Hello everybody.
Damon Friedman, Force for Good Show podcast.
Today, we're gonna be talking about work ethic.
So I attended an event right here in Tampa.
The Tampa Bay Buccaneers is our football team.
I don't know if many of you know, we had the greatest of all time come to Tampa Bay
and help us win another championship, Super Bowl, Mr.
Tom Brady.
And so all you New England fans, I'm sorry.
but you know man had to move on there and so we're sitting there at the ceremony and
it was pretty cool was it was a big fundraiser as well and we were all dressed
up and it was a kind of a unique like you get dressed up you wear sneakers right you
were sneakers and so I ended up buying some pretty cool Nikes I had my son
who's a whole lot groovier than me, helped me buy some kicks, right?
Some shoes, right?
They're fire, okay?
And we went to the store, got something, and we actually, it was kinda cool, we
ended up getting some matching shoes, Nikes.
I thought that was pretty cool, so I felt kinda cool with my son just for a moment.
Got my suit on, went to this event, and the master of ceremony was a WWE...
wrestler and He's I forgot his name, but he's huge He's got long hair and he just
he just looks like he could just put you in a lot of pain That's all I know and
everybody knew who he was.
So I apologize to all you WWE fans out there I watched wrestling back in the day
And I think it was like WWF back in the day, right?
Yeah
uh...
maybe i'm showing my age and my favorite wrestler was the ultimate warrior okay
like that he was awesome as soon as you'd come into the ring like you heard that
metal going and uh...
and it was awesome right like he came in yet bands all over his arms flexing and
i'm telling you was just he was just amped up he would run full speed into the ring
and he just flying it's like anybody who would have to
wrestle the ultimate warrior had to have some type of like they should be scared
right I remember when the ultimate warrior picked up Andre the giant man I saw it
with my own eyeballs man I mean if you knew anything about Andre the giant he was
huge all right big war against you know Hulk Hogan and Andre the giant and of
course all the Hulksters out there but look there are a lot of great macho man
Randy Savage do you remember that come on come on back in the day
You know, Slim Jim, slap it to a Slim Jim, right?
Okay, so that's the WWE, so my favorite was the Ultimate Warrior and so that kind
of reminded me, it was like reminiscing back when I was a kid, watching this
stuff.
So I apologize, I don't remember this wrestler in particular, but it was kind of
cool because he was mentioning all these characters that I was living vicariously
through when I was a kid.
And the whole concept here,
when he was doing this interview was introducing the new USF coach, football
coach, University of South Florida.
And I'm telling you, Florida schools always have a high potential of
performance in sports.
Florida's a great state.
It's the freedom state.
And so he's introducing the new USF coach.
So this coach in particular is from Russia.
OK?
So you got the WWE wrestler interviewing.
the new USF coach.
And he asked him a question.
He says, you were born in Russia, and your path led you to be the USF head coach.
What did you learn in life?
Man, I'm gonna tell you right now, we're all listening.
Like, first of all, you know, this guy's from a different country.
A lot of people don't realize that the United States of America is the greatest
country in all of the world.
I've traveled all over the world and I'm here to tell you, the United States of
America is the greatest country.
And anybody who thinks otherwise, maybe you should pack up your stuff and go
somewhere else, you know, because this place is really great.
Now, my public relations officer is going to yell at me for saying that, so I'm
sorry right off the bat.
But I just feel very vehement about my love for my country and how every American
should appreciate
our country for the awesomeness that it is and the freedom that we have and possess
that quite frankly does not exist anywhere in the world.
So anyway, so he's talking and this gentleman this gentleman's from Russia, he
comes to America and now he's going to coach one of the best football teams in
the NCAA, right?
I mean is okay USF is not Florida State but USF has the potential of becoming
Florida State and the University of Florida.
It's a great school.
solid academics.
And so this is what he says.
So the question is, what did you learn in life?
And you know what he says?
He says, I learned that I could outwork anybody.
And then he just paused.
We're all looking at each other.
It's like, OK, is that it?
He goes, yeah.
And he started talking about his journey.
And his story was extraordinary.
Do you know how hard it is to live in Russia?
Do you know how hard it is to be an immigrant and travel all the way from a
different country like Russia?
You got China, you got Iran, you got all sorts of communist countries out there.
Travel all the way from Russia, North Korea, all the way from Russia to come to
America.
And then one day, through all of his hard work, he ends up becoming the coach of a
phenomenal team, a great institution.
And I'm sitting there and I'm taking down my notes and I heard, I wrote down grit.
I heard discipline.
I heard commitment.
Those are the three words that I'm going to talk about today.
When I was growing up, I didn't have anything.
I had nothing.
And the reality is, is that, um, five foot nothing, a hundred nothing.
I, you know, I was, I was last kid picked on, you know, every sport.
And, um, I really struggled in being successful in any sport.
And.
And when I got out of juvie, and yes, I was a problem child when I was a kid, that
was kind of a moment of clarity.
It was like a trajectory, like tweak in my life.
I said, you know, I don't want to be a loser.
Um, maybe I've been taking too many shortcuts.
Maybe I've been wanting everything to be easy and, and I haven't really obtained
anything and it's true.
I hadn't obtained any, like I hadn't not really achieved much during that timeframe
in my adolescent years and in, and in juvie, it was there when I'm in the
corner.
I need a commitment, I don't want to be a loser anymore!
I had to change the way that I saw business.
I had to change the way that I do business.
I had to reevaluate where I was, where I've been, where I'm going.
I mean, I had to reevaluate.
Like, what do I want in life?
I'm gonna tell you something.
Everybody out there that's listening, that's watching, you want your life to be
meaningful.
You wanna make an impact.
You wanna win.
But let me ask you a question.
What are you willing to sacrifice to win?
What are you willing to give up?
Seriously, you got dreams.
And a lot of us, we dream big, especially when we're kids.
We think about all these incredible things.
And of course, you always have these adults, like, it's not that easy.
You're never ever gonna make it.
Then you'll have moms like, you could do anything if you put your mind to it,
right?
Your dad's like, come on, son.
Hopefully you have at least a mom and dad that support you.
I didn't have that.
I had a mom, a Wonder Woman mom.
She's the one that said, hey man, you gotta be strong because this world is
hard.
She sacrificed a lot.
I saw what grit and discipline and commitment look like.
So when I got out, man, I was like, all right, maybe I can't play football because
I'm too small.
Maybe I don't have the strength to play baseball, to throw that ball at 100 miles
an hour in the future like Roger Clemens or Dwight Gooden.
And yeah, I'm showing my age here.
Nolan Ryan, come on.
He smoked that man every time.
Maybe I can't do that.
I tried playing soccer and I was decent, but I wasn't that good.
Maybe I'll lie to myself every once in a while and say, man, I could have been
Maradona.
And again, I'm dating myself.
So for all you kids out there that don't know these superstars, please check them
out because they're legends.
They set the standard.
So when I got out, I said, you know what?
Every time I ran from the cops, they never caught me.
Now look.
I'm not advocating to run from the cops.
I'm just saying back in the day when I was a kid and I was a troublemaker, right?
I did a lot of bad stuff and I ran from the cops.
I don't condone that, okay?
I really don't.
And I started running.
I started running.
I had so much anger and so much frustration and so much pain growing up.
And one day, I made a command decision, and I decided to kind of change the way I
saw life.
I grabbed all that anger, all that frustration, all that disappointment, all
that anxiety, all that depression.
I used it as fuel.
And man, I'll tell you what.
I started running and running and running.
Man, I got out, I was running 10 miles a week, 20 miles a week, 30 miles a week, 40
miles a week, 50 miles a week, 60 miles a week, 70 miles a week, 80 miles a week, 90
miles a week, come on, man.
You gotta run at least 100 miles at least one time in your life in a week.
Yeah, crazy?
Yeah, absolutely.
Can you imagine the level of grit, discipline, and commitment?
that this coach had to go from Russia to become the USF head coach?
It's not easy, man.
There's nothing good in life is easy and free.
It isn't.
It really, really isn't.
Anything really good, you gotta work hard for it.
And that's what I did in one summer between my junior and senior year while I
was running for Wolfson High School.
Big shout out to Paul Nowicki, who was my coach.
He loved us.
We were all minorities.
He's like the white guy, the coach.
He loved us.
He took care of us.
He helped us buy shoes, running shoes.
I was wearing those Reeboks out, man.
Wearing those Nike Pegasus out.
And he kept giving me shoes, man.
And I ran so hard, and I'll tell you right now, I had a very successful running
career.
And because of Coach Paul Nowicki and Coach Brenda Hall.
Shout out to her from Gibbs High School.
She's the one that helped me as a sophomore become fifth in the state in the
800 meters.
It was because of Coach Paul Nowicki, I was undefeated in the mile my senior year.
It was because of these coaches that I got a full scholarship to universities.
Discipline.
Commitment.
You know what?
On my mom's side, you know, my biological father didn't graduate high school.
Maybe he got a GED.
I don't know.
Right?
Nobody in my family has a college degree in the United States.
No, not at all.
My brother and I, my twin brother and I are the first one to accomplish that.
you know, by God's grace, have a doctorate.
All that required grit, discipline, and commitment.
And it all began in the run.
I stopped running away from the cops and started running toward a future.
And I'm going to tell you something, when I ran that 1000 miles during that summer,
man, it was the hardest thing I had ever done, especially 17 year old kid going
into the senior year, 18 year old kid trying to figure out what a future looks
like.
But I'll tell you one thing, I didn't want.
to have nothing in life.
And I was sick and tired of looking at myself in the face and feeling like a
loser, like I never accomplished anything.
Well, maybe this one thing, this one thing, eight billion people in the whole
world, everybody's got something.
Everybody's got a gift, which I call a superpower.
And mine was running.
There's a lot of things I quit in life, man.
I did, because I didn't think I was good enough, I didn't think I was fast enough,
you know, people were telling me I couldn't accomplish it, but I'll tell you
what, about running, nobody could take that away from me.
Nobody.
And when I lined up, it was just me.
Yeah, and I got cocky.
The fastest, I was running so fast, but you know what, I'm telling you something,
I was trying to let go of the irreparable past through every step of the way, every
victory I had.
so that I could find peace in the future.
I'm gonna tell you something, man.
When I'm listening to this coach at USF and he's saying that, he said that I can
outwork anybody.
He says, you know, he kept going and I wrote down these notes.
He says, and the probability of beating all of your competitors is high.
He says, I can outwork anybody as long as I had grit, I had discipline, I had
commitment, I worked around the clock.
I didn't allow anything to stop me.
You know, if you have that level.
of tenacity, the probability of winning is high.
So when the pain comes and it's consuming, you gotta embrace it.
You gotta embrace it all.
Because dreams are not just worth fighting for, man.
They're worth going all the way.
They really are.
Because you only get one shot in life, man.
You only get one shot.
And for me, this was my one shot.
And it propelled me into the future.
I wrote down a couple more things, and I said,
You know, for all my listeners out there, man, listen up.
Follow your dreams.
Get after it.
It doesn't matter how old you are.
You could be 30, you could be 40, you could be 50.
Man, you could be 60.
Come on, tell me.
As long as you've got breath in your lungs, you can still accomplish things.
You can still do extraordinary things.
You can still accomplish your mission, your dream of a lifetime.
You got enough left.
You got enough left, my friends.
And so today's message on work ethic.
I said this, you have to believe in yourself.
Don't make excuses to work hard, real hard.
And never, ever, ever quit.
This is Damon Friedman.
It's a Force for Good Show podcast.
Godspeed.