Episode 327: Saban

What if you could step out of the day-to-day and see your business from a whole new perspective? Welcome to Above the Business, where we empower you to rise above the daily grind and embrace a higher way of business ownership. It's time to build your business by design. Hey everyone. Well, I have to tell you, chalk this one up as the podcast I never thought that I would do. If you've listened to this podcast for any amount of time, you know, I'm a proud Auburn graduate. My Mom and Dad both went to Auburn. I've been an Auburn fan my entire life. But at the end of the day, uh, with the recent retiring of Coach Nick Saban from Alabama, you know, I've had to hold both and in my hand. Number one, I guess in two hands, one is still having my hatred for all things University of Alabama, but on the other hand, being able to respect what Coach Saban has been able to do and really admire what he's been able to do at the University of Alabama, both for the athletics department and the football program, and at the same time, for the university. And so I have 5 things that I pick up and kind of look back on and reflect on as to why I think Coach Saban was so successful. And I'm not a football guy. I don't know X's and O's around football. but I wanted to bring things that I felt like that even for myself as an Auburn fan, if I can pick these things up, then hopefully they can serve you in your journey in small business and entrepreneurship as well. So I'm gonna go ahead and give them to you now. So if this is the, TL;DL, too long; didn't listen, you'll at least get these 5 things. Number 1, process-minded thinking. Number 2, the importance of culture. Number 3, A-players. Number 4, standards. And number 5, consistency. All right, number 1, process-minded thinking from the very get-go. And I remember, I think it was 2007, 2008, 2009 when Saban was coming into Alabama initially, and every press conference he kept talking about the process. I would mock him and think it was so funny until They won their first national championship in 2009 and then just went on to win many more thereafter. And he continued to talk about the process, but it wasn't just talking about— they actually lived it out in everything that they did. I heard him so many times, whether it's before an Auburn game or just in clips that you would see on social media, talking about playing the next play, forgetting no matter what what happened if you, you know, ran for a touchdown, if you intercepted, or you threw an interception or turned the ball over. Just go out and play the next play. And that takes, I'm sure, incredible consistency in the practices and messaging to be able to embed that into the next thing that we're going to talk about. And that's number 2, and that's culture. It was obvious that there was a culture that Alabama had that Coach Saban brought in. Whether, you know, some people would not be able to thrive in that culture. We'll talk next in just a second about the quality of the players that he had on the team and even in the coaching staff. But at the end of the day, whenever you're competing against other 4 and 5 stars, there's a culture of competition that was bred. In fact, I'm sure many times I listened to one of the sports radio stations out of Birmingham, Cole Kubelik, who has actually been on podcast is with Greg McElroy, a former Alabama quarterback. And they will often talk about, or I've heard Greg talk about that a lot of times, that the scrimmages that they would have were even more competitive than some of the games, even in the SEC. Not all of them, of course, but some of the games, because of the quality of the players that they have. So they had a culture of competition. Now, that probably also led into sometimes culture of comparison, which I'm sure the coaches had to work through that, but they they really had a culture of competition and getting the best out of each person and out of each player.

Are you an agency owner looking to grow your revenue, increase your bottom line, and better manage your taxes? Club Capital is here to help. Club Capital is the largest accounting and advisory firm for insurance agents in the country, providing monthly accounting, tax strategy, and CFO services. Way more than bookkeeping and your everyday run-of-the-mill tax prep, Club Capital is focused on providing financial and tax advisory services that help you plan and forecast your agency's performance. Their financial dashboards and agency forecasting tools help you better understand your agency's historical performance, create and measure future targets, and see how your agency compares to your peers around the country. Imagine what it would be like to understand the impact to your bottom line when deciding to hire a new employee or forecast the impact rate changes or commission rates will have on your business. With over $200 million in tracked annual revenue and $140 million in tracked annual expenses, Club Capital has the data and the team to help you make better informed decisions for your agency. They will help you turn that back office stress into the backbone of your agency's success by giving you the tools to take your agency and your leadership to the next level. Visit club.capital today to book a solution overview with one of our business consultants. Club Capital— way more than a CPA firm.

Ambition is the first step towards success. It's time to level up your agency, and Coach P Consulting will help you do just that by using the same strategies he used to sell over 7 100 life insurance policies in 2021 alone. Now, this is not your regular one-and-done type coaching. You'll get personalized coaching 2 days a week, every week of the month, and you'll get a live look behind the scenes of his team training and an office that's performing at the highest level. There's a reason Coach P Consulting is the fastest growing coaching company for insurance agency owners in the country. Coach P will train your team alongside his own and show you the exact steps they are taking to achieve Chairman Circle, Exotic Travel, and Multi-Line Presence Club and be one of the few agents to be selected to have a third office. So whether your goal is to be at the top of your local market or amongst the best in the country, this training will give you the strategies and the tactics to get there. For just $250 a month, you'll get high-level coaching each week from someone who is already getting it done at that level, and his strategies work, and it's time to put them to work for you. Sign up at coachpconsulting.com and get your first full month for free when you mention the Club Capital Leadership podcast.

So number 1, process-minded thinking. Number 2, culture. Number 3, A-players. I mean, at the end of the day, you can look at the recruiting that they did before Coach Saban, the recruiting that they did once he came on campus and for the rest of his time. I did not go before this and research, but I don't know if they finished outside the top 5 in many years, really the top 2 in recruiting each and every year. You can make a lot of mistakes with coaching and, and, and even decisions, but when you have, in football language, 4 and 5-star guys, you can go a long way. And so he had the Jimmies and the Joes, and of course matched it up with incredible coaching with X's and O's. And so with A players, I'm going to say that it was both the players that he had on the team But it was also the quality of the coaching staff. So many of the coaches came in and have— you've seen the Saban coaching tree if you keep up with sports, of course— have gone on to be very successful head coaches, obviously, famously Kirby Smart, Steve Sarkisian, who's at Texas now, et cetera. So those are 3 of them: process-minded thinking, the importance of culture, and specifically, I saw a culture of competition. Number 3, A players, both on the players and then also with the coaching staff. And number 4, standards. There was just a standard of excellence that they had. And again, that made its way in the standards that they had with recruiting, the standards that they had in every single thing that they did. And if you, you had to kind of read between some of the lines and hear some of the things, but in the building, everybody, the standard that they had to operate, there was a certain way of doing things. At Alabama. I've heard, uh, there's a— but maybe I'll share it on here at some point— of Jeff Bezos and Amazon. And when you are a high executive, you go into Amazon, there's just a way of doing things at Amazon that's just part of their culture and their DNA. But there's just standards of how they do things and even how they run some, some of their meetings. And there were certainly standards at Alabama. And then number 5, consistency. I'll turn this over to Auburn here for a second, but I've actually heard Bruce Pearl, Auburn's men's basketball coach, say often that, you know, it was one thing for him to turn around the bottom of the barrel SEC basketball program as he did at Auburn. It's one thing to do that, and that's not easy, but it's a lot easier than staying on top and being consistent over all those years. And I think that that consistency goes back to all of the other things that I mentioned— process-minded thinking, culture, A-players, and standards. And so I wanted to try to draw— and I'm sure from a football perspective, if we brought, you know, Greg McElroy, Colt Kubelik, and some of the Kirk Herbstreit on here, and we were asking very specific questions around football, that they would give some things. And I don't want to dismiss those, but I wanted to think for me personally, but maybe for all of you, what are some of the things that I learned, uh, and can look back on? And even with my, you know, dislike of Alabama, um, what are the things that I can distill or take away from Coach Saban's time? Because it is— he is without question the greatest football coach, college football coach of all time, even if that's hard for me to say that. And so process-minded thinking. There was just a process, the way that they approach their work. Number 2, the importance of value of culture. Number 3, how important it is to really have A-players on your team. Number 4, standards. There's a standard of excellence. And then number 5, being consistent over a long period of time. Maybe that gives you a couple things. It's certainly even just writing it down in my notebook and journal and thinking about doing this podcast. And I, certainly debated it, uh, over a period of time. But yeah, I said, you know what, uh, I can hold both things, uh, at once. I want to share that with all of you. Artywon, till next episode, lead well. Oh, and by the way, War Eagle.