B (3:08)
Yeah, Justin, thanks. I'll tell you what, it's a. It's a story that's just as applicable today as it was three to four decades ago. And I hate to say that, but it was that long ago. I was a pretty good high school football player, Justin, but, you know, I really didn't have any D1 offers. And, you know, the best I could DO is a D2 offer at Eastern Illinois University. And I came on as a. What's called a preferred walk on. And for those of you that don't know what that is, you're basically asked to go do the same things all the scholarship guys do, but you're kind of on your own dime. And that was okay because, you know, I had been hosted when I went there to be recruited by a guy that went in the third round to the Pittsburgh Steelers. And I could just see this team. I could see this team was developing, it was growing. They didn't have success in the past, but I wanted to be a part of something that was growing. And so I get there and, yeah, these guys, they're massive and they run fast and they're bench pressing the weight room, and it's just. It's like, oh, this is going to be fun. They lose their first game. They lose their second, they lose, they lose every game of the year until their last one. They go one in 10, voted one of the worst teams in college football. And of course, you don't keep your job when you go 1 in 10. So, so they, they terminated the coach and they brought in a new guy and they brought in a guy by the name of Darryl Mudra. And he, his nickname was Dr. Victory. And he walks in, he walks into this, this cold, smelly locker room and he looks at us and you know, there's, there's like 85 of us and you know, we're just coming off of a bad season. And he says something kind of pathetic and prophetic. He says, I know nothing about football, guys, and when you're coming off a 1 in 10 season, you don't want to see your new coach come in with that much authenticity. But that's what he was doing. He was being authentic. And he was telling us, he said, in fact, guys, I'll tell you what, I'm going to be coaching from the press box because I can see better up there, but I really don't do much game day coaching. And he said, you know what? But here's what I'm going to do. I'm going to set you up with some really good coaches. And he did. Within a week, he had hired a guy that had just played at Eastern Illinois three weeks, three, three years earlier. And he brought him in and it was Mike Shanahan. Mike Shanahan, who's got four super bowl rings and Mike didn't even have his son yet, Kyle, who's, who's head coach for the, for the Niners. And he brings in, he brings in, you know, a few more guys that, you know are now in the coaches hall of fame and they're all in their late 20s and 30s. So what he's doing is he's a showing authenticity, but yet he's also surrounding us with good coaches. And he says something else very unique. He says, you know what? Well, I'm going to bring in good coaches. Each one of you, each one of you are coaches yourself, because, you know, if you're getting your ass kicked or not out on the field, we don't know. And until we have that understanding, can we make in game adjustments, and those adjustments, you know, allow us to go ahead and to create new strategies as the game goes on. How many organizations today, Justin, would absolutely crush it if they're taking a lot of their advice from the field. I mean, it's just, it's just dynamic. And you know, here's the unique thing. Well, he brought in some good coaches. He also kept the majority of the coaches from the 1 in 10 teams. You see, they weren't bad coaches. They were great coaches in bad systems. We ran an offense, we ran a defense. We ran some systems that didn't work for the, for the coaches. And it was the same thing with the players. And let me just not bury the headlines. We went from one in 10 to national champs in 12 months. Now I registered that year, I, they moved me to, from tight end to offensive center and I needed to throw on 40 more pounds, but I still got to keep close enough to the action. These were still all my brothers. I mean we were all still in the same fraternity. And so I got a close up view. And I always said I learned everything I needed to know about people centric leadership when I went to college, just not in the classroom. I got to learn it on the football field. And you know the final thing he did because again we had 90% of the players from that 1 in 10 team, Justin, still winning national championships. They weren't bad players. They were great players in the wrong position. We moved our quarterback out to wide receiver. We moved our, our, our, our linebacker where he had to think too much to the edge rush where he became all American. We had literally seven guys that went pro off of that team. They were great players in a bad system. And that's how a lot of organizations are designed today. They've got great employees, but they don't have the trust, they don't have the authenticity. They're not asking them to be part of the coaching team. Yeah, and so that's, that's, that's the parallels that we're working with today. And, and, and you know, in, in all honesty, I wasn't going to put on that £40. It wasn't going to happen. And, and so after my sophomore year I just said, you know what, this has been a tremendous experience, but it's time to move on. And, and lo and behold, within about two months I was called and asked to become the assistant head coach for a high school about 20 minutes away from my junior and senior year at college. And I took these very principles because when I walked into this high school, number one, you don't get asked to be the assistant head coach if the team's doing well, especially two weeks before the season starts. And I show up in our first game, we lose 89 to 6. And I don't know if I was more Surprised that they scored 89 or the fact that we actually scored 6. Both were absolutely surprises to me. But I will tell you what the good thing about juniors is. They become seniors. And when you put in these same principles of taking and letting them, you know, I always say, you know, when leaders learn to coach, employees learn to lead. When, when leaders learn to coach, employees learn to lead. So when we threw the responsibility back on these kids to get better, we showed up the next year and we played that same team that had beat us 89 to 6. They were still ranked in the top 10 in the state. And I'd love to tell you that we won that game. We did not. But we lost six to nothing. We had developed that much in 12 months. We did the same things. We gave them new uniforms, just like we did at Eastern Illinois. We put white shoes on these guys. They could run faster, jump higher. We, we, we just instilled a confidence and surrounded them with good coaches. And I brought some of the other coaches over from Eastern Illinois that weren't playing as well. And, and so those are the paradigms, Justin, that I think work in today's environment, today's chaotic times. They're the same paradigms that I bring to my clients, I bring to my masterminds, I bring to, to, to, to my keynotes. I bring these paradigms and they work.