#76 Dr. Brandon Beck

Dr. Brandon Beck is an award-winning coach, teacher, and leadership expert with over two decades of experience in education and athletics. He is a highly sought-after Keynote Speaker and Leadership Coach who is dedicated to helping leaders cultivate unshakeable confidence in an ever-evolving world. His passion lies in empowering educators, students, athletes, coaches, and corporate teams by emphasizing the power of self-confidence as the foundation for strong leadership and a thriving team culture.

Brandon is the author of Into the Fire: Five Rules for Igniting a Leadership Legacy and Unlocking Unlimited Potential: Understanding the Infinite Power Within to Guide Any Student Toward Success . He hosts the Unlocking Unlimited Potential Stories Show, a podcast that amplifies the voices of inspiring leaders who are creating lasting impact across sports, education, and business.

A former semi-professional soccer player turned educator and speaker, he has worked with leaders at all levels, from NCAA programs to corporations and schools nationwide. His engaging keynotes and workshops are known for their authentic storytelling, interactive experiences, and practical strategies designed to inspire the next generation of leaders.

Transcript

SPEAKER_01 0:03

Coaches and athletic directors, it's Corbin Smith with MTTS Sports Group. Let me ask you a quick question. What are the biggest challenges that you face when it comes to leadership development and culture sustainability? At MTTS Sports Group, we have created a system through leadership speaking and training, staff alignment seminars, as well as culture seminars that address those issues. We also offer a six-hour fully immersive leadership stress test for your teams called the Tour Crucible. If you are interested at all, go to www.mttssportsgroup.com and let us know how we can help. Enjoy the podcast. Dr. Brandon Beck, um, God, you do a lot of things, man. You're an author, you're a leadership speaker, um, and leadership training. Uh, you're a soccer coach, soccer organizer, you're a teacher. Um tell us a little bit, first of all, welcome. And and I really appreciate you coming on. So um just just for for people out there, I I met um Dr. Beck through The Road to Awesome, LLC, which is where uh my book is is being edited and published with. And and Dr. Beck is, you've written a couple books, right?

SPEAKER_00 1:25

I've written a couple books, and Darren and I are great friends, who's the lead dog over there, um, an incredible guy. But uh thank you. Thank you for the invite. I'm excited to be here. Um, you know, I'm I'm super excited to dive in uh into all of this that we've been talking about. It's just been great to meet, so I'm excited.

SPEAKER_01 1:43

Well, let me let me first start off. So let's plug your book, but more than just a plug, I I want you to kind of give us a brief overview of of it. It's called Into the Fire. Um, so tell us a little bit about that.

SPEAKER_00 1:57

Yeah, absolutely. So, you know, I'm gonna go back just a little bit before the book to just do it because I think it's the easiest way to talk about my story. But, you know, teacher, I was a teacher for 17 years, and the reason I got into teaching was because of coaching. I always wanted to coach. And I knew the moment that I finished playing college soccer that I was going to start coaching. And I moved to a part of New York that I'm not originally from. I moved closer to the sub the suburbs outside of New York City and to Westchester County, where I am right now. And when I was moving there after college, I really didn't know many people and I didn't know what I was gonna do. And the day that I was graduating college, I'm standing in my graduation attire and I get a phone call for the opportunity to coach at this high school. And of course I jumped at it and took it, and the next was history. From there, I was able to, you know, teach in a district next to the school that I was coaching in, and I was able to always have a side gig of coaching because my passion for coaching just took place between between the hours of three o'clock and and nine o'clock at night. And um, that's what I ended up doing is just started coaching a ton and getting into the education side of things. And as I was getting into the education side of things, just fell in love with the organization of it and was doing a ton of coaching with a lot of different teams and with a lot of different players and a lot of different organizations, and just landed in one organization that really was amazing. And it's where it had been around for about 25 years, and I ended up moving quickly up the ladder there from coach to administrator to coordinator to the person running the website to the social media to doing pretty literally every single job throughout my 20 years. And, you know, that was my life. Teach during the day, coach every single day, or be on a soccer field somewhere and seven days a week, and that was a seven days a week, you know, 16 to 18 hour educator, and then COVID hit. And when COVID hit, there were no soccer fields to coach on for like the first time ever in my life. I couldn't be on a field, and I felt it. And so that was what led me to writing my first book. I wrote my first book because I knew I had a book inside me, and I had defended a dissertation about three years before it. And I went back to the work in my dissertation that was really, you know, always stuck out to me. And it was the work about self-efficacy and the importance of self-efficacy and the importance of preparation and how your confidence and your preparation is something that's a really important thing to think about. And that led me down a whole journey. I wrote my first book, Unlocking Unlimited Potential. I immediately started getting the opportunity to speak in schools, to teachers, to school leaders, literally virtually in person, as much as I possibly could. And I fell in love with it and I loved it. And then all of a sudden, I had all my coaching contacts reach out, and they were reaching out. They're like, Well, do you do this work for athletes? And yeah, absolutely. It ended up leading to working with NCAA teams. It ended up working with high school programs, high school athletes. And the more and more I dug into it, and the more and more I had the experience to work with athletes, the more clear I got about where I was going with it and the clarity. And so what I essentially do is I work with leaders. And what do I focus on? I focus on developing confident leaders because developing confident leaders is something that you'd be very surprised to hear. There's a lot of people that they may show confidence on the surface, but a lot of them inside are not as confident. And it's a very challenging gig being a leader, being a captain. I truly believe everybody's born to be a leader, but all too often we get in our own way, and all too often experiences happen that either make us feel negatively about our leadership experience. And that to me is something that drives me and keeps me going. And focusing on developing confident leaders because confident leaders make better teams and they make more positive culture to have confident leaders that are together, working together towards a unified goal. That's what it's all about for me. And as I had the opportunity to work and get really focused, I ended up really dialing in a lot on athletics and just those are my people. As I'm connecting with these leaders and these athletes and these coaches and these athletic directors, I just, I'm just falling in love with it because we're all speaking the same language. And I'm really enjoying being able to put all that together. Led to my next book, Into the Fire: Five Rules for Igniting a Leadership Legacy. After having that work with all of these schools and leaders and programs and athletes and all of those things, I ended up taking it to this book and took it, all the work that I had found from 150 podcasts, from having the opportunity to work in all these places, and just kind of sat down and said, What are the rules? What are the five rules that I truly believe from all this research, from all this experience that's out there? What are the five rules that I truly believe ignite a leadership legacy? And I call it into the fire because, well, we often get thrown into the fire of leadership. And also I survived a fire at the age of 14. So I think it it's pretty important and pretty full circle moment for me to talk about everything I talk about is related to that fire inside of us of leadership.

SPEAKER_01 7:57

Yeah. How much the the mindset, and I uh it's funny you speak about you know language of leaders. Um, because you're you're 100% right. I mean, I was speaking about a month ago at a seminar, and one guy got up who's ex-military and and um runs a consulting firm, and he was talking about leadership, and and I talked about leadership, but but it was two different avenues that we came from, right? And but at the same time, his core message, although a little bit different than mine, it was the same premise, right? I mean, we're speaking the same language. We may say it a little bit different, but it's the same language. And so that mindset amongst leaders, and and what I've found been being in having been in different industries, just not always in athletics, which pretty much encompasses my life. But I've you know, I've been in mortgages for a little bit, I was in medical device sales, and and it's funny because the people that the were the most successful in both of those industries were ex-athletes or ex-military. And so there's a mindset that goes along with having spent time as an athlete, whether it's you know, just through high school or through college or beyond. But um, you talk about being thrown into the fire. What are your thoughts? Because I have a philosophy that that I share with everybody I speak to on leadership, and and it's simple. It's leadership sucks. Leadership isn't fun, it's not meant to be fun. It is a responsibility that that we as leaders have to embrace um in order to have success. And the majority of the time, it's it's not all, you know, pixie dust and and spotlights, right? And it's it's it's the the stuff that most people don't see that you have to do. Um when when you speak to these young athletes and speak to administrators and teachers and coaches and all that kind of stuff, what is you, what is your your core message to them in regards to leadership and and and how to embrace it?

SPEAKER_00 10:16

Such a good question, man. You know, I I think you go back to what you said before about leadership, which is interesting to me. And I think, you know, I think of it as like getting a hamburger, right? There's a lot of different places that make hamburgers. And when you talk about leadership, we all know leadership in different ways. However, what makes the experience with me or with you or with someone else, what makes the experience different, and the reason people come back for more is because of the work that we've done that is behind the scenes that you're talking about. I think that's, you know, I think that's really important because there are a lot of people who speak about leadership. There are a lot of leadership theories. There's nine million frameworks, there's a billion pyramids, there's a billion ladders, there's this, there's that, there's scaffolding. There's so many different theories behind leadership. But I think what's really, really interesting is I think what I get the most out of it. And I think what I I think this is what I read a lot in the feedback when I when I do work with with groups of people, I think what's most important about, you know, leadership in general is just like you said, you're not alone. That's really important because, well, it's an experience that requires you to have conversations with others. It's an experience that requires you to understand that leadership is more about how are we all working towards this collective goal, but it's also not about me showing up and saying, I'm gonna give you all this information. It's more about me showing up and saying and hearing the people and hearing my my favorite groups to work with. Like I love working with a group of a room of a thousand people. That's great, that's awesome. 500, 200, whatever. But my favorite thing to do is to work with an actual team because in those moments where you're developing that engagement, you're learning so much about how they view leadership. And I think, you know, when you talk about like my message behind what I believe is I do have five rules, but one of those rules is really what I truly believe that leadership is, and it's my third rule, and it's leaders create leaders. And I think when you talk about leadership, I think all too often it's the best player on the team. It's someone who's gonna perform, it's someone who's gonna lead by example on the field. Like that's the person who is in line, who's the best player. There's, you know, 70 to 80% of the time, that is the person that is going to be the leader. But just because that person is the best player, that doesn't mean they're the best leader. That doesn't mean they're the best person to get other people to feel like leaders. Because a lot of people think when they have to wear that symbol as a captain or the armband or the asterisk on the roster, whatever it is. A lot of people think that that means they have to do everything, that they have to say everything, that they always have to be telling people something. And that's not true at all. The most successful leaders are the ones that get other people to on the team to believe that they can lead too. Because if they can lead, that means they're believing in themselves. And if you can get other people on the team to believe in themselves, themselves, even that person who's the last player on the bench who plays the least amount of minutes, if you can get that person to believe that they belong, that they matter as part of the team, then you're an exceptional leader. Right.

SPEAKER_01 14:04

You know, it's it's funny you say that about leaders creating leaders because I I have a I created what I call the leader blueprint. And um the the bottom tier of the foundation is self-leadership because leaders truly have to, they always have to maintain that self-leadership in order to be successful leaders. And and um the second one is peer, is peer leadership, taking just one person on and and helping them in their journey to to be the best version of their sex their selves. Um this the third one, so it's five-tiered, the third one is group leaders. And that is in my pyramid, that group leadership is when you as a leader truly have the most worth when it comes to building other leaders. And and that's the premise of that third tier, and it's the middle tier is that as a group leader, it's your responsibility to to help not just develop, but create other leaders so then you can move up a tier and become an area leader and then an organizational leader. Um so that's again, same language, right? Speaking the same things. Leaders create leaders. That's your job as a leader.

SPEAKER_00 15:27

Um what and I think that's what's that's what it's all about, right? It's all about essentially like we're all gonna we're all trying to arrive at the same goal to make great leaders. We it it's going to look and be the same thing. Like your leaders aren't gonna look different necessarily. They might have different tools, they might have different strategies that they use, but we're all both aiming towards the same goal. And I think that's what's been really fascinating about this career and this side of it, and we're having the opportunity to work with so many different authors and coaches and people that are out there speaking and doing this work. That's what's so incredible. Everybody has their own twist on it. Like they're all, yeah, people are talking about the same thing, but they have their own uniqueness that they do it with, and it's attached to their story, and their story is so cool. And you remember their story, and it's like, I just learned all of this, but really I remember this story. And that's what's so cool when you're getting together with all these people. So to me, it's like added benefit. Anytime I do these podcasts, it's like edu therapy, it's an opportunity to get like-minded people in the room that I normally wouldn't be able to be with face to face.

SPEAKER_01 16:44

What I we talk on this because a lot of coaches, um, specifically high school coaches, listen and and you know, I talk about this a lot. Um, and I found that there's a lot of coaches out there that are on this podcast that have a difficult time answering this question I'm about to pose to you. Um for me, and in the structure of my leadership and development platform and my staff and culture development platform is, you know, specifically with leadership, is coaches, athletic directors, administrators, and this goes into hiring too, you you have to be able to identify leaders. And I think there's a lot of coaches that struggle with, and I know I have from time to time, that struggle with, okay, how do I identify leaders? How do I identify the leaders? Because, you know, in the at the high school level, uh, a lot of kids, you know, it's starters or it's kids that are the most vocal, or it's or it's kids that um, you know, honestly are the most popular. And those aren't necessarily that doesn't make you a true leader, but so how do you go about and how do you help other coaches figure out like, here's here's some things, here's a strategy that you you can implement where you can really, you and your coaching staff can identify leaders because that's the first step to developing the leaders, right?

SPEAKER_00 18:13

100%. You know, I think when you talk about identifying leaders that are gonna be in the positions of leadership on your team, there's a couple of different ways to look at it. But like this has become a really big thing for me recently because I've started to notice as I worked working with schools over the past five years, is as I started to talk to leaders and these people or these school districts would pay money for me to come in, and I would be sitting there and speaking and talking to the athletes, and I'd be asking them if they had any other sort of leadership coaching or training that had happened pre previously or that was going to be happening in the future. And so many times the answer was that there was not much going on. Usually it was a big no, and to me, that became a really big, like light bulb moment. And the fact that people are being selected for these positions of leadership, but they're not given the support. They're not given any opportunity, not even once, not even once during a three-month season to connect. And I'm not just talking at the high school level, I'm talking at the college level, not even one time to connect as leaders. It's shocking. And it all of a sudden, like a light, it became like my mission to make sure that this doesn't happen. So when I go and I speak to a school, or usually a school reaches out to me, or a university reaches out to me, my first question is do you have a leadership council? Do you have a captain's council? And and it's the first question I ask because I already I will know by the answer to that question whether or not you are really committed to leadership, or if you're just checking off a box on your list. And to me, I don't want to be the person that I don't want to, I mean, I'm I'm happy to go there and speak, but like I don't want that. I didn't get into that for this. What I really want is I want to come in and speak, yes, but I want to be able to come back and follow up. I want to be able to come back every season, fall, winter, spring. I want to be able to come in once a season or do a virtual session or a virtual session at the beginning and the end of towards the end before playoffs. I want to be able to do that because it is the most powerful thing that you can give these kids if you're giving them the gift of being a captain. The second thing I will say, which goes along with the idea about how to select captains, is when people are selecting captains, you know that there are leaders on your team. And then you know that some of those leaders are going to be the ones that are responsible enough to handle what you think they can handle this season. And what we usually do is with those captains councils, it's not just the captains. It can also give you another arm or another element to your program. Hey, we have these captains, but we also have this leadership group. So now you're not just putting in a senior, a junior who's gonna be a captain captain for one year. Now you're putting in people who are freshmen, sophomore, junior. And now they're getting the opportunity to see longevity as we commit to the process. One year of coaching, two years of leadership coaching, three year of leadership coaching. Now we're giving this group that much. And now, like to come back to your answer, right? Come back to your answer. How do you select? How do you finally select the ones that you're supposed to select to not be maybe not be the ones that are the ones who are gonna be those people who are either. In the captain's council, or those people who are going to be the ones who are the actual captains. How do you decide that? That is such a challenging thing. You look at it and you ask yourself, you think about who are you look at their confidence first as a leader. And I think that's critical. You know, and I have, you know, I me personally, I use these things called leadership frequencies. And I like to look at these leadership frequencies, and each one of them is, it kind of speaks to an energy that they have. An igniter is someone who's inspiring. A flamekeeper is someone who keeps the vision set, who sets the standards, et cetera. I look at those frequencies and I try to see which players have a good balance of them. I try to see which players are going to be confident enough, they're responsible enough, and most importantly, they're going to show up to everything. And they're going to have that commitment. And, you know, I think when you get down to it, when you come up, when you get down to it at the end of it, you know, you said at the beginning, like it's very hard to determine who's going to be a leader. I have so many people that we're hiring that we're in in our organization, we're going to people and actually asking them to take on leadership positions. And some of them are saying, No, I'm good. It's shocking. Yeah. And like the raise in pay is there, the the incentive is there, the opportunity there, the the for long term is there. And people are the responsibility. I'm okay. You know? It's that uncomfortable. Yeah. Yeah. It's that, it's that uncomfortable. Who's gonna and and it's funny because you're sitting there and saying, like, man, I really have to, if I have to really encourage this person to lead, that says a lot about their confidence. And I think sometimes a lot of that confidence of leadership is is knocked down because all too often we're just focusing on that one or two per people on the team who are leaders.

SPEAKER_01 24:02

Absolutely. So that leads me into the second part of this question. And you you mentioned, you know, how you follow up. You mentioned how important your follow-up is to the teams and the schools that you are working with, um, and the people that you're working with. How do coaches, if if they're not, because let's be realistic about it. People are hiring you, people are hiring me, people are hiring other people that have leadership systems to come in and implement a system for their program, um, for their school to help them get the most out of their people, right? Um, for the ones which are the majority of people that I I work with, high school programs, for for the majority of them, they do it all by themselves, right? Whether that's because they don't feel like they need to bring someone in because of ego, or they've or they may not, school may not have the funds to be able to afford it, which I get. Absolutely. What would you what would you tell those coaches as far as how do you go about once you've decided and and and picked your leaders or your captains, you still have to develop them. And like you said, the leadership council question is a great one, and it's so important because my next my follow-up question to that is what is who does that consist of? Are those just seniors? Are those juniors and seniors? Or do you have freshmen, you know, juniors or freshmen, sophomore, juniors, and seniors? Absolutely. Do you have a swim buddy system in place where where you pair up a junior with a freshman or a sophomore with a senior that are accountable for each other and helping them peer the peer leadership? Um, so again, I sorry I went off on a tangent, but going back to the development of those leaders in that leadership council, what would you tell coaches are three to five most important points that they need to implement by themselves if that's how they're choosing to do it?

SPEAKER_00 26:04

Absolutely. The and and honestly, when I speak, and a lot of times I'm speaking to a lot of athletes from a lot of different schools and a lot of athletic directors, and I say this all the time. You don't need me to do an athletic, to do a leadership council. What you do need to do is you need to create a space for them to connect. You do not need to commit to doing 55 meetings. You let's start with one. Let's start with one in the fall season. Let's start with that. And then your meeting is gonna be 30 minutes long. That's it, 30 minutes. And here's what every meeting is gonna entail the three influences of confidence: your story, your why, and your purpose. What's the story? What's the team story? Everybody goes around the room. All the sports, who's included? The the leaders from every single sport in that season, or every single sport of the year. It depends. High school, it's a little challenging to pick, not all they don't always pick their leaders before the season. However, in my NCAA programs, they do. So a lot of times they're emerging leaders in there too. So your story. What's the story of your team? Oh, we're, you know, we're 3-0, we're at the beginning of the season. Oh, we're in offseason, and you know, we had a scrimmage last week. Um, you know, we just won our first round of the NCAAs. Like, okay, that's the story. That's what's going on. Let's hear that. Not everybody knows what's what all is what's happening in all sports. Not everybody reads about all the socials and all the things that are pugged about their sports all the time. Why? Second time. Why? Okay. Story, and now why? The second time is with the why is what are the challenges that you're experiencing right now? Yeah. What are the challenges you're experiencing right now? The number one thing is with the challenges that you're experiencing is the challenges are what any kind of problem, whatever they say, whatever they decide to say at that moment is so valuable. They will have talked, they will have been, and one person of the team, what's the challenge? The first thing that comes out of their mouth is so important, right? And then we go around, share a challenge. Yeah, oh, uh, you know, players are showing up late to practice. Um, we had uh we left the equipment on the bus the other day and it got taken to another school. Oh, uh, we have drama between the uh the incoming freshmen and the seniors. Like, share it. Watch what happens. You know what's gonna happen? Volleyball is gonna have the same issue as field hockey. Field hockey had the same issue as basketball and basketball had the same issue as the women's cross-country team. And all of a sudden you're realizing, boom, we're not alone. And all of a sudden you're realizing it's like, oh, well, the next most important question is purpose. Okay, well, what are the strategies? What did you what have you done successfully lately as a leader that has helped you get through these things? And then all of a sudden, people are like, oh, well, we have those players showing up late to practice too. How'd you handle it? Oh, you had a conversation, the four captains got together and met with those players. Oh, that's awesome! How'd it go? What'd you say? And all of a sudden we're sharing, we're doing this, and then we can get clear in our purpose as we walk out the door. What's one thing? What's one thing you're gonna commit to this season? What's one thing you're gonna commit to this week? What's one thing that will allow us to have observable impact on our success?

SPEAKER_01 29:46

Right. Right. Oh, that's good. Um I want to kind of change gears real quick. Um you talked about how coaching led you into teaching, which is my story verbatim, right? It's the same thing. Um I knew I wanted to coach, and when I got done college coaching, the only way to do that was to become a teacher, quite honestly. And in order to become a head high school coach, I had to be you know on campus. Um and I've had this question, it seemed like you know, for probably twelve straight interviews of head for head coaching jobs in high school that I didn't get. Um this question was asked to me every single time, and I answered it. I answered it the first time the way that I knew my heart was telling me to answer it, and I continued, I always stuck to it because I believed it, and it was pretty simple. Um, and I'll tell it to you after I get your thoughts, but from a coaching standpoint and a teaching standpoint, the question was always do you consider yourself a coach or a teacher first? And my answer was pretty simple. Um well, I'll just tell you, it was both, right? You're on mute, but it was you're on mute.

SPEAKER_00 31:06

Wanted to answer it first.

SPEAKER_01 31:07

Yeah, but you're I'm sure, you know, it's both, right? Um no, what's of course it is, but I'm a coach. Coach is a teacher, yeah.

SPEAKER_00 31:17

And so you always say that question. I always tell my students, I say, don't when I was back first year coach teaching, don't call me Mr. Beck. Call me coach back.

SPEAKER_01 31:27

So tell me, tell me, I mean, because you you I you know, a coach is a teacher, so explain for for those coaches out there, and especially the younger ones that you know are still figuring out or still green, or still figuring out, like, well, you say coach, and it's just teaching, like, but there's a difference between teaching and coaching. And but but they're combined, but in order to be a good one at one, you have to be a really good one at the other, too. So, so what it what would you tell coaches out there about the importance of being a coach and a teacher, not just one or the other?

SPEAKER_00 32:04

I well, I mean, I think they're they're synonymous. I think the the best way to teach is to coach. And I think it's most important for us to remember, you know, I think sometimes teaching has the connotation of the older school word of I'm this person who's gonna give you all this information. The world is moving so fast. I have 10 and 11-year-old kids that are way smarter than me, and they know way more than I do about certain things, and that's just that's just beginning examples. So, but what I think is most important is it's a a more holistic approach is coaching the student, coaching the player, because we're talking about the entire individual. We're not just talking about the academics, we're not just talking about, you know, the the the social, we're not just talking about the physical, we're talking about it all. And I just I just I've had great experiences in sports. And like you said at the beginning, I wouldn't be doing what I what I'm doing if it wasn't for sports. I'm so excited and and happy and grateful to be able to give back to sports in this way and that I've found this this passion and I found the ability to continue to share this work. That's what's super cool about it. So, you know, I call myself a leadership coach because I'm not a leadership teacher. My job's not to come in and teach you what leadership is. My job is to come in there and coach you through the unexpected stuff that's about to happen because there is not one person that can come in there and tell you and predict what's going to happen for this year, for the season as a leader. And that's what a coach does.

SPEAKER_01 34:04

Yeah, I, you know what, and and thinking back before prior when I was a young coach, um, coaching in Missouri, and you know, the word coach, it was like, okay, coach. I mean, I my dad was a head coach. I'd go, you know, over to their house and have dinner with them, and we'd be sitting down and I'd call him coach. I'd answer him, coach, there you go, coach Beck. And my mom would get mad, she'd be like, Corby, it's not when you're in this house, it's not coach, it's dad. I'm like, I he's my head coach, like you know, but I think once I had kids, it really hit me how, like you said, how holistic that word is. And my philosophy behind the teacher and coach was in order to be a great coach, you have to educate. Right? You you have to instill knowledge, which is teaching. In order to bring a great teacher, you have to be able to motivate and and and anticipate and not necessarily be empathetic, but for the for the definition of the word, be able to put yourself in someone else in that other person's situation as a coach to understand how they're motivated, how their brain works, how they're they're they learn, and that kind of thing. And and that really didn't that holy that holistic approach that you talk about didn't hit me until I was a a a father. Because that's when I really realized it's like okay, we have the same standards in this house and the same expectations, but when people say, you know, you gotta treat your kids all the same, no, you have the same standards and the same expectations, but I have to know my kids well enough, and this holds true, you know, in the classroom and on the field, to where I can really pull the most out of them. And in order to do that, I have to understand who they are and how they think. And so, you know, from a coaching standpoint, that's that's what it is. Like you really have to get in the heads of the kids. When, you know, when I think about the word teacher, I just think about sitting in my, you know, my sophomore in high school English class, um, you know, with my teacher, this older woman who was awesome. Um, and I mean she taught me a lot, but that's what I think of, right? When I think of a coach, I'm like, okay, there's someone that's gonna push my buttons, that's gonna pull me out of a of a bad place, that's gonna encourage me, that's gonna build me up, that's gonna knock me down when I need to be knocked down and stuff like that. So um, yeah, but I I'm glad to hear that you know that you think like that too. So it it's it that word carries a lot of weight, don't you think?

SPEAKER_00 36:53

Everyone needs a coach, man. Everyone needs a coach. Yep, yep. Absolutely.

SPEAKER_01 36:58

Well, um last couple things. I so let's plug your book, let's plug your pod, let's plug everything that we can. I'll put it down on the screen when when I edit it. So, you know, website, the whole deal. So talk to us about what what you're doing in all areas of your business.

SPEAKER_00 37:16

Yeah, absolutely. So I work with schools, athletics, athletic programs, athletic directors, corporations, as I talked about before, and I develop leadership programs, and I come in and do keynotes, workshops, and captain's councils and all the great stuff. And the opportunity is something that I truly enjoy, the opportunity to have these conversations. And if you're someone out there who's interested in learning more about how to get your school rolling and how to get your school, you know, headed in the right direction, focusing on leadership and focusing on developing confident leaders because it's a crazy world out there. So if you're focused on that, and give me a buzz, give me, drop, check me out on my website, brandonbecked you.com. I also from there have a newsletter that I send out twice a month on the first and 15th called the Something For You newsletter. You can check that out. I love to continue to give just free resources, helpful tips on the leadership journey. And my book into the fire, you can find everything there on my website. I also have a podcast called The Unlocking Unlimited Potential Stories Show. That podcast, like this podcast, shares the stories of incredible leaders doing incredible things. You can check that out over there. And I'm just excited to set up to be that's on continuing the work.

SPEAKER_01 38:44

That's on YouTube and and all the audio podcast platforms.

SPEAKER_00 38:47

You can find it everywhere, Spotify, all the places. It's there's a direct link on my website that you can get all your links to as well. So you can check that over there as well.

SPEAKER_01 38:57

Perfect. Perfect.

SPEAKER_00 38:58

Yeah, I'm just excited to continue the work.

SPEAKER_01 39:01

Yeah, I I appreciate you. And and you know, like we we've talked about, I mean, this podcast is trying to keep leadership and culture and and development, you know, of of coaches and their athletes at the forefront of this crazy, crazy athletic world that we now live in.

SPEAKER_00 39:24

So it's a crazy world. There's a lot of new things that are happening. We got high schoolers getting paid now. It's a complete different world than it was 10 years ago. It's amazing, dude. Listen, I love what you're doing. I really appreciate the opportunity to be here. And, you know, to all those coaches and all those people who are listening, continue to show up, continue to learn, continue to reflect, learn, and grow as you continue. And I appreciate the opportunity to be here.

SPEAKER_01 39:49

All right, brother. I appreciate you, man. Just hang on for a quick sec, okay? Thanks, Brent. All right.