What NFL Officiating Taught Me About Winning in Business

You fail by not starting. You can't fail by starting. That's the mental shift.

It's important to me if I said that I'm on this mission that I'm going to achieve this mission.

It's just a series of checklists and process [music] that people don't have. It's operational. There's no magic.

Growing a business while also achieving like a part of your dream. How do you balance those two?

From South Bend to Evansville and everywhere in between. This is Get In, the show focused on the Hoosier State and the incredible stories happening here today. I'm Nate Spangle, founder of Get Indiana, and I will be your host for today's conversation. Before we get into the episode, do you want to win a free mower? We got to talk about our friends at Indiana Farm Bureau Insurance. They're doing their ready, set, mow sweep stakes.

Go green, save green, enter for a chance to win an Ego self-propelled lawn mower. It's totally free. You don't have to be [music] a client. You just have to live in the state of Indiana. All you have to do is go to the link in the show notes and you can get entered to win this mower. They're giving out 24 of them across the state of Indiana.

Seriously, entirely free. Don't have to be a customer. You do have to live in Indiana, but you go to the link in our show notes that'll take you there. You can put in your information. They're going to pick the winner at early in September. This sweep stakes ends at 11:59 on August 31st.

So, go click it right now. Before we get into the episode, click that, enter the Ready Set Mo sweep stakes, and you could win a self-propelled mower. All right, let's get into today's episode. My guest today is Brian Neil, founder of Blind Zebra, a sales coaching firm that's helped thousands of professionals learn about the art of sales. He is also the co-host of the longest running sales training show. Additionally, he's an NFL referee who officiated the Super Bowl.

He's a self-taught musician who somehow finds a way to bring live piano to your keynote speeches.

100%.

No, you bring keynotes into your keynotes.

Well, key Oh my god, Nate Spangle, that was brilliant. That was brilliant. I'm really excited about this one. Uh they're just down the road here in uh in Indianapolis. I mean, you guys have been You said you've been coaching sales for over 20 years.

Yeah. You don't like to say you get to a point where you do anything over 20 years. It sounds like we were just talking in the pre-show. Like, you don't want to think that 2006 was 19 years ago. You just don't. So, it's just been a long time. I mean,

it's been a long 199 I know the exact date I started. June 3rd, 1997 is when I started doing sales training.

I was exactly zero.

Two months [laughter] old.

Three months old at that point. So, it's been a minute. Uh, we also talked about the fact that you started podcasting back in 2006. Correct. So, I'm excited to really dive into this, but before you were a Super Bowl referee, before you were a sales coach and ran this business,

the story starts in Newberg, Indiana. And for anyone out there, that's southern Indiana. Yes. That's down right by Evansville. Is that Castle High School?

100%.

Go Nights, baby. Come on now. Um, talk to me about how you went from a small town outside of Evansville and ended up in the Super Bowl.

Yeah, 100%. That's great. And so, first of all, I have to tell you, I love what you do and I'm so happy to be here. I had to invite myself on the show, but I'm like, you know, Nate's doing so I love our state so much. I love I'm in give back mode of life. So, thank you for what you do, first of all.

And it's just even though it's an Indiana show, it's still an awesome show. And then the fact that it's Indiana based just makes it so much better. So, I'm all goosebumpy. The other thing that's funny, so I'll get to the Super Bowl. So, I work the Super Bowl. A 100 million people watch me on TV.

I've worked the national championship game. I've worked two AFC Championship games. My kids, I'm their dad. Okay, my boys, when I work those things, they're really proud of me, but they have never been so happy for me to be anywhere than on Nate Spangle's podcast. Like, dude, do you know this guy? And I'm like, yeah, I'm going to be on his podcast.

Like, no. They're so excited. So, you got a great You got a great listenership here in Indiana. How did it start? Uh, I actually, this is fun because this is an Indiana show. I bounced around a lot when I was a kid.

I was born in Evansville. My parents moved to St. Louis for a year when I was really little. Then I moved back to Evansville. Then my dad got transferred to Columbus, Indiana. So I went to all first grade, half a second in Columbus.

Then I went to Greenwood, half a second, all a third for Greenwood. My parents split up. Then we moved back home to Evansville. And then when my mom married my stepdad, we moved to Newberg. So I was actually in all part of the southern state for, you know, five, I think five schools in six years, something like that. And I was always a new kid.

And this is getting into the story how we get to the Super Bowl. I was super shy and quiet. And a lot of people meet me like, "Dude, you're not super shy and quiet." I actually am. I'm one of those um you heard the labels like I'm an uh introverted extrovert. So I actually if I go to like a big networking event I'll go stay in the corner and wait for people to come talk to me.

Um but on the stage and things like that like I'm I'm you know out there and podcasting and all that jazz. So, uh, my grandpa signed me up for little league football when I was in fifth grade in an attempt to get me some friends cuz I was like, you know, kind of lonely, shy kid just standing there on the sidelines. And I went out there, uh, like you do in football, if you play football, you know, it's really hot. It's August in Newberg, Indiana. It's hotter than hell down there. The grass is all brown.

And, you know, they're like, "Okay, you know, get up and knock the crap out of that kid." And then you do that and then you're like, "Oh, you get kudos for it." And so I got this space to release all these emotions I had about my parents getting divorced and I didn't have a really good relationship with my dad. So these football coaches became father figureally to me really early and I got everything I needed from a father figure from my football coaches from age 10 forward.

So flash forward, I played at Castle High School for John Lighty, legendary Hall of Fame coach, passed away. One of his sons still coaches uh today, coaches high school football here in Indiana. Great family. taught me so many things about life and and living life the right way and and just how to achieve goals and things. When football ended, now I have kids now that played at Cathedral High School, good football program, linemen. All of my boys are linemen.

I was the slowest human to ever step foot at Castle High School on a football field. I mean, it was like and I now watch my kids and I know it's genetic now. It's like you can't try to run that slow. you like watch you like are you really trying to run that slow? I was so slow. I was 6 feet tall.

I wasn't good enough to play in college. So I go to my coaches and I'm like, "Hey, I really want to stay in football. I think I might want to be a a volunteer coach, but I I'm not going into education. Give me some advice here." They said, "Don't be a volunteer coach. You kind of do this."

Nate, it's tough. It's a grind. You don't get paid very much. It's a labor of love. He's like, "You're going to business. Here's what you should do instead.

You should get your referee's license." Like because you're, you know, you're kind of wired for that. Which I thought was at first I'm like, "Oh, thank I'm like, that's kind of a rub. You're kind of like, you know, refs are dorks. It's not like anyone grows up like I can't wait to be a referee. You can't wear a referee uniform and look cool, you know?

It's just impossible to do. But I'm like, okay. So, I yeah, I took this test. I got an 83 out of 100 on my first high school test, which is okay, you know, not bad. But what people don't know is it's a 100 question true false open book test and I still miss 17. And people are like, you want to know what's wrong with like refereeing America?

That's part of the problem. And so I uh worked the first game at Bloomington South High School, JV game. I ran around there. I didn't throw my flag. I didn't blow my whistle. I didn't signal stop the clock.

I didn't do anything. I just ran around. And I'm like got in the car. I'm like, "God, that was awesome." And the guys with me, they're like, "That dude sucked." Like he didn't do anything.

Just ran around. But I was hooked, man. And so I did what my coaches always taught me. Coach Lighty was required at Castle High School. Every football player had to write down uh you know, good oldfashioned smart goals on a note card before every every season. had to be specific, had to be measurable, timebased, all the cheesy stuff you hear.

But I learned that when I was uh in freshman and so I got done with my first season and I wrote down that I wanted to ref the state championship in Indiana by the time I'm 31. And I said I want to referee in the Big 10 by the time I'm 36, the NFL by 41, and the Super Bowl by 51. And I wrote that on a note card when I was 19 years old. I had no idea how that stuff happened, but that was my goal. And my coaches taught me to do that, so that's what I did.

Did you what at what age did you make it to the Super Bowl?

So I got the uh state championship when I was 30. I worked a 1A state championship. Lafayette Central Catch. Lafayette Central Catholic against Perry Central. It was like 67 to7 or something. It was a blow. Lafayette Central Catholic Perry Central.

What years was that? That would have been

uh 99.

Oh yeah.

For those early 2000s, they were just waging.

Crazy, crazy, crazy. And then um I got in the Big 10 at 36. Um and then I got in the NFL at 44, so I missed that one. And then I got the Super Bowl call when I was uh 52. So I missed it by a year. Isn't that crazy?

That is crazy. And it's crazy to have that like the thought to like look forward that many 30 year. You're 19 literally.

Yeah. I just started adding five year basically. I just did five. I started I'm like, "Oh, 31. That'll give me a little time to get out." And I'm like, "Okay, 5 years later, Big 10. Five 10 years later, NFL."

I mean, I have a uh I I was a ref in college. Uh I was an official cuz it's the ultimate college gig. So, I was going to Thank you for saying this.

It It was so lucrative.

So lucrative. People don't realize my I'm telling my boys

and there's no like no one wants to do it like and you do have to have um you had to be able to carry yourself. Yep.

So like I was a 21-year-old like freshly 21 I was like I could get a normal job. I got a work study where I just sit there and do nothing or I could do

this reving thing. Like sometimes you have to wake up on Sat for wrestling like wrestling does have bad Saturday hours. You got to be there at 7 a.m. So I said nope no weekends. I'm just doing weekn night duels for Putinham County's middle schools. Awesome.

And there's only like 15 wrestlers per team. I would get in there. I would call pretty quick pins. Like [laughter] I'm the best one ever. I made 75 bucks and I got out of there in 36 minutes

literally.

And I was like pin pin pin forfeit forfeit. We're out of here.

And and it's like it's an experience when when you have to like be young and look at someone and like I actually have the power. Like I'm in charge. And I made this call and they're like yelling at you like that wasn't a pin. And I'm like that's what I saw.

Yeah. And it's like you can't do anything like say anything like I'll just kick you out.

That's it.

And it was it was a really and it was lucrative. Like you could make money because there's this national ref shortage.

Massive. I can't even get that's a whole other episode, man. So people don't realize how bad it is. I mean already games are getting moved. I'm varsity in Minnesota. They play varsity football now on Thursdays and Fridays cuz there's not enough ref. It's just getting worse.

And that's the thing too with uh women's wrestling. Oh my gosh.

Cuz it's like growing so quickly. There's And like there's no young wrestling refs. like they were old when I was wrestling, which was a decade ago, you know, like they were already old. Same guys, usual suspects. Okay. So, you set these goals and then while that's rolling of you pursuing your dreams of being an a Super Bowl official.

Yep.

Then you're also start building the company and coaching sales on the side where like how long how much experience you have to get? How do you just start being a coach?

Yeah, it's good. I um I got my job my first job out of IU was with Proctor and Gamble, which you know these days it's cool to get like a tech job, you know what I mean? Like you know, and back then the cool job was to sell uh toilet paper and diapers. Like that was a really cool job to get, which is what I did. And uh I loved PNG. I fell in love with training at PNG because they're really good trainers. I volunteered to be a trainer. Um but I didn't like the grocery business.

And was that like PNG had a lot of like GE influence, right? people came over and GE was like the number one training organization. So like you'd go out there and get like your real world NBA there.

Absolutely.

I can't remember Dave Becker talked about whoever the founder of GE was and he got to you know rub shoulders or get that experience. So training yeah training and development like that's what you fell in love with

big time fell in love with it and I always wanted to be my own boss though. So I left PNG after five and a half years and I started my first business called Cleaning Solutions. What Cleaning Solutions did was distributed environmentally friendly cleaning equipment and cleaning supplies to hotels, restaurants, and hospitals.

What year is this

exactly? 1996. It's a great idea. In 2026, it's a horrible idea. In 2000 or 1996, we were actually headquartered. We had that office right across from the Vogue here uh right up the street on college in little blue house that has a little light bulb on it. We're in Indianapolis for those of you listening, but

uh so that's where we were. Uh it took me about 18 months to be bankrupt. So, I lo literally lost all my money. Uh, and then some.

How old were your

I was 25 26.

25 26. Like, how much is like how much money did you put in to start this company?

I probably I probably all in lost because I not only lost but then I lived off credit cards to try to just survive. I was laid on car pay. It was awful, dude. I lived in It was awful, awful, awful. I was always afraid like the newspaper guy back then would like pull in the driveway to deliver the paper and I thought my car was getting repoed. I'd jump up from my mattress, which was on the floor back then, you know what I mean? sweating profusely, so much stress. So, probably about 30 grand, which isn't a lot of money, but when you're 25, it's all the money I had plus

that. And I think that perspective, especially like, you know, being young and it's like being risky and like being able to put it all on the line

and sometimes it doesn't work out. Like, it's not always like, yeah, I started this company with my life savings and now I'm a multi-billionaire, right? No.

So, like it took 18 months.

Yes.

Through 30 grand totally bankrupt. Yep.

What do you do from that?

Huge debt. So then I'm I'm I'm surrendered to that. Here's a great lesson that I learned and all this stuff becomes clear when you're older. My reason to start a company was so that I could tell everybody I started a company. It had nothing to do with making money or creating something of value or giving something to the world. It was strictly ego-based, which that's why I learned my lesson because that is not why you go into business. You don't go into business to be famous and to make a bunch of money for yourself. You go into business to serve other people and create space where other people can grow and develop and that sort of thing. If you do all that stuff, the money takes care of itself.

I I've said this on a few shows. Starting a business, not that hard.

No,

like it's pretty easy. It really is. It's funny, [laughter] isn't it? Yeah.

But like growing a business and like maintaining a business, selling a business, all these other like building something that the world

I think that's just so that's so true. Like I think a lot of times people want to start business because they want to be the next Mark Zuckerberg or they want to be the next Sarah Blakeley, right? Build this billion dollar enterprise for them and because they want people to think that they're cool. And yeah, people can see right through that. 100%.

So from that moment, right, you kind of have to get a little reset button. What do you go do?

Yeah. So then you're broke. The good thing about being broke is you can't go any you it's hard to get like a whole lot more broke because you can't get more credit because you're maxed out of your credit. So you're kind of stuck, you know what I mean? At the at at this space where all the only thing you do is go up. So I'm uh doing networking like I would do uh and I'm meeting with a friend of mine from college and I said I really love training and development what I did at PNG but I a big company. I don't want to go back to a big company. And he said, "Well, my girlfriend, who was also a friend of mine, who he's now married to, uh, said she works for some guy uh, who does sales training here in Indie for himself, his name is Bill Casky. You should meet him." So, I met Bill Casy in April of 1997 and June 3rd, I started working with him and been doing it ever since.

Bill, he trained our sales team at Apex Benefits when I was there. For sure. Yeah. Yeah. That was my first job out of school. I was an or at Apex. Yeah. For

I didn't know that.

Yeah. So I was their first one of their first or fellows and Bill came in and we did some work with him and I learned and he kind of got on my radar. So you guys started working together in June of that year.

June of 1997. Yeah.

Was it interesting to be young and like be telling people like training them on sales?

It was impossible. It was impossible. And it wasn't impossible because it was impossible. It was impossible because I I tried to make it impossible because I didn't feel confident in myself yet. And I'm trying to but I I believed in what we were teaching but I didn't believe in myself the way that I needed to. There's a big generational thing going on here too. I'm Gen X. I was training baby boomers back then. Baby boomers are very like I got everything figured out. Uh you know that kind of way. Gen Xers are kind of like that too. Millennials love training and coaching. You know what I mean? And Gen Z, they like eat it up. Yand they Yeah.

I want to be better tomorrow than I than I am today.

Yeah. So that's helped a ton. both getting older's help, but also I think the world has been opened their eyes to being just more open to training and coaching and new ways to do things. So, it was a grind, but I, you know, like anything else, I love to do it. I struggled for four months and Bill's like, "Look, man, if you if you can't close a deal this month, then you're not going to make it." And I closed my first deal. Bill helped me close my first deal, but I closed it and then it just sort of just kept going.

Was there like a specific industry or niche that you were looking at like starting in?

Not not particularly at the time. Um, that's changed now. So, I've got, you know, you get wiser, you get older. Um, I've gotten more we've gotten more niched um now, but back then it was really anyone who had a B2B sales team. So, it was sort of anybody.

And it wasn't blind zebra at the time.

No, it was just Picassi training. It was Bill's company. Yeah. And I did I did take a stint. One of my This happens in consulting. I'm sure you've seen this happen. Um, one of my clients hired me to come be their national sales manager. That happens, you know. So, I did that for a little four-ear stint, then went back with Bill.

Oh. Because they're like, "Oh, we love like the

Yeah, please come be our national sales manager. We want you inhouse." That sort of thing. I'm like, "All right, I'm going go try that." um and then did that for four years and then came back and then been doing this ever since.

If you had to pitch coaching like I I do think a lot of younger generation type people like understand why to have a coach, why to invest in coaching, but like sometimes I think the feedback is like oh why don't you come sell this like you know like why don't you do this like what would your pitch to leaders out there of why they need to invest in coaching and why just maybe individuals like oh I'm going to run a marathon I should get a marathon coach.

Yeah pitch has changed because we've changed the business. So we did for years is if you think of selling as process [clears throat] and magic blended um I quote an old friend uh Tom Cersei who's a sales coach here uh I think he quotes his dad saying that sales selling is 90% process and 10% magic and the training and coaching works on the magic part. It's what to say how to position what your take what your your ability to question handle objections deal with people build rapport all that stuff important. Okay. What I've learned over these years is that the process is where people lose more than the magic. They lose in the process.

So their training and coaching is like say this angle when they ask this ask this or you do a Sandler thing reverse them or do this thing or whatever. Where if you just do some very fundamental basic things like run an efficient process that's clear with with timebased steps to it and then calendared events that are accepted by others. It works if you follow our checklist that tells you exactly how to get a warm intro from someone on LinkedIn instead of trying to just figure out how to do it on your own. It works. It's a checklist. All our our processes now, it's called the blind zebra sales operating system.

It's just a series of checklist and process that people don't have. It's operational. There's no magic to it.

And how much of that too is like you think um the traditional like old school salesperson. It's like probably not that organized correct of like correct, oh, I'm out there, I'm making calls, I'm doing this, but like do you know who you called? Do you know how many and like how many how many outbound things do I need to put out there to get x amount of meetings set to get x amount like like I think building a like a pipeline and like actually tracking stuff was like game changer and it's like helped us over the last year. It is

and I think that's a piece of like people just

you don't know what you don't know. You show up and you start cold calling people and then eventually someone says yes and you're like okay well I'd love to meet but like having the the CRM type the the pipeline the the organization is super important.

Yes. and the detailed organization so everyone knows like oh I got to build my pipeline but that our system literally tells you step by step how to do it in a warm way with all these metrics there's a book called traction by Gino Wickman EOS so we run on this EOS model that's where I got the idea for the operating system EOS is a generic version nonfunctional to a business to help them grow with structured processes

and I'm going through this certification to become you know to get to run on EOS and I'm like oh my gosh I have this for selling I just don't have it organized right so in the whole year of20 23 I hired an instructional designer and we sat down and we built this thing and now we're certifying coaches to take our system and then deploy it into their org.

Where did uh Blind Zebra like where did that like take its launch?

I had just gotten the call to go into the NFL and I was still partners with Bill and I was just having an itch to do something different than what we were doing and I'm like you know so Bill and I had you know tough conversations. It's like a I always say it's like a bad like a friendly divorce like you get you know your business partner and you split up. It suck kind of sucks. We still have the podcast. We're still friends. We still do the podcast.

It's great. But I just wanted to put my own brand in it and I wanted to put the referee stuff in the brand. So in 2014, I just got in the NFL. I'm like, "Wow, how could I say like refining in a brand?" So I wrote down, I was at Hubard and Cravens at 49th in Penn here in Indie. I take a little piece of paper, I go nouns, adjectives.

I'm going like nouns, blue, ump, you know, and I get to zebra. I'm like, okay. And then I get to the adjectives and it's like a-hole, you know, you can't say I'm in a brand. But then I got the blind zebra. I'm like blind zebra that's kind of clever. Yeah.

So in 2014 we launched Blind Zebra. Um and then we put the brand. We put the yellow for the flag, the BZ, the logo. Just kind of all search. So now we [clears throat] have this like cool fun playful brand that also invites a story. So if you if you know, you know.

And if you don't know, you're like, "Where'd you come up with the name Blind Zebra?" And then I got to explain like, "Oh, I guess."

Wait, you've been to the Super Bowl? Like that's pretty cool, right? Yeah. You're instantly just like have rapport there. [laughter] Um [clears throat] I think that's that's super cool. So, was it hard to balance your 19-year-old goal of making it to a Super Bowl?

Yeah.

With the like growing a business, growing a family, like doing all these like how did you manage that?

Yeah. I didn't I didn't. No, I suffered. Yeah. My marriage uh fell apart. My doing it was really tough. It's hard on my kids. It's scars that they'll, you know, they'll have their whole lives that I'll have my whole life. Um worked really hard, but it just did didn't make it. So, that was a that's a casualty of that. It was hard. And then you know you have the shrap and all that with like you lose friends and you lose it's it was it was a tough thing to do. Uh time away from family just in general too like you know together or not. It's like every weekend I'm gone. Now your family gets used to that thing.

Um and you just don't have the time that you have that other people you know that don't do things like that have with their family and that sort of be super intentional about things.

Everyone like Friday night Cathedral football game and then Saturday they're going up to Notre Dame to like tailgate or whatever and it's like

catching a plane 6 a.m. out of India. [clears throat] Ames Island.

Totally. I'm flying. Yeah, I'm flying to Minnesota to, you know, rough a Vikings game. I get home at midnight on Sunday night and then I grind and get up the next morning. Now, system and structure, I have this little cheeky phrase that um discipline creates freedom. Discipline creates freedom.

So, my structure around my calendar and all the things I do with EOS and our operating system allow me to be super hyperproductive and really short stints of time that are calendared. And so, it creates space on my calendar. So, Mondays are buffer days for me. So, I'll come home, ease into it, you know, stretch out a little bit because I'm really tight. You know, my legs hurt now that I'm old after an NFL game. Even though I don't run as much as the players, I still run a lot.

And, uh, I've got a really good system now. And then I'm really intentional to give my kids the experience to bring them along. My three boys are all getting a referee's license. Um, we're going to be refing our first game together. Actually, we're going to rough a game together. Yeah.

Cathedral.

Yeah. The first Yeah, [clears throat] freshman game. Freshman game. But still, it's could pretty cool.

It's not Make sure it's not the game. We don't even never would [laughter] I do that.

There we go. That's that's awesome. That has to be a very fulfilling like moment.

Can't even tell you.

It's like because this has been your passion and I think that a lot of people are probably like, "Dude, you're crazy. Like why would you go?" Cuz to get to the NFL, like it's cool when you make it to the Super Bowl. It's cool when you make it to the NFL, but like to get there, you probably had to do some like Indiana State games on a Saturday in

Ter. Oh my god. How about Duggar Seager? Seager versus Duggar over in the You know what I mean? Like a section. They they play by the pickup truck. They back the pickup truck, you know, to the fence to watch the high school game. You know, I remember like it was yesterday. So, you know, you're getting 40 bucks.

See your Patriots, baby. Come on.

It's a thing. You You did right. So, you know, it's it's a thing. And and all all of us in the NFL especially have got those memories. You got 14 years of

How do you How are you good at being a ref? Like, how do you advance?

This goes to anything. You play the piano. You Everything's the same to me with this formula. Yeah. You start off with what what your goal like what do you want to accomplish with this thing? are a lot of really good refs who only want to do high school ball.

Perfect. There are some that only want to do small college, some want to get to the Big 10, someone to get to the NFL, and someone want to get to the Super Bowl. So, you start there, and then you base your behavior and your activity around what that thing is. So, if you want to be a really good high school ref, you go to the high school meetings, you study the high school rule book, and that's it. If you want to be a college ref, you do that, you add that, and you just work. And man, I was hellbent on the Super Bowl.

Um, all of it was driven by the the relationship I had with my my little league and high school coaches. It all goes back to the pain I had with my relationship with my dad. That's where it all starts. So, the motive internally is super strong. It wasn't like I liked football. This is fun.

It wasn't that. It was much deeper than that. Not always conscious, but always deeper. And then you just do the thing. You trust in the in the process. I know it's cliche and you say that.

You say, "Would you coach wrestling or anything?" You trust and usually works out. Well, here's the piece that I think that is interesting that as I've like seen and started building something and like or is it trying to advance your career? A lot of times it starts it's like you just expect like oh if I make good calls all of a sudden like I'm going to get the call from the NFL. But how much of it is like speaking as Yeah. like one day I want to make it to the Super Bowl and like putting that out there going and doing all the things and people know then and that like helps more opportunities open their door

for sure. Yeah. It's all of those things. It's the what you can, it's very cliche, what you can control part and then there's the visualization part. That's the kind of the woo part of that. All those things working together. Um I always talk about um back to you don't start a business for yourself. So the refining isn't about me. It's about it. It's about the game. The game's going to carry on way after Brian Neil hangs up his, you know, referee cleat and his whistle. It's going to keep going. And it's a great game. And it brought me so much joy and so much happiness and really healed me a bunch as a kid. So it it it is way not is not about me. And then you work your ass off to be as good as you can at that thing that you are uh task to do. And then it's literally minute-by-minute play by play.

What year did you get into the NFL?

2014.

Same year you started Blind Zebra.

Yeah, exactly.

How is growing a business while also like achieving like a part of your dream? How do you balance those two? like

how do you grow a team if like you're having slow Mondays and are out on you know like [clears throat] that seems hard.

It's it is it's very hard. Um the good the good part is they're both aligned at a deep level like I'm feel very aligned like so when you this is dorky but when you love what you do it doesn't feel like work. It just doesn't it so my blind zebra never really felt like work. Keynote speaking doesn't feel like work. Podcasting doesn't feel like work and refering football doesn't feel like work. It's busy and it's hard.

It's not always perfect, but I love I just really really enjoyed doing it. And it was wasn't a passion either. It wasn't like I'm passionate about refereeing. Like no one's passionate about refereeing. It's just there's more to it than that. But I just love the job.

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Yeah.

To, you know, your mission was to get to the Super Bowl. And having a mission and having a passion like don't always they don't aren't always the same thing. Like I think that is a really interesting piece because nowadays a lot of it follow your passion. I'm on a mission. I always say that like I'm on a mission to promote the state of Indiana. Like am I passionate about every small town that no one has ever heard of?

Like I don't know. Not always but I'm on this mission and like my mission takes me into Duggar takes me into Linton. I get to go check out the miners at Linton Stockton High School. And then it's like you find these interesting things because this is the mission that I've set out and it's important to me that if I said that I'm on this mission that I'm going to achieve this mission. How would you talk about that? There are people out there maybe they have kids that are pursuing their passions of like those those overlapping circles of just passion and like having a mission and a goal and like conquering it.

The passion thing, I don't know. It's just flat for me. It's too wooish. It's to to me it creates this this thing like oh my god Nate gets up every day and loves his job and these you know flowers and doves fly around. It's not it's a freaking grind. It's a grind. It's really hard work. You're not passionate maybe about sees. You didn't you know you didn't wake up like God the you know most high school overtimes ever in the history of Indiana high school basketball sees Indiana peace and plenty little restaurant there like that. But then it's cool when you go do it. So you get on this so you carry something. if all you did was pursue your passion. If all I did was pursue my passion, like I would just be like making funny videos or whatever, but it wouldn't have taken me to all these the places that my mission takes me. And then you uncover these new things.

And I think that like

a lot of times I think that especially this my like I'm I'm 28 like a younger generation here is like yes, do what you're passionate about every day and like there's not that much growth that happens if you do what you like all the time.

Totally. You got to press it. Yes. and just the grind even like you you know my boy you know of course you go to I go to the 500 every year a huge huge fan like hey Nate's first guy in the Indy500 this year first guy in the infield my boys are like hey you know this guy Nate Spangle like yeah I know Nate I know him really well but yeah that drives you that's a hard work that's a hard job you got to go get a thing but you set out to do it and you did it like first guy here right we did it two years in a row now it's like it's always cool it's a fun story to tell what's not fun is sleeping in your truck from 11 to 6 a.m. Awful. It's awful. It's no fun. Um, okay. What I do want to talk about is one, you've been podcasting since 2006.

What What was the reason behind that? And and what do you have to say about like persevering through I mean 19 years of that?

We had a radio show on WX&T 14:30 here. It's now a sports show or sports station was a talk station. It was on Saturdays. Bill and I, Bill Cassie, I business 360. Nobody listens to radio noon to 1 Saturday. lowest rated hour of all seven days, even like middle of the night.

But they gave us the air for free. So like we and I was a radio geek in high school. So there's a thing called Explorers Club. It's like an offshoot of the Boy Scouts. We had an Radio's Explorers Club when I was in high school and I was in it. Um there's a sports guy in town named Dave First who was the sports director at Channel 6.

He and I had these things called Mr. Microphones back in the 70s and 80s they had where you could actually broadcast via a guy with a a radio. next next to you. It brought it was like old school Bluetooth. We used to broadcast our high school basketball games. I loved radio.

I couldn't do the radio show anymore with Bill. Bill comes to me and says, "Hey, there's this thing called podcasting. Have you heard of it?" I'm like, "No." He's like, "Basically, it's a radio show for iPods." I'm like, "Okay, let's try it."

So, we bought a couple microphones. We went into the conference room and just recorded a show. We made it up, Advanced Selling Podcast. We just called it what it was. And we just loved doing it and we just enjoyed doing it.

How many How many episodes a week?

I think we're one a week. One a week. One 15-minute episode a week. comes out every Monday and has for 19 and a half years or 18 and a half years. It'll be 19 years in September. And um we just love it and I can look back and go, you know, does it pay a little bit? Yeah. Uh over 20 years, have I made like a positive return on it? No. I just love doing it. Has it helped support a brand like Blind Zebra or sales coaching or keynote speaking? For sure. Is it good karma giving back? It's great karma. I feel so clean. Now, what's interesting I do I just like we give a lot of free stuff. It's still funny, too, how people will complain about a podcast that's free. I don't know if you ever get that. It's It's unbelievable. I'm like like you need to shorten the rant up a little bit in the beginning. I'm like, why don't you just press the plus 30 second three times and get It's just funny. Anyway,

oh gosh, [laughter] there's one thing the internet is full of. It is people with opinions.

It's so funny, isn't it? So, um, we just love doing it. Now, now the other thing though, these days, we don't, nobody knows yet what libraries of content are going to be worth. So, right now, podcasts are valued at your ad revenue times a multiple. And it's just starting to say, "What's the show worth?" Well, we do this, you know, $100,000 in revenue and it's worth two times that. So, 200 grand, you can sell it to someone or buy a network, buy it. But I believe there's going to be value in the library over time. I think people are going to say, "Boy, we could take this library because podcast is on demand. So you can listen to my show episode from September of 2006 right now on the app, you know, pull it right up. But I can't advertise something 19 years old, but I can with ad insertion, dynamic ad insertion, things like that. So

that's going to be an interesting thing. I think it's going to be worth something

like like like the collection like see a lot of like musicians selling their catalog.

Yes. I don't think we're going to get, you know, the $300 million that John Legend or someone like that get, but you know, it's going to be worth something. Somebody would love to have a library of content is my opinion. You know the other thing that I see people buying content to train AI models.

Oh,

people have asked so like from a creator perspective like so let's say I go to Linton and we make a 90 second video. The other you know there's 25 minutes of content. Yeah.

There are people that will buy the B-roll to train their AI.

And I like I I had heard about it and I like didn't really pursue it because I was like I don't want like if things start going crazy I don't want them to know my face. [laughter] Like

but I do think that's a good that's a good thought. So how many episodes over the 19 years? We're over,00 I think. Something like that. Yeah.

Okay. Talked about the growth of a podcast.

Yep.

Like at first, you know, you dropped out your first 100 episodes. How many people listen?

I love and I love I love teaching people how to podcast and I do it for free. I'll I'll teach anybody wants to come on my studio and shadow me. We got someone shadowing us here today. It's great. Anybody I I'll show you the equipment, all the stuff that we use. My mark is always the 20 episode mark. You got to get to the 20 episode. You said there's a fall-off Nate at five also. So whatever the stats are 50% or 80 get to five episodes because so many times what I see it's like people don't get to five because they put their first two episodes out and they realize no one listens.

Nobody listens. Nobody listens and no one's going to listen for a while and that's not the point. The point is consistency. The silver bullet silver BB, whatever call it is just consistency. I don't want to oversimplify it, but that's what it is. And you don't worry about vanity stats. You don't worry about listens and downloads or anything. Just keep putting them out. I Here's a little trick to get past the five. I tell people, so no one knows step one of podcasting. If I said to you, "What's the first step of podcast?" What would you say? It's a test. First step,

well, what I would say,

first step. First step, I want to start a podcast. What's the first thing I should do, Nate? What would you say?

I would say record your first five episodes.

It's good. I'm going to go before that. First thing you do is you go to Amazon. You type in podcast starter kit and hit buy now. And then and your podcast starter kit's 80 bucks and it'll show up at your door. Then you got the equipment. Now you got this equipment sitting there going, "Okay, I've just taken a a step toward my thing."

Well, now it's there. I gota I gotta unwrap it and figure out how it works.

That is so crazy you just said that. So when Guy Roz came to town for Rally, um I was still working at Powder Kick at the time and I got to do two minutes at the end with Guy.

Oh, awesome.

And I literally said, "What would you say to the people that have their that have the podcast, the mic and the all the stuff in their Amazon cart but haven't pressed buy yet?"

[laughter]

And like he gave like the he said just do it and realize his I think his exact phrase was it the first episode is only going to be listened to by your grandma and her cat. But then like you just keep moving forward.

That's it. It's all you do. So the other little trick is once you get the equipment then you do I now I love your next step. You got to do a little mechanics like what's the show about? Who's the target audience? The length all that jazz. Then record a show. What's great about podcasting is if you you know don't like the episode just don't release it. Um now here's the other part of that. What do most people say? They don't like to do podcast. What do they not like about themselves?

What do they say? They don't like to hear their own voice. And I tell people then you should never speak ever again because it's exactly how you sound. That's exactly how you sound. You don't sound that way to you, but to the rest of the world, it's exactly how you sound. Or video. Like, I don't want to do videos, man. I don't like how I look. I'm like, well, that's how you look. So, you should probably just stay in the basement, never see anyone. Yeah. So, get over that.

And then, um, record six episodes before you ever release one. record six, then release one a week. Now, drip it out and then stay ahead of it. The other thing then is the recording time. Like you have this time slot. I have Monday, every other Monday from 9 to 10, you will see Bill Casky and Brian Neil recording two episodes of the Events Lang podcast. Every other Monday for eternity. And that's gold. You cannot overschedu that thing. Don't go over it. Don't push.

Yeah. really after the beginning of this year is where we really started to get some momentum and like a lot of people were listening to the show. We like quadruple our listens the start of 2025 and I was like, "Oh, I need to record more and more and more." And I was recording mornings, afternoons, four or five days a week. Like it was and I like

was starting to have the feeling that I wasn't giving everyone like the greatest exper like it wasn't like, "Oh, you get my full attention because I'm already thinking about what I have to ask in this afternoon." And then I was like, "Okay, we're going to record Tuesdays, Wednesdays, Thursdays from 10:00 to 11:30." And like that's that's when we record. And like every now and again I might do a fun one in the afternoon because it's like we're cracking a few beers and hanging out and it's like a little bit of a but that's like more for me. Like that one's like just a fun one that I want to do. Like I want to do them all, but like that one's like, "Oh, I invite like a a brewery in and we just like drink a few beers and hang out." But I think like having the schedule and the system is huge.

And realize this is the piece that I think gets a lot of people. If every other Monday you and Bill were were out on the corner in Broadripple Yeah. and seven people showed up every other Monday to listen to you talk for 15 minutes.

Like would you keep doing it?

Oh my god. Be great if Yeah.

Yeah. Hell yes.

Early on like seven people will listen. I know.

15. Imagine when you get to 100. If you showed up every other Monday and a hundred people gathered in person to listen to you rant.

Oh my gosh. I'd feel like I'd feel so famous.

Who wouldn't give Exactly. give us a perspective of how long it took to feel like you had meaningful listenership on a podcast.

Well, we got 10,000 downloads. That's a you know, that's not technically a listen, but you know, you can there's a stat there. 10,000 downloads. The first time we passed that, I'm like, God, 10,000 downloads. That's a lot of people.

And then when it started to click up that I remember getting 40 one time, I'm like, get like 10,000 a week. And then, you know, you got to watch yourself now. You're like, dang, like I'm getting famous here. Yeah. You know what I mean? Meanwhile, yeah, Joe Rogan's getting, you know, four billion.

What year?

See, 06 to 10, 11, 12, kind of in that range. Here's here was the biggest thing that that shock here's the thing that I went. So, we started a LinkedIn group early for the podcast. I had a business gig in England. Nothing fancy. I went to this place.

I got to be careful now because it was the Get Indiana podcast, but I usually use a town. They say it's kind of like going to this town. I'm not going to say the town. You guys can all guess. It wasn't fancy, but I sent a note. I went through the whole podcast group and everyone that was from the UK, England, Ireland, anywhere, I said, "Hey, I'm gonna be on the back end of my work gig at the Intercontinental Hotel at Heithro airport and anyone that wants to show up at 6:00.

I'll buy a beer for you." 18 people showed up in England that knew me from the podcast. I was like, "What is going on here?" That's when I'm like, and and it was weird because now it's weird. People meet you and you're like famous. like my kids.

Nate Spangle is famous to my kids and you're there. I can't speak for you, but I don't speak for me. I'm like, I'm not famous. I'm just be Neil from Newberg. Like there's nothing fancy here.

And that's the key. That's the key I think. Um so like I have like a a whole thing where it's like

one I'm the same person that you're going to meet on the podcast in online video. Like I yap about Indiana like all day long non-stop. like whether whether you're like consuming the content or you're hanging out with me, like you're going to learn about a high school mascot or whatever. And I always do something like that where it's like, "Oh, where you from? New Hubert." I go, "Castle high school." Yeah. And I say, "Go Nights." Love it.

Cuz like I mean that's is like one of the things that got pretty popular early on was like going on this mission to learn all the high school mascots in Indiana because it's like such a weird niche thing that a normal person would never do.

How about Odin?

I know that that's the meat lacker down here.

Is it? Oh, it was the the Blue Jeans. The Odin Blue Jeans. It's their old mascot. Check that out. Fact check me on that. Go to fact check me the [clears throat] Odin blue jeans. See if that's their mascot. That's a fun one.

No way. The blue now. They're the Bulldogs.

They're the Bulldogs. Did they used to be the blue jeans ever?

We'll find out.

Either way, I always thought they were blue jeans.

The blue jeans.

The Odin blue jeans.

Uh that's like northeast boys. They were fighting Jeeps.

Oh yeah. Yeah. Oh, the Jeeps.

They're the Jeeps. It's like this little man. I could D up about high school Mong. Okay. So, but that was how many years into the podcast? Were you could get 18 physical people? um that had to be like uh six or seven I think. And here's the thing, podcasting got more popular in Europe and Australia than it did in America early on. It the listenership was higher outside of the US. That's kind of cool back then. So, it was forward thinking. And the other cool thing was you had this connection to these people that you never would had a connection for.

It was fantastic. And some of them I still keep in touch with. It's just it's just wild.

And I just think 19 years like you have to just persevere. Just keep going. Like it's literally all you

maybe check like I don't know sometimes it's like you don't even want to check the metrics until you get to 100 episodes.

Obviously if it's a business for you you got to pay attention to your stats just from a KPI standpoint down the road. But for most people it's not their core business. So I use it we we teach people to use it for you know giving good karma number one. Number two is you can use it for access. So you can get you can get access to people you know this way easier with a podcast than you can if you like cold call. No one ever No one ever you email CEO come on my podcast they're never like maybe one out of every hundred say how many people listen to

no they they go oh yeah oh yeah everyone wants to be famous

everybody just for a little bit and they just love being on a podcast it's just different it's fun you get to share your story maybe you know give someone

and like they can then share out like they have like a a recording they have this piece of like their story that they hand like I still say some of my best shows are not the ones that I've hosted when I've been a guest Y cooking

like it's just magical. So obviously buy that like I kind of want to start a podcast. I've always thought about it but I just haven't done it. Like what would you say? Why why podcast?

Yeah. So that's what that's where I go first when I'm teaching people. So you buy the equipment first. That's step one. Step two is then I take them through this process. So you first have to answer your own question.

Why do I want to do a podcast? And I will tell people like do you want to make money with it? Is it a hobby for you? You just want to have some fun? Do you want it for access? Or do you want it to catalog content for you to repurpose for other things?

And it can be multiple of those things, but those are the four primary buckets that you would use. Just do it for fun, do it for money, uh, use it to get access, or use it to catalog content. Again, could be all four of those, could be one or two or three of four, but you got to get clear on that. Then you do have to structure the show a little bit and say, okay, what what's, you know, who's my target audience? How long is it? Is it an interview show or am I carrying the show?

Is it a guru show? Sort of thing. Um, and then I get my recording times. Now, now I get the, you know, the equipment and the editing you can do on, you know, you can do it on Fiverr. I I always say you can, you can get a high school kid from North Central High School and pay him a bag of Doritos and a 2 liter of Mountain Dew and they'll edit your podcast. You know what I mean?

It's hard. Yeah. Uh, and I think a lot of it is if you have a personality, which I feel like you do, of like, I'll just rip it. Like, we'll figure it out.

Right. It's like, oh, I don't like just put it out there. The the world will steer me where I need to go.

Totally. And people will I believe this too about podcasting. So the big the big genres obviously true crime is a huge genre huge. We and one of the best podcasts ever and people you know lives right or works right up the street from us right here. So that's read they read the true crime p they're typed and read like read like a book. Okay.

All the this kind of stuff and my stuff we want authenticity. We want the ums and ost train of thoughts and things because that humanizes you and you're in someone's ear. You're in their AirPods.

You want them to like I know this guy 100 percent. And I and I and they feel like I hope that and I'm the same like you. If if we were, you know, getting a beer at, you know, at the Bulldog and they came like, "Are you Nate? Are you Brian Neil?" Like, "Yeah, sit down." Like it's the same thing they just heard. Like I was just listening to you guys. And I'm like, "What were we listening to?" It's like the same thing. I that's my favorite thing to do also is just like when they because you can get feedback about like what do you like? What should I change? What's different? And okay, so this is actually and then we can can shift off of podcasting. The other piece that I think has been a cheat code is

people are stingy with an hour like 15 minutes is a good time but like 90 seconds on a real like when you clip something like that's how

the younger generation are listening to their podcast%.

It's like they see a Theovan clip they see a Joe Rogan clip and they're like oh I listen to Theo. It's like, well, you listen to him for 90 seconds like one time a day on the clips, but like uh and there's like whole businesses and whole like people make $100,000 you're just clip farming just like watching Joe Rogan and clipping it out and putting it on TikTok and now they can make money. It's crazy. It's awesome.

But like

getting your video and like putting that out into the world

and every I don't know. I don't It's like if you're not willing to put it on your Instagram, then like don't even start it, you know? Like

no,

you got to be willing to own the brand a little bit. We call it inflated self-importance. Inflated self-importance. You think that you're gonna put something up and everyone's gonna give a about that. Like, no one's gonna care. You're not that important. You know what I mean? They're just going to blow by you. It's not like you're going to put something up and you put a video on LinkedIn like, "Oh my god, did you see Nate's video on LinkedIn?" Shut it down. Deffriend. Like, unless, you know, there's some certain subjects that you don't want to steer, but steer clear of those and who cares? They're going to fly right by you.

Think about the last time you like saw that video and was like, "Oh my gosh,

never. I'll deffriend." like

what was the uh I think I saw maybe Jesse or someone put it out where it was like uh at 20 at 24 I was worried about what other people thought and then at at 30 I didn't care what other people thought and at 40 I realized no one was thinking about me anyway

the whole time the whole time no one cares they just don't care

dude u I do want to talk through like specific okay so obviously you've been coaching sales for a long time let's say there are people out there one of the key things to starting a business that people have told me for years and that I really gravitated towards was learn how to sell.

Yeah.

You know, like whether it's selling your vision to employees like as a kind of the HR function, you're recruiting people over or you're obviously selling and bringing in revenue, you're retaining, you're keeping your customer, like selling is important.

Yes.

What are a few of these basic lessons maybe like some quick hitters that you could teach people that like I mean we're one year into our business. I don't know anything like I don't know nearly as much as I could know but like if you want to one get your business from zero to you know get to your first million dollars in sales and selling things

uh you need to operate from a set of guiding principles first and they need to be codified they need to be written down here so we have 10 guiding principles the first three uh e and we stole them it's not like we made them up abundance detachment and attention there's an abundant market I'm detached from outcomes and I have clean intention I try to help other people and that's my corest foundation in my gut I have to have those codified I can't be like, "Oh, you know, we always try to do a good job and you meander around them." No. Abundance, attachment, attention. Clear. Boom. That's number one.

Number two, you have to have a written plan. Sounds cheesy and hokey. I know. Our plans are six-month plans. They come with both outcomes and behaviors. There are commitments to yourself, not to others.

So, we don't plan, we don't business plan in our sales operating system for our boss. We plan for us. And so, if you took everything away from me, I've got my plan in front of me. this is who I'm after and this is the behavior I'm committing to do that thing to get those those deals. And then another part of that then is connectors and we have those listed by name. You need to list connectors by name.

I didn't learn this is a great I didn't learn this till I was like 32. Um there's a company here called Harding Porman. It's a big printing company. Dave Harding and Bob Porman. Bob Porman was one of my bis best mentors and he taught me this. People want to help other people and your friends want to help you and your business friends want to help you.

You've got to leverage connectors in an active um direct way. You can't just like put stuff out and expect people to like show up. And you don't have to go cold to people. You can go warm to people through people that you know. And so I always tell people start if you want to get to a million bucks, don't think about you always think about le leverage. Don't think about you know getting to um you know a hundred $10,000 sales.

Find people that one person that can get you to 40 of them and introduce you and do it warm. That is the trick. That's the trick, the leverage trick. Most people want to go cold, 20 calls a day, you know, 50 calls a day. I'm like, how about I have uh a breakfast and a lunch and each of those two people introduce me to 10 other people. So, I worked for two hours, but I got 20 introductions and they're warm and they're already trusted.

They won't all say yes or meet with me, but the odds go way up.

That is a good frame to think about it.

Um because people do at their core want to help.

Absolutely. and asking your friend or like a mentor or a peer or someone in your circle to help you get because they'll be listening for you and they'll be hearing it and they're like, "Oh yeah, you should meet with so and so." Like or they can hear like with someone that has a problem that you solve.

That's it. That's it. Make an entry. You know, the other piece uh this was this was like something that I picked up of like the modern way and and I've

you know, we've gotten you know, lots of followers and stuff like that now. So, like I put out a an Instagram story. Yeah. Yeah,

that was like just spent just spent one hour sending cold email like please respond to my emails.

Two people respond. I sent 100 emails in an hour or whatever it was. Two people responded.

20 people responded to the Instagram story saying, "Send me your deck."

Right?

And so it's like when people see it in public and they know what you're doing and like they see you building this thing, they want to help.

They do. They really really do. It's karmic. I'm telling you. And people don't they they get in their own way with that. They think, "Well, Brian's really busy. I don't want to bother him. I I get validated when people ask me for help. If I sit there by myself and no one asks for my help, I start to feel like I'm not worth anything. Like, well, no one needs my help anymore. But when people say, "Hey, man, can you introduce me to that person or this person?" I'm like, "Yeah, sure. Go ahead."

The the final piece before we get into the lightning round that I want to talk through is building the space as an adult to fail, to try new things, to learn, and to like seek out curiosity. Yeah.

So, you in the '90s got your private pilot's license,

obviously. you know, the NFL referee official, like that whole piece.

Uh, as well as music and specifically the piano. Yes. Like you've literally, we talked about it in the beginning, but you bring piano into your keynote.

Yes. Keynotes into the keynotes.

Keynes. It was very impressive. Very impressive.

I didn't even plan that one. Sometimes you're just

best kind. I mean, it's good. Um so talk to us about the importance for adults to give themsel that creative outlet and to get to you know pick up music or or sports or running or whatever it might be.

So I love this question. Um and when I go do keynote talks this is the my theme of keynote talks is called the first domino. And this is where people fail. People don't fail at the planning thinking followth through. They fail more at the failure to start than the failure to continue. Most people think, well, I don't want to, they don't want to start it cuz they're afraid they'll they'll not continue.

Then they feel like that's failure. To me, failure is not starting. So Tony Robbins talks about taking is one of his things. Take massive action. I don't totally agree with that. I think you should take it bitty action.

You should take the easiest first step to get going in anything. So an example would be I want to play the piano. I already gave the answer away. So if I have a piano, I'm good. If I don't, I need to go buy a keyboard. So I go to Amazon.

I type in starter keyboard. It'll be 80 bucks. It'll be cheap, but it's a keyboard. Hit buy now and it'll be there tomorrow. So now you've got a keyboard. You plug it in.

The next thing you do is you go to Google and you type in piano for beginners or piano playing how to play the piano for I've never played before. Tell it like you do chatbt. Tell it what's going on. And there'll be a billion videos in less than a second right in front of you. And you hit play on one of them and someone's gonna go, okay, so you want to play the piano. Well, here's the first step.

There's 88 keys and you know this one right here is where it starts. It's a C and it's next to these two black keys. And then and then and here's how you and you just start and then you just go. When I give a keynote speech, I I do this. I call it first domino. I I'll do I'm not going to give away all I do.

But one of the things I I I did for the first time was I someone in a crowd of 600 people that wanted to learn how to play the piano. I' never done this before. Worked. Thank God. I brought her up on stage. I'm like, "You ever play piano for him?"

I'm like, "No, I'm going to teach you how to play piano right in front of all these people." We played Lean on Me and then all of a sudden the crowd started singing lean on me when you I was like, "What is happening first?" Exactly. But it's real easy to play and I just taught her and I was right there with her and then she can never not do that. You can't fail is the point. You fail by not starting.

You can't fail by starting. You cannot fail by starting. That's the mental shift that has to go.

And then it's just taking those first steps and then just doing it

once you do it the first time. Like there are a lot of people in the world that are really good at starting like that first one cuz it's fun and it's new and it's exciting, you know, like buying the piano and playing for 20 minutes or whatever, but like day two it just gets progressively harder to keep picking up to like

ever get to any sort of mastery.

So where's the balance between like just being the person that's like a constant starter but never like a finisher or even like a continuer? Yeah.

Uh what would you say there? What's the advice?

Back to the the original question of what's my why? So, I heard the word mastery. So, I'd never have said I want to master the piano. I don't fly anymore. I got my I wanted to get my pilot's license and I didn't. I didn't want to become a proficient commercially licensed pilot or anything. I didn't want to fly stunt planes. I don't want to fly instrument rating. I wanted to get my pilot's license and I did and that's it. So, it starts with that. What do I want to do? Not everything has to be mastery. If I want to start running, I don't have to run a mini marathon. I just want to be able to run two miles at any one point in time in my life. That's all I ever want. So, I just learn how to get to that point. So it starts with the definition of what you want that thing to be start with. See what I mean?

That's that's really smart because a lot of times even whether it's podcast content could be running piano. It's like oh I want to learn how to play Lean on Me. Like that's the first notch, the first goal. And once you get there then you're like, you know what, I would like to play like a couple more songs. Cuz too often people get like I want to I want to learn to play the piano. So they think they have to be Beethoven.

Yes.

I w to start a podcast. They think they have to be Joe Rogan. Right. I want to post on Instagram. and they think they have to be Ashley Flowers and have 500,000 followers, you know, and it's like, well, you get too lost in trying to be bigger than what you are that you never even get to a thousand followers

or never get to a 100 listens.

Yes.

Or you never get to learn to play one song because you're too busy trying to play the all seven conertos or whatever.

That's it. You just don't and that's not required. That being a master at something I start is not required. That's that's a decision that you make. Uh, being able to play Lean on Me at a party is really cool and fun. People like, "Can you play anything else?" You're like, "Nope, I just play Lean on Me." That was awesome. You know,

he was the king of this. One time per night, uh, every night we'd have a fraternity party. He would play the office theme song, right?

And he'd get so fantastic. And then he goes from there and his only other song was Chopsticks.

That's it. Nothing else. But you, everybody that you knew and knew him remembers him as the guy who could play the theme to the office on the piano. every one of them could. And

they would say like, "Yeah, Don plays piano."

Totally. Exactly.

Yeah. He plays like, "Well, he's not very good. He only play." No one says that. Well, he's not very talented or he plays, you know, he plays the office thing, but not very well.

So, chopping that up. So, chopping these goals and just like what you did where it was like, I'm going to get to I'm going to be a high school ref and then I'm going to get to the state championship, the Big 10, the national championship, the Super Bowl. And you make it if you would have just set out from the beginning and only said like I'm going to get I want to be a Super Bowl ref like you wouldn't have taken the steps in between.

Correct. It had to Yeah. The things in between even like let's let's take back to piano playing a little bit. Maybe you want to play a certain song. Now I I can read music for trumpet but I can't read music for piano. If you put piano sheet music in front of me it's absolutely foreign to me. I have no idea. I know where the notes are and stuff. I just play chords. But I wanted to be able to play chords to any song. So now what I'm starting to do is I'm learning like new chords. like I'm like I'm interested in kind of like jazz chords. I don't really understand them well. So I'm using Tik Tok and YouTube to do how I learned the other ones.

The other thing I I think that we could put two things together here. Let's say you have a new skill. Yeah.

Whether it's running, whether it's piano, it could be anything. Time bound

like hey 15 minutes once a week I'm going to spend with YouTube in front playing the piano or I'm going to run 20 minutes twice a week.

Like give yourself this and it's like it is like a non-negotiable thing. It's like I'm putting the I'm gonna have my computer out and it's just going to be on YouTube. I'm not texting. I'm not I'm just giving this the time and it's every Monday afternoon.

Yes. Your calendar tells you everything

and or even one step crazier. If you want to make sure you hold yourself accountable,

spend the whatever it is on three months worth of piano lessons like once a week.

If you have an investment in it, you're going to make something happen. If you have a run club, like you're going to show up for Run Club. That's

it.

Interesting.

Yeah. you record yourself playing piano. I say, "Okay, Nate's gonna be my uh my piano u accountability partner." And so I'm gonna uh learn to play these three chords and I'm gonna voice memo them, which is totally free on your phone. Voice memo. I'm going to send it to you every Thursday night. Let you hear where I'm and I'm just, you know,

that was the biggest thing. Like I I'm just really big like on uh fulfilling your word. Like you want to keep your word to people, right? And so it was like when I told my friends we were doing an Iron Man, like we all agreed on it and it was like I remember it was

we trained it was a New Year's resolution and we did the Iron Man in April.

You did an Iron Man?

Yeah,

bro.

It was wild.

Intense.

I gave up my like a a large point of my life for those four months, but I remember one night in specific like I in the morning I had told my buddies like, "Oh yeah, we're all getting 10 miles." And it's one of those days where just life happens. Yeah.

And it was 10:00 p.m.

Wow.

It was 10. got home and they put in the group chat like hey I didn't see I didn't see your receipts like you didn't get 10 miles in

oh

and I was like I was literally typing like I'll do it tomorrow it's like no excuses and I literally went and got 10 miles in on the monon see

because I told my friends that I would do it

and they just held me accountable to it so shout out Bryce Andy the real

homies that's so imp I I don't know I've never done that but my friends that have that is like a that is one of the most amazing life accomplishments ever and it all started with an idea like we're going to do a marathon Iron Man

I I read this thing for let's say it's marathon or whatever it is like all these little fitness things or whatever. Yeah. More people

are millionaires than ever ran a marathon.

No kidding.

You are closer like if you just sitting there on your couch more people have made or have a million dollar net worth or whatever are millionaires than have finished a full marathon.

That's wild. Yeah,

because it's like less than 1% of the population.

What's what's the Iron Man version?

Oh gosh.

I can't imagine. I mean I have the needle stuff.

It's nuts. But it was fun. It was like one of those like seven like or whatever how many hours? 14 hours of pain and suffering, but you get the other side and [laughter] you're like, "Yeah,

it's done.

It's over." I did that.

Did you get ink?

Oh, no. I I finished it and I said, which like no offense to anyone out there has the Iron Man tattoo.

Yeah.

All respect cuz some people like that's their pinnacle. I said if this is the coolest thing I ever do in my life, I have failed.

You're No.

But like that's just cuz that's like I'm on to the next thing. Like that's what I'm here for. Amazing. We've come to the end of the show where we have a couple fun lightning round questions and just different things to talk through. The first one,

this question is brought to you by our friends at JC Hart. They're a leader in creating enjoyable living experiences at apartment communities all across Indiana and beyond. Check them out at homejart.com. My question for you, Brian, why do you call Indiana home?

It's where I was born and raised. Um, I go to lots of other cool places for the NFL for work. I travel a ton. I stay in nice hotels. I go to fun fancy places to eat and I go to cool. I went to fishing in Canada a few weeks ago and home is home. Nothing brings together um the people, community, hard work ethic, fun, enjoyable, all the things that hooers do. And this who's your hospitality, I know people like but it's a real thing. When you go places, people absolutely that have been here, they get it. They go it's a thing you can't describe until you experience it. And I'm never leaving. I love this place so much.

Bang. Okay. What's your go-to pumpup song before a big NFL game?

My daughter, Anna Neil. Hi, Anna. She makes a playlist for me every year. And she's uh 23, just graduated from college. That's one of our little things, fatherdaughter things. So, she makes a playlist. She she puts in like my music, a little bit of 80s and 90s and some rap for, you know, old school rap stuff. And then she puts in some new stuff uh that a younger generation would like. And it's like a tradition that we have. So,

that's really fun. Uh, it's got everything, but um, Knockk Knockock by Mac Miller would be [laughter] my fave, dude.

Oh my god, I love that song.

Okay, I like that. Uh, favorite Indiana comfort food.

Well, I'm going to go pork tenderloin, like Indiana wise. And then I'm repping my pizza king hat today. And I'm talking Pizza King Newberg only. Newberg pizza king stromboli.

Newberg pizza king stromboli.

Full stop. Stamp the tape. Newberg pizza king stromboli. If you know, you know. People that are from there know what I'm talking about. You get a Stromboli. Anywhere else in there. Pizza King. It's not the same. Newberg Pizza King. Stromboli.

That is a sick hat.

Stupid.

Where did you get that hat?

I I It's not that vintage. I wish it was.

United States of Indiana.

Oh, of course you did.

Of course I did.

Those guys rock.

They're so great, aren't they?

Oh, yeah. If you could refer anyone listening to one specific podcast episode that you've recorded, what would it be?

So, I did one called my interview with my favorite salesperson. and I interviewed my daughter when she was 9 years old and she was selling Girl Scout cookies. This is my favorite episode. The next best episode would be anything. If you go to a podcast app, Advanced Link podcast app, and you can search this, the podcast app is free and you type in the word abundance or detachment. Anything that talks about the the guiding principles is my favorite episode. Guiding principles. Abundance or detachment.

Yeah, I think that's good. I think detachment is a really like that one just resonates with me because being being cool to be like, "Yeah, I don't need this."

Yeah. like it it's not going to like you know

and they're going to say yes or no. It's just like we overthink these things in this

favorite NFL stadium to officiate in.

I love going to the iconic you know to a Green Bay type place or a Kansas City that has it kind of an iconic feel to it. The new Winds are shows you know what I mean? They're like really really big. I'm a real football pierce around college football though. Like I loved Penn State was my favorite place to go. just such a real collegiate football atmosphere. It's one of my bucket list things to take my kids to.

Yeah. Oh my gosh. Who's the hardest on the officials?

Oh, everybody's kind of the same. I mean, you know, it's it's like it's

like was there a time where you just got mfed like no other that that just like sticks out? Uh yeah, roughing uh sixth grade little league football in Bloomington, Indiana by the moms. I mean, let's call that what it is. That is the worst. I'm telling you, get chased out to my car.

Yeah, like you better watch out.

Totally.

Stripes blind zebra. Who's been the most influential mentor or the most influential coach to you? little league coach Tom Simpson who was um passed away and I've got a great story I tell about him when I do keynote speeches but he was just a guy that was a volunteer coach that just like treated me like his kid and I wasn't his kid he had his own two sons but he just um didn't know how much he meant to me and I didn't really know how much he meant to me till I was older and I got a chance to go visit him uh right before he passed away and tell him that face to face which is something I'd recommend everybody do um go see your Tom everybody's got to coach Tom

yeah absolutely well we have final two questions we asked everyone who sits in First one, what is a hidden gem in Indiana?

So, I got to go 812. I'm going south to my hometown. I'm going to give you like a little It's a tiny little like a I'm going to call it a little tour. Okay. We're going to go to the uh Evansville Nut Club, Westside Nut Club Fall Festival. The greatest food festival in the country. Second biggest behind Marty Gro. First week in October. Always go.

When I found out about this for the first time, I like I was like, "This is some kind of joke." The Westside Nut Club. Like what is it? It's huge.

How about it? It's huge. People have no idea. It's so worth the drive, especially these days with 69 coming from the middle of the state. It's so worth it.

And then while you're there, there's a place called the Hilltop Inn, which is one of the oldest continuing restaurants and and bars in Ev in in in Indiana, but also especially in Evansville. And you can go in there and get a um get a brain sandwich and a beer. Sounds crazy. Brain sandwich and a beer at the Hilltop in. If you know, you know. You're looking at me funny. And then you got to go to Newberg to Knob Hill and and have a fishbowl of beer and get fried fiddlers as we call them. Fried catfish.

Fried fiddlers.

That's my little

Wow, that's a good little a little like south southern Indiana tour. I like that. The Westside Nut Club fall festival. I get so many comments. Why haven't you been you gone to this festival? You gone. You got to come down there. And I think this is the year we're going to pull the trigger.

Good. I'll be there October 6 speaking at a quarterback club on Monday and I'm I'm taking some people. So you're going to be down there then. Maybe we'll do a a man on the street episode while we're down there.

We get some fiddlers.

Well, for sure we do that. We do. Yeah, we do a little video. I'd love to do that. I take you around town.

Come on. Uh, final question. This is how we get recommendations for new guests or just, you know, keep amazing Hoosiers uh out out and

shine [clears throat] some light on them.

Who's a Hoosier that we need to keep on our radar? Someone who's doing big things.

Bo Dietrich.

Bo,

you know Bo, right?

They are slinging the garage. I'm telling you what I love about uh what Bose's doing in Indie is he's he's he's taking forward thinking uh technology and humility and family name in what can be prescribed as a kind of a potential boring business. You know the things it's not like super fancy and has a culture like none other. And I got I've gotten a chance to spend some time with him. He's a client of ours. Huge huge fan of him.

And then I'm going to give you one more of someone that nobody's heard of, a kid named Leo Love. L Leonard Love. He's a salesperson. And Leo's one of the most coachable, most interesting humans in terms of like trying to roll to the next life path um that I've ever coached. Uh he sells for a company called Renovio, which a really great company, a commercial painting company here. But Leo Love, he's gonna he's buy I can't believe you said my name on the podcast, but great kid.

Um watch out for him. Watch out for Leo Love. Leonard Love. Go connect with them on LinkedIn.

I love that.

And just wait. The kids it get in for really, really big things.

Heck yeah. Brian, thank you so much for coming on, sharing your story from I mean getting to officiate at the Super Bowl. Yeah.

Right. Talk about all the fun stuff that you've done throughout the years of podcasting, of coaching. Uh this has just been a real treat and I appreciate you uh coming down the street a little bit and hanging out with us. Uh if people want to connect with you, if they want to learn more about speaking, all the engagements or how can they find you? Uh, you can send us an email. Bzsosblind-Zebra.com. You got to put the dash in there. I actually made up a jingle on my podcast. I go bzzosblind-z.com. bzzosblindber.com. When you do that, people will never forget it. So,

that's true.

That's that. So, you can email me and get a hold of me that way. Um, and then I'm a big LinkedIn junkie. So, please, anyone listening, LinkedIn and give me a note that you heard me on on on the show here with Nate. And, uh, we love Indiana. I love what you're doing, man. just I'm so proud to be a guest here and I just absolutely I it's one of those deals I wish I would have thought of myself and I'm glad someone did and you're the right guy for it. So I appreciate Yeah. Thanks for coming on and we'll talk soon. All right.

Awesome. Cheers.

Thank you for listening to this episode of Get In. If you like what you heard, make sure you leave us a review wherever you listen to podcasts. This show is made possible by our friends up at [music] Sweetwater. Whether you're looking to start a podcast or take your content to the next level, click the link in the description to see all my gear recommendations at sweetwater.com. If you want a behind-the-scenes look at everything we're doing across the state, make sure you follow me on Instagram and Tik Tok @ Nate [music] Spangle. Thank you so much for listening and being part of what makes the Who's Your State great. We'll see you next time here on Get