393 | Dad Lessons From Kobe, Time-Energy-Attention, & Choosing People Over Accomplishments (John Olinger)
Episode Description
Life moves fast, and without intentional direction, we can end up achieving things that don't actually matter. In this episode, John Olinger—former Nike executive and global brand director for Kobe Bryant—shares how tragedy, transition, and the halfway point of life led him to redefine success. You'll hear about his "TEA" framework (Time, Energy, Attention), why Kobe chose carpool line over meetings, and how simple practices like 10-minute wrestling sessions and Wine Wednesdays can transform your family relationships.
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John Olinger is the author of "Worthy Wins: Pointing Your Life Toward What Matters Most" and a former Nike executive who served as global brand director for Kobe Bryant. After over a decade at Nike, John made a cross-country move with his family to Florida, choosing intentional fatherhood over corporate climbing. He and his wife have three boys (ages 10, 8, and 5) and are passionate about helping other parents define and pursue what truly matters most. John speaks and consults on leadership, purpose, and the intersection of success and significance.
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Winning is subjective—you must define what success looks like for your family before you can achieve it
Your Time, Energy, and Attention (TEA) are finite resources that must be strategically invested in what matters most
The halfway point of life (around age 40) is a crucial inflection point for dads to pause and redirect toward meaningful priorities
Quality connection moments with kids don't require huge time investments—10 minutes of wrestling or monthly birthday dates can be transformational
Relationships matter more than accomplishments, and great stories require embracing challenge and difficulty
Creating structured connection points (like Wine Wednesdays for marriage) protects what's most important from the chaos of daily life
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Learn about the next DadAwesome Accelerator Cohort
Subscribe to DadAwesome Messages: Text the word "Dad" to (651) 370-8618
"Worthy Wins: Pointing Your Life Toward What Matters Most" by John Olinger
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We're under attack all day long from distractions, our brains playing tricks on us about what things are fulfilling in the moment, going after short hits of dopamine, chasing success and accomplishments at the expense of other things. And so it's actually an invitation to pause, stop and define what's most important. And in this case, who and what is most important. That's what gives me the chance to actually set a different course to make sure that the place that my life is actually heading is the direction that I actually want to end up.
This is episode 393 of Dad Awesome. Guys, thank you so much for joining us today. My name is Jeff Zog and we have John Olinger joining me today. He's the author of the book Worthy Wins, Pointing Your Life Toward What Matters Most. As dads, it's like, where are we pointing our energy? He actually uses this idea of time, energy, and attention. We'll break this down. He calls it T, time, energy, attention.
the importance of having directional focus and it's about the who, not the what. And he works for Nike. He was the global brand director for Kobe Bryant for several years. He was at Nike for over a decade. Guys, he has so many insights that are directly applicable to dad saying, where is my focus and how am I taking steps today, this week, this summer that leads to
What Matters Most, Worthy Wins is the name of his book. So, so thankful you guys are joining today. We mentioned and we talk about the Dad Awesome Accelerator a little bit in the conversation, but I want to remind you guys dadawesome.org slash coaching. We have two cohorts coming up this fall. We're just graduating our fifth cohort here next week. And over 50 dads have said yes to this journey of a six week sprint, taking all of the core mega, like kind of the core discoveries from
nearly 400 episodes of Dad Awesome. So I wanna invite you guys to prayerfully join us this fall for a Dad Awesome Accelerator cohort. All right, let's jump in. This is episode 393 with John Olinger.
Jeff Zaugg (02:58.862)
today if you're watching on YouTube. We got the uniform. it. Dad life uniform when it's hot out. Yes, especially in Florida. Yeah, you've got boys, I've got girls. How do pronounce your last name? Olinger. Olinger. John Olinger. St. Augustine, Thanks for asking. Does anyone ever call you John-O? John-O or Johnny-O? Johnny-O. Or J-O. Yeah. Do your boys have any nicknames for you? You know, they're...
Here we go. got to say it now that you started. They're at the age where, no, they just call me poop, you know, cause they go right to that. Yeah. They're in, they're like directly in that. I, obviously I turn around and I'm like, did you say, you say that? But that's their, that's their favorite one. Yes. Those moments. So now in this case on a podcast, your boys are, is it 10, seven, five, 10, eight yesterday, of a birthday, 10, eight, five. Yep. Yeah. Great. So we're in the same window of fatherhood, except you've got the little dudes. Yes.
I thought this is a different start. Instead of like your bio, tell us about what you've done. Tell us about where you've gone. There's a side to our story that's like, what's made the man. is, and of course none of us arrive, but there's a, what's made you the man that you are, the dad that you are. And we, for our coaching cohorts, we have the Dad Awesome Accelerators, the six week kind of sprint around what have we learned over these almost eight years of Dad Awesome. And we bring that to a group of dads across the country, usually 10 dads at a time.
They all share what we call a seven minute slice. so seven minutes is certainly longer than an elevator ride. So it's not the elevator pitch. It's, it's maybe you've come in for landing. You've just touched down your taxing at a large airport. got about seven minutes. And, and so it's going to be about, I do have my watch on so about seven minutes. And so instead of going back and forth, but I'd love to hear some of your story and we frame it as mountain, like peak moments and Valley moments.
So I already know from reading your book and from like knowing, like I know a few of the things that will come up, but instead of the long form story, it's like, no, just hit a few of the high points and the low points. And it's your role as a son. It's your role as a dad, your role as a son of God, he could hit any angle, but just what are some of the peaks and valleys of your story that's made John the man and dad who you are today? Would you be open to this? let's do it. If you end a little shorter or if we go far over, I'll give you a little like.
Jeff Zaugg (05:11.68)
OK, we're at the 7-minute mark. We won't put an alarm on today. But your 7-minute slice. Thank you in advance for being willing to share. Cool, Let's do it. So what has made me the man I am today, the dad I am today, goes all the way back to when I was 8, 9, 10 years old. I remember the conversation I was having in my dad's car driving north on I-5 in
We were going through just south of Portland, this area called Wilsonville. And it was the first time he told me that my mom was sick. we were driving to a track meet. And I was sort of like, what are you talking about? What you mom's sick? And he's like, well, she has cancer. And so it turned out my mom had breast cancer that was advancing. And it was at the point where she was going to go on heavy chemo. so there was no, they couldn't hide it from me anymore. And so.
The journey that I went on from there was like, okay, I'm this, you know, only child. was nine, maybe about to turn 10 at that point. And so, that journey with her being sick had a huge impact on my life. And my dad was, great. dropped everything to be attentive for her and serve her in the midst of that. And in that same time, again, talking about things that were mountains in my life, my best friend, lived down the street for me.
family of four boys, the mom said, all right, we'll just have another boy in the mix. What's a fifth when you already have four? And so I was down there all the time. during that time going down there, Young Life was happening in San Alamo where I lived at the time. And the area director for Young Life was this guy named Eric Schofield. Eric Schofield's an awesome guy. At that point, he was just like, young guy, no family himself. But we were always around when they were doing their Sunday night gathering.
And so on Sunday nights at seven o'clock, all these high school dudes would roll into my best friend's house. And sure enough, Eric found this just like, hey, you guys want to come? And so I started going to this, they call it campaigners, essentially a Bible study with us as fourth graders going with high school dudes. And this was laying the foundations. Same time my mom's sick. And so I'm going go in through all this process and then my mom passes away when I'm 11.
Jeff Zaugg (07:36.065)
And, know, it's naturally like most people do, especially kids are like, God, why did this happen? What's going on? But unlike most kids, I had this safe place with older dudes to process and cry and figure out what it was. What was I feeling and mourn and all this stuff. Um, but it was really foundational to ultimately be in this support net for me to then say, all right. I, I a year later.
Um, at a, at a young life camp, said, all right, Jesus, I do want to follow you. And, um, came to that place. So that was, that was foundational of me. And in a moment where it was both mountain of having this place and valley of going through it with my mom. And in terms of like other stuff that shaped me as I went along, I mean, I don't have time in the seven minute slice to go into it, but like, like most people that trauma.
if, if undelt with, you know, I found my own ways to deal with it. I didn't deal with it in the way that a lot of people like do. I wasn't like ever into drinking or drugs or numbing my pain in that way. The way that I surrounded my heart to try to protect it was I tried to be everybody's best friend and be all things to all people. And even now, you know, 30 years later, I'm still working through the process of unwinding that and being realized I don't have to be that and do that to all those people. So.
Go through it. the problem and you were joking about a different podcast I've been on recently. Like the problem for me is like, ended up falling in love with basketball. It ended up being a huge part of the way that I processed my mom's death. went to this place called the hoop every single day after school. And that was my dad saying, Hey, I'm to pick you up every day from middle school and I'm going to take you to the hoop. And I don't know what he did. Like I'm trying to think like, what did he do between the hours of three and
eight when he'd come back and pick me up, he must've done the work that he was giving up to like flex his life around me. but he laid down everything to just make sure I had a place. so I would go to the hoop every day after school. And the only problem was that I was a, basketball player trapped in a runner's body. And if you're watching, I'm still largely looking more like a runner than like a basketball player. we were joking about our height difference here. I'm six feet. I'm not like, but, but I love basketball and it was a huge place for me. And so,
Jeff Zaugg (09:53.73)
I just kept working and working and working. Always point card. shooting yard. you were asked about names earlier, like my middle school name, my middle school team nicknamed me slinger because at that point I was skinny. I slanging it from the hip. And that, that name translated like from slinger to slinger to all different names. but so basketball is a huge part of my life and I could tell that story at a different point, but just to like,
fast forward to the places where like my life changed in terms of like, so my dad, that part was really foundational of him laying down his life for me and showing what that meant to spend his life on what mattered most, which at that point in his life was to make sure that I was good and taken care of. So if we fast forward, played basketball in high school, ended up playing in college, played overseas for two years, but in the midst of that journey,
I ended up going on a traveling tour to Israel. And so we went to Israel and it was a literally a life changing trip for me and not because of the basketball, but that was the trip where I realized like, oh, it wasn't that I, again, I wasn't, I was a good kid. I didn't, I wasn't like dabbling in a bunch of negative things. Did I have my problems? Yes, but I was, I was a good kid. But I think for a long time that made me feel like that's all.
That's good enough. And when I went to Israel and we walked the places Jesus walked and we saw the Bible come to life. We realized as we stood there in the Sea of Galilee, that Jesus's invitation to his disciples was to literally follow, not to just follow in mind. Cause you know, at that point in time, the disciples couldn't be, Hey Jesus, thank you for the invitation. We're going to stay here, but I'm following you as you walk away. And so it changed my life. So I got baptized on that.
on that trip in the Jordan river. so that, that was super foundational. And then I came back and did another traveling basketball tour with athletes in action on the East coast. And we went through, this thing by a pastor named Robert Lewis. That was called the journey to authentic manhood and the four pillars of authentic manhood changed my life. And it was just a piece of my, education as a man that I didn't get from my dad. didn't mean my dad was
Jeff Zaugg (12:12.78)
shortchanging me or anything, he didn't have it to give or didn't know how to give it. And so, you know, the idea of rejecting passivity, accepting responsibility, leading courageously and expecting the greater reward, God's reward, like that changed my life. And, and because I was really passive and I didn't accept responsibility. And some of those things were, you know, ways that I protected myself as a result of my mom's death. And some of were just things that nobody had shown me. And because I was more concerned about protecting myself. And so,
Um, so that was a mountain and then, you know, I had the, the awesome opportunity to go work at Nike for a bunch of years and I had plenty of mountains and valleys in there. 2020, you know, was for many of us full of valleys, most people full of valleys. Um, and that's what it was for me as well. At that point in time, I was, um, I was the global brand director for Kobe Bryant. So obviously Kobe Bryant has the tragic accident with his daughter and the other, um, you know, lovely folks who passed away as well. And so like,
I'm in the midst of helping steward that work and then COVID happens and then Nike's re-orging and in the midst of that, I get to celebrate Kobe's legacy and lead the work around that, which is a mountain top in terms of what I came to Nike to do. And then, and we get to the end of that period and but Nike's still re-orging and I might not have a job anymore. And it's really uncertain. And so my wife is just like saying, what are we going to do? Like what should we move east?
Have you thought about it? Like, what happens if you lose your job? And I said, are you scared of leaving Nike? And I said, no, I'm not scared of leaving Nike. Nike's been, I feel really grateful. She said, well, what are you scared of? And I said, I'm scared of leaving my dad. And as we talked about it, we basically said, all right, well, let's pray for 40 days and see in the midst of this waiting about what Nike is going to do, like, all right, God, like, how might you move our hearts and whatnot?
like foreshadowing, the journey went totally different than we'd wanted or would expected or hoped or anything. And so five, five days into it, my dad goes to the grocery store in the morning because he's trying to avoid all the people because Oregon's COVID freaked out and all this stuff. And like, so he's there at seven in the morning and he slips in the parking lot and ends up with a traumatic brain injury. And that's day five. And it's like, God, that is not, that is not what we saw. That's not how we saw this going.
Jeff Zaugg (14:36.974)
But so we keep praying and in the midst of that, she decided she's going to leave her job, like felt like God was really clear, like, hey, step back from that. So she does that. And then we get to day 39 of the prayer journey and they say, hey, tomorrow you have a, you have a meeting about your job. And so on day 40, I joined a zoom room and my new boss who's been moved to that job says, Hey, we love you. We got a job for you. It's great. Here's the job. And the job was great, but it wasn't the job that I wanted.
And so ultimately it was a take it or leave it thing. And I chose to take the job to be employed, but my dad was still in the hospital. And so when my wife and I finally got to talk that night, when the kids were down, she was like, well, what do think God said in these 40 days? And I said, I feel like God said, I trust you. You can choose. Like, well, you can stay in Oregon, you can go, but it's up to you. And so we felt freedom in that way, but we didn't feel freedom because it was unclear about what was going to happen with my dad.
And so unfortunately, his body and his brain just could not get on the same page. And so he passed away like 20 days later. Sorry. Thanks, Ben. And so when the dust settled, and it's obviously a valley, when the dust settled, I went to my wife and I said, hey, I feel like we need to go move and get closer to your family. so that wasn't Florida, where we live now and we're recording right now, was not on the radar. That wasn't where we were planning on.
If you would ask that wouldn't have the spot we had chosen, but the circumstances sort of led us to and led me specifically to say, Hey, this is where I think we should go. Wow. So there's some mountains and valleys. Yeah. And it's the nature of the seven minute slices. It's a slice of so much more to all those stories. And there's, know, there's three times as many moments of high that you didn't share, it truly I'm grateful. Thank you. Yeah. We always honor it like the testimony. mean, the Bible says like,
by the blood of the Lamb and the word of our testimony, we will overcome. Like there's victory attached to like hearing stories of, in this case, you men, dads who have trusted God through highs and lows. I had a chat yesterday with a friend talking about transition points, inflection points, like this is a point in life where you can go play it safe or actually take a jump. In your case, it's both a career move and a cross the country move.
Jeff Zaugg (17:02.342)
and a grief moment of losing your dad, and probably grief around a long decade plus at an organization you loved working for. What would you want to share with, if there's a dad listening, and in fact, just recently, we interviewed a dad in Thailand who said it was the same. was about 40 years old when he made a big time move with his family. For me, we moved down here about 40. My dad moved the whole family from Illinois to Wisconsin when he was about 40.
But I think there's more dads listening that actually are not open to big change at 40 because of burdens, of family is not burdened, but there's real responsibilities, that's the better word, in that moment, that are not open to making cross-country moves for values. so this will take us towards the direction of your book. But what would you want to share with that dad listening who's in their upper 30s, lower 40s, that feels a little bit stuck right now? So what I didn't share in that,
up and down or the peaks and the valleys. What I didn't share was there was a moment, I guess it would have been about a year before. No, yeah. Actually not that far after I'd, I'd never connected this before, honestly. This conversation actually happened several weeks.
after, I think, after my wife, I had not got my wife a Christmas present. And so I'd finished this project and my boss is like, hey, well, what do you want to do next? I hadn't thought about it because I was like so deep in the work. And so said, hey, I need a minute. And so I went away for a week, prayed, reflected, what do I really want to do next? And what I realized was that I didn't want to lead projects anymore. I wanted to lead people.
And the reason why that revelation was so important was because it was basically the framework for me saying, hey, this is what really matters to me going forward. Like, could I keep leading big projects? I could. And I'd been successful with them. And they were happy to have me do that. And I continued to do that. But ultimately, what the longing of my heart was, and in a company like Nike, you don't necessarily get what you want, but you do have the chance to say what you want.
Jeff Zaugg (19:20.782)
to say what you want and it's your life. But if you don't tell them what you want, they'll just take you wherever they need you. So the role they ultimately moved me into after the reorg was because they knew that I could do it. And they didn't ask me, hey, is this what you're in? They're just like, oh, OK, he's led all these. Oh, great. Put him into that job at Nike, that's running. And so put me into running where that's the biggest dog that they need to tame.
So I say all that for dads who are like feeling stuck or whatever. I, the, the big question is like, what do you, what do you want to be true at the end of your life? What do you want to be true at the end of the season of the life you're in or the season of having kids? Like there's, there's a bunch of different ways we could slice it and stack it. But ultimately what gave me confidence, not only in, in leaning in with the Lord, but then ultimately for us to make that decision was being
really clear about what was most important and what I wanted to be true. And if Nike would have said to me when they reorg, hey, in six months, we'll let you get into more of a people job. But them saying to me, we don't know. We don't know when we're going to get, like, it's not a you thing. It's an org thing. We love you. Sure. But that was where it was like, OK. Well, I'm at the place now. And again, people approaching that age of 40, whether they know it or not, you know,
our give or take some years are at the halfway point. Sure. And so for me, that was the other big part of my journey of when my dad died, he was 74 and I was 37. And after he passed, it was this reflection of like, man, if I live as long as him, I'm halfway done. That's right. I don't feel like I'm halfway done. Right. I don't think I'm halfway done.
It be, it might be less than that, but it was then the realization of like, oh, okay, well, if I'm halfway done, that means that every year for the rest of my life is gonna be between one and 2 % of the reigning amount of my life. That's true. And so that for me was also like, do I wanna wait for later to do the things that are most important? Or do I wanna say, right, well, let's lean into this journey and go for it and make some big choices.
Jeff Zaugg (21:43.148)
And the cool part was, for anybody listening, you don't have to do anything. You don't have to quit your job and move across the country. But the question is, how do you just make sure that where you're at right now, that you're taking steps to truly lead towards the thing that you long for most at the end of your life? If you don't know what that is, then now is a great time to stop and start to think about that. Because it's a current that just pulls us onward without clarity of a direction we're headed.
And I like that you also have micro examples. there's the macro that you're talking about, which is like, what's going to be like, it's the obituary thinking, right? End of life. But then there's end of summer thinking. I love that you did this as a family. It's like, well, what do we want to be true of our family? What have we accomplished? What relationships have we leaned into? What's true at the end of this summer? Summer 2025. So because you challenged other families with this exercise, I'm assuming you guys did it yourselves. How?
How did it go? What was the direction? What are some examples of things you were hopeful would be true? Because down in Florida, we're at the end of our summer right now. Yeah. Yeah. Here we go. So a little check-in moment, accountability. Tell us about the exercise and how did it go. Yeah. So really, it was more between me, my wife, and our oldest son. Sure. know, the two youngest. The youngest, the youngest. He's out there. The middle, he didn't really care. But my oldest son, you know, I had asked him. We went on a date, a dad date, like,
right at start of summer, said, hey, well, what do you want to be true at the end of the summer that's not true now? And for him, it was simple. was like, hey, I want to be a better basketball player at the end of the summer. Which you were pumped about that. Yeah, was great. I was like, yes. I can lean into this. But then I'm like, what are you going to do about it? Like, how are you going to do that? And this is where, for me, as a dad, I want to be really firm. And I tend to be like,
well, this is exactly how you have to do it. But I tried as best I could to be like, okay, ask him, what are you going to do? How are you going to do it? What are you going work on? And now that we're in the summer, so literally one of his friends in the neighborhood who, who has just moved, he came back to the neighborhood the other day and they were playing, they're playing basketball at the park in our neighborhood. And the friend literally said to him like, Jude, you have gotten so much better at basketball. And, it's like,
Jeff Zaugg (24:09.646)
Amazing. A feedback loop was so clear. Yes. And did he do what I wanted? I wanted him to be able to dribble better with his left hand at the end of the summer. He quantified. That was your goal, He didn't want to do that. And I had to accept that I wanted him to just do it on his way and his terms right now. And I'm finding the blend between, I think I heard Trent Dilfer talk about it one time, like the dad hat and the coach hat. He wasn't giving me the permission to be the coach.
He wanted me to be the dad and just ask the question. for him, that's how it worked. The reason why I do the exercise though, and why I do it for myself and why I ask my wife to do it with me and invite friends to do it is because summer's just going, man. Right? Like it's 10 weeks, really. And next thing, all of sudden you're at the halfway point and then you're at where we're at right now. And it's like, OK, we're 10 days out. And they're going back to school and went away.
What you would see me talk about in the book, if you read the book, would be like, hey, success in the world's eyes is what you accomplished. And so it doesn't mean that things aren't important, but I would argue what we see in the Bible, what we see through experience and what we see through data is that relationships are more important than accomplishments. And so the exercise that we do for the summer is not just, hey, what do you want to accomplish this summer? It's like,
Hey, who are the most important relationships to you that you want to invest in over the summer? And then what's something that you can do to invest in them? And so for me, what I know that I've been prone to do the last few summers is to just grind at work. And two summers ago, it was terrible. I traveled so much because I'd just left Nike and I had to say yes to all the jobs that came. But it meant that I traveled, I don't know, at least part of six or seven weeks of the 10 week summer.
And I knew a year ago that wasn't what I wanted. So I started to fix on that. But then this summer, it was like, OK, how do I make sure I'm home as much as possible? And what am I doing to drive connection with my kids? Or with my wife. And so my wife and I have things we do to connect. like date nights, we have things called wine talk about your three X. You went from the date night to you tripled the intentional connection with your wife. Are you talking about the? Yeah, for sure. We went from being in Oregon.
Jeff Zaugg (26:33.238)
in COVID with three young kids and not getting any time together to then moving to Florida and having her parents around and close. And so like, we'll watch the kids on a Friday night and you guys can go on a date. And it was great. But the problem was we were just dumping all the stuff we had been waiting to talk about. Kids schedules, calendars, things were frustrated about, whatever.
Eventually my wife was like, Hey, this isn't working. I'm not enjoying these dates. Like, wow, well that's we're spending money and it's not, let's try something different. And so we ultimately said, all right, we're going to do three things. We're going to still have a date night, but it's going to be a date. It's going to be focused on not on the kids, not on the schedule, not anything, just us being together and connecting. Great. So that's awesome. And we feel so fortunate to have, her mom around to lean into that. So that's great. then we started saying, okay, well, we're going to do a weekly business meeting.
to talk about all the details, all the stuff that we've been talking about in dates. And it needs to be talked about. Money, schedules. Money, schedule. upcoming trips, big things, birthday parties, whatever. We're going to do that in those meetings. And so we added those to the schedule every week. It's at this time. And then we said, all right, we're going to try this other thing called Wine Wednesday. And I honestly don't remember where the idea came from. Just own it. It's yours.
Now it doesn't mean that you're whining to each other. It means that you're enjoying each other's company. Yes, and we may may not have wine. That's the thing. Some Wednesdays we do and a lot of Wednesdays we don't. And it's just more time It's posture thing, right? And it's a protection thing. It's a, like even today's Tuesday, but tomorrow night my wife was like, hey, are you cool if I go to dinner with my friend on Wednesday, but it's a Wednesday night. And I looked at her like, it's Wednesday.
like, we doing Wine Wednesday? And she's like, no, no, I mean like, at like five. Yeah, I'll be back for it. And I'm like, yeah, great, go for it. But we know that on Wednesdays, after our kids go down, we're just gonna spend time together. And that might be talking about something deeper, that might be watching a show, that might just be chilling. Like, it just depends, but it's- But it's not cleaning the house. No, and it's also, for us, and for me especially, like, part of the reason why I was like, can we pick one night?
Jeff Zaugg (28:54.766)
during the week was because I always felt this pressure to have depth on other nights. And I'm not, that's not like code word for like, I'm not talking about sex. that's like, I'm talking about literally, I'd be like, Oh, I want to know about what's going on in your heart and your life and what'd you do today? And as a, as a mom at end of the day, a lot of the, a lot of times my wife's just like, Hey, I'm just tired. I'm just tired. And so we know on Wednesdays,
That meant we're going to get some deeper time to connect and have discussion about what's going on our life. that there's not, it doesn't mean we won't have a deep conversation another night, but it just means that we're not left wondering, are we waiting until Friday night on a date to talk about something of significance or are we creating space to do it? Yeah. So if you're watching on YouTube, I'm holding up the book, Worthy Wins, pointing your life towards.
what, toward what matters most. Uh, congrats on launching this about a month ago, two months ago at the time of release. Uh, I was hoping you could contextualize in kind of the short form, um, how this book would apply to dads. I'm thinking about the dad dashboard of am I winning? Am I losing? Is my ladder is the other, um, analogy is the ladder leaning against the wrong building, right? Going after it. Um, so yeah, why did you write this? And then why would a dad, um, why would it matter to a dad? The reason I wrote the book was because
there's a risk that I think every person, that every dad faces. And it is that we would get thinned our lives and have wanted things that didn't actually matter. The proverbial ladder leaning on the wrong building. But I wrote the book because I know that I'm at risk of doing that. one of the things that's most important and like when people are like, hey, what did you take away from your 10 years at Nike? There's one thing.
that I had amazing experience, worked with athletes, all this stuff. But the most important thing that I learned in that process of how to win, because that's what Nike is. Nike is a company about winning. Stands for it. Yes. The Nakeys. Nike is the goddess of victory. That's what it is. So you learn how to win. You're Nike. What I realized in the process of how to succeed at Nike was that actually this big truth is that winning is subjective. Define it. And the only way you can win is if you get extremely clear about what it means to win.
Jeff Zaugg (31:15.468)
Is it possible you could win? I shouldn't say the only way you can't, but it's possible, but it's not likely. And we're, we're under attack all day long from distractions from, you know, our brains playing tricks on us about what things are fulfilling in the moment, going after short hits of dopamine, et cetera, you know, chasing success and accomplishments at the expense of other things. so, the reason this book applies to dads is cause it's, it's actually an invitation to pause. That's why I wrote the book and.
Whether I'm talking to a dad or I'm talking to an organization or I'm talking to myself, I've found that taking a pause to stop and define what's most important, and in this case, who and what is most important, that's what gives me the chance to actually set a different course to make sure that the place that my life is actually heading is the direction that I actually want to end up. Yes.
rather than getting to the end of my life and saying, man, I really wish I had taken a different course. And the truth is, again, we're talking about this, it's not limited to guys in there who are approaching 40 or past 40, it's all people. But the reality is, like for all of us, until you get close to death, whether somebody you love or your own, you're just going on about life. You're just going.
And for me, what I hope is that my, what my proximity to death through both first my mom dying and then my dad dying is actually that I could help other people have some of that perspective now rather than waiting for when the wheels fall off and then looking back. Cause the time is going. Like we talked about like time, like whether you're at the halfway point, whether you're 20 years old, whether you're 50 years old, like the two truths about time.
are that it's running out. And that it's uncertain. So true. And so we might have a day. We might have a year. might have, you know, I hope I live 60 more years and that I'm kicking it 100. You will. Yeah. Yeah. But I might not. And so the pause is a chance to say, how do I want to use what I have right now to actually make sure that it's leading towards the things that I care about most? Yeah.
Jeff Zaugg (33:31.662)
So we broke it down. One specific example was a summer defining the who and then you add some action to that with the example of tripling your date connection with your wife. We know that good stories have a couple of elements. And this is a quote straight out of your book. We need conflict, challenge, and difficulty to help write a great story for our lives. And it goes on. The idea of great stories have opposition. We don't want to watch a movie with no strong It wouldn't be a movie. Right, exactly.
and the dad life is full of this today when we both get home, there will be, there will be like, I don't know if I can, like, I don't know how to address this new challenge. how would you encourage the dad who feels maybe I'm combining the resistance side with the question around, just feeling like you're a little bit, stuck or, there's just a cycle of busyness that I can't quite get above. You're saying pause.
How would you kind of speak into both embracing challenge and resistance and like the pause principle? Would you kind of go into that a little deeper for us? Yeah. And I think my, like as a, as a dad, as a, you know, somebody who runs a business and, know, has worked in organization, like, dude, we're all doing the best we can. Right. Every, every dad, even the dad who's just surviving, who feels stuck, doing the best they can. And that's why the invitation to pause and stop and say,
And it's if you read Atomic Habits or Tiny Habits or any things, none of them are saying, start with some huge thing. They're saying start with something small. And that's the same thing here. But you have to stop and pause and say, OK, if I only have so much time, and in my case, I'd talk about it as tea, time, energy, and attention, I only have so much. Who matters most to me that I want to spend it on? And then what's one thing that I can do to help?
lead towards the thing that matters most of that relationship. And so I'll give it, I didn't answer this about the summer, but one way that I'm trying to be present with my boys, and we were doing this before the summer, but I didn't want to give up on the summer, is the second that we say, hey, it's time to go upstairs and go to bed, they immediately say, are we doing 10 minutes of wrestling? That's the follow-up question. Yes. And barring it being super late.
Jeff Zaugg (35:57.518)
Like it's game on it's game on like last time it was like 840 or something. I'm like, yes We're doing 10 minutes of wrestling. You guys are gonna beat up on me for the next 10 minutes and we set a timer and we do that but and not that it's that's like makes our life but like I Really want to be connected and present with my boys. And so It's not about hey, I have to spend every waking hour of the day with them It's not like quantity of time is not a realistic
metric of success because it's insatiable unless you're spending every moment. And it doesn't mean that quantity doesn't matter at all. It just means it's not a fair measure. Like build relationships by spending time with people, but creating quality moments and creating connection points and saying, how am going to create quality connection? Like my aim when I get home from work on a pre-summer is like, can I at least spend like five minutes with each kid doing something intentionally?
And it doesn't usually work as cleanly as that. Of course, when I want five minutes of one, they all want that five minutes. And then when I want five minutes of another, none of them want it. But that's the thing is like, what is something you could do in five minutes? could you commit to, I know, not everybody needs to do wrestling time. I did read something that led me to that. used to think over like, let's just like lower the, but I read something. They sleep well with the energy. It's better.
getting that last burp, like, and it's not like most nights, honestly, that once I say once the timer goes off, they calm down, they calm down pretty quick. And so all I to say is like, who are the relationships you care about most? And like, nobody gets married because they want to end up divorced or they want to end up in a bad marriage. Nobody has kids because they want to be a bad dad. Like, and so regardless of where you're at, whether you're whether you feel like your life is thriving or not.
Can you just pause and say, what's one thing that's simple that I could apply and to point into the relationships with the people that matter the most to me? T, time, energy, attention. T. I love that it's so quantifiable with the wrestling example, because there's a time, 10 minutes. There's definite energy required, which as dads of young kids, like the energy piece.
Jeff Zaugg (38:19.31)
We can even when we're exhausted bring like there's a lazy dad games where you lay on and they come near you, try to grab a leg or a hand. Like there's ways to like, it's real. We're tired to the day. You can still bring your energy to your kids. And then attention is means my eyes aren't on a phone. My eyes are on something else. My mind's out. You can't multitask with wrestling. You need all your focus. And just in general, like one of the things I realized is like, if I bring my phone upstairs,
I'm just naturally like magnetized to it. so like, I'm not, I'm not bringing it upstairs when we're doing wrestling. I try not to bring it upstairs at all because when I do, I'm just, and if there's a reason to, yeah, of course that's different. but like, if I don't have a reason to have it close, I don't have it there. so, T is, is really important. And like, from my standpoint, you know, you always hear people say like time is our most valuable resource and, that's not true. Actually our T is our most valuable resource because we've got 24 hours in a day.
We only got so much energy, even somebody like you who's done all these adventure races and all this stuff. you run out of energy and you run out of attention, like mental focus. Like you run out of that too. You only have so much, whether you subscribe to Cal Newport's like four hours of deep work or whatever, like regardless, you don't have infinite. And so like, that's what becomes so important of like, it made me realize, I talked earlier about the beginning of like wanting to be everything to all people. Like I can't, I can do almost anything, but I can't.
do everything and I have to come to a place of accepting that. the concrete examples around Wednesday wine, the business meeting, the day at night, the concrete examples around, well, just even setting goals for the summer, wrestle time concrete. know you have a monthly cadence or at least you did at the time that I kind of heard this or read about this around the day of the month of your boy's birthdays. Are you still doing that? Yeah. Yeah. Talk about that. Yeah. So again, same thing of.
Life's hard. Again, we're all doing the best we can. how do we create one-on-one connection time with our kids? And it just doesn't happen naturally, And so the thing that we have set up is saying, hey, on the date of one of my kids' birthdays, so if they're born on January 2, the second of every month, we know that that's a day they're going to get some one-on-one time with either mom or dad. We alternate months.
Jeff Zaugg (40:46.43)
you know, January it's, it's me and February, it's my wife and March it's, and we just go back and forth. And because we have the three boys and that doesn't mean it's monumental. Like sometimes that's going to the grocery store and getting a little time. doesn't like as much as they would love to be like, can we go to the arcade or can we go the batting cages or here? Like, and sometimes we do those things. That's a different, we're working on some ways to, allow them to work their way into earnings. But it's just about again.
knowing it's going to be on the calendar happens every month. How do we make sure that we're creating one-on-one connection time with them? Ice cream is the classic default for us. Eventually got to innovate and get beyond the ice cream date, but it's fun. And they're happy and they're grateful. Share a kid's size. It's pretty budget friendly. I wanted to ask because of the three or four years that you leading, was it global marketing for Kobe Bryant? And a lot of time with him.
I, you're the first person I had a chance to ask. know he was a, girl dad with his whole heart and just like port, like loved and, and the, you had two angle. One is just, what did you observe that you think he would want to pass along to dad? Awesome. Right. So a little just observe observation, second, like how you honored his impact, legacy life and what I came to appreciate about Kobe and his parenting journey. And, and the truth is what, what you don't think about or what you don't.
naturally notice is right. He's famous for 4am workouts. That's one of the things he's famous at. And the reason why he worked out at 4am is because he did want to see his kids. Do think he really wanted to get up at 4am? that, like, okay, his like persona that like gave him an edge and there's all the stories about him doing workouts when guys are coming in from the club and all that, but like.
The reality was the reason why he had that cadence of working out that early was because he wanted to be there in the morning when his kids got up and before they went to school. So there was that element of him as a player and I didn't start working with him until after he retired. So then I got to see the other element, which would be like, hey, okay, we're gonna fly down from Portland to have a meeting. We could take a 645 flight, land at nine, be in his office by 10.
Jeff Zaugg (43:06.19)
his president of his company is like, hey, just so you know, at two o'clock, he's done. Hard to stop. Why? He's got to go to the carpool line.
Kobe's got to go to the carpool line. Like, are you serious? That's where he's going? Yeah. He didn't care we were in town. He didn't care what was going on. didn't like, he was going to the carpool line. He said, hey, at two o'clock I'm done. I'm going to the carpool line. For me, that was like, yeah, he's committed. He architected his day around these moments of wake up to leave for school and the pickup. Yeah. Yeah, I love it. And he couldn't do pickup, obviously, when he was playing. And so then once he retired, it's like, that's mine. OK, I'm going do that.
And even the word agency ownership, like that we have more of that than we give ourselves credit, like two craft ways to insert in with our tea, our time, energy and attention. Those are beautiful examples. And then, you know, just what was the center of his heart? You guys had a chance to share and share to a billion people. I watched the film, right? yeah, talk just a little bit about the celebration you had a chance to create with Nike. Yeah. So, I mean, this is where the
the truth about winning being subjective is so important, right? When Kobe passed away, everybody in this giant company, 20,000 people, everybody was moved. And you had plenty of people who had bigger titles than me, ranked higher, that were like, hey, we got to do, we had you right by Kobe. You got to all this stuff. So you had all these cooks in the kitchen. But I was one of the few people in the company that actually had Kobe in their title. And so it was like a very unique, and I felt very honored to get to be the one to help steward that.
And so we came down to it after all the people are throwing all their ideas out. It's like, hold on. We have to get really clear about what success looks like. How are we going to know at the end of this project that it was successful and that we said, okay, well, what was Kobe spending his life on? And Kobe was spending his life on trying to pass Mamba mentality on to the next generation of athletes, primarily through Gen Z girls. It wasn't that he wouldn't work out with the guys, you know, mostly he was, he was
Jeff Zaugg (45:19.054)
coaching his daughter team and leaning into the women's game. And just a lean in a step, model mentality, explain what that is. Mom mentality is basically the pursuit of becoming the best version of yourself. Dialed in crystal clear. Yes. And it's basically this call to action to become better every single day. And that was Kobe's approach to greatness. Like he knew that there was no way to jump from where you are to where you want to be in one step.
And that was the journey of mom mentality. And ironically, right? Not ironically, like that's what we see with Jesus. Like Jesus' invitation is to come follow him today. As you are. next step. As you are. Take the next step. And then take the next one, and the next one, and the next one. But you can't, you can't call him out in a single day. This is probably where we'll land today, but taking that challenge alongside of your clarifying where you want to go, because we can't take the next step to being better if we don't know the direction that we're trying to be better.
But with our time, our energy and attention, and with the who, who have we been gifted to be in our inner circle? can we just take a step today with our time, our energy, our attention to be a step better and then in the compounding interest nature of just those micro steps, stealing some practical like wine Wednesday could be, right. It could be very, very simple. Cause if you're married, like that.
Street strategizing a tripling of the heart connection of the connection with our spotlight. Yeah, that should be part of our thinking. Can you say a short prayer or all of us? Yeah. Heavenly father, we come to you and we just pause right now. God pause to listen and to be aware of your presence. We pause to invite you into our hearts, our minds, our days.
Lord, I pray that you would feel each person listening to this guide with a word of encouragement and a word of opportunity for how they can live out the commands that you've placed upon us to love you and love others. And ultimately, those are the worthy winds right there. So God asks that you meet the listener right where they're at in this moment. Be with them today and
Jeff Zaugg (47:40.942)
we thank you that we have hope in you. In your holy name, amen.
Jeff Zaugg (47:48.642)
Thank you so much for joining us for episode 393. All the show notes, the conversation links, the key quotes, the transcripts, the links to John's book, it's all gonna be found at dadawesome.org slash podcast. And just look for episode 393. Guys, thank you for listening. One thing that John's book talks about is intent versus action. We actually have to put action.
to these ideas discussed today. So let's be dads at Dad Awesome. That's who we are at Dad Awesome is we take action and we pursue what matters most. And it's people, it's your wife, it's your kids. Let's use our time, energy and attention for what matters most this week. Thanks for listening. Have a great week, guys.
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"Winning is subjective. And the only way you can win is if you get extremely clear about what it means to win." - John Olinger
"We're under attack all day long from distractions, our brains playing tricks on us about what things are fulfilling in the moment, going after short hits of dopamine, chasing success and accomplishments at the expense of other things." - John Olinger
"The reason why [Kobe] worked out at 4am was because he wanted to be there in the morning when his kids got up and before they went to school... At two o'clock, he's done. Hard stop. Why? He's got to go to the carpool line." - John Olinger
"Can you just pause and say, what's one thing that's simple that I could apply to point into the relationships with the people that matter the most to me?" - John Olinger
"If I'm halfway done, that means that every year for the rest of my life is gonna be between one and 2% of the remaining amount of my life. Do I wanna wait for later to do the things that are most important?" - John Olinger
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