over 1300 baseball games.

I've now worked Monday night Football and AFC Championship game.

Worked an All Star game, worked World Series.

I'm always impressed by the players in the game and all that, but the thing that

I love the most is the roar of the crowd.

I really love watching people be happy.

And a lot of what we do is we put people on the big screen, and when you put 'em

on the big screen, they're always happy.

I mean, there's a handful of times and probably remember all of them when

they weren't happy, but it is mainly camera guys and a crew who are wanting

to have fun with people that day.

They're just wanting to make people happy or put them up there and

if you are on the big screen, you can't help but smile and wave.

That never gets old to me.

I just love people.

I love watching the people have fun with it.

Have fun at a game.

Have fun with their family, with their friends.

It's really fun to be able to actually provide a conduit for that.

For sure.

I think fan experience is definitely top for me too.

Just seeing everyone enjoying themselves and stuff.

For sure.

I remember the first game back with the Rockies after the pandemic.

It was the opening day, 2021.

We didn't know we got the All star game or that that was gonna change.

And there was a limited amount of crowd that you could have.

It was like 25, 30,000, and it'd been over a year since everybody was out and

even though they had to be isolated and all that in little pockets, everybody

we put on the screen was super happy.

And I just kept looking out there.

I just kept saying, look at all those happy people.

Look at all these happy people You just took it for granted that we could go to

sporting events, you could do whatever you wanted to do, and life went on.

It was awesome, but it was just great to be back and see that everybody's happy.

They're good.

They're just happy to be here.

I definitely agree.

You said that you worked a World Series.

Can you talk a little bit about that experience?

That's really cool.

The 21 days in September of 2007, probably one of the best experiences of my life.

In 2007, the Rockies had a really good team, but there were four

really good teams in the NL West.

So they found themselves in fourth place with 13 games to go.

And this was one of the best teams that Rockies had had in years.

They were really excited about it, but they hovered around 500.

I remember this Saturday before the streak started, and that was

the year of Michigan football.

I'm a big Michigan football guy.

Michigan lost to Appalachian State, then lost to Oregon.

'cause I had a good buddy who worked at the Rockies who was an Oregon fan.

So then the Marlins, the next week it was, Michigan was playing Notre

Dame and we went down and we were talking to the players trying to make

a video, a thank you to the fans.

And they're all kind of like, yeah, I don't know.

We're scuffling 'cause they'd lost a couple games and it was really

kind of a must win that night.

And they lost.

And Miguel Cabrera with the Marlins hit a grand slam.

'Cause he was like 24, 25 years old and just pounding the ball.

And I just thought, I was like, yeah, it's over.

Too little, too late.

I've seen how these things go.

So then the next day, it was a Sunday game and they had a rookie

starting and it went well, and Todd Hilton hit his 300th home run, which

we'd been sitting on for a while.

So you had that big fan moment and the graphics and all that played.

Okay, cool.

Todd's moment and next day it was an off day ' cause of

Major League Baseball rules.

And then it was a double header.

They won the first game and you're thinking, okay, this team is good.

It's a nice clean win.

It was Jeff Francis start and then the night cap, they're

losing to Dodgers and the Rockies loses the Dodgers all the time.

And they were down and it was just, they had our number.

It was the same thing.

Then Saito came in to close for the Dodgers, and he hadn't given

up a hit to the Rockies all year.

A hit, a base runner, anything.

Matt Holiday squeaks one through, just barely on the infield, get a runner

on, and then Todd Hilton came up and one of the defining moments of his

career, he hit a walk off home run.

And then from that moment on, it was just, next day they won and then it was a four

game set and they swept and then they go to Milwaukee and I go on a family trip.

I'm kind of paying attention, like, ah, we gotta win in San

Diego, eh, we'll see what happens.

Goes to extra innings.

Brad then they hit another home run, then on Sunday, Milton

Bradley melts down for the.

Padres and Garrett Atkins hits an inside the park home runs,

weird stuff starts happening.

And then they go to the Dodgers and win all three games there.

And then we are coming home, now we're got a chance at first

place and winning the division.

So lose the one game of the streak then, but then won the next two nights

and we're down to our last out, like, Milwaukee had to beat San Diego.

One of the best baseball stories, it was Tony Gwynn Jr for the Brewers who got the

hit off of Hall of Famer, Trevor Hoffman.

It was down to the last strike and he gets a triple to tie it.

Brewers win in extras.

We were in lower press around all these sports writers, and we're

watching the end of our season.

Like, if he strikes out, that's it.

We got two games to play and we're out.

He hits a triple and you're just like, this is really gonna happen.

And then the Rockies win that night.

Tulo hits a grand slam.

Then the next day they win three to two on just a barn burner.

And they also had to have the Padres lose, which they did.

And they were up like six, nothing.

So then you force game 163, which I still contend is one of

the greatest days of my life.

October 1st, 2007.

That game, 13 innings back and forth.

Still don't know how we fell behind after being ahead.

That was, that's a nutty game, but then went right into the

playoffs, swept Philly, swept the Diamondbacks, and then had to wait

eight days and lost all the momentum.

. Because we swept and Boston went to seven games and MLB

changed their schedule that year.

So the broadcast allowed for off days and were just set up this dead time where if

you swept the LCS, you were in a bad spot.

So we sat there for eight days and couldn't do anything

and then went to Boston.

Didn't look great in the first game.

Could've won game two.

Didn't look great in game three, except they came close, like almost tied it

in the sixth and then lost four to three in game four and that was it.

But still, it was three weeks time.

Absolutely no hope to being on the cusp of a world championship.

I'll never forget many of the details of that whole thing.

It was just a really great whirlwind month.

That's absolutely crazy to witness that unfold in front of you.

Yeah, it's kind of lost in baseball lore, because you didn't win.

Now it's almost 20 years past, and I don't know, it's just one of those things.

I guess that's like an award in itself.

That's just really cool.

But what other like awards have you won for your work?

What's funny is, my professor, Kim Roberts, which is my wife's aunt,

so we always call her Aunt Kimmy.

She nominated me for a Distinguished Alumni award that year, and I was

supposed to fly back and accept it, but couldn't because of that

2007 run that the Rockies had.

There was that, there's a annual conference for all the professional

college in-game entertainments, there's a couple awards that we've had in there

for our commercials that we used, to do.

This past year I've been working with the Broncos, freelance work and the

NFL tracks this very specifically, and I'm a game day producer

there, work with a fantastic team.

They do a great job and really make my job super easy.

But we were ranked the number one in-game entertainment in the NFL.

And I'm really proud of that 'cause I think there's some really good people

that deserve a lot of credit for that.

They do a great job.

No, I agree, the Broncos definitely have a top production team.

You guys did really, really great.

They're great.

They really put their due diligence in on the details of what needs

to be done, and highlight what's important for a good atmosphere

from ownership and coaching on down.

They've made it important that home field advantage is the number one priority.

We're taking a short break to tell you about the Dirk Koning

Memorial Film and Video scholarship.

Here's Gretchen Vinnedge remembering Dirk Koning.

The Koning Scholarship enables students to get that kind of an education, to be

a good filmmaker, to be able to express their voice and to continue Dirk's dream.

For more information, and to donate to the scholarship, visit

the link in the description.

Now, back to the show.

Can you talk about the difference going from, the MLB to the NFL?

What are some of the main differences you would say between the leagues?

As far as in-game entertainment goes, the biggest difference I notice is

baseball, there's a lot of downtime.

Baseball's a lot like fishing.

There's no motion on the boards when the ball's in play.

There's a lot of rules and a lot of 'em are safety related.

You can't have a whole bunch of motion while guys are trying to hit something

coming at 'em at a hundred miles an hour.

I always say that nothing happens in baseball until something happens, and a

lot of doing a baseball game is thinking about the game as you're playing it.

There's only a couple options of what could happen here.

A guy runs, a guy on second.

All right, if he gets a base hit and scores, I'm gonna take this camera,

this camera, and then we're gonna go to replay, and then we're gonna

come back, and then we're gonna do this before the headshot happens.

Or he's gonna be out.

If he's out, we'll get the next batter and we'll go up to the plate.

Football, there's a rhythm to it.

There's a rhythm that happens during a game that is pretty much the same

regardless of what the play is.

It's usually, you're in the wide camera and that's you're almost

downtime where you're waiting.

Whereas in baseball, you're sitting on a headshot and you're

not out live to the board.

When you're in football, you're on that wide camera, so you're looking

for what the play is, and then you go closer and you always hero on him

or the quarterback or the coach or something depending on what is going on.

You usually go to replay, especially with in-house, replays are very important,

but there's also a coaching aspect to replays on what they wanna see on

the board and what is advantageous to them for home field advantage.

They don't wanna give the other team a leg towards challenges or anything like that.

All 32 teams are this way.

So it's different.

And I've done some hockey as well, done a little basketball.

There, you're mainly on the wide shot.

You're on that center game cam for a while.

And then you gotta find ways to mix in your replays and choose your moments.

But baseball's unique, especially with the Major League Baseball

rules of replay on what you can show, where you can show stuff.

I still love baseball.

It's, a thinking man sport as we tell our 13-year-old team that

I'm fortunate enough to coach.

But there's a lot of intricacies into it.

Football's just fun.

Football's just straight up fun.

It's once a week.

Score some points, hit some guys, it's great.

But baseball, not every game is gonna be a barn burner, but when baseball is

great, when you've got that pennant chase situation, there's no better feeling

than I get to go to the ballpark every day and everybody wants to be there.

And then you get that huge crowd, 40, 50,000 people that are just

a whole city is got this vibe, they've got this fever to it.

With football, you do have that, but it usually comes around the

day before and then the game day.

And everybody's gotta work during the week.

But with baseball, it's just this constant, you're constantly checking

this score, you're constantly up on it.

It's just this vibe you live all summer long.

But again, football is just fun.

Football will change, but I hope they never change it.

It's just great.

I'm glad we have both of them and I'm glad we have all the different sports.

They're all good.

You've talked about some of the pros, like some things that you love

about your job, but what are some cons about your job specifically

or just about working in sports?

It is just time.

No matter what you do, you're gonna have to spend time on it.

And if you wanna be good at anything, it's gonna require time.

You're gonna have to study it, you're gonna have to have reps

on it, it's gonna take it while.

Editing has gotten so much better, so much easier, but it's just that time suck.

I mean, being in the edit room or making a graphic or doing anything,

it's gonna take a lot of time.

Building anything that's worthwhile is gonna take time, which means that's

time away from your family, time away from anything else you have.

And that's really hard.

When you have young kids, when you have a wife, you need to spend time together.

And, especially with travel or with sports, extra

innings, you know, I I worked.

all those baseball games without a pitch clock, at altitude, where

there's usually 13, 14 runs a game.

And each run takes more time and each walk takes more time.

There's a lot of time there, but it's part of the job.

There's a lot of industries that take a lot of time.

I don't know of many industries that don't take a lot of time.

That's, I think, the biggest challenge.

My wife is a teacher and one of the hardest things is it takes a

lot of time, grade papers, grade different things, prepare lessons.

Professions take time.

And I think that's part of the challenge is you have to master that,

master your time with your family.

I think for me, managing money is way easier than managing time.

I can see money and I can add and subtract, and that's about it.

If you make investments, here's what you can project.

It's not that difficult, but budgeting time and all that, what do you do when

things take more time than you want 'em to, and you're frustrated by that.

it's difficult.

Yeah, for sure.

That's good that you say that because I'm doing a presentation

about work-life balance in sports.

So yeah, I can definitely see how that can be very challenging.

It is challenging.

I think as time's gone on, especially after the pandemic, teams have

gotten better at it, teams are more willing to let you work from home.

Where I work, with Ross, our whole Rocket Surgery team is remote work.

Like I said, the headquarters is in Ottawa, but we have, on our team, guys

from Canada, guys from America all over the place, one guy in England.

And then, the Rocket Surgery team larger, they're from all over the globe, and

what I think I like about that is it allows Ross to hire whoever they think

is best, we will work with you anywhere.

There's pros and cons to that.

The pro is like, I work eight hours a day, and sometimes I have time

in the morning and I'll jump in.

Sometimes I have time at night.

Sometimes it's just straight eight to five.

Like today I'm able to do this on my lunch break because I can just easily

say, all right, I'm not gonna work for an hour and I'm gonna jump in and help

you out and help Grand Valley out.

Hopefully somebody sees this and they're like, oh, cool.

That was helpful.

It's a more difficult thing to do when you're in an office.

Traffic is always a difficult thing that takes time away it's nice when you've

reached a point in your career where you have more flexibility, but you also know

what is required to get the job done.

Yeah, for sure.

And thank you again for taking the time.

Really appreciate it.

You're welcome.

How do you work your way up in the industry, in the positions

that you were in at either the Rockies or the Broncos or now?

I guess I've never been a very extroverted person, but I've

always relied on the relationships.

It's all about knowing somebody and your network of people.

And there's a reason why that's probably the most popular answer to that question

is because that's usually how you get hired is, you know somebody, and I guess

I would say having done hiring, I see why it's more difficult to just look at

a blank resume or even a demo reel and see, all right, what is this person like?

Are they a good teammate?

What's gonna happen when we bring them in the door?

Are they gonna be here for just them, or are they gonna be here for all of us?

Are they gonna work late when it's required?

Are they gonna have a good attitude, bad attitude?

What I would say is, a good hire can multiply everybody else on

the team, but a bad hire divides.

You really have to depend on what other people know, what other people say.

Because if somebody I know and trust will vouch for 'em, or if somebody

is looking to hire me and they know who I am and what I can bring and

that I can be a multiplier, that goes a long way because you immediately

move up the hiring process and you immediately move up the career ladder.

If you just have a reputation and you have character that's been

established by somebody else, I mean, you established it, but somebody else

has said, yeah, "I can vouch for this person. They know what they're doing.

And not only that, but they're a joy to be on the team." I know I've hired

people based on that and I mean, a lot of times we will hire based on crew.

So they have game day crew, which are freelance positions.

You just get to know somebody that way.

Then when a position comes open, if they're interested in it,

usually that's like, all right, let's move them to the top.

'Cause I've seen 'em work and they're really good and

they're a joy to be around.

So I think they'd be a good addition to the team.

I think the best way is one, show up and do your job, and then

two, try and be a good teammate.

So obviously you have to have experience or talent in a certain

position, but also who you are as a person is what other people say

about you, like, that's the most important when you're hiring somebody.

Yeah.

When I was hiring somebody, I would look at their demo reel first

just to see if they had an eye for it, depending on the position.

'cause some of 'em weren't editing positions or graphics

and if it wasn't that, it was alright, are they capable of this?

Because there's a lot of people that don't like working on computers and a lot

of these positions are computer based.

Well, if you don't like working on computers, it's really

not a good role for you.

And then a lot of that was how good of a teammate they are.

How well do they work?

Do I gotta be on eggshells around this person because if so, I'd

rather not bring 'em in here.

Do they have a sense of what we're trying to do and are we gonna be able

to do it together and complete the task?

There's people that I've had to pass on just because you get a bad sense from

'em, didn't know 'em at all, and you're just like, I don't think this person is

going in the direction that we're going.

But for the most part, usually it's a slow process to build your career.

Usually starts with your foot in the door somewhere.

Getting a start, I don't think, is all that tricky as long as

you're willing to start somewhere.

If you're willing to start in the minor leagues, you get your foot in the door

and you'll learn a lot of experiences.

If you're willing to start anywhere close to production, you'll get your foot in

the door and then something will come up,

'cause people move, jobs get created, something will happen and

you'll be able to apply for that.

I think honestly, starting a career is probably easier than ever.

It's hard to hire somebody right outta college.

They didn't know who I was I knew this, this is why I moved to LA,

because I sent out a whole bunch of resumes before I moved and never

heard back from any one of them.

They didn't know who I was and they probably got hundreds of 'em.

They were just like, great, I mean, from Michigan, are you planning on moving?

It was, are you planning on me doing all this for you?

Like, I'm gonna move you here and I'm gonna set you up and do all this.

That's not how any of this works.

It's more or less we're gonna give you the opportunity and you gotta do

something with it, is usually how it goes.

Once you get more established, if they know that you can fill a role

for 'em, do it quick, then there's probably more that can be done on that.

I guess in the sports industry, it's obviously very competitive and stuff,

so how did you deal with the rejections that you got if you were like a new grad.

Yeah, there were some rejections.

The best way I would always look at a rejection was, well,

probably not meant to be.

And the, and the other thing is, if they don't wanna hire me, why

would I want to go work for 'em?

And some of it wasn't even that they don't like you.

It's more or less, we're going in a different direction for

the best purposes of what we're trying to get done, which is fine.

And I always took that as like, all right, I gotta get better at something.

Either need more experience or need to learn a new skill or do something.

I think there's positive ways to look at it where you can always build

yourself into something better from it.

You're never a completed project.

And especially starting out, you're barely a project.

You're barely going.

Obviously there are ways to get hired and you gotta learn what those are, you

gotta meet new people and there's so many things, especially when you're young.

So don't give up, stay positive.

That's what I would say.

What are some of your best and worst experiences or a problem during a project

that helped you become a better editor?

Best and worst experiences?

Worst is always deadlines and trying to get something done up against a deadline.

Some of the worst experiences I had was just doing fantasy camp for the

Rockies, but I'm so glad I did it because I learned so much of how to

be a better editor, a quicker editor.

But you're working with non-broadcast cameras, trying

to make something cinematic.

You're trying to make something entertaining and worthwhile.

'Cause they spent a lot of money on it.

But it's also, you don't have much time.

There's an overwhelming amount of clips.

It's almost an impossible task, but if you focused on it as like,

this is not that big a deal.

It's not life or death, even though when you get stressed out, everything

looks like life and death, it's not.

So if you could back away from that and say, all right, how can I do this better?

How can I learn how to do this better?

What can I do?

And then eventually, within a couple projects, you were like, oh, I wish I

would've known this trick back then.

And I think that's my main thing is, especially with expression, every project

I'm learning a better way to do something.

And so as long as you're using that, just trying to be better than you were.

I'm not a big fan of the phrase you're perfect the way you are,

because I don't think that's true.

You're told that in school and it's like, well, why am I in school?

You're constantly trying to get better, constantly trying to lean into

things, and just see what you can make.

I love watching on TV, like when I'm watching a Michigan game and I'm

like, I've built that in my basement.

I worked with the Diamondbacks last year, and you're watching a game and then all

of a sudden, because in Denver we don't watch the Diamondbacks all that much,

but it would be on MLB network and then all of a sudden centerfield scoreboard,

you're like, oh hey, and it still works.

What do you know?

That probably didn't answer your question, you said best and worst practices.

I can't think of any worst.

I think my worst times were when I was burned out or stressed out, 'cause

there's been times when I just couldn't look at another ball field, being around

the stadium would just turn my stomach.

I felt like nauseous and all that, like where it is overwhelming.

There's a lot of best moments, where you just are like, I can't believe I'm here.

I can't believe I'm looking at this.

And, I think that's the extremes of it.

How did you of like overcome that burnout?

When I feel burnout coming, it's always from stress and

your body's response to it.

And it's usually because I've been staring at a screen way too much.

Usually it's a combination of, you need to just stop for a little bit, even if

you can't, go for a walk, say a prayer, eat something, get some fresh air, get

some sunshine, go back at it, and then just make sure you can attack one thing.

Just get one thing done.

Whatever that is top of mind that's bugging you , get that one thing.

If you get that one thing, and you can get that so you don't worry about

it anymore, you've got at least a footstep in the right direction.

And then something else will go into that number one slide.

Get that one thing.

But if you attack it from the I'm in this spot and the only thing I can do

is now just work on this from here until eternity and I'm just trapped, that

is not a mindset that'll ever work for anyone, and you do need to break out

and separate yourself from that and just be like, all right, that's not real.

Let me just take a break.

Everything will be fine, and it's not something that's realistic

where you could say, well, I need a day off or a couple days off.

No.

You need 20 minutes, go attack something, get it done.

You'll feel a lot better.

And then you'll at least be able to breathe.

Once you're able to breathe, you can attack things and you can problem

solve and you can move from there.

But yeah, when it's overwhelming, you'll put yourself in a prison.

And I think that's part of the big trap of it is when you're there,

it's like, hold on a second.

I need to wake up to reality.

Nobody's gonna get hurt here.

This is gonna be okay.

Everything is gonna be fine.

that's how I've managed to do that.

That's awesome.

That's a great perspective to have too, to just like take a break and get

into prayer or whatever calms you down.

And I haven't done that perfectly, but yeah, that's what I've noticed.

And then just to kind of close out, you've shared a lot of great

advice, but what's one thing that you would want someone who wants to

pursue the sports industry to know?

I would say don't put it on a pedestal.

It's not the end all, be all.

It's just like any other thing.

It is a lot of fun.

It can be a lot of fun and it is possible to break into it.

I used to use "dream job" all the time.

I don't anymore.

Because dreams can become nightmares as well.

It is a wonderful industry.

The thing I'm thankful for the most is the people that I've met, the friends

that I've met over the past 20 years.

There's some really great people in there and it's just really cool

to have a career that I've had so many great relationships with.

I mean, I'm, talking like hundreds if not thousands of just

people I can call on or text.

It's fun when you know somebody with each team.

Like when you're doing the AFC championship and you know people at

the Patriots and you can text them before the game and you can say

things like, Hey, best of luck to you.

The best team win.

When you've worked both Michigan and Ohio State and you're friends with both of 'em.

To me that's rewarding because then you get out of the fan mindset of one of these

teams is good, one of these teams is evil.

And I really appreciate that.

And my advice would be, number one, don't put it on a pedestal because

teams are not looking to hire fans.

In reality, they're looking for people to do the job.

Cause you're gonna be working with athletes and they wanna know, when this

player walks in the room, you can act like an adult and you can treat them

like an adult, and you're not gonna freak out on somebody, you're not gonna

do anything that is not professional.

So that, and just constantly work at it and try to get better at

your skills and use your networking and your connectivity skills.

Do your best and, I mean some people find they would rather be doing something else.

I know a lot of people that have left the sports industry and I don't blame 'em

and they've thrived doing something else.

That's kind of what careers are.

They're not permanent and they're not the end all be all.

And as long as you can provide for a family, take care of

people, I think that's really what you want at the end of the day.

Absolutely.

Well, thank you so much, Jeff for joining this episode.

This was so helpful and I really appreciate it.

You're welcome.

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