When my clients (athletes and coaches) move in-season, everything changes.

Long-term planning shrinks.
The horizon disappears.
The rhythm becomes day-to-day, week-to-week.

Every conversation seems to be about reacting to, rolling with, and managing the moment.

And yet, no matter where we start, we tend to circle back to two themes:

1. Self-care
   Your body is the instrument.
   Diet, sleep, hydration. They’re not luxuries. They’re the foundation.
   If you’re run down, you can’t rise to the challenge in ...

Most of the coaches I work with are in the thick of fall camp.
Long days. Tired voices. And a repetition that feels like Groundhog Day.

One message I keep offering as a warning (an invitation?):

"Remember, you're not just leading people.
You're leading the STORIES you've been telling yourself about those people."

The guy who "can't make a block in space."
The position group that "doesn't have many leaders."
The other coach who's "just an *@sshole."

Once that story forms, you often only see what you expe...

The night before a big game, I like to walk teams through a simple visualization of their gameday schedule.

Wake-up. Breakfast. Position meetings. Walk-through. The bus ride to the stadium. Getting taped. Getting dressed. Warmups. Kickoff.

I tell them to see it all in their minds eye. Every moment. Each conversation. The whole thing.

And once we finish? I invite them to do it again.
Same schedule. Same bus ride. Same warmups.

But this time, I ask them to imagine themselves showing up...

With...

NFL camps start next week. After a decade coaching players and coaches in this league, I've noticed something:

My most accomplished clients?
They're not just talented. They're obsessed.

Psychologist Ellen Winner calls it "rage to master." A deep, internal drive to understand, create, solve. Not for applause. Not for trophies. But because there's still room to grow.

Every one of these folks has it.

In fact, every truly accomplished person I've worked with has it. It's less about being the best. And mo...

You chase it.
A goal. A milestone. Day 100.

You swear it’s just over the next hill.
A little more effort. A little more grind. Then–arrival.

But when you get there?
It’s gone.

Turns out, “there” was never the point.

The process was.
The showing up.
The noticing.
The courage to care enough to act.
The discomfort of pressing publish.
The quiet joy of impact.

You didn’t cross a finish line.
You built a rhythm.
And in turn, the rhythm built you.

Funny thing about goals:
They’re useful–only if ...

We were taught:
Ready. Aim. Fire.

But that’s not how it works.
Not really.

You don’t know what ready means
Until you’ve shot the ball a few times.
Missed. Rebounded. Adjusted. 
Shot again.

That’s how you get ready.
That’s how you get clear.

So yeah—Stop rehearsing.
Shoot the ball.
Then adjust your aim.
And shoot again.

Eventually you’ll find ready. 

Fire. Aim. Ready.

It's the first question in any coaching conversation.

What do you want?

Not what's next. Not what's expected. Not what keeps the plates spinning.
What do you want?

It's a hard question when you've been head down for so long.
Another day becomes another week becomes another deadline becomes another fire to put out.

So many of us have gone numb. Our impulses aren't even ours anymore. They belong to the systems we serve.

So before anything else, the coach's task is simple:
Cut through the noise.
C...

Most problems aren’t that mysterious.

When someone’s stuck—complaining, venting, circling the same drain—it’s usually one of three things:

Skills. Standards. Beliefs.

They don’t know how to do the thing.
They haven’t decided what they’ll tolerate.
Or they’re telling themselves a story that makes the whole thing feel impossible.

That’s it.
(This is also the simple gap framework we use in nearly all of our coaching conversations.)

So the next time someone comes to you with a problem, don’t jus...

Reading won’t do it.
Another certification won’t do it.
Even clarity won’t do it.

Only action changes you.

You don’t think your way into a new identity.
You act your way there.

Because no amount of thinking creates
What one act of courage can.

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 ...

We've worked with head coaches.
First-round draft picks.
Olympic medalists.
Fortune 100 CEOs and their teams.
NYT bestselling authors.
Founders who exited to millions.

Sounds flashy.
Maybe it is.
But here’s the truth:

They’re just humans.
Humans who did the one thing most people won’t.

They refused to stop.

In failure.
With critics.
On the good days.
And on the ones where everything in them wanted to quit.
They refused to stop.

When they didn’t win the starting job. When the launch bombed. When the mar...

ONE STORY

"When Impact Went Invisible"

In the 1960s, NHL teams—including the dominant Montreal Canadiens—had a problem: They were building rosters and rewarding players based on stats that didn't always lead to wins.

Goals. Assists. Penalty minutes. Easy to track—but incomplete.

The players with the most points weren't always the ones who made the team better. Sometimes, the biggest names disrupted chemistry more than they created momentum.

Teams noticed something frustrating: You could los...

The best athletes I’ve worked with all have one thing in common:

They believed before anyone else did.

That belief converted directly into action.
Not performance—preparation.

Extra work no one assigned.
Pilates. Recovery routines.
Massages. Mental reps.
Road habits. Food discipline.
Books. Self-talk. Silence.

What’s remarkable isn’t the work itself—it’s this:

No one asked them to do it.

They didn’t wait for coaching approval.
They didn’t seek team validation.

They carried an unshakable b...

 Limits feel real—right up until someone proves they aren’t.

Take the four-minute mile.

For decades, it was considered impossible.
Physiologically unsafe.
A boundary too bold for the human body.

Experts said the human heart and lungs couldn’t sustain the effort needed for that speed.
They said the strain on muscles and joints could lead to breakdown or injury.
That it was at the very edge of human capability—if not beyond it.

But Roger Bannister didn’t buy it.

Bannister wasn’t paid.
He trained d...

The most powerful voice in your life is the one in your head.

It shapes how you show up—or don’t.
It critiques. It hesitates. It keeps you small.

And it sounds convincing—because it’s well-rehearsed.

But that voice can be replaced.

Not with hype. Not with noise.
With something stronger.

Credible self-talk is a trained voice you trust under pressure.

Here’s how to build it...

1. Find a Reason

A voice without purpose is easy to knock off course.
But when you know what matters and where ...

Fear isn’t the problem.

It’s the moment after.

The hesitation. The second-guessing. The debate in your head.

You see the flaw in the plan but stay quiet—what if you're wrong? The final shot is yours, but you freeze—what if you miss? The idea sits in your head, full of promise, but you stall—what if they don’t like it?

Fear is universal. We all feel it. But what happens next? That’s the difference.

That split second—where you either step forward or step back. Where you take the leap or let f...

You see something others don’t.

A vision. An idea. A way to serve the people around you.

It lives in you—and only you.

But no one is asking you to bring it to life. No one is knocking on your door, insisting you build, create, or share what only you can see.

So you wait.

You wait to feel inspired, to be pulled forward by some external force. You assume motivation comes before action.

But that’s not how it works.

The Fuel Doesn’t Kick In Until the Engine’s Running

Think about it.

The fir...

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...