101. Shaun Peet: Proving People Right

All right, welcome back to this week's episode. I'm excited to have a gentleman that I had the chance to meet was last October, Sean.

Yep.

Sean Pete, who is co co captain of the Chip Ganassi coaching team of the Chip Ganassi race department. And I'm excited to have Sean because not only did I get a chance to meet Sean last October when we took a tour of the Chip Canassi headquarters, but he and his.

Colleague, his co partner, his co captain, Mike Metcalf, also have come out with this fabulous book, 12 Second Culture, which we're going to dive into as well. And Sean, I got the hat on as well.

Number 42 racing team. So I'm excited to have you, Sean. We're going to talk about a little about your early career in hockey and then chapter two of your life, which has been NASCAR racing, which people are like, wait, what? Hockey? Nascar? What? We'll definitely get into that. So, Sean, for the folks listening in who are like, okay, Sean Pete, who the heck is this guy? Give us a little feedback. Where are you from? Where were you born? What was life like growing up?

Yeah. So everyone that's listening is probably like, who the heck is Sean Pete? So, yeah, I was, I was born on Vancouver Island, British Columbia. Like every Canadian kid, you either play hockey or you're a social outcast back then. So I decided to play hockey and I was fortunate enough to get out of town on a scholarship and come to the States where I played four years of college hockey at Dartmouth.

Awesome. And growing up, I know you made the comment in Canada, either play hockey, you're an outcast.

For a lot of guys your age, you know, thinking about going back to your high school days, was that the ticket out?

It was, you know, like, there's the old adage, you know, you, you graduate high school, you work in the mill, and then you get laid in the ground and, you know, there's only a few ways out of town. And for me, I knew what that was and it was with the game. And I just, you know, I was really lucky I made a decision. I remember just being like, I'm going to outwork everybody when I was in the 10th grade. And that's when it really started to turn for me. And I was just relentless in my pursuit of it. And Andy, I had no reason to be. I was always the worst player on the team, the worst skater. The, like, I had no, like, I didn't get invited to any of the BC best ever camps or any of the things that are tracking players on a trajectory to the National Hockey League. I wasn't involved in any of them, but I just, I was, I knew what I knew and I was willing to give up Friday night parties and I was willing to give up the steady girlfriend, all these things to go after it. I just was so adamant that I was not going to make peace with mediocrity and stay in town. I was, I was getting out and it was going to be through hockey.

And I know you said early in this episode already how you it afforded you the opportunity to land a scholarship or land an opportunity to play hockey at Dartmouth, which is way over in New England. You know, I'm sure a question that popped in a lot of people's heads listening in. So here you are in Vancouver island, as far west as you can go in the, in the North American country continent. How did you end up with an offer from Dartmouth?

Well, you know, it was, it was interesting. I was, I was traded as a 17 year old and I was traded to a team that had two really dynamic French players. And basically I was traded to that team to make sure no one put their hands on these two guys. Right. If you touch them, you're going to deal with me. And they were so outstanding. You know, the first, gosh, 15 games of the season, I think I had 16 goals and a bunch of assists and, you know, 80 penalty minutes. Well, in British Columbia, because it is so far from New England, all the scouts come on a big run at the start of the year. So here I am six to 15 games in, I have 30 points and I was. I look pretty alluring on paper. However, you take those two French kids away from me, I'm not quite the get that they probably thought they were getting. But no, so it, you know, what really served me well, Andy, was that, like I said, the relentless pursuit in the off season. This was long before off season training programs, but I was mountain climbing and riding my mountain bike and lifting weights. And so when I came at the start of the season, I had everybody covered because what I lacked in ability, I more than made up for in work ethic. So I was prepared. I rolled into that season and I looked like I was out skating people because simply I was just in better shape. It meant more to me.

You know, you already dropped a nugget in this interview about, you know, if you, if you don't have the same amount of talent, you can outwork people, what advice would you give that athlete? Whether it's hockey, baseball, basketball, football, kid, right now in high school, who may be not the most talented, and it's easy to feel like there's no chance I could play at the next level. I can play in college. What advice would you give that kid right now?

I would say that, first of all, that someone else's opinion of you is none of your business, because that's what knocks people off the path is, oh, you're not good enough. You're not this, you're not that. And that's when we lay the ax down and we're like, okay, maybe I'm not. If you believe it in your heart, you go after it. Because what 45 years on this planet has given me is a little bit of wisdom. And it's. This is that when I put my hockey career away and I fell short of making it to the National Hockey League, you know, I got to the American League, which is aaa, that when I put my skates up for the last time, I knew that there was nothing else, nothing else I could have done to make it any further. And there is a piece that comes with that that is more valuable than anything I have in my life. And so what I would say to you, young kid, if you believe in your heart that you need to go there, then go.

You. You just dug into my soul and pulled out a very, very sort of subject for me. Because I talk about it a lot, Sean. My baseball career, you know, I had a chance to play some pro baseball, and people would say, man, you were lucky. You know, you. You were 5, 10, you weren't a big pitcher. You had the chance to play. And I tell them, at the end of the day, when I got there, though, I didn't live up to my full potential. I know that. And there's still days. It bothers me. And to your point, the fact you were to be at peace, like, you know what? I maximized my full potential. Right, Is what. It's so cool to hear that part of your story, because I think for a lot of athletes, especially, their careers are over before they real. They truly realize their full potential.

No, no, you're totally right. And. But even to your point, like, where people told you you're lucky, right? Think all the Friday nights you just spent pounding baseballs into a backstop, right? That's not luck. There's very. There's very little luck about making it all the way.

Right.

And you did that. I fell short of it. But it's, you know, it's all these things. It's intention, it's work ethics, it's an indomitable will to see it through.

Yeah.

And you know, like you said, you played college athletics. There's nothing harder. College athletics will. Will show you if you love your sport or not.

I talk about that all the time. Sean. I couldn't agree more. Where when I played baseball at UW Milwaukee, there were so many other guys more talented than me. But what separates the kid that excels in college and the one that fizzles out regardless of talent coming in is work ethic. Because in college you have more time on your hands, right? In high school, it's all structured for you. You go from class to class to class to practice, practice to home to do your homework. In college you have time. And the guys that could not manage their time and their work ethic fizzled out really quickly.

You're right.

So now let's go to your college career at Dartmouth. Tell us a little about that. What was it like playing?

It was great. Was. It was interesting. Like I said, I had no problem dropping the Mets when I played hockey. And in college there's no fighting, so I was recruited as a forward my sophomore year. They turned me into a defenseman, so my first game. And college is a really fast game, so my first game ever in a organized hockey game at defense. We were playing the University of Vermont and at the time they had Martin St. Louis, who since went on won the Stanley cup, was NHL mvp. So my first shift at defense was against him. Needless to say, it didn't go well.

Welcome to the ncaa, Sean.

Right, exactly. He played with another guy who was equally as talented. And I remember those two came down on my defense partner and I. And it was a two on two. And remember that scene in Top Gun where, you know, they're asking like, you know, just went this, where did he go? And the guy's like, where'd who go? That was my defense partner and I. These two were just carving us off. It was, it was brutal. So it was a pretty auspicious beginning.

Like I said, I was not a very good player. I won most improved player twice in four years. That kind of shows you how bad I was. But it was good, you know, it was growth the entire time. And it was really hard. You know, nothing, nothing came easy in college. But I left really proud of where I got to by the time I left.

Quick question. You mentioned earlier, you're 6:2. What is the average height for a hockey player?

Oh, it's getting bigger now. I mean, I was pretty big when I played, but like 626-3-64. But these kids can skate. Yeah, like a lot of times, you know, Connor McDavid, the guy is a lightning bolt. I think he's 6 3.

Wow.

Yeah.

Wow. So you told me offline that, you know, you weren't the star at Dartmouth. And I think a lot of people think those hockey players that go on to play in the NHL or even just minor league hockey are the inherent stars of their teams. Right. You said you weren't the star, but you still gave yourself the chance to play minor league hockey. How did that happen?

It was, you know, one thing besides an opportunity for an education. One thing that Dartmouth provided for me.

Was a look behind the curtain of what matters in life. Right. So I come from a logging town on the west coast of Vancouver Island. Very blue collar roots, you know, mid to lower socioeconomic class. So you get to Dartmouth, right? Freshman parents weekend. It's a contest to see who has the most expensive car. Right. And I've never been around such affluence as that before. And I think what totally caught me off guard was how many of those kids were unhappy, how many had, like, really awful relationships with their parents, like, all these things. And after four years of that, you know, I had a chance to do Dartmouth's a big banking school, and I could have done corporate recruiting and gone and worked at like a Price Waterhouse or something like that. And I was like, you know what, man? I'm gonna pursue joy in my life and I'm gonna go. I'm gonna go play in the minors. So instead of going to wall street for 60 grand, I went to Corpus Christi Stacks for 350 bucks a week because I thought that, you know, it was a moment in life that I was never going to get back. So let's. Let's go after it.

That is phenomenal. And, you know, you've brought up a couple times you were a. You keep mentioning penalty minutes, so we're going to talk about that in a second. What one of your major roles was in the minor leagues? It's. You remind me. I grew up in a small town in Wisconsin and we didn't have a hockey program when I was in high school. They have since built a hockey program. But it reminds me, there was a guy I grew up with, just slightly older, actually, probably your age. His name was Gunnar Krosberg. Never played high school hockey because we didn't have a program. He played his entire high school career down on the lake, the frozen lake with the kids, rec league. And he gave he somehow found his way into minor league hockey. And I thought it was such a cool story about, like, you that you had to create a lot of your opportunities. And I think what you said earlier can't be overlooked. Where you won most improved at Dartmouth twice. I know you said, well, it tells you how bad I was, but that also says how far, how hard you work to win that award twice.

Right.

In 1 4.

Which, you know, I can. I can sit here and describe minor league life in baseball.

Looking forward to those conversations.

What is the minor league life in hockey like?

Well, I mean, you think about. I. So I graduate Dartmouth and I play my first year in Corpus Christi, Texas, right. Fledgling league. And we're playing in old rodeo Barns. So, like, we won't play in Austin for two weeks and then we're. The first game in Austin. It's because the rodeo is there. Well, you go into the locker room and there's fly tape all over the place and flies and just. It was crazy. But it's. It's Texas, right? So if you put air conditioning, beer and fights in the same place, it's going to be a big deal. So, you know, it was, it was crazy. Like, we were in South Texas. We were basically treated like the Vancouver Canucks, like a pro team. And it was really interesting. But I just, I remember making a deal with myself because I felt like. Like there's some characters which I'm sure you can attest to in the minors, right? People that, yeah, I don't need to read books or I don't need to. So I remember like making a book list and I was like, I've got to read this many books just to stay, just to say, level on the other side of this. But, you know, it was, it was great. Played in Corpus Christi, Texas. Played a year in Charleston, South Carolina, which was phenomenal. Played for a team in Georgia named the Macon Whoopee. Out of Macon, Georgia. I got called up the American League, played the Calder cup finals from there. And then, you know, on my downward, as I started to go down the other side of the career hill, I picked the last place in my list. I was like, I'm going to go somewhere where I can after practice, I can rock climb and I can mountain bike. And so my last two years I played out in Albuquerque, New Mexico, and loved it.

That's awesome. I think you just gave the best marketing pitch ever to get a bunch of Texans to come to a hockey game. Air conditioning, beer and fights.

So talk about that for a second. Because in, in minor League hockey. You were, you know, they use the phrase goon. Yeah, the hired. The guy who's the enforcer, the guy who's come in. You even brought it back to your high school days. The two French players you played with, your job was to protect them, right? What is life like as that guy who's. Who sometimes his jobs to go out on the ice and create some havoc.

Yeah, it's. You know, it's funny, I was not a guy that went looking for it too often, but I never turned it down and I always stick up for my teammate. So, like a lot of times the goons get mischaracterized as, you know, these idiots that are chained to the bench and. But often they're the most selfless guy on the team. They're like, I'm not going to get my teeth beat in for me. I'm going to do it because that guy took a liberty with my, my teammate. So, you know, it's, it's a lot of fun when you play on like my first team in Corpus Christi, you know, and I think I'm a pretty tough guy. I bet you I was the 10th or 11th toughest guy on the team. So it was fun because we would go into other rinks and just throw down. It was awesome. Now when I was in Macon, I was on the other side of the coin. I was one of two. So you're fighting way more often. You're fighting just about every night and you don't have. There's no cavalry coming. You are the cavalry. You know, I mean, so it's, so it's nerve wracking, you know, you're thinking about, you know, playing Memphis the next night and they got six killers on their team, guys that can cave your face in. And you're like, okay, how's this going to go? You know what I mean? So it's, you know, obviously my mom never liked it, but, you know, I was.

I was lucky. I never got any serious. Like I had a couple concussions, but never serious injury. And there's. I'll tell you what, there's no higher high than winning a fight in front of 8,000 people. But there's no lower low than getting knocked out in front of 8,000 people. So I've experienced both of them.

Well, you're bringing, as a kid who watched hockey, I didn't play. You're bringing back memories of Tai Dome and Marty McSorley and some of the big enforcers of the NHL.

Yep.

Well, let's talk about this. If you don't mind sharing a story I've heard you talk about a couple times, and I think it's. It's a. It's a lesson of going through the lowest of lows, but also the highest of highs. Because what came out of this low, which was that fight that kind of could have ended your career, Right. But it led to you playing in a. In a. In a place where ultimately you met a fan that drew you to where you are today at nascar.

Right.

So if you don't mind sharing that story.

Not at all. So, like I said, I was lucky enough to make it up to the American Hockey League, went back to camp and.

Made opening day roster for camp. And it's the Wednesday before the home opener Friday, and we're all eating lunch after practice. And under the ticker on espn, it says, the Pittsburgh Penguins trade for these two defensemen out of Florida. And I was the only undrafted defenseman there, so I knew exactly what was going to happen. So I went to bed that night, got to the rink before Glenn Patrick, who was the coach, started packing all my stuff. And when he came in, because he's a. He was the guy who got there early, he's like, I'm sorry, kid. And I just knew. So they sent me to Greensboro, North Carolina. It's opening night down there, and it was kind of a perfect storm. I had just been demoted. The other team had a kid I had played against for four years in college. And like I said, there's no fighting in college. But you can stick people and run your mouth, and you don't. You're not held to any type of account for it. So you can be really tough because you don't have to pay for it. Well, that kid was on this team. So, you know, the game starts and it's chippy right from the start. And our coach is kind of losing his mind. Well, this guy cross checks one of our guys right before the end of the second period. And our coach is losing his mind. And, you know, he looks down the bench, he's like, is anyone going to do anything? And I just said, I got it hopped over the boards and I line up with this guy, and I'm like, hey, man, as soon as the puck stops, we're going. And, you know, he's running his mouth at me and stuff like that. So I just shut up. So soon as the puck drops, I grab him with my right, just start hitting him with lefts. He goes to the ground. And there's gentlemen's rules that govern hockey Right. So I stop hitting him when he goes to the ground. But a five on five brawl breaks out and they had a guy, he was a heavyweight for the Montreal Canadiens. His name was Ryan Flynn. And I look over my shoulder and he is pounding away on our guy. So I look down at the guy I got, I'm like, let go of my hand and he just lets go of me. And I take about five strides and wind up and hit this Flynn guy as hard as I can. Which is not one of my brighter moments. Right. I was a pretty clean player for the most part. He goes to the ground and the guy I was originally fighting tackles me. But when he tackles me, he ends up on the bottom. And, you know, you think of the demotion and four years of this guy running his mouth at me in college, you know when you pull your lawnmower out of the shed when you haven't used it all winter? Yes, it was like that. I just, I didn't stop until I was going to throw up on him. And I, I cut them pretty bad. I cut him for like 60 stitches. And I'm getting escorted off the ice and I look back and someone's challenging our bench. So I stripped off all my upper gear, escaped from the linesman and I almost got to the guy and.

You know, I leaned over him and just kind of ran my thumb across my throat and said, we play you tomorrow night, I'm going to. I'll get you tomorrow night. And made a throat slash, a throat slashing gesture. So I didn't even end. I didn't even think anything of it. But when I was leaving the ice, our team idiot had already been kicked out. And when I got through the doors, he's there in his street clothes and he looks me dead in the eyes. He's like, you are in serious trouble. You know what I mean? And I was like, Right then it dawned on me. So I got six games for starting it, six games for joining a second altercation, and six games for making a throat slashing gesture. So I was, it was the, it's been characterized as the worst brawl in East Coast League history. You know, not a record that my parents are super proud of. But, but like you said, I didn't know what it was going to lead to. Yeah, you know, I end up meeting a fan in the stands from nascar. And he knew, you know, I'm sitting up suspension and he knew my dad was at a garage on Vancouver Island. So he's like, look, when your dad comes down, I'll show You around the race shop. And so, you know, my dad comes down a couple months later and this guy makes good on his word. We're touring around the race shop, and this is back when mechanics used to pit the cars, not athletes. And practice was going terrible. So the crew chief was like, get the hockey player in here. And I was like, no, no, no. I'm just showing my pops around. And he was insistent. So I went and was almost as fast as the guy who had been jacking the car for five years. And they're like, you should do this. And I thought they were joking around. And sure enough, I'm halfway through the hockey season, I get a call from them. They're like, no, no, we're serious. We want you to come jack our race car. And I thought I would do that for one year. And that was 16 years ago. And the amazing thing about the story is so many of us.

Are so pessimistic. So many of us don't understand what life has in store for us to be so pessimistic when something doesn't go our way.

Yep. And what happened to you there with. I mean, that could have derailed not only your hockey career, but what happened just that could have left a huge stain.

Oh, it totally could.

On you in life in general. But you use it as an opportunity for growth. That's what's so impressive.

I think, like I said, we talk about kids that may not have the talent. Not having the talent prepared me for that. Because one thing, when you don't have talent and you got to fight for everything, one thing that I lived by was that never put a period where life intended a comma, because you're going to run into all these things that should stop you and you get to choose the punctuation in your life. So I could have been like, you know what? I'm suspended for 25% of the season. I'm going to pack my stuff and I'm heading back to Vancouver Island. Right.

I'm a big quote user for my content, Sean, and I'm going to give you full 100% credit. But that one's going in a post of mine.

Well, look it up. Says, no, I've heard that.

That was beautiful. Put. Don't put a period where there should be a comma.

Right.

That is. That is awesome. I've never heard that. That is unbelievable. Well, here you are, man, chapter two. Now you're. Now you're in NASCAR. You've been there for 16 years. You're the co captain, the The. The co coach of the Chip Canassi race department with your colleague who I've had the fortunate opportunity to meet as well, Mike Metcalfe. Let's talk about this first. I think people, you know, when you think of NASCAR back in the. Back in the day, you think of the gearheads, the mechanics, the. You know, so much has changed, correct, in the sport of nascar. Talk about when it comes to pit crews, because you're you again. You coach the pit crew department there at Chip Canassie. What is the appeal now about getting athletes to come in on the pit crews versus mechanics?

Well, I think, you know, as the NASCAR rule book has thickened, these cars have become more and more similar on the racetrack. So there is very little advantage that you can gain on the racetrack now. So what teams understood was that, okay, well, if we can't create an advantage on the racetrack, what if we did it on pit lane, right? Like I said, it was just mechanics pitting the car. So these teams started reaching out to athletes. And like I said, I was a B minus, C plus athlete, right? But I was the only athlete. So when I came in, you know, I joke, I spent 25 years trying to get to the National Hockey League. I made it to NASCAR in six weeks. But that was the landscape right now. If you look at our team, it's not C plus athletes anymore, it's A plus athletes, right? You had Marshall McFadden on your podcast, former linebacker from the Steelers. We have a kid that Dabo Sweeney built Clemson around, right? Led them in tackles his junior and senior year. We have Olympic swimmers. We've had two United States Navy SEALs. So the athletic acumen of these guys keeps ratcheting up to the point where when we got the kid from Clemson, he ran around the car the first time, and I looked at Mike Metcalf and was like, oh, my God, I don't know if I can coach that. I've never seen that. You know, just because they become so much more dynamic, right? Their rotational strength, you know, their explosion, it just. It's getting to a point where, you know, when I first started, a good pit stop was 16 seconds. We can run them in the 10 seconds now. Four tires, two cans of fuel in 10 seconds.

Well, and, you know, I have to say, Sean, I'm a former baseball pro baseball player, so I checked that box and, you know, we did the. We did the pitting the car exercise, and I thought I started to get pretty good with the lug nuts, you know, I don't know. I don't know if there's an opportunity there, but I'm, I'm more than happy to come down for a trial.

You absolutely did. Man, there's that hand. The baseball guys, as far as changing tires, have been some of our best. I mean, just because you guys, your hand eye coordination is just so much far superior to a lot of people.

Well, even Mike Metcalf, if I, if I remember, played college football at Appalachian State. Right?

He did. He was a running back at app State. Absolutely.

Yeah. So, I mean, just. And let's talk about this quickly. We're going to dive into the book here in a second. So I definitely want to promote the 12 second culture. It's a great book. You talked about how the time of pitting a car has plummeted from 16 seconds to 12 seconds. And just for anybody giving who's who has never done this before, I actually was part of a team exercise, team building exercise to do this. Our best time was 30 seconds. So to give you an idea of what it was like to do this in 12 seconds just blows my mind. But you made a comment while we were visiting the headquarters there. From a money perspective, what is the difference in NASCAR between first and ninth?

It's one lugna, right? Like our, our tire changers are tasked with hitting five lug nuts in under a second. So if you go ahead and blink your eyes, that's about 2/10 of a second, right. Now if you look at what that, what that costs us in real world is a million bucks. And now I'm sure your listeners like, well, there's no way that can be true. But if you look at the race car math, these cars are moving at 190ft per second. So 2/10 of a second equates to about 56ft. If you go look at the finishing order from the Daytona 500, the difference between 56ft is the difference between first and sixth. First place, $1.7 million.

Sorry, $1.5 million. Six places, $500,000. A million bucks. Two tenths of a second. Yep.

Now the other thing that absolutely fascinates me is if you've watched a race, these guys are pitting this car in 12 seconds, mind you, the guys who have to run around the car, whether you're jacking it, lug nuts, grabbing the tires, you're also doing it, especially when you're on the outside of the car with cars humming past you at 180 miles an hour. Like one wrong move, it gets really bad really quickly. What mindset do you have to have, as a member of a pit crew in the middle, in the heat of.

The action, you have to, you have to understand that the car comes to a stop every single time. So basically what we ask is for you to perform the same skill every single time. And that's regardless if you're running 30th or first, right? What's so different? And one of the hardest things that Mike and I have to coach against is, you know, we get football players in here and they want to headbutt each other and just, you know, get fired up and take Red Bull and, you know what I mean? And that is counterproductive for us. Right? We want you to execute a skill. So. So, you know, the biggest thing is, is making these guys so fundamentally sound like we don't practice to get it right. We practice till we can't get it wrong. Because the thing is, is there's so many things that are going to happen at the racetrack that if that isn't innate in you, we're going to miss it.

So talk about this for a second. Sorry, sorry, I didn't mean to cut you off there. You talked about how you get these football guys to come in and they want to drink the Red Bulls and headbutts. And again, so many have this perspective of the mechanics, the gearheads. What does a week look like for a member of the pit crew when they're not. We're not talking race day, Sean.

Right.

We're talking Monday through Friday. What does that week look like? It's not easy.

It's not. So basically they flew in at 10 o' clock last night. They had to be in the building at 9am for a blood flow workout. After that they had a one hour yoga class at 10:15. And then, you know, some of them will watch film today and then they're out of the building probably right around noon tomorrow. We get them in at 7:30. Each team will sit down and watch film. And then we have a team specific practice of stuff that we saw on the weekend that we think we can do better. After that, they have a position specific workout and then they're done for the day. They come back in Wednesday morning, 7:30am we have a competition practice and then we have our hardest workout of the week.

Thursday they come back in, we have race specific practice. So we put obstacles in their way of what they'll see at the racetrack this coming weekend. And then we play like a high school game. We'll play kickball or, you know, dodgeball or something. Like that, just to bring the guys together. They get Friday off and then they go pit the race car Saturday, Sunday.

And they're not just pitting the nascar. How many different races actually occur throughout a weekend?

There's three series, there's trucks, Xfinity and then the cup series. And our guys pit all three series. So they'll pit about 96, six races this year.

Wow. And I was fascinated. I was looking at the Chip Ganassi website. Did I see Jimmy Johnson's now racing, but not, not in NASCAR, in IndyCar.

So what's neat about Chip Ganassi racing is that basically if you, if it has four tires and you put fuel in it, we race it. We're one of the biggest race teams in the world, right? We're not the biggest NASCAR team, but we're one of the biggest race teams in the world. So it's super exciting because you get to.

Kind of cross departmental collaboration with the Indy guys and then the Formula E guys, they're run by a former Navy seal. So you get to pull ideas from all these different places. And it's really a cool resource to have that, you know, you can fly up to Indy and see all the championships they've won and you know, their culture and their building and what we can learn to better ourselves down here in Concord.

That's awesome. That's awesome. Well, we've talked about pitting a car for 12 in 12 seconds, which still blows my mind. And guys, I've watched them do it and it's a sight to behold. Let's dive into your book, 12 Second Culture. You and Mike are co partners, co founders in a program called DECK Leadership. Before we dive into the book and the principles in it, talk about dec, the acronym, what does DECK stand for?

So DECK stands for diversity, efficiency, culture and kindness. And Mike and I, we always just thought we were just pick coaches, right? We didn't think we had a whole lot to say and we had an opportunity to speak at the NFL combine. So we go up there, do a 30 minute talk. We didn't think it went very well. And but the end of it, there's about 30 NFL trainers and doctors hanging around to ask us questions. Well, we're leaving the conference hall and this guy tracks us down the hallway and he said, hey guys, I took more notes in your 30 minutes than I have the first two days of this conference. And we get into this really great talk and.

At the end of it I'm like, well, who are you with? And he's like, I'm with the New England Patriots and Andy right there, we knew that maybe we had something to give to the world. So as we started talking to people and looking how we rebuilt our own department, those are kind of like the four horsemen of the American workplace. They're one of those four things we're getting wrong, and that's what's affecting our culture.

Well, let's dive into this because there's 12 principles, essentially, 12 philosophies that go into the deck. Leadership, the 12, 12 second culture. First one is the Department of Unrealistic Expectations. I like this one because I have a lot of people in my life sometimes that I think, man, your expectations are holding you back because they're out of control. What does the Department of Unrealistic Expectations mean?

The Department of Unrealistic Realistic Expectations is expecting. We operate right on the verge of what's humanly possible. Right. To expect that to be perfect every single time is just not based in reality. And the only people that understand that seem to be the people in the picker department. So, you know, we've had, you know, Mike tells this story. We were in Darlington a couple years ago. Led the race almost, you know, end to end. Came in first, went out first the entire night. Okay. Last pit stop of the race. Our Jackman comes in and has a micro turn on the tire. So it cost us about 2/10 of a second, maybe 3/10 of a second. We go from first to second, we lose the race. People in our building didn't talk to us for two months. That's what the Department of Unrealistic Expectations looks like.

That's pressure, right? Wow. Which leads to our next great segue into the. The second philosophy, which is. It's. It's. It's what you guys. I think it was you or Mike, I can't remember. When you autographed my book, you guys wrote fail quickly, correct? Correct. That's a quick way to fail. The way you just described it is.

It is. And Andy, you know, you look at. You look at, you know, yourself, all the pressure that was on you, you know, whether the game was tied and you're in there or, you know, all this, all that stuff that you come up against, you know, going after this thing in pro sports, right? One thing that we know is we are going to fail. And our day isn't determined, successful or not, by whether we fail or not. We know we're going to fail. It's how quickly we can overcome that failure, extract the teaching moments and the positives, and Scrap the rest and move on. Right? We can handle failure. What we can't handle is compounding failure. I can't have you fail on the right rear of the car and then run around to the left rear and then fail there again because you're still on the right rear. Right? So what we try to offer our guys is basically, it's almost like a cognitive cradle to relieve some of the pressure. So, look, we know you're going to fail, fail quickly. You know, we talk about pressure. You know, here's another great baseball guy, Tommy Lasorda, right? He used to say that the only time you feel pressure is when you think of failure, okay? So if we allow these guys to fail, it takes pressure out of it. And if there is any pressure, what we talk about here all the time is that pressure is a privilege, Right. If you feel pressure in your life, it's because you're in a big spot. Yeah, right. You're not just, you know, closing down the gas station for the evening or, you know, you're in a big spot. So you should embrace that. Pressure is a privilege. And I think a lot of the mental health stuff that's going on right now is because we don't allow these people. There's no. There's no relief valves, right? So we want our guys to have a relief valve. We want you to go out there and be brilliant. And if we fall short, we got you on the backside.

Well, and I think of about my pitching career, you know, the failure wasn't giving up the home run. The failure was allowing that home run to impact how you pitch to the next guy.

Guy, right?

Because you had, as a pitcher, you give up a run, a home run, you had to forget it and get back focused on the next guy. And to your point, the failure, the act itself that didn't work is. Isn't the failure continuously making that mistake or letting it impact your day, your week, that's the failure, right?

And we just get failure wrong here, right? Like, we look at successful people and think they never failed.

Every day.

You got it. And we look up to them because they stand on a mountain of failures. They just do two things better than us. They don't let it stop them and they don't let it define them. And I think if you can do that, then failure. Failure is going to be your best teacher you ever had.

Exactly. And I love your third principle here, Sean. Arrival mindset. You know, I think to me it just simply means show up. What is that arrival mindset? You expect your Guys to have.

It's just being intentional. Like you said, intentional about the way you show up. What we ask our guys is that when you put your hand on the door leading into work, we want the very best version of you. We want the version that's the most collaborative, the hardest work, best teammate. You know, like something we talk about all the time in our program, Andy, is that thoughts are things and that the view that you adopt for yourself profoundly affects the way that you live your life. Right. And if I were to ask you, the example we use is think about the last time you bought a new car. Right. What was it?

We just bought one. A Jeep wrangler.

What color?

White.

When you decide on a white Jeep Wrangler, what starts happening?

You start seeing them everywhere.

You start seeing them everywhere. Right. So if your brain works like that for something as simple as a car buying experience, what do you think it does to you when you show up and think Monday's gonna suck or that practice is gonna be awful tonight or that. Right. It affects you. What if instead you showed up and said, you know, I'm going to kick this day's ass. I'm going to be the best, you know, Andy Neary I can be. Right. Your arrival mindset sets you up for success or failure. It starts the second you put your hand on the door.

Yeah. I can tell you. And I coach insurance advisors, Sean. And it's not uncommon to have the conversation with an advisor who's on the precipice of winning a big piece of business. But before they even won it, they already are talking about the fear of what it would be like if they lost it.

Right.

What if I write it and then I lose it? It's like, guys, you. If that's where your mindset is right now, that is exactly what's going to happen. And you have to just show up and do your best, and the chips will fall where they may. And I love. You know, this dives right into the. The next two principles. And it's something. Honestly, I don't know if I've shared this with you. You. I put a quote out there, and it's actually something I started to do every Friday on my social media. I call it catching great people doing great things. And it was after talking to you, and I had an interview with a guy by the name of Andre Young, who is a former college and professional football player about. You know, you talk about prove people right.

Yeah.

Win with good people. Right. What is it? You know, tell me about the. What your Philosophy around prove people right. I love that.

So what's interesting is that Ganassi, we're expected to compete with the big teams with half the budget, right? So in order to do that, you have to build guys in house, or you take team, you take guys that have been cast off from other teams. And one of the first things they always do when they get here and we sign them to a contract is they're like, thanks, coach. I'm gonna. I'm gonna prove my old team wrong. We don't allow that here. You're only allowed to prove people right, you know, because all of us are guilty. At some point in our life, we've tried to prove someone wrong. Right? But if you really stop and think about that for a second, when do you get that opportunity? It's at some summit moment in your life.

Winning a baseball series or a promotion or it's some great moment. And think about that for a second, some brilliant moment, you're going to prove someone wrong. What we ask people do is think of the nicest sunset you've ever seen, whether that's a beach or a mountain, and take yourself right there. It's probably with someone that you love. Okay, well, now that you're sitting in front of that sunset and you get that feeling, I want you to invite into that picture someone that stabbed you in the back, someone that never believed in you, someone that lied about you. It starts changing the picture and the feeling of the sunset. Right?

That's exactly what you do when you prove people wrong. What if instead, you prove people right? You know, what if we all have, you know, people that have poured their love and their time and their respect into us, whether that's coaches or parents or grandparents. You know what I mean? Managers. What if you did it for them? You know, one of the things that goes on at Chip Ganassi Racing is we have a task force that goes around the shop and they're looking to unburden the cars of weight, right? So they're looking for grams, and they can shave hood pins and use thinner metal. Then basically all those grams add up to pounds. And a lighter race car is the better chance you have to win a race. So essentially what you're doing is you're unburdening the race car of weight. Yeah, that's exactly what you do when you go from proving people wrong to proving people right. You unburden yourself of all the people that don't deserve to be in your life in the first place.

I love that. I love that. Yeah. It's.

Far. And I think right now, Sean, with the environment we are in and just in this country, there's far too many people out there trying to prove the others wrong. Correct. And no one, no one wins. I think you feel in the moment like you got a victory over somebody, but at the end of the day, nobody wins with that kind of.

Absolutely, absolutely. Right.

You know, I'm thinking about the next few. I think so much of culture, you know, you talk about the next chapter in the book is diversity isn't just a black and white thing. Obviously a very hot topic today.

It is.

And then you talk about creating environment.

Right?

So what is your view as a team, you know, as a pit crew team around diversity? What does that mean to you?

Yeah.

And what is how, how important is it for you to create a culture, a winning culture, an environment for your pit crew team members?

So diversity to us is simply strength, Right? Like when Mike Metcalf and I took this program over, we under, we were pit crew members, not pit crew coaches. And we understood that there were going to be things that came up and questions that we did not have the key to unlock the answer to. And by going after diversity, we had a better chance that someone would be at the table with the answer to that question. So in our place, we use a team acronym. Diversity of thought, Diversity of experience, Diversity of age and diversity of motor. That's the diversity that we go after. Now it turns out when we built our program, we have the most racially diverse pit crew in the history of nascar. But it was brought together on one basic recruiting principle and that's that we put nothing above being a world class human being. If you're that I can teach you how to pit race cars. And we started getting all these like minded people, right? Like we. Diversity is not a black and white thing. Right? Like we see with our eyes the merest fraction of a human being. So why would we set our team up like that? Right? We wanted true diversity. Different socioeconomic classes, because those offer different experiences. Guys that have been in a long time because they have wisdom. Guys that have been in it a short time because they're seeing everything with new eyes and diversity of motor. You've been in those locker rooms, Andy. There's always guys that you look forward to seeing. They were just a great experience. They were big energy guys. And you also need the ones that are stoic and well thought out. And by crafting that.

The culture in this building was a dumpster fire, to put it lightly. And it wasn't because we weren't talented. We were super talented, but we were lazy, we were entitled, and we were selfish, and we didn't want to win with those people. So, you know, we went about. Our bosses thought we were crazy when we let some of these guys go, but we were very intentional about the way we wanted to build our culture. And by setting forth.

Standards, Right. We went after standards, we didn't go after goals. Right. Like, one thing that drives Mike and I crazy is for the. For so many years, our boss would stand in front of the company and be like, our goal is to get two cars at the championship race in Homestead. That. That's happened zero times. Do you know what the repercussions of those goals were? Nothing. Very, very often goals have zero repercussions if you don't. Standards are where it's at. I love that we set standards, and by adhering to the standards, we have a chance to reach the goal. And that's what we did in the program. But it starts with intention.

Yeah. You got a few more minutes? Yeah, I just want to. I want to wrap this up because I think this book, if you haven't had a chance to get this guy's 12 second culture, if you. If you're a leader within your organization, small company, small business, or large corporation, get this book. It's. It's fascinating. It's. It's spot on. Sean, for. For the stuff everybody's going through today. Finish. I want you to talk quickly about. There's two formulas in here you talk about. I call them formulas. You've got the P equals W divided by T, W over T. And you also have vertical thinking. Right. Let's talk about what is vertical thinking.

So vertical thinking is, to put it simply, vertical thinking is working on your business versus working in your business. Right. Like you think about a typical workday for a lot of people. You come in Monday morning, what's the first thing you do?

Open the inbox.

So we go in the inbox, we answer emails till 9. We have a meeting at 9, and then we have another one stacked in there at 10. We get out of it. 11:30, we have lunch. We go to lunch, we come back, we have an insulin crash. Right. We have two more meetings in the afternoon, and by the time it's time to go, you didn't get to level up your company. You simply got one day closer to Friday. Right. Well, if you do that on Tuesday. Right. Again, you didn't level up your company. You just got one day closer to Friday. Vertical thinking is allowing yourself the space to think. One of the things that Mike and I did after our third year, it was just so crazy with travel and all the teams that we were curating. And one day we just had a conversation. We were like, when do we give ourselves the chance to think? Because we don't. Right. So we came up with. That actually was a formula that David Cutcliffe used when he was at Duke, and the formula is power equals work over time. Right. So many of us are guilty of looking at people's hours in the business. Oh, well, this person gets here at 6 and they stay till 10. And this person only gets here at 8, 30, and they stay. It has nothing to do with it. What was accomplished in that time. Right. That's efficiency. Right. What the. You know, what Coach Cocliffe was talking about was that so many of these football teams have beds in their office because they expect their staff to stay there 16, 18 hours a day. He's like, look, here's the volume of work. Dive into it. And when you're done, I want you in bed at your dinner table with your family. Now, some days that might take you 12 or 14 hours, but. But there's other days it would take you six. So it's again, it's about being intentional about what you're doing. It's not working at your computer and then checking your Instagram, and it's not that at all. So we set out blocks of work for our guys. When the work's accomplished, they're gone.

Yeah. And I think it's so apropos that we end the book. Guy that was known as an enforcer, guy that was leading teams in penalty minutes in the minor league hockey system, to end the book with kindness wins.

Right.

I think. I think. I think what, you know, that's a word that we all can see on a quote. Sean. Be kind, spread kindness. What does that mean to you?

Kindness is simply meeting people where they're at.

Right.

If they're struggling, you know, you have the empathy to meet them where they're at and try to help them take. Take them through that. For us, we use kindness as a recruiting tool.

Right.

One of the things that I am most proud of is our pit crew is. Is the only picker in the history of NASCAR to win NASCAR's version of the Walter Payton Award for their service in the community. And it shows. When you take our guys to the Berriam Springs orphanage or you take them to the Christian Mission and you watch them dive in and help people that you know, that are having a rough patch in life.

Your heart swells. But it also shows you if you have the right guys in the program or not. Because the ones that don't jump into that work make us question, hey, you know, it's, you know, and one of the things Andy, like, like we said, we don't pay the most on pit road. Right. So what doing the stuff in the community, for us, it is twofold. It creates purpose and it creates perspective. It's pretty hard to complain about making six figures when we're delivering, you know, two cartons of milk and a tray of sandwiches to a person. That's their meals for the next two days. Yeah, right. And again, it's. And now there's some hilarious stories that have come out of some of those. Some of those, like we do meals on Wheels. We get guys pulled over by the cops every single time we do it because it's like a cannonball run trying to get through the thing. But again, we, the world needs more kindness. Right? We're, we're born to be kind to each other. We've just lost our way.

Yeah. No, you couldn't wrap this up for this whole book in a bow for if there's that HR director, coo, CFO listening in right now. How does somebody take this? What advice would you give that business executive to apply. How does someone apply the 12 second culture to their business?

Basically, it's this is that you're going to call us and you're going to think we can come in there with a process to help your team operate like a pit crew. And operating like a pit crew is elevating people over process. If you do that, your team can operate like a picture.

That's awesome. Before I get into the rapid fire to end this episode, what is the best way? Sean, I know you and Mike do a lot of speaking. You guys do a lot of workshops, a lot of leadership work with organizations. What's the easiest way for you, somebody to get a hold of you.

Easiest way is probably just www.decleadership.com. we're both on Instagram. Mike's @ Mr. Metcalf Jr. I'm @swpeat Deck. Leadership is also on Instagram. So we're very passionate about it. And you know, there are more heart attacks in the United States on Monday morning than any other time during the week. And we want to see leadership done better. And if anyone has any questions, please reach out to us. We, like you said, we want to. Our heart's in.

This. So yeah, it's obvious. And I'm going to put all of your contact information in the show notes. I just. I'm fascinated. I'm excited. I get the chance to hang out with Sean here in a few weeks.