AFL legendary coach Craig McRae boasts an extraordinary 80% win rate in close games (matches decided by 12 points or fewer). He holds one of the highest winning percentages in tight finishes in AFL history.

After McRae’s Collingwood Magpies lost a heart-stopping 2022 qualifying final to the Geelong Cats, a reporter asked him in the post-game press conference: “You’ve won a lot of tight games, but you haven’t lost a lot. What’s the emotion in there?”

His initial response was direct: “We want to act like winners.”

He then went on to address the reaction of several players who collapsed onto the turf in despair after the final siren:

“I must admit, the siren goes and there’s half a dozen of our guys laying on the ground. For me, that’s not a winner. That’s acting like a loser... We lost the game, but we’re not losers. There is a difference. I said that for the lifetime that I’m sitting in this chair: if we don’t win, don’t lay on the ground.”

McRae’s reaction to defeat mirrors Giannis Antetokounmpo’s famous response when asked if the Milwaukee Bucks’ early exit from the 2023 NBA Playoffs made the season a failure.

Being a loser isn’t defined by losing a game—it’s defined by how we react to the loss. Reflecting on this mindset, I frequently see sports leaders (both coaches and athletes) fall into six common “loser” behaviors:

6 Ways We Act Like Losers

1. Emotionally Falling Apart: We act as though someone has died—losing sleep and treating people poorly. Roger Federer modeled a better path: devastation is not the only acceptable response to defeat.

2. Failing to Congratulate Opponents: We walk off without really acknowledging our opponents victory. Sometimes I see leaders even get into arguments. Former Phoenix Suns head coach Monty Williams showed us how to be a winner after losing the NBA Finals when he walked into the Milwaukee Bucks’ locker room to congratulate them.

3. Blaming, Complaining, and Defending: We point fingers at referees, players, weather, or bad luck. We make excuses instead of taking accountability for our own role in the outcome.

4. Downplaying the Opponent: We focus exclusively on how poorly we played, failing to give credit to the other team’s execution and performance.

5. Ignoring the Positives: We obsess over mistakes while completely ignoring the things we executed well. This fixation blinds us to progress.

6. Hitting the Reset Button: We abandon the process or strategy we previously committed to, making drastic, reactionary changes out of frustration.

None of these behaviors are merely bad sportsmanship—they actively work against our ability and desire to learn and grow from losses.

We compete to strive for excellence and find our best. As leaders, let’s never lose sight of that.

—J.P. Nerbun

If you want to help yourself and your athletes develop a true competitive mindset, pick up a copy of The Culture Captain—a book providing a 4-Level Framework for Athletes to Know Yourself, Lead Yourself, Lead Others, and Lead the Team.

Of all the changes I made, the most significant was around accountability. I didn’t lower expectations; I actually raised the standards and expectations for players in our program by changing how I enforced them. I became more demanding than I had been in the entire decade prior.

When players failed to meet our non-negotiables—be on time, listen, and refrain from complaining during practice—they were asked to step out of a drill or take a seat during a game. As a result of his behavior, our best player sat out several games early in the season.

Over the past decade as a leadership and culture consultant, I’ve supported many coaches who want to be more transformational. Unfortunately, a common trend among these leaders is lowering expectations and extending far too much grace. Coaches often confuse meeting athletes where they are with lowering standards. They are not the same. Meeting athletes where they are is about building a relationship with them to call them up to a higher standard.

Here are ten common mistakes coaches make around accountability:

1. Trying to boost self-esteem directly without requiring real effort or mastery. It doesn’t work. Landmark research (most notably Roy Baumeister’s extensive 2003 review) demonstrates that unearned self-esteem does not improve performance or behavior. Instead, it leads to narcissism, fragile confidence, and defensive aggression in the face of criticism.

2. Focusing too much on belonging and not enough on mattering. Belonging is about feeling accepted; mattering is about feeling valuable. When we expect every athlete to contribute to the group’s success, we reinforce that they matter.

3. Obsessing over moment-to-moment happiness. Life is difficult, and sports provide an environment for young people to learn how to find joy and purpose within that difficulty.

4. Over-prioritizing individual goals at the expense of the team. While athlete-centered approaches have value, ignoring team goals robs players of the responsibility—and pride—that comes from contributing to something larger than themselves.

5. Failing to charge a high enough price to belong. Modern sports may cost families a lot of money, but we rarely ask players to pay the price of basic responsibility. When youth coaches run around picking up equipment and carrying water while the kids “just play,” they miss a crucial developmental tool.

6. Prioritizing sports over other life-shaping responsibilities. A demanding summer job or academic commitment will often teach a young person more about discipline and work ethic than another summer training program.

7. Lowering standards to boost retention or inclusivity. People don’t want to belong to something easy—they want to be part of an environment with high standards. Lowering the bar decreases commitment across the board.

8. Sugarcoating feedback. Coaches often withhold honest assessments out of fear that players can’t handle hearing they aren’t ready to start or play in a competitive game. In doing so, we rob them of the spark that comes from facing reality and proving doubters wrong.

9. Confusing conversations with accountability. When a player falls below standard, talking about why the standard matters is only the first step. Without clear, consistent consequences, a conversation is just advice, not accountability.

10. Viewing sports as an entitlement rather than a privilege. Practice is an opportunity to get better and playing is a privilege. When we over-rely on carrots (praise/rewards) or sticks (shaming/penalties), we undermine natural consequences and stifle intrinsic drive.

—J.P. Nerbun

If you want to help your athletes have the train to win mindset, check out The Culture Captain, this book provides a 4-Level Framework for Athletes to Know Yourself, Lead Yourself, Lead Others, Lead the Team.

The biggest news of the summer in the NBA was LeBron James heading to the Philadelphia 76ers to finish out his career—a last-ditch effort to win another NBA Championship.

LeBron James has played 23 seasons in the NBA, the most by any player in the history of the league. Across all 23 of those seasons, as long as he has been healthy, he has lived with the absolute certainty that he will play.

Most NBA players do not have that luxury.

The average NBA career is just 4.5 years.

Only 20% of NBA players last more than 5 years.

Only 10% play more than 10 years.

Less than 1% play more than 15 years.

LeBron’s entire career has been defined by his pursuit of NBA Championships. The vast majority of NBA players’ careers are simply about survival.

LeBron trains to win. Most players train to play.

This dynamic isn’t unique to the pros. Look at almost any sports team, and you can divide the roster into the exact same two groups:

1. Players who train to play.

2. Players who train to win.

As leaders, we desperately want athletes who train to win—not just athletes who train to earn minutes.

In a recent conversation with a client, a head coach was telling me the story of a player who stepped up to demonstrate peer accountability. The player called a team huddle and warned everyone that if they didn’t work harder to hit their conditioning times, they wouldn’t play this season.

Later, that same player reflected privately with the coach: “The problem is, some of the players missing their times are still going to play regardless. They’re just that good.”

While that presents an obvious cultural issue regarding standards, a much deeper problem was at play. Subconsciously, that leader was reinforcing the mindset to work hard so you can get playing time. They were unintentionally reinforcing the “train to play” mentality.

One issue is around the reality on a 15-player basketball roster is that only 8 or 9 players will see competitive minutes. It doesn’t matter how hard players 10 through 15 practice or train—their role might still be on the bench. When you tie effort to playing time, it creates severe cultural challenges down the line when those fringe players work hard, don’t play, and feel cheated. That’s not all.

We don’t want players to train hard just so they can play. We want them to train hard so the team can win.

Our challenge as leaders is instilling the “train to win” mindset in everyone—both the star who is safe in the knowledge that they will play, and the reserve who fears they might not be good enough to get on the field.

This is precisely why threats around playing time so often backfire.

Instead of telling a player, “If you don’t work hard, you won’t play,” the message must be: “If you don’t work hard, our team won’t be as successful. You will be letting the group down.”

Playing time is a variable; winning is the shared purpose. Practice isn’t a bargaining chip for minutes—it is a privilege and an opportunity to improve yourself and make the entire team better.

—J.P. Nerbun

If you want to help your athletes have the train to win mindset, check out The Culture Captain, this book provides a 4-Level Framework for Athletes to Know Yourself, Lead Yourself, Lead Others, Lead the Team.

Leadership| Team Culture

August 06, 2026 • 3 min read

There is a song by a band called The 2 Johnnies that is getting a lot of play in our home at the moment. It’s called “When I Play for the County.”

Here in Ireland, if you play Gaelic Football or Hurling—the country’s two most popular sports—playing for your county is the ultimate prize. Although these are amateur sports and the athletes aren’t paid, these players are national heroes and celebrities. They play on national TV, and if they are lucky enough to reach the semi-finals or finals, they play in front of 88,000 screaming fans in the national stadium Croke Park.

My nine-year-old son’s dream of one day reaching the pinnacle of his sport is not uncommon for a boy his age. As a parent, it’s incredible to see him outside every day, playing, practicing, and dreaming of one day playing in the big match. It inspires so many healthy habits.

It is great to have dreams, but those dreams are inevitably related to doing, not being. They aren’t focused on who they should be on the inside—their values and character—even though who they are on the inside shapes everything they will eventually do on the outside.

This struggle between being and doing starts early, and we innocently encourage it. The more we ask children, “What do you want to be when you grow up?” instead of “Who do you want to be?” the more we subtly anchor their identity in their performance, rather than their character.

My son asked me the other night, “Dad, do you think I’ll play for my county someday?”

Without hesitation, I said, “Absolutely. If you keep having fun, playing as often as you can, and working hard, I’ll be there watching you.”

I don’t regret instilling belief in my son. But reflecting on that conversation, I wish I had followed up with one more question: “And when you get there, what kind of teammate and person do you want to be?” It is a simple, powerful way to elevate the being over the doing.

In fact, I’m even starting to question how often my wife and I use the line “I love to watch you play” after games. It’s not that it’s bad—it is actually a very positive, pressure-free way to reinforce joy.

But I feel challenged when I think about how author Bob Goff speaks to and inspires the people he mentors. He regularly uses this phrase: “I love who you are becoming.”

I love the selfless teammate you are becoming.

I love the hardworking player you are becoming.

I love the joyful person you are becoming.

As Goff writes, “People grow where they are loved.”

If we only show love for what they are doing, they will strive to do more and achieve more to feel valued.

But if we love them for who they are becoming, they will be inspired to become the absolute best version of themselves.

—J.P. Nerbun

I am currently reading my new book, The Culture Captain, to my ten-year-old daughter, and she is loving it. While she might not grasp “all of it,” it is clearly making an impact. I am excited to start reading it with my nine-year-old son next to help him turn down the dial on his intense competitiveness and help him focus on playing for the pure joy of the sport, being a great teammate and even a leader.

If you want to transform the conversations you are having with your kids and players around sports, this book provides a 4-Level Framework for Athletes to Know Yourself, Lead Yourself, Lead Others, Lead the Team.

“This book gives athletes the ultimate roadmap to becoming the type of leader every coach wants on their team.” —Dusty May, 2026 NCAA National Championship Coach & Head Coach of the Dallas Mavericks

In 1954, Roger Bannister was one of many athletes trying to break the elusive four-minute mile barrier. At the time, breaking this barrier was thought to be a pure test of endurance—a question of who could tolerate the most pain and suffering.

Except the relentless grind wasn’t paying off. As Bannister noted, “We were stuck. The training had ceased to do us any good.”

Instead of searching for marginal gains, over-optimizing his schedule, or hunting for a new training technique, he did the unthinkable for an elite athlete: he stopped. He completely walked away from training and went hiking in the mountains of Scotland with his running partner.

He wasn’t burnt out, and he wasn’t injured. To Bannister, rest wasn’t a reward for hard work—rest was a tool. Rest was a form of discipline, not a lack of it. It was the missing key to his entire training regimen. Very soon after taking that intentional break, he stepped onto the track and broke the four-minute mile.

For too many of us, rest is merely a reaction to burnout or exhaustion. And when we only rest because our bodies have forced us to a halt, it usually results in “bad rest”. Our rest consists of binge-eating, numbing out on Netflix, alcohol, or doom-scrolling.

Bannister’s rest looked entirely different. He was climbing mountains. He was connecting deeply with a friend, moving his body, spending time in nature, and changing his environment.

The responsibility of rest is not to simply stop working; it is to be just as intentional with how you rest as you are with how you work.

Rest should be systematic and proactive. It needs to be built into your life daily, weekly, monthly, and yearly. It cannot just be the one week off a year or a fleeting summer break. As leaders, we must actively design leisure into our lives.

The challenge is that we are constantly chasing more. We build our lives around our work, rather than building our work around our lives. We tell ourselves we need to work well now so that we can someday live well later.

We have it completely backward. We need to live well now so that we can work well.

Don’t just use this season to carve out a temporary break. Start building intentional rest directly into your daily routine.

Rest isn’t a reward. Rest is a responsibility.

—J.P. Nerbun

P.S. *My new book, The Culture Captain, is available now on Amazon. It isn’t just a blueprint for sports teams—it is a guide for any leader who wants to perform at the highest level without losing themselves in the process.

For the entire 20th century, if you wanted to survive as a musician, artist, or writer, you had to be a megahit—otherwise, you were starving. The corporate middlemen took almost everything.

But in 2008, long before Substack, Patreon, or the modern creator economy existed, Kevin Kelly (the co-founder of Wired magazine) wrote a legendary essay titled “1,000 True Fans.” His thesis was simple: you don’t need a million casual followers to make a living; you just need 1,000 true ones. A true fan is someone who will buy anything and everything you produce. With just 1,000 true fans, you can bypass the gatekeepers, retain your autonomy, and completely support yourself.

One of the central principles I’ve taught and written about in the past is that you should not try to be for everyone. Yet, the world constantly screams that we need to scale. We are told we must follow a specific, hyper-growth template to be considered successful, and if we don’t, we are failing to reach our potential.

Over the last year, I listened to those external messages. I made some intentional decisions to try to scale the content and resources I’ve built over the last ten years. I stand by my reasons for entering those partnerships and willingly giving up a level of control over the business I had built; I truly believe I have the best content on leadership and culture for coaches and athletes in the world, and I wanted to get it to more people.

But while I wasn’t necessarily trying to become a mainstream megahit, I definitely steered away from simply serving my core 1,000 true fans.

I’ve learned a lot of heavy, important lessons through this experience—lessons on business, partnerships, delegation, the responsible boundaries of AI, and ultimately, what matters most. Yet, anytime I’ve chased scale over depth, I’ve felt derailed from my true mission: to grow and to serve every single day.

I am writing this less than a month after publishing my new book, The Culture Captain, and it has officially sold just over 1,000 copies. That is more than twice as many copies as The Culture System sold in its very first month.

I won’t lie—a part of me was initially disappointed when I saw that number. After the compounding success of The Culture System over the last few years, I had hoped for an even bigger launch.

But that unmet expectation was exactly the reckoning I needed. It was a stark reminder to practice radical gratitude.

When I looked at that number again, I realized something beautiful: 1,000 copies means my 1,000 true fans showed up.

I am deeply thankful for the true fans of my work over these last ten years—the ones who listen to every podcast episode, buy the books, invest in the courses, send me emails and texts sharing how the work impacted their programs, or those who simply continue to read and engage with this community.

Moving forward, you can count on me to focus entirely on depth over scale. I am returning to where I started to deliver direct, uncompromised value through my once-a-week newsletter, featuring an article, a podcast episode, and our practical tool of the week.

Thank you to each and every one of you who has been a part of this community over the last decade. I am incredibly grateful to be in your corner.

—J.P. Nerbun

P.S. *My new book, The Culture Captain, is available now on Amazon. It provides the definitive 4-level framework to turn your players into self-driven leaders.

Researchers Samuel and Pearl Oliner wanted to answer a profound question: What makes a person risk their life for a stranger?

In their landmark study, they interviewed over 400 non-Jewish individuals who actively rescued Jewish people during the Holocaust, comparing them to neighbors who stood by as bystanders. The researchers initially assumed that the rescuers must have been raised by strict parents. Disciplinarians who instilled a moral code by punishing their kids for stepping out of line. The working hypothesis was simple: Strict rules create strong morals.

The hypothesis was completely wrong.

When the Oliners analyzed the data, they discovered that rescuers weren’t raised with more discipline; they were raised with a completely different style of discipline.

In fact, rescuers were punished by their parents at significantly lower rates than bystanders. While the parents of bystanders relied on rules, threats, and physical or emotional penalties—the parents of rescuers used consequence-based conversations to build awareness of their impact.

When a child misbehaved, the parents didn’t just hand down a punishment to enforce compliance. Instead, they focused entirely on the effect of their actions. They highlighted the direct consequences of the child’s behavior on other people. They would ask questions like, “Look how much you hurt them. When you do that, how do you think it makes them feel?”

The two methods trained entirely different types of human beings:

The bystanders’ parents trained children to focus inward. They learned to ask: What is the penalty for breaking this rule? How do I avoid it? Is it worth the risk? When a malicious authority figure later took power, they complied to stay safe.

The rescuers’ parents trained children to focus outward. They learned to ask: How do my actions impact the human being in front of me? When the Nazi regime took over, the rescuers didn’t look at the law to decide what to do. They looked at the human consequence, took personal responsibility, and stepped up.

As leaders, we often default to the bystander method. We try to establish rigid rules and steep penalties for breaking them, immediately jumping into punishment mode the moment a standard is missed. But penalties only manage compliance. If you want to build a culture of high care and high standards, you need a different kind of accountability.

Stop enforcing rules, and start highlighting consequences.

A New Kind of Conversation

One way to change the discipline is to change the penalty. In my book, The Culture System, I present progressive and restorative consequences as healthy alternatives to blind punishment.

• Instead of yelling at a player for lacking effort, have them redo the drill at the standard you set.

• Instead of forcing them to do push-ups, have them step out of the drill until they are ready to work hard.

• Instead of kicking them out of practice, let them know they’ve lost the opportunity to get better today, and you’ll see them tomorrow.

• Instead of making a kid run laps for being late, have them do make-up work after practice for the exact portions they missed.

• Instead of suspending teammates for fighting, have them spend time together getting to know each other outside of sport.

While these consequences are a massive step in the right direction, the conversation around the consequence is what matters most. As Brené Brown discussed with Adam Grant and Simon Sinek on a recent episode of The Curiosity Shop, the language leaders and parents use heavily dictates whether an individual becomes shame-bound or guilt-bound.

Shame-Bound

• “I am bad.”

• “I am lazy.”

• Shame is about who we are.

Guilt-Bound

• “I did something bad.”

• “I didn’t work hard today.”

• Guilt is about our behavior.

When you must discipline, your first move should always be to help the individual become aware of the impact of their actions. How is their behavior affecting the team? Their relationships? Themselves?

Sometimes, this requires you to lean into very direct, supportive feedback:

“You’re a really important part of this team. When you show up and give less than your best, you don’t get better, and our team doesn’t get better. I know you have more to give, and we are counting on you.”

Other times, it can simply be a curious conversation:

“What impact do you think it has on your teammates when you yell at them for making a mistake? How do you feel about the way you are speaking to them in those moments?”

True accountability isn’t about compliance; it’s about character.

—J.P. Nerbun

Be present. Be curious. Be human.

These became the core standards for a corporate sales team I recently worked with heading into last quarter. It was a powerful off-site session. The group left feeling inspired, aligned, and clear about how they wanted to operate as a team—not just with each other, but with their clients and other teams across the organization.

And then, adversity hit.

The last quarter has been a brutal struggle to hit their numbers. And in corporate sales, numbers are everything. Corporations don’t evaluate or measure presence, curiosity, or your capacity to just be human.

And yet—if this team only focuses on the numbers, they will eventually find themselves out of a job. Not because a competitor will out-hustle them, but because an algorithm will replace them. AI can optimize data and automate outreach, but it cannot replace humanity.

But prioritizing humanity isn’t just a strategy to save our jobs—it’s how we find genuine enjoyment and fulfillment in them.

The legendary football manager Jürgen Klopp understood this deeply. It’s exactly what made him such an inspiring leader. He recognized that you cannot support performance without supporting the person first.

*Video from The Diary of a CEO Podcast Intrview with Jurgen Klopp

The most important role of a leader, he believes, is the conversations. The raw, human ones—the moments where we choose to show up fully present and deeply curious.

Because when we have those conversations, we realize that it isn’t just the professional pressure of hitting quarterly targets, chasing good performance reviews, or earning nice bonuses that breaks us down. As Klopp beautifully articulates, it’s the heavy, everyday human stuff—marriage struggles, sick kids, sleepless nights, and personal loss. All of these things directly impact our lived experience, which dictates our ultimate performance.

Brené Brown, Adam Grant, and Simon Sinek all champion the same fundamental truth: the highest-yielding performance strategy on the planet is simply caring.

Being human and actively caring is hard. We will struggle at it and the system won’t always reward us for it.

But we cannot give up on it.

—J.P. Nerbun

Five days to learn how to play the drums before performing with the band Foreigner in a live stadium show.

Five days to learn Brazilian jiu-jitsu before stepping onto the mat to spar with world champions.

Five days to learn high-stakes poker before risking hundreds of thousands of dollars.

The secret to Ferriss’s rapid learning model was the Pareto Principle: the idea that 80% of your results come from 20% of your efforts. Instead of trying to master an entire discipline, he would identify the vital components of a skill and focus exclusively on that critical 20%.*

In a coaching or leadership context—especially when you are facing constraints like limited time, small rosters, or low buy-in—you simply cannot optimize everything. Trying to teach every technique, run every tactical scheme, or address every behavior issue doesn’t work.

I recently applied this while coaching youth football. Originally, I was working with all the players on learning to score with both feet. But considering we only practice three times every two weeks, this made zero sense for the 80% of kids who aren’t trying to become elite professionals. By narrowing our focus strictly to their dominant foot, I instantly doubled their repetitions. The impact was huge. Players feel improvement much faster when you narrow the focus—and that feeling of progress is what drives motivation.

I learned this years ago while coaching basketball. Instead of practicing every imaginable shot, I identified the single most frequent, high-value shot for each individual player. We spent 80% of our practice time working exclusively on those specific shots. The result? We improved our team shooting percentage by over 15% in a single month and went on to have our best season ever.

The exact same principle applies in a cultural context. Leaders often burn themselves out trying to police every single behavior. Instead of managing ten different standards, focus on the two non-negotiable behaviors that will naturally drive the other 80%. In my book, The Culture System, I talk about these as your foundational anchors. For me, those two are showing up on time and practicing engaged listening. When players do those things well a lot of other good things tend to happen.

Consider where your energy goes on a daily basis:

The People: We often spend 80% of our emotional energy trying to drag along the bottom 20% of resistant people. Instead, redirect that 80% into empowering your top 20%—your organic leaders—and let them pull the rest of the team upward.

The Environment: Instead of spending 80% of your time correcting “below-the-line” behaviors, spend 80% of your energy publicly celebrating and elevating the exceptional behaviors within the team.

I’ve had to learn this lesson the hard way in my own business at TOC. Over the last year, I realized I was spending 80% of my energy trying to convince everyone on our massive contact lists, social followers, and casual subscribers to join us in this important work of cultural transformation. Moving forward, I won’t make that mistake again.

I am shifting my focus to spend 80% of my time and energy supporting the core 20% of coaches, athletes, and programs who are already fiercely committed to this journey. By investing value in those ready to do the heavy lifting, they will achieve results faster.

And honestly? I have a feeling I’ll enjoy the work a whole lot more, too.

—J.P. Nerbun

Note* I first learned about this experiment in The Art of Impossible by Steven Kotler. I highly recommend it.

P.S. If you want to help your athletes find their purpose on the journey, my new book, The Culture Captain is the perfect read. If you want to facilitate powerful, reflective conversations with your athletes, this is the perfect guide. Grab your copy on Amazon, and then download the companion Field Guide at theculturecaptain.net.

I was walking my daughter to the bus stop before school recently when she said something that stopped me completely in my tracks.

We were talking about one of her teammates who is quick to criticize and slow to encourage. When the team loses, this girl gets angry and often cries. When her team wins, she is boastful and ungracious.

“She didn’t look very happy yesterday,” I remarked.

“Does she ever?” my daughter replied gently.

She paused for a second, looked up at me, and said: “You know, Dad, I think the problem is she’s climbing the mountain of achievement without any purpose.”

I stood there on the pavement, completely blown away.

For a bit of context, my daughter is only ten years old. But lately, we’ve been reading a chapter of my new book, The Culture Captain, every night. One of the early chapters focuses on this exact reality: the joy and fulfillment we seek in sports—and in life—comes from passion and purpose. To hear her synthesize a complex leadership principle and apply it to a real-life moment with such empathy put me on cloud nine. Especially since I dedicated the book to her.

But her insight is something every coach, parent, and leader needs to sit with.

We constantly look for fulfillment and joy in achievement. We tell ourselves, “Once I get that scholarship, once we win that championship, once I get that promotion—then I’ll be fulfilled. Then I’ll be happy.” Only to arrive at the mountaintop completely empty.

If you aren’t actively experiencing joy, connection, and purpose on the journey, it won’t magically be waiting for you when you reach the summit. Because the only fulfillment waiting for you at the top of the mountain is the fulfillment you choose to bring with you.

—J.P. Nerbun

P.S. If you want to help your athletes find their purpose on the journey, my new book, The Culture Captain is the perfect read. Currently, the #1 New Release on Amazon for Teen & Youth Sports, it is the definitive framework to help young athletes find fulfillment, become great leaders, and perform at their highest level without losing their joy.

“For success, like happiness, cannot be pursued; it must ensue and it only does so as the unintended side-effect of one’s personal dedication to a cause greater than oneself.”

—Viktor Frankl, Man’s Search for Meaning

A year after winning his sixth Super Bowl, Tom Brady decided to leave the New England Patriots. He made a list of 20 criteria for his next team, which included finances, weather, skill guys, and the like. But at the top of the list? The players he would play with. The coaches he would work under. The environment he would experience every day.

In reflecting on his decision to leave, he shared, “It might not be enough to just love your job. You have to want to live in the world the job creates. Working with people you like, a tribe with a common goal, would make your professional life far happier than any accolade, salary, or company’s prestige could. You need to do the work you love, at a place you love and with people you love.”[i]

Brady realized that Coach Bill Belichick’s and the Patriots’ philosophy of “winning is the only thing” no longer fit him. He wrote: “When you pack things up, you realize that some things fit perfectly, and other things don’t fit anymore.” Growth is recognizing when an old definition of success, like a favorite pair of jeans that are now too small, no longer fits who you are today.

Brady went on to win his seventh Super Bowl in his first year with the Tampa Bay Buccaneers. He wasn’t giving up on winning; he just wanted the experience of winning to be different.

Redefine Success

Matt Damon won an Oscar at age 27 for Good Will Hunting. He recalled taking the statue to his hotel room, looking at it, and realizing,

Oh my God, I feel exactly the same. And my heart literally broke for a second, because I imagined this other version of myself, this old man, who spent his life chasing that and finally got it in his 80s or 90s, with all of life behind him, and realizing what an unbelievable waste . . . if that’s a hole that you have, that won’t fill it.[ii]

Your vision is your definition of success—which means as you clarify your vision, you may need to redefine your definition of success. Remember, redefining success doesn’t mean giving up on your goals; it means committing to a process and creating an environment you enjoy, which will help you to do your best work.

Expand your definition of success beyond just being an athlete. As record producer Rick Rubin advises, “Success isn’t popularity, money, or critical esteem. Success occurs in the privacy of the soul.”[iii]

Heading into the Paris Olympics in 2024, Simone Biles dropped the definition of success that others had given her and crafted her own.[iv] And as you’ll see throughout this book, leaders like Brady weren’t just concerned with what he would experience, but what others around him experienced.

It might be time for you to drop an outdated definition of success and start to craft a new one focused on what truly matters most to you. A vision for your life should extend beyond a sport, job, career, or passion. It’s what you hope to experience in the pursuit of your best.

Chapter 3: Clarify Your Vision

[i] Tom Brady, “The Only Way Is Through,” The Players’ Tribune, April 6, 2020, https://www.theplayerstribune.com/articles/tom-brady-the-only-way-is-through.

[ii] Matt Damon, “Matt Damon Gets Emotional Talking About Winning an Oscar,” The Graham Norton Show, posted September 25, 2015, YouTube,

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[iii] Rick Rubin, The Creative Act: A Way of Being (Penguin, 2023).

[iv] Scott Bregman, “Full Q&A with Simone Biles As She Seeks to Make More History at World Championships,” Olympics.com, October 6, 2023, https://www.olympics.com/en/news/exclusive-simone-biles-history-marriage-life-priorities-olympics.

Courtney Dauwalter is the undisputed GOAT of ultrarunning, male or female. Her resume is legendary, and she cemented her status by winning the sport’s “Triple Crown”—the Western States 100, the Hardrock 100, and the Ultra-Trail du Mont-Blanc (UTMB)—all within a single ten-week span. She didn’t just win them; she smashed course records along the way, winning races outright against the entire men’s field.

And yet, she breaks almost every conventional rule of elite sports. She doesn’t count calories, she doesn’t use a rigid training plan, and she famously fuels her 100-mile races on candy, nachos, and beer.

On the Daily Stoic Podcast, Ryan Holiday asked her if adding a layer of strict discipline to her diet and lifestyle might help her achieve even more. Her response was this:

“I thought about it. Should I restrict the things I eat or how many beers I drink or whatever? But for me, the thing I’m against is losing the enjoyment of life and the enjoyment of daily things.”

How am I spending my hours? I think that I get more benefit personally from just enjoying life than I do from counting how many grams of whatever. I’m sure there’s a lot of people who could tell me all the things that could change about my diet, and maybe it would have some payoff, but I think I would lose all this joy for the sport and the race.

I want to create memories with people, and those shared moments are what I’ll take with me for the rest of my life. The factor of joy that I experience in my life is weighed way higher than trying to cut 20 minutes off a race time.”

Some might listen to that and think she simply values a healthy life balance. But there’s more to it: Courtney understands tradeoffs.

Yes, she could look for all the marginal gains—the 1% optimization tricks to “better” her performance. And while counting every gram of carbohydrates might make her a fraction faster on paper, she isn’t willing to risk losing her joy. She recognizes that without joy, she might actually perform worse. And even if she did get faster, she knows that better isn’t always better.

As Matthew 16:26 challenges us: “For what will it profit a man if he gains the whole world and forfeits his soul?”

I love the process of improvement. Whether it’s fitness, sleep, parenting, writing books, or coaching leaders, I am always researching best practices and looking for areas of improvement. And yet, I’ve recently become aware of how the constant choice for “better” has started to steal my own joy.

I skip the morning coffee with my wife to squeeze in an extra fifteen minutes of writing. I rush through bedtime cuddles with my kids to finish up “just one last thing.” I work until the final possible minute of the day instead of shutting the laptop early to go play outside.

These are the tiny, optimized tradeoffs that silently erode my. I give up a piece of our soul for a fraction of a percentage point in productivity.

What tradeoffs are you making today that are quietly stealing your joy?

—J.P. Nerbun

*Struggling to find joy in the pursuit of excellence? My new book, The Culture Captain, will be available June 9th. This is the playbook to help you get clarity as a leader, define success on your own terms, and start living your values.

“Decency is about what you do. It’s not a standard you hold others to [...] It’s how you raise your kids. It’s not something you wield; it’s not something you gossip about. It’s something you embody and embrace.”

The same is true for your leadership philosophy. Your core values and personal standards. They are about what you believe. They are the behavioral standards you hold yourself to.

The more clarity and conviction I’ve gained around my philosophy on leadership, the more tempting it is to think I’m enlightened. It’s a cheap trick of the ego to look around and think, I’ve finally figured it out, and people who don’t think like me are just foolishly lost. But clarity doesn’t make you superior.

Your philosophy is a compass, not a weapon. It is meant to keep you grounded, not to tell others how to live. It isn’t a tool to measure how everyone else is falling short; it’s a mirror to reflect how you are showing up.

Know who you are. Know what is most important to you and how you want to live your life. And then work like hell to live it out.

Don’t waste time using your values as an assessment tool for everyone else.

—J.P. Nerbun

“So, how do you apply this as a parent?”

I was facilitating a session for a Google Sales Team yesterday, working on the skills of listening—asking questions, reflecting, and holding space. The goal was to improve their teamwork and client service, but the message was resonating far beyond the office. Many in the room were already seeing how these skills could help them show up better at home.

The best part of my ten-year journey to become a better leader is that it has required me to work on becoming a better person. And yet, I feel incredibly vulnerable when someone asks how I’m applying these principles in my personal life.

Because the reality is: I don’t always do a great job.

It happens a lot in my line of work. As I travel the world giving keynotes and facilitating workshops, people are excited to meet me. They’ve listened to the podcast; they’ve read the books. They are excited to meet the “idea of JP” they’ve built in their heads.

Then they meet me in the flesh. Most people lead with: “You’re a lot taller than I realized!”

But my height is far from the biggest thing they’ve gotten wrong about the “idea of JP.” If you want the real story, just talk to my family. They’ll tell you: I’m a mess at the end of the day.

I probably fail to live up to my own listening standards more often than I meet them.

I certainly don’t emotionally regulate myself before trying to regulate my kids as often as I preach it.

It’s not just at home. Just the other day, coaching my daughter’s practice, I realized halfway through that I hadn’t connected with a single girl before we started. I was too damn focused on laying out cones for a warm-up drill.

I am a mess. We are all a mess.

This is the hardest part of leadership: Standing in front of a group of people, telling them what you value, and then trying to actually live it—only to fail.

Does that failure make us frauds?

No. It makes us human.

Authenticity is not living perfectly according to your values.

Living according to your values is integrity—that is the lifelong work of a leader.

Authenticity is simply being real. It is being human. It means perfection is not required and mistakes are welcome.

So, my answer to that Google employee was simple: “I don’t apply it nearly as well as I ought to for a man teaching it to others. And yet, I’m doing a hell of a lot better than I was a year ago.”

Just as passion can turn to an unhealthy obsession, purpose can turn into an unhealthy obsession. How so?

When you try to be a savior to everyone in your life, and you don’t help everyone you meet, you feel like a failure.

When you’re obsessed with personal growth it gets a new name—perfection.

When you have the very human experience of not being the person you want to be every minute of your day you feel like a failure.

When you judge your purpose by the depth of every relationship and a relationship deteriorates, you feel like a failure.

When you measure your significance by the number of lives you touch, you feel like a failure when you compare yourself to others.

All of these things can lead you to feel disconnected from your purpose— to question your self-worth.

Significance Over Success came at the right time for me.

In my enthusiasm to live a meaningful and purposeful life, I started to lose sight of the thing that is most significant: love.

Above all else, we are all called to love.

To love the person in front of you—from the person making your coffee, to the athlete who can’t seem to figure out how to show up on time, to the family member who always calls you at the most inconvenient times.

You are called to love the sick child who throws off your perfectly planned day of “purposeful” work or the spouse who calls in the middle of your day needing a favor.

Choosing significance over success is not a life-altering choice—it’s not a daily choice—it’s a mindful choice.

Significance is not measured by how many people attend your funeral or the number of people who say you changed their life for the better.

There is no measuring stick for significance.

Only a compass.

Justin Simpkins and Shane Sowden have given us more than a book.

They’ve given us more than inspiration to throw out the measuring stick.

They’ve given us a compass to pursue significance.

Regardless of where you are in your journey, this book will help you calibrate your compass as you pursue significance over success.

J.P. Nerbun

We want certainty.

When the pressure is high—the losing streak, the parents complaining, the fans criticizing—we crave a solution. We want to know the team meeting, the conversation, or the trick that will “fix” it.

But here is the hard truth: There are no certain solutions. There are no silver bullets or magical fixes.

A coach whose job is on the line recently called me. “I don’t know what to do,” he said. “I’ve tried everything—I’m all out of solutions.” He wanted to know what would make it all okay. He wanted a guarantee that the team would turn the corner and he would keep his job.

He wanted certainty. But certainty is a mirage.

That was the central point of my book The Culture System. It was never intended to be a step-by-step manual. It is a framework for how you might create the conditions that enable good things to happen.

Assembling a car is complicated; it requires a step-by-step guide. Culture is complex. Complexity cannot be “solved” with a manual; it must be navigated by a leader. Leaders in complexity can’t and don’t need certainty—they need conviction.

Conviction does not demand having all the answers. It demands purpose and values to guide the actions you take. Leading with conviction is the bedrock of great leadership; it moves you from being tossed by the emotions and even values of others and grounded in your values.

Conviction is not stubbornness. Stubbornness is the ego refusing to adapt.

Convicted leaders know they can’t know or control the future.

They just know who they are and who they are not.

I was recently interviewed by The Athletic for a feature on Michigan Basketball Coach Dusty May. I first met Dusty in 2020; he reached out after hearing me on Chris Oliver’s Podcast, and we began working together as he was turning around the FAU program.

To the outside world, Dusty’s climb looks like a vertical shot to the top. To those who know him, it’s been a difficult journey. His first four years at FAU were hard—he was barely above .500. For a young head coach at a mid-major that had never seen success, it’s tough to trust the process.

But Dusty didn’t just want to win; he wanted to be a transformational coach. In the beginning, he had doubts whether that type of coaching could produce results quick enough to keep your job. It often doesn’t feel like the “transformational” coaches are the ones hoisting trophies. Between COVID, the transfer portal, and NIL, the pressure to “sell out” and just do what everyone else is doing is massive.

I’m not sure how much the encouragement of a former average high school coach mattered at the time, but he stayed the course even when he wasn’t sure it would work. In 2023, he became an “overnight success” when FAU made a historic run to the Final Four. But Dusty’s success wasn’t a fluke; he has sustained it.

The secret? The Athletic pointed to his Curiosity. But what does curiosity actually look like in the trenches?

Here are four things Dusty does better than a lot of other coaches.

1. Mentorship

Dusty started as a student manager at Indiana under Bob Knight. He has worked for some of the biggest names in the game. Usually, when a coach finally becomes “The Guy,” they isolate themselves. Dusty does the opposite. He maintains deep relationships with other coaches and refuses to stay in a coaching bubble. He is always looking to learn from his peers, regardless of their level.

2. Consultants and Coaches

As the article noted, Dusty works extensively with people outside his immediate circle—like former high school principal Doug Lemov, author of The Coach’s Guide to Teaching, basketball consultant Chris Oliver, or an executive leadership coach like myself. He doesn’t just read our books or listen to podcasts; he wants to have conversations. Curious conversations where he is humble enough to ask for feedback and learn from it.

3. Trading Judgment for Questions

In an era where many college coaches blast their players in the media or vent to their staff behind closed doors, Dusty hits the “pause” button. When frustration arises, he notices the judgment and gets curious instead. He is constantly searching for better questions to help him understand his players’ mindsets and work with them.

4. Both Transactional and Transformational

In her book Leadership in Turbulent Times, Doris Kearns Goodwin writes of Abraham Lincoln: “Pragmatic, transactional strategies provided the nuts and bolts of principled, transformational leadership.” Dusty lives this. He has maintained a deeply relational approach to coaching while successfully navigating the highly transactional landscape of modern sports. He has shown us that you don’t have to choose between being a good leader and being a winner.

Hear More from Dusty on The Coaching Culture Podcast:

• Dusty May on the Leadership Style that took FAU to the Final Four

• Dusty May on How to Embrace Growth and Development as a Busy Leader

I’m writing this from a plane, traveling between conferences to facilitate sessions and speak with athletic directors from across Canada.

Two of the biggest and most common challenges they discuss in these sessions are:

1. The decline of the multi-sport athlete.

2. Sports parents who lose perspective (and sometimes their minds).

There is a direct connection between these two challenges. Parents are often encouraging early specialization with one goal in mind: for their kid to “make it big.” I get it—it’s not just about a full-ride scholarship anymore. The potential financial upside in sports today is massive.

There are many problems with early specialization, and I won’t list them all here. But here is the one we rarely discuss: “Making it”—whether that’s D1, the pros, or the Olympics—isn’t always what it’s cracked up to be.

The road to becoming an elite athlete isn’t just difficult because of the work required to get there; it’s difficult because of the challenge of getting there without losing your joy, your sense of self-worth, and your well-being. Whether the final destination is a professional contract or a college scholarship, it is a grueling path. I traveled it as an athlete, and now I walk it every day alongside elite coaches and players.

Often when you “make it,” fulfillment and joy are even harder to find in that life. You face an immense pressure to win and perform , while you and your family make massive personal and family sacrifices. On top of that you endure constant public criticism and if you are “fortunate” to find fame, good luck trying to enjoy it–I haven’t met many people who do.

There are much easier ways to make a good living and find a fulfilling life. Just ask Tiger Woods who seems to be still struggling.

I’m not going to discourage my kids from dreaming of becoming professional athletes or playing big-time college sports—I just wouldn’t wish that dream upon them.

I want them to enjoy sports. I want them to learn and grow from the process of giving their best, being a part of a team, and navigating the adversity that sports provide. And unfortunately, the current sports system is not designed to help elite athletes experience those things.

As I think about my children’s futures, I realize: I don’t think I want them to “want it.” I will continue to encourage my kids to play as many sports as they enjoy, for as long as possible—even if that means passing on an Olympic Gold, a professional contract, or a full scholarship.

If they do catch the dream, I’ll be right behind them, supporting them every step of the way. But that dream won’t have come from me. It will have come from within them.

—J.P. Nerbun

The story goes that the philosopher Zeno asked this of the Oracle of Delphi. Her response: “The secret to wisdom and the good life is to have conversations with the dead.”

What she meant was reading.

For Zeno, reading the works of Plato and Socrates was a direct conversation with the greatest minds of the past.

Fortunately for us—with how quickly a book can now be written, published, and printed—we have access not just to the dead, but to the greatest living minds of our time.

And yet, we spend our lives listening to the walking dead.

The news media: Profiting from your panic and feeding on your fear.

The social media influencers: Selling a filtered reality they don’t actually inhabit.

The AI Slop: The soulless content flooding your internet feed and stealing your focus.

The average person: All of us who substitute digital conversations for a real life one.

We listen to the living who aren’t actually living. Behind the filter, the generated content, and the pixelated image is just another person struggling and languishing in the same void.

Instead, try something radical. Take your phone and put it in a dark drawer in the furthest corner of your house. Then, go and do something that makes you feel alive:

• Read a book. Engage with a mind that spent years crafting a single message.

• Take a walk. Notice the world that exists outside of a five-inch screen.

• Have a real conversation. Sit across from a human being and start with this: “What’s something that is really important to you, but you don’t get to talk about a lot?”

See what happens when you stop listening to the walking dead and start talking to people who have lived or are living.

“You do a great job of creating a really safe space for everyone.”

I shuddered when I recently heard this feedback from a member of a team I was facilitating. Creating a “safe space” has become the buzzword of the decade, but honestly, it is never my objective as a facilitator.

Don’t get me wrong—I have nothing against psychological safety. But psychological safety is simply a condition that enables good things to happen. It allows people to open up and build connection and trust. But safety, by itself, is not the goal.

I recently interviewed author Daniel Coyle for the podcast (episode coming April 2026) about his new book Flourish, which I cannot recommend enough. He spends a lot of time discussing the importance of leaders creating space, but I noticed he never uses the term “safe space.” I asked him why. His response was spot on:

“I’m not crazy about that term, because it implies you wrap people in bubble wrap. What’s the deeper point of safety? Courage. They should call them ‘brave spaces.’ It’s actually not about being safe; it’s about feeling strong, secure, and connected enough to say, ‘I’m going to speak up. I’m nervous and it’s a vulnerable thing to do, but I feel brave enough to do it.’”

So no, I’m not interested in creating safe spaces; I’m interested in creating the conditions for people to step into fear, not away from it.

I am passionate about seeing people sit in vulnerability, uncertainty, and risk—the three requirements for courage*—and choosing to put themselves on the line anyway. Whether it’s voicing a difficult opinion in a high-stakes meeting or being open about something as personal as your faith, it is the act of allowing yourself to be seen as you really are.

The world doesn’t need more bubble wrap. It needs more courage.

-J.P. Nerbun

*As outlined in Brené Brown’s Strong Ground.

**Thanks to Garth Brooks and his song “Friends in Low Places” for the title inspiration.