Strategic Pivots: From Minor League Baseball to Executive Leadership
With Kevin Mortesen, Eleven Canterbury Consultant, Communications Strategist, and Dan Martin, Program and Relationship Manager
Summary
In this episode of Conversations with the Experts, “Strategic Pivots: From Minor League Baseball to Executive Leadership,” host Dan Martin sits down with Eleven Canterbury consultant and communications strategist Kevin Mortesen. Kevin shares his dynamic and unconventional career journey across a wide range of industries, from Minor League Baseball to positions with the NBA, tech, food services, and wealth management.
With humor, candor, and insight, Kevin reflects on how navigating such varied industries sharpened his ability to communicate with impact, build trust across functions, and tailor strategies that drive real business outcomes. He unpacks what it means to truly listen to internal and external stakeholders, adapt messaging to different audiences, and create alignment that moves organizations forward.
This episode is a compelling look at the power of versatility, lifelong learning, and strategic communication as levers for leadership and bottom-line results.
Transcript
Dan Martin: Welcome to another edition of Conversations with the Experts. It’s a pleasure to be talking with Kevin Mortesen today. We’re going to talk about communication and his career path. It’s an interesting career path, Kevin. You’ve been in a wide range of businesses, from technology, food services, wealth management, and I think you began your career as the general manager of a Minor League Baseball team. Was that all part of a plan?
Kevin Mortesen: I don’t know if all of the gear shifting was part of a plan. I have to say that I didn’t start as a general manager. There were some days of growth before becoming a general manager, but I did start my career in Minor League Baseball. Sports was always the plan, but it shifted right before I took my first job.
I had an option between an opportunity with a Major League Baseball team working in public relations or to go to Minor League Baseball, where you work in every aspect of the operation and wear every hat. I’m not quite sure why, but I made the decision to go the Minor League Baseball route. That choice actually set me up for what became a career that has included some real blessings in terms of opportunities, including working for the National Basketball Association on Olympic bids and entertainment, and a lot of other areas. But more importantly, it allowed me to understand and actually have work experience in all functions that you see replicated in one way or another in every industry that you go into. So, whether it was operations or the accounting side of things, or sales, or marketing, or communications, which was my core competency, I’ve been able to take those early day experiences in Minor League Baseball and have the same kind of open lens to understanding what others are doing in different functions, and then apply it to whatever my core responsibility was. So I can’t say it was part of a plan, to be gear shifting as much as I have, but the combination of Minor League Baseball and then early experience in the agency world where you have clients across multiple industries has really allowed me a different kind of perspective that I think is relevant, both in terms of ability to look at multiple industries, but also to understand what each function and varied stakeholders for those functions needs from an outcome standpoint that ultimately impacts the ROI and long-term bottom line of the company by hitting those external stakeholders.
Dan Martin: It seems as you move from industry to industry, as companies look for people, they often want somebody in their industry who has just finished doing exactly the job that they’re looking to do. And, frankly, I did that and I wouldn’t want to do that again.
But you seem to be very successful in pitching. How do you pitch your abilities? What is it that you pitch that makes it work across these spaces?
Kevin Mortesen: Well, I think it has to start with an understanding of what the desired outcomes are. If you can understand the desired outcomes, you can back into what the actual hot buttons are that your particular audience, whether that be talking to someone about a fractional assignment, a consulting assignment, or even a full-time role.
My experience may not be as deep in the specific vertical as some other candidates that you might be talking to. But I can bring a lot of knowledge from other industries where they have either a similar focus or a similar desired outcome, and apply that to what you’re doing today. So, I’m not saying that anybody’s doing it wrong, but if you can bring new perspective and fresh ideas and truly understand the horizontal part of the business, not just the vertical part, I think that you can be a fairly quick study on the industry specifics that will help you get to where you need to be from an outcome standpoint. But I really do talk about those broader perspectives and understanding of all stakeholder groups, internal and external, because stakeholders are stakeholders. Doesn’t matter if you’re selling a widget or a full dinner service, or a ticket to a game, or wealth management services. You have stakeholders to impact from an internal and external standpoint, that doesn’t change. So, understanding all of the key buzzwords of an industry on day one is not necessarily going to result in achieving the outcomes that you want. It really is about – how do you do that? Not so much about – what specifically do you say?
Dan Martin: What you’re saying is that communications and your ability to understand a variety of people in a variety of industries, where they’re coming from, and to figure out how to understand that and communicate your own abilities and the objectives of the organization as a whole.
Kevin Mortesen: Yes, I think that’s absolutely right, Dan. It really starts with asking, what is the strategic vision, and what are the primary initiatives that need to support that strategic initiative? Communication should be at the heart of those discussions. They don’t have to be decision makers in those situations, but communication should be a consideration from day one.
The worst thing that businesses do is they create a strategic plan, they’ve got these initiatives that can support it, and they go live with it, but they haven’t talked about it across the company, they haven’t addressed stakeholders. They haven’t really thought about what that means to the external side of things, because internal and external communication should be linked. I think there are a lot of companies that split those functions, and they actually even sit in different parts of the organization. You have stakeholders internally, and you have stakeholders externally. So, the communications part of this needs to be seamless.
You can’t have one message to your internal team and then expect others to be delivering a different message externally. So, the consistency and fluency in the communication strategy of executing on strategic initiatives that move the ball forward for the company, really should start on day one. It really should be a part of the strategic development process, not just the execution process. So, what I’ve been able to do is, because of that cross-functional experience and a broader, true business understanding, you know, business is business, they’re different industries, but there’s a whole lot of similarities. So those outcomes are not really unicorns. The outcomes that companies are trying to drive are pretty similar. Great customer experience margin, great revenue. Those are the things that you’re trying to do. How you discuss that internally and externally is part of the process all along, and that’s where I think that I’ve been able to thrive, because of that broader understanding of the other functions in the company where I don’t have to go out and learn a new language to talk to the marketing people, the ops people, the finance people, the tech people, et cetera. You kind of bring it all together in one ball and that way you’re really ensuring that those two or three key themes of what you want people to know, what you want them to do, what you want them to feel, and what’s in it for them, are constants in the communication, not an add-on for every group and in a different language.
Dan Martin: It’s really key that everybody understands, and not only understands, but uses the same words. You can use different words that kind of mean the same thing, but it doesn’t work.
When we talked earlier about your experience as the general manager, interacting with all kinds of different people, from arranging the design and painting of the men’s room and the baseball stadium to dealing with Fortune 500 executive sponsors for the program. You’ve built up your career by being able to communicate and understand, and know the drivers for a what really diverse group of stakeholders in every aspect.
Kevin Mortesen: Yes, and I think that’s the superpower, right? You need to be able to talk to people at every level of an organization. You need to be able to talk to all your different client segments because not all clients look the same. Not all employees look the same. For instance, in companies where there are equity holders within the organization that probably make up a small percentage of the entire employee population, but there are others that don’t. You can’t talk to all employees as if they are owners, but you can inspire the same kind of engagement, the same kind of connection to the company. You can’t talk about shareholder value and things like that to the day-to-day employee who is working in client services because they don’t care. There’s nothing in it for them, but understanding what their motivations are and how they can connect to being a part of the broader team and the ultimate outcomes, those are things that I think can really resonate and also really move the needle. So yeah, the humbleness of doing any job, stuffing an envelope, painting a bathroom, doing anything like that, and then the next day meeting with the CEO, I think really positioned me to be able to do that. And that is a true story. I literally did that. I painted a bathroom in the stadium one day, and the next day, I was meeting with a pretty powerful CEO about sponsoring the team and his tickets for the next season.
Dan Martin: That’s really cool, and it seems to have prepared you for a very interesting and successful career in such a wide variety of different industries and spaces in the country.
Kevin Mortesen: I learned right at each stop. I said, This is the way it was done in this industry, but this little tweak here could apply to the next one. And at each stop, I was incredibly fortunate to work with super-talented people who were willing to give so I could learn. I was not, on day one, great at understanding corporate finance and how do we really make money. I am much better at that now because I learned from great people, and there are myriad examples of that. And I stand on the shoulders of all the industries I’ve worked in and all the people that I’ve worked with and for.
Dan Martin: I might just note that, sometimes, a secret power is to recognize that you’re working with great people and be willing to learn from them.
Kevin Mortesen: There’s nothing that’s been more important in my career, frankly, than to just be a sponge. And when you’re a communicator, you have to listen. You, you just have to listen because you are not the one who’s creating everything that goes into a message, whether it be an email or a letter to clients, or a video, you’re not the one, as the communicator, who’s creating all of that. So, you need to absorb and understand. You need to really try to capture the voice of leaders, of organizations, and ensure that it resonates with the intended audience.
Dan Martin: It’s just wonderful. Thank you very much for this discussion. I’ve really enjoyed it.
Kevin Mortesen: Thanks, Dan. It’s been great. Enjoyed the conversation.
