Lessons from Fraser Bullock and the 2002 Olympics

Entrepreneurism is a path riddled with setbacks. Almost by definition, being an entrepreneur means getting knocked down, usually in ways that can’t possibly be anticipated, much less prepared for. Though it sounds like the stuff of fortune cookies, the fact is, it’s not the inevitable stumbling blocks that define the arc of the entrepreneur, but the much less certain way in which entrepreneurs respond to those stumbling blocks.

A good friend and mentor of mine is Fraser Bullock, of Sorenson Capital. If you’ve been a Utahn since at least 2002, you know Fraser as a man enjoying bona fide hero status here. If you’re not from Utah, you’ve none the less been influenced by him and his leadership ability, even if you’re not aware of it.

You’ll understand how below.

Fraser recently gave a keynote address at Accelerate ’17 – an event my company, InsideSales.com, produced for several hundred of the top C-Level business sales leaders from all over the world. The audience, myself included, were honored to have Fraser tell us about some deeply impactful setbacks he’s both endured personally and witnessed, and how people were inspired and lives changed thanks to how those stumbling blocks were responded to.

After his keynote, I sat down with Fraser to gain some more insights from this man I’m privileged to call my friend. I decided to share them here.

DE: I think all Utahns recall where we were, both the day Salt Lake City was awarded the 2002 Olympic Winter Games – it was a hot summer day in 1995; and the cold winter day in 1998 when it was revealed that bribery played a substantial role in the process. The whole thing fell into doubt and it was like getting punched in the gut. How does a city recover from that kind of thing?

FB: One of the things that happens to each of us in life is that we get knocked down. And the question is: what do we do when that happens? And the what do we learn from it? My point is, we need to get up when we’re knocked down, and we need to get up quickly. And then we’ll say “what can we learn from this”?

I use the example of a young Apolo Anton Ohno who was, in 2002, a young first time Olympian at 18 years old in the short track speed skating. Everybody was excited for him to come to his first competition. He was in the lead with just a few feet to go before the finish, when all of a sudden the Chinese skater tries to make a move and clipped he and the South Korean skater, and they all go down in a heap. In a single moment, the thing Apolo had been working for his whole life was taken away. He’d lost the gold. But to him, the competition wasn’t over. The silver was still in play. So he scrambled to his feet and slid his skate across the finish line, just ahead of the Canadian. When asked later, he said he hadn’t lost the gold – he’d won the silver.

Of course Apolo would go on to be the most decorated winter Olympian in history.

And so we all get knocked down. The question is: what are we going to do about it?

DE: This sounds a little like what happened to Utah leading up to the 2002 games.

FB: Oh yes! In 1998 we had been knocked down as a result of the bribery scandal. Here was a community that prides itself on honest and ethical behavior, and we’d become the poster children of the opposite. We were called the bribery capital of the world. That’s what Jay Leno called us on national TV. And that was very painful. There was no confidence in the state of Utah as a host for the Olympics. Sponsors were dropping out. There was a $400-million budget deficit. The Justice Department was investigating all these legal issues.

And so the Olympic Organizing Committee went out and found Mitt Romney. They persuaded him to leave a very successful lifelong career. They asked him to rescue the 2002 games, to pick it up and to turn it around. And to do it quickly.

I had been working with Mitt at Bain Capital, and he recruited me come and help, and I was delighted to join him.

We went through a methodical process of putting the pieces back together and building back confidence to host what went on to be called the most successful Olympic games ever. 

DE: Tell me about that methodical process. What was it comprised of and what lessons can we learn from it?

FB: I can boil it down to five principles.

First, we wanted to be completely transparent and upfront and honest with the entire community and the media. I call it the ‘Washington Post Test’. Remember that what you say, do or write today may someday be on the front page of the Washington Post. How will you feel when it’s one day repeated? So we decided to act like that’s a real possibility.

If you look at the Washington Post today [he was referring to the just-released news that the Trump Campaign had been in frequent contact with Russian intelligence leading up to the election] and we have a crisis in Washington over things that happened behind closed doors, and we don’t even know if it was completely inappropriate but it’s blowing up in their faces.

This can happen personally and in a business sense, so we set the first principle to be one of integrity and transparency.

Number two is about product leadership. We wanted to have the best product out there, which in our case meant creating the best possible experience for the athletes and spectators. And so what I tell companies is that you want to have a commitment and have it in your DNA that you will have the best possible product because that is the foundation to success. You have to make continual investments in your product. Never rest and always move forward.

I wanted to make it the best possible product for all our constituents, including the athletes. So to really understand each constitutents' perspectives, I tried to experience their points of view. For example, to understand the athletic point of view, I went down the skeleton, three times in fact, which is a frightening thing, going head-first at 60 miles per hour feeling like you’re shot out of a cannon.

That experience helped me understand that the difference between gold and silver is one one-thousandth of a second. So we had to do everything we could to make the fields of play in the best condition possible for the athletes to demonstrate what they could do.

The third principle is you’ve got to build a great team, which means not only hiring great people, but building great team DNA. I knew that for me to be successful, everybody around me must be successful. I needed to lift up my colleagues and have this growth mindset. I went to Olympics University and interviewed over 40 people to really get in their heads and understand what the games are all about. And then using the information learned, we really brought our team together, in training them and developing them.

And that brings me to the fourth point, which is continually investing in the best tools for your people, training them, and helping them develop and get better.

I often use the example of InsideSales.com, which is an organization that is committed to creating the best product, to help you leverage your people and help them become more successful and effective. That gives the employees an intrinsic satisfaction, the company does better, everybody does better. So it’s vital to invest in those systems that leverage your people to help them become the best they can be.

Finally, the fifth principle goes back to where I began: when we get knocked down – and we all do – you have to get up and get up quickly.

This reminds me of a story. I went in to see Mitt, in August of 2001. The games were about six months off. I told him: “Mitt we’ve been working for about two and a half years. We’re ready, operationally and financially, everything is in place and we’re going to hit the mark.”

And then the next conversation I can remember having with Mitt happened on the morning of 9-11 as Mitt drove past the Pentagon, still in flames.

We wondered how were we going to keep the world safe? We were hosting people from 85 countries and the Olympics had been a target of terrorists in the past. We’re going to have two-million ticket holders and we have to keep them safe.

And so we had gotten knocked down again. We started from a hole in the beginning and had worked our way out and got hit again. Countries were threatening not to send their athletes. Sponsors were pulling out. So we had to build back that confidence, which we did.

Then I remember the opening ceremony, when the flag from the Twin Towers was brought out. It was a healing moment for the country. You could hear a pin drop in a stadium of 60,000 people. It was a healing moment for the entire world. And it was symbolic of our getting back up after being knocked down.

It ended up being the most successful games in history. We generated a $100-million profit. No games make money. Sochi lost $50-billion. I’ll always remember when Jean-Claude Killy said, “Salt Lake we will always remember you. These were perfect games.”

When you get knocked down, get back up.

DE: Can you give me an example of when you’ve been knocked down, personally, and how you recovered?

FB: I have a good example, and it’s pretty recent. About 18 months ago, I was driving down a highway, and I had immense pain in my chest. It was a heart attack. I pulled over into an isolated spot. I found myself doubled over from the pain and trying, unsuccessfully, to talk to 911 and tell them what was going on, but in too much pain to even tell them where I was. At that moment, a vehicle came from the opposite direction. It pulled up and was my son-in-law. He took me to the hospital.

I went through this period, where I’d been knocked down. I’d gone from very healthy to extremely weak. It was a dark spot and I wanted to die. Life felt over for me. But I had to pull myself up, and do it quickly.

As I went through that transformation process, I came to recognize how lucky I was to be alive and I realized three principles that helped me get back up.

One, accept that every day is a gift. Be grateful for it and decide to make it special.

Number two, I learned that the fabric of life is comprised of interpersonal relationships, and we enrich those relationships every day through acts of loving kindness.

Third, and particularly in my stage in life, it’s important to give meaningful service. Serve your spouse, children, community and even business.

DE: Thank you, Fraser. You’ve given me (and us) lots to think through. After all these years I still have so much to learn from you. I’ve always appreciated your mentorship and friendship.