The Learning Leader Show With Ryan Hawk - 056: Blake Anderson – Trick Plays, Playing Fast, And Having Fun: America's Most Entrepreneurial Football Coach

Episode Date: September 21, 2015

Episode 056: Blake Anderson – Trick Plays, Playing Fast, And Having Fun: America’s Most Entrepreneurial Football Coach Blake Anderson is an incredibly interesting learning leader.  I’m very fortunate to now call him a friend.  He truly understands the value of creativity mixed with hard work and empowering of his players.  We are extremely fortunate to have Coach Anderson share his knowledge with US, the loyal listeners of The Learning Leader Show.  From John Brubaker on entrepreneur.com: Blake Anderson is one of the few in his profession who is keenly aware that the game has changed. College sports, like business, has entered an era where getting great results isn’t who you know or what you know. It’s about who knows you. To get “known” you’ve got to be different or you’ll be invisible. At a program such as Arkansas State, located in a small town and without the benefit of being the state’s flagship university or being a member of a major conference, great results are contingent on the ability to market better, faster and with less resources. How do you beat the big dogs at their own game with a smaller brand, in a smaller market and/or with a smaller budget? By changing the game. Call it disruptive or guerilla marketing, but creativity has been at the foundation of the team's strategy. Anderson asks his staff the same question each day: What is no one else doing right now that we can pull off? Episode 056: Blake Anderson – Trick Plays, Playing Fast, Having Fun: America’s Most Entrepreneurial Football Coach Subscribe on iTunes or Stitcher Radio The Learning Leader Show “You don’t ever want to be afraid of failure.” – Blake Anderson Some Questions I Ask: What one common characteristic do all successful leaders share? What is your process for creating trick plays? How have you built such a great culture? How do you handle failure? When trick plays don’t work…? How do you specifically coach millennials? What is the “10th man” theory? Why would (or wouldn’t) an athlete make a great entrepreneur? Why doesn’t the tough lover style work today? Do you prefer players who blindly follow what you say or do you like players who question everything?   In This Episode, You Will Learn: The importance of the environment created with his players The need to “be known” How he responded to the “fainting goat” play going viral The importance of empowering each member of the team to lead Entrepreneurs and athletes How watching movies can help develop leadership ideas and create a better culture How using Ebay auctions can be a great marketing tool The importance of listening deeply “Be a listener… Don’t have an ego.  Seek good counsel.” – Blake Anderson Continue Learning: ·         Go To: AStateRedWolves.com ·         Read about Blake in Entrepreneur Magazine: Entrepreneur ·         Follow Blake on Twitter: @CHbanderson You may also like these episodes: Episode 001: How To Become A Master Connector With Jayson Gaignard From MasterMind Talks Episode 011: Brady Quinn – Why Certain People Are Great Leaders And Why Others Are Not Episode 004: How Todd Wagner (and Mark Cuban) Sold Broadcast.com To Yahoo! For $5.7 Billion Episode 010: Shane Snow – How To Accelerate Success Using Smart Cuts Did you enjoy the podcast? This was a jam packed episode full of great content.  Blake Anderson is leader who is constantly learning in order to help us all live a better life. Who do you know that needs to hear this?  Send them to The Learning Leader Show! Episode edited by the great J Scott Donnell   Notes On Blake from John Brubaker on entrepreneur.com From John Brubaker on entrepreneur.com: Blake is one of the few in his profession who is keenly aware that the game has changed. College sports, like business, has entered an era where getting great results isn’t who you know or what you know. It’s about who knows you. To get “known” you’ve got to be different or you’ll be invisible. At a program such as Arkansas State, located in a small town and without the benefit of being the state’s flagship university or being a member of a major conference, great results are contingent on the ability to market better, faster and with less resources. How do you beat the big dogs at their own game with a smaller brand, in a smaller market and/or with a smaller budget? By changing the game. Call it disruptive or guerilla marketing, but creativity has been at the foundation of the team's strategy. Anderson asks his staff the same question each day: What is no one else doing right now that we can pull off?

I've got a room, I got a staff full of guys, and I think I want somebody to always be willing to be that 10th man and say, we can do this. We can tweak this that way. We've got people on campus as well in the administration that do the same thing. And then be willing to do it, and not everybody wants to spend the time and energy that it takes to do that. Not everybody wants to spend the time and energy to sort through what the details and maybe even what the risks are going to be to do it. And then ultimately, a lot of people aren't willing to stick their neck out there and do it. Are leaders born or are they made?

Our host, Ryan Hawk, believes that leaders can be made through determined, focused work on learning the art and science behind the makeup of other successful leaders. Now it's time to inhale knowledge and exhale success. You're listening to The Learning Leader Show with Ryan Hawk. Hey, and welcome to the Learning Leader Show. I am Ryan Hawk. And I know you guys are going to love tonight's episode with a guy Entrepreneur Magazine calls the most entrepreneurial coach in America. He's the architect of the U.S.'s most creative football team where he's a head coach at Arkansas State. We got into a lot of great topics.

I think you'll find his stories to be fascinating. You'll learn a lot. You'll laugh. You'll also take some notes, things that you can take back, whether you enjoy football or you're just a business. leader. Some of the things we got into, how you cannot fear failure. You need a willingness to be different. And Blake certainly discusses his willingness and how he's put that into action. Also, he does an eBay auction to be a guest coach for his team. I think you'll really love hearing that story. And another one we got into is his 10th man theory that comes from a movie where he picked up

saying he needs and values at least one person in every meeting. who is willing to question everything. We dove deep in that area. I think you're really going to like that part as well. Ladies and gentlemen, without further ado, it's Blake Anderson. All right, Blake, extremely excited to have you here on The Learning Leader Show. You know, you're at that really great intersection for me, which is football, coaching, as well as thinking like an entrepreneur.

And so that's why I was so excited to have this conversation with you. And I wanted to get this conversation started with a bang, so to speak. So I have a question around high achievers, people who have done big things in their lives. And you've been fortunate to spend a good amount of time around those types of people. And you yourself are one of those. And I'm curious as to what are some of the common characteristics that those people all share? You know, that's a good question. And I have been fortunate to be around some guys that have done really, really well,

especially in this profession and honestly some guys in other professions as well. I would honestly consider my dad in one of those categories and he's in the insurance business. But, you know, first couple things come to mind is just work ethic. The guys that I've seen that have done great have had tremendous work ethics. They're willing to put in the time. They're willing to really just kind of roll their sleeves up, so to speak, and get to work. They've all been self-motivated. They don't need other people to motivate them.

They have inner drive and they set extremely high stuff. standards for themselves. They're always going to be their own worst critic. It's not going to be the outside influence that's going to matter near as much as the fact that they're driving themselves to be successful. And I've seen, honestly, every kind of personality type be successful. Those that are outgoing, I would consider my dad that way. I would say that a guy like Larry Fedora would be that way.

But, you know, I've also seen guys that are not that just that know what's necessary be really successful as well. But those are probably two the first things that come to my mind. It's just inner drive. It's something that's going to keep them going, regardless of the circumstances and the willingness to work hard.

I love it. It makes so much sense. And so I like to share a little bit about how I became aware of you. So a good friend of my name, Brent Shures, another fellow learning leader who's always looking for interesting people to help me as far as people that I want to learn from.

And he sent me this article that entrepreneur.com wrote about you. And it's not often that entrepreneur.com is writing stories about football coaches. And I love it. And it's titled, you can Google it, four off-the-wall marketing techniques from America's most entrepreneurial football coach. And that was really caught my eye.

And I really love the article and everything that you do. So I'd love now, coach, to take a minute for you to share a little bit about your story and how you've gotten to the current place that you've. you are as the head coach of Arkansas State. Well, I don't know if we got enough time for all that. To be honest, there's been a lot of stops along the way. Yeah. I wasn't sure what the – I did the article and did the interview with Brew,

Coach Brew, I call him. I didn't know exactly what to expect from that article, and the title really caught me off guard because that's about the last thing I consider myself to be entrepreneurial. But, you know, the conversations were great, and the article came out really well because it truly did hit on some high points of what we're doing and that we're willing to think outside the box. I think you're a product of your environment. This has been 23 years of going from one place to the next, never really being the guy with a great pedigree.

I mean, I wasn't a great player. I didn't win a Heisman trophy. Nobody knew who I was. I was really fortunate to get to play and enjoy my college career, but spent most of the time with the trainers with injuries than I did. I wasn't on the cover of anything. and there's no football card in any package that's got my picture on it. So I feel like I kind of got into the coaching world as an unknown, and I've traveled through it, understanding that to some degree,

I had to be known at some point for people to recognize the job that I was doing. And I've worked at job after job that nobody knew about, from small schools to junior colleges, to driving the bus, to running the dorms and all those things. And it eventually led me to hear to end up being a head coach. to the place that other than just what's happened in the last couple of years with the coaching carousel, it's a small market. Not a lot of people hear about us a lot of the time. Not a lot of people know what we're doing. Typically, it's just local news and local folks. And we really want to

have an idea and a vision to be much bigger than that. So to do that, just went back to the same thing. We've got to think outside the box. We've got to be willing to be a little different and because we're not the first, you know, not on the first conversation. We're not on the first page of many of those conversations, and we need to start being that. And that's really where it all kind of started and being willing, honestly, to do some things that maybe other people aren't willing to do or maybe being laughed at a little bit at times if things didn't go the right way. It kind of led us to that conversation with Brew about some of the techniques and tactics that we've done. and that's been 11 different universities, seven different states in 23 years, even 20 different houses that my wife and I have lived in, all of which kind of picking up along the way, just little ideas and techniques for things that I thought worked.

And then putting our own spin on it, and it has gotten us to where we're at now. Well, it's really interesting. And I think some of the things they talk about here that you do is, and I won't read through all of them, you know, because I don't want to regurgitated at the article, but it's a great one, but one of the ones that you guys became, you had a viral video of more than 10 million in views, was a trick play that you ran called the Fainting Goat Play. Could you talk a little bit more about that and why you guys did it? Yeah, you know, there's a pretty good story. Number one, we carry trick plays into every game.

Normally, we carry multiple. We've always run them from as long as I've been able to call plays, which has really been pretty much most of my career. I've had a chance to call plays. We've always carried trick plays. Now they get more publicity now than they ever did, just because the medium is easier to get your hands on. Before nobody even knew we were playing at, you know, in Athens, Texas at Trinity Valley Community College,

nobody knew we were playing but us and the parents. And now it's more readily available. But we've always carried trick plays. That particular trick play and how it came about was about two years in the works. We had played a trick on our quarterback at North Carolina a few years ago. I saw that too. Brenner, you know,

he had, I'm a, I'm kind of a smack talker on a daily basis. I like to give it back and forth with the guys. They like talking smack to me. I like talking smack to them.

And I had really accused Bryn of feigning during a play. He had almost gotten hit by a guy, kind of one of those deals where you kind of see it coming, but you didn't and you kind of flinch a little bit. You probably as a quarterback somewhere along the way, you kind of thought you were going to get hit. You braced for it. Yeah.

It didn't happen. But, you know, on video, you could tell that he had, He had kind of, and I said, man, I think you, I think you fainted right. I mean, I really doubt I think you fainted. Well, it went on for a couple of weeks. And so we decided as we are to play a trick on him.

And we did. We had all the bodies on the field fall down. We got the inspiration from the feigning goats on the internet after I, you know, had bothered him for a few weeks about fainting, fainting in the game. And, you know, we didn't really give at him a lot of thought. It got some hits. It was, it was fun there, Carolina. Never did it in a game, obviously.

Couldn't get Larry to buy into that. That wasn't quite where he was. wanting to go. And we get in the middle of the process last year, getting ready for Miami. We've got the trick play dialed up. And we've got Booker Mace who's lined down in a position where he can't go down field. So he's covered up. He can't go down field. And typically he would. And so the question came up, what do we do with Book? Do we bubble him? Do we backpedaling? And honestly, my special team's coordinator was with me at Carolina, Luke Paskell. He said, man, we all just have him do the fainting goat right there. And I was like, absolutely, got to do it. Well, I don't think

anybody really believed we would do it. So we started practicing it, and we started building it up. We even showed him what a fainting goat looked like. We showed him the trick play from Carolina. I mean, we did the whole work. You prepared him. Oh, we prepared him.

We even critiqued him in practice if he didn't do it right. We'd do it again. The other kids, they really didn't know whether to believe. It's only a few games in. They didn't know if I'd do it or not. So we called it and everybody kind of held their breath. And he did a great job, even better.

That was the best performance was in game time. I mean, that was the best one he did all week. Now, the play should have worked, and it didn't. Let me, I need to get credit. The guy was open. We threw a bad pass. And it had been complete all week long. It should have been a successful trick play.

However, it had not ended up successful. But Booker was, and I had no way to know that it was going to blow up like it did. I thought people would laugh. Some people would boo. I mean, I thought we'd get both reactions. I had no way to know that it was going to go viral like it did and go crazy. And it just got a great response. It did, and I got to believe that the more and more people hear about these things or they see them online, this helps.

It's got to help from a number of perspectives. One, recruiting kids saying, wow, it looks like a place I'd want to go and play. And two, selling tickets, getting people to come to the games. I mean, it's from a recruiting perspective that leads to then, you know, further victories, which then also kind of takes care of the selling tickets part as well. No doubt at all. It's all going together. We said in the beginning when they talked to me about the job, you know, what kind of environment was I going to create, what kind of staff we're going to have, what was it going to be our plan?

And one of the things we talk about is playing fast and always having fun. Those are two things I sold. I sold the idea that we were going to be engaged. We were going to be fun to be around. We're going to be fun to watch. We sell the same thing to recruits. We want them to understand that the environment's going to be different. Well, you can't just say that and then not back it up.

And so we've tried to give them as many opportunities as possible to see that we really truly believe that. going to be sound, we're going to be good football. We're going to teach technique like everybody, but we're going to do some things that allow you to laugh, have a good time, and have some fun. And that was a great environment to do it in. It's happened to be seen by a lot of people. And then, I mean, it's still going today. There's still articles and conversation going on this year, a year later about that play alone. And it didn't work. I mean, it didn't, it did not get a first down. We turned the ball over, but that play has generated a tremendous amount of momentum for, for me and my staff in recruiting

and for the A-State brand in general. And you're right, it helps sell tickets. Guys, they want to know what we're going to do next. Exactly. I was just going to say that. The question people have to be thinking is wonder what Coach Anderson is going to bring to the table for this game. What trick play is he got dialed up? And I'm curious from a trick-play perspective,

you know, and I didn't, you know, as a player, this wasn't usually a big part of our game plans going to the games. I wish it would have been, but it really wasn't. what's your process like for one for creating them because it's not it's not easy i mean you have to really be thinking so i'm curious as to what it's like are you in a room with a couple of guys do you just have you know are you at dinner with your family and all of a sudden you can pull out a napkin i mean what's the process like for you to create these plays really all the above i mean we've done it every way you can imagine we we we want to try to steal 20 you know 21 points we want to try to find a way to create explosive plays and find a way to steal 14 to 21 points

And so we're going to be strategically, we're going to be sound. I mean, we're going to block the right people. There's always some risk involved when you run a trick play. You know that. But there's such a reward at the end of it if you hit it. And some of our biggest victories have been because trick plays have worked out the way we needed them to just a couple of years ago against an in-state rival when I'm at Carolina. One of the biggest plays that broke the NC State game wide open was a trick play at a

very pivotal time. And, you know, it may be on a napkin. It may be in conversation during the week when we're watching tape. We may have seen something somebody else did that we felt like we could mold to fit what we're doing. A lot of it is based off of what we do on a weekly basis. Stuff that people see us do all the time that create an opportunity for an explosive or a trick play off of it, a double pass, a reverse pass, any of those things. If there's something that you're doing that people have to defend a lot,

there's always creates an opportunity then to come off of that with something big. Now, the feigning goat was just really just something we saw alignment-wise that we thought made them vulnerable to to throw in the pass down the field to a guy. The part where the guy feigning was just the fun that we were having along with it. We could have run the play without anybody falling down. We could have just had him stand still, but that wasn't near as much fun. We want to have a little bit more fun with it. But we've even had kids come in. Now the guys come in on Monday.

A lot of them will bring me a piece of paper scratched in some trick play where they get to. to throw it or catch it. And we've used some of those. We've tweaked them and used some of those throughout the years. We've been doing this for a long time. We've run a lot of trick plays. We've stolen a lot of trick plays. And we've got a video full of probably hundreds of them that we've grabbed throughout the

years off of high school and junior college and NFL and college tape. I love it because it's creating this environment of empowerment with your players, which talk about, if you talk about engagement and culture, man, that is powerful stuff there when they're all bringing things to the table? Well, we work them extremely hard. We ask more time of them now than ever before. I mean, it's really a year-round deal. So somewhere on the way, we've got to let them be kids.

And one of the things we can do is get them involved. Who's going to get to throw it this week? Who's going to get to catch it? Who's going to get to fall down? Who's going to get to do the moonwalk? And it's funny that people have talked about the fainting goat because of the environment it was in and it was huge. What people haven't talked about, we played a Tuesday night game against Lafayette, Louisiana Lafayette later in the year.

And we ran a trick, we ran a fake punt, the very first fake punt of the game midway through the first quarter, first half, I believe that worked. And we had a guy on that particular play to do a forward roll in a karate kick. And nobody ever asked about the forward roll in the karate kick. And we worked it all week just as much we did the feigning goat. It just didn't get the same publicity. So we always have something in the mix, and we really kind of ask the guys, all right, what do you want to do? You're the guy.

What do you want to do? We've had some good and not so good recommendations that we carry in. You know, when you do these types of things, though, you open yourself up for risk. You open yourself up for people to speak negatively about you and write negative things about you. Is this the reason why you believe that more teams don't do it this way? or don't have this type of fun when it comes to a trick plays because it's such if I'm a listener here and maybe I'm not even maybe not even a big football fan but if some of the listeners and I don't assume they're all football fans but and they're listening it's like well why doesn't

everybody do that then you know that's the natural question well there is risk involved I mean you run a double reverse pass and you lose 15 yards or you throw an interception and you're you're you're opening yourself up for scrutiny where we could have just run a conventional play and And that particular play, there's a lot of people. There's a lot of people that didn't like the feigning gold. They thought it was stupid. They thought it was poor coaching or just bad idea. Now, the positive outweighed the negative by millions, honestly, but there was still negative.

And I'm sure that there's guys that just that are not not comfortable in that environment. I want to, I don't ever want to be afraid of failure. I don't want to ever be paralyzed by the fear of failure. And I think it gives us a strategic advantage, if it gives us a recruiting advantage, if it builds the brand in any way, or if it has a chance at any point to create an explosive play, I think it's worked the risk. And we will have thought through every detail of what we're doing to make sure we've given it the best chance of success. And heck, I can run a conventional play and it not work or I can run a conventional play and the outcome be bad. I mean, there's still risk involved with every single snap that we run from the line of scrimmage. So I tend to want to create excitement and create fun and then create the possibility of something big to happen.

And that's just my philosophy. There's just a lot of people that probably aren't comfortable in that environment. Have you spoke with Kevin Kelly, the coach at Pulaski Academy in Arkansas, the guy who never punts and kicks on side every single time? Well, it just so happens that my starting quarterback played for him. him. And he is right down the road. We've not talked a lot. I know he takes a very unconventional approach to what they do and they've been very, very successful. We don't, we don't see eye to eye exactly on never punting. I mean, we do punt. We just have, we're both

on the, kind of on the edge or kind of out there in areas that a lot of people aren't comfortable. I even read an article about him here recently where he's even getting more and more involved into double passes and trick plays and kind of researching the explosive play category and how to create those more, which is going to put him even further out there on his own against what a lot of high school coaches or college coaches are willing to do. Yeah, I think he talked about incorporating rugby techniques. Yeah, exactly. Yeah, yeah.

I just found him to be, it's funny that ironic that he happens to be in Arkansas, you're there. and I had to figure there was probably some type of intersection between the two of you guys since you're both creative thinkers and your approach to football. Yeah, like I said, I just happened to have his quarterback starting for me, Freddie Knight, and played at his high school for him. So he's been in that environment for a while. Man, that guy's had a lot of fun playing high school and college. It's pretty cool.

No doubt. No doubt. So I'm curious from a, I know you mentioned earlier that you don't view yourself as an entrepreneur or even know that you've been written about by people who follow entrepreneurship. entrepreneur, entrepreneurship. And I'm curious, when you look at athletes or football players, this two-part question, do you think they make good entrepreneurs or maybe they're, maybe I'm answering the question for you, but maybe they're not because their nature is more inclined to following rules

and almost fitting in. What are your thoughts on that? That's a good question. I don't really know the answer to that. I just kind of think of herself as just an old grassball coach. I mean, I don't, we kind of got this environment that we live in or this, we know what our challenges are. And in a sense of being innovative and being, you know, first to do things, I think there's a lot of great ideas that come out of our profession because we're always trying to be on the cutting edge. We're trying to have an edge.

We're trying to, you know, kind of move to the boundaries. But, but, yeah, there's a lot of things that do confine us. There's a lot of rules that we've got to work within. We have to stay within parameters. so we do have, there's some hand cuffs on us at times. And I don't know. I just never really thought of us in that sense. I've just thought we're trying to find creative edges.

We're trying to be the best recruiters we can be. We're trying to build our, you know, our brand name the best we can. I don't know that I've just never thought we'd be on the cover of entrepreneur or Forbes magazine for trick plays and giving away tickets on the street corner. So I think you guys see things from a different perspective. and it's really flattering that we're thought of in that way. So let me talk about your players now. Would you rather have a player that questions everything you tell them

or one that just takes what you say and does it exactly as you say it? Wow, tough question, tough question. Because the one that questions everything you say will drive you crazy. And I've had those, but they've also made me a better coach. Or even as a coordinator, guys on my staff that, work inside the offensive room or guys now as a head coach, guys within the staff that are willing to question, they make me think. They make me think, do I really believe in this?

This is really what I want to get done. And that's hard. It takes time. It takes a lot of energy. It's frustrating at times. But I think it makes you better. Now, there's something to be said for a good soldier, too, that's just going to go do what you say.

And I think in our business with our, with a team makeup, this is, in my opinion, the ultimate team sport. It is unlike any other sport. In basketball, a great shooter can take over the game. And baseball, a great pitcher. And hockey, a goalie, and that sort of thing. In this sport, it is truly, it takes all 11 components. And so you need some guys that truly are just good soldiers that say, yes, sir, go do what

they're supposed to do. They don't question anything. But I do think there's benefit in having a guy or two or a handful of guys that are willing to stand up and question things because it truly makes you decide what you believe in. And I think a good balance of those two things within what we do. And I would have to say in any business where you've got a staff of people, if everybody just agrees all the time, then you're probably not being very creative. It takes some disagreement and some argument and some scratch in your head, I think, to truly find that creative side of what you're doing.

Yeah, me personally, you know, as a quarterback of my college team at Ohio University, I actually wished I would have had more of the attitude then that I do now. If I could go back and talk to myself or teach me, I would say question things more. We unfortunately did not win as many games as I would have liked, and I think part of it was we had a lot of pretty good soldiers and that would just kind of do exactly what we were told as opposed to thinking a little bit differently or trying new things. and I think perhaps that could have led to more win.

So I agree with you. I think you definitely need a mix of those two. And if you have a team that just blindly follows, it could work. But it's certainly helpful. And I've seen even in the business world, I've seen the teams that have a mix, especially a couple of those people who are willing to question everything, seem to be innovating, evolving,

and getting better more so than the ones that don't. Yeah, now I think it's important that how it's, it's done, especially in a team sport where morale is huge. And I've always felt like morale is one of the biggest things that I need to try to control to make sure that our momentum is moving in the right direction, that everybody feels integrated and a part of what we're doing. So I think a lot about team morale, about staff morale, but questioning in a confrontational way, it doesn't have to be the only way it's done.

I think there's a lot of ways to question in the right atmosphere. in the right environment, in the right way. So it doesn't have to be confrontation, doesn't have to be argument. It just has to be somebody that's willing to do it and be able to do it with tact, to be able to do it respectfully, so that it makes you think.

And I think that's part of the battle is to be able to do it the right way, so it doesn't create dissension, it doesn't create bad feelings, it doesn't create, you know, a wall there that you can't get past, because morale is too important. You don't want to break team morale.

You don't want to break that close-knit group that you got, over an ego that that that that's too big that makes a lot of sense and i'm curious now about today's kids too and and i'm still kind of in this group um millennials you know i'm curious about how your approach towards coaching them and what's unique or different about this generation well they they spent more time indoors than we did back when i was growing up they've got way more things at their disposal to pull at their attention all kind of different types of media, there's every kind of game and every kind of snap this and I that and video.

I mean, it's just, there's so much going on that to captivate their attention, we've got to do it in different ways. We've got to be willing to think the way they think or let them learn the way they learn. We've got to try to keep them interested more often. It's, it is. It's a different, it's a different style than what we grew up. It's not the grab you by the face mask and, you know, it's not always. always the hard coaching. It's not the

environment that we were brought up in. I think you got to meet them in a way that they understand. You've got to try to create an environment that stimulates their thought that doesn't bore them and it keeps them moving and also understand you've got so

many different kinds of learners that you've got to have more than one way to do it. That takes a lot more thought than the old chalkboard and tough love and grab them by the face mask environment that I think a lot of us grew up in. Do you think if you had that style, it just simply wouldn't work?

Because, I mean, that was how I was coached playing. It was, you know, grabbing face masked and, you know, not letting you have water if things weren't going well, all that type of stuff. Do you think that just wouldn't work? Well, I think the way kids are, that it would take the exact, it would take the perfect group of kids to be able to handle that environment. I don't think, and there are still some guys that are true old school, that, that are successful, but they're going to need to find guys that they know truly fit that mold. I think of myself

a lot more as a player's coach. I think I'm more of a communicator than a yeller. The only time I'm yelling is usually because the music's so loud at practice that I have to be heard above it, but it's not because I'm screaming at. It's just that I'm trying to be heard in general. There's a time and place when they know that the foot's going to come down and that they know that they've reach that point where I'm done with whatever's going on. And I want that to be obvious when it happens, but that's not the environment they're in all the time. I mean, we think a lot about making their day-to-day better.

We think a lot about making their environment better, about allowing them to be their best. Instead of, you're going to do it my way or the highway, you know, we're going to push you to be, you know, the way things were 20 years ago. We're just not in that environment anymore. And there are some guys, like I said, they're still doing that that are successful, but I think it takes the right kids. to do that, you better have the right guys inside that locker room, or I just don't know that society is built that way anymore.

Yeah, I think it makes a lot of sense. I even saw, we used to read a lot about Tom Coughlin with the New York Giants, and Tiki Barber and Michael Strayhan were saying how he was out of touch and just, I don't know, it wasn't working for them. And then once he decided to probably take on more of those, the role of being more of a players coach, they got better. And I've heard that that's more of his style now.

So he was able to change and adapt to the players of today versus what he used to do. Yeah, and I think we have to continue to do that. But I tell my guys all the time, you can coach them as hard as you want to if they know that you care about them. If you don't spend the time to build a relationship with them where they know you care and you love them,

you're going to have no credibility to truly be hard on. If they know you care about them, they know you love them, they know that you're willing to defend them, go to the extra mile from, spend the time with them, then you can coach them as hard as you want to because you're going to be able to turn right back around, put your arm around them, and move forward. And so it's you've got to, you've got to put in the relationship time to truly be in that environment. And also understand that not every kid can handle that.

And not, not every kid can handle that type of atmosphere. So you have to be really careful and really aware of their particular personality and meet them in a way and teach them and communicate with them in a way that allows them to be at their best and to learn at their best. Yep, I completely agree. They're not going to listen unless they know that you truly care. And that's building a relationship and that takes time and investment and showing that. It's not just lip service. Like you genuinely do care about getting to know them and helping them. I got just a couple more questions, Coach, and one of them is around.

You've done eBay auctions for being a guest coach at your spring game, which I think is awesome. And even I read here that you got, it made national news because the NCAA had to investigate if this was legal to do it. Talk to me about your thought process around the eBay auctions. Well, we've auctioned those off in the past at different schools, but we've always kept it confined to a, you know, really just to boosters or local folks. And so when we got here, we wanted to, we're really talking about, how can we make this bigger? How can we make it better? And so that's where the national auction kind of became part of the conversation, Terry Mahezer, myself. And we also had the conversation. We may put this out there and nobody will bid on it. It could completely fall flat as well.

We had no guarantees that it would do well. And to be honest, when we put it out, it didn't do anything for about four days. I mean, nobody bid at all. It just sat there. And I remember conversations with Terry on the phone. I was like, this thing is going to be the laughing stock, you know, in the country. And then all of a sudden, it just exploded. And within a 48-hour period, it went from nothing to about $11,000.

And it couldn't have worked any better than to end up having a guy from California that none of us knew was an entrepreneur himself and a young, you know, just a sports enthusiast. It couldn't have worked any better than for him to win the bid because we brought him out. It went great. We got all the work we needed to get done in Spring Ball. That option had zero to do with us being prepared or not. It was strictly about generating excitement, about opening ourselves up to a different group of people, about getting the brand out there. And also being willing to, if it doesn't work, to say, hey, we tried it didn't work and just move on. And so it works as, even above and beyond what we expected it to.

We gained a fan base that we never had before. We raised some money that we were able to utilize, which was really not the biggest issue, because we would have been fine without the $11,000. But mainly we got tremendous exposure, and we helped the brand name. And we were able to do it again this year. We raised about 9,000 this year.

And it ended up being a local, one of our local fans that had heard, read about it last year, saw it, thought, man, I wish I had done that. And this year, we end up having the first female head coach, actually the first two. We had one on both sidelines. So it's been great for us.

It's really low-key. It did not take a tremendous amount of effort on our part. It was really just being willing to deal with the consequences if it didn't go well. And to me, that was easy. It was that was really, there was no risk. If nobody wanted it, we were going to have spring game

regardless, and I'd coach the thing. But we got what we needed on sides of it. You know, Blake, there's a couple things I'm taking from this that I just, I absolutely love. One of them is, you know, you have to be willing to not have any fear of failure because that's just going to happen sometimes and you have to deal with it and learn from it and look at it as an opportunity. And two is having the mindset of always saying, you know, so take a great idea, something

that you guys were already doing and saying, how can we make this better or bigger? What can we possibly do? And I think people can learn from having that type of mindset around anything, whether Carol Dweck, a great Stanford professor wrote a book called mindset. And it's called having a growth mindset where you're thinking about things in a way that how can we grow? How can we make this a little bit better? Not just being content with saying, well, this is really good. Let's do it exactly how we've always done. It's like, you know what?

It's having that mindset towards innovation, growth, and getting better. And so I love that. You have that. And it just shows through it. It seems to be every decision that you're making when it comes to whether it's selling tickets or calling trick plays or running the program and the culture of empowerment. I think that's really powerful. And it's, uh, uh, should be noted. Well, you know, I'm a, I'm a movie buff.

I don't know if you are. Mm-hmm. I think to the, did you see the movie World War Z? Oh, yeah. All right. The conversation that he's having when he goes to Israel about. the 10th man theory about how we got nine people thinking to say right one way we're going to make the 10th man think a different way.

I think I've got a room. I've got a staff full of guys. And I think I want somebody to always be willing to be that 10th man and say, we can do this. We can tweak this that way. We've got people on campus as well in the administration that do the same thing. And so, and then be willing to do it. And not everybody wants to spend the time and energy that it takes to do that. Not everybody wants to spend the time and energy to sort through what the details and maybe even what the risk are going to be to do it.

And then ultimately, a lot of people aren't willing to stick their neck out there and do it. And so we've been really fortunate the last year and a half of some of the things we've done. We've probably tried things that nobody knows about that didn't go over very well. But we've had fun doing it, I can promise it. And all of it has kind of spurred other conversation and potentially. moves us into directions to doing some more things that are going to help get us where we want to be. That's awesome, Coach. And I got one more question.

And this has been, I had high expectations for this, and you've been even better than I expected. So I really appreciate that. Sure. So this is all about, as I told you before we started recording, you know, my journey as a leader and constantly striving to learn to question things, to ask why, to say, you know, what if we did it the opposite? Or how do we get 10 times better or not 10% better? You know, always trying to think about things a different way, learning from people, and I've learned a lot from you. And that's why it's called The Learning Leaders Show, because it's, you know, how do we progress on our leadership journeys, whether you're an introvert, extrovert, it doesn't matter. And what are you, you know, striving to do? What are you, and what behaviors are you intentional about?

Are you intentional about learning and getting better? And I try to do that and try to have guests who help share how they do that so that I can, you know, in turn, learn for them. the listeners can learn. So when you hear the phrase learning leader, I'm curious as to what is the very first thing that pops into your mind? You know, the first thing to me would be a listener. Somebody that's learning, I mean, you've got to listen, you've got to hear, you've got to be willing to read, listen, investigate to be willing to learn. I don't have all the answers, be willing to listen to other people. That would be the first things that come to my mind. and not having an ego so big that I say all the answers have to come from me. There's a lot of times I can promise you in our staff room, there's a lot of times on a daily basis.

I say, look, guys, I need your input. I need to hear what you're thinking. Now, I still have to make the decision at the end of the day, and everybody's looking to me when it all gets put out publicly. I mean, I signed off on it. But to truly be a great leader and to be what you say, a learning leader, I think I've got to be willing to listen and let people be involved and help me. Seek good counsel is something I've always been taught from, you know, I grew up in the church and seeking good counsel is something my parents have been

instilled in me since day one. And so I've got to be willing to listen to truly be, to be effective and be good at what I'm doing. So good. Blake, this is incredible. Thank you so much for being a guest here and sharing so much knowledge and a jam-packed conversation. So I really appreciate I know you've got to get prepared as the season's about to get started for you. And I appreciate you investing the time with me and the listeners here at The Learning Leaders Show. And I look forward to continuing this dialogue with you as we

both progress on our journeys. Are there, is there a specific place you'd like to send people to look up either you or your team online? Well, I mean, we, they could come check out Aestateredwolds.com anytime they want to. There's all kinds of stuff about the university. what we're doing. They can follow me on Twitter at, you know, Blake Anderson, coach B Anderson. We're always putting out stuff. There's A-State football also on Twitter. Those are the two best places to kind of see. We're always putting out videos. We're putting out information, graphics. If they really want to see, and then we'll be kicking off against USC here in a few days. So we'll be on national television a handful of times this year, and I would really encourage

people to take a look at us. Awesome. Thank you so much again, Blake, for being here. and I appreciate it. Look forward to talking soon, man. Thanks, Ron. All right, thanks. Bye. This episode of The Learning Leader Show is over, but we have plenty more to keep you locked in until next time.

Head over to Learning Leadershow.com for more information and to request your favorite entrepreneur, CEO, world-class athlete, or anyone else that inspires you. You can also talk to Ryan directly by reaching out to him on Twitter at Ryan Hawk 12. Thanks again, and we'll see you next time on the Learning Leader Show.