TES 050 - Business Lessons from a Football Locker Room

Hey there, real quick before we jump into the episode, listen, if your earnings treadmill hasn't set you free yet, running faster won't either. Listen, hustle without principles just going to burn you out. So here's what I want for you. I want you to join me for my money machine experience live. It is three free trainings. Deep dive into how to escape the treadmill and build a money machine that actually works for you. All right, grab your spot here by going to moneymachinelive.com and I'll see you in the free training. Hey there. I'm Mel Abraham, the author of the number one best selling book the Entrepreneur Solution and the founder of Thoughtpreneur Academy, where we teach you how to capture, package and monetize what you know so you can have more impact, more time and more income. And welcome back to this episode of the Entrepreneur Solution show. This one's gonna be kind of a cool show because you'd be amazed at where you learned some lessons. And in this, this show, I happen to be wandering in a, well, touring, if you will, a football locker room. And so when we come back after this brief introduction, we're going to talk a bit about the lessons that I got about life and business and winning in a football locker room. And with this episode, just like every other episode, there's a downloadable action guide. If you want to get the downloadable action guide, go to melabraham.com session050 and that way you can download it. If you're not at your computer, you happen to be out running around doing whatever, just text me, okay? Text myLegacy one word, no spaces to 38470. I'll send you the download link so you can have the action guide, so you can make sure that you have the tools in place to make sure that you have a plan to win. So right after we come back from this brief introduction, we'll jump in to the lessons I learned in a football locker room. See you back here soon. Cheers.

Welcome to the Entrepreneur's Solution, where highly successful entrepreneur Mel Abraham becomes your entrepreneurial mentor. Here, Mel reveals his business building strategies and even gets a chance to answer your questions. Mel Abraham, a CPA by education, but an entrepreneur by exhilaration and a true believer in the entrepreneurial way of life. It's through entrepreneurship that we create community, support society and live our dreams.

Brand new.

It's where possibility meets reality again and you can have the life and lifestyle you want. One of freedom and peace of mind. Welcome to this episode of the Entrepreneur's Solution, where it's time for you to be bold, dream big, and live life your way.

All right, welcome back. I'm Mel Abraham, and welcome back to this episode of the Entrepreneur's Solutions show. And this episode is going to be kind of cool. It's different than what I've normally done because this is something that kind of generated by a recent trip that I. That I took. And I kind of want to dedicate this to my nephew, Jake. You know, my nephew Jake has been playing. He's been going to college at Georgia Southern University, and he's been playing football for Georgia Southern in his fourth year. He actually redshirted one year. He's got one more year left, and he'll be playing again next year. And I went down there. I typically try to get out there a couple times or at least once a year to watch him play, to watch one of his games, and recently traveled down there to watch him play. And their facilities have been totally revamped, completely new, completely redone. So he set up and he took me for a tour of all the facilities, which it's an amazing, amazing thing to see some of the facilities, the strength training facilities and the therapy facilities and all the things they do for these college athletes. And I know you could look at it and go, you know, they're spoiled or they have all these kinds of things to take care of them. But you know what? This is a group of guys, in this case, but it's a group of guys that have come together in a situation where people really didn't give them a lot of credit, people didn't give them a lot of attention. People really looked at them and said, you know, they're probably not going to do so well in a league. And this is what can happen when you have a group of people come together as a team with a common goal, with a common outcome, with a common journey, with a common mission and a vision for something greater. To look at things in a way and say, it doesn't matter what you say. It doesn't matter what you believe about us. We're going to show up because we know what we stand for and we know what we stand for. We're going to show up each and every day and we're going to show you what happens when we all are in alignment with that mission, with that vision, and with a desired outcome. Here's a team that came into it. And you know, Jake, in his short tenure at the college is going to have two conference championship rings. He's Also, they are going to their very first bowl game in history this year. And you know, I am a sports fan, but not a fanatic. I won't spend hours watching it, but I do keep track of my nephew and the things that he's gone through and the journey and the struggles and the adversity and how he's overcome it and some of the other teammates and I watch it. I think there's a lot of lessons for us to learn when we look at sports because it's easy for us to see the journeys, I mean, the destinations. It's easy for us to watch a Kobe Bryant, Michael Jordan or any of these athletes, maybe lesser known athletes like my nephew.

To run through the struggles, to fight the fight that they want to fight because they believe in something. They believe in living something and a higher ideal and that they want something to go through. And I bring this to you not about the sports, but about the life lessons, about the business, lessons about the entrepreneurial journey. Because you are going to have the same thing. You're going to have the naysayers, you're going to have the ridiculers, you have the people that are around you that are going to look at you and say, are you crazy? Are you nuts? I had that going when I left the big five, accounting for the big eight, accounting from back then, back in the 80s. They looked at me and said, you're out of your mind. You're on a trajectory for partnership. You've got your life ahead of you. What are you doing? You're going to totally screw it up. And I got to tell you, looking back, I didn't screw it up. I lived the journey that I was meant to live. I'm living the journey that I was meant to live. And that's more the story of what comes out of this. And the interesting thing is the lessons that I learned as I did this tour. I walked into this locker room for these football players and now this locker room is not like you would think at a typical gym. It is. Well, not. It is nice. It's beautiful. I mean, they got these beautiful lockers with their names on them and their uniforms are hung well and clean and it doesn't even smell like locker room. I'm sure it does after the games and after the practices. But I walk in and the very first thing that you see is a sign. And it's a sign that says this plan to win Georgia Southern. And underneath the sign it had five other little signs. And what that was is it's like Walking into a business, into a company, into something that's had their vision or their mission statement on the wall or their standards on the wall, their values on the wall. And these players, every time they walk into the locker room to go get ready for practice, to go get ready for a game, they get a chance to see the plan to win. It's posted on the board. And it's not just in one place in that locker room. It's all over the locker room. You see the signs, you see the statements, you see the sayings over and over again. And I think that there's some great lessons to come out of this and the lessons that come out of the specific standards that they set, the specific values that they have. Because every time they set their foot on the field, that, whether it's practice or game, those are in their heart, they're in their soul, because they see it each and every day.

Question is, does your team see that? And so let's just look at what those signs are, and then I want to relate them. I'm going to bring it back to business. I'm going to bring it back to life and relationships, like I said. But let's look at the signs a little closer. The very first one said, take care of the football, win the turnover and take away game. In other words, control the gift, control the baby, control the football. To love it enough that you're going to make sure that you don't treat it with disrespect, that you don't treat it. In fact, I have a very close friend of mine, some of you may have even heard the story. Bo Eason, who's an ex NFL player and was one of the top draft picks when he came out of college and played for many years in the NFL. He teaches his incredible son, Axel. Don't let the ball hit the ground. Don't let the ball hit the ground. And you know, it's interesting because some people will criticize him for that kind of thought process. Don't let the ball hit the ground. Yeah, but that's the exact process. That's the exact thought process, the exact value system. It's the exact standards that allowed him to excel, that allowed him to win, to not be compromising and be okay with disrespecting the gift. And that's what this is about in the context of these boys go out there, these men go out, the young men go out there to fight the battle, to go out there as a team. And I think that.

We don't consider it a Lot of times, the idea of entrepreneurship, the idea of being in business, it's about a team. It's about those people that I call the army of champions that are standing shoulder to shoulder to go out there and do battle with you.

For a mission, for a vision, to have an impact, to make a difference in the world. That's what we do. Take care of the football. Control the running game. Now, this is a running team. Amongst all running teams, I mean, they are probably the highest, one of the highest yardage running teams in history and certainly in this year. And so they're looking at us and control the clock, control the game. If they can control the running game, they can eat up the clock, they can control the game, they can win.

Again. I'll relate this all back to business in a moment. Control the running game. In other words, play your plan, play your game. What are your strengths? What are the things that you do to do it well? The third is great special forces. Now, they're talking about the kicking game. They're talking about winning the kicking competition. Whether it's punts, whether it's field goals, whether it's kickoffs or whether it's point afters, make sure that you win those. Make sure that your specialty teams, your specialty teams are executing at the utmost. Executing well. Win that. Then they say, the Eagles, don't beat the Eagles. In other words, don't make mistakes, you know, eliminate the penalties, if you will, in the process. And think about this is, you know, as these boys, as these men hit the field, that this is in their soul. This has been drilled in. It's how they live, it's how they show up.

In the process. And then the last piece is this. Finish, finish strong, win that fourth quarter, come after in the fourth quarter. Now, I've watched this team over and over again. They start off a little slow and then they come on like crazy, like crazy strong as the game builds. The interesting thing is, like I said, they're a running team and they are one of the highest scoring running teams out there. There have been games that they scored 40, 50 points as a running team in that process because they understood this. Now, you know me, those of you know me, I don't do any kind of training really without a framework. And so I was looking at this saying, what a wonderful way to look at football. What a wonderful way for him for the coaches to frame the journey for these kids, for these young men as they go out to battle on that field to create the team, to create the leadership, to create the Vision to create the mission. Then I looked at and said, what a wonderful way.

To think about business. What a wonderful way to think about life. And so I created a framework off of this that I think will serve you, actually know it will serve you as you start to look at business and relationships. But let's look at it again without the pictures, but as a framework from a football standpoint, as we look at this. So plan to win in football. The first piece again was to take care. Take care. Make sure that you're controlling the turnovers in the takeaway game. Then.

Control the game. Control the running game, Use up the clock, use up.

The. The game itself. Make sure that you're in control. The third was specialties. Make sure that you run, that you're winning the kicking game, that your special forces, your specialties are coming to play and they're playing well and that they're controlling that. And then the fourth is really about no mistakes, eliminate the penalties. And then the fifth was finish strong, win that fourth quarter. So we can look at this and we can say, oh, that's great. It's. That's wonderful, Mel. It's all about football and this and that. It's great. I'm not a football fan. I get it. I get it. Like I said, I don't spend hours watching sports, but I think that there's a lot to be learned from this. So let's relate it to your business. Let's just look at it for a moment.

You know what happens when you look at this in business. So I'm going to go back through these five elements and let's talk about in business. And here's the way I'd like. I'm going to invite you to look at this. Is that first, ask yourself, are you doing this? Not only are you doing it, but at what level are you doing it and how consistently. You know, if you're not at a level of 8 to 10 on a scale of 1 to 10 on this, there's a reason that you're probably not winning or we're not winning consistently. And I think that there's a lot that can come out of this. You know the very first thing they talked about, taking care of the football, taking care of the gift. Well, in business, it's about taking care of the customer and the team. What do you do in your business? What are you doing right now to make sure that your customer feels cared about? What are you doing right now to make sure your team feels cared about? What process do you have in place.

To make sure that that is part of the culture. You know, if you don't look at it in that context, then we're not. We're simply looking at. At a team member as a worker bee. And they're more. They're human. They want to feel cared about, they want to feel appreciated, they want to feel gratitude. And our customers are the same way. And if you have not intentionally designed a process to make sure that they are cared about, that you're taking care of the gift that they are bringing to you by being a customer, a team member.

Then my guess is that there's an area that we're starting to fall down and that can have an impact on your ability to win in business. The second part of that, they talked about controlling the running game in business. I think that it's about controlling the experiences. What experience are you creating for your customer and your team? We can turn around and try to be a transactional kind of relationship with our customer or team. In other words, our team members coming in there, they're spending their time, they're doing their work, and you're handing them a paycheck. It's a transactional relationship. It's fleeting, it's meaningless, other than the productivity during that time that they do it. The same thing with our customer. They may come to us for the product or service because they want to solve a problem. They need the aspirin for the headache. They need the service to make sure that the plumbing leak is taken care of. They need something and you do it. And it's a transactional element. But what.

What kind of customer experience did you make? What kind of team experience did you make? See the key to elevating your perceived value, the key to creating loyalty. The key to all of that is to create customer experiences. I have a very close friend, a good friend of mine, wonderful, wonderful speaker, consultant, entrepreneur, and humanitarian by the name of Scott McCain. And Scott wrote a book called the All Businesses Show Business. A wonderful book. If you haven't read it, get it, read it. It's an amazing book that talks about. We're really in the business of creating customer experiences, team experiences. And what we need to do is design in, to intentionally create and say, what's the experience that we want to have? What's the experience we want to create for everyone that's associated with it and go out and create it. And you can look at companies like Zappos, you can look at companies like. Like Patagonia and Clif Bar and look at the experience they create. For their consumer and for their team members. And that experience is what has built their loyalty. That's the experience that's built the value. That experience is what's going to allow people to say, I'm willing to pay more because it's you, because of how you treat me, because of how you make me feel in the process. So I ask you right now, what's your customer experience? What's it like when they pick up the phone? I know. How many times have you ever, you may have had this happen to you. You pick up the phone and it's one of those, those voicemail systems that, I mean, it's like voicemail, Helen, you want to hit the. You keep hitting the button, say, I just want to talk to a human and you can't get out of the system. What kind of experience is that for the customer? I get it that it's more efficient, I get it that it's more cost effective. But it's certainly not an experience that's a positive one versus picking up the phone and having someone answer the phone and have that experience. I'd rather talk to someone. I'd rather be able to have someone pick up the phone and immediately say, hey there, how you doing? I'm Mel. Here's what I'm looking for versus me trying to figure out whether I got a push 3 or 2 or 1 or 0 on the phone and I still can't get someone to answer the phone. And so what experience are you creating from the moment that you touch them the first time to the whole journey and client path? Have you intentionally designed it in a way that is going to be meaningful? You know, I look at things, one of the masterminds I belong to, I totally didn't expect this. And all of a sudden I get this package in the mail that is in this classy made box wrapped with stuff inside that I had no idea I was even going to get. And yet it was just an added experience, an added bonus that I looked at. Now that is cool. And when you get your clients and your customers to say, that is cool. That was really nice. That was totally different. That's starting to create a client experience. We need to engineer them, we need to create them. If you don't have a process, if you haven't done that, it's time you sit down and say, all right, what do we want our customer experience to be? I get it. It may cost money, but I guarantee you in the long term it's going to build loyalty, it's going to Build brand, it's going to build value. You're not going to be competing at a transactional level. Transactional levels of competition are at the commodity levels, which means that all you're competing on is price. There's no value down there other than let me solve the plumbing leak.

Create loyalty, create an experience, create value for your customers on an ongoing basis. Then the third piece they talked about was winning the kicking in the specialties in business. It's about your distinction, the specialness of you, the uniqueness. What is your uniqueness? What is your distinction? Does the market know about your distinction? Are you exploiting it? Are you putting it out there? Are you living into the distinction and the uniqueness that you bring? Do you have a uniqueness? Maybe you don't. If you don't, we need to engineer it. We need to find your strengths and create the distinction so it separates you from the competition, so it allows you to elevate yourself based upon the distinctions that you bring to the table, to bring to the marketplace, to bring to your team members, to bring to the brand. That's the key to start, to elevate your business. So we need to look at it, and we go deeper into this in some of my online trainings at Thoughtpreneur Academy and in my live events. They don't have the time to do that here. But really bringing that uniqueness and that distinction out becomes really important. Otherwise you're going to get lost in a sea of sameness in the process. Then the fourth piece, they talk about no mistakes, eliminate the penalties. In business, it's really about delivery with superiority and excellence. Are you delivering with superiority and excellence? Now, I'm not talking about beating down the competition and badmouthing competition. In fact, I think competition is great. The fact is, I believe Apple made Microsoft a better company and Microsoft made Apple a better company. And competition is a good thing. And it's not about someone has to lose for the other to win. We actually can all win. And some people might think, oh, my gosh, that's an idealistic view. But I truly believe that. And I've watched it in business. I've watched it over and over again. And I really think that we just got to look and focus and say, I'm going to create my own unique experiences, I'm going to create it with distinction, and I'm going to deliver it with superiority and excellence. So ask yourself this, what process do you have? Do you have a process in place to make sure that, you know, they'll call it quality Control, which is a buzzword in business. But I'm just asking, do you have a process in place to make sure that, that you're delivering with excellence and a feedback process that allows you to change and shift as you need to if you're not. And then the last part of this was, was about finishing the fourth quarter. Win the fourth quarter in business. I think it's about going the extra mile. What are you doing to go the extra mile for your customer, your team and your brand?

What are you doing to make that come to life, to allow that to come, come to fruition? You know, how is it that the customer experiences one where they go, wow, that's beyond what I absolutely fathomed. You know, there was a, it was an interesting thing. It was an article and it was kind of a. The guy that made a hotel reservation and, you know, made it online and there was comments down below and it says.

Any comments? Special instructions, special needs. Put it in there. And he put in there, as I recall, that he wanted three red MMs, peanut MMs, one for him, one for his fiance, and one that they could split if they got hungry during the night. He also wanted.

Bacon on a tray in there. And he just did it for fun, not expecting anything. He just wanted to just do it for fun. So he goes to the hotel with his fiance and checks in, and lo and behold, he checks in, goes to the room, and what's there? Three red MMs and a picture of bacon on a tray. And they just did it for fun.

To show them that, hey, we listen to you. Hey, we know that you were just poking fun, but we just wanted to give this to you to show that we saw what you wrote and we care about what you're doing and we want to have fun. What are you doing to go the extra mile in your business for your customers, for your team and for your brand? And so I look at that journey into the locker room, the football locker room, and I look at those, those five signs that they had up and clearly, if we are operating, operating at an 8 to 10 in this arena, 8 to 10, about caring for our customers and our team, about creating experiences for our customer, our team, that are unique, that are meaningful, that are distinct and delivering with superiority and excellence. Remember, an 8 or 10, not down at a 4 or 5 or a 6 and good enough, but at a level of excellence and going the extra mile, I can assure you that you're going to be winning. I can assure you that that will be the outcome. Profit is not the Driver profit's the outcome of doing these things, right? So we look at this in business and I told you we could also take this and look at it in the context of family and relationships. So let's do that for a moment. Let's just look at relationships.

This and look at the same things. Because I really think that this five step, this five piece recipe is a recipe for winning in a lot of areas of our life. So if we talk about relationships, the first thing they talked about was taking care of the football. Taking care of the football. Or in business, I said taking care of the customer team. But I think that in relationships it's about family, family first.

Does your family feel cared about? Do they feel that they're the priority? Do they feel that they're number one? Now, many of you know that when I talk about this concept of work life balance, that I believe it's a myth that there is no such thing as work life balance. There's not separate buckets, there's just life. And we need to live it that way. And all the choices we make are life choices and they affect the lives of those around us. And we need to think about that. So does your family, again, rank this from 1 to 10? You know, and we want to be up in that 8 to 10 zone and if we're not, we got to fix it. Especially this is the most important, our family, our relationships, one of the most important things in our lives. Do they feel cared about? Family first? What about experiences? You know, this is an interesting thing that came about. Many of you know, I've been married just a number of years now. Relatively recent. Beautiful bride, Stephanie and I, we talked about this. Now I feel blessed. We live an amazing, amazing life together. We get a chance to travel. I get the chance to, to do the things I love to do, to be able to talk with you, to be able to be out there speaking and making a difference and watching people build their lives and build their businesses and take what they love to do and make something of it and do it in an amazing, amazing way. But we kind of look at each other and we can say, okay, we can acquire a bunch of stuff or we can acquire a bunch of experiences. And I think that's what it's about when you talk about relationships. It's about creating experiences and cultivating experiences, life experiences that you share with your family, that you share with your loved ones, that you share with your friends. So at the end of the day, you know, when you're in your latter years and you're all together and you're sitting there talking, you're laughing about the life experiences that you enjoyed together, that you created a life full of experiences for them, for yourself together. And so, you know, I look at it and this is one of the reasons that I hard code we hard code into our year time away, time for us to go and create experiences that as we create experiences daily, that's fine, but we want to take some focus time for ourselves with your loved ones, with your family to do those things and hard code it in. I talk about it in the three Rs in some of the things that we do is to go out there and to go out and reflect, reconnect and rejuvenate. And so what experiences are you creating in your relationship? What positive experiences, meaningful experiences, deep experiences are you creating in your relationships? Then the third one, I talk about distinction and uniqueness. I think this is about your identity. Be yourself. Now, I'm not going to get on soapbox. I mean, I can where we've got this whole concept of political correctness and I believe in it and I respect it, yet I believe that we've used political correctness to carve off the edges of our uniqueness and to disregard the fact that each and every one of us are unique, each and every one of us are special, each and every one of us are distinct. And to allow that to come out, to be our own identity, to be that in a positive way and to be proud of it and to step out. So to allow my family members to allow my beautiful wife, my amazing son, his beautiful fiance to turn around and be what they want to be to the fullest extent. Not based on some paradigm that I have or society has, but to allow them to grow to their fullest potential and to be themselves. Then the fourth is about delivery with superiority and excellence in business.

And not making mistakes in football, but in relationships. I think it's about presence. It's about being the best to the people that mean a lot to you and always have the right intentions, the good intentions in mind. We're going to make mistakes, be the best we can be, do the best that we can, but by and large make sure that the intentions are right. If we make a mistake, we screw up, because trust me, I do it all the time. But my intentions are always good. I don't ever intend to hurt, harm or.

Do anything that would affect my relationships negatively. Not intentionally so my intentions get your intentions right. Always. To come from a place of service, a place of serving, a place of love, a place of caring and for the best of them. And as long as you're present with those good intentions, it doesn't matter what the outcome is because people will know that it wasn't intended if it doesn't go their way. Presence and then the last piece is this. I think dependability.

Your word is gold.

Having people in your lives that can look at you and say, I know that when he says something or when she says something, I can depend on it. That they'll go that extra mile that they will go to make that happen, to make it come to life, to do the things that are important to me. You know, raising a son as a single full time dad, this was really important that my son could depend on me. That he knew even with my crazy life and the traveling and all the things I was doing, that I would be there for them. My clients, my friends, my loved ones, my wife, all of them. To know that I would be there for him. The worst thing I would ever that could ever happen to me. I can take someone getting mad at me. I can't take someone that says, I'm disappointed in you. I don't want to disappoint people. I want to be dependable for people. And I think that our word is gold. So if we take the same five signs that I saw in a football locker room, we can relate them to relationships in life just the same. And I think that that's the key. So I hope that my visit to the locker room was meaningful, as meaningful to you as it was for me. I mean, as I reflected on those and took the pictures of them and looked at them, I said, man, there is a lot here, a lot of life lessons, a lot of business lessons, a lot to come out of this. And I commend Georgia Southern and the coaching staff and the people that have brought that into these kids, these young men's lives, to teach them something that will serve them, I think at a lot of different levels, in a lot of different ways in their life. So I hope that you found this of value. I hope that you found the ability to take those five elements and bring them into your life, to bring them at a level that start to shift and create that winning plan for you. And to help you out, remember to go ahead and download the winning scale. Okay? You can do that by going to melabraham.com session 050. I can't believe we're at episode 50 already. And you can also get it by texting mylegacy. One word. No spaces 38470 just text mylegacy to 38470. I'll send you the download link to make sure that you get the winning scale to help you out to bring this to life. And if you haven't done so already, do me a favor, subscribe. There's a whole lot more stuff that I want to bring to you to tools, tactics, strategies for success, for wealth, for business, for entrepreneurship. To do the things to get you out there in a way that you have more impact, make more difference, have more freedom and more income in the process. And I think that, you know, there's a lot of people that this can serve, so why don't you share it with a friend while we're at it? Share it with friend. Give them access to some of these things, give them the ability to find their winning plan in the process. And if you find that you have a question or a challenge or an issue that you want to bring up, just go to askmelnow.com leave me a message on the message line there askmel.com and I will make sure that I get to answer your question on one of the upcoming episodes. And as always, it is my honor, it is my blessing to be with you on this journey. Thank you so much for taking the time and going through this and being part of of the journey. And until we get a chance to see each other in the next episode, may your vision be grand, your journey epic, and your legacy significant. See you soon. Cheers. Bye.

We hope you enjoyed this episode. Make sure you subscribe so you get access to all of Mel's business and success tips. And if you like this episode, share it with a friend. If you have a specific business, business or success question, you can ask it at www.askmelnow.com. remember, it's all about being bold, dreaming big, and living life your way because the world needs you. Until the next episode, may your vision be grand, your journey epic, and your legacy significant.

Foreign.

And that's it for this episode of Building your Money Machine where we help you learn how to master your money, eliminate financial stress, and live a life of choice. If you found this valuable or helpful to you, here's what I'd love for you to do. If you do me a favor, go to Apple, Apple Podcast or wherever you're listening to this podcast and rate and review the show. It helps us tremendously to keep us at the top of the list so we can continue to get this information and this message out to people. Because I truly believe that financial freedom is your birthright. And I want to help each and every one of you claim it. Thanks so much.