Latest / The Gill Athletics Track and Field Connections Podcast / BONUS: URAVGCOACH podcast interviews Mike Cunningham

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BONUS: URAVGCOACH podcast interviews Mike Cunningham · The Gill Athletics Track and Field Connections Podcast

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  It's bonus time today we present to you Anthony Woods, a coach
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  here in the great state of Illinois and his new podcast
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  called your average coach podcast.
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  You are a VG coach podcast, Your average coach podcast.
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  Anthony is on on a mission to interview coaches from around
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  the country, really focusing on becoming the best Sprint coach
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  in the whole state of Illinois. His first episode was the great
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  Tony Holler. Love that that's who he chose
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  1st and then he went he went catfishing.
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  He went down here to me. This is actually the
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  rebroadcast, rebroadcast of his interview with me, Mike
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  Cunningham. He did an excellent job, really
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  great interviewer and had me sharing some stories.
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  I haven't haven't told anybody out loud.
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  So go check out his podcast, Your Average Coach Podcast right
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  here on your favorite podcast app and hope it brings you tons
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  of value. Soundtrack all right now I'm
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  nervous now don't be nervous, don't be nervous.
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  All right, I'm Anthony Woods. This is the your average coach
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  podcast. I have right here Mike
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  Cunningham from GAIL athletics. Again, we had our little pre
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  interview conversation and I think we are aligned and we're
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  going to have a great show for you guys today.
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  So I'm not sure how Mike got involved in podcasting, so I'm
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  going to start asking him a few questions on how he got started,
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  asked a little bit about his background, and then hopefully
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  give you guys some tools to maybe one day if you guys decide
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  that you want to make a podcast too, maybe you'll have the tools
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  to start yours as well. All right, so Mike, I'll have
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  you introduce yourself. Yeah, absolutely Will.
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  But before I do that, Anthony, I just want to say, first of all,
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  thank you for inviting me onto your show.
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  But maybe more importantly, is taking the courage, the leap of
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  faith to start a podcast. You know, I think of podcast not
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  any different than any other social media platforms.
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  So Twitter, Instagram, TikTok, etcetera.
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  If if you were to ask someone last year, hey, you know, maybe
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  your best friend, you're like, hey, should I, should I start a
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  Twitter account? No one would say no, right?
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  Like, sure, whatever. Why are you even asking?
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  Like just do it right? But for podcast, I get that a
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  lot of like, hey, should I start a podcast like, well, yeah, of
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  course you should. Why?
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  Why shouldn't you? Like if, if it's so bad, no
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  one's going to listen to it, So no one will know anyway.
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  You know, much like your tweets, by the way, if they're bad
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  tweets, no one's going to know about it, right?
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  So I think of a podcast as social media adjacent to it.
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  And that's kind of how I attack it when I create ours and our
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  different themes and things like that.
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  So I'm just so happy for you because I think we need more
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  media in our sport and any media in our sport that focuses on
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  coaches. Well, this guy's a big fan,
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  trust me. So I listened to your first
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  episode with the great Tony Holler Feed the cats.
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  Man, you did a great job and hopefully not, not hopefully you
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  will. You're going to do a great job
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  here today. And you know, when we look back
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  at episode 101 day, you're going to think of just how funny it is
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  that you're nervous. Big deal, no nerves at all, No
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  nerves at all. So again, thank you so much,
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  Anthony. I do appreciate that.
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  So for me, kind of 30,000 foot level.
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  I was a college track coach for 10 years.
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  My last place was at Mississippi State, so I've made it to the
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  SEC. I'm from Alabama originally, so
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  that was kind of a goal for me was to get to the to the SEC.
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  I'm a big SEC Homer, so I think they can do no wrong and they
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  should win it all, right. The SEC tournament is basically
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  the national championship in my mind.
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  So so I did that for 10 years. Some people know this.
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  I actually quit coaching, moved to Las Vegas and became a
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  professional poker player. So I did that for a little bit.
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  That was not as fun as I thought it was going to be.
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  To be real. Honestly, I thought it'd be like
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  the funnest career ever. It's not as fun, not not as fun.
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  Do not recommend it to anybody, no matter how good you are, how
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  good you think you are. And then thought, I want to get
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  back into coaching. Knew a lot of Gill people cuz
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  that's who I bought my track equipment from.
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  They were hiring. And man, let me tell you, best
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  decision of my life. That was almost 19 years ago,
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  actually in August. Yeah, I know.
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  I don't look that old, Anthony. I get it.
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  No, you don't. Got the job here and 19 years
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  has gone by, I've met my wife, have two beautiful children here
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  in the Champaign County area. And I have been able to grown in
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  responsibility and trust within this company to where I get to
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  do a lot of really, really cool things with the big facilities
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  and NCAA championships and social media and podcast.
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  And that's kind of where I sit today in 2025.
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  That's awesome. So I guess let's start with the
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  coaching aspect then, right? Ten years in the SEC,
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  Mississippi State, you're from Alabama, so you're familiar with
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  the area. How did you get to that point?
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  How did you get to Mississippi State?
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  Like how do how do we get there? Yeah, we could do a whole
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  podcast just on that. So I'm going to do the again,
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  the 30,000 foot level. So I ran track and played
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  football in high school and I was pretty good in football.
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  I started my last two years. I was really not very good at
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  all in in track. We had a I've said this many
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  times. So this is not offense at all.
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  I've actually not seen him to find out if it's not offensive,
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  but Dennis Anderson was my track coach loving to death, was a
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  shot putter and discus thrower at Troy State University, which
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  ended up becoming my alma mater by the way.
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  But he knew nothing about track, about running, I should say.
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  So literally every day, and I'm not talking this is 4 years of
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  track and field here, Anthony, you're going to die laughing
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  here every day, every single day.
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  Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, Friday, we would do
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  our little 2 laps of warm up. We would do our little static
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  stretching. Then we would run the track meet
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  and be done for the day. So exactly how you run a track
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  meet today? Yeah.
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  So we would, the first event, we'd do the 4 by 8 was the first
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  event for us in Alabama. So the four of us, I was on that
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  team, We'd run the 4 by 8. The sprinters would go down to
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  the 100m start line or maybe the four by one.
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  I can't remember what was next. So we'd run the 4 by 8.
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  They'd all watch us. We'd do the 4 by 8 and then the
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  100m guys would do their hundred.
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  And then maybe the 400 was next and the 400 would go.
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  And then I don't remember the order.
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  But you know, I literally ran my four or five events every day.
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  And if you were 100m guy, you did the hundred 204 by one.
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  That was it that our our sprinters didn't run the 4 by 4.
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  And that's what we did every. I was on the 4 by 4, so I was on
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  the 4 by 8. So I started my practice of the
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  four by 8, and I ended every practice with a four by 4:00
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  every single day. Every single day.
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  OK. And.
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  And then I started getting a little bit smarter my junior
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  year and I, you know, I started looking those sprinters and I
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  was like, they don't run nearly as much as I do.
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  I need to, I need to figure out I'm not fast.
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  So I don't know how that's going to work, but I need to figure
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  out. No one wanted to hurdle.
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  And so I was like, Oh, I can, I can figure this out.
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  So I was like, Hey, coach, can I try out for the hurdles?
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  Coaches are sure go see coach Pascal after practice.
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  He'll he'll try you out. So now after practice, so I did
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  the 4 by 8, the 8 the mile, probably the two mile and the
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  four by four. And then went to go try out for
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  hurdles. Yeah.
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  Yeah. So he puts five hurdles up at
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  39, puts them at their spacing. But, you know, in today's world,
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  you know, I think, you know, I'm like, Oh my God, why would they
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  ever do that to me? But they did.
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  And, you know, ran and jumped and literally jumped.
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  You know, you know, bad hurdlers take 5 steps.
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  I probably took 10 in between each hurdle, jumped, did five,
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  got done, looked at coach, had my hands on when he's looked up
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  at coach. And he was like, not bad, let's
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  try that again. So I go back, jump, jump, jump,
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  right, get done, you know, and all, all, all kids, they won't
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  say this out loud, but all kids want approval from adults,
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  parents, coaches. So I just wanted his approval.
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  I got, you know, how was that coach?
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  He's like, that's good, that's good.
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  One more time. Now we all know what happens
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  when you say one more time, right?
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  So I run and jump, run and jump. And I didn't, I didn't jump high
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  enough and I crashed a burn. We had an old recycled tire
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  track. So I just, you know, track rash
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  all over, but I immediately hop up coach, how was that?
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  And he's like, you know what, Mike, you keep working and you
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  going to be now, I don't know what the heck that meant, but it
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  was really exciting. I was so excited.
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  I ran all the way home to see my brother.
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  Now it's not that impressive. I lived right across the street
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  from school, but still. So I run into my room and I was
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  like, Brian, Brian coach said that if I keep working on
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  hurdles, I could be. Now my brother is one of the
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  most realistic dudes in the world.
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  He just looked at me and goes and we had, we had big accents
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  back then. He goes, what the Hell's that
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  mean? And I was like, yeah, I don't
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  know, actually. And today I'm 40, almost 49
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  years old. I still don't know what exactly.
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  I kind of get their picture, but I don't know what heck he meant.
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  So terrible hurdler, terrible track athlete, not very good
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  coaches in regards to the technical side.
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  They loved us. So that's one of the most
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  important parts. But technically they didn't know
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  it. I go to Chicago, go to college
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  up there, study for a year. I'm not studying in a major that
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  I really want. I kind of miss sports.
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  So a high school was literally right outside my fraternity
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  house and De La Salle High School in Chicago Catholic and I
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  decided to drop out of college and this Oh yeah, that's right.
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  I forgot you're in the Chicago area.
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  So yeah, you know, De La Salle. So I decided to drop out of
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  college, decided I got a job downtown and started
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  volunteering for the high school.
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  And again, you know, God just places you in certain places.
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  I called the head coach, Russ Martin.
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  God love him, He's such a good dude.
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  And he's like, well actually I'm looking for a full time
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  assistant. And I was like, OK, I'll make it
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  work. Yeah, I can do that.
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  And he goes, what events would you coach?
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  And I was like, well, I shouldn't tell him about the
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  hurdles because that was a little embarrassing.
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  So I said, well, you know, I was an OK, 800 meter guys, 4 by 8,
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  you know, we had to state and stuff, so probably 800 distance,
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  etcetera. And he goes, he goes, you know,
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  I'm the distance coach. I really need a sprints hurdles
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  guy. And I was like, well, you know,
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  I hurdled, I can coach that too. That literally I just pivoted.
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  So I was like, Oh yeah, I can do that too.
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  Yeah, of. Course.
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  Yeah, yeah, yeah. So fast.
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  I'm from the South, right speed. We can do this, right?
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  So coach one year as an assistant coach, he retires.
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  I somehow, you know, no degree. I'm what, 19 at the time, No
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  degree, 19. No, no.
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  And I convinced the I guess father is a Catholic school to
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  make me the head coach for the next year.
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  So here I am the head coach of a Chicago Catholic school, a
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  school down in Alabama, Troy, It was Troy State back then.
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  Troy University was recruiting one of my kids, a hurdler of all
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  things. And that kid end up going to
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  UMKC and doing an amazing job, did a great job, was all
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  conference, did an amazing job there.
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  But the coach down in Alabama, Bob Lambert, God love, rest the
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  soul, said, hey, I actually need a coach for sprints and hurdles
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  and we have an undergraduate coaching position.
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  You you need an undergraduate degree, Why don't you come home?
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  And so I went down to Troy for three years.
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  They paid for all my degree and I coach sprints and hurdles for
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  them down there. You this up just a little bit.
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  So after that I went to that's where I got my degree.
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  I went to Kansas and was a head junior college coach at Neosho
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  County Community College. Went on after that to Ball State
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  University and was the women's assistant sprints and hurdles
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  coach there and then from Ball State got the job at Mississippi
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  State where I was sprints, hurdles and eventually jumps as
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  well. Wow.
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  OK, So what a journey. So we.
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  Yeah. Lots, lots of hopping.
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  All those people that complain about coaches moving job to job,
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  well, I was that guy. Yeah, 10 years, 5 different
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  places. That's crazy.
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  And, and, and I had this vision when I decided I want to be a
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  teacher. Like, you know, at some point
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  maybe I want to go to a college and, and, and coaching college.
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  And then I started like really paying attention to college
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  coaching instead of just college sports.
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  And yeah, like that's part of the game.
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  Like you're having to relocate maybe every couple years until
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  you find a solid spot. And it's, it's rough like that
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  is a, a tough situation, especially like for people that
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  already have families and stuff like that.
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  You know, when you're single and you're, and you're younger, it's
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  easy. But as you get older like that,
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  that becomes a tough situation. 100% and I used to teach USATF
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  level ones around the country. And the number one question I
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  would get from high school coaches in the audience would
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  be, well, hey, you, you coached high school and went to college
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  and made it to college. How do I coach college?
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  And I'm like, maybe you don't like, you know, you got a good
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  teacher salary. You don't coach in the in the
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  fall. You only really have to, you
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  know, bar in our distance coaches.
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  You coach in the spring. You don't have to worry about
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  recruiting in the traditional sense.
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  As far as traveling, you you got to recruit the hallways, of
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  course. And you know, you get to go to
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  the state meet like it Like why? Why would you go coach college?
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  You're going to make way less. You're going to travel
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  everywhere. You you're going to have to go
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  to different institutions, whether it's your choice or not.
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  We're we're right after we're recording this right after the
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  NCAA Division one championship. So this is kind of a black
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  Monday, if you will mean there's a lot of coaches that get the
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  pink slip this past weekend. And so now coaches are
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  scrambling. They got wives, they've got
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  children, they've got husbands, they've got roots in communities
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  and now they find themselves without a job and in the college
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  side, there's not many colleges around each other.
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  So you're going to have to to move states a lot of times.
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  Not a not a not always a healthy profession, especially when you
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  consider how much money we are not making on the college.
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  Side yeah and I'm sure you're not getting the same type of
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  like pensions and as teachers and things like that we're
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  setting yourself up for retirement so like that's a a
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  struggle in itself like I I that was a short lived vision for me
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  once I realized that and. Not saying, you know, my wife is
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  a long term sub. So I get a kind of a glimpse and
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  I have two kids that are in school.
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  So I get a glimpse of the teacher's, you know, life.
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  Trust me, being a teacher, whether it's high school,
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  elementary, middle school, that it's no cakewalk.
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  Now that I'm not saying that college is harder.
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  I'm just saying there are other attributes to the college that
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  make it hard. And certainly, you know, our
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  high school teachers, God love you guys and gals because you
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  are going through it's, it's a tough job dealing with 1418 year
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  olds every single day, other people's 1418 year olds every
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  single day. So God bless teachers.
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  Not saying that's an easy job by any stretch of the imagination.
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  Yeah, for sure, yeah. Shout out to all the teachers
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  and all the kids, too. So let's Fast forward then.
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  You coached for 10 years at Mississippi State.
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  What follows that then? Yeah, so my 10th.
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  I coached for 10 years my last couple.
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  OK. Got it.
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  Yeah, I'm not that old. That would make me old if I was
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  10 years at Mississippi State. OK.
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  At Mississippi State, we had a fairly large controversy with an
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  athlete that I won't get into that ended up going to the court
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  system and it really kind of jaded me a little bit on track
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  at that level, at the SEC Power 4 level, you, you know, I
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  thought coaching was just about how much you knew and how much
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  you could recruit. But on that level, there's a lot
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  of politics that are involved and I can't imagine how, you
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  know, this is back in 20 and my last year was a 2005.
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  I can't imagine what 2025 looks like today with the politics in
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  that level of track and field. And so it was my 10th year
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  coaching. I decided I was like, I just
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  want to get completely away from track.
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  Like am I really supposed to be doing this?
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  Let me get completely away from it and see if it brings me back.
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  I was making a lot of money playing poker on the side of in
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  Mississippi there was a lot of casinos with poker and things
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  like that. So I literally put in my 2 weeks
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  notice and had never been before, drove to Vegas and got
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  an apartment, got a a a room inside of a a house and play
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  poker for a living man every day 24/7 essentially.
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  That's crazy. So like every day you're waking
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  up, you're going to the casino and just hours, hours on end.
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  I woke up every day at 2:00 in the afternoon, which I thought
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  that was part of be the cool factor.
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  Like, oh man, I don't want to get up.
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  Ain't no ain't no alarm, buddy. I just get up at 2:00, right?
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  Get up whenever I want. The only reason I got up at 2
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  was I was on a big fear factor kick.
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  I don't know if you ever watched that show.
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  Back Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Or Joe Rogan.
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  Yeah, I love that show. Right.
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  So I get up at 2, literally lay in bed, watch it for an hour.
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  It's what time it was on in Vegas.
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  So at 3:00, I'd start, you know, making my dad get up, have my
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  shower, have my breakfast and then go to my casino.
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  And typically, I played at the wind.
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  That was kind of my home casino. And, you know, minimum would
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  probably be 12 hours. Once I played 100 hours in a
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  row. But I would routinely play 24 to
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  30 hours at a time. And, you know, you don't see the
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  sun. I stopped working out.
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  So you don't gain a lot of weight, things like that.
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  Wasn't smoking or doing drugs or anything like that, thank God.
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  But just, you know, I was just sitting on my butt 24 hours at a
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  time playing cards. And that's not the physically
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  healthiest or mental healthiest profession in the world when you
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  do it that way. I didn't take any days off,
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  literally seven days a week. 365 just wasn't healthy in that
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  sense. Goodness, that's crazy.
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  So like literally 24 hour days at the casino I.
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  Mean that wasn't even like I I could blink into 24 hours.
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  That was really easy. So like how does that work?
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  Like dude, does the casino take like a percentage of the
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  winnings or because you're like their their home player?
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  Yeah, at the at the level I was playing at most places when you
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  go and play poker, like when you go to rivers, maybe, you know,
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  the river casino, we all put money in the pot and then the
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  casino will take 4 or $5 out of each pot.
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  That's how they pay for the dealer, the equipment, the
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  electricity, all that kind of stuff.
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  The level that I got to, they do what's called a time rake.
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  So every time a new dealer comes to sit down, which is every 30
• 17:20
  minutes, we pay that dealer 567 bucks and then they don't take
• 17:24
  anything out of the pot. Got it.
• 17:26
  OK, so they're making you know it's called 8 players 7 bucks a
• 17:28
  pop they're making 56 bucks every half hour, so hundred $112
• 17:32
  every hour and you know and if it's table stays full, they
• 17:36
  making 112 every hour guaranteed Yeah I.
• 17:38
  Think I might start dealing on the side.
• 17:40
  Yeah, well, that's, that's not for the dealers.
• 17:42
  Now the dealers almost all work on tips.
• 17:45
  So think about like your waitress at A at a restaurant.
• 17:47
  So most players when you win a pot, you'll throw a dollar to
• 17:51
  the dealer. And so, so they're, they're
• 17:53
  incentivized to get a lot of hands out, right.
• 17:54
  If they're going to get about a dollar every hand, they need to
• 17:56
  get as many hands in an hour as possible.
• 17:58
  So and then some people, you know, if you want a big pot,
• 18:00
  maybe tip a little bit more, etcetera.
• 18:02
  The the worst tippers are actually the professional guys
• 18:04
  because everything you tip is coming out your pocket.
• 18:06
  So I was like, yeah, I'd I'd win the $10,000 pot.
• 18:09
  I'm like, here's your dollar buddy.
• 18:10
  Sorry man, I got to pay bills. Yeah, yeah, that's a rough game.
• 18:14
  Breaking news, this episode is brought to you by our sponsor
• 18:18
  that we don't have yet. Be the first.
• 18:21
  Back to you, Anthony. Yeah.
• 18:24
  OK. So then you said that you knew
• 18:26
  people from GAIL Athletics from your prior positions in
• 18:31
  coaching, right? Because everybody shops through
• 18:33
  Gil, let's be honest. So how does how does that
• 18:38
  conversation come about for you becoming an employee?
• 18:42
  How does that? How does it even get to that
• 18:44
  point? Yeah, it's a conversation I have
• 18:46
  every year that I've been an employee here.
• 18:49
  You know, we will get coaches that will call us and say, hey,
• 18:51
  what have you heard? Now?
• 18:52
  It's a lot different today with the, you know, let's run and
• 18:55
  social media and stuff. So there's a lot of jobs out
• 18:57
  there that you kind of know, like back back in 2000, back in
• 19:00
  my day, Anthony, before the Internet, you had a word of
• 19:03
  mouth on what jobs were open, right?
• 19:05
  So that's what I was doing. I was calling my guy.
• 19:07
  He doesn't work here anymore, unfortunately.
• 19:08
  But I was calling my guy saying, Hey, what jobs have you heard
• 19:11
  about what, what who's who's moving on, who's about to get
• 19:13
  fired? So that I knew what jobs to
• 19:16
  start calling be like, hey, man. And so I heard you need a
• 19:17
  sprints coach, you know, those kind of things.
• 19:19
  And so so I applied to a couple of jobs.
• 19:21
  I was very spoiled. And what I mean by that is, you
• 19:27
  know, don't be fooled just because we're all Division One
• 19:29
  and I'll use my LA Mod or Troy University and I'll use my
• 19:32
  former employer, Mississippi State.
• 19:33
  We're both Division One, right? We're both trying to win the
• 19:36
  Division One national championship or whatever, right?
• 19:38
  We ain't in the same game, bro. Power, power 4.
• 19:41
  Now, back then it was, you know what we call it the FBI or
• 19:44
  whatever we called it, it it's, it's not the same playing field.
• 19:48
  Our, our budget in Mississippi State was billion times more
• 19:51
  than our budget at Troy University.
• 19:53
  And, and The funny thing is, our budget at Mississippi State was
• 19:56
  still next to last in the SEC. So even though we had a ton of
• 19:59
  money, we still, we were the we were the poor rich kids, if that
• 20:02
  makes any. Sense, right?
• 20:04
  Yeah. And so, so I was spoiled, man.
• 20:08
  We, you know, our kids, we got so many pairs of shoes a year.
• 20:11
  We're at Ball State. We'd get one pair every year.
• 20:13
  You know, just just the things that you need, it's not excess,
• 20:16
  it's the things that you need to be successful as a track athlete
• 20:19
  at a high level. You need multiple pairs of shoes
• 20:21
  a year. You need to be able to travel
• 20:22
  and things like that. And so I was very spoiled.
• 20:25
  I, I just, you know, call, call me spoiled.
• 20:27
  I'm, I'm, I'm OK with that. I couldn't go back to a Ball
• 20:29
  State of Troy, etcetera. I, I needed to be at a power
• 20:32
  four and either the jobs that were open didn't want me, which,
• 20:35
  you know, that's OK, or I didn't want to go to that job.
• 20:38
  And so as I was talking to my Gill guy, he was like, well, you
• 20:41
  know what, we're hiring. And so we started talking about
• 20:44
  it more and I was like, wait a minute, wait a minute.
• 20:45
  Listen to this, Anthony. It was the craziest thing in the
• 20:47
  world. I was like, wait a minute, So
• 20:49
  you're going to pay me more than I ever made coaching.
• 20:51
  That's pretty cool. I get to go home at 5:00 pretty
• 20:54
  much every day. That's kind of cool.
• 20:55
  I don't get that with with coaching.
• 20:57
  Oh, wait, wait, wait. I still get to go to all the big
• 21:00
  track meets, the NCAA champs and Prefontaine and all that kind of
• 21:04
  stuff. I'm like, why didn't I do this
• 21:06
  earlier? What have I been doing?
• 21:08
  So, so they, you know, I interviewed and thank God I got
• 21:11
  hired and man, you know, all my friends became customers.
• 21:14
  I, you know, I had a pretty big Rolodex or whatever, you know,
• 21:17
  right off the bat and, and the way we went, man, 19 years.
• 21:22
  That's awesome. So what is your exact title, Ed
• 21:24
  Gill? Yeah, You know, most people know
• 21:26
  me as the podcast guy or just the Guild.
• 21:29
  A lot of people call me the Gill guy.
• 21:30
  I think some people think my name is Gill, so which is OK.
• 21:33
  That's as long as you call me. I don't care what you call me,
• 21:35
  Just call me. Yeah.
• 21:37
  So my official title is today is National Business Development
• 21:41
  Manager. So my role is to go out and find
• 21:44
  business, right? So through social media, through
• 21:48
  hosting and MC different track clinics, through the podcast.
• 21:52
  My job is to go out and find who's building new facilities so
• 21:55
  that we can, you know, put it through our machine, our
• 21:57
  businesses, our dealers that we have out there and hopefully
• 22:01
  capture, earn, earn the business and capture it with Gil
• 22:03
  Athletics equipment. And so I do that through
• 22:05
  podcast, social media, track clinic attendance, etcetera.
• 22:10
  Awesome. That's, that's, that's super
• 22:13
  exciting. Like to, to, to get an
• 22:16
  opportunity to navigate back in the same waters that you were
• 22:20
  once a part of, right. That's awesome because it's
• 22:23
  clearly something that you enjoy.
• 22:25
  It's clearly something that you're passionate about.
• 22:27
  So like I, I made a tough decision where I, I took a pay
• 22:33
  cut to go back into education and it was because I, I wanted
• 22:39
  to be happy, right? So like, I, I understand
• 22:42
  everybody doesn't have the same opportunity, right?
• 22:45
  Because at the end of the day, we all have bills, we all have
• 22:47
  things to pay for. And yeah, like, you know, I'm,
• 22:51
  I'm just super excited that I had, I have the opportunity to
• 22:55
  be joyful in something that I do and as as well as pay my bills
• 22:58
  to do it. So that's super exciting, yeah.
• 23:00
  So I love that for you. I wish you made more.
• 23:02
  I mean, our track coaches and our teachers throughout the
• 23:05
  country, you know, just woefully underpaid.
• 23:08
  And you know, that became my, my passion used to be about track
• 23:11
  and coaching young kids. And, and it's actually, it's,
• 23:15
  it's a little nuance now. I, I don't, I still love our
• 23:18
  sport and I still love our athletes, but my passion, so
• 23:21
  like what wakes me up every single day and everything I do
• 23:24
  through my phone, through this podcast, etcetera, is, is you,
• 23:28
  is the coaches, the, the men and women who choose to be track
• 23:30
  coaches. I, I started realizing I, I got
• 23:33
  bummed out a little bit when I first got the job here because
• 23:36
  about 2:00 every day, I'd be like, I'm supposed to go
• 23:38
  outside. You know, it is an office job.
• 23:40
  I'm in an office most of the time, right?
• 23:42
  So I'd be like, Oh, I'm supposed to go outside and you know, play
• 23:44
  in the sand pit or, you know, whatnot.
• 23:46
  And I was like, oh, man, have I lost my influence on kids?
• 23:50
  Like, oh, I don't coach kids anymore.
• 23:52
  Like, that's, that's a cool thing to see a, a young kid
• 23:55
  become a, a man or a woman to be better at their event, to be a
• 23:58
  better character and morale into society.
• 24:00
  Like, oh, I don't have that anymore.
• 24:02
  And then something about probably about eight years ago,
• 24:06
  so probably halfway through my career here, something clicked
• 24:08
  And I was like, oh, wait a minute.
• 24:11
  If I positively affect the men and women who choose to be track
• 24:14
  coaches, I actually affect a lot more kids.
• 24:17
  Maybe not directly. They may not know who my name is
• 24:19
  and that's fine. But if I uplift and honor track
• 24:22
  coaches, Oh, I've got a way bigger influence on this sport
• 24:26
  because let's let's you know, you can play chicken and egg and
• 24:28
  say, well, you know, if it weren't for the athletes, we
• 24:30
  wouldn't have track. Or, you know, if it weren't for
• 24:32
  coaches or if it weren't for administrator, whatever, there's
• 24:34
  all these things you can say, well, if we didn't have them, we
• 24:35
  wouldn't have track. It's a, it's a big amalgamation
• 24:38
  of everybody. We need everybody for the sport.
• 24:40
  But man, for me, coaches, if I don't have coaches driving kids
• 24:44
  properly, being the positive role models every single day to
• 24:48
  these men and women, to these boys and girls, I can't imagine
• 24:50
  what kind of men and women they would grow up to be if they
• 24:53
  didn't have that. So, so I'm going to be that
• 24:55
  advocate, that cheerleader, that rah rah, rah hype man for track
• 24:59
  and field coaches so that you, Anthony, can go on that track
• 25:02
  every single day and show what these boys and girls what a real
• 25:06
  role model is. And you know, because here's the
• 25:08
  thing, 99% of the kids you coach aren't going to college and
• 25:11
  aren't going to pro for trek and field, right?
• 25:14
  But 100% of them are going to go on to become moms and dads and
• 25:17
  business owner and clear GS and tie their whatever.
• 25:22
  You know, they're they're going to go on and become big parts of
• 25:25
  society. Well, that's your most biggest
• 25:27
  impact you have on society is what you do for those boys and
• 25:30
  girls. You just utilize long jumping or
• 25:32
  shop putting or sprinting as the catalyst for that.
• 25:36
  But you're really showing them what what real leaders look like
• 25:38
  in our society. And that's so if you're willing
• 25:40
  to do that, well, good. Then I'm willing to be on the
• 25:42
  side saying, hey man, Anthony, you're awesome.
• 25:43
  Let me help you out. Let me do this.
• 25:45
  Let me give you this education. Let me do this.
• 25:47
  Let me be positive here, let me do this.
• 25:48
  Pocket whatever to lift up you man, so you can go do that even
• 25:52
  more. Yeah, and I appreciate that.
• 25:54
  Like it's funny. Like how the universe works,
• 25:58
  like, you know, I started my coaching Twitter and you know, I
• 26:02
  did it because I, I, I finally stopped being a dinosaur myself
• 26:06
  and realizing that social media isn't and it's, it's an
• 26:09
  important part in recruiting for these kids now, right?
• 26:12
  And you have kids posting their stats and their highlight tapes
• 26:15
  and their, you know, tagging coaches and stuff like that.
• 26:19
  And I wanted to be able to do my little part in trying to get
• 26:23
  some of these kids the opportunities to go on and
• 26:25
  further their career or their their passion per say in in
• 26:30
  track and field in a football. And I, I don't remember when it
• 26:35
  was, but I remember, I think you'd like like the tweet or
• 26:39
  something like that of mine. And I don't know how you found
• 26:41
  it or saw it, but I think maybe coach pro had had retweeted or
• 26:46
  something like that. And, and I followed you and that
• 26:49
  was it. And it was like, you know,
• 26:51
  whatever, you know, I'm just going to follow anybody who
• 26:53
  follows me back as long as it's not like a bot account or
• 26:55
  something like that. And and then Fast forward to why
• 27:02
  I started this podcast. I wanted to start this because I
• 27:05
  wanted the opportunity to be able to talk to different
• 27:08
  people. One of my favorite things to do
• 27:10
  is to learn. And I love to learn from word of
• 27:13
  mouth, right? It's easy to go on Google, but
• 27:16
  in today's society, it's much harder to have a conversation.
• 27:19
  Obviously we're not face to face, but you know, this is as
• 27:22
  face to face as we can be. And you know, I, I, I, I, I
• 27:27
  posted, I'm going to start a podcast and I put it on Twitter
• 27:29
  because I knew that if I did that, maybe, you know, I only
• 27:33
  have a few followers, but maybe a few of my followers would be
• 27:36
  like, oh, remember when, when Coach Woods said he was going to
• 27:39
  start a part? Like what, what happened with
• 27:40
  that? Like, so I knew it was going to
• 27:43
  put the onus on me to actually follow through.
• 27:46
  And you know, you were like one of the first people to reach
• 27:49
  out. And like, it was, it was awesome
• 27:52
  because I was like, you know, no one's even going to really pay
• 27:54
  attention or see this tweet. Like, you know, I could probably
• 27:56
  delete it. I could probably delete it
• 27:58
  before anybody sees. And and you reached out and you
• 28:01
  were like, Hey, if you need anything, reach out.
• 28:04
  And then coach Crow immediately reached out to me.
• 28:06
  Like he was like, hey, like take advantage of that.
• 28:08
  Mike is a great dude. Reach out.
• 28:10
  And you know, doing my first episode with Holler.
• 28:15
  We've been rivals for for years. You started on top too, like
• 28:19
  holy, it's all downhill after holler.
• 28:21
  I can't believe you went like you were like, you know what,
• 28:23
  let's just if I'm going to do this, let's go.
• 28:25
  Let's start with a bang man. I love that you had the and I
• 28:27
  know you've had a relationship with him, but I love that you
• 28:29
  had a the kind of the hood spot to go right after.
• 28:32
  I'm a lot of people's 1st guest because I'm an easy guest.
• 28:35
  Meaning, you know, once you do 100 to 200 of these, it's
• 28:38
  actually hard to get people to come back to your library to go
• 28:41
  back to episode 1 and two and three.
• 28:43
  It's, it's one of my biggest challenges of a podcast that has
• 28:45
  300 amazing men and women on it so far.
• 28:47
  And I'm like, oh man, guys, Brooks Johnson was like #30 I
• 28:51
  know you're on 300, but you've got to go back to 30.
• 28:53
  And oh, Judd Logan was #20 you got to go.
• 28:56
  But you know, and it's just the nature that people don't.
• 29:00
  So that's the hardest part. So I'm a lot of people's a good
• 29:02
  first podcast guest because it's like you get all the kinks out.
• 29:05
  No one's going to listen to number one for a long time.
• 29:07
  So you kind of wasted Tony a little bit.
• 29:08
  That's what I'm kind of really saying here.
• 29:10
  You know, you know, The thing is like I I wanted to make I wanted
• 29:15
  to make it more of like a conversation as the overarching
• 29:18
  thing for the pie, right. But I understand that like
• 29:23
  there's so much more to, to Tony then then feed the cats.
• 29:26
  And I'm hoping and I haven't talked to him yet, but I'm
• 29:30
  hoping that at some point down the line I can get a, a Part 2
• 29:33
  with him where we go even more in depth.
• 29:36
  But yeah, like I, you know, I've been his rival for for now,
• 29:41
  going on 8 years coaching. And my whole thought process is
• 29:46
  like, I maybe say hi, I maybe say bye, good luck, things like
• 29:50
  that. But we don't talk much.
• 29:52
  Like I don't really know much about him besides what I can see
• 29:55
  on Twitter or whatever. Let me have a conversation with
• 29:59
  him so that I can actually get some insight.
• 30:01
  And as an educator, or I thought back as a, as a kid, we think of
• 30:06
  educators and coaches as just these like robots where they're
• 30:10
  not really like human. They're just like these figures.
• 30:13
  And we see them for a brief moment in our day and then they
• 30:16
  go home and they like plug up and reboot, right?
• 30:18
  And then they come back the next day.
• 30:19
  But these people are real, right?
• 30:21
  Like they're, they're just like us, right?
• 30:23
  They have families, they have hobbies, they have interests,
• 30:25
  right? And I wanted to be able to shed
• 30:27
  light on that because I again, I thought back when when I was a
• 30:32
  kid and I was like, I don't know anything about my colleges
• 30:34
  besides like, you know, and I'm obviously you want to have a
• 30:38
  professional relationship, but it, it would be interesting to
• 30:43
  know like, Hey, I used to, I used to play the drums when I
• 30:46
  was a kid too, or I used to play hockey too, or I used to
• 30:51
  skateboard, right? And it would be interesting if
• 30:53
  you saw like, one of your old coaches that was like, you know,
• 30:56
  this this hard ass, you know, and he's like, yeah, I actually
• 31:00
  used to skateboard back in the day.
• 31:02
  Like you'd be like, holy cow, like what?
• 31:04
  Like. And so that's the point of it.
• 31:06
  I, I think that's super important.
• 31:08
  First of all, quick aside, I'm, I'm kind of a tangent guy, so
• 31:11
  it's hard to keep me in secret. What do you have right here?
• 31:15
  It's my it's my wedding ring I had a tattooed on.
• 31:17
  Same. That's why I saw that.
• 31:19
  I was like, wait, yeah. I was like, wait a minute.
• 31:21
  I knew I liked you, Anthony. All right, sorry.
• 31:24
  Back to the thing. That's why I try hard not to say
• 31:28
  like, hey, I interviewed coaches or hey, I have coaches on my
• 31:31
  podcast or whatever, blah, blah. I say the men and women who
• 31:34
  choose to be coaches because exactly what you're saying is
• 31:37
  behind coach Holler is is a person Tony Holler.
• 31:40
  Behind Coach Woods is a person, Anthony Wood and and that
• 31:43
  person. No one's you're a fan of coaches
• 31:46
  than this guy right here, right, and I still don't think coaching
• 31:49
  is your number one role. It may be your 4th or 5th.
• 31:52
  You know, for Anthony, I know for you just off this couple
• 31:54
  minutes, I know you're a son. That's a very important role.
• 31:57
  You seem to be a husband based on a tattoo or you need a tattoo
• 32:00
  removal artist, which I can help with that too.
• 32:02
  But you're a husband. I don't know if you have any
• 32:04
  brothers or sisters, but maybe you're a sibling.
• 32:07
  I don't know if you have children, you might be a father.
• 32:08
  Like all these roles, those are way more important than your,
• 32:12
  your work time. We, we forget as much as
• 32:15
  passionate we have about track and sports, and I do it for the
• 32:18
  kids and all that stuff's important.
• 32:19
  It's still a job and we lose sight of that sometimes.
• 32:22
  That's why we think about that. It's OK to take pay cuts and
• 32:25
  coaching and think it's like you need to be making more, you need
• 32:27
  to be demanding more. But that role of coaching might
• 32:30
  be your 4th or 5th most important role.
• 32:32
  So I'm, I'm working very hard at, you know, hey, I'm talking
• 32:35
  to Anthony, not coach Woods. Coach Woods is what I see on the
• 32:38
  track. And hey, coach, how'd it go
• 32:39
  today? Oh, hey, I saw your athlete.
• 32:41
  Good job, coach. When we're talking, whether it's
• 32:43
  about equipment or through podcasting or stuff in general,
• 32:46
  it's like, hey, Anthony, so how are you?
• 32:47
  How's, how's the spouse, you know, how's the family?
• 32:50
  You know that that's to me, that's super important.
• 32:52
  These are men and women who choose to be coaches because
• 32:54
  they could have chosen to be a lot of other things.
• 32:56
  They're smart, smart, smart people.
• 32:58
  They could have been doctors, lawyers, business owners, so
• 33:01
  many things that are in our society may be more important
• 33:04
  than than coaching. But thank God for me.
• 33:06
  Thank God for those kids. They chose to be track coaches
• 33:09
  and that's that's super important.
• 33:10
  So I think you're on, I think you're on the right track with
• 33:12
  that thought process with with the podcasting.
• 33:14
  I appreciate that. Yeah, I was.
• 33:16
  And, and again, you know, who knows how many people will end
• 33:18
  up watching this or listening to this, but I'm hoping that at
• 33:22
  some point maybe some of the kids will see this as well and
• 33:24
  be able to see some of some of mine and anybody else that I
• 33:29
  interviewed, some of their, you know.
• 33:30
  Let me ask you though, what's it matter?
• 33:33
  And, and what I mean by that is you're, it's, it's very easy in
• 33:37
  podcast, just like it is on social media to worry about how
• 33:39
  many followers do I have? How many people saw that tweet,
• 33:42
  how many people listen to my podcast, etcetera.
• 33:45
  I, I step back and say, what's it matter?
• 33:46
  And the reason I say that is, let's say no one listens to
• 33:50
  episode 1 of, of your podcast with Tony Holler, which that'd
• 33:53
  be a mistake. By the way, if you're listening
• 33:54
  to this, you need to go back and listen to it.
• 33:56
  First of all, it's Tony. He's he's, he really is amazing.
• 33:57
  He's a great teacher who happens to figure out how to market
• 34:01
  track in this training philosophy of his that has
• 34:04
  helped a lot of kids. That's it's amazing.
• 34:06
  But he's a teacher at heart first and foremost.
• 34:08
  So go listen to that. But let's say no one listens to
• 34:11
  that. You'd be devastated.
• 34:13
  I was like, Oh my God, no one listen to it.
• 34:14
  Who cares because you got value out of it.
• 34:17
  You personally like there's there's a little bit of
• 34:18
  selfishness of life and that selfishness is not necessarily
• 34:21
  bad, but it's like you got value out.
• 34:23
  So who cares if nobody listens to it?
• 34:25
  You're going to hopefully receive value out of this
• 34:27
  episode. Who cares if no one listens?
• 34:29
  Now, if you keep that mindset and keep doing and try to be
• 34:31
  better at at interviewing and better at guests and things like
• 34:34
  that, not not better guests, but better at guesting, like how do
• 34:36
  you get your guest and things like that, it'll come.
• 34:39
  People will people flock to good things, things that give them
• 34:41
  value. So as long as you continue to
• 34:43
  think about how do I give value to people who listen, you'll
• 34:46
  have plenty of listeners as it builds up.
• 34:48
  We have, you know, a quarter million listeners at this point.
• 34:50
  It didn't. I didn't have a quarter million
• 34:52
  on day one. I had nobody I was doing.
• 34:55
  I started this before anybody didn't that that's a small
• 34:58
  caveat. I'm going to say I did it for
• 35:00
  anybody was doing it. I, I know there were some track
• 35:02
  podcast out there that were doing it before me.
• 35:04
  So I'm not saying I was the originator of this whole thing,
• 35:07
  but then COVID hit and everybody had a podcast and I literally
• 35:11
  was helping everybody. Somebody gave me the the
• 35:13
  nickname the God, the pod father of track and field podcast
• 35:16
  because I was helping everybody like, oh, you want to start a
• 35:18
  podcast? Give me a call, let's talk, I'll
• 35:19
  get it started. And the reason I did that
• 35:20
  because I didn't see them as competition.
• 35:22
  I saw them as helping to build up the ecosystem of track and
• 35:25
  field podcast. And I knew we were going to get
• 35:27
  over COVID one day. And when that happened, they'd
• 35:30
  all go back to coaching. And that's exactly what has
• 35:31
  happened. Thank God.
• 35:32
  Again, we need them as coaches and they need a guy like me to
• 35:34
  stay on the mic. So, so it builds and I've, I've
• 35:37
  worked really hard at giving value to listeners and, and to
• 35:39
  guests. If you keep that in mind, it,
• 35:41
  it, it ain't gonna matter. It'll grow.
• 35:43
  It's gonna take time. You know, the best time to start
• 35:45
  a podcast was a year ago. The second best time was today,
• 35:48
  you know. What I'm saying?
• 35:49
  Yeah, so, so I, so I actually wanted to ask, you know, I'm a,
• 35:52
  I'm a host at heart. So, you know, I'm going to flip
• 35:53
  questions back to you. Yeah, let's go, let's go.
• 35:55
  Why did it take so long? You know what I mean by that?
• 35:59
  It's not a negative. Like, you know, Anthony, you
• 36:01
  screwed the pooch. You started now.
• 36:02
  You should have started five years ago.
• 36:03
  I'm just curious. Like you're a curious person.
• 36:05
  You're a learner. This this idea didn't start
• 36:08
  yesterday and you started it yesterday.
• 36:10
  This this idea started some ways back.
• 36:11
  What, what, what? What was the hesitancy?
• 36:16
  Life. Yeah, like.
• 36:17
  That's fair. It was, it was, it was time.
• 36:19
  It was just like the time commitment to want to reach out.
• 36:23
  Well, you know, I won't even excuse it on time.
• 36:26
  I'll put the onus on me. Fear.
• 36:27
  I was going to say, I'll let you come out with these excuses.
• 36:30
  That's cool. Fear, fear.
• 36:31
  That's not now there. We're being honest, Anthony.
• 36:33
  Yes, yeah. Fear.
• 36:36
  Fear of. Just.
• 36:39
  Judgement. Yeah, you know, and we all have
• 36:42
  that little bit of doubt, but it's like it was more of like, I
• 36:48
  guess putting yourself out there to be criticized and, you know,
• 36:53
  maybe putting yourself in some type of limelight, right, you
• 36:58
  know, in quotes limelight or putting the spotlight on you.
• 37:01
  And, and that's fearful, right? And again, part of the reason
• 37:05
  why I started it was because I, I decided I'm going to stop
• 37:11
  being fearful of how people thought I wanted to do this.
• 37:15
  Just like you said, like, who cares if you're going to listen
• 37:17
  to one of my goals in coaching? Because I want to be one of the
• 37:20
  best coaches in Illinois. And I've, I've been saying this
• 37:23
  for the last year. I want to be one of the best
• 37:25
  spread coaches in the state of Illinois.
• 37:28
  The only way I can do that is if I continue to learn.
• 37:31
  And this gives me an opportunity to not only shed a light on
• 37:35
  them, but selfishly, I can learn, right?
• 37:38
  And, and, and I won't have the opportunity to do that if I
• 37:43
  never go out and reach out to these coaches or if I never step
• 37:47
  out my comfort zone, right so. Yeah, what?
• 37:51
  You teach, right? You're a teacher there.
• 37:53
  Yeah, this is going to be my first year of teaching.
• 37:54
  What? Do you teach?
• 37:56
  What do you teach? Business Education.
• 37:58
  All right, so you've had students or you will have
• 38:01
  students where you will be pushing them to get out of their
• 38:03
  comfort zone, right? You're like, hey, do do the
• 38:05
  presentation. Get in front of I know it's
• 38:06
  scary. Get in front of the class.
• 38:07
  Once you do it 100 times, it won't be scary anymore.
• 38:10
  That's what you're going through.
• 38:11
  You're like, oh man, this you know, I'm putting myself out
• 38:13
  there a little bit. So you just got to do it.
• 38:16
  Just got to do it. Or or don't and then don't reap
• 38:18
  the benefits that that's the real have.
• 38:20
  Have you ever read the book The Twin Thieves?
• 38:23
  No, I haven't. All right, you said you'd coach
• 38:25
  football too, right? I used to, yeah.
• 38:28
  Just stopped last year. But you're a football guy.
• 38:29
  So you, it's, it's a football story.
• 38:31
  So you'll, you'll understand it better.
• 38:33
  Go find his twin thieves and what it is about.
• 38:35
  It's about the two thieves of, of fear of rejection and fear
• 38:39
  of, of comparison. The people saying, oh, you're
• 38:42
  not good enough and things like that.
• 38:43
  And it's, and it's around football.
• 38:45
  You've got to go. It's a very quick read.
• 38:48
  Like literally when we hang up today.
• 38:50
  Go to your local library, get them to get it, find it.
• 38:53
  I think you get it on Amazon for 15 bucks, maybe even that.
• 38:56
  But it's it'll, it'll, it'll really, really help you around
• 38:59
  the fear of judgement, fear of rejection, the twin thieves.
• 39:01
  Those are the two things that steal your joy, steal
• 39:05
  advancement, steal your curiosity.
• 39:08
  And you have to, you know, be confident in yourself that those
• 39:11
  two things, they don't have control over you.
• 39:13
  You have control over it. So and you're showing that by
• 39:17
  doing the show and by doing by doing this podcast.
• 39:21
  So that's perfect. So what have you, you know,
• 39:24
  knowing that this is, I think, your second recording, correct.
• 39:26
  I'm your your second guy. Yeah.
• 39:28
  So you you chose Tony over me. That's cool.
• 39:31
  What? So I, I taught up until last
• 39:34
  summer. I used to teach junior college
• 39:37
  up in Chicago. Triton Community College.
• 39:39
  Triton. Community College.
• 39:40
  Yeah. Yeah.
• 39:40
  Yeah, I, I taught an intro podcasting one O 1 class for
• 39:45
  three years. Yeah, I, I just have a real
• 39:46
  passion about helping people literally find their voice
• 39:49
  through, through podcasting. And so, you know, we'd have and
• 39:51
  it would be no sports people, people that wanted to do sports
• 39:54
  podcast, but no, no coaches. It was all just normal Joes and
• 39:58
  Anthony's and Cindy's and Tina's that just wanted to learn how to
• 40:02
  start a podcast. So we literally for 12 weeks we
• 40:04
  go, we talk about from soup to nuts, how to do a podcast.
• 40:07
  What have you maybe struggled with?
• 40:10
  What's what's some things that you either you don't know or
• 40:12
  you're not confident if you should be, you know, buying this
• 40:15
  mic or whatever. What what's?
• 40:17
  How can I help in regards to those kind of things?
• 40:19
  Yeah, so that was one of the, one of the first things that I,
• 40:23
  I didn't realize was the the audio, right?
• 40:27
  You don't really think about it, even though it's like what
• 40:30
  you're doing. But I, I, I didn't notice until
• 40:34
  after I had recorded. And so when I was editing it, I
• 40:38
  was like, oh, OK, I have to invest in that.
• 40:41
  I have to invest in them. Like I reached out to you
• 40:44
  because I was like, Hey, I had this one app in mind in order to
• 40:48
  record. And then I was like, this is not
• 40:50
  working. And then you give me, you gave
• 40:51
  me some advice on that and it worked smooth.
• 40:53
  And I was like, OK, that's awesome.
• 40:55
  Perfect. And then I was like, OK, how do
• 40:57
  I get this posted? Like, like, how, how do I do
• 41:01
  this? I know what sites, but how do I
• 41:03
  go about this? So I do a little research and I
• 41:07
  mean my RSS feed through Spotify.
• 41:10
  Yeah. Good.
• 41:11
  And connected it to Apple as well.
• 41:15
  So that connected automatically. So that was like a saving grace.
• 41:19
  And then I was like, OK, I want to be able to give people both
• 41:24
  views because I'm a visual guy. Like I love watching my podcast.
• 41:29
  I'm cool with hearing it, but I would rather see it just so you
• 41:31
  can see like the, the facial expressions and all the
• 41:35
  different things, the mannerisms, all that, all those
• 41:37
  things. So I was like, OK, how do I edit
• 41:40
  this video and how do I get it on YouTube?
• 41:44
  What's a what's a good app to start off with?
• 41:46
  You know, obviously before I just started spending money on
• 41:48
  things I don't really know about.
• 41:50
  So I was, I was comfortable with cat cut just to do like my intro
• 41:55
  and outro and stuff like that. But yeah, like the biggest thing
• 41:59
  was the audio. So I had reached out to Carson
• 42:05
  Vittorio from Illinois running news and he was like, hey,
• 42:08
  here's a great mic brand, check it out, see what's in your
• 42:12
  budget. So that's going to be the first
• 42:14
  thing to upgrade the quality, so.
• 42:16
  So before you do that, here is my biggest recommendation for
• 42:20
  everybody is don't spend a single dime on anything.
• 42:24
  And the reason is this today, as we sit here in June of 2025,
• 42:30
  this is a hobby for you. Now, if it's the right thing for
• 42:34
  you and you know, you got to catch some breaks and things
• 42:36
  like that, this becomes a big deal for you.
• 42:38
  Like we're talking in 20-30 and it's like, man, you know why
• 42:40
  Gil's the number 2 podcast because your your average coach
• 42:43
  podcast is number one, right? That's cool, but we don't know
• 42:47
  that most podcast flame out within 10 episodes.
• 42:50
  Does it make them less important or less valuable?
• 42:53
  It just means life got in the way.
• 42:55
  You know you're going to be coaching and things like that,
• 42:57
  right? So what I would hate, and this
• 42:58
  is, you know what I would tell all of our students at Triton
• 43:01
  and anybody who's ever asked me, I would hate for you to sync
• 43:04
  $100 style. It's easy to spend $1000 in this
• 43:07
  hobby, bro. Like I could do that in a
• 43:09
  heartbeat. It's easy to spend that money
• 43:11
  and then, you know, one month, two months down the line, you're
• 43:14
  not doing it and you're like, you're looking at your credit
• 43:15
  card bill and you're looking at this mic is sitting in a box and
• 43:18
  it's like, what did I do this for?
• 43:20
  So my recommendation is to go with exactly what you have right
• 43:23
  now. You already had your Earpods,
• 43:24
  you already had your laptop, things like that.
• 43:27
  We we recorded the 1st probably 10 to 15 on my cell phone.
• 43:32
  Literally put the cell phone in between me and the person.
• 43:35
  This is before COVID, I was still travelling.
• 43:37
  Put me in the person between it and record it.
• 43:39
  That audio is terrible. If you go back and listen to
• 43:42
  episode #1 of ours, you're like, Oh my God, how do people listen
• 43:45
  to this? I was so dumb and naive,
• 43:48
  Anthony, I didn't know the app. So you're using podcast for
• 43:54
  podcast, Spotify for podcasters, That's what they call it now.
• 43:57
  They bought the app Anchor and that's what I was using.
• 44:00
  And so I would use anchor and I didn't know that when you use
• 44:03
  the app and anchor like in person, it had a one hour Max.
• 44:07
  So after every hour, you'd have to restart another hour, right?
• 44:10
  I'm, I'm an hour and 10 into my first interview with the guest
• 44:14
  when I kind of touched the, you know, get the black screen off
• 44:16
  of it, you know, and I see that it stopped.
• 44:18
  I was like, Oh my God, the last 10 minutes of like, I am so
• 44:21
  sorry. Like I'm like, I'm just an
• 44:23
  idiot, you know? And so published it, you know,
• 44:25
  and I just put on my on my intro.
• 44:27
  I said, hey, you know what? Your humble host here made a
• 44:29
  mistake, didn't realize that after an hour it cuts off.
• 44:32
  And so, you know, there's no way to naturally do that.
• 44:35
  So we decided we would just go right there and we'd publish it.
• 44:38
  So at about an hour, you'll hear a very awkward in the middle of
• 44:42
  a sentence, it'll just stop, right?
• 44:43
  And then I came into my outro and said, hey, well, here's
• 44:45
  where I screwed up. Thanks for listening.
• 44:48
  Check us out next week, whatever, blah, blah, blah.
• 44:50
  So I did, I did it much better the next couple through my phone
• 44:54
  and then COVID hit. Well, that took away in person
• 44:56
  on the phone. Well, you could use that app
• 44:59
  back then. I could send you a link and you
• 45:01
  could get on your phone and I can get on my phone and it would
• 45:04
  record in the app. No one hour time limit then
• 45:06
  thank God, so I did that. So I literally would sit in my
• 45:09
  closet because that was some of the best audio acoustics you
• 45:12
  could have. Sit in my closet and interview
• 45:14
  for probably the next 20 episodes.
• 45:18
  So, so 0 bucks, still 0 bucks. And then I started learning more
• 45:23
  about Zoom because COVID hit right?
• 45:24
  And we started learning more about Zoom.
• 45:26
  And I was like, wait a minute, I can actually, and you, you hit
• 45:28
  the nail on the head. Now I can at least see the
• 45:30
  person. So when they when, you know, if
• 45:32
  I ask something and they go, you know, make a scrunchy face, I'm
• 45:34
  like, OK, I didn't ask that very well or, you know, or whatever,
• 45:37
  you know, or they could see me going, Oh my God, like, let me
• 45:40
  break in. That's amazing.
• 45:41
  Let's talk about that more. You know, that's much better
• 45:43
  than on the phone, right? And and then I had this content
• 45:46
  as well, but I wasn't putting it on YouTube.
• 45:48
  I didn't until about probably episode 80, eighty 9000
• 45:51
  somewhere around there. And I was like, wait a minute, I
• 45:53
  have this content. Like some people preferred
• 45:55
  YouTube to your point, Let me get that.
• 45:57
  So I backdated all my, you know, I had all that data and put it
• 45:59
  all on there. And now today we do it through
• 46:02
  Zoom and you know, within, well, I schedule it, but within
• 46:05
  minutes it's already scheduled to be, you know, on the podcast
• 46:08
  to go when it's supposed to go and on the YouTube when it's
• 46:10
  supposed to go. And I use Audacity.
• 46:13
  I told you about Audacity is a free digital editor.
• 46:18
  I used that. So that's $0.00.
• 46:19
  And then as we got back from COVID and gotten here and the
• 46:22
  podcast was being successful, the company allowed me to use
• 46:25
  this office that we weren't using to kind of make a
• 46:28
  recording studio. Bought my first mic, which is
• 46:30
  not this one. It's actually a different one.
• 46:31
  My marketing team bought this for me a little while back and,
• 46:35
  but still very, very minimal money.
• 46:37
  You know, the office space we had, we built, we bought the
• 46:40
  shell from IKEA or something or Amazon probably.
• 46:43
  And you know, these are things we had around the offices and I
• 46:46
  bought, I bought some, you can't see it in this picture, but I
• 46:48
  bought some foam and stuff like that.
• 46:50
  But I mean, maybe we're, I don't know, maybe we're $500 all in at
• 46:54
  this point. And that took years.
• 46:56
  That took years to get to. So don't don't run out and spend
• 46:59
  money when you're ready to do a mic, go get any, pretty much any
• 47:04
  mic is going to be a big improvement for you, but you're
• 47:07
  still going to deal with your your guests not having good.
• 47:09
  You're going to be like what's most guests.
• 47:10
  Most guests are doing iPod, Airpods and or their their
• 47:14
  laptop. So their audios aren't going to
• 47:16
  be that great anyway. But so while it's an audio
• 47:19
  format, you know, podcasting is don't get caught up in trying to
• 47:22
  get perfect audio. You're not A and and people have
• 47:25
  grace. They're like, oh, dude, I know
• 47:26
  Anthony. He's not a he's not a he's not
• 47:28
  in a recording studio. He's.
• 47:30
  You know, I'm definitely not. Business Ed and coaching
• 47:32
  sprinters. OK, sorry, the audio doesn't
• 47:35
  sound like it's coming from, you know, RCA or you know where it's
• 47:39
  like OK, doing the best he can and and and I listened to your
• 47:43
  audio with Tony perfectly fine. I I didn't have any issues with
• 47:46
  it. OK, good, good.
• 47:47
  I'm I'm glad you didn't think it was.
• 47:49
  Not at all terrible. One of the biggest, I would say,
• 47:52
  podcasters, but he's he's just all around business and social
• 47:55
  media and stuff like that. There's a guy named Gary Vee.
• 47:57
  Gary Vaynerchuk, Yeah. Yeah, yeah, he wants to buy The
• 47:59
  Jets. Yeah.
• 48:01
  Do you know Gary Vee? That's exactly, that's how I
• 48:02
  know you know him exactly right. He puts out a podcast and he
• 48:06
  puts out an episode every day. And a lot of it is it's
• 48:10
  recordings of his talks or things like that.
• 48:12
  And some of his audio is terrible because the because
• 48:15
  he's on stage and they didn't get a good recording and things
• 48:18
  like that. And he still publish it.
• 48:19
  And I'm like, well, this guy has 203040 million followers.
• 48:23
  If he thinks it's OK, I'll be OK.
• 48:27
  Every once in a while publishing something, It's not great, it's
• 48:29
  not perfect, but you know, if you listen, you'll, you'll get
• 48:31
  the value. I'm really about the value, not
• 48:33
  about the audio quality. So don't don't fret about those
• 48:36
  things at all. At all.
• 48:39
  And I I I have realized or I've heard before that again, most
• 48:42
  podcasts do flame out after about 10 episodes.
• 48:45
  Again, maybe it's it's a time commitment thing or.
• 48:48
  Mini. Yeah, and, and one of my things
• 48:51
  with this is I wanted to be consistent.
• 48:54
  That's key. And I wanted to be, I wanted to
• 48:57
  just build some consistency. As long as I can do that.
• 49:00
  You know, I feel like, I feel like the, the, the attention
• 49:03
  and, and viewership and all that stuff will come.
• 49:05
  But you know, if people see like, oh, he's posting again,
• 49:08
  like, maybe I'll check it out this.
• 49:09
  Time, that is the most important thing is find a schedule that
• 49:13
  works and then stay with it. So during COVID, because, you
• 49:17
  know, unfortunately there wasn't anything else going on.
• 49:19
  So I would literally like if I schedule two or three interviews
• 49:22
  that week, I would publish them immediately.
• 49:25
  So like I'd have three and you know, we're long form, so we're
• 49:27
  an hour and 40 hour and 50, sometimes two hours on our
• 49:30
  shows. So I would give you, I'd pump
• 49:32
  out six hours of content in a week if that's what I recorded,
• 49:35
  right? But then once, you know, we
• 49:37
  start getting back to our rhythm and actual business was getting
• 49:39
  done is like, oh man, I can't, I got to, I got to, I got to met
• 49:42
  these things out. I got to get a schedule.
• 49:44
  So now we're every Monday, we're 11 episode every week, 52
• 49:47
  episodes a year. So now it's, you know, if I do
• 49:49
  four in a week, well, that's four months worth of it, but
• 49:52
  it's consistent. You know, every Monday, OK, a
• 49:54
  new guest is going to drop on the Gill podcast every Monday,
• 49:57
  every we don't miss Mondays. Every Monday.
• 49:59
  If Monday is a Christmas Day, that one guy gets published on
• 50:02
  Christmas Day. You can listen to the next day
• 50:04
  if you want, but it's going to get published every Monday.
• 50:06
  So find a schedule that works for you.
• 50:08
  For a guy like you, here's something I could imagine you
• 50:11
  may want to do more. This is going to maybe sound
• 50:13
  like it's not a lot because you teach and in your audience is
• 50:18
  probably going to be mainly teachers and coaches and things
• 50:20
  like that. You may do a summer, your
• 50:23
  sprints coach, maybe you do a Sprint, a summer Sprint
• 50:26
  spectacular. And so for the summer, you
• 50:29
  record however many, you know, depending on your schedule and
• 50:31
  things like that. And that season 1, see you guys
• 50:33
  next summer and you go do your life, you go teach and you coach
• 50:36
  and things like that. Meet, meet more people.
• 50:38
  So that when next summer comes and here's season 2, Bam, we're
• 50:40
  going to, we're going to put out as many or whatever your
• 50:42
  schedule allows for the summer. That way you're not like, you
• 50:45
  know, next March and you're in the middle of, you know, track
• 50:48
  season starting and you're teaching and you know, all this
• 50:51
  stuff is like, Oh my God, I got to put out another one next
• 50:53
  Monday or whatever. You know, your schedule.
• 50:55
  It's like, oh God, where do I find the time?
• 50:57
  You know, don't fret about it. Make it a make it a season that
• 50:59
  works for you. My season is all year because I
• 51:02
  get paid to do this. Your season might not be that.
• 51:04
  So, and maybe your fall is a little bit more gentle.
• 51:07
  So maybe you roll into the fall, but take spring off.
• 51:09
  There's nothing wrong with that. Our listenership goes actually
• 51:12
  goes down in the spring and that's because most of my
• 51:15
  listeners are track coaches. Well, what are they doing on the
• 51:17
  weekends? Yeah, they're coaching exactly
• 51:18
  right. Yeah, yeah, yeah.
• 51:18
  They're not listening to podcast, they're they're
• 51:20
  coaching. So, so we actually do better
• 51:22
  late summer and through the fall and then dipped a little bit
• 51:25
  during track season. That makes sense.
• 51:28
  So then I'll, I'll, I'll ask you a question then.
• 51:30
  So you started off the podcast by yourself as a hobby to start
• 51:35
  off with? Oh.
• 51:38
  How did how did Gil get involved?
• 51:40
  Yeah, Yeah, good, good, good question.
• 51:41
  OK, So I, I was a podcast listener.
• 51:46
  I don't like to admit this today, but back then I was a Big
• 51:49
  Joe Rogan fan. Fear factor, right?
• 51:51
  But what I liked about Joe was I liked that it was long form.
• 51:55
  So it wasn't a 20 minute, which most people are going to be
• 51:58
  doing roughly 20 minutes. And that makes a lot of sense,
• 52:01
  but you don't get very deep with a person.
• 52:03
  So I, I like that, you know, he would have 246 hour podcast and
• 52:07
  go really deep. And I was like, man, I know that
• 52:09
  person better now because I, you know, the, the veneer went off
• 52:12
  and that, you know, you can't be interviewed for four hours and
• 52:15
  still fake yourself. You, you break down and just
• 52:17
  become yourself at that point, right.
• 52:19
  So, so I knew I liked the long form and so I knew there was
• 52:23
  something for Gil, but I didn't know how to podcast.
• 52:26
  I knew how to listen to podcast, but I didn't know how to
• 52:28
  podcast. So I, I didn't feel like I could
• 52:30
  just come to my boss and be like, hey, man, we should start
• 52:33
  a podcast and be like, cool, how do you do that?
• 52:34
  I'm like, I don't know, you know.
• 52:36
  So I was like, all right, I'll figure it out.
• 52:38
  So I, the origins actually start.
• 52:40
  I started a Facebook group for track coaches called beyond the
• 52:44
  track. And every day we'd have a post,
• 52:46
  a conversation about mental health, physical health,
• 52:51
  financial hell, all the beyond the track, everything outside
• 52:54
  the track. What are some things you know,
• 52:55
  how to how to concern yourself with your your kids, your
• 53:00
  athletes and social media, how to hire people, how to fire
• 53:04
  people. You know, these are all things
• 53:05
  that coaches that it's a big part of your job.
• 53:07
  And you never get taught about this stuff.
• 53:09
  You know, you go to track clinic, you learn how to do long
• 53:11
  jumping better. You don't learn how to read
• 53:14
  resumes or even build your own resume, you know, so, so we
• 53:17
  started with that and I started doing live interviews through
• 53:21
  the Facebook, through that app, through the, through that group,
• 53:24
  beyond the track. And so I did 345 of those.
• 53:26
  So I kind of got my, my chops as far as how to interview.
• 53:30
  They stayed on Facebook and then I was like, all right, so let's
• 53:32
  figure out how to podcast. So I started with anchor and
• 53:34
  really, you know, I just, it's kind of like coaching.
• 53:37
  I heard you say this with Tony, so you'll, you'll understand
• 53:39
  this. You know, coaching is, is
• 53:41
  stealing, right? You're just like, Oh, I like
• 53:43
  what he does. Let me take that.
• 53:44
  Oh, I like what she did there. I'm going to use that drill or
• 53:45
  whatever, right? Well, same, by the way, I'm the
• 53:49
  same, same person. So I was like, I'll start a
• 53:51
  podcast called the Mike Cunningham experience instead of
• 53:55
  the Joe experience. And I, I have a pretty varied
• 53:59
  life. I'm not just centered around
• 54:01
  track and fields like so I've got a lot of different people in
• 54:04
  my life that are super interesting.
• 54:05
  So I'm going to interview like Joe does.
• 54:07
  I'm going to interview like you're it's not all going to be
• 54:09
  track people. It's not all going to be
• 54:10
  whatever. So my very first now I did want
• 54:13
  to a big guest right off the bat, which is what you did with
• 54:15
  Tony, that you're smart there. So one of my good friends, I've
• 54:18
  known him since he was like 1617 years old, is Justin Gatlin.
• 54:21
  I don't know if you're young enough to know who that is.
• 54:25
  He's a little old now. Yeah, yeah, yeah.
• 54:26
  Well, he's got his own successful podcast.
• 54:27
  That's probably how you know him now.
• 54:29
  No, no, no. But Jay and I are good friends
• 54:33
  and, you know, Olympic medalist, Olympic medalist and things like
• 54:37
  that. I was like, oh, well, he'll get
• 54:37
  me some credibility right off the bat.
• 54:39
  So I called Jay. I was like, hey, Jay, I'm
• 54:41
  starting this podcast, man. I want you to, you know, will
• 54:43
  you be my first guest? And you know, of course said,
• 54:45
  yes, thank God. He's just an amazing human
• 54:46
  being. And so he's my first guest.
• 54:48
  So that got me a lot, you know, and, and, and everybody expected
• 54:50
  that, right? It's like, oh, Mike's a track
• 54:52
  guy. Of course he's got a track guy,
• 54:53
  right? My second guest was a guy I went
• 54:57
  to high school with who became one of the top nuisance chefs.
• 55:02
  So he goes out and all these things that are like, like those
• 55:05
  wild boar in Alabama, the lionfish down in the Gulf of
• 55:10
  Mexico, all all these invasive species that are out there.
• 55:14
  He goes out and finds out like figures that he's a chef.
• 55:17
  How do you how to make meals with these animals so that we
• 55:20
  can get rid of these invasive species?
• 55:22
  That's crazy, right? It's just that's crazy from
• 55:24
  little old Eufaula AL, this guy grew up and knows how to make
• 55:27
  like 100 dishes with lionfish and 100 dishes with wild boar
• 55:30
  and all this stuff. And it's crazy.
• 55:31
  It's crazy. So I had him.
• 55:33
  I had a doula. Do you know what a doula is?
• 55:36
  Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. So I had, you know, we had a
• 55:38
  doula for our kids. So I interviewed her.
• 55:41
  I interviewed a guy, I interviewed a guy who was, he's
• 55:45
  a in the pop rock band called the All for One, and that was a
• 55:49
  a on his own recording artist, on his own single recording
• 55:53
  artist. Adam e-mail had him on the show.
• 55:55
  Oh, I had a oh gosh, what's his name?
• 55:57
  WING Wing Wing. He makes watches like legit,
• 56:02
  like he's a watchmaker, like who, who The Who the world
• 56:04
  actually makes watches. And oh gosh, I wish I could
• 56:07
  remember the name of his brand because it's amazing.
• 56:09
  He does amazing work. So I interviewed him on how, how
• 56:13
  do you become a watchmaker? Why are they so expensive?
• 56:14
  You know, you learn so much about watchmaking and I can't
• 56:18
  remember some of the other guests, but had 10.
• 56:20
  I went, I did a 10 episode run of just, you know, one day
• 56:23
  you're listening to a gold medalist, the next day you're
• 56:24
  listening to a guy who knows how to cook fish you've never heard
• 56:27
  of, you know, all these kind of things, right?
• 56:28
  But I learned how to, OK, record, package it, publish it,
• 56:33
  schedule it. So I learned, OK, I know the
• 56:35
  mechanism now. And so much like most of my
• 56:38
  career here at Gill, I actually just started once I was ready, I
• 56:41
  just started the Gill podcast without telling anybody.
• 56:44
  It just it was a little nerve wracking.
• 56:47
  Maybe you had this with Tony, maybe not.
• 56:48
  Maybe you're a little bit more braver than me.
• 56:50
  It was a little nerve wracking. I was like, so no one's doing
• 56:53
  this. How do I just go up to a coach?
• 56:55
  Because you know, I'm usually going to a coach and talking
• 56:56
  about what issues they have on the track and maybe we can solve
• 56:58
  them with the equipment that we make.
• 57:00
  But it's like, hey, I want to, I want to interview.
• 57:02
  Oh, and by the way, I want to do it for like an hour plus, you
• 57:06
  know, so I was in the state of Washington and I was at
• 57:11
  Evergreen State University, which is a very cool NEIA school
• 57:14
  out there. And the coach is a throws coach.
• 57:17
  One trip that I was out there, he told me how he became the
• 57:20
  NANAIA national champion in the weight throw or the hammer,
• 57:23
  maybe both at the age of like 35.
• 57:26
  And I was like, that's crazy. Like, like, I know they don't
• 57:30
  have age, but that's that's weird, right?
• 57:31
  That's kind of like, I want to know more about that.
• 57:33
  And so the next time I was out, I was like, hey, man, so that's
• 57:36
  a cool, there's gotta be a cool story to that.
• 57:38
  Like, how did you wait that long to go to school and all this
• 57:42
  kind of stuff? And so that was what we talked
• 57:44
  about on the. So I was like, hey, man, think
• 57:45
  about doing this podcast. Would you be the first guest?
• 57:47
  And he's like, yeah, sure. And so we went to the conference
• 57:49
  room at a school and put the phone between US and I cut them
• 57:52
  off after an hour. That's the one I screwed up on.
• 57:56
  Yeah. So ever so grateful for for him
• 57:59
  for being a first guest. But yeah, so I just kind of
• 58:04
  rolled on on from there. I, I this is how bad I am.
• 58:07
  Anthony, what was the actual topic I was talking about?
• 58:09
  What was my actual? How did Gil get involved in the
• 58:13
  podcast? Yeah, so I just started it,
• 58:16
  interviewed him. I think the next week I was in
• 58:18
  Boston. So I interviewed 3 guys from
• 58:21
  Harvard who are amazing. Mark Mangiacati, Brenner Abbott.
• 58:24
  And love his work. Yeah, and Cava Tolberg.
• 58:26
  You know Cava? Yeah, Mark's great.
• 58:29
  I've known. I've known Mark and Cava for a
• 58:31
  long time printer I had just met actually at that time and
• 58:35
  literally in one day sat in their offices and recorded on my
• 58:38
  phone. And you know, and then I, I, I
• 58:40
  still hadn't published yet. I think I, I think right before
• 58:43
  cover for NCAA indoors, I started publishing.
• 58:45
  That's when I first started publishing and then, you know,
• 58:48
  the world shut down. And so we pivoted to Zoom and
• 58:51
  just kept going and now we're 300 and I don't know, 20.
• 58:55
  They were right about 320 at this point.
• 58:56
  That's. Awesome.
• 58:58
  Like, so like you, you, you started recording.
• 59:01
  You're like, OK, I'm just, I'm, I'm working for Gil.
• 59:04
  I have these connections. I have these wonderful stories
• 59:07
  that I can share with the world. How did you come to your boss to
• 59:11
  like, like, what was that conversation like?
• 59:13
  Like, hey, I have this content. Like, I think we can do
• 59:18
  something with it, like, yeah. Like like most things I've done
• 59:21
  around here, I just got caught. I got busted basically.
• 59:24
  So I started our Twitter account without telling anybody, our
• 59:27
  Instagram, our Facebook, because I just knew we should be on
• 59:30
  there. I didn't know what to do with
• 59:32
  it. Just like I was like, I know we
• 59:33
  need to be on here exactly what we should do with it.
• 59:36
  And so like for the social media, one day my boss comes to
• 59:39
  me and goes, hey, I got this e-mail from this guy who says,
• 59:43
  you know, he could do our Twitter better.
• 59:44
  You know, all these professional people think they could do the
• 59:46
  stuff better than I can or, you know, whatever.
• 59:48
  He goes, we have Twitter and I was like, ah, yeah, boss.
• 59:52
  So about that. I was like, I didn't post
• 59:55
  anything, I swear. I'm just using it to like learn
• 59:56
  from other people. But he's like, no, we probably
• 59:59
  should be on that. And, you know, get out of the
• 1:00:01
  way. I'm going at that point, you
• 1:00:02
  know, so I just I took over, right.
• 1:00:04
  So same thing with the podcast. I think one day he was like, so
• 1:00:08
  we have a podcast and I was like, yeah, yeah, yeah.
• 1:00:10
  So let me tell you about that. And, you know, thank God for my
• 1:00:14
  boss and my boss's bosses and stuff.
• 1:00:17
  They just, you know, they know how to.
• 1:00:19
  They know a good idea when they see it and they know how to put
• 1:00:21
  gas on a fire. And so, you know, that's what I
• 1:00:24
  used to do all the stuff from my office and either like no, no,
• 1:00:26
  no, you, you what would, what, what support do you need to like
• 1:00:29
  make it legit, legit. And I was like, OK, well, you
• 1:00:32
  know, probably 300 bucks for a mic and headphones and things
• 1:00:35
  like that. A room would be nice.
• 1:00:38
  And man, they, it was like a blank check.
• 1:00:40
  I could have, if I wanted to. They they'd let me spend
• 1:00:43
  thousands if I wanted to, but it wasn't, I didn't need to spend
• 1:00:45
  thousands. So, so they blessed it.
• 1:00:47
  They blessed it, man, and they blessed it today.
• 1:00:48
  They're always, you know, they've been on the show.
• 1:00:51
  My, our CEO was a five time all American pole vaulter for Baylor
• 1:00:55
  University. He's been on the show.
• 1:00:56
  We've got a lot of teammates. Tim Glover, our sales manager,
• 1:00:59
  was a two time Division One javelin national champion.
• 1:01:01
  He's been on the show. We've had lots of teammates and
• 1:01:04
  former teammates on the show and of course lots of coaches.
• 1:01:07
  We have a, a huge dealer network out there, BSNMF, athletics, BS
• 1:01:11
  and a lot of other great men and women who represent our
• 1:01:13
  products. A lot of them have been on the
• 1:01:14
  show. So it's, it's, it's, it's taken
• 1:01:17
  off and become its own thing. That's that's for sure.
• 1:01:19
  That's awesome to have that support from a place that you're
• 1:01:23
  already at, right? Because it's.
• 1:01:25
  Invaluable. Yeah, like it's, again, it's
• 1:01:29
  that fear, it's that fear factor, you know, no pun
• 1:01:31
  intended, but it's that, it's that fear factor that says in
• 1:01:33
  like, like you're, you're banking on these people like
• 1:01:37
  believing in it. And and then that's I.
• 1:01:41
  That's got to be invaluable. I, I might be just dumb enough
• 1:01:45
  that I didn't have a lot of fear of people like either making fun
• 1:01:48
  of or judging me based on as being the host, but I did and
• 1:01:53
  kind of still do have some a little bit of inferiority
• 1:01:58
  complex with some of my guests that I asked because I was a
• 1:02:00
  coach. So like one of the first people
• 1:02:03
  that was like, oh man, I can't, I can't ask.
• 1:02:05
  This guy was Mouse Holloway, head coach at the University of
• 1:02:09
  Florida, right. So Mouse when I coached was kind
• 1:02:12
  of a mentor of mine. Like I, I used to always go to
• 1:02:15
  questions with him and he'd always be so great at answering.
• 1:02:18
  And then I, I started coaching at Mississippi State.
• 1:02:19
  So now I was a competitor of his.
• 1:02:21
  We recruited against each other and things like that.
• 1:02:23
  And so, you know, early in the journey I was like, man, he has
• 1:02:26
  such an amazing story. Of course I want to find out why
• 1:02:29
  is his nickname Mouse and, and all these things.
• 1:02:31
  And I remember he he agreed and we got on the on the zoom or pre
• 1:02:36
  interview. And one of my questions that I
• 1:02:39
  used to ask is, Hey, is there anything you want to make sure
• 1:02:42
  we promote? So whether it's a charity you
• 1:02:44
  guys do or but whatever, you know, things like that.
• 1:02:47
  And he goes, no, no, I don't, I don't do that.
• 1:02:49
  I don't do this stuff for that. He goes, A friend asked me to be
• 1:02:51
  on a show on a podcast. And so here I am.
• 1:02:54
  And it took me like a second. I was like, I'm that friend.
• 1:02:57
  I thought he was someone like someone else.
• 1:02:58
  I was like, well, no one else asked him.
• 1:02:59
  I asked. I was like, I was like mouse.
• 1:03:01
  That means like, Oh my God, like that means so much to me.
• 1:03:04
  And and now, you know, that relationship is Boston.
• 1:03:06
  I saw him last week in Eugene and I hug him and I tell him I
• 1:03:09
  love him because I do. I love him as a person, as a
• 1:03:11
  man, as a leader in our sport and his family.
• 1:03:13
  And so now it goes from, you know, sheepishly asking him to
• 1:03:16
  be on a podcast to like, brother, I love you like you're,
• 1:03:18
  you know, we're we're both humans in this great world, in
• 1:03:20
  this great sport. And I'm just so grateful to be
• 1:03:22
  able to call him, to call him a friend.
• 1:03:25
  And so. So there's a little bit of that.
• 1:03:27
  You know, when I ask Carol Smith Gilbert, who just, you know, won
• 1:03:29
  the women's title at the NCAA Division one by like 1000
• 1:03:33
  points, you know, I've known her for a long time, but she's a big
• 1:03:37
  time coach. And by the way, I ask you for
• 1:03:40
  two hours of your time, that's a lot.
• 1:03:43
  And so there's a little bit of sheepish, like, oh, man, I don't
• 1:03:45
  know if I should ask her. Brooks Johnson, rest in peace.
• 1:03:48
  You know, he was a big one. I'm like, man, he's a giant in
• 1:03:51
  our industry. So I still have a little bit of
• 1:03:53
  that. It's gotten a lot better,
• 1:03:55
  especially when you can now count a mouse and a Carol and a
• 1:03:57
  Brooks and George Williams. You know, these really giants in
• 1:04:01
  our industry as now former guests.
• 1:04:03
  It's a little bit easier to go to someone, be like, I mean, you
• 1:04:06
  probably want to be on the show, bro, because I've had mouse
• 1:04:09
  like, you know, you want to be like, I have people now.
• 1:04:12
  I have a list, probably A100150 deep of people that want to be
• 1:04:15
  on the show. And I was telling him I was
• 1:04:17
  like, all right, man, I'll put you on the list.
• 1:04:18
  My goal is kind of like Pokémon. I want to catch them all, but I
• 1:04:21
  only do 52 a year. So that means if you, if you're
• 1:04:23
  #52 on my list right now, it'll be a year before I, I call you
• 1:04:27
  up. But, but again, it's been
• 1:04:29
  amazing how you know, I truly think that you are meant to be
• 1:04:34
  exactly where you are today. Whether it's a good situation or
• 1:04:37
  bad situation doesn't mean this is the, you know, you're going
• 1:04:39
  to stay in the situation. But I think where you are, where
• 1:04:42
  your two feet are right now is exactly where you're supposed to
• 1:04:44
  be. And I can't remember who the
• 1:04:45
  actual person was, but they had asked to be on the show.
• 1:04:48
  And it was like 2 years, 2 1/2 years later, I finally got him
• 1:04:52
  on the show. And their story, their journey
• 1:04:55
  was so much better than 2 1/2 years ago.
• 1:04:58
  Like they'd gone through some things.
• 1:04:59
  I'm like, oh, we wouldn't have been able to talk about this if
• 1:05:02
  we'd done this 2 1/2 years ago like this.
• 1:05:04
  There's, there's some, you know, not knowing where your faith is,
• 1:05:07
  where you in your journey and, and your listeners.
• 1:05:09
  But you know, there, there's a little bit of like someone else
• 1:05:11
  is in control here, a little bit of what we're doing.
• 1:05:13
  And when you're supposed to be on the show, you'll be on the
• 1:05:16
  show, you know? Yeah, so, and I'm and I'm super
• 1:05:20
  gracious that you've been a mentor to me so far in this game
• 1:05:23
  and I'm so gracious and and I, I, I don't, but the fact that
• 1:05:27
  you're able to provide me with with advice and information and
• 1:05:32
  and you know, just kind gestures.
• 1:05:33
  I I really appreciate you so much.
• 1:05:35
  Absolutely. Yeah.
• 1:05:36
  You're. Welcome.
• 1:05:36
  And again, you do deserve it. Whether you think you don't or
• 1:05:38
  not you do. You're bringing value.
• 1:05:40
  The people that you're going to have on your show, someone
• 1:05:43
  people that you won't even know, dude, like, you know, we're,
• 1:05:47
  we're very quick to say the negative and very slow to say
• 1:05:49
  the positive. It's not a social media thing.
• 1:05:52
  Same thing it was in 1950 and 1850 is same thing.
• 1:05:55
  People would be slow to to do positives and very quick to be
• 1:05:58
  the negative, right. So there will be people that
• 1:06:00
  will receive value from your show that you'll never know.
• 1:06:03
  Like somebody in Connecticut is going to listen to your show and
• 1:06:05
  be like, so who's this Tony Haller guy?
• 1:06:07
  Maybe I need to look. And they never heard of Tony.
• 1:06:08
  And they do and they start coaching that way and their kids
• 1:06:11
  and their program grow. And that was because of you,
• 1:06:14
  because you allowed the platform.
• 1:06:15
  You did it. You know what I'm saying?
• 1:06:16
  So don't, don't think you don't deserve it.
• 1:06:19
  You absolutely deserve it because again, because you're a
• 1:06:21
  interview show of track coaches, which you know is near and dear
• 1:06:24
  to my heart, you're giving value into the world.
• 1:06:27
  And man, nothing ever can come bad from that.
• 1:06:30
  Honestly. Seriously.
• 1:06:31
  I'm hoping. Seriously.
• 1:06:33
  Who's like, like who? And you may, you may say, hey, I
• 1:06:37
  don't want to say it on on the air.
• 1:06:38
  And that's that's cool too. Like who's like your dream?
• 1:06:41
  Like, oh man, Mike, you know who would be amazing?
• 1:06:44
  But I I don't know him. I don't know them.
• 1:06:46
  I don't know how to get to them. Is there anybody you're like,
• 1:06:48
  when you first were doing this, Tony was a one of the first
• 1:06:51
  people in your mind, obviously. Was there anybody else that was
• 1:06:53
  like, oh man, it'd be so cool to to have Max Siegel, the head of
• 1:06:57
  USATF or, you know, I don't know, was there anybody that.
• 1:06:59
  You I don't, you know, Tony was the first because I, I know that
• 1:07:04
  he's polarizing, but we again, we have that rivalry and I just
• 1:07:08
  like there's this like this little right?
• 1:07:12
  I think I can't stand this guy. But then you get to know him and
• 1:07:14
  it's like, oh, this is actually a really good guy.
• 1:07:17
  I her name is, is, is I'm drawing a blank.
• 1:07:21
  But you know who I just saw recently?
• 1:07:23
  I don't have like this super big person's mind, right?
• 1:07:25
  Because I'm, I'm just, I'm just starting out right?
• 1:07:27
  And I'm trying to be modest, but the athletic director for USC,
• 1:07:33
  it's a woman and I can't think of her name right now.
• 1:07:36
  And. She's fairly new if I remember
• 1:07:39
  correctly. I would love to interview her
• 1:07:44
  because I don't know how many women are in positions like that
• 1:07:49
  and she's coming off of a a national championship, right?
• 1:07:52
  Like that's got to be humongous for your school.
• 1:07:55
  I would love to interview her. She's the the 1st.
• 1:07:57
  Person. Here's the road map to making
• 1:07:59
  that happen. So I don't know her.
• 1:08:02
  So there's not, there's no shortcut.
• 1:08:03
  Sometimes when I know people, I'm like, I'll put you, you
• 1:08:05
  know, go do it, introduce you to.
• 1:08:07
  But no, I don't, I don't know her.
• 1:08:09
  I did meet when Carol was the head coach at USC.
• 1:08:12
  The head coach, I'm sorry, the AD of USC then we're Carol was
• 1:08:16
  walking me around campus and the the AD walks by and she's like,
• 1:08:20
  oh, come here. Let me just seem like it's Lynn
• 1:08:21
  Swan. Was Lynn Swan Pittsburgh Steeler
• 1:08:24
  great receiver? Yeah, he was the AD and I was
• 1:08:26
  like, hi, Mr. Swan. I was like.
• 1:08:29
  It's awesome. Yeah, yeah.
• 1:08:31
  All right. But here's the road map here for
• 1:08:32
  anybody who wants to like this is kind of a networking, not
• 1:08:37
  hack, but really road map. So if there's someone big you
• 1:08:40
  want So like when, when I would teach the class, I'd say, you
• 1:08:42
  know, if you you want to interview the president United
• 1:08:44
  States, we don't go straight to the president.
• 1:08:46
  You're brand new. No one knows you, you don't have
• 1:08:47
  listeners, you don't you don't have any St. cred, if you will,
• 1:08:52
  right? So you just work up to it,
• 1:08:54
  right. So if you if you wanted, if
• 1:08:56
  you're like, man, I want to fast track this.
• 1:08:57
  I want to get to the AD at USC. The first thing you would do is
• 1:09:02
  you go look at US CS track coach staff and you find the lowest
• 1:09:06
  person on that staff, the volunteer assistant coach, the
• 1:09:10
  the second throws coach, you know the the assistant to the
• 1:09:13
  assistant throws coach. You find that person, you get
• 1:09:16
  him on the show and that person has a good experience.
• 1:09:19
  And then you go to the full time assistant and that person has a
• 1:09:22
  good assistant, good, a good experience and maybe says, Hey,
• 1:09:25
  let me introduce you to Carl, my Sprint coach and you interview
• 1:09:27
  Carl Goodman on your show. Great guy.
• 1:09:29
  And then you go, hey, Carl, you know, if this is pretty good,
• 1:09:32
  would you put in a good word with Q with me?
• 1:09:34
  And you get Quincy, who's an amazing guy.
• 1:09:36
  You get him on the show. And then as you do your post
• 1:09:40
  interview with Quincy, you're like, man, I've had, you know,
• 1:09:43
  your coaches, yadda, yadda, yadda on the show, man.
• 1:09:45
  I'm almost like AUSC podcast at this point, dude.
• 1:09:47
  And you giggle and laugh and all that kind of stuff.
• 1:09:49
  And you're like, hey, man. So I was looking at your ADS.
• 1:09:52
  She seems she seems pretty cool, man.
• 1:09:54
  Like maybe she likes, I don't know anything about her.
• 1:09:55
  Maybe she likes track things like that.
• 1:09:58
  What would be your best recommendation to get her on the
• 1:10:01
  show and even go fast track and be like, Oh yeah, yeah, let me
• 1:10:03
  let me put an e-mail or it is USCSADI.
• 1:10:06
  Imagine that role is a a little bit high.
• 1:10:08
  Yeah, yeah. He start with her Lieutenant,
• 1:10:10
  start with her first deputy or whatever.
• 1:10:12
  And you do the same thing through the administration if if
• 1:10:14
  you want to go all the way, I mean that's going to take you a
• 1:10:16
  while to get to that one, so. I'm I'm, but that's worth it.
• 1:10:19
  Yeah. I'm putting it in the universe.
• 1:10:21
  There's a coach that I I had no idea that he actually switched
• 1:10:24
  schools. He was at Nebraska Coach Emanuel
• 1:10:29
  and he bring the manual and he has roots to Plainfield.
• 1:10:35
  Yeah, where I'm from, Yeah. And we've been following each
• 1:10:38
  other for quite some time because we sent a kid there a
• 1:10:41
  few years ago and I was going to reach out to him first.
• 1:10:46
  So you don't know Brenton? I don't know him personally, but
• 1:10:49
  but we, we, we, we know mutual. People, when we get done, e-mail
• 1:10:54
  me and you could literally just put the subject line.
• 1:10:56
  Brenton, I'll introduce you. I was just talking to Brenton
• 1:10:59
  at, I don't think I actually got to connect with him in Eugene,
• 1:11:01
  but at incidentally West in College Station had a very long
• 1:11:04
  personal conversation with Brenton.
• 1:11:07
  He used to be the head coach at Eastern Illinois, you know, down
• 1:11:08
  the road and stuff. But he is an amazing human
• 1:11:11
  being. Him and his wife and his kids
• 1:11:12
  just God love him. Had a great conversation with
• 1:11:15
  him. e-mail me. I'll introduce you to Brenton
• 1:11:17
  and tell him, hey man, I just got off this interview with this
• 1:11:19
  Anthony guy. He did a great job, was very
• 1:11:21
  comfortable, very safe. Would you consider, you know,
• 1:11:25
  doing his podcast for me as a favorite for me?
• 1:11:27
  We'll we'll get him on easily. That's awesome.
• 1:11:29
  If if he's a podcast guy, he may be like, you know, he may be a.
• 1:11:31
  Guy, probably. Those kind of things.
• 1:11:33
  But, but if he does, we'll, we'll make the introduction and
• 1:11:35
  we'll, we'll make it happen. Bro.
• 1:11:36
  He's a, he's a great dude, Such a good, he deserves to be on the
• 1:11:39
  show cause his story is really fascinating.
• 1:11:42
  I mean, he's just a great, great dude.
• 1:11:43
  Yeah, I've heard nothing but great things about and it it's
• 1:11:46
  it's crazy that I wouldn't have these conversations with these
• 1:11:48
  people if I never started the podcast, right?
• 1:11:51
  Like I would have never known anything about you.
• 1:11:53
  That to me. Is the biggest hack I tell
• 1:11:56
  people so again, part of that class I would tell people and
• 1:11:59
  I've I've given this suggestion to many, many student athletes
• 1:12:01
  that I've talked to as well. If you want a job in a certain
• 1:12:05
  industry, start a podcast and start interviewing people that
• 1:12:08
  are in that industry. Two things one, you're going to
• 1:12:11
  learn a ton because you're going to be interviewing people that
• 1:12:13
  are already in the industry. Two, you're going to tell me if
• 1:12:15
  you put in your resume for a job and you're up against someone
• 1:12:18
  else and you interviewed one of the people or the person who's
• 1:12:21
  you don't think you automatically get kind of ahead
• 1:12:23
  of the line, like, oh, come on, man, I have a good time with
• 1:12:25
  Anthony on the podcast. Maybe I want to hire him and
• 1:12:27
  bring him it. It's a it's a hack that just in
• 1:12:30
  in people when I've told that some people push back said,
• 1:12:33
  well, what if I don't get any listeners?
• 1:12:34
  You don't have to tell anybody. How many people listen to your
• 1:12:36
  podcast. That's not first of all, you
• 1:12:38
  know how many people have asked me?
• 1:12:40
  You know, when I say, hey, do you, you know, I'd like for you
• 1:12:42
  to be a guest on the show? You know, how many people have
• 1:12:43
  actually come back and asked me? Well, how many listeners do you
• 1:12:45
  get? None 0. 00, not one, not 20.
• 1:12:53
  It's no one's business how many people listen to the podcast.
• 1:12:56
  I don't care if no one listen to the podcast because when I'm
• 1:12:59
  interviewing, I care about that person right there.
• 1:13:01
  That's all I care. You know you're on the show.
• 1:13:03
  Cool, because that's what I'm after.
• 1:13:04
  I'm after uplifting and honoring you.
• 1:13:05
  And if anybody decides to listen, God bless you,
• 1:13:07
  appreciate you listening. If not, God bless you.
• 1:13:10
  You'll never know about it anyway, so don't matter.
• 1:13:12
  Yeah. But yeah, absolutely.
• 1:13:14
  And that's, that's what it's about, yeah.
• 1:13:15
  If you want to be the best Sprint coach in Illinois, I
• 1:13:18
  would keep that angle and I would go out interview every
• 1:13:21
  Sprint coach. I I would be, I'm going to say
• 1:13:23
  this as if you are year in, you get all grace that you're a day
• 1:13:27
  in. Basically.
• 1:13:28
  I would after each NCAA championship.
• 1:13:30
  I'm talking about each D3D2, not just D1, any IE championship,
• 1:13:34
  Jugo championship. I would be calling up or
• 1:13:36
  emailing the Sprint coaches at each of those schools.
• 1:13:40
  Hey man, you just won the national title.
• 1:13:41
  I'd love to have you on. I'm a Sprint podcaster.
• 1:13:44
  I'd love to have you on there and just talk about your journey
• 1:13:46
  and you know, maybe talk about the year, how you know, how'd
• 1:13:48
  your sprinters contribute to your team championship.
• 1:13:51
  I'd be getting every one of those guys and gals on your show
• 1:13:54
  and pick their brains and like, you can go, you can go XS and
• 1:13:58
  OS. Like, you know, here's what I do
• 1:13:59
  with my sprinters. Oh, you do that a little
• 1:14:01
  different. Why do you do that?
• 1:14:02
  Well, what kind of sprinters are you getting?
• 1:14:03
  Oh, OK, I see why you do that. And just I mean, literally like
• 1:14:07
  block out the cameras, block out the recording button and just
• 1:14:10
  have a conversation with these men and women who are coaching
• 1:14:14
  their tails off out there. I mean, go look at the sprints
• 1:14:17
  marks, dude. It's bonkers out there.
• 1:14:19
  What's going on? Go go have conversations with
• 1:14:22
  them and you'll be, gosh, you'll be getting a master's class,
• 1:14:25
  bro. In one year of doing that,
• 1:14:27
  you'll be five years ahead of everybody.
• 1:14:29
  You know what I'm saying? Yeah, and, and, and I that was
• 1:14:31
  like the secondary part of it. It's like I'm getting so much
• 1:14:35
  information. It's like by the time I get
• 1:14:37
  done, you know, hopefully with, with my, my, my episodes and my
• 1:14:42
  guests, like I'll have so much more knowledge that I could go
• 1:14:45
  take and and bring to my kids. Yeah, really.
• 1:14:48
  Is. Yeah, I started off locally.
• 1:14:50
  I asked. I actually asked over state
• 1:14:53
  weekend. I asked coach Lucado so if I
• 1:14:57
  could, if I could have a conversation with him sent down
• 1:14:59
  from Edwardsville and I, I felt like that was and I felt like
• 1:15:03
  that was part of the steps of me overcoming that fear.
• 1:15:06
  I, I asked Tony the same night I said, Tony, hey, I got this,
• 1:15:09
  this podcast idea. I want you to be the first
• 1:15:12
  guest. Literally I saw Lucado's and I
• 1:15:15
  was like, I'm talking to to Carson and I'm like, I'm about
• 1:15:19
  to go to ask him and he's like, dude, he's a, he's a cool guy.
• 1:15:22
  Just go ask him. And I was like, no, I'm about to
• 1:15:24
  go and ask him, right? Like I'm like trying to like
• 1:15:26
  hype myself up. And I was like, you know, this
• 1:15:29
  guy, this guy's built such a great program.
• 1:15:31
  He's got a perennial program. They're consistently winning
• 1:15:34
  state titles and stuff. Start and I want to talk to him.
• 1:15:37
  Start with people you know, people that you're comfortable
• 1:15:40
  with. Think about, you know, you have
• 1:15:43
  something a lot of Illinois Sprint coaches, college coaches
• 1:15:47
  want, right athletes. So call the Sprint coach at
• 1:15:50
  Illinois Wesley and call the Sprint coach at DePaul.
• 1:15:53
  Like these are people like, well, I, I probably should do
• 1:15:55
  the podcast because I'm going to recruit his kids one day.
• 1:15:57
  You know, I'm saying like they have a little bit of like,
• 1:15:59
  maybe, you know, scratch your back and scratch, you know, that
• 1:16:00
  kind of thing. Like, so they want to be on the
• 1:16:02
  show. Absolutely start there before
• 1:16:03
  you get that, before you call Mouse Holloway, you're like
• 1:16:06
  Mouse, you have no idea who I am.
• 1:16:09
  I'm this guy up in Plainfield. I have the show.
• 1:16:11
  Would you know, that's a big ask for a guy who's, you know, on
• 1:16:14
  the world championship teams and things like that.
• 1:16:15
  Coaching pros build out that that library of 20304050 people
• 1:16:20
  that it's very comfortable for you because because that'll also
• 1:16:22
  help you be a better interviewer as well.
• 1:16:25
  Like like listen to how you ask questions.
• 1:16:28
  If you find other people's podcast that are interview style
• 1:16:31
  interesting, listen to them differently, not just, you know,
• 1:16:34
  they ask a question, listening to what the person says.
• 1:16:37
  Go back and listen to how they ask questions, how they
• 1:16:40
  structure their questions, how they interrupt and when they
• 1:16:42
  don't interrupt, like, like listen to them and, and you'll
• 1:16:45
  just continue to evolve your style and, and you'll get better
• 1:16:48
  and better and you'll, you'll create your own.
• 1:16:49
  There's no one style, you'll create your own that puts the
• 1:16:53
  the guest at ease to really give you truth, not just, OK, here's
• 1:16:56
  I, I know what he really wants me to say.
• 1:16:57
  So I'll say it this way. You want them to be, you know,
• 1:17:00
  unfiltered. That's where you get the real
• 1:17:02
  Nuggets of information out there.
• 1:17:03
  So. Yeah, I'm super excited.
• 1:17:07
  I'm excited for you dude. This is.
• 1:17:09
  Great, man. Yeah, this is awesome.
• 1:17:11
  Again, I just want to thank you for being so gracious again.
• 1:17:14
  You don't have to do this, right?
• 1:17:16
  You're taking time out of your day to give little, little me
• 1:17:19
  and, you know, your average coach podcast some time and no,
• 1:17:22
  but I, I I appreciate it because we have to start somewhere,
• 1:17:25
  right? And I, you know, and for you to
• 1:17:27
  be able to be like, hey, here's some information and I'll give
• 1:17:31
  you some of my time, you know, that's invaluable.
• 1:17:33
  So I want to thank you and make sure I give you your flowers
• 1:17:36
  while I'm on the phone with you. Absolutely.
• 1:17:38
  Last nugget of information, I'll give you a cheat code, if you
• 1:17:41
  will, for your podcast. Do you use ChatGPT at all?
• 1:17:45
  That might be a curse word for a teacher.
• 1:17:46
  I'm not sure. But you know ChatGPT, right?
• 1:17:48
  Yeah, I'm talking about. OK, good.
• 1:17:50
  All right, good. I'm glad you at least know that.
• 1:17:52
  So here's kind of my workflow, if you will ever podcast when we
• 1:17:56
  get done with a podcast, you know, now, you know from Zoom,
• 1:18:00
  right? It'll give you 2 files.
• 1:18:01
  It gives you the audio only file and it gives you the video with
• 1:18:04
  the audio file, right? I, I take that video file and I
• 1:18:07
  put it into YouTube and I schedule it for one, you know,
• 1:18:09
  month or two later, whatever it's supposed to be scheduled.
• 1:18:12
  And then I take the audio and I do my intro and outro on on
• 1:18:16
  Audacity, right? And then I put it into Spotify
• 1:18:19
  and I tell it two weeks, 3 weeks, whatever it is, right?
• 1:18:22
  And I already have a title format, right?
• 1:18:26
  So I just put the person's name and the school and, you know,
• 1:18:28
  change the number, right? Move on.
• 1:18:30
  But there's that podcast episode description very, very important
• 1:18:34
  for people who are searching right?
• 1:18:36
  The next day on YouTube, go into that video and edit.
• 1:18:40
  Just hit edit. You know, go into the behind the
• 1:18:42
  scenes and there's a little button on the bottom right says
• 1:18:44
  transcript. You click on that, it'll, it'll
• 1:18:47
  have already taken all your words from both people into text
• 1:18:51
  form. Copy all that over into ChatGPT
• 1:18:56
  and say, hey, here's my transcript.
• 1:18:58
  When I did my interview with Tony Holler from, you know,
• 1:19:01
  retired now from Plainfield South or whatever.
• 1:19:03
  I'm not sure what school was that.
• 1:19:04
  Can you give me a really good podcast episode description?
• 1:19:09
  And then you can tell it, you know, I always tell it to add
• 1:19:11
  emojis and use bullet format. That's what I prefer.
• 1:19:14
  And then you control paste the whole transcript in, hit enter
• 1:19:18
  and within 20 seconds you've got a killer podcast episode
• 1:19:21
  description. It's amazing, bro.
• 1:19:25
  I was telling people, sometimes people are like, Oh, it's a lot
• 1:19:27
  of work. And I'm like, boy, I don't want
• 1:19:29
  to tell you how easy this is. It's not hard.
• 1:19:31
  The hardest part is this right here, you know, spending an
• 1:19:33
  hour, two hours and someone really getting the gold out.
• 1:19:35
  But after that, man, it's it's easy peasy stuff.
• 1:19:38
  The audacity is simple. It's 20 seconds and I'm done.
• 1:19:41
  ChatGPT, it's 20 seconds and I'm done Because here's my biggest
• 1:19:43
  fear for you, Anthony. I love what you titled the
• 1:19:47
  podcast Your average coach podcast and I and I know why and
• 1:19:51
  and how you spelt it but that is going to be almost not
• 1:19:55
  searchable. You know.
• 1:19:57
  What no one's going to search you are they're going to search
• 1:20:00
  why you are right. So you're going to you're going
• 1:20:03
  to have to really live on your podcast description of track and
• 1:20:07
  feet, like all the keywords right Excuse me track and field
• 1:20:09
  interview coaches Illinois sprints.
• 1:20:12
  You know you're going to need the pack that in there.
• 1:20:15
  So when someone searches. Sprint coaches podcast.
• 1:20:18
  Oh, yours will pop up because, oh, it has Sprint coaches.
• 1:20:21
  Oh, and it's podcast, you know, that kind of thing.
• 1:20:22
  You're going to struggle a little bit with your with your
• 1:20:25
  title, the way you title today. Yeah.
• 1:20:28
  And. That makes sense and.
• 1:20:29
  Again, we get lucky because if you're going to search for
• 1:20:31
  something that we did, you're going to search for kill
• 1:20:32
  athletics, right? So that's in the that's in all
• 1:20:34
  the stuff. So it's the author and
• 1:20:36
  everything. So it pops up automatically when
• 1:20:38
  you're doing a more stylized like you're doing it.
• 1:20:40
  You got to be a little careful what you actually title it.
• 1:20:44
  You may one day change your title to your average podcast,
• 1:20:48
  your average coach all spelt out that that that will help you get
• 1:20:52
  discovered more to be honest with you so.
• 1:20:54
  I like that. I mean let me see if I nobody
• 1:20:57
  has the the tag already. Oh, it doesn't.
• 1:20:59
  It doesn't matter. There's there's no copyrights on
• 1:21:01
  podcast. I I could go out.
• 1:21:03
  Well, I wouldn't do this because of who he is and how much money
• 1:21:06
  he has. But I could go out right now and
• 1:21:07
  start a podcast called the Joe Rogan Experience and they
• 1:21:09
  couldn't do anything. I can't steal his artwork, but
• 1:21:12
  I, you can't on the podcast world.
• 1:21:14
  You can't. He could defend it and he would,
• 1:21:16
  he would be able to defend it. But if there's somebody else
• 1:21:18
  that already has your average coach podcast, they ain't big
• 1:21:21
  enough to be able to do anything.
• 1:21:22
  A lawyer would laugh at it and be like, whatever, dude, get out
• 1:21:24
  of here. You got 10 listeners.
• 1:21:26
  Get out of here. Let that guy do get his 10
• 1:21:27
  listeners. Move on.
• 1:21:28
  You know what I'm saying? There's nothing there.
• 1:21:29
  But you can't steal artwork. And if you need help with
• 1:21:32
  artwork yourself, again, Chachi BT, bro, I've used Chachi BT for
• 1:21:35
  a lot of thumbnails and things like that.
• 1:21:38
  For sure. All, all my YouTube thumbnails
• 1:21:40
  are, are Chachi BT created? Really.
• 1:21:44
  Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. I just tell it, hey, man, I need
• 1:21:47
  a YouTube thumbnail. Here's the size.
• 1:21:49
  You know, I'll tell it stuff like there's a cool 1 coming up
• 1:21:52
  soon with the Arkansas State's head coach, Doctor Jim Pascal.
• 1:21:55
  And he's a chemistry teacher. And so I said what you kind of
• 1:21:59
  like, Tony, Actually I was like, you know, use the Arkansas State
• 1:22:01
  colors, you know, red and things like that.
• 1:22:04
  This guy used to be a a chemistry teacher, so kind of
• 1:22:06
  used that as the background. And then I was like, can use
• 1:22:08
  this photo. There was a cool photo of him
• 1:22:09
  standing like that and it all molded.
• 1:22:11
  It was like, oh, man, that's pretty cool.
• 1:22:12
  Like I could never, never. I could never have done that.
• 1:22:14
  Man, That's crazy. 20 seconds. Like here you go, button.
• 1:22:17
  I'm like, thank you. Yeah.
• 1:22:19
  That's crazy. Yeah, I'm going to have to.
• 1:22:20
  I'm going to have to add that to my repertoire.
• 1:22:21
  Yeah, yeah, practice and play around with that.
• 1:22:23
  Otherwise, the biggest advice I can give you, dude, is keep
• 1:22:27
  going, be consistent, be yourself, Don't try to, you
• 1:22:32
  know, here's what I think they think I I should be as a podcast
• 1:22:34
  host or what? To be yourself.
• 1:22:37
  That's going to make for a better conversation just like
• 1:22:39
  this one. You did a great job here with
• 1:22:40
  this conversation with me. We, we don't know each other.
• 1:22:43
  We didn't know each other. And so those are the harder ones
• 1:22:45
  when you don't know anything about the person.
• 1:22:46
  I think. So I thought you did a great
• 1:22:48
  job. So keep being yourself and man,
• 1:22:50
  if you keep doing this and be consistent, a lot of breaks are
• 1:22:53
  going to go your way and you're going to have a lot of
• 1:22:54
  listeners. You're going to be a lot of
• 1:22:55
  great guest and you're going to be, at the end of the day, more
• 1:22:57
  enriched because of it. For sure, I appreciate you so
• 1:23:01
  much. Thank you for being on the
• 1:23:03
  You're Avis Coach podcast. Thank you, Anthony.
• 1:23:06
  Appreciate you having me here today.
• 1:23:08
  Thank you. Awesome, cool.
• 1:23:22
  Yo be ready be one way you're Avis coach podcast TuneIn Thank
• 1:23:27
  you.