How I Started to Grow and Develop as a Professional: Guest Contributor, David Green
#TheGroundFloor is thrilled to welcome guest contributor, David Green, for this week’s edition! David is a Senior Account Executive with the Dallas Mavericks (Mavs) of the National Basketball Association (NBA).
David was born and raised in Wisconsin. He started his career in financial planning after college and took a big risk by moving to Los Angeles (LA) to pursue a career in professional sports sales. David moved to LA on $200 and couch surfed with friends for 4 months until he had enough money to afford his own place. David worked for the LA Clippers (NBA) for 10 months before landing a role with the Dallas Mavericks in a full-time sales role. David has made his name in the Mavericks Season Membership sales department. Since moving to Dallas, David became the least tenured sales representative to ever be promoted to a senior role with the Mavs. He was awarded as the top sales executive for 3 straight seasons (17-18; 18-19; 19-20 seasons), breaking their single season FSE (full-season equivalent) record in 2019-20. He currently resides in uptown Dallas, TX with his roommate and his dog, Hampton.
I am very excited to welcome David to #TheGroundFloor where he discusses how he grew as a professional through life experiences!
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When I first got in touch with Andrew Exler about writing this piece, life was a lot different in many ways. We could go to sporting events, go to gyms, and even get a haircut. All this time inside has made me self-reflect and realize now more than ever how important it is to continue developing and growing as a professional. Now is a great time to help yourself continue to grow without the distractions that may come up in our everyday lives.
Two years ago, I hit a wall in my role as an Account Executive with the Dallas Mavericks (Mavs). I was leading in sales but wasn’t being recognized or learning anything new at the rate I needed to. On April 21, 2018, I handed my late boss a letter requesting a title promotion so that I could start to see some upward growth and movement. His response was…. “Prove it.” My sales numbers were good enough to receive a title promotion to a Senior Account Executive, but did my character match that role? Did I have the confidence and leadership skills yet? Within the next three months (promotions happen companywide in July) it was now my job to show I could be that professional on the top of my team that would set the tone, lead the way and be a resource to others, rather than focus just on myself. In sales, it’s easy to get caught up in personal production.
Over the next three months, my life would be changed forever. May 2018 was the month that started to push me forward to centralize my focus for personal and professional development. The Mavs were out of the playoffs for the third straight year, wrapping up a 24-58 season on the path to a top draft pick. The month of May for teams who aren’t in the playoffs in the NBA is a great time for us to take a deep breath and begin to get ahead for the next season, while continuing to enjoy the hype of the playoffs. I made sure I took the opportunity to not only spread hope with my clients, but with my coworkers and teammates. Losing seasons in professional sports can be exhausting, especially multiple in a row for an organization who had 18 of 19 winning seasons to start the 2000’s.
It was at the this very same time our organization was going through a huge change with culture and leadership. Suddenly I saw an opportunity to be a voice for the account executives on our staff. I started speaking-up more in meetings with ideas and positivity. I would go around our department to check-in with my coworkers more often to see how things were for them amidst all the changes. I put a chair at my cubicle to encourage people to come over to talk about anything they needed. Some even joked and said, “the doctor will see you now”, when my seat was open at my desk. I wasn’t just a salesperson making phone calls or putting up numbers, I was becoming a go-to for some people to talk sports, life, sales practices and more.
Things were starting to take form. I was happier at work. I surrounded myself with great people. Everything was coming together.
While I worked hard to be a role model for my colleagues, I had role models of my own. A leader who I admired within the office gave me the confidence to grow into the professional he knew I could become. The last words I said to him on June 13, 2018 was, “I will see you tomorrow”, not knowing I’d never see him again. That evening my biggest influence, Tyler Underriner, passed away unexpectedly at the age of 34. It was a kick to the stomach to me, our team, and the entire organization. He had been in his role for 6 months making positive changes and constant progress. Our bonuses were set to get paid out in July and I remember bugging him every other day on if those were going to get pushed up with the season ending. Summer months can be tough as an NBA ticket sales executive. The sales you are making aren’t paid out until later in the fall, and you’d go 3 or 4 months without a commission check. After 2 months of bothering him on it, he always told me “I am taking care of it.”. At our end of the season awards ceremony, our Vice President (VP) took us by surprise and pulled out a stack of checks and handed them all out to us. Tyler looked across the room at me, pointed and said “I told you I’d take care of it!”. Tyler was special. The grieving process felt like forever. It wasn’t the same going to work for a while. That chair I had at my cube that he probably came to sit in the most, felt like it would be empty forever. I forgot about my promotion for a few weeks after it all happened. It felt like it wasn’t as important anymore. It took me a while to get back to where I was, but now more than ever I needed to step-up and “prove it” as Tyler told me. No one was ever going to fill-in for him and do what he did for us.
Another month rolled by and it was time for yearly reviews. Our VP of Ticket Sales and Service called me into a closed-door meeting. It was time to go over my performance from the past year. I didn’t know what to expect because my voice of reason (Tyler) was no longer with us. Halfway through our conversation we started talking about Tyler and how much we missed him. She handed me a letter and said, “We’ve made the decision to promote you to a Senior Account Executive on our Seasons team. I don’t know if you know this, but Tyler was fighting for this for you weekly with us. He was relentless in not letting your hard work and leadership go unnoticed.”. As you can imagine, I broke down and cried right in front of her. I knew Tyler would always fight for us but didn’t know he already was before I even proved myself and made the changes I needed to make. He believed in me. I realized more than ever how amazing of a person he was. I will always be eternally grateful to him. It was only the beginning for me because I needed to continue to show him that he wasn’t wrong.
Over the last two years since my promotion, I’ve pieced together a lot from my mentors and life experiences that may also help you move in the direction you seek to grow professionally. I’m 28. I’m not going to pretend like I know all the answers and have seen it all, but I am hoping my story can help.
One of the first things I started to do after my promotion discussion with Tyler was self-reflection. A month prior, Tyler sat me down after I was going through a tougher time and straight-up told me, “you need to look at your surroundings and figure out if you’re in the right place.”. At first I thought, “I love Dallas. I love my job. I wouldn’t want to be anywhere else.”, but then he stopped me. He looked at me and said, “You haven’t been YOU and we like YOU. Maybe it’s time to take a look around at the people you are surrounding yourself with.” That’s when it started to make sense to me.
My mom always said, “Surround yourself with good people and the rest will take care of itself.”, and me at age 22 just said, “yeah, yeah mom, I know”, but I never thought twice about it. Four years later, for the first time in my life I am thinking about who the top five people are that I spend the most time with. I ask myself, “what value are they providing me?”. It sounds selfish, right? Well, it’s okay to be selfish when you’re trying to improve yourself for the right reasons. I challenge you to surround yourself with people who share common values, goals, and career aspirations. Surround yourself with people you can grow with. Never settle. People and circumstances can change but it’s your job to continue growing. Remember to carry your own weight. Your circle needs you just as much as you need them.
My next point of focus has been leaning on the leaders and mentors in my life. Different from the friend groups or people you spend most of your time with, these are the people who’ve been around the block before. They are the people who are in the positions you aspire to be in some day. These should be people who want to see you succeed and believe in you. I was extremely fortunate to have my current director come into my life when my late director passed. He’s been someone who has helped me lay out a plan and steps of action to progress, something I had never actually written out before. He has enabled me to be myself in our organization and use my experiences and skills to help others in my department. Simple things such as giving me responsibilities with our in-game selling program and letting me tell a story in our team-wide meetings has been beneficial. I have been taken out of my comfort zone to learn new ways of doing things. There are people around you who want to help you succeed. Latch onto those people and ask them what you can be doing better. It’s okay to ask for help, and not know all of the answers. Sometimes we feel like we aren’t smart enough if we don’t have the answers, or sometimes we, “fake it until we make it”. I believe that there is a strength in vulnerability, not weakness.
A lot of us sometimes get stuck between where we are, because it’s comfortable, and where we want to go because we are impatient. Sometimes we are waiting for the next opportunity which causes us to get complacent. If I sat around and waited for the next step in my career, I’d be in the same spot I was in two years ago. Showing initiative and drive to take on new challenges is what puts you on the path to excel. Just the other day I had to ask my director for guidance and advice because right now I don’t know exactly how to keep progressing myself while working from home with minimal human interaction due to COVID-19. The support and perspective I received was exactly what I needed to hear. I wouldn’t have received the feedback without asking. I felt like my career progression had just stopped until my director eased my nerves by confirming that everything was continuing to move forward.
Patience is a very important skill, especially for a millennial like me. Millennials seem to be connected to a stereotypical reputation that we want overnight success and instant gratification. Career-wise, we can be more patient and sustain longer success to continue growing. Just because I had exceeded my sales goals in my first two years in my role didn’t mean I was ready to be the colleague who could take on more and be a louder voice. I didn’t know how to lead or how to take on projects. What I knew was how to be a good salesperson. Patience is a virtue. Accepting that I still have a lot to learn is what put me in the position I’m in now, on track to my next career goal.
My all-time admired athlete is Kobe Bryant. I have always loved his quote, “the beauty is in the process”. Kobe won all five of his NBA championships with countless hours in the gym, perfecting his craft, honing-in on his skills and developing new ones. As talented as he was, he never settled. He pushed himself, he pushed others, he took on roles and responsibilities that made him the leader and motivator we all knew him to be. He was the ultimate professional to his peers and coaches above him. He inspired me. When it’s all said and done, I’ll be able to look back and say, “I did it. I ran the race; I fought the good fight. I earned it.”
Thank you for taking the time to hear about my story. If I motivated just one person to improve themselves, then I am happy. If you only skimmed through this, that is ok.
Here are the key takeaways:
- Surround yourself with positive people who share similar values and goals
- Lean on leadership within your company as well as personal mentors you’ve crossed paths with
- Don’t get stuck! Ask for help and take initiative. There is strength in vulnerability. Embrace the challenge and not knowing the answers.
- PATIENCE. Overnight success isn’t the path.
Now more than ever, it is an important time to remember to be a good human-being and be there for others. Feel free to reach out or contact me directly if you’d like to connect. My email address is David.Green@DallasMavs.com.
- David
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Thank you, David, for being a guest contributor for #TheGroundFloor!
I am always open to welcoming guest contributors to #TheGroundFloor! If you are interested in writing or have a specific topic you’d like discussed, please contact me!
- Andrew
