Not the biscuit but the businessman!
A self-made billionaire who doesn't like the spotlight?! How refreshing.
As someone who played 13 years of organized American football, I lost a lot of games. And I won some games. But most important, I know firsthand how important a team is to success. Not just the players, but the coaches, the front-office, fans and all of their families contribute to a winning product. I’ve got an appreciation for good football.
And as a recruiter, I have an appreciation for a well-run org like the Baltimore Ravens, though I don’t actually really care for their on-field product. It’s their blue collar-turned billionaire Owner who worked his ass off as a recruiter in the 80s that gets me most interested.
Steve Bisciotti certainly plays the part as one of the wealthiest people on the planet, as owner of the NFL's Baltimore Ravens. He’s got the houses, the yacht, the plane(s). And though he looks and plays like a typical NFL Owner, his journey to this level of influence is anything but traditional. While some of his peers across the league moved into the Owner’s suite through oil money, hedge funds, or retail, Steve was able to build an empire monetizing people - a terribly fickle and unpredictable asset class.
Steve grew up middle class between Pennsylvania and Baltimore. His dad died from Leukemia when he was 8, leaving him and his siblings alone with his mom. This event alone would shape his work ethic for decades.
After graduating from Salisbury State in 1983, he founded staffing firm AeroTek with his cousin Jim in his basement. This, at a time before starting a business in your basement was cool. AeroTek was an immediate success: in their first year of operations the business earned $1.5m providing aerospace staffing services. In other words, aerospace companies would hire his company to recruit people to work at said aerospace companies.
He slowly grew the business over the next 10 years by opening new industry vertical specialties like automotive and telecom until each was doing tens of millions of dollars. Then they opened environmental, energy, and scientific divisions. He and Jim eventually created Allegis group, the holding company for AeroTek and various other human capital-based businesses. Through it all - he maintained it was his team and not his doing. The ultimate team player.
While he built his business, he developed a knack for surrounding himself with the best possible people, as difficult as that might be. Years later he would say “[At Allegis] we don’t parade around the ones who don’t get the promotion to Executive Vice President. They’re worthy or they wouldn’t get the interview, and I have to pick one. And I feel sorry for the ones who don’t get the job and that’s what makes it hard on me. I have to live with my decision. No matter what I do, I’m going to disappoint people in my decisions.”
Difficult as those decisions may have been, they were foundational for the type of organization he would run as part-owner of the Baltimore Ravens beginning in 2000, before assuming full ownership in 2004 from Art Modell. Modell, a 40 year veteran in NFL ownership circles, was instrumental in helping Steve affirm his own management philosophy.
“Art’s going to say, ‘Trust the people around you. He preached, ‘Just get good people around you.’ Art has constantly done it and he knows the game – surround yourself with quality people if you want to be successful. And treat them like family.”
The Ravens went on to win the 2001 Super Bowl, though it had little to do with Steve at the time. But for a hometown kid no less, it was about as storybook as it gets.
And when Steve assumed complete control of the team in 2004, Super Bowl trophy in tow, he didn’t change what was important to him. He didn’t change how he built his organization and didn't turnover key management paramount to the 2001 Super Bowl, like Ozzie Newsome. He stayed true to the kind of people he believed in: “Brilliant mind with a small ego. Those kinds of people are the best you can ever have. Smart and not egotistical is a great combination”. Hard lessons learned from having recruited tens of thousands of people earlier in his career with AeroTek.
Further, he didn’t change his public persona. He would go on to say “The biggest decision that I had to overcome was whether I wanted to be a high profile person or not,” he said. “I had a wonderful life being a low profile person. I would love to be the least-known NFL owner in the country.”
Each NFL owner has a strong presence in their community. Most of them have loud mouths and strong opinions. Steve is humble, maybe even a bit of a hermit, and while he owns both the team and Allegis Group, he rarely speaks publicly. He doesn't need that spotlight, that self-worth that fellow owners Jerry Jones of the Cowboys or Woody Johnson of the Jets get from being in the limelight. He gets his satisfaction from knowing where he started and how he got to where he is today. That's all he needs.
It’s fair to say the vast majority of today’s billionaires - NFL Owners or not - do like to make their presence known in media, on Twitter, interviews, etc. But not Steve. Despite his massive successes, notoriety is of such little significance to Steve. He’s unique. He’s humble. He’s extremely talented. He’s a symbol of American prosperity who stands in contrast to his counterparts across the league.
When Steve Bisciotti’s name is mentioned, most people think of a biscuit rather than an NFL owner who hustled his way to his fortune, and that is perfectly fine with Steve. He defies a prototypical pro sports owner billionaire, going so far as to say “I’m O.K. if I’m one of the least-known owners in sports.”
The Ravens would again win the Super Bowl in 2013, and have been competitive as long as I can remember. But Steve knows his place in the team’s success, and he won’t change his stance on it. He would go on to say: “The way we approach winning is to do our best to let the team be the focus and not the Bisciotti’s. And they all embrace my style and appreciate it, and it brings less angst to {his family}.”
The same system and ideology that built Bisciotti’s business at Aerotek has made the Ravens successful over two decades of his ownership: picking qualified, motivated people, building teams, and demanding accountability and growth.
The next time you see a loud-mouth sports owner, remember Steve and his humble beginnings, for his upbringing and team-approach to building organizations is a timeless one all leaders should emulate
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