[00:00] Bruce Babashan: Being successful and knowing how to handle success are two different things. You know, I can only speak for myself, but there have been in my younger ages when I was successful, I was not always mature enough or smart enough or wise enough to handle the success I was having. And I also didn’t understand who were my friends and who weren’t.

[00:23] Jim Harshaw Jr.: Welcome to another episode of Success for the Athletic. 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 Coach Bruce Babishan. Coach Bruce is a former successful senior-level corporate executive who walked away from his success.

[00:47] Jim Harshaw Jr.: To chase his passion in becoming a world-renowned professional boxing trainer. And that’s exactly what he is now. And he’s also a speaker, leadership coach, as well as a boxing coach. And today in this episode, he shares a story that It honestly sounds almost too wild to be true and he gets right into it.

[01:06] Jim Harshaw Jr.: I mean, right off the bat, we get right into this. The first thing we talk about. So imagine this young guy from a small town in Romania shows up at his gym outside of DC with nothing but a dream and a single phrase, two word phrase in broken English. Me. Champion. That’s it. And then over time, this unlikely partnership takes them to the brink of glory, facing some of the biggest names in boxing and aiming for world titles.

[01:36] Jim Harshaw Jr.: But it’s a cautionary tale and he shares a deeper story here that gets me choked up. And Bruce as well, as he shares this, it’s a story about ambition and grit, but also the dark side of having the wrong influences that can turn a dream into a nightmare. He dives into why success and handling success are two very different things and how with the right environment.

[01:57] Jim Harshaw Jr.: Even the strongest people can be derailed and the importance of having the right people in your life. You might not be a boxer, but if you ever wondered about the importance of process over goals, this episode is for you. Bruce’s story is going to resonate with you. So stick around to hear as this young fighter Shares this final phrase as he departs the country for Romania.

[02:21] Jim Harshaw Jr.: Absolutely fascinating episode. Bruce is just one of my favorite people. We connected years and years ago. I had him on the podcast and he continues to just inspire me. So super grateful to bring Bruce Babishan back on the show. All right, here we go. Let’s get into it. My interview with Bruce Babishan. You have this crazy story about this kid who showed up at your doorstep.

[02:42] Jim Harshaw Jr.: Couldn’t speak English. Didn’t have any money to speak of. But he just wanted to box. Tell me that story again.

[02:49] Bruce Babashan: So, I was in the gym one Saturday, working with uh, one of the, the pros in the gym and this, I noticed this guy came in the gym, who was not, clearly not dressed, you know, for the boxing gym, so I knew he was out of place.

[03:05] Bruce Babashan: And he was trying to get my attention, but I was working and so I’d look over, but I was still focused on the athlete I was working on. And the guy patiently waited a little older guy and eventually practice ended with that athlete. And I walked over and he walked over to me and I said, can I help you?

[03:22] Bruce Babashan: And he said, are you coach Bruce? I said, I am coach Bruce. He said, I have a young man on the phone. that would like to speak to you, would you be willing to talk to him? And this is like completely out of the blue with no pre so. I said, sure. And he put me on the phone and, and I looked down at the phone and there was this, this handsome boy with his long eyelashes and with a big smile.

[03:46] Bruce Babashan: And he started talking to me, you know, very fast and in an excited voice, but I couldn’t understand one word he said. And you know, I didn’t want to be a jerk. So I waited a little bit till there was like pause and I handed the phone back to the man. I said, You know, what’s going on here? You know, what’s happening?

[04:02] Bruce Babashan: He says, Coach, this young man’s asking that if he gets to your gym, will you train him? And I said, well, where does he live? He says he lives in a small town in Romania and he wants to come to America to be a professional boxer. And I said, well, how’d he find me? So his coach had found me when I was coaching one of the U.

[04:21] Bruce Babashan: S. teams abroad. I said, look, if he can get here, I’ll train him. And tell him that. And he said, and he looked in the phone, he said some words in Romanian and, uh, the man thanked me and left. And that’s the last I thought about it. About seven months later, seven or eight months later, I’m in the gym and I look up and we have a little area where you walk in, there’s a window that looks into the gym from like the vestibule.

[04:46] Bruce Babashan: And I looked up and I saw this boy’s face. I mean, I looked up and the moment I saw him. I recognized his face from the phone and I looked and he looked at me and his big smile came across his face and he came into the gym and he walked in. He was disheveled. He had shoe at his pinky toe where the pinky toe was was all worn out.

[05:07] Bruce Babashan: You know, his socks were gray, he had shorts on, he had like a t shirt that was raggedy, all stretched around the collar. He had a backpack, a tear in the bottom, and he walked up to me, he put his hand out, and he said, meet Champion. So, I looked at him, I said, well, we’ll see, but I don’t, you know, I didn’t really know what to do.

[05:29] Bruce Babashan: And so, I said, is there anybody who, how do we communicate? So, I realized I couldn’t talk to him, really, I couldn’t communicate with him. But he was eager. I said, you know, I’ve heard, you know, how are we going to talk? So eventually he got that fella to come back in the next day and we talked and it found out that this boy had saved up money for seven months to buy a one way ticket to United States.

[05:57] Bruce Babashan: He got off at the airport. He thought was closest to my gym, which is right outside of Washington DC. So he got off at this airport in Dulles. It took him a day and a half to get from Dulles airport to my gym. He was telling me that story and he showed up at the gym. He had no money and no plan, but the desire to be a fighter.

[06:20] Bruce Babashan: I didn’t ask him a lot of questions for the next couple of days. I said, well, just come to the gym. And every day I’d come to the gym in the morning and he would already be there. And I figured this kid’s really eager. This kid’s really eager. Come to find out he was sleeping outside. And then he would wake up in the morning and come over and be the first one there.

[06:40] Bruce Babashan: So, I started training him. And eventually, we found that he had a distant relative in the general area. And we talked to the relative, and the relative said he could stay here for a short period of time. Which was nice, and we started training, and he was gifted. He was gifted. You know, he had the things, Jim, that you can’t coach in.

[07:00] Bruce Babashan: You can teach skills, you can teach certain things, but certain, just, uh, you know, kinetic awareness and movement and understanding and, and, you know, so he had some gifts, and he was a really hard worker. He was a really good, sweet kid, but the uncle that he was staying with, This distant relative did a little research and he found out a little bit about what a boxer could make as a pro boxer who was successful.

[07:30] Bruce Babashan: So he started aligning himself with now his nephew. So anyway, I would taking Alex and you know, we were developing him and Had him for a year or so and then got him, started getting him some fights in 1 0, And he’s winning. He’s not winning. He’s crushing people. You know, I was taking him around to different gyms to test him out and I had him spar with people.

[07:54] Bruce Babashan: You know, Gravante Davis and all kinds of Keyshawn, all the top guys in the world. And this kid was hanging in and I was like, Oh my God. So we found somebody who would, you know, that, you know, the sport requires some investment in the athlete. And we found a gentleman who was very helpful, was helping him out financially.

[08:14] Bruce Babashan: I eventually moved him into my house because he didn’t have a place and I eventually had him bring his wife and his daughter over to the United States because they wanted to come. And then they ended up staying in my house. I taught his daughter how to, you know, the alphabet, you know, and she was this beautiful little girl.

[08:32] Bruce Babashan: All this time this kid was in the gym training and we were building towards something and I was doing it for all the right reasons, right? I was doing it. Because here is this kid that needed help, that he was responsive to the help that was being given to him. We were succeeding. He was coachable and all those things.

[08:52] Bruce Babashan: So we are now at the level where he’s beginning to fight for, for some sizable belts and things like that. So our first we’re fighting for the IBF intercontinental and we fought for the IBO international belt. He knocked the dude out in like three rounds. Then we fought for the IBF intercontinental and he fought the guy who was the previous world champion.

[09:13] Bruce Babashan: And won that fight decisively. Then, during this time Jim, and I want everybody to hear this part of the story cause it’s, it’s a little bit of a cautionary tale. Being successful and knowing how to handle success are two different things. You know, I can only speak for myself, but there have been, in my younger ages when I was successful, I was not always mature enough or smart enough or wise enough to handle the success I was having.

[09:39] Bruce Babashan: And I also didn’t understand who were my friends and who weren’t. And I was always telling Alex, make sure you’re hanging out with the right people because I am coach. Don’t worry about me. Don’t worry about it. I got it. I got it. Okay. You’re hanging out with the right people. Yes, sir. Hanging out with the right people.

[09:54] Bruce Babashan: So one day I’m in the gym and now we’re, you know, the training is serious and everything that we’re looking at is, is serious. And I see Alex, I see him, and there’s this other kid from Eastern Europe in there. And I go, what is this guy doing here in the gym? He goes, Oh, he’s a friend of mine. I go, well, how is he a friend of yours?

[10:18] Bruce Babashan: He goes, Oh, you know, he just says he’s a friend. And, uh, guy came over and the moment the guy came over, I felt uncomfortable. There was something about the guy that my instincts went up. And I just said, you know, Alex, I’m uncomfortable with this. Don’t be hanging out with this guy. I got it. And since we didn’t have a fight immediately scheduled, we were sort of in the gym working, but it wasn’t that intense.

[10:38] Bruce Babashan: He could, you know, so he started hanging out with this guy and they started hanging out with this guy’s friends. And then he said, I’m going to go to New York for the weekend. I said, okay, you know, be careful. And what I realized Jimmy was that he was getting pulled in the wrong direction. So we fought one more time and we are now the mandatory challenger for the world title.

[10:58] Bruce Babashan: With Jerwin and Kehas for the IBF world title. He’s ranked the number one challenger in the world in the IBF. He’s the number one in the IBO. He’s number like six in the, he’s ranked in the top five and all the sanctioning box. I’m on the phone negotiating for his first world title fight with Jerwin and Kehas as people from the Philippines.

[11:19] Bruce Babashan: So I’m on the phone negotiating his contract and which takes a couple of days, you know, a couple of days to do. So we’re in the discussions and. I get a phone call from Alex’s wife. Hi, uh, she goes, Coach Bruce in Brooklyn, she goes, Alex is in trouble. And I go, what’s he in trouble? He’s been arrested, he’s in Virginia, in trouble.

[11:42] Bruce Babashan: And I go, what’s he been arrested for? She said, I don’t know. So I called a lawyer buddy of mine and they researched it. And he’d been arrested for credit card fraud. And um, so I drove down to Virginia, down to where he was in Southern Virginia. Long story short was, these friends of his that he’d become friends with, were stealing credit cards.

[12:06] Bruce Babashan: You know, when I think of credit card fraud, I think of like, I steal your credit card and I use it before you know about it, right? Apparently what these guys do is they steal information. They make these chips and then they load these chips onto cards and then they have cards basically with other people’s information.

[12:22] Bruce Babashan: They use them until they’re shut down. And the guys he was friends with were involved in the Wawa breach. They, these guys had breached Wawa, which is a convenience store all over the chain, giant breach. They were making gift cards. And they were giving him cards like, you know, and I was telling him the whole time.

[12:40] Bruce Babashan: I said, you’re just their pet. You’re just the champ. These guys want to go to dinner with you, be seen with you, want to hang out with you, but they’re not your friends. We’re your friends here. Be careful. I got it. And what they were doing was giving them these cards to use. And he was using them and he got arrested because every single time you use the card, It’s a separate account.

[13:02] Bruce Babashan: A separate account, apparently, when you get charged. And the FBI had been following this group of guys that he was being friends with and tapped their phones and getting conversations with Alex. So this is a funny story. So I go down to the courthouse gym and I’m walking across the parking lot. into this courthouse in southern Virginia.

[13:25] Bruce Babashan: I’m talking about way down there, you know, two, three hours from where I live. And as I get out of my car, these other two guys across the parking lot, get out of the car at the exact same time. And I start walking to this building, this place I’d never been before. And I can see that these guys aren’t actually walking towards the building, but they’re walking towards me.

[13:44] Bruce Babashan: And I get out and I walk and I stopped and I’m like, maybe 15, 20 yards away. I said, can I help you guys? You know, you know, what’s going on here? That guy looks at me and goes, Mr. Babish in. Like I’m totally taken back. I go, what? He goes, uh, yeah, he goes, uh, special agent leak from the FBI. Could we speak to you?

[14:04] Bruce Babashan: I go, what? And, uh, so we go in it back and they explain everything to me that, you know, what has happened, this whole breakdown and everything like that. And this is how they knew my name. Cause they were part of this phone tap. And I’m, I’m like totally out of my element. I’m totally freaked out. Uh, you know, you know, I’m Mr.

[14:26] Bruce Babashan: Straight Down The Middle Guy and here I am. And so. Now, and you know, and you live your life as a coach, you try and live with high ideals and here I’m in this thing. I’m in this thing and uh, I’m, I’m, I’m worried for Alex. I’m, I’m uncomfortable with the whole situation. So anyway, we go through a process and eventually they come to find out that the state drops the case against Alex, but it was still reported to immigration.

[14:55] Bruce Babashan: And we get a letter from immigration saying, you have to, you have to Leave the country. You’re being removed from the country. And I remember trying to figure out what to do with the world title fight. This is all happened simultaneously and I realized I can’t do anything about it. And so I let him know and I remember driving Alex to the airport and on his final taking him away and he looked over at me and this by now he’s learned some English and he looked over at me.

[15:21] Bruce Babashan: He goes, did I kill my own?

[15:30] Bruce Babashan: He said, did I kill my own dream? And I said, yeah, you killed your dream. And here’s a kid who came from nothing with a pure heart, came over here, did everything right, got with the wrong people. It’s a cautionary tale. Everywhere I go, when people ask, when I go speak in front of teams or whenever I’m asked to come talk to different college programs, I talk about decisions.

[15:54] Bruce Babashan: I talk about the choices we make. You know, how you have to make the right choices and surrounding yourself with the right people. And the consequences and sometimes our kind, you know, we don’t think of these, this happened. This is real.

[16:06] Jim Harshaw Jr.: It’s not, it sounds like a movie. It’s freaking real.

[16:08] Bruce Babashan: Yeah. I mean, this kid, the rags to riches, we are in the riches discussion and his daughter had grown up here.

[16:15] Bruce Babashan: She no longer really spoke Romanian. She spoke English. They had to pick and they had to transplant them. I stay in touch with Alex. He’s trying to get back in the United States. I try and help them, but you know, like anything else in life, Jim, there’s a, when you’re climbing to the top, especially in a, in, in sports, there’s a window of opportunity.

[16:34] Bruce Babashan: And sometimes not only have you climbed, but the windows open for you. The circumstances are right. The conditions are right. You know, the moment is right. Preparation

[16:44] Jim Harshaw Jr.: meets opportunity.

[16:45] Bruce Babashan: Yeah. And, and just, you know, there’s a window for you and your style and the person you are to slip through that window.

[16:53] Bruce Babashan: And I talked to him not too long ago and he goes, you know, I want to come back. I said, you’re five years older, son. You haven’t fought in five years. You know, I don’t want to, you know, crush your dream or anything, but I don’t think that’s going to happen. And I said, I will start back at the beginning. If I say, if you get here, I’ll train you.

[17:09] Bruce Babashan: But I don’t think that right now. The window of opportunity is the same. You know, he’s older, the athletes have changed, the circumstances have changed. It is a much more difficult path.

[17:21] Jim Harshaw Jr.: Wow. Bruce, what a freakin story. Holy mackerel. I mean, literally, like, straight out of a movie. So, I wanna take this story and overlay this on top of the life.

[17:34] Jim Harshaw Jr.: Cause the listener’s saying, you know, I’ve got good friends and these are good people and I’m not doing credit card theft and nothing like that. But I think the lesson for all of us is what we just heard from Bruce is this story that is like stark contrast of like what could have been and then how these people drugged the champ down.

[17:57] Jim Harshaw Jr.: But for you, the listener, it’s like, It may not be so stark. You’re around people who don’t have the same goals as you. They, they may not be bad people. They’re, they’re good people and good members of the community. And that’s all well and good. Do they have the same goals? Do they have the same standards as, not just you have right now, But where do you want to go?

[18:21] Jim Harshaw Jr.: So Alex came into the sphere of influence of Bruce Babishan, a coach with high standards, had everything that this kid needed, and he gravitated up, he gravitated up, he was pulled up because he was in the right environment. And Bruce, we call this the environment of excellence in my coaching program. This kid got pulled up and then this gravitational force that pulled him down on the other side, the bad people.

[18:46] Jim Harshaw Jr.: For the listener. You have to be very intentional about you. It’s like, there are things that you want in the world, right? Maybe you want to make a million dollars, improve your marriage, lose that 30 pounds, run the marathon, ultimate, whatever that thing is. If you are not in the sphere of influence of other people who hold the same values and same standards.

[19:10] Jim Harshaw Jr.: You’re not going to get there.

[19:11] Bruce Babashan: Yeah. Yeah. I’m listening to you and I want to sort of overlay something in this because it’s a part of what I try and communicate to all the athletes. I’m working with a kid right now who’s an extraordinary talent. It’s Dusty Harris. He’s 37 and oh, we should be fighting for the world title soon.

[19:28] Bruce Babashan: Wow. Dusty Harris. Mark that name. Dusty Harrison. Yeah. Dusty Harrison. Everything in life. is a process. And part of process, you know, people think of process as A, B, C, D, and E. That’s part of process. But a part of your process is who you choose to associate with, who you choose to have in your life, who you choose to be around.

[19:52] Bruce Babashan: That creates the environment in which your process exists. And when you get people, when you have people in your life, and I tell the athletes this all the time, you know, you come in here, we have a very definite. Way of doing things. And we have a very specific process for everything. Part of your process is to put yourself in the absolute right environment to achieve at the level.

[20:17] Bruce Babashan: Most people, what they do is they have a couple of friends or they have a couple of things that are. These distractions that are outside and they feel they can manage those things. And it’s been my life experience that to be the best at something or to be extraordinary at something you have to have a very monocular view of things.

[20:33] Bruce Babashan: A very sort of, the more single minded you are, the more things you exclude from your life, the more things that you can have in your life. And one of the things you have to exclude in your life or To relationships that do not serve you. And we all have friends that we love and that are dear to us that don’t serve our greater good.

[20:53] Bruce Babashan: They don’t, you know, we have relationships. We may have preexisting relationships with people who are great people, nice guys, whatever, nice gals, whatever it is. But they don’t serve our purpose. They’re not in our process. They’re not currently involved in our process. And if we don’t get them, listen, you can fool yourself and feel like, you know, not me.

[21:14] Bruce Babashan: The not me syndrome has ruined more, more athletes than I’ve ever been. I could think of anything else. It’s not going to happen to me. I can manage it. I can deal with it. But every great overachiever has a monocular view and they do put people out of their lives who aren’t, you know, going to help them attain at the level that they’re looking to attain.

[21:35] Bruce Babashan: And if not, what you have is you have incongruencies in your, you know, when you look at a guy and you look at somebody and say, you know, am I doing what I need to achieve at the level I’m seeking to achieve? There’s all these incongruencies. There’s incongruencies in the relationship. There’s incongruencies.

[21:50] Bruce Babashan: I want to be the world champion, but my behavior is a certain way. I want to be a world champion, but I’m hanging out with bums and losers. I want to do this. And there’s all kinds of these incongruencies. And all of them say the same thing. I can’t, that’s not that important. I can manage it. You can’t manage it.

[22:07] Bruce Babashan: You know, I, I, uh, had a conversation with a Lee Kemp. You remember, you know, Lee, I’m bringing up for Lee, Lee was talking one time and just telling me how exclusionary success is and how, you know, you think you’re going to get to the top and you’re going to, he said, there is an element of loneliness associated with it.

[22:25] Bruce Babashan: And I don’t mean loneliness of feeling longing in your heart, but I mean loneliness in the sense that. You can’t drag a lot of people with you in extraordinary ventures. Most people don’t have that type of mindset. You have to leave people behind on your journey and being unable to do that, having that what you consider a good heart is really keeping you tethered to people who, who can’t serve your goal and your purpose.

[22:53] Bruce Babashan: And that’s where you have to have wisdom and you have to make hard choices and you have to decide what’s really important to me. What is important to me? And if you’re unwilling to separate yourself from the people in your life that are not congruent with your goal or not going to help you get your goal, at this stage in my career and when I’m dealing with adults, I lose sympathy.

[23:15] Bruce Babashan: I lose sympathy. I just say, listen, I’m going to tell you exactly what you need to do. And you can do that, or you can choose not to do that. But if you choose not to do that, and it doesn’t happen for you, I lose sympathy. If you’re going to do it now, you know, we can do everything right. And you know this better than anything.

[23:34] Bruce Babashan: Doing everything right does not guarantee success. You know, it’s one of the hard things in life. But it does guarantee self respect. It does guarantee a sense of honor and pride. that you gain from totally devoting yourself to something. I think the highest expression of a person’s life besides family is their ability and their devotion to something.

[23:58] Bruce Babashan: And most people when I say this, I say this to my athletes, when I say devotion I’m not talking about the bible, whatever that relationship is, I’m talking about the spiritual nature of devotion. And that there is something when you fully dedicate and sacrifice. Your life and you devote yourself to something.

[24:20] Bruce Babashan: There is a spiritual component that changes you as a person, that changes the way that you go about things, the way that you navigate. And that, that is part of the incredible value proposition of seeking high goals and seeking the highest things to attain. Some people don’t have high goals. Some people don’t know how to set goals properly.

[24:42] Bruce Babashan: I think I mentioned this to you earlier. Most people set goals, They set a long term goal and they focus on it daily and that’s the exact wrong way to achieve a goal. You know, goals and outcomes are distractions, right? They distract you from what you’re supposed to do. I remember this years before, this is about 35 years ago, and before I was coaching full time.

[25:02] Bruce Babashan: I got this job and I was working in this corporation. And the guy that brought me in was my mentor. He came in at that place and he said, you know, what’s your goal, Bruce? And I said, I want to be rookie of the year. You know, he goes, that’s great goal. And he goes, did you write it down? Did you put it up on your little, your desk?

[25:19] Bruce Babashan: You’re going to be rookie of the year. He said, I go, yeah, I did all that. Cause that was like the mantra of the, of the time, you know, write your goal down, vision boards. He says, all that does, Bruce is distract you. And I go, what do you mean? He goes, so every time you’re looking at that, you’re not thinking about what you need to be doing right now at this very moment to attain that goal.

[25:39] Bruce Babashan: He said, here’s what you need to do. He said, I want you to write down. I want you to work in reverse. I want you to set a goal that I want you to work in reverse. How many calls do you need to make? To get a meeting. How many meetings do you need to make to get a sale? Right? Broke it down like this. And he said, every day, your goal is not to look at that rookie of the year thing that you want to attain.

[25:58] Bruce Babashan: Your goal was to look down at that blank sheet of paper and turn it into a hundred phone calls. And then the next day your goal was to turn that into a hundred phone calls and to get one meeting. And then when you get five meetings, your goal is to turn one of those meetings into one sale. He goes, if you do that for the next two years, you’ll be, The rookie of the year, or the next year you’ll be the rookie of the year.

[26:21] Bruce Babashan: And that’s what I did. You know, I used to go to the library. I used to go to the public library every morning. This is before the internet and I’d get these, God, that’s incredible to say that. I feel so old when I say that. Get these reference books and I would write down these lists and I would go in.

[26:34] Bruce Babashan: And Jim, I had these little white square pieces of paper that I cut up, you know, and I would just hash them up. Phone call, phone call, you know, making phone calls, getting meetings, getting things, you know, crushing it, crushing it. And he was the first guy that made me understand or made me, to make me aware that setting goals is great.

[26:56] Bruce Babashan: But focusing on the long term when you’re in the daily process is exactly how you fail, is exactly how you fail. And so, my athletes, I say, what’s the goal? I want to be the national champion this year in amateur boxing. I have like three kids, they all want to be national champions. Okay, great, let’s be national champions.

[27:16] Bruce Babashan: I said, now how are we going to achieve that? Well, what do you think? And I said, okay, well here’s what we’re going to do. Here’s your workout, and every day we’re going to come in and we’re, What are our goals? Is a daily goal. We don’t, we don’t think about the, we don’t spend our time thinking about nationals or going to regional.

[27:33] Bruce Babashan: We don’t think about that. We don’t talk about that. We don’t talk about the outcome of your next fight. We talk about what we are doing today. What are we doing today? How far are you running? What’s your time today? What’s your, what’s, you know, when you’re doing your conditioning coach, what’s that like today?

[27:48] Bruce Babashan: How many rounds are we putting in today and how hard did we work? How many rounds of sparring today are we doing or whatever it happens to be doing? And we focus on the daily. And the more that, and this has just been my life experience, the more that my athletes look into the future, and I share this whenever anybody asks me, but the more that, you know, people set goals incorrectly all the time, and we all do, you know, I have the dream, I want to do this, I want to do that, and I’m constantly, how many times have you run across somebody that just tells you, man, I have, you know, you know, I have these dreams, I want to do this, I have so much more, I want to be so much more, I can do so much more.

[28:25] Bruce Babashan: And they ruminate about it. They ruminate on it and they think because they’re told no disrespect or anything to anybody who has a different philosophy, but when you sit around and only think about the end of your goal, you’re totally distracted from the process that allows you to achieve. I remember listening to John Wooden give a talk one time, and he was talking about how he never mentions winning.

[28:52] Bruce Babashan: I remember early in my career, when I was coaching. How important it was, I wanted to develop a philosophy and a thought process, and I started listening to these great coaches, and uh, I started realizing the fact that they would all say it similarly, but in different ways, you know, they would all say it, that the outcome is the distraction.

[29:14] Jim Harshaw Jr.: Yeah, that’s, I mean, I, I’ve seen that so many times too. And I, I saw, I’ve seen it in my own life and my own wrestling career, my senior year, the moment that I got out of my own freaking way wrestling was the moment I gave up on the outcome. I said, we all know what we want. I want to be on top of the podium as a national championships.

[29:34] Jim Harshaw Jr.: You got athletes who want to be national champions, you know, the list or you want to build the business, quit your job, make the career change, lose the weight, heal your marriage, whatever that thing is. It’s like. You know what that is. Stephen Covey, Seven Habits of Highly Effective People, told us start with the end in mind, right?

[29:49] Jim Harshaw Jr.: You start there, you figure out the process, then you focus on the process, not the outcome. And for me, the turning point was the moment in the hotel room. The night before my first competition, my senior year, when I said something about what I’m doing is not working. Something about what I’m doing is not working.

[30:05] Jim Harshaw Jr.: I am going to give up on the outcome. I’m only going to focus on doing everything I can possibly do. And like you said earlier, Bruce, it doesn’t guarantee success. But in that moment, I was allowed to, I allowed myself to let go of the outcome, focus on the process. I said, I’m going to show up to practice early, stay late, rehab my injuries, put the right food in my body, go to bed on time, take care of Injuries, all that stuff, like take care of my academics.

[30:30] Jim Harshaw Jr.: And if I do all of those things, I give myself the best chance. And then I like, Oh, it’s this freedom to actually go out and perform and to do the thing that you need to do day in and day out. And this is focusing on the process, not the outcome.

[30:46] Bruce Babashan: I think that whenever I get a chance to talk to other coaches or if I’m asked to, one of the things I try and stress to is that, especially the young coaches, is that process is many things and our job as coaches and our job As leaders, it’s to not only be successful, but to teach how to be successful.

[31:08] Bruce Babashan: And when I see a program that is poorly run, or I see a business that’s poorly run, oftentimes it boils down to leadership. And I feel sad though, for athletes in poorly run programs, not because they’re on crappy teams, but when I was a boy, I was immersed in something. Well, I grew up at the Silver Spring Boys Club right outside Washington D.

[31:34] Bruce Babashan: C., and everything had a process. It was just highly organized, and even at 75 pound football, practice was a certain way, it was run a certain way. Everything had a process. I didn’t realize that I was learning that. I was just in it. I was just in it. And when I got to high school and my high school football coach says, this dude is brilliant man.

[32:00] Bruce Babashan: And we went, we ended up winning state and being a great team. We had a process. Everything. And I didn’t realize I was learning that. I was just in it. And when you’re in a, when you’re in a bad team, You’re not learning. One of the most important things that leaders are supposed to teach is how to be successful and every great coach that I’ve ever come across or that I study or that I admire or that I try and emulate, it’s all process driven and then when the athletes leave, you know, like, this is the thing, when you see coaching trees, right?

[32:32] Bruce Babashan: You see a Joe Gibbs coaching tree or the Bill Walsh coaching tree or the Don Correale coaching tree. They have philosophies, they have all kinds of schemes and stuff. We’ve, uh, right. But they all have process. They’re all process and everybody takes that process. That’s why I think in large part, a coach like Nick Saban, look at his coaching tree.

[32:54] Bruce Babashan: Look at the guys that come out of that tree. This guy Cignetti over there in Indiana right now, who’s crushing it. He came out of that tree. They’re not smarter than everybody else. There’s not the only place in the country where genius football coaches come from, but what they do have is they have, they are disciples of a process.

[33:13] Bruce Babashan: Now they put their own spin on it. And I think when you’re a leader, or if you’re a coach, the most important thing you can teach about the process of being successful is immerse kids in a process so they understand how to win. Emphasize it as they’re going through it. Let them know what they’re supposed to be learning.

[33:33] Bruce Babashan: It’s not just, I want you to do the drill this way. I want you to do the technique this way. It’s the process. I’m putting you in a process and when you learn how to build process, you can take that process and start a business and you will know that the most important thing about being successful in that business is process orientation.

[33:52] Bruce Babashan: What is the process for every person in your company? What is the process for every person in your gym or in your team? The better the process, the better the outcome. And yet it’s natural for all of us. You were saying you do it. I do it. We all do it is to constantly think about the result constantly.

[34:12] Bruce Babashan: You know what I mean? Now, you know, visualization boards and all that kind of stuff. I love the idea that you can join with the universe and where you can metaphysically connect. I’m open to all things. And I love that kind of thing. I love that kind of conversation. But I also know that ideas without process are just dreams.

[34:35] Bruce Babashan: They just stay out there in the ether and they frustrate the hell out of you. And the last thing I’ll say here is that oftentimes, one of the great things about sports that’s a little different than life is that people have this notion, I have this notion, say, you know, I’m a hard worker, man. Nobody can outwork me.

[34:55] Bruce Babashan: That’s what I say. I say if you and I, Jim, are going to do a competition and we’re serious about it, the one check I put in my column is I’m going to outwork you. Now you might, you might put the same check in, that’s cool, and that’s what makes for a good thing. But I say I’m putting that check, I’m going to outwork this dude.

[35:10] Bruce Babashan: Now, I can beat anybody with work, right? I can win. This is the, this is the common sort of flawed thinking that happens, at least with my athletes. I can do anything coach if you just tell me exactly how to do it before I get started. And I say to the athletes, I said, you don’t want to know exactly how to, here’s what you do.

[35:30] Bruce Babashan: The first thing you do is show up to practice on time. That’s the very first thing. You overlook that, I can’t get you to the end. You show up for practice on time. You lace your gloves a certain way. You put your shoes on a certain way. We train a certain way. We have a certain way of hitting the bag. We have a certain way of working the wall.

[35:48] Bruce Babashan: We have a certain way of be I have a certain way of entering the ring. Everything has a process. The more you focus on process, the process is the way. You know what I’m saying? The process is the way. And people get caught up in tricks and the latest this and that. And I said, no man, it’s how you get in the ring every day.

[36:09] Bruce Babashan: It’s how you tie your shoes every day. It’s how you train every day. I, the very first one, when kids come into my gym to join the gym, I tell them all the same thing. I want you to watch practice today and I tell them the time to leave. Normally I say, okay, you can watch practice and I want you to leave at 7 15 and then you can come back the next day and see if, you know, try it out and we’ll see if you fit into the culture here.

[36:31] Bruce Babashan: And I tell the kids, if you leave at 7 14 in 59 seconds, don’t come back. I will know about it, I won’t say anything to you, okay, but I’ll know about it and I’ll know the kind of kid you are and I don’t want that kind of kid in here, not because I don’t like you, because I don’t want you affecting that kid over there.

[36:49] Bruce Babashan: You, if I say leave at 7 15, you leave at 7 15 or thereafter, right. And those things seem like to people, he’s being excessively difficult, but really what I’m trying to do from the beginning is put that kid into a process. And then my great goal at the end of all of this, when I have an athlete, because most of my athletes, like every sport, The overwhelming at a number of athletes aren’t going to achieve at a high level, you know, in this sport, but what is the thing?

[37:18] Bruce Babashan: Is that it then? And they, they did it. Or what did they leave with that makes that experience incredibly valuable to their life? They learn that if you push them, they learn with some self confidence, some self respect, but equally important is they’ve learned how to be successful. They learn how to be a success and they can take that and do their own work.

[37:40] Bruce Babashan: You know, they can start a roofing company. They can start an internet company. When you’re doing that kind of thing, you’re coaching the shit out of kids. Now you’re really coaching. And to me, process is king. Process is king.

[37:55] Jim Harshaw Jr.: Bruce, for the listener who has bought in and wants to take action on this, what’s something they can do in the next 24 to 48 hours?

[38:02] Jim Harshaw Jr.: To start taking action on what you’re teaching here today. So I’m

[38:06] Bruce Babashan: doing, I’m actually revamping my program right now. And the exercise that I’m doing right now is I am starting with what is my desired outcome. I’m talking about my specific desired outcome. And then I start mapping backwards. Exactly what it is that I have to do for my kids to attain that.

[38:28] Bruce Babashan: So for my local program, it’s to, it’s to win the team trophy and the golden gloves for my, for the nationals is for us to go on and, and when that, so what I do is I begin to map backwards and I get as granular as I possibly can. I wish I could show you something on the screen. I just did an infographic that I’m going to be showing the kids that shows them the five steps that we’re going to be going through in this program.

[38:51] Bruce Babashan: I tell them, this is how the program is being designed. This is how it’s going to be designed. So what I do is I sit down. It’s an exercise. It doesn’t, it’s not a 10 minute exercise. It’s not a 15 minutes. This is a process that takes, it causes you to think into, it may take you a month of deconstructing the goal that you have and breaking it down into bigger goals, smaller goals, actionable goals, daily steps.

[39:16] Bruce Babashan: The other thing is that I, I encourage everybody to do this. Is to get it, open a word document and whenever the mood strikes you, start putting down what you believe is your philosophy. Don’t go to uh, ChatGPT. I love ChatGPT, but not for this, right? It’s to start putting down your philosophy and think into what your philosophy is.

[39:38] Bruce Babashan: In that exercise, a lot of people come to realize and think things about that they’re not aware of. They become a little more, a little more self aware. Deconstruct your goal. Start with the big goal. Break it down into smaller and smaller pieces until you’ve gotten it down to daily actionable steps. And then those daily actionable steps.

[39:59] Jim Harshaw Jr.: Bruce, for the listener who wants to find you, follow you, learn more about you, etc. Where can they do that?

[40:05] Bruce Babashan: You can, I’m on Instagram as yourcornerman. I’m on, uh, you can go to www. yourcornerman. com You know, Jim, besides what I do on a, you know, coaching. I do some speaking when I get the opportunity or when I get the chance, I have the moment in the schedule.

[40:22] Bruce Babashan: I love to do that. I’d love to do more of that. I have a website that sort of speaks to that part of my life a little bit more. Uh, it’s yourcornerman. com. The boxing and the fighting side, you can go to Instagram and I, I’m, but I’m not prolific on social media. You know, I, I do

[40:38] Jim Harshaw Jr.: love your stuff though, man, when you post and when it’s you and you’re sharing messages like you’re sharing here today is like, is gold.

[40:44] Jim Harshaw Jr.: It’s the dose of social media that people actually need as opposed to all the garbage out there. I don’t know how to get, uh, You know,

[40:50] Bruce Babashan: popular,

[40:51] Jim Harshaw Jr.: you know what I mean? Yeah, it’s good. We need more of you out there. So Bruce, thank you so much for the lessons. Thanks for coming back on. It’s been way too long and it’s a really good to reconnect, man.

[41:04] Bruce Babashan: Yeah, it is Jim. And I just want to congratulate you on success. I’ve got to watch you from the beginning to where you are now. And I know you’re not anywhere near the end of where you’re at, but I just want to say. I love watching people start with an idea, develop it and become successful. I’ve watched you from afar.

[41:25] Bruce Babashan: I’m happy for you and I admire you for it. Wow. The feeling’s

[41:28] Jim Harshaw Jr.: mutual.

[41:29] Bruce Babashan: I appreciate you. Thanks, brother. Okay, brother. I’ll talk to you soon.

Note: This text was automatically generated.