Winning Vs. Personal Development

An interesting analogy from the top soccer players in the world.

On today’s episode Russell talks about the way soccer works everywhere in the world with the exception of America, and how it relates to personal development within business. Here are some of the awesome tidbits to listen for in this episode:

Why soccer in America is more focused on winning, while other countries are focused on the development of individual players. How personal development in soccer relates to the personal development of people in your team at your company. And why it’s important to help your team develop instead of focusing solely on making money.

So listen here to find out how business and soccer relate, and how personal development helps both of them in the long run.

---Transcript---

Hey everybody, this is Russell Brunson. Welcome back to the Marketing Secrets podcast. I hope you guys are having an amazing day. I had a fascinating conversation with somebody who is at the top of their game yesterday, and I got a couple of insights from it that were so interesting, that I want to share with you guys here today. So with that said, let’s queue up the theme song, when we get back I’m going to share with you guys some really cool insights about developing your team and developing yourself.

Alright you guys welcome back. Sunday, most of you know at this point that I am a Mormon, we call ourselves members of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints. And at my church I have a calling where I get to interview people and check in with them. So on Sunday after church I had interviews with a bunch of different people. So I’m interviewing them all and it was really fun because you get to know a bunch of people who go to church with us, kind of at a different level.

The last interview I had was with this guy, and we’re about to start the interview and we start talking about soccer, he’s a soccer coach. He’s a soccer coach here at the high school, but he also runs the soccer organization here in Idaho, and he’s also one of the main guys at the national level.  And we started talking about what he’s doing, every weekend he’s flying to New York, flying to different places for soccer. And on top of that he’s a doctor, so he’s also doing his business and doing his soccer stuff because he’s super passionate about it.

Anyway, but it was really fascinating, we were talking about soccer and wrestling and just different things about different sports. And he started telling me what he’s trying to do right now is to adopt a lot of what other countries do in soccer here in America. And it was interesting, he told me about, and I didn’t know this, but he talked about in other countries outside of America the way the soccer program works, which by the way, he said soccer is the number one biggest sport in the world. I didn’t know that either. So there you go, another interesting fact for you guys today.

But what he said that was interesting, he said that in other countries, let’s say you are a little league coach, I don’t know what they call them in soccer, but you’re a coach of a kids team, and you get a team and find someone who’s talented, and if you are the person that discovers that person, the way the organization structures, if you find the person you help develop them at a certain level, and then you move them up to the next level. Say, ‘Hey, this guy’s a rock star.” And you put him on the next higher level team. And if that person is really good there then they get up to the next level, and the next level, all the way to professionals. And then eventually they become professionals, and then they go from team to team and they get sold along the way.

Kind of like basketball, if you’re traded in the NBA from the Chicago Bulls to the Utah Jazz, you get paid whatever, $20 million to be transferred over to this team, and you have a new player contract. But he said what happens in soccer that’s interesting, he said that, and he was telling me the name of some soccer player that I probably should know, but I’d never heard the person’s name before. He’s like, “recently he got traded from this team to this team, and the cost to trade him was $70 million.”

I was like, “Oh my gosh, that’s crazy.” He said, “but what’s interesting, the way it’s structured in soccer is that $70 million contract that moved him over, the player will get whatever his percentage is, like 20% right, but then all the rest of it goes back to the people in his career that brought him up.” So the person at the college level and then the high school level, junior high, all the way down to the peewee levels. He said that if you were the peewee coach that found him and developed him initially, when you got him to the next level, you had a contract with him saying, “I get 5% of his future earnings, because I was the one who found him.”

So he was talking about the people who found this guy 20 years ago, who were his first coaches, when they got the $70 million contract, 5% of that went back to his original coach, to his club team or whatever. And I was like, “Oh my gosh.” And he’s like, “that’s how soccer works in Europe and these other countries, but not here in America. In America there’s none of that happening. I’m trying to develop that here because what happens is they treat the game differently over there because of how they’re rewarded.”

He said, “It’s interesting, in America, what they do is take the kids and their whole goal here is to get the teams to win.” So when you start soccer it’s like, “okay, you’re the big kid, you’re going to be the goalie. You’re the fastest, you’re going to be forward. You’re this…” and whatever, they put people in these spots. And this is like when they’re 8 years old. And they start playing and it’s like, ‘Okay, we’re going to make you the best in the world in this spot because you’re the fastest kid.”

So they do that and at first they start winning because they got the best kids in the best spots and they start beating all these other kids. Then what happens is they’re 8 year olds, 9, 10, 12, 15, and by the time they’re 18 years old, what’s interesting is that the kid who was the fastest as an 8 year old, isn’t necessarily the fastest as an 18 year old. But they’ve been training in that one spot for the last however many years, and they get the bigger levels and they start losing, which is why, I guess, apparently America doesn’t do as good at the national levels. I think they’re doing a lot better now, but they haven’t been as competitive because they train all their kids to win, and because of that they’re not developing them as athletes, all around athletes as much.

Then he said, “If you look at what happens over in Europe and these other countries, because of the way they’re financially rewarded, they look at the whole game differently. They bring these players in and they don’t care about winning at first. The only thing they care about is player development. How do we make this player better? If we can make this player better, then it’s more likely they’re going to go on to the next level, and different levels, and we’ll get paid somewhere in the future.”

So he said that they bring people in and they don’t say, ‘because you’re the fastest you’re the forward.” They say, “We need to develop these players so you’re going to play forward and you’re going to play goalie, and you’re going to play this and this.” And they move people around and focus a lot on character development, making that person better and better and better and better.

And then what happens is then all these rock stars start rising to the top, and they’re all being developed because all the coaches are focusing on the personal development of the player, that makes them amazing. And by the time they get to these higher levels, everyone who’s made it through those levels, who have developed so far, they’re amazing, they can play anywhere, and they’re just better athletes, better soccer players, and t hat’s how these guys win these world championships and titles and all that kind of stuff.

And I thought that was so fascinating. I told him, I said, “Oh my gosh, there’s such a cool life lesson there.’ How many times do we focus on winning? In business, I gotta make a million dollars. I gotta do this, I gotta do this. You know, focusing on winning, which is the short term win typically, as opposed to development.

So what that means for you guys, initially it’s your own personal development right. A lot of times people are striving so hard to make a million bucks or hit two comma club, or whatever the thing is to win, they don’t focus on what’s wrong with them. “How do I develop myself personally?” I’ve been in this business now 15 years and if I could tell you the amount of people that I’ve known who have come in this world, made a crap ton of money, and then lost it all because they never developed themselves, you wouldn’t even believe it.

So that’s kind of the first phase, but then those who focus on personal development, that’s why one of the really interesting and fascinating things about network marketing industry is that they’re so heavily focused on personal development, which is why so many great leaders come out of that profession because they focus so much on personal development.

I think about me, when I was getting started, I struggled in business and then I started going to Tony Robbins events and stuff. As I developed myself as a person better, as I started reading more books and started studying, started learning stuff, then my business grew as a byproduct, because I became a better person.

So that’s kind of the first phase, and the second phase is now you start having your teams and your people. And I think this is a mistake that unknowingly I made a lot in the last decade, I brought people in on these teams who were good, and I said, “You’re good at this, you’re good at this.’ And put people in and then I just assumed they were going to be amazing. And I didn’t focus on their personal development. I focused a lot more on the personal development, honestly, of you guys, my customers. Which is why I think we’ve been super successful, but I haven’t spent nearly enough time and attention focused on the personal development of my team, which is something I’m rectifying and changing now.

You know, I’m now sending a lot of my internal team to different events to learn how to become better at what we’re doing. We’re sending books to our people, doing more personal development. We’re bringing in a coach specifically to just work with our team and our leaders and people like that. So I’m trying to do more of that inside of our business.

Anyway, I thought it was just fascinating to look at this lesson for soccer, and how the best in the world are doing this thing, then looking at how we apply that to business. It’s like, man, I need to work not just on my business so I can go win and make money, but how do I focus on my own personal development, and then the development of my team. And when you start shifting the focus to that, all the stuff you’re trying to do will come. Again, over apparently in European countries, as kids they don’t care if they win or lose, that’s not the focus, and because of that by the time they’re at the top levels, they win.

It’s almost the same thing here. Stop focusing so much on like money, money, money, money, and focus on how do I develop myself? I’ve heard Stephen Larsen say so many times that Business is the best personal development course of all time. You get smacked in the face and you learn so much about yourself and your abilities by being part of it. It’s fascinating.

Alright, that’s what I got for you guys today. So hopefully that gives you some thoughts and ideas for yourself and for you team, something I’m going to be focusing a lot more with my team, and hopefully that will benefit you guys as well. So thanks again you guys, and I will talk to you all again soon. Bye everybody.