"We never thought to do it like that before"

Regardless of who you serve…

…a lil’ overdelivery goes a long way.

During my senior year at Hunter College, I interned for HBO Sports, which was an absolute dream for me. 

In my younger years, I watched A LOT of sports, and followed the major ones as if it was my job already. I was knee deep in all the major American sports leagues.

So when I was offered the chance to intern for shows that I watched religiously on HBO, I was totally and completely ALL IN. 

Granted, intern work is not exactly sexy, but I was 20 and didn’t give a shit. 

As long as I was on a set, hanging out with professional athletes who I admired and a production crew that generously offered me a ton of advice, I was grateful for the opportunity.

While assigned to support several HBO Sports programs, including Real Sports and HBO Boxing, I also spent a considerable amount of time on Inside The NFL. 

In addition to the coffee runs, receptionist work and other assorted odds and ends that no one else wanted to do, I also was assigned to work with the art director of the show.  

One of the tasks for which he was responsible was to place various NFL team helmets behind the panel of experts seated at the big desk. 

As a result, his task was the intern’s task - which meant me :)

Holy shit, I get to grab the actual helmets? This is so cool!!!!

One of my direct supervisors, a production coordinator, took me to one of the storage closets in the bowels of the studio, revealing a closet overflowing with boxes of helmets - 32 teams, 32 helmets. The tricky thing was that the set only had room for about 12-13 at one time. 

When I asked him about the process of figuring out which ones should be put on set each week, he said very plainly that there is no process - just simply grab a few and face them all in the same direction. 

And that’s what I did the first time charged with the responsibility. 

But, as I watched them tape - yes, actual tapes as this happened in 2000 - the show from the control room, I realized that if we didn’t keep track of which helmets were used when, we’d never know if each team was getting an equal amount of air time. 

So, I decided to noodle together a system to keep track week-to-week. 

With pen and paper, I created a chart with every teams name on the left side, and a series of rows that represented each week the show would shoot an episode. 

And every week, as I rotated in and out each team’s helmets, I’d check off the used ones, so I knew which ones were up for the following week.

For the first few months, I thought nothing of it and kept my little system to myself. 

But then, one day, the Production Manager who hired me saw my scribbled chart on my seat and asked me what I was doing. After explaining it to him, he complimented me on the extra effort. 

No one, including the professionals who were paid to be there, ever thought to do that before.  

Fast forward two months and my internship was drawing to a close. 

That same Production Manager came over to me and asked if I’d like to stay on. I, of course, said yes.

But, this time, he said that he was going to skip the college credit and pay me as a production assistant, complete with my name in the credits as a PA.

What??????????

HELL YEAH, I was in! :)

When I asked him why he wanted to keep me on, he mentioned how impressed he was that I took an opportunity and ran with it. I could’ve simply done the same thing they were doing for years, but I, on my own, decided to go the extra mile.

While I didn’t know it at the time - remember, 20 years old, didn’t know shit - this was the first time I learned the importance of overdelivering on expectations in a professional setting. 

It is a lesson that still lives and breathes in the work I do today with speakers, authors, trainers, consultants and other expert business owners. 

It’s one for which I’m deeply grateful - and so are my clients.

PS - The photo above is a picture of one of the helmets from the show sitting on a shelf in my living room.

The following year, they redesigned the set, eliminated the helmets, and disposed of all them…

…except for this one. They let me keep it :) 

Over to you…

Think back to your internship days. What was one major takeaway you had from that experience. Please share in the comment section below.