The Learning Leader Show With Ryan Hawk - 281: George Raveling - Eight Decades Of Wisdom: From Dr. Martin Luther King To Michael Jordan

Episode Date: October 28, 2018

The Learning Leader Show With Ryan Hawk Episode #281: George Raveling - Eight Decades Of Wisdom: From Dr. Martin Luther King To Michael Jordan Show Notes: Commonalities of sustaining excellence: Growth mindset Immense curiosity High level of self awareness -- "It starts within" Great vision Most important = "they execute" Relationship lessons learned over eight decades - "Be a giver, not a taker. Try to genuinely help people." Develop trust, respect, and care for others -- "It's all about love.  Don't keep score.  Do the right thing, be kind, but don't keep score or trade favors.  That's not how it works." Standing next to Dr. Martin Luther King Jr for the "I Have A Dream" speech Asking Dr. King for the speech after he finished (and getting it... still has it!) Why he won't sell of try to profit from the speech despite it being worth millions The power of "showing up early" and "asking for what you want" Why Coach reads so much -- "The slave owners used to hide money in books because they knew slaves would never look in the books because they couldn't read." -- "If someone can control my mind, they can control my body.  I will not let that happen.  Books are my mistress." Information = knowledge = wisdom = opportunity = growth = success The importance of his upbringing - His dad died when he was 9, his mom was institutionalized when he was 13. He was raised by his grandmother and nuns. "My grandmother taught me to be curious.  She taught me to ask.  She taught me good manners.  She taught me humility. She taught me to help people.  She was the #metoo movement before the #metoo movement" How basketball was the "greatest vehicle for transformation in my life." Earned scholarship to Villanova -- When George was first offered a scholarship, he didn't know what that meant. Going from player to coach and why he was suited to be a great coach Becoming the first African American head coach of the Pac 8 (Pac 12) The mindset of thinking of yourself as an educator/teacher George is a voracious reader and marks up each and every page of the books he likes (I saw first hand and it's amazing) The importance for older people to have 4-5 younger mentors in their life.  Ryan Holiday plays this role for Coach. The importance of self leadership - "You must take care of yourself before trying to lead others" Working at Nike for Phil Knight -- Helping sign Michael Jordan away from Adidas Focus on being a great decision maker and seeking out growth opportunities Why you don't need a title to be an effective leader In order to be promoted, focus on being incredibly great at what you're doing right now "Be so good they can't ignore you." The 10 realities of life Coach Raveling values most at age 81 Pushing Coach to write a book about living a great life -- Tweet him to do this! Why joining The Learning Leader Circle is a good idea Use the "Get To Know You Document"

Information equals knowledge, knowledge equals wisdom, wisdom equals opportunities, and opportunities equal growth and success. And then at that point, it now becomes an opportunity to share with others. I've said this millions of times, a professor at Villanover one time said nothing in life is of any value unless you can share it with other. So all this information, this knowledge, this wisdom that I, that I had. I have to try to share it with other people and try to help them. Hey everyone, it's Ryan.

Real quick before we get started with this episode, I mentioned on the conversation with Danny Eney, episode 280, that we are building an online course. And part of the process to put the best possible course together is very brief market research. And that is a two-question survey that I would be extremely grateful. if you would take a few minutes and fill that out for me. You can do that at Ryanhawk.me. Again, it's very important for us to put together the most useful, the most effective course to help you sustain excellence as a leader.

That Dan and I have put together just a couple of questions that will take you a few minutes at Ryanhawk.me. We will be doing a few random giveaways for those who do choose to invest just a couple of minutes to help us out as we build the best possible course we can for all of you. Thank you so much for your support. If this is your first time here, or you've been here more than 280 times,

I sincerely appreciate it. I would love it if you would felt the survey at ryanhawk.me. Thanks so much. Welcome to the Learning Leaders Show. I am Ryan Hawk. Thanks so much for being here. It is Mindful Monday.

Text learners to 44222 in order to join thousands of other fellow learning leaders from all over. the world and receive notes about private giveaways, Q&As we are doing with members of this community, as well as some other cool events we have coming up. In addition to the Mindful Monday notes, you'll get every week. Text learners to 4422.

Now on tonight's featured leader, and it certainly is a special one. I flew out to Los Angeles to meet with Coach George Ravelling in his office to record this one face to face, and man, it was so worth it. Coach Ravelling, possesses the original copy of Dr. Martin Luther King's I Have a Dream speech. He's also the first African-American basketball coach in the PAC-8, which is now the PAC-12.

He was an integral part of Michael Jordan signing with Nike. He's traveled to six of seven confidence referenced by many as the human Google, reads at least four books a month. We've talked about some of his intense note-taking skills. He has spoken before Congress and done so much more. This one was a life-changing experience. A few of the topics we got into. Making the leap from player to coach or individual contributor to manager and how to do this effectively.

Then critical lessons learned from the March on Washington and standing directly to the left of Dr. Martin Luther King during his famous I Have a Dream speech. And then relationship lessons learned over the past eight decades. Coach Ravling is 81 years old and is as curious as it gets. This one was so special. Ladies and gentlemen, it's George Ravling. All right, Coach Ravling, thank you so much for welcoming me here to your office. I really appreciate you joining me here on the Learning Leader Show. Welcome.

Thank you. That's a privilege to be here. I'm curious, when the opportunity came up for me to get a chance to meet you, it was just too good to pass up. your wisdom that you share. I've read your work for a while. I've studied you and it's really cool to be here. I'm curious to get a started, coach.

When you think about over the course of your life, you spend a time around an amazing number of high-quality leaders. And from that perspective, I'm certain that a number of them sustained excellence over an extended period of time. I'm curious, what are some of the commonalities among those people? I think that all good. great leaders, they have a growth mindset. They're extremely curious. They're people who are in constant,

they're constantly trying to reach for their outer limits, to discover what are their outer limits. And most times when they think they just about have it, the goal line moves. And they have a, I don't know of a great leader in the history of mankind who didn't have a vision. And all great leaders have a vision, a mission, a goal, a purpose, strategy. And the thing I think that separates them at this point of strategy is execution. The great leaders execute on strategy. the better leaders are those who recognize that it's about we. It's not about me.

It's about how can I serve the needs of others? And I've always been one of those people who believe if you help enough people get where they are. You'll always get where you are. So if you have a servant leader mentality, I think that builds the basis for a lifelong career. because in reality you'll never be able to satisfy the needs of all those persons that you lead. Also, I think that there's a self-awareness amongst the great leaders in the sense that they understand that great leadership starts from within, that the most important leadership is self-leadership.

If I cannot lead myself, how in the world am I going to lead others? And so I spend a lot of time trying to make sure that I create all those necessary and transferable skills that allow me to successfully lead myself. And the great leaders understand that when I get up in the morning and I look in the mirror. If I don't like what I see in the mirror, I don't blame the mirror.

I blame myself. And so there's always this constant thirst to go and find the undiscovered and discover it. And I remember a conversation I had one time with Phil Knight. He said, George, the many you think you won, you've lost. So there are no goalpost in life. There are no finish line. and anything that we do.

And so that's what I think makes it so exciting about being a leader is that you get to make your own rules. You ignore a lot of the traditional types of thinking. The 21st century leaders now, I think they understand, I'm not going to get trapped into this in the box, the box. First of all, I don't understand this concept of out of the box thinking. My question is, why does there have to be a box? You mentioned Dr. Martin Luther King and obviously the people who follow your work and know you, they know this story, but for those who haven't yet, I would love for you

to walk us through your relationship with Dr. Martin Luther King and how, or at least spending time in his presence and really the story that came out of that. And one, how you were put in the position to be around him, maybe some of the luck involved, and some of the lessons learned perhaps about showing up early and why that could be valuable in life, but I'm curious for you to walk us through that story. Well, what happened is I was not long removed from graduating at Villanobo,

and we now were at a point, We being black folks where we were overtly demonstrating for equality and for job opportunities and a better space in life. And so a king and a variety of black leaders had come to the forefront and were leading this movement against inequality and an injustice. And so the concept was perceived by A. Philip Randolph and Biden Rustin to have a march on Washington. And a lot of people think it was King's idea, but it wasn't. So on the Friday, the Thursday night before the March on Washington, I was having dinner with a friend, my best friend at his home in Claymont, Delaware, which is a suburb. Burba of Wilmington and his dad was the most prominent black person in Wilmington.

He was a dentist. So the television was on the background. They were talking about this march on Washington. And so Dr. Wilson and Woodrow Wilson, who was my best friend Warren's dad, he asked if we were going and we said no. And he asked us why. And we said, well, we don't have any way to get there. It was just an adolescent excuse.

And so basically what he did is he took the, uh, he took the, excuses away. He said, okay, I'll provide you a car to get down there and the money to do it. You people should be there because this is going to be a historic moment. How he knew it was going to be historic, I don't know, but he was a hell of a lot smarter than the two kids were. And so we went down and we got down there and we found a place to stay. And so we decided after we got a motel room to drive down that evening and try to get a sense of what's the quickest way to get down there and what it looked like. And so when we got down to the monument grounds and we were walking around, we ran into

a gentleman and he came over and introduced himself and he just said, hey, are you guys coming to the march tomorrow? And we said, yes. And he asked us if we were interested in volunteering. and well, he's two guys six, four, and he probably suspected that we would be good candidates for this. So we said, yeah, we would volunteer. What do you want for what?

And he said, well, we're going to have to have double the security because we're expecting a much bigger crowd than we anticipated. And so we said, yeah, we'll volunteer. So he said, okay, we'll meet you down here tomorrow morning at 830 or, or nine o'clock, I forget exactly what it was now. And so, but we got up early and grabbed some donut and some milk, and we had it down there just so we get ahead of the crowd. And we got there early.

And he said, wow, you guys are 45 minutes early. And so he said, well, we've made a decision. We're going to have to double a security up on the dais. And so we're going to put you two guys up there. So we ended up in the most strategic position because now we're right up there on the podium where the speakers and dignitaries are. And so they had a plan as to how if something happened and a disturbance broke out that we were to form this wedge around them and helped them exit out of the back of the Lincoln Memorial.

So they have a variety of speakers starting around 9 in the morning, and King was the last speaker, and some people will say he was the keynote speaker, but that wasn't necessarily the case. They kept King to the end because they knew he would hold the crowd. And so at the very end, he came up to speak, and of course he delivered a message that became historic and became tidily, I Have a Dream. So before I go into some of the historic aspects of it, when King finished, we were told to start this engulfment around so that we could usher them out. And just as I started to move closer to the podium, I was actually off to King's left side.

as I closed in, he was just finishing up because we knew what the closing line was, and he was folding the speech. And for some ungodly reason, I just said to him, I said, Dr. King, can I have a copy of that speech? And actually, CBS and Comcast and T&T have done documentaries on this. And in the CBS one, you can actually see them folding this, having the folded speech extended out to me. And so I at the time didn't realize it was going to take on the historic significance that it did. You know, Malcolm X had this saying that history is best situated to reward all man's deeds. And so my interpretation is ultimately history puts things in their rightful perspective.

But it took 50 years for this to become what we see it today as one of the top five speeches of all time. So you lump that in with the Gettysburg address, Churchill's speech, Kennedy's inaugural address, the Gettysburg address, I'm sure I said. But let's go back. So first of all, if you see the original text, it was typed, it had no title. So how did the I Have a Dream title come? So as he gets toward the last paragraph, if I had the speech here right now, Ryan, you could follow it line by line. And then when he gets down toward the last paragraph, he deviates from the prepared text.

Everyone had to submit their speech in advance. It had to meet a five-minute requirement, and they wanted to examine each speech. because they didn't want one to be so exclamatory that they would incite the people and they would become unruly. So they made John Lewis change his five or six times. James Baldwin refused to change his so he didn't speak. So King submitted this. And so when you get toward the close of the speech,

with technology being today what it is, you could pick it up, I'm sure. you hear a female voice say, tell him about the dream, Martin, tell them about the dream. And that voice was Mehalia Jackson, who most people think was the greatest gospel singer, female gospel singer or gospel singer of all time. And she sang at most of Martin's engagements. And so she had heard him do this speech. The first time he did it, interesting enough, was that Arefa Franklin's dad's church in Detroit. And then he did it a second time in Selma.

So she had heard this aspect of the speech and encouraged him to do it. So he ad-libbed this part in. So let's fast forward. So now after this event that the dignitaries are invited to the White House after the speech, and they walk into the Oval Office, and as they walk in, President Kennedy says to Dr. King, Dr. King, I loved your eye, have a dream speech. So the media picked up on that and put the title on it.

But the truth of the matter is the speech never had a title. And so for well over 40 years, no one knew I had the speech. I never really did thought that much about it. My wife didn't even know I had it. And my senior year at Villanova, I played in East West All-Star game in Kansas City. And so one of the things that happened while we're out today took us out to meet Harry Truman, a former president. And so we went to his office that was a replica of the Oval Office, and he had his office out in Independence, Missouri. And so when he was done, he had recently just completed a two-volume set of his history and memoirs of being the president.

So on the way out, he gave each of us an autographed copy of the books. And so mine says to George H. traveling from Harry S. Truman and it has the date. So I put the speech inside of one of those books for a frame of reference. One, I would know where it was if I had to get to it. And two, I knew I would never misplace it or throw the books away. because how many people can say they have an autographed copy of a book written by the President of the United States that's autographed personally to them? So it stayed inside that book for one of the two books for 40 years. And if you see it today, you could see the crease marks from how long it's set in the book.

And so at that time, like I said, no one realized the history. historic significance of the speech. But here today, you know, the speech is probably worth millions of dollars. I'm hopeful that maybe we'll work out something to get it in the African American Museum. The life lessons I learn, you know, always be curious. Don't be afraid to volunteer. Ask for what you want. Be on time.

You know, there's those type of fundamental lessons I learned to, you know, don't let your ego get care, become an integral part of this. I've never actually perceived this as mine. It's probably really the public's. that. And so I've never tried to profit off it. I don't go around doing speeches on Martin Luther King Day. I don't take it with me in charge or anything like that because I just think that that would violate all the fundamental values that my grandma and my mama taught me. You know, it's not about money. It's not about me. It's just that I was fortunate to be in the right place at the at the right time and um making them most of opportunities i think you you briefly mentioned those those life lessons they're they're simple yet they can be profound showing up early being willing to say yes having the the the the natural intellectual

curiosity about you that you have which we're going to get to even more of that being willing to ask that little part because if you would not have asked him for the for the paper he would have no wouldn't have given it to you. And I think that's something that could be good lessons for anybody as they're looking to progress in their life, regardless of age or whatever you're trying to do. There is this great little not very, hasn't been watched a lot. The Steve Jobs quote about when he was 11 years old, he called up Hewlett at his house. I'm forgetting Hewlett's first name at the time. Hewlett Packard. Yeah, the Hewlett guy. And he called him, asked him for some spare parts. And the guy actually answered his own phone. And he said,

sure, come picking up. And he gave him a job when Steve was really young. And he said, that's what I've learned at an early age. The difference between people who make things happen versus the people who dream about things and not make them happen is that they have the willingness to ask. And it's just, it's interesting that you, it seems like it came intuitively to you. And I'm curious, where does that come from? Because there's a, I do want to learn and talk about your upbringing because I think there's a lot of significance there. There is in everybody's life. But does it come from the people who raised you, does it come from something else? Or was it naturally there?

Or how is that developed? I'm curious about all of those things when it comes. My suspicion is it's the environment, that the core of it would be the environment that I was raised in. My grandma always taught us to ask permission. And the older I've gotten, the more I've realized that a, a simple process for acquiring knowledge and needs and wants, and there is a huge difference between needs and wants, is to ask a simple question. Can you help me with this? I think it's a

human instinct. People want to help others. At the end of the day, I believe that's why we're on earth to serve the needs of others. So I have learned to ask, permission. Can you help me with this? Ask someone, what do you think about this? If you had to do this, how would you? I think we need to ask for help more and be humble enough to recognize that we do need the assistance of others. And if you, if we were to say, can you more help? I, I, I believe that it would immensely escalate our growth. Yeah, we completely agree. And I'd like to dive in a little bit more to your upbringing

because from my research, there's some challenges you face that I'm curious to learn about just your mindset towards, I don't know if you'd say overcoming some of these challenges or just the way that you dealt with them and then we're able to succeed at a young age, especially going to college and playing sports. So can you share a little bit more about what your upbringing was like? You know, I was born in June 27, 1937 in Washington, D.C.

I was born in Garfield Hospital, and the hospital was segregated. You had a floor for blacks and the rest was for whites. And so you can, in a real sense, you could say to my introduction to life, and the world was a segregated world. But sometimes what you don't know can be a tremendous advantage to you. I didn't come up in an environment where I was taught to hate, where I was taught to believe that we were less than others. I came up in an environment what you make the best of what it is that you have.

And you figure out every day where there's growth opportunities. And so when I was, my dad died when I was nine. My mom had a nervous breakdown when I was 12 or 13, and she was institutionalized the rest of her life, her life. And so now the fundamental question is, what do you do with George? And so my grandma worked for some people in Georgetown, in Section D.C., and the daughter was headed a Catholic charity. And so she was able to get me in a Catholic boarding school in Pennsylvania, upstate Pennsylvania,

northeast Pennsylvania town called Hoban Hikes, and I went there to St. Michael's. And so basically, from that point on, I was raised by nuns and priests. And it was a school that had a farm and a bakery. And so you learned, you had to earn your way. In the way you earned your way, you had chores to do. I've scrubbed chapel floors. I worked in the bakery. I milked cows.

I cleaned out chicken coops. I bail hay, you name it, over the years. And I did it. And when I look back now, all those things taught you a sense of humility, a sense of appreciation for life's simple responsibilities. So I didn't have much to think about. in terms of being disadvantaged, because the people, our environment has so much to controls a lot of the way we think and behave in our attitudes.

And so I was never in an environment where I had a lot of time to think about what I didn't have. I was in an environment where my focus was on what I did have and what I could have in the future if I responded correctly. So the nuns were all about providing me with growth opportunities, providing me with discipline, helping me have a good self-esteem for me, making me believe that I could be somebody in a time when it was so easy to believe that you could be nobody, that you could come up with a litany of excuses on them why I'll never be anybody in life.

and I can blame a whole bunch of people or systems for it, or you can go out and try to challenge yourself and rise above these things. And so I took up basketball in my freshman year, and between my 8th and 9th grade year, I grew 4 inches in the summer, and I started playing basketball. And little did I know when I picked up the basketball, it was going to be a vehicle of transformation that would influence the rest of the life forever. So I, at the school, we had, we had four sports, football, basketball, baseball,

and boxing. And so I, so I participated in every one of those sports. And I actually fought in golden gloves and boxing. And so I, my senior year, I played well and I got a lot of scholarship offers. And the first one, I'll never forget, we played up at St. Rose in Carbondale, Pennsylvania, Pennsylvania, and after the game, I came out of the locker room, and a gentleman comes up to me, and he says, he says, George, my name's Jack Rams. He had the head coach at St. Joe's in Philadelphia. Well, I never even heard of St. Joseph in Philadelphia. And so he said, I really like the way you play, and we're going to offer your scholarship, and he handed me his card. And I said, thank you, sir. because when I was growing up as a kid, it was totally different than it is today, obviously.

But in those days, we were taught that children should be seen and not heard. So you didn't carry on a conversation with grown-ups. You listen and you adjust it. And so I just thanked them. And so on the school bus back, my coach said to me, who's that guy you're talking to outside the locker room? And I told him, and I showed him the card. and he said, well, what did he say to you?

I said, he's going to give me a scholarship. He said, he did? I said, yeah. And I said, coach, what's a scholarship? I had no idea what a scholarship was. So subsequently, I ended up by the end of the year getting a lot of offers, and I ended up going to Villanova. And really, it wasn't, not that I ever once ever regret,

it was probably the best thing ever happened to me, But Mike, we went down and we visited. The coach offered me a scholarship, Al Severance, why I was there. And in those days, you didn't have SATs. You had to take an interest exam right while you were there. So I took the test. And Sunday morning before we left, we had a final meeting. And he said, well, we're going to offer your scholarship.

And we need an answer before you leave. So my coach said, well, coach, can you lead the room and let us talk about it? So my coach said, hey, I don't think you're going to get a better opportunity to this. And when I look back on it now, I should have been smart enough to also realize they were never going to let me go any place but a Catholic school because I was raised in the Catholic religion. And so I went. And it was the greatest thing that ever happened to me in my life. One, there was never a time, Ryan, when I grew up that my parents said to me, George, when you grew up, you're going to go to college.

Why would they say that? First of all, no one in our family at that point had ever gone to college. My mom, my dad, and grandma didn't even graduate from high school. So why would they think I was going to go to college? So all of a sudden now, I've hit the lottery. I'm going to get a college education and they're going to pay for it, which is something my grandma never comprehended, was this idea that someone's going to give a black child, a free education just to play basketball.

She, the, the, the logic of that baffle her. But it happened. I had a great, great four years at Villanova. I always say the litmus test is if you had to do it all over again, would you still go to that school? And if I had to make a choice right now, Harvard, Yale, Princeton, Stanford, I know are all unbelievable educational institutions, but the best fit for George Ravling was Villeneuve. I loved every second, every minute that I was there.

I was lucky to graduate with a BS in economics. And this was the first stop on the journey of transformation that basketball was going to have in my life was to get a college education. And which ultimately led to you eventually, making that leap from player to coach. I know you're a lot of people call you coach, but I feel like I've read that you, you actually think of yourself more as a teacher

or an educator than a coach. And I'm curious was when did you decide, you know what I think I want to coach when you're done playing basketball. I think that's the next step. Because all of us who play, I played college football and play a little bit after college. And that certainly was a thought that was in my mind.

It was thinking of the lifestyle and is that a route I wouldn't go maybe be a graduate assistant and then work it out. And I ultimately decided not to. And I'm curious, what was it in your decision making process that said, I think I am made or I should be educating, teaching, coaching others? It was never. I'm always intrigued when I hear some people say, when I was nine years old, I knew what I was going to be. When I was nine years old, I had no clue, man, what it was life was who I wasn't. But so it really was one of those situations of someone seeing something in me that I didn't see in myself. When I graduated, I took a job at Sunoco as a marketing analyst and started out in what I thought was a career path in business.

And the coach at Villanova then was a guy named Jack Kraft who was immensely successful, who was in the Basketball Hall of Fame. And he kept trying to talk me into becoming his assistant. and I really didn't want to coach. I didn't see myself as a coach, and he kept, it was persistent. And so finally I get into my third year at Sunoco, and I start to try to look ahead in life and see, is this something that I want to do for the rest of my life? And I had some questions about it.

And so I was having dinner one night with, and he brought this subject up again. And I said, okay, I'll tell you what I'll do. I'll volunteer to do it part-time and let's see where we go from there. So I started out as a volunteer, non-paid assistant, and principally my responsibilities early on were in recruiting. And so once I got involved in it, I started to like it more and more. And I started to separate myself away mentally from the, job at Sonoco and I realized that at some point you can't serve two masters and it's not fair I'm

going to have to make a decision and so then I went on to Villanova full time and then from Villanova I left and went to University of Maryland with Lefter Gisela as his top assistant and at that point I really realized that I had my mind was what was in the coach and my body was into coaching, and this is probably what I'm going to do for the sustainable future. And I, in 72, I got an offer to coach at Washington State, and I took that head coaching job, and I learned a lot from that because it was on the job training. I had never prepared myself to be a head coach because I never wanted to be a head coach. And so Ryan, I get the job, and all of a sudden I realize that I haven't done the necessary prerequisites to prepare myself to be a coach.

So now it's on the job training. We actually played a game where we were ahead by eight points with a couple minutes to go in the day of no three-point shot and shot clock. and Montana catches up to us and the game goes into overtime and they're pressing us and I don't even have the, it's the second game of the season, I don't even have a press offense and we're turning a ball over. So after the game, I met it to the players. I said, hey, this is on me.

I failed you guys. I let you down. I should have had a press offense in and I didn't. And so I put you guys in a libelous position. But I learned a lot about it. And I'm not too sure if I had to live it all over. I wouldn't still go the same route because it forced me to face certain realities about myself and the profession that I might not. If I had came in and had immediate success, I might have been tempted to think, oh, this is easy.

But I think we won four games in my first year at Washington State. We might have won six to second. And the Affleck Director calls me in for a meeting. And I remember telling my wife, I said, I think I'm going to get fired today. And I got this meeting. And she said, I don't worry about it. So I go in and he says to me, he says,

hey, myself and Dr. Turrell, who was the president, we've been talking about you. We like what you're doing. He says, we're going to give you a two-year extension and a raise. And I was shocked. And he, and, but his closing words to me, Orion was, he said, George, just think about what we're going to do when you start winning. And that was a hell of an incentive for me that, that, that for him to, and in essence, what

he was really saying to me is we believe in you. And, and man, I, I was bound and determined and motivated that I was never going to let him down that some kind of way, we were going to make a way out of no way. You were the first African-American head coach in the PAC-8, which is now the PAC-12. Yes. What did that and what does that mean to you now when you think about it? I don't put a lot of stock into it, Ryan, because I think a lot of it, you have to put in this historic perspective. I came up in the time of what I call first.

You know, we were going from this transition from just, clear overt racism and segregation and inequality. And we were now starting to take some of the shackles off and people were getting an opportunity. It didn't mean that we were where we wanted to be, but we were getting opportunities. And so I came along in a time of opportunities for black males and coaching. And at that time, there were about four of us. John Thompson was at Georgetown. Fred Snowden was at Arizona. Nolan Richardson, I think, was at Tulsa at the time. And so we were in the early origin of black coaches in that. I didn't ever really kind of looked at it as a badge of achievement, I was more concerned with how can I become a better coach and how can I better

serve the needs of these players. I didn't have the luxury to think about this from a racial perspective. It's probably reveals how naive I was and maybe some would say vastly insensitive from a racial perspective, but I have to confess that I've never felt anything special about being the first. Somebody had to be the first, and I just happened to be in a many different situations. But I think when I look back at my life, I was born at the right time. I was born when opportunities were starting to raise their head all over. over the landscape and and and I was able to be in the right place at the right time and have the right people as as advocates or storytellers for me and and I find though your outlook on it is

is I think um you downplay it but it's the inspiring part is there are a lot of aspects of your life that you could have easily made excuses and probably a lot of people with the similar circumstances would. A dad dying, a mom being institutionalized, right? What do we do with George? Not necessarily having it. It sounds like you started basketball a little bit later and fortunately it worked out for you. But then you almost a naivete about it to say, I'm just going to put my head down and focus on the work. And that seems to me. That's kind of the way I was raised. Yeah. And my grandma never accepted excuses. My mom never accepted excuses. We never talked about that we were the last hired in the first fire that we were we were segregated against.

Those were givens. And so it's not, so what are you going to do about it? You're going to sit around and make excuses? Or are you going to take advantage of what you have and see where they'll take you? So that was never an option in my life. And, you know, I look back and people ask me a lot about the reading in that. Well, my grandma told me a story one time she said, she said, George, did you know during the days of slavery that the plantation owners used to hide their money in books? They'd put them in books and put them up on the bookshelves.

So I said, Grandma, why did they do that? And she said, because they knew the slaves would never take the books off the shelf because they couldn't really. And so the lesson to learn from that is if a person can control your mind, they can control your body. And so over the years, I always said to myself that I'm never going to let that happen to me, that no one will ever be able to enslave my mind. They might be able to try to enslave my body, but they'll never enslave my mind. And then as I grew older and more aware, I realized that there was a time in the life of black people when the libraries were segregated. You couldn't get a library card.

You couldn't go to the library to get a book. And so now here we are in an opportunity where books are readily available to us. I mean, how we can get them on a handheld device now. So to me, I believe I have a sense of obligation to all those people who demonstrate. in front of libraries, people who gave their lives so that I could get a library card, that we could have access to a library. Otherwise, I believe it's a little bit of a disrespect to those people who put their lives on the line to get us in a library, to get us an opportunity to read books.

And so at this point in my life, books have become my most important. important mentor. Books are my best friends. Books are my pathway into the future. I've gotten to the point now where I look at books and I say to myself, I don't want the book to tell me what to think. I want the book to tell me how to think. And so they're my mistress. I mean, I don't go anywhere without a book and a pad. And I realized that I started behind. Someone told me one time, if a man starts behind the race,

he must forever remain behind and run faster than the people in front. And so I've started behind in this intellectual race, and I'm trying to run like hell to get up to the front of the race and learn as much as I can. And in this process, I've really begun to realize is you have to try to figure out what it is that you don't know,

but you need to know to remain relevant in this ever-changing society. So every day, I call it search and discover. Every day when I get up, I'm in a search and discover move. I'm out searching for new information. And at this point in life, I found it really challenging, right? from this standpoint. So we have a proliferation of information today. We have more information available to us

than any people in the history of mankind. So how do you use this to your advantage? So I've come up with this little formula for myself. Information equals knowledge. Knowledge equals wisdom. Wisdom equals opportunities, and opportunities equal growth and success. And then at that point, it now becomes an opportunity to share with others.

I've said there's millions of times. A professor at Villanova one time said nothing in life is of any value unless you can share it with other. So all this information, this knowledge, this wisdom that I have, I have to try to share it with other people and try to help them. And so what I see, we talked earlier about leadership. I think a huge challenge for a leader today is to connect these three life communities, to pass, the present, and the future. And the great leaders are bridges between the past and the present and the future. They have to take those people that follow them by the hand,

and transport them from the past into the presence. So their bodies not in the present and their mind's still back in the past. We've got to get their minds and bodies in the present. But what we want to do is we want part of that mind in the present to also be a futuristic mind. So my idea is if we take those as three life communities to pass, the present, and the future, then as a leader, we build bridges for each person.

Some people are still living in the past. Some people still have 20th century traditional type of thinking. But our job as a leader or as a sharer is to help transport people from the original community to pass to the present to the future. And so that's a little formula that I use as a mindset to take what I learn and to utilize it. I love it. I actually brought a few books to give you. And I was going to wait until after.

Do you mind if I give them to you now? Because I want to share one. And we're going to do an exchange then because I brought some. Oh, no. What if we got each other and same stuff? No, there's no way we did. So can I share real quick why? Again, I was going to do this after, but I thought it might work right now.

And I knew, too, there's a chance you... I can segue because now we can start talking about my mistress. Yes, your mistress. So the three books I chose all to... This first one is called What I Talk About when I talk about when I talk about running by Heruki Marcomi. Have you read this? No. Okay, good.

Second one is called Legacy by James Kerr. This guy, James Kerr, embedded himself with all blacks, the rugby team of New Zealand. Have you read this one? No, but someone gave me that one. Okay. Well, you're going to get it twice now. I put a little inscription in each one. And this one is close to home, the Wright brothers by David McCullough, because these guys were in their bicycle shop, the Wright brothers, Orwell and Wilbur, in Dayton, Ohio.

And that's where I live. And so it's important to me that the air, the flying machine was built in Dayton, Ohio. And I love McCullough's books. And McCullough's great. So here are the three. I wrote a little note in each one for you, but I want to make sure that I know you're such a reader that that would be, you get used to me. They've all had different meetings for me. I'd love to chat with you about them after you had a chance to. I don't want to give you a homework assignment, but I know you read

anyway, so I love to chat with you after you had a chance of time. Now, uh-oh. Everything I do, I do to access. Oh, geez. So I'm going to just hand them to you to read the titles. 21 less of 20 percentage. So you've all, Noah Horari. So this guy is, it's funny. I just sent him a cold email this week. What are the odds of this to say I want to get them on my show? So that would be great. 21 lessons for the 21st century. Okay. His mind is off the charts.

This dude is... Yeah. Have you talked to him? No. Oh. But I'm trying... I go on Twitter. I try to...

Anything in where I see his name, I'm reading. But do you have a habit for that, though? Because I think that's how you and Ryan Holiday got connected, correct? Yeah. Because Ryan, I want to publicly thank him and Jason Gainer. They're the reasons that you and I have met and are talking today here in person. But that's why I thought you're the type to say, oh, that guy seems interesting. I want to reach out to him and then you and Ryan became friends from it. Cool. Thank you. I'm pumped for this. This guy's a transformational leader. Nice. Okay. Genius Foods. Wow. I think my wife has talked to me about this book. All right? By Max. So I'm going to save the one to last, but

winners take all another great I mean. Oh, I've not seen this one. Some of the authors, I'm just so in the The elite charade of changing the world. Oh, that dude is, you want, you want somebody to make you think. He will make you think. And this is one. James, yeah, he's from Columbus, Ohio. James Clear. Yeah, yeah, he's great.

Tom McCabets. I wanted to give you a copy of the latest copy of my favorite magazine in the whole world, the Atlantic. Oh, wow. Thank you. That's the new, that's the latest issue of it. This is so cool. And the last one, we're going to talk about. I would have to go buy another suitcase.

No, that's all right. I love it. I can see it. No, this is great. So this book here just knocked me off my seat. I actually bought this, walked outside across the street to a coffee shop from Barnes & Noble, and I opened it up and started going, and I actually sat down at 3.45 in the afternoon and fingering through it. And when I finally realized and looked at the clock again, it was 6.40 in the evening.

I'd been sitting there reading this book. So, I want to show you, I want to show you. And your notes, note-taking process in your books is insane. So this is the same book that you're talking about. And you can look to the back and you'll see like all my notes and stuff. Oh, my goodness. Red, blue, black ink, numbered all of your notes on the other. open free pages. Wow, this is incredible. I love it. Why is this, how did you develop this process

for note-taking when it comes to books? That's amazing. First of all, you hear a lot of people say they don't like to read. I think a lot of it is because the traditional way we teach people to read is no longer relevant. I think people, each person has to create his own reading style. is I don't start books at the beginning. I rarely ever read, I couldn't tell you the last time I read a book from the beginning to the end. Wow. I find that most books at least, that's what defies my premise on this book is that most books, at least four chapters are worthless.

Wait, so where do you start typically then? What I do is I have a process when I go to the bookstore. I always go to the new releases. Look, I'll pick up the book. I'll read the credits on the cover. I'll read about the person. And then I go to the index and I look to see what the chapters. And I'll see if I see one that I think is really interesting, that's where I start.

And in this particular book, I started in Section 2 on Discovery. But as you can see, this is the first book that I think that I've ever seriously delved into the introduction. So, and this is, this was by Beth Comstock. But in this book, as you can see, I read every page of her introduction. You've written up the entire page. And I don't know when's the last time I got so engrossed in a book. And this is, I would say, of the last 50 books I've read, I've never started in the beginning.

Wow. And this is the first thing in her book is the introduction. And so I read the introduction. I couldn't stop reading it. And so this is a book that's really captured my attention. The two that have knocked me out is this one. And then Chip Connolly's book, Wisdom at Work, The Making of the Elders. So yeah that I had chip on before he was fantastic what a storyteller as well

But I think yeah people would read more if they would not apply traditional reading methods Create your own every to me I say every every chapter is a book in itself Yep every page here's what I do with every page I say what did I learn from this page and then That's why you see all this writing at the time top and the bottom is I take a couple of learning lessons off of each page of what I learned from that page. So if we look at each page as an opportunity to learn, then I think it becomes a lot more valuable and interesting to us. And so I create my own methods for reading a book, but it keeps me engrossed in the book. And I can always go back and pick out learning.

lessons in there. And sometimes I'll read it something and it'll make me, I'll write down the notes that just come to mind. Yeah. The coach just makes me think you wrote a book on rebounding earlier in your career. I think it was on the advice of Bobby Knight from what I read. And that was helpful. But you and you write a lot of articles on your website, a lot of really useful things I've read, I think all of them. And why haven't you written a book about how to live a great life or even any other book outside of just on rebounding, which is a very focused topic when it comes to just playing the sport of basketball?

Well, I think a little bit is that we, my rationale is don't apply the old traditional ways of thinking about books. Books basically educate, informed. and stimulate one's imagination. But for me, honestly, I've already written a book. I just didn't put it out in a formal style. My life is a book. And I don't know, I never really have been all that wrapped up

and writing a book, although I've had a couple friends of mine, including Ryan Halley, who have just about tipped me over to doing it. But I've never really thought a lot. I'm so busy trying to live a life that I don't even have the individual arrogance to think that, first of all, I've got to presuppose that. I'm not trying to be humble because I don't think I'm a humble person, but I just don't think my life is that exciting. and if I write a book, I got to take time, a lot of time to do that.

And then that's lost time to learn. But I have to hear that. I got to share. Yeah, I feel like there's, you live such an extraordinary life and you're constantly learning and growing that by the end of the book, you probably have different things to write than you'd have at the beginning. And I think there's a lot of people out there who could benefit from it, from the stories you share.

because you already are sharing them in forms and just different forms in article forms. You could kind of, I'm not surprised here, Ryan Holiday's pushing you to do that. But I think that's something a lot of us would love to see the George Ravelling, kind of like, this is how to live a good life. And I know it's presumptuous, I guess, you think. But you just said something, though, you said you don't think you're a humble person. And I will say, I've never heard a humble person say, I'm humble. So it is kind of a catch-22.

But I'm curious, you, just the way, just from the second I walked into your, office and the way you and your your guys are here, the way you treat people, you kind of exude humility to me and every, every answer you've had so far in the way that you just carry yourself and other things I've seen as well. Why would you, like, you don't think you of yourself as an arrogant person, I would assume. When you say you're not humble, what do you, what do you mean by that? I'm grandma's boy. I just, my grandma, my grandma. was an amazing woman. Ryan, one day she took my brother and I out on the street,

and she said, I'm going to teach you some social graces. And so she says, when you walk down the street, you always walk on the outside of the woman. And why? Because you serve as protection. When you get to the corner, you always stop. You help, if it's an elderly person, you help them across the street. If a woman's getting in the car, you open the door.

She's sitting down. You help her cheer. You always say, yes, sir, no, sir, yes, ma'am, no ma'am. And so all my life, I have been taught to practice certain behavioral traits. And they're so ingrained in me that I don't know any other way to live. I'm 81 years old, and I still say, yes, sir, no, sir, yes, ma'am, no ma'am. I still, I mean, it's caught up now in my life with the Me Too movement. But in the 50s, I was way ahead of the Me Too movements.

I was taught when my grandma was teaching Me Too in the 50s. So this isn't any big social revelation to me. What she did is some kind of way she figured out. one day, if you live long enough, you're going to be confronted with this Me Too movement. And when you do, you will be ahead of everybody. There's a couple more things I want to get to Nike, Wise, and MJ and some of that. Do you have a few moments? Absolutely.

I'm on your time. Oh, okay. Thank you. I, you know, growing up, I was a big Mike Woodjordan fan, and you were one of the reasons that Mike Woodjordan signed with Nike. your email address still is I don't know if I should say this but I mean you're at Nike I won't say the first part unless you want to get that out there but the fact of I'd love to learn about

your relationship with him and how and maybe there's more there's certainly more to when it comes to to working at Nike but how that all came about because again that was ahead of his time as well nowadays players they have massive contract option choices from all the shoe companies, but it wasn't necessarily like that when Jordan signed with Nike. So what was it like working with him as well as the role that you were in at that time? Well, once again, there's one thing that has blessed my life is being in the right place at the right time

and having the right person to put their hand on my shoulder and push me in the right direction. And so in 84, Bob Knight was the head basketball coach of the Olympic team. And I had meant Bob when he was an assistant at West Point. And I was an assistant at Villanova. And we grew and nurtured a lifelong friendship. And so Bob is now appointed the Olympic coach of the United States basketball team in 84. And the Olympics were in Los Angeles. And so we went through a trial process.

in Bloomington, Indiana to narrow the team down. At that time, only college players could, or amateur players could be on the Olympic team. And so there were no NBA players playing on the Olympic team at that time. And so we had this elaborate tryout system at the University of Indiana in Bloomington. And we started out with about 70-some candidates trying out. And what was interesting, Ryan, out of that group, we cut four Hall of Famers, the mailman, Joe Dumars, Barclay, John Stockton.

So Michael was on that team. And so through the course of the summer and leading on in to the composition of the, the, the, the, the, the, the, Olympic team. Then we went from Bloomington to San Diego to train the week before we came to L.A. I don't know how this happened, but Michael Jordan, Pat Ewing, myself, and another player on the team named Vern Fleming, who played at the University of Georgia, we were in separate. We were like the four amigos. We went everywhere. We ate at the same table. We did everything to get a shop in movies, whatever we did. we were inseparable.

And so that was the start of a lifelong sustainable relationship with Michael. And I've said this to many people over the years. As great a player as Michael was, he's a greater human being. I never had anybody in my life who trusts me more than Michael did, including my mom and dad and my grandma. To this day, we just have an unconstitutional. friendship and we've kind of grown together on and off the court. It became increasingly obvious that Michael, the deeper we got into the Olympics, it became increasingly obvious that he was

someone special on and off the court. And so Nike was pursuing him and they had asked me to try to suddenly influence him to at least come to an interview. So all summer long, I'd be talking up Nike and Michael would say, George. Man, I'm telling you, I mean, he said, George. He said, coach, he said, I'm telling you, I'm an Detus guy, man. It doesn't make any difference. What Nike does, I'm going to go with Adidas. And so I said, Mike, it makes common sense.

If someone says they got a better offer, at least listen, he said, well, I probably will. So anyway, after pool play in the Olympics, we had a day off. So Sonny Rickerrell, who was then heading up the basketball side of Nike, he asked me, see if he can get Michael to come over and have lunch with me. So I asked Michael, and I think just to get rid of me, he just said, all right, I'll go. And so we went over and he listened and we're riding back. And I said, what do you think? He said, it don't make any difference.

I'm still going to go with Adidas. And he said, whatever Nike offers, I'll just give it to Adidas and they'll match it. Well, it turned, to shorten the story, it turned out that Adidas made a strategic mistake and didn't match the offer. And so Michael ended up at Nike as an endorseee. But what I think is often gone overlooked in this situation is this, that Phil Knight had the unusual, wisdom, discipline, and courage to sign Michael. Because here's why I say it was unusual and took courage.

It was a first Fortune 500 company that ever took a black male and made him the face of their company. And to this day, now a brand Jordan sits off as a separate entity, as a separate business, a very lucrative business. And one time I made the mistake of saying to Michael about Nike taking a risk on him, and he was quick to remind me, I took a risk on Nike too. But it's something that I think historians are put in its rightful place, and that is that the risk that Phil Knight took and taking a black male

and making him the face of their company, particularly at that stage of Nike at that time was a long way from who they are today. What was the process of you getting a job at Nike and continuing to work for them? Well, in 19, I think it was 79, Sonny Vicaro talked Phil Knight in to take in a greater presence or investing more in basketball.

And so he, his, Sunny's vision was that Nike should start trying to have a greater presence in college basketball. And so they brought about 11 of us head basketball coaches to Las Vegas, Phil Knight and Howard Slossier. They cheered the meeting. And so essentially what they did is they offered us an opportunity to endorse their product.

And the deal was that you could either get $5,000 in cash or $5,000 in stock. And they would provide the product. So that was the start of my relationship with Nike. The interesting thing is most of the guys took the cash because the caveat was if he took the stock, he couldn't cash it for five years. But that ended up being a great advantage instead of a disadvantage

because if you were tempted to sell the stock, you couldn't anyway. And at that time, the stock was only $6 a share. So in those days, this was, this was, part of my growth transformation from a global standpoint, Nike sent myself, Bill Foster, and Eddie Sutton to China for a month to do clinics. And this was, at that time, tell you how long ago this was, Beijing didn't exist. Beijing was Peking, and the country was a communist country, all the women dressed alike in slacks. In those days, it was

forbidden for women in China to show their legs. So everything was very communistic in structure in that. And so we did these clinics. But an interesting thing happened, Ryan, and we're in Tenement Square, and at that time, Polaroid cameras were popular. And so Bill Foster's wife had a polaroid camera. And so we're in Tenement Square taking pictures. And so, So she takes a picture of some Chinese gentleman talking, and then she develops and she shows it to him. And they cannot comprehend how this could happen that you could get an instant picture like that.

So anyway, as a crowd starts to gather around us, a Chinese man steps out of the crowd, and he comes up to me, and he rubs me on the arm and looks at his finger, rubs me on the arm and looks at his finger, and it dawned on me. this dude has never seen a black person before and I think he thought that I was painted black and so he was rubbing my skin to try to see if this was what I'd never seen anybody black before

and he couldn't understand so he did the obvious he said oh I got it he that's pain on him and so he was rubbing my skin to see if it was paint and and so that is one of the the the real cultural I don't know how I'd capture it but it was certainly one of the oddities of culture growth for me and then I finally realized

that you know black people had just not been into China before they didn't know anything about us yeah a few other topics I think are interesting that I know you've learned so over the course of 81

years I would imagine there's relationship lessons that you've learned and and I'd be I'd love for you to share what when it comes to building quality relationships because that's that's one of things I think about when I when I think about you and as I did more research is that is George and Co-travelling has been able to build these amazing relationships with a lot of people and it's like even compounding more now. What are some of just the overall general lessons you've learned from relationship building over the past eight decades? I think that trust has to be earned and once you earn it never violated. The things that I feel are that are integral parts of relationships such trust, respect, appreciation, recognition.

and love. Everybody in life wants to be loved. Everybody in life wants to be appreciated. Everybody in life wants to feel important. And I often say that when you approach a person, there's an invisible sign on their chest that says, make me feel important. And so I believe relationships are always about we and never about me. Authentic relationships are partnerships. We have a shared vision, shared goals, shared strategy. And to me, I feel you have to invest 10 times as much into a relationship as the other person. And one of the most important things I've learned about relationship,

is you don't keep score. It's not about how much I've done for you or you've done for me. It's about helping each other become better human beings. And so to me, I spend as much time as possible trying to be a giver and never a taker in a relationship. And that's why I believe it's, It's totally senseless to get into this of keeping score. It makes me feel so uncomfortable when I hear someone say,

I can't believe after all I've done from them that they didn't do this. Then right away, the first thing I know is they're keeping score. And to me, my relationships are built on trust and respect. and I work at trying to keep my relationships ongoing, and I work at trying to earn people's trust and respect. When I was growing up as a kid, no one ever taught me the importance of relationships. But today, I realized more than ever before

without relationships, it would be so much harder for me to grow and learn. We brought us name up two or three times in the conversation, but I'm 81 years old, and so this young white dude walks into my life named Ryan Holiday. I met him through Shaka Smart, the coach at Texas, at the University of Texas in Austin basketball. ball. And Shaka called me one day and he says, he said, coach, if you read a book called Obstacles, and I said, no, he says, don't buy it, don't buy it. He said, I'm just about finished. I'm going to send you a copy. And I said, who wrote it? And he says, Ryan Holiday. And I never heard of Ryan at the time. And so he said, you're going to really like this book. And so I was going down to

Austin in about three weeks. So I called Shaka the day before and told him what time I was getting in. And so he says, hey, you're going to be. And so he says, hey, you. You know that guy, Ryan Holiday, he says, I know him. He said, would you want to go to dinner with him? And I said, yes. And so that was the first time I met Ryan. And I don't know anybody, honestly, in the last 10 years, who's had more of an impact on my life than Ryan is.

The people he introduces me to the things that he's taught me. And he has been part of a change in my mentality that I realized that. when you're 81 years old, you need four or five young mentors, young people in your life that can help you understand and navigate through the 21st century. And so I'd advise any person, what we call, Chip Conley would call modern elders, you've got to have four or five mentors who are young and that can teach you and that you trust and that you have. the willingness to be vulnerable to the way they think. And so I have four or five of those people that could actually be my sons, but they're all my teachers, they're all my mentors.

I listen to them. I ask questions. I say to them, well, how would you handle this? Because I need a young person's perspective. And I would say to all of those modern elders out there, if you really want to accelerate your growth, get four young dudes and let them be your mentors. I love it. Coach, a lot of people listening now, and this may relate to Nike, it may not.

It also could relate to that transition from being a player to being a coach. But they may be working within a company and they're looking to get promoted. They want to be promoted to a management-type role. And I went through this at one point where you want to make, that leap from being just an individual who's taking care of only themselves at the company

to then being a boss or a manager, right, where people report to you. And I'm curious, if somebody was in that position, and they are who are listening, what advice would you give to them? Because you did this in a sense from going player to coach. And like I said, it may have happened at Nike too. I'm not sure. I would imagine at some points. The fact that, one, you certainly don't need a title to be a leader. And that's a topic that I think is very important to cover. But then two, as you look to make that leap to where you actually then do earn some sort of promotion to where people report to you and you're the leader of the team officially, what advice you'd give to those people? Well, the first thing is, as I would say,

don't tell me how good you are or how great you are. Show me. I think the first thing that you should do is to become a superstar and the job that you're in. To be. So, you're in. To be, so good that you cannot be denied. And in doing that, in this thirst to move ahead quickly, it's very important that you master the 21st century skills that are transferable. There's certain skills that will always be fundamental to human existence. And some of those are leadership, communications, decision making, problem solving, critical thinking. So there's probably 10 or 12 skills that you need to master so that they're transferable to any job or any situation.

So while you are looking for what snakes, be a superstar in the now. And also, I think one of the things that I've learned is that we need to spend more time in preparing ourselves for what snakes. And I believe if you're as skilled and as talented as you think you are, what someone said, even if you build your house in the woods, the world will be the beaten path to your doorstep. So I don't know, talent, and especially uncommon talent, rarely if ever goes unrecognized. And so, and just, just make yourself uncommon.

Make, make, make, do such a good job that you can't be denied. And a lot of people will look at all, organizational structures, and they'll say, well, I don't see a path forward. The path forward is a job that didn't exist, but your skills demanded that it did exist. And don't get caught up in titles, get caught up in responsibilities and growth opportunities. I really would say to young people focus more on where the growth opportunities are. And don't get so fix. And don't get so fix stated on the title. I learned this at Nike before. If someone comes into you and they say, Coach, I think I, I mean, George, I think I should have this title. Give it to them real quick

before they say anything about money. Because what the hell does the title mean? It's meaningless in this day and age. It's all about growth opportunities and transferable skills. If I could say focus on two things, be in constant search of growth opportunities and maximize transferable skills. Steve Martin was asked out a Q&A after you may have seen this or read about this, but he was asked, you know, how do I get the right agent and how do I make sure I have the right publicist? And this person was asking all of these questions and he said, these questions are useless. What what what you should be focusing on is being so good they can't ignore you. Absolutely. I was a saying I agree 1,000 percent. I love the love the advice and I think this is a

perfect place for us to wrap because I could talk to you all day coach. I'm so appreciative of your time. Is there anything that you really wanted to cover that I may have missed or any any topic or piece that I didn't cover. No, I, I, I am the happiest 81 year old person on the face of the earth. You maybe can take out that 81 year old part. I get that sense just from being surrounded by you. It's, this is, this is a treat, man. It really is.

I really appreciate it. Thank you for coming out and visiting with me. And, and, and I want to thank you for this because it, thanking for encouraging me about doing the book because I've really been grappling with this. Please do it. And I have to admit I'm really leaning toward doing it. Well, maybe you write like a page a day or two pages a day or Ryan's better at that to me.

Ryan Holly can coach you on that better than me. But just I think the world would be better off from it. And obviously you have a giving nature. That would be another, another form of you being a giver. But I am curious, you got connected to me because of Ryan and because of Jason Gainard. when you saw that you were connected with somebody whose show was titled The Learning Leader Show, for obvious reasons you can imagine that in my mind, the greatest leaders I've ever been around are focused on constant learning, on being a continual learner, on following their genuine curiosity,

and that's what's led to success. And I've unfortunately had leaders in my life who were the opposite and they struggled, right? I've never met a great leader who doesn't read a lot. Never. You probably haven't either and I'm curious but when you got connected with me what was what was your thought process when you saw learning leader I well the first thing I thought was this is something that that I would I should definitely be interested in because it's a person who's focusing on what I believe is so lacking in our in our social system today not just domestically but globally If there's one noticeable absence in the world today, it's the lack of courageous leadership. I ask friends of mine from time to time at dinner, tell me who you believe are the five greatest

leaders in the world today, and they cannot be the CEO of a corporation. Probably a couple of them, I get Merkel's name a lot, I get the Pope's name, a lot, I get the Dalai Lama's name from here or there. but people struggle to come up globally with five people they would capture as being great, courageous leaders. And if there is ever a time in the history of mankind when we need courageous leadership, it's right now. And when you were starting to ask that question and made me realize that I didn't do a perfect job of selecting the books for,

you because if I and I'm going to send it this one to you but Doris Kearns has a great book out now on leadership yeah she's a historian for the presidents correct yes yeah and so uh the book is phenomenal i'm probably three or four chapters into it uh but doris kerns she she has a great book and it's very prominently displayed in all the bookstores so the people who listen and and want to learn and grow from a leadership perspective I would encourage you to buy her books too. And I am so disappointed in myself that I didn't include this in this initial group. But I'm going to send it to you.

All right. It's all good. Well, Coach, again, I'm just so appreciative of you. Welcome me into your office here in L.A. I appreciate it. And where would you send my listeners to learn more about you online? Oh, God. I need one of my young dudes to do this.

I have a Twitter. It'll be linked to the show notes. It's George Ravelling. George Rattling on, I think, in all socials. Now you know why I need those four young dudes. They're great, they're great. But no, I really appreciate you being here, coach. And obviously, I want to continue this dialogue as we both progress.

I'm going to keep harping on you, get that book out. I'm sure I won't be the only one, but we'll all be better. You got one of the credits for me. I'd be happy to, but I think, I think, too, for me, the process of learning where it really gets reinforced is when you're forced to teach. As you know this, I think you talked about giving the commencement speech at maybe it's Villanova. Yeah.

And the process of you getting ready to give that speech and writing it, you probably learned a lot. Because it forces you to document your belief system. And not that those things, it changes as you learn and you grow and you develop. But I found that whether any type of I have to give a keynote speech or a guest lecture at a college or speak wherever, I have to spend a great deal of time documenting my belief system. And I learned so much. So that's, I think the book could do the same thing even more. As a guy, I know you value learning and following your curiosity, that it wouldn't be just. of a selfish thing of you taking time to write,

it would be time for you to learn. And we'd all be better off of them too. I appreciate you doing that. Sometimes you need someone exterior of you to make you realize how foolish you are. No, it's so great. Well, thanks again, Coach. I really appreciate it. Thank you.

All right. It's not every day you get to sit face-to-face with a national treasure. I sat down with Coach Riveling for more than two hours. talked a lot before and after the recording and I will treasure this one forever. I hope you enjoyed it as much as I did. If so, I would love if you would write a review, subscribe and rate the show in iTunes, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen. That's write a review, subscribe and rate the show five stars in iTunes, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen. I really appreciate your support and continuing to give me the opportunity to do what I love, like sit,

face to face with the legendary coach unraveling. Thank you so much. I will see you next week. Thank you so much. I can't believe I forgot that dog's corn. Oh, no, it's all good. It's all good. I saw her speaking.

She's really good. She's really impressive. I don't know, and knowing you, you probably do this, but one of my greatest sources of information is seats been on the weekend. Really? Yeah, on Saturdays and Sunday, Span has this thing called book notes. And they have the authors on there.

They talk about their books and that. I probably buy five to ten books a month from that. Yeah. You buy, do you always go to the bookstore? Is that your thing? No, well, sometimes I can't get them so I have Amazon deliver them

because I can get them the next day. Yeah. Yeah. I would love to get a picture with you one sitting there. Oh, no. Absolutely. Like in the recording setup, just to document the kind of day for me.

So this is one I just picked up the other day and I sometimes I get going on them and I just start as the NACS is now, five steps for embracing change. So what's your process for picking up a book? Do you just go and look at the shelves or referrals? No, I start in, I go in and I look at the new releases right away.

And then I go to the business section. I go to the sports section. I go to the self-help section. And the last thing I always, the last section, I don't know why I save it for the last, is I go to science. And I look at that. Because what I started to realize, Ryan,

was for a long time I was reading a lot of business books and self-help books, but everybody's talking about the future. And so I started to realize, you know, I'm not reading about the future. I don't know. what the future is going to be like. So then I start to realize that, okay, I'm going to, 50% of my reading for the next 12 months

are going to be about things that are going to help me understand and anticipate what the future is going to look like. Yeah. And so that led me to realize that I need to diversify my reading now. And so I'm all over the place in reading now. As before, I was just, I was, like, I spent one year just reading nothing but leading. shipbooks. Wow.

But now I realize that I've got to be more diversively. The Japanese guy, he's the novel. I don't know if you've heard of him, but you don't have to be like a hard. I think I saw him on C-SPAN. Yeah, you don't have to be a hardcore runner to appreciate it. But I think, one, it also might help you as a writer because he is, he talks about how writing and running and the similarities and some of the pain and what it takes to get it done and he's such a beautiful writer that it's it's really well done that I thought I added

that one up the end he's interesting and then yeah obviously I love the journal right yeah it's basically his running journal