 Lack of knowledge is rarely the reason we get stuck. It's not from lack of knowing, it's from lack of doing. And my goal is to try to give people, you know, strategies on how they can close that gap between what they know and what they do. This is Dave Meltzer, CEO of Sports One Marketing here with entrepreneur, The Playbook. And I am with a guy who has traveled old school. That's why I love him here to New York City to see me, Ellen Stein, performance coach extraordinaire. Took the bus, baby. You know what, I'm still on the bus. I saw Gary V, Instagram post about like, if you think entrepreneurs are all about bottle service and private jets, and he's lying down and he goes, try 15 hours of straight meetings, sleeping in the airport so I can take a red eye for 15 hours or more meetings tomorrow. I think both of you feel that way right now, right? It is awesome. And you know, this is for entrepreneur and I'd like to mix up the sports side because everyone sees sports is so much fun and passionate and all that, but it's a business. And I want to get to the point where everybody wants to know how do I get a job in sports, doing what I love to do. And that's really what they're asking. How do I get a job doing what I love to do? You love what you do and don't work it in your life. How did you get to do what you love to do? Well, thankfully I was given that advice very early which is find what you love and find what you're good at and then find where those two things intersect. And that's kind of the sweet spot where you want to live. And for me it had always been basketball. Still to this day is one of the strongest passions I have. So to be able to make my living as a basketball performance coach was amazing. You know, when I was younger in my career it was more about can I get players faster and stronger? As I got older I saw myself more as a role model and a mentor and can I actually teach them leadership and habits and accountability. So things bigger than the game but that's why the game's been so good to me and it's been a platform for me to teach life lessons which I think is more important. And when did you transition from player to coach? So I played, it was Elon college at the time down in North Carolina. So I graduated in 1998 and being a basketball performance coach up until 18 months ago is all I've ever done. And then about 18 months ago I made the leap over to the corporate side to start sharing these same messages with businesses on how they can improve their performance. But to think that I made most of my living wearing gym shorts and sneakers working with kids in the game that I love. I'm incredibly thankful. Yeah, and that's part of what you teach I'm sure. Tell me some more of the transition values that allows you to lead in the corporate world now the way you led on the court. What are some of those values that people should look at? The most important one I actually learned from watching Kobe Bryant workout back in 2007 and ultimately what he taught me is the best never get bored with the basics that you can't skip over the basics. All right guys, repeat that, hold on. I love that Dave Meltzer stealing a line from Alan Stein right here. The best never get bored of the basics. I stole it from Kobe so you're gonna get it. I love it, that's good, yeah. And I watched a private workout of his where he was doing basic footwork and offensive moves. Now, I mean it's Kobe so he's doing it at an unparalleled level of effort and he's doing it with precision but the stuff he was doing was so basic and I was blown away because as a young coach I figured someone who at that time in 2007 was arguably the best player in the world I figured I was gonna see some real hot sizzles some sexiness and what was the basics done over and over and I think that's the first lesson that I try to teach players is you gotta fall in love with the basics and that's not easy to do because as you know the basics are often they're boring and they're mundane but they're critical to success. I love that because my success is based on something that's very basic and mundane and it's my calendar. Yes. Right, I am a student of my, well I teach people to be a student I'll tell you I'm a doctor of my calendar. Love it. PhD. PhD because that calendar to me raises the awareness, the vibration of what I do. What basics do you start in the corporate world because obviously in the corporate world we don't really necessarily care about our footwork. Right, so to me it's finding that analogy so if footwork is the basketball as X is to say leadership and what I found it's something you also have a PhD in it's active listening. It's the ability to listen to others not just waiting for your turn to talk but listening because you're truly trying to connect and the best leaders and coaches I've been around they listen, they have a pulse on their players they have a pulse on their employees and they listen, they listen to their customers they listen to their clients they listen to their colleagues and I think that's the footwork of leadership. I agree, I do want to let you steal another line from me now. Please I would love to. This one it's amazing because you know as you get older because you're in this game you'll be your 50 years old and you're like gosh someone will DM me, that's genius and I'm like I don't say that enough but I forget that some of these basics right so that active listening for me was told by my older brother when I told him I hated hospitals he said be more interested than interesting. That's the definition of active listening. It's another way to frame it. It kills it and people love that. You should please and you don't have to give me credit give my older brother credit. Yeah. And what I find with all these things and this is the other reason I've been so attracted to the content you put out is it's what I call a performance gap. It's the gap between what we know and what we do and we all have these gaps. You know this whole concept of the calendar I think it's something most people know it's something most people don't do and that's the problem. So lack of knowledge is rarely the reason we get stuck. It's not from lack of knowing, it's from lack of doing and my goal is to try to give people strategies on how they can close that gap between what they know and what they do because most of us know a lot more than we think but we don't put it into action and then we wonder why we don't get the result we want. And I think it not only you know you're talking about PhDs or non PhDs experts and neophytes but for me I think it's important because you're kneeling a really important part it's where hypocrisy comes from it's where a lack of perspective comes from it's why I talk about I am in an enjoyment because I have a passion for the consistent every day and when you talked about meditating I love the fact because I know you're a consistent guy because you said I'm 300 and whatever day 378 today for head space. Right and most people don't know it's so hard just to be consistent but persistent without quit enjoying the pursuit of my potential. The potential is the actual doing all the time and the knowing is that first part and there's a gap there at all times and that includes you meditate and I meditate and I meditate to find my baseline in life because I want to go back to center. You know especially this week there's a personal things going on issues that aren't going on and I'm under a tremendous amount so you're gonna choke it up over it but I just gotta go back to center, right? Go back to center, sit there because the old day that gap would get really big because you and you see it on the basketball court guys get in their own way, right? It's running from you and you can't control it. It's easy to pretend in the corporate world but you can't pretend on a court, right? That's why guys go over five or that's why pitchers pitch two innings or that's why basketball players like Steph Curry can have a game where he bangs two shots, right? It's not the skill, right? It's literally he's not in center because he has, he's worked so hard he's put in the work and there's this gap here. How do you as a coach get somebody to have that same passion, to have passion and enjoyment about the basics like their calendar? You know to take a page out of Simon Sinek's book it's back to the why, you've gotta figure out the why and I think sometimes in business we can easily get derailed or get lost and we start chasing somebody else's why or we start pouring into what we think should be important for our business and it's not why we started it in the first place or it's not why I started working here in the first place and it goes back to what you just said get back to center, get back and find that why what it is that used to get you excited in the morning and when you can get back to that but it takes clarity and that's why that concept of getting back to center is crucial. It's interesting you say that because a lot of people use vision boards do you use a vision board? Yeah, absolutely. And because we have different mediums it's not just like John Asarov talked in the secret you know it's not a poster on your wall, right? People have them all over but the idea of why was so important for me to help my clients advance because a lot of times they were attaching to an outcome with no purpose and I believe the next step of why is to infuse purpose into things that you may have the wrong purpose to attach to and let me give you a quick example and I'd like you to give me how you use this because I bet you do is that I find if you don't like taking out the trash it's because you don't have the right purpose in it. So like for me I didn't like taking out the trash I changed the purpose of taking out the trash instead of the purpose was to make my wife happy it then for me became I needed more time to think about what I want to be happy for me. And the minute I changed the purpose I started taking out trash all over and pretty soon the energy of my energy made all of a sudden my wife want to take out the trash and my daughters want to take out the trash. I think it works in the corporate world do you have any examples where you've been in this leadership consultation and they don't insert the right purpose in it they've lost that why but also beyond the why they do it they haven't inserted the purpose in behind it. Yeah and purpose is everything and it's important to admit especially when you're part of something bigger than yourself and you're with a team that your purpose for playing a certain role may be different than the way that I view it and I have to have that respect and compassion and empathy things I know you talk about in order for you and I may have different purposes for taking out the trash and that's okay but we have to connect it to ourselves so that it's meaningful work that we're doing and we feel like we're delivering something to the greater mission and we're doing it within our role and I'm such a big guy on roles within an organization or a team and starring your role whatever that role may be we need you to star in it because we can't win without you but you can't win without us and it's that inverse relationship that's crucial to making an organization and we have to respect everybody's role my role may be bigger than yours from a proverbial standpoint but yours is just as important to the success of the rest of us and again that all goes back to being tied to some purpose because you can't star in your role if you don't find purpose in your role and you don't find meaning in what it is that you're doing. Yeah one of the best people I've ever met with that is Reggie Love who's a friend there in DC. I'm a big Duke fan so yes I love that episode. Isn't it amazing because like it wasn't until you start putting people into different roles but you're like wait a second this guy like he was the role player for Duke right national champion he's a role player for President Obama. Yeah two pretty good teams. Yeah and then now you know he's in a different role in the financial side of things and he's monetizing that. When you're in a certain role is there a balance as a leader between wanting a bigger role and playing the supporting part. How do you balance that because I find when I coach is a difficult thing to help people understand that you can still have an expansive view of yourself and still play the role that you're in today. So the terminology I would use is star in your role while you work extra times during the unseen hours to expand your role. So right now we need you to do what we need you to do to add to this team but then during the unseen hours when nobody's watching the cheerleaders aren't dancing the cameras are off then you put in the extra hours to prove that you deserve an expanded role. You know perfect example is a high school basketball player that thinks he should be a three point shooter. It's not a very proficient three point shooter. Well if you'd like to be a three point shooter on this team then you better be coming in early and staying late to put in the work to show me that you deserve to take threes when it matters. And it's the same translation to anybody in the corporate world. Absolutely now one of the other areas that I find that most people don't look at is they wonder how do you get to be where you're at? And meaning that look you and I weren't superstars in performance but people pay us a ton of money, look up to us now and we're able to somehow connect in that way. How are you able to communicate your value with confidence when you're selling yourself that you know what the heck you're talking about? Cause you didn't do it yourself, you're not Kobe Bryant. Definitely not. I mean you did it at a certain level but you're not Kobe Bryant. I think it comes back to self-belief and confidence and that only comes through demonstrated performance. That can never come up from something that you just kind of try to make up out of thin air. You've got to put in the work to deserve it. And then it's all about establishing trust. It's about making sure that you believe that what I'm going to share with you is going to add value to your life and you're going to get better. I would expect that the players that I used to train could run faster and jump higher than me. I mean if they couldn't, they're not going to be very good players. So it wasn't a matter of that but another thing that I think helps improve credibility and trust is I've never asked anyone to do anything that I'm not willing to do myself. Even the players. I might not jump as high or be able to do as many pull-ups but I'm willing to do anything that I'll ask them to do. And I think that's incredibly important. And then once you've built that trust, you know people are willing to run through fire for you. Yeah and we talked about vulnerability before the show and- Which is a sign of strength by the way. I think a lot of people get that, they get that backwards. Here's how, I didn't mean to cut you off but here's how I look at vulnerability. It's like you and I going into a sword fight and you're not wearing any armor. Like I mean you're tough. If you're willing to fight me and I've got a sword and you're not wearing any armor that's the definition of strength and toughness. It's not the opposite. And I have twin sons that are eight years old and a six year old daughter but really what's important to me especially with my boys is teaching them that being vulnerable is a masculine trait and it's the key to connection with anyone. I'm glad you said that because that's where I was getting to is like I pride myself for the last 10 years of my life being true to myself. And so that means drop the armor. I try to be as truthful as I can about my successes. I don't oversell them. And my failures, I don't hide them. Yes. This is what it is and why it is but I've learned that because of that I instantly like when you came in I have this emotional connection with people because the armor's gone so all that you can connect to me with is this guy like, you know, I got choked up because you know my poor father-in-law is passing away and we got into that and I'm not afraid to say it but it hurts, right? But I could feel. Oh, that's what drew me here. Years of relationship just occurred because we bonded. Yes. But we've never met. I took a four hour bus ride to get here just to have this 15 minute conversation because that's the energy that you put out in the podcast world. I've devoured your podcast and that's to me something really special. But think about that, the credibility and the connection that we've been able to establish. Shoot, I've known you for 20 minutes and I'd run through fire for you right now. To me, that's the key to coaching. Coaching is, I heard when I was, I was very thankful when I was a young coach that I learned the process is you connect first, you coach second. Has to be in that order. Anytime you try to flip it, if I try to coach you before we've created a connection and before there's trust and before I've actively listened to what it is that you wanna get out of this, you'll never give me your best effort and you'll never give me the focus and the discipline required to be great. So it's all about building that connection. And I think that's, one of the reasons I've been fairly successful in the performance world is because I've been able to establish those connections. And that had to come with maturity because you know when you're younger is all about you. When you get older, you realize, boy, it ain't about me, it's about you. And once I was able to switch that light switch, my whole world opened up and everything I was doing with players and now in the business world has changed. Yeah, it seems like you listen actively, you're vulnerable. Is there anything else you do? Because I think it's so important for people to understand that everyone has certain levels of skills, knowledge and passion. But if you can't connect on an emotional level through active, I call it being more interested than interesting. Yes, I love that. Through being vulnerable. Is there some other way, like in the corporate world, like I said, much easier on the court because it's an emotional place. There's much more momentum in a game and in practice than in the corporate world. How do you create momentum or that connection in the corporate world beyond just active listening and being vulnerable? Is there any other things you would give as advice to young entrepreneurs or entrepreneurs in general? I think there's a couple words that I always had a negative connotation with and now that I'm older and especially in the corporate world I've actually tried to flip. One is confrontation and one is accountability. I think I stole this out of Coach K's book but confrontation is just facing the truth head on. If I'm willing to confront you about an issue it's because I care about you. It's not for any other reason. And once both people acknowledge that then you've got something special and same thing for accountability. Holding someone accountable is something you do for them. It's not something you do to them. And that's, if I'm not living up to the standards of our team and you call me on it, that's because you care about me and you care about the team. You're protecting the locker room and that's incredibly important. But lots of times we think, well, why is Dave keep getting on me? You know, I used to have to tell players all the time the reason Coach Jones gets on you it's because he loves you. It's because he cares about you. You start to worry the day he stops getting on. I say that in my business all the time. And there's so much truth to that. So I think getting people to understand that healthy confrontation after you've built trust and holding each other accountable to the standards that you've collectively created are vital. That you do that from a place of love and trust. And yeah, we're gonna disagree on things. We may even have some heated exchanges. But when we go back to the baseline, the baseline is always, I've got your back, you've got mine, and we're here to protect this organization. So we may be angry at each other for an evening and that's okay. We wake up the next day and go, you know what, he did that because he cares about me. And caring is a choice. See, if you have an organization of a hundred people the chance that you like every one of them probably not so high. And that's okay because as you talk about all the time we have different vibrations and energies. You just click with some people better than others. But you choose whether or not you care about someone. And I might not want you to be my BFF but I can still choose to care about you. And when you get an organization that makes the choice for everyone to care about each other and care about their roles and care about their commitment to the team and the organization as a whole then you have something really special. And it's a choice. All of these things are a choice. And where does forgiveness fall in? Well, it always starts with yourself. You gotta forgive yourself. I mean, and that's sometimes the hardest thing to do because most of the entrepreneurs I've met are so driven and so ambitious and they wanna take on the world and they're their biggest critics to themselves. You gotta have some compassion for yourself in order to be able to truly do that for other people. So forgiveness, that's one that's also in my own personal life, has come with age and maturity. I could hold some grudges back in my previous life and now I realize, what's the point? It's only stressing me out and getting me angry. Yeah, I mean, that other people take our joy so many different times in our lives and we waste so much energy on the highs and lows. Last question, what legacy do you wanna leave, Alan? Ah, man, that's a powerful one. You know, my first inclination is it's always with my children. It's, you know, in this case, I have three children. If I can raise three children that grow up and can contribute to this world and are good people that live happy, fulfilling lives, you know, I always say in basketball, we say guard your yard. From as a defensive player, you gotta guard it. So first I wanna take care of my own backyard and make sure that my kids grow up to be happy, well-adjusted contributors to society. And then anything outside of that, if there's an offshoot and there's any way that I've added energy to your life or to somebody else's life, I feel good about that. I wanna be known as an energy giver. Yeah, right on. Well, I think we'll call it guard your yard but make it as big as a yard as you can. I love it. Right, start with your backyard and make it bigger. Well, anyway, thanks man. This will be many, many different meetings that we're gonna have. This is the first and for sure it'll just keep growing because I'm so amazed and I will tell you, so grateful that you went all this way. It's such an honor and a compliment. I'm doing the right things. When people like you will drive that far, they're in back in one day, just to spend these 20 minutes with us, I can tell you that you made my day. Has it been a difficult day for me? Of course. Well, keep doing it. I mean, you had a profound impact on me and we've never met and I'm not alone in that. So thank you for the opportunity. You're awesome man. Well, this is Alan Stein with Dave Meltzer with Entrepreneur, The Playbook.