How has Evan Burk developed the intangibles to create the coaching career of his dreams?
Humans are results-oriented creatures, plain and simple. Ironically, the most successful people develop the resilience to keep going when the road to achieving their goals is paved with obstacles. Character and mindset are often as important as natural ability when pursuing athletic success.
My guest in this episode is Evan Burk, former NFL assistant coach and author of a book entitled, “Finding Intangibles.” Evan started his career coaching 4th graders and within a relatively short period of time went on to coach at Southern Methodist University and with the Miami Dolphins.
In Episode 41, Evan talks about how his path to professional coaching started with calculated network building, focusing on the things he could control. Evan wasn’t a college athlete, nor did he have friends or family in the coaching profession. Rather, Evan was intent on dominating every day to the best of his ability, understanding that he had to keep going in order to reach his goals.
Through a blend of dynamic storytelling and real-life case studies, Finding Intangibles shares Evan’s unique perspective while revealing the framework for how organizations can update their approaches to make character a competitive advantage and unleash the true potential of their team.
So, what was your biggest takeaway from my conversation with Evan Burk?
For me, it’s that talent is a minimum requirement for athletic success. There are many athletes with amazing natural abilities. However, intangible characteristics like mindset, heart, and unselfishness ultimately separate the talented from the most accomplished individuals. Evan’s philosophy sings to me as a mental performance coach because I am constantly espousing the value of process and controlling the controllables to my clients.
My suggestion to young athletes is to think about how to be different. You can set yourself apart from your peers by taking great pride in doing the little things that others may not want to do. Demonstrating infectious energy, effort, and focus will take you a long way toward reaching your goals.
I want to thank Evan for his generosity and the wisdom he shared with The Freshman Foundation Community.
You can learn more about Evan on his website at https://www.coachevanburk.com/. You can follow Evan on Instagram @coachevanburk.
You can find his book Finding Intangibles on Amazon: https://www.amazon.com/Finding-Intangibles-Uncover-Performers-Championship/dp/B09SFYV3M6/ref=sr_1_1?crid=128ESTP8OD3TX&keywords=finding+intangibles&qid=1656616986&sprefix=finding+intangibles%2Caps%2C54&sr=8-1
To learn more about how mental performance coaching can help your mind work FOR you rather than AGAINST you, visit https://michaelvhuber.com.
Thank you for listening. We’ll see you back in two weeks ready to get better!
[00:00:00] Mike: Hey Evan, how are you?
[00:00:02] Evan Burk: Hey Michael, doing great today. Thanks for having me on.
[00:00:05] Mike: Thanks for coming on. It's great to have you here. I'm looking forward to our conversation. So let's kick it off. So how did you go from being a fourth grade football coach to the NFL in just six years?
[00:00:19] Evan Burk: Well, I could probably take the next 45 minutes and kind of outline all of the steps that it took, but to try and tell the story as succinctly as possible. When I was in college, I had started coaching, I had this idea that I wanted to be a coach. And my background was I played high school sports. I wasn't a tremendous athlete, but I was captain of my high school wrestling and football teams always love sports. And when I went to college, I just felt like something was missing in terms of the competitive aspect of sports. And so I started getting involved in in youth sports coaching, and that led me to coaching a fourth grade football team. I had this idea at the time, I was 19, 20 years old that I wanted to be a professional coach that I wanted to coach in the NFL or college, but I didn't know anybody. And I wasn't playing in college, so I wasn't a player. And I just knew I had to start somewhere. And that led me to the Boulder Rec Center to have my first experience literally starting at the bottom of coaching, coaching a fourth grade football team. And as I progress through college, I also progressed in coaching, I went from coaching fourth grade football to freshman football at a local high school in coaching with that JV. And after I graduated college, I went on to pursue trying to find a college job and ended up at Southern Methodist University in Dallas, Texas. And just so happens that I'm from Dallas, Texas, and grew up five minutes from the stadium here in Dallas, and was really a great situation for me, in particular, because I started as a volunteer ops assistant passing out Chick-Fil-A's on the bus. Anybody that's been in college athletics or coaching can relate, you know, you don't get paid a lot to do that job. I was a volunteer, I was getting paid, I think hourly to monitor study hall. But because I was in Dallas, I was able to stay in my grandparent’s pool house. And you know, it's definitely a struggle when you are a young college coach. And that was really great for me to have that and progress in my time at SMU, to eventually becoming an on the field coach, I coach on offense and on defense. And at the end of the 2009 season, my time as a grad assistant had expired, and I wanted to pursue getting a job in the NFL, I didn't really have a substantial network at the time. So what I did, and I knew I was different, Michael. Like I'm not a former player, I didn't even play in college, and I don't have any relatives or a dad that is an executive with an NFL team. So I knew I had to do something different. And so what I did was the limited coaching network that I had, I made a spreadsheet of everywhere they had coached from 2009 to since 1970. And after I made this spreadsheet, and this was maybe my coaching network that I'd like worked intimately with was maybe 25, 30 people. And after that I then made a list of every employee in the NFL, every member of a coaching staff, every pro personnel director, General Manager, anybody I could find information from and I did the same thing 1970 to 2009, everywhere they had coached. And what I started to do was I started to take my network and kind of piece together who had worked with who in the past. And again, I was trying to find some type of edge that would set me apart because I wasn't a former player because I didn't have a dad that everybody knew that particular person. So I started to do handwritten letters to all of these coaches that I had a connection to, even if I didn't even know if that was a good connection or not. Hey, Michael, just want to write you. I'm a grad assistant here at SMU, I work with Jonathan Smith and he says great things about you. I'm going to be at the Senior Bowl, and I would love to buy you a beer and get your advice on getting a job in the NFL. And I did this for every person that I had a connection to and I ended up writing 450 handwritten letters throughout the entire league just trying to find somebody that would see that and it would trigger something in their mind to either call me or have a meeting with me. And it also did another thing to, Michael, when I was pursuing these people. And I would go to events like the Senior Bowl in Mobile Alabama, where the top, basically the top players in the draft arm, but also every executive coach in the NFL attend as well. It allowed me to approach people and say, Hey, my name is Evan Burk. I don't know if you got a letter I wrote you. And most of the people that I approached, that I shared this with had at least, even if they didn't respond to me, they'd at least seen it, I did a unique thing where I stapled my business card to the top right hand corner, all of this to say, like I was just trying to find in, and trying to utilize every small little edge that I could to set myself apart. And at that Senior Bowl, I'd made a top 10 list, these are the top 10 people I want to connect with. I ended up connecting with eight of those people. And it might have just been as simple as me approaching them call that an event or at a practice and introducing myself and having a 90 second interaction, just sitting there and talking for 45 minutes. But I had these, I connected with these eight people, and one of those people ended up being a member of the Miami Dolphins. And that ended up being kind of one of the connections as I progress through that offseason, and ended up helping get my foot in the door of the NFL. So that was a little long winded. But kind of kind of shows the steps and maybe a little bit of my thinking as I approached, trying to access that highest level of professional sports with a background that didn't necessarily make me an instinct candidate.
[00:06:57] Mike: I'm truly fascinated by that story. Because there's so much to it in terms of the way that you thought about mapping out these relationships and these networks. And then the way that you pursued it in such a sort of clinical way of like, hey, I'm going to write these letters, I'm going to follow up. I mean, there's so much sales training in that you know, but if I related to my audience, which tends to be my audiences, I work with a lot of young people, and they're going through the recruiting process. And I think there's this natural reluctance to reach out to coaches, or this belief that someone's going to come find you. And what you just described as something that any family could do is in the recruiting process to say, make a list of all the people that you want to talk to, and go reach out to them and say, hey, I want to meet you, I want to talk to you. And I think that's something a lot of people don't do. So I'm curious. So like, how did you come up with the idea to do that, at that point in your life? Because you're still pretty young, like, you're just out of college? Like, what make what was the inspiration for being like, I'm going to go create this, like mapping network or network map, and I'm going to go tackle, you know, the way that you did?
[00:08:16] Evan Burk: Yeah, I think that a lot of it goes back to number one, my passion, and maybe at times unrealistic belief and confidence in myself, that's where I belonged. And I think also along the way, you know, you meet certain people, and especially during that time, when I was trying to figure out like what was next I had plenty of coaches telling me that, you know, you should go after a Division-Three job, you should go after a Division-One AA job. And that in terms of being realistic, they're not wrong, those coaches weren't wrong. But I also had a couple of people in my inner circle that were very encouraging to me, that not only were encouraging, like, you should go for it, that were telling me oh, this guy that just got named head coach of this team, like when I was working with this team, that was you, like, you are just like that person, you are built for this. And so it also kind of gave me this confidence that like, once I got there, that not only I could belong, but that that I could find a place to fit. And so I think that was part of it. And I think also for me, for whatever reason, and I don't know if this is a personality thing, or maybe traces back to my parents, like I've always been somebody who has written handwritten letters, that's always been just something that's important, and something that I've always done. And so I definitely made that a priority when I got into coaching is to take the time to write those handwritten letters. Whether it was in recruiting or just creating a network, which I hadn't done when I started coaching. And it really just kind of struck me that if I was going to make an impression on these coaches that I really don't have any reason to make an impression on them, I just started kind of reverse engineering, what was going to make an impression on them? Okay, maybe a connection to somebody that they've worked with, or somebody they know that they can ask about me. And then also, instead of just doing the form types manner that I had done in the past you know, maybe when I was 22, 23, maybe actually, instead of doing that cover letter typed, I would just do the exact same thing only I would do at hand. And so I think it was just kind of a reverse engineering of that whole process of kind of like, what is going to catch their attention and like, let me try and double and triple down on that piece.
[00:10:57] Mike: So I'm going to tie that part about your handwritten letters, and just the process that you took to your book, your book finding intangibles. It says, you know, the book says, you know, it encouraged encourages your readers to stop judging people on talent and instead prioritize character, which I and in theory and philosophy, I agree with that. And what you just described as somebody who has sort of that high order character that writing handwritten letters, and really sticking to what probably was a very frustrating and tedious process at times. And you kind of saw it all the way through, like, how did that experience in pursuing the NFL and the coaching jobs that you went through? How did that inspire the book, or did it?
[00:11:53] Evan Burk: Yeah, now, it did. I mean, I think it was you know, the book is a culmination of all of my experiences over the last 20 years, dating back to that first fourth grade football team. I had a very wise coach, when I first worked at SMU that told me, you are the sum of your experiences. So I think that when I started coaching, and in particular college, you know, I was very fascinated with the recruiting process and the team building process in at SMU at the time SMU had been was in the midst of 25 plus years of losing since the infamous death penalty in the mid-80s. And you know, we hadn't quite gotten over that hump. And sitting in those first meetings early on, I just was struck by how much we talked about talents and how we never mentioned character. And I didn't know any better, Michael, like I just felt at the time, like, oh, we should be discussing the family that we just met, like this recruit was just on campus with us for four hours. Like we're not even talking about how awesome his parents were. We're not talking about what type of work ethic he is. We're talking about, hey, did you see his shoulders are really narrow. Yeah, but he has a big butt, yeah, but he's 6’1” and four tents. And it's like, okay, so that's fine. But that was a great high school football player in a great family that just came through here. And we're picking apart, small things that I just felt in my heart, like, that didn't really matter. But I have to admit, like, I didn't know any better, I just felt like that. So I think as I progress through my career, you start to see coaches that think similarly to you, and that you're in alignment with in terms of your philosophy and what's important. And also I started to have experiences on teams and with players that were supposed to be great. On paper, this guy, and I'll just tell you like the best looking “players” the most talented players were not the best players that I coached or ever worked with, like that was never the case. And so like talking about talent is separate of talking about like, what makes a great college football player what makes a great teammate. And so I think as those experiences started to accumulate, I started to kind of piece all of this together, in addition to talking not only it wasn't only like finding coaches that thought similarly to me, it was coaches that had won at the highest levels that were thinking similar to me. So this all kind of came to a point where I was doing my master's degree at SMU, and I did my master's thesis on talent acquisition within college athletics. And the people I was interviewing were people that had played for the Patriots at for the first five years of the Bill Belichick era, and won three Super Bowls. So people that had worked with Bill Belichick and won multiple Super Bowls, people that had worked with Pete Carroll and won national championships at USC. And so in interviewing them, they obviously were teaching me, you know, I was learning from them. But like I said, they thought very similar to the way that I did about the influence of character, and how it impacts success, both on an individual level and on a team level.
[00:15:47] Mike: Yeah. I mean, the first thing that I thought of when you're giving your answer, like as you were giving it was the Patriots. The way that they acquire talent, the way they look at talent, assess talent is so different than what has typically been the standard in the NFL, they're able to take a guy's strengths, and apply them to get the most out of their performance. Whereas a lot of organizations will look at sort of the absolute talent. And they'll make poor judgments, because they're not really properly assessing all the other things that go into determining whether or not somebody is going to be a great performer in their job doing their job. So like, as you're coming up through coaching, so let's take SMU like, was that something that was your philosophy or your instinct? Was that something you were able to sort of influence people on or like impart to them, or was there a natural resistance to maybe the idea that we need to be looking at some of these other intangibles as opposed to really looking at all the measurable stuff?
[00:16:55] Evan Burk: No, I think that, in all of this, you know, again, it's very tough if you're an assistant coach for the Patriots, to have, like a huge influence on what's happening. Like, ultimately, these organizations or college programs are kind of run by a singular person, and even if they're not run by a singular person, that singular person is influencing everything that's occurring. So if you have, and this is something that I believe, you know, your head coach has to be intimately involved, particularly in college, in the recruiting process, in the evaluation. And I kind of outlined this in the book, but like, you need to have a vision for like, what you want your team to be. And if you look at the teams that win, and let's just stay in football, since that's what I know, intimately, well, like you can pick apart okay, so what do teams have typically you know, that lead them to win either consistently or win championships. You can reverse engineer that, oh well, they capable quarterback, they have a strong running game, or they have a strong defense or they have overall talent or whatever the case may be, you can do this for any level that you work on, or any competitive environment you compete in. And then you can kind of start to say, okay, so what does our team need? Well, yes, you need talent. And I talked about in the book like, talent is a minimum requirements, talent should just get you into the conversation. Okay, this person can play at the Division-One level, this person can play and compete at the Division-Two level. The coaches are the ones that need to say, does this guy fit us? Is this guy going to fit our culture? And then after you kind of determine whether that person fits your scheme or your culture, then you can kind of look at it and you can say, okay, is this the type of teammate we want? Is this the type of person that has the intangibles that are going to lead to them having success, and also be a value add to our team and I'm not talking about on the field, on the field that's great. And obviously, you need that. But like, the great teams have this cumulative effect of intangibles that permeate their teams. And you know, I obviously feel very strongly about this, and I could kind of go off here for another hour or so talking about different examples. But suffice it to say, like you know, you talked about the Patriots. The Patriots are never the most talented team ever when they've won the championship. Like they're always you know, well, the running back only had 400 yards this season. But like they do a great job of putting their guys in positions to win and have success on a week to week basis. You know, it's not about having the 1600 yard rusher, etc. So that was things that I started to see throughout my time. So all this to say that it's all driven by the head coach, and that coach's philosophy, and potentially somebody who has their ear or their influence. So I think what I do now working with sports teams, pro-organizations, coaches, I have that effect and impact to kind of outline a lot of my philosophy to them and help encourage them. It's not so much my philosophy, the book is really about defining your own philosophy, and then finding players that fit that. Like I talked in the book about finding mindset, finding heart and finding team first players. But that's just what I've seen in my experience, if you were a basketball coach, you might see a couple of different things. If you were you know, a sales team for a fortune 500 company, you might determine other things. But the process is the same of defining what it is you want your team to represent. Finding the best people to help build that team you want to envision, and then obviously going out and executing and performing.
[00:21:23] Mike: Yeah, now that makes sense. I mean, when I think about you know what you just said I think about the phrase buy in, coaches have to get players to buy in. And from the bottom up, the players need to accept their roles, which to me relates to character. Someone's coming into an organization where they're not the only person, there's hundreds of people who are involved in the process of building a team. Do I accept my role? And am I going to be okay with that, and operate to the best of my ability within that context with full buy in? That's hard, because there's a bigger an organization gets in the way, the more complicated or complex things get, the more things that can go wrong. So what are some of the, from your perspective, what are some of the intangibles, or some of the hidden traits that you sort of look you would look for, or you sort of value the most in your role as a coach.
[00:22:21] Evan Burk: So I think when I started to really put a lot of this together, as I mentioned, it was things that I felt, you know, growing up, maturing and growing through coaching. But I didn't really like define it, it was just things that I felt like, oh, we should be talking about this person's family, we should be talking about their work ethic. I think when I read the book “Mindset” by Carol Dweck, was when I really started to intimately think about what a philosophy would look like. And in particular, in anybody that hasn't read that book, I would highly recommend, I think I read this, it was in the final few years of my coaching career. So this is like 2014, 2015, when I was at UCLA, my first thought was, oh, I wish I'd read this book back when I first started coaching. It's incredible, just in terms, especially for a coach, because it talks a lot about how to bring out a growth mindset, either in a child in somebody you're teaching and in, in athletics. And, you know, it goes a lot back to praising people on the process versus the results. And I think that's one of my personal philosophies is always to be processed driven, not results oriented. And that's not to say the results don't matter. But you need to reverse engineer what results you want and create a process based off of that. But I've just seen time and time again, that any focus on like goals, really doesn't result in what you're trying to accomplish. And you know, I mentioned the Patriots earlier, the Patriots don't stand in front of the team at the beginning of every year and say, here's our six Super Bowl championships. And this is what we're trying to do. They don't talk about any of that. All they talk about is playing Cincinnati, the first week of the preseason, that's all they worry about. So everything is the singular focus on the process in this week in this moment. And I think that's one of the things in terms of mindset, particularly a growth mindset is the ability to stay focused in the moment and give your very best effort towards that. Obviously, the resilience factor of failing and still having the courage to stand back and keep going. And those are huge things and I think also to look back on performances, whether good or bad, and find ways to continually improve and those are kind of like the three things that I've seen that kind of separate in terms of mindset. And probably could make the argument that's like the one intangible that that really, for me, it started everything. But you could just focus on that one piece and make the argument that that's the most important thing.
[00:25:21] Mike: I wouldn't disagree. So much of my coaching with young athletes is around that concept of controlling what you can control and using your experiences as information to improve because you can't control the result, whether it's the result that you're shooting for, or the result as it relates to other people. And I think it takes a really skilled coach to help develop that mindset. Because it's not in most people. In most people, it’s the results oriented by nature, right? So there's that. And then we live in a culture that's results oriented. And so what I find myself doing a lot is unwinding a results oriented or a fixed mindset, and trying to build a growth mindset, which is a really hard thing to do. And so what might be some of the things that you would do with a client, whether it's an athlete, a business client, to sort of instill that concept that a growth mindset is going to be the most productive way to move forward.
[00:26:34] Evan Burk: Yeah, sure thing. I don't want to be inappropriate here. Mike, your line is, it looks like your audio is registered. I'm just looking at this line down here. My audio is not registering, am I good?
[00:26:46] Mike: Yeah, I can see you.
[00:26:47] Evan Burk: Cool. Okay.
[00:26:49] Mike: You are registering on my end for sure.
[00:26:52] Evan Burk: All good. It's not on mine. But I just wanted to make sure that.
[00:26:54] Mike: No, I can see and hear you. You're good.
[00:26:56] Evan Burk: So you bring up a really good point, Michael. I mean, you're talking about, like, how do you build this in somebody that maybe hasn't had this experience. And, you know, I have a background in recruiting coaching. I did it for basically, obviously, I was very heavily involved as a recruiting coordinator and in recruiting efforts in my coaching career, but also as a recruiting coach after my coaching career and dealt a lot with this, where I was talking to families and athletes who had less than ideal experiences with their high school coaches. And those are very difficult to hear. Because like I said, I read that book “Mindset” by Carol Dweck, and I was like, every coach should be at least influenced in some small way in their coaching. And that's a go on a rant here. But one of the things that really frustrates me about coaching in general is like, we have this idea that coaching is about yelling. And it's very ego driven, and it's about me and the cameras on me. So now I have to like show that I'm upset. And number one, I don't really think that's really that effective. And number two, I definitely think that the athletes now are different in the way that they're not just going to listen to you because your coach, connection in care is extremely important when it comes to coaching at any level. And I just don't believe that maybe like the old school model of I'm Bill Marcel's I'm Urban Meyer, so do what I tell you to do, and don't talk back, that doesn't really. Number one, it should have probably never really worked. But like number two, there's an element of why would I listen to you if I don't feel like you care about me. And I think this is true in corporate environments as well. I've seen this a lot in people that I've worked with, where you know, there's maybe a lack of care from somebody that's over them, and it just has a diminishing effect on even if you love your job or love what you do or love your team can really spoil an experience. So I'm starting to ramble and get off topic here.
[00:29:21] Mike: I don't think it's off topic. I think it's very complicated, though. Because you know, I agree again, like I think we sing from the same song songbook, you know, in that sense. But one of the things that I tried to instill in the young people that I work with is that the coaches that coach you in most cases are paid to do so and they're paid to generate results and whether you like it or not, those coaches are not most of them or some of them may not be development oriented. They may not be interested in your personal development long term. They're interested in generating a National Championship or a State Title or get into the playoffs or whatever it is in the short term and you need to understand that as an athlete, like there are some things you just can't control and so sometimes when an athlete has a coach that they either don't see eye to eye with or feel like the coach doesn't care, I tell them like, well, you got two choices, you could sit and take it and be frustrated by it and get angry and have that affect your performance or you can go have a conversation with that coach, and it may not go the way you want it to. But to do something you said earlier, it's more data. If I have a conversation with the coach, I control that I may not like what I hear back, but then I can process that I don't have that fear of the unknown anymore. And I can take that data and say like, Okay, this is what I need to do next. Because now I know where the coach is coming from, which to me all boils down to communication. And it's unfortunate, I think, you know, it's real life that coaches aren't always great at communicating with young people who are expecting the coach to care for them. And you know, it's the young person's burden to bear to go have that conversation, but it's in their control. And so there's this very complex dynamic of how do we communicate with people that are in power? Coaches are in power, they dictate our future in some ways? And am I willing to challenge that authority in a respectful way, to get answers so that I can further my development? It's super complicated, but it's, I think it's worth exploring.
[00:31:36] Evan Burk: Yeah, and I'll share a story here that maybe, you know, you asked about how do you build that or like, what can you do? And I kind of got off on my own? You know, I think a lot of this and we, I think if you're in sports, by, by, by most people's accounts, you're dealing with some type of adversity personally, what sports is all about random events and setbacks. Like that is the nature of sports. But I think like even personally, whether it's you want to be a starter on the basketball team, and the coach doesn't see you that way or you really want to make the field hockey team, but like, Yeah, you get cut. And I think that a lot of times, obviously, we all experiences experience those valleys. But I truly believe that the way that you respond, has a cascading effect within your life within your professional life. And when I was with the Miami Dolphins, I had worked my way up to where I was assisting the special team’s coaches. And I've done that for the majority of basically since week one of the preseason. And I was really excited about the potential of me being there that whole year, assisting these coaches, and then what might come of that experience. And with two or three weeks left in the season, they had brought on somebody to help with special teams. And this individual ended up being the son of the head coach. And so for me as a coach and having experienced sons of coaches, my entire career, I already knew what was happening. Like, even as they were telling me, Hey, we got this guy, he's gonna help you. He's gonna really help us, teach him everything that you're doing, and he can really help us. Well, I kind of already knew what that meant. Like, even in the moment when they were telling me I wasn't like, oh, this is not good for Evan Burk. Like, this is I already know what's happening. And, you know, I can remember being very upset, right? Like, I put a lot into getting to that point in my career. And I can remember calling my parents back home, and just kind of like, commiserating with them, but they didn't really allow me to stay in that. Like, you know, because I was sitting there, and I was like, well, what if I just download all the stuff and don't share with them and just delete it? And then they weren't going to even entertain that, right? It was like, No, you're gonna show up every day and show them who you are in this moment. And I thought that was obviously incredibly profound for me. And that's exactly what I did. I showed up and my mentality was, I'm going to train the guy that's going to replace me. If there may not be nobody might care here. Like they're already trying to replace me and nobody might notice but maybe somebody notices that like, man, they're replacing this guy in he does not stop. He shows up here every day and dominates, like that was my mantra and coaching. It was like, we're either dominating today or we're just getting by, and like, I wasn't gonna let myself or like you said other circumstances, things I couldn't control dictate my mindset how I showed up every day and how I was going to dominate that day. And so in that moment, it was like, okay, even if they're going to replace me, like, they're not going to be able to say, well, Evan really nailed it in the last two weeks. It's going to be Evan showed up here every day, he brought way more energy than was probably necessary. But that was the mark that I wanted to leave on that experience and every experience thereafter.
[00:35:41] Mike: Yeah, it reminds me, you know, when this isn't you know, sports psychology is my first career, my first career was in business. And I'll always remember somebody saying like, when companies go through a merger, like, people get panicked about losing their job, because there's redundancy. And the person that shows up to the job every day, not knowing what their future is gonna be, and does the job to the best of their ability to help facilitate the integration of the two companies is the one that either (a) gets to stay, or (b) gets a recommendation to go to their next job. And so that's basically what you described, right? That character of having, like, hey, like, no matter what happens, like, I'm going to show up the best way I can, and it's going to have a long term effect on your reputation. And, as we all know, with hindsight in our lives, we look back on the adversities that we have and you know, 99 times out of 100, they end up being opportunities for something better, and new and different. And you know, but in that moment, it's like, oh crap, what am I going to do or what does this say about me? I think that's a big part of what I talk to people about as well as identity. The reason why people are so hard on themselves, or they're so judgmental about the results is, I put in all this time and effort and energy into what I'm doing as an athlete, or whatever it is I do. And if I don't perform, what does that say about me as a person, what's wrong with me? Because I'm doing all this stuff. And I'm not getting the results and the feedback that I want. I mean, I think that that's a huge part of it. And one of the things that I try to focus on with people, too, is identity. Like, what are the elements of your identity that are beyond performer? And you know, what does that make you as a person? And I think that's really important. And I think if you tie it back to what you've been saying is, when you're evaluating talent, whether it's in the college recruiting process at the professional level, like, what's important to people, not just professionally, but what's important to them, like those values matter, character matters, like, because there's so much more that goes into being a winner. If you boil it down to winning, there's so much more to being a winner than just talent, like you said.
[00:38:02] Evan Burk: Yeah, 100%. And I mean, you think about it, what if you break down any successful person in any sports arena, any competitive arena? Yes, they have talent. But like I said, talent is a minimum requirement. Like if you talk about Tom Brady, you know, I cite in the book, and it's you know, a lot of people that have been following sports know that Tom Brady had a huge profound influence on the Tampa Bay Buccaneers. They couldn't win as a team before he got there. They were a 500 team every single year, no matter who the coach was, no matter who the quarterback was. Tom Brady goes in there. And yes, he's a good quarterback. I mean, I say good. He's a great quarterback, let's just say in his mid-40s, he's a very good quarterback. Like I'm underselling it. But that's not what that's not the emphasis on why they win games. Why they win games is because he shows up day one at 5am and stays there till 8am and they have no clue that that's what he does. All they see is what he does on Sunday. And once they see what goes in to his preparation, how he takes care of his body, the type of intensity he shows up with every practice every single day, then it becomes clear that like, oh, we don't win, not because we don't have talent is because we don't approach the things we need to approach the right way. And Tom Brady is here showing us what it takes. And so like that's something I feel extremely passionate about and but people get wrong in the evaluation process. Like they don't equate for competitiveness. They don't equate for how much it means to somebody. They overlook these things because you can measure them. Like you can measure a hand and everybody's making a big deal. This top quarterback right now. He's he has like a smaller hand size than typical, and I think there's been studies that like, okay, most quarterbacks that have success in the NFL have this baseline. Okay, but did the kid not have an excellent four years of college? Is he not 6’4” 210? Does he not have that type of grit resilience? So it's just funny how we take these measurable. And we like we like put them on a pedestal, but yet out of the side of our mouth will say, oh yeah, this other stuff is important, but we actually won't, through our actions show its importance, we'll look at your Marcus Russell. And we'll see all of the things that it's like, okay, red flag, like limited starting time, surrounded by literally a cast of all Americans. The word on the street is he doesn't work. Oh, he's 260 pounds, I'm not trying to just like, tear down Jamarcus Russell, but like, everybody's saying he's the greatest prospect I've ever seen. And they're discounting all these other players. And he's the number one pick in the draft. And so I just think that even after everything that we've seen, we still see like the same mistakes being made also by the same teams you know. Everybody's susceptible to mistakes, but like, by and large, the same teams are making the same mistakes. And if they had the most talent, and that was what mattered, they would win instead of, you know, having the top picks in the draft every year.
[00:41:40] Mike: Well, so okay, let's go with that. So let's take that example. Because when you were talking, I'm thinking to myself, why doesn't everybody just try to replicate the New England model? And part of it, I think is, like you said, everybody has different values. It doesn't have to be exactly like New England. But in that example of Marcus Russell, look at the Raiders, the Raiders have been doing the same things for drafting the same way for 50 years. The guy who runs the fastest 40 is the guy that they take. Like they're looking at all this sort of superficial stuff. And they haven't adapted to the idea that the most successful teams are looking at things that are not visible, they're not tangible. They're asking better questions. They're culturally doing things differently. Like, why do you think that some of these organizations aren't changing or aren't adapting with the times?
[00:42:37] Evan Burk: Well, again, this has to do we were talking earlier about the person in charge. And if you don't believe that, and it looks, it's hard to sit in those chairs. And now you're looking at somebody who has everything you're looking for, and but you maybe aren't sure about their character or whatever. But there's somebody else that doesn't have those same measurable. And I've just, I mean, I've talked to so many people where we're having this conversation, and then I'll talk to other people, and they'll say, well find talent first, and then you build character. Well, I don't really believe that, especially at the highest levels of athletics, like a lot of these people, you know, if you're a star player, you have had certain communication towards you for your entire life. This is bigger, but it's like the University of Texas should be what Alabama or Ohio State is in football? They should be. But like one of the problems is here in Texas, high school football is extremely important. If you're not from Texas, I don't know if I can like, adequately overstate how important it is. Which means if you're a star player, like people are talking about you, people are coming up to you telling you how great you are, your whole life from like, you know, little league all the way to high school, then you're recruited by the top teams in the nation who are telling you how great you are. You go to the University of Texas, where you are filled with a team of guys exactly like you. Why Texas should be in the conversation top five every single year, but they're not. And I think it goes back a lot to these guys. You know, we were talking about fixed mindset. Now you think like, man, everywhere I've been I've been the best player on the field. But it's not about being the best player on the field. It's about what are you going to do when you step on the field and you're not the best player? Like, how do you respond in that moment? And so some guys that have never had to go through that adversity or go through the work that it takes to excel or not going to excel once they get to Texas once they get drafted. In the NFL, it just doesn't happen. Tom Brady is a great example. But like somebody else that I was referencing was Cooper thinking about was Cooper cup, I talked about him in the book as well, like people look at his 40 time and say, well, he's a 4’6” 240. But let me ask you this, what dictates success for an NFL receiver? And so if you reverse engineer that speed is important. But not every receiver is four, three, and not every four, three receiver is a good NFL receiver, you have to be able to catch. And like you have to be able to separate you have to have quickness, you have to have knowledge of what type of coverage you're playing, so you know where the hole is going to be, and where to break your route off shallower than you normally would these things that Cooper cup excels at that you cannot see and measure. Yeah, like you have to tell a story to yourself and to find these things. Sorry, I know you want to jump in here.
[00:46:03] Mike: No, I love it. But I think there's a couple things there. So on that point, you know, and maybe this isn't relevant, but this is just me being interested in in that particular point about Cooper Cup is. I think there is a shift back now, or at least I get the sense as a shift back to the idea that what is the tape show? If you can play you can play. And then the measurable’s are sort of the cheque. Like, okay, like, the guy touched 100 balls a year in college like he gets open, is to 40 time is a little slower. But like, is it so slow that he can't go out and perform? Like what was Jerry Rice's 40 times, I think there's this sentiment, I get the sense that people are looking at the tape and saying, listen, you got to be able to play first. And if you can produce in play, the other stuff will kind of take care of itself. Especially if you think about where he came from. He came from, you know, kind of a smaller division one college, he's not going to have the resources that you're going to have at the NFL level, you're gonna get the best coaches, the best nutritionist, the best strength, guys, all those things, then you put a productive player into an environment where there's more resources, and they're only going to develop and get better. And I think the thinking can be a bit backwards. And the more important point I think for this podcast is, that's what you talked about people going from, say high school to college or college to pros, is such a big theme on this podcast, when I talk to people about that jump from high school to college, specifically, I'm a star in high school, I go to college, I'm just like everybody else, and I don't know how to deal with it. And that's where the growth mindset of, hey, what's my next step? The vision is I want to go to the professional level that's four years away, or three years away. What am I going to do to reverse engineer it? How I perform as a freshman isn't as important as how I perform as a senior. So what am I going to do the next four years to improve and develop to get to where I want to go? And I think a lot of kids think about it as the end all be all like, once I get to the division one level in any sport, I'm preordained to go on to be a professional. And they realize really quickly like, there's 100 of guys here like me. And how do you instill that growth mindset at that point? I think it's a real challenge.
[00:48:22] Evan Burk: No, you just summed up, basically, the entire reason I wrote the book, when you make it to division one or you get drafted, you as a coach want to make sure that that guy doesn't think, Okay, I've made it. You want to draft the guy that thinks, okay, now I can start getting to work that's what the entire book is about. Because most of it literally, if you are on a NFL draft board, you have talent, you have talent. But after you're drafted, none of that matters, teams get caught. And this is like kind of down the road. But teams get caught up in the saying, Oh well, we spent this much money we drafted like you already drafted that person like that pic is gone. So if you find out that the guy doesn't fit your scheme or can't play, why are you holding on to that person? A lot of this goes back to ego and things like that. But I put you just said about the mentality once you get there, you know, you said something earlier that I wanted to hit on is that like we look at people that are ultra-successful and we focus on their success. And like coaches do this too. You mentioned Jerry Rice. I've got coaches, I've worked for that. I've worked with Jerry Rice. I guarantee you if I asked them they would just like roll their eyes and just be like yeah, and now whatever but Jerry Rice was awesome. Okay, was he really that awesome? Because he played at Mississippi Valley State. Was he really that awesome because he wasn't the first overall pick in the draft, like, from what I've heard is that Jerry Rice was the hardest worker on that team. And I've heard stories about him talking about, I went to an event that he spoke at a couple of years ago, before the pandemic and he was talking about, he felt like he was about to be cut his rookie year. And Bill Walsh walked by him at one of these training camp practices and just basically told him, like, Hey man, you're gonna be great. Like, once you calm down, you're gonna be great. You're gonna be one of the greats and like, whether or not Bill Walsh really believe that, who knows, but like, what he was doing was he was instilling that confidence in Jerry Rice, like, Hey man, calm down, like even though you're dropping balls as a rookie, like I see it in you. And he said, like, that ignited him to where he was like, you didn't need to tell me anything the rest of my time. Like, that was all that I needed that just that little piece in, you know, again, going back to our coaching point, like it doesn't need to be, gosh, dang it, Michael, if you could just ever get out of your freaking head, we'll put it to you. You know, it was just like a little my guarantee it was a 10 second interaction that stuck with Jerry Rice and Tori was talking about it 30 years later. And I just believe that, you know, you look at we look at people like Tom Brady and Aaron Rodgers, and we say, well, like, look how awesome they are. And those guys are probably the two best football players. Let's just say quarterbacks of all time. I don't think there's any question. But like, if you don't go back to like, look at Aaron Rodgers not being tall enough to be recruited by Division-One, literally accidentally being recruited into division one, once he went to junior college, a Tom Brady going to Michigan not being good enough to start, then when he finally is good enough to start, they recruit the best high school player in the nation in both baseball and football, just start over him. And then the daily grind of having to show up to practice every day and bring it or else Drew Henson was just going to be given the reins of the organization are of the college football program. It's like, if you don't think that those moments in time were instrumental in what we see now, then you don't get it in line. It's not a coincidence that those guys went through that and are now at the pinnacle of professional sports. Very few of us can be born into a number one draft pick, like Peyton Manning and Eli Manning. And by the way, those guys bring a ton of intangibles in addition to their talents. So I think that we oftentimes focus on the results. And we don't even acknowledge the fact that these guys sat and had to play on scout team for years before they got their opportunity.
[00:53:12] Mike: All right. So as we wind down the conversation, the last question that I usually ask to all my guests, and it's a big one in the sense that it's kind of open ended and up to you to sort of answer it the way you want to. But if you had to give the people who are listening, the audience, one thing to sort of take away from the conversation, like one thing to sort of hang on to what would it be?
[00:53:40] Evan Burk: I think to keep going. You know, I reflect a lot of times on my experience as a coach, and I wanted to be a head coach in the NFL or in college. And I didn't get to experience that. But I got to have all of these great experiences. And every step along the way, when I would have a setback or something that I felt was insurmountable, I just kept going and was able, like you mentioned earlier to kind of find the next opportunity and it ends up being an even a greater opportunity. And I think that for a lot of us, we focus on success as like a destination or result. And I really believe that success is really determined by showing up and performing at your highest level every day, regardless of the circumstances, regardless of what happened yesterday, or what we've accomplished or what our failures were in the past. So I'd say showing up every day, focus on your domination and performing at your highest level.
[00:54:51] Mike: So really well said and I couldn't agree more. It's a great way to end the show. So Evan, I want to thank you for coming on. I appreciate your time. It was a great conversation, I would love to keep it going
[00:55:03] Evan Burk: Yes, indeed I get a little fired up at times especially when we're talking about these topics but this was really fun. Thanks for having me on Michael.
[00:55:11] Mike: Thanks again, Evan. Take care.
[00:55:13] Evan Burk: Take care.