Your Winning Team Culture with UFC and NFL coach Martin Rooney

0:28Welcome to the Big Success Podcast. all of the things, the NFL, you name the sports that he's trained in. But on top of that, all the books he's written, the companies he's built, and on top of that, as a trainer in the UFC of the winningest fighter of UFC history. This man has it all. You are going to love his view on success, his stuff on leveling up. Phenomenal, phenomenal bits and pieces in there. Take lots of notes. I think you're going to need to listen to this one twice. Martin Rooney, his book High 10, his latest book, Coach to Coach. These are the things that we got to keep reading, keep learning if we want big success.

1:06Dive right in. This is Martin Rooney. Martin, I got to ask you a question that I start every podcast with. How do you define success? Like what is success to you? Well, Brad, I am so glad I'm on here today because until I knew that was going to be a question I was going to be asked, I don't know if I really defined it for myself. And for all the listeners, I think immediately you think, oh, success, it's about money or wealth or freedom or my job or my career. And what I really discovered is that the best line I can say is success is holistic. And when we say holistic, it means there are parts of something that are all interconnected where I think to be successful, you've got to be successful in every one of those areas.

1:55And the areas that I kind of define for myself would be whether you call it career versus calling, there's got to be this career or calling success. You've got to have success in the health arena because obviously if you don't have your health, who cares how much money you have? you've got to have success in the areas of relationships again man you can have become the biggest guy in your industry but if you lose your family i consider you a failure right and then in the areas of wealth whether you say fortune or freedom and then in the area of your whether it's spiritual we'll talk about this today maybe achievement versus entertainment And then the last piece, success, there's got to be some kind of legacy.

2:43Like, what did you do that impacted someone else? And those would be my cornerstones or those were the areas that I defined in a holistic approach. But I'm hoping that that helps the listener investigate, wow, what are mine? What would be mine? And then what would be my highest levels in each area? So was it always that way, though? like when you go back to the early training days with the Gracies was, you know, obviously you've, you've defined that over a lifetime, I guess. Yeah. So obviously success. And I think we're going to talk about leveling up today and I'm going to be my definition of that, which I think is very interesting, but it's just become, as you grow, you become aware.

3:28Remember when I started with those guys and started training professional athletes, I'm a kid in my twenties and Hey, I'm a father of four in my fifties. Now there's a lot that has happened in terms of my awareness of what success really means. So I think when I'm in my twenties, I think success means, wow, I'm training these guys. I'm making money. And I wrote my first book. Now I'm much more concerned with how am I going to leave this world better than I found it. And that's personal growth. That's growth over a lifetime. And it evolves. And if everybody can hear that today, so if you're 20 listening to me now, I'm going to give you the keys to the kingdom, make it happen not only faster, but not make the mistakes I made along the journey.

4:15So where do you think you chose success? Like, was it something that was inbred in you? Was there a moment that it happened? Where did success become your choice? I was thinking a lot about this. And it's pretty interesting. I think everybody's got this origin story. And mine, hey, I was from a blue collar family. My parents both worked. I was a latchkey kid, not feeling so great about myself. And I really lacked control. But what I see now And what shaped me was I lacked mentorship. And I'll never forget that my grades were never that great. You know, I was really pretty mediocre at best. And it was in fifth grade, fifth grade.

4:59So I'm about 12 years old. And this teacher said to me at the end of the school year, he said, hey, Martin, you got five A's and two B's in the final marking period. It's the best I ever saw you do. But and listen very carefully, Brad. But he said, you could get straight A's. Did you know you could do that? Just those short words right there. Did you know you could do that? And he doesn't know how he impacted me. But no, I didn't know I could do that. And the minute that somebody gave me permission to be great, I just went on the attack. And I never got a B again in my life. That's all the way to through three degrees, two of them at a medical university.

5:41and ever since I have never said to myself that I can't do it I said do you know you can do that now what you got to do is find the strategies and do the work and you'll figure it out and so that was this hinge point right like those small hinges that swing big doors that was the one that I think was the change for me athletically academically spiritually all of it and uh and I gave myself permission to say I could be great at something too. You know, somewhere in that, you know, 10 to 20 age, I find that a lot of people get someone just push them to success, give them permission for success, ask them to be a success.

6:23And I think that I'm, you know, I hope through this podcast, we're giving a lot of people that as well. What is the Martin Rooney formula for success? Like how does success happen? How do you believe it happens? Well, it's, I've got it pretty crystallized down. And for everybody listening, I speak around the world on these concepts. I just never, I never presented say on success, but if I were to, but a lot of my philosophy, whether it's athletic success, academic success, it's all the same. And we're going to make this real simple for everybody. I put it down into, It's just four letters. It's an equation.

7:02And it's acts. So, A, C, T equals S. So, A times C times T equals S. And what does that stand for? Actions multiplied by consistency multiplied over time equals success. And so, when you say, hey, what's my formula? It's just take successful actions consistently over time. What's the real, I guess, definition of that? It's habits. It's, you know, so what are your habits are going to either determine whether you're successful or not. That could be as simple as how you eat. It could be how you train. It could be what you do every day at work. That little bit of reading every night. But my secret has been I am not smarter than anyone else.

7:46I know that. I was not born with different genetic gifts. But what I have done that few have done is over the last 40 years, I've taken consistent action when most people gave up. And at the end of those, say, 10 or 20 or 30 years, they either call you world expert, world champ, world best. And that has been what I have aspired to be in multiple industries and had some really cool success there over the last period of time just from that simple, simple equation. So let's break that down just for a second. Let's start with the actions. How does one actually find that the actions they're taking are the right actions?

8:28Here's what I would say. And it's almost like you're reading my mind there. Here, you ready? The breadcrumbs are already there. Find the person who is doing what you want to be doing and find whether you call it the actions or the strategies that they are employing, learn them, and then reproduce them. It's not hard. You know, there are any biography you could read of whoever's doing what you want to do. It's all there. And soon as I discovered that, it was like, oh, my gosh, if I want this and this person has that, then I have to do what they do. I have to have better strategies. And I, from a very young age, went on the hunt for strategies.

9:13So I like to call myself a strategy monster where I'll be like, oh, how do you do that? Down to, if anybody looks at my Instagram, I have started chainsaw carving in the last year and a half. And I'm producing some crazy, crazy works that are in galleries now just because I sought out the best, learned how to do it. And now I can do it, too. And I had no background for that. So there is a it works every time. You just have to work it. And a lot of people don't. That leads to consistency then. What is the fundamentals in your mind of being consistent and doing that consistently? And I guess add that to time, staying consistent for a long period.

9:54Yeah. So here would be the challenge. Everybody I meet, they can do something for a short period and stick with it if they've got a goal. So you'll see the person that'll lose weight for 30 days, the person that'll work on their sleep for a week, the person who will start reading again. And then a month later, you ask if they're reading and they gave up. And it's just, man, it's these simple little actions repeated over time. If you were to boil me down, right, and say what might be the most critical word for success, I would probably say consistency because that's the piece that everybody lacks.

10:32It's just so, of course, you got to take great actions, but you got to do them again and again and again and again and again. And it's not any harder. It's just there's something that stops people from doing that. And over the last 30 years, I just whether it's my sleep, nutrition, reading, studying, growing, personal development, I just didn't stop where everybody else gave up. And yeah. So how do you find that then? But as a coach, you like a lot of people come to you or used to back when you were training a lot that come to you because you made them stay consistent. Is that part of being a great coach, I guess?

11:13Absolutely. And that's what we all need. Right. Like, so whether you want to call it accountability, how I define it like this is I say I want my voice inside their head at all times. They say I have to do this because I can't let my coach down. And that kind of brings it full circle where there was that one person in my life who became that voice that I've tried to be that first with all my athletes, then within my organization to where now the stuff that I put out there everywhere in the world, I'm trying to hold someone accountable, which is ultimately to get them to be more consistent over time to reach their goals.

11:51And yeah, it's so it's kind of interesting that the master of something doesn't take a simple or a big idea and make it more complex. They take a big idea and they make it really simple. And for everybody listening, you might say, oh, is it that easy? And I'm daring you. See, I'm being your coach right now. I'm daring you. Take six, take the actions, you know, you should be taking already for the next year. Very consistent. Watch how your life changes. So hang on, let's go. Let's flip it over then. How does failure teach success? Wow. And you want to know, and you're going to like this. So it sits here on my desk.

12:26I'm in my office right now. And this is my black belt in judo. In judo. It took me a decade to achieve it. Even with my degrees, I feel like I learned as much on those mats as I did in any academic hall, in particular about myself. but what I say a black belt represents when I teach is I say the black belt is not the person that made no mistakes or had no failures. The black belt is the person that made them all. They made mistake after mistake after mistake. They just didn't repeat the mistake. They learned from it. And whether you want to say leveled up, they grew, they eventually earned new belts, But this sits on my desk always as the reminder, not, wow, here's this belt around my waist.

13:18It's a reminder that I've got to constantly keep making mistakes or I won't grow. And down to cornering the most famous fighters, and I'll say this, Brad, we never really learned much from big victories. So I trained the winningest fighter in UFC history, Jim Miller. He just won a few weeks ago in Las Vegas in 23 seconds. He had an incredible knockout fight of the night. You know what we learned from that? Almost nothing. There's no feedback. Yeah, but in five-round war where he ends up losing and we see the flaws or we get this feedback about where we need to be better, even as hard as those losses are to digest, they end up being the things of greatest value, the things that shape you forward.

14:06So yeah, for everybody listening, if you're not failing often at something, you're not pushing hard enough and you're probably not growing. You're on the Big Success Podcast. I'm Brad Sugars. We're going to take a quick break and then we're going to come back with Martin and we're going to talk about leadership and team and culture and all the amazing things that he can teach. Training for Warriors here on the Big Success Podcast. There's never been a better time to become successful in life than right now. Creating success in your life isn't about chance. It's about learning what it takes to create a great life.

14:36And that's why Brad Sugar's put together 30X Life. You get his 30 years of success in 30 minutes a day for 30 days. You only get one shot at this thing called life. Let's build an amazing life for you. And we're back. It's big success. And Martin, team and team culture. How does a team create a winning culture? Well, and this is, if we were to tap into right now, what is my current, either whether you would say passion or the area that I'm exploring the most. It's the area of coaching and how that affects culture. And I wrote a book about it. The book is called High Ten. People are loving it. And in the beginning, like you said, I was working with teams.

15:18So you might say an athletic sports team, but I helped build a hundred location franchise in the sports performance industry that did not exist. But then my company, Training for Warriors, at its zenith before COVID, we had almost 300 locations in 30 countries around the world. And what I realized was it wasn't about the training. It wasn't about the workout. The strength was in the community. The strength was in the culture. And even though I was doing it, I didn't understand it. And I needed to create the blueprint for myself, what it meant and how I could engineer it. And so the answer for everyone that I will give that will make it very simple is that first, you have to understand what you stand for, what that team stands for.

16:06I like to call those the beliefs. Then you've got to figure out what behaviors you allow and what behaviors you don't and which ones you want to foster. And then culturally, your beliefs in actions carried out through the behaviors of all your people. And at the top of that is leadership. And we talked about failure previously. I'll tell you what, there has never been a greater leadership lesson for me. I've read every book on it. I've met with leaders from around the world. But when I experienced those few years of COVID and trying to hold my company together that I had built for 20 years and what that taught me about culture and leadership.

16:48Now, as we've come out of this, it was the most dark and horrible time during it. But now I couldn't be more happy for those scars of what it taught me and what it prepared me for for challenges lying ahead. So when you think about knowing what you stand for, knowing the behaviors and all that, how does that play out on a day to day basis in making the culture stronger? Well, so it's interesting. We made coins about it. And these are core values on the coin. I carry this with me at all times. And really, ultimately, what I'm challenging everyone right now, if you want to be successful, you have to know what you stand for.

17:28It's not just what you're shooting for, but what do you stand for? Because that's going to be your compass. That's going to direct you the way that you attempt to achieve it. So for instance, you've seen a lot of companies out there, they're successful, and then you find out they're stealing or cheating or whatever else, and then they fall apart. So the bedrock of your culture are the values that you stand for. And few people I've ever met, when I really sit them down and say, hey, tell me the five or six things you stand for so strong you'll die for it. Most of them look at me like I have two heads.

17:59They don't even know what I'm talking about. Right. Yeah. And so I would challenge everybody. If you want to be successful, you first have to do the deep work on yourself. Who are you? What do you stand for? And what is going to be the compass or the pathway that you will use to achieve what you want? And yeah, and that is the bedrock of your culture, because if it stands for nothing, you've heard it before, it will fall for anything. And so that is where I begin. whether you want to call it value standard, these are the rituals that eventually happen that define who you are and what your company is about.

18:36So how does that work in with the leadership philosophy of how you teach leadership? Yeah. So with leadership from a culture, it starts at the top. I call it a trickle down. So the person who has to embody the values the most is the person at the top, right? Right. And often that's not how it goes. Right. So we can't be an empty leader. I like to say you can't be a dentist with wooden teeth. So those values, I've got to embody them stronger than anyone else and then hold everyone accountable to them. So the minute I see somebody not doing what meshes with our culture. As a strong leader, I've got to be all over that.

19:19And I wasn't always like that. Like I had to learn that sometimes I'd be afraid. Oh, I don't want confrontation. I don't want to say anything. But now that I understand that my company is the most important thing in the world to me, not just that it feeds my family, but that it will be my legacy. Man, there is nothing more important than the brand right here. I can't have anybody jeopardize that. Right. So a great line is my culture will never be held hostage by someone that uses either the wrong behaviors or just because of time served or production. Right. And these are powerful, powerful concepts that, again, I'm spitting them out like they're easy.

19:58But man, they took me 30 years of suffering to learn. So let's talk about the other side then. Let's talk about the health and the fitness side of things. How do we succeed at health and fitness? How do we make sure that that's a big passion or a big part of our life? Well, here I'm going to, I am going to, this is a part of my philosophy that I think I've been speaking on around the world for the last 30 years, and I'm going to make it really easy. Everybody listening, you have to make a decision. Number one is health important. And you better understand that it is because if you don't have your health, nothing else matters, right?

20:37Like, so if you are sick and ill, who cares how much money's in the bank? Who cares how many Instagram likes you have because you can't enjoy it. And in order to achieve that health, instead of making it complex, make it real simple. And here we go. I say that you've got to make your health non-negotiable instead of expendable. And what do I mean by that? Sleep for me is non-negotiable. It is eight hours a night. I don't care where I am, what plane I'm on, what I have coming up or what show is on Netflix. I am getting eight hours because I know how important that is for my health. And if you don't understand it, you should read some books on sleep.

21:18That would be sleep. Nutrition is non-negotiable. I love this one. People will say, oh, I call it the most dangerous word in the English language. They will say, I can't eat right. I'm busy. I can't sleep right. I'm busy. I can't work out. I'm busy. And guys, I don't care how busy you are, it's no physically harder to put the right food in the hole under your nose than it is the wrong food, right? You just have to make it non-negotiable. And then when it comes into your training or your workout, I don't care what it is. It doesn't have to be that you are blasting yourself with some crazy hard workout.

21:56In fact, I would rather you do 30 or 40 minutes or an hour of walking every day than two hard workouts a week and you do everything else wrong. And that's coming from the fitness guy. So, but the overarching idea is you've got to make the dosages of those things non-negotiable. Just as if a doctor was prescribing you a medicine that could save your life. I'm doing it right now. Eight hours of sleep, eat the right foods, which by the way, you already know what they are. Don't act like you don't. And then get some regular exercise. And holy cow, not only will you live longer, you'll be there to enjoy your time with everybody else longer too.

22:37And that's my philosophy and I'm sticking to it. So final, final one I want to ask you about here then is if you were to take the best lessons of martial arts and condensed down, what are the top two or three things that the Gracies taught you all of that, the whole thing, what are the two or three philosophies that you think stand out that make it such an amazing part of what is in your life? Wow. That's a tough one. Well, here's what I would say. Number one, we talked about the black belt, right, today. And when I achieved mine, my, whether you call them senseis, teachers, mentors, coaches, they were all afraid because they said an American ideal is once you achieve the black belt, you think you're done.

23:27But the Japanese concept from judo is the black belt isn't the end. It's just the beginning. And one of the concepts that I have to remind myself is even though this is around my waist, I always have to keep a white belt around my mind. So you have to always be open to possibilities, more of them that exist and always be open to new lessons or essentially become a dinosaur. And that one, as I get older, it gets harder. Right. As technology changes, as there are more complex things that I have to continue to learn, it'd be easy to say, let me just do it the way I always did it. That worked. But that's probably the fastest way to fall behind.

24:04So that one was a big concept. And here's another one that really stands out for me. You're going to love this one. Are you ready for this one? I'm ready. It's important for everybody. Don't try to drown the guy that taught you how to swim. This is one that I heard in the dojo one day and it just had such a profound effect. So you're going to, everybody listening is going to work either for someone or within a company. And you're going to reach this level and say, I'm going to do this myself or nobody ever helped me. I'm going to do it my way. And then you might leave and then try to tear down all the people that helped you get where you are.

24:43So that concept, whether you call it loyalty, that concept of thanks or gratitude, I challenge everybody to never lose it. You may move on, you may move on, but never underestimate the stuff that you learned from somewhere else. And that's something I take great pride in that. Hey, other companies that I helped build, there is no ill will. I love those guys. I could have never been who I am without it. And I'm never going to try to tear them down. I'm only going to try to build them up. And I have been successful in this industry and kept all my friends just because of that concept. Right. And so you can move on, but, but never forget where you came from.

25:24And, and I, I'll tell you what, it's, it's, that's a human nature thing or whatever else, but interesting lesson that I got there. And then the final one I'll give everybody right now. Hey, when I was beginning in jujitsu, it's very uncomfortable to have somebody trying to choke you unconscious. When I started in business and building my own business, it's very uncomfortable to have to either go out on your own or whether it's developing copy, marketing, whatever it is you have to do, man, it's so uncomfortable and scary. But the idea that the martial arts gave me that maybe helped me move forward in every other aspect of my life is that I'm always challenging myself to get comfortable being uncomfortable.

26:08So I realized, wow, if I can, if I'm okay, if I'm cool with somebody trying to break my arms or choke me unconscious, then man, this marketing thing's not that hard. That stuff's kind of easy. That's kind of easy. Like really, you're going to complain you got to write a chapter or something right now in a new book, yeah, it's uncomfortable, but it's not impossible. And the more you do something, the more comfortable you will become. And yeah, now when things are uncomfortable, I dive into them instead of shy away from them. And that has always been another secret to my success. You're on the Big Success Podcast.

26:43Martin Rooney is with us, and we're going to be back and chatting about leveling up. Martin Rooney is an internationally recognized entrepreneur, fitness expert, sought-after presenter, and best-selling author. Martin's two newest books, High Ten and Coach to Coach, are helping to create better leaders, business, and team cultures around the world. To learn more about Martin Rooney, please visit trainingforwarriors.com. You're back on the Big Success Podcast, leveling up. Martin, what is your theory on how people level up, going from good to great? I love this one, right? And I think this is an important segue, just that idea, leveling up, leveling up.

27:23So if I said to everyone, hey, leveling up, what does it mean? And people say, you know, leveling up. And everybody says, you know, it gets this lip service. But unless you understand what it means, it's probably never going to happen. It's exactly how I attacked culture, coaching, even what you're doing with success, right? Success, until you define it, you don't know if you have it. And I think what happened to me is I kept hearing leveling up, leveling up, and I didn't even understand what it meant. And here is my definition. And maybe we'll use finance as an example for that. But I say leveling up is simply becoming aware of things that you weren't doing at a higher level, that if you did those, you would reach a higher level.