Film Room: Jeff Pearlman

Brian Johnson (00:16.836)
Hey, listener, good to have you with us. Welcome to Talent Chasing, where we bring real world stories from the fields, from the courts and the pitches of Major League sports and offices of corporate talent. It's our job to amplify those hidden stories and find meaning retaining and motivating the best talent in the world because no team exists anywhere without great talent. My name is Brian Johnson, former Major League Baseball player and scout.

Jasper Spanjaart (00:43.128)
My name is Jasper Spongot, I'm a journalist and filmmaker.

Chad (00:46.793)
And I'm Chad Sawash, recruitment industry veteran. And this episode is part of our film room series where we break down our favorite parts of a big interview, kind of like breaking down big plays in the film room after a game.

Jasper Spanjaart (01:03.234)
Yeah, so not quite breaking bad, but it's going to be good because in this week's film room, we're breaking down our interview with Jeff Perlman, who's a bestselling author over in the United States of America. That was tough to get out. Maybe too much news about the US guys is maybe down to that. But another awesome interview, awesome conversation, even though I may be biased because I'm part of this podcast, but as a fellow journalist and future, hopefully bestselling author.

Chad (01:06.323)
You

Chad (01:25.876)
You are.

Jasper Spanjaart (01:30.718)
It meant a lot to me. So without further ado, we go into the first soundbite

Chad (01:36.873)
Here we go.

Jasper Spanjaart (03:12.746)
It's just, it's such a cool career path, but it's not just like, there's so many things in that segment that stood out to me. I mean, for him to be placed to that, you know, doing the beat writing of going, having to go to accidents and like what's going on, just, but just the basics, just the fundamentals, right. And I think that's something that's so true for so many professions where you think you're great at something, but you need that sort of reality to kick in and you need that bit of.

Chad (03:15.427)
yeah.

Chad (03:27.722)
Mm

Jasper Spanjaart (03:42.73)
someone to put you in your place, so to speak. But that was one thing that stood out to me. And also just the fact that he's obviously he's a best -selling writer, right? He's a very good author. I've read plenty of his books. They're all excellent. But he's like, he would, I don't think he's the type of guy that would ever describe himself as a great writer. So it's about being great, but staying humble and how do you stay humble? So that's one of the things I want to get over, go over with you guys, but also then just being placed in a situation where

Chad (04:07.114)
Mm.

Jasper Spanjaart (04:11.68)
Yeah, I think he might think at that point, I'm too good to do this job, but having to learn from that. Just throwing some stuff out there for you guys to respond on.

Chad (04:23.401)
So yeah, mean, most of the, most of the greats don't, don't call themselves greats, right? There's some, there's some humility that's there. I think for, for me, Jeff didn't know where he was falling down. He was obviously, and, but his editor did. And that was, that's what a true leader does when you're mentoring, you help those individuals round out their game, right?

Jasper Spanjaart (04:28.565)
Absolutely.

Chad (04:51.911)
and he was not rounded out. He didn't understand the when, why, he didn't understand the actual basic structure and the facts that you needed to build this world's word salad on top of, right? It's the difference between having a word salad and having word salad that actually has structure and meaning to it, right? And that's what he learned to do only because, only because he had a leader who could identify where he was falling down and helped out. And I mean,

It's not even mentioned in this clip. You definitely have to listen to the entire interview listener. but Jeff worked for pet fancy. mean, he wrote for, he wrote for a lot of different magazines and he just had the, the, the, the, the drive in the discipline because he knew what he wanted to do. And, and again, having that drive and then having, you know, leadership and mentors. mean, that, that to me is, is the big key and the recipe to success.

Brian Johnson (05:50.114)
Yeah, I love that. Mentors and leadership is such a big thing. We've talked about before between three of us how leaders don't just happen. They have to be molded. They have to be taught how to lead. But I think one of the things that really gets over mentioned a lot as a cliche, Fundamentals. Fundamentals are important. Fundamentals, fundamentals, fundamentals. But we don't say why fundamentals are important. And I know we've talked about this, but I want to bring it up because that's what I hear Jeff saying.

Chad (06:13.908)
Yes.

Brian Johnson (06:19.928)
He's like the when he really learned how to do this right, this writing thing right was stick to the facts. Who, what, when, where, why. And then from there, like Chad mentioned, kind of build off of that. But the reason why fundamentals are so important is because you have to be do those over and over and over. So it's muscle memory. So it's mental memory. it's so it's it's part of your DNA. So then when the game speeds up.

or or you get a writing gig for a national newspaper or you get the opportunity to present in front of your department or the national sales conference, whatever it may be. When the lights turn on and you have to perform, your muscle memory is is already grounded. So you don't have to think about that. So therefore, because you don't have to think about the fundamentals, you can keep up with the speed of the game. Right. You can you can adjust to the speed of the game because you don't have to worry about your fundamentals.

Jasper Spanjaart (07:05.218)
Yeah.

Brian Johnson (07:15.204)
They're already taken care of. Your body knows what it's doing. Your brain knows what it's doing. Your instincts are reacting. So now you can adjust to the other things that are happening. That's where greatness comes in, in my part. Or not even greatness, just satisfaction of doing a job well done or being able to do your, execute your responsibilities well. Fundamentals are important, but it's because of that. It allows you to do more stuff if you get those down.

Jasper Spanjaart (07:28.15)
Hmm.

Chad (07:39.669)
Well, I don't see us training on fundamentals enough in the business world. I remember when I first got into sales, we did role playing all the time, all the time. And what we would do is we actually had time put forth during the week where we would actually come up with some of the hardest objections or some of the biggest issues we're seeing in the industry. And then we would start to role play around that. again, know, two heads are better than one. And then when you have 10 in a room,

Brian Johnson (07:48.314)
Mmm.

Jasper Spanjaart (08:02.018)
Mm

Chad (08:08.617)
and you're starting to play to that, a couple of things happen. First and foremost, you don't care who you're talking to. You've already been put through the situations. You've already been put through those situations, right? So for the most part, you have the confidence to have those conversations and you also present yourself as an expert because this isn't the first time you've done this, right? So I think the practice, the preparation, it's one of the things that we did in the military and what they continue to do so damn well.

is the training and the planning, that's two thirds. The actual execution is one third. In corporate America, we do a tenth and then we try to push the 90 % into executions. Like, well, you haven't trained and planned enough, right? So yeah, think there are some things that we can definitely learn on the corporate side and we need to instill from a fundamental stamp.

Jasper Spanjaart (08:50.722)
Yeah.

Jasper Spanjaart (08:58.934)
No, think practice still, can't get it wrong anymore, right? I think that's the sort of mantra that is, but I think, I think you're, it doesn't, it's not just corporate America, right? It's everywhere because as people sort of put an emphasis on onboarding new hires, I am always sort of fascinated by it because it's like our onboarding period lasts three weeks. And I'm like, but in three weeks, will that person be capable to do a job? Like, no, like we can't expect people to, even if the onboarding period is six months.

Brian Johnson (09:03.802)
Love that.

Jasper Spanjaart (09:29.014)
Like you need to continuously train people because if you're not training people and if you like saying for sales, it's so obvious like going through the motions of what's going on in the world and how do we need to respond to that? If you haven't trained that, how can you be expected to perform like in the real back in the real world where you need to, you know, say the right things, do the right things, read the right, ask the right questions. So I think it's.

It's so weird. And I think it's also why you see so many companies having that problem of retention, right? we can't retain enough talent. Well, have you trained your people enough? How are you continuously? Have you put not just an onboarding program in place? Have you, have you kept a sort of continuously boarding program in place where you're just continuously trying to teach people stuff, give them, give them two, two weeks or sorry, sorry, two days in a month, just to train, just to learn stuff, just

Chad (10:10.057)
Yeah.

Jasper Spanjaart (10:19.244)
talk about what you guys are doing. And that could be applied to any team, think, to any sort of realm of the world.

Chad (10:26.943)
Yeah, Brian, you ready for yours? Here we go.

Brian Johnson (10:28.729)
Ready?

Brian Johnson (11:19.17)
Yeah, know, what hit me here is, you know, and again, I keep referencing a kind of our modern day way of communicating our social media world, right, where anybody does anything wrong or makes any mistake or mispronounces something or or falls right in the all the blooper clips, right? Someone falls, that becomes our entertainment that they got hurt. I'm entertained by that. I'm laughing at that. And I'm I'm throwing my opinion and criticizing, criticizing, criticizing.

Because like, you know with X is just a cesspool of criticism and nasty and it just I can't even spend any time in there But having said that it's really interesting to hear the grace of Walter Payton's brother Where he loves his brother, but he's got to be honest and answering the question honestly There's grace with that, right? My sister told me once because again being a celeb having a celebrity in your family, right?

Jasper Spanjaart (11:52.157)
yeah.

Chad (12:02.324)
Yes.

Brian Johnson (12:15.994)
So maybe I wasn't in the Hall of Fame, but there was a celebrity aspect to the thing that you do. Therefore, everybody kind of so your brothers and sisters are affected by it. Your parents are affected. Your parents love it. But your brothers and sisters are like it's a it's a it's a it's a win lose proposition. Right. Because no one gives a damn what you think. No one gives a damn how you're feeling. Everybody's like, hey, how's your brother doing? How's your sister doing? Hey, how how's everybody else doing? So they overlook you. And then, you know, they kind of

don't really care about you at all. So to hear that from Walter Payton's brother was really powerful for me. But you know, Chad mentioned this before, we built up folks and put them, just because they're great in one thing, we therefore expect them to be great in everything. I think that's unfair as a society.

Jasper Spanjaart (13:04.51)
Absolutely. We put so many people on a pedestal and then we wait for them to fail. And it's like the court of public opinion has become such a weird world. Absolutely. Absolutely. And I don't know how to relate this to sort of, but it's just, yeah, I mean, it's happened so often, like in the past where entire careers have been ruined over the fact that someone put a bit of information out there in the world or even a police report, like someone could file a police report and that person would

Brian Johnson (13:14.094)
And people celebrate that. The idiots out there celebrate people's...

Chad (13:17.235)
I do. I do.

Jasper Spanjaart (13:34.046)
not be convicted or just be completely innocent, but the information's out there already. And that is what could damage people. It can ruin careers. It's happening right now as we speak. It's happened so many times in the past and it's going to keep happening because people are just going to, I don't know, just judge people based on something. I read a line about that guy. So that must be true.

Chad (13:45.61)
Yes.

Chad (13:56.607)
Yeah. The hard hitting fact is this is, we're talking about Walter Payton. This is, mean, one of the iconic, iconic football players running backs of the game. And knowing that he was going through these things. And yes, I think the key word here, Brian's the grace that his brother gave him.

Jasper Spanjaart (14:02.904)
Hmm.

Jasper Spanjaart (14:12.351)
Ever.

Chad (14:23.785)
And hopefully more people would give them. And that would be my only, I guess, advice to listeners out there is like, grace goes a long way, not just for you giving to them, but understanding that as a person and knowing that you are getting that grace, it will come back to you tenfold. And I don't, again, I don't want to make this sound like this is, know, kumbaya, but seriously, if you treat somebody that way, it's like if you treat them with loyalty.

Brian Johnson (14:43.706)
Hmm.

Chad (14:53.597)
You're loyal to them. They're gonna be loyal to you. You trust them. They're going to trust you you give grace You're going to get grace, right? So yeah this to me just it was incredibly impactful because we hear about this all the time, but the name Walter Payton That just that's that hit me like a sledgehammer

Jasper Spanjaart (15:17.025)
Next clip.

Chad (15:17.343)
All right. All right. Yep. Last last but not least of the Perlman Diaries. Here we go.

Chad (16:29.225)
So in sports and in business, sometimes we tend to look at individual outcomes, high battering averages, great ERA, smashing sales goals. We look at those metrics more than someone's character. I've built teams and businesses for decades and I can tell you that some of the most toxic employees are the great individual performers, but we have to remember it's not a bunch of individuals. It's actually, we're trying to build a team and I've asked

Jasper Spanjaart (16:43.042)
Hmm.

Chad (16:57.983)
great performers because the holistic performance and health of my teams were more important than that one person. And I believe this John Rocker story really personifies just that. He was a very deeply flawed character. And as we come off talking about Walter Payton and giving grace, right? You can also have an individual who literally can poison the well. And I would say that he probably, you know, was a poison of

The wells of a few teams now now Brian when this came out you weren't too happy with Jeff when this came out Why was that?

Brian Johnson (17:36.088)
Yeah, yeah. So I was still playing at the time. I had come across Jeff as a reporter. He was a reporter. He was writing for the magazine, right? Old school magazine, the Sports Illustrated magazine. so, dude, I didn't know him. And so when it came out, I was a big, Sports Illustrated guy. had it every week subscription for my whole life. And so I read the article and I was conflicted. I was like, wait a second.

Chad (17:39.987)
Mm.

Brian Johnson (18:03.31)
You know, this guy, you know, again, from the player's point of view, this guy took time to answer your questions. He kind of, you know, was honest about things, blah, blah, blah. And I'm kind of reading it, but then the more I'm reading, the more I'm reading, I'm like, okay, this is different. This is a whole different deal. So, but my initial reaction was like criticizing the writer. And by the end of the article, I'm like, okay, this is very different. But again, Jeff Perlman broke the glass a bit. He broke the norm.

Jasper Spanjaart (18:32.833)
Hmm.

Brian Johnson (18:32.844)
In that he was, again, when you hear his reasoning, you hear his time with him. He gave the guy grace over and over and over and over again. He didn't want to write the piece that he actually wrote. But in the end, he was bound by his code of honor to be a, a writer, a truth, a sayer to report it, call it how you see it. Right. And I love that his, that he talks about this openly about the challenge that he had to do what he's supposed to do as in his role.

Chad (18:32.945)
Mm -hmm.

Chad (18:40.233)
You did.

Brian Johnson (19:02.904)
But also not looking to rip somebody in public, but in the end, it looked like he ripped somebody in public. But Jasper as a writer, I'm sure you can relate to that. I think you got into a couple great questions with him there. How does all this stuff hit you?

Jasper Spanjaart (19:20.32)
No, it's so important to hear this perspective on that because you think oftentimes you'll have a sort of radar what is right and what's wrong. it's like, it the price of being right? Is that a price you want to pay? So I've had interviews before where I've done documentaries and people weren't entirely willing or not willing at all to talk to me or to do an interview or stuff like that.

You go into the hall ordeal of how do you then portray these people in that documentary? Because these people aren't asking questions that need to be answered. And you sort of left without any real room or space to ask those questions. So how do you depict them then? And I think it's for him, for Jeff Berman, absolutely like that's the only thing he could have done. Like from a morality point of view, it's the only thing he could have done. Because if you give that guy a grace a few times, everyone slips off.

slips up, none of us are perfect. That's fine. But if you give the guy graze a few times and he keeps just pushing you back and you in that character, like that is it. That was his true character, right? Cause he thought, you're not going to write about that. You're not going to write about the drop pencil. But for me, I'm, I'm, I completely agree. And if I'm depicting someone, I know I've made obviously like biographical sort of documentaries and following a person for weeks on end, like, and I've been lucky in that sense. I've only had to follow, had to follow.

Chad (20:20.009)
Yeah.

Jasper Spanjaart (20:48.972)
people that I ended up spending, you know, spending a lot of time with and enjoying that time. But on the flip side of that, like you need to keep your eyes open, like, because you can't just fall in the trap of liking someone and then just seeing them through that lens. You need to make sure that you're as objective as you can be, like full objectivity is tough, but you need to be as objective as you can be. it's, I mean, it's, it's a tough.

Chad (20:53.204)
Mm -hmm.

Jasper Spanjaart (21:13.558)
It's a tough situation to be in as a writer and as a journalist when you're encountering something like that, what Jeff encountered.

Chad (21:20.117)
When you listen to that interview, you hear one stupid incident after another during that time that he spent with John Rocker. The pen was the, the straw that broke the camel's back, right? Just the, the, character flaw of, well, I don't need to, I can just throw anything wherever I want. Somebody else will pick up my stuff. Somebody will pick up after me, right?

Jasper Spanjaart (21:34.466)
Mm -hmm

Jasper Spanjaart (21:46.583)
Yeah.

Chad (21:47.451)
And again, that character in itself, that was a bridge too far. was all the things that happened. And then he had the straw that broke the camel's back. And it was the pen that he threw down and said, yeah, some janitor will pick it up, right?

Brian Johnson (22:02.382)
Yes, it's a straight evil, know, mean, just straight, straight manipulative. Hey, but manipulative forethought involved knew the impact it would be, wanted the impact that it had exactly. And I think for me here, the to the journalist, right, to the writer, to the person who's in this position that the Jeff was in, I think oftentimes we'll think of.

Jasper Spanjaart (22:05.144)
Brian Johnson getting right to it.

Chad (22:08.809)
WAH!

Yeah. Yeah. Didn't care.

Jasper Spanjaart (22:12.214)
Hmm.

Brian Johnson (22:29.188)
We put too much weight on our shoulders as writers or as journalists, whatever it may be, because the person who's being interviewed has a responsibility as well. They have the decision to make how they want to be portrayed. So they are making the conscious decision. I want to be portrayed this way because this is who I am. So therefore that gives the writer that gives Jeff Perlman the green light to say, hey, we have a contract, we have a verbal contract here.

Jasper Spanjaart (22:40.95)
Absolutely.

Brian Johnson (22:57.178)
We both are involved in this. don't have to reject my professional integrity because I'm trying to be nice. I have to write what I see and you're showing me what you want me to see.

Chad (23:10.195)
Yeah. Well, again, listener, another, another episode, a little tape on the, on the, the, film room, we're going to be back. We'll do another film room session, but also many other interviews. So check those out, until then, go check out any of the podcasting platform that you're listening to subscribe, send it to your friends, have them all subscribe and we'll see you soon. Later.

Jasper Spanjaart (23:37.09)
See you next time.