You'd be amazed how many emotionally immature coaches there are in sports.
(Or maybe you wouldn't.)

Half the work of working with young pros is helping them realize: It's not personal.

The psychological games? The mixed messages?
That's not about the athlete's skill or future.
It's about the coach's own insecurity.

That's when we talk about standards–and thermostats.

When everything around you feels unstable or reactive, you need something stable and chosen.

A standard is a promise you make to yoursel...

Casting the vision is the easy part.
Big words. Bold dreams. Applause.

But then comes Tuesday.
Then comes complexity.
Then come the good ideas.

Not the bad ones—those are easy to spot.
Easy to decline.

The real test is this:

Can you say no to something smart?
Something profitable? Something popular?

Can you look someone important in the eye—and turn down an opportunity that would look great on paper but pull you off course?

You see—vision doesn’t vanish.
It drifts.

One well-meaning yes at ...

One Story

A Company Built by Following Your Values

Yvon Chouinard never set out to build a company. He just needed better gear.

In the 1950s, Chouinard taught himself blacksmithing and started forging his own climbing pitons—metal spikes climbers hammer into rock faces for support. The ones on the market weren’t strong enough for the kind of climbing he wanted to do.

So he made his own. By hand. Tested them himself. And when his climbing partners saw what he was using, they wanted some too.

A $3.5 million violin. A world-class musician. And no one stops to listen.

Joshua Bell, one of the greatest violinists alive, stands in a Washington, D.C. subway station, playing for an hour. Thousands walk past. Few stop. Even fewer notice.

Not because the music isn’t brilliant—but because the setting makes it invisible.

It turns out, if your best work gets lost in the noise, it changes nothing.

Culture works the same way.

People don’t respond to what you claim is important. They respond t...

Think about writer’s block. Someone says, “I don’t have any good ideas.” The best response? “Okay, but do you hav...

Culture isn’t a vibe. It’s not a feeling. It’s not a general sense of “we like it here.”

That’s fine if all you want is a pleasant place to work. A team that gets along.

But if you’re building something that matters—something that lasts—culture isn’t about harmony. It’s about clarity.

The best cultures aren’t the ones where everyone agrees all the time. They’re the ones where everyone knows where they stand.

What’s expected. What matters. Where the lines are.

Clarity beats harmony. Because ...

Culture was never a slogan.

It’s not a mission statement or a set of values listed on a website. It’s not what gets talked about in pregame speeches or hung on the walls of the locker room.

Culture is what actually happens.

It’s the stories that get celebrated. The behaviors that get praised. The standards that get upheld—not because a coach enforces them, but because the team owns them.

Culture is the shared understanding of “this is how we do it here.”

And here’s the thing—this kind of cu...