MANO WATSA – PRESIDENT & OWNER OF PGC BASKETBALL – EPISODE 285

Mano Watsa

Website – pgcbasketball.com

Email – mano@pgcbasketball.com

Twitter – @manowatsa @pgcbasketball  

Mano Watsa is the President & Owner of PGC Basketball. PGC offers over 110 camps across North America in the summer for players from 4th grade to college.

Mano was the first Canadian athlete to ever attend PGC. An example of the impact PGC Founder Dick DeVenzio had on so many players, Mano returned from his PGC experience and his game transformed. Mano attended the University of Waterloo, where he was a 2-time All-Canadian basketball player and Academic All-Canadian.

Mano began his journey as a camp director at an early age, starting his first basketball camp in his parents’ backyard at the age of 15. By the time he finished high school, over 150 kids were attending his backyard camps each summer. By his last year of university, nearly 400 kids were attending the camps.

Since 2007, when Mano took on leadership of PGC, the camps have grown from 1,000 players each summer to 12,000 players and 2,000 coaches annually. Over the past 10 years, 85,000 players and 15,000 coaches have been impacted by PGC.

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Get ready to take some notes throughout this episode with Mano Watsa from PGC Basketball.

What We Discuss with Mano Watsa

  • The influence of his grade school coach – “Pepper the air with positives”
  • Responding with dignity, responding with integrity, responding with class
  • Challenging players to a higher standard of excellence and competitiveness
  • The experience is what players are going to remember most
  • How he started his “backyard” basketball camps when he was 15 years old
  • The investment of time that good coaches make into planning and decision making
  • Transitioning from playing to coaching
  • His college coaching career
  • The differences between being an assistant and being a head coach
  • In life, it’s your responsibility to find your happiness in whatever role you’re in
  • Surround yourself with those who know more than you, or think differently than how you think
  • The importance of having a mentor
  • The need to be self-aware
  • One commonality that all good coaches share is they’re all sponges, they always want to learn
  • How he and his team built PGC into what it is today
  • How to make a culture live beyond you
  • PGC’s Mission – SCHAPE stands for spirit, communication, hustle, approach, precision and enhancement
  • Impacting coaches through Key5 Coaching

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THANKS, MANO WATSA

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TRANSCRIPT FOR MANO WATSA – PRESIDENT & OWNER OF PGC BASKETBALL – EPISODE 285

Mano Watsa – President & Owner of PGC Basketball – Episode 285

[00:00:00] Mike Klinzing: [00:00:00] Hello and welcome to the hoop heads podcast. It’s Mike Klinzing here with my co-host Jason Sunkle. And tonight we are pleased to have on the podcast from PGC basketball, Mano Watsa.  Mano, welcome to the podcast.

Mano Watsa: [00:00:11] Appreciate it, Mike and Jason, it’s a pleasure and honor to be on with you.

Mike Klinzing: [00:00:15] Well, we are excited to have you on.

We’ve been kind of chasing around with you for about a year, trying to make it work and we finally have been able to get you on and we’re super excited to dig into your story. Learn more about your background and then dig into all the great things that you guys have going there at PGC. So let’s start by going back in time to when you were a kid and just talk to us a little bit about how you fell in love with the game of basketball and how you came to the game.

Mano Watsa: [00:00:41] Yeah, Mike, I was really fortunate. I had a grade school coach who loved the game, a big Boston salt to expand. And he picked me up before school in sixth grade and I probably started playing at recess fourth and fifth grade [00:01:00] as most kids and most boys do. But in sixth grade, he saw something in me in phys ed class.

And he asked me if I was interested in getting picked up in the morning before school with a whole number of other players that he would pick up, in sixth, seventh, and eighth grade. And I started getting picked up by him at 6:15 in the morning until 8:15 and we would go in and play and train and develop skills.

And,  that was really the beginning of it all.  lunchtimes, recesses, and then after school practices, I was hooked. And then he introduced me to a summer basketball camp, just a local college that put on a camp. He said,  if I pay half and your parents can pay half while you go. And I said,  I would love to, I ended up attending that camp for the next eight years straight, and,  and the, so that this coach, mr B, he actually passed away just a few months ago, but he was one of the biggest [00:02:00] influences on my basketball career and my life.

Mike Klinzing: [00:02:03] All right. So obviously one of the things that you loved about him was the time that he poured into you, but when you think back on those times, what were some of the other things. About him, about those sessions that you really liked, that you really enjoyed. What are some things that you took away from him as a coach that later influenced you when you got into coaching?

Mano Watsa: [00:02:23] You know, one of the best things he did as a coach, and I didn’t really know it at the time, it wasn’t until years later when I was reading a book by PGC basketball founder, Dick Devenzio, and then Dick talked about what all good coaches do, which is pepper the air with positives or pepper the air with reminders.

And as soon as I read that in one of Dick’s  books called running the show for coaches, I thought back to mr B. And I thought, well, it didn’t matter if it was badminton, volleyball, or basketball, regardless of the sport. He was constantly peppering the air with [00:03:00] reminders and encouragement and positives.

And so he did a phenomenal job,  of just continually. Reminding us about the next play and where we need to be, where we needed to be, what we needed to be thinking about. And that really not only stuck with me, but in influenced who I became as a coach. And so,  from a coaching perspective, I do my best to pepper the air with reminders and positives as much as possible.

So when you

Mike Klinzing: [00:03:28] think back to. Mr B and his sessions in the morning and just the influence that he had on you. Did you ever have a chance as you got older, to go back and have a conversation with him and ask him his why? Like why did he do that for you and that group of kids that got the opportunity to come in and work before school and then have somebody pay for half of your camp?

Was that a conversation that you were ever, ever, ever able to have with them at any

Mano Watsa: [00:03:52] point? Yeah. Do you know what I, I actually had it several times over because even when I was in eighth grade, we, [00:04:00] we brought him, he and his wife over to,  to my parents’ house and presented him with some gifts when I graduated from, from middle school, and I was

Really quite emotional when I graduated because of the impact he had had on my life. And then I had the opportunity when I was in 11th grade to go back and do a co op placement and volunteer at the, at the middle school and work with him for,  for half a year. And,  and then,  when I started my basketball camps in my backyard, um, sometime later, he, he came every year to visit the camp.

So we spent a lot of time talking about those years and I asked him. Why he did it all, um, on more than one occasion. But,  what he consistently said was, I just love to help kids fall in love with sports. And I just loved the simplicity of that. Mike, he just loved to help kids fall in love with sports.

And then he would, he would go on to say, each time, and I love to see kids improve and get better. That was his [00:05:00] why.

Mike Klinzing: [00:05:00] Yeah. Those are two great things we talk about. I know that I just did a little presentation with that virtual coaches clinic about running a quality youth program, and one of the things that I always tell the kids at our camps basically just echoes what mr  said, which is some of our guiding principles are, one, make sure the kids have fun to make sure they learn something, and then three, make sure they want to play more basketball when they’re done.

And I think if you do those three things as a . Teacher, in this case as a coach, you’re really gonna end up having a positive impact on the kids that you’re able to touch. And it sounds like that’s what he was able to do. So as you were continuing to go through and you’re in your playing career, at what point were you thinking about coaching?

Obviously it was pretty early on, but at what point do you remember thinking, boy, whenever I’m done playing this game, I think I might want him to get into coaching? Do you remember what, was there an aha moment or was it something that’s sort of built gradually over time?

Mano Watsa: [00:05:54] You know, I think it built gradually over time, but unquestionably, mr [00:06:00] B influenced me on that.

And I thought even at that time, when I, when I graduated from eighth grade, I thought one day I want to be able to do this for other young players, what he did for me. And, uh. And then in high school I had the privilege of playing from, for a couple of really dealt dedicated coaches. And that just further inspired me that I want to, I want to do this same thing.

And then when I got to college, had the opportunity to play at the university of Waterloo in Ontario, Canada. And I played for a phenomenal coach. And you know, Mike, it’s not often that,  that you play for a phenomenal coach. I realized that,  years later that that was truly a gift. And so all the coaches that coached me each, each one along the way, I took things away and thought I’d like to incorporate those things into my coaching one day when I become a coach.

Mike Klinzing: [00:06:53] So when you were going through that process as a player, and you were. Playing underneath these various coaches that all had [00:07:00] a positive influence on you. Were you taking notes? Were you writing things down physically in a notebook, taking notes? How are you remembering or recalling those things was just something that you committed to memory that just the general feel of how they did their program.

Where were you actually writing down specific things? You’re like, I love that the coach is doing this. I’m going to try to do that. Same thing if I ever get in this position.

Mano Watsa: [00:07:22] Do you know why? It was more just, um, so I wasn’t that cognizant of it at the time. It was more just a absorption through their modeling.

And I had a chance to play for each of my coaches for several years. And so I had the opportunity to see them in a, lots of different situations. I think of specifically my college coach, who I ended up spending eight years with first as a player, and then I went back as an assistant coach and I had the chance to watch him model.

Responding with dignity, responding with integrity, responding with class, um, [00:08:00] challenging players to a higher standard of excellence and competitiveness. All of those things I saw modeled over and over again thousands of times over. And so more than anything else, I, I didn’t even really have to take notes because it was ingrained into me by just absorbing it and being in that environment for as long as I was.

Mike Klinzing: [00:08:20] Yeah, that was exactly the word that I was going to throw out there. If you didn’t say it yourself, which is absorbing what you were able to be around every single day. I think that. Again, if you’ve been a player and you’ve been around somebody as a coach who inspires you, I think, as you said, especially if you spent a number of seasons playing underneath that coach, you do absorb the things that that coach does.

And then when you go back and you start thinking about yourself getting into the coaching profession, then maybe you start to go, Oh yeah, boy, he was really doing a great job with that. Or, boy, that was something that I remember how he treated players in the situation, or I remember how he reacted when we won a game when we lost, and then you can.

Incorporate that into [00:09:00] your philosophy. So let’s ask one more question about your playing career. What’s your favorite memory as a basketball player before we jump more into your coaching?

Mano Watsa: [00:09:09] Hm. Favorite memory. Do you know what it would have to be after we won the conference championship in my senior year.

And the interesting thing like is the favorite memory wasn’t even actually. You know,  the moments after winning the championship, it was being together with a group of guys arm in arm in a circle, and there was some music playing. I don’t recall the name of the song, but if I heard it, it would bring me back to that moment in, in an instant.

And just looking at each other and the journey that we had been through all of those years, and realizing that the journey was coming to an end and just the sense of accomplishment, the sense of. Connection that we all had, that we knew we would keep for life, and just the [00:10:00] sense of a relationship between all of us and what we’d gone through together.

So I think that moment when I think of my entire career, that moment, arm and arm, not even on the basketball court, just arm in arm in a circle with a group of guys.

Mike Klinzing: [00:10:16] And I think that’s something that. For coaches that are out there listening. It’s important to hear what mono is saying there, which is that it was more about the feeling that your coaching staff created that you’re being a teammate created.

And that’s really the memory when you go back and you think about. Your junior year in high school or your sophomore year in college, and you look at your schedule, you may not remember game by game, the wins and losses, which we all tend to get caught up in in the moment. But I think what’s important to remember is that as coaches, one of the things that we’re charged with is not only wins and losses, cause we all know that to some degree, if you’re coaching a team at the high school level or the college level, you’re being judged [00:11:00] on your wins and losses.

But it’s also more about. What’s the impact that you’re having on your players? And I think that story that you just shared illustrates the impact that your program, your teammates, your coaches, had on you, that what you remember are those times that were not necessarily specific to being out on the basketball court.

It’s not making this shot. It’s not winning this game. It’s just the general feel of how. You were together with your teammates and to me, that’s a powerful statement

Mano Watsa: [00:11:29] for sure. Yeah, absolutely. You know, that feeling of connection sometimes as coaches, when we’re in the midst of trying to figure out our systems and our strategies and what we need to do differently to prepare for the next game, we, we, we sometimes lose sight of the fact that the experience is what players are going to remember most and the relationships.

Absolutely. There’s

Mike Klinzing: [00:11:52] no question about that. I want to move back now from your playing career. Let’s start talking, coaching, and let’s go to one of the [00:12:00] most unique aspects of your story, which is your backyard basketball camps. So tell us a, how you came up with the idea of be how old you were, and then just kind of give us the rundown of what those were all about.

Mano Watsa: [00:12:12] Yeah, I was 15 at the time and I really stumbled upon it. I wasn’t really looking to start my own business or start my own camp. I was actually picking pickles for a local farmer and after a couple of days on the job.  it became clear to me and,  and my, my dad’s friend, who was the firmer that I wasn’t really cut out to be a pickle picker.

And so, um, you know, I think I was earning something like a 75 cents a day and wow. It just gained massive respect for those who are in the fields picking all day long. Um, but I realized I probably needed a different career path. I had a friend who was teaching swimming lessons in her backyard pool, and we were actually out at,  having breakfast [00:13:00] one day with her family.

And when I heard that she was doing that for her summer job, I thought, Hmm, I’ve got a basketball hoop in my backyard. Maybe I can. Start teaching some of the local kids in my neighborhood, but didn’t have that many kids in my neighborhood. But there were some kids that occasionally would, would come over to shoot hoops on a, on my net, and I thought maybe I could turn that into a summer job.

So I talked to mr B, my grade school coach, and asked him if he had helped me to get the word out. He liked the idea of it. And the next thing you know, summer rolled around and I had eight kids my first week of camp, and it was just eight in the morning till noon, Mike. So just kind of a morning before the sun start to beat down, we were fortunate that we had a pool in the backyard so that the kids could cool off, um, when it got really hot.

But then we did it a couple of weeks later and we had nine kids. And so we went from eight to nine and I said. Progress, you know,

Mike Klinzing: [00:13:57] that’s it. Word of mouth.

Mano Watsa: [00:13:59] And that was the [00:14:00] beginning of it. The next year we came back, we did it again. I went from two weeks to four weeks. We had over 20 kids a week, and I kind of jumped up to 80 kids over the course of those four weeks.

And then by the time I finished my last year of high school. Cool. We were up at about 35 or 40 kids a week, and I realized at that point in time, I probably shouldn’t stop the counts. Kind of had something good going and  and it was helping to pay for some of my college education. So I decided to continue it through college and the camps just continued to grow.

Mike Klinzing: [00:14:29] When did you start to, for lack of a better word, formalize. What you’re doing, cause I’m assuming right out of the gate you were kind of just throwing it together and Hey, I’m got, here’s my camp. And then when did you start to sort of formalize what you were doing.

Mano Watsa: [00:14:43] Yet a couple of things happened that really changed the game for our backyard basketball counts.

The first was I actually flew down to South Carolina and attended the point guard college camp with PGC founder Dick DeVenzio, and I learned so much in that five day [00:15:00] experience that not only helped me as a player and changed who I was as a leader and gave me a vision of who I wanted to be as a person, but it also directly impacted my counts cause I went home and immediately.

I began to teach everything I just learned. And so that really took the counts to another level. And I watched probably the best camp director I’ve ever seen in addictive Enzio teach, and it really impacted how I taught the game to these young players in my local community. So that was the first, and the second was.

Part way through my first year in college, somebody said to me, you know, you should really get some sponsors for your camp. And I thought, well, how would I get some any sponsors? And I thought about it and thought, well, why don’t I just try and reach out to them? So I started writing letters and I ended up bringing converse Wilson and Gatorade aboard that summer.

And suddenly we went from just kind of a backyard camp that a teenager had whipped together. And I brought in a couple of my buddies to, to help to suddenly. [00:16:00] Being outfitted, head to toe in converse and Wilson providing basketballs and Gatorade, providing all of their drinks and supplies. And suddenly we became a, a fully branded, fully sponsored camp.

And,  and so those were the two things that really took it to the next level. And then what. What helped was we just kept adding hoops and so we ended up,  at the, at the end when we peaked at about a a hundred to 120 kids a week, we had eight hoops in the backyard and we just continued to expand.

Mike Klinzing: [00:16:31] That’s awesome. What was your sales pitch to the companies? How, I’m sure people will be like, man, how did he get, how’d he get those big companies just to come and sponsor the backyard basketball camp? Do you remember what your sales pitch was.

Mano Watsa: [00:16:42] Yeah. You know, I think it was really simple because I was just a first year college kid at the time, but it was a, I’m running a, a backyard camp and,  and I think I’m doing something that’s probably a lot different than the types of organizations and companies you typically sponsor.

And if you’d [00:17:00] consider doing something a little different to,  to help out would, would be greatly, would greatly appreciate it. And the surprise was. I heard back from nearly everyone, which,  which, which was quite amazing cause we ended up bringing a board, a whole number of local sponsors as well.

Mike Klinzing: [00:17:19] Yeah. That’s awesome. I think that just wanted the lesson there. I think more than anything is just don’t be afraid to ask. Because a lot of times companies, people are more than willing to help. And sometimes just as human beings, we’re afraid to ask for help. Eh, or afraid to ask somebody to get involved with us and your story there is just a great lesson and just make the ask and see what happens.

And then who knows? You might develop a great

Mano Watsa: [00:17:43] relationship

Mike Klinzing: [00:17:44] like I’m sure you did with those companies and representatives from those companies.

Mano Watsa: [00:17:47] Yeah. And you know, one of the things that I tell my kids, I have three teenage years and I remind them all the time. There are some things you can do when you’re a kid or when you’re a teenager and doors that will open for you that won’t likely [00:18:00] open once you’re an adult.

And,  and there’s something of, it’s tough to turn down a kid who, who asks for help and it’s tough, dad, it’s a lot easier to turn down an adult. And so, um, well I’m still really bold in the types of requests that I make even today because those types of requests just gave me a lot of confidence to make even bigger requests.

Um, I think there’s, there’s something special about a young person doing something that I know, even as an adult myself. I love to help a young person who’s motivated and taking initiative.

Mike Klinzing: [00:18:33] Yeah. There’s no question about that. I think if you had been a 30 year old guy running a basketball camp in your backyard, the response, the response to those companies might’ve been, might’ve been slightly different.

Maybe or, or you would’ve had to have a different sales pitch motto. I think that might’ve been the case for

Mano Watsa: [00:18:47] sure. Hey, exactly.

Mike Klinzing: [00:18:49] All right. So let’s talk about now you moving from the camp scene there and going in working for your college coach. So you get done in the program as [00:19:00] a player, and then you transition into coaching.

And one of the things that I always find to be an interesting answer is when I asked the question, when you went from the playing side of it in a program to the coaching side of the program, and you kinda got to go.

Mano Watsa: [00:19:16] Behind the curtain

Mike Klinzing: [00:19:17] of what you had seen as a player. So what do you remember about that transition in terms of things that maybe you didn’t realize the coaching staff spend as much time on, or just what was something that was surprising to you when you went from the playing side to the coaching side within your own program?

Mano Watsa: [00:19:34] Yeah. What was most surprising was the amount of thought and planning that went into nearly every decision. You know, as a player, you just show up and you know, coach has practice set to go and you just do whatever coach says and you don’t realize the thought and planning of a good practice. It’s, it’s easy for any of us to whip together a quick practice, but to, to put together.

 a practice [00:20:00] plan that is organized and has the proper progressions and the building blocks and the foundational pieces. Now that takes time and I don’t think I had any appreciation for the investment of time that good coaches make into planning and decision making.

Mike Klinzing: [00:20:19] Yeah, I think that’s something that as a player, for sure, you don’t have any concept of the amount of time that coaches put in.

I think that’s a great point because as players, you’re there on the practice for, for your hour and a half, two hours, two and a half hours, whatever it is, and then you go off to the rest of your day, whether that’s class or meals or whatever it is that you’re doing studying, and you kind of forget that the coaches have probably been there since early in the morning and they’re probably going to be there late at night doing all types of things.

What was the, how was it for you to go from, in terms of a relationship standpoint, going from a player to a coach, both in your relationship with the coaching staff, sort of getting over the fact that [00:21:00] you had previously been under their leadership and now you were a part of a leadership team, and then what was the relationship like with the players who had formally been your teammates and now you were turned around and coaching them.

Mano Watsa: [00:21:13] Yeah. You know, it was, it was relatively seamless with my head coach because in my, in my first year in my freshman year, I made the commitment to go see my college coach every day outside of practice. And as a result. Yeah. Unknowingly it was almost like I was an assisting coach throughout my college career because we would talk about practice that day, how the, how the practice went the previous day, what we needed to be doing in preparation for the games that we canned or whatever it was.

You know, sometimes it was just a five minute drop in. Sometimes it was 30 or 45 minutes, and at the time it was just, I wanted to learn as much as I could from my coach. And,  and we had a great relationship as a result that [00:22:00] by the time I, when I transitioned to being an assistant coach for him, it was seamless because I had been a part of so many of those conversations already.

And then of course, in my last three years of,  of college, I was a captain. So I was spending time regularly with the coach as it was with,  with the coaching staff.

Mike Klinzing: [00:22:18] Absolutely. And what was the relationship like in terms of with your former teammates? How did that go for you on your end, and what was your perception of how they.

Reacted to you going from the playing side to the coaching side, obviously as a captain, you had some leadership role within the team already, but just transitioning into the coaching staff, how did the players react to that?

Mano Watsa: [00:22:39] I had one year off in between, which probably helped in the year off. I traveled around the world and played, and so when I came back, um, because I think in part because of the success that I had had, um, at the university of Waterloo, and then.

Having had the opportunity to travel abroad and play. [00:23:00] I think when I came back it made the transition back really easy. And, um, I think all of the younger players were, were eager to learn. So they were sponges. And I think I didn’t have to take a hard role. I did a lot of the player development and I was the encouragement, positivity guy.

So that made it pretty easy. Mike.

Mike Klinzing: [00:23:20] I understood. I understood.  so at that point in your career. Where are you thinking that

Mano Watsa: [00:23:26] college coaching was going to be

Mike Klinzing: [00:23:28] an area that you wanted to stay? Did you have designs on thinking about he, I’d like to get more into the camp business. I thought maybe I’d want to go and coach in high school.

What at that point in your early coaching career, did you see yourself staying sort of on that collegiate coaching track?

Mano Watsa: [00:23:44] You know, it’s interesting because I had always envisioned that I had, would have lots of careers and I actually ended up doing that in my kind of first decade in the, in the workforce.

And so while I was college coaching, I [00:24:00] was running my camps and I was also traveling as a speaker as time permitted as well. And then I also, most people don’t know this, but I spent five years as a youth pastor as well, right in that same timeframe. So I was drug elect juggling a lot of things simultaneously.

Not really sure which one I was going to really zero in on. And. As it ended up happening, they head coaching position on the women’s side came available and it didn’t even cross my mind Mike, to apply for the position because I thought one day maybe I’d become a head college coach, but I wasn’t interested in doing it.

That soon or that young. Um, but what ended up happening is a friend of mine said to me, mono, you’ve never worked a real job in your life. You started your own counts. You’ve been doing those for for nearly a decade now. And you stepped into the assistant coaching position. You stepped into the youth pastor position.

You should really just trow your name in the hat and go through an interview for once in your life. And so [00:25:00] he convinced me to do it. And lo and behold, I put my name in and I ended up getting the job. And so it was one of those things that kind of took me by surprise because I wasn’t really thinking about becoming a head college coach and I’d never coached women before.

So that was a whole new, um, twist and a whole new learning curve for me. And so I ended up spending the next three years as a, as the head women’s coach at the university of Waterloo, which was just a. An amazing journey and a an amazing couple of years. All

Mike Klinzing: [00:25:32] right, so let’s talk about what were a couple of things that you loved about coaching the women after you got an opportunity to do that and get your feet wet and figure out what that was all about.

What were some things that were special and unique to you about coaching the women’s team as opposed to coaching men that you had done previously?

Mano Watsa: [00:25:48] One of the things I, I really loved about,  the, the group of girls that I had the privilege privilege of coaching was how much they cared about each other.

And [00:26:00] I don’t know if I, I can’t say that across the board that. That girls care more about each other than guys care about each other on, I’m not sure I’ve, I’ve coached my son’s teams for the last five or six years and they’ve cared a great deal about each other as well, but it was really special to see this group of girls and just how much they cared about each other, how much they cared about our coaching staff, how much we cared for them.

So just the level of care was really special to see. That’s cool. What

Mike Klinzing: [00:26:27] was your biggest challenge as a head coach going from the assistant ranks to becoming a head coach? What was the thing that you found to be the most difficult? Challenging, however you want to phrase that.

Mano Watsa: [00:26:40] Yeah. You know, I, I used to tell this,  the story at our, at our summer sessions.

Why, why it’s so easy for anyone to lose their joy. And because there’s a lot of things you can’t control in the game, you know, when you’re a . When you’re a bench player, you think, I’ll be [00:27:00] happy once I get in the game. And then players get in the game and they think, well, I’m not really getting shots or getting opportunities.

I’ll be happy once I’m one of the key guys. And then you become the second or third key guy and nothing. I’ll be happy once, once on the star. And then you become the star and you think, well, gosh, why can’t everyone be as good as I am? Would have a lot more success. And so. That’s a reason not to be happy.

And then that player goes and becomes an assistant coach and they think, well, I’d be a lot happier if I could become the head coach because maybe I’d do things a lot differently or run a better program. Then you become a head coach. And here’s what I discovered. Like there’s a lot of reasons not to be happy because you realize you don’t have that much control after all.

In fact, your players have all the control. They’re the ones out there on the court who are getting it done or not getting it done. And I realized within the game there exists the opportunity for a lot of unhappiness. And at the end of the day, it’s your responsibility to find your happiness. In [00:28:00] whatever role you’re in.

So, so that was one of my learnings.

Mike Klinzing: [00:28:04] So your job as the head coach was to help everybody find their happiness.

Mano Watsa: [00:28:08] Yeah, I’m not, you know, I’m not sure if I did that,  quite as effectively because obviously, you know, challenging. People outside of their comfort zone or beyond their comfort zone doesn’t always lead to happy States.

And when you’re making difficult decisions about who’s going to play and who’s not going to play, and how much players are going to play, that doesn’t always lead to happy States. But I think,  yeah, I think as a coach, one of the surprises for me becoming a head coach was,  was how much.  how little influence you alone have as a coach and, but, but how, how big a role you play in leading, empowering and delegating.

Mike Klinzing: [00:28:48] Yeah. I think that’s really, really important. Can you talk about, I think this is one of the things that’s underrated from a head coaching standpoint. I know we have a lot of high school coaches that are out there listening. Can you talk about [00:29:00] how important it is to have. The right people in the right positions when it comes to your SAPs, your staff, and sort of your, your supporting positions in your program.

Mano Watsa: [00:29:11] Sure the, you know, the first thing I did when I became a head coach, especially being quite young as I was, was I decided to surround myself with those who knew more than I knew, or who would think differently than how I thought. And so, so I actually did a personality profile assessment called the disc profile.

And knowing that of the four categories, I was a high, I, I decided I needed to surround myself with high DS, high S’s, and high CS. So that. There would be others in the program who on our staff who would bring much different skill sets and attributes and characteristics than, than the ones that I would bring.

So that was the first thing that I did. I went really intentionally. So I found an older [00:30:00] retired coach, and then I found a younger young lady. Um, as I was coaching a women’s team, I thought that would be a good combination. But I specifically looked for coaches that either knew more than I knew. Or saw the world and saw basketball much differently than I did, as I knew that would be position us to be able to,  to really, um, would position me to be able to learn from them and for us to be as strong as possible.

And then the second thing that I did was I went and looked for the best mentor I could find. I realized it could take 20 years for me to gain 20 years of experience coaching. And I didn’t want to spend 20 years. I’m all about collapsing timeframes, Mike. So what I decided to do was go find a coach who had coached 2030 or 40 years, who could help me, um, and really, um, really help.

Help me. To collapse timeframes and learn what he knew and what he developed over 30 years for me to develop in [00:31:00] three or four years. And so that’s what I did. And I was really fortunate to find a former Canadian national team coach who coached our Canadian team in the Olympics a couple of decades earlier.

And he came and mentored me and watched practices, watched games. After every game would go up to my office and he’d share with me why I cost her team the game. And I learned a ton and I felt like I collapsed 10 or 15 years into three years.

Mike Klinzing: [00:31:25] Okay. So here’s another example of your ability to have a sales pitch.

So what was your sales pitch when you went and approached him about becoming your mentor? How did you go about having that conversation and convincing him that this would be a good and positive use of his time?

Mano Watsa: [00:31:43] Yeah. Well, one was just reminding him. I had had the privilege of meeting him several times prior.

Um, but, uh. Reminding him of how much. Of an impact he had had on the game and how much he [00:32:00] had to still give to the game and how honored I would be if he would consider passing on and sharing some of his knowledge with me. And so that was a, that was really it. I said, I’d love to learn as much as I possibly can from you so I can pay it forward to others.

What

Mike Klinzing: [00:32:18] were, I know you could probably come up with a list of a hundred things if we gave you 24 hours, but just in a very short time span, what are one or two things that you remember from learning that he shared with you that really had an impact on your success as a coach in that position? Yeah, one

Mano Watsa: [00:32:36] of the, so yeah, countless lessons.

And I thought, I really thought I could write a book on coaching at the end of my couple seasons with him, just based on what he taught me. And in fact, I really wish I would have, um, you know, but to one of the key concepts he taught me really early on, he going on back to my. Middle school coach, mr [00:33:00] B, that was constantly peppering the air with reminders.

I took that on as a coach, and so I was constantly given defensive reminders and offensive reminders to my players every trip down court, and he noticed something which I had never given thought to before, and he said, mano, it looks like you’re in the trenches with your players every single trip down court.

You’re in the trenches right there in every battle. And he said, it seems to me you might be missing the war. He said, because you’re so invested into every battle, you’re missing the war. And what he was really talking about was the overarching strategy. He said, I think it’s important that several times a game, if not several times, every few minutes, or at least a.

Every few minutes, you take the time to pull back from being in the battles of the moment and to see what’s really going on in the game from a strategy perspective. And so we started watching game film [00:34:00] and he started showing me where I was actually missing, how the flow of the game was changing or how the other team changed their, their strategies defensively, offensively transition or how I needed to, and I had no awareness.

Of that. And so that was one of my biggest learnings. How to, um, how to not only be in the battles because your players want you to be in the battles. If you just watched the war and you just sit on the bench and don’t say a word and just make the strategic decisions during timeouts, players can sometimes feel like they’re abandoned.

The soldiers need to know that you’re with them. But at the same time, you gotta be the general who’s able to get up on the Hilltop and look down and see where you need to put the soldiers. Now you need to place them. And so that, that balance of the war and the battles helped me being conscious of it helped me immensely.

And I grew tremendously as a coach.

Mike Klinzing: [00:34:52] Yeah, I could see that completely. I think that speaks to something that we’ve talked to a bunch of coaches about on the podcast, and that is, I think [00:35:00] what I hear from you is that you, as you were going through this, tried to be tremendously self-aware of what was going on.

And in cases like this where maybe you weren’t quite aware of what was going on, you were able to find someone who you could bounce ideas off of and ask questions of who helped you be co to become. More aware of yourself. Would you say that self awareness is something that has helped you throughout your career?

What,

Mano Watsa: [00:35:25] yeah, 100% if, if I was to say if, if, if I was to share some key attributes that I think. Have helped me the most in my journey. One of them has been self-awareness and I, the, the self awareness piece that I think has helped me the most was being aware that I, I don’t know that there’s lots I don’t know, and that I have lots of blind spots.

I think when we think we know. Or when we think we don’t have blind spots or refuse, or we refuse to admit that we have blind spots. [00:36:00] That’s the biggest blind spot that we could have. And so I think,  I, I think I, I, I realized in, in every, um. The line of work that I’ve ever pursued, I’ve realized that I don’t, I don’t know nearly as much as I need to know, and I have blind spots that I need to figure out what they are and how to remove them, and I think that’s been a big advantage.

Just knowing that.

Mike Klinzing: [00:36:23] Yeah, I think you’re 100% right. I think back to, I feel like I’ve grown in terms of my self awareness. I think when I was. A young guy, especially in the coaching profession. When I came out,  I had an opportunity to play division one basketball. And when I got done,  I wasn’t sure that I wanted to be a coach, but eventually that’s where I ended up.

And I think I thought at that time that, Hey, I was a really good player and I’m going to be a really good coach. And I look back at myself in that time. And, and I don’t think I was as self-aware as what you were describing in terms of. Me trying to figure out what I didn’t know. Instead I focused on what I did [00:37:00] know.

And then lately, and as I’ve grown and matured over the course of the last 25 years, I’ve certainly become more self aware and I think that’s made me a better basketball coach, but it’s also made me a better person and just being able to recognize what are my flaws? What are the things that. I need to improve on where are my knowledge gaps that I can continue to get better and grow as a human being.

And when you do that, then you’re able to share your influence with people around you. And it definitely sounds like that’s something that has sort of

Mano Watsa: [00:37:28] been a theme for you in

Mike Klinzing: [00:37:30] every stop that you’ve made. Every career move that you’ve had has been related to your, I guess, overall life’s mission, which is to serve others in whatever capacity it is that you’re working for them.

Mano Watsa: [00:37:40] Yeah, absolutely, and I think you hit the nail on the head because when I stepped into my first year as a head college coach, I actually thought I knew I needed to learn a lot, but I had been around the block. I had spent the past eight years. In the college basketball scene, I had studied under a great coach.

[00:38:00] I’d traveled around the world with the game playing. I played for lots of different coaches. I thought I knew the game and I knew I, I had more to learn, but I thought I learned a lot. It wasn’t until I got my mentor coach. That I realized I didn’t know anything. You know, the, the amount that I knew, I knew predominantly from the eyes of being,  either a player or an assistant coach, but you put on that head coaching hat.

And it’s a whole different landscape. And I, so that awakening really came from and in thanks to my mentor coach, who when would sit down and start assessing game film, or when would watch other teams play? Even now we’re, we’re talking now, what are we a good 15 years later? And I sometimes will watch an NBA game with him or a local college game and I’ll just stop him two minutes into the game and say, what are you seeing right now?

And he’ll tell me 12 different things he’s seeing. And I had only [00:39:00] picked up two of them. And so even today I realize, Oh my goodness. I don’t have a clue. I’m just, I’m just a, a baby trying to learn the game here. And so, um, so I think that was really an epiphany for me in my first year of college coaching because when you, when you’ve played the game at a high level, it’s easy to think you know, a lot.

Um, and, and really that can be,  can be a stumbling block for us all.

Mike Klinzing: [00:39:26] It sure is. I think that there’s, if you’d asked me this question again when I was 25 about the connection between how good of a player you were and how good of a coach you were, I would have said that that connection was very, very tight.

That if you were a really good player, that you probably were going to be a very good coach and that if you weren’t a very good player, you probably wouldn’t be a very good coach. And I’ve come to the realization that your playing experience, it certainly doesn’t hurt you to have been a good player. And to be able to understand the players mentality and the things that it.

Took from a dedication and that kind of stuff. But as far as your [00:40:00] ability to teach the game, I think what you were able to do as a player really is irrelevant. It’s more about understanding. What it is that a coach is supposed to be doing, and having mentors and learning and continuing to grow and have the right mindset is, is far more important than whatever success you had in your playing career.

And I think that’s been proven out. If you just look at the history of basketball and who. Coaches are, they ended up being successful at sure. There are a lot of successful players who end up being coaches, but there are also a lot of guys who never set foot in a college basketball court. They might’ve been a manager, or they might’ve just gone right into high school coaching or whatever the case might be, who have ended up being some of the most successful coaches at all levels of basketball.

And so I think that the lesson here is that you’ve got to keep learning, no matter whether you’re a person who played division one basketball or you played in the NBA, or you’re . A kid who was the manager of your high school team and just loves basketball and wants to be a coach. You have to continue to learn and grow and progress, and then you can eventually get to where you want to in the coaching profession and be able to impact kids, which is really what it’s [00:41:00] all about.

Mano Watsa: [00:41:00] Yeah. Yeah. I think the one commonality that every, that all good coaches share is they’re all sponges. They’re all sponges, and the more you’re able to soak in as a, as a coach, the better coach you’re going to become. All right, let’s

Mike Klinzing: [00:41:17] jump to peasy PGC. How did you get reconnected with PGC, which eventually leads to your ability to take on a leadership role and become the president and CEO.

Talk to us a little bit about that process, how you got there, and then we’ll talk about all the great things that you guys have going there.

Mano Watsa: [00:41:35] Yes. Well, as I shared earlier, I had the privilege of attending pointguard college with PGC founder, Dick Evencio. I was the first Canadian to ever attend one of his, one of his camps.

And so he picked me up from the airport. He dropped me off at the end of the week. I returned a couple weeks later and did another one of his exposure counts that he used to put on. And that really,  started a friendship and a relationship. I stayed in touch with him. [00:42:00] Over a period of years until he suddenly passed away in 2001 and so when he passed away in 2001 I had already graduated and I was already running my, my backyard camps and I wrote to see if I could somehow help to continue on.

Point guard college in some form or fashion. And I didn’t hear back from anyone at the time as PGC was really in limbo. So I decided to start a program in Canada called point guard Academy to do, do the best with what I could remember from my experience in continuing on his legacy. And so I created a five day experience that included,   hear it, see it, do it model similar to what.

PGC had, where you hear it in the classroom, you’ll watch it on film and then you go on court and do it. And I did that for five or six years. We ended up, but doing them quite successfully across Canada. And then, um,  college was continued on by. Had a player who had been [00:43:00] mentored by Dick as well. Her,  her name was Dick.

I was Dean Evans and Dena played,  at the university of Virginia, played in three final fours, and she decided to continue on his legacy and she did an amazing job. A mutual friend introduced us. I flew down and spent a week at one of her sessions and was just blown away at,  at. The experience she created for these players and how she taught these players to think the game.

And we decided at the end of that week to,  to join forces and partner together to be able to take PGC to more and more players and coaches. And,  and then a few years later. I had the opportunity to really take the helmet PGC and provide leadership. And so I decided to step down from my college coaching career to focus exclusively on a, on PGC.

So I’ve been doing that for the past,  past 12 and a half years now. All

Mike Klinzing: [00:43:55] right, so let’s go with first, just what’s been the biggest challenge in [00:44:00] taking over the leadership role at PGC and what’s been your biggest joy? And then we’ll get into some of the specific things that you guys have going in terms of programs, your mission and that kind of thing.

Mano Watsa: [00:44:10] Yeah. One of the biggest challenges in from going to running my own camp where I was at every single camp to now. We put on about 150 plus events a year, camps, clinics, weekend, a weekend camps as well. And so obviously I’m only out a handful of those and what I had to. Figure out and learn and discover was how to make a culture live beyond you.

And so that was my biggest challenge in my first few years, because when, when you’re really small, culture exists within the person. And so as long as you’re there, the culture exists. And because I was always there, the culture could always exist. You know, as a head coach. You’d like to think you can [00:45:00] always be there, but you’re not always there.

You’re not always there in the locker room. You’re not always there at when players are practicing. You’re not always there in the weight room. You’re not there when two, Claire’s might be shooting, um, after practice. And so the same can be said for a head coach that has to figure out how do you make the culture or how do you make your values become the shared values of the team.

That was probably the biggest challenge in figuring that out. I decided not to figure out it. Figure it out alone, Mike. So I went and found the best culture organizational coach I could find, found a gentleman out of New York city who mentored me and mentored us for five years on how to build a phenomenal winning culture.

Mike Klinzing: [00:45:40] So what’s the key? Give us it and give it to us in one sentence. How do us coaches wave a magic wand and create this culture?

Mano Watsa: [00:45:47] Not sure it’s a magic wand. It took years, but the first is you’ve got to get clear on your values. Then you’ve got to live and model your values. Then you’ve got to create a common language [00:46:00] around your values, and then you’ve got to find ways to acknowledge, encourage, and reward the values that are lived out a little bit more than the sentence, but that’s what we’ve spent the last 12 years building within our, within PGC and teaching others.

Mike Klinzing: [00:46:16] That’s pretty solid model. That is pretty solid. All right. Let’s go with the next question, which is just talk to us a little bit about what makes PGC your camps or clinics, the things that you do. What makes it unique? Share with us some of those core values that you share with players that you try to teach and get across to the kids who take part in what you guys do on a daily basis.

Mano Watsa: [00:46:39] Yes. Our, our core values were really invented by PGC founder, dicta van Zio. He wrote about them in his two best selling books, stuff good players should know and think like a champion. And it’s the acronym shape and shape is spelled a little differently at PGC. When, when he invented it, he intentionally invented it with a C.

so it’s S [00:47:00] C H, a P E shape. And he talked about the six special ingredients. This acronym and shape stands for spirit communication, hustle approach, precision and enhancement. And what Dick taught was that when you pour those six leadership ingredients into everything you do, you’re going to create a, a pretty special environment.

And get some pretty special results. And so what we decided to make shape our core values at PGC, and it’s the thread that’s woven through everything we do and everything we teach and everything we model at each and every PGC camp and clinic.

Mike Klinzing: [00:47:41] So what does that look like when you are out on the basketball floor with kids at a camp?

Just give people who are. Maybe unfamiliar with what you guys do at PGC? Give us an idea of when you’re talking about, let’s say, enhance, what does enhance look like out on the floor? If I [00:48:00] attend a PGC event?

Sure.

Mano Watsa: [00:48:02] Well, I’ll, I’ll flip it around and we’ll apply it here to coaches as well. So it’s not even just at a PGC session, but every practice all start with spirit.

Every pro, every good practice. If you walk into any gym across America and noisy gym tends to be a winning gym and a quiet gym tends to be a losing gym. Why? Because good practices are energized and so we talk about spirit and the importance of fostering and creating an energized environment. Because when you get into a game.

That’s an energized environment. And if you don’t practice the way you’re going to need to play, you’re not going to play the way you want to play. And so that’s the first piece. You’ve got to create energized practices. So when, when coaches or anyone walks into a PGC session, they tend to Marvel at how energized the gym is.

And we don’t just enforce it in, in any way like that. We, [00:49:00] we teach it and then we encourage it. And,  the players learn to own it because at the end of the day, as a coach, you don’t want to have to own every aspect of your culture and your values. You want your players to own them. And that’s what we teach players how to do at PGC, so that when they go back to their teams, they can actually create a winning culture.

And the C stands for communication. To just keep it super simple. Encouragement and reminders, reminders beforehand when they’re needed most and encouragement after the fact. And so any of any good practice is not just filled with energy. It’s also filled with communication with players, giving each other timely reminders and lots of encouragement.

And so the, the H stands for hustle. Every good practice is filled with players hustling, not, not just as a once in a while or sometimes thing, but as an all the time thing. So at our PGC sessions, coaches typically are floored by seeing [00:50:00] 120 players. That are consistently through three a days everyday over the course of five days, bringing tremendous hustle, bringing timely reminders and encouragement to their teammates and bringing tremendous energy.

And then the a is their approach and their P is their precision and their attention to detail. And the E is enhancement. Finding ways to make. Everything, and, and everyone around them better. And so, um, so shape really gets woven into everything we do. We don’t just do it lip service. It’s not a leadership talk.

It’s literally woven into every single drill competition and activity on court where we’ll talk about. How was your body language right now? How was your level of communication in the last drill? How was your level of uplift and celebration that you brought to those around you? What was your level of precision and focus and attention to detail?

When we said start at the elbow, where you by the elbow near the elbow or touching the elbow? When we said to finish off two feet, did [00:51:00] you finish off two feet every single time? Those are the types of things that we’re teaching players. And what we found is if a player wants to maximize their potential, and as coaches, if we want our, our teams to maximize their potential, they’ve got to be well shaped.

There’s no ifs, ands, or buts about it.

Mike Klinzing: [00:51:16] Absolutely. And I think that what comes across here and what you just said is that setting that culture has been right from the very beginning. Has been intentional and

Mano Watsa: [00:51:27] everything that you do, you

Mike Klinzing: [00:51:28] set up to make sure that those things, those values are passed along to your coaching staff and then eventually onto the players so that when somebody walks in, they are going to see and recognize all those things.

And I think that can only be done if you’re intentional about it. I know that I’ve talked about this on the podcast before, that at past times in my coaching, there’s been times where. I’ve gotten distracted by one shiny thing over here that I’m like, Oh, that’s really cool. I want to do that. I got, I gotta make that a part of what I’m doing every day and I’ll [00:52:00] do it for a week or two and then it’ll kind of slide off my radar and I’ll be back to doing something else.

I think it’s very, very important. I think you did a really good job of clarifying that and making it clear that being intentional about having those values a part of everything you do every single day is so critically important.

Mano Watsa: [00:52:18] Yeah. You know, it.  what we found is it really sets the foundation so that when you do build your player development and build your systems and build your strategies, you’re building and on a foundation of shared expectations and norms.

If you don’t have the shared expectations and norms, then over the course of the season, you’re constantly trying to pull players up to your level of expectation that you have, and that just tends to be tiring, frustrating, discouraging, and disappointing. Absolutely.

Mike Klinzing: [00:52:50] So. Not only are you at PGC, started out with the camp side of it and influencing players, but you’ve slowly expanded your reach into other [00:53:00] areas, working with coaches, being able to do some online video things and doing some virtual coaching.

So talk a little bit about some of your other things besides the traditional camps at clinics. Talk about some of the other things that you offer and other ways that people can interact with you at PGC.

Mano Watsa: [00:53:16] Sure. You know, back five or six years ago, we realized that to live out. Our, our mission to help to shape the basketball world and the way the game is played and taught that we were going to need to reach far beyond just the thousands of players that were attending our, our summer sessions each and every summer.

And so we started to put a major focus on inspiring and equipping coaches. And now we, we have, we launched in 2019 we launched. A key five coaching to really, um, to really focus on what we determined were the key five aspects of coaching that every good coach becomes [00:54:00] proficient in. And many coaches have never really even thought about it.

They just think, okay, I’m coaching a team. I, I need some offensive place in defensive plays. I need a press break. And, and then they watched some YouTube videos and go, and what we realized as, as we thought about and spent countless hours. Considering the hundreds of skillsets and attributes and qualities that every good coach possesses.

We were able to narrow those down to five key categories. And then we realized what we needed to do was start to equip coaches in each of those five categories and really provide them a blueprint or and roadmap. Cause a blueprint doesn’t really exist for how to become a great coach. So we decided to embark on the journey of.

Providing coaches a a blueprint. And that led to the launch of key five coaching. And so we’re now a year in, we decided to to only allow 500 coaches to come into our membership in the first year as we really wanted to equip them with courses, with our life clinics and workshops [00:55:00] and all the other online tools and including our live weekly.

Group mentorship calls that we provide, we only allowed 500 in, in the first a year so that we could really figure it out and make sure that we could equip these coaches well. And we’re, we’re actually just on the verge of widening the welcome and,  and bringing  coaching to the larger basketball world.

So that’s, that’s one of our initiatives that,  that we’ve been really, really excited about, um, as a way to continue to serve, inspire, and equip every coach everywhere. And then right in conjunction with that, Mike, we’re actually just in the process of launching and by the time this episode,  runs, we’ll, we’ll be partway through court side and court side is PGC and key five coaching,  key five coaching’s way of giving back to,  to coaches through this difficult time.

We’re all going through right now while we’re all at home and it’s 10 days of in depth interviews with NBA, WWE, NBA, and college [00:56:00] coaches where we go deep. In each of the five key categories of a great coach. And so,  so that’s a, that’s another key piece that we’re focusing on right now. Just doing everything we can to serve and support coaches.

Mike Klinzing: [00:56:15] Is that going to be a video series model?

Mano Watsa: [00:56:17] Yep. And we’re actually dripping every day a different interview with,  with our four coaches. And coaches can access it through any of our social media handles. If they’re on our email list, they already receive it, or they can, uh. Or they can go to a key five coaching,K , E Y five the number five coaching.com as well.

Mike Klinzing: [00:56:43] Fantastic Mano. We’re coming up on the hour that I know that we said we had when we started, so I want to give you an opportunity to share. Your social media, PGC social media, places where people can find all the programs that you talked about. Just give people an idea of where they can connect with you and [00:57:00] PGC.

And then if there’s one final point that you want to leave us with before we wrap up, you can go ahead and do that and then I’ll jump back in and we’ll wrap things up.

Mano Watsa: [00:57:07] Sure. Well, we have over 1500 coaches each year attend our summer and fall. Events for their own professional development. And so would certainly welcome any coach who’s really eager to learn how to build a winning culture, how to be a great leader to their players on and off the court, and to be able to teach the game and a really cutting edge.

Edge way too to come join us for one of our five day, four night summer sessions or one of our fall weekend shooting college courses and coaches can go to PGC basketball.com PGC basketball.com for details and we have details available on our point guard college course, our our shooting college scoring college and Playmaker college courses there as well.

And of course any of the, any of the social media channels. Either [00:58:00] PGC basketball key five coaching or Mano Watsa, M a, N, and then Watson, w a, T, S, a. And Mike.  any of those channels are, are great ones.  we have,  we have,  an enormous number of coaches and players that follow our YouTube channel as well at PGC basketball.

As well and in addition, well,

I can honestly say Mano that I’ve been following you guys for a long time. I’ve put a bunch of your things up onto my blog and my website that I’ve linked to because I just think that the content that you guys put out is a of tremendous quality, and B, it’s just been extremely valuable for players.

And coaches. So to anybody out there who’s a part of our audience who hasn’t yet connected with Mano and PGC, you want to make sure you do that. So we’ll have all those links in the show notes when we put the show up so you can go and find those and get connected to him and motto on a personal level.

We can’t thank you enough for being willing to jump on with us for an hour tonight. It’s [00:59:00] been a pleasure to get a chance to talk to you and get a chance to go through your story and just learn some of the secrets behind. The success that you’ve been able to have in your career. So we want to say thanks and to everyone out there, we will catch you on our next episode.

Thanks.