When Malcolm Jenkins was growing up in Piscataway, his father made him mow the yard, but that wasn’t the only job: Jenkins also had to do it for his neighbors.
“My father taught me from an early age that you are responsible for where you live,” he said. “He not only made us clean the area in front of our house, but also the house next door and across the street.
“He said, ‘We have a responsibility to our community. It’s our home.’
Jenkins, a longtime NFL star and two-time Super Bowl champion, offered many of these inspiring thoughts during a lunchtime fireside chat Thursday at the New Jersey African American Chamber of Commerce’s Juneteenth Black Business Expo, held at Fairleigh Dickinson University’s Teaneck campus.
There was some talk about the NFL, of course (just listen to what he’ll say about Tom Brady), but it was more about his life as an entrepreneur, investor, author, activist, philanthropist, community leader, and what has helped him succeed in all walks of life.
Jenkins, 36, told the audience that attention to detail and process often makes the difference in life.
He said he learned the importance of mastering the little things while playing for coach Jim Tressel at Ohio State and playing against players just as talented as him.
“Coach Tressel taught me that I have to master the things that don’t require talent: effort, commitment, preparation and attitude,” he said. “That way, if I lose, the only excuse is that someone else was God-given a better ability than me. That’s out of my control. But the rest of it, I can control, so I should master it.”
He said he learned the importance of process from reading Kobe Bryant’s thoughts.
“Kobe said that winning or losing is less important than the process,” he said. “A lot of people don’t have a process for success, so they don’t repeat it.”
“A lot of people want to be successful, but they don’t know what it is that athletes or business owners do on a day-to-day basis that sets them apart. Creating a process is so important. If you can control the process, you have more control over the outcome.”
Jenkins certainly learned that during his NFL career, winning Super Bowls with both the New Orleans Saints and Philadelphia Eagles.
And while his team beat the New England Patriots (and Brady), Jenkins said he has a lot of respect for Brady, but not for the reasons you might think.
In his book, What Winners Don’t Tell You: Lessons from Legendary Defenders, Jenkins analyzes what it means to be the greatest of all time.
“We worship winning and winners,” he said. “We believe that there’s something they’re doing that I’m not doing, that they have something that I don’t have.”
“What I realized is that because I failed on my way to success, all successful people are just like me. They are normal.”
Except for attention to detail and process.
“Tom Brady is the greatest quarterback of all time, but he’s not the most talented quarterback of all time,” he said. “He just does the simple things better than anybody. He does the simplest, most mundane things better than anybody else. That’s what makes him great.”
Jenkins said those lessons are also being applied to business.
“That’s the secret to success. My business partner always says, ‘Your idea is a little too big. All you need is a boring business, a long-term boring business like compound interest. That’s how you build things.’
Jenkins touched on a variety of topics during his 40-minute conversation with John Harmon, the chamber’s founder and CEO.
His other notable thoughts include:
On the creation of the Malcolm Jenkins Foundation (led by his mother)
“We impact the community through everything from financial literacy to health and wellness seminars to football camps to STEM camps. Our approach, which is also my mother’s vision, is that when we come to a community, we want to meet a community that really has a need, not just show up and do what we think is best.”
“Our programs are different depending on where you are in the country, and we serve four states: Louisiana, Ohio, Pennsylvania and New Jersey, all of which I call home.
On forming a players coalition with NFL star Anquan Bolden in 2017, following in the footsteps of Colin Kaepernick.
“Twelve football players wanted to have a greater impact in their community in terms of social justice, influencing policy and public education and raising funds for grassroots organizations working together. We had a crazy idea that we could have a bigger impact if we worked collectively. We started with 12 people and raised millions of dollars in grants for grassroots organizations, lobbied for legislative change and achieved policy change. Since then, we have grown from just 12 players to now a professional sports league of over 12 representing athletes across the country.”
His book is as much about the preservation of black culture as it is about his life.
“I think it’s important to understand where we are in history. There are states that are actively banning books that tell our history and our lessons – everything we want the next generation to know. In entertainment, we haven’t necessarily taken ownership of the stories we tell or the music we listen to. And when you look at the arts, there’s a gold rush of Black art right now, but we’re not the ones collecting it.
“I’ve become really passionate about spreading and preserving our history, our voice, our story, because when you don’t own the mainstream, word of mouth is how you carry our traditions and our spirit forward. Sometimes, when we’re scrambling to keep up with the Joneses, we forget that we’re not the Joneses.
“For me, this book is one way of doing that. They say, ‘If you want to hide something from black people, put it in a book,’ and even if it’s not true, we need to counter that. For me, it was a question of, ‘How do I unpack who I am in a way that’s not a five-minute ESPN clip or a sports journalist’s writing? How do I convey what it was like being a black kid in New Jersey going through this journey in the NFL, what did I learn from it and how do I relate it to my community, my family and the loss and stress that comes with it?'”
“Everything I’ve learned is in this book. This is my way of letting all the people in my community and those who look up to me understand me as a person, not just the work I’ve done.”
What it takes to build a winning team
“It’s like leading a great business. Teams that look good on the surface usually have very strong leadership at the top. They might have a great coach, a great quarterback and great veteran leadership. But if you don’t have vertically integrated leadership from the lowest employee to the top, then when you hit the adversity that every company, every team faces, your locker room is going to fall apart.
“To be a championship team, all of our veterans have to work hard to develop our weakest members. It’s not just about the coach. That’s why my biggest lesson as a leader is, if I’m going to ask someone to do something, it has to be something I’m happy to do myself. I’ve always found it’s easier as a leader if I’m willing to be on the front line and do whatever work needs doing. It’s a lot easier to hold everyone else accountable if I know I’m going to do the work myself.”
