EPISODE 5: Jamy Bechler

Welcome back to the UNF Leadership Podcast!

Before we take a quick summer break: this week’s guest is longtime coach and athletic director-turned-search consultant and executive business trainer, Jamy Bechler. 

Jamy has coached men’s and women’s basketball at the high school, NAIA, Division III, and Division I level. In 2016, he transitioned into full-time leadership training and motivational speaking. He’s authored more than half-a-dozen books and is the host of the popular “Success is a Choice” podcast. More recently, he started “Bechler Leadership Search” which helps identify candidates for coaching and administrative positions at the high school and college level. 

If you are a sports fan, athlete or coach – and you are on social media – there’s a good chance you’ve seen one of Jamy’s viral posts about leadership on your timeline at some point. 

This is “Voices of Leadership: Jamy Bechler” 

Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:00

Welcome back to the Women Leadership Podcast. Before we take a quick summer break, this week's guest is a longtime coach and athletic director, research consultant, and executive business trainer, Jamie Bachelor. Jamie has coached men's and women's basketball at the high school, NAIA, Division III, and Division I level. In 2016, he transitioned into full-time leadership training and motivational speaking. He's authored more than a half dozen books and is the host of the popular Success of Choice podcast. More recently, he started Bachelor Search, which helps identify candidates for coaching and administrative positions at the baseball and college level. If you are a sports fan, athlete or coach, and you're on social media, there's a good chance you've seen one of Jamie's viral posts about leadership on your timeline at some point. This is Voices of Leadership, Jamie Bechler. Welcome back into the UNF Leadership Podcast, where we have conversations with some of the greatest leaders in Northeast Florida and beyond. A pleasure to welcome in my friend Jamie Bachelor, who, as you just told me, Jamie, you're still trying to figure out how to introduce yourself, what your title is, what you want to be when you grow up, a career that began in coaching, now has transitioned into the world of representation, coaching coaches. Excited to talk to you today. And so without further ado, uh, what what did I miss in that intro? What what else, what other hats are you wearing as someone who also wears a lot of hats these days?

SPEAKER_01 1:29

Yeah, we try to juggle a lot of balls. And uh, you know, it really just comes down to we try to help leaders, we try to help coaches, we try to help student athletes, all that kind of stuff. And and we probably are uh more the jack of all trades, master of none sometimes, but we're we juggle a lot of balls. And in fact, I learned how to juggle when I was early, early on, just basic juggling. And, you know, I we always taught our players, I was a college basketball coach, and we always try to teach our players to to juggle for hand-eye coordination. But I could never do like the the the big time circus juggling, nothing like that. If if I could, maybe I could make some money in a circus, you know, during the summers, summer months.

SPEAKER_00 2:06

So you mentioned it, you were a coach, that was your first job out of school. Take us back to the very beginning. How do you get to where you are here today?

SPEAKER_01 2:16

Yeah, well, I was I was born uh in Michigan, and uh, you know, I grew up in a a family where a lot of hard work and I got to see early on work ethic and I got to see commitment and discipline. And I know those are kind of cliche things to say, but I grew up in a great family. My dad built our house. Uh, he was a firefighter captain, and then eventually he went to Hillsdale College to work in their maintenance department. He could fix anything, but he didn't have a degree. He was one of the smartest, uneducated people I ever I ever knew. Um, my mom was a teacher, she was she was president of the school union, teachers union. So I got to see her and working hard and just you know how how she had a passion for teaching and a more so a passion for the kids. And you know, she'd get those phone calls, you know, eight o'clock, nine o'clock at night from parents or or students, even sometimes. And so I grew up like that, but it wasn't particularly a a sports family, and and but I I grew up love of baseball cards, uh, football cards, those kind of things. So that got me into sports. That also was the only thing that taught me math. I'm still not very good at math, but five out of four people are bad at math, so I don't feel too bad about that. But you know, the the stats on the back of a baseball card or basketball card. But it was in seventh grade that I was in an English class and my teacher said, Hey, since you like sports, here's a book for you. And it was They Call Me Coach by John Wooden, uh, the legendary UCLA coach. And so I read that book, and it wasn't like a light switch went on that I'm going to be that coach when I grow up, because very few people are John Wooden. But as I'm reading that book, I'm like, wow, this is really different than some of the coaches I've been around. He actually talks to the people that don't play, he actually tries to get to know them, he respects them. There's this mutual respect there. It was like, I, you know, as a seventh grade, I'd love to say I was so mature. I wasn't that mature, but it was like, okay, this is a little bit different than what I've experienced in my small school in Michigan. And so I was like, man, I want to have coaches like that one day. And so I started looking at coaches a little bit differently. And then eventually, when when I decided I wasn't going to make the W or the MBA, and not like I decided that, but other people decided that I decided to go into coaching. And so uh that was something I wanted to give back to people, give back to kids, like people poured into me once I started finding in high school those those coaches that were were similar, had similar traits to John Wooden, where they cared about people. And so I just went through, you know, uh learning and learning and learning and learning throughout my coaching career. And I coached the small schools, I coached the big schools, I coach men, I coach women. I was uh I won coach of the year, I was successful, and I was also asked to take my talents elsewhere. You know, I got resigned. Uh, you know, so I've I've had ups and downs. We I've traveled, you know, first class and I've also driven 15 passenger bands and made peanut butter and jelly and had players talking behind your back, literally and figuratively, on trips home. So uh yeah, and then a few uh about 10 years ago, I I got out of organized athletics and started my own uh uh business, Beckler Leadership, where we try to help coaches be better so that ultimately student athletes can be better.

SPEAKER_00 5:32

And around the same time, I'm assuming, is when you started your famous Twitter page where you tweet out motivational quotes. And it's funny, just to take everyone behind the curtain, when I invited Jamie on the podcast, he was like, Man, John Gordon, Joshua Metcalf, those are heroes of mine. What do you mean, me? You're the hero of a lot of folks. Whenever I mention to people in the basketball world, oh yeah, I talked to Jamie, and they say, Oh, I follow him on Twitter. I love his posts, it really gets me going in the morning. So, was it around that same time that you said, hey, let me take the lessons from the court and try to promote them to a larger audience?

SPEAKER_01 6:04

Yeah, you know, I think it was 2011 when I uh got on Twitter. And now, now one of my assistants got on Twitter maybe in 2006, 2007, and I really made fun of him all the time. I was like, Nobody cares what you're eating for lunch, nobody cares what your relationship status is. Like, that's not a big deal. And because at the time, Twitter was that was what it was about. It was essentially Facebook status. It was like really quick things on Twitter, and I was like, Who's on Twitter? Um, and then I got suckered into it a few years later, and I didn't know what I was doing. You know, at the time I was I was tweeting about my favorite team or I was tweeting about you know life and and things like that. Now, if you look at my ex account at Coach Beckler, um, you know, you're not gonna know who my favorite team is, you're not gonna know who I vote for in an election, you're not gonna know what I'm eating. And in fact, you're not even gonna know where I'm speaking or what teams I work with. I I very rarely talk about the business side of it on my ex account because our our whole goal is how can we help people? And I know that sounds so cliche. Uh, you know, I just want to help people and add value. I I know that sounds cliche, but that's what we're trying to do. And and you knowing who I'm working with or speaking to, or you knowing that I like pepperoni pizza or I like Supreme Pizza or whatever, that doesn't help really a lot of people out there. So we try to put we try to put stuff out there that is helpful uh on X. And so uh yeah, it's it's been fun. Uh certainly have got to meet a lot of cool people, um, you know, got to follow a lot of cool people, got to have conversations with a lot of cool people through X. Um, some are some are famous and some are not, but that doesn't mean you're not cool. You know, there's a lot of middle school coaches out there or just parents out there that that I've started a friendship with or I've had a lot of communication with just through X. And so that's that's pretty cool.

SPEAKER_00 7:56

Absolutely. And that's also, of course, part of your personal operation that you started in 2015, your business, um, which, like you said, it's evolved over the years, but ultimately at the root of it, it's the same thing as John Wooden. It's about impacting, creating value, and improving the lives of others. And so that's probably the best starting point, I think, for us in our broader conversation, Jamie. And it's something that Joshua Medcal and I talked about in episode two, this idea of how can you add value to this world and how can you add this value to other people. Last week with Captain Rick Hoffman on episode three, we we talked about coercive leadership and how that has diminished as the years have gone on. In 2026, it is not good enough to simply say to one of your players, you have to do this because I said so. Why is that?

SPEAKER_01 8:43

Yeah, well, well, certainly most people would say, well, kids have changed, parents have changed, it's social media's fault, that kind of stuff. I would say, yeah, all of it. I mean, everything's changed, but but you know what? We talk about John Wooden, and I I kind of push back just a little bit about things are so crazy nowadays, or or the quote unquote kids these days, because John Wooden was coaching during the Vietnam War era, where you literally have college kids getting shot on college campuses, and you have protests all over the place, and it's a crazy time. Um I would I would say that John Wooden probably wouldn't say that, oh well, you have it rougher than we had it. He would probably say it's just different and you just have to adjust. And everybody has it rough and everybody has challenges, but but it's different, you know. You know, way back in the day, you know, Henry Ford said if if he asked people what they would want, he they would say faster horses. You know, there's always adjustments and adaptation that you have to do as a leader, as people, and so yeah, there's different challenges now. Like you mentioned, it we're not really in an era where, well, you know, do what I tell you to do, like it was in the past. But there weren't a lot of people in the past when John Wooden was coaching, those guys didn't necessarily love doing what the coach told them to do. There was still rebellion. It's just that that was a culture that that backed them, backed those coaches, backed those leaders a little bit, but they still turned off a lot of people by just saying, do as I say, not as I do, or just do what I tell you to do, be a compliant follower. I don't think that that's ever been the optimal way to approach. And that's why I liked John Wooden so much, was because even though he was coaching in an era of do what I tell you to do, he made connections and relationships with people that that was valuable. And that's why so many of his athletes got the most out of their abilities, and that's why they followed him into battle, so to speak, was because he made connections with them, not because he just told them what to do. Now, when he did tell them what to do, they did it because they had that connection. I still think in today's day and age, we can tell people to do X, Y, or Z, but we better have a pretty strong connection, a pretty strong relationship with them. And I think that's what's lacking with a lot of us today as a leader, you know, whether it's me with my 16-year-old son or me as a former coach or me going and speaking with other leaders or whoever it is, if you don't have that relationship piece, if we're not actually depositing in that emotional bank account, it's really hard when we have to pull out so so pull something out, you know, and ask them to do something. So, you know, yes, we are in an era today where it's not as easy to say, do this, do that, but I don't think it was ever that was ever optimal, even though it was acceptable, it wasn't optimal. And so the John Woodens and the best coaches sometimes were were building those relationships. Even let's take a Bobby Knight. Okay, Bobby Knight and John Wooden seem to be un too diametrically opposed, but at the core, Bobby Knight, if you talk to a lot of his players, a lot of his players swear by his relationships with them. Like he's gruff, he's this, you know, you know, dog cuss you up and down. But at the end of the day, so many of his players that made it felt like he really invested in them and really cared about them. Now, we as the public don't see that. Now, certainly he had people that left his program because they couldn't handle that. That's gonna happen. But yeah, I don't I don't think necessarily that there was ever a time where that was optimal, just acceptable.

SPEAKER_00 12:28

So now, in your work with high school college coaches, do you feel that now, even with the knowledge we have, that John Wood is one of the greatest coaches of all time, Greg Popovich, one of the greatest coaches of all time, Bill Walsh, you go on right down the line. These most successful coaches have established that level of trust and communication with their players and individualized relationship. When we don't see that in 2026, is the barrier, quite frankly, because coaches aren't taking the time to have those conversations?

SPEAKER_01 12:57

Yeah, you know, I'm this is this is gonna be controversial, and I may say a couple controversial things.

SPEAKER_00 13:02

All right, disappear with this podcast.

SPEAKER_01 13:04

I I think I think coaches, I think leaders are way too selfish. They make it about themselves. Um, I want Mia to be a great player and do well so that it benefits me, so that either it's easier for me, or I get a raise, I get a promotion, I get an award. Somewhere along the line, I want Mia to do well so that it benefits me. Now, controversial because there's there's you know, 115% of your audience right now is saying that's not me. And you know what? Maybe maybe it's not because you have a great audience and you uh you're talking to a bunch of great people.

SPEAKER_00 13:41

We all we speak the same language as Dr. Olson likes to say.

SPEAKER_01 13:44

But you know, I was somebody who read all the John Maxwell books. I loved leadership. I was, you know, I wanted to be a great coach that poured into people. And at my first head coaching job, man, we did so much community service. We tried to do so much leadership, but at the end of the day, it was so that Jamie looked good. Like I was a young coach, and I yes, I wanted them to be better and I wanted them to develop, but that was really secondary if I was being honest with myself. And at the time I wasn't, I was saying, well, we're doing this to help you, but really it's so that, well, Jamie's program's really good, or Jamie's culture is really good, or he's a disciplinarian. So I was doing things ultimately for me, and I think we do that a lot of times as leaders and coaches. Maybe I'm just telling on myself and tattling on myself, uh, like if we're going to confessional and you're my priest. But I really think a lot of us put ourselves first, and you and you hear that in the way coaches talk. Um, they'll blame the players. They weren't tough today, they didn't, they lacked focus, they did this, they did that. Or I'll even hear this. Hey, if you don't want to be here, I got the transfer papers ready for you. Okay, well, how is that helping? That's that's kind of my way or the highway. And and could it be realistic? And and could that be an actual statement that we believe? Yes, but how is that helping? And I think that that's a very trans transactional way of coaching and leading. And it goes back to do it my way, do what I tell you to do. I don't think I have to threaten Mia if I've built up a good relationship with her where there's mutual respect and mutual trust. Now, I might have to remind her of some things, I might have to inspire her once in a while, but I think she's going to be inspired most of the time because we have this connection because she knows when I ask her to do something that it's not based upon my agenda. It's not based upon what I want. It's based upon how can I get the best version of her? How can I know her? I know you, Mia, and and I know that this is what you want. And how can we get the best out of you? How can I maximize your strengths, minimize your weaknesses? How can I motivate you to be the best version? And I know I kind of went on a tangent there, but I think too often, coaches, we might coach basketball or we might coach baseball. Like that's the game that we coach, but our best game is the blame game. We're playing the blame game way, way too often. It might not be my fault that that Mia screwed up on the basketball court, but it is my responsibility as the leader to figure out how I can set her up for success, how I can I can set you up for success, set you up to be the best version of yourself. Maybe, you know, I shouldn't shake my head. I was a basketball coach, so maybe I use a lot of basketball illustrations, but I shouldn't shake my head if you can't dribble with your left hand and then you turn it over and I'm mad at you. Well, you should dribble your left hand, you should be working on that. Well, maybe I shouldn't have called a play where you're gonna go off a ball screen with your left hand, or maybe you shouldn't even be in the game right then. That's not your best play. Um, me as a coach, I am responsible for figuring out how Mia can be the best version of herself, but also help our team the best. And that's my responsibility. And I have to constantly keep my head on a swivel, finding ways to make people better and make situations better, not trying to make me look better.

SPEAKER_00 17:04

I could go on a tangent of my own right there about some WNBA teams who will remain nameless and maybe not maximizing a player's skill set just because you want to fit a circle peg into a square hole because the square peg was the plan that you showed up with. But we're gonna stick a pin in that, Jamie, because I want to go back to something you said earlier. There was a moment after your first job where you're having your team go out and do these community service acts, and they're great community, they're great citizens and they're going out of their way. But at what moment did it occur to you that you were implementing those activities for Jamie and not for the benefit of the team?

SPEAKER_01 17:42

Yeah, uh January 3rd, 2005. I'm sitting in a Taco Bell with my assistant coach. We're having a meeting. We're on break. The kids are going to come back the next day on January 4th. And we're sitting in a Taco Bell having our coaches meeting because free refills, so we can sit there all day just killing the Baja Mountain Dew. And we're talking about we've had a tough first semester. Now, just a year and a half ago, uh previous to this, I was coach of the year in the conference, 16 team conference. I was actually co-coach of the year with Julie Goodenough, who's now at Abilene Christian. Uh, this was a division three conference, and so just a year and a half ago, I was good. Now we're losing. We only, I think, won one game that whole first semester, and we're talking, and I'm blaming the kids, blaming the kids, blaming the kids. And and my assistant coach says, you know, Jamie, I've listened to this for all year. And here's the thing you're in your fourth year here. You either didn't develop these kids or you didn't recruit the right ones because all these kids are yours. And I'm like, you're fired. Seriously. Well she's like, you're just not being coachable, you're not, you're you're putting it on them, but not looking at yourself. And I'm like, okay, what do we do? And so we talked, you know, over Mountain Dew after Mountain Dew for a long time at that Taco Bell. And so we come back, we we get a game plan, we come back the next day, and things are different. Practice is great, you know. The kids come back from great practice, come back from break. Practice is great. We're trying to implement new things, X is nose wise, but we're also our our spirit is very enthusiastic. Okay. After practice, we're walking out of the gym. The athletic director says, Jamie, you got a minute. I said, Yeah, sure. What's up? He goes, come on, come on in here just for a minute. I gotta talk to you. Come in. He goes, We're gonna make a change. Uh we're gonna go in a different direction. I'm like, Well, you I just Taco Bell yesterday. What were you talking about? I'm changed, I'm a changed man. You don't need to make a change. I already made the change. He goes, Nope, we uh you're not coachable, and we're gonna make a change in our program. And so I left that meeting with the athletic director, and I call the only division one coach in my cell phone at the time that had been fired. So I call this guy named Ed Schilling. Ed Schilling was at Wright State, he got fired there, and then he joined up with John Calapari at Memphis. And so I call him up in Memphis and I'm like, what do I need to? Who do I need to sue? What do I need to do? You know, this is not right. And after about five minutes, he let me vent. And then he said, Jamie, I only got one question for you. Do you want to be bitter or do you want to be better? I'm like, what are you talking about? He said, Well, you've just spent five minutes telling me everything that your school didn't do, or they did this, and that wasn't good. You never said anything about you and how you could have done things better, how you could be more responsible. He said, So if you want to keep coaching five years, 10 years from now, you're gonna be a better coach for those athletes or a more bitter coach based upon what you do right now about this adversity or this challenge or this thing that didn't go your way. And so when you ask me, do I have that moment? I actually have the dates in the moment because that was so um, it was like a slap in the face to me because I was like, wait a minute, I've read all these leadership books. Like I want to be this kind of coach, but I wasn't being that kind of coach because life got in the way and my selfishness got in the way. And I would love to say that, you know, immediately I became John Wooden and I immediately became Pat Summit or the greatest coach ever. It wasn't. I it was it was a process, but it was that day that that told me, all right, I need to wake up pretty much every day. Like, what can I do to help athlete to help people in situations be better? Certainly I didn't do that all the time. I I was not a perfect coach from then on out, but I tried to be better and better and better.

SPEAKER_00 21:40

Right. So, what's funny, and for the purposes of, you know, Dr. Olson and I actually were speaking this morning before we recorded this podcast about some of the plans for these episodes and how they're going to be applied to our curriculum in fall of twenty twenty six, Jamie. Um, I'll refrain from saying, you know, times and places for me, because I think people can put two and two together. But I received Similar feedback in the last six months or so about me being fired from a previous place of employment. And of course, you know, now as an employee of ESBN, like things are good. But I was having a conversation with one of my coworkers at ESBN back in March. And self-admitted, he said, he's like, This is gonna turn into a psychoanalysis of you. And he let me vent about what had occurred at the previous place and blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. And then at the end of it, he said, Well, what could you have done differently? Did you ever stop and think about that? Exactly like you. And so I'll ask you this because the follow-up to me after that first question was, I don't think you've ever grieved what occurred, and that to your point, you were co-coach of the year, and it did go to heck in a handbasket quickly. But accepting what occurred and the lesson that it brings and that all we have in front of us is the future because there's a reason that the windshield is bigger than the rear view mirror. And so, in terms of how you grieve, how, like you said, it becomes a daily discipline thing for you to now reach the point that you are at today in 2026. Where do you start with applying those daily moments of this is how I am going to evolve into my version of John Wooden?

SPEAKER_01 23:10

Yeah. And you know, when I get these kinds of questions, regardless how they're framed or specifically asked, I never have a great answer because this sounds so corny. I don't have like this five-step or this seven-step, or this is this is my moment of zen, or this is what I do specifically every single day. Other than I do make my bed. I try to make my bed every morning, um, which is which is crazy. But I do try to make my bed like uh uh kind of the cliche, the uh uh I I I forget the Admiral that Avril McCraven um that talked about making your bed. But uh, you know, what I'm constantly doing is, and this is developed over time. Certainly it wasn't developed on January 4th, 2005. Um, you know, immediately, but everyday habits, everyday choices. It's it's okay, this choice that I'm gonna make today, this doesn't make me rich. This doesn't make me a great coach. This doesn't make me an award winner or a great father 10 years from now, uh, or or I should say tomorrow, but 10 years from now, I might see that if I keep working at these habits. And so it's the habits. Every single day, uh, our podcast is called Success is a Choice. And I stole that from Rick Pettino. Every team I ever coached, Success is a Choice was was our mantra, was our slogan. It was a book he wrote a long time ago, and that was the name of a book, Success is a Choice. So I took that when I started my podcast, it was obvious what I was gonna name it, Success is a Choice. It's a reminder of every single day you're making a choice in your habits. What are your habits like? So now that doesn't mean that you're never gonna fall back on a bad habit or you know, have a couple days off, those kinds of things, but are you then getting back up? Are you continuing to try to do those things that you know you should do? And so it takes a lot of mental toughness, it takes a lot of discipline, and that's not easy. Um, you know, I mean, I need to work out more. I also know that if I have an orange, you know, if I have an orange and I have a Kit Kat bar, I've never once accidentally opened that Kit Kat thinking it was an orange, that I was peeling an orange. I know exactly what I'm doing. I make those choices. Now, do I see myself gain five pounds when I eat that Kit Kat? No, but two weeks from now I might have gained five pounds or I might be out of shape or sluggish. Well, if I look back, it's because I kept making a choice to eat those Kit Kats. All right, I know this isn't a weight loss or nutrition, but it comes into being a leader, it comes into being a coach. Every single day, what are those things that you're doing? What are those choices you're making that that build your culture? I don't think your culture is established and healthy and strong because you put up a couple great posters or you bring Jamie Beckler or John Gordon in to check off a box in August to speak or to do a team building activity, or man, we we bought 30 copies of the energy bus. So automatically we're gonna have a great culture. No, no, it's it's what you're doing every time those kids get on the literal bus. How are you greeting those kids when they get on the bus to go to a game? How are you greeting those kids when they walk down the hall when you see them? What are you doing when they're tying their shoes before practice? Those are the things that are gonna establish your culture so much more than reading a book from Jamie Beckler or John Gordon. Uh, your culture is gonna be evidenced and demonstrated by what your kids or what your team does when you're not around. Now, that's built when you are around. How are you building people up? How are you building your team? How are you inspiring people day in and day out? And those are the little things, the choices that you make. Uh, early on as a coach, I thought Gino Ariema, even though I was a big Pat Summit fan, I thought Gino Arima was pretty cool, you know, because at the time he was kind of a younger, you know, brash, you know, all this kind of stuff. And I'm like, all right, well, he doesn't like to go out pre-practice when the young ladies are stretching. You know, he he wants to, when he steps out there, it's it's business. And he doesn't want to be out there while they're, you know, giggling and cutting up. I'm like, I'm gonna do that too. Well, the problem is that's a great opportunity for me to spend one minute with Mia, two minutes with Mia. That's a great opportunity for me to have some touch points where I'm not yelling at an athlete, where I'm not, you know, uh, you know, determining their playing time.

SPEAKER_00 27:53

It's just me talking with Mia about the Jacksonville Jags and building that relationship, like we talked about, that John Wooden does with his players.

SPEAKER_01 28:00

Those that's how your culture is built so much more than just some fancy poster or you know, some speaker that you bring in to talk to your team.

SPEAKER_00 28:08

Well, and that's why when we talked about Captain Rick in episode three with the Marlin, and he said to his XO that these midshipmen will remember this moment of us giving them the day off so they can go hunt this 103-pound marlin and bring him on ship and carve him up and eat him, than they would if we were to say, Oh, well, we have things to do and we have to keep it moving.

SPEAKER_01 28:31

Yeah, absolutely. I I think leaders are people uh leaders make people and situations better. So you always need to be looking for that. I I was in college, I was a lifeguard, and uh during the summer, I worked at this summer camp. And so we had this lake, and we would go out skiing when the when the all the campers would leave, we'd have like half a Saturday and Sunday to go out skiing and and have our own alone time, you know, just with the counselors. And so we'd go out skiing and we'd be on this boat out there skiing, and our our old camp counselor would be driving the boat around, and he'd be like, You see that turtle over there? No, he goes, Look at that turtle way over there. I'd be like, No, we don't see this turtle. Well, this this old guy, well, he was probably younger than I am now, but the old guy he loved turtles and he was always looking for turtles, and so he saw turtles on logs, it seemed like a mile away. He could spot turtles. We weren't looking for turtles because we were college kids and we didn't care about turtles. You're gonna find what you're looking for a lot of times, and so if you're a leader who wants to find ways to make people better, wants to find ways to make situations better, then you're gonna find those. You're gonna catch people being good, you're gonna find out how what makes Mia tick. You're gonna find out how to inspire and get the most out of Mia. Now that's gonna take work. It's a lot easier to put in a new play, it's a lot easier to change up the starting lineup, it's a lot harder to really dive into and get to know your people. But if that's what you are looking for, you're gonna find ways to do it. It's a lot easier on Valentine's Day for me to bring home some, you know, flowers, a card, and chocolates than it is for 364 days of the year for me to pick up my socks off the floor or treat my wife the right way. And so, as leaders and coaches, sometimes we want these hacks or these fix automatically. And and and instead of finding ways to really make our culture strong and healthy to begin with, I'll give I'll give you one more illustration about that. But like when I'm sick, and I and I think some people are like me in this, when I'm sick, I really don't care what the diagnosis is. Like if I have a sore throat, let's say, or a runny nose or a headache, I just want those symptoms to go away. I don't really care if I know what the diagnosis is bronchitis, flu, COVID, pneumonia, whatever it is. Okay. Um, I'd like to know it, but the main thing is go away. Runny nose, stop. I want my symptoms to be addressed. I think as leaders, sometimes we're like that. Yeah, we are more focused on that, those parent issues, uh, fix our parents, or fix this kid's attitude, or or what do we do about team captains or X, Y, and Z that we forget those are just symptoms of our culture. Do we have a healthy and strong culture? Well, that is hard to do. That's the 364 days with your wife of having a strong marriage. Uh, you know, the symptom or the Valentine's Day where you just bring home a card and chocolates, that's just fixing, you know. Do you have something temporarily I can fix with this parent? But then you're gonna have more parent issues the next year because you haven't fundamentally built a strong, healthy culture.

SPEAKER_00 31:56

Right. And I think part of that too is because naturally people run away from conflict. I I think that that's just an innate human nature is to avoid having to have difficult conversations.

SPEAKER_01 32:08

Yeah, absolutely. And it's just hard. All that stuff is hard. And I'm like, if if it was easy, anybody could coach. If it was easy, anybody could be a leader. You know, you're in this role. It's a it's amazing responsibility, um, amazing opportunities, but also amazing responsibility. And you got to step up to the plate if you want to be the best version of you. Um, and and sometimes we're not as introspective as we should, or we're we don't have our motives. Our motives aren't where they should be sometimes.

SPEAKER_00 32:38

So let's circle back uh before we wrap here. Since I did say we'd go back to it, Jamie, because it's something that I've talked about a lot, not just on this leadership podcast, but on ESPM programming, the Jaguars programming that I do. This idea of circle peg, square, hole. Coach goes into the season and says, This is the way we want to operate our offense. This is the way we're gonna run our defense. And then the need to have to evolve. Our GM here in Jacksonville, my fiance noted it to me the other day. His favorite quote from James in year one was when James said, the best teams evolve over the course of a season, they do not stay stagnant. And so it was very interesting to hear that juxtaposed with some of the messaging I've heard from other NFL teams and other NFL head coaches and GMs who say, Well, we did it this way in 2012 and we won the Super Bowl. Well, like that that's over a decade ago. What occurred in 2012 does not equate to what is occurring in 2026. And so, for you, from a coaching perspective, working with high school and college coaches now, how do you approach that coach who is frustrated by, well, I want to run the system this way and my personnel does not match it?

SPEAKER_01 33:44

Yeah, you try to ask them a lot of questions if you can. You know, do you have the personnel? You know, where does this come? Why do you want to do it this way? Maybe it's because back back in my day, you know, back back in you know, 2017, we won doing it this way, and I want to try to replicate that feeling. You try to get to where that motivation is or why they want to do it that way. Um, you know, sometimes they just want, like you say, uh, you know, square, uh, round peg, square hole.

SPEAKER_00 34:13

Yeah, either way. Um, either way.

SPEAKER_01 34:15

They're in the way, yeah. You know, sometimes it's just they want to do it a certain way. Well, I want to do a lot of things in life, but I'm not set up to do it that way. Your team might not be set up to do it that way. So we try to ask a lot of questions of that, but but also get them to understand that you're gonna have adjustments all the time. So if if you're built around, especially in basketball, you're built around a star basketball player. Well, if they get hurt, you may have to adjust. You may not be able that that your second scorer might not be the same kind of player. And that's probably more prevalent in football. You know, if your quarterback goes out. Now, hopefully you've you've had the foresight to, if if you have a starting quarterback, you know, if you if you have a, you know, in college, if you have an RPO type quarterback, a very mobile quarterback or something, hopefully you don't have a six foot seven pocket passer as his backup. Like that would not be a very smart thing. You know, hopefully, you know, if you're the Baltimore Ravens, you hopefully have a backup that's similar to Lamar Jackson because if he he goes out, you don't want to change up your whole offense. Sometimes we don't get to that point. Um, but yeah, you're gonna have to make adjustments throughout the whole game. Referees are calling it tighter or looser, somebody gets hurt, foul trouble happens. Maybe the other team comes out and does something totally different than you expected them to do. Uh, so you're constantly having to be ready to adjust. I just think in general, life, life is gonna throw curveballs at you when you're driving down the street. That stop side, that stoplight isn't always gonna turn when you think it should turn. There's gonna be more traffic or less traffic. People are going to do things differently than you expect them to do. Life is just about change. And it's not, is life gonna change? It's just are you gonna be ready and prepared? Are you gonna be uh uh agreeable to to changing and making the adjustment when you have to have to do it? But yeah, I I don't think we can get too fixed. And yes, as an early coach, I was very fixated on this is the style of play we're going to do, you know, no matter what. We're we're gonna do this because it should work. It should work, and you know, it I was right in a lot of things, especially as a young coach and even as a parent, I'm right a lot, but I'm also dead right more times.

SPEAKER_00 36:33

Uh you know, uh what does dead right mean?

SPEAKER_01 36:36

Yeah, so if I walk out my house, there's a there's a one-way street next to our house. If I walk out and I only look one way because, well, it's a one-way street, only cars are supposed to come that way. Well, if someone went down the wrong way, I am right, I'm dead right. Or if I'm a pedestrian walking in the road and and I walk out, pedestrians have the right of way, but you might be dead right. So, coaches, you might be right in the way things should be, but you're still working with young adults, you're still working with human beings who don't always see it that way. And there's so many times I'm dating myself here, but like the the old movie Ferris Bueller's Day Off, they're in that classroom, and and I don't remember if it was a science teacher or a math teacher, but nobody's paying attention to that teacher. That teacher is probably right about everything he's saying. He's he's technically right, he's very smart, but he's not inspiring anyone. No one's listening to him, no one's motivated by him, no one's inspired by him. He's dead right in what he's saying because nobody's listening. It's not how much you know, it's what your players know. It's not what you say, it's what they hear. And so we're constantly, as leaders, being dead right. We're right in theory, but in practicality, in practice, in reality, we're not getting people to come over with us, we're not getting people into our foxhole, we're not getting people that are motivated and inspired to go to battle with us. You know, it's not about having compliant followers, it's about developing leaders that can lead other people. It's not about me saying stuff all the time and getting them to follow me. It's can they follow each other? It's about ownership, it's we, us, ours, not just it's Coach Beckler's play, it's Coach Beckler's team. I mean, there's been so many plays that players have messed up on. And I'm like, well, you messed up my play. My play will work, you're just not working right. And it's like, yeah, but I might be right, but I'm dead right because I never put them in the right positions or I didn't teach them well enough. So we don't want to just be right if we're gonna be dead right.

SPEAKER_00 38:39

Mic drop. I was gonna ask for your final thoughts, but man, oh man, does this feel like a great place to end, Jamie? Because to your point, the concept of dead right speaks to number one, what we led with, John Wooden, you build relationships first with your players, and that is how you reap the benefits on the back end. But additionally, this idea of it's not about you, the leader, it's not about you, the coach, it's about the players. And if that player is making a mistake, yeah, the play didn't work, but you didn't coach the player and put the player in the right position to succeed. I appreciate this lesson so much. But before we let you go, I will actually give you a couple seconds here, a couple minutes here, because I'm so jacked jacked up right now. I can run through a wall. Dead right. I'm gonna start applying that to our daily lessons and our our daily verbiage in the Taylor Leadership Institute. But anything else you wanna you want to hit on before we head on out of here?

SPEAKER_01 39:31

Well, it it's a battle. I I say this stuff like it's easy. This none of this is easy. Uh, and and when my wife watches this podcast episode, if she does, she's gonna remind me of this stuff all she reminds me of stuff all the time that I say. She's like, uh, you're not really doing that. Or you remember that thing you wrote in that book? It's not easy to do. And ultimately, we have to decide if we want to do this stuff or not. Just like I made the silly analogy about the orange and the the Kit Kat. Ultimately, we know it's rarely a time do we not know the right move we should make. It's most of the time we just don't want to do the right thing. Uh, we want to do the easy thing, and and being a leader is not easy. And so, you know, the people watching this, the the young leaders or the leaders to be, uh, the more established veteran leaders, whoever you are watching this, stay encouraged. Stay encouraged. But the more you can make it about other people, helping people be better, helping situations be better, uh, you know, the better it's going to be for everybody.

SPEAKER_00 40:31

It always comes back around. Well, appreciate you taking the time, Jamie. We so look forward to your adventures to come. Thanks so much for joining the UNF Leadership Podcast.

SPEAKER_01 40:40

Thanks, Mia.

SPEAKER_00 40:42

Thanks for listening to the UNF Leadership Podcast. For more episodes like this, be sure to subscribe to our YouTube and podcast channels. This has been a presentation of the Taylor Leadership Institute at the University of North Florida.