#106 Bill Walsh (The Score Takes Care of Itself)

What I learned from reading The Score Takes Care of Itself: My Philosophy of Leadership by Bill Walsh. --- [0:01] I believe it’s much the same in one’s profession: Superb, reliable results take time. [4:55] How Jack Dorsey describes The Score Takes Care of Itself: He took at team that was at the bottom and brought them to the top. He focused on the details. He didn’t say you need to win games. He said you need to tuck in your shirts. You need to clean your lockers. This is how we answer the phones here. He set a new standard of performance. [6:53] Bill Walsh on his father / What he learned from his early life [10:15] Bill Walsh on why should you care about your standard of performance: Pursuing your ambitions, especially those of any magnitude, can be grueling and hazardous, and produce agonizing failure along the way, but achieving those goals is among life’s most gratifying and thrilling experiences. [14:15] A great description of the book: Bill Walsh loved to teach. This is his final lecture on leadership. [16:20] Bill Walsh built a new culture. He calls it his Standard of Performance. [20:30] Make a commitment to be the best version of yourself— even when your current external results may not warrant that belief [26:16] The prime directive was not victory [28:45] Winners act like winners before their winners [32:20] Bill Walsh experiences the entrepreneurial roller coaster [37:00] An incredible story about his idea of the west coast offense [46:20] Be unswerving in moving towards your goal [47:25] Sweat the little details but the right little details [49:00] Don’t focus on your competitors —spend that time making yourself better so it is harder for them to compete against you [50:00] Don’t let anybody call you a genius / If you sleep on a win you’ll wake up with a loss / Success Disease [54:15] Without a healthy ego you’ve got a big problem [58:05] There is no mystery to mastery [1:03:05] A pretty package will not sell a crappy product [1:04:16] Avoid burnout: Can you imagine how burned out you must be to wait fourteen years to return to doing something you love? ---- Founders Notes gives you the ability to tap into the collective knowledge of history's greatest entrepreneurs on demand. Use it to supplement the decisions you make in your work. Get access to Founders Notes here. ---- “I have listened to every episode released and look forward to every episode that comes out. The only criticism I would have is that after each podcast I usually want to buy the book because I am interested so my poor wallet suffers. ” — Gareth Be like Gareth. Buy a book: All the books featured on Founders Podcast

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• 0:00David Senra?

  The Fujian Province of China is known as the Venice of Asia because of the superb stone sculptures created there over the centuries. Hundreds, perhaps thousands of years ago, stone sculptors worked in a time-honored and time-consuming way. When their sculpture was completed, the artist immersed it in a nearby stream, where it remained for many years as the waters constantly flowed over it. During this period, the finishing touch was applied by Mother Nature and Father Time. The gentle but constant flow of water over the stone changed it in subtle but profound ways. Only after this occurred would the sculptor consider it complete.

• 0:44David Senra?

  Only when time had done its work was the sculpture perfect. I believe it's much the same in one's profession. Superb, reliable results take time. The little improvements that lead to impressive achievements come not from a week's work or a month's practice, but from a series of months and years, until your organization knows what you are teaching inside and out, and everyone is able to execute their responsibilities in all ways at the highest level. I believe that every organization has a cultural conscience that it carries forward year after year. That ethos may be good or bad,

• 1:27David Senra?

  productive or unproductive, but it exists, and it is guiding ongoing personnel and informing new arrivals as they come on board. The attitudes and actions I installed, including the inventory of San Francisco's football plays, were the results of the same guys doing the same thing for years and years. Subsequently, it became almost routine to execute at the highest level when the heat was on. Excellence in every single area of our organization had been taught and expected from the day I arrived as head coach. The big plays in business or professional football don't just suddenly occur out of

• 2:12David Senra?

  thin air. They result from very hard work and painstaking attention over the years to all of the details related to your leadership. Talent, functional intelligence, experience, maturity, effort, dedication, and practice may not be perfect, but they will get you so close to perfection that most people will think you achieved it. And the results will show it. It takes time to develop the standard of performance. It's not just a seminar, or a practice, or a season's worth of seminars and practices,

• 2:52David Senra?

  but thoughtful and intense attention over years and years. This is a powerful force to have within you. I was filled with an appreciation that what these players and members of our organization were doing was a work of art. One that had been created over many years, similar in a way to the sculptures in China. It was a thing of beauty. I believe it's true in your profession. Your effort in the beginning is part of a continuum of effort. Your standard of performance is part of a continuum of standards.

• 3:34David Senra?

  Today's effort becomes tomorrow's results. The quality of those efforts becomes the quality of your work. One day is connected to the following day, and the following month to the following years. Your own standard of performance becomes who and what you are. You and your organization achieve greatness.

• 4:03David Senra?

  Alright, so that was one of my favorite excerpts from the book that I read this week. And the one I'm going to talk to you about today, which is "The Score Takes Care of Itself: My Philosophy on Leadership" by Bill Walsh. So, this is one of, for years and years and years, this book, this is probably one of the most recommended books in startup land. I can't tell you how many different entrepreneurs have recommended this book. So, I'm going to start before I jump back into the book. I wanted to talk to you about, so I went back through my notes and I searched for every time that this book was recommended. And I think the person that best described, in like the most succinct terms, like the main idea behind the book, was the founder of Twitter and Square, Jack Dorsey.

• 4:48David Senra?

  So, let me just tell you what he said about the book. It's one of the books that he most recommends to people. And he's talking about Bill Walsh in this statement. He says, "He took a team that was at the bottom and brought them to the top. He focused on the details. He didn't say you need to win games. He said you need to tuck in your shirt. You need to clean your lockers. This is how we answer the phones here. He set a new standard of performance." Something else Jack learned from the book is, Bill has a lot of lists, like he's like a five, top, you know, here's five things you need to remember for this, or 10 things you need to remember for this. But his overall philosophy, he calls it the standard of performance, really he's talking about the culture that you're building in an organization, okay?

• 5:33David Senra?

  So, he says, "One, be yourself. Two, be committed to excellence. And three, be positive." And then finally, something else Jack took away from the book, which I think you could infer from the excerpt I just read you, is, "Recognize that mastery is a process, not a destination." Okay, so I'm going to jump right back into the book. I want to start with something, he does not, this is not a typical, you know, normally I try to read biographies, or even if it's not a biography, it's like the history of a company. Because I believe what Charlie Munger says, like if you understand the person, the reason he reads so many biographies is because he says like it's a way to build like a latticework of their ideas. So if you understand the personality, maybe their early life, you understand how they arrived at the ideas

• 6:17David Senra?

  they accumulated over their, like their career, their experience. And then how like their early life and their personality informs that. So there's not a lot of that in this book. Bill Walsh was a mentor to many people. He was called upon to teach, like he considered himself a teacher, which I'll get into. But he did not, he did not develop a lot of strong personal relationships. He seems to keep like a lot of his own personal feelings like close to his vest, almost like hidden. He's got a very old school way of doing things. But he does talk, the section I'm going to read to you here is the lone exception to that. He talks about what he learned from his father. So I wanted to pull that out of the book and start at the beginning as a way to hopefully understand

• 6:59David Senra?

  the person Bill Walsh was, and then we're going to understand his ideas even better. Okay, so this is his father and what he learned from his early life. He says, "When I was growing up, my role model was a good one. The guy who set the standard for me was my father. Dad knew what it meant to work really hard, and he did. He never went past eighth grade. He scrambled around as a young man to make money and came up through tough times, including the Great Depression. He struggled to make a living for his family, but he showed me what a man does when he has a job to do. He goes out and he does it. During the Depression, my father was paid 31 cents an hour to work 10 hours or more a day on the assembly line

• 7:43David Senra?

  at the huge Chrysler plant near our small house in south central Los Angeles. That didn't pay the bills, so he set up a little auto body repair shop in our garage, where he worked after he got done working at the plant, late at night and on weekends." When I was a teenager, I had to work with him on many of those evenings and weekends. Long hours into the night helping him out. I hated it, but he taught me the connection between hard work and survival. Between survival and success. Dad taught me that. His work ethic became my work ethic. He paid a tremendous price for his willingness to work. It may have shortened his life.

• 8:28David Senra?

  A life that offered little in the way of fun or material reward. And kept him from connecting in any meaningful way with his son. And this is the heartbreaking part. I never really got to know my father. He didn't have time. It was all work for Dad. Or his family wouldn't survive.

• 8:50David Senra?

  Over the years, I've heard many theories, often complex or convoluted on what it takes to be an outstanding leader. Most of the theories seem to take a monumental work ethic for granted. As if it is assumed or something. As if people automatically know what it is and then they just do it. I didn't assume it. The majority of people out there don't know what it is. They need to be shown and you're the one who must show it. So one of the things I enjoyed about the book was first he's got a lot of great ideas and there's very little fluff. He just constantly just hits you with ideas. But that last line where he says, "They need to be shown and you're the one who must show it." He's talking directly to you.

• 9:33David Senra?

  He uses that constantly. He's like, "Okay, this is what I did. This is what I learned from it. Now go and do it. Do this in your organization." And I think that's extremely helpful. He's also, he talks about setting a standard of performance, like a high set of standards for his organization, his team. He's also, by reading the book, he's doing that for you. He's stretching what you think is possible and what you think can accomplish, which I think is extremely helpful. Okay, so before I jump into, I want to start with what Jack was saying. Like, he shows up at this team, it was at the very bottom, and he took it to the top. Like, how does that happen? Before I get there, though, we have to understand, like, why? Like, why is he writing this book? Like, what, why even talk about this? In other words, like, why are you going to care about your standard of performance?

• 10:17David Senra?

  And I think he hits on, like, there's this dichotomy in our nature, that the things that you work hardest for, the things that take the most time, sometimes the things that cause the most pain, are the things that you enjoy the most. It's extremely counterintuitive, because I think most humans seek comfort, right? So he says, "Pursuing your ambitions, especially those of any magnitude, can be grueling and hazardous, and produce agonizing failure along the way. But achieving those goals is among life's most gratifying and thrilling experiences." So he talks a lot about, like, essentially, like, he's competing in a zero-sum game.

• 10:58David Senra?

  If you've ever studied, like, the schedules of NFL head football coaches, like, they're grueling. It's definitely not something I want for my life, but a lot of the book shares these experiences of, like, heartache, heartbreak, stress. And yet, he describes, so, when you're reading the book, it may sound like, wow, this guy went through a lot, but he talks about how thrilling it was to overcome those periods of discomfort, and he winds up being one of the most successful NFL coaches of all time. He wins, like, five Super Bowls with his system. And so I think that's really interesting, where he just said, "But achieving those goals is among life's most gratifying and thrilling experiences."

• 11:41David Senra?

  Anybody that's done something extremely hard, like running a company, doing anything, knows what that feeling that he's describing. So he says, "The ability to survive and overcome the former, to attain the latter, is a fundamental difference between winners and losers."

• 11:58David Senra?

  And then another thing I think you need to understand about Bill before we jump into his ideas is, he considered himself a teacher. He loved teaching.

• 12:06David Senra?

  He, yeah, he's a football coach, he's a leader of people. He says, "I'm a teacher." That's how he'd describe his occupation. So he says, uh, this is somebody else talking about him. So he says, "Bill Walsh was an educator, a teacher. He accumulated great knowledge because he was a grade A student of leadership, paying close attention along the way to some of football's most outstanding and forward-thinking coaches." So not only did he do that, he learned from, like, before he was a head coach, he learned from his bosses, people that were in the position that he wanted to get to. He continued to learn from his peers, once he was a head coach, but he also, and I'm gonna tell you about this, he would study the history of his profession, and he'd pull out ideas that wind up, uh, leading to his innovation, which is what we're gonna talk about later. It's this thing called the West Coast Offense.

• 12:51David Senra?

  Um, so he studied people above him, uh, people equal to him, and then people doing the same things he hoped to achieve in the past. So he says, Bill, and they're gonna talk a little bit about this here, he says, "Bill absorbed their good ideas, he learned from their bad ones, and then he applied his, uh, then he applied his own even more advanced concepts. He reveled in the process of teaching what he knew to his teams." And now he's teaching what he learned from his career to us. "I came to believe that the part of football he enjoyed best was teaching, or more accurately, identifying outstanding talent and teaching that player, that assistant coach, or that staff member how to be great. He loved it." And here's a quote I pulled out from Bill on this.

• 13:33David Senra?

  "The ability to help the people around me self-actualize their goals underlines the single aspect of my abilities and the label that I value most: teacher. In a very real way, everything I did was teaching in some manner or another." So he's gonna hold that same, when he's talking to you directly, right? He's gonna say, "Listen, I taught everybody around me, you, if you're the, whatever leadership capacity you may have, right? Whether you're running the company, maybe a small team within the company, your family, your friends, whatever it is, you, it's your, it is your obligation to teach everything you know, uh, to the people around you." Um, so with that, here, there's another, there's two sentences, uh, in the book

• 14:16David Senra?

  that I really think is like a summary for what this book is about. It's a great description. It says, "Bill Walsh loved to teach. This is his final lecture on leadership."

• 14:27David Senra?

  He actually dies of leukemia as they were putting the book together. And then he also says something about like the stuff he's teaching. And when I was reading this, this is really what I hope founders does for you in your life. He says, this is Bill talking, he says, "There's no guarantee and there's no ultimate formula for success. What it comes down to is intelligently and relentlessly seeking solutions that will increase your chance of prevailing." I love that idea, what we're trying to do here. We're intelligently and relentlessly seeking solutions that will increase our chance of prevailing. When you do that, the score will take care of itself. Okay, so now we've, now I've finally got to the point where I think I can get into the main part of the book.

• 15:10David Senra?

  And so I want to start with a quote from Bill Walsh. He says, "Running a football franchise is not unlike running any other business. You start first with a structural format and a basic philosophy." So he calls that his standard of performance, think about it, it's like your, your own philosophies on, on how you want to organize your business or the culture your company may have. Your structural format and basic philosophy, and then you find the people who can implement it. Alright, so now we're going to get into how he ran his team. This is the state of the team when he took over. He was a successful head coach at Stanford, gets recruited to the NFL. And he says, "This is what I faced on my first day of work. An organization in turmoil, a team whose roster of talent was paper thin, a future that seemed dismal.

• 15:55David Senra?

  In spite of last year's 2 and 14 season, I didn't even have a first round draft pick."

• 16:02David Senra?

  So now he's going to talk about, okay, well, I took over this team, I have no talent, you guys kind of sucked last year. What are we going to do here? So he doesn't start, this is what I think why people recommend this book so much. Because you think, okay, well, I'm going to start winning games. We went 2 and 14 last year, you know, the business aspect is like, we lost money, now we're going to turn a profit, whatever the case is. He says, "No, no, I'm gonna build the culture." But he calls it a standard of performance. And think about a standard of performance as it's high requirements for actions and attitudes. So let's, let's hear what Bill has to say about this. He says, "I approached building the 49er organization with an agenda that didn't include a timetable for a championship or even a winning season.

• 16:42David Senra?

  Instead, I arrived with an urgent timetable for installing an agenda of specific behavioral norms." So this includes both actions and attitudes. "That apply to every single person on our payroll." This is another unique idea he has. "To put it bluntly, I would teach every person in the organization what to do and how to think. The short-term results would contribute both symbolically and functionally to a new and productive self-image." He's gonna talk about the importance of your own self-image. And he explains what I've been trying to explain poorly the past, I don't know, several weeks about, there's a, there's a large section of people out there that have the ability,

• 17:26David Senra?

  that have the desire to wanna run their own businesses, but what's holding them back is their own self-image. Bill talks about this a lot. And so that's what he's talking about. It's like before, like, before you, you become a winner, you have to believe you have the ability to become a winner. And he goes, "So I'm going to systematically convince every single person in my organization that, that, one, that they have the ability to be a winner, and two, that they're part of a world-class elite organization." So he's, what is he saying? He's like, "I'm gonna, this is the standard you have for your own life. It's down here. That's not good enough. If you're gonna stay here, it's coming way to the top. And I'm gonna show you how to do that." So he says, "It would, it would, uh, it would contribute to a new and productive self-image and an environment and become the foundation upon which we could launch our longer-term

• 18:11David Senra?

  goal, namely the resurrection of our football franchise." So he's working backwards. People's like, "Okay, I took over this football team, I took over this company, I'm gonna make it, I'm gonna improve it by winning right away." He's like, "No, no, I'm gonna build the foundation." And that's why the book is called "The Score Will Take Care Of Itself." Because if you do all the little things right, every single one of them, then you don't have to worry about it. Because you're, whatever your endeavor is, it will be successful. Now we get, we're getting to his fundamental leadership assertion, okay? He says, "It began with this fundamental leadership assertion. Regardless of your specific job, it is vital to our team that you do that job at the highest possible level in all its various aspects, both mental and physical."

• 18:54David Senra?

  So what he's saying is like, "Listen, we're gonna have a set of values, we're gonna have a set of standards, but the values have to come from a source. And they can't just be like, uh, they need to initiate action," is his point. "They should not just be words you repeat that are really just lies." So he compares and contrasts the way he went about this to the way other organizations do. And you might have experienced this, uh, in some of the organizations or that you've been involved with. He says, "Uh, this is consistent with my conviction that an organization is not just a tool like a shovel, but it's an organic entity that has a code of conduct, a set of applied principles that go beyond a company mission statement that just tacked on the wall and forgotten. We had no mission statement on the wall. My mission statement was implanted into the minds of our people through teaching.

• 19:40David Senra?

  At its best, an organization, your team, bespeaks values and a way of doing things that emanate from a source. And guess what? That source is you, the leader. Thus, the dictates of your personal beliefs should ultimately become characteristics of your team." And we've seen this over and over again with, uh, all the founders that we studied. They, you cannot separate the person from the company that, that, that he's built, that he or she is building.

• 20:10David Senra?

  Their personalities is undoubtedly imbibed into their organization at a very fundamental level. That's why it's such, it's such a difference between like when a founder leaves or passes away or dies, whatever the case is, like how, like that organization changes over time when that person's no longer there. So at the very beginning, essentially what he's doing here, this next section I'm about to read to you, think about it like this. He's teaching everyone to make a commitment to be the best versions of themselves. Even, now that's, that's, that's a, you know, something we've seen a lot. But here's the difference. Even when their current, the current external results may not warrant that belief. He understood the order in which things have to happen. Right? So he says, "My standard of performance applied to marketing,

• 20:56David Senra?

  office personnel, and everyone else with details applicable to their jobs. Even to the extent of including specific instructions for receptionists on how to answer our telephones professionally. All of this increasingly demonstrated to others and to ourselves that we were on top of things. All things. We were neither sloppy nor inattentive, and contributed to a greatly heightened sense of this is who we are. Even though a strong case," now this is the, this is the difference between like what he's trying to do at the very beginning and their, their, their external results, right? That's why I started the podcast with that metaphor about the scope, the, like father time and mother nature,

• 21:42David Senra?

  slowly like finishing the job. Cause it's a good metaphor. This is gonna take a lot of time. So he says, "Even though a strong case could have been made that who we are wasn't much based on the initial one-loss records during my first two seasons." So before he gets there, the team goes two and 14. His first year, they go two and 14. The next year, they go six and 10. Okay? Then you know what happens the year after that? They win the Super Bowl. So he says, "Of course, that was part of my challenge." This is the most important part of the section I'm listening, I'm reading to you right now. The most important sentence, if you only remember one. "Of course, that was part of my challenge. Turning the self-image of the organization on its head from toxic to top-notch."

• 22:26David Senra?

  Okay, so how do we do that? One way to do this is to teach everyone that you are part of an elite organization. If you start with that belief, eventually they're gonna... If you start teaching that, eventually they will believe it. He also talks about, "Listen, man, if you're gonna teach organization, you gotta repeat, repeat, repeat, repeat." Humans are not gonna absorb these lessons. The first... You can't say it once and expect everybody to get it. That's just not how it's gonna work, especially in an organization with, I don't know, 115, 150 people, however many people are in a professional football organization. Alright, so he says, "So I'm gonna start this, I'm gonna have a lesson, I'm gonna repeat it all the time, and I'm gonna repeat it in different ways to teach the same lesson." That, "Listen, you're a San Francisco 49er, and me, as Bill Walsh, running this, I'm not letting..."

• 23:09David Senra?

  You know, he has like a... We'll get there, he has a giant ego. But he's... And rightfully so, if you think about what he's able to accomplish. But he talks about, "Like, you're gonna meet my high standards, or you're leaving." But the standards are not going... Like, once the San Francisco 49ers standards, they're not deviating, they're not breaking for anybody. So he says, "To encourage..." And you're gonna see like little tiny ways he does this, which is really smart. "To encourage positive thinking, pride, and self-esteem, I insisted that specific equipment carrying the emblem of the San Francisco 49ers be treated with respect." Okay, so if it has our logo, guess what? Now that I'm in charge, San Francisco 49ers, they're an elite organization. So you're not gonna abuse things, like a flag or an emblem, you're just gonna throw it around.

• 23:54David Senra?

  He's like, "No, you're not gonna do that." "For example, players were told their practice helmets, which carried our emblem, should never be tossed around." So it's very common, he's like, "They're done, they just throw it to the side." "They should never be tossed around, they're not gonna be sat on, and they're not gonna be thrown in the bottom of their lockers." So what does he say? He says, "You wear it, you hold it, or you put it on a shelf." The same applied to their game helmets, of course. "That San Francisco 49er emblem, and the helmet it was affixed to, signified that they were members of an organization with pride and high behavioral expectations." So something he talks about a lot in the book is, "The reason this idea is so powerful is because very few people are held to a high standard." Very few... He talks about, "One, very few people are capable of holding themselves to a high standard,

• 24:39David Senra?

  and then also, very few people work in organizations or are part of organizations to actually make sure that every single person..." They may hold certain parts of the organization, certain parts of the company, to a high standard, but Bill's like, "No, that's not good enough, every single one." And then he talks, so he changed a lot of things like people would come into, they'd be rookies. They'd come in, they, you know, kind of abused. He also talked about how he didn't like how coaches talked to his players and like, he's like, that's if you're, if you're trying to tell everybody you're part of a leading organization, then you talk to them like they're a dog or you treat them like crap, like that doesn't make any sense. So, um, this is another idea where he changed. He deviated from the norm. He analyzed what his peers were doing. He's like, nope, no, that's not smart. I'm not doing that. So he says, uh, we respect every member of the organization because they deserve it.

• 25:24David Senra?

  If they don't deserve it, they're not part of this organization. So he says, in keeping with this philosophy, I forbade the traditional hazing of rookies and walk-ons, making them the butt of humiliation or physical punishment. He's like, I'm not going to do that. You're, you're a 49er. He says, when they arrived, I informed them. You are a San Francisco 49er. As long as you're here, you will be treated like one. And it was true. They were respected, full-fledged members of our organization from day one and were treated as such until they proved otherwise. Now, he wasn't a soft person by any means, by any means. So I'm going to treat you with respect. If you don't meet my standards though, I, he's a dictator. You're out of here. He says, of course, when they proved otherwise, they were not subjected to hazing. They were subject to determination. And his whole point is like, don't haze them.

• 26:07David Senra?

  Get them up to your standard. If they can't meet your standard, get them out of the organization because your, your organization is only as strong as the weakest person. All right. Now he goes back to his very weird, unique idea. The prime directive was not victory. He never focused on victory. The book is called, the score will take care of itself. That's his philosophy in leadership. So he says, from the very start, my prime directive, the fundamental goal was the full and total implementation throughout the organization of actions and attitudes of the standard of performance. This was radical in the sense that winning is the usual prime directive in professional football in most businesses. So again, he has the same trait that almost every single, every single person I've analyzed for this podcast does. They're going to learn as much as they can, but they're going to learn some things like, oh, that I'm learning what not to do. This is the same thing that, that, that Bill's doing here.

• 26:52David Senra?

  He said, "I had no grandiose plan or timetable for winning a championship, but rather a comprehensive standard and plan for installing a level of proficiency, competency, at which our production level would become higher in all areas, both on and off the field, than that of our opponents." He's got a really interesting idea about competition I'll get to too, which I love. "Beyond that, I had faith that the score would take care of itself. So if we do everything a little right, we can't help but win." I just ran over my next point, which is the note I left myself on the next page. If we can't do, if we can't, if we do that, excuse me, we can't help but win. "I directed our focus less to the prize of victory than to the process of improving, obsessing about the quality of our execution and the content of our thinking."

• 27:40David Senra?

  He also talked about, this is really interesting too. He didn't believe that there was independent operators. Like, some people would say, "Okay, this is a star player. He's got different rules apply to him. Oh, this person's really valuable, you know, we have to treat them differently." He says, "Every team member is an extension of the entire team. Players had a connection to and were an extension of the coaching staff." This is his whole idea about that any organization is really an organic entity. And so, he's echoing nature here, like, there is no division. Everything's connected. So he says, "They were an extension of the coaching staff, trainers, team doctors, nutritionists, maintenance crew, and yes, the people who answer the phones. Everybody was connected. Each of us, an extension of the other.

• 28:25David Senra?

  Each of us with ownership in our organization. I taught," and this is him talking directly to us again, "I taught this just as, just as you should teach it in your organization."

• 28:38David Senra?

  And so now he's gonna get to the point, like, why is this such an important thing? And his, one of his big ideas is that, listen, winners act like winners before they're winners. He understood the sequence of events. He says, "Eventually, within months, in fact, a high level of professionalism began to engage within our entire organization. The 49ers' self-perception was improving. Individuals began acting and thinking in a way that reflected pride and professionalism, even as we continued to lose games." Winners act like winners before they are winners. Champions behave like champions before they're champions. They have a winning standard of performance before they are winners.

• 29:22David Senra?

  And this sums up the entire section. The culture precedes positive results. That's his entire thesis. You've got to get your culture and your philosophy and your standards correct first. Then you will automatically win. You can't do it in reverse. And I love this. So in this section, he's really good. He's obviously a really good teacher. He did it for decades, right? So this is another way to think about the section I just read to you. In a way, an organization is like an automobile assembly line. It must be first class or the cars that come off it will be second rate. The exceptional assembly line comes first before the quality car. So he's saying, once you have a great organization, you can't help but make a great product.

• 30:07David Senra?

  And in his case, his product was, had a really, you knew if it was a great product or not because you'd win games if it was.

• 30:16David Senra?

  Alright, so I really like this idea.

• 30:19David Senra?

  Like, it's a way to, he has this idea that his guiding set of philosophies, they essentially act like a north star for your life, for your organization. So he says, "Consistent effort is a consistent challenge." So you don't just start doing things well and then just straight up from there. It's like you're going to take two steps forward, you might take one step back, you might jump up to 10 steps forward, then you might take 15 steps back. It's this constant going ebb and flow. So he says, "There's an ebb and flow, an up and down in every significant endeavor at every level. I cut through that ebb and flow with the standard of performance. It was our point of reference. I envisioned it as enabling us to establish a near-permanent base camp near the summit,

• 31:03David Senra?

  consistently close to the top, within striking distance, never falling to the bottom of the mountain and having to start all over again." So the way we do things, we might have some setbacks, but we're never going to go back to the place we started from. We've surpassed that. We're getting closer and closer to our goal. We might get even closer to the top at some point and maybe knock down the next year. But this consistent standard of performance is going to keep us within striking distance to what we're trying to do.

• 31:29David Senra?

  Okay, so now I'm gonna take a little interlude because I think this is a good time where we're at where he's talking about like, you know, it's an ebb and flow. It's gonna go up and down. During his second season, he is going to, well, first, he's gonna describe something everybody has to deal with when they're trying to accomplish anything. And this is commonly referred to as the entrepreneurial roller coaster. And it's usually like, it's an emotional up and down, like your entrepreneurship and anything, even what Bill's doing. When you're doing something hard, it can produce the highest highs you've ever felt in your life, but at the same time, it can also produce the lowest lows. And you have to be able to work that through mentally so you don't quit or give up when you're failing.

• 32:13David Senra?

  Because inevitably, you're gonna have some forms of failure, right? So this, let me, I'm gonna do this interlude. First, I'm gonna start with this great quote from Bill. He says, "Almost always, your road to victory goes through a place called failure." Okay? Now, what he's gonna describe is, this next section I'm gonna read to you, just happens for a few brief hours when they just lost the game in his second season. He goes 6 and 10. If he loses the next game, he's on a terrible winning, uh, losing streak, he has a chance he's gonna get fired. So before the organization can reap the benefits of his standard performance, he might be cut out. And this inner monologue I'm about to read to you is happening when he's on a cross-country flight back to San Francisco from Florida. And let me just go right into his mental state.

• 32:56David Senra?

  He says, "I slumped down, depressed in my dark little space, contemplating whether I should offer my resignation." This is gonna be a hard sentence here. "Most debilitating of all, devastating, was a gnawing fear that I didn't have what it takes to be an NFL head coach." So our equivalent, so you didn't have the, what it takes to be an entrepreneur, founder, whatever it is. "At one point, I actually decided to hand in my resignation the next morning, then I changed my mind." So there's that roller coaster, right? "I've tried to describe my anguish, but the words come up short. Everything I dreamed of professionally for a quarter of a century was in jeopardy just 18 months after it was being realized.

• 33:38David Senra?

  And yet, there was something else going on inside of me, a voice from down deep, uh, from down deeper than my emotions. Something stirring that I had learned over many years in football and before that, growing up. Namely, I must stand and fight again."

• 33:55David Senra?

  I need to stand and fight or it's all over. In my mind, our gut, and in spite of the pain, I knew I had to force myself to somehow start looking ahead, to overcome my grief. So this is advice. To get out of the inevitable dark period you're gonna have in your life, you're focusing too much on your current state and your past, right? So he's saying, no, the key here is to focus on your next task, to just keep moving forward. I was able to summon enough strength to pull my focus, my thinking, out of the past and move it forward to our next big problem. It takes strength to shift your attention off pain when you feel as though your soul has been stripped bare. When the inevitable setback, loss, failure, or defeat comes crashing down on you,

• 34:39David Senra?

  losing a big sale, being passed over for a career, uh, for a career promotion, getting fired, allow yourself the grieving time, but then recognize that the road to recovery and victory lies in having the strength to get up off the mat and start planning your next move. Failure is a part of success, an integral part. Everybody goes through it. Knowing it will happen and what you must do when it does is to first step back. Okay, so now, his takeaway, so he winds up pulling himself out of that. And then these takeaways, listen, each time this happens, each time you come back from doubt or despair, you get stronger for the inevitable future reoccurrence. So he says, "When you stand and overcome a significant setback,

• 35:23David Senra?

  you'll find an increasing inner confidence and self-assurance that has been created by conquering defeat." Almost, I would say, "that has been earned by conquering defeat." "Absorbing and overcoming this kind of punishment engenders a sober, steely toughness that results in a hardened sense of independence and a personal belief that you can take on anything, survive, and win."

• 35:47David Senra?

  Okay, so back to how he's setting his organization up for future success. And this is where he talks about, like, you have to, like, humans are not, they're not, they're not naturally, for the majority of us, it's not natural to set extremely, extremely high expectations of standard of performance. And I would say, let me read you this part, but before I do, just keep in mind, I think this is also something that's happening to me and probably to you by listening to this, is, part of the benefits of reading biographies is like, you're constantly reminded that you can be excellent, just like they were. And it keeps you, being exposed to that over and over again, it keeps you accountable to a higher level than if you didn't read or didn't hear that story.

• 36:29David Senra?

  So he says, be, and this is why that's important, he says, "Be clear in communicating your expectation of high effort and execution of your standard of performance. Like water, many decent individuals will seek lower ground if left to their own inclinations. In most cases, you are the one who inspires and demands they go upward, rather than settle for the comfort of what, of doing what comes easily." Okay, so now, there's a really interesting story, so I'm gonna, this is the longest part I'm probably gonna read to you. And it talks about, it's just, this story's incredible. It's an incredible story about how he came up with the idea of the West Coast offense,

• 37:12David Senra?

  how it was derived essentially from, like, having to use the limited resources he had. And then this is how, and then also his, his, his habit of studying and constantly learning from others, and then combining those, their ideas, and adding his own unique ideas into something brand new, this innovation in the game of football. And then, what's most interesting is, this is how his competition, who lacked that innovation, reacted. Okay, so let's go into it. I love this part. Here's an interesting but very irritating footnote. For my effort in coming up with a successful new way of doing things, I received the disparagement of many in the NFL. Their condensation stemmed from the fact that my approach didn't rely on the traditional brute force,

• 37:56David Senra?

  grinding ground game, or spectacular long bomb pass of old time NFL football. Mine was a different approach. But he's saying mine's a different approach to gaining yardage, controlling the ball, and scoring touchdowns, which essentially is, he's saying mine's a different approach to what everybody, the objective everybody's trying to do. There's, everybody has the same objective, what we've seen over and over again as we study more founders and histories, but you can, you can reach that objective in many different ways, almost limitless different ways. In a sense, the naysayers were seeking victory, but only if it came the old fashioned way. They were locked into the past and unwittingly, and unwittingly locking themselves out of the future. His main point, leaders do this to themselves and their organizations all the time.

• 38:40David Senra?

  It was a change whose complexities were often misunderstood by observers. So in this section, he's going to tell us, listen, I thought deeply about this, I combined a bunch of different ideas, I had a unique set of experiences, and from the outside, if you didn't know it as well as me, we've talked about this a lot, that is, it is possible for you to know more than somebody else, and if by doing so, gives you a huge advantage. So we're going to see that in his case, like, listen, there's people analyzing what I'm doing from the outside that don't even know what they're looking at. And you're also going to see a little bit of his ego. He says, "It was a change whose complexities were often misunderstood by observers." Why? Because it's a new way of doing things. And if you didn't have the set of experiences, the set of thoughts, and didn't study the same stuff that Bill Walsh had, or Bill Walsh did, rather, you wouldn't even understand it."

• 39:25David Senra?

  He said, so now he's got one of these famous, um... Like, uh, what do you call them? TV broadcasters, people that talk while the game's on. So he says Howard Cosell was once, uh, was critical of a call I made, uh, because he wasn't aware of just how complex and precise our receivers' routes were. He exclaimed with exasperation during Monday, uh, during one Monday night football broadcast, "How could Bill Walsh call for a 12-yard pass play when they needed 14?" So he's gonna now analyze that assertion, this criticism that he's receiving. It's like, this guy doesn't even know what he's talking about. "Howard didn't understand the extraordinary precision required for successful execution of that play. We couldn't have the receiver running approximate routes and inexact distances each time.

• 40:08David Senra?

  The route called for, the route that was called for on that play was 12 yards exactly," and he italicizes that word, "exactly." "Not 11, not 13, but 12, and to an exact spot on the field." This is one of his innovations. "Additionally, what Howard and many others missed in the early days was that 60% of the yardage," this is an example of him knowing more than other people, and this is kind of embarrassing on Howard's part. "Your job is to commentate, so study the game. You don't even know what you're talking about." "Additionally, what Howard and many others missed in the early days was that 60% of the yardage on our pass plays came through running after the catch." So he wasn't expecting him to catch a ball 12 yards and just stay there.

• 40:52David Senra?

  It's like, no, we expect, now, sometimes he's gonna be stopped there, sometimes it's gonna be incomplete, whatever the case is, but 60% of our gains comes after that point. You're focusing on that point. "A 12-yard pass was designed to produce an additional 7-yard gain on the ground." So now, people didn't like this. So one executive summed it up like this. "This is not real NFL football." He viewed it as gimmicky, smoke and mirrors. "Neither substantive nor long-lasting." He was wrong. This is where we're gonna see some of Bill's ego. And I'm gonna talk more about that, because he explicitly talks about the value of having an ego in the book. So he says, "The complexities of the offense I created as compared to his real way

• 41:37David Senra?

  were as dissimilar as a Rolex to a sundial."

• 41:45David Senra?

  Now, it's a hell of a statement. This is what I love, because this is something anybody that studies history knows. And then, so now, that's where he's like, you don't even know what you're looking at. But not only that, you're telling me that I just need to go ahead and copy everybody, what everybody else did in the past, right? Because that's quote-unquote "real football." But the problem was, you people that love the past, aren't even studying the past. So he says, "Few inventions are created out of nothing. What I was doing had its roots in the theories of others who had modernized the passing game, most notably, the brilliant Sid Gilman." Okay, so think about that. He goes back, he's like, "All right, and I'm gonna tell you why he had to invent this in a minute." He's like, "Well, I don't have a..."

• 42:27David Senra?

  One of the things was like, "I don't have a quarterback who's capable of throwing accurately a long pass. Like, what am I gonna do?" So what he did is like, "Well, I have a problem. Let me see how other people solved this problem in the past." And you had this, this coach in the past called Sid Gilman, who, let me, I guess I'll just read, I'm gonna read you what he says. He says, "Those who cling to the past have apparently forgotten the past. Early in its evolution, football didn't even allow a forward pass." Okay, so he's going back into the, the, he's studying the history of his profession. He's like, "All right, I'm sure we've seen this somewhere before." He says, "In fact, it was brought into college football simply as a device to make the game safer."

• 43:09David Senra?

  This coach at St. Louis University immediately and enthusiastically embraced a new alternative to always running the ball. So he's saying, "At this point, you couldn't even, no one was passing forward, everybody's running the ball." So this guy, back in the 1900s, which is, let's say, what, 70 years before Bill Walsh took an idea and then revolutionized, or he calls it "modernizing" the passing game again. He starts using the forward pass, no one else is doing it, this is the result. In 1906, his team went 11-0 and outscored opponents 407 to 11.

• 43:50David Senra?

  He faced traditionalists who looked down their noses at what he had incorporated as part of his search for victory. It's often the case that a game changer takes a while to change the way the game is played. And that's exactly what Bill Walsh did. His, his, uh, system is still in use to this day. Now, it's important to know, like, Bill Walsh was extremely smart, but he, it's not like he came up with this on a full cloth. He just told you, studied the history, learned from other coaches, combined all his ideas. But it was also invented out of necessity. He, somebody else gave him the name, the West Coast offense. He said it should be called the lemonade offense because it was his response to be given lemons in the form of a team with no ground game and a quarterback without a strong arm.

• 44:31David Senra?

  So he says, "The fact was that we had seemingly no op-" the, the fact was, we had seeming- the fact that we had seemingly no options forced us to come up with new options." What's he talking about? He's talking about being resourceful. Here's a good question to write on a post-it note and put on your desk. What assets do we have right now that we're not taking advantage of? He's talking directly to us, that's important, let me say that again. Write, write out this question and then ask yourself, "What assets do I have right now that I'm not taking advantage of?" So this is an example of what he was working with. Uh, his quarterback's name was Virgil Carter. He was, I, I was working with Virgil Carter's limited skills. He was a quarterback who couldn't throw a long pass accurately.

• 45:13David Senra?

  Uh, then, oh, then, so another thing was, he analyzed how everybody else, like, they a bunch their players. He's like, "Most people don't realize, uh, most fans don't realize that a football field, the length is, it's 53.5 yards of width. That's a huge space." So he's like, "Why is no one using all that space?" Uh, he's like, that, like, most teams bunch their players together. So what he says, he's like, "Okay, I have a limited QB, can't throw long, but I can get him more space by spreading my receivers out, right? I'm gonna use all 53 yards." So his, his innovation was, "Okay, I'm gonna use 53 yards of width, and instead of going long, I'm gonna use about 10 to 12 yards, maybe 7 yards of distance."

• 45:55David Senra?

  And if you go 53 width by, let's say, 10 yards of depth, you have a giant field, like, you can utilize. Um, and then he says, uh, so the width of the, and the availability of five potential receivers were all available assets even before desperation drove me to utilize them creatively, creatively.

• 46:19David Senra?

  Okay, I love that section. Alright, now he has something he says over and over again. You need to be unswerving in moving towards your goal. He says this a bunch of times in the book. It's also a trait that he admires in others and he mentions other coaches that have this trait. And he saw that trait in other people. He's like, I want that for myself. So he developed that talent. He says, "We are unswerving in moving towards our goal. We will not quit. There's an inner compulsion and an obsession to get it done the way you want it done. It's good to remind yourself that this quality, strength of will, is essential to your survival and success." Talked about earlier how to manage your mental state when you're having setbacks. In this case, he's talking about your physical state.

• 47:03David Senra?

  You need to keep moving, acting, working. Often you're urged to go along and get along. You're advised that your plan should have worked by now. Are told other variations that amount to backing away from a course you believe in your heart and know in your head is correct.

• 47:21David Senra?

  Another great story. He's really big on details. It's like, listen, you need to sweat the little details, but you need to sweat the right little details. So he's going to give us an example of the same person applying the perfect execution of that idea and then that same person not getting, like, doing the exact opposite. It says, "Coach George Allen was a demon on details. He was preparing to play in the Super Bowl at the Los Angeles Memorial Coliseum. A few days before the game, he sent a staff member out to the Coliseum for an entire afternoon to chart the movement of the sun during the hours when the game would be played. George wanted to know exactly where the sun would be so he could calculate the advantage if his team won the coin toss.

• 48:05David Senra?

  This is an example of sweating the right small stuff. Now, here's an example focusing on the wrong small details. George took time off from his coaching responsibilities to design a more efficient system of serving food for the players, a way of reducing the amount of time players spent in the lunch line. He took time out of his schedule to personally draw up a schematic for those players wanting soup with their meals. One line was designated for those wanting crackers with their soup and one line was for players who didn't want any crackers." This is an example of sweating the wrong small stuff.

• 48:43David Senra?

  I love this idea. We've seen it in different variations. His idea is like, listen, don't, like, most companies, most football teams, most organizations, they focus on their competitors. I don't care about my competitors. Instead, I'm gonna spend that time making myself and my organization better, and therefore, I'm gonna make it harder for them to compete against me. So he talks about, you know, coaches would use the saying like, "Oh, we're gonna play X-team, and they're really vicious, etc." He's like, "Well, I generally prefer the opposite approach."

• 49:14David Senra?

  To me, the opposite, to me, they, meaning the other teams, were objects that were both faceless and nameless. Nameless, faceless objects. My logic was that I wanted our focus directed at one thing only: going about our business in an intensely efficient and professional manner, first on the practice field, and then later on the playing field. I felt that moving attention away from that goal to create artificial and manufactured demons was artificial and usually non-productive, especially when done repeatedly.

• 49:54David Senra?

  Now, we already passed the part where he becomes extremely successful. Like, he wins a lot of games, he obviously wins a lot of Super Bowls, and now he's getting to the point where, when you're already good at something, you get like a lot of accolades, and people are telling you how smart you are. He's like, "Don't let that happen. Don't let anybody call you a genius." And that's when you research Bill Walsh, you'll see a lot of people calling him a genius. And so he says, "In part because of the complexities of our pass-based offense, the media began referring to me as 'the genius.'" And then he's gonna, you know, he's human. At the beginning, he's like, "Oh, that makes me feel good about myself." "When the name was first attached to me, I was naive enough to be flattered and did nothing to discourage writers from using it.

• 50:38David Senra?

  I may have even been thinking, 'Hey, maybe there's something to it.' I learned soon enough that an inflated label like 'genius' or any other form of hyperbole comes with a big downside."

• 50:50David Senra?

  Buying into what people say about you can create both external and internal problems. This makes your life and your job a lot tougher than they already are. The genius labor, the genius label was an albatross around my neck. It's easy to get caught up in or enamored by lofty titles, praise, and flattery. As you subconsciously attempt to become the character others have created out of who you are. This goes back to Andrew Carnegie's advice for. He's, uh, it's one of his famous quotes is like the, the, the judge within like reigns supreme or something like that. Essentially, he's telling us like the, the most important, uh, person to judge who you are is yourself.

• 51:34David Senra?

  And in like, you know who you are, like internally, like are you proud of the person you have become? Don't let other like the, the, the views of other people like color that or influence that so much. And Bill's kind of echoing that here. He says, "That character isn't you, but it's an addictive attraction if plaques, awards, and commendations start rolling in. Believing your own press clippings, good or bad, is self-defeating. You are allowing others, oftentimes uninformed others, to tell you who you are. The real damage occurs when you start to believe that future success will come your way automatically because of the great ability of this caricature that you have suddenly become.

• 52:18David Senra?

  That the hard work and implied intelligence you utilize initially are not as crucial as they once were. That is when you get lazy." So he calls this success disease. Okay. And his point is like he fell for it for a little bit, but what helped him avoid it was his standard of performance. Think about it as like an operating system. It's a series of habits that you just apply every day regardless of the outcome. Cause what happens is like, there's a lot of people that are really successful and they're like, okay, I'm gonna, I'm gonna slow back. I'm gonna, I'm gonna, you know, let my foot off the gas, uh, so to speak. I'm just gonna, you know, I'm fine now. I'm a winner already. I'm good. Um, one of my favorite sayings comes from Conor McGregor. He says, "If you sleep on a win, you'll wake up with a loss." And so.

• 53:04David Senra?

  Understand that this is prevalent human nature throughout millennia. So we have to, we need a solution for it. Bill's solution is like my standard of performance. I apply that standard every day regardless of external outcomes. So I won the Super Bowl. Okay, the next day I'm back at practice. I lost the game, next day I'm back at practice. Cause over time, over the length of your career, multi-decades, the score will take care of itself. Alright, so he says, "When you reach a large goal or finally get to the top, the distractions and new assumptions can be dizzying. First comes heightened confidence, followed quickly by overconfidence, arrogance and a sense that we've mastered it. We've figured it out. We're golden. But that gold can tarnish quickly. Mastery requires endless remastery.

• 53:48David Senra?

  In fact, I don't even believe there's ever true mastery. It's a process, not a destination." That goes back to what Jack Dorsey was telling us at the beginning. "That's what few winners realize and explain to some degree why repeating is so difficult. Having triumphed, winners come to believe that the process of mastery is concluded and that they are its proud new owners." It's not the case. Now he's gonna get into the part, the difference between ego and egotism. "Don't let anybody tell you that a big ego is a bad thing. Tiger Woods, Bill Gates, Warren Buffett have lots of ego. And so does anyone, anywhere, who is dedicated to taking his or her talent as far as it will go.

• 54:32David Senra?

  I've got a big ego too. Here's what a big ego is. Pride, self-confidence, self-esteem, self-assurance. Ego is a powerful and productive engine." This is a very important part. "Without a healthy ego, you've got a big problem. Egotism is something else entirely." And they're, they're next door neighbors. You gotta be very careful about this. "Egotism is an ego that's been inflated like a hot air balloon. Arrogance that results from your own perceived skill, power, or position. You've become increasingly self-important, self-centered, and selfish, just as a hot air balloon gets pumped with lots of hot air

• 55:15David Senra?

  until it turns into some big ponderous entity that's slow, vulnerable, and easily destroyed."

• 55:24David Senra?

  In evaluating people, I prize ego. It often translates into a fierce desire to do their best and an inner confidence that stands them in good stead when things get really tough. Psychologists suggest that there is a strong link between ego and competitiveness. All, this is a hell of a statement he's about to tell us right here. All the great performers I've ever coached had ego to spare. Alright, so you, essentially what I took from this section is you need a belief in yourself, just don't believe that you're perfect. There is a, I think arrogance, a lot of people confuse confidence with arrogance. To me arrogance is when you think you can stop learning from other people. Alright.

• 56:09David Senra?

  Okay, I want to read you this one section. This is, this is how a former player saw Bill. And something we've talked a lot about, a lot about, which is essentially the power of focus. That whatever you're going to focus on in your life is what you're going to improve. So you gotta, you have to protect that. You can't just give away your focus to a lot of people that are, don't want the best in your life. This could be, you know, TV shows, friends, loved ones, whatever the case is. Don't let people distract you if what they're, if what that distraction is is not the best for you. So he says, "I saw immediately they had a singular focus on being first class, on being the best, on being the greatest." But a lot of people have that, the desire to be the best. Here's the difference. Bill knew exactly how to do it.

• 56:54David Senra?

  The specifics, not just for his quarterback, but for a receptionist answering the phones. Not just for a backup left tackle, but for groundskeepers. Somehow he knew what it was and what constituted greatness for every single job in his organization. He knew what a spreadsheet looks like, what a marketing presentation should look like, and all the rest. Detailed concepts. And he hired the very best people to do the jobs that he needed them to do. And in most cases, he had a good sense to get out of the way and let them do their job. This is a very undervalued management skill. So this is an important point because this is coming from somebody that Bill managed.

• 57:37David Senra?

  And he's also talking about what like the superpower when you combine focus and consistency. Like what that will do to your life. Right from the start, he really got out there and coached, rolled up his sleeves and got totally into teaching what he was aiming for. And he did that every day of every year for a decade. So he's talking about here with what that player is talking about here is what Bill's gonna tell us now. That there's no mystery to mastery. How do you get good? There's no mystery to mastery, he says. Now, for the, in case you don't know, Jerry Rice played for Bill Walsh. Some people say he's the best receiver in history. So there's a story about Jerry Rice.

• 58:20David Senra?

  And it's interesting, there's also a story about Jerry Rice towards the end of his career. He says, if you're Jerry Rice, the greatest receiver in NFL history. You're practicing, uh, he says, and uh, if you're Jerry Rice, the greatest receiver in NFL history, and you're practicing a slant pattern at 6:00 AM over and over again with nobody within a mile of you. No football, no quarterback, nobody but Jerry working to improve to master his profession.

• 58:45David Senra?

  What's the, why, oh, excuse me, not why, not what? Why is the NFL's greatest ever receiver doing this? He's gonna get to the point. Jerry Rice understands the connection between preparation and performance. Between intelligently applied hard work and results. Between mediocrity and mastery of your job. And Jerry had the skill coupled with the will to do it. You never stop learning. So again, this whole section is about what's the, why do people feel there's a big mystery to mastery? Where, where Bill's telling us there's, there is no mystery. Um, you never stop learning, perfecting, refining, molding your skills. You never stop depending on the fundamentals, sustaining, maintaining and improving.

• 59:32David Senra?

  He says Joe Montana, which also he coached, and he says maybe one of the best quarterbacks of all time, did this as well. He says Jerry and Joe, maybe the best ever at their positions, at the last stages of their careers, were still working very hard on the fundamental things that high school kids won't do because it's too damn dull. It wasn't dull to Jerry and Joe because they under... the why, the why. We go over and over again, people have to understand why they're doing. It wasn't dull to Jerry and Joe because they understood the absolute and direct connection between intelligently directed hard work and achieving your potential. We all do, you do, I do. Everybody who's a serious player knows what it takes. The

• 1:00:17David Senra?

  difference is how much you're willing to give to get there. For us, there is no mystery to mastery. It applies to anyone, anywhere, who wants to get really good, who wants to master his or her profession. It applies to you.

• 1:00:36David Senra?

  Okay, so one thing, one pattern I see a lot when reading all these books is a lot of founders, they actually learn from seeing things done the wrong way. It's a very fast and beneficial way to learn. Bill's no difference. He says, "I hate to see bad football. I hate to see a team play bad football even for a single play. Bad football makes me ill in the same way a symphony conductor hates to hear an orchestra mangle Bach or Beethoven." There's a reverence for the art. For me, it can be described as a reverence for football as it could be played. And he describes like the highest form of football. He's like,

• 1:01:18David Senra?

  "It's an exquisite beauty of what can occur at its uppermost level. I think top performers in all professions have the same deep respect, even reverence, for their work." I could see, I go back to this over and over again. It's very obvious for me why a lot of founders and other people that are, that want to master their profession recommends, keep recommending this book, is because that, essentially, like, that's what he's trying to help us do. Because in, he mastered... His profession. Everybody works, right? To some degree. How many of us actually want to master our profession? It's a small group. It's a group of misfits, you know? But these are the most interesting people in the world. These are the people that are most widely admired.

• 1:02:02David Senra?

  And it's just like, why wouldn't you? You're spending half of your life, your conscious life, assuming you sleep eight hours a day. You're up for 16. You're gonna work eight of those, right? Some people work more, some people work less. That's probably average, who knows? But that means half the time that you're actually experiencing life and not in some dreamlike state, you're working. Why would you not want to master it? It's just, I think it's like, it's one of those things I have a hard time explaining because it seems so obvious. And for Bill, like, that's, I'm glad he combined all the lessons that he learned from trying to master his profession, you know, for five decades or whatever it was. Think about it, it took him, he wanted to be a head coach in the NFL. Took him 25 years just to get to that point. Then he's got all, so he's got a ton of life experiences, lessons up until that point.

• 1:02:46David Senra?

  And then he's got another, what is that, 10? I forgot how long he coached for. But, you know, let's say another decade plus after that, continuing learning. And then just somebody put it down in a book that you could pick up and read and, you know, 15, 10 hours, 15 hours, but that just seems like a good idea. Um, got another idea. Uh, pretty package will not sell a crappy product. Before they started winning games, he came up with all these marketing techniques to try to sell season tickets. And one was a pick a seat day. They wound up selling like, like 10 tickets the entire day. It was terrible. I think he bought three of those tickets. Anyways, he says, pick a seat day, and this, there's a lesson here. Pick a seat day was a total flop. What is a flop that taught me something very important?

• 1:03:30David Senra?

  A pretty package can't sell a poor product. Results in my profession were winning football games. And that was the ultimate promotional tool. I was trying to sell a bad product, a team that was the, that had, that was the worst franchise in the sports, that had lost 27 straight road games, and whose record at home wasn't much better. So he's like, this doesn't matter. Like, I can't put lipstick on a pig here. So he says, from that point on, I focused my energies exclusively on creating a quality product, a team that was worth spending money to see. When that was achieved, we also achieved a 10-year waiting list to buy 49ers season tickets.

• 1:04:14David Senra?

  And finally, another, the last piece of advice from Bill Walsh that I want to cover today. And it's something that happened to him. There's a lot of, you know, heart wrenching things in this book. And the advice is two words, avoid burnout. And he can say that because he burned out. He retired the day, right after he won a Super Bowl. He just couldn't take anymore. He says, and he gives an example in history of people, this is also happening to him, or to other people. He says, he's giving an example of another coach. He says, "Not long after he was finished, burnt out, as he described it to reporters, at a very emotional press conference when he announced he was quitting. Dick retired for 14 years before returning in triumph by leading the St. Louis Rams to victory in Super Bowl XXXIV.

• 1:04:57David Senra?

  Later, he told the story of having a sign on the wall, this is his previous job, when he was the Eagles head coach. It said, "The best way to kill time is to work it to death." He told people, "I worked time to death until it killed me." So he's telling us to avoid this. This is his main takeaway here, though. This is Bill talking now. Can you imagine how burned out you must have to be to wait 14 years to return to doing something you love? I don't have to imagine it. I never returned to the NFL as a head coach in spite of offers, where I was given a blank contract and told to fill it in with whatever I wanted and then sign it.

• 1:05:41David Senra?

  That's where I'm going to leave it. If you want the full story, buy the book using the link that's in the show notes on your podcast player or at founderspodcast.com. You'll be supporting yourself by getting a book that'll hopefully have ideas that help you master your profession, your craft, whatever that may be. You'll also be supporting the author and this podcast because it's an affiliate link and I get a small percentage of the sale, no additional charge to you. Thank you for listening. I just have one request. Please tell at least one friend about this podcast this week. And that's it. Thank you very much for listening. I will talk to you next week.