108: From Busboy to the Stanley Cup: How Sean Henry Built Smashville

From busing tables on the Jones Beach boardwalk to building one of the NHL’s most admired workplace cultures, Sean Henry’s leadership journey is anything but conventional. In this episode, Sean shares how he helped build Smashville by putting culture first—using trust, humility, fun, and servant leadership as a real competitive advantage.

This conversation is packed with hard-earned lessons on motivation, decision-making, culture-building, and why people don’t quit jobs—they quit environments.

What You’ll Learn in This Episode

• Why fun is not a perk—but a leadership strategy
• How servant leadership creates trust at every level
• Lessons from bankruptcy, bad bosses, and bold career risks
• How listening to employees transforms culture
• Why great leaders remove silos and lead from the floor
• How Smashville became one of the NHL’s top workplaces

Episode Timestamps / Chapter Markers

00:00 – Why this episode matters & what makes Sean Henry different
01:38 – From busboy to CEO: early lessons in work ethic
03:14 – “Leave it better than you found it”
06:21 – Motivation isn’t money—here’s what actually works
07:42 – Why Sean doesn’t read management books (except one)
10:31 – Leadership mistakes and what not to do
13:45 – Don’t make your passions other people’s burdens
15:31 – Betting everything on a startup—and going bankrupt
18:38 – Choosing who you work with matters more than the job
21:05 – Turning around the Tampa Bay Lightning
24:30 – Trust starts at the top (and goes down)
26:23 – Breaking silos and building one team
30:31 – Confidence, humility, and decisive leadership
33:09 – Innovating when “it’s never been done before”
36:12 – Installing urinals yourself (yes, really)
38:40 – Why Smashville is a top workplace year after year
41:58 – The power of fun, joy, and shared purpose
45:44 – Final thoughts on leadership and service

Links & Resources

• Connect with Sean Henry on LinkedIn:
  https://www.linkedin.com/search/results/all/?keywords=Sean%20Henry%20Nashville%20Predators
  
  
• No Limit Leadership Website:
  https://nolimitleadership.com

Interested in exploring a thrilling vision for your life with me or another Novus Global Coach? Go to www.nolimitleaders.com/vision to apply.

No Limit Leadership is the go-to podcast for growth-minded executives, middle managers, and team leaders who want more than surface-level leadership advice. Hosted by executive coach and former Special Forces commander Sean Patton, this show dives deep into modern leadership, self-leadership, and the real-world strategies that build high-performing teams. Whether you're focused on leadership development, building a coaching culture, improving leadership communication, or strengthening team accountability, each episode equips you with actionable insights to unlock leadership potential across your organization. From designing onboarding systems that retain talent to asking better questions that drive clarity and impact, No Limit Leadership helps you lead yourself first so you can lead others better. If you're ready to create a culture of ownership, resilience, and results, this leadership podcast is for you.

Transcript

Sean Patton (00:00)
Before we jump in, let me just say this episode is packed. It's not every day you hear a CEO talk about installing urinals himself, handing out ice cream in meetings and leading with equal parts grit, humility, and fun. Sean Henry, president and CEO of the Nashville Predators, brings the kind of leadership that doesn't just build winning teams, it builds winning cultures. We talk about what he learned from working as a teenage busboy, the leadership mistake that still sticks with him.

and how fun became a strategic advantage inside one of the NHL's top ranked workplaces. If you care about building culture, leading people, or just want a better way to run your team, this one's worth sticking around for.

Sean Patton (00:50)
Welcome to the No Limit Leadership Podcast. am your host, Sean Patton. And today we have someone very special. Sean Henry is the president and CEO of the Nashville Predators. And under his leadership, the team has not only been a force on the ice, but a powerhouse in building the culture, community, and connection. Sean brings serious energy, heart, and hustle to everything he does. From working on the boardwalk as a teenager to getting his name engraved on the Stanley Cup, Sean has one of the...

one of most unique and inspiring journeys in sports leadership. He's built one of the most admired workplace cultures in the NHL, led the charge in making Smashville a top destination in sports entertainment, and has become a civic leader in Nashville, using this platform to create real impact. I know this conversation is gonna be packed with insight stories and a whole lot of fun. Sean Henry, welcome to the show, brother.

Sean Henry (01:38)
And that last line scary man. I gotta deliver my job. Well, thanks.

Sean Patton (01:42)
I know I do

the opposite of what I like to do in my life for my guests. I like to set high standards. I like to keep things low in my own life. man, you we got connected because you graciously gave your time to the group I'm a part of, which is the West Point Entrepreneurial Group. And we had a summit in Nashville and I really enjoyed your talk and I'm a huge fan of the work you do. So thanks for being here today. Yeah, just thanks for being here.

Sean Henry (02:08)
Well, I appreciate it. That's an inspiring group, man. There's number one, think 90 % of people in that room chose to serve our nation, which it's always humbling to be around a group of people like that. And then the second is almost everyone in there is also an entrepreneur where, know, kind of putting it all on the line, you know, on every front, your career, your ego, your family. And then obviously the investment and you walk out there thinking, my gosh, I've accomplished nothing in my life. Number one.

Number two, you're just so inspired. yeah, that was a really nice afternoon to spend. So thank you.

Sean Patton (02:39)
Absolutely. Well, I want to dive right into it. You have such a ⁓ unique background and told some stories around, you know, literally starting your career on the ground floor, know, busing tables on the Jones Beach boardwalk. I believe it was in Long Island, right?

Sean Henry (02:54)
That is correct. Yeah, the garden spot of the country. I thought it was the most beautiful beach in the world until I saw a second one.

Sean Patton (03:01)
So, you know, how did those early, you know, gritty jobs like sweeping sand off the patio for minimum wage shape you and your perspective in terms of your plan to move up and have a career?

Sean Henry (03:14)
Oh, it's a question I'm asked a lot. I don't think I ever answer it very well. You know, for for me, I'm really fortunate. I five older siblings. It was pretty big age gap between me and the next one. They're all about a year apart. And, you know, those five pretty inspiring to me, kind of raised me with my parents work ethic was everything treating people the right way or striving to is just what you did. It wasn't really something you set out like, oh, this is a goal of mine. This is

I should think about this. It was no, that's just what you do. That translated to my really very first job. I didn't even before that I worked for my dad on the side, know, he's a carpenter. So when he did a side job, I was always with him. and his mantra was very simple. You just leave every job site better than when you found it. And I'll never forget, we were in a restaurant once putting up, ⁓ molding around like some door frames, pretty easy job overnight. And the place was disgusting.

absolutely nasty. And I remember I went in the kitchen and get something in there, this one refrigerator that was a brownie refrigerator, it's just full of brownies. Oh my gosh, like I just hit, you know, Willy Wonka's factory. So I remember my dad came around the corner and you know, I had frosting all over my face and crumbs all over. I was like, what did you do? You just stole. I like, I didn't steal your brownies, you know. So of course, he made me clean it up, made me pay for them. But when we were getting ready to leave, was like, hey, we have to vacuum the dining room. I said, why?

God, here is nasty. He's like, yeah, he's a good tomorrow when they come in and they know it's gonna be cleaner than when they left it. Our work's gonna look better. And that kind of never left me. And again, when I was a busboy, I knew one thing, if I did a better job than Mike Butler, the guy next to me, a good friend of mine, I'd get more hours and more hours you got, know, the bigger your paycheck was, the bigger paycheck was, you know, the easier life was in certain areas, you know, to go away some worries. So it really was just a work ethic.

defined by that's what you do. And then the greedy part of me saying, if you do a good job, that makes someone else's life easier. You know, people are going to treat you differently. Kind of follow that my whole life by accident. And it's weird, you know, certain things become habits, habits become just who we are. So I've always been pretty proud of being the best busboy at that Robert Moses and Jones Beach. And I know it sounds a little silly, a little arrogant, but I tell you, I can call four or five guys I worked with back then, you know, 40 years ago.

And reluctantly, they'd be like, ah, shoot. Yeah, he was better than us. And I wasn't better. I just knew if I worked harder, I'd get more hours. It was that simple. I also knew what to do certain tricks. Was it going to start raining out? Because you're going to get sent home if it rains at the beach? Start doing a project no one else wants to finish. So there's some manipulation in that too. You start pulling all the kegs out of the walk-in refrigerator, scrubbing the floor, and all of sudden, you're a 19-year-old supervisor. Like, was all children that ran it, realizes she doesn't want to finish that.

So you got to get your extra two, three, four hours.

Sean Patton (05:58)
There's so much in that as a teenager in terms of there's the altruistic work ethic and just doing the right thing, leaving things better than you found it, providing value. If you provide enough value to other people, it'll come back to you. And then there's the make yourself invaluable to the people that you work for. like you got a whole life lessons there running around the beach.

Sean Henry (06:21)
That is

funny, know, years and years ago, were designing a new sales plan or commission plan. And I my boss, who was a mentor of mine, I met him when I was 22 years old and we were in Detroit together and Tampa together, he invested in a company I was part of. And he said, why are we doing it this way? I said, man, we have to hit on true rewards for people to do really good work. Well, you also have to figure out what's important to them.

and lay the path out that way, you so they don't have to manipulate themselves like me pulling kegs out. And I remember telling them that same story. was like, the right people are going to be motivated for all the right reasons. But there's some selfish nature in all of us. And if we can hit that trigger too, can be a pretty magical sales plan. And we ended up leading the league in attendance that year in Tampa, Florida, of all places.

Sean Patton (07:06)
Wow. So it's so interesting. was actually doing a house facilitating a mastermind with a bunch of senior sales leaders, CROs, and we had some lively discussions about comp plans and some of those basic, the basic lessons you just called out of like, how do you align personal goals and motivations with company goals and the magic happening when you align that? But I think

Sean Henry (07:28)
Mm-hmm.

Sean Patton (07:29)
I don't know if you've seen this, I see so many leaders that the assumption is it's always money or the assumption is whatever motivates them motivates other person. Maybe it's a promotion, not every, especially in sales, not every sales person wants to get promoted, you know? So it's, but you've got to have those personal conversations. I wonder what your approach has been, especially maybe in that instance to try to draw out like what are those real motivations in the individuals inside your organization?

Sean Henry (07:42)
No.

Yeah, I think that's always driven you hit already by conversations, you know, getting to know people. And I don't read management books. They kind of make me laugh. You know, people have talked about them all the time. But there's one that I think is good. It's called Fun is Good. And Mike Beck wrote it. Bill Beck's son is one of the best promoters in sports history. But the whole thing is just get to know people, celebrate when things are good and when things are bad, don't get too down, but have an honest dialogue and conversation about it. But if that's the only time you're talking to people.

You're never going get to know them. You know, it's important to have a robust beverage area. know, the most dynamic, cool coffee machine, soda, juices, water. And we have all these crazy machines upstairs for one reason. One, it's healthy for people to drink a little bit more water. Two, you know, people save money instead of run down the road to some expensive coffee shop if you have it in your own house. But most importantly, you end up spending an extra half hour a day or so just talking to people about

a game last night, their son's graduation, their daughter's game, dance recital. You don't even know that you're getting to know people. More importantly, they don't know you're getting to know them. So then you understand what motivates that person a little differently because we are all different. And none of us knew that not that long ago. But I was in a pretty cool lecture that someone else was giving. And it's so fundamental. I can't believe it took me to my age to understand this a few years ago.

So when you write an email to 10 people, how many emails did you write? I'm like, what is this? The riddle of Sphinx? mean, you write one email and then you realize as he says it, you're right. I just wrote 10 emails. Like how will each person perceive it? When are you sending it? You know, what's the tone of each person within that department? It's multi-department. And once you break it down and realize that one, you'll send less emails or mass emails because you should structure them a little differently. But every single person, whether they went to the same college, grew up in the same suburb,

started the same day in the same position. Even the most like people in the world are so different on what's driving them that day. And I always thought it was going to be about money or time off or a bottle of liquor or free tickets to this or whatever. And it just it's not the same for everybody.

Sean Patton (10:02)
I love that. So it sounds like there's so many good lessons there. I'm wondering, you know, as you made some of those moves and it could be recent or maybe some those early career advancements from teenagers in your early years, you you suddenly get some great mentors, but I'm sure you had some other experiences of like what not to do. wonder if, you know, if there was some leadership mistakes or stories there that you could point to and be like, okay, I'm glad I saw that or did that because now I know not to do it in the future.

Sean Henry (10:31)
Yeah, I'm very fortunate and it really does start with my parents who are just two of most incredible people you could ever meet. and they grew up in, they born in the Depression era. My dad's youngest of ten worked his whole life. College was not an option for either one of them, you know, both first generation Americans. But they also had parents that drove them and pushed them forward. They got married young, but they understood the value of education and the value of work, which is kind of funny.

because they didn't go to college, but they knew it was so important. Again, two of the smartest people I've known and still reading into all of us. And you if you read, you're going to enjoy it. If you enjoy reading, you're going to write a little bit better. Like sometimes you don't even know you're being improved by things that you enjoy. So for me, it always starts with them and some of the stories that they've shared. literally being on job sites with my dad when I was four, five, six, seven, eight years old.

And then working with them always, you know, we got my union card early on and probably the worst carpenter in the history of the world. And it's tough being a carpenter son, you know, it's pretty tough sandals to fill, you know, you'll get that one later. I mean, there's some really, really cool values you learn on a job site because everyone's different. I mean, you have a lot of different trades. You people who are there for a week. Guys are there for 40 years. That alone, you start understanding how to be around people that are a little different than you.

So to me, that was always really important. Again, I've always had great mentors. I tell stories from time to time. Our president, Michelle Kennedy, would be like, wait a minute, why did you like that person again? It seems like they were awful to you. Like, no, it was always good. But there's one guy in particular that stands out that I don't care for. I don't know how I got hoodwinked by him. He's not attractive. He's not articulate. He's not smart. He's not kind. There's not one redeeming quality in this human. With that said, I left.

My company that I was with since I was 14 years old, it was a startup HDTV company. I was there the next Microsoft type of thing, you know, in this mid nineties, I was the third employee. I don't understand how I followed this guy. I mean, I really don't. And he got a lot of people to invest in the company and he turned out years later, I realized he never believed in what we're doing. Never thought we could be successful. It was just him improving his own lifestyle. But the biggest thing I learned from him in a negative way.

was don't make your passions other people's burdens. And I hate the University of Illinois so much. And I say that so proudly, they just played in our building Saturday night. It was a great game. The UT and them, know, so orange was everywhere. And I wanted UT to win so badly for one reason. This guy loved Illinois. And every Saturday, and I didn't care about college football. I didn't grow up with it. And now I'm jealous of people that, you know, have that passion.

And now my passion to where my kids go to school, I like them. But every Saturday football season, we had to get together and watch Illinois with him because that's what he loved. And we'd have a business meeting around it, but we never got any work done. I had a two year old son at home that was leaving on a Saturday at noon or one or three or four. And maybe a year into it, said, why are we doing this? We don't get any work done. You're taking my own time away where maybe I could be working or being with my family or whatever.

I said, no, no, we all like this. And that's where I realized the hubris or the arrogance of certain leaders. And if I like it, we all must like it. So it scarred me probably to a degree where I like parties. I like getting together. I like socializing. But I'm so afraid of inviting subordinates to dinner or lunch or party because they're going to say yes. And I always say to people, I want you to say no. If you have anything going on, if you're planning on raking your leaves that day, do not come.

And I know some people will always still say yes, but I think it's important to remind people that when you are doing things socially, let me know if you can't make it. Like there's no obligation here because unfortunately a lot of us, it's this time here especially, we all talk to our friends and we're like, hey, what are you doing tonight? Oh God, my boss invited me out to a Christmas party. I have to go. And they're like, no, should be joyful. And I always, I've learned more from that. Like don't think inviting someone somewhere.

is going to be as beneficial to them as you think it's going to be and make people feel comfortable missing out on things. And I think that's improved our culture here more than anything else. Now, at same time, people around me like, stop telling people not to come if they don't want to. Because that's tough footing as well. but again, I mean, when I first got here, we had full company parties at my house. Labor Day weekend, we'd have a big barbecue in the backyard. We had about 150 employees back then. So it was crammed. It was tight. You knew all the cooking.

Sean Patton (14:43)
Hahaha

Sean Henry (14:56)
But we love hosting people, my wife and I, my kids, right before COVID, we moved into a new house. We had the Christmas party at my house. It was, and then we had 350 employees. My house isn't built for that, you know, but to me, a crowded house is a good place and it shows people you care about them and you want to serve them. So servant leadership is important. At the same time, you got to make sure people are okay not coming. And by the way, I hate it a lot. I don't think it was every game they were playing every sport.

Sean Patton (15:17)
Yeah.

noted. Yeah. We'll make sure that gets out there. ⁓ You know, as what was the transition into, well, after that you talked about the HDTV kind of startup and that ultimately went bankrupt, right?

Sean Henry (15:31)
It did. you know, so I went there, I was at my company, volume services from teenage years, you know, through, you know, meeting my wife, getting married, having our first child, moving quite a few times. And, you I was on the golden path to, you know, the boardroom. You know, the CEO, vice presidents above me were just really good people. I knew me since I was a teenager, understood what drove me and manipulated that a little bit, but for good reasons.

And I remember going to our CEO saying, I was offered this job. The Pistons are investing money in this company. It's a startup. It could fail tomorrow. And he encouraged me to do it. He's like, if you don't do this, you'll always regret it. And he said, you know, jump off. I ended up cashing on my 401k, investing every dollar we had. And I really believed in what we were doing and it worked. I mean, we were the first to broadcast, first to sell TVs. We broke the chicken and the egg with programming and equipment. You know, there were no TVs. There was no program, no programs. are no TVs.

And we were doing it. What we didn't realize is the guy in charge was truly just squandering, you know, hundreds of thousands of dollars a month on vanity things that we just didn't need. And, ⁓ you know, we in a VC firm that, ⁓ two of the VC guys, and one of them went to jail one died before he would have, it was, it was a good lesson in really understanding who you're aligning yourself with. And that's important too. Sometimes you get so flattered that

My gosh, this visionary wants to hire me and he's given me hundreds of thousands of shares of stock that if it hits, it'll be worth multiples of that. Instead of sitting down and saying, who is the guy? Do you want to have dinner with them? Do you want them at your house for your son's birthday party? And if you can't say yes to those, you probably shouldn't work with them in an intimate setting, two, three, four, five employees. Maybe that could work in a larger company. I don't think it can.

You know, I got very good lessons from the Pistons when I went back to the Pistons, we bought the lightning of, know, Mr. Davidson, the owner of the Pistons, best owner in the history of sports, self-made billionaire, conquered many, many industry events of what we all do. But I only spent one, you know, weekend with him. And we were just talking to General, he was in his last year of life, not that he knew that or maybe did. So he was giving out a lot of good advice.

And I'll never forget, he said, just always make sure you're relying on yourself with people that you would admire and you want your kids to be around. And I thought, how simple, but how true. And right after that, I was offered a job with a sports team that would have been kind of going back home. And I just could not reconcile the owner with, I want to be around him? And his son-in-law was around and had some weird people working for him. And it was a dream job, I thought. And I remember sitting down with the president of lightning saying, I'm going to turn it down. And he said,

And why I you're going back home taking over a team that was iconic and it's kind of falling on hard times I said man, I just the guys weird And he said, all right. Well, I'm glad you're staying it was it was great But I think those are really good lessons. I learned that the most from that coming though and bankrupt I'm going through bankruptcy at the time was painful awful looking back is the best thing I've ever gone through it was like a master's class But the biggest thing I learned is I give this advice to everyone whenever they're

Sean Patton (18:19)
Yeah.

Sean Henry (18:38)
If I tell you if you're thinking about leaving, come talk to me. We'll help you in that interview process. We'll help you along the journey and the path. But most importantly, if you're going to work somewhere, make sure you like the people you're going to work for. You may be wrong, you know, once you get to know them better. But if there's something in your gut saying, man, I just don't know about that person, just say no. Next job is always there.

Sean Patton (18:58)
That's such good advice. I appeal back to the current of it. I took the entrepreneurial leap right out of the military. knew that I wanted to do what I'm doing today, which is work with leaders and be in leadership development. had four years at West Point, 10 years in infantry and special forces. I feel like I had crammed a lifetime of leadership lessons into those 14 years, but I didn't want to be the military officer. got out and was like, all right, business leaders, let me tell you about real leadership when I'd never been in business a day in my life.

And so I thought, what's the quickest way for me to, you know, see what, what works, what doesn't and what, what applies and what doesn't it's like, well, get a formal education in business. got MBA and then it was if I could start a company and get itself sustainably profitable, it doesn't have to be a billion dollar company. It just has to make money without me there. that seems to be, you know, I'll, I'll learn these lessons. And I learned out, I learned in my first three years that starting a business with zero business or industry experience is the fastest way to make as many mistakes as possible. And so.

My own bankruptcy later, you know, went from Green Bay commander, everything. then it was your point. It was like those hard years of, you know, in that four year span, I went through a painful divorce, left the military, the only job I'd ever known and got money from friends and family and took a loan and went bankrupt. And it was like, it's such a, it's so hard and it hits so different. And I can't imagine doing that, you know, having a family at the time, cause it was just me really.

Sean Henry (20:07)
It's hard.

It was funny, my parents' first and only investment they've ever made was in that company. My brother invested, my sister invested, my brother all invested, bunch of my friends invested. Again, we cashed our 401k because we all, I believed in it. They believed in it because of me. And that crushes you, right? When people closest to you, you think you let down, years later, you reckon something like, no, you didn't, it didn't work. I'm like, wow, that's, and you don't know that when you're

Sean Patton (20:14)
But. ⁓

Sean Henry (20:41)
you know, 30 years old.

Sean Patton (20:42)
Yeah, it's tough. You do learn those lessons. then, know, from there, I want to fast forward. You stayed with that company, you went back to Detroit, and then you ended up with the opportunity to go to Tampa Bay. And that was a very unique situation with where that franchise was at and that town was at. And you got almost like, it sounds like tasked with a turnaround plan, you know, at a company. So tell me what that experience was like.

Sean Henry (21:05)
It was the best thing I've ever been a part of until I came to Nashville. know, the Pistons invented our industry and they truly did. You know, they built really the first arena that contemplated more than sports. It was like we're going to run this whole business. It was built around fan amenities, around signage, around the first suites ever built really by design or in that building. Other venues built suites into the old press box or, whatever. The building was designed, it 88 and opened.

And the whole mentality was fans first. Let's, you know, embrace our partners, our players, our performers, our employees and our fans. And I was just fortunate because, know, I went there right out of college and I thought that's how everyone is. Like that's just, course. And I'm just on one hand, I'm so lucky I got that early on because it's amazing. know, 30 plus years later, there's still a lot of teams that are like, well, that's not our problem.

The city owns our building, blah, blah, blah, blah. Well, I want it like it's yours. And if you do that, life gets easier. But when we went down to Tampa, we were so arrogant because we're the best sports entertainment company in the world. You the Pistons, you know, again, invented what we do. And we own two amphibious business after in the country, you know, one of the busiest arenas in the country. We're going to show up and sell out like, my gosh, look at who we are. And what we neglected to realize is a probably the best lesson I learned.

brought in a few people from Detroit, you know, I flew in from St. Louis and everyone there must be a screw up. And that's why they were so bad and how dumb, right? But this is where leadership kicks in. We were the third owner in three years. You know, the 70 employees that were there heard the same thing from each group. You know, we're going to do this. We're going to be great. You know, you're going to have the freedom to do this. Handcuffs are off, you know, whatever silliness was said. We all said the same thing, maybe slightly differently. And

I remember like doing the same thing with the rah rah and I was, I don't know, 30 years old, not even 30 years old, you know, fool myself and you know, Tom Wilson, our CEO was again, I say this admiringly and lovingly if he were here, he'd laugh. He was pretty proud of himself as well. Ron Campbell, president, same thing. Bill Wicked, our chief PR guy. We're all pretty arrogant, I guess you would say if you were listening. But I remember being at the party and talking about all the great things we're going to do, blah, blah, you're going be empowered.

and every face just shared with me like this.

And I'm thinking, what's wrong with these people? So afterwards, I grabbed two or three people that seemed pretty cool. I said, why weren't you fired up? Why weren't we fired up? Because it's July 5th and you made us come in for a stupid meeting. I was like, what do mean? It's July 5th. It's a Friday. We could have had a four day weekend. We had to listen to your dumb ass tell us about all the things that the last guy told us. And by the way, the last guy told us that. And you're not going to listen to us. You're not going to do this. And I realized, my gosh, we have work to do.

We have to prove to them where we're going, how we're doing it, not the other way around. And that was a good wake up call. And that's exactly what we did. We flipped it over to the employees, flipped over the fans, like, tell us what we're doing wrong. And, know, what are the handful of things that you want to do and you've never been allowed to? What are the few things that you tried and failed, but you want to try again? And most importantly, like, where are we as an organization really? And once you listen to the people that know, and then it

Allow them to activate and take their handcuffs off. And when something fails, you ask them, Hey, what could I have done differently to help you differently to make that success? The whole dynamic changes and it's like a wildfire. Once it starts, man, you can't stop, you know, people from altering what you're doing. I just read an article about, um, the owner or CEO of Ritz Carlton in late eighties when that brand was dying and every full-time employee could correct any mistake up to $2,000.

Now, most corrections were $60, $40, buy a cup of coffee, free Valley parking. Some that were jumping around playing, delivering a laptop computer. So I forgot during presentation and the whole thing was we want people talking about the Ritz Carlton, you know, as the best place in the world because the average traveler that's a Ritz Carlton person spends 200 grand over the course of their career. It's worth that free Valley parking. That's what we put in play in Tampa. Maybe not the $2,000 mark, but

buy someone that are hot dogs and sodas. And I do it to this day, every night, I walk up a concession stand, I always eat a hot dog, by the way. And I just start taking the people behind me, three or four groups, what do you want, what do you want, what do you want, what do you want? I never say who I am, I never talk about that. But those small things change what's happening, upgrading people's seats. Tonight is another example, I have eight seats for my family tonight, none of them are coming, I don't know why, but I'll just go find six other people.

you know, from the upper to come sit my seats. It's those little points of connection that I learned in Tampa that we're still doing today. When you listen to people, an amazing thing happens. They own what they're doing. And yeah, we turn it all around. Won a Stanley Cup, led the league in tennis, made the building the busiest building in America. Just really, really cool things. You know, that whole city was transformed around our success, the Bucs success when we were both the worst teams in sports.

Sean Patton (26:01)
Yeah, there are such great examples. And I remember hearing you speak before and through research about how you transformed or the way you envisioned the business in sports in Tampa Bay with partnering with the community, with partnering with the other sports franchise instead of being siloed. Can you talk a little bit about that approach?

Sean Henry (26:23)
Yeah, one of the main things when we walked in the door, you had they hired a company to run the arena. So you had the arena business. You had the team itself, team operations, and then you had the team business. Three very separate things. You literally had two box offices, two HR departments, two accounting departments. You had three different Christmas parties. You had three different schedules of who's doing what. And I just didn't understand it. And, you know, first thing we did was try to break down those silos. It's one thing to say.

You can't do it from externally. got to do it internally, you know, outward. And, you know, first thing we did is, we, bought that company out and you don't need a management company. We are management company. Like this is what we should be doing. And we hired most of the people from that company. But it sounds like a small thing, but it was major to have everyone paid on the same day. It was major to have the same, you know, playbook from an HR principal standpoint and those little things.

And again, we all celebrated together. So you break down those silos first and foremost, and then you build a connection with, know, hockey operations and to everything else you're doing. So many organizations treat that area as if, they're deities. So like, don't even look at the GM. We're not really proud of there and then here as well. All of Rob is flowing out of each other. You know, there's one area for your coffee and your drinks. There's one common restroom area, conference room, sit in the middle of it.

know, we're for Barry Trotz here is such a dynamic person. Um, he's our GM was our first coach. He loves walking through the sales area. He loves popping down to the event coordinators here and just plop it out and be like, what's up? What are you guys doing? And he's not doing that because he's trying to give them life lessons. He's learning as well. So when that's real, you're not just faking it. Those silos just don't exist. Everyone realizes we're all in this together. Uh, Saturday night we have.

Double header of Nate Bargazzi concerts one Friday night to Saturday in between those shows on Saturday Myself every executive every full-time employee will be picking up garbage in the arena bowl to make sure the rainbows clean for the next group coming I'm not saying that doesn't happen in other places, but the places it happens It's pretty cool. If you're a part-time employer and event service staff and you see all the suits, right? You know the People coming down from the ivory towers doing the same job you're doing

It makes life easier when things are tough. So it is about breaking down silos, reminding each one of us what's important. And what's important are the people coming in our front doors as guests, people coming in the back doors as our performers and our players. You want to make sure that they all know that every one of us is committed to putting on a great show and doing anything possible to make them successful. Make sure the stage is set when they come in. The most important thing you do on a concert when the road manager rolls in or the first truck rolls in, make sure coffee is ready to go.

I know it sounds so dumb, but I was a catering manager backstage. And if you're running around later, you're hungover or whatever, if that coffee is not done when they walked in, the tone of the entire day is wrong. And I always tell people the magic to a great concert is at five o'clock or six o'clock, whatever the time that truck rolls in, that pot of coffee is fresh and it's brewed. And you're there to be like, Hey man, how you doing? It sounds dumb, but it's the way it is. It's when you walk into a restaurant, order a iced tea.

They're like, all right, I'll go brew it for you. All right. Well, why weren't you ready for me to walk in the door? Kind of same mentality. Everyone comes in, we treat like a client. And again, you do that. Everyone catches it. It's contagious. And there are no silos. And that's, that's to me, really important. No, there is it's more fun, you know, to be an engineer or housekeeping person, knowing that you could have an input on the marketing plan, knowing that you can make commission on ticket sales.

Again, those long days get a little shorter. You you when you understand what's happening a lot.

Sean Patton (30:04)
I, it's such a good call out on, you know, in the military that we call that a common operating picture, right? Like what is, what is going on? How, how is what I'm doing here impacting larger picture and giving people ownership of it. And when I'm, what I also took out of that, that w what you just described and before that talking about the going to Tampa Bay originally was this lesson around how trust and respect has to go down in organization before you can ever expect it to come up.

Sean Henry (30:31)
Absolutely in so many organizations not just sports right? mean so many leaders Just don't get that and sometimes it's out of you know, immaturity, you know, maybe you got promoted before you should have and you don't realize that I always tell people appreciate getting promoted and the responsibility that comes with it Because more often than not most people I know have gotten promoted before they're ready myself included I mean to the point where absurdity you are like Me? Like how or why?

But the burden that comes with that is recognize it. I I always, I liked working for people who are always candid and showed a little vulnerability. At the same time, you are the leader. And when a decision has to be made, get input, do whatever, but then make it. And that's where we're going. And no, you might have to change directions tomorrow, but every time you make a decision, do so, not authoritarian, but this is what we're doing. This is why we're doing it.

Let's go. And here's the plan. We built it together. There's no reason we can fail. Uh-oh, we just failed. Let's retoggle it and do it again. But I think we've all worked where people are like, well, I don't really want to do it this way. Or I don't know why we have to do it, but just shut up and do it. And it's like, okay. And then they're always shocked that it didn't work as well as it could have. ⁓ And yet I like people that say, you know what? I don't know if it's going to work, but we have to do it. We got to get across this bridge, if you will.

We just hired a guy I started with years ago and I love him. And he always had this mentality. It's asses and elbows, man. As soon as we decide what we're doing, all I want to see is asses and elbows. So let's just go. Or his other saying was, I remember our forklifts were down and we had 200 kegs to move. was hotter than anything, our outdoor amphitheater. And we're all sitting around complaining like, oh my God, you know, like we wasted a half an hour complaining. And he finally said, look guys, they ain't going to move themselves. So it's going to stink.

Sean Patton (31:59)
Yeah.

Sean Henry (32:16)
But it's that, know, let's go grab a couple of hand trucks and start moving them. And a weird thing happened. We moved them, right? As opposed to just staring at them watching them get hot. But that, that to me is you have to be very strong in your convictions, but at the same time, a little bit vulnerable, but not out of they're making me do this or that's way it's always been. Or I don't know why, just do it. Sometimes you have to slow down and explain why, sometimes you don't.

Sean Patton (32:22)
Hahaha

Sean Henry (32:40)
But the more times people realize you're making sincere decisions and unwavering ones, we're all going to be in. And it's cool. again, I work for people that are just the opposite and work for people that are that way. And I know where I've always been more successful. It's working for people that make decisions.

Sean Patton (32:56)
Mm-hmm. Yeah, I love this almost balance you're describing between like confidence and humility. And like the ability to kind of hold both, you know, at the same time instead of like over-indexing on one or the other.

Sean Henry (33:09)
I remember we built the first ever all-inclusive club in Tampa. Now they're at almost every venue in America. Your food and beverage included in this great club. I will never forget, it came out of an off comment by an accountant at the Pistons. We were complaining about it per caps, basically what people spend when they come in the building on food and beverage. Let's just say back then, there were $15 a head. He made this offhand comment. He said, we added $30 to every ticket price and let people eat whatever they wanted.

We'd have a $30 per cap. We'd double our per cap. And it never left my head. I remember thinking, you know, Dan Rupinski was a lot of things, but he didn't believe in what he said. But I was like, he's a genius. That is, he's so right. And it took me a long time to get in position where I could actually do it. So we built the first one. I remember our food and beverage provider at the time. It was like, you can't do it. It's never been done before. I said, well, why can't we do it? All people were doing pre-buy the food. We're going to provide it.

at a level that they're going to love. They're going to talk about it. We were a bad team. So they were coming in to eat for free. Meanwhile, they prepaid it every game. They missed, you know, you got paid for something they weren't taking. And I'll never forget the first night we thought people would eat and drink X. It was like three X because they couldn't believe it. Like you're taking three extra beers only drink two sips out of it. You were taking, you know, three plates of, you know, whatever because you were waiting for it to disappear. Once it didn't, you normalize. Right. And

But I remember walking our CEO through the building. He was up in Detroit and again, say his name, Tom Wilson, invented everything we do. But on this one, he was wrong. He was like, I don't get why you're doing this. This is dumb. I saw it's so dumb that we sold 421 new season tickets. Last year we sold six new season tickets and we were awful. People are going to come out to beat us on eating and drinking for free in this amazing new club. But I remember he was like, you're wrong. This is never going to take fire.

The liquor control commission is going to take our liquor license away because you can't give away free alcohol. I'm like, we're not giving it away. We're pre-selling it. And every time someone come up with a reason you can't do something, you got to come up with a reason why it works. And I'm not exaggerating. Six days later, we started construction on the all-inclusive club in Detroit for the Pistons because it really was that simple. But again, there's an example of just because something's never been done before and a lot of people are setting their ways.

Sean Patton (35:14)
Wow.

Sean Henry (35:21)
are going to tell you why it can't be done or, or my favorite is I always call it the fire marshal clause. If anyone ever says to me, yeah, we can't do that. said, why not? Fire marshal. Like, you're a liar. Like that is not true. And I called that because I remember in Tampa, we couldn't do something because the fire marshal, you know, from the guy that was there forever. So I called the fire marshal, had lunch with him. So I wanted to walk through some things we want to do. He's like, ⁓ looks great. So let me ask a question. Do you know, I won't say the guy's name.

But do you know this guy? He's like, no, I never met him. And he said, well, just so he alleges we can't do this, this, this, or this because of you. He's like, that's just not true. So anyone who's ever worked with me knows the fire martial clause is nothing but bullshit. sometimes by the way, true. Like every, like one out a thousand times, you got to check yourself, but it's those things that with your strong in your convictions and you know, we can do something different for a better outcome.

Sean Patton (36:00)
Hahaha

Sean Henry (36:12)
You got to try it. got to push forward. And sometimes you got to convince people. Sometimes you got to bully it though, too, and say, look, Sean, you're wrong. And this is why you're wrong. We need to alter this and just try it. And by the way, if we're wrong, what did it cost us? When I got to Tampa, the building was never finished. just, the guillotine came down on Ballet of Engineering. was never finished. And in the restrooms outside my offices where the floor seats used to go to, there was this huge men's room with

three urinals on the wall and it looked like eight pipes where urinals should go. And I said, what, why don't we have urinals there? And building manager at the time said, they never finished it. I said, well, how much is a urinal? And they're like $375. I said, let's just go buy them, we'll install them. And he's like, well, we don't have to buy them. I said, well, what? Yeah, we do. He's like, no, we have them in storage. I said, wait a the building's three years old. You have the urinals.

The lines for the existing urinals are literally 30 people long and you didn't hang them? So we don't have the budget to pay the plumbers to hang them. I said, we have a plumber on staff. I said, by the way, I can hang a urinal, not well, it'll probably leak, but let's just do it. And that night, we got a bunch of people, we all stayed till like midnight, hung all the urinals. And guess what? You don't have lines for the bathrooms, but sometimes you need to ask the question. But there was a guy who was responsible for it in the building that never thought.

about taking urinals out of storage and hanging them on the walls where the pipes were. Like, you just gotta force people to think differently sometimes. And force is a bad word, but sometimes it does take force. The weird thing about it is you'll find some allies that you didn't even know existed that get excited about it, because they're the ones that hear the complaints about the lies. They are the ones that hear, you know, the players complaining about ice conditions. And all we gotta do is change the way we're managing the dehumidification. So the ice guy,

all sudden is a hero to the players who we all want to put in better conditions. There's so many examples of that that you just have to push forward on what you're doing and why you're doing it. And then it gets contagious.

Sean Patton (38:07)
⁓

I love that. as you know, as we come to the end here, I want to make sure we hit on the fact that, you know, the predators have been named a top workplace for 13 years. part of that, you've mentioned, I want to say four times now, I've been trying to count in my head about fun, about work being fun. I imagine that there's a correlation between top workplace and a focus on, on making work.

fun. So can you talk a little about like what makes the Smashville culture so special and how do you keep it that way over time?

Sean Henry (38:40)
Yeah. And again, it's sometimes it's us against them mentality. And, know, I'm sure you do this many times in your own leadership world. You can't use it all the time. But every once in while, it's they don't think we can do it right. Or they don't want us to succeed. Let's go. And it's a weird pack mentality. But once you get past that, you have to find different ways to motivate people. I know myself when I was having fun, I worked better. Like if I could.

You know, whistle. I someone work here not that long ago. I'm always whistling when I'm walking down the hallway. I get bored. I hate silence. And she said to me, it is so arrogant to whistle. I said, I'm sorry, what? I've never heard any whistle and got bothered by it before. And she said, well, you're making noise for other people. You think your whistling is wonderful. I said, no, don't. I can't sing. My lyrics are off. And I thought, wow, how miserable are you? if whistling makes someone happy or spinning keys on my finger makes that

person happy, leave them alone, get out of their way. But if I'm enjoying myself, chance are I'm a better person to be around. And all of a sudden, everyone's being picked up a little bit more. And again, I go back to that book, was a turnaround looking for the book, fun is good. I give it out all the time. think Mike Beck owes me money, you know, for his vacation house. There were books I bought. But it is, it's just, I don't care where you are or what you're doing, whether school, church, Little League, band, or restaurant. When you walk into a restaurant, the hostess is up eating happy.

Sean Patton (39:46)
Hahaha

Sean Henry (39:58)
You're already set. Like it seems good. If that hostess is on the computer, like how many people are in the reservation type in it has a frown on. You're put off a little bit. You know, if the waiter or waitress or bartender greet you a little differently and they're upbeat, it sets your tone differently. So if you're providing that you're creating your own environment, the better your environment is, the better you are. it's just this weird, know, inertia starts kicking in that that will keep spinning. And it's just a more enjoyable place to be.

When people bring their kids to work, which I love when they do, my kids grew up in arenas and stadiums. They learned ice skate, you know, in Tampa on the ice. They learned to play football on the Rams turf, you know, on the stadium. And we have picnics out there. They rollerbladed on our concourses. They stole sodas out of concession stands. Like we all knew they were doing it. But all of a sudden more people had their kids there. And let's be, we hear kids giggle and, know, playing hockey on the concourse or knee hockey. Your, your mentality changes and you're happier.

When you're happy most of the time, when things are dark and tough, you get through it together and you fight through it together. And that to me, that culture is unpenetrable. And sometimes you get that hedgehog come in and you're like, why are they here? They're miserable. And you got to recognize it quickly and go talk to them and say, look, it just seemed like you're not enjoying yourself. You hate the noise. Like our offices are loud and I love it. And right away you recognize when people don't like the beer cart.

at five o'clock every third Friday or they don't like the ice cream truck pulling up in the plaza and everyone literally running out of a meeting to get ice cream. I think it's the best thing in the I laugh when that one serious person like I'm trying to have a meeting. I'm like what was your meeting about? Well, we're setting up the plans on handing out the bobbleheads tonight. Really the doll with the spring on the head. You don't know how to get them distributed yet. How many people have to meet a meeting to figure out? Now it is logistics have to be there. I get it. But

giving them that eight minute break to literally race each other to the ice cream truck and getting something they haven't gotten since they were 12 years old and then come back in. Also in those logistics for the bot lead just got a little bit easier, right? And you know, it's amazing what an ice cream sandwich could do for someone's mentality or a beer or a free t-shirt or sometimes just, mean, the office is closed. It's too nice out. Just go home. And everyone comes in a little bit happier. And here I have

Sean Patton (41:58)
Yeah.

Sean Henry (42:11)
A neck brace on my back towel. I don't do this anymore. But in the old days, when you could be a little bit more mean, if you said no in a meeting, start shaking your head before the person was done talking, you had to wear the neck brace. And it was like that movie up, you know, the dogs were in the cone of shame. It was if you're wearing this, it was because you were were a jerk to someone in a meeting. Like, people talk. Now, we don't hand this out. We don't make people wear it anymore. But once in while, I'll it to a meeting and you sit at like

Sean Patton (42:17)
Yeah.

Hahaha!

Yeah.

Sean Henry (42:37)
Come on, let the person speak, give them the benefit of doubt. And again, even wearing that, it was fun. We have a lot of foundation events, we connect with the community. We have the most active foundation in all sports. We build a playground a year in public housing areas. And the fun thing about it is I'm always on concrete crux, I'm an old concrete guy, but there's another guy that thinks he's better than me. I'm like, wait a minute. And all of sudden you end up having contests over who's making concrete faster, who's pouring it faster.

The Moultz crew is doing the same thing. And no matter what you're doing, this guy's the executive vice president, this guy is, you know, the entry level assistant coordinator and whatever, they're doing the same job and laughing while doing something great for a child. That's a good place to work. It really is. And again, I've worked in enough places that weren't like that, where I remember when I was in Detroit and I love Detroit. I love the PAL sports entertainment, what they used to be. But I remember

the reward for working in an amphitheater show after a full day. You wore a suit during the day in July. And if you're working the amphitheater show, you got to change into your golf shirt at five o'clock. And I remember I walked in one day wearing shorts and a golf shirt and to a meeting at 9 a.m. at the CEO, he said, where's your suit? I said, it's in my closet. I was angry. He why is it in your closet? I said, because Tom, I can't afford to dry clean a suit every day. Number one, number two,

I gotta work eight hours after that I'm allowed to change into my golf shirt. So let me just wear my golf shirt the whole day. Like it was a small thing and he laughed and everyone else was like, ⁓ shit, Henry's getting fired. And he's like, do whatever you want as long as the show works. And it was a huge change up there. But I remember like how miserable I was every morning putting my suit on. Knowing I had to go work at Jimmy Buffett concert at five o'clock till one in the morning and get thrown up on by some parrot head drunk wearing a tutu.

Like, let me be a little happy. And I remember Tom Wilson has talked about that since then. He's I remember when this 22 year old schmuck who worked for the food and beverage company. Basically said, I'm not wearing a dumb suit anymore. And by the way, I wore a tie in 20 years. I don't understand why people do because we're in the fun business and you go to a bank or a funeral, that director better wear a tie when you come to a game. You're wearing a jersey. You got to buy a hot dog and a beer, maybe a 10 gallon foam hat. You have foam fingers on.

You don't want the CEO of company wearing you a three-piece suit, do you? So, any of you do, don't care, because I'm not wearing it. I'll end it with this, fun is good. I've never met anyone that was put in a fun environment, didn't have fun, as opposed to people put in a miserable environment and not have fun. And I'm not going to knock any of the other hockey markets, but we're non-traditional and we love it. And Northern markets used to put us down by saying, Tampa and Nashville, they're non-traditional. Yep. And we're fun.

You know, we used to billboards that said, we're going to charge it for the whole seat, but you don't need it. Meaning we want you standing up where some door of the markets, if someone's standing up, they get thrown out of the building. Like we want you on your feet, right? Like you want to be loud and exuberant. I like when other, I don't like too many fans from other teams coming here, but the few that do, because we try to lock them out. I like after a game when they say, man, that was the best time I ever had. And my team lost. Those are good, fun implements. And again,

Sean Patton (45:41)
Yeah.

Sean Henry (45:44)
We're a fun factory or a joy factory. Either you get that or you don't. And if you don't, go work in another industry. But if you work in the service industry, enjoy it. And too many people don't.

Sean Patton (45:54)
Yeah, Sean, that is such great lessons and having a culture of fun and inclusion and getting people to have buy-in with strong leadership. I'm sure the reason you've had all the success that you have had. And I appreciate you taking some time today to share those lessons with us.

Sean Henry (46:09)
Well, I appreciate you and congratulations on everything you've done. And hopefully you guys do your meeting here again next year. And I might sit down on the whole thing, just to get inspired. Because again, for myself, I got a paycheck every week. You know, I had that one little failure where I invested a little bit, but people have put their own, you know, neck out there, their reputation out there, their ego out there, and then their own money out there. It's so impressive. I mean, it really is. It's something that, you know, centers from now, we're going to read about that, like Robin Hood and, know, ⁓

Ivanhoe, because that's what it is. It's incredibly inspiring. And then you mix that in with those that have chose to serve our country. It's pretty powerful. And I hope you don't lose that when you're in those meetings, because from an outsider, it is so humbling. again, I walk out of there, walk in with a big ego, feel good about myself, walk out thinking, my gosh, I just sat with giants. So thank

Sean Patton (46:59)
Thanks brother, I appreciate it man.