Paul Epstein
At a glance:
Paul Epstein speaks about the power of Playing Offense— how purpose helps us push through adversity to unlock greater fulfillment and mastery of our craft. He shows how you and your team can become more inspired, impactful, and effective to create a competitive advantage of culture where greatness can be the catalyst for growth. More than anything, he’ll help you discover just how incredible it feels to lead with purpose and take control of your future.Paul Epstein has spent nearly 15 years as a pro sports executive for multiple NFL and NBA teams, a global sports agency, and the NFL league office. He’s transformed numerous NBA teams from the absolute bottom in league revenue to top-two in financial performance. He’s broken every premium revenue metric in Super Bowl history as the NFL’s sales leader. He’s also opened a billion-dollar stadium, helped save the New Orleans NBA franchise, and founded the San Francisco 49ers Talent Academy—where he became known as the “Why Coach”.
To amplify this impact, Paul has since installed his leadership and high-performance playbook with Fortune 500 leaders, Founders and CEOs, MBAs, and professional athletes.
As a global keynote speaker, #1 bestselling author of “The Power of Playing Offense”, and host of the “Playmakers: ON PURPOSE” podcast, Paul explores how living and working with a focus on leadership, culture, and purpose can transform organizations and individuals anywhere to unleash their full potential. When he’s not on stage, he’s putting his insights to daily practice, serving as Chief Impact Officer for PurposePoint (host of the world’s largest Purpose Summit) and Chief Purpose Advisor for the Why Institute (the world’s fastest way to discover your purpose)—on a mission to inspire leaders and lives to meet the unique challenges of our era.
-
THE POWER OF PLAYING OFFENSE
In Paul Epstein’s keynote message on the Power of Playing Offense, he shares the stress-tested secrets to unlock organizational performance, combat burnout, inspire teams, and scale purpose and positivity through any environment, no matter how dismal current conditions appear. See how Playing Offense can become your ultimate 'people solution' amid uncertainty. -
Leading Teams through the Power of Playing Offense
How to Scale Purpose, Courage, and Impact
This keynote is for you if...
You believe leadership is the engine that fuels organizational purpose and its culture. You have a bias to action, and are committed to leading self, leading others, and leading impact, at a championship level.
Learning Outcomes
- Discover the leadership and culture dynamics to attract, engage, and retain your top talent
- Build a purposeful and impactful environment where everybody shows up at their best
- Acquire a toolkit to overcome adversity, cultivate grit, and build resilience
- Inspire an identity of a winning mindset
-
Sales Performance through the Power of Playing Offense
How to Produce amid Change and Uncertainty
This keynote is for you if...
You are driven to compete in today’s relentless market. Grit, agility, and a resilient mindset are the table stakes. Learn from a 15-year NBA and NFL sales leader, who has walked through the same fires.
Learning Outcomes
- Discover how purpose can be the igniter of performance, productivity, and perseverance
- Grow customer relationships from transactional to transformational, through one simple rule
- Acquire a framework to build trust and earn loyalty from your team, clients, and key stakeholders
- Energize your locker room to show up committed to a standard of excellence
-
Building Culture through the Power of Playing Offense
How Talent Becomes Your Competitive Advantage
This keynote is for you if...
You are growing weary of the never-ending battles of finding, engaging, and retaining talent. Learn the keys to org and local culture where people know they belong, can thrive, and will stay, because they matter.
Learning Outcomes
- Reconnect fragmented workforces to rally around a spirit of camaraderie, empathy, and trust
- Elevate the level of adaptability and agility so your culture can persist and endure any climate
- Learn how purpose can galvanize your organization to greater passion, positivity, and happiness
- Learn to lead challenging teams through highly volatile times -
Better Decisions Faster: Mastering the Head-Heart-Hands Equation
In Paul Epstein’s keynote message inspired by his upcoming book, he aligns teams and organizations around the premise that the quality of business and life comes down to the decisions we make and the actions we take. With such high stakes and consequences of making the wrong call or not even making the call, why would you leave these decisions to chance?
This keynote is for you if...
Decision fatigue, overwhelm, and indecision are negatively impacting your business. Imagine a simple and consistent solution to decide: strategy A or B, hire or fire, time spent on X or Y, invest or don’t. The Head-Heart-Hands Equation is your solve.
Learning Outcomes
- Enhance decision-making capacity across teams with clarity, confidence, and courage
- Discover a framework to boost engagement, get unstuck, and beat burnout
- Learn how to elevate mindsets and inspire action to drive purposeful outcomes
- From the C-suite to the front lines, build and scale a culture of heightened awareness, ownership, and intention
After a year of COVID, my team at work was really starting to show the strains of being physically distanced for so long: we were all feeling disconnected, we had difficulty communicating and there was just a general feeling of malaise among the group. Paul created a two-part workshop that helped us reconnect with our personal goals, each other and why we do what we do. He helped improve communication among the team and everyone left feeling seen, heard and hopefully more valued. I look forward to following up with Paul to continue the work we started together.— LACMA
Paul’s interactive workshop at our conference provided our attendees an opportunity to identify a gameplan for their personal success and their roles as leaders. You could see individuals engaging with Paul’s message and anecdotes in a fun, thoughtful and informative format. His emphasis on building human relationships and playing offensive provides a foundation for individuals to apply actionable items to work towards their personal and professional leadership goals. His workshop was a perfect fit for our program and added a tremendous amount of value to our conference agenda.
— Laura Case, Senior Program Director, Sports Business Journal
Paul led our leadership and staff through his coursework on identifying and living/working with purpose through core values and an over-arching “WHY” that optimizes performance and challenges us to level up to our full potential. He’s done a ton of work with other teams/leagues and companies to focus on our best asset, people. I’ve received incredible feedback from our group around connecting and creating a culture that celebrates personal growth, talent and performance that centers on authentic and purpose driven energy.— Michelle Kajiwara, Senior Vice President, Premium and Events Business, STAPLES Center/AEG
We are a fast growing tele-therapy startup company with it's entire workforce operating from home. We were looking to build the foundation of our company with the combined values of our people. Paul's session was powerful. He made the team stronger and guided us through identifying the most important values we wanted to embed into the work culture.— Syed Mohammed, CEO Enable My Child
Playing Offense challenges us all to lead with purpose, authenticity, and courage—characteristics that make Paul the ideal coach for this transformational journey to know who we are and why we serve. Paul was able to plant deep-rooted seeds that blossomed into self-awareness and change for my team.— Michele Kajiwara, Senior Vice President, Sales & Service AEG / Staples Center
Paul’s work with our hotel’s management team has been invaluable, inspiring individuals of all different tenures and experience levels to find their purpose and become more fulfilled leaders. The impact on our organizational culture has been tremendous and the fundamental lessons from his workshops have become a core part of our organizational DNA.— Matthew Lehman, Fairmont Miramar Hotel & Bungalows, Former General Manager
Paul imparts practical and action-oriented lessons from the trenches of leadership through his Playing Offense system. His people-first approach will resonate with leaders at every level, inspiring both teams and individuals who are determined and driven enough to take on the challenge.— Rich Diviney, Retired Navy SEAL Officer, Author & Speaker On Leadership & Optimal Performance
In football, the most successful teams develop a plan and take deliberate and consistent steps toward achieving their goals every single day—leadership is no different. Paul has provided the ultimate game plan for leaders that are driven to achieve their vision of success for themselves and their teams.— Merrill Hoge, Former NFL Player, Former ESPN Commentator, Bestselling Author
Many of us have been promoted from player to coach and were never provided a playbook on how to lead. Playing Offense was curated to solve this problem. The impact it will create for your team, career, culture, and life, is infinite.— Santor Nishizaki, Award-Winning Chief Executive Officer, Formerly With NASA And Disney Imagineering
Paul’s keynote exceeded all my expectations and my team was profoundly moved by Paul's authenticity, and by the leadership principles he taught us using amazing storytelling skills. Paul helped Amazon understand the core values at the center of leadership such as Compassion, Character, and Trust.— Oumar Diagne, Former Amazon Sr. Manager, Honeywell, Sr. Director Global Operations Finance
What makes a great leader? Mountains of books have been written on the traits, skills, and qualities that provide this answer. In my mind, one easily rises to the top: The Power of Playing Offense.— Eric Yuan, Founder & CEO, ZOOM Video Communications
Gothamites Unite: Creating Impact On Purpose
From the author of The Power ofPlaying with Offense, NFL and NBA business executive Paul Epstein is now your coach and coming back with the second season of his podcast, The Playmakers: On Purpose. In ... Read more
Leave It Better Than You Found It
Anndddd we’re back with the final installment of the five pillars from The Power of Playing Offense with Paul Epstein. It’s been a minute since we introduced the foundation to ... Read more
What is a Fractional Leader?
Has your business continued to grow but you’re not yet ready for a full-time C-level employee? Do you see opportunities in your marketing, sales, operations, finance, or technology but need ... Read more
Meet Us At The 50: Maximizing Organizational Health With Paul Epstein
Forget the New Normal. It’s time for the Next Normal. As we move forward leaders will continue to face unprecedented (yes, we used that word again) challenges as we shift our efforts from ... Read more
