The #1 Responsibility of a Coach with Bill Whittle

Welcome to this episode of the Million Dollar Mastermind, where we get real world insights on winning from people who have accomplished amazing things. I'm your host, Larry Wydell, and let's get going. I'm talking with Bill Whittle, and Bill is a master at maximizing potential, winning in life, making the right moves. He's a role model. He's always been one of my inspirations and heroes for a lot of things. But Bill does things the right way all the time. And that comes, like he said earlier on, by design and success and good things coming to you and coming to him in his life is simply by design. And rather than drifting, you know, the whole picture, Bill of the. You know, you can go to go through life like you're on a log drifting down a stream, or you can get a boat and steer your way. You know, it's just like, what do you want to ride?

You know?

And so anyway, Bill, let's, let's get into. And by the way, I gotta ask you about this. How did that thing go? Was this really real that they wanted you to run for governor? Many about 10, 15, 20 years ago, it was that. Was that a real thing?

Yeah, it really was. They. They had a program about it, and I was, I've always wanted to. My dad, he had a philosophy, widows don't whine. And boy, you never, ever around my house, you never, ever, ever whined, complained. Now, here's the deal, though. If you had a solution, you had an answer, you had an issue. Be man enough, woman enough, because I got two older sisters, one year older than me, and each of them are one year old. And. But it is. You could say anything you want to say, but it better not be a complaint, an excuse, a whine. It better be a solution, an answer or a question. Question. Okay. And so with him, with me, with the, with the politics, I really am totally anti. I really don't like politicians. I don't like what they stand for. I don't like. I mean, I. You don't want me getting started on that. But I did know back then they said, look, we need the. Things change in the state of Louisiana. We know you got a lot of the grassroots movement. Actually, the guy that did get elected governor, he, he went on the platform that they were asking me to go. I just re. I just refused to do it. But I accepted that and I went around the state and there's zero question I would have got the governor of the state of Louisiana because of my grassroots movement. Business, sports, the religious element that I was involved with so heavily across the state of Louisiana. So there is no question. But it got elected. But then they asked me to compromise on an issue. I said, well, you told me when I was running, you asked me to run for the governor and that the reason you were asking me was I had to. I was a decent platform speaker, I had a lot of influence. But also because I wasn't willing to compromise like so many other politicians doing. The Bible calls it ever wind of doctrine. No matter what comes your way, you're blown every different direction. I said, now you're asking me to compromise. And they said, well, that's how you got to get things done. I said, I'm out. And so I said, I'm not going to do it. And I backed out. But it was an honor to be. I don't feel like it's an honor to be associated with most of those people, but it was an honor to be asked to do it. I just wasn't willing to compromise my morals, ethics, values and my beliefs in my life. And it sadly say you almost have to be that way if you're going to be an elected official. And that wasn't for me.

And so thanks for sharing that. I knew there was something, some end of that story that I didn't.

That's what I was.

Because I would have loved to see you, you know, do that. But all we can do is pray for more people to keep coming up. They're willing to fight those battles, you.

Know, myself, yep, I agree.

Definitely a calling, you know. And so let's talk about what you brought up. And you and I have always benefit from the knowledge that work is a great equalizer. You know, there are people that say, you know, they brag about their success. You know, people can relate to me because I was a success at every level in the business, in life and this and the other. And I said, well, not really, because most people are not a success. And so it makes it, you know, right off the bat in anything, you know. And I said, they can. They can actually relate to me a whole lot better than they can relate to you. Because just about every layer, every stage, everything I faced in life, I floundered and up and down and, you know, went through turmoil. Nothing came naturally. But I again asked enough questions, got around the people who knew and who had figured the thing out. And it's really like when you figure things out, it's like untangling the knot. And once you know how the knot is tangled, you can untangle it. The thing is, for me, Bill, it was a huge release. Like, oh, great ideas, don't care who use them. And you can go out there, the thing goes, it's not who comes up with the great ideas, it's like who uses them. And I always thought I had enough self confidence coming out. I wasn't really sure what I wanted to do, but I felt like I could do pretty much anything if I wanted to. And I was great in that conviction until I got going in business. It was like, wait a minute. I started finding out how stupid I really was. But guess what? All of those things I was ignorant on had answers. Again, it's like Ecclesiastes. There's nothing new under the sun. So whatever you run into somebody's, you know, millions of people have faced that before. Not everybody has let it stop them. You know, some of them have figured it out and gone forward. And the way we are now, we used to hang on to our cassette, audio cassettes and magazine articles and things like that, but now it's everywhere. With YouTube, podcasts, access to people that are successful. It's just like all of the truth, all of the insights is low hanging fruit, folks. It's out there. You know, it's a matter of getting yourself motivated to go out there and start looking. And like Bill said, don't whine about what you don't know, don't complain about it, ask questions until you find the solution. You and I have bought into this thing for a long time that is invigorating for both of us, that hard work is the great equalizer. But another, another aspect of that is what you just brought up, hustle is a great equalizer. Like if everybody's out working hard, you know, like, I know you're a great student of the great coach, especially basketball, but John Wooden, one of his things is that fundamentals, it's great to be fundamentally sound, but you got to learn how to be fundamentally sound with speed. You can't just be la dee da about dribbling the ball down the court and you gotta be able to move or somebody's gonna steal that ball. And so hustle is never really talked about that much, is it? You know, it's like work hard and people don't understand. And you did a great job at the end of that last episode of explaining hustle and how it works. But when most people say, you know, like, let's go, let's go, let's go, papa, papa, papa, you know, they feel like they're being pushed they're feeling, you know, you know, they don't understand. It is like compressing time frames. Let's race through this. Let's not waste time. You know, if we can get it done quicker, quicker, faster, better. You can get there quicker. You know, you can move up. The more, especially if you're in a business, the more you can figure, you know, the better you can figure the business out, the quicker you can get the product done, that place sold, the quicker you get paid. And so, just by picking up the tempo, you don't have to learn anything else. You just have to get better. You have to stop wasting time, stop screwing around. And so hustle. One way you can look at it is that hustle is just like work. If you're in a group of people, they're all going to work. But it's really the hustle that makes the All Stars, don't you think? Any MVPs.

Yeah. Because you think any practice, any sports practice, you'll hear the coach. Okay, guys. Okay, let's hustle. Let's hustle. Well, what, you know, it's kind of like. It is a T.R. vecker concept. It's done either or both. Because hustle combined with hard work. Because you can have a lot of people hustling. They're busy, but they're not accomplishing anything. Or they may be busy for a while, but they're not willing to work hard for a long period of time and thinking, oh, God, I got to work hard. But that's a mental stage, because then it comes down to the price you're willing to pay. Well, if the price is hard work, I know when I started in business and in sports, if the price of success in sports, that would give me notoriety and fame and popularity, man, I'm in. Is that all it is? Hard work? Man, I'll be a stud athlete. You know, then I really had in coaching. I beat so many people in coaching. Because when I first started coaching, I'm thinking, man, I could just apply the same philosophy I learned from playing sports that I learned from my father to have anything I wanted, whether it was that go kart, that All Star baseball team, I could bring that into my coaching world. Beat all the other coaches that knew more than I knew about coaching. Even though I knew how to play the game, I didn't know about coaching, but I learned the coaching from other coaches because I was coachable. So I could never be a great coach. I'd be coachable myself. But that was part of the things I learned. Hustle. Hard work and stuff. And then I started realizing that all this stuff, like Johnny Wooden said, it's good to have a philosophy, but you better have a. He said, the only thing worse than having no philosophy is having a changing philosophy. We get yourself all these other things out there. You got to get focused. And focused requires hard work. It's easy to be, you know, everywhere in the world, but when you start getting focused, you better get really zeroed in. I call it Indianapolis 500. Focus. When you run, when you're driving in Indianapolis 500, you're going to the curves, 200 and something miles an hour. You better not be thinking that you leave the cooking pot on at the house. You better be focused. And business or anything else requires that kind of focus. Nick Saban wrote a great book, How Good do youo Want to Be? And he says, to beat the best, you got to be the best. And to be the best, you got to find out what are the best doing and ask yourself, am I willing to do that to be able to be that? It's not that you're not capable of doing it. The question is, are you willing to do it? And that's where that hard work and the hustle comes in. Are you willing to work hard? Are you willing to hustle in order to be your best and then be able to be the best, to beat the best?

Absolutely. Right. Absolutely. And I want to just insert something here, is if you watch college football and you watch Alabama play, at least turn. Try and at least turn in to where they interview Saban coming off the field.

Amen.

And pay it. Record it. Okay.

Yeah.

Because what happens, Bill, most people have no clue what he's saying. And he'll say it. I mean, the condensed genius of that guy analyzing the game, analyzing this, that, the other. What they got to do going forward. It's amazing, his condensed wisdom and because it comes because he's got a philosophy, he's a hard worker, he's focused, and he's just come out of an event that he put a lot of energy into. And he, of course, he was locked in on what was happening the whole time out there. So when he comes off that field, Bill, and whatever the lollipop interviewer is, it doesn't matter. She's from high school or whatever. She asked the question. I mean, he'll go out there. It's just amazing to me what he says. And it's just funny to see how it, like, goes right over their heads.

Right.

You're not even paying my. You know, because it's almost like too rich, you know, it's just like, you know, you have to be, you know, you have to be successful. You know, you have to have things going on. You have to be someone who's wired into your profession and projects and your team to where when that comes in. And he says that till you go like. But if you're out there and you've got a business and you've got a team and you're on a growth spurt and you got a campaign you're trying to pull off and a 90 day challenge or whatever, an expansion program, that's one place you're in the mindset. And you're the kind of person who can really get some insights that are big difference makers from a top winner, a guy who knows what he's talking about. And just in a short little 60 second type response, you can get enough stuff to go back to your team and fire them up like crazy for the next month, you know. And so I just wanted to say that you know what I'm talking about, right?

No, I agree. And I think one of the biggest things is I really think this is probably over simplistic the way I'm going to state it. But if you look at most people gather information, it's one of three things. There's a shield, which means they're holding up and they let nothing in. Now it's good in a defensive mechanism. If you're in the old days and they're shooting arrows and stuff at you got your shield up there, but it's not good in the information age. You're trying to be successful and you got a shield up and nothing gets in. Okay, then the other thing is like a sponge where you take every information coming at you and you just bring it all in and you wring it all out. That's not good either. And then there's so one is you let nothing in. The other one is you let everything is. But intelligent people, successful people do it like a sieve. Where you let it come in, you shake it all around and what comes out, that's what you apply to what you're trying to cook up, what you're trying to build, what you're trying to organize and what you're trying to develop in your children and your people that you're leading. In your personal life, you just can't take everything in, but you can't keep everything out. You got to have enough wisdom and discernment, which also incorporates your spiritual life, to know what is, what is the wisdom that I should receive from the sheep. And what's a wolf that I think so she. But it's really a wolf. But if you don't have enough to wisdom discernment to discern that, you're going to either block everything out or accept everything in. And you'll never be a successful person because you're going to have a changing philosophy and you'll have a not a solid philosophy and you'll never be great at anything.

And that goes back to the idea that we stated or you stated earlier. It's like it's great to have a philosophy, but not if it's changing all the time. The only thing worse than no philosophy is one that changes. And you and I have seen that over the years in business, at conferences and all. People will listen. You know the. It is like a coaching clinic. You know, coach gets up there, I love his system. We're going to call the assistant coaches, you know, throw all our playbooks out. We got a whole new thing we're shifting from, you know, the, you know, in football, you know, they, I won't go in and show my ignorance by rattling off all those terms, you know, but they, no, you're right.

No, that's where Johnny Wynn taught that. I mean, I was dosing clinic and had a chance to sit in on an airplane for four hours and that's where I got that from, from. And he wrote it in all of his books about that Change of philosophy versus no philosophy. You go to coaching clinics, you got a Johnny Wooden up there, a Bobby Knight up there, or a Coach K up there, they're talking about this. That's one thing. When they got these seven footers, they're all five room, six of them are all American. But you're out here in Baton Rouge, you got these little five foot two, you know, little, little kids that can't even jump over the foul line and you're trying to run the same offense, defense. Well, that doesn't apply. And you got to do the same thing. Take it, sip it out. Use wisdom discernment, use past experience, other people's experience, sieve it out and then apply it. You're right a hundred percent.

Now, Bill, did you say you were on a plane four hours with John Wooden?

Yeah, yeah, it drove him crazy. It was the greatest highlight of my life. Probably a nightmare for him because when he sat down next to me, I'm like, Jack, we're flying from Atlanta, I think, or New Jersey or wherever it was to la, obviously back when he was Alive, obviously. And boy, when he sat down, I was like, jacked. I was so fired up. And I hated to say this, but he sat right next to me and obviously I knew who he was. And I turned him. I said, coach, I said, obviously, I know who you are. You don't have a clue. I am. I said, but I'm honored to sit next to you. I'm not going to try to wear you out. Which was a lie. And I then asked him a question about those gracious human being I'd ever met my entire life. And for the next four hours or three and a half hour, whatever it was, to get there, he answered everything I could possibly ask him because he realized I was being sincere. Now, I was already in business. I'd left coaching, but he knew the guy that mentored me. Dale Brown was all the fame coach at lsu. That's Johnny Wooden. Yeah. Johnny had mentored Dale Brown and Dale had coached me on his first team. And I was one of Dale's favorite players because of my work ethic and my attitude and my dedication to the game. And then he mentored me in my coaching career and helped me in my business career. So Coach Wooden was like, oh, more than he could. Anything he could do to help me because he thought indirectly he was helping. Paying tribute to Dale Brown, but that's the kind of man he was.

What do you remember while we're. I want to talk. I'm going to break here real quick and have a go over talk about your book. But what do you remember from Dale Brown right off the bat that you still carry with you?

No, I mean, I talk to Coach Brown all the time. Matter of fact, I'm going to be at his granddaughter's grandson's wedding this weekend. I'm going down Saturday and Sunday and spending time down there. And Coach Brown and I see each other all the time. And he actually forwarded the book that I just did. But, you know, with one thing interesting with Coach wouldn't I remember bringing it up? I said, well, Coach, how did you coach 12 all Americans when you only played seven players per game? I said, how'd you get 12 all Americans to not have a bad attitude when they were not going to play? And they came there as an All American because all 12 players on Johnny Wooden's teams were all Americans. He said, bill, on the teams that I coach, when you came to my team, you wanted to prove, going back to Nick Saban that you were the best. You were coming there to be your best. And even though you Weren't going to be a starter on my team. You were still going to be a starter in the NBA. So you came to me. You may not be my top five or my top seven, but you're Ralph Drollinger, one of the top NBA players, didn't even start for ucla, was a first round draft choice in the NBA. But that's where Johnny wasn't dead. Everybody thought because the kind of players they were, that they were going to be good enough. But the moment somebody wasn't good enough, bam, they were in there and they were proven. So he developed that mindset. That was one of the biggest things I learned from him. And then Dale Brown, zero question about what I got. The power of belief once again. Vincent Bardi, greatest football coach of all time, pro ball, said that the number one responsibility of a coach is to breathe belief into people. It's the number one responsibility of a parent, of any leader, of any coach, anything is to breathe belief in the people. And Dale Brown took a team. I was playing for a guy, Press Maravich, his son was the leading scorer in the history of college basketball. Pete Marovich, good friend of mine, I played with him one year and we're good friends. Still have friends with his family, but. So Dale took over, took over a team that Press had just retired, quote, unquote fired. And Dell came in, took over this team. We'd gotten beat pretty bad the year before and we had pretty good players. But then Dell comes in, takes it over. We were predicted to finish in the very bottom of the SEC. We ended up beating eight out of the top 20 teams in the nation that year. Beat Memphis State, who was runner up in the national championship to ucla. We beat them like a drum the first game. And people said they needed to test these players for rabies. They play so hard, so they're so tough. But it's because Dale Brown breathed belief in us. He made you believe. Now he. You knew he was blowing smoke up your butt when you got in the locker room. You had motivation all. But you know what? Just like the person me and you were mentored by, you wanted him to blow more, spoke up. You were so fired up when you. That's what great leaders do. They make you believe you're better than you really are. And you live up to. Psychiatrists tell us this. Firstborns don't perform the way they perform because they're firstborn. It has nothing to do with your generic birthright. It has to do with the expectation, expectations that parents put on and grandparents put on and of the firstborn. And we tend to live up to or down to people's level of expectation. Del Brown made us believe we were, and so therefore we performed up to that level. Wouldn't that be great if we all did that as parents?

It's incredible. And it's. I mean, in terms of research, scientific fact, whatever, I mean, it is been proven over and over again that people live up to other people's. What they perceive is other people's opinion of themselves. Right. And I. Or, or.

Or down to. That's down to.

Or down to. Let me tell you a quick story, though. I want to talk about your book. When I got laid off out of Georgia Tech, I was in construction for four years and I was a field superintendent. And then with Jimmy Carter, and he gave us that oil embargo. Nobody could get financing, and the construction industry dried up. So the guy that I worked for, he couldn't afford to support two families because we weren't selling any houses. And So I went 7 o' clock out in Roswell, lived in Buckhead. 7 o' clock in the morning. I'm on the job out in Roswell, Georgia. And he says, I got to let you go. He said, now, this is a guy who, seven days earlier, I'd heard through the grapevine, had told someone checking my credit that said, this guy will have a job as long as I'm alive, okay? This guy will be in business with me as long as I'm alive. And I'd heard that through the back channels. So I felt pretty secure. Then I show up three days before Christmas, and this guy says, we're out of money. And he said, you know, if. He said, I may be able to keep myself and my family going for another month. But he said, I can't keep two families. So he said, that's it. And so all of a sudden, I can't tell you, Bill, up at that point, I was the star. I was the lead guy. I'm the one who built the houses. Everybody looked at me, all the subcontractors, everybody in the. When it was like, boom. It was like I was an outcast. I didn't belong. You know, I was like. I had lost all of my credibility. You know, I was.

Like.

I smelled or like I had body odor or something like that, you know, And I could feel all the eyes of everybody around the construction site on me. And so I had to back out. I never forget this. I had to back out of this long driveway, Bill, downhill and to drive home and my head was this, that, the other. You know, it's like all of a sudden I became a loser. You know, it's like, okay, you know, you went from the top guy. Now you're, you know, you're off the team, you know, turn in your jersey and this, that, the other. And I got all that, you know, to deal. Process that and back out of the driveway. Okay, Down a long winding thing. Well, all I know is when I got out in the street, I went across the street and I smashed the back of the van into a telephone pole and a fire hydrant and made a bigger fool out of myself in front of everybody because I felt like all of a sudden I'm a loser. I'll do stupid things, I guess. But it's just, you know, now I. Fortunately, I had heard that concept before that and I said, I gotta snap out of this. I've just experienced that it's a real phenomena. But so we can be a difference maker in so many people's lives and it's so rewarding. You make that decision like you did. The rewards go so far beyond any kind of accolades or paychecks or material things you can get in terms of being the difference maker in people's lives. And I know that you have enjoyed that feeling and you get that feedback from people all over the country. So thanks so much. That wraps up this episode. Consider leaving a rating and review if you like what you heard. In addition, I have a free video for you and it contains my video best insights from 20 years of running my own business and also coaching million dollar earners. You'll find it@whitelownwinning.com webinar. Thanks for listening and do it big.