Lou Holtz (Fmr. Head Coach of Notre Dame Football)

The episode you're about to listen to was released back when the Mere Christians podcast was called the Call to Mastery. Now, if you love Mere Christians, you're still going to love these older episodes because the majority of each conversation focuses on how the gospel influences the work of our guests. With that disclaimer out of the way, please enjoy the episode. Hey, everybody. Welcome to the Call to Mastery. I'm Jordan Raynor. This is a podcast for Christians who want to do exceptional work for the glory of God and the good of others. Every single week, I'm bringing you a conversation with a Christ follower who is pursuing world class mastery of their vocation. We're talking about the their path to mastery. We're talking about their daily habits and routines, and we're talking about how their faith influences their work. Today, I am super excited to bring to you a conversation I recently had with Lou Holtz. Of course, Lou needs no introduction. He's the legendary college football coach best known for leading Notre Dame to their national championship in 1988. He's the first coach in NCAA history to lead six different programs to bowl games. That's astounding. And it goes without saying, he's a member of the College Football hall of Fame in recent years. Best known as a broadcaster and commentator on television, he's one of the most beloved personalities in all of sports. He's also well known as being a devout follower of Jesus Christ. I was so honored that Lou decided to come onto the program. So excited to have him. So Lou and I recently sat down in the middle of the coronavirus crisis. We talked about the the keys to mastering the art of coaching. We talked about the simple win win framework that Lou uses for budgeting his time and deciding what to do day to day. That's probably my favorite part of the entire conversation. And we also talked about his three rules for a good God glorifying life. This is a terrific conversation. Please enjoy my time with Lou Holtz. Coach Holtz, thank you so much for being here. We talked before we got on the line about this quarantine. You and I are both in the state of Florida, stuck at home right now. So I'm just curious, you know, before we start talking about your career and mastering your craft, I'd love to get some perspective from you. You were born into the Great Depression. You lived through World War II. Vastly worse phenomenons compared to what we're experiencing today. But how does that history that you lived through give you context to today's events in this coronavirus crisis?

Well, when you talked about the depression affected everybody. You talked about World War II. It affected everybody. Coronavirus virus. We've had 500,000 people, 350 million people be attacked by it. So in one thing, it attacked everybody. But I'm not sure the ruined economy to shut everything down. Yes, in New York, things like that. But in Idaho or everywhere else, why do you affect everybody's lives? And so many times you can't understand why this happened. However, there are some positive things about it. You spend more family time together. We do face time with our children and their families, and they're all together. You spend time together. And my wife and I do a Bible study together every single day. This isn't something you could do before because my schedule was so hectic. You can never set aside one time. So while there's always negative things, the one thing I've learned in life, there's always going to be something positive in everything that happens. If we react positively to it, we will get positive results.

Yeah, there's a lot of wisdom in that. So, coach, obviously you're a master of your craft as a coach. So I'm really curious, just high level, whether you're coaching football players or coaching employees or a member of another team, what are the keys to mastering the art of, of coaching?

I think that coaching is like anything else. It's just being able to communicate with people, getting people to have a goal and then show them how they could possibly achieve it. The one thing about coaching, you know, a lot of people in this world can be successful. They make a lot of money. When they die, that ends. But in coaching and teaching in certain areas, you have a chance to be significant significance when you help other people be successful. And that lasts many a lifetime. For example, Woody Hayes has been dead for many years, but he still lives because I. He influenced my life in so many ways. And whether it was Urban Meyer or Barry Alvarez, et cetera, I probably influenced their life because of Woody Hayes. So coaching is caring about players. I think it's like not real difficult. But you also have to have standards. One thing Woody Hayes taught me is if you're a leader, your obligation is not to be well liked, your obligation not to be popular. Your obligation makes people the very best they can possibly be. And that only happens when you get them out of their comfort zone. Most people don't realize how much talent and ability they have. They always want to take a less difficult course to follow. So your obligation is to teach them how good they can be, get them to have goals that help them reach those goals.

There's a lot of science to support what you know intuitively through your experience. Right. That mastery requires frequent discomfort. Right. Masters never settle. They always put more weight on the bar. And a lot of times that takes a coach putting more weight on the bar for the player. Right. Or for the member of the team to help develop their skills.

Well, I think that your attitude is constant improvement. The great organizations and great athletes, it's just constant improvement. They don't talk about what they did. Well, for example, whether it be Notre Dame, Augusta, they just, what can we do better? Same thing has to be that attitude as an athlete is you aren't satisfied with what you did. If what you did yesterday looked big, do you, then you haven't done much. Today you're really looking at, okay, what can I improve upon? What areas need to be improved upon? And this constant improvement attitude.

Yeah. What was the most difficult part of coaching for you?

Right.

So you're remembered as this great hall of Fame coach, but what was the area that you really had to work on as a coach and really practice?

I think patience and budgeting my time. But we always put our priorities, our faith. Faith in God was number one every single Sunday that I ever coached, win or lose. We went to church on Sunday as a family, and then we went out to breakfast. I mean, that's a ritual. And my children continue that today with their families. Nothing's more important than Sunday church. And that was instilled in me by my grandparents. And my parents say, we never miss church on Sunday. And as you go and you look at the variety of things you do, and man, you do, but just having enough time and then being patient enough, I really wish that I would have spent more time with the athletes individually in their dorm room or in the office, because you get more done in a relaxed atmosphere when they get to see that you don't have a selfish agenda, you just want to see them be very good. And you have an obligation to explain to them that when you join a team, your obligations are to the team. Our team has a goal and you have a role. And whatever role you have, you have to accept that goal. Being able to spend more time with the athlete in a relaxed environment, explaining to him why his role is so important and why he has to do it to the best of his ability at all times, regardless whether it's a classroom or whether it happens to be on the football field.

I think athletes struggle with this time budgeting thing probably as much as coaches. Right. I Mean college athletes. You're running from class to two a day, practices to games. So I'm really curious, you know, and you're still a busy guy, right? You're very busy. We were just talking about how busy you are today and how much you've got going on. What are the lessons that you've taken away from your lifetime of experience of how to budget your time? Well, so you mentioned, you know, kind of getting the rocks in place first, right? So faith is first, right? So spending time in God's word, going to church, et cetera. But on a day to day practical level, when you get to the office, what are some of the lessons you've learned about how to budget and spend your time wisely?

Number one, what's important now? The word win. What's important now? This is what I want to get done. We want to win. I want to do whatever it is. Ask yourself 25 times a day when what's important now? To evaluate the past, focus on the future, tell you what you have to do in the present. What's important now? To get the objectives that we want done, there's always going to be a priority. You have 100 things that maybe you'd like to do, but that's not the question. The question is what do you need to do? What has to be done right now? And you list your priorities or things I want to get accomplished. The night before I come in the office, I always sit down and make a list of what I want today to be like, what I want to accomplish, what I'm going to try to do with my time budget. But it doesn't always work that way. But you adjust.

Yeah, there's a lot of wisdom there, right? There's a hundred or so things that we're all committed to, but you can't do more than one at one time, right? So continually asking, what's the most essential thing to do right now in this moment, that's really, really, really wise. I want to take you back to something you said at Liberty University recently, which I loved. You said, quote, I don't believe you can accomplish an awful lot in life, anything worthwhile without faith in God, end quote. And it just reminded me of Jesus words in you mentioned John 1. This comes from John 15:5, where he says, I'm the were the branches. If you remain in me and I and you, you'll bear much fruit. But apart from me, you can do nothing. Right? So I'm curious what some of your spiritual disciplines have been that have kept you connected to the vine. You mentioned this current Bible study you're doing with your wife. For you personally though, what do you, what do your spiritual disciplines look like?

Well, it started out both sides of my family were religious. I said we went to church every Sunday and then we go to grandma's for breakfast. All the family congregate. I went to Catholic grade school as an older boy, honored the holy days of obligation. You start out every day at school with catechism. We're talking about our lord Jesus Christ, etc. So you grow up. And I was very religious even at a younger age. So this isn't like all of a sudden I had a transformation. But as you go along and all of a sudden you go to college and your friends are in the fraternity, they're going to father. They're going to St. Mattress pop my father pillow. I mean, they didn't get up. I was the only one, I think at get up every single Sunday and went to mass and all of a sudden you start making those decisions for yourself. My parents had a strong belief and so I believed it. But then you get away and you find out not everybody shares your belief. And then you have professors that are liberal and very few of them have a strong religious faith and you start questioning. And all of a sudden when you start looking at the logic, you look at an individual, you look at the heart, his eyes, his ears, his reproductive system, his final column, the brain. You're going to tell me that happened by accident when you have 11 of the 12 apostles died as martyrs. You are going to die for a lie and you're going on. And then it comes down to question, either going to believe or you're not going to believe. And I chose many times years ago to believe and I've never had any reason to doubt that. Now, because you have a faith, Jesus Christ and God, your religion doesn't mean you aren't going to have problems. Matter of fact, once you commit your life to God, you're going to have more difficulties than ever because he's going to test you in that respect.

Amen.

However, here's the difference. When you have difficulties and problems, you can handle them because you know that they're trying to teach a lesson and God is with you. You go there. So having the faith helps you handle them. It's the people that don't have faith that are going to blame everybody else. And it's always somebody else's fault and woe is me and life's not fair. And you go on and on when you understand you're here for a purpose. It makes it much easier.

I want to talk about the application of that wisdom to something earlier in your life. So I read that in your youth, you actually prayed that God would make you a great athlete, not a coach. But he didn't answer that prayer directly. Instead, he made you a great coach. So what did you learn through that experience of not getting what you initially wanted?

Well, God answers prayers, but he does it in different ways. Yeah, if you want to make God laugh, you tell them what your plans are, because it just doesn't work that way. I always wanted to be a great athlete. And I was. I was a good athlete. I want a great athlete. I pray, oh, God, in grade school, help me be a good athlete. And he did. But he put me in coaching for 40 years. We could experience the field and excitement, the big games, the excitement and just the environment that you're in. So we prayed on every decision. Matter of fact, one of the more critical things that happened in our life. I was being recruited by the University of Minnesota now and offered a job to five different people. Five turned it down, including three assistant coaches. The athlete director, Paul Gill, had heart attack. So the president alumni association said he would go hire a coach because they'd gone through the list at the committee, come up with it. He brought me to Minnesota and I brought my wife and two of our four children. The other two were in college. And he wants an answer. He wants me to coach at Minnesota. They lost 17 the last 18 games. The average girl was 47 to 13. So I knew the program was in shambling. Right. And so we sat down, my wife and my two children, myself talk about going to Minnesota. Boy, everybody had a different point of view and nobody wanted to do it. It's cold and I don't want to leave my friends. I said, okay, well, I'm going to go into a separate room. They had a penthouse for us in a hotel. And we're all going to pray on this for. For one half hour. And we would come out. It was amazing. At that half hour prayer, the whole atmosphere in our family had changed. Both children said, yeah, we think it would be fine. Different environment. My wife was okay with it, but in praying, I came up with this feeling that I just needed to put the Notre Dame clause in there and I would be allowed to go to Notre Dame if they contacted me after we had accepted a bull bid at Minnesota, figuring that day, five or six. But we did it our second year, and when we accepted the bull bid to play Clemson. We're at Iowa City. And the following Monday, Notre Dame called me and said Jerry Foust had resigned. They wanted to talk to me about the Notre Dame job. So you can talk about weird things happening, but the timing of it. And I just felt that the reason I felt that Gene Corrigan, who recently passed away, past two months, great leader. He was the AD at Virginia, and he tried to hire me three different times to coach Virginia, but there was never a situation I could go there. So my logic was, if he's at Notre Dame and something happened, why would he not be interested in me if we turn Minnesota around? So that's how prayer comes into our everyday life. Yeah.

It's a story of submitting your plans to the plans of the father.

Right.

And being open handed with your plans. Say, this is what I want, Lord, but my life is service. Right. And I'm going to submit to your leading. You know, as I was reading your story about, you said you're a good athlete, but not a great one. I think a lot of young people would who are in that situation today would get advice of, well, you're good, but, man, you just got to work harder. You just got to persevere. But I think there's so much wisdom in what you articulated, just recognizing that, you know what, I'm good at this. I'm probably never going to be world class at this. And because of that, I feel this call to excellence. And so I'm going to pivot to coaching. I think there's a lot of wisdom there. And I'm curious if your faith had anything to do with that decision. If your faith kind of shaped this desire and this pursuit of excellence and caring deeply about being great at what you do.

Well, God just wants us to be the very best we possibly can. And what I told all four of our children when they're growing up, Number one, find something you like to do. A life's too short to go do something as a track. Number two, find something you do very well, that you enjoy it and you're talented at it. And the last point, find somebody to pay you to do it. I like golf. I didn't go, but I couldn't find anybody playing me to play golf. So golf is a hobby now. If you do something you like and you do something you do well and you find somebody to pay and do it, you got a career. If you don't, you have a hobby. So let's make sure we understand the difference between a career and a hobby. Some people like to pay. That's wonderful. But you can't get anybody to pay you to pay. So that's a hobby. You distinguish between a hobby and a career. But in the Bible, over and over, and particularly in Proverbs, just do everything to the very best of your ability. That's all God wants you to do. And you put your head on the pellet. Dan. I'd say to the athlete, you fool me, you fool your teammates, you fool the officials, you fool the crowd, the TV audience. You can't fool yourself.

That's good. And I love the distinction you made. I'm not sure if this is intentional, but you said that we are called to be the very best versions of who God has created us to be. You didn't say we're called to be the best in our field or the best in our class or the best, the world's best coach or the world's best sales executive. Can you talk about the difference between those two things?

Oh, absolutely. Not everybody can be all American. Not everybody be all conference, not everybody can be first team, not everybody be an A student. Everybody can be the best you're capable of being. And with our children, all I want to know was that the best you could do, whether it was cleaning your room, cutting the grass, your schoolwork, athlete, that's all. That's the only criteria you should have is what was I capable of doing and how close did I come to realize it? At it. Don't do something because somebody's looking, somebody's going to applaud you, somebody's going to give you an award. You do everything best, your ability, because that's the way you live, that's the way you believe you. At the end of the day, feel good that you lived the right way, you did everything best, your ability, and you cared about other people. Life's not complicated. See, we complicate life and we don't have to.

Yeah, I agree. Paul says in First Corinthians 10, do all things for the glory of God. He doesn't tell us that we have to accomplish. It's not about the pursuit. It's not about the outcomes of our pursuits of excellence. It's about the pursuit of excellence and being good stewards of the gifts that God has given us. Right. You once told your players, I love this quote. I think it came from your autobiography. You said, if the rewards you seek are found in the praise of others, you are destined for disappointment. Because the moment you drop one pass or lose one game, the cheering stops and the praise Goes away, end quote. I think we all need to hear this, whether we're a football player or a coach or a podcast or an author, whatever. I'm curious. How did your faith. How did the resources of the Gospel of Jesus Christ allow you to preach that sermon to yourself throughout your career as a coach?

Well, I think that as you go through life, you find out that you always want recognition, you want adulation. That's not what the Bible tells us. Want to go do everything the very best of your ability, and you're going to have ups and you're going to have downs. I mean, there are going to be difficulties in life, there's going to be disappointment, there'll be things that don't work out the way you want. And if you have a faith in God and you understand the basic principle, putting on this earth to be the very best I can be, not live up to other people's expectations, that when you have difficulty, which is going to come, you have a stronger faith. One of the unfortunate things, with this quarantine right now, more people would turn to God than in normal times because we don't need it. When the crowds cheering, the bands playing, the TV lights are on and you're ahead by 20, when you need the faith is when things aren't going well. That's when it really counts. That you sit down and you evaluate. Was so difficult. As a friend of mine said his first time he ever went to Mass, of course he was watching it on TV because he could not said, first time I ever went to Bass with my own glass of wine, he could do that. And Aubrey can't do that, too. But it's just amazing that when you have difficulty and if you have a faith in God, I mean the true faith, you understand that everything ends for a purpose. And there is a greater example of that than my wife Beth. She's a cancer survivor, stage four. She's not particularly good health. She got a feeding tube for a year and will be on the rest of her life. And she has serious infection in her lungs, which can't be cured but may be controlled. She has trouble with her throat because 83 radiation treatments over the years. But you know what? She never complains. And she just talks about the positive things in her life and how fortunate she's been when things go badly. She counts her blessings, she counts her children, she counts the 59 years of marriage we've had together and just all the experiences we've had, et cetera. So having that faith in God that you're going to look on the positive side. People say, well, you're always pretty positive. And what's the difference? I thought about it. I never analyzed it before, but I said, positive people look for solutions. Negative people look to blame somebody else. If you're negative, you're going to find that everything is wrong with everybody else and who's at fault of why you're here. If you're basically a positive person, you cannot have a faith in Jesus Christ and our Lord without being positive. Then you're going to look for solutions. You're going to look for a way to get things solved. And to me, as first time, I really asked the difference why I was positive and not negative.

No, that's so good. And, you know, just showing how the resources of the gospel and the truth Paul talks about in Romans 8:28, the Lord is working all things for our good, the good of those who love him. Now, that good might not be on this side of eternity doesn't mean that our pain is going to go away. But he's working everything for our good and for his glory. And that should allow us to be positive and to just solve problems. Say, okay, in light of that, in light of what I know, how can I solve the problems around me? How can I use my work as a form of worship? By the way, you used that word once before and talking about your life, you said you were put on this earth to help other people and praise our Lord, kind of the purpose of your life. How do you do that? Through coaching. So the whole purpose of this podcast is showing people how our work is, whether it's coaches or entrepreneurs or janitors or pastors, can be an act of worship to the Lord, an act of praise to the Lord. How did you think about that through your work as a football coach?

Well, I think life's a matter of choices. People are choosing to listen to this podcast. They made a choice, their choice. Is they going to benefit from this 45 minutes or is it going to be a waste of time for them? Wherever you are, good or bad, because of choices you make, choose do drugs, drop out of school, try to gag, get tattoos from head to bottom. You're choosing to have difficulty in life. And please stop blaming me for the choices you make. And contrary to what people think, I've never disciplined my children. I've never disciplined an athlete. They'll say, oh, you went to the Orange bowl without three athletes and scored 78% of your touchdown. I never disciplined them. I enforced the choices you make to my children. They always had a chore. And if they didn't do their chores that week, they didn't go out on Saturday or Friday or Saturday. It wasn't my choice. That was their choice. And when we enforce choices people make, they think we're being unfair and difficult. No, when we learn that whatever happens, our life because of choices we make. And, you know, there's all kind of federal laws, county laws, state laws, corporate laws, by laws, in laws and outlaws, I. I just tried to get people to make good choices and by simplified, making it easier to understand how to make good choices. And they all basically come from the Bible.

Yeah. So your upbringing in the scriptures you already talked about started at a very early age. Right. I read somewhere the nuns in your grade school had a pretty big influence on your life. You described that influence once by saying they encouraged you to always make sure that God is the focus of your life, and they didn't allow you to do anything except to the very best of your ability. In your mind, were those two things connected? Those sound like separate thoughts, right? God's the focus of my life. And then do everything to the best of our ability. What I'm hearing you say is, and it's a theme of this podcast, these things are intertwined. It's because of a focus on God that leads us to a pursuit of mastery and excellence. Is that right?

Yes. My first grade teacher was Sister Mary Baptista. And I remember because she's one of the kindest, caringest person. And I started school a year and a half before I should have, but they needed people to fill up the first grade of St. Anthony. I got out the baptismal certificates, and I was the last child at home. And when I asked my mom, she said, that's great. So consequently, all through school, I was a year and a half younger than my graduated class, which hurt me socially, it certainly hurt me academically, and it hurt me athletically to be one to two years behind the class that I was with. But then we had so many. Sister Mary Bernadette in the fourth grade, Sister Mary Harriet in the seventh, Sister Mary Cornelia. I mean, these nuns were tough, they were demanding, they were nasty. When they whipped me with a ruler, I never dared go tell my dad because he was doing it at home. You know, there are certain things that we used to be taught at home that was reinforced in the school. The one thing we were taught was respect. Respect for parents, respect for elders, respect for teachers, for coaches, respect for the law. And that was reinforced in the school, and it was Taught in the home as well. So I learned at an early age to respect elders, to respect authority. And that has really done me well through the years. If I just stopped for speeding and I show that also respect, not upset. How dare you stop me? But it's just you go back and do everything miserably. I only had three rules and you follow three simple rules. You always make good choices. The three rules are all basically Bible oriented. Rule number one, do what's right. You do what's right and avoid what's wrong. You have any doubt, get out the Bible. There's never right time to do the wrong thing. Never wrong time to do the right thing. Just do what's right. You know that I don't think it's right to find a teammate's wallet before he lost it. And you go along and you look in life and when you have a choice to make, just say, what's the right thing to do? Rule number two, do everything the very best your ability. That's what we've been talking about. Just do everything the best to your ability. Not because you're going to get an award or it's just the way you live, it's the way you think, it's the way you believe is what made this country great. And then the third rule, you show people you care. Everybody is carrying a hardship. Everybody can use a kind word, a smile, an encouragement. You're never going to find anybody again that doesn't have problems or difficulties. And why do we always wait for a funeral to say good things about somebody? Why not sit down and write a note or a letter to somebody that influenced your life along the way, whether it be a teacher, coach or your parents. When my parents died and went back to clean out their belongings, every letter I wrote my parents in college they had saved over all these years, they still saved it. It's not complicated. In all my years, you'll never need a fourth rule. Those three rules will cover everything that could ever happen to you.

At the end of the day, those are really different ways of articulating what Jesus outlined as the greatest commandments. Right to love the Lord your go all your heart and all your soul and all your strength and love your neighbor as yourself. We talk a lot on this podcast about the ministry of Excellence. This idea that one of the most fundamental ways in which we love our neighbor as ourself is just by doing our job really, really well. And a lot of times that can open up doors for us to talk about our faith because people are attracted to excellence. I was talking to Tony Dungy about this, right? He was talking about how people are just attracted to. To excellence, to master. People want to be around winners. So I am curious for you, can you recall any stories from your coaching career in which the fact that you were excellent at your craft opened up opportunities for you to talk about your faith?

Certainly many of them. That was one of the great things about coaching at Notre Dame. I could go to church every day on campus, go to confessions there twice a day. You're down by the Grotto. But we beat Miami. They had won like 34 games in a row and they were number one. And we were undefeated. It was titled the game of the century, and I think it was selected the fifth greatest game of all time. And we won the game 31, 30. And I'll never forget, fans poured on that field. It was elbow to elbow. And NBC, which televised the game or quartered me and wonder how we did it. I talked about the spirit, the spirit of God, Our lady on the dome, just right there on national television. That was just. Wasn't anything planned. The game had just ended and we had won in a great game. But just my first thought was, give thanks to the Lord. And in our prayer after the game, we always gave thanks to the Lord for whether it be good or whether it be bad. But you also, being a coach at Notre Dame, for example, you had the opportunity to speak a lot of different functions and things like that, were very, very religious and wanted to hear about your faith and how you believe in it, et cetera. So, yeah, I think regardless of what your profession is, you talk about people being successful, how we can influence people's lives just day by day. The way live, you don't have to be in the public line, you don't have to be on your show or anything else. For example, my wife, as I said, my wife has a neighbor here. They're great people. Now she can't do it anymore because she's too weak. But for years they would walk in the morning and then exchange Bible verses while they walk five miles. There were two women in the neighborhood that were having difficulties. So my wife and Dixie decided they would start a Bible study for those two women, the four of them. Well, that was probably 15 years ago. It's grown to 24 in the neighborhood. They had to cut it off. They meet Every Tuesday at 10 o'. Clock. Now they can't because of quarantine. They meet at 10 o' clock every single Tuesday, basically for an hour and 45 minutes. And they studied the Bible. She's had such an influence on so many different women and the way they react to God. And she's not in the public limelight. So we can use the way we live our life as a good example. More so than just what we say.

Yeah. Using it in both words and actions. I love that. All right, Coach, so three questions I love to ask every guest before we wrap up these conversations. First and foremost, which books do you find yourself giving away the most to others or recommending the most frequently to others?

Well, the Bible is everything. I mean, Psalms tells you how to get along with God, and Proverbs tells you how to get along with man. But also give away my books also. I like to think we've written three New York Times bestsellers. But one of the best books I've ever read is not a religious book, although he was a religious man. With Zig Ziglar, See at the Top. Yeah, that was a great book. And when my children were teenagers, they wanted something. I say, okay, you read See at the Top by Zig Ziglar. Discuss it with me intelligently, and I'll take your request under. But that's how I got him to read the things I wanted to see. But there's so many good books I like to read. I'm not much into reading fiction or.

Me neither.

Yeah, tales. I just like to read basic people's lives of what they've heard, experienced, and what I could possibly learn from what they experienced.

That's great. So we'll make sure to put that book on jordanrayner.com bookshelf so you guys can find an easy link to that. Hey, Coach, what one person would you be most interested in hearing talk about how their faith influences their work?

I think Ben Carson's one of the classiest people you'll ever be around, and his wife, Candy. They're just great people. Down to earth. I think that everybody. We can learn from everybody just the way they act. I always ask, why? Why is he successful? Why is he not? Why did he do this? Why did she? We live in the greatest laboratory in the world, and that is in this country, being able to look and study and examine why people do things. Not to evaluate them. Not to say, you're bad, you're good, you're right, you're wrong. No. What can I learn from. You can learn something from every person. I'll tell you something else. Every time I meet somebody and they'll come up to me, the first thing I'll say is, Tell me about yourself. Everybody's got a story. Everybody has something that happened in their life inside they want to tell somebody. And I love to listen to what other people have to say. And so just tell me about yourself. And some will make it short and some of them will eventually I say, well, I gotta run now and look forward to reading your book. But really, truly is listen to people because you can learn from them. I never learned anything in my life by talking. I only learn by listening.

That's really good. So Chick Fil a, when they're interviewing new employees at Corporate, one of their favorite questions to ask is just very open ended and awkward for a lot of interviewees, but just what's your story? And they're just very genuinely curious about the stories of people's lives. And you're right, you learn. And people do not have to be world famous to have compelling stories. It's something we talk a lot about on this podcast. We have famous people like Lou Holtz, and we have very unfamous people here all the time just talking about how mastery can glorify our great God. All right, coach, last question. You've given so much great advice, but one piece of advice to leave this audience with. And again, this is an audience of Christians who care deeply about their work. Not necessarily success, but just doing their work with excellence for the glory of God and the good of others. What one piece of advice would you leave them with?

Well, Mark Twain said it best when he said, the two most important days in your life, one is the day you're born. The other is the day you discover why you're born. We discover basically we're born to help others people, that we have a tendency to complicate life and we don't have to. And ask yourself this question. Is your religious life, are you growing or are you dying? In your personal life, are you growing or you're dying? In your professional life, are you growing or dying? And it doesn't have a thing to do with age. Whether you're growing or dying is determined by one thing. Are you trying to accomplish something, you try to get better, you're trying to improve or you're trying to just maintain? Let's not change anything. Let's maintain. Because anytime you try to maintain any phase of your life, including your religious life, you're dying. Should constantly say, how can I get closer to Christ if you aren't closer to God? I wonder which one of you moved. I have to believe it's you, not him.

Amen, coach. I just want to thank you for your commitment to excellence, for serving fans and players and universal presidents through the Ministry of Excellence. Thank you for your example of doing great work and just inspiring us that whatever our work is, that we do it in service of others and we do it masterfully well. Hey, if you want to follow Lou Holtz, he's pretty easy to find. Where are you blogging the most? Are you on Twitter these days?

No, I'm not on Twitter. I'm not on blog. I'm just a simple person. Good Lord, I have a hard time turning on my phone, let alone use it.

I. Well, somebody's posted a Twitter for you. Oachlou Holtz 88 coach thank you so much for joining us on the Call to Mastery.

Thank you for having me.

We recorded this episode so long ago, but it still plays over and over again in my head. What an opportunity to spend some time with the legendary Lou Holtz. That was. That was a really special, special time. I'm so glad he had the the time to do it. Hey, thank you guys so much for tuning in to this episode of the Call to Mastery. I'll see you next time.