Coach Paul Assaiante – Leading People to Greatness (Capital Allocators, EP.307)

27:15And we've changed that. For us, it's just helping them understand how beautiful the differences are. And to me, the two largest differences in our program are socioeconomic. When kids graduate from here, we have an area called Tent City, dozens of tents down there. My guys are in the tent. They've got some beers, some pizza. The tent next to them has ice sculptures and caviar. And so we're just breaking down that socioeconomic thing. The second thing is the religion. Religion is a huge factor. Not so much color, but the religion. And the reason it is, when I wake up in the morning, I look in the mirror at an ugly old man, but I see myself as a white man in society.

28:02when Ziad wakes up in the morning and he looks in the mirror, he sees a Muslim. That is how important his religion is to him. So we talk about the differences. Isn't it interesting? We're coming upon Ramadan where you won't eat in daylight or drink for 30 days or 40 days, whatever it is. We're now in the middle of Lent. Isn't it interesting? Supposedly Christ went out into the desert for 40 days and 40 nights. I made the ultimate sacrifice for Christ. I gave up chocolate. And we laugh and we joke about the differences. What we find is that the differences are really what bind us together. One interesting story, when 9-11 happened, we didn't know when the next shoe was falling.

28:46We were under siege. At Trinity, there were so many kids who had family members, brothers, sisters, neighbors, friends who died in 9-11. And when you looked at the screen all day long and the images that were being shown, they looked like my players. I had a boy with headdress. He was a Sikh, young man from Pakistan. And the president called us into his house and he said, you have to make a promise to me. He said, we don't know what's going on. We're under attack. Promise me you will go nowhere where there is drinking happening, which is a brilliant thing. You're around someone that lost someone that's now drunk.

29:25God only knows. Now nothing happened. But that was one of those days where I realized, oh, these kids really are different on this campus. And it's been pretty interesting. What are some of the situations where it didn't work? Early on, we faced a tremendous amount of prejudice. It's interesting. We had a young man on our team from Lahore. Anytime we flew, it got to the point where he would simply get off the plane and go directly to the area where they interrogate you. He didn't even stop. He just went straight there because he was always picked to do that. And it got to the point where, my God, what are we doing?

30:04This is the model citizen student athlete. We had a young black man from Harare, Zimbabwe, and he is now doing amazing things in the world. And we were playing at one of the Ivy League schools, and I was standing next to a 120-year-old man wearing a bow tie with his school colors. And my guy was wearing lime green sneakers. And this gentleman looked at the boy and he looked at me and he said, I say, coach, why is he wearing those colored sneakers? And I said, well, I think he likes to express himself. He likes to be a little different. And he looked at me and said, but he's black, as if that wasn't difference enough.

30:44And we faced that as we went through, and now it's changed. Thank God. And how about managing within the team some of the challenges of bringing those diverse people together? Oh, it blows up every so often. Initially, I just thought Pollyanna approach, it's all fine, never a problem. When it ignites, it ignites hard. One of the things I really focus on with these boys is learning to let other people be right. When they're sitting around on a Saturday night and they're drinking is when I'm sleeping with one eye open because they get aggressive. Things happen. And invariably, that blows up the family.

31:22So we have to monitor that closely. one of the things we talk about in the program is taking back the night. And what we tell the young man is you are probably the biggest athletic stars on campus. You're leaders. Be leaders. If you're out and you see a teammate maybe moving into a dangerous situation, don't look the other way. Additionally, if you see anyone in the student body who looks like maybe they're getting over-served or looks like maybe there's a fight that's starting to brew, get engaged. So we've focused on that a lot. I'm curious, this blend of the individual sport and a team is something we see a lot in money management.

32:03How do you get the stars to buy into the team concept? It's a good question. I believe in a rite of passage. I believe in seniority. It's a meritocracy on the team. If you come in as a freshman and you're the best player on the team, you're going to play number one as a freshman, but you're going to be reminded that entire year that you're the lowest form of life on earth. And you know, oh, look, my train needs to be taken up. You'll do that voluntarily, right? Of course. Now, we don't want to be hazing people and that sort of thing, but I'm a big fan of that. And they ultimately buy into that idea.

32:41That's a very good thing. So we had an example this year, we had a young man on the team who the players on the team thought, you know, he might be the weak link. And he was a senior. And then we had a young man who was a sophomore who was a world-class player, but was battling some mental health issues. So he played some and he didn't play some. The team thought this one person maybe was a little weak. And now it's the week of the Nationals. And I said, okay, man, you two are going to play each other. And you can imagine the pressure on the senior. They went out to play. The young sophomore won the first two games.

33:15The senior won the next two games. And in the fifth game, the sophomore won the game 12-10 in the fifth. I sat them both down and I said to the sophomore, if you had rolled him, we'd be having a different conversation. But you barely beat him, which tells me you're both very even. The senior's playing in the national championships. And when you're a senior, you'll remember that. That senior went 3-0 on the weekend. Through the process of those challenges, and certainly I was thinking about when you're talking about the 9-11 story, there's always this question of that big battle, someone being afraid.

33:55Your book titled Run to the War would love to hear what that means and how you've imparted it on your teams. We are constantly talking to each other about how to manage every moment. And their young minds, they're very often not able to frame those moments. And very often, those moments are unconscious for them. I'm a neurotic mess. I see my shrink. He laughs at me all the time. And one day I was there and he said, you know, coach, I got to tell you, you're the weirdest dude I've ever met because I've never met a person who is so conflict avoidant. And yet on Saturdays, you take these boys directly into conflict.

34:37How do you reconcile that? And he said, so the story I'm going to tell you is the story of Run to the Roar, which is a true story. And then Africa lions hunt in packs. They take with them the oldest female of the pride. By this point, she's old and infirmed and cannot catch her own food, but she's got the deepest roar. So if you can picture her being positioned in the middle of a field and then several hundred yards away, there's the bush. The lionesses hide in the bush, but the prey are between the bush and the old lady. And when she roars, the prey run away from the roar to their death. So what is the message?

35:17You go at the problem. Go at the problem. You find out it's a toothless old lady. It's not what you made it in your mind. So when they come into my office 10 times a day, and I can tell in their eyes they're struggling with some thorny issue. Coach, my father's car got towed and I don't know how to tell him I was illegally parked. Things like that. I always ask the same rhetorical question, which is, what's the worst that can happen? What's the worst that can happen? And the more often you say that and they start to realize they're just making themselves actors in their own drama. It's really not that bad.

35:54It's not going to be that bad. It's going to be okay. hey, go at the problem. I buy them little books and I make them take notes every day because they don't do that anymore. And I said, absolutely have your notes for the day. And when you go to bed, look at your list for the next day. You wake up much more ready to go. And whatever that is on that list that's your least favorite thing, do it in the first thing. Get it out of the way. Because what we do is we push it to the next day and that thing gets bigger and bigger in our minds. So running to the roar is learning how to address your fears, even though you may not know what they are.

36:32That is what we do every minute of every day here. And so going into match day, they're not quite as afraid as what's the worst that can happen. We won 252 consecutive matches. That's ridiculous. And I'm not taking any credit for that. But I remember one of the boys from Bloemfinton, South Africa came into my office. Literally, he was so frightened, it never occurred to me. He said, coach, what's going to happen when the streak ends? And I said, well, you know, when the streak ends, rivers are going to run red and frogs are going to fall out of the sky. Nothing's going to happen. We'll be fine.

37:07We'll get up the next day and start a new streak. Even at the Nationals last week, before the tournament, I said to the guys, if there was ever a team that deserved success this weekend, it's you. You've done everything right. You're healthy. we've managed every minute perfectly. I am hoping for you success because it's not my success. I'm hoping for you success. No matter what, tomorrow the sun will come up. And it freed them up because it's interesting. I coached tennis here for 24 of my 30 years here. It was so much fun coaching tennis because except for the kids and their parents, not that many people cared about tennis here.

37:47Whereas squash, it means more to so many than it even means to us. It's our thing. We're going to take a quick break in the action to tell you about SRS Aquium. Want to make sure your M &A processes aren't stuck in the past? Partner with a company that's been defining the future of dealmaking for nearly two decades instead. When it comes to M &A innovation, SRS Aquium has reshaped the way that deals get done, streamlining processes for maximum efficiency and minimum headaches. Professional shareholder representation, online M &A payments, digital stockholder solicitation, SRS Aquium pioneered each and continues to set the bar for game-changing innovation.

38:36So leave the days of disjointed deal management behind and define your future with SRSAquium, the smartest way to run a deal. Learn more at SRSAquium.com. That's S-R-S-A-C-Q-U-I-O-M.com. And now, back to the show. I'd love to dive into how it got to be that way. How did you go into this sport that you then knew something about and turn the program into such a perennial winner? It's really an interesting story. What it says to me is a bad idea will never work, no matter how hard you work, and a good idea can never fail. So when I first came here, I was just thrilled to be rolling out the balls to the boys from mainline Philadelphia and Brookline, Massachusetts, Brooklyn, New York, and that's what we were doing.

39:31And we were slightly better than a 500 team during my time. One day, the president of the college, Evan Dobell, called me into his office. And this meeting honestly took about three minutes. And he said, coach, you play against the Ivy League schools. You don't ever win them, but you play against the schedule that I would like to be able to brag about. He said, so tell me, where is the best squash players in the world? And I said, they're in foreign lands, which was hard for me to admit because I was the US national coach. He said, great. He said, go out and find the best and the brightest and understand that we're not going to give away financial aid that they're not qualified for and understand that we're not going to make academic compromises, but I want you to go out and find the best and the brightest.

40:17And he said, you're dismissed. And I got up to walk out of his door and he said, coach, and I looked back and he said, don't screw this up. And so off we went. I can honestly tell you that change, for better or worse, changed the course of squash forever. However, this past weekend in the elite 16, there were two US players. He saw the formula. He wanted to be able to walk into a board meeting where there was somebody there from an Ivy League school and say, hey, we stuck it to you this weekend. So how long did it take to get from a 500 team to a championship team? Well, it took us two years to make it to the finals.

40:56And you only need nine players. We already had nine good players. and then we bring in three world-class international players. And it was interesting. We beat Harvard at home in a dual match for the first time in history. It was otherworldly. And then the last match of the year, we went down to play Princeton in a dual match and they beat us. So we go down back to Princeton the following weekend to play in the national championships and we have Princeton in the semifinal. I get a phone call from Evan's secretary. He says, coach, Evan's in California. He wants to know when the finals are. I said, you have to tell Evan we just lost to Princeton and we play them in the semifinals.

41:37She says, okay, hold on. And then she goes over and she talks to Evan. She comes back and she says, Evan wants to know when the finals are. I was like, oh my God. He flew in. We beat Princeton in the semifinals and we lost to Harvard 5-4. And he came up to me with tears in his eyes. And he said, coach, could you imagine if we ever won one of these? That year, he left to take another job. We won 13 in a row. How did the complexion of your team and the other teams you competed against change such that you were able to win so many titles in a row? I have a friend who was in finance, and he told me one time, there are three I's in life.

42:18There are innovators, there are imitators, and there are idiots. The interesting thing was, and I apologize for telling you this as a Yale graduate, but the Ivies, rather than saying, wait a minute, what's going on here? It became a pity party. Woe is me. They're bringing in illiterate people. They're cheating. We weren't doing any of those things. So instead of saying, what is the secret sauce here? It was like, woe is me. Woe is me. Woe is me. Then one day, they said, wait a minute. not only can we do this, we can do this better than them. Who wouldn't come to Harvard? So now it's changed. And for the last few years, we haven't been that competitive.

43:02For us to make the finals this past weekend is otherworldly. How have you learned to coach your kids about losing? Celebrate it. Absolutely celebrate it. It's awesome. That's your moment. When you're winning, you're not learning anything. When you lose, the train stops. Everybody comes out with their magnifying glasses. What just happened here? You know, oh my God, were we good enough? Did we train? Were we sick? What happened? Why did this? And then you make your adjustments. It's the perfect story. And to me, that's where champions are made. The single most important thing in life to be successful, in my opinion, is resilience.

43:45And if you're not failing, what are you going to recover or two. It's like I tell my seven-year-old, you cannot show bravery if you're not first afraid. You cannot be resilient if you don't first fall. Cute story. When I was coaching at Army, I had a great player on our team who's just recently retired as a four-star general. And he was playing number three for us. And he had an amazing year. He was maybe 14 and three. And we go down to play at the Naval Academy, which is all that matters in life. And they've got a kid with like a six and six record and their kid was a lefty and their coach outcoached me on that day.

44:22And that boy hit every single ball, every single ball to my guy's backhand and my guy lost. And he was devastated. And I went up to him and I said, Rich, what I learned today is the importance of dominating the backhand cross court exchange. And he said, that's great coach, but I'm graduating with a loss against the Naval Academy. And I said, well, fairy tales don't always come true. A week later, we're going to the singles championships and he looks at the draw in the second round. He's got the Navy guy and he walks out onto the court and he shakes his hand and he says, this just proves that there really is a God.

44:57And he just pummeled him off the court. I'll give you a business story. I was working as a consultant for a company and I went up to speak to the company and talk to all the partners. And as I was leaving, one of the young partners came up to me and he said, I'm sure you're a nice man, but I'll probably never talk to you. I said, okay. He said, I don't know what you do and you have no idea what I do. So why would we waste each other's time? I said, that's fine. So a few months later, I get a call and says, we're having a bit of a crisis. It's a Sunday. Can you come up for this meeting? So I drive up and all the partners are sitting around this table.

45:35And at the end of the table is this young man, and he's just getting skewered. And apparently, he'd made an investment that failed. And I'm being a luddite like I am. They're going at it and going at it. And after a while, I raised my hand and I said, can I ask a question? And I said, yeah. And I said, didn't you all participate in this decision? Well, yeah. So then why are you killing him? So as I was leaving to go to my car, he came running up to me and he had tears in his eyes. And he said, you stood up for me. I said, I didn't. I questioned the process. About two months later, I get a phone call in the middle of the night and he says, coach, I have to call you to tell you I hit the mother load today.

46:12I said, that's great. I said, but why are you calling me? And he said, if I'm going to cry on your shoulder, then I also want to share in the success. What differences are there when you're coaching your college team compared to these higher levels like the national team or team tennis, the professional tennis players? I also do some work with the Patriots. Belichick is a very good friend of mine and they're not in the business of education. This is business. So there's a big difference in that. It was always interesting when we'd have world team tennis and these amazing players on the team, nobody in the stands were there to see me and it was very clear and that was fine.

46:51You asked a question earlier about the importance of practice and I tell the boys this all the time. We'd play a world team tennis match and then there would be autographs and all of that going on and then we'd have a team meeting before we'd go to the hotel. And what we would meet about was the next day. And the first thing they'd put on the schedule was practice. And they would build the day out from there. Hey, we're practicing at two, therefore we're having lunch at this time. I can do my PR work all around practice. When Monica Sellis was playing, I would walk up to her and I'd say, Monica, would it be okay if I suggested something?

47:25And she'd say, sure, coach. And I'd say, well, you know, you've got two hands on both sides. And I'm noticing that Lakova's really pulling you wide to the forehand side, so why don't you? And then she'd look at me and smile and go back on the court. Sometimes she would listen, sometimes she wouldn't. With the US national team, it was a little bit tricky because I was really a part-time coach. So the only time we'd be together was when we were getting ready for a world championship or something like that. So I didn't really have the full credibility. I was more of a manager than I was a coach. I needed to be careful not to overstep my limits.

48:01You know, to me, a coach is like a referee or an athletic trainer. It'd be good if nobody knew you were there that night, but a lot of people make it all about themselves. What have you learned about coaching that you wish you could give yourself tips from when you first got here? That it's not all about you. As a matter of fact, it can't be at all about you. You saw when you came into my office, there's 17 national championship rings up there. When I retire and walk away, I'm leaving those 17 national championship rings. Those belong to the college. Yes, they're my size, but that's the college that won those, not me.

48:39I wish I could have taken myself out of it early, but I had that need because of the imposter syndrome. How did that play out in ways that you coached and led your teams then compared to now? Well, I was probably not giving them enough space, enough room. I was probably a little too demanding because it was about me. I've learned now to provide them that space. It's much better now. The balance is better. What have you seen as the application of what you've learned as a coach and what's different in the business environment? I think they're much more similar than they are different. Again, hearkening back to Billie Jean, not pretending to be something you're not.

49:22Usually when I speak to these companies, I go in in sweats because I don't want them to know that I can't afford a nice suit. And I also am a big fan of self-deprecation. So I tell a lot of funny stories at my expense, but mostly everybody's trying to find a way to make the organization successful and trying to understand how to get the most out of people. I don't think that's that different. I'll speak at a retreat and very often the CEO will get up and they'll have a slideshow and he'll talk about, well, this was fourth quarter earnings and this is our goal for first quarter earnings and this is our North Star and blah, blah, blah.

50:01When I get up, I'll say, well, that's all well and good, but I believe it's nothing but people. If you really take care of your people, they'll take care of the business side of things. I have never met an athlete that's playing their sport while holding the scoreboard clicker. And I think that is really critical. One of the interesting things that I have found that I think is a challenge for companies is very often I'll come across companies where you have super bright people sitting in a room trying to figure it out. Instead of get out of your chair, walk down the hall and ask the question, you save yourself so much time, so much more effective.

50:44And I don't know what it is. They don't want to do that. And I think that's a big difference. Whereas I want my kids, I want to be speaking too much. We'll joke, you know, coach is having a meeting to decide when we're going to have the next meeting. And that's not far from true, but total transparency. That idea of transparency, you wrote about this in your book when it came to challenge ladders on your team. You'd think, hey, the best player wins or the story you just told, hey, the senior actually lost, but you made the decision that he was going to play. What are some of those examples of where you had transparency on decisions, but from the outside you would say, hey, that wasn't an obvious decision?

51:27We try to hold the challenge system in its purity because if they're up there really getting after each other, and then your actions on the other end show that, well, that wasn't really that important, then you're not going to get full effort out of them. So I want them going up there and battling. And I want them to earn their spot through that head-on competition. And I'm fortunate, you know, I don't know how the lacrosse coach or the soccer coach does it. You're making subjective decisions out there. In the swimming pool, there's a clock. In the squash court, there are two people playing against each other, winner moves on.

52:04And we try to stay with that. Sometimes it doesn't work. An example is some people just play better in practice. So you'll have a number two player who's beaten people below him. But in competition, the number three player never loses. Then we'll sit down and say, the ladder is supposed to reflect the actual strength of the team in competition, we're going to move the number three player above you because he's proven in competition he's the better player. So the other challenging thing, of course, somebody gets injured or somebody gets hurt. How do you bring them back in? And the system doesn't work in that regard.

52:45So if you're injured, you're playing number three and you get injured and you're out for two weeks. If I'm watching you play, I would say, well, you know, maybe he's playing about number nine level right now. Let's put them at number nine. That's considered stacking. That's illegal. I have to bring you back at the number three spot, which is a problem because what if I bring you back at three, but you're only 50 % of yourself from before. You got to play number three and that looks like I'm stacking there. So it's a very tricky one to the point where we now are supposed to put online challenge match results open to the entire league.

53:22So you know, oh, this guy's playing number one because he's beaten this person and this person. Interestingly enough, I consult for UNC Tennis. And as best I can tell, at the Division I Tennis, the coach and the team sort of decide what the lineup's going to be. And they're all very much at peace with that. But of course, they have world rankings or national rankings, so it makes it a little easier to make those decisions. You made reference to writing another book, and I was wondering if you'd give a little preview of what that book's about. My first book really had three themes, which was learning through sport, learning how to manage fear, and as an apology to my three grown children.

54:03One of the things I'm concerned about now is that as a society, our kids are not getting enough ownership over their journeys. So they are so afraid to fail that they will cheat to not fail. We're seeing more cheating than we've ever seen before. and tie that to the mental health issues post-COVID, it's a mess. This book is how to help people understand the importance of ownership. When a gymnast does a round-off back handspring, double backflip, and lands on their head, they don't come out with a magnifying glass and examine the double back. They go back to the round-off. Well, for us, we need to go back to the parents.

54:43And that's the answer. Let your children fail. I know it's hard, but if you want your child to be successful, that's got to happen along the way. You know, when I was growing up, if I came home with a progress report, my father would say, you know, what the heck's going on here? Honestly, now, if Susie Sunshine comes home with a progress report, the parents want to know how the teacher is letting her down. It's truthfully what's going on. So this has to stop. And I don't delude myself into thinking that a book is going to change the world, but it is an interesting thing. I had the honor to do a presentation with Jim Lehrer, who is the eminent sports psychologist in the world as far as I'm concerned.

55:31We were speaking at a prep school in the Philadelphia area to 500 parents, all of whom had children of almost college age, recruited young athletes. and only Jim could get away with this, but he stood up with a blackboard and he said, okay, I want you to play a game with me. First of all, when your child was born, what were the big three? Okay, hand goes up. I want my child to be healthy. I want my child to be happy. Okay, great. Those are your three. Now you decide you want your child to play an extracurricular activity, the oboe, lacrosse, whatever it is. What were the big three? My child to develop confidence through the activity.

56:12My child to learn how to play nice in the sandbox. He writes down the big three and he turns to the group and he says, so here's my question. When did you collectively lose your minds? And it was like, wow. But it's true. How did this become the ticket to a better college? I get it. I understand it. We want what's best for our child, but is that what's best for that human being in society down the road. One of the things I've always been curious about when you have so much success as a coach, just measured in terms of winning and losing, winning national championships, coming so close, what happens the day after a win or a loss?

56:56You go back to work. You go back to the business of evolving as a human being, helping people understand what just happened, helping them understand that it's never quite as good as you think it is, and it's never quite as bad as you think it is. To me, Ted, the paycheck is not the wins or the rings or the banners. It's the relationships with those people all through life. And it's amazing when they come back or when you're invited to a wedding or you're made a godfather of a child. That's the paycheck. We put a tremendous amount of value in what student athletes think about the program. At the end of the season, our players are going to be given an evaluationary form, evaluating my performance as a coach.

57:46And I go down to the athletic director's office and he hands me this packet and I thank him very much and I put it in the garbage pail. I don't care what a 19-year-old thinks, and half those kids weren't in the lineup. They shouldn't be happy. They should be working harder. I want to know what they think five years later. That's the paycheck. How do you think about managing your players differently today from 10 or 15 years ago when, as you said, the expectations are so different? It's really hard. Because I'm a dinosaur. or it's been difficult. The question you get asked always, every day, multiple times is why.

58:29And my knee jerk reaction is to want to say, because I said so. But you have to sit and explain to them why. And it's exhausting. Every new situation is a why and what happened there. Why are you making me do this? And that sort of thing. So it's different. These young people need to understand why, rather than saying, of course, Coach said it, so that's what we're going to do. So Coach, by the time this comes out, it'll be announced that you are stepping down after this incredible career. So what's next for you? I think the key to happiness in life is knowing your purpose. And one of the things I learned along the way was my purpose is messaging.

59:11So I would like to stay at Trinity, and I would like to continue helping with the messaging in different areas. I'd like to help with friend raising. I'd like to help be a liaison between the athletic department and admissions. And if someone has a superstar recruit, I'd like to be one of the stops on the tour because my daughter graduated from here and it changed her life. what I didn't want is I didn't want to be that person who stayed too long and someone said well he was a nice guy let's let him do that on his terms who was that for this is for the program and for the kids and I know the time has come it's a young man's job and also I have three children at home it's time for me to go home and pick them up from school and have daddy-daughter dinners.

1:00:06And I haven't done that. And it's time. All right, coach, I want to ask you a couple more questions before I let you go. What is your favorite hobby or activity outside of work and family? Don't have one yet. Looking forward to developing one. My favorite thing in life used to be to run. I played professional tennis. I played professional squash. If you told me I could go and do any of these activities, I would always choose go for a run. I just found that I could get to a head place that was different. Now it's hard for me to walk, but I'm going to start doing a lot of walking. I can't really read very much because of my eyesight, but maybe I'll learn how to putter around the garden a little bit, learn how to drown worms on a pond.

1:00:48I don't know. We'll see. What's your biggest pet peeve? Someone not applying themselves with what God gave them. I find that unforgivable. I can accept almost anything except a person not trying. And obviously, that's usually a product of them getting themselves so tied up mentally that they can't see straight. They don't even know they're not trying. But there have been times where I've taken student athletes across the street to the hospital to visit a child in a hospital bed and said, you know, this kid would give anything to be in your shoes. How dare you? I just think that's unforgivable.

1:01:26Which two people have had the biggest impact on your professional life? Firstly was my dad. I was raised with love and we would talk virtually every day. And when he passed away, it was like a cataclysmic starburst. I could no longer pick up the phone and call him, but I am awash in his essence everywhere I go. the interesting thing was he would always ask me what's next what's next what's next that wasn't the best thing for me i should have been able to say this is next right here this is enough then all of the coaches that i got to work with along the way had such a big influence on me because they had all learned so much and they had so much to share some of it was good and some of it wasn't good.

1:02:17Some of it applied to me and some of it didn't apply to me. Look, I've never had a creative thought in my life. Everything I know I've stolen from other people and I've had a lot of great people to steal from. What was the most challenging moment in your career or life? As I've told you, it's always not as bad as you think it is. What's the worst that can happen? What's the worst that can happen? Well, maybe 15 years ago, we received an anonymous packet Written in legalese, went to my president, charging us of 11 NCAA violations. And our president was not happy. He stuck his finger in my chest and said, I've fired people for less.

1:03:00And I called the chairman of the board and I said, I thought you were innocent until proven guilty. And he said, we have your back until we don't. That thing went on for a full year. They hired the biggest law firm. and every day I woke up not knowing what's the worst that can happen. Are they going to take away championships? Is this going to hit the newspaper? Am I going to be vilified once again, making myself the actor in my own brain? That was the worst year I ever went through because I just didn't know what was going to happen. So I couldn't answer the rhetorical question. And what happened at the end of that?

1:03:36They were all nothing. We had a young man on our team. His last name was Vargas. One of the first accusations was that this young person was playing in Columbia at a pro tournament in October. I call up the young man, were you down in Columbia playing? It's your name. No, coach, I wasn't there. Well, it says you were there. I've looked at the draw. There's a Vargas in the draw. I said, coach, that's my cousin. And one by one, these things washed away. But that was a brutal year. What teaching from your parents has most stayed with you? To be a kind and gentle person. It's the only rule we have in our house.

1:04:15Wake up and be a kind and gentle person. There's so much anger now in society. Don't get sucked into that. My father was an interesting man. He wasn't very successful by today's standards, but he was the kind of guy that could walk across the field and not leave footprints. He was just a kind and gentle soul. That's what we're all focused on trying to be better at. All right, Coach, last one. What life lesson have you learned that you wish you knew a lot earlier in life? That it's not about you. I wish I had known that earlier. I would have been a better coach and a better person. People ask you all the time, what would you change?

1:04:54I don't think I would change anything because I had to stumble and bump and fall, and I wish I hadn't hurt people along the way. but that's what made me able to do the messaging now. But I wish I had learned earlier that it's not all about me. Coach, thanks so much for sharing this incredible path and good luck in what's next. Thank you, my friend. Thank you. Thanks for listening to the show. If you like what you heard, hop on our website at capitalallocators.com where you can access past shows, join our mailing list and sign up for premium content. Have a good one and see you next time. Thank you.