In Episode 14, Mike talks with Casey Jacox. Casey is a father, a husband, a friend, a coach, an author, and a business leader who strives to lead by example through authenticity, vulnerability, and positivity. Casey was also starting quarterback at Central Washington University, the school that produced 17-year NFL quarterback Jon Kitna.
Casey opens up about his challenges as a college athlete, specifically how the adversity associated with major injuries have helped mold him into who he is today. Casey also talks about the challenges of parenthood and how he has been inspired to help other fathers who often have difficulty opening up to others about the pressures of fatherhood.
Around 26:00 into the episode, Casey talks about an article called The Ride Home that talks about the do’s and don’ts of speaking with your children on the ride home from sporting events. Casey passionately articulates the importance of allowing the athletic experience to be the child’s and not the adult’s. It is an important reminder for all parents that the things that we say to kids can have a very detrimental impact on their motivation and self-esteem. You can find a link to that article here: https://changingthegameproject.com/the-ride-home-after-the-game/
You can learn more about Casey and find The Quarterback DadCast at https://www.caseyjacox.com/.
You can learn more about The Freshman Foundation at https://freshmanfoundation.com.
Schedule a free 30-minute strategy session to learn more about how The Freshman Foundation can help your family nail the transition from HS to college athletics: https://calendly.com/michaelvhuber/the-freshman-foundation-exploratory-discussion
Thank you again for listening!
[00:00:00] Welcome to the Freshmen Foundation podcast, a conversation style platform where we explore the many challenges of transitioning from high school to college athletics, and with the help of our expert guests and using positive psychology, mindfulness, acceptance and commitment, our listeners can learn new ideas to gain insights into a meaningful and successful transition into college athletics. Now, here's your host, founder and CEO of the Freshmen Foundation, Michael Huber.
[00:00:30] Hey, everyone. It's Mike Huber, founder and CEO of the Freshmen Foundation. Welcome to the Freshmen Foundation podcast, a podcast specifically about the transition from high school to college athletics. I guess in this episode is Casey Jacox. Casey is a father, husband and coach. He is also the author of When the Relationship Not the Deal and host of the Quarterback Diecast Podcast. Please welcome Casey to the show. Casey, how are you, Mike?
[00:00:59] I'm doing good, man. I'm honored to join you. And thank you for the warm welcome.
[00:01:03] My pleasure. It's great to have you here. Casey, I was a guest on Casey's podcast just recently. We recorded. And so the offer to return the favor and I'm more than happy to have him here because Casey, amongst the things that I mentioned in our introduction, was also the starting quarterback at Central Washington University and played on a team, I believe, with Jon Kitna, former NFL star of 17 years. Is that correct? That is accurate. Yeah. So, also Casey's experience as a transitioning high school, the college athlete is going to come into play in our conversation. So I guess before we get into the nitty gritty, can you just tell the audience a little bit about yourself?
[00:01:47] Yeah, I'm a washed up mid 40 year old Caucasian male who is fighting injuries every day. And I'm joking. I want a lot of that's true. But now I'm I am healthy for the most part, fighting, lingering back injuries. I wish they would have told you that when you were playing quarterback in the mid 90s when they treated quarterbacks a little differently. Back then, they get used to get ridiculed for not stepping into the throw and taking the shot from the six three two hundred forty five pounds. Do that. He would pick you up, body slam you. And when we didn't take it like a man back in the nineteen hundreds, we would get ripped it. But I don't regret that. But times when my back it's tweaky and I'm out of sorts which is maybe a little bit right now. I regret it. But no, I'm joking aside. And you married happily married for twenty two years. I have a fifteen year old son and a twelve year old daughter. Both are doing great. I could not be more lucky and blessed for how they've handled themselves through this pandemic. Obviously everybody's been challenged now. I told them from the beginning to things I said, kids, we will not use it as an excuse for this family and don't ever feel like you're getting picked on because we're all getting picked on right now, every single person in the world. So time wasted worrying about that is an absolute waste of time. I want to be empathetic. Your emotions, we're going to talk about it, but then we're going to move on. And they've embraced it and they've worked hard. And our relationship as a family has gotten way tighter. And I'm just very thankful for that time that we had. Sure, we miss sports or we miss all those things like just like everybody else did. But we made the most of it. And I'll look back. And this has actually been a great year for our family.
[00:03:15] Yeah, I think it's ironic that I feel the same way about my own personal situation. And I think it's great to hear that your family is taking it as an opportunity to get better and to really work on maybe some of the things that sometimes we just didn't have as much bandwidth or that we didn't have the resources to work on. I guess I'm going to ask you to talk a little bit more about that relationship with your kids and sort of how they've responded to it, because it sounds like they've responded to a while. But can you just talk about that in a little bit more detail, how they've kind of responded to your parenting in that respect?
[00:03:47] Yeah, well, thankfully, my wife, my general manager, I work for her. So she's she's done a great job of keeping us all in line. And I think throughout this journey, I also started a business during this last year which which helped me meet a lot of interesting people. And I'll give you an example, like one exercise that they embraced great was just a little dinner exercise. We did. And we went around the room and we said, all right, so my kids names are right. And really, my wife's name is Carrie. So I'd say, hey, Ryder, so your job at dinner is to talk about one thing you love about everybody at this table and then one thing you love about yourself. And there like what I said, because you've got to be confident with things that you're good at. We all have gifts and treasures to give the world. And it was such a cool exercise to be kind of want to go through. And then they also talk about showing love to each other and having him say something that is sister, you know, and it was really cool to see them just kind of embrace that. That would be one example. The other example it was really impacted me was during an episode I interviewed a gentleman by the name of Swen that Nader, who was a famous ABA NBA player, played for John Wooden. Interesting story about him is he got recruited to play for UCLA back in the 70s, but never truly played a lot.
[00:04:55] And that was Wooden's kind of pitch to him. He said, you're going to come play for me. You're going to play behind the best. Foul player in the world. We're not going to play much, but I guarantee I'll get to the NBA. That was his recruiting pitch. If you're a high school kid or family out there thinking about that, like, why would you do that? And he said is the best decision he ever made. You got to play by Bill Walton and to play an NBA for 12 years and tell a story because he also ended up writing a book called You Have Not Taught until they have learned. And he talked about such as parents during this last two or three years. We all realize that there's a lot of parents that are probably doing way too much, way too many things for the kids were busy. We've got to get this sport, get to that sport, do this, do that for him. And I was like, no, I was guilty of that. And we're not helping them, and so we really challenged our kids to say, hey, I know you love the dad makes pancakes and that's my jam, but I want to see you do it and I get to start teaching you. And so we really took that advice to heart and they embraced it. And so now I joke and I got short order cooks in my family. They're making eggs. My daughter made a full on cake yesterday.
[00:05:54] I'm like, what do we have a case where she goes, that's why bake them. Like in my mind, like you say, I don't eat a cake like it's she was passionate about it. I just I thought, awesome, go girl, do your thing. So I think we're just trying to love them where they are, not where we want them to go. Because in the end, as parents, it's not our journey, it's theirs. And I think there's too many parents. I'm sure there's parents right now listening that you might be wrapped up in. My daughter's not playing or my son's not doing this or why are they on this team right there? I think in the end, it's not your goals, it's their goals. And I think we need to remember that. And coming from a college athlete who played sports, that's one thing my parents did really, really well. They didn't they weren't like, you got to go out and do seventy eight hundred pushups and throw 7000 thousand footballs. It was always my idea. I didn't get that fire until probably my late sophomore year when my high school football coach spoke truth to me and said, hey, you can be our starting quarterback, but here's what you got to do. That was like she got the right Casey like me, and it was the best thing. And they never they pushed a little bit, but nothing like I see what I see now in today's society.
[00:06:55] I mean, listen, you're speaking my language and in some ways a one I think philosophically we agree as fathers. But I also believe in that professionally, you know, I'm a big student of motivation. And one of the things about motivation that I think a lot of people don't really understand or think about is people get motivated kids, particularly when they feel like it's they're in control. They perceive control in this situation. Right. So if it's their idea or they have the ability to navigate it on their own and solve problems, even if they fall on their face, they're OK with it because it's their experience. And I think what we've come into is as a society is is we've all gotten busier. We've all become more scheduled. Technology sort of taken over and a lot of ways. And I think there's just everybody wants to have a sense of control. And so we're constantly jockeying with our kids to schedule them to do things and push them to do more stuff. And part of that is, you know, we want them to succeed. But part of them is that's our guilt as parents because we're not spending as much time with them. And so we want to make sure everything's perfect. That's the least. That's my take on it. We want to make sure everything's perfect for them because we're not capable of giving them the space to fall on their face. So I love that. And so can you talk about that maybe a little bit more in terms of athletically with your children and their experiences? You know, obviously, you talked about kind of what goes on in the home, and that's really important. And I think that translates to outside the home. But can you talk about their kind of athletic experiences, what they do and kind of how you manage that?
[00:08:24] Yeah, you so my my kids have been in sports ever since. They're young. I coached a ton of their sports. My son was, I say above average baseball player, and then he decides he was twelve to go play golf like, OK, we sure like you're one of our better players. Like now I'm like OK, sweet, I'm thinking Jack. But I'm in baseball, I love it, but it's a little bit boring as a coach sometimes and players at times go mariners. We still yes. We got no hit this week which is awesome, super proud of that heavy sarcasm and then went back to playing baseball and they kind of showed me what to do and my daughter just been like this. I always joke she's the toughest one in our family. Intense basketball player, point guard. There's never a shot inside half court. She's like fiery motor never quits. I'm like, I get tired watching her so I don't have to push her as much. But my son, what covid did for us specifically with sports is it shut basketball down so he couldn't do basketball when he was like, want to play golf like. All right. It's a lot of times when Dad was building his business in the last year, he would go play golf by himself. We spent a lot of time in eastern Washington. Thankfully, we have a like a vacation home over there. And he would go out by himself or go to the range or as mom or dad to go drop me off.
[00:09:34] And he played sixty rounds of golf last year. And played in his buddy that the same thing, his sport, he played hockey as a sport was shut down. So they and then we got back to the west side of the state. They'd play three or four days a week. And we weren't sure if golf was going to happen at the high school level. And then he end up trying out. And then this was my idea. And it sure, I introduced him to him. Sure, I like his school play golf, but sometimes he wouldn't do it. And I just kind of like to watch him do it. And all of a sudden it was became his idea, his idea. And he had to make the varsity golf team as a freshman and a meddling as a freshman, which means for those I don't know, it means it means he shot the lowest round for both teams. And a pretty funny story when it happened. I wasn't there. My wife took him in because we only could have one parent at the at the event. And the coach comes up to and knocks on the window and says, hey, are you writer's mom? She's like, hey, man, he did a great job. So he meddled. And she's like, what does that mean? You had no idea.
[00:10:30] Right. And so I love that. Like, she's got a little naivete to it. I've taken a step back and I'm like, but now is the time. Now you've got taste of success. And even like basketball team, you just made the high school basketball team. I talk about him now. Is that great? You made the team, but now the work starts and said, right, this is what your dad teaches in the business world. Is this number called Fourteen Forty, which is the number of minutes in the day and you're only as good as that day. And also you're only as bad as that day. And so I try to teach them like those types of mindset, things from a sports perspective. And because in the end, I'm not trying to produce college athletes. I'm trying to produce great human beings that are going to be great fathers, friends, husbands, employees, leaders of community. And well, I would rather day in, day out, like, say, man, your son, that's six out of 14. That was nasty versus bad case. Your son had the best handshake and he had the best conversation and he handled himself with respect like that to me is more important. And I wasn't always like that early. My kids are third, fourth grade. I probably fell in that trap a quickly. I realize I don't want to be one of those dads.
[00:11:34] I, I agree. I mean, my kids are just similar age is put it that way. And it's the same thing. You know, their sport experience can't be mine. And I think that that's unfortunately in that respect, we're in the minority. I think that there's an overemphasis on sport in terms of what it's what it means to the child, to the parent, and ultimately leads to a lot of pressure. And you talked about your parents a little bit when you were an athlete coming up through high school and how they weren't particularly hands on. That's my interpretation. So can you talk about that as you were sort of learning from your coaches, like, hey, maybe there's a chance for you to be our starting quarterback in high school as a sophomore to the point where you started to get recruited and started to get interest from colleges. Like what did that look like for you?
[00:12:25] Yeah, me or is it I would not classify my parents as more like hands off. I'd more classify them as just not they weren't like over the top, like, OK, hey, you got to go run three hundreds and do that like they once it was my idea then they kind of start playing some paint. You, Casey, you got a job and you put a tire swing in the backyard. Do you think it'd be a good idea? Go on, throw the football at you. Right, Dad, I'll go out there like a little encouragement like that. I mean, they never missed an event, but. Yeah. So anyway, so sophomore year, I literally look like a cross-country runner, six one, one and thirty five. I'd like to play football, man. I look like Beetlejuice, like pumpkin on toothpick head. And I got in the weight room and obviously getting in the weight room gets confidence up. All of a sudden the bench increases, squat increases. You start seeing changes in your body like this. That's kind of fun. You start you feel better about yourself. And, you know, on a software football team, there's a kids same age as me. And he was on JV. And so the writing was on the wall. I got all this is going to happen way better athlete. He was a baseball player getting drafted by the Yankees, made to triple-A. And that sophomore team, we had about sixteen, seventeen kids in the team. And yes, you guys heard that number at sixteen or seventeen, eleven play on the side. So I was going offense, defense special teams. I was kicking, I was punting, I was playing middle linebacker at one thirty five.
[00:13:39] Not the most intimidating guy over there, but it toughened me up and we had so many great memories and we got our asses kicked. Sorry about the language and, but it was so fun. And then one day I get pulled up to JV because we didn't have a software game and they put me in and I all of a sudden I went in there like had three or four great series that I got on the sidelines. I remember this coach, Coach Charlie Cannon, who's now the head coach of this high school called Mountain Side here in Seattle. He said, check your stocks rise. And I was like, what does that mean? He was talking about stock market was like, I think, is that good or bad? I mean, so naive. And I'm still naive to this day. My goal is to be the oldest naive person in the rest of when I get there. And at the end of the season, Coach Marty Osborne says, hey, you got a chance we're going to open up this job. And but here's what you got to do. And we went through goals like benched, squat, clean, forty body fat, all these things. And he goes, and we had a goal sheet, so we had to write it down, which is what I always teach everybody you want have. Go write it down and tell somebody about it. There's accountability. And that she went right next to my bed and every day I'd wake up and I'd see it, it was a reminder that I had to go do it if that was so something I want to do so that next Monday, six o'clock in the morning, I start lifting weights.
[00:14:49] Monday, Wednesday, Friday, I lift left before school. And then Monday, Wednesday, Friday, I left for school. So I was lifting twice a day, Tuesdays and Thursdays I'd throw the football to anybody care for to a player, violinist, English as a second language teacher for Rozzi. I don't care who you are, you're running routes. Let's go. And went to a couple of camps a junior year and then finally we went to fall. We agreed to compete and it's fast for the story. There's both captains that your seniors and they were both split to want to meet. You want to be our guy. And we didn't know until the first game week. And I remember us stretching and I get this tapped. My shoulder is like kolkhoz goes. Jaycox, you ready to be our starter this week? And I was like, oh, my God, I got goose bumps telling strikes, it just takes me back to that moment and I'm like, Yes, Coach. And he's like, and I could not wait to go tell my mom and dad because they know how hard I worked. Anyway, fast for a story. I had a decent junior year. We didn't have. I say the most talent around me, no disrespect to the team. But like I mean, for example, I got interviewed one day. I went three for 11 with eight drops. And the reporter at the end of the game was like, how did it feel to have that many drops, which I'm so glad God universe, whatever crazy me is like that was on them.
[00:15:57] That was on me. I could have made those throws easier. And I was just innately already wired to take the heat, which was Quarterback's lesson out there. It's never your teammates fault on getting the line of fire for them. The story gets good, though, like when that summer my junior and senior year I'd go to the central Washington camp just because my high school football coach, Marty Osborne, played there. And then I also went to the University of Washington camp where my other friend was going. He was getting recruited by and I was excited to throw with, like Division one athlete to kind of see how I would do and not really having any expectations is that that would be fun. And I go and I knew I was playing well, but I didn't think anything of it and get the end of the camp last day. They're giving out awards. My friend, Kevin Charles, he got an award. My God. And that's awesome. And the very last word. There I go. Right now we're going to announce the most outstanding quarterback of the camp and not I did not have I was I was even thinking about it and got named. Dick Baird, who was a recruiting coordinator for University of Washington, said the most outstanding quarterback of the camp is Casey Jacox. I'm like, oh, my God. What? And Kevin, my friend, went bananas, I walked out of Husky Stadium, now those beautiful state
[00:17:04] Greats that if
[00:17:06] I walk down there and get on the field, they give me all this gear, these I signed on James poster when the famous coaches and they talk to me afterwards, like, listen, you're now on our radar. We I got tickets to all the home games. I got part of the recruiting class. I'm going to be in the locker room before after the game because I want you to send us your best game film, September, October, November. We're going to have someone at your game. You know it. I'm like and now it's just like I mean, I went from not being recruited to full blown like, oh, my God, this is happening. So now I'm confidence is an all time. I keep working hard. We get to the fall and we have this thing called jamborees, um, if you have about where you are. But for those who don't know, Jamboree is like a mini practice game against other teams. And we would get situational stuff where B ball the twenty go each team get a chance or something like that or third down situations. And anyway we crushed them, crushed everybody, played some strong teams and we were just like destroying. So the guy that I beat out of our junior, he's now playing tight. End the position for him. He's athletic, you know, it's just relationships tight. The last play, that jamboree I get put back in for whatever reason coach calls a pass play. I was like I was kind of weird with the JV line said I'm like, OK, Lee. Right now, Andy Reid snaps, snaps a little slow.
[00:18:18] I get it. Nose guard dives in between the gap between the a gap. His knee somehow gets on top my right foot and I couldn't move us like stuck like you're in quicksand. All of a sudden a defensive end comes. We'll turn around and blast me from the back. This guy goes low. This guy goes, hi. I felt like the tongue of my shoe exploded, went into shock like, oh, tried to get up, took one step, immediately collapsed. They kind of walk me off. I'm like, this is not feel good trainers like typical high school trainer. No disrespect. Yeah. We'll get to Isong. You'll be back by day. It's starting to really, really hurt now. I almost feel in tears my eyes. My mom and dad said we'd better take the doctors to make sure that wrong doctor. We do x rays. He goes case. I got bad news. You broke four bones, your right foot. You're in surgery in two hours, done for the year. Now, the guy that I beat out the story from Junior, he now has to play quarterback. After the first three games, he's playing amazing and I'm a captain and then my acting like it, I'm selfish, I'm thinking negative thoughts. I'm hoping he's going to play bad. I want him to fail. I want him to get hurt. I could not have been a worse teammate. I finally had the courage after the fourth game to go talk to my high school football coach. I said, Coach Osman, I'm not I'm embarrassed by my actions.
[00:19:28] I'm not being a captain. He's like, what do you mean? I said, This is my team. Everything I work for, Shane's achieving and I'm a mess. I need to figure out something I don't. I just I'm struggling. And to his credit, he goes, Kaseman, I'm so proud of you for the courage. Come talk to me. I got an idea. I'm like, what kind? I was having a piss poor attitude. So he's like, you know, this offense almost better than I do. Why do you go up in the booth and help me call plays? You'll be my office coordinator for the rest of the year. And I was like a light shine. I was like, what? I'm like, I'm in and I felt like I have goosebumps now. My vacuum sucked, all that negative energy gone, like it happened like that. And I was like, let's frickin go. I could not wait to get to practice telling my teammates and Shane would go on. That was the guy I had to play a great year. He had he went on to break our single season passing yardage record. He went on take us to say playoffs, first time in 20 years. And he was named second team, all league, all things that I was supposed to achieve. So now a dramatic story, but I'm forty five. That happened almost 30 years ago. Ish. I will honestly say the best thing that ever happened in my entire life and my parents. I can't imagine how hard it was for them to watch me go through this, but that moment prepared me for so much that I went through.
[00:20:48] I ended up walking on in Central Preferred walk on. I was twelve from the depth chart. That guy's got a pretty good arm. Chipping away, chipping away. Almost almost didn't redshirt was fourth string my junior. True freshman year. I read your read your freshman year. I end up beating my other freshmen out on the third string which I got to travel, which was like a huge accomplishment. So now I'm with me. Got him. Ryan Fournier and Jon Kitna. I was on the floor. They were in the beds and just, you know, and so many great memories for anybody out there that said John Kennedy. And he was that good or is not strong arm like both people used to say that I'm like the dude could throw it. Seventy three. Seventy four yards. I could throw at sixty nine to seventy. He could throw out at a high velocity, I could throw it about one or two miles an hour slower, which is why he's in the league. And I'm talking to you right now. Right. And he is the most competitive guy I've ever met and I just see so many amazing stories. But adversity like this. Tony Bennett, the coach at Virginia and former Washington State basketball coach, says of paraphrasing, Adversity is life's golden ticket. And that moment of diversity back to how his conversations started impacting me as a dad. Me telling my kids we're not going to use it as an excuse.
[00:22:02] Absolutely. And there's a couple of things that I took out of there that I think are really important to I'd like to highlight. One is your coach having the foresight, the understanding that giving you a purpose and a role on that team was so critical? And for him to kind of support you through that and encourage you and say, hey, I'm proud of you for stepping forward and now I'm going to put you in a position and give you some control, give you some authority here to be a part of this team I think is amazing. Right. And it sounds like you recall him very fondly. I don't know if he's still with us, but
[00:22:46] We're still close. I had him on my podcast coach Marty Osborn, and it was the biggest honor I got to know about him as a dad, how I learned about him and I. But it was a way to say, Coach, I want to publicly thank you. I wrote him a letter in college after all my games where I was playing. Well, I would call him after him Sunday morning, coach of twenty three or thirty eight. Three forty. I finally played to tell him all this and he was like, I was so proud and does I call a second dad? But yeah, I mean a guy like him got like coach. I had so many good coaches so lucky.
[00:23:19] It's amazing. Yeah. And so the other thing I wanted to point out or highlight there is or even ask you probably a better way to to kind of spin it. So tell me, can you tell me a little bit more detail about how your parents got you through or helped you get through the injury and dealing with that or how they reacted to it? Because I think it kind of goes back to what you were saying at the outset. Right. Which is I think when I see this in my practice with athletes, when they get hurt or they go through an adversity, the first instinct of a parent is to jump in and try to save. Right. And so as a parent, that's just the way we're wired. We want to help our kids and make sure that they're safe and happy and all those things right. But the adversity that they learn how to deal with on their own is usually, to your point, the greatest gift that we can have. And so how did your parents kind of address your injury at that point in time?
[00:24:17] Yeah, it's a great question. So my dad, unfortunately, is not in the best health. He's in assisted living facility. And I would love to be able to go talk to him about this and ask him, because I don't know if I ever truly had a chance to have a deep conversation about that. And maybe actually out of this, I'll call my mom and I'll ask her that, because, honestly, I don't remember. I don't remember any negativity, I don't remember them. I'm sure that they were sad, but I don't remember them. I remember just like being apathetic. A lot of love may be a good teammate. Positivity. I don't remember anything negative. I was still going to the games. They just said, hey, this is going to be this is just a short term blip. And I don't truly remember any bad scenarios or situations with just a lot of support in the House. And I think there might have been shock for them, too, like, what are we dealing with? Maybe they didn't know how to respond. They were just maybe quiet. But I'll call my mom, dad, and ask her. Then I'll follow up with you.
[00:25:16] That's great. I think it's great that you can have that conversation. And I think it's great that you can kind of look back and and say, like, I'm not sure, because I I think for some parents, especially parents, I don't know if your parents were athletes, but my parents weren't. So whenever I went through stuff athletically, there was really a lack of understanding. Right. And it wasn't because they were bad parents just because they had never been in my shoes before. And so sometimes parents just don't know how to react or I like I've never been there. I don't know what to say. So sometimes it's better to say nothing, you know, if anything. But it doesn't sound like you have bad memories of it, which I think, listen, sometimes less is more as a parent. And I think that that's hard sometimes as well,
[00:25:57] Because you say you made me think of something. So have you heard of Bruce Brown, the car ride home? Yes. So if you could find that and link it in this episode, give him some love, because that article is so good. And parents, if you're out there, what this article talks about is when you get in a car after a game, I don't care if your son or daughter had the game winning shot. I don't care if I had seventy four airballs. All this talks about is to say, man, that was a blast. Watch you compete. I love watching you play so much fun. That's all that matters. And if your kid is competitive, if it matters to them, if the individual accolades, if the winning losing it matters to them, they will come talk to you about it. And I was like, Albert, my son was seven. I was like, that was a naysayers. I don't know about this stuff. And my son, I remember we were doing the ground balls or something. Maybe he to shortstop and then my mom like brog you could have made that play shut my mouth to a man.
[00:26:56] Great. A fun to watch you play man. And we and we get home and. In his article says if it matters to them, they'll come talk to you about it, ensures, you know what to decide that he goes, Dad, I'm frustrated by what's going on. But it's like you and I have been spending so much time in the backyard and I made that mistake. And I'm like, it worked. I'm like, what do you mean, tell me more? And he's like, Well, you know, I had this place sure. Bubble to me near Michael. Well, that's right. Guess what? The best part about making mistakes you're going to learn. And that mistake, it's over. You can't change it. But I love you want to get better. I love you want to compete. And to like that mindset of parents, I think kind of is what my parents did, too. They don't remember them do the negative. But like, I'd love to give some shout out to Bruce Brown for parents at home because that's a good good axi to get from this episode.
[00:27:41] I'm a huge believer in that. When I get in the car after a game and I've read a lot, I don't know if I've ever read that article, but I, I've read a lot about that. And I am a firm believer in after a game I usually don't say anything. Right. And to your point, if they want to talk about it, they can talk about it. But I'm definitely not being critical. If anything, I'll ask him a question. Do you have a good time or how do you think it was? But I try to stay away from that. And you said interestingly, we talked about this the other day when we spoke, something you said that I thought was really cool, like a tip you gave me, which is to ask questions. Right. And so tell me more. Explain, describe can you talk a little bit about that? Because I think that's really, really cool. And it's something that I've been thinking about when I'm around my kids the last couple of days.
[00:28:26] Yeah, I wish it was my idea. I got to give much love to my boy John Kaplin, who I met at the end of my business career. John Kaplin is I don't where he learned it, but just like in anything, when you ask dad questions, you should expect better results. So as parents, if you're out there, you're saying, Hey, bud, how was school? Good. What you do not much fun. Yeah. Why don't you open up, talk to me. What's wrong with you. OK, stop the problem. It's not your kids, it's you. Mom and dad. Those are horrible questions. Look in the mirror. Point the finger at yourself instead. Let's try this writer. Tell me about the best part about recess. Describe what you love most about math and what you like most about science. And tell me one thing you'd like to change about those classes. Explain the funniest part that happened at BASTABLE practice. Describe how you feel when your coach raises his voice. They have to answer the question right. And then once they start talking another TED question. Tell me more about that, bud. Explain how you feel and watch your relationships change overnight when you do this. And so parents, I'd say be accountable to yourself. Ted based questions are gold. I wish I learned it when I was probably forty one. I wish I had learned it when I was 15. It is absolute gold, if you've any. If you listen to any episodes of my podcast, I read that you know what at all? My guess,
[00:29:50] And I think it's a great strategy, gets people talking and it lets them decide what they want to tell you versus asking them these closed questions where you're giving them an out or they're going to just shut down or feel like maybe they're being judged. I think that's a big thing that I see with the athletes that I work within the my kids at home. I as a parent, like if they feel like something's conditional or they feel like they're being judged by you, a lot of times they're going to shut down. And the way you do that is by asking questions like why and using words like should and just and the language that is very, very confrontational and it's very judgmental. And I think that no young person wants to be judged. They want to kind of they want to feel like they're a whole person. And I think that's something I really I really believe in myself. I wanted to ask you before we move on to sort of chronologically past college, I wanted to ask you. So you walked on it at Central Washington. What was the ultimately the deciding factor that led you to that decision to pick you up?
[00:30:52] So, like, back then, Central was a high school. And then once I became a starter, we were Division two. And we that transition to my my cousin is a guy named James Compton. He played football at University of Washington. He was a starter fullback, played with Greg Lewis, almost had a chance. Go league stud. He's out of Bandera, Texas, and he loved his time. And this guy was a beast in Texas high school football. But he I remember when he was going through a lot of injuries, he said, case, if you have a chance to go small, go small because it's not as big as a business. You'll have fun. And I always remember that the back of my head, I don't know why. And when I got hurt, I was up, said walk on a preferred walk on all these schools that come on, walk on. But Central was like, you know, I was they couldn't give us money or I mean, I end up getting like an academic grant. My then I got money my senior year to help pay for expenses. But they showed me love. And my high school football coach, Marty Osborne, was a quarterback there in nineteen eighty one, nineteen eighty two. And so he told us coaches like, listen, no one knows about this dude. He didn't play diamond in the rough. Give him a shot. And they made a flyer on me am so in debt to guys like Coach Bruce Walker, Coach CHUFFS, AntiSec coach Bob Baldwin, who's the head coach now at Cal Poly.
[00:32:06] They showed me that I was wanted and I was like and I was so I had the biggest chip on my shoulder. And I still do to this day. It's like the life of devotion to athlete, always something to prove even. There's all the success I had in business. It's gone. Don't matter anymore because I had to go out and prove it as a coach, leadership coach, author, broadcaster. And I was like 12 from the depth chart. When I got to Central. In my mind, I was like, it can't be anything worse than what I just went through. Right. And what's kind of a funny story, funny now. Little not funny at the time. So I, I end up starting came in off the bench my sophomore year at Central, my sophomore year, and one of my great friends still to this day, Ryan Furnier. Ryan Furnier was waived his fifth year to play. He starts on the back up. He's a great first game, second game plays OK, gets a little dinged up, third game gets dinged up. I come off the bench, my first collegiate throw, third and sixteen. I remember the play doubles, right. Seventy one sees the shotgun. I throw an absolute laser at yard. Come back. Come back out to Kenny Russo. First down I take a massive hit late. Dirk stuck to my face mask and I'm like, Welcome to college football bro. You just did that.
[00:33:18] And then Forni came back in a jog. I felt like holy. You know what I just frickin did? Like, it just is out of body. And I was feeling confidence rise and went on I Annacone into that game and then the next game Forni gets hurt halfway through the first quarter. We're down twenty seven six and I end up throwing for coming off the bench and we get in the shootout, we lose forty four to forty one through for like three forty in whatever next to name the starter for next week. So now you remember that got fifth year guy waiting in the wings and so you could think our relationship is going to be horrible. He was the most supportive teammate on that field. And I always when I speak to companies now, I'm always like be the Ryan Fournier, not the 17 year old Casey Jaycox. And he's still one of my best friends. He helped. He was one of the early supporters of my book. But anyway, long story short, great guy, great teammate started my junior senior year, but before my senior year in winter conditioning, we're doing we're doing like our extras, like fall winter conditioning unit, whatever, before spring ball. Typical, clumsy for nine, quarterback for eight forty. I'm like leaning forward to try to get a faster time, lose my balance. Oh that was getting closer. I put my hands up to stop man. The wall boom. Break my wrist and I'm like, oh, my God, it's going to happen again, and I couldn't do winter conditioning.
[00:34:37] I'm thinking this exact flashback of what happened in high school. And I didn't realize I was put on to put on some weight during that injury, which is pretty funny story. A second went out to spring ball with the cast on with my left, and I could still at least like a throw, which is nice. But we used to wear these things called Schimel shirts, which is like a half half shirt underneath the shoulder pads. And my jersey was kind of like I didn't realize it was like part of the belly machine. And so we get all quarterbacks. We should give you a hard time. You're like, dude, what is that? And I'm like, what do you mean? And for the audience yelling, You can't see it. They're pointing at my belly and like you're fat is f. But I was like, oh my God. What? I didn't even realize it. I was so I played it like six two, six, one, two or eight. I was six to two twenty seven and straight Roethlisberger. I just went, I had a chubby tubby and I like so I was like perfect. You guys are going to pop off on the senior tomorrow morning. We're running as a team so I made him get up. We ran a mile in the morning as a team, as quarterback for charity. And so anyway, I just tell those two stories because it's memory lane.
[00:35:42] Yeah. It sounds like you have a lot of a lot of great memories. What was the hardest thing about the transition to college or college, just in general, the four years you were there, like what was or was the biggest challenge you faced?
[00:35:54] I said the biggest challenge was biggest challenge, probably ending when I knew it was done. But I mean, I want to tell one more quick story you made me think of when you ask that question. So in the spirit of what I went through at a high school to college, what I went through, the ups and downs of in college, another injury. But my junior year after I had played no, my senior year because my Yeah. Know my junior year, sorry, my junior year. I'm leading the league in passing. We're blunt, it's like, OK, this is my job and no, sorry, my senior year is my senior year. I'm leading the league in passing and first play the game, I throw a 60 yard bomb in stride touchdown. And I'm like, we're going bananas, like. Here we go again. The next two to four series, I look like a ninth grade kicker, like I could not hit water if I thought of a boat, it was it was like one hundred degrees. We're playing this cool school called Azusa Pacific. Krishnakumar is all Mudar. Yep. And I'm like, what is wrong? And Coach Bob and says, take a seat. You're hurting the team. Take a seat. And I was like, what do you mean take a seat? In my mind, my first ego got in the way.
[00:37:03] I'm the number one quarterback in this league. I'm Starger we talk about and I'm like, hey, no coach. I'm going to say, no, you're not good to sit down. And now the shock of getting benched, I'm like, Oh. And I went up to him at him, I said, listen, I know I'm not right, I'll get it right. I need to go back into my team, coach the my senior. I got he goes, you got one. You got one chance. Get together. But that moment of getting benched taught me about you're only as good as today. And so if there's dads out there listening, there's kids out the list of moms. Complacency is a silent killer. It's a silent killer. Right. And so teach our kids that compete as hard as you can today. If you're in sales, don't let one bad phone call lead to one bad week to lead bad one bad man, one bad quarter, one bad year. Next, you know, you're looking for a job, right? And so like that, again, these sports analogies, I just I apply them in my life every day because it's it works.
[00:37:56] Absolutely. And I think there's a lot in what you just said, which is pretty brief. But these are the things that come out all the time when I'm working with with athletes is sort of that element of focusing on process over the result. Right. And taking it day by day. I like being able to kind of chip away at a goal, not expecting that you're going to get the result that you want right away and being able to deal with the emotional challenges that come with not getting the feedback that you want. Right. Because sometimes whether it's sport or sales, which you and I share that bond as well. And there's plenty of days where I send 50 emails and I don't get one response where I make a phone call and I don't get a call back. And it's like, well, what am I doing this for? But if you do that every single day and you focus on what you can control, ultimately you'll start to see the results. Maybe not at the pace that you want, but you're investing in the future. And I think that that's something that's really hard to teach for young people for whatever reason, whether it's biological, which I think it's part of it. Right. Socio emotional, but I think it's also the way that they're taught. And so I think that's a message worth sharing all the time. Break it down to small pieces or I take it day by day, do what you can and come back the next day and do what you can again and try to focus on what you can control.
[00:39:16] Well, there's two things we can control. Our attitude, our effort. That's all we got. It's all we got. And I always tell my kids they're both baseball players. I say only one person scores in each possession. But there's so many other ways you can impact the team. Your talk on defense, you're talking offense, how you set screens, how you hustle for a loose ball, you better dive for it. Like if you play hard, like nonstop, a coach is going to find you a spot in the court. Every coach will find you. Every basketball team needs that guy or girl. So I don't care if you're if you shoot 10 percent all season, well, don't shoot then. Just go make a lamb and you can. But if you got great vision, you can make great passes. They're always going to need someone like that.
[00:39:59] Yeah. So I think that that mindset's. Definitely challenged in today's day and age, and, you know, I don't want to go down this road too much, but I think one of the things that I that I see particularly as being an influence on that is social media. Right. Like everybody wants to be the star. Everybody wants to get noticed. And I can tell you, when I was playing sports and I didn't play at the level you played, but I was that guy. I was the center. I was a nose tackle. I played basketball, is the 12th guy on the bench. When I went to the game, it was to set up or get a rebound or to mop up. But we all have our roles and there should be pride in playing a role and being the hard worker and being a good teammate. And I think that that is in some respects kind of taking a hit today. And I think it's it's a really a challenge as adults to try to coach kids through that, because there is so much that we can't control that's around them socially and the influences that are brought on them, whether it's by friends, social media, media, TV, whatever. Right. Like we have to combat that. And that can be really hard and really frustrating as a parent like, hey, there's only so much I can do and I struggle with that, frankly.
[00:41:16] Yeah, it's fun. There's a there's a girl in our community. It's one of the top ranked basketball players in state and she never promotes anything on social media. I love it. Absolutely love it. And I just tell my kids, like, be that person. I want to say her name. But it's like be that person destined for in seventh grade, promoting herself already at the head scratcher.
[00:41:38] So. So tell me about your transition right out of college. Right. You said that that was really difficult, right? Obviously, you're leaving football behind. You're leaving your friends behind. You're moving into a professional capacity. Like what was your first job out of college? Where did that transition look like for you?
[00:41:53] Yeah, well, I got teased and I really almost played for Portland. Then I got a job through my one, my old high school football coaches. Is Mazeroski still friends then today? And he got me a job. This company called barcodes w we were a label manufacturer for like Warehouse Management Solutions. I call them stickers because that's what I thought they were. It showed my naivete and national sales guy just didn't travel. It is all inside sales, hundreds of phone calls a day. I was selling stuff and I wasn't making commission. And then about eight months in, I got a call to go play for San Jose. And I was like, Oh, shoot. And I would have been like I would have had a roster spot, but then I would have been I would have had to quit this job. I would have made 40 grand a year. And that would be like working six months in a warehouse. Is that really what I do? And so then I just said I'm done. And once I said I was done, it was like a big rock off my chest that I'd pay. That chapter's over. And all the things I've told you today that people taught me my experiences, my coaches, the university, I applied that to business immediately. And I just start pound the phone. And I remember how my one year review after my job, after that first year, I went to my boss and said, hey, he was what are your goals? He said, I want to I want to be in front of the customer face to face and I want to double my salary.
[00:43:04] He goes, Casey, those are way too aggressive goals for someone your age. I want us to rethink these things and come back and tell me some different. I was like, perfect. That's the answer I needed, not the place for me. And my buddy at the time, Kelly Hanson, was trying to get me to leave to go to this company called Hakkinen, staffing its staffing firm and didn't really know what the heck I was doing there. I interviewed nine times because they didn't think I could do it. And that was, you know, division to mindset. Get more pissed. Screw you guys. I can't do. They hired me as a sixteen dollar an hour sales contractor. Right, and so as dumb as that was, I was like, let's go, that's a raise for my other job. No benefits. I took it, and so if I think back of my cab is risky and they said, you got to prove yourself for six months after that six months, we'll see about bringing you full time, will they end up hiring me full time after three months? Fastow's story and to become a number one sales rep three years later got bought by a company called Cephus in June of 2004. That was the number one rep there for 10 straight years, nationally left as that company's all time sales person.
[00:44:09] And that led me into writing a book and now being sued for the storage center project short on time. And then but all those things, all those lessons I'm still playing today. And even like this week, I had a very big week. I was a partner do partnering work with a company called Limitless Minds, which is Russell Wilson, Trevor Mallard, those guys. And I'm a speaker and coach for them and I'm speaking with one of their clients. The night before, I was presenting him in his office with the door closed that presentation doing reps. And I told my kids, hey, dad, some to go practice just like you and you guys go shoot free throws or go make putts or go ahead. This is, what, a beer back. It was such a cool moment to be able to walk the walk because of the practice. And so far, I have two more presentations tomorrow on Friday. But the four have gone great. Mondays weren't good, Wednesdays weren't great, and Fridays is going to be elite. I told my kids, I said, if I don't practice, I'm not even going to be good. And I asked for coaching. After both calls from the people who are behind the scenes, they tell me how I can be better for Wednesday. So anyway, all those mindset, it just it's just fun to be able to kind of like it keeps me grounded, keeps me humble, knowing that we always have fourteen forty to get better.
[00:45:21] I love that. And I to try to lead by example in my household, my kids see the work that I put in what I'm doing and working now or the late hours, the weekends, trying to get better at what it is that I do and not tell them but show them, because I think that that gets internalized. And, you know, I want to sort of give a plug for the sales profession and I'm going to tie it back to what this podcast is all about. Right. So I've been in sales to most notably the last four or five years as a way to just sort of pay my bills. And what I've learned about sales is, is that teaches us a lot about life. Right. The persistence, focusing on a process, the follow up. I talk to my kids that I work with all the time about this. It's following up and staying on top of the pile with a coach. If you want to go to a school and you love that school and you want to be there, like you can't just send one email, you've got to follow up. You've got to build to use a Segway. You've got to build a relationship with that coach to let them know what kind of person you are. Right.
[00:46:27] Because it's not just about your ability on the field, your stats, your highlight reel. It is. Hey, are you committed to this process of I really want to be at your school? Right. I'm going to show you that this is something I really want by being persistent and in a professional way. And I think that that's something that's often lost on kids. I mean, and rightly so. I didn't have that mindset when I was 16, 17, 18. But I think our parents are much more they're much smarter, much more business savvy themselves. And so we should be teaching kids, hey, not only this is how you write the email, but you need to be the one that owns the process. Every coach I talk to tells me that the kid needs to write the email. The kid needs to follow up. The kid needs to look me in the eye and shake my hand. And I think these are things that we're not teaching kids. What they're doing is they're focusing on the highlight reels and they're focusing on social media. And those are not the things that build relationships or builds relationships is the effort into getting to know somebody and expressing a desire to to help them. Right. And that's that's what you're talking about, right.
[00:47:32] In your book, Chapter four, I wrote an entire chapter about documenting what you hear from people and then following up Chapter two is all about setting expectations, getting ahead of it. Like, one of the biggest reasons I wrote this book was because of what you just talked about. Too many kids are taught to build relationships. They don't know how to do it because no one's teaching them. So there's six common sense pillars of the starting position. Treat people with respect, treat people you want to be treated, set expectations. Always, not sometimes. Always. If you're going to be late, let them know. If you tell someone you be there nine show up at eight fifty. A whole chapter is dedicated to the difference between what listening is and what hearing is chapter for, I could talk about documentation, follow up. Chapter five is all about checking your ego. Be coachable. We all got gaps. Don't pretend you're perfect. That doesn't exist. Don't be that dude. That's it's always someone else's fault and played center. If if I was the quarterback blaming you. Come on, Mike, you suck blog for me. You're not going to block it. But if I'm saying, hey, I wouldn't be able to get a touchdown to Mike to pick up that block. Hecuba get my linemen Zaim. The paper was always my goal and in six is always about just patience. Relationships take time, but if you follow up and you're persistent and you're doing the right things along the way, it will happen. And I always talk about life as a sales metaphor. It's about being a boomerang. If you're serving people, if you're throwing out goodwill like a boomerang, what does a boomerang do? Comes back to you right always now, sometimes a boomerang might take a little longer out. That's OK. But if you keep throwing enough boomerangs, watch what happens. Watch what happens. One day it's going to be like dodgem left and right.
[00:49:08] So of that, I love that. So when did you write the book?
[00:49:12] I wrote the book. It came out January of twenty twenty. OK, I wrote it in about four and a half months from April twenty nineteen through August of twenty nineteen. I wrote every day from nine to 11 30. Some days I thought I was Hemingway. Some days I thought I was in a dude living in a van down by the river. Some days it sucked. There you go. Farley had a black eye, but it was amazing. I hired an editor but the best editor. I did not have to pay until you guessed who that was. Your wife. Bingo. Best editor ever. She knows my voice. She's like. And I like how that sounds like she was right. And so. But it was I didn't write the book to make money because you don't as an author, we don't make money on books. I think I make three dollars a book giving away my secrets. But I wrote a book because I was so passionate about that message. I wanted to get the mindset at about about winning people and anything you do. And so, like now it's funny, I'm doing consulting work for real estate, wealth management, insurance, staffing, consulting did. I'm like, what? I mean, I don't know anything about wealth management, but I know a lot about relationship building and sales process and sales mindset and the power of asking great questions and being prepared for all things that people don't want to talk about and do they want to show up and happen. So I have another book in my mind. It's going to be about listening. Which is, I think, a topic and a gift that we don't focus on enough.
[00:50:46] One hundred percent, I totally agree. And OK, so are Segway to your podcast quarterback diecast, which I was a guest on. Phenomenal concept. I love their conversation. I think it's self-serving. But I do think objectively that fathers are a group in our society that I think are sometimes underappreciated and overlooked. And the challenges that we face as fathers are maybe not as obvious to others. But can you just talk about how that came to be and how you came up with the idea for the podcast and who should be listening to it?
[00:51:28] Yeah, I did a podcast at Kalfus at the end of my journey, and then I had this idea. I always want to start a podcast. I like asking questions. I'm curious. I all those things and and then my great college teammate, Tininess old eighty six out of Yakima, Washington. He's a he's our football coach at East Valley High School, still a great friend today. One day, probably in the summer of twenty nineteen. He's like, dude, stop talking about this podcast. I'm come to your house right now. We're going to fucking do it. Like let's go. We got equipment, we set it up and he was going to do it with me and then we decided like he was kind of switching jobs. And I said, I think it's better if I just do it by myself. And he's like, no, I think you're right. And so but he did such a good job of getting me off my ass and get this thing going. I knew there was not a lot of dad's stuff out there. I always joke. There's a lot of me, too. There's was a lot of heat. And I'm always massively supportive of women, obviously a father of a daughter. I always want to be sensitive and get and promote women's athletics because I don't think they still get enough credit and enough notoriety for their what they do. But I wanted to find something that helps dads because most guys don't want to talk about their feelings. Most dads don't want to cry. In a good episode of Punky Brewster.
[00:52:36] I do. Or Family Ties. And like the gift of saying I love you or the gift of saying, hey, I don't know, or the gift I'm sorry, or the gift of asking for help like that is a massive gift we can give our kids and your wife and you. And so put down the armor. You're not perfect. Right? And so leadership to me, just like Bernie Brown talks about his vulnerability. And so, like, my definition for leadership is humility, plus vulnerability equals leadership. And so that's really kind of the goal is I want to interview dads. I do interview dads to understand their story, where they came from, what they're grateful for, what adversities that they've been through in life, what challenges are they going to what are their own gaps as a dad? Like, what are they thinking about to become better? And then lastly, you based on our conversation, we have reached out like what can dads take from the conversation to be the ultimate quarterback of their household? Now, for all the moms out there, I'm not saying that you can't be a leader to trust me. My wife is a way better quarterback a day that I am. But I just it was more of a metaphor. And that's I made a joke earlier. My wife's a general manager and she hired me to become a quarterback for her team, jokingly said, but yeah, it's fun. I've done close to a hundred episodes. We've produced eighty eight. And it's it's amazing, amazing journey.
[00:53:48] Yeah, I know. We're running out of time. I appreciate you sharing all that. And frankly, I think there's a lot more meat on the bone for us to talk about. So maybe we get to do this again once on air or not. But before we let you go, let everybody know where, where they can find you and where they can find the book, whatever you want to kind of plug here.
[00:54:08] No, I appreciate you asking so people can if you want to learn more about me and go to my website, which is just KC Jaycox dot com. So CAC y Jaycox, I'm on LinkedIn. You can find me there. My book is on Amazon so you can get there. It's in Kindle. It's in paperback. I'm currently recording the audible version right now that should be out within a couple of months. It will be my voice. I'm reading it, which is so fun and embarrassing to say. But in spirit of vulnerability, I'm the author of the book. I read it four or five times. I'm on Chapter two right now. I'm still learning from myself, as weird as that sounds, which says that even the author I got gaps, I still have gaps. So keep learning. Keep growing, everybody. And please, if you want to learn more about me, you can connect with me there.
[00:54:51] That's awesome. Well, thanks again, Casey. I loved our conversation and I'm really excited about putting it out there for everybody. And like I said, hopefully we could do this again soon.
[00:55:01] Let's do it, Mike. Thanks, buddy.
[00:55:02] Thank you to everyone for joining the Freshman Foundation podcast. We have gained new insights and feel more positive, mindful and committed to the journey from high school to college athletics. Michael is here to support you along the way. And if you want to know more about how the freshman foundation can help, go to Freshmen Foundation dot com and connect with Michael. Remember to subscribe to the Freshmen Foundation podcast so you can be part of the journey into college athletics.