Never Settle For a Poor Substitute: Interview with Erin Patton, Architect of Nike's Jordan Brand
I recently went one on one with Erin Patton. Erin crafted the business plan and historic launch of Nike's Jordan brand, leading the Jordan Brand business unit to $350 million in global revenues. Erin also managed Converse brand's repositioning and launch of Dwyane Wade partnership; spearheaded the launch of Stephon Marbury's $15 Starbury sneaker; and developed marketing partnerships and private label brands for The Williams Sisters. Erin is the author of the new book C+Suite Leadership For Christ and is the founder of the New Birth Institute.
Adam: Thanks again for taking the time to share your advice. First things first, though, I am sure readers would love to learn more about you. How did you get here? What experiences, failures, setbacks or challenges have been most instrumental to your growth?
Erin: Thanks, Adam. It’s an honor to be here and share my success path. Suffice it to say, I’ve now officially arrived! So, how did I get here? In short, to say I came from humble beginnings is a fashionable concept and compliment, at best. Truth be told, having been raised in poverty by a single parent from the inner-city of Pittsburgh, I’m an outlier in the regression analysis on the odds of survival for young, fatherless black males or the school-to-prison pipeline, take your pick.
As I like to say, where I’m from, “we weren’t born to win so we taught ourselves how not to lose.” Which is to say, the dire circumstances surrounding my environment pressed up against the blue-collar backdrop of this once-proud steel city manufactured us to be a rare breed. It also instilled within us a unique sense of pride and uncommon urgency. And with that, came resilience and the shaping of a set of core values and conforming patterns with respect to outworking, outhustling, and outsmarting the competition. This is not to suggest the presence of arrogance (though to be soft was to be lost) but rather to imply the absence of choice.
In other words, if you have two choices and one goes away, you have no choices.
Or, as Jay-Z opined, “I had to hustle, my back to the wall, ashy knuckles.” In my case, we’re talking about earning an honest living. To that end, I watched my Mom work two and three jobs at times. She would care for diagnosed patients at the hospital by day, and come home for a quick change of clothes before going to work as a barmaid and caring for the undiagnosed at night. There were few, viable alternatives to raising three boys solo. In other words, if you have two parents and one goes away, you have no choice. Her sacrifice was tremendous and that early work ethic was key for me.
Bottom line, there was no sense of entitlement beyond the constraints of an early entrepreneurial spirit. I’ll give you an example: During the winter, upon getting pummeled by notorious Western Pennsylvania snowstorms, my brothers and I discovered we could make money by hustling and shoveling snow. We also learned that our earnings forecast stood a better chance if we expanded our minds and horizon beyond our ‘hood. After all, we had already experienced the diminishing returns of spending a few hours laboring, only to get a buck or two and be told we missed a spot. So, we grabbed our shovels, with tube socks substituting for gloves, and hopped port authority buses for suburban enclaves like Penn Hills, Squirrel Hill, and Highland Park. As a result, not only did we clear massive properties and some nifty 50 dollar bills for a job well done, on occasion the homeowner would open up the door as we were finishing up and say, “would you boys like to come in for some hot cocoa?” “Yes, Ma’am…you betcha!”
A funny thing happened as we gathered around their kitchen table. Not only did I get a cup of hot chocolate with extra whipped cream, I got a healthy serving of cross-cultural, social location, and my first taste of creative visualization. I saw families, with a mother and father and children under my roof. I saw what success and “normal” actually looked like. I saw my future. I also saw that the color of my skin didn’t seem to matter when I opened my mouth to speak intelligently and conducted myself in such a way that revealed the content of my character. For example, offering a firm handshake to the man of the house and looking him square in the eye upon leaving or aforementioned “yes ma’am” to the lady of the house when she smiled and jokingly asked if I’d had enough hot cocoa with my whipped cream.
Without question, this inter-faith, cross-cultural exposure would forever change my narrative as a young black male coming of age in America. Notwithstanding these transformative life lessons, education was clearly our gateway to success. In between jobs, my mother was a fixture at the school, ensuring we were placed in the right classrooms or fighting hard to get us placed in gifted programs. Neither of which seemingly was a tall task for a petite woman with a short fuse when it came to equal opportunity for her children based on merit. She was never one to play the victim either. When schools in our district didn’t measure up, she opted instead for us to take that same public transportation route to schools in all-white neighborhoods. Ironically, I attended Wightman Elementary in the predominately Jewish community of Squirrel Hill not far from the heinous shooting which occurred there a few years ago.
I was routinely the only black kid in my school but I always felt comfortable in my skin and enjoyed relationships and friendships inside and outside of my community. In this regard, my mother’s parting shot as we scrambled to get to the bus stop was beginning to echo true. She told us we were not products of our environment but products of our imagination. And I believed her. And you would too if you can imagine this scenario. My junior year of High School, my mom didn’t want me to attend the HS in my neighborhood, in lieu of a newer public school opening nearby, but just outside of our district.
She somehow took notice of the fact that the new school offered Russian as a foreign language. I don’t have to tell you the school in my neighborhood didn’t. As such, I had morning classes at the school in my district and walked several miles to the newer school where I took Russian and a couple of other classes in the afternoon. Just before the Holiday break, the Principal called me into the office to inform me that they regretted losing one of their better students but were transferring me because my mother obviously wanted more for me than they could provide.
Not only did I take Russian as a foreign language at the new school, but I also took Journalism. And I became Editor of the school paper, which led me to Northwestern University’s prestigious Medill School of Journalism. In retrospect, I know it was more than her imagination, but spiritual matters of divine providence that were leading her into making these decisions which absolutely changed the course of my life. In either event, I truly believe you won’t see the bigger picture until you believe it exists.
What does this mean for climbing the success ladder? It means that years later when due diligence came down to asking why they should invest in this Entrepreneur, I recalled such stories for investors before lauding other accomplishments. When asked about my ability as a Chief Executive to return value to shareholders and boost profit margins, I was able to say with complete confidence and all sincerity that I had long since mastered the art of the start-up and doing more with less.
From a career perspective, looking out over the time horizon of my professional experience in the C-Suite and growth as an Entrepreneur and Leader, I would say I got here by hitting for average. At first blush that may sound like a mediocre attribute for the types of heavy hitters associated with your program and platform, but in reality, it’s a most lasting and self-actualizing metric for success in playing the long game. Specifically, in keeping with the baseball analogy, it speaks to consistency in volume and production over time. This calculation runs counter to our overnight culture of success in a digital world. As you know, batting average (BA) is calculated by taking a player’s total hits and dividing them by at-bats. On a statistical basis, a .300 hitter is defined as one who hits for average. Over the course of a career, a .300 or above hitter is also considered to be a G.O.A.T.
For instance, Babe Ruth’s lifetime average was .342. Joe Dimaggio, .325, and Hank Aaron .305. The all-time, MLB home run leader Alex Rodriguez? .295. This is not to say I don’t swing for the fences because I do, and I consider myself to be a power hitter when it comes to innovation and the brands I’ve built, the disruptive products I’ve launched as well the iconic athletes I’ve partnered with to do so. However, I’ve also learned not to despise small beginnings as well as how to take the singles, doubles, and swings and misses along the way. To borrow a line from one of the most impactful TV commercials I ever did together with Michael Jordan, “I’ve failed over and over and over again. And that is why I succeed.”
Adam: How did you develop a relationship with Michael Jordan and how did the Jordan Brand come together?
Erin: Developing a close relationship with MJ and coming into the role as Jordan Brand architect was another matter of divine providence and appointment. I was recruited to Nike as US PR manager where I oversaw a portfolio of categories, including our largest which was Basketball. I first met Michael, working in that capacity, at an old armory on the South Side of Chicago on the set of the commercial for “1,000 Foot Hoop.” This was the spot where he takes flight for a signature dunk, only to look down to see that he and his patent-leather Air Jordans are wayyyy up, and truly hanging above the rim. To which, he offered one of his patented facial expressions.
Our first encounter was memorable. I walked inside his trailer where he was engrossed in conversation and laughter over a cup of coffee with a lovely, older lady who was obviously responsible for his wardrobe and affable, signature smile that day. He ignored me at first, as I sat at the front of the trailer. After a few, hair-raising minutes (which felt like eternity), he laughs and says something to the effect of, “Hey EP, you’re here to do the interviews and B-roll right, let’s go.” Wow. He not only knew little old me but what my big role was that day. That was mind-boggling at the time, but I quickly learned this was also vintage Michael. He was tangibly involved in all aspects of his business and went out of his way to make everyone on the team feel valued, boosting their confidence while deflating his own ego, and thereby inspiring those around him to raise the level of our games. Like all great leaders, MJ knew the team was only as strong as the weakest link, so he always directed his focus and attention that way.
In large part, I instantly connected with Michael because I was the Jordan consumer. I was a product of Hip-Hop culture in Corporate America and was bridging those worlds. Nike lived and breathed the consumer, so I was a breath of fresh air in that regard. My intuitive understanding of the visceral consumer insights and nuanced brand/lifestyle preferences of urban consumers from my authentic, lived experience proved invaluable toward establishing the brand’s positioning within sneaker culture, which was transcending race beyond a demographic into a mindset, or psychographic.
We touched on hitting home runs versus singles and doubles earlier. While it wasn’t quite the grand slam at the time, I instinctively knew we could make the brand a hit by blitzing inner-city Barber Shops in LA where we would seed the Air Jordan’s on the Barbers while providing exclusives to trendy retail accounts back in the mid’ 90s when “urban” was still a forbidden word in marketing vernacular. While some frowned in the meeting when I suggested this strategy, MJ saw the relevance in it. So did the Wall St. Journal as our efforts to double down on grassroots marketing were highlighted there as Reebok and others began to follow suit.
Of course, there were many key players on the Jordan business, like Tinker Hatfield, Howard White (MJ’s “day one” and soul of the brand), Mark Parker (who would become CEO) Howard White, Peter Ruppe, David Bond, and Gentry Humphrey. As Michael was beginning to consider retirement, the company began considering a viable path to sustain the Jordan business going forward. There were two camps: one camp felt the air would go out of the Jordan sails and fever pitch around his shoe releases would subside once MJ was no longer on the court. Others of us believed we could channel MJ’s attributes and legacy into a stand-alone brand with a positive, yet inherent separation from Nike. Whereas Nike Basketball was purely performance-driven, the Jordan product had a premium performance and lifestyle positioning (style meeting substance). The latter contingent ultimately prevailed.
Peter Ruppe called me up and offered me the opportunity to be marketing director for the new brand working alongside a product director who was coming over in a “sign and trade” from the Apparel division. In a twist of fate, that particular colleague was unable to make the move so I became the Global Director for the Jordan Brand business unit and its first employee. In that role, I populated a team, crafted the original business plan, and spearheaded the launch in 1997 at Niketown NYC. As I took the stage, looking to my left and right at MJ and legendary designer Tinker Hatfield, my mother’s words echoed loudly, I was not a product of my environment but a product of my imagination.
Adam: What are the best lessons you learned from launching and developing the Jordan Brand and other highly successful brands you built with other prominent athletes?
Erin: I credit MJ with the early formation of what my (adaptive and transformative) leadership style would be and framing what success looked like. He often said, “success happens when preparation meets opportunity.” I’ve internalized so many of those lessons which also formed the basis of our Jordan Fundamentals education program and they evolved into a professional mandate throughout my career. There is such richness in the mindset of athletes in terms of dealing with disappointment and fighting through adversity that invariably rubs off on you. I recall being at the Ericsson Open in Florida with Venus and Serena Williams after the Indian Wells controversy when racial epithets had been hurled at them. My job was to manage the media day and teleconference the girls did and deflect further controversy from the press. We came prepared with key messages and talking points galore. Venus and Serena set the tone for the call and handled themselves with such grace that revealed their spiritual fortitude. That really inspired me.
In working with NBA star Stephon Marbury to launch the $15 Starbury shoe, I learned that it was bigger than basketball and an athlete could be as authentic off the court as on. We cried together with single parents and a father who had just lost his job in Detroit and was so grateful he could get his son a pair of affordable sneakers from an NBA athlete. I saw Steph load gift cards by the thousand and give them to families to go on a back-to-school shopping spree. I walked the streets of Beijing with him and saw how much the people loved him and marveled with him as we stood next to his statue and he said, they gave a (expletive) statue. I learned that professional athletes can wear their faith on their sleeve while having Bible Study with Kevin Durant in his hotel suite before the All-Star game.
Lastly, while I enjoyed close, personal relationships with the athletes, I recognized that my role was primarily professional. Throughout the time I worked with MJ and any of the athletes I’ve partnered with, I never asked for a personal favor or single autograph. I know they appreciated that. I learned to always be on time but knew when to go. I learned their life (and lifestyle) was theirs, so I grew to appreciate and cherish mine all the more. I learned that the key to relationships lies in value creation.
I was able to nurture, build and leverage my network over time and deliver exponential value to those relationships following the Master Mind group principle and Napoleon Hill’s thinking on the science of human success. As an example, building on the success of Starbury, I ultimately opened up that mass merchant distribution channel opportunity for Venus Williams and also facilitated introductions for my retail partners at Steve & Barry’s with the likes of Kanye West
Adam: What are your best tips for marketing and branding?
Erin: Product is king and if it can’t sell itself, never settle for a poor substitute. Brands are many things, some hold aspirational value, some hold inspirational value. They laughed at us when we set out to launch a $15 sneaker for Starbury but we created a movement that wasn’t about price-value proposition but became a referendum on our values as a society and community. The brand became a platform to deconstruct and re-story the narrative that was creating an identity crisis among young black males in inner-city communities like I came from. We talk about brand promise, but we’re in a marketing dispensation where brand purpose is becoming paramount, as it should. We launched a fashion-conscious brand inspired by Nelson Mandela a few years back and had a launch at the United Nations. Another pro tip is to live and breathe alongside the consumer. For all of its intrinsic value, digital marketing and social media as resulted in a conditional marketing fatigue. Brands aren’t working to win the hearts and minds of their consumers anymore. We’re outsourcing our influence. At Nike, we always believed that the consumer will know where we’re going when we show them. The brand dictates consumer behavior, not the other way around.
Adam: You’ve had a number of career pivots. How can anyone successfully pivot in their career?
Erin: One of the hallmarks of Hip-Hop culture is reinvention. It takes courage to pivot. We resist change and hold on (too long) to what was because we don’t like to acknowledge loss. Again, this is one of the rewarding aspects for me in working with athletes and, specifically, MJ. This brother was the greatest basketball player on the planet and took the challenge of pivoting to Birmingham, shagging fly balls, and traveling by bus from one town to the next as a minor leaguer. Setbacks are always a setup for something greater. Complacency is our biggest foe. Just as we are called from faith to faith and glory to glory, we must be willing to embrace change and recognize that for everything there is a season.
There is a season to sow, and a season to reap. A season to water and a season to plant but God gives it the increase. Answering the call to servant leadership and ministry was not in my five or ten-year plan but here I am, and I’m discovering that nothing we’ve been through gets wasted. The same skills I honed in branding, marketing and Entrepreneurship are the same skill sets I’m using today. The only difference is my sole ambition is beyond my own selfish interests and what I’m extracting from it as a result. I love what I get to do for others. I’m enjoying the life coaching I’m doing to equip the next generation of leaders. It’s humbling to realize that the doors we were knocking on but didn’t open and couldn’t understand were because God was shaping, molding, making, and pivoting us to become a door of expansion for others to walk through. At the end of the day, there’s no more gratifying feeling than knowing we have the privilege of reporting to the CEO of the universe.
Adam: What do you hope readers of all religions and backgrounds take away from your new book?
Erin: Faith matters. Faith informs and makes better leaders. Faith makes a difference in the C+Suite. Faith makes organizations better stewards of our most precious human resources and opportunity costs.
In this great employee reconsideration, I believe it’s time for our organizations to reconsider what Faith looks like as a competitive advantage and core value. For instance, in the book, I talk about the benefit of instituting a team chaplain or corporate chaplain to help shepherd the flock. In this new paradigm we are in, I believe that Faith, from the perspective of management, leadership, and the ethical framework, should factor into the methodology for our succession planning and company valuation. We are living in turbulent times of transition and we serve a God of spiritual transition, not religious tradition. God is present and actively engaged on matters of leadership and deeply concerned with our conforming to His perfect pattern. This book is a practical guide to help navigate the intersection of faith and enterprise Faith also makes no religious distinction. In this regard, we approach this subject humbly, knowing and believing God to be no respecter of persons. As believers, we inherit the faith to share it but not own it. While I write from a Christian perspective, this transformation of leadership can be recognized and experienced by anyone, regardless of faith and religion, and even if you practice no religion at all. At the end of the day, it’s about faith, not religion. Religion divides, but faith unites the corporate body.
Adam: What do you believe are the defining qualities of an effective leader? How can leaders and aspiring leaders take their leadership to the next level?
Erin: From the very beginning, God was quite deliberate and clear about what the image of leadership looks like. He, literally, prescribes its core essence and aspirational value on his own terms. Beyond physical appearance, though, this authoritative expression of leadership resembles God’s moral likeness. HIS character. You are undoubtedly familiar with the saying, “Leaders don’t create more followers, they produce more leaders.” Essentially, what I’m suggesting here is that the creator of the universe was divinely inspired as being the first to subscribe to this philosophy, existentially. As such, God’s self-fulfilling prophecy and desire for men and women in leadership is to transform their finite attributes into the infinite expression and fullness of his image. Ultimately, conforming to His style, and personifying His type of leadership. From this perspective, we begin to transpose Leadership in light of God’s intentional process, not man’s isolated happenstance. We start to perceive that all of our business affairs, decisions, works, and activities are a fine pattern woven together into the fabric of a much broader tapestry. All matters are guided by God’s sovereign hand. All things are timed, purposed, arranged, and orchestrated by His divine providence. This mindset has implications for aspiring leaders looking to take their leadership to the next level. We’ve developed a full platform and set of tools to assist organizations in this regard. Just as Emotional Intelligence fundamentally shifted the narrative and thinking surrounding the Organizational Behavior discipline and in much the same fashion that Meyers-Briggs set a new precedent, normalizing personality frameworks around leadership, we’ve developed our proprietary Faith Quotient (FQ) and Christ Type personality profile as the Millennium standard.
Adam: What are your three best tips applicable to entrepreneurs, executives and civic leaders?
Erin: The best way to compete is to not compete. The best form of competition is derived from cooperation. This is rooted in economic theory and natural law but has fertile application as Kingdom principle for the marketplace. Our creator designed us to function as a cooperative, even in the midst of what appears to be competition. By focusing on hyper-competition, we reduce necessary cooperation and extinguish our natural instincts to thrive collectively. Despite the competition to survive, the rainforest thrives as a result of it, not in spite of it. In my book, we call this “marketplace mutualism.”
During the pandemic, Grubhub and DoorDash thriving became as important to the fortunes of the local pizza shop with its own takeout mechanisms in place. Like the rainforest ants and termites, they rebuilt a molehill of consumer confidence together and doubled down on their cooperative efforts to boost spending back up in support of their “shared” local business environment.
The natural law of Reciprocity is critical toward the survival of our organizations in a post-pandemic world. It helps others see the contribution of every man or woman’s gift as an asset to the organization and reminds everyone in the alliance that God is the source of every good gift. It also promotes goodwill in other potential allies, enables network effects, and develops a natural atmosphere of added value, mutual benefit, and good faith. We must be careful of how we treat our alliances and associations as the oil of anointing flows based on connectivity. When we breach the natural connectivity (e.g. breaking laws of reciprocity), we disrupt the supernatural flow. One of the key takeaways from this pandemic is that human organisms are functioning in the profitable ways we were designed to by cooperating, co-laboring, and practicing natural laws of reciprocity. We are observing universal signs of the realization that who we are connected to matters for joint survival. We are bearing witness to the fact that our strategic alliances possess enough power to command supernatural favor and windows of opportunity opening up with blessings being poured out, by virtue of our associations.
Leaders that are set apart, must stand apart. Sounds fairly elementary, but the lesson remains largely unlearned. Given the high stakes and high visibility associated with the task and position, chosen leaders simply can’t do whatever everyone else does. When leaders fall from grace, their followers pay the price and their organization is left to pick up the pieces.
Adam: What is the single best piece of advice you’ve ever received?
Erin: When it comes to business, relationships and success, always remember trust is the hardest thing to gain, and the easiest thing to lose. I’d rather be known as a trustworthy leader, more than a noteworthy leader any day of the week.
Adam Mendler is the CEO of The Veloz Group, where he co-founded and oversees ventures across a wide variety of industries. Adam is also the creator and host of the business and leadership podcast Thirty Minute Mentors, where he goes one on one with America's most successful people - Fortune 500 CEOs, founders of household name companies, Hall of Fame and Olympic gold medal winning athletes, political and military leaders - for intimate half-hour conversations each week. Adam has written extensively on leadership, management, entrepreneurship, marketing and sales, having authored over 70 articles published in major media outlets including Forbes, Inc. and HuffPost, and has conducted more than 500 one on one interviews with America’s top leaders through his collective media projects. A top leadership speaker, Adam draws upon his insights building and leading businesses and interviewing hundreds of America's top leaders as a top keynote speaker to businesses, universities and non-profit organizations.
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