“Why did you make the jump from how-to writing to fictional storybooks?”

In my podcast interview with Jon Gordon, he shared some great principles and strategies for why he writes the way he does.

Watch this video below to learn more about the new fictional storybooks:

The 12 Pillars of Peak Performance are the 20% of the entire field of Peak Performance that will get you 80% of the benefit.

Learn more about my new fictional storybooks!

Your Peak Performance Coach,

BRIAN CAIN 

Cain: So I get this question a lot from people. Why the jump? Why did you make the jump from writing the how to follow the process and system to Peak Performance book into fictional writing? I get that question a lot. I want to try to answer that question here.

A big part of that inspiration – which you’ve probably heard if you listened to the September podcast I did with John Gordon.

Gordon: I really am about these fables because I realized when I first wrote The Energy Bus that that is a great way to share a message. That is a great way to empower others and to share a story with them that as they read it it becomes their story. We learn best through parables.

Cain: I’ve been a huge fan of John Gordon’s writings from The Energy Bus to The Hard Hat to The Seed and all of his books are all fictional books. What I also like about them is that they share very strong core principles and some strategies that you can use to be your best. As I was going through a lot of the books that I had written – whether it was Toilets, Bricks, Fish hooks and PRIDE, or The Mental Conditioning Manual or any of the Mental Game books specific for sports (Mental Game of Volleyball, Mental Game of Football, etc.) it was all the how to. When you write that way I feel like it kind of boxes you in a little bit in terms of how you can write.

In my interview in the podcast with John Gordon he shared some great ideas and principles and strategies and why he writes the way he does. So I said hey it’s the start that stops most people and if you don’t try it you’ll never know. So I sat down and started to write the 12 Pillars of Peak Performance. It’s a fictional story book about a guy named Matthew Simons who is in his mid 30s. He is sitting on a plane at the Detroit airport and he hears the worst words you can possibly hear from a pilot as he comes on the intercom before the plane takes off.

He says, “Ladies and Gentleman this is your captain speaking. We’re having some mechanical issues and are going to have to return to the terminal.” My heart sank. Another delay. As I sat there I muttered to myself, “You have to be kidding me.” The old man sitting next to me who I thought was sleeping opened his eyes, looked over at me, and said, “I’m sorry what did you say son?”

“Nothing, I was just talking to myself.”

“Well, I thought you were complaining that we were going back to the terminal. I’m just glad we didn’t take off. The last thing you want is for the captain to diagnose a mechanical issue once you have taken off. Then none of us are getting home. Better late and alive than never I always say.”

“That is a great point. I just wish I could get home once on time in my life.”

“Home? Home is where your feet are and right now you are on this plane so you might as well enjoy it because from the looks of it we are going to be here for a while. My name is Ken. My friends call me Coach Kenny. What is yours?”

“I’m Matthew. Matthew Simons.”

“Well Matthew Simons it’s nice to meet you. I’m on my way home too. I like in Southlake, Texas. I was here in Detroit seeing some of my friends.”

“Coach Kenny, did you say you live in Southlake, Texas? So do I. Small world. And did you say your sons are in Detroit?”

“Yes. I work as a sports psychology coach and although the coaches and athletes I’m working with up here are my clients I consider them my friends and teammates and treat them like my sons and daughters. I think of them like that so I can be my best for them. What brings you up here, Matthew Simons?”

Now you might be wondering what happens then. Well when they get back to the terminal Matthew Simons picks up the phone. He calls his wife, Erin, who tells him “I knew this was going to happen, I told you so,” the whole ordeal. He is trying to get a flight and none of the flights are going back until Saturday. He is trying to get a rental car. The rental car facility is sold out and he can’t get back. As he is walking through the terminal not knowing what he is going to do next he hears a voice.

“Matthew. Matthew Simons. Come over here son.”

As I looked to my left there was Coach Kenny sitting at a table inside the airport Fuddruckers with a burger and a Fuddruckers Sweet Cherry Cream Soda.

“Come on in son. We’re going to be here a while. Might as well take a load off and fuel the machine.”

I thought to myself, “What the heck, I am going to be here a while. Might as well sit with the old man and have myself one of the world’s greatest hamburgers.” I went in, sat down, and ordered my favorite Fuddruckers burger – a 2/3rd pound burger with Swiss cheese, mushrooms, grilled onions, and avocados. I got myself a Fuddruckers Sweet Cherry Cream Soda as well and took a big deep breath as I sat back in my chair wondering how I was going to get home.

As the story goes on Coach Kenny and Matthew Simons sit down over a great meal at the world’s greatest hamburgers – Fuddruckers – and Coach Kenny shares the 12 Pillars of Peak Performance for living an optimal life and performing at your best on a daily basis.

Where that story ends is at the hotel lobby because they’re not getting out that night. The airport is sold out, all the flights are sold out, and all cars are sold out because the next day is the Detroit Dominators against the Chicago Bees of the professional football league. Both teams are 8-0. They both haven’t been 8-0 ever and they’re bitter rivals so that game sold out there in Detroit. There is also the Detroit marathon happening on that Friday so everybody is in Detroit. It’s the busiest the city has ever been so they are stuck at the airport.

Matthew Simons wants to thank Coach Kenny for investing the time and sharing the wisdom that he did over that meal at Fuddruckers so they go to the hotel lobby. They go to the hotel to get a room and they find out that the hotel is sold out and all the hotels are sold out within one hour of the airport. As Matthew Simons throws his hands in the air and says “you have to be kidding me again,” he turns around and Coach Kenny is gone.

Then as you maybe know by now we follow up the 12 Pillars of Peak Performance book with the book Training an Elite Mindset and the story continues where Coach Kenny and Matthew Simons get reunited and they get reunited with four Navy SEALS and a guy named Marcus that worked together with Coach Kenny when he was in playing college football. They get together and they talk about the 15 Keys to Unlock a True Elite Mindset. They all share their stories about how they use the mindset not only in combat but they used it in athletics and they use it now in business now that their career is over. They use them in their family. They are the 15 Keys to Build an Elite Mindset that will help you to be your best as well and for you to unlock that elite mindset that will help you to accomplish anything.

Then that book finishes with a phone call to Matthew Simons from his wife Erin who says, “Matthew, we have a problem.” As we know as the story continues Matthew and the SEALs and Marcus and Coach Kenny are all packing into a Suburban headed over to the Detroit Dominators and the Chicago Bees game because Tony Shea, head coach of the Detroit Dominators, actually coached Marcus in college football and now he has ascended the ranks and he is the head coach and the PFL of the undefeated Detroit Dominators. The way that he has led that program from the bottom to the top, from the outhouse to the penthouse, is through creating a Championship Culture. Coach Shea shares with you the exact steps of how he created that Championship Culture in Detroit.

So what I’ve found is that being able to tell a story creates a picture. As I’m even sharing that story with you here as you’ve read through the stories of the 12 Pillars of Peak Performance and the journey of Matthew Simons and Coach Kenny you can put yourself in that situation.

As I wrote the book I really felt like there were aspects of Coach Kenny’s life, there were aspects of Matthew Simons life that we me, that we parts of my life. Things that Matthew Simons struggled with I struggle with and have struggled with. Then the mentor, Coach Kenny, I dedicated that to my mentor, Dr. Ken Ravizza who I met back at Cal State Fullerton in 2002 and 2003. Really he shared and put me on the journey of Peak Performance.

What the 12 Pillars of Peak Performance are is the Pareto Law. If you’re familiar with Pareto’s Law it’s that 80% of the benefit of what you get comes from 20% of what you do. In my years of working as a sports psychology and peak performance consultant the 12 Pillars of Peak Performance are the 20% of the entire field that will get you the 80% benefit. As you continue the journey with Matthew Simons and Coach Kenny and you apply the principle that you’ll learn in the 12 Pillars of Peak Performance and Training an Elite Mindset and Championship Culture and Time Is Ticking – and if you haven’t figured out by now there are more books that are coming.

There is going to be one for each of the pillars: Knowing Your Numbers, Sailing the Right Ships, How to Develop That Present Moment Focus, Keep the Process Over the Outcome, Have the Attitude to Take You To the Altitudes That You Want to Go To, How to Maximize Your Vision, How to Maximize Mental Imagery because we know that everything happens twice, How to Create the Routines and Habits of Excellence that back up and get it done on a daily basis because what you do on a daily basis will take you where you want to be so you are where you are right now.

As we get ready to head into 2017 you are where you are right now based off of what you do on a daily basis. What you’ve done in the last five years has gotten you to where you are right now. What you do in the next five years will determine where you end up. But it happens one day at a time. If you don’t’ have the right routines and habits of excellence, if you don’t understand the 12 Pillars of Peak Performance, you’re not going to end up where you want to go. It comes back to being able to recognize your signal lights (Pillar #11) and know “am I doing what I need to be doing right now in this moment to get me one step closer towards where I want to go?”

Then you’ve got to back that up with Pillar #12, the ability to release when things go bad. There is one guarantee. There is going to be some bad that happens. There is going to be some adversity in life. If you haven’t had adversity in a while get ready because it’s coming. When it does make adversity your advantage and refocus on what you’re going to do in that moment to Dominate the Day.

Watch this video below to learn how you can surround yourself with the best coaches on the planet:

Inside of the Inner Circle, you immediately surround yourself with the best.

If you are a coach who is ready to take your game to another level, click here.

It is my mission to equip you with the tools you need to make a massive impact on your athletes, as quickly, effortlessly and powerfully as possible.

>> BrianCain.com/InnerCircle

Your Peak Performance Coach,

BRIAN CAIN 

Cain: In our last Monday Message we talked about a concept that proximity is power. To have maximum influence and impact with others you have to be with them. You have to have that connection. If you stand up and you raise that right hand I want you to raise it as high as you possibly can. As high as you possibly can. Give me your best effort, yes or no?

Crowd: Yes.

Cain: Now give a little bit more. Give a bit more. Everyone gave more. Can I continue? Best effort. Best effort. Give a little bit more. Give a little more. Okay, hands down. How many of you were able to give a little bit more when I asked to give more? Raise your hand and say “I could.”

Crowd: I could.

Cain: So do that with your kids. You can always give a little bit more. If you do that you’ll find kids jumping up on the table. You’ll find kids climbing up the scaffolding and putting their hand in the air. They can always do a little bit more. But get them to raise their hand and think just when you think you’ve given enough you can always give a little bit more. Always give more. I can always give more. I can always give more. I can always give more. Why is that? I’m going as high as I can but I can still give more. Sometimes it’s just the one degree of separation to get us where we want to go.

We also know that you become the average of the five people you associate with the most. Some of the people I associate with the most I’ve never met in my life or I’ve seen them once. For example Dr. Rob Gilbert. I call Success Hotline and invest at least three minutes a day with him every single day and I’ve met him once. He’s had tremendous impact and influence in my life.

I want to invite you to come with me and other members of the Inner Circle and take your game, take your life to another level. You see inside of the Inner Circle you’ve got other A-list coaches like yourself, other Peak Performers like yourself, who want more. But they know this, they know that if you want more you have to become more. To become more you’ve got to surround yourself with other people that are doing what you’re doing at a level or higher than you are currently.

What would you say is your favorite asset of being a member of the Inner Circle?

Addie: That these guys usually ask the questions before I even get to them. Having people respond to those questions is just awesome. And sometimes they ask questions I didn’t even think of so that is awesome too.

Tom: I think for me, it’s really Automobile University.  Every month being a part of the Inner Circle Brian provides us with an MP3 or MP4 audio that I download, put it in a CD, put it my car so for the entire month I am doing a little a lot along the way which helps with the spaced repetition and reinforcing the message.

Randy: For me it’s kind of what I said a while ago but it would be the relationships, it’s being able to connect with people.  Even like Ed says, sometimes you get a great idea like when I went to SMU’s practice and coach Morris talked about something we implement at Grapevine so if you have a great idea and you want to share it with somebody that cares – because a lot of people don’t care – but you’ve got the people in the Inner Circle that care.

Cain: You see, with the Inner Circle we do monthly conference calls. We do weekly book breakdowns where we review some Cliff Notes and then talk about them in an Inner Circle discussion. You get it every month. You’re going to get an audio where I’m going to teach for 60-80 minutes and you listen to that audio as you drive around enrolling in Automobile University and I get to become one of your closest five and help mentor you to take you to another level.

Not only do you get access to me through the audio and through a written newsletter and through the monthly conference calls but on those conference calls we do question and answer with other great coaches. Then in our Inner Circle Facebook group you get to post a question and interact with coaches who are all over the country – different sports, different levels. We’ve got Olympic medalists in there. We’ve got Division 1 college coaches and the Power Five Conferences. We’ve got high school coaches that have won numerous State Championships. We’ve got Major League Baseball players. We’ve got FC Championship. Inside of the Inner Circle you are immediately surrounding yourself with the best.

We know that high water does what? Raises all boats. So if you want to raise your game to another level the Inner Circle is the place to go. I believe in it so much. I am so confident in it that if you join the Inner Circle, if you come in and you become a member of our team and it’s not exactly what you’re looking for and you say in 3-4 months “this isn’t what I want, this isn’t having the impact, I’m not getting what I want out of the Facebook group” or “I’m not getting what I want out of the monthly conference calls or the books that you recommend, Cain, and you give to us every week in the Inner Circle, they’re just not for me,” then we’ll refund your investment 100%.

Look, this is the best training in the planet for the mental game. If you’re a coach and you want to take your game to the next level you can do it one of two ways. You can go do all the reading, you can go do all the work, you can go consult for 15 years in the top programs in the country, interview all those coaches, stay in their house, or you can let me tell you what it’s like to do that because that is my life. I’m cutting through the crap and I’m speeding up your learning curve so that you can take what works and use it in your program and get it done more quickly. We all want more in less time. That is what the Inner Circle is. It speeds up your learning curve and gets you where you want to be as fast as possible.

Now come be one of the five. Come be one of the five people in my life as a member of the Inner Circle that has the biggest impact on me. The reason why I do the Inner Circle, the reason why I’m on this mission to educate, empower, and energize others to a life of excellence and fulfillment is because of what you do for other people. You are the messenger. You are the solider in the army of changing people’s lives. It’s my mission to equip you to be able to do that as effortlessly, as powerfully, and have as much impact and influence as you possibly can have in a short time that you get to be called the most precious term in the world – you get to be called “coach.”

When you’re called “coach” that comes with a lot of responsibility and it’s my mission to equip you to help execute your mission and your responsibility as being a coach. So come on, join us in the Inner Circle. Come be a part of this elite group and let’s take your game to another level.

On this episode, you’ll learn about:

• The #1 biggest improvement Coach Padalecki has experienced in the last year
• The power of a community of like-minded individuals
• What it takes to coach 2 sports and lead a family (with a newborn!)
• The 2016 Inner Circle Moment of the Year
• and much more…

PODCAST TRANSCRIPTION

Morse: Throwing you a change up this week. It’s Matt Morse here hosting this episode of the Peak Performance Podcast. I’m joined by Inner Circle member and high school football/baseball coach, Ed Padalecki. Great to have you here today, Ed.

Padalecki: Thank you, Matt. It’s a pleasure to be here and an honor.

Morse: Awesome. If you would tell us a little bit about how you got to where you are today as a successful high school baseball/football coach here in the state of Texas.

Padalecki: Well I guess it started shy of my 30th birthday. I was at a point in life where I was living in San Antonio. I had a financial firm, wealth management firm, and was doing the Wall Street thing for most of my 20s. I got to a point to where I was evaluating my life and I liked what I did but I didn’t love what I did. I was always passionate about sports and I looked back on my life and who had the biggest impact on me growing up and that was my teachers and coaches so I was able to transition out of my practice and became a coach and a teacher.

I started off in southeast Texas, south of Victoria at a small little rural school. I did everything – football, baseball, track. I taught five different classes. Then from there I move up to the metroplex and I was in the Eagle Mountain Saginaw district and spent a couple years there. Then for family reasons I moved back down to central Texas to Hutto, Texas, home of the Hippos, and coached football/baseball. I taught junior US History. Then I came back up to the metroplex for my wife (or now wife) of going on 2 years. She can check me on that fact. Sometimes I miss that. I’m a guy.

So I moved up here to metroplex, became the head baseball coach and defensive coordinator at a small school just west of Fort Worth – Millsap High School – and spent a year there. It got to the point to where I was driving an hour to work. I needed to reevaluate things. My name was brought up for Terrell High School which is on the opposite side of the metroplex and I figured well if I’m going to drive an hour to work I might want to do that on my own choice. So I moved to Terrell and was the head baseball coach there for this past year. But again an hour commute.

My wife and I had a baby girl over the summer so I needed to reevaluate things, look at what I wanted to do versus what I needed to do, and stepping down as a head baseball coach and becoming an assistant for a few years to come is what I needed to do.

Coach Danny Wallace over at Flower Mound High School graciously gave me the job at Flower Mound so I am there coaching football and coaching baseball. I am coaching football with Coach Brian Basil who is there for his first year as well. Big mental game guys, guys that love to build a championship culture.

Morse: Awesome. Congratulations on the baby. I’m sure that has added a nice dynamic to the family.

Padalecki: It has. It’s been a roller coaster – as those of you that have babies know. It’s been fun.

Morse: Awesome. So your journey as a coach from Wall Street to coaching – obviously you started in the state of Texas and have stayed in this state. Where along in that journey did you meet up with Brian Cain?

Padalecki: I had been on the acceptance continuum regarding the mental game and the mental aspect. I took sports psychology classes in college. It always seemed to interest me. But it wasn’t until I got to Millsap High School and it was really based on a conversation that I had with a friend of mine in passing at a grocery store. He was complaining about how his baseball team had always committed mental errors and I said “mental errors in my mind at some point in time okay let’s fix those, they can only be an excuse for so long.” So when you tell a kid “hey take mental reps, work on your mental imagery” that is one thing. But you’ve got to teach the kid how to. That is why I reached out to Brian. I needed to learn the how to.

Morse: So you reached out to Brian to work. Did he come work with your team or was that a one-on-one thing?

Padalecki: It was a mixture. I first sat down with Brian at his house and did a little half day one-on-one then took the information and started implementing it with my team at Millsap. Then I took the team out to a TCU Texas game and Brian sat with us for about six innings and talked us through the mental game with what the TCU players were using, the routines. He pointed out the game within the game and turned the light bulb on for a lot of my players. They were able to see the game in a different light and slow the game down and really work on things that will help them become better baseball players.

Morse: Awesome. What are the biggest challenges you face coaching multiple sports in high school?

Padalecki: The biggest challenge is having your daily routine down as a coach. Time is in demand on a daily basis and you’re pulled in multiple different ways not only coaching your two sports but also the teaching aspect. You need to have your 168 set pretty tight in terms of what you need to do on a daily basis and where you need to be. That’s the biggest challenge I believe.

Morse: When did you start your 168 plan?

Padalecki: I started my 168 last year. I was pretty rigorous and on point with it. Then on July 18th when a little baby girl comes into your life that changes little things about your routine because sometimes you can’t dictate what the baby wants to do. But for the most part you go with the flow. You have to widen your chunks throughout the day or especially overnight. Then just have a general concept of what you want to do.

But I brought that concept into the classroom. I teach high school economics and if time is our most important asset I relay to the students I teach that they need to dominate their 168 throughout the week.

Morse: Sure. I saw several of the 168 plans posted in the Facebook group for the Inner Circle. Obviously you have contributed to that. So far what are the biggest benefits that you’ve seen since you’ve joined Brian’s Inner Circle?

Padalecki: The Inner Circle, it’s the networking aspect. When you have a question you’re not limited to the circle of influence that you have locally. You are broadening your network to the United States if not internationally because we have coaches involved that are international coaches based in the UK, Europe, Australia (I believe) that coach baseball. Being in that Inner Circle group you can post a question, maybe it’s philosophical or basic game strategy practice organizations, and you get immediate responses. It’s great having that network to rely on.

Morse: What do you think of the monthly audios and newsletter in there? Is there a time that you block out in your 168 that you listen to that or that you read that each month?

Padalecki: I took a page from Brian and on my commutes – right now I have a 30 minutes commute, in the past it was over an hour. So I created an automobile university. Instead of sitting there complaining about being stuck in traffic I took advantage of it and I pop in the Inner Circle audios that Brian releases at the first of every month as well as podcasts and audiobooks.

Morse: I’ve got to bring this one up too. I saw Brian recently nominated you as the Inner Circle Moment of the Year. Can you elaborate on how that came to be?

Padalecki: That took me by surprise that I was nominated for that. It was one of those things that came about Coach Jeff Johnson as Mesquite Poteet. We were about to play them when I was at Terrell and he approached me that he had a senior manager that had been with him for all four years of his high school career. This particular senior is wheelchair bound and he wanted to do something special for it.

It was actually a no brainer for me. I didn’t even have to hesitate in doing what he wanted to do. I wanted to intentionally walk one of his players and put the young man on first base and during the young man’s lead off we needed to try to pick him off. We intentionally threw it away and created a little circus around it and threw the ball around and allowed the young man to score.

What was interesting is those that were in attendance to that game they released the senior moments of each player before the game and the highlight of this young man’s career up until that point was just being able to run the bases at practice so to speak. So in my mind I was like “wow we’re about to blow this kid’s mind by allowing him to come into the game and allow him to score.”

The best part of it is that those of you that did see the video – I guess it went viral. I guess that’s what you call it if you have over a million hits, it goes viral, and hen news stations are calling you asking your opinion about it. My players cheered when that young man scored and that was something that I wanted to impart to them because one of our core values was being selfless. I think that exhibited being selfless to them in real life.

Morse: That is awesome. For the listeners that have not seen that yet where can they find it? I know several media stations picked that up. Do you know where they can see that online?

Padalecki: It might still be on YouTube. I think if they just type in “Mesquite Poteet manager scores” it should come up if I’m not mistaken. I think it’s on MLB.com in one of the highlights of the year. ESPN might have heard about it. I know it was on CBS News etc. I imagine if they can Google it they can see it.

Morse: Awesome. That is a tremendous moment. For the listeners that are considering joining the Inner Circle what is one piece of advice that you would have for them?

Padalecki: The piece of advice is be engaged. It’s not about what you can get from the Inner Circle but what you bring to the table. Even if you don’t think you can bring anything to the table you can. Just little tidbits of what you’re doing in your program within any sport helps show coaches that they can make little adjustments as well. At the end of the day we don’t know what we don’t know.

Morse: Awesome. What is one strategy you use in your life – maybe it’s from the Inner Circle or maybe from outside – that helps you to continue to sharpen your axe as a coach, as a father, as a husband, to keep getting better?

Padalecki: I think it’s that it comes down to if you want more you need to become more. If you want your program to grow you as a coach need to commit to growing holistically in all areas of your life.

Morse: What brings you the most joy or satisfaction in the life style or mission that you are on as a coach?

Padalecki: Seeing the players I coach changing and growing into young men both on and off the field. It’s an intrinsic reward when they come back to you years later and they want to have lunch with you or come to your town to have dinner with you. I think that speaks volumes as to the seed that you plant on a daily basis that you don’t see come to fruition until years later when you’re reminded of “oh yeah that little chucklehead that I coached, he actually was paying attention” and to see the young men that they do become.

Morse: Awesome. Speaking of planting seeds, if you could open the mind of the listeners of this podcast and plant a seed in their mind from your experience and from all of the wins that you’ve had, the losses that you’ve had, the teams that you’ve coached, what would that one piece of advice be for the listeners?

Padalecki: Stay the course. Remain patient in what you do and the goals that you want to achieve. Don’t try to speed things up because with due time they will come about. You just need to press towards the goals that you have for yourself in life.

Morse: Awesome. Before we conclude here I want to put you on the hot seat for a couple minutes where I am going to give you a phrase and want you to just come back with the first thing that comes to your mind.

Padalecki: Alright. Let’s give it a shot.

Morse: The best book you’ve read.

Padalecki: The Radical Leap.

Morse: The best advice you’ve ever received.

Padalecki: If you want more you need to become more.

Morse: Your mentor.

Padalecki: Brian Cain.

Morse: Your favorite hobby.

Padalecki: Baseball. My family if my wife is listening.

Morse: Your favorite app.

Padalecki: My favorite app. I’m not really a big social media guy although it is a necessity (I guess) in life. My YouVersion Bible.

Morse: If you’re not a big social media guy the next one is what is your favorite social media network.

Padalecki: Well I guess in terms of posting I don’t post a lot but I do the big three – Facebook and Instagram and Twitter.

Morse: And lastly your favorite podcast.

Padalecki: Favorite podcast. There are several. They are all a tie. The one I’m on right now – which I appreciate and feel honored to be on. I love The Mind Side. And then also my wife’s. My wife started a podcast where she reaches out to coach’s wives to help support them and encourage them. That is called Married To The Game podcast. You can find that (it’s a shameless plug) on any of the iTunes, Stitcher, or your favorite Android podcast search engine.

Morse: Awesome. Coach, for the listeners that want to pick your brain a little more, follow you on social media networks, where can they find you?

Padalecki: Twitter is the easiest one. I believe my Twitter handle is @CoachP35. I think I’m under Ed Padalecki. You need to look at how it’s spelled in this podcast – Padalecki – on Facebook.

Morse: Awesome. Any last thoughts that you’d like to add for the audience and the listeners that are coaching different sports around the country?

Padalecki: Inner Circle is a great resource. Anything Brian Cain does is a great resource. The live events that happen around the country are great resources as well as whoever Brian networks with. Your network is a great resource. Continue to stay the course. Continue to grow as a coach and in all areas of your life.

Morse: Speaking of live event you were obviously there in attendance. What did you think of the live event? Maybe what is one thing that you have done differently since attending?

Padalecki: The live event was great in terms of you were able to be face to face with other Cainiacs (so to speak) and believers in the mental game. That is few and far between but it is a necessity.

As your athletes grow their talent level increases and then every level they’re at everybody else’s talent is the same. What separates your athlete from going to the next level would be the mental game. And being able to just talk with the other coaches that are big believers in the mental game. Also the manual that came out. I have used that with my players. Not only my players but in the classroom as well.

Morse: Awesome. Thanks for your time today, Coach. Appreciate you joining us.

Padalecki: You bet, Matt. Thank you.

You’ll learn from members of the Inner Circle and how they use the mental game on a consistent basis to help better develop themselves as coaches so that they can best develop and train their players.  Better coaches make better players.  In this podcast, some of the best coaches in the country explain how they use the Inner Circle to become more so that they can achieve more.

This week, we reach into the Peak Performance Vault for a episode featuring leadership & culture guru Jeff Janssen from 2007!

On this episode, you’ll learn:

• How to KNOW you are making a difference in the lives of your athletes
• The training needed to develop true leadership
• The importance of keeping the main thing the main thing
• How to build confidence in your players
• and much more…

The Janssen Sports Leadership Center develops college and high school student-athletes and coaches into world-class leaders who are committed to a lifetime of service, success, and significance.

PODCAST TRANSCRIPTION

Cain: This is Brian Cain live with Jeff Janssen of Janssen Peak Performance out of Cary, North Carolina. I’m sure a lot of listeners to this interview have already been to his fantastic website: it’s www.JeffJanssen.com.

Jeff, thanks for sitting down and taking the time to chat with us today. I really appreciate it. For the Inner Circle members most of them are (I’m sure) familiar with your stuff already but for those who aren’t Jeff is one of the world’s leading authorities on leadership development and Peak Performance. It’s an absolute honor to be able to sit down with him today.

Jeff, could you give us your background in the Peak Performance industry and how you got to be where you are today as one of the top authorities in the world.

Janssen: I’d be happy to. I was real privileged to start out at the University of Arizona. I got my Master’s degree there and while we were there the stuff we were learning and the experiences that we were having it just seemed like it really needed to be shared with the coaches and student athletes there.

Mike Candrea, who is their softball coach and a big baseball kind of guy at heart who has applied a lot of baseball stuff to the softball world very successfully, gave me an opportunity to work with his program. Fortunately for me and unfortunately for Coach Olsen and his program that was kind of the early 90s where Arizona men’s basketball would end up a pretty good seed going into the tournament and would end up losing in the first round to some teams that they shouldn’t be losing to.

So both of those guys gave me an opportunity to work with their programs and fortunately things went very well and they decided to go to the athletic director and create a fulltime position for me. I spent eight years with Arizona’s athletic department working with all of their different teams and their coaches. As you might imagine you learn a tremendous amount during those eight years with those stellar coaches and you learn a lot from the programs that are struggling too.

So I did that for eight years. During that time there were obviously a lot of schools because not everybody has their own sports psych consultant so a lot of other schools said “can you come out and do some workshops for us.” That eventually got to the point of being a self sustaining business. I was fortunate to then create my own consulting company. We moved to Cary, North Carolina, and just going out to a variety of different schools.

Fortunately then three years ago the University of North Carolina, their athletic director, Dick Baddour, decided to create the comprehensive leadership academy called the Carolina Leadership Academy at Carolina. So I got a chance to work with a variety of student athletes there from all sports. We’ve got a few different levels. We’ve got a program for freshmen called the Creed Program. We’ve got a rising stars program which targets sophomore and junior student athlete emerging leaders. We spent a year with them trying to teach them what it takes to be a leader and how to gain everyone’s respect and step up to be a vocal leader. Then we’ve got a third program for the veteran leaders because they are the ones who are in the fire and having to deal with all this stuff.

Part of the leadership academy too is we meet regularly with the coaches and do a lot of professional development with them. Also their administrators are involved. That has gone so well that now there are schools like Stanford and Pitt and Yale and Illinois and some others now who are getting on board with the leadership academy concept and finding out that all this training – you can’t just do a onetime thing but it’s really an ongoing, systematic, comprehensive kind of program. So there is the somewhat brief version of my background.

Cain: You’ve talked about the Carolina Leadership Academy. I’ve heard a lot of great stuff about it. Is that academy something that you just do with the Carolina athletes, coaches, and administrators who are a part of the UNC athletic department? Or is it something where they have a leadership camp in the summer where someone who is a high school athlete or another college athlete or one of the coaches listening to this that they can send their kids there to get the same kind of experience through you?

Janssen: Right now we don’t really have that camp available. Obviously with the high schools and colleges you’ve got kids working and then you’ve got the whole how do we send these kids there financially and give them some time. So most of my stuff is me going to a particular school and doing what I call a leadership summit where I will spend time with the coaching staff and talk about how best to develop and groom and partner with the leaders then usually meeting with a group of 50-60 student athlete leaders from each school from a variety of sports and taking them through a two hour workshop on what it means to be a leader and how they can step up and be effective. So that’s a lot of what I do.

But as I mentioned there are some schools now who are taking a more comprehensive approach where I’ll be visiting 4-10 times throughout the year and kind of staying in touch that way.

Cain: Some of the things you mentioned about going in and doing a leadership summit – and I know that some of the Division 1 coaches and higher level university coaches have the opportunity to maybe have the budget to bring you or some of the high school coaches that would have that booster club or in their budget to be able to bring in a guy like yourself. What are some of the benefits of the leadership academy?

I know that as captains a lot of times kids are elected captains but we don’t necessarily give them the skills to lead. I know that your programs are designed to give the kids the skills to lead. What are some of the other benefits that your programs offer?

Janssen: I think the huge benefits are just raising the standards of play. I think coaches are frustrated because it seems like we’re the only ones who are trying to drive this whole machine with the attitudes and the chemistry and the commitment and it seems like how do we get kids to want it half as badly as we do. I think when you can get the leaders within the teams and now they’re leading peers you can just get so much more accomplished.

When you have kids taking co-ownership of the program and they take pride in what is going on then they’re the ones who are going to be setting and establishing the standards. They’re the ones who are going to echo the things that the coaches say out in practice. They are going to echo those in the locker room. They are going to echo those in the weight room. They are going to echo those on Thursday, Friday, and Saturday nights when somebody is about to screw up with something. I think you’ve got now somebody embracing your standards.

I think when you’ve got great leaders you are going to help build a sense of chemistry. They are going to help welcome those younger kids under their wings. You are going to have better – during adversity you are going to have a leader step up and understand the gravity of the situation and keep the main thing. The main thing, as we just talked about with the Vermont leaders here.

I just think there are so many benefits. I think there are obviously the competitive benefits when you’ve got somebody stepping up and leading but there is also just the things that give coaches and programs black eyes are a lot of the times the off the field shenanigans that happen with all the teenage temptations that are out there. If you’ve got a leader that cares enough about your program and says “quite screwing around, you’re making the rest of us look like an idiot” then you’re going to have that part (hopefully) salvaged too.

I think, obviously, all coaches out there are competitive. You want to win, you want to be successful, but at the same time I think coaches want to see that they’re making a difference with their kids and when somebody has gone through their program for a couple of years they can go onto the next level not just a better athlete but hopefully a better person. I think that is obviously where the leadership stuff hits. If you’ve talked to most coaches and athletic directors and principals and school presidents they talk about our mission is to develop leaders. Yet when you look at it what kind of training are these leaders getting other than just hoping that they’re going to figure out leadership? I think we’ve got to be much more systematic and comprehensive in our approach if we want our kids to be extensions of us we as coaches have to extent ourselves to them.

Cain: I think that’s fantastic, Jeff, what you just mentioned about as athletic directors our mission – at I think any level you are talking about – is to develop people have good life skills or good leadership skills that they can use to be successful after the athletic career. For most of the coaches out there the majority of the people they coach are never going to make a living playing that sport. For the baseball coaches that I talk to at the college level teaching a kid to hit a fastball or throw a curveball may win a couple games at this level but they’re never going to make a living doing that – or very few of them will. So are they getting those skills that are going to help them in the real world?

Janssen: They’re probably not. I think the question all coaches have to ask then is are you a coach of success or are you a coach of significance? Obviously a coach of success is somebody who wants to win games and be competitive but I think if you look at the real coaches who have a major impact on kids and are the coaches especially that recruits want to go play for they aren’t just coaches of success, they’re coaches of significance – which certainly takes into account you’re competitive, you want to win, but you see the bigger picture. You see the perspective in it and you use that I’m not just developing sports skills but I am developing leaders and life skills along the way.

Cain: When the athlete leaves they’re not just a piece of meat. They are somebody who is a person, somebody you can have a relationship with. I think a lot of times you can see those programs where you have coaches of significance where their athletes come back. Their athletes come back. Their athletes stay in touch with the coach after they either go on to pro-ball or graduate. That is a coach of significance.

I think for the coaches listening to this how many of your former players still stay in touch with you? You probably think you’re a coach of significance but the writing is on the wall. If your kids aren’t following through with you and maintaining those relationships they’re probably – your perception of yourself is jaded, similar to what you were talking about today with the athlete grading themselves out.

Janssen: Right. I mean I can tell you stories of examples of Hall of Fame coaches who send out invitations to former players for their Hall of Fame banquet induction ceremony and those players get those invitations and rip them up and throw them in the garbage and think “no way am I going to go honor that person.” I wonder as that person gets up and gives their acceptance speech and their thank-yous and they look out in the audience and there is just a smattering of their former players and knowing that very few of them actually want to honor how they won – not that they won but how they won – I just wonder does that coach really feel like they’ve been a success? It’s a very hollow success.

Sadly I think sometimes there is an evolution in a coach’s philosophy that when you first start off you’re trying to prove yourself to yourself, to your colleagues, to your administrators, and the success part becomes the major focus and sometimes you lose track in terms of trying to build your resume and move up the coaching ladder that sometimes you lose track of that significance. It’s only until when your career is done sometimes that’s it smacks you smack dab in the face that you wonder “I wonder if I would have done things exactly the way I did earlier.”

Cain: I love how you’re talking about the difference between success and significance. We have a common bond through Ken Ravizza. One of the things that he always would talk to us about – and I think it came through Dr. Tom Osborne who was the football coach in Nebraska – is he always said “there is a difference between success and winning.” Just because you win a game doesn’t mean that you were successful. I think that ties in with what you are talking about. Am I right?

Janssen: Yeah. I think so. If you talk to a lot of coaches a lot of times they’ll say “my best coaching job wasn’t necessarily my championship years.” When they take a look at sometimes putting a team together that may not have had a whole lot of talent or had a lot of dissention and grabbing the duct tape and seeing what we can do to piece together something, sometimes those are the most satisfying times for coaches.

I was just out at Stanford and Dick Gould, who is their tennis coach – he won (I think) 17-18 national championships with their men’s program) – said an interesting thing that I’ve heard other people say as well. They said “I became a better coach after I won my first national championship because I wasn’t so consumed in making that happen that I had a better perspective.”

Mike Candrea, who I mentioned before, the softball coach at Arizona, has often said “I wish I could give every coach out there a national championship right away so that then they could have their perspective and priorities in order and go from there” rather than desperately getting on the wheel like a hamster running and running to chase something that they may never get. Even if they do get there is it the end all/be all that you think it was.

I think Steven Covey is the guy who said “be careful when you’re frantically trying to get up that ladder to success, make sure it’s up against the right wall.” When you get up to the top it may not be all it’s cracked up to be.

Cain: I love what you mentioned about how Candrea said “I wish everyone could win a national championship earlier” and how he says “I’ve become a better coach after winning a national championship” and guess what? Mike Candrea continues and will continue to win national championships.

Janssen: Exactly.

Cain: Augie Garrido, the head baseball coach at the University of Texas who was the head baseball coach at Cal State Fullerton, has won five national championships spanning four decades. The thing that Augie said after they won their first national championship was “is this it, is this all there is.” I think until you get there you wonder “well yeah there is going to be something there” – I think another reason why those coaches like Augie and Coach Candrea continue to be successful is that they’re gotten there and they realize exactly what you are talking about. It’s about coaching for significance. Through coaching for significance comes the end result – success.

Janssen: That is what I think a lot of coaches miss is if you coach through significance you’re more likely to get the success that you want as well because your kids are going to run through a wall for you because they know you’ve got their best interests at heart, that you care about them as individuals, and that you’re not that piece of meat that “hey we’re going to use you for a couple years while we’ve got you and then sayonara we’ll take the next group in.”

You look at some of the best coaches out there – Greg Dale, who is a colleague of mine, we got to a couple of years ago write a book called The Seven Secrets of Successful Coaches. We purposely took a look at coaches who had not just won but won the respect of their student athletes in the process. Those coaches really do have a big impact on their kids and when it comes time to recruiting and parents take a look at “is this a person I want to send my kid to for the next four years” then certainly these aspects take into account.

I think the other question – as you were talking about before – is if you’ve played for someone do you want your son or daughter to go play for that person? Would you send them back there because of the experience that you had?

Cain: You mentioned the book that you and Dr. Dale wrote together and I’ve read that book The Seven C’s of Successful Coaches. Could you talk to the listeners at home? I know a lot of them probably have it and have read it but for those maybe who haven’t what are the seven C’s and talk about that book a little bit because it’s fantastic.

Janssen: Well thank you. I’ll see if I can remember them all here. I talk about them enough so they should be in there.

Number one is character. I think all of these – as we interviewed coaches and athletes to put this book together obviously you’ve got to be a person of character. You’ve got to be trustworthy, you’ve got to be honest in your approach, and you’ve got to win the right way. It’s not about – as we were talking about before – winning at all costs but winning the right way.

Certainly commitment is a big part of that. If you want your kids to work hard you’ve got to be setting that standard, you’ve got to be planning practices, you’ve got to be trying to get better in every single way. Obviously your coaches listening here have made an investment in getting better so hopefully they’re got that taken care of.

The third one is competent. You’ve got to know what you’re talking about. You don’t have to be the world’s foremost expert in pitching or catching or hitting or anything like that but you’ve at least got to have a solid knowledge of what you are talking about if you expect kids to listen to you.

Caring is another huge one. You’ve got to show the kids – this is the old saying that people don’t care how much you know until they know how much you care. It’s all the relationship building stuff that the coaches have to do off the field. Again going back to Candrea I can remember him saying there were times where he’d have a 2-2 ½ hour practice and he’d say the most important part of the day was the five minutes after practice that he ended up talking to somebody and making a huge breakthrough with someone. That was the biggest breakthrough that they had even though they just spent two hours physically doing some stuff. So there is the caring part of it.

Another one is confidence builder. I think so many people go through ups and downs with their confidence and as the coach you’ve got to show them you’re right behind them. I think that is what Joe Torre does so well with the Yankees for so many years. I forget who exactly it was but one of his pitchers one time said “no matter how bad you’re throwing you know that Joe is not going to give up on you, he is going to be in your corner no matter what.” Whereas sometimes coaches and our egos we have a tendency if somebody is not playing well we kind of distance ourselves from them and that is the last thing–

Cain: Don’t want to catch it.

Janssen: Exactly. And that is the last thing that that person needs and now they don’t respect you in that process too.

Going along with this another one of the C’s is communicator. Obviously you’ve got to be able to communicate and relate well but a huge part of that is the whole listening thing and finding out where people are coming from first before you tell them exactly what you think they need to do and you find out well that is not exactly where they are coming from.

Then the last one that we talk about is just a sense of consistency both in terms of your overall philosophy – it doesn’t mean you’re not going to adapt to certain personnel but having certain things that you’re known for (kind of a “brand” to use marketing terminology there) – and the other consistency is just in your moods and your attitude and lot letting the highs get too high or the lows get too low. If you’ve got a three game win streak hopefully you’re a similar coach to some degree as when you’ve got a three game losing streak and not having a Jekyll and Hyde kind of approach because then kids don’t know what to expect from you.

I don’t think you need to be perfect on all those but I think when recruits look at programs and certainly when student athletes decide “am I going to buy into this guy or am I not” those seven things either consciously or unconsciously are things that we all evaluate. If you’ve got those seven things going for you I think you’ve got credibility as a coach. When you’ve got credibility as a coach, a leader, a teacher, a president, whatever it may be, you will have people’s buy in and commitment – all those fun words that you need to have a successful program.

Cain: I think one of the things that coaches can do – and you do this in your book – is it gives them tools to evaluate how they do in the seven C’s. It’s a self evaluation. Then most importantly they give an evaluation form to their kids, to their athletes, and their athletes get to evaluate the coaching staff if the coach can put the ego aside and be willing to do it, those seven C’s.

Janssen: It’s hard to do.

Cain: Then they can start to make some real breakthroughs as a coach. Once they break through as a coach, guess what? The program and the kids are going to follow.

Janssen: I agree. A lot of times when I work with coaches in programs the coaches are frustrating. It’s like “fix my team chemistry” or “fix my kids, they’re not mentally tough” and all that. Certainly there are areas that need to be worked on but a lot of times if coaches might make a little adjustment in their coaching strategy it’s amazing what it does to the coachability of the kids because they’re a lot more receptive to what is going on.

As coaches I always ask coaches “imagine could a player get any better if you had never given him any feedback, if you never watched any video with the kid and what was going well, if you never gave them feedback on their swing, how much better is that kid going to get throughout the course of the year” and they all know the kid is not going to develop.

It’s the same thing as coaches. If you never get any feedback from your staff members or if you never get any feedback from the kids that you’re actually working with finding out what is connecting with them, what is not connecting with them – and you’re not going to let the inmates run the asylum but you are hopefully going to check in with those kids and find out what is working so that obviously you can repeat that stuff and try to make some adjustments to the stuff that just isn’t connecting with the kids that you have in your program.

Cain: I like the fact you talk about as coaches if we never gave our kids feedback we could not expect them to get any better yet as coaches how do we get feedback so that we can approve.

I know you talked about The Seven C’s of Successful Coaches. What are some of the other products that you’ve got? I know you’ve got a great line of books and some manual and some videos. What are some of those other products that coaches could get to find ways to improve themselves and their coaching of Peak Performance/team building/leadership/mental game type stuff?

Janssen: Obviously you mentioned The Seven Secrets as one and that’s where we get a chance to interview some of sport’s greatest coaches. Roy Williams, the basketball coach at Carolina. Mike Krzyzewski, of the Carolina/Duke rivalry. Pat Summitt’s in there. Mike Candrea, who I mentioned before. Jerry Yeagley, who is the Indiana men’s soccer coach; they won six national championships. Mary Wise, who is the Florida volleyball coach; they haven’t won a national championship but it doesn’t mean she is not a credible coach – she has been several final fours. Mike Gillespie, who was at USC. A lot of just really great coaches who have won their student athletes’ respect along the way.

You’ve got the championship team building book where you take a look at what does it mean if a team has got great team chemistry. Again there – I don’t know if it’s a ting I have with sevens and the letter C – there is kind of seven characteristics that I have people evaluate their team on in terms of complementary roles. Commitment is in there. Constructive conflict. Cohesion. There is a variety of different things that coaches can use to try to evaluate where they are. Then depending on how that evaluation goes there is a variety of practical things that can implement with their team.

Mike Fox, who we talked about a little bit before (he is the baseball coach at Carolina) gave up last season in their fall ball every Wednesday – he said “I hated doing it as a coach because I thought we were missing time on the field” – but every Wednesday he dedicated some time to simple team building things that they could do as a team. He said “at the time I was really reluctant because are we falling behind.” He said it’s the best thing they absolutely ever did. As he looked as last year’s roster certainly they had some very talented players but he said “years past I have had some more talented teams but what this team had was chemistry.” They had something special and they not only played for them individually but they played for each other. That, he felt, was a real key to their success last year because he invested the time during fall ball and certainly carried it over to spring to do some team building stuff.

Cain: Mike Fox being the head baseball coach at North Carolina who competed for a national championship and ended up losing to Oregon State. It was a great series. Btu they gave up every Wednesday in the fall to do team building activity.

Janssen: To do some team building stuff.

Cain: Were there activities that Mike did or did you go in and do activities with the team? I’m sure he communicated with you either way. How did that work?

Janssen: I’ve got what’s called a Peak Performance Playbook that goes right along with that championship team building book. Some of the stuff he would take from there. I’ve got a website called www.TeamCaptainsNetwork.com so he and his assistants had access to that where again there is a lot of different stuff. So they would do a lot of them. Sometimes it was just simple things as “hey let’s all go bowling together.” It was just a time for them as players to really get to know each other away from the field and start developing some bonds and connections that would really come and help them get through at Omaha as well.

Cain: It’s all that off the field team building stuff that translates to the field which I think a lot of times people don’t know if that is going to happen. I think that does happen.

Janssen: It’s an investment. As Coach Fox said initially he was reluctant. We’re missing all this on the field time. A lot of times – it’s old Steven Covey stuff with the seven habits by sharpening the saw, by doing some things that may not have an immediate impact right now on what you’re doing on the field but you’re starting to set a foundation for that chemistry and you’re going to end up seeing that pay off for you later down the road because you’re sharpening the saw of your team’s chemistry and that will pay off later.

Cain: Beautiful. We’re running long here. We’ve got about 24 minutes down for the interview. Two more questions for you, Jeff.

Janssen: Okay.

Cain: You mentioned when you were at Arizona you had an opportunity to learn from some of the great coaches. You mentioned Mike Candrea, Lute Olson, some of the other coaches you got the opportunity to work with in North Carolina. What would you say to a young coach or to a young Peak Performance coach/sports psychology guy if you knew then what you know now what would you do differently?

Janssen: I mean that is a great question. I think a lot of it is just finding a mentor that you respect – or mentors that you respect. I think especially when you are a young coach sometimes you try to be those other people and that is not always going to work for you because you’ve got your own unique style, you’ve got your own unique ways of doing things. I think find a mentor, learn from them not only what is working but hopefully you are find a few things that “when I am in a position to be a coach or a leader I may do things a little bit differently” and just try to soak up as much information from them in the sporting world.

Don’t be afraid to go to coaches from other sports. Carolina has got Anson Dorrance who has won an amazing 19 national championships. If you can’t learn something from him in the process then I don’t know who you can learn from. There are so many experienced coaches usually on a coaching staff that you can learn from along the way.

I’ve always been an insatiable reader. I think what better thing to do than when people put all of their best ideas into either a book or a video or an audio or something like that and learn from their experience and just pulling one idea out that you can use is going to be critical.

I think the biggest thing is being a sponge. One thing that we’ve started at Carolina is we call it a fast track for assistant coaches. We’ve got so many great head coaches at Carolina that what we do on a periodic basis is we bring the assistant coaches in and we have the head coaches share leadership lessons that they learned along the way and what they did to get in their positions, what jobs they may have turned down along the way and why they turned those down, how they have assembled a staff, what they did in that interview to get people to hire them, the biggest mistakes they’ve made and what they’ve learned from them. I think the more you can do the stuff informally – or if you’re fortunate to be in an athletic department where you can do stuff formally I think the better off you’re going to be.

Cain: Awesome. You mentioned that all the products that you have are available at www.JeffJanssen.com. You mentioned that you love to read. Your top three books that you would recommend people read other than the ones that you’ve authored?

Janssen: Oh man. Well there is on my website – I think it’s on the business side of www.JeffJanssen.com I’ve got my top ten coaches books that are on there. Wooden’s I think is a great one. The little lifetime of observations on and off the court. That one is spectacular.

Anson Dorrance, it’s not by Anson but it’s called The Man Watching where Sports Illustrated writer Tim Carruthers spent four years embedded in Anson’s program. It’s called The Man Watching. An amazing book.

I really like Rick Pitino’s Lead To Succeed. Whatever you feel about Rick Pitino and his career I think his book is really, really good especially from a leadership standpoint. Lead To Succeed. He’s got Success As A Choice as well too. Those would be three that I would definitely put towards the top of the list.

Cain: Awesome. And I would add to that list the books that Jeff has. Those are available at www.JeffJanssen.com. If any of the coaches here listening to this interview wanted to bring you in to speak to their teams or work with their teams (or maybe I don’t know if you do one-on-one coaching over the phone or through email) what are some ways for people to get a hold of you to get some more of this great information and knowledge that you have to offer?

Janssen: I think the website, as you mentioned. Jeff@JeffJanssen.com is my email address. We’ve got an 800 number too: 1-888-721-TEAM. Those are simple ways to get a hold of me. I’d love to come out and spend some time.

A lot of what I do (as we were sharing before) is a lot of leadership academies for coaches and a variety of student athlete leaders to develop the leaders that you’re going to need to succeed.

Cain: Awesome. The phone number (to make sure we got it right) is 888-721-TEAM and Jeff@JeffJanssen.com.

Janssen: You got it. Thanks for this opportunity.

Cain: Jeff, thank you man. For the listeners back home, guys, I just spent two hours listening to Jeff talk to the best student athletes the state of Vermont has to offer. If you’re serious about coaching for significance and want to take your athletes – from a leadership perspective – to another level Jeff’s the guy that can do it. Thank you Jeff.

Janssen: Thank you.

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You can follow Coach Wasson and Southlake Carroll HS Football @SLCDragonFB.

PODCAST TRANSCRIPTION

Cain: Hey how are you doing? Brian Cain your Peak Performance Coach here with the Peak Performance Podcast. Today I’m super fired up to have our guest Hal Wasson. Hal is the head football coach of the Carroll Dragon football program in Southlake, Texas, one of the most sought after clinicians and speakers on program building, culture building, and winning at the highest level of high school football.

Coach Wasson thank you so much for taking time out of your busy schedule to join us here on the podcast.

Wasson: I’m really happy to be here, Brian. I’m feeding off your energy right now. I’m excited to just be around you today.

Cain: Awesome. Well I’m glad you’re here. The feeling is mutual. If you would could you give our listeners kind of your background in terms of where you played football and then how you got to be the head football coach here at Southlake Carroll.

Wasson: Well you know it’s a journey. It was a long process. I grew up in a small town in East Texas – Kerens, Texas. I was a multisport guy. I played all four sports in my high school. You played the sports, you were in the band, student council, beta club, all those things. I graduated from high school. Obviously I thought was better than what I was and I jumped into a junior college. I played a couple years at Navarro Junior College. I was fortunate to be on a couple of championship teams. I parlayed that into finishing out at Abilene Christian University where I played a couple of years and was ready to conquer the world.

Initially I didn’t think about coaching. I was thinking about the business world. We all want to make money right Brian? But the closer I got to graduation I realized my passion is kids. It’s being around kids and developing relationships and trying to get guys to reach their full potential. So I changed majors in mid stream.

I got my first coaching job at Groesbeck, Texas, actually as a head baseball coach and assistant football. I met the love of my life, my wife Sally. She was a cheerleader at the University of Houston. I had an opportunity to come to the metroplex area as a varsity coach and realized I wasn’t getting any prettier. So I jumped in and went to Kingwood High School as an assistant football coach. I spent that year to let her graduate, we got married, then believe it or not the next move was as a head track coach/assistant football.

I realized I was kind of spinning. I wanted to get in the best program possible. At that time I actually took a demotion as far as a varsity job to a freshman job. I got into Corsicana. I was elevated to a varsity coach after a year or so. That is when my journey really began because being in that quality of a program I got the opportunity to be the head coach at Italy High School, a little two-way school. I was there a couple of years. Then I got the opportunity to be an athletic director and a head football coach at San Saba. We were fortunate to win there and made a move to a couple of other places, a little bit bigger schools, AD, AD head football coach. Every move I made I made so many great relationships, met a lot of great people, and from each place I learned a little bit more about myself, I learned a lot more about how to build a program.

I did that journey obviously blessed with a couple of beautiful kids. Chase and Chelsea were born during all those journeys. We made the transition after a few years. My son was going to be a sophomore in high school. We had the opportunity to come to Southlake Carroll as a position guy. I got out of head coaching after 16 years because I believe as long as you keep your priorities in order good things will happen. It wasn’t about me. My family had moved – as you can tell – all over the place. I really wanted to put my kids in a great environment as far as academics and athletics go. We chose Southlake Carroll. My son played here a couple of years. My daughter went to school here and graduated from here. We won a state championship there with my son as the senior quarterback.

I had a fabulous year. I worked there with Coach Todd Dodge. After we won that championship I had the great opportunity to go to Keller Fossil Ridge as the head football coach – again getting back on what my passion was (head coaching). I did that after. After 4-5 years there Coach Dodge took the head job at the University of North Texas and because I was here understanding the (here’s that key word) culture of the Dragon Nation I had the opportunity to come back here at Carroll as the head football coach in 2007. My wife and daughter stayed here at school. My wife taught here during that tenure at Fossil Ridge – which I am greatly indebted to Keller Fossil Ridge for allowing me to get back into the head coaching avenue.

So good things happened because I was in the right place at the right time around the right people trying to make good choices. It’s been an incredible journey and I am just so excited to be a head football coach at Southlake Carroll.

Cain: I want to make sure that we definitely talk about the Dragon Nation and that culture that is created (that you’ve created) in that program. Before we go there you mentioned that you coached your son Chase who was a quarterback and his senior year they won a state championship and he was Texas High School Football 5A Player of the Year. Is that correct?

Wasson: That is correct.

Cain: Talk a little bit if you would because we don’t often get the chance to – now you weren’t the head coach when he was playing right? You were an assistant coach. But talk about fathers coaching their kids and what advice would you give to the parents that are doing that.

Wasson: That is a great question. My wife was a great referee in all this because as dads we want to be the best we can be. We’re lathered up, we’re fired up. It wasn’t an easy transition. My son was a quarterback as a sophomore in high school at a smaller school. We moved into a great program at Southlake Carroll. They had a great quarterback. He changed positions. He played a couple other positions which was a very valuable experience for him because he learned a lot of other – there are a lot of moving parts to having a great team. So his senior year he moved back to quarterback. He didn’t play it at all his junior year. This is pivotal in our deal.

I remember the spring ball I didn’t think he was as good as he needed to be. That father/son, we always expect them to be way above the charts. It’s a Sunday morning and Coach Dodge said “hey you let me handle this, don’t get on him about this or that.” Well we’re at the breakfast table and I just quirked one of those “you know Chase if you don’t get a lot better we’re not going to win a lot of football games next year.” Well my wife, as mothers do, put her foot down. She said “you’ve always told me we don’t do this stuff at home, leave it at the practice field, leave it at the field house.” So I learned real quick you always want to please who? The moms. You want to please the moms. So I backed off.

We rocked along there. Had a good summer. Great things started happening. Then the next conversation we had was we always had personal goals, filled those out, team goals (in other words you had a vision going in), and Chase let me read his believe it or not. I take that back he didn’t let me read it. It was on his desk up in his room and I just passed up the room and I saw it. I said “Chase you’ve got to be kidding me, you want to be 5A All-State quarterback, throw for all these yards, rush for all these yards, you envision yourself as the player of the year and your team goal is to win a State Championship.” Mind you we had just moved up for 4A to 5A. I said “let’s be realistic.” He looks at me dead serious and he says “dad if you don’t believe in yourself where are you going to get?” I said “great point.” He said “this is going to happen, I’ve seen it happen, I’ve played this all through my mind for two years. I told you when I was in the fifth grade the first State Championship you would bring home as a football coach I would be the quarterback and that is what was going to happen.”

Just to backtrack briefly. The coach from Mexia, where I had stopped, called me literally that summer and said “hey I got you a job.” I’m looking in the desk and in the desk it was carved out “dad I will win a state championship my senior year.” That is what he said in the fifth grade.

Cain: Wow.

Wasson: On the footnote of that I told my wife and I tell any young coach now, I told my son “you never call me Coach Wasson, I am your dad, 24/7 I am your dad. With that being said I am going to coach you harder and be tougher on you than anybody else in that locker room. I want you to understand that that is going to be tough love. But you never call me anything other than ‘dad.’”

Obviously he never called me anything. It wasn’t “dad” or “coach.” But I tell you what I would not trade for those times. It was an unbelievable journey and my son has really been a great mentor to me about positive approach. Believe in yourself. You are only as good as you think you’re going to be. However that’s easily said. It takes a lot of work to get there.

Cain: And you’ve done a tremendous amount of work both as an assistant and now as a head coach in terms of creating a championship culture with the Dragon Nation. I mean looked at as maybe the marquee in premier high school football program in the country. The first game I went to moving here to Texas two years ago you guys are playing a school from Tulsa, Oklahoma in Cowboy Stadium. There are 30,000 people there. I’ve got goose bumps all over my body talking about it. It was unbelievable.

What is the Dragon Nation? You talk about Dragons in the culture. What is that?

Wasson: It’s hard to define. In simple terms it’s simply committed to excellence, being the very best you can be every day. As we know that is a very difficult process. It’s hard to do. Sometimes you have to fake it till you make it. That culture is something that has been here from the Bob Ledbetter days through the Todd Dodge days.

I will tell you, Brian, in today’s world it’s harder to keep that culture just because of stuff. There are so many outside distractions, things that are happening so fast and furious. There are so many things that could distract a young man. But I have been very blessed here. This is an unbelievable community, an unbelievable school district that is very passionate and committed to excellence not only in athletics but more significantly in academics. They put a premium on being the best you can be every day and that helps us tremendously as coaches.

Cain: Talk a little bit about the culture and the system that you have, Dragons. Having been a part of your football camp last year where you starting with the kids who are coming up that are in kindergarten or in second grade and you’re training them in the culture of Dragons so that when they get to the high school level it’s not something new. It’s something that they’re ingrained in. The Dragon logo is the same logo for every school in the district from K-12. Talk a little bit about Dragons and those core principles or core values that you instill in the guys in the football program.

Wasson: That is a great thing. I’m not giving you tremendous accolades here but I’m going to give you a pat on the back because you changed the way I look at things a lot too. We don’t want to be too wordy and have too many signs out there, too many things that they have to think about. I know it starts with drill work. Everything we do is Dragon Pride. Well what does pride mean to us? Personal responsibility and daily excellence. If we ingrain that in our guys when we hear “pride” that’s what it means. That is another hard thing to do.

The things that we came in – Dragons are significant to us because we don’t see Dragons, we see the D for discipline. That is what we see. When we see the R in Dragons we see trust. When we see the A in Dragons we see attitude. We see all those things that come out for us. Obviously the S is for being selfless. Successful programs are selfless programs. Successful relationships are selfless relationships.

What does the world teach us to be? It’s all about me. The world teaches it me and all of us today to be selfish and it’s all about me. How can I get to the top the fastest? Who do I have to walk over? How many counts can I go to to make me better?

It’s about TEAM. We all know that acronym – together everyone achieves more. But our core values are distinct and through focusing on what you can control you can get to that destination.

Cain: When you come into your complex and you walk in your see the state championship pictures on the wall, you see the state players of the year on the wall. There is a sign right before you walk into the indoor complex that says “one play one day at a time.” Talk a little bit if you would about the importance of the mental game of football and that one-play-at-a-time approach.

Wasson: That is a great question because as a young coach when I first got my head job it was all about Xs and Ox. Go, go, go. Lots of reps, lots of reps, lots of reps. That’s all significant, but I learned a long time ago (and it has been really ingrained in me in the last few years) that we invest so much time in the physical aspect of the game but when someone asks you a real simple question “how important is the mental aspect” and you say “man it’s huge,” “well how much time are you investing in the mental part,” you say “well we talk about it five minutes after practice maybe a couple days a week here and there.”

This changed our approach now because we invest a minimal 20-30 minutes a day in mental preparation. When you really take that concept and gravitate to it you choose at that moment to start really focusing on the things that you can control and not on the things you can control. That is a waste of time and energy. How important is energy on a football team? Huge. If you’ve wasted all of it on stuff and not things of significance then you’re wasting your time.

Cain: One of the things that totally impressed me last year about what you would do is in the mornings before school in Texas – for the listeners outside of the state of Texas who are unaware they have an opportunity here called “athletic period” where every day as the football coach you get to see your kids year round. Why every state in the country doesn’t do that I have no idea. I think it’s a genius opportunity for connection with students in the school that have a passion for the same thing you have passion for – in this case football – and you get to train them physically, mentally, character leadership.

One of the things you did everyday is you trained mindset. What are some of those key principles? You mentioned controlling what you can control, your championship culture. How do you every day, Coach, come up with that content to deliver to them in that morning meeting where you are developing what I would call the morning mindset meeting?

Wasson: Well another great question. I left this out: excellence. What is the definition? What does excellence look like? We start with doing very common things like blocking, tackling, lifting weights, running, everybody does that. But our start is we do it with uncommon energy, we do it with an uncommon attitude about the way we go about things. Again, we control our effort. We control our energy or attention to detail. That is where it starts.

We take (say) the word discipline. We’ll use it and maybe spend a week or two depending on where our team is (that is where we have to gravitate as coaches). First of all you have to know who is your team? What is the team makeup? It may mean “we need some discipline, we need more discipline,” and we’ll take a daily occurrence. It may be something that comes up in the NFL on an NFL team or collegiate team or high school team where a guy has had a discipline issue. We’ll use common things that they read about.

We know this, as long as you bring honor to your football program and your family name your life is pretty simple. If you dishonor your family name or dishonor your program your life gets really complicated. Brian, we like simple. We try to keep it simple. But we’ll take the discipline part and define it. What does it look like? What does it taste like? Who are teams that have discipline? Who are programs? Who are players? Then use those current events and incorporate them into where we are in the particular week.

Cain: So you’re kind of always in research mode (is what I would call it).

Wasson: No doubt.

Cain: Research mode where you’re looking for things to help reinforce your championship culture. When we talk about Dragon DNA there was a poster that you had created that went up into every single classroom in the entire district. Every kid that was playing football in the Dragon Nation from peewee at six years old up until varsity and high school had the same exact poster – which we’ll put out here on social media as people look at and see this podcast. It lists the Dragon DNA.

You already mentioned discipline. When they see the R in Dragon they see trust. When they see the A they think attitude. The G they see toughness. Could you talk a little bit about toughness and kind of that embracing and overcoming all challenges? That is what football is is just one challenge after another after another.

Wasson: It really is. Adversity: some people say “well adversity builds character.” We look at it as adversity reveals your character. That’s a mindset. It’s going to reveal. When it’s 105 degrees out there it’s not easy. We literally do lessons about the mental toughness part and the things you can control. How do you prepare for the heat? How do you prepare for the rain? How do you prepare for things you can’t control? It’s all mental toughness.

I know one week in toughness we were using things like an oak tree and a palm tree where an oak tree will snap when adverse storms hit. You ever wonder why they don’t put oak trees near the beach? That is why they put palm trees, because they can bend.

One year we had a great quarterback in Kenny Hill. As coaches (as you just alluded to) you research things. They think we’re rocket scientists but you look up and, man, a seven day forecast has wind and rain. Well in a pass-happy offense wind and rain normally aren’t good for pass-happy offenses.

We’re playing a great team. It’s about the third or fourth round of the playoffs. We’re down 21-0, had not had a first down, and there are two minutes or less to go in the half. The quarterback is frustrated, everybody is frustrated, and an old guy that was kind of our mental conditioning coach said “you’ve got to have some mechanism as a coach whether it’s drink a cup of water and wad that cup up and trash it,” I was having to do a lot of that that night because I was about ready to twist off.

Cain: Bottle, release, and flush it.

Wasson: Bottle and release, that’s right. So Kenny comes off the field and I said “Kenny right now it’s not going our way. Tell me what the theme of the week has been all week.” He says “Coach adjust your sails, what does that have to do with anything?” I said “brother it’s time to adjust your sails because we can’t control the wind, we can’t control some of the breaks we’ll get, but what we can control is the next play.”

Literally this is the craziest thing and it really transformed our program. It’s one of those moments in time where we get our team over there and said “now is the time to adjust those sails, there are 42 seconds to go in the half now (as I recall), we’re 65 yards away from paydirt.” Kenny draws back and launches a perfect 48 yard strike to an open receiver and we go down 21-7. The kids come off the field running. You have those spaces in time that are suspended. They’re all running. “Adjust your sails! Adjust your sails!” We go in at halftime and that’s all the chant was, “adjust your sails!” We go in there and I’m going “hey guys I don’t have anything to say, you know the routine, it’s one play at a time, you’ve got to make a couple adjustments.”

Long story short we won the game going away by a couple of touchdowns. The kids came by. That was one of those rallying moments. They said “Coach now it’s all coming together, it’s all how you view things.”

Cain: That is awesome. Toughness to embrace the adversity but having something to go to in terms of creating a mindset of like the palm tree of bend but never break. Or adjust your sails and make adversity your advantage is something I’ve heard you say a lot.

Wasson: That is the toughest part. What do we live in today? We live in a soft world. We really do. We’ve all got air conditioning. We have instantaneous communication, instantaneous travel. We could be anywhere we want to be. That is what I love so much. I think football is the greatest team sport because there are so many moving parts and the toughness comes into fruition so many times because you are going to have to handle adversity. It’s not always going to go your way. Are you going to crack and pop every time it doesn’t go your way? As we all know, Brian, that’s a long tedious journey too. As you alluded we get these guys when they’re young and start disciplining those guys towards the toughness aspect of the game. It’s huge.

Cain: You also talk about in Dragons it’s the discipline, the trust, the attitude, the toughness, the work ethic, and the confidence that helps you to be selfless and put team over me. When you talk about building toughness and creating discipline through work ethic which will give you confidence – think about the Dragonmaker, maybe the most grueling physically demanding conditioning in all of high school football. What is the Dragonmaker?

Wasson: That is where – we never assume (keyword: assume) anything. I know everybody thinks “I put on the Dragon jersey and I’m the next _____ guy,” the All-State guy or the state champion guy. We tell them going in “we’re going to have this big pot and everybody is going to go into the same pot and we’re going to start creating our identity, our team, and it’s not going to be easy” because we all know confidence can be and is a learned behavior. You choose to be confident or you choose unfortunately not to be. Obviously it’s hard to be confident when you’re not being productive. We’re all about what? The end product. The results. Well how are you going to get there? Through the conditioning of the Dragonmaker.

The Dragonmaker – we could talk for two days on the Dragonmaker. It’s a boot camp (more or less) where you start earning your stripes. We have obviously a lot of stuff we have developed: a peer group council. It’s not necessarily the star player who is in there or the guy that you think is going to be the captain. It’s guys that need to be a leader that aren’t. We’re all acclimatizing ourselves to our culture.

Obviously we know the culture is the feeling we want to have every time we walk in that building. That doesn’t mean we all have to go to the movie together. We don’t really have to like each other outside the building. But when we come in that building we’ve all got to have the same mindset, have the same goal, have the same vision. It goes back to what you’re saying: one day, one play, one game at a time, not trying to jump ahead.

Dragonmaker kind of overwhelmed me the first time because when you come to Southlake they’re not talking about “who are we playing in district, who is the bi-district game,” it’s “who do you think we’ll play for state.” You’re like whoa that is overwhelming. There is a lot of stuff that has to happen. We break it down in Dragonmaker. What is our goal? Well I know that. Our goal is to win simply the next game. Well I know exactly what Tulsa Union looks like. I know what that looks like. What is your vision? Well it’s real simple Coach, to win the last game. That condenses everything right there.

We start with those principles in Dragonmaker through a lot of speed. Everything is structured, organized, disciplined on command. Basically you’re in the weight room 15 minutes. It’s high rep, high volume, everybody is lathered up screaming, hollering, yelling. One guy is not verbalizing anything because if you haven’t noticed in today’s world everybody is texting and they don’t know how to verbalize. Well if you don’t verbalize there is a consequence. “Coach I’m just a quiet guy.” Well good. Your whole team is going to be punished for it because we can’t win unless we’re communicating.

You’ve got to get out of your comfort zone in Dragonmaker. You’ve got to force yourself. You’ve got to act differently than you feel. That is what you have to do. Through that and then going out in the indoor and (by the way) Thunderdome it’s nothing but pushups and sit-ups. It’s real simple but it everybody is not in unison guess who is – there are consequences. We don’t use punishments. There are consequences for not being in unison. Then after 20 minutes we’re out in the indoor and it’s anything from foot fire to agility drills to mat drills. High octane brother. I mean we are lathered up. The music is playing. It’s loud and tempo. If it ever gets quiet there is no doubt there is a consequence.

Dragonmaker can go seven days. It can go 28 days. We don’t skip anything until we feel as a coaching staff and that peer group council – and they’re tough on themselves – “Coach we’re ready to move on.” “Well good. We don’t think you’re ready just yet.” So normally it depends on teams but we’ve had them go four weeks and we’ve had them go 10 days. We are creating that culture. There are no shortcuts and we don’t take any shortcuts. It’s hard.

Cain: Awesome Coach. I know you’ve got to fly here so we’ve got just one more question for you if you could. The million dollar question – which I’m sure you are aware of – is what do you know now about creating a culture that you wish you knew when you were just getting started as a football coach?

Wasson: Wow. That’s powerful because it’s all the way you view things. I’ve learned this and I’ve learned it the hard way: no one can make you feel any differently unless you allow them to make you feel that way. You can never win enough football games. I get it. You can never win enough. But you can control how you approach things. You can control how you feel about yourself. You’ve got to really put the blinders on about what everybody else thinks of you or what just happened that last play.

I’ll tell you, Brian, that is another story. I spent too much time focusing on the last game or the last play and it just beat me up all week. Well who controls that? Guess what? I do. I control how I feel. It’s hard. I’ll tell you, Brian, for an older coach (I’m not going to say old coach), a veteran, seasoned guy, I kept saying “I’m smarter than this, I’ve got to figure out a way.”

That’s when I came into the mental conditioning part. What do we want to do? You start looking at the Alabamas or the Ohio States or the TCs, those guys that are consistently – “man how do they consistently do things the right way?” Everyone I talked to said “we really focus on mental conditioning.” Well I’m smart enough to know if it works for them it can work for us.

I think you have to change your mindset as a coach. You have to tweak your approach a little bit. That doesn’t mean you discontinue or take away from fundamentals (blocking, tackling, lifting) but what you can – and it’s truly investing. I tell our guys everyday “you walk in this building I don’t want you to think ‘man I have to lift weights today, I have to go watch a video today’ but ‘man I get to do that stuff.” It changes the way you feel. It changes the way you view things.

The mental approach, I think, at the end of the day – I tell our players “I don’t know how it works for you, I know what it’s done for me personally, every day is a new challenge, every play is a new challenge, it takes toughness, it takes mental discipline to snap and move on to that next play.” That separates the good teams from the great teams, the elite teams and elite players from the good ones. It’s just that little bit.

You see them every day on TV, you can watch them in high school football. That is why I’m so blessed, Brian, to be here. Our kids are very – they’ve got a lot of stuff (they really do, they’re blessed) but they really invest in the mental part of the game, things they can control. It’s really hard when everybody else is telling you as a player “man you’re better than that guy, you should be playing.” Well can you sort of trust your coach? You either do or don’t. If you choose to block that out you can become an elite team and a better football player. More importantly, Brian, you are going to become a better person. You are going to have a better relationship. You’re going to love your wife better. You are going to be more selfless. You are going to be more approachable because people are going to feed off your energy. It’s going to be a feeding frenzy is what it’s going to be.

I’d better slow down because I’m about to get fired up and get ready to play. It’s always great being here around you, Brian, because I’m feeding off you brother.

Cain: Well, Coach, I appreciate you making time out of your hectic schedule here to come over. I think there is one thing that you just hit in terms of Alabama does it, Florida State does it, Ohio State does it, the Dragons do it. The best leaders – and we are sitting here with one of the best leaders in all of high school athletics – leaders play follow the leader. If you are listening to this podcast I hope you follow some of the leadership and the culture strategies and some of the mindset building techniques that Coach Wasson shared with us here today. Coach, it’s been an honor. Thank you for joining us here on the Peak Performance Podcast.

Wasson: Thanks for having me Brian.

You can follow Alan and Colleyville Heritage Baseball on Twitter @CHHS_Baseball.

PODCAST TRANSCRIPTION

Cain: Hey how are you doing? Brian Cain your Peak Performance Coach here with another episode of the Peak Performance Podcast. Today our guest is Colleyville Heritage High School head baseball coach Alan McDougal. He just wrapped up his tenth season of success and he is here to talk to us today about how to build a mindset in your baseball program, how to create a championship culture, and how to coach the mental game.

Alan has now been coaching the mental game for a number of years and is one of the best in the country when it comes to creating a one-pitch-at-a-time approach within his culture. Something I’m super excited to talk about today is how he runs a fast-paced up-tempo practice in baseball which you don’t see all the time. Alan, welcome to the podcast. I appreciate you making the time to join us.

McDougal: Brian, it’s a pleasure to be here face-to-face with you for the first time getting to talk about the mental game and share it with some other coaches.

Cain: Awesome. If you would could you kind of take us through your background in kind of a quick one minute snapshot of where you grew up and how you got to where you are today as the head coach at Colleyville.

McDougal: I grew up in Sherman, Texas, about 60 miles north of Dallas. I went to Baylor University to play baseball. I got hurt. I played a year there. I got out of college and went into coaching in the Fort Worth area. I was introduced to Brian Cain when I got the head coaching job at Colleyville Heritage through a TCU baseball camp my first year there. I have luckily got to get some CDs and different things and got the first exposure there.

As we transferred through my career at Colleyville, Brian, with TCU and some players that we had run through, helped me to just stay focused on the mental game and to get some stuff there. When Brian relocated into the Dallas/Fort Worth area it kind of went to another level.

Cain: I remember the day clearly. I was driving from Phoenix, Arizona, moving to Southlake, Texas. I was in my car and I got an email. It popped up and it said “Alan McDougal, Colleyville Heritage High School.” I go “man, Colleyville Heritage High School, that sounds familiar.” I had spoken there one time at a coach’s clinic that a mutual friend of ours, Aaron Weintraub, had put on. I’m like “I think that’s close to Southlake.” So I think I just called you out of the blue after getting that email and said “hey man what’s up.” You were talking about how you had used the Pride program and used some other training tools with your program at Colleyville. I was moving in within 10 minutes of where you lived and we’ve developed a relationship since then which has been awesome.

If you would, Alan, could you kind of talk to us about what’s the mental game from your perspective as a head high school baseball coach in one of the top programs in the country.

McDougal: Well I think we’re always trying to get to the mountain top (which is Round Rock, Texas) and we’re trying to find different ways to get there. Most of us have lots of kids that are very comparable so what sets it apart. With your introduction to the mental part of the game and then I get to look at what do the best of the best do that sets them apart. I look at Augie Garrido or Skip Bertman or Tim Corbin or Jim Schlossnagle locally. I think what they do that is different is they have a mental aspect to their game that sets them apart.

It’s not just a one year thing. It’s you look back at the track record and the thing that they do that is different from most is they have a mental curriculum that their players are ready to go when the stuff hits the fan – and it does hit the fan.

Cain: I heard a great quote one time from Clint Hurdle, manager of the Pittsburgh Pirates. He said “great leaders play follow the leader.” They find out what people are doing who are already having success and they follow what they do.

You’ve mentioned some of the legends in the game: Skip Bertman, Augie Garrido, Tim Corbin, Coach Schlossnagle at TCU. What are some of the things that the coaches who are listening to this podcast could go home and go into their program and get started? So if they were to get started as a high school baseball coach (or any sport really) with coaching the mental game where would you suggest they get started?

McDougal: I think the place you start a Success Hotline. I think you’re looking for something that each day you can send your kids to that just gives them some little snippet of the mental game. Is there a way that you can hold those guys accountable that can be done through Twitter or through Mind 101? Just something that lets them know that you’re kind of sitting on their shoulder. Probably not watching personally but just imagining that they’re there and they’re holding them accountable for getting that into their lives.

Cain: You talk about Success Hotline – which is something that a lot of our guests refer to. Dr. Rob Gilbert, one of the premier Peak Performance coaches and sports psychologists in the country at Montclair State in New Jersey, every morning does a Success Hotline message. The phone number (for those that are listening) is 973-743-4690.

Alan, you mentioned the importance of doing a little a lot, calling Success Hotline because it’s consistent. I think a lot of coaches when they look at the mental game they’re like “hey we pull them into a classroom for 10 minutes, we talk about the mental game once or we have a guy” like myself or someone else come in and speak to their team and then they check the box and they’re done with the mental game. What would you say to those coaches that are kind of just getting started so that they don’t just check the box and say “hey we’ve done the mental game” but “we have a consistent system.” One of the things that impresses me with what you do is how systematic you are with the mental game.

McDougal: Well I’ll be honest with you. When we first introduced Brian Cain’s Peak Performance into our program it was just what you said – it was a snippet. I kind of checked the box, thought that was really good, and we jumped into the season and kind of went away from it. Over the last two years we have had a particular menu and we have looked to keep that consistently through our year and lo and behold we’ve had a little bit more success with it. I really don’t want to measure success as we all do with wins and losses but at the end of the program it just seems that it has reached a place that the kids really, really like it.

What happened with this fall is there was a day each week that no matter what it was going to be a mental day. Typically that was a Friday. If the weather kind of came in for us maybe we’d adjust it slightly, but we were going to get one day a week through the off season. Once the season hit it was an everyday part of our practice.

I think that was the part that I took the most pride in and our kids took the most pride in because it was, yes, I guess, initiated by me but run by them and it was every day a part of our practice. It kind of got us started. It wasn’t something that drug, it wasn’t “let’s listen to Coach McDougal and have our eyes roll if we’ve heard this for the 15th time.” It was a different player each day introducing what the mental game meant to them. I thought it was awesome and it will certainly be something we continue throughout my time at Colleyville.

Cain: I think as coaches that are always pressed for time some people are probably listening to this going “how do you do the mental game every day, how long does it take, I don’t know if I can make that much time in my program to do it every day.” Could you talk about how you made it part of your everyday routine, what you covered, and how long it took.

McDougal: I’m going to say it is a four minute max. If you don’t have four minutes we’ve got some issues. We’ve got to cut some other things out of our practice.

We circle up at the beginning of practice, we have a breathing exercise. It takes maybe 15-20 seconds. We probably could go a little bit longer on that to be honest with you but that at least gets us focused in on what we’re doing. Then I turn it over to one of our kids. What they’re asked to do is to tell the group what Success Hotline meant to them for that day, to tell them what the Daily Dominator for that day meant to them. I don’t want a Cliff Notes version. I want what did you get from it. They talk about a one word exercise. I want one word that you want to present to the group that represents you or represents us.

Our core values are DUDES: dedication, uncommon, discipline, energy, and selflessness. Those correspond with each of the five days of the week that they’re going. At that point that person will tell what that DUDES word of the day (again) means to them. So it’s about a four minute thing. I briefly say what practice is going to look like that day then we go run, stretch, and throw, and practice starts. But it has been an awesome start to our practice and that has gone on on a daily basis.

Cain: And do you ask a player that morning to speak or you’ve let them know ahead of time by giving them a calendar of who is going to talk?

McDougal: Good question. I did it the first day of practice then I gave it to somebody, then when the person is done with their portion of the day they select the next person. It’s not a volunteer basis. But the guy knows 24 hours in advance what is going on. I allow them to bring notes. They bring their notes on a written piece of paper, they hand that to me, and then what we look to do is at the end bind that up, hand it back to them, and you’ll see for 2016 what those words meant. We’ll have different kids or the same kids in the circle next year, possibly looking at the same words. I think that’s going to change as they mature.

Cain: That’s awesome. So you talked about DUDES. Let’s recap here. What you do on a daily basis is there is a breathing exercise followed by a player summarizing what it means to them – which I think is great. It’s not a regurgitation of what Success Hotline was. It’s what it means to them. So they are going to cover Success Hotline, the Daily Dominator, their one word, and then the DUDES characteristic of the day.

McDougal: Correct.

Cain: DUDES again being dedication, uncommon, discipline, energy, and selfless. If you take DUDES and you tie it to a day of the week, Monday would be dedication, Tuesday would be uncommon, Wednesday is discipline, Thursday is energy, and Friday is selfless. Is that correct?

McDougal: That is correct.

Cain: What do you do on Saturday?

McDougal: Well we may not meet Saturday. Sometimes we play, sometimes we practice Saturday. It comes back to me. Typically if there is an odd day that is thrown out then I am going to take that or ask one of my coach’s staff to take that. But that would not be a kid-related.

Cain: Excellent. Now for the coaches listening to this one of the things they could do too is on that Saturday it could be maybe the motto for the day. If you’ve have a motto “common/uncommon” or a motto of “dominate the day” or a motto of – we’ve referred a lot to Pete Carroll and Win Forever, or the motto that Rick Pitino uses with Louisville basketball of “one day contract.” You could build your motto in on that Saturday.

Before we go back to DUDES here, Alan, while we’re on the topic of basketball you’re also a highly regarded basketball official. How do you use the mental game yourself when you’re performing as a basketball official and people are heckling you and they’re calling you names in the great state of Texas when basketball was huge? How do you use the mental game yourself?

McDougal: I love to compete and refereeing basketball is kind of the way that, as an aging person that doesn’t get to compete a lot, I get to do that.  I cannot tell you how much better a coach I feel I am because I referee basketball because I have the ability to communicate in very short snippets what I’m trying to explain as a game gets moving back and forth. I get to communicate with parents better, I get to communicate with our umpires better, and it has made me much better as a person, as a coach, as a communicator.

How I get to use the mental game? It’s tough. You have to sit there and take a lot from coaches and from fans and from players and you kind of take what you need and it’s literally one play at a time. Once the whistle blows you say what you need to go and move to the next play. If you look at it that way with the one play at a time you’re not going to hold a grudge on a coach that didn’t like your traveling call or block charge. It’s over and done with and move to the next one. That’s kind of how we deal with things.

Cain: Awesome. Let’s come back to DUDES now, if you could, which is straight from Pillar #2 Championship Culture. How did you get to DUDES? Did you come up with that and just give it to your players? Was it a collaborative effort? How did you get there?

McDougal: It was a collaborative effort. We sat down and kind of went through what is important to us, what Panther Baseball needs to represent in the school, on the field, and in our city of Colleyville. I know a lot of the other ones that we’ve looked at used their mascot typically. “Panthers,” for whatever reason, seemed a little bit long for my guys so as we went through this we just kind of looked at the letters and looked to see what could we make this that would represent us. At that point we had gone through some other curriculum with Dr. Tom Hansen which talked about playing big and a word that came across to one kid in the classroom was what does it look like to be a dude? A dude is a guy that bows his chest and plays the game big. So that’s kind of how it went. We looked and shuffled the letters and DUDES is what we came up with.

Cain: So if you would could you go through kind of each of those core principles and talk about what it means in your program. So what is dedication?

McDougal: Dedication is doing what is right even when no one is watching. Are you dedicated to Panther Baseball? Or is that just talk? Typically when we have cage time or workout time I’m not much one that goes up there and takes roll. I think that can be figured out once you get on the field. If this guy’s stroke is really fine-tuned that didn’t just happen by chance. It happened because he has really put some work in. Dedicated guys don’t rely on our hour and a half that we get each day. They find time in their schedule to make sure it means something to them. All of a sudden you look and our best kids typically are the ones that do that and everyone typically falls in and goes “well if it works for them it’s probably going to work for me too” and they at least give that a shot.

Cain: What about being uncommon? What does that mean to you and your program?

McDougal: Uncommon, just different. Are you going to do what everyone else does or are you going to do what the uncommon person does? One thing that we have done that has kind of stuck out to them – and I think you might have introduced us to it – was picking up a piece of trash. I had the fortunate neat thing to walk Ty Willingham to a classroom my first year at Colleyville. He was the head coach at Notre Dame at the time.

Cain: Are you going to tell this story? This is unbelievable.

McDougal: The head coach at Notre Dame at the time. He and I are walking.

Cain: Notre Dame football coach.

McDougal: Notre Dame head football. He was walking from our administrative area and needed to walk back to our coaching area. So we are walking through the cafeteria and I mean we’re probably 15-20 feet from an empty Coke bottle sitting in the corner. He and I are talking and he just kind of veered me over towards that Coke bottle, reached down, grabbed it, and threw it away. He never broke conversation. Then we kept on going to the coaching area.

At that point I’m just going “holy moly this guy!” I mean this guy was the premier football coach in the country at the time and takes time out of his life to just walk over and do something that was completely different. That is what uncommon is.

I think a phrase that you gave to our kids is “if you see it you own it.” That is something that sticks with me. It’s a little frustrating at times as I’m walking through a parking lot or a cafeteria and I see it and I go “dang it, if I see it I own it, I’ve got to walk over there and do what I can.” It has worked out to my kids as they walk through and walk from our gate to our practice area I can see them picking up balls or picking up trash or going in the classroom and going through the halls and doing the same thing.

I’m wanting them to do something that is different. I don’t want it just to be that they wear a “CH” on their hat or their shirt, that that sets them apart. I want it to be the way that they conduct themselves.

Cain: It’s awesome that you mention that. Inside of our Inner Circle, Jim Schlossnagle (who you’ve referenced, the head baseball coach at Texas Christian University) their motto, their theme for the 2016 season (every year they come up with a motto) this year their motto was “beyond common” which is exactly what you’re talking about.

In the Inner Circle I posted I think about 10-12 different photos that are in their manual that he gives them on day one. It’s a picture of like a beer and water. It says “common/uncommon.” It’s a picture of a guy out partying at 2:00 in the morning and a guy in bed, “common/uncommon.” A picture of a grilled chicken salad, a picture of a hamburger, “common/uncommon.” It’s all those little small decisions that guys make along the course of their season or the course of their life that makes them uncommon.

It ties right into your next principle which is discipline. Discipline, making those little decisions and kind of the compound effect of all those things either takes you closer to where you want to be or pulls you further from where you want to be. Alan, would you talk about discipline in your program and what that means.

McDougal: I think it’s (again) doing the right things and doing them repeatedly. Doing the little things and expecting big results from those little things. We read the compound effect as a group last Christmas. I think when we have the ability to get those words out of our mouths and throw them through a medium (whether it be an audiobook or something they can read) and they hear the same stuff coming from quality people it just means so much more.

In suburbia (and I know kids in suburbia and out of suburbia) there are lots of excuses on what goes on. We’re trying to rid those excuses and instill in them a mindset in which they’re just going to do little things a lot and all of a sudden they look up and their accomplishments are going to be past what they ever thought they could do.

I think all of us have our goals and they think that is going to be something “if I can do this I’m going to get this” and that’s just not how it works. It’s “I’m going to do this, this, this, and this repeatedly and then I’m going to give myself the best chance for success.”

Cain: I love that term that you use “the best chance for success.” Could you talk a little bit more about the compound effect? You said you guys went through that in a book study. Did you give them an audiobook? Did you give them a paperback? How did you do that and what was the benefit?

McDougal: We went through an audiobook. Typically I guess with kids these days they want to throw their earbuds in and listen to that. We’ve got all different kids running around through Christmas break. They can do it on travels. They can do it in whatever they were doing. We just ask that we’re going to come back and you’re going to give a presentation on one of three books. The Compound Effect by Darren Hardy was one of them. Certainly went into the fact that I am going to have to listen to those as well so I will be able to hold them accountable for what they did. They got in groups after we came back and they presented that to the group which was awesome. Then this year we gave them a few more books to kind of go through.

The compound effect for us is doing a little a lot not a lot a little. I think that just ties into what baseball is and what life is to be honest with you. I think if you’re trying to lose weight or trying to gain mass you  can’t go in there and snap your fingers and have it done that fast like things can change. But we just want to instill in them the principle of having a routine to get through things.

Cain: Awesome. The Compound Effect, I was listening to that audiobook this morning as a matter of fact as I was in my AM routine – as Darren Hardy would talk about “your bookend routines,” your AM routine, your PM routine. My AM routine this morning I was listening to The Compound Effect as I was on the bike. It was awesome and is one of my favorite books of all time. If you are listening to this podcast and you have not yet picked up The Compound Effect what are you waiting for? Go get it.

Now talk about energy. What is energy in your program? It’s the E of DUDES. Why is that important for you?

McDougal: Kids these days need energy. They need it bad. Brian talks about being comfortable where you’re uncomfortable and to be honest with you energy is the portion where I am not real comfortable. I don’t have a theatrical personality. But I’ve got to find a way to bring that to my kids because I think that’s where they thrive. If I can’t do it I’ve got to allow them to do it.

I think that is where in our practices, through some different structures that we’ve thrown in, energy is injected through an app that we use and through the way that we control BP and with the power of music. We’ll talk about that (I’m sure) in a second.

Energy in baseball is done in bursts and it kind of builds off of actions that happen in the game and it just had to be we had to practice that through our scrimmages and through different things in our practices that when we got into games it just kind of snowballed on what was going on. It wasn’t new to them.

So one thing our kids injected into this year was every time that we singled kids would come back, they’d look at the dugout, and I mean it had to happen, they would just yell “yes” and the whole dugout would do it, the kid on base would do it, and it was just something that was really good in the fact that it kind of engrossed our kids and our team as we moved through the year. When we were eight up, eight down, whatever, when the kids singled they got it. It might not have been as exuberant if we were down a little bit but they were all the same.

Cain: So you’re giving your team a system to have energy. I think if you watch high-level college baseball you’re going to see when a guy squares around a bunt all 35 guys in the dugout are all going to yell “bunt.” If the ball hits the right side they’re all going to yell “get over.” If there is a shallow fly ball they’re all going to yell “in.”

Talk a little bit about some of the dugout energy. You talked about the “yes” chant which you’ll see guys who slide into second base – I think the Texas Rangers maybe started some of this years ago. They’d slide into second base they’d put up the claw or they’d put up the antlers or whatever it was. Now everybody has their thing that they do. What are some other ways that you create or foster energy in your program?

McDougal: I think more than anything it’s just the fact that you have to give those kids the ability to be themselves, to inject their personality. There are probably some areas in which they can’t tread. However I think the biggest thing that I got away from this year was I was groomed under a veteran head coach on the west side of Fort Worth, probably one of the most legendary coaches in high school baseball. I think the way (for the most part) things need to be done is how he did it.

However from an energetic standpoint he didn’t bring a whole lot to that. I think that we because things were very, very rigid. When I kind of stepped back and let some kids do some things that they like to do as far as injecting energy in the games with chants or calls or whatever – and I didn’t think that was in any way taking away from the way we were presenting ourselves – it just kind of took off.

Most of it was the fact that you came and did a presentation at the school and injected a few phrases that – I don’t even think you had intent in those getting into our dugout but they did. All of a sudden they enter into a scrimmage, they enter into a tournament game, they enter into a regular season game, and it just took off. I think the big thing was me not being as rigid in what my expectation was for their conduct. It also wasn’t forced. I wasn’t saying “Brian said we’re supposed to say ‘yes’ when we single.” Nothing that happened in our dugout came from me. It all came from them.

Cain: I like the fact too that you mentioned that there is a line too that players will cross. As a basketball official too you know how that goes. As long as it’s on you guys and not against the other team there is probably no ceiling to what you can do.

Steve Smith, who is the head baseball coach at your alma mater, Baylor University, was in a similar situation. When I started with them I think it was 2010 or 2011 – the year that they won like 23 straight games in the Big 12, set a record. Won like 35 straight games overall, were the #4 national seed, hosted a super regional, lost to Arkansas, and Arkansas went on to the College World Series. But that specific team at Baylor was unique in that they brought a different level of energy than any Baylor team had had.

I remember Steve saying “I had to make the commitment to myself to let them be themselves, bring energy, and toe the line.” He goes “what I was going to say is if there was a point in the season where the umpire said to me ‘Steve get your guys under control’ then I know maybe it had gone too far.” He goes “and that never happened, not one time in 60 games did an umpire say ‘Steve your guys are out of control, get them locked back in.” He goes “so I looked back at how much I had kind of held them back in terms of just letting them play and letting them take some of that ownership.” He said it was great because he just sat back and watched the ship go and they had the most success that they’ve ever had and one of the best (probably) college baseball seasons ever. It didn’t end in a National Championship like we all wanted it to but rarely do they.

McDougal: Right.

Cain: So they had a great run there for sure. I think it takes a leader who is selfless and is not focused on themselves but focused on the unit and the program which is your fifth of your championship culture which is selfless. Can you talk a little bit about how you build that in a program?

McDougal: Well let me touch on one thing before I head to selfless.

Cain: Sure.

McDougal: Each year at our banquet instead of me talking about our seniors our seniors talk about what is important to them as they exit. Basically it’s just their 30-90 seconds to thank whoever is important to them. Typically it’s their parents or siblings that are sitting in the crowd. One thing that rung true as they spoke is when they spoke to me the message was there that “thank you for letting us be us.” It was really good to hear that (again) there was no intent, there was no ask or request from them for me to let that happen. It was just a recognition that we need to try something different and maybe you need to try something different. It was kind of the cherry on top of the season in the fact that with no intent it happened and was recognized that this is a good thing and it’s something that would be continued.

Selfless I think kind of speaks for itself. We’re trying to create a situation in which it is a team sport which is really hard in the age of adolescent athletics right now because with select baseball or AU basketball they spend 3/4ths of their time concentrated on their individual effort to promote themselves to play wherever their talents lead them. All of a sudden for a quarter of the time of the year they get to come back and play for their school. It’s a hard thing because they spend so much time on the other side of it.

I think with that being thrust into our motto – because the year before last our motto was DUDE singular and they thought that we need to have more of a bond with us and that is going to come from selfless which entered the S into our core values. I think with that addition (that was the big addition to what we did this year) it was something that I could point to – because you notice that DUDES is on a Friday and we play on every Friday night. It helped me build something in to a pregame or postgame talk just to kind of get us back grounded to our core values if we’re starting to drift a little bit.

Cain: I love it. One of my mentors (who I am sure you are aware of), a guy named Bruce Brown out in the Seattle, Washington area, does proactive coaching. I have one of his great books, Coaching For Character, and he says that every successful program and championship culture is selfless. He might have a different term for it. It might be family, it might be commitment, it might be together, but they all have a selfless component to it.

You talked about uncommon earlier; the connection between you and TCU baseball, selfless is the first of the three championship culture principles for TCU baseball which is selfless, energy, and excellence. I think that is fantastic.

McDougal: Speaking of Bruce Brown real quick I know that he has a curriculum on parenting athletes. I’ve introduced or distributed that at times or made it available to our parents for the last two years and it is over the top good. Whether it be through a pamphlet or a video podcast it is awesome information. I think we as coaches always give our parents that but if we have the ability to give an authority the platform to distribute that same information (for whatever reason) it may hit a little bit easier when it’s not coming from the head coach. It’s really, really, really good stuff.

Cain: Alan, I think what you are referring to is Bruce Brown’s video DVD on the role of parents in high school sports.

McDougal: Absolutely.

Cain: As a high school athletic director I had Bruce come to our school I think in 3-4 of the last years I was there if he could make it. I would show that video. It just is so powerful because he has had so much experience (he has been a college coach, high school coach, college AD, high school AD) and as he’s talking he’s saying things that you know but you forget and you usually don’t do as a parent. It’s some great stuff.

McDougal: It fits right into what you do in the fact that it kind of gives you a recipe, an agenda for how to do things. I think often we have a grand scheme of what we want to get accomplished. It’s awesome stuff but we don’t know how to get there. We don’t have the road map. Well this gives parents a particular road map on “this is what you do, this is what you don’t do.” There is no gray area. It is the blackest of blacks and the whitest of whites. I think after being exposed to it it kind of lets you think “is the way I’m conducting my ride home with my kid proper?” You’re going to know like that that it is or it isn’t. It’s over the top good information.

Cain: Awesome. Alan, let’s go back to energy and talk about the tempo. Coming out to your baseball practice you have a timer that counts down for your batting practice routine. You hear “switch in 3, 2, 1,” and kids are flying around the field. You’re not having a stopwatch. There is music playing. They’re getting ready to get set up. There is a countdown. Your batting practice is as fast paced and time efficient as Vanderbilt’s, as TCU’s. It’s as good as it can be. How did you get there and what do you do?

McDougal: Well you introduced the Seconds app to me which is on the iPhone (I’m sure it’s on all the Android stuff as well). When I did a practice before we had an hour set apart for batting practice and typically that thing would go from an hour to an hour-twenty and it just was not efficient. We had kids not walking around but there was not intent getting from A to B. Not even just from cages to the main diamond, from position to position. With the Seconds app there are eight segments for it. Those go I guess 7-8 minutes, I’m not exactly sure what the math is on that, but our BP takes an hour and one minute. It does not vary.

I was under the impression as we went through this – I was a little bit skeptical because I was going “man my kids are not going to get as many cuts as they need in this segment.” I could not have been more wrong. They honestly doubled their cuts on the main diamond.

You can set this thing to music and I initially chose my music because I wanted to make sure it was something that was appropriate – which certainly you need to do in this day and age no matter what. However I think things got much better when I said “you know what, guys, you send me 2-3 songs that you want and we’re going to put your stuff on there.” Once we did that things turned up even more.

The biggest thing is when we have to transition from our batting cage to our main diamond the last thing a kid wants to miss is his cuts on the main diamond. So if this thing I set to time and they know it and the timer does not stop they get from A to B in a hurry. It has been something that has made our practice more efficient and more fun. Again in our post season interviews with our kids, “what is the one thing you like most about our practice?” “Seconds group.” To a man. They loved it. If I took that out of the day it was not good. If they saw that on the schedule that that wasn’t part of our batting practice today that was not going to be a good day at Panther baseball. So that typically is a staple for what we do.

Cain: That’s awesome. The app is called Seconds Pro Timer if you’re looking to get that app. It’s just an S with a stopwatch around it. It’s kind of a reddish-orange. Seconds Pro Timer.

McDougal: Kids know where they go. They typically have two stations in the batting cage, one station behind our main diamond (which is a bunt), one on the main diamond, and then four on defense. They kind of just see where they start. When they see where they start they know where they end and they know how the transition goes. The music is going over our loud speakers, the Siri voice comes on and says “you’re going to move in 3, 2, 1,” I blow a whistle and here we go. It’s really good. No one is looking at a watch. As I’m throwing batting practice I never have to look down at my watch to see how much time is left. It has really taken us to another level in efficiency in our practices.

Cain: Awesome. Alan, last question here. I really appreciate you taking the time to join us. For the people that are listening if you want to get a little bit more Alan McDougal in your life – which I’m sure you do – you can follow him on Twitter @CHHS_baseball.

Alan, here is a question for you. What do you know now going back through the mental game (you have worked in here for about 10 years) what do you know now you wish you knew then? The million dollar question.

McDougal: The million dollar question. I think it’s the importance of intent. I think I have had grand goals as I’ve been into the coaching profession and I think what I know now that I have not known through the 20 years as I’ve tried to get to that point is that happens with intent – a specific recipe on getting things done. If you do not have that intent and something specifically put down on how you are going to get there you are not going to move anywhere. That comes from the compound effect of doing little things a lot and not a lot a little.

We have a specific ingredient on what we’re going to do and we do it repeatedly. We do it really, really well. I think since that has come into my life and into my athletic practices I think we are much closer to getting to the mountaintop of Peak Performance than we would have been in the past.

Cain: So living with intent, having a plan, having a purpose for everyday. Alan, thank you so much for taking time out of your hectic schedule to join us here on the Peak Performance Podcast. Thank you so much.

McDougal: Brian, thanks for having me.

You can follow Coach Jackson on Twitter @CoachJacksonTPW.

PODCAST TRANSCRIPTION

Cain: Hey how are you doing? Brian Cain your Peak Performance coach here with another episode of the Peak Performance Podcast. Today our guest is Randy Jackson. He is the head football coach at Grapevine High School in Grapevine, Texas, and one of the most sought after coaches and speakers on creating a championship culture and building mental toughness through high school sports. The motto of his program is very simple – TPW, tough people win. That is something that Randy Jackson does.

When he took over the Grapevine high school football program, before he got there they had a string of losing seasons. They were 1-9 in their last season in 2013. He took over the helm in 2014 and immediate success going 3-8. Then in 2015 they pushed the envelope to 8-3 and he was named 2015 Tom Landry High School Football Coach of the Year.

This is going to be one podcast that you are definitely going to want to listen to over and over again as part of automobile university – as you’re driving – and one that you’re go into want to listen to and sit down and take notes.

Coach Jackson, thanks for joining us on the podcast.

Jackson: Thanks Brian. I’m honored to be here. I’ve listened to your podcast for a long time and I’m really honored to get to sit down with you today.

Cain: I’m glad you’re here. Could you take our listeners through your story in terms of high school football coaching and how you got to where you are now at Grapevine?

Jackson: Well I’ll tell you I’m a man well traveled. This is my 26th year of coaching, my 16th as a head coach. I started at the smallest level you could in a little West Texas town called Paducah. 120 students. 25 kids playing football.

I just moved. My wife and I have been married 21 years. We’ve lived in 14 houses. So I’ve just moved and moved and moved and kind of move up the ladder. I’ve been fired once and all that stuff that happens to coaches. But we’ve got two kids and as they’re getting more – they’re in high school no so knew I needed to get some stability.

So in 2010 I got my big break as far as going from small schools. In 2010 I got the job at Mesquite Poteet and really caught a big. They were 0-10 before we got there and we went 12-3 that first year. Just kind of got me out there I guess. Like I say it was just kind of an “angels in the outfield” kind of year. So I stayed at Poteet three years and went to Plano East for a year. It’s one of the biggest high schools in the United States – 6,000 students. I wasn’t a good fit there. My son was in 8th grade. We stayed a year.

I’ve been at Grapevine two years but I feel like we are really moving in the right direction and I love it here and hope to be here for a while.

Cain: You’ve turned around a lot of programs in a short period of time. How do you do it?

Jackson: I think the biggest thing that I’ve done is make sure that I sell the vision. When I got the job in Mesquite, the second day on the job one of the coaches told me “you just don’t understand, Coach, the band makes fun of the football team here and it’s in a bad shape.” So I knew that that was my priority was to go in and just instill confidence and sell the vision.

I think a leader is a dealer in hope. That is what I do. I’m always trying to talk about the future and how good we’re going to be. I think it’s a self-fulfilled prophecy a lot of times, especially for high school students. They’ll buy what you’re selling. We work on them really hard and we earn victory and all that stuff but when I come into a place I’m not saying “we’re building for the future” I say “we’re going to be better tomorrow than we are today.” I learned this really from you. I say “be a 1% warrior and get better every day and sell the vision.”

Cain: You talk about vision and TPW and I’ve had the opportunity to be in your office and spend some time at your complex. You see TPW everywhere. Talk a little bit about how you came up with that and what that means.

Jackson: When I became the head coach in Lone Oak, Texas – it’s a school of about 300 not going to win, sprint relays, but just some blue collar kid who were tough – I knew that’s what I needed to build on. So we started with TPW in 2004 and I liked it. I really had never heard anybody using it. One of my assistant coaches mentioned it to me. He had seen it before (I think) on the back of a cross country shirt or something. But anyway.

So every school I’ve been at I’ve taken it with me and they’ve liked it. For me toughness is not about ability. It’s just not about anything except are you a warrior or not and the mental toughness. So I think anybody can be tough. We’ve had a lot of success with it. We’ll change our slogans from year to year but TPW is a constant and it’s our brand.

Cain: You also talk about the championship culture of Grapevine football. Could you go through the hand signal that you guys use that ties in with the core principles and kind of the whole picture? You do so many amazing things with the championship culture at your program, and we’ll get into some of the strategies and the activities and things that you do, but let’s start with the foundation of what are the principles that make up the championship culture of Grapevine football?

Jackson: When you walked in my office in August of 2015 it really just changed my life. I love this story. You asked me what our core values were and I told you, you didn’t see them anywhere, and you explained to me how to do it. So I’m one of those if I learn something good I’m all in. We went all in and I let the players be in on creating our core values and we have a hand signal that they have to do to get their decals on the side of their helmet.

So for us I believe you ought to assign a day of the week to your core values and that is your emphasis for the day. It helps you talk to your team. It gives you a theme of the day. But in football in Texas it can be 100 degrees on a Monday. I know it can be in other states too. But Monday is the day that if you’re not intentional you can have a mediocre workout. So for us Monday is Energy and Tempo and we take our thumb and we move it around like we’re stirring a pot.

Then Tuesday is Competition Tuesday and we take our index finger and we point as us and then our opponent, like me versus you. Then Wednesday we take our middle finger and that is Toughness Wednesday. With our middle finger we go from our temple to our hip and that is mental/physical toughness back and forth. Thursday is Family and Appreciation and that is our ring finger – like for where your wedding ring would be – and we slide our thumb and index finger of our other hand up and down. Then Friday is Discipline Friday and we take our pinky and point at our sternum and say “count on me, I am disciplined.”

Those really are specific core values. But I added an open fist that we raise in the air and that is Finish. I am a big believer in Finish. Then Payday is getting what you’ve earned. So we’ll hold our hand up in the air for Finish then we slam it down and that’s Payday and that is game day for us. So we’ve got a few more than the days of the week. But the game is something where we talk about getting what you’ve earned and let’s go get paid.

Cain: So it’s Energy and Tempo Monday, Competition Tuesday, Mental and Physical Toughness Wednesday, Appreciation Thursday, Discipline Friday, and we’re going to Finish because it’s Payday.

Jackson: Exactly.

Cain: Could you kind of talk about some of the activities that you do with your team, some of the awesome things that you wrote about in your book – which is super exciting. You are coming out with a book about championship culture. Could you talk about some of the activities that you do that really help your players to understand one of the key principles in life – that nothing is given and everything is earned. You make them earn everything.

Jackson: Everything. I’ve got two kids in high school and I want to be in Grapevine, Texas, because I want them to live here. But there are not a whole lot of things around this – I guess maybe in every area but I laughingly say the worst thing that happens to kids in Grapevine is they get cut off at Starbucks or something. It’s just not a place where you have to fight for your next meal around here and I’m glad that’s where my family is. But you have to be intentional about being tough. So we make sure our kids earn everything.

Probably my favorite activity would be when the season is over with we are going to take everybody out of the varsity locker room, we are going to put them in the JV locker room, we are going to take them and just give them the worst stuff we can give them. We’re going to give them a white T-shirt with a big question mark on it, we’re going to write their name on the back of the shirt with a Sharpie, and we’re going to give them some old football pants that we’ve cut off that are not anything anybody wants to wear, and all those kids are going to stay in that locker room for about two months. Then we’re going to start bringing them. We’re going to make them wrestle each other and the winner will get to move into the varsity locker room.

It’s a very organized way that we do it. The first kid that gets over goes into locker #1 and after he is over there a couple days he and I are going to meet and we’re going to decide which two guys need to wrestle to get into locker #2. So it’s a systematic deal. But they are not getting to that varsity locker room without earning your way in there. So that is just one of the things that we do.

We talk a lot about earn everything every day. So anything that we can do to make sure that they realize that nothing is going to be given to them we try to do.

Cain: Coach Jackson, I love some of the creative outside-of-the-box things that you do to help build that championship culture and getting your players to realize that to whom much is given much is expected in that they have to earn everything. Could you talk about that reading to schools program that you do? I think any coach that is listening to this could duplicate that with their program.

Jackson: We call it Read to Succeed. We’ve got six elementary schools that feed eventually into our high school. I’ll just email those principals and say “we have these six dates that we can send some guys over for 45 minutes.” Of those six dates we want to go to each elementary schools and I’ll just say “first come first serve for which date.” So they’ll send it over.

We’re a unit type of team so Day 1 maybe my offensive line coach is in charge and he’ll get some offensive linemen in there and they’ll go to that school. We put jerseys on them. The principals will have a map for them and they’ll just go read to kids. Like anything our guys get more out of it than the little ones do. But it’s an awesome deal. I just believe you’ve got to figure out ways to make sure your team – it’s a place those guys can’t live without so the more we do things like that together then the more that they’re going to lay in traffic for each other.

We call it MSO – Mustang serving others. So any of our community service things – and I’ll send out to our parents an email of “hey if you have any community service ideas let us know” so we try to do community service as much as we can.

Cain: One thing you also do is you have a little ice cream activity that your players and people like a lot. Could you talk a little bit about that?

Jackson: It’s great. I’m at SMU for spring football and Coach Chad Morris is the most hospitable college head football coach ever I think. So he lets us sit in the team meetings with them. So I’m in a team meeting and he’s talking about a professor’s diner and Mark Smith (who has been on a podcast before) – I said “Mark, what is this professor’s dinner?” He told me that every player gave a professor a handwritten invitation and they invited them to practice and they had a dinner for them after practice. Well that is just something our teachers live everywhere so we made it fit us.

So before our spring game all of our players gave a handwritten invitation to their teachers and we had an ice cream social for them. We had all the fixing for a Sunday. The players took the order. We set the teachers down. Then we had every player with a microphone – let’s say four players invited Ms. Smith and all four players would get Ms. Smith and they’d say why she was special to them. I had all of them take a selfie with Miss. Smith. It was a great time.

And I sent it to all the teachers. It’s invitation-only and if you didn’t get invited then we aren’t everything at Grapevine football. Next year maybe you do something a little different maybe and get invited. But great feedback on that. It took about 30 minutes and was great for our kids to stand up and show appreciation to others and great PR too for our teachers, showing them appreciation.

Cain: I love that. The teachers who aren’t there you let them know that “hey everything is earned around here, nothing is given.” It’s fantastic.

Jackson: That’s right.

Cain: As teachers we all need to be reminded of that as well. Talk about the Breakfast With Champions idea.

Jackson: When I was in Mesquite we started this. I believe this, that 200 years from now if we’re not the dominant country in the world it will be because we don’t have enough parents mentoring our kids.

We have a mentor program. What I did in Mesquite was invited men from the community to come up and participate in a game day morning. We call it “Breakfast With Champions.” We have men from the community that will come. We will show a highlight video of the week before. All our kids are sitting in the middle. Our parents are standing around. Any community member is invited. They bring breakfast for the players. That is kind of their ticket to get in is some breakfast tacos from Sonic or wherever so there are a bunch of different kind of breakfast foods there. We have a little five minute highlight video. Our team chaplain will give about a 12 minute devotional. We’ll talk about players of the week from last week. I’ll talk about the keys to victory for that night.

So it’s kind of a way for some community members to kind of get into the locker room, kind of feel a part of it. When it’s over with we have all the players shake everybody’s hand and look them in the eye and thank them for coming. When the game is over with we don’t let players down on the field but anybody who came to Breakfast With Champions are ten invited to come out to the field and be a part of everything. So it has been a really good deal.

Cain: Could you also talk about your Football 101 for Moms which I think is something that could be duplicated in any sport. I know TCU baseball has a Women’s Night. Could you talk a little bit about that Football 101 for Moms?

Jackson: One of our most popular events. In late July we are going to have a Football 101 for Moms and we are going to just break down everything for them about the football season coming up.

I’m going to invite our team doctor and give him 15 minutes and talk about his role. We’re going to talk about concussions and what the protocol is. I’ve got a football official who is going to come and talk about what football officials do. They ask him some great questions. Everybody gets a little bit. Basically every speaker gets about 10 minutes and then about 5 minutes of Q&A. We have a nutritionist that comes in and talks about what they should be feeding their kids on game day. We practice in the mornings at Grapevine so what kind of breakfast they need to make sure they get. My offensive coordinator speaks. Our defensive coordinator speaks. I’ll speak about some things. One of our coach’s wives will speak. So it’s about an hour and a half totally dedicated to moms.

We started it last June and had about 75 moms. We feel like it will be easily over 100 this year because it was just so well received. We give them all a box lunch, the same exact pregame meal that our players eat. Give them a T-shirt. Just like a college recruiter (I guess) if you can win over that mom you’ve got a chance to sign that player so we’re trying to win over moms. I think any program – like you mentioned baseball – anybody should have a night for the moms.

Cain: You guys are really big on relationships at Grapevine and one of the things you do is you have Relationship Dinners. Could you talk a little bit about those? I think that something (again) that any coach could benefit from doing.

Jackson: Yes. I’m always on my assistant coaches about taking their position group to Cici’s or somewhere and making sure – we say this all the time. If your players won’t lay in traffic for you then we have a problem. So we’re trying to win them over. We’re trying to fascinate them every day. Our players do not want to let us down.

After about a year of this I kind of realized, being the head coach, that I was really not doing my part. So I decided to every month invite 15 players over to my house – different age groups, different position groups. My wife cooks spaghetti, salad. One of the moms will send a dessert.

The kids will eat for about 45 minutes and then we’ll gather up in my living room and we’ll make a big semi circle and we have questions that we talk about. We’ll just kind of go around the room. I’ll ask them ‘hey tell us about your siblings” and everybody will go. Then we’ll go another question and “hey what’s your best football memory from middle school or little league” and we ask that one pretty early because it kind of gets them going and gets them talking. “What is your favorite core value and why?” “What is one of your goals for spring football?” This is kind of a spring semester deal. We just kind of get into those kind of deals. The last question is “what is the worst thing that ever happened to you?” So we talk to them about the trust in the room and being able to share.

It’s about an hour and a half. Maybe close to two hours. When we walk out of there all of us know each other a little bit more. Again, I just think that the really great teams are the ones that don’t want to let each other down. So we’ve got guys in there who the more you know about each other the less you want to let each other down. I live pretty close to the high school and so I think it’s just a good thing for every time a kid drives by my house, if they’ve been in my house and eaten before, I think that’s a positive also.

Cain: And you said you don’t do that with just the seniors you do that with all players?

Jackson: All players. I really an intentional about a sophomore defensive back and a senior offensive linemen being in there together. I think that is a great deal to make sure that there are different groups of kids who would not normally ever talk to each other.

Cain: That is awesome. And you do that every year so if they’re a sophomore on the varsity they are going to have three meals in your house by the time they graduate.

Jackson: Exactly.

Cain: That is awesome. You guys do a leadership retreat – which I know that you may refer to as a “leadership advance” because I know there is no retreat in Grapevine football, everything is about advancing and moving forward. Talk a little bit about that leadership advance with how that helps with the family and relationships?

Jackson: I’ve got a buddy who has an organization. He’ll get me a house. Last year we went to a lake about 80 miles away. It was a big cabin. We went and spent the night and his organization helped feed us. We had some activities. We shot skeet. Of course the kids played touch football. It’s just a way for us to go spend the night somewhere and really just be together. We had some organized activities too, some speakers and things like that.

We got a lot of great feedback from that. Kids in the city, they don’t get to go – we didn’t really camp out but it’s the closest thing to camping that some of these guys have done. It just comes back to is it a program that they can’t live without or not and you’ve got to do things like that to fascinate them and make sure they can’t live without you.

Cain: You’ve said this a couple times. I want to make sure we dissect and have you talk about that. You talk about “I want to fascinate them daily.” What do you mean?

Jackson: Well this is all Pete Carroll’s Win Forever book and I encourage everybody to read this book no matter what sport you’re in. He mentioned this in that book and that is what we are trying to do is when they show up every day it needs to be the best part of their day.

So in Texas we have an athletic period so we get them every day for an hour and a half and it needs to be the best hour and a half of their day. It needs to be the tough hour and a half of their day but it needs to be their best. So we’re going to spend 30 minutes in leadership development and then we’re going to grind on for an hour. But it needs to be something they look forward to because we’re fascinating on them. Anything that we can think of I want to fascinate them.

We do graphic T Thursdays. So every coach on Thursday needs to have a graphic T that is just ridiculous. I’ve got one with Andre the Giant on it. Whatever. So it’s kind of goofy, yeah.

Cain: It’s awesome.

Jackson: But our players love it and we’re fascinating them. We got this idea from you but we have a closed Facebook group and we allow our players to post on it. We talk about it all the time. We’re trying to fascinate them so if I see a good video or a picture quote or something I’m putting that on our Facebook group, I’m texting them saying “hey get on this and answer it.” But if you go on vacation post on this. So it’s about relationships and fascinating them. Any way we can think of to do it we do it.

Cain: Go a little bit deeper on that Facebook group and kind of how you use that and how it has been beneficial for you.

Jackson: Oh it’s just been tremendous. Every day we start at 8:00 AM and they’re in our meeting room and our computer is on and on that screen our Facebook page is going to be on there. That is what we are going to teach off of on our character. We used to have a champion’s notebook and we had them printed and passed out to everybody but now we just use our Facebook group.

So what I’ll do is I’ll pretty much daily will find something that I think is something our team needs to talk about – and this is in the off season. During the season it’s a little bit more structured. But during the off season I’ll text them and say “hey get on our Facebook group, answer this question, how does this relate to our core values, what does this mean,” and if they don’t then they’ll be responsible. We call it “the price of irresponsibility.” There will be a PI the next day. So it’s not an option. They have to be on it. They do a great job of participating on it. So we’re going to get on our Facebook group for the first 25 minutes and we’re going to talk about our character lesson for the day that’s up there.

We did a book study as a team of Chop Wood Carry Water by Joshua Medcalf. Tremendous little stories in there. So all that is in our Facebook. So we are doing character. Then there will be something funny on there and we’ll talk about that. Then somebody else will post something on there. So we allow our kids to post on there too.

I think that is a good deal where it’s kind of like a normal Facebook. I’ll tell them “if you’re on vacation, if you’re going to a baseball game to support another team take a selfies of yourself at the baseball game and post it on Facebook.” So our guys are used to posting on it and we have a good time with it. But the biggest aspect for me is I can post a two minute video by Brian Cain or Inky Johnson or somebody and say “watch this video and tell me which core value does this relate to you the most and why” and they’ll answer it and we get a lot of great discussion out of that.

Cain: So you created the private Facebook group and only the members of your team have access to it or can anyone find it?

Jackson: It’s only the members of our team. I think that is real secure for our guys as far as knowing their parents won’t be on it. I’ve let some coaches, some friends of mine, get on there. I’ve told our team “hey if you see somebody on here it’s a buddy of mine who they have their own team Facebook group and we just kind of share ideas.” There is a buddy of mine from Oregon, one from Minnesota, and we all just kind of share on that. But basically it’s just our team and it’s real private so they know there is some security there.

Cain: One of the things I‘ve also seen there at your school right as you walk into the complex is there is that banner that will be behind. If you imagine watching any NFL or any press conference in athletics there is always the banner behind the person who is in front of the microphone. You have that banner there and you have a camera set up. Do you also interview your players and then put that in the Facebook group? How do you use those?

Jackson: Yes sir. Any time we take pictures or anything like that we put them in front of this banner and our core values are behind it. We sell them every chance we get. After spring ball this year, again, just fascinating kids. I just had the idea of we ought to interview a couple of kids every day and post it to our Facebook group and also post it to our public one for our parents. So I’ve got a coach who will interview a couple of kids and I’ll put the question on there.

Again it all comes back to core values. “Hey give us your name, position, what is your favorite core value, which player would you want to be in the foxhole with,” so certain questions for them to answer. But it’s just another way for our guys to feel important or feel special about being Mustangs. That is probably the best thing we’ve done is make them feel like they’re proud to be a part of the football program again. I think fascinating them is a way to get that done.

Cain: I love that. I think that’s a great idea, that any – I wrote that down in my notes for things for me to do moving forward is to fascinate people on a daily basis. I think that there are so many distractions nowadays that – call it customer service, call it fascinating – your audience just gets lost because there is so much out there that goes on.

Randy, you also do a tremendous job of building leaders in your program. Could you talk about the use of your Leadership Council and what you do with those guys?

Jackson: We like our Leadership Council. What we do is we’re going to take some players and we’re going to take them from each position unit, a few different grade levels, and have a Leadership Council. Right now we’ve got 11 guys on our Leadership Council. I had them fill out a resume – which I think is a great skill – so they all had to answer some questions then they had to present to the team. They had to stand up in front of the group and go over their resume of why they should be on the Leadership Council then we made a Google Survey and our guys voted on it.

We have a member – on our offensive line there are five guys so we’ve got two members from the offensive line. We’ve got a wide receiver. We’ve got a quarterback. We’ve got a defensive lineman. Whatever. We’ve gotten them from every unit. We have a sophomore representative and then we’ve got an at-large kid. Then because summer is so important we are going to elect two more after summer where guys still feel like they have a chance to earn it through summer and fall camp.

So we meet once a week and we’re doing a book study with them right now. I’m using a leadership clock. I even posted this in the Inner Circle of “hey what is a good book” because this is the first time I’ve done a book study with my leadership council and I wanted to make sure I hit it out of the park. And the leadership clock has just been excellent. So we talk about that.

We talk about “hey what is the culture of the locker room.” I make sure that I don’t sit there and do all the talking every week. It will be a 45-55 minute meeting. We sit around a big conference table and I let those guys talk. “What are some issues, what are some things we can do with Mustangs serving others,” just any of that. I talk to them about “make sure you guys are posting on our Facebook group, make sure when we’re talking” – we do a lot during our leadership development time where we want our players talking and I make sure there guys are talking and doing all that. Your best players have to be your best leaders. All of our guys on our Leadership Council are not going to be all State guys but they’re all key contributors to our team.

I make sure that I talk to them about doing a great job, being a great leader, and it’s just been – when they are in the football season once a week we’ll go to middle schools and we’ll talk. I’ll send four guys to this middle school. We have three middle schools that feed into us. They’ll go and the first time we go speak at a middle school they are going to go talk about Energy and Tempo, our number one core value, then the next week they’ll go talk about this. So they have roles like that where they go speak in front of people. If there is something I need to get done then I’m going to call on the Leadership Council first. So I think it’s been a good way to help grow leaders.

Cain: Awesome. Speaking of leaders, yourself as the head football coach at Grapevine you are also the campus coordinator, the boys’ coordinator – which for people who are not in the State of Texas is basically the athletic director of that high school. Would you talk a little bit about (from an athletic director’s standpoint) how do you continue to grow as a leader? I know you attended our Athletic Directors Summit in Vegas this past year in March and maybe some of the benefit that you got out of that to help you grow as a leader.

Jackson: I think the biggest thing is about relationships. It’s so easy, even in football it’s year-round, and just to make sure you are – I think a great athletic director doesn’t tell people how to go do their job. A great athletic director removes obstacles for people that allows them to do their job.

I’ve been an athletic director in a 300 high school town and dealt with so many problems from middle school girls volleyball on up and it’s the same in a small town or a big city. It is removing obstacles to help people get their job done.

There are so many people going in different directions that you can look up and not have had much communication with someone in a month. So you have to be very intentional about that. I think that is the biggest thing as far as for me is making sure that I can do what I can. There are not a lot of things you can do with money and things like that but it’s being an ear for somebody to complain to or how to help them solve a problem.

I had a coach call me the other day. They’re on a summer basketball camp and an issue came up. I didn’t really give him a specific answer but I was listening to him and I gave him a little bit of advice. Just having somebody like that, that trust factor I think is a big deal.

Cain: I know you attended the event in Vegas – and for any of our athletic directors who are listening to this that are looking for their professional development – could you talk a little bit about the importance of professional development and going to coaches clinics or going to trainings like that.

Jackson: If you’re not progressive and passionate about getting better then you are really in the wrong business because there is just so much out there. It’s just so easy to find information now.

Really I was kind of one of those that I wasn’t sure. It was an AD’s conference and we have an athletic director at Grapevine, Colleyville, and I thought “I’m just going to go, I’m going to go to Vegas” because I wanted to see what Brian Cain – you and I have worked together and it was one of the best four days of my career because I learned about things like that Facebook group. And just being around 25 other like-minded people – so not only did I learn a ton from sitting in, but just being around other people and learning from them.

I really believe that you have to be on fire to continue learning and where you can go help and share with other coaches and players from other teams or whatever. But there is so much knowledge out there that you have to be on fire to want to continue to get better.

Cain: Speaking about continuing to get better let’s transition the conversation now to you and some of the routines and habits that you personally have so that you can be your best for others. I know there are some in there that are awesome that I think if coaches can learn from your experience and you can inspire them that they’ll become more. We know that if you want more you’ve got to become more and you need to be the model for people to see. What are some of the things that you do, Randy, to help you be your best?

Jackson: You’ve changed me. You’ve just helped me a ton since you and I have met. I really used to think that to be a great head coach and all was sitting there and grinding and watching film and just making sure – but I never devoted anything to me. That’s probably the biggest thing that I’d like to make sure I can get across on this is you’ve got to get off your butt, you’ve got to go exercise, you’ve got to eat better, you’ve got to feel better. The more I took care of me I think the better head coach and boys’ coordinator I’ve become.

Leaders aren’t fat and I was getting there. So last August I started eating a lot better and eventually lost about 30 pounds. I do believe that when you exercise and really exercise the studies show that your endorphins are going to release and I think you get about 12 hours of benefit after you get finished exercising. I think Brian Johnson or somebody said it’s “taking your energy pill.” So when I exercise in the morning I feel like I’ve taken my energy pill for the rest of the day. I eat a lot better and I feel a lot better.

Of us going 3-8 to 8-3, there are a lot of reasons why, but one of the reasons I really think is because I was a better head football coach because I took care of myself and was more intentional about from meditation to just personal growth and not just sitting there watching film all day. I took care of myself a little bit and I’m going to continue to do that. I think all leaders – if you are a leader then you have to act like a leader and one of those things is taking care of yourself.

Cain: Could you talk a little bit about the audio books and some of the things that you listen to when you’re working out? I know that when you do those stadium hikes you listen to podcasts or audiobooks and kind of get two benefits for one. You’re getting the physical exercise but you’re also getting the learning component.

Jackson: I don’t understand why people don’t listen. The podcasts are amazing. If I’m in my truck and I’m drying somewhere I’m listening to a podcast. If I’m exercising at Orange Theory or whatever if I’m able to listen to ear buds I could listen to something to get better I’m always doing that. There are so many great podcasts out there. So I think the automobile university is one of the best things I’ve picked up from you. There are hours and hours of knowledge that I’ve listened to in the last year. If you want to be great then you really don’t need to be listening to the radio. You need to be grinding and getting better every chance you get.

Cain: Last question for you here Coach Jackson. What is it that you know now you wish you knew maybe 10 years ago or you wish you knew when you were getting started coaching? If you could go back and educate the younger Randy Jackson who is just getting started what would you say?

Jackson: I think for me it is you have to stay passionate and progressive. You have to just have that thirst for continued – kind of segueing from that last question, the people who are really great are the ones who are always striving to get better. They are always. They are not watching TV all the time. They’re readers, they’re podcast listeners, they’re going to clinics, they just can‘t get enough of it. For me I think the number one thing if I could tell a young coach is it’s not that hard to outwork the average person. The average person is trying got just get by. If you’ll grind and always look for a way to get better then you’ll be successful.

Cain: Coach Jackson, I appreciate you taking time out of your busy schedule to join us here and be a guest on the Peak Performance Podcast. For our listeners you can follow Coach Jackson on Twitter @CoachJacksonTPW as in “tough people win.” I’m sure when his book comes out and the new website is built he’ll be able to put that out on social media so stay engaged with @CoachJacksonTPW on Twitter. You’ll be able to find him there. And in the notes section here of this podcast we’ll also have a link to where you can invest in his book and learn more about Coach Jackson.

Thanks for joining us. I appreciate your time so much.

Jackson: Thanks Brian. It was a big honor. I appreciate it.

You can follow Beth Torina on Twitter @BethTorina and LSU Softball @LSUSoftball.

PODCAST TRANSCRIPTION

Cain: Hey how are you doing? Brian Cain your Peak Performance Coach here with the Peak Performance Podcast. We’ve got LSU head softball coach, Beth Torina, fresh off back-to-back Women’s College World Series appearances in 2015 and 2016. Beth, thank you so much for taking time to join us here on the podcast.

Torina: Thanks. I’m happy to be with you guys.

Cain: If you would could you talk to us a little bit about at LSU you guys are the Tigers and in your softball programs “Tigers” is really the acronym that you use for the core principles of your program. Would you talk about Tigers and how you use that with your softball team.

Torina: We had this genius mental conditioning coach that directed us to having this Tigers standard. Is that what you want me to say?

Cain: No I want you to talk about how you use it.

Torina: Tigers – trust, integrity, grit, energy, relentless, selfless. I think the coolest thing about it is that all of our players could tell you that instantly which is something that we were missing before. Now they understand the standards. They can define the standards. I think that’s step one to being able to do anything is having a good understanding of it, knowing it, being able to define it. You can’t live it every day if you don’t have a clear picture of what it is so I think that has been huge for us.

Cain: Excellent. Beth, what is the mental game to you as a head coach in the SEC in one of the top programs in the country.

Torina: Well I think if you look at the season my team just had everybody had written us off somewhere midway through the year. We played five of (to me) the toughest people in our conference, the toughest people in the country right in a row. Two pitching staffs with ERAs right around one. So we had six games, virtually back-to-back weeks, with two pitching staffs with ERAs around one so our kids were just absolutely beat down. I mean going up to the plate and failing or having to compete against that time and time again was a huge toll on our kids’ mentality.

I think a lot of the reason why people had written us off was because of our mentality at that point. I don’t know if we put enough credit into what these kids have to go through to play day in and day out against the best of the best. I think we had to climb out of that hole not as a fundamental team but mentally as a program. I think once we did that and got confidence at, you saw where we ended up.

Cain: How did you do that? What did you do as a head coach to help them get that confidence back and crawl out of that hole and finish as strong as you did?

Torina: Well we went back and looked at some things and I think we got a little bit caught up in worrying too much about what everyone was going to do to us instead of what we were going to do to them. I think we tried to play – we always talk about our strengths first but I think we were so worried about how are we going to beat this pitching staff, how are we going to do that, that we missed the point of “let’s play LSU softball.”

For example in EP we would hit three rounds of what we thought we were going to get from the other pitcher. Well we went back and we said “you know what, let’s make sure that every day we’re hitting around with just fast balls and letting our kids just come out of their shoes.” Let’s make sure that we haven’t forgotten how to put a ball under the fence or how to square something up, what that feels like, because we’re challenging them so much to like “oh let’s make sure we  can hit that drop ball on the outside corner this kid is going to hammer us with or the change up.” Instead let’s also remember what it feels like to square something up. I think we kind of got lost and forgot that.

So we added that back in and made sure we were doing things every day that they were confident about, things that were feel-good things. We don’t always have to give them the hardest drill in our repertoire. Sometimes we give them a drill they’re really good at and let them feel good about it. So we made some changes there and I think it really helped.

Cain: Love it. One of the things I’ve seen you do – and I don’t know if you’re even conscious that you do it, I think we’ve talked about it a little bit – is in the third base coaching box during the SEC pyramid they panned on you and there was a lot of good deep breaths each pitch. Is that something that you’re intentionally doing as part of your routine to keep yourself in the moment and in control?

Torina: I thought you were just making fun of me with that.

Cain: No I was awesome. I thought it was awesome. I’m going to start teaching that. You’re going to be the model for all head coaches to follow.

Torina: I can tell you one thing I do as a head coach is I try and stay as consistent as possible. I try to not ever get too high or too low. A lot of people will ask me all the time “you’re never smiling over there, you’re not doing anything.” Well I try not to react to things. If I’m not going to react when we’re up 10 I’m not going to react when we’re down 10. I think our kids just always know what they’re getting from me. That’s something that is really important to me.

I think I see it all the time that a coach is arguing so hard about the pitch before not being a strike or not being strike three that they forgot to focus on the pitch that is coming and now we give up a homerun. We just argued it should have been strike three and we’ve now given up a homerun on the next pitch because we’re so focused on the pitch before.

I really try and just be present. I try and say the same – I tell myself in my heart before every game that I can be full of emotion but act emotionless. That is one of my things that I try and tell myself all the time is that I can act emotion-free. I can be passionate and I can have a lot of emotion but my actions have to be free of emotion and more intelligent instead of knee jerk and reactive.

Cain: Love that. Full of emotion but act emotion-free. That is fantastic. Last question I have and then we’ll open it up to the crew here. Beth, you’ve worked in college softball now a number of years and had a chance to work with and be around a lot of mental game sports psychology coaches. Some of the coaches that are with us here this weekend are trying to decide “do I want to be a baseball or softball coach or do I want to go be a sports psychology coach.” What advice would you give to somebody kind of just getting started in the field of the mental game to help them connect with and serve a coach like yourself who is a head coach in the SEC?

Torina: Well we’ve been around some different people and I think one thing that’s really cool that you do, Brian, is that you really know our kids and you know their names and you take the time to learn about it. I think while you probably give a lot of the same advice to different programs around the country you really make it specific to our kids and you understand them. I think that is a huge key in making them buy in.

They’re probably not going to buy in to somebody that just says blanket hitting but they might buy into it and say “Bianca, I really saw you doing this and I think this is going to really work for you.” I think they are going to understand that a lot more and buy into it if you know something about them.

Every time you’ve come and visited us (or even if you’re on Skype) the first thing you do is know the kids’ names. The first thing (even if you’re on Skype) you’ll recognize “hey I see you in the front row there, Landry, what are you doing.” I think you do a good job of making the kids buy in. It’s great to have all the information. It’s worthless if your kids don’t find it valuable.

Cain: Awesome. Fantastic. Thanks Beth. Let’s open up to your questions you’ve guys have got for Beth Torina who, by the way, does have a French Bulldog.

Torina: Yes I do.

Cain: His name is Rosen which is fantastic.

Audience: You were talking about keeping your emotions kind of even. Do you have a preference of your players? Like whether they are up and down? Is it individual or is it something you like to keep consistent through the whole thing?

Torina: I tell them the same thing. They’re allowed to be a lot more emotional than me. I like our players to be individuals. I think their own personality needs to come out. I think that is a big part of the fun of being on a team is having a whole bunch of different personalities working towards one goal. So I encourage individuality within the team concept.

But I think whatever they’re going to be – so if they’re the cheerleader, if they are the top step and they are the one that is leading the Tigers cheer, they are doing it whether we are up 10, down 10, whether they just struck out or made an error whatever it is, if that’s them then that’s them. If they are the person that is more focused, more intense, then no matter what happens – we’re the last pitch to go to the College World Series – you are still the one that is intense and focused. You can’t suddenly become the cheerleader. So you just have to be who you are.

I think all of them bring something great to us. We don’t need everyone to be a cheerleader. We don’t need everyone to be quiet. I think you’ve got to just groom your individuals. I think consistency is huge.

Cain: Awesome. Another question.

Audience: You talked about Tigers – trust, integrity, grit, energy – can you go through all those?

Cain: I got them. I’ve got to have those. I can show them to you. I’ll give them the resources and stuff.

Torina: Okay.

Cain: Is there anything else you wanted to ask more specifically about how she uses them maybe?

Torina: I’ll tell you one cool thing we do with them is every day we nominate a player of the day after practice. They have to nominate them according to a Tigers trait. They can’t just say like “Cindy pitched really good today and I like her headband.” They have to be able to say like “I trusted that Cindy was going to make pitches today because she’s worked hard” or “I know that Connie struck out in the first inning was it was really gritty for her to come back and get the game winning hit, she has been relentless.” So they have to use the Tigers traits in their speech. They can’t just say it. So that is something where we’re reminding them daily to live it and use it is in that.

Cain: Beth, one of the things that I think you are one of the best coaches I’ve ever been around at doing this is creating a motto for the year whether it’s take the next step or whether you had the Top Gun planes or the one penny. Would you talk about some of the mottos that you’ve used for those individual years and kind of your process for coming up with those?

Torina: Kind of like your total immersion we kind of total immersion our staff and come up with the things that we think our team is going to need for the year. We really just sit around and say “what are we trying to get out of this group, what do we think are red flags, what are things that we’re trying to ensure don’t happen and what are the things that we think we’re missing?” So we’re third twice. I know this is just conversational. We’ll be like “we’ve got to win another game, we just need to win one more game to get in the championship series and see what happens.” I think our question will be amongst ourselves of what do we have to do to bridge that gap to win one more game. I think we sit a lot and talk about the things that our team needs.

We’ve had some really cool ones. I think everybody’s favorite has been the power of one. The player of the day got a penny and they would bank them in a bank on the wall that slowly builds up the power of one. It was cool because it was power of one, one team coming together as one unit, but it was also like how small is this one little this, this one detail that you can do, this one penny, yet it adds up to this big huge season where you’re finishing in the College World Series.

We did whatever it takes one year and it was all about having the it factor. That was our first year at LSU. I love this one too. Every day there was a word and it had an “it” in it like “commitment” or “attitude.” Something like that. The kids also identified their own personal it. Like what is it for you that makes you tick. “I’m going to crush it, I’m going to live it, I’m going to earn it,” whatever it might be. That was one of my favorite ones just about the it factor.

I have some genius assistants that make the coolest stuff. This year they got puzzle pieces for the player of the day and the puzzle piece had all these people that had the it factor in their life – Michael Jordan, Muhammad Ali, people that you would think like they just had it when you watched them play and watched them do it. They had it. So just trying to teach our kids about having that it factor. That was one of my favorites to do.

Cain: Awesome. Beth, fantastic. Thank you so much for taking the time, energy, and attention. I’ve got to ask this question as I do since this is a podcast, as I ask for all of our guests, the last question. What do you know now that if you could go back and talk to the 21-22 year old, young, just getting started coaching, Beth Torina, what do you know now you wish you knew then?

Torina: I think staying true to yourself. There is no point at it’s bigger than the game. There no point at let’s figure out what you do well. I think just staying true to yourself, doing what you do well no matter who you are up against or who you are facing. I think I’m hit in the face with that lesson every single year all over again. Just staying true to what you do well. It’s the same game. They don’t change the length of the bases or any of that stuff since I’ve been around it. So just keep being true to yourself.

Cain: Awesome. Beth, thanks so much for taking the time, the energy, and the attention out of your busy schedule here. Scratch Rosen on the back for me and Dominate your Day. Thank you so much.

Torina: Thanks.

Cain: Alright we’ll see you.

Torina: Bye.