 Be a Verb, Not a NounMeet Gregg Popovich. The winningest coach in NBA history, five-time NBA champion, and what most would consider one of the best coaches in the history of basketball, maybe all of sport. Even with all the accolades, the most remarkable aspect of Popovich’s legacy is what his former players say about him. They don’t lead with his win-loss record or his championship runs. To them, “coach” was a title that was insufficient to describe what he meant to them.
For example, in 2018 DeMar DeRozan had just received word that his father had passed away. Devastated and sitting alone in his San Antonio hotel room DeRozan heard a knock minutes after informing the Spurs front office of his loss and plans to head home for the arrangements. It was Pop. He sat in the room and cried with DeRozan for two hours. In simple Pop fashion he declared, “I’m not leaving until you leave.” When another former Spurs player, Dejuan Murray, spoke about Popovich, he got emotional and said, "I love that dude to death, man. He's like a father to me. When I would lose people, I would go to his room, and he would give me that hug. I would cry on his shoulder. I'd vent to him. He was just there for me. And that has nothing to do with basketball. We're talking about real life." Popovich was “Coach” by title. It was a noun that described his position. But his actions, the behaviors, the way he showed up day after day is what defined who he actually was. He wasn't great because he was a coach. He was a great coach because of how he coached, how he cared, how he showed up for his players when they needed him most. The title gave him access. The actions earned him influence. The difference between the two is everything. Why Should We Care? We've got this thing all backwards. We chase titles, positions, and labels as if those things define us. We act as if becoming president or head coach or COO is the goal. But titles are simply the nouns. They're descriptors of where you sit in an organizational chart or at the meeting table. They might grant you authority, but they don't make you a leader. They might give you a team, but they don't make you someone worth following. The mistake we make is thinking that once we achieve the title, that it defines us. But, it's the verbs, the daily actions and behaviors, that determine whether that title means anything at all. Far too many people get promoted into positions of authority and then spend the rest of their careers protecting the title rather than living out the behaviors that made them deserve it in the first place. They become more concerned with their title than with actually leading. They focus on maintaining their position rather than serving the people in their charge. But the truth is people don't follow titles. They follow actions. Your title might get you in the room, but your behaviors determine whether anyone listens to you once you're there. REAL TALK - Action Steps Shifting from title-focused to action-focused leadership requires intentional practices that keep you grounded in what you do rather than what you're called. Here are a few ideas to maintain that focus:
Stop worrying about whether you're called a leader. Start focusing on whether you're actually leading. Be a verb, not a noun. Let your actions speak louder than any title ever could. Checkout Surrender the Outcome on Amazon and order The Score That Matters with Ryan Hawk & Brook Cupps. The latest blog from Blue Collar Grit can be found here!
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 Feeling ReadyAdmittedly, I’m not a Harry Potter fan. Also admittedly, I’m not not a Harry Potter fan. I’ve never read it - not a big sci-fi, make-believe kind-a-guy but based on the scores of fans I am convinced it’s incredible. As good as the story may be, J.K. Rowling’s account of bringing it to the masses may be even better.
The idea of a boy wizard named Harry Potter had come to her seven years prior to the initial submission of the manuscript. On a four hour train ride from Manchester to London, Rowling’s imagination ran wild with the tales and adventures which would eventually entertain millions. At the time she was on the verge of depressed from the loss of her mother, alone having just left a failed marriage, and broke on welfare. Not exactly the perfect circumstances for a budding author. Years later after finally getting everything down on paper, Rowling went months bouncing back and forth between turning the manuscript into a publisher and hiding it to never be seen again. She never felt ready. How could she? She had never published anything in her life. Unqualified was an understatement. Why would anyone want to read what she had to write? Fortunately for all the Potterheads out there, Rowling finally decided to submit the manuscript. Not because she felt ready or because she became confident. It’s more simple than that. She submitted it because she made the decision to. Rather than wait to feel ready, she decided to act. What followed was twelve rejections from publishers - twelve! To her credit, once she decided to submit the manuscript she never waivered. Her feelings about readiness had become irrelevant. Over 600 million copies later, Rowling is now recognized as the first billionaire author. Her readiness came from the doing, not before it. Why Should We Care? Waiting to feel ready is one of the most clever forms of self-sabotage we practice. We tell ourselves we're being responsible, strategic, and wise. That we don't want to act prematurely. But what we're actually doing is confusing readiness as a state of preparation and readiness as a state of emotion. You can be prepared without feeling ready. And, you can act without feeling ready. Readiness is not discovered. It's decided. Being more qualified, more confident, or in a different circumstance doesn’t do it. The willingness to make readiness a choice rather than a feeling is precisely what separates people who have goals from those who actually achieve them. Too many people are waiting for a cosmic experience that will all the sudden make them feel ‘ready’. In leadership, if you feel ready it’s not that big of a decision. The biggest decisions you'll ever make will be decisions you don't feel ready for. If you wait until you feel ready for these moments, you'll wait forever, because the feeling of readiness is often the result of taking action, not the prerequisite for it. REAL TALK - Action Steps Deciding to be ready requires intentional practices that separate your feelings from your decisions and help you act before confidence arrives. Here are a few ideas to get started:
This is the pattern that defines every significant achievement. Someone decides to move forward before they feel prepared, and through the movement, they become what they needed to be. Checkout Surrender the Outcome on Amazon and order The Score That Matters with Ryan Hawk & Brook Cupps. The latest blog from Blue Collar Grit can be found here!  Urgent & PresentFor years one of the early assignments in our leadership class was the eulogy exercise in which students were tasked with writing their own eulogy. While it creeped most of them out, they all did it and their reflections following its completion surprised even themselves.
Of course, they had never thought about dying, at least not to the extent of what was going to be said at their funeral. But, its reality does offer some clarity that’s unattainable through any other path. The most significant being the acceptance that they don’t have forever. If there’s things they want to do, they better start getting to them before it’s too late. As they wrestle with this, they quickly realize the only way to capitalize on those special moments they’ve dreamed of is to be present in them. Steve Jobs may be the best example. In regards to gaining this perspective Jobs was quoted saying, “Remembering that I'll be dead soon is the most important tool I've ever encountered to help me make the big choices in life, because almost everything - all external expectations, all pride, all fear of embarrassment or failure - these things just fall away in the face of death, leaving only what is truly important." In Jobs' famous 2005 Stanford commencement speech, delivered two years after being diagnosed with pancreatic cancer, Jobs added "Your time is limited, so don't waste it living someone else's life. Don't be trapped by dogma, which is living with the results of other people's thinking. Don't let the noise of others' opinions drown out your own inner voice. And most importantly, have the courage to follow your heart and intuition." Jobs had clarity on something most of us struggle to grasp, urgency and presence aren't opposites. They're partners. Being urgently aware that your time is limited doesn't mean you can't be fully present in the time you have. In fact, it's the awareness of limitation that makes presence possible, because it strips away everything that doesn't truly matter. Why Should We Care? How do we hold the tension between urgency and presence? It’s an important one. Most of us simply bounce between the two. We either live with such urgency that we're never truly present or we're so focused on being present and mindful that we lose the healthy sense of urgency that creates momentum and prevents procrastination. We tell ourselves we're "being present" when we're actually just avoiding what we know we need to do. Bishop Rosie O'Neal's definition of procrastination as "the arrogant assumption that God owes you another opportunity for what you already had time to do" reminds us that procrastination isn't just poor time management, it's an issue of the soul. When we put off what we know we should do today, we're operating from a place of assumed entitlement to tomorrow. We're acting as if time is guaranteed, as if opportunities are unlimited, as if this moment doesn't really matter because there will always be another one. The opportunity in front of you right now is a gift, not a right. Treating it casually, assuming you'll get another chance, is not just inefficient. It's presumptuous. It's living as if you have more control over time than you actually do. The leaders who create lasting impact are those who have learned to be both urgent and present simultaneously. They understand that every conversation matters. And not in some abstract, philosophical way, but in the concrete reality that this conversation with this person at this moment may be the only chance to say what needs to be said. That the opportunity to influence someone's life or direction is time-sensitive and unrepeatable. But, they also don't live in frantic anxiety about the future, constantly rushing, never satisfied, always focused on what's next. They're fully engaged in the work of this day, this conversation, because they understand that presence is how urgency expresses itself most powerfully. You can't be urgently impactful if you're not present enough to see what this moment actually requires from you. REAL TALK - Action Steps Living with both urgency and presence requires intentional practices that keep you anchored in reality. Time is limited, this moment matters. Here are a few ideas to start you down the path:
Anxiety assumes today doesn't matter enough. That we need to rush past this moment to get to the next one. But, if we listen, our wisdom will whisper that today is all we truly have, and it’s always just enough. Checkout Surrender the Outcome on Amazon and order The Score That Matters with Ryan Hawk & Brook Cupps. The latest blog from Blue Collar Grit can be found here!  Life is a CreationAt fifteen years old, Arnold Schwarzenegger made a decision on who he would become, and then he built that man. He described it as ‘magical’ because it was the first time in his life that he realized who he wanted to be. Schwarzenegger recalled, “I knew I was going to be a bodybuilder. It wasn’t simply that either. I would be the best bodybuilder in the world, the greatest, the best-built man.”
As he transitioned to Hollywood, Schwarzenegger encountered resistance at every turn - his thick Austrian accent was too hard to understand, his clunky bodybuilder physique was wrong for acting, and his name was too long and unpronounceable. Similar to his fifteen year old decision to be a bodybuilder, Schwarzenegger had already made the decision. He was going to be an actor. His response to the naysaying agents and casting people seemed like a joke at the time, but turned out to be prophetic: “Eventually, there will be only one Arnold, and they won’t need to be able to spell Schwarzenegger.” He didn't soul search to discover if acting was his authentic calling. He simply decided to create a new version of himself. We couldn't imagine a bodybuilder chatting it up with Johnny Carson until we saw him on The Tonight Show. We couldn't imagine the guy who was so convincing as a killer robot in The Terminator becoming governor of California. Nonetheless, Schwarzenegger made it all real by deliberately creating who he needed to be in each chapter of his life. Bodybuilder. Actor. Governor. Each version was intentionally constructed, not passively uncovered. Why Should We Care? Here’s the danger with self-discovery: it’s passive. The narrative tells us that we need to ‘discover ourselves’ by peeling back layers until we find our true, authentic core. We search for our purpose, try to reveal our core values, and attempt to uncover our passions as if our identity exists somewhere out there or deep inside us. If we’re not careful, years can pass while we’re waiting for clarity, searching for signs, and hoping for a revelation about who we’re supposed to be. However, life holds a different truth. It’s not a treasure hunt for a pre-existing self, it’s a creation process. We don’t discover who we are as much as we decide who we want to be and then build that person through our choices, habits, and actions. Our perspective on life changes when we recognize and take agency over our own development. The key aspect of that shift is understanding that our identity is something we actively construct, not something we passively uncover. The most transformational leaders aren't those who spent decades finding themselves, they just had the courage to decide who they needed, or wanted, to become and then did the work to become it. The discovery model leaves you too dependent on external validation. The creation model puts the power back in your hands, in your choices, in your daily decisions about who you're becoming. REAL TALK - Action Steps Shifting from discovery to creation requires changing your relationship with identity from something you find to something you build. Here’s a few ideas to get you started:
Life is about building an ever-evolving masterpiece, one choice at a time. Stop waiting to discover yourself. Start creating yourself. The person you become will be far more interesting than the person you might have found. Checkout Surrender the Outcome on Amazon and order The Score That Matters with Ryan Hawk & Brook Cupps. The latest blog from Blue Collar Grit can be found here!  The Brilliance of SimplicityYahoo was Google before Google was Google … kinda. In the late 1990s, Yahoo was the undisputed king of the internet. Within three years of going public, founders Jerry Yang and David Filo were worth $8 billion each. Yahoo had built an empire as the one-stop shop to the internet. It offered a search engine, email, news, weather, entertainment, shopping, and everything else users might want. The strategy was brilliant at the time. Yahoo was the hub for all internet activity.
Meanwhile, in a dorm room at Stanford, two students were working on something drastically different in their dorm room. Larry Page and Sergey Brin were focused on something simple, just a search engine. Their creation was to do one thing: search. No portal. No news. No entertainment. You know it today as Google. While Yahoo was adding features and complexity, Google focused obsessively on simply delivering the most relevant search result as quickly as possible. The homepage was minimal with just a logo and a search box on a white page. Users quickly learned that Google got them to the right answer quickly, with minimal friction. By the early 2000s, even Yahoo recognized Google's superiority and signed an agreement making Google the search engine that powered Yahoo.com. But eventually, Yahoo returned to using its own technology, unwilling to accept the brilliance of Google’s simplicity. Today, Google handles billions of searches daily and is one of the world's largest companies. Yahoo was sold to Verizon in 2017 for $4.48 billion, a fraction of its peak value. Why Should We Care? The smartest people in the room are often the ones most vulnerable to being pulled away from simplicity. Intelligence tends to create complexity. Smart people see more variables, more contingencies, more options. They build sophisticated systems that account for every scenario. And at times, that complexity works brilliantly. But, complexity also complicates. It blurs decisions, slows agility, and can dilute our focus. Leadership is change. The strategies that made us successful yesterday will become the very things that prevent us from succeeding tomorrow. We see the pattern playout constantly. An organization will invest years in building intricate processes, elaborate systems, and complex structures, and then when circumstances shift, they can't change quickly enough. Meanwhile, someone comes along with a simpler approach - ask Blockbuster about Netflix for a quick reminder. Maybe not even a smarter approach, but definitely a simpler one. And, they win. High achievers are notorious for overcomplicating their approach to success. They develop elaborate productivity systems, complex goal frameworks, and sophisticated strategies for managing their time and energy. And while that complexity might create short-term gains, it often becomes the thing that prevents them from actually maintaining presence and living the life they are striving for. The people who sustain excellence aren't the smartest, they're the ones who've learned to keep things simple enough to remain agile. They understand that complexity is seductive because it feels thorough and intelligent, but simplicity is powerful because it's executable and adaptable. REAL TALK - Action Steps Moving from complexity toward simplicity requires courage to let go of things that no longer serve you, even if they once did. Let’s give it a shot:
Yahoo tried to be everything to everyone; Google chose to be one thing to everyone. If we’re not careful our sophistication will become our liability. Checkout Surrender the Outcome on Amazon and order The Score That Matters with Ryan Hawk & Brook Cupps. The latest blog from Blue Collar Grit can be found here! |
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