Sunny Lenarduzzi: Goals.
Let's talk about them.
Give this video a like if you feel like everyone and their dog is talking about goals right
now, and I so feel you.
There's a bunch of pressure in January, and I get it, but I also think it's really important
to focus on the long game.
I mentioned in the last video that I wanted to introduce you to my original mentor.
Now, here's a little secret I don't think I've ever actually shared with anyone, so
just keep this between you and I. I've actually spent probably close to half a million dollars
on mentorship over the last decade of my career.
That's a lot, but my original mentor was entirely free.
This person has molded, crafted my career, crafted who I am as a person, and has over
45 years of experience in excellence in their career, so I know this is going to be jam
packed with value for you.
We're going to cover everything from haters, to work-life balance, to goal setting, to
adversity; everything that you have asked me about and want to tap into, and the things
that I often touch on, it's all come from this person.
So I've built it up, and you're probably wondering, "Who is this mystery person?"
Well, there's a lot of comparisons between sports and business.
You have to goal set, have mental toughness, be resilient, deal with wins and losses.
You know what I'm talking about, and if you do put, "goals," in the comments below.
I figured what better place to be than the Vancouver Whitecaps office, and we are going
to go have a meeting with my dad, because nobody knows more about goals, literally,
than this guy.
Lenarduzzi, Hinton, Cambert, and finally Bobby Lenarduzzi's fourth goal of the season for
the two-one victory.
Sunny Lenarduzzi: A lot of you ask me all the time on every platform, "How do you stick
with it?
How do you stay motivated when things aren't exactly going your way?"
Sometimes this is like a month into trying to build a business or trying to build a brand,
and sometimes this is a few years in, but I wanted to introduce you to my mentor, because
he's been at the same thing and working in the same space for 50 years.
He has been to the World Cup, the Olympics; he's done it pretty much all in that time,
it's a long time, and he's persevered through a lot of issues, and he's basically the opposite
of entrepreneurial ADD, so Dad.
Hi.
Bob Lenarduzzi: How are you?
Good, how are you?
Do you want to introduce yourself to YouTube?
Yes.
I'm Bob Lenarduzzi.
I'm the president of the Whitecaps.
Last year was my most successful season with the Whitecaps.
I got 10 goals, and a number of assists.
I won a trophy for being named North American Player Of The Year.
And have been in the game, as you stated, for over 50 years.
That took me to England at 14, and I'm still in the game now.
My mantra is I always try to avoid getting a real job.
Which I love, and I appreciate, and I feel like has taught me a lot.
Talk a little bit about your ups and downs, and the times when you thought you might just
give up.
I can tell you that over the course of the 45 years, it's been a rollercoaster ride,
but the two moments that stand out the most for me amongst all the rest is winning the
Soccer Bowl in 1979.
The city reacted in a way where we had 100,000 people in downtown Vancouver welcoming us
back from New York.
We were all the talk of the town.
Then five years later, the team folded, which seemed incomprehensible.
I want to actually know if any of you have experienced any sort of stumbling blocks,
or any sort of pits in your business where you've just felt like giving up, because I
know that with anything, and especially over 45 years, there's going to be ups and downs.
I think a lot of people measure their success on sequential success, and making sure that
everything's going like this all the time, but that's not really how it works.
So the team folds, and I mean, I can liken that to my business basically going under,
or anyone's business basically going under.
I feel like that would be paralyzing.
I know that you've come back from it, but what was that like for you?
How did you come out the other side?
How did you have any sort of hope that this was going to sort itself out?
I do think that ... and it's an overused word, and it's an abused word, but passion.
If you're really, really passionate about something, and you continue to follow your
passion, it will lead you to where you need to get to.
I'm a big believer in that.
Throughout that whole process, I knew I wanted to stay in the game.
There were other opportunities that people were suggesting.
"Well, maybe you should be an Adidas sales rep," or, "Maybe you should get into politics."
At some point, if the soccer career hadn't been restored, then maybe I would've had to
get into something else, but I truly believe that by manifesting something, and by believing
that it's possible, that it can happen.
With where things are at with my business right now, things are going really well, and
it's been a really great last year, and you've seen every step of the journey and the growth.
We've grown the team up by a whole bunch, I've hired Mom, but I also know that this
doesn't last forever.
What's your advice on fool proofing for the future so that I don't make the same mistake
twice, or I don't have a really awful pit in the future, and that I'm prepared for it
if I do?
When you say the words, "fool proof," I don't think you can ever fool proof against things
that potentially are out of your control; the economy, things that are around you that
you don't have a lot of control over.
Ensure that the success that you've had is based on a gradual success.
The tendency might be, "Okay, well, we've done this in this short a period of time.
Let's go for the home run."
In attempting to go for the home run, you may be neglecting the principles that allowed
you to get to where you're at at the moment.
I think that's the perfect way to summarize the long game, because my tendency is to say,
"Okay, we had a really good year last year.
Let's just continue to double things year by year," but I also have learned, and I've
seen a lot of friends and mentors talk about the fact that, "Just because you grew that
much this year does not mean you need to continue to double and triple, because when you do
that, when you try and go for that home run, you often miss things, and you lose sight
of the basics that make this a good business or a good life even, or the balance that you
want to achieve."
I think I'm finally at a place where I'm not so in my business that I don't have a life,
and I really want to hold onto the fact that I've got this little sense of balance now
where I can see you, I see Mom, I see my friends, I have hobbies for the first time, and I'm
doing things outside of just running my business, which I do think is a part of playing the
long game, is not just having that one singular focus, but also building a whole life.
I saw firsthand, and I still see firsthand how obsessed you are with what you do, and
with this club, and with soccer as a whole, and you love it.
You eat, sleep, and breathe it, it's your passion.
What I find really interesting is that you've never burnt out, and you've never gotten to
a place where you are ... your health's taking a slide because you're working yourself into
the ground.
That's so common with ... I mean, I've been there.
You saw when I got burnt out, and I know a lot of other people are dealing with that,
and dealing with anxiety, and all of these different pressures.
How did you avoid it?
How did you avoid burning out?
I came up in a family that we sat around the dinner table and had dinner every night together.
That was until I left home.
Then in our own family, tried to adopt the same principles.
I can remember suggesting that we needed to sit down at dinner, and let's talk about what's
going on in our lives.
I actually think without knowing it, I was also focused on that side of my life, and
being in a family that nurtured that growing up, and then taking that nurturing and then
adopting that to my own family.
Yeah, and I don't think I've ever really thought about that too hard, because it was just so
normal in our family that every single night we sat down for dinner.
I know now how rare it is, but I do think that that played a big part in you having
something outside of just work, and I think maybe that's a big part of what's missing,
and maybe something we should bring back, to have that sense of balance, or normalcy,
of not being tunnel vision on one thing, because you will go crazy, I think, if you do things
that way.
Obviously, it's sports.
That was the focus of your life, but I think there's a common thread no matter what you're
doing and what you want to succeed in.
Yes, there's the physical aspect of being an athlete, but so much more of that is the
mental game, and so the psychology of how you persevere.
What were your staples when it came to keeping your head in the game?
See now, now we're talking new age, right?
Yeah.
Yes, so but I actually was introduced to sports psychology as a result of having to achieve
all the levels in the coaching certification course that the Canadian Soccer Association
puts out.
One of the segments was sports psychology.
I can tell you, I'm going to this sports psychology course, and I know I have to be there for
two full days, and I am dreading it, because I've used sports psychology as, "Okay, lay
on your back.
We're going to tell you that you're going to score six goals, and you're just going
to visualize it, and it's going to happen."
I'm not having it.
So the first thing Mr. David Cox says at this course is, "Let me give you an example of
the power of the brain."
So he says, "How about if I take a plank that wide, that thick, and put it between this
table and that table at this level.
Would you walk across it?"
"Yeah, sure, of course we'd walk across it."
"Okay, I'm going to take the same plank, and I'm going to put it on a 10 story building
attached to another 10 story building.
Same plank.
Would you walk across it?"
"No, no way.
We're not going to walk across the plank."
So the question is, "Well, why?"
"Well, because if we fall, then we're probably dying."
So he said, "Well, what's the difference?
The plank's on here.
You're saying you'll walk across it.
It's all here.
It's all mental, so your mind starts to play tricks with you, and it starts to go to the
outcome, and the outcome on a 10 story building is, 'I'm going to fall off and I'm going to
kill myself.'
Whereas all you need to do is think about the principle: put one foot in front of the
other, put your arms out for balance, get across it, and you can do it here, or you
can do it in a 10 story building."
That actually for me put into the sports psychology, it put it in simple terms.
I get that.
I get yeah, it's the same plank.
There's no reason why I couldn't walk over it over a 10 story building, but I'm starting
to go to outcomes.
It's definitely process, and if you follow all the right steps, the outcome will get
there.
If you jump ahead to the outcome and miss all the steps, you're probably going to fail.
Okay, so let's reverse the roles.
You've been asking the questions, I've been providing you with my worldly advice.
Let me give you my perspective of where you're at and how you've evolved.
You've gone through situations where both personally and professionally it's been difficult,
but you've always managed to get yourself back on track.
Whether I did it by design or not, maybe you've adopted some of those principles that we've
been talking about.
You've adopted them to the point where when I'm out and about, and someone hears my last
name, and they say, "Oh," I'm assuming you're going to say, "You're Bob Lenarduzzi, President
of the Whitecaps."
They say, "Oh, Lenarduzzi.
Are you related to Sunny Lenarduzzi?"
My ego takes a big hit, but it's still something that I'm very proud of.
In anything that you do, whenever you're in the arena, and whenever you're actually putting
yourself out there, there's going to be fans, and then there's going to be haters.
I mean, I remember being really little and seeing newspaper articles saying, "Lenarduzzi's
going to get fired."
It was traumatizing for me, but you're the one who's under attack.
How have you dealt with trolls, before trolls were even a thing?
But now there's obviously social media trolls, but how have you dealt with the haters?
Well, it's a whole different world now than what it was 20, 30 years ago, but I went through
it as a player.
I went through spells, because I was the local boy.
People were critical of my profile, of how I played, and at that time, I don't think
I was as well equipped to deal with it, because I actually took it quite personally.
As I've gotten older, I've realized if I want to stay in the business that I'm in, and social
going the way that it's going where everybody has an opinion, you don't necessarily need
to like being criticized, and anyone that suggests that they're okay with being criticized,
they're lying, because it hurts.
However, if you want to be in the business that you're in with the profile, you have
to accept that it's a part of the business.
You may hear things, but you can't afford to let them set you back, and understand that
anybody in a position of profile will have to actually deal with those kinds of things.
So entrepreneurship can be a little risky, and it can be really tough.
It's amazing to me after all that I've been through in building my business that you and
Mom never once said to me, "Don't do it," or, "You should quit," or, "You should stop,"
or, "It's not going to work out."
How?
How did you do that?
Because I feel like it'd be really easy to try and protect me, and to get me to take
the safer route.
Well, when you started initially, you said you wanted to be an on-air personality in
the news world.
I don't know if I said it to you at the time, but in my head I was thinking, "There's probably
five or six jobs available, so you're heading into a field that has very, very minimal opportunity,"
but didn't say it, and I'm glad I didn't, because ultimately what you wanted to do then
changed over the course of time, but the skillset you acquired by going to BCIT and doing what
you did put you in a position to do what you're doing now.
I don't think there was ever an instance ... Maybe, as was the case with you deciding you wanted
to be an on-air personality, maybe there was a time where I thought, "Oh, maybe I should
say something," but no.
I always felt that whatever you decided you wanted to do, you were going to have a very,
very good go at it, and it wouldn't be for the lack of trying that you didn't succeed.
In the back of my head I'm thinking also that if one venture didn't succeed that you'd be
on to another, and in fact, you've actually done that.
You've been in different forms, and the one you're in right now wasn't the one you were
in two or three years ago.
Any parting words for me and for the viewers as we head into 2019?
The parting advice I have for you would also be to the viewer as well, and that is, and
it's simplistic, stay the course.
If you have an objective, just stick to it.
You might be inclined to want to get there quicker, but at the same time, trying to get
there quicker might actually reverse the trajectory that you have.
Stay the course.
There will be plenty of detractors out there.
Understand that you're in an industry where the trolls are going to say what they say.
I know all about that, because that's what they do in my industry as well.
The best thing you can do is avoid that, and forge your way through to where you want to
get.
Thank you so much for watching this video.
It was so nice to have my dad on the channel, and I want you to tell them what to do.
Like, share, subscribe.
Nailed it.