2018 - JCU Recruit Day - Richard Kramer '86 #2 (Presentation)

Good morning everybody. How's everyone today? Good, good. Well, welcome to John Carroll on behalf of Techdirt, everyone else, and Hector. Thanks for giving me the opportunity for you and all of your recruits today to be here. I really appreciate it.

John Carroll has been a part of my life for a long period of time, and it's certainly rooted in all the things that we've talked about. But some of my best friends to this date are still my teammates from playing for John Carroll here, so it's an honor to be part of this organization, even though I'm a longtime alum.

I'll just start out my comments just telling you how I got to John Carroll, and it's really something I get a lot of questions. You know, did you start out to want to be a CEO? Was that your goal or whatever? And I said, look, I came to John Carroll. Like you, I'm first born in the States here. My parents are immigrants that came over in the 50s from Europe as well. And you know, people ask me, I said I came to John Carroll because I had heard they had a good accounting program. And I knew when I got to school I needed a job. That was mine. Nothing fancy, nothing idealistic, no huge goals. It was, I got to get a job once I graduate. I hear you can get a job in accounting out of John Carroll. Back then, I think young people are a lot more savvy than I was. And you know, go back to the eighties or further, we didn't—I didn't even know what accounting was. I didn't know exactly what they did. I didn't know what an auditor was. I knew that these seven at the time, the big eight firms, had jobs. So John Carroll had an accounting program, I could come here and get a job, and I did. That's how I got here. And I'm grateful for John Carroll because of that great reputation and a wonderful place. And I'll talk about that a little bit as we go.

I thought about my remarks today. What did I say to you guys? Because you're listening to a lot of things. So I thought, how about distill it down to a simple question and straightforward question that maybe take the rest of my time trying to help me answer the question. And the simple question really is: why would you want to go anywhere else? I don't say that with arrogance. I say, why would you want to go anywhere else? So you might say, why would I put that question? Well, another way to think about this is something that I tell my teams at work. So I run a company, and I tell our people as they manage that they have to manage the and. In the end, in my world, you have to deliver results. So we have to have quarterly earnings, we have targets and everything else. But you also have to build capabilities for the future. And what that means is you can't burn the furniture to deliver results now, because if you don't build for the future, you have short-term results and you'll be dead down the road. So you have to do both, and both are really hard because both mean you got to know how to allocate your resources. You got to know how to deliver in the near term but continue to build out for the long term, allocate capital, in my case, hire people, retain people, all those type of things. So you got to live in the end, and that's really hard. Not many people do.

So anything about John Carroll, and while you all might want to come to John Carroll, I think about the and as well. So the and is what you've heard here about education and playing soccer, and I'll touch on both. But how does that work? You can come here to play soccer, candidly, to go anywhere to play soccer, and if you put all your efforts in that, you're gonna give it up. You're not managing the and because you're gonna give up building those capabilities that you need for the future. And likewise, I think as soccer players, as athletes, as teammates, as people who appreciate teams, you have an opportunity to play here that will further, I would tell you, further develop your skills around collaboration, around team, and around everything else. You have an opportunity to build those skills for the future. You can play soccer and build your future and get a great education. That's what John Carroll offers you.

So let's talk about how does it happen. Well, you know, very simply, talk about the school part first. You've heard a lot from Hector and all the students and a lot of the teammates talking about. You know, maybe it may be a quick show of hands. If you look at John Carroll today, a third of the people going to business school, a third pursue a medical career starting here, and about a third don't know what they're gonna do. Their decisions may tell me. So if we say business school and show of hands, anyone? Yeah, get a business school. How about med and treatment? Okay. And the rest are undecided. Yeah, that's very common. Don't feel bad about that at all, but that's pretty normal. So if we think about that, you take the business school for a moment. We have fantastic programs here, and the accounting program is second to none. In fact, my son, like my wife, actually is from John Carroll as well. I met her here. My son went here. He's working in New York City for PwC as well. I'll come back to that in a moment. Accounting program is second to none. You heard about that. The school is having a lot of new programs and things like supply chain, which most of you are coming, what's supply chain? Don't feel bad, that's what I was doing with accounting, right? What's accounting? But supply chain, think about Amazon, how Amazon moves something from point A to point B. That's supply chain. That's really sophisticated stuff. John Carroll is adding a lot of supply chain programs right now, so you're seeing a lot of things like that come forward.

I would say what's most important in the business school as well are the professors. And there was one individual who may or may not join us later that would have been a great example for you, Dr. Andy. You know, great professor, but what he brings is his very personal treatment and very personal association with the students in the business school. Very personal. And that's what you want. You don't want to go to a classroom with 200 people and have no one care about what you're doing. You want someone who's paying attention to you, who knows you, who knows your name, who's gonna tap you on the shoulder if you're not paying attention or you're not on track. I don't mean literally tap me on the shoulder in class, I'm gonna call your name, pay attention to you and say, hey, you're off here, what do you need? So great professors, great programs. And Hector said, and I just wanted to elaborate, so Bloomberg Businessweek study rated John Carroll the first in students best prepared to come to work to start a job. Not a Bloomberg Business polling of employers that they went out to of all universities. So not D3, not Northern Ohio, not anything, whether it's Harvard or whether it's whatever, John Carroll, number one students prepared to start a job. Think about that. That's a fantastic reason of what this school brings, not for me telling you, but from third parties saying JC students, as you heard, are really well prepared.

As we've done the last thing, I'll just say in the business school is internships. Internships are part of what the school is trying to do, and internships are hands-on learning. And I would tell you, whether you play sports or not, there are ways to make this work and ways to get you involved as you move ahead. You got to be in the and. If you're only gonna play soccer and not take advantage of that stuff, you're not gonna do both of those things. You're just doing one. And life, because your parents will tell you, nothing is singular, it's multiple. You got to do multiple things at the same time to live your own life.

From pre-med, you know, John Carroll doesn't have a formalized pre-med program, but I believe, and someone can clarify and give you the exact detail, but John Carroll actually has a number of pre-med, or excuse me, medical school slots held for them every year for students that want to go to med school, direct admit into med school. The Jack Hill already has a slot held away, and if I'm correct, most of those slots don't all get used. So that means there's opportunities that are waiting out there if that's your interest to go right into med school. We have internships with the clinic, we have all kinds of different things around the med school program, the pre-med type programs that are fantastic if that's what you're interested in. Most people don't think of John Carroll as a sort of a science school for pre-med, but it's a wonderful place, and I encourage you if that's where your interest, to get more information from the school. I'm not the best one to give it to you, but I know the Cleveland Clinic, for instance, can't get enough of our kids to go with. They have their slots, it's really fantastic to go do that.

The third area for those who don't know is just our School of Arts and Sciences. And really the essence of John Carroll is our School of Arts and Sciences, because what it does, and what's probably the most important thing you can take away from this school, is critical thinking. Right? It's learning, it's thinking, and speaking to go along with it, because before you speak you need to get your thoughts in order. You need to understand how to think critically, and that's what the school does. So Business School students are required to take classes in Arts and Sciences, and Arts and Sciences kids aren't, but are actually encouraged to take classes in the business school or other places as well. But what the school does is it really prepares you to go out and have an impact in the world. And what does that mean? Well, that's the beauty of it, you don't know, right? Because most of you don't know what you're going to be doing out into the future, and you're going to go work for a company and that company is going to train you. You're not going to learn anything at this school. So what you want is to be well-prepared. And what John Carroll does around critical thinking, around the education process, and around the attention you get is prepare you to go out and be successful in the jobs that you have. What John Carroll does is try to prepare you today to solve the problems of tomorrow. That's what the university is really trying to do. And it does, in our judgment, tradition about what we call men and women for others, which also encourages you to go out and do things in the community and go out and give back. And that's part of the ethos of this university. And I would also tell you that's one of the things that distinguishes us from other places, right? A lot of things that this university does around its Jesuit mission and this Jesuit identity, which is really important. And as a board member, I can tell you we spend a lot of time on making sure we never lose that center. And don't think of that, by the way, as someone pushing something down and pushing your faith down to you. It's not like that at all, to be clear. What it really is about is just men and women for others and going out and getting involved and providing service in a variety of different ways to round out who you are and what you do in terms of sending you out into the world and having an impact. So that's what I would tell you, you know, John Carroll really can bring to you from an education standpoint. And it's a wonderful, wonderful place. And we can go through all the numbers, they're in the brochures, but I kind of need to feel and touch things. And I would encourage you, if you go talk to a student from John Carroll, forget if they played soccer or not, what you're going to find is very rarely, if ever, anything to hear someone say they had a bad experience. Very rare. And if I ever heard anyone say that, and it's a bit of a hidden treasure, we're trying to continue to promote it, but frankly it's a bit of a hidden treasure here. And you know, just ask, and you're gonna hear this is a wonderful place and it really hands-on place where professors care for you. So it's so good to keep that in mind. That's important to your parents out here because university education isn't cheap, right? John Carroll isn't really either, except I would suggest to you it's a really good bargain compared to some other universities and the return that you get from it is really fantastic.

And that's the reason I mentioned my son. So my son came to school here, he was an accounting major as I mentioned. He's working for PwC in New York, and the kid that he's doing, he's doing very well, got an early promotion and all this. The kids he's working next to went to, you know, other Jesuit universities, Boston College, or they went to NYU, or maybe they went to Harvard, or maybe they went to some of the fancier name schools that we all recognize. He's working right next to them, and actually one got hired, going back to the stories we heard, that you can get hired. One got hired because of that John Carroll thing, and two is frankly doing better than many of those kids. And that's what a John Carroll education does. And by the way, it's about 50% or more of the cost to some of those other universities. So the investment and the return in John Carroll is pretty darn good. So think about that. That's one element.

The other element, if I come back, is about playing on this team. And you know, I think the advice is really good. You know, if you're coming to any university just to play soccer, you're a little bit short-sighted, because most likely, you know, we all have great dreams and maybe it happens, but most likely you're not going to make a career out of playing soccer at a professional level. So what you want to do is get the most out of it, understanding that, and don't let that diminish your passion for playing here, right? And the reason that I say that is I look at this program and the program here is really outstanding from a number of elements. The first one I would say is a commitment to it over time. So I graduated in '86, I think that was the first year we started our alumni chapter for soccer here. He did that because a player had passed away in a car accident the year before that. Alumni game we started when I was a freshman, which I didn't really know, I'd actually never met the person. We started that maybe '86, so what is that, 32 years or something like that? Never missed a year. The family of this individual comes back every year, and our group gets bigger and bigger. So a 30-year tradition plus their tradition of soccer players coming together, that's sort of the ethos of the team that you're becoming part of here. That's really important.

The second thing is this team is really, I would tell you, you know, it's grown in its execution and its accomplishments just wonderfully over the periods. And I tell you this because if you come here to play soccer, understanding it's probably not going to be your life, if you come here you have a purpose to be a part of the team. And that purpose is—we couldn't say this when I played, we couldn't say even when Hector started, they just asked him this before—but the purpose is to win a national championship. Right? And that's pretty cool. So you're not coming just to play, you're coming to accomplish something. And we started accomplishing that. In fact, we hoped to do it back when I played, and we didn't get it. We were hoping to get the first NCAA bid back in 1986. We had a great season. We actually beat Notre Dame. We went up to Notre Dame, a D1 school, beat them three to two up there. We thought for sure we're going to get a bid. No respect, right? Now we get bids because the program is so much improved and so professional and getting the attention of the university, and it's only getting better. And that's why all of you are here. So when you're thinking about becoming part of this team, don't think just come in to play soccer here. Think about contributing to the larger purpose of how you guys are going to deliver a national championship to the school. But we couldn't say that a long time ago. I think it's legitimately say that's what this team wants to do, and that's what you're doing it. And that experience to be part of a team is really, really important. I think it gives you a reason to want to be here, it gives you a goal to set for your four years here. And if you do that along with your education, you're going to come away from John Carroll with great experiences. And that teamwork, again, I would tell you, and I have never played on a team like this, but I've played on a lot of teams. The best teams are focused around collaboration. They're not focused around an individual. They're focused around the team. They're focused around a group of people coming together for a larger goal. And that collaboration is what makes this program a success, but it's something that's directly transferable once you get out of school, right? I look for people who know how to play on a team and know how to actually work together. That is a huge skill when you go out and get a job. Most people don't think they use it. I'll tell you an interesting story that confirms this. From my wife, we had a little christening a few years back, and we had... going so bad... whose son on ABC in the morning? I can't remember. ABC Good Morning America, the Michael... yeah, who's our partner? That's the late Ron Roberts. I know, Robin Roberts. I apologize, I'm getting too old. Wife watches, yeah, Robin Roberts. So wonderfully, phenomenally, she's tremendous. So Robin Roberts was at the christening of the bloom, and I was talking to her, and I actually had Michael Strahan coming on the show with her. And she said, I want the name, she said she was so glad to get Michael Strahan to come join her because Michael Strahan knew how to play on a team. She said I really liked him because he thinks about the team as opposed to some of the other people she worked with who are really about me, right? And that teamwork, it goes way beyond the four years you're gonna be here. It goes what you do the rest of your life. That's what you're gonna learn. I'm playing on a team here, but you're gonna do it. And the team that's deeply rooted in tradition, deep rooted in caring for each other, with a great coaching staff, and that's I think what you want to think about when you're thinking about what's going to go. A lot of schools have soccer, a lot of schools have education, but not many put all that together in a package that's going to stay with you for the rest of your time here.

So I'll finish my comments there with where I started, and just asking the question: why would you go anywhere else? I don't ask that arrogantly, I just say when you think about this, ask yourself that question: why would you want to go anywhere else? So Hector, I'll stop there, and I'll just open up if anyone has any questions. As we... most people don't ask any questions. I'm glad you guys are sitting up front, because most people won't even do that. So yeah.

No, so I worked in public accounting. For those of you who, you know, aren't familiar with public accounting, are these firms sort of have a track that, you know, you move up as a senior manager, so on and so forth, to a partner. And if you're going to do that, to be a partner, you do it to be a partner. So you don't do it to be a partner and leave that sort of gear. So I became a partner, never thought I was gonna leave. Why would I put all this effort in to go do it? So wasn't gonna leave, was happy to do it. And Goodyear kept asking me and asking me, you know, why don't you come over in this role, the head of finance and etc. And I said, I don't want to leave. Why would I leave? This is what I'm doing. And they kept asking me. And finally I thought about it, and I said, you know, big corporations typically don't ask people from particularly accounting firms to come in to senior roles. They typically come either from within the company or they come from other companies where people have had that experience. You know, a partner at an accounting firm isn't the best candidate for positions in the company to lead up their finance organization. So, you know, saw how you thought about that, and I said, yeah, maybe I should think about this more. And I did. And I said, this is, I'm not gonna get a call from another company who doesn't know me to take that opportunity. So I said I better think about this. And I thought about the career opportunities, and I saw an opportunity to be the CFO. And I finally talked to someone in the firm, and they said, yeah, it's a good opportunity, but they said if it doesn't work out, you can come back. And so then they gave me a floor, right? I knew what my risk was, so I could always come back. So you know, I took a chance and had the confidence to go do it. And you know, we got to the CFO role, and I think I had seven positions in those ten years to get to the CEO. So sometimes you got to roll the dice a little bit, and you know, sometimes it works, sometimes it doesn't.

I'm paid... look, what has a lot to do with it, it's like we talked about. And then in soccer, you know, we do, you know, it's good, you work hard, but you know, never kid yourself, luck has a lot to do with it. Have a great thing. So, and I think the last time...