JIM BROGAN – FORMER NBA PLAYER, FOUNDER OF JRB ACADEMY & JIM BROGAN CONSULTING – EPISODE 786

Website – jrbacademy.com jimbroganconsulting.com

Email – jrbnba@hotmail.com

Twitter – @jimgrogan

Jim Brogan is an author, instructor, leader, and dynamic speaker who has earned national recognition as an inspirational speaker and advisor. He is a well- known and highly respected authority on peak performance for teens, CEOs, coaches, and elite athletes from the NFL, MLB, and NBA. 

Jim played in the NBA from 1981 – 1983 for the San Diego Clippers.  Through his JRB Academy he continues to work with basketball players of all ages to improve their game and their mindset. 

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Take some notes that will help you to grow as a leader as you listen to this episode with Jim Brogan, Former NBA Player and respected authority on peak performance.

What We Discuss with Jim Brogan

• Growing up outside of Philadelphia and going from one sports season to the next as a kid
• The distractions/engagements that kids have today vs. when he was growing up
• The travel and cost required in AAU Basketball
• Getting up before high school every morning to shoot 150 jumpers at Lower Merion HS
• Attending the same high school as Kobe Bryant and being the first pro from Lower Merion
• “The brain is confused when you tell a person to work harder.”
• “Trust, but verify.”
• Have athletes explain things back in written/drawing form to ensure understanding
• Teaching shooting with “swish the ball” which demands precision
• Building neural pathways in the brain
• Learning about learning through studying stroke victims and the blind
• “Be willing to do today what others won’t, so you can play tomorrow, like others can’t.”
• Using a poster sized calendar to record your daily actions – start small and make incremental changes
• “People have gotten away from controlling their choices.”
• “Tell me there’s something that you’re willing to get up in the morning for, or stay up late at night and not look at your phone. Please tell me there’s something.”
• “Everybody’s got an excuse. I don’t deal with excuses.”
• “People in the front row are risk takers. They know they can get it done, and there’s a difference between know and believe.”
• “Impossible is not a fact, it’s an opinion.”
• “You are what you watch. You are what you listen to. You are what you’re around. So if we can determine and find out what they’re listening to, what they’re watching, who they’re around, I can tell you where they’re going.”
• “We don’t teach a class called risk taking. We don’t teach a class called leadership. We don’t teach a class called goal setting.”
• “It’s about presence. We don’t teach athletes how to have a presence. We don’t teach students how to have a presence.”
• Giving kids opportunities to speak in front of their peers
• The power of a hand-written thank you note
• “The success is in the struggle.”
• The importance of parent-child communication
• “If you fake caring, people can see that.”
• Thinking in threes
• Why journal writing is so powerful and everyone should do it
• “You have to buy people a book. It’s the greatest gift you can give.”

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THANKS, JIM BROGAN

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TRANSCRIPT FOR JIM BROGAN – FORMER NBA PLAYER, FOUNDER OF JRB ACADEMY & JIM BROGAN CONSULTING – EPISODE 786

[00:00:00] Mike Klinzing: Hello, and welcome to the Hoop Heads *odcast. It’s Mike Klinzing here without my co-host Jason Sunkle tonight. But I am pleased to welcome Jim Brogan, former NBA player, and the director of the Jim Brogan Basketball Academy. Jim, welcome to the Hoop Heads Pod.

[00:00:15] Jim Brogan: Great to be here. Thank you for having me on, Mike. I’m looking forward to this.

[00:00:21] Mike Klinzing: Absolutely. We are thrilled to have you on. Looking forward to diving into all the things that you’ve been able to do in lots of different avenues with the game of basketball. Let’s start by going back in time to when you were a kid. Tell me a little bit about some of your first experiences with the game of basketball.

[00:00:35] Jim Brogan: You know, it’s interesting. I actually wanted to play football when I was in junior high school. We had a really tough, gritty type of  football coach, and he demanded so much from each player and I was all but maybe 90 pounds playing on the 105 pound football team on the junior varsity.

And I just really enjoyed the team camaraderie the idea of playing together. And it just was fascinating to me. I really enjoyed it. And then of course, football season’s over, you get into basketball and I enjoyed the game too, because you, you’re playing again a team sport and then that goes right into baseball.

And in the summertime when I was young, they didn’t have all these different leagues. So you just went to a playground right outside Philadelphia called Narberth, Pennsylvania, and you just played pickup ball and you could play it all day. I mean, my brother and I, we would ride our bikes and, and we’re 12, 13, 14 years old.

We’d ride our bikes because that was the only transportation where you tried to hop on the back of the train going from one town to the next town because you didn’t have any money. And we would just hop on the back of the train and ride over with the basketball underneath our arm and then jump off. And that’s what we did during the summertime.

I mean, we were gone from eight o’clock, nine o’clock in the morning till six o’clock, seven o’clock in the evening. And it was an everyday occurrence for three months. And then we started school back up again and it was time for football season. So I was kind of  playing all three sports all through junior high school.

And I was fortunate. I had some great coaches that, I mean, back then you could be really tough on young people and they survived. They could get through it. It made them tough and that’s why I enjoyed it. When you think

[00:02:30] Mike Klinzing: When you think back to your development as an athlete and you think about playing multiple sports and you think about just the way that you grew up in terms of hopping on the train, hopping on your bike, playing different games in the neighborhood, whatever, it might have been completely different from the way that kids grow up, not just in the game of basketball, but just in general grow up completely different.

When you think about just your upbringing as a, as your development as an athlete, how do you think it impacted you?

[00:03:00] Jim Brogan: I think it’s given me the opportunity to do what I do today in my consulting business in that being able to speak with different people from different backgrounds, different ages, because you had to negotiate on the basketball court.

We had to negotiate when we were playing three on three football. You just had to learn to speak with people and plus, there was nothing else to do. I mean, I grew up with, there was three channels on the tv, right? And then the UHF came in and I think there was four more channels. So there wasn’t really much to engage into, and people call it distraction, social media on that.

And I say the people I work with, we look at as an engagement. So when you didn’t have all these engagements and things to be entertained by, you went out with your buddies and you competed and you competed in all kind of different things. We made games up with a tennis racquet and a tennis ball, and you figured out a way to pick teams and you learn to speak with other people, negotiate fouls and that area.

And everyone knows anyone over the age of probably 35, 40 can understand what I’m talking about right now. And today, everything’s organized. I mean, AAU basketball is a juggernaut in football, in basketball and baseball. I mean, the amount of money that’s spent just in traveling, I was telling a young person this the other day and I was talking to the parents.

Okay, let me get this straight. So I live in San Diego, you’re going to travel up to LA every Saturday and Sunday. So that’s at least two and a half hours in the car going up two and a half hours in the car going back. And you’re going to play two games and you’re probably going to get in maybe 15 shots each game.

Oh, now I’m going to get that many in. Okay, so you’re going to get 30 shots in. Why wouldn’t you just stay home and that two and a half hours, put up 300 jumpers in one timeframe. Go take a break as if it was a game. Then come back out later because you’d be in the car normally and take another 300 jumpers.

That’s 600 jumpers on Saturday. 600 jumpers on the next day Sunday. That’s a 1200 jumpers in a weekend times four weekends. Okay. So I can tell you right now, even if you don’t have the best mechanics, you’re going to be pretty good at swishing that basketball. So that’s really how a lot of people in my age bracket got so good at their sports because there wasn’t more to be engaged into.

[00:05:35] Mike Klinzing: You make a great point with the travel and I think what people run into, and I remember saying this before, my kids who, I have a daughter who’s 19 who she stopped playing basketball when she was in ninth grade, and my son’s a junior and he’s currently playing and he’s in the midst of the beginning of his AAU season right now.

And I remember before they were kind of of the age that they were going to start playing sports. I always used to say, I can’t believe that people go and put their kids in these sports. And just like you said, that they travel to these different places. And I just didn’t really think that there was that many kids that wanted to.

Go to a formal practice for basketball or soccer or whatever sport you’re talking about. It really doesn’t matter that it just seemed to me that that might be good for that one in a thousand kid who just couldn’t get enough of it. But for the average general kid, it just seemed like, man, that’s kind of a waste.

And what I’ve found is that there’s almost, if you’re a good high school player, you really, there’s almost no alternative. Now, there is the alternative, like you described, which is go and work on your game and put the time in. And I think the good players are still doing that, at least by themselves or with a trainer in some form or fashion.

But I think it’s so different. And again, I grew up in the same era that you did from a standpoint of, I just left my house was out playing in the neighborhood, whether it was football, baseball, basketball, making up games, whatever it was. But now, like if you’re a kid and you’re in high school and you want to go and find good pickup games, like it’s almost impossible.

Like those games, at least around here in the Cleveland area, they just don’t. Exist. If you can’t get on your bike and go and find a game or get in your car and drive to a gym the way I did, where you knew on Tuesday night that was going to be a place where all the good players were. And then on Thursday it was this gym, and then on Sunday night it was this playground.

Those games just don’t exist. And I think it’s kind of pigeonholed everybody into the system whether they want to be in it or not. And then to your point, just the amount of money that’s being made by adults in this whole scenario it’s crazy.

[00:07:37] Jim Brogan: I look at it sometimes and I think, what is the best avenue for these young people?

And I will say that when you go to these AAU tournaments, there’s definitely coaches there. Division one, division two, division three, NAIA, they’re attending these. So you are getting some exposure. I’m on the fence post about, Wow. I mean, some of these parents are spending money they shouldn’t be spending sending these young people on these trips because they’re expensive hotels for sure.

Have to have three meals. Sometimes the travel is by plane. I know we couldn’t afford that when I was growing up. I’m glad I had to work to get the bike cutting hedges, cutting lawns, shoveling, snowing. I mean, I can’t wait to get, I knew exactly the bike I wanted and it’s different. And is it different in a positive way?

Sure. There’s some great things that are happening. I just question the mechanics of it and what it’s doing for a young person and that some of them that I’ve come across, the parents can’t afford it. So then the son or the daughter is in a really precarious position now because the other kids are like, come on man, let’s go.

You Have to go. Well, they just can’t do it.

[00:08:57] Mike Klinzing: In a lot of ways we’re pricing out a certain demographic. That if you don’t have money now as a youth sports parent or a youth sports participant, it’s really hard to, to get involved. It just is like you don’t have the avenues that you and I had to be able to just go out and practice or find a game or not only with kids, but talking about playing with adults and developing your game in that way.

I always say I’m really glad that I grew up in the era that I did. Just as you said, there’s, there’s positives for sure to the system that we have today, and kids have a lot more access to gyms and I think they get access to better coaching. That’s not to say that all the coaching that they get at younger age is good, but they do get access, I think, to better coaching than what certainly what I had in elementary school or middle school, which was almost none.

And yet at the same time, I just look at the way that I grew up in the game and playing pickup basketball with people from all over the place and different races and different just backgrounds and everything else. And to me, what that did for me as a person, like you talked about, being able to negotiate and stand up for yourself and have confidence and all those kinds of things.

But then also what it did for me as a basketball player in terms of those older guys pushing me around and teaching me how to do things and learning how to play your role there, there’s so many positives to it. And so I, I, I think just like you, I see some of the positives and yet there’s still a party that says, I’m not sure that the system we have today is better than what you and I had.

And I think when it comes to just general athleticism, which I know you’ve worked with players on balance and just some of the things that I think I learned by. Running through the neighbor’s backyard and jumping over fences and leaping off their garage, or having a fight with apples in the backyard.

Like I learned all that kind of athleticism stuff that way. As opposed to just going to a trainer and having somebody teach me the mechanics of how to throw. I was like, I Have to get this apple to plunk. That kid on the head over there, he’s 50 yards away, so I better figure out how to throw this thing.

[00:10:57] Jim Brogan: That’s the part, I mean, we were done playing ball. I’ll never forget, we used to go pool hopping. I mean and we get thrown out of some pools and then some people go, man, it’s boiling hot. These young guys are out here. They just want to get in the pool. Yeah, just don’t hurt yourselves and then let us stay in the pool.

But that was the best part because you have those memories and now it’s getting the car. I mean, I know in San Diego there’s a lot of emphasis on you have to go to LA, you have to go to LA, you Have to get on a traveling team. It goes up to LA You’re telling me San Diego doesn’t have a great basketball.

But that’s what they’re told. Because there’s wow. A great deal of a financial reward for people to put these teams together and travel and do what they do. And I’m not bashing that. I’m not, I’m just saying what’s in the best interest of this particular athlete and person.

[00:11:51] Mike Klinzing: It’s a challenge. I mean, there’s no question that figuring that all out is a challenge.

Something that’s probably beyond the scope of what you and I can figure out. Just because the cat’s out of the bag and it’s certainly going to be hard to stuff it back in. But I think when you look at, at least what I do, the AAU side side of things, there’s some people doing it right. With the best interest of the kids and the athletes in mind.

And then just like any other space out there, there’s people that maybe aren’t doing it the right way and aren’t taking advantage or just kind of steering people in one direction or another, just to kinda line their own pockets. And so I think if anybody’s out there listening, parents or players, whatever, just make sure that you ask a lot of questions and see what the program that you’re getting involved with is all about.

And because you can find good programs, there’s no question that you can find the right environment for your kids that, like I said, you’re kind of forced into the system if you want to be a basketball player, but you can also maximize your experiences within that system.

[00:12:49] Jim Brogan: You make a great point. A parent has to do their due diligence.

They’ve got to do the inquiry and find out from the person that’s going to be working with their son or their daughter, ask a series of at least eight, 10 questions. And that’s imperative to really find out, do I want this person around my son or my daughter for two and a half months? Because it’s going to have an influence.

There’s going to be an influence there. There’s no doubt about it. So people please do your due diligence, ask questions.

[00:13:21] Mike Klinzing: Absolutely. There’s no question about that. All right, let’s jump back to you as a player. Give me some of your favorite memories from being a high school basketball player. What do you remember?

[00:13:30] Jim Brogan: Just the team. I mean, we had a really good culture and that that was the best part about it. The basketball side was pretty simple for me in that all I did every day before high school, every day before high school, I took 150 jumpers every day. I didn’t miss. And people ask me, wow, why’d you do that? I don’t know why I did it.

I look back. And that was a way for me to stand out. I was okay in the classroom. I missed going to the United States Air Force Academy. I look at my office right now and I have the rejection letter that came back to me. And I look at that every day and always think to myself, never miss being extremely productive.

I wish I was more productive in the classroom, but I just did something in basketball that is simple to do. You just get up a little bit earlier, you hitchhike to the school unfortunately there’s no bus. We have one car in our family, so I couldn’t get a ride. And people, they see it pretty much every day with a ball under your arm and your backpack, and they’re going to give you a ride.

And it was pretty interesting that the same people pretty much dropped me off at Lower Merion High School. That’s funny. All the time. And when it adds up 10th grade, 11th grade, 12th grade, you’re doing that all the time. So I got really good at scoring from the outside and I wish there was a three point line when I played.

Oh my gosh, please give me that three point line baby. But that’s all it was. It was a simple act of just getting up a little bit earlier and going up to the school and taking 150 jumpers. And I actually did it wrong and I was by myself doing it. And I’ll never forget when I went back to high school because I played in the pros.

I go back to high school, I do the camps for the high school coach there. And there’s a guy sitting in the audience and he hears the story and he says, that dude does 150, I’m going to do 250. And it made a big difference. And his name was Kobe Bryant. And I used to tease them all the time going, just remember my man, I was the first guy to come out of this high school to go to the pros.

[00:15:42] Mike Klinzing: That’s part of the story that people don’t know that Jim attended Lower Marion High School, same high school as Kobe. And so that’s, again, you can obviously, obviously joke about that and you had some contact with him when he was younger and then obviously with all the success that he went on to have in his professional career.

And that’s kind of cool that you guys share share that background. What’s interesting, I think about your story and talking about you did it wrong you know, kids today, there’s so much information out there. If you want to go out and figure out, okay, what, what should my workout look like?

What should I be working on? And you can go and let’s say, okay, I want to work on this. Well, you can probably find 150 YouTube videos or 2000 whatever it is on that one particular skill, whereas I don’t know about you, but. When I was doing my workouts, I always say that I had two workouts. I had one workout I did when I was by myself and then I had another workout if I was lucky enough to have somebody that wanted to do something with me.

Then I had another workout that I did when I had a partner to rebound or play against me or whatever, and that was pretty much it. I mean, that’s what I did from high school all the way through college. I was doing that same thing every day just because I didn’t know any better. You know what I mean?

That’s what, that’s what I kept working and now I look at all the stuff kids get to work on or can try or these different drills and all this stuff. I’m like, man, I wish, I would’ve wish I would’ve known some of that back when I was playing because I would’ve loved, I would’ve eaten all that stuff up, but I just didn’t know any better.

[00:17:03] Jim Brogan: Oh, yeah please let me go back and do it again. It’s interesting because my particular professional career, I started working with these doctors and everything we do, working with business people, professional athletes, amateur athletes, it’s all science based. And I look back and even the words that were used to me like work harder.

The brain is confused when you tell a person to work harder. The word hard if, if I took my iPhone and backed up five feet and threw it as fast as I could at your forehead, it’s going to hurt when it hits you because the metal and the plastic are hard. We actually confuse a person, and especially it’s done in sports.

And I worked 10 years in the NFL and it took the longest time to get coaches to stop telling players to work harder because there’s no context to it. And I look at my days of going into Lower Merion high school before school, and I’m just shooting, getting my shots up. And hopefully this will help all your listeners and they can bridge it to other sports.

They can bridge it to their business, they can bridge it to their personal life. I should have been attempting to swish the ball, the precision of taking a nine inch object and putting it through an 18 inch object. I had a young lady who she was leading in high school across the country, and she broke a couple records in college.

She was the leading three point Swisher in the country at LaCosta Canyon High School, here in San Diego. Little itty bitty thing. And I knew I couldn’t get her to drive the basket, so I figured just work on her ball handling and her ability to swish the ball. Period. That’s it. Nothing else. She could swish the ball from behind the NBA line four feet behind the NBA line.

Effortless. Effortless. Just because we started out doing something small and in what we call an incremental basis. So an incremental basis with the compound effect changes the dynamics, Mike drastically. And what we do is we have young athletes, pro athletes. I’ve worked with a lot of pro quarterbacks, pro baseball players.

We have them explain it back to us in written form. Why? I went to the White House one time and met one of the presidents and he said something to me that I’ll never forget, and this was back in the early eighties so he can figure out who it is. He said in everything he does, he trusts, but it’s verified.

I said, I haven’t forgotten that since 1982. Trust but verify. We verify through drawings and you have to write it out. That way we know that you understand because I can talk to 10 people and say five different things and ask people, explain back to me what I just said. You, you can tell those 10 people and you might have four different things said back to you.

They might go back to their desk and they do something completely different from what you talked about and there’s probably people listening right now to this podcast going, oh my God, that happens in my office all the time. That happens on my basketball team that happens in pro football because you have 11 guys and they all have to go in sync and it’s all based on about 3.5 to 5.6 seconds.

That’s why you see quarterbacks get really upset in the nfl. They get really pissed off when a guy runs down and he’s supposed to run in and he’s supposed to run down at least eight steps. So it’s about seven yards and turn in at a certain angle and the ball’s thrown over their head or thrown at their feet because they ran down five yards and not the seven yards that the quarterback thought.

And because now the guy thought, well that’s what I was supposed to do. It was never verified on paper in a drawing.

[00:21:00] Mike Klinzing: So what does that look like when you’re working with a basketball shooter, like you described when you’re working with that girl and you’re trying to get her to be more precise in her practice? What does that look like? What are you talking with her about? What are you having her do? How do you go from someone, just as we talked about earlier, just getting up their shots versus somebody who is practicing with precision?

[00:21:22] Jim Brogan: So think about that, what you just said. Let’s go, guys, get your shots up. Let’s go guys. Shoot your free throws. You’re not asking me to do something with results. You’re telling me to get my shots up. I can take a hundred shots and not make one and not swish one. Let’s go. Everybody. Swish the ball, go free throws, swish them, make the ball come back to you.

If the ball is at the right height, the right distance, and it’s straight, the ball should swish and come back to you. Now you’re precise. So we tell people, swish the ball. And what happened was in the study. So I’ve been involved in about 140 clinical trial studies with human beings. I’ve taken a massive amount of time and studied blind people.

They’re fascinating. Do you know any blind people, Mike? I don’t personally. Okay. They’re fascinating. Why? The way the brain works, 83% of what you learn is through sight. 11% is through hearing taste, touch, taste, and smell. Not that much, but think about 83% of what you learn is through sight. Think of, I took away your ability to see what would the other senses do?

[00:22:41] Mike Klinzing: You’d start to use them a lot more.

[00:22:42] Jim Brogan: They’d start to develop exponentially. Exponentially, it’s fascinating. So I’ll give a little secret, which you can’t tell anybody. You have to promise me you’re never going to tell anybody. You got it? You got it. We’ll keep it. We’ll keep it quiet.

We have people swish the ball from the free throw line. We have people swish the ball from behind the three point line with their eyes closed. When you released the ball and you were a former basketball player, you’ve played a high level. How many times are you at that free throw line that you let the ball go, that’s good, and the ball’s about eight inches from your fingertips, and you went, that’s good.

Yeah, absolutely. Yep. No question. That’s because that’s a neurological pathway being ignited in your brain. The electricity. So if you look at the electricity in your brain, the speed of sound is 720 miles an hour. So I live out here in San Diego where they film Top Gun. So they film the two top guns out here.

When the jet F-14, F-15, F-35 goes 720 miles an hour, it breaks the sound barrier. A sonic boom occurs. The speed of light is 600 million miles per second, and your audience right now is probably thinking, where’s this guy going with this? I’ve got no, what’s he talking about? Well, if I touched your leg in three different spots down by your ankle, I just touched it, the signal goes from your leg up through your leg, through, let’s say the right part of your torso through your shoulder blade, through your neck to the back part of your right brain, back down again, almost as fast as the speed of light.

Wow. And yet we teach people so slow in athletics. And I’ve listened to some of your other podcasts of, you’ve had wonderful people on there, some very, very bright people from Cal Baptist. You had a gentleman on the, the gentleman who’s the mental perform coach, Dr. Ed Garrett. Yep. Bright guy, man. I listened to Jeff Becker, this guy, these are bright people.

I just wanted to do something different 40 years ago, and I was fortunate because I had someone very close to me have a stroke and they couldn’t walk and they had a difficult time talking and the doctor said she might not walk again. She’ll never bowl. And that person heard that and it was the first person, first time ever heard this person curse ever.

And for nine months this person worked and just about, killed themselves doing the rehab back then where they really didn’t have rehab Today, rehab is so sophisticated to get stroke patients. My right knee replaced. The rehab that was done was phenomenal. It’s so precise. 40 some not even close to what they have now.

And this person just kept working, Mike and working. And nine months later they were back bowling, they were speaking and I looked at that and thought, okay, I have to learn more about this. And I was so close to it because it was, my mother and I flew back and forth from Philadelphia to San Diego and San Diego, Philadelphia.

Philadelphia, San Diego, back and forth and back and forth probably 15 times. Because they didn’t know if she was going to make it over a six month period. And I just saw her get a little bit better, a little bit better, and I thought, I’ve Have to learn how this happened. So we don’t understand how neural pathways can be built in the brain.

We just keep telling people to work harder.

So when you explain it to them that way, even if they’re 15 years old, they go, wow. Because you do the demonstration.

[00:26:29] Mike Klinzing: So there’s a couple of pieces there, right? One is that there’s a sense of determination, I think about you having the letter from the Air Force Academy. I think about your mom swearing, which I assume was associated with, well you might be telling me that, but that’s not really what’s going to happen.

And I think a lot of people who are successful in some way, they have something that somebody said to them. I had a coach once on a recruiting visit, tell me that. I should go to their school because I could come there and I could score a thousand points. But if I went to the school that I wanted to go to at the division one level, ah, they’re just going to recruit over you and you’re never going to play.

And I ended up scoring a thousand points at that school. But that was something that drove me through my entire college career that I’m sure the coach has no recollection of ever saying that to me. But I think that determination piece of it is a part of it, but that’s obviously not enough. Because determination, you could skew that and say, well Mike, that just means working harder.

So how do you take that determination piece of it and make the person work smarter, work more efficiently? Which is I think, the direction that you’re going here.

[00:27:36] Jim Brogan: We have a saying for athletes and we have a saying for business people be willing to do today what others won’t. So you can play tomorrow, like others can’t.

For business people be willing to do today what others won’t. So you can live tomorrow, like others can’t. So for example, we give people a huge poster calendar because there’s the power of sight and on the poster calendar and it’s about five feet by five feet. It’s huge. We want them to see that they’re up in the morning and for 10 seconds doing their two ball dribbling for 10 seconds.

They’re jumping rope for 10 seconds. They’re doing as many pushups as they can in 30 seconds. That’s all we want them to do. Stand in place, dribble two balls, because we know what that does neurologically. That’s all we want people to do in the very beginning, and we have people tell us all the time, I can do more than that.

We don’t want you to. We know what happens. Just three things done. 10 seconds each. 30 seconds. For business people, we need you to read two pages of a book. Every morning. So you get up, you go to the bathroom, you go downstairs, we need you to read two pages. These are CEOs, these are business owners.

These are very highly educated people, but we have people miss the two pages. We have people miss the 30 seconds in the morning. It’s fascinating to us why we don’t want to know. We’re not going to study that. We’re not wasting our effort, energy. We’re not, I can’t control the time. We don’t waste energy, effort, period.

Some people will, some people won’t. This is the line that hurts Mike. This kills me when I’m about to say some will, some won’t. So what? That hurts when I say, so what? I can’t begin to tell you how much that hurts my heart because you’re asking a human being to just on a very incremental basis, change something.

That’s it. Just incrementally. I never miss reading 10 pages of a book a day. Never. I’ve never missed 35 years. I’ve never missed. I have a journal that I do success interviews with. We have young people that keep journals. We have adults that keep journals. We want you to write in there, you took 10 free throws.

Okay? How many did you swish? How many were precise? So it’s pretty simple. You took 10. How many did you make? How many did you miss? How many did you swish? How many are precise? And now you have a chart of why you’ve gotten better. You have a chart. A young lady, I’ll have to send you something when I get off.

I’m going to show you a young lady who’s brilliant. She’s really bright. She needs to put on about 30 pounds. She’s about five foot four if that. She can swish the ball and I’ll put her against Steph Curry. I’ll put her against Steph Curry. That’s the only thing I taught her to do. Swish the ball from as far out as we can go.

And I’ll send you the film of her. It’s people can’t, they look at it and you see people on the sidelines put their arms up and they’re like, oh my God, look at this. She took the saying, be willing to do today what others won’t, so I can play tomorrow. Like others can’t. That’s in her room. She looks at it every morning before she goes into school and puts up her 50 3 pointers, sometimes 60 3 pointers, sometimes 70 3 pointers.

But she never misses, never. Now that’s a choice, and people have gotten away. Mike, I think, and you can tell the passion and the intensity of my voice, people have gotten away from controlling their choices. They’re not cats, they’re not alligators, they’re not drafts. They’re not dogs.

You can control so much your life. I can’t control the weather. I can’t control the traffic. I can’t control the stock market. I can control what time I get up in the morning. But it’s tough. Then go pick another sport. Go be great in math, in science. Go be great in math. Go be great in the violin.

But tell me there’s something that you’re willing to get up in the morning for, or stay up late at night and not look at your phone. Please tell me there’s something. And if there isn’t, you need to go see a professional. And I have them laugh. Of course. You need to see a professional. You need medical help.

Come on. We’re offered so much in this country. It’s amazing to me. It’s absolutely fascinating. I mean this new thing out called Google, I don’t know if you’ve ever heard of it. It’s phenomenal. Got it. Duck, duck, go. Unbelievable. You put this information in and what comes back to you, not that it’s all correct, it’s not always right, but go be phenomenal at something phenomenal.

Oh, God, I didn’t hear the well, and I got, my parents are this and I got this. Something’s wrong here. Everybody’s got an excuse. Everybody’s got an excuse, man. It’s fascinating to me. I don’t deal with excuses. Everybody’s got a story. I could tell you a story and you go, wow, you dealt with that all the time.

Yes. What who cares? And people come from horrible backgrounds. I’ll match my background, some of the things that happened. Look, let’s compare. Okay? You win. Sorry. You win. You win. How’s that feel? The world doesn’t care. Get over that. Find someone that can help you. Write into journal. Reread something you wrote last year.

I got 40 journals. I’m actually leasing them out, Mike, I’m leasing these journals out to people because that’s the best content from interviews, from Ted talks, from reading books. Why? Why didn’t someone do that to me in college? Why didn’t someone do that to me in the pros? I mean, honestly, why didn’t someone say to me, Jim, listen, you’re in the pros, man.

Just interview everybody that sits in the front row. What’s the difference? We did a study on this. The people sit in the front row, but there’s the person sits way up top. The only difference is the people who sit in the front row, they’re risk takers. They’ll fail and they’ll get up and brush themselves off and do it again.

It’s not that they have more money. There’s no doubt about that. They’re sitting in a $1,200 seat first. That person’s sitting in an $80 seat. But if you look at historically, they’re risk takers. They know they can get it done, and there’s a difference between know and believe. And I’ll ask you a question, ask your kids this.

What’s two plus two? Mike, seriously, tell me what’s two plus two four? Do you believe that or do you know that? I know that that’s the difference. Kobe Bryant ran his life on. He knew he was going to be better than Mike and Jordan, and he practiced for it. Sarah Blakely started spanks. She knew she was going to have a clothing company.

There’s a difference between believe and know, a big gap between the two. Because if you believe something, how many kids today in high school and college, even in grade school, tried drugs for the first time? Because they believed in that other person that likes them. And I get upset about this. I’m telling you, I know that what those drugs lead to, I saw more basketball players go down a bad hill because ah, they’re only smoking dope.

It’s not a big deal. Really, really. It’s going to lead to something else. Or they’re going to just keep doing it. Because that brain is going to get used to that feeling. The brain gets used to the feeling.

And you and I have seen that. I know you’ve seen it. You ask your kids. How many kids in school were getting hot? Oh, I’ve seen it. It’s, there’s no question. Yeah. And everyone’s afraid to say something.

[00:35:35] Mike Klinzing: All right. Let me ask you this. Because this is a fascinating conversation for me because I think this is something that I’ve kind of done sporadically throughout my life.

Like when I think about journals, so when I was a kid, I still have these, by the way, I have journals from when I was a kid where I would write down everything that I did basketball wise, like I’d say played one-on-one against my neighbor, Tony, won 59 to 48 shot a hundred free throws with my dad. I made 91, dad made 86, whatever it was.

And so I had all this stuff, and every day I would count the out a number of hours, whatever. So I’ve had that sort of in my past. And then I would say I rediscovered journaling probably four or five years ago. And I’m not quite as religious as it as you are. I can be honest that I’ve missed days here and there, but.

I’ve tried to do a pretty good job with it. And so all the things that you’re talking about are things that are fascinating to me, both from a basketball standpoint, from a business standpoint, from a personal growth standpoint. And yet I spend a lot of my day teaching phys ed at an elementary school.

And I see a lot of kids that, when you talked about having excuses or I think about sort of being the victim where I try to talk to the kids about the very same things that you’re talking to, to me about here tonight and you’re talking to the audience about is you can’t have excuses. There’s so much opportunity that you can control what you do.

And I see so many kids who even when I try to explain that to them, they just can’t get past it. They, they only see what’s right in front of them. Like in the moment they can’t see. Five seconds into the future of how what they’re going to do is going to impact. I’m thinking about like guys that you played in the NBA with that started getting into drugs and took them a direction that they didn’t anticipate it was going to go.

I just think there’s so much of that. So how do you talk to a kid to help them to see all those things that you’re talking about? What do those conversations look like? Because I’m fascinated by this because it’s such a challenge and it’s something that I see day in and day out. How do I get a kid to see beyond the five seconds that are right in front of them and see kind of what their future’s going to be if they start making better decisions in their life?

[00:37:59] Jim Brogan: I look at the school system and we have the best school system in the world, yet I look at, we have math and science and English and all that. I understand that. How come we don’t go to a class that teaches us goal setting with a book and we write things down. And a timeframe to accomplish it. I see in high school, I see in college, I see in graduate school, it’s alarming to me that we don’t teach people the incremental theory to accomplish something.

I’m finishing up writing a book with two other people and they’re brilliant. They’re PhDs very accomplished in their professional lives. And writing’s always been a challenge for me. And I just said, okay, incrementally. And it’s been three years because the one gentleman we’re writing the book with, he is a captain of special operations in the Navy Seals, and he’s retiring at the end of May.

So nothing can be published until he’s done. And all I did over three years was every week, make sure I’ve got a paragraph done for the chapter. And then what happened was momentum was built up. When working with people, we have something called an immersion process that we attempt to immerse people in the very beginning.

And for young people, we tell them, look, impossible is not a fact. It’s an opinion. So let’s talk about opinions. Who do we think is the best hockey player? Who do we think is the best basketball player? You’ll have your opinion. I have mine. Okay, great. So we have to be careful who we listen to. And I have him write this down.

We’re writing this down. You’re 10, you’re writing it down, you’re 50, you’re writing it down. Impossible is not a fact, it’s an opinion. And we have to be careful who young people are listening to. So let’s go to all these young people and say, what are the top three things you’re watching on Instagram?

What are the top three things you’re reading on Twitter? What are the top three things do you watch on Netflix? See, because the way the brain works, you are what you watch. You are what you listen to. You are what you’re around. So if we can determine and find out what they’re listening to, what they’re watching, who they’re around, I can tell you where they’re going.

Because it’s impossible. You’re going to fight this on me. And people are taught to not take risks. So when you’re young and you’re in class and the teacher says, on average in a class starting in fourth, fifth, sixth, all the way through, it’s not so much in college, but they’ll say, does everybody understand Mike?

How many times did you hear that in class? Oh, all the time. Okay. All the time. Now of a sudden it happens to every child just about. They’re up there talking about history, English, math, science, everybody, the teacher will turn and say, does everybody understand? And somebody raised their arm was like, I don’t get it.

And they’re ridiculed you dumb ass. You don’t, man. Can’t you understand that? Do you know that moment right there solidifies, I don’t like the feel being embarrassed. I don’t like the feel of people laughing at me.

So now they start to think in mediocre terms. They will not take risks on themselves.

That’s it. That’s a defining moment from hundreds of people we’ve talked to that can actually go back to the incident that they remember they got laughed at or called stupid.

[00:42:04] Mike Klinzing: One of the things that I always try to do with my own kids, Is I always try to encourage them to ask those questions.

Not even a question necessarily of I don’t understand, but just when somebody’s talking or somebody’s telling you something or somebody’s sharing something, whether that’s in school or whether it’s a coach or whether you’re, wherever you might be, where somebody is trying to help you to learn something, make sure you ask a question.

Because one, it keeps you more engaged, and two, it continues your learning process because I think so often we sit, and I’m guilty of this at times, where somebody’s saying something and maybe I have, maybe I do have a question and maybe if for whatever reason that moment I didn’t put my hand up in the air and I didn’t ask that question.

And it’s always that feeling right of regret. It’s always the things that you don’t do that you end up regretting. It’s not the things that you do. And I think that goes to what you’re talking about, where am I willing to take the risk to? Be great. You’re never going to be great if you don’t take the risk.

And too often I think people are willing to settle, whether it’s in athletics or as you said in business or coaching or whatever it might be. You Have to be able to take those risks. You Have to be willing to take those risks because when you do, that’s where success lies on the other side of that risk. And I think if we could convey that to young people, man, we’d really have something.

I, like I said, I’m in it every day, so I know how challenging it is to get kids to, to think about some of the things that, that we’re talking about. And like I said, this is a, a fascinating conversation for me because I feel like it’s something that I’m trying to do every single day is to get kids to see that you can do great things.

You just have to know that you’re capable of doing that. And too often they just, they don’t buy it.

[00:43:59] Jim Brogan: Let’s just end the conversation and just put that up on the website. Let people just listen to this part right here. The other stuff. Great. There we go. This right there, this right here is paramount. This to me, and the reason I say is because dealing with, I don’t know, maybe a thousand executives over 40 years and doing group type stuff too, this goes all the way back to why people are where they are because something happened in the classroom.

And I love that you’re telling your kids that. And I would also add that to say, look, the reason I want you to raise your hand in class, even if you don’t understand, you’re going to learn something that’s never taught in school. Along with goal setting, you’re going to learn leadership, you’re going to learn that you can make a difference in other people’s lives.

And you can take the hit, so you can look around the classroom. When the teacher says, does everybody understand? And when they don’t understand kinesthetically, they will lower their head, they will lower their eyes and lower their head. Anywhere between a half an inch to three inches. You’ve seen it, you’re a professional.

So now all of a sudden we want young people and we tell them, we give them examples, we practice it. I’ll ask them a question, what’s the square root of 15? They got no idea. Okay, I want you put your arm up. Don’t raise your hand. I need you to raise your arm. I don’t want you to raise your hand. I need you to raise your arm, Mr. Brogan. I don’t understand that. And you know what? I looked around the room and I know those five guys over there, they got no clue either. So you can help us. See, that’s a great thing. You can teach a young person, be the first to raise your arm and go, look, I don’t understand. And I know there’s other people in this room don’t understand either.

Because you’ve seen it and it’s subliminal to you. But in the back of your head you go, I know they don’t understand. I better go over this again. I better teach it a different way because subconsciously you’re picking up on it. And it’s all because we don’t teach a class called risk taking. We don’t teach a class called leadership.

We don’t teach a class called goal setting. So think about how just in the very beginning of the class, here’s a thought and I asked the young people to do this in my basketball academy because I still love the game. I don’t want to coach, I’ve turned down pro coaching jobs, college jobs, I’ve turned them down.

I just enjoy leaving a legacy behind through the basketball part is easy to getting a person to be a better basketball player. I guarantee you I can do that. Wow. Just teaching them to swish the ball, looking through mechanics, teaching them, listen in the pros and Pat Riley taught me this when he was the coach of Lakers.

You Have to dribble two balls up 94 feet and two balls back 94 feet and you Have to do it about eight and a half to nine seconds. As a pro. What? Excuse me? Yeah. You Have to dribble two balls, alternate. 1, 2, 1, 2, go up, touch that baseline and run your butt back and with no mistakes. Took me two weeks to do it. I did it 12 times and I wore myself out.

I got in better shape, but I kept dribbling those two balls. Took me two weeks of doing it 14 days before. I got it right once. Now, wait a minute, wait a minute. I can be a great leader if I can handle this ball like this. How come no one taught me that in college? How come no one taught me that in high school?

Because if I could dribble two balls really well, dribbling one’s going to be a lot easier. I’ll be a great leader on this team. You can lead your team because they’re going to see how you’re handling the ball. They’re going to see how fast you are, not quick, fast, and you’re going to take a risk. We’re not teaching this in the formal educational setting.

I know with you, I would actually pay you at Cleveland. I’d find a really nice restaurant and I’d pay you a really nice gift certificate about 75 bucks a month. And say, do me a favor, Mike. Can you just tell my son in front of all the other students, Hey Tim, I Have to tell you something that’s really impressive.

The homework you handed me was fantastic, and all the young people in class are going to go, oh, teacher’s pet, you jerk. But you know what? He comes home with his shoulders back and his head high because someone edified him in front of his peer group. I’ll pay 75 bucks a month for you to keep doing that, and I’ll find out who his favorite teacher is and I’m going to ask him, Hey Tim, let me ask you a question, man.

Who’s your favorite teacher? He’s in ninth grade. I really like Mrs. Harrison. That’s all I need to know. I’m going to go to Mrs. Harrison. Say, Mrs. Harrison, can you do me a favor? Could you ask my son in front of all of the students in class Tim, I like to talk to you after class. Could you please stay afterwards?

Ooh, everybody here’s the sounds. Ooh, ooh, man, you’re in trouble, dude. What’d you do? I don’t know what the hell I did. I don’t know why everybody leaves, and I teach Mrs. Harrison to say this verbatim. You know, Tim, I wish all the young people in this class could be similar to you. You’ve got great courage.

You’re not afraid. You answer in class. Your homework is really good. It could be better, but it’s good. But I just wanted to let you know how proud I am of you. You as a dad can’t do that because your dad now a teacher has a good chance of doing it. But Mr. Brogan, who’s not part of the school and not part of the team as a third party, Look at the impact I can have.

And then I give them a big poster calendar and I give them a piece of paper after every class, and they’re asked to take that piece of paper that’s short. It’s got something on there called action for today. I’ll send you a couple. And they’re asked to read it in front of the whole class and it’ll take about 40 seconds.

Some of them do it, some of them don’t because they’re still embarrassed and they’re in 11th and 12th grade and it tears my heart out of my body that they won’t go to the teacher and say, I’d like to read something that could be inspirational to everyone in class. So take me about 40 seconds. How does that sound?

Why The biggest challenge that employers that we work with, people have a very difficult time interviewing. So let’s say a teacher in high school has 30 kids in a class think that he could take six people. On Monday, six people on Tuesday, six people, and they stand in front of the class and one at a time.

They just read something out loud for 40 seconds and then sit down. And every week they do that. So if you take six of them, it’s 240 seconds. It’s a couple of minutes. But if they keep doing it over and over and over, they don’t get embarrassed reading in front of people. They start to have a presence.

Amy Cuddy did a TED Talk. It’s one of the most watched Ted Talks. I interviewed her, I read her book. It’s about presence. We don’t teach athletes how to have a presence. We don’t teach students how to have a presence. And you can tell I’ve probably gone on too long cause you want to ask a question, but how tough is it for a teacher that they give a student a piece of paper and say, read this, you six, come up here, stand in front of class, read it, pass the next person. They read the next paragraph, they pass the next person, they read the next paragraph. And they did that for an entire semester. We’ve done the studies. Those young people have so much more confidence about themselves than when they go out to a party and they’re asked to do something.

It’s like, nah, I don’t have to do that, man. Why aren’t we doing that? That’s powerful stuff.

[00:51:41] Mike Klinzing: I think one of the things, I stole this idea from James Leath, who he does a lot of work with teams and athletes on some of the things that you’re talking about, and one of the things that he said he always did with his teams was he taught them how to shake hands and look somebody in the eye.

And when you think about social interaction or you think about. Being a business person and trying to put together a deal and talking to somebody face to face, or you talking about being an athlete or you talking about being a coach and just being able to shake somebody’s hand and look them in the eye and be confident enough to introduce yourself or whatever it might be.

So that’s something that I’ve definitely tried to do with my own kids again, and it’s something that I’ve done with some of the teams I’ve coached when I’ve coached my own kids teams. And it’s just one more thing, another example of what you’re talking about where if you can harness that power of giving a kid first opportunity, right?

A kid needs an opportunity to be able to stand up in front of the class and share. And then two, once they get that opportunity, now you keep repeating it and eventually they sort of will themselves into developing that confidence. And man, now you can take that and export it to all different kinds of situations that that kid might be faced with in life.

[00:52:57] Jim Brogan: Agreed. It’s, it’s that compound effect. Sure. In the very beginning, everyone kind of complains and then after about the third week, it’s, damn, I’m looking forward to this man. He always brings these inspirational things in, right? So we have a thing called action for today, and they just read something out in front.

So after every basketball academy session that I do, these 10 people, five people, four people, 12 people, they stand out in front of all the parents and they read for about 40 seconds, and then it goes to the next person, and then they’re asked to write down what action will they take that week on what it’s about.

That’s it. And I have thousands and thousands of handwritten letters from young people that are now having kids. I’ve had people over my academy that were 14 years old, 15 years old. They’re now putting their sons and daughters in the academy that are 12 and 13 years old.

Why? It’s not the basketball. That’s the easy part. It’s making a great choice. It’s what you just said. Shake a hand correctly and look in the person’s eye. Send a handwritten thank you note. If you don’t send a, and we give, as part of our prerequisites, we give people in our academy and I give it to CEOs.

Send five handwritten notes to your CFO, to your COO, to your CRO, to your head sales guy and to someone else. Write five handwritten thank you cards. And if you tell me you don’t have time, I’m not working with you. Period. Why aren’t you doing this more often? Why? Why aren’t we doing that? Why? Why aren’t young people?

I have young people, Mike, and it’s embarrassing. They don’t know how to write a handwritten thank you card address. They don’t know how to put the address on a card. When people send me a thank you email, you’re lazy. You’re lazy. Who wants to get a birthday card via email or a birthday card in the mail?

It shows that you took the time. You care, you had the energy. You must have put some thought into this and some people that are listening right now, they’re probably going out’s a bunch of crap. That’s okay. That’s fine. There’s nothing wrong with that. I’m just letting you know what has worked over 40 years.

That’s a good amount of time that can tell you what works and what doesn’t work.

[00:55:29] Mike Klinzing: Let me say this. I can tell you the names of everybody who has written me a handwritten thank you note for being on a podcast. I can tell you that I won’t, but I can tell you I know who, I know who they are.

[00:55:44] Jim Brogan: That’s the point. And does that make an impression? Yeah, it absolutely makes an impression.  I send thank you cards to people that I don’t get every assignment. I don’t get every consulting assignment. I’m going against the McKinseysof the world, McKinsey and Company, the Hay Group, Korn Ferry Burton. I’m going against the top notch consulting firms in the world, and I tell people, when you first interview me, I want you to interview two or three other people.

And people say, no, no, no. I’ve heard about you just listening to you. I want to work with you. No, you don’t. I want you to interview at least two other people. Because working with me is a struggle. The success is in the struggle. And there’s an immersion program. We’re going to immerse ourselves into it.

You can’t be great at any sport unless you immerse yourself into it. You can’t. The brain works on an immersion process, period.

People miss the opportunity to be fantastic at something. I don’t care if it’s painting. Doesn’t matter to me. Find something when you walk in the room, people go, that’s the person. That’s him. That’s her. Wow. Because they go back to that. Impossible.

And people are afraid to take risks on themselves. They’re afraid to. They’re afraid What other people think. I have to go give a speech coming up here to about 300 people in Santa Barbara, and I’m going to tell you the numbers, I do a lot of TV at March Madness. The numbers are 85% of people are going to love me.

Another 10% are going to go, eh, he’s all right. 5% are going to go. He’s awful. Can’t stand on the guy. Do you know what most people pay attention to? The 5%. 5%. Absolutely. That’s what young people do and they magnify it and they make it. They exacerbate it and it kills me. That’s a spotlight effect,

[00:57:39] Mike Klinzing: That’s a spotlight effect, right? That we spend a lot of time thinking about what other people are thinking of us. And the reality is most people aren’t really thinking of us. They don’t really care at all what we’re doing, what we’re saying, what we look like, any of that stuff. They don’t care because guess who they’re focused on? Themselves.

And that’s again, something that I think young people particularly struggle with. I think as adults we get, I think, a little bit better at it. Obviously not all adults are perfect at it, and as adults, we still spend a lot of time thinking about what other people think of us. But I do think we get better at it.

But young people really struggle with that, where they feel like everybody is looking at them. And those are conversations that you’ve Have to have. Like again, I equate it back to my own kids. Like you have to talk to them a lot about that to get the message across. And people, when you think about parenting, man, the amount of time that you have to put in as a parent to get some of these messages across, or just to get your kid to.

Be polite. My wife and I would always say, when our kids were younger and you’d see some kids that were super polite and we would always look at each other and be like, man, we know how much time that parent put in to get those kids to say please and thank you. Because it doesn’t happen automatically. It takes a ton of effort on the part of the parent in order to get that to happen.

And I think that that’s really the key is you have to continue to make sure that you get those messages across and the kids realize that, hey, it’s not, not everybody’s looking at you and don’t worry about that 5% like you talked about, get to the 85% that think you’re doing a great job. And then the 10% that think, hey, you’re okay and keep working and getting better at it.

Right. That’s what’s really ultimately important.

[00:59:24] Jim Brogan: And we have to teach them, what do I need to do? What are the action items I need to do to get better at it? And you talked about shaking hands and what happens with the brain and we teach that in our academy and we go over it a lot. I mean, we go over that a lot.

Why? When you first meet a person, the grip that you put on a hand and the look in the eye and being able to pronounce your name correctly, now they make a determination on you right there. Young people coming out of college don’t understand that, and they get eliminated almost immediately before the interview even starts.

And we’re going back to meeting people. This zoom is going to end this whole work from home and all that. There’ll be a hybrid of some sort, but you’re going to go back to greeting people. And I love what you’re talking about. Kudos to you. There’s no tougher position in this country today. And I deal with the CEO of a top Fortune 10 company and he has kids, and we’ve talked about there’s no tougher position.

He does acquisition and mergers. He has to fire people at times. Then there there’s no tougher position than being a parent. None. Zero. Because it’s 24 7. And as they get older, your time diminishes with them. We watch parents, we’ve done these studies, we watch parents that drive up and drop their sons and daughters off at school and they’re on the phone, they don’t hug their kid goodbye.

Or High five their kid. Goodbye. They’re on the phone.

We stop and talk to the the teenager, the young person. Hey, I Have to ask you, what happened there in the car with your mom and dad? What was going on? Nothing man. They’re always on the phone and you hear the tone in their voice and parents don’t think it’s a big deal. They’re driving in their car and their kids are on the phone and they’re not having a discussion.

So sometimes you only have to watch your kid. You Have to watch who they’re around. Look at the five people your sons and daughters are around. Call the parents, ask them certain questions, make a list of questions. We got the questions. I’m not going to go over them, but do you know what I’m talking about?

I know exactly. Your son will be similar to the five people they hang around

and that could be hard. That could be really hard to find

[01:02:03] Mike Klinzing: Five families, five kids that have a similar set of values that you do. That is not easy to do. It’s not easy for the kid to do, and it’s not easy for the parent to be able to approve, disapprove, figure that out to make sure that the people who are influencing your kids are the people that you want influencing them.

That is a challenge.

[01:02:33] Jim Brogan: That is a challenge. Well, we don’t look for easy. We look for simple, simple to pick the phone up. Say, Hey, my son’s coming over your house tonight. Can you tell me what’s going on? Hang the phone up. It’s a 45 second call. Yep, that’s it. Hey, hey’re all coming over your house.

You know, I hear there’s big things going to your house. Is there going to be alcohol there?

Ask. If you’re afraid to ask that there’s bigger issues.

[01:03:03] Mike Klinzing: That goes back to what you talked about before, right? If you’re going to be afraid to have that kind of conversation, what else are you afraid to do?

[01:03:13] Mike Klinzing: Why your kids your most asset. For example, you don’t love anybody more than your kids.

[01:03:15] Jim Brogan: I’ll give you something scary. How old’s your son? He’s too late. You told me your son was 12. I said, listen, you’ve, I got a daughter who’s 14. Oh, you do? Mm. It’s probably pretty much over. What, Jim, what are you saying to me? Hold on. Once they turn 14, 15, it’s like, yeah, right Dad, right Mom, I Have to go. When they’re around 10, you’ve got about 48 more months with them.

What? Yeah, when they’re about 10, you got 48 more months. Once they turn 14, 15, 16, they are into their friends. So you Have to pay attention to the friends. I mean, think about it. If they’re 16, you got 24 more months with them, and then they Have to make a decision. They’re 18, they’re off to college, they’re off to the military, they’re off to a job, or they live in your basement.

You got four options. You better figure out and start planning right now. If they’re 12, 14, 16, you better start planning right now. Put as many people in front of them as you possibly can that will assist them in making a great decision. There’s not a lot of options for them when they turn 18. There’s not.

So start planning when they’re 10, 12, 14. Let them see what the plan is. The key is you have to talk to them.

[01:04:39] Mike Klinzing: I mean, as you said earlier, you see so many opportunities that parents have to interact with their kids. That could be at home, that could be in the car, that could be at a game, that could be wherever.  And the phones are a problem.

[01:04:58] Jim Brogan: No, it’s not. No, it’s not. No, no, no. Hold. Let me interrupt you here. Hold on. The phone is not a problem. See, when you walk in the door from school, You take the phone when they go to bed at night, you take the phone because if you ever to negotiate with your son or daughter. And we’ve been through this wait, wait, wait, wait.

[01:05:16] Mike Klinzing: No. I’m going to say so hold on. So I’m going to say the phone is a problem for the parent. Now the kid’s phone is a challenge and yeah, you take it away. Like my kid’s phones don’t go in their rooms and there’s certainly times where they’re on their phones too much. But my daughter who’s in seventh grade, she doesn’t have a phone.

My son didn’t get a phone until he was in 10th grade and my other older daughter got hers when she was in 9^th grade, I probably had three or four years of them complaining. We’re the only ones in our grade that don’t have a phone. We we don’t have a phone. Dad here, you and mom are so mean.

You don’t have a phone. So yeah. We’re not perfect by any means. Trust me. They use the phones probably far more than even I’d like to see them use it, but we do decently. But I see so many parents, and again, I’m not to say that I’m never guilty of that too, but I think parents, it’s just so easy to pick that thing up and look at stuff, whether you’re a kid or your parent.

And as a parent, it’s like you only have so much time with your kids, and it’s really important to be able to try to maximize that time. Like I said, I’m not perfect by any means, but I think you just have to be conscious of what you’re doing, I guess is my point.

[01:06:25] Jim Brogan: No, you’re right. I always ask parents, why does your kid need to take the phone to bed with them?

If they need an alarm, I’ll go to Target and buy them one. Why? Tell me why your son, your daughter needs to take the phone to bed with them. At 10 o’clock at night because if it’s alarm, go buy them one because they’re getting interrupted. Look at grades across the country are down because kids are on their phones.

[01:06:51] Mike Klinzing: I heard something, I don’t know if you’ve heard of this, I don’t know if you’ve heard of this before, but I had guy that we had on the podcast last week, he told me that here in Akron, Ohio, that they are next year going to this system where when a kid gets on school campus, as they enter into the school, they get this bag that is like electromagnetically charged that the kid puts their phone in the bag and as long as the kid remains in the school or on the school property, that bag is in their possession. But they cannot open the bag because of the whatever electromagnetic field that’s keeping the bag closed. And then as soon as they. Exit the school grounds, they can then the electromagnetic charge goes off and they can reopen their phone.

I thought that was ingenious. I mean, to me, I know there’s been, when phones first came out, people are like, oh, but you’re going to use them for school and it’s going to, we’re going to help them be able to do research and all this stuff. And I can tell you that any teacher you talk to is going to disagree with that.

So I thought the bag solution, I’m like, man, we should start doing that because to take that thing out of their hands and get them to bat, be back focused on what they should be doing in school. To me, that would be a huge win.

[01:08:05] Jim Brogan: I’m dealing with a professional right now, I mean, bright. And he told me, he goes, I’m addicted to the phone.

This is an adult, brilliant adult. And all I’ve asked them to do is just put a little thing on the phone and just remind, okay, I Have to put it down. Go talk to people, go talk to people. I have to work with just incrementally. Just for one day. That’s all we did for one day. That’s it. Next week we did it for two days.

Next time we did it for three days and he only has to stay off it for five minutes. Cause it has to be done incrementally because we, yeah, we live, we live in an experience economy. We live in an experienced life, that’s what we are, we’re looking for experiences and they’re getting it through the phone.

It’s so entertaining. It’s so engaging. I come in the door. I don’t touch my phone. I get clients that get upset with me. I got my two authors upset with me, Thomas sometimes, because I don’t get back to them at eight o’clock at night, eight 30 at night. I’m sorry. My wife is more important than this phone.

You understand? And they’re like, wow, you really to put it down? I said, yeah, I put it down, I’ll touch it. No, I don’t. That’s not all the time. It’s not all the time, but five days a week, six days a week, yeah. I’m not touching the phone. I come in, I’m done.

I mean, I can’t run my business unless I come home and I have to do certain reading because of the people I have to talk to the next day at four o’clock in the morning or five o’clock in the morning, or six o’clock in the morning, I’m running a business for results, period. And when you’re running a business with results, you’re attempting to impact human behavior, human thinking that’s what it is.

So there have to be strategies, there’s have to be tactics. As I was telling you earlier, we work on an immersion program, the first month and awareness program, the next, second, third, and fourth month, an execution program, the fifth and sixth months. So a client is with me for six months and then we stay in touch with them for life.

Impact. Right? That’s what it’s all about. That’s it. And there’s an accountability factor.

I’ve got attorneys, I’ve got doctors. They’re held accountable. Business owners who holds a business owner accountable. Sure. He looks at his profit loss statement. That’s an accountability factor. But for other areas, that’s why a publicly traded company has to have a board of directors.

That board of directors keeps the CEO, the CFO, the COO keeps all of the executive team in line. That’s why they have those quarterly reports. There has to be someone that keeps people on the straight and narrow. I hope that helps. It does. Absolutely. So. It absolutely does. It’s been interesting.

I’ve learned so much in the last three years. Mike. I’m with these gentlemen I’m working with, he the former president of Nestle largest food company in the world. The captain of the Navy Seals. It’s made me even better the last three years and writing this book, it’s been fascinating.

And people don’t try to seek out either through books, TED Talks, how they get better. You know, I always ask people, okay, so the first time we started to work and the last six months, what have you done to become a better husband, a better wife? What have you done to become a better leader at your company?

Tell me three things. Don’t start answering a question with odd, please. There’s the struggle and someone did it to me. Someone did this to me. People should have a personal board of directors, a personal board of directors, people that you know are going to give you the best information, not believe no.

So we have people that we work with that…Who’s your personal board of directors?

What’s the last book? What’s the, I think that’s great advice

[01:12:41] Mike Klinzing: Who’s your personal board of directors? What’s the last book? I think that’s great advice for a coach.

[01:12:43] Jim Brogan: Oh, I had so much fun in the nfl, Mike, I Have to tell you, it was sure the professional, we have to get results. But I was so fortunate and it started when I first started doing the stuff with the doctors, when the first quarterback we worked with was here in San Diego, and they came to me and said we’ve heard about you.

We’ve heard some things you do. We want you to work with our quarterback. So I went and watched how they did things. I said, God, you have to stop telling them to work harder and you’re training them the wrong way. Well, going to draft a new quarterback. We don’t think he can do it. I said he can do it.

I’m telling you he can do it. If he’s willing to meet with me at six o’clock in the morning twice a week, three times a week for the summer, he can do it. So he went from one of the worst quarterbacks to one of the best quarterbacks and he’s been, well, he just retired recently. He’s one of the best quarterbacks ever.

His name was Drew Brees and we taught him neurologically. Did it with a guy named Matt Ryan with the Atlanta Falcons Falcons.

So it’s all science-based can do with the ceo. That’s why we’re putting this book together to teach people leadership because it’s desperately needed in this country.

How do you define leadership? How did you make a difference? Tell me three ways you made a difference in your class today. That’s all I have to ask you. Tell me three ways that you’re having them do something outside the classroom. All I Have to do is listen to you. Let’s take this supposedly captain on the football team.

Tell me what you’re doing off the field for all these players. Okay, that guy right there. So I’m working with, I’m working with a defensive coordinator right now in the nfl. We had him make sure that he knew the birthdays of not just the players, the birthdays wives, the birthdays kids. Why he’s showing that one thing people understand.

People don’t care how much you know till they know how much you care. And if you fake caring, people can see that. They can see right through it. You’re not authentic.

That kind of resonated with you, huh? I can hear you thinking. I can hear it through the mic.

[01:15:13] Mike Klinzing: Yes, it absolutely does. I mean, when I think about that, I think about investing in someone. I love that I think about the people who invested in me as a kid, whether that was a teacher, a coach, a parent, a friend.

And I always think that those are the people that are the most impactful are the ones that get to know you. There’s obviously, in education, there’s a whole sort of situation going on where people are being evaluated based on test courses as a teacher, and I always say to people, look, you might have had a favorite teacher, but I guarantee your favorite teacher was not the person who was the best at teaching you algebra or the best at teaching you American History.

Your favorite teacher was the one who put their arm around you and. Got to know you and learned that when your dog died, they had something nice to say to you, or when your parents got divorced, they were the one that you could talk to at school. And those are the people who invest in their people. And I think that goes for coaches, that goes for business, people that goes forward.

Families. If you’re the mom or dad that every day you drop your kid off at school and you’re on your phone, what kind of investment are you making in your kid? And it just, it’s not always easy, right? It’s a lot easier to stand over on the side and not talk to your players before practice starts. Or it’s a lot easier as a teacher to just kind of go through the motions and do whatever and the class ends and everybody goes on their merry way.

It’s a lot harder to invest in people and take the time. And to me that’s just, you have to invest in people. And if you do, you have a much better chance of. Getting the best out of them and getting the best out of yourself.

[01:17:00] Jim Brogan: Fantastic. That sums up what my consulting business is. I mean, you said it there and I was just taking notes about it.

When we ask questions, and this is important for your audience to learn this, the way the brain is put together, we have what we call the rule of three years ago when kids were kids, they would think in terms of three. And since we were young, we heard this three, we didn’t realize it, but we heard things in three and three is embedded in so many different areas when you’re young.

The three bears, the three blind mice. What’s the three little pigs, the three musketeers, the phrases, blood, sweat, and tears, baby, the good, the bad, the ugly. When we ask questions of people, and we notice that when you do this, It gives the person the chance to think, not regurgitate. So when you are asking questions, so let me ask you or Mike, let me ask you a question here.

What three things happened today that are great? So I go to your, you go to your daughter’s 19. What three colleges are you thinking about going to and what are three things that really intrigue you about study? If you had to start a company, what kind of company would you start? What would be three things you’d want everyone to understand about the company?

What are the three values you want your people to understand in the company? And write it down for me. So that’s where the success journal comes in. We don’t allow people, and we fight this all time, I have to send the study out. I explained it to him, but I back it up with a third party by sending out the study.

We don’t allow people to type the notes. We ask them to write the notes in a journal and we send out, as a client, we send out a really nice world-class journal to people. It’s beautiful. And we ask them to take notes in that and write in it. And after a while, especially if it’s a person that has a family and they got a two-year-old, they got a five-year-old, they got a 17 year old.

The reason we ask them to do this is because when you’ve been doing this, as long as I’ve been doing this, unfortunately we’ve had people who have passed away, moms and dads have passed away. We have letters from sons and daughters that said, I got in touch with you because your name was in this book and I found you over the internet.

And I’ve read some things about what my mom or what my dad wrote, and he’s got these two, three journals that I never knew my dad had. And in here he writes down questions that you asked, and he talks about our family stuff. I never knew that to me, I’m having the chance to leave a legacy. And I think that’s the ultimate accomplishment when you get to leave a legacy. So you’re leaving a legacy with your kids, you’re leaving a legacy as a teacher, you’re leaving a legacy as a coach. I applaud you, man. I give you a standing ovation. I just found these different ways that we have these people write in these journals.

The questions we ask them and, and I’ll bring up families. I’ll say, write down three things you love about your son. Write down two things that you think he makes you laugh, that he does, and they’re writing the journal and it has nothing to do with their business. However, it has to do with them learning to care more.

Because I’ll bridge it to what could you do for the head sales guy you work at, well, I can’t use the company’s name. You work at this company. What are three, two or three things you could do that would be really different for your sales team? Don’t tell me. Take them out to dinner. Don’t tell me that.

Have you ever bought everybody a book? No. You’ve never bought everybody a book. Come on. Seriously, you have to buy people a book. It’s the greatest gift you can give. Cause they can pass it on a physical book. Don’t buy people the damn book over the internet and don’t do that. Buy the book. If you look at my library, I’ve got about 900 books.

The books are about the brain. I don’t even understand all of them. Trust me, I don’t. But the other books are about leadership. They’re stories. My wife was all over me. She’s like, you have to start getting rid of these books, man. This is ridiculous.

[01:21:46] Mike Klinzing: Our house, man. Our house is filled. Yeah. Just every spare space on the shelf is just books. It’s crazy.

[01:21:52] Jim Brogan: Love it. And I try to tell adults, I try to tell executives and I tell employees or team members, let your kids see you reading a book. I don’t care if it’s just for 30 seconds, but let them see the consistency.

Every night or every other night, you pick the book up and you looked at it, what should I buy? Buy Obstacle’s the Way. Great book Obstacles. The way Courage is Calling Ryan Holiday. He wrote two fantastic books. Just let them see you. I’m rereading. Ego is the Enemy right now. Great book. Reread. Ah, you’re my favorite.

Lemme give you a hug. Don’t move. Hold on. I can feel it. We got it, man. Virtual. Here we go. So hopefully that helped your audience understand some of the things that we’ve done because we’re based on the science side of it and doing massive human studies and holding people accountable through the journal, the basketball side.

I still love, man, that’s Saturday and Sunday mornings. I love that. I just love it because it keeps me involved in the game and you get to impact a young person’s life forever using a sport for sure. Yep. So there’s nothing better than that. Even some of the pro-athletes I’ve worked at football at the NFL level, they still call, Hey, I wanted to let you know man, I just got married and I had a son and you know, I want to get some of that stuff you talked about and they still remember.

[01:23:20] Mike Klinzing: Yeah, that’s what it’s all about, man. Being able to use the game that you love to be able to have an impact.

[01:23:27] Jim Brogan: It’s cool stuff. That’s powerful. It’s cool stuff of things that I love about, I’m so proud of being around these two other gentlemen that they’re the best in the world at what they do.

And you get to learn even more. You do, you get to learn even more. And you write a book and people have such hidden talents, Mike, that they don’t even realize because they’re afraid to try. They’re afraid that people are going to say they failed. I tell people, listen, go to Children’s Hospital. Just go there, visit every once in a while.

Just visit there and you realize how lucky you really are in your life. Go to an old age home, just go visit there. And you can look at people that are in their eighties and nineties and think, God, I don’t want to miss a moment. I don’t want to ever miss a moment. Realize how fortunate you are. You’re blessed to be alive.

You’re blessed to be above the ground.

[01:24:24] Mike Klinzing: So true. And I think what I. You talked about tonight speaks to finding the time to be intentional about what you do. And it’s easy in today’s world to just kind of spin and run on the treadmill and not ever stop to look off to the side and slow down and think. And I think a lot of the things that you talked about tonight are just getting people to get into their own head and really think about being intentional with what they do when it comes to their family, their job, their career, their passions, whatever.

Because too often we just kind of go on autopilot. And I think this was a great lesson in not going on autopilot, but really becoming the steward of your own life. Which man, that’s what we all should be doing. But unfortunately we don’t, and we’re coming up here on an hour and a half. We didn’t even get to talk any basketball, so you’re going to have to come back on at some point because we have to get your best NBA story and all these other, we, we got a ton of things. So we’re, look, this is part one, how about that? But before we wrap up, Jim, I want to give you a chance, share how people can get in contact with you, learn more about what you’re doing.

And then after you do that, I’ll jump back in and wrap things up because this has been fantastic.

[01:25:42] Jim Brogan: There’s a couple websites that they want to go to JimBroganConsulting.com. That’s where we do that part right there. And then there’s the basketball website is my initials, JRBacademy.com.

And thank you to your audience for listening and thank you so much for allowing me to have some time on your podcast and congratulations on what you’ve accomplished. You’ve got some fantastic people on there. You’ve got some fantastic subjects that people can cover. They should be listening in their car, listening to your podcasts, and they can learn a little bit and they can grow as a person, as a wife, as a husband, as a father, as a brother, as a sister.

There’s so many things. And just that little bit every day, that incremental commitment to something every day turns into what they call the compound effect. And I love what you’re doing, and it’s the old mathematics of I’ll give you a penny a day and I’ll double it every day for 31 days, or I’ll give it a million bucks.

And I took the million bucks. When I first heard that equation, the guy looked at me and said, that choice, Jim, better take that penny. Now it’s 10 million, 700 million, $7,000. No way. And then they show you on paper and you’re thinking, wow, what could we all do incrementally? So good question. Thank you so much for your energy, your time, your questions, and, and setting this all up.

I so appreciate your professionalism.

[01:27:20] Mike Klinzing: Well, absolutely Jim. We cannot thank you enough for taking the time out of your schedule and sharing, and I think there’s a lot of powerful stuff in here that anybody who’s out there listening, if you take just a couple of suggestions that Jim put forth, I think you can make a huge difference.

And as he said, it just starts very small. Start with small incremental steps and eventually you’re going to get there. So Jim, thank you. And to everyone out there, thanks for listening and we will catch you on our next episode. Thanks.