CALEB SOUTH – TROY (OH) HIGH SCHOOL BOYS’ BASKETBALL ASSISTANT COACH & FOUNDER OF CPS TRAINING – EPISODE 1217

Website – https://www.cps-training.com/

Email – southcaleb3@gmail.com

Twitter/X – @CpsTraining

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Caleb South is currently the Boys’ Varsity Basketball Assistant Coach at Troy High School in the state of Ohio. He also is the founder of CPS Training where he has trained more than 50 D1 and D2 athletes.

Caleb previously served as the Girls’ Varsity Basketball Head Coach at his alma mater Bethel High School where his team won their first league title in 36 years and went 28-19 during his two seasons as the head coach.  He began his coaching career at Tri Village High School as a varsity assistant.

Caleb scored 1,700 points as a high school player at Bethel (OH) High School before injuries cut short his playing career which led him into coaching.

On this episode Mike & Caleb discuss the significance of vulnerability in coaching, as Caleb emphasizes the importance of authenticity and the need for coaches to share their imperfections with their players. He elaborates on how fostering a culture of accountability and clear expectations can elevate the experience of high school athletes, encouraging them to embrace their roles within the team. Additionally, we dive into the transformative power of mentorship in coaching, as Caleb reflects on the influential figures in his life who have shaped his approach to both teaching and basketball. Our dialogue showcases the balance between teaching the game and nurturing personal growth, highlighting the profound impact coaches can have on their athletes’ lives.

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Have a notebook handy as you listen to this episode with Caleb South, Boys’ Basketball Assistant Coach at Troy High School and Founder of CPS Training.

What We Discuss with Caleb South

• Core values provide a foundational framework for guiding interactions and decisions
• Each player’s role on the team should be clearly defined to foster a sense of value and importance, regardless of the amount of playing time they receive during games
• Building genuine relationships with players is essential for fostering a supportive and productive team environment that encourages growth and development
• The ongoing journey of self-improvement for any successful coach
• The mistakes he made as a young coach
• Why coaches should embrace vulnerability, demonstrating that they too are imperfect and continually learning
• Fostering a positive experience for players leads to long-lasting relationships and impactful life lessons
• Balancing high expectations with understanding
• Promoting accountability and effort in a supportive manner
• The journey of coaching is as significant as the results

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THANKS, CALEB SOUTH

If you enjoyed this episode with Caleb South to let him know by clicking on the link below and thanking them via Twitter.

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TRANSCRIPT FOR CALEB SOUTH – TROY (OH) HIGH SCHOOL BOYS’ BASKETBALL ASSISTANT COACH & FOUNDER OF CPS TRAINING – EPISODE 1217

[00:00:00] Narrator: The Hoop Heads Podcast is brought to you by Head Start Basketball.

[00:00:20] Caleb South: I think core values are awesome. I think it’s great to have that, but I also think in order to really win with people and for me to be able to coach them the way I want to coach them, they need to know where I come from and they need to know that I’m vulnerable and that I’ve made mistakes and I’m not perfect.

I’m not asking them to be perfect, and I’m not perfect. I just want their best every single day. If they give me their best, I’m happy.

[00:00:40] Mike Klinzing: Caleb South is currently the boys’ varsity basketball assistant coach at Troy High School in the state of Ohio. He’s also the founder of CPS training where he has worked with more than 50 D1 and D2 athletes.

Caleb previously served as the girls’ varsity basketball head coach at his alma mater, Bethel High School. Where his team won their first league title in 36 years and went 28 and 19. During his two seasons as the head coach, he began his coaching career at Tri Village High School as a varsity assistant.

Caleb scored 1,700 points as a high school player at Bethel High School for injuries. Cut short his playing career, which led him into coaching.

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[00:02:03] Brad Cooper: Hi, this is Brad Cooper, men’s basketball head coach at Hartwick College, and you’re listening to the Hoop Heads podcast.

[00:02:12] Mike Klinzing: Coaches, you’ve got a game plan for your team, but do you have one for your money? That’s where Wealth 4 Coaches comes in. Each week, we’ll deliver simple, no fluff financial tips made just for coaches. Whether you’re getting paid for camps, training sessions, or a full season, Wealth 4 Coaches helps you track it, save it, and grow it.

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Have a notebook handy as you listen to this episode with Caleb South Boys, basketball assistant coach at Troy High School and the founder of CPS Training.

Hello and welcome to the Hoop Heads podcast. It’s Mike Klinzing here without my co-host Jason Sunkle. I am pleased to be joined by Caleb South Boys’ Varsity Assistant basketball coach at Troy High School, here in the state of Ohio, and from CPS training.  Caleb, welcome to the Hoop Heads Pod.

[00:03:19] Caleb South: Hey Mike, thanks for having me.

[00:03:21] Mike Klinzing: Absolutely excited to have you on. Looking forward to diving into all of the interesting things that you’ve been able to do throughout your basketball life. Let’s start by going back in time to when you were a kid. Tell me a little bit about your first experiences with the game of basketball.

What made you fall in love with it? What are some, what are some of your first memories?

[00:03:40] Caleb South: Yeah, some of my first memories in the game of basketball were one of my mom’s practices. My mom was the JV girls coach at Bethel when I was really, really little, like five or six. And I remember just being excited to go to practice.

 I didn’t really necessarily know at the time what was being run. There’s pictures of me sleeping in the ball rack with the basketballs, but that’s when it. I knew I was hooked to the game. And then from there I played YMCA, played upward, and then I got on a really good team when I was in elementary school.

[00:04:13] Mike Klinzing: Is your mom your biggest influence as far as a coach that had a, an impact on your career?

[00:04:19] Caleb South: I would say my mom is the biggest inspiration for my career, or just life in general. I would say the biggest inspiration for me as a coach has been coach Cups at Centerville High School. I mean, that’s much later in life, but my mom is the inspiration of why I’m a teacher, of why I try to serve out the values that I have every single day.

[00:04:42] Narrator: Yep.

[00:04:43] Mike Klinzing: What, what part of your mom’s personality coaching style, the way she went about things, do you think is still a part of who you are today? Both as a coach and as a teacher,

[00:04:58] Caleb South: I would say in the classroom, we, we both don’t give up on kids. So with my specific role as an intervention specialist, sometimes like it requires differentiated instruction to get a kid to understand what, what you may be trying to teach them in the classroom.

But it, it’s kind of helped me be creative, like I’m a, a son of a teacher and coach. And then as, as far as athletically, my mom is probably more competitive than I am. I mean, there was no, I mean, she’d kick my butt until I was old enough where I could kick her butt, whether it was pig or just racing me. I mean, she was obsessed with like, let’s first one to the car.

And like, when I was a little kid, I didn’t understand but it was a competition and I, and she would, she, dude, she’s a good athlete. She would, she would beat me, she would smoke me. I think I was in eighth grade, first time I beat her in a race.

[00:05:54] Mike Klinzing: How’d that feel?

[00:05:55] Caleb South: Oh man, that’s, that’s one of the biggest wins of my career.

[00:06:00] Mike Klinzing: So as you’re developing as a player. I’m thinking like junior high, middle school age. What are you doing to improve your game? What is your efforts to become a better basketball player? What does that look like?

[00:06:15] Caleb South: I would say junior high is when I really became basketball obsessed. And like, I went to Rick Mount shooting camp.

I went to Jim Clayton’s shooting camp. And I just was so curious. I went to every big college camp that they, they held at the time, and I just remember trying to play in, in front of and around the best competition possible. I’m from a rural area and Bethel High School at the time was pretty small.

And my goal was just to always be around and play the best. And luckily I have two parents that are really supportive of me and  they were willing to drive me to Fishers Indiana to do a four day shooting camp. And they just kind of chilled in the hotel and they were just. It really helps when your parents get it.

Like my parents weren’t really meddlers, meaning like, it wasn’t ever anyone else’s fault. Like if I didn’t do well, it was like, well, what’d you struggle with? Left pool So, well, I guess we needed to wrap more left pool it was never, never anyone’s help, anyone else’s fault. And I think junior high is when I was able to really synthesize like the game, like be able to to understand, okay, they’re in a zone.

Where’s my, where’s my shot going to come from? Or, oh, they’re in May and I can attack and get to the basket.

[00:07:33] Mike Klinzing: Would you say that you spent more time during that particular age bracket playing pickup basketball? Or was it more time in the gym by yourself working on your game?

[00:07:48] Caleb South: A good question. I would say it was probably, I’m an equal opportunity basketball hooper, meaning like I didn’t always have people to play pickup with.

Like when you’re at a small school, like I don’t, I don’t remember a ton of open gyms. We were able to run in the spring and summer in junior high and and growing up, but I remember going to high school, open gyms in sixth grade. Like I was really, I just wanted to work on my game. For me, it was, there was a basketball under my mom’s desk and every day when the bell rang, I went and got the basketball and I went to the gym and I just needed, I needed to know what I needed to work on.

And sometimes getting your butt kicked by some 17-year-old is exactly what you need to, okay, I need to work on this, or I need to work on that, or I need to finish off contact better. And it, I wouldn’t change anything about that. I mean, I definitely think being in skill development, I know a little bit more now of maybe, hey, you don’t need to spenD3 hours on one thing and you can get everything done in a 45 minute concise workout.

[00:08:49] Mike Klinzing: Do you feel like you were a pretty analytical. Player at that time and really trying to dissect your game. It sounds like just from talking to you now, and obviously again you have a lot more experience in the game now than you did then, but it sounds like even back then you were really taking a hard look at what you were doing as a player and trying to look for ways to improve it.

Am am I reading that right?

[00:09:11] Caleb South: Oh, a hundred percent and and sometimes that’s a blessing and a curse. It’s allowed me to help kids that I train now. because I think sometimes I suck the joy out of the game for me because it’s great to overanalyze what you you could have done or should have done. But at the end of the day, like any experience you go through is a good experience.

Even if you lose and you get your butt kicked, it’s still something you can use to get better and grow your game.

[00:09:37] Mike Klinzing: Yeah, absolutely. I mean, I don’t think there’s any question that if you’re able to, I think one of the keys to being a good coach, I think it’s probably a key to being a good player as well, and just about anything in life is, is the ability to be self-aware, right?

Is if  where you’re at, where you stand, then you can go and you can make corrections. And then to your point, you have to be careful there that you’re not too self, self-critical, as you said. And then kind of suck the joy out of why we all start playing is because the game is fun. And if you lose that, it’s really hard to get it back if you, if you lose that.

So I can completely understand kind of both sides. It’s almost a double-edged sword, right? You have to walk that line of being able to analyze yourself and your game so you can get better. And yet at the same time, not being too self-critical, that you can’t get out of the way of yourself and and not have fun with the game, which ultimately is an important piece of it for sure as well.

You mentioned Coach Cups earlier and I’ve been fortunate enough to have him. The podcast, but just talk about the influence and the role that he played in your life.

[00:10:42] Caleb South: I went to college at, at ud and I’m sure we’ll get there, we’re kind of skipping through high school and a little bit later. But when I went to ud, coach Cubs hold a leadership class when he taught at Centerville, and I remember I sent him a cold Turkey DM on LinkedIn just because I knew about him, I knew the type of program he ran from, from multiple people that told me that kind of knew me and what I was trying to build.

And he allowed me to attend that leadership class. And I would go before I went to class, like I was in college, so I would go to his leadership class. I’d wake up pretty early. I mean, I believe it was first period, so I was going there for first period and then I had lecture at nine and I don’t, there there’s a proverb we always quote, I always tell him, and I always get it wrong, but it essentially, it’s.

When the student’s ready for a teacher, the teacher appears. And for me, I don’t, I still think sometimes I’m hard to, to be led. Like It’s hard for me to receive information, but from him, he is really challenged me. And sometimes it’s not always what I want to hear, but it’s what I need to hear. And it’s been really cool to be a kind of a, a really young coach and a young man.

And now our relationship is like, I can call him and talk and it, it’s just really cool how the relationship’s evolved. He’s the best, best coach I’ve been around culture, team building defensive philosophy. I mean, anytime I have stuff I want to bounce off in basketball world, that’s who, that’s definitely who I’m giving a call to.

I’ve been around a ton of really, really good coaches, but I would say he’s the one that’s poured into me the most.

[00:12:23] Mike Klinzing: When you find the right person that you click with. I think that’s invaluable, and I don’t care whether it’s in coaching, whether it’s in teaching, whether it’s in any environment that you can get into when you have somebody who’s had the kind of success that Coach Cups has had at Centerville, and then he’s willing to give to you and to be able to pour into you, as you said, that’s just such a valuable thing that I think a lot of young coaches don’t always necessarily take advantage of it because I know I can speak for myself and we can maybe get into this a little bit.

We’ll, we’ll work backwards, but I think sometimes ego gets in the way right of, we think we know what we know and we’re not always, as you said, open to somebody pouring into us. And so it sounds like you’ve reached a point where, man, that relationship with him is, is one that not only is valuable today, but I’m sure it’s going to be valuable for you going forward.

So to work our way backwards. When you’re a high school player at that point at all, with your ability to analyze your own game and thinking that through, were you at all thinking about at some point getting into coaching or were you just focused at that point on just trying to be the best player you can be?

because I found that guys either come from one of two camps, either there’s the guy that is a hundred percent I’m a player, not thinking at all about coaching, and then all of a sudden my playing career ends for whatever reason. And now I’m looking around, I’m like, I have to stay in the game. How can I do that?

And then that’s when coaching comes. Or you have the other kids that they’re like eight years old, they’re drawn plays on a napkin and they’re trying to coach their friends and they kind of know in the back of their head that they are going to end up in coaching. So I don’t know if either one of those fits you and obviously you had an injury at some point during your playing career.

So you can talk a little bit about that. But just walk me through kind of the, the genesis of how, how you get to coaching or what you were thinking about while you were still playing.

[00:14:18] Caleb South: I. I couldn’t imagine not having the structure that one playing basketball provided me. And like, just the, the schedule, the routine.

I love practicing every day. I love knowing it used to be school, now it’s work. And then we have practice. That’s something I just, I was like a fish out of water when I was young and I got injured and I would say I had an unrealistic expectation of what I was as a player. I was a good high school player.

I wasn’t a great one. So in my mind I’m thinking I’m going to go D one or I’m going to go to Duke. And it just wasn’t necessarily in the carts for me with my game and my athleticism at the time. And coaching has been the most challenging, but the most rewarding job I could ever have. And I always tell people, because people ask me, like, teaching and coaching to me are the same.

Like, if you’re a really good teacher, I think you’re a really good coach. The difference for me is the relationships you’re allowed to build. It’s, it’s more intimate than in the classroom and intimate in the sense of, I’m able to pull our point guard Aiden, Louise to the side at Troy, and have a conversation with him.

 in my classroom there may be 25, 30 kids. It’s a, it’s a different dynamic. And unless you’ve coached and taught you don’t, may not understand it, but it’s just, it’s really, really a, a cool opportunity. And I really couldn’t imagine life without it. I couldn’t imagine. It, it’s hard for me to fathom doing something else, or not living out my values.

because the whole genesis, like the whole, my purpose, my why is just, I want these guys to, or girls to have a great experience, but I definitely want them to be better people and handle hard, better than I did when I was in high school.

[00:16:02] Mike Klinzing: Did  that that was going to be your purpose or did it sort of slowly build into, into that career,

[00:16:12] Caleb South: man?

Oh, basketball’s always been my purpose. I don’t think I knew how much I would enjoy coaching to playing. because I think it’s still hard to turn off the competitive juices as a player. because for me, I was a process guy. I loved training, lifting, watching Tate more so even than the games. Like, the games were awesome, but the process is really where you test yourself.

Like, man, can I make, can I make 30 free throws in a row today?  am I going to be, I’m going to stay in this gym until I make 30 free throws in a row today. And I, that’s the part I really love. But I found, and I didn’t know it at first, but coaching’s a lot of the same ways. It’s just, you’re, you’re, you’re kind of maneuvering so many different factors in playing, in my opinion.

[00:17:01] Mike Klinzing: It is true that I think when you’re a player, you don’t necessarily realize all the behind the scenes things that coaches are doing. As you said, you have your hand in so many more aspects. I know when I was playing Caleb that. I kind of came from the camp of I just wanted to be the best player I could be.

I was focused on being a player and try to maximize my performance and trying to figure out what I could do to help my team win. And I wasn’t necessarily at all thinking about, Hey, what’s my future in the game? Beyond playing, I can honestly say I don’t think I thought about coaching for one second while I was still playing.

I was completely focused on that. And then when I got done, you start looking around and saying, okay, well how do I stay involved in the game? And coaching and teaching became the, the way for me, and I’ll remember I’ll, I’ll never forget when I knew that that was what I was going to do. I actually, so I have a business degree from Kent.

When I graduated and I was going out and I was doing interviews, and I’ve told this story on the podcast a couple times, but. I was interviewing for quote unquote Real Jobs, right? And I had this interview with Nestle, the big food company, and I forget what the job even was. It was some kind of like inside business to business sales job or something.

I can’t remember exactly. But they offered me the job, and this was in like maybe June. And they said, well, you’re going to start on July 1st. And I went home and my dad was a professor at Cleveland State. My mom was an elementary school teacher. And so I’d never seen anybody really work in the summertime.

And I went home and I’m like, Hey, I got this job. And  I’m supposed to start on July 1st. Like, but I don’t think I want to put on a suit in July and go to work. Like, I had never seen anybody do that. And that was the moment where I was like, I think I’m going to go back to school and get my teaching certificate and get into, get into coaching.

And that’s, and that’s what I did. And then from then on it kind of became, again, I started to look at things and look at the game a lot differently. And it is interesting how the transition from playing to coaching, just again, your mentality, there’s still that competitiveness. There’s still, like, I don’t think the, the desire for me to play and compete has never gone away, even though I tore my ACL when I was 42, which is now like 14 years ago.

So I really haven’t played since then. But it’s still like when I, when I lay my head down on the pillow and I’m having dreams, I still Dr I still dream like I’m a player, if that makes any, if that makes any sense. Oh, yeah. But, but it’s just, it’s such a, it’s such an interesting transition and. For me, it was just like this moment I’m like, okay, I have to I want to stay involved in the game, let me go and do the teaching and coaching thing.

And it ended up being a really, a really good decision for me. So just talk a little bit about the search for, for that first job as you get out of college and what, what you’re thinking about.

[00:19:56] Caleb South: Yeah, I have a really, really good high school experience like playing and we were really good and we won a lot of games.

And for me, when I got injured I had knee injury, achilles injury, foot injury back to back to back. And I was, I was really lost, just kind of searching for meaning. And I actually, I had a coach from Tri Village, Brad Gray brought, brought his kid to train with me and it was a kind of like hit it off.

He really liked what I was doing. Said, Hey, we need to bring you on, our staff at Tri Village. And I had the opportunity to go there when I was 20. I coached there. We went to regional semis that year, and I learned a ton from Coach Gray. He does a great job over there. And then after that one year, I was able to get the head girls job at Bethel High School, where I’m from, and I mean, just a dream year.

But we won 20 games. We won a league championship, the first one since 1984. And that group of girls, I mean, I was still young, and those group of girls, I think, I feel like taught me more than I could teach them at the time. But it also, I don’t know if it’s a good thing or a bad thing, but it was like, oh, okay, I can do this.

But I, and then I, after, after that experience, the boys’ job at Bethel, the program I played in came open late July. And I switched over to coaching our boys. I was 22 at the time when I switched over. And I think the biggest. I give because I try to pour into a lot of kids, a lot of young coaches if I can, is I think just never lose your why.

Like, there’s so many external factors that pull you and prod you and you feel like you have to measure up or you have to show bravado. But the biggest thing I just try to do every day at work or training is just trust my work. Like It’s the same way with coaching. Like I got, I got teed up so many times and it, I felt like getting teed up is, is insecure behavior.

because if you trust your work, like if you trust the work you put into practice, the off season, the weight room, like why am I arguing a charge call or,  I’m a touch foul. Like, all that stuff just becomes secondary because like I’m here to, to grow these kids. I know what my high school experience was like, and I want theirs to be better.

So that’s, that’s the lens. I view things now and. It’s been really, really painful, awful tasting medicine for me. But I’ve been fortunate to have a lot of good mentors. I’ve, I’ve wanted in my life from Centerville also named Andrew Bokey and he’s, he’s been really good for me too. And I think that’s one thing I would recommend too for young coaches.

I didn’t have very many mentors. I felt like I could call when I was a head coach at first, and I’m a junior, I was a junior in college and then a senior in college.  being a head coach and it’s a lot to manage and just, it’s good to bounce ideas off of people or like, Hey, I did this.

What should I do? Well, well, you should apologize.  like, it’s good to have somebody in your life to, to tell you what you, what you need to hear and not always what you want to hear.

[00:23:07] Mike Klinzing: So to go along with that and how did you put together a staff being so young and trying to find. People that could be that sounding board and be the person that you could talk to.

Obviously now you have people that are both inside and outside of your program, but just I think about the network that I have now at age 55 compared to the network that I had when I was 22, and it really doesn’t look at all the same. And I wonder that just getting that head coaching job at Bethel and being able to take over a program at such a young age, how’d you put together a staff without really, again, maybe necessarily having as big of a network as somebody who was a little bit more, a little bit older?

[00:23:54] Caleb South: Yeah, it’s a good question. It was so late in the process that actually my growth staff, which. My JV girls coach is now the head girls coach at Sevens. They’ve been awesome. I mean, they’ve, she’s a rock star. Her name’s Autumn Johnson. She actually coach Shay boys. She was awesome. I mean, like, I always used to call her Minnie, Becky Hammond.

I just felt like she, she had the temperament. She could coach boys or girls. She does a great job. And then my mom obviously helped me and then I had a guy named Mike Terry, who’s been around Bethel a long time. I felt like he had the pulse of our kids, our locker room. We had a good collection of people.

If I mean, obviously you can’t change anything. It was late in the process. But the biggest thing I would change going forward the rest of my career is I want people to challenge me more. Whereas when I was younger, I don’t think I could have handled being challenged. I think my ego was so big where it’s like, well I’m the youngest head coach in the state, or this or that.

When like. Grow up, man. Like I think that’s the biggest thing I’ve, I’ve taken away from that experience is I just, there’s, there’s, I still catch myself in some situations now, whether it’s as a teacher, coach partner to my girlfriend or son, anything. I just tell myself to grow up a lot. Like it’s not about you.

It’s

[00:25:15] Mike Klinzing: a hard realization to come to sometimes and I do think that what you have to do is kind of what you just described, is you kind of have to catch yourself and be intro introspective because I think so often as people, right, that we have that tendency and we all, again, if you’ve had success in any walk of life, but particularly in athletics, I think there’s definitely ego that’s involved when you think about yourself as a player.

Right. You talked about it 15 minutes ago that you were always trying to. Get out on the floor with the best players that you could find. Right? And part of that is just wanting to prove yourself and see where you stand. And you only can do that if you have a healthy ego and a belief in yourself. If you don’t, then you’re trying to shy away from the opportunity to test yourself against some of the best players.

And so I think that it kind of goes hand in hand. And yet at the same point, it does lead to a situation like you described where you kind of think, Hey, I know it all. And it’s amazing, Caleb, how many coaches I’ve talked to on the podcast that have a similar experience to what you’re describing in that when they first started, they feel like they know a lot.

They feel like they want to control every single aspect of their program, which typically, if you’ve had success, you attribute it to the things that you do well. And so you want to be able to have your hand in everything. And then as they gain more experience, the number of guys that have told me like, Hey, I’ve been coaching for 20 years.

20 years ago I was trying to do everything. I was a maniac and I was, and now I just end up delegating things to my assistant coaches because I hired them. because they have expertise and they’re good people and they know what they’re doing. And that allows me to kind of step back and be the CEO and oversee the entire program as opposed to just trying to get down into the weeds of every little thing that somebody else who I’ve hired, who I trust can handle those things.

And it’s not always easy to do that. It sounds like that’s kind of the where, where you were at the start of your career. Is that accurately describe kind of the, the situation?

[00:27:25] Caleb South: Oh, I was probably worse, to be honest with you. I mean, I just, that’s a, that’s a great, great word sandwich there. But I just, I just, I, you don’t know what you don’t know.

But the biggest thing for me wasn’t basketball on the court related. It was more so self-reflection. I mean, really just being able to. Look back, evaluate the situation and do what’s best for the kids because we’re here for the kids. So me getting teed up or costing my team or reflecting poorly on our program, like the program I love since I was four years old, that that reflects on the, it affects the kids.

It doesn’t just affect me. So like, just getting out of my own way. And once you accept that, I think it’s pretty easy. Like once you accept like, like, oh, like I like this coaching thing. I think I’m pretty good at it, but I really need to do a better job about it. Just, it, it can’t ever be about me. It has to be about the kids.

It, it, it just, it’s never going to be a conversation the rest of my career.

[00:28:27] Mike Klinzing: A great realization to come to. And I think it’s one that, it’s a sometimes a slow journey to get there. I can tell you that I went through that journey as a coach and I’ve also gone through and I’m continuing to go through that journey.

As a parent sitting in the stands, watching my kids and just continuously having to remind myself that it’s them out there playing and it’s not me. And I can provide guidance and I can provide help when it’s asked for, but I can’t want it more than my kids do. And when I was a coach, I can’t want it more than my players do you.

You can do what you can do. And when you do that eventually, and you sort of realize that it’s about the other people and you’re there to serve them and give them what they need, then ultimately you create a better experience for them. But you also create a much. Better and less stressful experience for yourself.

And I think that’s one of the things that I’ve really come to realize is that in the day to day, we all get caught up in the wins, the losses, the performance, the moment to moment, what’s happening. And then when I look back at my coaching career, my playing career, there’s very few individual games that I remember what my performance looked like or what my team’s performance looked like.

But what I do remember is the overall experience that I had as a player and as a coach and what that felt like and who the people were that were a part of that experience. And that is what carries with me, and that’s what’s impacted me. And yet, in the moment, what was most important to me was how many points am I getting in this game?

How am I helping my team win? Did did we win the game? And yet, ultimately when I look back, that stuff is way, way less important than I thought it was. In the moment. And so let me ask you this. When you think about, and you talked about it, the experience, right? And that it’s about your players and giving them a good experience.

So when you think about what makes a good experience for a high school basketball player as part of a program, and you can take it on the girl side, the boys side, take this question in whatever direction you want. But when you think about a good experience, what does that look like and how can you as a coach try to contribute to that?

[00:31:01] Caleb South: Obviously, this is one man’s opinion, but for me, for me, like the way I would describe a good experience, it’s clear expectation, expectations, and roles. All the programs I’ve been around that get into trouble or coaching friends, I have, I think just clearly defining roles, what you expect from everybody in your organization.

And then from there. How do I get this high school kid, this 16, 17-year-old high school kid who one buy into their role but two max out their role? Like really take pride in, even if your goal is to be sixth, seventh man and you’re going to come in and you’re going to give spot minutes and you’re going to guard and you’re going to rebound, how do you get a high school kid to believe that that role is the most important role?

That what I do matters? I think that’s really important. And then off the court, I think also clearly defining what behaviors you want to promote because the if you, if we permit behaviors, we’re going to promote those behaviors. And my goal is any kid that plays in my program or comes and trains with me is a part of my training program.

That even if they don’t play in the NBA or the WNBA, or even if they don’t go to Duke or they don’t go to Ohio State. They still had an experience that taught them lessons that they can use in their life. Whether they’re going to be an electrician or they’re going to go to college, or they’re going to be a doctor, they’re going to be a nurse.

I’ve, I’ve trained them all, coached them all. I had kids that have done everything and the, the most fulfilling part of my job as a trainer coach educator is getting that text. Hey, coach South, I just want to let  I didn’t get this job, but I kept my head up. I applied for this one and I got it. And I’m just so thankful you held me to such a high standard getting that from a kid five years ago when I first started training.

It’s really, really cool.

[00:32:52] Mike Klinzing: Absolutely. Those are the best calls that you can ever get from somebody that you had an impact on that. They come back to you with something, whether it’s just a hello, whether it’s news, whether it’s a question, whatever it is. I can honestly say that as a coach and as somebody who’s been around the game for a long time, that those, those calls mean a lot.

And I’ve also been on the other end of a, as the player talking to my coaches and I know how much that the conversations that I’ve initiated with them, how much it’s meant to those coaches, just to again, know that there’s somebody out here that they had an impact on. I think that’s, that’s really powerful.

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So what does that look like on the ground? Let’s take the getting a player to buy into their role piece of it first, and then we can come back to the, the deeper relationship side and the off the floor kind of thing that you talked about. But talk to me about having honest conversations with players about what their role is and how you get that kid to see that they’re six or seven minutes off the bench is the most important role on the team.

Obviously that’s one of the things that just from talking to coaches at all levels, everybody, I don’t want to necessarily say struggles with, but everybody has to figure out how do I keep my 12th player engaged when. I’m just not going to be able to engage them with playing time or the role that they want.

So just walk me through how you try to get every kid on your roster to buy into their role. What does that look like?

[00:35:29] Caleb South: I think coaching them the same way you coach the other kids. Like I think sometimes, and  I, this is one man’s opinion, one man’s perspective, but I think sometimes I’m harder on the best players, but everybody’s still held to a high standard.

I don’t think any kid wants to feel like they’re pitied or that, oh, he knows I’m not going to play, so I don’t get reps, or I don’t get coached hard, or I don’t get coached the same way. And then I like, I like giving examples. So I sometimes will deep dive. One of my favorite guards ever, because I thought he was really limited athletically, was Bronson Koenig that played for Wisconsin.

Those of you that may remember May Notd, he hit a big shot against Xavier in the Sweet 16. But I like using examples of like, Hey maybe it’s a, a Josh Murphy on a Troy basketball team. Hey, look up Bronston Canning, watch his YouTube clips, let me know what you think and then we touch base tomorrow and he is like, wow, he is a really good step back.

Wow. He, he really reads ball screens really well. Why’d you want me to look him up, coach.  my response would be, well, he does everything under the rim and you, you play under the rim. Like, I think that helps a kid to see, hey, oh, I’ve been told my whole life is that I’m limited athletically.

Well, who else has been able to get it done? And obviously we’re talking about high school kids and not big 10 division one athletes, but there’s examples all over the place.

[00:36:56] Mike Klinzing: It’s great. I mean, I think if you can point to somebody that. Is in a similar situation to a kid that you’re coaching. I think that’s, I think that’s really valuable.

And I love the idea of coaching everybody the same. And I do think there’s something to be said for making sure that you coach your star player the same, or even maybe a little bit harder. But I know one of the things that has been frustrating for players that I’ve talked to, and it’s also something I think coaches sometimes forget about, is those players at the end of the bench that are reserves in practice.

And a lot of times, again, especially as you get into a season, right, you’re focused on the seven or eight guys that are going to play. And so if you’re working on your offense and those guys at the back end of your bench are playing defense, they almost never get coached. And all the focus is on those offensive players.

And I think one of the things that you can do as a coach to be able to keep your players engaged is to continue to coach those guys who are whatever they’re the. They’re the practice squad, they’re the, they’re the scout team. They’re the defense all the time. And it’s really easy for them to start to feel like, what am I even out here doing?

No one’s watching me. No one says a word to me during an hour and a half of practice. How valuable can I really be when they’re not investing in me or coaching me? And I do think that that’s a huge piece of it. And is that something that you do with the guys that maybe aren’t getting as many minutes as they’d like?

And if so, what else might you do in order to try to keep those kids engaged that aren’t getting the minutes that they, that they want to get?

[00:38:39] Caleb South: Yeah, that’s a really, really good question. I think we get it right at Troy with our head coach. Marques, he does a good job of, we’ll go ODO periods where maybe our first team will run an offensive set.

Our scout team will get the rebound, throw it in, they’re able to run a set. And honestly, we, there’s been a lot of movement. One thing I can appreciate that our head coach does it, Troy, is if if a guy out plays another guy in practice, he’ll start the other guy. I think sometimes coaches bury their heads in the sand when it comes to, I think practice still matters.

I know a lot of people, I don’t think practice that serious or they may, Hey, we have to only practice this amount or that amount. I’m a big practice guy still. It doesn’t always look like running suicides, but  I think those guys are still valuable, right? It doesn’t matter. But I’ve been a part of teams where a kid that averages one point a game wins you a big game where there’s foul trouble or half your team gets sick or a kid gets suspended and now this guy that maybe you didn’t pour into, thrust it into the lineup.

Well, if he’s already gotten reps and he’s comfortable and he’s hitting shots of practice, holy smokes, where’d this come from? ? I’ve seen that.

[00:39:53] Mike Klinzing: Yeah, that’s a good point. And I think it’s something that sometimes it’s easy to overlook. And thank God this kid, we’re never going to need him. And maybe, yeah, I want to build that relationship with him off the floor, but he’s probably never going to really be able to contribute on the court for us this season.

And so it’s sometimes he’s overlooked at. And I think when you start talking about what kids want, right? There’s that idea of, and you mentioned it earlier, that in defining roles, part of that is telling a kid the truth of where they’re standing, right? If, if I’m the 11th man and it doesn’t look like there’s an opportunity for me to play, because I think they’re, the coach thinks there’s two guys ahead of me that, that are better, then I want to hear that.

I want to know that if I do improve and I do get better and I am outplaying them, that I’m going to get an opportunity. But I also don’t want to go into every game with the idea of thinking that, Hey, coach told me this, this game I’m going to play. And then I never do like I want to be told the truth of where I stand.

I think that’s a big part of it. And then. The second part of that is I still, if I’m a competitor, I still want to get better and I still want a coach to tell me what I’m doing. I don’t want to coach if I go in and ask the coach, Hey, what am I doing? What can I, what can I do better? And the coach just says, Hey man, you’re doing great.

Keep, keep up what you’re doing. And then I look around, I’m like, I’m the 12th man, and I don’t get in the game. I like, I, maybe I’m, I don’t think I’m doing that great because I want to, I want to play. And I think it’s always, again, it, it’s something that I think during the course of a season, I think a lot of coaches just forget that those guys that are contributing in the  during practice and contributing in other ways other than in the game on the floor playing big minutes or contributing big statistically.

Those other guys play such a huge role in, in keeping your team comradery together and keeping your, your team focused on what’s important and helping those guys who are in the lineup to improve. And if you just ignore them as a coach, it, it ends up being, in my experience, it ends up being a disaster in a lot of cases.

[00:42:06] Caleb South: Absolutely.

[00:42:07] Mike Klinzing: Tell me a little bit about the experience between coaching boys and coaching girls. Do you look at that or did you experience it in a different way or do you feel like the approach was pretty similar in terms of how you handled coaching on the girls’ side and on the boys’ side?

[00:42:31] Caleb South: A great question.

I love this question because it’s probably the most, one of the most common questions I get. I loved coaching girls and everybody’s experience is different. Girls, in my opinion, and it’s, it’s good and bad, but I feel like girls want to do exactly what you tell them to do. So sometimes there’s not some, some nuance on offense.

Sometimes it gets choppy. But as far as scheme and being able to scheme defensively, offensively, basketball, iq, the girls I coached were unbelievable and just hunger to be better. Teach me, feed me. The athleticism component of it is different. I’m not going to say it’s worse or because it’s just, it’s just different.

There’s no way to really, it’s describe it other than it’s just different. The way the game’s played played is just completely different. I think the biggest thing in girls basketball, I was talking to one of my buddies at the Girls Basketball Coach day. I focused on making more layups than the other team and winning the rebounding battle.

Those were the two stats I cared about more than anyone. Obviously it’s just my experience and people I’ve been around, but I just, I really think if you focus on the fundamentals of the game and  someone listening to this would say, oh, fundamentals matter in the high school game as well. I agree with you.

But the style of game and the pace of play is so different in girls because I would say in our league that I coached in, I think I saw man once in the 20 however many games. So possessions, possessions, matter, rebounding matters. It’s harder to box out out of the zone, I believe. So we crashed a lot.

We capitalized on second chance opportunities. I would say the, the boys game, the scouting, coaching, everything is a notch up in my opinion. Just in terms of the scouts, you can roll over what coaches are going to throw at you. I coached both of them the exact same. Meaning for me that looks like I want to build a relationship with these kids, but I want to work harder than anyone.

because I think hard work is the number one trait a kid can take and do anything they do. Doesn’t matter if they hate basketball and they play for me one year, man, I’ve never worked like I did with Coach South and just, just showing them, that’s why I love sports and either boys or girls basketball because sometimes you work your butt off, you do everything the right way and you still lose.

And that’s life. Sometimes in life. You do everything you’re supposed to do. You check all the boxes and you don’t win At the end of the day. The only difference really, in my opinion, circling back, putting a bow on your question from the boys and the girls game, is, I don’t think in Ohio the, the girls game’s treated the same as the boys game.

In terms of the Friday night games. I hated playing on Saturday mornings. I mean, it’s, it’s tough to get any high school kids ready to play a game on a Saturday morning, but I think kids are kids. In the classroom on the basketball court. I think if you have high standards, I think if they know where you’re coming from, I think if you you permit and you promote great behaviors in your program, the kids will do anything for you.

[00:45:51] Mike Klinzing: I think your point about hard work is a great one, and it’s one that I think is so valuable when I think about my own experience, both as a player and as a coach, and I think about my experiences that my kids have had. I think about just the people that I’ve had the good fortune to be able to coach with that.

When you put in the hard work and players see that, I think it builds the culture around that because everybody sees what the head coach or the coaching staff is doing and they say, man, these guys are putting in. X number of hours and I see them all the time. And anything we do, everybody on the staff is there and we’re getting all this extra time in.

And that stuff matters because players ultimately see that. And let’s face it today, Caleb, right? People have, kids have lots of other things that they can be doing besides going to open gym or getting in an extra workout or whatever it might be. There’s plenty other choices of things that they could do.

And I think when they see their coaching staff working hard, I think there’s no better sales pitch for building the kind of program that you want to have than making sure that it starts with you as the head coach and your coaching staff working hard for the players, right? Which we talked about before, that ultimately.

You’re working hard for the benefit of the kids who are a part of your program and trying to give them best possible experience that you can give them. And the only way to do that, it starts with hard work and obviously there’s a lot of pieces that fall in after that. But if you start with the hard work piece, I think you end up going in a really good direction with your program.

And to go along with that, we’ve kind of danced around this. So let me just ask you directly when you talk about building relationships with players, and let’s focus on a high school side here for a minute, and then I want to jump over to your training business in just a second. But from a high school coaching perspective, whether as a head coach or an assistant coach, and you’ve been in both roles, you’ve been on the boys side, you’ve been on the girls side.

When you think about building relationships with the kids in the program, what does that look like? Is it. Informal, is it formal? I’m guessing it’s probably a mix of both, but when you think about building a relationship with a kid in your program on your team, what does that look like day to day?

[00:48:26] Caleb South: For me, it’s, I think you have to be very intentional with it, and you have to understand that every group you’re around is different.

So a lot of that is formal at the beginning, but then what I find is it becomes informal. So like those, those microaggressions that take place every day, whether it be in your, your weight room or your practice or your off season workout, I try to take mental notes of, okay, I think this person’s good at this.

Like, because some people are naturally really good leaders, vocally, some people are really good leaders by example. And then how do we, how do we build on that? And then how do we maximize these kids? Put them in a position to be successful. My belief in any program I’m around, I think everybody’s a leader.

I try to empower everybody to maintain the standard that we have. Where I see sometimes people get into trouble or people get caught in the weeds is, oh well, such and such is the team captain. Well, just because such and such is, is a team captain, doesn’t mean their teammates don’t hold them accountable or to the standard.

We all, we all have to meet the standard.  and at times for me, I didn’t meet the standard as the head coach, but my punishment for getting a technical was always the same as my kids. I, God’s honest truth, I mean, I would, 50 50 suicides is the punishment I put into place. And when I got teed up, that’s what I was doing.

So I just, I think kids, naturally, at least the kids I’ve been around, I know everywhere’s different, but kids want to know that you care about them genuinely. They don’t want it to feel like a puppy meal or a meat factory where it’s like next like, Hey, how you doing next? They want to genuinely know, like, like, Hey man, did it, did I see you score touchdown on Friday?

 and it’s not in season. I haven’t seen the kids since soccer basketball season, but I did seethem score touchdowns. I’m going to ask them about it. Or just going out of your way to check on a kid that’s going through a hard time. Maybe you notice they’re quieter. I think sometimes and sometimes it does look like a A team building a culture activity.

Oh, we’re going to define our core values. Absolutely. I think core values are awesome. I think it’s great to have that, but I also think like in order to really win with people and for me to be able to coach them the way I want to coach them, they need to know where I come from and they need to know that I’m vulnerable and that I’ve made mistakes and I’m not perfect.

I’m not asking them to be perfect, and I’m not perfect. I just want their best every single day. If they gimme their best, I’m happy. Even if we lose

[00:51:00] Mike Klinzing: that vulnerability piece, I think is one that. Important, right? Because it’s easy to get up on the mountains and preach down at your players and hope that they hold you up in that high esteem and you never make mistakes.

And I think about what the coaching profession looked like 30 or 40 years ago when I was coming up as a player. And there was certainly much more of that where you didn’t question the coach. The coach really didn’t talk about their own life. The coach told you what you did, what to do, and you did it blindly.

And that was just the way it was. And there was very little of the back and forth and relationship building that you were talking about. Not that there weren’t coaches that were doing it, because obviously there were, but I think it was less prevalent back in the day than it certainly is today. And it’s one of the things that goes back to what you talked about, getting that phone call, right?

Building those relationships to me is one of the best parts about. Getting an opportunity to coach is the relationships that you can build with your players. And those are relationships that don’t just last through a season or through a player’s career, but hopefully in many cases last throughout their lifetime.

And I think when you look at what makes a successful program, what makes a successful coach, how you have a great experience it, it’s that, right? It’s that there’s a genuine human connection between player to player, player to coach. And when you have that, that’s really when you’re able to have success.

And that’s when you can build a sustained program that can win year after year after year, where even if you have a down year, you’re still having success because you just built this relationship machine and you see what. The connections are between people and people want to be a part of that. Right. And I think that really is a key.

When you look at the most successful programs, the reason why they’re successful is because people want to be a part of them. And I don’t care what kind of school, your big school, small school, private school, public school, if they’re successful, people want to be a part of it because the experience is a good one.

And mostly that comes back to relationships and then everything else. The winning, the all that flows from building the kind of place where people want to be a part of it. And I think that’s what ultimately leads to, to the most success as a high school coach. Let’s flip gears and go to the training side of it.

Tell me how you got started with training, what that looked like at the beginning, and then at what point did you start to formalize it and really create. A business environment. Four. Your training.

[00:53:51] Caleb South: I started training in 2020. I was working at a gym here locally and a kid from my hometown asked me to, to train him, like I said, pretty good high school player at scored a thousand points.

I was Allstate a bunch of times and I was missing it. I still had the itch and it just kind of, man, I don’t, I don’t really know how it’s blossomed into the, the way it has. I mean, I think God’s favor certainly is prevailed through it all. Like even when, I mean there are guys I did on paper like, oh, this guy played here.

He played there. I didn’t, but I take a lot of pride in the relationships and the retention. Those are the, the two r’s I emphasized in my program is. I don’t, I don’t believe in like the cone setup. I don’t believe in the puppy mill. We’re going to have 30 kids in the gym.  we’re going to make the most money possible.

I don’t think that’s how you maximize people. Maybe you maximize your profit that way. But for me, and the way I’m able to do this and fight off burnout is every kid that walks through that door, I know their name, I know who their parents are, and I know exactly what type of experience that they’re looking for because all, all of us want the same things.

Sometimes it looks different. Sometimes the developmental track for a kid is different because what I mean by that is some, every kid’s feeling is different.  Tim Martin Jr. Who I train that’s committed to Rhode Island, his feeling may look different than a kid that’s just trying to make their varsity team.

I’ve trained both and both get the same heart from me. I try to work both equally hard. The intentionality and the workout’s just different of what we’re trying to work on. So. I’ve been really fortunate. I could go on and on about different things, but the biggest thing I would say is I’m fortunate. I’ve had really, really good people around me that have trusted me and I’ve had the opportunity to work with really good kids.

And I think employer development and coaching your name and your reputation is your product. And for me, the product is, a lot of the kids I have are dedicated and the more dedicated you are to doing something, obviously the better you’re going to be. So we have really good shooters.  we have kids that I think handle themselves the right way.

And a lot of that is, I can say, Hey guys, when I first started this, I did it this way. Do it the opposite. But hey the process and the work are undefeated and it’s cool to see A lot of kids will, will text me in season and be like, Hey man, I miss it. I miss our high school boys group. I just got a text yesterday.

Man, I can’t wait for high school boys group. I’m there soon as the season ends. I said, oh, okay buddy. We’ll just take a couple weeks, relax a little bit. But that’s the kind of culture we, we, and I say we, because it’s my name’s on it and it’s my initials and it’s my logo, but what the heck am I without the kids that believe in me to to, to work with me and trust me with their game?

[00:56:57] Mike Klinzing: No doubt about that. Right? I think that, as you said, the relationship, and it goes back to what you talked about in terms of being a high school coach, that you have to put your ego to the side and realize that it’s about your players and what you’re able to create for them. So when you’re working with a kid, and as you said, you get to know the kid, you get to know their parents, you get to know their game.

What’s the prep like for you when you’re working with a kid and  they’re coming in for a workout? And again, we could talk about maybe. For the first time working with a kid, somebody who’s a new client, and then obviously it’s probably a little bit different for a kid that you’ve worked with and  their game a little bit better.

But just describe for me the prep that goes into preparing for a session with one of your players. I

[00:57:47] Caleb South: treat it like my favorite player. Kobe Beam Bryant hit me a text at 4:00 AM and wanted to train. I mean, I really, I love tape. It. It’s, it’s easier with a high school kid because they can send me, I can ask them, Hey, I don’t like highlights.

I don’t want any highlights. I hate highlights. But if I’m, if I’m able to watch a half of a game of a kid or even a quarter, Hey man, where’d you struggle?  a kid texted me last week. Hey, s when you look at this game, I struggled a quarter and I’m able to go in and see, oh, he is getting bumped off a spot here, right?

Like his first step on his rip he’s going too wide. Defender’s using that space against him, going parallel with him. Those are easy fixes I can fix in an individual workout. I love the group stuff because I’m a, I’m very much a see it say it type of guy. So a kid’s struggling in a workout to get a shot off, we’re able to talk about their angle, right?

Maybe the move’s great. I did an in and out cross coach. We worked on that in an individual last week. Why is this not working in group session? Well, when you’re in and out cross your right, foot’s going too wide. Therefore, when your other footsteps over on your cross, the defender literally just slides parallel with you, right?

Like that’s a, that’s a quick fix in a boys group. He goes out, next time he tries it, oh, I have a counter. Boom, pull up, jump shot. I really, I, where I’ve really changed and I think evolved is I think a lot of times trainers and I use that, I hate that word, but I’m a coach regardless. Basketball coach doesn’t matter in the classroom, doesn’t matter, but I.

I think where I used to get it wrong is I felt like I couldn’t coach them hard because it’s a service you’re, you’re getting paid for a service. I don’t do that anymore. And I’m, I’m very upfront, I treat it like you play for Duke or you’re a part of a program. It’s not just a, oh, we’re going to come in here and we’re just going to dribble you around some cones and everyone’s going to feel good.

I want you to feel good about yourself, but I want you to feel good about yourself because you did something really freaking hard. And that’s how, I believe that’s how you maximize people. I don’t think it always looks like, Hey, good job when you’re missing layups, or and that, that doesn’t mean tear down a kid’s confidence.

It means, Hey man, get your eyes to the rim. You’re leaving everything short. I

[01:00:05] Mike Klinzing: think you’re a hundred percent percent spot on with that. And I think one of the things that trainers struggle with too, that I hear when I talk to people is that you have to have the right. Clientele client who wants to be coached in that way.

And people sometimes are worried about losing clients, right? Hey, I coached this kid too hard. Or I tell them the truth about where they’re at with their game, that they’re going to go somewhere else. And I’ve said this before, but a lot of times it feels like training can sometimes be a commodity, right?

That Hey, Caleb’s not available. So Guy X down the street, I just take my money over here. because Caleb couldn’t fit me in my schedule, didn’t match up with his. And I would sometimes, I know when I was doing it, get frustrated with that aspect of it, that there were times where, and I wasn’t doing it full time by any stretch of the imagination, so my schedule was pretty limited.

And I’d work with a kid and things would be going great, and I’d feel like I was helping them, and then all of a sudden they’d show up. Down the street because I couldn’t meet there Tuesday at four o’clock time slot, and then they’re down. There’re working with a guy who’s got a baseball hat on and is sitting down eating a sandwich while they’re training, and I’m just like,  what’s, what’s, what’s happening here?

So I completely, again, understand where you’re coming from with the wanting to be able to push the kid hard and wanting to be able to, to tell them the truth about where their game is. I think that’s really, really critical when it comes to being a good trainer slash, as you said, coach and giving the most to the kids that you possibly can.

Tell me about the scheduling process for you. How do you go about putting together your schedule? How much are you available? What does that process look like for somebody who’s out there who either is thinking about starting a training business or somebody who’s maybe struggling with the scheduling piece of it?

What does that look like for you?

[01:02:12] Caleb South: I think the, when you first start training, there’s not really any fancy or cute way to say it. You’re going to have to work maybe seven days a week. I’ve trained seven days a week before, and Well, why do you do that? I, I think first of all, define what type of trainer you want to be.

If you want to do mega groups, I mean, you can cut that down. I just, I’m a quality over quantity type of guy. That’s just kind of what I wanted to establish and what did I, what I wanted to make my name on. I think as you continue going on in the process, I think you need to listen to your consumers, so reaching out to clients you’ve had for, I mean, this senior class I’ve had, I’ve had most of these boys since they were in.

Some of them fifth, sixth grade. So I know the parents well and just saying, Hey, what’d you like last year with scheduling or booking? What didn’t you like? And they’re able to gimme feedback that I can take and I can, I can actually use, it’s not some random person, like, I don’t care what Jimbob, COER down the street says on a Facebook about my schedule or my website.

I care really about those people that have been with me, that have kind of been through the highs, been through the lows. And then I think once you establish your name, it gets easier because you can be more selective. You’re not teaching a third grader how to shoot right hand layups on a Friday night at seven.

But I think that all those experiences go through put you in position to be in position. I wouldn’t be in the position I am and I wouldn’t have the gratitude for where I’m at because I’m not where I want to be, but the perspective I have, I’m just, I’m so thankful. I’ve had nights where there’s one person that shows up and now we have nights where there’s 30 to 40 across four groups and it’s.

I never forget that because a couple years ago I was literally the guy just, it’s really cheap and I was available, and now it’s, it’s blossomed into something where I work with really, really, really good basketball players. I work with even better humans though. The, the, the kids and the culture we’ve cultivated with the kids that train with me, I always get the right kids.

[01:04:18] Mike Klinzing: I think if you do it right, you end up attracting the right type of player that fits with what you’re trying to do. And when you do that, it makes it a lot more fun for you as the coach and also for the players when there’s that synergy that you talked about a little while ago. A business standpoint, what’s the most challenging part of running a training business?

Forget about the basketball side of it for a second, but just talk to me about the business side. Managing the website. Managing the scheduling. Yeah, managing the, managing the money, man, just the marketing, all, all the things that go into running the business side of it. What’s the most challenging part for you?

[01:05:04] Caleb South: Taxes. I think the, there’s a lot of people that are going to listen to this. They’ll nod their head yes. I think the hard thing you, I’m a teacher. A lot of people that listen to this are probably teachers you get, get money pulled out of every paycheck teaching it, they make it pretty easy on us.

Coaching the same, your stipend. I think the hard part you have to, you have to learn when you’re training is, it’s so seasonal training, I always compare it to owning a. Asphalt business or a lawn care company. I think that is the best comparison for basketball training, for football, training, for anything, because it’s feast or famine.

There’s no in between. There’s no in between. If it’s the off season, you’re as busy as you could possibly be. When the season starts, it’s like, holy smokes, am I going to have a training business when the spring starts again? So I think it’s just understanding that when you first get started, you panic.

You’re like, why is no one training with me? And then it’s like, man, you’re in season. A lot of these kids don’t want to go seven days a week, even if they’re D one athletes. I’m still available, I still do train on Sunday mornings. It’s really cool to train on Sunday morning. Besides that, I think the schedule, I would say taxes and then the schedule, the schedule for me is very difficult as I get older.

It’s really hard for me not to be home with my, my girlfriend or to not be available to go to family events. And it’s, it’s, it’s really, really difficult to manage as, as I continue getting older because time is valuable and time is precious and I love what I do. It gives me great meaning. But I mean, getting up and being in our building at, at seven and then training until nine and then getting home at 10 o’clock without eating, since lunch at school, it’s, it’s a grind.

And I don’t want anybody to hear this, to think I don’t like, I love the quote, I can’t complain to have too much on my plate when I asked to eat. ? because I used to pray to have the opportunity to even work with these kids. But the schedule does make it difficult. It makes me, makes you age like a banana.

[01:07:15] Mike Klinzing: I’ll say that. That is very true, especially when you are working a full-time job and teaching and being with kids all day. And then. Leaving your teaching job and going and training is definitely something that it takes a concerted effort to maintain the same level of enthusiasm at the end of your training hours that you had at the beginning.

And I know that was something that I was really conscious of and I was doing a lot of training is if I’m going to do three hours of training or I’m going to do four hours of training that last hour, I had to really, really push myself to be focused and bring just as much enthusiasm and energy to that last kid or that last session as I did to the first one.

And that, as you said, is, is not always, it’s not always easy to do and you have to be really intentional about it for sure, or it can, it can get away from you. Do you have an accountant speaking of taxes? You got an accountant yet, or are you doing your own taxes still?

[01:08:14] Caleb South: Oh yeah, I got an accountant. There’s no,

[01:08:16] Mike Klinzing: yeah,

[01:08:16] Caleb South: I don’t have the mental capacity to sit down.

There’s no way. There’s no way. I definitely,

[01:08:23] Mike Klinzing: that was the, that was the best decision I ever made was, was getting it at, so I, when I started my camp business, and now we’re talking, this is 20, 25 years ago at least. And I remember when I I used to do my own taxes, kind of watching my dad, who always did his own.

And so that’s kind of what I was doing. And then eventually I’m like, I have to take this business. And I incorporated, and when I incorporated, I went and got a, an accountant. It was like, that was the best money I, it was the best money I ever spent. Once I did that, because I went from having to go through and do the thing to basically just gathering up all the.

Gathering up all the receipts and data and everything. And obviously now you can do it much easier on the computer than you could even 20 years ago. And yeah, it’s the best, the accountant’s the best money I ever spent. So let, let’s, hey, let’s boil it down here, Caleb. If you have a basketball business and you’re listening to this podcast and you don’t have an accountant, well that’s what you want to make sure you do is get an accountant because come tomorrow, it’s going to make your life.

Yeah. It’s going to, it’s going to make your job a lot easier. For sure. No question about that. So, when you got started with the training piece of it, did  right away that it was something that you were going to try to build out? Did you love it right away?

[01:09:47] Caleb South: Oh my gosh, yes. It was like every workout I did as a player, I was able to do it now.

And I mean, I made no money when I first started. I didn’t know anything about pricing. I didn’t know how to look up what’s worth this. I mean, I was so slow to raise my prices because I would, I would work for free. I have, I used to work events for OGBR, other organizations that were pretty big just to get my feet wet.

I just, I wanted to be around the game and learn and soak up as much as I could. And I mean, I, training for me has just been, it’s been unbelievable. It’s been an unbelievable thing. It’s a lot of people ask me like, oh, how do you do the schedule? How are you able to maintain the schedule that you have? And my, my answer to that is a lot of times it’s my escape where some people need to go to the gym to work out training for me is my going to the gym or it’s going to dinner with friends or it’s, that’s what throw up my cup.

I mean, a lot of these boys and girls I’ve had since they were in elementary school and  having a high school girls group or a high school boys group, or my college group in the summer. It’s awesome. It’s like a little mini family reunion.

[01:10:57] Mike Klinzing: Yeah, absolutely. I think when you get to know those kids, right, it’s just whether  them through high school or  them through your training business, the relationships, and it speaks to sort of the full circle of our conversation, right?

When you’re a young coach and your ego’s involved and you’re thinking about winning and losing and you’re going crazy on officials and you think it’s all about you, and then you eventually come to the realization that you have to make some changes to make it about your players. And I don’t care whether that’s high school, I don’t care whether that’s training.

It really doesn’t matter if you’re pouring into the kids that are in front of you, you’re going to end up doing good things for those kids. And  we talked about a lot of other qualities. In terms of the hard work and building the relationships and just understanding what it is, putting in the time to watch film and putting in the time to grow your craft as a coach, all that stuff is hugely, hugely important.

And when you do all that, you end up in a good place and the kids that are are underneath your underneath your tutelage, get an opportunity to have a great experience, which has kind of been the theme that’s running throughout our pod. So before we get out here, Caleb, I want to give you a chance to answer.

Final two part question. So part one of the question is, when you look ahead over the next year or two, what do you see as big in your being your biggest challenge? And you could take that on the high school side, the training side. You can combine them together, but your biggest challenge. And then the second part of the question, your biggest joy.

So when you think about what you get to do every morning, you get up out of bed, excited to get into your workday, what brings you the most joy? So your biggest challenge and then your biggest joy.

[01:12:45] Caleb South: I would say my biggest challenge going forward is making sure my messaging comes across the way I intended to.

I think that’s the biggest thing I’ve struggled with. I think my heart’s always been in the right place, but the way you present your message, or the way you present your idea, whether it’s to an admin, to a team, to a ref, to a player, to a training client, I think being really, really intentional with your messaging, like.

Not being so absolute, like I still am one of those guys that I struggle with just speaking in absolutes. Like, oh my gosh, we give up a backdoor layup. Why can’t we guard today?  like that’s,

yeah,

[01:13:24] Caleb South: that’s kind of my mentality in a game, and it’s something I know and I’m actively working on or at home.

Like I’m taking a dish out of the dishwasher, it falls and it breaks. Oh my gosh, how can I be so stupid? This is the worst day ever. Like, just trying to be more consistent with my messaging. And even if I have to tell someone something, like if someone’s not playing super hard, instead of just saying like, Hey, play harder, or Man, you’re not playing hard.

Be more intentional. Like, is that your best? Are you giving me your best? So same message. I think one of them just comes off the correct way. And then I think my biggest joy is I just, I love the opportunity to work with kids. It’s something I don’t take take for granted, whether it be in the classroom, whether it be coaching, whether it be training.

I’m doing exactly what I want to do every single day. Like even the long nights when I train super, super long, I’m doing exactly what I want to do. Like my cup is overflowing, I got the true joy I think in is the journey. When I first became a head coach, I was so focused on wins and losses like anybody else.

The journey is, is is the destination, right? Like the process. Seeing kids grow, seeing yourself grow, like even quote unquote, the challenging kids you may have, they’re going to make you grow. Your ability to reach them, your ability to get through to them, that’s only going to help you grow. And I think the way you frame that in your life is going to determine how successful you’re

[01:14:58] Mike Klinzing: the opportunity to get up every morning and do something that you love, that you feel like is your calling, your mission in life.

And to be able to. Impact, kids impact using the game of basketball that you love. To me, that’s just something that makes it so special, right? That you get to use a game that has been so good to you to be able to pass that down, pass it along to the kids that get an opportunity to work with you and use the game to teach those life lessons, to build those relationships so that you do get that phone call five, ten, fifteen, twenty years down the road from a kid that remembers what Coach South did for them back in the day when they were a part of your program.

There’s, there’s nothing better than that. All right. I want to give you a chance to share how can people connect with you, find out more about what you’re doing, reach out to you, share email, website, social media, whatever you feel comfortable with, and then after you do that, I’ll jump back in and wrap things up.

[01:16:03] Caleb South: Yeah, I mean, I’m, I’m available on all socials, Caleb South, my name. And then my training business is CPS training. Do a lot of stuff out of Centerville, Troy. So, I think the biggest thing I would want to, I would want to convey to everybody is, I think a lot of times, especially us men, I think we struggle sometimes reaching out for help or seeking mentorship.

And I’m always available email, call, text, just I don’t, my way isn’t the correct way. I don’t have all the answers. If you asked me a couple years ago, I probably would’ve told you I had all the answers, but I did not have all the answers. But I’m willing to share my experience and share my testimony because I’ve tried to turn every test into a testimony that I can speak to and allow kids to learn from me.

[01:16:49] Mike Klinzing: Caleb, I cannot thank you enough for taking the time out of your schedule tonight to join us. Really appreciate it. And to everyone out there, thanks for listening and we will catch you on our next episode. Thanks.

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[01:18:12] Narrator: Thanks for listening to the Hoop Heads podcast presented by Head Start Basketball.