Mentors make all the difference. Good ones often take you uphill.
In the last years of his life, I’d talk to my dad about his career and it all came back to Cecil Goode, his mentor as a young man. Every time Cecil moved to a new job in federal government, he’d find an opportunity for my dad.
I’m sure it was for Cecil’s sake as well, since my dad was a brilliant and hard working management analyst (I didn’t get that gene). But bottom line, he made a huge difference in Dad’s life, thus our lives, and it didn’t stop until Cecil went to New York with the United Nations and Dad stayed in D.C. with his growing family at the Bureau of the Budget. I could have grown up in New York.
Brad Mayne is a mentor. He has pulled a lot of people up through the ranks, in his roles as arena and stadium manager and as an instructor at the Venue Management School. He has influenced people to do the right thing. We couldn’t be more pleased that he is now president and CEO of the International Association of Venue Managers.
He’ll pull us all up. He always has.
Profiling the Women of Influence this month, I had the pleasure of getting to know Ali Harnell, AEG Live.
Asked about her career highlight, she keyed in on Dave Matthews Band at Vanderbilt Stadium in Nashville. The university hadn’t done a stadium show in forever and DMB was one of Ali’s picks when they were a supporting act in New York City. “Doing him at Vanderbilt — pulling off a stadium show at that university, it was such hard work, but then to stand there that night… Honestly, he added a couple songs to the playlist that he knows I love. It was a seriously special night for us,” Ali recalled.
She also put her heart and soul into Nashville River Stages for many years. “It was way cool and I loved it.”
River Stages went out of business a couple of years after Ali left. “For a couple of years I giggled to myself, ‘wow, they couldn’t do it without me,’” she said, laughing. “I do think the passion somebody brings — I had such a feeling of passion, ownership and obligation to River Stages — makes a huge difference.”
“Other things I’ve done, I’ve felt just have an organic, natural flow. Sometimes I have to pull the plug on it, but if you just stop and give it a minute, most things resolve themselves. When it’s supposed to go away, it goes away and everybody kind of knows that,” Ali said.
Little Big Town is as an example. After a disastrous 2014 fall tour, Ali went into budget meetings feeling like she had to pull the plug. “That’s when ‘Girl Crush’ started to have some legs for them. We decided to give it another try in the spring and the band took off. A song can change everything. The band was willing to put their own skin in the game to make it work, and it did and everybody won.”
Those might be lessons to live by for Brad, who has inherited an association that is morphing into something else. Let’s hope there’s a hit song in his repertoire.
God grant you many years to wait a minute and see if it grows wings.