How to Turn a Moment Into Momentum

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0:32Hello and welcome to another episode of the DuckDate Marketing Podcast. This is John Jantz. My guest today is Don Yeager. He's a New York Times bestselling author, leadership expert, and sought-after speaker. Deep experience interviewing world-class athletes, coaches, and business leaders, Don has distilled the secrets of high performance into a practical framework. His latest book, The New Science of Momentum, challenges conventional wisdom and offers a research-backed playbook for leaders who want to achieve sustained success. So, Don, welcome to the show. Hey, John. Thank you so much. Looking forward to it.

1:10Should we see how many sports cliches we can use in this? You know what? I don't know. I feel like I'm already in the bottom of the ninth. I mean, anyway, go ahead. So, well, just take it one question at a time. That's all you could do, right? So, speaking of cliches, you argue that momentum isn't just a cliche, it's a science. What made you tackle this topic? So, you know, like many of your listeners, probably, I was watching the Super Bowl a few years ago when the New England Patriots fell behind to the Atlanta Falcons 28 to 3. And the prognosticator said Atlanta had a 99.4 % chance of winning the game at that stage.

1:52Most of America turned the game off because it was over. And then suddenly, you know, Tom Brady runs, you know, 12 yards on third and eight. Tom Brady hadn't run 12 yards all season long, right? You know, that's not who he is. And one little thing after another started stacking up. And pretty soon, as we all know, New England created the greatest comeback in the history of the Super Bowl. And I watched and at the end of the game, Joe Buck said this great line. He said, New England has redefined the word momentum tonight. So the next morning I came in, opened up the whiteboard in my office, brought in the creative team that works for me and just wrote the words, how do you turn a moment into momentum?

2:34How can momentum be manufactured? Can we engineer it? Can we build it? Or is it we just have to wait on something good to happen? And that started an eight-year project interviewing the best leaders in the world and the worlds of sports, politics, the military, and business to try to understand how do they construct momentum. Yeah, let's talk a little bit about that because I think most people probably think in terms of like momentum, something you just get caught up in. Right. It takes you. It carries you, right? Right. And you are your truly. That can be true, by the way. Yeah. But don't wait on it.

3:08I was going to say, since your argument can be engineered, are there like triggers or things that you found that start, you know, that process? There are, actually. A big piece of it is, in fact, in the book, we actually built a model for how momentum can be constructed in your organization. And what's interesting is I used to think it always began with a spark, something that happened, right? What I grew to understand from talking to these great leaders is that there's an entire framework of effort that is created before the spark. And in that framework, the first thing you have to do is create the right culture, a culture where we actually aren't pitting teammates against each other, which happens too often.

3:50And you've got to recruit people who are both talented but can cheer for other talented people. And that's very hard to do as well. And then the third thing is there's actually an entire model of preparation that allows you to be mentally in the game when the spark occurs, which allows you to capture sparks that others miss. And we use great examples from great leaders in all three of those kind of pre-spark elements that teach you that you can actually then engineer the moment. And then as the moment comes, it could be small, but you can treat it as if it's large. And if you do so, you can actually, as we said, you can create momentum where other people might be sitting back and wondering, when's my spark going to happen?

4:39Yeah, it's interesting. You know, I think a lot of times, you know, people are like, oh, you were just in the right place at the right time. And there is a lot of truth to that, but it's also recognizing the right place, right? And taking action, isn't it? Yeah, in fact, so one of our great interviews, one of my favorite interviews in the entire book, we did 250 interviews with great leaders, was with a basketball coach named Buzz Williams. Buzz was the coach at Texas A &M last few years. He's now the coach at Maryland. But Buzz, all season long, off season, all off season long, you're walking by his office, you're one of his players, he'll say, John, get in here.

5:13and he'll pop open the laptop and on his laptop, he'll have a contest, a competitive contest that's being played. And it's often not in basketball, right? It could be women's volleyball. It could be softball, baseball, football. And what he wants is for the player to sit down. He opens up the laptop, hits play, and then he lets him watch six to seven minutes of the contest. Then he closes the laptop and he said, tell me exactly what is the time left in the game right now? What's the score in this very moment that I just closed the laptop and who has momentum on their side? And explain to me why you believe that.

5:54And what he wants is he wants to build within his players this this awareness, right, of what's happening around them. so that as something good happens, they are better in position to grab onto it, do something with it. You know, the business analogy of that would be, you know, those organizations, and there are plenty of them that are very good, that create what-if teams, right? A team of executives who sit and on a regular basis are asking themselves, what if? I mean, let's throw something crazy out there. What if the president of the United States decides to throw tariffs on every country in the world and half of our supply chain is gone.

6:38Well, that would never happen. Why are we even talking about that? But if it were to happen, what would we do? Right. What if our the CEO of our greatest competitor is suddenly caught on a big screen at a Coldplay concert, hugging up on his HR director? What if? I mean, that would never happen. Right. Nobody would ever do that. But the truth is, if you can start thinking about what if concepts, what it does, forget whether those are the exact same things that happen. The concept is that we collectively are constantly thinking about the world as our playing field. And when you're thinking about the world as your playing field, you have a greater opportunity to capture those moments when they come.

7:23So we've been talking about catching momentum and engineering momentum. What are some ways that you found that people actually, probably not intentionally, but actually kill momentum. Oh, well, one of the easiest ways to kill momentum is to not recognize it when it happens, right? So something comes along, an opportunity, and you sit and you're busy chuckling because you're thinking, how crazy is that? And instead of capturing and using the moment to your advantage, you're laughing about it and pretty soon the moment's gone, right? They're called sparks for reason. You know, they don't last unless you've built the kindling, which is all the work you do in advance, and you fan the flames, which is what you do after the spark takes hold.

8:06And so this idea that it's that you and but the other ways you can kill momentum, let's say you recruit people and that that are so eye centered that if I'm not the reason the good things are happening, then I'm not happy. And the way you discover this is the next time you as a group are celebrating someone on your team that just did something fantastic. They made a massive sale. They closed the deal. They dislodged the competitor. Look for the A players on your team. Where are they in that celebration? Are they at the front, high-fiving the guy or the woman that makes this deal? Or are they in the back browsing that, damn it, that should have been my deal, right?

8:51Should have been my opportunity. And you start to realize what you have. If you don't have people who can celebrate each other, you know, in the world of neuroscience, there's a whole, whole, you know, discussion around what are called mirror neurons, which is what, which is how, you know, we've all seen somebody walks into a room and yawns, other people suddenly start yawning, right? Mirror neurons are, we mimic a situation if we feel like we're connected to it. Well, if I feel like your success is to my detriment, then the mirror neurons in the room are actually quite negative, right? And people pick up on that.

9:32And suddenly the vibe changes. And that's a way to kill momentum, by the way. Were there any examples of people that you've spoken with over the years? Sometimes you have to make a change that is really hard because you sense, hey, the market's going this way. Or, you know, I remember talking to some folks in advertising in newspapers, you know, in the early days. Wait, newspaper? Yeah. I know. My kids still laugh at me that I still grab the New York Times when I'm going through an airport. But, you know, they were laughing in the early days of, you know, the web. And it's like this Craigslist thing's a joke.

10:08And, you know, it pretty much because they, you know, they wouldn't make the move early to say we got to kill classified ads and make them free because, you know, they're going to eat our lunch if we don't. And so sometimes, you know, grabbing that momentum or that opportunity that's obvious means you're going to kill the golden goose. You know, so how do you did you talk to anybody that really, you know, saw momentum as a real negative to begin with, but as where the market was inevitably headed? Well, yeah, momentum. I mean, if you're momentum is when you had the wind to your back, right? That's what momentum is.

10:44If you want positive momentum. So if you shift, if you fence, if you feel the wind is coming to your front, then you might need to turn and make a change. I mean, there are a couple of companies that we focused on who built momentum after pretty significant layoffs of employees. Like, they had to make the hard choices. But in order to get right for the market, in order to get right to be able to capture the next opportunity in the market, they couldn't be, they couldn't have it. So yes, uncomfortable as that was, it was the choice that helped them be ready for an upcoming opportunity to expand that opportunity and take it, create that wind to their back.

11:27Hey, you want to keep up on all things duct tape marketing, the stuff I read, the books, the people I interview, check out the duct tape marketing newsletter. every week we're going to send you out. We're going to keep you up to date on what's going on in the world of marketing. And just for subscribing, you're going to get our free chat GPT prompts that will allow you or assist you in the creation of marketing strategies and plans. So check it out. It's at dtm.world slash news. That's dtm.world slash news. How do you measure momentum? I mean, in some cases, there's certainly very tangible results like revenues up, things like that.

12:11But I suspect that some of it's sort of incremental. Is there a are there metrics, you know, that you can say, yeah, this lead this means we're getting we have momentum. No, because momentum at its core is a state of mind, right? It's a belief system. At its core, that's what momentum really is. There's a scientific version of momentum, right? Which you would, when you see, you know, a swinging of a pendulum or whatever, there's a scientific version of that. But in real life, momentum at its core is a belief system. So how do you measure belief system? By the number of people who are participating in it, right?

12:57If you're the leader and you're the only one that believes, you don't really have momentum because you need, as a group, you have to be able to move into moments. You have to, I mean, remember that question I wrote at the beginning, how do you turn a moment into momentum? And there was a lot of the preparation piece, having the right people on your team. You know, the recruiting piece is one of the few places in the book where we went with a negative as an example. And the story we share was, you may remember when Michael Jordan retired for the first time in the Chicago Bulls, you know for all those years Scottie Pippen had been his you know his Robin right he was Batman and Scottie was Robin and Scottie Pippen kind of objected to that he really wanted to be Batman he believed he was worthy so suddenly Jordan's out of the picture and Scottie is Batman and that first season Scottie is Batman is okay good but when they get to the playoffs they're in a key game against the New York Knicks two seconds left Phil Jackson calls a timeout Scottie Pippen's like, I'm Batman.

14:08I'm going to take the shot right now to put us over the top because that's what I've been waiting for. Jackson designs a play for Tony Kukoc to take the shot. Scottie Pippen refuses to get off the bench. He's like, I'm not even going to the game. If you didn't call the play for me, I've waited all these years. Now it's my turn and you're going to give the shot to Tony Kukoc? And Pippen refused to get off the bench. No one on his team ever saw him the same way again. In fact, to this day, if in the NBA you commit a very selfish act as a teammate, it's referred to as pulling a Pippen, right? Because Scottie Pippen was so absorbed with the idea that it had to be his.

14:52You know, obviously in the NBA, you picked players, you contract with them. So it's not like you can dump Pippen. But what they saw immediately was that he was not and could not be the leader of that team. And so, you know, when you're picking people to put on your team, pick people who can be happy when somebody else does well, as just as they would be happy if they did it as well for themselves. So, you know, the thing about sports is, I mean, there's a winner and there's a loser, right? In a game. In business, it's not quite so clear. I would argue that you You may not, there's maybe not a scoreboard that is broadcast to the world, but most often internally, we know the scoreboard.

15:37I was working with a company last week, a massive international company, and they can look at many of their products that they are currently in the marketplace with and where they were once the leader of the pack in that product line. Many of them, they are not anymore. Now, to the world, they're still a pretty, they're a fantastic brand. Everybody knows who they are. But internally, they know they have lost momentum, right? They have lost that others are taking their space. There are scoreboards. They just may not be always as public as we're used to in sports. So you, a great deal of your career and your very successful books have been as a biographer.

16:21Would that be the right term? Yeah, I'm a teammate with Deion Sanders and all kinds of other people that help tell their stories. So for this book, you probably didn't go live with any CEOs for a couple of months or anything. What's been your tool to kind of extract these stories from some of the folks? I think what happened was many people were fascinated by the curiosity of the idea that, again, you know, in sports, we see momentum. Oh, everybody. The other team has momentum, right? Oh, we have momentum. Yeah, broadcasters say it all the time. Exactly. It's probably, it's as great, it's as used a word as there is in broadcast.

17:00But in business and in other places, it's known but not studied. It's not been studied. And so the idea that I was coming at it, and that I was coming at it from four verticals, right? I mean, because we look at it, some of the greatest generals on the planet sit down with us to talk about how you build momentum into your game, into your battle plan, right? How do you create small victories to win momentum? And then business, some of the great business leaders in politics, James Carville, Karl Rove sat down with us to talk about how do you build momentum into a campaign to win an election? You want to peak at the right time, obviously.

17:40And so all of these were just fascinating conversations. And when people find out who else you're talking to, most people of significance kind of want to be in. They want to be in that conversation. So, oh, wait, you got, I'd like to talk next, basically. So if somebody is listening to this, the leaders listen to this and they want to make it a part of their culture, because I think I hear that as much as anything. You know, you've got to get as many people to believe, you know, well, that's probably the definition of culture. Is there a single habit or ritual that you'd tell somebody, OK, you have to start this week?

18:15I think what you have as a habit among those that, again, I'm just the, I'm the voice of the people that I had the chance to interview, was you speak truth into the conversation every week. If people start thinking that you're blowing smoke, that you're spinning the numbers, that you're creating, like the company I was talking about last week, if the CEO were to walk in and say, guys, we are right on the edge of just kicking the world by the tail, everybody in the room would know the CEO was not telling the truth. So they were either disconnected from the truth or a liar. And you want to be neither of those things if you're a leader.

18:53And so one of the most important things you have to do every week is speak truth into the situation so that you can then create a vision that others believe is possible. And that's where you begin to create that belief system. And I imagine for a lot of leaders, that's hard because they're looked up, you're supposed to have all the answers. You're like taking us someplace great, right? And so for them to admit, I don't have all the answers or maybe things aren't going like we thought, I mean, can be really tough. It can be. But the alternative is an absolute loser. Well, Don, I appreciate you taking a few moments to stop by the Duct Tape Marketing Podcast.

19:35Is there someplace you'd invite people to? I know you have your own podcast. Corporate competitor. Yeah. Love people to listen to and then obviously find out about the new science of momentum. Yeah. You know, just donyeager.com and D-O-N-Y-A-E-G-E-R.com is the best place. And because I know a lot of people misspell my last name, I own all iterations of my last name on the internet. And so, yeah, I welcome your listeners to the conversation. Awesome. Well, again, appreciate you stopping by and hopefully run into you again one of these days soon out there on the road. Good, John. Thank you.

20:18We'll see you next time.