Zach Brandon

Leadership & Performance Advisor for Elite Coaches + Teams | Speaker | Podcast Host | My favorite role: Dad

[Zach Brandon @MVP_Mindset]

I spend a lot of time writing about the human side of coaching and leadership here on X.

But for most of my professional career, the real work took place behind the scenes.

I've supported coaches and teams on the sidelines, in clubhouses, dugouts, training rooms, coaches’ offices, and meeting rooms.

One thing I’m excited about in this next chapter is taking more of those conversations off the timeline and into rooms with coaches and staffs all over the country.

If there’s a conversation your staff needs to have or you’re looking to create a meaningful development experience for your team, I’d love to get in a room (virtual or in-person) together.

DM's are open if you'd like to discuss how I can best serve you.

[Zach Brandon @MVP_Mindset]

The development gap between players and coaches is widening.

Athletes have more individualized development than at any point in history.

This includes unprecedented access to personal coaches, specialists, and outside information and “expertise.”

As a result, today’s athletes are learning from more people (outside your program/organization) than ever before.

Meanwhile, many organizations still have no intentional system for developing their staff.

The rate at which your internal staff develops can no longer lag behind the rate at which your players develop.

The future belongs to organizations and programs that develop their coaches and staff as aggressively as they develop their players.

[Zach Brandon @MVP_Mindset]

Pat Murphy was asked how comfortable he feels with the Brewers up 3–0 in the NLCS.

“Don't matter how I feel...The goal the whole time is just like build a resiliency and a passion for being in the now and a passion for winning tonight.”

There’s something powerful about a team hearing in October what it’s been practicing since February.

The expectations established on day one still guide how Murphy leads now.

As the stakes rise, he keeps reinforcing the same habits, standards, and mindset that helped them get here.

🎥: Fox Sports

[Zach Brandon @MVP_Mindset]

Joe Mazzulla on why he wrote handwritten thank-you notes to staff throughout the Celtics organization after their championship.

“It’s easy for parts of the organization to feel not as valued as others...It was just important that everybody knew…everything they do is the most important thing for the team, for the organization.”

“Everybody matters” is a good message, but it means more when you tell someone how their work actually makes a difference.

Some people can see their contribution on the scoreboard. Others may wonder how much their work even matters.

Part of leading is helping people connect what they do each day to what the team is trying to accomplish.

🎥: Boston Celtics' View From The Rafters

[Zach Brandon @MVP_Mindset]

If you coached yourself the way you coach your players, would you consistently get better?

Would you feel challenged? Supported? Equipped to succeed?

Or would you eventually start looking for a different coach?

[Zach Brandon @MVP_Mindset]

Hey head coaches,

A costly mistake many make is treating culture like an offseason remodeling project.

If you're waiting for the offeason to improve your culture, then you’re missing all the moments that are shaping it right now.

You don’t fix it in the offseason and forget about it. It needs to be built and maintained every day.

Like strength, culture starts to atrophy the moment you stop doing the reps.

[Zach Brandon @MVP_Mindset]

Pat Murphy uses climbing a mountain to explain how he wants his team to handle getting closer to its goal.

“As you get closer, you just got to keep your footing…you can’t look too far ahead. When you look up for the prize…you might step in a crack or a pothole.”

Getting close to a goal can pull a team away from the very things that put it within reach.

Players start pressing. Coaches feel compelled to say more. Everyone wants to make something happen.

Part of leading in those moments is helping people trust the work they’ve done and stay connected to what the next play (and moment) requires.

Keep the goal in view and the next step in focus.

🎥: NLCS Press Conference

[Zach Brandon @MVP_Mindset]

We often ask our players...

"What are you working on right now?"

Maybe it's worth asking ourselves the same question.

Great coaches don't just develop athletes. They continuously develop themselves too.

The better you become, the more everyone around you benefits.

What leadership skill are you practicing this week?

[Zach Brandon @MVP_Mindset]

Erin Matson shares a great story about receiving a 30-second voicemail from Hall of Fame basketball coach, Roy Williams.

“Erin, I just want to tell you that I’m proud of you…I enjoy watching your team…You’re doing amazing things. Just keep on keeping on.”

Sometimes the most impactful thing a coach can do is take 30 seconds to let someone know: I see you, I believe in you, and keep going.

Those moments may feel small to the leader, but they rarely feel small to the person receiving them.

📹: Win More, Live Better Podcast (Episode 236)

[Zach Brandon @MVP_Mindset]

Hey head coaches,

A lot of your emotional energy gets allocated to “important” people.

Recruits. Boosters. Donors. Administrators. Alumni. The media.

Even on an exhausting day, you often find another gear when one of those people needs your attention.

Just don’t forget to treat the people at home like VIPs too.

Start noticing whether your family regularly gets the most exhausted, distracted, depleted version of you.

They may not need celebrity treatment, but they do need your attention and presence when you can give it.

You put real effort into making people around your program feel important.

Bring some of that intention home.

[Zach Brandon @MVP_Mindset]

Bob Chesney on the everyday work of building a program’s culture.

“If I just sit at my desk and talk to no one and go on the field and stand in the corner and do nothing, it's really hard to identify if I'm building that culture and that environment or not.”

A great speech on Saturday can help your team, but your team’s identity takes shape in how you show up Monday through Friday.

Your players learn what matters through their daily experience of being coached by you.

Give them a message worth hearing AND give them evidence of it throughout the week.

🎥: Big Ten Network

[Zach Brandon @MVP_Mindset]

Nick Saban on why he learned to put limits around his work as a head coach.

“It was just too stressful to carry it with you all the time...I was so committed, it was not healthy.”

I don’t know any coach who doesn’t bring some degree of work home with them.

It’s a natural byproduct of caring about your craft, your people, your program, and wanting to do things at a high level. Those responsibilities don’t disappear when you leave the building.

But I appreciate Saban’s acknowledgment that commitment has a threshold where it begins to tax your health, your relationships, and your ability to lead.

If you never give yourself relief from the job, eventually your team gets the version of you with less patience, less energy, and less perspective.

Your commitment matters. So does your capacity to sustain it.

🎥: This Past Weekend with Theo Von

[Zach Brandon @MVP_Mindset]

Stephen Vogt on how he defines success as a coach and why it's not rooted in his win-loss record.

"I think you get better as a coach when you stop measuring yourself by your win-loss record. It's not about your win loss record. It's are you developing the people and are they getting better with you?"

You can coach well and your team can still lose. You can coach poorly and your team can still win.

We remind athletes that their worth isn’t determined by their performance. Coaches need that reminder too.

You can chase more wins for your team, but it doesn't tell the full story about your impact or who you are.

I don’t know any coaches who have their win-loss record on their tombstone.

But the people they developed, the relationships they built, and the difference they made? Those things live on.

📹: Win More, Live Better Podcast (Ep. 220)

[Zach Brandon @MVP_Mindset]

I’ve spent most of my professional career working with coaches, athletes, and leaders in high-performance environments.

One thing I’ve learned is that the challenges of leadership rarely stay confined to sports.

For those on LinkedIn, last week I launched a newsletter to share more of the lessons, stories, and principles I’ve gathered along the way, particularly as they relate to leading people and sustaining excellence.

Hope to see some of you over there!

[Zach Brandon @MVP_Mindset]

Appreciate the question!

I think sometimes we talk about building a great culture as though it's the ultimate objective, when really culture should be a vehicle for helping people accomplish something meaningful.

To expand on the weight room comparison, a strength coach doesn't just ask how to make athletes stronger. They first consider what physical qualities will help those athletes perform better in their respective sports, then design their training accordingly.

I think culture should be viewed similarly.

Rather than starting with how to build a great culture, start with what you're trying to help your people accomplish (in detail).

Then identify the mindsets, behaviors, and conditions that will support those outcomes and build an environment that reinforces them.

[Zach Brandon @MVP_Mindset]

The purpose of a weight room isn’t to produce great weightlifters. It’s to help athletes become better at their respective sports.

Likewise, the purpose of a great culture isn’t simply to have a great culture.

It’s to create the conditions for people to produce results, develop, and thrive.

Don’t confuse the means with the end.

[Zach Brandon @MVP_Mindset]

Coaches, leaders, and anyone interested in sustaining excellence…

What questions are you wrestling with?

I’m planning to do something a little different for an upcoming podcast episode: a Q&A mailbag.

So anything related to mental performance, the art of coaching, culture building, or leadership is fair game.

These are the things I spend nearly every waking hour (outside of dad duties) studying and helping people navigate.

Drop your questions below or send me a DM. I’d love to answer as many as I can.

[Zach Brandon @MVP_Mindset]

Every day is an opportunity build trust or doubt.

Internally with yourself and externally with others.

[Zach Brandon @MVP_Mindset]

Are we developing athletes who are better at executing movements or athletes who are better at competing?

One of the unintended consequences of our obsession with optimizing athletic performance is that we’re developing a lot of athletes who are better at practicing than competing.

We’ve made tremendous advances in technology and tools that allow us to better understand and optimize physical movements.

But I wonder if those advances have also created an unintended problem for the mental side of performance.

We’ve become so focused on helping athletes optimize their movements that, in some cases, we’ve inadvertently trained them to become more concerned with how their bodies feel than with actually competing.

Throughout my career, I’ve had very few athletes tell me that during their best performances, they were thinking about their mechanics.

Usually, it’s the opposite.

They’re immersed in the competition, focused on the task, and responding to what’s happening around them.

Yet how often do we spend the majority of practice reinforcing the opposite?

We ask athletes to monitor their movements, analyze them with video, and next thing you know they get sucked into chasing a feel.

To be clear, I’m not against optimizing physical movements. Far from it.

But we have to recognize that every emphasis in training has the potential to create a tradeoff.

If we’re going to spend considerable time developing how athletes move, we also need to be intentional about developing how they compete.

Otherwise, we risk creating athletes who have the physical skills to perform but struggle to access them when it matters most.

[Zach Brandon @MVP_Mindset]

Steve Kerr on the willingness to reimagine how a team operates, even when its previous formula has been wildly successful.

“We’ve had a formula here that has been wildly successful…Some of those values we have to get back to...But I think we also have to change some things."

Part of coaching is recognizing what needs to be reinforced and what needs to evolve.

Your personnel changes. The game changes. What your team needs from you changes.

Reimagining your standards and identity means examining how you practice, teach, and prepare and whether those habits still serve the team in front of you.

The formula that built your success may need to evolve to sustain it.

🎥: NBC Sports Bay Area

[Zach Brandon @MVP_Mindset]

I've spent the majority of my career working in the mental performance space, but I can promise you that 99% of athletes don't care about mental skills.

I've met very few who are particularly interested in breathing techniques, visualization, meditation, and self-talk techniques.

But every single one of them cares about becoming more confident, performing better under pressure, and being more consistent.

This came up in a conversation this summer when a D1 football head coach reached out for guidance on integrating a mental performance coach into his program.

As we talked, he started listing out all the skills and techniques they should be teaching, but at one point I interrupted and respectfully said, "I don't think your players care about any of that."

Not because those skills aren't valuable, but because what matters to athletes is what those skills can help them accomplish.

If your athletes aren't buying into mental performance training, one of the first places I'd look is how it's being presented.

Is the issue the training itself or how its value is being communicated?

Are you teaching them a collection of mental skills or helping them solve problems that matter to them?

The goal isn't to get athletes excited about mental skills. It's to help them recognize what those skills make possible.