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This is our 58th episode of The Community Conversation and today’s guest is Macky Bergman! You won’t want to miss this episode as it’s a good one!
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Mike Collette 0:02
All right, everyone, we have coach Macky on here with us today, our first non-member guest for the Community Conversation and I’m so pumped for you guys to get to hear from Macky. Macky and I’ve been hanging out for a bit with all the stuff we’ve been doing with next jump. And he’s been just innovating like crazy and really putting like leadership in practice with his nonprofit youth Basketball Association that he has called steady buckets. So with that being said, Mackey, why don’t you just introduce yourself a little bit like tell everyone like who you are, like maybe a little bit of your story, what steady buckets is all about? And again, guys, I’m just like, so pumped for you to hear from this guy. He’s the man.
Macky Bergman 0:44
All right. Thanks, Mike. Yeah, pleasure to be here. Um, I’ll go quick with my story. I tend to I find in telling the story about study buckets. I don’t like to spend too much time on the past because what I’m really excited about is the present and the future. So a little bit about kind of speed through I’m a lifelong New Yorker recently moved to New Jersey, so kind of getting getting used to the shift of leaving the island of Manhattan. But lifelong New Yorker grew up loving the game of basketball, playing pretty much every day after school, went on to play in high school in college at the University of Rochester, came back and dabbled in a little art career that didn’t go anywhere, made a lot of art, didn’t sell a lot of art. But then quickly rediscovered my passion for the game and coaching the game of basketball. I’ve been coaching ever since I’ve been coaching almost 20 years now. And started a nonprofit organization in New York City called steady buckets. Pre pandemic, we had over 2500 kids participating in the program. The heart and soul of the program is skill development, I think basketball is obviously a competitive sport. At the end of the day, we want to win. But it’s my belief that too much of the youth sports world in general, not just basketball, but too much of the youth sports landscape is focused on the game, and not on developing the skills that kids need to be successful at a higher level. So talking about just the foundational skills that you need to be strong and fast, you know, when I was a kid, nobody was lifting weights. Nobody was really doing strength training or working on their explosiveness working on their vertical. Then you have the the fundamental skills of the game primarily being shooting and ball handling. But are you getting enough reps to be the player you want to be? Or are you spending an imbalanced amount of time playing versus really working on your craft, we tend to model youth sports after professional sports. And the difference is they are already the best in the world. First of all, we don’t see how hard they work in the weight room, and on the practice court honing their skills. But so sometimes fans and kids get confused at how hard they’re working when the cameras are not on. But aside from that there’s a difference between being a professional and being an amateur. There’s a difference between investing in practice events in your skill set and developing the skills that you need to be successful versus already acquiring those skills. And now it’s time to play the game. So I started the program really as a way to provide an alternative model that didn’t exist in New York City, which is really focused think I think like the average youth sports program is probably somewhere around 80% of the of the kind of priority is put into the game, practicing for the game learning the plays. Most youth sports programs revolve around the team and the league and the competition. And maybe 20% on skill development, I wanted to flip that model. So our model is more about 80% focused on skill development, and, and 20% we still play games, we want to have fun, we understand that it doesn’t make sense to work really hard and develop a skill set if you’re not going to use it in competition as a way to figure out how good you really are and challenge yourself in with the scoreboard on but but really flipping that model of going from 80% game 20% skill development to 80% skill development and 20% game so that’s kind of that gives you a little history of of how I started the program started with zero kids and it kind of rapidly grew to like I said before the pandemic we had over 2500 kids. And then really what me and Mike have most in common is our love for leadership development. And actually, what I’ve I was about four or five years ago, where I was reflecting on some of the best players I’ve coached and and kind of players who fell short of reaching their full expected expectations I had for that more the expectations they had for themselves. And really what came down to as I decided the the best players were more coachable. And the best players communicated better. The best players were worried about their teammates as well as themselves, the best players had more of a dialogue between player and coach rather than just kind of Jay Wright from Villanova talks about the difference between a respectful relationship and an authentic relationship. So a respectful relationship is the player that just says like, yes, coach? Yep, gotta coach Yes, coach, whatever you say, coach, and then they go out there, and they don’t do what you said. Whereas an authentic relationship is, is the player who asked questions and doesn’t just give you the automatic Yes. But actually is curious and interested in learning from you. And if they disagree, they’ll say they disagree and, and pick your brain. But ultimately, not just yes you to death and do what they want, but actually be a student of the game and somebody who values their coaches for for the brainpower they provide and the knowledge and IQ that they’ve developed and that they can learn from. So with that being said, we, we started a young leaders program, I decided all these words, right. So I said coachability, and communication and caring about your teammates, really, I kind of thought of as the the players that were performing at the highest level were leaders, the players that were falling, short, lacked leadership abilities. So I decided as much as I kind of made leadership, the sixth skill that I think about in developing players, and I had always thought the most important skills were you got to be strong, you got to be fast, you got to have a jump shot, you got to have a ball handling skills, right? And, and you got to have basketball, IQ, right, you have to understand how the game is playing. And then I, after years of teaching under that model, I decided that leadership was going to be the sixth component that I wanted to prioritize and study buckets. And then really, the way I think of leadership is it’s a multiplier. It actually, it if you have leadership skills, but lack fundamental skills, the leadership doesn’t really do all that much. So like if you’re the worst player in the gym, and you’re a great leader, that usually doesn’t bring a lot of value to your team. But when you have fundamental skills combined with leadership, it’s not an addition, it’s a multiplier. So you see, the players that have the skill set combined with leadership skills are just, you know, 5x 10x better than players with a similar skill set.
Mike Collette 7:32
I literally have just been taking notes this entire time, you’ve been talking and every single time I talk to you, I feel like I’m taking notes because I’m always learning something from you. You said a couple of things. And one thing I want to bring up that you didn’t mention is your your mission is to not just change basketball, but also to change youth sports. Right? Can you can you talk a little bit more about that Macky and like that mentality and what you like you see is the problem now and what you see is maybe the future of what you sports looks like.
Macky Bergman 8:03
Yeah, I mean, that’s a that’s a big question that we talk about. It’s kind of why we know each other, we know each other because of next job and, and our common love and desire to learn about leadership skills and leadership development. A lot of what we talked about is the future of work the future, the future of humanity. You know, not just youth sports or Asian or the workplace, but just the future of human success is more and more going to be determined by leadership skills, communication skills. And I think about the my next job, we talk a lot about industrial age, right? What is, what is what did a successful company look like 100 years ago, or even 50 years ago? Versus what does it look like today, and it used to, it used to be a much slower moving, you know, power was in capital and human resources. And, you know, the ability to have a lot of workers who don’t do a lot of thinking, just do what they’re told, with one, one or two leaders making all the decisions. And now you have in the modern world with, with technology has accelerated the ability for one or two people to run huge companies and make huge changes in the world. Then I love quotes, and there’s, I’m gonna butcher this one. But there, there are this there. I know, there’s a quote out there about like, the history of humanity, the history of the world has proven that one or two people can do amazing things and really changed the course of the love of humanity. So, you know, I think that’s true more and more now. It used to be people were so much more isolated to their community, and you had to to make change was such a more challenging task for somebody to really influence people worldwide or nationwide. Now with technology. The ability to impact change as as a small group is has been elevated to a degree that You know, we’re all looking to learn from each other. And now with the internet and with social media, with everyone doing podcasts like this, our voices can be amplified at such a more rapid rate. So, so I’m excited about that, what that means to the future. And then I so I think of each person’s individual ability to make a huge impact on their community, and on the on the greater world, as well as my own. So, you know, even before I got involved with net jump, and started being mentored by Charlie and Megan, my lens of of change and community was much smaller, I wanted to impact the kids in my program, the families that participated in my program, I wanted steady buckets, to be the best program, it could be right. I started the program in 2010, identifying the problem that downtown Manhattan didn’t have good enough basketball, that kid started coming from all over New York City. And I learned that no, it’s not a downtown Manhattan problem. It’s a New York City problem. And then you realize that it’s not a New York City problem, it’s a New York State problem, then you realize that it’s the whole country, even the cities that are producing the best players. They’re not, they’re not doing it the right way. They’re not doing it in a way that they’re the same way, Charlie and Megan talk a lot about the Industrial Age of running an organization, most basketball organizations are just, they’re running things the same way. They’ve been run for, you know, decades, without without thinking about how we need to teach people for the modern world, right. Like, I think we’re still the way we teach kids in school. And the way we use youth sports as an opportunity to, to help kids grow and develop skills is still very much preparing them for an industrial age world that no longer exists. So, and there’s a lot of hypocrisy in the youth sports world. So we, as leaders of youth, sports teams, everyone’s talking about, you know, we want our kids to be creative and collaborative and, and communicate and have leadership skills. And then if you look at your average huge sports team, or high school team or college team, it’s basically run by an adult authority figure who says, shut up and listen to me, do what you’re told. And that’s not what the future of work, that’s not what successful people successful companies are looking for. They’re looking for people that can collaborate, communicate, share truth, with each other, have difficult conversations and ultimately maximize their brainpower not by working as individuals, but by working as teams. So how does that how does that it’s almost like reverse engineering. The goal is to help kids who grow up in my program be successful in their adult lives. Well, what is successful in what is success as an adult look like 1020 years from now? And are we using youth sports and education system to prepare kids for what success 1020 years from now is going to look like? That’s kind of what I think through that lens of not just improving youth sports in downtown Manhattan, but really preparing kids for success in what future of work is going to look like, it makes me motivated to blow up the system that exists and invent a better way of using youth sports, which is such a powerful vehicle, such a motivating and important part in so many young people’s lives. And, and figure out the better way to do it, to run it, so that kids are getting out of it what they actually need and learning the skill sets that are going to lead to success once they stop playing the games they love.
Mike Collette 13:50
So basically, like taking you sports, you want to use you sports as this, like this mode to develop these future leaders for the for the the world that they’re coming into and what the world needs, because we’re kind of living in the past with how things are. And you mentioned a couple of things is really which is really interesting, which I didn’t know which that the six skill of like leadership and you’re looking at that from the basketball lens. And this like idea of like being respectful versus authentic, you’re trying to help create more authentic versus respectful people. Right? Versus like the Yes, yes, yes, people and don’t do it, like, maybe not do what the person is saying. But you’re creating more authentic individuals in the sense of like, being able to make better decisions. And your your what I think the folks that may not know that are listening here now is like you’re doing all these incredibly innovative things with applying leadership to these kids into using it through basketball. Like, you know, you’ve talked about the truth reps and you discipline reps and these sorts of things. Can you talk about some of the things that you’re doing with the kids right now and maybe the impact that you’re seeing even at like this stage?
Macky Bergman 14:59
Yeah, so I mean, the key to what I was saying earlier the, if you want to reverse engineer from what’s the most important skill we can teach our young people. And I, if you can define that as leadership, and under leadership, you start talking about communication, and the ability to be coachable. The ability to coach the ability to have difficult conversations, go into conflict, and share your next job, what we call UFC, your unfiltered communication, your truth, if that’s the number one skill that young people should be focused on developing, why not blend that into everything they’re doing, whether it’s basketball, any other sport, learning a musical instrument, into the education system, where I’m not talking about replacing one with the other, what I’ve developed and Mike just referenced, what we call it steady buckets, truth reps, is, I’m designing all these practice plans that allow kids to do their normal basketball workout, but at the same time, develop the leadership skills that I earlier described as a multiplier, where if you can be good at ball handling and shooting and become coachable, and, you know, be honest with yourself and gain self awareness, it has a multiplying effect where you are 10x Better than you were, if you could just dribble or shoot. So, uh, I think the most innovative thing we the two things I would like to talk about as like the the most innovative stuff we do at study buckets, one Mike just referenced is called Truth reps. So I’m through conversations at next jump with Mike with Charlie and Megan with the team over there. We talk a lot about truth. And truth is a is it sounds like such a simple concept, right? A lot of time when you talk about the importance of truth people go oh, I don’t lie. Well, yeah, you do. We all do. I love what the the two acronyms I imagine Mike is talking about them in the past. But the two acronyms we use a lot. And let’s jump our lhf in which is lying, hiding, faking, and UFC in, which is unfiltered communication. And the way we talk about it is you’re always, basically every time you speak, you’re facing a fork. Should I lhf? Or should I UFC? How honest should I be with the person I’m talking to? Right? And there’s, there’s different levels of it. We don’t call it lying, we call it lying, hiding and faking? Because you can be truthful, but not all the way truthful, right? There’s different forms of lhf. And it doesn’t mean that you’re blatantly lying and deceiving. You may be holding back information, you’ve may be not speaking at all with right, you can be hiding, you can does anyone have a question? And in your head, you have 10 questions, but you feel like people will judge you and think you’re stupid for asking the question. So you decide to be quiet. Whereas UFC thing is to the best of your ability sharing what’s on your mind, which I like to describe as being impossible, ultimately, right? So on the one hand, people say I don’t lie. And the answer is, it’s impossible not to lie. Or it’s impossible not to hold back your thoughts. Because we can speak about 200 words a minute, if you speak really fast, you can speak about 200 words a minute, and yet your brain is processing three to 5000 words a minute. It means in every sentence that we speak, we are deciding at a rapid pace internally, in our own mind, what should I say? What shouldn’t I say? What will make me look good? What will make me look bad? Let me stay away from the stuff that’ll make me look bad. Let me give more of the stuff that will make me look good. And we spend so much brainpower in that brand management of making other people impressed by what they hear and what they see. Whereas the more you can get to a cleaner version of brain to mouth to ear. That’s ultimately what we describe as truth. So truth doesn’t, I always like to point out truth doesn’t mean Correct. Truth, right? Truth can be factual. But truth doesn’t have to be factual. So two plus two equals four. That’s true, but it’s also a fact. My opinion, is truth. If it’s if it’s a pure thought process to what I want to say if it’s, if it’s honestly everything I’m thinking, that is true. I might be wrong. In fact, I might be wrong a lot. But what I define as truth is the ability to give an honest opinion, not brand, manage, not coddle, not prioritize how people will think of you, but just I’m giving you everything that I actually think so that being one of the ultimate skills of communication, right. And when we talk about leadership, I really think helping people communicate Right, I think about leadership is, is getting people to share their brainpower and getting people to be we use the word authentic, but help people be authentic around each other. So that we can get as much truth and as much information on the table. And then together argue, and and debate and go into conflict, and ultimately, together come up with the best solution we can come up with, and act on it. Right. So that process starts with truth. Right? Getting someone to develop a love, I forget who Charlie gets this from, but he he usually quotes one of one of the people he’s worked with in the past. Um, he always says, you know, the human brain wants to do the right thing. People want to do the right thing people the human brain is designed to correct the problem is we just don’t know what the right thing is all the time. We need we need help with that we all have blind spots of what we can see and what we can’t see. And if we, if we just know what correct is, then it’s amazing how well how efficient we can be in actually correcting it. But in order to know the right thing, we need truth. So back to truth reps, truth reps is we do basketball skills. And a skill drill could be tossed the ball out to the perimeter, catch it, turn, face the basket with a reverse pivot, look up at the rim with your eyes up. You know Triple Threat jab step with a rip through below your knee. Fake left, go right take one dribble, and shoot. Alright, I hope that was clear enough for you to visualize.
Mike Collette 21:39
I got the passing the perimeter. And then I’m thinking like what just came to my mind was so funny was like playing a video game trying to put into a cheat code. You’re sitting there like shit, I like I only got the first few steps, no, keep going. I hear what you’re saying.
Macky Bergman 21:56
Okay, you guys are CrossFit community. So it could be anything. It could be, oh, think about a burpee, right? Think think about what a good burpee looks like and what a bad burpee looks like. Right? And we can, the coach’s job can be to describe in detail what a good burpee looks like. So Mike, I’ll let you take over what described to me in as much detail what what a perfect burpee looks like?
Mike Collette 22:18
Yeah, I mean, hands go to the ground, legs, kick back, chest and hips come down to the ground. It’s an even chest rises become underneath the hips evenly about shoulder width apart. Stand up extension, little hop off the ground, hands come behind the head, there’s full extension from the hips down to the knees down to the ankles.
Macky Bergman 22:38
Right, so similar thing I heard just the poor. Yeah. So but but the point is, okay, one thing that that stood out to me that I know I do wrong when I do burpees is when you kick back up, your feet go under your hips. My guess is a lot of people struggle with that they don’t get their feet all the way up, their feet are six inches, 12 inches behind where they should be, and to do a proper burpee, they need to get their feet under their hips, right? So a truth rep would look like this, we would take now might just describe the perfect burpee and he just tried maybe 10 different details. But we start simple and we start with one detail. And we tend to start with the detail that people struggle with the most. So if I was doing truth reps on a burpee, me and Mike are partners, and then there’s a coach out there that says, Okay, here’s the criteria for the truth rep. Feet hat when you kick back out of the plank position, I want your feet to go under your hips, right? Very simple. Now, good means thumbs up. Bad means thumbs down. So again, it’s a very simple form of truth. Good, bad. All right. Now I go I do a burpee. Mike gives me a truth rep. Right? What I was doing real quick. Like that. You’ll see how bad my burpee is.
Mike Collette 23:57
Are you warmed? Are you warmed up here? Macky, I don’t want you to pull on a groin.
Macky Bergman 24:01
I don’t have a ton of space. But if I can even see this, maybe this is a bad idea. But I tend to get from here to here. That’s not feet under my head. Oh, there. Sure. Right. So the first one would be a thumbs down. That the second one I don’t know. Maybe? I don’t know if I’ve got a thumbs up on the second one. I felt like it was a thumbs up.
Mike Collette 24:24
Well, you didn’t go all the way down the ground. But yeah, but I hear. Yeah. on that on that part. Yeah, for sure. Yeah, yeah. Yeah, go ahead. No, no, I was gonna say the interesting thing is like the thumbs up thumbs down, is there’s no in between. And that’s where and the interesting thing too is, you know, let’s say you nudge an inch closer every time you’re still not perfect. And this is one thing I remember you’re teaching me about the truth rap string thing is just so fascinating, is we will eventually give the thumbs up even though it’s not a thumbs up.
Macky Bergman 24:57
That’s right. So the point is we’re starting simple. Now, assuming I’m getting a thumbs down. First of all, there’s a couple key nuances that I’ve built into it. First of all, when it comes to truth, one of the reasons why people in general are really bad at truth is we tend to deal in relationships where the giving and getting of truth is imbalanced. Teachers give a lot of truth, students get a lot of truth. Coaches give a lot of truth, players get a lot of truth, children get a lot of truth. Parents give a lot of truth. managers and bosses, right upper management give a lot of truth, subordinates get a lot of truth. And when when you’re only giving you your ability to think as the receiver is lost. And when you’re only getting, you tend to take on a victims mentality, you tend to start blocking it out, you don’t want to hear it. There’s something about oscillating between give one get one give one get one that strengthens both muscles, I think about I think about the the muscle of receiving truth, but also the muscle of giving true. And what’s interesting is they strengthen each other. It’s very hard to get really good at giving truth without also improving getting. So the way you want to grow your troop muscles is leveling up in this fashion versus when you’re imbalanced. I think a lot of things go wrong. Um, so the idea is, I would do a burpee, like would give me a thumbs up, thumbs down, he gives me a thumbs down. Then he goes, he does a much better burpee than me, I’d give them a thumbs up to Mike’s point earlier thumbs up means perfect. Thumbs down. So perfect needs no explanation. Sums up is just Thumbs up. Thumbs down requires an explanation. So now we’re practicing detail. So Mike would say thumbs down, your feet didn’t get under your hips. You were about six inches short. Then he would go and I would go thumbs up. That’s a you did it. My turn thumbs down again, thumbs down again, thumbs down again, what you tend to see is eventually Mike would get tired of giving me thumbs down. One thing that kids learn when doing true threats or adults will learn giving true threats is we tend to lie to other people not to protect them. The the instinct you would think is I’m calling somebody because I don’t want to hurt their feelings. And it’s not true. We tend to lie to people to protect ourselves. It’s exhausting giving thumbs down, thumbs down, thumbs down, thumbs down, thumbs down, thumbs down. I like Mike He’s my friend. I see that it’s starting to wear on him. So eventually I go thumbs up. Now the coach’s job is to walk around the gym and catch these situations. And when when the coach catches Mike giving me a thumbs up that I don’t deserve. He would say Mike, do you think Mackey is so fragile that he wants you to lie to him? Because I think Mackey wants to get better. And if you lie to him, and tell him he’s doing it correctly when he’s not. He’s gonna continue to do it incorrectly. But but I’ve seen so Michaels, okay, I got you. But it’s almost like this, this fatigue of truth. Where we, if you don’t have strong truth giving muscles, you can only give two or three pieces of truth until you need to go, Hey, man, thumbs up. And the answer I get a lot is but it was better. I say but we’re not, we’re not going for better. The goal is not better, the goal is perfect. And that’s why we give us simple criteria. I don’t care about anything else on the burpee, all I care about is feet under the hips. Now, once both players can accomplish it, or if you’re working in a big group, once the majority of the group is getting thumbs up, now we make it a little bit harder. Right. So now we would say I want you to kick back further. I want you to make sure that you’re in a straight you’re, you know your spine is straight, I want you to make sure that your your glutes are tight. Whatever the detail, I want you to squeeze your abs maybe it’s tougher to see, right, but their head position matters, right? I don’t know if you want me to look down or up. But all these details that one by one, once I master one, I can then move on to two. Once I master two, I can move on to three. What’s interesting is at some point, you’ll see I got the spine straight, I got the head down, I got the hand position, but now I’m screwing up my hips again, my hips, my feet aren’t getting under my hips again. So at some point you say thumbs up just for one criteria, but then we make the criteria more and more difficult. And then if you give a thumbs down you have to say why? And sometimes the why is it was so bad. I’m giving you a thumbs down because your feet didn’t get under your hips. Your head was in the wrong position. You didn’t get into a full plank. You didn’t tighten your glutes. Your hands weren’t wide. like, thumbs down, thumbs down, thumbs down, thumbs up, or it might be everything was perfect, except for this one thing I’m giving, I’m giving you a thumbs down, everything was perfect, except your feet still aren’t getting far enough under your hips. Right? And that that’s the truth I need to hear in order to perfect my burpee, because if if I don’t get the truth, I want to do it, right. I’m a hard worker, I’m showing up to the gym. And it’s gonna be challenging one way or the other. But if if nobody tells me what we tend to do as coaches is we become cheerleaders. And it’s actually it’s what I call it when a cheerleader, you’re not a coach, if all you do is clap your hands and tell people how good they’re doing. Alright, a cheerleader. We talk about the same thing. Right, a cheerleader, their team is down 20. And they score and they’re like, go team. Yeah. Oh, that’s not so helpful in terms of improvement. So, at the same time, cheerleading is part of coaching. So there are times where as a coach, you want to cheerlead. But if you’re only cheerleading, and you’re not providing true, then you might get people to work really hard. But they’re not doing the drill correctly. They’re not gonna improve. Exactly. It’s all about giving people the information, they need to do it, right.
Mike Collette 31:19
And there’s, there’s this, get on both ends, right? So you have the person who’s giving the truth, right. So they’re improving their ability to give this feedback, you know, those tough reps of like having to be honest, and continuously, like, even though it might hurt them, because you mentioned, it’s harder for, you know, we tend to use to lie to protect ourselves, we think we’re protecting others. And then there’s this get on the receiving end of actually getting that feedback, right, it’s like, and that’s also hard, as well as sometimes getting negative feedback. And like something I’m curious, like your thoughts, and we talked about before is like, this whole thing with like, UFC and lhf, is that we can also make it really hard for people to give us true, there’s also things that we do, right, and like we not, might not be wherever you mentioned, like blind spots, we might not be aware of the things that we’re doing. How do you see that like on the on the basketball court?
Macky Bergman 32:13
Yeah. So the first thing I would say is what you said, like they’re both hard, right? Giving truth is hard. Getting truth is hard. But when you do both, they become easier. Right? You start to recognize that it becomes what again, and using this word authentic relationship, it becomes a conversation, it becomes you owe it to me to give me truth, because I’m giving you truth, right, like the the level raises, because I’m gonna hold you to a high standard. Now you hold me to a high standard. It, I always it always makes me cringe when relationships are imbalanced in the way that, for instance, it drives me crazy when coaches expect their players to show up on time. And if the if the player is late, they have to run sprints and run laps, and they’re gonna sit out in the first half of the game. But that same coach is laid all the time. That’s not a healthy relationship. That’s hypocritical, right? And hypocrisy shows up when truth is imbalanced. When when we both have an opportunity to give truth and get true, the chances of hypocrisy showing up go down dramatically. Right? And because ultimately, like I said, truth is not fact. Truth is what are you thinking? As a player, I want my players to know what I’m thinking. The problem is, a lot of players don’t want to know what their coaches are thinking. They just want to get playing time. So then they’re their whole brand, we call it brand managing everything they do around the coach is to earn playing time, it’s not to get better, it’s not to address their weaknesses. So as a result, they hide their weaknesses. Right, they only do the things they’re good at, they maybe take risk when the coach isn’t around. But when the coach is around, they’re back into brand management mode. So the coach doesn’t even know what their weaknesses are. Well, then how can the coach help? That the authentic relationship is more honestly exposing your true self? Hey, Coach, this is what I’m bad at now. Can you help me as a coach, having the ability to a more honestly assess your players, but also to give to open up a channel of communication? As a coach? Don’t you want to know what your players are thinking? It doesn’t mean that you have to follow their their thoughts. At the end of the day, you’re the head of the team, you’re the you’re the person who has to make the final call in terms of who’s going to play and who’s not. But don’t you want to know what’s going on inside the locker room? Don’t you want to know what your players think of each other? Because because it’s what’s interesting is, how wrong you can be what another innovation we do but steady buckets we call a team truth reps. So at the end of every practice, we circle up, and everyone’s in a group of either 10 to 15. Kids, sometimes we have five or six groups in a, in a gym. But every everyone gets in a group with the people they worked out with. Sometimes it’s the smallest three or four people. And we asked three questions we say, number one, who’s the hardest worker in the group, we say one to three point, everyone points to the person in their group that they think is the hardest worker. Now, it’s interesting from a coach’s perspective, I very often agree, I usually agree. But sometimes I don’t. Sometimes they say, that’s interesting. The person I thought was the hardest worker, his peers don’t think he’s the hardest worker, what am I missing? Well, what I’m missing is there’s a certain type of player that every time the coach walks around the gym, every time I’m walking, watching, that player, steps up their effort, you start working a little harder, the second I walked away, they stopped working hard. Now they’ve tricked me, they’ve successfully fooled me into thinking they’re the hardest worker, but they can’t fool their peers, because their peers are watching all the time. Now, as a coach, don’t I want to know what the peers think, don’t want? Don’t I want to have a additional data point in terms of what’s going on when I’m not around? So first question is who’s working the hardest? Second question is the opposite? Who is the most distracted? Or who’s the laziest? Who works the least hard?Because again, some Hey, somebody might trick me. I might that now when I see who gets pointed to in that regard, it’s Whoa, I thought that kid was a leader. And now it gives me an opportunity to talk to that kid and say, you know, what’s going on? I see this is three, three practices in a row, you’re getting voted, most distracted. I always think of you as a hard worker is everything okay? At home. Like, I might have missed it. Because every time I walk around, he’s smiling, and he’s upbeat, but the second I walk away, he’s distracted. He’s not working hard. Right? So again, it’s just it’s a weight. Truth is not necessarily fact, truth is just another data point to add to the conversation. So ultimately, I can have the right follow up conversations dig a little deeper, get a little more curious. And what’s really going on in my players head, how can I really help them, because like I said, when people brand manage, what they really do is they hide the help, they really need. My job as a coach is to help them. But they can be so good at tricking me that they actually don’t need help. Whereas if I can get some truth out of their teammates and out of themselves, I’m more likely to figure out where, where and how I can really help them. The last question we ask is, who’s the best teammate? Right, who not the best player, but who’s the player in your group that brings the best out of you? Who’s the best leader in your group? Again, this is a great question for high school, college coaches, middle school coaches to ask, because you tend to pick a captain, it’s really bad when you pick the cap and that nobody respects they trick you into thinking they’re a leader. And in reality, their teammates don’t look up to them. Versus over time figuring out who’s everyone’s favorite teammate. Right. And it just brings some clarity to the conversation. I had this one of my one of my best players who’s going to play in college. He’s a junior in high school right now. He’s on path to play college basketball. I told him, I didn’t think he was being a very good teammate. His reaction was denial. We talking about Coach, I’m a great teammate. I brought everyone in it said everyone, you know, point to the best teammate, and nobody pointed to him. Said hey, you know, okay, this is it mean? So it’s easy to say coaches getting it wrong. It’s not easy to say all of my teammates got it wrong. Right. So again, truth. Truth is what he needed, and that he was able to realize he was being too hard on his teammates. Just because he’s better than somebody doesn’t mean he can be so critical. Right? When somebody makes a mistake, you can always yell at them, but sometimes support them.
Mike Collette 39:14
Interesting thing, right? And so like, I know this just being in like your, your social circle and within next gen to Charlie and Megan and the community for a brief period of time. So I’m like aware of this. But the folks that might be listening may be like unaware of like, this is like innovative, right, what you’re doing, and you’re really your your driving motivation is to really help these kids. There’s so much like coddling that goes on right now. And with that said, is like, I would assume and I think you’ve told me stories of like parents that like, you’re giving us these Hartley’s this truth reps. It’s hard stuff with these kids, helping them develop themselves. And like the parents might be like, Hey, you’re being really you’d be too hard on my kid. Right? Or like or like Mackey. You’re kind of a an asshole. The reality is like you’re doing what’s best for them, but they’re viewing in a different lens. Like, can you talk about that? Like, just in general? Because I know we had a conversation about it before.
Macky Bergman 40:11
Yeah, I mean, look, anything you’re any, it falls into the category of risk taking, like anytime you’re gonna do something different people are not going to be you’re not going to make everyone happy. The kind of falls into the same conversation. But the other kind of top innovative thing we do at study buckets is we, when we play games, we have the young leaders, the people who do the leadership training, they get to coach and rep younger kids. So I’ve eight and nine year olds are playing games, we have 11 and 12 year olds coaching and reffing. We call it our young you know, our EY BL all youth basketball league, run by young leaders. Now, similar to 123 point and truth reps, some people love it. Some people see the value. And some people say why are you doing this, that that 11 year old who’s coaching my nine year old doesn’t know what he’s talking about? Why don’t you you know, I’m happy to volunteer, I played high school ball, and I’d be happy to volunteer and be a coach. Right? And you have to explain well, that’s not the point. The point is not to provide, first of all we can, we can argue all day about who would do a better job coaching, I would argue that the 11 year old is actually doing a better job than you think he’s doing. But aside from that your nine year olds here to play basketball that 11 year old is here to get leadership training. So this is how we run our program. We are you know, I believe in everything we say we’re going to do we do and we’ve been calling steady, but it’s an innovative basketball program. Right? Innovation is is an interesting word that gets thrown around a lot. I would argue a lot of people that call themselves innovative or not innovator. It’s just kind of a fancy word that like, do you want to be innovative or not innovative? Sounds good. Let’s, let’s throw that in the mission statement. Alright, that’ll that’ll make us popular who, who doesn’t want to be involved with something that’s innovative. But innovative means creating something that didn’t exist before? Right? It means I didn’t learn this from someone else. I didn’t see that somebody else had successfully run a league run by coached and ref by kit. I didn’t see somebody else running a program where truth reps was successful. I didn’t see this idea of 123 Point work. It was an idea I had. So it was it’s an innovation because nobody else has ever done it before. Now, anytime you innovate something, it might work and it might not work. And you have to be ready for negative feedback. Because the first time we did 123 point I remember saying I remember the fork again. We talked about forks a lot it next job, right like lhf, UFC, innovate, play it safe, take a risk, do what do the status quo, right? And and you find yourself in these moments saying, you know, I already have a successful program. I can do the same, I can run the program with my eyes closed, and take a paycheck and run it to a level that it’ll be successful. But that’s that’s not what interests me. That doesn’t excite me that doesn’t, that doesn’t solve the greater puzzle that I’m trying to piece together of what is the best possible youth sports program look like? How can we use youth sports to develop people for future success? Because the average youth sports program says they’re doing it. But if you say how you’re doing it? Well, everyone knows that playing sports is like a study show. It keeps you out of trouble, less likely to drink and do drugs and teen pregnancy and gang membership and all that stuff is true. But if it’s not being done purposefully, if the lessons that you’re trying to pass down to young people isn’t doing isn’t being performed purposefully, you’re leaving a lot to chance, meaning, yes, it’ll work for most. But it could definitely be better. It could definitely be more purposeful, like it could definitely be these lessons could be stronger, versus just kind of rolling the ball out and taking credit for Well, obviously when kids are playing sports. Yes, they are getting exercise. And they are learning to play on a team the fact that they’re on a team. But there’s there’s being on a team and there’s being a leader isn’t as being on a team and there’s being on an elite team that communicates at a high level and is able to go into conflict fearlessly with each other as a way to help each other grow. Right? So you have to accept the fact that you’re going to get some people that don’t agree with it. Anyways back to risk taking the first day I did want to three point I said I could tell this is not going to go well. This is like this. Some people are not going to like this And I think the story, Mike, I told you the first time I did it, I got some really negative feedback. I got a nasty email from adatto. I shouldn’t even use the word nasty he was it actually has become a very close friend and, and we get along really well. But he’s basically said, my kid came into the gym, super enthusiastic, loving the game of basketball, he had a great day until you did 123 point. And then he left crying because all of his friends, you know, all of his teammates pointed him for being the silliest. And my reaction was, well, I’m sorry that he had a negative experience. But I I hope you’ll come back. Right? And I but but also let’s talk about why we’re doing this. Is your child getting in trouble at school for fooling around too much? Do you have to discipline? And do you and your wife have to discipline this child for misbehaving at home? And the answer to both questions was yes. So I said, on the one hand, I’m sorry, he got upset. On the other hand, we agree that he fools around too much. He does it at school, he does it at home, and he does it at my program. Well, my program is the arena that I get to address it in the way I want to address it. At home, you get to address it the way you want to address it. And at school, his teachers and principals get to address it the way they get to address it. Now, I’m going to do things differently than you do at home. And I’m going to do things differently than the people at his school do things. I hope together, we can help this child, not fool around so much and not get in trouble. Because it’s okay right now when he’s nine years old. But every year it becomes more and more of a problem. And can we fix this? Now my approach actually, I point out, I didn’t call him silly. I didn’t say he fools around the most his peers did. And what the philosophy behind what we’re doing here is that kids don’t really care what adults think about them. In fact, employees don’t really care what employers think about them. They, they have respectful communication, yes, code. Yep, gotta coach. But it’s not authentic, peer to peer relationships tend to be a lot more authentic. They actually do care what their peers think about them. So in this situation, teachers and parents and coaches couldn’t get the kid to stop fooling around. But when his peers all pointed, I mean, sometimes they all point to different people. But sometimes you have 15 kids, and 14 of them point to the same person for being the silliness, that doesn’t feel good. And on the one hand, we don’t want that the intention isn’t to make people cry. At the same time, if shedding a few tears, and being embarrassed, and disappointed in yourself, is what drives change. I would argue that, it’s, it’s worth it 100 out of 100 times, and in this case, that’s what happened, he did come back. So that was a good thing, he was able to shake off his tears, right? Go get a slice of pizza, or an ice cream cone and come come back, ready to do it again. But then there was a slow process of every week, it was, well, the next week, it was less people pointed him but still too many, too, then he was able to course correct. And get to the point where nobody was pointing for silliness. In fact, he was getting hardest worker and best teammate. And that same mental shift was showing up in school and showing up and the home, at which point I think it was, it was a month or six weeks later, the same father who wrote me this email being very critical, wrote me a follow up email saying, you know, I just want to tell you how wrong I was and how thankful I am that, that you took this approach because it worked.
Mike Collette 48:48
Awesome. Like, everything you’re doing is so tied into and you can compare it to, like, you mentioned, like being in the office employers like in in the workspace, like something that I picked up is like, you know, the difficult conversation that you had to respond right to this to the parent as an example. But also still hold your ground. That’s difficult, right? That’s like a rap, right? Truth rap in your own right. And so this idea of like, being in the arena, like you’re not just there telling the kids what to do and making shit up. Like you’re also in the arena yourself. Can you like just talk about that the how important that is like in the idea like you mentioned earlier, you know, when when when a coach tells someone, you know, to be on time and they’re also late, it’s kind of like Do what I say not as I do sort of thing, like he just talked about that the importance of being in the arena and and being able to, you know, coach others and help others and how important that is?
Macky Bergman 49:48
Yeah, no, I think it’s it’s it’s huge, right? I mean, first of all, to lean into the muscle of not being a hypocrite is key. That’s kind of the first thing that comes to mind. Another thing that comes Mind is a next job, they have this expression better me plus better you equals better else. But the idea is like, you need to work on yourself first self improvement leads to a stronger ability to help other people. Meaning if you’re not focused on yourself, as a coach or an employee or a teacher, you end up not being very good at helping other people. If you think of the worst teachers, right, and on the one hand, I think the best teachers in the world are incredible people, right? Magic. I mean, the work that the best teachers do is just incredible. On the flip side, though, and sometimes people don’t like to talk about it, but like, the worst teachers are terrible. I mean, well, having a desert gifts, right, and we can all think of the bad teacher, the birth out teacher who really doesn’t care. When I really think about what’s the difference between great teachers and bad teachers, great teachers are always learning. They’re still learner, bad teachers. They’re not interested in improving, they’re not interested in learning themselves. They’re just on autopilot. They’re just doing the same thing over and over again, showing up getting the check. They barely know who their kids are, they are completely numb, and, and, and uninterested in the kids in their classroom and the subject matter. Whereas the best teachers are equally interested in learning as they are in teaching. So it’s like, when I mean, now, it’s a lot of what I teach, and a lot of my philosophies come from next jump and conversations with Mike and and Charlie and Megan and the other partners that next jump, but I learned Thursday is like all day learning, so that I can go into the weekend with new ideas. And I rapidly teach what I learned, it makes me feel like I’ll never get bored of coaching. Because I’m not coaching, the same thing I tell. I tell my players and my coaches, a lot of the people who work for me used to be kids in our program. And I say, just look at how different I am now than I was three, four years ago, when you were playing, like look at look at how much the program has changed. That’s why the program is successful, because I’m always interested in learning new things, so that I can teach them and that so I, I can build on my own wealth of knowledge. Now I have five things that I talked about, it’s at steady buckets, every player who’s played for me has heard it hundreds of times. But I say to be successful at steady buckets, I want you to do five things. Number one, I want you to get a little bit better at something every time you come to practice. So might be shooting one day it might be ball handling, you might feel like you got stronger, you might have got better at jumping rope, you might have got your burpee technique a little bit better, whatever it may be, I want you to get a little bit better at something I want you to show up with the intent to improve. Alright, number two, I want you to leave your comfort zone, both mentally and physically. So in the 90 minute or 120 minutes you spend with us, I want you to constantly challenge yourself both mentally and physically to the to the point of discomfort. I want you to embrace discomfort, right? Leave your comfort zone. Right number three, I want you to work so hard you feel proud of yourself. So for years, we said outwork them I used to define hard work is kind of comparing yourself to others be the hardest worker in the gym. I eventually realized that wasn’t the right approach. Some people can’t outwork someone, if someone’s just in much better shape, they’re going to need less breaks than you. So comparing yourself to others was less impactful than I think about when I work hard. I feel proud of myself. Alright, I did one of Mike’s workouts a couple of weeks ago, it kicked my butt. But when it was over, I just felt great. I did that. Right i i had this fork of quit or keep going and I chose to keep going. I chose to work hard. And then there’s moments where if I think back I go shit, but there was that 160 minutes set that I did go easy on myself. So maybe I’m if I do that consistently, maybe I’m not proud of myself. Right? If you’re always proud of yourself, maybe you don’t have high enough standards. If you’re but if but if you can be proud of yourself leaving the gym, that was a good day, right? Like and nobody can tell you you worked hard or you didn’t. If you feel proud of your efforts, if you hold yourself to a high standard and you feel proud of yourself. Right? Nobody can make you feel proud of yourself. You. You feel it inside. So number three, I want you to work so hard you feel proud of yourself. Number four, have fun. Number five, make new friends and strengthen existing relationships. Now, I always challenged people in other walks of life to say is there really anything else that you need to do in your job to be successful? I always challenging people because if they can, if they can think of something that doesn’t fall into those five categories. I’d be happy to include it in my philosophy. But mostly people whenever they say I’m like no, that’s more like number two. That’s combination of one and three. Anyways, so but the important thing to answer my question is, I very often think about those five things and how it applies to my own life. So I preach it to the kids. But then I also challenge myself, and actually a major breakthrough that led to doing all of these innovations, but especially the all youth basketball league, and allowing younger coaches to take more responsibility was and I think the hardest one out of the five is leaving your comfort zone. For me, leaving my comfort zone is taking a step back, my comfort zone, is having the microphone in my hand, my comfort zone is being the head coach, running the workout being the loudest voice in the gym. And I remember thinking about it and saying, Well, how am I going to leave my comfort zone? What makes me uncomfortable is when I stepped back, and I let younger coaches run the program. And then I’m thinking, man, it’s not good enough, it could be better. And what I’ve learned is if I just hold myself out, there very often only a couple seconds behind me. So if I if I don’t step on their feet, and I don’t take the microphone back, and I don’t jump in to fix things, they actually fix it themselves. But when I do it before they get an opportunity to, I’m taking away their opportunity to grow. I’m taking away their ability to experience leadership, to do leadership reps, right to improve on their skill that ultimately I need them to develop for the growth of the program. But mostly what hold was holding the program back from growing and innovating was comfort. So again, all truth reps, any innovation is going to make you uncomfortable. Doing anything for the first time is going to be uncomfortable. And I’m always looking for ways in life. I have a I just started, I’ve done it twice. I’m really enjoying it. But I’m doing archery. One of my parents invited me to do archery. And I have no interest in hunting or doing it as a sport. I said, You know what I’m interested because I’ve never done it before. There’s a concept in Josh Waitzkin book, The Art of Learning, he talks about the beginner’s mind. And I think as somebody who coaches beginners, it’s very important for me to always be doing something I’m not good at. It used to be golf, I got decent golf, so it’s almost not working anymore. I’m not a beginner at golf anymore. So now I’m a beginner or an archery. But I think anyone who’s teaching beginners should practice being a beginner. Because otherwise you won’t really understand how your students are thinking, I need to play golf or do archery, in order to understand what my kids are going through, when I’m teaching them how to shoot a jump shot. I’ve been shooting jump shots for 30 years, they’ve been shooting jump shots for a couple of months or a couple of years. And they’re going through the same struggles that I’m going through on the golf course or the archery range. And if I’m not leaving my comfort zone, I have no idea what their brain is going through where their emotions are, what it feels like to struggle, when I’m only living in my world of expertise.
Mike Collette 58:24
You just unpack so much so much stuff that the five things you talked about. Like, first of all, you’re speaking to a lot of the folks in our community right now that I assume can relate to every single one of those things. And they’re probably like, yep, yep, yep, yep. Yep. That word community like that. Like, right, there is like a big part of like, community, right, like, getting a little bit better, like people around you help you get you helped get you better leaving your comfort zone, right, they push you, right, there’s that push pull, like working hard, hard work, right. shared suffering. We talked about that before, having fun, social events, those sorts of things, making new friends relationships. I mean, that’s what a community is all about. I see how all this sorts of tight sort of thing ties into that idea of community and we’ve been talking about it a lot. And I’d love for like you to kind of describe, like community in your words like to the folks that are in our community, because there’s so many parallels to this stuff and community and we’ve been talking about community 3.0 And Charlie and Megan have this like, amazing vision of what that looks like. And the idea of community how important it is but like also, like just from your your perspective and your world. Like, what does that what does that look like?
Macky Bergman 59:39
Yeah, the way I think about it is like call me selfish, but I just want to live the happiest, most interesting, most challenging life that I can’t I want I want life to be as full as possible. Like, I want to meet amazing people. I want to have amazing thoughts. I want to do amazing things and see beautiful places like I just want Everything, like, I’m selfish, I want life to be as great as it possibly can be. And then when I think of community is like, community is where life takes place, and community is like, if you’re going to live the fullest life possible, that takes place in a community, I can’t do it by myself. Right? I just know I can’t, I can’t first of all, I can’t have fun by myself, I can’t challenge myself by myself, my brain needs other brains to activate. So I can’t even think, to the fullest capacity by myself. There’s nothing that I can do by myself that I can’t do better with other people. So, being so selfish in terms of what I want out of life, I need to find the the people who can help me. And when I when I, to me, that’s kind of when I think of community at its best is the people who can help me live my life in the way I want to live. And in doing so I can help them accomplish the same thing. But like, yeah, life, life being so precious communities where life takes place.
Mike Collette 1:01:08
That’s like, the best course I’ve ever heard. That’s awesome. I love that. This is by far like the best episode that we’ve ever done on the community conversation and everything that you’ve been talking about is like the stuff that we’ve been doing. And I’ve been learning and trying to implement on our team level, and then get involved in our community as well. And then also, you know, impact the code community and the folks that next jump, but you’ve articulated all this stuff. So well distill that down. So well, I feel like we go on and talk about this stuff for like, hours and hours and hours, like honestly, it’s just like, it’s just such awesome stuff. But I got a I want to cut it now, because I know that there might be a follow up here. And I gotta ask you last three questions. Remember, I mentioned to you in the beginning, there’s three questions. I always ask people at the end of these community conversations. And they’re a lot harder than anything. I’ll see how fast can you answer question number one, you’re probably thinking what the hell is Mike gonna ask me? Favorite movie and TV show of all time?
Macky Bergman 1:02:14
Favorite movie white man can’t catch up.
Mike Collette 1:02:18
Favorite TV show of all time?
Macky Bergman 1:02:20
Comedy but there’s a ton of wisdom in there. Favorite TV I would say is a close the wire and the sopranos kind of made me decide I’m gonna go with the Sopranos.
Mike Collette 1:02:32
Dude, that’s a great choice. Did you see the new? All the saints of the newer?
Macky Bergman 1:02:36
Yeah, I didn’t love it. I didn’t love it.
Mike Collette 1:02:39
It was weird. It was just weird. I feel like you have to like, watch the entire sopranos up like series, then immediately go and watch that you can’t take like a what?
Macky Bergman 1:02:48
You know, if your expectations are too high with movies and TVs, you’re gonna be disappointed. That’s true.
Mike Collette 1:02:54
And then the other like, that’s, that’s, that’s question one. But there’s there’s three parts of that question. There was movie TV show. The third part is what are you currently binge watching right now if you’re binge watching anything?
Macky Bergman 1:03:08
We just finished Squid Game. That was pretty good. That was scary. Half the time you know, though, if I really get into a show, I watch most of the time. Me and my wife watch together and I’m doing other things on my phone. We had to stop going to the movies because I just fall asleep. It’s like an expensive way to get an app.
Mike Collette 1:03:32
Alright, fair enough. All right. Second question is a favorite musician or band of all time.
Macky Bergman 1:03:42
That’s a lot tougher. Movie I can give you quick. Um, I like a lot of different types of music. So I listened to a lot of Jay Z. I listened to a lot of Bob Marley. I like classical music, then it doesn’t really matter what it is, but it kind of depends what kind of mood I’m in. Yeah, if I gave you to maybe Jay Z and Bob Marley.
Mike Collette 1:04:03
Okay, Jay Z, Bob Marley. And then the part two is better there’s three questions but there’s like a B’s and C’s Part B of this is favorite song of all time you get to pick one song listen to the rest of your life. You’re on a desert island you had like just like a mp3 player that had like unlimited battery one song you can eat listen to what would that be?
Macky Bergman 1:04:32
I said Bob Marley and Jay Z, but definitely not Bob Marley or Jay Z. Mm hmm like I said, I like classical music. So I and it’s funny with classical music. I don’t really know what they’re called. I don’t know who it is or, or anything. But just like if I can only listen to one thing I would want it to be really calming. I like music. I mean, there’s times where like music damped me up and get excited. But mostly if I if I could only have one song I would definitely want it to be very, very chill.
Mike Collette 1:05:03
Beethoven, Bach like that sort of thing.
Macky Bergman 1:05:06
Like I said, I don’t I’m not educated in classical music I just know if I’m stressed out and I need to need something to relax me I’ll I’ll pop in like just you know, classical music station and whatever they give me works.
Mike Collette 1:05:18
Fair enough. All right, I like that. And then all right, last question. This is an easy one. What’s your favorite hobby? Everything to do outside of like work coops like steady buckets? What’s your like, your favorite thing kind of thing that might give you energy.
Macky Bergman 1:05:34
Yeah, I like golf. I still like to play golf if I can. The problem with golf is it just takes too much time but I do like the challenge of golf. I’m not a big nature guy. So like camping doesn’t really do it for me too many bugs. Not really my thing. But like I do like I’m a city guy. I’m in New York City boy so I like to be a golf course is like nature. So like you know it is I could do that like you know, I consider that a nice way to take a long walk I think Mark Twain said Golf is a good way to ruin a nice walk I disagree. Way to make a nice walk more interesting.
Mike Collette 1:06:13
That’s awesome.
Macky Bergman 1:06:13
I also love art I love art. I love going to some art galleries or chilling out I mean family time is always how I spend most of my free time so anything my wife a kid want to do work for me.
Mike Collette 1:06:26
Dude I’m gonna have to definitely see some of these these pieces of art the the they’ve made have never seen anything you said you were into that before getting into steady buckets. So we’ll have to see some of the stuff you’ve created.
Macky Bergman 1:06:38
Yeah, I can I can give you a quick
Mike Collette 1:06:42
Oh you’re gonna show right now. Oh, this is awesome.
Macky Bergman 1:06:47
Well, I’m down in my basement in my office but just upstairs I got some
Mike Collette 1:06:53
love it we are we are on a tour now. This is awesome. You drew that too? Oh my god. That like I don’t know why but that gives me like A Tribe Called Quest vibe. I don’t know why. Something about the colors.
Macky Bergman 1:07:23
We got one more down here. A lot of flower. I like flowers. But I also like kind of abstract cityscape stuff. Another flat out this one’s mine.
Mike Collette 1:07:33
Dude you got skills, man, you got skills. Now I see where the creative mind comes from. The innovation and the creativity are here. It’s all in one it all relates. You will Mackey i I appreciate you being on here so much. This was so awesome. Everyone who’s listening. You guys just got an incredible amount of wisdom and knowledge dropped on you, Mackey how to how to folks like find out or check out steady buckets. Like what are ways that people can kind of like help out, like what’s like website like, you know, that sort of thing.
Macky Bergman 1:08:06
Steady bookings.org is our website. Um, a lot of information on there, to be honest, needs to be updated. Probably doesn’t do us a great amount of justice. But there’s some good videos on there. If you want to see the kids in action. If you go to the video portal, this, that’s kind of the best way to learn. What we do mostly the website is designed for just for players and parents to find the schedule, register and donate. We are a 501 C three tax tax deductible organization. So everything we do is free for the community. And yeah, there’s a donation page and check this out study.
Mike Collette 1:08:42
That’s awesome. Well, guys, if you guys are listening, make sure you check out steady buckets.org Donate. This guy is doing awesome stuff. He’s changing the world changing new sports and Mackey again. I so appreciate you being on man. Thank you so much for today.
Macky Bergman 1:08:56
Thanks, Mike. Thanks for having me.
Mike Collette 1:08:57
You got it.
Transcribed by https://otter.ai