Ep.04 | Going Pro Series | Coach Danny Ford

Hey, guys, what's going on? This is Tommy with the Lead Fast podcast, and we are joined today by maybe one of the greatest men of my childhood, of my. My fam. Like, I'm just telling you, this guy is a living legend for my family at least, but also in college athletics. Everybody give it up for Coach Danny Ford. All right, so for. For some of the guys who may not be from the Southeast and may not follow college football, Coach Ford is the youngest. Let's start there. The youngest coach to win a national championship at 33. Back in 17, he was voted into the College Football hall of Fame, not just the Clemson College Football hall of Fame, the College Football hall of Fame. Now, he did go play for other schools. He played at Alabama. He finished his career at Arkansas. But, you know, as a Clemson fan, I'm just going to say the only thing that matters is those wonderful years he spent with us as a Tiger coach. Welcome to the program.

Thank you, Tommy. Nice to talk with you. Good to be with y' all today.

Yes, sir. Yes, sir. So when. When mackenzie said she could get. And now for all the people watching and listening, Mackenzie here is a Carolina fan, which is, you know. You know that other school in South Carolina that we don't really talk about. When. When mackenzie said she could get Coach Ford on. On our show, I was a little skeptical, but the new hire came through.

So.

Well done, Coach. How's life for you now? What's going on? Tell us about it.

We got a lot going on, but it's fun, and it keeps you busy, and it keeps you sweating and kind of like football, it kind of keeps you in shape a little bit.

I love it. Coach. Coach. Going from being a football player to a football coach and now into business, agricultural business, as an entrepreneur. How was that? How did that challenge shape you? I mean, that's a. That's a pretty big shift.

Well, it's a big adjustment because you don't have the coaches and the good players to do all the work. You have to do it all yourself. And when I was coaching, I had the great players and I had the great coaches who taught the guys what to do, and most of the time, they were successful. And it's just like any other thing that a leader is supposed to do, that when they win, they get all the credit, glory, and everything else that comes with it. And when they lose, whoever's in charge gets all that. So that's kind of like farming. Now. I get all the credit for doing wrong every day, according to my son, because he's the only one that works with me. You know how working with the family works. You never, never do it right for them.

Yeah, well, you know, I had both of my parents working with me at one point in time, and that was one of the. It's one of the hardest things that you can do. But, man, it's fun when things go right and you get to celebrate together, isn't it?

Sure. I mean, if you could, if you could win every time you go out, it would be wonderful. If you had a good day and equipment didn't break down and everything else and you didn't get in the fuss about something, it'd be one. You can't do any better than spending time with your family. But unfortunately, sometime people, sometime, you know, the family mixes like oil and water, and they just don't get along working together, but they love each other and everybody loves each other and all families. So I don't ever say that, but it's hard for me to work with my family because I've always had my way with everything because I was the head coach and now I'm assistant coach.

I get that as well. That was a hard, that was a hard dynamic for us, going from a kid who, you know, always worked for his parents to. To a kid where his parents worked for him. And that dynamic changing, that was a big change. But you said something there. You said, you know, it'd be great if you could go out every day and, and win them all, but you actually got to do that. I mean, in the, in the national championship season in 81, you guys had a perfect season. Was that something that was kind of like a goal from the beginning, or is that some. As it got closer, you know, oh, three or four more, we could win this out. Is that how going on in your mind back then?

Well, 40 something years, I guess so. It's. It's the memory that's still very deep in my mind. But. But at the same time, you know, we were coming off a difficult, difficult year. The year before we were 6 and 5. So I don't know that we thought we were going to win a national champion. That's always something you, you talk about or you set your goals to do, but, you know, going undefeated back then I thought would be very hard to do in any situation. There's a lot of teams winning the national championships with one defeat or one tie, or you could tie games back then, so. But no, I mean, the closer we got, I don't think we realized it until we got to the North Carolina game, which was like number eight or nine game of the year that we felt like we had a chance to win the conference and do good there and then play South Carolina fall in a week, two weeks or whatever it was, and then play it in the Orange Bowl. And we had a tough ending there with three really good teams. And they were all three really good teams.

Yes, sir. I remember, I remember back then, you know, I just, I found out this week my dad was like, you know, I was at the game and we were looking at memorabilia and you know, my, my uncle gave my, my, I've got a seven year old little boy and he gave him a, the commemorative pocket knife from the 81 championship season this year. And you know, they're starting to, starting to pass down those things to my kiddos and stuff. And so that's, it's one of those things that still, I mean, I deal with this every day where we talk about with our company and how we help other people leave a legacy for others and do something more important than just their life's, life's work that lasts beyond them. And you've really been able to do that for so many people. When you're part of something that has such a big fandom and such a big family that IPTAE is and the Clemson football family, you got to do something that leaves a legacy so much bigger than just, you know, your life's work. This was something that was huge. Do you ever think about that? Do you think that like some of the best memories of my childhood are. You're responsible for. That's, that's pretty epic?

Well, no, I really don't. I mean, I really enjoy people and I love people to death. And so we, we, we enjoy being around people and, and visiting with people and doing all that. And I really get a bigger kick out of these players coming back home, you know, and coming and visiting me at the house or at the farm and coming back and telling how bad they had it and how rough we were on them. You know, kind of stuff that they like to brag about, you know, and everybody, everybody had their, they got their children now, you know, they like to brag in front of them and do all this kind of thing. So yeah, that's the greatest part about any of what I do because of getting a chance to influence those kind of people who were really, really great kids and great players. So we like that part about it a whole lot. And that's the best thing I ever got involved with coaching is what you do. And when you see how these young boys, just a little bit older than children and they real weak in certain situations, you. You test them, you put them through a lot of stuff and they respond and they win and they grow up, they leave you as young men, then they come back as fathers and grandfathers. You get really a chance to see the whole development of a young person. And that was the beauty of coaching football to me. Or being associated with young people.

Yes, sir. And that was one of the things we did want to get into a little bit. Because our platform, what we do here is just strive to make better leaders. That's sort of the whole thing of what we're doing. And mackenzie's obviously great at her job and has been through that. And as for a young person is more mature than most 23 year olds that we meet that come on the show or, you know, that come to work for us, how is it that you were so successful at taking kids at a very pivotal time, really leaving mommy and dad for the first time and heading off into the real world? How was it that you helped them make that transition? Because there are a lot of people, you know, that are in their 40s right now that are trying to make that transition.

Oh, yeah. But people still try and grow up. And I got children still growing up that are in their 30s, you know, and I'm waiting for that day that they become a real grown up that I want them to be. And sometimes you have to force kids or people to grow up faster than they want to be. But the thing about. I was thinking a little bit while I was driving up here to, you know, the world is a round world and it's not a flat. It just keeps turning on the axis. And you can get on or get off anytime you want to. In this world. It's not equal. Everybody's not put in the same situation. It's round. But that doesn't mean that you can't overcome any situation that you get put into. There's been so many success stories of people that worked their way up from nothing and became very successful. There's been people who started with a lot, lost everything they've had. There's all kind of ways to do things. But in this world now and in this world today, it's a lot harder than it was when we were coming up. But what I've found out is that it's not an equal opportunity place. Some places, some people have a better chance to be successful than others. But that still doesn't mean that you can't be successful. You just got to keep working. And that's. I guess what. When we get back to your question of how did we handle these young people? We always believed you could outwork people and you could make them tougher than everybody else. You could get through any rough spots in life that you wanted to. And that's supposedly what teamwork and leadership is all about, is to make these people successful. Whether it's your business that you make business people successful, well, that's your goal, and that's your end result. There's all kind of ways to do it. You can do it different ways, but the way we did it was strictly. We thought we could motivate people, and they kind of want to do that. If they don't want to, you can't motivate them. Get your head up against concrete all you want to, but they really don't want to do it. They're not going to do it. I mean, you're not going to make somebody do it. But if they got anything to them back in our day, when most of them had mamas and daddies, a lot of them don't now, and that's unfortunate, but a lot of them just are not in the perfect situation like they were back most of the time when I was being raised that your family gives you something, they teach you how to do things get stronger with somebody at a later date that knows how to push you even further and make you even better, then you know you're going to end up with a pretty good situation. And that's kind of how we deal with our young people. And there, again, it's never equal, but you can make it equal by outworking people, have been motivated.

That's awesome, Coach. That's one of the things that we talk about all the time here. We say this around the office. Is that because I don't really. You know, we have people here that have degrees that don't have degrees. And I tell everybody, you can't get a degree in grit. No, you can just work harder than everybody else and get where you need to be. And so I so resonate with that. I love that. That's what we tell entrepreneurs every day when. When they're, like, in business and they want to be better leaders and like, well, just stay later, show up early, have a better attitude, work harder than everyone else. And if you're not willing to do the work, then you. I can't believe that you really want what you say you want.

Well, a lot of people have the opinion now that you don't need to convert and stay late. And if you're a genius, you don't. But everybody's not have the iq. And if you don't pick up things as easily as someone else, how are you going to catch up if you don't stay late? And it's not how many hours you spend, it's how many quality hours you spend in there and that you work your way through. I used to believe that you had to outwork people and stay in the office all day. Well, it'd be 11, 12 o', clock, I'd be sitting there with my feet on the desk reading the paper or something. That wasn't quality work, you know, but I thought I couldn't go home at a certain time because it somebody be out working me. But I really wasn't spending the, the right kind of work hours. That's, that's key too. But, but there again I wasn't the smartest guy in the world and I had to stay a while to learn. I mean and you know, that's just it. If it, if it takes some, it takes some people that are going to college, you can. We had a quarterback one time that was there when we got there, Steve Fuller. He just had to open a book. He just, everything came easy to him. We had another guy that's passed away now that was his buddy named Dwight Clark who was probably a better pro player than Steve was, but Steve was a better college player than he was. And what Dwight tried to be like Steve but he couldn't keep up with him in the classroom. He'd have spent more time studying and. But he tried to be like Steve and just try to make it through without study. And he had tough time in school. Both of them are good students but not. It wasn't as easy done for him as it was for Steve so he had to spend more time, you know what I'm saying?

Yes, sir. Now Coach, you had a unique opportunity. I mean more than you know, such a very small percentage of people get to coach and then such a very small percentage of that get to coach at your level and then get to succeed at your level. And I mean I knew all about the 81 season like because you know, I was also two by that point. I was very young. But some of my fondest childhood memories are, you know, sliding down the cardboard, sliding down on cardboard of the hill in the west end zone and touching Howard's rock and all that stuff. Growing up as a little kid, I don't think I'd ever heard the story of the 80 season coming off of, you know, a little over.500 record. And. And so I'm just more impressed now than ever before. So I always go back. So one of the things we talk about here is that simplification is the way to succeed. Like if you think about the only the important things and you don't have to get caught up thinking about everything else. And so, you know, I know everybody has those, like key takeaways. So when you were coaching and you had young men come into your program fresh out of their houses and not a lot of world experience, and then for lots of them, because you were a successful program, the opportunity to go be professional football players and go expand their lives or move out of football into the professional world because back then you had to actually go to class and study and all that stuff. What were the key takeaways? Like? If you have like two or three things, like when you just think about it, like, here are the things outside of football that I wanted these young men to know when they left my program.

Before you let him go home, you know, you make sure you go in there and you hug his neck and you tell him how much it means to you, why you did everything that you did. Because if he leaves with a bad taste in his mouth about you, then you going to have a hard time motivating that person every day. And I think you'd have the same happy in business, I believe in a bully. You don't have to agree with him, but you know, and he may be too rough on you one day, but if you know that he cares about you, you're going to do, you're going to do the extra work and, you know, the extra mile for him. And that was the basic belief of what we believed is that you could push a guy as hard as you could and to make it better, and he may not see why you're doing that, but whatever you do before that day ends, you go to them and if you've been extra rough on it, you say, well, you know why I'm doing this, or you know, you know, I care about you, you know, I'm trying to make you better, you know, and you know, and they listen to you a little bit better like that when they're not in uniform in their practice and you're not getting chewed out in front of everybody else and you're one on one with them and take the time to come and explain yourself to them. You know, I just think it Makes a, a better working situation for that. And that was our primary thing that we, we believed in. But I would, I would hate to know that. I would hate to know that. I hated to go to work every day and get up. I mean I just, that would, that would, that would work on you pretty good, I'm afraid. And I said you wouldn't get a, do a good job for the people that you were trying to do a good job for. You got to be in a situation that not necessarily that you love or agree with or anything else. It ain't got to be perfect, but it's got to be bearable.

Well, Coach, that's, that's so huge and that's. We, we, we talk about over communicating value here. That's part of, part of our leadership series. And so we talk about the fact that you've got to over communicate value. We as a, and especially in a startup environment, as an entrepreneur, like you have nothing but 18 hour days because you don't have resources. So all you have is time. And so you have to outwork everyone and you have to ask other people to outwork everybody else, their counterparts and other businesses. And so one of the things that we talked about here a lot is that, you know, everyone in this Office knows at 4am if their car breaks down, I need to be the one, I want to be the call. I'll come get them, I'll take care of them. And everybody here believes that. And because everyone believes that I care about them more than I care about myself, more than I care about anything else, that their happiness and their contentment is chief on my list when I ask them to do things that they don't necessarily want to jump on. They understand immediately that, well, he cares about me, so he wouldn't be asking me to do something that hurts. And that I think has made all the difference for us as we, as we've succeeded. I think that's been the key factor.

No doubt. To me, you're 100% right on what you're saying. That's the key to it, you know, and that's the key to a happy marriage, that's key to happy kids. That's a key to anything. You know, they've got to know that you care. And as long as they know that you care, you're in good shape.

Well, Coach, I am thrilled that you've been on the call and you know, Mackenzie hasn't said a lot because, well, I'm not going to give up my chance to talk to Coach for she has your number. She can call you back and chat.

She hasn't said her good until I know it worked out good. I tell her I just got. I just walked to the dentist office, and now I got to go in here and listen these women fuss at me for a while.

Oh, it's perfect. Coach Ford.

Coach, I appreciate your time this morning. Thank you, sir.

Thank you, guys. I appreciate being on there with you.

Yes, sir. Well, that was Coach Danny Ford, everybody. That's a great way to have a Tuesday, huh? Wednesday. What day is it? I don't know. Right now, I'm too excited. I'm too excited right now. You guys don't even understand. So that, for me, was epic. So I. Sorry, I just need a second.

You can fangirl. It's okay.

I'm a little bit. So for me. And so everybody here knows I've said so, like, 93 times because I don't have words when I get around people who have experience, I just soak it up. Like, I was way. If you've ever listened to any other podcast we've ever had, there's a lot more back and forth. There's a lot more of me talking, saying what I want to say. I just didn't want to talk at all.

No, you just want to take in everything.

Yeah. No, you just want to listen. You just want to sit here and, like, have Coach Ford tell you all the secrets to life because he's lived it way, way more like.

And lived it well.

Yeah. No. Youngest national. Yeah. That's crazy. We talk all the time. It's one of those, like, core things that we say that there are only two ways to learn in life. Mentors and mistakes. And we just got to spend 20 minutes having someone mentor us. Now. He's. He's seen thousands of kids come through programs. Thousands of kids.

He.

He has repeated success on a scale that some people. I mean, I'll never see. Like, I'll never have personal contact. Like, we'll. We'll. I can't imagine that lead Fast is ever thousands of people big from a. Working for us and with us. Right. I hope that we get to hundreds of thousands of people that we inspire and. And go help them make better business decisions. But he has touched lives on a scale that is unreal to me. And for him to say the number one thing, like, the key takeaway that he wanted people to know when they left his program was that they were cared for.

Yeah.

That's like, what else do you need? Like, that doesn't. So, like, for me, that just doubles down. Doubles down on everything, I believe, everything we teach. Like, we didn't do any prep for this. Like, none on our end. We did some prep. I've got show notes for the first time so that I didn't mess up any of the dates or anything like that. But, like, on his end, it was just completely unscripted. I mean, he's on his way to the dentist.

That was phone call to the dentist.

Yeah, yeah. And he's going back to the farm later on today. He was just gracious enough to give us 20 minutes on his drive, and that was, like, straight off the cuff. The first thing he thought about when we asked what was his success, it was, I outworked everyone. I had. I had. So these are my takeaways immediately. You can outwork everyone, but to be willing to outwork, you have to have sort of a real assessment of who you are. He said, I wasn't the smartest, I wasn't the greatest, so I had to stay. That's what, by the way, coaching does for you. Coaching allows someone else to tell you where you're at if you can't see it for yourself, and then they prescribe what's necessary, and then if you'll do the prescription, then you can get to where you actually think you are, but you're really not. Right. And so for me, I just go, man, like, everything made sense there. I loved every bit of that, like, so much stuff there. You have to. You know, he's. He's such a great storyteller, so you just get caught up in his voice and his sort of, like, quaint Southern charm and all that. Like, growing up here in the south, that was like having a conversation with my grandpa, who I miss. So, you know, that was. I'm a little bit. Yeah, single tear. I'm a little. I'm a little. I'm a little put off to the side right now. But when you really start to think about what he said, you can draw so much from that. There's so much wisdom in what he said about hard work and about how they didn't really know that they could get a national. They didn't. They weren't thinking national championship in 81, because in 80, they were six and five.

Yeah.

Like, to come off of a season where you're, you know, 600 to go. Oh, we could. We could have a perfect season. We can win it all. Like, you don't reload talent like that. So what happened. What happened to the guys who went six and Five who were still then went perfect. They just worked harder, 100%. They just bought in more. They stayed later, they worked harder, they grinded it out. And as the world changed around them because some teams got worse, you know, the teams that would normally would have been a powerhouse maybe weren't as good. And so they had some things work in their favor, but they were ready for the things to work in their favor because they outworked everybody else. They controlled what they could control, their time and their effort. When things aligned for them, they were ready. You know, there's this old saying that says luck is when opportunity and preparation meet. They were prepared. They were prepared. They had taken care of everything they could do. And then when the opportunity came around, they were ready to seize it. Man. And I don't know if you guys heard him say that, but that's what I heard.

Yeah. When I actually got to sit in on like a dinner that we had for coach Ford in 2017 when he was in inducted into the hall of Fame, I got to listen to some of his players come up and just tell stories and talk about how hard they work. Like they were worked by him. But then at the end of the day, like he was their dad, basically.

That's awesome.

Like just the love and care that he showed for people, that he would kick them in the butt sometimes just to make them work. But at the end of the day, the culture was knowing that he cared and knowing that he wanted what was best for them because he loved them.

And that was, that was in a time when by and large, these kids were coming out of both parent family homes. Hard working parents, like these are blue collar kids for the most part. So these are kids that came out of stable houses with hard working parents and were playing college football. And care made all the difference. What an opportunity now for coaches for people who, you know, he said it. Most of the kids that are coming into college football programs right now, by and large aren't coming from. Most kids are coming from single family homes, you know, that are playing college sports. Most kids are coming from single family homes, may not have a dad in the picture, all those things. And now what an impact. College coaches, like it's, it's exponential the impact that you could have now. But that's also true in business. Like there was, there was a generation of kids or adults that went into business where everything was about corporate structure and reporting structure and rules and regs and all this other stuff. And they, you know, sold their, sold the American dream for a salary you know, we always talk about salaries, what they give you to bribe you to give up on your dreams. And so people gave. If you're an entrepreneur, you know that quote, a salary is what they give you to get you to give up on your dreams. They gave up those dreams because their dream was to provide some stability for their family and those types of things. You didn't have to care for them. Their job was to do what they were told, to get their salary, to get their pension, to retire. We built an amazing economy, but now we're seeing a shift in the corporate world. We're seeing. I mean, I've worked for an amazing corporation, but we're seeing a shift in the corporate world where people are. Leaders are trying to show that they genuinely care for their employees, for the people that are under them, because they know that they get the very best work out of those people in an environment that cares. What an amazing opportunity we have as entrepreneurs to build a culture, because you get to do it from the ground up. So you don't have to change anything. You don't have to revamp anything. You can just always care and it always works. Listen, if you're watching or you're listening, this works every time. Every time. I've done it multiple times. The key to success for us as businesses has always been our employee buy in, our family buy in. We don't even call them staff meetings. We call them family meetings. The key to our success has always been buy in. The key to that buy in has always been wide open, just ridiculous care, always. That's the chief thing. That's the thing I do better than I do anything else to show people that we care about them. So that's your key takeaway today, man. Thanks for watching the leefest podcast. We are super excited that you're here. I got to work all the buttons without Daniel. He'll be back for the next episode. This is great. We'll talk to you guys later.