Episode 195 – Graeme Gordon

Graeme is a CEO, Yankees fan, and Shakespeare actor

Graeme Gordon is a British former naval officer, now a CEO of Praxity – Global Alliance. He shares his stories of being introduced to baseball and falling in love with the New York Yankees, to almost accidentally being cast as a producer for a Shakespeare play. Graeme also talks about how these passions are beneficial in social situations in the workplace!

Episode Highlights

• Being introduced to baseball by a young child
• How he got into acting in Shakespeare plays through his daughter
• Talking about these passions in the office and offering outings to plays for his co-workers
• How acting has improved his speaking skills
• How his passion for baseball serves as a great ice-breaker

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Graeme’s Pictures

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At Yankee Stadium, with “tell all” T shirt

Flash-Saver of the Universe
 

Which one’s the Eyore?
 

 

Graeme’s links

Transcript

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    Welcome to Episode 195 of the Green Apple Podcast. This is John Garrett. Each Wednesday, I interview a professional who, just like me, is known for a hobby or a passion or an interest outside of work. And just by doing it or even sharing it, it makes them stand out like a green apple in a stereotypically boring red apple world. To put it another way, it’s encouraging people to find their and. You’re never going to believe when we talk with Graeme later about his and. He’s the CEO and acts in Shakespeare plays and also as a Yankees baseball season ticket holder, which is amazing, considering he lives in the UK.

    But first, I have a quick favor to ask you. If you like the show and are listening on iTunes or your favorite Android app, don’t forget to hit subscribe, so you don’t miss any of the future guests because I love sharing such interesting stories each and every week. And this week is no different with my guest, Graeme Gordon. He’s the Executive Director and CEO of Praxity which is the largest alliance of independent accounting tax and consulting firms in the world. And prior to that, he had a variety of positions in finance and accounting. I was fortunate enough to hang out with Graeme and meet him last year at the Association for Accounting Marketing Conference. So I know this is going to get crazy in a hurry.

    Graeme, thanks so much for being with me today on the Green Apple Podcast.

    Graeme: It’s great pleasure.

    John: I’m so excited to make time. This is going to be so much fun. But as you know, we always start it out with get to know Graeme on another level with my 17 rapid-fire questions.

    Graeme: I’m here.

    John: Okay, very good. Very good. All right, here we go. When it comes to trilogies, Star Wars or Star Trek?

    Graeme: Star Wars.

    John: Okay. All right, and your computer, a PC or a Mac?

    Graeme: It’s a PC.

    John: Okay. When you click on your mouse, right click or left click.

    Graeme: Both actually. I’m a happy clicker.

    John: There we go. I’ve never had that answer. Awesome. You’re just bragging. Do you prefer more hot or cold?

    Graeme: Hot. Oh, God, I moved from Scotland because it’s too cold. I love this place. I’d rather be in Florida than Scotland.

    John: Okay, okay. How about a favorite place you’ve been on vacation? You’ve been all over the world.

    Graeme: Well, vacation, Venice, I think.

    John: Oh, okay.

    Graeme: I got a place in Florida I love to visit because it’s an island. Having said that, I love Scotland. There’s an island in Scotland I love to visit.

    John: And what’s the name of that one?

    Graeme: L’Isle-Adam.

    John: Okay.

    Graeme: You have to roll your R’s there as well.

    John: Okay, perfect. I’m practicing. I’m practicing. How about when it comes to financials, going back to your accounting days, income statement or balance sheet?

    Graeme: Profit and loss.

    John: Okay, profit and loss. I like that. I like that. That’s very British of you. Would you say you prefer more suit and tie or jeans and a t-shirt?

    Graeme: Well, neither actually. It’s a khakis and buttoned down, open-neck shirts.

    John: Okay. Okay, kind of an in between. All right. Since you have the accounting background, I have to ask, do you have a favorite number?

    Graeme: Seven.

    John: And is there a reason?

    Graeme: Everyone says lucky. The other one is 42 because it’s the answer to everything.

    John: Okay. All right, Jackie Robinson’s number. That’s what that is.

    Graeme: Well, I was going to say 42 is the most number you’ve got to remember.

    John: Oh, yeah. As a Yankees fan, of course. Of course. Yeah. So do you have a favorite Disney character?

    Graeme: Yes, I do. It’s Goofy.

    John: Ah, good answer. Very good answer. That’s a solid answer there. Would you say more Sudoku or crossword puzzles?

    Graeme: I can’t do Sudoku, so I have to say crossword puzzles but neither of them actually.

    John: How about a favorite color?

    Graeme: It’s red.

    John: And how about the least favorite color?

    Graeme: What we call green, kiki greens, green — oh, I can’t describe them so that off gray, green.

    John: Oh, yeah, like an olive green, sort of like army green almost?

    Graeme: Well, it’s halfway between the two, but it’s a bit dull. I remember when we first got married, we got a house back in the ’70s. We thought we were really chic. We got ourselves an avocado bathroom set. Oh, my God. What a mistake?

    John: That’s hilarious. Because it came out like the kiki green-ish?

    Graeme: Yeah.

    John: That’s very funny. Just you describing it makes me hate the color, and I don’t even know what it looks like. So very well done. It’s a bathroom set. I have to ask — this is an important one — toilet paper, roll over or under?

    Graeme: Over.

    John: Over. Okay, just making sure it didn’t change as you cross the ocean there. How about a favorite animal? Any animal.

    Graeme: Black panther.

    John: Oh, good answer.

    Graeme: That’s my dream animal, though I actually have had Labradors since I was eight. And my present Labrador, Merlin, is a yellow lab. I absolutely adore him as well.

    John: Very cool. Very cool. Do you have a favorite actor or actress?

    Graeme: Derek Jacobi. I think he’s a great actor. I think he’s really underrated.

    John: And we got two more, two more. When you’re traveling, especially when you’re flying, more window or aisle seat?

    Graeme: Well, I prefer the window seat, but I’ll take the aisle seat because I don’t want to disturb people when I get up to go to the toilet.

    John: Right. Yes, exactly. Exactly. And the last one, the favorite thing you own or the favorite thing you have?

    Graeme: Well, if I ignore my wife, in one sense, the first time I’ve been allowed to ignore my wife, it would be my dog Merlin.

    John: Nice. Very cool, which was the lab that you talked about. That’s awesome, man. That’s very cool. What a great start to this episode. I know you mentioned it in the intro, but I’m so curious how someone from the UK has Yankee season tickets. How does that happen? Basically, let’s just jump right into that. Have you always been a baseball fan?

    Graeme: No, no, I have been an American football fan for many years, many, many years and actually was able to have a secondment, two-semester secondment to Penn State and got really into it there. So when I came back to the UK, I was in an American football team over here where I lived. I guess long story very, very short, I got a phone call from Neil Austrian asking me if I wanted to join the NFL and be the financial controller for the London Monarchs. It took me all about two nanoseconds to say yes.

    John: That’s so cool.

    Graeme: I worked for them for about six or seven years. When I was crossing the States at their offices, of course, as part of a professional team who can get tickets to other professional teams in any way you want. So I thought I’d try looking around and see what anything on the other sports. Now, hockey, ice hockey, I have also liked for some considerable time. So I went to see the Rangers, and I asked if I could go and see the Knicks. They were playing, so it so happened I had to go to Boston and they gave me tickets to see Boston versus Milwaukee, the Bucks. I sat there anyway, two points, two points, two points, and I was absolutely bored to tears. But I then went to see the Yankees. I got tickets that I really could not afford now, just above the Yankees dugout as it turns out.

    John: Oh, my goodness.

    Graeme: And I turned to this couple sitting beside me, a man and his son. His son must be seven or eight, something like that. He said to him, “Look, you can tell by accent, I’m not local and I’ve never been to a baseball game before in my life. I’ve got to say, to get an eight-year-old baseball fan to describe it to you is perfect because he gave the absolute basics from there. With my knowledge and love of cricket and statistics and numbers and all the rest of it, I was hooked from that day. So this would be back in ‘91, ‘92, something like that. I was trying to get season tickets then because back in the old Stadium, you had to wait your time and I did wait my time. I guess it was about ‘97, it must be earlier, it’s ‘96, sorry, I got season tickets and I went there. I was sitting beside all these guys and got really into it. Of course, the new stadium, they raised the prices, shall we say.

    John: By a multiple.

    Graeme: Yeah, exactly. And they gave their premium ticket holders first choice. So by the time they got to ours, I was about halfway between third base and the foul pole. If I tell you exactly where it was, when Derek Jeter went in for the dive into the stands, if you see any of those photographs, you’ll see my feet and my son’s feet because we had two tickets.

    John: That’s awesome.

    Graeme: Yeah, but it’s our feet. We recognize our feet. No one believed.

    John: Your shoes should be in the Hall of Fame.

    Graeme: If anyone out there knows of a photograph taken from a different angle, because it was obviously taken from behind him, actually we can see our own selves and we can prove that we were there, then I’d love to hear about it. So anyway, so I fell in love that way. Even the new stadium, I was offered the bleachers tickets $10 apiece, and I thought I’m not coming all the way across spending several thousand pounds normally just to sit in a $10 seat in the bleachers which, of course, from about this time of the year onwards are indeed bleachers. I have sat in them a couple of times. So I thought right, I’ll hold that. And lo and behold, I did. So yeah, I got them and now my tickets are in Section 105, which means absolutely nothing if you don’t know Yankee Stadium. It’s in fair territory from the home base. It’s just to the left of the foul pole and about three up in those row 14. It starts at row 11.

    John: Right. Because the way it angles there.

    Graeme: It’s in a short porch. Lots of poles go over my head. I’ve never caught one in my life.

    John: That’s so great. Just going back to when you asked people to explain the rules of baseball to you, I had that happen once. My brother and I were in San Francisco at a Giants game, and we were standing in the standing room only area in the back where Barry Bonds would hit all the homeruns into the water. And there was a college kid that was standing there who was from Austria, I think. And he said, “Can you explain to me the rules of the game?” And I’m like, “Sure.” So I started explaining. I’m like, this is the dumbest game ever. I don’t even know there are so many rules on top of rules because it’s like, well, if he hits the ball and has to go inside the lines or it’s a foul ball but if it’s a pop fly and they catch it outside the lines, then he’s out. But then if he’s — you know what I mean? There were so many different things. So we were kind of okay, and then in about the seventh inning, the pitcher balked. I was like, I don’t even know how to explain it. I can’t even explain it. I don’t even know either. He’s going to first like that’s it. It was pretty funny.

    Graeme: You haven’t even got to the unwritten rules. Baseball has got so many of them.

    John: Yeah. And now now you’re an expert. So next time that happens, I’m just going to call you and be like, “Can you explain it?” Because I’ve been playing since I was five, so I don’t know why I know all these dumb rules. But, man, what a crazy, crazy game. To explain soccer or football to people, it’s pretty simple. Just don’t use your hands. Unless you’re the people with the long sleeve shirts on and the gloves, then you can use your hands. But otherwise, don’t use your hands. It’s that easy. But baseball, it’s like, what? This is nuts. I didn’t realize how crazy that was until you had to explain it to someone. And then it was like, oh, man, my head hurts.

    Graeme: You wait till you try to explain cricket to someone.

    John: You know what? You should do that for me some time. I’ll come over and then we can go to a game, and now I have all the questions.

    Graeme: You’ve got 12 people who are in till they’re out, then the 12 people that are out come in and then the others go in.

    John: There you go. It’s that easy. Come on, John, pick it up. That’s really cool. So how many games do you get to a year?

    Graeme: Probably about a dozen.

    John: Nice. That’s fantastic. That’s probably more than New Yorkers, to be honest. You just fly in and then take the subway. You don’t eat at the park or anything.

    Graeme: Yeah. Someone else pops the train for me.

    John: There you go. Yeah, they’re playing. That’s fantastic. Very cool. And then, I guess, is this something that you talk about in the office? I guess since you’ve had them, do your co-workers know about this?

    Graeme: My co-workers know about it, but none of them actually have any interest in it after the fact that they are all but one are British and the other one is Romanian. It so happens, we have a gender diversity issue because they’re all female.

    John: Oh, wow. That is certainly an issue. I have your back on this one. Plus, it’s such a foreign game to them that they’re just like, whatever. But I mean, I’m sure after you take the trip and you come back, I’m sure they ask, how was it?

    Graeme: They do indeed. Usually, they’re interested but more in the case of did I go shopping? Did I go to Sephora and pick anything up?

    John: Right. The rest of the New York City experience.

    Graeme: My daughters are very happy I go because they want me to go to Sephora. I’m probably one of the few people from over this side of the water who can go into any Sephora store anywhere in the world and get anything you want because I know exactly where it’s going to be.

    John: That’s fantastic. You’ve just been to so many. That should be your passion actually. We should just talk about you shopping at Sephora.

    Graeme: About four Christmases ago, five Christmases ago, I’ve got three kids, but two of them are girls. They gave me a t-shirt, a black t-shirt with writing on it. It says, “You don’t scare me. I’ve got two daughters.”

    John: Right. You don’t even blink anymore at anything. You don’t even look both ways crossing the street. You just go. You’re like, “Whatever. I’m invincible.”

    Graeme: Absolutely.

    John: That’s very funny. Very funny. But I mean that’s so cool though. That’s your thing and then people know that about you. Do you have Yankee stuff in your office? Okay, that’s definitely a yes right there.

    Graeme: Oh, yeah. I have the Yankee helmet when you get the ice cream in.

    John: Oh, yeah. Right, the plastic helmet.

    Graeme: Yeah. It so happens I’m drinking out of a Yankee’s well-known beer. I’m not drinking the beer. I’m drinking water, those ones with the built-in straw. I drink water in that. It’s got the entwined NY on it.

    John: Yeah, you’re bringing it to the office which is really cool. Is that always been something that you’ve done in your career like sharing things, or is it just something now that you’re CEO, you’re like, “Look, no one else can yell at me, so I’m doing it”?

    Graeme: No, ever since I fell in love with the Yankees, I have had people know about it. They know what I’m up to and why. If Michael Kay ever wants to retire, I’m taking his job.

    John: Right. Yeah, I’m pretty sure there’s going to be a lottery for that as well. Yeah, you’re not the only one that wants that. Yeah, that’s a pretty sweet gig.

    Graeme: I’m probably the only one in the lottery who doesn’t have an accent though.

    John: Right. From your perspective. Everyone else is like, we have to practice — luckily, the Yankees doesn’t have an R in it or it’s the New York Yankees. We’re rolling the R.

    Graeme: It’s like Sterling at the edge. The Yankees win. Yankees win. I can do it. I can do it with the New York Yankees win.

    John: Right. See, and everyone will think that their reception just fuzzed out. That was weird. The signal got weird every time he says it. That’s very cool. I know that you also do acting, and especially Shakespeare acting, which I appreciate you not using the Old English on this podcast. Is that something that you’ve been doing since you were young, or was that more of a late development as well?

    Graeme: Again, it’s one of my daughters. I’ve been a bit of a diva, at least my wife and my mother tell me so. But back when she was 11, she’s 33 now, she saw this advert to audition for a Shakespeare play. It was actually A Midsummer Night’s — no, it was Romeo and Juliet, sorry. She said, “I’d like to do that.” Okay, yeah, that’d be very good. So I think her mom took us to the first audition. I took her in her second audition. She got a call back. And that was in February, early February. And then the rehearsals were Mondays and Wednesdays from beginning of March all the way through to the end of May. I ended up doing that. It was fairly close. It wasn’t too, but the actual performance is in the open air outside a saintly home near-ish us, probably about 20-minute drive by the time you get to where it was. I took her there, dropped her, went back. By time I got back, I had like half an hour before I had to go back and pick her up again. So it took about two performances, and there are 10 performances over a two-week period.

    I thought so solid. I was just going to stay here. I’d read a book or whatever. I got talking to this nice elderly lady who was there. She and I just talked generally and she knew I was coming because I told her that fairly quickly and what was going on. She said, “Next year, why don’t you try out for like a spear-carrier’s role? At least you’re there. You’re still sitting in the back doing nothing. Your daughter can do the big bit, and you get a spear-carrier roll and just come on and be a soldier patch or a member of the village or something like that.” It’s not a bad idea.

    So the next year, I went to the auditions. We’re in rehearsals, the second rehearsals where we did the walk through the block and all the rest of it. I was sitting there, and the director, it turned out that the lady I’d be speaking to was actually the founder of the Children’s Shakespeare Company. She was co-directing with this other chap. The other director came to me and said, “Oh, Graeme, thank you very much.” And I went, “Yeah, what? Pardon? What for?” “I understand you’ve agreed to be our producer.” “Pardon? Two questions. First of all, when did I volunteer? And what the hell is a producer?”

    John: Yeah, yeah, what does a producer do?

    Graeme: Yeah, exactly. “By the way, I have a speaking part in this, so do I lose my speaking part?” “No, no, you can do that as well.” Okay. Some 17 years, I produced it as well. And as I said, whatever I could take a part, I would.

    John: Do people that you work with come to these shows? Clearly, they want to hear more about that, I guess, than Yankees baseball.

    Graeme: They do. We normally have an outing every summer. That’s the first one we have done is Midsummer Night’s Dream this time, but unfortunately there’s a lot of clashes. We’ve got various conferences and things like that that totally clash. So I’m only going to be what I refer to as the bar steward this time that.

    John: You’re out there, man. You’re way more on stage than any of us. Maybe you get to sample some of the wares as the bar steward. You got to test it out. You can’t just like go.

    Graeme: I have a very, very strict rule for myself. If I’m driving and I have to drive to get there, if I’m driving.

    John: Okay, then yeah.

    Graeme: Yeah, exactly.

    John: Yeah, I hear you. I hear you on that. So do you feel like either one of these has benefited your career in some way? Because so many people think that passions outside of work are distractions. You’ve heard me speak, and I feel like it’s quite the opposite. How do you feel about that?

    Graeme: The answer is both have helped. Obviously, my speaking voice. I have what is referred to in some of our conferences, as the voice of God. When I want people to be quiet or do something, I can go back into my diaphragm the way I’ve been taught at the Shakespeare. I can project so much that it will quiet an entire room of 250 to 500 people. But also from a public speaking point of view, I can stand up and I can deliver the way that I think is relevant, but not just normally, and also the delivery. We think back about really good orators. JFK was a good orator. Obama was a good orator. People are known not to be particularly good orators. One of things they do that is actually not noticeable unless you pay attention, whenever there’s a comma and the longest tail where there’s a full stop and it sometimes just draw things out a bit as I’m trying to do now to sort of explain and to show you what I mean. If you do that, when you’re public speaking as I’m sure you know, John, as having heard you, if you give pauses and such between, not long pauses, you don’t sound like you’re dumb, but it does allow people to actually listen to what you’re saying and to what you want them to say. So that’s the Shakespeare side of it, absolutely. As for the Yankees, it is such an icebreaker.

    John: Oh, yeah.

    Graeme: You what? You have Yankees. How? What? How did that go? Of course, there’s a story of how it came up. I’ve given you the five-second version of a two-hour story. There’s a story of how it came up. There’s a story of how I worked at the NFL which in itself is the sort of thing that people sort of say, “Oh, I’d love to have done that.” It’s knowing how to deliver and being able also to deliver something that people are actually genuinely interested in.

    John: There you go, right. How big of a deal is that do you say when it comes to accountants and professionals, in general, to actually talk about things that are genuinely interesting?

    Graeme: It is. If you think about it, virtually every firm I know say they are the trusted advisor of their clients and I hope, for their sake, they are. But when you speak to someone, the client takes a certain amount of things as said. When you go into a prospect, et cetera, you’re seeing them, they’re expecting you to be professional. They’re expecting you to have all the qualifications and to say that you want to be their trusted advisor and all of that is BS. What they want to know is, are you genuinely interested in them? And if you can bring them out, say, they got baseball fans or they’re Shakespeare fans or any of the other sort of things and you talk about that and get them to talk about their life and where they come, then that’s cool.

    John: Yeah, I completely agree. But in your words, that’s so powerful to hear. Even if it’s not the same thing, let’s say they hate the Yankees, they’re Red Sox fans, then you still have something in common. Even if they don’t do any of the things that you do, at least they share theirs and now you both know more about the person behind the professional or within the professional, if you will, is really what it’s all about. Why do you think it is that we’re so reluctant, like why is that not the default for most people?

    Graeme: Most people think that they need to impart their benefits or their goodies to someone. They sort of say, “If I’m going get this prospect actually come to me or someone to buy this service from me, whatever, I’ve got to convince them that I’ve got the silver bullet that they’d been looking for.” Having been a CFO, been a CEO in listed companies, et cetera, I know full well I don’t give a damn because I know full well they don’t have the silver bullet. I want someone who has a pocket full of nickel-plated bullets, I can pick off little things that I need here that’s worrying me, and therefore, as a prospect, that’s what I want to get the knowledge that they have the ability to have my benefits in mind.

    John: That’s huge and it’s not talking about your expertise and all of your wisdom because you’re convincing them of something that they already believed. You’re like, “No, no, I really am smart.” They’re like, “We thought you were anyway. Why are you — the more you try to tell me you’re intelligent, the less I start to believe you.” That’s exactly it. I love that. There is no silver bullet. We just need some nickel-plated bullets that get the job done and from a basis of you genuinely care about me. That’s so perfect.

    Graeme: If you can apologize to someone and mean it genuinely, “Sorry, I think you’re wrong, because…” or “I’m sorry, I misspoke,” and you genuinely do that because they feel that either you’re going to insult the person or you’re going to infer that you are insecure and you don’t really know what you’re talking about. With that in mind, I’m going to apologize to you right now because I have realized that actually Derek Jacobi is in The King’s Speech.

    John: Oh, okay. All right. All right. What’s up? What’s up? No, no, I’m just teasing. I was just like, I felt like their name ring a bell.

    Graeme: Colin Firth and Geoffrey Rush are the main —

    John: Yeah, absolutely. Right

    Graeme: With Helen Bonham Carter. But, yes, he is in it and I’ve totally forgotten that.

    John: No worries. But he’s also before my time, so I appreciated you saying that because I’ve clearly lied about how old I am. But it is true. If you have that relationship with someone where you realize that you have kind of a friendly relationship that’s beyond just the business, whether it’s a co-worker or a client, then you’re able to have those frank conversations and it’s not insulting either way. The feedback isn’t critical anymore. It’s actually just feedback, or it’s just a question, because you have that relationship where you know that it’s not coming from a bad place, if you will. So that’s fantastic. Apology accepted, Graeme. Apology accepted. I apologize for butchering your name half the time that I say it.

    Graeme: Well, I always say to people, don’t worry, because a lot of people call me Gordon Graeme, and a lot of people call me Gordon thinking it’s my surname. But I always say, don’t worry, my grandmother used to call me Glenn and that was the name of our dog at the time.

    John: Oh, my gosh. That’s so perfect. So perfect. So do you have any words of encouragement to anyone listening that thinks maybe they do Shakespeare and they’re like, “Well, this has nothing to do with my job. Why should anyone care”?

    Graeme: I think it can be very boring if you compare it to your own job, et cetera. I love my job. Don’t get me wrong. But without outside influences and what have you, I could be, and probably would be, exceedingly boring. No one would want to talk to me. I’d be the person in the corner.

    John: Right. We’ve all seen it in all the offices.

    Graeme: Yeah, absolutely.

    John: But the passions in the outside of work interest give you some dimensions.

    Graeme: Yeah, I think it does. It keeps you alive as well. Also, as I said earlier, it makes sure that when you’re talking to someone, you’ve always got some aspect that you can connect with. Like of six degrees of separation this day and age with podcasts and blogs and everything else, you’re probably talking about three degrees of separation. So you soon get to it. Even if someone that isn’t a baseball fan, for example, but their uncle Tiberius is a Boston Red Sox fans and hates Yankees, that gives you something to talk about and keeps them going. There are other things. I’m an ex-naval officer as well, so there’s all sorts of other things. I believe very much that the potpourri of one’s life is much more important to your own satisfaction and to your success in business.

    John: Wow, I love that — potpourri of life. That’s very cool. So before I bring this in for landing and wrap it up, it’s only fair that I turn the tables back since I rapid-fire questioned you out of the gate. So I know you came ready, so I’m extra nervous. I’m not going to lie to you. So here we go.

    Graeme: Do you still use your CPA skills at home?

    John: Oh, absolutely. I’m running a business here. I’ve got profit and loss statements. I’ve got balance sheet. Yeah, absolutely. I’m running a business, man. When it comes to that, I can at least understand the financials. I understand when the expenses come in, how to categorize them, and I know what a trial balance looks like and all that. But anything beyond that, no, not at all. Actually, even if you talk to the people I worked with as a CPA, they would probably say those are more skills than you had when you worked here. So that’s impressive.

    Graeme: Apart from eating green apples, what keeps you healthy?

    John: Oh, wow. Well, here’s the secret fun fact. I’m not necessarily the healthiest individual when it comes to eating desserts and ice cream unless those count is keeping me healthy, those are definitely part of my diet. I guess I just try to walk or run somewhat regularly. When I lived in New York City, I would walk everywhere because you’re always walking somewhere. But now that I live in Denver, there’s a little bit less of that. But yeah, just trying to just stay moving, I guess, is the best for me.

    Graeme: When you travel, you turn right or left on a plane?

    John: I turn right. Yeah. I’m not up there in first class with you fancy pants recliner. If it’s international, I try to do the economy plus, I guess. So just a little bit of a step up there because I’m almost six-three and coach is not going to work for more than two to three hours. Yeah, I turn right. So there we go.

    Graeme: As you live in Denver, do you hike in the mountains, climb the mountains, or just enjoy them with a martini?

    John: Ah, probably enjoy with a glass of wine is more of it and then snowboard a little bit in the winter. I guess that goes to the not being healthy part of it.

    Graeme: Those are my questions. Thank you.

    John: Very cool, Graeme. So I appreciate you taking time to be with me today on the Green Apple Podcast. This was so much fun.

    Graeme: It has been my pleasure, absolute pleasure.

    John: If you’d like to see some pictures of Graeme at the Yankees game or maybe just his shoes with Derek Jeter diving or maybe on stage or connect with him on social media, be sure to go to greenapplepodcast.com. And while you’re on the page, please click that big green button there, do the anonymous research survey about corporate culture. It’s going to help for the book that I’m launching in October. And thanks again for subscribing on iTunes or whatever app you use and for sharing this with your friends so they get the message that we’re all trying to spread which is to go out and be a green apple.

 

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