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“Why are you holding this contest”? That was a question that I became really good at answering throughout the last few months. The short answer - I want to achieve awesomeness in my life. Hopefully, the people that I get to meet with have accomplished something awesome in their life and getting to know people like that will ultimately help me do the same. Ok, there is my answer. Here are the results and what I learned.

I didn’t get to meet Harrison Ford, who was my number one target influential person for many apparent reasons. And yes, one of those reasons is his ridiculous good looks. However, I did get to meet with five awesome and influential people. Without further delay, the winner of my contest is Alex McKenzie who connected me with Jim Foglesong, Country Music Hall of Famer and former president of Capital Records. Jim signed several country music stars while at Capital Records including Garth Brooks, Reba McEntire, and George Strait.

The purpose of this contest was to connect with influential people and do two things:

1. Learn as much as I can from each person and use it in my attempt to achieve awesomeness.
2. Build some sort of relationship with each person so that they might remember who I am if I come calling on them in the future for help or advice.

While I didn’t get to meet nearly as many people or as influential of people as I had hoped, I feel that I did accomplish my goals with the people that I met. Let me share with you what I learned.

In all of my discussions I found two common themes. The first is that if you are going to be the best at whatever you choose to do in life, you need to be doing something you love. Jim Foglesong said it many times in our conversation, “I loved music, so it never felt like work”. Whether I was meeting with a championship coach, a business owner, or a musical artist, I could tell that work wasn’t the same thing to them as it was to most people. It was their passion and they woke up in the morning happy because they got to do what they love. The second common theme was to surround yourself with the right people. This means the right people for you. Sometimes this might be other hard working people, sometimes smart people, sometimes creative people. Whoever compliments you best and pushes you to be your best, this is who you need to surround yourself with in your quest for awesomeness.

There was one other finding that I really want to share with everyone. One of the questions I asked each person was, “Did you ever have to sacrifice anything that you wish you hadn’t?” The purpose of this question was to see if they ever felt like they had to ‘sell out’ or give into temptations or distractions that they might regret in the future. Of course I knew they had to sacrifice a lot in their journey in the form of time, leisure, and other opportunities, but I was more concerned with whether or not they had to cross any ethical or moral lines they had drawn. It was refreshing to find that none of the five interviewees had any regretful sacrifices on their road to success. Either they didn’t want me to know what they sacrificed and were really good at lying or they truly did stick to their core values and beliefs. And to me, that was a huge relief. A constant inner struggle of mine is how much do I have to give into this world and surrender in order to someday become influential myself so that I can change the world in a positive way. It was very inspiring to hear that I don’t have to sacrifice anything I don’t want to, most importantly my values, in order to achieve awesomeness.

List of influential people I met (in random order):

Robert Young – President of Tutt Inc., large construction company in Lexington, KY
Jim Foglesong – Country Music Hall of Fame and former President of Capital Records
David Emerson – Atttorney at law, owner of Emerson Law Office
Richard Ketch – Owner of R.J. Ketch Equine
Michael Burt – State championship girls basketball coach, Riverdale HS, TN

- If you want to hear more about my interviews with any of these influential people, just ask me.

So I definitely should have wrote this about a month ago, but here it is.  I am giving away $500 to the person that hooks me up with the most influential person for a 15-20 minute one on one meeting.  The idea is to connect me with the most difficult-to-reach, influential, or prestigious person possible.  I want you to shoot for the stars.  I’m talking about people like George Bush, Michael Jordan, or Harrison Ford.  Ok, that might be a little extreme, but you get the idea.  Here is a link with more information outlining the rules in detail.  Contact me if you have any questions. 

I will write about my experiences with these connections on this blog after the contest deadline.

It’s that place where you don’t feel nervous, you don’t feel awkward, and risk is at a minimum. It’s when you are with your friends, behind your computer desk, or participating in an activity that you dominate. It’s called your comfort zone.  I’m here to tell you to get out of it and spend more time in what I like to call your “irrational fear” zone. Sure, life is easier in your comfort zone, but since when was easier better.

Speaking in public used to be part of my irrational fear zone. I wasn’t all that great at it and it inevitably made me nervous. Then one day I was forced to give a presentation for a concept to millionaire investors. Talk about being intimidated. These guys meant business, and even though I only had 5-10 minutes of their time, I knew their time was valuable. I prepared for those 5 minutes for about 50 hours. As a result, I nailed it. I no longer get nervous speaking in front of anyone. Turns out I’m actually quite good at it. That is why I call it your irrational fear zone. You really have no good reason to be afraid of trying it other than it isn’t something you are used to doing.

This is the cool thing about getting out of your comfort zone - the more you challenge yourself in your irrational fear zone, the more your comfort zone will expand. As your comfort zone expands, you’ll be able to accomplish more. It will make you better at getting what you want. Talk about an edge on the rest of the world.  You are now succeeding at things most people wont even attempt!

How does one get out of their comfort zone? Well, the first step is defining what isn’t in your comfort zone. For guys, one area is always girls. No matter how cool, smooth, or confident a guy appears, girls are his kryptonite. Other examples of irrational discomfort might be participating in class activities, speaking up at a business meeting, dancing at a wedding, or even something as simple as looking people in the eye when you talk. Basically, all things that involve the potential for failure or rejection. Once you’ve defined what isn’t in your comfort zone, the second step is facing those irrational discomforts. In other words, just do it. Try it, fail at it, get back up and try it again.

“Action may not always bring happiness, but there is no happiness without action.”
Benjamin Disraeli, former British Prime Minister

Once you try it enough, you master it and it becomes comfortable. And just like that your comfort zone expanded - Ergo, Vis-à-vis, Concordently.

The constant battle for anyone who is truly good at what they do is to find a balance between coming across as confident or arrogant.  I once had a professor who was reviewing my graduate school application say, “You sound a little arrogant in your application letter…I like it.”

I think most people will praise confidence but might detest arrogance. It is often tough to take one without the other though.

The truth of the matter is, people who are the best at what they do got their because they had tons of confidence. They were constantly telling themselves they were the best. And sometimes that confidence can sound like arrogance. Every professional athlete, Nobel Prize winner, or President of the United States faced adversity at some point in their life. They overcame it and rose to the top because they were confident and probably a little bit arrogant. Confidence is so important. It drives how you present yourself and can be the difference between success and failure. In sports, confident players want to control the game, therefore they do. The players who lack confidence don’t want the pressure, so they don’t get the opportunities to make big plays. It is the same in so many other areas of life – confident guys get prettier girls, confident students test better and as a result get better grades, confident presenters win the prizes (sometimes this can be investment money, sometimes an election). The point is, confidence is important and if it has to come with a downside in the form of some arrogance, I say take it.

If I had to choose an employee for my company or a player for my team, I would always pick the confident candidate that might be tied with some arrogance over the insecure candidate who might fold under pressure. All other things equal, the confident candidate will rise to the top more often.

So my first high school soccer season as a coach has ended. Let me just say, I learned a lot. I learned a lot about soccer, teaching, people, and life in general.

The biggest point I emphasized for my team was that we would never get outworked. Our work rate would always be higher than the opponent. I made a big deal about having a good work ethic and putting forth effort. And for the most part, I think we did a good job of maintaining a solid work ethic. I would say that only in two games throughout the season did the other team outwork us. And believe me, I let my boys know how frustrated I was when it happened. But there were many times when they made me proud of their work rate. I remember several occasions when the opponent’s coach would even yell at his team, “They are out working us right now.” I would smile so big inside when that would happen. I guess my deal with work ethic is it’s something that no one can take from you, ever. No matter what happens in life and no matter how hard things get, no one can take away your work ethic. A strong work ethic is something that can be carried into everything you do in life – your school work, your job, your family, anything. And people with a good work ethic end up doing something special with their lives.

As the JV coach I found my scale for success changing as the season went on. I started out the season telling the boys that we would go undefeated. That goal ended in game 2. But as the season continued I started to think more about the future of the program and how success could be measured in more than just wins and losses for this team. I really started to focus more on player development and preparing them for the Varsity level (where wins and losses really do matter). Don’t get me wrong, I still wanted to win every game and I would still lose sleep after losses. But when it came to practice and training, I prepared practice plans to equip the players for the next few years and not just the next game. There are some coaches at the high school level that play a certain style of play that ‘can’ win games (especially at the JV level), but that style doesn’t prepare the players for the next level. It is very tempting to fall into this style to win, but I resisted. I really hope it pays off in future seasons.

I also started to realize that there has to be a balance between preparing for the future and maintaining success in the current season. It’s true that if you sacrifice too many wins in the ‘now’ for wins in the ‘future’ you can hurt team morale and kill the kids’ spirit.

One other thing I learned from coaching this season is that you can gain a lot from a win, but you can gain even more from a loss. Losing gives you this feeling that can only be described as a sickness that doesn’t heal until you get to redeem yourself in the next game. At least it is that way to competitive people. The thing about sports is that one team has to lose…every time. So no matter what, one team is left feeling that way. And that feeling is what drives you to work harder and do everything possible to keep from feeling that way next time. The good news though is that in sports you always have that next time to redeem yourself. It’s not like you are ever really playing your last game. You always get another opportunity to come back and make it right next time. Whether it be next week, next season, next year, whatever…there is always another chance. Man, I love sports.