Today we get to hear from one of my coaching mentors, Bruce Brown of Proactive Coaching. I have had a few coaching mentors in my life. Like all coaches, I have had long-distance mentors who I have followed and learned from, like Coach K at Duke University. But as far as in-person coaching mentors, while I have coached with many great coaches, learned a ton from many of them, and feel they contributed greatly to who I am as a coach, I have only had a few people who I consider as actual coaching mentors of mine. One of them is Bruce Brown.
Bruce became a mentor for me in the second half of my career after I met him in 2002. While I could write so much about Bruce to explain what has made him such a great mentor to me, space here prevents me from doing so. Suffice it to say that I learned so many new and different ways to deal with kids, parents, fellow coaches, building teams, creating and living by Core Covenants, and so much more from Bruce. I only wish I had met him at the beginning of my career, so I could have implemented the things I learned from him earlier.
In today's episode, you will get a glimpse as to why he has had such a big impact on me. Bruce discusses a quote that he heard very early in his coaching career from a high school football coach in Washington named Rich Rowe. In many ways, it set a tone for Bruce in his coaching and then in his life. The quote is "What you have, give. What you save, you lose forever." I love this quote for a variety of reasons, and you will hear some great ideas that Bruce shares with us, plus a GREAT story about the first time Bruce met Coach John Wooden when Bruce was early in his coaching career.
This quote also fits right in with the servant-leader types of quotes we have had in some of our recent episodes. In fact, it is very close to the quote by Albert Pine that Kathryn Geouge talked about in episode 37, "What we do for ourselves dies with us. What we do for others and the world remains and is immortal." I love how many of the quotes we have discussed in our show so far have great connections and can help illustrate and reinforce the other ones.
If you would like to connect with Bruce, he can be reached at bruce@proactivecoaching.info.
To find out all the great things that Proactive Coaching has to offer, check out their website at www.proactivecoaching.info.
You should also check out their Facebook page where over 850,000 people have "Liked" the page and get two or three short nuggets of inspiration everyday - www.facebook.com/proactivecoach.
Twitter - @Proactivecoach
For more information to help you on your road to becoming your best, check us out at SlamDunkSuccess.com or email me at scott@slamdunksuccess.com.
As always, our background music is "Dance in the Sun" by Krisztian Vass.