TRANSCRIPT
Speaker 1 00:00
World class athletes, great coaches, what do they do when they’re at their best?
Speaker 1 00:26
We’re gonna get him on the run, boy. Once we get on the road, we’re gonna keep on the run. then we’re gonna go go go go go, go, go.
Speaker 1 00:38
Now your kids probably saying to yourself, hey, I’m gonna go out and I’m gonna get the world by the tail and wrap it around and pull it down and put it in my pocket .
Brett Bartholomew 00:53
Hey, everybody, hope you are doing well, hope everything’s going well with your week so far. Listen, today’s a special day, I’ve been working on something for over two years, that is finally going to go live this week. It’s actually live May 1st through May 5th. It’s called Valued.
Brett Bartholomew 01:09
And it is a response to so many of the questions that I get and other coaches get regarding career management, common obstacles, pitfalls, and it’s really not a matter of whether you’re in the beginning of your career, the middle years or the late stages. And really, it transcends career.
Brett Bartholomew 01:26
So even though I’m going to talk about some things that are strength and conditioning related within this, it applies ubiquitously. Now, when I say that we’ve been working on this for two years, we had put out a survey, and we got responses from more than 3000 strength coaches in the private side, professional sport, even a Olympic team in the college arena, and just tried to get a better idea of what people were struggling with. And it was really incredible. I mean, what you saw across the board, and this was all done anonymously, this is done through a third party research firm, is that coaches in every sector are really struggling. And this was evident, and they’re struggling for a number of reasons. But when you think about when we talk about the most important ability an athlete can have is availability. Well, the most important trait a coach and their career track has to have is viability. And that’s really what we are seeing through the feedback, these more than 3000 responses was missing. We saw coaches that felt stuck, they felt like they’ve done the internship thing, they got their degree, they did their certifications. And they still, you know, didn’t have jobs.
Brett Bartholomew 02:32
We saw coaches that have been in the career 13, 15, 20 plus years, and the interpersonal politics and power dynamics within their job, just kind of really made them feel conflicted and stuck. And we have also coaches that are in the twilight of their career that really have no idea how to approach retirement. And it’s something that nobody’s ever really had a blueprint for. I know, it’s something that I struggled a lot with, especially when I went out on my own, you started looking for resources around, I need to learn a lot more about business, I need to learn a lot more about just contract negotiations.
Brett Bartholomew 03:06
I need to learn more about you know, what am I priced myself out when people want me to speak what’s respectful, but still allows me to pay the bills? And most importantly, just what are some things that you need to look at as a coach beyond the X’s and O’s? And even beyond the classic Art Of Coaching, which I’ve been speaking on for a while, How do we manage our careers? And so this is a full blown resource that I have poured my heart and soul into over the past two years.
Brett Bartholomew 03:32
We actually hosted a small event on it in January, earlier this year, and we had some great coaches come out. And everybody just said, hey, can you make this public? So we’ve done that we put it in a course format, there’s a test to it, because I think we can all agree it’s one thing to just sit there. And yeah, it’s one thing to sit there and watch content, but it gets really sticky. When you’re not held accountable for you know, what did you really learn? What strategies did you take away? And we really wanted to dive into the psychology of the problem. Because one thing that really annoyed me over the past, I wouldn’t say three to four years, were coaches getting on and saying, hey, you know, we’re not valued our field needs, you know, we need other people to evaluate us more critically, so that, you know, the people that deserve certain jobs can get these jobs.
Brett Bartholomew 04:15
And it was just kind of, it was a lot of whining, to be honest. Now, there’s certain people that did put out some great stuff and suggestions. But you know, some were more realistic than others, right? Like there’s a couple and they’re all well intentioned. But one of the suggestions was, you know, for strengthen conditioning to continue to rise, we need sport coaches to better understand the value of what we do, and that’s going to require them to undergo some continuing education on their own so they can really understand the value of a strength coach, great idea not going to happen right Nick Saban is likely not going to be forced into taking a Con Ed course about why, you know certain nuances around strength and conditioning other sport coaches are not going to be forced into some weekend lecture as to why they should value their strength coach more.
Brett Bartholomew 05:01
You know the other thing that was really kind of really unrealistic is to put together some kind of governing body or executive board that can go around and give everybody some kind of score equivalent to a credit card rating, so to speak. Right. So, yeah, there’s not going to be five people that are going to be able to come into every institution and evaluate strength coaches, you because there’s so many inherent problems with that one, who’s going to agree on who’s qualified to do the evaluating.
Brett Bartholomew 05:27
Two, coaching is contextual? Because if you think about it, let’s say you go in and you evaluate somebody that’s just been an incredible strength and conditioning professional in Major League Soccer. Well, does that evaluation that they would then get by this pseudo, you know, governing body applied to how they would be how effective they’d be coaching kids? Does it apply to if they went to the collegiate setting, if they open their own business? Does it even apply if they go to a different MLS team, where the head Sport Coach values a different style of coaching? You know, so to say that we’re going to pick four or five respected professionals, however, they choose to define that in the field, to go around and really give everybody a score, so to speak, is it’s wishful thinking at best, should we be doing some form of evaluation for sure.
Brett Bartholomew 06:13
And we have one that we use internally at at Art Of Coaching both on the social context side and the technical side, but to act as if that is going to fit and really be an accurate label for every coach and every scenario in every part of the world to display their “worth” just as it isn’t correct. And so what we dive into a lot within this resource, and we’re gonna give a snapshot of it today is just what does value even mean, you know, and where’s the source of the problem, because just like, if there’s a disease, you can try all the medications in the world. But at the end of the day, if you don’t understand the root causes of the disease, then we’re in trouble. No formula that we put together is going to matter. And so we’re gonna give a little bit of a highlight of this today, if you guys want more details, and it’s going to be on artofcoaching.com. Again, the course is live by the time you’re hearing this, and it’s going to be open only for a week, we’re going to open it bi annually so that we can keep the cohort small, because there are a lot of assignments and follow up things that we’re going to do on this.
Brett Bartholomew 07:11
We’re really trying to create a strong coalition that really feeds into staff development, personal development, professional development, really creating this resource. So when we look at the problems that have been reviewed, one is coaches feel like there’s no way to prove their value, right? It’s hard to stand out. I love coaching, but it’s not sustainable. You know, I always feel expendable.
Brett Bartholomew 07:32
This is a high turnover. And coaches really often devalue themselves even further by becoming yes, men and yes, women because in the power dynamic standpoint, they don’t have a lot of say, right coach, it’s at colloquialism that the strength coach is usually the last hired first fired. A lot of the other feedback we got from folks like you listening is coaches feel stuck, undervalued and misguided. We already know there’s fewer and fewer opportunities during a time when competition for jobs is at the highest.
Brett Bartholomew 08:00
You know, we’re always told that getting a degree certifications and experience is enough to get that job. But you know that’s not really working. You know, you look at the other side of it, there’s no real support. Governing Bodies are limited in the help they can provide. Or they’re so busy just talking about training modalities, that anytime there is something on career development, it’s at like six or 7am in the exhibition hall, where as the main stage is now doing its fourth lecture on hand cleans and snatches.
Brett Bartholomew 08:28
So these topics aren’t discussed enough. You know, we’re taught my core statement is we’re very much we’re always taught or thinking about how to periodize programs, but not our careers, you know, whatever happened to this begin with the end in mind. And then if you do, you’re looked at as selfish. If you’re thinking about your career, yet, if you don’t have career viability and sustainability, you’re never going to be able to over the long term give the best care for your athletes, then there’s also no union, there’s no pay standards, there’s no safety nets, we’ve heard these kinds of things before. And one thing to understand is part of the problem is us.
Brett Bartholomew 09:03
So we dedicate ourselves to the understanding the science of training, we’re now learning more about the Art Of Coaching, we’re bringing that to a formal practice. But what we forget is the business of coaching is a critical part of that cycle that allows us to continue on in our career path and do things within our own field. Here’s the thing, the climate within strength and conditioning is changing. It’s undergoing its own version of global warming, no matter what you feel about that things are changing in our field, the strategies are outdated, but policies and perceptions remain the same. I mean, guys, if you just Google strength and conditioning and then the word fired, or strength and conditioning and ethics, you’re gonna see some pretty bad stuff on there. And so as much as coaches whine about branding and how social media as the issue and all these things, the reality is we pretty much need a PR representative to come really do some damage control with the right mutations and the impression that the public has of us.
Brett Bartholomew 10:04
And so, you know, one, one, some somebody that always inspired me was the author Robert Greene. And he had this awesome quote where he said, you know, if it’s your strategies, and your methods of attacking problems that always have to be adapted to circumstances strategy is the essence of human interaction. And what coaches have to realize, and I know, I realized that at some point, is we’re on the outside looking in, you know, nobody’s coming to save us. And that’s one huge critical part of this online course Valued, is you have to understand that you can say, we can all say what we want, oh, somebody should Great.
Brett Bartholomew 10:38
Somebody should stand up for, somebody should do this. Really, like nobody’s coming to save us? It’s not anybody’s responsibility to do that. Right. It’s our responsibility. And so what are the contributing factors here? Yeah, we have a lack of education and career management, financial management, we have a lot of people that get into the field for the wrong reasons people get into it, because they were former athletes, or they love the weight room. They love, you know, just being around that environment, which just because you love those things, doesn’t mean you should become a strength coach.
Brett Bartholomew 11:09
We have a martyrdom complex in our field. And we’re proud of being humble. It’s funny, like, we’re supposed to be the most humble people in the room, but we also kind of thump our chests and do this in an ingratiating way. I mean, you see, a lot of coaches just be like, Oh, I’m the dumbest guy in the room, or, you know, I’m just here to serve. And they downplay themselves to the point where it’s even beyond humility.
Brett Bartholomew 11:29
It’s not surprising, then when you wonder, like, what when you continually devalue yourself, what do you expect your bosses or other power brokers to do? pay you more? Do you expect them to give you more time off? Do you expect them to give you more resources when you’re constantly, you know, marching around saying, I don’t do it for the money. And we’ve talked about this a lot on the podcast, because this is a big issue. It’s a big issue. And we need to stand up for strength and conditioning by not doing those things.
Brett Bartholomew 11:54
There’s the outward perception of the strength coach, there’s our own naivete, and fear. There’s coaches, it’s still just don’t want to learn about marketing, even though it could widely benefit them in the way that they run their department, the way they gain access to resources or you know, even a competitive edge of them getting a job or creating their own future. And then of course, there’s localism, or nepotism, you could consider it favoritism, if you want.
Brett Bartholomew 12:18
The fact that by the time most jobs come open, they’re really already filled. And so a lot of coaches that are saying, hey, I need to learn how to write a better resume. Well, it’s not really the case, because most of your resumes aren’t getting seen. And so when we think about why we’re to blame, we’re not expanding our education enough, there’s been very little on personal development and professional development. And that’s what my new online course is really focused on, we’re scared of change, because change is hard.
Brett Bartholomew 12:47
And within the course, we talked about how change can really be divided into three phases. And this is from absolute pioneer in change management. His name’s Kurt Lewin. And this is really first talked about the early 1950s. And he had this model called the change as three steps model, some called it the forcefield model. And within the first part of this model, there’s this unfreezing phase. Now in the unfreezing phase, that’s typically where people come to realize the old way of doing things is no longer adequate.
Brett Bartholomew 13:19
This may occur when they recognize there’s an obvious crisis such as I, I’m not getting jobs, or I don’t know how to retire or man, like all of a sudden, like I didn’t really think that I ever needed to learn about business wouldn’t matter. And now, you know, I’ve been out of a job for eight to 12 months, and we got to figure out a way to recreate our own income, or we don’t even have an emergency fund, how do I build finances to do that? Or even just a result from an effort to describe threats or opportunities that aren’t evident enough to most people in the field? I mean, that was my case.
Brett Bartholomew 13:49
Like I said, early on, I was trying to figure out how do I navigate being on my own now? How do I navigate you know, figuring out how to create the most adaptable path while still coaching and helping a lot of people and just looking around, it was obvious, there was no career management resource for coaches. So I thought, well, what better way to document my own struggles, be able to do a lot of behavior change research, which fits into my doctorate, and also help a lot of other coaches so they don’t have to learn shit the hard way myself, like I did.
Brett Bartholomew 14:18
So that’s the unfreezing phase. The second part of Lewin’s model is the changing phase. Now this is where people actively begin to look for new ways of doing things and eventually select a promising approach. And that’s the gear of this course again, is valued is is an approach we want people to adopt so that they know whether you’re an undergraduate strength coach listening to this, at grad school, whether your 10 year veteran in the NBA or major league baseball in terms of strength and conditioning and your whatever you’re doing when you’re looking at the next step in your career or how to overcome an obstacle and you realize, hey, I’ve got to find an alternative strategy. That’s the change phase.
Brett Bartholomew 15:00
And then finally is the refreezing phase. Now this is when you find that new approach, right for us, this is the valued online course approach, and it’s implemented and truly becomes established. So the critical thing about the work that Kurt Lewin did, and this is backed up in a 2010 article by Erwin and Garman is all three of those phases that the unfreezing the changing and the refreezing are necessary for change to have its best chance at sticking, right.
Brett Bartholomew 15:29
So attempts to move directly into just one of the phases without the other are likely to be met with a lot of apathy or resistance. And I see this a lot, because here’s another obstacle, almost daily. And there’s a lot of veteran strength coaches on here, and just leaders on here that can appreciate this, but almost daily, I open up my direct messages in social media, and I get the same kind of questions, hey, What books should I read? You know, duh-duh-duh, all these things.
Brett Bartholomew 15:55
And the truth is less than 1% of the people that actually seek out these resources are going to do anything with them. Now, how do I know that guys, it’s simple. I mean, you can tell everybody, every book you’ve read right now the likelihood that they’re ever going to read that book. And even if they do that, they’re going to extract the same thing that you did from that book. And even if they do, the likelihood that they’re going to even act on the information within that book is very low. And it’s been an interesting social experiment, because I haven’t find that putting out a podcast where we talk about career obstacles, and we talked about all different things, and then having a book that talks about, you know, building trust and buy in, and then having courses that deal with change psychology, I still find the majority of people will only gravitate maybe to one of those things.
Brett Bartholomew 16:43
There’s some people that are like, hey, I like the podcast, they haven’t read the book, they won’t do the course, they have no interest to, they expect the podcast to be the main source of information for them. And this is where it gets tricky. And some of you listening to this, if the shoe fits, you need to understand, there’s never going to be one resource that solves all your problems. And that’s where you are at fault for some of your struggles.
Brett Bartholomew 17:06
If you’re expecting well, you know, I’ll reach out to this coach, and you know, I won’t read any of their articles or anything, I’ll just get them on the phone, and they can tell me everything I need. Or, man, if this coach will just tell me the books to read, like, I’ll be okay. Like, I don’t need to read anything else about that. Or if I just read books and listen to podcasts, I don’t need to go to clinics, like you’re wrong about all these things.
Brett Bartholomew 17:25
And this is why these phases of change are really critical for you to understand within your career development framework, because you’re expectancy, you’re expecting other people to do the work for you, you’re expecting the easy resources to give you everything you need, you’re expecting the answer just to come to you. And you’re not putting skin in the game. So, you know, when you look at the psychology of around this, how somebody reacts to change, or if somebody feels compelled to act like the other day, somebody says, hey, you know, can you give me a synopsis of your online course? I said, well, I can, but it’s not going to do your justice, you know, you’re going to want to take it and you know whether that person does or not, or changes in any aspect. I mean, it can even be how you guys talk to your significant others. If you deal with a difficult colleague in the workplace.
Brett Bartholomew 18:09
How you react to respond to change depends in part on your confidence in dealing with change successfully in the first place. How do you adapt to that? You know, like, how do you deal with chaos so that that can deal with your self confidence, your risk tolerance, which I found a lot of strength and conditioning, personal trainers, physical therapists, their risk tolerance is really low. Sohey want black and white answers.
Brett Bartholomew 18:33
A lot of times they want a safe route. They don’t want to take a lot of risk, yet they expect these epiphanies that are going to come and really help them become one of the best, it just doesn’t work that way. Nothing. Absolutely game changing occurs without having a higher than average risk tolerance for me that was taking out a massive loan to write my book with no marketing campaign, no understanding of how any of that work. That was part of naivete and stupidity. But also I that was risk tolerance.
Brett Bartholomew 19:02
My wife and I had just gotten married I didn’t have that money. You know, for some of you guys risk tolerance might be just trying a new programming method and but you’ve got to expand that your career. Also how open are you to new experiences? I knew I always wanted to work with pro athletes, but that never stopped me working with kids and high school kids and I still do it to this day. I love working with kids and I love working with disabled athletes and I love working with military guys. Like I’ll be honest, the older I’ve gotten, I even appreciate working more and more Gen pop. One of my closest friends on this planet a guy named Carl coward is is a supremely like, competitive guy in the investment banking world. And you know, I remember one time I haven’t done one on one training in forever, but by necessity where I was at, we had to do a couple of one on one clients and I’m sitting here like, Are you kidding me? Like I’m used to train in big groups.
Brett Bartholomew 19:53
Now I got this and you know, I don’t know anything about this guy. It’s probably some you know, posh, you know, soft guy. This dude came in and train harder than some of my world class athletes. And not only that, what made it more fun is he loved the learning. And he still loves learning, which is why we’re friends to this day. And so just being open to new experiences and not thinking you’re too good for this kind of stuff. And then what’s your, you know, internal external locus of control orientation, when I hear strength coaches talk about how, you know, they can’t get a job or can’t transition to the next part of their career?
Brett Bartholomew 20:25
Because nobody’s read my resume or at all, there seemed to be an answer. There’s too expensive, like all that shit is an internal locus or an external locus of control, like you’re blaming your situation on things, outside forces, right? An internal locus of control is getting very real with yourself and being like, Yo, I’m in a tough spot. I need to seek something else out. I mean, for example, I talked to a strength coach the other day, and he’s an awesome guy. And he said, he didn’t mind me sharing this, because it’s a lesson. He’s like, Yo, like, I’m $30,000 in debt, $30,000 in debt, and I was like, well, you know, what are you reading right now? What do you do? And he’s like, now I’m like, I buy every training book I can. I said, why are you still buying training books if you’re $30,000 in debt, man? Then he’s like, well, I just feel like, you know, doing this is gonna help me become better.
Brett Bartholomew 21:11
And I’m like, you already have like, how many of these books do you have, and he had read a lot of the classic science and practice wise out torski, he had, you know, done what everybody does, and thumb through Super Training. I know, there’s a lot of people that claim to read Super Training, cover to cover.
Brett Bartholomew 21:24
Anyway, so he had read all the classics, and he continues to educate himself. But guys, if you’re in debt, and financial, you’re having a hard time and all these things, and you’re still just reading training books. You know, I don’t mean to sound hard, but you only got yourself to blame. You know, it’s the same thing, if you’re just going to strength and conditioning conferences, but you have no idea like how to plan for the next stage of your career, you’ve got to figure that out, you’ve got to figure that out.
Brett Bartholomew 21:49
So the key here is resistance to changes in about ignorance or in flexibility. It’s really a natural reaction by people that want to protect their self interest, and their sense of self determination, or are just scared. And in the course, I go in depth, it’s not, you know, there’s no way I’d be able to cover it on the podcast. So I’m just going to glance over it here. But the five reasons people reject change is, you know, they either don’t believe it’s necessary. So in the course, I call this opinion or tradition, they get stuck on the way things have always been done a lack of vision. So they don’t think that the proposed change going out on my own or trying to do this, or whatever that is, they don’t believe that it can be implemented successfully. There’s suppression.
Brett Bartholomew 22:33
So this is usually people that are already in really high paying jobs or top spots, and they’re, you know, they’re directors, they’re really locked in, and they just kind of want to shit on anybody else that that comes up suppression is, even if the change would benefit a group of people or organization as a whole, let’s even just look at strength and conditioning. It may be resisted by people that are already really in good positions, these power brokers, because they feel like it’s going to cause them to lose power, income, benefits or current job security.
Brett Bartholomew 23:02
And you see that, you see a lot of just berating young coaches or even see like young coaches, not respecting traditional norms, like all these people are kind of fighting these power struggles, because everybody wants to be the expert, they all want to be in this position, and nobody wants to put their ass on the line. You know, then there’s perception. Well, I don’t know, does this change up here and consistent with values or anything like that? Or seem unethical? I mean, I got told a number of times that really focusing on building your career and building external revenue streams is irresponsible and unethical.
Brett Bartholomew 23:38
Why? Why is it like how am I supposed to tell my wife, hey, like, you know, we’re gonna put complete faith in this organization that’s given us a two year contract to take care of us for the rest of our lives. Not only is that ignorant, that’s paradoxical. So when I say that you periodized, your career, or your we periodized our programs, but not our careers. That’s exactly what I mean. Like you always have to periodized and program based on a variety of contingencies. Why would you not do the same for your job? Why would you not do the same for your job, and I get it, like for any hardcore or hard ass person listening, don’t get it twisted, I was that. I mean, go hard. Never leave the facility, yada, yada. I mean, and it’s great.
Brett Bartholomew 24:18
There’s a time of your career, you got to do that. There’s a time of your career like by all means, like execute, but like, you’ve also got to expand your purview. So getting more into these kinds of things. One of the other pieces that we really discussed a lot, and we had a ton of feedback from from those 3000 plus responses is what people don’t realize is if you don’t reject change, or if you don’t accept change, and you don’t find alternative ways of overcoming obstacles, not only is it going to be really, really difficult for you to move forward in your career, but you have a higher likelihood of burnout.
Brett Bartholomew 24:52
Now, we’re gonna talk about burnout, really, and we talked about it, it’s almost like an hour. I think there’s an hour and a half portion on it within the online course at artofcoaching.com/valued. But, you know, when we talked about why would we discuss something mental health related in a course focused on career sustainability? Well, here’s the thing. Burnout is a hallmark affliction of the most dedicated amongst us. And I think that’s really important to point out. Because one day on social media, I’d put together a poll and on this poll about 2346, I have the number in front of me. People responded, and I said, do you think burnout is a real thing?
Brett Bartholomew 25:32
And you know, do you think coaches struggle with it? Yes or no? And if not, why? Man, we got a lot of interesting responses by and large, it was 85%-yes, burnout exist. 15%-no. And almost every single person that said, No, when I asked them why they said, hey, you know, I just feel like, if you’re burnout, you’re ungrateful, or you’re in the wrong field, or you’re uncommitted. Now, what was interesting is I follow that up with, you know, thanks for your input. Why do you think this and how many years have you been in the field? and almost entirely almost 92% of the people that said, those things that burnout only exists in people that are ungrateful, unworthy or uncommitted?
Brett Bartholomew 26:13
Almost all of them had only been in the field for five years, none of them had had more than five years, none of them. And what was interesting about that is it made me go deep into the research, and I’ve spent the last two years doing this, there’s over 50 years, over half a century of research on burnout.
Brett Bartholomew 26:29
Now, to put that in perspective, strength and conditioning, if you’re gracious with it, and you’re not reaching has really been around about 60 years. Again, if you’re gracious and not reaching, don’t be that person that’s like, well, the Greeks did this. And so I’m talking about as a profession. And by the way, it’s still if you whether we can call strength and conditioning a profession.
Brett Bartholomew 26:49
Right now, I still think it’s a field and we have a future episode on that. But if you look at this, the research on burnout is almost longer than we’ve had a career. So what they find is that burnout is the bedrock of emotions of you know, stress, anxiety, and even depression. You know, for anybody that believes that it’s this kind of pop psychology jargon. It’s not, you know, it originally had its roots in health care. But now it’s rapidly spreading to other vocations. due to just the changing nature of the modern workplace, we have a lower average levels of long term commitment between employers and employees. And it heavily relates to Job fit. So there’s a lot of people that think burnout is just solved by taking some time off, or, you know, resilience training, or maybe we should talk to the boss. But we’re going to talk a little bit about why that stuff doesn’t work. So when you look at a definition of burnout, burnout is a psychological syndrome developed in response to chronic emotional, and interpersonal stressors on the job. And guys, this is why it’s really in the purview of Art Of Coaching, the company that I started, and this course, because anything that is interpersonal, in nature, or social in nature, is stuff that we’re trying to study, and we’re trying to educate more coaches on. And also, I’m learning a ton about.
Brett Bartholomew 28:08
So in the course, and it’s pretty cool, we were able to break down and break out some groups, we looked at a lot of the things that contribute to burnout, as external and internal load. And again, I’m not going to go into this here, because it wouldn’t do it justice, you’ll have to watch the course and the breakout activities. And we give people handouts, by the way, which allow you to identify sources of internal and external job load, when we look at this stuff, but it’s very comparable to how we look at sport and non sports stressors, and when we’re modifying our athletes training. But essentially, a lot of this stuff includes work responsibilities, your family responsibilities, relationship, stressors, financial stressors, and a lot of these things are ignored, or they think that they’re not interrelated.
Brett Bartholomew 28:53
You know, when we were hosting the event in January, when Coach reached out and was like, Hey, man, I really want to come. But to be honest, like, I’m depressed, like, I’m not happy with my job. And you know, the coaches asked me to do a lot of bull crap. And I just need to focus on my physical health because I’ve had problems getting out of bed. I don’t, you know, I don’t need to really worry about my career right now. And I said, but like, they’re tied together, you know, your career is a part of your personal life like these things, especially as a coach, the lines between here are very gray and so if one part of your life if you know if your personal life screwed your careers, generally that’s going to impact your career. And similarly, if you’re really burnout and unhappy at work, you’re usually going to bring that at home. So just acknowledging that but like I said, just as external load for performance is the stimulus applied to the athlete via physical work so that’s you know, your strands your weights, distance volume tonnage, all that external load in this situation would be like your job duties roll conflicts is there an asshole at work, you can’t seem to get you know on the same page with Are are you being stymied by an athletic director or a general manager heads or coach or even just a business partner, personality conflicts, job insecurity, all these things. And then internal load within the performance realm is typically one’s emotional, psychological or even physiological response to a stressor. Well, in burnout when we look at it within the context of this course, we mentioned that this manifests itself is fear and anxiety and aggression, or even depression.
Brett Bartholomew 30:23
So the last part I’m going to talk about on the podcast, because again, the course goes in, it was almost an entire day on burnout. And but the last piece here, guys is it just talks about the three dimensions. So we spent a whole afternoon talking about when you look at the dimensions of burnout, right, these components of it. And when you look at these dimensions, I want you to think of it like this, when we look at strength training, and variables that we can control. Obviously, we can control the sets the reps time under tension, there’s more things right. But think when I talked about components or dimensions of burnout, think of these three things. In the same way, they kind of feed the greater whole. So there’s emotional exhaustion, and that refers to feelings of being overextended or depleted of one’s emotional and physical resources.
Brett Bartholomew 31:08
This is really the central quality of burnout and the most obvious manifestation. When you hear people describing themselves as man, I’m feeling burnout, or I don’t know what’s up with me, I just, you know, I don’t feel I just kind of feel drained. That’s typically emotional exhaustion. And a lot of coaches feel like oh, well, again, like, definitely, for people that aren’t truly hardcore bullshit. What you find in this literature is it applies to the members of the military, even special forces, firefighters, high level like surgeons, doctors, nurses, people that are just in health care. And so don’t give me the rah-rah stuff, you know, because a lot of that is an act. When you see somebody putting that front on, though, when the cameras are around, there’ll be all rah-rah, but you know, a lot of them aren’t really that happy. There’s cynicism and detachment.
Brett Bartholomew 31:55
Now, this represents the interpersonal dimension of burnout. That’s kind of this onset of negative callous, easily detached responses, it really manifests itself as some sort of depersonalization. Right. What the research talks about is cognitive distancing, just in general indifference, you kind of just like, get into robot mode. And then finally, there’s an efficacy. Now, this represents the self evaluation dimensions of burnout. Now, this is, you know, your feelings of incompetence, the lack of validation, achievement, this is what coaches face a lot of because they just feel like, hey, nobody really realizes what we do. And that’s what leads to a lot of our behaviors, we’re always trying to prove our worth, when in reality, you know, the fact that a lot of our hard work and commitment goes on record, it causes us to kind of lash out in other ways. So you know, within that section, we go on and on and talk about, alright, well, like, how do we deal with this stuff?
Brett Bartholomew 32:48
And again, it’s beyond the scope of this podcast, but just giving you an idea. So you know, the point of discussing burnout, even in this career development course is listen, like, it goes into the whole, why are you getting into the field in the first place? Is it the right fit for you, because if you go in, you know, as coaches, we tend to blow past warning signs, you start the first five years of your career, you can’t get enough, even first 10 years can’t get enough. Now, all of a sudden, you get family and things like that, and other bills to pay, and you still can’t get enough, but you’ve got to figure out other aspects. But just like if we don’t manage our athletes training, we’re just going to continue to grind ourselves down into the dirt.
Brett Bartholomew 33:27
We’re eventually it’s like, we’ve ignored all these warning signs. Now we’re in our 30s and our 40s. Maybe we don’t have retirement. And in the course, we talked about we brought in an experienced financial advisor in areas my father guys spent over 40 years in financial management. And he’s a licensed broker license it like so he’s talked to all about he talks about the differences of IRAs, 401 K’s what to do, you know, for me, for a while, I worked for a company that had provided no benefits, and now I have to provide my own benefits being self employed. So you know, what’s the difference between a Roth IRA and a SEP IRA? Is it really true that you shouldn’t even invest in retirement until your debts paid off? There’s a lot of people that will follow that advice. And you’d be surprised to know, it’s not really great advice. So that’s a whole chapter and part of the online course. But the point is coaches just getting this sunk cost fallacy of even when things are bad, they’re like, Well, I’m gonna keep going. I’m not a quitter, you know. And so all of a sudden, these burnout predictors, things like workload, and your sense of control and social rewards and the sense of community and what you attribute is fairness and all these things. They just start to get more and more insidious, and most coaches really don’t feel it until it’s too late. So you know, if you don’t understand kind of why you’re getting into the field in the first place. It’s hard to manage your career because it’s got to be more than like, oh, I’m passionate, about strength training, or I’m passionate about sport.
Brett Bartholomew 34:56
Even if you say I’m passionate about helping people. That’s a way to do enrolled, we’re going to talk about why Maslow’s hierarchy really needs to be up into it. And of course, we talked about something called the five s filter. This is something that I put together that really builds off Maslow’s, but modernizes it, right? So like, we look at things like if you don’t understand at the base of your pyramid, your values, your drive your strengths and your fears. And then you don’t, you’re not a little bit inherently selfish.
Brett Bartholomew 35:22
And yeah, you heard that, I’ll just I’ll say it louder. If you’re not inherently selfish, in regards to you being able to manage and take care of your own health, your own family, your own finances, and your own friendships, you are not going to be able to lead anybody else, let alone scale your impact, right. So we talked about, you’ve got to have self awareness, you’ve got to have some level of selfishness and taking care of your own needs, which is what traditional Maslow’s is really all about. You’ve got to have social agility, which was the essence of my first course Bought In, you actually need to be committed to then service of others. Because once you know your values, once you’ve taken care of your own family’s needs, and you can support them, once you know how to communicate really well, it’s really a lot easier to serve others, and you’re going to do it in the right way. And learn how to scale your impact. The rest of the course guys talks about a time we go into three stages.
Brett Bartholomew 36:15
And it’s important that you hear this. So the first stage of your career is all about execution. Now, this is where you really reinforce your resume. And what I mean by that is, you have got a lock and load in terms of building a skill set. You know, so many people get into it. And they almost like too soon we’ll blow past the basics. But in the execute part of your career, you need to consider the proper way to network because a lot of people that don’t do that, right? We covered that in the course, even though most people aren’t reading your resumes, like what can you do to enhance the chances of that we talked about that we have an experience resume writing piece in there, from somebody that worked in a larger corporation. Yet, how do you just get around these gatekeepers? What do you do if you feel like you’re stymied? Or, hey, I don’t have these credentials, or maybe I’m a little bit older in the field. And, you know, the perception is I got into it too late, you know, just how do you deal with this stuff? How do you build social capital? Because even your networking, even your career management needs periodization and strategy, you know, what role does social media play, we always hear about the bad parts of social media.
Brett Bartholomew 37:19
But you know, relationship building in a lot of ways for some has become a business model. The standard approach for a lot of people is kind of just been transactional and self serving and they think, what can this person do for me, and that’s not really I know, the number one pet peeve I have is when people reach out to me basically, only when they need a job, or only when they need a connection by I won’t hear for like, somebody won’t reach out for one or two years. And then all of a sudden, it’s like, Hey, dude, hope you’re doing well, do you know so? And so like, could you pass them my resume? And it’s like, dude, like, you don’t even ask me one question about me. And like, I haven’t heard from you for two years.
Brett Bartholomew 37:54
And by the way, two years ago, you asked me the same thing. And so there’s this misunderstanding of what networking it is. And that’s a whole section of how you can upgrade that, how you can really maximize the clinics and your learning opportunities, and really, you know, find ways to help other people.
Brett Bartholomew 38:12
That’s what networking is about, like, it’s not about, you know, what can this person do for me, it’s you getting out in front of it and finding creative ways which we provide in the course, for you to help them. What you can do in interviews, you know, how can you empathetically present the cure? For somebody else’s pain when they’re looking to hire somebody, you know, how do you showcase your experience evocatively but also ethically? How do you solicit feedback from critical companions? Like people like you know, do you even go up before you send in your resume and ask somebody in other fields to evaluate it, because so many strength coaches or resumes all say the same thing, experience putting together and organizing and delivering a sound training program a year round, a year round training program for 23 supports, including but not limited to men’s tennis, women’s golf, football?
Brett Bartholomew 39:03
Do you know what it’s like? Then they’ll put organization of an enhancement and delivery of the Olympic strength training standards representative of the University of what and it’s just kind of like, Dude, you sound like a robot, you don’t think every other strength coach is saying the same thing. And most of the strength coaches just copy each other’s resumes and then wonder why they get passed over. Hence, your resume is not enough. So what do you do a lot of those strategies shared in the course too if you’re like, hey, dude, like, you just keep doing this. Damn right. We put together this course for two years and there’s five other coaches in the team setting and private sector that got involved. So if you follow me for any period of time, you know, I’m not in the spoon feeding ship. This stuff wasn’t you know, free or easy for me to put together so for all the details, you’re gonna have to go to that resource but I’m sharing a lot with you here.
Brett Bartholomew 39:50
The point is, is you know, this first execute stage of your career, if you’re just getting into it. Adaptability is key. Your career is always going to evolve remain open. and take any job you can early on, as long as it fits with your values, what you should identify, you get worksheets within the course to help you do that, shit that’s actually addressing this, so wha.
Brett Bartholomew 40:11
As opposed to you just getting some online course at bitches about all these problems, you’re gonna have solutions, understand that your resume extends way beyond the page. And it’s got to reflect you and authentically Now, does that mean you start a website? Does that mean you create videos, does that mean you do on site visits? That depends, and we talked about that in value. And also understand that success requires mastery in your current position, you know, make the big time where you are, if you’re in your first job, and you’re already thinking 3, 4, 5, 10 years down the road, your waist, like, it’s a big reason why sometimes I’m strict on who I’m gonna even bring on or mentor if somebody is just like, not solely focused on the mentoring experience and what they want to extract out of it. And they’re going to spend their entire time asking about how to get a job that they want five years from now, their head’s not in the right place.
Brett Bartholomew 40:57
You know, now we get to the point where maybe you’re 8, 10 years into the field, and we’re looking at expanding, so like, how do I keep the job? How do I build up, you know, more autonomy and clout, you know, and this is what the part that we really talked about? Well part of this, you have to understand that again, you never prove your value.
Brett Bartholomew 41:17
Don’t go into it bullheaded, you have to provide value. So you’ve got to make some difficult decisions at this point in your career, you got to understand that if you’re just a strength coach, and now you want to be a director, or you want to be somebody else at a higher level field, and, again, it doesn’t even matter if you’re a strength coach, if you just want to take the next step up, there are going to be truths about perception, you need to understand, and we talk about what perception is and how that feeds into branding. Because even if that term branding makes you vomit in your mouth, you gotta understand branding doesn’t mean social media, that can be a part of branding. But that’s not where that term came from.
Brett Bartholomew 41:53
The term branding does it, branding guys is really just in part, it’s storytelling, when you look at the essence of the term, and we think about what this is, and what it means, you have to understand that, you know, branding was created and the true definition, by the way, is to mark something indelibly to brand or burn it like to etch it in somebody’s psyche. And although that metaphor, branding derives from the designated ownership of things like livestock in corporate communications, it represents something completely different. Branding per a 2005 article by Lair, Sullivan and Cheney, because believe it or not this resource on career development can be researched back to. It really, that word means you’re attempting to make direct clear and persistent bonds between symbols, values, and products and services. So when somebody’s like, I hate branding, and I hate marketing. I’m just like, dude, all that is, is telling people what you actually do.
Brett Bartholomew 42:53
Literally, it’s telling people what you actually do, you know? And will there be people that use branding and social media and marketing unethically? Yeah, guess what, there’s also people that do that with fire. There’s people that use fire to stay warm and cook food. And there’s people that use fire to burn down houses. So branding is like physics, and fire doesn’t matter. It’s not inherently bad or good, it’s how you use it.
Brett Bartholomew 43:17
So within the course, you know, we spent a ton of time diving into marketing related research, talking about the human brain, how it processes certain messages, and how you know, you need to communicate in accordance with the messages you’re trying to get across. If you really want to have a chance at moving up within your field. And it doesn’t even have to be within your direct job, are you trying to become a speaker? Are you trying to do anything ancillary, you’re gonna have to brand and you market yourself every time you walk out the door. So we spent a ton of time talking about impression management techniques, a lot of this research dates back to the 50s, and is still groundbreaking to this day and has been built off of.
Brett Bartholomew 43:59
But the fact is if you don’t understand some of these roles, and what the human brain does, and how perception works, we, you’re screwed, because at the end of the day, you’re going to keep beating your head against the wall. And in essence, you know, what influences the perceptual process are the following things.
Brett Bartholomew 44:17
You know, first of all, is somebody’s habits. What are their usual responses to a given stimuli? Do they get defensive when they’re challenged? Do they blush when they’re complimented? Do they fear that you’re trying to take them get their job? One’s motivation? What is somebody’s desires? You know, what’s their agenda, this person? Will they be able to help you down the road? Can you help them, but when you’re trying to communicate a message to somebody else, whether it’s, hey, I’m competent enough to take a leadership role, or I’m the one that should be in this job. You know, it’s funny, the primary way a lot of strength coaches are still handling this isn’t just attacking people on social media, because they think, Oh, if I can prove this guy wrong, or I can prove that person wrong, you know, somebody’s going to perceive me as an expert. Yeah, you’re wrong.
Brett Bartholomew 44:59
Usually they proceed View as an asshole. And there’s smarter ways to go about that, you know, you need to understand the locus of control of the other individual self awareness and the education level of the individual. This was something I learned most. And the fact is, is, you know, when you if you create a resource today, and let’s say the resources to help people better understand the nuances of psychosocial dynamics, and you put that up, you say, hey, click here to learn more about psychosocial dynamics, by and large, you’re gonna get 1% of the population that’s going to be interested in reading that same if you were doing anything on periodization, or program design, if you were to, if you were to put learn the neuromuscular underpinnings of speed enhancement, not many people are going to read that. Now, if you put something that taps the emotional part of their brain, that’s a different story, right. But we’ve ignored this part of the audience for so long.
Brett Bartholomew 45:52
And this is why strength and conditioning is so much ground to make up. There’s there’s people, whether we like it or not, that have no interest in reading, richly detailed scientific articles. That’s why they go to podcasts, or that’s why they go to other things.
Brett Bartholomew 46:06
Now, is that right? Absolutely not. And that’s why you know, still anything I put out is going to have those science batch resources in your shed to, but you do need to know how to communicate the biggest piece to it, you know, and you need to understand their frame of reference, because at the end of the day, most people, they don’t act, they don’t act because the emotional part of their brain just isn’t triggered enough, or it hasn’t happened to them. social background media, social agents, just how do we navigate this stuff. So we dive in on this part into not only perception, but the human attention span, how to make yourself more marketable in the right way, guys, essentially, you know, because branding is just a communication method. It’s an influence tactic, and influence, like we’ve talked about this in the podcast influence isn’t a bad thing.
Brett Bartholomew 46:53
That just means that you’re altering somebody’s psychological state. And you’re going to have to do that no matter what if you want your wife or your husband to be in a good mood, you’re going to thank them for helping with the dishes, you know, and you alter their psychological state by giving them a compliment. That’s what these things are, again, you have to get over strength and conditioning really, at the end of it doesn’t have this value problem.
Brett Bartholomew 47:13
They have a marketing problem and a career management problem because they view these things as bad and ugly. And that’s why there’s just so little on it. So we’ll skip past that. But again, if you’re a social science nerd, or you’re at all interested in psychology, the middle portion of the course is absolutely loaded with research on everything from perception and human brain function and how we interpret certain images and how you can use those things to enhance the way you do everything from conduct interviews, hire others, nail the hiring, process yourself, do communicate with your clients, anything like that. Finally, guys, we go into the Expand section, and or I’m sorry, the Evolve section. And this is for people that really like, you know, I hate to put a time limit on it, because it doesn’t have to be a time thing.
Brett Bartholomew 48:01
But you generally find these are people that are a little bit later in their career, it could be after 10 years, it could be 20 years. But there’s also some people that get really unique opportunities, and I think need to learn this early in their careers. And this section really talks a lot about you know what goes into negotiation, because a lot of the coaches that reached out the 3000 Plus, you’re just like, I’m stuck, I can’t make any more money, no matter how much I work. I have three kids now, I you know, every time I go into these meetings, they just don’t value what we do they view us as weight room people, you know, what do we do? So we talked about negotiation.
Brett Bartholomew 48:36
In this, we talk about contract law, and we got some great resources there. Because the worst thing, almost one of the worst things you could do in your career is sign a bad contract. There’s a lot of people that signed contracts that don’t realize the minute they put their name on that line, that anything they create, while they’re in that job is owned by that job is owned by that entity.
Brett Bartholomew 48:56
And so people think they’re being loyal and committed, staying somewhere for 15 plus years, and then they realize they can be fired for no reason. And once they are, they don’t have anything, they work to create nothing, they’re stripped bare. And now they’re just kind of like, alright, well, how do I secure my future here? So within this, we talked about how negotiation is not a battle, you know, it’s an act of self discovery. And we take communication tips from one of the best negotiators there is that teaches you how to manage this stuff. We talked about contract law, like I said, and just different legal things that you need to be aware of, how have you gotten in a really bad spot and you’re in one right now what you can do about it?
Brett Bartholomew 49:35
How can you navigate it, how important it is to get so many things in writing. You’ve got to get it in writing, no matter what there’s people that are still taking jobs on a handshake and that’s just not it’s great to trust people but that’s not where we’re at anymore. And then just all the unique nuances of entrepreneurship Andy McCloy and a lot of good friends that came on board and shared rules of like, you know, what were their views on money early on. How did that influence them, you know, how did they grow? Where did they realize that they were wrong about some of the misconceptions of money? You know, how did they get out of debt? Because you think about it, like this topic has been so overlooked in strength and conditioning, so many. And if it is discussed, like I said, it’s passed over, you know, where we read about ideal, like retirement scenarios and finance books. I mean, guys, if you look at fidelity, and fidelity handles the majority of the world’s retirement savings, they say that by age 30, somebody should have one times their salary saved in retirement.
Brett Bartholomew 50:34
By age 35, they should have two times their salary. So if you made $50,000, at age 35, and you’re 35, you should have at least $100,000 in your retirement. Age 40, three times salary. Age 45, four times salary. 55, seven times your salary. How many strength coaches do you think have this, I know my wife, and I don’t, we don’t have that much in retirement and savings. And my dad’s a financial advisor, you know, but at the end of the day, no matter what advice he could give me, I still had to learn to make more money.
Brett Bartholomew 51:03
And I had to figure these things out, because I can’t just make it out of here out of nowhere. Now, thankfully, he was able to help me avoid some pitfalls. And even if I had $5, or there’s a period where I sold plasma, you know, to get that kind of money, like you can always find something. So the entire financial management section of the course really talks about what’s realistic for a strength coach to do for savings. I mean, you guys think about it, a 2018 salary survey from the NSCA have over 2000 strength coaches showed the following. Despite 52% of coaches having a master’s degree, many coaches are still averaging anywhere from low 30s $30,000 to mid 70s. And anyone that was in that higher bracket, meaning the 50s 60s 70s typically and beyond is typically in pro sport with over a decade in the field. So that doesn’t leave a lot of time for savings.
Brett Bartholomew 51:58
If you have six years of college, you got to pay for unpaid internships, you got to account for a Master’s, you know, like, well, that would be included in the six years. And then the sad thing is, is women in our field make even less what resource out there is talking about the gender gap. Women are completely misrepresented in our field. And it’s something like it’s why on the podcast we’ve had, I think we’ve had three or four female guests right off the bat, we have two or three more coming.
Brett Bartholomew 52:24
But there’s a gender gap, and you’re having people that again, don’t have any retirement, barely making any money. And then the gender gap has just been ignored, ignored. So we talk about that in the course. And we’re fortunate enough to have folks like Andrea Hudy, who’s just an absolute powerhouse. And you know, she is so much more than a female strength coach. She has so many unique things that she’s done with it not only her career at KU, but business wise, her and her staff have shared exclusive video content that they’ve put in this course that talk about this stuff.
Brett Bartholomew 52:57
We have Andrea Hudy, we have Ron McKeefery, we have Andy McCloy, we have Donnell Boucher at the Citadel, all these people are coming together for this Art Of Coaching coalition. Because we’re all tired of strength and conditioning, not moving forward in the way that it should. We all need to do better. So we can rise each other up there has to be less undercutting less Oh, he makes $1,000. I’ll do it for 500 Screw that, you need to learn why you should do it for 1200. Because the more everybody can bring each other up, the better chance our field has at moving forward together. Yes, rising tide lifts all ships, but you forget that when, like when ships have a hole in them, or you know, those times, if they’re left on check, they can sync them too.
Brett Bartholomew 53:39
And that’s what’s going on as we have so many people battling and not just listening to this stuff. So we you know, we talked about all these different ways that you can save, you know, the truth about should you pay off your debt should you save? What’s the essence of compound interest, we have a whole podcast that you guys will get it’s exclusive audio of my father, a financial manager for over 40 years. Just walking, it’s I would just say it’s, I’m an idiot with this stuff.
Brett Bartholomew 54:05
So it’s the Idiot’s Guide to you know, saving and financial management, you know, because if you look at, if you just put money in your savings account, you know, add at the rate banks accrue interest, right, like you look at the average cost of living the past 90 years, guys has gone up 3.1%, the average cost of living the past nine years has been an average of 3.1% every year. And so if you’re just paying off debt and putting some money in savings, not retirement investments, anything like that, just savings, you’re losing money, even if you have a high yield savings account of 2% You’re still getting eaten alive by the average rate of inflation over 90 years.
Brett Bartholomew 54:43
So it just talks about how we need to learn about investing and compound interest in the same way that we think of progressive overload. And you know, the only difference here is the adaptation is money, not muscle. Guys, this is just a glimpse, okay? So at the end of the day, you’re damn right this an advertisement. This is an advertisement for a course that I’ve been working on for over two years, I tasted my own blood plenty. I didn’t learn any of this stuff soon enough.
Brett Bartholomew 55:09
And what’s really sad is the amount of people that will reach out to people like me and you and whatever and say, hey, what resources there that can help me, no matter how many times I send a link to this course with them, 90% of people will not sign up for it. And they’ll continue to have the same issues of their whole life. It’s just like, if we could bottle the cure for cancer, if we could bottle sleep, if we could bottle sound training, if we could bottle all these things up. People, there’s still some people that wouldn’t take it, they wouldn’t want to unscrew the lid. But there’s resources out there. Alright, you have no excuses.
Brett Bartholomew 55:42
Now, is it perfect? Hell, no. Nothing I will ever do is perfect. But here’s the facts, the climate is changing. Nobody is coming to save us, nobody’s gonna come do this shit for you. The tools are now at your disposal if you want them.
Brett Bartholomew 55:57
So if you want it, guys go to artorfcoaching.com right now, it does close in five days, it’s not a trick, we’re not going to reopen it like some encore at a concert, it only opens bi annually. If you’re serious about it, you’ll find a way to make it work. If you won’t you think it’s horseshit, that’s fine. That’s your choice to all I’d say then is if it’s horseshit, make sure you put together a course or some kind of resource that helps coaches put it out. And I would love to see it, because that’s the kind of thinking that’s got our field in this pickle is we think everybody else’s stuff is bullshit. Or it’s just some products for them to make money, or it’s all these other things. And then nobody else contributes, I got news for you. Almost all of my savings and our emergency fund went into this course, because I look at it as an investment. I look at it as an investment not only for myself, but for the field of strength and conditioning.
Brett Bartholomew 56:48
Because at the end of the day, we should all be focused on giving back lifting it up and moving this shit into the 21st century. Because if we do this, right, there’s never been a better opportunity to be a strength coach. Never. And it’s not about the old guard versus the new guard. It’s not about young coaches and myths. It’s about people together as this pod unifying for once to move it forward. artofoaching.com the name of the course is Valued. I hope to see you inside all the best and talk to you soon.