Episode 193: The Leadership Secrets of Nick Saban with John Talty

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Welcome to another episode of the Club Capital Leadership Podcast. My name is Bradley Hemney, your host. On today's episode, we have Jon Talte. He's a Wall Street Journal bestselling author of The Leadership Secrets of Nick Saban: How Alabama's Coach Became the Greatest Ever. He's a senior sports editor and SEC insider for the Alabama Media Group, the leading statewide news organization, which includes AL.com, The Birmingham News, Mobile Press-Register, and the Huntsville Times. He's covered college football for two decades with a specific focus on the Southeastern Conference for the last decade. John frequently appears on the SEC Network, SiriusXM, and other national sports programs. His work is regularly cited by national outlets, ESPN, Sports Illustrated, etc. I tell you what, you guys know my affinity for Auburn football, but if there's one person that I've admired is Saban, what he's been able to do at Alabama, and how do some of those Secrets, leadership, culture, uh, apply to business. And so when John's book came out, I was excited to be able to have him on. Without further ado, here's my conversation with John Talte.

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John Talte, welcome to the Club Capital Leadership Podcast.

Appreciate you having me on. Excited to have you.

So before we dive in, we always start with just background and origin story. And so why don't you kind of walk our listeners back along your journey and kind of how you got to where you are today?

Yeah, sure. So I started writing about sports when I was 13 years old And it was back in the days of AOL Instant Messenger. And so I would just message these reporters and people that I found their information and started cold calling people. And that's kind of how I got my start covering recruiting back for Pure. You know, if you're a college sports fan, you might have heard of Scout.com. That's kind of where I got my start and Rivals and all that. That's— I started doing that when I was 13. And then just kind of taking that journey Since then, you know, from New Jersey originally, bounced around a little bit, worked in New York, and then came to Mississippi just about a decade ago covering Ole Miss and Mississippi State and SEC and all that and really got my first taste of college football in the South and then moved to Alabama, and I've been in Alabama for about 9 years now covering Alabama, Auburn, UAB, all the things that happen in the state of Alabama. So it's been fun. It's been a good journey, and, you know, here we are.

Yeah. I have a— I've got a question. I wasn't planning on asking you this, but given what you just mentioned there, coming from New Jersey, what was your just opinion around college football in the South, one, and then number two, How has that been different in the fact that you've been literally, we'll say, in the arena, to use that quote, with all of these coaches and just seeing the fan bases and all that? Like, how has that been different but also maybe similar to what you thought it may be?

Yeah, I think, I mean, I think you can watch on TV and know that people care, but I don't— maybe you don't understand how and why they care. And I think that's been a big part of the journey of, you know, covering XFT in particular for the last decade is really understanding how people live this every day of their lives. You know, it is something that is important to people at a level that I think outsiders probably don't understand. They might think they get it, but I don't know that they do. So, you know, I went to, uh, at the time it was an ACC school, it's now in the Big Ten, at Maryland. And, you know, pretty big-time athletics there, would go to football games and basketball games, all that. And so, you know, I had some taste of big-time college football, but certainly, I mean, that pales in comparison to what happens in the SEC. And so it's really kind of what brought me down here. I had a boss in Mississippi, and we were talking about college sports a lot, and he ultimately took a job at Mississippi and wanted to bring me with him. And his pitch basically was like, you say you love college sports, but like, you've never really seen college sports unless you covered the SEC. And that was kind of what sold me on it, of wanting to kind of really get a taste of that. And You know, just being inside, you know, whether it's Bryant-Denny or Jordan-Air or Tiger Stadium when there's 100,000 people there going wild, like it's— until you really experience it, I don't think you get it. And I think that that's something that is really crucial to understanding, you know, these teams and the passion around it.

One last question before we really dive in. You now have been covering it for a decade. You get a lot of criticism, as anybody does. I mean, when you come up with an article that's, you know, what some people would perceive as pro-Alabama or pro-Auburn or against Alabama or criticizing, how do you, how do you handle that? And the reason I'm asking that question is because people listening to this podcast get criticized for decisions that they make a lot. And, you know, sometimes it can— it's easy to say, oh, you're going to have thick skin. But really, how do you— how have you built that to be able to not allow it to affect you mentally?

Yeah, I mean, it's hard. I mean, it really is. You know, I think there's— I think one, if— I think it helps when you know that you've acted in good faith, you know. So if I write a story, you know, in— especially in the sports journalism world, you know, there are people who I feel like— it's not to criticize anybody, but sometimes you you see the arguments they make and you ask yourself, do they really believe what they're saying? Or are they just saying it because they know it's going to get a reaction? I don't write anything to just get a reaction. Now, of course, you want a reaction. You want people to care about your work. If you write something or produce something, whatever it might be, and absolutely nobody reacts to it, then you probably failed. But I don't want to produce anything that I don't truly believe what I'm saying or what I'm writing. So that helps a little bit. If somebody's criticizing you, you can fall back on, I know I went into this with good intentions. Now, they might disagree, with what I— with the conclusion that I came up with, but I know that I can feel good about what I wrote and put out there into the world. So that's the first part. Second part is you just have to kind of know sometimes just to stop looking at it, you know. I think, uh, if you're on Twitter— and Twitter is a whole, you know, another story right now— but if you're on Twitter and, you know, if you're easily bothered by some of the negativeness, and sometimes you just have to— I'm just not looking at it today, you know. And I think that Um, I've had to make that decision at times where, you know, it's like, this is probably not good for me to keep looking at this negative stuff. These are just random people in the world. They're not, you know, the people that I— whose opinions I matter most. And so you try to kind of self, uh, police yourself a little bit in terms of what you're allowing yourself to look at and take in. But it's always going to be a challenge. Like you said, some people are more thick-skinned than others. I think if you're a little thin-skinned, you just have to know yourself well enough to know, like, what can I handle and what, what is going to start maybe impacting my mental health if I keep taking this in?

Yeah, I mean, there's a big— there's a lot of big names. I mean, Stephen Smith, Stephen A. Smith, I'm okay to say his name personally. I mean, they will say things out there just to get reactions, and you wonder, do you really believe that? I mean, do you really believe that, or are you just trying to get, you know, people to tweet about it? But post about it and, you know, just because any, any, any interest or reaction is good reaction, that type of thing, right? Or any news is good news. But anyway, so I appreciate that. I was curious to see how you handled that, especially in, in, in the Deep South with college football. All right, let's get into it. So it was actually Lane Kiffin's tweet. I think I told you this before that he tweeted about he was reading or had gotten your book The Leadership Secrets of Nick Saban: How Alabama's Coach Became the Greatest Ever. And look, everybody who's listened to me for years knows my affinity for Auburn, the university. My parents went to Auburn. I went to Auburn. My son's a big Auburn fan. And so Auburn's in my blood. That said, though, this podcast is all about, you know, business owners being able to become better leaders. And it has been astonishing to me to see what Alabama specifically, what Nick Saban has done there. As much as I cannot stand it, uh, and it pains me to say it, he is without question the greatest ever. He has sustained success in an incredibly difficult, maybe one of the most difficult environments, competitive environments that there is. And so it's one thing for him to have success, but to sustain it— and I, I thought, man, if somebody could ever peel, you know, peek behind the curtains to be able to figure out what in the world is he doing. There are lessons there that we can apply to our businesses. And so when your book came out, I saw that tweet, I was like, all right, I'm getting it. So yes, I've gotten a lot of flack from my Alabama buddies who I sent the screenshot to and said that I was listening to it, but I'm about 75% through and I think you did a fantastic job. So before we get into some of the questions I have, What was the impetus? Where did you begin to kind of start to think about putting this book together?

Yeah, I think, you know, it's something that I've talked about. It's funny to kind of bring this full circle. The guy who convinced me to move down south years ago, he and I have talked about this idea for years, and he had written some business books in the past, and we were talking about it. He's like, you know, the more you cover Alabama, like, you know, there's something there. And that's kind of got me thinking a little bit about it. And for me, a big part of it was that I feel like when you're around Alabama football, and I've covered them for many years now, and you talk to players and coaches and recruits and all these different people, they all keep coming back to saying that this place is run like a business. And that's what people always talk about. This is— Nick Saban runs it like a business, right? And sometimes that's even used against them. Like, yeah, it's all business-like over there. It's not fun, whatever it might be. And so to me, that kind of stirred something inside of me to wonder Is it actually run like a business or is it just that maybe this is run 5% more efficient than other schools and that's why we say it's like a business? And so I started thinking that way and then just wanting, as I kind of dove further and further in, I just wondered, there has to be something that's happening here that translates outside of football. Like, I just, I believe that when you achieve that level of greatness and truly sustained greatness, you know, you could say, for most of, you know, the mid-2000s, you know, Alabama is, you know, the Apple or Facebook of college sports. You know, they've just had a dominant run, and, you know, Nick Saban has been the CEO through that entire process. And so I just wondered, what is it that he is doing and Alabama is doing that might benefit people like you or your listeners or people outside of just hardcore college football fans? And that was really kind of the impetus behind it. And then, you know, kind of went from there.

Yeah, well, I completely agree with you because I wanted to know, you know, I like, what is it, what is he doing? I mean, yeah, it's all— you, you hear the things that he says, which I'm gonna kind of dive into a few of those, but then you wonder really behind the scenes, like, what, what is it, what is it really like? Um, and what are the things— what, how does that kind of, that saying or that quote actually get translated down to day-to-day meetings that he has with staff, et cetera. And there's one of them I would love to know about is at first, you know, as an Auburn fan, we really busted his chops pretty hard when he first came on. But man, we were wrong about this. And he talks about the process and the process, the process, process, and was kind of ad nauseam at first. And it still is. When you started to research the book and interview a lot of people What did they say about the process and what are some of the things that you've learned about, you know, what he has done with the process, where it originated, and then how maybe we can take some of those things to apply to our businesses now?

Yeah, I think the process is one of those things, and I feel like when I first got here, I had a same kind of reaction to you, just an outsider, like, okay, whatever. Like, it's the same thing over and over again. It felt like the guides in some ways we're almost brainwashed, right? And in some ways they are, but in a good way for them in that it's a very simple, I think, concept. But I think to actually live your life that way is very challenging, right? And so at its core, at its most basic, it's focusing on the process to have the results you want and not on the results itself, right? So if you're, you know, selling, you have a quota or whatever, it's not thinking about, I have to sell 200 things. It's focusing on, I need to work a certain way every single day to be successful. And if I do that every single day, ultimately I'm going to do what I need to do, rather than just thinking, oh, I need to do one more, one more. You know, it's more about focusing on the little than the big picture. And so for Saban, it really started back in the late 1990s when he was at Michigan State. They were playing Ohio State. I think Ohio State was number one in the country. And he asked this psychologist like, what, what do you, what advice do you give to a team that believes they have no chance to win, right? They believe there's no way we're gonna be able to beat this team. And the advice he got was said, rather than thinking about having to win, you know, 60 minutes of a football game, focusing on winning individual 7-second plays. So just focus on your, you know, if you're an offensive lineman, you're standing right in front of a defensive lineman, focus on winning that 7-second play. Okay, you won. All right, now do the next one. And so that was able to, it allowed them to break it down in a much smaller way rather than just staring at the scoreboard thinking, how are we gonna be the number one team in the country? And so I think that's very, I think when you can live your life that way, I think you can have a lot of success. I think Nick Saban's a great example of it. It's about doing what you need to do on a daily basis to be successful and not allowing yourself to get, you know, too swayed up or down by daily, you know, outside factors. Influences. And, you know, that's— again, that's challenging, I think, for a lot of people. But when you're able to string a bunch of those days together, I do think you're able to build momentum. Um, and I think, you know, one of the things that Saban talks about, which I personally buy into a lot, is that basically every single day there's— you can't maintain status quo. You're either getting better or worse every single day. And so there's a strong emphasis obviously on getting better every single day, but there's— he's not really a believer of just at the end of the day you're like, yeah, that was another day. Because if it was just another day, then you probably actually got worse because there's always going to be somebody competing to be better than you, especially at Alabama. When you start having success, you know everybody wants to take you down. And again, I'm sure plenty of the people who listen to this podcast, you know, they're competing against other companies, individual people You know, if you're not working at a certain level, there's somebody out there who's trying to work harder than you to win, you know, whatever you're competing in.

You know, that was one of the things I definitely did, did like. I was in one of my notes, um, uh, whenever you said you're either better— he said, but you're either better or you're worse, you're never the same. And I really did, um, like literally pause the Audible book and I thought, yeah, I think he's actually right about that. I think You're never just in, you just are. You're either going, you know, becoming a little bit better. I mean, people have talked about 1% better, etc. You're becoming better or you're becoming worse. You're never exactly the same. I have one question that I struggled with a little bit of the application to this in business. Now, fans absolutely are like national championship or bust. I mean, we're in 2022. You know, a lot of the Alabama fans are upset because they underperformed, which, you know, for an Auburn fan, we'd take that in 2 seconds, you know, the season they had right now. Um, and so you wrote his aversion to a results-based mindset such as a national championship. He just does not have a results-oriented strategy or outcome-driven strategy. And I was like, okay. And you mentioned this a little bit. But I wanted to press into this and get your thoughts about it. Well, if I was a business to not say, here's our targets, our outcomes, here's our 3-year vision of where we're trying to be, um, goals if people want to use that terminology, um, to say this is what we want to accomplish this year. And I thought, well, if I stripped all of that away and then just said, hey, just do these things every day, I would feel like, okay, I get the concept of it, but I'm trying to— hard time to say, yeah, but is there not ever a place maybe in business to actually say, no, this is what we are actually trying to accomplish? Does this make sense? Like, I was actually trying to think, how do we actually really apply that? I'm just curious your thoughts.

And I think, I mean, in the big picture sense too, I think everybody at Alabama still knows they won a national championship, right? So whether it's explicitly spoken or not, and what Saban will do, one thing he'll say is basically like We're not thinking about just winning a national championship. It's about— and this is kind of cheesy— but basically having that national championship mindset every day or working like a national champion every day. So it's not that you have to necessarily strip all of it out. It's just not putting a big sign in your team building that you touch every day before you walk out, national championship or bust. Because I think Saban's fear both ways, really. If you don't measure up, which this year they have not, you know, it becomes so deflating. And I think there is still so much outside pressure that those players still, I think, are deflated the fact that they're not going to win a national championship. But still, you're trying to prevent some of that because, again, there's only one. There's 130 teams, uh, in college football competing, which is a little unique compared to business, but there could only be one national championship. Right? So if you're saying that you have to be number 1 out of 130 every single year, you know, you're not going to achieve that every year. He's had an incredible run. It's the greatest ever, but still it's incredibly hard to do. And so you want to be careful in doing that. The flip side of that, I think, is you can have— and this is something he talks about a lot in individual games— is that you can have a goal. You know, we want to be the number 1 seller in X product, whatever it might be. And you might achieve that, but you might not still be doing that good of a job. You might not still be actually maximizing what's capable. If it's truly just, well, I just want to be number one in this, you could achieve number one by happenstance. That other company could have a worse year than you, and you're number one. It doesn't mean that you're actually doing as well as you could be doing. And so I think that's some of his fear too, is that if it was solely just about winning or losing, right? Mm-hmm. At Alabama, they're going to win the majority of their games. And so if it's just, well, as long as we beat every team, that's all that matters. Well, to some extent that's true, but— and we saw this this past year at Alabama— like, when you're, when you're very barely beating teams you should be beating by more, eventually that has a way of catching up and getting you. And there's a chapter later on in the book that talks about, you know, this one, uh, executive I talked to and some other people like that Many times the best time to apply pressure is when times are going well, rather than applying pressure when times are going poorly. And it's a lot easier to, "Oh man, we failed. I wanna yell at people. I wanna get everybody fired up." It's harder, I think, for leaders to say, "Yeah, we're winning right now, but we're not actually doing that good of a job. We could be doing a lot better. Let's crank it up." And so that's where I think having some of that, some not being solely results-oriented it's helpful because you sometimes intrinsically or individually know, yeah, maybe I won this thing or maybe I did well enough that everybody's happy, but I could probably actually be doing 5% better. And that's really what we want. We really wanna maximize purely than just hitting one specific result.

That makes sense. Yeah, that, that, that was good. That's helpful. There was, this was within just a few months of when now Senator Tuberville decided to start, you know, his political, you know, career. He actually came to the office. I knew some Auburn people and I got to talk to him for maybe 20, 30 minutes or so years ago. And he saw the pictures in my office around about Auburn. And we started a conversation. I have no idea how this came up. I certainly wouldn't have brought it up, but he said, You know, the thing about Saban that just blows me away is how he has been able to maintain what he maintains throughout all the staff turnover. He said, when I was at Auburn, if I'd had that amount of turnover, no way, no way we would have been able to accomplish what we did. He said, to me, that's the most amazing thing about it. And so if we think about, let's say, the application to business and sports is all these coaches, offensive coordinators, all the way down to wide receiver coach, etc. Are like the leadership team, we'll just call it that, right? And then the players are the— is the team itself. Still, in a business, you have that much turnover in a leadership team? And yes, Kirby Smart was at Alabama for a very long period of time, but since then, a lot of offensive coordinators have come through and they have maintained that level. How in the world has he been able to do that? Yes, I know these are good coaches.

I get it.

But still, it would feel like it would just be kind of a cluster, and it's not been.

Yeah, I mean, I, I have some, you know, some examples in the book, but you're right. I mean, I agree with Senator Tuberville that, you know, if you look at it as a business, if you lost, say, 3 or 4 of your top lieutenants, you know, you would ruin your year, you know. And he has to deal with that almost every single year. So I think he does a couple things that are good that I think are applicable, um, outside of just sports in particular. I think one of them is that he prepares people in the organization for change, right? So they know the players, which you consider probably your main employee work base, they are prepared for the inevitability of change. Now, it might not happen every year, but they know that it's probably gonna happen. And so there's not gonna be this massive uproar when somebody leaves because they know how it's gonna work. They know the system that's in place. They know that, you know, if these guys leave, it's because they've done a good enough job to get an opportunity elsewhere. And that's really a positive for the organization. And when somebody leaves, they'll bring in another strong candidate to do that. One of the other things that he does, and I think the example I use in the book is related to Bill O'Brien, who's not the most popular guy amongst Alabama fans right now. But what I thought was interesting was that he comes in months earlier, he was the Houston Texans head coach, been an NFL head coach, was Tom Brady's offensive coordinator of the Patriots. This is a well-known guy. He's a big personality, all these different things. And when Nick Saban hired him, what he did was say, you need to learn our system, we're not learning your system, right? So rather than making half the team, let's call it 60 players on the offensive side of the ball, having to learn all this different terminology and, and language, all these different things for how, uh, Bill O'Brien wants to do things, he'd say, I'd rather make one adult rather than 60 kids have to learn a new system. And that's kind of humbling, you know. You can imagine the ego around a big-time football coach coming in and be like, wait, I have to learn how they do things? But that's in part how I think he allows the continuity of saying, listen, we're going to make some changes, of course, but we're going to still try to keep these things in the language that we use. We're going to still kind of keep the system that we use. There's just a different person leading that team now. And so I think that allows again, the players to feel like, okay, like, yeah, you know, we love Lane Kiffin, we love Steve Sarkisian, or whatever it might be, but we're going to bring in somebody who's still doing things the Alabama way that we do things. And so it does put a lot of pressure, I think, on Saban, uh, to kind of maintain that cultural standard, that individual standard for these different position groups and things like that. But I think when you lay it out in very clear, concise terms to everyone If you find the right person, it's kind of almost plugging in rather than asking them to do something completely different. And, you know, some of the people I've talked to who are hired by him, he'll say like, you know, I'm hiring you in part because what you did at this other place, but I'm coming to you to run things the way that we run things. I'm not coming for you to do things the way you did them at LSU. I'm coming to you to take the skills that you developed at LSU and run them the Alabama way. And so I think that's another way of kind of helping, um, do that. But I mean, he's had misses. He's hired the wrong people before. It happens to everybody. But he does have a pretty good hit rate.

Yeah, he does, to say the least. That makes a lot of sense. Yeah, that's good insight. I'm curious, in the book, I thought one of the best stories for me that really resonated was whenever you talked about the COVID year, and you said one of the, like, maybe the very first meeting when it was pretty clear things were gonna going to change in March, that you said that the people in that room have said that that was the most impressive meeting that they had ever been in to say, this is, this is really where his ability to prepare everybody for change really stood out. And of course, they ended up winning the national championship that year in spite of all of those difficulties. And you would have kind of thought maybe that this was the thing that was going to disrupt him the most, right? That COVID and all these things, it's not— he doesn't have control over it yet. It was actually the thing that actually maybe showed how well he is able to adapt himself, um, and, and adapt the team. He was so— had already had a process in place. Can you just talk about two things? One, kind of maybe that, that story in particular I thought was really great in the book, and then also how the COVID year, in spite of all of its challenges, really illustrated and brought to light maybe the genius of Saban?

Yeah, I think there's this belief, and it's not unfounded, that Nick Saban is a very rigid person, right? You know, whether it's the process— I mean, he eats the same thing for breakfast and lunch every day. And so to your point, I think people thought, oh man, COVID is going to really screw him up. But I think it, it kind of, uh, maybe either forgot, or maybe, you know, I think part of the thing that maybe people forgot about Saban is that his intention, his attention to detail is incredible. And this is somebody who has his day, you know, down to really sometimes the second. At a minimum, it's the minute. And so I think what that allowed him to do was to be very organized, to bring organization to a chaotic situation. And I think a lot of other coaches struggled with that, where Saban, I think his organization was, you know, there's a lot of things we can't control, but the things that we can control, we are going to control to the nth degree. And I think he's really good at doing that. And People will tell you stories, you know, there's a rain delay and the players will come back into the locker room and all the rain gear is already laid out for them. Like he's always kind of a couple of steps ahead. And I think he was able to bring that to whether it was testing, eventually vaccines. They were, I mean, they were one of the teams that I remember who were as close to 100% vaccine-wise, the first set of anybody out of college football teams and just his organization, his ability to explain to the team why that was important for them to do that. So I think, One of the chapters, I think it might even be that chapter, it's called Evaluate Constantly, Evolve When Necessary. And I think that's a lot of Saban's approach is that we will come up with these different things. We'd say, oh, this is gonna be a thing that gets Saban, you know, whether it's spread offense or hurry up, no huddle. Now it's a lot of the NIL conversation, but he's very good at kind of trying to look, all right, are we doing this the best that we can do it? Is there a way for us to do this better? And if it is, then we need to evolve and change. And that's one of the things that he identified pretty early on that first meeting, that first Friday. I think it was March 13th when really the world changed in many ways. And he was already thinking, OK, we have to evolve. If we don't evolve, we're going to fall behind. And he was able to kind of get to that next step, I think, a lot faster than the average coach where they were just trying to think about how it was impacting them. He's like, all right, we got to do these things. We got to get these guys ready for this. 'You guys send him home with this.' He had all these kind of things already arranged very quickly. That's how fast I think his mind works. But I think it's important, and I think it's another one of the things that has allowed Nick Saban to stay at the top, is that there's a humbleness there. You know, there's not the, 'Well, I've already won 4 national championships, we're doing it this way.' There's, 'Okay, you're telling me there's a better way to do this? Let's look into that. Let's evaluate that. Let's find a way to see if that can work in our system. And if it does, then let's do that. Let's find that next, you know, way to get 1% better, as you mentioned earlier. And so I think that's a really important thing as a leader to be able to do, to not get so stuck in the past, to be unwilling to evolve, to stay ahead of people. And I think that meeting in particular showed Saban's very good at staying a step ahead of people as best he can.

So I want to ask you just a couple other quick things about just your experience in writing this. But what's probably one of the most misunderstood aspects of Coach Saban?

You know, I think the one that I think he's done a decent job of trying to change this perception in recent years, but I think for a long time, and you as an Auburn fan, I'm sure would know this, like He was painted as this basically this cyborg, this robot, you know, that he was just obsessed with winning and that, you know, he never smiled, all these different things. And again, that's not unfounded, you know, he does want to win. I think for people will tell you, it was just one of the things that I enjoyed, uh, with writing this book was that like, you know, guys who had him early on in his career, I mean, he was a hard-charging guy, right? But like, then it almost like if they saw him smiling, it'd almost be a bad thing to be like, what did you do? Like, what are you about to drop on us that you're He's already like smiling about this. And I think now as he's gotten older, I think you're seeing a little bit warmer of a Saban. I think one of the things that I was impressed about him was just, I think kind of once you get in his world, you're kind of in his world for life. And the guys who played for him on his first team, you know, in Toledo, calling him 30 years later, like, hey, would you be willing to be a reference for me? And he was of course willing to, or like, Hey, I'm going to be in Alabama. Would it be okay if I stopped by practice? And like, came greeting them very warmly or, you know, helping people behind the scenes with money and donations. There's a lot I think that he's not showy about. He doesn't want necessarily people to know what he does behind the scenes. I think he almost likes this for a long time, this image of him almost being like a Darth Vader. But there's a lot of other stuff that happens kind of underneath the current that I think he does for people that's been beneficial.

Yeah, yeah, that's true. I agree, because I mean, that, that has been the perception, the stereotype of him for a really long time. Well, personally, what's your favorite Saban story? Have you been on the, on the receiving end of one of these, you know, whether it's public rants in a press conference or maybe just individual conversations?

Yeah, I have. He calls those ass chewings, and I have been a part of those. I think this is a very benign one, but it just made me laugh. A couple years ago, we were at this like small gathering, and I asked him a question, and he started going off on me. And, you know, whatever happens. And then he like went away, and then he came back and started to kind of apologize to me, which that was nice. He was like, you know, I didn't like— I didn't mean to go off on you. But I mean, like, and he just started ramping up again. And basically, as he tried to apologize to me, he just started yelling at me again. And I just— to me, it was funny. I enjoyed it. Like, I was just kind of like, he, he just started ramping himself up all over again and started yelling at me again. Uh, but yeah, listen, he is a fiery guy. Uh, you know, if you've covered Alabama, you have probably been the recipient of a phone call. Usually the way it works is his there's no notice. His— usually it's his assistant will call you and say, uh, I've got Coach Saban here for you. And it's just like, oh boy, here it goes. It's usually not a positive phone call. You know you're gonna get yelled at. And, uh, you know, I think he's pretty good about not holding grudges. And it's just, you know, he's— it kind of— it goes with the territory when you cover that team. But, uh, he's—

he—

even at his age, he's 71 now, he can still deliver a pretty good one.

Yeah, I'm sure you get accustomed to it initially of being on the recipient end of like, oh man, this is going to be tough. You know, we talked earlier about you having to have thick skin with all these people on whatever message boards and Twitter. I guess nothing is bad as getting it from Saban himself. You know, that prepares you quite a bit for the public, you know, talk and criticism.

Yeah, and I think you just have to get used to it. You know, he's not the first coach to yell at me before, which helps. But I think especially when you're younger, it's— it can be a little intimidating. I think when you get older and you get a little bit more separated, it's easier. But yeah, it's tough. I mean, I think the average person in the state of Alabama, if Nick Saban called and yelled at them, you know, they'd probably be heartbroken, right? But like, you know, I think that we just understand that we both have a job to do, and sometimes things that we do are not necessarily going to be aligned with what he wants, and Yeah, I think one of the things you have to understand of Nick Saban is that, you know, it goes back to what we're saying about COVID earlier. I mean, he wants to control things to the best of his ability to control things, right? And so, you know, the media is one of these things that he tries to control, but he can't always fully control it. And so there's just some of that helplessness, I think, in terms of people writing stories about the program that he can't control, that I think is certainly, you know, a little anxiety-inducing for him.

All right. So this next question is— this is kind of for some of my really close friends who say this quite a bit. You know, Saban did not have the best experience in the NFL whenever he was at the Dolphins for a couple of years. Well, college football is moving a little closer to that with NIL and transfer portal, et cetera. And so— some of them have speculated, well, you know what, this may— we may actually now be start seeing that, not the downfall, but starting to see the change where Saban finally says, this is not the college football I want. And he bails because of NIL and all these other things that you have to deal with. Do you think that's founded? Do you or do you think that this is just another opportunity for him to say, nope, we're going to— we're going to thrive and survive in this environment as well?

I mean, this is a cop-out. I think it could be both. I mean, I think we're kind of in that important time frame in which we're going to find out, I think, a lot in the next— you know, we've already in the last year, but I think in the next year forward too, because I think it could go either way. I mean, if you look at his track record, again, there have been numerous times where people thought this is going to be a thing that he's not going to be able to figure out. He's always been able to figure it out. But I do think the NIL does deeply frustrate him. And I think if you go back to his NFL experience, I do think there's something to take away from that. I think one of the things that frustrated him— there are a couple things. One, the whole draft process of the better the team you are, the worst draft pick you get. I think he was just like, this is kind of, you know, if I win a national championship at LSU, I'm going to get better players the following year versus worse.

That's true.

But the other thing is that a key tenet of Saban's philosophy and organizational philosophy is that he tries to keep it as close to meritocracy as possible. And so what you'll see at Alabama, you can be a 5-star recruit coming in But if you don't learn the playbook, work the way that you need to, he'll just tell you you're not playing. You know, he has playing time as a carrot to hold over everybody that if you don't follow the way that we do things, you're not going to play. Well, the NFL, if your owner decides to give now a player $30 million, $40 million a year, that player is playing. You know, I don't want to— Kyler Murray, you know, not to just take a random ricochet shot at Kyler Murray, but like if he doesn't deliver, which he's not doing right now in the NFL before he got hurt, you owe so much money to that guy, you have to keep playing him, right? And so the fear, I think, would be with NIL, if it keeps getting bigger and bigger and you owe significant amount of money to these different players, there's that pressure that they're going to have to play. Uh, and so I think there's some issues that have already bubbled up that are confounding, uh, to Saban, that are frustrating, that, you know, we'll see how he handles them moving forward. I mean, I think they've had very good teams the last 2 years. Of course, they have not won the last 2 years. Uh, next year they're losing a lot of their top players. I think next year is going to be really interesting for Saban to see how he's able to get Alabama, whether they're able to get back to the, to the mountaintop, or, uh, this is a little bit of the beginning of the end.

Well, John, I really did enjoy, um, listening. I've listened to the book, and on Audible in my case, I really did pick up a, a tremendous amount. I'm going to finish out the last, uh, 25% or so in the next, uh, in the next week or so. It's been great having you on. People want to connect with you, uh, where would they, where would they do that? And obviously, where can they find the book?

Sure, yeah, you can follow me on Twitter @JTalty. Uh, you can of course, you know, read all of our great sports coverage at AL.com. And, uh, if you're looking to buy the book, pretty much anywhere you buy books, uh, looking for, you know, a gift or anything like that, Amazon's probably your best bet to get it fast. But Books-A-Million, Barnes Noble, any of your local independent bookstores should have it. So lots of great places to get it. And, you know, audiobook, Kindle, plenty of options for you if you want it. And so it's, it's the reaction to it's been great so far. And I think people, I think your listeners are really gonna enjoy it.

Yeah, absolutely. You did a great job with it. I've really enjoyed it. Alright, so I'll have you back on whenever you write the redemption story of Auburn and Hugh Freeze in the next year or two. Okay.

Sounds great.

Well, I do it every time we have an interview. What are some of my big takeaways? I thought the conversation around the process was great. And also when we started to kind of work through, well, what does that mean to not be resource-oriented? How do we kind of thread that needle between not being resource-oriented, but also being able to set targets and outcomes and achievements that we want to have, not only in, in the case of football, but obviously in sports. I thought the conversation around staff turnover and how he's been able to find a way to still have that turnover because people come to his organization, his program, and then leave to go be head coaches again somewhere else. And then certainly, I did think that the part of the book whenever he talked about how he handled the COVID year was really interesting to me. So anyway, I hope that served all of you. Appreciate John coming on. I thought he did a great job of just giving us some of the tidbits and behind-the-scenes look. I really encourage you to pick up the book. I've learned a lot from it and I hope that it serves you as well. All right. So we're already at the very beginning of 2023 and at the end of the month in January. How's your year gotten off to, uh, so far this year? Have you gotten off to a quick start, a fast start for 2023? Hopefully you began to kind of set out what are some of the objectives and and the targets that you want to hit this year, it's important to be able to get off to a quick start. And there's a number of different ways to do that. You know, business is hard. There's a lot of different moving parts. And so you want to be able to do it with a team of A players. And if you know that having a bench recruiting pipeline on an ongoing basis, not just leads to work, but obviously a team, you know, one thing we didn't talk a ton about with John was just how the emphasis around recruiting that Saban has. And, and if I'd had more time, I would have talked to him a lot more about that. And because it's very prevalent, prevalent in the book, and you can certainly see that if you follow, follow college football and how much Saban has put an emphasis on that, and for good reason. You need to be able to do the same in your business, and you know that, but you're wearing a lot of different hats and you're busy, and that's not necessarily an excuse, but there is ways to be able to outsource some of that process for you so that you can continuously find A players. I've referred a number of different business owners over to the team at Autopilot Recruiting, and they have just raved about the experience. So go to autopilotrecruiting.com and use the code CLUBCAPITAL to get started. Let the team know that you heard about them on the Club Capital Leadership Podcast, and you really want to be able to make 2023 a great year for you and your team. You know, you need to do that with a team of A players. Autopilotrecruiting.com. Of course, a part of that is— of that attract, develop, retain, that's kind of a framework that I personally use and believe in— got to be able to— part 2 is got to be able to develop them. And so, you know, again, Saban, whenever he's at Alabama, he goes and gets 4- and 5-star talent, but they, they work them and they develop them. And, uh, you know, you can really see that in the way that he runs the program. As much as I hate to say that, David, I'm giving it so much credit to Alabama and Saban. I can't believe that. But anyway, you know, you got to be able to develop them. And so you want to do that too. But also at the same time, with wearing a lot of different hats, it's good for your team to sometimes hear from a different voice. And so that's what Coach P can be able to help you and with your team. So go to coachpconsulting.com. Let David know. You heard about him and his coaching on the Club Capital Leadership Podcast, he'll give you entire very first month off. CoachPConsulting.com. You know, you're probably starting to think about your taxes, uh, for 2022. And if it's a big surprise to you about what you're going to pay or possibly pay, or you have no idea, there's an opportunity there for you. There's opportunity for you to, to use this year to be a little bit more on top of your financials so you don't just have surprises, but also for you to be able to bring more home, more money yourself, to be able to invest the resources, the cash, the profit of your business in different ways and know how that's going to affect different aspects. How much do you spend percentage-wise in marketing this past year? What about percentage of your team salaries? What should you be? What are other people doing? Well, that's what Club Capital will be able to give you some insights on. Go to club.capital, book a no-obligation demo to be able to get started. All right, everyone, hope this episode has served you well going into this next year. Till next time, lead well.