ISU’s ‘CEO’ Hawley tells WCMS students: ‘It’s never going to be all about you’

He’s not a “celebrity CEO” like Warren Buffett. Nor is he the kind who defined an era in business, like General Electric’s “Neutron Jack” Welch. Or any of those anonymous tech CEOs whose companies make widgets that make the internet go.

No, we’re talking here about Conrad Hawley, the CEO — “Chief Energy Officer” — of Iowa State’s 2024/25 men’s basketball team.

The self-professed “worst player on the team,” he’s a 6’5″ senior forward who averaged 0.0 points per game, got no rebounds all season long, and blew his one chance at sinking a free throw.

Teammates and fans, though, rate him one of the squad’s most valuable players.

His message was simple: “Life is not about you, and never will be.”

He told students “these are the years — right now — that are shaping you into the person you’ll be the rest of your life.”

At their age, and for sometime thereafter, he admitted being less than he would eventually be.

“I had no idea who I was, except that I was selfish, a liar, a complainer, and soon realized it was no way to live.”

Athletics, he explained, being part of “something bigger than yourself, being on a team,” was the mechanism life used to teach him about success.

“Whether you play sports or not, you’re on a team, and will be all your life,” Hawley matter-of-factly told his rapt audience. “If it’s not a sports team, it’s your family team, your team of friends, or your co-workers; it doesn’t really matter because it’s your team.”

He asked students if they were living life “like the hokey-pokey … you know, one foot in, one foot out?” His advice: “Be all-in for life, every day and every way.”

Using ISU’s “team mechanics” as his example he said, “we eat together every day. No phones are allowed. It’s 100% people time.”

He suggested, in an age of too many devices, that the key was to “get off your phone and find real ways to spend time with people”.

Nicole Muhlenbruch, eighth-grade language and history teacher and coach of WCMS’s seventh-grade boys basketball team, became a follower of Hawley on Facebook and Instagram.

“When I found out he was doing motivational speaking, I thought he would have a great, positive message for our kids, so I contacted him about coming to Webster City,” she said.

She phoned First State Bank Home Mortgage Officer and ISU super fan Kyle Swon, who said the bank would pay half of Hawley’s fee. Swon then went to work and found a group of others, including Enhance Hamilton County Foundation, who together covered the other half.

“It took all of five minutes,” he told The Daily Freeman Journal.

Hawley, 22, graduates from ISU this spring and plans “to return to Missouri to coach and do more motivational speaking.”

On Tuesday, Hawley shared some of his trademark energy with 450 Webster City Middle School students and about 540 faculty and staff in Jefferson Gym.