John Hall grew up riding in rodeos in West Texas oil country. At 12 he moved to Coronado, California and became a surfer. By his 30s he was running rooms at Madison Square Garden, holding two VP roles and a GM seat while the NFL, NHL, and NBA all paid for his time. Then in August 1999, at 40 years old, a former quarterback named James Gidry stopped him in a crowded hospitality room and told him they needed to pray. John walked out of that event a different person. This conversation is about the transitions that followed.
What You'll Hear
- Going from riding in rodeos in West Texas to surfing in Coronado, California at age 12
- How a knee injury in high school ended football and left John's 20s wide open
- Becoming the youngest professional boxing promoter in the United States
- The first day walking into Madison Square Garden as an employee and thinking he didn't belong
- The night at the Arena Bowl in August 1999 when James Gidry asked to pray with him
- Leaving sports and entertainment for Colorado to be present for his kids
- Building a consulting practice that took a street sweeper to ten million dollars
- The 80 percent income drop in three months when the 2008 recession hit construction
- Meeting Malia McCray at a celebration of life in San Diego and moving to Kansas City
- What Crux Accelerate teaches salespeople about becoming a resource instead of a vendor
From West Texas rodeos to a Coronado beach
John Hall was born in West Texas, in oil country, and spent his first twelve years in a rural pocket of the country where both of his parents worked for oil companies. His childhood was local, horse-shaped, and narrow by design. Then his mom moved the family to Coronado, California. He went from riding in rodeos to learning how to surf, and he points to that move as the moment his lens on the world cracked open.
He didn't think much about the change at the time. Looking back, he credits the flight from a small regional airport into a major California one as the first time he understood there was more out there than the town he knew. Coronado was a beach community full of visitors from all over the world, and being around people who weren't from his hometown showed him that the world was bigger than the Permian.
Sam asks whether John kept any of West Texas with him. The answer is yes. He still says y'all, still uses fixing to, still orders chicken fried steak when he can. The country creeps back in when he spends time with anyone from south of the Mason-Dixon line. The packaging got more polished as the decades went on, but he isn't trying to hide where he started. He calls being able to leave his element and still carry it with him one of the things he credits for the rest of his career.
Fashion, boxing, and the world's most famous arena
Football was John's love in high school. A serious knee injury ended that, and his 20s opened up without a map. He got into the fashion industry, then moved from the creative side to the business side, which is where he found his lane. American Airlines once interviewed him and told him he seemed more like the type of person who wanted to run the airlines than work for them. He didn't get the job, and he still tells the story with a grin.
From there he moved into sports and entertainment. He became the youngest professional boxing promoter in the United States, and that experience hooked him on the industry. A series of roles followed, and he eventually landed at Madison Square Garden, where he held two different VP seats and later a general manager role. Along the way he spent time with the NFL, the NHL, and the NBA, and he lived in Europe for two years working on globalizing the NFL.
He remembers his first day walking into the Garden as an employee. Not interviewing. Arriving. He looked up and thought, what am I doing here. He calls himself the poster boy for imposter syndrome. That room was full of the best of the best, and he had to sit with the voice that said he didn't belong. He now talks about imposter syndrome from the stage in his Coaching Up presentation. Sam names the voice too, describing moments when he's in conversation with someone he respects and the back of his head says run. John's point is that most people who get into rooms like that hear the same voice. Authenticity, he says, is what eventually quiets it down.
A prayer at the Arena Bowl in August 1999
The turning point came in late August 1999. John was 40 years old and working as a general manager in the arena football league. David Baker, the commissioner at the time and later the president of the Pro Football Hall of Fame, had invited him to the Arena Bowl to pitch him on coming back to the league. During the award ceremony the night before the game, a young man got up and spoke. He was fragile, and he spoke about football and faith.
When John mentioned the speech to David afterward, David told him the speaker was James Gidry, a quarterback who had been hit on the field so hard he was pronounced dead on the turf. Gidry survived. The hit left lasting damage. David gestured him over. It took Gidry what felt like five minutes to cover fifteen feet. He reached John, shook his hand, looked him in the eye, and said, you and I need to pray.
The room had the testosterone level you'd expect at a championship-eve reception. The bars were open, and everyone else was moving toward them. John says he thought, okay, do your thing. Gidry prayed over him. When it was done, John felt something lift. Weight he hadn't known he'd been carrying. He skipped the bars that night, went to his hotel room, and sat with it. He remembers praying that he'd wake up still feeling that way. He did. He says something transitioned spiritually in his heart that night, and it changed the rest of his life. He doesn't preach about it. He tries to walk it instead, through kindness, grace, and compassion, the same themes he eventually built into his keynote.
Leaving the arena for Colorado and a street sweeper
The next transition was harder. John calls himself a workaholic through his arena years, running 70 and 80 hour weeks, and the mother of his children eventually left and moved the kids to Colorado. He followed, because after the night at the Arena Bowl he knew he had to be present in their lives. He says leaving sports and entertainment was one of the best things that ever happened to him. He got to coach his kids, two of whom eventually became Division I athletes, and he got to be in their community instead of an arena across the country.
To pay for that chapter, he started a consulting business in 2000. His first client was a street sweeper. He calls the jump from Madison Square Garden to a small street sweeping operation exactly what it sounds like, and he doesn't apologize for it. He helped them spin off divisions that had nothing to do with street sweeping, and he grew that company into a ten million dollar operation. Another client followed, then another. By word of mouth he built a book of small and midsize companies, landed a large association, and produced a twenty-one-city EPA compliance training tour that raised a quarter of a million dollars in sponsorship money.
Then the 2008 recession hit. Most of his clients were in construction. His income dropped about 80 percent in three months. He rebuilt by refusing to put all his eggs in one basket. One of the new clients, a software company called Zoom Grants that helps administer grant applications, is still a client fifteen years later. He talks about that relationship the way people talk about a long marriage. It matters to him that the work is putting billions of dollars into the hands of people who need it.
Kansas City, Crux Accelerate, and being a resource instead of a salesperson
Kansas City happened because of a celebration of life in San Diego. John's sister was engaged to a man whose niece, Malia McCray, came into town for the service. He met her in his sister's kitchen the night before. They FaceTimed every night for a year. Their first actual date was John driving Malia from Denver up to Sydney to spread her uncle's ashes at a family gravesite where her father, who she lost when she was five, was also buried. They've been together ever since. They're getting married on 5-25-25.
Malia owns Crux KC, a marketing agency in Kansas City. She also owns a sister company called Crux Accelerate, which coaches sales teams, and after she watched John deliver his Coaching Up keynote she told him he belonged in that business. He resisted for about a year, then agreed. Crux Accelerate combines traditional sales strategy with an Insight Inventory personality assessment developed by Dr. Hanley in Kansas City, plus LinkedIn coaching, networking training that Malia runs at Rockhurst University, and a written sales playbook each client keeps for onboarding.
The through-line of John's coaching is simple. Stop trying to sell a widget. Start trying to solve a challenge. If you become a resource, people want to buy your product. He talks a lot about emotional intelligence and about the posture of a trusted advisor. He's scheduled to deliver Coaching Up at a conference in Denver, a conference in Kansas City, and as a company-wide session in January for a new client with twenty salespeople. His LinkedIn tag line ends with the phrase always seeking a sustainable mission, and his mission, he says, is to make other people's lives better and leave every room better than he found it. When Sam asks for one piece of advice to close the episode, John lands on being your most genuine self. The business opportunities came whether or not he was authentic. The peace only came once he was.
About John Hall
John Hall is a sales executive at Crux Accelerate, a Kansas City sales coaching firm, and a public speaker whose signature keynote is called Coaching Up. Raised in West Texas and Coronado, California, he spent his earlier career in sports and entertainment, including two VP roles and a general manager seat at Madison Square Garden and time with the NFL, NHL, and NBA. He later ran a consulting practice out of Colorado before moving to Kansas City. Crux Accelerate