Howie Zales: The Magic Behind a Camera
Expecting the unexpected is critical to success in life and in business. By definition, the phrase teaches us to be - or at least to try to be - prepared for whatever might come our way. In practice, it's a reminder that surprises are inevitable. But with the right mindset, sometimes curveballs can become our greatest opportunities.
Hitting the curve is a phrase I often use when keynoting to corporate audiences. To me, it's the perfect analogy to describe the mentality of expecting the unexpected. I'm lucky to have a front row seat to this lesson in action every day as a sports broadcaster for the Kansas City Royals. And just like those Big League players, when surprises come hurtling your way, you can either stand idle while they pass you by or take a swing at what just might be your next home run.
I was recently joined on my podcast Rounding the Bases by Howie Zales of HJZ Productions. He's seen his fair share of these very types of curveballs. Each of which has been pivotal to him building a career in television production. Like me, he works in sports, but has a vantage point entirely unique from my own. While I spend my days and nights in front of the camera, he spends his behind one.
Howie is an Emmy Award-winning virtual storyteller who has fine-tuned his craft for decades, making every seat the best one in the house for high-profile sports and entertainment. And when the early days of the pandemic put an indefinite hold on events everywhere, expecting the unexpected enabled him to show up and continue to deliver when the world needed it most.
SINGLE: A New Ambition
Growing up, Howie had his sights set on one career: becoming a professional baseball player. I had a similar dream at one point, but not the skill to support it. Howie, on the other hand, played relentlessly in his pursuit of one day making it to the Majors. Between catching games for his hometown Mets and Yankees, he played ball year-round. He could also be found at hitting clinics every Friday night and Saturday morning. But just before his Junior year in high school, his Big League dreams were hit with something he didn't anticipate: The unexpected vacancy of one course in his schedule. To fill it, he needed an elective.
The description of one course in particular included a trip to NBC Studios in New York City. Not only would there be a tour of the Saturday Night Live studios, but students would also attend a show taping. He remembered thinking, "How bad could this be?" And wound up falling in love with television production. From it came a new ambition that allowed him to fuse baseball with his new-found passion.
DOUBLE: Professionalism, Always
The pandemic introduced us to a lot of things. But perhaps none so much as the program now known around the world: Zoom. It became the standard for many, but not Howie, whose commitment to his craft demands professionalism, always. His solution was to create camera kits - also known as contributor kits - that he distributed to talent, ensuring a top notch production, even when remote.
The kits included a high-end gaming laptop, third-party camera, ring lighting and a mic. When reflecting on those early days of decision making as we were all expecting the unexpected, his satisfaction was evident. "We're pretty proud of how we managed to do all these virtual shows," he said. And better still, managed to pull off each one of them in perfect high def.
TRIPLE: Pandemic Pivot
Nobody could have prepared for the implications of the novel coronavirus when it began circulating in the news. It was a masterclass in expecting the unexpected, and one that had Howie swinging for the fences. "I needed to learn a new skill," he said, "and maybe make some money while doing it." After noticing that people had begun doing things virtually, he leveraged his knowledge of the television business to pivot.
Ahead of the Jewish holidays in September, he learned everything he could before pitching his rabbi. Live streaming was their solution, and would allow the congregation to be together while apart in celebration of the High Holy Days. "It was me, the cantor and the rabbi in the temple streaming to 1,500 devices," Howie recalled of his first virtual production. It offered valuable training ground, and priceless momentum towards his newest iteration of televised event production.
HOME RUN: The Mind shift
"I've always had a business on the side, but I never thought of myself as an entrepreneur," he shared. When he opened his television staffing business in 2000, he simply thought of himself as a camera operator with a side business. A conversation with his wife nearly two decades later presented some unexpected facts.
The reality was that was that his side hustle was actually earning him more than his day job as a camera operator. And that was the realization that ushered in his crucial mind shift. "I became the entrepreneur that once in a while does camera work on the side," Howie told me, before adding, "And now, I don't even do it anymore."
Listen to the full interview here or tune into Rounding the Bases every Monday and Thursday, available wherever you get your podcasts.
Learn More About Expecting the Unexpected from Joel
Book Joel Goldberg for your next corporate event. He draws on over 25 years of experience as a sports broadcaster. In addition, he brings unique perspectives and lessons learned from some of the world’s most successful organizations. Whatever your profession, Joel is the keynote speaker who can help your team achieve a championship state of mind.
Full Transcript
Joel Goldberg 0:00
Welcome into another episode of Rounding the Bases presented by Community America Credit Union: Believe in Unbelievable. My name is Joel Goldberg. Good to be back with you, good for me to be back home in town and recording this episode. In September home from my final homestand of the baseball season, then one road trip. And we're done. We're winding up this season right now on Rounding the Bases. And looking forward to another one soon. We'll take a quick break coming up. But we'll keep cranking out these episodes, two per week over and over because there's so many stories to tell. I mentioned Community America, quick shout out to my friends at Chief of Staff Kansas City, Making Connections That Matter. If you're looking for a job, looking to place someone, looking for a resource or help in or out of Kansas City, all over the country. Check them out at chiefofstaff@kc.com Today's guest is a great entrepreneurial story, but also one that speaks to me just because it's very relatable to my world. Most of the time, I spend my days in front of a television camera. Or nights. On today's episode of Rounding the Bases I'm joined by someone who spends his time behind the camera. His name is how he Zales of HJZ productions, the Emmy award winning visual storyteller who has fine tuned his craft for decades, making every seat the best one in the house for watching high profile sports and entertainment. When in person events came to a grinding halt, he made an unexpected pivot into media entrepreneurship. With great expertise and even better attitude, he found a way to show up, delivering when the world needed it most. I can relate because, and I always say this, that I don't expect anyone to care or sympathize. But many of us in the television world certainly in the live television world, whether it be in front of the camera or behind we get paid by the game, many of us. And when those games stopped, the paycheck stopped coming in again, not looking for the sympathy. I know there are a lot of people that went through a lot of similar things or even are going through that right now. But just a little bit of a peek into the world. When when it falls apart, you've got to find a way, you've got to pivot. And that is a part of the story right now of my guest Howie Zales. How are you?
Howie Zales 2:26
Hey Joel, I love the theme song.
Joel Goldberg 2:28
Well, thank you. Artist by the name of AY Young who now travels the world doing work for the United Nations. And so something fun, every now and then I'll hear my kids humming it. I don't know if they are trying to give me a hard time or it's in the back of their head. I don't think they even listen to the podcast, actually, but I love, I'm looking at your background and most people are listening to this. But I see all the press passes behind you and you, like me, I think you got a lifetime's worth of press passes to remind you of the many places that you have been. The beauty of the journey is, I don't know that any of us get into this saying okay, one day I want to be a speaker, one day I want to be an entrepreneur. Certainly not from the television and for you, probably like me, you wanted to play the sports, right?
Howie Zales 3:15
Yeah, I did everything possible growing up to try to play professional baseball. I went to hitting clinics on Friday and Friday nights and Saturday mornings, I played just about year round, except for the you know, dead of winter. But yeah, that was my goal. I grew up going to Yankee, Yankees and Mets games. And yeah, I was there when Reggie Jackson hit three home runs in the World Series. So for me, that's yeah, that's what I wanted to do.
Joel Goldberg 3:45
And for most of us, it doesn't work out that way. Or I would even say it for those that it did work out for, at some point there is life after sports. There is life after playing it. As my broadcast colleague Red Huddler, once a New York Yankee says, the only thing guaranteed of a ballplayer is they'll be an ex-ball player. So at some point, we have to make that pivot. I mean, that's just life, you know? You can't keep playing until you, unless you're Satchel Page, you can't keep playing until you're you know, 50s and 60s or whatever he was. How did you get into this end of the business?
Howie Zales 4:15
Yeah, it's a great story. In 11th grade, in high school, I needed one elective to fill my schedule and the course descriptions of this one particular course read that it was a trip to NBC Studios in New York City, a trip a tour of the studios where Saturday Night Live is shot and and so on, so forth. And then to watch the show being taped. And then I was like, How bad could that this course be? Right? So I ended up falling in love with TV production.
Joel Goldberg 4:47
Right and that's at an early age too, although I will say that and I knew in high school that I wanted to be in front of the camera. I knew I wanted to be a broadcaster. I didn't know that would end up looking like this because there weren't even pre and post game shows that I host right now back then. So for me it was either I want to be a play by play guy, or I want to be the local guy doing sports on the news. That was really my passion at that point. But I know that those classes that I took in high school and college were the most fun, because you got to do some things out of the classroom, you got to experiment, you got to mess around with all this fun equipment. What, at what point, did you realize, hey, I really liked this. This is something I could do?
Howie Zales 5:30
Yeah, you know, I guess midway through that 11th grade year, and then I, my love with sports. So I knew that I was, it was getting time to, I was taking the pre SATs and the SATs, and I knew it was time to start thinking about college, and what am I going to do? And I said, what better idea to, you know, take my love of baseball and sports, and combine it with my new passion television. I grew up going to sporting events. So I would see the camera operators. So I knew that that sort of thing existed. And photography was huge in my family, a second cousin of mine, was a staff photographer for the New York Times. And we have famous pictures that he took with Thomas Edison and Babe Ruth. So it all kind of came together like that.
Joel Goldberg 6:21
There is, I don't know the best way to describe it. But I want to do so for my audience. Because even people in, on my end of the business, in front of the cameras, don't understand the amount of work that goes in what I call behind the scenes from the technicians, from all the people. And by the way, I mean, what what fans might see when they go to a game is the camera people. But they don't see the audio engineers, they don't see the technical director, the director, I don't know that they even know necessarily what a producer or director does, do they understand that people that are working in video are working with tape and putting together the replays and on and on, there's so much that goes in. And I always say too that, we have it easy on the broadcast side. It's not that we're on the on the on camera side, it's not that we're not working hard. But we don't have to be the first ones there. Those camera operators and all the technicians, they're there hours and hours before everyone else. Give, give my audience a little bit of a glimpse in what it's like to be behind the scenes.
Howie Zales 7:22
Yeah, sure. So if let's take baseball, for example. So if the game is 705, like they normally are night games, the most of the TV crew, it will show up at one o'clock. That gives us six hours prior to the start of the game. If it's a if the team is just coming back from being on the road, and none of the equipment is set up, we'll get there even earlier, because we have to rerun all the cameras, set all the cameras up, rerun the cables, especially if it was a long road trip. Because the TV trucks are being used by other clients, they're just, they're so expensive, they just can't sit in one place all the time. So it we're there at least minimum six hours before the event starts. And setting the cameras up, laying the cables up, making sure that everything is working and that the TV truck sees and hears every image and sound that we're trying to capture.
Joel Goldberg 8:24
It's a lot of moving parts. And that is that is the Cliff's Notes version of it. But yes, deep into the weeds about the amount of attention to detail on this stuff. And then I think people understand it from this standpoint that for the most part, when you're watching a broadcast you just enjoying it. But when something doesn't look right, or something doesn't sound right, or there's a number that's off or whatever it is, that's when we hear about it's usually me because I'm the one that's in front of the camera, and they know how to get a hold of my Twitter account. But for the most part, no one really complains about it because it's nice and smooth. It's almost like surgery to me. I think, you know, in terms of watching an ER room, that's what a truck is like. And there's such an almost a calm and a rhythm to it. With, with everything flying left and right that there's a beauty of live television, where we never really know what's going to happen. And yeah, set day, first day in for a series. You guys are there a lot earlier, last game of the series. If that trucks moving on somewhere else, guess who's breaking it all down and putting it all away and then boxing are packing it all up? It's the crew. That's why I say it's not like I'm showing up at 659 for that 705 game. I'm getting there at 3, 3:30. People think that's really it is nothing compared to the crew. So tell me about this entrepreneurial journey. I'll get back to some of the early stuff later because there's some things a lot of fun things that you've done and I ought to ask you those, you know, favorite this and that type of questions that we all have.
Howie Zales 9:52
Of course.
Joel Goldberg 9:53
How did you, how did you make the pivot and how did the pandemic affect everything?
Howie Zales 9:57
So, um, just rewind real quick. I always had a business on the side. In 2000, I opened up my television staffing business. So we've been, I've always had a business on the side. But I never thought of myself as an entrepreneur, I thought of myself as the camera operator who has a side business where we hire TV crews for baseball, soccer, boxing, hockey, whatever, events. But the pandemic happened 2020, we had opened a second business in 2000, late 2019, that would kind of work alongside our staffing business. And basically, what I mean by that is we HJC productions, the first business, we would hire all of the local people that the clients wanted, but take a client like Showtime boxing that they hire, you know, 30 locals, but they bring in 50 Travel people that travel with the show, wherever it is. So what we were saying is, with all these new employment laws that exist, let our new company take the burden of all of your travel, people will train them in sexual harassment, workplace harassment, pay them as employees on a W-2 for a fee. But, obviously, but we wanted to keep the union side, the local side and the travel side completely different. And that's why we started the second company.
Joel Goldberg 11:24
So this is I mean, this is knee deep into it in in a way that you'd never could have imagined, obviously, growing up, what happened during the pandemic. I mean, I know for me, it was like, Okay, I already, not quite the same as you, but I had already started my speaking business, by the way, nobody was hiring speakers early in our pandemic, and then we pivoted to, to doing a virtual and that wasn't bad. Not ideal, but it was doable. But you know, I spent the pandemic fine tuning the podcast, writing a book, making, doubling down on all those connections, trying to meet more people. Almost using it as a time while I was off, so to speak, to be able to grow the business and it all paid off. What was that time period like for you when sports stopped?
Howie Zales 12:12
On March 11, when all sports stopped, it was like, no one knew if this is going to be a week or two week thing, right. But after I caught my breath, I, we, we new that we we always lay out a ton of money. So we knew we had a lot of money coming in, because it was owed to us. So once we kind of got, you know, got that and relax for a bit. Because like you had pointed out earlier, if you don't work in this business, you don't get paid. So we took a step back and, and I said I need to learn a new skill, I need to learn something else. And I knew live streaming. And if you pay attention to the internet, people are starting to do some things virtually. So I said I needed to gain all this information on live streaming, how can I put my knowledge to the TV business in use, and learn a new skill and maybe make money while doing it. And so I surrounded myself with people that I knew that had knowledge of this, and who are a lot smarter than I, I am. And I learned everything I could possibly learn about live streaming. And with the Jewish holidays approaching in September, we went I went to the rabbi who is a friend of mine, I said, Listen, this is what we're gonna need to buy, this is what we're going to need to do. And this is how we're going to achieve getting the service to the congregation because they can't come in person. And during the holidays. And in September, it was me, the Cantor and the rabbi in the temple streaming to over 1,500 devices. So people could still have the services and while we were setting up for that, a client called and said, Hey, Howie, I need to interview nine major league baseball players. They're all going to be in different cities in nine weeks. But the hardest problem, the interviewer cannot leave her home. Do you think you can do that? And I said, Absolutely. And I called my wife I said, I told her exactly what I just told you. And I said, I have no idea how we're going to do that. But we figured it out.
Joel Goldberg 14:23
There's something there. I gotta get back to those high holiday services too. Not literally, but it was that did change things, by the way, because suddenly it's like, wait a minute, I'm out of town. I'm trying to this, you know, post pandemic or whatever. But suddenly, it was like, wait a minute, I can go, I can go to a service no matter where I'm at. And I can do and that's the world that we're living in now as well. But this all had to be quite a revelation to you. And I'm sure a little bit scary too, because it was truly a jump into a new world.
Howie Zales 14:56
Yeah, and it was and I, and the way I looked at it was I was doing the, I set up the temple with the help of a few other colleagues, with the proper equipment. And I said, you know, I'm learning this, as I'm doing it, I'm learning this technology as I'm doing it. But if I make a mistake, I'm not getting paid for this, I was volunteering my time. If I make a mistake, this is the place to make it. And then I'll learn from it. And when I turn around, and I do it professionally, I won't be making those mistakes. And it turned out to be, you know, a really good training ground for me,
Joel Goldberg 15:36
Almost like working in a starter market. In television, at least for me. I mean, you jump into the starter markets, you're not making any money. Okay, I did. I mean, like, my first job was, let's just say in Northern Wisconsin, was not enough to pay for the $300 a month in rent. So I had to downsize there and find a roommate, but essentially, you're doing it for free. But as long as you didn't do anything, too, too bad, you got a chance to learn from it. And you were able to figure it out. How similar was all this to everything that you had done before? I'm not talking about the clients per se, right. But the production? I mean, in the end, how many of those skills translated over and how much did you kind of have to reinvent?
Howie Zales 16:16
Everything trans, translated, because I know what a good camera shot looks like, I know when the eyes are in focus, and not the background behind. I know how to frame a shot. I know what good audio sounds like. I've been listening to directors for 25 years. Now I'm starting to direct the show myself. So I know what the flow is supposed to be, you never go from a tight shot to a tight shot, you always go to a two shot in between, for example, so I was, everything completely trans, translated over.
Joel Goldberg 16:53
You have the interesting background, Howie, of having had one of those jobs, that even if people don't understand what goes into being a photographer, or a camera operator technician, they know that you're at the games, they know that you are going somewhere that they would love to go. And so I'm sure even on the bad nights, right? I mean, we've all done those games where you just okay enough, let's just get this one done. And you know, we got to be back first thing in the morning, that type of thing. But for the most part, you know, we know every single day that we don't have the typical job, that someone is paying us to go to sports. I'm curious what your and I don't mean to put words in your mouth, but I'm guessing because almost everybody that I know feels that way those that don't shouldn't be in the business. But we're lucky, right? I mean, you agree with me on that. But this is different, right? I mean, there are a lot of similarities, as I mentioned in terms of skill and ability. But this is almost a new frontier with all the streaming and everything that's going on. So I'm just curious sort of what the emotional feel was for you in starting something new if you are getting that similar feel to what you did, and going to the sporting events, because it may not always be as glamorous when you're doing some of this behind the scenes stuff.
Howie Zales 18:11
Actually, we had the good fortune in starting out where my camera career kind of left off. And this is what I mean by that. Our first streams were with nine different baseball players. So I was working with athletes, right? Our next big project was was with two famous chefs from The Cooking Channel, we did a live stream of our cooking demonstration for the New York Wine and Food Festival. And then we continued with live streams with Doug Flutie and Mike Tirico, Tiger Woods, Charles Barkley, Magic Johnson, just to name a few. And to be able to talk to Magic Johnson like this on the other side of the computer, telling them how to set up or move a little this way or, you know, great job, you're coming up in five minutes, you know, things like that talking to it was it just it all kind of just flowed smoothly?
Joel Goldberg 19:08
Yeah, and you didn't have to be there. So you're still, you're still dealing with the same people, but you're pushing all the buttons from the comfort of your office or home or wherever, wherever you are. That, there had to been moments there where you had to pinch yourself to write and say, Oh, my gosh, we're doing this.
Howie Zales 19:22
When we came up with, we devise these camera kits, contributor kits, we call them, it's a high end gaming laptop with a third party camera that sits on the top, a microphone, ring lights, and we send them to these athletes or the other contributors in our show, and that's how we bring them into the production. And so we're pretty proud of how we managed to do all these virtual shows that it was not through, you know, Zoom and Microsoft Teams. It was actually, it's actually professional software. That is is, you know, full 1080.
Joel Goldberg 20:03
Do you have that entrepreneurial bug now, and again, I know that you've been in business, but this is different. This isn't a side hustle anymore help. Tell me about that entrepreneurial bug.
Howie Zales 20:12
Yeah, I think it was like 2018, my wife. And part of doing sports, my sports career was I also worked for the World Wrestling Entertainment for 20 years, backstage as a camera operator. And their schedule is Monday, Tuesday, and they just had signed this new deal TV deal where the schedule is going to Monday and Friday. And what that meant was just going to lead my life at six days a week or more on the road. So I said, I need to make a change. My wife and I sat down and we did the math. And I couldn't believe how much money my business was making compared to how much money Howie Zales the camera operator was making. So we had a mindset change. And I became the camera operator, that the entrepreneur that once in a while does camera work on the side. And now I don't even do it anymore.
Joel Goldberg 21:03
Pretty liberating, especially in the way of no one ever tells you that you almost have to find it on your own. There's no cost to this.
Howie Zales 21:12
No and and we did the math, and I'm my wife Jenny's like, See! I still don't believe it.
Joel Goldberg 21:20
It's a great thing. And just, there's so much that's what I tried to tell young people now to begin, I think that this is a different generation than the you and I are close enough in age, I'm guessing. But based on the based on the color of our hair that we both have, and the amount of experience in the business. But you know, when we were coming up in the business, this was the this is what you do. This is the path, maybe you had one or two options. Now he could do anything. I mean, you know, and I look at all of all of our crew, with with Kansas City Royals, baseball, and they are doing all types of stuff. But they don't necessarily have to travel either. Some of them are, some of them aren't to what you're saying. I mean, I see some of our, we lose a lot of our crew in September because of football, football, you know, and some of these guys, they leave. Like our camera operators, though, they'll leave on a, you know, Thursday, and they're back on a Sunday or a Monday working for, say, a CBS game or whatever it is. And then they might get two days of baseball. And it is a grueling schedule, that all of you guys work,
Howie Zales 22:22
My schedule, at the height of my busy-ness obviously, would be football where I would leave on a Thursday. Because I did Notre Dame for NBC for over 20 years, I'd leave on a Thursday, work on Friday, going around getting all the scenics and the beauty shots and the interview, team interviews, do the game on Saturday, Sunday. If I was filling in on Sunday night, I'd travel work to the Sunday Night Football city. If not, I would probably travel to the wrestling city work Monday and Tuesday during wrestling and travel home Wednesday, and then hope Notre Dame was on the road next week.
Joel Goldberg 23:03
So very much six days on the road, potentially come home for a day and then gone again. And that was that was the life. So this is a little better. Just as as fulfilling, obviously, and absolutely nothing to like, you're just you're just breaking in as much success as you've had, right? I mean, sky has got to be the limit for this.
Howie Zales 23:22
Yeah. And now we have transitioned the livestream business into doing events, corporate corporate meetings and events, that once they first you know, then they first they were high off fully remote, then they went fully virtual, I should say. And now they're the hybrid component exists in every live event there is and it's not going to go away. So that's what we do. We do live stream or meetings, events, corporate meetings and events for all of our different corporate clients.
Joel Goldberg 23:56
I want to hit you with my baseball themed questions. Before we wrap things up. I'll ask you a little bit later on the YouTube bonus questions about a you know, favorite event or a favorite, whatever, but how about just a big home run and that might be with your, with your company? What's that big home run in your career?
Howie Zales 24:16
Probably the biggest home run was you know, starting a new business during the pandemic, and being actually profitable. And just sitting back, looking at my wife and being proud of us of what we pulled off.
Joel Goldberg 24:31
It's, again, it's amazing. And I just want to follow up on that too. Because I think that in your world as a camera operator, you do have some say in saying yes to events, no to events, and the more more you're known, the more that you're in demand. So there's work I mean, again, I see our guys, they're doing really well. The question is how much do you want to kill yourself six to seven days a week and so now to be able to start this business, there has to be this freedom. I know there is for me with mine. As much as I'm still working the grueling baseball schedule, I know that on the speaking side, the podcast, I'm in control of it. That's not anything that I ever had. And I've got to figure for you, that's incredibly liberating.
Howie Zales 25:19
It's totally liberating, to be able to clear my schedule. So my wife and I go for a walk in the morning or do something with the kids or whatever, absolutely, and not have to run to a flight. But the other thing that's liberating is the power of saying no to a project, because the client wants to do too cheap. And you know that the resources are not there to support that project, because it'll make our brand look bad, should something happen. So the power of saying no is definitely huge.
Joel Goldberg 25:51
Yes. And most of us in our business, never were able to say no, for a lot of years. And so you just don't know how to say no, that's why I can struggle sometimes often struggle with no and I'm learning it. It's an incredible thing. And I know a lot of people talk about that, how about a swing and a miss? And what did you learn from it?
Howie Zales 26:07
Yeah, we, good question. We, we have a content delivery network, I won't name the company. And I followed the protocol to what I thought was to be to cancel it. And we ended up in a lawsuit because I didn't follow up with an email and it costs cost me quite a bit of money. So when I thought it was a good investment to try to build our company turned out to be pretty big loss.
Joel Goldberg 26:40
They're not fun. You hopefully learn from them, learn from them, and it never happens again, you'd rather not have to learn from them. But you can't change what has happened. Last question of the baseball themed questions. Small ball to me and, you've watched enough baseball, it's the bunts. It's the sacrifices, hey, not everybody has to hit homeruns like Aaron Judge and the New York Yankees, although sometimes it's easier at Yankee Stadium with that short porch. But you get the point, you get the point to this, the little things and you see this I know more in business now than ever. But to me, the little things are all of the behind the scenes and television. It's that what we call the V1. The video operator in the truck that shading all that all the color and you know, all those things that go into every day. But what about for you in your world with HGZ productions? What is small ball to you? What are the little things that add up to the big results?
Howie Zales 27:35
Yeah, the little things are keeping my morning routine, getting up early, doing things, getting some things done. In the morning, doing my morning workout. It's non-negotiable, what I do, or actually doing it every single day. And then getting done what needs to get done to grow and scale the business, trying to work on them and not in them so much. But that's that's the battle.
Joel Goldberg 28:06
It totally makes sense. And that morning routine, still working on that by the way too. And some days it works. Other days with the grind of of baseball, not so much. You get that one. But I think that everybody needs that routine. We're going to shift over to YouTube. And I've got four final questions for Howie. So I hope that everyone will check that out. Just check out YouTube search for Rounding the Bases Joel Goldberg, Howie Zales. It'll be in the show notes. Also want to let everyone know if you're interested in learning more about how he and his company. The website is HJZ Productions. Some really cool pictures on the website, you'll see a big smiling Howie holding the camera at an NFL game, and all kinds of other stuff information about all the unions. They've worked with the crewing for anything from NFL Network to Showtime to MLB Network, Fox Sports on and on NBC Sports and so an incredible career. But I would also say an incredible start to really that next phase, that second journey and all of what's ahead. Howie thanks so much for doing this. Really appreciate it.
Howie Zales 29:15
Thank you, Joel. I'm super grateful.