https://youtu.be/ffII6vyE__Q
Former NFL lineman Shawn Harper is the owner and operator of American Services and Protection, a security firm based in Columbus, Ohio. He also owns Bridge Builders International, an inter-denominational non-profit helping children in developing countries. We discuss how successful NFL systems can be applied to the business world and how to create a team-based winning culture.
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Leverage NFL Systems with Shawn Harper
Our guest is Shawn Harper with me today. And Shawn is the owner and operator of American Services and Protection, a full-service security firm out of Columbus, Ohio. He is also the owner of Bridge Builders International, a non-profit, interdenominational non-profit helping children in developing countries. He played for seven seasons as an offensive NFL lineman with the Coors, the Oilers, the Rams, and NFL Europe. And he is the author of the Winning Edge, Eight Principles that will bring out the winner in you. Welcome Shawn to the show.
Hey, thank you for having me. Let's have fun for the time being, and hopefully we can extract some tools, thoughts, and principles to win at this game of life.
That's awesome, that's awesome. Well, listen, first of all, I love to have you on the show, and I'm kind of intrigued, how does an NFL linesman becomes an entrepreneur with multiple businesses, how does that work?
Well, you know what, it's something that I kind of fell into, but it was a blessing as well. And so what I mean by that is my brother owned a security firm and through some unforeseen circumstances, he had turned the control of the operation over to me. And I promise you at that moment, I was a deer in the headlights. I had no business sense. I didn't understand. And you know what, actually, to be truthful, you know, close to 20 years later, I'm still learning and I'm still growing. I'm still, you know, learning how to win at this game.
But what I did understand is I understand winning. And I was able to grab that not only from sports, but from the challenges that were in my life, as far as the learning disabilities and voted most likely to fail, graduating last in my class in academics, barely starting in high school football, overcoming the adversity and the struggle and to push towards the win.
And I played with and for probably one of the most successful businesses in the world. That's the National Football League. It is a business. And so the things that I learned from playing in sports, being around amazing players and coaches, styles, techniques, and strategies and methodologies, I begin to infuse them into the business world. And you know what? I started having a lot of wins. Normally I try to stay away from the word success because that to me is a man-made construct. It's all about winning. And it, well, no, no. I mean, it is.
I mean, the problem with success is that it's ambiguous, which means, and also it's not static. I can be in Columbus, Ohio. Thank you so much for the skylight right there. That's very awesome. I've never had this happen before, but I can have $4 million living in Columbus, Ohio. And you know what?I'm doing well.I can have, you know, $4 million living in Manhattan and you know, I'm okay. I can have $4 million in Dubai and I'm like, whoa, you're struggling here. Trying to live downtown Dubai with only $4 million.
So guess what? It's not static. And so what I've learned is that it is not static by design to always having you push more towards or towards what you probably already are. You're a winner. And so now infusing those concepts in corporate America, you know, everyone that works with me and work for me, you guys are already successful. The fact that you're here, you're successful. Now let's win. Okay, can you imagine trying to tell Mark Cuban to be successful? Of course he's already successful.
Well then what's, okay, so then what's driving him? What's driving these billionaires now? Is it success? No, they're the apex. It's the win. That's what I was able to bring to the corporate room. And that's what they were bringing to the corporate culture. And that has allowed me to be in business for about 20 years now, not bad.
That's very interesting. So, Shawn, so tell me a little bit about what it means to winning with American Services and Protection. What does it look like?
What was that now?
So, what does it look like winning with American Services and Protection, your business? What does it look like for you guys?
American Services and Protection is a full service security firm based out of Columbus, Ohio. We serve Central Ohio and the great state of Ohio and beyond. And so winning is that I was able to cut out all the gray, cut out all the fluff, and we have firm fixed targets. This is what we're going towards. Now, you look at the target and you assess the target, sometimes daily. Do you have the tools to achieve this goal? Do you have what it takes? Do you have your mentor? Do you have people driving? Do you have your support system? Do you have what it takes to achieve this goal?
And if so, then I'm gonna let you go. I'm gonna let you win at it. I'm gonna let you do the best you can. And then if and when you come to me or you come to my operations manager, this is what I'm struggling with, okay, this is an obstacle to your win. Then we will attack it like that. Now what that does is that it gives a firm fixed target that every individual knows exactly what he or she, they understand the expectations and they know where they're going. That's number one.
Number two, it forces teamwork, okay, because it strips out the ambiguity. Because one person in IT is like, well, I'm successful, the computer didn't crash. And the other person over here in sales is like, well, I'm not successful, I don't have any sales. IT, you need to fill it too. So when we played football and we would lose a game, the offensive line may have had a great game, but they're not walking in the locker room like, yay, all right, well, I did good. That's so myopic.
No, you feel the loss and the same and vice versa. You may have had a horrible game, but we got the win and we celebrate the win together just now. Promise you. 15 minutes ago, I'm on a conference call with my supervisors. We had a site, no call, no show. That is like the dreaded, when you have a site that's not covered, that kills contracts. I'm getting on the phone with them and I'm like what happened talk to me about it.
Well, it's my work you know, this was under my Responsibility and I dropped a ball cheap not normally. It's like, okay. Yeah, okay great But then I had other supervisors on the phone like no one else is chiming in like you gonna let him burn like that How come you didn't step in? How come you didn't step in? How come you didn't step in? How come you didn't drive your butt over there? Why because you're interested in winning the battle and not winning the war. I said, this is all, we'll pick up the pieces and fix it later. But you get in there because our client is our quarterback and we're the left tackle. And last night, they got sacked.
Okay. So how do you build that culture, which is focused on winning rather than winning the battle, the war, rather than just the battles?
So one of the things that I do is that I elevate the win that everyone can agree in that they can feel some of the win. So you know how departments have, well, you got your numbers, you got that, that's fine. You made your sales call, yeah, that's great. But then there's a big win. There's a big win. It's all the way up there. This is the big win. What are you doing for the big win? What are you doing to pick up so many contract hours a month?
Now, for some people, it's the big win. We all have a job, we have job security. For certain personalities and temperaments, the big win means X amount of bonus goes to every single person, period. No matter, you contribute this much or you contribute this much to the big win, we all get a party and we get a bonus, things like that. So I kind of, what's the word? I kind of minimize the individual wins and then I focus on the big win. And then that brings about a culture of agreement.
And when you have a culture of agreement, when people are working not as together, but working as one, boy, you can get a lot done. It also brings a higher level of accountability because that person wants that five, 10, $15,000 bonus, right, but he's looking over at this other person, this person's on Facebook, like, hey, what are you doing for the big win? Okay, you're letting us down. It's self-policing, kind of like a captain on the football team, right? It's self-policing and yeah, it's, that's just one of the strategies, you just put, yeah.
So how do you identify your big wins and how do you create the buy-in in the team into the big win, what's your process?
Okay, so the big win is derived from the company goals and visions and strategic plans for the year or maybe a couple of years out. So we'll pull a piece of that and it has to, and this is how it flows into our overall strategic plan. And that's very important. That's a great question, by the way. It's very important because they have to understand how that piece fits the larger puzzle. That right there is the Achilles heel to some corporations is because you know what, they don't kind of share what's behind the veil.
And I'm sure you can't share everything, but you have to allow them to see how that piece fits the puzzle and then how them, themselves being present in what they do fits into the piece that fits into the puzzle. The next thing that you brought up, which is very interesting is, wow, I mean, you're asking some amazing questions, by the way, is that everyone is different. Every department is different.
Everyone's mindset and vision is different, okay? And so you have to be able to sell. And I teach my leaders, all that you do is sales. You're selling. Right now, I'm selling. I don't have a sweatsuit on.
