When you’re a woman in sports, there’s a proverbial ceiling that no one tells you about. But today’s guest broke through the barriers to become an executive in the field. Meka White Morris is currently the Executive VP and Chief Revenue Officer at the Minnesota Twins. She sat down with Lance Tyson to share how she built her career by not accepting a ‘No’ until it was from someone who could say ‘Yes’. Tune in as she gives valuable real-world advice as a woman executive in sports.
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Against the Sales Odds and Meka White Morris Reviews What it Takes as a Woman Executive to Break the Glass Ceiling
I have a dear friend. Somebody I've known for a very long time, Meka White Morris. We have worked together at several spots from the Cleveland Cavaliers, at Legends. Meka, why don't you introduce yourself?
Everybody, excited to be here. Meka White, which is what most of you know me as. I got married and added a Morris on the back end. I'm pumped. I've done a lot in sports outside of sports and am certainly excited to share my perspective and everything that I've done and all the things that I've seen. Lance is a good friend and has been for a long time, so I'm eager to be here.
I botched up. I'm still telling everybody I'm learning this whole interview thing. Tell everybody who you're with. You’re the chief revenue officer.
I'm the Chief Revenue Officer of Tappit. Tappit is a cashless contactless payment solution. A company that started it in the UK, any RFID and touchless payment services in the festival business and has made a massive splash in the US. Not only because I think contactless and mobile pay wallets are a thing of the future but in the breath of COVID and everything going on, people wanting to use their phones to do everything is becoming at the forefront of how we're all going to be doing life. Not only now but certainly for the future.
I want everybody to understand this. I think you have one of the most interesting journeys because I remember when you first started in sales and I go, “She loves to debate.” That’s the first thing I remembered about you. I’d be in a room and you would debate me and go, “I don't know if this is right or not but I don't think the sounds good.” You had to debate it through to problem-solving. A lot of times, you were right, which I loved about you. Tell everybody about your journey because I think your journey is fantastic.
I grew up in a sports family. Sports have been in my blood. I played sports growing up, went to college on a track and field scholarship to the University of Kansas. A proud J-Hawk, for anybody who cares to know. I started a job that was terrible at a company that sold office equipment. I couldn't believe that this is what life is about when you spend all this time going through all this school and you work at it. It’s not possible. It was an interesting start and I did it for three months. I think I looked at my dad and I said, “I can't do this. I want to be in sports but obviously, I'm not playing anymore.”
I don't think at the time, you knew about jobs and sports. I knew about athletes, coaching. I didn't know about the front office staff at all. He had played golf in Miami with a guy named Todd Fleming. Todd and I spoke on the phone. Todd goes, “Yes, we have an inside sales program.” I don't know what that means but heck, it's Miami. It's the heat. I'm rocking with it. At the time, he's like, “We'd love to have you. I'm going to FedEx you an offer letter,” because it wasn't colloquial to do email and all this stuff.
In the middle of that, they signed Shaq and he called me up. He goes, “I'm sorry but we're sold out. I have been freezing on all hiring. I can't hire you but I got two boys that I started an inside sales with that I'm going to call and see if they might take you on.” One gentleman, his name was Mike Tolman. He was at the Phoenix Suns and the other gentleman was Mike Ondrejko at the Cleveland Cavaliers. I talked to both and had great conversations. I said, “If all of them came from the Cavs and Cavs is fitting out talent all over the place, it sounds like I need to go to the Cavs to learn this business of sports.” That's what I did. I spent a few years there inside sales. I was the first woman they ever promoted out of inside sales into a premium role.
At that time, you did your client development and you manage the existing book of business that I took over from a guy named Brian Basloe, who's been in the industry a long time and quickly realized that my background and who I am landed to relationship selling, more importantly, providing customized solutions that could drive a business. Versus, “There's a ticket package, and let me figure out how I can make this package work for you,” but the building of a sponsorship support mechanism. End up working under Kerry Bubolz for a number of years and a guy named Randy Domain. They went out to the Raiders, did the same thing for them, managed the team.
If you can do the job and do it your way with integrity and succeed, results are the name of the game.
When you were at the Raiders, that was your first management experience?
It was my first real management experience. I spent some time there that ended up going back to the East Coast to Charlotte. It was the Bobcat's then. Now Hornet's under a guy named Michael Wandell and Pete Guelli and managed the team. There was the director of sponsorship there and the league was locked out. It was apposed to be the worst lockout in NBA history at the time. I ended up getting a call from Live Nation. They said, “We need somebody to run our Southeast business based out of Charlotte.”
At the time, they didn't know what the situation was going to be with the NBA. I ended up moving on to Live Nation for about five years. I got a call from Mike Ondrejko that said, “We're opening up the Observatory at the top of the World Trade Center. We need somebody with a varying background who can get in there and build it culturally as we do in an inside sales infrastructure.” I went up there to build, open and develop the attractions business for Legends.
That's when you got your NBA when you're up there in New York?
No, I don't have an MBA. I've talked about getting an MBA twice. I got accepted at NYU and when you boil it down for me, it was this six and one half a dozen in the other. Like, “Do I go? By investing this $120,000 in my education, am I going to see the fruits of that labor? What's that going to look like?” You rack and stack it and there are so many reasons to go and not to. I ended up making the difficult choice to stay on the course I was on.
Which is a fantastic course, I want everybody to think about this. Against all sales odds, the whole philosophy here is, most of the time, you get somebody that moves up in sales or revenue. They've come either from sales or from high finance. You think about your rapid movement and a lot of different diverse properties you're with. You're at one world observatory sitting overlooking the 9/11 Memorial in a relatively something you'd never had done before. Other than the sponsorship side of it.
I was their VP of Sales and Marketing, so I had the entire marketing function, which was how we talk about ourselves globally to get a tourist into this space. The sales function that we had was an events business. We had group sales as we would all as sportspeople think about group sales but the main difference and the attraction space, one of the things that we all learned together, it is selling five million new people every single year.
Give people perspectives. I remember going on a tour and as you're setting up the business. We have had multiple conversations. Tell everybody how many people a day. I don't know if that's still true, go to One World Observatory.
On a good day, you're talking about maybe 12,000 to 15,000 people. On a bad day, you're still talking about 5,000, 6,000, 7,000 people a day, every single day. It's not like there's a game this week and tomorrow we're off. It's every single day, seven days a week, 365 days a year. Maybe we shorten some hours on Christmas but other than that.
You’re open all the time. It's every single day, 7,000 new people, every single day. When you are in sports, you're building a base. You've got your season ticket holders and let's say, you're a good team and that's 60%, 70%, 80% of your entire. You're only looking to fill the bucket on anywhere from 50% to 20% or maybe you're sold out.
If I go to the Empire State Building, I'm not going back next year or next week. I've done my thing. I've taken my grandparents or my kids. It's over for me. When you're in an attraction, you have to find brand new people. What we did is we built a group sales team that's bringing affinity group similar to you doing sports where you have a group that is a sports group or a church group.
Woman Sports Executive: What we give teams is the ability to understand exactly who's buying what and they're building in real time, because now they own that data set.
They want to do something together from a team-building perspective and come in and buy a group of tickets and maybe dine or what have you. Every other person, which is maybe 10%, 15%, then you're doing massive deals with international tour operators that want to buy 300,000 tickets but they want those tickets at a discount.
They package them up to people coming in from China or London. You buy a package for $1,200. It includes your flight, your hotel, tickets to us, tickets to the Statue of Liberty, etc. All in one package. That's one layer. The rest is people who are buying a single ticket for a single day for a single experience that you have to market to those people on a continuous basis in order to fill up your volume on a day-by-day perspective.
From there, you're with Tappit now. You left there. What is interesting about your career, you did not take a traditional route at all. You went right in the most complex selling at the beginning, which is partnership sales, mega-deals, multi-dimensional or multi-elemental, selling to buying committees C-suite. You do it in the NBA, you do it in an NFL, then you make your way and you're doing something in Live Nation and now, you're with another firm. Explain that whole journey.
For me, what I didn't want to do as I matured as an executive is be known as a sport to the executive. I truly wanted to be an entertainment executive. I think a lot of people try to stretch that title and they say, “My building does concerns in other things,” but truly selling entertainment as a standalone entity is very different than having a building that houses different events. When you go get under the hood at Live Nation, you understand fundamentally how that business works. The same thing with an attractions business. I went from there from Legends. I went to Learfield for a time. Trying to understand how does this works when you're talking about college? What are the differences? What are the nuances?
You need to know when your opinion is warranted. You need to be able to draw people into the discussion. It's much more art than science.
When I took a step back and looked at the breadth of my experience, I'm like, “I have relationships in the NFL and NBA.” If you look at those three, let's start there. I've been across the country. I've been in Cleveland, San Francisco, Bay Area and Charlotte. I know people through all those verticals from a geographic perspective.
You pull in Live Nation, so I've got the music. You pull in attractions through Legends and you pull in college. I started to see myself as this holistic entertainment executive with relationships across all sports, all leagues and all entertainment verticals. How could I parlay that for a business that's external of sports and use those relationships as a pivot point within sports? When Tappit rolled up, it was like, “We all know that everybody went to ticketless travel and now mobile ticketing.” It's hard-pressed that you go to a game or an event now where you have a physical ticket. There's a handful that you do for the large majority, it's on your phone.
Now, you're looking at how Apple Pay and Google Pay and all of these payments services. How do you roll that into the sports environment? I think the data piece is significant now. If you pay for something in an arena, the team knows that X dollars were sold at this outfit but they don't know that Lance Tyson bought a beer and Meka Morris bought a hotdog. They only know that beers and hot dogs were sold. What we give teams is the ability to understand exactly who's buying what and they're building in real-time because now they own that data set. It becomes a white-labeled wallet.
Think Google Pay but that wallet lives within the app. You think the Cowboys have a Stadium app and in that app, you may have your tickets from SeatGeek. You may have a map of the stadium. You may have your parking but imagine you put in a wallet that now I can put any credit card I want to in and pay. Now you have the full tech stack of all of that information. Now I know where Lance park, where he sat, when he got there and he used an American Express. I know that he bought two sweatshirts, two beers and two hot dogs. I know when and where he bought them, and when he left.
I can send real-time push notifications to you that say, “Lance, I know you're drinking Bud heavies. Why don't you come 2 for 1? It's the third quarter. We're cutting sales off in the fourth. By the way, we have another event happening on Saturday. We can give you a package with Bud, hot dogs and tickets because we know those are things you like,” in real-time while you're in the building. It's a revolutionary way to look at the business that I happen to know how to insert that in the NFL and the NBA in college, music and attractions, which isn't a purview a lot of executives have now.
With entrepreneurs, I deal with a lot of tech entrepreneurs and in being on a couple of boards, the entrepreneurs always the person knows their business better than anybody. They always try to look for somebody that's similar to them but can never find it. What I always admired about, no smoke intendant. You know when I am. When you were with Legends and One World, you wanted to understand that business because nobody else understood it.
I remember you arguing with senior management like, “Tractions is different than Arena.” I can remember those arguments, how frustrated you would get because nobody knew it and you're in uncharted territory. I like how you're talking because as you build that sales team out and grow, you understand it better than anybody else because you're doing it. As a salesperson, what did you be bad at and what were you good at?
Woman Sports Executive: There's this proverbial ceiling that no one will tell you about where you're trying to navigate as a woman in sports—a black woman in sports.
I am by my very nature, a rule breaker. I'm a rule follower in some ways but I'm always going to push the status quo and bring my own flavor to a situation. I happen to have an ability to maximize opportunities and drill it down fast to get to the nuts and bolts in the crux of whether someone's going to buy or not. For that reason, when you pull that back out, some people are tactical salespeople and some are relationship finesse salespeople that I much more relationship finesse.
When I am managed by somebody who's tactical, we oftentimes don't see eye to eye because they want me to make 100 phone calls a day and do these things. I'm like, “I can make 25 phone calls and have the same success as somebody who makes 100 because I’m going to make 25 of the right phone calls at the right level, with the right people and with the right things to say.”
What happened to me a lot early on is I was having the same success and at the top of the board, but doing the business in a very different way than the rest of my colleagues. The leadership I had at the time was much more like them and very much less like me. While we're in conflict, it's hard to argue that conflict when the success is there.
For me, as a sales leader, I am laser-focused on results. I'm going to give you all the tools I can to give you all the information on how to do this job the best way I know-how but if you can do this job and do it your way with integrity and succeed, results are the name of the game because you and I know people who've done everything right and still bad at it. Like, “What are we talking about?”
I never realized that about you. I'm blown away. I never even thought about it that way. I remember you were like, “Don't tell me I can't do it in twenty calls because I'll figure it out,” but then I think about all the consulting and training my firm's done with. You're always like, “Lance, do your freaking thing. I want the details. Make them better at X.” I didn't have to get involved. You like, “This is the big rocks.” That makes total sense to me now.
I was on a call with a guy. He did this culture index on me. He was the owner of this company. He goes, “You're not an introvert or an extrovert. I'm listening to you right now. You're an ambivert, which means you have a select social ability.” I have the tendencies of an extrovert but qualities of an introvert or feel you can turn it on and off.
For me, it was hard in the beginning. I think I go back to days where there's this proverbial ceiling that no one will tell you about where you're trying to navigate as a woman in sports, a Black woman in sports. You have to find ways to lean into what you want as an executive while not pissing a whole bunch of people off in the process, in particular in the early days.
Now, if I piss people off, I piss people off. I think that I've got enough wind in my sails at some level to do a little bit of that. You still need to be a good person and be respected for what you do but you've got to know when to speak up and to shut up. You've got to know when your opinion is warranted. You've got to be able to draw people into the discussion. It's much more art than science for me.
Sometimes salespeople are desperate to cut through the cutter but you’re trying to cut through it while you’re a part of it.
I think you can win in sales or science. I think the best people are a little bit of both. I straddle that in some ways. I am very scientific when it comes to what I present, how I present it, how I write an email, the things that I say, buzzwords but I'm going to drill it down and be strategic about who I call. I’m going to call the CEO and if I don't know the CEO, I'm going to know somebody who knows somebody who knows the CEO. I'm going to get the call with that person versus starting with the VP of Marketing, who's going to have to take it to the CEO anyway. I'd rather you push me down and have you push me up.
There are two concepts I want to talk about there because I think one, no matter how many times my firm or myself goes in, people will talk about, “What's social selling and what's the rules and what's not?” You said something like, “As long as it's not illegal, immoral and ethical. Everything's on the table.” You were to literally and I tell your story we're talking about. You're one of the first people I have ever known that's like, “I got a huge deal because of Twitter.” This was like years ago. Talking about that story. You land a huge deal because you do what on Twitter. This is not a rule follower. I'm not going to follow your rule if it's not listed as a rule but I'm going to be respectful.
I think we live in a day and an age, and at the time, people were starting to put their personal life online, whether it's Facebook, Twitter, Instagram. Fortunately or unfortunately, you can follow anybody. When I would have a leader, somebody I wanted to do business with who wasn't either calling me back or answering my email. I was getting stuck in the fray.
I would find another tack. What I'm not going to do is lower my expectations from the level of person to get an easier entry point, which will ultimately make the length of the close that much longer because this person doesn't have the juice to make a decision but somebody who will talk to you. I would still keep banging for the person at the top.
What I did was I followed this guy who was the CEO of Chiquita Banana. They had moved their corporate headquarters to Charlotte, North Carolina. He said a comment about one of their business strategies and tactics and how it was keeping them up at night. I simply responded to him directly and I said, “I might have something that can help you. If I had a solution that could solve that, would you give me fifteen minutes and have a conversation?”
He was taken aback because, at the time, it was such a personal rant that he said, “If you think that you have something that can help me, I'd be crazy not to listen.” We scheduled a meeting. The 1 meeting became 2, 2 became 12 and before we know it, we have this entire relationship built and a deal in place with Chiquita Banana, which was crazy.
Woman Sports Execuitve: It’s trying to find the right allies in the business who see you for the talent you have, not your gender, your race or whatever that is. Then, it's getting them to buy into you systematically and be an advocate for you when you're not in the room.
All things considered but I think people are trying to cut through clutter then you shouldn't become the clutter. Sometimes salespeople are like, “I'm desperate to cut through the clutter,” but you're trying to cut through it while you're a part of it. Like, “How many emails do I get a day?” It's uncanny how many emails I get a day. It's not because what you're sending me is important. It’s because you're in the mass of all thousands of these emails. How do you get to me in a way that cuts through the clutter? We all got to reinvent that time and time again.
Let's flip it over because this gets into the leadership side of this. You've never been an excuse maker, as long as I've known you. You don't make a lot of excuses for yourself. You have very high expectations and we've talked for years like, “Sports has been a fricking boys' club for a long time.” It's starting to break and you and I are talking about this.
You think about some women who have broken through, Deanna Wilder, Gretchen. Down in Houston, Michele Kajiwara and Jamie Morningstar. You look at some of the people that have broken it and are running men's organizations, sports organizations. Talk about how that's made you tough. Talk about how you played that political game or need it.
It's been a long journey and my hats are off to every strong woman who stayed in there and ground it out. It can be a total beatdown. Not only because you're one of a handful and because you have ideas and you want your voice heard or because you look at organizations and while they do have some women employed, but the large majority of the people making the decisions are also, in fact, male and largely White male. You're trying to figure out how to be heard and not be a squeaky wheel at the same time. First things first is you got to deliver. Everybody that you've mentioned has started their career in a sales role and is great at doing it. You got to sell your way into respect.
All of them have been delivered. I think of Michelle at AIG, what a vicious market that can be out there. She's completely delivered.
You got to sell your way into it. First of all, you got to have the goods. From there, it's trying to find the right allies in the business who see you for the talent you have. Not your gender, race or whatever that is. That might be a hindrance. It's getting them to buy into you systematically and be an advocate for you when you're not in the room.
It's a very tricky political system because there are people who are intimidated. There are people who are going to hire their boys because they play hoops with them in the morning and girls aren't invited to the hoops game. There are all sorts of that stuff. Those relationships and pieces that you don't get because you're not invited as a woman.
They go out to play rounds of golf. It took years for me to get that invite but my fellow inside sales people were at the golf, kicking it with everybody. It's a hard road. What's happening is as organizations are getting more diverse, leaders are having to own that piece but when you never started from that place, it's hard.
I get constantly get asked, “I wanted some diverse leaders.” It's like, “If you don't have a diverse friend group and you don't employ diverse people from the beginning.” You can't think that now you're the president of something and you're going to find like a farm of Black, Hispanic and Asian people to go out and hire who know the business.
It's the little things that make the difference. There are inches all around us. If you can gather those together, you can create really massive gains.
You got to look introspectively. If you look around and you don't have diversity in your personal life and your social circle, it’s going to be hard to prop up those people and those candidates when it's needed. You get decks with people's pictures on it, who don't have any influence in the organization because they look pretty in a room or they look pretty on a presentation and that's not diversity.
In my opinion, diversity has nothing to do with race. Diversity is a diversity of thought. It means that you grew up in a way, in a place that I didn't grow up in, whether we're both White or both Blue or both Purple. I bring a different perspective to this situation than you do. Therefore, us together make something bigger than what would be there if I’m only surrounded by people like me.
There are two things there it's interesting of what you said. If you took like what you did with the guy from Chiquita Banana, if there is a way that I can do whatever. You've mastered the art of influence, which most people don't. When I looked at that, I had a lot of questions. I had a female executive say to me, “Your company is diverse.” I go, “What do you mean?” She goes, “I was on your website. It's all females.” I go, “What are you saying? Are you saying that I went specifically out and looked for all females on my executive?” She stopped for a second.
I go, “I know that came off strong but if I went back to my female executives, that I hired all female executives, how would they feel like?” I got to be honest with you, I hired the best people. It wasn't a choice for me. It was, you think different. There's loyalty there. With your career, this might be a tough one but you made me think of this. Have you worried more about the system or are you worried more about Meka?
I'm going to use something that you said to me many years ago and you've probably said to anybody and everybody who's reading to this show or any other. You asked me tough questions, leader and you said, “Meka, ship or crew?” I’m a perpetual crew person but what I ended up hiring is a lot of ships because you need both to make an engine go. When you asked me that question, my gut wants to say it's always been about Meka but the reality is it's always been about everybody else, the system and how I can be a person who changes and helps elevate the system.
If that helps me in the end, great, but I am not somebody who's motivated by my personal success. I'm motivated by the fact that I get to rise the tide of others because I truly believe rise and tide lift all boats. You always ask that question. I think it's poignant because I don't think an organization is successful if you don't have both crew people and ship people. I know because I know that I'm a crew. I look for ships if that makes sense.
I appreciate you saying that because that's my go-to question. As a leader, you got to worry about both the ship and the crew at the end of the day. It's not one or the other. It's both or equal. A lot of companies now are worried about the ship to make sure the ship gets to the next level. They're doing everything they can. I got a couple of more questions for you. One is, as a leader, from where you came as a salesperson, you've done such a good job of talking about your values. What's something you drive in particular and to all your sales teams and organization.
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