Founders - #106 Bill Walsh (The Score Takes Care of Itself)

Episode Date: January 12, 2020

What I learned from reading The Score Takes Care of Itself: My Philosophy of Leadership by Bill Walsh. ----Come see a live show with me and Patrick O'Shaughnessy from Invest Like The Best on October 19th in New York City. Get your tickets here! ----Subscribe to listen to Founders Premium — Subscribers can listen to Ask Me Anything (AMA) episodes and every bonus episode. ---[0:01] I believe it’s much the same in one’s profession: Superb, reliable results take time. [4:55] How Jack Dorsey describes The Score Takes Care of Itself: He took at team that was at the bottom and brought them to the top. He focused on the details. He didn’t say you need to win games. He said you need to tuck in your shirts. You need to clean your lockers. This is how we answer the phones here. He set a new standard of performance. [6:53] Bill Walsh on his father / What he learned from his early life [10:15] Bill Walsh on why should you care about your standard of performance: Pursuing your ambitions, especially those of any magnitude, can be grueling and hazardous, and produce agonizing failure along the way, but achieving those goals is among life’s most gratifying and thrilling experiences. [14:15] A great description of the book: Bill Walsh loved to teach. This is his final lecture on leadership. [16:20] Bill Walsh built a new culture. He calls it his Standard of Performance. [20:30] Make a commitment to be the best version of yourself— even when your current external results may not warrant that belief [26:16] The prime directive was not victory  [28:45] Winners act like winners before their winners  [32:20] Bill Walsh experiences the entrepreneurial roller coaster [37:00] An incredible story about his idea of the west coast offense [46:20] Be unswerving in moving towards your goal [47:25] Sweat the little details but the right little details [49:00] Don’t focus on your competitors —spend that time making yourself better so it is harder for them to compete against you [50:00] Don’t let anybody call you a genius / If you sleep on a win you’ll wake up with a loss / Success Disease [54:15] Without a healthy ego you’ve got a big problem  [58:05] There is no mystery to mastery  [1:03:05] A pretty package will not sell a crappy product  [1:04:16] Avoid burnout: Can you imagine how burned out you must be to wait fourteen years to return to doing something you love? ----“I have listened to every episode released and look forward to every episode that comes out. The only criticism I would have is that after each podcast I usually want to buy the book because I am interested so my poor wallet suffers. ” — GarethBe like Gareth. Buy a book: All the books featured on Founders Podcast ----Founders Notes gives you the ability to tap into the collective knowledge of history's greatest entrepreneurs on demand. Use it to supplement the decisions you make in your work.  Get access to Founders Notes here. ----“I have listened to every episode released and look forward to every episode that comes out. The only criticism I would have is that after each podcast I usually want to buy the book because I am interested so my poor wallet suffers. ” — GarethBe like Gareth. Buy a book: All the books featured on Founders Podcast

The Fujian province of China is known as the Venice of Asia because of the superb stone sculptures created there over the centuries. Hundreds, perhaps thousands of years ago, stone sculptures worked in a time-honored and time-consuming way. When their sculpture was completed, the artist immersed it in a nearby stream where it remained for many years as the waters constantly flowed over it. During this period, the finishing touch was applied by Mother Nature and Father Time. The gentle but constant flow of water over the stone changed it in subtle but profound ways. Only after this occurred would the sculptor consider it complete.

Only when Time had done its work was the sculpture perfect. I believe it's much the same in one's profession. Superb, reliable results take time. The little improvements that lead to impressive achievements come not from a week's work or a month's practice, but from a series of months and years until your organization knows what you are teaching inside and out, and everyone is able to execute their responsibilities in all ways at the highest level. I believe that every organization has a cultural conscience

that it carries forward year after year. That ethos may be good or bad, productive or unproductive, but it exists, and it is guiding ongoing personnel and informing new arrivals as they come on board. The attitudes and actions I installed, including the inventory of San Francisco's football plays, were the results of the same guys doing the same thing for years and years. Subsequently, it became almost routine to execute at the highest level when the heat was on. Excellence in every single area of our organization had been taught and expected from the day

I arrived as head coach. The big plays in business or professional football don't just suddenly occur out of thin air. They result from very hard work and painstaking attention over the years to all of the details related to your leadership. Talent, functional intelligence, experience, maturity, effort, dedication, and practice may not be perfect, but they will get you so close to perfection that most people will think you achieved it, and the results will show it.

It takes time to develop the standard of performance. It's not just a seminar or a practice or a season's worth of seminars and practices, but thoughtful and intense attention over years and years. This is a powerful force to have within you. I was filled with an appreciation that what these players and members of our organization were doing was a work of art, one that had been created over many years, similar in a way to the sculptures in China. It was a thing of beauty. I believe it's true in your profession.

Your effort in the beginning is part of a continuum of effort. Your standard of performance is part of a continuum of standards. Today's effort becomes tomorrow's results. The quality of those efforts becomes the quality of your work. One day is connected to the following day, and the following month to the following years. Your own standard or performance becomes who and what you are. You and your organization achieve greatness. All right, so that was one of my favorite excerpts from the book that I read this week. And the one I'm going to talk to you about today, which is the score takes care of

itself. My philosophy on leadership by Bill Walsh. So this is one of, for years and years and years, this book, this is probably one of the most, um, recommended books in startup land. Um, I can't tell you how many different entrepreneurs have recommended this book. So I'm going to start before I jump back into the book. I want to talk to you about, so I went back through my notes and I searched for every time that this book was recommended. And I think the person that best described in like the most succinct terms, like the main idea behind the book, was the founder of Twitter and Square, Jack Dorsey. So let me just tell you what he said

about the book. It's one of the books that he most recommends to people. And he's talking about Bill Walsh in this statement. He says, he took a team that was at the bottom and brought them to the top. He focused on the details. He didn't say you need to win games he said you need to tuck in your shirt you need to clean your lockers this is how we answer the phones here he set a new standard of performance something else jack learned from the book is uh bills has a lot of lists like he's like a five top you know here's five things you need to remember for this or 10 things you need from this but uh his overall uh philosophy he calls it the standard performance Like he's like a five top, you know, here's five things you need to remember for this or 10 things you need to remember for this. But his overall philosophy, he calls it the standard performance. Really he's talking about the culture that you're building in an organization. Okay.

So he says, one, be yourself, two, be committed to excellence and three, be positive. And then finally something else Jack took away from the book, which I think you could infer from the excerpt I just read you, is recognize that mastery is a process, not a destination. Okay, so I'm going to jump right back into the book. I want to start with something. This is not a typical, you know, normally I try to read biographies, or even if it's not a biography, it's like the history of a company, because I believe what Charlie Munger says, like, if you understand the person, the reason he reads so many biographies is because he says, like, it's a way to build like a lattice work of their ideas. So if you understand the personality, maybe their early life, you understand how they arrived at the ideas they accumulated over their, like, their career, their experience,

and then how like their early life and their personality informs that. So there's not a lot of that in this book. Bill Walsh was a mentor to many people. He was called upon to teach, like he considered himself a teacher, which I'll get into, but he did not, he did not develop a lot of strong personal relationships. He seems to keep like a lot of his own personal feelings, like close to his vest, almost like hidden. He's got a very old school way of doing things, but he does talk the section i'm going to read you here is the lone exception to that he talks about what he learned from his father so i wanted to pull that out of the book and start at the beginning as a way to hopefully understand uh the person bill walsh was and then we're going to understand his ideas even better okay so this is his father

and what he learned from his early life he says says, when I was growing up, my role model was a good one. The guy who set the standard for me was my father. Dad knew what it meant to work really hard, and he did. He never went past eighth grade. He scrambled around as a young man to make money and came up through tough times, including the Great Depression. He struggled to make a living for his family, but he showed me what a man does when he has a job to do. He goes out and he does it. During the Depression, my father was paid 31 cents an hour to work 10 hours or more a day on the assembly line at the huge Chrysler plant near our small house

in South Central Los Angeles. That didn't pay the bills. So he set up a little auto body repair shop in our garage where he worked after he got done working at the plant late at night and on weekends. When I was a teenager, I had to work with him on many of those evenings and weekends, long hours into the night helping him out.

I hated it, but he taught me the connection between hard work and survival, between survival and success. Dad taught me that. His work ethic became my work ethic. He paid a tremendous price for his willingness to work. It may have shortened his life. And this is the heartbreaking part. I never really got to know my father. He didn't have time. It was all work for dad, or his family wouldn't survive. Over the years, I've heard many theories, often complex or convoluted, on what it takes to be an outstanding leader. Most of the theories seem to take a monumental work ethic for granted, as if it is assumed or something as if people

automatically know what it is and then they just do it I didn't assume it the majority of people out there don't know what it is they need to be shown and you're the one who must show it so one of the things I enjoyed about the book was first he's got a lot of great ideas and there's very little fluff. He just constantly just hits you with ideas. But that last line where he says they need to be shown and you're the one who must show it. He's talking directly to you. He uses that constantly.

He's like, OK, this is what I did. This is what I learned from it. Now go and do it. Do this in your organization. I think that's extremely helpful. He's also he talks about setting a standard of performance, like a high set of standards for his organization, his team. He's also, by reading the book, he's doing that for you.

He's stretching what you think is possible and what you think can accomplish, which I think is extremely helpful. Okay, so before I jump into, I want to start with what Jack was saying. Like he shows up at this team, it was at the very bottom and he took it to the top. Like, how does that happen? Before I get there though, we have to understand like why? Like why is he writing this book? Like what, why even talk about this?

In other words, like why are you gonna care about your standard of performance? And I think he hits on, like there's this dichotomy in our nature that the things that you work hardest for, the things that take the most time, sometimes the things that cause the most pain are the things that you enjoy the most. It's extremely counterintuitive because I think most humans seek comfort, right? So he says, pursuing your ambitions, especially those of any magnitude, can be grueling and hazardous

and produce agonizing failure along the way. But achieving those goals is among life's most gratifying and thrilling experiences. So he talks a lot about, essentially, he's competing in a zero-sum game. If you've ever studied the schedules of NFL head football coaches, they're grueling. It's definitely not something I want for my life, but a lot of the book shares this experiences of like heartache, heartbreak, stress. And yet he, he described, so when you're reading the book, it may sound like, wow, this guy went through a lot,

but he talks about how thrilling it was to overcome those periods of discomfort. And he winds up being one of the most successful NFL coaches of all time. He wins like five Super Bowls with his system. And so I think that's really interesting where he said, he just said, but achieving those goals is among life's most gratifying and thrilling experiences. Anybody that's done something extremely hard, like running a company, doing anything, knows what that feeling that he's describing. So he says, the ability to survive and overcome the former to attain the latter is a fundamental difference between winners and losers. And then another thing I think you need to understand about Bill before we jump into his ideas is he considered himself a teacher he loved teaching

he did like he yeah he's a football coach he's a leader of people he says i'm a teacher that's how we describe his occupation so he says uh this is somebody else uh talking about him so he says bill walsh was an educator a teacher he accumulated great knowledge because he was a grade a student of leadership playing close attention along the way to some of football's most outstanding and forward-thinking coaches. So not only did he do that, he learned from, like, before he was a head coach, he learned from his bosses, people that were in the positions that he wanted to get to. He continued to learn from his peers once he was a head coach. But he also, and I'm going to tell you about this, he would study the history of his profession, and he'd pull out ideas that wind up leading to his innovation, which is what we're going to talk about later. It's this thing called the West Coast offense. So he studied people above him, people equal to him, and then people doing the same things he hoped to achieve in the past. So he says, Bill, then they're going to talk a

little bit about this here. He says, Bill absorbed their good ideas ideas he learned from their bad ones and then he applied his uh then he applied his own even more advanced concepts he reveled in the process of teaching what he knew to his teams and now he's teaching what he learned from his career to us i came to believe that the part of football he enjoyed best was teaching or more accurately identifying outstanding talent and teaching that player, that assistant coach, or that staff member how to be great. He loved it. And here's a quote I pulled out from Bill on this. The ability to help the people around me self-actualize their goals underlines the single aspect of my abilities and the label that I value most.

Teacher. and the label that I value most, teacher. In a very real way, everything I did was teaching in some manner or another. So he's going to hold that same, when he's talking to you directly, right? He's going to say, listen, I taught everybody around me. Whatever leadership capacity you may have, right? Whether you're running the company, maybe a small team within the company, your family, your friends, whatever it is. It is your obligation to teach everything you know to the people around you. So with that, there's two sentences in the book that I really think is like a summary for what this book is about.

It's a great description. It says, Bill Walsh loved to teach. This is his final lecture on leadership. He actually dies of leukemia as they were putting the book together. And then he also says something about the stuff he's teaching. And when I was reading this, this is really what I hope Founders does for you in your life. This is Bill talking. He says, there's no guarantee and there's no ultimate formula for success. What it comes down to is intelligently and relentlessly seeking solutions that will increase your chance of prevailing. I love that idea.

What we're trying to do here. We're intelligently and relentlessly seeking solutions that will increase our chance of prevailing. When you do that, the score will take care of itself. Okay. our chance of prevailing. When you do that, the score will take care of itself. Okay, so now I finally got to the point where I think I can get into the main part of the book. And so I want to start with a quote from Bill Walsh. He says, running a football franchise is not unlike running any other business. You start first with a structural format and a basic philosophy. So he calls that his standard performance. Think about it. It's like your own philosophies on how you want to organize your business or the culture

your company may have. Your structural format and basic philosophy and then you find the people who can implement it. All right, so now we're going to get into how he ran his team. This is the state of the team when he took over. He was a successful head coach at Stanford, gets recruited to the NFL and he says, this is what I faced on my first day of work. An organization in turmoil. A team whose roster of talent was paper thin. A future that seemed dismal. In spite of last year's 2-14 season, I didn't even have a first round draft pick.

So now he's going to talk about, okay, well, I took over this team. I have no talent. You guys kind of sucked last year. What are we going to talk about, okay, well, I took over this team. I have no talent. You guys kind of sucked last year. What are we going to do here? So he doesn't start. This is what I think why people recommend this book so much. Because you think, okay, well, I'm going to start winning games. We went 2-14 last year. The business aspect of this is like, we lost money. Now we're going to turn a profit, whatever the case is. He says, no, no. I'm going to build the culture. But he calls it a standard of performance. And think about a standard of performance as it's high requirements for actions

and attitudes. So let's, let's hear what Bill has to say about this. He says, I approached building the 49er organization with an agenda that didn't include a timetable for a championship or even a winning season. Instead, I arrived with an urgent timetable for installing an agenda of specific behavioral norms, so this includes both actions and attitudes, that apply to every single person on our payroll. This is another unique idea he has. To put it bluntly, I would teach every person in the organization what to do and how to think.

The short-term results would contribute both symbolically and functionally to a new and productive self-image. He's going to talk about the importance of your own self-image. And he explains what I've been trying to explain poorly the past, I don't know, several weeks about there's a large section of people out there that have the ability, that have the desire to want to run their own businesses, but what's holding them back is their own self-image. Bill talks about this a lot. And so that's what he's talking about. It's like before you become a winner, you have to believe you have the ability to become a winner. And he goes, so I'm going to systematically convince every single person in my organization that one, that they have the ability to be a winner and two, that they're part of a world class elite organization.

So what is he saying? He's like, I'm going to this is the standard you have for your own life. It's down here. That's not good enough. If you're going to stay here, it's coming way to the top. And I'm going to show you how to do that. So he says it would contribute to a new and productive self-image and an environment and become the foundation upon which we could launch our longer-term goal, namely the resurrection of our football franchise. So he's working backwards. People are like, okay, I took over this football team.

I took over this company. I'm going to make it – I'm going to improve it by winning right away. He's like, no, no. I'm going to build a foundation, and that's why the book is called The Score Will Take Care of Itself. Because if you do all the little things right, every single one of them, then you don't have to worry about it. Because whatever your endeavor is, it will be successful. Now we're getting to his fundamental leadership assertion, okay? He says,

It began with this fundamental leadership assertion. Regardless of your specific job, it is vital to our team that you do that job at the highest possible level in all its various aspects, both mental and physical. So what he's saying is like, listen, we're going to have a set of values. We're going to have a set of standards. But the values have to come from a source. And they can't just be like they need to initiate action at this point. They should not just be words of repeat that are really just lies so he compares and contrasts the way he went about this to way other organizations do and you might have experienced this uh in some of the

organizations or that you've been involved with he says uh this is consistent with my conviction that an organization is not just a tool like a shovel but it's an organic entity that has a code of conduct conduct a set of applied principles that go beyond a company mission statement that's just tacked on the wall and forgotten. We had no mission statement on the wall. My mission statement was implanted into the minds of our people through teaching. At its best, an organization, your team, bespeaks values and a way of doing things that emanate from a source. And guess what? That source is you, the leader.

Thus, the dictates of your personal beliefs should ultimately become characteristics of your team. And we've seen this over and over again with all the founders that we've studied. You cannot separate the person from the company that he or she is building. Their personalities is undoubtedly imbibed into their organization at a very fundamental level. That's why it's such a difference between when a founder leaves or passes away or dies, whatever the case is, how that organization changes over time when that person's no longer there

um so at at the very beginning essentially what he's doing here um this next section i'm about to read to you think about it like this he's teaching everyone to make a commitment to be the best versions of themselves even now that's that that's a that's a you know something we've seen a lot but here's the difference. Even when they're current, the current external results may not warrant that belief. He understood the order in which things have to happen, right? So he says, my standard of performance applied to marketing, office personnel, and everyone else with details applicable to their jobs, even to the extent of including specific instructions for receptionists on how to answer our telephones professionally all of this increasingly demonstrated to others

and to ourselves that we were on top of things all things we were neither sloppy nor inattentive and contributed to a greatly heightened sense of this is who we are even though though a strong kid. Now, this is the, this is the difference between like what he's trying to do at the very beginning and their, their, their, um, external results, right? That's why I started the podcast with that, that metaphor about the scope, the, the like father time and mother nature, uh, slowly like finishing the job. Cause it's a good metaphor. This is going to take a lot of time. So he says, even though a strong case could have been made that who we are wasn't much

based on the initial one loss records during my first two seasons. So before he gets there, the team goes 2-14. His first year, they go 2-14. The next year, they go 6-10. Okay, you know what happens the year after that? They win the Super Bowl. So he says, of course, that was part of my challenge. The next year they go 6-10. Okay, you know what happens the year after that? They win the Super Bowl. So he says, of course, that was part of my challenge.

This is the most important part of the section I'm reading to you right now. The most important sentence if you only remember one. Of course, that was part of my challenge. Turning the self-image of the organization on its head from toxic to top- okay so how do we do that one way to do this is to teach everyone that you are part of an elite organization if you start with that belief eventually they're gonna if you start teaching that eventually they will believe it he also talks about listen man if you're gonna teach organization you gotta repeat repeat repeat repeat humans are not gonna absorb these lessons the first just you can't say it once and expect everybody to get it. That's just not how it's going to work,

especially in an organization with, I don't know, 115, 150 people, however many people are in a professional football organization. All right, so he says, so I'm going to start this. I'm going to have a lesson. I'm going to repeat it all the time, and I'm going to repeat it in different ways to teach the same lesson. Listen, you're a San Francisco 49er, And me, as Bill Walsh running this, I'm not letting, you know, he has like a, we'll get there. He has a giant ego, but he's, and rightfully so,

if you think about what he was able to accomplish, but he talks about like, you're going to meet my high standards or you're leaving. But the standards are not going, like, the San Francisco 49ers standards, they're not deviating. They're not breaking for anybody. So he says, to encourage, and you're going to see, like, little tiny ways he does this, which is really smart. To encourage positive thinking, pride, and self-esteem, I insisted that specific equipment carrying the emblem of the San Francisco 49ers be treated with respect. Okay, so if it has our logo, guess what? Now that I'm in charge, San Francisco 49ers, they're an elite organization. So you're not going to abuse things like a flag or an emblem.

You're just going to throw it around. He's like, no, you're not going to do that. For example, players were told their practice helmets, which carried our emblem, should never be tossed around. So it's very common. He's like, they're done. They just throw it to the side. He's like, they should never be tossed around.

They're not going to be sat on, and they're not going to be thrown in the bottom of their lockers. So it's very common. He's like, they're done. They just throw it to the side. He's like, they should never be tossed around. They're not going to be sat on, and they're not going to be thrown in the bottom of their lockers. So what does he say? He says, you wear it, you hold it, or you put it on a shelf. The same applied to their game helmets, of course. That San Francisco 49er emblem and the helmet it was affixed to signified that they were members of an organization with pride and high behavioral expectations.

So something he talks about a lot in the book is the reason this idea is so powerful is because very few people are held to a high standard. He talks about one, very few people are capable of holding themselves to a high standard. And then also very few people work in organizations or part of organizations that actually make sure that every single person, they may hold certain parts of the organization, certain parts of the company to a high standard. But Bill's like, no, that's not good enough, every single one. And then he talks, so he changed a lot of things. Like people would come in to, they'd be rookies.

They'd come in, they, you know, kind of abused. He also talked about how he didn't like how coaches talked to his players. And like, he's like, that's, if you're, if you're. If you're trying to tell everybody you're part of a leading organization, then you talk to them like they're a dog or you treat them like crap. That doesn't make any sense. So this is another idea where he changed. He deviated from the norm. He analyzed what his peers were doing.

He's like, nope, no, that's not smart. I'm not doing that. So he says, we respect every member of the organization because they deserve it. If they don't deserve it, they're not part of this organization. So he says, in keeping with his philosophy, I forbade the traditional hazing of rookies and walk-ons, making them the butt of humiliation or physical punishment. He's like, I'm not going to do that. You're a 49er.

He says, when they arrived, I informed them. You are a San Francisco 49er. As long as you're here, you will be treated like one. And it was true. They were respected, full-fledged members of organization from day one and were treated as such until they proved otherwise. Now, he wasn't a soft person by any means. By any means.

So I'm going to treat you with respect. If you don't meet my standards, though, he's a dictator. You're out of here. He says, of course, when they proved otherwise, they were not subjected to hazing. They were subject to determination. And his whole point is like, don't haze them. Get them up to your standards. If they can't meet your standard, get them out of the organization because your organization is only as strong as the weakest person. All right. Now he goes back to his very weird, unique idea. The prime directive was not victory. He never focused on victory.

The book is called The Score Will Take Care of Itself. That's his philosophy on leadership. So he says, from the very start, my prime directive, the fundamental goal was the full and total implementation throughout the organization of actions and attitudes of the standard of performance. This was radical in the sense that winning is the usual prime directive in professional football in most businesses. So again, he has the same trait that almost every single person I've analyzed for this podcast does. They're going to learn as much as they can, but they're going to learn some things that I'm learning what not to do.

This is the same thing that Bill's doing here. He said, I had no grandiose plan or timetable for winning a championship, but rather a comprehensive standard and plan for installing a level of proficiency, competency, at which our production level would become higher in all areas,

both on and off the field, than that of our opponents. He's got a really interesting idea about competition I'll get to too, which I love. Beyond that, I had faith that the score would take care of itself. So if we do everything a little right, we can't help but win. I just ran over my next point, which is to note I left myself on the next page. If we do that, we can't help but win. I just ran over my next point, which is to note I left myself on the next page. If we can't do, if we can't, if we do that, excuse me, we can't help but win. I directed our focus less to the prize of victory than to the process of improving, obsessing about the quality of our execution and the content of our thinking. He also talked about, this is really interesting

too. He didn't believe that there was independent operators. Like some people would say, okay, this is a star player. He's got different rules applied to him. Oh, this person's really valuable. You know, we have to treat them differently. He says, every team member is an extension of the entire team. Players had a connection to and were an extension of the coaching staff.

This is his whole idea about that any organization is really an organic entity. And so he's echoing nature here. Like there is no division. Everything's connected. So he says, they were an extension of the coaching staff, trainers, team doctors, nutritionists, maintenance crew, and yes, the people who answer the phones. Everybody was connected. Each of us, an extension of the other. Each of us an extension of the other. Each of us with ownership in our organization. I taught, and this is him talking directly to us again, I taught this just as you should teach it in your organization.

And so now he's going to get to the point, like why is this such an important thing? And one of his big ideas is that, listen listen winners act like winners before they're winners he understood the sequence of events he says eventually within months in fact a high level of professionalism began to engage within our entire organization the 49ers self-perception was Individuals began acting and thinking in a way that reflected pride and professionalism, even as we continue to lose games. Winners act like winners before they are winners. Champions behave like champions before they're champions.

They have a winning standard of performance before they are winners. And this sums up the entire section. The culture precedes positive results. That's his entire thesis. You got to get your culture and your philosophy and your standards correct first. Then you will automatically win. You can't do it in reverse. And I love this. So in this section, he's really good. He's obviously a really good teacher. He did it for decades, right? So this is another way to think about the section I just read to you. In a way, an organization is like an automobile assembly line.

It must be first class or the cars that come off it will be second rate. The exceptional assembly line comes first before the quality car. So he's saying once you have a great organization you can't help but make a great product and in his case his product was had a really good you had you you knew if it was a great product or not because you'd win games if it was um all right so i really like this idea uh like it's a way to he has this idea that his guiding set of philosophies um they essentially act like a north star uh for your life for you for for your organization so he says consistent effort is a

consistent challenge so you don't just start doing things well and then it was like just straight up from there it's like you're going to take two steps forward you might take one step back you might jump up to 10 steps forward you might take 15 steps back it's this constant going ebb and flow so he says there's going ebb and flow. So he says there's an ebb and flow and up and down in every significant endeavor at every level. I cut through that ebb and flow with the standard of performance. It was our point of reference. I envisioned it as enabling us to establish a near permanent base camp near the summit,

consistently close to the top within striking distance, never falling to the bottom of the mountain and having to start all over again. So the way we do things, we might have some setbacks, but we're never going to go back to the place we started from. We've surpassed that. We're getting closer and closer to our goal. We might get even closer to the top at some point and maybe knock down the next year, but this consistent standard of performance is going to keep us within striking distance to what we're trying to do. Okay, so now I'm going to take a little interlude because I think this is a good time where we're at,

where he's talking about like, you know, it's an ebb and flow. It's going to go up and down. During his second season, he is going to, well, first, he's going to describe something everybody has to deal with when they're trying to accomplish anything. And this is commonly referred to as the entrepreneurial roller coaster.

And it's usually like it's an emotional up and down, like your entrepreneurship and anything, even what Bill's doing. When you're doing something hard, it can produce the highest highs you've ever feel in your life. But at the same time, it can also produce the lowest lows and you have to be able to to work that through mentally so you don't quit or give up when you're failing because inevitably you're going to have some some forms of failure right so this let me uh i'm going to do this interlude um first i'm going to start with this great quote from bill he says almost always your road to victory goes through a place called failure. Okay? Now, what he's going to describe is this next section I'm going to read to you.

It just happens for a few brief hours when they just lost the game in the second season. He goes 6-10. If he loses the next game, he's on a terrible losing streak, he has a chance he's going to get fired. So before the organization can reap the benefits of his standard performance, he might be cut out. And this inner monologue I'm about to read to you is happening when he's on a cross-country flight back to San Francisco from Florida. And let me just go right into his mental state. He says, I slumped down, depressed in my dark little space, contemplating

whether I should offer my resignation. This is going to be a hard sentence here. Most debilitating of all, devastating, was a gnawing fear that I didn't have what it takes to be an NFL head coach. So our equivalence is you didn't have what it takes to be an entrepreneur, founder, whatever it is. At one point, I actually decided to hand in my resignation the next morning. Then I changed my mind. So there's that roller coaster, right? I've tried to describe my anguish, but the words come up short. Everything I dreamed of professionally for a quarter of a century was in jeopardy just 18 months after it was being realized. And yet there was something else going on inside of me.

A voice from down deep, from down deeper than my emotions something stirring that i'd learned over many years in football and before that growing up namely i must stand and fight again i need to stand and fight or it's all over in my mind our gut and in spite of the pain i knew i had to force myself to somehow start looking ahead to overcome my grief so this is advice to get out of the inevitable dark period you're going to have in your life you're focusing too much on your current state and your past right so he's saying no the key here is to focus on your next task to just keep moving forward i was able to summon enough strength to pull my focus my thinking out of the past and move it forward to our next big problem. It takes strength to shift your attention off pain

when you feel as though your soul has been stripped bare. When the inevitable setback, loss, failure, or defeat comes crashing down on you, losing a big sale, being passed over for a career promotion, getting fired. Allow yourself the grieving time, but then recognize that the road to recovery and victory lies in having the strength to get up off the mat and start planning your next move. Failure is a part of success, an integral part. Everybody goes through it. Knowing it will happen and what you must do when it does is the first step back.

Okay, so now his takeaway, so he winds up pulling himself out of that. And then his takeaways, listen, each time this happens, each time you come back from doubt or despair, you get stronger for the inevitable future reoccurrence. So he says, when you stand and overcome a significant setback, you'll find an increasing inner confidence and self-assurance that has been created by So he says, and a personal belief that you can take on anything, survive, and win. Okay, so back to how he's setting his organization up for future success. And this is where he talks about, like, you have to, like, humans are not, they're not naturally, for the majority of us, it's not natural to set extremely, extremely high expectations of standard performance. And I would say, let me read you this part, but before I do, just keep in mind, I think this is also something that's happening to me and probably to you by

listening to this, is part of the benefits of reading biographies is like you're constantly reminded that you can be excellent just like they were. And it keeps you, being exposed to that over and over again, it keeps you accountable to a higher level than if you didn't read or didn't hear that story. So he says, and this is why that's important, he says, be clear in communicating your expectation of high effort and execution of your standard of performance. Like water, many decent individuals will seek lower ground

if left to their own inclinations. In most cases, you are the one who inspires and demands they go upward rather than settle for the comfort of what of doing what comes easily. Okay, so now there's a really interesting story. So I'm gonna, this is the longest part I'm probably gonna read to to you. And it talks about – this story is incredible. It's an incredible story about how he came up with the idea for the West Coast offense, how it was derived essentially from having to use the limited resources he had. And then this is how – and then also his habit of studying

and constantly learning from others and then combining their ideas and adding his own unique ideas into something brand new. This is innovation in the game of football. And then what's most interesting is this is how his competition, who lacked that innovation, reacted. Okay, so let's go into it. I love this part. Here's an interesting but very irritating footnote. For my effort in coming up with a successful new way of doing things, I received the disparagement of many in the NFL. Their condensation stemmed from the fact that my approach didn't rely on the traditional brute force, grinding ground game, or spectacular long bomb pass of old-time NFL football.

Mine was a different approach. But he's saying mine is a different approach to gaining yardage, controlling the ball, and scoring touchdowns, which essentially he's saying mine is a different approach to the objective that everybody's trying to do. Everybody has the same objective. What we've seen over and over again as we study more founders and history is like, but you can reach that objective in many different ways, almost limitless different ways. In a sense, the naysayers were seeking victory, but only if it came the old-fashioned way.

They were locked into the past and unwittingly locking themselves out of the future. His main point, leaders do this to themselves and their organizations all the time. It was a change whose complexities were often misunderstood by observers. So in this section, he's going to tell us, listen, I thought deeply about this. I combined a bunch of different ideas. I had a unique set of experiences. And from the outside, if you didn't know it as well as me, we've talked about this a lot, it is possible for you to know more than somebody else.

And by doing so, it gives you a huge advantage. So we're going to see that in his case. He's like, listen, there's people analyzing what I'm doing from the outside that don't even know what they're looking at. And you're also going to see a little bit of his ego. He says it was a change whose complexities were often misunderstood by observers. Why? Because it's a new way of doing things. And if you didn't have the set of experiences, the set of thoughts, and didn't study the same stuff that Bill Walsh had, or Bill Walsh did, rather, you wouldn't even understand it. He said, so now he's got one of these famous, like, what do you call them,

TV broadcasters, people that talk while the game's on. He said, Howard Cosell was critical of a call I made because he wasn't aware of just how complex and precise our receivers' routes were. He exclaimed with exasperation during one Monday night football broadcast, how could Bill Walsh call for a 12-yard pass play when they needed 14? So he's going to now analyze that assertion, this criticism that he's receiving. It's like, this guy doesn't even know what he's talking about. Howard didn't understand the extraordinary precision required for successful execution of that play. We couldn't have the receiver running approximate routes and inexact distances each time. The route that was called

for on that play was 12 yards exactly, and he italicizes that word, exactly. Not 11, not 13, but 12, and to an exact spot on the field. This is one of his innovations. Additionally, what Howard and many others missed in the early days was that 60% of the yardage, this is an example of him knowing more than other people, and this is kind of embarrassing on Howard's part, your job is to commentate. So study the game. You don't even know what you're talking about.

Additionally, what Howard and many others missed in the early days was that 60% of the yardage on our pass plays came through running after the catch. So he wasn't expecting him to catch a ball 12 yards and just stay there. He's like, no. Now, sometimes he's going to be stopped there, sometimes he's going to be incomplete, whatever the case is. But 60% of our gains comes after that point. You're focusing on that point.

A 12-yard pass was designed to produce an additional 7-yard gain on the ground. So now people didn't like this. So one executive summed it up like this. This is not real NFL football. He viewed it as gimmicky, smoke and mirrors, neither substantive nor long-lasting. He was wrong. This is where we're going to see some of Bill's ego. I'm going to talk more about that because he explicitly talks about the value of having an

ego in the book. So he says, the complexities of the offense I created as compared to his real way were as dissimilar as a Rolex to a sundial. Now, it's a hell of a statement. This is what I love, because this is something anybody that studies history knows. And then, so now, that's where he's like, you don't even know what you're looking at. But not only that, you're telling me that I just need to go ahead and copy everybody,

what everybody else did in the past, right? Because that's quote-unquote real football. But the problem was, you people that love the past aren't even studying the past. So he says, few inventions are created out of nothing. What I was doing had its roots in the theories of others who had modernized the passing game. Most notably, the brilliant Sid Gilman. Okay, so think about that.

He goes back, he's like, all right, and I'm going to tell you why he had to invent this in a minute. He's like, well, I don't have a, one of the things was like, I don't have a quarterback who's capable of throwing accurately a long pass. Like, what am I going to do? So what he did is like, well, I have a problem. Let me see how other people solve this problem in the past. And you had this, this coach in the past called Sid Gilman, who, let me, I guess I'll just read, I'm going to read you what he says. He says, those who cling to the past had apparently forgotten the past. Early in its evolution, football didn't even allow a forward pass. Okay, so he's going back into the, he's studying the history of his profession. He's like, all right, I'm sure we've seen this somewhere before. He says, in fact, it was brought into college football simply as a device to make the game safer. This coach at St. Louis University immediately and enthusiastically embraced a new alternative to always running the ball. So he's saying at this point, no one was passing forward.

Everybody's running the ball. So this guy back in the 1900s, which is, let's say, what, 70 years before Bill Walsh took an idea and then revolutionized, or he calls it modernizing the passing game again. He starts using the forward pass. No one else is doing it. This is the results. In 1906, his team went 11- 0 and outscored opponents 407 to 11. he faced traditionalists who looked down their noses at what he had incorporated as part of his search for victory it's often the case that a game changer takes a while to change the way the game is played and that's exactly what Bill Walsh did.

His system is still in use to this day. Now, it's important to know, like Bill Walsh was extremely smart, but he's not like he came up with this out of full cloth. He just told you, studied the history, learned from other coaches, combined all his ideas. But it was also invented out of necessity. Somebody else gave him the name, the West Coast offense.

He said it should be called the lemonade offense because it was his response to be given lemons in the form of a team with no ground game and a quarterback without a strong arm. So he says, the fact that we had seemingly no options forced us to come up with new options. What's he talking about? He's talking about being resourceful. Here's a good question to write on a Post-it note and put on your desk. What assets do we have right now that we're not taking advantage of? He's talking directly to us. That's important.

Let me say that again. Write out this question and then ask yourself, what assets do I have right now that I'm not taking advantage of? So this is an example of what he was working with. His quarterback's name was Virgil Carter. I was working with Virgil Carter's limited skills. He was a quarterback who couldn't throw a long pass accurately. Oh, so another thing was he analyzed how everybody else,

like a bunch of their players, he's like, most people don't realize, most fans don't realize that a football field, the length is 53.5 yards of width. That's a huge space. So he's like, why is no one using all that space? He's like, most teams bunch their players together. So what he said is, okay, I have a limited QB, can't throw long, but I can get him more space by spreading my receivers out. I'm going to use all 53 yards. So his innovation was, okay, I'm going to use 53 yards of width,

and instead of going long, I'm going to use about 10 to 12 yards, maybe 7 yards of distance. And if you go 53 width by, let's say, 10 yards of depth, you have a giant field you can utilize. And then he says, so the width of the and the availability of five potential receivers were all available assets even before desperation drove me to utilize them creatively. Okay. I love that section. All right. Now he has something he says over and over again. You need to be unswerving in moving towards your goal. He says this a bunch of times in the book.

It's also a trait that he admires in others, and he mentions other coaches that have this trait. And he saw that trait in other people. He's like, I want that for myself. So he developed that talent. He says, we are unswerving in moving towards our goal. We will not quit. There's an inner compulsion and an

obsession to get it done the way you want it done. It's good to remind yourself that this quality, strength of will, is essential to your survival and success. Talked about earlier how to manage your mental state when you're having setbacks. In this case, he's talking about your physical state. You need to keep moving, acting, working. Often you're urged to go along and get along. You're advised that your plan should have worked by now. Are told other variations that amount to backing away from a course you believe in your heart and knowing your head is correct. Another great story. He's really big on details. It's like, listen, you need to sweat the little details, but you need to sweat the right little details.

So he's going to give us an example of the same person applying the perfect execution of the idea and then that same person not getting that, like doing the exact opposite. It says, Coach George Allen was a demon on details. He was preparing to play in the Super Bowl at the Los Angeles Memorial Coliseum. A few days before the game, he sent a staff member out to the Coliseum for an entire afternoon to chart the movement of the sun during the hours when the game would be played. George wanted to know exactly where the sun would be so he could calculate the advantage if his team won the coin toss.

This is an example of sweating the right small stuff. Here's an example focusing on the wrong small details. George took time off from his coaching responsibilities to design a more efficient system of serving food for the players, a way of reducing the amount of time players spent in the lunch line. He took time out of his schedule to personally draw up a schematic for those players wanting soup with their meals one line was designated for those wanting crackers with their soup and one line was for players who didn't

want any crackers this is an example of sweating the wrong small stuff um i love this idea. We've seen it in different variations. His idea is like, listen, most companies, most football teams, most organizations, they focus on their competitors. I don't care about my competitors. Instead, I'm going to spend that time making myself and my organization better, and therefore, I'm going to make it harder for them to compete against me. So he talks about, you know, coaches would use this thing like, oh, we're going to play X team and they're really vicious, et cetera. He's like, well, I generally prefer the opposite approach. To me, the opposite, the, to me, they, meaning the other teams, were objects that were both faceless and nameless. Nameless, faceless objects.

My logic was that I wanted our focus directed at one thing only, going about our business in an intensely efficient and professional manner, first on the practice field and then later on the playing field. I felt that moving attention away from that goal to create artificial and manufactured demons

was artificial and usually non-productive, especially when done repeatedly. Now, we already passed the part where he becomes extremely successful. He wins a lot of games. He obviously wins a lot of Super Bowls. And now he's getting to the point where when you're already good at something, you get like a lot of accolades and people are telling you how smart you are. He's like, don't let that happen. Don't let anybody call you a genius. And that's when you research Bill Walsh, you'll see a lot of people calling him a genius.

And so he says, in part because of the complexities of our past-based offense, the media began referring to me as the genius. And then he's human. At the beginning, he's like, oh, that makes me feel good about myself. When the name was first attached to me, I was naive enough to be flattered and did nothing to discourage writers from using it. I may have even been thinking, hey, maybe there's something to it. I learned soon enough that an inflated label like genius or any other form of hyperbole comes with a big downside. Buying into what people say about you can create both external and internal problems. This makes your life and your job a lot tougher

than they already are. The genius label was an albatross around my neck. It's easy to get caught up in or enamored by lofty titles, praise, and flattery as you subconsciously attempt to become the character others have created out of who you are. This goes back to Andrew Carnegie's advice for, it's one of his famous quotes, it's like the judge within reigns supreme or something like that. uh, it's one of his famous quotes is like the, the, the judge within like

reign supreme or something like that. Essentially he's telling us like the, the most important, uh, person to judge who you are is yourself. And in like, you know, who you are, like internally, like, are you proud of the person you have become? Don't let other, like the, the, the views of other people like color that or influence that so much and bill's kind of echoing that here he says that character isn't you but it's an addictive attraction if plaques awards and commendations start rolling in believing your own press clippings good or bad is self-defeating you are allowing others oftentimes uninformed others, to tell you who you are. The real damage occurs when you start to believe that future success will come your way automatically

because of the great ability of this caricature that you have suddenly become. That the hard work and implied intelligence you utilized initially are not as crucial as they once were. That is when you get lazy. So he calls this success disease. Okay. And his point is like, he fell for it for a little bit, but what helped him avoid it was his standard of performance. Think about it as like an operating system. It's a series of habits that you just apply every day, regardless of the outcome. Because what happens is like, there's a lot of people that will be really successful. And they're like, okay, I'm going to slow back. I'm going to, I'm going to, you know, let my foot off the gas, so to speak. I'm just going to, you know, I'm fine now. I'm a winner already. I'm good. One of my favorite sayings comes from Conor McGregor. He

says, if you sleep on a win, you'll wake up with a loss. And so understand that this is prevalent in human nature throughout millennia. So we need a solution for it. Bill's solution is like my standard of performance. I apply that standard every day regardless of external outcomes. So I won the Super Bowl. Okay, the next day I'm back at practice. I lost the game. Next day I'm back at practice.

Because over time, over the length of your career multi-decades the score will take care of itself all right so he says when you reach a large goal or finally get to the top the distractions and new assumptions can be dizzying first comes heightened confidence followed quickly by overconfidence arrogance and a sense that we've mastered it we figured it out we're golden but that gold can tarnish quickly mastery requires endless remastery in fact i don't even believe there's ever true mastery it's a process not a destination that goes back to what jack dorsey was telling us at the beginning that's what few winners realize and explain to some degree why repeating is so difficult having triumphed winners come to believe that the process of mastery is

concluded and that they are its proud new owners it's not the case now he's going to get into the part the difference between ego and egotism don't let anybody tell you that a big ego is a bad thing tiger woods bill gates warren buffett have lots of ego. And so does anyone anywhere who is dedicated to taking his or her talent as far as it will go. I've got a big ego too. Here's what a big ego is. Pride, self-confidence, self-esteem, self-assurance. Ego is a powerful and productive engine. This is a very important part. Without a healthy ego, you've got a big problem. Egotism is something else entirely. And they're next-door neighbors. You've got to be very careful about this. Egotism is an ego that's been inflated like a hot air balloon. Arrogance that results from your own perceived skill, power, or position.

You've become increasingly self-important, self-centered, and selfish. Just as a hot air balloon gets pumped with lots of hot air until it turns into some big ponderous entity that's slow, vulnerable, and easily destroyed. In evaluating people, I prize ego. It often translates into a fierce desire to do their best and an inner confidence that stands them in good steed when things get really tough.

Psychologists suggest that there is a strong link between ego and competitiveness. All, this is a hell of a statement he's about to tell us right here. All the great performers I've ever coached had ego to spare. All right. So you, essentially what I, what I took from the section is you need a belief in yourself. Just don't believe that you're perfect. There is a, I think arrogance, uh, a lot of people confuse confidence with arrogance. To me, arrogance is when you think you can stop learning from other people. All right.

Okay, I want to read you this one section. This is how a former player saw Bill, and something we've talked a lot about, which is essentially the power of focus, that whatever you're going to focus on in your life is what you're going to improve. So you have to protect that. You can't just give away your focus to a lot of people that are, don't want the best in your life. This could be, you know, TV shows, friends, loved ones, whatever the case is, like, don't let people distract you if what they're, if what that distraction is, is not the best for you. So he says, I saw immediately he had a singular focus on being first class, on being

the best, on being the greatest. But a lot of people have that, the desire to be the best. Here's the difference. Bill knew exactly how to do it. The specifics, not just for his quarterback, but for a receptionist answering the phones. Not just for a backup left tackle, but for groundskeepers. Somehow he knew what it was and what constituted greatness for every single job in his organization. He knew what a spreadsheet looks like, what a marketing presentation should look like, and all the rest. Detailed concepts.

And he hired the very best people to do the jobs that he needed them to do. And in most cases, he had a good sense to get out of the way and let them do their job. This is a very undervalued management skill. So this is an important point because this is coming from somebody that Bill managed. And he's also talking about what, like, the superpower, when you combine focus and consistency, like, what that will do to your life right from the start he really got out there and coached rolled up his sleeves and got totally into teaching what he was aiming for and he did that every day

of every year for a decade so he's talking about here with what that player is talking about here is what Bill's going to tell us now, that there's no mystery to mastery. How do you get good? There's no mystery to mastery. He says, in case you don't know, Jerry Rice played for Bill Walsh. Some people say he's the best receiver in history. So, there's a story about Jerry Rice. And it's interesting, there's also a story about Jerry Rice towards the end of his career.

He says, if you're Jerry Rice, the greatest receiver in NFL history, you're practicing, he says, if you're Jerry Rice, the greatest receiver in NFL history, and you're practicing a slant pattern at 6 a.m. over and over again with nobody within a mile of you, no football, no quarterback, nobody but Jerry working to improve to master his profession. What's the, why, excuse me, not why, not what. Why is the NFL's greatest ever receiver doing this? He's going to get to the point. Jerry Rice understands the connection between preparation and performance,

between intelligently applied hard work and results, between mediocrity and mastery of your job. And Jerry had the skill coupled with the will to do it. You never stop learning. So again, this whole section is about why do people feel there's a big mystery to mastery? Where Bill's telling us there is no mystery. You never stop learning, perfecting, refining, molding your skills. You never stop depending on the fundamentals, sustaining, maintaining, and improving. He says Joe Montana, which also he coached and he says maybe one of the best quarterbacks of all time, did this as well. He says Jerry and Joe may be the best ever at their positions. At the last stages of their careers were still working very hard

on the fundamental things that high school kids won't do because it's too damn dull. It wasn't dull to Jerry and Joe because they understood the absolute and direct connection between intelligently directed hard work and achieving your potential. We all do. You do. I do. Everybody who's a serious player knows what it takes. The difference is how much you're willing to give to get there. For us, there is no mystery to mastery. It applies to anyone, anywhere who wants to get really good, who wants to master his or her profession. It applies to you. Okay, so one thing, one pattern I see a lot when reading all these books

is a lot of founders, they actually learn from seeing things done the wrong way. They're very fast and beneficial way to learn. Bill's no difference. He says, I hate to see bad football. I hate to see a team play bad football, even for a single play. Bad football makes me ill in the same way a symphony conductor hates to hear an orchestra mangle Bach or Beethoven. There's a reverence for the art. For me, it can be described as a reverence for football as it could be played. And he describes the highest form of football. He's like, it's an exquisite beauty of what can occur at its uppermost level i think top performers in all professions have the same deep

respect even reverence for their work i can see i go back to this over and over again it's very obvious for me why a lot of founders and other people that are uh that want to master their profession recommend uh keep recommending this book is because that essentially like that's what he's trying to help us do because in he mastered his profession everybody works right to some degree how many of us actually want to master our profession it's a small group it's a group of misfits you know but these are the most interesting people in the world these are the people that are most widely admired and it's just like why wouldn't you you? You're spending half of your life, your conscious life, seeing you sleep eight hours a day.

You're up for 16. You're going to work eight of those, right? Some people work more. Some people work less. That's probably average. Who knows? But that means half the time that you're actually experiencing life and not in some dreamlike state, you're working.

Why would you not want to master it? It's just, I think it's like, it's one of those things I have a hard time explaining because it seems so obvious. And for Bill, like that's, I'm glad he combined all the lessons that he learned from trying to master his profession, you know, for five decades or whatever it was. Think about it. He wanted to be a head coach in the NFL. It took him 25 years just to get to that point. Then he's got all, so he's got a ton of life experiences, lessons up until that point. And then he's got another, what is that? 10, I forgot how long he coached for, but you know, let's say another decade plus after that,

continuing learning. And then just somebody put it down in a book that you could pick up and read and, you know, 15, 10 hours, 15 hours, but that just seems like a good idea. Got another idea. Pretty Pack package will not sell a crappy product before they started winning games he came up with all these marketing techniques to try to sell season tickets and one was a pick a seat day they went up selling like like 10 tickets the entire day it was terrible i think he bought three of those tickets anyways he says pick a seat day and this there's a lesson here pick a seat day was a total flop. What is a flop that taught me something very important. A pretty package can't sell a poor

product. Results in my profession were winning football games, and that was the ultimate promotional tool. I was trying to sell a bad product, a team that was the worst franchise in the sports, that had lost 27 straight road games, and whose record at home wasn't much better. So he's like, this doesn't matter. I can't put lipstick on a pig here. So he says, from that point on, I focused my energies exclusively on creating a quality product, a team that was worth spending money to see. When that was achieved,

we also achieved a 10-year waiting list to buy 49ers season tickets. And finally, another, the last piece of advice from Bill Walsh that I want to cover today, and it's something that happened to him. There's a lot of, you know, heart-wrenching things in this book, and the advice is two words

avoid burnout and he can say that because he burned out he retired the day right after he won a super bowl he just couldn't take anymore he says and he gives an example in history of people that's also happening to him or to other people he says he's giving example of another coach he says not long after he was finished out, as he described it to reporters at a very emotional press conference when he announced he was quitting. Dick retired for 14 years before returning in triumph by leading the St. Louis Rams to victory in Super Bowl 34. Later, he told the story of having a sign on the wall.

This is his previous job when he was the Eagles head coach. It said, the best way to kill time is to work it to death. He told people, I worked time to death until it killed me. So he's telling us to avoid this. This is his main takeaway here though. This is Bill talking now. Can you imagine how burned out you must have to be to wait 14 years to return to doing something you love. I don't have to imagine it. I never returned to the NFL as a head coach in spite of offers where I was given a blank contract

and told to fill it in with whatever I wanted and then sign it. That's where I'm going to leave it. If you want the full story, buy the book using the link that's in the show notes on your podcast player or at founderspodcast.com.

You'll be supporting yourself by getting a book that'll hopefully have ideas that help you master your profession, your craft, whatever that may be. You'll also be supporting the author and this podcast because it's an affiliate link

and I get a small percentage of the sale and no additional charge to you. Thank you for listening. I just have one request. Please tell at least one friend about this podcast this week. And that's it. Thank you very much for listening. I will talk to you next week.