I want to show you something that's honestly changed my life. Have I showed you this 5-year diary?
Okay, so let me explain how this works. Dude, I'm so jealous that I did not invent this journal.
So, basically, here's how my 5-year journal works. On every single page, it says like, you know, December 1st, and then it has the first year, the second year, the third year, the fourth year, the fifth year.
Oh, yes. I'm interested. You took this journaling thing from like, 'Oh, great. The most boring topic ever, journaling,' to 'Oh, wait. That's pretty cool. I kind of want one.'
I started doing this in November, uh, like the week of Thanksgiving, actually.
And so, your boy's getting to last year's entries like a week ago, you mean?
I started doing it a year ago last week.
Oh, last year. Okay. I've talked about this three times now. This is the third time. This is the first time it's clicking.
But the reason it's been very special this week is because I'm getting to my previous year's entries and I had purposely not looked ahead to remind myself.
Do you want to know something? The biggest takeaway...
Like, what do you mean? Like your habits or what you're doing or how you feel?
I have complained about the same stuff for 10 or 15 years and I have previous journals where I look back and I'm like, I've complained about the same things.
Give me an example. What do you mean?
So, like, is the way that I'm spending time right now, is it even worth it? Is working on this business even worth it? Do I want to go all in on creating content or do I want to go all in on being behind the scenes? Right? Where should I live? Basically, I complain about the same things all the time. Why did I lose my temper today and make myself look stupid? Why didn't I pause for like 10 seconds and reflect before I snapped at my wife or a kid or something? And I think I've concluded a few things.
One, humans don't change. Actually, change is—let me rephrase that. I've concluded that change is unnatural. Change is not natural. Inertia is natural. Right? Inertia is the default.
And so, you can change. And I actually have changed a lot of big things in my life. And I was thinking about what causes change. And I think a good representation of what causes change is in business. Typically this happens at the 10 million mark. The difference between a 10 million and a 100 million a year business oftentimes is systems. So I think it typically comes down to hiring great people and creating great systems. And the reason why I love business is because it kind of teaches you a little bit about life. And what I'm learning about my own life is that the moments that I've changed most in my life is when I've had a system. And a good system, what it does, it makes it more predictable by taking away how you feel at the moment. The way that you feel at any moment should have nothing to do with the actions that you take to get you to the goals that you've set.
So, for example, the times that I've lost the most weight and gotten the most fit is when I had an accountability—a nutritionist holding me accountable, or I had a trainer who I had to see, or I was following a plan. The times that I've stagnated most in my life is when I've not had a plan and I let my feelings on that day dictate what I do during my schedule.
When I have a good company, your salespeople have scripts that they follow. They have checklists for follow-ups. They spend the early morning doing outbound. The middle of the morning is doing follow-up emails. And it's like a system. And I just wanted to talk about, like, a, do you have this? And b, we should talk about some of the systems that we've implemented in our lives that have actually made real change. Because I think the key to living a successful life—not just money, but like success defined as getting what you want—is creating a system.
I mean, you brought up a pretty amazing topic. I think you started with the journal, which again is just incredible. The year-over-year journal, which I think is incredible. It's basically a time machine because you get to see where you were, and so it forces perspective, which you wouldn't normally get.
The vulnerability of being like, 'Dude, I don't change. I'm the same complaining, you know, mother-effort that I've been for the last 10 years.' I think that's really funny and honest. And then you have the systems thing. The best quote of this, I think, comes from James Clear or whoever he got it from in his book Atomic Habits, which is, you know, we don't rise to the level of our goals, we fall to the level of our systems.
You see this everywhere. I see it in my business, I see it when I'm coaching basketball, I see it in my fitness life. You see it everywhere, which is that you don't become what you want, you don't become your potential, that's for sure. You become what you regularly do. The old, I think, the Aristotle quote, you know, we are what we do repeatedly. And so what do you do repeatedly? You do what's on autopilot. You do what's defaulted. You do what you have on an automated basis and not what's based on how you're feeling in the moment, which is like if it was a graph, it'd be up and down, up and down, up and down, up and down. And so I think you're—I mean, you're spot on that this is inside the company and outside of any of your work stuff. It's the same thing.
Let me give you an example. Here's what I wrote about on 12/5 of last year. I said, 'I'm one text message away from going Amish. I'm so sick of digital distractions. It's a drug.' And then I wrote—I had this other section. I'm like, 'When I hang out with all these successful people, I have to remember my roots. I'm just a punk rock skateboarding redneck from Missouri and I shouldn't get caught up in this fancy stuff or wanting to achieve all this fancy stuff.' That's an example. And the reason I'm bringing up the digital stuff and being distracted is I wrote about that three weeks ago in the same thing.
Right? So there's one thing I think that goes underneath, that comes before the system, right? Because you're basically saying like you need a plan, you need a goal, and then you need a system that's going to get you to the goal reliably, right? A system that if you just follow that, you know, sort of the mechanics, the physics of the system leads you to a certain outcome. And I think that's very true, but there does seem to be like a couple things underneath that. One is the blueprint.
So figuring out what to want, because if you set up your systems towards getting a goal that wasn't the goal that actually would change the feeling that you want, you'll be perpetually on the hamster wheel. This happens a lot in business, right? We get a promotion and then you immediately are like, 'I still feel kind of the same stressed, anxious version of myself. So, you know, I just need a little more and that'll be the solution,' right? So like figuring out the right thing to want, because then it says, 'Cool, let me build my systems in that direction.' And I think that's a very uncomfortable place to be, is figuring out what you actually want in life, because it sounds like it should be so simple.
That's the hardest part, right? You can't optimize for a goal without a goal, and we spend most of our time worrying about the optimization.
Yeah. Or like, you know, the goal—did you pick a goal that's actually going to get you—again, like, you never want the thing, you want the feeling you think the thing is going to get you. Right? You don't want to have the fancy watch or the car. You don't want to have the promotion. You don't want to have the relationship. You want the feeling you think you'll have if you were in a great relationship. You want the feeling you think you'll have if your team wins the game. You want the feeling you think you'll have if you are driving that car instead of this piece of junk. Right? And so it's the feeling that you're chasing.
And if you're not very good at understanding your own feelings and practicing having the feelings that you want, you're not just going to have them when the thing happens. We just adapt too quickly, and your base nature, your emotional home is too strong. So when you say, 'I'm complaining about the same things,' I would guess that it's not that you're literally complaining about the same things. It's that you're having the same feelings about some variety of problem. Some same genre of problem, but the feeling is almost identical.
Yeah, exactly. And so what should you do about that? I think a few things. I think that the way that I'm feeling now—correct me if I'm wrong—do you feel this exact same way or have you had the same issue?
I've had the same issue. I don't know what you're feeling right now, but yeah, I mean, like this—I don't change fast enough or I'm not coaching myself fast enough and I'm not adapting.
I think more often than not, the listener and you and me, we don't need to be taught new stuff. We just need to be reminded of the same thing that we already know. I think that we don't give enough credit to reminders. So, let me give you an example.
I read—or when I don't have a newborn, I read a book a week probably. I read a lot. I love reading. It's great. I get so much joy out of it. Now, there's been so many times that I've read a book and it'll be on like something on a president or something, and then you ask me a year later, I really just can't remember much about that president. I can't tell you about the thing. And I think that a lot of times we go too wide and we consume too much stuff versus the same thing over and over and over again to master and be reminded of the same thing over and over and over again.
And so like another example could be when you're training an employee on like a sales process. I think the majority of the time you have to repeat yourself like seven, eight, nine, ten times in a sales meeting. So you have to do it like—if you have like a daily standup, you have to have phrases that people can remember constantly because I don't think they need to be taught what to do. I just think they need to be reminded constantly. So I think reminders are important.
I also think that a system of accountability. So when you hire employees for your business, or at least when I do, I'm like, 'I don't want to do that. I could just do this on my own.' But I've noticed that when I hire employees for my company, I then feel like, well, now I have to keep feeding this system because now I'm held accountable. And it's very painful, but I get significantly better results. And so when I back myself into a corner where I must perform and otherwise I'm going to let others down, that's when I get the best results.
If you want to hit your goals, you need a system. And so I worked with HubSpot to put together a step-by-step process showing you how I use ChatGPT as a life coach. So, I uploaded my personal finances, my net worth, my goals, and the output is that I have this GPT that I can ask questions that I'm having issues with in my life, like how should I respond to this email, what's the right decision, things like that, and it's literally changed my life. And so, if you want that, it's free. We will send you everything you need to know to set this up in just about 20 minutes. And I'll show you how I use it. So, check it out. The link is below in the description. Back to the episode.
Have I told you what I've been doing lately? I texted you something this morning.
Uh, so it's 12:15. At 11:55 when I log in, I got this text from Sean and it was this really good like Instagram reel, but it wasn't on Instagram. And it was Sean telling the story about how he has quit being a business person and is now fully focused on coaching a basketball team. Is that right?
So, here's the story of how I stepped down as CEO in my companies and I'm now an unpaid high school assistant basketball coach. This is a decision I've made.
They were high school kids? These guys look like they had beards.
They're high school kids. So, I love basketball as you know. One thing you probably don't know is that growing up I didn't watch cartoons. So, you know how you'll mention like Dolly Parton and I couldn't tell you who she is, or you'll be like, 'Yeah, you know that Elvis song?' And I'm like, 'No, I don't really know.' Well, that's also true if you ask me about Sesame Street or Rugrats. As a kid, I never watched cartoons.
World Series of Poker. I watched two movies on loop: Home Alone, great movie, and I watched Mighty Ducks 2, specifically D2. And you know, these things you do as a kid, they sort of imprint on you, right? And so this idea of—in the movie Mighty Ducks, Gordon Bombay, he's this hot shot lawyer who actually gets in like a DUI, but gets assigned this community service thing where he ends up coaching this hockey team.
This pulls up into his limo in New York City or some city and he's coaching, you know, like the street kids that somehow also play hockey.
Exactly. The business guy who grew up playing hockey but has given it up now has to go back into the world of sport and he ends up being the coach to this shitty ragtag group of kids, these underdogs, and then they go on a run and they sort of make it to the top and he finds his love, his passion, he realizes like, oh my god, this fills his cup. So I watched that movie a lot of times and I had always said—I don't know if I ever told you this—but I had said like, bucket list item, my retirement plan was to go coach a high school basketball team at least for a year.
And I tried convincing my brother-in-law. I was like, 'Hey, what if we got like an AAU team? Could we do that?' And I've been kind of like poking around, like, 'Is there a way to do this? I think it would be really good for the soul.' And the opportunity presented itself about a month ago where I hired a coach—I'm big on coaches. I hired a coach to train me in basketball just as like a workout. And so this guy used to train NBA players before the draft, things like that. And so I worked with him for like, you know, over the summer.
Yeah, I mean, of course you're better. You practice, you get better, right? Systems. So, like I showed up two, three times a week. We practiced the same things every time, the fundamentals, and guess what? Like, you get better.
Was it good exercise or did it hurt you?
Oh, dude, it's great exercise. Like, you know, you're drenched with sweat, which I would never get in the weight room type of thing.
I like, you know, it's like your full body, right? Because you can't make a move without rotation and you're doing like lateral movements and stuff, things you wouldn't do in a stationary machine or barbell. So, he tells me, he's like, 'Hey, you know, I don't think I'll be able to coach you anymore. I got this job. School starts in a week. I'm the head basketball coach at this high school. It's like a small Division 5 high school.'
I didn't know the divisions go to five, right? D1, D2, D3, all the way D5.
And so, I was like, 'Okay.' And I was like, 'So, you need an assistant?' I just said it jokingly. And he's like, 'Yeah, actually, like I don't have any—there's no staff, so yeah, I'm a first-time coach, so I would love an assistant.' So I told him, I was like, 'Dude, I'd love to show up maybe once a week.' And I just thought this would be something I would do just the way I do everything.
I thought that I would make a fun commitment in the moment and then sort of back away over time. Things that I've done many times with many cool ideas in my life. But this year, I'm trying to be a different guy, right? I said, 'I'm going to play the piano.' And guess what? I sit there and I practice scales and I play the piano, you know, four times a week and I'm getting good at it and I'm doing the boring things and I'm sticking with it. I'm not giving up. And so I did the same thing with this. I was like, I'm going to show up.
And dude, when I tell you that this is the most fun thing I've ever done in my life, I am not lying. This is incredible. So now I'm spending like 15 hours a week doing this. I'm basically going to practice four days a week. I commute, which I would—you know me, I would never commute.
It's like I didn't even know you had a driver's license.
It's a 30, 40-minute drive and I'm basically coaching these kids from the beginning of the season, tryouts. We just had our first game last night. First like official game and the video I showed you was our first preseason game. We got smashed by 30 and then, you know, four days later we had our first real game and we actually just won. We won by 30 last night and we like did a Gatorade dump on the coach because it was his first win.
And here I am, this assistant basketball coach, you know, in the office when Dwight's like, 'I'm assistant regional manager.' They're like, 'No, no, you're assistant to the regional manager.' That's what I am. I'm assistant to the head coach is really the more accurate way of saying this. And I'm so emotionally invested in the entire process. You would not believe. Like me, I'm so invested in these kids. I'm so invested in getting them better day by day, system by system, habit by habit.
I'm breaking down game film of like other high school teams that we're going to play. I'm sending clips. We have a kid who was struggling in school and got kicked off the team and I'm helping him with his math homework trying to get him back on the team. Like, I am so in it, it's not even funny.
So, are you—I don't know much about sports, or at least basketball. I don't know much about basketball. Can you tell a player to make minor changes and it actually impacts the game or is it just like if you're seven foot tall, you're going to win?
Well, this is why I brought this up. So, you were talking about repetition, reminders, habits, systems. Well, sports are of course the great teacher of life. It's this little petri dish. It's like a simulation of life, right? You as an individual, you working with a team, you going up against competition, you facing defeat regularly, and you getting to go practice and then seeing if that translates into the real world, right?
And there have been so many things where we would tell the kids something and then the first scrimmage would happen and we would just get our butt kicked and it's like, we told them this. That's the exact thing we've been telling them. And then we had to take a step back as coaches and be like, oh, that's because the job is to drill this 50 times. Like, we did one of 50 and our perspective was wrong, which is that, oh, I'll tell them once and then they'll get it and then they'll just do it live in action when the moment happens. Like, no, you won't. You will default. Inertia, baby. You will default to the thing that you already do, the old you.
And so now we took, you know, as coaches, we're basically giving this mindset of like, all right, if this matters, there's only like—you can only tell them two or three things that matter. You can't give them 15 things to change at once. So like, pick one to three things and then let's be honest, we're going to need to say this 50 times with the same level of enthusiasm and we're not going to get discouraged if it doesn't happen at number 42 because it takes 50. And that's like the mindset as a coach.
But it's the same thing in your own life, which is like you seek progress, not perfection. And reminders matter a hell of a lot more than some new strategy, some new play, some new thing that nobody's ever done before. You want that. You want some new answer because you're like, maybe I was just missing the thing. And actually, no, it's because I didn't internalize the thing, the answer that was already on my plate, right? And that reminders, like you said, are extremely undervalued to the point where not only are reminders undervalued, they're sort of discriminated against.
Reminders are like, you know, the minority class of self-help, right? Because when you tell somebody something that they already know, what's their reaction? It's not like, 'Oh, that's helpful.' It's 'I know that,' right? It's defensive. It's like, that clearly can't be important because I already know it. And it's like, no, no, it's coming back up again because it's that important.
Dude, this is hilarious. This has happened—I don't know if the listener can tell this. This has happened so many times where you and I come with the same exact thing not even realizing it. If you're an entrepreneur listening to this, you are going to be nodding your head, but how many times have you said to come up with a brilliant idea and gone to your company and in an all-hands it says, 'This is what we are doing now and it is new and it is different' so many times.
Right. Yeah. And I've come to the conclusion that a company can basically only do one new project maybe per quarter, but definitely—but it could be every six months. And when I say project, I mean something relatively small. Like for us, we had never advertised before. Now we're starting to advertise. It's like, just do Meta. Just do Meta and get really good at that. And you think, well, we should advertise on Meta, on LinkedIn, we should advertise, we should buy podcast ads, we should do this, we should do that. It's like, no, no, no. Just that one thing and let's really master it and it's going to take six months.
And so it's kind of funny that you're hearing that. Like, I don't know about basketball, but what are you telling them to do? Just that one thing or you said three things? What are those three things?
Okay, these are a little bit nerdy basketball things, but here's one. Something called playing off two feet. So, the way that—how do I explain this if it's not like—okay, when you play basketball normally and you go, you're just playing by yourself, there's no defense, you're like, 'Oh, I'll go do a layup.' So you run in and you jump usually off one foot and you go shoot a layup and that's great when there's nobody there.
When there's defense, that's a lot harder to do because not only are there people in the way, but when you just run and jump off one foot, you commit to that path being the only thing you can go do. And so what we have is a lot of undersized guys, right? Like our point guard is like, I don't know, 5'7" or something like that, right? We don't have like 6'4" athletes that are just going to be dunking and finishing at the rim across the board on our team. We have like, I think, one guy who can dunk pretty much.
And so we had to teach them that there's this other way of playing. Looks a little less sexy but is really effective, which is when you get into the paint and you're amongst the giants and the crowd, you come to what's called a jump stop. So you just land on both feet and now you have options. You can pass, you can pivot, you could shoot, you can step through, you can do a bunch of things, but you're more under control. It's almost like a slower way to play.
And it's not what you practice when—it's not what you do when there's no defense there. When there's no defense there, you just kind of naturally will go do this. But guess what? In the real game, there's always defense there. So, we're going to practice like what happens in the game, and we're going to do things that match our athleticism. And this is a habit that you guys don't have. And so we're going to drill this not once, not twice, but every single day. You're going to get reps at doing this and you are going to hear us say the same phrase: 'Play off two, play off two, play off two.' You're going to hear that till you hear it in your dreams, right? So that'll be like, let's say, one of the core principles that it's like, that's a change we need to make, right? Because change requires that level of repetition to do a new behavior.
You're going to say it until someone hears it in their dreams. That's exactly what I'm meaning about reminders. You have to—it's like, that's so funny. Number two is what?
And by the way, the actual test is you say it till you hear them saying it to each other. Once they're saying it to each other, your job as the coach is like, you know you have successfully incepted the idea into them.
This happens also as a CEO, right? Like whether it's habits and how we do meetings or whatever, or it's like what matters, what are the priorities, you know you've done it well when they're saying it to each other. I used to do this test with companies, like if I would invest in them or they were running into trouble and they'd be like, 'Yeah, we're trying to do X.' And almost always in there, the little magic trick you can always pull is you take, you know, let's say they have a—it doesn't matter how many people, it could be like just their top five executives or it could be, you know, 15 people at their company. And you say, 'Hey everybody, I would like you to write down the top three priorities of the company. What actually matters right now?'
And then you look at the CEO and you see the CEO start to realize like, oh, we are not on the same page. Like I have not done a good job. They don't even—forget doing it, they don't even know what we're supposed to be doing. I have not even successfully communicated the priorities because everybody—what they'll do is basically they will focus on their problems, my little problems in my part of the world, or recency. What's the most recent fire that somebody put on my plate? And like, that's just the thing I'm thinking about. I kind of forgot about all the other stuff we talked about at that all-hands or at that meeting or at that offsite or whatever the thing was where we made our plans.
And so this is the same thing in whether it's a team or whether it's a sports team or it's a company. I heard this story about NASA in the 1960s before we went to the moon. They had this amazing leader and they're telling the story about how they knew he was amazing. And this one reporter sees a janitor mopping the floor at the NASA center and he goes, 'Sir, what are you doing here?' And he goes, 'I'm helping us get to the moon.' And that was like the best story ever because like they all knew the mission. Like we all are playing a part in getting us to the moon.
Right. By the way, there's like such funny things that happened. Like one kid came to practice like 10 minutes late and we're like, 'Dude, you can't be late.' And he was like, 'Sorry, I was at work.' And then we look at his hands. His hands were covered in grease. Like he's a mechanic, I guess. Our point guard's like a mechanic. And then he comes to practice.
And like this other guy, you know, wait, in high school, does he have like jobs, you know? Is his name Vinnie? Does he like—this player named Vinnie?
Yes. Vinnie's a man. Yeah, Vinnie's amazing. Like Vinnie. Yeah.
So anyways, there's all these little things where you're like, 'Oh, you forgot what it's like to be, first of all, like a teenager, but secondly, you forgot like how much of the basic habits have to be installed in somebody that will serve them not just here, but also like whatever they do, right?' Because most of our guys are not going to be in the NBA, right? None of them. So it's how do I teach you something that's useful today for you on this team so we win and have fun, but that's like a master skill that's going to serve you in the future, right? I'm not doing my Gordon Bombay if I don't actually do both for them.
Do you think—how much percentage of a difference will—so let's just say you're hypothetically, let's say your team is a five out of 10, just average. Good coaching, what do you think that would change?
I think good coaching can take a five out of 10 team to an eight.
Which is great. Which is dramatic.
Yeah. I think in my leadership position in my career, I think I've only been average and I've seen great. And I particularly love reading military books like about Navy SEALs and stuff like that and I think I get good examples of what a good leader looks like. And I think that the difference, with all else being equal—like I've read, I think Jocko has this story about—he's got this book, I forget what it's called, something leadership, and he talks about the story about how they would during BUD/S or like the week where you become a SEAL, they have like six different groups of like eight guys carrying the rafts on their back and they have to race and they assign leaders.
And all they do is they change the leaders after each race. And what they notice is that the leader determines whether the boat wins or not, not the other seven guys lifting the boat, right? And when I heard that example, I was like, I'm not that leader at this moment and I have to become one because I think the difference is not—I think it's more than from a five to an eight. I think it's potentially like almost a 10.
I just think that leadership is so important and it's just so challenging because it's one of these things where if you're like you and I, you think, 'Oh, I'm charismatic. I'm probably already good. I don't need to learn. Like I can convince people to do stuff or I'm an idea guy. My ideas are good.' That's just not the case. Just like basketball, it's a skill. Learning how to get teams to operate effectively, it's a skill and I'm learning all of this like in real time and it's been very challenging.
I'll give you an example that I took from the pod. So, I think you were on here, you were talking about company values. You're like, 'Oh, at Hampton we're trying to come up with our values.' And you were saying like, 'Here's what I think they're going to be.' And then I was kind of pushing back like, 'Yeah, I kind of expected it to be like this.' And you were like, 'Yes, okay, let me...' And you were working through it.
So, right after I got off the pod, I grab my whistle and my clipboard and I drive over to basketball practice. And when we get there, I was like, 'Hey, it's the start of our season.' So I'm telling Danny, our coach, I was like, 'Hey, I think we should install like the kind of two or three things that we hang our hat on. What are we all about?' And in sport, they call this like your team's identity, right?
So there was like all these famous teams that had a real identity. So it'd be like the Bad Boy Pistons. It was in the name. You already knew they were tough, they were mean, they had a nasty streak, and you could not push them around, right? They would push you around. They were the Bad Boy Pistons.
In the modern day, there's like Heat culture is a big one. So the Miami Heat are known to be this team where they hold a standard almost like military. So for example, they're the only—I think they're the only NBA team that does this—where you get tested on weight and body fat every single week and you're either fined or you don't get to play if you are not keeping your—like, doesn't matter who you are. If you're the star player, like you can't just coast by on your talent.
And so they demand and they demand it from day one. So it's like by the time you show up to training camp, you need to already be in shape. You don't come to training camp to get in shape. And that's just a known thing that that's their standard. And so it doesn't matter what it was like where you played before. When you go there, you already know what they're all about. You've heard the stories. And so you got to buy in or you're going to be out. It's one way or the other.
And so we go there and our first day, we do it all wrong. We're like, 'Okay, what do we—it's all about playing hard. So, effort. Effort is going to be one of our things.' So we tell them that at the beginning. We tell them three values. Well, effort's the first one. And then we had two others.
So you get to the end of practice. Coach had to leave. Like the athletic director wanted to talk to him. So he's like, 'Coach Sean will finish up the practice.' And I'm like, 'Me? That's me? Wait, I'm coach. I don't know what to do here. Okay, let me go ahead and help these guys out.'
So as we're finishing up, I just huddle them up and I'm like, 'All right, how did we do today on those?' We started the practice saying, 'We're going to be—this is our team identity. These three words.' And I was like, 'Who can give them to me?' They couldn't even remember, right? They got one of the three. So they got effort as the only one of the three that they remembered and they were like—they wanted to remember. They just couldn't remember. This is—it's like to your thing about repetition and reminder, right? Like it's super important.
So then I was like, 'So how'd we do on effort?' And they were like, you know, some guy was like, you know, kind of like a nod with a shrug, like, 'Pretty good.' Another guy just shook his head no with no explanation. You know, another guy was like, 'Yeah, it was good effort.'
And then I was like, 'Oh, remember what I was telling Sam, which is like Facebook's value was move fast and break things.' It wasn't just like speed, which everybody could be like, 'Yeah, we're moving fast.' It's like, 'No, no, no. Are you moving fast and are you moving so fast you're breaking things?' Because if you're not, then you're not even playing at our speed.
So what's yours? What was yours?
So I was like, 'Oh, if we just said the word is effort, then like some effort's fine, I guess. Kind of pretty good. Effort's fine.' Like, wait, guys, what is it? Is it pretty good effort? Whatever.
And there's one kid on the team who always beats everybody in the sprints. He's not the most talented kid, but he plays the hardest and then whenever we make them run, he always finishes first. His name's Max. And I was like, 'Oh, perfect.' I go, 'All right, we have a new standard. It's called max effort.' And I was like, 'If you're not playing as hard...' but like it's like a pun, right? But I was like, 'If you're not playing as hard as Max, it's not effort. That's not what we do. We play with max effort.'
And so that's the only one of the three that stuck because it was like a campaign slogan and it worked. You know, it's like it is actually a bar you could pass-fail, whereas most of the other values were like, 'Yeah, like we want to be really competitive.' It's like, all right, we were kind of—there's no pass-fail, you can't test it. Versus everybody knows, did I actually go at max effort today or not? It's like a very simple pass-fail. And so taking these things from business and trying to apply it here has been very, very interesting.
Yeah, I think that we too often think about marketing to customers when we should be marketing to ourselves and our teams and our families. So like, you know, this sounds eye-rolly, but my wife and I are like, should we have values for our family? Like what should we—because we're at the age now where our children are just now old enough where we're able to form traditions and we're like, what traditions should we have? You know, what do we want to teach them?
And so I joke with my daughter where we do daily affirmations. I say, 'Repeat after me: I'm bold, I'm tough, and I won't conform to anyone.' That's like her daily affirmations because clearly I care about like that type of stuff. But we had to sit down and we're like, all right, well, what collectively should we care about so we can teach our kids? And also like what traditions can we have?
And I was thinking, I was like, well, I have these things. I have what I call my four F's: family, fitness, finance, fun. And that's like the categories that I value or I weigh myself on. I need to have that for my family and I need to have that for other parts of myself. So if I'm being a weak leader, I need to come up with a cool phrase that I can remind myself in times of like I want to revert back to, you know, old me in order to create change.
This whole episode is about change. And I think that something—these cute phrases, I'm telling you, I just dismissed them by calling them cute phrases. I'm trying to make myself feel better here, but they work. They work so much.
At Hampton, we have this thing called the three C's: commitment, candor, and confidentiality. And so we have to repeat it. We have found roughly six times to our customer for them to understand and remember the three C's. And so it all has to be in a memorable format.
So I was kind of studying this last night. So I was like, how do you actually do it? Because you said that, right? They need to be memorable. All right, Sam, tell me how you make them memorable.
Right. So it's like you kind of like—it should be—there's a couple frameworks, right? But like I'm not an expert on that. I don't think you're an expert on that. And we actually care about this and we should be good at this. We're like actually pretty good at writing and pretty good at talking. It's kind of what we do for a living. And even we aren't like that far ahead.
Okay. So who is great at this? What group of people is amazing at this?
Marketers. So the people who come up with specifically slogans, right?
Yeah. Another one that's like—where is it life or death? Where do you have to be great?
Military and politics. You got to get elected, right? And so, 'Make America Great Again,' right?
Okay. Okay. That's a thing that if he repeated it a thousand times, but it was enough to stick. It was polarizing. It was interesting. It was repeatable. It was like something you could get behind.
So I was studying this last night and there's this phrase called a—I don't even know how you pronounce this—chiasmus. C-H-I-A-S-M-U-S. All right.
So here's an example of one. Sam, if I said the following phrase—if I said, 'Ask not what your country can do for you,' what would you say next?
