I did it my way! Investing in people and acts of kindness. | Jon Absey | TEDxFargo

"I started out as a mascot for the Utah Jazz in 1993. I was just a small town farm boy that didn't really know much about sports teams let alone mascots. The profession was very new. I came in with the San Diego Chicken, the Philly Phanatic and the Phoenix Gorilla. These 3 were the pioneers of the industry. I copied them for a couple years and then realized that i will always be just second best to all of these characters. So i decided to do my own thing and be something no one else was doing. I also realized that i had one of the most amazing jobs in the world and i knew i wanted to give back to the community that had embraced the character so much and had supported me. So I started doing appearances at charities and the Jazz actually told me to stop. So listening to my inner voice that said you need to do this, because you have a vehicle for good i chose to ignore the teams request. So i continued to do charity work. I would get called down to the VP of PR office and would routinely get told that I couldn't do charity work unless it was for 1 of 3 charities they specified. I still did charity events until finally it came down to firing me or letting me continue to do any and all of the charities in the community. So fortunately they chose to let me continue with my mission and do over 300 charity events a year.
The whole time something i didn't know would be so helpful was acts of kindness. This would be the 3rd thing that helped me create a successful program. I didn't do acts of kindness for any other reason other than to show appreciation to other people who didn't get appreciated very much. This turned out to be one of the most impactful things i could have done to set a trajectory for the Jazz Bear to become one to the best mascot programs in the world. There was literally no other mascot program in the world that was doing what i was doing. Because i believed so fully in what i was doing and because i had such an amazing support group i was able to make the program succeed. I was able to take these 3 things and implement them into my current businesses and it has helped me succeed. I fully believe in karma and what you give back comes back two fold." Jon Absey is in a class all his own. Dating back to his first season in Utah, he performed at over 900 NBA games, has donated 16,000-plus hours of assistance in the community for more than 300 community organizations, and raised more than one million dollars for charity in the process. Jon has taken home more than 40 community and national awards, including eight mascot leadership awards, keys to two cities, been honored by three individual governors with his very own “Day in Utah”, been named Mascot of the Year in the NBA five times and Best Mascot out of all sports nationwide twice and, just recently was given an award for the best video by a mascot out of all sports nationwide. He has been inducted into the YMCA Hall of Fame, the Utah Summer Games Hall of Fame, and the Mascot Hall of Fame in 2006. This talk was given at a TEDx event using the TED conference format but independently organized by a local community. Learn more at www.ted.com/tedx