Behind the Brand®

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Jeff Adamson [00:00:39] Welcome to Behind the Brand presented by Neo. We take an inside look at the leaders behind today's most influential brands. I'm your host, Jeff Adamson. As co-founder of Neo Financial and SkipTheDishes, I'm fascinated by what it takes to build great companies. On this podcast, we'll learn from leaders that are reimagining, transforming, and innovating in the financial and retail industries across Canada. Let's get going!

I am excited to introduce Russell Reimer, Founder and President of Manifesto Sport Management, Canada’s leading athlete management and sponsorship sales agency.

Russell's career began as an announcer on the women's professional beach volleyball circuit in the United States, and he is now an active member of Canada's sports scene. Over the years, he has worked with world leaders and developed several successful programs, including an award-winning program called Sport for Life, which promotes tobacco-free living among youth. He has also founded a growing community movement, All Sport One Day, which aims to provide free sport discovery opportunities for kids.

At Manifesto Sport Management, Russell and his team focus on managing Olympic, action sports, and professional athletes, as well as producing branded content. Some of their notable clients include Toronto Maple Leafs star Mitch Marner, hockey legend Mark Messier, and Olympians Mark McMorris and Hayley Wickenheiser.

With his extensive experience in executive event volunteering, athlete brand and marketing advising, and sponsorship sales, Russell is a true expert in his field.

Russell, let's start from the beginning. I want to know what was your inspiration or driving force behind starting manifesto?

Russell Reimer [00:02:01] It came to me, I was a producer for NBC in the 2000 Sydney Olympics and the 2002 Salt Lake Olympics. And I gotta, you know, I think that's a fairly significant career break because I know beach volleyball really well, and I went in as a beach volleyball producer and then I ended up producing a lot of different sports. I came away from Sydney with a really, I think, beautiful understanding of how the Olympic movement should be framed. And a lot of that has to do with NBC and the way that they tell stories.

What I distilled all of that experience into was a simple phrase, “Olympians and their stories are the currency of the games”. When I began to think about that editorially, because NBC's a very competitive environment. You could imagine, you're there with the best producers in the world. Everybody wants Costas to talk about their story that night. And you're following, you know, what you believe 15, 20 million Americans have to fall in love with and have to have a vested and interest in it. And being an athlete yourself, in a sport that is not mainstream or a sport that has a moment during the Olympics, you know that to make people care, it's not about the luge or the bobsleigh. It really is about the transcendent story of the athlete. So when you be begin to look at the real asset value of what you're working with as an editorial producer, you can really begin to see the magic.

In Sydney, I began to formulate this idea that was really well seated by NBC in their approach to editorial storytelling, and then carried that forward in Salt Lake with a much more senior producer role. Incredible feedback from from the executive producer there, and you know, we found a real sweet spot. I was one of the only Canadian producers, I was heavily involved in the Salé Pelletier story and we turned them into honorary Americans. You know, there was a gap there in coverage that needed those nights to perform and everything worked, works back for ratings.

So you have Dick Ebersol, who's one of the greatest broadcast geniuses of all time, and he's telling you, you know, “We're working back from a broadcast”, or “We guaranteed our advertisers a 16 share last night, we only got a 50.” You had to grind to find this idea at editorial meetings that you'd be pitching your stories against 50-60 other producers. It sharpens you in a way that you get so competitive that you want the nugget, you know, you want to talk about. And maybe you know, the Shea family story from 2002, right? The three generational Olympians, that ended up being Jim Shea who won the skeleton gold.

Jeff [00:04:41] Explain that a little bit because it…

Russell [00:04:43] Do you remember the story?

Jeff [00:04:44] Well, like I'm, I'm closer to the Summer Olympics and so I…

Russell [00:04:47] Right.

Jeff [00:04:47] I definitely tune in for the Winter Olympics, but I'm definitely not as in touch with the stories by now. What's the story there?

Jeff [00:04:53] The Salé Pelletier story was fairly straightforward. You've got these Canadians, they're a beautiful couple, but in pairs there was no American, there's no American team. So what would've usually been a rivalry between the Russians, Canadians, Americans did not have Americans in it. So our goal was to create honorary Americans and turn this Canadian pair and get the entire rooting interest of everyone who watches spread primarily in pairs, it's like 40 to 65 year old women. That's the target demo. And the Olympics has a way of reaching them that no other sport property does. You have to give them a vested interest. You have to make them fall in love with Jamie and David. And that's really successfully what we did through beautiful storytelling, super deep, I think 10 or 11 stories on them before they even took the ice.

So that moment, really crystallized, I think, and and showed them in Salt Lake that Canadians could find that place if the storytelling was good enough. And I think we got there. And then of course, it turned into something extraordinary when a French judge did a taxi cab confessional and that basically showed the world that the judging was fixed.

Jeff [00:05:59] Hold on. Can you expand on that? Cuz I, I feel like I missed, I missed that.

Russell [00:06:03] You missed the 2002…

Jeff [00:06:04] What like a French judge confessed to a taxi cab driver that the judging was fixed?

Russell [00:06:08] Yeah.

Jeff [00:06:09] that seems like a bit of a slip.

Russell [00:06:11] Yeah, she did! She, I think she was in tears because the French judge had agreed to vote or to elevate the Russian pair over the Canadian pair. And that night she, taking a taxi back to her hotel, told the taxi driver that she had fixed it in favor of the Russians.

Jeff [00:06:28] Man, that makes me so mad cuz I, I competed against a lot of Russians when I was an athlete and the amount of doping that was going on, just blatant, like everyone knew…

Russell [00:06:37] Straight up.

Jeff [00:06:38] And then you're competing against a guy or even in training. I remember when I lived in Russia, I was training there, and you're going through these intense training camps and you're exhausted, you're hurt, you're beat up. These guys that are, that are doping are just like fresh. I'm like, how come they're not getting as tired? And how come they're like putting on muscle like crazy?

And, and then you hear, at least we, I mean, we don't have, we have refereeing, but we don't have judging as much in wrestling. But to hear that it's kind of in every sport, it just man, it really, it's really depressing.

Russell [00:07:05] Yeah. It's rampant. You know, if you ain't cheating, you ain't trying. That's the motto there and we've seen it play out with the Sochi Olympics and you know, things as revealing as Rodchenkov in Sochi 2014 and everything else that happened there. Yeah, this was the beginning I think, of Russians reveal to the world that they had corrupted a French judge and she had admitted to doing it and that the trade-off was, and if she did it, then the Russian judge would give France the ice dance gold. So that was the trade. Russia got the pairs gold and then in return they got the ice dance. So the quid pro quo.

But while we are in it, we have this challenge of how do we take these American sweethearts from Canada and not lose that entire demographic? Because if that demographic became inflamed and just simply said “This is fixed”, you lose them for the rest of the Olympics. And that's a terrifying prospect if you’re NBC that's guaranteeing a 16 share during primetime for 17 consecutive nights. So, Dick Ebersol, Tom Pure, this incredible executive producer and a kind of the guy who wrote the Bible on Olympic broadcasting, a guy, our Olympic researching guy named David Wolczinski. They said, “Well let's figure this out. Like let's put our brains together and find out a solution.” So I offered this idea of doing a web poll, and in 2002, web polls weren't really even a thing. And they said, “Set it up, we'll lead with Costas on the results of a web poll”. And so Costas leads the broadcast with an update on what has happened to date. And says, “Go online to nbcolympics.com. Tell us if you think that the Canadians should have won.” Sure enough, 96%, it crashed the site. 4 million people in the first 10 minutes who are hitting this web poll?

I think one of the most, gotta be one of the most successful web polls ever promoted right off the top of a broadcast and the hottest story, maybe in Olympic history. 96% of Americans say Canada should have won. And what that basically did, was it armed Ebersol with a temperature check in a very loosely democratic way of what was going to happen. And the producer asked David Wolczinski, can you find somewhere in the Olympic record where we can reconcile this?

And of course, Wolczinski said something like, “Oh, Grenoble 1968, there was a double gold on a judge's error”. So Ebersol had these two pieces of information. He had the French judge’s confession, he had a web poll that said, “You're going to lose America, if you don't change this” and by midday the next day, the ISU and the IOC had given the Canadians a gold as well.

Jeff [00:09:46] Wow!

Russell [00:09:47] Being a part of something like that, I began to realize that wow this has, storytelling has incredible currency. And you gotta remember storytelling is everywhere now. But in 2002, it wasn't commercially a thing. So as I began to form this idea about athletes and their stories, or Olympians and their stories or their currency of the Olympic movement, I got [a] firsthand really in-depth bootcamp on just how powerful it could be.

Those are the seeds of how Manifesto began to form as an idea and worked its way into a business plan.

Jeff [00:10:19] And so like what is Manifesto's role in an athlete's life? Is it kind of just like an agency? Help manage their social media, help get them speaking gigs? Is it all of the above?

Russell [00:10:32] Yeah. I mean, fundamentally we are an athlete services agency. We started, I think, with very philosophical approach. That was a differentiator from the beginning of how we were going to approach athlete management. I mean, we believe that sport is a tool for social change that you can make meaningful impact in communities, you can influence consumers. So there's a commercial part of this, but philosophically there has to be more to this than just making you money. Although fundamentally that is the most important thing that we do. But we find that well-rounded athletes who have what I call a parallel path, that those things are actually shaping what sponsors are looking for more and more.

And we made a big bet on this, you know, believing in storytelling from a very early age, our very early development of Manifesto. And then what we would begin to do with the athletes is reverse engineer, so that we would begin to understand what is the tool that we need to unlock what your story is, and that basically, I took my journalistic background with NBC and said, I'm gonna go all in on an athlete discovery, and I'm gonna ask you about when you failed spectacularly, when you surprised yourself. Who you skate for, who you played hockey for.

You know that there's this famous guy named Rowdy Gaines. You come off of the pool and he puts a mic in your face and he says, who do you swim for today? And you can't tell everyone's crying because they just got out of the pool, they're crying in the rain, but everyone cries and everyone thinks, and that, you know, the grandmother who drove to 5:00 AM practices or a single mom or a dad who gave up working at his job so that he could shepherd them through their teen years. And that, that emotion is solicited from that one question is what we're looking for so we can understand our athletes better.

And then think of their stories in a commercial way of what will appeal to partners. And it’s turned out to be the golden nugget. I think it's what, what's made us not only a differentiated and philosophically driven agency, but it's also led to commercial success for our athletes, which I think is deeply satisfying. Sponsors get to know who they are and why they are.

Jeff [00:12:46] I wanna touch on something you mentioned while you were at NBC. You mentioned that you were able to learn a ton while you were at NBC because you have so many people competing, pitching stories. You had like 15 or 20 competing stories. Storytelling is incredibly important, I think, in almost everything that people do.

Jeff [00:13:02] Yeah

Russell [00:13:02] And it's, some people just think that people are born good storytellers. They always know someone who's a really good storyteller and they're like, “Oh, right, you tell, yeah, you tell it because you tell it better.”

But if someone wants like a promotion or if they want to win a deal or they want to convince their kids to, you know, put their clothes on in the morning, you know, they're…

Russell [00:13:20] Yeah.

Jeff [00:13:21] Storytelling really helps kind of, you know, grease the wheels a little bit. So what's some of the advice or things that you learned from that really intensely competitive storytelling environment at NBC?

Russell [00:13:30] You don't have to accept rejection. You have to fall in love with it. You cannot be great in that environment or really, in my opinion, that's the most transferrable skill. If you're pitching, you have to be ready to not win and recognize that that is a step to success.

You, you can't think of yourself like every time I go up there, and I’ve got one minute to catch an executive producer's imagination. That actually is where the win is. It's what I call the find and grind. You have to get down to the nugget. You have to reduce a story to it's essential why.

And this is before Simon Sinek reduced it to, you know, start with why. This is before Brene Brown said, dare greatly. I mean, all of these things, the market has now caught up to. But it all existed within that, that environment because you had to compete for time. Every minute that you got, you had to compete for.

So it was an extraordinary time and the biggest learning is, when someone gives you really direct, candid feedback, treated like solid gold. Most people that I find I work with don't, can't take it. You have to really soften the edges, really soften the edges, and it, it's, I don't really find it frustrating, I just find it so different than what I was willing to accept when I was growing up. And a person that I believed in, trusted, knew, was at the top of the game, and they looked you square in the eyes and they said, “You are not gonna win a pitch until you do this. You found the nugget.” We even had a bell, if you can believe this, where a friend of mine would yell out “Nugget!” and then we would ring the bell when we knew someone found it. It was that celebrated [laughing]. So weird environment, but then it pulled the best outta you.

Jeff [00:15:25] What do you think is holding people back from taking in feedback? You know, because it, because I, part of me is thinking, of course, like everyone knows that feedback is kind of how you get better, but then knowing it doesn't necessarily make it any easier to swallow.

So is it the fact that the person giving you the feedback, perhaps you don't necessarily have that relationship with them or that trust with them? And for people who are kind of thinking about how they can get better, is the advice there, get the relationship, get the trust, then let's talk about the feedback? Or is it, hey, take the feedback, try it out. If it works, then you can trust them?

Russell [00:15:56] I don't think you have to have someone's trust to give them feedback. The trust is how well it might be received. But the appeal to me was, do you want to win? This is a highly competitive environment. Well, how do you feel about winning? You are not going to. And then I, something had been taken from me before I even got a taste of it. And I wanted to win, so I said, I said to myself, I'm willing to accept, you know, I gained trust because of the candidness of the feedback. I gained trust of this individual.

He sent me one of the nicest notes on the 20 year anniversary of the Sydney 2000 games, and he said that the, the three producers that he worked with most closely, he said we were the most creative and the energy is the best he's seen in the Olympics ever. He just completed his 14th Olympics for NBC. So I took that as probably professionally one of the, one of the greatest things I've ever had. But we had a bond because he said it. He saw a glimpse of himself in me. He said it to me because it's the stuff he wanted to hear when he was my age and he didn't hold back. Now, I love that guy. I do absolutely love that guy. But if you ask, should a relationship have started out that way? Probably not.

Jeff [00:17:19] Yeah. But he already had that credibility…

Russell [00:17:21] So if I wasn't gonna listen to this guy and I was, I had a fixed mindset at the time, I was 28 years old. Good luck.

Jeff [00:17:27] Yeah. And I think part of it too is like, who would you be to criticize someone who's kind of been there for 14 Olympics? To not listen to them or respect their opinion on the work that you're doing, I think would be, would be pretty arrogant to try to try to kinda ignore that.

Russell [00:17:42] To me, the greatest arrogance reveals itself in defensiveness.

Jeff [00:17:44] Yeah.

Russell [00:17:45] I think what would happen now if I gave that type of feedback to the people that I work with or the athletes that I work with? A lot of them would initially respond very defensively. It would never be my intent to try and tear someone down. And I believe I, I can deliver candid feedback in a way that's wrapped in a bow. In a way that, you know, gently guides you toward a better story for yourself. I'll put it that way. And I've been able to do that through my career.

But I think it's the importance of the feedback, the timeliness of it, that usually could tell the story. There's a moment, a teachable moment here that you and I need to go through and it's all because I'm dedicated to your success.

There are a lot of athletes who have entrusted their careers to me, to my team. And like I said, philosophically, we treat it very seriously, but don't take it too seriously. Like we still want athletes to have fun, but we want them to be a more fulfilled, better self that has a parallel path. You cannot define yourself solely as an athlete. So when things start to get there, you know where you think you deserve something because you won a gold medal, you always have to remember that the multiplier is the story that you create around who you are and why you do what you do.

And we've, I mean, we have moms that have gone through our program, Hayley Wickenheiser, Melissa Bishop, most recently Natalie Spooner. And we were able to tell these really beautiful stories about them that have nothing to do with sport, and that's what gets me excited.

Jeff [00:19:13] Yeah, I wanna touch on a question you asked earlier, Russell, and it's something that I've been asked as well. And it's such a simple question and you said it, and it actually like literally triggered like something in me.

Russell [00:19:24] You, you, you heard the same thing? [Laughing]

Jeff [00:19:25] [Laughing] Oh yeah, I've heard it.

Russell [00:19:26] Yeah?

Jeff [00:19:27] But it's, do you want to win?

Russell [00:19:28] Right.

Jeff [00:19:29] Do you find that you get a very wide range of reactions though, to people when you, when you ask that question or you hear that question asked? Or is it pretty consistent?

Russell [00:19:37] With the, with the people we hire and it's pretty consistent. With athletes it's like, I mean, it's a hundred percent. I'm not saying that the sole motivator for athletes is winning, but what's the alternative here? Like, what's the phrase? If you're concerned about the cost of not trying, just imagine the price of regret. That I think is, is a driving or fundamental motivation for most athletes. I think you'll, you'll appreciate that. You weren't in it or you were only in it to the point where you thought you could win it. And then retirement usually is the moment when you come to terms with, with the fact that you can't honestly say that to yourself anymore.

Jeff [00:20:14] I think the context of when it's asked is also important, and you know, what are the limits on your desire to win and what are you willing to do to win? The reason why, to me, it's such a profound question, is that the context of of when it is asked is usually when it comes down to what are you gonna do? Well, if you really wanna win, you're going to embrace this feedback. You're gonna internalize it, reflect on it, do things differently. So you're almost tying the things that you deep down know that you need to be doing to that desire to win. And, and you have to almost admit to yourself, I actually don't want to win bad enough…

Russell [00:20:50] Yeah.

Jeff [00:20:51] To overcome maybe my ego that might be preventing me from listening to this advice.

Russell [00:20:55] Right.

Jeff [00:20:56] Or that insecurity that's triggering that defensiveness. To me though, if that desire is strong enough to win, if the need, if the, if the why behind it or whatever it is, you start crushing away your ego, you start crushing away the distractions, the things that are holding you back, because ultimately that's a path that you kind of, you, you admit to yourself that you do wanna win and you wanna win this badly. So you're willing to, to start changing yourself.

Russell [00:21:19] It happens so unconsciously. I mean, the beauty of that, having that type of conversation with yourself or separating yourself a little bit from the outcome of fixating yourself in the Canadian sports system has taken what I think is a very terrible term toward fixation on metal outcomes, and it's missing the entire point.

Canada is a country that is almost singularly defined by humility, grace, friendship, smile, welcoming. All of these things, I think across the board, people would say about what makes Canada, Canada. I think most international people would say those things too. And suddenly we have a cultural pivot where it's all about the outcome of winning.

And we miss the point, especially in the storytelling that this kid was from Port St. John, BC. They competed at a home Olympics, they didn't do great, but then they won a gold medal. In the meantime, Canada judged them only on their failure. Why? Because we have a culture that decided, in my opinion, to take a wrong turn.

When you get back to this idea of how it changes you. That type of external environmental change, it unconsciously changes you, but I think in the wrong direction. When you should be thinking to yourself, how am I going to win? And that is a deeply personal question that you are asking yourself, your coach, your immediate team. And that's not necessarily something that Canada or everyday Canadians should be saying, “Oh this, this kid's favored win three gold medals.” And then all that he could do from that point is lose Canada instead of gaining one…

Jeff [00:22:50] Yeah.

Russell [00:22:51] One gold medal. And these false expectations that you've created of yourself. And that ultimately the programming in Canada created for our kids, missed the entire moment of what makes, not just Canada a beautiful country to compete for, but makes our athletes what they are and why we become so proud of them. And now it's only performance and has been entirely hijacked.

So to take that back to the example of NBC, I separated myself entirely from trying to get a winning pitch. And I thought, I have 10 seconds here. I have eight seconds here. What is the nugget, grind and find, you know? You find it and you get outta the way and then somebody else tells you, “Yeah, that's the story we're gonna deal with.”

I stopped thinking about, man, I need to be on tv. I need my piece up on the front page of NBC olympics.com. And you thought just about finding the nugget because that's how he told you you'd win and he turned out to be right.

Jeff [00:23:45] That's great Russell. And when you think about finding the nugget, do you see it as a, the goal is to, to basically find the nugget and the byproduct of that is going to be all the other things like getting on NBC and getting notoriety? You know, I, I've increased my chances of really getting it.

Russell [00:24:00] Yeah. I think, you know, the idea of getting somewhere, I think of our brand or the development of Manifesto, I think of it this way. I took what I believe was a rebellious spirit, a really deep philosophical understanding of what sport should mean and did mean to me. And I took this idea of entrepreneurship and said, I'm going to have to do it my way, or it won't be successful for me and it won't return value for my, for the athletes that I work with.

So it wasn't about pursuing my passion, it was just deciding I was going to do the things that I was. Right? And I would have no fix address that I was going to, and I would allow opportunity to create gravity for me. And I would recognize, oh, there's a pull here. And I would listen to myself and I would find an nugget. I'd work hard and I would take action, learn by doing. I would say to myself, “What did I learn from NBC? Well, athletes and their story are the currency of the Olympic movement.” Grind and find. Take action.

My dad always used to say, equal parts action. You could talk all you want, but you'd better be ready to dock it out. I didn't think about developing a brand or some grand idea, that Manifesto would be very deliberately chosen. It was no fixed address. If you're gonna think entrepreneurially, you have to also have one eye on opportunity at all times and allow that gravity to pull you toward what you should become.

Instead of saying, I'm gonna build an athlete agency, I'm gonna build something that is a difference-maker in Canadian sport, period. That is a verb. Right? You are constantly becoming that thing and then it returns personal and professional value in equal measure. Because you never thought I would become this and my agency would become this, and then if I didn't get there, I'd fail. Every moment is a cumulative sum for me and I treat myself professionally that way as well.

Jeff [00:26:00] Well, it seems true to the Olympic spirit, the pursuit of excellence. It's not the achievement of it.

Russell [00:26:06] Right!

Jeff [00:26:07] Yeah, I think a lot of people get so fixated on the outcome they actually don't understand or comprehend who they're becoming in the process of doing something very, very difficult.

Russell [00:26:15] Yeah.

Jeff [00:26:16] I've been so blessed to be able to see so many people, both in my athletic career and in my professional career, transform before my eyes.

Russell [00:26:23] Yeah.

Jeff [00:26:24] And because I can remember, I can remember the work they were doing the first day we hired them, and then I look at them in a pitch meeting or running a project, and I'm just like almost in awe of how much…

Russell [00:26:33] Right!

Jeff [00:26:34] They've progressed. And the same, same thing in sports too, where you're like, you know, we had, Erica Wiebe works at Neo and, and

Russell [00:26:39] Yeah, I love Erica.

Jeff [00:26:40] You, you know Erica really well. And yeah, I remember even just like first seeing her compete. Cause we, we were the same age, we went to the 2012 games together.

Russell [00:26:48] Yeah.

Jeff [00:26:49] And I remember seeing her compete like in, I think it was like late high school, maybe early university. And then like fast forward to the Rio Olympics where she's winning gold medal. It's just like, it is unbelievable how far people can come in a short amount of time when they stay focused. When they kind of believe in themselves. When they really understand what their why is.

Russell [00:27:07] Yeah.

Jeff [00:27:08] That must be such a rewarding experience for you at Manifesto to see that happen.

Russell [00:27:12] You know, I call it the joy of the gift. We have athletes, I mean, they are truly blessed when you find out you have a gift. I mean, a lot of us have a gift, it just doesn't turn into a gold medal at the Olympic Games.

You're almost born with it, or you identify it so early in your life and you set aside everything to pursue the gift, to make sure that you have given the gift everything that you can to fulfill it. And that, that finding out process, that discovery process, I think is, you know, one of the coolest things to find in athletes and the true outcome of any successful venture, and especially for athletes, is that you can leave an Olympic games or a world championship believing that you have done right by the gift you've been given. And to me, that's a level of fulfillment, no number of medals can match that.

I think if you asked athletes really candidly, were you competing to exceed what you believed you were capable of? Or were you competing for a gold medal? They would probably say, “I, I was, I wanna see what I can, what I could become.” And if a gold medal was the outcome, awesome!

Jeff [00:28:21] Was it Steve Prefontaine? Anything less would be a waste of the gift.

Russell [00:28:24] That's right. He knew the transferability of that specialism.

Jeff [00:28:42] I understand the value of sport and what it can do, but I feel like a lot of people, you know, they, they may be thinking, listen, art and, and music and healthcare and, you know, there's people who are struggling all in all different parts of the world, you know. W

hy should we care about sport when there is so many other things that we need to be caring about? And I'm not saying this as a way of saying like sport is any more important than those other things because there's so much need in the world.

Russell [00:29:07] Yeah.

Jeff [00:29:08] But why, why should we hold up sport? Like why is it important, specifically to Canada?

Russell [00:29:13] I think most recently, during Covid, with a lot of people there was a, there was a crisis of care, I think. There's a lot of people who looked at the jobs that they had and thought, I don't want to be doing that anymore. Or this is a moment of reflection and pivot my life that if I don't take it, it's never going to come again. And I mean, please, I hope it doesn't come again. Or you have to go through a personal crisis to get there.

When I look at sport and what particularly the Olympic movement does, is it gives you every two years or so, maybe every four years, it gives you a moment of pause and reflection to remember in the most simplest ways why you care about a national identity. Why you care about the kids you're watching who have dedicated their teens and twenties to do something great for Canada. Why you proudly call yourself a Canadian. But it goes, it goes beyond national identity. And I think sport is one of those rare things where people share moments together, but personalize them, individuate them in different ways.

And you could talk to someone about Sidney Crosby's goal, or Joannie Rochette’s skate for her mom, Mark McMorriss’ third consecutive bronze, Tessa and Scott's, you know, glorious Olympics. And what it always comes down to is what you personally took from the story. Or most importantly, what you needed to take from it. And that's why I think sport is so important, is it finds you where you're at. And a lot of people went through really tough stuff during Covid, and you take a moment just to settle yourself down and watch 17 days of competition and allow the stories to kind of give you a grounded understanding of not just what Canada is, but you're placed in it.

Jeff [00:31:00] There almost seems like a bit of a movement and like even to, to go back to the question of, but like, why should we care about Canada being number one? Or why should we care about us being great? Like, shouldn't we just kind of focus on the problems we have at home? And let's fix some of those problems but let's not try to be too good, you know, like less…

Russell [00:31:20] Yes. [Laughing]

Jeff [00:31:2`] Do you know what I mean? Like, and I, honestly, it's hard for me cuz I've been wired for so long to kind of always push to become the the best you can possibly be. That was just the way that my parents had raised me was you always put in your best effort and you know, you don't settle for anything less than that. But I feel like there's, it's almost a little bit countercultural now to kind of really be the best…

Russell [00:31:45] Yeah.

Jeff [00:31:46]At something like, it's like, hey, just like calm down a little bit. Like, let's not, let's not rock the boat too much. Like let's aim a little bit lower. You know? Why do you think that is? And, and do you think that is, that's the wrong way we should be thinking about it in Canada?

Russell [00:31:55] Yeah, a hundred percent. I do not like prognostications. I think that basically what prognostications do is they download all of the pressure. Of the, of the games that are the only metal performances to the athletes themselves. And they say, look, we've put all this money, we've invested all this money. And I remember the Vancouver 2010 games were entirely about, these are our games of conversion.

Canadians should have never even heard that word. We ended up winning two more battles in Vancouver with 150 million more dollars than we did in Turino. And you're telling me that was a success? No, the biggest failure was that we shared with Canadians the idea that our athletes were somehow alone in the pursuit of excellence with all this money. When the ruthless pursuit of excellence has pretty much been monopolized by America and Russia. If you think you can compete with those two countries, and now China. Good luck.

You know, this idea of owning the podium is so farcical that it's almost comedy. I can't even hear the words without laughing. And it, the program has been a spectacular failure. And I mean that because I've done a really considerable data analysis because I was so interested in NBC, the early coverage that I did on understanding what America's secret plan was to win their home games, which they did. They didn't say a single word about an extra dollar spent on those games. They quietly shut up and went about their business and beat the world. That's how you do it.

Jeff [00:33:23] Mm-hmm.

Russell [00:33:24] How you don't do it is talk about it every single day for two years before Vancouver 2010, so that Canadians have a heightened expectation and all you can do at the starting line is lose, no matter what you do.

So it was tragic. And after five days, the COC trotted out their leadership and they said, “We're not gonna reach our medal total”, which I think at the time was 35. 35 medals, we ended with 26. What it took away was the joy and I think only Jon Montgomery kind of brought it back with the beer and he gave Canada an excuse to party. And it kind of reminded us that as long as we're watching sport and having fun and drinking a beer, it doesn't matter. And we're so much behind the veneer of performance that we missed because of the fixation on it. You know, when you, when you talk about the pursuit of excellence, I get it. I totally get it. What athlete would be in it if they, if they weren't committed? But when your Olympic dream gets hijacked by medal outcomes or podium performances and is the biggest single disservice, I think that's happened to how Canada sees the Olympics and what their expectation is. We used to win with grit, humility, and grace, and now all of that has been supplanted by the ruthless pursuit of podiums.

Jeff [00:34:41] So then what's the alternative then? Because I think it's like a metal count goal. As long as the goal is specific and measurable and so on and so forth, that shouldn't be a bad thing. Unless the outcomes of that are are quite negative. But sounds like what you're saying is breaking it down to purely outcomes, purely dollars was harmful. How would you do it?

Russell [00:35:00] There's no problem with creating goals. I don't do that personally. Because I find that linear pursuit is what takes you away from opportunity. If you feel a pull that is gonna take you in another direction because your gut tells you, I know the market, I know where this is going, but you're fixated on one linear path, you have missed a moment.

I'm not opposed to the pursuit of podium performances. I just think that they are the secondary outcome of that pursuit. You happen to be rewarded with a bronze today, congratulations. But if you sent out and said you, you have to win a gold medal and a bronze, you win a bronze, you have not succeeded. You have fourth place. You're telling me fourth place isn't success? You lost your mind.

Jeff [00:35:50] That's a good point. There's also lots of people who, you know, outperformed. Maybe they were at 12th in the world and they got 8th, and like, how are we moving up, yeah. Boiling it to only medals at the exclusion of everything else. Definitely, I see what you mean there.

Russell [00:36:01] Yeah. Progression over podium, I think is, is the way I would put it. The easiest way is not to disclose those goals to Canadians. You can internally talk about it all you want. This federation thinks it could win this number of battles. This federation believes it's gonna win this number of battles.

Hey, keep it to yourself. And whatever happens at the Olympics, proud of you. Proud of the kids who, you know, like I said, took their entire team years, took their entire twenties to create something special for Canada, no matter what. Right? That should be celebrated as a team. Just don't talk about it in a way that sets 'em up for, for failure.

Jeff [00:36:34] You mentioned earlier about transitioning from sport to kind of, I call it the afterlife. I went and looked through the kind of the list of athletes, and I know, I know some of them, and a lot of them are just great human beings. Like these are just, these are role models that really helps reinforce to, I think, younger people and e even people in their peer groups that you, you don't need to be a jerk to be successful. I think it was Izzy Wideman for example, she was just out [and] my sister sent me photos. She lives in, in Brandon, Manitoba, and she sent me photos that Izzy is out. For those that don't know Izzy, she won a whole handful of medals, including some gold. She was a flag bearer at the closing games.

She's in Manitoba, she's meeting kids, she's talking. And I remember my sister was like, “She just, she seems like such a genuinely good person”. And I was like, “Yeah, she is”. For kids to have role models like that to look up to and not to see those role models in the news about something terrible and you're just like, okay, now I need to find a new hero. I think that's just incredible.

But like all this to say, Russell are there examples you can think of or what, what advice would you have based on your experience with these high-performance individuals? For people who are like, “Okay, I'm not gonna be, you know, an Olympic gold medalist in speed skating, but I really, really want to have an impact at the company I'm at.” Those types of people.

Russell [00:37:58] I think that everyone who wants to be really great and what I've seen from athletes and what I've applied to myself is, you have a career vision for yourself that goes beyond, I want an incremental job opportunity. Oh, next year, by this time I wanna be a VP. When you fixate on those things, that is all that you will become is the title, is the thing that you're searching for.

A great Oscar Wilde quote about if you want to be a lawyer or a firefighter or policeman, that is what you will become, but he calls it your prison. Right? You and your role, how you identify, that is you now. And if you are a verb, you are in a constant process of renegotiation with yourself, allowing yourself and pushing yourself to become something that you might not have thought you would be. Right? And that is your joy. That is your prize, that you have become a verb.

And it's not just this idea of no fixed address and you know, wanderlust where you don't have a lot of meaning or focus on what you're doing. The focus is on the process of becoming, and that's what Oscar Wilde means by being a verb. So we like to call it a parallel path, and I think when you have a career vision, instead of thinking in terms of these two polar opposites of work and life balance, you think of it as a parallel path where work is here, life is here and sometimes they can exist together, sometimes they can exist apart, but you always know that you are forming an identity based on two things, at least, that help you move forward. So that if one lets you down, the other can pick you up. And it isn't that they're in opposition or any sort of polemic,they are where we tend to think of it a little too heavily like, I'm working too hard, my life is falling apart. I'm enjoying my life, oh my God I'm letting my career down.

As two oppositional forces misses the entire point of life. It's the space between the notes that we should be focused on. That's where the music is! The parallel path is what we talk about with a lot of athletes. What is your story that helps you identify as more than an Olympic gold medalist, or more than a Canadian hockey player? Look, I mean, look at Hayley Wickenheiser, right? She said “I wanted to be a doctor when I was growing up. I just took a circuitous 23 year route through hockey.” This is a woman who had a very clear intention of what her life would be. I want to be a medical doctor. Hockey. And did she allow those things to fight each other? Didn't she say, “Oh, I'm losing my career opportunity in the medical field because of winning gold medals.” Can you imagine thinking that those two things were oppositional? Because she didn't think of it that way as work-life. Right? She thought of it as, I'm going to do these things alongside each other. They'll be friends, they'll walk together. And when one of them is ready to lead, the other will follow. And vice versa. So that, that's the stuff I think that is most applicable to greatness in your career life.

Jeff [00:41:11] Yeah and so it's about thinking about multiple paths that can be in harmony with one another, that perhaps are complimentary to one another. And I think, you know, in Hayley's example, having been through everything that she's been through as an athlete and like a pioneering athlete, all the skills that she would develop, I would expect help prepare her for whatever challenges becoming a doctor might be. And this is something that I think helps you focus on the process as you know, whatever job you have right now and wherever you want to get to, being able to look at and say, “Hey, all this difficulty…

Russell [00:41:51] [Laughing] Yeah.

Jeff [00:41:52] Is actually what's preparing me to become the person I need to be in order to achieve the things I want to get.” To be honest, I feel like we could talk a while about this stuff, and I'm super grateful for you taking the time to come on and talk with us. Where can people learn more about Manifesto? Where, where can people learn more about you specifically as well?

Russell [00:42:41] Yeah, I mean, manifestosport.com is the website. We represent some of the most incredible athletes, influencers, human beings, philanthropic people, and I mean, I'm privileged to, to say that I represent them. So manifestosport.com, people are welcome to go there. I have a bio on the site that I think you may have, may have seen.

What I'm most proud of is the work that I've done in helping build Calgary, specifically with All Sport One Day, a program that I founded 13 years ago now, 14 years ago now, that has absolutely changed the way that we turn never-evers into first-timers. So if you want a little bit, know a little bit about my philosophical approach to community building, please visit allsportoneday.ca and the program is run by Sport Calgary and then has become an absolute change maker in how sport is delivered, not just in this city with hundreds of thousands of kids now gone, gone through that program. A free day of sport discovery at almost every single a community sport facility in the city. And then if you want to follow me on LinkedIn, it's Russell Reimer.

Jeff [00:43:53] Amazing. Thank you so much and we'll put links to those in the show notes. Russell, this has been amazing. Thanks a lot, man.

Russell [00:44:01] Yes, brother. I appreciate it and great to meet you and appreciate you extending the invitation and, and the time.

Jeff [00:44:11] Thank you for tuning into Behind the Brand. If you enjoyed today's show, please subscribe and leave a review on your preferred podcast platform. If you’re interested in learning more about Neo Financial, visit us at neofinancial.com.

Behind the Brand is a production of Neo Financial and MediaLab YYC. Hosted by Jeff Adamson. Strategy, research, and production by Keegan Sharp, Alana Tefledzuk, and Kyle Marshall.