 Welcome to the show, John. We're excited to chat about your book, let them lead, and I think it'd be fun to start with just a bit of backstory of how a sports writer becomes the head coach of the worst hockey team in America. Great question. I guess the short answer, AJ, is brilliant career move, obviously. You're making good money as a Detroit News feature writer on Sundays to take over a winless high school hockey team for 5,000 bucks a year. Yeah, genius. That's one of my many, many savvy fiscal moves of my career. But I played for the team and over here on high school, home of the River Rats, I'm not making that up, of the tens of thousands of mascots out there. We are the only ones who are the River Rats, I guarantee you. Plenty of Cougars and Cubs and Lions and Tigers and Pioneers and all that, but only one River Rats. So I played for the team, I've been assistant coach earlier, and the program was not a hard time. So my dream was to lead the team, but of course also try to save it and keep it going, basically. Did you always see yourself as a leader who was capable of turning around a winless hockey team? I had better have. I was about to test that theory. I believed I could do it, but I also knew that the risk of failure was very high here for a few reasons. One, I'd never been a head high school hockey coach before, so zero experience is a thing that you need. I coached junior high school baseball teams and things like that, but not the same. Two, the team was 0-22 and 3, as you know. You went to Alan Park Cabrini, one of our rivals, by the way, in our division. So back in Michigan, Frank DeCristofero won state titles there. So we had great competition in our league, four or five of the best teams in the state, including Cabrini. So that was going to be hard. And the guy they hired, of course, yours truly happened to be the worst player in school history, and this is not false, modest people. I'm not just trying to be humble about this. I've got numbers to back it up. You guys like numbers. I still hold the record. For the most games in a here in uniform, 86. I played in every game for three years back then as 10 through 12. With the fewest goals, zero. And look, all my all-state teammates, all the records have been broken. Nobody can break that record. Every game, all the games, none of the goals. You can't break that. So my definition. So worst player in school history. It's actually a family record. My brother shares it. He's also on the team. He also failed the score. But as he likes to point out, he played goalie, but we've all got excuses. So worst team in America, worst team in school history, fabulous. And by the way, the worst team in America is not false either. Some website, USCHO ranks them all, which is crazy. We don't play all the teams in our state, let alone the United States. But out of 1,256 teams in 2000, we ranked 1,256 dead last. That's impressive. And I know you guys are LA based and so on. They had teams from California ahead of us. Hey, we're not surfing out here. Now, this is what we do. We have snow, we have ice. This is us. Take the tennis titles, take the golf titles. We'll give them all that to you. Hockey's us. And so that was bad news. And to prove it, they didn't want me either. So the vote of the committee was 4-2 for the other guy. And the four votes included a parent, a secretary, the incoming captain. That's the guy you kind of want on your side. And the athletic director, my future boss, who was a good friend of mine from the time I was an eighth grade algebra student of hers years earlier, and she voted for the stranger. So this is not a great setup. And she eventually changed her votes into being 3-3 and the principal picked me because I went to Huron. That's all not based on hockey. So and the parents and the players were decidedly displeased by this. This is about 15 years ago or so. So I got a chance to interview all the former players, all the parents, and for the book, let them lead, of course. And they're quoted as saying, I cannot believe when, you know, they named a new coach. We picked another loser. That was one of the mom's conclusions. So we're not good friends, but we weren't then. So, John, I have to ask, I mean, obviously you had a mountain climb. The odds are stacked against you. Well, every, it seems that every metric, including their vote, was against you. What was the determining factor where you're like, rather than just play it safe and stick to your job and do the norm, you decided to take on this challenge. And I also, in reading the book and looking at the story, I couldn't help but compare it to one of my favorite movies growing up as I'm 49. And that movie growing up was Bad News Bears. And I just, I love that story. And of course, I just kept looking at the parallels to that. So if you could let us in on what made you choose that path, John. Well, that's, like I said, it was not financial. We know that. Nor is it odds of success, nor my background. So there's three things, the normal boxes do not apply here. Scratch them all off. And like AJ from Michigan and like Johnny, I went to kindergarten in Pittsburgh, actually. So we're living some of the parallel lives. And I grew up watching Bad News Bears and Brian Song and all the classics, of course. And honestly, it's corny as it sounds. It kind of comes down to that. On paper, it made no sense for me to do this. It's time consuming. It cost me money. It cost me a lot of money. So yeah, for the time and effort and so on, as a freelancer, naturally. I could have embarrassed myself in the city, but it comes down to the intangibles. It's an experience I wanted to have. And I wanted my players to have an experience also that I had half of when I was a player. There's that great feeling when you see a band on stage, and whether it's Bruce Springsteen or whatever you got, where you know the band's in sync and you know it's tight. And you know they're looking at each other and they respect each other. There's love and affection there. And they're ripping it. And the crowd's going nuts. I mean, my era. Earth went on fire back in the day. That was a wall of sound, man. Those guys know exactly what they're doing. All right. And they knew they knew it. I can't sing or play an instrument. So that's not an option. But the closest I could come is that great feeling when you know the team is in sync, when you know the team knows what they're doing. And everybody in that room has got your back. And from that, the synergy start and the multiplication tables kick in. And great things happen. And I've been a part of some of those teams. But I've never led one. I've been an assistant coach at Culver Academies. We're a brilliant mentor of mine. Al Clark was the head coach. I talk about him in the book as well. He's the nation's leading. I retired with the most wins of any high school coach in America. Probably more on him later. So I knew what it looked like. I knew what it felt like, but I had not done it. And that's what I wanted. They always ask you in corporate America, you know, what's our return on investment? What does it look like? What could I say? I could give you some numbers and I want to win, you know, some playoff games and compete for the league title and some all-stay players. But ultimately what I wanted was that feeling and you know it when you have it. When we're in the locker room before game, we know we're ready. We know we're good. And you better know it because we're coming. And that is the feeling that I wanted above all else. You have parents doubting you. You have the team captain doubting you. The staff at the school doubting you. Paint the picture of walking in to the locker room wherever you met the team the first time. What was going through your own head? And was there a self-doubt at this point with everyone else doubting you? By the way, and I'd be lying, but I didn't say I didn't have a ton of doubt. I mean, I just couldn't let it get past one-third of my mindset. I mean, if you don't have some doubt, what do I say in the military? If you're not scared, you're an idiot. I mean, because those are live bullets. Now, this is not a war. This is just high school hockey, but there we go. So I had a lot of doubts and I'm kind of like the dog chasing the car. I caught the car. Now what? I don't have opposable thumbs or a wallet or car keys. So how is this going to work? Before I get to the first meeting, the key to it was, and this is true of all leaders. When I find, when people get to the leadership role for the first time, whether the 25 or 55, the first mistake they make is thinking that I've got to be all-knowing and all-powerful and I'm not going to ask for help. I'm not going to take advice. I'm not going to listen to what my people say. I'm not going to show any weakness. Those are usually the traps that I'm in charge thing. And by the way, the military is shocking the good at not doing this amazingly. They're actually pretty enlightened about this, I think. But so what do I do? I get help. Those who don't get help are going to fail. I guarantee it. And when you fail on your way down, no safety net because there's no one there to pick you up. All your allies are gone. So get help. And Warren Buffett had a great line. He said, if you think you're the smartest guy in the room, get a better room. And that's, so first thing I did was I got a grossly overqualified assistant coaching staff, guys who played in Sweden professionally, two guys who played from Michigan, two or three guys who won state titles at Ann Arbor Pioneer, our rival, some of the best players in the city. And my joke was my goal is to be the dumbest guy in the coach's room. And I greatly exceeded my expectations. So I was by far the dumbest guy and I wasn't close. So long as they knew that I'm the head coach when we walk out of this room, then we're cool. That's okay. And I also saw Al Clark's help. He's again, my mentor at Culver Academies started with an outdoor rink in 76 and 12 players never skated before bought it. Many of them skates in South Bend, third year of their state champs, eight straight years. He produced then five more of a second team. They've won national, competed for national titles, sorry, 25 NHL draft picks, nine NHL players, six Olympians, this guy, and this is the cornfields of Indiana. That's basketball country. That's not hockey country. This guy's pretty amazing and a five beta cap up math department chairman, cut no corners, no deals with the devil, any of that. So I ask out before I have that faithful meeting for the first time where I'm undeniably unsure of myself. I said, okay, Al, what do I do? And he said, the first thing you've got to do is to make it special to play for here on. I said, well, we're already the worst team in America. That's pretty special. And he said, no, no, he said the easiest way to make it special is to make it hard. The easiest way to make it special is to make it hard. The exact opposite of what everyone was telling me about this generation, millennials then now Gen Z and so on. They won't work, they're selfish, they're entitled and so on. But Al is right. When you offer what casual Fridays and taco Tuesdays and beanbag chairs and all that, what do you get? You get the problem is that bait works. You get those who like casual Fridays and taco Tuesdays and beanbag chairs. Put out that bait, those are the fish you're going to get. And you guys work with the military a lot. I know that Navy Seals is in the book. Got to be about the hardest job in the world, probably the most dangerous perhaps, certainly one of them. They get $54,000 an average. That's not a whole hell of a lot by any standard. And they take 6% of those who apply. They're not apologizing for it being hard. They're not denying it. They're bragging about it. And the Peace Corps, same thing. You got to go through a rigorous interview process for what? The honor of digging ditches in the world's poorest countries for a few hundred bucks a month. And they take one out of six applicants. So when you're selling the mission and not the salary, when I talk to companies the way you guys do, about recruiting today is the biggest issue. They're going nuts. Labor market is very tough to recruit in right now. Find me a harder one than worst human America, worst player in school history, and everybody hates you. All right, start there. And what you do is you do the opposite of what everyone says. Don't lower the bar, raise it. And that's what Al told me. So with that in mind, my first encounter with a team was a letter I sent out before I had met any of them with a questionnaire and some other stuff. And the letter said, congratulations, you are trying out for the hardest working high school hockey team in the state of Michigan. And I meant it back to Al's ideas like, man, if I'm rational about this, it's not going to work. I do it the normal way and play it safe. Like Johnny was saying, if I play it safe, this ain't going to happen. It can happen. We got to throw the dice. So I threw the dice and I bet on them. And then I meet them for the first time. I mailed the questionnaire in that form, in that letter to each player, meeting for the first time in the backyard of the captain, Mike Henry, now a great friend of mine, a fantastic leader, by the way, in his adult career, good friend, but his backyard, the guy who voted against me at the time. And 15 players went around and got to know them all. I engaged them. I learned all their names. I can do that pretty easily. 15 names, go around the whole room and get them all right. That always helps. And then I said, who here has got the questionnaire I sent out? And all the questionnaire I asked is off the top of your head questions. How many years have you played hockey? What position do you play? What do you like about it? What do you not like about it? What worked well in last year's team? What didn't? What advice do you have for me? Simple stuff, trying to coach them better simply enough. And three out of 15, turn that in. And that's when, okay, all or nothing, I decided we can't do it this way. I chewed them out. And I just met them. And I said, forget the opponents and forget your record. This is why you're 0, 22, and 3. Because I gave you a very simple task and 20% did it. Was it too difficult? Did it take too long? Did anybody guys call me up with questions? My number's on there. Email, it's on there too. My snail mail address is on there as well. Did any of you guys call me? No, none of you did. This is why we're the worst team in America. And I walked out and I turned to my assistant coach and said, you might be the head coach by Friday because they already hate me. So this might not go over so well. But our next workout, June 28, 2000, all 15 had their stuff. These are voluntary workouts. As you know, AJ, in the state of Michigan, you can't legally require anybody in the off season to come to a workout. So these are optional. They were brutal in the weight room and on the track and not one player quit from the worst team in America. These aren't the Navy SEALs we're talking about. That tells us we pretty much get this generation exactly wrong. And even in the worst team in America, they want a challenge. They want somebody to believe in them. They want to get pushed. And they prove that. So there's a long answer to your short question. Sorry about that. But there's about a third of the book, people. Well, a couple of things there, just our comment on the military folk. I'm always amazed that every time AJ and I step into a room full of military people, that room is the most humble room that you could walk into despite all of their accomplishments. And we're always blown away at the caliber of men and women that we're working with. But they also understand that they're there for training and they're there to learn. And I think that mindset is what allows them to be able to do that. So because that training could be a life or death situation as well. They're going to have to recall that. And it could be an incredibly difficult position to do that. So they got to absorb it all. And the other coming into this, did you have the mindset or an understanding of wanting to go in and make a statement quickly and early as to let people know how this is going to go as you come in? Either every leader that we have interviewed and when they have come into an organization, the rule is if you're going to break some eggs, do it early and do it fast and do it quickly. Yes, yes, and yes. I had that mindset. I wasn't sure I was going to do that that day. I mean, that was like seconds, not minutes basically. If you get 20% response rate, if that's acceptable, then say it's acceptable. If it's not, then you better know it right now. And I do agree with that approach. And you've already encountered it many times. You're going to break the eggs, don't drag it out, don't stretch it out. One of the lines in the book and then previous book with Bo Schembecker, the old football coach, is a higher, slower, fire faster. And if you're going to have to do it, you might as well just do it. If you have the data and you know what you got to do. Now at this point, I didn't know what was going to happen with the players. But again, to their credit, they all came back and then they started telling their friends about the workouts too. Friends who don't play hockey like lacrosse guys and basketball guys and so on. And their friends wanted to see if they could meet the challenge of these workouts. So at that point, you know, it's happening. But back to your point, if you're going to be a bad guy, be your worst guy on day one. And you can become a nicer guy as things go on. But your toughest self is probably day one. Well, the other thing that you probably realized in going into this, to set this up in that manner is that young men are looking for ways to be special. And you provided that to them. If everyone's getting a trophy just for showing up, no one is special. And that is ingrained in young men to find those qualities that are unique in them that separate them from the pack that self confidence. In fact, we had did an interview with Stephen Hayes and he he got in a bit of controversy early in his career, challenging the self esteem movement. And just this idea of telling children that they're special at time tends to have the opposite effect. People have to earn that for themselves. So they can really feel that through and through, because that's where that confidence is going to exude from. You just can't slap a cone of pain on it and think things are going to be fine. Well, I'm with you and Stephen Hayes and that one for sure. For this reason, they're not stupid. What we tend to screw up, especially now with the new generation, is we underestimate them. We underestimate their work ethic, their desire, as you said, their need to be pushed. I mean, be drawn in to be something special. And their brains, frankly, if everyone gets a trophy, look, my kids six, have we got a trophy for might hockey mini mites last year? He's not stupid. He's having that one. And okay, there's some value in that. I'm not going to dismiss it all together. When you get shellac 12, two by a team, they know it. And when you beat a very good team, they know that too. And what I've also found, by the way, even in might hockey, where we don't keep score for almost anything, all the kids already know it. So you're not fooling them as far as that goes. So yeah, the self esteem thing only goes so far. What you really need is something far more important than self esteem. And that's confidence and confidence. By the way, there are no shortcuts. There's one pathway. You have to do something you are not sure you could do. That is the only path to confidence. And we did it all summer long. We just kept that. And we kept track of our weight stuff, our weight limits and all that. We kept track of our relay team relay times, always team on the track and all that. And they knew they were getting better. Went from 15 minutes for a team relay to about 12 minutes. That's, you know, you knock off 20%, you get your attention. And as Scotty McConnell said, one of the players in the team, that when someone is pushing that heart, there is a compliment embedded in that in that work. And that isn't you guys can handle it. And I don't get into politics as a rule, but I'll quote George W. Bush once on this one, the soft, bigotry of log expectations, nothing more insulting than lowering the bar. And if someone needs help to get over it, then give them the help. All right, then get in there and engage. But you don't lower the bar and say, this is good enough for you. This is for everyone else, but this is for you. Not the same. So yeah, I agree with Hayes. I think the reason the younger generation is getting the bad rap is just culturally around them. It has been softened, but regardless of that softening and the bubble wrap you wrap around them inside each young person is that desire to separate themselves, to develop, to evolve, to become something we all dream as young children. So you're eliciting that and drawing that out regardless of how much bubble wrap we put around them. They're still going to want to jump off big stuff and learn stuff and find adventure. The flip side of that challenge I feel in a lot of these situations is when the stars don't buy in. So you don't want to lower the bar for the entire team, but there's also got to be part of you where you don't want to lose your best players in the process. So how did you strike that balance where obviously the most talented players might not want to buy into these principles or might not want to buy into you, the new guy with all these doubters behind you? And those challenges where the stars step out of line, a lot of us feel, okay, well, let's bend the rules a little bit or let's go a little easier on them, lower the bar because we want to keep them around. Two great points and really questions embedded in those. The first one, by the way, from Johnny is that high school boys especially, but it's true for everybody. They're going to challenge themselves. My mentor there is Al Gallop. He's 96 years old, a World War II hero. He has a system principle here on when I was there, later on a principal at community high school here in town, still around, still bikes every day. This guy is tough, pretty amazing. And he said that they're going to challenge themselves and they're going to challenge themselves with drugs and cars and God knows what else. Or it's going to be climbing mountains and outward bound or hockey programs or a rock band or something else. So we gave them a healthy outlet for that. I define their limits. He said they're going to test their limits in some way or other. Let's do it this way. And I tell the parents that we're a little skittish about certain things. They look, we're going to test ourselves on the track or they're going to do with drugs and cars. So pick one. And it's going to be scary either way. I get that for parents, but you have to do it. So that challenge they like. So that appealed to them. And back to your point, AJ, two points in there and yours. One thing I hear a lot on the stage, of course, in my corporate presentations is, well, you can't get everyone doing this, right? Exactly. I don't want them. So, and doesn't necessarily mean the stars. I'm not talking about that. The worst man in America. I wanted all those guys. I needed them really, but I wanted those who are serious about working. And it turns out all of them were, I was not frankly expecting that. I fully expected our, you know, two, three, four, at least appeal off and say, screw this. And none of them did. And they started telling their friends and our team got bigger. And third year, we got 80 guys trying out for our high school hockey team because they told their friends. And by the way, you can try to recruit your people all you want. It's your employees who recruit your people because they don't believe you. So that's how that one works. But so back to the star system, though, and it's kind of the same thing. What if your stars don't go for it? And I learned this from Al Clark again. The phrase is the bus waits for no man or woman. I know it's true in the military. It's true in the Peace Corps that, and this is where you've got to be tough. The easiest temptation I think for leaders is exactly the one you circled age in. I'm glad you did because you see it all the time too. I'm sure that, okay, look, we got these rules, this and that. But you know what? My star salesperson, you know, I didn't get this stuff in on time and blah, blah, blah, but look at those numbers. You can't do it that way. You cannot play favorites. And if you do, two things happen and they're both bad. One, maybe three. One, the star is not motivated because he or she knows that they can, you know, not turn in their expense reports on time or do whatever, but I got the numbers. So screw it, they're not going to mess with me. So they are now demotivated and you're not getting their best anymore. And then the guys behind them are off the demotivate because no matter what I do, I play by the rules. I show up on time. I do all this stuff. I will never get ahead of that person because the numbers and the boss will never give me a fair shot at this. So now they're both demotivated. Your whole team's demotivated and you've been exposed as a hypocrite, somebody who does not believe what they say. So none of that's good. So keep the kid's name out of it. He's a very good guy. He's about 40 years old now. One of our stars at Culver Academies and I'm a 22 year old second assistant coach. I'm pretty low in this totem pole. Say the least. I'm in the front seat with Al Clark. We're leaving Culver Academies at 10 o'clock in the morning, driving, I don't know, 10 hours to Buffalo, New York for a big hockey tournament. NHL scouts going to be there. Eight of the best teams in America are going to be there. College scouts and so on. And one of our players already drafted by the NHL, by the Montreal Canadiens. This guy is quite good. I think we can say fairly. He is three, four minutes late for the bus and the bus is leaving. Yeah, he's one minute late. The bus is already rolling out. I'll call him Rick is banging on the outside of the bus, running up and all the, and we all liked him. He wasn't a bad guy. I didn't have a bad attitude, but he's, you know, late and all the places. Coach, coach, Rick is banging on the outside of the bus. And Al says, and Al is not a talker unlike me. He says about 10 words a day. He says, and I quote, he word outside. He's on the wrong side of the bus. And he turned to the driver says, roll. He left the guy in the parking lot for this eight game tournament, this weekend tournament. And guess what? They won anyway, because they're all inspired and they got to fill the gap. And even if you lost, it's still the right thing to do. So following that, I left leading scores. I left starting goalie in the parking lot. You hope it happens in my sport in November before it really matters too much. Don't play this game in March, people. Right. Early on is fine. Exactly. Once you leave the star in the parking lot, all right, chance of the star, the star, either get it together or they won't. They probably will get it together. Once in a while, they won't. If so, if you keep them, it's going to be, I don't know if it's a cancer, but it's at least mold. It's going to, it's going to spread. It's going to get ugly. And it's not good. And if they do get it, now everyone's on the same team. Guess who shows up on time for the next bus? All of them by half an hour. If we left, you're rick in the parking lot, we'll leave you in the parking lot. Don't think twice about that. So no one's messing around with that ever again. So the star system was one of the first things you have to get rid of for your team to be successful. It may cost you somebody, probably won't have more faith in them than you think, but if it does, it does. And one of the key takeaways early in the book is this concept of you need to separate the behavior from the results. I'd love for you to unpack that for our audience, and especially those who are in leadership roles, how we can bring that to our own teams. And that's where we often get confused. It's like, okay, I want to be tough and so on and so forth, but the world's around there or the guys got a great attitude, but not getting it. Okay, separate, as you just said, it's chapter three, I think, be patient with results. And if you turn over, taking over the worst team in America, and it going to happen overnight, we know that your division, your, you know, whatever you got going on, but be utterly impatient with behaviors. As I was in that first meeting, you guys are late with this questionnaire, there's no excuse period. And you won't be late for the workout, you won't be late for our practices, you won't be late for anything. And they basically weren't for four straight years. And I couldn't be either, obviously. So behaviors, that's an attitude. Look, we had two rules and only two rules, work hard, support your teammates. That's it. And my promise to them was, if you do those two things, I'm cool, no matter what the score is, scores my responsibility. All right, if you don't do those two things, I'm not cool because those things are your responsibility. And those don't depend on referees or goalies, or the quality of the ice, or the weather, or anything else. All right, those are two decisions we make every day we wake up. And if you make the wrong decisions, it's not going to go well here. So stick with that. And I'll back you always. And the, as you know, AJ, the asset test for that was early in my first season, we won three games, the first three games, in one week we equaled the total wins for the two previous seasons combined. That's how bad we were. As my dad said when I took the job, you know, why do you want to do that? Your question, basically. And I explained. And he said, all right. And then he said, well, when you're on the floor, yeah, can't fall out of bed. So thanks dad for that motivational pep talk. He does not do what we do for a living. I'll say that. So we won the first three games, we got to play Almighty Trenton, USA Today once called them the best high school hockey program in the nation. They produce NHL players. They've won 14 state titles. Hey, Alan Park, you're not too far away. AJ, you know about Trenton. They are the be on the end all in this state. We're playing those guys final scores 13 to two. And I'll remind you that this is not football. This is hockey is not field goals. No touchdowns, you know, and safety. No, was all in increments of one. So you kind of 13 very slowly. That's how miserable that night was. We knew their fight song by the end of the night. So that's that's how bad that was near 13 times. You can learn it too. So promise you 10 year old kids banging the glass, flipping us off. And we had to take it. So give the locker room and the guys are throwing their gloves and throwing their sticks. They worked five months very hard. And this is the worst loss they had had the year before. So there's a setback. They're not too happy. I said, Hey, I saw what you saw. We got our butts handed to us on a silver platter by the best team in America. And that shocked them. When in doubt, tell the truth, as Mark Twain said. So whatever the dad is, don't lie about it. Cold eye. But that's not what matters here. What matters here are our values. What are our values? And they mumble, work hard to support your teammates. And no, no, no, we've been yelling that back and forth all spring, all summer, all fall. I want to hear it. And we start yelling it back and forth, work hard to support your teammates. And I said, okay, did we do those two things tonight? And they think about it. And they think actually we did it. So that's right. You didn't take a single shift off. You all came back on defense. You didn't coast to the bench. They didn't do that. They started loafing in the third period because they had a 10 goal lead. All right, but you guys did support your teammates. You guys do that. They said, actually, we did is that you supported the goalie by players every time after each goal tapped his pads tapped his helmet. That's part of our protocols. All right, they quit high five at each other after the 10th goal, they got bored, kicking our butts. All right, they didn't do that. What you did is so much harder. And so much more impressive tonight was heroic. We define ourselves. And that's crucial point. Once you decide emphasize behaviors over results, all right, you can't COVID man. I mean, I don't care how smart you are COVID probably three for a loop, unless you're selling COVID tests. And then you're probably doing great. But short of that guy, all right, everyone's taken in the short, you don't control that it's not your fault. All right, but your behaviors are. So that's what we control. We define ourselves that way. And that allowed us to keep our heads during a 10 game losing streak. And later on our third year, 14 game winning streak, same players by the way, I didn't cut one guy from the zero 22 and three team, allowed us to keep our heads on straight during the winning streak. We didn't believe our press clippings. We didn't believe the rankings. We didn't have to two things tonight. Gentlemen, work hard for your teammates. We'll handle whatever comes in and that frees you up. Now I would assume with high school athletics, it feels like there's a need for a lot more rules and regulations for a team. And you talk about underage drinking in the book and then there's parental pressures of how you're going to get these guys disciplined. So how did you fall on those two principles and what was the overarching theory behind it? Because it's very easy for us as team leaders to make a laundry list of rules, a guidebook that we hand out to our staff. And then of course it's difficult to enforce all of those nuances. Exactly, right? And then you end up being judge and jury. Your job, instead of leading your team, your job is adjudicating every stupid little thing that comes across your desk. All right, this guy's 10 seconds late. What is that? You know, versus a minute late versus this guy's, you know, got a cold and staying home with that guy, you know, is coming here anyway and blah, and you're not leading your team anymore. You're just trying to, you know, judge with all the behavior all day long, get out of that business, keep it short and keep it simple. Now look, I'm not going to lie to you, under work hard and support your teammates, a lot of things showed up showing up on time, showing up prepared to work appropriately, the proper clothes and all that and ready to go, pour your teammates and all that business. But for example, the drinking, which is a big deal in high school, obviously, and it's a big issue. And I'd rather it did not be one, I'd say the least, but it wasn't naive or stupid. And I can't control if they do a 10 o'clock on a Saturday night. I'm not going to drive around town. I'm not knocking on doors. And if I can't enforce a rule, don't make a rule. And the one rule I could enforce as far as that goes, as I said in the book, as you know, AJ, is if it gets to my desk, whatever it is, you can't handle it, and you will not like my solution. So whatever that is, you decide what you can handle, what you can't handle. What I did not want to see is any drunk driving, drinking and driving, obviously. I didn't want any peer pressure for the players to drink on the team. And again, if you can't handle it, it's on my desk, you ain't going to like it. I'm not going to kick you off the team. But whatever the school gives you, I'm going to give it two more, whatever it is. So there you go. But keep it simple. And I'll, financial firm, I do a lot of work for, that I admire greatly. She said, who here's got the employee handbook? And some hands go up from the rookies is a big national conference. She goes, no you don't, because we don't have one. The employee handbook is do the right thing. If you don't know what that is, call me. And there's my number. Call me. But guess what? By the time you reach for the phone, you already know what the right thing to do is. And you know it's going to cost you. And you don't want to do it, but you have to. So that's the right thing. So when in doubt, keep it simple. And that way it's consistent. And you get out of the jury and judge business. The whole reason I was so strict about being on time is I didn't want to deal with it. It's a waste of everyone's time. So guess what? If 14 and 15 year old kids can get to the rank on time every single day for four straight years, your employees can too. It's so important as leaders to not only have the simple message, but enforce the message. You're in a unique situation that I think most leaders in employment aren't where you then also have to deal with parents. And parents come, I know hockey moms for my days, they come in all shapes and sizes. And of course they won't spend for their kids, but that doesn't often align with the team principles, the team goals and what you're working towards. So how did you deal with those challenging conversations with parents who maybe weren't happy with the direction you were taking the team? Maybe felt that their child needed more playing time or whatever bone they had to pick with you. How did you deal with those conversations separate from obviously what you're building internally with the team? Great question. One, I don't get very often actually. And it turns out, as you guys know from the employers, it's amazing how much more often these employers are dealing with parents as well. One, I've read stories about bringing your parents for the year end evaluation. You're 24. What? My parents wouldn't have gone if I asked them. So I know that much. But anyway, two things. One, you try to nip it in the bud. Almost all problems I try to nip way upstream. As I say about fires, if you get the fire when it's in your waste basket, it's not very big. If you wait long enough, it's your whole damn house. So get the bucket of water as fast you can and end it as fast you can. Try to smell the problems early on. First Monday after the team gets made, we have a players meeting. I go over all this stuff. And then a few days later, we have a parents meeting. We'll go over all their stuff. And I said, you are not only welcome to talk to me about anything you want, you're encouraged to do so, including grandparents getting sick, kid getting sick, girlfriends, problems at school, whatever is going on that you think I should know about. Girlfriends never made the list, thankfully, I guess. Our boyfriends or whatever. Except for two things. One, strategy, and two, playing time. And here's why. And I had them sign contracts, by the way, on this one. I drove up a neutral zone trap, which is a hockey system. Well known by the Pittsburgh Penguins. You'll be glad to know, Johnny. And I said, okay, who here knows how to break the neutral zone trap? I got the pen right here. Nobody? Okay. I'll coach the team this year. And we'll see how that goes. And if I have a question, I'll ask Red Barents and the Michigan coach, or Barry Smith, the Red Wings assistant coach, or Her Brooks would be the Soviets in 1980. I've got a great Rolodex here. If I have a question, I'll get good answers. All right. So that's one thing we're not talking about strategy. Two, the far dice year one, as you know, is playing time. I said, let me explain something here. I get five skaters in the ice and I got a goalie. All right. And everything is zero. So if your player wants more playing time, it comes out of her son's pocket. All right. That's all I get. All right. So I guarantee you two things. Everyone on this team is going to get everything they need to succeed. And nobody is going to get everything they want. All right. Including the star player. I'm benching him when we're up by five goals in the third period, he gets benched. So I can dress through it and play third and fourth line players. He will not get everything he wants. All right. And no others and so on. So treatment will be equal. Playing time will not. And if you want equal playing time, here's the number for the local little league. All right. There you play every third shift and there's value in that. I get it. All right. Now, unlike most coaches, if you're in uniform, I would play you not equally necessarily, but I get you in. I was always bigger than that. But anyway, so that was the deal at first. I show off hands. Everybody here understand this? Show me your hand. Nonetheless, you know what happens? I got two nasty emails in my four years, which out of 100 parents, you can't complain about that. They were nasty enough that I remembered them. I can probably still quote some of them to this day. The things that I thought were, you know, accuse me of, you know, false things being mean or whatever, which is not true. I love their kids. I love them sometimes more than parents, but you're still going to get some. And on that point, so you try to fend it off. But on that second point, okay, it sucks to get an email like that. I can't deny it. And it affected me. No, I can't deny that either. And then I'm reminded of a beekeeper I once met when I was working on a farmhouse and I tore open a beehive behind the walls by accident. Gigantic. And of course, I got stung four or five times, bring the beekeeper in. And all he wanted was the 500 beehive. It was apparently a great hive. So I can vouch for that. And I said, I got to ask, you know, do you ever get stung? And he didn't even look at me. He said, plumbers get wet, beekeepers get stung. I thought, that's kind of it. If you don't like water, don't be a plumber. If you don't like getting stung by bees, don't be a beekeeper. If you don't like blood, don't become a surgeon. And if you can't stand being criticized, do not be a leader because you will get criticized. And it won't be fair. And it won't be when you want and everything else. It's gonna happen. And it sucks. But if you can't handle that, get back in line and be a follower. John, on that note, what intrigued me about the book was you were a bit hesitant in putting it together. And so you had wrote everyone that was on this team. And you had asked them to turn in the, I guess, the lessons that they had gotten out of your term there. And I believe you got 150 pages back or whatnot from everybody. As much as AJ and I are in front of the room, we're always surprised to hear the words or the behavior that sticks into somebody that made the light go on. Our fathers always will sit us down and they'll talk to us and they'll think this is the moment that this kid's going to get it. But it's never those moments. We'll see something, we'll hear something where it all clicks. So in getting all of that feedback back after all these years, what had surprised you? Is there anything that kind of stuck out? You're like, that was the lesson? That's what you guys got out of that? A lot of that happened. More than half of them, 54 players in four years, more than half of them sent me back pages, as you say, 150 some pages. I mean, so one thing is humbling right away. And once again, 15 years after I coached them, I had still underestimated them. Shame on me. Also, by the way, a lucky break to write the book years later. Because by now, their husbands and fathers and so on, most of them are leaders in their fields. They had a much better perspective on what the thing meant and what it didn't mean. And they would have had when they're 18 or 19 or 20. And I did too, being older as well. But a few things stuck out. One, it's scary the impact you actually have. And don't take it for granted. I mean, things I said that I didn't remember, that they remember like crazy. Most of them positive, a couple weren't. And watch out what you say to anybody in the heat of the moment or whatever. But it was very positive in the grand scale. It was amazing their perspective that they got it, right, basically. And you and Johnny hit the nail in the head. One of my phrases is water all the plants. Because you don't know who's going to grow when and how far and how much. But I guarantee you this, if you don't water, I'm not going to grow. They're all in their own schedule and you can't force it. Some light bulb goes on right away. And there are examples of that in the book, of course. One of my favorite stories, one of our players was not a great student in high school. He'd been in and out once or twice until I started enforcing the study table. Because I was done with that. We got rid of that problem. We had the highest grade point in the state, 3.27, I think it was, which by the way, in high school hockey, I have to tell you, this is not tennis or golf or rowing across country. Let's be honest here, shall we with these people? We used to laugh about brain freezes. One of the biggest things that stood out for me is that these guys always got it better than I expected. And each time I let the rope out, each time I put them in charge of things, the more I was willing to do that, the better it went. And by the way, the military, for all the talk of, you know, that's got a hierarchy and got strict rules and so on. Man, I've been on the Teddy Roosevelt, the USS Teddy Roosevelt, one of the five or six major aircraft carriers. And the Admiral told me when I got on, he said, you're going to get on first of all thinking about all how, you know, the technology that's put things amazing. You're going to walk off thinking there are 3,020 year olds who run this thing and it works. And that's the amazing thing. These guys can handle it. So what came out again and again and again is how mature they were and how much they got things that I didn't even get myself. You write in the book that there's value in having team members who are willing to stand up to you and question you and push back. You don't want a team full of yes people that doesn't allow you to reach those greater goals. Johnny and I, in all of our years of managing team members, especially millennials and now Gen Z, there is a difficult balance there where opening up to questions can often lead to more questions that you could handle and an inability to take action to actually move towards those goals. So how did you strike that balance with opening up the floor to those questions, but then allowing the team to stay focused on the goals that you had as the coach and as the leader? It's two things. It's the culture you set up, but then it's case by case, honestly. And it's always easy to look back and say, okay, we did this, we did that. When you're in that moment leading, as you guys know, every day, you think, okay, am I being too hard? Am I being too soft? I mean, I'm constantly going back and forth, microscopically too hard on that guy, not hard enough on that guy. Individually, the team itself, have I been open enough to the suggestions? Have I been too open? Same idea. It also depends partly on where it's coming from. I wanted to be very, very close. We took our leadership on the team very seriously. We talked, as you know, it's a chapter title of one of the 12. Create layers of leadership. If it's you versus your team, you already lost. There's more of them than you. They win. Sorry. If you have a four person office and you're one of them, it's three to one, you just lost. And the military is worse and so are teams and so are most corporations. So it can't be that. So we had head coach, assistant coaches, captains, seniors, juniors, sophomores, and each one had responsibilities. And each one therefore was responsible for how the team was going. So I met with the captains every single day after practice for at least a minute. On their way out, they knew they had to come in and check with me. How are we doing? Who's happy? Who's not happy? What should I be aware of? So again, I'm trying to get things upstream whenever I can. That helps a lot. They already feel like they're being heard. If I hear about a problem with a sophomore who otherwise would probably not talk to me, might be too scared to, I can reach out to that sophomore and say, hey, look, man, what's going on? How are you doing? Let's talk. Come in the office. So you learn from your captains that whole thing, but then also the captains. There's the scene in the book from Chris Kunkel, our second captain, great leader. We had a good game. We'd beaten team five to three, but the seniors weren't happy about a few things. And they met after the game under the stands without me present, which can make you paranoid if you're not careful. I was a little bit just seeing what's going on. Then he comes in, a few complaints. We don't want to hear about last year's team because I love the first team, of course, and how tough they were and how they were the most improved team in school history. We're tired of hearing of those guys. We're our own team. Focus on us. That's fair. Two, we're tired of having the study table at here in high school across town from the rink. Let's have it here at the rink. Order pizzas. We'll shower and go right to the room across the hallway. Done and done and a few other things. But why would I not listen to those? Those are two good ideas. They cost us nothing. They gained a ton. They're good. They've made us better. And even if it was neutral, you already have the example that I listen to you and your voice matters. And at that point, that captain has more pull with his teammates because they know he can come to me and I listen. He's got that kind of power. So if I need something the other way, I say, Chris, I need you to do X, Y, and Z. He'll probably do it because we had that kind of relationship now. That is a scary moment for any leader, but I've seen it when it's mishandled, you're headed for a mutiny. And that is even scarier. Well, I think it's the perfect setup. Obviously, it's the title of the book. And I think for most leaders, especially young leaders, let them lead, right? It's very easy once you get elevated. You get the title, the position, all the status that comes along with it to let your ego run wild and to think that all of your decisions are right. And your opinion is the only one that matters and not have room for those types of conversation, building the trust with your team. So what do you mean by let them lead? And how did you take a losing team, the worst team in America and get out of the way as a coach? Because I think for many of us, we not only want to take that loser team to winning and to all the great results you had, but then we want all the adulation that comes along with it, the pats on the back, way to go, John, you're the best coach in America. How do you deal with that ego as a leader? Two things about that. One, first question, how do you let them lead? Look, my first year I was more of a control freak by far than it was my third year. And if I could do anything differently, I'd go back and probably put more trust in them than I did the first year especially. But Al Clark got it right. He said, if they know they've had to do something difficult just to make the team, then not everybody would be willing to do. That's through the Peace Corps and the Navy Seals and everyone else too. Then with a little encouragement, they will start enforcing the culture themselves. And now you got a real culture. The culture is you. It's not a culture. It's a leader. I want a culture. It's got to come from everybody. I got to trust them. So that boils down to what I call the driver's ed model. What happens in driver's ed? I drive and you watch. Then you drive and I watch. And here's the scary part. Step three, you got to hand the keys and walk away. And that's terrifying. And I can't even imagine that yet. My kid is seven. I'm a late starter obviously. We're doing, we're learning how to ride a bike. All right. Forget the car. All right. So what happens? I ride the bike and then he rides the bike and I hold the seat. Step three. I got to let go of that seat. And why is that terrifying? Because he's in a bike off into the sunset just fine. No, he's not. He's going to wipe out the questions we wipe out into the picket fence or the tree or God help us the street, et cetera, et cetera, he's going to wipe out and to skin his knee. Hopefully that's all. He's going to cry. Then he's going to get back on the bike and do it again. And only then does he know how to ride a bike. And if you have a kid who can't ride a bike, that's more dangerous because you don't know what's going to happen next. And likewise can't drive a car. So it is scary. The third step is the scariest one. And how far do we take that? As you guys know, if you read the book, I'll let them lead third year. We had a 14 game winning streak. We finally lose two games to Trenton by a goal. I think we're now they're equals, but we can't quite beat them. Then we lose to our arch rival three nothing. They brought in a goalie from Finland, man. That's cheating. I swear. That guy was really good. We had 35 shots. We got nothing. We lost three to nothing or something like that. So it was brutal. What do you do? I called up the captain, Chris Fragner, and I said, uh, tomorrow night frag captain, I call them. Tomorrow night, you seniors are going to coach the entire game. And he says, what does that mean? I said, you'll see. They get to the rink and the dry race board is empty where the where the lineup is. The scoresheet is empty where I write in the roster. You guys got to pick 20 names. You got to pick five starters in hockey. You have to change on the fly, as we say. So while the pucks and play, the center comes off and the center goes on and that's got to be coordinated. Well, I got 10 seniors. So I got to have at least five on the bench. So you seniors are doing that all night long. I'm not saying a word and clearly I'm a talker. They did six nothing against a rank team. Um, and the zero was the impressive part. Any guy can score zero means every guy's doing their job looking up for each other and taking mutual accountability seriously. So that was one of the best games we had, but it was their risk. Absolutely. If that doesn't work, we blow it because they don't know what to do in the third period or whatever else. Now we got a three game losing streak and not getting paranoid. Is there a risk to it? Yes. And as I say early on in this book, everything I'm going to tell you is simple. None of it's complicated. All right. None of it is easy. None of it. And what does require most of all courage, courage in yourself, in your staff, and ultimately in your people. And that is the scary leap of faith you have to make. And if you don't, you're never going to achieve the heights. I'm not sure if we want to spoil the end for the audience. Of course, going in, hearing a story like this, as Johnny talked about bad news bears, everyone wants to know, did you win the championship? What are you most proud of with this team? And I think in the last chapter, there's actually a lot of great lessons around not winning the championship and what that actually meant to the guys. So how did that feel wrapping up your tenure? And what are you taking out of this experience that you're super proud of? Great question. Look, we'll play a little spoiler here. It's okay. So we go from zero wins the year before I got there. Seven wins our first year, 16 hours second. So we're two years in a row, we break the record for the most improved team. That's how bad we were. We could break it twice. Well, as your dad said, you're on the floor. So there's only one way to go. Exactly right, AJ. Third year, we're 17, four and five, we're the best team in school history. We're number four in the state. We're number 53 in the nation now and Culver's number three or four. That's how good they were. So therefore we passed 1,203 teams in three years. 97% of the nation we passed. I can't imagine anyone's done it since because you have to start out dead last and only one team's got a chance to do that every year. So very proud of all that obviously, but that wasn't the point in the playoffs. We're ranked fourth. We have beat the ninth ranked team, the seventh ranked team, then the third ranked team is to get out of our division. That's out of, you know, 80 teams that division, something like that. So it was brutal. And we lost to the second team. We all shot them 35 to 16 something like that. And we lose four to three in overtime. We're the better team. We all played them dramatically. Pucks bounce. Like I said, you don't control results. And it was heartbreaking. The guy who made a mistake on the ice there that led to that final goal, he's banging his head against the glass. And his teammates, I don't tell them to do this. They already know his teammates go right to him and give them a group hug to make them stop and to tell them they love them. And it's okay. And don't worry about it. They're heartbroken too. But that, I couldn't coach that at that point. That's what I'm proud of. All right, work hard to support your teammates. They did it. All right, they did it at the worst possible moment. They did it in spades. After the game, I said, I've got no complaint here. You guys were clear to the better team. You might be the best team in the state. You're very close. They got lucky. We didn't. I love you guys. I'll never forget you. And then what I'm also proud of is I come back 20 minutes later. They're still not undressed. They're waiting for Chris Fragner, the captain. I didn't realize they were doing this. He finally starts taking his stuff off and they start taking their stuff off. No one says a word to this, still 20 minutes. He's walking in the shower with his towel on and he turns and says the first word spoken since I spoke. And he says, I just want to thank all you freshmen for filling the water bottles and collecting the pucks and doing all the stats on game nights. You guys were great. That's when I started getting choked up even now, because that's a team you want to play on. At his lowest moment of his career, he's thinking about the quote unquote, the smallest guys in the team. That's what I'm proud of. There's also the epilogue, which we probably won't get into here, that maturity was tested in a much greater way after the season, as you know. They behaved at a tragically sad funeral in ways you could never have predicted. And that's when I'm really going to get choked up. Their maturity at that moment, you can't coach. It was out of this world. I think that's one of the most amazing things about this. It's represented in bad news bears and in your story, why I saw those parallels, which is through all of the fighting and the growth that that movie ends, and they don't win the championship, but you realize that they have a newfound confidence in themselves and each other that they didn't have at the beginning of the movie. And that's the part that really messes with you because you realize if they didn't have this experience, then there is no growth. And who knows what the outcome is in them going into the world. And in the same here, as for you to not take control, it's another losing few seasons, more losing culture surrounding them. And for some of those guys, they might not ever be able to escape that because this is such a critical time in a young person's development. No one there is going to make their living playing hockey. We knew that in that professional development in that sense, obviously. But if I had to say one thing to your question at the start of the podcast, why do this? What did I want to get out of it? I wanted them to be better people. That's it. And if we do that, this successful program, if we don't do that, doesn't matter how many games you win, if you made them worse, people are greedy or selfish or jerks or whatever else, and you won a lot of games, you failed. And we used to say our final exams as coaches was a senior banquet. If they're not crying at the end of the experience and we screwed up, if they don't care about this thing ending, then it's not that special and we didn't do our jobs. And one of the most reassuring things came to me from Chris Fragner. I've mentioned him a couple of times now. We're still in close touch now. We are coaching our kids together, actually. And his son, Matt, is a great player. He's three years older than my son. So Chris has given me parenting advice and I have to take it. He needs more than that. He needs to let them lead fashion. Oh, it worked out better than I expected. How's that better than I planned? But he said in the back of the book, and you guys have this, he said, you know, this guy played for Michigan. This guy's a serious player. Michigan was ranked number one in the country at the time. He wasn't, you know, fourth or fifth of the line guy, but so what? You're on the team. And he said, you know what? Even if we won the championship, we would not have learned any more. The experience would not have been any better. And he's a highly competitive guy. That made me feel extremely good. You ever seen the way I did? I mean, look, I'm competitive. I think that team shouldn't want a state title. It didn't work out that way. He said, it wouldn't have changed the experience. And that's when I think you're doing the right thing. Look, I know your job in the corporate America is to make more money and shareholders and so on, but if you're leading that way, it won't last very long and it won't stick very, you won't, won't go very far. Your real job is to make you and your team better people. And if you're doing that, don't worry about the numbers. They'll follow. And with that, you know, as the epilogue, as you mentioned, those team principles, like they're not just printed on the practice shirts, you know, they live by that even after those seasons are over. Like those carried on. And I think that's really what was so inspiring about the end of the book. I've already mentioned three of our captains, Mike Henry, Chris Conkel, and Chris Fragner. Conkel's brother, who never played for me, played lacrosse, not hockey. He's started his own company in Chicago, they're doing very well. And it's, it's one of their core values came from our wall. Your character is what you do and you think no one's watching. When that got transferred from my captain to his older brother to a company of 300 people 20 years later, okay, this stuff works. And again, it's not complicated. It's simple, but it's not easy. So we love asking every guest what their X factor is. What do you think makes you unique and extraordinary, John? Not much. How about that? I've got more energy than almost anybody that helps. I've seen a few guys with more, but not too many. My biggest superpower, whatever I've got, the ability to seek, find, and recruit mentors. I've got the best list of mentors you've ever had. And those people I went to constantly during this experience and experiences since then. I attract good mentors. The chapter in the bow book early on, early in your career, especially, don't seek money, seek mentors. I got paid $9,000 for that year at Culver Academy. It's the whole year as a faculty intern. I got free housing, thank God, and free food. I was like, I can't do it. High four figures, baby. But I got Al Clark. And that's why I did it. So seek mentors, not money. Great story. Thank you for joining us, John. I'm excited to read the rest of your books. Where can our audience find out more about you and all the great work you do as well as Let Them Lead? Thank you, Johnny and AJ. And by the way, you podcast your listeners out there. These guys do their homework. They know their stuff. They read the stuff and they're connected to other experiences they've had and leadership deals and so on. It's great. Letthemleadbybacon.com. Letthemleadbybacon.com. That's the website. It's got my TED talk on there, my appearance on Good Morning America, my graduation speech from Michigan Tech, the short version, two and a half minutes. And also my podcast, and Johnny and AJ don't know yet, but they're going to be guests on my podcast very soon. So what comes around goes around, boys. We're excited. Thank you, John. Thank you. Thank you.