[00:00] Jamy Bechler: If I’ve got invoicing or I have all this boring junk that I don’t want to do, when am I best at doing that? Is there a certain day of the week? Is there a certain time of the day? Know myself so that it doesn’t get pushed, pushed, pushed, and then all of a sudden you’re late on stuff or stuff doesn’t get done.

[00:19] Jamy Bechler: So you’ve got to know yourself and figure out, alright, in the morning I’m better at doing this stuff, or I’m more creative in the morning, I’m more creative at night, that’s when I’m going to do my creative stuff. Or whatever it is, know yourself and then figure out when you can do that junk stuff that you don’t like to do.

[00:33] Jim Harshaw Jr.: Welcome to another episode of Success for the Athletic-Minded Man. Real talk on harnessing your athletic drive for clarity, consistency and focus in business and life. This is your host, Jim Harshaw, Jr. And today I bring you Jamy Bechler. Jamy is a professional speaker. He’s an author of several books.

[00:54] Jim Harshaw Jr.: He’s a podcast host and he’s a leadership consultant. And he’s worked with teams ranging from major corporations to the NBA. But before going into full time leadership work, he served for 20 years as a college basketball coach, as a professor, and as an administrator, when he hung up his whistle for the last time at his last college, he was the winningest basketball coach in their history.

[01:17] Jim Harshaw Jr.: So success as a basketball coach, he’s now certified as a John Maxwell leadership trainer and motivational speaker. And Jamy comes with just a lot of. Background in, in sports, but also in business. He’s a business coach, executive coach now, and he’s an entrepreneur himself. So he’s walked the walk and you know, this guy is somebody who, who was successful at what he did, and then he made this transition.

[01:44] Jim Harshaw Jr.: And I think a lot of folks listening are successful at what they do, but, uh, maybe know that there’s something next, something else, something in the future that might be different for you. So we talked a little bit about not only leadership. Principles leading from where you are, but also how to make career transitions and some sort of strategies around that, as well as some practical, actionable advice for you at the end of the episode.

[02:07] Jim Harshaw Jr.: So, all right, let’s get into it. My interview with Jamy Bechler. So. You work with a lot of leaders. I work with a lot of leaders in terms of leadership development. A lot of leaders approach their role as having tasks to do, getting their job done, getting work to do, and that sort of getting being caught in the weeds instead of.

[02:33] Jim Harshaw Jr.: Being a leader. Like why is leadership more important than doing the stuff?

[02:39] Jamy Bechler: Yeah. You know, or is it, I should ask you, I don’t want to put words in your mouth. I would say I am biased just like you. I do think leadership is more important, but it’s one of those maybe 51, 49 percent type things, because If you’re not in the weeds, if you’re not competent, I think that’s important.

[02:54] Jamy Bechler: If you’re not competent and you’re not doing those day to day or, or know how to get those day to day tasks done, then you’re not going to be a very good leader. People aren’t going to rally around you. People aren’t going to be inspired by you because you’re incompetent. So I do think not every manager.

[03:11] Jamy Bechler: See, we get leadership and management confused sometimes. They’re not synonymous, even though we tend to put it that way. We tend to lump both of those in the same conversation, but managing is kind of what you talked about. Being in the weeds, the day to day tasks, doing things, getting things done.

[03:26] Jamy Bechler: Leadership is more about making people better, making situations better, providing hope for people to a degree. Also, leadership is not about a position. So let’s say you have a bank. My wife works in a bank. You have a bank manager who could be considered the leader. They would definitely be from a positional standpoint or on a flowchart.

[03:45] Jamy Bechler: They’re the leader. But you could have the newest bank teller in that bank. Could be a leader because they can influence the person next to them at break time at lunchtime Their attitude could wear off good or bad on their co workers and then before you know it that manager has very little to say with the culture that’s going on because These these individual people are screwing up the culture These individual people are making things good or making things better So anyone could be a leader in any business or on any team Obviously the person with a position status, a title will have more of a platform, oftentimes more of an opportunity to set that direction or set that vision or be a change agent in a quicker way.

[04:27] Jamy Bechler: But anyone can be a leader, first of all, but then coming back to the management leadership type stuff as a leader, you better have some management. Abilities or people will stop following you as a coach. You could be the rah rah You could give the best motivational speeches Everyone could love you and you’ve probably heard this before on teams that you work with Oh, I really like coach, but you know coach isn’t really a very good coach But man, I really like him or I like her that will only take you so far You’ve got to be competent, but there’s a lot of managers that have no leadership They don’t go from the day to day task and inspire anyone and you know, I’m dating myself here But the old movie Ferris Bueller’s day off.

[05:09] Jamy Bechler: They’re in class They have this really smart teacher and he’s going Bueller Bueller anyone nobody’s paying attention to him because he doesn’t inspire He’s not somebody that anyone wants to pay attention to, but he’s the smartest person in the room. Managers oftentimes might be the smartest person in the room.

[05:26] Jamy Bechler: They might know exactly what should be done, but then people aren’t inspired by them. So nobody look forward to coming to work in the morning because Jim. Jim is great with the TPS reports, man. Jim knows how to fax something I’m dating myself. Jim knows how to put together the best memos or man, the best standard operating procedures that doesn’t get people out of bed in the morning to come to the job and do this job to the best of their ability.

[05:53] Jamy Bechler: They’re just doing it for a paycheck. So you’ve got to find a way, if you want to take your culture to another level or have a great work environment, you’ve got to find a way to go from just being a really good manager. To being a good leader. How can you inspire people, make people better, make situations better where people no, one’s going to do somersaults and jumping jacks and be really excited to come to work if it’s like the bank or if it’s a real estate or a, an insurance agency or whatever it is, but a good leader that maybe inspires people, makes it a little bit more fun to work.

[06:24] Jamy Bechler: You know, at this place or, or is catching people being good fist bumping every once in a while, high fives, Hey, how’s your family? That kind of stuff. Someone that goes from the managerial stuff now into the leadership where you’re making people better. Now, all of a sudden, you’re going to tend to have employees that maybe give you the benefit of the doubt a little bit longer.

[06:43] Jamy Bechler: They might stay at that job a little bit longer. And now your retention is a little bit better. You have less transitions, less people you got to hire. And so your culture is more sustainable. Yeah. Increased

[06:53] Jim Harshaw Jr.: productivity. All that. Yeah. All that stuff. The challenge is like a lot of leaders get put into that position because they’re good at the TPS reports and the memos and you know, they’re good at something.

[07:04] Jim Harshaw Jr.: And so people go, Oh, well, let’s just put them in charge of a bunch of other people who have to do those things. And you know, that’s great. There’s the competence piece that you said. A lot of leaders maybe have that ability to execute the same job that they used to do and that all their direct reports are doing.

[07:21] Jim Harshaw Jr.: It’s that leadership piece, that ability to inspire that I think is, that’s the hard part. And I don’t listen, I don’t want to put anybody down for being that, that, well, that they’re Ferris Bueller type character. I mean, I kind of see some of that in myself. Like I’m good at doing things, but when I’m put into leadership positions, like, and have been in the past, like I have to actually think about.

[07:40] Jim Harshaw Jr.: Leadership. It doesn’t necessarily come natural. It’s like, wait a second. Okay. I can’t just tell people, Hey, go do a B and C or go when I was wrestling coach, Hey, just show up and practice and do the work do what I say and then go home and come back and do what I say again tomorrow.

[07:54] Jim Harshaw Jr.: Like there has to be intention around communication, painting, division, inspiring, building relationships, developing trust. And not everybody’s going to be like you mentioned, given the high fives and patting people on the back and saying, how’s your family? Like. That comes naturally to some people and they’re sort of naturally maybe outgoing, but you can be a great leader and be an introvert, extrovert, introvert.

[08:17] Jim Harshaw Jr.: Doesn’t make you a good leader one way or the other. It’s just regardless, you have to be intentional about the activity and actions of leadership.

[08:26] Jamy Bechler: You hit upon that word right at the end. That was awesome. Intentional. You might be an introvert. You might not even like people. All right, you’ve got to figure out a way to intentionally, purposefully get involved with the people, even if you don’t totally like people in general, and there’s managers out there like that.

[08:44] Jamy Bechler: There’s leaders, there’s people in charge that don’t like people or are introverted. I know those aren’t the same. They’re not the same thing, but oftentimes people that don’t like people will say that they’re introverted because they don’t want to admit that they just don’t like people. But with that being said, you’ve got to find a way and understand that.

[09:03] Jamy Bechler: You might be introverted, you might not even be comfortable giving a rah rah speech, or whatever, that’s fine. A one on one, I go up to Jim, I’m like, Hey your wife was having knee surgery, how did that go? Or, hey, your grandpa X, Y, or Z or your mom X, Y, or Z. Or you ask them, Hey, you got vacation coming up any big plans or whatever, and you a negative person could be like, well, I don’t want to get involved in their business and all that stuff.

[09:30] Jamy Bechler: Well then figure out a way to get involved without getting too personally. So Jim, if you like a certain sports team. That’s not being personal to be like, Hey, they’re in the playoffs. You’re going to watch the game. You’re obviously you’re going to watch the game. You know, you’re going to go to a sports bar.

[09:45] Jamy Bechler: You can watch it with friends or whatever. Talk about something that’s important to them. I started doing that toward the back half of my career as a coach. I started doing that with our athletes before practice. I would pick two or three players every day and I would intentionally go up to them. And talk to them about something I had already decided I was going to talk to them.

[10:04] Jamy Bechler: So, so maybe they love Taylor Swift. They’re a Swifty. So, we’re going to talk to them about Taylor Swift coming to a location near them, this summer, to do a concert. Are they going to go to that? Or whatever. Or Tom Brady winning a Super Bowl, and they love Tom Brady. Things like that. And it’d only be a two or three minute conversation, and when I’m done with them, I’m like, Hey Jim, maybe you’re shooting free throws at the side, and I’m rebounding for you for two or three minutes while we talk about Tom Brady.

[10:29] Jamy Bechler: You know what, when we’re done with that, real quick, I’m gonna hand you the ball, I’m gonna high five you or something and be like, hey, this is gonna be a good practice I like your form, this is gonna be fun today, I’ll see you in a few minutes, and then you walk over to the next person that you’re gonna talk to, and they’re maybe tying their shoe, well, you can do that in your place of business as well, you can be like, hey, what Can I talk to Jim about today?

[10:50] Jamy Bechler: That’s not calling him into the office calling him in the principal’s office type thing. What can I do to start connecting with Jim a little bit more because then those little small connections, you do those. For six, seven, eight weeks, if you approach it from a long game perspective, after six, seven, eight weeks, you’ve, you’ve melted some ice, you’ve built more connection, you’ve built a little bit more trust, you’ve put some emotional deposits into that emotional bank account.

[11:15] Jamy Bechler: Because when we go to the bank, we want money in that bank so we can withdraw it. Well, when we have to have a conversation with something or somebody and we want to motivate somebody, we better have something in that emotional bank account. And oftentimes we don’t as Especially as managers, we don’t because we’re all about the TPS reports.

[11:32] Jamy Bechler: We’re all about filling out the requisitions the right way or whatever. And you mentioned. You know, sometimes you get promoted and this, this can be a whole different section, but you get promoted because you were good at something the, the office, some of your listeners are fans of the office.

[11:47] Jamy Bechler: Well, Michael Scott was the best salesperson. Then he gets promoted to manager. And the whole show is essentially about his. Goofs and his buffoonery as a manager. He’s a terrible manager. He’s not good at that, but he got promoted because he was good at being a salesperson. We oftentimes don’t put people in the right positions.

[12:07] Jamy Bechler: We set people up for failure. A coach could put a player in the wrong position. They can’t dribble with their left hand, but we have them in a play dribbling with their left hand. And then we get mad at the kid because they screwed up. And it’s like. Yeah, but we probably could have done something a little bit better.

[12:22] Jamy Bechler: We do that with our employees as well. We don’t set our people up for success, whether it’s the position they’re in or it’s the training that they receive. We don’t always equip our people properly to do their job.

[12:33] Jim Harshaw Jr.: And for the listener, I want to point out, like Jamy talked about being very intentional about, okay, there’s two or three players I’m going to go talk to today and.

[12:41] Jim Harshaw Jr.: Investing that time. And it’s easy as a leader to think, okay, I need to do my TPS reports. So I need to talk to so and so about him doing his TPS reports or her doing hers. But you’re talking about something about relationship building and Those conversations with a leader are so impactful, like is leaders and again, leader by title leader, just by becoming a leader from wherever you’re at, like having those intentional conversations with people.

[13:12] Jim Harshaw Jr.: Are so much more impactful than I think that all of us, I mean, if we took leadership out of the question or out of the equation here, we’re just talking about, like, if you go approach somebody and talk about them, ask them about them, focus on them. Those conversations are so powerful. I think back to when I was wrestling, there was a conversation I had with a guy named Mike, my craft check on my wrestling team.

[13:32] Jim Harshaw Jr.: I was a freshman. He was a fifth year senior and he used to beat the. Living tar out of me at practice. He was an all American and I wanted to be like Mike and I had a conversation with the ones after practice and that, that conversation in the conversation was essentially this. I mean, everybody had left the room.

[13:47] Jim Harshaw Jr.: Mike always stayed late and Mike’s in there doing some extra conditioning by himself. And I’m like, I’m just going to sit around and watch Mike. You know, I jumped on the airdyne bike and I’m doing a little bit of workout and watching Mike. And then afterwards we chatted and he talked about sort of. Like how do you get as good as you get and he talked about his level of just the work that he puts in the extra work ethic and how I can do it.

[14:07] Jim Harshaw Jr.: And he believed in me and all this. And I, and I ended up following in his footstep and becoming an all American as well. And I guarantee you, he does. He has no idea. He does no recollection of that conversation, but I do because I’m talking with a leader. So. Those conversations, Jamy, that you’re talking about are so important.

[14:24] Jim Harshaw Jr.: So impactful. They’re more important than the TPS report, or at least in your, in your view, 51 percent more important, you know?

[14:31] Jamy Bechler: Yeah. And it doesn’t have to be, and this is as a young coach, I was all about, well, yeah, I’m going to meet with my players. And so they come into the office, they sit in across from my desk.

[14:40] Jamy Bechler: So there’s a barrier between me and them and I have a normal meeting with them. You know, and I’m fooling myself into thinking I’m connecting with our athletes because we’re having weekly meetings. Well, the environment is kind of stuffy, it’s structured. Organizationally, it might be what is good for exerting power, but it’s not for having a conversation and connecting.

[15:02] Jamy Bechler: You know, there’s still that intimidation factor. I’m in charge. I called this meeting, it doesn’t seem like they’re special because I’m doing this with everybody. But when you talk to them at a break or just out of the blue, you congratulate them on something they didn’t see coming or you praise them for some something, you catch them being good at something.

[15:22] Jamy Bechler: Now, all of a sudden, that’s something more than most managers do. That’s something more than most people do. And so I’ve never had a boss or a supervisor say something nice to me. You know, I’ve never had a boss do X, Y, or Z. Once again, you might be an introvert. This might not come naturally to you. I can guarantee you that your people, the team members you have will appreciate the extra few minutes that you spend trying to figure this out.

[15:49] Jamy Bechler: And this will go a lot farther with your whole culture, your whole organization. If you spend a little extra time figuring out how you can connect with your team members, as opposed to making sure there’s a couple extra eyes dotted. and T’s crossed. Yes, you have to be competent. Yes, you have to get the job done.

[16:06] Jamy Bechler: But at the end of the day, it’s like when you’re trying to plan for the week ahead, sometimes taking an extra 10 to 15 minutes on a Sunday night or a morning before you get into the day, figuring out, Hey, this is what I need to do today. Just taking that extra time will then help you be more effective.

[16:25] Jamy Bechler: Well, spending an extra few minutes trying to figure out how can I connect with Jim today or this week? Don’t even look at it as I’ve got to connect with everybody right now. I don’t have to do it all right now. Look at the long game. And if you look at the long game, hey, what, how can I? reach everybody this week.

[16:41] Jamy Bechler: And it’s not like I have to turn Jim into a best friend. I don’t have to turn Jim into an ally. I don’t have to make Jim an assistant to the regional manager type thing. I don’t have to make him a mini me. But what I do have to do is start the process of building that trust, start the process of building him up as well, because the more you can build him up, then the better your company organization team is going to be at the end of the day.

[17:06] Jim Harshaw Jr.: For the listener, you know what I’m probably going to say here for the long time listener. This is Jamy. We call this a productive pause, like that pause at the beginning of the day, thinking like, okay, what do I have to do? What do I need to do to connect with so and so today, this week, this month, whatever.

[17:21] Jim Harshaw Jr.: That’s a pause. It’s hitting the pause button. Thinking strategic as opposed to jumping right into returning emails and TPS reports. We’ll just keep using like office space in the office for our, all of our metaphors today.

[17:34] Jamy Bechler: That’s right. Dating ourselves too. But you know, and sometimes people hear what I just said, or some of the stuff we’re talking about and they’re like, Oh, great.

[17:42] Jamy Bechler: We’re going to church. Let’s just sit around. Join hands, sing kumbaya. You know, I have to be overly sensitive to everything and care about everybody’s feelings, and I have to constantly be praising everybody. I’m not saying that. I never want you to be positive without any substance there. But you hired a person for a reason.

[18:04] Jamy Bechler: Or there’s a person you recruited on your sports team. The people are on your team for a reason. Now it might’ve just been to fill a role. Okay. But if it’s even just to fill that spot, you probably should have equipped them or train them a little bit to do a certain job. They can do something. So that’s where you start.

[18:21] Jamy Bechler: Start with what they can do, not with what they can’t do. You know, and a lot of times we’re like, Oh, Jim just drives me crazy. Cause he can’t do this, this, and this it’s terrible. He might not be able to do everything right, but he can do something find the thing that he can do well Praise him for that try to encourage him inspire him in that area to do that even better And then that’s gonna now build up a little bit more trust with you So he doesn’t hate your guts as much so he listens to you So then when you then try to help him be better in the areas He’s struggling in he’s gonna listen to you a little bit more than he would have three weeks ago Once again, we’re playing the long game.

[18:58] Jamy Bechler: Now, if you’re trying to, if I’m trying to change Jim, by the end of the week, we may have a problem. You know, and, and sometimes we’ve seen this to a certain degree an athletic director is gonna fire a coach, but he’s gonna give him one more week. Or, hey, you do this by the end of whatever.

[19:12] Jamy Bechler: You know, you give him a time frame, and you just throw that out there. Or, here’s your personal improvement plan, you need to improve by the end of the week, or by the end of the month, or whatever. Whatever time frame that is. Sometimes it gets down to where it’s at the end and there’s not much that can be done.

[19:27] Jamy Bechler: But if you start early and think the long game, Hey, I’m not thinking about I’m gonna fire Jim or not fire Jim. I’m always thinking, how can I make Jim better? How can I not take him from zero to a hundred right away? Not get him to where he’s the employee of the month, but just get better every single day.

[19:44] Jamy Bechler: Not get him from where I want him to be or where he is now to where I want him to be. Just get him from where he is now. To a little bit better tomorrow and a little bit better the next day. And sometimes we lose sight of that because. Jim’s not to the point where we want them yet. Well, yeah, of course it takes time.

[20:00] Jim Harshaw Jr.: Yeah. It’s an investment. It’s people, people are not widgets. You can’t hammer them and put a couple more screws in and some duct tape and they’re just fixed tomorrow. You know, it takes time. These are people and we have to develop them. Quick interruption. Hey, if you like what you’re hearing, be sure to get the notes, quotes, and links in the action plan from this episode, just go to jim harshaw, jr.

[20:22] Jim Harshaw Jr.: com slash action. That’s jim harshaw, jr. com slash action to get your free copy of the action plan. Now back to the show. So Jamy, you’ve gotten into this field of leadership, coaching, leadership, speaking, certified John Maxwell, uh, speaker and coach. That’s a pretty big pivot from your career. I mean, you were, you were doing what you do.

[20:45] Jim Harshaw Jr.: You were a coach and athletic director, you were successful there. And I’m going to ask you a question of like, why pivot? But like, because a lot of my listeners, just like a lot of people in general, I think they’re, they’re in their job and it’s fine. And then maybe they’re making a good living.

[20:59] Jim Harshaw Jr.: Maybe they’re comfortable there. But they think there’s more, there’s something different, maybe a calling, maybe something they’ve wanted to do. Maybe it’s a side hustle they wanted to start. What was it for you that helped you pivot or drew you to what you’re doing now?

[21:14] Jamy Bechler: Yeah. You know, it’s one of those where I loved coaching.

[21:17] Jamy Bechler: I loved being in organized athletics. I did it for a little over 20 years as a college basketball coach and then a high school athletic director at a large athletic program, fifth largest gymnasium in the world for high schools, seated over 7, 000 people, Indiana high school basketball. Um, many people will know Indiana high school basketball, Hoosier hysteria, that kind of stuff.

[21:37] Jamy Bechler: Well, the school I was at have won the most boys basketball state titles. So it was a basketball school. So as a basketball guy, it was great to be at a school like that. So I love being a coach. I love being an AD. What I didn’t love, and I love diving into the lives of student athletes, helping coaches be better when I could.

[21:55] Jamy Bechler: And most of the time it was, Hey, here are a bunch of mistakes I made as a coach. Let’s try not to do those. You know, I, I don’t want you to go through what I’ve gone through or make the same mistakes and, and that kind of stuff. And so I like helping make people better, make situations better. One of the things though, that I absolutely hate, absolutely hate is being confined to an office.

[22:17] Jamy Bechler: I don’t like to be Hey, you’ve got to be behind a desk. You’ve got to have these office hours. That was me. I didn’t want office hours. You have to be in a building. You have to, whatever it is, I want to be free to roam. As long as I get my job done, as long as I do what I’m supposed to do, those office hours were a thorn in my side.

[22:37] Jamy Bechler: And at the high school level, it’s all about office hours. You have to be in that building don’t be out fundraising, don’t be out meeting people, don’t be out whatever, you got to be in that building. And so that was kind of the thing that pushed me over the edge of, hey, what can I do to be in leadership and help people, but not be confined to an office?

[22:56] Jamy Bechler: You know, I went into John Maxwell, got trained by John Maxwell and his teaching staff and that was kind of the first time I realized that you could actually be a speaker, you could do this for a living and be a nobody, kind of, so to speak, because I thought the only people that do speaking are the Tony Robbins of the world the people that are absolutely their presence is bigger than anything or Like a Bobby Bowden, a Bo Schembechler, or a Nick Saban, the people that are really famous coaches, and when they’re done coaching, they go on the speaking circuit.

[23:27] Jamy Bechler: I didn’t realize that people like you and I people that don’t have millions and millions of followers or have made millions and millions each year at our job, I didn’t realize people like us could actually go out there and speak. And so, that’s when I first learned. That that was a possibility.

[23:44] Jamy Bechler: So I looked into that. I jumped in with with both feet jumped into the deep end without some floaties. I started my own business. I quit athletics and learned a million things what not to do, learn a million things what to do. But it was essentially you can relate to this in college athletics.

[24:00] Jamy Bechler: Those first couple of years was like being a graduate assistant again. It was like being 22 years old, 23 years old. You don’t know what you don’t know. But the reach Of leadership. We’re not able to dive as deep as I was when I was working with a sports team or a school like full time. You’re able to maybe put some seeds out there for a lot more people than you were when you were just working with one team.

[24:23] Jamy Bechler: And so that’s been great getting to work with so many sports teams or businesses and kind of put some seeds in their head about, you know what, yeah. I have a terrible boss or I have a terrible coach, but that doesn’t control my attitude and effort. I can still be a good leader, I can still be a good employee, even though my boss is an idiot or my coach is an idiot.

[24:44] Jamy Bechler: It’s also been great putting seeds in the coach’s minds of, you know what, you might have parents or you might have players that you don’t like, that are underachieving, that aren’t motivated, that are selfish, but you know what? Doesn’t make you then be a jerk as a coach. It doesn’t make you do certain things as a coach.

[25:03] Jamy Bechler: You still have to inspire them. And especially at the lower levels. The higher levels you go where you’re looking at, this is a business, it’s harder to really dive in and impact a life. You can still do it, obviously you can still do it, but the lower levels, smaller colleges, high schools, even junior high, you get into there, you know what, it’s more important that you help them to be respectful, to not get in fights, to not get thrown into jail, than it is to teach them the newest.

[25:32] Jamy Bechler: Offense or defense but we see in the pro level we see at the high level of division one football or basketball the highest levels of college sports, that’s still important to it. Just gets pushed under the rug, swept under the rug a lot of times. But how many teams have been destroyed because a kid makes a terrible decision?

[25:51] Jamy Bechler: Well, how many coaches had an opportunity to help them make better decisions? In the two months previous to that bad decision, but they were more focused on X, Y, or Z the X’s and O’s, they were more focused on the technical skills are more focused on our strategy and not focused on that kid and not to go real deep on you.

[26:13] Jamy Bechler: Oftentimes, even at the highest level, our performance can be positive or negative based upon how are we impacting lives and helping people make decisions that aren’t even basketball related or aren’t even business related.

[26:27] Jim Harshaw Jr.: It’s so important because I think the key here is, is knowing yourself, right.

[26:32] Jim Harshaw Jr.: But based on a couple of things you said here, knowing yourself, you didn’t want to be closed in and be in an office space, right? You wanted to be at the freedom room, but also knowing yourself as a leader. Am I the type of person, the type of leader who is head up looking at the horizon visionary, or do I tend to be more head down working on the TPS reports again, like in the details, like you have to know yourself.

[26:57] Jim Harshaw Jr.: Because these are going to create blind spots, either one, no matter how you’re wired. And this is one of the things that we do in our leadership development is we start with an assessment and when we help people get to know themselves and we get to know them with this tool, now you put the tool together with the.

[27:14] Jim Harshaw Jr.: Actual human being behind the tool and you unpack it and you can understand them. You can help them see their blind spots and say, Hey, you know what? Like you might be focusing a little bit too much on the X’s and O’s here. Well, there’s these other things that you could be focusing on that are going to actually help your people execute the X’s and O’s, right?

[27:30] Jim Harshaw Jr.: Whether they’re athletes or, or employees, et cetera, for takeaway here is. Understand yourself, know yourself, and then also going back to what Jamy did. I mean, he was in a great job doing great, finding success, knew there was something else, something else we wanted to do. And he went out and found a way to do it.

[27:47] Jim Harshaw Jr.: And he went out and found a way to do it despite his doubts. Despite his wondering like, Oh, I thought only other people did this. No, like you can go do that thing. Whatever that thing is you’re thinking about, there are other people doing it and finding success in it, and you can do the same thing.

[28:02] Jamy Bechler: One of the questions you asked early on kind of managing versus leading type stuff, that was one of the things I found as a high school AD, even though there were so many great things.

[28:12] Jamy Bechler: About being a high school AD, especially at the school I was at, there was so much day to day managerial dot the I’s cross the T’s that I didn’t enjoy. And I didn’t enjoy that a bulk of my time was making sure that the blue Powerade never ran out in the concession stand because people would complain.

[28:29] Jamy Bechler: You know, far be it that they would have to drink red Powerade instead of the blue Powerade. Or having to do all these managerial or administrative things, which yes, you have to do them. Absolutely. You have to do them. That wasn’t my passion. My passion wasn’t making sure paperwork is filled out.

[28:47] Jamy Bechler: My passion was forming a student athlete leadership group or helping coaches to be better, helping coaches understand. How they handle discipline, how they work with students, how they make decisions has a bigger impact than just that one game or that one situation or that one trip that was fun to me.

[29:05] Jamy Bechler: And so I was like Hey, how can I have the good parts of this job without the bad parts of the job? And so I was like, well, I’ll, I’ll run my own business. I’ll do this. And it’s been great. Other than the one thing you forget when you start your own business is that it is a business. And so it’s fun to go up on stage.

[29:22] Jamy Bechler: It’s fun to work with a team. And then it’s like, Oh, wait a minute. We have all these bills and I have all these invoices and I have all these marketing stuff and this sales stuff that I’m not prepared for. So there’s that business side of it. So pretty much the point of all that is. I love what I’m doing and I love the pivot, but you’re never going to find the perfect situation.

[29:42] Jamy Bechler: I was like, okay, if I start my own business, I have total flexibility and freedom. And you do, except that there’s certain things that you’re going to hate, just like there were certain things I hated being an AD. There’s still things that are not going to be your ideal, and you just have to do it. And you have to find ways, either hire people, put systems and processes in place, spend a little extra time figuring out, how am I going to handle this?

[30:06] Jamy Bechler: Figuring out, you just said it great, know yourself. Hey, if I’ve got invoicing, or I have all this boring junk that I don’t want to do, When am I best at doing that? Is there a certain day of the week? Is there a certain time of the day? Know myself so that it doesn’t get pushed, pushed, pushed. And then all of a sudden you’re late on stuff or stuff doesn’t get done.

[30:27] Jamy Bechler: So you’ve got to know yourself and figure out, all right, in the morning, I’m better at doing this stuff, or I’m more creative in the morning. I’m more creative at night. That’s when I’m going to do my creative stuff or whatever it is, know yourself and then figure out when you can do that junk stuff that you don’t like to do.

[30:42] Jim Harshaw Jr.: Yeah, there’s a great book that I read when I first started my first business back in the early two thousands called the E Myth. It’s called Stands for the e, stands for the Entrepreneurial Myth. And it’s this idea that just because you’re a great carpenter, you could go start a custom home building company or you know, you love to bake cookies than you could start a bakery.

[31:01] Jim Harshaw Jr.: There’s so much more that goes into it. And like you said, Jamy. Building systems, building processes, hiring people. And it’s so easy to hire people these days in the sense that you can hire people to do very part time work for you work for two hours a week on building SEO for your website or doing your invoice.

[31:19] Jim Harshaw Jr.: I mean, there’s so many different platforms out there where you can hire people to get. Get them to do that stuff that you don’t like, but at the end of the day, you’re the leader. And actually I was talking to another fellow entrepreneur. I’m in a mastermind group with, and he said, there’s a difference between delegation and abdication and just ignoring it, hiring somebody else to do it.

[31:40] Jim Harshaw Jr.: And then saying, why is that not going so well? So you can’t just abdicate everything and say that I’m going to hire people to do everything that I don’t like, but there are certain things you have to hold onto, which is critical for entrepreneurs.

[31:51] Jamy Bechler: Well, I had an AD, my last coaching job, our AD, Jeff Bain, who’s at NAIA Hall of Fame.

[31:58] Jamy Bechler: He’s in the Hall of Fame for the NAIA in the National Association of Collegiate Athletic Directors as well. But he always has a phrase. He always threw this out there. You can delegate tasks, but you can’t delegate responsibility. And I always thought that was good. And one of the things that I think.

[32:14] Jamy Bechler: Leaders do well, or good leaders do, is that they take responsibility for everything that happens. We’re in a society, and just human nature, the game that we play the best is the blame game. We point fingers. It’s not my fault. You know, whether it’s politics, whether it’s our family, whether it’s business, whether it’s a sports team, at the end of the day, yeah, you want to learn from stuff.

[32:38] Jamy Bechler: You want to learn from why did this happen so we don’t repeat it. But at the end of the day, I don’t really care whose fault it was. I care about, did we find a solution? Are we moving forward? And I know there’s a fine line between finding fault and finding a solution for a problem and identifying the problem, but you can identify a problem, but not dwell on it.

[32:58] Jamy Bechler: So when I go out this afternoon or tomorrow in my car and I fill it up. And the gas price isn’t quite what I want. I don’t really care. This is not a political podcast, but I don’t care if there’s a Republican president or Democrat president. I don’t care whose fault it is. All I know is the gas price is higher than I would like it to be.

[33:18] Jamy Bechler: Can we make the gas prices lower or my carton of eggs? Can it be lower? I want a solution. I want the gas prices to be lower. I want the eggs to be cheaper in my place of business. I want. X, Y or Z to be better and my team. I want us to be achieving our potential. I want to win games as a player, as a coach.

[33:39] Jamy Bechler: Let’s find ways to do this together. Let’s find ways to work toward progress where we’re finding solutions and not necessarily placing blame or pointing fingers. I think a good leader. Finds ways to make things better, find solutions to problems without always pointing the fingers.

[33:58] Jim Harshaw Jr.: Jimmy, as we head towards the close of our conversation here, I want to ask you.

[34:02] Jim Harshaw Jr.: What kind of morning routines do you have? Do you have any specific either morning routines or daily routines that you do that really help you be a peak performer day to day?

[34:11] Jamy Bechler: I don’t have as good of habits as I should, but specifically what you asked when I do get up in the morning, I have a whiteboard.

[34:17] Jamy Bechler: I have a bunch of whiteboards in my office and I like dry erase boards or whiteboards. I was a coach, so I liked that, but. That’s where I do like long term stuff, weekly stuff. I want to have vision of what I need to do a couple months from now. And then I have other boards for more specific stuff. So we have an online program, theleadershipplaybook.com

[34:37] Jamy Bechler: On my day to day stuff, I don’t say anything about theleadershipplaybook.com because I have a separate whiteboard for that because there’s so many things involved in that. So I have a specific board devoted to just one aspect of my business. And then I have a couple other boards for these are long term projects.

[34:54] Jamy Bechler: I want to do, this is money we have coming in, or these are people I have to follow up with the main people I have to follow up with. So I have different boards for different things. I have about five different white boards in my office.

[35:06] Jim Harshaw Jr.: So for the listener who. Buying into your philosophy of leadership.

[35:11] Jim Harshaw Jr.: What is an action item they could do? Something in the next 24 to 48 hours to up their game as a leader again, whether they’re a leader in title or not.

[35:21] Jamy Bechler: I would sit down, I would take five minutes and think about kind of, you could even jot this down. How am I being a leader versus how am I being a manager?

[35:29] Jamy Bechler: What am I doing that’s more leadership, visionary, making people better, as opposed to day to day tasks? And for most of us, I think it’s going to be a lot more day to day stuff. This is what I’m doing. This is what I’m doing. As a coach, this is what I do. This is what I do. This is what I do. As a, as a supervisor, this is what I do.

[35:47] Jamy Bechler: Your list is going to be a lot longer, and then you have to decide for yourself. All right, what do I want to be? Is this going to be more equal? Is it going to be more in one area? What does my job entitle? So think about maybe looking at it a different way. When I come home at night and I talk to my spouse and I’m banging my head against the wall about stuff, am I typically banging my head against the wall because of these certain reports that I had to fill out today?

[36:13] Jamy Bechler: Or was it about my boss or was it about a certain employee or was it about, Oh, they, they don’t seem to be motivated or they don’t care or, Oh, I got to find another employee. You know, we’ve got to hire someone again. Oftentimes the people stuff, the people issues are the things that we’re banging our head about, not the actual minutia of the job the job description type stuff, those are not the things that I’m complaining about banging my head against the wall about.

[36:41] Jamy Bechler: So when you start listing out stuff, you’ll start finding, I think that most of this stuff that you. Focus on is the day to day minutia, the managerial stuff. But the things that you complain about the most or the things that that drive you crazy are people issues. And so if that’s the case, then you’re going to have to start tweaking and saying, all right, what can I do to balance this out a little bit more?

[37:04] Jamy Bechler: If the people issues are the ones that are driving me crazy, then I need to focus and be more intentional on people issues. Don’t solve people problems with. Administrative solutions. You know, that’s not always going to work. Just putting together some standard operating procedures. You know, here’s another memo.

[37:21] Jamy Bechler: Here’s another report. That’s not going to solve the problem. I have with Jim every day. You know, that’s just another rule that he’s not going to follow. So don’t solve a people problem with an administrative solution.

[37:33] Jim Harshaw Jr.: Yeah. Great advice. Jamy, for the listener who wants to find you, follow you, where can they track you down at?

[37:40] Jamy Bechler: Yeah. One of the best places is on Twitter or X @coachbechler. @coachbechler is where we try to put out positive leadership stuff. Don’t follow me there though. If, if you want to know my favorite sports teams or what I ate for lunch or who I voted for in a presidential election or anything like that, you, you don’t get much of that.

[37:56] Jamy Bechler: We try to keep it inspirational and positive, but my website’s coachbechler.com, and you can find all of our resources, books, all that kind of stuff there, blog, podcast stuff, all that stuff at coachbechler. com.

[38:10] Jim Harshaw Jr.: Excellent. Jamy, thank you so much for making time to come on the show.

[38:13] Jamy Bechler: Appreciate it, Jim. Thank you.

[38:15] Jim Harshaw Jr.: Likewise.

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