Bill Courtney is a former college football coach, Oscar winner, entrepreneur, and philanthropist. Coach Courtney has built a business that does business in 42 countries and is worth an estimated $80 million. He has been a member of the NFL Hall of Fame for 33 years and is now a certified non-faculty coach at the University of Tennessee.
00:00:11.680So, Bill, you've got an amazing personal story.
00:00:16.100I want everyone to get into the upshot at this point because I think it's a really good point not to be a turkey person.
00:00:21.380Which is to say, don't just be the kind of person who hands the bum a dollar looking in the other direction and runs away as quickly as possible.
00:00:30.980Don't just do your charity in a selfish way or in a grudging way, but really recognize people's humanity and really fully give of yourself.
00:00:42.020But just before we even get into not being a turkey person, could you just tell our creme de la creme audience here a little bit about your personal story?
00:01:05.380My fourth one shot at me down a hallway.
00:01:07.960I had to dive out a window one night to save myself.
00:01:10.400And I grew up in apartments in kind of a lower socioeconomic environment.
00:01:18.560And, um, that's kind of where I came from.
00:01:21.560I got married, had four kids, uh, took $17,000 and started a business.
00:01:27.620Um, I now have 150 employees and $80 million business.
00:01:32.040It does business in 42 different countries.
00:01:35.620The, the good men in my life were football coaches.
00:01:38.560And so when I graduated Ole Miss, I coached football for a living, had those four kids, couldn't afford it anymore.
00:01:45.380But in the state of Tennessee, if you go through a bunch of classes, you can continue to coach as what's called a non-faculty, certified non-faculty coach.
00:01:55.580So I've had this parallel life as a business owner and as a coach.
00:01:59.660When I started my business, I found out about this school called Manassas, only about a mile from where my property was.
00:02:06.240And I took an opportunity to coach there, frankly, because it was convenient.
00:02:10.500I found, uh, 17 kids on a varsity football team whose previous record was four wins and 95 losses.
00:02:17.480And seven years later, we were 75 kids.
00:02:21.820We were 18 and two and in an area where an 18 year old is three times more likely to be dead or in jail than he is to have a job or be in college.
00:02:31.040We graduated 18 seniors those last two years and 17 went to college.
00:02:35.980And these goofy guys from Hollywood showed up, said they wanted to make a movie that we were convinced we'd see on a Wednesday on channel 422 at three in the morning.
00:02:44.880And a year later, I'm walking down the red carpet at the Academy Awards.
00:02:56.100So I want, even before we get to the turkey person, but I don't want people to get the turkey person out of their head because it's a good point.
00:03:11.080You don't need to be coaching, doing all this other stuff.
00:03:13.080Was it your rough upbringing that you think, well, I'm going to make sure this kind of stuff doesn't happen to other kids?
00:03:19.920Because plenty of people have a rough upbringing and they say, all right, I'm going to go get mine.
00:03:24.940I'm going to go get my sack and forget about everybody else.
00:03:28.060This is the school of hard knocks and we all got to fight our own way out.
00:03:31.340What gave you that kind of charitable spirit?
00:03:34.300Well, in fairness, I did decide I was going to go get mine.
00:03:37.940Um, I, I, you know, I never had a, I never had a, I never owned a, I never cut grass with a lawnmower until I bought my own house with a yard, bought my own lawnmower, you know?
00:03:49.740And I wanted my children to have opportunities and things available to them that I didn't as a child.
00:03:59.200Um, I don't know why the Lord has decided to bless me with this business and my marriage of 33 years and four delicious children who are now all gainfully employed, doing well all over the country.
00:04:15.000But he did, and I believe fundamentally that, uh, a requisite, um, a requirement of those blessings is to give back.
00:04:28.140And, and my way of giving back is again, when I was growing up in a lot of dysfunction with a lot of pretty bad men in my life, I had some coaches that had they not invested in me.
00:04:42.380I'm really not sure where I'd end up and the very fundamentals and tenants and values that operate my life with my personal life, my philanthropic life, my professional life, my entire life with, or the lessons I learned from those men, those coaches.
00:04:56.820And so I saw an opportunity as a coach to, to, um, meet that requisite requirement to give back with a skillset, uh, and a passion that I have, which is the lessons that football can teach young men.
00:05:44.680So halfway through the season, we're three and three.
00:05:47.860And now I think three and three is pretty average, but when you've won four games in 10 years, they thought I was a fat redheaded version of Lane Kiffin or somebody.
00:05:55.860And so I, uh, when I first got there, I also learned that athletic ability was there and losing was not really about tackles and scoring touchdowns.
00:06:08.100It was more about a lack of fundamentals of things like character and commitment, integrity, the value of indignity of hard work, the importance of showing up on time, civility, um, the core values and tennis that your grandmother should have taught you.
00:06:23.840You know, and so I started teaching those as well and holding kids accountable to those.
00:06:28.580Well, halfway through the season, we're three and three.
00:06:31.000And while the whole team, because we're winning and there's no equipment and stuff, they're buying into the football, but only half the team is buying into the important stuff.
00:06:39.680The other half, the team, while respectful on the football field, the minute practices and games are over, they're back into the streets, engaging in the same type of behavior that metaphorically got them to four 95 in life.
00:06:51.140And so I was losing it a little bit, real frustrated.
00:06:56.000I went to my guy, every coach has a guy, especially a first year coach.
00:07:27.900I said, why can't I get that half the team to buy into the important stuff?
00:07:32.060Like your half the team, y'all are all in on football, but the important stuff that's going to serve you long after the days of football are over.
00:07:40.540And he said, coach, you're trying to figure out if you're a turkey person or not.
00:07:44.360And I got to tell you, bro, I learned a lot of vernacular and phrases my first four months at Manassas that I'd never used or heard in my life.
00:08:52.560And all of a sudden, this effort, I was starting to enjoy what it was doing for me and what it was about me.
00:09:00.220If you serve soup in a soup kitchen or you give turkeys away on Thanksgiving or hams at Christmas or any of that, man, the story is that's a beautiful thing.
00:09:17.260Are we motivated by the simple exaltation of another person who's not as blessed as us, who's not as fortunate as us, or are we doing it because it makes us feel good or it exalts us among our contemporaries?
00:09:31.220If you are doing it for the latter, the people will take what you have to offer and they will say, yes, sir, no, sir, yes, ma'am, no, ma'am, and smile at you.
00:09:39.520But the minute you turn and walk away, they were still darts to your back because you are a fraud.
00:09:45.180Philanthropy is about helping another person for the value of that other person, not for yourself.
00:09:52.780And so the danger in being a turkey person is simply motive and consistency.
00:09:59.000And if we will be consistent and be motivated by the very people we are trying to serve, motivated by actually celebrating and someone else becoming better as a result of that service and back up from it and let them have the limelight of their successes as a result of the little bit of work you're putting in,
00:10:20.760then you avoid being a turkey person and true servant leadership happens and amazing things occur.
00:10:26.940If, on the other hand, you want to take the credit because it makes you feel good, well, you'll give away some turkeys, but you're not going to make any damn difference.
00:11:05.620I like that basic definition of love, that love is willing the good of another for their own sake.
00:11:12.500Not willing the good of another so that you get a trophy that you can put on your wall or something like that.
00:11:17.280But really for their own sake, that you dissolve a little bit out of it.
00:11:21.440A really, really important point that is not only classically, ethically, and morally true, but that any person can see in real life when you actually engage in it.
00:11:42.060So, Undefeated is on Amazon Prime if you want to watch that.
00:11:45.560You can read about that and all these tenets in my book, Against the Grain.
00:11:50.840And there's plenty of stuff on all that.
00:11:52.860And where we came to you from is you can go to turkeyperson.com, which will link you with my podcast, An Army of Normal Folks, where we highlight every week normal people doing this exact work for the right reasons.
00:12:07.480Which we're trying to inspire people to use their passion, their discipline, at points of opportunity and get involved in the communities for the right reason and be consistent with it and maybe change the trajectory of our culture right now.
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