The Secret to Loyola-Chicago’s Basketball Success, with Ed Molitor

Welcome to the Athletics of Business, a podcast about how the traits and behaviors of elite athletes and remarkable business leaders frequently intersect. The real stories and hard lessons to help you level up your leadership and performance. Now, your host, Ed Molitor.

Welcome back to another episode of the Athletics at Business podcast. I am your host and CEO of the Molitor Group, Ed Molitor. I hope you are ready to go because we have a great episode for you. Today is episode number 116. I'm going to break a rule. I'm going to timestamp this episode right now because I have some stories to share with you. We are in the throes of March Madness, which is my second now as a parent. It is my second favorite time of the year. Of course, Christmas with my children is the number one time of the year, but man, another great tournament, another great NCAA tournament. And we're going to talk about Loyola basketball here in a second. But it's funny because the athletics of Business, we mention it a lot, right? Every podcast episode you hear about it.

But what the mindset, the athletics of business mindset is this. It's that the traits and behaviors of high performing teams, elite athletes and high impact coaches are key to your success in business. And this past weekend I had the good fortune for the first round go to Henkel Fieldhouse to watch Lola beat Georgia Tech. And then the next round at Banker's Life. And I'm sitting there and I'm watching Coach Moser. I'm watching the Loyola men's basketball team. I'm listening to the conversations that go on around me. I'm reading social media, I'm reading the articles, I'm watching the broadcasters and everything.

They are talking about how Porter does things, about how their team executes and what their culture is and how they operate, how they carry themselves, how they communicate, how they respond to adversity, how they hold each other accountable, but they pick each other up. It's what we talk about every single day here at the Molotov Group. As a matter of fact, we've just released a pilot program recently titled Victory Defined. And our belief is this, is that victory undefined is victory unfulfilled. So what is it, you know, what does winning mean to you? We live in a cancel culture right now where a lot of people are afraid to talk about winning. And one of the things I love about Porter is that he'll absolutely tell you where he stands and he'll tell you what he stands for. And they want to win, okay?

Not win at all costs. But they want to win. They want to win with the right people doing the right things. And after all, isn't that what we want? Isn't that what we want in life? Isn't that what we want in business? So why are we so afraid to define what winning means to us? Well, I'll tell you why. Because we're afraid to fail. We're afraid to ruffle feathers. We're afraid to upset people. So as I'm sitting there specifically in banker's life the other day, and I'm watching the LOL Illinois game, and I have a tendency to watch different things than most people because of my years around basketball, my years coaching.

I watch the coaches a lot and I watch the players on the bench and I watch the communication and I watch action away from the ball and what happens and how people respond when different things happen. I pay attention to time and score basketball IQ stuff, how players respond to made baskets, how they respond to bad calls, things of that nature. And I'm sitting there like, man, if you can operate a business like Porter's operating this basketball program right now, you're going to be pretty darn successful. So right now, I think people are finally starting to realize that this isn't a fairy tale ride. Like, this is a sustained culture. This is a sustained level of success.

Three 21 seasons in the 31 season over the course of the last three or four years, three out of the last four Missouri Valley Championships, two Sweet Sixteens. Now they made the Sweet Sixteen the Final Four. I truly think they'll get to the Final Four here again this year. And here's the thing. First round, they beat Georgia Tech. Okay, again, this is not a sports show, but there's a reason I'm going to say this. They beat Georgia Tech, who won the ACC postseason tournament. They beat Illinois from start to finish, okay? They control the game. Who is the Big Ten tournament champion. And now they have to play Oregon State, who was the Pac12 postseason tournament champion. So to be the best, you have to beat the best.

They're playing three of potentially hottest teams in the country to get to where they need to go. But that's never what the conversation is about with Porter. The conversation is about this. How are we going to do our things? Like, how are we going to run our stuff? How are we going to execute our defensive schemes? How to. Are we going. How are we going to tap into our guy's strength? What combinations are we going to use on the floor with what time on the clock? And what are the foul situations? How will we respond to different forms of adversity that happened during the game? And how are we going to keep chasing what it is we're chasing? And that's the national championship. And I love the fact he's not afraid to talk about it yet. That's not what they're focused on.

They're focused on the process. Every single day, they're focused on the process. Now, I mentioned that the program victory defined, so what we really lock into, right, is frontline leadership and teaching people how to coach. And the five fundamentals that I firmly embrace of coaching, and this is something I developed over my years of coaching college basketball and now into my executive coaching, into my leadership consulting, are these. Stay with me here and think about it and think into each one. Number one, preparation. Are you prepared? Are you prepared mentally? Are you prepared physically? Are you prepared emotionally? Two, communication. Three, execution. Four, reflection, and five, adjustment. So you have preparation, communication, execution, reflection and adjustment. And then you just run that whole loop back again.

And when you line that up with victory, as we have it broken down, V for values, I for intangibles, T for team, O for objectives, R for rules of the game, and Y for you have a pretty powerful model of success. And you look at Loyola basketball, and that's what they do. I mean, if you watch the Loyola game, if you haven't figured out a way to go, find it, okay? If you watch that Illinois game, they were as prepared. And I have been around basketball since I came out of my mother's womb, okay? I have never seen a team more prepared, nor have I seen a team execute a game plan more meticulously, not flawlessly. There was mistakes. There was. They had a couple of hiccups. Things didn't go their way the whole time. It's not why they won by 11, okay?

That's not why they held Illinois to what the points they held them to. But they did exactly what they set out to do. And if you watch their team during the game, I love the way they communicate. And not just from the sidelines, not just Porter, and not just his staff, which does an amazing job, but the players with each other. And the way the leaders, Krupway and Lucas Williamson, the way they. They grabbed those younger guys, okay, the guys that weren't around for the first Final Four. Last week, I heard Porter talk about something that really resonated with me because we talk about sustainable culture all the time in business, right? Last week, I did a presentation, four presentations for Acadia Pharmaceuticals and we talked about, focused on building a culture worth fighting for.

So you go back to what sustainable, excuse me, culture, and what Porter calls what they have right now is a carryover culture. Okay? Because he has two starters that were on the first final 14, and that's Lucas and that's. That's Cam Cutwig. They know what it takes to win. They know what it takes to keep the right mindset, and they pass that on to the younger people. Now, something Porter was very intentional about when they went to the Final Four. Heck, I'm not going to limit when they went to their first Final Four underneath his leadership, of course, they won the championship in the 60s, but when they went to his first Final Four under Porter. All right, I wrote an article on LinkedIn. I talked about the secret behind Loyola Chicago's basketball success. And there is no secret, obviously.

And we talked about things such as positive energy and the process and consistency and authentic leadership. But one of the things that people loved and they love to talk about, and I really leaned into it a lot because of all my years in the recruiting industry was recruit winners. Recruit winners who know how to win and will bring that culture to life that you envisioned. Okay? And people that will leave their jersey in a better place. Now, notice I didn't say recruit the best players, recruit the top talent. Krug was not the best big man coming out of high school. But you know what Porter loved about him? He was a big man who loved to play the game and was a great teammate. And it didn't hurt that he's probably one of the best posters he's ever seen.

And then you have Lucas Williamson, who flat out was a winner, and he competes every single play, every single practice, and every single game. He just wills that team to win sometimes. He did it against Georgia Tech in the first round. Recruit winners. But those winners are going to evolve. Then when you add more talent and more winners to them, they are going to build this culture that's absolutely worth fighting for. And that's what you're seeing right now. There's no buzzer beaters right now. Doesn't mean there won't be here in the next few games. But they're just executing and they are just relying on their resilience. And the fact that you can punch them in the face as much as you want, you're not going to get them because they are cohesive, they are close. They over communicate.

They hold not only each other accountable. This is what's awesome. If you watch them when they come out of the game. They hold themselves accountable. They know when they messed up. They know when they could have done something better. But they hold themselves accountable, and that's huge. If you look back and you go back and you look at Porter's story, there's a book that I love, Legacy, and you've heard me talk about it before. It's about the All Blacks in New Zealand Rugby Club, and in that book, their mental strength. Coach says, to know how to win, you must first know how to lose. Now, Coach Moser, let's go back, like, right now, he is the darling of college basketball. And I'm telling you right now, I firmly believe this. He is one of the top five coaches in college basketball.

I don't say that to slight him. I mean, he's a brother. I don't say that to slight him. I say that with respect to the hall of Famers that are still coaching. But I'm telling you, he is one of the best, if not the best. But he has been through his struggles, like all great success stories have. He was let go at Illinois State when it was his third ad, I believe, in four years. It was a ridiculous situation. He made the intentional decision to go work for Rick Majeris instead of taking a low Division 1 job to feed his ego, to stay as a head coach. But he wanted to learn. He wanted to regroup, and that's what he did under Rick Majeris. And then he positioned himself to take over the Loyola job.

Ten years ago, Loyola was not in the Missouri Valley. They're in the Horizon League. He was one. They were as with him as a head coach. They were 1 and 1710 years ago. And now you look where they are. But before you know how to win, you must first know how to lose. And I think that as we talk about building a culture, we're fighting for and recruiting winners. One of the things I've always looked for as I've helped build organizations, is obviously, I want to know that I can win with you. Obviously, I want to know that. But the other thing is, I want to know that I can lose with you. I want to know that we can lose together. What does that mean? It means that I can trust that you'll respond. It means that you care enough to bounce forward.

It means you're going to hold yourself accountable. And I know together, collectively, that we're going to continue to stay locked in and bought into the process and the culture, and we're going to keep moving forward, working towards our goals by locking into the Process, as I said, and that's it. I want to know that you're not going to point fingers. I want to know that you're not going to whine. I want to know that you're not going to talk under your breath or behind people's back. And I want to know that you're not going to be a cancer in this culture. And you look at this Loyola team, they protect it. That's what I mean by having a culture we're fighting for, right? You protect it. There's this positive energy and. Positive energy.

I don't mean you're bouncing off the walls like a cheerleader or anything like that. What I mean is this. I mean, there's a love. There's true love for each other. There's compassion, all right? You have each other's back. You refuse to let each other fail. It's family. I'm going to do whatever I can possible to make sure you succeed and that we succeed. And that's what a culture we're fighting for is to me, that we can go through anything together and come out the other side of the stronger and better. Why? Because we grow through adversity. We don't just go through it. And that's what. When you're inside of a culture we're fighting for, there is. And that's what Loyola has. That's what Porter and his staff have created. And there's that consistency.

If you look at it, they don't try to do anything cute. They don't try to do anything clever. That doesn't mean they don't change schemes. That doesn't mean they don't tweak. But again, that goes back to preparation, communication, execution. They make their adjustments. They make their adjustments after they reflect, after they watch their game film. And watching them in the NCAA Tournament, when you. You play on a Friday, then you play on a Sunday, and then you come back and this week you're going to play in a Saturday, you're going to play in a Monday. What allows teams to make quicker adjustments than others because they all had the same amount of time. And I think it's that level of trust, that level of authenticity, because you want to do things in such a way. Now think about this.

You want to communicate in such a way where your players, where your team members, where your team in the office, they value what you have to say because you have built this incredible amount of trust by the way you lead, by your honesty, by your integrity, by your skillset, by the fact that you have paid Your dues. Okay. And your ability to make yourself vulnerable. You create this psychological safety. So they know that when you make tweaks and you make adjustments, you're doing it in their best interest, and they value it. And it happens quicker. And it allows you, when you understand your culture and when you understand what it represents and what you need to really continue to be successful, it allows you to be on the same page. And Cam Krutwig said this in an article.

It allows you to be on the same page. But what else it does? It allows you to get more creative while you're in the middle of the execution piece. Right. You make decisions quicker. You make decisions with more confidence, with more conviction. And that's what I love about watching this team. And, you know, let me give you a little peek inside. What makes Porter so successful. This didn't just happen overnight. I can remember when we first got in the business, he was a year or two ahead of me getting in the business. I'm a couple of years younger than Porter. When we first got in the business, he absolutely studied the game, and he embraced every learning opportunity he ever had. Not just with the coaches on the staff he was a member of, but other coaches.

I mean, I used to love going to Nike clinics and sitting and talking hoops. And he was always a sponge. He was always learning. There was always another way to look at things. He wasn't afraid to challenge the status quo. He wasn't afraid to challenge the orthodoxies, which goes back to when you start looking at the word victory. That's our rules of the game. If there was a better way to do it, he was going to try and figure it out. And that's what he challenges his staff to do. That's what he challenges his players to do. And he empowers every single person inside of that program, and not just the players and the staff, but the support staff in the office, the managers inside of the program, the strength coach, the trainer. I mean, that's. They're one big family.

That's all a huge integral part of the culture that they have built. You know, it's funny is I turned on the TV yesterday morning, have a cup of coffee, got the kids off to school, had a workout in. And I like to have some time just to kind of decompress. Day's already scheduled from the night before, but I like to just kind of decompress. I turn on TV just to see what the latest stories were. And I'm one of those guys. I mean, I was in the business for Years I've been in around it my whole life. I like watching the coaching changes. The coaches care. So not because I like seeing people lose their jobs. I do not enjoy that at all. I feel for them. I mean, I've been on that end of it, right.

I've gotten fired as an assistant coach when our head coach lost his job. But I'm just always intrigued to watch people lead programs, take programs over what they have to say in their press conference, how they operate, and the whole chess mass behind the scenes of guys getting jobs. So I turned on the TV and turn in, and it might have been later in the morning, but anyway, Stephen A. Smith was on and with his crew, and they were interviewing Porter, had no idea he was gonna be on. And they were interviewing Porter. And everything Porter was saying, he had said to me three weeks ago. And I was sitting at my daughter's baseball practice in my truck talking to him on the phone. His message never changes. It doesn't change because he wins big games.

It doesn't change because he loses big games or when they lose games, I should say. But his message never changes and he never wavers, and he never has. It didn't happen overnight. So about two hours after I turned the TV off, my phone rings and it's Porter. So we start talking about the game, and I said to myself, I have to ask you. I said, his yellow game was going on. I'm watching you. I said, you never seen Faze when they made a little bit of a run and they cut it to six and they had the ball? I go, did you feel like you were in control the whole game, or were you kind of living with every single possession? And what he said to me was really interesting because it's something we talk about a lot. He said, no.

He goes, honestly, I was just waiting to see what Brad. Coach Underwood was going to do because I knew he'd make an adjustment. I was waiting to see what he'd do, because I was ready to respond as soon as he did it. Because were prepared for just about any adjustment that they can make. Which all of a sudden it dawned on me as he was saying that, this conversation in another direction. I said, that's so awesome. Because we talk all the time about having a vision. The leader has a vision for their team, for their organization, for their business, for their culture. But the great coaches, the ones that are beyond high impact, they're the best of the best, the elite of the elite, they have not just a vision, but they have vision in other Words.

They see things before they are going to happen, they anticipate things before they are going to happen and they know exactly what they are going to do and how they are going to respond. If they don't know exactly, they have an idea because they played it out in their head before. They played it out on film, they played it out on paper. They played it out with mental rehearsal. They played it out and thought it through. And they are so present, so focused and soul locked in. I mean, think about this.

Think about if you operated for one hour, just one hour a day at your desk in work like Coach Moser operated during the game against Illinois on the sidelines, how locked in, how focused, how present, how undistracted he was, how he knew what was coming next and how he would respond to it. All right, how he shouldn't say, how he knew, how he anticipated. Think about if that happened during your day, if that happened when you were leading your team members, if that happened when you were trying to close a deal, if that happened when you're trying to recruit someone to your organization, to your company and get them on board, it would be huge. And here's the thing, you can do it. It's very feasible. It's what we work with folks on all the time. I don't want to use the word easier.

It doesn't make your world easier. It makes it more efficient, it makes it more productive, it makes it more powerful and it really accelerates the success curve. And not only that, it extends it lengthens it. Because now you're creating these habits of success. And that's what Porter I talked about giving you peeking to it. You. That's what he's done over the length of his career. He learns from everything. I forget, I think he said he had seven TV interviews yesterday. Tv, radio interviews. And he talks in them about how they're always learning, they're always growing. He was my second podcast episode. The first was a solo cast just like this. Listen to that podcast episode.

And then the other podcast episode he was on was episode number 74, which is awesome because that was right at the start, probably about two months in to the pandemic. And we talked about how they were doing and at that point all their kids were home, all their kids were remote. They're trying to figure out how they could do zoom workouts. They're trying to figure out how they can continue to build and foster and nourish these relationships that they had with the kids. And it's a mind blowing conversation because he just does some really, really cool stuff and everything. He does everything any of these high impact coaches do in the athletic world, we can do and there are many that are doing it in the business world.

It's good stuff and it's going to be interesting to see what happens and how the rest of the tournament goes. You know, he's a hot name. There's jobs out there's folks that want him. But I'm going to tell you what, you know, what he's concerned with. Think about this in your life. All these distractions he can't see. His family, misses his kids. I was sitting right with him and he walked up to that first row to bleachers and we're all up in like the 12, 13, 14, 15 row at banker's life. And he has to yell above the noise that he loves them and he misses them. Talk to him later. No hugs, no high fives. None of the stuff that you got to see him do that was really cool and they made the Final Four run. None of that.

He is as big of a family man as it comes. And that's weighing on him, right? People are throwing his name out there for these jobs. That takes a toll on it. He's got these commitments with the media. That takes his toll. He's got commitments with the ncaa, but you know what? He's focused on his players in the next game. That's it. His players and the next game, his players and the next game. And that's how he manages things and that's how he continues to build this culture. That is unbelievable. And if you pay attention, I would get my hands on every article I could read right now, every interview I could watch of his players, of him, of his staff, of other folks, other coaches, what they say about him. Because all of this is something that you can model your business at.

It's sustainable. And here's the coolest part about it. He's having fun. There's no ego. It's not about him. He's having fun because he's very well aware and he'll communicate this. He's very well aware that you only get to do this life once. And he's appreciative. He knows it's an honor, it's an opportunity. Just like for you, if you're leading a team of people, you don't have to do it, you get to do it. And it's an opportunity. It's not a box to check. Those are lives to impact, those are differences to make. It's Success to be had, it's battles to win and that's it. God, it's such a fun time of the year. And there's so many. And you look beyond Legolo basketball, you go out there and Google things and there's so many storylines and so many lessons to be learned and shared.

And if you're having issues coming up with material or content to motivate or inspire your team or educate them, then you're not doing your work, man. Because it's out there. I mean, it is out there. So jump into everything you possibly can and continue impacting your people. And learn lessons from coaches like Porter and learn lessons about culture from teams and programs like Loyola. Implement them, share them. And hey, if you're interested in victory defined, I mean, reach out. I have people reaching out to me all the time via my personal email. It's ed themolator group.com edemolator group.com Feel free to reach out to me. Just shoot me an email. I would love to connect, love to talk more about the victory defined program inside the athletics of business operating system. And it's work like this that we do.

And that's why I sit there and I watch these coaches and I watch these teams and these programs in these athletic departments and what they've done during this pandemic and what they're doing now here during the NCAA tournament. And not to mention their academic world, their social world, their family life. We all have a lot going on. We are all capable of an extremely high level of success. And it's up to us, are we doing the best we can with what we have to become, the best we are capable of becoming. All right, thanks for listening. And again, edemolter group.com I appreciate it. I appreciate you.

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