Sometime in 2014, I can’t tell you exactly the day or month or occasion, Brandon Walker, my editor at the Northwest Florida Daily News, asked if I could sub in for his co-host, Rob Brown, on their thrice a week radio show he did in Destin, Florida. I’d never done radio before. Didn’t know the fundamentals of it. Didn’t know if it would be a paid gig. Didn’t even know what to wear.
I said yes anyway, because it sounded fun and, besides, we talked sports all the time at the office with our fellow co-worker, Seth Stringer. Wouldn’t be that much different with a mic, which turns out to be both true, in some ways, and not at all in many ways.
Brandon eventually left for another gig covering Mississippi State, then a few more after that, until he finally landed at Barstool Sports. His absence created a void at the radio station that I filled, and for the next year, three days a week from 6-9 a.m., I’d co-host the show with Rob. On rare occasion, however, Rob, who led the show, couldn’t make it or would oversleep, and I’d show up at 5:45 in the morning with no notes, no plan, and three hours to fill on live radio with only my producer, Chris The Sports Babe, as she was known back then, and a very large cup of coffee.
It was terrifying.
It was, in retrospect, easily the most expedited learning experience I’ve had in any field in my life.
My first radio gig. Please forgive the Florida shirt. I know not what I did.
What better way to learn than to be thrown into the proverbial fire and figure it out as you go?
What better way to improve at whatever it is you’re attempting to learn than to simply say yes?
The English poet John Keats has a wonderful passages on this topic: “I leaped headlong into the Sea, and thereby have become more acquainted with the Soundings, the quicksands, and the rocks, than if I had stayed upon the green shote, and piped a silly pipe, and took tea and comfortable advice.”
My friends and family who know me well will probably laugh when reading that Lesson No. 3 from Nine Years of Living in California is to say yes to everything. They’ll laugh because they know that, at this point in my life and career, I say no to almost everything.
I reached that point, however, and perhaps this sounds hypocritical and counterintuitive — and maybe it is — by saying yes to every opportunity that came my way for five-plus years upon the move, and several years prior to that as a high school scribe and burgeoning journalist.
When you’re young and in the early aughts of your career, I believe saying yes is a necessity. It opens doors. Creates new pathways. Forges relationships. Takes you places you’d never have imagined. Makes indelible memories you’ll tell your grandkids about till they’re bored to tears. Launches careers you never thought you’d get into — like that radio gig, which provided the foundation of impromptu public speaking that would become invaluable for podcasting and commentating.
When Tri Bourne asked, in August of 2017, if I’d want to start a podcast, it was a non-decision for me, even if, aside from that radio gig, I’d never done a lick of broadcast journalism in my life. I didn’t even listen to podcasts.
This was Tri Effing Bourne, one of the best players in the world, the player after whom I was modeling my burgeoning game.
Easiest yes I’ve ever said.
We took the advice of Keats and bet we could figure it out as we went, jumping headlong into the sea. After just a single meeting at the Ocean Diner, we have. Seven years later, we’re the most downloaded volleyball podcast in the world, and we’re still figuring things out. It’s worked far better than we could have imagined.
That podcast eventually led to Clayton Lucas calling me one day, asking if I could commentate the 2022 Tlaxcala Challenge for Volleyball TV. I’d never commentated anything before and didn’t understand the rules and rhythms and all the rest, but I knew how to speak about volleyball, and it seemed fun — it is — and I knew it had the potential to advance my career — it has — and there would be immense learning involved — oh, yes — so I said yes.
It is now a realistic possibility that in the somewhat near future, I’ll be on the call for an Olympic Games.
I had a simple system when deciding when to say yes or no. Did it sound fun? Would it somehow advance my career, or have the potential to do so? Could I learn something from the experience? If any of those questions could be answered with a yes, I was in. This led to me saying yes to virtually everything, despite being wholly unqualified for almost all of the roles I would eventually fill.
Radio?
Podcasting?
Commentating?
Coaching?
Promoting a tournament?
Yes yes yes yes yes.
A beautiful byproduct of all this yessing is that you make some of the most indelible memories you never could have imagined. When Eric Zaun asked, sometime in 2017, if I wanted to play snow volleyball, I had no idea that was a thing.
You probably didn’t either until just now.
The only question I had for him was when do we leave?
That trip, criss-crossing Austria and Italy, playing the most absurd sport I’ve ever seen make an attempt at being labeled professional, is one of the most enduring memories of my life, and where I can recall Zaun the most. I will cherish that for as long as I live.
The Snow Dogs
There is, however, an important note I must mention when discussing all of this saying yes: While jumping headlong into the Sea, as Keats might say, you will fail.
You will fail a lot.
This is as inevitable as tomorrow’s sunrise.
A healthy tolerance for failure, and the ability to reframe it, is a not optional. I have written many stupid things and spoken volumes more. I’ve lost thousands of dollars traveling to tournaments I knew I wouldn’t win. The critical element is to learn from each of those failures and make little improvements with every repetition.
Eventually, you will get very good. And when you get very good, you will begin to capitalize and seize upon these many opportunities, and “opportunities,” as Sun Szu wrote, “once seized, multiply.”
Indeed they do.
Which is when you must say no to almost everything.
