BOSTON CELTICS OWNER: HOW TO BUILD A CHAMPIONSHIP CULTURE

0:28So, hey, guys, are you frustrated with where you're at right now?

0:33This is the Ed Myron Show. Hey, welcome back to the show, everybody. I'm honored today. As a lifetime Boston sports fan, to have the primary owner of the Boston Celtics on my show is a real treat for me. And I can't wait to share his wisdom and insights with you on leadership, on family, on setting standards. But I also can't wait to share with you some of his family background, which I found like super interesting and compelling. He's got a new sitcom out on NBC called Extended Family, which is kind of loosely based on his life. It's Tuesdays on NBC and Peacock. And if any of the show really resembles his real life, this is going to be an incredible interview.

1:14So primary owner of the Boston Celtics, Wick Grossbeck, welcome to the show, brother. Thanks a lot. It's nice just getting to know you just recently in our chat and reading about you, and I'm excited to be on the podcast. Thank you. I am too, brother. So we got to start out with one of the greatest stories I've probably ever heard. Let's start with some Celtic stuff. We're going to weave in the show, family, all this stuff today. It's going to be a great ride, everybody. But I was reading about how you ended up buying the team, and it is literally like something out of a movie. I mean, it's incredible.

1:45He ends up buying this team for 360 million guys, just so you know. I don't, you know, round numbers, it's got to be worth between, I don't know, five and seven billion now, probably this, this many years later, at least that's what I'd pay for it if he would let me, but, but tell him the story of how you end up. It's your dream. Let's set the stage with that as a, as kind of a Boston kid growing up and then how it ends up happening is just incredible. Well, a lot of people helped. I'd want to start with that, but it was, I was sitting at my desk doing an investment job at age 41 and not sure that that was the be all and end all for me.

2:21And I looked up at the wall and I saw a picture from 20 years before when I was on a college team that had won a championship, a rower. And I looked at our picture with the oars and the trophy and the shirts over our shoulders. I am literally getting goosebumps right now thinking about it, which if it says something bad about me, okay, or something good, but it's something true about me that I get goosebumps thinking about competing as part of a team. And I was like, I'm 41, I'm past it, but I want to do that again. And so the only way to do that, I realized was to try to be part of, buying a Boston team and going and winning the championship.

2:59So from there, I went that night or soon to a Celtics game because I had some season tickets and I noticed that it was not full. and it just was in a down period. And I wondered if there was a chance to, and it was traded by the way on the New York Stock Exchange. So it was a public company. So you can see their numbers. And I just wondered if I could politely ask the person who owned it, if he would sell me the team, maybe it was time and maybe not, you never know. And we ended up meeting and having a really nice conversation. And we ended up, I had a deal by the end of the thing to, and I made it clear I didn't have the money, which I didn't, but I was going to go get the money if I possibly could.

3:46And we shook hands and he couldn't have been nicer about it. And so then I'm 41 and I've got this contract, but I don't have the funds. And so I went and met everybody I knew in Boston. And I said, this is going to be the last Boston team that sells in our lifetime. I've got the contract. We're going to buy it December 31st. I'd like you to be part of it, but we're going to do it for love, not money. And this is the whole key to the whole thing. We're not trying to make money here. And I'm just telling you the truth that we're probably overpaying. It's a record price. It might be too much. In the context of the day, it was an overpayment probably.

4:22But we're going to do it to be paid in love and enjoyment and passion. There's a whole different way to be paid in life is to enjoy yourself. You've got to pay your bills, understood, not diminishing that or minimizing that. But think about being paid in enjoyment and breaking even. That's what we're going to try to do here. And that's what happened. So I had 20, 25 people joined in in the first meeting and others did not join in or brought accountants and tried to negotiate puts and calls and interest rates and guaranteed returns. And I said, no, we don't have any of that. We're just going to be in it together side by side.

4:58And if it works. As a guy that grew up, well, I was born in Weymouth, but I've been a lifetime fan. There's a lot of guys like you and I like I'd love to own the Red Sox but that's not going to happen ever again I'd love to own the Celtics I don't think the crafts are going to let go of the Patriots anytime soon Bob and I sit on a board together for the College Football Hall of Fame so I'm real sure of that I've poked around and but the idea here there's such a lesson everybody I want you to I want to unpack a lesson here the the key part here is he didn't have the money no and there's the thing I've learned about people that become successful and that is that they have a They're preparation freaks.

5:35I think you would agree with me. They want to prepare. I'm sure you were prepared for that meeting. But their threshold of what they think they have to know before they'll take a step into the room is lower. And people that have a hard time in life succeeding, they're just always getting around to preparing until all the conditions are perfect and you lose the moment. And so for me, the big lesson of the takeaway was that, like, you got the handshake. You give them a non-refundable deposit, as I understand it anyways. Right. But you had this thing about you were like, if I can just get in the room, I'll figure it out.

6:06I will figure it out. And I think that's a principle of success with so many people that I meet. They'll put themselves in a position maybe they're not completely prepared for, but they know if they can get in the meeting, they can get in the room, they can get in the door, they can get the job, they can get the speech, that they'll somehow find their way through it. And a lot of other people never pursue one of these opportunities because they're getting around to getting around to getting ready. that had to be part of the reason why you're sitting where you are today. Am I right? I think, Ed, I think, well, I don't want to, I have to agree that your observation is true.

6:41I'm not sure how much it applies to me. I just want to be, you know, more humble than my normal attitude. But I respect what you say. And I think the way I might say it is that I had the idea. And once I had the idea, I was like, of course, this is the idea of my lifetime. So I have to, And you can't always see that so clearly, but I just all of a sudden I started imagining myself as the lead owner of the Celtics, you know, with partners. And I'm like, nothing was going to stop me from trying. So I think it's the same thing. But in other words, I couldn't have read anything in the preparation that was going to talk me out of it.

7:14Once I saw their numbers and they were cash positive, so it would give you room to maybe try to improve the roster, borrow some debt, which we had to borrow$180 million and pay it off. So we needed some cash, but we're going to put the rest into the team. there was a whole virtuous cycle that we generated where there was enough. If we didn't all take cash every day, every week, every month, every year, but put it into the team, maybe the team could play a little bit better and then the tickets would sell. And, you know, so I'm coming at it from a different direction, but I'm agreeing. If you don't really want to do something, what you're going to do is analyze it until you find a no answer.

7:48If you want to do something, you're going to get enough information and then try to go for it. I mean, my wife, Amelia, right now is at a meeting in an undisclosed West Coast location with one of the biggest kind of stars in the world. I mean, one of the top stars. And that person wants to get involved with our Sincoro Tequila as a co-owner alongside Michael Jordan and Jeannie Boss and Wes Edens and us. And Amelia's in that meeting one-on-one with this person and they're from different backgrounds. But the connection has been made already and there's going to be more coming out of it, but she's not prepared for the meeting, you can't prepare for this meeting.

8:24You just have to have, I mean, she's as prepared as she can be, but you just have to have belief and optimism and maybe things will happen. Wow. That's so good. I actually think if we all step back and look at our lives a little bit different, our lives have been preparing us for whatever moment we're in right now. And if you can have that belief somehow that everything I've been going through in my life, no matter what it is, prepares me for this moment. So, hey, guys, as you know, I've partnered up with my good friend, Brennan Brouchard, who's created the greatest personal development system that has ever been designed called Growth Day.

8:58There's everything from journaling to accountability programs, live messages every Monday from myself and other influencers. There's an opportunity for you to get courses that would cost thousands of dollars completely for free. It's incredible. Go to growthday.com forward slash ed and check it out.

9:16There's another little element, and listen, you are being humble, and I love that about you. And that keeps you making good decisions. When you lose humility, you can make big mistakes believing your own press clippings. I agree with that. I've made those mistakes in my life. But having said that, there's another little element to the story before we move off of it that I want everybody to hear. And I'm going to make you aware of it because I just think when you're great at something, sometimes you're just oblivious to it. But the vast majority of people that listen to my show or are watching us right now, they have their own version of buying the Celtics.

9:46It's to start their restaurant. It's to write the book, right? It's to find their dream relationship. It's to lose 50 pounds. It's whatever it might be. Start their charity. And what happens oftentimes in people's lives is a dream stealer, I call them, comes along and talks them out of it. And oftentimes it can even be somebody whom you admire and respect. I know like in my career, remember when I started, my dad, who's my hero, really questioned what I was doing and wanted to talk me out of it. Not because he was a hater, because he loved me and he wanted to protect me. He didn't want me to make a mistake.

10:24Did you have people that you admired and that you looked up to tell you you were crazy to be doing this and to be careful? Maybe you're paying too much money. Did you have anything like that happen? I did. I also want to come back to what you just said about people's goals. So I'm going to try to remember to do that after I answer your question. It wasn't that they were haters for sure, but I had people I respected that I went to talked about. I think the first four people I met after shaking hands on the Celtics, the first four people I met hoping they would come in said no. And for perfectly good reasons, you know, overpayment.

10:58I had never had an employee before. I had. Wait, say that again. You had never had an employee before? If you can call my assistant an employee. I did have one employee. she's we're still working together today 21 years later Wendy Cooper she's fantastic but she doesn't really report to me if you know what I mean but other than that but I guess I just I got some very qualified no's thoughtful no's from people that I really respected but then I went ahead and signed the contract and wired the money then when I had the signed contract everything actually got easier if I can just talk for a minute about your observation that everybody has a dream or hopefully everybody has a dream.

11:38The way I say it, or I've said it to people in the past, like a class, a college class or something would be, I got to win a banner with the team in 2008. You know, got the ring, we got the banner up in the rafters, had the parade. And I want to win two more banners before I die. And everybody will normally go, yeah, of course. And why doesn't he want to rent five more or something. I said, no, no, no, you don't understand. My son is born blind, Campbell, and doesn't see, has many amazing qualities. He's everybody's favorite person who meets him, but he's struggled with or had to cope with not being able to see his whole life.

12:18I became the chairman of Mass Eye and Ear, which is the world's largest and among the leading blindness and deafness research institutions affiliated with Harvard, but really stands on its own since the 1820s. And the motto is so that the deaf may hear and the blind may see. And so one banner I want to raise is we beat blindness. And one banner I want to raise is we beat deafness. You know, we're done with it. And my point being that everybody in the room that I'd be talking to, and I think probably every listener here could raise a banner. They have those talents. But what do you want your banner to say?

13:00Do you want to say, I did something about hunger or homelessness or poverty in my community or in the broader world? I did something about, I did something for someone who was lonely. I did, I did, I helped somebody fight cancer. I was a great parent or a great partner. I mean, it doesn't have to be the biggest banner in history, but what, what banner, when you're 80 years old, 90 years old, what banner do you want to have in your Raptors. And then let me know when you do it and I'll come to the celebration. So that's kind of what I think about it. That's so good. You know it. I'm stealing that.

13:38Yeah, well, I kind of polished it. I've polished that a little bit, but I think it kind of works because people think, oh yeah, this guy wants to win more banners. Big deal. But no, they're different banners. Brother, that's remarkable. I was going to ask you about Campbell later, but I'll ask you now since she brought him up. How is having Campbell in your life change? It makes me emotional, and he's not my son. I don't even know what the heck I'm doing right now. I have a sister, Wick, who went blind with diabetic retinopathy, so this is a subject that's close to my heart as well. Now, fortunately, we've got some of her vision back, but how did having a child who, I'm sure when that happens, I really have this theory that when God maybe takes a gift from somebody, he doses them with incredible other gifts that make them superhuman in certain ways.

14:26But I'm curious as to having a child like Campbell, how it changed you. It had to some extent change you or affect you, give you a perspective or something that was different before God blessed him in your life. How did it affect you? Well, I guess I would just say Campbell is, and his sister are both spectacular, thoughtful people who are generous and giving and do everything they can for other people. And so that's one of his gifts. He's beloved by everybody who meets him. Really, that's true. It's not an overstatement. He probably taught me and others to, you know, I don't want any more pain in the world.

15:09I don't want people to feel overlooked or left behind in any way. Or, you know, everybody feels this way. I'm not saying I'm special in that way, but it just made me realize that, you know, we have to go fight blindness. We have to go fight deafness. It gave me probably a little bit more of a purpose. But anyway, Campbell doesn't owe me anything, but he's the most wonderful. He and his sister are spectacular, and his mom and I worked hard raising them, but they started off spectacular anyway. You know, what does make you different, I'll just brag on you. It's pretty clear to me early in the interview you're going to refuse to do it, so I'll do it for you.

15:48And this isn't just you. A lot of people have feelings about things in life, Wick. This is why I do my show. They feel like they want to change their emotions. They feel like they want to change their family station in life. They feel like they want to make a difference. But what separates people isn't that you have that feeling. It's that you use the word that you just used. They fight for it. And, you know, life's not going to give you what you'd like to have or you want to have or you feel like having. It gives you what you're willing to fight for. And what separates people in life is their willingness to fight for something that's bigger than them.

16:17And to your point, this banner is one of those things, but that is what separates you. A lot of people have liked to own the Celtics. You fought for it. That's why you have. And I think there's a lesson there. You're not going to say it about yourself, but it's, it's a fact. I think when you're in the midst of doing something great in your life, you really don't even realize it because you got the meetings every day and the pressure and we lost in the finals last year. So it doesn't really dawn on you probably till it's long done. And you are 80 years old wiki like i owned the flipping boston celtics and i even have the money to buy the team the other thing that dawned on me about you is the sitcom so it's called extended family guys and it's sort of loosely based on wick and his family tell me this isn't really how this happened because it's like if i understand the premise i understand the premise and by the way i've heard unbelievable things about amelia just so you know from mutual friends of ours they're like wick's pretty good but Amelia's remarkable and I'm serious whenever I go to a Celtics game up in Boston Amelia lives primarily down in New York and so whenever I'm at a game in Boston everybody's like hi Wick where's Amelia where's Amelia where's me I mean I will hear it 12 to 15 times a night including I hear this too and uh where's Amelia and so I asked her the other day I said Amelia has anybody ever once asked you, where's Wick?

17:33And she's like, oh, honey. And she's like the big smile. She's like, she's crunching up her face, thinking of a time someone might've asked, where's Wick? Like that's the difference. She has to reflect. I'm sorry, man. Well, I'll ask where you are next time I'm there. I'll ask her out. But I got to tell you, I think people look at someone like you or, you know, anybody who they see on TV or like their family dynamic must be perfect as well. Right. And so then I'm reading into your background, like, well, he's got a beautiful, incredible family, but there was, I'm sure the, the day you found out that, that Campbell had an issue with his vision.

18:08That's, that's a, that's something to process, right? That's not, that's a curve ball. We'll call it a curve ball.

18:16And then I don't know that this is accurate, but I know the premise of the show, the premise of the show is that you, you, and there's, there's a woman who ends up getting divorced and she ends up living under the same roof with her ex as they decide to raise the children and this really successful guy who owns a sports team ends up dating her and then there's this crazy dynamic that takes place tell me that that's actually accurate did that actually happen i'm sitting in the i'm sitting in the communal apartment right now in manhattan um george emilia's ex um was born and raised in boston went to bc born in needham huge boston sports fan There's more back to that later.

18:57But hilarious guy, brilliant guy, worked on Wall Street for many, many years. And really, really funny and really nice guy and a great dad. But eventually, apparently, the marriage ran its course. But they were both, they said, look, we're going to be better friends. So what if we stopped being married, but we kept the kids intact, you know, as best we could? This is the story of the show. So speaking for George and Amelia here, who are co-creators and co-executive producers. Um, the, uh, the idea was that they had, which I think is brilliant was to basically it's called nesting and it happens every now and then.

19:32If you can get along with your ex, the ex switches in for a week and then you switch in for a week and the kids stay put in their bedrooms and the kids, I think were young. I think there were eight and 11 at the time or something, or nine and 12. And it just probably provided more stability and calm that mom's here or dad's here. Maybe there were Sunday dinners, but everybody got along and they went, I mean, they may have still gone on family vacations. To this day, we all have Thanksgiving and Christmas together and so on. So George is part of the family. He has welcomed me to the family. There was a family event.

20:03There was a family funeral. And I just met George that evening. Amelia and I had been dating a little bit. And in front of the whole family, George stood up in this emotional time and said, I just want to welcome Wick to the family. Like he knew it was serious. George is a fantastic guy. And so when George is willing to go that far for his kids and the happiness of not only his ex, uh amelia but but his two kids and amelia was willing to go that far and of course i'm you know i'm happy to share everybody's life together i mean it's an amazing thing when it can happen we didn't start the show to give people a lecture it's just kind of funny because a boston sports fan's head explodes when his dynamic beautiful wife ex-wife brings home the owner of his favorite sports team it's a little bit much okay because that's crazy he literally said and he named a couple nba owners what about this guy or that guy you know mark cuban can't you date mark cuban you just can't boston sports is all i have okay so he's so funny he's now a writer on the show by the way so he's in the writer's room out there in in la half the time that's awesome you guys just picture this you're really with first off it is unique that you're living essentially in the same house with your ex-wife and then you're this huge fan of the Celtics and she dates the guy that owns the team so we've got Donald Faison playing the Celtics owner and he's thrilled he actually won the celebrity basketball league in LA he was like on the winning team he's a real basketball player he's a hilarious guy and I personally wanted him for my role because I wanted to have I just imagined Donald Faison owning the Celtics it seemed to work for me and then um Abigail spencer very talented with scotty on suits and then in gray's anatomy and mad men um she looks a lot like amelia and but she's just very talented in her own right and she's playing amelia's role and then uh john the very super talented john crier is playing george and so that's why we were actually last week the number two show on all of tuesday night congratulations by the way the reason i know about the show is john crier i'm a huge two and a half men fan and i think he's just he's awesome so you guys go check out the show and just this man's life is so interesting like everyone's just told to me hey if you get the owner of the celtics on the show do it and then i start to research because i don't just have any owner on the show i only do 52 interviews a year and i'm like my gosh this man is so compelling it's so interesting what's it like what's it like when the dream comes true take us through this 2008 uh it finally happens you've owned the i I guess you probably own the team about six, seven years by that time.

22:37Right. And you get to actual raise the actual Celtics banner with the parade. I read some stuff like when you were selling people on investing in the team, it was not just the fun of it, but it was also like, imagine the parade day. You know, imagine this raising the banner. You actually sold the dream to investors, which is what I think all great leaders do. They've got a vision. They've got an ability to sell a vision and a dream and repeat it and get buy-in from people. That's one element of the things that you're great at that you discount about yourself. But what is it like when you actually step into a dream?

23:11Because most of us, most people listening to this pray for that day where they actually meet their dream. They're stepping into it. What's it feel like? I was almost like bewildered. I didn't let myself believe it almost because it just seemed too implausible. i know it was halftime of game six and uh we were up by 28 points at halftime we went on a run right before halftime we're up like 26 28 points at halftime i went into our courtside club and i've got steven tyler in there from aerosmith and um bill belichick from the patriots who was a terrific guy off the field on the field you know he's non-communicative or whatever he is off the field he's hilarious and i'm sitting next to standing next to belichick and i said bill what do you think like what do you think i figure if anyone's going to take me down a notch it's bill belichick right like take it one play at a time like the most dour right right by the book and he goes are you kidding me you're the bleeping world champions we can celebrate now he goes tequila for everybody in the bar like he what called it at halftime i'm like we just got jinxed by bill belichick but we but we won by 39 you know but but i still didn't believe it i'm like well they could come back.

24:22We're up 30, you know, and then they put these velvet ropes at our feet that they were preparing to raise. And then like, all of a sudden I remembered, oh my God, the trophies in the building. Like I hadn't even allowed myself to think about the trophy. And I'm like, I'm about to be handed this trophy. And I had no remarks prepared. You know, I just didn't let myself prepare because I didn't want to jinx it. I was superstitious, I guess. And I just didn't believe it was true. But you know, to this day, every day I walk out onto the court, I'm like, I'm sitting in these great seats. I'm like, I guess it must be me and my partners who are sitting with me because like who else would be sitting in these seats?

24:56Like I, I, it's kind of a pleasant surprise every day. I swear to God, it's that good. Yeah. Are you telling me Bill Belichick bought a round for the bar or am I exaggerating that story? Yeah, he did. That's the way I remember it. We're going to go with that. We're going to go with that. You, uh, you win. I don't know for me, people have asked me like different dreams of mine that have happened. If I'm being honest, when they happened, they were incredible. But it didn't last as long as I thought it would, if I'm being candid, meaning the joy of it and the euphoria. This is just me. I'm just sharing from my perspective.

25:28I'm curious for you. Because of the pressure of now doing it again or doing something bigger. And so it was almost like, for me, I got as much joy in almost pursuing the dream as I did in actually the achievement of it. And there's actually some studies that say you get more dopamine in the pursuit of a goal than you do actually when you hit it in your brain. I can refute that. Give it to me. I want to hear your perspective. It's been 16 long years, but every day I'm happy about it. You are? Yeah. I mean, because it wasn't just me. I didn't make any of the baskets. It was us as a group, and we got there.

26:06And I don't know, I'm just, maybe it's just, it's my character or lack thereof or whatever, but I'm thrilled about it. Could that explain why you haven't won another one in 16 years? I'm just kidding. We're on top of the league right now, my friend. We are five or six games ahead of like everybody else, but we don't want to jinx it because it's only two thirds of the way through the season. What about that though? So the team itself right now, I'm a huge fan. And so we've been knocking on the door. I say we, and I don't have an ownership piece until this interview is over today. but um but the we've been knocking on the door i don't know five western conference finals couple finals and that's frustrating is the joy of winning for you greater than the pain of defeat at least as the owner meaning you said it's frustrating but it looks to me like it's frustrating but that that championship meant so much to you that you know you can grind through the man we were so close we were so close what's that feel like if we can get back there it'll be super sweet.