Having a personal life when working in the sports and entertainment business is a constant struggle, but it’s a battle you have to fight.
“I’ve tried to do it always. Once you decide you will have kids, you have to find some way of balancing it out in this crazy business we’re in,” declared Donna Julian, SVP, arena and event operations/GM of Spectrum Center, Charlotte, N.C., and Venues Today 2017 Woman of Influence.
Julian has been on the fast track since she fell in love with the arena business while interning at Capital Centre, Landover, Md., for Centre Management in 1984. “As soon as I did that internship at the Cap Centre — which had all the hockey, basketball, events, and Georgetown — I got the bug. I knew instantly I want to do what I can to get into this arena thing,” recalled Julian. Until then, she had thought she would do something in sports, having gone to Ohio University on a tennis scholarship.
In 1990, she became assistant GM at Baltimore Arena (now Royal Farms Arena), while still working for Centre Management. In 1998, always on the fast track, she became GM. By that time she was working for SMG, which bought the management contract from Abe Pollin’s Centre Management.
Those 14 years in Baltimore sealed the deal for Julian, who developed a network of mentors and friends and family there who serve her well to this day.
Her mother, Loretta Patterson, is first on the list of mentors. “She was a working mother when I was in school and helped me with balancing mother and businesswoman. She is an instinctive, good manager. I could call her today and bounce ideas off of her.”
Hank Abate, now with Madison Square Garden, New York, is a tremendous resource for Julian. “Hank is just such a great balance of business, operations and customer service knowledge. He showed me how to juggle all three of those things to be successful,” Julian said. Gary Handelman, who handled operations at Centre Management, was another mentor to Julian.
Mike Evans, now with Live Nation, dates back to Julian’s Maryland days when he ran Music Centre Productions and is a great source of advice, she said.
Evans is impressed with Julian as well. “Donna is a consensus builder. She wants everyone’s opinion, then makes her choice. I’ve gotten mad at her, wanting her to make a decision now, but she’s not going to do it. In the end, we’re all better for it.”
Evans also claims matchmaker in his relationship to Julian. “I introduced her husband to her. I still think of her as Donna Patterson sometimes. David was running a “Bring the Ball Back to Baltimore” campaign after the Colts moved.”
Her husband now works in the Foundation department at UNC Charlotte.
“He’s wonderful support,” she said. “I could never do what I am without him.” Her son Griffin, 19, is in his first year of college at East Carolina University, Greenville; and son Donavan, 16, is going into 11th grade. The younger one has a little bit of an interest in the business, “but they’re into other things, which is totally fine. I want them to have a passion for what they end up doing.”
She attributes her love for sports to her late dad, Mulda Patterson, a huge fan who took her to every game in Baltimore as a child. “I really credit my father for my love of sports. We listened to sports on the radio. It was the foundation of my life,” she said of her childhood.
Sports means competition, camaraderie, team effort, all of which translate into business, Julian said. “It’s about people coming together for a common goal. I like winning.”
Julian defines herself as goal oriented. “For me it was clear, once I knew I loved arena stuff, that I wanted to be an arena manager; I just drove people crazy. I was eager to do what I could. And Baltimore happened. Timing is everything. I had a connection to Baltimore and they just gave me a shot so I’d stop driving them crazy.”
She learned the business side of arena management from one of Baltimore city’s finance pros and fiscal responsibility from SMG’s finance department.
To get results, you must understand flow sheets and financial statements, she said. And you must network. Julian is somewhat of a sponge, soaking up every detail she can and applying it in her own way.
When Centre Management sold its Baltimore contract to SMG, it also sold its Cleveland contract, which brought Marty Bechtold, now with the Indiana Pacers and Bankers Life Fieldhouse in Indianapolis, more firmly into Julian’s life in Baltimore.
Bechtold calls Julian “a genuinely nice person and incredibly bright. Donna sees all sides of an issue and is a great consensus builder.”
But beyond that, she is wired to keep a work/life balance. All her mentors and coworkers pointed out that Julian has taught them, through example, how to maintain a strong personal as well as professional life. “She has that balance totally squared away,” Bechtold said.
One of Julian’s goals was to work in a National Basketball Association (NBA)or National Hockey League (NHL) arena. When Barry Silberman, one of her bosses back at Centre Management, was hired to open the new Charlotte, N.C., arena, he brought her into the fold. “We fell in love with Charlotte,” Julian said of her family.
Julian prides herself on being a good communicator and a good listener. “I realize it is a team effort. You hire good people and you work for a common goal.”
She also thinks things through, preferring to not always be reactionary, despite the pressure to do that in the music side of the arena business.
Opening Spectrum Center (Time Warner Cable Arena at the time) with the Rolling Stones was phenomenal for Julian. “I had never been involved in preopening of a major building. Then a couple days later, the team played its first game. It was awesome.”
Another highlight was hosting the 2012 Democratic National Convention in Charlotte. “I do love the collaboration of people coming together to get this thing done,” she said. And getting it done took a year and a half of multitasking.
“On the music side of things, you want to feel like you have some control, but you really don’t. Some people are touring, some aren’t. You have to be ready to jump on something.” She feels like she has a little more control with the NBA’s Charlotte Hornets, except for what happens on the court.
“You can control the experience in the building. We put a lot of effort into our training. We empower our staff and spend a lot of time with touchpoints with Levy [Restaurants] and other partners. We put everyone in the same room so we’re speaking the same language.”
Julian inspires the troops to take chances and put themselves out there, sharing a Theodore Roosevelt quote with all new hires from Brene Brown’s “Daring Greatly.”
“It is not the critic who counts: not the man who points out how the strong man stumbles or where the doer of deeds could have done better. The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena, whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood, who strives valiantly, who errs and comes up short again and again, because there is no effort without error or shortcoming, but who knows the great enthusiasms, the great devotions, who spends himself for a worthy cause; who, at the best, knows, in the end, the triumph of high achievement, and who, at the worst, if he fails, at least he fails while daring greatly, so that his place shall never be with those cold and timid souls who knew neither victory nor defeat.” — Teddy Roosevelt, speaking at the Sorbonne in Paris, April 23, 1910
“That’s so simple, but yet it makes sense. You can probably feel okay about doing something, even if you fall short, but at least you tried,” Julian said. She encourages employees to make suggestions; to take chances.
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THE BALANCING ACT
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