← The Dream Dividend
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- [00:00]
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Kevin Patrick
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The business world is obsessed with productivity hacks, efficiency models and the next big framework. And it's all missing the point because the real edge it's been dismissed as soft, irrelevant, unprofessional. This is the Dream Dividend, where we're done apologizing for putting people before process and the ROI speaks for itself. Time to break some rules. Here's your host, Kevin Patrick.
- [01:06]
Kevin Patrick
Hello everyone, and welcome back to the Dream Dividend, the podcast where we explore how extraordinary business results happen when organizations genuinely invest in their people's dreams. As always, I'm your host, Kevin Patrick, and I want to start today by saying that I'm recording this episode the morning after what might be the most difficult loss of my football coaching career. Last night, our middle school football team lost the championship game. We lost. And honestly, I haven't slept yet. But here's the thing, and this is why I wanted to record this episode today while it's all still fresh. I've never been more convinced of something in my life. We already won. The thing that really matters now, before you think I'm just going and trying to make myself feel better about a devastating loss, hear me out, because the story is actually the perfect case study for exactly what we talk about on the podcast. It's about dreams and human potential and what happens when you decide that supporting people's aspirations is more important than chasing a single outcome, even when that outcome is a championship trophy. So stick with me as we unpack what we learned this season about the real championship, the one that doesn't come in the form of hardware. Let me set the scene for you. Our school. It's the largest middle school and in the fastest growing suburban community in Northeast Florida. That said, it has not been known for its football prowess. When I took over the football program two years ago, the team had made a single playoff appearance in over a decade, somewhere around 15. Since its last championship appearance, the program was frankly broken. It had low participation, zero winning culture. We were the joke in the middle school arena. It wasn't Just that we were losing games. It was that we'd lost something deeper. The belief that our young athletes could achieve something meaningful together. So two years ago, I made a decision that probably seemed crazy to some, if not most people.
- [03:35]
Instead of focusing on wins and losses as the primary metric, I decided we were going to use football as a platform for something bigger. We were going to use this program to help young people discover their potential across all areas of their lives. Now, I didn't have a name for it then, but what I was really doing was implementing something very similar to what we call the Dream Manager methodology in the business world. Honestly, it didn't feel radical at the time. It just felt like good coaching. The same good coaching that a group of us had pulled another organization out of the ashes to the mountaintop over the previous few years. So here's what we did differently. Conditioning started in March when the season didn't start till August. We genuinely made an attempt to get to know the athletes and what they aspired to. What did they want to learn? What were they dealing with family challenges? Were they dealing with family challenges? What did they want to be known for, not just on the field, but in life? And we created, while informally what we refer to as the championship blueprint, a document for each player that included their football goals alongside their personal, academic and character development goals. It sounds simple, maybe even obvious, but I have to tell you, most programs don't do this. Most coaching is purely transactional. Show up, execute plays, win games, move on. But we decided to coach the whole person last year. The year previous was brutal. AV went 1 and 7, varsity went 3, 4 and 1.
- [05:36]
Fast forward to this season and from this point on, I'm going to focus on the varsity program. And that is the team that I directly head coach. The culture has completely transformed. Kids wanted to be a part of the program because they felt seen, valued and supported in becoming better versions of themselves. And yeah, we started winning, too. This year we had one of the only winning seasons in over a decade, which got us into the playoffs. Then we won our semifinal game in convincing fashion against last season's champion. We found ourselves in the championship we hadn't seen in over 11 years. The whole community was buzzing. Parents were coming around. These young men, these 13, 14 and 15 year olds, they were carrying the hopes of an entire community on their shoulders. And they were handling it with grace and maturity. That honestly moved me. But here's where the real story lives. The night before the championship game, I received a phone call from one of our Team captains. He said something I'll never forget. He said, coach, I'm nervous about the game, but I'm more nervous that people are only going to remember us by whether we win or lose tonight, because this season has already changed my life in ways that have nothing to do with football. And then he shared something personal, something about how the program had helped him work through some serious family challenges, how it had given him tools to communicate with his parents, and how it had helped him set academic goals that were now setting him up for opportunities he didn't think were possible for him. As I sat there listening to him honestly, I felt this clarity wash over me. Whatever happened on the field the next day, we had already achieved the championship that matters. We had helped a group of young men discover and pursue their dreams. We had created a culture where they weren't just becoming better football players, they were becoming better sons, better students, better citizens, and better versions of themselves. Now, I want to be really clear about something. This doesn't mean we didn't want to win the game. We absolutely did. As a matter of fact, losing it was not an option. We prepared with such intensity, we believed we could win. And we went into that championship game with everything we had. But the win at all cost mentality, that wasn't and isn't how we operate. So let me tell you what happened last night. We played the perennial powerhouse, a program that won the title two years ago and was runner up last year. The game started out as good as you could hope for. Our opponent decided to start with an onside kick, which we expected and were prepared for. We recovered it. First play, wide receiver comes in motion, takes the ball as if he's going to run a jet sweep. The entire defense bites. And yep, you guessed it, he launched it for a 40 yard completion and run. But we were tackled from behind just short of the goal. First and goal from the two. Well, after four attempts, our opponent stuffed us for a goal line stand.
- [09:24]
So momentum shift number one. Our defense hits the field, their ball carrier takes the direct snap out of the end zone. And you wouldn't believe it if I told you that we tackled him in the end zone, but that's exactly what we did. For a safety, this was obviously momentum shift number two. Within 45 seconds of the start of the game, we. We had our chances throughout the game, much of it going back and forth like two heavyweight boxers in the ring trying to knock the other guy down so he doesn't get up. That's not what happened. We fought and we Fought hard, and for just a moment, I thought we might pull it off. But it didn't happen. We lost 26 to 16. I have to tell you, it hurt. It still hurts this morning. There's no sugarcoating a loss like that. The trophy we wanted to lift wasn't going to be lifted by us. The championship ring these young men dreamed about, they won't be wearing. And that's real and that's painful. But here's what happened after the game. And this is the part that actually tells you everything you need to know about what we've built. The kids were sad, obviously, but they were also remarkably grounded. They were disappointed, yet not destroyed. As I addressed them, I had to pause as I looked for the right words. And before I could restart, one of our players, kind of the team jokester, but a heck of an athlete, stood up and said, coach, I have something to say. We all kind of chuckled because this wasn't unusual, but he says, we didn't get the trophy, but we got something much bigger this year. As tears welled in his eyes, he said, we got to believe in ourselves and we brought pride back to our community. The pain was real. The tears were real. His teammate hugged him. And right then, I understood something really deeply. When you invest in people, when you create systems and cultures that support the whole person, the outcomes take care of themselves. Yes, we would have loved to win that game, but because we focused on something bigger than that single outcome, these young men have the resilience and perspective to. To process this loss in a healthy way. They're not devastated. They're disappointed, sure, but they're not crushed because their sense of self worth isn't entirely wrapped up in one football game. And now let me connect this to something that's incredibly relevant for anyone listening who runs a business, manages a team, or leads any kind of organization. The story with our football team is actually a perfect microcosm of what we see happen in small and medium sized businesses. So many business leaders are obsessed with one metric, revenue growth, quarterly targets, or market share. And don't get me wrong, those things matter. But what we discovered this season is that when you obsess about the single metric while ignoring the people who actually create that metric, you're setting yourself up for fragility. Your team is one bad quarter away from falling apart. Your culture is one market downturn away from evaporating, and your retention is one bad year away from disaster. But when you invest in your people's dreams, their growth, their development, their aspirations, you create Something that's resilient and adaptive and genuinely sustainable. In business terms, what we did this football season is what we would call integrated employee development. We didn't separate work performance from life development. We didn't say, here's how to be a better football player, and separately, here's how to be a better person. We said, we're going to develop you as a whole human, and the football will benefit from that. And guess what? It did. Our team improved dramatically, not because we suddenly became obsessed with football, but because we focused on developing complete human beings. Better students became better athletes because they developed discipline in the classroom. Kids who worked through emotional challenges became better teammates because they had better emotional intelligence. And young men who pursued academic excellence became more coachable because they understood the connection between effort and results. Now, here's why I want to get really practical for anyone listening who's leading a team or organization program that we implemented in football applies directly to business, and the results are strikingly similar to what we saw in the field. Let me walk you through how this works. Excuse me, then. Sick. First, you have to decide, really decide, that your people matter more than your metrics. Now, I know that sounds almost trite, but most organizations don't actually operate that way. They say they value their people, but then every decision made through the lens of does this improve our numbers? When you flip the script and say we're going to develop our people completely and then optimize for our metrics, everything changes. Second, you need to create systems and structures that actually support that commitment. You can't just have a nice philosophy if you don't back it up with action. In our football program, that meant accountability systems and visible celebration of progress in a business that might look like monthly dream manager coaching or personalized development plans and integration with performance reviews and public recognition of people achieving their personal goals. Third, and this is crucial, you have to measure it. Have to measure it. What gets measured gets managed. So we didn't just hope people were developing, we tracked it. Academic performance, personal growth metrics, team cohesion, skill development and character assessments. And yes, we also track the business metric, in our case, wins and losses. And here's what we discovered when we optimized for the whole person development, the business metric, the record, it improved and it improved dramatically. This season we had the most wins in a decade, our first playoff appearance, our first championship game appearance in over a decade, and as I understand it, closer to 15 years.
- [17:12]
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Kevin Patrick
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And that happened not because we obsessed over winning, but because we developed complete human beings who brought their best selves to the field. Now, I want to tell you a specific story, because abstract principles don't really change people, stories do. There's a player we won't call out by name who came from a pretty challenging home situation. His parents were divorcing. He was shuttling between two homes, and he was angry. He was really angry. He was showing up with behavioral issues, difficulty with authority, and honestly was becoming a discipline problem. But instead of just benching him or kicking him off the team, we invested in him. We created space for him to talk about what was really going on. We connected him with resources if he wanted. We helped him process his anger into purpose and to unleash that anger on the football field. Towards the end of the year, he wasn't just a better football player. He was a leader. He was mentoring other players. He was helping them process their own challenges. He moved from being a liability to being one of the most important cultural assets in the team in the span of three months. So there are many stories like this, and they all have common threads. The young men came in with challenges, dreams, aspirations, family situations. They came in as complex human beings as we all are. And instead of asking them to compartmentalize themselves, to be one version of themselves on the field and a different version in the classroom and a different version at home, we ask them to integrate. We ask them to bring their whole selves and then them and that. We ask them to bring their whole selves and then help them develop their whole selves. And the football, the winning, the improvement, the competitiveness, that all came as a natural result of their development. Now, here's something really important to say, and I want to be honest about this. This approach doesn't guarantee winning championships. Obviously, we lost. Last night proved that. We did almost everything right. We developed our people holistically, we created an incredible culture, we improved significantly as a program, and we still lost the championship game. That end, that's actually a feature of this methodology. It's not a bug. Because when you're not obsessed with the single outcome, you can handle not achieving it in a healthy way, you could be disappointed without being destroyed. You can learn from the loss without questioning your entire approach. And you can move forward knowing that you accomplished something real, even if you didn't accomplish that specific thing. And that's exactly what applies to business, especially for small, mid sized business leaders. You're not always going to hit your revenue targets. You're not always going to win the market competition. You're not always going to come out on top in every situation. But if your foundation is built on genuinely developing your people, on supporting their dreams, and on creating cultures of possibility and growth, then you'll have something that survives disappointment. You'll have retention when times are tough. You'll have people who stay engaged even when things aren't going perfectly. And you'll have leaders emerging from within your organization. And because people feel genuinely invested in Let me tell you what we're already planning for next season. Because here's the thing about sports. There's always a next season. And our young men, they're already thinking about it. Not obsessively, not desperately, but hopefully and more importantly, strategically.
- [21:59]
We're going to take what we learned this season, both the successes and the failure, and we're going to integrate it into next year's program. We're going to celebrate the young men who are graduating, honor their contributions and send them off knowing they've been genuinely developed as human beings, not just football players. And we're going to welcome in a new group of players who are going to hear the stories of this season. We're going to see the culture we've built, and we're going to know that they're signing up for something bigger than football. Now I'm already thinking about how to tell our community how to communicate what happened this season in a way that captures the real championship that took place. Not to make excuses for the loss, but to frame it honestly. We came into a season where the school hadn't been competitive in over a decade. We built a culture of excellence and I truly believe that. We went to a championship game. We developed young men who will carry these lessons for the rest of their lives.
- [23:08]
We weren't perfect and we didn't win the final game, but we won something that matters more. A program that produces complete human beings. I'll be honest, implementing this takes courage. As a leader, it's easier to say, just do your job and hit your metric. Or in our case, hit the other player. Just do your job. It's harder to say, I see you as a whole person and I'm going to invest in all of you to make you a better player. It's easier to keep things transactional. It's harder to make them relational. But the payoff. The payoff is real and substantial. And what we experienced this season watching young men process a difficult loss with perspective and hope. That's what happens when you've invested in their whole development. So here's what I want to leave you with as we close out this episode. Your next disappointment. It's coming. Maybe it's a missed revenue target. Maybe it's a lost deal. Maybe it's a market shift you didn't anticipate. Either way, it's coming. And the question is, will your team have the resilience to process it? Will they have the confidence to learn from it? Will they have the belief in themselves and your organization to move forward? Or will they be so focused on that single metric that they lose perspective entirely? The answer depends on whether you've invested in their dreams. So here's my call to action for you. If you're leading a team or organization, I want you to think about this. What would it look like to implement the Dream Manager methodology in your business? What would it look like to sit down with each person on your team and ask them about their dreams? Not just their professional goals, but their life dreams? What would it look like to create integrated development plans that supported the whole person? And what would it look like to measure success not just in business metrics, but in human development? And would that change in your organization if you made that commitment? We work with small and medium sized businesses who want to make exactly this shift. We help you design Dream Manager systems that work in your specific context. We help you measure the impact. We help you create cultures where people feel genuinely developed and invested in. And yes, we help you improve your business metrics. Because when you develop whole people, the business results follow naturally. If you're curious about what this could look like for your organization, I'd love to continue the conversation. You can find information about how we work with businesses@trinityoneconsulting.com you can also reach out directly to start exploring what integrated employee development could mean for your team. Before we close, I want to say something personal to the young men on our football team. You made me so proud this season. Not because you made it to the championship game, but because of how you showed up, how you supported each other and how you pursued your dreams with integrity. You lost the game, but you won something so much bigger. And to the families in our school community, thank you for trusting us with your sons. Thank you for supporting a program that's committed to developing complete human beings. And to anyone listening who's in a position of leadership championship that really matters, the one that changes lives and build cultures, that's the one worth chasing. And it takes courage. But it is 100% worth it. Thank you so much for listening to the Dream Dividend. I'm your host and I'm grateful you spent this time with me, especially on a morning when I'm processing a difficult loss. This conversation has actually helped me see what we've really accomplished this season. If today's episode resonated with you, I'd love to hear about it. You can find us on all the major podcast forums, and I genuinely appreciate it if you'd consider leaving a review and sharing this episode with someone in your life who's in a position of leadership. Because this message that people matter, that dreams matter, that developing whole humans creates sustainable success. That message needs to spread. Until next time, keep dreaming big, invest in your people. And remember, the real championship is building something that lasts beyond one game, one quarter, or one season. Thanks for listening to the Dream Dividend.
- [28:39]
SpinQuest Legal Disclaimer
If this episode made you uncomfortable, good. That means you are paying attention. The future belongs to leaders who stop managing people like assets and start investing in them like humans. See you next time. And remember, dreams aren't frivolous. Ignoring them is.
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Kevin Patrick
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SpinQuest Legal Disclaimer
Social casino void where prohibited.
- [29:28]
Kevin Patrick
Visit spinquest.com for more details.