Cool Things My Friends Do - Zach Horvath Travels The World

Each Friday on this blog I enjoy highlighting some of the cool things my friends do in their work and personal lives. 

I met Zach Horvath over a year ago.  He is in his early twenties and full of energy and ambition.  He openly seeks an entrepreneurial life and does not feel he needs to play by the traditional norms.  He clearly would be board working for an accounting firm.

What I like about Zach is that he does not wait for life to happen.  He tries stuff.  If it does not work out, he tries something else. Zach is a seeker (one who openly seeks something greater than the standard).  He was doing some coaching for Gen Y folks who felt disappointed and disenchanted by the "system".  He designed T-shirts which he sold.  He hosted "Salons" where he brought together interesting people to talk politics, philosophy, and the meaning of life.  He orchestrated public art creation.

Now he is on the road.  He realized that life could get more complicated as he got older, so he figured now was the time to travel.  Several months ago he went to Europe.  He may be there for a year.  Maybe longer.

I follow him on Facebook (for some reason, unknown to me, his name has become "Zoom Horvath").  Each week there are colorful photos of his trip and stories of his encounters.  It always is interesting.  He finds people and places while freely living his life.

I love writing this weekly post on "Cool Things My Friends Do" as it forces me to look closely at what people are up to in their lives.  Zach was an easy choice to add to this collection.  Imagine going throughout the world without a plan.  Think about the conversations you could have with people when you are not shy or worried about what they will think of you.  Consider how you can discover the human condition while waiting for hours for a slow train to somewhere.

Zach is the poster child for cool things people do.  No matter where life leads him, I doubt he will ever be board or boring!

Have A Great Day.

thom singer

OFFSIDES

Fool me once, shame on you. Fool me four times, you need your head examined.

The NHL is surely the most dysfunctional family in all of sports, maybe in the history of labor-management relations. Four times in the last 20 years, the league and its players have volunteered to sit in the penalty box and off the ice. In 1992, they lost 30 games; in 1994, about the same; in 2004, they trashed the whole season, and the league just announced the cancellation of games through at least the first two weeks of the season.

I don’t have an opinion as to who is at fault but does either side have any concept as to what is going on in the world’s economy?

The average salary of the players in the league is a healthy $2.4 million. That is a half million dollars higher than the average salary in the NFL, which has three times the total revenue of the NHL.

Still, last year was the best year ever for the teams in terms of revenue, approaching almost three billion dollars. And its individual owners are no slouches either. The league boasts eight billionaires among its top brass, three more than are in Major League Baseball.

So why can’t these folks just get along? Is it the language barrier? After all the league has players from something like 14 nations and even the two thirds of the players which hail from North America seem to be divided equally between French and English speakers. Or is it just greed?

Since it’s obvious the two sides cannot figure out how to negotiate with one another, why not just submit to some sort of binding arbitration? They might be able to agree on an Administrative Law Judge from the Department of Labor. Or better yet, randomly pick three longtime season ticket holders, present your best case, and drop the puck.

Burn The Ships

I got a call from a young professional who is thinking about moving to Austin, Texas. He is about the same age that I was when I chose Austin as my home twenty-one years ago (or rather, Austin chose me).  We have a mutual friend and he was counseled that I would be a good person to talk with about his pending relocation.  I was 25-years-old when I left my native California and came to Central Texas.  I came here for a job thinking I would stay three years and I got lucky -- Austin became a great home for our family. This enterprising young man is 26-years-old and has researched where would be the best place to build his creative career and future. That is better than luck... that is foresight!

We talked about why Austin is great and he shared that he was having trouble finding employment opportunities from 1000 miles away.  I explained that there are lots of creative, young, hard-working, educated professionals in Austin.  Thus there was little reason for a company to invest the effort in interviewing him, waiting to see if he is really coming, etc...  Even though he did not expect for a company to pay his relocation fees, the reality is he is not the easy choice.

I suggested he get in his car, drive to Austin, live with his friends (he has college buddies how live here) and seek employment as a local.  At 26 he has no other responsibilities.  With a car and his friend's couch he can re-position himself as the easy and best choice for a potential employer.  Looking for a job from a distance (without something unique that is overly appealing) was not going to get the job done.

My advice of "Burn the Ships"....(get to Austin and make it home... then figure out the rest) would not work for everyone.  Some might be frightened.  Others have financial or family commitments that will not allow an "all-in" action plan.  But this guy understood.  He immediately changed his social media profiles to show his residence as Austin, and is on his way to Texas.  Right on!!  My guess is he will find a great life ahead and Austin will be a better place to have one more person who understands the value of taking risks.

And what happens if he can't find a job?  Or if Austin does not work out as he hopes?  At least he tried and he will not spend a life wondering.  He is 26 and has parents in his home state that would welcome him back.  He can easily start over if Texas is a flop.

Not just making a geographic move, but in many things, those who succeed are committed, focused, and do not "hem and haw" about all the options.  They take action.  They go for it.  I did this with my career as a professional speaker.  In 2009 I made it my full-time effort.  With a family to support and a recession tearing many businesses apart I started earning a living as a speaker and trainer.  It was hard.  We took risks. While I have worried, fretted, and struggled all along the way.... I have never regretted the decision.  To have gone in with a toe in the water would not produced the same results.  To have never tried it would have left me incomplete. I still have not "made it" to the end-goal, but the journey itself has been great.

How about you?  What do you want to do?  Are you hemming and hawing?  Maybe it is time to go for it.  Burn the ships!

Have A Great Day.

thom singer

Getting the wild card right

I have written several times about baseball's old wild card system, which I argued eliminated the possibility of good division races between top teams. When the top two teams in a league are in one division, there was no real incentive to win the division, because both teams knew they were in the play-offs and being the wild card was not a significant disadvantage.  Otherwise, the real race was between a potential wild card and the other potential wild cards in other divisions or between two weaker division rivals, one of whom will not make the playoffs.

But baseball made two changes this year: 1) they added a second wild card team and 2) the two wild cards meet in a one-game playoff, the winner then playing a division series with the team with the best record in the league. And, at least for this year, these changes prodcued real division races between good teams, at least in the American League: Both the A.L. East and A.L. West came down to the final day of the season, with the Yankees winning 95 games and beating out the Orioles by 2 games and the A's winning 94 games and beating out the Rangers by a game. The difference this year is that both the Rangers and Orioles had a real incentive to catch the team ahead of them on the final day, in order to avoid that one-game playoff.  In previous years, by contrast, the Orioles would not have cared about catching the Yankees in the final two days of the season; they only would have worried about staying ahead of the Rangers, then getting to play in the division series.

So, credit where credit is due--baseball made changes that create the right incentives.

Ed O'Bannon scores victory against ESPN in his NCAA lawsuit

I have a new article for Sports Illustrated on U.S. District Judge Alfred V. Covello ordering ESPN to give Ed O'Bannon its TV & licensing contracts with the NCAA. O'Bannon's class action lawsuit threatens any company that has a contract with the NCAA or its members. O'Bannon may also end up suing those companies. 

Here's an excerpt:

Looking further down-the-line, Judge Covello's ruling is a reminder that O'Bannon's case presents real financial and legal risk for companies that have contracts with the NCAA, CLC or member institutions. ESPN is not the first company to see this risk materialize, as Electronic Arts, makers of college sports video games, has similarly been impacted by the litigation. And yet divulging information they consider privileged is not the greatest worry for these companies. Instead, it's this: relinquishing private knowledge about how much they have profited from the labor of college athletes illuminates these companies' own susceptibility to being sued by O'Bannon. After all, if the NCAA wrongly profited from the names, likenesses and images of college athletes, then companies in contract with the NCAA have arguably done the same.

Hope you have a chance to check out the article.

The Presidential Debate: Baseball Quiz

The Huffington Post's Aaron Zelinsky, who has written extensively about the intersection of sports, law, and government (see his Yale Law Journal Online article The Justice as Commissioner: Benching the Judge-Umpire Analogy) has an interactive piece on the Huffington Post called "The Presidential Debate: Baseball Quiz".  Try to match the presidential debater with the ballplayer they most resemble.

Lance Armstrong and Morals Clauses

I was asked an interesting question recently, in the aftermath of Lance Armstrong's decision to no longer contest the doping allegations pending against him.  Would his failure to contest the allegations trigger a morals clause in any of his endorsement contracts and lead present or former endorsing companies to sue him?

It's an interesting question on a number of levels.

First, assuming his endorsement contracts do have morals clauses, the critical issue is what specific language they provide.  Do they have broad enough language to cover a situation where the conduct at issue hasn't been admitted, but is no longer being contested?

If the morals clause is broad enough to even be triggered, is it too late for the endorsing company to assert a claim?  The answer to this question depends on what the basis for the claim is and when the conduct at issue occurred.  For example, would the claim be for breach of contract, which has a statute of limitations of six years in many jurisdictions?  Would the claim be for fraud, based on Armstrong's misrepresenting at the time he signed a contract that he was not engaged in doping?  Fraud claims often have a shorter statute of limitations, typically three years.

The other fundamental questions is what the offending conduct is and when it occurred.  Armstrong won his first Tour de France in 1999 and his last in 2005.  If the basis for a breach of contract claim arises from doping during that period, it would appear that any claim would be barred based on the statute of limitations, unless a plaintiff could argue that the statute was tolled based on concealment of doping.

One final issue, regardless of the legal issues surrounding a claim based on a morals clause, is whether it is worth it for any company that endorsed Armstrong to bring a claim.  Would a company want to spend the time and money litigating to recover endorsement fees so long after the fact, and essentially having to prove that Armstrong doped?  Thus far, no company that endorsed him has taken such action.