Building Ultimate Trust: Volleyball Coach John Cook’s Championship Formula

Guy Kawasaki:
I'm Guy Kawasaki. This is the Remarkable People podcast, and we are on a mission to make you remarkable. And what we do is we find remarkable people, and we found one today. This is John Cook. He is the four-time national champion Nebraska volleyball coach, and he was a dominant coach. He won more Division One games than any other volleyball coach. Is that true?

John Cook:
Yes, or this century. That's correct.

Guy Kawasaki:
There was women's volleyball in the previous century?

John Cook:
Yes, there was. That started in the 1970s and the early 1980s, is when it really got going.

Guy Kawasaki:
So is it accurate for me to say you're like the John Wooden of women's volleyball?

John Cook:
You can say whatever you want, but I've actually tried to be the Tom Osborne of Nebraska for volleyball, because he was a role model for me, a mentor. He was my athletic director for a while, and I watched him as a kid coaching. And so, he's somebody I've tried to emulate being in Nebraska, and he is the John Wooden of football probably in this country. So similar type of guys.

Guy Kawasaki:
Okay. All righty. So first of all, just give us a little update. How is retirement going? You've been retired a couple months now. Right?

John Cook:
I've had all these opportunities like this one, have come out of the woodwork. So I've had lots of requests to do things. I've turned down a lot. I had a lot of commitments that I had committed to, so I'm still fulfilling those. So it doesn't feel much like retirement. I've actually probably been traveling more right now than I normally would recruiting at this time, but busy hands make happy hearts.
But I'm just doing different things, and the great thing is you don't wake up every morning, "I'm worried about fourteen players and what they're doing, how we're going to get better today." It's more of, "What adventure are we going on today?"

Guy Kawasaki:
So let me ask you then, so how and why did you accept this request to be on my podcast? It was because of the picture of Madisun at your camp, or what was it?

John Cook:
That was a big part. And we have a saying here, "Once a Husker, always a Husker," when you're really smart to hire kids from Nebraska to work for you. They're great. It's a great state. And you sent me a great information page to check out. I looked who you had on. I read about you, and I just thought, I love your idea of remarkable, because our saying is, "Dream big every day."
And you're doing a Remarkable Person podcast, and that really caught my attention. I guess it's a really cool idea. And that's how we learn, is we study other people and share things with other people that have been successful.

Guy Kawasaki:
You've been on my podcast before. You've been on Joe Rogan's, I bet.

John Cook:
Yeah. I'd love to go on Joe Rogan's.

Guy Kawasaki:
In one part of your book, you mentioned these three questions you asked yourself every day as a coach. So I would like you to explain the three questions you used to ask yourself every day as a coach.

John Cook:
Yeah. And I do quite a bit of speaking, and this is something that I share with people, that if you're a leader or working with teams or even your family, you got to ask yourself these three questions, and you got to answer them every day. So when you go to bed at night, you got to be able to answer them, and the first one is, "Who needs me today?"
And I've always thought, working with the team, somebody is going to need me today. Somebody is going to have a crisis. Somebody is going to need something. Is it my family? Is it my team? Is it my staff? All the people that work in our program, but somebody is going to need you today. So if you could start off the day and figure that out, and be proactive as opposed to waiting till something happens. So that's the first question.
The second question is, "Would I be hired again if they were hiring for the Nebraska volleyball coach? Did I do a good enough job today that they would want to hire me back?" And then the third question is, "Would I want to be coached by me?" And this is the one that is the toughest as a coach, because you want those players to want to come back and work hard and be excited to come to practice the next day and keep building towards something.
But if I have a bad day or I'm too negative or didn't run a good practice, or didn't create a great mindset, we didn't feel like we got better, that's the tough question to answer. And there's a lot of days, I'm sure, our players, they don't want to see me the next day. But it helps you stay centered on what is really, really important. And as a Nebraska volleyball coach working with this program, those were the three key questions that I had to answer every day.

Guy Kawasaki:
Related to the third question, and you mentioned about maybe the Nebraska players didn't like you every day, but do you think that coaching comes from a position of love or anger? Because there are some different coaching styles right there. There's the love your player. There's the scare the shit out of your player, Vince Lombardi, I don't know, Bobby Knight, although we interviewed Tara VanDerveer, and she said Bobby Knight was not what you see on ESPN. So let's talk about love versus anger as a coach.

John Cook:
That's a really good question. And so, my background was I coached football, I played football, and all my models in the 1970s was football coaches who were tough guys, and they coached with anger. They were in your face. They got after you. They ran guys till they quit, stuff like that. And I started off coaching that way. I started off coaching high school that way. And then my early years at Nebraska and Wisconsin, I was a tough coach, and I was on them all the time.
And then I realized about 2012 to 2014, when social media came in and iPhones came in, all of a sudden, these players couldn't take it. And I became very frustrated as a coach, and I wasn't connecting with them.
And so, I realized I had to make a change, and that's exactly what I call it, is you got to coach with love. And so, each day when I went in, I always had that mindset, "I'm going to coach with love today." Very similar to raising kids. I'm going to challenge you, push you, but I'm going to do that with a lot of love.
And did I do perfect every day? No, but that is the mindset, because I don't think this generation handles failure very well. They live in this perfect world on these phones and social media. Everybody is perfect. Everybody looks great. They post pictures, "I love you. You look so cute," blah, blah, blah. And so, they just have a different mindset about them and how the world works, and that was a big adjustment I had to make.
And when I made that adjustment, I went on the best run of my coaching career, which is the last ten years. I've had more success, won more games, played for more championships, won more championships than I did in the previous two decades before that. So it was a major change for me and something that I had to do, and I did it, and it worked well.

Guy Kawasaki:
So the irony is that what you describe as iCentered as opposed to iPhone or iPod or iPad, but iCentered made you into a better coach.

John Cook:
Yeah. That technology and those things definitely made a difference. But here's the downside of that. All of my older players who all have kids now and they're getting ready to play college volleyball and high school volleyball, every time they see me or they come watch practice, the first thing they say is, "You're so soft. I can't believe how you treat these guys," because what the world they came from and the way I coached the last ten years here was completely different. And so, they get after me quite a bit.

Guy Kawasaki:
Would you say that if iPhones didn't exist and social media didn't exist, do you think a person like Harper Murray would've had all the issues she had? Were her issues at least partially caused by this kind of social media world?

John Cook:
Most definitely. And there's tremendous pressure that social media is putting on high-performing athletes or high performers, and people can say anything and anything they want. And again, I've been criticized on social media, but it doesn't bother me, because I don't care.
People can say whatever they want. But when you're eighteen years old and you're trying to please everybody, and you're trying to be this person that kids look up to, and people are saying awful things about you in social media, they believe it.
So that's why every athletic department now, there's a shortage of trying to hire mental health professionals. That's why you've seen this in college athletics, this explosion of mental health issues and talking about mental health, because they just cannot handle that side of social media.
And you might say, "Hey, just don't listen to them." But remember, they're on their phones. That's their world now. They're connected to that, and they're doing things on social media to build their brand, and they're making money off of it, and they're using that as a platform, whether it's political or being a leader or helping kids. But again, that negative stuff is going to come in. And some of the stuff I saw that was written, it was sickening. But again, they believe it, and that's all that really matters.

Guy Kawasaki:
But as an antidote to this, didn't you take away their phones and put them into small groups of four or five as opposed to twenty-five at a dinner, and you set up these small groups, and the players just rejoiced in that, that they had these personal interactions instead of constantly looking, "What does ‘Lonelyboyfifteen’ on Instagram think about my play?" or whatever?

John Cook:
Yeah. Two great stories on that. We were in China in 2014. Again, this is when all this is happening, and we weren't playing very well. We went on an international trip. So I got mad at them. So I walked down the bus. I said, "Throw all your phones in this bag. You're not getting your phones back till we start playing better." So I kept them.
And for a couple of days, and all of a sudden, we went and knocked off this professional team, played great. I gave them back, and one of the players, she goes, "Coach, I don't want my phone back. I'm really enjoying not having my phone." So that was a big telltale sign for me. And then the other thing is, you're from Hawaii. I gave you a hard time about not going to Kamehameha, because my assistant coach, Jaylen. He's got it on his license plate in Nebraska. He's very proud of that.
And so, when we go to Hawaii with the team, every spring break, in March, we divide up into small groups, and we go to some hole-in-the-wall restaurant, something not where the tourists go, not a Cheesecake Factory or something like that. And one of the places I go is this Japanese place, and everything is in Japanese, and they barely speak English. So our players have to figure out how to order and what to order. So it's an adventure.
But what I noticed was, being in small groups, and again, their phones are off, it goes three, four hours for dinner, because they're not distracted. So they actually sit down and have a conversation, and they love it. I just sit there and listen, and they just talk and talk and talk, because whenever in their life do they ever do that? Everything is on the go. They're on their phones. Everything's boom, boom, boom, "Got to go to this class, got to go do this."
So they really, really enjoy it, and that's something I've noticed. I think they crave that social interaction, but they just don't do it. In the old days, I'm sure you and I both had family dinners and everybody was there, and we didn't leave till dinner was over. And so, it's something that's missing for this generation.

Guy Kawasaki:
Okay. I got to know, because I'm about to go to Hawaii. So what is the name of that Japanese restaurant?

John Cook:
I know right where it is. It's a Japanese name. It's in Waikiki, and it's very close to The Cheesecake Factory, but it's in the back alleyway. Just look up best Japanese restaurant down there in Waikiki, because we stay in Waikiki, so we can walk to it. But the players love it. Of course, they don't even know what they're ordering half the time and wasn't familiar.

Guy Kawasaki:
Okay. Oh, before I forget, I got to tell you, I prepared for this interview by reading your book, and I want to know, do you have another book in you now that you're in retirement?

John Cook:
Yes. I submitted an outline to Nebraska Press. They're reviewing it right now. Again, after I wrote that first book, and that book came to me when I go for bike rides. All of a sudden, it just started coming in my head, and I can't explain why. I'm just like, "That would be a great chapter to write about."
And now that I'm finished and retired, I have another set of chapters and things I want to write about, and not so much about my life or Nebraska volleyball. This is more about what I've learned about coaching and working with people and building teams, and the really big thing is culture.
And that's the one thing I see is failing in a lot of places, is, how do you maintain a great culture? Everybody is complaining about it's really hard now, especially coaches and I think leaders and people working with teams. How do you build a great culture? And, of course, what I did for the last thirty years is, how am I going to build a great team culture and keep these guys together?
And now, in college volleyball and college athletics, with the portal, money coming in, and it's going to be even harder to have a great culture. So I've got some great wisdom I would love to share. And so, I'm just waiting to hear back how we're going to do it and when we're going to go.

Guy Kawasaki:
Well, how about giving us two or three pointers while you open that door? I mean, jeez, give us one.

John Cook:
For a great culture, to start off, you have to get everybody seeing the same vision and goal that you want for your program, and do they commit to whatever it's going to take, and do they trust the leader and the leaders that were going to stay with us and get there? And to me, that's the first thing on culture.
Are we all in, or are you thinking about something else, and is Madisun thinking about something else? Am I thinking about something else? Are we just all over the place? And then do you have other things that are more important than the team? And again, can you see a picture? It's about something bigger than yourself. And to me, if you don't have that going, you don't have a chance with culture.

Guy Kawasaki:
I have a question that as I was reading your book and I read about the story I'm about to reference, I just was like, "How do you handle that? How do you make a transition?" So the story, of course, I'm talking about is, so you were the coach of Wisconsin. You lose to Wisconsin. You have dinner with the opposing coach, and he approaches you to become an assistant coach for the next year.
So now you've been building this culture with your Wisconsin team, and how do you tell those people, all those girls that you recruited and all that, "Guess what, gang? I'm going to Nebraska"? How do you navigate something as difficult as that?

John Cook:
I did not navigate it very well, and that's one of my regrets in my coaching career, is how I handled that. If I had it to do over again, I would have done it much differently. But it was just so bang-bang, and I didn't have great support from the leadership at the time at Wisconsin.
So after we met and we started talking through some things, I was really disappointed, because I wasn't sure I was going to go, and I wanted to talk to them in Wisconsin about, "What can we do now to make this program like what Nebraska wants to do?"
And I just got shut down. So it's one of my regrets, but what the great thing about it, Guy, is, and this is, sometimes you get second chances in life. Two of the players on that team that I recruited, I both hired as coaches later on that coached with me at Nebraska. And so, for me, I knew they came back around, and I worked hard to make that happen, because, again, they wouldn't even shake my hand after the match.
Next year, we beat them. We played Wisconsin, my team, for the national championship, and we won in five games, and they wouldn't even shake my hand afterward. And we had an undefeated season that year, my first year at Nebraska. So it was a magical year, but it was no joy in winning the national championship. I felt so bad for those Wisconsin players, and I was just glad to get it over with. And so, in my regret chapter, that'll be one of the things. I didn't handle it great.

Guy Kawasaki:
And you even mentioned you tried to take a player with you from Wisconsin to Nebraska, and you couldn't do it.

John Cook:
Right.

Guy Kawasaki:
Is she one of the players that became a coach for you?

John Cook:
Yes. Sherisa Livingston. She went and played professionally, cut, came back down to coaching. She was lost and wandering around. I called her, and I said, "You're going to come to Nebraska. I want to hire you as a coach." And she came there and coached a couple years and then went on and has been a head coach at a couple of different universities. So it was somewhat of a validation for me that I did some good stuff. I just didn't handle it very well, and it was a way for me to make it up to them.

Guy Kawasaki:
I hope I didn't cause PTSD by asking that question.

John Cook:
No. I still have dreams, Guy. And I talked to another coach, who was a Hall of Fame coach who retired, and I asked her, I said, "So I'm still having dreams." She goes, "They'll never go away. They'll never go away." And you're so consumed in your life and coaching, it's twenty-four/seven, 365 days a year. And so, those things stay with you.

Guy Kawasaki:
You say that the more you coach, the less you think you know. Now, why is that?

John Cook:
Like I said, my first year at Nebraska, we went undefeated and won the national championship. So I thought, "I'm pretty good. I got this figured out." And so, if you start thinking that way, you're never going to get better. And I was thinking that way, and then all of a sudden, I was getting frustrated because we weren't getting better and we weren't performing at the highest level over the next couple of years.
And then, so one of my mentors told me, "You got to get a growth mindset and keep learning and getting better, because you're just stuck." And so, that's the saying I would tell myself, "The longer I coach, the less I know." And if you have that open mindset and that growth mindset, you are going to continue to learn over and over and continue to learn more and more.
And one of the things I say is, I learn more about coaching and Harper's situation, some other things last year, than I did in the previous twenty-four years combined. That's how it feels, and that's how the mindset I have.
I'm going to continue to learn and grow and continue to get better, because there's things that are going to come up. There's no coaching 101, how to deal with what happened with Harper Murray. There's no preparation for that. So I had to really have a great growth mindset on how to handle that one specific thing.

Guy Kawasaki:
Oh, Carol Dweck is smiling someplace at Stanford right now. She's been a guest twice, and we love Carol Dweck. So I'm sure she's happy now.

John Cook:
Yeah.

Guy Kawasaki:
So what do you think is the most rewarding thing about coaching? Is it the glory and the fame and the money? Why? What is it?

John Cook:
That's an easy question to answer. For me personally, if you look at my coaching tree and how many former players have gone into coaching, and I just hired the one that replaced me in Nebraska is a former player, coach. But to me, that's the most rewarding thing, is seeing a young woman go through our program and then wanting to stay in coaching, whether it's high school, junior high, club volleyball.
I have a former player that started a club in Lincoln. She has a twelve-court facility she's built, and just seeing these former players stay in coaching and want to be difference makers. And to me, that's what it's all about. That validates I did something pretty good there developing those guys that they want to stay with us, and they have the passion for the sport and the passion for working with people, and especially the ones that work with younger kids.

Guy Kawasaki:
But just to be a devil's advocate for a second here, I understand what you just said, and I am impressed, and I think it's wonderful, but isn't it a luxury that only someone like you can say that because you have, in fact, won four national championships? If you were a middle-of-the-road coach, could you still say that? Would you still say that?

John Cook:
Yes, I would. And for me to be able to hire Dani Busboom Kelly to come back to coach Nebraska and be a female coach coaching women's volleyball, that, by far, overshadows any national championship or great wins or great moments. The stadium match we did, where we broke the world record, that overshadows any national championship.
Trade that for four national championships, for example, and same with hiring Dani and some of these other ones. So those national championships, those great wins, those are moments. And they're there, it's exciting, and then it goes away. It's the things that stay with you that to me are why you coach.

Guy Kawasaki:
So I am a parent, and I'm not a parent of a professional athlete or college athlete, but I would love to hear what you say about, what's your advice to parents of kids who are interested in playing volleyball, or any real sport actually, at such a high level? What's your advice to these parents? Are they supposed to be screaming on the sideline? Are you focusing on one sport, multisport, send them away to camp? What's your advice to these parents?

John Cook:
My advice is your kids growing up should play every sport that they want to play. And I see so many times, I've just seen this over the years, they think they got to specialize in one sport. And by the time they get to high school or college, they're burned out. Our best players at Nebraska, and if you look at our All-American wall, they were all multisport athletes.
Now, eventually, they started playing volleyball or got involved in a club. Usually, it was in high school. For example, a lot of our players at Nebraska, because they come from small towns, they do everything. And I remember my first year recruiting there, I go and see this player. She's warming up for a volleyball game. This is a little gym, like in the movie Hoosiers. She runs over and plays the flute in the national anthem, runs back and plays the volleyball match. That's doing everything.
But I've heard them talk about when they run track that running the 800 in track is the hardest thing they've ever done, mentally and physically, because you're going till you think you can't go anymore. And so, that develops a toughness.
Playing golf or tennis, a lot of our players have played tennis. There's a lot of transfer over to volleyball, but it's a different game. It's a different mindset. Everything is a little different, but I think that's how they develop athletically, and then, eventually, where's their passion, and then turn them loose on that.

Guy Kawasaki:
And should parents look at, "We got to send them to this elite sports camp. We got to do all this kind of stuff," or just let them grow up?

John Cook:
Just let them grow up. And maybe once a summer or something, go to a camp, because I think there's other things they can gain from camp, being around other kids, seeing other kids, a different experience, learning how to function, "These aren't my players I play with every day, or my friends." They go to a camp and, "Oh, I got all these new kids I got to meet and learn how to interact with."
So I think there's a lot to going to some camps and things like that. But to send them to camps all summer, to me, I see that's a lot of get my kids out of the house. I don't have to babysit them. But I think there is some advantages to going to some camps and being a part of that, and then eventually getting into club programs.

Guy Kawasaki:
So from the flip side, I read that, how do you possibly make a judgment about a fourteen- or fifteen-year-old girl to make her commit to a program? This is three, four years before she graduates. How do you figure that out about a recruit, and is that a good practice that you're getting kids to commit at fourteen or fifteen?

John Cook:
They actually made some rules to take that away now. So the old days, or two years ago, we could do that, and I hated it. It's not good. And when you're in ninth grade, going into ninth grade, you're really not ready to make a decision. And so, you see a lot of bad choices, and then kids will change later on, and then they'd have to transfer and all that, which is hard to go through.
But two years ago, they changed the rules. Now, they can't commit till they're a junior in high school. So it's been a big change now, and I think that was a really positive move that the NCAA did, because we can't even talk to her. We can go watch ninth graders, but we can't talk to them or recruit them or do anything like that. So that part has changed, but most of our players committed going into ninth grade up to the last couple of years.

Guy Kawasaki:
So what do you look for in a recruit, even if it's just a junior?

John Cook:
How athletic they are and how good arm swing they have for volleyball. You got a Major League Baseball player. You can either throw the ball or you can't hard. So can they swing if they're attacker? And then how do they move? How athletic are they? How do they compete? But those things are really hard to judge in ninth grade. Some of those level of play, they're just trying to get the ball over the net. So it's really hard.
And again, I think, Guy, what I've learned in reading and studying, once you see so many athletes over and over and over, your mind can pick it out. I can pick out things that I've seen that will translate to a player, projecting them to be pretty good. But it's not 100 percent, but you just get an eye for it. And I think anybody in anything that's seen it enough and seen enough video or watched things enough, they could just get that sense, that sixth sense.

Guy Kawasaki:
So talking about that sixth sense. So then as you look back, how do you allocate athletic success? Is it talent? Is it luck? Is it grit? What are the major components, and what's most important?

John Cook:
I think in this generation, I'm talking about now. First of all, can they focus on what they need to do to be great? How many outside distractions, and how do they manage that? The second thing is, there's definitely a grit factor, a perseverance factor. It's moving on from failure, because most of the players that get to the Nebraska level, they've had very little failure in their life.
And when you get to that level, you're going to fail. You're going to lose. You're going to get beat out, because everybody has come from that same background. So how do you handle that? Are you going to complain? You're going to blame somebody else? Are you going to look in the mirror and start working hard, or ask what you need to do to be better and how to get there? So those are two areas that I think are really important.
And then I think you can call it heart, desire. What drives them? And one of the things that I ask them is what their why is. And sometimes it takes them a couple of years to figure out what their why is, why they're playing. Deep down inside, what is it they're really getting from this? Is it because I can get more social media followers? Do I like the color red?
I hear it all. But at some point, they're going to dig down, "Why am I really playing this game? Is it for the love of my teammates? I want to win championships. I want to be the best player I possibly can be." So at some point, they got to figure out their why. And I think the ones that do that, they're the ones that can go to the next level.

Guy Kawasaki:
As I was reading your book, I saw a lot of parallels in business practices. So this is a businessperson asking you these questions to see if I can gain insight into business. All right? First question is, how do you pick a team captain?

John Cook:
Wow, that's actually one of the chapters in my new book. We have tried everything, and what we've done the last two years, and I think we've had the best leadership. And again, you have to have great leaders to maintain your culture, because I'm not with them in the locker room. I'm not with them in the back of the bus. I'm not with them when we're in hotel rooms and they're hanging out or they go to coffee, and you've got to have leadership there.
And so, the captains to us are very important. So what we decided to do, because I was in a coaches' meeting a few years ago, and the question came up right there, "How do you elect captains?" And every coach said, "I don't know. We have no leaders anymore. These kids don't come in here with a leadership mindset. What do we do?"
So what I did is I have read books and studied leadership. We start every January. And once a week, we have a leadership class with our team, and anybody can go to it. Guess what? They all show up, and we talk about leadership. And at the end of the semester, we let them choose. The ones that are interested in being a captain, they get up and talk in front of the team, "Okay. This is why I want to be a captain."
And I've heard some incredible things, and I've also seen some that really struggled with being able to verbalize why they should be captain, and then we let the team elect them or vote on them. And that's how we've done it, and it's actually been about the last three or four years we've had amazing leaders, and that's how we have filtered them out, and they've taken ownership of wanting to go through that process. So that would be my best number one way to select captains.

Guy Kawasaki:
All right. But in a sense, in business, we never do it that way. We make this false assumption that if you are good in sales, you should be VP of sales.

John Cook:
Yup.

Guy Kawasaki:
And if you're a good engineer, you should be VP of engineering, which both of those examples don't make sense.

John Cook:
Yeah. It's the same in the university world. Somebody is a good professor, has been there a long time, all of a sudden, they're in a leadership position. Same in athletics, and you're like, "Wait a second. I've seen a lot of people bomb out in the athletic departments going into leadership positions."

Guy Kawasaki:
Yeah. How about how to pick who to redshirt? Which, in businesses, is like asking some people to not get promoted, stay in their lane, continue to do what they're doing, or step aside. How do you tell somebody, how do you pick somebody to redshirt when they're at the University of Nebraska, they're all-American something, they're all MVP something? Right? How do you pick the redshirts?

John Cook:
Up until the last couple years, it was a lot easier, because if somebody knew they weren't going to play, the talk was, "Hey, your fifth year, you're going to be a lot better in your fourth year. You could stay your fifth year and get your master's degree."
So from a business perspective, it was a no-brainer, if you could just get over not playing your freshman year. In this day and age with the portal, forget it. There's going to be very little redshirting. I would never even try to redshirt anybody, because I got burned two years ago.
We have this player. We had a great plan for her. We recruited her. She bought into the plan. She comes and sits for a year, not happy, transfers, because now they can transfer so easy. So after that, we said, "We're not redshirting anybody anymore."
It's because it's so easy for them to transfer. A few years ago, before the portal, they would have to potentially sit out a year if they transferred. So there was a consequence for leaving or breaking a commitment. Now, there's no more of that. So the redshirt days are gone.

Guy Kawasaki:
In a sense, the portal has had a completely unexpected result. The point of the portal was like, "Go where you're appreciated," or something. But you could, in fact, hurt your career.

John Cook:
Yes. I understand the portal, but again, I told you, it's going to be really hard to culture and develop loyalty, and it's so easy to leave, and then you've got the poaching going on. So if you're a business guy and you've got somebody you redshirt, and I think they got a lot of talent, I'm going to go offer more money and take them away from you, and that's what's happening in college athletics, "Oh, you're not playing very much? Hey, I'll pay you to come to our program, and you'll start here."
So that is constantly going on right now, and there's no way to manage it or to combat it. So you're going to have to figure out in college athletics now, "How am I going to keep this group connected?" And those guys, they've got to believe that there's no better option for them if they were to leave. And knock on wood, this year, after I retired, we had nobody leave. And again, it still could happen at the end of the year.
But that's one of the reasons I retired when I did, because I felt like I got this group, and they're going to stick together. I really believe that in my heart. And so far, it's worked out, because I wanted Dani, the new coach, to come in a great situation, because if a coach leaves all of a sudden, there's an excuse to go somewhere else. Here's other coaches coming in, "Hey, your coach left. You want to come to our program?" And so, I felt my heart, the timing, this group is going to stick together, and it is a great group.

Guy Kawasaki:
Okay, coach. I want an explanation of something you hear in football and basketball and hockey all the time, and I don't know anything about volleyball. So I just want to know, does defense or offense win games?

John Cook:
I've always was a defensive-minded coach, because I felt like defensively, if we were really good, defense is a lot of effort and mindset. So you could bring that every night. Offense sometimes, and again, I'll equate it to basketball, you may not be hitting your shots. You may be off a little bit hitting your shots. Same thing in volleyball. The setter may be a little bit off. The hitters might be a little bit off. The passers could be off. So your offense may not be doing great, but you can always play defense.
And so, we've always thought, "If we can be a great defensive team, we're always going to have a chance to win." And again, remember, I started off as a football coach, and I was on the defensive side. And if you can stop your opponent, you got a chance to win.
And so, I think that's the most important thing. But when it comes down to winning the close matches and the big matches, who's going to step up and take it over? And typically, they're going to do that offensively. But you can't always plan for that, and it always doesn't go well, and maybe your best player is having an off night and somebody else steps up.

Guy Kawasaki:
And if you're a coach, is it harder to prepare to play a great offensive team or a great defensive team?

John Cook:
In volleyball, a great offensive team, you can match them by, if they side-out, you can side-out. So we're basically washing each other out. What I found in my early years playing against Penn State and Russ Rose, who's a Hall of Fame coach, they were always a great defensive team, and this was in the 1990s. And every time we played them, I could see how frustrated our players would get, because they couldn't put the ball away.
They couldn't pass their serves. They couldn't hit around their block, and it's deflating. And again, another great example would be a football team that can't run the ball, and they just have to throw. And all of a sudden, now you've got them. The defense is more frustrating and harder to play against, and it'll take away people's confidence faster than anything.

Guy Kawasaki:
Okay. I have a very tactical question that I am very curious about that I picked up in your book, which is, I want you to tell me the three best motivational movies to show to players.

John Cook:
This year, Gladiator One would be one of them, which I actually, before I retired, I have a clip about mindset for this year. So Gladiator was one of them. I really believe, and I actually made a coaching video from the first Top Gun.
There are so many analogies in there about teams and about performance, about sticking with it, about performing under pressure, and I actually took a bunch of edits and made a coaching video that I would show at coaches' clinics about, "This is all the things we can apply in Top Gun to coaching." And so, that would be the second one.
So those are older movies. Of course, some of our players, they would've never seen Gladiator, but when Gladiator II came out, they all went and saw it. So I'm like, "Now you got to go watch Gladiator One." And I think the third movie that I've actually used quite a bit is Hoosiers, and Hoosiers is another really good coaching movie, and a team-building movie, and a lot of great lessons in there.

Guy Kawasaki:
I can see everybody going on Netflix right now and running those three. You have very interesting mantra about two points better, which I think the gist of it is two points is all it takes to win these matches, right?

John Cook:
Yeah.

Guy Kawasaki:
And so, first of all, correct me if I'm wrong, what's the implication of a mantra that two points better is the key?

John Cook:
Yeah. So if you look at our match, we lost to end the season. We won the first two games by more than two points. We lost the last three by two points each. So that's how close we were. All we needed was to get two more points and we would have won that match and played for the national championship. A few years ago, we had a frustrating season. This is about four or five years ago.
And so, I was looking back and studying and analyzing, and I looked at how many two-point games we won and how many two-point games we lost. And it was three to one that we lost all these close games. So we put this big poster in our weight room and said, "Two-point wins, two-point losses. We got to find a way to start winning closer games." And that's where that win by two points came out.

Guy Kawasaki:
And so, we need a little lesson in mantras here, because most companies have mission statements that are fifty words long, like, "We endeavor to create world-class products, increase customer satisfaction, enable our employees to self-actualize their goals while maintaining a reasonable return for our shareholders, and kill as few dolphins as possible." So that's your typical McKinsey mission statement. So what is it that makes a mantra magical?

John Cook:
Well, you call it a mantra. We call it a theme, and I've always believed we have to have themes, because, again, you just went on and on there. Right? Remember, these kids today, their attention span is about seven seconds. So you have to have a theme, and we want to put it on a shirt, in their notebooks, on their bag tags, in their lockers, "This is our theme or themes that we're working on and we're going to use this year."
And that would actually be another chapter in the book, is all the themes that we've used over the years. We've come up with some good ones. I actually have a patent on one of them. I got a patent in Nebraska. It's called WEOFEO, with each other, for each other. And we grabbed that, and actually, adidas used it one year in their marketing campaign, with each other, for each other. So you call them mantras. I call them themes.

Guy Kawasaki:
I'm beginning to sense that this is going to be a really good book. When you talk to the University of Nebraska Press, have you already signed with them?

John Cook:
My first book was with them. Yes. And so, I don't know if I'm technically signed with them or not, but they're very selective on what books they print, because they're not a New York publishing firm. But they're very selective, but it's prestigious to get with them.

Guy Kawasaki:
If you get Madisun's grandparents tickets to this game, we'll introduce you to a real New York publisher.

John Cook:
Okay. All right.

Guy Kawasaki:
How's that for a deal?

John Cook:
I'll tell you what, I'll give them my two tickets for one of them. There's two Madisun. I'll give them my two tickets for one of them. So they're covered, Madisun.

Guy Kawasaki:
Okay. Two more questions. First of all, you introduced this concept of ultimate trust. So what is ultimate trust, and how do you develop it?

John Cook:
Ultimate trust is something we talk about, but it's very hard to define, and you have to be able to see it. Our best teams played with ultimate trust. And Guy, you have to remember, volleyball is six people, 900 square feet. The ball is moving over. I actually had a physicist chart this out, because volleyball, when the ball is spiked by the hardest hitters and the defensive players are so close, it's equivalent of a 160-mile-an-hour fastball. That's how fast it's getting to those diggers.
So things are happening very fast. So there has to be tremendous trust among the six people out there. The teams that have that magical feel and everything just flows, we call that ultimate trust. And the best way I can define it for you is this: I have two pictures I show our team. One is the first test way back in the early 1900s of the first bulletproof vest.
So the guy taking the bullet had ultimate trust that that vest was going to work. And then the other picture we have in our locker room, we blew it up, is a dog leading a blind dog, and they really connect with that, because all of our players love dogs. Many of them have dogs. And if they can play like that dog leading the blind dog, that's ultimate trust. Like I said, it's hard to define, but when it happens, it's beautiful and you can see it.
And our last two years, if you watched our team play, and I've had so many people just say, "I love watching your team." These aren't even Nebraska fans. That's the greatest compliment because they see that ultimate trust that they're playing with.

Guy Kawasaki:
I lied. I have two more questions. Okay. I just thought of this. I have watched my kids play volleyball, and I want to show a total ignorance of volleyball, but what is the theoretical perfect amount of serves that are out or hit the net? If you make it so that every serve goes in, probably those serves are too easy to return.
But if you hit the ball out or into the net, then the pressure was always on you. They didn't have to return it at all. So there must be some number where you say, "We would like to have a certain percentage of serves not successful, because at least we're trying to attack with our serve."

John Cook:
Yeah. So we were the number one serving and passing team in the country last year after they did all the stats at the end of the year. Our error percentage, it's about 8 percent. If you can serve tough with about 8 percent error, so think nine out of ten go in, and you're really attacking the ball, you're going to be at a really high level, at our level.
There's teams that were in the final four that had a higher error percentage than that. In high school, it may even be lower than that. Maybe it's eight out of ten misses or seven out of ten, just because of the skill level. Of course, if you go down to fourth and fifth grade, you're hoping maybe one out of five go in over the net. And so, it just depends on the levels.
And then men's volleyball is completely different. They'll accept 30 percent error, no problem, because they have to go for it, because the men are so good at siding out, and they're so hard to stop. So they have to take more risk. But again, you asked me defense or offense. If we're a great defensive team, we want to give our defense a chance. And so, nine out of ten is a great ratio. And if you can do that with good serves, you're going to have a really good chance to win.

Guy Kawasaki:
So what is your advice to a young coach listening to this about how to develop as a good coach?

John Cook:
First of all, surround yourself with people that are going to help you. Figure out, "Who can help me be the best and develop and grow as a coach?" Is it other coaches? Is it somebody in business? Is it somebody from your church? Who is it? But surround yourself with mentors. Second thing is listen to podcasts, read, study other people, study successful people, and study other successful teams.
One team that I've studied, and again, I grew up in Chula Vista, California, and our beach that we would go to, and Chula Vista is right on the border across from Tijuana. We would go over to Coronado. As a kid, guess who I saw running down the Coronado Beach? Navy SEALs.
That's where their headquarters are. So I became infatuated with the Navy SEALs and how they train and what they do. And I actually, in about 2010, a former Navy SEAL commander retired in Lincoln, and I went and got him and had him work with our team and worked with me and worked with our leaders, because they're doing it at the highest level.
So that's just one example. Can we study those other teams? And the third thing I would say is you got to have a hobby. People that are driven and consumed, and again, in coaching, it's twenty-four/seven/365, but at some point, you've got to let your mind go and you got to think about something else. So what hobby do you have? Is it hitting golf balls? I went and got my pilot's license. When I fly planes, I'm not thinking about Nebraska volleyball.

Guy Kawasaki:
I hope not.

John Cook:
You're thinking about flying the plane. So I really think you have to have some type of hobby, distraction, something else. But also, with that, when I learned how to fly, I was getting coached by somebody else.
So I figured out, "What helps me learn? How do I want this guy to interact with me on learning in a very stressful situation?" And learning how to fly a plane is very stressful. So how can I stay calm, trust my training? How do I want to be coached? So it really helped me figure out, "How do I want to coach my team?" And so, those are three things right off the top of my head of what advice I would give.

Guy Kawasaki:
Okay. I promise you, this is really the last question. I promise you.

John Cook:
Okay.

Guy Kawasaki:
I just want to know, looking back in hindsight, with all that you figured out, if you were back in 2023 and you were playing against Texas, and Texas just scored nine straight points against you, and you called time-out, what would you say to your team if you could do it all over again?

John Cook:
The same thing I told them, "Hey, take a deep breath. We're okay. We're going to focus on winning the next point." And again, that's a mantra for us. We're just going to focus on winning the next point, because remember I told you they don't handle failure very well, and that starts building, and then they lose their confidence, and that's what I've always tried to do.
And the biggest matches, you have to be the most calm and reassuring. Now, there's other times when we're playing a team that we should be beating, we're better than, and I haven't done that. I've gone the other route of getting after them and getting in their face a little bit. But in the big matches on the biggest stage, you got to be the most calm and the most supportive and make them believe.

Guy Kawasaki:
Which comes back to this concept of coaching from love as opposed to anger.

John Cook:
Exactly. And over my career, I got a lot better at it, and it's something that I've worked really hard at, but I knew I had to do it. And I think, again, go online, and Merritt Beason, who just graduated and is playing pro volleyball, she does a great job of explaining, she was one of our captains, of explaining how I adapted to her teams the last two years.
And I think that would be another thing as a young coach. You got to be willing to adapt to whatever you need. Guy, I don't know. I made TikTok videos with our players.

Guy Kawasaki:
You what?

John Cook:
Yeah. Well, they get over five million views. Yeah. But they just take my phone. They do something. They edit it, and I get approval, like, "Is this okay?" But again, it's way out of my comfort zone, but you have to be able to adapt to whatever group you're coaching.

Guy Kawasaki:
John Cook, thank you so much for spending this hour with us. It's been just delightful and remarkable, and there are many lessons in your book that apply to life and business in general, and I really enjoyed this. And we have some Nebraska fans listening, and I'm sure they're just doing backflips right now. So, Grandpa and Madisun, why don't you come on and say goodbye to John Cook?

John Cook:
All right. I hope you guys enjoyed it. You're doing okay?

Madisun Nuismer:
That was amazing.

Larry Hinrichs:
It was amazing.

John Cook:
Yeah.

Larry Hinrichs:
It was amazing.

John Cook:
You got two tickets out of it. So you're going to see them. I'll just cruise around and sit in my seats. They'll just be right across where yours are.

Larry Hinrichs:
You keep those. I'll pay some extra money off of the secondary market. I'll be there. I'll be there. No problem.

John Cook:
Anyway, Madisun we'll stay in touch as we get closer.

Madisun Nuismer:
Okay.

Guy Kawasaki:
I'm going to get rib eyes from Nebraska for life for that. Wow.

Virginia Hinrichs:
Oh, yes, all the time.

Guy Kawasaki:
All right. John Cook, thank you very much.

Madisun Nuismer:
Thank you, John.

John Cook:
Thank you.

Guy Kawasaki:
This has been the Remarkable People podcast and thank you from all of us here. And I want to thank, of course, Madisun Nuismer for making this happen, and Grandpa for helping make this happen, and Tessa Nuismer, who is another girl from Nebraska who helps us with this, and our sound design is Shannon Hernandez and Jeff Sieh. This is the Remarkable People podcast, and Go Big Red, I guess, is the way to sign this off.