Rapid Decision-Making And The R4 Method With Dub Maddox

 

Just like in football, in business, making decisions in the spur of the moment with what little information you might have is a vital skill. Though the ability to produce these judgment calls is a difficult skill to truly master, once you have, making decisions will be infinitely easier. Coach Dub Maddox is an author and the creator of the revolutionary R4 Football System.

In this episode, I speak to Coach Dub about the parallels between football and business, especially when it comes to making decisions on the spot. Do your rapid decision-making skills need an upgrade? Coach Dub’s advice could be just what you need!

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Rapid Decision-Making And The R4 Method With Dub Maddox

Speaking of contribution, here’s a question for you. What do you think football and business have in common? In fact, how do you think that football and business can complement each other to help build leaders, champions and communities all around the world? You’re going to find out from one of the leading experts that’s not only building young men but building a great business helping build men as leaders, champions, business pros and a whole lot more.

His name is Coach Maddox. He’s the Head Football Coach of Victory Christian High School in Tulsa, Oklahoma. He’s the Co-Owner and Camp/Curriculum Director for National Football Academies. He’s considered one of the leading experts in QB training and offensive tactics in the country. He’s two times bestselling author and Creator of the revolutionary R4 system. A little story, I got introduced to Dub and his work. One of our coaches had stumbled into his materials and said, “You’ve got to check this out.” Being the person that I am, wanting to surround ourselves with bigger or better people, I started doing some exploration. I got into his books and his training. Lo and behold, here we are having a conversation to talk about business and football, how it works and how it can work for you.

If you’re a parent, I want to share this with you. If you’re a business leader, you’re going to want to know this. You’ve heard, “Follow your passion.” You’re going to learn about some of the mistakes that Dub’s made, some of the successes that he has, his bigger impact that he’s looking to make and maybe you can help. Do you know why? Do you know some kids that need some mentorship, have better access to the best training in the world? He’s created a platform to help make sure that happens. Not only locally with his local team, but also nationally, and you’re going to know more about that. Coach Maddox, welcome to the show. How are you?

I’m doing well, Dan. Thanks. I’m excited to be here.

I want to jump right into it. Everybody usually has a story of why they’re doing what they’re doing. Why are you doing what you’re doing as a coach and developer, creator and cofounder of the R4 system?

It started at an early age for me. I remember going to my first football game when I was five years old and I remember being in the stands with my dad. It was a hometown football game. I don’t remember much as a kid but my first probably vivid memory is a fifteen-second clip of a group of about 40 players walking out of this locker room into the North Endzone and huddling up right before the game. All these people line up and create a tunnel on the field. The band starts playing a song and the lights are on. Everybody stands in their feet cheering for this group of young men running on the field. At the end of this tunnel that’s made, there’s this large banner with writing on. I couldn’t read at that point, but they burst through this piece of paper. I thought that was the coolest thing that I’ve ever seen. I said, “I want to be like those guys when I get older.” From that moment on, I was always drawn to the game of football.

In football, innovations start in high school and work their way up. - Dub Maddox Click To Tweet

As I played when I was a young player, getting mentored by older men, being encouraged and the lessons I learned from my coaches growing up, it impacted me in a positive way. I learned a lot about myself as a young man and I wanted to be able to give that back to young kids that special gift that was given to me. That’s what sent me on a course to become a football coach. As I got into the coaching world, I learned quickly. It was a lot different than playing. That set me on a journey to find the reasons why behind everything that’s being taught. When I started coaching and you ask coaches questions and question, “Why do we run this scheme? Why do we run this play?” You’ll find that it’s hard to articulate the answers. I was always inquisitive and always want to know the deeper meanings behind why we do things and the tactics behind it all. That’s why I’m passionate about football. It’s a great game that teaches servant leadership. We’re all hardwired and created to be in that role as men, so I use the game to teach that from that platform, but I also enjoy the X’s and O’s and the strategy of it as well.

I’ve gotten a chance to go through some of the R4 training material. Our coaches go to doing that as well. One of the things that jump out is the importance of alignment. Not only with the player, quarterback if it’s quarterback-receiver, and offensive coordinator coach. Speak to the idea of alignment and how important alignment is as well beyond football that business does.

What you’ll find out when you go into great businesses or you do a deep dive into a great company or when you’re in an environment and you see something’s different and special. One of the main things you’ll discover is that everyone in that company or on that team is speaking the same language. We’re big on developing a common language. The common language is critical in football because in football, we’re making decisions under pressure and we have to be able to communicate a lot with the little. One of the key components of R4 was developed based on the study of what the military does. In the military, for example, when you go to become a fighter pilot in the Air Force or the Navy, they have a system called the brevity code system, so they have a language that’s built. You have to learn these codes because when you are at 30,000 feet flying at Mach 2 or whatever and you have to make rapid decisions, you can’t speak in 2 or 3 paragraphs. You have to say those in 1 or 2 words.

That spoke to me because football is the same way on Friday night when you’re in a game and you have to communicate all the things that happen in 3 to 4 seconds. How do you extract? How do you filter that information to your players and coaches in a quick way where everyone’s on the same page? A common language is big. That helps you align. What happens when you see teams that don’t do well or you’re in companies that struggle? Everybody is speaking a different language. As a business owner or if you’re on a sports team, you’ve got to do a long look in the mirror and make sure. Have we defined what these words mean? Do we have a process that can say a lot with a little? Can we build that brevity code system?

As you’re reading, what would it be worth for you to get your team in alignment, get them on the same page, and have the same languaging so that you can build more momentum, create more impact, create more opportunity and have a bigger impact and reach in your community? Dub, as you’ve built this business, I’m fascinated by football in general. I’m biased because I’ve got my son who’s playing and he’s excited about it. On top of that, the business side of it. I meet a lot of consultants, coaches and experts who go, “I want to get my book. I want to write a book in the first place. I want to go build a course.” Here you are almost part-time. You’ve built this publishing platform that’s impacting thousands of people. Talk about your methodology for going about creating your publishing platform.

It’s not like you set out one day and decide, “I’m going to write books and do an Audible.” The first one started when we developed the system. I started developing it in 2007 and we created a three-DVD system that explained, at that time, one facet of R4, in which all R4 is a decision-making system that accelerates and teaches quarterbacks how to make rapid correct decisions under pressure. It’s essentially a feedback loop that informs their decision faster so they can learn faster from mistakes. It’s a process that allows the coach to connect and see the same visually what the quarterback is. It gets them on the same page and there’s a big disconnect between coaches and quarterbacks because the coach sees the field one way and a quarterback sees the field on the other.

 

Anytime interceptions happen or the play does not turn out as the coach wants, if he doesn’t have a process that can allow him to read the reality of what he’s seeing and have a language to be able to interject that, then there’s going to be a fracture there. The genesis of R4 began in 2007, so we created a DVD system and that took off. A lot of people had success with it, so they wanted more. As we got into the years, the system kept evolving and we kept growing it. We decided to sit down and write a book on what the system was built upon, but there were more components that we added.

I sat down to write a book in 2010 and it was the most difficult thing I’ve ever done. You’ve got to set your keyboard to bleed out essentially. It was hard. It took probably a couple of years to get that thing going. I swore to myself I would never write a book again after that first round, but I was able to find a publisher who was able to get it all done in diagrams, and it was a painful experience. Once we got it out, you saw another leak in the system getting out there and people raving about it, so I didn’t write another book. Between the time the first book came out and we decided to sit down and write another one, technology was changing the game. What we saw is that DVDs were going away and everything was becoming online.

In the coaching world, there was nothing out there where you could access online. The coaches were saying, “I don’t want DVDs. Do you have anything online?” We decided to sit down and the whole time this is going through, R4 is continuing to evolve and grow, so it was going from a quarterback-centric process to entirely a coaching system process. What I mean by that is it went from a tool to help quarterbacks to a tool to help everyone on the offense, offensive linemen, receivers, and running backs and to help coaches. As a coach or a play-caller, you have to do what a quarterback does every play. You’re having to see what the defense is doing and call the correct play. If that play doesn’t work, you have to know why and communicate the fixes. We saw that the system that was used to help quarterbacks could help coaches as well.

We spent 2 or 3 years building out an entire infrastructure. It’s essentially an operating system that can accelerate any offense in any level of football, so we started to put that online. We developed an online platform where I could create essentially teaching modules that are 15 to 20 minutes long. It was an online curriculum that allows coaches to go to it to a one-stop-shop and learn how to become a football coach. That’s where the online business took off. As we started creating that, we created so much content. Coaches were asking for it in manual form, “Can you give me the manual that I can use to study this outside of what the video that I’m seeing?” I decided to sit down at my chair again and bleed out. We wrote the second book that was called Adapt or Die. It was built on military strategy that the Marines learned in Fallujah, Iraq.

What they learned there was that they had to change the way they were fighting because the insurgents there at the time, the Taliban, were fighting in an unorthodox way that they had never seen before. They had to create an entirely new strategy where they could change on a dime because this opponent that they were facing could shapeshift and maneuver faster than they could keep up. They had to go back and create an entirely new language and process on how they operated. We saw the same innovations in football where the defenses are becoming more complex. They’re able to change faster because of technology. The ability to share information is allowing the high school coach to do things that they’re doing at the highest levels. What we needed to do is create a manual to help talk about the evolutions of that.

I wrote the second book, Adapt or Die based on that, and that took off. I released the final book, which is called What is Open? It builds out how to gameplan and play-call for the offensive system. That’s where we’re at. If you had told me how I did that, many years ago, I would have said it’s crazy. For anybody that has that passion or that entry, you got to sit down and it starts one day at a time. I would sit down my computer on some days and I’m going to say, “I’m going to write a paragraph.” Some days, it would be just a page. Some days when I get into the flow, it would be three pages. I knew every day I was going to have something extra written on that paper and then over time, the next thing you know, you have a book.

Football enables you to learn a lot about yourself as a young man. - Dub Maddox Click To Tweet

There are many layers of genius in what Dub shared with you as you’re reading. I hope that you got it. By the way, thanks for making us part of your day. I hope you’ve got a pen and a piece of paper to ideally extract some of the wisdom. Think about it. In your business, what would happen for you if you built your operating system? How would it get you and your team on the same page? It can seem daunting, “I’ve got to create an operating system for my sales, my marketing, my operations or finance and more.”

If you take it one little bite at a time or one page a day, when you look back over a couple of years, not only will you have a good operating system, you might find yourself having two best-selling books and an entire online course that others refer to. One of our clients that we’re working with, Dub, his name is Mike Aguilar. He’s brilliant. I see many parallels between you and Mike from the way of thinking about building a business, growing a business and also replicating it. You can learn from that, too.

If you’re a football fan, it’s one thing that you can be fascinated by learning the advanced strategies, yet simple to put in place. Starting now, you could start implementing, you, your quarterback, team, son, child or whatever. Starting implementing now. On the other side of it, if you’re a business owner, founder or CEO, what could you learn from Dub and his experience of how he’s grown this publishing? He’s a full-time coach besides. I admire and respect, Dub, what you’re doing and how you’re building it. If people want to learn more about your system for their kids or in their community where they want to make sure to get their youth coaches or their high school coaches connected to your system, can you share where people can learn more about you?

Our website is R4FootballSystem.com. I’m also on Twitter, @CoachDubMaddox. Those are probably the two best areas to reach out to me, and then also see our product. If you go on to our website, we have a blog there. I pulled out periodic articles on some innovative things that we’re working on and then we have some access to free videos. We also have the subscription component that you can sign up to get the materials online and order our books as well.

I want to encourage you to go to R4FootballSystem.com. I’ve gone through dozens of videos and several of the modules in the program already. By the way, I want to speak to your team, Dub. You may not hear this all the time, but you have one of your team members that I’ve had a lot of communication with. Jonny does a phenomenal job. Based on what I see in his interaction in the forums and other places, it seems like you’ve got a good one there. Not only are you talking about what you do, but you’ve got a team helping support what you do to help you have a bigger impact. As you’re reading, that starts with the way you think about your business, the mindset of success from day one, and an operating system for success. Go check out what they’re doing.

Coach, I want to talk about decision making. I don’t know about you, but in many ways, I feel like the traditional education system teaches kids how not to think and not to make decisions. Waiting for the authority figure to give them all the answers versus having critical thinking skills. Speak to the idea of how you see football playing a role and also an operating system like this to help people, kids in this example, to be able to make rapid decisions and how that translates and helps them in their future.

 

Probably the most important thing you could teach your kid is making sure that he’s looking through the right lens. That’s what R4 is. It’s being able to go into any environment, extract the most important information, and have frames of reference that are built to help process the reality and what’s occurring. From that, you can make the best decision, find the open space and move the chains. That’s the goal in football. In order to make rapid decisions, we call it rapid cognition, you have to be able to have a dense library of explicit information. My job as the coach is to take years of experience and knowledge and distill it down into an implicit process where my sixteen-year-old quarterback can understand that information. Be able to pull out the key parts and know exactly the answer or the solution to the problem that’s presented.

The problem is there’s a bottleneck between all those twenty years of knowledge to an easy approach that most important information out. What we had to create was we had to teach our quarterbacks, football players and coaches the non-negotiables. You can’t find the answers or find this process when you go to experts within your field. My journey to this began to find out the experts in my field of football and how they do it. For example, a quick story, my first year coaching quarterbacks, we were good. I had a good quarterback. We got into the playoffs, and in the playoffs, there’s a lot of pressure because when you lose, you go home.

I had this talented quarterback that was making great leads all year. We call it a simple curl-flat concept. The linebacker that he’s supposed to read just stands there and it freaked my quarterback out. He throws it right to the guy. It’s an interception, and we’re down by fourteen points. He comes to the sideline and he goes, “Coach, I have no idea what I see out there.” He’s a kid that had this much ice in his veins. He was a cool, calm and collected customer. He was a talented kid. He was done and I didn’t have a process to pull him out of that hole. I never want to be in that situation again. It got me thinking, “How do I teach what is open?” Because that’s the most important thing to know from an offensive standpoint.

I’ve got to get the ball to the open space. How do I teach my quarterback to know what open is? I bought a plane ticket and I put a couple of guys on my schedule. I went and found the best offensive minds in football at the college level and I made a trip itinerary to their spring ball schedule. I went to 3 or 4 places and my goal was to find the answer. I was lucky enough to get in some rooms with some of these offensive coordinators at the time. I remember being in the room with this one guy in particular who’s written a bunch of books and he’s considered one of the best offensive minds in the history of football. He was writing up this plane, diagramming and crazy illustrations. He was writing a mile a minute.

I paused and I said, “How do you know what open is? How do you teach your quarterback to know what open is? How does he know that is open?” He paused for about ten seconds and he could not give me an answer. He looks at me and he goes, “He just knows.” I was defeated because I was like, “Here, I’m going to get my answer if I’m going to know.” That left me still searching. I’m like, “I don’t have a guy in high school that just knows. I have to train him. How do I do it?” I decided to go outside the domain of football, and this is what you’ve got to do. If you’re a business person and you’re looking for a solution, trying to build a system, going to these experts and they cannot give you the ‘why’ behind what they do. Maybe they have the talent or they have enough money to work around these issues that you’re having, you need to go outside your domain and find someone who’s doing excellent in a field that has a lot of parallels to yours.

You need to see what they’re doing and then from that, you can extract a system or take those components and apply it to your domain. What I started looking for is, “Who in the real world has to make rapid decisions under pressure where their life is on the line?” Because it doesn’t get any more pressure than that. The frontliners, emergency room doctors and fighter pilots. When you study the best in those domains, what you’ll find is they’re trying to go into an environment and they cannot think about all the 150 things that could go wrong. They have to know the 3 to 4 things that matter most and those are called non-negotiables. What we started looking at from a defensive perspective is, “What are the 3 to 4 things that my quarterback needs to know at the most on a given play that gives him the most important information?”

When you're making decisions, you can't worry about everything that could go wrong. - Dub Maddox Click To Tweet

The critical part in the making decisions is when you go in and you’re making decisions, particularly ones under pressure where a lot of it weighs in the balance, you can’t worry about everything that could go wrong or you can’t try to figure everything out. It’s like, “What matters most here?” When I know what to look for, I can now cut out all the noise and I can gauge from those frames of reference, “What exactly is going on here?” The next thing you need is a common language to define those frames of reference. The frames of reference are big for us, and you did identify the frames of reference. Frames of reference allow you to create mental models of the reality that you’re seeing. There are frames of reference in business. There are frames of reference you can’t work around.

For example, the frames of reference in football are space-time and talent. You have to work within those constraints. You cannot ignore talent, space and time. When you know that and you know how to manipulate and work within those, you can make better decisions through identifying non-negotiables and having frames of reference with a common language that explains what you’re seeing. You have to have a process that’s sequential. It’s essentially what we call the process of self-correction. Our quarterbacks and coaches and whatever business model you’re using, the process you use to extract the information have to be consistent. You can’t have 24 different if-then statements. It has to be sequential and concise. A quarterback or a business person can self-correct if they mess up. That completes the feedback loop. Mistakes are going to be made but if we can’t learn from those mistakes, we’re going to keep repeating them. That’s a real key component that you need with whatever system you’re creating, which is those three things.

As you’re reading, can you start to see how this would translate to your business? It’s not having hundreds of options or dozens of options. It’s narrowing it down to simplicity. The 3x3x3 Rubik’s Cube, Google’s supercomputers evaluated there are over twenty million combinations to solve the puzzle. They also evaluated and found there are only about 8 to 10 moves that matter. Not only does it work here, but it also works in football and it’ll work for your business, too. I encourage you, if some of what Dub has been sharing with you intrigues you, not just from football, but from leadership, servant leadership and building a better business, go check out what they’re doing at R4 Football.

Let’s talk about learning from outside of your industry. You probably learn a lot outside of your industry by learning from someone who’s one of the best in the world. If not, the best in the world of teaching and simplifying offensive decision making. In fact, going through your system, I love that you talked about a quarterback to be reviewing pre-snap. You talked about the hardline. Are they above or below it? Is a quarterback to make the decision? Where are they lined up in the different realms? Are they over outside? Are they over inside? Are they under inside at the third step of the drop, which is related to timing? Those are three critical factors.

By the way, if you’re a football fan, you want to have a better experience and probably the best experience you’ve ever had watching a game and observing a game and way beyond fantasy football. Go through some of their basic training that he’s got available. You can also go to R4FootballSystem.com. Start learning some of the basics of this because it’ll make the game more enjoyable when you start understanding the chess game that’s happening from run to pass, what’s open and what’s not, and a whole lot more. You’re here for a reason. You’re here to build and grow your business. You want to have a bigger impact. Go check out what Dub is doing. Why? To see how that can translate for what you’re doing. Dub, as you’ve been on this journey, you’ve got many fascinating stories. Can you remember your biggest failure or biggest mistake that you made on this journey? What did you learn from it and what can our readers take from that too?

This is a trap we all fall into but early on, we started to get some momentum, starting to get out there and people were starting to get their eyes on R4 and use it. You start to look at what other people are doing. A lot of coaches were creating other types of systems. You would start to see some college guys create and recreate some offensive systems, selling it online, and doing well. What they were selling though was more of a playbook. They were selling an offensive playbook where R4 is an operating system that can accelerate any playbook. I started to have people in my ear saying, “You’ve got to get a playbook out.” That’s what everybody wants, so I started to build that, try to get that out and I got distracted. I probably wasted a year or two of my time building this playbook and trying to get it out.

 

Finally, I thought, “There are many people out there that are selling playbooks and everybody runs the same plays.” The secret is not in the plays. We all have playbook per se. There’s a playbook for this. The things that businesses do, there’s a playbook out there, but it’s the systems that accelerate that playbook. It’s where the secret sauce is at. I decided, “I’m putting this thing on the shelf. I’m going to get back to what matters most here and what the genesis of R4 was. I’m going to dive deep.” Because when you go to football clinics and you hear coaches talk, everything is surface level. It’s all about the X’s and O’s.

There is no place to go to do a deep dive into the inner workings of what makes a play successful or why you should call this player. Depending on the person you have, how do you know if that play is going to work? Because that’s a big deal in the football world. It’s like, “This play may work for this team, but it’s not going to work for me because I don’t have those same types of players.” What process do I have that informs that for me? How do I know? It wasn’t a difficult lesson. It was I wasted a lot of time trying to chase what everybody was doing. I needed to go back to blue water. No one was in this space. No one had what we were working on and no one could go as deep as we could. I went back to that blue water and that’s why where we’re at now is because you can’t find that anywhere.

As you’re reading, what can you take? Do you face the potential of competitors? The fact that they’re morphing what we’re doing to a degree and feeling a little bit of the pressure and the noise to keep up with them? What if you took Dub’s approach here and summarized it? It’s not about sameness. It’s about differentiation. What makes you unique? What makes you different? There’s a big difference in his world between a playbook and an operating system. Here’s another key. An operating system is principle-based and it’s timeless. A playbook is timely, which means it’s tactical. It’ll come and go like leaves blowing in the wind. Is that what you want? If you want tactical, then focus on the playbook. If you want strategy and principle-based models, focus on the operating system, alignment and those sorts of things. What is something I should have asked you that we haven’t had a chance to cover?

I don’t know. That’s your job.

Who’s your favorite quarterback to watch?

I’ve been fascinated with Tom Brady because of what he’s doing at his age level and his competitiveness. He’s a guy that I admire because he’s never stopped learning. He’s always willing to learn and he’s always working, so that’s been fascinating for me. Young guys like Patrick Mahomes, a talented guy and fun to watch. I like more of the guys that aren’t just gifted athletically and how they use their mind, work ethic, and character to overcome their talent deficiencies. The ability to see a guy that can pull guys together. The key to any great leader or business person, the ones that have the best, is when they step in that huddle or that room and they elevate everyone’s game so they make everyone better. I’m always intrigued by studying those types of players.

You waste a lot of time trying to chase what everybody else is doing. - Dub Maddox Click To Tweet

What are 1 to 3 action steps that you hope our readers take from our time together?

For business people, the one thing is nothing great is ever achieved alone and you need people around you that are better than you. Probably one of the biggest things that I’ve learned is that you have to find people with the right mindset. Many people, when they’re hiring, they look for experience. My challenge to you is don’t get caught up of where they’ve been or what they’ve done. When you interview them and you look for these people, don’t look at where they’ve been or the experience they’ve had. Interview them, ask different questions, and find their mindset. What we’re looking for in that is do they have a growth mindset? Are they passionate about what they’re doing? What’s their character? Those types of things. That’s one thing.

Another thing is to make sure if you’re starting out in business or you’re starting out, it’s good for you if you’re a younger entrepreneur. If you’re someone that’s going into the field that is passionate and you have all these plans, put your timeline on hold per se because we’re caught up in titles. We have our track and plan for where we’re going to be in ten years. It’s important to make sure that we put ourselves under people of great leadership and we learn as much as we can. I was lucky enough to come out of college to get hired by one of the toughest but most brilliant head coaches in high school football history. I worked for him for four years and it was a difficult working environment because he challenged me. He held me accountable. A lot of guys couldn’t have survived in that situation but I’m glad I was able to fight through it because I learned how to coach through him.

The second coach I work for is another Hall of Fame high school coach. I worked for him for thirteen years. It’s important for people to don’t be afraid of putting yourself beneath and putting maybe your long-term plans on hold. Knowledge is power. Learn from people that have gone ahead of you and find a great mentor. That’s the two things probably. You can’t do it alone. Find and hire people with the right mindset. If you’re starting out, I will find the best program. If I were starting over again, I would go and try to get Bill Belichick and be his editor. I would start at the lowest position and whatever I had to do. I would start at that entry-level and do the best I can. I’ll try to move up and learn as much as I can from that.

That’s great wisdom and great advice. Tying into that, I’ve got two coaches. One named Brad and one named Brennan. These guys, I’ve gotten a chance to know and they come with a growth mindset and are givers. They have no kids in the game. They’re young guys in their twenties. They’re hungry and they want to learn. They dove into your system, learning it and working on mastering it. Knowing what you know now and how the game has changed. Football, even at high school levels, becomes a high profile, especially in states where you’re at like Oklahoma, Texas, California, Arizona, etc. Knowing what you know, what advice would you give to these two guys? One has done some volunteering as a high school receivers’ coach and the other is trying to work his way. If you were them, knowing what you know now, what would be an approach you would take to try to connect to live the dream to become either a head coach or high-profile offensive coordinator ultimately?

I would try to find a program in my area and try to find a head coach that has character, he’s been winning and he’s in it for the right reasons. I would get in any role I could to get my foot in the door and I would try to attach myself at his hip, serve that guy, and learn as much as I can. All the great coaches I know have started down that path at some point and they were willing to do the jobs that no one wants to do. They’ll get in there and do jobs that no one wants to do. I would volunteer for those and do those well. Over time, you will gain more responsibility. My brother works for the Oklahoma City Thunder and we had a conversation one time. He’s high up in the Thunder organization, so every year, they get twenty interns that come in and they all want to work for a professional sports team. Out of those twenty interns, there might be one job that might come open.

What he was talking to me was like, “You would not believe in nowadays society. The way it is with these young kids coming out of college is you can get a job for an entry-level position in an NBA program if you could show up every day on time, listen and work. It’s hard to find people coming into the workforce now that do those three simple things well.” My point is if you can train your kids or you can train your young people coming in to have this mindset of, “If I show up every day on time, listen, work and do the things that other people don’t want to do, it’s hard to find people that can do that these days.” That’s what I would encourage those guys to do. It’s easy to move up and find those positions. It’s just hard to find people that are willing to do those.

Brennan and Brad, that’s great advice from one of the top minds in football. Sharing that direct wisdom, not only for you but also for all of our readers. As you’re reading, if something that Dub has shared with you intrigued you, go check out R4 Football System, get his books, and get his book on Audible. Even if you’re not in football, there are many lessons on leadership, servant leadership, growth, development and a whole lot more training that you can take from this practice of football. Bring it over into your business as well.

Check out his business model. It’s a fascinating model. When you stop and think of what his number one focus is and this publishing business that he’s built, he does clinics all over the country. He set up a model where he’s partnered with a group where he and his organization do clinics all over the country. I don’t know the rules of what you have to be or what you don’t have to be, whether you have to be a football coach or don’t have to be. Regardless, I would encourage you when you go to R4 Football System, dive in and I would get his program. Why? It’ll translate. You’ll have more fun if you’re a football fan to learn about football.

Number three, with clinics all over the country, I would find a way to find yourself in a clinic. Either yourself, if you’ve got kids or you got community members, get them over to check out what they’re doing. What would it be worth to have kids that you mentor potentially learn rapid decision making? Because in life at the end of the day, we’re all the CEO or quarterback of our families. This translates not only in the huddle on the football field but it translates in building men and building people at home. If that’s something you’re excited about, I encourage you to go check out what he’s doing at R4FootballSystem.com. You can hit him up on Twitter, @CoachDubMaddox. Any parting words, Dub? This has been awesome.

It’s been a blessing to be here. I enjoyed it. I’m fascinated with the parallels of sport and the business world. When you can look outside your domain, whether if you’re in business, look into those sports teams, what are they doing? How are they operating at a high level and then vice versa? For me, my biggest answer in the ability to develop this operating system wasn’t found in the football realm. I had to look outside of it. That’s the big takeaway. Telling these stories has reinvigorated me on that and reminded me of how it was all built.

He’s Dub Maddox. I encourage you to go check out what he’s doing. Most importantly, I’ve got 4.5 pages of notes from our conversation. The big mistakes that he learned, how he sees football and business in life, intertwining the idea of the same language, alignment, core values, getting everybody on the same page, rapid decision making and what that means. A way to think about doing is not having 20, 100, 1,000 choices. It’s crystallizing down to 3 or 4 simple choices overall. That and a whole lot more. If you never want to miss an episode, go to GrowthToFreedom.com/subscribe. Seize the day and make it a great week.

Resources mentioned in this episode:

• R4
• Adapt or Die
• What is Open?
• R4FootballSystem.com
• Blog – R4
• GrowthToFreedom.com/subscribe
• @CoachDubMaddox – Twitter

About Dub Maddox

Coach Maddox is the Head Football Coach at Victory Christian High School in Tulsa, OK.

He is also a co-owner and Camp / Curriculum director for National Football Academies. Coach Maddox is considered to be one of the leading experts in QB training and offensive scheme tactics in the country. He is a 2x author and creator of the revolutionary R4 system.

The R4 system is a reads and recognition system that is used to accelerate decision making for QB’s and provide sound offensive concepts for their coaches.

Coach Maddox spends the off-season traveling across the country teaching and training quarterbacks.

He is also a coaching consultant for football programs on offensive scheme design and implementation. He is passionate about using the game of football to build great men on and off the field.