Harry Campbell wanted to be a pro athlete. By six he already knew it wasn't happening. He wasn't fast enough or quick enough. But he could run the same speed for ten thousand meters as he could for a hundred, so he became a long distance runner. In 1982, at a night race on the University of Tennessee track, he set the Vanderbilt school record for ten thousand meters. It stood for thirty-four years. That race is the story underneath the rest of Harry's career, including a brand management run at Procter and Gamble, a humbling dot com collapse, and a late chapter built around speaking, coaching, and a charity he runs in his wife's honor.
What You'll Hear
- Why Harry calls himself a social cusser and how it shapes his keynote style
- How a double major in East Asian history and economics led to Procter and Gamble brand management
- The Vanderbilt 10,000 meter record Harry set in 1982 that stood for 34 years
- His 98 percent rule for managing people without turning into a people pleaser
- The Colby index hire he almost got wrong and what it taught him about fit
- Why selling his half of MAI before the dot com bust was the humiliation that reset him
- How getting an interim president job at Sprint at 40 turned into the break of his career
- Why he charges zero for coaching and gives 100 percent of his speaking fees to Head for the Cure
Teachers for parents and a skill set they wanted at P and G
Harry grew up with two teachers for parents in a town where the people he knew were farmers and college professors' kids. He didn't have a model for how a business ran. What he had was parents who assumed college was for growing up, not for landing a job. He double majored in East Asian history and economics at Vanderbilt, couldn't find a job when he graduated, and went straight into an MBA in marketing at Indiana University. At 23 he walked out of Indiana with an MBA and walked into a brand management role at Procter and Gamble.
Procter and Gamble's brand management group wasn't looking for resumes stacked with business experience. They were looking for thinkers and problem solvers and communicators with grit. Harry started on Crest toothpaste. His last brand there was Metamucil, which he still jokes about as number one in the number two business. The point he keeps hitting is that P and G trusted him to learn the category on weekends, absorb the company's way of thinking, and bring his own skill set to the work. Seven years there, from 1985 to 1992, taught him what a real operating platform looked like.
The night race in Knoxville that set the tone
Harry wanted to be a professional athlete. By six it was clear it wasn't going to happen in any stick and ball sport. He made the basketball team but he was the last man on the bench. He kept trying anyway, until he noticed that he ran the same speed for a hundred meters as he did for ten thousand. So he peeled off the other sports and poured everything into long distance running and cross country, not because he liked running (he didn't) but because he wanted to compete.
In April of 1982, at a night race on the University of Tennessee track, Harry ran 31 minutes and 11 seconds for ten thousand meters. His goal had been to break thirty. The existing Vanderbilt record was around thirty-one and a half. He ran negative splits. With a mile to go he realized nobody was going to stop him. That record stood for thirty-four years.
Sam pushes him on whether this was giving up the original basketball dream. Harry flatly rejects that. It was a pivot, not a surrender. The dream wasn't the specific sport. The dream was to compete and succeed, and he found the version of competing he could actually win. That distinction, between the form of a dream and the heart of one, shows up again in everything that follows.
The 98 percent rule and the culture superpower
Harry's first real management job at P and G, on Metamucil, exposed a problem he didn't expect in himself. He was a people pleaser. He'd played that role in his family and dragged it into work. One of his four direct reports was mediocre and figured out quickly that Harry would cover for him. Harry did the work. It got done. His boss was happy. And Harry was quietly miserable.
Over time he landed on what he calls, only half jokingly, the Harry Campbell made up 98 percent rule. If you treat people like adults, give them the tools for the job, and connect them to something bigger than themselves, 98 percent of them do solid to great work. They don't want to be the squeaky wheel. They want to matter. The other 2 percent need to be coached up or coached out, not carried.
When he started running that playbook, the business results in his groups spiraled upward. He realized his actual superpower wasn't any single functional skill. It was culture building, relationships, communication. The soft side of business, if you do it right and get the right people, wins all day. He credits time around Sam Walton in Northwest Arkansas, during his two and a half year P and G tour on the Walmart customer team, with hardening that conviction. Walton ran on high expectations and extreme respect, and people wanted to deliver for him.
Personality tests, Colby, and the hire he got wrong
After Sprint, Harry eventually landed as CEO of Dury Vision, a premium cash pay LASIK and lens replacement practice in Kansas City. Dury wasn't really a healthcare story. It was a boutique, high end experience brand with black scrubs and gold name tags and no waiting. What Harry found there was a hiring tool he hadn't used before: the Colby index.
Dury used Colby to match people to jobs. The med techs who walked patients through testing needed to be process people, rule followers, the kind of worker who gets uncomfortable outside a defined flow. Harry, new to the tool, pushed back on it once. He wanted to hire a candidate he liked even though she didn't fit the profile. She was entrepreneurial, a green in Colby terms, always thinking about how to do things differently. She was a winner. She just wasn't a winner for that job. Within 90 to 120 days she was out.
It was a lesson he never needed to repeat. For the remaining five plus years he ran Dury, they hired to the index. Harry is a fan of these tools, Myers Briggs, Disc, Colby, Strengthsfinder, because they give you a language for difference. He points to the high T versus high F axis in Myers Briggs as a favorite. High T is data driven and blunt. High F works on relationships and reads the room. Understanding which one you're talking to, he says, is closer to a golden rule than a parlor trick.
The dot com humiliation and the lucky break at Sprint
The turning point in Harry's story isn't a win. It's a fall. After P and G he moved to Kansas City and spent five years at Sprint, rising to assistant vice president by his early thirties. Then a friend offered him half of a twenty person sports marketing firm called MAI. He took it. They won the Mr. K award as Kansas City's small business of the year in 1998. It was the proudest he'd ever been in business.
Then, in 1999, the dot com roll up wave started pulling him. VCs wanted adult supervision. Harry's resume checked every box. His phone wouldn't stop ringing. He flew to Sand Hill Road. He got full of himself, as he puts it. He sold his half of MAI back to his partner and joined a Kansas City dot com called UClick, distributing branded content like Doonesbury and Dear Abby to websites. Within a year the company was done. He was 39, divorced, with a six year old and a four year old, and unemployed.
He went back to Sprint, in part because he'd left well the first time. He tells his kids you always leave well. A couple of vice presidents there had been let go and a bigger role opened up. Shortly after, his boss was pulled into a different role, and Harry was named interim president of a division. He was told he was five or six years too junior for the permanent job, that Sprint would search the country for a real hire. After six or seven months of strong people results and strong business results, they stopped searching and gave him the job. He calls it sheer luck. It paid him for years and finally closed the chapter the dot com had left open.
Three books, zero dollar coffees, and Head for the Cure
When Sprint spun off its local telephone division as Embarq, Harry chose the spinoff over the sexier wireless side, partly on his wife's nudge. Four or five years later Embarq's board sold the company. In the summer of 2009, at 48, Harry carried his boxes out. He took a year off, tried a senior exec role at Freight Quote, realized he didn't want to work yet, and took another three years off to do breakfasts and lunches with anyone in Kansas City who'd meet with him. He didn't want a job or an investment. He wanted to understand the city.
Then, in the same week, he drove his oldest son to college and walked his youngest to kindergarten. His wife told him he needed a sense of purpose for the long haul. Two months later Dury Vision called, and he took the CEO role as a five year bridge between the founding surgeon and the next generation.
Today Harry does three things. He mentors and coaches for free, meeting anyone for coffee or lunch and leaving without a to do list, because not charging lets him keep the rules. He and his wife invest in small businesses, because he loves being around entrepreneurs even though he's not one. And he runs a keynote speaking business built around three short books he wrote: Get Real Leadership, Get Real Culture, and Get Real Mindset. He gives 100 percent of his speaking fees and 100 percent of book proceeds to Head for the Cure, a Kansas City based brain cancer research nonprofit. His wife was diagnosed with an inoperable malignant brain tumor in February 2004, eleven months after they were married. Harry is closing in on 700,000 dollars raised, and he's not stopping.
About Harry Campbell
Harry Campbell is a Kansas City based keynote speaker, mentor, and small business investor. He spent seven years in brand management at Procter and Gamble, held senior leadership roles at Sprint and Embarq, co-owned the MAI sports marketing firm that won the Mr. K award in 1998, and served as CEO of Dury Vision. He is the author of the Get Real series: Get Real Leadership, Get Real Culture, and Get Real Mindset. All speaking fees and book proceeds go to Head for the Cure. HarrySCampbell.com