SPEAKER_01 0:04

You're listening to the Hanging with EAD podcast, where we break down hot topics in athletic administration and lessons learned through leadership.

SPEAKER_02 0:12

Now, you're your hosts, Josh Matthews and Don Baker. Welcome to another episode of the Hanging with EAD Podcast. Today we welcome Randell Richmond, Vice President and Director of Intercollegiate Athletics at Kent State University. Randell's journey in athletic administration has come full circle. He spent 10 years at Kent State working in compliance academics and student athlete services before moving to Old Dominion University, where he continued to expand his leadership responsibilities. In 2021, he returned to Kent State as the university's 12th director of athletics and was elevated to vice president in 2023. At the center of Randell's leadership philosophy is a commitment to developing people. He has described his purpose as being a transformational leader who positively impacts the lives of others while building an athletic department that is student athlete-centered, coach-led, and administrator-supported. In today's conversation, we talk about his journey to the AD chair, developing culture, leading people through change and uncertainty, preparing student athletes for life beyond competition, and what leadership looks like in today's rapidly evolving world of college athletics. There is plenty here for athletic administrators at every level to take back to their own programs. So to settle in as we talk leadership, athletics, and the responsibility that comes with sitting in the AD chair with Kent State Vice President and Director of Athletics, Randell Richmond.

SPEAKER_01 1:50

Randell, we're so glad to uh for you to join Don and I for this episode of Hanging with the AD. Thanks for being with us today.

SPEAKER_00 2:00

Another day on the grassy side of the side, and I'll take it every time.

SPEAKER_01 2:03

That's right. I love that. That's a great energy. Uh so for our listeners, Randell Richman serves as the vice president and director of intercollegiate athletics at Kent State University. I almost said interscholastic because that's our side of it, but uh intercollegiate there at Kent State. He began his tenure as the university's 12th athletic director on May 1st, 2021, and was promoted to vice president and director of intercollegiate athletics there in spring of 2023. Uh, Randell is a current member of the NCAA Division I Baseball Oversight Committee and the chair of the Mid-American Conference Basketball Committee. Randell's career touches several areas that translate directly to interscholastic athletics, compliance, student athlete welfare, leadership development, fundraising, organizational culture, strategic planning, and navigating rapid change, which we'll touch on today. But we'll stop right there. Uh, let Randell tell us a little bit more about his journey through athletics and leadership. Randell, we call it the back of the baseball card bio. So if you could take a minute, tell us about what the back of Randell Richmond's baseball card would look like.

SPEAKER_00 3:13

Yeah, I love it. Uh, I didn't used to share much of this part of the story, but I realized how important it is for people to see uh themselves and someone else to realize what they can become. Uh, so my story starts on the back of that baseball card of growing up uh in situational poverty in inner city Akron. Uh, grandmother never made it past the seventh grade, mother not past 11th grade, no alcohol, no drugs, just situations of growing up in America at that time for my family and what it looked like. Uh, but it says, okay, Randall, well, how in the heck are you a vice president of uh athletics at a Division I FPS institution with a beautiful wife, three awesome kids? Well, uh, three things I tell people, God's favor, people who cared, and sports, because those three things led me to higher education. Higher education, I was able to uncover and discover my why. Uh has to be a transformational leader who has a positive impact on people's lives that resonates well beyond sports. So this transformational leadership thing has now become my purpose each day in and day out, and is what has me in front of you two here today.

SPEAKER_02 4:16

Pretty powerful there. Now, uh, Randall, we've previously had University of Georgia AD Josh Brooks on the podcast, and he talked about serving as an associate AD at UGA before leaving for elevated roles at Mill Staffs and Louisiana Monroe before returning to UGA, where he eventually took over. And how it was those experiences away from Athens that best prepared him for the head job when he came back and took over. You actually spent about a decade at Kent State earlier in your career before leaving for Old Dominion and eventually returning as AD. What did leaving Kent State teach you that ultimately made you better prepared to come back and lead it?

SPEAKER_00 4:57

Yeah, one, I want to give a first shout out to Jives Brooks. What an awesome human being. Uh, you you a man of that salt of the earth running an organization of that brevity, uh, boy, it is quite impressive. And he's even more impressive of humans. So kudos to you guys uh for getting your audience an opportunity to hear from him. I'm a big fan. And uh, when I was going through some rough times of my transition as an AD, he's one of the guys to reach out, and you just don't see that in this industry. So special, special human. Uh, but to answer your question, going to ODU was the best thing for my career. Uh in 2015, I was a part of this NCA Leadership Institute, and that really helped me define exactly who I was and why I was within this industry. Uh, ultimately, I then defined that I want to have an opportunity to be an athletic director one day. And there were certain experiences that I would need in order for that dream to come to fruition. And part of that was being sport administration, being a sport administrator. I didn't have the opportunity for that here at Kent. Um, so uh when we got the opportunity to go to Old Maine University, uh Dr. Camdenwood Sealick uh there really gave me an opportunity to grow in that stint. So what I learned out there at ODU was really the business of athletics, the scope and the reach of athletics from an entrepreneurial or an enterprise identity standpoint. Uh well, how and why? Well, when I got there, uh seeing the level of fundraising, the level of importance that an institution can mean to a community, uh, there's not another pro sport, at least uh at the highest level, for another five hours. And that was the Washington Commanders. So you have this transient uh group of people who are there for the Navy, largest naval uh community, North Naval Base uh in the world, and they're all there with their different types of affiliations. But what keeps them home and keeps them grounded? Well, that was part of ODU's vision to be that university, that institution, that beacon for the people in that community. So seeing the reach and seeing the level of resource, level of investment from a corporate standpoint, uh, seeing how it was an identity connection standpoint. And I got all that from the purview of being a sport administrator, started with baseball, uh, because who wanted to be uh anywhere for 56 games? But me, I'm trying to grow, I'm trying to learn. So I'm raising my hand and I'm there the the uh getting there with those guys.

SPEAKER_01 7:20

Did you know there were 56 games when you raised your hand?

SPEAKER_00 7:23

We got a lot more rained out when I was here at Kent State, man. So I did not think that we were gonna come come to rain and snowed out. So I did not realize, but boy, was that an amazing experience because from a sport administrator standpoint, it's really a microcosm of being an athletic director. You get to learn learn talent evaluation, um, uh hiring coaches, uh looking to transition or firing coaches. Uh, you get to learn uh alumni engagement, fundraising, uh you get to learn community engagement. You really get to learn from the beginning of a process all the way to the end of a process the impact that every position, every touch point, every faction has of one individual program. And to me, it's biblical. You get trusted in the small, you one day can be trusted in the big. Because I was learning, I had a great coach there in Chris Finwood. Learning through that process, it really broadened my scope of what this could be. And then now you have scope, so you have philosophy. How do you get the application? So now I have a scope of what this is. Now, what are some goals uh that I can help serve the program? So I we were able to start a mini fundraising campaign. And Chris Finn was a great fundraiser already. Well, how can I bring value? So I began to find ways to bring value, and that was the ultimate uh lesson. How do you bring value? So my transition to ODU helped me see the enterprise financially that athletics was and the reach and the scope that it was beyond just the campus point, and then having an idea of what being an athletic director would be within one program, learning how I can uh broaden that to scale for every program. It was the education that I needed to have this opportunity.

SPEAKER_01 9:05

Randy, I want to jump in. You mentioned that microcosm, uh, that that sport was to what you wanted to do eventually of being a director of athletics. Talk to the people who are sitting in a seat and they have their eye on the next seat, which is not an aspiration, is not a bad thing, right? Talk to them about how to find a microcosm of what that next seat could be, and and really dig in and and dive in and and learn as much as they can there.

SPEAKER_00 9:37

Josh, that's where it's at. Idioms become idioms for a reason. It's because over time they get passed on as the most simple way to explain the processes that people know work. You know, that's why they're called idioms, right? So this grow where you're planted or be where your feet are. People can miss that. If it weren't for me, uh really leaning in in every opportunity that was right there in front of me at ODU, I wouldn't be in front of you all here today within this particular role. People get so fixated and focused on what the next title is or what the next opportunity is. If you can be excellent and if you can get an expertise in an area that everyone knows, if I need help in this particular area, I'm going to dine, or if I need someone who can handle this at a crisis critical moment, I'm going to Josh. Now, what you've done is you've established value. This person is an expertise of value in this space. What happens after that is people then want people of value around them. And once you're around people, I'm around the AD, I'm around the president, I'm around the provost, I'm around whoever oversees student life. Now it's like, hey, here are the other things that are going on. So you're in the room now hearing about the other things that are problems to be solved. And maybe now you're able to have an expertise that can solve that particular problem. You're a person of value. Once you have an expertise, you're a person of value, you're in the room, you're learning about the brevity of what needs to be solved. Now you may get an opportunity for a new responsibility. You get an opportunity for a new responsibility, you're successful in that. There's most likely people who report through that responsibility. Now's your opportunity for leadership. You're effective at that, you're going to get more opportunities for leadership. But it all starts. People see the end game, they see the reporting lines, they see you at the top of it. But it really started when you showed yourself to be an expert in a thing and then became of value. That's the idea of growing or uh being planted and growing where you're planted and being where your feet are. Man, that's so good. Let's go to lunch.

SPEAKER_01 11:44

That is good. Wow, wow.

SPEAKER_02 11:46

Yeah, I I tell you, I did you say that. I am not sitting in this seat overseeing 13,000 student athletes if it I wasn't the guy who just said yes to cutting up film when I was a young coach. And nobody else wanted to do it. Nobody wanted to figure out how the editing program worked. I said yes, because my dad used to tell me, you just say yes, you crush that, and then you'll be given another opportunity, and then it's up to you. Like you want to say yes or not, then crush that and then kind of rinse and repeat. So uh I am totally picking up what you're putting down. Now, Kent State Athletics uses a phrase that I love student athlete centered, coach-led, and administrator supported. What does that actually look like when it is functioning the way that you want it to?

SPEAKER_00 12:34

Absolutely great question, Don. It becomes, it's our uh guiding principle. Uh, and it started when I was here at Kent State in grad school, um, 2004, 2005. Uh, there's not a lot of black athletic directors who are out there. So I talked about this idea of sharing my story differently than I ever did before. But there was one, and they were right it right in my community, Lee Reed. Lee Reed was the AD at Cleveland State, and I didn't know anything about this journey. When people say, Well, what do you want to do? I'm like any other young person. Uh, I'm gonna say something that sounds good to another human just so they get off my back because I really don't know all the possibilities that are out there, right? Um, so my question was, what's the highest it goes? They said AD. Yep, that's what I want to do. I had no idea what it truly entailed. So you begin to look for people out there who model that. And Lee Reed happened to be right up there at Cleveland State, and he had that phrasing back then that the best departments are student-centered, coach-led, and administrative supported. What I didn't have a full appreciation for was that I was living in an athletics department that was ran like that under Lane Kennedy. And what it became for me as I grew, so you have philosophy, and then it transfers over to consciousness. Uh, and that's where the application takes place. It became real to me once I got this opportunity. It says that the I flipped it in a way that made sense to me. And it goes in terms of like Tim Kite's idea of a performance pathway. So, my first two weeks on the job, I go to all of our staff and administrators, and I said, Hey, everyone, I need you all to serve our coaches more. I was not the most popular new leader coming on campus asking our staff who are underpaid, felt undervalued, and felt overworked to serve our coaches more, who they felt had all the privilege, had all the fun, all the engagement, and more salary. I said, but that's the only reason our roles exist. My demand to you coaches is be worthy of that servitude. Be worthy of that servitude day in and day out. Make them feel a part of your team because they're serving you to clear up the red tape. Well, why? Because if I got coaches worthy of that servitude with administrators supporting them to clear off the red tape, they're gonna have more time to serve our student athletes. To serve our student athletes. If they serve our student athletes, our student athletes are gonna be more likely to return back to Kent State. If they return back to Kent State, they become juniors and seniors. And look at any championship team across our landscape, they're led by juniors and seniors. Not even that Michigan Fat 5 team with all the freshmen wanting. Even looking at Anthony Davis, uh Kentucky team, he wasn't the leader on that team, he's the best player on that team. If we then win those championships with those juniors and seniors, we get the next great crop of freshmen and transfers to come to Kent State to be a part of a championship culture. Student-centered, coach-led, administrative supported. It's a performance pathway to success. All right, Randell, you talked about application and you talk about theory or philosophy of application. Sounds good to the ears, but how is it working? Well, we have one of the lower budgets in FBS, in particular in the Mid-American conference. We're right there at the bottom. However, over our now five years together, we've won 24 championships, both conference and regular season, over 14 of our 19 sports in our time together. And we've had copious numbers of student athletes who have been NCA participants, qualifiers, all Mac players, uh, with a GPA that's above a 3.4 dean's list. And we have this thing we call the 92% graduated success rate. Means our seniors from this past year, they either got admitted to grad school, found a full-time, first, first-time job, or pro opportunity. 92% of them. So it starts with this idea as a guiding principle, but when everyone has a role in its application, it's what leads to our success when we don't have the resources.

SPEAKER_01 16:34

Yeah, that's good stuff. And I think it's worth saying folks in the athletic administration, you talk about they are the support. Usually the support does it get your name in a paper, does it get you on TV, you're behind the scenes. Uh, and a lot of people want that, that uh fame and fortune, right? But you have to understand and you have to buy into you are helping those others. And you just mentioned, I love the idea of coaches being worthy of the servitude. Like that is a great uh quote that I think will get used again, at least in my spot here for sure. Uh, but but you led into my next question, which is great. Your strategic plan emphasizes three things graduate student athletes, just mentioned a little bit about that, boldly prepare them for life after sport, and win championships. Right. You just kind of mentioned all three of those things. How do you keep the first two from getting lost when everyone tends to measure athletic departments by the third thing of win championships?

SPEAKER_00 17:35

It's an absolutely fair question. Uh, my belief is that the first two should lead to the last one. When we got together here, you know, five years ago, Kent State had a very noble and worthy uh mission statement. It was graduate student athletes and win championships. But you all hearing my background in the story, uh, you know, we show up in the way in which we are. And we felt that it was missing that soul in the middle, that purpose that's bigger than oneself. And that's when boldly prepared for life after sport came into play. When we look at this, we we tell people we're not dream killers. Whether you go pro for two months or 20 years, like Tom Brady and LeBron James, at some point in time, there is a transition to life after sport. We just want you boldly confident that you're prepared for that in your time. While we don't have a lot of financial resources at Kent State, what we do have is an amazing campus that helps people grow as people, that journey of self-actualization. That's what we have with the humans we have here in this environment. So we can help a student understand you are measured by these goals. There's not another entity that has a two columns, a W and an L, and you're judged by it at every time you go out. So that's part of this. However, you're not monolithic in your identity. You are many a different thing of amazement, all right in there. But you, since the age of four, have been praised and prided for this one thing. At some point in time, that one thing is going to transition. Here are all the other tools that we're going to equip you with. So when that transition happens, though it'll be difficult, you'll be able to say, I am more than that, though. How do I tap into that? Or for my next 20, 30, 40, 50 years of dominating this new arena that I'm in and everyone is going to go into at some point in time. So how do we do that? Well, that's through our student athlete development. That's through all the lessons that our coaches are helping them learn. That's through us empowering them for things like Team Impact, that we became the best Division I campus for the Team Impact Initiative. These are these things that are bigger than oneself that we want you to discover while you're here at Kent State. So when it's your time to dive into that next identity, you're confident, boldly confident that you're going to engage in that and dominate that one just like you did your student athlete identity.

SPEAKER_01 19:59

That's great. That's great. You know, I I've heard you say a couple of times already, we don't have the most money, we don't have the biggest budget, we don't have the best resources, but you're saying it in a in a non-negative way. That's that's not a perfect way to say that, but you're you're saying it in a way that you understand where you are, you have respect for that, but you also just said use what we have to prepare. And I think everyone listening can learn from your your attitude, your your tone of hey, we understand where we are, we're not ashamed to say it, and we're not gonna say it in a in a in a way where we are bashing our our our situation. You're not doing that at all, and you're you're saying in the same breath, we are using everything we have to prepare people to win in life and win championships. You mentioned you've got 19 teams have won championships. So uh you're you're not shying away from where you are, but you're also your attitude is leading you to probably better results than what most people would think you could achieve based on where you are financially or resources-wise.

SPEAKER_00 21:12

Absolutely, Josh. It's important. Athletics, no one cares. We are we have two columns, and those columns exist for judgment simplicity of judgment. That's where it's at, and that's how we are going to be judged. I just happen to believe that those other foundational things that we talked about lead to success. How you do one thing is how you do anything, and I truly believe that. And your circumstances can't be an excuse. You know, it can't be, it can't be an anchor anchor. We're not victims, these are privileged opportunities. And the second that we uh begin to look at them different, someone's waiting uh as their dream to take them and take hold, and they'll make it amazing because they understand the great privilege and opportunity that it is. So I try, I tell people, I'm An optimistic realist. I tried to live in where the reality reality of where we are is. Um, but now I know what the negative outcome is. I have no time to spend on ruminating on that. What's the thing that we can solve to make this a success? If we can identify and do that swat of what our difficulties are, it's not for them to become excuses. It's just to know what our baseline is. Now it's okay, that's our baseline. We know what the failure looks like. How can we dream, execute, and apply so we can get to some successes? So that's why I do acknowledge it and mention it, but it's almost to eradicate it as an excuse because we still need to have success.

SPEAKER_02 22:38

So good. I mean, we're gonna put it out there so that it's not a skeleton in the closet. We're gonna put it out there and find ways, find answers. I think that's great. And you you mentioned something I'm totally gonna steal, by the way. That idea about being boldly confident for that next thing, that phrase boldly confident. I think that we we play the long game in high school athletics and just in the high school space. You know, we play it's this, it's just like the stock market. We have no idea if we did our job.

SPEAKER_03 23:05

It may be 30 years, right?

SPEAKER_02 23:07

Until those kids come back and they say, hey, thank you for what you did because you helped me be boldly confident for that next step. I I love that phrase. A lot of the times our jobs, uh, I tell people all the time, nobody really calls my my phone during the day because they want to ask how I'm doing, right? It's usually it's a problem, it's a fire that they won't put out. And I really believe it's our job to take crisis, turn it to problems, turn it to issues. Everybody has issues, right? And so how can we get it from a crisis to an issue? And we're also surrounded by people, and I call them fire spawners. Like anybody can go, there's a fire over there. They're not gonna give you any, like anybody can do that, right? Anybody can say that, but they're not really gonna give you any solution. So one of the hardest things for an AD is determining whether a problem is a people problem, a process problem, or a culture problem. How do you diagnose which one you're dealing with?

SPEAKER_00 24:05

Yeah, uh we we train ourselves and we speak about it a lot, that number one, assume good intent. Start with the structures in the systems. What I've found that typically issues are structural issues that get identified as communication issues, but they're really communication issues because of your structures. So the inefficiencies of inefficient structures lead to conflicts based off of structures alone before you even get to the humans involved. So if you're able to first identify your structures of reporting, of clarity of role, of clarity of execution, then you have an opportunity to determine now that I know the structures are fluid, do I have a people problem? Do I have a clarity of expectation pile problem? Do I have a competency problem? Do I have an expertise problem? Now you're able to see where you are in that range and space. But for me, it always starts with the systems and the structures, uh, because then I can identify whether it's the people. And then you can identify whether we not educate well enough within those systems and those structures. We try to assume good intent the whole way through until we identify a problem. I got to give credit to our executive deputy AD doctor now, Greg Gloss. He just finalized his doctorate in higher education administration over the summer here. Uh, he brought here to Kent when we came back together these after action reports. So I love how you put it together at the beginning there, Don, crises to problems to issues. Uh, the after-action report is to identify just that. So here's what we went through. If we had systems and structures and expectations, this might not have been a crisis. It would have already started as an issue. You know what I mean? Or this one, we really did have a problem. Let's find out if it's a structural problem or if it's a people problem. Because whatever it is, now we can attack it. And what we did as a department, especially leadership team, we read this book, Crucial Conversations, because now we know now we've identified that as a people scenario. How can we attack the thing and not the person? We have to equip our people with the tools to do so. And we're going to talk about this thing. Don't internalize it as we're attacking it to you. Right. We're attacking the thing. So, hey, how do we start that conversation? Well, here's the issue that is at hand. Here's the after-action report. Uh, here's what I want for our relationship after this for me. Here's what I want for our relationship for you. Here's what problem that I want us to solve. That's the structure that we set to start now this conversation. And from that after action report, we know whether we need to implement better systems or we need to have more accountability from the person.

SPEAKER_01 26:59

That's good. I can't wait to listen to that again. I might have got lost, but that is good. Uh, because there's so much there. Like the the the after action reports, I've heard a lot of people do those or especially at the college level, bigger scale events. And I'm sitting here, I think I got lost because I'm sitting here thinking about how we could implement that here. I just recently moved to a new position in a in a in a new school. And um yeah, I mean, it's just the structures you talked about lead to those different conversations. Kali, that's good. Um, Randell, you've worked, uh, we're gonna change gears a little bit, talk about coaches. Uh, something I'm really passionate about. I can't wait to hear the answer to this question. Uh, you've worked with coaches across many different sports. Uh, actually mentioned a former athlete of ours uh at a previous school I was at, uh, played up there, but is also uh on the coaching staff now a little bit. What separates the coaches who simply run successful teams versus or from the coaches who build sustainable programs? I think I'm really envious of those people who run six uh sustainable programs, not just have success once or randomly.

SPEAKER_00 28:13

Yeah, I haven't been successful every time in identifying this, and it is the perfect question. This I've been racking my brain over this formula um for the last three years, right? Uh, and what we have so this is breaking news.

SPEAKER_01 28:28

We're gonna get the formula right here. This is it right here. Love it now. Here you this could be a book. You need to sell this once you tell us. All right, here we go.

SPEAKER_00 28:36

Here's the formula. We got to cover here, Josh. Um, is it's is this book, uh, The Ideal Team Player. And it's right there.

SPEAKER_01 28:46

I mean, I'm staring at it.

SPEAKER_00 28:47

Yeah, it is there it is, hungry, and smart. Yes, sir. Uh and people of great character, hungry, humble, and smart. And smart for our audience is more than just your intelligence, it's it's your it's your emotional IQ. Uh, it's your feel for how to engage and navigate the human experience and humans within it. And you if you have people of high character and they fall into those categories, you really have a chance to be successful. And if they have one or one of the categories, you're gonna you're gonna struggle a little bit of them being worthy of that servitude that we talked about in our guiding principle. Uh, but if they got two out of three, you can work through it. And one thing I will say, Josh, for the people out there, it does not look the same for any one of our successful coaches. Some of them are environments based off of the makeup of their students and uh the makeup of that sport where they can be a lot more assertive. So you're gonna have your Greg Popovich type people. They they challenge you to the same degree that they love you. And that challenge to you is very hot, it's heavy, and it's hard living like a Tomizo. But they love you to that same type of balance that you have there. You're gonna have those who are more your soft-spoken. I'm disappointed in this effort from you because I know you got more. You're gonna have those lead out front, inspirational folks. You're gonna have different flavors, characteristics, mannerisms of your leaders who can build sustainable programs. The one thing every single one of them have is a high character. They're hungry, they're looking for ways to develop and grow, and they're working their butt off. They have not taken the foot off the gas. Matter of fact, they have the Jerry Rice disease where Steve Young used to talk about every day that Jerry Rice came to camp, he was afraid he's gonna lose his job. This is arguably the most well-rounded player he's ever played, and he's the best receiver's ever been out there, and he had fear in his eyes every day he came to practice that someone's gonna take his job. So they're hungry and they have that. A little piss and vinegar to him in that particular sense. They're humble, not in the sense that they think less of themselves, they just think of themselves less, right? So they're able to go to a person and meet them where they are. They know they're good at what they do, but they don't lead with that as their identity, they lead with that a purpose bigger than oneself that they have about it, right? Or they'll try to be self-deprecating in how they talk about their successes, right? But they're confident that they're going to get the job done. And then they're smart, they got some feel to them. You know, this message in this room with donors needs to be a little bit different than mine with the administrator, then a little bit different than mine with the parents, a little bit different than mine with the agents nowadays, a little bit different than mine with the student athlete. You know, so those characteristics all in one uh come into play. But here's one thing that we had to tell ourselves as an administration, and we've infused this into all of our uh hiring processes now. Did your department read the book? Did you read the book? Leadership team did our entire lead, and our leadership team is everyone who oversees a functional unit. So I have an executive leader's team, I'm a hierarchical leader. Okay, yes. But everyone's role has a purpose for the machine, therefore, everyone's dignity is at the same type of importance in terms of executing their role. So the executive team is the six of us who oversee all the different functions of the department, and that's from the NCAA level, conference level, campus level, execution of the mission level. Then the leadership team is everyone who oversees a functional unit, academics, compliance, facilities, sports information, all across the board. That team, that mid-management group, that's really your culture. What they understand, what they're able to then execute with their tentacles, is the definition and culture of your program. We're doing that work with that leadership team group, because if they can understand it, they can now apply it to our mission and guiding principle. Therefore, they can get people who don't understand it to still act in accordance of execution. So we did that book with that team, and that was a part of all of our hiring questions and processes, identifying that. The one thing that we had to make sure we made clear that the number one thing is first is competence. You can have somebody hungry, humble, and smart, but if they're not competent in what we're asking them to do, those traits won't um those traits won't yield results that we're looking for. So if I gave you a summation, high character people who are competent, then they fit within that hum hungry, humble, and smart ideation. That's good. Thanks.

SPEAKER_02 33:18

Wow. All right, we're gonna keep changing lanes here because you you're dropping dimes on every topic that we do. So what we're gonna cover as many as we can. Um kind of what brought you and I together uh was a conversation that we were having uh about fundraising here uh in my district. And you had considerable fundraising success even before becoming NAD, including raising more than 1.5 million while at Old Dominion for athletic administrators who don't consider themselves fundraisers, and I'm gonna be honest with you, that's most of us, right? Um our focus is kid focused, it's not necessarily focused on that skill. What advice would you give them about building relationships and then making the ask?

SPEAKER_00 33:59

Yeah, that's a such a great question. Uh, and here's the thing that I used to hear all the time, but I didn't know how to receive it yet. I couldn't internalize it. We're all fundraisers. Okay, well, what does that mean? And like, how do I don't want to ask people for money? When I used to have to sell candy bars as a kid to be able to be on a pee wee team, I used to just hope my family would eat them and somebody would just give me money for them. Like I didn't want to go door to door.

SPEAKER_02 34:23

That makes two of us.

SPEAKER_00 34:24

Yeah, oh, I just did not enjoy it. I would eat half of those things myself and just spend my money on it. Like I just did not feel comfortable. And then when I, you know, we worked in in the internal units, and it's very rare that you'll see an administrator from internal units become an AD because of the idea of fundraising and being an external person, and how are they going to relate and how are they gonna ask for the money? I had to change it, the paradigm within my mind, uh, Don. And what I did was I said, okay, I'm not asking this human being for money. That's not what this relationship is about. I'm listening to this person to find out what their passion is. I'm just want to hear about your passion. And now I'm not asking for money. What I'm doing after this next phase of our conversation, I'm aligning your passion with our purpose. There's a passion that you have, and it's going to be different than another individual. I bet you there's a purpose that we have that aligns with your passion. So if it's something about access to higher education, oh, we got a purpose. Because we're an institution that needs people from all walks of life to be a part of our teams to yield our success. If your passion is honoring your family because you want their name on a building, you want their name on an office. Hey, we got a purpose for that because if that comes in, this is going to go towards scholarships, gonna help us build a really good team. If your passion is the this is a company that I built and I want my arma matter to be the best resource in that conference or in the world, we got a purpose for that. Our mission, our purpose of who we are. If you got a passion, I want to learn about it, I want to hear about it, and then I want to talk to you about how I think it truly does align with our purpose that we got going on in Kent State Athletics, or a purpose that we got going on in Kent State at large, or a purpose that I have personally as a human being. It's all about being truly, genuinely, authentically curious, seeing where that passion aligns, and seeing if it aligns with a purpose that we have in Kent State and in Kent State Athletics. That's how I've shifted in my mind the paradigm of what fundraising is.

SPEAKER_02 36:25

Is that just you listening as you speak to them? Or do you find that sometimes you may have a tougher nook to crack and you've got to kind of lean in, just ask what they're passionate about? How do you land there? It's probably a little bit of both, I would assume.

SPEAKER_00 36:38

You're right, it is a little bit of both, Don. I'm just a curious human being. You know, maybe it's all those curious George books when I was coming up out of in grade school or what have you. I I'm I'm fascinated about the human experience. I really want to learn about you. Uh, when I'm having a conversation with someone, I want how like when we you and I first spoke, how'd you get into this? Uh, to be at that level and to have the scope and reach and range to understand all the intricacies at these other levels, use it's hard enough to be uh a mile wide and inch deep leads to success. Your brevity, you and Josh, is a mile wide and it's impressive, right? I was very curious uh about that. I'm curious with other human beings too. You know, how are you attached to Kinsteak? Well, what why are you even on this trip? If they're doing that, there's some type of interest right there. Now I'm curious about why that is, you know, and then off the people don't have an issue talking about themselves because how many people ask them about themselves? You know, there's so many things that people do humbly just for the purpose of being a good person. But if no one asks them about it, they're not gonna just come up. Let me tell you what I've done today to really impact the world. Like that's not gonna be someone's general approach. So it's just really having a genuine interest and asking questions. Now, some people you know what they're there for, yeah, and they're gonna boom, come right out with it. Well, that's just being prepared to know what your coach's needs are and your department needs are for those moments. But I start every moment with just general curiosity.

SPEAKER_02 38:07

Yeah, I think that's great. I think that there's there's a lot of power in tell me your story. Like hard stop, like say that, let them go, and then find it, right? I think that that's great. Now, let's talk about change for just a little bit. It the landscape of college athletics is is changing at a pace that we've never experienced before. Anything that you would say today is going to be irrelevant by the time we post this uh at the pace that you guys are at right now. Now, athletic directors are being asked to lead organizations when rules, expectations, and even the definition of success can shift quickly. As a leader, how do you provide stability and confidence for your coaches, staff, and student athletes when you may not have all the answers yourself?

SPEAKER_00 38:50

Yeah, control the controllables. I say that a lot. Uh, you know, uh, I didn't realize it was becoming a thing. It really was my my reaction, my response. It could be a trauma response, but it was my response uh to places like, hey, nice pocket square, control the controllables. Because I do control that for the day, you know, just your energy, control the controllables. I do control that for the day. How you respond? I do control that for the day, what our purpose and mission is, I do control what that is for the day. So I'll put it in like an analogy metaphor way, like uh whenever we deal with extreme crises of weather, tornado, hurricane, or whatever. The number one thing people say is get to your foundation, get to a safe, steady foundation, get to the ground floor, get to something that's solid, get to your it's a metaphor for life, right? When things are chaotic here in Intercleasia Athletics, what's our foundation? Our student athletes. Graduate student athletes boldly prepared for life after sport and win championships. What's something that we can align on that we're all here? We're here to teach and educate. Graduate student athletes boldly prepared for life after sport and win championships. Let's get back to our young people. Let's realize that although the world's chaotic and they're being pulled in many ways, and some of the resources and finances that are being put in front of them, they'd be crazy not to take. But how let's get to the human, though, and let's prepare them for what that means and understand that we won't keep them all. But if we do a great job with this young man, young woman, we'll have the next opportunity to get the next great one. So go back to what we're here to do within higher education. We're the only country in the world who does it like this. It's amazing opportunities. Outside of the GI Bill, we are the incubator for more graduates at the collegiate level in terms of scholarship than anybody else. Uh, we have an amazing opportunity to engage with 18 to 22-year-olds, sometimes 26 these days, uh, in the most transformative times of their lives. We're privileged, we're blessed to have this opportunity because they'll look back, like you said earlier, Don, and it might be 20 years from now, 30 years from now, but we're planting seeds for shade that we may not ever benefit from, but that's purpose in life. And that's where our foundation is. So with all this chaos, we still have to execute forward-facing microtransactions. Absolutely, we wouldn't be doing our jobs if we didn't, and we need to execute. However, our meat and potatoes, our foundation, it's still the purpose of these students' access to higher education and the growth they're at.

SPEAKER_01 41:24

That's really good. That's outstanding. Now you talk about those student athletes, and um, I just read an article a couple days ago written by Rich Martin, one of the uh associated or uh assisted directors uh for the NIAA, our um athletic, our National Athletic Association. And it was he he focused on athletics being the front door to the institution. Yes. Uh high school athletics is the front door to everything we do, um, and really everything that happens eventually in college athletics, right? They have to get there. They may stay there a lot longer with you now, as you mentioned uh upwards of past the uh stand on mom and dad's insurance of 25. But uh, you know, they stay a long time, but they got to come through high school first. 100%. If you had a room filled with high school athletic administrators from across the country and uh could ask them to focus on just three things to better prepare young people for college athletics and life beyond sports, which is one of your focuses there. You just said it five times, like it's just rolls off. I loved it, man. You know your mission. What would those three things be?

SPEAKER_00 42:37

Yeah, number one, uh, you know, give a damn. Number one, you gotta care, and that's not easy. There's so many things that are pulling the other human beings in so many different directions. It's a quite a polarizing time um for us all uh the these days, but care.

SPEAKER_01 42:56

If you can Reddale, can I stop you there for a second? I'm I'm sorry to interject there, yeah, but it's amazing how many times, and Don's done this. We we've had conversations about it. There's certain ads that I guess are on my in my role of decks that I have called and talked to over the years, and like leaving a school, yeah, and just like man, do they did is it is there an ad here? You know, it's just there is no care, right? And it does you don't have to once again going back to resources, you don't have to have everything to actually care, show you care. Uh man, I love you said that because it's amazing, and you probably do this at college athletics, like you'll go to a place and like these people just don't care about their kids. Like, right, they they they're just not even trying. So sorry to interrupt you there, but I I'm glad you started there because I agree.

SPEAKER_00 43:44

That's where it all starts, man. Uh I used to when we first got started the first two years, you know, we had six people on an executive team. I said, Well, my Angela's the seventh, you know what I mean? Like, you know, the tennis that she had, you know what I mean, and understanding about how important people forget what. You said what you did did, but never how you made them feel. Like this is just the nature of the human experience and interaction. So that's you gotta care uh out the front because that care leads to vulnerability, which ultimately leads to trust. And if they can trust you, they can follow you. You know, that's ultimately what leadership comes down to. So number one thing I would say to them is just care. You know what I mean about the students environment. Number two would be uh challenge. You have to make young people uncomfortable. There's for all of us, like a I've always felt like it was a mental ceiling on the understanding of a high school person. Like you can't look past the social construct of the environment that high school is. It's your world. Every adult can tell you, if you tell me your five friends, I'll tell you your future. You don't have a scope of what that means as a high school kid. But as administrators, you still got to challenge them at that level. Let me tell you about how I see your future. Let me tell you about all the students I've seen with mannerisms like yours, and let me tell you what you got that they didn't have. And let me tell you that if you don't take it seriously, if you don't really double down on it now, how it won't be realized. Because I got a lot of those kids I've seen too. So having that uncomfortable conversation. And the last thing is what you all do. I've never seen a organization uh how you all have it, is network above and across. I think I forget what the stats are now, but there's only like 3% of all of high school athletes who go on to play college athletics, division one, two, or three. Wow. It is such a small percentage. That impact is based off of people like yourselves who have contacts with colleges, high schools, other high schools, you go's that help students get started. It gives them a chance. One to three percent is just to show how difficult it is to have a level of talent, grades, and background to become a collegiate athlete. The other portion is if we don't have people like yourselves making these connections, helping a student to know where to start, that number will never grow. Matter of fact, it'll go the other way.

SPEAKER_01 46:10

That's good. I I love the second one challenge. I'm kind of curious. You you mentioned we must challenge young people, yeah. We must make young people uncomfortable. Yeah. Overseeing a coaching staff of adults, right? Where does challenging adults come into play with at your at your level of leadership? Because we're dealing with adults. So I think sometimes we're scared to challenge them. We think they may leave, or you know, we may lose a good coach, or where it's it may be a little easier to challenge the kids because we're giving them scholarship money, or they're one of our students, they can't leave, whatever. Yeah. Where does challenging the adults under our supervision fall?

SPEAKER_00 46:54

Josh, you spot on. Uh, for us is in our annual evaluations and our ongoing evaluations. You know, here are our tenants, here are our principles. We've exalted you as the face of our organization. Ministers in the background, student athletes graduate. Coach, you are the face, you are the brand, and you need to be worried. I demand worthiness of that servitude. You know, so with you, coach, when we meet together, here are our goals. They're very laid out, you know, they're very practical in terms of how they are achieved or not. And we have honest conversations about achieving that goal. And then my question at Diane was how can I serve you towards us getting here together? No one hires a coach to fire a coach, right? So here's our realities, here's where we need to go. Here are the things I see missing within your program. If I'm talking about X's and O's, we're already in trouble. Uh, but if I'm talking about leadership, accountability, structures, observations, then we're in a better spot. Well, what gives me the authority to know whether that's happened or not? Well, it's our structures. We have a sport administrator preaching our sports, and they're present. They're giving me feedback on what the culture is, feedback on what we get from our we have a student athlete experience survey, not a student athlete exit interview. I want to know your entire experience. And there's rankings within there about uh, hey, coaches understand other sports. Do they care about me more than just an athlete, academics? Uh, how are they the other staff members? I'm getting feedback and data from all these areas, and when I'm presenting it to the coach, it's just one of the evaluation metrics, but it is one that's important because we're leading young people, and then the conversation becomes a very direct, real, transparent one with myself. Okay, coach, here's what I'm seeing in these places and spaces, and I go through this process. Here's what I like, and I talk about what I like, you know. Here's my concern, and I'll dive into the concern. And it's like you said before, the the fire spotters, you know. I mean, so I try not to be that and I say, here's a potential solution, and then we attack it from that level, and we'll see if we had improvement throughout the next year, and we can do all that, and it still not lead to the results that keeps that coach retained. But one thing that I'll pride myself on whether or not they receive it towards our separation, or if they do, is that it was always upfront, it was honest, it was transparent, and it was measurable.

SPEAKER_01 49:09

I don't want to put you on the spot here, but I'm kind of curious. Do you have an example of when you challenged a coach? Maybe you didn't want to, maybe you're a little fearful that hey, if I challenge this guy, he may just shut down, or he may go, maybe it's a she uh, you know, they may they may go somewhere else and come back and beat us, but once you did it, they turned a corner and have turned into maybe a superstar in your organization. Our track and field coach Nathan Fanger. Uh yeah, boy, uh challenge.

SPEAKER_00 49:40

No, I got three of them, you know, right off the top of my head. Uh boy, I I challenged him. Uh, I felt as if he was looking at our resources. I felt as if he was making excuses. Uh, he's a hall of fame coach, he's got somewhere up over 20 Olympians. And he's one of the most world-renowned throws and field coaches in the world. And he he's at Kent State because he loves to be in at Kent State. He can be at any power for he wants to be. But when he transitioned over to the head coach, there's a learning curve for all of us when we step into that higher role of leadership. And we all don't have the full appreciation for it because some things you just got to go through to learn. And, you know, we were having some issues with things from that and understanding financially what we needed in the do. And we got in there, we had at it. And credit to Nathan. He said, Hey man, actually, I wish you would have given me this sooner. This is what I needed. Yeah, like I didn't see the scope of it. This is what I needed, you know. And I had staff members back in my first leadership moments that Randall, you speak in parables. Give it to me playing. You know what I mean? Like, so I've worked on that as a leader um throughout my time period. Uh, and they ended up winning their first indoor women's track championship in 14 years. And, you know, I mean, fiscally, he was able to get the program reset from a scholarship standpoint, brought in one of the largest gifts uh that we've ever had at Kent State University in athletics, let alone in track and field. Uh, and he's become a leader within our coaches' leadership room. Another would be Rob Sinderhoff, our legendary now at this point in time. I hope he doesn't see that, let this get to his head. Uh, men's basketball coach. He's been a coach here now 15 years. And we had a situation where we had to suspend a player in the championship game, our best player in that tournament. And you want to talk about pain, gentlemen? I can't tell you a more painful opportunity or time that I had as an athletic director. You know, I challenged him about certain things and behaviors, and he was able to come right back at me about certain realities that maybe I wasn't appreciating. And then we talked about thereafter what structures can we put in place that can protect us from these things in the future? What do your assistant coaches do that protect you as the head coach? You know, and I've had one with our lacrosse coach, you know, I mean, diving in there each year about things that would come up. Not things that were bad, but things that were maybe missed that can help her and her leadership journey. This is the job, this is the role. It is uncomfortable. If you don't get there, then uh failure is inevitable. So that's why crucial conversations. I give Dr. Lamar or Lamar Pottery's work at the NCAA credit when he worked on my staff at ODU for giving me that book and helping me in my leadership journey, you know, because I am a kind human, but we need to get to our objectives, and that really helped in that sense.

SPEAKER_01 52:23

There you go. Everybody listening, you just had real life examples, real world experience right there. You got to have those crucial conversations. That's great. Uh, Randell, one more question before we get to our two-minute drill, have a little fun uh with you. We're asking each guest this season to kind of respond to this question. It's a simple fill-in-the-blank, so I'm just gonna throw it out there and let you respond. It could be short or long or whatever you want to make it. Great leaders blank.

SPEAKER_00 52:51

Care. Great leaders care, they care about each individual. Doesn't mean you're going to serve them in the way in which they want to be served. It's like the five love languages, right? You know, I mean, hey, coach, I'm giving you stability, I'm giving this. Yeah, but my love language is more money, you know. So you're not always what I need. Yeah, you're not always going to meet that, but what you got is really truly caring for their objective and in the changing landscape and the frustration that it is, and what they go with with students and parents, and crises that they deal from a mental health standpoint within themselves and their real lives, their own families, and the the process that that is, and how you can't bring that to work because you still got a duty to lead and uh how you navigate that. You know, starting at a place that I will not be able to meet every need that you have. If there's five things you need, I can get you two. But I can work like hell alongside you to try to get the other three, you know, because I do care what you got going on, and the ones that you that aren't being successful, I do care that it's come to this. Um, I'm gonna try to be alongside you to figure this out, you know. But at least it's transparent. I do care, even if it ends in a bad space. Everyone will still not receive it that way. You cannot let that get to your heart. You still have to lead the way that you know is the right way, and that's careful.

SPEAKER_01 54:11

That's really good. Wow, there's so much here. Thanks for sharing with us and helping us uh be better leaders today. You just made us uh really, really uh better today. So we appreciate it. We finish all of our conversations with a two-minute drill, just some questions to get to know you a little bit better. We'll probably learn more leadership here in this two-minute drill, but uh the this would be a little bit uh maybe, maybe uh not as deep. That was that was good stuff. So, Randell, we enjoyed it. Thanks. I'm gonna let Don kick off our two-minute drill.

SPEAKER_02 54:43

Okay, Randell, we're gonna hit you with some rapid fire questions. You just tell us the first thing that comes to your mind. What was your first job ever in your life that you had?

SPEAKER_00 54:51

Oh man, I used to uh hustle pallets with my stepdad, and this got me ready for football. So people don't know about this world of pallets in the shipping industry, and we used to grab these jokers, stack them 20 high on a truck that was inevitably in the next three months gonna blow its engine because we're carrying so much weight on those things. But you're strapping them down, you're getting splinters, you know what I mean. You're working a whole day and you're getting about 20 bucks, you know what I mean? But it gave me some summer money uh to be able to spend things with. So uh we don't have to go back, isn't it like 10 years we can't go back on taxes? So we don't gotta look whether it's over the board or under the board, but that was my first real uh official job job.

SPEAKER_01 55:31

Man, I haven't seen those trucks going down the road, and I've always thought, how did they get those pallets back that high now that they're right there, did it?

SPEAKER_00 55:39

I'm gonna shoulder strong man prepare me for football.

SPEAKER_01 55:42

All right, for the optimistic realist, as you called yourself, what makes you optimistic about this generation of student athletes?

SPEAKER_00 55:49

Uh they're access, they're more well-informed than we give them credit for. You know, we look at some of their what we would determine as aloofness, as uh not being aware. No, they're making a very conscientious, aware decision that that's not a value to me. Uh, they got more access points to debunk things that are just been tropes to see whether they truly believe them or not. So they're making more conscientious decisions about how they invest their time or not. And if we take a broader look at it, you'll see that their reasons that this generation is going to give money is based off of the things they believe in uh that are uh purposeful, not things that are just transactional. They're more informed than we give them credit for.

SPEAKER_02 56:33

Good. What's something athletic directors don't spend enough time thinking about?

SPEAKER_00 56:38

Oh, that's a really good one. Don't spend their health, their health absolutely.

SPEAKER_01 56:47

All right, if I walked into Kent State into the Kent State Athletic Department today and asked your staff, what does Randell care about most? What would you hope they say? People.

SPEAKER_02 57:01

Yeah. Thought that would be the answer. What's the best place to eat in Kent, Ohio?

SPEAKER_00 57:07

Ooh, that's a good one. Now I'm in a position whether I got to choose a corporate sponsor or be a different one, and hopefully they're all the same. This one's all the same. The river merchant, man. My dude Cam runs the River Merchant. His dad runs or used to run the most prominent uh restaurant here in Kent. Uh, you know, and everyone who comes back still goes uh to his dad's restaurant as like the place to be. But Cam has now started his own uh restaurant on the river merchant. A little bit it used to be an old wine bar uh that uh caught fire, and now he's made it a restaurant wine bar hybrid, and they got all the different bourbis. His burbers are all big now, and and he got a little outdoor patio, and it's a train that goes by and it's got a little river out there. Uh so the river merchant uh is my favorite place to go and ken.

SPEAKER_01 57:59

That sounds great. All right, if you could experience a favorite memory again for the first time, what would it be?

SPEAKER_00 58:07

Oh man, that is great. Favorite memories again for the first time, what would it be? Uh my brain's in sports, my brain's right now in family, uh, firstborn stuff, all that stuff. I'm gonna stick to sports. Uh the calves, man. 2016 championship, being from Akron, Ohio, LeBron James coming back home, being able to bring that championship back. My family was in Cleveland. I was at ODU at the time, and over the summer, um, they would come back for a month here in Cleveland. I would be on the athletic circuit. So we were away, but boy, my neighbors, they knew the Cavs won. Uh, let me tell you that. I celebrated all night, and and I took the smell of that celebration into work the next day, but I did go into work.

SPEAKER_02 58:55

Yeah, yeah, good deal. All right, who has influenced your leadership the most?

SPEAKER_00 59:01

You know, it's really been it's been so many people. And I and this would be a I cuss a lot, but I love the Lord, is what I tell folks. Uh, so this this would be, it really has been a God-given deal to see talent in every human I engage with. That's been my biggest part of influence. It's not just one person. Yeah, it really has been, you know, I don't know why I think that way, and I'm so thankful I do. And it sounds weird me saying it, but I learned something from every human being. I used to play Tecmo Bowl or these uh role-playing games like Legend of Zelda or Final Fantasy. And what I learned from those games is that you could learn something critical to the mission of the execution of that game from any human being in that game. It could be this beggar here, it could be this blind person here, and you have to go to them to get information about how to solve the next puzzle or get to the next stage. That has always had me in a mindset that whatever human being I'm talking to from whatever walk of life, there's something I can learn from them. And that's really had an influence on me just learning from every human being I come across.

SPEAKER_01 1:00:09

Okay, let's finish with this. It's our trademark question. Today, Randell Richmond, you've been hanging with the AD. Well, let's say you can hang out with anyone. Who would that be and why?

SPEAKER_00 1:00:19

Ooh, hang out with anyone who it's a boring question. It's my friends, man. Uh, I I've I've got a wealth of associates. I got a very small, uh, intimate core group of friends. And the way that our lives are these days, we just do not get that time. So being back with my buddies, laughing about sophomore humor things, free from responsibility for that moment, just to be with each other and crack up, that that would be my time today because I just don't get as much time to do it anymore.

SPEAKER_02 1:00:58

We are the we are kindred spirits, sir. A buddy of mine got inducted into our high school hall of fame uh over the summer. If we went back for that, I would still be on that back porch right now if I had it my way. And so I I totally totally understand. Um Randall, we find great value in speaking with our counterparts at the next level. And today you did not disappoint. Thank you again for the time. We appreciate you saying yes uh and good luck to you guys.

SPEAKER_00 1:01:24

Yeah, credit to you guys. Again, I can't I've been telling people all around here. Uh I don't have this scope of the industry adjacent to myself. The fact that you two do and you're doing this, thank you. Um, this is amazing. I can't wait to learn more uh from these. Now I'm I'm fully intrigued. What you're doing is amazing. So congratulations. Thank you.

SPEAKER_02 1:01:49

Appreciate it.

SPEAKER_01 1:01:51

What a great conversation with Randell Richman, the director of athletics at Kent State University. I had heard about Randell from a former player, and Don had met Randell in person, and we were just both excited. But I'll be honest, I think this conversation blew away our expectations just because we don't have a deep relationship with uh Randell. My takeaways, as you heard me reiterate in the podcast, were the ideas of finding ways that you can put yourself into microcosms for the places you want to go. Don't get out in front of yourself, understand where your feet are and lead there. But if you are aspirational, figure out a way to learn how to lead in that other position where your feet are planted. Just a great conversation there. He said, be excellent in an area to establish value, and then people want people of value around them. Wow, that was gold. And then the other one I think I'll share is your circumstances can't be an excuse. I was just impressed with Randell having a clear, as he called it, optimistic, realist view of Kent State University, but also how they can be successful and achieve excellence there through a clear mission statement. Randell, man, you just made us better today. You gave us lots of nuggets to help us move forward in our leadership, and we appreciate it. Thanks for spending time with us, and uh, we look forward to talking to Randell again one day, maybe. Thank you for listening today. We would love it if you would leave a rating or review in the podcast. I know it's been a while since we've been on. We had a little sabbatical that many of you heard about, and we appreciate you rejoining us in the second half of 2026, and we think we started off with a home run with Randell. And as always, thank you for spending your time hanging with the ADs.