BILL VASKO – FOUNDER OF XO COACH – EPISODE 615

Bill Vasko

Website – https://maxxathletes.wixsite.com/xocoach https://www.coachingportfolio.com/

Email – billvasko@gmail.com

Twitter – @billvasko  @XO_Coach

Bill Vasko is the founder of XO Coach and The Coaching Portfolio Guide. He helps coaches navigate the job search process and build a professional coaching portfolio that will help them land their dream job.

Vasko has coached at the college level in Division 1, 2, and 3 as both a head coach and assistant coach in three different sports! He has also served as a coach and athletic director at the high school level.

 Bill is currently the Head Women’s Softball Coach at Frostburg State University.

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If you’re looking to land your next coaching job make sure you take some notes as you listen to this episode with Bill Vasko, Founder of XO Coach.

What We Discuss with Bill Vasko

  • His original website, CoachBook, a social network for coaches
  • Coaching football, baseball, and softball in his career at both the college and high school levels
  • His first side hustle was selling copies of Ohio State’s strength and conditioning program via the NCAA News
  • How a series of articles he wrote about coaching portfolios led to XO Coach
  • “A coaching portfolio is a way for a coach to demonstrate what their philosophies are in building a successful program.”
  • “We try to tailor the portfolio to the job that a coach is applying for, and really try to research and understand what types of things may be important for that particular position.”
  • “A coaching portfolio is something that comes from your heart and soul.”
  • Using the coaching portfolio with your staff
  • The process for building a coaching portfolio
  • 80% of the portfolio should be sport neutral
  • Developing core values and including them in the portfolio
  • “Your accomplishments and achievements should be on your resume and then your portfolio should be more showing how you achieve those things.”
  • “The more you focus on your portfolio, the more you learn about yourself and your philosophies and what’s important.”
  • Ways a coaching portfolio can help you prepare for a job interview
  • “You need a resume that’s really good at telling a story about what type of value you’ve brought to a program.”
  • The biggest resume mistake is a focus on general duties and responsibilities instead of achievements and accomplishments and improvements
  • What not to include on your resume
  • Find out where you can bring value beyond just the in practice or in game type of coaching
  • “Think outside of the box of what you can do to help a program and to help a head coach be more successful and make their jobs easier.”
  • Using the Trello app to designate staff responsibilities
  • Tips for having a great interview and following up after

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ros with the all new FastDraw and FastScout. FastDraw has been the number one play diagramming software for coaches for years, and now with it’s integrated web platform, coaches have the ability to add video to plays and share them directly to their players Android and iPhones via their mobile app. Coaches can also create customized scouting reports,  upload and send game and practice film straight to the mobile app. Your players and staff have never been as prepared for games as they will after using FastDraw & FastScout. You’ll see quickly why FastModel Sports has the most compelling and intuitive basketball software out there! In addition to a great product, they also provide basketball coaching content and resources through their blog and playbank, which features over 8,000 free plays and drills from their online coaching community. For access to these plays and more information, visit fastmodelsports.com or follow them on Twitter @FastModel. 

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THANKS, BILL VASKO

If you enjoyed this episode with Bill Vasko let him know by clicking on the link below and sending him a quick shout out on Twitter:

Click here to thank Bill Vasko on Twitter!

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And if you want us to answer your questions on one of our upcoming weekly NBA episodes, drop us a line at mike@hoopheadspod.com.

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TRANSCRIPT FOR BILL VASKO – FOUNDER OF XO COACH – EPISODE 615

[00:00:00] Mike Klinzing: Hello and welcome to the Hoop Heads Podcast. It’s Mike Klinzing here with my cohost Jason Sunkle tonight, and we are pleased to welcome the founder of XO coach, Bill Vasko, to the Hoop Heads Pod. Bill, Welcome.

[00:00:12] Bill Vasko: Thank you for having me on, I appreciate it.

[00:00:14] Mike Klinzing: Absolutely excited to have you on and dive into some of the things that you’ve been able to do to impact the coaching world.

And we’re going to get into that pretty deep here as we go through the episode, want to start out by just allowing you to explain for maybe people who aren’t familiar with XO coach, what exactly it is that you do and maybe where the idea  came from?

[00:00:34] Bill Vasko: Yeah, absolutely. XO Coach is kind of my umbrella business.

You know, not to get too far into things, but I ran a social networking website. About, I started in 2008 and it was called coach book. It was kind of like Facebook for coaches. One of the lasting legacies of that website before I shut it down was an article series that I wrote on coaching portfolios for coaches and how to build one, use that in the job search process had over 10,000 views in a few months.

And I kind of realized that I was onto something that coaches needed more assistance developing coaching portfolios. So I created a website called the coaching portfolio guide, which is coachingportfolio.com, which has most of the services that I provide for coaches assisting them with job search prep.

And when I shut down coach book, it just didn’t make a lot of sense to completely eliminate a lot of the things that I had on the website. So coach book actually became XO coach, which was kind of the foundation of my business and the coaching portfolio guide was the primary product, which then kind of branched out into some other services that I’ve been adding over the last couple of years.

[00:01:46] Mike Klinzing: So let’s go back in time and we’re going to dive into all that as we move through the episode. But your background is somewhat unique for a guy who is a guest on a basketball centered podcast. So give us a little bit of an idea of your athletic background, go back to when you were a kid, just talk a little bit about the sports you played, how you got into coaching, and then we’ll dive in a little bit deeper from there.

[00:02:10] Bill Vasko: Yeah, absolutely. Well, as a gen X-er you know, I. In the early eighties, when you know, you, you were out in the yard until the lights went out. And sometimes way after that, and I was just really big into baseball, football, and basketball and whatever season it was. That’s what sport I was interested in.

I wasn’t a bad baseball player. I ended up playing basketball in junior high and I realized pretty early that I wasn’t cut out to be a basketball player. Football was my true passion, but I was a little skinny runt that they kept sticking on the offensive and defensive line to get beat up. So I excelled in baseball and you know, as I got further, along into my high school career, I realized I wasn’t going to be the elite athlete that I thought that I was.

And I started considering a career in education and coaching and a local college football coach came to our school during a job fair day. And I sat in on. Discussion about becoming a coach and what was involved in it really lit a passion in me to become involved in that. So I went into undergrad at Ohio State and tried to walk onto the baseball team.

Didn’t make it played club baseball. And then my dad was actually good friends, went to high school with Dom Capers who was a defensive coordinator and head football coach in the NFL. And he helped me get a position as a student assistant coach in with the football program at Ohio State, which I did for about a year and a half before I got into what I considered my true coaching career.

My senior year, I was an assistant football coach at upper Arlington high school. And then kind of launched my career after I graduated. I spent time as a D three assistant coach with football and. After a couple of years added baseball because I was on a restricted earnings contract and I really did it to make the extra money but then enjoy doing both sports for a few years and then kind of went the baseball route a little bit realized I couldn’t keep doing it at the salary that I was earning as a, a D three assistant.

And I actually went back in, became a teacher and athletic director at the high school level for eight years. And during that time, I got involved with the sport of softball and knew that I didn’t want to be a teacher for the rest of my life. And I really missed working in the college environment. So I ended up landing a position as the head softball coach at a local college.

And was in that position for three years, then five years as an assistant in softball. And now I’m in my fourth year as the head softball coach at Frostburg State University, which is a division two school in Maryland. So I’ve done football, baseball, softball at the college level, been an assistant coach, a head coach worked at all three divisions, high school athletic director.

And I can even throw in their two years of junior high girls basketball assistant coach in the late nineties. So I’ve done a little bit of everything, which is kind of spawned. You know, when I was looking for ways to make some additional income and trying to figure out where I could help people, I realized that I had done a variety of things in the coaching profession and could give a lot back based upon my experiences.

[00:05:33] Mike Klinzing: What was your first idea was the first idea helping coaches with the job search process or did you kind of go through a series of ideas and toss things around in your head, or did that just, did you have that light bulb moment?

[00:05:47] Bill Vasko: I’ve always been the idea person putting it into action was never my strength.

So as a coach who struggled financially and was looking for ways to make ends meet, I was always looking for ways to make a little extra money. My first side hustle was you know, back in the day, every two weeks, you’d go to your mailbox and look for the NCAA news newspaper, because that’s where all the, the job postings would be.

And they’d always have a little section there at the end for miscellaneous classifieds. So I had gotten a copy of the strength and conditioning program that they had used at Ohio state. And I, what I did was I put an ad in the NCAA news and for $10, I told people I would send them Ohio State’s strength and conditioning football program.

Xerox copies of it and then send it out for 10 bucks.

[00:06:39] Mike Klinzing: You never got a cease and desist letter from

[00:06:42] Bill Vasko: it. You know, it didn’t have any logos on it or anything. Again, this is the early nineties, so it’s just a black and white. I still have the original copies in a folder somewhere in a filing cabinet. So so you know, it shoot, it was a program that we just, for many years, when I got into coaching myself with football and baseball players it was a little more basic.

It’s not like the programs they do today. As I’ve told people a strength and conditioning is really changed in all levels of athletics these days. But that was my first real thing. And then in 1996, I believe when right after Al gore invented the internet, I took a class on HTML programming and learned how to design websites.

With coding and my first website was called the prime time page. Yeah. I was a big Deon fan. I was kind of a self-appointed nickname to myself to really hype myself up. So the primetime page had places on it where I posted workout programs that I got from the different colleges that I worked worked at, and coaches could access those for free because in the early stages of the inter internet, really hadn’t learned how to monetize things on the webs on the, on websites.

So that was like my, my first real dive into developing websites and trying to share the knowledge that I was gaining as a coach in different areas.

[00:08:08] Mike Klinzing: Did you graduate with an education degree?

[00:08:11] Bill Vasko: Yeah, actually my undergrad was a recreation degree and then I did a one-year post-grad program to get my teacher certification in phys ed and health.

So, and then my master’s is in secondary education and educational leadership.

[00:08:27] Mike Klinzing: So you were, you were messing around in the back roads of college coaching making your $4,000 a year. And probably there was somebody in your family that was selling you, Hey, isn’t it time to maybe go get a teaching job?

[00:08:37] Bill Vasko: Exactly. You’re exactly right. They’re like, aren’t you tired of sleeping on the office floor and using your food stamps to get hot dogs and macaroni and all of that, but I just loved it, but financially just couldn’t make it happen. But the prime time page eventually turned into. Max training, which was based upon developing workout programs for athletes.

I did a lot of research on the early days because as a young coach at D three schools, you are primarily responsible for the strength and conditioning programs with the athletes. Even today, a lot of smaller schools still don’t have strength and conditioning staff. So I had to learn as much as possible.

And I put all of that knowledge on a website, created a forum. We had some actually big time name coaches that would come to the forum and share information. And I just realized that I loved web design and sharing information with other coaches. So that form kind of eventually led into what was coach book, which was like I said, a social networking platform where coaches could come and exchange information and network online without having to worry about the fear that they had that their players or parents would find them online because in the early two thousands, a lot of coaches were really.

Wary about getting online and having a noticeable profile on Facebook or Twitter, which all of those platforms kind of started right around 2008. So I kind of started that up, but it was really popular at first and was an area where coaches could share information and share blogs and articles and just connect with other coaches in all sports around the country.

So and then, like I said, I wrote the article series on coaching portfolios and it was really popular and that kind of led to XO coach and the coaching portfolio guy.

[00:10:27] Mike Klinzing: So when you say coaching portfolio, what exactly does that entail? Explain to me what that means when you’re saying a coach is going to put together their portfolio.

Cause I’ve heard that word, I’ve heard that term, but I think everybody has a different vision in their mind of what exactly that means or what it looks like. So in your mind, when you say coaching portfolio, what are some of the things that you’re talking about?

[00:10:49] Bill Vasko: So in my mind, a coaching portfolio is a way for a coach, a to demonstrate what their philosophies are, whether it’s their strategical philosophies, Xs, and O’s their program, building philosophies, instilling culture within their program, their core values recruiting philosophies, just all of the ins and outs of what a coach would want to demonstrate to a hiring committee, what their philosophies are in building a successful program.

So when, when I’m helping coaches build a coaching portfolio we try to tailor the portfolio to the job that they’re applying for, and really try to research and understand what types of things may be important for that particular position. For example, if you’re going to a school where there’s not a lot of funds available and you know, you’re going to have to do a lot of fundraising, you’re going to need a, a section in your portfolio about how you’re going to raise funds and support the program.

And I got the idea you know again, an education major when you’re an education major, you have to create a teaching portfolio as part of your requirements when you’re going through the certification program, because teaching portfolio is something that you take with you to the interview to show your lesson plans and what types of topics that you teach and everything.

So I had, again Late nineties is when I started applying for my first head jobs as a baseball coach. And I’m really not sure how I got the idea, but I just kind of heard about a coaching portfolio. I’m like, oh, well, that’s like a teaching portfolio. You know, I’ve put together a spiral bound notebook that contained what my philosophies were and how we were going to build a successful program.

And it was a lot more basic back then. It was here are our goals for the program. Here’s how we’re going to accomplish those goals. This is what we’re going to do in practice to achieve our statistical types of goals or our success on the field. Here’s how we’re going to recruit.

Here’s our yearly calendar, all the things we’re going to do throughout the year, each, each month strength and conditioning stuff. Off-season programs, winter break workouts, and those kinds of things. So it was really a way to like I said, demonstrate to a hiring committee or head coach or an a.

How I was going to build a successful program. And you know, when I wrote the article series, I just kind of explained all of the different sections that I thought were really important in a portfolio. So today, when I talk to coaches about building their portfolio, I tell them, especially young coaches or coaches who are looking for assistant positions, or maybe their first assistant position, when you’re designing your portfolio, do it in a manner where you’re in the head coaching role, what’s important to you start to develop your philosophies and put those down on paper because a lot of young coaches will come to me.

Well, can you do a portfolio for me? I’m like, I don’t know, what’s in your head. I don’t know what your philosophies are. Like some coaches want shortcuts on everything and have things handed to them. A coaching portfolio is something that comes from your heart and soul. What you think is important as it.

And when you start to develop the portfolio, it eventually becomes your coaching manual. That was one thing that I picked up from Vince Arduini, who was the head coach at Kenyon College. When I was the assistant there, he had a staff manual and in August two weeks prior to camp opening up, he would hand out his staff may know, and he’d go over every single page in that manual and said here’s how we’re going to do things.

Here’s how we’re going to handle our recruiting visits. Here’s what we’re going to do when we make recruiting calls. Here’s what we’re going to do. Pregame meals, when we’re on the road, traveling, everything was in that manual. So a lot of the things that I talk about with coaches to put in their portfolio, I tell them, think about it.

Like if you were handing this information out to your staff and explaining how this is the roadmap to our success, That’s how you want to create your portfolio. And even to this day, when I hire new young assistants on my staff, I sit down with them and I pull things that are in my portfolio and sit down with them and kind of discuss those things so that they understand what the expectations and standards are for our program.

[00:15:03] Mike Klinzing: So when you have a coach that comes to you and says, I want to put together a coaching portfolio, what you’re coming back to them with is a framework. And I’m assuming that you’re asking them a bunch of questions about, okay, this, that the other thing. And then you’re providing with them with that framework.

And then they are filling in that framework with their philosophy, their way of doing this or their way of approaching that. And you’re kind of getting them to think about maybe some areas, because you’ve done this with a lot of coaches at this point. You’re maybe getting them to think about some areas that they haven’t considered, that they might not necessarily have thought of, but things that could really help them a be a better coach, but also be help them to get that next job.

[00:15:47] Bill Vasko: Yeah, exactly. And, and when I started the, the portfolio guide in 2014 that framework was really basic and it was designed to be something that I could sell to coaches really cheap. It was $4.95 and it was something that they could utilize on their own and access at any time and have lifetime access to.

And I didn’t have to do anything. All I had to do was approve their membership, collect the payment, they created their account, and then they went in and it was kind of a step-by-step guide of here are all the different sections that you could potentially include in your portfolio. And then we have.

Sample portfolios from other coaches who had what, after getting my help they’re thank you to me was to give me a copy of their portfolio to be able to show to other coaches. And then over time I started developing more documents myself for the different sections that I thought were good examples.

Now we have a lot of different samples in the, in the guide that coaches can look through and help brainstorm ideas for them if they’re struggling a little bit. So it, it really is self paced for them to be able to go through the guide. And as I said over about the past year or so, I’ve added some premium services where I’ll have one-on-ones with coaches who may need a little more assistance.

We’ll get on a call or a zoom and, and kind of walk through things. And then they can submit their materials to me to review. So I can give them some feedback on ways that they can improve their portfolio. And then we’ve had. Resume services and interview services. So, so the guide itself is self-paced you know, and I’ve just added more and more resources every year to it.

Podcasts and webinars like this that coaches can listen to, to get ideas and just more documents and articles and different types of things that will help them, not just with the portfolio, but the job search process overall,

[00:17:46] Mike Klinzing: Did it start out generic in terms of the sport, and then now where it’s evolved to, do you have a particular framework or is the framework different or the same for different sports or how do you approach that piece of it?

[00:18:03] Bill Vasko: So my philosophy has always been that the 80% of any portfolio should be sport Neutral. Because a lot of the philosophies are going to carry over from sport to sport, to sport, and then the other 20% of your portfolio can be comprised of information that’s a little more sport specific. My last portfolio that I use to get my current job at Frostburg had zero softball information in it, other than what we were going to do recruiting wise.

And a lot of that recruiting stuff was even pretty generic. Football coaches, probably more than anybody have to add a little more sport specific information, because a lot of hiring committees, especially if they’re interviewing as a head coach, they’re going to want to see what type of offensive and defensive philosophies that they’re going to implement as a coach.

Basketball coaches are probably second and those are the two most high profile sports. And those are also our biggest client base for the coaching portfolio. Obviously as a former football coach, I was a little more familiar with how a football portfolio was going to look than I was with anything else.

But I’d already had created mind for both foot or baseball and softball. So I was able to get some football and baseball and softball sample documents put together pretty easily. And as the website and popularity grew and we started attracting more basketball coaches I kind of had to really do some outreach to get some of those coaches to provide me with this.

Portfolios once they were completed it if they followed the steps in the guide, it was pretty easy to put together a portfolio and then add some of their tactical philosophies on their own. Now, I still do get questions because I’ve had strength and conditioning coaches, lacrosse coaches, field hockey, coaches, soccer coaches, all utilize the guide every once in a while.

We’ll get a question, Hey, that’s almost all football and basketball portfolios. And I tell the coaches focus on the information in the portfolios that is not sport specific because that should be the bulk of your portfolio. And then that kind of you know, puts the light bulb off in their head that, oh it’s not about the X’s and O’s so much as it is, especially if you’re interviewing for a head coaching position about program building and developing team culture, team chemistry, all of those types of things, more so than it is the X’s And O’s,

[00:20:28] Mike Klinzing: What’s an area that. You found coaches to be maybe not as aware of that should be part of the portfolio. Is there any one thing that stands out, like when you talk to a coach or as they’re going through and putting together their portfolio, that they come to the realization like, oh, I should really have that in there.

That’s not something that I thought I, was there something that jumps out at you like that?

[00:20:53] Bill Vasko: Yeah, I mean, I would say core values is a big one because a lot of coaches are really focused on, on the field or on the court types of goals and expectations. So when they start to put together their portfolio, they’re really focused on how are we going to get from A to Z.

On the field or on the court. And so they’re really focused on statistical kind of numbers and showing that kind of information, which is really important. Like along with that stuff, in my opinion should be on your resume kind of showing your accomplishments and achievements. And then your portfolio should be more showing how you achieve those things.

What were the steps that you actually put into place to make those kinds of things happen? So it could be your core values that your program is built upon. Again, culture building is really big. I’ve been recommending a lot of coaches have a section in there about working with mental health, because that’s been a big topic at the college level with student athletes right now.

And it’s kind of student athlete driven and the administrators want to see. So that’s a big area. We focused on a lot of coaches don’t really think about having a recruiting philosophy. Like what type of athlete are they going to recruit? Where are they going to recruit from, how are they going to package kids from an academic standpoint or an athletic scholarship standpoint?

And obviously with things like the transfer portal and everything that’s even changed things more, or you’ve got to have a lot of information because these kids are coming at us with a lot more education on those kinds of topics. These days I sit on a Twitter space as almost every night on recruiting topics.

So these parents and kids are getting a lot of information about handling this and more of a business regard than just a recruiting for a sport in a school. So those are some general things that coaches really don’t think about. Because again, they’re so focused on the X and O sometimes that they really don’t stop and think about all of the other things.

I’m a big one for myself in particular has always been like our academic progress plan. And it was really cool. When I took over at Frostburg, my first year, we ended up in the top 10 for team GPA in all of. Division three softball because my first year at Frostburg, we were a division three school before we transitioned to division two and I made it a goal.

I wanted our program to be the number one in division two, once we made it to that level. And after we got through COVID this past year, we were number one in the country and top 10, and then all divisions of team GPA, which I think is pretty cool, especially for a state school, because you look in the top 10, you’ve got like Stanford and Duke and Vanderbilt and all of those schools.

And so that’s something I focus on in my portfolio because that’s been an emphasis that we’re going to put things into place to really make sure our kids understand the importance of the academic piece of being a student athlete. So just a lot of those non tactical kind of things are some of the things that coaches really don’t think about.

[00:24:00] Mike Klinzing: Have you had coaches come back to you because as I’m sitting here and listening to you talk about this, what keeps coming in my head is there’s value in the document itself. But I can totally see where there’s also a lot of value being unlocked, just in having a coach put down on paper, what’s in their mind about how they want to coach and what their program’s philosophy and all these things that you’ve been talking about just by putting it down on paper.

I almost feel like the coach is getting a tremendous amount of benefit by getting it out there and putting it in a place where they can consolidate it, think about it, see it, and it forces you to really define who you are as a coach and what your program is all about. Have you had coaches come back to you with not only feedback positively about, Hey, the document really helped me to get this job, but also it helped me to clarify who I am as a coach.

[00:24:58] Bill Vasko: Yeah, absolutely. And to be honest, that was a, a key moment in my understanding of myself as a coach at one point where I was like The more I focus on my portfolio, the more I learn about myself and my philosophies and what’s important. And I try to save a lot of my order documents and I’ll go back and look at academic progress plan from 15 years ago, compared to what it is today and, and see how that plan has really progressed and the things that we’ve added and the resources that we tried to provide for our kids.

It’s not only caused me to learn more about myself as a coach. It’s forced me to really focus on enhancing what we provide to our student athletes as well. And not only is it a benefit for learning more about yourself as a coach, but when you sit down and think about these things and put it on paper, like you said, It also prepares you for the job interview process, because I tell coaches the questions that normally would be hard for a lot of coaches are going to be really easy for coaches who have a really good understanding of what’s in their portfolio, because they’ve really had to sit and think about these things and put it down on paper.

And it’s like, you’re practicing those interview questions. So when certain questions come up in an interview, you’ve already talked about that in your portfolio. And you can just sit and talk about that with ease, and you’re not going to be stumped by those difficult questions. So you’re absolutely right.

It really forces coaches. And when I say some coaches come to me and ask about a template and just plugging in their information, I know right off the bat, that’s not, that’s not a type of coach that I would want on my coaching staff, because they’re not putting any type of thought into any of their philosophies and sitting down and creating that information on their own.

They want somebody else to do it for them. And that’s somebody who’s going to take shortcuts when they’re on your staff as well.

[00:26:55] Mike Klinzing: So when you start thinking about helping a coach, get off to this, get started with putting a portfolio together. What would you tell them? Hey, here’s your first step before you, even before they even go to you and they come and they, they look for their, they’re trying to get this, this framework.

What do they need to do first to be prepared to start putting together that portfolio what’s step one for a coach?

[00:27:22] Bill Vasko: Step one is to have a really good resume and a resume. That’s really good at telling your story about what type of value you’ve brought to a program. As part of our services for the longest time we were offering a free resume review and as the guide became more and more popular, I just didn’t have time to do 10 to 15 resume views per week for free.

So it’s now a premium service, so I’m, I still do probably three to five reviews per week, which means I’m doing hundreds of resume reviews per year. So I’ve reviewed thousands of resumes and 90% of the resumes that I get are not resumes that would make it to the yes pile because they’re just too basic.

They focus on general duties and responsibilities instead of achievements and accomplishments and improvements within our program. You know, so that’s always, my number one recommendation for coaches is to really sit down and critically think. How you’ve brought value to a program in your previous stops, what kind of things were improved while you’re there?

Even if that means that the winning record didn’t improve, what other type of value did you bring to the program? Was it academic progress? Did you Institute a mental performance program? Were you able to assist in the weight room and get the athlete stronger and faster? Those are the kinds of thing.

Coaches have to be really good at sitting down and documenting. And I learned that lesson the hard way, because I had to really sit down and critically look at my resume and be honest with myself and admit that it stunk. Because I had a lot of those generic kind of things I’m like, yeah, look at all these responsibilities that I had at these places, but I really didn’t. Every coach does those things. So what I learned was and every time we do something good, something new break, a record. A kid has an something that’s never been done before in the program, whatever it is. Like I, I jot it down in a little area where I keep all of my notes on the progress of our program.

So that I can use that information in my resume. So when I tell coaches that’s the number one thing you gotta do, some coaches struggle with it because they don’t have to really try to think back though. What, what did I really do when I was there beyond practice planning and breaking down video and scouting opponents, like those three things are on every single coach’s resume.

It doesn’t make you stand out. So you’ve got to make your resume really good. And then once you’re able to really hone in on some of those accomplishments and achievements and how you brought value to the program. Again, now you go to the portfolio and go into more detail on how you achieve those things.

So when I can go to my resume, And tell an AD. Hey, we had the number one overall team GPA in all of division two softball, 300 schools in 2020, 2021. And if you look at my portfolio, here’s exactly how we accomplished that, here are all the steps that we took here are the resources we provided for our student athletes.

Now I’ve got all of the information to back up how we actually did that. So the first step is having a really good resume. And like I said, only about 10% of the resumes that I get are actually really good.

[00:30:32] Mike Klinzing: What’s the funniest thing you’ve ever seen on a resume?

[00:30:34] Bill Vasko: I wrote a little article on this, so I write lots of articles based on the documents that coach has sent to me.

I don’t know if it’s funny or not, but the, the most common thing I see coaches that like those little career summaries or professional summaries at the beginning of their resumes. And I just, I went through a bunch of. And did an article and said, here are all the things to not include on your resume.

Things like great communicator, a self-motivated real people person does well with student athletes. Like really, like I expect every coach that I hired, that every one of those attributes, if you don’t have those attributes, I’m going to be worried. And I keep getting it over and over again. And you know, some coaches will have 20 things listed like that.

I’m like, dude, you got 20 buzzwords. That’s what I call them on my resume. Do you really think that this makes you stand out? And young coaches are. I shouldn’t say the young coaches are more at fault. It’s I can cut them a little bit of slack. Cause they just don’t know yet. Some of these older coaches think that’s going to help them stand out.

And it does a bit I hear from a lot of younger coaches that when somebody says, well, why should I hire you? They’re like, well, I’m really passionate. I’m eager to learn. And I just want to be under somebody that to study the game. And I’m like, again, like that’s every young coach out there that wants to get into the profession.

What can you actually do to help me as a head coach, make my job easier. And what can you do to help make my program be more successful? Those are the things I’m looking for. Even with first-year coaches, which I have three first-year coaches on my staff this year. So you know, I’m looking for those kinds of things.

I want you to be energetic and passionate, but I also expect that.

[00:32:18] Mike Klinzing: So, all right, so let’s say I’m a brand new coach. I just graduated from college. I’m trying to get my first job. I’m putting together a portfolio. I’m putting together a resume. What are some things when I haven’t really done very much in the profession yet, let’s say even a a year or two in, and I’ve been part of this program, how can I take what I’ve done?

How can I take those buzzwords and turn them into something tangible that I can actually put on a resume that isn’t made up. But that’s something that actually I’ve contributed to, because I could see where somebody who’s young in the profession can say, well, I was the JV assistant coach at this high school, and now I’m trying to.

A head coaching job where I’m trying to get an assistant varsity job, but I don’t really know how to make my resume look better. So what suggestions would you have? Somebody who’s in that kind of situation?

[00:33:09] Bill Vasko: So again, especially if they don’t have a lot of experience and I’ve worked with a lot of student athletes who are getting ready to like apply for GA positions as well.

And I know that they have a really difficult time if all they have on their resumes, that they were an athlete. So they’ve got to list some other things. But you know, if you’re a young coach and you do already have some experience and it’s only a year or two, and it’s a JV assistant and you don’t have a lot of statistical kind of things or winning percentage things that you can put on, that’s where you really need to focus on the other kinds of things that you can bring value in again.

And this was what was important to me as a young coach, when not when I was young and eager and enthusiastic and passionate, I took on every crappy job that I could within the program and the athletic department. I mean,  I sent, I sealed envelopes for the secretary to send out recruiting letters to every sport, like whatever I could do to add more stuff to my resume, I would do it.

I supervised work study students in the weight room and it was my, that was my first real, super advisory type of position where I had to oversee work study students that didn’t want to show up for their jobs on Saturday morning after they had gone out on Friday night. So really kind of looking at in depth into what other kinds of things did you do that brought value again? Do you do strength and conditioning kind of stuff? If you do video breakdown, what programs are you using and how exactly did the video breakdowns help the team be more successful? If you were doing scouting reports? Like what kind of information were you putting in the scouting reports?

Like don’t tell me, you just did scouting reports. Tell me what you were looking for, how it helped you get certain wins. I gave that recommendation to a coach last week he had a lot of information about scouting. I’m like scouting is great, but how did it help you be more successful? He sent me a revised copy of his resume and he had actually been able to go back and show how certain scouting reports that he had prepared gave them victories against certain opponents. And he went into a little more detail to say I was able to find this, I guess, this certain opponent. And we were able to utilize these plays. This was a basketball coach and it helped us get a victory against a, a top 25 team. So really sitting down and finding out where you can bring value beyond just the in practice or in game type of coaching.

Outside kind of things like team bonding, activities, team, building activities mentoring programs, again, the mental health aspect. I give a lot of responsibility to my first year assistant stuff. Individual meetings with our players to discuss academics, to discuss mental health. So that gives them an opportunity to really start to develop themselves as young coaches and take on other responsibilities besides what I give them to do in practice coaching a position.

So again, a lot of people don’t think about those kinds of things, and that’s one of the big points I try to get across is think outside of the box of what you can do to help a program and to help a head coach be more successful and make their jobs easier.

[00:36:23] Mike Klinzing: Conversely, I would say just what you just talked about there.

If I’m a head coach, one of the things I would think would be valuable to a program is what you just described, which is I can help my assistance to develop and become better coaches. And how do I do that by delegating and giving them responsibility? I think that’s something that, to me, if I was an athletic director or someone making a hiring decision, if I saw somebody that was not only developing themselves and the players that were part of the team, but we’re also helping to develop the staff.

To me, that would be something that would be attractive.

[00:36:57] Bill Vasko: Yeah, absolutely. I’ve always had a section in my staff manual of the different responsibilities that every person in our program has and kind of broken that down based upon the time of the year, whether we’re in our fall season, our individual section of practice, winter break pre season in season and an off season.

I’ve actually I got this idea from another coach. I use an app now that’s called Trello, T R E L L O. And it’s kind of like, I’m a little bit OCD and I’m really big on to-do lists. And I will redo the same to-do list three or four times in the same day, because I think it makes me more organized when it probably just makes it worse.

But the Trello app is really nice. It’s just kind of like a to-do list kind of thing, online that you can access the app either on your desktop or on your phone and you can move things around to different columns. So I actually have a Trello for our staff that kind of lays out all of the Staff responsibilities that each person has.

And then it’s broken down by like away games, home games, travel responsibilities, recruiting responsibilities, upcoming projects, long-term projects, things we have to do before the fall things we have to do over winter break things we have to do before the season. And it allows me to delegate and assign a lot of responsibility because I really believe, like you said, it’s super important for me as a head coach to delegate and mentor my young assistants and give them as much responsibility as possible, because I know that’s how I learned as a young coach and how I got a lot of opportunities because I was able to do a variety of different things.

And to be honest, the more they can do the easier my life is because there’s nothing more stressful than. A head coach thinking that they have to be able to be in charge of everything within the program. It’s much simpler if I can delegate some things and not have to worry about it and know that my assistants are going to get it done properly.

And in a timely manner,

[00:38:59] Mike Klinzing: We’ve talked to a ton of coaches, Bill on the podcast that, especially when they’re young, most people who are successful, they tend to be very control-oriented right? Because they feel like they can do what they do better than anybody else. And it’s only as they gain more experience that they realize what you just said, which is I could try to do all this stuff myself, but I’m probably not going to be able to do it at the level that I want it to.

And hopefully the people that you’ve hired as part of your staff, that you hired them for a reason, because they’re good at what they do. And you have to give them the space to be able to do that. But sometimes as a young coach, as you know, that’s not always easy to do because you feel like you want to have your hands.

Directly in every aspect of the program. So I’m sure that you get coaches that you’ve had that conversation with of look, you might need to step back in this area and give some of that responsibility to someone on your staff.

[00:39:54] Bill Vasko: Yeah, absolutely. I mean, it’s, it’s, it’s tough for every coach and you know, like I said, with three first year assistance myself this year, it was really difficult for me.

I knew coming in, I had a little bit of information on their backgrounds. I knew what their strengths were going to be in terms of on the field coaching, but I just wasn’t sure you know, how comfortable I was delegating certain things. As simple as hotels, food options. When we travel buses itineraries, because I know even myself I’ve had instances when I was not a young coach where we would show up and the hotel didn’t have hotel rooms and it was my fault that I didn’t follow up a couple of days prior.

One year we went down to play number two, Auburn, we show up at the hotel and they’re like, sorry, we don’t have rooms for you. And I’m looking at my boss. I’m like, we’re playing the number two team in the country tomorrow. And we don’t have rooms. You know, so based upon the mistakes you made as a coach, when you were an assistant, you get nervous about those things as the head coach, I always tell our kids like they always ask me why I’m so.

OCD about all the equipment getting loaded on the bus. I’m like, well, one time when I was the assistant, something didn’t get loaded on the bus and I got my butt chewed out about it. So even now I’m the head coach. I still like to make sure everything is on the bus. Cause I don’t want anybody else to get in trouble like I did one day.

But then as you develop trust in your assistants and I think that’s a big part of it them gaining your trust and myself, having trust in them to be able to feel good about them doing the job because I’ve showed them how to do it properly. And then also being okay with if a mistake is made mistakes happen.

And that’s sometimes how we learn. You know, I learned when we didn’t have hotel rooms against Auburn that send an email out one week prior to the hotels and confirmed that they have the rooms and for the correct dates and everything. And that’s something that we still do in our program. That’s in our manual and how we travel exactly how we follow up with hotels and everything.

Sometimes. You learn those lessons the hard way, unfortunately.

[00:41:58] Mike Klinzing: So when you talk about learning and you think about yourself and your background and coaching and all these different sports that you’ve had the good fortune to be able to coach, but you also have coaches that are coming to you to build a portfolio that are not from sports that you’ve coached.

So how do you go to, or where do you go? Who do you go to, to learn when you’re talking about, let’s just say basketball, for example, do you have coaches who you reach out to, to talk about some of the things that maybe other coaches come to you with questions, and then you’re like, Hmm. That’s something that I hadn’t thought about on the basketball side.

Who are your resources or where do you go to maybe pick up some of those little tidbits that you might need that could add value to the coaches that are coming to you?

[00:42:40] Bill Vasko: Well, obviously like I mentioned, I created coach book, which was a social networking platform. So networking was always something that was really important to me.

And it’s kind of funny because I’m really an introvert. Like if you stuck me in a room full of people I would not be the person that would be out there networking and, and working in the room a little bit. So I think actually developing that platform gave me an opportunity to, to start to network a little more over line.

And, and even today I would say I’m an excellent online networker. I can go and pull resources, coaches from all over the country, all divisions and everything. Just based on the online networking that I’ve done. As this, this kind of grown, and I’ve kind of realized that I really do enjoy helping coaches in all sport become more successful within the profession.

And I especially like helping out young coaches because I had a lot of you know, like a lot of people, I had a lot of coaches in my life that were really important as mentors. And that helped me out when I was struggling in a variety of ways that encouraged me and gave me a lot of opportunities, gave me a lot of responsibility.

So I think just, I’ve realized that I needed to make sure that I networked as this thing grew and became more knowledgeable about everything that went on in other sports. So it offset in on it. But the one good thing about the pandemic is we’ve had a lot of opportunities to sit in on virtual webinars and learning sessions.

And I’ll sit in on a variety of sports and just listen and learn about what other coaches are talking about in other sports. If it comes down to something that’s more a X’s and O’s strategy kind of thing I will always be upfront that that’s not my strength outside of, even as a former football coach, offenses and defenses have become so much more sophisticated from when I’ve coached. Back in the day that I, I couldn’t look at somebody’s portfolio and look through their playbooks, that section until that was a good or bad section in their portfolio. So I will always be up front with maybe that’s not my strength sometimes with the X’s and knows kind of thing, but I really focus on a lot of the things that are consistent.

With coaches of all sports the philosophical kind of things that aren’t on the field or on the court with the advice and knowledge that I try to pass on to other coaches. And then I get a lot of questions from young coaches. I’ve been doing a lot of basketball related podcasts in the last couple of weeks.

And a lot of young coaches have reached out to me and sometimes I have to tell them like, Hey here’s a better resource for your question than what I can provide for you. If it has something to do with resumes and portfolios I can definitely help I get a lot of questions about the networking and relationship building.

And from a general standpoint I can talk about going to clinics, working camps networking at recruiting events, going to your national or state convention. I know the final four is always the big time. I would love to go to the final four and network and see what that’s all about for the basketball coaches, but that’s during the heart of my season.

So it’s not something that I can do. So sometimes I may say here are my general recommendations on how to network within your sport, but here’s a couple of other resources that you can reach out to and get even more information on. Somebody that’s a little more connected in the field.

[00:46:13] Mike Klinzing: That networking is so important that I think that young coaches probably have a better understanding.

I always say that when I was a young coach, I kind of was in my own little bubble and had just come off a playing career and thought I knew way more than what I did back in that time. I think with the advent of the internet. And like you talked about with the pandemic and just, there’s so much more information out there for coaches to be able to connect with.

And then as a result of that, So many coaches who are experienced have shared that, having that network and building that network, like that’s the first step to being able to get a good job is the fact that, Hey, there’s somebody that knows you that has seen your work, whether that’s, again at a camp at a recruiting event at wherever it is that you’ve had an opportunity to interact with other coaches and build your network.

And now that’s the first step to getting you in the door and getting you an opportunity, which leads to something else that you’ve talked about, that you’ve branched into, which is helping coaches with interviews. So let’s talk a little bit about that and what it is exactly that you do when you’re helping somebody.

When they come to you and say, Hey, I want help with preparing for an interview. What are some of the things that you do that can help a coach to prepare for an interview?

[00:47:27] Bill Vasko: So in the coaching portfolio guide, we have an interviewing guide and it’s got some general tips on how to handle the interview process.

The one thing that that I think is the most beneficial. It has approximately 200 questions that you could encounter during a coaching interview. And I’ve just collected those over the last 10 years. Anytime I see somebody post an article about what are the interview questions you have to prepare for?

Or a lot of times on message boards, coaches be like, I got an interview coming up. What should I be prepared for? And somebody with posts like 10 to 15 questions of, Hey, I just had an interview and here’s what they asked me. I would just copy and paste them and just keep collecting them and adding them and putting in putting them in that resource so that it’s got pretty much every question you could possibly encounter in a high school or college based interview.

So what I recommend, and this was most helpful to me. So prior to taking the job at Frostburg I was kind of in limbo with where I was at my current position. And I knew that I was potentially going to be moving on and I needed to start to prepare my portfolio, resume my interviewing skills. And I had been fortunate enough, my previous two positions were kind of based upon some of the networking opportunities that I had. So the interviews I had for my two previous jobs were pretty laid back. I wouldn’t consider them to be real interviews. So I was a little bit rusty on the interviewing process. So I went through all of those questions and I kind of marked off the ones that I said, okay, I can answer these without practicing them.

And then I went through and I said, okay, all of these ones here, I’ve already practiced because this is information that is in my portfolio. And then I had it narrowed down to about 15 questions that I was like, okay, this is something I haven’t really thought about into great detail. I haven’t written about it in my portfolio.

I need to sit and think about this and write it out. And I started writing out my answers. And then as I kind of wrote them out and developed my own. I would then have someone ask me those questions and I would practice answering them. I would do it over the phone. I would do it in person, just so I felt comfortable with how my answers were coming out.

And, and again like I mentioned earlier, the biggest. And doing really well in interviews, isn’t just being able to spit out some type of answer. That sounds good. It’s really believing in the information that you’re relaying to the person that’s interviewing you. So to be able to sit down and, and really think about the information and the answers that I wanted to give, I wanted to really reflect upon, well, how, how does this tie in with my overall philosophy as a coach or how I want to build a program or how I want to treat my student athletes?

It just forces you, like we talked about earlier to sit and think about some of those philosophies. And then the other part that was really important to me and I had never done it in the past because as an intro for, I was always afraid to ask I interviewed for one job that I was really interested in and I thought I did really well on the phone interview.

And then I found out I didn’t make it to the next phase of the interviewing. So I, I called the senior women’s administrator and asked her, Hey, can you give me some feedback on how my interview went and talked to me about some of the areas where I could improve. And I still have all of those notes written down and I have a folder put together with.

Just for me, the questions that I feel maybe I can struggle with, or some of my sample answers for those questions. And then the feedback that she gave me an areas where I needed to be better. Which she, she told me that a lot of my answers were really good, but they weren’t convinced that this was the job that I really wanted the top job on my list.

And that’s what they wanted to hear from me because I’d already had experience coaching in that conference and was familiar with that school and that area. So they felt like I could be a leading candidate, but they weren’t convinced that it was the job that I really wanted. And I, I made some notes on that and how to handle that better in the, in, in the future.

And that was a big part of me interviewing for my current job now was when I went to. Job. I sat down and learned everything that I could about that school and really made sure it was a good fit for me in a position that I really wanted in terms of location level of play, things that were going on at the school.

And I made sure that I tailored everything in my portfolio and how I was going to handle the interview based upon how much I wanted that position. And why,

[00:52:01] Mike Klinzing: How important do you think it is to ask questions of the people who are interviewing you and kind of flipping it around and asking them questions about the job, the resources, those kinds of questions.

[00:52:12] Bill Vasko: I think it’s super important. It’s important for two reasons. A not only are you a good fit for them, but is this position, is this school a good fit for you? And I’ve really learned. You’ve got to be really good at asking the right questions and asking them to the right people. There are certain people on the interviewing committee, especially other coaches within the department.

That will be totally honest with you with what you’re going to find out once you’ve take a position at that particular school or program. So you’ve got to ask the right questions and ask the right people to learn more about the position, more about the school, more about the administrative support to make sure it’s a good fit for you as a coach and something that you run a really get into.

And the other thing is, if you ask the right questions to the people that you’re interviewing with, you can really show them that you’ve taken the time to think about why this job is important to you and how you’ve researched the school and the history of the school or the history of the program, or what’s important at that school, the culture of the school, the socioeconomic demographics of the community and how that may impact what goes on.

At the school or how it shapes recruiting or the financial status of the school. If you’ve done a lot of research and you can ask some of the questions about what you’ve learned to try to gather some more information that can really impress a search committee by showing them that you’ve actually thought about some of these important kinds of things and are willing to ask questions about them.

[00:53:40] Mike Klinzing: To me, that seems like a no brainer that if I’m sitting on an interviewing committee and I’m the only person asking questions and the person isn’t asking questions back, it seems like, as you said, they may not be all that interested in the job if you’re not willing to share and ask questions. So I think to me that seems like a critical piece of making sure that interview process goes well.

How have you found the coaches that you’ve worked with or that you’ve heard back from? How do they use that coaching portfolio? In their interview. In other words, are they sending that in advance to the interviewing committee so that they have that document in front of them prior to the interview? Or are they showing up within, in a briefcase, pulling it out, putting it on the desk and offering it there what’s been the best or what’s the most common way that coaches use the portfolio through the job search process?

[00:54:33] Bill Vasko: Yeah. So that’s one of the recommendations that I make in the portfolio guide. I talk a little bit about how to handle the post application part of the process. So my recommendation and it worked really well for me is that especially if you’re even these days at the high school level, in most cases, when you apply for a high score college position, you’re going to have to go through the HR application, which could take you like an hour and is a pain in the butt because you know that the person on the search committee is really not going to use that information.

And then you attach your resume and cover letter to that particular application. It goes to HR and then they pass on your materials to the head of the search committee. So what I recommend to coaches is once you’ve applied. Is to make sure that you know who the person that is in charge of you’re applying for assistant position, obviously going to be the head coach.

If it’s a head position is probably going to be the athletic director or an associate Ady within the department. And if you can find out that information, that’s super helpful, but follow up with just a brief email, just introducing yourself, letting them know that you’ve applied for the position.

It’s a position that you’re really interested in. Let them know that you’ve attached a copy of your resume as well as your portfolio in PDF format, which is super important because 50% of coaches don’t know how to save their documents as PDFs send them out. So that’s something that we teach our student athletes in the first couple of weeks, when they get on our campuses, I teach them how to make PDFs and how to use them.

And then, and then if you have a what I recommend to some coaches who might be a little more advanced is to develop a portfolio website where you can. Kind of brand yourself a little bit more and put some of your philosophies online. I think that’s a really unique way to stand out sometimes as a candidate, but you just want to include your resume and your portfolio.

And then, like I said, a brief introduction and then at the end, just ask them what a good day and time would be to follow up with a phone call. And you’d be surprised at how many people will actually reach back out and thank you for emailing them. And occasionally not very often, you do get times where they’ll be like, yeah I’d be interested in chatting with you a little bit more to talk about the position.

So I, I think that piece is really important to get the information to the head of the search committee, that AD, or the head coach, and now they have your portfolio in their hands. So if they were impressed with your resume, now they’ve got a little more information that they can review.

And then if you make it to the next stage and get an on campus interview, I recommend going to staples and getting approximately 10 copies spiral bound color with plastic covers of your portfolio. And I recommend that your portfolio be somewhere 20 to 25 pages. Now I’ve seen portfolios over 150 pages for some football coaches.

Mine right now is about 16 pages. But I took a copy for each person that I knew I was going to meet throughout the day. I knew it was going to be about eight people, but I took 10 copies and. If possible when you meet with the very first person in the morning, give them copies to pass out to everybody you’re going to meet throughout the day so that they can have it in their hands prior to meeting with you.

I think that’s really important because a lot of times people will go into these kinds of round table interviews at some point, and they pass out their portfolio. And then the people in the committee are sitting there flipping through your portfolio while you’re answering questions and not really paying attention.

So emailing it upfront, we’ll get it to at least a, the head of the committee and possibly even the others on the search committee and then bringing copies and trying to get it distributed before you meet with the people I think is really important.

[00:58:22] Mike Klinzing: That makes a lot of sense. I think if you can get it out to those people, as you said of anybody who’s ever been in a classroom knows that when you pass something out to your students and then you start talking to them, they’re all flipping through that document, whatever it is.

And looking at it and their chances of listening to you go go way, way down. And the same thing certainly happens in an interview. When you look back on sort of the development of XO coach as a business and the services that you provide, and as you said, you sort of added these different things over the course of time.

What do you see coming down the pike in the future? Is there anything that you sort of have in the works or things that you’ve thought about that you think might make Mike make sense in under this umbrella?

[00:59:09] Bill Vasko: Unfortunately I went through a divorce in about 2010 and I spent my entire retirement savings on paying off all of our bills.

So I kind of started from scratch and there are some days where I think I’m going to be working till I’m about 95. But I’ve started to do a little bit better financially. I’ve actually kind of I spent time during the pandemic sharpening my financial skills a little bit, because that was an area I was really bad at.

I’m still not great, but I’m, I’m a little more knowledgeable about that. You know, as much as I enjoy coaching I know that there’s gonna come a point where it’s kind of time for me to step aside when that is. I’m not really sure, but you know, two things that I’m really passionate about. I have a private camp company and I love running camps and I love working with young student athletes during the recruiting process, because it’s just a fun period of time for most of them to go through that.

And they’re so excited about it. So I enjoyed the camp part of it and over the last year or so as this has really grown a little more and I’ve gotten involved with some of the. Organizations I’ve worked with Hoop Dirt now for the past two years, and I know they’re a pretty, well-known commodity in the basketball community and they’ve been a big help to me in getting my information out to more basketball coaches.

And I appreciate everything that they’ve done to help me. Ultimately I know that just building my community and my audience is an important piece of this to get the information out to more coaches. As long as I’m involved in the coaching community, it’s a good thing because it gives me credibility, but it’s a bad thing because I have less time to devote to doing some of these things.

Winter break and summer are two of my biggest times of year where I’ve focused a little more on the business and some of the information and resources that I tried to put together. This, this is a really tough time a year and, and businesses booming right now. I’ve been doing a lot of resumes and portfolios for basketball coaches and I’m in the middle of my season.

So I’m burning the candle at both ends, right? And I know that’s not sustainable. So at some point I think this may be something you know, that I become a coaches coach where I’m just working more one-on-one with coaches and helping them either get into the profession or advance up the career ladder.

And I think that’s something I’m really excited to be involved in at some point, once I decide to make that move

[01:01:33] Mike Klinzing: Bill, this has been great stuff. I think the advice that you’ve provided and just the idea of putting it in that in a coach’s head who might be listening to the, to this episode and thinking about, Hey, what do I need to do to get that next job?

What do I need to prepare in order to make sure that I’m ready to step up to that next opportunity? So we cannot thank you enough for being a part of this before we get out. I want to give you a chance to share how people can connect with you via social media, share your website, email. Cell phone, wherever you feel comfortable sharing how you want people to reach out and get in touch with you.

And then after you do that, I’ll jump back in and wrap things up.

[01:02:11] Bill Vasko: All right, well, again, the, the primary website, XOcoach.com and then the product and service website is coachingportfolio.com. I have an account pretty much on every social media platform, including Tik TOK, which I think I’ve only got like 25 followers.

So I’m trying to pump up the Tik Tok a little bit. I had a plan. I was going to do a Tik Tok every week and that’s kind of fallen off a little bit. I haven’t been able to keep up with, keep up with that during the season, but @XOCoach on pretty much every platform, including Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn.

I have a personal account. Plus I have a group for XO coach Instagram, XO coaches on their Tik Tok. I have a YouTube channel that I just created a few weeks ago has a couple of videos. Again, that’s something that I’m going to focus on a little bit more. This summer is taken a lot of the articles that I’ve already written and create some YouTube 10 minute videos, and then some Tik Tok, 60 second videos on some of the content to be able to reach people in different mediums.

So people can find me if they type in Bill Vasko,  in Google, a lot of that information will come up. As well as if you just put in XO Coach or coaching portfolio guide all of my accounts, people can just DM me through the social media accounts or they can find my email contact information on any of the websites.

And like I mentioned one of the biggest criticisms that I’ve gotten over the years is I give away too much information for a really small price. And over the last year, I’ve one of the mentoring programs that I took myself from another coach who provides services for coaches like myself, who are looking to share knowledge and information with other coaches.

I learned that my time is valuable and that I do have to charge appropriate. I still tried to do some specials. If young coaches who are in grad school or undergrad are interested, I have a $5 special for the portfolio guide. They can reach out to me and I’ll send them the link to get that because I think it’s super important to be able to make sure it’s affordable for young coaches.

And then some of my more premium services again, are for more experienced coaches or coaches who are just really serious about you know, bettering themselves in this environment to, to prepare them for the profession. So, so there’s a lot of ways that they can get in touch with me and find me and they can message me anywhere and I’ll always respond.

[01:04:43] Mike Klinzing: You shared a ton of great information. I think any coach who’s listened tonight has been able to pick up some tips about how to get that next job about what you need to do to put that preparation in. I want to thank you for being willing to jump out with us and being a part of. The hoop heads podcast tonight, and to everyone out there.

Thanks for listening. And we will catch you on our next episode. Thanks.