Whenever the clock struck 2:00 a.m., if he was awake, it always gave Brian a little chuckle. His dad, when trying to impose curfews and get him and his siblings to make better decisions in their own lives, would always say, “If you’re out past 2:00 a.m., you’re only looking for trouble.” His dad was an undercover cop, so there was a lot of experience coming from that statement. As a bartender, Brian agreed, there was also a lot of truth.

Yet, the Saturday night of week two at Crossroads, something good happened after 2:00 a.m.

“Can I get a glass of water?” the man asked.

“Sure,” Brian said without looking up.

When he poured the water, he looked up to hand it to the customer. He recognized the man. He wasn’t sure where from, though.

“I know you, right?” Brian asked.

“Coach!” Jack screamed from the other end of the bar.

And then it dawned on Brian who this gray-haired man was. Coach Hal Babson was a Hall of Fame college football coach.

“Coach, great to see you. Thanks for coming in,” Jack said.

“Anytime, Jack. We had some big alumni dinner downtown that let out about a half hour ago. Otherwise, I would have been in sooner. All those ‘glory days’ stories can go on sometimes a bit too long, but it’s always great catching up with my former players.”

“You met Brian?” Jack asked.

“Yes, just now.”

“Coach, it’s okay if I call you Coach, right? Big fan.” Brian shook his hand.

“Yes, call me Coach. Everyone else does. Even my wife.”

“Really?” Brian said.

“No, not really. Just kidding with you, Brian. She calls me Hal. Coach is my brand. And when I leave the room people say I’m mean and tough, but fair.”

“Personal brand?”

“Yeah, yeah . . . I don’t call it personal brand,” Coach said to Brian. “That’s Jack and his fancy brand strategy talk. I call it your reputation. I call it ‘your shadow,’ and I used to tell my players that your reputation will follow you wherever you go. It follows you and every single person you hang out with. So, we didn’t call it branding. We called it, do the right thing and surround yourself with the right people, or I’ll kick you in the ass and then I’ll kick you off my team.”

Brian thought that between Kelly punching people and Coach kicking them in the ass, this whole idea of personal branding could be considered a contact sport.

“I played for Coach Babson,” Jack said. “He was the one who taught me all about having a strong sense of self. So, since I knew he was going to be in the neighborhood, I asked him to come in and talk to you about your identity.”

“Jack tells me you are between jobs,” Coach said.

“Yes.”

“So, you’re looking for a new team?”

“Well, yeah, I’m looking for a new company.”

“No, you’re looking for a new team. The company is not going to hire you. A person with needs who is in charge of a team within that company is going to hire you to be part of that team. Once you look at it that way, you will have a much easier time of finding a new position. That leader of that team has a vision. His or her team has necessary positions to deliver on that vision. You with me?”

“Yes, I understand. I also played ball and had a tough but fair but not as good a coach as you, so I get it,” Brian added.

“You played in college?”

“Yes.”

“Great. So, here’s something you may not know but might have experienced. Kids who either graduate out of their sport or get hurt during their college careers and can’t play anymore are up to 20% more likely to suffer severe depression when they stop playing their sport. Any idea why?”

“Obviously, they miss what they have been doing their whole lives. It happened to me. I played from the time I was eight years old through college, till my junior year,” Brian stated.

“What happened junior year?”

“I got hurt. Spine and shoulder injury. A bit of nerve damage. Couldn’t play my senior year. Had to medically retire. I was devastated. I guess you could say I felt incomplete.”

“Depressed?”

“Yes.”

“Questioned who you were?”

“Every day.”

“Lost your identity?”

“Yes. I was no longer an athlete.”

“And your whole life from that day up until this point you have been searching for a team, any kind of team to make you feel whole again?”

“Pretty much.”

“And you thought your past company was that team.”

“Not the way I felt about my sports teams, but yes. I felt like I was a part of something bigger than myself. I wore the branded golf shirts and had the swag bags with the corporate logo on them, and, yeah, I guess you could say I felt as much of a part of a team as I could.”

“Brian, your company is not your team. Your company is like the school you graduated from. That’s the bigger brand. When you go in for an interview, that college you graduated from will be a brand that either means something or it doesn’t to the person hiring you. They may be impressed or they may not.”

“I like to think I went to a good school.”

“That’s great, but at the end of the day, the better school brand doesn’t matter if you can’t help someone deliver the vision. The person hiring you wants someone who fills a position on his team with the best talent available, who stands for the same things he or she stands for. They care about the school brand but only as part of the decision process. That label will help them get to the final two or three choices for the position.”

“I understand,” Brian responded.

Kelly came running down to where Brian was standing and practically shoved him out of the way. She reached across the bar to give Coach a peck on the cheek.

“Coach! Great to see you.”

“You too, Kell Bell. Punch anybody out tonight?”

“Not tonight, but there’s still time on the clock.”

Kelly ran back to the point where two new customers had just stepped up to the bar. Coach turned back towards Brian.

“That girl has always scared me a little bit,” Coach said.

“So, you were saying the company and the school are the bigger brand.”

“Right. And, within each school there are teams. Sports teams, clubs, academic teams, music teams, debate teams. You name it. You could find a few hundred teams at each school, just like you could find a few hundred teams at each big company. You won’t play for every team. So, you need to decide what team you want to be on and make that team the best it can be.

“When I was the coach for the football team, I didn’t care as much about what the rest of the teams were doing. If the other teams were doing well, that was good for the school, but not necessarily for my team. I didn’t care about the basketball team or the lacrosse team. I cared about my team. My team had a brand. We had a very strong brand because I picked the best people for each position. Not just the best athletes—the best people. If you didn’t fit with my culture, I didn’t care how talented you were. You had to fit all aspects of my team to be chosen by me.”

“So, you’re saying I need to focus on helping the hiring manager and his or her team. If I do that, then I also help the company by making the team brand stronger. And based on my conversations over the past week or so, I need to be known for one thing that is essential to the team.”

“Bingo. Your reputation is essential, but you can’t be everything to everyone. I’ve seen people try to be everything, but no one is good at everything. You are better off if you have a strength or an expertise that is essential to the team, that gets results no one can match.”

“What do you mean?”

“I’ll explain in terms of when I used to do recruiting. When I looked for someone to join my team whether they were an athlete, an assistant coach, the team manager, or the water boy, I focused on their one greatest talent to get the results I needed for that position. Everyone has specific skills that are unique. I’m sure you have certain talents that no one else has. Right now you might be questioning your uniqueness, but find those talents; find what you are best at that can help a leader fill an essential position. Know what powers you have that make you an expert, and then you will have the confidence to put yourself out there for the right team. Know your greatest strength and highlight it. The right team will find you. Position yourself in a way that highlights the one thing that only you can bring to the role and the one thing that team needs most. It’s easy to get the job when you are the only candidate for that unique position.”

Brian realized that Coach was saying the same things Jack was saying, but it terms he could completely relate to. He was trying to get onto any team, taking any position that would have him. Instead, he should be looking for a team that needed him and the unique skills that only he had to offer.

“Brian, it’s not complicated. As a coach, I just called it simply finding the best talent possible at the position I needed, who wouldn’t need a kick in the ass. And, if I found a kid who had a great attitude with the best skills for the position, I’d do whatever I needed to get that kid on my team. In business, if you are the CEO, you pick great leaders who hire other great leaders who then hire other great employees. No matter who you are, if you are in charge of hiring someone, you want someone with a specific skill to make your team better. Brian, your job is to know your one true strength and find a way to make sure everyone else knows it as well.”

Brian nodded.

“My boy, you will find another team. But you have to be valuable to the person recruiting you. Forget the logo and the benefits of the corporate brand. There are too many people who do that. I went to this school. I work for this company. Who cares?! One day your weak reputation that is hiding behind the stronger reputation of the company brand is going to be found out. Obviously, you wouldn’t be between jobs if you were the right guy in the right position on the right team. Make your strength so powerful that the right team would be honored to have you. Remember, no one will hire you if you don’t have the skills to make their team better.”

Brian nodded.

“Jack! I’m leaving,” Coach called out.

He turned to Brian.

“Good luck, Brian. You can do this.”

They shook hands, and Coach walked out the door with a wave to Kelly.

Brian realized that if he did not make a single dollar that evening, it wouldn’t matter.

After Coach left the bar that night, business picked up again slightly till about 3:30 a.m. Rather than leave early like Jack said he could, Brian stayed to help clean up and count tips. Brian never stayed late at his previous job. At least not in the past three or four years. Going beyond the norm was a personal brand that did not exist for him in the past.

He finally got home, but he couldn’t go to sleep. So many things he wanted to do differently. He had wasted so much time being average. Coach was right. After he got hurt in college, he was not the same. He still wanted success, but something died in him. He became human. He had powers, but they were no longer superpowers. He felt invincible in college. Then the real world and work and his family became his priorities. So, forget being close to invincible. He just tried to get by or get around whatever obstacles occurred. You just lose a bit of yourself each day, he thought, until you don’t even really know who you are anymore.

No! That would not be him anymore. He could change. He would change.