Precision in Language is Leadership Superpower | Angus Reid

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Speaker 6 Are these people here to help you do it your way or you help them succeed? Your job is to be who they need you to be.

Speaker 6 And we teach so many tactical ways to improve the skill, but we don't teach the tactical way to improve the coaching of the skill.

Speaker 6 Let's go.

Speaker 7 Yeah, make it look, make it look, make it look easy.

Speaker 3 The Ryan Hanley show shares the original ideas, habits, and mindsets of world-class original thinkers you can use to produce extraordinary results in your life and business this is the way dude super excited to have you on the show blown away by your energy your message i pulled up my my uh notes that i took in uh apple notes or whatever uh during your talk and you know the first thing that you said that really caught me that i would love for you to just just why you spend a lot of time on this concept and you said it i think two or three times uh in your keynote was don't be lazy with your words.

Speaker 3 And I could tell that that was meaningful to you by the way you delivered your message and by the words that you used.

Speaker 3 And for you to say that three times throughout a keynote tells me that it's maybe a core value for you. So one, I guess, is that true?

Speaker 3 And two, why does that message, why is that message so important for you to deliver to an audience?

Speaker 6 Because I think the easiest mode of communication we have is language, is verbal words, right? We do podcasts because we want to have verbal conversations with each other.

Speaker 6 And as much as nonverbal cues are huge in terms of body energy, body language, whatnot, the most direct means of conveying a message is still language.

Speaker 6 And I think a lot of us forget how important utilizing the correct words to convey the correct message is.

Speaker 6 And let's be honest, Ryan, a lot of us, we don't even realize the words we're using.

Speaker 6 And I think that's the number one issue is, you know, i i speak a lot on coaching and and they haven't they haven't learned they haven't you haven't taught until they've learned so the message hasn't even been conveyed until they've understood do you are you choosing the appropriate words you even know the words you're using to convey the message and are they the the very best words possible to convey what you are really trying to communicate and i don't think we give enough thought to that as um as leaders or as influencers we're all influencers right we're influencing the person we're talking to and we all want to be understood right?

Speaker 6 I think that's one of a basic human need is to be understood.

Speaker 6 Are you aware of the words you're choosing to convey the message you are trying to be understood through?

Speaker 6 And I, you know, I think if we all gave a little more care to that, there'd be a lot less miscommunication, a lot less lost in translation, and a lot more harmony between people in terms of

Speaker 6 particularly on a team, you know, pursuing a similar like-minded mission because they really understand what we're here to do because you've chosen your words carefully.

Speaker 3 So I took what you said. So I coach 10-year-old baseball, travel baseball, and

Speaker 3 I love coaching. I love coaching baseball.
I love coaching in general.

Speaker 3 You know, in truth, I may have missed my calling or, you know, what I could wake up every day and do and love. do it now for my kids, but I just, I just love it.
I love being around a game.

Speaker 3 I love coaching. But

Speaker 3 I took what you said during that keynote and I brought it back to my coaching because I started to think about some of the kids that were struggling with

Speaker 3 adapting to some of the simple principles of hitting a baseball that you have to do, right? Like there's, there's a lot of, you know, people kind of think, well, you just swing the bat and you hit it.

Speaker 3 And there's some truth to that. But there are some, like all sports, there are some key aspects of a baseball swing that you have to perform in order to get consistency.
You just have to.

Speaker 3 There's no getting around it.

Speaker 3 And if you look at every major leaguer, as much as they all may look different at the start, throughout the process of hitting a baseball, there are only two or three different styles in which you can do it consistently, and you kind of have to find one.

Speaker 3 Okay. All that being said,

Speaker 3 there's a few kids on the team that are athletic, that are, that, that want to get better, but they're struggling to adapt to these things. And what I did after hearing your keynote was

Speaker 3 I started just asking them, like, simply, did what I say make sense to you? Like, what did you hear when I said that? And actually, that's how I framed it. And I think I took that from you as well.

Speaker 3 What did you just hear? And

Speaker 3 some of them would regurgitate, I could tell they were regurgitating what they thought they should say. And then some of them would be like,

Speaker 3 I don't know. And it was like a light bulb went off in my head.

Speaker 3 It was like, I have to change the way I'm speaking about what I'm trying to get them to do because I'm using terminology or something that is not connecting with them because they're getting frustrated and I'm getting frustrated.

Speaker 3 And it's not for a lack of effort. And

Speaker 3 I can, you know, and since I started asking them that.

Speaker 3 Now I have a slightly different language profile for almost every kid on the team because each kid hears a little differently, different words resonate with them.

Speaker 3 So it's almost like for every individual player i know

Speaker 3 i can use these set of words with them and these set of words and i think that translates 100 to business it translates to our family and our children and our spouse and and all these things and um that was an enormous takeaway for me and just i i couldn't have been uh you know for me an amazing value from the mastermind was was getting that from you well and i appreciate that and then and i think when you spoke about you you maybe missed your calling like i i coach high school sports and that is my love but i'm in business and and everything else It's all coaching anyways.

Speaker 6 All we're doing is influencing, right? We're trying to support the person we're communicating with to improve whatever they're on their journey towards. We're all helping each other.

Speaker 6 And a great point that you just threw back at me that I was taught by my great coach was, your job is to be who they need you to be. And there you go.
There is no universal, this is how I coach.

Speaker 6 Your job is to help them. So before we get into specific languages, we have to understand who they are.

Speaker 6 You know, how do they learn? What's their comfort level? what's their understanding ability, and not our job is to always adapt to them to help them grow. You'll force them to adapt to us.

Speaker 6 They'll quit. They'll be confused.
They'll be frustrated. They won't, they won't keep bringing it because you're speaking a different language and you don't seem to care.
Right.

Speaker 6 And so that's number one. And then number two, to your point, Ryan, I love it.
It's not.

Speaker 6 you weren't missing it because you didn't care and there wasn't effort. You just didn't have the skill base or understanding the importance of that skill base.
And I think we do too.

Speaker 6 You know, I'm sure you've been to coaching clinics.

Speaker 6 I've been to coaching clinics and we teach so many tactical ways to improve the skill, but we don't teach the tactical way to improve the coaching of the skill.

Speaker 3 Yeah.

Speaker 6 Right. We, I, you know, and that's where the, that's where the gap between the recipe and how to cook the meal is different, right?

Speaker 6 And here's everything, but how do you convey it with the right words so they understand it, not so you understand? And I think you brought up a great point,

Speaker 6 bringing it back to them. What did you hear? What did you learn? Can you now, now we want the older players to coach the younger players and watch them how they coach.

Speaker 6 Are they conveying the message in a language that they've decided makes sense? And does it, is it seamless?

Speaker 6 Because the words themselves can change as long as the meaning is precise and it makes sense to the person that's conveying it, right?

Speaker 6 There's no best word. It's, are you using the words that's going to convey your message best to that person?

Speaker 3 Yeah. It's, and you see this in business all the time.
You know,

Speaker 3 when I get messages from leaders or, you know, CEOs of companies and they're struggling with culture or a specific process or whatever their struggle is.

Speaker 3 A lot of times the core issue is

Speaker 3 they believe they have a way and that everyone has to fall into that way. And if you are not that way, somehow you are wrong.
And then they deal with constant and unending cultural issues from people.

Speaker 3 They're like, you know, this person scored highly on this personality exam and I can't understand why they're not performing and blah, blah, blah, blah, blah.

Speaker 3 And I'm like, well, you know, what do they want? Like, what do they want? What are they, you know what I mean? Like, I sold insurance for eight years.

Speaker 3 I can't, I was terrible at selling insurance the traditional way. Cold calling at that time, just couldn't do it.
Like it just mentally, I just, I would have literally a physical reaction.

Speaker 3 I've told this story before. I would reach down to pick up the phone to make a cold call and my hand would start shaking, right? Like I just couldn't, I couldn't get myself to do it.

Speaker 3 But when I turned to digital, telling stories, answering questions, writing essays, describing claim scenarios, et cetera, and became a storyteller of insurance, my entire career changed because that was the way for what at that time and specifically I needed to do this job.

Speaker 3 Now, what's funny is at that time, the leader of that agency discounted everything I wrote because I didn't bring it in the traditional way. You know, I was told, we're hunters here.

Speaker 3 We go out and club our food and drag it back. And I'm like, but we're making money from these policies too.
And it was like completely discounted. And ultimately, that was a big part of why I left.

Speaker 3 So it's

Speaker 3 what is that initial unwillingness of leaders or coaches, et cetera, to change? And is that something that, or maybe not is probably the wrong question.

Speaker 3 How do, if I'm a leader who's listening to this, who says, maybe I'm, maybe I am that guy, maybe I am that that gal

Speaker 3 who's being a little unyielding in process

Speaker 3 to the person, how do they start to make that change? What's the first step down that path?

Speaker 6 I think it's a mindset shift to, are these people here to help you do it your way or you help them succeed?

Speaker 6 My job as a leader is, we talk about servant leadership and we throw these words around, right?

Speaker 6 But, you know, traditional role of a coach, and we can get them semantics, coach leader, they might be a little bit different, but at the end of the day, you're trying to help people get somewhere where they're not, right?

Speaker 6 We're trying to get to a place that we're not currently there because if they're already there, they don't need you. And so,

Speaker 6 you know, a couple things.

Speaker 6 In a collective group, we have to define what that ends, what that end is, what winning is, what is a win for us. So we know we can measure: are we actually

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Speaker 6 Getting somewhere and we can adapt and change and, you know, move on the fly instead of just redundantly work harder, you know go harder all that nonsense and then within that what is a win for you ryan within the scope of our bigger wins so here's the thing i i think we've missed this in culture lately where the old way was everyone's got to be the same in the military way we're just building robots here you're not important the mission is and now the new way is everybody's everybody's journey is unique and i think we need to remind ourselves when we talk about this word you know elite culture whatnot and teen culture we have to have both where people have to realize there's something bigger than their mission they're part of.

Speaker 6 That gives people energy.

Speaker 6 I can't do this alone. We're all coming together to do something unbelievable, whatever that may be.

Speaker 6 And within that, there's a whole bunch of individuals that have unique talents, wants, skills, desires, strengths, weaknesses, whatever. And I think the great leaders are able to.

Speaker 6 harness that human condition to want to be a part of something bigger than themselves. So what is our big mission as a company, as a team?

Speaker 6 What's this huge target that we're going to do no one's ever done? Or what's our big win?

Speaker 6 And then the leaders understand that within that each person is a unique individual they all have strengths weaknesses different skill sets different abilities how can i help them have that autonomy of growth personal growth within the larger accomplishment of a group goal and i think you know so many people go one way or the other with this right everybody's got to be free to run their own journey We find that, though, people need to be something bigger than themselves.

Speaker 6 But if it's just that, then they're just a cog in a machine and they get worn out.

Speaker 6 And so I think our job as a leader is, how do you create the vision everybody gets excited about and then give a damn about each individual person's growth, knowing how can you best contribute?

Speaker 6 What are your skills? What are your enjoyments? How can we support you bringing your best to become your best? So we do something that neither, none of us could do alone.

Speaker 6 I think that is where real magic happens. And not enough leaders have that whole dichotomy of thought where it's about the mission, it's about the person.
It's about the mission.

Speaker 6 and it's about achieving individual growth for each person to succeed the mission while they all become their own best in whatever they do, which let's be clear, it's super hard.

Speaker 6 That's why leadership is super hard. Lazy leadership is, I'm the boss, you're going to do what you're told.

Speaker 6 Or I'm going to be honest here, other lazy leadership is everybody's an individual, do whatever you want here. That's lazy.

Speaker 6 And I think people, if you go one of the two, you're always missing a gap in that human need. I need to become my best, but I need to be a part of something bigger than me.
Right.

Speaker 6 And then I think you harness that and you have something great. And that's got to be intentional.
It's got to be thought through with your actions, but your words too.

Speaker 6 You know, you know, leaders got to be salespeople. What do they say? They're dealers in hope, and there's got to be hope that together we're going to do something you don't believe is possible.

Speaker 6 And individually, you're going to be something that you only dreamed you could be.

Speaker 6 I'm going to, I'm going to, I'm going to do everything I can to create an environment that's going to facilitate that, and then we feed something bigger, and that's difficult, like that's not easy.

Speaker 6 Yeah,

Speaker 3 yes, I

Speaker 3 think that

Speaker 3 lazy leaders mirror whatever feels like the safest path in the current societal

Speaker 3 culture, right? So, like, so

Speaker 3 it was 70s, 60s, 70s, 80s.

Speaker 3 How to keep your job, how to protect your territory, how to make sure that you keep getting the three weeks off and the bonus check and the fancy trip at the end of the year with your family was to hold everyone to this company process, count your I's, dot your T's, and make sure everyone's doing everything exactly the same.

Speaker 3 That was how you kept safe. Then the culture kind of shifted in the 2000s and the 2010s to this more,

Speaker 3 you know, kind of DEI, everyone equal outcome, everyone's a unique snowflake flower, everyone has these mental health issues if you push them.

Speaker 3 So what you do is you let everyone do whatever the hell they want. And that way you are safe because you're saying,

Speaker 3 you know, right now, you know, you, everyone's unique. Everyone needs to be equal, you know, even if she's terrible, you know, I need to make sure she's on the team.

Speaker 3 And even though he never shows up for work, that's okay. He has mental health stuff.

Speaker 3 So, so you're, it's really, you get these leaders who all they're trying to do is protect their status in the organization.

Speaker 3 That's what they're, what they wake up every do is don't make decisions that could get me fired.

Speaker 3 Don't manage in a way that is outside of the cultural norm because that will get me fired and get me questioned.

Speaker 3 So I just have to take whatever that path is that that allows me to stay safe and keep my vice president title or whatever's important to me. And

Speaker 3 the last thing that

Speaker 3 these types of leaders, and unfortunately, I feel like this tends to be more the norm. The last thing they're thinking about is how do I, what, where do I find that optimization?

Speaker 3 What's the innovative technology we can bring in? How do I get the most out of Sally or or Johnny or Steve?

Speaker 3 Because if I push Steve and Steve goes to HR and says I'm pushing him too hard, I'm going to get in trouble.

Speaker 3 And so what you're describing is an advanced leadership style that I think the people who think that way have, it's why I think we've seen this rush to entrepreneurship.

Speaker 3 I do believe there's some of the sexiness and the social media side of it is part of it, but that tends to be more like the influencer entrepreneur.

Speaker 3 I'm talking about the real developer builder entrepreneur.

Speaker 3 i feel the reason that they have gone from from building innovative products out of large companies like like ge or ibm or whatever now they're starting these companies because they're they're looking at that culture and saying

Speaker 3 i can't manage lead and grow in that environment so i need to to come here and and and i think that's a big impetus that's why you see for the most part these incredible leaders that we hold up, oftentimes they're entrepreneurs.

Speaker 3 And I think it's just the only place that they can actually execute this advanced leadership style without fear of losing their ability to do their job is in an entrepreneurial setting.

Speaker 3 Do you think that's

Speaker 6 yeah, I think in the last 20 years, we have moved to

Speaker 6 everything's everything's a game of checkers now, right? Chess is an obsolete game because it takes too long.

Speaker 6 But we all know, you know, you can't build pyramids in a week. So nothing great will ever get achieved.

Speaker 6 We just go around and around in circles trying to build the next shiny thing that falls apart two days later because the time it takes to build something great,

Speaker 6 our culture doesn't have a stomach for it, except for those rare individuals to say, yeah, you know, Amazon's losing money year after year in the 90s. He goes, but I know what I'm doing here.

Speaker 6 And this is where I think, you know, we have to get to a place where you spoke earlier, and let's be, let's just call it what it is, right? It's not even laser leadership. It's not leadership.

Speaker 6 That's being a boss.

Speaker 6 That's protecting a title. And I think to your point,

Speaker 6 it's fear and to me one of the probably the hallmark again choosing our words carefully of leadership is courage like courage and that takes tremendous courage to say this is the way i believe is correct this is what everyone's doing not important this is what i believe will work and i will stress test this over time and in public companies large port companies not gonna give you that time every quarter matters now it's just checkers right shareholders want answers this week Sorry, we can't microwave a culture.

Speaker 6 Like that is a, we can't microwave a great company. You just can't do it, right? And you need time.

Speaker 6 And I think to your point, entrepreneurship, if you have sole ownership or at least a very small group that says, guys, this is what we're here to do. And it's going to take a long time.

Speaker 6 We're going to do it right. Let's just stick with it.
You can't do that if you're, if, if you have a boss that has a different agenda. Let's be honest.

Speaker 6 Public companies, what's their number one driving force? Shareholder value every quarter. Do you want to do something great?

Speaker 6 We just want to make sure our numbers look good every quarter or we get in trouble. Yeah.
Good luck. Good luck, right? So, you know, we spoke about this afterwards with baseball and I coach football.

Speaker 6 You know, how do you sit down, your shareholders one day and go, what really matters most? But they're going to tell you, driving my profit. Everything else just looks nice, right?

Speaker 6 But, and that's what pisses employees and people off more where we say this, but we don't do it. Because, you know, that's what we talk about parents of sports.
What matters most to your kids?

Speaker 6 And they're going to say all the right things. Okay.
Then, because we agree, this is what we're actually going to do. That takes a really long time.
It's going to be frustrating.

Speaker 6 It's going to be really hard. It's not going to look good tomorrow.
We might lose a bunch of games because it's one of those, you know,

Speaker 6 to vertical jump, you got to bend. You got to dip before you jump.
People hate to dip. They want to jump without bending.
Everyone wants to skip what matters most to get to what looks good in the end.

Speaker 6 Hence, social media influencers faking it. And we've been a sucker play to this.
And leadership, as you said, again, I don't call it leadership. We've played safe because we need someone to work here.

Speaker 6 And nobody's interested in the long haul. Nobody's interested in greatness.
Nobody's interested in mastery. Everybody just wants to look good.

Speaker 6 You have to find a leader that can sell that. How do we sell that

Speaker 6 to our society today?

Speaker 6 That what greatness really is, is making a decision of who you want to become as an individual person, regardless of any other influences that look cool, where are we going to go?

Speaker 6 What's going to be amazing? And then understanding that that road is really hard.

Speaker 3 Yeah.

Speaker 6 It'd be awesome because at the end of the road,

Speaker 6 you will be more than proud that you did something because you needed to. You believed it was right, not because it looks cool tomorrow, because it's going to be really hard.

Speaker 6 And you've got to sell kids on this too, right? It's going to be really hard for a long time.

Speaker 6 You're going to get laughed at and you're going to look silly because it's going to be difficult and awkward because we're pushing new ground. And as a leader, that's when you cheer harder.

Speaker 6 That's when you support harder. You know, we got to change what we praise.
We got to change what we praise because what gets praised gets repeated. Kids want to be praised.

Speaker 6 Everybody wants to be praised. That's why they're posting their pictures on social media looking for likes.
Are we praising growth and development?

Speaker 6 We're praising fake end flaunt, fake end showboating, right?

Speaker 3 Yeah.

Speaker 6 And everybody is terrified of the now.

Speaker 6 And they're not courageous enough to go, you know, what's that great line? Who are you? The greater line is, who are you becoming? That's all I care about.

Speaker 6 What's the work going towards? And everybody is playing an immediate checker game. And we've forgotten them.

Speaker 6 The grand masters of chess, they see the long game and they have patience and they have courage to have that patience when everyone else is terrified of what the world's going to tell you right now about where you're at.

Speaker 6 Where are you going is all that matters, but nobody wants to talk about that. And every kid wants the, you know, wants to be a star today.
Everybody wants to be a millionaire before they're 19.

Speaker 6 They don't just want to, they don't make a decision of this is who we're becoming.

Speaker 6 And I'm going to stick through this unless we really, you know, we polish it and tweak it as we go, but we're not just, we're not just plugging in things so everything looks good.

Speaker 6 We want to be, that's the difference. Do we want to look good or want to become good? Yeah.
That's a big, big difference. And we got to sell that again.

Speaker 6 That that's what america was built on you know the great countries are built on people that had an idea how to plan and said this this might take a long long time might take forever but we're we'll get there and that's what matters we know where we're going we're not interested in how it looks today we know where we're going and that's got to get rewarded again i dude i couldn't agree with you more you know and i'm not gonna i'm gonna paraphrase the quote but you know george bernard shaw you know only unreasonable changed the world it's it's unreasonable today to say

Speaker 3 i'm going to give up playing golf. I'm going to give up my hobbies.

Speaker 3 And what I'm going to do is become really good at this thing that I want to be really good at, that moves me, that allows me to provide for my family or whatever.

Speaker 3 Like, I'm going to give up these things because what society says is,

Speaker 3 take a break. You deserve it.
Angus, you worked hard this week, man. Go get hammered on Friday.
Play golf on Saturday. It's all good.
It's all good.

Speaker 3 Yeah, it's all, you know, whatever. It's all good, man.
Like, hey, this is what you do. You, you earned it.
You deserve it. And it's like, yeah, but I'm not getting better.

Speaker 3 Like, it's not that we shouldn't take breaks and not that we all don't need to make sure that we're taking care of ourselves. That's not what I'm saying.
But I look at, you know,

Speaker 3 there's guys that I love in the insurance industry that are still in their 30s that play golf every Friday.

Speaker 3 And I'm like, that's awesome.

Speaker 3 How much better could you be at what you do if, you know, and in your 30s, you weren't playing golf every Friday, you were taking that day. Cause, you know, how many, what do you, what are you losing?

Speaker 3 25, 30 work days a year to play golf, which is amazing. And I know it makes you happy, but are you going to be a pro? Are you becoming like, are you working at it?

Speaker 3 Like, what, what is the goal of that?

Speaker 6 And, you know, you raise a good point there. You know, there's happy and there's fulfilled, right?

Speaker 6 And happy is that distractionary process, which we do need. Listen,

Speaker 6 you need the momentary happiness.

Speaker 6 You know, have it sparingly but if you build your life around being happy all you can do is fill yourself with distractions yeah because fulfillment requires tremendous work where we're you know down at the end of the road you became what you chose to become you didn't just you weren't happy because you were eating ice cream all day and watching fun movies like if that becomes your life you become the product of enjoying someone else's hard work because every all that ice cream all those movies were made by people that sat down and worked their butt off so someone else could have happiness i want to create something that gives someone happiness but my happiness my my fulfillment is in the creation.

Speaker 6 And you're right, Ryan. And but a question to your buddies that, you know, again, we got to, in a personal level, we got to redefine what success is.
They're doing, they're making a bunch of money.

Speaker 6 Are they playing golf? Is this really what they really wanted to do, become insurance, or was it just a way to make some money, do well? And I think that's where midlife crisis kicks in too, right?

Speaker 6 You got the millions of dollars, you got the car, and you're like, I didn't like who I am because I never sat down to go, what do I have the courage to want to become that I just never told my buddies because I get laughed at.

Speaker 6 But I did what I'm supposed to do. I got pretty good at it.
I got all the cool clothes now.

Speaker 6 We go on trips, but there's that inner lack of fulfillment because they didn't have courage to go, this is what I really wanted to do. But, you know, that takes risk.
Okay. Guess what else is risky?

Speaker 6 Living. Like you're already, you know, you're already risking everything.
You could lose at any moment.

Speaker 6 And that's, that's, it takes a real leader, a real parent too, to not tell people what they should become because it answers society's question of winning. What do you want to do? Oh, that's crazy.

Speaker 6 Good. Good.
Then let's go do it because that's going to give you fulfillment. Are we going to get there?

Speaker 6 Even doing it, you're there. Like, you know, we are in the doing.
We're not, you know, and you know, I know too, real fulfillment is very rarely in the actual winning.

Speaker 6 Talk to any great athlete, right? They win the game, it's anti-climatic. They win the championship most of them, it's anticlimactic.
There's the moment of we did it, but where was the joy?

Speaker 6 All the work. Yeah, because that's who they are.
Yeah. They're living them.
And winning is kind of a, it's a fulfillment of a reminder of what you already know.

Speaker 6 I want to get back to work tomorrow because it's who I am.

Speaker 3 Yeah. It's funny.

Speaker 3 You know, people talk about Tom Brady.

Speaker 3 They won. I can't remember what Super Bowl it was.
Wins the Super Bowl. And the next morning, he's back at the facility throwing passes to the wide receivers.

Speaker 3 And I think one of the, and the story was around one of the major wide receivers on the team didn't show up and, you know, whatever he's throwing to rookies. And they're like,

Speaker 3 what is Tom Brady doing the day after winning the Super Bowl throwing passes to rookies? And like,

Speaker 3 because he's fucking Tom Brady.

Speaker 3 This is how he got here.

Speaker 6 Who he is? It's who he is. Yeah.

Speaker 3 Like, you ask, there was a great clip.

Speaker 3 Belichick was on ESPN the other day breaking down

Speaker 3 some rookie quarterback. And then

Speaker 3 one of the other hosts asked him, you know, what was it like when Tom Brady was a rookie? And he said, I didn't know he would be as good as he became, but I knew he was going to be special.

Speaker 3 And that Bob question is obviously why. And he said, because the first day that he could show up to minicamp, he was at minicamp.

Speaker 3 He had the entire offensive rookie structure organized, running plays and throwing passes without any coaches on the field.

Speaker 3 Like, like before anyone's there, he's already got them all organized and doing things. And like, he just, he's like, no one had ever done that before.

Speaker 3 No one had ever just grabbed all the rookies and said, here's what we're doing, like before the coaches gave him direction. And he said, That never changed.

Speaker 3 He's like, That literally never changed throughout his career. And you think, like,

Speaker 3 the only Super Bowl he ever celebrated, I think, was the last one where, like, you know, they got the clips of him getting a little tipsy on the thing. And it's like, great,

Speaker 3 like, great. You're 44 years old.
I'm glad you enjoyed one. But to get to enjoy that last one, that he, you could tell, you know, he, you could tell he was savoring that Super Bowl.
But to get there,

Speaker 3 he had all that work. And that's the part that is so hard to teach people.
And I, and I just, I give you one anecdote. I, I was talking to my, so my son loves to pitch, loves to pitch.

Speaker 3 He's 10 years old. The number of guys I've seen in my career who threw a ton of pitches at 10, who never made it to 13s as a pitcher.

Speaker 3 I mean, I couldn't, dozens, dozens and dozens of kids. Because what happens is they, they, once you're labeled as a pitcher, they use you you up and you throw and throw and throw.

Speaker 3 Your arm is not ready for that kind of action. And they're throwing as hard as they possibly can.
And to put that amount of stress on your arm at that age is,

Speaker 3 it's an, nobody comes back from that. It's why there's why there's, I think there's only been one kid who's ever pitched in the Little League World Series who's ever made it to the pros.

Speaker 6 Ryan, it's almost, it's almost child abuse.

Speaker 6 You're destroying it. You're destroying a young person's body purposely.
Yes.

Speaker 6 Knowingly. Knowingly.
You know what you're doing to this kid.

Speaker 3 so i how i taught him is i said okay if you love pitching which he does i said that's great i go we're not going to do it like other people do it and he said okay and and thankfully he's a the kind of kid who will actually listen to his dad and not just do the opposite of everything i say so what i said was we're going to focus on location first then we're going to focus on movement and then five years from now, we're going to focus on velocity.

Speaker 3 But if you have location and movement, you're Greg Maddox, right? If you have location, movement, and velocity, you're Nolan Ryan. So

Speaker 3 let's think through this in a positive way. So

Speaker 3 he was always considered a soft tosser. And he was on the A team for his squad.
And he

Speaker 3 got tons of results, but he didn't throw hard. So the head coach of that team dropped him down to the B team because he wasn't a hard thrower.

Speaker 3 Well, now, a year later, nine to 10, the kick and throw a cutter a two seamer and a change up that are almost unhittable and he still probably only throws

Speaker 3 you know he probably throws seven to eight miles an hour slower than the average top level pitcher and he's he's never maxing his arm i don't think he's ever even thrown a max pitch in his entire career as a pitcher and it's like

Speaker 3 and and

Speaker 3 I look at it and I'm like, and I'm not trying to say whatever, who knows what he'll become. I'm not, that doesn't matter.
But my point is like,

Speaker 3 to not think of developing ourselves for outcomes that are going to happen six months, 12 months, three years, five years, 10 years from now, to just think right now, I'm going to max pressure myself in this situation for a short-term outcome that's going to get me some limited amount of praise.

Speaker 3 I cannot wrap my head around that idea, regardless of the situation or where you are in your life.

Speaker 6 Well, I think you hit on a very good word there.

Speaker 6 always looking for the key words of the phrase and it's develop, right? We don't develop anymore.

Speaker 6 We just live the world of attrition, throw people in a blender and the ones that can survive it, that's our winner. They did that in the military 100 years ago.
Didn't we learn better?

Speaker 6 It's just like, let's throw 200 people in there, crush them all. Whoever's left, they're the best.
They're just the ones that made it through because of luck or who knows why.

Speaker 6 Because I think the downside, again, is leadership is the courage to take the time that it really takes.

Speaker 6 And society's putting pressure on people to microwave everything and microwave's never made a good tasting meal like that it it it's the it's the worst you know who who who wants a microwave brisket right like

Speaker 6 you just can't do that nonsense but we do it all the time and i you know i i the strength training world and i one of my great mentors in the strength and conditioning world always said never add load to dysfunction never add speed to dysfunction so what's first function teach kids how to how to how to do things right then we can speed it up and then you can throw the ball faster then you can add load you can add weight to the barbell but just start loading weight on the squats before they even know how to do it and that takes takes a long time to learn those patterns, to develop.

Speaker 6 And people don't give the time it takes. That's why I think today's world,

Speaker 6 we're lacking mastery. There's not so many masters anymore.

Speaker 6 Some Steve Jobs that just say, listen, I am going to, I don't give a damn about anything else is what I've chosen to become the greatest ever at making.

Speaker 6 We're going to isolate one thing because

Speaker 6 to people, they think that's too risky. And I think it's too risky not to, just to become like either rush everything or avoid trying anything because it's all hard.
Good luck with that. But yet,

Speaker 6 as you said before, the world's okay with that. Don't worry about it.

Speaker 6 Like, why are you working so hard to choose something and say, I am going to put everything I have into becoming the best ever, but I'm also not going to rush it. I'm going to do it correctly.
Yeah.

Speaker 6 And instead of, and that's why the danger in the sports world is high school coaches go to professional sports clinics and they plug in the San Francisco 49ers drills and offensive systems to their 12 year olds.

Speaker 6 And what are you guys doing? Like,

Speaker 6 we look at the end and then we start with the end. No, this is a really, really long road.

Speaker 6 And my analogy, which is maybe not good, is as a coach, I'm looking to try to, how do I make the perfect omelet without cracking all the eggs?

Speaker 6 I don't want to break all, I don't want broken eggs to have a perfect omelet. And is that impossible? I don't know.

Speaker 6 But I got to find a way to make that perfect outcome without destroying everyone and finding out who's left.

Speaker 6 And you have broken people that have, they think they have memories of fun times when coaches beat the hell out of us all day long. Say, no, we're going to teach you how to do something really well.

Speaker 6 And we'll layer it. We'll stagger it.
We'll do all the great coaching information on how to build neural pathways so it's good without burning you out.

Speaker 6 So you can do it for a really long time at a really high level. And that takes tremendous courage.

Speaker 6 And I think you can transfer that to business, families, you know, like, you know, people wake up with their kids at 17. Why don't, why don't, why don't my kid ever talk to me?

Speaker 6 Did you layer that throughout your entire day since they were seven years old, having conversations, basing easy conversations to harder conversations so you normalize an activity so you built the foundations of of of of function so when it got difficult and fast and challenging the foundations were there and you add difficulty or when it got really hard did we start you know did when you're in 18 you go we better start squatting because you've never done it before better put 400 pounds on because you got it heavy the function had to be built five seven eight 10 years earlier then when life got hard and heavy you have the stability to be able to add the stressors of life we don't do that we just throw them in the top end and hope to teach them all the techniques at the same time.

Speaker 6 And we get, we wonder, why doesn't it work?

Speaker 6 That takes thinking.

Speaker 6 That's what leaders have to do, right? What is your grand plan for your family? What is your grand plan for your business? What is your grand plan for your team?

Speaker 6 How do we start right so we can end right instead of make it up as we go and we'll just throw things in when it's needed? It's what do they say?

Speaker 6 Always be always be ready so you don't have to get ready, right? When the load's heavy, the form already better be ready.

Speaker 6 It's too late, but people do it all the time. They wait till they have to teach it and they shove it in.
It's too late.

Speaker 3 Yeah.

Speaker 6 It's too late at that point.

Speaker 6 And that takes a tremendous amount of thinking instead of, you know, you said earlier, Ryan, about the bosses that are scared about, they try to be really good at the status quo.

Speaker 6 Let's just get really good at what people are doing. What do you want to do? What's it going to take? How do you, you can't water your,

Speaker 6 your garden, a year's worth of watering in a day. You have to do the appropriate dosage every single day or you'll drown them or they'll dry out.

Speaker 6 You can't just take a year's worth and dump it in and go, well, that's the watering system. Like we do these off-site strap planning meetings.
We're gonna throw all these great ideas.

Speaker 6 No, that has to be every single day watered and then it becomes real. You don't just random things that these crazy boot camps we go away and do crazy physical activities for two weeks.

Speaker 6 And then for the next six months, we do nothing. Like it doesn't work that way.
It's what does it matter? What does the daily dose look like? Not too much, not too little.

Speaker 6 We don't count a kid throwing 500 pitches a day. You're going to kill the kid.
Basically, can't throw forever.

Speaker 6 So, how do we do something that is a great train coach told me this a long time ago you know what is the greatest lifting workout you can do for your program well what's required but what is sustainable that you can do for decades decades and that it'll keep moving you forward and so the real the real word i always usage is people always want to like in the lifting world i train all bunch of high school kids we don't max out hardly ever once in a while i only feel it we're always nudging the girded to nudge you know that that comfort zone push right like you said i can't throw the world at you before you're prepared for it.

Speaker 6 And we can't do it too often. Stress is great, but daily stress kills you, right?

Speaker 6 So the reason we only play football once a week, I said, you can't play a game six times a week in the way you're meeting. There's nothing left, but we got to nudge.
We got to nudge.

Speaker 6 So we're always trying to build up your 85%. We're trying to build your 85%.
Once in a while, the world's going to throw 100 at you. Game day.
Craziness. You can crank it up.

Speaker 6 And then we nudge again at 85, make that 87, make that 84, make that 88. And then you get periodically tested.
We need those. Boom, bring it.
Then we dial back again. We can't live all here.

Speaker 6 We can't live all here.

Speaker 6 And too many people, type A's, we got to be careful, right? We go pedal the metal every single day and we burn out. So it's about being always upping our 85%

Speaker 6 and challenging it here and there, pulling back, making 85% feel like 80%.

Speaker 6 So we're really, we're nudging, we're nudging up our really good and then randomly getting tested at max, pulling back, making really good better and better and better and better.

Speaker 6 That's hard for competitor. I mean, I find it harder to work with competitors than people that aren't because people that aren't a little bit challenged them to the world.

Speaker 6 Competitors, I was told again by a great coach a long time ago.

Speaker 6 He said, hey, if you have a great one, when your job as a coach is to hold them back, you shouldn't, you don't have to motivate in great ones. You got to regulate.

Speaker 6 You got to regulate the great ones because they're going to give 120% every day. They're going to die.

Speaker 6 And you're like, my job is to teach you the greatest discipline in life when you're a super type A is to say no more now. Why? Because that's the best for tomorrow.

Speaker 6 Like a guy goes, I got one more rep in me.

Speaker 6 Save it for tomorrow. What do you mean? Bring it tomorrow.
Because if you max it out, tell you, tear something today, tomorrow might be over.

Speaker 6 That's really really difficult but i live in that high achiever world and you know we talk about regulating more than motivating i i got to regulate because you every day's game day can't play a game every day you'll die but uh the rest of the world it's shocking what two percent more will do for them but the high achievers it's it's about regulating the arousal level because there's a burnout there too so again a leader is be who they need you be Some people need a kick in the ass, some people need a pat on the shoulder.

Speaker 6 Some people need to remind it.

Speaker 6 Some people work so hard because they don't think they're enough they gotta remind who they are and some people need to remind it hey is it is this your very two two of the greatest questions i i thought i can ask an employee

Speaker 6 was that your very best

Speaker 6 let me sit on it just was that your i because i don't know was that your very and

Speaker 6 if they go that you know it was all i can was that your very best

Speaker 6 Are you really, really proud of what you put out today?

Speaker 6 Let them think on that.

Speaker 3 Yeah.

Speaker 6 That beats people up inside later on that day, too, because at the end of the day, you can cheat the scoreboard, you can cheat, you can win salesman of the week. Was that your very best?

Speaker 6 You can think on that. And are you okay living life knowing you had to challenge yourself with that question? Are you proud of it? And if you are, I think that's great.
Only you know. I don't know.

Speaker 6 I can grade you 10 out of 10 because you beat the test. Are you proud of it?

Speaker 6 I want someone to know I did my best in life and I'm really proud of what I did. I think

Speaker 6 there's no bigger win than that.

Speaker 3 Yeah, I love that. And I found, again, in my own maturation as a leader that

Speaker 3 questions are more powerful than statements 100 out of 100 times. The right question

Speaker 3 has exponential impact on the mindset, performance, attitude of a team member. That whether you're coaching or you're, or you're, you're, uh, it's a business team, doesn't matter.

Speaker 3 Community organization, not-for-profit board, doesn't matter.

Speaker 3 Your family, your children, like the right question

Speaker 3 moves them because they're the ones that have to answer it.

Speaker 3 When you just tell them, it's, it's, you know, so I, and I, and I hate that I keep coming back to my own kid, but we're in the middle of tournament season, so we're on the field a lot.

Speaker 3 The other day,

Speaker 3 he threw

Speaker 3 nine pitches, three outs.

Speaker 3 All three of the hitters hit the ball, but got out. And he came off the field and he didn't normally bounce off the field.
He's got a big smile on his face. And I was like, What's up?

Speaker 3 And he's like, I didn't have it today. Like, I just, he's like, I, I, it's like my arm, you know, whatever.
I just, I just didn't have it.

Speaker 3 I go, bro, you just threw nine pitches and got three outs on three, on two soft ground balls and a pop out to second base. And he kind of looked at me and I go,

Speaker 3 I go, was, you know, I said, like,

Speaker 3 do you realize how hard it is for a 10-year-old to get three outs on nine pitches when they they don't have their best.

Speaker 3 And he was like, he kind of looked at me and I go, that's how you know you're getting better.

Speaker 3 I go, because what you did was make it work with the best you had that day.

Speaker 3 That's the goal. Because, you know, how many, I mean, how many times you look, you look at, look at freaking Jordan, you know, 103 fever, right? Incredible game.
But was it his best game ever?

Speaker 3 Probably not because he's got a freaking 103 degree fever, but it was the best he could give, right?

Speaker 3 When you, if, if you can show up, and I think this is something that, and I know even myself, right?

Speaker 3 I'm a competitor, so I'm, I'm probably that person you, you would have to downregulate, oh, you know, but

Speaker 3 getting a team member to understand, like, so take a, take a sales team, right?

Speaker 3 You'll get, you'll get, you'll have a week where you just don't put points on the board. For whatever reason, you just don't put points on the board.

Speaker 3 And all of a sudden they show up on Friday and their head is down or they're moody or they're not talking to anybody. And you're like, What's going on? I just, you know,

Speaker 3 are you giving your best in those moments on those calls? Yes, I'm doing the pitch. I'm working them, bro.
That's the game. Because as the universe works, it's going to swing back around.

Speaker 3 And you're going to have a week where you're absolutely going to dominate. And you're not going to understand why either because we can't.
It's, are you showing up?

Speaker 3 the best version of you for that day that you have and and and that's it it you're gonna have days where you're 110%. You're going to have days where you're 60%.

Speaker 3 But if it's, if you, if the best you can give that day is 60% of your max, just for whatever reason. That's your best.
That's your best. Yeah.

Speaker 6 You know, we talked about that at the mastermind where, you know,

Speaker 6 nobody can stop you from bringing your best. And there is no better than your best.
And your best

Speaker 6 is highly subjective to that moment, given all the variables, right? And I think, again, we spoke at the beginning of the talk about language and

Speaker 6 one of the roles of leadership is to utilize utilize language to shape

Speaker 6 what people view as success.

Speaker 6 We can make winning anything we want if we're leading a culture through our words and then actually what we reward through body language behavior and response to after the essui.

Speaker 6 So, we talked about you know we have targets and whatnot, but that can't be what matters above everything else because you know, as Bill Walsh said in his great book, The Score Takes Care of Itself.

Speaker 6 Um, we live, we do things the best of our ability throughout throughout every activity we can. That numbers will be fine.
It's not going to be, but you can't win every single game. You lose games.

Speaker 6 That's fine. We feed what matters most through describing it, talking about it, and then actually rewarding it appropriately, reminding them of it.
That'll always be fine.

Speaker 6 We'll max out what we're capable of. And what's wrong with there's nothing we can do more than that anyways.

Speaker 6 And, you know, I always say my role as a coach is to help you become the best version of yourself.

Speaker 6 We're trying to win a championship, 100%.

Speaker 6 But the end goal is to maximize you kids as people that you know what you're actually capable of in this world. And the probability is we got good enough players.

Speaker 6 We're probably going to compete for that championship too. And that's always an external marker.
It's just a marker.

Speaker 6 It's another

Speaker 6 measurable that we can use, but it's not the end goal, right? And again, leaders, parents, influencers,

Speaker 6 we have to over-message that because they're wired to think the other way. So to unwire, you can't meet one with one.
You got to meet one with like 10, 10 to one discussions.

Speaker 6 You got to over praise the stuff that they don't think matters because they're too hardwired to not think it's important. So we got to triple, quadruple, five times down on that stuff.

Speaker 6 And again, that's a leader realizing,

Speaker 6 be what they need. They need this because they're not getting it anywhere else.
And they're actually going to listen to you. So if you run a company or you're a coach, they listen to you.

Speaker 6 They're waiting for you to think, am I good? Am I bad? And we can focus on them good because. And they start, you know, you tell somebody things enough times, guess what, Ryan?

Speaker 6 They'll probably start to believe you. You tell someone they suck enough times, they're going to start to believe you.

Speaker 6 You tell someone they're getting somewhere and show them the work they're doing, they'll start to believe you.

Speaker 6 But it takes a lot of repetition because they're conditioned to think, I'm a loser because we lost. No, you lost.
It doesn't make you a loser. Those are very different statements.

Speaker 6 Be very careful lumping them together, right? And kids need to know that you're a winner because of what you brought to table. We lost the game.
That's fine. Well, we'll go out tomorrow.

Speaker 6 We'll try to win the next one. It's all good, but we're going to focus on what you can control.
That's at the end of the day, right?

Speaker 6 What can you, what's in your locus of control yeah is where your mind's at where your focus is at and the energy level you bring uh to what you've decided to do i and i think probably the hardest thing the today's world is uh focus and how do we teach people to go put it away and just dive deep dive deep right now uh

Speaker 6 we have to model that

Speaker 6 you can't coach with your phone out sorry the kids see what we're doing like you can't stress something that you're not you you you you can't coach something you're not willing to model uh you gotta remind that right right um but i i think i think there's a there's a huge upside there's a massive void needed for good leadership and again i don't think it's hard but but but it's tremendous courage to do like not hard in terms of complex change my word i don't think it's complicated it can be but i think all it means is pulling back going what are we really trying to achieve yeah what do you and then and then walk backwards is how do you get there well it's going to take a long time that's fine like don't take shortcuts don't life hack culture, leadership.

Speaker 6 Your big word there. You can't life hack development.

Speaker 3 Yeah. You can't do it.

Speaker 6 Everybody wants the quick camp,

Speaker 6 the

Speaker 6 20 pounds lost in five weeks so you can gain 30 pounds later. Every pull one direction is going to have a snap back in the other.

Speaker 6 It's nudging along is enables it to etch it and stay, etch it and stay. So we don't slip back, right?

Speaker 3 Yeah. I just had this conversation with

Speaker 3 both my kids the other day. We were talking about, it started about baseball and then it then it went to school.

Speaker 3 And then we were talking about, they started talking about careers that they wanted and stuff. And

Speaker 3 they said, well, what do you think? And I said, I think you should pick whatever is the hardest.

Speaker 3 And they said, and they kind of looked at me and I said, look, nothing. And I said,

Speaker 3 and I know this is cliche for this audience and adults, but for these kids, it's like mind-blowing, right? Because no, we don't talk to our children like they're real people.

Speaker 3 We talk to them like they're idiots. and it's like i literally the same conversation i'm having you right now i have with my 10 and my eight year old i i

Speaker 3 maybe unfortunately people can judge me if they want but but

Speaker 3 you know sometimes i curse you know i talk to them like real human beings and what i said to them was guys

Speaker 3 a lesson i had to learn that that wasn't taught to me when i was your age is that nothing

Speaker 3 that has any meaning in this world is easy.

Speaker 3 It will look easy easy to others at times who haven't put the work in that you've put in, but it will never be easy for you. Right.
So you have to pick the paths where

Speaker 3 difficulty, obstacles, challenges, pain, you know, and I, and I try to bring things back because obviously this is their world right now is baseball. I'm like,

Speaker 3 my son is the starting shortstop and he loves playing shortstop. And

Speaker 3 sometimes on hard-hit balls, he'll, you know, still kind of react, you know, kind of out of fear. And I said, you told me that you want to be the starting shortstop on this team.

Speaker 3 That's your goal, not mine. I don't care what you do.
I'm your dad. If you told me you want to be a ballerina, I'd drive you to fucking ballerina practice.
I don't care. I don't care what you do.

Speaker 3 You're my kid.

Speaker 6 I love you. I'm the same way.

Speaker 3 Yeah. You told me you want to be the starting shortstop.
What I'm telling you is you have to accept the pain of getting hit with the ball.

Speaker 3 It's if you want to be a good shortstop, you need to know that regardless of how good you are, all the way up to Derek Jeter and Ozzie Smith got hit with baseballs,

Speaker 3 got hit with grounders. They got hit.
And guess what? Even at 33, it still was painful to Derek Jeter. Well, guess what?

Speaker 6 Guess what? They come at you harder. The higher you get, the harder that reality becomes.
So the better you need to become. And the only way to get better is to get in front of it and do it.

Speaker 3 Accept the pain, choose a hard path and follow that. Because anytime anyone presents you with an easy path, it's a trap.

Speaker 3 And like, I could see them mulling it over. And then they asked me about the trap piece.
And I said, you know, they said, what do you mean, a trap? And I said,

Speaker 3 when someone presents you with an easy path, a life hack,

Speaker 3 seven ways to lose 50 pounds in a month or whatever.

Speaker 6 Million dollars in a week with no sweat. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Speaker 3 They're selling you something. You are the mark.
You're the thing they're selling. It is, you are not, that is not something that's going to improve your life.

Speaker 3 There is nothing in life, 43 years old, right? People are, everyone feels nothing in my life that I can sit here and say that I'm proud of was easy. Literally nothing.

Speaker 3 And I said, the two of you are the case study.

Speaker 3 Being a parent for children is the hardest freaking thing you're going to do in life. It's, but it's the thing I'm the most proud of is the two of you, but it's freaking hard.
You know what I mean?

Speaker 3 And, you know, they mold that over. And then,

Speaker 3 you know, I can tell and that that kind of hit them. And we'll see where that comes out of.

Speaker 3 That's a recent conversation we had, but I feel like, you know, two, two things, and then I have one very specific question I want to ask you before we're done. But

Speaker 3 I feel like one, in general, we're all way too self-oriented. It's what leads to ladies and leadership.
It leads to shitty parenting.

Speaker 3 It's what leads to really all the things that we end up disliking about our life oftentimes are a result of self-orientation versus thinking about the community, my family, the company, the team, whatever it is.

Speaker 3 Instead of focusing on our contribution to that bigger enterprise that you described at the beginning of the podcast, we self-orient because that gets us pleasure now.

Speaker 3 And therefore, that leads to long-term ramifications. We refuse to have hard conversations.
We refuse to have hard conversations.

Speaker 3 We want to gloss over things and TikTok everything, you know, the cheeky way, or we're going to be pessimistic or sarcastic or, you know,

Speaker 3 try to downplay something because we don't want to have the hard conversation that's going to create growth.

Speaker 6 Yep.

Speaker 3 And, you know, the last thing,

Speaker 3 and

Speaker 3 if we're following best practices, we will never be a master. No.
We'll never be a master.

Speaker 3 People push back on me about this all the time. And I'll say this in my keynotes.
I'm like,

Speaker 3 it's perfectly fine to read and know what the best practices are. But if you are running your business on best practices, guess what? Everybody knows how to beat you.

Speaker 6 Everybody.

Speaker 3 Everybody knows how to beat you.

Speaker 6 Yeah.

Speaker 3 Because you are not approaching each situation.

Speaker 3 with an open mind and and and iterating and navigating navigating through the waters that are presented to you, you're just trying to plow through with the Titanic because you think you have the answer to all things.

Speaker 3 And I just, I had to share that with you mostly because you just, you got me all jacked up, but

Speaker 3 I couldn't agree more with what you're saying and where we're going here.

Speaker 6 No, I think you touched on some major things there where.

Speaker 6 you know, we haven't developed the skill of having hard conversations because kids now don't look at each other when they talk and adults don't either.

Speaker 6 So we'd rather text a breakup, text a firing, text a difficult conversation, look people in the eye.

Speaker 6 That's a skill set that we have removed from society that we need to bring back in some form or the other, whether it be public debates, whether it be more sports where they're actually playing face to face, conversationally, dealing with things, whatever it may be, that's a skill set and skills get lost if they're not, if they're not worked on, they're gone, right?

Speaker 6 They're not inherent. They need to be trained.
What I loved, I took some notes here about how selfish we are. People talk about being self-aware so much.
I think we need to be a lot more people aware.

Speaker 6 Think less, you know, think more about what you can bring to the people around you more than how can I improve my life? Improve it by doing things for people. Like, we're a very mirror culture.

Speaker 6 We need to be more of a window culture. We love to stare in the mirror and go, look at me.
I want to look out the window and go, what's out there? What can I, how can I make this world better?

Speaker 6 We want to stare at ourselves and make ourselves better. And that's all ego-centric stuff.
Okay. You want to make yourself better? Open the window, move the mirror aside, look out the window.

Speaker 6 How can I make that better? And you become better.

Speaker 6 It's a very nice way to do it.

Speaker 6 I think you know, you talked a little bit too about

Speaker 6 the trap.

Speaker 6 I bring that back to don't chase happiness, chase fulfillment, right? Happiness is, you know, don't worry about the get quick, get rich quick. Just go eat ice cream and you'll be happier too.

Speaker 6 It's fine. At least you got enjoyment of something.
Fulfillment is in the hard, is in the difficult, right? It is in the growth. Nobody grows when they're happy.
Nobody.

Speaker 6 And nobody improves without growth. So there you go, right? You want to become better than you were tomorrow.
It's not going to happen when you're happy. Sorry, it just will not.

Speaker 6 Those are those micro breaks you take to just give yourself a breath, to get back to the growth curve of things.

Speaker 6 And I think when you talk too about following best practices, you know,

Speaker 6 forgive me, I can't remember who the quote was from,

Speaker 6 but

Speaker 6 it's learn, learn, study, and understand all the rules, and then you can go break them. So don't be reckless.
No, know foundationally how we got to here. So you can go to the next level first.

Speaker 6 Otherwise, you know, there's a difference between just being a someone that just likes to cause chaos and doesn't really know.

Speaker 6 They're just a shit disturber or someone that's actually going to improve life.

Speaker 6 So you should know where we got to this place with the rules and the best practices so you can understand it to a level going, okay.

Speaker 6 Here's the next leg up then.

Speaker 6 We're going to shake it up by going here. Otherwise, you're just reckless and you might even be going backwards without realizing.

Speaker 6 So I think there's a case to knowing your history so you can create the next level of history instead of just, you know, instead of just mimicking it.

Speaker 6 You should know it because there's a lot to learn. So you can take that and go, all right, let's go here with it then.

Speaker 3 I think the great Morpheus said it best. There's a difference between knowing the path and walking the path.

Speaker 6 100%, buddy. 100%.
Like I can, I can tell you, I can tell you that that ice water out there is minus 20 degrees, but I'll go out and jump in and live in. I know what that means.

Speaker 3 Yeah.

Speaker 6 A lot of people study a lot of things, right? There's those professors and teachers that study things that I've never done in the world. Not saying they can't teach it, but there is a different level.

Speaker 6 What is it? Knowledge versus wisdom. Yeah.
Right. Knowledge versus wisdom.
And

Speaker 6 confidence, I hate to say it comes from the wisdom. Knowledge means you can parrot out a bunch of stuff.
You memorized a bunch of things. That cracks under reality.

Speaker 3 I've talked about my kids more on this show than I ever have before. My son said to me the other day, he goes, Dad, I think I want to go to business school.
And I had this like visceral reaction.

Speaker 3 Oh, fuck that. I go, what do you, why do you want to learn from a bunch of stodgy old guys that have never done anything? I go, go start a company.

Speaker 3 I go, if you want to start a company, I'll start a company. I'll help you start a company right now.
What do you want to do? Sell baseball cards, start a YouTube channel. I don't care what you do.

Speaker 3 I go, but you're not going to learn anything from them. You got to go do it.
You got to go get your ass kicked. I go, how do you get better at baseball?

Speaker 3 You strike out 10 times and you start to figure it out. I go, this is life, man.
I go, don't, hey.

Speaker 3 If it makes perfect sense for your life, that's great. But don't make your goal having someone else preach to you about what you should be doing.
Go figure it the fuck out for yourself.

Speaker 6 Yeah, there's no better learning curve. There's no, there's no more sticky learning than the act of doing it.
I heard Jerry Seinfeld say the other day.

Speaker 6 He goes, he got, he got asked to teach a comedy class. He walked in the first day.
He goes, you guys already have no chance. You're coming to school to learn to do this.

Speaker 6 You get out there in the clubs and just get your ass kicked and get better.

Speaker 6 There's that, right? I mean,

Speaker 6 there's learning by doing.

Speaker 6 I don't want to go off and say something inappropriate here, but I think there's safety in sitting in the educational mode of learning because you get to stay removed from it. You don't take the risk.

Speaker 6 You can study. There's something.
Look, I'm a big reader. I love to read, but I take it right away and I'll stress, test, try things based on information and I'll utilize it or not.

Speaker 6 I don't want to compile a library in my head of facts that have nothing to do with my ability to do anything just to know stuff. Sorry about that.
Like, I don't need that. We have Google for that.

Speaker 6 Thank you very much. I don't need that in my own head.
But I think we're at a place now where, you know, we talk to full circle leadership, parenting, it's all the same thing, right?

Speaker 6 How do we

Speaker 6 get to a place where we can help people become their very best and achieve something

Speaker 6 they never dreamed possible? Well, it starts with us. How do we get out of our own damn head and become more than we thought possible?

Speaker 6 How do we have the courage to clear out this safe road, to clear out mimicking what we were taught without even stress testing it and thinking is there anything better?

Speaker 6 And, you know, how can we help others until we're able to be courageous enough to go, I'm always going to be out there.

Speaker 6 I'm going to risk failure in front of my players players every day because I want to find new answers. I want to get better.
I don't want to sit in the grooved road and just follow all the other cars.

Speaker 6 And so I'm okay if it doesn't work because I'm going to try. And that gives them the freedom to fail in front of me and learn, to keep failing forward, right?

Speaker 6 If we don't do it, they're going to be scared. So we have to live it with them.
We got to be out there.

Speaker 6 We got to be risking right along with them, not reckless, but just nudging those risk levels and then honestly assessing it back, polishing it, tweaking it. Let's get back out there and improve again.

Speaker 6 And improvement only happens against resistance. Improvement only happens against

Speaker 6 an unknown.

Speaker 6 Nobody improves when you're already following a road that already has an answer. That's not improvement.
That's just, yeah, you're right. Straight mimicking.

Speaker 6 There's nothing inspiring about that. Don't we want to inspire our children, the people we're for? Well, then let's be something that's actually inspiring then.

Speaker 3 Angus, I'm such a huge fan, man. I'm so glad that we met, spent time together.
I

Speaker 3 think the way you deliver messages, the way your mind is wired and how you approach it embodies this idea.

Speaker 3 And actually, with our mutual friend, Chris Paradiso, we're writing a book called The Civilized Savage.

Speaker 6 And I can't wait.

Speaker 3 Dude, you embody it, man. I just, I absolutely freaking love your energy.
I love your mindset.

Speaker 3 I love how you approach it because it's that, it's the masculine, aggressive, but, but controlled nature that we need, right?

Speaker 3 We need people who are willing to push and grow and get bloody and bruised and banged up, but do it in a way that, that fits into society and provides real value back to people. And I just

Speaker 3 consider you a friend, but also a huge fan. And so glad you're on the show.
Where can people get more of you, what you do?

Speaker 3 If they want to have you come keynote, guys, if you you run an event and you're listening to this,

Speaker 3 I've seen Angus live. He's phenomenal,

Speaker 3 awesome guy to have coming to your event. Your audience will light you up and reviews for having Angus come to your event.
Where can they learn more about you and potentially hire you?

Speaker 6 Thank you for all that. And the honor is mine.

Speaker 6 We always got to thank Chris Paradiso. All he does is connect good people with more good people.
Yeah, forever grateful for that. My website is angusread64.com.

Speaker 6 Simple website, but at least you can email me direct, has some basic information.

Speaker 6 The usual social media outlets: Twitter, Angus Read64, Instagram, Angus Underread64. I'm on LinkedIn.

Speaker 6 I had my best-selling book out a few years ago, Thank You Coach.

Speaker 6 It's all about my tenures through my great football coach that taught me how to teach life through sports, how to improve people through whatever activity you're doing.

Speaker 6 Yeah, anyways, love to keynote, love to chat, just love to be a part of people that want to get better. Just love it.
Thank you for having me, Ryan.

Speaker 6 Let's go.

Speaker 7 Yeah, make it look, make it look, make it look easy.

Speaker 8 Thank you for listening to the Ryan Hanley show.

Speaker 8 Be sure to subscribe and leave us a comment or review wherever you listen to podcasts.

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