An UNFORGETTABLE ESPY's Moment + 7 Leadership Keys WIP

Six months after that game, Jason's at the Espy Awards. He's up for the greatest sports moment of the year. And there's four finalists. And I kid you not, Vincent.

One of it his idol was the late Kobe Bryant. And who does Jason meet because he's one of the finalists for the same award? Kobe Bryant. Kobe had scored 81 points in a game for the Lakers that year.

So Jason meets his idol and beats him out for the Espie. Well, how does he do that? He doesn't just make two threes, he made a bunch of threes. In fact, the two things I'll never forget was about a minute ago, he's made four or five threes.

The place is just bedlam. And I get a tap on my shoulder. I'm sitting on the bench and I'm shocked. I look behind me, and it's Jason's mother, and she's bawling her eyes out, and she whispers in my ear, Coach, this is the best gift you could ever give of my son.

I don't know what you've done, Vincent, but I cried harder. We have a treat for you. We have someone coming here today whose focus is on building championship team culture. He's been blessed to be a part of the global inspirational story leading teams for over 30 years.

And if you stick around till about the halfway point, we're going to have those seven leadership keys that he practices in his workshops, in his talks, and everything in between. So, Coach Jim Johnson, welcome to the show. Thank you, Vincent. I'm looking forward to it.

It's great to see you again. I always try to make sure we shout out where people meet me, how we connect, right? Shout out to a fellow Rochester guy, Ben, up there. He's got an awesome networking event he does every month.

He's got an awesome podcast I was lucky enough to be on. I have a feeling you might have been over there too on that show. Yeah, I've been on Ben's show, and uh we've had Ben, so uh and Ben and I have become friends. So in fact, I redid a video for my speaking and actually Ben did it for me.

So I've known Ben for a while now. He is a rock star host, guest, and again, has a mastermind just like we do here at Coming Alive Podcast Production, where he brings people together, brought us together, and with that, I want to welcome everyone back to that entrepreneur show. My name is Vincent A. Lancey.

Want to thank you for making this a top 2.5% global show. All thank you to the amazing guests and the amazing listeners each and every week. We're brought to you by Coming Alive Podcast Production.

com. Head there for free resources or to book your free call to become a next podcast host or booked guest. And with that, Jim, you've done so much, all leadership focused, which I love, but we're gonna go back in time a little bit. What led you to become a founder and entrepreneur?

Well, it was really because of a nice act I did. I was a high school basketball coach and teacher for over three decades. I was a head coach for 30 years at four different high schools. The last two high schools were in my hometown of Greece, New York, which is a suburb of Rochester.

And interesting, and I was halfway through my last stop, which was at called Grease Athena High School. And I was gonna known Vincent as the coach that couldn't win the big one. We have winning seasons pretty regularly, and then we would lose in our postseason tournament. In fact, I took six teams to the semifinals and had some devastating loss, never made the finals.

So that was kind of my dream, but it changed dramatically because of a young man that came into our program. His name was Jason McElway and everybody calls him J Mac. And he tried out for our team three consecutive years, never made the team, but he served as our team manager, and I got so attached to the young man because of his loyalty to our program. I told him for his senior year, the gift was I was gonna give him a uniform for our final home game where he onto the seniors, and I was hoping to get him in the game.

And do you want to go through the game or do you want to go, okay? Yeah, so he's got me hooked already. I'm at the edge of my seat. You know, you gotta tease the listeners a little bit.

So, anyways, with about four minutes to go, I decided the time was right, and I turned and pointed to him. He got so excited, and he wrote nearly ran right on the court, he was pumped up. Well, he gets into the game and the place just erupts. In fact, a very touchy moment in that night for me was that when Jason walked on the floor for the first time, we had a good student body following.

What I didn't know, and what Jason didn't know, was one of our parents made these pictures of his face like placards and put them on paint sticks, and he gave them to the student body. And when Jason entered the court for the first time, they showed those. Well, Mr. Macho, me, I got so overwhelmed with emotion.

I don't know how you would have felt, but I sat down and tears started to flow down my face. I was just so humbled in how they greeted him. It's like one of those ESPN stories. Do you have this on video to send in to honor this special guy?

Yeah, we do have a video I can send to you. Uh ESPN did a five-minute video on it. But I was just gonna say, this is like something I've seen watching sports centers, the feel good stuff. He shot an air ball in his first shot and he missed his second shot, but then he made a three-pointer and the place erupted.

And I was like, oh my gosh, God must be a basketball fan. Now that he's scored, he's got a three-pointer, right? Well, he comes back, he makes another three. And I I'll finish the story in just a second.

But six months after that game, Jason's at the Espie Awards. He's up for the greatest sports moment of the year, and there's four finalists. And I kid you not, Vincent. One of it, his idol was the late Kobe Bryant.

And who does Jason meet because he's one of the finalists for the same award? Kobe Bryant. Kobe had scored 81 points in a game for the Lakers that year. So Jason meets his idol and beats him out for the Espie.

Well, how does he do that? He doesn't just make two threes, he made a bunch of threes. In fact, the two things I'll never forget was about a minute ago, he's made four or five threes. The place is just bedlam.

And I get a tap on my shoulder. I'm sitting on the bench and I'm shocked. I look behind me, and it's Jason's mother, and she's bawling her eyes out, and she whispers in my ear, Coach, this is the best gift you could ever give of my son. I don't know what you've done, Vincent, but I cried harder.

And then this is how the game ends. With about 10 seconds to go, our opponent, Spencer Porter. I want to give kudos to their coach, and their players ever good sports, but they score, and our player takes a bottle of bounds, and he normally throws door a point guard, but he throws it right to J Max. So J Max's dribbling down and the clock's ticking seven, six.

And I thought they were just gonna let him go in and make a short layup. No, he slows down, he pulls up like two feet behind the arc. I'm thinking, Jason, don't shoot from there, you're gonna ruin this moment. He launches this rainbow.

Swish. I look over it, it's like the movie Rudy Vincent. The whole crowd runs on the floor. Our players put him up on their shoulders, he's got the game ball over his head, and I'm thinking, oh my gosh, this is crazy.

But the wild thing is at that point I had no idea how many points he scored. And our public address announcer comes on and says, the leading scorer for Greece Athena tonight, J Mac, with 20 points, including six three-pointers. With actually, you know, they talk about uh, you know, as an entrepreneur, you want to build a community. Well, I was not a promoter, and I felt like I did it for all the right reasons.

We had no media there. And but what happened was the next day, Jason speech pathologist, which I didn't know very well, he was at the game. He called on our local TV stations. And Vincent, within three days, it blew up all over the world.

Phones were ringing off the hook. And the ironic thing is Jason had to go back and be our team manager because he had to play in six regular season games. And we, as I mentioned, we had never won our championship. We ended up going back and winning the championship for the first time.

So it was quite a thrill and just a man. And the closing thing is Jason actually volunteered for my last nine years in coaching, and we ended up winning six championships. So he was definitely my good luck charm. So that's the story.

I'll close with just saying, as far as how did I get into entrepreneur? Well, I became a part-time entrepreneur because I became a professional speaker. I developed one speech called Dreams Really Do Come True, and I was speaking and traveling. I also became an author.

I wrote a book about it called The Coach and a Miracle. And I had had some trials and tribulations. And in 2016, I retired from teaching and coaching to speak full-time. And now I've been an entrepreneur for the last decade.

And it's quite an endeavor. It's uh a lot of good and some real challenges as well. Wow. Thank you for sharing that amazing story with us, everyone.

We have Jim Johnson with us. Stick around to the end of the show. We'll tell you how to get in touch with him. But please share this story, this episode, with someone who can really benefit from hearing that uplifting story.

And now you had that steady paycheck, right? You're coaching, you're teaching, great. And while you had success speaking, you learned nothing's guaranteed. That direct deposit email no longer comes up on Fridays.

What were some of the other differences slash challenges that at first were obstacles? Maybe you found ways to, because I know you're a mindset guy, transition those into some strengths. I I think the biggest challenge that you forget is that, you know, in is that you have to not only be good in whatever your craft, your service. In my case, I'm a service because I'm doing speaking for various organizations around the country.

But the other thing that I didn't understand, Vincent, and you know, for your listeners, as an entrepreneur, you not only got to be good at whatever your service or your or whatever widget you're gonna make, but you've got to learn how to be a good business person. And that part I had really struggled with because I had no clue. So one of the things I like to give advice to people is uh is you know, I became a student of leadership. Now I had to become a student of entrepreneurship.

How do I run a business? How do I, you know, build a team? I built teams obviously with my with my coaching staff and my players, but now this is a little bit different. You know, there's a lot of similarities.

Leadership, there's a lot of similarities whether you're leading a basketball team or leading a business, but there are certainly some things that I had to learn. And it's in the beginning, having to learn, like you said, everything. There's no blueprint or textbook and entrepreneurship. I say that a lot, but you have to at least try to do marketing, social media, accounting, finance, advertising, the normal business, right?

The work you're actually doing. You have working in the business and then working on the business. Eventually, you want to start to delegate and build a team of people who believe in you. He mentioned we're talking behind the scenes.

He's got a team here to help with some promotion for the show. But part of that is hiring the right team. I've unfortunately had to let go a few people in my time here. I'm not an incredibly experienced business owner.

We're going on since 2015. But hiring the wrong people is so many steps back, right? You spend time and energy onboarding these people to hopefully have nothing in the back end, but not everything's perfect. Do you have any tips maybe that you found from working with all these people and organizations how to attract the right talent and not just any talent because it may be convenient and right here, right now in front of you?

Yeah, it's a great question because I think the first thing is you gotta be the model of so that we you people are gonna follow your lead. So if you say one thing and do another, you're gonna break trust. And it's so important as you're building a team that you have alignment so you can build trust. Fake.

I challenge leaders often in my leadership presentation and say, how many believe it's important to have trust with your team, with your customers? And everybody's 100%. Yeah, any place they go. But then I challenge them.

I said, well, if trust is so important, I do have an intentional trust plan. And we had a three-point plan that I did with my coaching staff and my players, and that's something that I've shifted now when I'm trying to hire people. And when, you know, the other advice I think is that you got to really sell your vision. And people have got to be wanting to buy into what you're selling.

And so the people that, you know, I hire, I just have part-time staff, I don't have any full-time staff. They've really bought into the vision that they want to try to make an impact. And one of the things that I learned as a leader is I think you got to have clarity of who you are, the famous, you know, Simon Sinek Y. And so I learned that a long time ago when I read The Seven Habits of Highly Effective People, when Dr.

Covey talked about do you have a personal mission statement? And when I heard about that, Vincent, first of all, I had no idea what a personal mission statement was, but I thought, wow, that's something. And so that's one of the things I talk to people in some of my keynotes and my workout workshops, is getting clarity of who you are, and I give them some ideas on how they can create and develop a personal mission statement. And just for your audience, my mission statement is to be an outstanding role model that makes a positive difference in the world by helping others make their dreams come true.

And so the other thing I really encourage people is that the mission has got to be bigger than you, both, you know, your entrepreneur as a person, but also as the business. The business can't be just about making money, although that is important. If you don't make money, you don't survive. But at the same time, the what the study and I've done is that businesses that last for a long time have a bigger purpose than just making money.

Yeah, and I learned firsthand that when I was chasing sales, I wasn't getting sales. When I was chasing relationships and learning from people and having conversations about not just how they can help me, but more how can I help them? How can we become a long-standing trusted helper? Hey, Jim, I'm out right now.

This sounds like a great place for you to come in and speak. Or hey, Ben, someone wanted a podcast. I heard about like if you have these relationships, right? You check in from time to time through opportunities like a podcast.

It's amazing, everyone. This is that entrepreneur show. Please share this episode with someone who can help because now it is time for what I teased earlier. Jim here, we have Jim Johnson here.

He has seven leadership keys he provides in his coaching, his talks. Now, I'm not gonna ask for the whole kit and caboodle, but let's scratch the surface with these seven, and then we'll lead into, of course, how to get in touch with you. Sure, absolutely. So the first thing I talk about is having clarifying your mission.

Okay, so that and we talked a little bit about that. I think you have clarity about your own mission, and then you got to have a team mission. For our, for example, in our basketball program, our team mission was to develop winners on and off the court. And as a leader, you gotta be the CRO, the chief reminding officer.

You've got to live the mission and share the missing consistently. I talked about building trust. That's one of my other keys. Another one is effective communication, which, you know, you have a podcast.

It's a really powerful way to communicate. But leaders, something that I really challenge leaders is to be a more effective communicator. And the first thing they think about is, okay, I got to be a better public presenter, which is important. I think you know, be able to present to your team or in public is an important thing, and you should learn and study that craft.

But the thing that we forget so much, and I became so much better at this the second half of my coaching career, is you've got to be the CQA, the chief question ask. And so that you got to be willing to ask more questions and listen and get to know your people. You mentioned a really powerful business thing is, and that's something is you got to be a giver first and you build relationships. In fact, Vincent, I was talking to a group of administrators last year in Kansas, and you know, in education, you hear the three R's, reading, arithmetic, and writing.

And I kidded them. I said, no, the three Rs are relationships, relationships, relationships. And you're so correct that, you know, as a business person, you got to be constantly finding ways to serve others, and it starts with you building a positive relationship with them. I wish I knew it earlier, Jim, to be honest with you.

I mean, that's not something, you know, you're taught XYZ, this, that, this. But it's all, of course, okay, who do you want to give your money? Who are you gonna give business to? When you're not selling something that's five, ten dollars, like of course I got books, like that's great.

That's the entry level to the ladder. But when you're having coaching practices, it's a pretty penny. So who are you gonna choose? I mean, I've closed several deals off LinkedIn DMs that nurtured into something, but the majority come from relationships.

So please, Jim, continue. Yeah, so one thing that I think you gotta be intentional. Like I talked about having a trust, intentional trust plan. So, like little tips that I do now is uh, and this is another thing, I was very poor early in my business where I would go speak someplace and I was grateful for the opportunity, but then I didn't stay in touch with those people.

Now I'm very cognizant that I have to keep that relationship going. For example, something I I did started three years ago, I had an idea, and I think it's been very powerful. The person told me, hey, why don't you start sending out personal videos? Because videos are big, but how often do you get a personal video?

So, on average, for the last three years, I've probably averaged between three and five personal videos. And it could be a video on just a check-in, it could be a happy birthday video, it could be uh, you know, a congratulations video, but just think about how you can stay connected in a positive way, and then finding other ways that you can stay connected where you maybe even recommend a book to somebody or a podcast, or you know, I write a weekly blog and a monthly newsletter, so I might share those with people.

You know, you have a great podcast, so that's a way you could share, you know, a podcast. I have a podcast as well. You know, so just different ways that you can add value to people, you know, and you said it so well is that you gotta be thinking of what how you can serve first. And I think it's important.

Again, I'm not saying I'm perfect, right? I'm trying to be, you know, very honest here because that's what life's all about. No need to lie about it. I focused not on the wrong things, but in the wrong direction.

Now my newsletters, he's on it now. Today's just went out. Every newsletter has a mental health tip, a podcasting production tip, and a community spotlight, right? Those are three things that have nothing to do with anything for me.

Of course, I update on what's going on because I love the newsletter. And before we let him go, we're gonna get the entrepreneur forum. But while we're on this track, I've never been in love with social media. Of course, now, digital age, you need to have it, you do.

But I'm such a bigger fan of the newsletter because it's people who actually are in your life. They care about what you're doing, that they're happy to use the relationship you have to maybe refer you to something, right? Where, of course, being on social media is important, but use the people in your network to build your relationships, right? They're in your life for a reason.

Life gets busy, go, go, go. I love the newsletter because I'm able to indirectly keep in touch with so many people who I don't really get to see because life's fast, nothing personal. We all got stuff going on. But now, Jim, the question that has survived since 2019, if you can choose any entrepreneur, dead or alive, to pick their brain, who's at the top of your list?

Well, I'm gonna go with a personal growth guy. He's passed away. But there were two people that when I got really into leadership with coaching basketball, was the one was the late John Wooden, and I started to study a lot of things about him. But then the other guy was the late Jim Rohn, and Jim Rohn was Tony Robbins' first mentor.

And I never got a chance to meet either John Wooden or Jim Rohn. But boy, would I love to have a sit down with them and take them out for a meal and just ask them different questions because uh they both, you know, they had struggles. I'll start with John Wooden. People don't realize John Wooden was a high school teacher and coach for 11 years and didn't win a national championship at UCLA until his 16th year.

In this day and age, you know, you talk about fast, he probably would have never been around. But yet he won 10 in the last 12 years. Jim Rohn had a lot of struggles, even though he was a dynamic speaker. He was not a very good business person, as I've learned.

But then, you know, he he started to align himself with the right people, and then his business really flourished. So he really learned a lot, but those would be the two that jump right out to me. Oh man. Well, thank you for sharing that, and everyone.

We had a lights out show today. Please remember to share this with someone who would be a good connection for Jim. Please jot down your favorite thoughts, message him, tell them how much you love him. Jim, where can we find you online?

Yeah, so best way is my uh website, CoachJimJohnson.com. That way I wouldn't forget it. And on that, we do have a you can sign up for a free newsletter monthly, a free blog.

And then, you know, we have a lot of different things. We have videos and stuff and a lot of different content and all our information. If I can ever support you with one of my presentations or workshops, I'm here for you. Well, thank you for sharing that, everyone.

This is Coach Jim Johnson joining that entrepreneur show. Thank you for tuning in to keep this a top 2.5% global show. Share it with someone, subscribe, leave us a review, everything in between.

We appreciate your support so much and would love to share your support. My name is Vincent A. Lancy, and you can reach me at 813-445-3295. And the team is at podcasts by Lancy at gmail.

com. We are signing off originally two New Yorkers. Here we go, having fun, Jim. Thank you so much.

Thank you, Vincent. It was a pleasure. Absolutely.