Lead...For God's Sake!

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For nearly thirty years, Todd Gongwer has been building his expertise in leadership

and team dynamics by serving in a variety of senior-level roles in business and

athletics. From an entrepreneurial start-up to public company to college athletics,

As a best-selling author, speaker, and teacher on leadership and cultural

development, Todd has spent the last decade working with some of the most

successful coaches, teams, business leaders, and educators in America.

His principles have been embraced by countless leaders, including coaches and

athletes from championship programs in the NCAA, NBA, MLB, and NFL. Stories of

the profound impact of Todd’s message have been featured on ESPN the

Magazine, ESPN.com, Bleacher Report, and Forbes.com.

Todd continues to work with many of the most successful coaches in sports and is a popular speaker at major universities (Darden School of Business), high-profile

sports teams (Clemson Football), national associations (American Baseball

Coaches Association), and high-profile businesses (Home Depot) throughout the

country.

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He lives in Indiana with his wife and three children, Kaden, Kira, and

Wadson.

"If you lose sight of the proper perspective, everything else seems to fall through the cracks."

"I had a lot of coaching and business friends who were pursuing great things at the expense of the most important things."

“A key is not only becoming more self-aware because that’s becoming more of a hot topic right now but learning to act on that self-awareness.”

This is the coach to coach podcast, episode number 33 game time

Hey, what's going on guys? Welcome to the coach to coach podcast where we believe every kid deserves a coach that cares and every coach deserves someone in their corner. I'm your host Nate Sallee and this podcast is sponsored by the Northern Kentucky fellowship of Christian athletes. We have an incredible team of donors, of volunteers, board members, supporters prayer partners that all contribute to this movement of God, of Northern Kentucky FCA, and part of the vision behind this podcast is to capture the collective wisdom in Northern Kentucky greater Cincinnati and beyond so we can all get better together and really have success not only with our teams on the field, but to be able to transform lives in the process. I couldn't be more excited about this episode as we interview Todd Gongwer. Todd has written one of the iconic coaching books of our era lead for God's sake. I remember hearing this book a few years ago. I got through it in two sittings. It's an incredible story about a basketball coach who is friends with a business leader as well. And Todd has some incredible experience in both worlds at the business level but also in college athletics as a basketball coach at the collegiate level. He's spoken for championship programs in the NCAA, NBA, MLB NFL has been featured on espn.com Forbes Bleacher report and his book, some of the people that have endorsed his book Lou Holtz said he wished he'd read it 30 years ago. Dabo Swinney said it's one of his all time favorites. Urban Meyer, one of the most powerful books I've ever had, John Smoltz, former MLB player, powerful life changing it truly is an incredible message that he is passionate about. And he gives us some insight into some of the lessons he's learned personally as a coach, as a leader, things that he wished he would have known himself and why he's so passionate about moving forward. So you're going to get a lot out. I hope you have a notepad ready and willing to take some notes. Hey and real quick before we get started, if you could take just a moment and rate this podcast. If you've enjoyed previous episodes before, it would really help get the word out and get the message out and be able to help more coaches. And I can't wait for you to hop right in. I'm not gonna hold you back anymore. Let's hop into our conversation with Todd Gongwer. All right guys. We are here with with Todd [inaudible]. He's the author of Lead for God's sake and he is man, just a really respected leader this time. Just really you giving us some time. What I love about you is you've kind of been in both worlds that one of your most popular books lead for God's sake is you've been in the business world, you've kind of done that organizational side, but you're also exactly been in the hat of most of our listeners, which are current coaches, at the college level. Yeah. Would just love to just have you have you jump in and just share maybe some, some big learnings kind of through your, your coaching journey specifically.

Yeah. So it's interesting, man. You know, I look back and you know, hindsight's always 2020 but in our lives, I think especially as followers of Christ, you know, we, I mean God has orchestrated so many really cool things that a lot of times when we're going through and we just, we have no idea how he's working on us, what he's developing within us. And I think obviously that's a lesson for right now. I mean, I think there is no doubt God's doing a work in a lot of hearts right now and a lot of really cool ways with regards to relationships and focus and priorities and all those things. So, but when I look back on my days in coaching and for me, and I was really, really passionate about sports, I was passionate about basketball in particular, you know, had 12 years I think as an assistant college basketball coach had a great mentor, coach Mike Lightfoot, who just, you know, he was awesome. He was a guy that understood the bigger why and was always about impacting the kids, not only in their lives, but eternally. So I took a ton away from just being a part of that program. But even as I think back on that question, I look, you know, coaching, I got out of coaching in 2004 officially, but then from that time my kids were starting to grow older. So I coached in youth sports, basketball, soccer, baseball in every way, shape or form, both my son and daughter. And when I look at that time from then, you know, even up until about a year, year and a half ago, when, when you take the college coaching experience and those coaching experiences, you got literally hundreds and hundreds of games, thousands of practices. You know, I mean, and just, and just some amazing, amazing experiences. I think you're looking back for me, and especially because I started coaching at a young age. I was in my young twenties and it was so about climbing the ladder, you know, pursuing success and, and my title meant everything to me. Back then. It was like, you call me coach, you know, and, and even when I, when I look back on, you know, how I, I dressed my appearance, I mean how I carried myself. It's not that any of those things, they all matter. You know what I mean? They're, they're not, they're not completely insignificant things at all. But at the same time, when you fast forward to today, and even the opportunities I've had in the last decade to work with some of the top coaches in the country, some the top programs in the country, you know, keeping things in proper perspective is just, it really is everything. And again, this goes back to the why of the book that, I mean, I learned that through that is, is no matter how focused we can be on our why and the right why sports has this tendency to inch us out of that focus and then to the competitive nature that all that's within all of us that are in sports. You know, you're not going to be a coach if you don't want to win the games. You know, you've got that competitive and there's nothing wrong with that. You know, I think, and I'll probably botch this up, but I think the, the, the term competition actually in some way, shape or form of is derived from a root that had to do with cooperation. You know, and I think often we just, we lose sight of that. And, and again, yes. You know, one of the things, biggest things that I took away is how easy it is to lose sight of the fact that listen, why, why are we really in this sport? Are we really given the opportunity to compete? And if it really is about just me beating you, you know, we're setting kids up for some, for some tough times as they even move out into culture because you could operate that and that way completely in the business world too. And in fact, you can be very successful if that's the obsession that becomes the obsession. But it's a dangerous game when it gets out of balance. And for many of us, just like, it's easy to lose sight of the proper perspective when we were in sports. And keeping the competition in the right, you know, place. It becomes easy in the business world to to lose perspective. And remember this is about relationships. This is about impact. This is about making each other the best that we can be. When you're a coach you have the unbelievable opportunity to teach, to help kids move into the next phases of their lives and to again, proper perspective is huge. It cannot be all about killing the opponent and that's just a tough balance. I think that's probably as much as anything kind of an underlying theme of everything that I learned in sports was, man, if you lose sight of that perspective, everything else starts to fall through the cracks so to speak. On the outside.

Yeah, that's big. It really stuck out not only the perspective and being connected to your why. It also sounded like the ongoing maintenance of staying connected to that why is is really key. Because like you said, the default trajectory of sport is to pull you slowly, even it might just be an inch at a time, but pull you slowly, slowly away from that. So, how have you maintained that perspective, whether it be family, business or coaching or what have been some ways that you've fought against that, that resistance? Because if you're like me, I've definitely fallen off. They've taken an exit ramp at times.

Yeah. There, there is no doubt. And I am, I am like, I'm a competitor big time. I mean my kids get frustrated with me when we play ping pong. I mean, you know, like it doesn't matter what we're playing. Yeah. I, I think, I truly believe Nate. It's, it's, it's kinda crazy cause again, looking back on my life, I'm 50 years old now and I looked back and I'm like, man, I really believe God. One of the reasons he gave me this book and this message, and it's so resonated in my heart because he knew I needed something to like remind me every day. And so like this is what I do for a living now is help teach that proper perspective. Why do we really do, what's your real purpose? How do you remain true to that? And so, you know, for me a big way to stay true to that has been, yeah, that's a huge part of my message. When you're teaching it, it's easy to go, Todd, come on you say. And so like, like even, you know, I mentioned coaching my kids and, and for years coaching AAU basketball, you know, and as my kid got older and older, my son, it was a very, very competitive environment obviously. And but you know, always trying to remain true to that ultimate message of why we do what we do. So it was teaching the message helped my daily routines are really big for me. Maintaining a proper kind of balance and focus in my life, my quiet time every morning. I think that's a huge time of just kind of centering ourselves and reflecting and I think fewer and few people tend to take that time. I mean, I protect that time crazy. People get frustrated with me sometimes cause I won't, I don't want to do an event at, you know, even with coaches, like you know, we start at 5:30 AM and so be there at six Todd and I'm like, you know, I'm not going to because that's early morning is my time. I get up and I and I that first 45 minutes to an hour, I really want to ease into my day with quiet reflection and prayer with time in the word. I mean real time in the word, not five minutes of here's two scriptures and a little story. That's nothing wrong with that. But I've really found that for me, especially the last 15 to 20 years, I mean that's changed my life just exponentially is just taking time to really read in the word. And you know that quiet time prayer, reading the word. So I think that's been a big part of kind of maintaining the proper perspective cause we start every day like that. It's reminder, Hey, these are the things Jesus was teaching and I just didn't see him getting up all the time and go, come on guys. You know, like get after each other, come on, get at you and beat each other. You know what I mean? Like, like it's not, it's nothing bad in the competition, but it wasn't his primary focus to teach them to compete against each other. You know, when they came out with words of who's the greatest and all that other stuff, what'd he tell him? You know what I mean? I mean like, come on. So I think really staying true to you know, his words, his teachings, that's, that was a big part to her has been a big part of helping me try as best can to stay, to stay in the proper perspective.

Yeah, that's, that's really good. And just in the same way that we as former athletes, current coaches, what have you, we know what it's like to have a disciplined training program and it's so much harder. Once I got out of, of collegiate sports, there's no team accountability, there's no strength coach. It's going to be breathing down your neck if you miss a workout, you know? So it's just really interesting how we kind of have to read, almost figure out how we're going to have that, have that time or have that way to continue to take care of ourselves physically, mentally, spiritually. It's not going to happen by accident. We do. We almost have to take time to write up a template, you know, workout plan, you know, I'm playing, I've also heard somebody say that they've place their time that they have with the prayer with God, however long it may not be as long as you are speaking of, but they'll put it in their calendar as if it's a and appointment, a meeting. Like it'll be in their calendar as now. This is like time with God for this however long and to protect it as if it was another meeting with a really key person in your life. And I was like, why? Why have I not viewed it that way? Has it? Why hasn't it not laid it on my calendar in the same way that I would have, you know, put this on the counter, you know, key meeting. Yup, absolutely. Absolutely. Well, Hey, I would love to hear, and interesting enough on this podcast is when I was really, it was the catalyst for me to read lead for God's sake. I'd heard about it at like a glazier football clinic, different things, but we interviewed a local basketball coach, Joel Steczynski, and he had, he had read it and he was reading inside out coaching. So we were talking about that. But I was like, man, I've got to read. I can't be doing my job if I don't read lead for God's sake. Read it within just a couple of sittings. Really appreciated the simplicity of it, the story, even the, the, the drawing, the simple stick figure drawing. I'm like, man, I love this because it's not like you gotta be a doctor to be able to discern all this stuff. So just tell me a little, I would love to hear just kind of the backstory of what was your, what was the inspiration for, for late, for God's sake.

Yeah. So you know, it's interesting I shared with you kind of, you've heard my, my coaching part of the journey. You mentioned at the beginning though, you're like, Hey Todd, you had a cool business background. So yeah, that was my life. I grew up family, four boys. My grandfather had started a small business. My father really built that small business into something really unique in our area, especially in, and and so I, I, it's a food service company that I was involved with really at all facets from a very, very young age. And you know, I tell people all the time when you're the, the son of the owner of the company, you know, that can be really good or really, really bad. And, you know, my dad was one of those that was like, you know, made it made real. His point of emphasis was, you better work harder than other people. You better prove yourself. You better be better, you better be an earlier, you better be like, you know, all that stuff. Not all of it was completely healthy, but you know, but for the most part it was, it was really a you know, drove us to work hard and so it was great work ethic. Part of that was awesome. So, but I love the business world and I love the opportunities that I had in leadership early on. And then eventually to take, you know, more formal leadership roles to have my own business and own my own businesses over the years. Eventually as I'm running in these two worlds parallel in the nineties coaching, because it was an NAIA school, I kept my day job. So now I'm working 70 80, 90 hours a week in, in both of those I didn't have a kid so I could do that. But I was also just obsessed with studying leadership out of necessity more than anything else. So really became, you know, with the three of those things going on all through about 95 to 2002, three, you know, in that area for just really began to actually, right a lot of the stuff that I felt I was learning thing and combining. And, and even then I felt God was kind of laying on my heart and I had the opportunity, I had a CEO come to me and wanted me to kind of lead a cultural transformation in his company, maybe a part of the senior team. It was both feet in, you can't do this part time. So I left coaching for that and did that for three years. And then we, that company was bought by our largest competitor, which was a public company. And I was able to serve then as a senior executive for that organization for a few more years. And so through that time, really bringing a lot of these philosophies more into the forefront and testing them and really to a point where I felt called the write. It felt like God laid and title on my heart. And when the season was finally right, where I knew I had the time to write it and not sacrifice my family and all that other stuff. During that time, you know, as I set out, I wanted my kids to have something. If anything should ever happen to me and a lot of friends in the sports world, the business world, I felt were pursuing great things at the expense of the most important things. And even, and, and honestly I look back on that, even friends I say, I always say friends in the sports world, the business world, but even friends that were in ministry too, you know, cause we can lose sight of priorities and perspective in any of our pursuits. I think that's important for us to, you know, think about all of us.

I gotta hop in for a second right on that. Sorry. When you said it doesn't matter what area you can, we can always lose sight of that. I used to think that it was only athletes that had an issue with finding their identity in their sport and that becoming who they were. And then now I've realized it is, it could be the same exact thing, copy and paste with a coach. You can find your as coach so-and-so and that's your, that's your source of self worth. So why wouldn't you be obsessed with maximizing that? And then I found that even more, I mean other people, same thing in the business world. So I just, I just want to make sure, man, that is such a big point you just made, that all of us can find our worth and significance from something that isn't really worth putting all that that much stock in.

Yeah, absolutely. And so that, that was my, I mean again, like I said, I shared all, these are my own battles too. If people ask me about the characters in the book, Todd, who were those characters? Come on, you had an, and I always tell people, I said, look, first of all the coach, I said, it's 99% of coaches that I've ever been around was that character because every coach battles that at some point in their life. Yeah. And I said the business person and I said, including though myself, like I was that guy, I was that guy that was on one hand trying to do this and saying these things. On the other hand, the motives still weren't that pure and the business world's same way. You know, everybody knows a grant and I tell people like all these business people are pursuing, you see so many of them are, are, can relate to grant but I can do. Right. That was me. You know, unfortunately in both cases I never was that highly successful head coach and I never was that, you know, multi-million or billionaire CEO guy. But my heart was right where those hearts were. Yeah. You know, leading up to that, I think that had a huge part in and really shaping or equipping me to be able to write what God wanted me to put on paper for that. So, but I, I never intended to write it as a fiction. I had it laid out step one, step two, step three and you know, struggled for weeks trying to write this thing. Nothing came out right. Finally just felt like God was saying, Todd, start over the short story and literally Nate, I mean, I had no clue how to write fiction. I've barely read any fiction at that point in my life. And I was like, okay, I'll try it. Maybe it'll be a couple chapters or a couple pages or chapters and then I'll, then I'll get my brilliant commentary. And literally when I started, it just poured out like nothing that I'd ever experienced. And so, you know, honestly that, you know, when I, when I got about halfway or two thirds of the way through, I could tell that God was, was doing something way bigger than me. And as I began to hand the manuscript out, I've continued to have more and more people coming back to me. You know, people that were nervous I was handed it to and they were like, Oh my gosh, what are we gonna tell Todd? There's no way Todd could written a book, you know, that I want to read. And then all of a sudden they come back and they're going, Oh my gosh, Todd, you're right. You know, like you didn't write this like, you know, and I was like, I told you, you know, so really, really cool experience. And even since that time, that's been cool and dealing with all the, you know, when you get, I tell people there's really, it meets you where you are, so you get coaches from all over the board that that come back to me. Guys like Tony Bennett Dabo Swinney those guys read the book. They love it because they, that's who they have been in our today. Ben, that coach in the latter stage center. Yeah. It's not that they didn't battled coach rocker at the beginning. Exactly. Exactly. Exactly. Then there's other guys out there that maybe battled it more and it hits them and it says, Hey, you need to get back to why. You know, why do you really do what you do? You say this, but do you really care about the kids? Is it really about impacting them for the kingdom? You know, do you really understand the ultimate impact you had the opportunity to have on these kids' lives and hearts? When I, when it went out and started getting out to others and I started getting feedback from, you know, people were coming back. It just took off organically with Lou Holtz and Jim Tressel when he was still coaching. And obviously urban Meyer was a huge one and it just kinda, you know, really,

I know that the Stoops are big fans as well

Yeah, yeah. Oh exactly. I mean like all those guys, man, I was just finding out from different people all over the country. Like, you know, this coach has read and he's talking about it at this conference and this, you know, John John Beeline is that a Indiana high school coaches conference and he's holding the book up to all the state basketball coaches and you know, you gotta read this. Every coach needs to read. So it's been awesome that a lot of these guys, I don't even know, I've never heard, you know, all of a sudden someone will, you know, shoot me a text going, Hey, they're talking about this at the NCAA tournament, you know, champions breakfast or whatever, you know. And so it's been really just a real blessing to be on the journey. It's been a God thing. And you know, I tell people all the time, obedience has been my number one goal through the whole journey. Mmm. It's slow. It's been slow as you know, maybe as a part of a result of that because I haven't, you know, tried to just push out 10 other books and do another and nothing wrong with that. But my journey is I just felt like I've been called to be different in some of these things and take my time on this and I hope and pray that the next book, the SQL comes out sooner than later and even a prequel.

Yeah, that'd be good. To put ourselves kind of with that hat on of the, of the coach inside the book. One of the questions or one of the frustrations that I think resonates so well as, Hey, there's no leadership on this team. I don't have any leaders. You know, we need to get step up and lead and well, obviously that's part of the title. And so that's a big, that's a huge question. Why is it, do you think, because I've done this myself, I've actually thought this and had to work through this. Why is it you think that we have this default mode of if we're leading a team or a group of people and we don't see leadership in them that we kind of go to do, they don't have any leadership versus holding up the mirror and saying, what am I currently doing that isn't bringing that out on them? You know, why do you think that's our default mode?

Man, Nate, that's such a, that's a love that question. I think that's, I think that's so huge. You know, when people ask me the core or when I sh I should say when I've asked for the core themes of the book and I've, and it's funny cause I did a survey a couple of years ago and I did it on Twitter and Facebook. I just kind of went on and said, Hey you guys, give me two words that best describe what the book taught you or what the themes were. The book was and it was obviously purpose and servant leadership and selflessness and and love and relationships and all of these and it was amazing. I literally had, I don't know of the hundreds and hundreds of responses I got, I think I had over 40 some responses before I actually got to the one that spoke most specifically to what I believe the core theme really is and that is self awareness. Yeah. What you just described is the tendency is so, I mean this is so prevalent in our society. Our tendency is so when we have a problem. Yeah. You know, I mean we turn the TV on. That's all you see my fault man. I'm so mad at these politicians. I'm so mad at the people that think differently. I'm so mad at the president and the speaker of the house, like everybody is getting so angry at everybody else. You know what it is is, is basically what it comes down to. It's basically a numbing salve that we put on the pain of, you know, the results that are going on around us that, that in some way, shape or form, we still caused. But we, God forbid, we ever look back and try to go, Hey, how did I contribute to this problem? Because I mean like, you know, 99.9% of the time, if we're involved in it in some way, especially if we're a leader, we contributed to the problem and we just, so, you know, such a tough one. Um it's a tough one to teach. That's one of the core things of a lot of the workshops and things that I do now is trying to help leaders really develop more of a, of a, not only becoming more self aware because that's it's becoming more and more of a hot topic among coaches and stuff, but learning to act on that self-awareness. Yeah. You know, reconcile reconciling the relationships that we screwed up with. And that's another part. If you, if you think back now the question you asked me and you think through the whole process, I don't want to give the story away, but you know what I'm talking about. Like coach, there had to be that moment in that moment of, okay, not only am I aware of it, well how am I going to act now to do something and what are those steps? Yeah, I mean that's just such a, that's a such a huge part of leadership and our culture doesn't, we're not doing a lot right now in terms the broader cultural themes that our young people are seeing. We're not doing a lot to really teach them to look here first. I think. I think you guys are, I think FCA is because dealing with heart stuff and dealing with forgiveness and things like that, but unfortunately the broader culture, we're getting killed in that area right now.

Well, and a neat byproduct of confronting the even harsh reality sometimes is, I mean you have, you get some, you get some humility out of it. You know, God says if you lift yourself up, you'll be humbled. And if you hummed yourself, you'd be lifted up. And another, the thing for me though is now that I've like processed it more, and it's still an ongoing thing for me, is I realized I actually have control over my thoughts, feelings, and actions, and I can actually do something about me, whereas I can't control someone else. Even if it's somebody I spend so much time with. I can't control my spouse a hundred percent. I can't control my kids a hundred percent I can't control, other student leaders or volunteers. But I can control who I am, what I'm living out, my thoughts, feelings and actions. And that's, that's more empowering. So initially it stings and it hurts. But then I'm like, Oh, but if I'm, I have areas to grow, I can actually do something about that in real time. And it's actually become very encouraging. But initially it kind of stinks.

Yeah, no doubt. That's so good. Nate, you're, spot on, man. That is, you hit the nail on the head. I mean, that's, we control, we control in terms of changing and effect. We control our competing, our contribution, whatever percentage of the contribution it may be, we control that demolished you. You hit the nail on the head, man, that's great.

And that can still have a huge, massive impact and influence, but it's just not going to be, you know, we don't, yeah, we don't have the steering wheel per se. We'll have one. One question we always love to kind of wrap up with is there's coaches that listen that have been at the game for 20 plus years, but we also have just a really big heart for that. Coach who's just starting out that just gotten that first assistant coach position. Or maybe they come back from college or maybe they're a senior in high school and they're already coaching ten-year-old 10U volleyball already at AAU level. You know, we see that happen more and more. What would be one or two things that, that you would tell a coach that's just kind of getting their feet wet, just getting going that you wish you would've known when you got your start?

Well, again, and I, this is going to sound self-serving, I promise. It's not. Hopefully everybody will remember who I said is responsible for writing that book and that I, I just had a lot of hell. I mean, I, I thank God he gave me the opportunity to put the pen to the paper, so to speak. But I truly believe it was a message that he really wanted me to communicate a conduit as a conduit. You know, that, that when, when I hear that come back from folks, I wish I'd read this 30 years. And especially like from Lou Holtz, a lot of people, you know, that's so meaningful and I know that's way beyond anything I could ever do. And so I look back, what is that mean? That that's basically because I feel the same way. I wish I would've had the book. I wish I'd have read it when I was 20 you know, because what it did is, is what it does, I think is it helps us set that right heart set right from the beginning going, okay, what is my real why? Why do I really do what I do? Am I really in touch with this? Can I, can I get over the self deception component in my life? Be honest. And if it's not right, what do I need to do to set it straight? Because the thing that I, I tell coaches all the time, really is this. There really are a lot of folks that are coaching for the wrong reasons. It's about my own affirmation, my tendency to want control of things, my fear of dependence on anybody else. I got to have the, you know, I mean there's all kinds of things that could be impure here that can sneak into there from a standpoint of insecurity and things like that. You know, eventually cracks in the foundation can be seen if we don't recognize that right from the beginning, go, wait a minute, this is more about me. I need to change that. It needs to be about if I'm, if I'm going to be in this and influence young people, it really needs to be about them and what's best for them. We need coaches and leaders that are like that. I think, you know, reflecting on that, reading the book, I think it gives you a chance to do that. But really taking the time to reflect on that and even maybe even writing a purpose statement for yourself, this is why I do what I do and this is why I really believe God created me in the first place. These things need to remain aligned. If you write those two things down, it's pretty, I mean, you know, again, it's plain and simple. Go back and read it every Friday. Okay, right. You know, remember why you're here and it really isn't about my advancement, my, you know, so I think that's a big one. Um you know, the concept of self awareness and reminding, you know, really, really having a good mentor in our life that you seek out to, to say, look, please, I'm inviting you to tell me the insecurities that you're seeing or the ways if I'm over the top, obsessed with this or that, you know, helped me remain true to why I'm here on this earth. I think those are two really big keys. Kind of kind of write it out for the beginning and coming to grips with it, but then having a gel so to speak in your life. I think those are, those are the things that I didn't, I didn't, I wasn't intentional enough with, I had some to some extent, but not until later did I really recognize that, the real importance of that. So yeah, those are, those are the two big things.

Awesome. And it's so encouraging. I know we're just so aligned in just with our, some of our FCA stuff too, like when a coach comes to the end of our three-dimensional coaching, one of the tests they have is to write down their transformational purpose statement. They have to have that thing that they can re revisit of staying connected to their why. And then I was going to, you haven't heard this story yet, I don't think, but there was a small school here in Northern Kentucky right across there on the river, right across from, from Cincinnati called Bellevue, a small A school. But their girl's basketball coach reached out to his alumni and asked if the alumni would be willing to buy a copy for one of the current players of lead for God's sake. So they have this kind of mini event where the alumni from this high school purchased a book for the current players. And just that, just as an encouragement to you the impact is having right here in our area. It's, it's been pretty cool,

Man. I love that. That is, that's awesome. That's awesome to hear. That is, that's a kind of thing that, you know, again It's a blessing. I felt credibly blessed and honored to be a part of the journey. God has me on this thing and I hear stuff like that and I'm just like, man, that's so awesome. So awesome. So thanks for sharing.

Yeah, yeah, coach Sorrell, good guy. I'm really pumped that he, that he did that and, and Hey, I just want to make sure that you have some room. How do we get, obviously if you're listening to this and you don't know who Joe and grant and these guys are from the book, obvious. Next step is to get a copy. So where can we get the book? What other things do you have on your website or what are the things are you up to these days?

Yeah, so obviously the, the books available in most major retailers, so if you go to your Barnes and noble Books-A-Million most of those stores around the country are carrying it. You can get it. Obviously online. Amazon a lot of times is the best price. So you know, those are, those are obviously options. They don't, one of the couple of things I'm really excited about, especially this time at this time, Nate is, is, you know, we, we developed kind of a kind of a virtual university that is specifically for like the coaching staff that wants to go through a series of small videos. It helps develop values. It helps develop the, you know, helps a coach talk about the foundation, who do we really want to be, what does effective leadership going to be for us? Why do we do you? It's a series of like there's three modules, it's like 30 videos and so it's a, it's a virtual training option for coaches that I think during this time might be something that coaches want.

It's a great season for that. They have more time. And honestly, I was just thinking earlier the the budgets, the expenses that aren't happening as much as we're mourning the lack of spring sports and everything, there's probably a little more margin in the budget to maybe invest in some of this stuff.

Yeah. Yeah. You can't go to the clinic right now. Right. This is a clinic, it's a clinic that comes to you and you can do with your staff and everything can be done. You can do it on your phone, watch a five, six minute video. There's a PDF, there's like a 50 page workbook that has individual questions and then there's group study for your staff. And so that's the one thing. The other thing that I'm even more, and, and I'll give you like a website that you can go to to find that stuff. But the other thing that I'm even more excited about right now is this thing called character amp that we're doing. And it's a tool that basically helps the coaches keep character at the top of the mind every week. One character attribute. So if you have a six to set up for like a 16 week season, every Monday there's a video that that gets, gets texts to the coaches, the players and catch this, you'll love this. All of the parents. So they get the same video and then here's where it really gets good. Then after the video to all of them, then we have a separate one that's maybe a minute and a half that goes directly to the coaches. Says, okay, coaches this week we're talking about respect for officials. Now here's what I want to challenge you with with regards to respecting officials. Remember what we're trying to model here and why we're trying to model this with the kids is that, and then Hey parents, this week you saw, we're talking about respect reds, I want to challenge you when you're in the stands. Now I want to challenge you what you're talking about with different people in different cities. You know, like with your kids when you get to the car and you're talking about the officials here, like what are you teaching them? And so we're addressing all three components. It's been a really, really cool thing. And so you know, we're, we're working on right now it's being set up to where coaches if they want to do it in the off season, cause a lot of coaches are going, she's Todd, we need something to help us connect with our kids. And this is a tool that will throughout, you know, on a weekly, like multiple days throughout the week, it'll hit them up and you're all doing the same thing. You come back together on a zoom call on Friday and go, Hey, how'd this go? What did we talk about? What'd you learn this week? But you know, so some cool things there. So both of those are resources that, and I hope it can be an encouragement to coaches and athletes at this time.

That's great. Well, we'll put all the, all the links in the description of the, of the episode, but where, where could a coach go to get the, the character and the last thing you just mentioned?

Yeah, so the character amp is, if you just look up character amp.com just like it sounds, cha character amp because it's a character, amplifier.com amp. So character amp.com. We'll get that. The coaches one is that, is that my kind of my website, but it's Kardia TG, K, R, D, T, G and then the U virtual university. And if you go into there, you can see on both of those names because we're doing a lot of programs and stuff. And I'm, I'm spacing this right now so I'll have to get it to you. But there's like coupon codes so they can get like a, a huge discount on both of those for listening to go into it from this program. So awesome. I'll make sure to get you that before so you can like put them in there. Here's the coupon code. Yeah,

We'll pass those along for sure. Yeah. Well, hi Todd. Thanks so much. Thanks for bringing it today. Bringing the energy, sharing your heart and just for all you do for the coaching world and beyond, you've been a blessing. You've, you've made an impact more than you know, here in our area and yeah, this blessing to you and your family moving forward.

Hey, thanks. Thank you so much, Nate. Thank you for what you guys are doing. You and my buddies in FCA all over the country, man. I, I, it's near and dear to my heart for obvious reasons and man, just keep doing what you're doing. I just, I love it and we're such, such a need for it nowadays. No matter what sports is, sports is gone for a period right now, which is great. In essence because it's, it's helping a lot of athletes that maybe wouldn't otherwise be thinking about it. Go back to that perspective as you know, what, what really matters in sports more than anything else and those relationships and the things that you guys are teaching about the heart. That's the stuff that's still stands. So you're doing what you're doing man.

Appreciate that. Yeah. Our playing careers all have an expiration date and might come soon so.

That's right, thank you. Thanks Nate.

So there you have it guys. Our conversation with Todd Gongwer, what a great man who is serving and is open was an open book, really brought it. I hope you took some notes. A couple of things that I took away was not only arriving at a healthy perspective but really need to maintain that perspective even though life comes at you and basically get messy and you need some people around you to be able to do that. So I hope that you'll take him up on some of the offerings he has, whether it be the book. There was a link in there about the coaches, virtual university, and then Todd, one 50 is your discount code for the character amp tools. That man, that sounded pretty awesome to me to have all think about having coaches, players, and parents all on the same page and the unity that that would bring and working through some of the same issues simultaneously. That sounded really encouraging. Well, Hey, if you have not already, please subscribe to whatever app you're listening on, your favorite streaming app that'll help us serve you better that you won't miss any upcoming episodes. We're really trying to bring a quality content that's going to be helpful and encouraging and bringing value to you. And if you found this valuable, please share it with at least one person that you know that might appreciate this message. Well, until next time, keep growing. Keep learning and keep changing lives. Your team and in your home.