How to Commit to and Respect the Basics

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Welcome to beyond you'd why Podcast, where we go beyond just talking about your why and actually helping you discover and and then live your why. So if you're a regular listener, you know that every week we talk about one of the nine whys and then I bring on somebody with that why so we can see how their why has played out in their life. So if you have not yet discovered your why, go to whyinstitute.com, discover your why and then come back because this interview will have so much more meaning for you when you know your why. And so today we're going to be talking about the why of trust. Now, if you have this why, trust means everything to you. You believe that trust is the driving characteristic behind all that you stand for and you will work hard to create it. When the relationship is based upon trust, the sky is the limit for you. You will go to great lengths to demonstrate that you are trustworthy and do such things as becoming an expert in a given field or with respect to a particular subject so that you can demonstrate your expertise and thereby establish that you can be trusted. You will look to do things properly and correctly because that is what a trusted person would do. You want others to know that you can be counted on and will go the extra mile to demonstrate that with your actions, your words and your deeds. While people with otherwise may get annoyed by a violation of their trust, for you, it's like a knife in the gut. You are someone that builds loyal and lasting friendships and relationships. So I am very excited about our guest today. His name is Alan Stein Jr. He is a successful business owner and veteran basketball performance coach. He spent 15 years working with the highest performing athletes on the planet including NBA superstars Kevin Durant, Steph Curry and Kobe Bryant. Allen teaches proven strategies to improve organizational performance, create effective leadership, increase team cohesion and collaboration, and develop winning mindsets, rituals and routines. In his corporate keynote programs and workshops, Alan reveals how to utilize the same approaches in business that elite athletes use to perform at world class levels. He delivers practical lessons that can be implemented immediately. Alan says, my entire life, personally and professionally revolves around maximizing performance and happiness. Alan, welcome to the show.

Oh my goodness, it's so awesome to be here.

Let's start at the beginning. So what got you into coaching? Did you play all the different sports and then go into coaching or give us a little bit of your history?

Sure, yeah. I was incredibly active as a child and did just about every sport under the sun, from your conventional sports of football and baseball and basketball to some non traditional activities like martial arts and BMX biking and skateboarding. So really, anything that could expend fit physical energy, I was all about. But there was something about the game of basketball that I was especially drawn to and that ended up winning out as my number one passion. And was able to play in high school and then play in college. Played at Elon down in North Carolina. But the writing was on the wall that when my college playing days were over, that my playing days would be over. And I had a very strong attraction to the coaching field. You know, I'd had so many coaches that were so impactful in my life, and the thought of being of service and pouring into young people and still making a living doing something that I loved just seemed like the perfect vocation for me. So I jumped in headfirst and still to this day, very much consider myself a coach.

So who was your biggest influence or who influenced you the most while you were playing? And then who was it that finally said, all right, Alan, you got to get into coaching?

Well, you know, I heard that from so many different people. It certainly started with my parents. Both of my parents were elementary educators for 30 years. So I grew up with a very strong appreciation, appreciation for servanthood, for pouring into young people for doing something that you're passionate about and feel that is meaningful work. And I always have felt that while teaching and coaching are not necessarily synonymous, they're very directly related. And you know, coaches from the youth level through high school and college, and trainers that I had, you know, there was always something about them that I was just drawn to the craft and the profession. And like many people, I mean, I had a few coaches that weren't very good coaches, but they even taught me how I didn't want to be and how I didn't want to serve and work with others. So I felt that every coach I've had along the way taught me something. And every time I learned something new about myself, I was just more drawn to that craft of helping other people achieve their goals and follow their dreams.

So at what point did you say, I'm going to be a coach?

I officially decided probably midway through college. When I first started at Elon, I was actually an elementary ed major and thought that I would go the teaching and coaching route where I would actually be a physical education teacher by day and a basketball coach by night. But then realized that I wasn't near as passionate about the teaching portion of that and all I wanted to do was coach. Well, it's very hard for someone fresh out of college to be able to work as a full time coach. So I decided to enter the training industry and become a strength and conditioning coach or a performance coach, which really at the time in the late 90s, early 2000s, was basically looked at as a personal trainer. So I started off as more of an individual coach and trainers and then that broadened out to being able to be a performance coach for different teams. And then of course as the performance coach on different teams, then I was learning from the actual head coach, which was incredibly influential in my journey.

So did you coach as a head coach of basketball or more as a performance coach?

It was always in the performance, in the performance realm. So I've never actually been a head coach, but I've been able to work for, work alongside and observe the best coaches in the game of basketball. And that's the thing is I very much viewed myself as a coach, even though what I was coaching was athleticism and fitness and strength and conditioning, where they were coaching X's and O's and strategy. But I looked at our craft as being the same. So I would. Most of who I learned from early in my career were head coaches. And then I just figured out how to translate their strategies and their teaching principles and the way that they communicated and their emotional intelligence. And I just translated that to what my actual craft was.

Awesome. So what did you learn along the way as the most important aspect in performing at the highest level? Because you saw players that came in probably with a lot of talent and didn't perform well, and you probably saw players that didn't have as much talent and performed really well. What was the difference?

The number one thing that I learned from elite performers, I actually learned from the late Kobe Bryant. Had an opportunity to work a camp for him back in 2007. And the thing that I learned from him, I mean, he said verbatim was that the secret to his success was that he never got bored with the basics. And what I took from that was if you're working to master the basics and master the fundamentals during the unseen hours, that you never leave the foundation of what it takes to be good at your specific craft, that that's the only way you'll ever achieve true excellence in High performance. And I started to notice that theme with everyone I was working with, and it far extended past the basketball court. Really, any high performer in any area of life that I've ever been around has a commitment and a respect to the basics. And then, of course, one of the most important things we need to do is figure out who. Well, what are those basics? You know, in basketball, it's. It's rather obvious. It's things like footwork and shooting form and ball handling technique, you know, but. But outside of that, if you're a sales professional, you know, what are your basics? And being able to figure those things out and then work relentlessly towards mastery of them will give you a strong foundation to which the rest of your house is built.

God, you know you want it at least. I kind of feel like I want it to be something more exciting than that. Right. Not the basics. I want to say, you know, give me the little special sauce. And that special sauce is a sauce that anybody can do, right?

Yeah. And that's the thing that. I mean, first of all, when I saw Kobe work out in one of his private workouts, I was shocked at how basic the drills he was doing were. But that's what you just said is why it's rare to find someone, especially someone that's already accomplished and someone that's already a high performer, stick to those basics. Because we live in a society that tells us it's okay to skip steps. You know, everything on the Internet is telling us to look for a hack or a shortcut, you know, and we're told that we should always be looking for what's new and what's sexy and what's shiny. And anytime you pursue those, it's usually a grave mistake, because it's the basics that hold us together. Now, that doesn't mean that we just do the basics. It's about creating a foundation to which then we can level up. So I'm not saying that the only thing Kobe Bryant did during his workouts were basic drills, but that was the foundation, and then he would build upon those. Basketball is a perfect example. You know, I realize at the time of this recording, you know, we're all on our own house arrest and we're being quarantined and sports are off. But, you know, if the NBA was still going on right now, and if a 15 year old turned on a Lakers game and saw LeBron make this amazing move, normally they would go right out to their front yard or go down to the gym and they would try to emulate the move that they just saw LeBron do. But unfortunately, they're not doing everything that he's done during the unseen hours to build up the right to do that move, to earn the right to do that move, that he's mastered. All of the puzzle pieces that you have to put together for that one final move. And what they end up doing is trying to skip steps. And anytime you skip steps, you're going to have a problem. My good friend and mentor from espn, Jay Bilis, says, you know, in order to get to the top of any ladder, you have to touch every rung. Now, you can have one misstep and fall all the way to the bottom, but you have to be able to touch every rung. And I know that's very analogous to the whole trust concept, because, you know, trust is something that can literally take years, if not decades to really earn and can take a few seconds to actually diminish or undermine yourself. So I find that, you know, that those things are incredibly analogous.

How important is it for high performers to trust themselves incredibly?

I mean, that is. It's vital, you know, that that self awareness, the self confidence, the self discipline, that's where it all starts. And being able to trust yourself comes from demonstrated performance. And a good portion of that demonstrated performance happens during what I keep calling the unseen hours, which a friend of mine, Drew Hanlon, who's a phenomenal NBA skills coach and strategic coach, is the one that actually coined that term. I've just conveniently stolen it from him. But during the hours where no one's watching is when most of the work for any high performer is done. You know, once again, if the NBA was playing right now and we turned on a game and Steph Curry, you know, scores 50 tonight, all we're seeing is the result of the work that he's put in. We're not seeing the millions of repetitions that he's put in during an empty gym. In an empty gym to earn the rights to be able to score 50 points. So we, as the general public, aren't privy to that. We just look in amazement and think, well, he was born with that, or he got lucky. Tonight. We don't realize that he's been spending so much time mastering the basics, he's supposed to score 50. That's what he. I mean, that's what he's been designed to do because he's mastered those fundamental skills. And really, if you apply that mindset to any area of life, it's not a matter of if you'll be successful. It's simply a matter of when.

That's what a lot of people call. Or at least I hear they say, well, you're just a natural. Yeah, well, yeah, you're. I'm a natural after I spent thousands of hours doing the same thing over and over and over again.

Yeah. Ray Allen, who, you know, I believe Steph Curry will go down in history as the greatest shooter that the game's ever seen, but Ray Allen, certainly in that conversation, I mean, hall of Famer, you know, had the record for most threes, and he'd said several times in interviews, he actually gets offended when somebody calls him a natural because he says, man, you're completely disregarding the hours and hours of preparation that I've put in every single day of my life since I was barely able to walk. And, you know, he's like, I'm not disregarding that. I have some certain inherent talents and I've got great hand eye coordination and, you know, I'm fairly athletic. I mean, he's not disregarding some of the physical gifts that he has. But he'll be the first to tell you, there's lots of people that have the same physical gifts that I do that haven't been able to achieve what I've been able to achieve because they weren't willing to do what I did. So, yeah, I know that most people mean well and they think it's a compliment by calling someone a natural, but I actually think you're doing them a huge disservice because you're discrediting all of the work and effort they've put in.

I feel that same way. When I was younger, basketball was my sport, and then I didn't grow right. And when I was like 15, I was probably 5ft tall. And so I switched way back in the day to racquetball, when racquetball was the fastest growing sport in the. In the US And I ended up becoming the world champion in racquetball. But I know exactly what you're talking about because I spent thousands and thousands of hours alone in a court hitting and hitting and hitting and trying in front of a mirror, practicing and practicing and practicing. And that's what I hear. Oh, well, you're just a natural at it. And I'm like, well, wait a second. What about all that time that I spent in there where you didn't. I did. That makes you look like a natural. But it's not natural.

No. In fact, it's unnatural to spend thousands and thousands of hours by yourself in isolation, working on the same rote skill over and over. That's why many people don't do it. And one of the things that I found fascinating, and you just brought up a great point, you know, especially in athletics, where there is a physical component, we can have, obviously, genetic predispositions that give us a higher potential to be good in something. And as you just said, being 5 foot tall is not the genetic predisposition that you want to play basketball. But I don't know a lot about racquetball, but it might be a big advantage in racquetball, you know, you're closer to the ground. You can probably hit lower shots. But when we step outside of the realm of physical activity and we just talk about business or we talk about relationships or then the physical component doesn't matter, because it doesn't matter if you're 7 foot tall or 5ft tall. You can be a phenomenal dentist. It doesn't matter if you're, you know, £300 or £100, you can be a phenomenal coach. So, to me, that's one of the things that's most exciting, is the high utility that these principles have, that the. The mindset that Kobe had to get good at his craft doesn't mean that if you and I would have spent the same amount of hours working on our game that we would have been as good as Kobe in basketball. Because clearly, that's not true for either one of us. But it does mean if we take his mindset and we translate that over to whatever we want to be good at, Racquetball dentistry keynote speaking, that we have the potential to maximize our ability in that realm. And to me, that's what's most exciting, that this is something that's open and available to anyone to use.

See, that is awesome. I love that. Well, take us through a workout that Kobe Bryant would do. Take us through one of his workouts so that we can kind of picture and we're there with you on what he does so we can feel what it's like to, you know, practice and never get bored with the basics. What's it like?

My number one signature story, And I've opened up every keynote that I've ever done in my entire career with the story about the first time I met Kobe. And I probably won't do it justice explaining it to you guys now. So I would encourage. When we're done, I'll give some folks some sites or some links. They could go hear the full story. But one of the cool parts about the Workout that I watched was it was at 4 in the morning and this was during an off season after he'd already been an NBA champion, after he'd already been, you know, an all star, a multimillionaire. Like, he was still getting up super early in the morning to work on these basics. And I remember that for the first 45 minutes, first of all, the first 10 to 15 minutes, he wasn't even using a ball. He was just doing footwork. He was doing on different foot movements and pivoting drills and things just to get his feet ready. And then he would add a ball and he would do basic ball handling movement drills and different ways that he would attack the basket. But they were all things that I had done with middle school and high school age players. But I loved the way that kind of in a sequential standpoint, that he would come in and he would do the most basic stuff, you know, some form shooting to work on his technique, some footwork, some movement, and then he would slowly graduate to more advanced level stuff. And one of the things that I always loved about the way he approached it, that he always did things in pieces first and then he would put it together. So let's just say, for example, and I'm making this up, he has the ball in triple threat, he does a crossover dribble to a spin move to a floater. Well, he would work on each of those segments in isolation. So he would work on just the crossover until he had it down perfectly. And then he'd work on just the spin move until that was precise, and then just the floater until he felt confident. And then, and only then would he put the pieces together and go basically part to whole to finish it. So he wouldn't just walk out on the court and immediately go to a crossover spin move floater. He would build it as if you were building some type of puzzle. And I just found that fascinating.

And he would do that every day.

Yeah, I mean, legend would has it, I only watched his workout that one morning, but I mean, legend added that yeah, he did that consistently all of the time, and that his capacity for work was just unparalleled. Later in an interview, not that I did with him, but someone else, they asked him why did he choose to do these early morning workouts at 4 in the morning. And he said, well, it's simple. You know, even the most dedicated pro is probably only going to work out twice a day. They're going to do their first workout at 9 or 10 in the morning and go for a few hours and then go home and rest and recover and eat and then they'll come back in the afternoon or evening and get in their second workout. And he said these are the hall of Famers, dedicated pros. He said, well, if I get mine in at 4 in the morning, then when I'm coming back for my second workout, they're only on their first workout and when I come back for my third workout, they're only on their second workout. He said, it's only a matter of time and then I'll have created such a lead they'll never be able to catch me because I'm going to do this every day of every off season. And he had a 20 year career and he said, once you start accumulating time and adding these things together, if every day of my life I'm getting in an extra workout, there's no way you'll ever beat me. And whether or not that's true doesn't matter. That was his mindset and he really believed it.

So obviously Kobe trusted himself. Oh yes, if the, if the ball, if it's coming down to the last shot, who's going to take that shot? There's no doubt that he's going to be the guy.

Yes. And he would demand it, he would want it, because he'd know he had earned the right to hit that shot, that he had put in the hours to deserve the right to hit that shot. And he's so confident in himself that even if he missed and guys like Kobe and Michael Jordan, Jordan missed plenty of game winners, they were okay with that because they had the grit and resilience to just simply move to the next play. And they had more confidence in themselves because of this demonstrated performance than they probably had in their teammates.

Is that mindset teachable? Is it innate? Is it teachable? Did Kobe always have it and others won't have it? What have you noticed over the years?

For the most part, I believe almost everything is teachable now. I believe there's a certain ceiling on certain things. But you know, I think, and this I really take to heart because I'm a father of three young children. I have ten year old twin sons and I have an eight year old daughter. I don't believe it's ever too early to plant seeds and I believe as parents, as teachers, as coaches that we should be planting seeds early and we should be modeling the behavior that we want to see in young people. So I do believe that some of that was ingrained in Kobe at a very young age because his father was a professional player, and he more than likely saw his father, you know, grab his lunch pail and head to the gym and put in work. And Kobe got to see his father earn his repetitions during the unseen hours. Same thing for Steph Curry. You know, I don't think he was necessarily at an advantage because his dad taught him how to shoot correctly. I think he was at an advantage because at a very early age, he connected the dots that the more purposeful and deliberate practice you put into something, the better you'll be. You know, as soon as he's old enough to walk, he was going to the gym with his dad, Dell Curry, who was a great NBA player, and he saw that connection, and to me, that's what's most important. So, yes, I do believe these are learned skills. I think it helps significantly with most things if you plant the seed early in children. I think it would be hard if you take someone that's rather lazy and apathetic and in their 40s and try to rewire their mindset to adopt that. Whereas if they're 4 or 5 years old and they're more like sponges, it's probably a bit easier. But, yeah, all of these mindsets I do believe you can improve in. Now, I think Kobe is a once in a generation type player. I think the same thing with any high performer. I mean, it doesn't matter if you're talking about Tom Brady or Jay Z. I do think they were born with some tools that other people weren't born with. I think they were raised in some specific environments that helped create the person they became. So I'm not saying that anyone could be Tom Brady, Jay Z, or Kobe Bryant, but you absolutely can improve your own commitment to mastering your fundamentals during your unseen hours.

So every one of these top performers that you've worked with or seen or observed all have legendary workouts.

Yeah, the work ethic and focus is what separates them. It's not necessarily what they did. It's the way that they did it and the level of precision. You know, there's an adage that we would use in the basketball community all the time. You know, an average player goes to the gym to take 500 shots. A good player goes to the gym to make 500 shots. A great player goes to the gym to make one shot 500 separate times. And that might sound like verbal semantics, but there's some truth behind that. Kobe would do everything with the precision and focus as if it was Game 7 of an NBA Finals. He didn't do anything, going through the motions. He didn't mail anything in. Everything was done with tremendous effort and tremendous focus. And that's something that's very hard to replicate. You know, many of us, and certainly I'm far from perfect myself. A lot of the reps that we get are casual reps. You know, we go through things sub maximal. You know, Kobe would do everything outside of his warm up at game speed with game like attention. And I've heard, because I haven't spent time with Tom Brady or Jay Z yet, but I've heard that, you know, their approach is very, very similar.

Wow. So, you know, this just came into my mind and I was thinking about the new generation, the younger generation. How are they receiving this message? Are they saying last night, you know, I'm never going to be like that? Are they saying, are they feeling like I'm too lazy? Or are they. What are you hearing from the younger generation when you talk about this kind of work ethic? Never getting bored with the basics, you.

Know, I've actually found the younger generation is in alignment with this. You know, if we are going to put labels on. I found that the younger generation craves feedback more than older generations do, you know, and part of that is driven by social media. I mean, in many of their lives, their feedback are the likes or the comments or the views that they get on social media. And they crave that, you know, in their mind. If I post a picture and 100 people like it, then that's a good picture. If I post a picture and only two people like it, then it wasn't a good picture. So they're kind of wired to desire feedback and have outside sources tell them what's working and what's not. And I think if we use that correctly, that's a great thing. When it comes to coaching, we have to be willing to meet them and play in their sandbox and go to them and offer as specific feedback as we can. You know, I find that younger people, I know this is a trait for all kids, but once you get a little bit older, younger people want to know the why behind everything. You know, my generation, when I came up and I'm not that old, I'm only 44, but when I played in high school, if the coach said to do something, you did it. I mean, that was it. You didn't, you didn't ask why. And if you asked, he would say, look, I'm not here to give you an explanation. I'm the coach, I have the authority. If I tell you to do it, you do it well, I've seen that shift dramatically over the last 20 to 30 years. Whereas now players will ask why? You know, why should my feet be in this position, coach? Why do you want me to shoot from here? You know, why was this the incorrect pass to make? They want to know why. And as coaches and as teachers and as leaders, we owe them that explanation. You know, I've always believed I would never ask someone to do anything, that I couldn't explain the why behind it because I just don't think that's fair.

What do you think makes a great coach?

First and foremost is humility, is understanding that you have a certain expertise and you have certain experience, but that you don't know everything, that you're still open to learning. And you're not just open to learning from other coaches. You're open to learning from your players. You're open to learning from things outside of your industry. You're a continual learner, I believe is one another. And I don't necessarily, I don't know that I can rank these 1 and 2. They might be 1A and 1B. The other is emotional intelligence, which is having self awareness, the ability to recognize and manage your own emotions and feelings, but also be able to recognize and manage the emotions and feelings of others. And part of that is being able to speak someone else's language. You know, the best coaches I've been around, as I just said before, it's a phrase I use a lot. They come to your sandbox to play, they don't make you come to theirs. When I was a child, pretty much everyone could be categorized into two buckets. One bucket was the kid that could swallow a Tylenol pill. The other was the kid that had to have the Tylenol smashed up in applesauce in order to take it. And just for anyone wondering, I was an applesauce kid for most of my childhood and I always bring that up because it's an easy way to share as a coach. If you played for me, the very first thing I have to figure out is can you take your Tylenol directly or do I got to put a little applesauce with it in order for you to take it? And it doesn't matter how I prefer it as a coach, it's my job to give you your Tylenol in the way that you prefer it, because that way it will be most well received. So this is not about ever skirting the truth. I believe coaches should always tell the truth. But you might Be a player that I can speak to very directly and quite frankly and your performance will go up. Whereas you may have a teammate that if I do that, they'll actually cower. They'll feel emasculated, they'll feel embarrassed, they'll feel called out. So they might have to have a little applesauce when I deliver some feedback. So it doesn't matter which way they want it, it just matters. As a coach, you can speak their language. And I think if you take a coach who is humble and constantly trying to learn and get better at their craft, they have a high emotional intelligence and they learn how to speak other people's language. Those are the basic components of being elite. And then the rest of the stuff can easily be learned because notice I didn't say anything about technical skill. I didn't say anything about which offense or defense to run or X's and O's. These are the skills that are required to be a good coach. The rest of it can easily be learned.

So is that a fair story to tell at the beginning? When you start working with players and tell the applesauce story, then say, okay, which one are you? So you have that because otherwise you're just kind of. How do you know which ones are the applesauce kids and which ones are the Tylenol kids?

Well, you know what's kind of comical? At young ages, sometimes they don't even know about themselves because they haven't. They don't have the requisite self awareness to know. So you start to pick it up. And as a coach you have to be incredibly observant so you can notice. I mean, there's a few different things. I mean, one, you know, a perfect example would be, alright, I'm coaching 15 basketball players and I noticed that I keep calling you out and correcting you in front of your teammates. I'm going to either notice that after I make that correction, you have positive body language, you're optimistic and your performance goes up, or I'm going to notice the opposite. You're kind of like a dog with your tail between the legs and you kind of cower. You feel embarrassed that I called you out in front of your peers and a good coach is going to pick up on that. And then if I do it a few more times, I'll start to notice some trends and then I'll be able to say, okay, you clearly respond better to Tylenol or applesauce. And then it's my job to do that. This is why the one size fits all doesn't work because if I take a typical random sample of 15 basketball players and I make all of them swallow the Tylenol, there's probably three or four or five kids that need some applesauce with it. And now those kids aren't going to play to their ability. And as a coach, it's my job to get each and every player to play to their maximum level and then get the entire group to work together as one cohesive unit. So you can ask them, and you can ask them in kind of a funny way, like I do with the Tylenol, but a lot of it's just going to come through straight observation. Yep.

So. And that translates right over into business. Right. The same thing in business. And being a better leader, without question it does.

This doesn't change from childhood to adulthood. It doesn't change when you leave the court and you head to the boardroom. Now, what can make it incredibly or increasingly difficult is when we start doing things at scale. So I'm the CEO and I have 200 people that work for me. That's a tall order for me to know how 200 people like their applesauce or like their Tylenol. However, if I've done it correctly and I'm just again, making this scenario up, hopefully I have 10 managers or supervisors who are each responsible for, you know, 15 to 20 people and they learn how their people like it. So now all I have to do is learn how my 10 managers like their Tylenol and then it's up to the manager to run it through a filter and just, you know, discern what information and how the information gets to their team. And once again, this is not about skirting truth. This is not about playing a game of telephone and trying to change the core message. It's all about being able to deliver things in a manner that will be most well received. So that performance goes up, because that's everybody's number one goal, is for increased performance.

So as good as Kobe was and as good as the other Steph Curry and Kevin Durant and all the other high level, top performing players are, they can't do it by themselves.

Nope.

So what does it take and what have you seen works for creating a great team? Because you got to have a team, right?

Absolutely. And it takes a few things. First and foremost, you have to have distinct role clarity. Everybody on the team needs to know exactly what their role is and what the expectations of them are and how that will be measured with their role. And then once they know their Role. They have to embrace their role, and then they have to do everything they can to star in their specific role to the best of their ability. And when we look at the team from that standpoint, everybody on the team needs to respect and value and appreciate and of course, your favorite word, trust. Everybody else is going to do their role to the best of their ability. So this means that the star player on the team has a strong appreciation, value, respect, and trust for the 15th man. He knows that the 15th man's role is completely different than his own, but he also knows that there's an important role that that person has to play, and he trusts and appreciates that they're going to do that to the the best of their ability and vice versa. And, you know, so when it comes to the role clarity, you can almost take the traditional org chart and just kind of shelve it for a little bit, because it doesn't matter where you fall on the org chart. If you are on the org chart or if you are on the roster, you are important. And if you're not important, then you shouldn't be on the team. Like, I mean, if your box on the org chart is irrelevant, well, then we don't need you. You shouldn't be here. We should trim the fat and only keep what's vital to us performing at a high level. So if you were on that, if you were in that locker room or in that boardroom, you are important. And what's most important is that you play your role to the best of your ability. Now, if we take a typical high school basketball team and I say, okay, you're going to be my starting shooting guard, you're going to play most of the game, and you have the full green light to shoot whenever you want, well, that's a role most players would relish. They want that role. Boy, that sounds heavenly to me. But then I look down the bench to one of your friends and say, your role is you're going to be our third backup point guard. You're not going to play very much, but I need you to show up to every weight room session, every film session, every workout, and every practice on time. And your job is to push the two guys ahead of you so that they can be the best player that they can be, but you're not going to play very much this year. That is a much harder sell. That's not necessarily a role that people stand in line raising their hand for, but that is a vital role to the success of the team. You know, the best Teams that I've ever had a chance to work with, not only were they starting five really good, their players, six through 10, were equally committed to their role to push the starters to be even better. So it's so important. And this is where, you know, you assume that the starting shooting guard is already going to get a lot of praise and a lot of accolades. You know, you're the one that has your name in the headlines. So if you can go out of your way to make sure you're putting an arm around the 15th man after practice and just saying, you know, hey, Jimmy, I can't tell you how much I appreciate the work you put in to make us better. You had a great practice today. Your time has come and thank you so much. Then you've got something really special. So cohesion and culture all starts with role clarity.

So it was role clarity, embrace their role and then star in their role.

Yes. I love that you want to be world class at that. And I know this is going to sound overly dramatic for the example I'm going to make, but imagine that, you know, you have a business and within the office, when things resume and we go back to normal, you have a building service crew that comes in overnight and they take out the trash, they clean the floors. You know, they do all of that stuff. You know, we often forget, you know, those people are important. They're the ones that allow us to show up every morning with a clean and safe environment to do our job. And yet, because they're out of sight and out of mind, we often forget about them. It's like we just expect that when we show up magically, the office is going to be clean and. But how important they are. And yeah, I would want that person. And I know this is going to sound comical to say, I'm going to be the best building service person in the world tonight. I'm going to clean these floors and take out this trash better than anyone in the history of the world has ever done it, because I have that much pride in my job. And, you know, I don't know that there's a ton of people that have that much pride in that job, but I would have so much respect for someone that does. You know, I know that when I take my children and maybe we stop by, say, like a Chick Fil a to grab lunch, you know, I'm not a huge fast food guy, but maybe we'll stop in Chick Fil A and I see somebody, you know, they're basically a cashier at a fast food restaurant, and yet they have so much pride in their work. They're smiling. They're going above and beyond to serve you. You know, I have so much respect for someone like that because they're taking a job that most people would kind of turn their nose up at, and they're fulfilling it with excellence and doing the best that they can. That's the type of person I almost want to say, look, I don't have any openings at my business, but the moment I do, I'm going to hire you just based on how much pride you showed in your current role. And that's the thing. If you want an expanded role, you have to star in your current role. You can't try to sandbag, to skip steps. You have to be great where your feet are now in order of hopefully attracting something better in the future.

I'm on my third page of notes now, just listening to you. So when you see me look away, I am writing note after note after note. You have have so much great stuff that you're sharing with us, and I love it. And you've put it together in a way that's simple, easy to understand, and anybody can do it, right? That's the key.

Well, the other lesson that I learned from Kobe, and I appreciate that compliment more than ever, I believe, you know, you taking notes is about the best compliment that I could ever receive. And I feel that way when I'm on stage speaking and I look down and I see somebody's eyes light up, their head nods, and then they immediately start writing something. It's the best feeling in the world. But one of the other lessons that I learned from Kobe, you know, what we've been talking about this entire conversation is very basic in principle. I don't think we've confused anyone. I don't think anybody's heads exploded. But nothing that I've said so far, not a single thing, is easy to do. Basic and easy are not synonyms, and yet people often use those words interchangeably. What it takes to be great at your craft is basic and premise, but what it takes to actually do your craft, and definitely not easy. There is nothing easy about embracing the role of being the 15th man on the team. There is nothing easy about wanting to star in your role as an overnight building service worker. There's nothing easy about that, much less nothing easy about going to the gym at 4 in the morning and doing basic pivoting drills for 45 minutes when you are already considered the best player on the planet. There's nothing easy about any of this stuff. And that's where I think we start to see the. The high performers separate themselves from everyone else. Not only do they not get bored with the basics, but they understand that what they're trying to do is not easy. And most people roll their eyes at that. That's why one of the disclaimers I make when I'm on stage is, I'm going to talk to you guys about a lot of very basic fundamentals. But I caution you not to sit there listening to me thinking, I already know this. But instead I challenge you to sit back and ask yourself one of the most important questions you can ever ask yourself. And that's how well am I doing this? Because there's always going to be a gap between what we know and what we do. And a key to high performance is closing that gap, is taking everything that we know we're supposed to do on a regular basis and actually doing it and executing it. And physical fitness is the easiest example I can make. Every full functioning adult on the planet knows what healthy foods are, knows they're supposed to get good sleep at night, and knows they should be physically active most days during the week. They know all of that. And yet statistically we see that most people don't do any of that. So why would we have a gap between what we know we're supposed to do and what we do? And the answer is because it's not easy. It's not easy to always eat healthy foods, it's not easy to always get eight hours sleep, it's not easy to work out consistently. Those things aren't easy.

What does it take then to. So in your high performance coaching, what were you able to instill? So I'm listening to this right now. I'm driving or I'm flying somewhere and I'm listening to this and I'm saying, man, I would love to be able to do that. I get it. I understand what he's saying. What do I need to adopt in my own mind so that I can accomplish this, so that I can not get bored with the basics, Because I'm.

An action guy and I want to give practical strategies. So I'm going to give you a three step formula to help you close performance gaps. And because I know we're running short on time, I'll be fairly concise. But I'll also give folks, I'll give you a link at the end where they could get more information on this for free. I have a whole bunch of free resources. The very first thing you need to do is you need to isolate one behavior or one habit that you want to focus on. So don't try to change five or six things at once, which is what most people do. I want you to have razor sharp precision and pick one. And the best thing to do is figure out. All right, first let me narrow it down to one of the silos of my life. What do I want to change? Is it something in my health and fitness silo? Is it something in my relationship silo? Maybe it's something specific at work. So narrow it down kind of to a genre first and then make a list of, I don't know, three or four habits that you'd like to start because you know it would improve your performance. But then also make a list of three or four habits you know you need to stop because you're currently doing something that's sabotaging your performance. And let's just say I go health and fitness, here's three or four things I could start doing. Here's three or four things I need to stop. And all I want you to do is circle one. One, just the one that you believe would be the most impactful. And that's going to be your target. You're not going to worry about the others right now. You'll get to them at some point. But right now all we're going to do is focus on that one and then the next step. Step two is I want you to be relentlessly committed to either starting that thing or stopping that thing, whichever you chose for the next 66 days. 66 days. First of all, I like it because it's kind of an arbitrary number. It's kind of hard to forget. I also like it because it's enough time to make it challenging, but it's not so overwhelming that you feel defeated before you've even started. And I've seen plenty of research out there that says if you do something daily for 66 days, it starts to remove some of the friction and it starts to become much more ingrained as a habit. It doesn't mean anything magically changes on day 67. But I just think it's a great goal to have. And I'm a very visual guy. So I picture just having a calendar on my desk and a big red Sharpie and every day that I add this new behavior, I just make a big red X. And my goal is to get 66 red X's in a row. And I know because I'm human and I'm fallible, I'm probably going to break the chain at some point. But I'm not going to let that defeat me. I'm just going to pick right up and keep going. And then the third step is you want to keep the spotlight on, and the spotlight is the spotlight of accountability. So you want to insulate yourself with an inner circle of people that you've told what you're trying to do so that they can help hold you accountable, so they can check in with you. So if we use my example in the fitness world to be more physically active, my goal is I'm going to go for a 30 minute walk every single day. I'm not changing my diet. I'm not signing up for soul cycle classes, I'm not getting yoga DVDs. All I'm going to do is go for a walk 30 minutes every day and I go over to the Office Depot and I buy myself a nice calendar and a red Sharpie. And every day that I go for a walk, going to put an X down. And I'm going to be super committed to doing that for 66 days in a row. And I've told you, and I've told my kids and I've told a few folks that are important in my life and my inner circle that this is what I'm going to do. And would you be kind enough to check in with me every day? Just send me a text and ask me if I went for my walk, or send me a text and ask me what did I listen to on today's walk. Or ask me if I went on the treadmill or if I went outside. Just something to hold me accountable. And if I have four or five people checking in with me daily to hold me accountable on this one specific behavior, and I'm committed to doing it for 66 days, there's a very good chance that I'm going to see the finish line with that. There's a very good chance that walking for 30 minutes a day is now going to just become part of what I do. And now once that becomes part of what I do, now I move on to something else. So this is not about just changing one habit and calling it a day. This is about over the course of the rest of my life, if every roughly 66 days I can start starting or stopping a new behavior that's closing a performance gap, I'm going to see my performance go through the roof over time. In fact, if someone's committed enough to doing this, in one calendar year, you would start or stop four or five things in your life. You would be a completely different person one year from now. If you were able to add two or three good behaviors and remove two or three bad ones, you wouldn't even be able to recognize yourself.

Wow. And see. So from my perspective, I see that as building in structure to be able to trust yourself. Because when you can trust yourself, then that's when you perform at a higher level.

Brilliantly said. You put a perfect bow tie on that. I could not agree more.

Well, Alan, thank you so much for being here. I've got my three pages of notes that I'm going to share with my family and with my wife and you've got some great stuff. What's next for you? How can people get a hold of you? What was that link you were talking about?

Well, if you go to my website, which is alansteinjr.com free, you'll see a series of free videos and free downloadable PDFs. And one of the PDFs, my key themes actually talks about this three step process in a little bit more depth. I actually created this free resources page during this global pandemic that we're in because my entire business has been shelved for who knows how long. I mean, all of my speaking calendar has been wiped clean for at least the next couple months and who knows for how long. So my goal during this is to find other ways to be of service. So if you go to alansteinjr.com free, there's tons of free goodies on there. You don't even have to opt in or anything. You can just take a look. I do have a book called Raise youe Game which talks about all of this stuff. And you can go to raiseyourgamebook.com if that interests you. And I'm ensteinjr the major social channels and love having dialogue with folks. So if you listen to this and something resonated, give me a shout on social or drop me a line. I would love to continue the discussion.

Alan, you're awesome man. Thanks for being here. I look forward to staying in touch as we're both on our journey. So thank you very much.

Thank you.

Have a great day.

You too.

Sam.