[00:00] Ross Bernstein: Now, how can you be a thought leader if you’re not investing in yourself? What are you reading? What are you listening to? What podcasts are you subscribed to? How are you working out? How are you? Sound mind? Sound, body. These are common characteristics of winners of great leaders. These are things they do, so you can learn a lot from being around those people.

[00:23] 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 Ross Bernstein. Ross Bernstein is the bestselling author of nearly 50 books. He has keyed on all seven continents, which is crazy, and I actually ask him about keynoting in Antarctica and he, he shares that story.

[00:53] He spent the better part of the last 25 years studying the DNA of championship teams, and he’s written almost 50 books on the topic of championship teams and sports, and he references a bunch of these books. While we’re having our conversation here, which you’re gonna really love, you know, we get these fascinating insights into all these different teams, all of these different athletes and, and how they operate.

[01:15] But really he’s boiled this down into a program and a keynote called The Champions Code, where he shares life lessons from the sports world. And how to apply those to your life and how to apply those to the business world. In today’s conversation, we explore everything from Tiger Woods and we talk about the fine line between cheating and gamesmanship.

[01:35] We talk about shared vision, we talk about culture. We talk about all the things that you want to learn about when it comes to these high performing teams and how to apply that to your business, how to apply that to your career and get ahead. Fascinating conversation you’re about to hear. I challenge you to think about one person who you think would love this kind of conversation.

[01:57] Somebody who’s in sports, somebody. Maybe it’s a colleague who you think really enjoys sports, or they have kind of an athletic mindset. Give this a share. Let them know about this episode. Thank you in advance for any shares, any likes, any comments on social media. Help amplify the message. Get this word out to even more people so I can continue to bring on amazing guests like you’re about to hear with Ross Bernstein.

[02:20] All right, let’s get into it. My conversation with the great Ross Bernstein, you have spoken on seven continents. How in the heck does somebody get a speaking gig in Antarctica?

[02:31] Ross Bernstein: That was a hard one. I, I’m not gonna lie to you. It was, uh, definitely a bucket list. I, I had a gig in South America in Chile, and we decided, you know what, let’s go for it.

[02:39] So I just reached out and I wound up connecting with, uh, a company and they were, were doing an event. So my keynote was on a research vessel, which was pretty cool. You can’t really do anything on Antarctica. They don’t let you hardly do anything when you’re on. Land there. Uh, and the penguin poop is quite overwhelming.

[02:57] I’m not gonna lie to you. We spent a day on Shackleton’s Island, if you know the history of Ernest Shackleton. And I don’t know how that guy survived with all the penguin poop, but it was pretty cool. And, you know, as speakers, we love to do these weird, exotic things and, and uh, that was for everyone who was on that trip.

[03:12] It was their seventh continent, which was pretty cool.

[03:15] Jim Harshaw Jr.: Yeah, that’s epic. I have a client named Rich and Rich is gonna love that. I just mentioned his name here, rich Lang. His goal is to re-propose to his wife on all seven continents. That’s cool. So, yeah, yeah, yeah. That’s awesome. Ross, you’ve been to so many locker rooms behind the scenes.

[03:31] You’ve written all these amazing books. You have so many stories. Is there one particular story or experience from being around all these amazing teams, players behind the curtain, behind the scenes? What’s the funniest, weirdest, utmost, outlandish. Craziest thing that’s ever happened to you.

[03:46] Ross Bernstein: Wow. Yeah. I’ve had a lot of like you, a lot of crazy behind the scenes things.

[03:51] You know, I’m a Minnesota boy and we love our Vikings and our gophers. We’re long suffering fans. Our teams stink and we, we hate the Packers. Like, that’s just like, everyone needs an enemy. And for us it’s the packers. So, years ago, I, I wrote this book called I Love Red Fav. I hate Brett Fav and I actually, I gave him the book in Lambeau Field in the locker room.

[04:12] You gave it to Brett Fav? Yeah. After the game. It was the revenge game. It was the first game he came back to Lambo as a Viking. I believe it was ESPN’s highest televised rated game ever. That was a non playoff game or something. But I remember, uh, him, him seeing that for the first time. And, uh, all of his teammates wanted copies and that was a, that was a pretty surreal, fun moment.

[04:34] I figured he’d be, I, I wasn’t gonna do it if we had lost the game, but we wound up winning. So it was a, it was a fun moment.

[04:39] Jim Harshaw Jr.: Yeah. That’s super cool. So how did you get a chance to meet him? How did that come about?

[04:43] Ross Bernstein: You know, I’ve been a working member of the media for, you know, the past 25 years, so I’ve got access to get into the locker rooms and press boxes and stuff.

[04:50] So, you know, you’re not supposed to do too much personal stuff when you’re in the media. You’re supposed to be pretty neutral, but, uh. No, that was a fun one, and I got to interview lots of Packers and Vikings and just talking about that rivalry and the hatred and, and that’s what sports is all about, right?

[05:05] It’s about bringing people together. We, you know, you’re a Pennsylvania kid, so I don’t know if you were a a, an Eagles fan or

[05:11] Jim Harshaw Jr.: Steelers, not Pittsburgh. Steelers. We hate the Browns. We hate the Ravens. Yeah. Right.

[05:15] Ross Bernstein: So you’ve just, right. That’s how it is, right? You just, you have people, and I don’t, I don’t like people that are like, oh, well, if my team loses I’ll root for them.

[05:21] I’m like, no, you’re an idiot. Like you root for your team. I hate everyone else. That’s just how it should be. That’s, I’m a homer. I only, I only love my team. So, uh, yeah, it’s, it’s fun.

[05:30] Jim Harshaw Jr.: So you’ve been in endless encounters with amazing athletes and amazing teams, and you’ve studied them and written about them for so long.

[05:38] What is something about. Those locker rooms. That is unique and that is special. That is maybe, maybe sometimes missed in boardrooms, right? For the listener who’s may not an athlete, but they’re a executive, a leader and they’re in business, like what, what is something in the DNA of those championship teams that you see that, um, that a lot of people miss?

[05:57] Ross Bernstein: That’s like, that’s what I do, right? That’s what you do. We figure out like what makes the great ones great and then we apply that to business. I wrote a whole series of books about why winning teams win. It was cool. It was a series of books I wrote. About what it took to Hoist Trophy. So I’m holding up a couple copies of these two are called Raising Stanley, raising Lombardi.

[06:17] The, the bus wrote the forward for, for that book, your Guy. But I interviewed about a thousand professional athletes who were all members of the championship teams. And I can only ask them why, what was unique about that team Because you know, a guy might play 20 years and win one title, but you start to see the trends and the metrics and the patterns that exist on those.

[06:38] Winning teams and you start to hear words like family, right? Where everyone got along, it was unique. Like, you know, Oklahoma City just beat my Timberwolves in the, to make the finals and they’re, they’re a team of destiny right now. Right? You see the momentum they have and, and that’s created, you know, that, that comes from training camp.

[06:56] I, I believe that that’s the thing that sports does that that business doesn’t a lot is they get away at the beginning of the season, they have a, a retreat, right? And they go to some small town, middle of nowhere by design. No kids, no spouses. And that’s where culture and chemistry are created. And that’s where coaches figure out who gets along, who are the buddies who would make a good line mate or or teammate?

[07:18] Who are the team cancers? Who do we gotta get rid of? Addition through subtraction is very key. Who are the divas and prima donnas and the poor listeners and people who are gonna cause disruption? And you start to see like, because that’s the thing about sports, is that there’s what we call a shared vision.

[07:34] And that means that when your team sucks, they fire everybody. You’re the coach, you’re the gm. It doesn’t matter. You’re all getting fired, so they have to win. And, and they gotta win fast, that’s the thing. So they gotta figure this shit out quick. Like, who can win now? And how do we bring this stuff all together so that we can win?

[07:50] And uh, you know, even in Minnesota where my lowly timberwolves, arguably the one of the worst franchises in NBA history. Has made the Western conference finals two years in a row, which is unbelievable. And they’re already saying, well, maybe they should fire the coach. You know, how are they gonna get to that next level?

[08:07] It was like you in wrestling finally, after your fourth year, you finally made All American, right? It’s like, what else could you possibly do? But you know, it’s, that’s how it is. It’s like, no, you know, they, people wanna win. They want to get together and they wanna, they want results. So I love studying the why, and you start to see those patterns and you start to see those special.

[08:27] Dynasty teams like the San Francisco 49 ERs had done some work with with that organization. You talk about how everything was family and first class and just the ownership down. Like if someone was injured, they were in the hospital with them. Right. It was like those little things that people talk about.

[08:43] They took care of their wives and they knew everyone’s wives and kids names when they came there. It’s these little things that really matter and you know, playing on a division one college team, like how important that stuff is and. Getting outta that next level. It’s just so much more important. ’cause everyone there is so good, right?

[09:01] Because you know, when you made college wrestling, ev, everyone was a state champ, big deal, right? But to become a national champ, to become a pale a, a gable, right? Like how do you get to that level? So I’m just always fascinated and there’s no one right way. That’s the beauty, right? You see all kinds of outliers and weirdos and square pegs and round holes, and so it’s just fascinating.

[09:23] Jim Harshaw Jr.: So you talk about these teams that have that kind of culture and they’re, they’re talking about family and they use those kinda words and they, they know each other’s, you know, spouses names and kids names, all that. That’s leadership and so many leaders are focused, it seems like on on, not that, right?

[09:41] Certainly you have to focus on the technical stuff, whether it’s sports or business. You certainly have to focus on on these other things, but I think that’s easily overlooked or maybe it’s lip service, I think, by a lot of leaders and people and saying, we’ve gotta develop culture and we have a great culture and we focus on culture, but they’re really.

[09:59] I
[10:00] mean, it starts with the leadership and is it overlooked? Because it’s a soft thing. You can’t measure culture. I don’t know. You know?

[10:09] Ross Bernstein: Yeah. I mean, culture’s that weird and tangible, people talk about it. It’s really an unspoken thing. Like I keynote about 120 conferences per year and I can walk into a room and I can see culture pretty quickly.

[10:22] Like you just start to see it. What do you see? Is it a feeling? Is it something you see? It’s a buzz in the room. Particularly companies like cool credit unions that are like an esop. It’s company owned, stuff like that where you start to see like they’re all in this, like maybe there was an owner that gave everyone ownership or cool companies where the CEO will give people bucket list things and people become cheerleaders, rooting for them.

[10:45] Like, oh, that’s so cool. Like Susie gets to go to New Zealand and see her family or just, it’s just cool little things. People hang out after work. You start to see that stuff. A lot of people hate their jobs. It’s nine to five. I mean, COVID killed culture. It’s been real. A lot of my clients now are like, how do we build culture?

[11:05] ’cause we’ve been on Zoom for five years. Like, well, Zoom’s a culture killer. Like no one creates culture on

[11:10] Jim Harshaw Jr.: Zoom. How do you do it? Uh uh. I mean, short of bringing everybody back in full-time in person,

[11:16] Ross Bernstein: and even now I’m seeing when I’m in person for a lot of events, a lot of them, you know, you can’t control the room.

[11:22] You get 500 people and it’s like, it’s maddening because they all wanna hang out and talk. Like the last thing they want is some old dude talking for 90 minutes. Like they want to visit and hang out and drink beer and eat steak and talk about their families. ’cause they haven’t done that. They don’t have water cooler talk as they, you know, back in the day for us old guys, it was, you’d talk about, did you see Seinfeld last night?

[11:44] Did you watch friends? Or Saturday Night Live? And well now you don’t have that conversation. So it’s just. It’s different, I think. But a lot of companies that have just said, we’re gonna go back to the office. I think they’re gonna win the culture. Race. You can’t recruit and keep young talent with, you know, just by everyone doing their own thing.

[12:01] You might hire them and they’ll work for you, even for less money. So they can have the freedom, but they’re not gonna be loyal. They’re always gonna be looking. I’m always fascinated how great companies do that. For instance, I just worked with a really interesting specialty insurance company down in a small town in Texas.

[12:17] They had offices in like Dallas and Houston and, and they were just, you know, people come and go, you know, if you’re in big city you’re gonna get headhunters and recruiters and people are always looking right, what’s the next big thing? Well, they finally just said, you know, we’re not gonna compete with that.

[12:30] So they went down to a small town and they bought this big campus of a college that had been disrupted by online education. ’cause everyone’s being disrupted as you know, and they basically retrofitted it and they made it really cool. And they said. They’re a private company. They’re faith-based, so they said, you’re we’re gonna come to work every day.

[12:50] This is during the pandemic. And they said, everyone comes to work. If you don’t wanna come to work, we understand, but then this isn’t the place for you. We’re gonna pray every day. They’re faith-based, which is controversial in a lot of places, but for them, that worked people and, and then they invested and they’ve spent all this money.

[13:06] On the grounds. They built baseball fields, soccer fields, the cross fields, basketball, and they basically said, Hey, if you’re tired of living in Houston where you can’t afford a house. Come down here. We got really affordable housing. There’s tons of really cool stuff. Your kid can go to public school and there’s so much sports and stuff that you’re gonna wanna do.

[13:25] Oh, and then at the office, we’re gonna bring in lunch every day. We have a gym, we have a haircut. Person on staff. We got a doctor on staff. So you don’t even have to leave if you have, if you’re sick. And then like they have a waiting list of like hundreds of people going, I’ll come work for you. I’ll take less to move my family.

[13:42] ’cause I, I want that. So that, that’s where I feel like some companies are winning by doing weird, crazy shit like that. And that, that to me is fascinating. So I love studying those outliers and figuring out why.

[13:55] Jim Harshaw Jr.: Yeah. Yeah. I just hosted my client retreat a few weeks ago and we got a couple dozen clients in the same.

[14:00] Room at the same retreat center for a few days and it was just amazing. People do crave that connection. Connection cannot be undervalued. It is so, so important. And you’re gonna be in Richmond speaking in the fall and I can’t wait to meet you there. And there’s the, you know, pe it brings people, when you bring people together like Scott Mc Roberts or friend at at Virginia CEOs, when you bring people together.

[14:21] People not only come to listen to somebody like you, but they come to meet other people and make connections and they just thrive. And that’s where networking happens and, and people grow. And I think that is easily missed.

[14:31] Ross Bernstein: And that’s what’s cool about, you know, that group, the, the Virginia Council of CEOs and like what you do as a coach consultant, as you know, you help people, you help leaders be better.

[14:41] And it’s so important. I’m a member of eo, which is a similar peer-to-peer masterminding group. It’s like Vistage. There’s a lot of groups like that. But I just feel like anyone. Any of your listeners who want to get better, they need to do that. They need to surround themselves with people better than them.

[14:58] They need to be in a group where people are gonna hold them accountable. They’re going to be able to share and be vulnerable and say, here are my goals and here’s where I failed. And be transparent and honest and say, how can I get better? And I, you can’t do it alone, right? We’re, we’re truly better together.

[15:12] So some groups are purely just business, some are a little more social, YPO, certain groups, but like. Anything that you can do to invest in yourself. That’s why I think even if you’re, you know, someone listening to this podcast right now, kudos good on you for investing. I mean, how can you be a thought leader if you’re not investing in yourself?

[15:31] What are you reading? What are you listening to? What podcasts are you subscribed to? How are you working out? How are you? Sound mind? Sound body. These are common characteristics of winners of great leaders. These are things they do. So you can learn a lot from, from being around those people and you know you weren’t getting better as a wrestler hanging around.

[15:51] Crappy wrestlers, right? You wanna go to the elite camps and you wanna get your ass kicked. You go, how do I beat that guy? So you, that’s top performers surround themselves during the off season with top performers, and that’s what they gotta do. And for me, as a professional speaker, I’m in groups of other professional speakers of people better than me, that make more money than me.

[16:10] And I want to help them and support them and be around them and share referrals with them. And by the laws of Karma, it’s gonna help me grow my business. So I think there’s. Success leaves a lot of clues. You just gotta look for ’em.

[16:23] Jim Harshaw Jr.: We call this the environment of excellence in my coaching program. And by the way, for the listener, if you wanna go deeper on this topic, I, I talk all about this.

[16:30] We call this the environment of excellence. Go back to episode 445, 4, 4 5, and the whole concept here is like, who are you surrounding yourself with? Do you have a coach who can kick in the ass if you need a kick or help you course correct somebody who can see your blind spots? Are you hanging around other people who are raising the bar for you?

[16:47] When I trained at the Olympic Training Center. I got to hang around with world class athletes. The bar is just raised and it’s everything that Ross just talked about here. And you, you’ve got to see this over the decades of, of doing your research and your writing and interacting with these kinds of people.

[17:01] So Ross, when you look at these elite athletes, individuals, are there traits that we don’t maybe see from the outside looking in? We know they’re hard workers or may, maybe it’s the degree to which they work hard, or is there something that’s shared? Among the, the greatest of the greats, whether it’s teams or individuals that we just maybe don’t see from, you know, watching on tv.

[17:25] Ross Bernstein: Yeah. There’s the cliche stuff, like you said. I mean, they’re all incredibly hard workers. They all prepare. You know, I, I talk about, in my program, I’ve studied people like Tom Brady, interview people like that and Wayne Gretzky, and, but there’s unique things. I think it’s, you know, a will to win. There’s certain things that.

[17:42] Michael Jordan, Patrick Mahomes, LeBron James. They just, they have another gear like with the game on the line. They want the ball. Right. And I think as great leaders, you gotta figure out who wants the ball. And it’s okay if you don’t want the ball. Like that’s totally cool. You don’t need to have, everyone wants the ball.

[17:59] But like there’s certain people that crave that, that want that, that perform well under pressure. I remember there was a kicker for the Vikings, Ryan Longwell, who I got to know, uh, when he was playing for Minnesota and he lived down in like Jupiter, Florida, and he was a neighbor of Tiger Woods and Ryan was a long time NFL kicker.

[18:18] He was a pro bowler, did really well. And he said Tiger would always wanted to go golfing with him. And I was like, wow, how cool. He’s like, yeah, well, he wanted to talk about pressure because there’s nothing more pressure. When you’re a kicker in overtime and a team ices you and they call timeout and they crowd is, and the players are yelling, screaming, horrible stuff about you and your girlfriend and your family and they’re trying to get in your head right, that that mental game, there’s a game within a game.

[18:46] People don’t, fans don’t realize what’s going on down on the field. ’cause if they can screw you, mess you up, and you’re thinking about that and keep your head in the swivel and you’re not thinking about what you should do, then they’re gonna win. So how do you channel that out? And it’s the same in golf with the Ys.

[19:02] How do you make, how do you sink that clutch 12 footer to win the Masters? So again, it’s, it’s tiger. It’s the great ones studying other great ones, other industries to figure out why, how. And you know, I, I have a theory. I think that, you know, 10% of top producers are just have those god-given abilities. As you know, you can’t teach a guy to be seven feet tall in basketball.

[19:27] You can’t teach a guy to run a 4 2 40 yard dash in football. But certain people, just LeBron James and Patrick Mahomes, right? These people have that it factor. And I think it’s the same in business too. By, by the way, the other 90% they, you know, will beat skill. They just work harder, right? Like, uh, you know, most guys just work their ass off.

[19:48] That’s why I love wrestlers. I, we were talking off camera. I’m, I’m a former wrestler growing up in min Southern Minnesota. This is the heart of wrestling country. And I, I’ve written a few books about wrestling and, and I have, like I, I have
[20:00] clients who will only hire wrestlers. You probably know this, but there’s a disproportionate number of wrestlers who go on to become special forces officers, rangers, seals, commandos because they’re incredibly disciplined.

[20:11] If you’re a 98 pound wrestler in Blue Earth, Minnesota, you are not playing football or basketball. But you could be an All American captain of the varsity wrestling team, and these farm kids are tough. They got five older brothers who beat the shit out of them regularly. They have physically strong hands from milking cows and bailing hay, but most importantly, they’re disciplined.

[20:35] Farm kids are up at five in the morning every morning because cows, pigs and chickens don’t take days off. So companies recruit these kids. They’re the, the holy grail. And in a, in a society now of, of young people who don’t wanna work, there’s an arms race to find, not just farm kids, dairy farm kids.

[20:55] They’re the hardest working kids on the planet. They’re nice, they’re kind. They have all these things that you can’t teach. I love figuring out that why factor and then I think it’s the same in business. I think there’s a 10% of top producers, and I speak a lot of top producer sales conferences, life insurance, wealth managers, realtors, and the 10% are beautiful smoking, hot, handsome, great hair, daddy’s boss, but then the other 90%, they set up more meaningful meetings.

[21:25] They set up more meaningful phone calls, and they truly become trusted advisors by doing the extra things. So if you’re not an All American, if you’re not a physical specimen, then get over it. Me neither. It means you gotta work a hell of a lot harder than everyone else and you gotta do all the other stuff and you can bitch and whine.

[21:45] And just like in my world, I go, man, why is that speaker making 50 grand a keynote? Well, ’cause they’re beautiful or they’re this, or they’re a celebrity, or they did that and it’s. You know, it’s, it’s toxic. Like you just, it’s good to see those people and to shoot for that, but like at a certain point you gotta settle in and go, what can I do?

[22:04] Like, where can I get better? Where are my liabilities? Where can I get better? Not big, better, little better. That’s what sports is. It’s about every day getting a little bit better and dealing with all the failures that you talk about, and how do you just keep grinding and hustling and moving along.

[22:19] Jim Harshaw Jr.: It’s great to hear you say that.

[22:20] And for the listener who’s like going, yeah, like, I get it. That’s really helpful, Ross. And then they stop listening to the podcast and they go back into work and they deal with a failure. They deal with a setback. It’s hard. I, I, I’m speaking to the listener and Ross I’d be interested in, in anything you wanna add to this is like, this isn’t just Ross talking about something that sounds good.

[22:42] He actually applies this to his business. He learned this from sports. He sees it all the time. We see it play out in front of us and we see their resilience of the successful ones. And I’m not just talking about the LeBron James and the Tom Brady’s of the successful ones who make it to the NFL or get onto the podium or, or make the starting lineup or whatever that next level is.

[23:05] You will face that time, those moments in your work, in your life. When you are low, you are down and out, and it is then when you have to. Harness this lesson. Not on the good days, not on even the average days, but on the hard days when you fail, then you’ve gotta go, okay, let me remember what Ross and Jim were talking about.

[23:27] Let me actually put that into practice. When I don’t feel like putting it into practice, I feel like wallowing. I feel like pitying myself, but that’s when you have to use these lessons.

[23:40] Ross Bernstein: Yeah. I mean, you know, for Tom Brady it was, it was consistency. It’s just managing failure. Every play, every day, every week, you’re gonna have good days and bad days.

[23:50] It’s okay. Like just, it’s the long-term game. Like, just, you know, in my world, I, you know, I’m a, I’m a gig speaker, so for every gig I book, I probably lose five that I know of, maybe 20. I mean, it’s your job interviews every day and they say, you know what? Sorry, you suck. We found someone better, smarter, prettier, more qualified.

[24:12] We’re gonna pay them more money than we were gonna pay you, because they’re just, you’re just dealing with that every day. So like, if you can’t deal with sales, if you can’t deal with rejection, then get into a business where that, then you’re not gonna be dealing with those things. Like so many people get stuck.

[24:28] I mean, money doesn’t buy you happiness. It you freedom to say no to crap. You don’t want to do, get into a job where you, if you like helping people, then go do that, you know? My brother is an Ivy League, NBA, and he wound up quitting everything a few years ago and going to become a marriage counselor because he wants to help people.

[24:48] And he said, at this stage of the game, I just want to have an impact and help people. And I’m like, God, what a great, that’s what money buys you, buys you the ability to go back to school and do something that you want to do, even if it’s making less money. So, you know, it’s, it’s, it’s great when people say, oh, do your passion.

[25:03] And I’m, I’m big on that too. I’m very passionate about what I do, but. The reality is, is that I wasn’t good enough to play sports. I wanted to, I had to find my way in and that, that’s what you gotta do. I want people like, you’re so lucky. It’s like, yeah, it’s a crazy backstory, but it’s like 20 years to become an overnight sensation.

[25:20] Right. So you get that.

[25:22] Jim Harshaw Jr.: Yeah. And tell me about your take on success and has there been a time when you failed where you felt like this isn’t for me, and you had to work through failure to get to where you’re at?

[25:31] Ross Bernstein: Yeah, well, my dream was to play hockey at the University of Minnesota. That was my everything, and I tried out and, and I didn’t make it.

[25:38] I got cut. The silver lining was, I, I wanted to becoming the team mascot, Goldie the gopher. So I became a giant smelly rodent and I got to entertain all these crazy drunk fans. And turned out I was pretty good at it, at just getting people to laugh and providing entertainment between, between the whistles in a day when there was no internet or, or scoreboard.

[25:59] That led to my very first book. It was called Gopher Hockey, by the Hockey Gopher and 50 books. Later I made a career out of it and I just realized I could tell stories. I’m not the hero of my stories. I, I talk about other people and I make them look great, and I find out as a journalist what it is that makes them tick and I, you know, make them look great by helping other people learn from their lessons.

[26:20] So. You know, my, my biggest failure turned out to be my biggest success. It also led to a charitable foundation that I got to co-found with Herb Brooks and his family, and we’ve helped graze millions of dollars to help kids play sports, disadvantaged kids. So it’s been profoundly meaningful and rewarding.

[26:37] So now I get to speak and write books and, and just be in the world of sports, and I get to be around athletes and coaches and people like you who are. Trying to help make people better. So it’s just, it’s really fun. But you know, but again, I hear from parents all the time after my speak engagements, boy, my kid wants to do what you did.

[26:54] How do you do it? It’s like, come on man. It’s like, takes a long time. And oh, by the way, I leveraged my graduate school money to write and publish a book. When I was 21 years old. My parents thought it was the biggest, worst decision of my life. Today, any kid can start a podcast. They can have a, a YouTube channel, a vlog, a blog, and guess what?

[27:14] The cream rises to the top. So if you’re good and you have good interviews, guess what? People are gonna like you click on you share, you subscribe to you. Sponsors will pay you. Like Justin Bieber did not need a record label. He just went on YouTube. There’s no barrier to entry today If you’re good. You can do anything.

[27:31] You can make a PDF and you’re an author. Drives me nuts. You know, I write big hardcover books. But you know what? Anyone can say, oh, I’m an author, but you know what? That’s the world we live in today. So you can bitch about it or you can just get off your ass and go do something. So I say, get off your ass and go do something.

[27:46] Jim Harshaw Jr.: Yeah. Mic drop right there. That’s so good, Ross. I mean, and for the listener, like, I can’t tell you how many times I’ve had clients who I work with say, you know, I didn’t get that job, or This bad thing happened and like they experienced failure. And you have to walk with them through that. But I’m also thinking something great’s gonna come from this and.

[28:04] Inevitably something does, and, and you can look back on your own lives and, and see the same things. And Ross just shared a great story of that. So I wanna go back, Ross, to the conversation about where we were talking about Tiger Woods and this, this, this kicker. And first of all, I, I think it’s fascinating that Tiger Woods wanted to hang out with him.

[28:23] And so that’s a lesson for us all. Like, who else can we hang out who’s maybe not as good as us, right? Like world, you know, tiger Woods is best, greatest of all time. Hanging out with a guy who’s not the greatest of all time, but he, he had experience in something so we could all learn from that. But I wanna talk about the gamesmanship piece you talked about here.

[28:40] So in one of your keynotes, this champions code, you talk about the, the fine line between gamesmanship. Cheating. Can you explain that and, and how do you see that playing out in business? Because there can be a pressure or an integrity that is challenged if you want to make the sale or win the job or whatever it might be.

[28:59] Ross Bernstein: Yeah. Thank you. So I wrote this whole series of books called The Code, but basically it’s about what leads to, you know, fighting in hockey or getting drilled in baseball. And it’s about these unwritten codes. They’re, you know, every sport has these unwritten, unspoken rules. And as a speaker, I tie that back to business so you can cheat.

[29:21] There’s shortcuts you can take, but if you disrespect someone, if you do something dirty, the game polices itself. That’s why they allow fighting in hockey. It was interesting that book got turned into a movie with an Academy Waring director, which is really cool ’cause people are fascinated by it. They go, why is there fighting in hockey?

[29:35] Well, they, they allow the game to police itself. So I apply that to business and I celebrate great companies who win the right way because there’s always shortcuts. Maybe it’s steroids or performance enhancing drugs or sign stealing in baseball. I mean, there’s so many sneaky nefarious things athletes are always trying to do to gain an edge, right?

[29:56] I mean, every sport. There’s some nefarious,
[30:00] sneaky thing, right? I mean, it could be making weight and wrestling, right? It could be doing something that you weren’t supposed to be doing to make weight, or maybe you’re putting Vaseline on your body so a guy can’t grip you and grab you or, you know what I mean?

[30:12] I mean, there’s all kinds of stuff people will do. To gain a little edge. ’cause at at your level between All American, you’re basically about the same as another guy. It just comes down to those final just few little chess match moves of how you got over. Why did you win four to three? Like it was just one quick reverse at the end or whatever, right?

[30:31] It was, it’s not like you dominate that guy. I mean, you’re both on paper pretty even. I mean, there’s outliers, but. So I apply that to business in about, I celebrate great companies and I throw other companies under the bus, Enron and Fannie and Freddie and Lehman Brothers, and Lance Armstrong and Bernie Madoff.

[30:48] I mean, the list goes on and on and it happens every week. Right? I just saw on the news this morning, uh, there was a, a race. It was like a hundred meters sprint this morning. There was some guy standing at the, in the stands, at the starting line screaming at this woman, and I’m sorry, her name is gay and you can Google it, but it, it literally just came out this morning.

[31:10] She’s an Olympian. I think she may even be a gold medalist, but there’s a race, some World Championship event, and he’s just screaming at her going, I, you know, you’re gonna lose, you’re gonna lose. Then he posted and you could clearly see she’s upset because this is, this isn’t normal. You know what I mean?

[31:26] This is, there’s sort of an etiquette, like you don’t just yell at, people are looking at this guy like, what are you doing? Well, he made a post on X or something and he said, guess what? I just got in the head of this Olympian and I screamed at her and I won my bet. So this is how gambling is now changing game.

[31:44] This guy affected the outcome of a race by being a dick. But nevertheless, is it cheating or games? Because technically there’s no law that says you can’t yell at someone to get in their head. I mean, like, you know, great. Michael Jordan’s one of the greatest trash talkers of all time. That’s legal. So there’s a gray area, there’s an arbitrage.

[32:05] It’s clearly not ethical, but he did it and he won his bet. I’m not here saying it’s right or wrong. I’m saying it is what it is, and it’s fascinating.

[32:14] Jim Harshaw Jr.: Yeah, we see that. I think we see that play out in our workplaces sometimes. How do the great ones handle that? Like how do the successful teams, successful individuals, successful coaches and leaders that you’ve seen, how do they handle when the line is crossed?

[32:32] Ross Bernstein: Yeah. It’s tuning out the noise, right? Some fight fire or fire. Some are trash talkers. All of them, and they’re just like, we’re gonna beat you. We’re gonna be better than you, and we’re gonna, we’re gonna practice it and we’re gonna, and that’s how we’re gonna do it. Some are like, we’re, we’re not gonna listen to you.

[32:46] You know, I did this cool book, this is my research, my life history. This is things I’ve given birth to. But I did this cool book called Wearing the Sea, and I interviewed about 500 captains and I wanna know how they lead, right? There’s rah rah cheerleader guys, there’s quiet guys. There’s guys that, you know, they don’t wear the sea, but back in the locker room, they’re the captain in practice on road trips.

[33:07] They’re the captain. And it’s just fascinating to see, like, how do you, you know, they’re, they’re the ones that sort of like say, this is what we’re gonna do right there. It’s the, it’s your veterans, those A players who coach up your B and C players, the youngsters, those are your senior supervisors, your managers, those are what we call ’em.

[33:23] Sports clubhouse guys. Clubhouse gals. Those are people that you lean on for inside Intel. They’re the spies, the moles, their jobs. Make sure little problems don’t turn into big problems. And that’s the same in business. Leaders need those people, those. Confidants that they don’t have to worry about being a narc or rat, that they can tell you anything unfiltered and they’re never gonna get ratted out or in trouble because if you don’t know what’s going on back at the office or in the warehouse, you don’t know what’s going on.

[33:51] And the only time you’re gonna know is when there’s a lawsuit, when there’s some sexual harassment problem, when there’s an e coli outbreak because you had someone doing this and that when you were over here doing all that, like you need to know what’s going on. And in sports, if they don’t know what’s going on, there’s problems.

[34:06] So in that book, I was able to interview all these different captains and certain coaches, and they would talk about this stuff and player only meetings, right? It’s like, Hey, these guys are getting in their heads, they’re doing this stuff. They’re, they’re cheating. They’re, they’re, they’re getting over on us.

[34:18] How do we get by that? And it was interesting. I remember interviewing, uh, Natalie Ditz and she was, uh, legendary hockey player from Minnesota, and, and she was the captain of the Olympic Dream team. I thought, man, that’s pretty cool. ’cause every single player on that team was a captain of their team. Now you’re a captain of captains.

[34:44] That’s badass, right? How do you deal with that, those egos, right? So I’m just, again, there’s no one right way. I just like, and I think what great organizations do is they figure out, you know, we got a situation. How are we gonna deal with it This way? There’s no like Vince Lombardi, boom, this is what we’re gonna do every time, no matter what.

[35:04] Like that just, you can’t yell and scream and just say, Nope, this is what we’re gonna do. Like, you gotta, you gotta talk it out and be like, all right, what are we gonna do?

[35:11] Jim Harshaw Jr.: This is the art and the science of leadership. Yeah. Yeah. So Russ, for the listener who is enjoying this and, and wants to follow through and take action and do something in the next 24 to 48 hours to start, you know, applying what they’re learning from you.

[35:27] Can you recommend an action item or two that the listener can do?

[35:31] Ross Bernstein: I would call Jim Harshaw, Jr. Immediately and hire this guy to come coach and consult you. That’s my advice to you. Listen to the man.

[35:42] Jim Harshaw Jr.: Excellent. Ross, where can the listener find you? Follow you, buy your books, et cetera.

[35:46] Ross Bernstein: I’m not selling books.

[35:48] I have a website, ross bernstein.com. My my business now is speaking at conferences. I’m on LinkedIn. That’s it. I have nothing to show. I’m just here to share some wisdom because you were kind enough to ask me to, and I feel very honored to be here. Thank you for, for having me and I hope your listeners found a few nuggets of wisdom in there, but I appreciate you, you bringing me on.

[36:10] Jim Harshaw Jr.: Oh, I know they found a lot of nuggets of wisdom here. So Ross, thank you for making time to come on the show. Appreciate you. Likewise.

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