An Interview with Chesapeake Bayhawks Owner Brendan Kelly

Recently, we had the opportunity to talk about risk with Brendan Kelly. Brendan is the Owner of the 2013 Major League Lacrosse championship winning Chesapeake Bayhawks and CEO of Smartlink, a staffing and site development service specializing in the telecommunications industry.

Here, Brendan shares his thoughts about risk management as it relates to lacrosse, business, and life in general, and some lessons from the sport of lacrosse that he has applied to his life and work.

You are the CEO of Smartlink and the Owner of the Chesapeake Bayhawks. These are two very different businesses. Talk to me about what some of the biggest risks are in each how you manage those risks.

They are very different. From a customer standpoint, Smartlink has a handful of very large customers (AT&T, T-Mobile, Sprint, Verizon, etc.). With Smartlink, if we lose one customer, we lose a huge chunk of business. With the Chesapeake Bayhawks, our customers are individuals. We fill about 10,000 seats at a typical game, so if we lose one customer, it doesn’t have a significant impact on the business. Having said that, it is very hard to keep 10,000 people happy!

When you first purchased the Bayhawks, you changed the name of the team and that has really paid off. At the time, I imagine that might have seemed like a risky decision. What factors did you consider when you made the decision to change the name?

Our team’s fans come from throughout the region. I felt it was important that we encompass the whole territory and not make it all about Annapolis. The Chesapeake Bay touches all of our customers in Virginia, Delaware, Maryland, Washington DC, and Pennsylvania. We kind of stole from the New England Patriots. If you are the only team in a region, then you truly are a regional and not a State team.   

The sport of lacrosse is really about people – your players and your coaches and the team staff. I imagine there are lots of lessons from the staffing world that you could apply to the Bayhawks. How do you keep everyone motivated and what measures have you put in place to retain the best talent?

Bayhawks players are professional athletes, but they are also people with other careers outside of lacrosse. It’s about managing that and managing people. Most of them know what they’re doing in terms of their ability to execute on the field, so it’s about putting the chess pieces in the right places. The secret to success lies in building your product to be consistent on the field.

I read somewhere that 40-50% of your employees at Smartlink are lacrosse players. What is it about lacrosse players that make them such great candidates for your staffing business?

We started out hiring lacrosse players because lacrosse is a great fraternity. Regardless of where you played, you’re accepted as a member of that fraternity. But these days, it’s not just lacrosse players. We like to recruit any athlete that played any sport, particularly at the collegiate level. College athletes have to do more than the average person. They put in a couple of extra hours a day training and practicing and they are used to the extra work. In addition to work ethic, the team concept is huge. The best candidates have to understand sacrifice, be unselfish. This is very important in a corporate environment. 

Similarly, I’ve heard that your company slogan is “relationship based, not resume based”. This is really an interesting approach to risk management in which you are relying on relationships to drive better outcomes from a human resources standpoint. Tell me more about this.

We believe strongly that you can teach somebody Excel, project management, or sales, but you can’t teach character. The more you hire for character, the better off you are. We focus on that core piece first, and the scope of work second.

You’ve been involved in the sport of lacrosse as a player, a coach, and an owner. Tell me about how your approach has changed as you’ve changed roles.

As a player, you’re focused on fulfilling your role as a member of the team, and that is a minute part of the game. As a coach, you’re focused on the big picture on the field. As an Owner, you’ve got to stay on top of all three. But it’s a fine line. Owners have to be careful about inserting themselves too much and that’s my biggest challenge.

Right now, lacrosse is the fastest growing sport in our country. How important do you think it is, as a team owner, to be involved at the industry level? Do you think these same lessons apply in business as well?

I think you have to be involved and engaged in what’s going on at the high school, collegiate, and world levels. This is really no different than at Smartlink where we’re involved in the wireless industry and have to know where the industry is going. Understanding that big picture – whether in the world of lacrosse or in staffing - helps us to make decisions, set goals, and develop strategies for the future.

How have you applied the lessons you’ve learned through the sport of lacrosse to your life, both personally and in your business?

Lacrosse has taught me the importance of team, sacrifice, and unselfishness. It also taught me that there is nothing better than winning and nothing worse than losing. That’s what drives me in all parts of my life to be the best that I can be.

You are a part of the Kelly Family, which recently won the Ernst and Young Entrepreneur of the Year Award in Maryland in the Family Business Category. What have you learned from being part of such a large family with a successful family business?

I’m not currently involved in the family business side of things. My family is full of entrepreneurs with strong opinions, and it’s difficult to have multiple captains of the ship. I’m number 11 out of 12 children in my family. I have five older brothers, one younger brother and five older sisters. There is a piece of each of them in me.  I’m a mutt, and I have lots of their strengths and weaknesses. Perhaps most importantly, growing up with so many different personalities has prepared me to deal well with people.

Anything else you’d like to add?

Without risk there’s no reward. The true entrepreneurs of the world are the people who do the things that everyone else is telling them not to do. This is what happened when I bought the Bayhawks.  Everyone told me not to do it, but it’s been a great move for me. If everybody saw those kinds of opportunities, everyone would be an entrepreneur. Being an entrepreneur means being able to swallow those fears and face those risks.

This blog originally appeared on the HWP Insurance website. To view the original or to read more from HWP, visit www.hwphillips.com. 

Photo published with permission from Brendan Kelly