How to Lead Your Team, with Andy Frisella - MFCEO8
Episode Stats
Length
1 hour and 46 minutes
Words per Minute
217.20435
Summary
On this episode of the MFCEO Project, we have special guest Will Compton, a third-year NFL player with the Washington Redskins. Will is a captain in the NFL and has been with the team for 3 years.
Transcript
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Hey guys, what's up? It's Andy. You're listening to the MFCEO Project. For those of you who
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are new, welcome. Give you a little history on us. My business partner and Chris and myself
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started a company called Supplement Superstores, a sports nutrition retailer with $12,000 that
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we earn from striping the stripes on parking lots. Now, 16 years later, we do over $100 million
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collectively with six different companies. I started this podcast for basically three different
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reasons. One, to mentor people that don't have mentors. I was very fortunate growing up to have
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people around me that told me the truth, that didn't prey on me and got me on the right track.
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I hope to do that for you guys. Number two, to motivate people in a real authentic way. I'm going
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to say fuck. I'm going to say shit. I'm probably going to say pussy. If you don't like those words,
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this podcast probably isn't for you. And three, because I have a passion for motivating and helping
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people. I think that success is very, can be very selfish. And the way I define success is doing
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and fulfilling your ultimate potential. And I believe that helping people get to a point where
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they can be successful as part of that potential. Guys, basically, we're trying to help you. Okay.
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We're not selling anything. We're not asking you to buy anything. We're just giving out information
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for free. Today, I have a couple of very special guests. And as always, my host, Von Kohler. What's
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up, Von? I'm excited. I am too. Why don't you tell the people who we have here today? Well, we have
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Ben, who's not really a guest. I mean, I think we were thinking of keeping him on.
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Ben Newman, international man of mystery, professional public speaker. How are you doing, Ben?
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Good. Well, for those who didn't catch last podcast and nobody who's anybody missed last
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podcast, but for those who did miss it, Ben is a professional public speaker, author. He's a
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performance coach and he works with executives and elite athletes. And one of the guys that he works
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with, Ben, you're going to introduce. Yeah. So, couldn't be more fired up today. Obviously,
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I get fired up just to be in the room with you two guys and to be with all the listeners. But today,
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we have Will Compton, who is a third-year player with the Washington Redskins. And what's unique
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about the opportunity to be with Will, Will's become like a little brother to me. And his story is
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incredible. You know, oftentimes in a mentor-type relationship, you know, I'm supposed to be
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giving advice. But the great thing about our relationship, and you guys are very fortunate
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to have this time with Will, is that I learned so much from Will. And it's a two-way street. And
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we have the opportunity to grow together. So, I'm excited for you to have the opportunity to learn
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from Will. He's kind of an old soul, which means that he has overcome a lot of adversity, a lot of
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challenge to accomplish some big things that were his dreams at five years old. So, excited for Will
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to be with us. And I kind of spaced out for a second and didn't catch whether Ben said it or
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not, Will. But where'd you play college ball? Nebraska. The University of Nebraska.
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The Cornhuskers. Now, let me just, one thing, interject. So, very, very humble is Will Compton.
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So, let me share with you, there's about a hundred individuals that have ever walked the face of the
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earth that have been a captain at the University of Nebraska. So, there's a big wall in the school that
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he showed me. And he is one of those individuals. So, one of the most storied programs in the history of
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college football. And he's one of those very few captains from that school. So, he's done some big
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things in his football career. So, he knows how to lead a team, which plays right into our subject.
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Right, Andy? Yeah. Today, guys, we're going to talk about different aspects and all things related
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to teamwork and leadership, which is an awesome topic. You know, we sat here and talked for two hours
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amongst us guys here, just kind of shooting the shit and seeing what was going on. And
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I'm happy to have you here, man, because I know you're going to have a lot to offer on the
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leadership aspect. You know, it was cool to hear the, I wish we would have been recording,
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you know, like the stories. Private recording. Yeah. Thanks for coming out, dude. Oh, man.
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Thanks for having me. People ask, people ask all the time, one of their questions is like,
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what's the coolest thing? What are some of the coolest things you've done since you've been
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like in the NFL? Like, what have you got to do? And I'm not BSing here. Like, this is probably
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the coolest thing thus far. Oh, come on, dude. I promise, man. I know a few guys will
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be listening to my teammates. They know how much I was hyping this up. And, you know,
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now that I have the opportunity to be on here, it's, man, it's an honor. But thanks for having
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me. Yeah, dude. Well, Will, we got to warn you, man, because I got to tell you, you got
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to get ready for fame. I mean, I'm up to almost 900 Instagram followers.
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No, I'm happy to be here. That's awesome. Yeah, guys. So basically what we're going to
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talk about today is things that cover concepts like the basics for how to lead a team, how
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to be a team player, how to develop your team, strengthen the morale and the cohesiveness
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of your team. And we're also going to talk about what not to do when leading a team. And
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this is going to apply for whether you have zero employees or whether you have 200 employees
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or whether you have 2000 employees. These concepts are going to come into play because
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here's the reality, guys. Nobody can do anything great alone. Okay. Nobody's won a Super Bowl
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alone. Nobody's won a World Series alone. Nobody's, you know, cured a disease alone. Nobody's
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built a multi-billion dollar company alone. Okay. It takes a team. Everything great takes
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a team. And if you can't understand that concept and you don't make yourself a
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student of leadership and teamwork early on, you're going to have a much harder time because
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you're going to learn things through example or through experiences like I did. Whereas had I had
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somebody walk me through some of these things, maybe it wouldn't have been so tough. So hopefully
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we'll, you know, we'll answer some of these questions because that's, that's a lot of the
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questions I get on my Periscope. By the way, Periscope is fucking awesome. If you're not on
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Periscope, get on it. I know me and Mr. Ben here killing it on Periscope. Basically, dude,
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I just get on there and yell at everybody every day and people fucking love it. I don't, I don't
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really get the appeal, but it's a cool, it's a live broadcast app. It's definitely worth checking
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out. I know I'm watching it more than I watch TV or even read at this point because you're able to
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learn from other people. I follow some really cool people and learn a lot from them. If you want to
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check out Periscope, download the app and then you can follow me at at Andy Fursella. Ben,
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you're at continued fight on Periscope. Guys, it's definitely an app we're checking out either
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way. While you're on, while you're on the subject of social media. Yeah. Why don't you just share
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all of your social media contacts? Cause we're going to, I'm going to take a second just to make
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before we get going. Yeah. Before we get going. Yeah. I mean, Instagram, I'm at Andy Fursella
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Periscope, the same thing at Andy Fursella, Facebook, the same thing. And then, uh, Snapchat,
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which is basically me just taking pictures of random shit throughout the day. Um, I'm MFCEO dash
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one. Uh, Ben, what are you on? Yeah. So, you know, Facebook, you know, those, those mediums,
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it's just Ben Newman. And then the Instagram, the Twitter Periscope is at continued fight.
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Yeah. How about you Compto? For myself, for Instagram and Twitter, I am at underscore
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Will Compton. Yeah. And I'm, I'm, uh, at Vaughn Kohler and I've been told multiple times
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to spell it. V-A-U-G-H-N-K-O-H-L-E-R. That's, uh, for everything except for Snapchat, which I'm
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not super active on quite yet, but on Snapchat, I'm VKO dash MFCEO. And then guys, uh, check
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out the website, the MFCEO.com and to, to link directly to this, uh, episode, it would
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be the MFCEO.com slash P eight. All right. I think that covers everything. Oh, oh, and
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send your questions and you're doing a good job of sending your questions, but keep them
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coming. Ask Andy at the MFCEO.com. Yeah. We're getting ready to change the format of, of how
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we do podcast releases here soon. Um, we've been doing basically one every Tuesday. It's
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about an hour long. And then what we're going to do is a shorter one on Thursdays, which will
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be 20, uh, 15 to 20 minutes, uh, where we're going to hit Q and a is pretty hard. So, but
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yeah, guys, um, let's, let's go ahead and get into the, to what we're going to talk about
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today. Um, you know, like I said, nothing great is done individually. Um, a lot of times
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the leader's going to get the credit, the guys, the guy, so that's quote unquote calling the
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shots. Uh, but the reality is there's, there's always a bunch of, of people behind, um, them
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that are making it happen. They're making the dream happen. Um, and if you're not, if
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you're not able to create a culture of a good teamwork or, or be a good leader, you're
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going to have a very hard time being successful in, in any sport, in any business, um, basically
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in anything that you're trying to accomplish. So, uh, that's what we're going to cover today.
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And, um, you know, I think we've got excellent, uh, we're gonna have some excellent content going
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forward. Yeah. Yeah. If I could just mention something real quick before we get started,
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you know, the times where I have fallen, the times where I've been knocked down or the times
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where I tried to control too much and you start moving backwards from your goals, I can look back
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at those periods of time. And I was trying to do it alone. You know, you try to do something. It's
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like, man, why was it? And then you have those, you know, the Andy Frisella who steps into your life,
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the Will Compton who steps in and says, Hey, you know, what's going on here? What's going on with
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you? And then you can kind of, you can step back and say, why am I trying to do this by myself? So I think for all
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of you out there, I've been there. So as we walk through this, if you're kind of in that space,
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think about where you are and the people that are going to be on your team, because these are two
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individuals and Will and Andy, that you're going to get amazing nuggets about leadership to really
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take you to that next level. But sometimes you've got to be truthful about where you are. And I know
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the times I've been held back, it's when I wasn't accepting of teams. And now I'm very conscious of
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making sure I'm not doing it alone. Well, you know, what's funny too, is that I get a lot of
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questions, obviously, through the website and also on Instagram a lot. One of the questions I get
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that's most common is how do I go from what, like people that own a business, an entrepreneurial
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setting, how do I go from one location to a second location? How do I go from, you know,
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me running everything to hiring my first two or three employees? And I can tell you from experience
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that for me was the scariest time in business because you think that you're the only one capable
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of doing what it is that you do. But let's be honest here. You're not that fucking special.
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You know, other people can run your business and you have to be good at organizing and you have to
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take that first step in trusting somebody to have your back. And I think that that's a huge part in
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business. And a lot of business, a lot of businesses get caught up in the fact of not being able to take
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that step, which is what ultimately keeps them to be a mom and pop where they could go be a Zappos
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or an Amazon or something crazy big, you know, a hundred locations versus one. I mean, there's so
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many retail operations out there that are great. They could have, you know, a thousand locations,
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but they don't because that owner is so scared of taking that first step. So, you know, accepting the
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fact that it's going to take the power of many to reach your goal is the number one thing that
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you've got to, you've just got to accept it. It's going to, it's part of the deal.
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That makes a lot of sense to me. But even before you get to the point where you're taking,
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you're going from one store to the next, I mean, even before that more fundamental is how do you
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even start getting people to follow you? I mean, I, you know, in terms of how.
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Well, one thing you have to remember as a business owner, and this is entrepreneurial based
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podcast. So a lot of things I speak about are going to be in terms of business. You know,
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Will, you're going to speak in terms of sports, you know, and we're going to, but they're all the
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same things. And one thing that I see a big mistake with a lot of leaders when they're small is that
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they forget that you are supposed to be the number one salesman in your company. And when I say number
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one salesman, I don't mean number one salesman at product. I mean, you've got to be the number one
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salesman of your fucking vision. You've got to be able to look at people and sell them on your vision,
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on your mission, on what you're trying to accomplish. And if you're not able to do that with
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passion and with your heart and your soul, you know, you're probably in the wrong business,
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you know, so that that part should come naturally. Like if you don't truly believe in what you're
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doing, which is why we always talk about passion is where you start with the business. I always say
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passion pays the bills. But if you're not able to truly look at a situation and get excited about
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where you're going to take it, you're probably not in a great place business wise, you should
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probably reevaluate it. Because the reality is, is you are the number one salesman. And your job is
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to sell people on your vision, on your goals, on the future. And a lot of leaders just don't do
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that. You know, it'd be the same thing as with you, Will, when you're in training camp, and somebody's
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got to step up and say, Hey, this is where we're fucking going. I mean, is that right? You know,
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no, absolutely. I mean, you got to have a guy who, you know, sells you on what, what the culture is.
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And, you know, you got to, you got to stand behind that. I know, at Nebraska, for myself,
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when I stepped into the leadership role, it was more, you know, we'll talk about here in a second,
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but changing yourself first, making sure you're doing all the things right, before you stand up
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and speak to anybody, right, before you say something, you got to have yourself in check
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first. But, uh, you know, that was a big thing for me, you know, making sure I did all the little
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things right. So that way, when I spoke on something, people knew I was coming from the right place,
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and not just out there barking or threatening people or anything like that. I kind of, you know,
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you, you lead with your personality and you know, you keep yourself in check first before you put
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it on everybody else. That's a great place to start. I mean, you know, we've got this agenda here,
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but I'm just going to start here because that's a great place. We just talked about this a minute
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ago before we started recording. We were talking about people's ability to lead is usually held up by
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their own mindset. And what, what I mean by that is they look at themselves and they say, man,
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nobody's going to listen to me. Nobody wants to hear what I have to say.
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Nobody, you know, nobody's going to follow my, my lead. But the reality is that starts with you.
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So that point you're making, you know, for you guys listening, that would be something,
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if you're a business owner, that would be cleaning the fucking toilets. It would be sweeping the floor.
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It would be stocking the shelves. It would be doing the shit that you ask your employees to do
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better than they do it. And, and, and from a sports, we talked about this a minute ago,
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you know, in conditioning drills, it's, it's going all the way to the finish line.
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It's touching the line. It's waiting for the whistle to start before you start running.
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It's taking pride in all the seemingly insignificant details that you have in a day-to-day operation,
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whether it be sports or business or whatever, and taking pride in those details and being
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consistent. And if you do that through your actions, people will follow you, you know,
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and I, Vince Lombardi, you know, his whole thing is leading by example. Isn't the best way to lead.
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It's the only way it's the only way. So leadership and teamwork and building a great team,
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dude, it starts with yourself. Absolutely. Yeah. I mean, I, I totally agree with that point.
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Um, you know, if you're going to get up and you're going to try to rally guys around
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your vision or your business and your mission, and you can't execute the way that you want your
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team to execute yourself, it's very hard for them to take you seriously. So you have to get
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yourself straight first. I mean, I, I, you know, I would have skipped right over that point. I'm
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glad you brought that up because like, honestly, like that's, that's the number one thing. And
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that's, I think the number one trait between good leaders and good executives and good managers
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and bad ones, or, and you could say, you know, good leaders on the, on the field are the guys who
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execute the way that they call on their people to execute. You know what I mean? I think that that's,
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I think that's a differentiating trait. Well, to, to go along with the leading by example,
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you know, having yourself, uh, getting yourself right first, you know, that is the most important
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thing leading by example. But then from a leadership standpoint, you got to bring somebody along. You
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know, if you're just a teammate, you don't see yourself in the leadership role. You need to bring
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a teammate along, hold somebody accountable because what good is it if, you know, you both get thrown
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out of the boat, the boat burns and you both got to swim back to shore. One guy knows how to do it by
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leading by example, but that's not helping the other guy who doesn't know how to swim. So, you
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know, once you, once you have yourself right and you know how to swim, you know how to take care of
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yourself and you're doing all the little things, right. Then you got to start pulling somebody
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else along or some of your teammates along. Cause you're not going to do no good. If you know how
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to, if you know how to do it, but you know, you're not trying to instill that culture or you're
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what you know into somebody else. So I think that's really big once you do lead by example.
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I think that's a great point too, because for me, like, I'll be honest, like I take pride in all the
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shit that I do. And sometimes I skip that step. Like, and that's one of my faults as a leader.
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I'm not ashamed to admit it because everybody has their weaknesses. One of my weaknesses as a leader
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is assuming that the shit that I know that you should automatically fucking know, you know,
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so taking the time to show people how to do, you know, back, you know, 10, 12 years ago, I was in
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the store. So I was able to show guys what to do. I was on the sale. I was a frontline salesman.
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I showed people what to do now, you know, we were doing this so long. I forget, you know,
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and I'm like, man, that guy doesn't know how to do that. I'm getting all pissed off about it.
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So, I mean, that's even a, that's a great point too, because remember what it's like to be like
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day one and show people exactly what needs to happen and bring them with you. I mean, that's,
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dude, that's gold. But for you to, but for you to, to recognize that that guy doesn't know that
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you had to have a lot of knowledge of yourself and you had to know what you didn't know 10,
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you know, 10, 15 years ago and not, not every leader does that. So, so it's super,
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a lot of people are in leadership roles by default. They start a company and then they're a leader
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or they're an owner or whatever. And I see this a lot because, you know, I get hit up on business
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consulting all the time and dude, I go meet with people and they're running it. Like these people
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should listen to me or these people should be inspired. I don't understand why they're not
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inspired by me. I don't understand why they don't listen to me. And it's because, and it's always the
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same kind of guy. It's the same kind of woman. It's always the same. It's the guy who sits on his
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ass and doesn't do the fucking work himself, isn't willing to do it and treats his team. Like
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they're a bunch of fucking servants. It's always the same kind of guy. I'm a leader because I own
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the business. No, you're not. That's not leadership. I'm a leader because I'm the best guy on the
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football field. No, that's not leadership. Your performance does not dictate leadership.
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It's how you bring people along and teach them along the way.
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So realistically, Andy, are those kinds of people going to change? I mean, are those kinds
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of people ever going to want to put in the effort to get, to be better leaders?
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I personally, I, I have never seen it happen. I've seen, I feel like a lot of people want
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to be in business to be in business and they want to say, I own a business or they want to
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say, I, you know, that's, it's hard to explain. They, they want to like play, I call it like
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play business. Like I want to be the boss. I fucking want to go to the bar and say, I own
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this or that, but they really don't want to do anything other than earn a living, you
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know? And, and I've never seen a change. I can explain what I'm talking about to those
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kinds of individuals till I'm blue in the face and it just never seems to sink in with
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them. Um, and, and from, and now I, I, when I do my initial meetings for consulting with
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other small businesses, if I sense that the person is that way, I won't take the account
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because it's not worth my time to do it. Um, I don't really do it for the money at this point.
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I do it because I want to see improvements and I want to see the business grow. And I feel like
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I just, I don't know. I mean, Ben, have you ever seen somebody change? Do you know the
00:19:54.200
I know exactly the mentality you're talking about. And I think it's, it becomes so that there's two
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kinds of mindsets. So there's a growth mindset and there's a fixed mindset and there's individuals
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who are they fixed mindset. They reach a point of point of leadership. My company's doing this
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much revenue. They really don't want to grow anymore. So they stay usually that revenue is
00:20:12.180
not that fucking much. That's exactly. Well, and not only is it, it's not that much. It's
00:20:16.300
not even tapping into close of what their company could be yet. The growth mindset is no matter
00:20:21.440
what you accomplish, you always look for the person who's doing more. So you can say, what
00:20:26.020
can I do to improve? It's the same thing with you, right? Well, I mean, we'll go in and
00:20:30.260
say, look, I was a captain of Nebraska. I did this. I'm going to go to the Redskins. But
00:20:33.660
it's constantly looking. And what I always think of in the stories I loved hearing was
00:20:38.020
how you went straight to London Fletcher when you went to the Redskins, who, you know, it's
00:20:42.560
one of the Ironmen of all time in football. And Will had a burning desire to learn from
00:20:48.220
the best. Not, hey, look at me. I was a captain. I'm on the team. So what is it that in you,
00:20:54.260
Will, give us your example, because you're all about a growth mindset from reading books
00:21:00.320
Yeah, absolutely. Me personally, I think it depends on what's driving the person and what's
00:21:07.200
driving them to talk to you. You have to be coachable. I mean, you have to be coachable.
00:21:12.260
Coach Bo, one of his first, you know, talks to us.
00:21:16.960
Yeah, Bo Pelini. Yeah, my head coach from Nebraska. He's like, you know, when you walk in one day and
00:21:23.020
you feel like you know it all, that's when you need to hang it up. And he's a big believer in that.
00:21:26.840
You need to constantly be learning, constantly looking for new ways. And, you know, for me,
00:21:32.900
you know, I don't want to sound arrogant or bragging or anything, but I've just always
00:21:36.620
had the mindset that, you know, I've got to learn from more people. You know, London,
00:21:43.080
one of the best stories, I think, out there. I mean, he was a D3 player and was undrafted,
00:21:48.960
played 16, 17 years in the NFL as a middle linebacker. Ray Lewis has done it. But that guy,
00:21:55.120
I mean, he was a first rounder. I mean, he was a stud. I mean, you're talking about
00:21:58.200
London worked his way, worked his ass off to be what he was. Yeah. When he was here
00:22:03.140
in St. Louis, he's my favorite player. Yeah. I mean, he's incredible. He's a great human
00:22:07.280
being. And, you know, he shared he was an open book. And I mean, I think it's just awesome
00:22:12.520
when you're out there trying to just learn new things. But I really think it comes from
00:22:16.100
what's driving the person. If it's, you know, if it's monetary, you've spoke on that stuff
00:22:20.040
before with purpose and passion. If it comes from the wrong place on like, you know, how am I
00:22:24.060
going to tell these people what to do to make me more money, you know, versus really
00:22:28.540
trying to consult with you and, you know, learning better. Yeah. How can I do things
00:22:32.720
better? Right. You know, that that's when true growth will happen. And until you figure
00:22:37.000
out why you want to, you know, do something in the first place, you're not going to
00:22:39.960
grow. So all the great leaders, I mean, they're focusing in multiple areas. It's not
00:22:44.440
once. Like if you look at a lot. Yeah. I mean, talk about it before we went on before we
00:22:48.460
went on here. We talked about we were talking and I'm not going to name any names
00:22:51.520
because I don't want to. But we talked about some of the guys in the NFL and we
00:22:55.560
named some pretty high profile dudes that just kill it in the NFL. And Will's
00:23:00.740
comments were, yeah, he also kills it in all these other areas because he works and
00:23:05.320
he's into business. He's into these other areas. He's interested. He's got mentors
00:23:09.960
for different areas of his life. He's trying to get better. And that's a common
00:23:14.720
trait. And a lot of guys only see what's on the field in the NFL. They don't see the
00:23:18.280
mentality behind it. Absolutely. And that name he's talking about, I'm proud to, you
00:23:22.860
know, say it's Indomitian Sioux. I mean. Which a lot of people, you hear that name
00:23:27.020
based off the press he gets. Yeah. You wouldn't hear that. Right, right, right, right. No.
00:23:30.920
And Indomitian, he's a, I mean, he's a great guy. I mean, the stuff you were talking about,
00:23:35.280
I know an example in particular when he's, you know, flying to a business meeting. Right.
00:23:39.320
And, or in a car with somebody for business, but he's on the phone with his psychology mentor,
00:23:45.360
sports performance coach, whatever you want to call it. Right. And working on his visualization
00:23:49.060
for an upcoming game. And it's just, he does it all the time. He knows it. He surrounds
00:23:54.180
himself with the right people. It's not just, he's not just some freak. I mean, the guy
00:23:57.700
has a lot of horsepower and work ethic behind all of that. Right. Will, do you think it's
00:24:02.340
fair to say that if Indomitian Sioux was here today, he would be pretty intimidated by
00:24:07.300
us? Uh, I think he would love, he would love that first form truck you guys got going
00:24:13.900
on out there. Yeah. Yeah. I don't, I don't know if he fears anybody, but, uh, he's, he's,
00:24:18.400
he's a good dude. I want to add to that conversation real quick because what we were all saying there
00:24:22.780
comes down to, I do, I do, uh, periscopes on, on core values in the morning and, and, uh,
00:24:28.800
two of the core values that we just talked about without even naming either one of them
00:24:32.580
was humility and always be learning. Okay. And this is why, this is how you differentiate
00:24:37.660
good leaders from bad leaders. Like you were saying, growth mindset, um, how you,
00:24:42.260
how you define the growth mindset, you, me, dude, in a reality, you, all of us and what
00:24:48.800
we do for our livings, we're all fucking ants in the scheme of things. None of us have achieved
00:24:54.420
top level greatness. And I think that always knowing that is what drives being humble enough
00:25:02.300
to admit like, dude, you're really just kind of a pissant in a big scheme of whatever it
00:25:05.800
is you do that drives that hunger to grow and improve. And when you're humble, you're able
00:25:11.700
to admit, Hey, I don't know this or that or this without your ego getting in the way you're
00:25:16.900
able to learn, which allows the always be learning core value to come into your life. You know?
00:25:21.820
So, you know, unless you're the best in history or whatever it is that you do, you've got a
00:25:28.220
lot to fucking learn. And nobody listening to this podcast, I don't fucking care who it
00:25:32.340
is. Can't get better. All of you should be humble. Everybody, because I don't care how
00:25:37.400
good it is you are at painting the stripes on parking lots or fucking packing boxes like
00:25:44.360
we do here or, or, or making supplements or speaking or playing in the NFL. You ain't
00:25:49.200
that fucking great. Right. Period. So I think that that's the willingness to check your ego
00:25:55.420
at the door and know that if you have the right mentors and you have the right teammates,
00:25:59.080
they're going to challenge you to continue to get better in all areas. Dude, one of my biggest
00:26:02.840
fucking pet peeves is when people say shit, like when they insinuate that they're at the
00:26:07.480
top of their game, when they're not, when they, they say things like, you know, I always
00:26:11.840
thought that it was going to be different when I reached the top or when people say to
00:26:15.520
me and a guy and a person running, it's running like, you know, it's like this middle sized
00:26:21.260
business, like 20 million bucks or something. You know, it's like, dude, you haven't fucking
00:26:24.800
done shit. You know how many $20 million a year businesses are out there? A trillion,
00:26:28.900
you know, or when somebody comes to me and they're like, Oh dude, and I don't get upset
00:26:34.400
at this, but it's just, it irritates me a little bit. But when they say, Oh, congratulations
00:26:38.560
on all this success. And I'm like, fuck, I haven't done shit. You know, don't congratulate
00:26:43.300
me. I haven't done anything yet. Nothing. Not, I'm not done. I've done 10% of what I want
00:26:49.660
Yeah. You're going to think I'm kidding when I say this, but I'm not. I love your analogy
00:26:53.140
of the ants because ants are small. They are seemingly insignificant, but they get things
00:26:57.940
done. I mean, it's amazing. And by the way, Ant-Man is an amazing movie.
00:27:03.480
But, but I mean, you know, being humble enough to learn is a huge indicator of leadership ability,
00:27:11.160
And I think it, like I had mentioned, is learning in all facets of life. That's one
00:27:14.660
thing I think, Will, that is so impressive about your game is that it goes beyond the game.
00:27:19.120
It goes beyond athleticism. It's about nutrition. It's about studying the playbook. It's about reading
00:27:23.480
books. It's about studying finances so that you can protect your money, protect your body,
00:27:27.940
protect everything. So what's been your philosophy on not just learning football, but learning
00:27:34.300
Oh man. Gosh. For me, you know, I, it's, I'm always looking to listen to people. You know,
00:27:42.760
one thing we talked about being around the right people and teammates and leaders and things
00:27:45.960
like that, it's, you become who you surround yourself with. And, uh, you know, being in DC
00:27:51.280
now, I I'm surrounded by great people with, you know, Sean LaValle, Ryan Kerrigan, Adam Hayward,
00:27:55.860
a bunch of guys where, you know, you have this idea of what you want to become. So, you know,
00:28:00.740
you need to surround yourself with those people. Um, for me, outside of all that, where all that
00:28:05.400
for me comes from, you know, I, I watch and listen and read about a lot of people. You know,
00:28:11.940
I, I just love listening to, I love listening to Andy's, uh, new podcast that he said come out
00:28:16.520
before Andy. It's, you know, Tony Robbins, Jim Rohn, you know, uh, Eric Thomas, a bunch of people.
00:28:22.680
And now I'm getting into reading books. I know Andy talked about reading a book a week. That's
00:28:26.360
ultimately what I want to get to. It's just, you know, me stop making excuses and reading a book
00:28:30.980
once, uh, reading a book a week. But, uh, that's where I get it from. And I fully believe in all
00:28:37.080
that stuff that these people talk about. Will Smith, he's probably, you know, one of my favorites
00:28:40.900
to listen to and, you know, speaking about the law of attraction and all this psychology stuff.
00:28:45.660
And, you know, to a lot of people before I've gotten to where I'm at and where I'm at now,
00:28:50.000
isn't even that, you know, like you said, I'm not even close to scratching the surface of my
00:28:54.340
potential and things. I haven't done anything that's, that makes me some legend or anything
00:28:57.760
like that. But, you know, I've shattered a, a, probably a lot of people's expectations,
00:29:01.600
you know, doing, getting to where I've gotten through practice squad, being undrafted and all
00:29:05.440
that. But, uh, I fully believe in your psychology and, you know, you, what you think you become,
00:29:13.220
you know, thoughts turn into words, turn into action, all that stuff. I fully believe in all
00:29:18.080
that. And you, you attract what you just think about. If you're thinking negative all the time,
00:29:22.400
you're going to attract that negativity into your life. And I'm not saying that you go out there and
00:29:26.320
you just have strong, you know, you talk about I am statements, you don't just say stuff and then
00:29:30.680
you hope for something to happen. You work your ass off for it to happen. Yeah. You follow it up
00:29:34.160
with action right away. Absolutely. Like Tony, Tony says, you create a very vivid vision,
00:29:38.960
you know, dude, he doesn't get enough credit, man. Like I was just thinking about him last night.
00:29:43.160
Something popped up on my, on my, uh, Yahoo or Google about Tony Robbins. And, uh, and you know,
00:29:49.880
for you young people listening, you guys need to, you guys need to invest in Tony Robbins stuff.
00:29:54.460
He's, and when I say invest, I say that for purposeful reason. It's an investment in your
00:29:58.840
future. Um, the guy's unbelievable. There's not been a person that I can name who's dedicated his life
00:30:04.560
more to teaching the principles of what you're talking about, Will, the psychology of success
00:30:10.360
than Tony Robbins. I mean, I, I think the young generation hasn't really been turned on to him as
00:30:14.580
much as they should be. I mean, you listen to his audio. I mean, Tony, if you ever listen to this,
00:30:19.880
you need to update your audio with some more relevant stuff because like, it's just, it's dated,
00:30:24.200
you know, you listen to it and it says like, it talks about like the fucking microwave oven being
00:30:28.460
like, you know, so like it's older, but you have to put it in context. The Berlin wall coming.
00:30:32.580
Yeah, dude, it's tremendous shit. And I think people get turned off, you know? And dude,
00:30:37.120
if he came out with another program and I know he's financially, you know, I think he's worth
00:30:41.420
half a bill, you know, but the thing is, is like, uh, the information is just invaluable,
00:30:47.220
man. I mean, it's just tremendous. Like the guy's just, it's so like rich, you know, the information
00:30:53.220
that he puts out in, uh, I mean, it's cool to hear that, you know, you as a young man are into
00:30:58.920
that because I don't find a lot of the younger guys, you know, yeah. Well, I think I think
00:31:03.300
I think what they realize is that there's a new Tony Robbins in town and he used the F word a
00:31:07.760
little bit more, but listen, listen, all kidding aside. One of the things I really love about this
00:31:11.900
podcast is that we, we address issues in a way that like you say, Andy, no unicorns, no, no rainbows.
00:31:18.280
And one of the things that it just dawned on me is that, you know, there's this cliche that there
00:31:22.400
is no I in team, but what's really fascinating to me as I'm listening to you guys is I'm hearing Andy
00:31:27.360
say, okay, first you have to sell yourself. Then you have to, then, then, uh, Will, you were talking
00:31:31.920
about leading by example, uh, Ben, you just talked about this, this desire to grow and get better.
00:31:37.120
These all have to do with I, so there is an I in team. It has to start with you right before it's
00:31:43.180
transferred to anybody else. Yeah. That's a good point. You know, I, I think that people, uh,
00:31:50.420
I, I think it comes down to, you know, you, you have to step up and you have to say, all right,
00:31:53.980
look, it's time for me to be a fucking leader. You don't need anybody's permission to be a leader.
00:31:57.940
You know, you don't need the rest of the football team to, to say, okay, well, you could be a leader
00:32:03.440
now before you're a leader on the team. You know what I mean? Being a leader, being a leader comes
00:32:08.620
with a decision, like you're saying, Vaughn, um, within yourself, you know, and if you're going to
00:32:13.920
progress past any kind of mediocrity, because, and that's the thing about business that people
00:32:18.600
don't understand is that dude, it's pretty easy to go out there and start a business and get it to,
00:32:22.760
you know, a few million dollars. It's not that hard, but getting it from, you know, five or six
00:32:27.700
million to 60 million or from, you know, that two or three million to 20 million, dude, that's hard
00:32:34.500
because it takes a lot of fucking people to make that happen. And, and so that's what we're talking
00:32:38.800
about today is how do we get people organized beneath us and to follow us into battle, so to speak.
00:32:46.200
Right. And, and for me, you know, I guess some people are, you know, I'm not one of those people
00:32:53.560
who's a natural born leader. I think I've, I'd be like, like what you're saying, Will, like you're
00:32:57.940
a student of all these things. I've, I've always been a student. You know, I've always said, I'm
00:33:02.360
going to read this information. I'm going to listen to this person. I'm going to, I'm going to surround
00:33:05.240
myself with people who are leaders. And I try to like, like soak that in, um, you know, as much as I
00:33:12.080
can still to this day, you know, I try to surround myself with people that are better than I am at
00:33:17.080
what I do and are more knowledgeable and know more. And, um, you know, I think that's a huge
00:33:23.180
trait for being a good leader is always being willing to like, you know, learn from people
00:33:27.580
who have done what it is you want to do, you know, and you don't have to like, you know,
00:33:31.980
you don't have to get them on the phone. You don't have to like, you know, I don't talk to Tony
00:33:35.140
Robbins. I never met him, but he's a huge mentor in my life because of the information he's put out. So,
00:33:39.580
you know, go out and study the people that, that, that are what you want to be. You know,
00:33:45.260
I think that's a huge step. Uh, you know, reading's a big deal for leadership to me. I can always tell
00:33:50.560
like when I, when I go to my meetings for consulting and I ask somebody how much, how many books they
00:33:54.980
read this year. And if the guy who owns the company says like, Oh, well none, cause I'm too busy.
00:33:59.840
I won't even take the fucking account because it shows me they're not willing to learn.
00:34:03.740
You know, I help you, uh, go through the emails and you know, we're always getting tons of emails and
00:34:08.060
what's not surprising to me is that we have a lot of people always asking, well, what are Andy's,
00:34:13.360
uh, book recommendations? So we're going to probably just to let everybody know, we're going
00:34:17.560
to post those on the, uh, on the website very soon. I'm going to gather them all together and,
00:34:22.820
and offer them for you for download. So just to let you know about that. Hey, Will, you were,
00:34:27.180
you were mentioning just a second ago that part of leadership is, is not, or, you know,
00:34:31.120
part of being a team is not just leading yourself, but knowing how to bring other people with you.
00:34:35.140
And I know Andy, you're, you're always saying that a huge part of success, like you are not
00:34:39.220
truly successful unless you bring others with you. And so, um, I guess if it's okay with all
00:34:45.620
of you guys, I'm just going to leave the discussion on how do you, how do you then transfer what you
00:34:51.960
model to other people and how, how do you develop the, um, I don't know, the morale or the cohesiveness
00:34:59.580
of the team? How do you transfer what you, what you possess yourself? There's a couple thoughts I have,
00:35:04.020
and then I'm going to, I'm going to pass it to Will cause I think we'll hit on it. This is an
00:35:06.760
area we really connected, but you know, you always hear Andy say that, you know, passion is
00:35:11.220
what pays the bills. And I think it's an individual's passion of where they want to go
00:35:15.480
and their vision, which is what attracts people to want to follow their leadership, right? Andy's
00:35:20.660
so passionate that people want to follow. And then his passion is going to drive his daily
00:35:25.200
disciplines. And if you look at the 17 years and the times you've been knocked down,
00:35:29.000
there's things Andy focused on that he could control his attitude, his effort, and his beliefs.
00:35:34.300
Well, when Will and I talk and it goes back to Nebraska, it goes back to, you know, high school,
00:35:39.040
what are the things that you've always said that you can control? Attitude, effort, beliefs. So I
00:35:44.000
think it's the same thing now when Will, you know, when he's in the football game with the Redskins,
00:35:48.420
when he's in the football game with the Redskins, he has a green dot on the back of his helmet,
00:35:52.680
which means that he's going to help call the plays. What's given him the ability to do that?
00:35:56.720
Attitude, effort, beliefs. The same thing that got Andy to where he is, same thing that's allowed
00:36:01.240
Will to continue to grow no matter what arena he's been in, high school, college, pro. So
00:36:05.860
what are your thoughts on that and the importance of focusing on those things you can control
00:36:09.700
because it causes people to follow your leadership? Yeah, you know, at any level, you don't have to
00:36:15.960
be the CEO or you don't have to be the team captain. I mean, right now I'm not a captain or
00:36:20.180
anything like that. You know, I have a role. Again, I'm not on here saying, we're not on here saying
00:36:25.280
I'm an expert or anything like that. But you can be a teammate, you just being a teammate,
00:36:32.900
somebody that you might see yourself as one of the lower guys on the team, right? And you have
00:36:38.600
a leadership role. And I learned this from Nebraska brought in these Navy SEALs. They call
00:36:44.620
themselves the program. They put you through a few days and you kind of do a bunch of stuff,
00:36:47.840
team activities, things like that. But you have leaders and then you have teammates. You know,
00:36:52.560
you don't have to just see yourself as the number one guy on the team to be a leader,
00:36:56.160
like you were saying earlier, Andy. But you got to be one hell of a teammate. And that's
00:37:00.560
adapting your principles and the guy next to you holding him to that standard. If his standard
00:37:05.300
is higher than yours, then you got to rise up to his standard. But you're always, you're next to
00:37:09.660
somebody, you got to bring somebody along. You know, right now I'm at a teammate role.
00:37:13.680
I surround myself with guys, with vets who, you know, who have been doing it a while because
00:37:17.860
that's what I want to do. So I need to surround myself with those guys, ask a bunch of questions.
00:37:21.800
And then hold guys that are maybe the same year as me or younger than me accountable. Or
00:37:26.640
if guys are starting to respect me more, I start sharing my opinions and ideas with them.
00:37:31.440
You know, you don't just go in just being a rah-rah guy. I'm this, I'm that. You kind of
00:37:35.360
lead by example first. You got to earn that respect. Yeah, absolutely. You know, right now,
00:37:39.660
I'm like I said, I'm not that in Nebraska. I was a captain. But you have a leadership role,
00:37:44.520
no matter if you like it or not. You know, you're, you're either part of the part of the problem
00:37:48.600
or the solution. And you, you know, you either buy into the culture and bring somebody along with
00:37:53.040
you or, you know, you're, you're a bad egg and, or you need to look to somebody to raise your
00:37:57.000
standard. But that's, let's even get down to like practical application here. Okay. We're talking
00:38:02.040
about, Will, what you're talking about is you have to earn the respect of your team. Okay. And you
00:38:08.820
don't have to be, if you're the CEO, I mean, starting a good culture in your company is going
00:38:16.660
to start earning the respect of your employees. It's going to start with being, like I said a
00:38:21.080
minute ago, being able to do the jobs that you ask them to do as good as they do. And maybe you
00:38:25.820
have a guy who's a computer programmer in your company and you can't program computers. So he's
00:38:31.220
in a special role, but the other things that are responsibilities of the office, like the
00:38:36.320
little things, that's where you earn the respect. You know, it's in the company kitchen, you know,
00:38:41.420
cleaning up after yourself. It's making sure that the, the floors are clean. It's making sure the
00:38:45.940
bathroom's clean. It's taking out the trash and it's not taking out the trash to make sure everybody
00:38:50.060
sees you taking out the trash. It's taking out the trash for nobody's fucking looking. You know,
00:38:54.580
those are the things that earn respect amongst your team. And if you can't, if you aren't willing to
00:38:59.640
do those things, it's going to show and you're not going to ever have the respect or even have the
00:39:04.080
opportunity to build that culture that you need to build inside of your company. So you have to be
00:39:09.280
willing to do what you ask somebody else to do. And you have to hold yourself to that standard.
00:39:14.000
That's what you're saying, right? Absolutely. Absolutely. You got to, you know, you got to do
00:39:18.780
all of those things, you know, like when we talked about conditioning before we started and you were
00:39:23.160
talking about, you know, going to the line and stepping on the line in that, I mean, go tell people
00:39:27.980
what we were talking about. Cause that was cool. Yeah. I mean, they always talk about winning and it's,
00:39:31.880
you know, the, from the smallest margin. And I actually saw a picture the other day of somebody
00:39:36.460
not, uh, I forget who posted it of somebody not touching the line. I saw that today. The best
00:39:41.500
fucking unbelievable. That's meme. I'm going to post it later. Yeah. That was the best meme I've ever
00:39:45.320
seen. The difference between winning and losing. And it's this guy. Yeah. It had a guy from a hand,
00:39:49.580
like a hand distance gap from touching the line. I screenshot that this morning just to post that.
00:39:54.780
That is the coolest graphic. This one. Yeah, that's exactly it. Yeah. That's exactly it. But it kind of just,
00:40:00.800
it kind of just reminded me because we're not visual here and explain a little bit more of
00:40:05.480
what you guys are talking about. Cause I'm in the room and I don't get it. Okay. So coming from
00:40:10.620
Nebraska, we were a very disciplined team, you know, touching the line, waiting on the whistle.
00:40:14.900
In conditioning. In conditioning and you know, hard stuff, just things where you would be worn out
00:40:19.660
and tired and you would fall start or something and you would get, you get chewed out by starting
00:40:24.860
early. You get held accountable by your teammates, all that stuff. And then, um, you know, my first year
00:40:29.920
coming in the NFL, uh, you kind of see a little more guys being able to do what they want, just,
00:40:37.020
you know, whether it's, uh, getting paid or anything like that, but it kind of just shocks
00:40:41.760
you on the different, you know, levels of culture or guy, guys holding themselves to the standard and
00:40:46.100
things like that. But, uh, you know, we were showing that picture and it had a guy barely,
00:40:51.680
barely missing the line, coming up short of the line, six inches from the line. And it had a,
00:40:55.740
it just said, it showed a graphic that said the difference between winning and losing.
00:40:59.180
And, you know, it sounds, you know, repetitive or, or dumb, or some people might think it's dumb,
00:41:03.940
but it's the truth. And seeing that picture is a good reminder because, you know, I'm at fault of
00:41:08.320
that sometimes. Yeah. I really, especially when you train by yourself or when you're in with a
00:41:14.460
group of guys and your teammates and you're kind of just joking about everybody's like, fuck this,
00:41:18.340
man, we're tired. I know it's like, well, shit, he did it. So, you know, I'm going to go ahead and do it.
00:41:22.700
But it kind of just reminds you that that, that is the truth. And that's, those are the disciplines
00:41:27.040
that you've got to, um, you know, cultivate yourself in, you know, those, those are the
00:41:32.360
things you've got to do. So you're an all the time person. You're not just a sum of the time
00:41:35.840
person. I love that. Yeah. I love that. Say that again. You, you can't be a sum of the time person.
00:41:40.740
You got to be an all the time person. And again, a lot of stuff that I talk about comes from coach
00:41:44.820
Bo Pelini. He was, he was one of the first people that really inspired me to look at things in a very
00:41:50.660
small discipline manner, like the little details. You can't just show up on Saturdays and play in
00:41:55.220
front of 85, 90,000 people. You got to go to class. You got to do the things all the time and
00:42:00.120
practice everything all the time. He would be pissed when we miss practice. We'd have team meetings and
00:42:04.960
he'd be, he'd be getting after us on grades, all that stuff. Cause he's not here to babysit. He's not
00:42:10.100
going to trust you to play on Saturdays when, uh, you can't do it Sunday through Friday. And he,
00:42:15.720
he truly believes people want to talk about winning and all that stuff, but winning takes care of
00:42:19.880
itself. When you take care of all these little things, when you live that disciplined life,
00:42:23.840
all the winning and losing, that's going to speak for itself.
00:42:26.540
It's so funny that you even say that because like the around here at our office, it's so
00:42:32.500
similar, but like different application, right? You know, it's like somebody comes to me because
00:42:38.800
they want to raise, but yet, you know, their desk looks like shit and they're there's trash
00:42:44.140
overflowing out of their trash can. You know, like if you can't take the fucking trash out,
00:42:48.620
why the fuck do I even want you in this building? You know, that's the simplest shit
00:42:53.440
that you could possibly do. If you can't clean up after yourself, do you even deserve to be in
00:42:58.080
this building? You know, people don't think about that. They think about the big shit. They think
00:43:02.400
about scoring touchdowns. They think about, you know, being on ESPN. They don't think about the
00:43:07.840
offensive lineman who's, who's in the, in the trenches making all that shit possible, which is
00:43:12.620
your team. You know what I mean? That's in your team is you. If your team is performing
00:43:18.300
badly, guess what? Guess whose fault that is. That's not their fault. That's your fault
00:43:23.600
because you haven't cultivated enough teamwork and enough leadership within yourself to make
00:43:28.900
your team perform. So, you know, being accountable for your team on top of all the things we're
00:43:34.560
talking about is a huge aspect of leadership. It's not something you never see a great leader
00:43:40.980
say, dude, my fucking team sucks. You know what they say? They say, dude, I've done a
00:43:47.580
poor job of leading my team. I can improve. You know, I should have done this and this
00:43:52.680
and this better. You know, that's, that's what a leader says.
00:43:56.560
No, I agree. You know, we, we have a different defensive coaching staff. I have the same linebackers
00:44:02.800
coach, but coach Jay Gruden, he's a, he's in a second year, but it's already so different
00:44:08.160
from last year as far as culture and as far as disciplines and things like that, because
00:44:12.300
you just, you know, he's a, he's a, he's a leader. I mean, he's, he wants to change things.
00:44:16.760
You know, one of the, one of the definitions of insanity is doing the same thing over and
00:44:20.240
over and expecting different results. And there's already a bunch of things. That's why I'm so
00:44:24.880
excited about this year is the leaders we have and the things that coach Gruden's putting
00:44:29.000
in place to, to create a culture is, is awesome. I mean, our new strength coach, coach Mike Clark,
00:44:36.260
you know, he's big on sweeping the shed and whenever we're done lifting, you know, we
00:44:40.680
got to be the ones that pick up the weights, put everything back. It's not the assistance.
00:44:43.760
It's not the people who are in there spotting us and all that. He, he makes it a point to
00:44:48.060
tell the leaders, Hey, you do it first and tell guys to come with you and sweep it themselves.
00:44:52.380
You know, what's so awesome about that, dude, is that, and this is, this is like a spot.
00:44:57.780
Number one, rule. Number one, mission. Number one, creating a great culture is that people
00:45:03.200
will follow. If you set the example, cause people know in their heart, what the right
00:45:07.920
thing to do is. And if they see you as a, as a owner, a business owner or a leader, and
00:45:12.400
you're running a company and you're out there sweeping the floor or doing the shit that they
00:45:15.940
should have honestly done on their own. And they see you, they say, fuck man, without
00:45:19.980
saying anything. This is an internal dialogue. They're like, fuck, look at Andy out there
00:45:24.220
sweeping the floor. Fuck. And that sucks when that happens. Cause you kind of get humbled
00:45:28.060
because you know, but what happens though, all the guys come out and that's how you get
00:45:33.140
the culture going. Yeah. You know what I mean? That's how you get the culture going. You do
00:45:37.160
it yourself and you do it. Perfect. We have this talk amongst our managers, um, a lot, you
00:45:42.700
know, 99% of, of issues with training or performance in a work environment can be solved by upping your
00:45:49.640
own performance period. And not saying anything. You don't have that fucking meeting. Well, there's
00:45:54.260
some psychology to the preparation and organization that you're talking about. So let's use Will's
00:45:58.960
example of sweeping the shed, you know, getting the weights ready. Think of the last time that
00:46:03.360
you went into the weight room and the way you're getting ready to start your workout. The weights
00:46:07.380
are everywhere and you're looking for the 45 pound dumbbells and you can't find them cause
00:46:11.400
they're tucked away in a corner. You get pissed off. You're angry. You're trying to fight. It
00:46:15.480
completely takes you off your game as opposed to if you walk in and the 45 pound dumbbells are
00:46:20.720
exactly where they're supposed to be. You're organized. You're ready. You pick them up and
00:46:24.240
you start what you're doing. There are no distractions. So if you think of that in all
00:46:28.320
areas of your life, how important is it to be organized, to be detailed? So if you're
00:46:32.920
the leader sweeping the floors and setting the tone for organization, your people are
00:46:37.300
going to do the same, which means the efficiency of that company, the efficiency of the follow
00:46:41.460
through and the elimination of distractions allows people to perform. Yeah. And the thing
00:46:45.300
is about what you just said, that's so true is that you've got to attach a meaning behind
00:46:50.940
a task. A good leader will, will, will tell people what to do and then also explain why
00:46:56.840
it's important. Okay. A bad leader will just say, go clean the fucking toilet. I'll say,
00:47:02.020
go clean the fucking toilet because what if a customer comes in here and we're selling nutrition
00:47:06.940
products and they come and look at our toilet and it's got fucking poo stains on the inside
00:47:11.900
of it and dribbles of pee because you guys are disgusting, filthy fucking animals and can't
00:47:16.700
clean up after yourself. And they take a picture of it and then they post a picture of it on social
00:47:20.980
media and say, Hey, I just went into this nutrition store. Look how fucking nasty their bathroom
00:47:25.580
is. You think that's going to have a bad effect on our business? So is this fair to say, Andy,
00:47:29.840
that in your mind, a good leader is not just a good manager, but is also a teacher? Yeah,
00:47:34.040
absolutely. Absolutely. That's a fabulous point. Yeah. You can't just point and say, go sweep the
00:47:38.460
floor. You got to say similar to what Ben just said. You got to say, Hey, look, and this is
00:47:43.380
what I tell our guys around here. I said, look, you never know. We're a pretty public
00:47:47.360
in the public eye company. We have people who, which is still weird to me, but we have people
00:47:52.660
who are fans of first form, like they're fans of a nutrition company. People stop by here and they
00:47:57.040
want to see what's going on. They want to see the operation. I never know who's going to come in
00:48:00.980
today. I don't know who's coming in the front door today. It could be if our, if somebody comes in
00:48:06.040
here and our warehouse looks like dog shit and they want to go look at it, what am I going to tell
00:48:10.520
them? You know? So I have to attach a meaning to the task, like why it's important. You know,
00:48:16.200
don't be the guy who just says sweep the floor, clean the toilet. These are your tasks because
00:48:20.360
people hate it. But, but what they don't hate and what they will learn to love is the meaning
00:48:25.320
behind the little things that you do. If you could attach a meaningful meaning that they can
00:48:30.260
understand why it's important to do these things that would otherwise be, you know, pointless,
00:48:34.740
you know, okay. Um, then you have an inspired worker versus somebody who's just doing something
00:48:41.780
to not get in trouble. You know what I mean? Now you have somebody who takes pride in what
00:48:46.720
they do versus somebody who's just doing things to get a paycheck. Now you have a culture.
00:48:55.280
I have, uh, I have something very good to follow that I was reading. I was reading, uh, or I am
00:49:00.720
reading the dude's guide to manhood written by Darren. I forget his name. Yeah. So I was just
00:49:07.280
reading it last night. He's a local pastor here in St. Louis. Yeah. Yeah. Out of St. Louis. But I'm
00:49:11.560
reading that book right now. And I was actually, I take a bunch of notes on my phone, but, uh,
00:49:16.680
I wrote down last night, if we are to cultivate disciplined hearts, we must also create systems
00:49:21.960
of discipline, the sweeping, the sweeping of the sheds, the cleaning of the toilets, all that stuff.
00:49:26.440
It all makes sense. I mean, doing, having all these discipline systems in place, it cultivates
00:49:31.220
that discipline heart. I mean, all, you know, is that standard, right? I mean, when somebody comes
00:49:35.900
in and you know, somebody who's right below you, but they're training somebody new, they don't know
00:49:41.520
the difference because that's what you've been. No, it is different. Here's the two, here's the two
00:49:44.920
ways that conversation can go. All right. Let's say I hire somebody in new. All right. The conversation
00:49:50.780
and I have a guy training the new guy. All right. So it's me. Take me out of the equation. I've
00:49:55.080
got, uh, Tyler who's worked with me for a number of years, training a new guy. The conversation
00:49:59.560
can go two ways. If you did it properly, it's going to go like this. Hey, this is how we clean
00:50:06.060
the toilet. This is why we clean the toilet because people come in here. It's a public
00:50:10.140
place. It needs to be clean. They need to have a good impression. This is how it relates
00:50:14.040
to our business and your performance and your growth as an individual and part of this
00:50:17.460
company. Tyler will explain that to the new guy. Now, if I did a bad job as a leader, Tyler's
00:50:22.620
going to go and he's going to tell the guy this, Hey, we cleaned the toilet because Andy
00:50:26.700
fucking says so. And if you don't clean it, he's going to fucking freak out. Absolutely.
00:50:31.480
And that's the difference. But, but that's, we're talking about something that is so simple
00:50:35.660
as cleaning the toilet. But if you've been, you can inspire people to clean the fucking
00:50:40.600
toilet. If you attach the proper meaning to it and they understand why they're doing something.
00:50:46.160
When I was playing football and I never played in college or anything, but when high school,
00:50:50.120
I used to fucking hate conditioning. I, and I'm sure you guys don't love it, but the point
00:50:56.860
is I hated it. And you know what I hated more than anything is when the coaches wouldn't
00:51:01.780
tell you how much shit you had to do. Okay. When the coach tells me how much I have to do,
00:51:06.580
Hey, you're going to do 20 fucking gassers. I'm like, all right, I'm down with 20. Let's
00:51:11.300
fucking do it. Yeah. But when they just let you keep going and going and going and going
00:51:14.560
and going and didn't attach a meaning to it, like, Hey, we're going to do 20 gassers
00:51:18.740
because we got fucking DeSmet High School coming to Vianney where I played and we're
00:51:23.480
going to beat their fucking asses this week. And that's why you're going to do 20 versus
00:51:27.900
you're going to do 20. And I'm not going to tell you why, or I'm not going to tell you
00:51:31.920
how many you did. You know, they used to drive me crazy. Yeah. So dude, employees are the
00:51:37.300
same way. Vision drives behavior. Yes. Exactly. Elaborate on that, please. So vision drives
00:51:43.260
behavior. So what Andy's saying is, is a coach has to say, Hey, don't just go run this.
00:51:47.440
You have to say the reason why we're going to run this is because we're going to come
00:51:50.460
together as a team. We're going to unite. We're going to fight. We're going to go to battle
00:51:53.840
because we are absolutely going to take it to our opponent on Saturday night. Once a team
00:51:58.280
can see the vision, then when you follow that up by saying, okay, here's how we break it
00:52:02.620
down today. If we do this tomorrow, if we do this in practice, then that vision will come
00:52:08.520
true. The vision is going to drive the behavior. Right. Which goes back to my point of being the
00:52:13.040
number one salesman in your company. It's selling the vision. It's selling the purpose.
00:52:16.840
It's selling the meaning behind the seemingly meaningless shit. You know what I mean? That's
00:52:22.420
what a good leader does. A good leader sells the meaning behind the insignificant, seemingly
00:52:28.020
meaningless shit that you're required to do to win.
00:52:31.080
There's actually, yeah, you're not going to be surprised to know this, but there's actually
00:52:33.860
hard science behind what you're saying because there's a, there's a psychologist.
00:52:37.720
His name is, I just wing every, I'm just making this shit up. I know you don't, you don't realize
00:52:42.720
that all the scientists in the world agree with you, but there's a, there's a psychologist
00:52:45.300
named Robert. There's a psychologist named Robert Cialdini and he's got all sorts of books
00:52:51.180
about persuasion and influence. And he's got a book called Yes. And he talks about how there
00:52:55.740
are all sorts of studies that prove that, um, you are 90% more likely to get somebody to
00:53:02.440
comply with what you're asking them. If you tell them why, or you say, or you use the reason
00:53:07.960
because or the word because I read a book one time. Um, and I cannot remember the book
00:53:13.500
and I, I cannot remember the book, what it was. And I think it was a Gittimer or a Godin
00:53:19.860
book, but it might've been a Vaynerchuk book. Um, but they use this example of these bricklayers.
00:53:27.260
Okay. And the bricklayers, they, they use the example of, um, a guy, you have two bricklayers.
00:53:34.580
Okay. And you have a wall that needs to be built that's three foot high and it's, it's
00:53:40.120
never ending. There's never an end to this wall. So they come to work their entire life
00:53:44.340
every day and they build the same wall every day. Okay. After 30 days, they come to work
00:53:50.640
and they say, you know what? I liked him. I'm thankful for having a job. I like this. You
00:53:55.400
know, it's good. After a year, it's like, Hey, this is getting a little bit boring. After
00:54:01.300
10 years, it's like, fuck, I'm wasting my life. I don't care how much I'm getting paid.
00:54:05.580
This sucks. Okay. Because you're not telling them what they're trying to accomplish and
00:54:11.500
you're making them do the same thing. Okay. So the example is take the same two bricklayers
00:54:16.120
and you give them a beautiful, uh, elegant cathedral to build. Okay. Something that they can look
00:54:23.020
at and they can say, wow, I fucking built that. All right. And that the whole purpose of
00:54:28.040
the, the whole thing I always took away from that conversation was give them a cathedral.
00:54:32.420
Okay. That's the theme I taught. I took from that story and I might not be explaining the
00:54:36.960
story properly, but in what book it is. And I'm sorry if you're listening and I butchered
00:54:40.460
your example, but the book, the example is one of the best I've ever heard because you,
00:54:46.100
if you give people something that inspires them to do great work, they will do great work.
00:54:52.940
Right. If you ask them to do mundane work and do the same thing over and over and over again,
00:54:59.040
without a purpose, they're not going to be happy. Right. And, and, and so you could take
00:55:03.760
those same two bricklayers and you could say, all right, we're going to build this wall. It's going
00:55:07.780
to be a thousand miles long. And the purpose is to help this drainage so that the farmer's field
00:55:14.300
doesn't become flooded and they can grow crops. And then our village won't starve. And now you have a
00:55:20.460
totally different mindset amongst the people working for you. Okay. Yeah. They're doing the
00:55:25.240
same action, but now they, now they come to work and they're like, fuck yeah, we got a purpose.
00:55:29.360
Right. We've got something that, that, that we need to accomplish, you know? So just by attaching
00:55:34.760
a meaning to your, to the things that you need, and it can't be a bullshit meeting, you know,
00:55:40.200
don't treat your employees like they're stupid because a lot of them are probably smarter than you.
00:55:43.960
That's the reality. The smartest guy is not always the boss. Um, I know I'm not the smartest guy in
00:55:48.620
our building, but yeah, Tyler is definitely, see the guy, the guy who raised his hand and says
00:55:53.960
Hey, listen, I don't want to hijack the conversation, but a couple of things we want to
00:56:02.760
cover a couple more, uh, topics. And I know that we want to be sensitive to the fact that Will has to
00:56:07.680
get to, uh, to working out. But one of the things I want to do is add an, add another layer to this
00:56:12.380
conversation, which is that we've been talking about leading a team and you guys have been really
00:56:17.220
good about, you know, talking about the issues of leading by example, holding yourselves accountable.
00:56:22.560
And so it's all about what you, you, you can do. But I want to, I want to introduce this whole issue
00:56:27.840
of, of your team and the fact that let's face it, your teams, I mean, Andy, you've got like 200 guys
00:56:33.160
on your, in your company. Your teams are comprised of people who have very different dispositions,
00:56:39.080
very different personalities. And so one of the things I want to throw out there is how do you
00:56:43.120
motivate, uh, different people with different personalities? I know somebody like coach K or
00:56:47.860
John Wooden would say that he, there's a certain kind of person that you don't call out in front
00:56:52.320
of everybody because their personality is going to shut down. Whereas maybe for other people that
00:56:56.440
would work and that would motivate them. But I, I want to know what are the standard things that you
00:57:00.820
have found that really motivate people? Um, you know, the teams that you work with.
00:57:06.280
I, I, I'll answer that because I struggled that and you guys could chime in, but just let me handle that
00:57:10.780
off the top. Dude, I struggle with that for a long time. You know, I, I grew up in like you guys have
00:57:16.840
heard, you know, the first 10 years of business, I kind of wasted because I chased money. Um, so I
00:57:22.140
always assumed that people were motivated by money and it caused me a lot of problems. Um, and then I
00:57:27.520
figured out certain people are motivated by money. Certain people are motivated by accomplishing things.
00:57:33.300
Certain people are motivated by contributing. Um, and they're happy to contribute. They don't need to
00:57:37.440
be the center of attention. They don't need to be the highest paid guy, but there's two things that
00:57:42.680
I have learned in my experience that will keep people motivated above all other things. And if
00:57:48.000
you can corner these two things and make them part of your leadership skillset, you're going to be very
00:57:54.080
successful and you're going to deal with a lot less headache. Anybody who runs a team or manages people
00:58:00.400
will tell you it is the hardest job in the world. So trust me when I tell you this, that these two
00:58:05.360
things will motivate 99.99% of individuals on a team. Number one, identify the purpose and the goal.
00:58:16.180
We've been touching on that here a little bit, but number one, always speak towards your purpose.
00:58:22.440
Don't speak towards your dollars. Don't speak towards the money that you're going to make.
00:58:26.300
Don't, while some people might be motivated by it, by motivated by that, other people get turned
00:58:31.560
off by that. Okay. Which is a whole nother deal. You shouldn't get turned off by making money. But
00:58:36.160
the point is you could capture everybody by speaking to purpose, no matter how money motivated,
00:58:43.260
no matter how recognition motivated, no matter how gratitude motivated people are, everybody can get
00:58:51.720
behind, let's go out and kick some fucking ass. Okay. And so when you define your mission to define
00:58:58.720
your purpose, you can capture everybody, not just the people who are motivated by X or Y or Z.
00:59:05.300
Okay. So one, define your purpose and speak in terms of accomplishing your purpose all the time,
00:59:12.500
not 80% of the time, all the time, all your communication should be geared towards this is
00:59:17.760
our goal. We're all on the same team. What do we have to do to get to that fucking goal? Okay.
00:59:22.640
Number two, be appreciative of the efforts that your team are putting in. Okay. Say, thank you.
00:59:32.940
All right. A lot of people reward people. They think that they can just reward them with cash prize or
00:59:38.020
money or a raise. And, you know, one thing I had a hard time understanding as a business owner was
00:59:43.840
that sometimes, you know, that doesn't even mean anything to people. Some people are just happy where
00:59:49.000
they are financially and they are much more responsive to you. Just saying, look at them
00:59:54.840
dead in the eye and shaking their hand and say, dude, thank you so much for doing a great job for
00:59:59.760
us. Thank you for the effort that you're putting in. You know, when you do that and you make it
01:00:04.620
genuine and you really mean it, dude, that means more to people than any amount of money you could
01:00:08.820
ever fucking pay them period. So defining your purpose, speaking in terms of your purpose and
01:00:14.280
always show an appreciation for your team, even when you lose, even when you lose. Now,
01:00:19.780
if someone goes out there and they, and you lose because, you know, people aren't putting the effort
01:00:25.080
in, you go, you don't go out there and thank them for not putting the effort in, but let's say you
01:00:29.680
got the one guy who's working his ass off and you just got done chewing the rest of the fuckers out.
01:00:34.100
Take that one guy and you walk over to him and say, Hey man, I know you're doing your job. Thank you
01:00:38.020
so much for doing what you need to do. It doesn't go unnoticed. And that's very powerful,
01:00:42.220
you know? So always be mindful of the effort that people are putting in because dude,
01:00:47.640
the reality is, is these people are the people that drive your business. They're the people who
01:00:52.020
allow you to get the credit. You know, I'll add a third thing in there too. You know, um,
01:00:58.980
I just said, get the credit. You know, I get a lot of credit personally for our business that I don't
01:01:03.980
fucking deserve and our team deserves it. And there's a saying that, uh, and I think it was,
01:01:10.120
I heard it from Stuart Scott the first time. So I don't know where he heard it from, but,
01:01:14.360
um, it was, you know, when things go wrong, you use I, when things go right, you use we.
01:01:21.000
So sharing the credit and giving the credit to your team when you guys fucking win is a huge deal.
01:01:27.820
It's huge. It's the same thing as saying thank you on an individual level, you know? Um, because
01:01:33.280
as the business owner, you're going to likely get the credit anyway, but what, I don't know,
01:01:38.300
a personal pet peeve of mine are the business owners that try to have all the fucking spotlight
01:01:41.620
and they act like their team doesn't exist. Right. It's like, dude, you're not fucking fooling
01:01:46.280
anybody or the business owners that throw people under the bus. I mean that, I don't know, it's,
01:01:50.360
it's annoying. Yeah. You know, to me personally, but the point is, you know, speak with purpose,
01:01:56.720
define your purpose, always talk in terms of purpose, always show gratitude and always give credit
01:02:01.980
to your team. You know, those three things you could bring in everybody, you know,
01:02:06.620
you don't have to worry so much about how is this person motivated versus how is this person
01:02:11.260
like, you know, people are surprised. We don't have HR person here. You know, I don't need an
01:02:15.460
HR person because I fucking make sure that everybody's inspired that works here. You know,
01:02:19.980
I make sure that every single person wants to come here. You know, people don't, we don't even,
01:02:24.700
we don't have required hours here. We don't have, you got to get here at this time, leave at this
01:02:28.720
time. Dude, it's, it's not uncommon for these guys to be here till eight or nine o'clock at night.
01:02:32.380
I don't ask them to do that. Why do they do that? Cause they want to fucking win. You know,
01:02:37.520
they're on the team, man. They want to win. And, and, and people always love to win. So when you
01:02:44.400
talk about how to bring people together in terms of culture and inspiring and how to get people on
01:02:50.220
the same page, you know, speak in terms of winning, you know, speak in terms of purpose,
01:02:56.920
speak in terms of, of don't speak in terms of the fucking $5 an hour raise I'm going to give you.
01:03:01.300
I don't give a fuck about that. Well, well, what do you care? Yeah. I was going to say
01:03:05.600
about the team winning or do you care about you getting a fucking highlight on ESPN? I already
01:03:10.480
know that answer. Yeah. The team winning for sure. I think one thing that's interesting on all the
01:03:14.940
things you're talking about, the cathedral, the wall, the, this and that you will, you always start
01:03:20.100
with purpose and stuff coming from why, you know, Simon Sinek, you know, what? Yeah. His golden circle
01:03:26.720
or whatever. Everybody, every, you know, football team business, they know what they do. They know
01:03:31.120
what they are. Oh, I'm going to play football. We're going to go out here and play football and
01:03:34.300
win. Right. Everybody knows what we got to do. Everybody, everybody knows how we're going to
01:03:38.380
do it. Everybody knows the strategy, but when you sell people on why that's, you know, that's kind of
01:03:42.240
what, that's kind of what drives people in the long for the longterm. Cause if you don't know why
01:03:46.520
you're going to, you're going to go by your feelings eventually, and you're going to fall short of
01:03:49.860
your goal. Cause that little voice from day one, very motivated with what they're writing out
01:03:54.920
strategy wise verse day 100, you know, will, there's going to be completely different minds
01:04:00.240
unless you have this vision in mind, this cathedral in mind. You constantly take a minute to reflect
01:04:05.180
on what that is. Absolutely. Cause otherwise that hundred day will is out there running his
01:04:09.000
fucking gassers. He's like, fuck this. Yeah. Yeah. I don't want to do this shit. Why am I doing
01:04:13.580
this shit? Exactly. And that's where, that's where your vision and your why comes into play. You know,
01:04:17.860
Will Smith, he talks about, you don't set out to build a wall. You have this wall in mind,
01:04:21.720
but each day you lay this brick as perfectly as you can. But cause his story, his dad trashed a
01:04:29.040
building and made him and his brother build this shop for him. But he only made him lay like one
01:04:34.180
brick a day or something like that. But that's what Will Smith, you know, I got that from Will
01:04:37.300
Smith. Yeah. You, you lay a brick as perfectly as you can. And then you have a wall or a cathedral
01:04:42.740
or whatever, you know, you see the vision, the result of mine. I love that. Dude, when I have kids,
01:04:46.940
I'm making them build a fucking wall. We're moving out to the farm, dude. I'm going to,
01:04:52.440
I'm, I'm being dead serious, dude. I'm going to come up with this fucking plan. I'm going to do
01:04:56.420
the same thing. What an awesome lesson that is. Yeah. And then his dad told him, don't you ever
01:05:00.360
say that you can't, you know, somebody says you can't do something. You know, he gets that from
01:05:03.780
that pursuit of happiness scene where he tells his son, don't ever let somebody tell you you can't
01:05:07.660
do something. He gets that from, uh, his dad making them do that stuff. Cause they had to build this
01:05:11.440
shop and they did it on their own. But now he said at times they hated it, but you know,
01:05:15.720
each day you want to lay a brick as perfectly as you can. And that's all, I think that just goes
01:05:19.520
with all that. Well, that's, that's, that's a, that's a good analogy. You know, you should look
01:05:23.180
at your days as the brick. Absolutely. You know what I'm saying? Yeah, absolutely. And when you put
01:05:28.300
enough perfect days, AKA bricks together, you build great shit. You build this vision you have in mind
01:05:35.760
and you know, you've got to lay this brick that's tailored toward that wall you have, you know,
01:05:39.860
meaning you have a vision, you know, my vision being an NFL linebacker is, or do my days look
01:05:46.360
like what an NFL linebacker does? I mean, am I, you know, doing this out there, working out,
01:05:51.480
you know, eating right, uh, doing all these right things, reading, you know, in my mind,
01:05:55.280
in my opinion, reading and being, you know, trying to learn new education, education yourself in that
01:05:59.920
mold of what, what a hall of fame linebacker would do in a day on a, yeah, on a, yeah. Am I doing these
01:06:06.200
things or am I playing video games or am I doing this? Like that's when you've got to be truly
01:06:10.280
honest with yourself. Are you doing these things? Because that's how I feel like that's how you,
01:06:13.820
that's when you start to grow. When you can be honest with yourself, what do you want to be?
01:06:17.760
Who do you want to be now? Is that person living that life day to day? Right. And if he's not
01:06:22.780
there, there, there's where you find the problem and you fix it. You write out, you write out your
01:06:27.600
standard or your plan and really, really, I never heard of that before. I like that a lot.
01:06:31.740
So this is one of the reasons why I can bond so well with the two of you is because sitting
01:06:36.080
back, listening to the commentary, everything, both of you are saying, you have the choice to
01:06:41.040
be intentional, to choose what it takes to follow through on all of these initiatives.
01:06:45.780
Not one time, Andy said, if you lose, here's how you react. But you didn't say, I get up there and
01:06:50.400
go win, win, win, win, win. And Will's not saying win, win, win. It's all, it's focusing on being
01:06:54.680
intentional of the things that you can control, which will drive progress towards what that big goal
01:07:01.560
and that big vision is. And I think the more that you listeners, you are choosing to be
01:07:06.440
intentional with the things that you can control. You can control passion. You can control effort.
01:07:11.960
You can control the attitude. You can control the focus. You can control whether or not you
01:07:15.840
choose to connect to the why, the purpose, why you're going to take action. It's all about being
01:07:19.720
intentional. Great leaders help cause their people to recognize what can I do intentionally
01:07:25.660
today to drive progress forward. Example, Will Smith's dad, one brick at a time.
01:07:31.580
That's cool. Yeah. And I mean, it goes, you have a lot of stuff, your prize fighter day and all that,
01:07:35.980
you know, all it comes down to is creating a new standard, upping your standard. Nothing happens
01:07:42.220
without being intentional. We're not sitting here talking on a podcast without being intentional.
01:07:46.840
People listening, aren't trying to change their life without being intentional by listening to this
01:07:51.560
and then trying to put it into practice. Everything you do comes from intention and comes from
01:07:55.540
it all starts with a thought in mind. You know, I know on yours, you talked about how
01:07:59.960
correct me if I'm wrong, the word you haven't worked out or something for three weeks. And
01:08:04.700
you said, no matter what, the next day you're going to wake up and do this, but everybody's the
01:08:09.080
same and goes through the same stuff. You wake up and you don't want to get up and work out.
01:08:12.800
Nobody wants to do that today. I didn't want to get up earlier than I had to, to do a speed workout
01:08:17.540
because I had to fit, drive up here and do this. You wake up and you always want to hit the snooze
01:08:23.020
button and I'm guilty. I hit the snooze button at least twice. So I give myself two snoozes a day.
01:08:27.420
But, uh, but you, you wake up and you tell yourself why you're doing something, whether
01:08:32.440
that's, I write things on my phone and take a snapshot and put it as my lock screen, just so
01:08:36.260
I can remind myself why I'm doing something. Because again, day 100 will in training is way
01:08:41.460
different from day one. You know, you write out a diet and all this stuff. You're all motivated and
01:08:45.240
pumped up. You listen to Andy, maybe you're listening to this one. And now you're starting to be,
01:08:49.100
you know, motivated to do something or change something in your life. You need to write it
01:08:53.180
down and put it on paper because when the next month comes or a few weeks go by, you're not
01:08:58.120
going to want to do the same stuff because it's hard. You got to make it a habit to remind yourself
01:09:03.220
why you're doing things. Absolutely. And that's how that happens. I mean, you take this momentum
01:09:07.060
you have by listening to something or, you know, doing something right or anything. You need to write
01:09:11.660
it down, map out your strategy, how you're going to get there. And you need to recite it and review
01:09:15.720
it every day. Because if not, your feelings are going to succumb to, you know, all of these things
01:09:21.540
that you're trying to do. If we all live by our feelings, we'd sleep in every day. We'd eat cake
01:09:24.700
for breakfast and all that. But we have a standard for ourselves to, you know, live a certain way.
01:09:31.120
You have chosen a standard for yourself. Andy has chosen a standard for yourself. And I think that's
01:09:36.660
the difference for everybody listening. It's that moment in time when you choose a new standard.
01:09:41.180
See, it rolls off your tongue that way, Will, because you have chosen a lifestyle like that for a long,
01:09:45.420
long time. You have to make that a choice. It's got to be a choice. And it's not natural.
01:09:50.780
It's you choosing standards. You don't just wake up and just do what you do. You have created
01:09:54.800
standards based upon the mentors, the coaches, the teammates, the people that have been there
01:09:58.900
for you in the past. Right. And you just said it right there. It's not God-given. You're not born
01:10:03.080
with the genetics to think and choose to be coachable and all this stuff. It's literally a decision.
01:10:11.240
Yeah. I'm thankful looking back, knowing that I didn't know it at the time because I wasn't into
01:10:15.600
psychology as much as I am now. But subconsciously, always looking to be better.
01:10:20.660
Like, that's simple. If you can't do the easy things right as far as being coachable and always
01:10:25.000
trying to learn, that's easy information that's been written for millions of years. I mean,
01:10:28.800
it's out there. Literally go on YouTube. Guys come to me, you know, comp, guys I play with at
01:10:35.120
Nebraska, comp, what are some things that you did or what do you do? And I give them links and books to read.
01:10:40.180
I mean, it's not, this isn't something I made up and it's, I'm just born with, you know,
01:10:44.140
my body didn't think that way. It's just all this credit. I mean, I am, I, the way I live is just
01:10:49.320
by other people. Now you listen to your stuff, but it's all stuff I've just decided to sit down and
01:10:54.420
learn and be like, well, Tony Robbins has it figured out. Let's see, let's see, you know,
01:10:58.520
if I can put some things into practice. I listened to him and it's like, holy cow, like this,
01:11:03.080
I'm so motivated by the wrong things sometimes that you can literally rewire yourself by being
01:11:08.560
intentional with choosing to look at things a different way and then writing it out. It's
01:11:12.640
crazy. It's crazy. None of this is stuff I've came up with. You know, again, I'm not on here
01:11:16.380
saying I'm an expert. I've played one in my third year. What's awesome about what you're saying is
01:11:20.160
the humility in his, in, in his message. You know what I mean? Like, dude, this is the truth of where
01:11:25.780
I am. Exactly. Being honest with yourself. Absolutely. And, and, and also, you know, I can agree with
01:11:31.940
everything you're saying from a different aspect in terms of business. You know, right now we're
01:11:36.300
talking about building a great team. I get a lot of compliments on our culture, on our team,
01:11:40.800
on our internal culture and external culture, our ability to create fans of our brand and we're
01:11:45.820
selling fucking vitamins. Okay. Um, and you know, people are like, God, man, I don't know how you
01:11:52.400
do it. I don't know, blah, blah, blah. And they, they speak of it as if it's this thing that I have
01:11:56.660
or this thing that I know, right. It's not a thing that I knew or had. It's a thing that I chose
01:12:03.380
to study. It's a thing that I chose to put in my brain. It's the materials I chose to read.
01:12:10.080
It's the people I chose to listen to. Okay. And that's where people get off track because they
01:12:15.780
look at somebody like you and it's very easy to say, all right, here's Will Compton who plays the
01:12:21.940
NFL. He must be faster and stronger and smarter than, than me. Okay. Um, they look at somebody like
01:12:29.920
myself and they say, Oh, here's a guy who's running all these companies and doing all this
01:12:34.360
shit. And I think he must be smarter or work harder or no more than me. No, I just choose to
01:12:43.240
put the right shit in my brain and to study the right things that have created habits that have
01:12:48.960
allowed those processes to play out. And I've given them enough time, you know? And I think that's the
01:12:55.840
biggest mistake people make is they look at a guy like you or a guy like me or a guy like Ben who
01:13:02.280
goes around the world and speaks for a living. And they say he has something that I don't. And that's
01:13:07.500
not true. You have to go out and choose to cultivate those qualities in yourself. And, and, you know,
01:13:15.620
as corny as it sounds, I even feel corny saying, cause it's not my style, but dude, you really can go out
01:13:21.320
and learn the skills to be whatever it is you want to be, you know, and anything else that you tell
01:13:27.440
yourself is a fucking excuse period. Yeah. Tony Robbins says it's 20% mechanics, 80% psychology.
01:13:34.220
Yeah. I mean, you're just very, we're all just very conscious of being intentional with our actions.
01:13:39.320
Right. You know, when you do something wrong or, you know, when I would get reminded comp sweep the
01:13:44.780
sheds, what are you doing? Why are you leaving the weight room? You know, if Adam were to say,
01:13:47.760
Adam Hayward were to say that to me, you know, it sucks at the moment in time, like, like, damn,
01:13:51.600
he's calling me out right now. But in my mind, it's like, I know that's the right thing. So you
01:13:55.560
have two decisions. You've reframed yourself. Yeah. You can, you can sit there and say something
01:13:59.880
back on why you're going to walk out or you don't have time to do something or you just,
01:14:03.160
you know, you take your medicine, you go over there and start sweeping the sheds with them.
01:14:05.780
Yeah. It's like, it sucks that you're being called out in front of people, but you know,
01:14:09.840
you got two choices to make. People fail to realize the, you know, the adversities and things you've got to go
01:14:14.720
through to get. The more and more I talk to guys like you, like just guys in business or guys who
01:14:19.200
have been successful, high level athletics, dude, humility, the humility of the guys. And I'm
01:14:25.980
speaking like totally off the subject here, but the humility of the people that I talk to, it's such,
01:14:31.060
I think it's such, it's so much more of an important aspect to success than people realize.
01:14:37.520
I just, it opens up your ability to learn like what you're saying. It opens up your ability to accept
01:14:42.460
criticism or to be called out when you're not doing what you need to be doing. And instead of you being
01:14:47.040
like, man, screw you for saying that you're like, fuck me, you're right. I better get back there and do
01:14:51.780
it. You know, might be worth a whole podcast at some point. That's what I'm saying. Humility is, but it all
01:14:57.860
starts with being humble. It all starts with being able to accept the things that you don't know or accept
01:15:03.620
criticisms that are true. You know, today a popular term is haters. I got all these fucking haters.
01:15:08.960
Well, are they haters or are they telling the truth? You see what I'm saying? Everybody says
01:15:15.040
anything against anything that you say as a hater, but are they, or are they just trying to make you
01:15:20.020
better? And if you're somebody with the mindset that they're trying to make you better, you're
01:15:23.480
somebody who can be honest with yourself on critiquing your own daily routine. You should
01:15:28.560
be able to take some, even if someone's being a dick and they're, and they're going about the wrong
01:15:33.120
way of approaching you with it, you should be able to decipher their message and say, you know what?
01:15:37.500
Absolutely. Maybe that guy has a little bit of a point, you know, maybe he went way overboard,
01:15:42.240
but there's 10% of what he said was true. Right. And you're able to be like, you know,
01:15:46.500
there's, there's a little bit of truth to that on critiquing something, but you know,
01:15:49.540
you're so strong minded about it that that's not going to phase you, but it could, it could help
01:15:53.340
change something. Exactly. You take the negative and you make it, you make it help you get better.
01:15:57.420
Yeah. Right. Whether or not he's 90% wrong or not, you're able to see it. Oh, you know,
01:16:01.420
he's just messing with me. And then you're able to, you know, I know for, for me personally,
01:16:04.840
lay down at night and be like, man, maybe I could be doing something else. You know,
01:16:08.260
guys don't know that they, that they influence me all the time. You know, when I see Kenan Robinson
01:16:12.820
doing extra things, um, in the, in the training room, the rehab room or yeah, you're not walking
01:16:17.460
up to him and saying, Hey dude, you're inspiring me. Right. But dude, in your head, in my mind,
01:16:21.320
when I'm like, Oh shit, I'm, I just got done rolling out. I was about to go in the locker room
01:16:24.500
and I'm thinking, yeah, I need to start doing more. You never know who you're inspiring.
01:16:28.140
You never know. You never know. You never know who you're inspiring. And one thing that, uh, I love,
01:16:33.800
there's a book called the Lombardi rules, which is one of my leadership books that I make everybody
01:16:38.000
read who's in a leadership role. Do you know who read it? Or excuse me, who, uh, wrote it? Um, it's,
01:16:43.240
it's like a compilation of Lombardi stories. His son actually put it together. Okay. Um, it is
01:16:48.500
freaking awesome. Uh, excuse me. It is fucking awesome. We're not going to put this out here on the show.
01:16:53.460
I've been, I've been running, rubbing off on you. Yeah, I know. Jeez, Vaughn. It's a really cool,
01:16:58.460
awesome book. You know, I should say, I have some people. Everybody go read a fucking book.
01:17:05.080
All right. The Lombardi rules. One of the things he says in there is that you act in Tony Robbins
01:17:10.520
says this shit too. And there's actually a boiler room scene. If you want to talk about three different
01:17:15.540
ways to hear this message, the movie boiler room and Ben Affleck talks about act as if, okay.
01:17:22.660
Tony Robbins talks about act as if like act as if you are the greatest of all time.
01:17:28.740
Absolutely. Like what you're saying about framing yourself into these situations of what hall of
01:17:35.320
fame linebackers do. I want to do those things. It's, it's, it's a term that, that, and Vince
01:17:40.640
Lombardi says to act as if, except for his follow, his, the way he follows up with is if your team is
01:17:46.900
always watching you at, if you want to be a great leader, do what you would do if your entire team
01:17:53.260
was watching you and do that all the time. That's one of the best pieces of leadership advice that
01:17:57.600
I've ever come across because then no one can ever point at you and say, Hey, I saw that one time,
01:18:04.920
man, you know, you put that shit in the trash can and it was full and you just stuffed it down instead
01:18:08.840
of taking it out. I saw that. Yeah. No one can ever say that about you. You know what I mean?
01:18:12.820
So you have to act as if the whole world's watching all the time. And I think that's
01:18:17.400
something that, uh, Tony Robbins talks about it in terms of acting as if, uh, I think he even talks
01:18:24.240
about it in the same terms as, as if you're a celebrity and everybody sees everything that you
01:18:27.980
do, because when you act as if that you, okay, so let's talk, we're talking about leadership and
01:18:33.620
teamwork, right? When you act as if you're the world's greatest leader all the time, you eventually
01:18:39.680
become a great leader because you're forcing yourself to go through the motions of what
01:18:44.740
that leader would do or what that hall of fame linebacker would do, or what that professional
01:18:51.040
speaker would do. That's world renowned, you know, or what that CEO would do, you know, or whatever it
01:18:57.000
is that you do, you have to frame yourself and pretend as if, and almost trick yourself into acting
01:19:04.100
as if, because when you act as if the rest of the world kind of forms around you and eventually you
01:19:09.940
become that. That's all. I always, when I, when I share, you know, they're called I am statements,
01:19:14.340
right? So it's an answer to a, who are you question. So ask yourself, what's going to drive
01:19:18.720
you more? If I say, who are you, are you going to be driven more by telling me the things you've
01:19:22.660
already accomplished in your life? Are you going to be driven more by the things you believe that
01:19:26.920
you can achieve with the talents that you have? It's exactly what you're talking about.
01:19:29.600
Right. Yeah. Yeah. Go ahead. I think it's awesome because you talked about, you kind of trick
01:19:34.380
yourself. That's, that's kind of what I say sometimes when I'm trying to explain this crazy
01:19:38.660
stuff that I talk about psychology wise, but you basically brainwash yourself into thinking
01:19:42.980
something different. You know, Muhammad Ali, he would always say he's the greatest. He's the champ.
01:19:47.760
He's number one. Right. His name of speech before a foreman, you know, I know all of you got him
01:19:52.660
picked and everybody laughed. Everybody made fun of him. Yeah. So let's, let's, I got to bring this up
01:19:57.740
because this is important because this is an entrepreneurial podcast. I got to stop right
01:20:02.300
there and use this as a good parallel or something. You know, when we were building our business,
01:20:07.000
like a lot of guys were like, Hey, nobody believes in me. Nobody's going to believe in my vision.
01:20:11.560
Nobody's going to believe in what our company is trying to achieve. Okay. That is fucking normal.
01:20:16.740
People are going to not believe you, dude. I once had a guy tell me in my meeting that our retail
01:20:23.380
stores would net, they were doing like $20,000 a month. And I, I set the goal the next month for
01:20:28.740
40 grand. Okay. And the guys looked at me like I was fucking crazy. There were 16 people in that
01:20:33.720
room. There's only one person that was still in, that was in that room. That's still with me today.
01:20:38.300
And I told him we were going to do 40,000 that month. And the guy looked me in the fucking eye and
01:20:41.960
he said, Andy, there's no fucking way these stores will ever do $40,000 a month ever now, dude,
01:20:49.620
I've got stores do $10,000 every fucking day. Okay. Per day. You know where that motherfucker is?
01:20:58.300
He's selling some fucking multi-level marketing shit. Cause I see him on Facebook. All right.
01:21:04.900
People are not going to believe in your vision. People are not going to believe in what your vision
01:21:11.700
is. They are going to laugh. When Muhammad Ali says, I am the fucking greatest people. He got chastised.
01:21:18.680
People raked him over to fucking coals. They said, look at this cocky dude. He's full of shit. This
01:21:23.640
guy really thinks he's the greatest. And guess where he is now? He's the fucking greatest.
01:21:28.800
And arguably one of the greatest athletes of all time, not just boxer athletes ever. So I was
01:21:33.640
going to bring up, but the point, but the point is here guys, is that dude, your team, when you're
01:21:39.020
in the beginning stages, you're going to, you're not, let's say you're a guy starting out and you're
01:21:42.700
only doing a couple hundred thousand dollars a year in business or less. All right. You're very
01:21:46.840
small. You're just getting going and you've got five or six guys around and you're trying to build
01:21:50.840
this culture. Dude, that is the hardest time. If you're in that position right now, you are in the
01:21:55.900
hardest time in business that you ever fucking be in. Okay. What you're going through now is so
01:22:02.140
fucking hard that you can't comprehend how much easier it is to do what I do now versus what you're
01:22:10.540
doing now. Cause I've done both. And what I do now is fucking easy because they see the big
01:22:15.560
buildings. They see me drive to a meeting and a fucking Rolls Royce. They see me wear a $70,000
01:22:21.340
watch. Okay. They, it's easy to fucking believe now, but when you're where you are and I'm speaking
01:22:27.800
to the guy who's just getting started, nobody is going to fucking believe in you. Nobody's going to
01:22:33.400
say, Hey, I'm selling, you're selling lemonade and I'm going to grow into the greatest fucking
01:22:38.060
lemonade company that ever existed. People are going to fucking laugh. Okay.
01:22:44.040
Expect that you're the people that you have working for you. You have one person out of your
01:22:51.320
group that might stay with you. Okay. Expect that expect resistance from your own team. It's going to
01:22:58.480
happen. And it's easy to throw rocks at something that's not, that doesn't exist. But as long as you
01:23:03.720
can become and cultivate good leadership qualities, you could speak with purpose, you could, you could
01:23:08.580
speak with gratitude and you can sell your vision to your team. And you can get at least one guy to
01:23:14.560
believe in you. That will turn into two guys and that will turn into four guys and that will turn
01:23:18.800
into eight guys. Okay. And that's all you need to do. So just bring, like you said in the beginning,
01:23:24.760
one guy with you, bring one teammate with you. Real quick. So there's just one more story that I,
01:23:29.280
I had to get in here and share about I am statements and the importance of it. And it has to deal with
01:23:34.540
the example of the guy sitting across the table from me. So Mr. Will Compton, you know, some of you
01:23:39.580
heard on the last podcast, I talked about at five years old, Will was telling himself, I am an NFL
01:23:44.860
football player. And now we know that he is, you know, when he was playing football by himself out in
01:23:50.220
front of the house. But here's a story that I don't think is really private anymore. And he's shared it
01:23:55.000
and we've shared the stage. So I'm going to share it with all of you because it's pretty powerful. But when we
01:23:58.540
first met, he was in that undrafted free agent status, just having graduated from Nebraska,
01:24:05.340
getting ready to report to the Washington Redskins training camp. And he started telling himself,
01:24:09.680
I am a linebacker with the Washington Redskins, which was something he was telling himself before
01:24:14.060
that was a reality. And getting invited to training camp as an undrafted free agent is not being on the
01:24:18.600
team. And I'll never forget, I was pulling into a lunch meeting and I get this text message from Will.
01:24:24.540
And the text message says, do you drink coffee? And I thought, well, what kind of a bizarre text
01:24:29.020
message? Do I drink coffee? And I responded back, yeah, I drink coffee. And he says, here's a great
01:24:33.580
post-workout drink. And he says, take whey protein, honey and coffee and mix them all together. He says,
01:24:40.640
it's great for post-workouts. And I said, okay, I guess I'll try it. And then he responds back,
01:24:46.140
that is what a linebacker with the Washington Redskins drinks. So it was that point in time
01:24:51.780
when Will had made the choice, you know, he bought in, right? So like what Andy's been talking about,
01:24:55.560
it's seeing that vision. He believed he was a linebacker with the Washington Redskins. And
01:25:00.060
now here we sit, he's getting ready to report to his third training camp. And there was a stint last
01:25:05.100
year, three games where he led the NFL in tackles. So it's about believing no matter what anybody else
01:25:10.600
thinks, believing in what's possible for you and putting the work behind it.
01:25:13.820
I love it. And guys, that's just my, that's just my experience. I mean, that's just an example.
01:25:18.720
Again, not on here claiming to be an expert, but these are real life experiences that, you know,
01:25:23.680
I've put into practice. And honestly, I wrote that example because Ben had challenged me to
01:25:28.820
write that example. I know Ben remembers me saying, you know, we were writing my I am statement. I just
01:25:34.000
wanted to say, I am a, an NFL linebacker. And he was like, why would you, why would you want to do
01:25:38.700
that? And I was like, I mean, you never know what'll happen. I can, you know, get cut and somebody
01:25:42.540
else can pick me up. He's like, why even think about that? He's like, say you're with the
01:25:46.380
Washington Redskins. And, you know, again, just like everybody, everybody goes through
01:25:50.300
their doubts and their, you know, their self, you know, their self doubts on thinking, you
01:25:53.980
know, they're not good enough. And, you know, I was the same way. I still am the same way.
01:25:57.320
You know, you get nervous about everything, but you know, you buy into it. Like Ben said,
01:26:01.240
I bought into it and, you know, I told myself that, you know, every day. And that was the first
01:26:07.260
year I got cut. I was on the practice squad. You know, I got cut and picked back up on the
01:26:10.760
practice squad and get activated until the very last game of the season. But I continued
01:26:14.240
to tell myself that, you know, whether I was on the practice squad or not, I knew one day,
01:26:19.440
you know, my hard work would pay off, you know, doing the daily disciplines and things like
01:26:23.480
that. But, you know, it's not, I just said that. And then ultimately it happened. I mean,
01:26:27.020
I didn't want to say it. Then I challenged my, Ben challenged me to say it. I said it, I got
01:26:31.720
cut, picked back up for the practice squad. I continued to say it. And, you know, now, you know,
01:26:36.620
fortunately I'm able to say, I got to live that experience. I have that same statement
01:26:40.580
on my notes and my, my iPhone. I have all the statements I've made before, but it's
01:26:44.940
crazy how that stuff works. Speak things into existence. And, you know, it's insane. It's
01:26:49.420
insane. Not only that, I'm going to challenge you right now because it's time to reframe.
01:26:54.940
You are a linebacker with the Redskins. Now it's time to be the greatest linebacker with
01:27:00.160
the Redskins. It's time to reframe that, you know, it's time to change your thinking from
01:27:05.440
making the team to being the best on the team. Right. When you're the best on the team,
01:27:10.420
then it's time to reframe and become the best in the league, you know, and that my
01:27:15.380
point in telling you that is to give an example and not only like I'm seriously
01:27:19.420
challenging you. No, I know you are. All right. I see the look in your eyes right now.
01:27:22.620
I can see Selah's eyes right now. Boy, there's some fire.
01:27:27.120
But my point is, in this, is this. That's, that's how you, that's how you become great.
01:27:33.800
And anybody listening now, once you, where people fail and where they fall off in
01:27:39.020
developing a team or becoming a leader is they get the small little goals and then
01:27:43.940
they stop trying to grow. They stop trying to progress and it becomes, okay, I'm a leader.
01:27:50.020
That's good enough. No, now it's time for you to become a great leader. Okay. And then when
01:27:55.900
you become a great leader and you accept that you're a great leader, it's time for you to
01:27:59.320
teach other people how to become great leaders. Absolutely. Okay. So it should always be the next
01:28:04.900
thing. The next thing for you is going to be the best linebacker on your team. You know?
01:28:10.080
Yeah. That's what you need to start telling yourself. And I know your buddies are listening
01:28:13.620
right now and they're going to give you shit because you're a humble dude. They're going
01:28:17.060
to say, Oh, Will, you think you're the fucking best? You know what? Sometimes you got to look
01:28:22.100
at him and say, damn right. I'm the fucking best. Yeah. Yeah. You know? And guys, the thing
01:28:26.180
is, you know, when you, when you have big goals like that, you know, it's going to, you're
01:28:30.940
going to, you're going to fail most of the time. I'm not saying that you're going to, I'm going to
01:28:34.800
fail or you're going to fail, but you fail, you fall short of it. But with that mindset,
01:28:39.620
you know, you're able to reframe and react to the next situation, you know, prepare for the next
01:28:45.000
situation. It doesn't work out. You know, your mindset, you've cultivated this discipline so much
01:28:49.020
that, you know, you don't see it as a failure, but you know, you got to look for it. There's another
01:28:53.640
opportunity out there. So, you know, you keep going about it. You might fall short. You're going to fall
01:28:58.440
short. That's what happens in business. I mean, you, that's right. What did you raise the first
01:29:01.420
day? Seven bucks. Seven bucks. And now it's so crazy to me hearing a hundred million. Then you
01:29:06.320
talk about 20 million. That ain't nothing, but that's just crazy to me. You know, you're going
01:29:10.200
to fail. You're, you're just going to fail. That's just going to happen. It might, you might fail in
01:29:14.380
the, in the specific subject you're in. So here's the point. We just talked about reframing where you
01:29:19.640
are to become better. You know, the minute we hit 20 million is the minute I said, dude, we're going to 40,
01:29:25.540
you know, and, and there's, there's a little bit of a, I don't even know what the proper word is,
01:29:33.900
but a paradox there to that. And people are like, Oh, well you must never enjoy anything. No. You know
01:29:40.340
what I enjoy? I enjoy the fucking progress, the fight for your real potential. That's right. I enjoy
01:29:45.580
the fucking fight. I enjoy the growth. I don't enjoy, I don't care about the cars. I don't care about
01:29:51.660
the money. I really don't. At this point in my life, I don't give a fuck about that. I care about
01:29:57.120
the progression of our employees. I care about the progression of our company. I care about
01:30:02.200
accomplishing the fucking goal. And that's, that's where, when you learn to love the fucking fight
01:30:08.280
and you learn to fight for the sake of winning the fight, that's when you become a great leader.
01:30:14.160
That's when you build a great culture. Absolutely. The alchemists love the desert. Yeah. But yeah,
01:30:20.360
no, I think so. So, so will. Yeah. Amazing. Yeah. So, um, last night I, my wife watched a movie with
01:30:28.480
me. It's one of my favorite movies. I actually named my dog after this movie and, uh, I finally
01:30:32.880
got her to watch Rudy with me. Oh yeah. You know? So I was just thinking how cool would it be if you
01:30:38.260
found a way to help me walk on as a 40 something guy with the Washington Redskins?
01:30:44.580
That's my point. Everybody laughs at your dreams. Yeah. Yeah. Everybody. You know what? That's my
01:30:52.700
new, I am state. The invincible part to that movie. You'll be the next Mark Wahlberg doing that movie
01:30:57.560
for you. Well, listen, this is great conversation and this has gone long and I'm sure people are
01:31:01.640
going to look at it and say, Oh my gosh, those guys were, you know, when they first see the,
01:31:05.180
the, the length of the podcast. What they don't realize is that we were going for two hours before
01:31:08.240
we were recording. I think we got another five or six minutes. Yes. But, but I do, I will. I hope
01:31:14.140
you could, I mean, dude, I hope you definitely plan on coming back and joining us. This has been
01:31:18.300
awesome. Oh hell. Yeah. Ben knows. I'll be back in a heartbeat. My girlfriend knows too. She's all
01:31:23.080
I've been talking about. So that's awesome. But we are going to wrap up with one. I want to throw
01:31:26.840
one last question out there and that is, you know, on this leadership issue and being part of a team
01:31:32.320
and what it means to lead a team. And you, you touched on a little bit earlier, just a second ago,
01:31:37.100
Will, but what happens, you know, in a business context, obviously Andy can attack this question,
01:31:43.040
but in a business context, what do you do when a member of your team, not because of laziness,
01:31:47.160
but because of just human failure, they screw up, they do something wrong. And Will,
01:31:53.320
what do you do on the field when you have a teammate who is an incredibly committed player,
01:31:58.920
but they drop the ball, they do something wrong. All right, let's close with a discussion on that
01:32:04.180
issue. I think it's a great defining quality amongst good leaders and bad leaders, great leaders,
01:32:09.380
good leaders. And, and believe me, I have a long way to go. I mean, I wouldn't, I would say I know
01:32:15.140
the minimum enough to speak about it in terms of hopefully providing some sort of information.
01:32:20.080
I've got a long way to go, but one quality trait that I've seen amongst great leaders and poor
01:32:27.160
leaders is their ability to handle teammates or employees that, that screw up. And the great
01:32:33.820
leaders always do the same and they look at it the same. And the poor ones always look at it the
01:32:37.880
same. The poor ones will usually fire somebody. They'll fire that person. They'll say, you fucked
01:32:42.620
up. Let's say they made it. And you're, you're running a business of a million dollars a year.
01:32:46.580
And they made a mistake. That's going to cost you $20,000. It's a big fucking deal. Okay.
01:32:51.960
They'll fire that person. All right. The great leader will pull that person in and they'll say,
01:32:58.640
you know, you fucked up. Right. And they're going to say, yeah, I'm so sorry. Blah, blah, blah. All right.
01:33:03.420
Stop. How'd you fuck it up? Well, I did blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. All right. Well, you know,
01:33:09.140
not to do that again. Right. You know why that costs us, it costs us $20,000. You understand that,
01:33:13.020
right? He's like, yes, I'm never going to do it again. And then you fucking reinforce the fact
01:33:17.440
that they're a quality member on the team and you give them their confidence because here's the
01:33:21.580
reality. That's valuable education for that person and for your company. So if you fire that person,
01:33:28.980
every time they make that $20,000 mistake, not only are you, are you going to cost yourself much
01:33:36.720
more in the long run because the people you bring in are going to come in and make that same mistake
01:33:40.720
over and over and over again, every time you fire them, but you're not allowing your company to learn
01:33:47.220
from that person's mistake. And you're not allowing, you're putting bindings on your employee's
01:33:55.780
ability to take initiative because they're going to be afraid to make mistakes. And when you're
01:33:59.760
afraid to make mistakes and will, you can lend yourself to this. When you're afraid to screw up
01:34:03.500
on the football field, are you playing at your best? No, not at all. Right. You attract it. You
01:34:08.040
want to play to not mess up while you're attracting that to yourself. That's all you're thinking about.
01:34:13.140
You're not able to focus on the task at hand. So what happens is you bind your whole company up
01:34:18.000
because everybody's afraid to not fuck up and you impede your ability to grow. So you have to have
01:34:22.560
compassion. You have to understand that people are going to screw up and you have to look at it
01:34:27.620
as their education when you're growing a company. Now, I mean, I, I would assume that if you have a
01:34:33.780
guy who's maybe you're his mentor on a football team, would you handle it the same? Yeah, absolutely.
01:34:39.580
I mean, obviously it's a shorter amount of time you got to talk to them or, you know, rally them around
01:34:45.980
you, but, you know, depending on who they are and you know what they're about, you know, first of all,
01:34:51.340
don't be an air repeater when you're an air repeater. That's when, you know, you got to
01:34:54.860
get, get in them a little more, you know, for myself, I mess up more than once on the same
01:34:58.920
thing. You know, I beat myself up a lot, but that's when the coach will get into me a little
01:35:02.220
more. Right. But, um, you know, you can't live in the past. Somebody just messes up. You don't
01:35:06.600
have time to sit there and dwell on it. Right. You know, chew them out and hurt their self-esteem
01:35:12.100
or confidence. Cause like you said, then you start, you start going about it not to make
01:35:15.500
a mistake, you know, and which not only hurts that guy, but it shows your whole team that
01:35:20.560
you're going to come down on them the same way, which is going to basically shackle up
01:35:24.680
everybody from doing their great work. Absolutely. Absolutely. So, you know, for me, I know at
01:35:29.880
times it was, you know, you would have, it would kind of be on more unforgiving at, uh,
01:35:36.280
playing at Nebraska when you mess up because you just feel like you've got to make every
01:35:40.560
play. Right. And then, um, playing for, uh, coach Hazlitt and coach KO, you know, when
01:35:46.500
I've messed up before and I'm really beat myself up because, you know, that's kind of what I've,
01:35:51.000
what I've thought about it. I'm like, gosh, I'm going to lose my opportunity. Last, last year,
01:35:56.100
my fourth preseason game, I missed like a two tackles in the first series. And literally,
01:36:00.140
honestly, it was, I was so nervous that it was game four because I had in my mind, I was like,
01:36:05.380
this has been the best I've played. I can make it like, don't mess this up type of type of mindset.
01:36:10.860
And that first series I was messing up. I wasn't playing like myself and the, my coaches knew it.
01:36:15.540
And I got to the sideline and even Perry Riley and Kenan Robinson, you know, like, comp, what's up,
01:36:20.080
man? I'm like, man, I just don't want, I don't want to mess this up. Like I was in this position
01:36:24.500
last year and I got cut and, you know, cause it happens the next day within the next 24 hours,
01:36:28.960
they make decisions. Right. And coach Hazlitt and KO, well, coach Hazlitt, he was on the sideline.
01:36:33.800
He's like, comp, what are you doing? Just go make the tackle. And, you know, I was kind of like,
01:36:37.300
I know I was just, I, this is what I've had in my mind. He's like, man,
01:36:40.600
don't even think about that. You're, you're going to be, you're going to be with us.
01:36:43.400
You got this and you're a hell of a player. Go out there and play a hell of a game.
01:36:46.940
You know, you're, you're good. Go out there, go out there and show everybody.
01:36:50.140
And just that little bit of encouragement, like, you know,
01:36:52.460
he's not sitting here thinking about me, like comp, don't screw this up.
01:36:55.000
He's out there, you know, ready to coach me up and be like, man, what, what,
01:36:57.580
what's the deal? You're way better than that. Yeah. Yeah. Like, yeah. And all the,
01:37:00.800
you know, the backers with me, like comp, go out, go out there and do your thing, man.
01:37:03.760
And then, you know, knowing you've got that support from your leaders, you know,
01:37:07.900
it just shows like you have nothing to lose. Go out there and play your game.
01:37:10.720
Right. But it's crazy what somebody psychology could be.
01:37:13.540
Cause you don't know what they're thinking when they, when they mess something up,
01:37:16.320
you know, they're probably beating theirself up if they're a hard worker.
01:37:20.240
you have to recognize how important it is and how that one interaction will affect
01:37:25.640
your whole entire team. Because if you have, if you have one guy and let's say
01:37:32.400
you're four other guys cause you just fired this one guy from making a mistake, dude,
01:37:38.000
They're not going to go the extra mile or take initiative or do the extra things
01:37:41.600
because they're afraid of screwing up. You know, you don't get the creative,
01:37:46.720
You don't get the internal culture building you would get, you know,
01:37:50.180
as you would, if you would just handle it as a lesson, let everybody know.
01:37:55.480
it's a good opportunity to pull all your employees in and say, Hey, and dude,
01:37:59.720
you know, around here, we'll make fun of them a little bit. You know, we'll,
01:38:04.180
it's like a locker room type of thing. And we'll be like, Hey,
01:38:06.800
you see how fucking so-and-so Tyler fucked this shit up, blah, blah, blah.
01:38:10.300
But then we'll say, you know, seriously guys, like,
01:38:12.360
did you see what he did? Because none of us can afford to do that.
01:38:14.780
And you use it as an opportunity to educate everybody as opposed to,
01:38:19.640
firing him and then trying to bring in somebody else that does what he does.
01:38:24.180
it's a great opportunity for everybody to learn, you know,
01:38:28.080
and that's something that a lot of people just never leader,
01:38:31.080
leader, great leaders understand that poor leaders never get it.
01:38:35.060
Well, we are definitely bringing Will back in the future,
01:38:51.980
Vaughn asked this question earlier when we were off air and I made everybody
01:38:58.340
I made him hold the question until we were on air.
01:39:01.300
if you could be coached by anybody in the history of athletics,
01:39:14.860
And then because I'm just amazed by the motivator that this person is,
01:39:25.760
I was going to say two and now he was going to be one of them.
01:39:41.500
I know it is a mentor to so many of you listening and you've never met Andy,
01:39:45.620
but you have met him because he's with you every single day when he pours his fire.
01:39:54.520
Dude told I had two and he was going to be one of my two.
01:40:02.260
Anything that you can read on John wouldn't read it.
01:40:10.960
He understood what that meant and probably defined what that meant for you.
01:40:15.720
For you young people who don't know who this man is,
01:40:30.140
I think it's Seth Davis wrote the book on John wouldn't recently.
01:40:36.200
I love how he starts by putting your socks on properly.
01:40:57.620
A lot of times when you meet somebody who's going to hold you to that kind of standard,
01:41:14.380
like we were talking about when you were sitting in my brother's office,
01:41:27.400
And you hate him until you realize what they made you,
01:41:31.180
and Bill Parcells is responsible for a lot of success.
01:42:04.520
But a quote we had around our facility everywhere is just focus on the
01:42:15.180
fortunately I got to play for somebody like that.
01:42:34.080
he has a tremendous story and the adversity he faced that he had in his life.
01:42:50.880
he was on a personality that was a lot different from that.
01:42:54.800
I feel like that would be awesome to play for somebody like that.
01:42:57.580
I agree with that because that would be something for me,
01:42:59.580
like would be a different type of leadership that I don't think I've ever personally experienced,
01:43:23.180
I know I go over the top and I wish I wasn't as like the aggressive type that I,
01:43:33.380
I don't know how I would lead if I wasn't that way.
01:43:35.360
So like learning it that way would be really cool.
01:43:37.400
It's like seeing somebody with that exact same mindset,
01:43:43.120
you just feel like they're in such control of their emotions.
01:43:50.980
Those people always make you want to be better.
01:43:56.340
It's like they make you want to be better people.
01:43:58.840
I imagine Tony Dungy having that presence about him.
01:44:06.120
or if you want to go directly to this podcast episode page,
01:44:36.020
make sure you're emailing us at askandyatthemfceo.com.
01:44:44.060
we're going to be doing a 20-minute shorter version podcast slash Q&A on Thursdays,
01:45:04.020
Thank you for supporting what we're doing and helping us get ranked up on iTunes.
01:45:12.280
my goal is obviously to be the best podcast that we can out there,
01:45:24.440
We're always looking to improve and become better.
01:45:33.640
like the whole thing when I'm hearing him talk this whole time,
01:45:54.580
Everything you've heard me state comes from somebody else,
01:45:57.100
and I'm very fortunate to have the teammates I do now,
01:46:03.660
There's no doubt that great things are coming your way,