The Dugout
I met Franklin 25 years ago on the Warner Brothers softball team. Entertainment league, LA. He was a guy from New York — good player, loved sports, loved music. We had a ton in common.
We'd spend time in the dugout, or sometimes at the bar afterward, talking about life, music, sports. And I was always struck by how different we were as people, and how much I genuinely liked him anyway.
Franklin was calm. Measured. You could tell he was always sussing things out — probably a move or two ahead of most of us. Meanwhile I was the class clown. Chaotic energy. Very different vibe.
Franklin has now been at one of the biggest television networks in the country for 35 years. You know the one. And he hasn't just survived there — he's thrived. In a place that has been the subject of articles, documentaries, and movies with big stars about the chaos inside its walls.
Meanwhile, I was walking into my office every day in band management with absolutely no idea what was going to happen. Would the band get a million dollar offer? Would the singer get arrested? Often that binary. I loved it. It took years off my life, but I loved it.
I went to a hockey game with Franklin recently. We caught up. And he said some things about surviving inside a machine that big, for that long, that I haven't been able to stop thinking about.
THE INSIGHT
What Franklin Actually Said
I asked him directly: what's the secret? He gave me two answers.
One: Don't Be Above Any Task
Franklin is senior. He reports to someone who reports to the effective owner of the place. And his answer was: if something absolutely has to get done, no job is beneath you.
He flagged the downside himself — sometimes you end up covering for weaker staff, because you did something they couldn't. And you have to be careful not to become the person everyone dumps on. There's a difference between being willing to do anything and being the mule.
But Franklin knew the difference. Not everyone does.
In big organizations, the people who aren't always the most brilliant — but are the most reliable — tend to thrive.
The long survivors orient themselves around contribution, not status. That's not for everyone. I knew in my twenties it wasn't for me. But it's a real and underrated path.
Two: Become the Wise Uncle
This is the one that really made me think.
At some point, after enough years, you stop just knowing your industry — you know your organization. How it actually works. Not the org chart. The real version. Who makes the decisions. Where the bodies are buried. Which battles are worth fighting, and more importantly, which ones are not.
Franklin called this becoming the wise uncle. And here's the part that surprised me: it makes you more valuable to the people above you than the people below you. A new leader who's been there 35 days needs someone who's been there 35 years to tell them how things really run. That can save them enormous amounts of time and heartache.
Leaders come and go. Strategies change. Reorgs happen. The person who knows where everything is — and who to call in a specific situation — becomes almost indispensable just by being present.
I've never stayed anywhere long enough to accumulate that kind of institutional knowledge. I've always had to build from scratch. That's a superpower in some ways. But there's a real cost: you never get to capitalize on the momentum you've built, because you keep starting over.
THE FRAMEWORK
Five Things That Make a Long Career
Franklin's story led me down a research rabbit hole. Here's what I found tends to separate the long survivors from everyone else:
1. Adaptability. Franklin survived multiple regime changes, multiple leadership transitions, and an industry that got completely disrupted by the internet. He bent without breaking. Every time.
2. Relationships at every level. He wasn't just managing upward. He kept his bosses informed, his colleagues moving, and mentored the people below him. He was never just playing in one direction.
3. Identity outside the building. He's an amateur musician. A sports obsessive. Rarely would you see Franklin without some team's gear on. He wasn't defined by his title. He just happened to be very good at his job for a very long time.
4. Political intelligence with ethics intact. This is rarer than it sounds. Franklin was politically smart — but he always stayed on the right side of the line. That's what separates him from Charlie. (Listen to the Influence Factory episode if you haven't.) People respected Franklin the human, not just Franklin's game.
5. Knowing thyself. Franklin knew what he was optimizing for. He knew early, stuck to it, and executed it with integrity for 35 years. That's not a small thing.
THE TAKEAWAY
Know What Game You're Playing
When we sat in that dugout 25 years ago, I knew we were different people. Franklin valued rhythm, stability, and mastery of a specific environment. I needed the unpredictability. And I've spent my career in industries that accommodated it — music, gambling, entertainment. By definition, none of them are predictable.
Neither outlook is wrong. But both have costs.
Mine: starting over repeatedly. Never accumulating the wise uncle knowledge in one place. Always building from scratch.
Franklin's: the routine that sometimes felt like a ceiling instead of a floor. Roads not taken. The occasional morning where 35 years felt like the weight of it.
But here's what I keep coming back to: a lot of people never figure out what game they're actually playing. They just show up. They grind. They wonder why they feel stuck or restless or like something is off.
Do you know what you're optimizing for? Franklin knew it early, stuck to it, and executed it with integrity for 35 years.
Whether you're an entrepreneur or a startup person or someone deep inside a big machine — that's the only question that matters. And the answer is different for everyone.
Some people win by leaving. Franklin won by staying.
They both take courage. But only one of them takes patience.
And that might be the harder one.
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