Another Molly

Mollie Marcoux Samaan has gone running 23 times this fall, she says.

How does she know that it's exactly 23 times? It seems that she's been listening to a Molly Fletcher podcast each time she runs, and she's listened to 23 of them.

Given her interest in what Fletcher has to say, Marcoux Samaan jumped at the chance to have men's tennis coach Billy Pate reach out to her, as the two are friends, and have her speak to the entire department, something that she did yesterday.

The first takeaway is that people named Mollie or Molly seem to have a lot of energy, regardless of how they spell their first name.

Fletcher, who certainly brings all kinds of energy to her talks, is a motivational speaker and author, as well as a former sports agent. Her background certainly includes interactions with some of the biggest names in the sporting world, and she told a few stories about them along the way.

As for her own background, she played tennis at Michigan State, and in fact she was there when Merrily Dean Baker was the Spartan AD.

When Fletcher mentioned a story involving Michigan State men's basketball coach Tom Izzo and an act of empathy he showed toward a player after a tough outing, TigerBlog texted Marcoux Samaan to mention that in fact it was Baker who had hired Izzo at Michigan State.

She had also hired Nick Saban to be Michigan State's football coach, by the way. That's not a bad resume item: "hired Tom Izzo and Nick Saban."

Before she was the Michigan State AD, Baker spent 12 years at Princeton, beginning as a 27 year old who was charged with starting women's athletics at Princeton 50 years ago.

Marcoux Samaan mentioned Baker to Fletcher, and it led Fletcher to tell the story about how she had contacted Baker when she was a Michigan State student for some advice on how a woman could get into athletics as a career. She asked Merrily for 15 minutes, and she got an hour and a half instead.

As for Fletcher's talk yesterday, she certainly is right out of the "Be A Tiger" mold. She talked about essentially all of the values that Marcoux Samaan holds so dear for the department, even referencing the acronym at one point.

Fletcher is all about being growth-minded. She's all about accountability. Her talk certainly reflects that.

She talked about leadership and the lessons that successful leaders have talked to her about during her podcasts. One of the best moments of her talk, at least to TB, was when she mentioned her podcast with Holly Rowe, the ESPN reporter, who said that nobody should remember who the interviewer was, only what the questions were and how the subject answered them.

In other words, it's not about you; it's about the person being interviewed. That's how TB was taught a long time ago, and it's something that seems sadly to have all but vanished by now.

Early in her talk yesterday, Fletcher mentioned three main points of emphasis in life. They are:

* lead with love
* stay curious
* prioritize what matters

She asked if everyone on the call to take five pieces of paper and write down the five most important things in his or her life, one on each piece. That's a really, really tough question, right? How would you answer that?

It certainly got TB thinking.

Then, after the five things were identified, the next part of the exercise was to essentially rank them by crumbling up the one that you'd eliminate, and then the next one and so on.

Then she asked everyone if they were devoting proper energy to the most important thing, or things, every day. 

In the end, Fletcher spoke for over an hour, taking questions as well. She certainly brought a lot of energy, and it seems likely that she has plenty left over for the things on her list of what's most important to her.

She was entertaining. She was thought-provoking. She was inspiring, as was her message. The hour-plus seemed to fly by. 

There's not much else you can ask for from a motivational speaker.