How you handle success is just as important as how you handle failure. In two thousand and nine, when we went to the Final Four, I did not handle success well as a leader. I wear this wristband attitude, but the other wristband is we would always wear as humble and hungry, and that was how we dealt with success. After every game, wherever we played, we played at Creighton. If we won the game that everybody was moving forward with a humble mentality, understanding that there's things we still need to do to get better, there's some breaks. We got to win that game. Our opponents are now looking at us in a different way because we won and we got to be hungry to continue to improve regardless of our success. And humility is a really important thing in business, and especially when you have success, because there's two kinds of people, those who are humble and those who are about to be. If you don't use your intelligence to understand that when you have success, especially as a company, everyone else is looking at you and saying, what are they doing? How are we going to copy that? And if you're not getting better, they're going to catch you or pass you. So you've got to stay humble and use your intelligence to be hungry, to continue to get better. Welcome to Self Equity, the podcast that dives into the inspiring journeys of founders, entrepreneurs, athletes and entertainers. I'm your host, Jolene Tepedino, authorised officer and team business manager for the Tzelniker Dorfman Car and Heritage Group at UBS. On episode twenty three of Self Equity, we're joined by one of the greatest minds in college basketball history, Jay Wright. As the long time head coach of Villanova, Jay built a program defined by culture, discipline and teamwork, leading the Wildcats to two national championships and four Final Fours.
Beyond the wins, he's known for shaping leaders on and off the court, developing NBA talent and navigating the changing landscape of college athletics. Today, we'll dive into his journey, the lessons he's carried from the court into life after coaching and his perspective on leadership nil and building lasting equity in every sense of the word. Joining me is co-host today is Ryan Lynch, financial advisor with the Tzelniker Dorfman Car and Heritage Group. Hi, Jay. Hello, Joleen. Great to be with you today. Great to see you. Thank you so much for joining our Self Equity podcast. We are thrilled to have you here. It's cool to be here in New York and be with our UBS team. Thanks, Jay. So let's get right into it. I want to review some of your stats. Jay, you're a two time NCAA championship winning coach. You've reached four Final Fours, five Big East Tournament titles, two time Naismith National Coach of the year, six time Big East Coach of the year, twenty twenty one inductee into the Naismith Memorial Basketball Hall of Fame. You've coached numerous NBA players, including Jalen Brunson, Mikal Bridges, Josh Hart, Donte DiVincenzo and Kyle Lowry. All while instilling core values in your players. You value character over talent. You've discovered the power of attitude. How could any player you coach not get it right? Well, you know what your players are like. Like your children. They don't all get it, right? Right. They tried. It's interesting when you talk about that, Jolene, the most pride that I take, really in our entire program is, is that all of our players that were there for four years, every single one of them graduated on time, got their degree. And I really take pride in how they've represented Villanova the entire time they were there. And the men that they've become now that I'm retired. Yeah. The point. The part that I really enjoy is now being able to spend time with them more as men. Right?
Not as these young guys that I'm coaching and trying to develop their becoming men, fathers, husbands and important people in their community. That's what I really enjoy about it. Amazing. It's beautiful. It's come full circle. So again, you're renowned for your coaching philosophy. Can you share with us how you created a culture where attitude became the program cornerstone of Villanova? That's good because that means you you studied it because that is the truth. I, I still I still wear the wristband to this day. I really believe in it. And you said it the right way. It is the cornerstone of our program because it's a it's a characteristic that I really believe is the most important characteristic any of us can have. There's other gifts we have that we don't have control of, like how tall we are, how athletic we are, how smart we are. There's an intrinsic intelligence, right? We have control every day of our attitude, and we have a choice. Every morning we wake up when we go into work, when we go into practice as a player, um, when we when we meet our family in the morning, what's our attitude going to be? That's something we have a choice of. And people like being around people with a positive attitude. So with our players when they were young, we try to teach them as basketball players to understand the concept of next play. It's it's okay to be make a mistake. We're not going to be perfect, but we control what our attitude is going to be on the next play, even to the point in practice, we kept score in everything we did. Everything was competitive. If a player made a mistake, missed a shot, threw the ball away. We didn't take off points for that. But we looked at his reaction on the next play and if he had a poor reaction, we gave an attitude point to the other team. So we we had this, uh, saying in practice that we practice to create habits that will make us successful in the most difficult situations. You can't just say when times are tough, okay? You gotta have a good attitude.
Jolene. Yeah. All right. Things are good right now. The market's down, right. Have a good attitude. It's got to be a habit that you've developed every day over time. So we were teaching that to be habits on the basketball court. And you would see our guys on the court sometimes clap their hands and go. Attitude, attitude. That was a code word to remind each other, hey, you made a mistake. Get over it. We're with you. Have a clear mind and a positive attitude on the next play. If I made a mistake personally, I would say to you. Attitude, attitude. So I was telling you, hey, I know I screwed up. I'm okay. You can trust me. I'm going to have a clear mind, positive attitude on the next play. So we wanted them to learn that on the basketball court. But more important, we wanted them to take that into life. And it's a next day mentality in life. Whatever happens during the day, that next day, if it was a bad day, I'm going to have a positive attitude. A clear mind. Attack what I'm doing with confidence. And in business I found that even goes in basketball. Goes from play to play business. That can go from meeting to meeting. Minutes a minute. Right? You could be. You could be in a meeting and things don't go the way you want the meeting. Now, in your next meeting, are you going to have a positive attitude, or are you going to let everybody know that you're upset about what happened before? So our players use that in life, even to the point where yesterday I was driving up here to New York and Eric Pascal called me one of our former players who played for the Golden State Warriors. How you doing, coach? I said, I'm sitting in traffic, man. I'm dying. I'm heading up to Fairfield, Connecticut. And then I got to go to New York.
And this traffic's killing me. He's like attitude, coach attitude. So they take it in life and that's what I really want them to do. So Jay, you know, we work with a lot of business owners as well as athletes. And when you're a head coach, you're not just a basketball coach. You're the CEO of a major program. Right. Like a in a multibillion dollar industry. So when you come to Villanova in two thousand and one, you know the state of the program, you were hired for a reason because things had been going great and you had to turn it around. What were the first couple of things that you did? You know, obviously attitude and the culture. But like when you walk into the program as CEO and you're looking to establish how you want to build this and have a vision for a successful program, what are the first few things that you did and looked for? Well, Ryan, as you know, as a as a passionate Villanova alum, I first deal with the crazy alumni like you who are not happy. Wherever we do have passionate alumni, we really do. And that's a great strength of our program. But to answer your question, which I think is a really good one, the first thing I wanted to do was I wanted to establish with everybody in the program that we were all part of something much bigger than ourselves, and we were all part of a great history, and that we all had a responsibility to play and to compete and to carry on the traditions that came before us. And we wanted to play for those guys that came before us and understand that there were a lot of great players before us, there were a lot of great coaches before us, and we've got to respect that, and we've got to understand it's not about us individually, it's about us maintaining this great tradition and playing for those who came before us. So one of the first things I did was take our team and go into the pavilion. We had old basketball pavilion at that time and they had the the retired numbers hanging up in the rafters. And I had the team stand under the jerseys.
And I asked them, do you? Do you know who Howard Porter is? And they didn't. And so I explained to them, each player Chris Ford, Tom Inglesby, Bill Melchionni, all the great players that came before them that were retired, what they did with their lives, what they did in the NBA, what they're doing now, and let them understand that, look, you're a great player and you were highly recruited to come here, but there were great ones before you, and there's going to be great ones after you. And this opportunity that we have right now is for us to hold up this great tradition in the time that we're here. And I always thought the same thing as coach and Ray used the term HCL, which is really important because I didn't want to be too much of a CEO and not be hands on enough as a coach. But yet there's so much more to being a college basketball coach, as I'm sure Coach Willard shared with you, dealing with alumni, dealing with the students, fundraising, recruiting and balance that CEO coach responsibility. And I really always looked at it as this is a great program. This is my time to uphold this tradition, try to improve it. And one day I'm going to pass this on to somebody else. I never thought that one day would come so fast. It seems like it was just yesterday, but I really did think I was going to pass this on. And now it's Coach Willard's turn to uphold that great tradition. You know, one of the things I think that executives may struggle with the most. It's something that you did better than any, really, any coach I've ever seen where you build a successful program. We talked with, uh, Randy Foye about how you've recruited a lot of guys selling them on a vision without a lot of anything really, to be there yet, and they established what Villanova basketball was. And then I'll just, you know, you go to the Final Four in oh nine. And then my freshman year we go thirteen and nineteen. Right. And it seemed like the program was like on unsteady ground for a minute.
How did you kind of rebalance what you wanted the program to be and recover? Like a lot of businesses may be successful and then hit a rocky road, and CEOs aren't able to get back on track. You took it to a whole different level. How did you get through those rocky periods to end up being the best basketball program of the decade? Well, that's a actually a fascinating story. Um, and I'm glad you mentioned Randy Foye and Allan Ray A and Kyle Lowry and Jason Frazier and Curtis Sumpter and Mike Nardi and all these guys because of a relationship we had. They trusted me and trusted my vision. So without them, none of this happens and we want our championship in sixteen and eighteen. Those guys were all there and we all held hands in the locker room and we said, look, we did this today, but let's remember the stonecutter. And if you look at a stonecutter pounding away at his rock, you might pound away at his rock a hundred times and that rock might break on the one hundred and first blow. But it wasn't that final blow that did it. It was all the taps that had come before. And we made sure that when we won in sixteen and eighteen, all those guys understood. This was built by Randy Foye, Allan Ray, those guys earlier, and it was built by the Kerry Kittles, the Bill Melchionni, the George Raveling all the way back to the fifties. They were the people that we stood on their shoulders. So it was important that everybody understood that. So when we eventually did have some success in oh nine and went to the Final four. It's so interesting you talked about CEO Ryan. I was a really hands on coach, not as much of a CEO. And then we got to the Final four and recruiting became easier. And I thought, okay, now we're oh nine, we're final four. We're up there with Duke, Kentucky, Kansas. Now we got to start running our program like Duke, Kentucky, Kansas, these big, huge operations. And I got to be more of a CEO. And we got great recruiting classes. But I wasn't as dialed into explaining or even interrogating the new recruits as to understanding our culture and what the Villanova culture. I just got the most talented guys where previously I was going for guys who would understand our culture, play hard together, smart, with pride, and knowing that that would get them where they wanted to be. And instead I just went out and got the most talented players that it wasn't their fault. It was on me as a leader. I didn't explain to them what the culture was all about. And they got there and they looked at me like, hey, I'm coming here to go to the NBA. You didn't tell me about all this culture stuff playing hard together, smart, taking pride in Villanova.
And I didn't, and we kind of lost our way there. And that year that we went thirteen and nineteen, that was our only losing season. And we had a really talented team. And after that season, I said to our staff, we've lost our way here, we've lost our culture. We're we're doing what Kentucky Kansas does. We're just getting the best players, but we don't have our culture and we're going back and I don't care if I get fired, we're going back to getting our kind of guys. We went and got Renata Diacono, Daniel Ochefu, and in my mind I thought, you know what? We might not be able to turn it around because, you know, as you both know, in business, sometimes you don't get that second chance. But I really, as leader said, we're either going to go down with our kind of people. And me going back to being a hands on leader and teaching our culture. And when I'm recruiting people, bringing them in based on our culture, not that just talent. And I really made a mistake that way. And it wasn't the guy's fault that we brought in. We went to the Final Four. Everybody wanted to come. I was like, all right, great players want to come, let's go, let's do this. That's the way it's supposed to be and never explained to them really what the culture was before they got there. And then we went back and we struggled a little bit. We I never thought we'd win national championships. I just thought I'd be happy as the leader with what our culture was and how we competed every day, how we handled success, how we handled failure, how we treated each other. And it actually turned out to be the best thing. And what I used to say was, let's not try to be Kansas, Kentucky, Duke, let's be the best Villanova we can be, and let's see where that takes us and what I learned a great lesson in not trying to do it the way the most successful programs have actually gave us our best chance to be successful. So when we won in twenty sixteen, I didn't make that mistake again. I said, we're just we're not going to try to win another national championship. We're going to try to strengthen our culture. And we did. And we won another one. And then the same thing after eighteen, we just stuck with our culture and it brought us to another Final Four in twenty two. Then I was exhausted at the end of the run. I was a heck of a run. I seriously mean that. It's one of the things I think that businesses struggle the most with is how do you regain your footing when you can lose your way? So to be able to do that, it's impressive and I think people matter, right? It all comes down to who you have in the building. If they buy in, you could get all the talent you want, but if they're not going to take charges, it's not going to work, uh, you know, on the court. And then you get a guy like arch who's diving all over the place, and now he's playing international. I love on the Knicks when he was on the bench just to call defensive. Three seconds like that killed me. I was like, this is perfect for him. He's going to be a good coach one day in the NBA. I really think so, because I think there are a number of people in the NBA that that look at him just as you're explaining, Ryan, that that guy understands being a part of something bigger than yourself and contributing in any way. You don't have to be the star to contribute and get find value. If you look at it, people above you who are in leadership positions are always looking for their next leaders, for people that they can count on. Who can I trust, who can grow, who can work within our our culture?
And I think that's what Ryan did a great job of in the NBA, whatever team he was on, Chicago Bulls, Knicks, whatever his role was, he excelled in his role. And I know people are going to want him to coach and bring that mentality to their program. Very true. It's so beautiful to to sit with you and to listen to your, you know, your thought process. And, um, it's it's very true. Our character, our attitude, our sweat equity. This is what we have to give. And again, you don't have to learn. It comes from within us. And we all have it. Exactly. It's in there for all of us. You know, one of the other things you brought, Ryan, that's interesting is and I'm sure a lot of companies go through this, and hopefully a lot of your clients go through this. How you handle success is just as important as how you handle failure. That first year when we went in two thousand and nine, when we went to the Final Four, I did not handle success well as a leader. I wear this wristband attitude, but the wristband is what we would always wear as humble and hungry. And that was how we dealt with success. After every game, wherever we played. We played at Creighton and got home at four o'clock in the morning. Creighton before everybody is in Omaha, Nebraska. So we'd fly back to Villanova. We might get back at four o'clock in the morning. At eight o'clock in the morning we'd have breakfast. So I made sure the guys got breakfast, but we'd have a team meeting to make sure if we won the game, that everybody was moving forward with a humble mentality, understanding that there's things we still need to do to get better. There's some breaks. We got to win that game. Our opponents are now looking at us in a different way because we won and we got to be hungry to continue to improve regardless of our success and humility is a really important thing in business, and especially when you have success, because there's two kinds of people those who are humble and those who are about to be. If you don't use your intelligence to understand that when you have success, especially as a company, everyone else is looking at you and saying, what are they doing? How are we going to copy that? And if you're not getting better, they're going to catch you or pass you. So you've got to stay humble and use your intelligence to be hungry, to continue to get better. Absolutely. J. For for a quick moment, I want to talk a little bit about you. You are such a a mentor, a coach, a North Star to so many who mentored you or who did you look up to? Where did you find all of this strength?
First was my dad. My dad was a coach. He was a football, basketball, football, baseball guy never touched the basketball. He told me basketball was a soft sport when I first started playing because he liked football and baseball. But then once he knew I fell in love with it. He was very supportive, but he was a coach and one of the things he coached us in football and baseball, and one of the things I learned from him was he always spent the most time with the worst players on the team, and he would always say at some point, that guy, our weakest link is going to be exposed, and if we don't make him better, then it's going to cost us in the end. And there's always stories in Little League where the worst player, of course in the championship game, the ball gets hit to him. He makes a great catch at the end of the year because all the time my dad spent with him during the year was as kids. We were like, why are you dealing with him? He doesn't. He hardly even plays. But what I what I took from that was that I always thought about everybody on our team. Everybody mattered and the guys that were having success, they were always okay. The guys at the end of the bench that weren't getting what they want. I wanted to make sure they were okay. They saw a vision for their future. They knew that I cared about how they felt, and that's what I talked about. Those meetings we would have after games the next morning. A lot of times it was talking to the team about the guys that maybe played a couple minutes but contributed. I wasn't worried about the guys that scored twenty points. They were fine. The guys that were not happy with the playing time or how they played and make sure we were all in a positive mindset moving forward. Coach Massimino Rollie Massimino was a great mentor to me. I worked for him as an assistant for seven years. He was great. I learned so much from him. And when I was the head coach at Hofstra University in New York, Pat Riley was the coach of the Knicks, and I got to spend a lot of time with those guys. I loved him still a mentor. I love his leadership skills, and coach K was really helpful to me in USA basketball. I worked under him at USA basketball. It's hard to say. He was a mentor because I wanted to beat him all the time, but having the ability to be an assistant coach on the Olympic team was because he got me involved at a at an early stage in my career. So I appreciate all those guys as mentors, but I look up to a lot of coaches, I really do. I continue to learn from coaches. So Jerry talked earlier about how you adapted within your internal program, right? And make sure your culture is set, but you're also dealing with what's happening around you, right? The game changed a lot in your time at Villanova. And even before, you know, we saw the evolution of the three point shot. You implemented the four guard play. Uh, before most and then nil. So how did you navigate all those changing factors? And while staying true to your core philosophy, that's exactly what it was, right? We had our core values. Our core values were we always wanted to play hard, play together, play smart, play with pride. And on the basketball court, we wanted to defend, rebound, run and execute. They were both triangles that we kept up on the wall, but we always wanted to be agile and always be on top of what was changing in the game and recognize what we had to do to keep those core values and how we had to change. A simple example would be we used to have a rule in the early years before they changed the rule. No layups, you know, on our triangle, the bottom, the bottom base of our triangle is play hard.
And one of the definitions of playing hard was no layups. So anybody that came to the rim, if we couldn't block the shot, we were going to put them on their butt. And we took pride in that. But then they changed the rule and they said, that's an intentional foul now. So it's two shots in the ball. So we we had to completely change our technique. So when guys came to the rim we learned two hands up and back off approach, which was hard to do for us because we wanted to be physical and tough and take guys out. And then the next year in practice, we're practicing, put our hands back and avoid contact. So mentally it was tough for us, but we had to do it. And that's something we actually became really good at. And if you watch some of the guys in the NBA Josh Hart, Jalen, those guys, they do a great job on breakaways. They'll go up with a guy and they'll throw their hands back and just put their chest on them so they don't get a foul and someone from behind will come and block the shot. But it was a total change in philosophy for us. It was really hard for me because we were a tough, physical team. I had to say we can't. The rules changed. We can't do that anymore. And as you guys know, that happens in business. Our definition of our core values of playing hard was, okay, now put your chest on a guy, put your hands back. Sprint back hard. Don't put him on his butt anymore. He can't do that. But we you know, we had that meetings each year like, okay, this is the definition of playing hard. Our core value. And it's changed this year because the rules have changed. You know we we know we got to do that in business. One of the only things that is a definite in business and in life is change. There's going to be change. And you've got to be ready to adapt, and you've got to be ready to do that within your core values. I think we all miss the old Big East basketball. You're right. It would kill me to do that. And I'm sure there's things in business you guys have to do. You're like, I don't I don't like doing this, but this is this. This is a change in the business, and we have to do it this way now. And, you know, one of the biggest changes, and it's honestly what we get asked about most when dealing in the athlete space that we worked in now is nil. It's something that kind of came towards the end of your time at Nova when you saw this coming. How did you guys start preparing for it as a program, and where do you see we are now and hope we go? Well, it's amazing, isn't it? A funny story. When it first started, we were on top of it. We were actually ahead of it, and we were one of the first teams to hire a general manager, Baker Dunleavy, because we saw where this was going. But I have to be honest, I never thought it would get to where it is now, where guys are making millions of dollars. But we saw it going in that direction and and we knew it was going to be important to address that early in the recruiting process with recruits. So the funny thing is, the first year that that came into play, we were opening up the season on a Tuesday night, and my niece was a representative for Tom Brady's clothing brand. She said, I got a deal for Colin Gillespie to come up and be a model. We're going to put out his his clothing brand. And it was on a Saturday and I told it was for ten thousand, ten thousand dollars. These guys get millions now. I told Colin he's like, nah, we open up on Tuesday. That's a distraction. I don't want to do it.
And we're like, all right. I told my niece and she said, well, can you get somebody else? I said, yeah, Jermaine Samuels, he was our other captain. So I went to Jermaine. He's like, nah, we got a game and I knew Jermaine needed it. I said, okay, Jermaine, look, we're making you do this. You got to go up there for the day. We're going to practice in the morning. You can leave after. You're not going to miss anything. It's only going to take a day. So he reluctantly went and made ten thousand dollars. Now these guys are coming to you. They're coming to you. And hey, I might not be at practice tomorrow. I gotta do this commercial. Uh, it's totally changed. It is. It is pro sports now. And it wasn't totally what entered into my, uh, decision, but I did get into coaching for the educational part of it. Um, the mentoring part of it. As I said to you, Jolene early, what I took really most pride in was our guys all getting their college degrees, and I saw where it was going, and I knew I was at a point in my career like, you're going to have to adjust, right? And you can't complain about it. It is what it is. You got to adjust. And I was at a point in my career that I didn't want to get away from the mentoring and the education, and as one of the reasons, not the main reason, but one of the reasons I decided to step down. You have to look at the environment of your business and your career and just say, am I willing to do what it takes to be successful in this business? And if I'm not, I got to step down. It's the honest thing to do, but it's also the fair thing to do to everybody's working with you, not to just hang in there and try to fight the reality that you know what you got to do. I can do that mentoring now from where I am with our guys that have played before, with coaches that are in the business, and I really still enjoy that educational part of it. Speaking of the educational part, one thing that we do with our athletes and our entertainers is we, you know, promote financial literacy. We want to make sure that they're prepared. They're not scared. They're not, you know, making crazy decisions. How is the landscape of financial literacy changed from your tenure to today? I think this is a really interesting time and an opportunity in your business right now, because when when I was coaching, the players could not get representation until after they finished their eligibility. They were going to the NBA and it was an NCAA violation. If they did so, they specifically stayed away from financial advisors and agents. Now, while they're in high school, the first time they start negotiating to go to college, they have an agent. And financial advisors are really important at that time. And I've always told my guys, even when they went to the NBA back then, I'd always tell them, your financial advisor and your agent have to be separate people. And so I think it's a really important time when financial advisors are really important to these kids and their families at a young age. Now, really, by the time they get into high school, and maybe more important than the agents, because they're going to get the money. But at that point in their lives, you're in college.
The tax ramifications, understanding the hardest thing for athletes to understand, and I would assume entertainers, is you're not going to make that money the rest of your life and you can't live a lifestyle at this point, like you're going to make this money the rest of your life. You've got to save that money so you can live comfortably the rest of your life. And that's where financial advisors are really important. And I think you guys do a great job of that. And it's important that you continue to get involved with these young people. You know, I can't believe I'm saying this because when it was illegal, I would say, stay away from these people when you're in high school. But I think it's important as they start negotiating with colleges about how much money they're going to make, that they have a financial advisor, they're talking to them about plans of handling that, saving it, paying taxes. And I think they're getting more educated on the fact that they need that, too. Yeah, we just had the Nil event on campus for the men's and women's program. Very, very happy to be a part of it. A few of the things that we covered with them, and I'd love to get your input on this as as now, a mentor to the whole program is how do you just make sure these kids don't just enjoy short term wins? Really understand that not everyone goes to the NBA and signs one hundred million dollar contracts. Like you're going to have a real job after this. You can make some money right now to set yourself up for the future. And then how do you help kids in college and their families establish boundaries and work with professionals to make sure that they're not being over asked for stuff they can't deliver because every kid wants to take care of their parents. But a lot of these Nil deals aren't one hundred million dollar contracts, right? Even if the high end is a few million bucks, this is the most sensitive issue with young college athletes and young NBA athletes. Um, is that if you never had money, you don't understand the value of money. And I used to talk to our guys about this all the time before they went into the NBA. I would start with them.
And this is where maybe you all could start with people even younger before they get the money. But I would talk to these guys about this in college before they made their NBA money. To you or me. Right now, five hundred thousand dollars is a lot of money. But after you pay your taxes and whatever you want to do with that, it's not that much money. It seems like a lot. So you really don't have the ability to take care of anyone else, not even yourself. If someone doesn't explain that to them and their parents, if you never had money, you don't get that. You look at five hundred thousand and you think, well, I never had that. So that's going to take care of me and my family. You've got to educate them as to the value of money and show them, look, you might get two hundred and fifty thousand out of that five hundred thousand. If you're going to buy a car that's seventy five thousand. You only you've only got this much left. You got to sit down and show that to them because they've never seen that before. And I was in the same thing. I remember that when I was, when I was coaching and started making money, I never had money. So you think you've got a lot until someone really sits down and shows that to you? And I think that's important to do that, and especially with their families, because they're in the same situation you've got. I used to tell our guys, you've got to take care of yourself first, make yourself successful so that at some point down the line you can help out your parents, but you got to make yourself successful first. So Jade, you walked away at the top of your game, right? Like you talked about earlier off of a Final Four, where I think we would have won if Justin didn't get hurt. I agree with you one hundred percent, Ryan. Or even even if we had Jordan Longino, if he wasn't hurt, if we just had one of them, just one of them. One thing that when we work with business owners, we help them, you know, become really efficient and increase the value of their business and then help them get to market and sell it.
And then, you know, we manage the money and make sure their families are taken care of after that. The hardest part for business owners often is to know when's the right time to walk away. And then they struggle for a year or two, typically with one the lack of income coming in from a paycheck, but also from like, what do I do all day with myself? Because I've spent twenty, thirty years building a business that's as much a part of my family and life as anything else they have. How did you know it was time to walk away? And what was that like afterwards? Trying to find, you know, what to do. You know, I would, um, I would say I didn't have a plan. I remember I was in the Olympics when we were in Tokyo in twenty one. I was an assistant coach to Gregg Popovich on the Olympic basketball team, and I was making recruiting calls at crazy times in the morning back home at like two o'clock in the morning, back home to the United States, and then going to practice with the USA team, and was away from my family, away from the team. And I remember thinking, I don't want to do this anymore, you know, and I had one more year to go. So if this resonates with anyone in business, we had seniors in, uh, Collin Gillespie and Jermaine Samuels who had decided to come back for another year. So I thought, I can't retire and walk out on them. They just came back for another year. So I'm going to get myself through this year. And it was actually one of the best things I did because I battled through that last year. It was difficult for me. I always asked everybody to give me one hundred percent. I would say to our guys, you're either one hundred percent in or you're against us. And I could feel I had to battle every day. I talked about attitude. I'd walk in every day with positive attitude. I knew I'd catch myself walking up the steps to the office. Sometimes I'd say, whoa, gather yourself right here. You got to come in here with the energy fired up. So I kind of started to see, like, this isn't coming natural to me anymore. It's time to pass this on the way. The way? I always ask everybody for one hundred percent. I got to give one hundred percent. So I kind of knew then that was my time. What's interesting is as soon as I finished and I'm sure everybody who runs a business, there is a time where you're so used to thinking about your business twenty four over seven. Does this a natural time where you're sitting around thinking, I should be doing something, I should be worrying about something, that it's it's natural. And then I found the TV and it was a new challenge for me. But actually, after I went through that for three years, I just decided, uh, last month that I was going to step away from TV because I just didn't feel authentic to me. Everybody was great. The people at CBS were awesome, people, TNT, I loved it, but I just I feel like I'm a coach at heart and doing things like this, talking about this, sharing my experiences with people. That's what I really learned. I enjoyed so you don't have to be perfect in your plan. You just have to be honest with yourself in what you do.
So I think most people that run their business will find there will be opportunities. Don't be afraid to take them because you don't need to do them. Take them. Try them. If you don't like them, step away. It's nice to be in that position where you don't need to do it. For instance, my TV job. If I had to have a job, it would have been a great job. But I didn't have to. And I was missing out on too many other things so I didn't have to do it. And I think that's what everybody going into retirement can look forward to do. Try things, don't think it has to be perfect and really concentrate on your authentic relationships. Yeah, that's real freedom. That's real financial freedom. That's great. Yeah. You talked about like the guys that you mentor. Um, now that you're retired and, you know, you have a lot of players that have been in the league, and I'm not trying to leave anybody out. But the one of the biggest stories of the NBA last year was the Knicks. You're in New York. I'm a huge Knicks fan. It's been very surreal to see guys that I went to college with and like, cheered for playing for my favorite NBA team and having a great level of success. What has it been like for you watching that? It's a pretty special thing, and I know you were at their podcast back on campus, just seeing Jaylen and Josh specifically kind of growing up and now having a great level of success in New York. It is awesome. I gotta be honest with you, though. I used to tell our players, uh, if we lost the game, I would say, look, I know your parents, when we lose, think it's all my fault. And I just want you to know, my mom watches the games, too, and she thinks it's all your fault. So, you know, when you're a parent and you watch your your sons play or your daughters play, you want the team to do well, but you really want your your child to do well. That's normal as a parent, right? And that's why it's hard to take parents advice if you're a player because they're only looking after you. They're not thinking about team. But I honestly watched the Knicks the same way. Like I'm a Sixers fan. I grew up in Philly, but I've become a Knicks fan, obviously. But I watch it. I want Josh and Jaylen and McHale to do well, you know. So one of my thoughts right now is I'm so scared for them that if things don't work out in New York and the New York fans turn on them, that's what I'm worried about. Like as a father and a mentor. Because everything's been so great. It's been such a fairy tale. They do this podcast. They they get thousands of people in Central Park for a podcast. That's crazy. I mean, it looks like a major concert in there. And, um, it's been a lot of fun. I just hope they can maintain the level of success that everybody expects here in New York, and the fans can continue to love them. I think they will.
And if they don't, I know people are going to be asking when you're going to take over, so I think I'm good. I went through that one time. I'm good, I'm good. Yeah. We're so proud to have you. As part of the UBS family UBS team, can you tell us a little bit about what you're doing with UBS Advisory Council? I'm loving it. Dwayne Hughes runs the Americas Advisory Council for UBS, and we have Admiral Jon Greenert, and we have Mary Schmidt Campbell, um, who was the president of Belmont University. She's an expert on art. And, um, for me personally, I just love being a part of the team. I love the culture. The two areas that I really enjoy that work is number one, client relations is just going to events, speaking to clients who are running businesses, just like we're doing here today about leadership and team building, and then internally working with all the leadership here at UBS about culture, teamwork, right. And team building. So I get to do what I love and I'm amazed at how important it is to everyone here at UBS that everyone works hard, works together, works smart, and takes pride in being a part of UBS. It's very similar to our basketball team. We're lucky to have you, coach. I love being a part of your team. Last question that I ask everyone on our podcast, what does sweat equity mean to you? It really means, um, to me putting the effort in to whatever team you're a part of and trusting that that effort will get you what you want individual in the end. Putting in team effort, right? Not individual effort, but team effort to get you to be the best you can be. That sweat equity to me. And that's what I hope everybody that's a part of my team can understand. And I think that's something a lot of kids used to learn in sports. And now sports is becoming so individualized. They're not learning that team aspect of sweat equity that you could be your best individually by investing your effort, your sweat, your time into a team that will make you your best individually. Jay, thank you so much for joining us today. It was amazing to sit with you to hear your stories. Thank you so much for sharing your experiences. I enjoyed Jolene and I enjoyed being part of your UBS team. Ryan, great being with you too, buddy. Thanks for being a passionate Villanova alum.
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