Finding Mastery with Dr. Michael Gervais - Coaching With A People-First Philosophy | MLB Coach of the Year, Donnie Ecker

Episode Date: February 22, 2023

Baseball America’s MLB Coach of the Year, Donnie Ecker, shares his heart-forward approach to coaching and leadership.Donnie Ecker is a highly respected and accomplished Major League Baseball (MLB) coach who is entering his second season as bench coach and offensive coordinator for the Texas Rangers. Before his tenure with the Rangers, Donnie was recognized as Baseball America’s 2021 MLB Coach of the Year when he helped lead the San Francisco Giants to a franchise record 107 wins and 241 home runs. However, this is not a conversation about baseball. Donnie’s expertise is in biomechanics and analytics – but it’s his people-first philosophy and ability to help his players work from the inside out that makes his coaching style so powerful and effective. I love how he’s navigated the tension between taking care of himself and taking care of those around him. Best of all, it’s forged in a great life story. Donnie has skills that we can all learn from and try to implement in our own lives – in business, sport, in our communities, or in our families. So, whether you're a baseball fan, a coach, a business leader, or someone looking to level up your own performance, I think you’re really going to love this conversation with Coach Donnie Ecker._________________Subscribe to our Youtube Channel for more powerful conversations at the intersection of high performance, leadership, and meaning: https://www.youtube.com/c/FindingMasteryGet exclusive discounts and support our amazing sponsors! Go to: https://findingmastery.com/sponsors/Subscribe to the Finding Mastery newsletter for weekly high performance insights: https://www.findingmastery.com/newsletter Download Dr. Mike's Morning Mindset Routine! https://www.findingmastery.com/morningmindsetFollow us on Instagram, LinkedIn, and X.See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

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Can we be self-aware and then can we go do it? Okay, welcome back or welcome to the Finding Mastery podcast. I'm your host, Dr. Michael Gervais. I trade and training a high performance psychologist and I'm really excited to welcome Donnie Ecker as our guest for this week's conversation. Donnie is a highly respected and accomplished Major League Baseball coach who is entering his second season as bench coach and offensive coordinator for the Texas Rangers. Before his tenure with the Rangers, Donnie was recognized as Baseball America's 2021 MLB Coach of the Year when he helped the San Francisco Giants to a franchise record 107 wins and 241 home runs. Remarkable. But this is not a conversation about baseball. Donnie's an expert

in biomechanics and analytics and all that makes him a great coach, but it's his people first philosophy and his ability to help his players work from the inside out that makes his leadership style so powerful and so effective. And I love how he's navigated the tension between taking care of himself and taking care of those around him. Best of all, it's forged in a great life story. Donnie has skills that we can all learn from and to try to implement in our own lives, in business, in sport, in our own communities, in our own families. So whether

you're a baseball fan, a coach, a business leader, or someone looking to level up your own performance, I think you're really going to love this conversation. So with that, I want to introduce coach Donnie Ecker. Donnie, how are you? I'm great. It's great to be here. I'm stoked that we are having this time because, what was it, a year ago? Two years? 18 months ago, I think we connected online.

You have become, you've received an incredible award. Can we start with that award just for a moment? Sure. Yeah. I mean, let's just celebrate that award. Can we start with that award just for a moment? Sure. Yeah. I mean, let's just celebrate that award. Yeah. MLB coach of the year. Right. Okay. That's pretty cool. So how long have you been coaching? Man, I say my whole life and it, it starts at, you know, moments that you look back and you go, okay, why in 13 years old flag football, how come I wanted to call plays?

And so I didn't know that at the time, but I was also playing quarterback, but the dopamine hit wasn't dropping back and making the throw. The dopamine hit was, hey, let's get together. If we do this and they do this, we'll do this. So I was always drawn to the mic. Um, and that transformed in my life to, you know, going to Australia and trying to fight to keep a career going. But a part of that deal was you're going to coach 12 year olds. So then I was doing that and just my whole life in some form or the other, I was really drawn towards, towards coaching. Okay. So let's, let's do a little bit of the, the chapters of your life, if you will. Right. And so

we'll do a quick little flyover. And then if you allow me to pick some of those apart, that would be fun. Okay, good. And the things I do want to make sure we connect on is like how you teach and work through failure because baseball is a game of failure as it's, it's, you know, respectfully known. And then I also want to understand how you work with people. This conversation for me is about how coaching is really how you work with people and how that your insights translate into other rooms, like boardrooms, living rooms, you know, decision-making rooms, whatever that might be. And so let's start with chapters of your life. So I don't know how many chapters have you had so far?

I don't know. I don't, you know, it's, it's the way my brain works. It's not one, two, three, it's just this constant line, you know, it's like one long book. Um, but I think if you start at the beginning, it is the first eight years of my life were a double wide trailer in this beautiful part of California called Bakersfield. So you're probably familiar. There's no ocean there. Um, it was across from a Frito-Lay plant. So my, my biological parents, they were six months pregnant with me when they got married. And some of this is getting older and wanting to figure out the answers, but it really starts with a single grandmother raising me in a dirt lot from, you know, birth till eight years old. So, and I say that because, um,

when you're that young and you don't have structure, you lean towards curiosity, exploring, and then, and you get a little taste of problem solving on your own. You know, I didn't have a be home at this time. I did not have a, you know, do this or don't do this. I had a, uh, basically a free canvas to just go explore. So that was the first eight years. What would you title it? I would title it curiosity. Do you talk about this much this part of your life? I'm becoming more clear that it's important to share it, but I haven't. And really, I spent a lot of one-on-one time with myself trying to figure out

like deconstruct, why is that? And it's just because I did not want, um, any extra sympathy. And I never felt like it was unique. You know, it's like, man, these aren't first world problems. And even all the hard things I've been through, you really look at what's going on in the world. And it's, it's like, man, these are not first world problems. And it's, it's unique to me, but it's not unique to the world. So do you mean our first world problems or they're not? What, what did you mean by that? Yeah. Like the real problems are, you know, not having food and shelter and stuff like that. Yeah. Yeah. So, um, how do you think that helped that experience help shape you? And let me, let me make sure I'm calibrating correctly. Sure. Double wide trailer. So I get in my mind in Bakersfield,

like a dirt lot, you know, like and I'm not sure it's not a dirt ladder or not, but like this image that resources were thin, that you had loose parenting styles, your parents were not around, your grandmother was doing, you know, the best she could with thin resources. And that zero to eight, you're just kind of getting into school. Right. And so like, you didn't, you know, it was like probably pretty wild or loose. I don't know if it was scary or not. Yeah, those are all words I would connect with. It was very, it was very free and you, you don't know what you don't know, which when we get into that, that next chapter of moving to the Bay area and you're thrown into a very affluent area, you start to really go, oh man, there's another world that exists. So what I knew was riding a bike and running around and starting a tractor and climbing fences. And, and I just knew the social dynamics were, if you saw a kid in the dirt lot, you just wrote up to

him and, you know, you became friends and you did stuff together. So it, it loses a very good word um but it's also figuring out like a lot of ways to be self-sufficient and and go problem solve which i think is such a it's such a key ingredient to where i am now and and what we all strive for which is you know less complaining and more like go figure out solutions so curiosity led to this curiosity exploration had a either led to or had a problem solving solution focused experience embedded in it. That's really cool. I don't think you would know this, but I grew up on a farm, dirt roads, no streetlights. Nearest neighbor was really far away and we didn't have a lot. And so laissez-faire parenting where if I didn't come home by dark, you know, at least my experience was that we didn't have a lot.

It's not like I went without. But yeah, but like to get a new pair of shoes, like it was, I had to wait to get shoes. And as I'm talking about it, even right now, I'm not sure if that was the way that they just parented with, um, material things or we actually had to wait, you know? So it wasn't a thing. I didn't care that much about it. Yeah. So I'm, I'm, I'm marking that there's a similarity there that maybe we both had. Yeah. And it's not totally clear for me exactly how that experience has led me to some of the insights I have. But I do know that I had to figure shit out early. No doubt. You too.

I didn't know. I have faint memories, but I slept – my bed where I would sleep was – you know the big, like really big black plastic bags? Like the garbage bags. Where are we going with we're going there sleeping and try. So no, no, not in them, but we would, she would stuff laundry in there and I would lay on that. And then every once in a while she'd go to a laundromat to do laundry. And you know, my area I'd slept in would be different, but here's the beautiful thing is dirty clothes. Luckily they had a garbage bag around it, you know, but I didn't know, I didn't know any differently. Yeah, of course. And I still look back and the gosh, this feeling of emotion right now, but I look back knowing that, you know, the thing that has stood the test of time for me is this really high regard for humans, even more so is this single

grandmother. And that, you know, you want to talk about shaping that relationship and just how you think of women too. That is really carried over where I see kids that have moms now and I make a point to do this. Even last week, I was at a autograph session kind of thing in a grocery store. And it's something I'm wanting to continue to get better at. But all these kids, you know, they're coming up, coming up and they're with their parents. And I just try to pause every once in a while if I see behaviors. And I just try to tell that kid, hey, you're so lucky. You're so lucky. And they're like, why? I, hey, you're so lucky. You're so lucky.

And they're like, why? I'm like, you have a mom. Like, you're winning. You're winning. You know, and just to frame that. And I try to win those moments. It is so important to me. I used to try to avoid public appearances because I did not want this feeling of, you know, you're better than somebody or all the attention is on you.

And I'm extremely comfortable speaking in front of big crowds. I like all that. And it shifted for me when I realized that, you know, when you have an opportunity to elicit an experience for somebody else that they can't get other places, you do it. So it's taking the photo. It's signing the autograph. It's speaking to kids. If you can shape and create a feeling for somebody else that they can't get somewhere

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Get a free variety pack, a $25 value, and 10% off for life when you head to davidprotein.com slash finding mastery. That's David, D-A-V-I-D, protein, P-R-O-T-E-I-N.com slash finding mastery. That sounds like a first principle for you. It is. Yeah. So what is that about?

Is that's, that's creating an experience. There's a, um, there's a kindness in that, that you're working from. It's a kindness is a lean for me. Is a what? It's a lean. It's a, um, it means there's a, probably a frame we're missing here, but when I got shifted from the single grandmother to my dad's side of the family in the Bay Area. So before you go there, where were your parents early? I know you kind of hit it. Yeah, they were separated. They were separated, and they left you with grandma.

Yeah. And this is mom's grandma? Yes. Okay. So my biological mom. Drugs involved? Yeah. So my biological mom was in and out of rehab.

Beautiful lady. She was kind of in the modeling space. That's why you're so handsome. I got it from your mother. Your cameras are good. No, but she was not a part of my life. And I didn't know why. Okay.

How did you answer that as a young kid? I didn't know. Yeah. It's the unknown, which is interesting, right? Because as you get older and you start to formulate, then the work begins like what we call trauma or what we call, um, you know, life experiences that shape you. Like when I say the work, that's not the, that's the dark side. What do you, what's the dark side? The work, the dark side. I mean, there's a lot of dark sides in

the career. There's darks. Anytime you're, you're pursuing, um, maybe a different direction in life. That's not the 90% or 95%. There's a price that comes with that. Oh, that's interesting. I do want to talk about that with you. Cause I was like nodding my head, like all the work. Yeah. Like I love the work. Yeah. Right yeah right like the the opining and the philosophizing and all that that's cool because there's framing in it right and i i mean that is that's part of it but i love the work and when i sit with folks in a um high speed corporate environment or sport environment and they like, okay, let's be great. Or like, I want to get better. I'm like, great. Okay, good. Yeah. That's what I all say. And they look at me like, no,

but I'm different. And I'll say like, do you want to do the work? And they're like, yeah. You know, like, what do you mean? I go the work where you go to places that you haven't been and you hold yourself in those places. You feel all of that until you make some sense of things and you can put some words to it. And then you figure out how you're going to become your very best every single day you're working in that type of way. And that work is remarkable, right? And I hear you saying that. So I was nodding my head to that.

And then you took it to another place like the dark side, which are we saying the same thing? I think two anchors here, intrapersonally the, the, um, when I got, and I'll unpack this, it'll make a little bit more sense, but my grandmother got sick. And so my dad, yeah. Okay. And, and it was a little bit of like the courts getting involved. And eventually what happened was my grandparents on my dad's side stepped up, right? They came down in a motor home from the Los Altos Mountain View area by Stanford, drove down. I can still remember this because it was, my dad was there. And at that time I was seeing my dad once a year, once a year,

he would show up, take me to lunch. And then I wouldn't see him again. That was from about four to eight. So, you know, good job, dad. Anytime you're, um, somebody inserts themselves, no different than, than coaching or, or being a part of anything, right? Like if you just show up here and there, it's, it's not sticky. So even that, you know, what's interesting is he didn't try to, he didn't parent me in those moments. We just had lunch and he left, which is interesting. And that's probably not the important part here, but the context is, is essential. So you go up to now I'm up into the Bay area and I want to get to the dark side of this. My grandparents on my dad's side did a tremendous job they were um this was not like a love through

affection or anything like that but they were self-made millionaires from nebraska they both dropped out of high school at 15 and a half 16 they came to california they took iq test they were both scaled out as geniuses so really elite problem solvers grandfather went and worked for boeing before you know google and, you know, Google and YouTube, you know, changing engines. Grandmother hit that stream in the 70s, 80s with Intel, the dot-com era. So what was unique about them is they were wealthy and they didn't spend a dime. And it was very much a, if you want something, go figure it out. So I go from loose, no boundaries, no shoes, no bed to almost the militaristic model where I didn't play sports. The first time I played sports was I got into – I moved to the Mountain View area.

I got into school. First day of school. The day before, they drove me down the street and they said, this is your school. Tomorrow, you will walk to school. Got me a backpack. They taught me – Are they like, this kid is feral? Oh, yeah.

A lot of work to do know yeah yeah a lot of work to do there's a lot of work to do yeah yeah and it's just interesting i kind of go from a frame of the one through eight i go from a frame to eight to 13 14 and then my life really you know we'll get to it it really transforms in a way so i'm i'm kind of being passed along and i'm i'm like oh maybe this maybe this is, this is normal. What is the pass along? I'm not going to forget. Yeah. We will come back there. Yeah. Um, what was the second, what would you call the second phase of the chapter with your second grandparents? Yeah. It's from eight to 14 and it was the ultimate form of, of discipline. Okay. So curiosity, discipline, structure, structure. Okay. Then what is the next

chapter? To me, the next chapter is family and love, family and love. And that's from 14 to till now till now. Yeah. Wait, you've had more chapters than that. Well, when we talk about my family life. Yeah. Okay. So let's go chronological chronologically for a little bit. Sure. 14 to where's another kind of, I'd say through high school, you know, high school. Yeah. Cause you, you get drafted professionally in baseball and that. Oh, so you got good. I got good early. I look good in shorts.

You look good in shorts, you know, seven on seven camps. Yeah. Elite 11. Yeah. Some of those dudes can rip it. Yeah.

Then the pocket gets messy and we really find out. Yeah. I was, I was really good in practice. Yeah. So for folks that don't know elite 11, it's the top, um,

20 some quarterbacks that come in the country and they're competing and they've been scoured for a year for the full year to come into a camp, to see who's the best 11 quarterbacks going into college. And, um, and your point, like they look good in shorts, they can whip the ball. It's amazing. Their speed and accuracy. And all of a sudden when there's large humans pushing into the the area that you're trying to keep your feet grounded and people get tossed around in there it's a whole different mechanism and you're saying that you you could do it when it wasn't dangerous but then when it got a bit dangerous in your mind because baseball's which do you call baseball

dangerous sport yeah i think it's fair it's it's um it's once again just filled with failure right you're talking oh so you so you say dangerous from a psychological perspective yeah physical so no noise outside external noise um it engulfed me it did oh man i never i didn't look we're gonna have to be disciplined to stay on topics here. Yeah. Um, but I, I sometimes didn't see the picture. I saw other people looking at the way I moved in the way I swung. And I was always worried about the aesthetic and is it, does it look good? And is it right? So, I mean, I was the classic, um, freeze and focused on what other people thought of me. Oh, have you heard of this thing called FOPO? Fear of people's opinions.

I mean, that is, that's the, to this day, like it's not the breaking ball. It's not the hundred mile or fastball. It is. That's the single detriment. If we go back to modern times, the things we worried about, right? Like saber tooth tiger, all that stuff. It's, it is like, what do people think of me?

And where do you think that came from for you? Because my estimate is that. If you're listening right now to this conversation, you can recognize FOPO in your own life. You can recognize paying attention to what somebody might be thinking of you as a way that just absolutely got in the way of you doing your thing well. Sure. Loving well, laughing well, hitting well, you know, a baseball, whatever it is. So where do you think for you that came from? It's that second chapter of, sorry, it's going from the grandparents in third grade, fourth grade, fifth grade. There's so much good that I learned in there.

My entrepreneurial life started there as simple as, hey, I want to play baseball. What do you have to do? I need $90 and I need a signature. How are you going to make $90? I mean, pause at the end. What are you going to do? My grandfather, there's a grocery store chain chain called Albertsons at that time. He took me over. He put money in, he popped up the newspapers. He said, go, go sell. So like,

what do you mean? Well, knock on the door, offer them a newspaper, ask for a dollar. So I did that. And the fourth door, and I tell people the fourth door changed my life. The fourth door handed me a $5 bill. So that's where I learned value creation. And we fast forward to, to, you know, coaching and being responsible for human beings right now. My model is built off of making sure we create value for them. But I learned that at, at that was nine years old. It's like, Oh man, if I do something for somebody else that kind of takes something off their plate, I've created a value for them that there's a return that's even richer than the $1. And this happened young. This was nine nine years old so this is the first principle for you as well

absolutely because it's time tested which is what do you mean it's time tested we can go back a thousand years and if you if your driver and your anchor is to pursue the best interest of the people that you're responsible for moving because the leadership word is which we can get into like language is so important to me and the more words become produced by the masses i think the more we lose the origin of them so leadership is people just know the words to say now because it helps them get the job. And then keeping the job is very difficult, but they know the macro buzzwords. So I'm not as interested in leadership as I'm interested in. I want to move people.

I want to move into individuals towards their best, and I want to move groups towards their best. I know that if I do that, it's not me standing in front of a room saying, this is what we're going to do. This is who we are. This is how we're going to do it. Macro buzz statements. I do feel confident over time, a thousand years till now, if we say,

Hey, what do you want? What does it look like for you? What does it feel like? What does a great year look like for you? Now I have to be very responsible behind the scenes to know what that plan looks like and try. And is there an aim here? Is there a motive for me? Absolutely. But I know if they own it then i can say you know authentically okay let's build a plan for that and that's how i approach these guys donnie that sounds like how i work too that sounds almost exactly i don't use the word move people that sounds like it's uniquely yours and so i'm like oh this is so rich because what you just did is you gave a very clear two first

principles. They're both about other people creating an experience. If they can't have it on their own, you do it. Right. And that's you using your celebrity. That's you using the unique uniform that you get to put, put on where people are like, Oh my God. And they start shaking around you because how handsome you are. No, because, because of what you might help me get a date or something. Yeah. So, um, so, but that's the first principle. And the second first principle is that you help you're committed to helping people move, which is about growth, which is about getting better. Yeah. And you're helping them understand what they want, which is like when you, when you're asking that question and then your responsibility is to back it up with a plan. And what I do is I calibrate the plan with them.

You probably do the same thing. Absolutely. And then, so let's stay here for a minute. So if we use the word, so the process is asking somebody to use their imagination in a way that conjures up with great clarity. Like you can get the fabric of the clarity from what the vision that they hold for themselves is. Okay. So that's the word I use vision, but it almost, it does lose power when I even say it. So I don't even like to use the word vision, but that I don't have a better word. And do you, have you found that when you ask somebody that question, that sometimes it is far bigger than you might've thought, or sometimes it's like way smaller than you might've thought? Absolutely. Every day, right? That's the beautiful part. So how do you calibrate with them? And hold on before you answer

that, do you come into it with an idea? You do. That's what I do as well. So I come into the conversation like, what do I think could be possible? And that's the, as a partner in helping people be their very best, that's my alone work. You know, like if you and I are working, and i'm like what do i think is possible for him and that's hard because the boundaries are like where are the boundaries okay so this is a two-part conversation here is what do you do when they go i think my my vision is and you're like oh geez

that's like 10 steps bigger than i thought. What do you do in that moment? Well, I make sure that I come in extremely nonjudgmental. Very important to me. Eliminate bias. We know like there's that invisible world that we're all in, right? If people don't click on this podcast, at some point you can't pay the bills, right? And I know that if we don't score runs and and win games eventually you're just not invited back contract over okay so that's there it's in the corner like um i was going back through notes of uh two gosh 2015 16 and this

was about two weeks ago and i had something highlighted from you and you, I don't know if you're gonna remember this. You called it the invisible handshake. Oh, yeah, of course. Which is results. Yeah. It's a scoreboard and it's beautiful. And I was like, man, that's really cool timing. Um, and I have these things highlighted all over that stuff stands out and I'm like, ah, man, that, that has to resonate with me. Yeah. So I really know when something doesn't resonate with me. Yeah. Um, how do you know, how do you, like, what do you use for calibration? It pops in me right away when it's not right. When it doesn't feel true, especially when I'm in a group setting and everyone is moved by it. And I, I won't name names here, but we had a sports psychologist come in when I was in college baseball.

And I knew really at an early age that this was not for me. And it was just, it's high, you know, breathing fire, motivation. And this big theme was fake it till you make it. And everybody was pumped up, fired up. And I was lost. They're still saying that now. You're not letting them in your club, are you? That fake it till you make it shit.

If it works for other people, if I'm responsible for you, I will work to understand because it's more important for me to partner and help them. But I knew at 18 when I heard that, everybody was pumped up. And I was like, man, that doesn't do anything to me. And then what happens, you know, 30 minutes minutes later everyone that that dopamine hit is gone yeah right and that's the that's the fear with all this over mass populated uh motivational stuff well motivation last moments yeah so not not to get too off track no no this is right i knew first principles last when they hold if they especially if they've been time tested.

So that's why we want to work from first principles and work on mastering decision making around those. And so you knew and you listened to your body. Yeah. Whether it was my gut or it didn't move me at all. I didn't get goosebumps. I wasn't drawn to it, which during this whole journey, I'm slowly cultivating the authentic side of, of how I want to lead. Right.

Cause I knew this is you as a young player. This is me. We're thinking, how am I going to lead? This is me at long beach state playing ball. Yeah. What's a good program now? Great program. Yeah.

Really good players at the time. Troy to the whiskey, Evan Longoria. And, um, yeah, I knew, you know, I knew I'm like, man, that does nothing for me. Fake it till you make it. Like, what are we the best in the world at? Well, us human beings are, we're the best in the world at telling ourselves stories. It's a, it's a never ending 24 hour conversation we tell ourselves. So we know I want to look in the mirror and like I do now and go, dude, you had a to-do list. You did four things. You didn't do the last two. Why?

And it's simple. You've heard of like the negotiation phase, right? I'm going to do three sets of 10. One, two, three, and you're pumping. You're like five, six, seven. You're like, all right. We're talking about lifting weights. Yeah, like just for an example, eight.

I'm good. I'm good. We never negotiate up, right? We don't. Our brains are not designed for that. Like nothing in our biological state of our brains is like, Hey, go be amazing. Go do 12. We, so I've transformed my whole structure about four years ago where I'm not, I'm not doing the negotiation. I'm it's a do or a don't. And I'm not perfect in that. But when I'm not, I love telling myself, hey, man, you didn't do that. Finding Mastery is brought to you by Momentous. When it comes to high performance, whether you're leading a team, raising a family, pushing physical limits, or simply trying to be better today than you were yesterday, what you put in your body matters.

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Again, that's Felix Gray. You spell it F-E-L-I-X-G-R-A-Y.com and use the code FINDINGMASTERY20 at FelixGray.com for 20% off. This negotiation phase is awesome. It resonates. Conversation with yourself right well yeah it's a it's a way out of the heart i'll do it tomorrow i'll do it tomorrow yeah or like to your point in the intensity when it's like eight and you've got all this lactic acid coursing and it's like oh you know i don't want to strain or pull something you know whatever okay so and you

put the weights down at that negotiation phase how are you being fluid because it sounds like what you're saying i did it or i didn't which is rigid black and white yes or no which is not how the world works sure it's shades of color as opposed to only two black and white or something so So how do you, how does that rigid type of yes, no work for you in other parts of your life? Is there a downside to it or like, help me understand this. Yeah. Um, back to kind of a dark side where if you, you build your life off this idea that I'm going to focus on timeless principles. So am I like this year, one of my, my commitments is I'm only going to read books that have been around over a hundred years. And you know, is there some Nassim Tlaib

in there with the Lindy effect? Absolutely. Like there's, there's a reason it's lasted this long. And so I want to focus on that. Um, so whether it's, it's Socrates or Aristotle or any of those things, like if it's been around this long, it's probably going to be around for another 500 years. So I do like that is a major principle to my life. And then I'll just transfer that to all the way I want to live and the way I want to impact. I know that there is no magic pill. There is no

shortcut, but I do believe that the, if there was a shortcut and the one I'm going to go into is that it's discipline. So that does come with a very binary approach. Now that dark side, when you, when you, um, when you kind of adopt that at a younger age, and I had a lot of experiences through Silicon Valley and interning at Stanford, interning at Google at 17 years old, I was exposed to a lot of things in Silicon Valley that I was exposed to you. I was exposed to Stephen Kotler. I knew when things resonated with me. It's like, ah, that feels alive. That's me. I was trying to put words to that. hotler, I knew when things resonated with me and it's like, ah, that feels alive. That that's me.

Like that's what, that's really, you know, I was trying to put words to that. When you go down that path, that path is usually not conforming it when it's binary. The dark side is, is relatability. The dark side is going into my first pro job and you're like, man, why am I only drawn to like those three people? Like the way they work, the way they talk, the way they love feedback, the way they give feedback, the way they love being criticized for certain things. So that dark side to do that lonely work and go on that journey with yourself and then raise the fist and say, I want this because being the best in the world at helping other people, that's fun to me. And so that dark side is like, oh, but my habits and behaviors have to match that. So I'm, I've always viewed it as an investment where right now in my life and in full vulnerability, I know I need to get better at taking vacations. I need to get better at spending more time with my family. But that balance that has been talked about so much never has made sense to me. I don't know how you do it when you're competing on the world stage.

So the rigidness of that is just real, right? And you own it. You say, well, this is who I am and it's how I'm going to be. But then pairing that with a high amount of flexibility, and it's, it's kind of the way I operate in my day is I wake up and the idea is I'm going to be selfish to my binary mode of, of helping myself grow. So like, I'm not gonna, I'm going to put this in my body on an empty stomach. I'm going to read, I'm going to info sponge a little bit, but the second I drive and I show up to work, now it's about everybody else. So it's a way that I can do both.

And that's kind of this idea of institutional leadership, which is no matter what job I've had, I have these standards for myself. I have these behaviors that I really want to match. And ultimately, those behaviors are going to drive the systems that we've created that eventually create production. But the minute I drive through that parking lot and I go through that door, the, the ability to like institutionally lead is what is this environment based on the people I'm responsible for asking me to do. So, you know, Corey Seeger is his own game. Marcus Simeon is his own game. Our president is his own game.

And once I know the rules of those games, how they operate, how they love, how they feel, I deploy what I hope are unique skills to get the most out of that experience that I do believe drives those outcomes. And that is, it gives me the best of both worlds. I'm true to myself, which is very important. I'm a little bit more on the binary side, but I'm able to separate when it comes, when it becomes about other people. So the minute I stepped in that building, man, like, you know what would I do? I love talking about the weather or about hunting. It doesn't move me that much, but I know that person loves it. And for those 10 minutes, I'm going to do that. That's what they need. It fills their cup up. It gets our relationship tight. So that feels really

good to me, which is an anchor that I'm not giving up my growth, but that I'm also leaving a conversation or leaving an experience. And we got the most out of that. How long have you been using this framework, this feed myself so I can feed others, feed myself first so I can feed others? Really? It started because every job I had, it wasn't, you were, you know, the first three years in St. Louis system. St. Louis? Cardinals. St. Louis Cardinals.

What years? I want to say 26, 2015 to 2018. Okay. So, you know, you're thrown into a very high tradition-based organization and your job is to stay in your lane and that's it. Don't mess things up, right? That's what's being messaged. Were you a player or a coach at that time?

Coach. Coach. Yeah. So, and I say that because I did that job and then I jumped from a ball to triple a with the Los Angeles angels and there you're a triple a coach. So you're executing whatever the hitting coordinator, which is the guy that's responsible for the minor leagues. You're executing his vision, right? It's kind of execute whatever he wants. Then I go to Cincinnati. I get my first

major league job, the reds. Now I'm an assistant to a head guy. I'm what was your job? Assistant hitting coach for hitting. Yeah. And I say that because I'm executing the vision of other people. Then I get the big job, right? I'm here's the keys to the offense in San Francisco for the giants. Well, now it's in a way it's like, okay, what are you going to do? There's no more, you're not an assistant anymore. So that's when it started for me, Mike was building a specific plan and strategy that was true to myself, but that was going to be applicable now to this new challenge I was taking on. Okay. And what years were that? 2020 and 2021 was San Francisco. And you won coach of the year in 21. Yes.

Okay. Yeah. All right. So how long, so since 20 that I want to get the, the way that you were practicing feed myself. Um, and I want to unpack that because I think anyone that wants to be extraordinary or do well in life needs to understand this, what you're talking about at a deeper level. And right now I'm talking to leaders that are operating in a very stressful environment, especially large enterprise companies where

Wall Street is demanding returns and they're still growing, but not growing fast enough for Wall Street. And because of that, having to let go of employees. So it's a really intense moment with high ambiguity, high stress for leaders. And what I hear you saying, and you live in that world, the invisible handshake that you and I live in is if we don't help the organization get the outcome that they want. And our approach sounds like it's by getting, by transforming, not transactions that, or investing in the process to get the outcome is another way to think about it. That we're asked, eh, you know what? Here's a bus ticket. You know, I'm going to fly back in the jet. Here's a bus ticket. So let's go, let's go back to the framing and you're doing it as a hitting coach and I'm doing

it as a performance psychologist. And so go to the, um, how much time is that morning process for you? And then what exactly are you doing? And, um, let's just start, start and stop there. Yeah. And I think it's it's a great place to start is even before we had our first game, our first job, because the context, which I think is really important, whether you're in business or anywhere, is the ability to balance out, what do I want to do? Here it is. It's a blank canvas.

Do you want to go under center 50% of the time? Football analogy. Do you want to be in shotgun? Do you want to run an RPO? I mean, it's your call, your choice. What do you want to do? And just to be clear, for those that don't know football, that that's American football, that shotgun RPO. And what was the third one? Like under center and more traditional. These are ways that you can move that the quarterback moves the ball. Yeah. And there's a philosophy and a style that would fit with those and there's cost benefit to each one of them. Sure. So this is what you're saying. Now I'm thinking about my style, how I'm going to run

my offense at the giants. And so, you know, those, those three overarching first principles for me, has it stood the test of time, right? Are we creating simplicity, right? I'll go do the heavy work and do the complex work. Let me go to the deep end and I'll bring up a system that's simple, that operates really efficiently in loud, complex environments. And then that last one is that we're constantly pursuing self-interest of our people, right? That's it. So focus on those three things, our systems, our people, and then let's just make sure as technical as I can get with all this evolving limb tracking and brain testing. And I have to know that, but there's a filter that's got to go through that right so just know that like

that's a that's a concept design for me before i even step in so a part of taking this job with san francisco i knew i was going to have two other people that were coming from the minor leagues at other jobs that were going to be kind of in the trenches with me so it's the three of us let's build it let's go the biggest thing for me when I sat there and I thought about, um, and this is so cool. Cause like, imagine being a CEO of a department or a CEO of a business and you have your first meeting, right? And so my brain goes to, what do I want them to feel when they walk out of that first meeting? What do I want them to think? Cause they're going to go talk. What are they going to say? So I right away in November, I got that job in November. I knew we weren't

going to be in person with them until spring training, February 14th. So what I did, and I've believe in this and I still do this is I'm going to have meetings before the meeting. And it was, it was the context of that situation, which wasuster posey three world series wings hall of famer mvp evan longoria veteran multiple all-star hunter pant all these guys there was 12 world series rings in this group i was leading seven of the people were older than me so that that matters right mike yeah like no it's not me going up in front of the room and saying these macro buzzwords it's what's the reality of the situation i'm walking into yeah right and how old i was 31 31 so i had guys 35 36 37 and i had already won a lot and you hadn't won a championship at that no no not even on a

video game so um you know and i i got a ball. The lowest level of baseball was when I got released. So as a player. Yeah. So like there's things I haven't felt that they felt. And to be clear, a ball, double A, triple A majors. So you didn't get a cup of coffee with the majors. No, no, not even. I couldn't even see the cup.

Yeah. Right. Well, you could see everyone else judging you. Yeah. Really well. Clear. You can see the ball very well. Oh, gosh. Yeah. Oh, the cup. Yeah. Right. Well, you could see everyone else judging you. Yeah. Really well. Clear. You can see the ball very well. Oh gosh.

Yeah. Oh my goodness. Okay. But I, you know, we're building a strategy and, and a lot of it's, is about what are we not going to do? And that, and that's, that is a, that's okay. You know, sometimes it, because there's so much overhyped, like naive, optimistic positivity stuff that's out there, in my opinion, and I think it really leads people down blind spots where it's not the truth, which I'm so in love with the truth and honesty.

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prepare for it matters. If you're looking for high quality personal care products that elevate your routine without complicating it, I'd love for you to check them out. Head to calderalab.com slash finding mastery and use the code finding mastery at checkout for 20% off your first order. That's calderalab, C-A-L-D-E-R-L-A-B.com slash finding mastery. Wait, okay, hold on. You just dropped this really cool thing. Like the over, this is, it drives me crazy. I want to see if we're talking about the same thing. Okay. Like this reflexive positivity. And I'm not talking about a hardened earned optimism. I'm talking about I'm afraid to say the hard thing, feel the hard thing. And so I'm going to say that it's all going to be good. We'll figure it out. But there's an anxiousness in that. And I do not trained myself to have this set of beliefs or to have

this belief that my capabilities and my teammates capabilities, if we stay in it long enough, we'll figure it out. And so those, those teams, I'm so I'm really clear on the teammates that I want to be on the team with. And I've worked a long time to say, what do I need to be able to figure shit out in my life? And then, so it's, I've earned the right to be able to say, wait, hold on. It's reverse order. Most people think, oh, just train optimism. It's reverse order. What are the capabilities I need to believe that I can solve some stuff? And I, it doesn't need to be perfect. That's not what I'm saying, but like you have to, I feel like we have to come from a place that when someone says, all right, we'll figure this out.

What makes you think that? Well, I don't know. Things just always go according to plan. Who's plan? Like God's plan. Wait a minute. Is God active or passive? Now I'm down this weird philosophical thing, but I don't know. That's just kind of what it's supposed to be. I'm like, no, I want to know what gives you the right to say that it's all going to be good. And that could be a deep philosophical position, a deep belief system, or it could be you're anchoring on your history of hard times or, and that you've solved some stuff and, or you're anchoring to the capabilities that you know, that you've, you've refined over time. And if you got all three of those together, history of figuring some stuff out, deep philosophical first principles that you

fully align to, whatever that spiritual philosophical set of principles are, and you know that you've earned the right to have a certain set of skills. Now I can talk to myself. I can use my self-talk to think about the future in a very purposeful way. And so are we talking about the same thing? It's really well said. I couldn't say it that well, but I can, I can tell you how it feels. I want to hear that. It's when you're down seven to zero in the third inning. And here's the principle is that, you know,

who knows the truth is the players, the people, they know it. So if you're down seven, zero, this is the visual. It's not my, my touch points in, in that dugout, right? It's not, Hey, we got it. We're going to gonna be it's great. We got them right where we want them No, we don't and they don't want to the best in the world don't want to hear that And you know that message is hey, it's it's not going how we wanted it. No big deal. Stay the course Right. There's only one thing on my game sheet like my play call sheet That's filled with all kinds of stuff on the very top of it every day. I write 10 seconds to clarity

That's it. And that's just my signal that no matter what I go to, because I know what they're going to want. I know the probabilistic thinkers that want percentages. I know the guys that want characteristics of how the pitches are moving. There's a lot of analytics in this. Whatever it is, it filters up to 10 seconds of clarity, which is whatever I'm going to tell them, they have to walk away with a clearer picture of what they're going to execute versus a more complex picture. So is this tense? You have 10 seconds to get clear, or is this whatever you give them? It's got to get really clear for them in 10 seconds. I have to say it within 10 seconds. You have to say it in 10 seconds. So you have 10 seconds. If I'm going on and on.

Oh, you have to say it in 10 seconds, not get the clip. Get it done in 10 seconds and make sure it creates clarity. Can I hear that? Yeah. Imagine I'm a hitter and I come to you and I say, who's a pitcher? They go, what do you got? Okay, so who's the pitcher that I'm going up against? Imagine a scenario where it's the seventh inning okay and Corey Seager MVP from

the Dodgers now with now with the Rangers a very decorated player he's hitting lead off that inning okay so he runs off the field the third out he's on defense think of their heart rate think of the think of their brain right now they sprint off which is heart this is how I'm thinking as a coach. He sprints off, heart rates up. Are baseball players fit? They run a lot and they stand a lot. He runs off. Joking, joking my baseball friends. He takes his stuff.

He puts his glove down. He has to go to the batter's box, put a helmet on, put batting gloves on. There's two minutes in between a transition between them, us on defense and us on offense i take all that into account what kind of physiological state is he going to come to me at um if he's first up to bat yeah it's a big deal it's a really big deal what's what is a big deal it's a big deal what physiologically state he's going to show up because i know the question's coming okay what do you got what do you got It's gonna be that simple. It is.

It's funny. Like I'm like, that is the question. Yeah. What do you got for me? What are we going to do? You know? And then I know Corey, Corey, I know because we've already downloaded this, we've done the work on the front end.

Hey, and this sounds silly, but I do, I plan these questions out before the season starts. We're not going to be reactive. Hey, when you're leading off an inning and it's a new pitcher, what do you want? What helps you be at your best? It sounds silly. And I think advice is super dangerous and I'm probably easily the most insignificant person ever on this podcast, but what else? You've had some impressive people. Yeah, but why don't you just slip in that? Where's that come from? Because advice is dangerous. No, I'm down with that. But this other part, I'm totally down with advice. I think it's really dangerous to assume that you know what's right for somebody else.

Oh, gosh. It's always been on my heart, too. Seriously, I have a real reaction. Yeah, I know. But what I love saying is. But I want to learn. Yeah, is here's what I've learned from other people. Here's some big takeaways.

Oh, yeah. And that feels right to me. Yeah. Um, but here's a, here's a crime. Yeah. My, my takeaway or, Oh no, no, sorry. Here's my, here's a crime. I think, okay. You know what you should do? That's like a crime. Let me, let me give you some advice. Let me give you some advice that feels so like arrogant. And so, yeah, it's just not real to me yeah but it is comfortable saying here's some some big takeaways that i've learned from other people that are doing this much better than i am and i've learned so much from people that have been on this podcast and that's why i joke about the insignificance because i go back to day one of like when you started the facebook community

oh yeah so i mean so not to get too off track but man awesome the community you've created it's special and i was i was there from the beginning yeah and in many ways i had to i got in the last five years i i've probably listened to two or three but on on purpose two or three podcasts on the only listen to two i know i'm sorry on front end, I was doing it all the time, right? I love that. Here's why though. Here's why. Yeah. I was so in line with the, there's no three steps. There's no five steps. They're like, stop with that. Like go on the journey and expect bagged stuff to show up. I was so in line with what you were doing. I knew I had to get away. I had to go write my own book. I had to go figure it out. That's what's up. I've had two or three things, two or three people that have impacted me that way where i'm like oh i gotta go i gotta go do my

own work because that's i think the people that impact you the most are the people that push you away oh cool in a way they're they're they've given you so much that resonates and it's so easy to just go to them but but i think at point, like you read books or you write books, you take notes or you create notes. I wanted to start creating my own notes. Um, but dude, this is cool. This is really cool. Like for a couple of reasons, right? You're there right when we're starting this thing up, you're taking great notes and you're like, Hey, I got to go create some notes. What a cool framing. Okay. This is awesome. So let's, let's go right back to Seeger. What do you got for Seeger in that moment? Yeah. So we've done the work on the front end,

right? Which was the takeaway, as we say, you know, for anybody listening to this, if you're in a position where you're responsible for trust is put in you to lead people. If you are reactive to a situation when it doesn't go well, I think a good question to ask is, well, did you do the work on the front end? So I know guys are going to come off the field and they're going to have to lead off and their heart rate's going to be up and it's going to be messy. So before the season starts, I asked them, Hey, it's going to be messy. Your heart rate's going to be up. What do you want me to say in that situation? What do you like? So we, we do that. Hey, when you're leading off, how do you want to be coached?

Yeah. Hey, when it's not going well, hey, three sales calls are going to go really bad for you. I'm going to observe it. Do you like feedback that day? Do you like feedback the next day? I see some things where I can help you. When do you best receive feedback? A lot of people probably like the education side of America, which I'm super passionate about.

But we do a terrible job of, of coaching and helping people receive feedback and give feedback. We're just, and we're really bad about it in the sporting world, but Corey Seager. So we've done the work on the front end, 10 seconds to clarity. I know what Seager,

what he loves. So it can be as simple as like Corey is fast. Paul's going to have cut. He's going to throw you breaking balls. Just see it up and closer to you three things so he always technical he always wants to know do you stay technical with him with him he wants to know how the fastball is going to move because they don't they throw it straight sometimes it sinks and it's very important to know whether it's going to go down or whether it's going to feel like it goes up. He wants to know if it's going to go up.

So I have to tell him, hey, this fastball is going to have carry. It's going to feel like it's going up. And then he really wants to know where he needs to set his eyes. It's a really cool thing. That's really cool. So if I know there's a certain shape and I go in and I study the vertical nature of how a ball moves and the horizontal nature and i study the release height it's coming from so to geek out like that is as much as we've we built a system the human system takes precedence over the coaching and athletic system okay i'll open that

up a little bit well i told you a first principle of mine was systems. So I know inside of that system, right, you got to put the ball in the end zone. You got to score runs. You got to make sales. We know. So my job is to build a system that not only makes our players valuable throughout the minor leagues and the big leagues, right, it creates value for them in the organization, which is just being very productive. It's my job to really get in the weeds and be technical about that. So we have a system in place for how we help people move better, whether it's how we assess their human movement and then how we help them move more efficiently. We have a system in place

for how we actually want their map path to move. And we have a system in place for how we game plan. So that's the coaching side. That the athlete system well the more important system to me is the human system because biology yeah we're that neurobiology that's not going to show up yeah okay yeah so cory seager is he's the the human system of him is so much more important to me and it's what's going to allow the athlete system to show up and produce. And that does not happen if we don't do it in the way that he needs it. And it's not to single him out. We treat everybody like that. Now, Corey's an MVP. He's one of the best players in baseball. Every single guy is that to me, coach him the same way, treat them the same

way. So they deserve the same process, treat them equally different, equally special, treat them all the same. Like there's two ways that I'm trying to understand here. So there's the old, you know, we don't treat anyone differently. We treat them all the same or, or we treat each person uniquely different, which is like, I'm trying to see the special in you and you and you, and then I'm the, that is the system. Yeah. Which way do you go here? I'll, I'll flip it around to you. Okay. Do you think there are coaches that were prepared differently? And if the rubric was, Hey, you have a meeting with Tom Brady and you got to walk them through the entire game plan on third downs. So we go here. That's

what you're done tomorrow. You're going to meet with the, the practice squad quarterback. Does he prepare differently? I bet. I just know that I was guilty of that at a younger age. In my early times, I just, you put people on a pedestal and I, and I felt that because I asked for feedback. One of the best things I could do. Kid's name was Danny. And this was my second year coaching with the Cardinals. And he said, man, I loved my time with you. He goes, I just have one thing though.

I said, what's that? Danny's Danny's a dinka. He said, when I was injured, you stopped talking to me. And I was like, okay. I remember being very emotional with this and I'm, I'm, I'm learning that I'm like way more emotional. It's just really about like human beings that I'm responsible for. I can go through tough stuff and be pretty binary with it. But man, if I feel like I've let somebody down, he told me that and he had a broken wrist. I stopped coaching him whether I like it or not. I really failed in that moment. And when he gave me that and he had a broken wrist. I stopped coaching him. Whether I like it or not,

I really failed in that moment. And when he gave me that feedback, one, I said, oh gosh, I need to be better at creating internal systems where I'm getting feedback more because I never would have thought of that. I didn't. I was focused on the guys that were going to drive results and I stopped coaching and he still needed me. So I let him down. It was a really good lesson to learn. So I don't ever want anybody in our environment to feel that I'm coaching Corey Seager differently than I'm coaching the rookie. So that's, that's how you're thinking about it. Yeah. And just for the record is that when folks are not in the field, the training room is a really hard room. That's a very, very difficult room for people. The training room is when it's, it's a place where you go for prehab. It's also

a place you go for rehab. And so rehab is like trying to put something back together that is keeping you from doing the thing that you want to be doing. And at least there is a place in sport, you know, and again, it's a lonely place, but in non-sporting environments in, let's say big business or whatever, we don't even have a place. And so what do we do? You know, like the, when somebody is not doing well, they get ignored. Yeah. Right. And so, um, by the average leader, the average coach, the great coaches, to your point of what you just said, and the scar tissue you have is that they're going into, they're going into the cave with people. They're pulling them out. They're knowing how that person wants to be treated in a cave. Maybe it's just standing by the cave's door and say, Hey, I'm here for you when, you know, or it's

going in and grabbing them, you know, cause that's what they want to your point about how do you want to be coached? And the easy is just to be like, Oh, the person's in a cave there, there, you know because that's what they want to your point about how do you want to be coached and the easy is just to be like oh the person's in a cave they're they're you know they're shit in the bed or whatever and uh i'm on to the next that's a brutal way to lead and to build and it's really pretty common so yeah you're not in your head like yeah it's even going back and put myself in that situation telling that story is I needed to go through that. And it's back to the, the human being is that is the most valuable thing in this entire existence for us that it's just supersedes that coaching system. Um, so let's talk about feedback for a moment. And then I want to understand how you use your athletic system and the human system to help

with failure and mistakes. But let's talk about feedback. And the way that I think about feedback is that I want to understand just to what you're saying, how does the person like feedback? Private, public is one way. Do you want me to ease my way in or do you want me to be super concrete with the thing that we're trying to improve on easing in is like i love when you did a b and c and now i'm going to give you kind of the other thing that i want to see improvement in or some sort of change do you like when i say it or give questions okay and then the other is uh timing immediate do you want me to interrupt and stop no okay yes gotcha um do you want to wait for it like this is the the timing immediate right after practice or right during a break right

after practice uh within six hours 12 hours 24 hours and there's like uh a gold standard there yeah right like 24 hours later it's kind of gone. You know, 12 hours is almost gone. Six hours. We're almost outside the glow. And within one to two hours, we're still in a sweet spot, but some people like it like right away. And some people that's overwhelming. Yeah. So those are the levers or variables that I choose for feedback. And then my job is to be incredibly sensitive and accurate. I like that. Sensitive to the person and accurate with what I'm seeing or asking about. And so what, how do you do it? I really like how you've kind of deconstructed that. So

I have a system for it and I think I'll look up in three years, five years, and I'll probably tweak the system. But I've, I think you've probably gathered this from this conversation. If I have a system for our offense and I don't have a system for feedback or for trust, like I,

I personally am not good. I get lost all over the place. I have a system for confidence and we can, we can tug on that confidence for you or confidence, confidence, just, um, for how I look at people and how I want to set up the environment. But this feedback for me is it is the work on the front end, which is asking those questions very similar to what I'll add that has worked for me. And it gives me a little bit of liability or a little bit of freedom in it is,

um, I do, I give it to two ways, which is I'm going to give you some feedback. This feedback is just information. You choose what you want to do with it. It's in their best interest too. So I give feedback that's information based, which is it's up to you, whatever you want to do with this. And then I give, I'll give feedback. That's a little bit more directive, you know, and we're, we directive. We're really needing to implement some change here. And I'll just say that the consistency of that feedback loop is only as good as the work that's been done on the front end to say that, hey, our environment is going to be back to self-interest. It's to help you pursue your best. So if we haven't created these feedback loops, like, can I actually say

that I love you? Cause that, that word love is, that is the most powerful anchor that I want to coach through. And so not love like fuzzy, warming, all this stuff, but man, I'm, I'm like, when it's tough, when it's good, like I'm going to cover your blind spots and I'm going to give you the truth. We're going to do, I'm going to honor you and we're going to do things through transparency. So our feedback loops, whether it's, we have ones that are on the wall that are our North stars, KPIs, just like businesses have, it's just letting us let individuals know and the team know, are we on track season long? Are we on track? And then what did we do yesterday to, to your point of 24 hours but then we stem that down and each individual we've already done the work on the front end

the same way we built a plan and the way they've done it we've created feedback loops in the way that they want it and you'll find that most people they don't know yet but man do they appreciate you asking and that just gives them the space which I tell them it's like the setting their plans, which we were kind of talking about, like, how do I approach that? Some guys, they have numbers and they're like, I want these numbers. I want to be an all-star. And then you walk into Brandon Crawford, who's the starting shortstop for the giants. Um, and the stuff that comes out of him is, is about his kids. He wants it. He wanted a contract extension. He was on the last year of his deal when I got there. The thing that I got from him is my kids are getting older. I want them to

continue to watch me play. I want an extension. I knew it was a contract extension. Invisible handshake. We got to perform better. We know. But what I got out of Brandon was this father and this husband. He wants his kids in the seats. He's played there 10 years. It's not time. It's not my time. I want my kids to watch me play more. I get goosebumps talking about it.

When you go into meeting after meeting and some guys want numbers and all stars and money, that's great. I don't judge that. Why wouldn't you want that? But then you get the guy that talks about his family and his kids. So people ask me, like, oh, gosh, like why do you have to fill the 8 o'clock? And what about vacations? Right now in my life, it fills me up so much to go grab every resource I can, to be as sharp as I can, to be as on it as I can for a guy like that to go have the all-star year he did and to get a three-year extension.

And he was texting me yesterday. He's going out to the eagles game he's sitting behind trout and he's but he's taking braxton his son you know and it's like um those relationships are still there i don't coach him anymore but i know he's getting a chance to finish his career as a giant and you know that's so much bigger than the 30 home runs all that's cool but you don't judge and you just don't know what they're going to say. Just like feedback. You don't know what they're going to say, but man, the, the, the gap between the responsible work I do on the front end, which is kind of what you're saying when you go into these plans, I have the answers in my back pocket objectively for where we got to go. Right. If you're hitting too many ground balls, I know

we got to get the ball in the air. I have that work done. But now once I have the answers in my back pocket, I'm measuring the distance between what objectively is happening and what they think is happening. The bigger the distance, the more my pace, my tone, my tenor is dictated. If there's a big gap, if I walk in with a guy and I know he is not performing, picture a salesperson going in for my assessment. He's been here six months. He's the worst performer. He does no conversions. And I go in there and he's like, I love it, man. I'm doing great. We've got a lot of work to do because that gap between what's objectively happening and what he thinks is big. And maybe you really value him. So to me,

that just dictates, man, we might have to go at a slower pace because all the stuff you want to do, you might not be ready for versus we've had guys, Brandon Crawford, great example. I went in with that same thing. Very, we're in Scottsdale. I haven't coached him in a game. We've talked with all the key alphas. Hey, like, what do you think of this, this, making sure that nothing shows up in that environment in San Francisco that they haven't put their stamp on. They're not walking into a meeting ever surprised with something they see. That was a very key strategy for that job. So I did that to Brandon Crawford, right? I said, Hey, if there's anything you want to talk about with your swing or hitting,

you know, I'm here for you. He's like, Oh swing or hitting, you know, I'm here for you. He's like, oh, cool. And, you know, I'm kind of waiting for that. And I see him the next time, once again, measuring the gap between what's actually happening versus what does he think, knowing what this guy wants. What does that last part? And explain Brandon Crawford for folks that don't follow baseball. So one of the best shortstops to ever play. He's, gosh, super decorated.

Most games played, you know, 10 years at a premium position, put his body on the line, multiple World Series. Was that the kind of tell-in? You know, typically when you get into your 30s, as any performer, there's, you know, objectively a drop-off. And, you know, he was on the last year of a deal, and fans love him. He's an amazing human. He, he's the guy that was like, I want to finish my career. I want a

contract extension. And so you mentioned the two variables, the objective, how did you just call it reality? The objective assessment. What's he actually doing? Yeah. Versus what does he think he's doing? And then what was the third variable that you added there? The third is that plan he told me about, which is, Oh, this guy wants to finish his career here, which is important, right? Cause I know that objectively it's not going well and I know why, and I have ideas. Well, when Brandon Crawford walks in and says, Hey, um, when I go, Hey, you know, if you want to talk or if you got some ideas of what you want to work on, let me know. It was very important that I was non-invasive. You know, let's do it at

your pace. And he goes, well, I was hoping you would. Right away. So what does that mean? It's game on. The gap, he knows. He knows it's not going well. He's been around a long time. He doesn't want to wait so versus coming in hot all the time on every guy you're gonna you're gonna miss on 50 of people so it's okay to to know the plan i know what he wants i also know objectively it's not going well now if brandon goes i feel good like it's just been a bad luck it's gonna be a lot more i'm gonna lean a lot more on the artistic side to move that player towards the plan yeah because it's going to be a lot more. I'm going to lean a lot more on the artistic side to move that player towards the plan. Yeah.

Cause it's like blaming or pointing to an external uncontrollable as opposed to an internal controllable. That's it. Yeah. As soon as he said, I was hoping you would, the gap's small. Yeah.

All right. You want to meet tomorrow? Let's go over it. Yeah, let's do it. I'll be there. Got to work. Yeah.

It's important that's a cool framing yeah and you want to go like the urgency is like like i love being patient artistically and then patience is not passiveness you know i think of it like aggressive in the discipline of my day being present over the course of 24, 12 months, 24 months. So I can be patient, but I, and I can be long-term aggressive, but it's not passiveness, right? No, it's not. And I, we built out a whole framework for bands of coaching with masterful coaching being at the top, obviously. And one of the things that we observed is that coaches who are masterful at their craft, they ask more questions.

So their feedback is typically in the form of asking a question to elicit an insight or calibration and to see if the person understands or what they're understanding. And then to match that with the observations from the coach. So simple as, um, if you're the athlete and I'm the coach in this instance, it's as simple as this. Okay. So what did you see out there? Right. Like, and then, so now we're getting into a feedback loop and what the masterful coach is doing is what you are doing is trying to understand the gap. And if it's not a gap, it's trying to understand what their experience is. And if it's not a gap, it's trying to understand what their experience is. And if you can understand their experience, then you can better understand,

you know, how to guide, how to nudge as opposed to the amateur coach, which is saying, okay, listen, you got to keep your shoulders here or your elbows here, or make sure your back foot is here. And then now they're like, oh my God, what are we talking about? So anyways, that's really cool. Finding Mastery is brought to you by iRestore. When it comes to my health, I try to approach things with a proactive mindset. It's not about avoiding poor health. This is about creating the conditions for growth.

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Baseball is a game of failure. What does that mean to you? So a lot of my design to how I approach my job is, is the context. So I, I partner two things and I'm in love with, so if we're approaching human beings, I'm going to go back. I told you from the beginning, what's timeless. Well, let's go to the biological design of human beings. So I factor number one is like, what's the biological design of these people I work with? So we know what's going on in the brain. Like we know survival. We know, um, we know what it's primed to do, right? Like we have, our brains have not evolved, but our problems

have. And then I go, I almost think what's the biological design of the sport that I happen to be in. And it's as simple as like football, right? They play on a Sunday. They have six days. You have six days. You have that six days of responses. Oh, it's such a luxury to do whatever you want. Right. So, but I think the biological design of the sport I'm in is every single night they have to perform. What you guys do is insane. It almost looks like you're practicing every day, you know, like, but there's no, there's no, there's very little practice. It's game lights are on and, you know, it's kind of a warmup. Yeah. It's like, it's the monotony is incredible.

Well said. And it also wrecks marriages, like, like from the support staff standpoint. I haven't been there yet, but I'm already doing work that when that comes, I'm somebody that's healthy because I have seen it. And I'm the person that's standing up here really saying, you know, I don't believe in balance. I believe I'm going to be immersed into whatever I'm doing. So if I'm with my family, go be an uncle, like be a family guy. When I'm in my job, a hundred percent there. When I go home, it's not a hundred percent, right? Like you, you get in bed. This is the dark side, right? The dark side, the dark side is I'm in bed and I'm, I know a guy's struggling. I'm feeling it. I'm struggling. I can't move past that until he does. So the locking of arms with a human being back to the design of

biological design, the brain, as we, I mean, you know, this better than anybody. It is not, the brain's not telling us like, Oh man, let's go be amazing. And let's go conquer. It's like setting up parameters and making sure you're safe and all those fear detectors. And then the design of our sport is also saying, if you were the best, you're going to fail 70% the best. Most guys are feeling like 80 to 85%. That's average. So picture design of the brain. These are my humans. This is what they're going. They're trying to survive. And we put them in a sport where they're going to fail almost 80 percent, 70 percent of your elite. In what other field can you have a 30 percent success rate and be considered elite and where they want to keep you? Is I mean, is there another field?

Well, I'm glad you're bringing it up because you added the where they're going to keep you. And so where I was going right before you added that was, I think that that might be modern business. I don't think the success rate in business is any better. Let me, let me open that up in when we're, uh, I was fortunate to work across a couple of Olympic games. And in, um, in particular, I'm thinking about volleyball, indoor USA, women's volleyball, every ball that they touched or didn't touch had a statistic to it. Somebody was measuring everything that they did.

And then it was public and it was force ranked. So you're trying to compete against, um, three other women that are just about equally as skilled as you are. It's a four year tryout to make the Olympic team. You get notified like two weeks before that you've made the squad. So it's a volunteer position and there's no second job. So just imagine the context here for just a moment. And everything that you do is publicly, has a statistic and force ranking. First of all, most humans cannot handle that. That's incredible stress,

incredible stress for that. So business isn't even close to those types of conditions that are required in some respects to know how to help somebody get better. Baseball, everything's statted as well. So where I'm going with this is that in the world of business, I don't have a feedback loop. If the email I sent was good, not good, great. I don't know who gives me that feedback. There's not a coach that's saying, Hey, when you're on that call and you pause for those three seconds, that was good. Not so good. Or that was great. So I could be blowing it all day long and I don't have a feedback loop and I could have lots of failures and I don't know how to get better. And when you've got hundreds of thousands of people working in one organization or 50 people working in an organization without some sort of coaching or feedback loops, I'm bringing up right now.

I don't know what the rate of failure is. And so you can celebrate got the job or made the sale, didn't get the sale. But on the podcast, lots of people watched, didn't watch. But it's all outcome-based and it's not real-time feedback on the inputs to get that output. So what other industry? I think the lack of feedback in where most humans, adults, spend most of their time, it's not even existent. And so what's unique about baseball is that 70, 80% of the time it's public failure. And even if it's not globally public is a large community that you guys are in front of,

and it's public in front of their teammates and the coaches that are sometimes inspecting, sometimes guiding, you know, whatever that role takes for folks. So how do you help them make the mistakes? Because in business, people say fail fast, fail forward, fail often, you know, like we're here to support you. But then if you don't get the outcome, you're out. It's, it's lip service, you know, in many respects. So how do you help them work with that failure? Yeah, I think it all goes back to doing the work on the front end, which is here's our humans. Here's our system. And then we know.

It goes back to the neutral side of this, which is not overly optimistic. And the naive optimism is just to go in and it's going to be great, all this stuff. We talk as an offensive department, kind of what I'm tasked to, to lead, you know, the trust that's been put in me, we work on this before it happens. So, Hey, this is going to happen. These things are going to happen. So we talk a lot about user experience, environmental design. I mean, these are things that I've like, wait, like you, you coach baseball and you're in a batting cage a lot in a field. And it's like, yeah, but you know, Silicon Valley and these, these places have been talking about how to gamify things and create user experience and environmental design and the music and the

ambience. Um, and then just our approach to human beings. And, um, you know, earlier we talked about like how a lot of words in society have been hijacked. And I know that's just a bias for me that I'm interviewing people a lot in the job setting. And I just you hear like, OK, they're trying to say these five words. And so one interesting word for me is is like the phrase core values. OK, and so we have first principles. You can call them core values. We have the same thing in our offensive department.

But I'm very clear with I have two guys that I'm responsible for that I work with at the big league level. I have two coordinators in the middle, so that's four. And then I have seven hitting coaches in the minor leagues. So I have 11 people, sometimes 12 12 that I'm really like responsible for. So we talk about this all the time is everybody's got, you know, quotes up on a wall and core values. And most people have t-shirts and it's just, once again, like, I don't want to see stuff up on the wall for, we're not living it. And it's, it's even the word culture, Mike, it's like,

man, I'm, I'm almost so tired of hearing it. Just let me fill it. Let me talk to your people. So we offensively, everybody knows it's really important to have a culture. But even offensively, it just really bring a lot of awareness to these words. Once they get really mass popularity, they start to take on all these other things. So let's go back to the origin core values. I told you, you know, how we move and how we game plan and self-interest. Well, what are core values? We go back to the Latin root and like Corazon and it's heart. So our failure in our sport, our system is set. Like we're going to move people's hearts and this goes back to love. And it's like. And it's like it's the one thing that's at the bottom.

If we thin slice everything, well, Kobe on this day, rest in peace, right? So Kobe, man, he worked really hard. Well, why? He loved it. Like you can go through all these people that are elite and like at the very bottom of this is love. So we talk about love and we talk about core values. It's been hijacked. And these words are put up like accountability and humility. And it's like, well, what's, what's the origin of core. And you go back to the Latin root and it's heart. And

it's like, okay, like if we want production to show up, if we want to help them through tough times, our job is to really transition and, and move our, move their heart, right. Through ours, through everything we do. So you just, that, that guard goes down when you sit down with people beforehand and you ask them certain things like, Hey, when it's going really tough, what do you, what do you like? Like, do you need space? Do you need, do you, do you want me to be on top of you? Like, do you like that more? And you're going to get answers on both sides. Um, and, and it does, it goes back to relationship and trust, but we value the, the asking the question so much. And then knowing we're going to invest the time with them and we're going to be there right with them the whole time through the struggle.

There's no, there's no, like they're a performer. We're a coach. It's, it's really like a locking of the arms and we go with you. I feel it. Who in the big leagues inspires you? Players that you have spent time with is what I'm thinking about. It really is players. Yeah. So in particular, what's a player that really inspires you?

I think my time around Buster Posey. Buster Posey. what makes him special? The, how comfortable he is being who he is. That's really cool. If you could speak right into leaders in business right now, if they knew what you knew about helping people, what would they be doing differently? What would they be making sure that they're doing? I would say, don't worry about the word leading, move into it, move individuals through their heart, move them towards, towards best interests of themselves and the company, and then move groups. Like, can you, can you just move people?

And, and it resonates with me because it really creates a freeing aspect of, man, like I want to help that person. And then that person's in charge of this department. I want to help that department. And you're just helping them pursue their best in the way that's true to them. And, and it's written on our walls and our room and the offensive room. And it's, it is a nine on one, there's nine nine players so our group is nine guys every night against one a pitcher and underneath it though it says bu within us so we're we're you know i think it's so congruent to business as well which is do you want to follow the military model or do you want to be a little bit more high performance, Navy SEALs?

It's different. So you can get everybody to stand in a straight line and wear the same shirt, but your ceiling is – you can get efficiency, your ceiling is lower. So how do we as leaders, as people that want to move people, how do we maximize the uniqueness of the individual within the structure of us? You've spent your career working with some of the best in the world. What would you speak into parents that one day maybe their kid is going to be really good at a sport or an art or anything? And let's just imagine the scenario that, uh,

there's an incredible talent that ends up on your team. And if you could, and the talent, and they have high work ethic and they've got the natural ability, but they're kind of like fragile maybe, or there's just something that is like, it's hard for them to get loose and free. And if you could go and speak to the parents when those when they were parenting the kid at age let's say 14 yeah what would you say to those parents take them to ice cream but but really you know design design as much flexibility as you can for kids and they're going to tell you what they love and and i and I'll tell you a story of, um, the, the family that kind of took me in at 14 has raised me ever since the oldest brother was my

best friend. That's, that's how I became a part of the family. You go from hanging out at their house in the summer to them kind of going, do you have structure kid? You know, then you're in their house in high school. And then before you know it, it they're they're raising you ever since right so yeah that's how it happens you know of course um but the oldest joey had his first daughter peyton and i was she's seven years old now and peyton changed my life because i was as i've fully been vulnerable with i was um really binary i was pursuing what i thought was was was best. And I wanted to be the best in the world at helping other people. So then I literally held Peyton for the first time at the airport in San Francisco, super small, like a moment, you know, there's, there's everything's

a moment, but then there's these moments that are a little bit, they weigh, they weigh differently. And it was as simple as Joey saying, Hey, just watch her for like five minutes. I'm gonna go get, get our bags. And I, here I have this newborn and I'm looking down at her and I know now I'm, you know, I'm, I'm going to be the uncle, but that was the first time I had felt like, Oh, I can't let you down. Like true. And I, and I know there's a whole other evolved level to this with being a parent someday. But even being an uncle to Peyton has taught me unconditional love. And it's taught me this feeling of like, oh, my gosh. Like I have to do right by you in every single circumstance.

So I'm back home for the holidays recently. And I asked Peyton catching up with her. I'm like, hey, what's your, you're doing soccer. You're doing dance. You're doing softball. She's playing all kinds of stuff. They put her in everything. Right. And which I love. And they're just kind of letting her do her thing. And I said, what's your favorite out of all of them? Like, what do you love? And she goes dance and she lights up and I go, that's awesome. And she goes, but it's the hardest, but I love it. And I was like, ah, you know, and I made up, I went and set Joey and Lauren down and I was just like, Hey,

that's it. You don't have to do anything. Leave it be don't over coach it. Don't she just basically said the adult version, which I believe in, which is if it's miserable and it's tough and you sprint towards it and that brings out joy in you, man, spend time there. It's a beautiful thing. And she figured that out at seven. It's really difficult. It's the hardest. And I love it the most. If the car ride home is hard for parents and kids from sport practice, what would you want parents to do or not do during that time? So I think one thing that's very important to me, top of my list is the kids are, we're modeling. So everything we're doing, we're modeling and the kids are

connecting a stimulus to the parent. So if you're focused on their outcomes, man, you're like, you went, that's so cool. You got two hits, simple language. That kid now is connecting his value to his parent through the two hits. That's what he heard. Right? So gosh, man, you made this air. Like if it just becomes a result based, is that a formula that's sticky for the rest of their life? right? Man, I'm so excited. You got an A+. The kid here is A+. You got a C- like that. We don't do that.

We got to get A's. What if you just changed the A+, like, hey, I noticed that you studied a little bit extra. You know, do you think that led to that really good grade? Like if we can highlight and just keep focusing on the means and the process, to me, I'm always looking what transfers to their life. That's cool, man. Like we need to focus on what actually transfers to the good stuff showing up more and just be disconnected as much as we can. Let's not wrap their identity in an outcome. before you go, um, when I would say thank you for sharing the honesty and the brilliance of, um,

how you've expressed what you've been working on for the last couple of decades. So thank you for the time and, um, the highest compliments that you've also given me, but, um, I really appreciate just how clear and thoughtful, um, and how much you care about helping people move so that's a huge takeaway I just want to say thank you and before we before we wrap we didn't get into the part like what is your morning routine what are the things that you do to invest in your sense of self yeah and thank you too it's um I love these because they're they're unscripted and i love the vulnerability of knowing that i'm going to look up in three years five years seven years and i should have looked i should look back and be like ah you know i've i've tweaked that that was

lacking this and i i love like if i don't do that then something's wrong so appreciate you having me on here we'll have to have to do something way down the road and look back at it and see what we're missing yeah yeah um but the morning for me is um is you know it's like healthy selfishness so um and it's discipline so i want to start off my day as simple as it is empty stomach i get get my athletic greens in, which I know like is, is a thing, is a thing on the show. I've loved it. All of our athletes are using it. It is my favorite thing on the market.

Oh, awesome. Yeah. To plug them, but we're going to plug them. Yeah. So I go base athletic greens. I left that digest and I, I just try to read, I read for 30 minutes and I just want to just prime. Um, so sometimes I'll, I'll, I'll go outside, but the

reading for me is important. Um, and then I do have, you know, a little bit of an entrepreneurial side with some other businesses. So I try to, to just loop back in and, and, um, you know, one of them is blended the robotics company and, and they're, we're doing cool stuff we're finally on college campuses and then I'll do what is the name of it blended yeah the L E N D yeah B L E N D I D D I D blended dot com yeah yeah so it's um the the version two version three is really the idea of like can we recreate um grandma's recipe from a robot right from your phone so right now it's smoothies and organic stuff so on college campuses and it's it's growing nice and vip and jane's a tremendous you're having a robot cook grandma's recipe that's what we want to get to and we will right now the right now it's a smoothie in any way you want it um they're they're starting to be at airports and

so hopefully you see some more stuff i think i've seen i saw one in san francisco i don't know if it's this that's like that's where they're based out of yeah okay so that's that's going so it's it's touch points and you know you want to just let those guys know you're thinking about them and what can we learn and then and the other one is called blue maca and it's it's all environmental friendly there soles that go in shoes. We've created a way to basically create less micro-slipping. And Tiger Woods is wearing them. We've had NFL guys. We have baseball guys.

It's still kind of under the radar, which is kind of. Not now. Yeah. But it's been cool, man. Blue Macca. Blue Macca, yeah. B-L-U. Yeah.

Stuart is the inventor of them. And it's B-L-U-M-A-K-A. It's great, man. It's all made from recyclable items. And really the idea is if we can put this in a shoe, which athletes, these guys that are making millions in a high-performance environment mostly choose shoes because they look a certain way.

And when we think of the margins that are out there, performance of making one slight move, if we can create more stability in a way an athlete moves, like we win. So we've tested this biomechanically all year, gotten great results. So it's been fun. And is the sole on top of the insole or underneath the insole? Yeah, we can do both. Yeah, we can do both. So that's going well. And we've talked about business a lot. And I think it's something that I really admire about the business space. And I know a lot of your audience is that. And it's why I'm drawn to it is every day they have to perform every learn, grow, and be a good teammate. And that's, that's why my heart

is there is there. The game is asking something of me and I know I have to perform as a win and a loss on top of that though. That's, that's baseline on top of that is, am I still learning? Am I still growing? Am I still being a really good teammate? And business teaches us that you, you have to do those things. You don't get, I know you love those six days, but you don't get those six days off. So, so I'm, I'm touching base with the companies. Um, and then, you know, if I'm in season, I'm, I'm typically having my breakfast and then I'm on my way to the field. I'm at the field by 9am, 10am. And that's my selfish time to work out. And then it's all about kind of the only kind of rule standard I have for myself is my head's not in a computer when the guys are in the building. So I have from nine till about two, do the heavy lifting,

get the systems and the game planning done. But it's just a matter of, we, we try to have our athletes see the game plan and see what they're going to do five times before we have our game plan meeting. So touch points, right? Like what is your culture? Like, what do you believe? Well, it's these guys see it. They have it on their phone. They see it on the TV. They see it on the whiteboard. Like, so we don't have to overcrowd them with it, but we create simplicity, not through our words, but by certain ways that they see it and feel it. Very cool, man. Yeah. So I know I said last question, but I've got two more. Okay. One is what's next for you? Are, are you considering head coaching? Is that part of your future?

I've, I've never had like five-year plans or, or I've never had what's next. Um, I've always been in my dream job. So like the world, I don't want to say it doesn't need sport, but it's also not education, food, shelter. So I think just a ton of gratitude that I get to do what I do. Um, but I'm really just immersed in figuring out like, how can we be as good as we can be with Texas? So what's next is like thinking about buying a dog. That's cool. Yeah. I'm a fan of Australian Labradoodles and I'm not buying your bullshit right now. Do you want to be a coach? I love leading and the more responsibility I can have, it does make me come alive. If that, if that shows up, you'd be a great skipper. You'd be a great coach. Like what, why are you kind of dancing a little bit here? I think that like,

do you really not think that way? Or are you trying to play a political game? Like, I don't want, you know, I don't want people to think that I'm coming for their job or. Sure, sure. No, I understand. Man, you're on it. I have a lot of apprehension for the things that that I think are really valuable to stepping into that chair. And so I think a lot of people are really drawn to the next position. I'm really in love with the triangle that exists at the top of responsibility.

And that, and you know this, ownership, front office, head coach. So I don't just, you know, think about jumping, jumping to that chair. I'm in love with what I do. And, and I've always chased, um, if the responsibility and the people are there, if that's there, then let's have a conversation. But that, that really matters. I believe now I believe you. Yeah. Now I believe you like high regard for, um, how important it is to have that triangle together and high regard for that position. You're not trying to rush it. It's coming, dude. Like I'm listening to how you're working with people and helping build systems and humans to be their very best

in a foundational way that is born out of curiosity, early ages for you, experimentation, you know, like kind of figuring out what's happening. And then you're grounded in love and real deep care for other people, open to ideas, highly conscientious. You don't get rolled over with agreeableness, but you're so likable and enjoyable to be around that people want to, you know, also be a good partner and teammate to you. I think self-admitted, you're like, yeah, I came from some places and it was hard, but you don't present with a neuroticism that it's all about you and a narcissism. You don't have any of that going on, which is like a massive

asset, internally motivated. You'll take the external rewards, but that's not what's driven. You're more interested in unlocking what's possible for you and other people. At the same time, you've got this radical ability to see good in other people. I don't know if you're hard on yourself, but I don't get that you'd be hard on other people, which is your coaching style, which is awesome. Which is the, those are the types of coaches I like to be around. And I think the mistakes that you might make are not many, but it's probably saying yes too often, you know, because you know that you're capable of much. You might take on a lot. And, you know, I just think that you've got such strong foundations in who you are based on the way that you've been raised that I bet on you a hundred percent. I think owners, you know, like I hope when, when the skipper job comes up for you, I hope the ownerships, uh, listen to this and be like, Oh yeah, bet on him.

Hi. I, it means a lot for you to say that. I appreciate that. Cool, man. All right. And then what does it mean to be a master? What is mastery? Last question. What is mastery? I've evolved. I've thought about this question for like a decade in different ways. Um, and it would have been a long paragraph, um, uh, 10 years ago and five years ago, it would have been three sentences and where I am right now with it. And I do think about it of the people I'm responsible for. So I'll have to keep building like what that is for me. But right now mastery to me, especially for the people I'm responsible with, like over overarching, I want them to be able to go into as many

environments as possible and be who they are. When I thin slice that mastery is the combination of self-awareness and an application. Can we be self-aware And then can we go do it? And that's really what I want for our people. I love that. I love the simplicity in that as well. Awesome, brother. Wishing you absolute best. Likewise, man. Thank you again.

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