NFL legend Fran Tarkenton said the same issues that can kill team chemistry in the locker room can also hobble a company, which is why he insists on interviewing each of his employees.
“If you don’t have the right people, you can’t make it in your business, my business, and you can’t make it in the NFL,” the NFL quarterback-turned-founder of tech company Tarkenton told Business Insider.
Relaying a conversation with then-Seattle Seahawks head coach Pete Carroll, Tarkenton said over a decade ago, he advised Carroll to cut a superstar player who was causing drama in the locker room.
“I said, if you have 40-man roster — back then we had 40-man rosters — and you have 39 All-Pro players and you have one asshole, the asshole will take over,” Tarkenton said during a Tuesday interview in New York.
Tarkenton, who is CEO of his Atlanta-based company, said he considers himself a lifelong entrepreneur, dating back to a newspaper route he had at the age of 7. He played in the NFL in the 1960s and 1970s, setting records as a star quarterback.
Tarkenton’s career occurred before the sport’s explosion in popularity and the lucrative contracts that followed. He worked side jobs during off-seasons to make more money. After he retired, he served as a commentator on “Monday Night Football” and co-hosted ABC’s “That’s Incredible!,” where he did a TV spot on a then 5-year-old Tiger Woods.
All of this work, Tarkenton said, was so he could reinvest the money in private ventures, which spanned from a partnership with IBM to the recent launch of pipIQ, an AI startup focused on small businesses, with a particular emphasis on maintaining LLMs in a secure environment.
Tarkenton, who was inducted into the Pro Football Hall of Fame in 1986, said that he makes sure to spend at least 15 minutes with everyone from top-level executives to those just starting out. He said over the course of a year, he’ll speak with 500 or more people.
“This practice stems from one of my seven business maxims: people have to talk to people,” he wrote in a follow-up email. “No one succeeds alone. Communication and collaboration help us learn new ideas, strengthen our thinking, and discover better ways to do things.”
No matter the line of work, Tarkenton said, it simply won’t do if someone can’t get along with those around them. That’s why, even at 85, he insists on meeting applicants who want to work for his Atlanta-based companies.
“I want to see who they are,” he said. “If they’re a genius and they’re not the right kind of people, it doesn’t work.”
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