The Learning Leader Show With Ryan Hawk - 602: The Learning Leader Team of Coaches - Sherri Coale, Brook Cupps, Geron Stokes, Eli Leiker - Helping Teams Be Elite and People To Be Excellent

Episode Date: September 29, 2024

Read more about our team at: https://learningleader.com/team/ Text Hawk to 66866 to become part of Mindful Monday Full show notes at www.LearningLeader.com "Have I ever mentioned how much I f'n love these Phase 2 calls?!? Free cocaine. Straight outta the Dope Factory." – Geron Stokes "Another thing that I found is an intense interest of the subject is indispensable if you are really going to excel. I could force myself to be fairly good in a lot of things, but I couldn't be really good in anything where I didn't have an intense interest." – Charlie Munger Our Team Values & Behaviors: Curious: practice invested listening  Honest: give direct feedback  Intentional: provide purposeful action What is our edge as a TEAM? Our purpose, our values, and our behaviors. We are ACTIVELY doing it. Raw and Simple: We cut through the noise and address the fundamental issues leaders face. Our straightforward approach helps teams confront what they're not doing and empowers them to take actionable steps toward improvement. In The Arena: We don't just talk about leadership principles—we live them. Every member of our team actively practices the strategies we coach, ensuring real-world insights and practical solutions. Take Risks: We're unafraid to push boundaries and challenge conventional thinking. We help leaders take bold actions, even if it means stepping out of their comfort zones or facing tough consequences. Love being on a team that "makes the water rise." We all are better for being together on the same team. Gratitude – You can't roll up your sleeves and clench your fists at the same time. Living with gratitude is about recognizing and appreciating what you have. This will change the lens in which you view the world. Geron (overheard from Coach Mike Gundy): "I can't believe they pay us to do this." It is so much fun working with this team and the reward is that we get to keep doing it. So grateful. The makeup of a great team… They are tough, they have fun together, they care about each other, and they have that gritty humility about them. "Humble enough to listen, gritty enough to apply." Our prep calls – The calls before the calls. We learn so much from our preparation together. It's an open forum to share ideas, disagree, talk through stories, and figure out how to make people better. Some of my favorite times. How to work with the employee who just won't fully buy-in. Be curious, not judgemental. Ask questions. LISTEN. Care. As Sherri said, "Nobody wants to sleepwalk through life." We need to figure out what makes them come alive and help them bring that to the team.

Before we get to the official start of this episode, I wanted to share a brief update about my learning leader business. We are in fact growing. There is a huge demand for leadership development services in the ethos of becoming a learning leader. And so much so that I can not do it on my own. I don't want to do it on my own. I want to be surrounded by people who are quite frankly better than me at coaching and teaching. And so I am so lucky in the fact that I've gotten to hire the great Hall of Famer Sherry Cole, Brooke Cubs, Garen Stokes, and Eli Liker as the coaches and teachers on my learning leader team to go out into the world and help leadership teams become elite and help

leaders become excellent. And that's what this conversation is all about is how we've been going all over the world helping leadership teams get better. And I just feel a huge sense of gratitude that I get to be surrounded on a daily basis by these amazing leaders, people who have helped others become more effective, that maximize people. And if you have any interest in learning more about what we do, in addition to listening to this conversation, you can go to learning leader.com slash team.

That's learning leader.com slash team. Okay, here we go. Awareness is such a key part of the leadership process. If you skip that, then everything else has nothing to root into. Is there anything better than chasing improvement for other people and helping them do something? There's nothing better. We're in that environment every day where our objective is to help people learn and grow. How does that relate to maximizing people?

We help your coaches do something. help your family do something. Like there's no better feeling. It changed our programs. It changed us as coaches. Part of our edge is being an active in the arena coach. The people in the trenches know the most about the problems. They're facing the riddles that can't be solved. You have to have humility to get better. It's portrayed so much as weakness and softness. And I think it's the complete opposite of that. Welcome to the Learning Leaders show presented by Insight Global. I am your host, Ryan Hawk. Thank you so much for being here. Text Hawk to 666866 to become part of Mindful Monday. You, along with tens of thousands of other learning leaders from all over the world,

will receive a carefully curated email for me each Monday morning to help you start your week off right. You'll also receive details about how our book, The Score That Matters, will help you become a more effective leader. Text Hawk to 66866. Now on to tonight's featured leaders. This one was So good. First, it's Sherry Cole. Her purpose is to nudge others to think and feel. She is in the Basketball Hall of Fame for 25 years. She coached at University of Oklahoma, took them to multiple final fours. Also a bestselling author of Routed to Rise, the Redwood Legacies of Life Anchoring People. Next, Brooke Cups, his purpose is excellence over success. He's been the basketball coach at Citadel High School for many years. He's taken them to back to back.

to back to back to back final fours winning a state title as part of that as well next is Garron Stokes his purpose is to maximize people high school football coach has won multiple Ohio high school state championships our clients have loved his unvarnished raw style of see it say it love Garin and Eli Liker the behind the scenes guy who makes all of this go editing this pie podcast, putting together our decks, doing everything. His purpose is to invest in others to maximize their purpose. Makes a lot of sense.

During this conversation, we discussed why we've decided to work together, how we help people, what we love most about this work. We talk about how to build a great team. We share our purpose, our values, and the critical behaviors to make those values true, as well as how others can find theirs. We talk about how to work with that problem employee who just can't seem to be. to buy in and how we've helped them. And we close with gratitude and love for the opportunities we have to work with amazing

people and try to help them be better. Ladies and gentlemen, please enjoy my conversation with our learning leader team. I love saying that. And that's the Hall of Famer, Sherry Cole, Brooke Cups, Eli Liker, and Garren Stokes. Here we go. Okay, we're getting started. I thought the most appropriate place to. start had to come from our group text because that's where a lot of action is going on.

And here is a recent one. And Garan, I'd love for you to respond. Quote, have I ever mentioned how much I effing love these phase two calls, free cocaine straight out of the dope factory? Garrett, I love how much you love working with our clients, working with leaders, doing the stuff that we do that excites me and I know it does our whole group. Can you just talk more about how much you love, love it so much that you call it free cocaine by working with the leaders that we're so fortunate to work with? Okay. Can we start with? I've never done a drug in my life. So that's just semantics. I know. Okay. So we're all clear on that. I don't know what it's like to do drugs, but it has to feel something like what I feel when we're on these calls,

mixing it up, getting better, talking about this stuff, I always click off of those things and am jacked up out of my mind. I hope everybody else feels that way. It's hard to explain because there's like such a natural high of like, I don't know, helping people and getting better at the same time that I believe that wholeheartedly. Those aren't just words. Like I feel really good about getting off those calls ready to go run through a wall. And I don't know if it's just me or about it else.

So I love it. It feels to me like, some people say like, oh, if you do what you love, you'll never work a day in your life. And I don't agree with that. I do think it still work, but it doesn't feel like a job. I'd love to hear from you guys, too. What do you think about the feeling you get after we get done with one of those calls, working with the leaders that we work with, seeing them go, ah, or seeing some of the growth, the aha moments, like the light bulbs.

I feel like that feels amazing to me as well. I just love the way that Garin honestly just sees it and says it. But Sherry, Brooke, Eli, I just love to hear from you guys too, how you feel after being in the moment working with our clients. You know, it's not unlike being a coach and being on the court with a kid who finally figures out that's how I make that back door pass. Or being in a classroom, you know, I was public school team. teacher a long time ago. And being in that environment where a kid finally figures it out, or they write that beautiful sentence and they understand in a way that they didn't before, there is a natural high that just rushes back to you because you're in the presence of that

newfound knowledge and that clarity. And I think that's anybody who's in a giving profession. I think of nurses and doctors and people who serve and how that has to feed you. when they're able to make a difference on somebody else's life. I just don't say it as colorfully as G did. Yeah, I'm with you, Coach. For me, it's more like you're doing something that's hard. Like, it's hard to convey some of the things

that we're talking about and getting people to really process it and act on it. Just like teaching, just like coaching. And so that struggle is what kind of brings me joy and makes me enjoy it so much. It's just it's hard. And so that makes it fun. Yeah, it's been good.

Hearing BC talk about that made me think about when Coach Cole spoke at the Learning Leadership Summit in 2023. And I asked her, what are you going to miss most about coaching? And she said, standing shoulder to shoulder, doing hard things with people that she loves. And, you know, I've known BC and G for a long time and Ryan for a while now and Coach Cole for the last couple years. And so it's been really great. The work doesn't feel hard. It doesn't seem hard. It is hard when you look back.

but it's fun because it's hard and we're doing it together. Isn't it the selfishly, like, most unselfish thing feeling in the world? Like, like, the reason we love to do is because we get so high doing it. It's such an awesome feeling because we're helping people. So it's like it's like this selfishly unselfish, cool deal that you get to do. How does that relate to maximizing people, Gary? Because I feel like that's like that's your life's purpose. You've been on before talking about that.

And I think part of the reason that you attract so many people to you is because you're as authentic as any human that I've ever met. And you also know your purpose as well as anybody I've ever met. And that's purely just to maximize people. And something about like the simplicity of that. It's just two words. That's the whole mission. That's all we're there to do. And it feels like probably the feeling of living out your purpose I have to imagine is what feels like such a high.

is there anything better than chasing improvement for other people and helping them do something? There's nothing better. When you help your kids do something and they do it, you're like, oh man, when you help your team do something, they do it, we help your coaches do something, help your family do something. Like there's no better feeling. It's literally the most selfish thing in the world. You keep doing that because you feel great about it. So, yeah, very, very.

very great feeling. I don't know if everybody feels that way, though. You know, is this, is this a coach thing? I'm curious, is it a teacher thing? Because you're all teachers, you're all coaches, right? Is that part of it? Is it, does it come from your upbringing? I'm, curious, where do you think this comes from? I think anybody who's ever done it and felt it, then when you feel that joy of being able to help someone that, I think you want to replicate that. So I don't, maybe it's more prominent in teaching and coaching because we're in that environment every day where our objective is to help people learn and grow. That's clear.

Our objective is not necessarily to make money. It's to go out and help people learn and grow. But I think anybody, regardless of the sphere, if you are a part of helping someone improve, you feel that and then your body and your mind and your spirit want it again. Yep. I think about Garrett, when. when you were talking about maximizing people, he's so clear, which makes him so nimble. When you are super clear, then you, you know, like a running back, you just, you have your feet

under you and you know the holes to hit. And he just hits them over and over because there is no dissonance. And you can look that one up. Gee, you'll have to in a minute, I'm sure. But there's just no confusion there. He knows exactly where he's going and why he's going there. And he hits the whole running. And because of that impacts a ton of people. in a short amount of time. When you think and you ask people like what their best memories are, how they want to be remembered, what they want their legacy to be, it always involves other people and creating something together with them,

helping them achieve something. It always points to some type of service. And so, you know, the opportunity to do that on a regular basis is what makes, I think, teaching and coaching the greatest profession in the world. like it is it is that that natural high that you get to experience just over and over and over on a regular basis so when i think about literally do it for free you would literally do it for free if you could support your family and you would literally do it for free you paid i'd pay to do it well in a way you you guys essentially coach for free i mean high school coaches you're do you you get you don't get

paid very much to be a high school coach especially if you if you talk about the amount of time you spend preparing and being at all the practices and doing everything you do as a coach. No coach, especially in the high school level, does it for the money. You do it because you absolutely love the profession. And when I think about the leaders, even outside of the sports world, that I admire the most, the ones that I love working for or working with, they have that element of being great teachers and coaches. So this goes far outside of the sports world, whether it's a boss or a colleague or a CEO of a business. They're the ones who I think are really good view themselves as teachers and coaches,

in addition to some of the other elements of what it takes to lead a business. But I think that's why part of our edge, I think part of why people hire us, part of why I think it's not only do people want to bring us on, but then once we come on board, they want us to do more. and more and influence more of their people, it's because of that authenticity, because of that, this willingness to dig in with people and get to know them and understand them and listen to them and then do our best to help them because we feel like it's our drug. And I think that might not be the case everywhere, but it feels like it is for us. And so I wanted to start to start fast with the story, but I want to now zoom back out for a second and just talk about like how we came

together and why we're doing what we're doing and kind of how it's happening. So a few years ago, this amazing leader who now we've all become friends with named Rob Kimball was in one of my leadership circles. And he's only in it for like three or four months. And it was going well. I like to think that those go pretty well. And he just sent me a text, hey, can we do this for my whole team? Just that simple, that one text out of the blue. And I was like, I'm sure we could figure out how to do that, Rob. And the more and more we talked, you know, we got to hang out together in person a few times. And I said, hey, Rob, I think to be able to do this, though, and he, he had brought this as an idea as well, I'm going to need a team. I'm going to need more people. I'm not

going to be able to do this on my own because at the time I was basically doing it by my own. Brooke and I have done some things one off here and there, but we hadn't established a team. And at that point, my thinking was, who can I surround myself with that are, and this is not like a fake humility thing, but it's just a real thing. Who can I surround myself with that will be far, far, far better at this stuff than I am? I remember this quote, Dave Matthews said years ago that when he was forming his band, one of my favorite bands or my favorite band, that he wanted to have every person at every single instrument. be far better than he is at singing and playing the guitar. So Carter Beaufort's the best drummer in the world. I'm going to try to convince him to be my drummer, right? LaRoy Moore is one of the best saxophone players in the world. I'm going to try to convince him to be my saxophone player. Stefan Lassard's is a 16-year-old crazy prodigy at playing the bass guitar.

I'm going to try to convince, right, all down the line. So I want to be the worst member in the band because it will lift me up. And I think that's why I kind of wanted to be with each of you, because I think you each bring those unique qualities to what we do. And it's made me a lot better. That's the text, Garen sends all the time. You make me better. You make me better. And I think that's what's really cool. So I'd love to go now to you guys to say, like, well, why would you want to do this?

Because you all have things. Sherry, you're in the Hall of Fame. You could do literally whatever you want and work with whoever you want. And so the fact that you work with us, I still think all of us are a little bit. it confused but happy at the same time. So I love to start with you. What makes you want to do this and want to work with us idiots every day and have to talk to us all the time to prepare for these meetings? You know, Eli hit it on the head when he said what I had responded to his question at the summit about standing shoulder to shoulder with people doing hard things. I was very ready

to chase some other passions other than basketball. And one of them, being writing and speaking. And so as I ventured off into that, those are very singular activities. There are things that, yes, there's an audience out there, but you're actually doing those by yourself. And I missed being on a team. But I didn't want to be on just any team. I wanted to be on a team with people that I liked and that I enjoyed and that would push me. And we all sort of serendipitously became friends at your summit and stayed in touch after that and text back and forth and the friendships grew. And the thing that I love most, Ryan, and I was thinking about that this morning, there are people that you can surround yourself with who just make the water rise.

You know, you just elevate with it because they're living in such alignment. And I think that's probably at the core of all this, that when you, when you are living in alignment with your values, with what you believe, with what your purpose is, then you're happier, you're at peace. You have great energy and you're able to impact other people. And what I see in our groups, and I've said this many times to you, our planning calls where we're getting ready for working with a client are the best ever. Because we argue and we disagree. We wrestle with things. We never let one another off the hook. And that's probably my favorite part. If it's not exactly right, somebody's going to go, we can do better than that. And being around that, it's contagious. So not only does it feel that

environment when we're together, when I get off the call, when we break the text chain, when I go out and do whatever, I want to do it better. And I want to get it exactly right as a result of the energy and the influence of the group. It just stays with you. And so I think it's awesome if we're influenced in our clients, but I'm going to be just completely honest. I'm the winner here. I get to be in this every day. That's exactly the honest truth. That's how I feel about it. I get to win. The work is the win. The reward is that we get to keep doing it. That's everything. That's everything. The reward for this is that we get to keep doing it. And I think that's also how you get really good at something, is if everybody that's on the team

feels like the win is that we just get to keep doing the thing we're doing with the people we're doing it with. How about you, B.C? I mean, coach said it better than I can say it. That's exactly it. I just think of iron, sharpens iron and it's the opportunity to be challenged. You just get in so many different roles. You know, education, I taught for 25 years and to jump out of education and then have more of a control of intentionally who I'm putting myself around every single day and to have that opportunity to grow with each interaction. I just, it's, I mean, it's just, it's cool. I don't know how else to say it. It's, it's an opportunity that you just don't get very often. It's hard to find those people that

are truth tellers and view things a lot like you. I think the alignment is a big deal. I'm a big believer that, you know, leadership, I'm drawn to authentic people. I sniff out fakes really quick and I don't want to be around them. And so people that are authentic is who I, who I like to surround myself with. This group is full of those people. And like coach said, it really makes you better outside of the calls because now you're a little bit more accountable because of what something coach cole said on the call or something that g said or you're a little bit more intentional about what you're doing with everything that you do so it's it's been really cool the the best part of these calls is like when you say something stupid like you get called on it uh if you put up like a

dumb idea like they're like ah that's not that's not good or hey i disagree with that and none of us have an ego behind that we all have big egos but none of us have an ego but none of us have an about getting better. And that, that to me is the best part. Like, we just all just try to get better. E, from the behind the scenes guy, you're so valuable, but you've never ever pushed. And you've been working on the podcast now, I feel like forever. And always behind the scenes, never really getting credit for anything and being completely cool with that. I'm curious from your vantage point, embracing that role of being the behind the scenes guy, being on the calls with us, chiming in at like the perfect time, even if we've been arguing for an hour and you haven't said a

word yet, but then speaking up and we're like, oh, yeah, like that makes sense. What are we doing? I'm just, I'd love to get it from your perspective. I think I've settled into that role probably it's been a while. A question that I always get because I've been coaching with Brooke for so long going into year 15 now is, you know, when are you're going to leave Centerville and go do your own thing and become a head coach? And I've thought about that a lot. And it's not really what I'm chasing. It's not what I want to do. If that opportunity comes, then we can make that decision. But like I said earlier, I like being around people that are really good and know where they're going and what they want in life. And I try to do what I do well and bring that to them and serve them

how I can. And so I've enjoyed that part of it a lot. And I was actually talking to my wife, Megan, this morning when we were talking about recording today. And she just asked how long of him working for Ryan and my guess was, you know, last three years thinking back to the pandemic and getting involved with stuff. And so I got bored and looked up emails this morning and we actually got hooked up back in 2017 when you came and spoke to our team leadership group, the group that Brooke and I ran at the high school for a while. And so it's been longer than I thought, but that's, that's what I enjoy. I like doing hard stuff with people that are good and see where that goes. And so I think I just get drawn to people that are elite and try to bring what I can to that person or that group and just try to make it even better.

So valuable, I think that I feel like one of the things we've also done is I know Brooks, you're really good at this is role clarity, especially with the people on your team. We've talked about it a lot. I feel like we talk about this when we go on the road or we meet with clients. I feel like we've really figured out how to settle into our. roles and embrace each of those roles. Could you talk more about the importance of that, BC, when it comes to a team and, and you can relate it to us too, but just in general of how important that we understand our roles and embrace them?

Yeah, I mean, the first thing I was going to say about E is like the level of, of first of all, self-awareness and then like authenticity to know that's who he is and that's where he's at his best, and to be great with that is what makes him so good at what he does. There's a lot of people that do that with the intention of not really liking it. And so I think that's a big part of the role. You've got to find ways to get people to not only accept the role, but to embrace it and love what they're doing. And that's what E does, I think, as well as anybody. And so basketball is a tough sport in terms of roles because everybody does everything, right?

It's not, you're not a pitcher, you're not a catcher, you're not a lineman, you're not a white out of court. Like, you have to do everything, and that blurs a lot of lines. And so being able to be very clear, very up front, just very honest with team members, I think, is the only way to effectively do it. Sometimes it falls into place, but that's not the norm. I think we just try to be on our teams extremely clear with what those expectations. expectations are. We always do what are you good at, do a strengths and weaknesses exercise. And we've

we've kind of worked through that with this group to figure out how each of us kind of falls into certain roles and certain topics that suit us the best too. That made me think immediately when you were talking about Eli. I had an assistant coach for all 25 years at the University of Oklahoma. She was my back court teammate in college, Jan Ross, best assistant coach on the planet. and she was fantastic as an assistant coach because she understood the game and she was a great teacher and she was loyal and all those things. But the thing that made her unique was that that was the lane she wanted to live in. She embraced that with every fiber of her being and that made her indispensable. And so to be surrounded by people who accept and thrive in their roles, not just

accept them, but embrace them and say, this is what I want to do. She was, was 4,000 times better as an assistant coaches. I ever could have been had I wanted to try that route. So that's kind of like Dave Matthews drummer, you know, you get the best at that. And I feel so blessed to have had her. And I see those same traits in Eli. There's a selflessness and a service, a sort of, I'm going to figure this out before you even know that it's a problem and have to ask me to fix it.

I'm going to get it done. That's what I see. And by the way, he has to deal with my text messages that are 24-7. 365 at all hours. And usually it's something that I'm not happy with. And he's never once flinched, ever. And yeah, I think that from BC. BC's been doing that for 14 years. Yeah. We don't flinch. The coloring is a little bit off on that one clip that nobody's even seen, Eli or nobody will see. Can you please fix that? Or, hey, I said like too many times in the 54th minute of that podcast, why did you not fix that? You know, like, this is the type of stuff he's got to deal with. It's like,

Let's go. Let's go. I love that. It's super valuable. I want to talk about our edge. One of the reasons that I think were good and continuously getting better is the active element of what we do. Sherry is actively out there working with some of the biggest names in coaching quietly behind the scenes that people don't even realize is the confidant to the famous coaches out there. And then Garen and Brooke and Eli are actively coaching current teams. And when you guys left the classroom, which you did as of this year for the first time, one of my hopes was that you would continue coaching your teams. Now, that takes away time from doing our work. However, I think it's an element that makes us different and really good because you're not talking about,

well, I used to do this. I used to do that. Or yeah, I overcame that problem six years ago. You're living it as we speak as active coaches. And so I love to hear, Garon, what do you think about that element of part of our edge as being an active in the arena coach? We've said it for a while. There's a lot of people that know how to do it and very few people that actually do it. A lot of people is like driving, right? everybody knows how to drive when they're not driving, but prove to us that you can drive. Well, we're in the middle of the fist fight every day. And that doesn't make us perfect. We were screwing it up. We're making mistakes. We're trying new things, evaluating, reflecting, like, fixing, like constantly trying to monitor the whole deal and teach leadership and character development at the same time.

So, like, how cool is that? We're, yeah, we say, like, not do as well. we say, but like try to do as we do and we're still learning and trying to mix it up too. So, gee, speaking of driving, you know, some people get so caught up in their purpose and coaching and chasing excellence over success that they actually forget to renew their driver's license and have to go retake their driver's exam. The same one you take when you're 16 years old. My driving analogy, I was thinking about my driving analogy and the first thing that popped

in my head was how bad BC is behind the wheel. Terrible. He's always a passenger. Every picture I see, he's asleep. Or upside down. Or upside down. He's got a bad hip. So he like flips upside down in the passenger seat usually or goes in the backseat. It's very weird guy. There's really no need for any of that dialogue. No need. I did forget to renew my license for two years.

And I mean, that thing's hard to remember. I don't know how everybody remembers that all the time. I think you're one of the most focused humans ever, but you're focused on the things that you care about. And there are a lot of other things that you don't. And it's just like, I'm not going to play golf. I'm not going to do these other hobbies.

I'm going to make people better. I'm going to coach. I'm going to help my team. I'm going to live my purpose. Oh, yeah. And I'm going to forget a bunch of other stuff that's outside of all of the. Yeah, forget about legally driving. Forget about legally driving.

You can't do everything. I mean, speaking of driving, though, you guys, you two, went on a trip to, was it Missouri to a conference? Garon, can you tell this story? Yeah, drove my old Accura that had one headlight, got pulled over on the way. BC had a summer league game that night. The clinic started at 8 o'clock the next morning, 9 o'clock the next morning,

and we said, all right, how we got to get to Missouri? I'll just pick you up after the summer league game. You're not driving. You're riding with me. And I get pulled over about halfway out there. Illinois, B.C.'s videotaping the whole thing. We get there at like 233 o'clock in the morning. It was a very weird time to get there. And we're like, okay, we didn't get like a hotel or anything. What are we going to do? We'll just pull up into where the clinic's at and sit in the parking lot and fall asleep for a little bit.

And we fell asleep and it was like a hundred degree night for some reason. It was a real hot night. So I had to leave the car on air conditioning on. And campus security pulls up to us at like 3.30 in the morning, knocks on the window. like what are you two guys doing in this car? Like, well, we're here for the... Windows are fogged up. Yeah, bad situation, bad deal. And so we ended up, whatever, he lets us sleep. And we wake up the next morning, like 6 a.m. 7 a.m.

We drive to Denny's, go brush our teeth and kind of take somewhat of a, like a Denny's shower. And then the whole point we went there was to see these great coaches speak. and on the stage walks coach Sherry Cole and delivers this powerful, powerful speech. And then I remember she ended the whole thing with another powerful speech. And we wrote down BC, it changed our programs. It changed us as coaches.

It was 2016, I'll never forget it. It changed the direction of where we were going as coaches. We were kind of on that path. We drove back the whole way home. We were like, man, this is it. This is it. This is the way. This is the past. And it's changed us as coaches forever, a large part to coach Cole and her people.

The people I was surrounded with at the conference is the deal. I got the opportunity to sort of wrap everything up in a bow at the end and grab all the nuggets of wisdom from all those folks, Anson Dorrance. I don't know if Gino was at that one, but I know there were a lot of powerful. Mike Gundy, I think, from Oklahoma State, lots of nuggets flowing around. And my job was sort of to package them all together and show how they connect and make sense at the end. And I think from that, you know, the people in the audience that those things are usually people who are hungry and they want an edge. They want just something little extra. But the people who take whatever they find in that and then go back and apply it to how they do business, to how they live, to how they work, to how they coach.

I think that's a select few. I don't think the whole congregation at that conference went back and decided this is, the kind of coach and teacher I want to be. And that's one of the things that makes G and B.C. So unique is when they are totally bought into something, they're going to apply it in every area of their life. And that's to your previous question, Ryan, about real time, you know, G, B, C, and E are all real time in the trenches. The people in the trenches know the most about the problems. They're the ones who know the most about the challenges, what they're facing, the riddles that can't be solved.

And so that's an invigorating thing for me to be a part of this group. What those guys are right there every day. And they're having to figure out how to get through it. And theory is one thing and practical application is another thing entirely. And they live that daily. And we were just talking about that. Brooke, seconds before we hit record, right? We're talking about people.

We're talking about a player and how you manage that situation. So it's happening in real time. Can you share more about that? Not about this specific instance, right? But just Brooke, in general of like dealing with the things you deal with when you're leading a team. And I'd also like you to add too because I think I pushed you a little bit on this back in 2017 when I was asking you to speak at the first event that I had you come to where you said, these CEOs and senior leaders don't want to listen to me because my sports stuff doesn't apply to them. And I said, oh my gosh, yes, it does.

promise you it does. And I think, you know, I like to think I was right after you spoke. You were rated the top speaker of the event and absolutely destroyed the room by being you, by being authentic and saying, I'm just going to go for it. So maybe you talk a little bit about the combination of that real time stuff as well as how this applies off of the basketball court into both life and the professional world. Well, I mean, the stuff of being an active coach, I think it's, I mean, it's kind of like he was talking about, like, it's a little bit selfish. Like, I'm getting noticeably better every single day because it's so top of mind. Like, everything we're talking about is so top of mind.

I'm trying to apply it. I'm trying to think through situations. I have a different awareness, I would say, because we're doing this. We're talking about how to best lead teams. It gives me ideas, and I go try to apply those things. And some fail miserably, and some are great. And when they're great, I come back and like, hey, this was really good. You know, so it's an incredible testing ground for things.

So I think that's the side of it that is so attractive to be an active coach and to be involved with something like this is that I'm hopefully helping people, but I'm directly helping my guys too, the guys that I'm coaching on a daily basis, hopefully. The application outside of coaching, I mean, it did surprise me. My dad was a teacher. My mom was a bus driver. I've taught for 25 years. Like I've never been outside of education.

So every single thing to me is through that lens. And so the most impactful people to me in my life have been teachers and coaches. And so knowing how it applied in the business sector was completely foreign to me. So Ryan, I really just believe Jim was like, all right, what the hell? I guess I'll just go tell them what I think. Right. I mean, that was pretty much the essence of it. And then, you know, when you're in that environment,

and you start talking to people that run their own businesses and CEOs, you start realizing like it's the exact, like it's literally the exact same thing. Like you still have, you have to find ways to build trust. You have to find ways to hold people accountable. You have to set a standard. You have, like, it's even like recruiting and things. You've got to get people to want to be in your program. You've got to set a vision.

It's literally the exact same thing. And so that has been really, I mean, really fascinating. to me because I just I guess I never saw that that alignment outside of team sports. Sherry, G, I would love to hear you're as you've had now. Sherry, you've probably been doing this a little bit longer when it comes to because people are asking you to speak for for years and years that are outside of sports. So I'd love to hear both of you, your thoughts on the application of taking the stories and the team building from a football team or a basketball program

and making that portable into the business world where we spend the majority of our time. We take a lot for granted as coaches that there are things that we have to do, multiple things that we have to do, basically simultaneously in a coaching role. You know, you're putting a team together, you're holding people accountable, you're teaching.

There are all these things that you're doing. And we sometimes take it for granted the things that we learn through those multiple experiences. Because I liken it to this. It's the same thing that happens in the business world. But just like there's this giant neon scoreboard when we play games. And at the end, you know who won and lost based on that giant neon scoreboard. Everything is amplified. So all of those interactions that we're having, they're like sped up and they're amplified.

They're more intense because of the arena. that. And so when we can take that and dismantle it and then share it, it transfers beautifully to the corporate world and to business leaders. They understand all that. Maybe their interactions are fewer and further between. Maybe those relationships of trust, that trust building is over a longer span. We got, you know, six weeks till season starts. We got a boom, boom, boom. There's that speed that's always pushing the athletic world. But inside, it's always the same. It's always the same stuff. And I think the key, the anchor is always it's real people, real life, real emotion. And so when we share those stories that take place on the corridor on the field over with the

boardroom, if you will, then that emotion and that real experience of human nature and human interactions transfers and they feel it. And when they feel it, then they can go into their respective spheres and apply it. Yeah, I keep thinking, just like, okay, go to your freshman team and look at the problems that they're dealing with. It usually comes back to character and competence and like BC, like trust building and alignment. And then working with these companies, you see the same thing. Their issues come from character or competence or a lack of communication. It's all the same stuff. I said it a while ago. It's like all the things, the third grade team, teacher taught you. You know, lead by example, do what's right, hold people accountable,

treat everybody the way you want to be treated. Like that's all the leadership issues that we see. It's just, we're just all humans just trying to figure it out one, one bit at a time. And I'm surprised too. I was, I was very surprised like BC to see it's very similar. Coaching to leading a company to leading a family to anything. So it's been cool to see that, like, hey, we're not the only ones that have to deal with that. You know, that makes me think of what Brooks said just a bit ago about awareness, because as we as a group work together and BC mentioned, he's more aware. It's more top of mind. These things are more top of mind as we get off our calls, our planning calls, our client calls, whatever. In our respective individual lives, it's more top of line. Awareness is such a key part of the leadership process. If you skip that, then everything else has nothing to root into. And yet, It's seemingly such a simple thing, and yet so many people don't do it or people want to fly right over it. I want to get to that.

I'm going to show me how to do that thing. Well, unless you can really hone in and be truly self-aware and aware of your surroundings and the people that you're responsible for helping to improve, none of that other stuff sticks. It doesn't make any sense. And we all spend the first few weeks of every season trying to talk about that with our players. and then it's a constant force or a constant area of focus throughout the year. Usually when things fly off center, it's because of a lack of awareness. And you can bring people back to that.

So what we experience in a nutshell is what everybody's experiencing outside of that athletic field. Well, I think what Coach Cole said about the reps is a big deal too. Like I've been coaching 25 years. So 25 years worth of putting a team together and building trust and establishing of it. Like every year you get to do that. Every year you have a new group of freshmen in that or young kids that you're building trust with, you're creating a relationship with. You get so many reps in the, as a teacher, 30 kids at the bell, build a relationship,

develop trust, set a vision for the class, speak in front of people. Like it's just the number of reps you get in those two professions is just, it's wild in terms of, then you think about like a CEO of a company, they don't get all those reps. reps. But the one or two reps that they get, they got to make count. Right. And so that's unique. That is one of another benefit of being surrounded by teachers and working with. You've all gotten so many. We went to Garen's game the other night. And there was six, seven, eight different mini keynote speeches Garen gave just in the time that we were there. Right. Pre-game, half time, between quarters, talking to different people.

you may not even think of that but that's important each of those reps are important because you're trying to communicate effectively and that is a skill that i mean i just talked about this with my dad i'm thinking one of the reasons my dad rose so high in his career and it affected so many people in a positive way is because he worked so hard at being a great communicator and i asked him like what did you do and he's like i got lucky early on i got a job at AT&T as a trainer and so literally Every day for years, I was training multiple groups. Something as little about us putting the cap on the Sharpie marker when you're writing up on the board because it makes people uncomfortable if you leave the cap off. That granular of detail of what it means to get up in front of a group of people and speak is, Brooke, that's an amazing point you brought up because you all have gotten so many reps that that's why when we get with clients, when we stand up in front of them, even if you haven't full.

I'm like, hey, BC, can you get up and talk about that for 10 minutes? You just go and do it because you've done it so many times before. That's different. That's unique of the fact that our whole group has gotten so many reps on a stage or in front of a group of people or giving mini keynotes where you got to be good. And I think the people that we work with, they benefit from that. They get to see that. And I'm grateful that that's a big part of what we do.

one of the things that we did at the very beginning that I think has been good is we defined our purpose, our values, and our behaviors as a group. Now, we've all done this individually as well. We all have a purpose. We all have values. We have critical behaviors. We help people define their purpose and their values and the behaviors to match to make them real, to bring them in life.

But I like to talk through our purpose and our values and behavior. Just riff on these and have you guys add color to them as well. So our purpose is to help people become excellent and teams become elite. We define excellent as becoming the best version of yourself. We define elite as functioning at optimal potential, right? So we help people become excellent and teams become elite. If you're leading a company, this is obviously what you want. And a lot of senior leaders at companies, they're doing so many different things that they don't necessarily have the internal people that are fully.

focused on the things that we're focused on. So that's why they bring us in. But then you look at our values, right? And again, if you value everything, you value nothing. So we had to really work to narrow these down to curious, honest, and intentional. And the behaviors to match each of those curious is we're going to practice invested listening. Like we're going to listen with our eyes. We're going to listen with their ears. We're really going to be invested listeners. We're honest, right? We said this from the beginning. We are never afraid to be fired. we're not going to be afraid to be fired and because of that we're going to give you honest

and direct feedback. Sometimes people get brought in and they're getting paid well as these high-priced consultants and they're like, God, I don't want to lose this gig. So you just take it a little bit easy when you're providing feedback

in order to not make the client mad, thus becoming less effective and not helping them. So I think that's one thing of us is we're never going to be afraid to be fired because we're honest, we're going to give direct feedback. And then intentional is that we're going to provide purposeful action. Like everything we do, we want you to take it and actually implement at the end of all of our calls.

I feel like this happens with every client all the time is, okay, what does this look like tomorrow? What does this look like tomorrow when you implement the things we talked about today? And we have each person go around and talk about what it looks like when they implement the things we're doing. So they didn't just sit there during our training and take notes and be like, oh, okay, that was cool. Yeah, they were excited. and then not do anything with it. They have to implement it. So getting clear on our purpose,

getting clear on our values and the critical behaviors, I think, has been a North Star for us. That's really important. We help other people too. But we had to live it. And we are living it. BC, this is something I've learned from you many years ago and you personally helped me as my coach to get me clear on my purpose and my values and my behaviors. I'd love to have you go first and hear of your thoughts on our team purpose, values, and behaviors. Well, I don't think it's any different than for an individual. You know, you guys love the driving metaphor so much so I can stick with that. When you don't know where you're going, right, and you've got to put something in your GPS to get directions.

If you don't put anything in GPS and you just start wandering around driving, that's what it's like when you're operating without any values and without any purpose. So by setting a purpose, we know what we're trying to do is we're trying to make people. People excellent and teams elite. So then you say, okay, well, how do we do that? Like, what does this group believe is at the core of doing that? And we think it's curiosity, honesty, and intentionality, right? Being those three things. So if our vision is to make people excellent, why wouldn't we be curious?

We have to be curious in order for that to happen. Why wouldn't we be honest? Why would we hold back when we know it's going to help you? right whether you like it or not whether you're going to fire us or not that's irrelevant if we think it's going to help you we need to tell you right and then why not provide you with specific actions to be able to implement that all the time in day to day life so it's that vision that allows us to live those values and and why those values make sense for us like you said right i think it's just a north star it tells you where you're going and how to get there it's way more about the how

and the why than the what. It's a culmination of the personalities on this call, too. I was initially drawn to your podcast, Ryan, because of your just transparent curiosity. When you ask your guest's questions, you're not asking them questions performatively. You're asking them questions because you really want to know. And it's not always exactly what they wanted you to ask them, I'm sure.

But you start probing because you sincerely want to know. when we talk about honest, Geron Stokes is one of the most honest individuals I've ever met. And he's able to do it in a way that I know why he's such a great coach because he's able to do it in a way that makes you want to be better. But he is unfiltered honesty. And so that comes across. And then BC is the most intentional dude I've ever seen.

Just like you said, he may not renew his damn driver's license, but he is going to teach at practice today. And here's how it's going to happen. So I think it's a culmination of our individual personalities and what we know works in real time. I just think it's very clear on who we are and it makes decision making so much easier. We've been on calls. Man, you guys see this?

Should we tell them? Like the answers, yep, tell them. Or, hey, did you guys hear that? We should ask more about that, right? We should ask more about that. or guys we got to give them something specific we got to give them something specific so they can actually utilize something to make their company better it just it just drives all decision making so very very clear on who we are well bc and i were texting recently about one of the ones we're working

with and he said hey just you know i i gave him everything like i i told him straight it was about an issue it's there's always issues at every place we know that's how it works there's people issues. There's whatever is happening, whether there's a level of commitment or not. And he's like, I laid it all out exactly as it is. And I think that's a little risky. That's not always safe to because that reflects poorly on the person that's leading that team that they may have commitment issues. But that's honest. That's living in accordance with the values. If you know something, it's like, Garan, if you see it and you don't say it, then you're not living in alignment with our values. And that's a problem.

I think that's a problem. I think they're not real values unless you're willing to potentially cause issues or lose out on something or get fired by saying them. That's when you know they're actually real values. And I think that's what makes this authentic. That's what makes this real. And that's what makes it attractive to people and why, like I said, they may bring us in for a little thing. and then before you know it, they want us working with the whole company, which that's as good of a compliment as we could receive is, hey, we want more, we want more. What else can you do?

So I think that's been a big, big part of what's made us good and what's also made this fun for me. Eli sent me some questions that I want to ask you guys that I think could be useful. One of them is on team building. So I recently talked to my dad and my brother about this because I think team building is at the foundation of what we do, especially you guys as coaches. When you think about, and maybe you could even give a specific example, I'll share you, I have you go first. When you think about like, oh, these are my favorite teams or my best teams, and maybe those aren't the same, I don't know. But if you had to pick out the qualities or the attributes of your favorite and or best teams you've ever been a part of, what are some of the

commonalities among those teams? The first word that comes to mind is always toughness, and that's not necessarily physical toughness, though that is a part of it in sport, but it's mental and emotional toughness, the ability to see something hard and not shy away from it, the ability to fail and not be devastated by it, the ability to cheer out outside noise, all those things, toughness. Another would be, and this is going to sound kind of crazy, but when I think about my most successful and even favorite that maybe weren't, you're not supposed to have favorites like kids, but the ones I enjoyed the most,

the teams that maybe didn't go to the final four, but were really, really good, those teams had fun together. We laughed a ton. We were serious when we needed to be serious. We were incredibly intense, but we had a lot of fun together. And I think that gets overlooked sometimes.

I think connection, knowing they really knew each other well, like they really knew who was to their right and to their left. And when you pose that question, I couldn't help but think about part of what we do as a group is we have formed a team and we are living and modeling what we're hoping to share with the clients that we hire. One of the greatest takeaways for me being a lifetime member of an athletic team and a coach, but my entire life until three years ago, is that when the Indiana Hoosiers play, I have a Hoosiers hoodie that I put on and I go find the stinking Big Ten network and watch because BC's kid, Gabe, plays at Indiana.

And I'm invested. Now, I'm invested. Okay, on Friday nights, we have a group text where you guys are given, usually Eli, he's the best play-by-play guy. BC works hard at it, but Eli's the best. And I get Garens, I know what the score is, rocks, not rocks at the end of every quarter. And it doesn't matter where I am, I'm like on my phone, like involved. I'm invested.

My heart is in that. And I think the best teams do that. They're connected in a way that people outside can't understand. And because of that investment, there's great joy in that. I've watched these guys in the short amount of time I've been a part of the, this group succeed wildly and fail. Both have happened. Big wins, big losses. And the thing that I've noticed is that they don't change. They're the same in the face of both of those impostors. And we're getting to live that and we're in the trench of that together. And that's what we share

with the people that we're trying to assist outside of the athletic world or in the athletic world. to hear what goes through the mind of Garen Stokes during an Indiana basketball game. Oh, man. It's good that those aren't public. Brooke, how about you, man? Best slash favorite teams, the kind of commonalities among them. Yeah, I mean, coach hit on a ton of them. When I think of it, I think of they really care about each other.

More than anything else, they celebrate each other's successes really well. and they pull together rather than pull apart when they're facing adversity. Let me pick a specific one. I'm not saying this is your favorite. This is one that I enjoyed. Gabe's sophomore year at Centerville High School. You happened to win a state championship, a number of great wins along the way.

What was it about that team? What made them so good? They didn't think they were good. That was a big part of it. A lot of those guys were sophomores and juniors. and every time we beat somebody good, it was a little bit of a surprise. They're like, oh, oh, oh, like they're kind of proving it to themselves along the way. And then we had a couple losses during that season that were, you know, one was, like, kind of set the course for everything.

And then there was another one later on where we played pretty well. We lost a really good team, St. Vincent St. Mary's team that won the State Division II that year. And we played them really well and lost at home. They pulled together rather than separating. It was like, all right, guys, like, we're close. Like, we need to, instead of like, they tighten the shoe strings instead of loosened them. And so.

Isn't it interesting that I bet I would like to hear from Garron, too, that those teams that we're talking about and describing right now almost always have that moment where they get to make that choice. We're either going to come together or we're going to splinter apart. And you don't always know it at the time. I think most of us can kind of sense this could, be one of those, but you don't know until you look back, maybe at the end of the year, maybe even years past and you look back and you go, that was, that's when it happened.

I'd like to hear, Garen, you have any thoughts? Does that resonate with you? I was just listening to you guys. I think all of you guys are right, but I think there's a gritty humility about our best teams where at some point they have to take all the feedback that they've gotten. None of our, none of my favorite teams are our best teams. started out really good. None of them. They were messy and ugly and forming. And they decided at some point,

I'm going to take all the feedback, and I'm going to be humble enough to listen to it and fix it and go through the hard to make ourselves better. And it usually goes like it's flat and it's up and down, it's up and down, up and down, up, down. And then it takes off. And you can see the wheels go off the ground, and the flight takes off.

So, yeah, agree. They own it. They start owning it, right? Yeah. Actually, this reminds me. I feel like we had this text going six, 10 months ago. I don't know where Garon and Brooke were fighting about humility. And I think this is part of the, part of the cool stuff that happens where we're maybe chiming in here and there, but like watching you guys fight in a group text and then talk about it too.

Garin, can you can you go more? Because like humility is good. And I know like BC is you've got to be humble. You got to be humble. And I think you were arguing a little bit about that. Do you remember that? I'd like to maybe let's just do it here in public. I hear about maybe humility isn't always the best move. So I think that I think that there has to on the best of the best, like there's a conviction. There's a belief that I am equipped. I am prepared. I am. better than other people. I believe that there has to be that in your heart or you can't be the greatest. Like you go, you reverse engineer the greatest of all time. They had to be super humble, super humble to get to that point. They keep getting better, keep getting better, keep getting better, keep getting better. You have to have humility to get better. But then there has to be like a manage of that to where there's conviction and believe them.

Damn, I'm better than you. I'm going to go out and compete. I'm going, I deserve to win, which is a unique trait, I think. I don't know. Go ahead, B.C. argue. I just, better than what? Like, what's that even mean? Like, better than, better than what?

And confidence in what? That you're better than. Like, your opponent. Better than what? Like, like, like, your opponent. Your opponent. Your opponent. Better than him at what? Football, basketball, working out.

Okay. And that makes you the greatest? No, but I'm thinking like Kobe and Tom Brady and Belichick and Sabin and Popovich and go down the list that I've all been. They have a, the best have a belief. Like they want the ball last. They have like, they're not. And people was like, I'm humbled to like, like, no, like I want the ball. I want the ball.

And I'm going to go score. I don't think it's a belief. I don't think that's counter to humility. I think, I mean, I think humility just says I think of other people more than myself. That's what humility is. And it doesn't mean you're not confident. I think humility is one of the strongest traits, a reflection of strength and power rather than, I think it's portrayed so much as weakness and softness.

And I think it's the complete opposite of that. Yeah, I agree with you. I agree with you on that. I think you're the most humble. Yes. And then they turn it off. Yeah, I think like you've got to have some of that conviction, though, because I can specifically remember times mostly as a player, a little bit as a keynote speaker, when I

was fully convicted that I was the man. We're losing by four points against Springfield South. Those guys are absolute killers. They're great players. And there's, I think, two minutes-ish left on the game. Luckily, we stopped them. and they're punting to us. And I remember the ball goes over our punt returner's head.

He lets it go. And it rolls down slowly to the one yard line. And we're down four, two minutes to go. And I vividly remember saying my guys like, Garan, I was arrogant and very cocky in that moment of like, this is what I'm about to do. This is what we are about to do. Right.

And we went 99 yards in two minutes and won the game. And I think part of it was I wasn't very humble in that moment. I was very convicted and very sure of what I was going to do. And if you then look at maybe a moment in college when maybe I wasn't as prepared, wasn't as convicted, had the same exact situation against Akron my senior year and junior year, sorry, and completely flubbed the two minute drive, throw a pick, and lose the game. That's confidence, though. That's not humility.

Humility is having that moment where you think you're the man and you make the play. And you come off and now you think you're above everybody else because you made that play. That's a lack of humility, right? You can make that play and then come off and say, great job blocking. Thank you. I'm so grateful. Thank God. Thank your team.

Right. Now you're still operating in humility while having the confidence to go make the play that you've trained for. Yeah. Because your team, the 2021 team, you said they were humble. They were almost surprised when they won, which that actually answers, me. But they were confident. Like when I see Tom Howes shoot it, that 25 footer and just stone cold drill it, that guy looked very confident, very sure of himself. Is that an actor? Was that real? What's going on?

Surprise probably isn't the right word. I think the level that they were able to succeed at, what we were, they were a little surprised that all the stuff that we were having them do was effective. Like it worked. They're like, oh, crap. Like, okay, okay. We can beat those guys doing this. We can beat those guys doing this. And so, At no point during that process, did that group ever waver in the work and the effort and the focus that what they were doing? They trusted you. They trusted you and they were bought in. And it was a little bit of a blind trust at that point because they didn't know it was going to pay off. And that's what I think great teams require.

Like there's a little blind trust in the leader. Like, all right. Let's go. That leads me to one of the most common things that we face, that every team faces. is there are certain people, even in leadership roles that we work with, that they are there. And I'm not even saying maybe there's something wrong with this because everybody can choose to do what they want to do, but they're there to cash a check. They have their job and they're working for the weekend or they're there because they just want to get paid so that they can do the work they need to do, not necessarily anything more than that, and then go home and enjoy whatever. their families or kids sports games, which again, I get it. I do that, too, that part of it,

at least. So at times, though, we have leaders say, hey, can you work with so and so and so and so? They're not fully bought in or not fully committed here or, I don't know. And this happens at every single place you're going to go, right? It's just people are messy. I love to hear from each you, what do you think about that when it comes to the commitment continuum, Brooks, things we've taught how to work with that person who is, they're fine. They're in it enough, but they're not fully in it. They're mainly there because it's a pretty good job and they're going to do a pretty good job, but they're not all away in it like, like some are. What do you guys, Garon, how about you start? How do we work through that? I think you get very curious and you

ask a lot of questions and you understand because they're human they have a purpose they have a purpose i think you get people to be very honest with them and you give them direct feedback and you show them why it's not necessarily an issue but you could be working at optimum efficiency if it got better and then you give them i'm not trying to be cliche here but you give them purposeful action like you give them, this could improve the company that you're working for if you do this and this and this and this or if you somehow, the access you could gain from living in a purpose, how much better could you be? So that's what comes to my mind. That was cool. Yeah, right where you started, G, with curiosity, I don't believe that there's

anybody who wants to sleepwalk their way through life. I just don't believe that people want to do that. Something's in the way. sometimes it might be because they haven't experienced what it feels like to go all in on anything. So they don't know that high that we're talking about. So you have to get them to experience that. And in order to do that, you've got to ask a lot of questions because there's something, whether it be contextually in their daily life or the way they were raised or where they were raised or the experiences they've had, whatever.

You've got to kind of unpack all that to help them, remove the obstacles so that they can feel it. I'm completely convinced. that when somebody feels the high that comes from going all in for something, they're going to want to do it again. And they're not going to be okay. I've told the story a million times about our high school team that won the state championship and we left the gold ball in the locker room because it wasn't about the trophy that we won. That group of girls learned how to go all in on a thing.

As a result, there'll be different spouses, different employees, different bosses, different friends, different parents, the rest of their life because they know what it feels like when it's right. and they won't always know how to get there when it's not right, but they'll hunger and thirst for it and itch. And that's what you want to give to that person who's sleepwalking. You want to give them access to that so that they can then hunger and thirst for it. And then you can lead them fairly easily. But curiosity starts that whole path. Cherry, those girls too, I don't know that team, but I have to believe that they're connected for life.

Ryan, you don't know them because you were probably. three when that happened. They are connected for life. We are connected for life. I still talk to many of them. And it's just when you go through hard things together, you leave parts of yourself on each other. And it's just that way forever. You can do that in the business world too. I have some sales teams from LexisNexis that we are still that tight because of how tough of a goal we were given by the company and how hard we got after it on Mondays and Thursdays to train, how people mentored others and stepped up and were selfless, how we got the new people up to speed really quick, faster than anybody else in the company.

And that's what we were really proud of that. Our people didn't need a ramp like everybody. Like all of these things, members of that team, again, not a sports team. This isn't a business world. Members of that team are still really tight. We still talk about those moments. fun we had, how hard it was, how hard we worked and got people going, there's nothing better. Like, it is almost nothing better than doing hard things with people you grow to love and accomplishing

things and then seeing others rise as a result. It's the coolest thing ever. B.C., I'd love to hear your thoughts on this, too. Well, the only thing I would add is, is all that's true. We've got to be curious. We've got to try to ask them a lot of questions. We've got to try to figure out what's blocking them from fully committing, but you have to get volunteers, not hostages. You have to. And you can only make every person in that group that you're making, you're compromising your ceiling, like you're limiting how high that group can go. And so I'm not saying you never have to do it. There are roles that have to be filled. You have to have some people. So everybody's got to make that decision based on their situation and, you know, the spectrum that you can accept. But

Volunteer is not hostages. You're never going to get the most out of them until you free them up to be a volunteer. So true. And that takes tireless work, B.C. Like, it takes tireless work because maybe they're volunteers, but they don't understand. Or maybe they don't. It's the power of yet, too, right? I've had it a bunch of times, and gee, I know you have two. We've talked about it. Some kids just aren't ready yet. Like, they're not going to make that decision yet. I fully believe everybody figures out their purpose and figures out their values at some point in life. my goal is just to hopefully help you do that before you're under deathbed. So you can have some good times before that, where you're authentic and you're who you are. There's been plenty of hostages that have become volunteers.

There's been plenty of those. And it just takes tireless work to try to get them there. And love. I can tell, too, regardless how frustrated you get, Garen, we text about this stuff quite a bit is if you really care, truly, truly care and have love for that person. My brother just told a story that I never heard before about his defensive coordinator in college. I know a guy you know, Garan, Mark Dantonio, who went on to be a great head coach.

But about how much time and effort and love he poured into each of his players, even, and he scared him. He was really hard on them. He said super high expectations, but they all love him for that. And I think the people in our lives that we probably look up to the most are the ones that were most grateful for. They cared and loved us enough to tell us the truth, to nudge us, to push us, to set a higher standard,

to say, I know you got more. I know it. But if you don't care or have love for that person, you'll just kind of ignore them. You'll just let them go. And I think that's what the best leaders do is you care enough. You have enough love for that person that you're willing to push them. You're willing to expect more.

You're willing to spend extra time with them. think that's, again, part of our edge. And what we try to do is like, hey, we care about these people. Like, you all have our phone numbers. Every client, they have our numbers. They can text us. They can call us. Right. We do these things off on the side because like if we're going to do it and we're going to be very selective. That's another thing I guess we haven't talked about. We're going to be very selective with who we choose to work with. So if we do, though, we're committing. We're all in. We're 24-7. If you are dealing with something, you know, hey, got a minute. Yeah, we got a minute. Yeah. And so I think that, That's a big part of it too. Okay.

To close, we close our meetings with gratitude. This is one of my core values. I think it's something we all share. I know BC is big on this. And everybody in our group is really big on gratitude, on living life, thinking about, and actually voicing the words, thank you to the people who are important.

And so I just thought we would focus on the importance of gratitude, why we choose to end all of our trainings and our meetings with gratitude and really pushing on others. Brooke, how about you start with the importance of having gratitude in your life and why it's a big part of what we do? I mean, it's just a better way to live life. I don't really like it's just, it's just better to recognize and appreciate the things that you have, the things that you've been given. I look at it as virtually everything in my life has been given to me. I didn't get a pick how awesome my parents are. So none of the stuff that I have is truly because of anything I've done.

And I think when you operate from that perspective, I just think it's way easier to see the good in people, way easier to be accepting and not judgmental, way easier to be optimistic instead of pessimistic. I just think it sets up so many different things for you that just the way to go. I've been the other way. This is better. Coach.

So good. Yeah, gratitude is one of my core values. Counting blessings is something I do every single day, sometimes multiple times a day. I've found that gratitude is an all-encompassing thing. There's no space for anything else while you're being grateful. You can't worry. I used to have a thought for the day in practice. Every day we'd have a thought for the day. One of them was you can't roll up your sleeves and wring your hands at the same time. To me, that's gratitude. You can't worry. You can't be thankful for something and worried about something simultaneously. It just can't coincide. And so it's a cleansing trait to me. It's freeing and it's cleansing and it gives us access to grace, which is maybe the most important thing that we carry with us when we're trying to deal with other people,

that avenue of grace, because we can't know everything that another person is facing or enduring or feeling at a time. And so it's just a perfect conduit into building successful relationships. So I started a gratitude journal probably 10 years ago. And we've done thankful Thursdays on our team for, I don't know how long, probably 10, 12 years. And it literally changes the lens you see the world through. Like it's like putting sunglasses on. I don't wear sunglasses, our dog, because I just don't believe in them. But what is this shot?

Gee, are you saying that you're stronger than the sun? The tan. I don't need, I don't need, I'm not worried being tan. Sunlasses have nothing to do with the tan. It's just a shot. You're right in the middle of such like a beautiful thing. You take a shot and be like, God, you look like you got a fresh spray tan

with those shades you're wearing too. Anyway, go ahead. It literally changes the lens you see the world through. Like it changes everything that you start to notice becomes something that you're grateful for. It's, I blame, like, it's completely changed my life and how I view everything. Obstacles, I'm grateful for it. Adversity, I'm grateful for it.

People throwing shots at me, I'm grateful for it. The hardest times I've been through, I'm super grateful for it. And then you start noticing all the things people do for you or the people that are giving effort to help things that you're around. You just, you just know, like you just become a noticeer of all the things that are, you're so lucky to have. I would recommend to anybody and everybody, I'll die on that one, that gratitude can change, like just a simple direction of your eyes can change the way you go about your life. That sounds awesome, G, but how do you actually do it in the moment? So, you know, your starting quarterback gets hurt, right?

This is a huge obstacle or whatever. A bad thing happens in your life. How are you able to, in the moment, be grateful for something that at the time seems like a, not a fun thing to deal with. You practice it. You practice it. Like, it doesn't, like, I write down three things every day for 10 years. The next thing you know, that's just, that's just become your automatic response.

And you screw it up and you fix it. Yeah. Yeah. When it happens in your life, you just, you say, perfect. How grateful is this of an opportunity is this? Like, now we got to go play with a backup. Perfect. I got to be better.

Our team's got to be better. How cool is this? It removes the victim mindset that we all have naturally. It removes it because you're just grateful for everything that comes your way. Also, the see it, say it with gratitude is, I think, really important. For example, this is something anybody could do right now with the most important person in your life, hopefully most people, that's their husband or wife, that I tried to implement this from learning from you guys is anytime I see Miranda do anything that is good. just say thank you. Thank you for doing the dishes. Thank you for this amazing meal. Thank you for helping Charlie with her homework. I think just saying it. You have to actually verbalize it though. And the more

you say it, the more you end up seeing it out in the world. I joked about being really hard on Eli, which I am at times. But I also hopefully he would feel that I do say thank you to him a lot because I'm very grateful for how hard he works and try to be that with everybody in my life. If they do anything that serves me or is helpful, when you see it, you say it. It's just like when you're thinking something positive about somebody, send them a text immediately. Just send it right now. Oh, I remember, I just did this with Steve Wojahowski, actually.

We saw Wojo years ago. I haven't seen them in years, but I saw you did something and immediately text them and it led to this amazing conversation over text for a while. Like you see it and say it. And if you're, as Garon said, you're practicing it regularly, whether you're, you're write it down or you have it in your mind. Like when I see this, I'm going to say it. You just end up doing more and more and more. And like you said, it just makes your life better. It makes you more of an optimist. It makes you see more good in the world instead of the things that the online world

is trying to make you see, which is all of the rage type stuff. It really will change your life in a better way. And it's probably as needed now more than ever. And again, this is another thing we try to help leaders with is, hey, this is a different way to view your job. This is a different way to view your family. It's a different way to view the challenges you're facing because that's a certainty. We know for certain adversity is going to strike. We know for certain that you're going to have challenges. We hopefully, I think with this style of looking at them, and we mess it up, obviously, as Brooke said, but with this way of looking at it, hopefully we'll better suit you, better prepare you to handle them head on and be better for it. So anyway, I could go, we could go all

day. I really appreciate you guys. I love you. I'm so grateful that you allow me to be a member of this team. I don't say that with any humility. I just, I mean it sincerely. I'm grateful as BC puts the heart stuff that I get to be a part of this team, man. And it brings me so much joy because I've been doing this kind of by myself for a bit for years. And one of the things I'm asked about from others is, what are you up to or what are you excited about? I'm like, I'm on a team, man. I get to be on a team. And I haven't been on a team like this in a long time and this team makes me better. And how cool is that? How cool is to be able to be, I got you, G, to be able to be on a team where everyone

that you're surrounded with makes you a lot better. And that just juices me up to keep doing this stuff. Coach Cole, Coach Cole hooked me up with Mike Gundy, Coach Gundy in Oklahoma State. And he ended his staff meeting when we were out there. And he said, can you believe people pay us to do this? Can you believe people pay us to do this? And that's the feeling I get up with every single morning being with you guys. So super grateful.

So good. Love it. Thank you guys. We should do this again. Maybe we'll make it a semi-regular thing as we go through all this stuff we're doing. But I really appreciate. Love you guys. And I'm sure I'll see you like in an hour.

So okay. Bye. Later. Thanks. Hi, Ryan. It is the end of the podcast club. Thank you for being a member of the end of the podcast club. If you are, send me a note, Ryan at learning leader.com.

Let me know where you learn from this great conversation. with the Hall of Famer Sherry Cole, Brooke Cubs, Garen Stokes, and Eli Liker. Also, if you want to know more about working with us, our team, you can go to learningleader.com slash team. That's learning leader.com slash team. Okay, a few takeaways from my notes, the makeup of a great team.

They are tough. They have fun together. They care about each other. They have that gritty humility about them. They're humble enough to listen, gritty enough to apply. That's what makes a great. great team. Now, how do we work with that employee who just won't fully buy in? Everybody in the

world who works at a business is thinking of a person or two who they're there just to kind of collect a paycheck. And I thought this was a cool part of the conversation. We talked about being curious, not judgmental, asking questions, listening, both with your eyes and ears. You got to care. And as Sherry said, I don't think anybody wants to sleepwalk through life. So we need to figure out what makes them come alive and help them bring that to the team. Then we close with gratitude. You can't roll up your sleeves and clench your fist at the same time. What a great one from Sherry.

Living with gratitude is about recognizing and appreciating what you have. This will change the lens in which you view the world. As Garen said, I can't believe they pay us to do this, right? I agree. And it's so much fun for me to get to work with this team. and the reward is that we get to keep doing it. I'm so, so grateful. And I'm also so grateful for you for continuing to spread the message and telling a friend or two,

hey, this is a little bit different of an episode of The Learning Leader Show. It's with the Learning Leader team, Sherry Cole and Brooke Cobb's, Garen Stokes, Eli Liker. But I think listening to them will help you become a more effective leader because you continue to do that. And you also go to Apple Podcast and Spotify and you write a thoughtful review and you subscribe to the show and you rate it hopefully five stars. And by doing all of that, you. are continually giving me the opportunity to do what i love on a daily basis and for that i will forever be grateful thank you so so much talking soon can't wait