Scott, first of all, I appreciate you being here tonight. Big deal for the diamond allegiance to get somebody of obviously your stature and the type of people that you’ve worked with to join us tonight and talk about sustainable human performance, what that means, and some real practical applications for current high school athletes and what they can do. For those of us joining us, Scott, is the current, I guess CEO would be the correct term. Right?
Thanks Matt, and thanks for having me. It’s great to be here. Yeah. I’m the chief catalyst, I’m one of the co-founders of our company, tum, and what we do is help executives help basically all kinds of high performers be what we call a sustainable high performers. So how do you show up at your best day in and day out, make the biggest impact, bring your talent to fruition and win in the game, whether it’s business, we’ve worked with professional sports like the Oakland Raiders, we’ve worked with Arizona State University, Michigan, worked with some professional baseball players now, but mostly we work with executives and we work with people in the business world, but in the end, they all share the same thing and that’s their humans and they want to make the biggest impact at whatever they’re doing, and they also want to be the best human beings and make the biggest impact at home.
And that’s, so the idea is to be very practical and pragmatic and create some strategies and some skills and some tools that work in all those areas. Yeah. My background is a little unique, I’ll just say, because you guys see a fire helmet behind me, but I was a firefighter for 25 years, retired from the Phoenix Fire Department as a division chief. And so in my time during the fire department, I got my master’s degree in performance psychology and exercise physiology. So my passion was always around performance. How do firefighters and fire ground commanders and leaders in the fire station show up under the highest levels of stress and perform their best? And then I kind of transferred that when I retired and we started tum into other populations, whether it was the business world, whether it was working with the most elite military, you see a Green Beret here. We’ve worked with special forces, special operations, the most elite war fighters all over the world. And in the end, one of my takeaways is it’s all the same. So no matter how you’re aware, you’re applying it, it’s the same stuff. So I’ll pause there. That’s kind of me and what I bring to the table.
Yeah. Thank you, Scott. I appreciate that. And like you said, it’s high performers, whether it’s an athlete, whether it’s a business leader at a top 100 company, whether it’s our special forces who are probably doing the hardest job of anyone out there. I think it’s really interesting to talk about that performing under pressure and performing under pressure is one thing that whether you are a little league player, whether the lights pop on for the first time in your varsity baseball game, whether you’re playing at Arizona State or Michigan or Clemson, or whether you’re playing in the big leagues, you’ve got to deal with that pressure of performance. So why don’t you talk to us a little bit about your outlook on how to perform under pressure?
Yeah. Well, it’s actually interesting because you could argue that we as human beings will learn that naturally if I continually put you under pressure. But the hard part is that would only work if I could put just a little more pressure than you’re used to and let you adapt to that and then a little more pressure and let you adapt to it. But life isn’t so graduated. It turns out that sometimes more is thrown at us than we can handle. And as it turns out, one of the biggest myths that we have found is this idea that mental toughness is something you’re born with. Mental toughness is an outcome. It’s the outcome of practicing mental skills under higher and higher pressure until those skills would hold up under the highest level of pressure. And unfortunately, most people do not learn those skills. In fact, I’d say one of my takeaways, even at Arizona State University when I started with those guys, many of you athletes are so talented, and so people just rely on your talent.
You’re physically talented, you have fast hands, you have good eye hand coordination, you have good footwork, you’ve learned good baseball fundamentals, you can throw, you can catch, you can run, you can hit. But one of the problems is that how do you bring that talent day in and day out? Sometimes it’s not enough. How you show up can make a big difference whether you’re coachable, what your mindset is, how you deal with failure, how you deal with self-doubt, something we work with athletes and executives on all the time as human beings, we will doubt ourselves. The most successful athletes I’ve ever seen struggle with a lot of self-doubt, but they’ve developed skills on how to deal with it. But unfortunately, no one teaches that to us. The curse is when you’re talented physically, most coaches growing up do not want to touch your mindset because the worst thing they want to do is open up Pandora’s box and find out either what’s there or find a problem that they’re not really equipped to handle.
And so the way most people address mindset is a bunch of rah rah, a bunch of quotes, a bunch of cliches, a bunch of stories about athletes, but those are always the exhibition of a mindset. Those are not the skills that help you develop it. And I can tell you, I’ve worked with professional athletes that were exceptional talents and been blown away at some simple things that they didn’t know from a mindset perspective. So I believe there’s skills you have to learn, and the earlier you learn them and start develop developing them, the more your talent will hold up under pressure over time.
Absolutely. And that makes a ton of sense. So what are some of those important skills? I mean, what are some practical things that obviously are the people that are part of our diamond allegiance are youth players, right? Kids that are 18 and under.
Yeah.
What are some practical things that you would recommend that are really important to start chipping away at that mindset and starting to train for it?
So sometimes what we think of mindset skills are simple things that are easy to miss. So I always say at the foundation for every athlete, no matter where you are, is playing for the love of the game. So once we lose the love of the game, we lose our why, we lose our purpose. And we know that purpose is super critical for not only resilience, but for being able to keep perspective. And so if I don’t love the game, that’s a problem. Look at how the system, whether it’s travel, baseball, high school, baseball, it’s so easy for coaches and parents to take away that love for the game. Whenever I work with an athlete, I always go right back to, let’s go back to the days that you just couldn’t wait to get on the field the day that you just loved it and you played.
And when I see great athletes, whether it’s right now in the World Cup in their soccer players or whether it’s baseball players during baseball season, one of the things you always notice is they have this passion for the game. And if you have that, then we can build some hard work and other things. So to me, that’s a great start. And probably the second step is to train your mindset to be coachable. People don’t think of that as a mindset skill, but what is that? It’s vulnerability. Am I willing to try something I don’t know that I can do and fail if I’m not willing to get out of my comfort zone, I’m not really coachable. I can’t be put under pressure because I want to stay in my little safety zone. So well, am I willing to play against tougher competition? Am I willing to face the best pitchers? Am I willing to play a position that I may not be the best at, but it’s an opportunity to develop my skills? Kids that are vulnerable, we’ll take that risk and we can train that and use that humility.
How I handle humility makes me coachable. It’s very hard to coach an arrogant player. So a player that’s very humble, that listens. So curiosity, what don’t I know that I want to know? What can I ask the coach to help me with? Where are my opportunities to learn the skill of asking for help? That’s an interesting one. When we’re afraid to be exposed, we don’t ask for help because then my coach is going to know that I don’t know the answer. Coach, what do I do in this situation? And you’re afraid the coach is going to say, how could you not know that? Well, it doesn’t matter how I could not know it. In order for me to get to the next level, I need to learn it. But here’s a surprise for a lot of people, coaches love to coach. Coaches love to teach.
So when you’re coachable, you will get extra attention. You’ll get extra work, you’ll get the benefit of the doubt when you make a mistake because a mistake is nothing more than a learning opportunity. I remember you watch in football in the preseason or in training camp, players would make a mistake and the coaches would throw it on the clipboard and lose their stuff. And I would say, guys, isn’t this the place that we should be making this mistake? He could have gotten lucky and turned the other direction and run this route, but he didn’t really know what he was doing. He didn’t know what the play called for. I’m glad he made that mistake because now we can coach him on it. So look forward to mistakes. Well, that’s the mindset of the coach. So the mindset of the coach, the mindset of the parent and the mindset of the player all have to come together and then we can build upon that many more skills like learning to embrace, to suck.
The next level I would argue is can I work hard? Because at some point, if you’re going to be an excellent athlete, if you want to be a performer under stress, if you want to be able to compete with great teammates, you got to work hard and you got to sometimes outwork everyone else. Well, that sucks. So that means you better learn to embrace the suck. And there’s a process in that is recognizing that grinding through pays dividends and recognizing to focus not on the work that can fatigue us, focus on the benefits of the work because that will help us grow and get better. And it is amazing when you take two, I remember working with some special forces guys and they’d be going through selection and selection is brutal. There’s sleep deprivation, there’s amazing amount of workload. And the candidates that focus on how long we’ve been going, how far we’ve run, how little sleep we have, they often don’t make it. But the ones who focus on the little recovery breaks that they got, oh my God, I just grabbed five quick minutes. I didn’t have to do anything between this run and pushups. I caught my breath and I loosened up my shoulders and I’m good to go. The ones that have that mindset that are focusing on what they’re achieving and how much farther they’re getting, and even what they’re able to do that they didn’t think they can do. So recognizing that they learn to embrace the suck and learn that they can push through it.
Yeah, Scott, I would equate that to some things in baseball weight room, you get in the weight room, you start getting stronger, and that can suck sometimes, but really being focused on that end goal can really push you through those tough times. So I would agree a hundred percent. I think one thing too, Scott, that as kids get older, it does become, you have to balance that grind, right? With that love of the game. And I hear you hear it a lot in today’s youth sports that, especially in travel ball, Scott, one of the big words is, I’m on the grind. I’m grinding this summer, I got to play five games in seven days. I’m grinding. And I think nothing against the current athlete, but understanding what a true grind really means. And you can’t get that experience until you get that experience. And I think a lot of high school kids are really shocked when they move to the next level.
They think they’ve worked hard, they think they’ve grinded, and then they get to that next level, whether it’s collegiate baseball at any level, whether it’s professional baseball, and they understand that grind and then the importance of them taking care of your body. And I don’t mean to skip ahead or anything like that, but one thing that I’ve learned through the years, I’ve had the lucky enough to have coached about 40 big leaguers over my coaching career. And I think the one thing that is consistent with each and every one of them after they got drafted, I’d always come back after the first season and say, Hey, what did you learn the first season? What did you take away? And to a man, every single one of ’em that has made it has said, I learned that I had to take care of my body. So I don’t know if that’s something that you, I know we’ve got some things to go through, but if you maybe want to talk a little bit about that and being prepared to compete and what that looks like.
Yeah, both of those are huge. So the whole concept of self-care is so critical. And also when fatigue really impacts our mindset. So many times I’ll develop good mindset skills and there’s many more we’ll get into today, but then fatigue kind of chips away at ’em or fatigue allows self-doubt to really overcome my mindset. So it’s this constant kind of balance. Self-care is the place where I rebuild myself. And I’d say for young athletes, learning that self-care is not a nice to have, it’s a must have is the most important thing. So don’t confuse grinding and working hard and being willing to push yourself with putting my recovery aside. I would argue that that’s crazy. So there’s all kinds of recovery. There’s physical recovery that can be something like my stretching, my foam rolling, my active rest, getting out and doing light movements, doing sometimes players use massage, hot and cold therapy, all those kinds of things can be for physical fatigue.
Well, I also get cognitive fatigue. It’s hard to focus five games in a row, so I need to do stuff that gives my brain rest. Sometimes things like music or breathing techniques or just going and playing other games gives my brain a chance to check out. People don’t know this, but your brain has about 45 minutes of intense concentration. Well, that’s pretty interesting because when you think about it, a game is going to last three hours, sometimes two to three hours around a golf can last four or five hours, watch professional golfers, they know how to check in and fully focus, check out and get mental recovery focus recovery. Well, baseball players have to learn the same. So even in the course of a game, there is self-care between innings, taking care of myself, stretching back out, staying warm, allowing my brain to lose its focus for a little bit, bringing it back when I’m coming up to bat, that little kind of in and out without being intense all the time can also help.
And then there’s emotional fatigue, and that’s what a lot of us forget. And there’s some things that create more emotional fatigue. Like my mindset, if my perspective on competition is competition is war, meaning I have to win and you have to lose. And if I don’t beat you, it’s like going to the death. Well, that’s not a healthy competition perspective. That creates a lot of emotional fatigue. When I change my perspective to competition, and I say competition is actually partnership, we’re both in this to push each other to find out how good we can be. I want to play against the greatest talent and the better talent I play against. I want you to play your best. And then I want to see how I match up whenever we have this partnership or competition is partnership that adds way less of an emotional load, and it turns out it gives us much more emotional growth. The two best examples of that right now are in tennis, Raphael Nadal and Roger Federer. And when did we think in our lifetime we’d ever see two players have such a long and lasting successful career? McEnroe all the people before all people you young guys would never have heard of.
I don’t know, Pete Saners, Andre Agassi were pretty good though, but they didn’t have the sustainability. So It is interesting. But I would argue Pete Saners probably had a pretty good perspective on competition. Agassi too, but McEnroe was a complete competition is war, I have to win, I have to embarrass you, I’m going to have a temper tantrum. That’s a mindset skill of learning to keep that perspective. So I think good players treat your brain and your body. It is the driver of my talent and I have to make sure that I take care of all these aspects. I mean, I’m looking at the guys that got drafted from ASU right now, only one has made it to the major leagues that I worked with, right? Spencer Torkelson. The rest are on the long slow journey of miners. That is a grind. I mean for Spencer it’s a grind too. Torque will have his work cut out for him with a number of games and spring training. So much of it is, am I available for my coach to put me in? Well, I’m only available if I’m not injured. I’m only available if I’m cognitively, physically, mentally, and emotionally ready to go into the game. So those are skills I have to practice.
So obviously we transitioned to pro ball and think, and obviously not all of them have these skills, but a lot of them do and that’s why they’ve been able to get to where they are. There’s a lot of very talented athletes out there, and the ones that really can rise to the top of the top of the top do have these skills. So obviously those are type of people that we want to mirror. So what are some things that you’ve seen them do to be very successful? What are some things that you coach them to do to be successful? Both. We can use athletes, we can use top executives, but what are some things and some things that kids can do to really prepare like a pro?
Yeah, that’s a great one. I agree that the system of pro baseball is built to give you so many repetitions that you will eventually develop all the talent that you have and it will push you to develop the mental skills too. And without naming names though, I can tell you of players that were this close to winning the MVP of the league, that when I ask them, just curious, what are the things that destroy your mindset in a game? And they say a fan yelling something at me when I’m in the outfield or I make an error early in the game, or I strike out the first two times at bat. And then you say, but all those things are out of your control. You allow all those things out of your control to destroy your mindset. You realize that player made it on talent. They did not have the mindset. Those are things that you should be able to deal with at that level.
Yeah, absolutely.
So then I realized not everyone has learned those skills. On the flip side, and I can say this, when I work with the elite groups in the military, they have difficult selection processes just like baseball, whether it’s tryouts, whether it’s going through combines, whether it’s going through summer ball. So those are all kind of selection processes that do weeded people out. My job, my goal though is to say how many people get weeded out that actually had the talent and what was the thing that was missing, the missing piece of the puzzle? And almost always it’s mindset. So in that sense it was a mindset skill. So one, like you said, how do I mentally prepare myself to come to a game? But that starts with how I mentally prepare myself to show up for practice. Have I set clear intentions of how I want to show up?
So I might want to go through my mind and say, what does it look like when I’m coachable? What does it look like when I’m playing with passion and a love for the game? What does it look like when I embrace the suck and I want to be out there? How do I deal with failure and success? Because if I freak out every time I fail and yet I’m playing a game where failure is statistically built into the game, I’m not going to be a player that’s going to do very well. So that’s a mindset do I learn? So we try to teach players how they can quickly learn from a mistake. I go up to and at bat I get eight pitches overall out of those eight pitches if I’m honest. And then I end up, let’s say, popping up or striking out. If I throw my bat down, and to me that’s a failure and I put my head down, throw my helmet, run back, or walk back to the dugout.
I’ve taken everything I did in those eight pitches and thrown it out the window as a mistake. But what if I actually did nine things really well? My balance was really good in the box, my mind was clear and uncluttered and I was really ready. I was confident and set myself up for success. I managed my inner anxiety, maybe with my breathing between pitches. I stepped out and reset to get ready for the next pitch. But it just happened to be I swung a two breaking balls and this pitcher has a great breaking ball. If I throw my bat down and get angry, I’ve thrown away all those things that I actually just practice that were good, that I want to continue to do and build upon. So one of the things that we love to have players do is to quickly have an evaluation process to capture what did I just do well?
And then that means I’m going to continue doing that. What did I not do well? But most important, how would what I didn’t do well, look if I had done it well. So that might be laying off that pitch. Okay, so I do a quick visualization. I see myself laying off that pitch. I’ve had players tell me, they call me Scotty P, they used to call me Scotty P at ASU Scotty P. Hardest thing in the world is the first ball that’s hit to me after I make an error. And I say, well, why wouldn’t you fix that before the next ball’s hit to you? Meaning what if I were to play back in my brain, that same ground ball being hit to me and I moved to it with much more confidence. I had better footwork, I had better body position. I was more confident.
Maybe I was more aggressive. So rather than being on my heels, I was more aggressive moving into the ball. What would that look like? Why don’t you practice that five times in your head before the next balls hit to you? That would mean the last five balls that were hit to you, you fielded beautifully. How do you field the sixth ball when you fielded five beautifully? You fielded it pretty confidently. So yet a player is out in the field going, man, my last ball that was horrible, I can’t miss it. Another one, two airs. Oh my God, that would be horrible. This ball comes to me. They’re having this dialogue in their brain when they should have and could have fixed it mentally before. So that’s a skill that we work with them.
Yeah, don’t mean to jump in on you, but one thing that I hear my coach’s brain starts to go off, and obviously we do have coaches that tune in and listen to these type of things. So ss a coach, what can we do? Obviously this is an individual player thing, every player is different, but are there any processes that maybe that you help skip with at ASU or that you talked about that coaches can help their teams develop these type of mental skills?
Totally. So I think right out of the gate, coaches should never assume that kids have those mental skills. That means they have to be taught so they’re not going to magically appear. So be careful about judging players is mentally tough or mentally not tough. Again, mental toughness is the end result, practicing mental skills over and over again under higher and higher pressure. So as coaches, we should ask players, Hey, what are you feeling right now? And they may say, man, I feel nervous. No worries. I’ve been there too. Nerves are totally normal. In fact, nerves are a funny thing because there’s a weird thing that happens to humans. We look across to the other dugout and we go, man, those kids look so confident. I’m so nervous. And we forget that they’re looking across to our dugout and going, man, those kids look so confident.
I’m so nervous. We don’t understand that. I try to get players to recognize a nerves are good. When I get nervous, that means my body is doing what it is evolved to do to create adrenaline and energy and focus for moving forward. It’s going to give me more strength, quicker hands, more focus, and it’s going to prepare me to come out and play my best. But there’s also a downside. We all feel the downside differently. Some of us, our legs weigh a hundred pounds each. Some of us, we feel it in our stomach. Some of us, our chest gets tight. So what I try to get players to do is recognize there’s a good side and then find the one thing that helps you with the negative thing. So I’ve noticed a lot of pitchers get fast when they get nervous. So I tell ’em when you feel those nerves coming on a embrace the nerves as a good sign because number one, you care.
And number two, your body is giving you the energy you need to perform. And then on the other side, say, okay, I know that when I get nervous, it makes me go fast. So slow my breathing down, get back in my rhythm. It’s all about rhythm, 1, 2, 3 or whatever my rhythm is, fix the rhythm and everything else comes together. And I use the nerves to my advantage. Maybe my legs get tight before I get up to bat. Hey, maybe just a little bit of bouncing, shaking my legs out makes ’em a little lighter. Cool. I’ve solved the negative part of my nerves and I’m going to use the positive part of my nerves, but I’m going to tell you, you will never not have nerves. Talk to the best players in the world. There’s always going to be nerves. Learning to embrace an example of something coaches can help players do, rather than coaches often say, come on man, just be tough out there. Forget about those nerves. Well, I would love to forget about nerves, but I don’t know how no one’s taught me how. So we have to go back and say, Hey, let me teach you something of how you can do that. The other thing is recognizing when players do good things, Hey, you made a mistake and you kept your head high. So we call that a positive physical response. So one of the things we always want to do is do things that build self-belief. Well, when I drop my head and my shoulders, my body language tells my brain, I don’t believe in myself. I’m not good enough to be out here. So I want to be careful that I’m not communicating that language to my own brain. So I got to have positive physical response. My body posture, my body language has to be positive. Also, I want to be a good teammate. Here’s an interesting thing. When I’m under pressure, the more I focus on making my teammates better, the less pressure I feel.
So that’s a great thing for coaches. Hey man, be a good teammate. Cheer your teammates on. Now I’m not in my own head. I’m trying to help other players play good. They make a mistake. Hey, no worries man. We’ll get ’em next time and guess what they’re going to do for me when I make a mistake? No worries, we’ll get ’em next time. So there’s a lot of little things, and what I’d love for coaches to do is when they recognize a player exhibiting one of these skills, pause, point it out. Hey, did everyone see the way Steve just handled himself after that error? That was amazing. Shook it off, positive body, positive physical response, got his glove back, got focused, got right back in the game. That’s what pros do. Pros don’t let one error lead to two errors, lead to three errors. They clean it up, they move forward. Great job, John. I love that. And all of a sudden players want to do that. You know what I mean?
Yeah, a hundred percent.
In this way, I think coaches can help. I like to use questions. So one of them is like player. We’re trying to teach a player to work hard, to grind, to embrace the suck. So I’d love to ask them like, Hey, today we’re going to work hard. What are the benefits of working hard today? And I ask ’em and they raise their hands, we’re going to work harder than our opponents. How’s that going to help us? Well, we’re going to get into the ninth inning of a game or the seventh inning of a game depending on how many innings you’re playing, and we’re going to know that they’re tired and we’re not awesome. I’m going to know that even when my legs get heavy, I can push through. I can run for a ball in the outfield, I can still get down. Awesome. So I try to constantly ask questions that put the team there.
Maybe I’d show a video and say, tell me did we win or lose this game based on the body language You see? And if we see a bunch of heads down say, yeah, what did our opponents just, what did we just do? We made our opponents stronger because they know they kicked our butts. But if we walked off with our heads high, this is nothing more than a learning experience. So what does it look like when we win and lose with the same body language? Let’s practice that today. So I always coming back to that, why would your teammates love to have you on this team? My favorite player or favorite question I ask my pro players that I work with every single session, I start with the same question. Spring training comes, general manager sits you down. He says, Hey, there’s a hundred players here that all want to play. Why should I believe in you and what’s your answer going to be? And at first they look at me like I’m crazy, and then I no answer it. And every time I’m going to ask you that question, because until I believe that you believe in that answer, it’s bullshit. And that’s an amazing question actually.
It is an amazing question. What are the most successful guys typically answer to that question?
Yeah, so here’s the funny thing, super simple stuff. You know why you should believe in me, coach? I’m going to work harder than anyone out here. When I make a mistake, I’m going to have positive physical response and I’m going to learn from it and move forward quickly. I’m going to mentally and physically prepare for every game and every practice, and when I don’t, I’m going to learn from it and get better at it. Next time, I’m going to be a great teammate and I’m going to pick my teammates up when they’re not playing well and help them get excited. I’m going to play with a passion and love for the game. It’s all not rocket science. It’s mainly I’m going to be at every practice early and make sure that I’m warmed up and ready. You know what I mean? Scott? I’m going to ask for help when I need help.
I think, Scott, one thing that I go back to this on my coaching career and the guys that I’ve had the opportunity to work with and a lot of the stuff that, and this is the first time I’ve heard it from you, right? It’s exciting for me. I love it. But one thing that is uniform across the board, I look back and in this day and age of for the amateur player to take time off and just play when they want to play and play when they feel good. I’m a firm believer and I can go back and name a litany of guys that have played in the big leagues and I knew them when they were 12, 13, 14, 15, 16, 17 years old. And to a man, they loved to play the game to a man, they loved to play the game. You couldn’t tell them to take a day off. We’d be in the eighth game in six days and I’d be like, Hey bud, you got to take the day off, man. No coach. I’m playing today. I’m playing today. So that love of the game, and that’s where it all starts, right?
A hundred percent. And then think, you know What ruins the love of the game more than anything
I do. But you can go ahead and answer that.
No, it’s funny actually. I think it’s even statistically proven. It’s parents. So it’s actually funny parents who want to be supportive but end up being hard on their kids or trying to be the coach. Now, I know some parents are the coach, but we have to remember, there’s lots of coaches my kid is going to have, but they’re only going to have one parent or two parents and parents that love and support their kid feed a passion for the game, a love for the game. Parents that try to overco their kids can sometimes destroy that because every time that kid looks at you, they feel judgment and judgment then leads to guilt and shame destroys the kid’s self-image and destroys their love for the game. One of my favorite stories was Hunter Bishop. He was playing for ASU and his mom had a horrible disease, got early and she was not going to live long.
And I remember it was in Hunter’s head and I asked him when we were talking and I said, hunter, take me back to when you played travel ball. And his brother also is a pro. They both played for San Francisco, I think. And he said, my mom took me to all my games. My dad was taking my brother to all his games. And I just never forget the fun I had with my mom of being on the road and just her smile when she saw me out in the outfield chase down a ball or when she saw me just steal base or get a great hit. And I go, okay, let’s go back to that. That’s what you’re here for. You’re letting a lot of stuff get in your head. That’s tap back into imagining that your mom’s in the stands right now. And the way you serve her, the way you the thank her for taking you to all these games is you come out here with a smile on your face, you play hard and you play with that passion why she drove you around. She loved it. And so I think about that. She probably never thought about it, but her love for her son playing the game was all that he needed.
So I’d love to hear what you were going to say destroys the love of The game. I was going to say parents, and I think I’ve obviously dealt with a wide spectrum of parents. I think a lot of parents do it out of love, but it’s showing love in the wrong way. And one thing, when I used to run a large travel program, we used to do a parent meeting at the beginning of every season, and my biggest to every single parent was when you get in the car, do not say anything about the game until your son or daughter says something to you about it. When they’re ready to talk about the game and open up about the game, they’ll come to you, right? They’ll come to you. And the other thing is show up. Like you said, show up. Be there. Be in the stands as much as you can. Obviously people work and we understand that, but be there because when they do look over their shoulders and they see you clapping for them, it means so much more than you’ll ever know. I had the opportunity today, just a little personal note, my middle son was essentially nominated to be one of the presidential nominees in his seventh grade class this year. I was thinking to myself, Sandy, the founder of our company, and I was supposed to have some important meetings this morning, and I looked at my wife and I was like, what should I do? And she said, well, what would Sandy do? I said, Sandy would figure out a way to be present for his kids. So I did that, and it really meant a lot for my son to be there today. And I think that as parents showing up and being supportive can push your kids in such great ways. Then I think as a parent, understanding that there are a lot of parents out there that have a lot of knowledge of the game, but I think those parents also need to understand that for the most part, once a kid reaches a certain age, they want you to be their parent and not their coach.
And so understanding the importance of finding people, if you are that parent that is very knowledgeable about the game, I look at Jackson Holiday was the first overall pick this last year, right? Played for an organization out of Florida, his dad, obviously Matt Holiday. I watched the way that Matt would watch Jackson play and it was, I don’t even know the games going on. Jackson would come up and he’d look, I had the opportunity, I coached Dan Odos son, Dan on the MLB network, former GM of the Rockies. Dan was probably the most mellow parent I’ve ever seen in my entire life, would go down the right field line, sit there and watch, never saw him get too high, never saw ’em get too low. So when I look at those guys that have been at that level as GMs in the major leagues as all stars in the major leagues and the way that they treat their kids, that’s the model. That’s the model. And I’ve obviously had the opportunity to be around that. And I think that the more that parents can understand that your job is to put your kids with people that you trust, and if you trust those people, let ’em do their job. I always used to tell people, Scott, my office is this dugout, would you come up to me at my office And tell me how to do? I’m not going to come into your cubicle and tell you how to do your job. This is my office, so respect my office. But again, parents do have such a big effect on kids, and it’s so important for all parents out there to hear that and understand that understand undue pressure that you put on them, they strike out, they make a bad pitch, and even your body language is bad in the stands can affect the output of the child so much, right?
I mean, there’s one thing that your child needs to know. I love you. No matter how you perform with the one exception, if you have a bad attitude, I’m going to call you on it because that’s not acceptable to play. You’re not playing with an attitude that deserves to be out here because we’re all taking time and money and all that. To me, if a kid has a bad attitude, I can’t just accept that the rest though, I love you no matter what. And you need to know that my wife is a great tennis player, and her dad was her coach growing up, and I don’t know where he learned it, but he was phenomenal. So when she would come off, he would only bring up things she did well and stuff that she forgot about because she lost. He’s like, I love the way you attacked her second serve. That was amazing. My wife said when she was growing up, she’d think I double faulted so often. How did he notice that I was attacking their second serve? Then the next day he would say, Hey, you want to go out and hit some serves? So he wouldn’t even say, because yesterday you double faulted, right? Because yesterday you couldn’t serve worth of shit, right?
Had he done it that day, it was too hot, it was too emotional. It would’ve been a criticism, but the next day it was a fun thing to just go out and work on serves, and it had no tie to success or failure. It was just a good thing to work on. And parents can do that too. Hey, let me know tomorrow when the tomorrow comes. You want to play catch? You want me to hit you some grounders? You want me to, but it’s not, Hey, yesterday you made two errors. We better go out and hit some grounders. I want to help you. But I will say, and you know how hard the job is of coaching. The hardest job is being a parent. It is hard.
No doubt, No doubt, no doubt. I understand that. And the things that we’ve been talking about today, they’re not easy, right? It’s not easy to see your kid fail, right? It’s not easy because you feel that for them. So I’m very empathetic with parents. I think that in our industry that use sports industry, parents get a bad name. But I also think that we need to put ourselves, I’m a parent. I’ve got three children. I know that how I react and how I feel, even though I’ve seen the bad side of it, sometimes I mess up. But I think that the two things that I try to do is when I do mess up, I let them know that like, Hey man, I shouldn’t have reacted that way. And being able to stand up and say that to them Totally. But I think also as coaches then, like you said, having a little bit of leash with them, because at the end of the day, what they’re trying to do is they want what’s best for their kid, and you are dealing with their kid as a coach, right? Totally. So understanding that there needs to be some leash. I’ll tell you one story, and as I do this, we’ve got about 15 minutes left. So everybody that’s on live with us tonight, if you want to pop any questions in the question and answer, this would be a great time.
But Scott, my first year coaching, we were down in a big USA baseball tournament, and our best player who ended up being a first rounder played in the big leagues for about 12 years. His dad, the USA coaches wanted, he was a shortstop, but the USA coaches wanted to see him pitch too, because at that level, at the 16 year old level, a lot of times when you make that USA team, they like you to be able to do both. So I told the player came in from shortstop, I was like, Hey, bud, USA guys came over, they want to see you throw today. Go get loose. So we were in the first base dugout and the bullpen was over between the two third base dugouts of the two fields. He comes back in about a minute and a half. I said, Hey man, there’s no way that you could have warmed up in that time.
He’s like, coach, my dad says, I can’t pitch. I said, your dad said you can’t pitch. What do you mean? I said, yeah, he just says, I can’t pitch today. I said, okay, bud. Well, either I’m the coach or your dad’s the coach. Please go let him know that. And he is like, okay. So he goes over and comes back and says, my dad says I can’t pitch. Now mind you, this is a kid that by far the best player on our team, he is going to be a first rounder, be in the big leagues, like I said, for 12 years. And I said, well, I’m sorry. Pack up your stuff and get out of the dugout. So do that. I’m walking after the game, walk into my car, and the dad lets me have it for about 15 minutes, just face-to-face. Scott and I let him finish and I look at him.
I said, sir, I won’t say his name obviously, but sir, I promise you that my heart is in your kid’s best interest and I will never do anything to hurt your son. I got in my car, closed the door, went to the hotel. About 15 minutes after getting back to the hotel, I get a knock on my door and it’s the kid just crying, just bawling, right? And he is like, coach, I want to play for you, right? I just want to play for you. And I said, Hey bud, I’ve got no problem, but we got to be on the same page with your dad. We sat down and to this day, one of the best friends that I have in baseball is that dad. So giving him that leeway, but then also standing your ground as a coach and understanding that, look, I understand what you’re trying to do for your kid, but also understanding that, that you are with that right person. So a couple questions here. So first one is how do you deal with coaching your son or daughter? And they don’t listen to you, but they listen to all the other coaches. Is there anything specific that we can do? Right?
Yeah. Do you want to take that one or do you want me to?
You can go for it. You can go for it.
You mentioned it before. Coaching our own kids is so hard. I also did it when my son was growing up and my daughter, I coached my daughter’s tennis. And it’s hard too because as a coach, I didn’t want to favor my son. I didn’t want the other players and parents to think, oh, it’s all about his son. Unfortunately, what I realized is I slighted my son because of that. So it’s a really, really hard one because now you’re stuck in this case where your son or daughter won’t listen to you. You’re now having a power struggle or you’re in an argument that really should not happen on the field there. In that case, I mean, the question is whether this, it’s time for your child to play for another coach, or if I have multiple coaches on the team, I get another coach to work. When I put kids in groups and move ’em around, I would never have my own child in my group. So I would eliminate that opportunity. Easier said than done.
It is, and my response would be, honestly, after doing this for a really long time is try not to coach your kid. I mean, it’s tough. Try to find people that you trust and surround them with my recommendation to parents, and there’s plenty of relationships that really work well and they gel well. But if you’re running into any friction, my response would be that it’s probably time, whether that player’s 10 years old, whether that player’s 18 years old, it happens at different times, but that friction is probably going to happen. And when you start to feel that friction as a parent, you’re the adult, it’s probably time to kind of step back and say, we probably need to make a change here and get a different voice into the equation
And maybe have that conversation away from the field with your own child. Hey, this is what’s going on here. We’re at the point now where you need to be coached by other kids. I can’t have kids on my team that don’t listen, and you are destroying what I said was the second most important skill. You’re not being coachable a hundred percent, and so I don’t want to ruin you because you’re learning bad habits. So that’s a great one. I saw another question about what if your kid already thinks, or you’re coaching a kid, not your kid, but you’re dealing with a kid who thinks they know everything.
And I’m going to argue this is one of the most hardest things. I face that all the time as a mindset coach. Trust me, when I come into a college program or whatever already, the last thing kids want is to expose themselves that maybe I think they’re mentally weak, so they want to portray a smokescreen for me to think they already know all this super, super hard. Now, what I used to do when I was more insecure myself was let me prove to you that you don’t know everything. But in essence, now we’re in a power struggle, and that’s not a very good place for a mindset coach to be or any coach to be. But in the end, that attitude is going to be a big problem. That’s not going to move them forward because that kid is again, missing that second step. They’re not training being coachable.
So one of the things that I want to teach ’em is what does it mean to be coachable and look at every level. What is one thing? Tiger Woods, the greatest, one of the greatest golfers to ever live, always has a coach. Do you think that he doesn’t know a few things about golf? What is the benefit that a coach provides for him? They step aside and with unbiased eyes, they get to watch their player and provide guidance. It doesn’t mean the coach knows everything, but the coach can offer something that even the best players, the smartest players in the world, Michael Jordan always had a basketball coach. Kyle Schwarber always has a baseball coach. Aaron Judge has always had a hitting coach. I mean, that guy looks like he was born with a bat in his hand and was just destined to hit home runs.
So again, that’s part of the conversation you have to have is if you want to move on in life and in sports, you better learn to be coachable. Now, there is a funny thing called the, I think it’s called the Dunning Kruger effect, which is the less we know, the more we think we know, and the more we know, the less we realize we know. And that’s one of the reasons for coaches that have been around for a long time, they actually sometimes are a little intimidated because they’re like, I’ve been around long enough to know that I don’t know a lot.
And new coaches and new players think they know everything. And I always sometimes will explain that to always. Sometimes, many times I’ll pull a player aside and go, you may not know this, but let me show you the science behind this. When you think you know it all, it is actually the sign that where you are on the growth curve is you don’t know enough to know what you don’t know. Young firefighters had the same problem. They come out of the academy, they know everything. And you’re like, when I was 20 years on the job, I was more nervous going and taking a group of firefighters into a burning building than I was with one year. And it wasn’t because I knew less. It was because I knew way more.
Absolutely. Well, we got one more question, and this is kind of switching gears to the other side of your business, obviously, but the question is, for professional entrepreneurs top 100 type that you work with, what are the top three things that they do to get their mind? And whether that’s in the morning at night, but what do you recommend the top three things for them to do to have that good process in place?
Yeah, it’s a great question. And I want to tell you, it probably applies to an athlete just as much as it does an entrepreneur or one of the CEOs that I coach, and one of them is, how do I want to show up today? And the three questions that I ask them to help them determine that is, how do I want to be perceived today? What do I want people to know about me today? How do I want to make people feel when I interact with them? And those three questions help prepare me, and that helps do a thing in our brain called priming our brain so that I don’t need to think about it anymore. It automatically is looking for opportunities to make those intentions come true. The second thing that I do is I look at my day and I go, where’s my recovery going to be?
Because like I said, we only have so much mental power, so much emotional resource, and therefore I need to build pit stops throughout my day so I can constantly recharge so that I can be my best, just like an athlete does between innings, just like a basketball player or soccer player does in halftime. And then the third thing I would say is I like to look for where are my most critical moments where I can make the biggest impact. So as a business person, I have my calendar and there’s certain events in that day where I want to make sure I’m really ready to be my best. And then I asked myself, so how do I need to show up at that event to be my best for my baseball players? It’s the same. My first at bat is going to set such a stage. I want to really make sure I’m ready for my first at bat, a pitcher coming out of the bullpen, that first batter that I face. I want to be really ready where I make my impact. That’s where I set my brain up for success. And that to me would be really, really good place to start.