In this solo‑host podcast episode, the speaker dives into the career of college‑football coach Curt (Kirk) Cignetti, highlighting how his time on Nick Saban’s staff at Alabama gave him a "blueprint" for turning around struggling programs. The host traces Cignetti’s path from assistant coach under Saban, through head‑coaching stints at IUP, Elon, James Madison, and finally Indiana, where he led a historically losing football program to a top‑ranked team in just two seasons. From this narrative the host extracts four business‑focused lessons: (1) follow a proven, evidence‑based blueprint; (2) use a blueprint to avoid costly mistakes; (3) place yourself in an environment that reinforces high performance; and (4) accept that not every year will be a breakout year and use down years as learning opportunities. The episode repeatedly urges small‑business owners to adopt a similar process‑driven approach, offering a call‑to‑action to visit blueprintos.com/assets and attend monthly 2026 workshops. The tone is conversational, instructional, and enthusiastic, aiming to translate football‑program turnaround principles into actionable strategies for entrepreneurs.
Chapters
Hey everyone, welcome back. All right. So have you seen the Kirk Signetti at Indiana? Now, at the time of this recording, it is before Indiana is going to be playing Alabama in the quarterfinals of the College Football Playoff. By the time this episode drops, well, we may be, I think, roughly close to the college football, uh, finals, but potentially whenever this episode is going to drop. So I don't obviously know how that game between Indiana and Alabama is going to play out. But here's the deal. It doesn't matter. It's irrelevant to the point of this podcast. So I happened to see a 60 Minutes interview with Kirk Signetti. It was a 10 or 15 minute long episode, and that took me down an absolute rabbit hole of doing research on him. And of course, if you haven't heard him, he's the one that's famous for saying, I mean, look, I win. Google me. And so I did. I Googled Kirk Cignetti and took a look at his background. Now, he's in his 60s now, but if you go and listen to, watch several of his videos on YouTube, I think I probably in the end maybe watched 7 or 8. I mean, I went down a fairly long threshold. He will say a lot of the same things over and over and over again, which, you know, most coaches obviously do that. But there is some things that he will share that absolutely resonate obviously with us. He talks about having a blueprint and a plan. He has a blueprint and a plan. And then he obviously says some other things. And in one of the episodes, and this is what I think is key, he said something that I was like, wow, it was a great question by the person that was interviewing. And I'll share that with you in just a second. But let me take you back in time. So Kirk Cignetti had been a coach at a number of places in C-State. He had actually coached with Philip Rivers, who ironically is from Athens, Alabama, not too far from Huntsville. And he'd been in C-State for a while, and he was on Nick Saban's first college staff whenever he was at Alabama. I believe, if I'm not mistaken, he might have coached tight ends when he was at Alabama and did some other things. He was involved in a lot of high-profile recruits, at least their recruiting battles that they had. I think he helped put 6 first-rounders in the NFL, kids that they had recruited. And so he got to see firsthand how much— and of course, if you're watching this video, you know that I'm an Auburn fan myself— but he got to see firsthand how to turn a program around. He was there, I think, from 2007 to 2011. So he got to see the entire arc of what happened. He then goes on, he bets on himself, goes and takes his very first college football job at IUP, which is actually where his dad previously had coached. He left there, went for a couple years to Elon, coached there for 2 years, left, went and took a great job at James Madison, continued to improve that program, got it to some national, uh, some notoriety, was there I think 4 or 5 years, and that was when he was able to take his job on the road to Indiana. They've lost the most football games of any Division I team, I believe, in history. If they're not number one, they're pretty close. I mean, they have not won at football. Now, they obviously have a very historic college football or college basketball program, but not in football. And he tells the story about what it was like when he first got there, about how, you know, just ragged everything was, that a sign that was red that was turning pink because it had been there so long, and how dirty dirty the elevators were and how everything felt like he was going back into the 1970s. And he knew he had a lot of work to be able to do. And they have had immediate success. I mean, they lost basically, you know, 12 players, 12 starters to the transfer portal when he first got there. But now here they are, the number one team in the country in his second year. It's unbelievable, the turnaround. You— I mean, you can't make this up. And so when people— when you know, he was first hired, he talked about this. And then other people have asked him about his time with Saban, and they have said, well, what did you learn from Coach Saban? What is this blueprint you talk about? And in one short thing, he said, I mean, basically, I learned the blueprint of how to win. How to win. How to turn a program around, because I saw it firsthand, what Alabama had been. And then when Saban came in, they didn't have a great first year, 7-6, I believe, if I'm not mistaken. And then it was the second year they really took off. And then obviously in their third year, they ended up winning the national championship in 2009, much to my chagrin. But needless to say, he was able to pick up from Coach Saban, Coach Saban's blueprint. Now, Saban has famously talked about the process. Okay. And he picked that up. He talked about like the things that he learned, how to turn a program around. But I thought it was so unbelievable for him to be able to say, I mean, look, the blueprint is how to win in college football. So what's the application to this idea? Number one, I think there's a few things that we can pick up, but first and foremost, let me ask you this. Do you have a blueprint that you're operating off of? Do you have proof? Is there proof of concept that the blueprint you are following in your business is a winning blueprint? If it's not, maybe you can go find someone who has been able to do it at the level you want to be able to do it. You can go get their blueprint. Now, we believe in business that there is not a blueprint that's just off the shelf. I mean, there are obviously differences depending on kind of where you are and where you're wanting to go. The blueprint for a $3 million company is not the same blueprint for a $300,000 company. Eventually it gets there, but that's not exactly the same. So number 1, are you following a blueprint and do you have proof that the blueprint you're following is actually a winning blueprint? If not, then maybe there's an opportunity for you to go and pick that blueprint up from someone else. Number 2, I think that we tend to think that we have to figure it out all ourselves, that somehow at the end of the year when we get our financials, our year-to-date, year-end financials, that, that somehow we're going to get some bonus because we did it ourselves. There's no— in, in business, you don't get bonus points for doing it alone. You don't get bonus points for you being the one that's only able to figure it out. There have been other people that have gone before you, and because business behaves in patterns, can help you spot some of those patterns and help you avoid some of the things that they had to go through to get where they are so you don't have to go through those things. So not only is it a winning blueprint, but it's also, hey, here's the things to avoid. Here are the mistakes that I made so you don't have to make these mistakes. I mean, it's why reading a book over, you know, 4 to 5 hours or so total, but yet it took, you know, 2,000 hours for somebody to write that book because they had to go through all the experiences So you didn't have to, and they put it, put it together in a book format. So I think number 1, do you have a winning blueprint? Number 2, not only is a blueprint helping you to be able to win, it's also helping you to avoid losing, to avoid making costly mistakes with team and with marketing, with sales, etc., that you can be able to follow. And I think that the 3rd is when you put yourself in the right environment See, Kirk Signetti put himself in the right environment with Coach Saban. He had been coaching for a number of years. In fact, I think he was in his mid to upper 40s or so, around Coach Saban's age, when he went to work with Coach Saban at Alabama. I mean, I could be off a little bit, but it's not like he was in his 20s when he was there. I mean, he was in his mid-40s. He had been coaching for a number of years. And this is the other thing. It's not too late for you either. Look at what he's been able to do over all of those, all of those years. And that leads me to my fourth point. So number one, do you have a winning blueprint? Number two, also having a winning blueprint means that you can avoid certain mistakes. And number three, putting yourself in the right environment. Environment dictates performance. But then here's number four. If you go and look at Kirk Cignetti's Wikipedia page, It is impressive as a head coach. There's no question about it. From 2011 to 2025, his head coaching records over the years is, is pretty amazing. But that being said, there are some years in there, I think 3 or 4 in particular, that are not great years. And so if you're listening to this at the beginning of 2026, if you had a really poor 2025, it was a 6-6 year, it was a 7-5 year where it was just like, well, we just got by. I know we have some Blueprint members specifically that had years like that, and I shared this with them. I said, not every year is 10-2 playoff that you're going to go. That's not the way it works. We tend to think it's going to be that way. I tend to think every time I go out and play golf, I'm going to shoot, you know, under par. I wish that was the case. It's definitely not the case. Well, if 2025 was that year for you, the growth wasn't where you wanted to be, the profitability wasn't where you wanted it to be. That's okay. It doesn't mean that everything is broken. It doesn't mean that you don't have the blueprint. Go back and look at Kirk Sinnett. Nobody is asking him right now and say, hey, tell us about that year at Elon, you went 6-5. Nobody's asking him about that. Tell us about that. Yeah, yeah, you've had a good, good year, but 10 years ago, 10 years ago you went 6-6. Nobody's asking him about that. And so the same thing can be true that sometimes you just have to chalk it up and move on and say, you know what, that wasn't kind of, that wasn't a great year. But now we get the opportunity to turn the page and have a better 2026. So my encouragement to you, if you're not following a good blueprint, get one. That's what we do. We help small business owners to follow a blueprint. If you've not listened to Curt Signey, I do recommend you go and, and, uh, check him out on, on, on YouTube and you'll hear him talk about that. You'll hear him talk about the pro— being process driven. You'll hear him talk about having a blueprint. We'd love to be able to help you as a small business owner to have the blueprint. Just go to blueprintos.com/assets and come to one of our upcoming workshops that we're going to be able to have. We have one every single month in 2026. So come in, put yourself in the right environment of other small business owners trying to do the exact same thing as you. So we can help you get above it, start thinking like an architect, and then designing the blueprint to help you grow the business of your dreams. All right, till next time, lead well and go be great.
