Boyles Distinguished Lecture featuring Jamie Harris, Chief Financial Officer, RXO

Heather, thank you for the introduction, and thank you for letting me be here today. I see a lot of people in the audience that I know very well, and a lot of new faces. I'm excited to share my journey here today. And Edward, I remember your dad. Thank you for what he did for the school and what he did for the state of North Carolina. His impact on the state is our treasure for so many years. That is really what public service is all about. If you don't know about Treasurer Boyles, take a few minutes, go to the website, and learn about him. He was an awesome leader. Also, there are a lot of great leaders at Appalachian State that would be worth your knowing about. A few of those for me have been people like my baseball coach, Jim Morris, who's actually not here today; he was planning to come, but something came up. When he watches this online, a special thank you to Coach Morris. My assistant coach, Roger Jackson, who helped recruit me here, passed away a few years ago. I had some great professors like Jim Jones, Gene Butts, to name a couple. Harry Davis, who's here. Ken Peacock, who later became our chancellor, is here. They helped me be my best. This person right here, if you don't know him, is Jim Jones. I could not stand up here today and give any remarks about Appalachian without honoring this man. I had him as a professor. He did a lot of things here; you ought to go read his obituary if you want to know what Appalachian's best is all about. I had him as a professor in 1983. We've remained friends. The only thing I can tell you about him: I love this guy. Without him, I wouldn't be here today for sure. When I got on the Board of Trustees, he called me. He was 91 at the time to say congratulations. I think his exact words were, 'Can you believe it? When you got here, you were just an old baseball player from Reidsville, North Carolina, and now you're on the Board of Trustees.' If you know Jim, this is maybe as close to a compliment as you might get. He was a great man. I would encourage you to learn about him. There are a lot of people who helped shape me and know what I could achieve. They were tremendous encouragement to a young man who arrived on the mountain from Reidsville that was very naive. I'm not unique; they did that for a lot of people here while I was here. For the current students, whether you know it or not, they're doing it for you right now as you speak. There's something about the hunger of the student who chooses to come to Appalachian that's just different. The people here I find love that hunger, and they go out of their way to invest in the hearts and minds of young people to help them be what they can be. I'd also like to thank Speaker Tim Moore and the House of Representatives for appointing me to the Board of Trustees. It's been a great honor. I've loved the role. I've enjoyed the partnership with other board members, and specially have enjoyed the partnership with Chancellor Everetts and her team to serve this university well. There is a lot of good stuff going on at Appalachian. Just to name one, drive down 321 and look at the ASU Hickory campus; big nice sign on the building as you drive through town. Two special call-outs I want to make today to folks from her team: first is Sandy Vinoy; she's doing a great job of leading the business school. You do a great job serving the students. The second one I'll call out is Doug Gillin, our athletic director. Thank you for the commitment you have to all the athletes here. I will emphasize the word 'all,' and I have that in my mind in capital letters. All the student athletes know you care about them, and that's important. So thank you for that. A few points before I get started. I'll borrow a point made from my good friend Jim Morgan over here when he spoke at this event in 2009. I think his exact words were, 'My remarks were made primarily with the students in mind. Hopefully everyone enjoys them, but the students are the target audience.' Next, a little about me and my background. So as Heather said, I'm currently Chief Financial Officer of a publicly traded transportation business called RXO. We call ourselves a high-tech, asset-light transportation broker. What we do: we use technology, industry knowledge, and customer relationships to match shippers' transportation needs with carriers who are looking to haul freight. If you drive down 77 or Interstate 40 and you see an 18-wheeler, it's very unlikely you'll see our name on the truck, but there's a very high likelihood we matched that shipper and that carrier together so they can move that freight across the country. We're trading on the New York Stock Exchange, we're about five billion dollars in revenue, we have a market cap just over two billion dollars. I joined the company last fall to help them do a spin-off from their parent company, a company called XPO Logistics. Actually, when I was approached about the job, I said no the first time because I was very happy with the role I had. But I knew the company just from having been a shipper at Coca-Cola before, was intrigued by the business, liked the ideas of what they were doing, and the fact that I thought they could grow nicely. I was also pleased by the culture of the company. I like the team. Since joining the team, I have found them to be genuine, hardworking people who are very customer focused, all the things that you have to have to be successful in the business world today. Often when speaking of culture, you hear companies, you may have worked for a company that talks a good game about culture, but the actions don't match the words that they say or maybe the words they put on their website or on the wall. You'll hear a lot more about that later. What I would say is working with people that you trust and enjoy is paramount to having a fun time and a really fulfilled life. The company is doing well; it's a tough economic cycle, it's a tough freight market right now, but the team is working hard. I think the company has a very bright future. The leadership principles I'll share today certainly apply to my current company RXO, but I think they're applicable for any organization. Before you hear my story on leadership, I think it's important to know a little bit about who I am. First, I have a very strong faith. I'm a Christian. I love Jesus. I'm proud of that. This was the case when I got to Appalachian State, it's still the case today. It became stronger when I got here. I was very involved with the Fellowship of Christian Athletes, and a special teammate, Rusty Stroupe, who just retired as coach at Gardner-Webb, was a close friend. My faith and my family are top priorities. My wife Monica is here. Love her dearly. We've been married 33 years. She was a graduate here in marketing, also played tennis here at Appalachian. She's been a great wife and mother and has a heart of gold. We've been a great team in raising our family. Everything that I've been able to do has been a team effort. Family had a very close family. As Austin talked about at lunch, I really couldn't get up here and talk about me or my business without talking a little bit about family first. Had three awesome children. One's here, Meredith. I have Rebecca, Meredith, and Everett. Two sons that we've added to the family tree via marriage. And now we have a first grandchild, a little girl named Cara. Couldn't resist showing this, so had to throw that in there. She's now 31 days old. I think I told Meredith we have a new shortstop in the family. The last thing about me is I love to compete. I'm as competitive today as I was when I was a student athlete here. That has not lost any of that drive. I love to win, I hate to lose. My motto has always been you've got to be in the game to have a chance to win. A phrase I often use to make this point to people is, using baseball, you've got to be in the dugout for the coach to call on you, because the coach never calls somebody from the stands to pinch hit or go into pitch. So you've got to be in the game. Faith, family, and competition are the key drivers for me. I think it's important that I make this point: to do these things you have to make time for them, and that requires you to set very strong boundaries in your life. Personally, I've never subscribed to the theory or the belief that you have to choose one of those over the other. The world tells us routinely that you must choose one or the other. Personally, I believe that's a lie. I don't think you have to do that. I think you can do all of them very well. I think you can excel at all of them. But you have to be clear what your priorities are and what your boundaries are, because if you ever have to choose, it'll be clear what you choose. My faith, my family, and my competition converged when I stepped foot on this campus. I came from a very modest upbringing. My sister and I had very high expectations from our parents for education, hard work, and academics. My parents' counsel always was to work hard, give your best, and trust God. My mother was extremely smart. She grew up in Surry County up in Elkin. She's very well read. She had great musical talent. She wanted so badly to attend college and study music, but her family was too poor; she couldn't afford to go to college. The same for my dad. He couldn't afford college either. In fact, he had a health care emergency when he was growing up, and he didn't even get to graduate high school. He chose to do something very different and much more important: he actually served our country in the Army in the Korean War. My sister and I were both first-generation college students. Ironically, our mother went back and I guess technically became the first-generation college graduate. She went back to school at age 55 and got her degree in music, which I think is awesome. I developed a very strong work ethic and values. I grew up on a very small farm in Rockingham County. I love where I grew up. Growing up on a small farm is fun, it's a lot of hard work, you mainly learn hard work through the school of hard knocks. Do you learn a lot of life lessons. When I'm asked where I'm from, I always answer very specifically: I say I'm from Reidsville, North Carolina, and Rockingham County, but I now live and work in Charlotte. The reason I answer that way is I'm very proud of my roots. I love where I grew up, and in my heart that's still my home. As a young person, I loved sports. As Coach Holcomb can tell you, I was a pretty good athlete. I had a lot of options when I graduated high school to go play a sport, either basketball or baseball, in college. But I had zero idea what I wanted to study. I knew one thing: I wanted to be able to play college sports. I was passed over by a lot of the bigger schools. I was too short or too slow or hit too few home runs. I was, quote, 'too something.' I didn't like hearing that, but they were probably right, at least they were right when I got here. They certainly didn't measure my competitive drive, and they certainly didn't measure my heart, and they certainly weren't right when I left Appalachian. But Appalachian gave me the best chance athletically to play at the highest level against the most highly ranked teams in the country and to play on a national scale. As I was telling Doug yesterday, baseball is the only reason I came to Appalachian. I knew very little about the school. I'm kind of embarrassed to admit this, but I did very little about the school. I wanted to play sports here. Having said that, after I graduated I was thankful I came to Appalachian for many, many reasons, none of which was on the list when I came. But Appalachian has been a huge part of our family's life. As I mentioned before, Monica played tennis here. I found this in archives and couldn't resist. She played tennis here all four years. Her parents came here. Her father played baseball here back in the '60s. Our what I'll call our godmother graduated here in 1922 from what was the Appalachian Teachers College. We had a niece and a nephew that came to Appalachian. Even all my kiddos went somewhere else to college to play a sport, but they have a long history here. We have a long history at Appalachian, and you probably figured out I loved the game of baseball. I think it's such an interesting game. I think it's very kind of intellectual; it makes you think a lot about strategy. It's a great relationship sport. I loved playing here. I was so proud to wear an Appalachian uniform. I still have my uniforms framed and hanging in my office at home. I remember the first time I was asked to sign an autograph after a game. I told Coach Jackson, our assistant coach, how cool I thought that was. He quickly gave me some good feedback. He said, 'I hate to break it to you, they don't want your autograph. They want the autograph of the uniform. You just happen to be wearing it today.' That was a great lesson for me: this place Appalachian is so much bigger than one person. It's all about this school. After ASU, I did not pursue playing professional baseball. People ask why not, and I kind of jokingly respond: I had a major league IQ, a triple-A glove, a double-A bat, single-A speed, and high school power. Not exactly a skill set that's going to earn a living in professional baseball. So I had to make a different decision. I had to go into the business world, which I did, and I've enjoyed it immensely. I've been able to work with some great companies, as Heather said: Coca-Cola, SPX Technologies, and now RXO. Appalachian's current baseball coach, Kermit Smith, posted this on Instagram and Twitter when I was appointed to the Board of Trustees. I think the caption kind of sums it up: where it came from and what's going on now. When I look at this caption, it reminds me of my relationship with this school. From my childhood in Rockingham County, to playing in a nationally ranked baseball program, to being able to study and learn inside the Walker College of Business, to the family connections that I have to Appalachian, and now on the Board of Trustees. Appalachian's really been a constant throughout my life, and it's been great. Today I'm going to share some lessons that I've learned along the journey from being that naive kid on the left side of this photo to the person that's on the right and who I am today. My journey to Appalachian, while here, and after leaving has been hugely shaped by the experience I had playing baseball here, being part of the athletic program, and also being part of the Walker College of Business. So I thought it was only fitting that I titled my discussion 'Lessons in Leadership from Baseball to Business.' I know somebody in the audience may be misguided and not like baseball or even think it's boring, but in all seriousness it's a great sport. Whatever your passion is, just substitute what you love to do into my analogies for baseball, and the leadership lessons you'll find are very much the same. First, as you hear my discussion, I'll share some personal experiences and some stories about playing that I think are very applicable to leadership in business. The first thing I'm going to cover is boundaries. I started here because boundaries I think define everything. They are foundational. Without good boundaries on a team or in your personal life, really everything else becomes somewhat chaotic. If you look at boundaries, baseball has very specific boundaries. It has baselines, it has an outfield fence, everything's geometrical. It's called a baseball diamond for a reason. There's a specific 60 feet 6 inches from the pitcher's rubber to home plate. Everything has its boundaries. That being said, there's also a lot of room for creativity in baseball. If you look at some of the stadiums, Fenway Park has the Green Monster, Wrigley Field has the ivy on the wall. We've got one of the best baseball fields in America right up here at Appalachian. Just like baseball, business has tons of boundaries as well, but it also leaves you a lot of room for personal growth and development. The application here: personally, know your boundaries, but most importantly set your priorities straight. In business, there are tons of boundaries. You have ethical and industry expectations, you have the rules, you have the industry, you have accounting financial principles you have to follow, organizational structure you have to follow. But entrepreneurial spirit is a must if you're going to succeed in business. Some boundaries are requirements, some boundaries are nice to haves. But it's very important you understand them. Most importantly, it's very important that you know who you are and how you fit in those boundaries, who you're working with, if your culture is a fit with that culture, and the two of you mesh well. For those of us in leadership, what values are we setting as leaders of a company? The culture we set in a business is very important for the company's future, but it's also going to impact the lives of many people—employees and their families. My strong advice on boundaries: clearly understand the culture and the boundaries that are around you, and set your personal and professional priorities so that you can have crucial and successful fulfillment of your personal and professional career. The next topic in baseball is practice. Athletes train their body, their mind, and their emotions very hard to be able to perform under pressure, under stress. A person always reverts back to their core behavior and their core characteristics. To be elite, the science says it takes at least 10,000 reps to be elite. Great players practice over and over and over to simulate the stress that they'll incur physically and emotionally while they're playing. You can't think about mechanics when you're performing. If I get in the batter's box thinking about hitting mechanics, I can assure you I'm out before the first pitch is ever thrown. In baseball, there's also a ton of time to think. The average game last year was three hours and three minutes. The average amount of activity and action in a baseball game is 18 minutes. So there's a lot of time to hang out. Two hours and 45 minutes of down time, but it's pretty darn busy. Every minute matters in baseball. Every play, every pitch, you've got to think about every situation. The scenarios are changing constantly depending on who's running, who's pitching, what the pitch count is. The cardinal rule in baseball is the baseball always finds the one who's not ready on the field. It's the same in the business world. The application here: you've got to practice and you have to prepare so that you're ready to execute when the time comes. There is no substitute for preparation. In business, you've got strategy decisions. You may be buying or selling a company. I have investor meetings I have to do, I have media interviews I have to do. I have to be prepared; I cannot just wing it. I can't just show up unprepared. With practice and preparation, we position ourselves to be the best. Real leaders are prepared, and they love the pressure. They thrive because they're fundamentally sound and they're mentally and emotionally ready for the moment. I believe this separates the elite from the average in the business world, just as it does in sports. Third topic: conditioning. Seasons are long. Athletes have to take care of their body. College baseball as an example: fall practice starts when you get back from school, it goes through fall break. Spring practice starts in January, season starts in February, you finish in May. By the College World Series, you're playing through June. Play summer ball probably 100 games a year these guys are playing. They have to be in shape. During the games, you don't see them off the field. Seasoning, excluding travel, is at least a 40-hour-a-week job, plus academics. And despite the world we live in today, there's still 'student-athletes' for a reason. It's awesome, I loved it, but it takes a toll. It's mostly hard to be an athlete. Try going to study for a test or write a paper the night after going 4 for 4 with a home run, because you'd like to go out and celebrate. Or worse, you go 0 for 4 with three strikeouts, you want to go hide under the bed. It's a long season, and it takes a toll. But you have to be prepared and you have to be in condition to win. The application here in business: your personal health and wellness is a must. It must be a priority. I think about conditioning: physical conditioning, general health care, nutrition. Personally, I'm much more effective at my work when I work out hard, when I eat healthy, and when I get to go do the things that I enjoy that kind of energize my mind. I work out four or five days a week, a couple hours a day. I seldom miss it. It's the first thing on my calendar when I start the year. It's my time to work out. I have rest days that are also a priority. I do a lot of cardio, I lift, I take care of my body. You might say that's so intentional. First reason is I want to be sharp mentally, and I'm much better mentally if I feel good from a physical standpoint. Secondly, I still like to compete, and I try to avoid getting hurt. Plus, at my age, I still like beating up on the younger guys who think they're better than I am. Being strong physically is something that's very important as I get older. The wear and tear of just getting older is important, and I want to be strong so if ever faced with a real health care crisis, I'll be able to fight that. Nutrition is equally important. About 15 years ago, I attended a week-long leadership training, executive leadership training out in Colorado Springs. We spent the entire first day talking about this topic of wellness. We spent the entire afternoon talking about nutrition. Their takeaway quote was: to excel in business, just as an athlete, you must eat to win. I also have Crohn's disease, an intestinal condition that's in my DNA, so good nutrition is extra important for me. My strong recommendation on this application: set physical conditioning and good nutrition as a priority. Build a great habit, especially as you're young. You will position yourself to win in the business world, but more importantly you'll position yourself to win in personal life. Fourth thing: bad hops happen every day. As a hitter, I loved a bad hop because I had a better chance to get on base. As a defender, you hate them. Regardless, you've got to expect them, you've got to prepare for bad hops. As a fielder, you've got to know your surroundings, you've got to read the spin on the ball, you've got to move your feet, all these things just in case you get a bad hop. On the business side, a little story: the first ground ball that I ever got, I was playing for Coach Holcomb. I didn't do it very well. I fielded the ball where the grass meets the dirt, which is a no-no in baseball. The ball hit me right in the nose, caused a big mess. After it got cleaned up, Coach Holcomb came and said, 'Well, you just learned a cardinal rule of baseball: you either attack the baseball, or it's going to attack you.' The business application here: be ready for the unexpected. There are new surprises in the business world every day, every minute. If you're unprepared, the unexpected will dominate your time and will take your focus totally away from what you're trying to do. You must anticipate. You've got to have capacity in your schedule. If you're prepared, you can manage the unexpected in a very routine manner, and you can showcase your abilities. Remember, in baseball the great players always make the bad hops look routine. In the business world, the great leaders make the unexpected circumstances just look normal. The next thing to talk about is curveballs. A lot of people talk about curveballs and bad hops like they're the same thing. Keep in mind that bad hops are those unexpected challenges, kind of bad luck. Curveballs are very intentional. The pitcher is really trying to get you out; he's trying to fool you. Lots of players can hit fastballs in baseball. Only the best can hit curveballs. It separates the great hitters from the average hitters. First time I ever saw a college curveball, Coach Jackson, our hitting coach, was there. I didn't do very well; I struck out on three of them straight. I asked him to help me out a little bit, and he explained it very simply: 'You've got to keep your hands back, see the spin on the ball. But you better figure this out soon, because you cannot play at this level if you can't hit a curveball. That is just an expectation.' The application here for business: learn to excel at the difficult. If you do, it will separate you from just being average in business. Your competitors are trying to beat you. You may be competing for a new job or promotion. You may be competing in consideration for the CEO or CFO job. So you want the tough assignments. Prove that you can handle the difficult roles. Companies that do this usually win. Leaders who do this are always selected to do the most important roles and have new opportunities. You have to plan capacity in your life to deal with unexpected because it will happen. Remember, curveballs come from competitors, they come from a friend or teammate, they may come from somebody who's just trying to test you to see if you can handle it. It's very important: learn to excel at the difficult, and if you do, you separate yourself from just being average. Next: adversity. Austin talked about this today at lunch. Baseball is a game of adversity. The best hitter of all time, Ty Cobb, hit .366. Last year, the major league average was .243. So the best baseball players in the world made an out 75% of the time. It's a game of failure. Coach Holcomb used to tell me when I was young: 'The best hitters have three things in common: great eyes, great hands, and an extremely short memory. And the most important one of those three is a short memory.' With adversity, that short memory is important because you have a choice: you can dwell on that adversity, or you can use it, own it, and grow from it. The application: adversity is always around the corner. Turn your tough circumstances into an opportunity. You've got to have the capacity for adversity. You've got to learn how to handle it. The Bible speaks about this often. There are many examples in the Bible where it talks about adversity and trials and tribulations coming to people and how it builds character if you let it. You may have heard the old phrase: most people are either in a crisis, leaving a crisis, or getting ready to enter a crisis. I find that to be so true. You have a choice. You can own your adversity, you can use it as a motivating tool, or you can allow yourself to feel like a victim. My advice to my kids—Meredith probably remembers me saying this a time or two—when you have adversity, the first person that you need to talk to is go talk to the person in the mirror. Once you and the person in the mirror have been held fully accountable with each other, then you have the right to go talk to somebody else about what they could have done better. Unfortunately, today's culture rewards bad behavior and actually encourages the victim mentality in some respects. I can assure you, very few people in the business world have ever become successful feeling like a victim. The principle: turn your adversity into opportunities. Next, my wife's favorite topic: umpires. They make bad calls. They're human. Sometimes they're really pretty bad. Most of the time, I think they do a really good job. Keep in mind, a bad call for one team probably feels like a good call to the other team. Most importantly, they are the authority figure of the game, and whether you like them or not, they have the final say in a baseball game. My funny baseball story about umpires here at ASU: there was a guy here in town, some of you probably remember John Holler. He was a legend in baseball and football. He actually played in the NFL for a few years. When I met him, he had a lot of football injuries and literally could barely walk. Based on some of his umpire calls, I'm not sure he could see very well at the time. But my first fall up here, I was hitting and he called a terrible strike two on me and put me in the hole, no balls and two strikes. I gave him the old 'you missed that call' look, and I ended up striking out. My next time up, I was leading off the inning, and John walks up and says, 'Hey number ten, I missed that strike two.' I said, 'Yes sir, I thought so.' He said, 'Well, I thought so too. Tell you what: take the first pitch strike, I'll make it up to you, and we'll get back even.' So he did that. The catcher didn't like it very much, but that's what he did. I was like, 'Wow, I don't think I've ever seen umpires like that before.' But the lesson was: I treated him with respect, he showed me some compassion. The application here: own your outcomes. Don't let a bad call define you in your life. In the business world in particular, somebody in authority, a boss, a friend, a peer, a company, is going to make a decision that's going to impact your life negatively occasionally. Occasionally the decision maker will be compassionate, like John Holler was in that particular example. Most of the time they're not. Most of the time you're going to have to own it and just deal with it. Treat them with respect, and you have a chance for compassion to cushion into your life so that a bad call doesn't determine your outcome. Learn how to handle bad calls. Stay focused on your purpose. Don't let it distract you from what you're trying to accomplish because somebody else made a bad decision. Very important to your outcome. Next: know your role. Baseball is like a business. It's a team sport played in a very individual manner. It takes diversity, talent, individual focus, great communication. Without all of these, everyone on the team's outcome is less than what was possible. It takes a great leader to understand that, understands culture, communication, and people to build a great team. Every kid grows up playing a sport, dreaming about making a great catch or hitting a home run to win the game. But on a team, everybody can't be the star. Everybody has a role on the team. Everybody must learn to accept their role on the team. A great coach, a great leader makes sure everybody on the team knows what their role is. You don't have to like the role you've been given. You may not want to do it long term. But if you own the team and you get a role, you have to do it to your best. You owe that to your teammates. You owe it to yourself. You also owe yourself the development of your God-given skills. You can either complain 'I don't like the role I've been given' or you can do something with it. But most importantly, you've got to serve your teammates. When you do this, you send a message to your teammates that you're a special guy and you're a special teammate. Our society today has become so 'me' focused. I believe our world is hungry for people, especially young people, who can accept the role they've been asked to do, and they work hard and they do their role well until their time comes. I promise you, if you do that, you'll be rewarded for it. The application here: be a great teammate and serve your team with excellence. If you're getting paid to do a job, you owe your company your best whether you like the job or not. As long as you're there, you owe them your best. Most leaders didn't start at the top of the company. They accepted anything just to get in the door. Along the way, they performed and did a good job, somebody noticed them, and they got put in a better role. God puts us in very specific places at very specific times for a very specific purpose. I promise you, coaches, bosses, companies notice great teammates. They also notice bad teammates. Know your role, do it with excellence, and you will be rewarded for that. The next: improve every day. This was actually the motto of our baseball team that played here in 1984, and we won the conference championship. Our team made a decision that we were just not going to accept being just good enough. Common knowledge throughout sports, throughout business: you tend to play how you practice. I learned this from one of my early coaches: the quality of your practice was much more important than the quantity of your practice. He would always say, 'When you practice, have a purpose.' I've always personally thrived in environments where results mattered more than just being present. So improving was so important. Baseball is a game of inches. Everything is measured. Every great coach, every great player is always looking for just some small edge to gain an advantage. It's an inch, a hundredth of a second, something that can give them an advantage over their opponent. Also, I'd say please don't be afraid to ask for help. My greatest learning at being a second baseman—what I played here—came actually from my college shortstop. He was very good at the time; he could handle the glove much better than I could. He did things I really hadn't learned to do before. I could have been very prideful and embarrassed to say, 'Hey, shortstop, how about helping me be as good as you are?' But fortunately, I recognized that, and I asked him for help. He gladly invested in me, and we together became a very, very good middle infield combination. In fact, we set a Southern Conference record for double plays. But he was great. The application here: you've got to commit yourself to excellence, and you've got to be a continuous learner. Leaders love learners, people who want to grow and want to learn and get better. To be a great leader, you must be a continuous learner because the world is changing rapidly every day. You have to be constantly learning. In today's competitive world, every company, every person has somebody that's trying to take your spot. So you have to be getting better. When I'm hiring or promoting somebody, the number one attribute I look for is somebody who has what I call 'intellectual curiosity.' I want somebody on my team who just wants to know how things work. I don't constantly have to push them. I don't constantly have to ask all the right questions. They want to know just because they're intellectually curious. My advice on this topic: observe, be a listener, and commit to being a continuous learner. Next: be ready when your time comes, or when your number is called. In baseball, business, whoever is producing is going to get in the lineup. Whoever's not, they're going to be watching. Hitters get hot, hitters go into slumps. There's somebody working hard right now to take your spot when you go into a slump. My time at ASU came a couple of times. The first time, I wasn't ready. I got here my first year and had a chance to start at shortstop. Certainly had the glove, certainly had the speed, had all the physical tools, except my arm was not ready to play college shortstop. So I didn't do very well. It took some time and actually a lot of work. Coach gave me a shot to play second base. I had never played second base before. So I had to learn second base before practice and after practice on my own, with one of my teammates hitting me ground balls to get another shot. I remember it like it was yesterday. I was at UNC Wilmington, in the locker room, when Coach called my number to start at second base. I never came out of the lineup again because that time I was ready for it. So you've got to seize the moment. The application here: you've got to plan your strategy, know where you want to go, and seize the opportunity that will be presented to you. Have a vision for who you want to be in life, where you want to be in the business world. You've got to do the work to physically prepare to get there. Patience is going to be involved; it takes time. You've got to be mentally ready for when your time comes. But when it's your time, you've got to seize the moment and not miss the opportunity. The next topic: the little things. There are a lot of jobs in baseball. Some jobs everybody sees—who pitches, who's hitting, who makes the error, who makes the great play. There are a few jobs that nobody sees or nobody notices. Backing up a throw is one of those examples. In baseball, every fielder has a job to do. Few people notice that until there's a bad throw, and then everybody notices. My best example: when I played here, we were playing Marshall in my senior year, playing at Marshall to clinch the Northern Division Championship. It's the job of the second baseman and shortstop to back up the throw from the catcher to the pitcher on runners in scoring position. I counted up: I probably ran back and forth that year about 1500 times to back up the throw. I calculated about 10 miles that year just to back up the throw. Brad Long was that catcher. He never threw the ball away, zero times. But in the bottom of the ninth against Marshall, with a runner on third base and our championship on the line, Brad actually makes a good throw back to the pitcher. Somebody from the dugout yelled at our pitcher, kind of a distraction; he missed the throw. I'm there, I catch the ball. Runner didn't score. Very few people noticed that. The guy on third base for Marshall noticed it because he didn't score. I was just there doing my job, one of the little things. The application here in business: excel at the little things, even if you don't think anybody's watching. In business, this is one of the most important principles I can share with you. Excel at the details, and you will be given greater levels of responsibility. The Bible says this numerous times. In Luke 16:10, it says whoever can be trusted with the small things can also be trusted with the big things. It goes on to say whoever is unrighteous with the little things will also be unrighteous with the big things. You may not think anybody's watching; I guarantee you somebody's watching. The best companies do this well. The best leaders do this well. You send a message to everybody around you that you have a standard of excellence that is high and that you want to achieve that. I guarantee you, if you do this, you'll be rewarded for it. Next is trust. Here I'm not referring to integrity. Integrity is a qualifier to be on the team. I'm referring to trustworthiness: can other people rely on you to do your job? Baseball, coaches, all sports have tons of data: batting averages, ERAs, everything. It seems like there's a stat for every kind of measure. I personally love data because it measures your performance; it helps me with a practice plan. Most coaches love data regardless. I'm sure Coach Smith can probably agree with this: no matter how talented the player or what the data says, the one question every coach asks when they make out a lineup is, 'Who can I trust to get the job done when the pressure's on?' The application here: as a businessperson, build trust. Prove to your peers, to your companies, and to the investors that you can be counted on. In business, the trusted person always gets the high-profile assignments, their promotion, they're always one of the leading candidates to be the CEO, the president of the company, the CFO. My advice: establish yourself as somebody that can be counted on under pressure. It often starts with that last point I made: doing the little things when nobody's watching. Next is coaching. My first baseball coach, Ernie Holcomb, who's right here, was my first mentor. You've heard me reference him several times. He saw a talent in me that I really didn't see in myself. In fact, I didn't even play baseball until I was in seventh grade when I met him. He actually recruited me to play baseball on his middle school team. I'd never played. I wouldn't be standing here today if it wasn't for you. So thank you for that, and I love you dearly. Let's just say along the way, he gave me a lot of tough love. I won't get into that. I met him in 1972; we're still very close friends today. In business, Jim Morgan, who's here, is one of my first business mentors. We met in 1998 at a YMCA meeting in Charlotte. In the past 25 years, we've taught regularly. In fact, it's probably not been more than a couple weeks in that time that we haven't talked, had lunch, or breakfast together. We actually serve on the board together now. It's still a thrill to be able to work with him. He's also been particularly helpful to me balancing my life priorities of my faith, my family, and my business, because he was an example of someone who did that very well in his life. My coaches also passed along to me their love of coaching. This year, 39 years later, is the first year I have not coached a baseball team or a fast-pitch softball team since I graduated college. I've coached several teams before we had children. I coached every team my daughter Meredith played for until she got to college and played at UNC Charlotte. I coached every team my son played for until he got to his varsity high school team at Charlotte Christian and then NC State. To put this in perspective: Meredith and I counted up recently, we were on the softball field together as a player and a coach during games over 900 times, plus practice. We've been on the baseball field together as a player and a coach over 300 times plus practice. Fortunately for Rebecca, who played tennis at James Madison, I didn't know a lot about tennis, so she didn't have to deal with me coaching very much. But we logged a lot of miles together traveling to tournaments. I recently counted up: I've been able to coach over 125 players that either are playing today or have played Division I college softball or college baseball. This has been my way—I love doing it—but this has been my way to help repay my coaches for passing on my knowledge and the knowledge that they gave me to these next generation of players. The application here: find a mentor. Everybody needs an Ernie Holcomb or Jim Morgan in their life. If you don't have one, go find one. There are people in this room who'll help you find one. Somebody will be thrilled to be your mentor. Likewise, part of the cycle of life is you need to mentor others. So my ask is: find a mentor, but then go be an Ernie Holcomb or Jim Morgan for somebody else. The next is the team. This is my '84 team. This was a special group of guys. We were 35 and 7. We won the Southern Conference Championship. We were the first team in Appalachian's history ranked in the top 30 in collegiate baseball. We were one of the five winningest programs in the NCAA nationally from 1982 to 1987. To put this in perspective, we had three and a half scholarships; the max was 11 and three quarters. We had a very small budget. We had no lights, we had no indoor facility, we had no tarp on the infield. We had a lot of rain, we had a lot of cold days, and we were the grounds crew. But this group came to this school from a lot of different backgrounds, many because, like me, they came here because they were 'too something' that the big schools really didn't want. But we bought into the ASU from the coaches. We loved the legacy of the school, we loved each other, we sacrificed for each other on and off the field. We had very little conflict on our team, and we pulled together with a common purpose. We bought into the belief that we could compete at Appalachian State on a national scale. My biggest testimony to this team is: 39 years later, we're still very close friends. We still have a text string that Coach Smith is actually on. We talk a lot. One of my teammates texted me last night, saw I was doing this, and said, 'Hey, do a good job. Congratulations.' We still talk to this day, almost 40 years later. We were a testament to what a team does. Today's culture likes to celebrate a lot of self-promotion, a lot of selfish behavior. Despite this, great teams still win. Culture still matters, and it still wins. I promise you, it's more fun to play with people you enjoy being around than to play with folks that you don't enjoy. ASU proved this in 2007 when we went into the Big House and beat Michigan, and we did it again last year when we went in to beat number six Texas A&M. Doug Gillin, I think you might agree: Appalachian does a pretty good job winning on team and culture over the big guys, don't we? The application here: you have to build a winning culture. Culture wins in business just like it does in sports. Doesn't have to be flashy, doesn't have to be fancy, but it must be authentic. Humility and respect for others is also a must. You can be confident and also be humble at exactly the same time. As a leader, you own the culture for your organization, whether it be the team or the whole business. You owe your team honesty, you want to do clear communication. But for a team to win and a company to be successful, everybody has to own their piece of the culture. Post-game: this is a point that a lot of people forget or ignore. When the game is over, your job's not done. The results matter. Reflection is also very important. What I always think about is: I want to celebrate the wins, I want to study my losses, but then I want to move on to the next thing. Stats also matter greatly. They tell a very clear story about your performance and what to go work on. I always wanted to know my batting average on all the pitch counts, all the types of pitchers—righty, lefty. I just wanted to know that because it gave me a plan to go practice on so I could get better. They tell a very good story and a roadmap. The application here: like baseball, business results also matter. I still remember my finance class with Harry Davis. I learned how to read an income statement, estimate cash flow, measure return on investment, or ROI. All companies measure return on investment. It helps measure absolute as well as relative performance. Businesses use it for everything: to buy or sell companies, how to allocate their money. Money managers use it to decide whether to buy or sell a stock. We all use return on investment in some form of fashion. On a personal level, the key question is: how do you measure your return on investment? How do you measure your return on investment on your life? The 'I' in that formula is your time. Your time is a precious commodity that goes very fast. Only yesterday I was sitting in an audience listening to somebody else up here speak. They'll say, 'The days are long, but the years are short.' That is such a true statement. What I cannot answer for you, you have to answer for yourself, is: what is your 'R' in that formula? For me, I have several R's. In my business at RXO, my R is to help us be a great company, to provide our shareholders a great financial return, to provide our employees a great place to work, a place they can have growth, fulfillment, and a lot of opportunities. On a personal level, I'll take you all the way back to where I started: my boundaries and my priorities. My most important R's in my life, as I discussed earlier, are my relationship with Christ and my future heavenly treasures, and my family. I measure this personally: how I live out my faith, and the time and closeness that our family has. I want people to know that these are my priorities by my actions, without ever saying a word. I strive personally to be the same person no matter who I'm with or what I'm doing. Quick story to conclude: 2017, I was hosting a panel. We had been doing a lot of acquisition work at the Coca-Cola Company; we had been in the news a lot. Somebody in the audience raises their hand and says, 'Hey, what's your greatest accomplishment this year?' I said, 'Well, first of all, we completed more than 20 acquisitions at the company over the last three years. We've doubled the size of the business. When we're all said and done with this work we're working on with buying companies, we'll have tripled the size of the business. But my most proud stat this year: I saw all of my daughter Rebecca's 25 college tennis matches. I saw 50 of Meredith's 53 college softball games. I coached my son's middle school baseball team and his summer baseball team.' I said, 'My personal return on investment this year was awesome. In fact, it was immeasurable.' My challenge to you: determine how you will define your return on investment. You have to go figure out what your R is, and you have to go make sure you use your I very wisely. Our world needs leaders from the younger generation. We need strong, highly ethical, passionate leaders everywhere. We need them in the business world, we need them in higher education, coaching, teaching, the ministry, government. Name a spot: we need highly ethical, strong leaders. Students, for you specifically: you are the next generation of leaders out there. You are the world's future. Please go use your God-given talents and become a leader just like I described in whatever field of study or field of profession you go into. I promise you, if you use the tools that I shared today, your journey will be rewarded. When you measure your return on investment, you'll look back and you'll declare it awesome. In fact, it will be immeasurable, just like mine's been. So thank you for having me. I very much enjoyed doing this, and thank you for listening. Thank you.