Episode 108: Coaching Character with Brett Miller

And hello everyone. Welcome to episode 108 of the weekly Yes And podcast. I'm your host, Travis Thomas, the creator of Live Yes And, and the host of the podcast.

Hi, everyone.

Make sure you check out my website at liveyesand.com, or you can follow me online or other social media @liveyesand. I recently just started a new daily series on Instagram. You can follow my story @liveyesand or go to Instagram TV and look for Live Yes And, where I am doing a daily 3 to 4 minute video based on whatever inspiration from my reflection, my daily meditation, or whatever is happening in my life. And being able to share that with all of you, you know, as far as what impact it's having on my life and really just what I'm being inspired by on a day-to-day basis. And so the series is called Yes Daily. The Y-E-S stands for Your Excellent Self. So the Yes Daily is all about how are we bringing the best version of ourselves to every day regardless of how we feel and regardless of, you know, maybe we're not at our best, but how do we continue to sort of live yes and accept what is happening and respond with purpose. And so it's more just an extension of what I did a few years ago called A Moment of Yes, which I did for over a year uploading a different inspiration every day on YouTube. But that was a few years ago. We now have Facebook Live and Instagram Live and Instagram TV. And so it's a lot easier for me to kind of share those ideas and wisdom. So make sure you check that out. So today's podcast, let's get into it. It is the beginning of a new school year. So you've got kids that are going back to school. A lot of you are sort of going back into maybe jobs or positions where it feels like there's a new sense of kind of a new year has begun. And for a lot of you out there, your kids especially, they are starting new sports teams either at the high school level The middle school level, or at the club level. Could be AAU basketball, club soccer. Obviously, my life is fully engulfed with club soccer down here. My youngest child plays club soccer as well as he's an academy player at the club and academy that I work for down here, Massive Soccer. And so I know this time of year, once we begin, we begin, and it's kind of full bore for the next 9 months. And so clearly, I am committed to— obviously, I work with companies and teams and a lot of sports teams on culture and mindset and how do we develop these high-performance, you know, teams and cultures. What are the values? What are the principles? And what are the practices that go into that? So I'm fascinated with that. I'm constantly trying to bring more of that to the work that I do with Massive. And I work for a club that puts a lot of emphasis on leadership and the mental side and the team dynamics. And so I'm in a perfect spot for that. And I clearly love reaching out to people who are doing it in their way as well. And today's podcast interview is so much fun. Brett Miller is a club coach in Peoria, Illinois, and we'll let him talk about that. But he's been coaching for about 5+ years now, young kids. And his examples, his practical examples of what they do during training, what they've done during games, pregame, postgame, and how he He acknowledges leadership and character in his own players as well as other teams as well. And so a cool thing here is that after we finished the interview, I thanked Brett. He's like, no way, because I had so many ideas written down that we didn't get a chance to get to. And I said, no worries, we'll do part 2. And I think once you listen to Brett's, you're going to, you're going to want to hear more. From him as well. And so enjoy this interview. Uh, you know, being a performance coach and being on the sidelines and working with teams, sadly we're still at a place, I think, from a coaching perspective— and, and parents, we have a big part of this— is that there are so many bad examples out there of, of coaching and character that when we see the good ones, they seem to be such the, uh, um, what word am I looking for, the, uh— Uh, the outlier, uh, the exception to the rule, that they stand out even all the more. And that just doesn't need to be the case. Where you hear about stories like the University of Maryland football program with the level of toxicity and using shame and intimidation as a coaching tool, we're just— we've got to be beyond that with our— with where we are, uh, in, uh, in teaching performance and getting the most out of our kids and players and seeing that it's not about— that the scoreboard is information, but it can't ultimately be the end goal as far as what's— especially in youth sports, as far as what we're teaching and what we're developing. And so Brett is an amazing example of a coach out there who is doing it right. And I would have no problem sending my son or daughter to play on one of his teams. In fact, I would love for them to have that opportunity, and you'll hear it too based on our interview. So, episode 108 of the Weekly Yes and Podcast, please welcome Brett Miller.

Welcome, Brett, to the Weekly Yes and Podcast. How are we doing tonight, Brett?

Pretty good. How are you, Travis?

Good, Brett. You are with the Peoria Soccer Club there in Illinois. How long have you been with the club? Tell us a little bit about your coaching.

Sure. So I've been coaching soccer now to include park district and club probably for since going back to 2013. Been a club coach for probably six seasons now, going on my seventh. And we've I've been a coach with the same club. We started out as the Legends based out of Washington and collaborated with a club, Pure Soccer Club. A year and a half ago, and we just recently took down the Legends name and became part of the Peoria Soccer Club. So that's where I currently coach right right now. And going back to you know my daughter was a Park District player at the time, and playing rec league is obviously completely different than than the club scene. So for me, I had to jump from a coach where you're just kind of volunteering, showing up, and having fun, and not really. a whole lot of structure to more of the club-type mentality where parents, the expectations from parents and players and the club itself are a little different. And so like I said, I've been doing that for about 6 years, loving every minute of it and growing as a coach every season, trying to build on the things that I've done in the past.

And so you, yeah, you and I got connected, you know, I think we spoke the first time maybe 6 or 7 months ago. Heck, maybe it was more than that. Connected through a mutual coach who you ran into, a friend of mine who you ran into at a conference. He connected us through, I think, maybe Twitter. That's the way things work nowadays.

Oh, yeah.

Then you and I have spoken on the phone a few times. I know at the time, we were talking about coaching philosophies and this idea of merging with another club and how do you deal with different philosophies and different values. How has that gone so far?

Oh, so I, I listen to and follow Simon Sinek. So I'm a big believer in why. And I think that a lot of what I do, it all ties back to what the why is, which for me is to inspire my players to be confident, brave, and creative leaders for life on and off the field. There's a, you know, we can talk philosophical differences on soccer for probably hours, but you've got those that believe The statistical win is more important for me. I look at it more as what can my players take away if they're not going to be soccer players in the future? What can they take away from what we're doing on the field to help them, whether it's a basketball court, a swimming pool, a classroom, or in the community? So for me, it comes back to the brave creative leadership, which kind of stems from the legends philosophy. That's what they're all about. So that's where I took that from.

So it's brave, creative, and leadership, kind of those 3 core values.

Right.

That was from the Legends Soccer Club. Then you also have a military background as well, right, Brett?

Absolutely. What I bring from that, being in the Air Force, is their core values: integrity first, service before self, and excellence in all we do. Right thing even when no one's looking and putting the service before yourself. So in the case of soccer, it's the kids or it's what do I bring to my players, putting them first before my own interests. And then everything that I do, I'm going to give 100% or do in excellence. If you do those 3 things, you can't go wrong. And all the branches got their— have their own core values. But I've got 18 years in the Air Force and Out of all of the stuff I've learned, that's what it always goes back to. Anytime you have any kind of interview or anytime you're going before a board in the military, they want to know, do you still know what the core values are? There are 3 simple things to do. You know, sometimes it's hard to do the right thing, right, when no one's looking. Um, that's why it's important that you teach these kids nowadays what integrity is. And we'll talk a little bit to that here in a bit when I talk about some of the things that I'm doing with my players. But yeah, But that's the core that comes out of— that's what I try to bring to my players is a set of values that they can fall back on to help guide their way and lead them through whatever comes their way, whether it's on the field or on the pitch or in the classroom or whatever it is they're doing in life.

Well, it's great. I was just having lunch today with the director of the soccer club down here that I work with, Massive Soccer, down here in South Florida. He and I were, again, doing some planning. how we're going to structure some of the leadership and the mental components into the club for this coming year. And we both got talking about sort of more and more just, you know, the military and how to incorporate some of those values as far as accountability and discipline and sacrifice. Right.

Yeah.

And so with your background and then bringing that into coaching, how have you been able to translate some of that into you as a soccer coach?

Well, like I said, for example, one of the things that we've done over the past couple seasons is we've customized our pennies that we wear during training sessions. On the back of all of our training sessions have different leadership characteristics or just different valuable characteristics you would want to have on and off the field. So things like being passionate, courage, sportsmanship, respect, integrity. Believing in yourself, work ethic, some of those things that you don't necessarily see maybe brought up into the soccer environment or the training environment. And then how we utilize those is at the end of every practice, we pick a player with a yellow penny and a player with a pink penny, and then they've got to take their penny off and talk to whatever it is that's on their back to the rest of the kids. So they not only get a chance to get up and kind of speak in front of people, but they get to give their spin or give what they feel Yeah. Respect or they feel sportsmanship is to their peers. And then once they get done speaking, we coaches, we give what our view on that is and how we see it playing out on the field and off the field. Then we open it up kind of to group discussion. You know, that kind of goes back to what you were saying before about how you can kind of incorporate some of that stuff into your practice sessions and only use maybe 5, 10 minutes. But it's definitely something that you have to invest the time and be willing to take time away from maybe your technical touch or your your tactical learning and incorporate some more of this character building and leadership type stuff.

That's great. I love, I love that idea of, of using the pennies and then having the, having the kids actually, you know, think about it and share. And give us an idea of what are the ages of kids that you're working with?

So they're— most of my kids are in— just went into 5th grade. I did this season pick up a handful of '07s, so I've got some 6th graders as well. All the way down to 3rd grade. So anywhere between— was it 9, 9 years old and the older half of the 10-year-olds? So a fairly broad range when it comes to grade, like school grade.

Sure.

I've had these kids since, you know, since they were 6 and 7 years old, some of them even farther than that back in Park District. And, and it's always been this message. It's always— I mean, this is something I've always kind of thought was important, um, and at some way have tried to incorporate it into what the kids get on a daily basis when we train together.

That's great. And I guarantee, as people were listening to you talk about sort of the pennies and, and, and the kids talking, I guarantee people were thinking you were talking about older players. And the fact that you're talking about 9-year-olds, uh, who were doing this is That is just phenomenal. Then you also mentioned too that it's not— the kids are having to talk about it, but then the coaches are talking about it as well, and then you're having that group discussion. What impact have you seen or how has that sort of transferred or has it transferred to the parents as well?

It's funny because when I first started coaching, Yeah. When I first started coaching, the parents all stayed. I had like an audience at practice when I first started coaching. But it seems like as the kids have gotten older, my audience has diminished. And now all I have is, is just the kids and players until it's time to go. Then they, they up and take off as soon as they can. But I do try to use Facebook and Facebook Live to talk to my parents after tournaments. Like, for example, we were just at a tournament in East Moline. And I always try to get on and recap kind of what happened over the weekend, whether, you know, for me, it's Yeah. It's a lot of times it's relaying that information and explaining it in a way that parents can understand as well. This is about development. It's about your child. You know, if you come and go 0-4 in a tournament, you can still have success, right? So I like to get out in front of the parents and we talk to a lot of this stuff. We talk to the sportsmanship. I like to always look for opportunities to acknowledge people on the field when they show good sportsmanship or they show respect for the expect for another player or for a referee, for believing in yourself, for having confidence in yourself to go out there and do something that you may feel you're not quite ready for. So a lot of that comes with just conversation via Facebook Live or just in passing after the game. But just letting them know what the big picture is and what the end goal and the end state is and what we're trying to do with the leadership and the character building and let them know that there's just There's more to the game. There's more to your child than just coming out here and playing the sport of soccer.

Well, you talked about it at the beginning, obviously Simon Sinek and understanding your why and you being very clear on your why. As a club, you just spoke about that you are development-focused compared to what you are very familiar with. Many clubs are very sort of outcome-focused. focused, or shall I say short-term outcome-focused.

Sure.

So that is a difficult thing often to communicate and especially to stick with in the heat of competition.

Absolutely.

So how have you caught yourself or how have you found success in And being able to sort of stay true to those values and staying true to that why, especially when you've got parents who are maybe unhappy with the child's playing time or unhappy that you just got your butt kicked 8 to nothing. And then you as a coach, your competitive juices get flowing as well. So how do you deal with that?

Absolutely. And to be honest with you, it's a work in progress. I'm not saying I'm perfect by any means. I've come a long way. From where I have, but the nice thing about having a why is that if you believe in it and and you believe in what your why is, then no matter what comes up, if you just refer back to what that is and you make decisions based off about about that why, then it really doesn't matter what boils up on the other side of that. You you stick to your what you believe in, and it usually works out. I haven't had recently had a whole lot of instances where something has happened on the field or off the field that I haven't stepped back and said, "Well, this is what I'm trying to do." And been able to work through it, whether it was with parents or with another coach or with a player. But like I said, there's been times in the past where you know I've had to learn some things the hard way, and I still learn every day. I mean, if you're not learning every day, you're not doing it right. And there's always opportunities to make yourself better and to improve upon what it is that you're doing. But having a good assistant coach there to kind of kind of QC and and check yourself with and say, "Hey, should I? Is this how we should be looking at this?" Or Am I wrong in thinking this? And I used to have— and I have to take a new picture because the kids are older now, but I used to have a little picture that I would carry in my bag that had a picture of them on what we call pro day. And we can talk about that here in a bit. But that basically, if I had a problem where I was losing my mind or kind of getting ready to go off the deep end, just to look at that picture and that picture would kind of reel me back into what's important here. Is the ref blowing calls really important? No, not really. You know, there's things that you can't control in life and on the soccer field especially, whether it's weather, whether it's bad parents on the other sideline, whether it's the refs are making bad calls, missing offsides, getting scored on. And if you have something to look at and say, you know, this is what it's really about, like, I can deal with the fact that these refs are making bad calls. I can deal with whatever's in front of me because this is what's important. So I try to just think back to the why, like I said before, and having a good assistant coach there to kind of keep you in check and kind of say, yeah, we're doing the right thing, or maybe we need to adjust here, or maybe we should have approached it differently here, and to bounce ideas off of definitely helps.

That's great. And you just sent me an email this week that I thought was just so amazing and such a such a practical example of really you putting into practice sort of the integrity and the values that you stand for. And it sounds like this happened at a recent tournament. Can you share what happened with the audience here?

Yeah, so this is a really cool experience. And this, I think I'd mentioned it before, just being on the lookout and looking for opportunities to acknowledge When someone does something that's, you know, like sportsmanship or showing respect for someone on the field. And we were up in Chicago, and Chicago soccer— and I'm sure you have this down in Florida— is, is a lot more aggressive, a lot more physical. There's a lot more teams than like typically where we're at here in central Illinois. So you never know what you're going to get into. I've been up there before and gotten, you know, had coaches come over and get in my face for things. And with this particular scenario, we were in a championship game And it was just super competitive on the field. Both teams are fighting tooth and nail. We were up 2-0 at the half and they ended up coming back and tying the game up with like 2 minutes to go in the game to go into a shootout. And the thing that made it easy to look for something other than the statistics, like what was happening in the shootout, was the coach on the other team. We just kind of came together, shook hands, and And, you know, acknowledged, hey, your girls did great. He acknowledged my kids did great. We just had a conversation that, hey, this is what it's all about. When it all ends here at the end of whatever happens, just want you to know, like, you know, I was proud to be here on the field with you. And he shared those thoughts and we kind of fed off each other. And we stood out there in the heat of the moment. At this tournament last year, we went into a shootout and lost, and their team had been to this tournament the past, like, 3 years and been to shootouts and lost. So we were both kind of fighting for that, you know, that win, you know, what it was, all the hard work that we put in for it. But we just sat there and we watched our kids take shots, and some went in, some didn't go in. We clapped for each other, we high-fived each other. And, uh, he had a player that had gone up, taken a shot, and scored and put their team up, I think, 1 or 2 in PKs. And she celebrated. She came back and high-fived her teammates and then turned around and went back to my keeper and high-fived my keeper. You know, gave her some words of encouragement. And like, out of all of the stuff that was going on, the parents cheering, the players cheering, like, that's what I saw was the display of sportsmanship to like go back and acknowledge like your opponent. Like, yeah, you're here to compete. Yeah, you're here, you want to be successful. But at the end of the day, like, how you carry yourself and how you treat people, dude, that matters. And when I saw that, I was like, that's so awesome. Like, it doesn't matter what the outcome of the game is. I don't care if we go into another 5 shooters and we lose or we win. I don't care what the result is. Like, that's probably the most awesome thing I've seen all weekend. And it was just a display of sportsmanship. Like, there will be more tournaments. There will be more opportunities. But it's very— it's not very common that you see that, especially from a youth athlete. So to see that, it just, you know, warms your heart. It gives you goosebumps. The hairs in the back of your neck stand up. It's like you just witnessed something like that. So I gave her a coin. So I have I have coins that I had made that say Brave Create Leadership on on the back. They say respect, and it's just it was just important for me to find her after the game and say, "Hey, you know I saw what you did out there, and it was awesome." And so she you know her dad had an opportunity to ask her the same question, and that's what you saw in the email was. her dad kind of just reaching back and saying, thank you. I would have never had the opportunity to know that my daughter did that. And to me, that's, that's, that was the coolest thing that happened that weekend.

Well, yeah, go ahead.

Stuff that I like, it may— I'm very passionate about, and that's the kind of stuff I get excited for because that's special. Like, there's not a lot of that out there, and there needs to be more of that. And so by recognizing it and looking for opportunities to recognize it, I feel like that's the way that I can kind of give back to the game.

Well, there's so many, there's so many cool things with that story, Brett. There's, you know, there's you, there's you on the sidelines hanging out with the other coach and, and just having sort of that moment. There is the backstory of this girl who, who high-fives your, high-fives your keeper. And, and I think you had told me in the email that she had been responsible for for 2 penalty kicks earlier in the game.

Right. Yeah, that's what her dad had said. She was the— so she was new to the team. And it was her 2 fouls that put us up 2-0. Yeah. And she came back and scored on a PK. I mean, yeah, it was the whole story. Like the whole thing about it. Like you see the memes on the internet of like the softball player that's carrying another player to the home plate. And you're like, man, where does that kind of stuff exist? Like, I want to be there in person when that happens. And, you know, kids in shootouts— and shootouts are the most stressful time for me as a coach. It's very stressful. And you know that the kids in the net, all the weight's on— a lot of the weight's on their shoulder. And like, so my keeper was feeling down.

Yeah.

I mean, she just got scored on. She was feeling down. But that whole interaction, I mean, that's relationship building right there. Like, they, they had something that no one else will have, and that's To me, that's awesome.

Well, and then, you know, the amazing thing here is that here you are, you know, after a championship loss, because you guys lose, right? And, you know, obviously you've got your own sort of competitive juices, or, you know, taken into consideration, but then you've got to console your own team. But even, even within that, you, you had the sort of frame of mind to, to find this, you know, to find this girl and And to basically honor her and her sportsmanship in that moment.

Yeah. But you know what though, having the coach— I always say, because I also like to send emails to people after tournaments when I've had a good experience, and there's 4 things that go into an outstanding experience. You have the referees, which you can't control. You've got the other team's parents and your parents, which you really can't control. You've got the Yeah. The players and you've got the coaches, right? And this particular team, and there's been others that I've come across, like the coaches just, they had it right. They were doing it right. They were supporting the love of the game. They were supporting the opponent. They were supporting their own team. They were supporting the process. You know, their parents were legit. They were on the sidelines supporting. They weren't heckling the refs. They weren't heckling the players. They weren't doing any of that. And when all of that stuff is jiving and all that stuff is, is kind of in sync with one another, dude, it's magical. There's been, there's been a few times that I've had that where at the end of the game you just want to go over and shake everyone's hand on the sideline and say, hey, you guys rock. Yeah, like, you guys are doing it right.

Well, and then, you know, the, the component of here that we haven't shared yet is the whole reason that, that you knew about this, the impact that it had on this, this girl, is that the father of the girl then sent an email off to the club thanking— well, basically acknowledging you and acknowledging the club and what a special thing that was for his daughter.

Right.

So the reciprocation— just the, you know, the, you know, it's, it's just that, you know, that butterfly effect, that, that one effect and— or the one effect of her and how it impacted you, and then you reciprocating it back to her, and then having a, you know, an impact on the father. It's, it's, you know, they're Just to see, just to see all the different people that were impacted by it.

And it's interesting you say that because actually the order of events that happened was I came back from that tournament in Chicago, I got home and it's like 2 in the morning and I can't sleep because when I have this problem, when things like this happen, I sit there and think about them. I'm like, if I can't go to sleep, I need to get up and do something right now. Otherwise, I don't want to forget this. So I had gotten up and sent an email to their club. Just saying, hey, this is what this was my experience with your with your coaches, your players, and your parents, and I want you to know that I appreciate that. And so I basically I had sent them an email like two in the morning, and then I had actually received a tweet from somebody that I had no I didn't even know who it was. It was someone who's a sportswriter, I'm assuming in Chicago, and he said, hey, I just want you to know, I want to make sure this gets to you, and it was. 4 little individual screenshots of that email. And then later on that day, I got the email from my president at my club saying, hey, I want you to read this. This was sent to us. So it was, it was kind of interesting that like I was trying to recognize them at the same time he was trying to recognize— was trying to recognize me. We just kind of met in the middle. It was pretty cool.

That is, that is. And man, man, it is, is like you said, when, when those moments happen Those are special, special moments. We were again at lunch today. I was meeting with Fraser, the soccer director, and we were starting to share some of these ideas. And he told me of an experience, I think it happened in the spring, that it was either our U18 or U19 boys were playing in a match. I think it was a tournament. competitive, scrappy, intense. You know, there's probably quite a few words exchanged out there in the field. And then the game ended, and he— the cool thing about this, he can't remember if our team won or lost, because what he remembered was, after the game, he said the captain of the other team came up to him and said, hey, Coach, can I talk to your team? And his first reaction was like, oh boy, is this— You know, what do you want to say? Is this gonna be okay? And he's like, all right, yeah, yeah, yeah. And so he brought the team in, and this young man, you know, he's probably 17 years old, 17, 18. He said— he was so composed, and he just said, I just want to thank you guys. You guys were a fantastic opponent. You really brought out the best in us. That was a hard-fought battle. And we, as a team, spoke, and we agreed that your number 8— was the man of the match for you guys. Here's a $10 iTunes gift card.

That's awesome.

And so our coach was just, A, blown away by this young man and the maturity he had. Obviously, B, the idea that this is something that they did. And then just the reaction of the young men on our team, they were blown away as well. And so it must have been a tournament because our coach then watched their next game and saw that captain go do the same thing to the next team the next game.

That's classy.

And so I'm like, you know, you're just like, yes. And we were talking about this idea of when you start to shift, when you start to shift your mentality of, of really what this means, of what, what competition is, and you start to, like you said, you're, you're looking for opportunities To recognize people. And so that shifts how you approach training, and it shifts how you approach coaching. It shifts how you approach the opposing coach, the opposing team.

Oh, absolutely.

And you start to realize that there are so many different ways that we can honor, you know, we can honor the game, we can honor our opponents in a way that is hard-fought but, but is respectful at the same time.

Sure, absolutely. And we do— we've got a couple different things we do. Obviously, you've seen the coin, the coin which I ran out of. I'm gonna order more.

Yes, I love, I love the coin.

When I—

when— as I post the podcast, I'm gonna have a picture of both sides of the coin that people can see. It's beautiful. I actually have been playing it with— in my hand all day because it just feels good.

Yeah, well, it's awesome because like, so that goes back to the military influence, right? In the military, those are challenge coins, right? So I mean, those are handed out every time you encounter someone that's done a good job for you. Uh, maybe they've gone out of their way to— I mean, the same type of stuff, right? Like, people in the military look for opportunities to, to present you with a coin. It's a big deal in the military. So like, for me, that's the best thing that I could do is give you a coin, right? But there's other things that we do as well. Like before the coin, we had laminated cards, like bag tag type cards. And I had a card for coaches and I had a card for players and referees. So essentially what would happen is after a game, our team, like you had mentioned before, that captain, we would pick a player and we would give the player a card that basically said, you know, thank you for showing good sportsmanship today and spending the day with us on the field with the You know, the legends or the PSC legends, 2008 girls, kind of speaking to sportsmanship. We had one that you would give to a referee that basically said, hey, thank you for spending the day with us and dedicating your time to the love of the game. And then we'd have one that we would give to coaches too. You know, now I have these coins that I give, but we used to have— it started out as just a laminated— my wife's a teacher, so she's got like 5 laminators and laminate all over the house. I laminate a lot of stuff. Yes. That's where it started at. And like, the cool thing is like even referees, just this past tournament I was at in East Moline, we had, uh, 3 refs because we jumped to 9v9 now. And one of them was one I've seen before. And I went up to her before the game even started. I was like, hey, have you, have you been, have you reffed one of our games before? She pulled her coin out. That's her coin she uses for the, the flip toss now. And I'm like, dude, that's awesome.

Oh, that's fantastic.

So it's like coming full circle.

Yeah.

There's people out there now that I'm coming across and they've got these coins and it's like, hey, we've got that relationship. We've got that experience. Yeah. Hey, what can— what's going on? Like, how's life been? How's coaching? How's reffing? And you've already got like a jump-off point where you can kind of just pick up where you left off.

Well, exactly. And, and the fact that, you know, she kept that coin, you know, we were— and we were talking about this, this whole— this story with this, you know, kid coming over and giving an iTunes card. Like, it wasn't about the iTunes card, right? You know, it was about It was that gesture. It was that gesture of respect and how that was felt. The iTunes card was kind of irrelevant at that point.

Right.

And just, yeah, just that— again, you're taking a moment. You're taking a moment to recognize and acknowledge, whether it's the referee or the other team, to acknowledge just that respect that you have for them is just so— So simple, but yet so powerful at the same time.

And the thing is, the kids expect it now. They want to do it. They're like, Coach, you got the cards? You got a coin? Like, yeah, uh, uh, and we can talk a little bit about this here in a bit. The Way of the Warrior Leadership Camp, we talked about shaking hands and like, you know, how to properly shake someone's hands, the importance of that contact and making sure you do it right. And they want to do it. They want to take the coin and do it like the military, put it in the palm and shake the hand and the whole thing. Like, it's awesome. Like, so that's where, like, as a coach, by doing that kind of stuff, your players see that. They're watching you and they're seeing, like, you know, why is he over there talking to that player? Then they come over, they say, you know, what did you say to her? I'm like, hey, I just went over and said, hey, that's a great job for going down and saying, saying something to Avery. I'm like, Avery, did she come down and talk to you? Oh yeah, she said great job. And, you know, now the players are talking about it. Now they can kind of take ownership of that and be like, hey, I want to do that next time. What Next time we do this, let me go give them the coin. Okay. Hey, we can do that. Let's grow. Let's do this.

I love it. I love it. Well, and you just referenced the Way of the Warrior leadership program. Tell us a little bit about that, how that came about, and sort of what your vision is with that.

Sure. So the Way of the Warrior leadership camp started last season. So one of the things that I used to always try to do with my kids and my players is give them the opportunity opportunity to lead on the field by wearing a captain's band. So we would give them the captain's band, and this is a couple seasons back, and they'd go out there and play, and they'd come off the field and you'd be like, okay, so when this was going on, did you go over and kind of high-five your teammate, pick your teammate up? What were you doing on the field with that captain's band on? And the consensus was that I had gotten back and the feedback I had gotten was my players don't really understand what I'm asking them to do when I put this captain's band on, and they're like, you know, 8, 9 years old, so they wouldn't. So I was like, well, you know what, I need to fix that. Like, if I'm gonna have you wear a captain's band, then you need to understand what your responsibilities and what the expectations are. So the camp actually started out as the PSC, or the Peoria Soccer Club Legends Leadership Camp, last year, and I had probably, I don't know, 18 players of mine show up, and it was 100% focused on captainship, like being a captain for a team.

Yeah.

And here's the Illinois, or the IHSA, or the Illinois High School Soccer Sports Association, or whatever the acronym stands for. I used their captain's handbook for the information, right? And then I threw in some things that I had learned from the military, and I got some activities offline, and I put together this camp. And at the end of the camp, I was like, you know what, like, this is stuff that is beneficial regardless if you're a captain on a soccer team, a basketball team, a swim, you know, in a swim pool, whatever the case may be, like This is good stuff. And like, the kids can benefit from this regardless of their being a captain on a soccer field. So that's where The Way of the Warrior, you know, this year I decided I was going to rebrand it and I was going to try to reach out and get more people involved. Whether you're a basketball player, a soccer player, a swimmer, if you're on the speech team, it doesn't really matter. Like, if you're a kid and you want leadership and character building, then The Way of the Warrior is for you. And the whole— the inspiration behind The Way of the Warrior A lot of it aligns exactly with what I want for my players. I want to inspire those that attend to be confident, brave, creative leaders for life because I absolutely love that. I think there needs to be more of that and giving girls the opportunity to realize that they can do just as much as the boys can. They can be just as successful as the boys can. They can be confident. They can be brave. They can be creative. They can be leaders in the community, on the teams, in school, whatever the case may be. So that's, that's what the camp is designed to do. And, and the inspiration behind it all, a lot of it, a lot of it comes from your book, from reaching out to people on, on Twitter and Facebook. So like Simon Sinek, what he represents and what he stands for, a lot of what he does inspires me with the camp. Jocko Willink, Willink, the Navy SEAL commander, a lot of what he does inspires me. My former coaches, Nate Eisfelder was my high school coach. He instilled a lot of that You know, from the leadership perspective of, you know, a leader is going to be somebody who isn't going to ask you to do something that you're not willing to do yourself. And he would go out there and he'd do sprints with us, he'd do activities and drills with us, he'd put himself in the ground before he put us in the ground. And like, like, uh, my dad, a lot of that comes from Dad. A lot of lessons that I learned from my dad growing up as a kid, you're like, yeah, yeah, yeah, Dad, okay, okay, sportsman.

Yeah, yeah.

And then you get Yeah. To the point where you're at, I'm at now. And it's like, man, it makes sense. Like everything Dad had told me, like, hey, don't go out there and get wrapped up in the fight and this, that, and the other, and just go out there and be yourself and play your game. Yeah, Dad, I know, but my teammates really want me to do this. And so I see that now and I'm like, man, I was dumb as a kid. Like, Dad was right. So like all of those lessons I learned and all that stuff that I'm, I'm bringing in, I'm like, there's no way that I can't Yeah. There's no way that I can't have a positive impact on the players that I have now, anyone who wants to be involved in the Warrior Leadership Academy. There's no way that I can't give them from my experiences and from what I've learned a step ahead or a foot up in the character building and the leadership arena. And one of the things I always go back to and I think of, and I'm assuming, and assuming is not always a good thing, You know, as you get older in life, whether it's a job opportunity, whether it's trying out for the high school soccer team, whatever the case may be, you have to imagine that there's gonna be other people there that are at the same point in their life as you. They've all had the training, they're all soccer players, they all can put the ball in the back of the net, they can all play defense. So what separates you from the rest of the people? It has to be your character. It has to be the way that you carry yourself, how you treat people. Your, your mental toughness, you know, those little things that I think are missed out on, on a lot of youth athletics. That's the stuff that you need to be squared away on. And that's the stuff that if you start at a young age, I mean, I'm hoping that as my kids get older, 7th and 8th grade, and their minds have matured and they've matured as people, that they're like, hey, you've been telling me this for, you know, 9, 10 seasons now. It makes sense. I get it. Like, I want them to get it earlier in life than I got it.

Yeah.

Because I didn't have anything like this when I was a kid. You know, I had sports, I had my mom and dad, but I mean, I didn't have anything dedicated to you as a person until much later on in life. Like, I'm talking my military time, so 18, 19 years old. And I went through a lot of lessons learned the hard way. to get to that. There's no reason that they should have to do that. Like, why can't we grow this and plant some seeds now to where when they get to the point where those seeds start growing, they just blossom and they're like out in the community leading, they're out doing projects, they're out leading groups in school, they're the ones that stand up when no one else will. And that to me is like, that's awesome.

And yeah, and you and I were talking about it, you know, before we went, we went on here. And, you know, with the club that I Yeah. The coaches that I work with down here, I have the luxury of being able to work with each team each month in 30-minute sessions or in addition to their training time. But the things that we're talking about, some coaches might be listening to this and thinking like, well, I just don't have time to work it into a session. This doesn't have to be 30 minutes or 45 minutes or an hour. It can be a 5-minute conversation. Uh, it can be incorporating these little components into your actual training, uh, and then just again, done consistently where you just start to kind of groove those values and some of those leadership skills into your players.

Absolutely. Absolutely. And you just hit it right on the head. I believe, I believe it is literally as simple as just committing to and taking a little bit of time away from what I like to call the grind to work on yourself.

Yeah.

To work on you as a person. And like you said, it does not have to be, be much time. Like, another example that we just implemented this year is our, is our goal-setting board. So I thought it was important that, um, our players learn how to develop goals for themselves, whether it's a game time goal, a practice goal, short-term for school, long-term, whatever the case may be.

Yeah.

To educate them on the importance of setting goals for yourself to help you navigate and stay focused in life. So we have a board. It's just a foam board that's on 2 stakes. It gets posted and beaten to the ground with a hammer every practice. And on top of the poster board, I've got some short-term goals that I want soccer-wise for the team, but I also have some goals on there that I want them to do outside the classroom. For example, one goal— and I, and I took this from Julie Foudy's book Choose to Matter— is I want you to go to school at least once a week and say hi to someone that you've never said hi to before.

Mm-hmm.

Or in the cafeteria, I want you to sit down with someone that you've never eaten lunch with before, invite them into your circle, have a conversation with them. Let's improve our social skills, but also give other people an opportunity to be a part of whatever it is that you're doing. I mean, if I'm giving you all this, all this character building and leadership, go out and share it. Like, go out at school and, and sit next to someone that doesn't necessarily have someone with them and just talk with them. Like, let them talk to you about what interests them, what their interests are. You don't have to look at it as like, well, if you don't like soccer, then you can't sit at my table. Like, go out and interact with these people. Let, let them know what you do, man. You might Recruit the next teammate, right? You may help somebody in a situation that they may be having a problem at home or having a problem with a friend that you might help them out of. And it literally is as simple as you walking over there and having a conversation. And now some of you, you may say that, well, you know, I've got players that aren't comfortable with that. Well, I would say to that, that if you live in your comfort zone your entire life, you're never going to learn, you're never going to grow. So get outside that comfort zone and go over there and sit down and just say hi. Once you say hi, I mean, I look back to the first conversation we ever had on the phone when I talked to you probably last year. I, I knew what you represented. I knew what you stood for. I, I looked you up online and I had sent you an email. You knew what I stood for and what I was going to talk about. We got on the phone, it was like we had already met before.

Right.

Like, you never know. Like, you never know what that person has going on in their head when you sit down with them. You may find a new best friend.

Yeah.

That takes, you know, that, that's a goal of mine for my players. And, and another one would be, hey, every week I want you to write something down you want to learn. Well, what do you mean, Coach? What do you, you know, on the soccer field, is that a Maradona turn? Do you want me to learn? No, I want you to learn something new every week. It doesn't— I don't care if you want to learn about different cloud formations. Like, the idea here is that you fall in love with the process of learning. Yeah. Like, not necessarily the fact that I want you to learn about CloudFormation, but if you go out there and find something, seek something out that you want to learn about and fall in love with the process of learning, like, that will help you in the future with whatever it is that you do, whether it's a soccer field, basketball field, whatever it is. If you can fall in love with that process, because when I was a kid going through school, I was a social butterfly. That's what I wanted to do. I wanted to play sports. and hang out with friends. I didn't care about learning until much later in life. I look back and I'm like, man, I really wish I would have spent more time, uh, developing myself and my education. And you— once, you know, life happens, you can't go back and fix that. So that's, you know, I want my kids to fall in love with the learning process. That's another goal for them. Find something you want to do every week to expand what your knowledge In whatever it is, and we have long-term goals and we have short-term goals. Then the bottom of this poster board is blank, and I gave all the kids a pad of sticky notes and a pen, and I said, "This is going to be up at practice every time you come here. I want you to look at the board before you go on the field, and if you have anything that you want to do, if you want to get better at, I want you to write it down here. It can be school-related, it can be soccer-related, whatever it is." And I've got the bottom of my board filled up. I've got kids that want to juggle ten times. They want to do a Maradona turn. They want to go out into a game and score a goal. They want to make the school play. That's awesome. That's giving ownership. That's teaching them ownership and teaching them to take control of their life and what it is they want to accomplish. To me, that's great. That's awesome. Yeah.

I mean, you're hitting on so many things there. You're teaching the skills that just transcend sport. You're teaching them to be self-motivated. You're teaching them to get outside their comfort zone, how to learn, how to fail. I think you and I spoke a lot about just embracing the idea of failure when we spoke in the past.

Right.

You're just helping develop those skills even if they quit playing soccer next year Absolutely. You're giving them skills and things that are going to be with them for the rest of their life. Trust me. Dude, you and I could keep talking here for hours. I know we could.

Absolutely.

How can people who are listening to you, Brett— is social media— what's the best way to get a hold of you?

Absolutely. You can hit me up on Twitter. I'm a huge Twitter fan. That's one thing without getting too much in the weeds, that I've found over the past year that there's a lot of people out there that are willing to help if you just let them know what it is that you are trying to believe in. So @BrettLegends is my, is my Twitter handle. I'm on Facebook if you're on Facebook. I don't know what my actual Facebook name is. It's just Brett R. Miller on Facebook. I know there's like a handle side of things. I don't really pay too much attention. Um, or they can get me at email at sgt.brett— that's with 2 Ts— brett.miller@gmail.com. And like I said, I, I could talk about this kind of stuff for hours. And, um, I mean, I had more stuff on my paper that we could chat about.

Um, part 2, Brett. Part 2.

Part 2. Let's do it.

I love it. No, uh, I'll make sure I I'm going to include your Twitter handle in the description for this podcast.

Awesome.

So if you're listening, you can just go to the description page, people, and we'll have Brett's Twitter there. Brett, you've shared so many really, really practical inspiring ideas today. I mean, trust me, I'm taking notes because some of the things that you're doing with the club are so out applicable and just really, really, really powerful. So yeah, some amazing things and keep it up. I can't wait to keep connecting and seeing what you do from here.

Absolutely. I want to thank you for your time and giving me this opportunity. It was a live yes and moment for me.

You're the man, man. I appreciate it, Brett. Thanks.

Awesome, sounds good, Travis. Thanks a lot. Thanks.