To tell stronger stories, understand yourself first - Ryan Hawk & Brook Cupps, Coauthors of The Score That Matters - How Stories Happen #8
Storytellers often face a paradox: to connect deeper externally, you have to turn deeper internally. You have to know yourself and get more honest with how you think and feel than others might be comfortable doing themselves. That often means we have to stop caring what people think of us quite as much.
In this episode, we meet Brook Cupps and Ryan Hawk, coauthors of the book The Score That Matters. We talk about how they collaborated on their book together and how they use stories to inspire and lead others. Brook is the head boys basketball coach at Centerville High School in Ohio, while Ryan hosts the popular podcast, The Learning Leader Show.
What makes their partnership one of a kind—and what you'll hear in this episode—is the blend of practical coaching wisdom, deeply personal ideas, and storytelling finesse.
The story we dissect comes from Brook, who shares how he transformed his coaching approach after a pivotal moment with his daughter, which shifted his entire philosophy. Ryan chimes in with insights from his own journey, emphasizing the importance of inner growth, values, and deliberate practice.
It's a refreshing look at storytelling and the tough things we need to embrace first, which then allow us to become more effective communicators and leaders.
BONUS: Hear Jay and Ryan on Ryan's podcast, discussing the art and science of hosting great interviews: https://learningleader.com/episode/330-deconstructing-the-art-science-of-interviewing-with-jay-acunzo/
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Episode Resources:
⚫ Check out Ryan Hawk’s podcast, The Learning Leader Show: https://learningleader.com/
⚫ Learn more about Brook Cupps and Blue Collar Grit: https://www.bluecollargrit.com/about-us.html
⚫ Get Ryan and Brook's book, The Score That Matters: https://www.amazon.com/Score-That-Matters-Excellence-Yourself-ebook/dp/B0CGZ8HRXD
🔵 Follow Jay on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/jayacunzo/
🔵 Subscribe to Jay’s newsletter: https://jayacunzo.com/newsletter
🔵 Learn about Jay’s coaching and consulting: https://jayacunzo.com/
🟢 Created in partnership with Share Your Genius: https://shareyourgenius.com/
🟢 Cover art designed by Blake Ink: https://www.blakeink.com/
Full Transcript
(This was created with AI and may contain some errors)
Brook Cupps [00:00:00]:
I'm Brooke Cupps. I'm a head boys basketball coach at Centerville High School in Ohio, and I try to challenge people to strive for excellence over success.
Ryan Hawk [00:00:09]:
Ryan Hawk hosts a podcast called the Learning Leader show, trying to explore my curiosity and obsessions with great rigor and hopefully inspire others to value and pursue excellence.
Jay Acunzo [00:00:24]:
Today we have a rare opportunity to talk about maybe playing this on hard mode. When you're set out to write a book and you have so many variables involved, obviously the show is about making things and how we felt about making those things, and the two of you decided to team up to write a book. I imagine that's a very rare experience for many creatives, even those who decide to write a book. Talk to me about Ryan. I'll start with you. Was that a hard decision to make? Because as someone who's written a book before yourself, you recognize what goes into it. Did you see this as making it easier on yourself or harder, but with maybe a better outcome?
Ryan Hawk [00:01:04]:
If you would have asked me a few years ago, I would have said no, I would not write with somebody else because of, as you know, how personal the experience is. Interviewed Tyler Cowen. He's an economics professor and a good podcast host himself. Conversations with Tyler is his show, and I asked him that question because he had written a ton of books by himself and then decided to write his book about talent with another person. And I said, why did you do that? And he goes, if you get the opportunity to work with somebody who is world class and really awesome at what that's what he said and really awesome at what they do, then you should drop everything and do that. And so when Brooke and I actually sat down to record an online course for about 8 hours a few years ago, and I had a friend of mine named Dan Smith sitting off camera, transcribing everything we said over the course of those 8 hours. And then I read through the transcript of what Dan had written and then promptly texted Brooke and said, dude, I think this could be a book. What do you think? And I think his response was simply, I'm down.
Ryan Hawk [00:02:06]:
And, you know, here we are, like three years later, and we finally have the artifact and a lot of messiness along the way. But I'd say it was worth it because I just learned when you get to hang out with one of your mentors, basically not every day, but a lot of days over the course of years in order to try to create something of value for others, you're going to learn a ton in that process. So even if it didn't sell a single copy. It still would be deemed a success for me because I got to learn, learn so much through the process of doing it.
Jay Acunzo [00:02:35]:
Yeah. Brooke, what's something that surprised you? You know, heading in, you probably had a bunch of assumptions of what it would be like to do this project with Ryan or with just any other person. And then, of course, rubber meets the road and you start to realize what it's like. So what's something that surprised you about the process of writing this book together?
Brook Cupps [00:02:53]:
I think just connecting our thoughts and our beliefs. Like, we see things pretty similarly, but it was hard to get it organized and, like, coherent, where it made sense and was in an order that we thought would be impactful for other people. That was probably the most eye opening thing because the first one, I was like, oh, yeah, I don't know if this is the book or not. We'll see. When we first put it on paper, it was all over the place. So that part of it was really cool and a challenge.
Jay Acunzo [00:03:26]:
I think this is the naive question that I have to ask because I am genuinely wondering this, and I imagine others will be, too, which is, what are you physically working on to get all your thoughts on paper? Do you have an outline you agree on and then fill it all in, you know, assigning each chapter differently, or, you know, is this two head coaches trying to both run the same play? Like, how does this work in reality? So you get out of your heads and onto the page.
Brook Cupps [00:03:48]:
We started with a Google Doc, right? And we just started dumping into a Google Doc. That's how we started.
Ryan Hawk [00:03:54]:
And then trying to organize it. We got everything out, and that was a process that took years. And then I think we were organizing and trying to reorganize and, like, we were doing that down to the last second as far as, wait, should this go there? We're going to move this here. We're cutting this chapter here. It's not good enough.
Brook Cupps [00:04:13]:
Need a story for this. Like, yeah, need a story to connect these things.
Ryan Hawk [00:04:16]:
Exactly. So there was a lot of that back and forth. And the fun thing about Google Docs is it's real time. So there are moments when both of us are wide awake in the very early hours on Sunday morning, and you can see the other person writing actually in the document and then see them, like, backspacing and erasing and then writing more and then backspacing and, like, going through the process of, like, oh, this is. I can hear Brooks thoughts as they're coming out of his head, going down onto the page. Like, you don't. You don't really get to see people write in real time that much. So, in a way, that part of it was kind of cool for the moments when we were both actually doing at the exact same time.
Jay Acunzo [00:04:56]:
Ryan, you and I have talked before about the importance of effective communication and, by extension, storytelling. Right? Like crafting a story that we can bring with us on a stage, crafting a story out of an interview where a guest is the one delivering that. And we're kind of seeking. We've talked about how a great interview isn't a march forward. It's more of a dance with a dance partner, and you're trying to construct a whole lot of that. So storytelling in your life, I know, shows up in all kinds of ways. Brooke, I'm really curious. I had a high school basketball coach who would paste all these pithy sayings all over our locker room, and my friends and I, when we get together, maybe after a few beers, I can neither confirm nor deny.
Jay Acunzo [00:05:34]:
Inevitably, one of us will say out of the blue, the ten most important two letter words in the english language. If it is to be, it is up to me. And that's directly from our high school coach because it was pasted on the wall. He wasn't a storyteller per se, but he had his go to bits. As a coach, do you have go to stories, or where does storytelling fit in your world?
Ryan Hawk [00:05:55]:
As a coach, I think that is your primary job as a leader. I'm leading our program, so I'm casting the vision of what our program is. So that's the story. The story is how we're going to go about the things that we're going to do and the way that we're going to do them. And then, you know, all those little bits that we say are just pieces of our culture that we want to highlight and we want to make sure we bring to the surface that kind of keep our story afloat and keep it relevant in people's minds. So I think your ability to cast that vision is the storytelling that you're going for.
Jay Acunzo [00:06:32]:
When you were little, Brooke, were you eager to get up in front of the class or the group or the team and deliver an inspiring message or, you know, there's ample proof if you can't tell from the everything of me already. I know we just met, but, like, as a kid, I was like, is that a camera? I'll go in front of it. You know, that was who I was from the beginning. Is that something you feel like you were just eager for at a young age? Or was it something you experienced and learned over time?
Brook Cupps [00:06:59]:
Yeah. No, not at all like, I was. I wouldn't volunteer in class. I would just sit there kind of quiet, kept to myself. It's more like. Like, for me, it's more of just sharing my authenticity and what I believe and trying to impact the people. I think that's what gives me kind of the. It's not really courage now.
Brook Cupps [00:07:19]:
I don't mind doing it at all, but it's just gives me the comfort to be able to do that. I'm really comfortable with who I am, what I believe, and where we're trying to go.
Jay Acunzo [00:07:28]:
Ryan, on that same subject of you as storyteller, I know you have this really rare position of having this enormous back catalog of exceptional interviews you've done with many, many guests. And also, I've been on that show. So it's like, good job, except for that one instance or two. But you have all these stories and advice and insight coming from other people. And I think it'd be very easy for you to then show up when you're hired to speak or you're coaching somebody or you're just having conversation with someone and sort of say, well, as so and so said. And so and so said, just be the consummate curator and not bring your own perspective. Talk to me about, like, your evolution as a storyteller, because there's a version of you that would just say, let me publish the learning leader show book with the best excerpts from my best interviews. And that's not what this book is.
Jay Acunzo [00:08:20]:
This is you and Brooke having a perspective and you trying to say something that matters as an individual and as a. As a duo.
Ryan Hawk [00:08:27]:
I think early on it is more of, I'm referencing other people, and I still do that a decent amount because I'm trying to be the person who can take a lot of information and synthesize it and then share it in my own words. And that's been an evolution over time, as opposed to, like, completely just quoting somebody else to, then taking it in and really thinking about it and then sharing it as the way I see fit. I just think that that takes time, that takes repetition, that takes confidence, that takes experience. And so when I go on a stage, I mean, for the most part, the stories are pretty much my own stories or the way I'm either, like, real experiences of my own life that I've synthesized and tried to figure out what's most useful for this, for somebody else. And then maybe like, there's little. There's little bits that I will throw in that I'll. That'll be a key learning from somebody else that just punches it up a bit. So I think that's.
Ryan Hawk [00:09:29]:
What's. What's nice is because I also have been really intentional to be the sole person when it comes to the preparation for each of my interviews, as well as the note taking and then actually writing the show notes. I could outsource all of that, but I don't for the reason that it helps cement that learning, and then I can make that my own when I go to share and teach other people, if I outsource some of that work, I feel like I would lose the learning, and I wouldn't be able to, like, have it so deeply ingrained in who I am, and I wouldn't be as useful when I go to teach other people. So I think all of that probably plays a role into now. I'm much more comfortable just sharing it from my perspective, even if I learned it from somebody else.
Jay Acunzo [00:10:11]:
Right. Right. And final question before we hear your story. Brooke, what was it like having a lackey like Ryan do all the writing for you? I mean, that's amazing. What a gift.
Brook Cupps [00:10:19]:
Yeah, it was nice. It was nice. You know, I will say, jay, on Ryan, the question you asked to Ryan, I've noticed, I mean, I don't know. We've known each other for, you know, eight years now. Seven. Eight years. But there's been, I think, a noticeable difference in when he first started, when I first got to know him, I thought a lot of what he had to say was based on what other people had said on the show. And now working with him, with some other company stuff, he's so good at pulling just the right story and just the right message that applies to what he really thinks.
Brook Cupps [00:10:53]:
And so his. His belief is now kind of the driving vehicle for that. It's. That's. I mean, his ability to do that is really cool to me. I think it's fascinating how he can remember that show, that comment that applies to exactly what we're talking about, to make that message better.
Jay Acunzo [00:11:11]:
If ever there was an example, I mean, I love actually, like, behind closed doors or, you know, in my inbox saying, go check out Ryan Hawk, not just because the show is great, but because Ryan, when people say, you know, maybe they're looking to me to coach them, or maybe we're just talking about my public platform and they'd like something similar, but. Or maybe it's a friend who's feeling diminished or, you know, feeling some kind of creeping doubt in their head. I think a lot of people retreat to this safety zone of, well, for me to be worthy to lead, to help people, to change, to show up as a storyteller and a changemaker, I gotta go get more experience. I gotta go work at six more big brands. I gotta go lead an increasingly enormous department or something like that. And I've always been of the belief, or in the creative world, I need a lightning strike idea. It's a genius idea. Just out of nowhere that, you know, out comes that idea into the world and it catches fire.
Jay Acunzo [00:12:04]:
And I've always been of the mentality that, like, that is the tyranny of the right answer. Maybe the school system beats it into us, but the corporate world certainly perpetuates it where it's like, don't speak up unless you already know, unless you're already the expert. You can't write or speak or share anything. And I'm like, Ryan Hawk is an expert. Ryan Hawk has a lot of answers. But Ryan Hawk's calling card is curiosity. Right? And, like, he's not in the sciences. He's not the classic example of curiosity as a fuel, but all of us.
Jay Acunzo [00:12:31]:
And Brooke, you know, I know you're the same way. We're pursuing questions. We're pursuing the desire to know. The questions get better. You know, it's not necessarily that we have some fancier logo we can now cite alongside our names. And I would actually cite, to close this little rant here, a quote that I got by listening to your show, Ryan, from JJ Reddick. Do you know the quote?
Ryan Hawk [00:12:54]:
Of course.
Jay Acunzo [00:12:54]:
Because we've talked about it before.
Ryan Hawk [00:12:56]:
You've never arrived. You're always becoming there.
Jay Acunzo [00:12:59]:
It is never arriving, always becoming. So, anyways, credit to both of you, really. And I think that what this show is sort of a trojan horse for is people being a noticer, people being more curious. Right? If you're trying to tell a great story, I'm not saying go build a billion dollar company and then tell that story. I'm saying walk out into your life, notice things, observe things, sense things, turn that into more effective storytelling. So I think both of you have done that exceptionally well. And now what I would like to do is hear one of the signature stories. At the core of this thinking of both of yours is from you, Brooke, and Ryan, the way you teed it up to me ahead of time was, this is the evolution or transformation of you, Brooke, from a results oriented coach to a process based one? Before I hear it from you.
Jay Acunzo [00:13:50]:
I'm just curious, like, where has this story showed up publicly for you both? Like, where has this story been used?
Brook Cupps [00:13:58]:
I've told it a lot of times. Almost every time I speak or talk about our basketball program or teaching and coaching, it's kind of the central theme to what I believe now, even though.
Ryan Hawk [00:14:10]:
This is his story, but it flows really well when I share the difference between this internal and external scoreboard and why, I'm a firm believer that if you get the internal right, everything else seems to take care of itself. So this is the one that I think kind of really illustrates it well, right?
Jay Acunzo [00:14:31]:
So, I suppose, Brooke, this is your story of understanding the score that matters, the score that counts, the score that should drive us all. So whenever you're ready, please let us know. How did you transform from a results oriented coach to a process oriented one?
Brook Cupps [00:14:45]:
I would say it's more of a realization than the actual transformation was a process as a result of that, of that realization. But I was a head high school coach when I was about, I don't know, 23 about. And my first part of it, I mean, I had no idea what I was doing first part of my coaching. I would say the first five, six, seven years of my coaching was strictly transactional, just trying to win the most games, trying to run the play that would win the most games, trying to put our players in a position that would just win the most games. I had relationships with our guys, and it was surface level, and I'm embarrassed to see those guys now. You know, I would like to see them, but I'm embarrassed by what I robbed them of during that time. But we had a season where we were 18 and two, beat a team by 40 in the last game of the regular season and then lost to them in the second round of the tournament, which is hard to do, hard to lose. Hard to lose to a team you beat by 40.
Brook Cupps [00:15:46]:
You got to really be coaching to do that. Within that season, though, I had a moment in our living room when I was trying to watch film. My daughter, who was maybe five at the time, was, I can still see her. She's in her pink princess dress, standing in the middle of the living room holding, like, a bowl of popcorn and asking me to hold her. And I got frustrated because I was trying to watch film, and she started crying, and then the movie didn't. She wanted to, and so I knocked the popcorn bowl out of her hand. At that moment, I remember thinking, like, who am I? What is this? It's not the person I want to be. I can't do this.
Brook Cupps [00:16:27]:
This isn't who I want to be as a person, a coach, a dad. So, that realization is what sent me into kind of the spin to, okay, I got to figure out who I am and what am I doing? I knew I couldn't continue coaching that way. I love coaching. I love basketball. I love impacting kids. But I knew I couldn't keep doing it that way for the rest of my life. So then I had to decide, like, okay, well, who am I gonna be? How am I gonna go about doing this in a different way? I really just went into a deep dive into myself and thought, like, okay, what do I believe? And I happened to go to an athletes in action clinic where Dick Bennett. Most people don't know who Dick Bennett is.
Brook Cupps [00:17:06]:
He used to coach at Wisconsin. He's Tony Bennett's dad, who's the coach at Virginia now. But Dick Bennett was very faith based coach, but pretty old school. But he had five pillars, and he was speaking at this athletes in action clinic, and he started talking about his five pillars and how that is what he wanted to share with his players. That's what he wanted them to grow in as players in his program. And I was like, that makes sense, okay, that I can invest in. And so then it was more about reflecting on my life and figuring out, like, okay, what do I have to give? What's the best of me that I can give to the kids that are in my program, that are playing for me. I think that's what we all have is whatever our best is, right? And that's what we're trying to give away and how we're trying to impact the people around us.
Brook Cupps [00:17:52]:
So, a lot of reflection looking back at my life and thinking about the people that were impactful for me, what did they do? Led me to my core values. And then those core values kind of provided the foundation for what our program was from that point forward. And that's not only how I coach, but then really just how I live my life. Like, that's how I want to impact everybody that I'm around. And it's that process that then I trust that process. Whatever that leads to, I'm cool with. Like, I'm good with that if I'm. If I'm true to those values.
Jay Acunzo [00:18:28]:
Thank you for that. Ryan, I'm curious. Why does that story resonate with you, someone who is not a professional coach?
Ryan Hawk [00:18:37]:
I admire the fact that more people know Brooke cups values than know their own values. They're tough, passionate, unified, and thankful. Especially in the state of Ohio. People know what those are. People copy them. People steal them. Other programs you should see, they, like, literally, word for word, steal. His purpose statement, the Centerville basketball core values, which are Brooks values, I think that's really amazing.
Ryan Hawk [00:19:01]:
And so that's, that led me to want to dig deeper and to get to know him. And Brooke also isn't, like, flashy with this stuff. He's like the least flashy person you're going to find. He just is comfortable in his own skin. He's given up the need for approval from, from those outside of the people in his foxhole. And I think that's a quality that is attractive as well as something that I'm, I'm striving for. And I'm a lot closer to it now than I was back in, what, 2017, when we first met. So that's why to me, the whole story, the.
Ryan Hawk [00:19:35]:
This popcorn bowl story with Ally was so impactful, because, like, I also, a background in athletics also, I want to win when I play games. Don't get me wrong. Brooke does, too. But we also realize that if you don't get this stuff right on the inside, that it's not going to be worth it to get. Just get the w. I mean, there's. There's so much more as well as it's. It's interesting that the people like a Bill Walsh.
Ryan Hawk [00:20:00]:
The score takes care of itself. Or a Brooke cups those ones. Or a Garron Stokes, one of our mutual friends who is a part of our group, the ones who get it right on the inside, it just. It just seems to happen that they also get it right on the outside. It's just at. That's the result, even though they've surrendered that outcome. So, to me, that's an admirable trait. Cause it's not just about winning games.
Ryan Hawk [00:20:23]:
It's really about how you live your life. And I'm striving to be more like that.
Jay Acunzo [00:20:32]:
Yeah. You know, in marketing, we learn about these concepts called apparent value and discovered value. I even talked to a friend of mine who's not in marketing. He's a Grammy nominated music educator, and he plays trumpet and jazz bands on the side. And we talked about the same thing, applying. He's looking at a new job opportunity, and he's asked, why do you think? He said, this is a classic question in education. Why do we need a music program? What's your belief in the value of it? And his response is, he's drawing on our conversations about marketing, which is, well, there's the apparent value of something, which is that thing that people arrive readily seeing, which in his case in music, is. There's the extracurricular, and you can spend time doing something productive.
Jay Acunzo [00:21:12]:
There's art for art's sake. There's all these things that, on surface, yes, they do matter, and we don't want to belittle them. But he's like, I'm much more interested in the discovered value of. And he's got this long list of what he talks about, working together as a team, as you're part of the orchestra, pushing yourself beyond the limits that you previously had set for yourself, understanding that to solve something in a creative craft is to solve a hard problem which applies elsewhere. The case of this show, the apparent values. I get to hear exceptional communicators share a story which on face has value, and then dissect that story, and there's a voyeuristic value to that. But then I discover, oh, wait, Ryan and Brooke, these exceptional communicators, they're putting their butts in a chair to figure out how they told that story to begin with. They're slogging it out in a Google Doc at odd hours, laughing to each other as they, like, backtrack and rewrite and all these things, too.
Jay Acunzo [00:22:05]:
Well, who am I to think that I can't be going through the mud like that, too? That's the work. So, I think of, like, these stories as, you know, they're presented as, here's the apparent value, then there's always a discovered value, almost as if they're, you know, an allegory is a word that pops to mind, right. There's always a deeper meaning to it. And I feel like in sports, that's obvious. And, I don't know, maybe since I've left the world of spice to play basketball, too, as my main sport, I started to get too literal. I started to think, okay, if it's not an example that looks like my work, I can't learn from that, right? And here you are coming out with a story, Brooke, that maybe isn't applying everywhere. You're showing up with Ryan in the business world, and I'm sure you're being met with some kind of positive response. So the question to you is, as you tell that story to people that themselves are not trying to be coaches, other people like Ryan or me or elsewhere, what's been the response to that idea?
Brook Cupps [00:22:58]:
I don't really care, is my answer to that. I mean, I think.
Jay Acunzo [00:23:06]:
Hold on. This is a show record. People parading through this show who have followers want influence, you know, want to, you know, perform their art publicly or build a business. They're all eager for someone to go, oh, man. Yeah, the response was great. That is the best response I've ever seen.
Brook Cupps [00:23:25]:
I mean, I think authenticity is what draws people to you. And I think being real and open and vulnerable, I've never had anybody with a negative response to that story. I mean, I think there are probably people walk away, think I'm a jerk, which is okay. I definitely was at that time, but it's true. It's who I was. I was willing to go there. I think there are a lot of people that aren't willing to go there and go to that point and understand who they really are. So I hope it.
Brook Cupps [00:23:52]:
Hope it spurs people to be vulnerable enough to really look and see who you are, because I think once you figure that out, I think a lot of things change for you, either writing.
Jay Acunzo [00:24:03]:
The score that matters or sharing ideas from the score that matters around it. How do you decide to describe a tough moment with your daughter? I have two little kids, five and three. I've personally made the decision that they're not going to show up on my social media, like images or videos of them, but I will talk about moments with them, and I always find myself really thinking deeply about how to tell this story, if it involves one of them and what details to include or omit. What was your consideration, or was there any thought to go into like, oh, okay, this is a tough moment with my daughter. How do I approach this in a public setting? Or are you the type of person that will readily pull on autobiographical moments when trying to teach?
Brook Cupps [00:24:46]:
Yeah, everything's game. Like, I. And that's how I am with my kids, too. So they know it's, I love them. There's no question of whether I love them or not, and it's true. And so the reason people refrain from saying those kind of things is because they're worried about what other people think about them. And I don't really care what other people think about it. Like, that's true.
Brook Cupps [00:25:08]:
It's what I feel. It's what I think is beneficial at the time. Then I'm just going to tell it.
Jay Acunzo [00:25:15]:
Ryan, how about you? You know, you. You are someone in the public eye. You're a family man. How do you think about involving or not involving moments with your family in your public platform?
Ryan Hawk [00:25:25]:
They're the number one priority in my life. So when you talk for a living on a podcast, I mean, if you listen, their names just randomly come up, and stories that happen randomly come up without even thinking. It's, like, subconsciously that just. There's. And then consciously it comes out. So I'm not going to act like the number one priority of my life doesn't exist to try to like. It's also, as Brooke said, it just wouldn't be real. I'm thinking about them and my wife, like, all the time.
Ryan Hawk [00:25:55]:
So if I'm. If I'm in conversation with somebody, I notice when I listen back, some of those stories just come out without even. Without even thinking. So when it comes to sharing, like, pictures and stuff on social, I think that might be a completely different thing. You know, I don't do very much if any of that. Mostly focus on the work and trying to, like, share, learn from me content instead of look at me content. So that's what I'm trying to do. I don't get it right all the time, but for the most part, that's how I approach it.
Jay Acunzo [00:26:26]:
I think about comedians a lot. Comedians are so craft driven. Like, if you listen to them talk about how they develop their material, they'll throw the raw clay down on the table. The Jerry Seinfeld book, is this anything? Right? They'll present it to a peer. They'll present it to a small audience at a small club. And, you know, I don't necessarily think that we have an exact comp in our world of coaching and teaching and sharing expertise, but everywhere we show up is a chance to say, okay, you know, that felt right, or that was the right way to say it, so people lit up. The score that matters is a part of the story that you're telling the world. Is that handle that idea something that popped to mind? Was it a lightning strike moment? Was it something that was a part of your platform? Brooke, you're smiling.
Jay Acunzo [00:27:06]:
So good to you.
Brook Cupps [00:27:07]:
No, I think it's a good story. Ryan, go ahead. Liam's gave.
Ryan Hawk [00:27:10]:
Yeah, I mean, we had, like, many different titles along the way. We couldn't get there. It's, as you know, Jay, like, the titling process is every once in a while. I guess maybe authors get lucky and they just got it from the beginning, but that was not the case for us. And so I enlisted the help of friends and one of the guys who's helped me with all three of my books, who's a mutual friend of Brooklyn, Brooke. And we were just together in Columbus last month named Liam Murray. I was like, dude, he always helps him with chapter titles. And, like, subheading titles.
Ryan Hawk [00:27:44]:
And in this case, I said, could you even think about the actual title of the book? Which is the first time I've done that, like, the actual title. And he sent me a list of, like, 40. And this is why I love Liam, because 35 of those 40 were stupid. Like, they made no sense. But he didn't care because he. He also is pretty an internal scoreboard type of a guy. And one of those 40, though, was the score that matters. And I was like, ah, that might be it.
Ryan Hawk [00:28:11]:
Like, the right title might actually be the score that matters most. But the score that matters, I think, really embodies living by this internal scoreboard to us. And so we're, in a way, it was like, let's be humble enough to seek out the help of other people who are good at naming things. And in this case, that was one of the ideas, because some people are so afraid when you ask for help. Like, they want every idea to be perfect. But as you know, Jay, and in marketing and just in your world, too, it's usually about quantity. You need the quantity in order to get to the quality. Like, if you're workshopping stories to tell on a stage, you probably have to try lots and lots and lots of them to find, like, the one that actually hits.
Ryan Hawk [00:28:59]:
And the same thing when it goes to naming stuff and the titles of things, you gotta go through a bunch of garbage in order to find the. Find the one thing. And that was our process to finally get there to where we got to like, oh, I think this is it. The publisher was like, yeah, we think it's it, too. And then eventually that became it. And now we're, you know, now we're really happy with it. It's kind of become just a thing. And it's like, oh, yeah, it's always been that.
Ryan Hawk [00:29:25]:
It's like, no, I actually remember. It wasn't always that, but it took a while and we finally got there.
Jay Acunzo [00:29:31]:
Who is it? Neil Gaiman. The author said the second draft is making it look like you knew what you were doing all along.
Ryan Hawk [00:29:37]:
Exactly.
Jay Acunzo [00:29:39]:
Yes, yes. You know, Ryan, one of the things you were saying there and on the same sort of plane as the whole comedian working out material or speaker working out material thing. I joked with a friend the other day, I'm so glad that I was under 6ft, skinny white kid who shot threes and not like a giant rebounder or something, because the idea of putting up shots, of getting up your shots has helped me in so many other things in my life where the intention is not to shoot a lot of shots poorly. Right. And I think in the business world or content creator world, it could be misconstrued as, like, just ship it. Like, don't care about quality. It's like, no, you're going for the make here. You're not just trying to throw the ball at the hoop.
Jay Acunzo [00:30:20]:
You are trying to do something well. But to get to the point where you do it well, you have to do a lot of it. So, like, people debate quality versus quantity. I'm like, they're not diametrically opposed ideas. They're two different things that actually harmonize quite well. If you bring the desire for quality to a high quantity of reps that you're going through, that's actually where the magic happens. So, Brooke, I see you nodding. I don't know if that's clearly something I'm sure you teach.
Brook Cupps [00:30:46]:
Yeah, that's a great take on it. I think that's a great way to skill acquisition. That's a. It's a good take on.
Ryan Hawk [00:30:52]:
It's like the deliberate practice, Jay. Right. I mean, that's that. It's more. We were. I shouldn't criticize. I love my dad more than anybody, but, like, he's not a very good golfer. And I was talking with another golfer who's not bad.
Ryan Hawk [00:31:07]:
And I said, you know, he said, you know, your dad's, like the hardest working golfer I've ever seen. He just pounds balls on the driving range. He practices and practice. And he goes, but if you're practicing a bad swing, you're just cementing a bad swing. What you really need is more deliberate practice. Like, in this case, probably have a coach saying, you're really cementing this, these bad habits if you're, if you have bad shooting form, right, and you probably should get a coach to help you get better shooting form. So you're cementing the right form as opposed to the wrong one. And I think the same is true.
Ryan Hawk [00:31:38]:
Jay is right. Like, let's have more deliberate practice. And also, a lot of what we're talking about happened when nobody saw it. Like, there's a lot of work done in the dark before it was brought to the light. So a lot of our reps, a lot of the quality is done in the darkness. Not even, like, testing on a stage like Dave Chappelle did at Wiley's comedy club down the street when he would work out material before he does his Netflix special, because Dave's a Dayton guy. And to me, it's like we workshop that almost with ourselves in a very small group of people to get ideas from and then, you know, try to ship the high quality. So I'm with you.
Ryan Hawk [00:32:14]:
Like, I don't, like, just spray and pray and say, oh, something will hit. So let's just keep putting it out there. It's like, I like to think we have a standard and we're going to try to uphold the standard with the stuff that we do, but we are going to practice and do stuff in the dark that's probably going to be pretty messy and not very good or not finished before we get it out there.
Jay Acunzo [00:32:33]:
I think it's a big reason you and I like to deal in slow media, not social media, Ryan, where it's like there's nuance to this stuff and it doesn't sound like something people are going to reshare, repost, retweet, whatever, at high volumes to say what you just said, even though it is the truth and what people need to hear, right. Like, it's social media is a nuanced, killing technology. And in my world of trying to encourage people to create content with substance and not resort to all these hollow stunts, you can't just show up and answer the question of quality versus quantity by picking one. Right? You have to go to first principles. And on the subject of first principles, I feel like that's ultimately what this book was about. I want to go back to something that, Brooke, you mentioned, speaking of first principles, in your story of, like, you started your coaching career in a very transactional way. I heard you say that word transactional, surface level approach to it, or surface level, even maybe connection to your players. Talk to me about how you approach it now.
Jay Acunzo [00:33:34]:
What is an example of something where you're trying to, I don't know, build rapport with a single player or a whole team, that you would have done it a certain way that back then and what it looks like now. Instead, I'm looking for kind of like an understanding of, as you shift your mindset towards the score that matters in your world, what's something you've actively changed in doing?
Brook Cupps [00:33:55]:
I mean, I've changed just about everything, but I think when you go back to the transactional part of it, I think from the outside, a lot of times it looks the same. It's hard to tell the difference, but I know the difference. Like, I know my purpose and my intent of talking to a kid in those first five or six years when he was having trouble at home was to just get him to play better. Now, when I talk to a kid, I couldn't care less how he plays in the next game. It's more about, like, let me help him get better. Like, let me help him handle this situation so he can navigate those similar types of situations the rest of his life. And so it's really. It's that purpose that changes, and I think that's the difference between transactional and transformational.
Jay Acunzo [00:34:38]:
Ryan, similar question to you. Your work looks a lot more like a lot of our listeners work in the business world as a content creator, as a public communicator, what is something that, if you were to look back on it and then play it forward, was your version of before I really understood the score that mattered most, I would have done it this way. And now maybe I think of it differently or do it a different way.
Ryan Hawk [00:35:00]:
Comparison with others. I want to actually read this great quote that I think Brooke has helped me understand the most. And it's about envy, and it's really about eliminating envy. And this one really speaks to me because it's, uh, this guy learn. Lauren. Yow. I think it's how you pronounce his last name. He says, envy is inversely correlated with self examination.
Ryan Hawk [00:35:20]:
The less you know yourself, the more you look to others to get an idea of your worth. But the more you delve into who you are, the less you seek from others, and the disillusionment of envy begins. And so I think the score that matters helps you eliminate envy, because if you do the work on yourself and understanding your core values, mind, thoughtful, thankful, curious, and consistent, and then I can ask myself at the end of each day, what did I do today? To be more thoughtful, to be more thankful, to be more curious, and to be more consistent. And if I can answer those in the affirmative, then that's what matters most, regardless of anything else that's being accomplished by other people. That's really what I try hard. I'm not. Again, I still mess it up, but that's what I try hard to focus on. And by doing that, by doing that really hard work of one, first establishing your values and then setting up the prompts to ensure you're living by those values and and demonstrating the behaviors that bring those values to life, that has helped eliminate a lot of the envy in my life that I have for people.
Ryan Hawk [00:36:25]:
I'm still inspired by other people I still love, like reading about interesting stories and and talking to the people I'm closest with to be inspired by them. But I think I've, from Brooke's help and some of the other people that are close to us. Their help have gotten much better at self examination, defining what success for me is, defining my values, and then trying to live them out. I'd say that's the biggest change from probably eight, nine years ago to how I try to show up today.
Jay Acunzo [00:36:55]:
Brooke, as you traverse different pockets of society and pockets of the world, fellow coaches and athletes, over to business leaders and other types of organizational leaders, what is something that you wish more of the world? Gonna give you a little permission to strut on behalf of all coaches here, but what do you wish that people who are not in the role of a coach understood about how coaches communicate and maybe adopted a little bit more?
Brook Cupps [00:37:20]:
Giving and receiving honest feedback I would say, is pretty close to the top of the list, I think, in the corporate world, at least so far. It's just amazing how averse to critical feedback so many people are to both give and receive. And in coaching, it's literally happening all the time. So you don't even think about it. Like, you walk into a company, like, into a corporate world and say, that's not good enough, and, like, the sky's falling. Like, in our program, the kid just does it again. You know what I mean? And so I think that's just a huge thing that. I think it's a benefit for a lot of people that have been in the.
Brook Cupps [00:38:03]:
In the sporting world of competition, because you. You do get it and receive it not only from. From those people, but you're gaining feedback constantly, just from whether your performance is. Is up to par or not. And so you constantly got that ongoing feedback. So that would be my answer. I think that's pretty high.
Jay Acunzo [00:38:21]:
I love that answer. It aligns with me very fully, because part of the reason I wanted to make this show happen was this is the hallway conversation with a fellow speaker. You know, if Ryan, you know this. If you're hired as a keynote and maybe you're outside of that specific industry, you have a bunch of practitioners and maybe people from the event organizers on the stage, and then you're brought in as the author, as the big idea guy, as the. The perspective changer in the room. You're not bumping up against other peers exactly all the time. But if you're ever at an event with other professional speakers or authors, you're like, this is amazing. I get to chop it up with these peers.
Jay Acunzo [00:38:54]:
And we think of the speech not as a proxy for our own self worth, but as an external product or thing that we're trying to master. You know, like, this is a difficulty I think in the corporate world, maybe Brooke is like, my idea is me. Your idea is you. So if I said to you, hey, Brooke, I really wanted to hear, I don't know. I'm looking at my notes from when you told that story. If I said to you, you started with the word transactional, and I wanted to hear the word transformational to bookend it later in the story, a coach mentality goes, oh, yeah, okay, cool. I can see what you're saying, even if I disagree with it. Right? It's like, yeah, we're working on this thing together.
Jay Acunzo [00:39:25]:
If I said that in so many corporate settings, it's a proxy for me saying, well, you're not worthy or you're not good enough, or it's an attack versus, like, we have a problem on the board, let's stand shoulder to shoulder to address it. Ryan, you're nodding. It sounds like that's something you've experienced as well.
Ryan Hawk [00:39:40]:
The best organizations that we work with are good at that. I mean, the best teams I've been a part of, both in the sporting world and in the business world, had a room of people like Shane Snow. And I know, you know, Shane would write about in dream teams where they have different set of life experiences and they're willing to speak up and they're willing to say it when they see it, they'll say it. They don't hold back. They don't have the side conversation after the meeting to gossip about the person. They just say it in the room. And I think that's the big thing that in the work that we do now that we're trying hard to help people do better. And it's a challenge, though, man.
Ryan Hawk [00:40:22]:
Like, I'll tell you, even with some of the good companies, that we still kind of come up against it because there's a lot of messiness and gray that happens in corporate America where people want to keep their jobs or they're worried, can I say that or not? It's not worth it. It's not worth it because they're thinking of something else. And so this one's top of mind for both of us because of the work that we're fortunate to get to do with companies and see it as probably one of the top things that we're trying to work through.
Jay Acunzo [00:40:54]:
I think of this visual, I think I put it on a slide in a presentation at one point, but there's this visual of, like, the literal form of communication versus the figurative. Like, you use a story, whether or not the story looks exactly like here's somebody with your job title, or I think even more powerfully, here's an allegory. Like, here's something that doesn't look on face exactly that you're going through, but it carries that insight you need to hear. And the visual is you're trying to move someone from a to b. The literal communicator is telling, right? So they try to move you through from a to b in some exact straight line. I'm going to tell you to do this. I'm going to tell you you should care. Right? And I think the problem is people start inserting a lot of their own head trash and they're grafting on, well, okay, here's why I can't, or here's why I'm hurt, or here's why I'm sad about your feedback or whatever, but if I can convince you that I'm not talking about you for a second, you're, like, going to relax and go, oh, okay.
Jay Acunzo [00:41:44]:
So an example is I could try to convince people that you should try new things. And so, like, the Nike slogan is the worst way to do that. Hey, just do it. Just do it. Like, studies show, in general, people aren't afraid, afraid of the task. They're afraid of the unknown. So you're not actually afraid of the thing that you're agonizing over or avoiding. So just do it.
Jay Acunzo [00:42:02]:
Not only is everybody capable of saying it so there's nothing unique about it. I'm not bringing forth any of my own unique powers there. It's ineffective. It's that linear, literal, a to b. And now you're inserting all these objections. But if I can get you to say, oh, I'm going to relax now because Jay's not talking about me, and I talk about why I was afraid of making espresso in my kitchen despite a beautiful machine in my kitchen for many years, and I'm italian, and that's super embarrassing. Now you're like, oh, okay, so what's this about espresso? Not me. Not my problems.
Jay Acunzo [00:42:30]:
Great. Continue, please. And I can land that story by going, well, and that's the thing about trying new things. You're not actually afraid of the task. You're afraid of the unknown. Why do I make espresso every day today when I couldn't make it a year ago? Because I made it one time, right? And that took away the unknown. So move faster to make the unknown known, try the thing first. Just do it right? And then tell me.
Jay Acunzo [00:42:51]:
It's hard. And then tell me, oh, I should do some research or take the course or follow the espresso influencer on Instagram. Right? But I get you. It's a misdirect, right? I get you to think this is about something unrelated to you and then deliver some sort of insight inside of that trojan horse that you really need to hear. So, to me, I think that's what we're talking about, maybe, is when you stay on the literal people who are not necessarily, like, from your world, Brook, or have your disposition, Ryan, they're more likely to put up objections. And I think storytelling is one of those vehicles that, as a friend of mine likes to say, melanie Diesel, another great author. You got to feed your kids veggie chicken nuggets once in a while, right? You're not going to fight them on the fact that they don't want their veggies. Okay, here's a veggie chicken nugget.
Jay Acunzo [00:43:31]:
You're delivering that insight, that hard truth, that feedback insight, something they can actually stomach, which, for my world, is a story. So I don't know if you have any responses to that way of communicating.
Brook Cupps [00:43:42]:
I love it. I mean, I think storytelling is a superpower. I think it connects. It brings things to light that you wouldn't be able to reach some people with without having them. And so I think the ability to tell them and create connection with them is awesome.
Ryan Hawk [00:43:57]:
Jay, too. And you do the same. I'm sure after a keynote, I will. Sometimes these are like formal assessments that we'll send out to the people who are in the audience. And, you know, what was most useful, what was most memorable? You know, really open ended questions like that to try to get some feedback to figure out, okay, what should I change moving forward? And when you ask that most memorable slash most useful question that it is like, 100% of the time, they are talking about a story that you told. So the stories are what bring your ideas to life. They are what the people remember. They are what makes it sticky.
Ryan Hawk [00:44:33]:
I still have people say, oh, yeah, I remember that triathlon story that you told them, like, six years ago, and it's like they don't remember anything else I told except for that story. And I think, ah, okay, like. And so it's just another reminder if you're trying to really leave people with something that maybe creates some sort of behavior change for the better cause, hopefully that's one of our goals of speaking. You usually have to wrap that in some sort of a story to make it memorable enough so that when you're gone and maybe three months later, they remember the story and say, wait, what was the idea? Oh yeah, I need to go do this thing that was wrapped up in that story. Like you said, use the word Trojan horse a few times or the phrase a few times and I'm like, yeah, that's, that's really what it is. In order to create some sort of behavior change.
Brook Cupps [00:45:22]:
Jay I'll say too, I think, I think it also highlights the importance of under, of doing the work to understand yourself so you can actually tell your story. Cause so much of the time, if you haven't done that, you're telling some other story that's not real. And so I think it speaks to that piece of it, too.
Jay Acunzo [00:45:49]:
How stories happen was created by me, Jay Acunzo, and it's produced by share your genius cover art by Blake, Inc. Learn more about these kind and creative humans and how they can help you by checking the links in your show notes. And while you're there, please explore my sponsor link. Big thanks to everybody supporting the show as a listener, a sponsor, or a partner. For more ideas and stories from me. To help you communicate with greater power, visit jaconzo.com. and when you're there, explore my free newsletter, my books, and my consulting and coaching for experts and entrepreneurs. I help you develop a more original premise driving your work and the signature stories and pillar content to bring it to market.
Jay Acunzo [00:46:29]:
In other words, youre smart enough, youre expert enough, but maybe your ip isnt strong enough to differentiate. And if you feel that thats you, lets chat. Thank you so much for listening. Im back in two weeks with another episode of the show. But until then, as always, keep making what matters. Because when your work matters more, you need to hustle for attention less.
Jay Acunzo [00:46:49]:
See ya.