Think about the last goal you set. Does it scare you? Is there a possibility you could fail? Today’s guest Ben Newman challenges us all to stop protecting ourselves with our goals and push past self-imposed limits.
Also in this episode:
- Connecting to your “burn”
- The 30 day challenge – what are you ACTUALLY capable of?
- Why we all need a coach
- Doing “un-required” things to take us to the next level
Ben is a highly regarded performance coach, international speaker and best-selling author. His clients include Fortune 500 companies around the world, business executives, sales organizations and professional athletes in the NFL, PGA, NBA, MLB, UFC and NCAA. He also serves as a Mental Conditioning Coach for the 17-time National Champion Alabama Crimson Tide football team and has worked with players from the last 3 Super Bowl Champion teams.
If your goal is to be a better communicator, add more value to your organization, or secure a financially stable future for you and your family… Take a moment and ask yourself: what are you actually doing to make that happen?
What if we take Ben’s advice, stop protecting ourselves and instead try something new and bold?
Still unsure where to start? We’re here to help. Our online courses Bought In and Valued are a GREAT way to push yourself past where you’ve been before and work toward those difficult but achievable goals.
Connect with Ben:
Via his website: www.BenNewman.net
Via Twitter: @ContinuedFight
Via Instagram: @continuedfight
TRANSCRIPTION
Ben Newman 0:00
When my grandmother gave me my mom’s journal, which was a testament to her positive mental attitude, when I was a junior in college, I was able to read that my mother wrote, beat the statistics beat the odds, live with a disease that is chronic and fatal, believe in yourself combat anything purpose in life, the way my mother approached her adversity, it has caused me to have this burn inside of me. I don’t care how many nose I hear, I don’t care what kind of heat you bring to me, you will not break me, because I have been through worse, and that’s the fire that causes me to show up every day. And give everything that I’ve got. I would never wish that adversity and challenge on anybody. But I know because I’ve done this enough times. There’s plenty of people listening right now, you just realized how important the burden is because you’ve been through your adversity and challenge too.
Brett Bartholomew 1:02
Welcome to the Art of coaching podcast, a show aimed at getting to the core of what it takes to change attitudes, behaviors and outcomes in the weight room, boardroom classroom, and everywhere in between. I’m your host, Brett Bartholomew, I’m a performance coach, keynote speaker, and the author of the book conscious coaching. But most importantly, I’m a lifelong student interested in all aspects of human behavior, and communication. I want to thank you for joining me and now let’s dive into today’s episode.
Hey, guys, welcome back to the show. We have an awesome episode queued up for you guys, today is Ben Newman. And Ben is a highly regarded performance coach, international speaker and best selling author, he has worked with a wide range of folks as well. Again, you see commonalities here, fortune 500 companies, sports teams, guys, you see these commonalities, because there’s so much synchrony between the corporate world and sports performance. I know that may make some of you cringe, some of you hardcore strength coaches out there feel like, oh, the suit and ties and you know, all these people listen, it’s all about leading and managing people. And whether you’re a coach, whether you’re a speaker, whether you’re a manager, whether you’re a teacher, like that’s a universal, we deal with people problems in life. And you know, guys like Ben, get it, they’ve worked, you know, we have a lot of mutual connections here with with Microsoft at Kansas State. And he’s also worked with Wells Fargo, which I just went up to last year. And these aren’t about name dropping opportunities. These are about helping people understand that all these organizations, whether it’s the Miami Dolphins, or Wells Fargo, or your team or somebody else, are all trying to figure out how to serve their end user better. That could be an athlete, that could be a client, that could be a customer anything. So I’m really challenging you guys to continue to see these links here. Because if you’re not learning from people, in all walks of life, you need to I say it again. And again, we tell our athletes, and we tell we tell our athletes to participate in a wide variety of sports. We tell kids to read a wide variety of books. But then at some point, some people quit learning from a wide variety of people or they only do it through books. So we’re really trying to do something unique with these podcasts. A Ben has served as a mental conditioning coach for Alabama. He has worked with players from the last three Super Bowl teams, he’s got insight here. I want to challenge you, I want you to find some things you don’t agree with within Ben’s episode. But don’t just talk about what you don’t agree with why and you know, dive deeper into how you would rephrase it. What do you agree with the most talked about what connected with you the most in this episode?
You can do all of that in our podcast, reflection sheets, they’re free. They’re at artofcoaching.com/podcastreflections. And you guys been throughout the episode challenges you to put this into action as well. None of us are looking for an echo chamber. None of us, including Ben are looking for people to you know, just hook line and sinker into everything we’re saying. We’re trying to challenge some idea. We’re trying to challenge the way that you think about these things. We’re trying to challenge your ability to apply them at a higher level. So I hope you enjoy this episode. I hope this gets you thinking I hope you feel challenged emotionally professionally from it. If you don’t dive deeper, make sure you check out everything that Ben does in the show notes. These people take great time and care to take time out of their schedule away from their families and their work to provide you with these insights. Please honor that.
Also make sure that you show love to our sponsor, Momentous guys, I if you’ve followed me for a while and I always talk about this. There is not any things that I endorse. Momentous is one of them. Momentous is the premier supplement form that we use for all of our athletes. It’s certified at the highest levels. We’re talking about NSF Certified for Sport. It’s the number one whey protein by Men’s Journal founder calls it the Ferrari of supplements, and most importantly, it’s just really good people It’s clean, it’s grass fed, you can, you can rest assured there’s no fillers. And they’re the reason we’re able to provide you with podcasts like this. This takes time and money to put together, as do all of our resources. And Momentous is the reason we can do it. So if you guys use Brett20, on anything at livemomentous.com Again, that’s Brett 20. At anything on live momentous.com You get a discount, check the show notes. I promise you’ll love it and reach out to their team. Everybody from Sarah Hendershot who was a previous guest, Chris DeSanto. Matt one, they will answer any question. They’re phenomenal people. All right. Enough for me, make sure you guys are signed up on the newsletter, we have more and more Apprenticeship workshops out early bird early bird discounts are all over the place. Guys, you can save up to $380 on any of our workshops anywhere in the world. But now on tip Ben Newman.
Hey, everybody, welcome back to The Art of coaching Podcast. I’m joined today by Ben Newman. And if you heard the intro, you know that Ben has done a wide range of unique things in the leadership space in the performance coaching space. This is somebody that doesn’t, doesn’t leverage fluff, guys. And that’s what this podcast is all about bringing pragmatic people on the show, who tell it like it is challenged people to be their best selves and be adaptive. So Ben, listen, thanks so much for taking the time. I know you have a lot going on.
Ben Newman 6:32
Well, thank you so much for the opportunity to be with you and your listeners. And, you know, obviously, in those intros, you’re highlighting all the stuff that they want to hear. But I look forward to them hearing the real story. So we can all get to know each other better.
Brett Bartholomew 6:44
Yeah. And I mean, we’re gonna waste no time diving right into that, you know, I think you and I have a shared belief just in terms of the due diligence I’ve done on you and our short discussion ahead of time of that, you know, becoming a leader becoming more adaptive, becoming somebody that really can enhance performance requires you to kind of taste your own blood metaphorically, like the failures are what make you and a lot of our listeners always talk about how they get tired of hearing, whether it’s motivational speakers, or coaches or leaders just talk about the highlights, they get tired of just seeing the, the oh, these are my successes, and I’m gonna name drop this, and I’m gonna name drop that. Ben, what were some of those earliest moments where you had to check yourself and just, again, metaphorically, you tasted your own blood, and you realize I need to step my game up here if I’m going to do something meaningful with my life.
Ben Newman 7:33
Yeah, so that, you know that there’s a couple of things. My work started corporately, and then it blended into sports. And, you know, similar for you doing significant work on on both stages, you know, ours have kind of flopped, you’ve gone from sports to corporate and blended both, and I was the opposite corporate to sports and blending both. And so I’ll give you two examples. Number one, it just it kind of happened. I didn’t expect it. But my career as a financial advisor. And I don’t say this to impress anybody is to impress upon the point, it’s really what gave me the opportunities to speak, I’ve always been a hard driver, a hard charger, believing in process, giving it everything that you’ve gotten. So I got off to this great start and financial services, got hired to speak in 2006. Things are going incredible for the first four years. And then I got smacked in the face and humbled in 2010. To the point where I was writing checks back to the insurance company that I worked for, my accountant is saying, I don’t understand this, I’ve never had a client that said to do this, you know, you’re paying money back to the company. And I’m talking like, checks that, you know, rookie NFL game checks. And all of a sudden, you get smacked in the face, and you get humbled. And I really was able to relate to audiences completely different. And I was able to, I’ve always been able to check my ego. But read, I was able to check my ego like never before event.
And so sometimes that pain that you go through, it’s necessary to build the strength to actually do your job at the highest possible level. And the next story, I’ll tell you in sports, it’s totally what people don’t expect, is for those of you that maybe you want to speak, you’re in the coaching world, or you’re just wanting to start a business. Sometimes we have to check that ego and say yes, to the opportunities that have nothing to do with money, the opportunities where you’re going to be tested to see if your heart is really in it. And the first time I ever spoken sports was in 2011 When my old high school basketball coach called me and he called me Benny boy. And he said Benny boy, he said, man, we got this team of athletes, these kids are underperforming. I need you to come fire him up. We’re playing the number 10 team in the city. You need to get these guys right. And I went there, no paycheck to go speak to my high school to my alma mater, right. And I showed up and just poured into these kids and they attack To the full 32 minutes, and I was frickin hooked. And I look back on that now this is actually the ninth year. So even though you guys see Alabama, Kansas State, the Rams, all these professional athletes I work with, guys, I still go back to my high school, this is the ninth straight year, and I give back to those kids. I’ll be there this Saturday for a big game as they’re prepping for districts. So sometimes you got to say yes, and be in it for the right reasons, even if you’re tested, even if you’re challenged, and even if it doesn’t come with significant amounts of revenue.
Brett Bartholomew 10:33
Yeah, I think that’s a good point. And you know, we’ve talked in the past on certain episodes, about the opposite side of the spectrum, because we do have some coaches and some leaders that I think tend to almost say, hey, it’s not about the money, we’ll never do it about and, and granted, that’s true, you should never get into this field about the money. But on the dark side of that we’ve had some people undervalue their skill set. And that can lead to burnout and some other things. But you know, what you just said, is, is a great reminder that, hey, when you do something that isn’t about the money, genuinely, at least make sure that’s an opportunity that pushes you in a different direction, because it’s one thing like everything can have an accompanying virtue and vice, right, what is an asset can also be a liability, going back to your time as a financial advisor, and helping people understand that there does have to be a trade off. But putting yourself in situations of ambiguity, which you certainly did is the ultimate reward as an early leader, or somebody that’s looking to guide others, am I hearing you correctly on that?
Ben Newman 11:29
Absolutely. And over time, you know, our goal is to show up every day, and at least the goal that I always had, and I would hope that you know, the listeners this is your goal is to give everything that you have one day at a time, right to look in the mirror and say, Gosh, today I gave it my best if you can stack those days on top of each other, with good old fashioned hard work, which these days people don’t, don’t necessarily want to commit to, you will overwhelm the system, whether you’re a financial adviser, whether you’re in sales, entrepreneur, whether you’re a speaker, whatever you’re you will overwhelm your system with opportunity. And when you do that, the money’s gonna come. And I’m not shy about it. I let people know like, yeah, I don’t charge my high school like XYZ company, you’re a for profit organization, you just said your goal was 100 million in revenue, right? Yes, I’m gonna charge a fee. You know, my high school. My high school, I’m not charging a fee. Yesterday, I spoke for the United States Coast Guard, guess what any branch of the military, I’ve never charged a fee, I will never charge a fee. These are men and women that give us our freedom, right? Like there’s no fee to be charged for it. That’s not a for profit organization. So I think if we’re doing things for the right reasons, the money will come. If you only think about the money, it creates undue pressure and stress, and we don’t perform at the same level.
Brett Bartholomew 12:51
Yeah, no, yeah, similarly, so I sit on the board of a nonprofit and anything they need, I mean, I’m heavily involved with them all around throughout the year, and there’s not a fee there. You know, on other things, yeah, there has to be a fee. I mean, this is part of my job, it’s part of your job, it’s no different than if you have a plumber come out, or an electrician. They’re in it for the right reasons. They genuinely want you to be able to flush your toilet or have power, but they’ve got to charge for their services. Going back to your time as a financial advisor, which I love this. My father was a financial advisor for 40 some odd years. And you’re dealing with a lot of and I don’t think many coaches realize this. But there’s a lot of similarities with the complexity and the relative like ambiguity and volatility of the market and leadership or of the markets. Now that’s congruent with leadership. What are some ways that you’ve been able to help athletes and coaches or leaders if you want to use that term universally, then deal with uncertainty because you help them you had to deal with it on the financial side? But in sports performance? And even on the corporate side? There’s so many more forms of uncertainty? How do you help people that might be rigid deal with the reality of that, and the fact that we may not be in control of the outcome all the time?
Ben Newman 13:59
Yeah, it’s such such a great question. Look for all of us, for you. For me, for everybody listening. We all have fears, doubts and uncertainties all the time. And I call it the black box. You know, sometimes the black box, it’s super, super tiny. And other times the black box is so big, that we couldn’t even fit it in Bill Snyder Stadium, which I use that reference, you’d be in a K State alumni and yes, me not working there. Right. So that’s our football. You couldn’t even fit that black box in the stadium. But we all have something all the time. And one of the things I found with the highest performers, is that they have a consistent connection to their burn. Okay, now, let me explain this for everybody. There’s a lot of speakers and coaches that talk about why and purpose. One of the things and it’s the name of our podcast, it’s called the Burn.
One of the things that we talk about is that underlying fire that lies inside of you, that actually lights the why and the purpose On Fire that then causes us to take significant action. So what I would love for everybody to answer for themselves and you know, for Brett and I, this is, you know, we’re not with you guys, we can’t see you raise your hands or nod your heads, and I never call anybody out. I want this to feel like one on one coaching. But over the last 30 days, how would you say that you as an individual have connected to that burn that lies inside of you the real reason why you want to do what you do. And I’m talking about connecting to it first thing in the morning. And people don’t realize that they have 100% control of their mindset in the morning. So I always encourage our athletes who might be struggling, where am I on a depth chart? Or somebody? Where am I in my organization for sales right now, strip away the pain of trying to figure out what the results are going to be. And let’s control our mindset at the beginning of the day. And when you consistently rewire how you start your day and show up connected to your burn, it is a game changer for your performance. And during the day, when those fears doubts and uncertainties creep back in. After a tough phone call. After a tough set. When Brett’s putting you through a frickin wringer in the gym, all of a sudden, you reflect back to that burn. And you say, I know the reason why I’m doing this, I’m gonna push through this last set. And quite frankly, I’m going to give this this last set more than the first four.
Brett Bartholomew 16:22
Yeah, it’s, it’s a critical point. I mean, and we talked about starting with wire your burn, and a lot of different facets. Now I always try to challenge it respectfully and say, Well, yeah, that’s great. But we also need to know the what and the how, and that’s what you’re alluding to is don’t just connect with the burn, or that the the main motivation for why you’re doing what you’re doing, but actually put it into use, because that part of it matters too, because I just remember in and all respect to Simon Sinek and everything there and he talks about it, I just don’t know, if people always, you know, really excavate and this is something I think you challenge people to do well is starting with wire or burn or anything like that is not enough. It’s what are you going to do with that now, because you work with organizations, Ben, that’s great. They can have mantras, and they can have all the other motivational signals that every other organization has. But if that’s not backed up by some kind of action, right, and a consistent action at bat, it’s really not going to go anywhere. Am I right? How do you how do you get them to take action? So it’s not just words to them? And they’re not just reciting this passively?
Ben Newman 17:23
Well, it’s, it’s challenging. From a coaching platform, right? I’m sure you, you and I enough times, right, we get tossed into the motivational Inspirational Speaker bucket. I’m a coach. Right, right at the at the end of the day, if you and I don’t drive long term growth and sustainability, I haven’t done my job. And that’s not that that’s not what I want. I don’t just want a feel good from you and I having this call together today. Oh, we share some stories. I want actionable takeaways. And I know that when you choose to connect first thing in the morning, so we’ve call it a burn journal for the next 30 days, whether you put it your phone, you put it in a journal, connect to that burn for the next 30 days, it’s gonna change your life, it is going to change your life. Because that you’re correct. There’s too many speakers and coaches that they don’t get to that underlying purpose. They don’t get to that underlying burn. And we have to go there, we have to go deep. And let me get permission to get long winded here just for a second. Quick example. Yeah, so two examples, because I think we can’t just say connect to the burn. I want to give people two examples, because some people have a burn that will never go out that’s inside of me. And other people. It’s the short term burns because maybe they haven’t been through the pain that I’ve been through.
So for me, I lost my mother 11 days before my eighth birthday, and my mom had a rare muscle disease called amyloidosis. Every single one of our listeners, you and I we all have amyloid in our muscles if you have an excess of amyloid that eats away at your muscles. My mom was a single mom, a teacher fighting to make ends meet parents divorced at six months old. I mean, I hit rock bottom before I turned eight years old when my mother passed away. And that’s a pretty fast way to grow up in life. But my mother came to the dinner table with an IV stand every single night when we had 24 hour nursing care in our house to ask me how my day was at school. When my grandmother gave me my mom’s journal, which was a testament to her positive mental attitude. When I was a junior in college. I was able to read that my mother wrote beat the statistics beat the odds, live with a disease that is chronic and fatal. Believe in yourself combat anything purpose in life.
The way my mother approached her adversity, it has caused me to have this burn inside of me. I don’t care how many no’s I hear. I don’t care what kind of heat you bring to me. You will not break me because I have been through worse and that’s the fire that causes me to show up every day. And give everything that I’ve got. I would never wish that adversity and challenge on anybody. But I know because I’ve done this enough times. There’s plenty of people listening right now. You just realized how important the burn is because you’ve been through your adversity and challenge too. Yeah. Now for for those of you who maybe haven’t sometimes the burn is short term, I was with an advisor in Orlando two weeks ago. And he’s like man like this burn like it’s just it’s hard for me I, I haven’t been through the adversity and challenge that you’ve been through, I said, I wouldn’t want you to go through the challenge and adversity that I’ve been through, I wouldn’t wish it upon anybody what I had to see as a young boy. And then even with my dad growing up, like, I wouldn’t wish that on anybody. But I said, You know what I remember when I was here last year, you and your wife were building a house. And it was your dream house. And what I recognized was your energy, your effort, your attitude, your beliefs were you were going to work and give it everything that you had one day at a time, because you were not going to miss this house turning out exactly the way that you wanted it. And I said, No, let me ask you a tough question. I said, you’re in the house right now, aren’t you? And he said, yep. And I said, so the temporary burn has gone, it’s completed itself, I said, we need to find that next short term burn, or at some point in time, we’re gonna find a long term burn. So I’m not big on finding things that are, you know, monetary. But for some people, that’s it, it’s building that dream home where I want to get out of student debt, or whatever it is, that might be the one significant thing that causes you to show up differently. Because you will give it everything that you’ve got one day at a time to make sure that I will crack away at that student loan debt because it puts pressure on me I don’t like it. And I don’t like the stress that it creates. So whatever it is, we all have to find that burn connect to that burn, which then lights that why and that purpose on fire? And then our action forever changes?
Brett Bartholomew 21:41
Well put no and I like what you said there, especially about, you’re grateful for the affliction you went through and you know, being able to see your mother, the most powerful fighter you’ve ever known go through amyloidosis, amyloidosis. Sorry, that’s a tongue twister. Yeah. And like, you wouldn’t wish it on anybody. But at the same time, you understand how critical it was you had similar to like, you know, when I was hospitalized at 15, for a year in my life, that’s, that was an early age for me to kind of really connect with what that meant to me, you know, and I would never wish that on anybody at the same time. I think and where I’m going with this. And what I love about the message that you’re sharing, is that you’re helping people understand that you shouldn’t run from chaos and conflict. And I think too many people today do that. I think we’re in this culture that is just taught always be positive and don’t acknowledge the negative and, and of course, there’s power in that, right. You don’t want things to eat away. But I think if more people actually stayed focused on some element of their pain, and it’s serving as a reminder of what got them there, that’s critical. Like, I wake up grateful every morning, but I also keep a painting and a picture in my office every day. That reminds me of my time in the hospital, because I don’t want to lose that connection to what got me on that path. Can you relate to that? I mean, do you feel you certainly don’t try to push these memories out? Do you bet you try to stay connected with them just in a healthier way? Long term?
Ben Newman 23:03
Absolutely. Because I think it’s important. I mean, the world that we live in today, I mean, the reality is as tough as it is to talk about and look, I fall victim to doing this with my children as well. It’s our naturalness to protect, protect, protect, as opposed to, to let them fall down and scrape their knees. Right. And and the reality is that, you know, you and I are not recording this sitting on unicorns, and we’re going to go slide down rainbows this afternoon. I mean, life Life is tough life is not easy. And so having that pain or adversity it molds who you are. Yep. And for those of you on the call that you don’t need the short term burn, because you’ve got to burn just like mine, stay connected to it, I look at it every single day, I get to honor my mother and her legacy every single day in my life, right? I get to make sure that the pen that my mother was writing within that journal, that the ink never goes out, because when I’m done with the pen, I’m giving it to my kids. And so you know, that’s a that’s a flame that is going to be for ever. And so we don’t, we don’t have to run from the fear and the pain. Oftentimes, it’s where we find our greatest strength. So I would encourage everybody, you know, whether it’s getting with a coach, I’ve got a paid coach since I was 25 years old. You need that as a financial advisor I’ve got and now I have two coaches. I’ve got two coach, I hired a second coach last year. I read 24 books last year, because I am far from figuring it out.
Brett Bartholomew 24:25
Yeah, yeah. Well, and I think you know, even hearing that, right, like, let’s talk about that for a moment, the books and the coaching. I think a lot of times at least I know our audience talks about, oh, how many books somebody’s read a year and how many of these things they’ve gone through but it’s not about the amount of books you read. It’s about you doing something with that and that’s why I love you saying you have a coach and I just learned this about you as well. And none of this is pre scripted guys. We don’t we don’t do that on the podcast. But you know, there are a lot of people that are reticent to hire a coach. Now none of us have none of us will ever have enough money right? There’s always something whether it’s kids or emergencies or what have you. But you have to invest in some kind of coach or output, because reading books alone won’t do it. So if you don’t mind me asking your coaches and you don’t need to name them, but what did they help you with? Specifically? And what have you hired for coaches? or what have you hired coaches for? In the past? Is it business? Is it personal stuff? Is it a combination of both? Would you mind sharing that?
Ben Newman 25:18
Yeah, no, absolutely. So the first coach that I ever hired, brand new financial advisor, I’m three months into being an advisor, and first real, you know, corporate job. 25 years old, I was a paper broker, you know, before that, and so, you know, here I am, and we all have, you know, these, these, call them, I hate the word weakness, right. But we all have these shortcomings, these areas of opportunity. And what Dieter helped me highlight was these areas of opportunity for me where I could get better and build strength. So we worked on the strengths. But those areas of opportunity, we worked on getting better there too. I mean, there are all kinds of focus techniques for I was never a good exam taker, and I got a 19 on my ACT, I was automatic acceptance to Michigan State with my GPA, right. So I was never the smartest guy in the room. taking tests was horrible for me. And so you know, he helped me learn ideal state of focus techniques, ways to lock in to take exams. And then he helped me with understanding what now has become my attack the process mentality focusing on process, rather than the results that we can’t control. That then translated into a coach named Laura Pierz, who I still work with Laura. She’s in Asheville, North Carolina. And Laura is one of those individuals, she cuts it to me straight. I mean, Laura will say to me, Hey, like, I’m recognizing something and how you’re communicating, and I’m about to piss you off right now. And I’m gonna go for it. And she literally over all these, I mean, I’ve worked with over 10 years, she knows how to get at me. And she knows, like when I’m trying to protect myself. So even though I do this work, of course, there’s moments I protect myself too. And that’s another story I can share. That’s pretty powerful as we keep rolling. But you know, she helps me see that. And then last year, a buddy of mine, Drew Hanlen, who’s one of the top NBA skills trainers in the world, he and I agreed to start coaching each other. So every other week, we coach each other. So here he is, he’s working with, you know, a bunch of guys you’re about to see in the NBA All Star game. And, you know, he’s helping me challenge myself to get inside what he calls the micro skills, the details inside the details, so that I can have focused like I’ve never had before. And guess what everybody listening, I’m 41 Drew’s 30. So the age doesn’t matter. His experience at 30 is more than some coaches do by age 60. And he’s one of the most talented, brightest, biggest thinkers I’ve ever met my life.
Brett Bartholomew 27:47
I love that. I mean, selfishly, I love that. And this is just a little bit of bias here. But I wrote my first book at 30. And I took a good amount of heat from some folks that were much older, you know, saying, Oh, what, you know, what are you doing writing a book at 30. And I look at this, and I say it all the time. You know, you look at companies like Forbes that celebrate 30, under 30. And then you look at some people in coaching, who it’s like, they have this idea that unless you’re this archetypical, you know, 60 year old coach who’s you know, gray haired and kind of that old sage mentality, like you have nothing to learn from him. Every other industry, people of a variety of ages are innovating. You have people in the tech sector that are doing these things in their teens. And so the fact I mean, that speaks volumes enough that you’re willing to learn both up and down, whether it’s age, demographic, what have you, because you’re right, and I do want you to get into to what you said, because you’ve mentioned some powerful there, you said people try to protect themselves. Now I’ve noticed that some people do it through the myriad of excuses. Others do it through isolation. Now that can be like, Oh, I don’t have time I’m too busy, or they just don’t even engage. And then others do it through defensiveness. So talk a little bit more about how you feel like or your coach has pointed out to you that you’re kind of protecting yourself or that there were some things earlier on that you needed to work on that maybe were blind spots prior. If you don’t mind elaborating on that, I’d love to hear it.
Ben Newman 29:01
Well, actually, if you don’t mind, if I can share the sexual story, I think it might highlight the importance of this with the action step a little bit better. So I always you know, I always say it’s important that when we set goals that we think big and that we don’t protect ourselves. So even though that’s something that I talk about almost every time that I speak, there’s still periods of time where I will protect myself. So last year, I was reading Can’t Hurt Me by David Goggins. And hands down the best book I’ve ever read in my life. And just the book was incredible and Goggins. And I actually shared the stage at Alabama training camp together, and we hung out together for a little bit and shame on me. It took me a year to pick up the book. And so here, it takes me a year to pick up the book. Then I finally start reading it. I get to the second or third chapter of the book, and he challenges you in the book. And he says, Pick something over the next 30 days that will really challenge you and do it every day. No excuses. So I wrote Down planks. And the reason why I wrote down planks was because one of my clients, they’re Home Builders here in St. Louis, I work with the husband and the wife, Guy planks. Brett, you tell me if you ever heard of this 20 minutes as a warm up every time he lifts it’s pretty insane. 20 straight minutes. And so I wrote down planks because I’m like, God, this guy inspires me. That’s insane, right? So here I am. I’m the coach, the speaker. I’m tremendously disciplined in so many areas of my life. But here I made an excuse not to start. Day one. I didn’t start day two, I didn’t start. It took me two weeks to finally start. Right. So sometimes we got to clear the clutter. Stop protecting yourself. Don’t make excuses. Go all in and challenge yourself. When somebody who’s been to places that you want to get to is offering up that challenge David Goggins, most mentally tough guy in the world. And I’m trying to become more mentally tough every day, even though I’m a mental toughness, coach. And so finally, I started to planking and I said, What’s the longest I’ve ever plank? It was five minutes. So I said, Okay, here’s what I’m gonna do. I’m gonna start at four minutes, I’m going to add two seconds every day, there’s 30 days in a month, at the end of 30 days, I’ll be back at five minutes. I’m all fired up about it, right? So I do day one, day, two, four minutes, two seconds, then four minutes for four minutes, six. I’m in Sacramento to speak at a dinner. There’s three leaders, where I’m at this organization I was going to speak the next day, they said, Can we wake up and train with you tomorrow? I’m like, absolutely. So they come to the hotel, we get done with the workout. I say, check this out. Here’s this, this this plank challenge that I’m doing four minutes and eight seconds today. And one of the leaders looks at me and he says, Hey, with all due respect. He’s like, I want to let you know something. I could not plank for four minutes. But that is not a challenge for you. You could do five minutes right now. And your ego wants to go Who the hell are you? You brought me in to speak like, right? Like, this is a challenge. Yeah. And I looked at him and I said, you know, tell me more what you’re thinking. He’s like, Dude, he’s like, you’re in unbelievable shape. Like go up by 15 seconds today go up by 30. Like, see how far you can take this. You could do five minutes right now. Long story short my day. 30. I did 16 straight minutes. So I never caught the client. I my body and my body. I took my body as far as my body would go, right. I wanted to get to the 20. But the reality was like that was it. That was that was the point where it was just 16 Was it? But here’s what’s crazy. In David Goggins book, he talks about the 40% rule. And the 40% rule in the seal community says, when you’ve reached the point where you feel like your mental or physical, absolute exhaustion, I cannot go any further I, Coach, I am done. You actually have 60% left in the tank. So for everybody listening, check out this math. I original, my original goal was five minutes. I was never good at math, but I think it’s pretty close. Five minutes. I did 16. Five minutes is roughly 40% of 16. I protected myself to the 40% rule before I even got started,
Brett Bartholomew 33:06
right? Yeah, I mean, and like that the story does illustrate it. Well. I mean, people do protect themselves in a wide variety of ways. Now, there’s some people that are gonna listen and be like, oh, you know, nobody needs to do a plank that like, listen, the story isn’t about the planks, the story is about being able to find something that you’re genuinely not pursuing, even though you could be and you could surpass it. Like for me, Ben, that was even just being out there more, you know, coming up in strength and conditioning, you’re not supposed to have a quote unquote, brand, you’re supposed to just shut up and you’re supposed to do your job, and you’re supposed to be in the trenches. And for a long time, I bought into that, and there’s value in it. But eventually, I felt like, you know, I wanted to be more involved with the community. And so we did the book, I did the podcast, I’ve done online courses, and I speak because there were some people that wanted me to, to elaborate on the lessons in the book. And you know, that was uncomfortable for me, even though I’m a fairly outgoing guy, like being able to go out there. I mean, you know, how it is like, everything you do is when it when you start having a more public brand, everything you do you open up for wider criticism. So you know, I would have people that say, Oh, you shouldn’t have in the book, you should have done this, you should have done that. I’m like, Hey, I’m grateful for the feedback. But at the same time, send me examples of what you’re doing. Right? Because people protect themselves a ton by not whether it’s not sharing on social media, or not writing a book or not even just doing whatever, right, like it’s easy for those people then to become critics. And that’s what you see people that protect themselves too much start to become angry and bitter, and they don’t have a burn. They have an infestation then so so
Ben Newman 34:36
so, to me, the reason why that happens is because they are continuing to resist that inner internal voice that lies inside of them and they’re protecting themselves. So yes with that story, those are the individuals that hear that and go guys even crazy for planking for 16 minutes, right this client is crazy for 20 I said when I typically tell that Story I say you pick something and challenge yourself for the next 30 days, whether it’s the burn, which has nothing to do with physical that’s all mental. Yep. Whether it’s literally telling your children I love you, or your significant other, I love you three times in the day to make sure that you don’t forget. And it’s never in doubt how much you love them. Like I don’t, it doesn’t have to be physical. No, the key is, stop making excuses. Stop, stop living your life with the foot on the brake. And finally go all in and recognize that God has given you everything that you need. But until you choose to take it every single day and to become relentless with it, you’re not going to see significant change.
Brett Bartholomew 35:40
Yep, yeah, without a doubt. Within that, even when you’ve accomplished everything you have been, and everything that you’re talking about in terms of understanding your burn and pushing yourself. Inherently I imagine you still deal with self doubt, one of our most popular podcast episodes was on self doubt. There’s days where you probably feel like crap. And there’s days where you like even your own advice isn’t sinking through one, I guess I shouldn’t say there are days like that. I need to ask you. Are there days like that for you, even when you don’t want to listen to your own advice, and you’re not doing the steps? And to how do you dig yourself out of that?
Ben Newman 36:15
So I know that this is going to sound redundant, but I go to the burn. I mean, that that’s literally it for me. Like when I connect to my burn, there are no excuses. Because what that does, it shifts my perspective, back to as tough as this is on the ears, right? Because what the bio that you share, people probably didn’t expect to hear the pain that I’ve been through. But that’s my perspective. And that’s where my mind goes, if I’ve got doubts, fears and uncertainties, and yes, I have them, I shift back to the perspective, what I’m currently doubting is not nearly as bad as watching your mother die before your eyes, right. And, and the times when my mother didn’t have enough strength after she made it to the dinner table to tuck me in at night, as a seven year old. Boy, I’m climbing under my mother’s IV wires in a 24 hour nursing center. And it was in what was once her TV room to tuck her in at night. So you know, my doubts really don’t carry much weight with me. Sure doesn’t mean it doesn’t mean I don’t have them. But the conversations with those doubts, they don’t last very long,
Brett Bartholomew 37:14
right? Let’s talk about if you don’t mind, because I know this is a personal part of your life. But you’ve mentioned being a father several times. And it can be tricky, right as a coach and a leader and a father because you want to push your kids. At the same time. You certainly never want to become a sycophant, you never want to be one of those people that your kids three years old. And all of a sudden, you know, he’s he’s, he’s reciting mantras. And if he wants to take a nap, or eat some junk food every now and then like you’re snapping at him, we’re, you know, how do you address kind of some of the principles and everything that you believe in? With fatherhood? How do you find that balance of letting the kid be the kid and enjoying life and being full of wonder and all these things and letting him fail? And then also adding some strategic guidance without over parenting or, or trying to control it? Would you mind touching on that?
Ben Newman 38:02
No, I’m so glad that you bring that up. Because I think it’s a critically important issue these days. Because, you know, I go to my, my son, and my daughter’s games, to my son, Isaac is 11 years old. He’s a sixth grader, and my daughter, Kennedy Rose is nine, she’s in fourth grade. And I go to some of these games. And I’m just completely embarrassed for how some of these parents act and the amount of pressure, the amount, you’re, you’re destroying these kids opportunities. And quite frankly, what these parents need to understand is that the behaviors that they’re building, not only is it detrimental to the kid, but if I if I were and I don’t, I don’t do recruiting at any of the universities, it’s not part of my responsibility. But let’s say I were a position coach, and I’m in high school, and I’m recruiting your son, and I see you or your daughter, and you’re acting a complete fool. In the in the stands, guess what, I’m no longer recruiting your child. And so I don’t think these parents realize how detrimental their behavior is.
So number one, whether I know more than the coach who’s actually signed up to give their time, these are not these are not getting paid to coach sixth and sixth graders and fourth graders. I let those coaches do their jobs because they’ve made a commitment to my child. And I sit in the stands and I never say a thing. Nothing. I literally enjoy my child playing a sport. And I engage my children. I just asked them questions. Are you enjoying hoops? Are you enjoying soccer? If you’re not enjoying something, you don’t have to play the sport. And I want my kids to find what they love. And then I just encourage them by asking them questions. Do you feel like you would perform better in the game if you went and you shot 100 shots a day or 50 shots or do you want me to go rebound for you? And you know, sixth grade I think is kind of the the breaking point to where I might push just a little bit more and when I say push It’ll just be more questions, you know, but my son is to the point now he’s starting to show some talent in hoops. So after this year of playing, I’m going to start to ask him like, what do you really think you need to do if you really love the game? Let’s go find examples of what people who are great that you want to be like what they do. And then you got to choose whether or not you want to do it. But I’m not gonna force my kids to do anything. And I’m certainly not going to be that vicious parent in the stands, yelling and screaming at referees and yelling at practices and yelling at the coaches.
Brett Bartholomew 40:28
Yeah, it is wild. And I like your approach of saying, you know, questions are the key that’s I don’t want Socratic method of make them be introspective, make them come up with answers, you know, I always say, and jokingly, to my wife, but truth is said in jest, one thing I want to raise our son is that, you know, if I asked him a question, he says, I don’t know, let’s say I asked him, What do you think about X, Y, and Zed? And he says, I don’t know, it’s well, we understand you don’t know. And that’s okay. Not to know. But we asked what you think like, just think, like, talk to me a little bit, you know, encourage them to talk because I feel like so many parents try to just and it’s not much different than whether it’s a parent, and their kids or a coach and their athlete, there is a difference between introducing an idea and forcing it. There’s a difference between compliant compliance and commitment. And people, I think, just sometimes think, Alright, I told them this, they’re doing it. We were successful. But really, that’s not the case. Is it?
Ben Newman 41:20
Yep. You know, that’s, that’s exactly right.
Brett Bartholomew 41:23
Yeah. Like you look at these things, and with the teams that you’ve worked with, you know, inherently, you have so many other stakeholders that you know, and it may be parents at some level, but usually these are, you know, higher level organizations where these kids are now at the universities, whether it was with Alabama, Kansas State, or North Dakota State or any of the other organizations you’ve worked with, you know, how do you get them to, to kind of block out the other stakeholders or power brokers that might be whispering in their ears in the same way that, you know, toxic parents can whisper in the ear of a youth athlete? How do you get them to block those things out outside of the burn? Because these are people that have their motivation? So we’re not talking about motivation? We’re talking about distraction. Now. How do they deal with those distractions?
Ben Newman 42:05
Yeah, so you know, one of my favorite stories of the college football season last year, you know, there were four college football playoff teams. And of those four, there was one loss, right, the Oklahoma Sooners of those four teams had one loss to the Kansas State Wildcats. And what I shared with the team coach climate and I have now worked together for six years, we won a handful the national championships together at North Dakota State and he brought me to Kansas State and the way that our cadence works is on Fridays before walkthrough and before team meal, I set the tone for the mindset for what we’re going to lock in and focus on over those final 24 hours, you know, when you find your edge and the details you lock in. And so I always share my message. And one of the things I shared with the team without giving you guys too much too much of the insight but sharing what I can is I encouraged the team, I said look, I said strip the name off their jersey, I said forget about rankings, forget about what other people are saying about this football game, I said, this is an opportunity for you to come together. And to release yourself of the pressure. And to choose to intentionally focus for 60 minutes. When that whistle blows, you’re gonna step on these lines that are behind me, they’re the same lines that we played on last week against TCU. It’s the same damn lines you’ve been playing on your whole life. And you have a choice to intentionally focus for 60 minutes, the full 60. And we’re going to break it down to six seconds of play. And if you give it everything that you’ve got for six seconds, and you recognize that this is about Kansas State, it’s about protecting yourself protecting each other and fighting, when we walk off this field and we see zeros on that clock, the rest is gonna take care of itself. And these young men committed to intentional focus for those 60 minutes. And that’s one of the things from from a mental standpoint, is we have to try to do the very best we can to understand what the pressure is to remove the pressure and speak to the things that are 100% in their control. And that’s to give it everything that you got one play at a time for the full 60 minutes.
Brett Bartholomew 44:04
Sure, no, and that’s it’s great tactical insight, you do have to control what you can control. And some, some will say that’s cliche. Some will say that’s that. Well listen, some of the things that we screw up most commonly in life are the basics, like people don’t do the simple thing savagely. Well. And that’s because we almost start to take them for granted. Right man like you think that? Yeah, I’ve heard it. I’ve done it. But it’s like now like, but are you doing it the best you can like even just getting people thinking about what you said, right? Getting people to silence the myriad of distractions comes from focusing internally. But if you don’t know how to do that, you’ve mentioned journaling or journaling a number of times, that becomes hard. And so as journaling is something you actively have these guys try to participate in are there. Are there strategies like that, that you think still work for those populations that help them kind of just stay in their own head and focus on reflecting on you know, all these things that give them trouble or might lead them astray?
Ben Newman 44:58
Yeah, so there’s actually six mental training tools that we actually use in our coaching work in the corporate in the sports world. And, you know, what I always encourage people is you don’t have to use all of them. But maybe one or two or three, maybe all six will resonate with you. And I try to connect with each player’s heart, understand their pain, understand their struggle, struggle, understand what their passions are. Once you understand that, then we can start to dive into how do they think can do they want to think bigger? What do they really want to drive towards? And then encouraging them whether it’s writing down and putting posts on the mirror, whether it’s doing a burn journal, whether it’s having what we call a prizefighter day where you’re intentionally locking in and understanding, okay, what are the components of what it takes for me to win the day One day at a time based upon the choices that I make, right? So there’s all these different things, but each individual knows the way that they learn, and they know the way that they take action. So we have to empower and inspire them to stay motivated, stay connected to what drives them, and choose the things that they want to become part of their environment to drive that next level performance.
Brett Bartholomew 46:06
Yeah, yeah, without a doubt. Well, Ben, listen, I put you in the wringer man, whether we’ve talked about distractions, communicating, being able to define your burn, being able to see bigger picture, being able to adapt the story you’ve told about your mother, and all those things. You know, I think there have been very few episodes where we’ve covered such a wide range of tactics in such a short period of time. You know, I definitely want to leave the next piece up to you have, you know, what, what else do you think before you go, that people should just really consider or you want to challenge them with or you want to leave them with? And of course, we’ll link everything you do in the show notes. So they’ll have tons more resources. But is there anything just kind of burning pun intended within you right now that you just want to leave the audience with a convicting message of any sort? Or do you feel like you’ve got across everything that you really want to target?
Ben Newman 46:52
You know, the last thing I I’d mentioned is two things really quick. Number one, the greatest life lesson I ever learned came from my mom. And that lesson is it’s not how long you live, it’s how you choose to live your life. Right? So every single day, believe in yourself and make great choices and give it everything that you got win the day. The second thing I’d share with you is that the highest performers do what I call the unrequired. The unrequired are the things that other people can’t see, they won’t talk about that they won’t do, that we as high performers choose to make a priority. So on top of what you already define, it looks like for you to be great, let’s identify the little things that are unrequired, put it on top of what you normally do, and go create distance in the comments from the competition, and go figure out what you’re really made of. And that’s a lot of our coaching principles are now made up of the unrequired. And I know you’ll share the the unrequired.com. And so you know, those are all things that are mindset driven that are 100%, your choice, but it’s those little things that will take you to the next level of your performance.
Brett Bartholomew 47:55
Yeah, I think that’s even more powerful perhaps than the do your job mentality is what’s unrequired because your job is what’s required. Now somebody could say, well, any good job description is going to touch on the intangibles. But again, that goes back to taking things for granted. You know, I think that’s a great reflective activity. For anybody listening right now. Like, yeah, you might be doing your job. But what is unrequired? And I think that goes into not protecting yourself, if I’m hearing you write banners like those to go hand in hand, because you might be protecting yourself from these things that are the unrequired because you’re scared to face them. Am I hearing that and getting that message correctly?
Ben Newman 48:29
You nailed it. And it could be it could be as simple as somebody who’s in sales says if I make 20 phone calls a day, I call them POCs a point of contact text message, email, phone call, basically your voice, I’m open for business. If you say my best is 20 a day, then the unrequired add 10% do 22 I’m not asking you to pray to God to get a 36 hour workday. I’m not saying go home to your family and tell them you won’t see him for a year. It’s two additional points of contact that become the unrequired you take that to you do it every single day, you’ll steal an extra month when you put the math to that equation.
Brett Bartholomew 49:06
I love that. Guys, listen, you have more than enough to sink your teeth into and as I’ve said I’ve put bands contact information, everything in the show notes Ben Newman dotnet, the unrequired.com all those things, the ways you can communicate with Ben. Remember, these podcasts are just the tip of the iceberg. Everybody we interview has extensions of courses and opportunities where you can dive more deeply. We’ll also always have the free podcast reflection sheet that you guys can download at art of coaching.com/podcastreflection. Ben, listen, I know that you are constantly on the go and I appreciate your patience. I appreciate the tactile nature of the interview and the tips that you provided and appreciate you just taking the time to connect man.
Ben Newman 49:47
I appreciate the time spent with you and I look forward to continue to attack together. Thanks for having me and to all the listeners just keep attacking one day at a time.
Brett Bartholomew 49:56
My pleasure guys this has been the art of coaching podcast we will see you next time