The first time I ever met Kobe Bryant. My life changed forever. See back in 2007 Nike flew me out to Los Angeles to work the first ever Kobe Bryant Skills Academy. Nike brought in the top high school and college players from around the country for an intense three-day mini-camp with the best player in the world. And for any of you that don't follow basketball as closely as I do just know that in 2007 Kobe was the best player in the game. Well an important fact about me as basketball was my first identifiable passion. I fell in love with the game at five years old and here 40 years later basketball is still a major pillar of my life. And having grown up around the game I had always heard this urban legend of how insanely intense Kobe's individual workouts were. When I found myself on his camp staff I figured this is my chance this is my shot. So at my earliest opportunity I walked up to Kobe and asked if I could watch one of his private workouts. He was incredibly gracious and smiled and said sure man no problem I'm going tomorrow at four. Well I got a little bit confused because I had just got done looking through the camp schedule and the camp schedule clearly said that the first workout with the players was the following day at 3.30. Well Kobe recognized that confused look on my face and clarified that with yeah that's four a.m. Well I couldn't think of a reason on why I couldn't be somewhere at four in the morning so I'd committed myself to being there and I figured if I'm gonna be there anyway I may as well try and impress Kobe. I may as well show him how serious of a trainer I was so I came up with a plan to beat him to the gym.  Now when I arrive it's 3.30 in the morning so it is pitch black outside and yet the moment I step out of the cab I could see the gym light was already on. From the parking lot I could faintly hear a ball bouncing and sneakers squeaking. I walk in the side door Kobe's already in a full sweat. See he was going through an intense warm-up before his official workout with his trainer started at 4. Well out of professional courtesy I did not say anything to Kobe and I did not say anything to his trainer. I just sat down to watch and for the first 45 minutes I was shocked. For the first 45 minutes I watched the best player on the planet do the most basic footwork in offensive moves. Kobe was doing stuff that I had routinely taught to middle school aged players. Now don't get it twisted this is Kobe Bryant and he was doing everything in an unparalleled level of intensity. He was doing everything with surgical precision but the stuff he was doing was incredibly basic. When his workout went on for a couple more hours and when it was over once again I did not say anything to him I did not say anything to his trainer I just quietly left but my curiosity kept nipping away and it eventually overwhelmed me to the point that I had to know so I went up to Kobe again later that day and said Kobe I don't understand you're the best player in the world why are you doing such basic drills and he flashed that million-dollar smile and he gave me a friendly wink but he said in a very serious tone why do you think I'm the best player in the world because I never get bored with the basics. I never get bored with the basics. Kobe Bryant the best player on the planet and someone who has truly mastered his craft said that his secret is that he never gets bored with the basics and as obvious as that may be to you all right now that was a life-changing moment for me. See in that moment I realized that just because something is basic it doesn't mean that it's easy those are not synonyms and yet people often use those words interchangeably just because it's basic it doesn't mean it's easy if it was easy everyone else would be doing it and you all know in the world we live in society is telling us that it's okay to skip steps. Society tells us we should always be looking for a shortcut or a hack. Society tells us we should be infatuated with chasing what's new and what's shiny and what's sexy and just ignore what's basic but I'm here to tell you if you do those things you are making a huge mistake and that's because the basics work. They always have and they always will and the very first step to improving performance whether it's you improving your performance or it's you helping and empowering to improve your clients performance the very first step is to admit that the basics work but it's also having the humility to acknowledge that implementing the basics every single day is never ever easy. As Ken mentioned I'm very fortunate and thankful that this is my fourth fortune management event that I've been a part of and absolutely adore what you all represent and the way that you do it just by show of hands how many of you have seen me speak live before is that somebody calling in to tell us that they've seen they've seen me speak live before wait put the hands up one more time okay so about a third of the room to those of you that have seen me I'm going to tell you the exact same thing that I tell my three children and that is just because I said it I'm not going to assume you heard it so I'm going to say it again just because I showed it I'm not going to assume you saw it so I'm going to show it again and just because you know it I'm not going to assume you do it so I'm going to say it and I'm going to show it again and again and again and that's because one of my foundational beliefs is that repetition is not punishment repetition is the oldest and most effective form of learning on the planet and that will never change so the core principles and values and things that you speak to your clients about on a regular basis or the things that you talk to your own children about you're going to have to say them again and again but part of being communicators is making that message as sticky as possible for those that haven't seen me live before I'm going to tell you my goal which is the goal of every time I take the stage and that is to offer as much value to you as I possibly can in our short time together see one thing I know for certain if you are part of the fortune management family you are a high performer you are all as coaches are the Kobe Bryant's of what you do and I know that high performers are always looking to grow always looking to improve always looking to evolve high performers are always looking for that edge and that's why I'm here today to help give you that edge and I'm going to share some stories and some stats and some strategies but more importantly I'm going to give you some practical actionable takeaways that each and every one of you can implement immediately to raise your game which then by default you will use to raise the game of the clients you work with another one of my foundational beliefs is that a candle loses nothing by lighting another candle my goal today is to light your candle so you can all go back to your respective situations and you can light the candle of the people that you work with but in order for us to accomplish all of that in just under 90 minutes I need you all to be open-minded to heightening clarity in three very specific areas and a quick sidebar as coaches and as leaders communication is one of your most important tools to pull out of the toolbox and it is your job to communicate things so effectively that your message becomes sticky it becomes memorable it's meaningful and it's been my experience that there's three ways we can heighten the stickiness of our message the first is to teach through story story evokes visceral emotion and we can use that to sway the behavior of our clients so we want to teach through story two we want to be incredibly concise trim all of the fat trim all of the fluff and I want you to teach in bullet points teach in tweets don't teach in blogs and three I want you to use the magic of the number three there's a rhythm about threes when you teach things in threes they become stickier they become more memorable so if you can do those three things consistently your message will stick so if you're like me and you're taking notes anytime you see me hold up three fingers you're going to want to write those three things down so now there's three areas that we want to heighten clarity the first is our perspective the second our core values and the third is our purpose let's start with perspective and primarily what is your perspective on how you view leadership as coaches you all by our definite by definition our servant leaders but what is the lens at which you look through and I want to highly encourage you to look through the lens of transformational leadership which is going through the world saying it's not about me it's about you it's not about me it's about you you should be able to look every single member of your family in the eye your spouse is your significant others and your children and say it's not about me it's about you you all should be able to look each other in the eye while you're here in Miami and be able to look at each other your colleagues and your co-workers and your peers and say it's not about me it's about you and you absolutely have to be able to look every single one of your clients in the eye and say this is not about me this is about you see when you can shift the focus off of what you want from people and turn it to what you want for people it's an absolute game changer and one thing I've learned in the latter part of my life if you focus on taking they'll never be enough you focus on giving you'll never run out and something I just realized I mean I had this epiphany moment while I was standing in the back of the room because I knew that I was going to talk to you all about transformational leadership and I knew that I was going to talk to you about it's not about me it's about you and then I had you watch a 75 second video about myself and had them put a picture of me behind me while I'm speaking so I may have to make some changes to that rhythm but but I do hope you realize as I'm standing here me being on stage this has nothing to do with me this has everything to do with me trying to fill your bucket and light your candle so that you can in turn do the same thing for the clients that you work with work with so the second area that we need to heighten clarity our core values now one of the reasons I am so honored and thankful to continue to do work with fortune management is because I feel so aligned with your core values but in addition to your professional core values each and every one of you needs to have a personal set of core values what do you stand for what do you believe in what are your non-negotiable principles see it's been my experience that when you can live a life based on principles and build a life based on standards as opposed to the roller coaster coaster of emotions you become the most magnetic person in any room when the decisions you make are based on your values and your principles as opposed to the emotions you're feeling in the moment you'll be much more of a consistent high performer and don't forget that every single thing I'm sharing with you I'm doing this because I want you all to implement this in your lives but these are the exact same things I want you to pay forward to your clients tell them the exact same stuff and the beautiful part about getting crystal clear on your core values is that actually makes decision making so much easier so much more fluid now this doesn't mean that you won't still have really hard decisions to make you'll still have really hard decisions to make but now with this construct it'll actually make that process more fluid because you run every single decision of your life through the filter of is this an alignment with my core values and if the answers yes you do it if the answers no I would at least hope you have a pause or a hesitation the more decisions that you can make that are in alignment with your core values then you will be on the path of where you're trying to go and who you're trying to become so we have to get crystal clear on core values and the third area that we want to heighten clarity is on purpose why do you do what you do why do you make the sacrifices to use your talents and your gifts to pour into others to help them improve their lives and their businesses and don't confuse focus excuse me function with purpose don't confuse function with purpose the function of that chair is to provide somewhere for you to sit the purpose of that chair is to provide you comfort we want to get to the purpose which is always going to be deeper and the more you as a coach can stay connected to purpose and the more you can get the folks that you work with to connect to their purpose and piggyback that on top of core values and having the perspective of looking through the lens of it's not about me it's about you then we've got everything in alignment one of the best organizations that I've ever seen when it comes to purpose is DHL the international shipping and logistics Goliath now they have hundreds of thousands of team members all across the planet and they do a brilliant job of making sure that every single one of them stays truly connected to their purpose and their purpose is we don't deliver brown boxes we deliver promises they make sure that every member of the team feels valued and appreciated and respected they make sure that the person that's working in a in a rural town the graveyard shift in the warehouse loading box after box onto the truck at 2 a.m. that those folks know you are not putting a brown box on a truck you're putting a little kids Christmas gift on a truck you're putting a future brides wedding dress on a truck we don't deliver boxes we deliver promises and the more they can keep their hundreds of thousands of team members connected to that purpose then the more people will give a bit though the more of their people will consistently give a better effort and have a better attitude so those are the three areas that we consistently have to heighten our clarity on and when it comes to those three areas I've never seen anyone do it better than my good friend and mentor J. Billis of ESPN if you don't love college basketball as much as I do just know that J. Billis is the face of ESPN college game day and back in December of 2010 there was a really highly anticipated game that pitted Duke vs. Butler and the reason this game was so highly anticipated were those were the two teams that met nine months previously in the national championship game where Duke narrowly escaped with a two-point win and it's very very rare in college basketball that the two teams that meet on the biggest stage meet again in early December so there was a lot of anticipation and hype around this game well part of Jay's responsibility with ESPN is he watches both teams practice the day before the game he wants to find out where their strengths lie their keys to victory their game plan he wants to learn as much as he can about their personnel so he'll have plenty of fodder for the next day on air well Jay being a Duke alum decided that he would go watch Duke practice first and Duke was and is for just a couple of more weeks led by Hall of Fame coach coach K the all-time winningest coach in the history of college basketball and Jay walked into the Duke practice and saw coach K saying with great clarity confidence and conviction guys if you do what we do well and you stick to our game plan we'll be more than fine tomorrow because we clearly have the competitive advantage we are bigger stronger and more powerful than they are we're gonna pound the ball down low and get easy layups and dunks we're gonna out rebound them and we're gonna get a shot up a hand up to contest every shot if you do what we do well and you stick to our game plan we'll be more than fine tomorrow because we clearly have a competitive advantage and Jay left that practice and was thinking this could be an absolute massacre tomorrow coach K one of the best in the world to ever blow a whistle or hold a clipboard just told his team definitively with clarity confidence and conviction what gives them the competitive advantage and where their strengths lie but Jay had to do his due diligence so he went to watch Butler practice and at the time Butler was led by coach Brad Stevens who last year was promoted from head coach to GM and president of operations with the Boston Celtics in the NBA and to Jay's surprise coach Stevens was talking to the Butler Bulldogs with the exact same level of clarity confidence and conviction and said guys if you do what we do well and you stick to our game plan we'll be more than fine tomorrow because we clearly have the competitive advantage we are smaller quicker and faster than they are we're going to get tons of points in transition and on fast breaks we're going to put on a smothering full court press and there's no way they're big guys can get out to our corner shooters if you do what we do well and you stick to our game plan we'll be more than fine tomorrow we clearly have the competitive advantage and Jay left that practice and was thinking I have no idea who's going to win this game both of these Hall of Fame caliber coaches have both the self-awareness and the team awareness to know what it is that they do really well where their strengths lie and to what gives them a competitive advantage and my favorite part of that story is they're both correct it's all a matter of perspective it's all a matter and how they choose to view it so I want you all to think of that story for a few reasons number one I want you to consistently reflect and ask yourself where do your personal strengths lie you as a human being and as a coach what are your gifts what are your talents what are the things that you have that can add the most value to those around you and that those you care about the second reason I want you to think of that story is you need to mine that from the the clients that you work with with the different dental practices you work with what is it that makes them unique what are their natural talents we're things that they can take advantage of and double down on to continue to give them a competitive advantage and the last reason I share that story with you is by the time I'm done with you this morning I want you to feel empowered to make yourself awareness and to make your team awareness with your clients part of your secret sauce part of that answer that one of the reasons you all will continue to be epic at what you do is because of heightened self-awareness and heightened team awareness so now let's unpack self-awareness how well do you know yourself do you know where your strengths lie do you know your gifts do you know your talents do you know your hopes do you know your dreams my guess is with a group like this the answer to that is yes yes yes yes and yes but I do want to challenge you and I want to challenge you to have the courage and it does take courage to look on the other side of the curtain do you have the courage to look in the mirror and ask yourself what are your weaknesses where are your biggest opportunities for growth what are your personal fears what are your insecurities what is the baggage you bring everywhere you go not just in Miami but everywhere you go you'll bring that baggage from your past and you got to get crystal clear on that because all of that both sides of that curtain in totality make you who you are and the sooner you can acknowledge that and lean into that and embrace that then the sooner you can put yourself on the path of who it is that you're trying to become but it all starts with that self-awareness and there are three pillars of self-awareness that we'll dive into now the first are our habits the second is our mindset and the third is our focus so let's take a look at habits the things we do unconsciously and the things we do consistently there was a duke university study that found that 42 percent of everything we do from the moment we wake up to the moment we go to bed is habitual that means almost half of everything we do every single day is on autopilot we've grooved a series of behaviors repeatable patterns that provide us comfort and it's so important that you take a look first to be aware remember you will never improve something that you're unaware of you will never fix something you are oblivious to so awareness and clarity are always going to be the first two steps but you need to take a look at your habits and I've already told you my evaluation of you all is that you are the Kobe Bryant's of the coaching world you are the best at what you do you all are high performers by definition but even with that being said I have a really really important rhetorical question that I want you to reflect on over your neck over the next couple days and that is are you a high performer because of your habits or are you a high performer in spite of your habits if you were to break down and list a granular list of all of the things that you do repeatedly every single day how many of those things are helping you and how many of those things are hindering you how many of your daily actions are taking you closer to the person that you're trying to become and how many of them are weighing you down like an anchor and don't even remotely be worried about worried about or stifled by perfection I threw perfection out the window a long time ago thankfully because I'm not anywhere close to it but I got rid of perfection right now what motivates me and inspires me is progress especially when it comes to habits and with that being said please know that everything I'm sharing up here with you all I'm not sharing from a place of mastery I don't have all of this stuff figured out I don't have the game of life on lock I face the same challenges and trials and tribulations that you all do now where I'm incredibly proud of the progress that I've made especially over the last several years is I've put myself on a path and I like the direction that I'm going but I haven't mastered any of this and I don't know that anyone can master this but we can get clear clear and we can get aware and we can make tweaks so my goal is can I make consistently better decisions today than I did yesterday can I consistently make better decisions and have better habits in 2022 than I did in 2021 and even if that progress is ever so slight and even if it's incremental as long as I know that I'm going in the right direction that's what matters most and ultimately as coaches that's one of your number one jobs is making sure that each and every person you work with is getting on the right path and you don't have to worry about where you've been you don't have to worry about the things that you've done before that maybe haven't put you on that path because you can refocus that lens immediately to get back to where you need to go and this all comes through habits so here's your first homework assignment your first actionable take away and I recommend each and every one of you do this self-audit and then equally important I recommend that you have your clients do this exact same self-audit and here's how it'll go if you're if your analog like me you're going to use a piece of paper and a pen and you're going to draw a line right down the middle of vertical line on the left side of the paper I want you to write down the things that fill your bucket the activities that light you up and energize you the things that you do that bring a smile to your face and give you confidence these can be things for your physical well-being taking a yoga class or hopping on your peloton bike or going for a jog these can be things for your mental well-being reading a good book like Bernie's book watching a documentary listening to a podcast these can be things for your emotional well-being like meditation or prayer or having a deep conversation with a loved one but I want you to write down all of the things that fill your bucket that's on the left side then on the right side I want you to get really really honest and vulnerable with yourself and I want you to write down how you've been spending the bookends of your day over the last couple of weeks last couple of months how have you been spending the bookends of your day your morning and your evening routine write down what have you been doing the first 60 minutes after you wake up and what have you been doing the last 60 minutes before you go to bed and I'm well aware that every day is not identical on the calendar I'm sure there are some differences between your Sunday and your Wednesday but don't forget that Duke study half of what you do is on autopilot so I can promise you that half of what you do you're going to have these repeatable behaviors I'm willing to bet that what you do most Sunday mornings we're going to start to see a pattern what you do most Wednesday evenings we're going to start to see a pattern and I just want you to write those things down and then to complete the self audit you're just going to compare the two sides of the paper the two sets of notes and I want you to ask yourself again and this takes vulnerability and humility I want you to ask yourself are you doing the things that you know you need to do to fill your bucket to show up as your best self are the things on the left side of the paper getting integrated into your morning and evening routine and if you do this with humility you are most likely going to start to uncover what's called a performance gap and a performance gap is the gap between what we know we should be doing and what we're actually doing it is literally the gap between the things on the left side of the paper that we know fill our bucket which is priority number one as a coach when you're in a servant leadership position the very first thing you have to do is show up as your best self to everything you do but we need to start making sure that the things on the left side of the paper slowly get integrated to the morning and evening routine and don't worry about changing all of that at once don't try to to devise a picture perfect morning and evening routine just slowly start to take some of the things from the left side of the paper and sprinkle them in even in 10 to 12 or 15 minute increments into the right side and what it'll do it'll make sure that your bucket is full see you have to remember as a coach as a servant leader if you show up to anything as less than your best self that is an act of selfishness you are giving your clients less of a chance to be successful and get on the right path if you choose to show up as anything less than your best self so i need to encourage you and hopefully empower you to make yourself a priority so that your bucket is full that's the only way you'll have more to give others one of my favorite concepts and quotes that's been around a lot longer than i've been breathing is you can't pour anything out of an empty cup if your cup is empty physically mentally and emotionally you have less to give those that you serve so we have to make sure that we prioritize our habits and we build systems and processes in our lives and in your clients lives that allow you to show up as your best self the second pillar of self-awareness will be mindset which i personally believe is the biggest separator in in life your mindset what is your perspective on the world around you how do you view the world around you and i want to encourage you from a mindset standpoint to adopt what i call a winner's mindset which is simply deriving confidence and self-worth in knowing you're going to do the best you can with what you have wherever you are that's it your goal needs to be to do the best you can with what you have wherever you are and the reason i love that as a foundational principle is it eliminates a trilogy of behaviors that will undermine not only your performance and your achievement but i know through personal experience it'll also undermine your fulfillment and any sense of peace that you're looking to acquire and that is blaming complaining and making excuses i use absolutes very sparingly but blaming complaining and making excuses will never ever improve your situation or make things better so the sooner we can eliminate or eradicate blaming complaining and making excuses from our own lives then the sooner we can hold those that we coach accountable for the same behavior see if you expect it of others you have to expect it of yourself if you're going to hold your clients to a certain level of accountability and not allow them to blame complainer make excuse you have to model that behavior yourself first you have to live it before you can coach it has to be in that order can't be reversed from that so we need to eliminate blaming complaining and making excuses which is not easy to do but it is basic remember what i said right after the kobe story these are very basic principles over the 90 minutes that i'm on stage i don't expect anyone's head to explode because i'm not sharing anything complicated up here nothing i'm going to share with you today is outside of the realm of basic but it's so important that you guys understand this not a single thing i'll share with you today is easy to do none of this is easy there's nothing easy about anything that i've shared with you so far or anything that i'll share with you in the rest of our time together so we need to know that going into it these are going to be challenges so from a mindset standpoint we're going to eliminate blaming complaining and making excuses and when we do that we're putting ourselves in the perfect position and this is this is one of my main focal points in my own life right now is not allowing the outer world to dictate my inner world is not allowing circumstances and events and what people say and what people do to affect my own perspective my mindset my attitude and how i show up very basic there is nothing easy about that i think we can all agree especially over these last two years there have been no shortage of circumstances and events that make it easy to default to blaming complaining and making excuses but see when we do that we take ownership and accountability off of ourselves and we deflect it and defer it to someone or something else and you can't do that if you want to be a high performing leader you can't do that if you want to be a high performing coach we have to hold ourselves to an extreme level of ownership and an extreme level of accountability so we want to get and this is like i said this is what i'm working on in my own life right now is not letting these things in the outer world dictate my inner world that has to come from me and that will ebb and flow that's why i told you all with great humility before i don't have this mastered some days i do a pretty decent job with that some days i trip over my own feet but at least have the awareness and i give myself the grace and i give myself the permission to be less than perfect and to be fallible and then i just figure out quickly how to move to the next play which is something we'll talk about in a little bit but it's vital that we realize that every single response to every single thing that occurs in the outer world is completely up to us so you saw in my intro video i'm a very proud father of three children i have twin sons it'll be 12 in a couple weeks and a daughter that'll be 10 and i don't know if any of anyone here has twins or if anyone has younger sons but i didn't realize it for the from ages five to ten they were secretly training to be mma fighters and cage fighters the boys had so much energy that would take about 30 seconds of silence that i could hear in the other room before all of a sudden i would hear some rumbling going on and inevitably someone would come out with tears my son jack and and i'm also a believer how many of you have children the vast majority yeah i'm a believer as a parent it's never too early to plant seeds like the more you can plant seeds even if at their age they can't conceptually even understand what it is that you're teaching them keep planting those seeds so my son jack came out and luke and jack had gotten in a little bit of a scuffle and jack was crying and he said i said what's wrong buddy why are you guys in there fighting and he said luke is making me mad pretty decent response for you know i think he was around seven at the time and i took a moment and i said luke is not making you anything you're choosing to be mad now you have every right to choose that but you're choosing to be mad the response is completely up to you and we had a nice sidebar conversation and i can completely empathize and have compassion for the fact that what luke has been doing might skew towards annoying or irritating but it is your choice in your response and you have to be able to control those things now my parenting philosophy is i want my children to embrace all of their emotions i don't want them to suppress them i don't want them to resist them it is nothing wrong with feeling angry with feeling frustrated with feeling disappointed you fill in the blank there now i'm not saying those are pleasant feelings and i know that those aren't your preference which quick sidebar going back to the outer world versus the inner world just so you guys don't think i'm insane i'm not saying that everything that happens in the world is to my liking i'm not saying that everything that goes on in the outer world is my preference i'm saying that it's irrelevant it doesn't matter what i prefer what happens happens and it's up to me to choose a response to whatever happens and that was the conversation i had with jack and i let him know it is okay for you to be angry it is not okay for you to punch your brother in the throat and i make sure that they understand that it is okay to feel every single emotion that you have but you can't let that dictate your behavior another one of my foundational beliefs our emotions are designed to inform us they are not designed to direct us this goes back to make sure that you're making decisions with the level-headedness of having crystal clear core values so we have to make decisions based on principles and standards not on the ebbs and flows of emotion life will be too much like a roller coaster and too rocky if we do that so we have to set standards and those standards have to be more important than our feelings in the moment but at that same time we don't suppress any of those feelings and that's something that's talked about in our household a lot and it's something that i have to work on myself so embrace every moment and everything that you are feeling and sit with those feelings do not allow the negative ones in particular direct your behavior especially on how you show up and how you treat others so that's our mindset the third pillar of self-awareness will be focus or what i'd rather call refocus see i don't know that it's realistic in today's day and age to have long sustained uninterrupted periods of razor sharp focus i just don't know that we can do that we have too many distractions bombarding us every second of every day but what we can do is have an awareness of when we're unfocused and then quickly refocus the lens so simply you need some type of trigger or something that is going to make you aware of the fact that your mind has wandered that you are distracted that you are not in the present moment and once you can realize that then you can quickly refocus the lens so what do we want to refocus the lens on right down this acronym this is from lew holt's the best i can figure out this is from lew holt's the former football coach at Notre Dame he came up with the acronym win and it stands for what's important now and that's a i mean a almost minute by minute recalibration tool that i use for myself at any given moment of any given day you should be able to take a deep breath and ask yourself am i choosing to invest my attention in this moment to what i deem most important or what i deem most valuable i would imagine if you were having a meeting with one of your clients that's where your focus should be that's where you need to be fully present but i want to encourage you to let that go into your personal lives as well when you're having dinner with your family at night that should be what's most important the folks sitting around that dinner table should be most important in that moment so learn to invest all of your faculties heart, mind, body, soul, everything in where you are which is why one of my favorite quotes and i've heard this from both i don't know who first said it i've heard it both from Nick Saban and Oprah Winfrey so it has to be true and that is you have to learn how to be where your feet are wherever your feet are make sure that's where your head and your heart are as well that's actually the trigger that i use all of the time anytime i find that i am not fully present i just say to myself alan be where your feet are be where your feet are i say it silently i don't say it out loud i'd be committed if i walked around the streets of miami saying be where your feet are be where your feet are but i constantly remind myself be in the present moment now i more expanded definition of being in the present moment has how many pillars do you think yeah of course has to be three i love threes three pillars of being in the present moment number one is refocus the lens on the next play two is refocus the lens on what you have control over and three refocus the lens on the process so let's take a look at next play when i was in the basketball space when i was working with players and teams regularly one of my priorities was to get every single player to focus on the next play why would i want players focused on the next play it's the only one they can do anything about they can't do anything about the play that just happened you just turn the ball over it's okay next play you just missed the wide open layup it's okay next play i know the referee didn't blow their whistle it's okay next play why do i want my players focused on the next play there is nothing they can do about the turnover the miss layup or the referees and ability to make a call there's nothing they can do about it so they have to quickly refocus the lens on the next play and there are so many parallels between the game of basketball and just the game of life in general and the game of basketball if played correctly is usually paid played at a pretty fast pace which means as a player if you choose choose being the keyword if you choose to get in your feelings you choose to be dejected you choose to pout you choose to hang your head you choose to have bad body language after you turn the ball over after you miss a shot or after the referee doesn't make a call to your liking and you choose not to sprint back on defense there's a very good chance that the man you're guarding will score two points on the other end and you just took a compounded a two-point mistake on one end and have turned it immediately into a four-point mistake we simply can't do that folks not if you want to have any attempt not only high performance and achievement but if you want to have any attempt at being happy and fulfilled and having a sense of inner peace we can't compound mistakes we're going to make plenty of mistake we're going to make initial mistakes all of the time and that's why as a coach there was never a problem with a player turning the ball over missing a shot or even being disappointed that the referee didn't make the call but we can't get in the business of compounding mistakes we need to siphon that off and quickly move to the next play the second pillar of living in the present moment is learn to control the controllables i'm a firm believer that there's only two things in this world that each and every one of us has 100 percent control over 100 percent of the time and that is our own effort and our own attitude now i know there's there's a lot of other things we have influence over and i don't want this to be a game of verbal semantics i realize you can take effort and attitude mix them together and you have preparation certainly you control how prepared you are when you're going to have a call or a meeting with one of your clients i'm aware you can take effort and attitude mix them together and you get enthusiasm you're certainly in control of how much enthusiasm you show up with in every single thing that you do but those are really spokes off of the exact same wheel it really all comes down you guys hear that is that what they are have they been going on this entire time okay i need to refocus the lens because i'm trying to be present with you all and i feel like someone's out here chopping the heads off of birds because this is getting this is unbelievable all right if it keeps going fred would you mind going out and asking the birds to please be quiet for a few minutes because i got i got a little bit more time good gracious all right we're gonna we're gonna dial that back in controlling the controllables first let's take a look at effort i'm willing to bet that if i sat down eye to eye and shoulder to shoulder with any one of you and ask you is giving your best effort a choice you would say yes and i agree completely working hard is a choice but what most people don't own is there has to be another side of that coin if working hard is a choice that means not working hard that's also a choice and it can't be a choice that we make consistently if we want to be on the path not only to high performance but to fulfillment and repeat like you fill in the blank you fill in to what it is that you're moving towards and who you're trying to become but i can promise you if you consistently make the choice to give less than your best effort it's going to be a really rocky road and getting there so we have to give the best effort that we're capable of the second half of that is attitude and for the most part when it comes to attitude i already covered that with mindset attitude is simply saying i do not control everything that's going to happen around me i control my response and to me that is incredibly liberating like i find it really liberating that i'm not responsible for controlling the entire universe and every single thing that happens to every single one of us on a daily basis i have nothing to do with that so i don't spend two seconds worrying about it all i figure out is what is my response going to be to the things that happen and can that be a response that moves me forward it takes me closer to the man i'm trying to become and try to limit the times i make responses that move me backward and take me further away from the man i'm trying to become but i find it incredibly empowering that i get to choose i have the keys to the car and i don't give them to anyone i don't ever let anybody have the power over how i'm going to show up my mindset and my attitude and i find that really really liberating so that is controlling the controllables and when you can learn to let go of everything i mean i've only really started to experience this on a deep level over the last several years i mean there's some serenity in that there's something incredibly peaceful about saying i don't care what happens i'm still going to choose a response that moves me forward and let me actually rephrase that i do care what happens i have preferences just like everybody else i would prefer that the sun is out when we're in miami then it's raining that is a preference of mine but if it rains like it did last night that will have zero impact on how i choose to show up and how i choose to live my life and that's the that's the point that i'm hoping everybody works towards so now let's look at the third pillar of being in the present moment and that is learning how to focus on the process learning to detach from outcomes which is really hard this is one of my biggest challenges is learning to detach from outcomes and focus on the process learn to love the work learn to love the day to day let the outcomes just take care of themselves the best analogy i i can think of is building a brick wall not implying any of you would be but if you're ever tasked with building a brick wall i suggest you don't worry about the wall you put all of your focus on laying each and every brick with precision and care do the best you can to lay every brick exactly where it needs to go because if you lay every single brick exactly where it needs to go guess what happens the wall takes care of itself you don't even have to worry about the wall if you lay each and every brick exactly where it needs to go the wall will take care of itself from a sports lens which again is where i've spent most of my life it's doing the little things consistently every day in practice and during the game and the scoreboard will eventually take care of itself now as many commonalities and overlap as there is between basketball and business and i know that's kind of a cliche there are a lot of overlap there are also there's a very stark difference and the stark differences and simon senek who's one of my favorite authors and speakers really brought this to light which is basketball is a finite game we have all everybody in the world has unanimously decided that in the game of basketball the team with the most points on the scoreboard when the final buzzer goes off is declared the winner we've all agreed to that in business and life it's it's not that concrete it's much more abstract it's much more evergreen how you define success in life or business might be slightly different than how you define it how you all define success might be different than the clients that you're working with but we still have to get clarity on how you define success the terminology i like to use is what does winning look like and keep in mind terminology is so important i've spent my entire life in in sports so terms like winning and scoreboard have very positive connotations to me that relates well to me if it doesn't for you then you just need to switch the terminology figure out another way to say the same thing but ultimately you have to get crystal clear on what winning looks like to you and once you've established what winning looks like that is your north star that's the input that you input that you put into the gps this is where i'm trying to go right here and you want to be crystal clear about that once you do that then you can start creating a process and a system for getting there the best group that i've ever seen do this is the men's basketball program at queens university in charlotte north carolina now i know i just said basketball is a finite game we're dealing in an infinite game but you can still draw the same parallel and i use this exact same mindset mindset and construct in my own life in my in my own business coach bartlundi the head coach of the men's basketball program at queens university has figured out that there are four key analytics and it's killing me it wasn't three he had to add a fourth one in like it feels awkward even holding a fourth finger up but yes he figured out there were four key analytics stats in the game of basketball that heavily influence whether or not they won the game the first and for those of you that follow basketball closely this will make sense and for those that don't hopefully i can connect the dots so that this is still a powerful lesson for you the first is turnover differential if we can have more possessions than our opponent it gives us a better chance to win the second is offensive rebound differential if we can rebound our own miss if we can take more shots than our opponent it gives us a better chance to win three free throws attempted per possession the free throw is the highest percentage shot in the game of basketball if we can take more of those than our opponent it gives us a better chance to win and four is three pointers attempted the three-pointer in college basketball is a massive weapon and if we can take more clean looks from three than our opponent it gives us a better chance to win when queens university comes out on top in those four statistical categories they win 97 percent of their games i'm going to say that again because except for the person that just whistled i don't think you guys think that's as cool as i do when they come out on top in those four statistical categories they win 97 percent of their games that means statistically they are almost unbeatable if they simply do those four things so now i'll ask you lovely folks a a rhetorical question or a series of rhetorical questions what do you think coach london his staff talk about remind and emphasize every single workout every single practice before every single game those four things coach london never talks about winning never talks about banners never talks about championships never talks about trophies because he knows if we just do these four things the winning the banners the trophies the championships they all take care of themselves what do you think he uses to design every single practice plan i know you know absolutely those four things every single thing that he doesn't practice is some way related to those four things so the reason i share that with you is in your own lives and in your own coaching practices you have to figure what winning looks like figure out what are the the measurable stats or analytics that will help improve your chance of getting there and then just focus on those things focus on the bricks don't focus on the wall and then in turn you're going to do that with the clients that you work with with each and every one of those dental practices what does success look like to them what does winning look like to them what can be measured and what can you hold them accountable to that will increase the chance that they will get there a real-life example a fellow speaker of mine marcus sheridan who's a good friend he's an author before he got into speaking he started co-founded a pool installation company and they install pools and he built it to a goliath of a pool company it was amazing and he's a big data guy and he loves looking especially kind of on the back end of google and what he found it was called river pools his company he found that when a prospect a prospective customer viewed 30 or more pages of his website they purchased the pool 85 percent of the time if a prospective customer viewed less than 30 pages on their website they purchased the pool 25 percent of the time so marcus wasn't worried about beating people over the head with all of the features and benefits of his pool company instead what he tried to do was consistently post as much captivating and compelling and useful and educational and helpful content on his website so that after you read one article you click to watch a video after you watch that video you want to read a bulleted list like he wanted to keep you on the site as long as possible and he wanted to do so he's not trying to to manipulate or trick anyone he wants to make sure his website is full of so much helpful useful practical information that you as a prospective pool buyer feel educated and feel comfortable and trust river pools so he didn't focus on selling pools he focused on educating customers in the pool buying process so continue to think how you can apply that to not only your work and your coaching practice but apply that to the the folks in the dental world that you work with as well when it comes to self-awareness i think the all-time king is my favorite player of all time which is steve nash and before steve nash became the head coach of the brooklyn nets he had a hall of fame caliber career in his own right is one of the best point guards the mba's ever seen and back in the early 2000s steve nash actually won back-to-back mvp titles which puts him in very rare company in the mba and the first year that he won the mvp he actually only led the mba in two statistical categories he led the mba in assists which means he liked to share the sugar he liked to pass the pill he liked to get other people involved but he also led the mba in touches physical touches he led the mba in high fives fist bumps and pats on the backside now how could i possibly know that steve nash led the mba in high fives fist bumps and pats on the backside what just so happens there was a research team from uc berkeley and they were conducting an official study because they wanted to measure if showing signs of physical enthusiasm actually led to more wins on the court so they hired a team of researchers who watched every minute of every mba game and made a tally mark every time a player gave a high five a fist bump or a pat on the backside well the phoenix sons were so enamored with this study that they hired a full-time intern to count just for steve nash just by show of hands how many of you have ever had a crappy entry-level job before yeah can you imagine if that was your very first job yeah you see this guy right here every time he touches one of these big tall sweaty guys uh i need you make a tally mark well in the very first game that the intern counted for steve nash an mba regulation regular season game the first time the intern counted steve nash delivered and i know some of you know it 239 high fives fist bumps and pats on the backside he was a furnace of human connection now in basketball where physicality is appropriate it's been physiologically proven you can transfer energy to another human being through physical touch a well-placed high five or a well-placed hug you can actually transfer energy to another human being just to make sure i'm clear in both cdc and hr compliant i'm not telling you guys at the end of a client meeting that you're going to pat them on the backside before they leave the room but here's what i am telling you i mean that's your thing if you want to knock yourself out i just had to put the disclaimer up on myself but here's what you can do you can get creative and innovative and figuring out what are other ways that i can provide touches what are other ways that i can fill the emotional bank account and make emotional deposits with those that i work with whether it's your own children whether it's somebody else in this room or whether it's the clients that you serve how can you consistently fill their bucket with emotional deposits with the same ferocity of a steve nash giving high fives fist bumps in a pat on the backside so here's your second homework assignment if you will this is more of a challenge than a homework assignment and many of you i believe are already doing this and i've had tremendous success with the groups that i've worked with it's called ten assists and here's what you do every single morning when you wake up you put 10 rubber bands on your left wrist and every time you give an assist to someone else maybe somebody in your family maybe somebody up here maybe one of your clients but every time you give an assist you take one rubber band off of your left wrist and you put it on your right wrist and an assist is anything you do that adds value to someone else's life that is above and beyond what you are expected to do this is not part of your job description this is above and beyond and i want you to get creative and i want you to get innovative and think man what are some things that i can do regularly to fill someone else's bucket every time you do it take one rubber band off of your left wrist and put it on your right wrist but here's the rub you can't go home for the night or you can't close your laptop at night or you can't put your head on your pillow at night until all 10 rubber bands are on your right wrist until you know for a fact that you personally have done nothing short of 10 tangible things to add unexpected value to the lives of someone that you care about now because you guys are the Kobe Bryant's of what you do because you're in fortune management because you guys are high performers to the nth degree i'm not even remotely concerned about your ability to dish out assist i'm willing to bet almost every person in this room dishes out 10 assists before the morning coffee break you're not the ones that i'm concerned with what i want to see is do you have the type of influence and impact that can make that contagious can you make that contagious with your kids can you make that contagious with those in this room or those other colleagues and coworkers you have those on your team can you make this contagious with your clients you start getting your clients to go back to their dental practices and make sure that every single person at that dental practice from the the front desk receptionist to the hygienist to the dentist themselves are intentional and purposeful about delivering assists to everyone i mean it's an absolute game changer very very basic i don't think i lost anyone on that not easy to do not easy to get large groups of people to be thinking about and intentional about pouring into others because i think it's in our dna to be inherently selfish it's in our dna to inherently look out for ourselves and to want for ourselves so we actually have to be really intentional about that but if you can make 10 assists ramp it with the groups that you work with i'm just telling you i've seen it too many times to count absolute game changer just want to make sure we're doing good on time because the balance when i'm finished with the keynote which will be in just a few minutes then we're going to have an open up q and a and dialogue which is absolutely my favorite part i had a chance in philly to speak with shannon and the rest of her amazing team there and that q and a was unlike anything i've been a part of they asked some of the most brilliant questions so for any reason when we start the q and a if you guys don't have anything shannon i need you to ask me all of the same questions that everybody asked me yeah you can just stand up and just read them off just so i'm not just standing up here looking awkward so we have to make sure we're dishing out those 10 assists now let's talk a little bit about team awareness and i know each and every one of you it comes from a slightly different vantage point i don't know how big each and every one of your individual teams are how many people you work is closely with so if the team awareness stuff doesn't apply directly to you and your own coaching practice this will absolutely have a massive impact on the dental uh the dentist that you work with and to no surprise there are three key components to team awareness the first is role clarity the second is accountability and the third is communication role clarity every single person on every single team doesn't matter if it's basketball or it's a dental office every single person needs to know their role needs to embrace their role and needs to star in their role to the best of their ability getting people to buy in and to believe in a role that is not of their choosing is one of the hardest parts of coaching to get someone to make the personal sacrifice to make a commitment to a team and a commitment to something bigger than themselves when that's not the exact role that they would prefer or want in my opinion is one of the hardest parts of coaching but everybody has to have that type of buy it and believe in and then everybody else on the team needs to respect value and appreciate everybody else's role especially across departments can't be in a silo this goes back to the ten assists like go out of your way to give an assist to someone that you're not necessarily working with and working next to all of the time this and I'm thinking this audit will be very applicable with how you work with your coaches but if it's not I know for a fact that it will be with the dentists working with members of their team and this audit is called the big three I'm just going to lay it out and then each and every one of you can figure out exactly where to put that puzzle piece on a team you're going to have positions of designated leadership you're going to have people that report to other people to do the big three audit I want let's just say that this gentleman here in the front row reports directly to me we're going to make time to sit down for a 15 to 20 minute one-on-one meeting and I'm going to have you write down because I'm analog on just an index card and a pen that I provide I'm going to have you write down what you consider your three most important responsibilities in your current position what are the three most important duties that you need to fulfill if you're only going to do three things in a given day what do you think those three things need to be what are the three areas that you can make a maximum contribution to our team based on your strengths and the things that you bring to the table and I want you to get crystal clear on your big three and then because he reports to me I'm going to take an index card and a pen and I'm going to write down what I consider his big three what do I believe are the three most important responsibilities he has on our team what do I think are the three most important things he needs to focus on if he's only going to do three things in a given day what do I want him to be doing and based on what I know of him and his strengths what do I believe are the three things that he can do to make a maximum contribution to our team and then very similar to the first self-audit we're going to compare these two sets of notes we're going to put the index card side by side and we're going to see how congruent we are and how much alignment there is to what you believe you need to be focused on and what I believe you need to be focused on and it's been my experience even the best leaders in the world can have someone that has worked for them for years on end and there's not identical alignment between those two things this gentleman shows up every day with a great attitude and a great effort and he's slowly climbing a ladder that's not leading to the top of the building that I think it should be now the best part is now that we've exposed this and we've we've figured this gap out look at that as a gift to me that's the best thing now we've gotten clarity between the two of us and we're going to figure out how we can have an open and honest discussion just to make sure that before you leave today we're only going to have one index card and this will be a collaboration this is not me as the leader telling you what your three need to be this is let's have a discussion and let you and me figure this out but by the end of this discussion there'll be no question of what the three most important things are and if you can do that with every single person on the team now we have everybody swimming or rowing in the exact same direction we've removed the tremendous amount of friction because everybody knows exactly what it is they need to do and now all I need you to do is every day show up is star where you are every single day you come in and you try and do those three things to the best of your ability and that's certainly part of my job as the leader is to inspire support and encourage and empower you to do that but again it starts with clarity I said it before and I'll say it again because it bears repeating you will never fix something you're oblivious to you will never improve something you're unaware of so let's get back to the basics and sit down and get as much clarity as we can on exactly what it is you need to be doing so that's our big three now let's take a look at accountability the second pillar I'll tell you lovely folks the same thing that I tell my three children all of the time holding someone accountable is something you do for them it's not something you do to them I tell my kids the reason I hold you accountable is because I love you and I want to hold you to the highest standard of excellence possible I'm a firm believer that's what a good parent does a good teacher a good coach a good friend a good spouse a good trainer you fill in the blank if you care about somebody you hold them to the highest standard of excellence now you do so with compassion you do so with empathy you do so and try and speak their love language you do everything you can to bring out the best in them but you don't let them slide that's why I think accountability is the best gift you can give another human being because ultimately you're saying you're better than what you're showing me right now and I care so much about you and I care so much about us that I'm not going to let you slide I'm going to hold you to the highest standard possible so accountability is crucial but before we can hold someone accountable we need to make sure we're on the same page to what we're holding them accountable to very similar to what I just told you a moment ago you can't hold someone accountable to something very oblivious to going back to my own three children so I'm very amicably divorced so I only have my children half of the time and I had my kids over for dinner this was this was a little while ago but I had my kids over for dinner and at the end of dinner I asked my son Luke to clean the table and after he rolled his eyes Luke grabbed the plates and the utensils and the glasses and he threw them in the sink and he sprinted off to his room to start playing on his iPhone and I was a little frustrated that's not how I define cleaning the table see I define cleaning the table is taking the plates and the utensils and the glasses coming over to the sink rinsing them out and using the scrubber lining them up neatly in the dishwasher taking a Clorox wipe wiping the table down and if you knocked any crumbs on the ground you sweep them up that's how I define cleaning the table but before I could get frustrated with Luke I started to laugh the failure was on me this wasn't Luke's fault I didn't communicate effectively and I did not articulate my definition of cleaning the table I left it ambiguous I left it up to him I left it to default and I don't know if any of you have an 11 year old son but if you do you can probably agree his default definition of cleaning the table is pretty on par with how an 11 year old sees the world so then I brought all three kids out and I gave them a tutorial 101 on exactly how we clean the table and guess what it's never been a problem since now when I say clean the table there's no ambiguity they know exactly what I mean when I say clean the table and if there's ever a time and it still happens that they don't live up to the standard and don't do exactly what it is that I just said because I love them I call them out I bring them back out from their room and do whatever it is they were deficient in and they do it and they know and now there's no rebut because they understand that's the standard we've set that's the precedent we've set and I didn't live up to it so then it's my obligation in this case as their father but as a leader to hold them to that standard and the best part is once you've gotten clarity on all of this every single behavior that someone on a team exhibits can only fall into two buckets one of two buckets it's either something you accept or it's something you correct that's it after we're done having dinner and whichever child I assigned to clean the table there's only two things possible either you did this correctly or you did this incorrectly there is no gray area in this case I actually love that it's binary now if it is done correctly and when you see someone on a team doing behavior that is in alignment with your core values and your mission and your vision you need to praise it and you need to acknowledge it because that which gets praised gets repeated if someone on a team does not do what the standard is and does not live up to the core values or the vision or mission then you have to care enough to correct it or in your cases coach it to be able to let them know this is not the way we do things and we need to coach them to higher performance but every single thing we do we either accept it or we correct it now let's talk about communication now i'll put a big bow tie on this and then we'll get some hopefully some wonderful dialogue and some some q and a going when it comes to communication you just have to realize you were always communicating something always even when you're not speaking you're communicating something over the course of the last hour plus every single one of you has been communicating a message to me based on your eye contact facial expressions posture body language even the birds out there have been communicating something i i don't i don't know exactly what i'm not fluent in bird but they're communicating something but more important than that than those non-verbals is there's an unconscious message that goes underneath every single thing that we attempt to communicate and i just want to make sure that you guys are aware of that and that you own those unconscious messages one of the best examples i know of is delegation when you delegate something of importance to someone else whether it's one of your children or it's somebody on your team when you delegate something of importance you send an unconscious message that i trust you i believe in you i know you're good enough to get this done that is a very powerful unconscious message that will actually strengthen your relationship with that person however and this happens a lot with high performers and i have so much empathy and compassion for this but lots of times we delegate something and then we micromanage it we either literally or figuratively stand over their shoulder breathing down their neck watching them across every t and dot every i and what's the unconscious message when we micromanage yeah it's the exact opposite of what i just shared i don't trust you i don't believe in you i don't think you're good enough to get this done and i know that's not what you mean i know that's not what you intend but that is what they receive one of the earliest coaching maxims i ever had was it's not what you say it's what they hear that's all that matters and what they're going to hear is they don't trust me they don't believe in me they don't think i'm good enough and that will erode your unconscious relationship with that person it's like pulling a thread out of a sweater so we have to make sure that we are owning the unconscious messages what's the unconscious message you send to someone when you are fully present with them in the moment no phones eye contact heart mind body and soul when you are fully present with another human being what's the unconscious message you send them yeah you're important to me i value you i'm about to make a deposit of one of if not arguably the most important currency i have which is my attention in the present moment and i'm going to invest that in you right now that's an unconscious message and we need to make sure we are making that investment that one in particular is often as possible when it comes to communication and when it comes to these different pillars of team awareness whether it's role clarity or accountability coach k does it as well as anyone that i've ever seen in my entire life how many of you watch the the final game or saw any of the coverage on him all right so we don't have a lot of basketball fans that's all right well i had a chance to meet coach k back when i was working at montrose christian i was working at montrose christian as the performance coach it's where kevin durant graduated from and we've had some really good players and i had a chance to talk to coach k for just a few minutes before practice one day and this was a really really big deal to me at the time because he was someone that i'd idolized my entire coaching career and the funny part is even though we had this conversation to this day i still don't remember a single word that either one of us said i wasn't near as present or grounded or aware then as i'd like to believe i am now because i really don't remember anything that he said but i'll never forget how he made me feel he was fully present the entire time he made great eye contact had a warm smile very open body language he showed a genuine curiosity in asking me question after question now i was raised old school i was raised that when someone goes out of their way to do something nice for you you handwrite them a thank you note which by the way is an absolute lost art and i think every successive year that goes by we see fewer and fewer handwritten thank you notes if you want to find a way to separate yourself and to make a deposit into another human being get back to the practice or get to the practice of handwriting notes and the reason i bring that up is i hand wrote him a thank you note telling him how amazing it was to meet him and how much i enjoyed our conversation well three weeks later i get a note back from coach k and i know you guys can't see this because it's dark and you're sitting kind of far away but it's just a few sentences on the front of his stationary that in essence said the same thing no alan it was nice to meet you love the work that you're doing always rooting for you coach k how long do you think it took him to write this even if he's slow maybe 60 seconds i mean how long does it take to write three sentences on the front of an index card maybe 60 seconds maybe two minutes can we agree that over the span of our entire lives 60 seconds is a little thing yeah well this little thing had a profound impact on my life this little thing is why i wake up every day with an attitude of gratitude and the singular goal of telling as many people as i can i appreciate you i mean this little thing is why i'm relentless and returning emails and voicemails and phone calls because i believe and i know that i'm biased but if the greatest coach in the history of all of team sports can make the time to hand write me a thank you note you better believe i can call you back you better believe i can respond to your email so just remember guys as coaches and people of influence and impact the little things you do make a huge huge difference especially when done consistently now i want to put a big bow tie on this with one final story and then we'll open it up to about 15 minutes of q and a i told you about the coby bryant skills academy what i did not tell you was there was a very special college counselor that was there now we had no idea he was special at the time because he didn't have the physical stature or the resume of the other college counselors but we learned very quickly there was something about this young man that was unique and it was palpable the most impressive of these tells was at the end of the first workout he tapped me on the shoulder and said coach will you rebound for me because i don't leave the gym until i swish five fritos in a row swish five fritos in a row for any of you that have never shot a basketball yourself let me just tell you that is a really really really high standard a bat a swish by definition is the perfect shot it doesn't touch the rim it doesn't touch the backboard it gets its name from the sound it makes by going nothing but net and this young man was not going to leave the gym until he swished five in a row which means he could have swished four in a row hit a little bit of the rim on the fifth one it still went in he'd still be mathematically perfect he'd still be five for five but that wasn't good enough for him he would start over and if memory serves it never took him longer than 12 to 15 minutes to swish five in a row that young man was stefan curry of the golden state warriors who will go down in history as the greatest shooter that the game has ever seen and it's not by accident it's not by luck it's not even because his dad played in the nba it's because he's willing to hold himself to unparalleled standards and that's the thought that i want to leave you all with before i pass it back over to kim and we open up the q and a for a few minutes that the standards that you set today and the standards that your clients set today particularly in your self-awareness and your team awareness and everything that we've discussed the standards you set today will determine who and where you'll be tomorrow


Hello and welcome friends, I'm Philip Magnus and this is my Lords of Uncreation review, sit back and relax. As I tell you how it really is quite infuriating, how good Tchaikovsky, Adrian Tchaikovsky, that is, is a this whole writing thing. Although I suppose that could be right about the other Tchaikovskis as well, mostly with music, not with writing, but we'll move on from that. Lords of Uncreation marks the final exclamation mark, a bit of totology for you, to what has become a favourite trilogy of mine in the space opera genre. There is little I could tell you in this book review that I haven't already said about the final architecture trilogy elsewhere, not without spoiling the delightful series of twists and turns that punctuate this final journey alongside characters Idris, Solace, Chris, Oli and Timo, Kittering, Agent Javier Mundi and others. It takes a lot for the hegemony to break its non-interference clause, yet the machinations, certain elements of the Partheni and Hugu, government force the advanced federation of alien species, led by the inscrutable Essiel to throw a real fit. Now the Parthenian Hugu governments, if you haven't seen my previous reviews, are two of the, let's call them biggest factions of humanity. The Hugu government is really the main body of humanity, a council of all surviving human worlds after the loss of Earth, whereas the Partheni are a genetically engineered race of warrior angels, shall we call them. They've got a bit of that warhammer 40k sisters of mercy DNA going through them and if I know Adrian Tchaikovsky, he probably drew some inspiration from there because he is as far as I know a bit of a warhammer 40k nerd, which is lovely anyway.  I love that alien, never have I loved the space gangster as much as I have loved this one and his even more audacious protégé Oly Timo, the protégé in question, her connection to acclue gains a whole new dimension that makes up for one of the emotional centerpieces of the entire novel and series around it. Among my favorite descriptions of a character probably ever written is this one. Quote, Oly and Timo was harder to get rid of than a venereal disease working for the huge tax office. That's got brilliant. In fact, what makes this final book in the trilogy so excellent is that every one of the main characters I recounted above receives a satisfying end to their narrative arc. So do most side characters. I do not wish to go in-depth with all of them, as I have a tendency to write long analyses of Tchaikovsky's books, a tendency that recently and me a master's in English literature, bragging, not complaining. I'll just underline how happy I am with where Idris and Solis and Chris all end up. Similarly, my sorrow for some of these characters that didn't make it is genuine. The loss of friends, human and un- human, un-human, in-human hits hard. As always, Tchaikovsky makes the reader feel for life forms you don't expect to ever feel for. That's one of the many reasons I keep coming back to his works. Every one of the three novels in the final architecture trilogy had a slightly different feel to it. Shards of earth, sword, a lost family I have come to know and love, shaped through trials by fire, blood and iniquity. Eyes of the void did not leave behind this sense of importance to the small-scale lives of our protagonists, but doubled down on the scale of the threat, the scale of this universe itself. Laws of uncreation is high-octane throughout, never for a moment accepting any kind of status quo, with the universe imploding around these characters without, well, a moment's respite. I will miss this universe. I will miss its characters, both those lost along the way and those who managed to stick the landing and get their just deserts. However, I don't feel that anything was left unresolved that should have been expanded upon. And isn't that a great feeling? Laws of uncreation examines the mysteries so central to the series and explores them fully. The architects' nature is given a place to shine. Their masters are revealed. And so are the countless mysteries that have made of unspace a delightful world-building element to speculate on and read about. I did trope-check posts for the previous two books on my blog and hoped to do one for this third one too. However, I couldn't stuff my copy of Laws of uncreation in my luggage as I went home for the summer, so it might have to wait for a little bit. There's more to be said about this book in series, but it will have to wait a bit, bummer. The main thing is, you'll enjoy this book in series if you like space gangsters that make Jabba the Hutt look like a big old pushover. You're into fully realized worlds with deep existential threats and universe-ending narratives. Or you just love lawyers wielding knives and that kind of thing. Lawyers using words and sharp things to starve people to death seems to be a team with my book reviews lately. I don't mind it. And more, probably. At any rate, if you enjoyed this book review, let me know. Maybe check the videos I have on the final architectures, previous two books in the trilogy. Don't forget to smash that like button, subscribe for more, and I will see you next time. But before I do, unsubmitters, have you read any of Tchenkovsky's works? Are you going to? The answer is yes. And what are you reading right now? Tell me. Make my day. Yeah? Yeah. I'm Philip Magnus. You're not. I'll see you again next time. Bye!


Mr. X has a quick tip for us. He says It would probably be helpful to remind the audience that even when you're using a VPN You can still leak your real IP via DNS leaking And there is a useful site to test for DNS leaks and it's called DNS leak test calm So we will put a link to that in the show notes and this is correct You can if DNS isn't being routed through the VPN You can still very easily leak your real IP to a to a DNS server and and may even wind up getting You know DNS results that are specific to your area and not the area that you're intending to VPN from so That's a great tip. Thank you. Mr. X will put that link in the show notes at Mackie cub comm Of course, if you go visit Mackie cub comm you can give us your email and sign up for the list so that you get show notes Delivered to your inbox every week. You don't even have to look for them. They just were right there You have to go once then after that all good