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 Molitore.
This is the Athletics of business podcast, episode 15. Today's special guest is Don Yeager. Don is a nationally acclaimed inspirational speaker, longtime associate editor of Sports Illustrated, and author of over 30 books, 11 of which have become New York Times bestsellers. He began his career at the San Antonio Light in Texas and also worked at the Dallas Morning News and the Florida Times Union in Jacksonville before going to work for Sports Illustrated as an author. Don has written books with, among others, hall of Fame running back Walter Payton, UCLA basketball coach John Wooden, baseball legends John smoltz and Tug McGraw, and football stars Warwick Dunn and Michael Oher, who was featured in the movie the Blind side.
Don left SI in 2008 to pursue a public speaking career that has allowed him to share stories learned from the greatest winners of our generation with audiences as diverse as Fortune 10 companies to cancer survivor groups, where he shares his personal story. More than a quarter million people have heard his talks on what makes the great ones great. He collaborated with the Florida State University School of Business's continuing education program to build a corporate webinar program focusing on building a culture of success within an organization. This naturally led to another keynote speech on what makes the great teams great. The release of his 11th New York Times bestseller, Teammate, was the inspiration for his newest keynote on what makes a great teammate Great? Becoming invaluable without being most valuable. Don, thank you so much for joining us today.
I am humbled and fired up to have you joining us.
Ed, Always a pleasure to be in communication with you and kind of catching up.
Well, you know, Don, unbeknownst to you, my relationship with you goes back years to your Sports Illustrated days. I've always enjoyed reading your pieces because it was about so much more than just the facts. There was always a story and it seemed to me the story always had something to do with greatness. And you and I talk about how you are consumed with greatness. Can you tell us a little bit about how that started, when that started, where that started, in the journey that's taking you on?
Sure, yeah. I would tell you that for me, when I look back and I tried to figure out where does this kind of passion for this discussion go or where does it start? For me, it started when I was just graduating from college. I was leaving Indiana. I was standing there with my dad and Was heading to my first job in Texas, and my dad is in the driveway and we're talking, and he said, you know, Don, my dad was just filled with these amazing little nuggets of wisdom, which probably many fathers are, and most of them don't get credit for it. Right?
Right.
But my father looked at me and he said, you've chosen this profession of journalism as your. As where you're going to go in your career. And as a result, you'll end up in the presence of some really extraordinary people. That's what journalists are allowed to do. You're given access. He says, always. You'll always be asking the questions you're required to ask because that's what you do professionally. But always ask one question that will benefit you. Always find something you can learn from each one of these winners and people that you'll end up engaged with that will benefit you. What will make you better? And so I settled in on a question which was, if you could name for me a habit, something you believe helped separate you from others, what would that habit be?
And then I ended up keeping a series of notebooks just on the answers the great winners were giving me to that question. Looking at what are the habits that the very best credit for the distance between them and next best.
How long did it take till you started to see a consistency or a trend, if you will, in answers?
Not long at all, frankly. I think what you start to realize is there's a. And I thought that one of the things that really stood out to me was it almost to a person. None of them credited a physical gift for what allowed them to be separate, to separate themselves. There's always somebody bigger, stronger, faster.
Right.
What they credited were mental, emotional and spiritual disciplines, the ability to kind of govern themselves so that others didn't have to. And by doing so and knowing what they were after, wanting it more than other people, but doing it in a way that was. That fit their emotional strength. They were able to kind of keep themselves on task and to be. To use these habits to separate themselves from those they were competing with.
So did you become. I know if it was me, I become very conscious of what my habits were. And am I as good at that as I need to be? Did you ever find that happening?
Oh, all the time and still do. I mean, you know, the one thing that about. That's fascinated. Fascinating me for. Has fascinated me for many years on this subject is there are a lot of people that want greatness to be an endpoint. Right. They want some place where you stake a flag and the. You know, in the. In the ice and you say, I've arrived, right? I'm here. I've climbed the mountain, or whatever it is. And at the end of the day, what you really grow to understand is that it's not. Not a destination, it's a journey. And that's what is fascinating. The truly best. John Wooden was 99 and a half, right? When I'm sitting there with him, and he is fascinated by learning from our conversation, he is reaching for texts to try to refresh something that he read 20 years ago.
But he was constantly looking to better today at 99 and a half than he was yesterday at 99 and 160 days or whatever it was. He was looking constantly for that daily improvement. I thought, again, you and I are both basketball junkies, so no one approaches the greatness of John Wooden. But what really stood out to me was Coach Wooden's belief that he never arrived. He never arrived. Greatness was not a destination. It was a pursuit.
In all your interviews and all the relationships you have developed, have you ever met an individual as authentic or as real in believing in and actually acting out that continual learning is so important? I mean, John Wynn, like you said, 99 and a half, and the stories are endless from all the people that were fortunate and blessed enough to cross paths with him. All the way till the end, he'd be at coaches clinics taking notes. I mean, have you ever met anybody else as intentional about his. I mean, first of all, John Wooden forgot more about leadership than most people will ever know in their lifetime. And have you ever come across anyone quite like Coach Wooden?
First off, I would argue that John Wooden didn't forget anybody.
Well, and that's. I don't like that saying.
I know. I get the saying, but the point is, the craziest thing about Coach Wooden, and you and I have discussed this others on your podcast may not know it, had the extraordinary opportunity, over the last 12 years of coach Wooden's life, fly out to California and spend a day with him every other month, in which coach served essentially as my mentor. He was diving in to help me grow and become a better Don, right? And in Those more than 500 hours of recorded conversations, Coach Wooden just poured himself into me. The thing that struck me is that here's a man, and as I said, I'm with him at 99 and a half, who still could recite poetry, right?
Who could tell you how much time was left on the clock when one of his players made a Decision that Coach Wooden still to this day wishes the player hadn't made. I mean, and 40 years earlier, right. These are things that happen. So Coach Wooden's, his mental acuity was off the charts, even to the very end. His body broke down and that's what ultimately cost us John Wooden in this world. But he an enormous and was consistent. He believed that the reason his mind stayed sharp was he was constantly seeking new things to learn.
Right. And the thing that fascinated me about Coach Wooden, and we're not going to talk about the mess we have right now with college basketball, but he firmly believed that their success, their championships were a byproduct of doing things the right way and doing things a certain way and treating people and serving people. Can you talk into the importance of that you see not only in athletics but in business as well?
Well, with that question, a sense of purpose and a belief that you're in service of someone else. Human nature, right. We are wired as humans to respond differently when we believe that what we're doing is an act of service versus an act of selling or an act of work. Right. And so Coach Wooden made it clear that while it was his job to be the leader of UCLA basketball, what he believed his greatest role was to serve as an individual who set a really high bar for those who had the chance to be tutored by him. And so without question, a servant leader, which there wasn't even the phrase back then, was how you would have to best define coach.
And did he talk to you in those 500 plus hours of recording? Did he talk to you at all about the struggles he had in his career? Because everyone thinks of Coach Wood and they think, oh man, how easy did he have it? He got the best of the best at UCLA and they just won championships, baby. That's all they did. Did he talk to you about how he continued to grow through his struggles early on in his career?
Sure. No, I mean, again, he, you know, he. Most people don't realize that he was 14 years at UCLA before he won his first championship. There were periods in that 14 years when alumni boosters, as happens today, it happened back then, questioned his ability and whether or not he could be the right guy and challenged the athletic director over the choice. So John Wooden didn't, it didn't happen automatically, didn't happen quick. It was a, you know, the man, he paid his dues to get to Those amazing that 12 year run at the end of his career where he won 10 championships.
Well, and he represents something that you Say, and you're gonna laugh. The introduction to your book, greatness, the sixteen characteristics of True Champions. The introduction of that book alone could be a separate book on greatness. Okay. There is so much value, so much gold in just that introduction alone. It's mind blowing. And on page three, you say something and it's. I tend to highlight things that most people don't highlight things that just catch. Resonate with me. And you say greatness and is a state of being. Can you talk about that a little bit?
Well, again, this gets to this idea that some people say, I want to be great.
Right.
Well, and for some people, greatness is defined by trophies or some physical accoutrement, something that says, I'm the best. What coach and others really taught me over the course of this journey to learn what greatness was really all about was the greatness was a sincere desire to show up better every day than you were the day before. And then in the process of doing that, when you walked into a room, everybody knew you were there. Not because you were the greatest winner, not because you had the most trophies or the. The metals draped around your neck, but because you literally, you stood differently because you were. Because the state of being that you were. That you were in pursuit of something others won't.
Right.
There's a reason why not all. Not. Not everyone's great because most people won't do the hard work. Right. Right. Most people are. Most people acknowledge the challenge and are impressed by those who chase it, but they don't want to do the work themselves. Right.
Right. Well, you always have. I'm sure you've had this quite a bit where folks say, gosh, Don, I want your life. I want to do what you do. I think it's so cool. All right, well, then do what I've done. And they look at you like you've got 10 heads.
Yeah. No, I love. You know, there's a great story about Leonardo da Vinci. One year, one day, walking by, a man standing on a bridge, and the man asked him if Leonardo would scrawl a picture, draw something really quickly. And he did whatever. Then he asked for some outlandish amount of money for it. And the guy said, that took you three minutes? And he said, no, it didn't. It took me a lifetime. Right. What you're buying here? And again, the point, ultimately, as I understand the story and I've read it a few times, he. He gives it to the man, but he wanted the man to realize this isn't. You know, none of us are. There is no such thing as an overnight success. Anybody, when you read that phrase, immediately dismiss it.
Right. And let's talk collectively for a second too, if we can, because you can have the greatest compilation of greatness. You can have a bunch of great individuals. And we live in a world, in the business world, in the athletic world, a lot of instant gratification. Produce or get fired. But you can have, and I think you know where I'm going with this, the greatest group of talents. But in order to achieve collective greatness, you still have to have a singleness of purpose. And you have a story that I'd love for you to share about Coach K and what he did with the US Men's basketball program, if you will, an organization, and how he was able to bring it back from where.
Where it went and how it dropped and what he did to get that singleness of purpose and that focus collectively again, with all that greatness in one room.
Yeah, no, I mean, most of your listeners probably will recall that Coach K was. He was asked to leave USA Basketball's program as the coach after the previous two international competitions had led the usa, had sent NBA All Star after NBA All Star, and they finished sixth in the world championships. And then they went to Athens, Greece with Tim Duncan and Allen Iverson and Carmelo Anthony and this amazing talent, and they won the bronze. Right. So all this talent, as you said, you line it all up. Nobody in the world had talent like the United States, but were finishing sixth and third. And so they brought Coach K in.
And what he realized was that in his opinion, the best teams are filled with, are loaded with patriots, people that believe in what you're doing and they want to be part of what you're doing every day. This isn't a basketball discussion. This is much about business or anything else. What is it that are you driven by? Is your team driven by something special? Well, that team was not. And he needed to reinforce to them the sense that they had to feel that they were in service of something bigger than themselves. So he started introducing them to members of the United States military, started bringing in wounded warriors to talk to the players, started inviting children whose mother and father were lost in Iraq and Afghanistan to talk to our players.
He started giving them sense that wearing the letters USA on their chest meant more than basketball. And he culminated the one that most people talk about. He called these feel it moments, which were his opportunity to get his team to feel who they were in service of occurred in 2012. They were headed To London. And just a couple days before they were scheduled to leave, he gathered the team in Washington, D.C. and he took them to Arlington National Cemetery. And while there, General Martin Dempsey, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, takes the team and he walks them through Arlington and he starts telling them stories about soldiers. And then he takes them further. He takes them to Section 60 at Arlington, which is the freshest graves there. And while they're all standing there silent, because. What do you say? Right. Emotional.
Coach K sees a young man standing about 100ft away, and he's dressed in civilian clothes, but he's got a crew cut. Coach assumes he's a member of the military. He's got a backpack, and he's reaching in the backpack, and he's pulling out pictures and laying them down at grave sites. So Coach K walks over and he says, sir, you know, my name is Mike Krzyzewski, and I'm the head men's basketball coach of our Olympic program. And I'm wondering if you would tell me what you're doing here today. And the young man looked back and he said, coach, I know who you are. He says, this was my team, the grave sites. He said, we had a mission, didn't go as planned, and these are pictures of me and them in better days.
And then Coach asked him to come talk to the players, and he did. And this soldier walked over and he started telling our players this greatest collection of talent ever assembled. Right? Unbelievable. Starts talking. Well, among the greatest collections of talent ever assembled. Starts talking to him about what it meant to be part of something bigger than yourself. What it meant to truly care for the guy. To your left or right?
Right.
What did it mean to. What does self sacrifice really look like? And then he started talking about the idea. He started talking about survivor's guilt. He wasn't there the day that it happened with his comrades, but he wished he had been. And he became emotional, and he turned around, he walked away. Coach K leans in right about there, and he said to the players, you know, gentlemen, this is why I brought you here today.
Wow.
Because I want you to feel what it means to wear the letters USA on your chest.
Wow.
And those team felt its purpose, right? They knew who they were in service of. They knew why it mattered. They knew what the letters really stood for. And it was made clear to them because they felt it through an experience. And the great teams, the great leaders, create those feelings for those that they are. That they are asked to lead.
I mean, it's just a powerful story. I mean, when you go and you have so many great stories that you tell organizations that you work with, but when you sit there and you tell that story, if I. If I'm on the other end of that story and I'm the senior sales manager and I hear that story, I'm like, that's incredible. Now I have to figure out how to get my team to not just buy in, but believe in. And I have to get a singleness of purpose, and I've got to get them to attach emotion to the vision that I've created for them. How do you see the successful ones do that? How do the business teams do that?
So there are three ways. Actually, there are three pieces that work in this space. There are three kinds of. To me, and I've got a whole series of conversations with great winners about how they create their version of feel it moments. Coach K calls them feel it moments. But it's a moment where your team is inspired to remember that they are part of something bigger than themselves. We are all wired. We're hardwired to want to be in community. Most people, right, they're the complete outliers. But most of the rest of us are hardwired to want to be part of a team, part of a community. So the three are that first there's your product impact, right? What is your product? What is it that you're selling that actually, what does it do for the people who are able to be. Who use it?
How does it change the dynamic of those you're serving, not selling to, right? So the first is your product impact. Who does your product impact and why? What does it mean to them? And it could be that you have to look downstream, not just who you sell it to, but how. Those who you sell it to are able to have maybe a better environment, maybe their life is better. Maybe they are a more efficient company, which means they get to hire another person, right? So you just change the dynamic of one family by selling that, you know, by doing something to help that group. The second theme is your community impact. Let's say you work at a restaurant and once a week you are helping some charitable organization within your. Within your community by raising funds for them.
Now, most people, that's just a night for them. The truly great teams are then at the end of the night bringing that charity back to tell us what you're going to do with what we just gave you. We collectively, our organization, our team, our employees, just created an opportunity for you. Now tell us more about what you're going to do as a result of that? Because at the end of the day, the charity gets to go do more because you as a team delivered for them that night.
Right.
You didn't actually. You don't work for the charity, but you support the charity and now let us know how that works. And the third one is your teammate, impact. And that's where you look and say, what do we do for each other? And. And how does being part of our team. How is it different and better and more impactful to you than being a part of another team? At my little company here, and you've met part of my team, Ed, we, on a. Every other month basis, we take an afternoon of a Friday off and we go in service of one of our employees. You know, a couple months ago, our IT guy, his grandmother had passed away, but she had lived a really good last couple of years in a nursing home that he is convinced helped keep his grandmother alive longer.
So we spent the afternoon serving meals to the employees of the nursing home.
That's awesome.
In between our meals, in between serving meals to them, he got to tell us stories about his grandmother. Right. So we got to know him better and he got to do. He had to know we cared about him because we took time to go do something that mattered to him. So how do you find those things? What do they look like? What does it mean to be part of a team? Because we. We perform differently, we show up differently when we believe we're responsible for something, someone to our left and our right.
Yeah, that's amazing. And really, when you look back at that. By serving, everybody served.
Absolutely.
Yeah. Yeah. That is sort of three ways to get the team to believe in and attach emotion, product impact, community impact, and teammate impact. And we've talked about greatness and we've talked about individually, collectively. Let's talk about that last one, being a great teammate. Can you talk about the most recent book you released about obviously one of my all time favorite Cubbies, even though he was there for a very short time. But talk about impact, David Ross, can you talk a little bit about being a great teammate and what that book meant to you and the journey, again, there's that word, the journey, about how that all came together.
Sure. David and I have been buddies for many years. He lives actually in the same town I live in, Tallahassee, Florida. But it was time for him to do a book and it turned out to be a really great time for him. They were heading into the last season that he was ever going to play in major league Baseball. He was playing for the Cubs. Many people thought the Cubs could win the World Series. Anybody that was a Cubs fan knew not to believe that, because the second you believe they're going to win, they're going to lose, right? Yep. But he goes there. But the story of David Ross is that his career doubled in length. He played 15 years in the major leagues.
That's amazing.
Career doubled in length when he learned how to become a better teammate. Talent can take you so far, but when you can make others better.
You.
Have a roster spot in almost any organization, right? And he became that guy that made others better. We say all the time that if you become a great teammate, you learn how to become invaluable without ever being most valuable. Right. David was the. I mean, he was a backup catcher, right? But he made the team better. He was a. It was a driving force in everything that he was. He was constantly attentive to what others around him needed. He was looking at body language. He was bringing guys together when they needed to be. He just knew what was happening because he was. He inserted himself into the lives of others. Most teammates, most of us, we want to do our thing and go home, right? David Ross was like, I want to do my thing and make sure we're all together.
And by becoming a great teammate, he became the heart and soul of this team. Loaded with all stars, right? And in fact, that year in 2016, the, you know, it felt like three quarters of the all star team that lined up in, you know, in the All Star game was Chicago Cubs. David Ross was not one of them. Right.
He could have been the manager for that team, though.
He could have. But he ends up, you know, he goes to the seventh game of the World Series, hits a home run and is lasted bat. When the game is over, they carry him from the field. When the game is over. Now he's a backup catcher. He got carried from the field because he was a great teammate.
Well, and think about this, because I want to get into this a little bit more. I'm asked quite often with organizations I work with, okay? I've got these guys, and they're big time producers, they're high performers, but they are not great teammates. Can we ever develop them into a great teammate? Can you take us back to the defining moment when David Ross realized, I've got to change and it's on me. I need to learn to be way more selfless than I'm currently being, because I think it's very important for these organizations and teams to know that it's learned behavior. Yes, it's a learned behavior.
Yeah.
Can you take us back to that?
David Ross is the perfect example of the learned behavior. It was the only period in his career when he was a starting catcher, was in Cincinnati. And there was a game in the middle of August and Cincinnati was already out of the playoff hunt. Midway through the game, the manager, Dusty Baker, yanks David from the field, puts in the backup, and as soon as the game is over, David storms into his office, slams the door, asks very aggressively why the manager had made that choice. And Dusty Baker looked up and said, excuse me, but who are you? Like, you know? And he said, I'm your starting catcher. And Dusty said, you might not be for long. He said, I don't know if you got it, but our team just lost out there.
But the second the game was over, you're in here talking about your situation like you don't care about the rest of the team, you just care about you. He said, that's not good form. David Ross had a few choice words, storms out of the office, and that afternoon he gets cut from the team, loses his job, and he gets picked back up in Boston for the remainder of the season because they were looking for a third string catcher, right? He was a starter, now he's a third stringer, right? But at the end of that third string, at the end of that run with the Red Sox for that season, Theo Epstein grabs David, pulls him into a locker room, pulls him into a private office and says, you know what? When went to sign you, we almost didn't.
Because the reputation you have is that you're a bad teammate. You think about you when you think we should be thinking about us, right? And we didn't see that in the short time we had you. But it doesn't matter. We're not going to sign you again next year.
It's not funny, but it's.
We don't have a spot for you next year. But what we'll tell you is that if you're going to stay in this game, you should know that's what the world is saying about you. You're a bad teammate. And David came home to Tallahassee, sat down with his wife and said, if I ever get a chance to play again, I don't ever want those words to be said of me again. How do I become a better teammate? And he started studying what it meant to be a better teammate, started asking questions of leaders and people, and pretty soon he started saying, okay, if that's What a great teammate looks like. I'm going to make myself look like that. I'm going to do those things authentically. I'm going to bring that to the team.
He became so good at it that by the time his time in Atlanta was up, that was where he signed next. Half the teams in baseball were lined up to sign him because he now was deemed in baseball a great teammate. And he had all these job opportunities. And so it was a really great lesson. Right. We create opportunities for ourselves when we learn to serve others well.
And within that story, there's something he did that amazes me. And I know you and I had talked about this. He was so intentional about it. And a lot of times people at that level, they don't want it. They want to keep it a secret that they're trying to become a better teammate, that they're trying to become more selfless, and it's hard for them to check their ego. I mean, he did something that blew me away. Can you talk about that with the training whiteboard?
Yeah. He went into the trainer's room, which is where baseball players kind of congregate pre game, and started asking everybody that was going through the room, you know, tell me about the best teammate you ever had. Tell me, what do you think it means to be a great teammate? What's. Give me an attribute. And he started writing them down on this board and he created a list of the attributes of a great teammate, what it meant, what it looked like. And then he started challenging himself every day. Am I bringing these things to the. Am I this when I walk through the door? Right. And then he started challenging his teammates. Are you this when you walk through the door?
Pretty soon they all went to work on kind of creating a environment where they were a team of teammates and they outperformed their talent every year because they were in support of each other.
That's amazing. So let's shift. Let's take that over to the Golden State warriors and what they have done. And, okay, they have a collection of talent now, but it wasn't always that way when Steve Kerr took over. And I mean, Steve Kerr is the consummate professional he was as a player. He is as a coach. How have they built what they have built in Golden State?
Well, I think a big part of it is this sense that they're so. They have figured out a selflessness in the way they play.
Right.
That, I mean, just. I mean, I know these. I know the beauty of recording a podcast with you and is that this isn't going to run for several weeks. But just as it happens, last night the third best player, Klay Thompson, hit 14 three pointers, right? I mean, it was just now when your third best player can do that and he's okay with being declared the third best player, it doesn't bother him that's what you call him. His ego doesn't need to be stroked in a way that says I need to be thought of and declared the same as the guys who are also all stars. When you can create an environment, this isn't always about the players. Sometimes it's about the environment where we're not going to let anyone's ego take us off task.
You create this culture of exceptionalism that's hard to beat, right?
And talk a little bit about that in the business world, what you see and what you work with teams on in creating that environment, how they go about doing that.
Well, the key is as a leader, you know, we always, a lot of times we find ourselves focusing on our lowest performers, right? We spend all of our time trying to build them up. The truth is that the best. Phil Jackson once told me that his greatest gift was that his best players, no matter where he, you know, whether it was Chicago or la, his best players, his most talented players were also his hardest workers, right? They set a bar for everybody else. And so that becomes that. If I'm looking at it, I'm thinking, gosh, what's a corporate application? Focus on your very best. Make sure that person is bringing it every day and recognizes and that person appreciates the responsibility that they have to shape the culture for all the others.
And the better they are and the more they bring, the better those around them will perform, right?
And that's a perfect setup for my next question because embracing your role, regardless of what your role is, Klay Thompson, the third best player. But then you go for 14 threes against the Bulls, you know, regardless, bench player. But your hardest workers don't always mean they're the most verbal leaders. Like you take a Michael Jordan, I mean, he was relentless and he was brutal and it was awesome, but he wasn't going to be empathetic with you. But that's all part of it. That's all part of the dynamics of the, of great teams. Can you talk about that?
Well, so an important discussion point right here, real quick is that there's a different chemistry for all great teams, right? Golden State, Michael Jordan wouldn't have fit in the Golden State warriors, right? As incredible as he is, he was such an overwhelming dominant personality. It would have been difficult for him to have allowed Klay Thompson to feel, you know, there's just, there's something about different teams and different, and each one, when the great teams come together, they all have, there's a slightly different chemical composition. So there's no one answer, there is no one way to build a great team. But Jordan obviously was incredible in the way he pushed others by saying, look, how can you, how good do you want to be?
And if they say name one person in that environment is going to say, I want to be the fifth best player on the team, I want to be average. No one says that to Michael Jordan. And if they say I want to be great, he says, follow me. I'll show you what it takes, I'll show you what it looks like. And if you're willing to do those things, I promise things will better for you than anything you can imagine.
Right. And there's so much to be said about that. When your best player is your hardest worker. And then you have to have followers, you have to have people that are positive followers, that embrace the role and then understand that. Have you seen that over time? I mean, I know you've seen it, but can you talk a little bit about the ability to buy in and believe in and to be a follower in your role, but yet work on your self leadership?
Sure. David Ross, I mean, we'll go right there, right. David Ross never believed he was the, he didn't even think he was the top 15, you know, on a 25 man roster. He didn't see himself in the top 15 on most of the teams he played on.
Right.
But as he was, where he went at the end of his career was I don't have to be the best player to be a leader.
Right.
I don't have to. What I can do to be a leader is to prove engaged, to be engaged, to be authentic, to want to win. Right. I'm not, I'm not on this team just because I'm a good guy. I'm on this team to contribute.
Right.
So they're highly competitive. He worked on those elements. But yeah, there was a, there's a perfect example. A guy that was nowhere near the best player on his team.
Right.
But who led.
Right? Right. So of all the folks in all the situations and incredible environments you've been around, I think it would be safe to say that you agree with me on this, that working hard and having fun and enjoying yourself don't have to be mutually exclusive. Unfortunately, a lot of our society thinks that. So can you share some of the funnier moments or maybe one or two funny moments in sports that you've had from incredible leaders, whether it's in an interview or something you witnessed or whatever it is?
Well, I mean, one to that point right there. I mean, a lot of people look at Nick Saban and say, the man is joyless.
Right.
The truth is when you ask him that, he'll tell you if you're in a private or he's not the best in press conferences, but in private settings, he'll say, I don't understand that. People show joy in different ways. My joy is in feeling like we delivered on our commitment to be the best we can be today. And that to me, I get joy out of that. I don't show it the way you show it. Doesn't mean I'm joyless. Why do you. Why do I have to look like you to be anyway? It's just interesting when you get to people, a lot of people say, well, gosh, look at the very best of all, they don't seem to be happy. They don't seem to enjoy themselves. Truth is, they just. Maybe they show it differently than we show it. And that's okay, too. Right.
Well, let's take Joe Madden and back to Dave Ross and I hate to be that Cubs fan that keeps going back to him, but the pajamas on the airplane, the different things they do to keep things lighthearted. I'm sure in your organization you do some things to keep that fun and the joy going. Talk a little bit about, I mean, what did David say about some of the crazy stuff they would do with the Cubs?
Well, you hit on pajamas in the airplane or, you know, what's the wearing your. What they actually, they had a flight going out after Halloween. Right. And so Joe Madden said, I want each of you to take your kids trick or treating or if you don't have kids, I want you to go find a kid and go trick or treating. But then whatever you're wearing to trick or treat, wear that to the ballpark because that's what we're going to race to the airplane and wear on our flight. On our flight to the next. I think it was actually during the World Series, but definitely playoffs.
Yeah.
So he would, he encouraged them to wear what they were wearing and you know, to trick or treat. Anyway, that's it. Right? It's about, it's about how do we make sure that there's seriousness in the moment, but we can appreciate it and have fun with it as well.
Right. You just touched on something that I didn't plan to ask about, but I have to. Kids, how important? Not how important, but how challenging is it? And how do you do it with your schedule to find the blend? And I'm not going to say balance because there's really no such thing. We can pursue it, but there's no such thing. But how do you find that blend where your family doesn't begin to resolve what you do? I saw it in college. Coaching, obviously is where the family would really resent how much mom or dad was going all the time or how much they were consumed with their position and their title and their role and their responsibilities outside of the family. How have you done it? Because it has to be difficult at times.
Yeah. And I don't want to claim that I have the answer to that, but some of the things that we try is that I regularly try. I take one week every summer and each one of my children get to pick my schedule that week. They look at my schedule, where I'm traveling and they get to travel with dad for a whole week. Right. Just on the road and outside of my speaking engagements, they get to pick whatever else we get to do. So I'm in Washington D.C. delivering a keynote for Oracle. And that night I'm staying in the American Girl Doll hotel and eating the dinner with my daughter and her American Girl doll. Right.
How awesome is that?
Or I'll have a speech. This last year I was back in D.C. for another event and my son chose he wanted to go to the FBI Crime Lab and the International Spy Museum. So I'm squeezing these in between the speed around the speech. Try to find ways to engage in one one opportunities with them that will be experiences they'll remember forever.
That's so cool.
And then I really had to learn this one. This was probably the most difficult for me is to stay present when I'm with them. So, you know, when I'm in town, I drive to school every day. If I can and I don't have the radio on, I turn my phone off. I didn't do that for you, but I did it for them.
Hey, that's more important than me and.
I and we talk, you know, so when I'm with them, I'm present and when I'm at home with them at dinner, I don't answer the phone if it rings, I don't care who's calling or at dinner. Right. And whatever it is can wait 30 minutes. And I had to learn how to do that because I'm not wired that way. I'm wired to answer the phone.
Right.
And so it became, just became some life choices I had to make.
Right. And it's okay to struggle with it. I have clients all the time. Like, I must be a bad person. I must be awful. I still struggle with. I'll stay, sneak a peek at my emails. Well, I mean, it's just the world we live in. Right?
Right.
You got to keep working at it.
Yep, yep. Absolutely.
Yeah. Well, as we wind down here, I want to talk a little bit about the one word that keeps coming up. Journey. All right. The journey to greatness. And you have a program coming out that I really want to talk about. I believe it comes out December 1st. And I know you're not supposed to timestamp podcast, but we already have, so I have your papal blessing to do that. So, December 1st, a journey to Greatness. Can you tell us about this unbelievable master course and how you came about putting it together, what it hopes to accomplish and how you're going to accomplish that?
Sure. So one of the things were looking at was as you referenced the book that I wrote a number of years ago based on those 2,500 interviews, on asking those great winners, what did you do? What's the habit? What's the thing you believe you wove into your being that made you. That separated you? And so we broke those down in the top 16 answers and we developed a 30 day course that basically walks you through the habits of high performance with workbooks. But each day it's a 20 to 25 minute window of commitment. We ask of you, and if you take the course, you go through it. And over the course of 30 days, you actually learn through storytelling and audio input from some of the great winners that I've had the chance to talk to.
You learn the habits and you learn how you can apply them into what you do. That's the thing that's beautiful about these 16 habits, is there's not a single one of them that it doesn't matter where we are from an age or physical conditioning, we can actually do these habits of high performance because they're not based on your physical gift. As I said earlier, our goal was to build a course that allowed people to make their way through the journey that I've been watching and learning and studying these last 30 years, and to do it in 30 days. The course goes live December 1st. As you said, we're very excited about it. It's my first ever virtual learning course. Opportunity for me to do what I do, allow people to grow by what we do.
That's fantastic. And will they have lifetime access to the course?
They do have lifetime access. There's all kinds of neat little. I mean, we're so confident in it. We actually created a 100% money back guarantee on it too. You know, that if they invest in it's not that expensive. $399. And you know, and if they do it, they. And they get to the end or they get wherever they are and they say, you know what? I'm. I'm not growing. I'm not getting better. You know, we believe enough that we believe in it to the level that we are willing to make that kind of an offer. And that's cool.
So cool. How awesome was it putting it together? How much fun did you guys have?
Best experience of all, because obviously for each one, you get to tell them some story that helped me to put a face on what it looked like. What does that characteristic look like? And some of the faces are extraordinarily famous and others are not. But you see through the discussions and the lessons why this is so important. And if we can go on the journey, you know, were assured of becoming, of being better tomorrow than we are today.
That's phenomenal. And so on December 1st, courses backslash. Donjaeger.
I think it's courses, Donjer.
Thank you.
Yeah.
That's why I looked at you inquisitively with those. The eyes of a question. So courses.donjaeger.com and where else can our listener find out more about you or connect with you socially? Where else can they do that?
I love the world of social media, where Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, LinkedIn are my four that I really focus on. But then the website danyeger.com we actually offer a quote every day. We send you a quote every day if you want one from some leader. That's inspired me. I been collecting quotes my whole life, and for about four years now, we've been sending out a quote every day to about 25,000 people. And it's really neat to be part of someone's daily inspiration. It's kind of neat.
I had a good friend of mine who did something for his kids when they were growing up. He had a big fishbowl in the kitchen, okay. And he would write quotes out and he stuck them in a fishbowl. And on their way out to school, every Day, he would stick his hand. The children would stick their hand in fishbowl, but pull out a quote and read it. You know what daddy wrote that day to be something inspirational. And then they'd go off to school and he did it all through about late grade school, middle school and high school. So, as you know, my children are a little young now, so the only reason they stick their hands in fishbowl is to actually grab fish. We haven't got there yet, but I'm collecting all your daily quotes for that sole purpose.
I meant to tell you that.
So I have to tell you. I tell you so. I made a tragic error the other day. I actually, my. My little girl who's nine said, you know, impossible is my least favorite word, right? And I just thought, you know what, I love it when my, when I'm. That tells me I'm raising her right if impossible is her least favorite word. So I made that my quote of the day. So my 9 year old was the quote of the day sent out to all these thousands of people, including several of her teachers at her school who signed up and get my quote of the day. And she was so sure that was big time, that now she and my son every day are trying to come up with some quote. Daddy, you can have that one if you want to.
You can go ahead and post it to all of your friends. And now they want to be the quote of the day every day.
And when you don't, you're the bad guy.
Oh yeah.
That is outstanding. Well, good. That's good. Gives her something to do aspire to. That's awesome. Well, hey Don, I can't thank you enough. To find out more about the Molotour group, go to themolitaurgroup.com obviously the podcast the Athletics of business where we are blessed to have Don here with us today. And our other amazing guests are theathletics of business.com, iTunes as well as stitcher. And I do have a Facebook page which is my name Ed Molotour. We have the Molotor Group Facebook page on LinkedIn. I am the Molotow Group or Ed Molotour.
I love connecting with folks on LinkedIn at Twitter, it's hemolitor group and Instagram is my name admolitor and I cannot say thank you enough and I can't wait to share this with everybody and really thank you for doing what you do because everyone who's in your position doesn't necessarily share the stories and share the lessons and isn't as intentional about other people's growth. So the amount of value that you add is. It's hard to describe. And folks like myself, we get it and we do appreciate it, Ed.
Thank you. Appreciate it. It means a lot to me.
All right. Have a great day.
Thanks, buddy.
Thanks, Don.
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