The Six Keys to Success with Karl Mecklenburg

In today’s episode of The Leadership Habit Podcast, Jenn DeWall interviews former Denver Broncos Captain and All-Pro linebacker Karl Mecklenburg. Karl Mecklenburg rose from being a college walk-on, and a 12th round draft picks to a pro career that included six pro-bowls and three Super Bowls. Considered the NFL’s most versatile player, Karl played all seven defensive front positions, and in 2001 he was inducted into the Denver Broncos Ring of Fame and the Colorado Sports Hall of Fame. As a highly regarded speaker, Karl tailors his presentations to the needs of the group while addressing and inspiring his audience. His legendary NFL career draws many attendees to events, and the content and delivery of his presentations sent his audience home with a renewed commitment to their goals. I hope you’ve enjoyed today’s podcast where we interview Karl and where we’ll be discussing his book, Heart of a Student Athlete.

Jenn DeWall:
Hi everyone. It’s Jenn DeWall, and I’m so happy to be sitting down virtually with Karl Mecklenburg, former Denver Bronco, huge accolades under his belt. Karl, thank you so much for joining us on the podcast today. I’m so grateful to have you here, and I’m just excited to be able to share your message with the world today.

Karl Mecklenburg:
It’s good to be here.

Jenn DeWall:
Karl, for those that may not have met you or maybe, weren’t around during the Orange Crush days of the Denver Broncos, maybe could you just walk through and tell us a little bit about yourself?

You are Either Getting Better or Getting Worse, You Can’t Stay the Same

Karl Mecklenburg:
Well, I grew up in Minnesota. I played at the University of Minnesota and did my college career there. Then the Broncos drafted me in the 12th round. They only have seven rounds now, but I was the 310th pick of the draft. Fortunately, I came in at the right time, right place at the right time. So I made the team. Ended up playing in three Superbowls, six Pro Bowls. I played all seven defensive front positions. They could move me around and play me anywhere. Sometimes I played all seven front positions in one game. I was a team captain, had a great time playing professional football, and since that time, I’ve been a professional speaker, so I travel around the country. I do 35-40 keynote speeches a year. This year it’ll be a little less. I love to get out there and meet people and share my message.

Jenn DeWall:
And you do have such a powerful message that I think people can find a lot of value in. And before we kind of went live with the podcast, we were talking a little bit about COVID because we have to acknowledge it right now. This is something that everyone, in some way, is being impacted by. But you had talked about periods of overcoming uncertainty. And can you tell us a little bit about maybe like, just some tips or like feedback that you would give to help someone be able to, I guess, weather this, this wave of uncertainty that many of us are experiencing right now?

Karl Mecklenburg:
Well, change is inevitable, as Dan Reeves used to say, you’re either getting better or you’re getting worse. You can’t stay the same. And, and we’re all going to come out of this, you know, and in a different point. And the fact of the matter is you decide what that point is. I played professional football for 12 years. In that time, well in my football career, including the, all the way through, and since being done, I’ve had 18 football-related surgeries. At least 10 of them were during my football career with the Broncos. And when you have surgery, I always had it in the offseason. You play with the injury, and then at the end of the year, they’d fix you. And while you’re rehabbing from these surgeries, everybody else is getting ready for the next season. They’re lifting weights, and they’re running, and they’re running, and you’re just, you’re just trying to walk. You know, you’re just hoping you’re going to be able to walk again.

There is uncertainty. You don’t know how you’re going to come back. You don’t know if they’ve already replaced you in their minds. And, and, and it was difficult, but I understood, and I learned to, to not worry about what I couldn’t control, worry about what I could control. I could control my attitude in the training room. I was the rehab captain, right? I was in there, enthusiastic and got everybody else going. When you’re on a professional football team there, there are cliques that the offense hangs out with the offense. The defense hangs out with defense. The old guys hang out together. The young guys hang out together, the white guys hang out together, the black guys hang out together. And it’s not because it’s on purpose. It’s just because it’s convenient. So I crossed those lines.

I started hanging out with some of the older guys and with some of the younger guys and across racial lines and across position lines and, and, and really I think opened up possibilities for later when, when I needed to talk to somebody on the team as a captain, I already had that relationship. So, what you can do now, whether you’re a speaker like I am or whatever business you’re in as you can, you can build those relationships. Everybody’s going through a hard time. Now building those relationships I think is, it is vital when you come out of this thing, you’re already gonna have those connections, and our people are gonna, you’re gonna know who you are. They’re going to trust you, and they’re going to want to do business with you.

Focus On What You Can Control

Jenn DeWall:
And those are things you can control. And I like, you know, just as you brought that up, that everyone is going through this experience together. We all have a universal shared experience, which isn’t something that walks in front of us all the time, that we all have something that together we’re facing. And so being able to use that as maybe a point to initiate the relationship or blossom their relationship, but leveraging that and at the moment and what you said, focusing on what you can control. So then when we come out of this that you know, life looks a little bit different, and it doesn’t necessarily have to look as maybe doom and gloom as what we’re kind of thinking it’s going to look like in some way.

Karl Mecklenburg:
Sure. There are always positive things you can do, whether it’s building relationships with your family or building relationships within your community or building relationships anywhere. I mean, it’s possible even if you can’t be inside 6 feet from each other.

Jenn DeWall:
There’s still the ways, I mean, you know, Hey, we’re still connecting virtually, and I know that you’ve been connecting with a lot of people virtually. So it is neat that we have had to adapt all together to kind of figure out a new way to connect and socialize. And I’m glad that we have it because it does allow you to still maintain a little bit of that normal. Like, you know, to still have that normal routine and connection, but we have to be a little bit more intentional about using it. Sure. So, Karl, I wanted to have you on the show because I heard you speak, I’ve heard you speak a few times now. You’re a hilarious keynote speaker. You’ve got such just great stories of perseverance and all-around just how to be a great leader. And so we have you on the show today because we wanted to talk about your book, the Heart of a Student Athlete. And I’ve just. I’m so excited because I think that right now during this period where people are just a little, you know, they’re uncertain, they’re a little afraid- that I think that they can really find a lot of value in your book and how maybe this is what they can focus on to allow themselves to get a sense of calm during this time of uncertainty. So what was the, what was the inspiration when you wrote this book, Karl?

Karl Mecklenburg:
Yeah, that the inspiration. I went to NSA, and we’re both NSA members National Speakers Association. Oh, early, early on in my NSA life, I had people asking me, where’s your book? It’s like, you mean I have to have a book to be a speaker? It took me five years to write it. But it really is the same concepts that I use when I speak. Some of the same stories obviously. And in the 15, 16 years that I’ve been a professional speaker, the stories have adapted and changed, and I’ve moved on to some newer stuff. But I talk about universal keys to success. Like I said earlier, successes, overcoming obstacles on the way to your dreams.

That’s the main message you’re going to get if you hear me speak or if you read my book. I talk about teamwork, with leadership being the ultimate expression, teamwork, courage, the courage to try new things. And the courage to be decisive. Dedication, which I described as hard work, constant learning, refusing to quit desire. That’s the dream, the passion, the mission, honesty, and forgiveness with yourself and self-evaluation and with others. And finally, goal setting, reasonable short-term specific steps that get you to those desires and those passions, those missions. So that’s, you know, the book in a nutshell. Obviously like you said, there’s some humor, there’s some– obviously, it’s based on stories. I’m a storyteller. I’m not an industry expert. I’m not going to give you some charts and graphs as much as I’m going to get into things that’ll put you in the direction that I think you should go to.

The First Key to Success – Teamwork

Jenn DeWall:
So let’s talk about those six keys to success. You just briefly outlined them, but let’s go a little bit deeper into them to help our audience maybe understand what your story is focused on or what the book is focused on and maybe some actionables that they can do or what they, what they can do to implement, and I guess start aligning their life for those keys. The first key that you had talked about in the book was teamwork.

Karl Mecklenburg:
Right? Yeah. When I look at my job, one of the big pieces of it is I want to remind people that they’re on teams. It’s really obvious when you’re watching a pro sports game or watching your Badgers who’s playing like a team or not like a team. People can tell when they’re watching a sporting event, right? You know the Nuggets have it today and they’re passing the ball, and they’re playing like a team or, or if they’re not. But they don’t see that in their own lives. They don’t see that in their business. They don’t see that in their families. They don’t see that in their communities. But, but it’s just as true. If you’re going to relate with other people, it’s best done as a team. Now, when I talk about leadership, I’m not talking about the CEO.

I’m not talking about the CEO, although the CEO should be a good leader. It’s not. It’s not only the CEO. When you’re in an organization, when you’re in a family, when you’re on a team, there should be leadership throughout the organization. I describe leadership as the clarity and consistency of the cornerstones of that group, of the commitment of that group, and of the connection of that group, the cornerstones. That’s the priority. That’s a Dairy Queen’s -we serve ice cream, right? That’s the Denver Broncos. We’re here to win championships. When I first started with the Denver Broncos, a guy named Edgar Kaiser on the team, Edgar Kaiser, was a financier out of Edmonton, Canada. He didn’t know anybody on the team. He never hung out with the team. He had no idea what the team was other than an investment. Our cornerstone, our purpose was to make Edgar Kaiser money.

He sold that team to Pat Bowlen. Pat Bowlen was there all the time. Pat Bowlen had relationships across the organization. Pat Bowlen brought in the cornerstones of we’re here to serve the community, and we’re here to win championships. And because of the oversight of that, that leader that trickled down throughout. And we had leaders all throughout that organization, we knew where we were going, and this is where we’re going. So yes, the top guy has to set the cornerstones, but that commitment to the team, passion, the team mission has to trickle throughout the organization. And it will if the top guy insists on that. So commitment to the team, passion, the team mission. And then connection, that was unbelievable with that. I mean that he was in the training room. He was in the weight room. He was in the locker room. He was on the practice field. He knew my wife’s name. He knew my kids’ names.

You know, he knew what I was capable of, what I wasn’t capable of. Pat just turned that thing around. He was an amazing leader, and I’ve never met anybody like him truthfully from that standpoint. OK. His connection. He was, he was there, he was everywhere. So, from my standpoint, leadership has to be throughout the organization, but it’s the clarity and consistency of your commitment to the team. Passion, the connection with the other team members, understanding what their strengths and weaknesses are, using their strengths to help the team succeed. Using the team strengths to cover for their weaknesses. And the only way that happens is if you know the people you’re connected with. So cornerstones, commitment, and connection.

Jenn DeWall:
And those are three powerful things that I think sometimes we can forget, especially the importance of just connecting as you had said that Pat paid attention to detail, that he knew your wife’s name, he knew what you did well, and he knew maybe what your areas of opportunity were, what you couldn’t do. I think that sometimes as leaders, we get so caught up in the business that we forget that those well might feel like minor details in comparison to some of the priorities or deadlines that we have are actually really, really important to be able to achieve your strategy or your goals.

Karl Mecklenburg:
Sure. And I, and I’m not talking about, it’s not like I hung out with Pat. I mean, I don’t recall ever doing anything with them outside of Bronco football. You know it was, it was not, it was not a, and I didn’t hang out with Dan Reeves. I didn’t hang out with Joe Collier, except at work. But they understood who I was because they paid attention—a lot of times. As you say, you get caught up in this your own little world, and you’re as a leader, and you lose track of the people around you. The fact of the matter is the business you own. The family is in, the community you’re in, are these people. That’s the strength of it. And if you’re not, if you don’t understand what that, what those people are capable of, you have no chance of using their talents and putting them in a position to be successful. I mean, what do the new England Patriots do other than cheat?

Jenn DeWall:
OK (Laughing)

Karl Mecklenburg:
Bill Belichick studied under Joe Collier. That was his first job in the NFL. He’s as good a guy as I’ve ever seen as far as understanding what the strengths of his individuals are and building a system to fit them. He had a four tight end offense a few years back. Nobody had, I’d never seen that before in my life. But they went into training camp. He figured out. You know what, that four of our top 11 offensive players are tight ends. I got to figure out a way to get them all on the field at once. And he did it, and it was very successful. They went to the Superbowl that year. He is a tremendous firm. Have you ever watched him during the game? He sits there with a hoodie on, and his arms crossed. He might as well buy a seat. He’s not doing anything. He’s just watching the game.

Jenn DeWall:
Wait, are you talking about Bill Belichick, are you talking about with the sweatshirt cutoff.

Karl Mecklenburg:
And there he was with his arms crossed, but he doesn’t do a thing. But the fact of the matter is he’s already put the work in and he’s put people in a position to be successful and put together a game plan with his assistant coaches and delegated authority and allows them to be leaders. They’re all pushing for winning championships, and they’ve done it over and over and over again. And yeah, they cheat. But that’s not why they win.

Jenn DeWall:
Well, yes, we’ll say that. No, but I think, you know, you also mentioned another great piece of a team is lending proper authority, giving people the authority to be successful, to take the lead, to make a greater contribution or leverage their strengths. I think that’s a really valuable component of teamwork.

Karl Mecklenburg:
Sure. That’s part of that clarity and consistency. You want to be somewhere extravagant. That desire, that passion, that mission, that should be an extravagant, long term, somewhat general thing. From an individual standpoint and from a team standpoint, you don’t set your cornerstone of, you know, we’re going to be middle of the road this year. People don’t do that. I mean, it should be, we’re here to win the championship, and that should be it.

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The Second Key to Success – Courage

Jenn DeWall:
So let’s talk about your second key to success, which is that your book, Heart of a Student Athlete. The second key is courage.

Karl Mecklenburg:
Yeah. The courage, the courage to try new things. It’s something that people struggle with. I’m not a technical guy. The fact that I’m doing this is pretty amazing.

Jenn DeWall:
You’re doing so good.

Karl Mecklenburg:
My first time I got a smartphone, I spoke at the Global Speaker’s Summit in South Africa, and we were when early so we could do a photo Safari. So we, I brought my wife and my youngest son and my dad and his wife, and we all did this photo Safari thing in South Africa. Beautiful, unbelievable country. But we’re on the truck. The Zulu guide is driving the truck, and we’re going from site to site to see the elephants and the hippos and the crocodiles and all this stuff. And he pulls out his cell phone because that’s how they communicate with each other. There are three trucks out there and, and if they find something cool, they call each other. So we found the hippo, so he pulls his phone out. It’s the same phone I’ve got. That’s when you know it’s time to upgrade. I got a real phone when I got back to Denver.

So yeah, technology is, is not my thing. So having the courage to try new things allows you to keep up. It allows you to thrive when others aren’t thriving. And it’s, it’s, it’s a tough thing. It really is. But, for me, especially technology-wise is a challenge. But for me, in other ways, it’s not a challenge. I love to have the opportunity to try new things from a work standpoint. As a player, as I said, I played all seven defense and front positions. I came in as a nose guard. They moved me to the defensive end. They moved me, the middle linebacker, they moved it outside linebacker, and then they just started moving me around between them all. Nobody’s ever done that before. Or since. And if I hadn’t had the courage to try new things, that never could have happened—my business as a speaker, same thing. Well, life gives you opportunities to change directions. And a lot of times it’s something that you originally saw as a negative. Like, oh, I lost my job. Right? I lost my scholarship at Augustana College in Sioux Falls, South Dakota. So what am I going to do? Well, I went to the University of Minnesota. Well, I went to the University of Minnesota. Oh man, I didn’t, I didn’t do really well my senior year because we were behind all the time, but I had a really good game against a guy named Chris Hinton. Chris Hinton was the offensive guard for Northwestern. I had two sacks and had had a bunch of things that go well for me.

The Broncos drafted Chris Hinton first round in that year. They had watched film of him over and over, and I was the only guy that was eating him up. So they figured out, well, maybe we should draft him. He’s available still at the end of it, at the end of the draft. So, so things that look negative from the start and turn out to be positive things. So, so when you come out of this, and we all come out of this COVID-19 thing, there’s going to be opportunities. You just have to have the courage to be decisive and take advantage of them. And that’s the next courage. I want to talk about the courage to be decisive. I run a 4-9-40, for those of you who don’t follow football, that’s too slow to play major college football, let alone Denver Bronco football or you know, all-star football.

But I found out early on in my career. If I could take the first step in the right direction before anybody else did, all the angles would change in my favor. Everything would change. Other, the tight end couldn’t pin me in. The guard couldn’t cut me off. The fullback couldn’t keep me from getting the line of scrimmage. Everything changed. And that’s not just in football. If you can be decisive, if you can take the first step in the right direction before anybody else does, all the angles change in your favor, in business, in relationships and community. And you know, anyway, anywhere you’re at the question is, how do you do that? How can you be decisive? Well, it’s through anticipation, thorough preparation. It’s you’re looking at what who you’re going to meet that day and how you can help them. I get up every morning. I do a little Bible study. I think about what my desires, my passions, my missions are and, and what’s going to come that day, who I’m going to run into, what, what opportunities are there for me and what opportunities are for me to help somebody. Because ultimately, that’s a success. It’s, it’s, it’s breaking through in those relationships and, and then the relationships lead to business or the relationships lead to friendships.

Jenn DeWall:
There’s a little bit of trust that’s in there. It sounds like too. It’s trusting that things do, and we’ll work out with your effort, with your, you know, an action that when you are courageous, you can defy those odds or turn a situation around and find silver linings or just find that next opportunity.

Karl Mecklenburg:
Certainly. There are always going to be opportunities. If you think about your life, I can think about my life and think of all the different times if I’d have acted when I knew it was time to act instead of waiting a little bit, I would have been in the front of that wave of success rather than behind it. And, and it’s happened to me a number of times, you know, if I was the Zoom guru, right? Everybody be calling, and I’d be great, but you don’t know, you do what you do, what you do. You look for opportunities wherever that opportunity lies, and sometimes it’s an unexpected place.

Jenn DeWall:
How much do you think giving yourself permission to fail comes into that?

Karl Mecklenburg:
Yeah. In the NFL, they film everything. They film every game from two different angles. They film every practice and now they even film meetings. So theoretically you can sit in a meeting watching film of yourself, watching film of yourself practicing. Well, everything is filmed, and everything is evaluated. They evaluate you both on technique and on assignment. If you bring it out 90%, you’re an All-Pro level player. That means 10% of the time you’re wrong. The coach is sitting in that room, hollering at you right in front of your teammates cause he wants to let the other guys know what’s right and what’s wrong. And you have to be able to handle a failure. You’re going to fail. Failure is part of success. Success is overcoming obstacles on the way to your dreams. Obstacles are situations that, where are you going to fail? I mean, it’s, it’s a challenge is a, it’s a battle. Don’t give up. I, I’ve played in three Superbowls, and we lost all three horribly, all three Superbowls. But in each one, I had to show up for work the next day. You know, you go back and, and you reevaluate. You look at what you did right. Look what you did wrong. If you set up the if you set up a day to day approaches to life that you can follow, whether you win or whether you lose, then you got a chance to continue to move forward. We went back to work. You know, we figured out what went wrong in that thing. We fixed things. A few guys got fired, a few other guys got hired or, or moved up and, and we moved on.

This COVID-19 thing. People will lose their jobs, but, but maybe it wasn’t the best place for you to be. You don’t know. There are other opportunities. There’s a yeah, there’s things that’ll come up that you’ve gotta be decisive and ready and, and, and take advantage of them. And if you’re not, it’s nobody going to be beating down your door. You, you’re the one that has to initiate. And, and I guess maybe that’s what you were talking about, that ability to handle the feet is that is you’ve got to come back, and you’ve got to initiate and you gotta have enough confidence to say, you know what that was then, this is now that wasn’t the right situation for me, but this one is.

Jenn DeWall:
I love that. That’s a great piece of feedback, and I think so many people need to hear that right now is many people listening might have been some of those ones that just lost their job but are looking for that next opportunity and kind of hard to see that. But knowing that, you know, just have the courage to be brave and look at that new challenge or to pick yourself up even if it didn’t work out. And, you know, just try again.

Karl Mecklenburg:
I was going to say–my daughter worked for a t-shirt company. She got her degree in graphic artistry. So she was a graphic artist. She was working for a t-shirt company for years. She kinda hit the ceiling of where she was going to go within that organization. So she started doing some online classes. She started working on data because she understood that data is kind of the direction the world is going. Right. She became a data architect, and now she’s working at the University of Minnesota or University of Virginia in their medical school as a data architect helping to solve this COVID problem, which is pretty amazing. But she did it on her own. It was, it was looking around and saying, you know, what are the opportunities?

What can I do? She took these online courses. Built-up her knowledge base applied for some jobs, and now she’s, she’s really taken off. So, yeah. It’s possible. You don’t. You don’t have to. You don’t have to sit around and wait for the opportunity to come. It doesn’t come. Opportunity has to be grabbed and has, it’s, it’s moving by on the conveyor belt. Right? And you can just sit there and watch that thing say, Nah, that’s not it. Nah, that’s not it. When, when, when an opportunity comes, if you’re not decisive, you don’t make that move. All right. It’s gone. So, so take advantage of your time now. Think about what you’re good at. Think about what you like to do if you’ve lost your job or if you’re going to have to change directions after this thing, and then go after it.

The Third Key to Success – Honesty and Forgiveness

Jenn DeWall:
Yeah. I love that. Let’s, let’s go into your third, your third key for success, honesty, and forgiveness. What does that mean?

Karl Mecklenburg:
Well, we already talked about the NFL film. And ironically, you wouldn’t think having a coach holler at you every time you do something wrong is something you’d miss. But ironically, that’s something I miss.

Jenn DeWall:
How did you not cry? I would have cried. I mean, we’re not the same, but if they’re yelling at me, I would be crying in front of the entire team. I know myself, though, that I’m way too emotional.

Karl Mecklenburg:
Well, you got to understand why right? What I looked at it as, OK, here’s somebody who knows how to play linebacker way beyond what I could ever imagine. He’s been involved with linebacker thing his whole life. He can look at me and say, you’re doing this right, and you’re doing this wrong in the end, let’s fix it. Right? So all of a sudden, his motivation is to make me and make the team better. So I know, I know where his corrections are coming from, it’s, it’s not to attack me, it’s to build me up. It’s to make me a better player. So I look at it as, yeah, of course, it’s embarrassing, but I’m in the room with everybody else. You know, I’m getting yelled at 10% of the time he’s getting yelled at 15%.

And we share that. But what we, but we also share is, is the drive to get better. So what came out of those things, and it didn’t matter whether we won or lost? We’d still go through that same film study where we’re. The coach would be brutally honest with you. You had to be able to forgive yourself, set some goals, reasonable short term, specific steps to get you back to, to, to playing better against that thing. And then the next week something else would go wrong. And you got to set some goals, work on that and practice and get ready. And the guy next to you is messing up too, right? You see him getting yelled at. So you’ve got, you’ve got to be able to forgive him. You’ve gotta be able to forgive yourself, and then you’ve got to be able to set those goals. He’s got to be able to forgive you. He’s gotta be able to forgive himself, set those goals, improve, gets better the next week.

And, and it’s, it’s a constant and, and it really is a, a great exercise in that not only does it allow you to be honest and forgiving with yourself and with others, but also it really nips complacency in the vibe. A lot of people get real comfortable. And the art, as I said earlier, getting better, getting worse. OK. They don’t see that. They just kind of stay the same and, and you can’t stay the same kosher. He said, you know, Karl, you’re either getting better, you’re getting worse. You can’t stay the same. And he’s exactly right. We, as human beings, get comfortable. Right? Obviously, this is not a comfortable time. But I was pretty comfortable before this happened before COVID happened. I wasn’t, yeah, I want, I’m one of these days, I’m going to write that book. One of these days I’m going to try to do a zoom conference, and I was really comfortable. When reality is reality, I’ve gotta be able to forgive myself. Oh, I’m not up to date on zoom. I’m not up to date on, no, I haven’t written a book for 10 years. It’s time to start doing those things. So, so I think anytime you make a move forward, anytime you make a move, you’ve gotta be able to be honest, and forgiving with yourself.

Jenn DeWall:
I like that you talk about forgiveness. So I do coaching outside of this with, you know, like life and career coaching. But I think one of the things that I see in a lot of the different people that I coach is that they can’t let it go. It’s hard for them to forgive because they might feel a lot of like just frustration for how they showed up or shame and embarrassment for how they showed up or what they didn’t do right. If they made that mistake, and so it can be really hard for them to forgive themselves, which only keeps them stuck in the place that they don’t want to be. And so I think that’s such an important thing for us to recognize that. You know, forgiveness, like some things are going to be harder to forgive than others, but you still have to work on your own forgiveness so you can move forward.

Karl Mecklenburg:
Everybody knows bitter people that they just can’t get past whenever it was and, and because of that, they can’t move forward.

Jenn DeWall:
Do you know? And I think even talking about how honesty plays into that, we, I think, you know, depending on the generations, depending on how you grew up and maybe how you were parented or the impact of your employer or teachers, you may be more, I guess accepting to direct feedback. But I think that the thing that’s great about someone being honest, giving you their honest feedback, giving them, the honest opinion is that they’re allowing you to focus on something that might actually be more tangible, that you can focus on to grow instead of like a fluff concept that you can’t really do anything with.

Karl Mecklenburg:
Yeah, yeah. There’s, there’s great power in honesty. There really is. And there are companies out there that are, and they’re just brutally honest with each other. I’ve run into two or three people that said, Oh yeah, that’s exactly right. That’s what we do. You know, it’s not personal. We’re trying to all get better. And then that if you realize it’s not personal, but it’s for the team’s improvement and for the individual’s improvement, honesty is vital.

The Fourth Key to Success- Dedication

Jenn DeWall:
Yeah. So let’s go into the fourth key to success, which is dedication. And I think that right now, given with everything that’s going on, we’ve been knocked off of a lot of our maybe routines or our normal. And so dedication might be a new thing that we have to reinvigorate. What does dedication look like for you? Or what, what inspired you to write about dedication as a key to success?

Karl Mecklenburg:
Yeah, well, a hard work, constant learning, refusing to quit, that’s dedication to me. I was like I said, I was not a great football player as a kid, as, as a junior in high school, I played JV football. I didn’t make the varsity team. The senior in high school, I made the varsity team. I wasn’t big enough to play major college football. I was six feet tall and 200 pounds. So I went to Augustana in Sioux Falls, South Dakota, on a one-third scholarship. In my first year there, I grew three inches and gained 40 pounds. And I got good. In my second year there, I led the team in sacks. I played every down a defense. I was the best defensive player on the team. When they gave me the one-third scholarship, the way the coach explained it was they were late in the recruiting season.

They didn’t have a full scholarship for, but if I contributed and that, and I did a great job for them, they’d give me a full scholarship later. So I went into this meeting with the head coach after that second season when I was the top player on the defense by the numbers. And then just by the I and I was expecting to get a full scholarship. We had that debriefing session that every coach has where they call you and sit you down and talk about last year and what to expect next year. And I’m thinking he’s going to give me this scholarship. We talked about my family’s living room. The first thing out of coach Swisher’s mouth was Karl. We know your dad’s a doctor. He can afford this school. We’re going to take away your scholarship and use it to bring somebody else in.

Ah, my passion, my mission already was I’m going to be the greatest ballplayer that ever played the game. It just wasn’t going to be at Augustana, So I left Augustana, and I walked on at Minnesota. I worked and struggled; I earned a scholarship there. A week after the game of the scholarship, I tore a ligament in my knee. They tried to take the scholarship back. You can’t take it back in the big 10. It’s a four-year contract, so they can’t take it back unless I give it back. They made it difficult for me. The next year I led the big 10 in sacks, and there was no question about whether I belong. I was the 310th pick in the NFL draft. I was not expected to make it. I had the same number as a starter on the team. They wouldn’t give me a pair of cleats. They wouldn’t give me socks.

Success is overcoming obstacles on the way to your dreams. And the only way it happens is by being dedicated. It’s hard work, constant learning, refusing to quit. It’s if it was easy everybody would do it. It’s not easy. Success is not easy. You’ve got to struggle, you gotta fight, you gotta be dedicated. It’s gotta be a day to day thing, year to year thing, and the season to season thing. It’s something that one of the things that I have a problem with is, is people who believe that it was easy to be successful. Okay. Every day, everybody who’s successful, if you, if you talk to them and you get to know them, there’s, they have a background of overcoming. You can see it once you get to know him. But from a distance it’s like, oh, well they, they were born into it, or they were lucky, or they were fortunate, or they were, it’s not that way. Hard work is, and if it was just hard work, I get up, and my speech would be hard work and sit down, and it’d be a really short speech.

But that is a piece of everybody who is successful DNA their, their approach to life. So, so to me that, that, that dedication, that hard work, constant learning, refusing to quit pieces, it’s, yeah, you’re not going to be successful if you don’t have those things now, you might not be successful yet. And you have those things that that happens. There are people who work super hard, but if they don’t have the other keys that I talk about, they’re going to have a hard time being successful. I know a lot of people worked super hard and didn’t get anywhere, but more often than not, it’s because they don’t have that desire, that passion, that mission, that place they’re trying to get to pinned down, and they’re not setting goals in that direction. They’re just scrambling around working super hard, just trying to keep their head above water instead of having a focus and moving in a direction,

Jenn DeWall:
Have a focus that you can be dedicated to. So, and then keep trying. Don’t think that it’s going to be easy. I think that those are so important things to say. I love our conversation right now, Karl. I think there’s just so much value in terms of how people can apply this to current circumstances. And the one thing that you kind of just skipped over, which I think is a good point to call out, is that when you went to your first practice, I think if I understand this correctly at the Broncos, they gave you a Jersey that had the same number as the starter, which meant that if you’re going into that, you’re not necessarily thinking I am probably going to play and they really, really want me here. Right. That was a hard,

Karl Mecklenburg:
Back in the day, they would have 110 guys at training camp, and numbers in the NFL only go up to 99. So 11 of us had somebody else’s number, too. And it was usually a starter’s number because they, you know, and it was usually the guys at the very back end of the roster. Yeah, I tried to go to the equipment manager and get a new pair of cleats. He asked he told me I had to wear the same cleats I wore in college. I got a hole in one of my practice socks, and I asked him for a new pair of socks. He said, what’s the matter with the other sock? I, you know, I know what it’s like to be at the bottom and build up from there. Once again, it doesn’t happen without hard work, constant learning, and refusing to quit.

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The Fifth Key to Success – Desire

Jenn DeWall:
Let’s talk about desire. That’s your fifth key to success. That just is a natural build, right? Like I love desire.

Karl Mecklenburg:
Yeah. That’s the dream. The passion, the mission. That’s the extravagant, long term, somewhat general thing you’re always trying to get. For me, for the longest time, it’s, I’m going to be the greatest football player that ever played the game. When I made decisions, I was going in that direction. When I set goals, I wanted them to go in that direction. When I got up in the morning, I thought about it when I was confronted with a decision that was of any consequence whatsoever that weighed into it. How was this going to help me be the best player that ever played the game? Obviously, I’m 59 years old now. I’m not Tom Brady. I can’t still play. I have other desires, other passions, other missions in my life.

As a husband and a father, I want to give unconditional uncompromising love for my family. As a Christian, I want everything I say and do to reflect God’s love. As a speaker and an author, I want to inspire long term, positive change. Those are my desires. Those are my passions. Those are the directions I’m going in because I know where I’m going. I have a chance to get there., those things I can, I can set goals in those directions. I can. I can be honest and forgiving with myself and say, okay, I’m right here. Now. I, this is where I’m trying to get to. How do I get there? Well, those are the reasonable short term, specific goals you take to get to those extravagant, long term, general things. So yeah, that’s desire, passion, mission. That’s something you’d pursue relentlessly even when you get knocked down. That’s where the dedication comes in as you move towards those things because it’s not easy.

There’s a. There are a million little kids who would love to be a professional football player. My desire, my passion, my mission was beyond that. And I want to be the best that ever played the game. I saw guys with unbelievable talent come to training camp every year. Whose desire? Whose passion, whose mission was I want to get invited to an NFL training camp. And they sold themselves short. They got invited to the NFL training camp, and then they didn’t know what to do, and they got sent home. I was beyond that. I wanted to be the best that ever played. Not I’m gonna make it. Not I’m going to just get invited. There’s a difference. A lot of people sell themselves short. They don’t believe that they can be the best of the best. They’ve had too many people tell them in the past that they don’t belong.

That’s not true. There are a thousand different ways to get to the top. But, but they all lead through your dedication and your desire. You have to know where you’re going if you’re going to get there. I’ve got dyslexia. It means I don’t know my left from my right. If you watch my highlight videos that played on either side, I didn’t know I didn’t care. I don’t, and I think that’s what it’s like for a lot of people who are very dedicated but don’t have that desire, that target, that place they’re trying to get to. Once again, they work super hard, but they don’t, they don’t have the focus so that they don’t know where they’re going. Yeah.

Jenn DeWall:
And I think, you know, Oh my gosh, there’s just so much there. What advice would you give to someone that might struggle to find their passion or their desire? Because I think there are some people that could also be listening like, Oh well, they’ve all got it figured out. They know what they want to do, but like, I don’t know what I want to, do you have any tips that you kind of like, throw in along the way?

Karl Mecklenburg:
Yeah, no, it was a, it was interesting when I retired from football, I didn’t know what to do. I really didn’t. That always been my focus, my passion. That was always a huge part of my life. But that was over and I, and I knew it was over physically. I just couldn’t do it anymore. And it took me a while. It took some soul searching. It took some time. My father’s an obstetrician and obstetricians, while they’re waiting for babies to be born, they stand around telling stories. I grew up around a man who told stories all the time. And I loved that. I, that, that storytelling piece, was something that was part of me too. I wanted to have an impact. I wanted to do something that was significant in people’s lives. And I found speaking it was an opportunity.

I was looking. I didn’t know. But when the opportunity came, I was decisive again. A gal named Deep Dukart talked to me. She knew I was somewhat interested in speaking. And she got me to join the National Speakers Association. She said, hey, you know what, if you’re actually thinking about doing this here’s an opportunity. And I got involved and went to the winter conference. It was here in Denver way back when. And my career took off from there. That was something that, but I was lucky. It’s, it’s not an easy thing to, to change direction. It never is. There are there. There are skills that everybody has, that are underutilized. I mean, as a professional football player, I guess I got interviewed a bit and allowed me to do a little bit of speaking and storytelling. But ah, that was something that I had never looked at as a possibility, and suddenly the opportunity came, and I was decisive.

The Sixth Key to Success- Goal Setting

Jenn DeWall:
Thank you so much for sharing that. Let’s go into your sixth and final key to success- goal setting,

Karl Mecklenburg:
Goal setting. We’ve kind of bumped into that a couple of times. Yeah. Reasonable, the short term specific steps that point you towards those desires, those passions, those missions. Those are the extravagant, long term, general things. Those are the big target that you’re setting the goals towards. Now, first of all, you have to be honest with yourself and say, yeah, and know where you’re at. You don’t know where you’re at. It’s really difficult to set goals in the direction that you want to go. So establish where you’re at. Measure that against where you want to be. And then the goals are, in my mind anyway, a somewhat obvious most of the time. I need to fix this. I need to change that. I need to move in this direction. I needed to take advantage of this opportunity. I need to. I need to get involved with this person or this group and take those steps that get you closer and closer.

Once again, you have to go back, and you have to evaluate. You have to be honest and forgiving with yourself. Did that move me in the direction I want to go? Is that towards that desire, that passion, that mission? So it’s a constant evolution of, of reasonable short-term specific stuff to get you to where you want to go. This COVID thing had I lost maybe at this point, seven different keynote speeches that I was going to have through April, and I had to sit down and think about what can I do? That’s a positive thing that can help move me forward in inspiring, long term positive change. One of them is to do more podcasts and, and, and get my face out there and get my, get my voice out there and get my ideas out there. Another was to work on that book I’ve been thinking about for years. I’m talking more about leadership than I was in the past. So I’m going to write it more of a leadership and teamwork book rather than a keys to success book. And those will be, and that’ll be coming out eventually here. But I’ve started that. I’ve done some things, but, well, once again, I had to be honest and forgiving with myself and say, you know what? I didn’t anticipate this. I, you know, I don’t really have a network of podcast people that I work with, but that’s all right. I can still do that. I’ve been thinking about that book, but I’ve been putting it off all of a sudden. I’ve got time. Hey, there is a goal. I can get started on that book.

Now I’ve started on the book. Now it’s a, you know, I’ve gotta write so many hours a day or so many words a day or, you know, make sure you know, it’s just that’s how I do goals. And I know there are a lot of people who said, who say you have to set yearly, quarterly, monthly, daily goals and write them all down. That’s not how I operate. When I find myself drifting away from my desire, my passion, my mission, when I’m honest with myself and say, Oh, you know what? I’m not going in the direction I want to go. Then I set goals back towards that desire, that passion, that mission. So it’s not a, I don’t have a big chart hanging on my wall with goals written down. I don’t do that. I know some people operate the way I don’t operate that way, but I do internalize the goals and make sure that those are things I’m doing.

Jenn DeWall:
I think that’s important to highlight when you’re talking about goals because sometimes people can really just be upset by themselves if they don’t miss their goal when they don’t realize that maybe their passion has changed. And that that goal doesn’t matter anymore. And so they do have to set a different goal to get them to where they want to be. I think sometimes people feel like they still have to follow through on some of these goals because it’s written down on a piece of paper, even though they found out that it actually isn’t a goal that maybe is important to them anymore. I think showing people that there are other ways to do that and then you can always fluctuate and adjust and adapt your goals to what you’re going through and new observations or new awareness that you have with being honest to yourself. I think that’s important to share that there are different ways of doing that.

Karl Mecklenburg:
Appreciate that Jenn, and, and truthfully that happens to a lot of people. As you, as you age, as you grow, as, as things happen in your life where you’ve been focused on, on, on one desire, one passion, one mission. When my wife raised kids for 34 years, right? We had kids around the house forever, and now we don’t. And, and her direction has changed. And, she’s realized that and she’s, you know, doing other things. And that’s, that’s cool that that’s what you need to do. You need to say, OK, this is, this was was the direction I was going on setting goals in this direction, but when I retired, all of a sudden, you know, football’s not it anymore. So it’s these other things. So if you don’t know what your desire, your passion, your mission is, that’s the first step. Then be honest with yourself. This is where I’m at. This is where I’m trying to get to. How do I get there? I set reasonable short term, specific goals and take steps towards that.

What is Your Leadership Habit for Success?

Jenn DeWall:
Thank you so much for walking us through the six keys to success. Karl, I know that people are going to find a lot of value in everything that you shared today, and I’m also going to hold you accountable now that we all know you’re working on this next book. We are going to expect this. This is where we are going to push you to do it. And I know it’s already a goal, but seriously, I’m excited. I’m looking forward to a book by you because I think you just have so many great ideas to share, and you’re also coming at it from a place of community and just being more intentional with our time, with our resources, with how we interact with people. I think there are so many great messages that are relevant to how we can thrive as leaders today. I wanted to close, as I do with every single Leadership Habit Podcast episode with our final class question, which is what is your leadership habit for success?

Karl Mecklenburg:
Right. Yeah. And actually, I bumped into both of those already in this conversation. I think getting up every morning, centering yourself. Well, with me, it’s, it’s through a Bible study and prayer. And then thinking about what’s important to you. You know, for me it’s, it’s faith and, and, and inspiration, working, working on my speaking and on my speaking business. And how those are going to be encouraged today. How you’re going to pursue those things today, what you’re going to get done today that’s gonna make a difference in those areas. So that, that routine of, of focusing every morning is huge for me. And the other thing is decisiveness. Like I said, I run that 4-9-40. I’ve overcome obstacles in my life, including, you know, I’m a published author twice over now, and I’m going to be a third time. And I’ve got dyslexia. Oh, I’m a slow white kid from the suburbs who you know is an NFL All-Pro. As a kid, I was in speech therapy classes in first and second grade, I had a lisp, and now I’m a professional speaker. Success is overcoming obstacles on the way to your dreams. Nope, nobody’s going to hand it to you. You’ve got to earn it. Hard work, constant learning, and refusing to quit. Teamwork, leadership, dedication, desire, honesty and forgiveness, goal setting, all those things put together will allow you to be successful regardless of whether it’s on the football field, whether it’s as a husband or a wife or a kid as a professional in any way circumstance. Success is overcoming obstacles.

Jenn DeWall:
That’s a great point to end. Success is overcoming obstacles. Thank you so much to you, Karl Mecklenburg, for joining the Leadership Habit Podcast. I know that our viewers or audience is really going to enjoy this, and I just, I thank you so much for taking the time to be able to share your experience and these techniques for success and all of your stories. Thank you so much.

Karl Mecklenburg:
Thank you, Jenn. Take care.

Jenn DeWall:
I hope you enjoyed today’s episode of The Leadership Habit with Karl Mecklenburg. To learn more about Karl, head over to karlmecklenburg.com, or find the link in our show notes. There, you can book Karl for events, sign up for his newsletter, and purchase his book, Heart of a Student Athlete. If you know someone who could benefit from this episode today, be sure to share it with your friends, family, and coworkers, and if you’ve enjoyed it, be sure to rate us and leave us a review on your favorite podcast streaming service!