today we're in t-town tuscaloosa on campus at the university of alabama full disclosure i'm an alabama crimson tide fan i came by it honestly as my son attended alabama and as scripture says where your treasure is there your heart will be also however even if my son had not attended college here i would have become a fan anyway why well i'm a fan of best and every saturday every fall alabama reminds us of what best looks like in every generation there are extraordinary people with extraordinary talents michael jordan herschel walker paul mccartney they all have extraordinary gifts that we've all witnessed extraordinary people can do the things that the rest of us can't they were born with gifts that the rest of us can simply admire it's also true that in every generation there are ordinary people people just like you and me who become extraordinary they discover a process that when followed unlocks their full potential they do ordinary things in an extraordinary way you've ever watched tom brady a six round pick you've witnessed ordinary becoming extraordinary as much as we all admire those among us with extraordinary gifts i think we're all even more inspired by the ordinary among us who become extraordinary we're drawn to them because they give us an example of how we too can become extraordinary our guest today is indeed an ordinary person who discovered the process and codified it at the university of alabama the results on and off the field have been extraordinary he's the winningest active coach in college football he's coached his teams to 13 sec west championships and nine sec championships his teams have also won seven national championships a record his players he had more first-round draft picks than any other coach in history he's also coached two heisman trophy winners and his players have earned 1.2 billion and they have one of the highest graduation rates of any team in college football our guest today is of course the coach nick saban coach david welcome to personal and professional best good to be here appreciate you having me well we appreciate you taking the time to join us today i don't want to talk about football today good you talk about that all the time what i do want to talk about is what you're doing here which from my vantage point and many others transcends football you're bringing life change you know you're a coach of course but coach is about leadership and about influence and you're influencing life change for all the people that you're in association with whether it's the administration the coaches whether it's the players not the fans necessarily they're a little bit harder to control but what i have is an audience today of our associates at supreme and we also have partnerships in the real estate committee with 40 different partners he'll be watching and basically all of them want the same thing in life they want to build a championship at home and they want to build a championship in the workplace but most of them aren't accomplishing that and so today i'm hoping that we can take your process your playbook and share it with them because i don't think it's limited to football and winning championships in football so you ready to go to work sure let's do it okay let's start at the beginning bc um nick saban b4 coaching if you could share with us the story growing up in west virginia well i i think growing up in west virginia was sort of a great place to develop the kind of background that has helped me uh have relationships with all kinds of people because i grew up around all kinds of people you live in a coal mining town you've got every ethnic group um you know every kind of person that you're ever going to meet in the world sort of there you had a company store where they're obviously owned by the company and then you had a bunch of people who work for the company who kind of lived out of the company store so you kind of saw both sides of life and then starting at the young age of 11 i started working at my dad's service station which was at a crossroads so almost everybody that went to work every day stopped there whether they stopped to have a conversation and just chat or whether they needed something done so um and my dad was sort of a perfectionist he instilled the whole pride and performance type of um part of me that still is a part of me to be the best that you can be at whatever you choose to do and he actually instilled that every day in our work whether we washed a car and wasn't done exactly right or there was a streak in it we had to do it again and if we didn't treat the customers correctly we were always reprimanded for it so how you treated other people were was a very important part of what we did and then him being my coach in pop warner which he started i actually bought a school bus went and picked everybody up because these guys in these coal mining towns really couldn't participate because they couldn't get back and forth to practice and it was the same way as a coach everybody needed to work hard have perseverance be able to overcome adversity have pride in performance be the best you can be i mean those are all sort of the values that he instilled in us and in athletics but he found out soon enough that those things could carry over into anything he chose to do so in a nutshell i had great parents but where i grew up in a small community everybody knew everybody and everybody influenced everybody else because it seemed like everybody was together in trying to get you to do the right thing so if you stole an apple on 2nd street by the time i got to 7th street my grandmother would know what happened on 2nd street and so everybody was looking out for everybody and and that was a good thing um and when i left to go off to college i remember you know we used to hang out on the second street corner it was right across from the company store and just about everything that you could learn in life you could learn on the second street corner whether it was you know fighting good and bad right good and bad um so when we i remember to this day when we were riding out of town and we passed the second street corner you know my dad said i never want you to come back to this corner but i never want you not to be able to be on this corner so that was pretty compelling in terms of just how my dad viewed things i remember my dad never went to church but every monday morning the priest would come to his little office at the service station and to leaning over the cigarette machine asking him questions about things and uh i always kind of found that a little bit strange you know it's usually the other way around yeah so um but so i had a good childhood i had great coaches in high school i always played on really good teams um so it was a really positive experience growing up in a in an appalachian type place where nobody had a lot but everybody was very much together and how they did things it's a beautiful story your pops um i understand picked up the kids to take them to pop warner football yeah yeah tell us about that had this little orange bust because our our colors were orange and black and uh so he painted the bus horns and you know inside the whole part of the bus were these little things you know like it's nice to be important but it's more important to be nice i mean it was never things about necessarily playing football but there were always little these little things you know all around the bus that when you're sitting there riding the bus you would read some of these things and like i still remember some of them today so i guess they had some impact so um we weren't very good the first year because nobody knew much about football but after that we we never lost any games for a long time and went to high school i think we lost one game the whole time we were in high school so we had a lot of good teams but a lot of these guys would probably not have played if the opportunity wasn't created because transportation we hitchhiked everywhere and you get up in these hollows where these coal mines are and these coal mining towns and there's no only traffic when the ship changes so you can't catch a ride um so the fact that he bought the bus and picked everybody up sort of enhanced the participation which i think he had when i played there were three guys that i played with that probably would have never played sports at all played and made all-american at west virginia university when they went on to college so um and he was all about helping people you know kids would come in his service station with the worn out basketball he'd put him in a car and take him to johnny's sports shop and buy them a new basketball you know aba ball you know one of those red white and red ones so um he was and you know our knicks kids now you know people think it's about me it's really about him you know his legacy of helping young people trying to create opportunities for young people my mother always said if you get the opportunity it would be great if you sort of extend your dad's legacy which was no man stands as tall as when he stoops to help a child wow so that that's what that's where nick's going you were so blessed to have that transcendent leadership um pour into your life at that age and you know parents we all get so busy um but the lessons that he taught you the details of cleaning the car but that's on the one hand the discipline right the um and on the other hand there's the there's the unconditional love of him buying a bus and going and picking kids up so that they could participate uh pretty amazing stuff i've been blessed in a similar way my pops is the single source in my life that i look to um because i the lessons that he taught me that he poured in they never go away um and they're my his fingerprints are all over my organization just like right your dad says yours pretty good stuff so um let's talk about what goes on here um everyone hears the process and to me i've always thought well there's a success process for everything in life the best way to practice things in life the best way to do everything in life but tell us about the process define it for us so that we all understand it because i think people that are in the audience today that are attempting to build a business run a business a family talk about the process if you would for us well the process to me is just the definition of the things that you have to do to accomplish the goals that you have so obviously if you don't have any goals or aspirations or sense of purpose in your life then how do you define the process of what you have to do to accomplish that so that becomes the most important thing what are your goals what's your visions uh what do you want to accomplish what do you want to do and then define exactly what you have to do to do it and then the next thing is how do i have to edit my behavior to be able to do it you know kobe bryant was asked when he was here several years ago speaking to our team how did you drop 60 points when you're 40 years old in the 82nd game of the season your last game that you played coming off an achilles tendon injury and he said when i made a decision to play that season i had to work eight hours a day for 365 straight days so that i could get back in condition well enough to be able to play to the level that i expected to play and he said they don't put that part on espn but then he said that's how i had to edit my behavior as a basketball player because of the circumstance that i was in so it's not just understanding this is what we have to do to accomplish the goals it's also how do i have to edit my behavior to do it and then the next part which is probably the most difficult is do you have the discipline to execute it every day and this is where people struggle the most there's a lot of people that know what they want to do they have a sense of purpose right they even know what they have to do to do it but they can't execute it on a consistent basis i mean we're all guilty of we go on a diet we want to lose 10 pounds that's our goal slim fast tells us exactly what we can eat every day that's kind of the process but three days later we're eating pie and ice cream so we don't have the discipline and and i think people sometimes don't understand what discipline is you know discipline's really doing what you're supposed to do when you're supposed to do it the way it's supposed to get done do the right thing the right way the right time all the time those are great definitions of discipline but self-discipline we make choices and decisions every day that basically come down to two questions here's something i know i'm supposed to do that i really don't want to do can you make yourself do it and over here there's something you know you're not supposed to do but you want to do it can you keep yourself from it so we make hundreds of decisions and it starts as soon as we get up in the morning you know and what i always try to tell our players is this is a bridge that you have to cross if you're going to be successful and it's feeling versus choice you're going to choose to do the things you need to do to accomplish the goals that you have are you going to do what you feel like doing and how how many times do you hear i mean even my kids when they were going to school here i don't feel like studying i don't feel like going to class today well you want to graduate yeah i want to graduate but then you need to choose to study you need to choose to go to class so that that to me is very important in the mindset that you need to have to be able to have the self-discipline and understanding that these are the things that i have to do this is how i have to edit my behavior and then once you establish all that like i confront players all the time you told me this is what you wanted to accomplish how is this behavior right now helping you do that it may not have anything to do with football but um so you asked me what the process was that was kind of along with an answer but really it's it's about mindset it's about understanding it's about having a sense of purpose it's about understanding exactly what you have to do to accomplish the goals that you have and then having the the discipline to execute it every day you know over the years just following you and wanting to influence our folks in the best way that i possibly could we built this program personal professional best because if you ask an adult do you want to be your personal professional best everyone answers yes and if you ask them if they have a life plan to do it only three percent of people in america actually have goals in writing just because they have goals in writing they have to have the discipline to actually finish those things so we built this portal online where everyone's required to fill in goals in six areas of life um so that's kind of and it works like a navigation system so we called it best gps because there's where you are there's the goals where you want to get to in any particular area of life there's the process or the plan to get you there and then there's that final thing which is having a voice like yours in their life to make sure that what they've already said that they want they keep themselves disciplined or we apply discipline to make sure that they ultimately get the results yeah well you know there was a great analogy used we have speakers for our team all the time and we had a speaker come in once and he said first question he asked the team in the team room was you guys want to be number one where do you guys where you want to end up the season and everybody put up you know we want to be number one and he said you know what i've asked that question to every team that i talked to and nobody ever says they want to end up number four everybody wants to be number one of course all right then on this big screen you know he puts this tiger i mean like a ferocious looking tiger and he said everybody wants to be the beast but everybody doesn't want to do what the beast does i mean i thought that was a great analogy all right you want to be number one but you don't want to do the things you have to do to be sure so it was kind of interesting but it's really pretty much what you're talking about yeah and i think um you know god blesses us with certain capabilities and if we do all the things that we're talking about doing we get real close to what our best looks like when we don't that gap i think that gap is um that unfulfillment is unhappiness and it leads to a lot of negative consequences in people's lives they just they show up in relationships and they can't be their best because they're dragging that unfulfillment with them right so it's really important that people get the around people that have the right mindset because it's also a pattern you know when you get around people that are doing all the right things it's more likely that you're gonna that you're gonna follow them well most of the regrets that we have are not regrets about things that we did well we didn't do it's all about the things we didn't do and um that's that that's something that we all probably ought to be a little more conscious of yeah and so i check a box today because i did not want to regret not reaching out and coming here um so um thank you for taking the time again today so if someone's out thinking about building a business today you were building a business today um you know how do you kind of create the infrastructure for a championship organization what does that what does that look like what are the ingredients that go into it well i think first of all you got to establish a culture you know in your organization where first of all everybody's willing to work together you know be a team you know together everybody can always accomplish more if everybody works together how do you get people to work together i think first of all you got to have principles and values of the organization that everybody can respect and trust and buy into and uh when everybody does that then i think the people in the organization can respect and trust each other because they're not looking over their shoulder as if i'm doing something this guy's not doing it this person's not doing it so there's this resentment and you've probably heard me say before that you know mediocre people don't like high achievers and high achievers don't like mediocre people and if you let those two things coexist in your organization you're never going to have the kind of togetherness that you really you know want to have but when you clearly define what the principles and values are the standard and the expectation that you have for everybody in the organization and give people the opportunity to buy into that then i think you have a chance to establish a culture and then you want to be have everybody be very positive you know in the way they go about their work and how they influence each other and people need to learn to be responsible for their own self-determination right which has to be accountable to do their job and to do their job well and then you can define all these things over here whether it's work ethic perseverance ability to overcome adversity pride and performance whatever that you have to sort of buy into to be able to execute at that level so sort of creating that culture you know like we don't have any signs up in this building that says win the national championship we don't have any signs up that says win the sec championship we have a sign that says be a champion and it kind of defines what you have to do as an individual player on the team to be a champion if we have a team full of champions we'll win a championship so that's more the approach that we use um and the culture that we try to create and you know i always tell the story a couple years ago julio jones was out here our players we're not allowed to do seven on seven and all that with them in the summertime so they do it on their own and there's not any coaches out there so he was standing out there watching and you know some receiver dropped the ball custom kicked the ball you know kind of made a fool out of himself because he dropped the ball and julio called him over and said you know that's not how we do it here and i thought that was kind of julio hadn't played him for 10 years but yet he understood the culture right of how sure and the expectation of how we do things and how it was supposed to be done and as soon as he saw that that wasn't a part of what was going on he confronted a guy that's not how we do it here so um once you establish that there becomes an expectation for everyone in the organization to sort of live up to the example that was set in front of them which you know i think has been one of the reasons that we've been able to continue to have a successful organization i'm really really really happy that you're not in my business i much prefer you to stay at the university of alabama coaching alabama football will continue to do all the things you're doing and i'll stay at the mortgage bank because continue to take your playbook and export into my business yeah but it's it's the same and i'm sure you have a successful business because you're doing a lot of the same things i mean we have you know we own mercedes dealerships and 18 out of the last 19 opportunities something like that we've gotten the best of the best which is means you're in the top one or two percent of all dealers based on the performance and the culture that you create in your organization in business and it's no different yeah it's really no different you know if we answered the question the purpose of business in america any but organizat think at least i do that it's about profiting all of the people that are um constituents of the business the people that are my players and the people that we serve every day those customers and to your point about um championships you don't have those necessarily that's not your goal the outcome winds up becoming much better when your purpose isn't something to get something when you're actually giving it right and if you ask a fan they would say are we going to win a championship but to your point we're trying to develop champions in the organization that will sort of get us to the outcome yeah i try to tell people all the time you shouldn't focus on the outcome you need to focus on all the things you need to do to get to the outcome the outcome's a distraction i mean i don't care golf is like a metaphor of life you got every shot you're over here in a bad spot you're here in a good spot what about the next shot right and uh your ability to stay focused on the next shot no matter what it is is is really really important and you're going to get in the sand trap and you're going to get in the hazard and you're going to get all these negative things that they name these things traps but how are you getting out of them you know that's that's kind of what golf's all about and um if you look at those things as an opportunity to make a good shot rather than be mad and kicking and fussing that i got in the trap to start with you probably have a little better chance being successful it seems to me that all the things that come natural in life being complacent not wanting to do the workouts that you need to do not having the discipline the natural thing of wanting to make money as a purpose for your business um we have to we have to work intentionally against all of that because the best of us is about doing all of those other things yeah but that's the human condition the human condition is to survive it's not to be special it's not to win a championship it's not to have the best business or be the best that you can be i mean we're human beings so we're here to survive so surviving is not like being the best that you can be thriving it's doing what you have to do to get by sitting in your chair at night i lean back and eat tostitos and have a beer that that's i did what i needed to do to get by we pay all the bills we can do what we need to do i'm comfortable so the human condition is to be comfortable to do what you have to do to be comfortable and and we promote that in our society because we say if you sell your 10 cars this month you know and you do that for 10 months in a row you get to go to aruba for a weekend or whatever all right so we're promoting that right we're not saying sell 20 cars we're saying if you do what you're supposed to do for 10 months you get a reward for it instead of trying to figure out where the ceiling might be right what the possibility is for people um so we have uh two thirty foot signs on the walls in my facility um thank you uh complacency this is one of them is the enemy of best is what we have kind of on the top and on the bottom we have complaining is the arch enemy at best right because i've never been around a single person who is thriving in life that spends a lot of time complaining you were talking about the sand trap right so you're in the sand trap well now you have a chance to make a great shot right you could complain about being there or you could do something about it and we really appreciate your time today coming to be a part of our program thank you and i cannot say goodbye without saying roll tide thank you old times we're all tied ladies and gentlemen that's the process and we experienced it that is nick saban's playbook during our recent visit to t-town we experienced exactly how the tide rolls first we set a goal of doing the best interview we possibly could next we planned every detail of the interview with their team just like we were game planning together once we finalized the game plan we went and we executed it the staff that was responsible for hosting us they treated us better than we deserved to be treated and exactly how you would want to be treated the facilities were immaculate and they were inspiring as they depicted the process and the outcome of the process including the heisman trophies the legacies of draft picks and of course the championship rings you might expect that the alabama staff would be a little bit arrogant but instead the staff was filled with humility like they all knew that they too could get even better when our host assistant athletic director josh maxim informed ellis ponder the chief of football operations that we were there to interview coach saban ellis asked me a question what in the world are you doing here if i were you i'd be back in my hotel room in front of the mirror practicing for the interview you see coach saban expects everybody to do the work to become their best including anyone that would interview him the details were exact he showed up exactly on time and he had prepared he had read every question i intended to ask him in advance we then played the first half together and the best i could tell it went well not a single code saving scout aimed my way next month we'll continue with the second half of the interview and my hope and prayer is that we all choose to roll in life just like the tide all the way to a championship at home in the workplace everywhere with everyone we now have the playbook well most of the playbook tune in next month to get the rest of the greatest of all times playbook although i often end the program this way today it means more than ever your best my best our best is waiting meet you there you