A few weeks ago, The Athletic published a piece on Buzz Williams, the new head coach for the Texas A&M men’s basketball team. Buzz used to coach at Virginia Tech, and before that, Marquette. Everywhere he’s gone, his teams have had success — in 11 seasons of coaching at Marquette and Virginia Tech, he’s taken his teams to the NCAA Tournament eight times. So what’s his secret?
The Buzz standard is a no-nonsense, no-excuses approach. He climbed the ladder in coaching by outworking and out-networking everyone. On the back of his calendar is a monthly contact list. There are 58 people in a column labeled personal and 31 apiece for a Texas A&M column and a grassroots/high school basketball column. The people he has contacted are highlighted in yellow. Halfway through May, he had already knocked out 46, 11 and 17, respectively.
Williams is trying to meet daily with a person important to the process at A&M, and similar to a presidency, he believes the first 100 days are critical. Relationships have always mattered most to him — and why he’s successful.
There’s a lot in there to unpack, but the one thing that stood out to me was this phrase: Outwork and outnetwork. So much of the success of a coach like Williams depends on relationships. If you have the relationships in place, a scout or a coach might give you a heads up about an under-the-radar talent. If you’ve established trust with a source, you might be the first to know about a new method for developing players. And a strong network within a college campus might make all the difference when it comes time to getting the funding you need for your team.
Nobody does it alone. It takes hard work — and a network — to help you achieve your goals.
But building that network is simple: Meet people, be kind, and stay in touch. Do those three things, and do it for a long time, and you’ll slowly build the network you need.
Here’s a great example of that, from Phil Knight’s “Shoe Dog,” a wonderful memoir about how Knight built Nike. In it, he tells the story of Jeff Johnson, Nike’s first employee. Johnson, turns out, was a lot like Buzz Williams. Writes Knight:
He worked seven days a week, selling and promoting Blue Ribbon, and when he wasn’t selling, he was beaverishly building up his customer data files.
Each new customer got his or her own index card, and each index card contained that customer’s personal information, shoe size, and shoe preferences. This database enabled Johnson to keep in touch with all his customers, at all times, and to keep them all feeling special. He sent them Christmas cards. He sent them birthday cards. He sent them notes of congratulation after they completed a big race or a marathon. Whenever I got a letter from Johnson I knew it was one of dozens he’d carried down to the mailbox that day. He had hundred and hundreds of customer-correspondents, all along the spectrum of humanity, from high school track stars to octogenarian weekend joggers.
Those relationships, writes Knight, were the key to Nike’s early success. Those early fans told their friends about Nike shoes. They came back as repeat customers. And they gave Nike feedback about the shoes that the company then used to test and improve their product. None of it would have been possible if not for that network — and that wouldn’t have been possible if not for Jeff Johnson and his daily letter writing habit.I’ll say it again: Meet people, be kind, and stay in touch. Pair hard work with a powerful network, and you never know where it might take you.
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That photo was taken by Samuel Zeller for Unsplash.