Episode Transcript
Kirk: This week's guest is Alex Weber. He's an author and leadership expert, but also an award-winning lacrosse coach. His book, Fail Proof, has received rave reviews from pro athletes, business leaders, and award winning authors alike.
Alex will be bringing his keynote on unstoppable leadership to our upcoming Construction Leadership Conference in just a few weeks. But until then, please welcome to the Construction User 2.0 podcast, the human shot of espresso, Alex Weber. Thank you so much for being here with us today.
Alex: Hey, I'm so fired up. I appreciate you having me.
Kirk: In our intro and on your website, you refer to yourself as the human shot of espresso. Where did that come from?
Alex: I got to say, I think the team came up with that. I wasn't sitting, looking at myself in the mirror like, all right, who am I right now? I do have a lot of positive energy.
I'm the first to say two things. One, it's not insincere. I think that would be exhausting and honestly, a little offensive, if someone was just bouncing off the walls all the time. The truth is that I love this life. I love meeting great people. I love when people are fired up, like you all, to redesign this world that we live in, to do amazing things, and to be a part of that. That's what fires me up.
Kirk: Awesome. That question could have technically qualified. I like to start every one of these with a completely off-the-wall unimportant question just to get us going that could have qualified. My favorite has actually become, what is the last song that you got stuck in your head that you just could not break free of?
Alex: You know what's so funny? I'm just going to own this. It's a Sam Barber song. For some reason, there are a few songs like this where the boys are leaving high school. They're going off to the next chapter of their life, and it's like a country song about their last night. There are a few songs like this.
I'm not leaving high school. I've been out for a minute now. There's something about, and I feel like your audience would hit home with this too, just when you have those deep memories, experiences, and growth with a group of guys, and then that chapter ends. It's so universal. For better or worse, those are the songs that have been cranking.
Kirk: No, it's amazing. No matter how old we get, you go back and you watch that movie, that ride or die movie, or that song in high school, that moment, and it brings you back there real quick, so I get it.
Alex: Totally, a hundred percent.
Kirk: Awesome. We're just going to start with, tell me a little bit about you. You have such an interesting story. We have you coming out to our leadership conference. In researching you for that, as well as reading a little bit of your book and googling you, you're the first person I've ever actually gotten to talk to that was on American Ninja Warrior. What's your story? How did you get here? Where did you come from?
Alex: It's a layered one. First off, I cannot wait to be in Savannah with you all. My man, Sterling Hawkins, is speaking as well. I'm just so fired up to join you all.
Ninja Warrior, every season of it literally has been its own period where I'm like, this is going to be its own adventure and its own experience. I'll get into specifics, but it's something where before I decide to commit myself to it because you got to train for a year.
For those who haven't seen it, it's this really intense obstacle course series on NBC. It's called one of, if not the toughest obstacle course series on Earth. It's bananas. To do it, you really have to be training as much as possible for a year. You don't really know if you're going to get a shot to actually compete till a month out.
The decision to be in or out has to take place regardless of the result, and really if you know if you'll get a shot at your goal or not. I always ask myself the year before, do you want to do this because it's going to be a lot? You're going to be driving an hour, you're going to be training for three hours, you're going to beat the crud out of your body. There are going to be highs, we're going to be lows, and this may end with either smiles, winning, laughs, pride, or this might end with heartbreak, some humbling moments, and some frustration.
Knowing all of that, are you in or are you out? And every time, I'm in. I'm in really because I have how much I love what it does to me. I love that I'd go train and get to be with other athletes.
The more layered answer is I play D1 lacrosse. I played college lacrosse, and that was my dream. But something happened to me where I finished college lacrosse, and everyone referred to me as a former athlete. I accepted that identity. We're going to talk a lot about that when I'm with you in Savannah.
I accepted that identity, even though my inside was like, no. No, that's not who I am. Because I accepted it, I acted on it. I treated myself like a former athlete and got depressed.
When American Ninja Warrior came in my life—we'll talk more when I'm there because it came in my life as a host and a competitor—it was not only for my dream job that I had to do this sport, but also, I felt like I was fighting for my life as an athlete because I had lost it. I had lost that identity, so now I was like, oh, gosh, I got to fight for this.
Kirk: No, I like that. Tell me a little bit more about that. You're an author, you're a speaker. You are not a former athlete, you're a current athlete. You have done everything. Your book is Fail Proof. All of these roads merged together. What was that moment? Or was there a moment? What was that codifying moment?
Alex: Really, where it all came from was a lot of these things were brewing inside me as a lot of this happens. You have some experiences, you have some growth, you have some cool mile markers.
Really, the big defining moment—we'll obviously talk more about it when I'm there in Savannah—for my dream job, the first year doing it, my bosses, the producers, and NBC—incredible people, incredible series—the idea was that I was just going to be a goofy guy who would flail off the obstacles, everyone would laugh, and it'd be great. I was like, got you, because I also come from a comedy background. I'm like, okay, just turn up the dial on that side, and I'll flail off things.
The thing was whether I was trying or not, the obstacles were so hard. I was getting splashed on the water regardless. I was like, all right, I'll just have some fun doing it. But then—this was the really defining moment and one that I like to convey to people is—for my dream job, my bosses came to me and they changed my expectations and job duty on a dime. They were like, hey, it actually works better if you were good at this, so we need you now to be good at this.
Now I'm like, ah, I've just been failing on all of these. I can't do these, and now I have to be good at it? Keep in mind, there are so many athletes who are competing. Also, the sport is so big, there are so many athletes who are just in the world, who would love to step in and do this job. I really had to become good at this sport.
What I ended up doing was I reflected on it. I'm like, all right, if I got to get good at this sport, I need to go and train with the best people. This is so important because what I was doing at the time was, I was scared to go train with the best athletes because it was going to be uncomfortable, overwhelming, intimidating, and humbling. I would just go to my gym, I do some pull-ups, and I would tell myself that I was training. But really, I wasn't because I wasn't doing what the best people did.
The biggest decision I had to make was, I'm going to eat some humble pie, and I'm going to be okay with that. I would drive out, would train with the best athletes, and I would fail my face off over and over and over and over again, be embarrassed, humbled, frustrated.
But after a while, I realized, oh, the same thing happens every time you fail. Then I started to see that the same thing happens, whether you're in a sport, you get in an argument with someone you love, or you screw up a habit in your life. It's the same chain reaction. That's what ended up.
I made this formula for it. Really, it led to what I speak on now, which is being unstoppable, which is the mindset that challenges are going to come, we're going to make mistakes, fine. Where other people stop, how do we keep going? That's really what fires me up the most.
Kirk: There are so many questions and so many ways that I want to lead to that. Using that as my segue, how does an obstacle? I'm a former military. I've run through the basic training obstacle courses. I used to do the Savage Races and the Mud Runs. I love them.
When I try to compare those to the sports I've done, I'm not saying they're not athletic, but it's not a sport in the same way. It's not a game in the same way, I guess, but it's still a sport. It's still athletics. It's not a game. It's a total change in mind frame.
Going from lacrosse, which has, like you said, D1, there's a league, there are rules. There's this very specific. To Ninja Warrior, I'm not saying it's freeform, but it's a different paradigm. How do you shift your mind frame from that?
Alex: That is such an awesome question, it really is. It's such an insightful question. I would joke, I played feet-on-the-ground sports. I played lacrosse, I played baseball, I played hockey, I played flag football or pickup football with the dudes, pick up basketball. Any of those sports, I can figure out and do it. This was bonkers to me because now, your primary device is not your feet running. You got to hang by your fingers.
One thing I love about the sport, and why I have so much respect for it, is not only do you have to hang, not only do you have to fly literally through the air, but then you have to do finesse moves. Meaning you'll have a little ring. While you're flying in the air, you have to look hand-eye and hook on a ring.
I really love that because you have to work extremely hard, but then you have to be an athlete, too. My answer to you is what I told myself was, the best people at the sport have the most TOO (time on obstacles) and that is just experience.
I think we live in a time where people, especially now if you're coming up, and you see all this stuff on the Internet, it's like, what's the secret formula? How do I do it? Who has the answer? You know what the answer is? It's show up, do your best, get messy. Some of that messiness is going to work out, some of it’s going to make mistakes, but all that's going to ebb and flow, and you're going to progress.
I think, too often, we fall into this trap of, it needs to be perfect. That's just never going to happen. It's just show up, roll up your sleeves, give it your best go. I think this is really important. Have faith in yourself that you're going to figure it out in the moment. You'll rise to that occasion.
Kirk: I'm not trying to throw a curveball at you. At the same time, obviously you're coming to our conference. We're The Association of Union Constructors. Construction is one of those things where there hasn't been leaps and bounds of technological improvements since the Industrial Revolution until the last 10–15 years. Making a road was making a road, asphalt was asphalt, pillars were pillars, pylons were pylons.
In the last 15–20 years, we're having this huge generational shift exactly leaving one type of sport. We're having a generational shift. We're not talking about just, how do I train differently? How do we have leaders move a ship, change the direction, change the rules of the game? We're playing a different type of sport now as the world is changing. How do you lead through that?
Alex: I'll say a few things. I love this expression from hockey, you got to skate where the puck is going. It's just a next play mentality and I'll say even more internally.
Our teams are going to pick up on, how do we feel about this? Before we even get into the nitty gritty of it, as you as a leader, how do you feel about this? Are we saying this is stupid, this ChatGPT stuff? Is this all going to just go by the wayside and blow it over, and we just got to endure? All right. Or as team members, do we look at our leader and say, okay, we don't know what's going to happen, but our leader's confident, our leader's telling us we're going to face these challenges, we're going to figure it out. We're in because of that.
I would say, the first thing is, as a leader, we have to consciously and authentically decide, these changes are not what we asked for, but they are occurring. Okay, let's accept it and let's move with it because if not, we're trying to win a losing battle from the start, because this isn't going to go anywhere.
The second thing I'll say is to empower your team members, too. If we're trying to innovate, if we're trying to figure out how to adapt to this, call upon your team members. The ones that you feel really understand your company mission and are trustworthy. Make a little council of the best and brightest that you've got, take a little bit of the extreme heavy lifting off of your shoulders as a leader, and also, your solid team members are going to have great ideas. There are.
The beautiful thing about that I found—I won US Lacrosse Coach of the Year—in making your council, it just makes it an ‘us’ energy, where now, we're all trying to win together. We all in this fight together, versus it being, well, the leader decided this, it didn't work out. That's what the leader decided. Now we're all coming to this decision together, and the skin in the game is a lot stronger.
Kirk: I like that. Trying to tie it back to some of the things that I've read and seen that you have said, tie that back to being fail proof. What does it mean to be fail proof? There are a lot of companies going through some huge changes, and there are a lot to overcome there.
Alex: What really pops out to me, and I want to make sure I say this in a way that I think as a predominantly male audience, I'm a male and I come from a male background of sports, we don't want to admit weakness. When I say this, I want to be clear that it is not a weakness. I think humility is a really brave quality. Humility is saying, you know what? I don't have the answer. You know what? I'm okay showing up, giving my best, and having this be imperfect.
Whether that was me training with American Ninja Warrior and showing up, I showed up to training, failing, frustrating humiliating, as a D1, as an All American, as a US Lacrosse Coach of the Year, as a world champion, I played the world championships of lacrosse, second top goal scorer in the world, arguably an expert in that sport, and then I showed up and failed, failed, failed, failed, failed, failed, failed, embarrassed, humiliated, frustrated.
There was no other way for it to work out without just having that humility of saying, you know what? I got to learn and improve at this. I think if we translate that as leaders of connecting with our team and saying, hey, we don't know what the future is going to look like, we don't know all the right moves, but let's show up. Let's show up and make the best decision we can right now, commit to it, having faith that if we need to make some moves, figure it out, ebb and flow, we will. I think, too often, we get in this trap of feeling like we have to have the exact right, perfect answer right now. How can we? That can be paralyzing.
Kirk: Absolutely. I want to play off that statement. Construction, as you may or may not know, has one of the highest ratings of stress, as well as mental health issues. It literally is, I believe the highest, if not just the top few. The numbers are depending on which you're looking at.
I understand that you have an organization, Men We Admire. It works on these things like mental health. We have a Dial 988 campaign that we're pushing really hard over the last few months. Like you said, how are we going to get this right? How are we going to survive these transitions? Tell me a little bit more about the Men We Admire and mental health.
Alex: I get chills. I appreciate you bringing it up and sharing about mental health as well. Men We Admire started, and I'll share more about it when we're all together, but I was going through a darker patch in 2020 and into 2021.
Here's what's interesting about that. My front of house was pretty good. Meaning I was going to compete on American Ninja Warrior. I was doing speaking, I had a book coming out. If you just saw what I was doing, okay, that guy's good, he's all good. He's got good stuff going on. I'm a smiley guy, I'm happy, I'm energetic, got good career stuff. Back of house, internal, I was so depressed, just questioning a lot, and I didn't like who I was.
What I did at that time was I made a list of men that I admire. I've never done that before. When I started writing it, I got chills. I was like, oh, that's what this is. I would like to be a man that I admire. Then I started thinking about some of my friends that I know and great guys. They want to be men that we admire, too. That's where this started, Men We Admire.
Now it's two years in, and we have guys in construction, we have leaders of different companies, and we've got pro athletes. I call it high-achieving men just like what you all are because—this is what fires me up—it's so hard to be a high-achieving man who is waking up early, and going and slaying the dragon. You're going and trying to go. You're working your tail off all day to literally kill this dragon or whatever helps the gazelle, bring it home for your family to eat, provide, achieve.
While you're doing that, which is not easy—just like we all talked about, uncertain future, you got to work with team members, you got to adapt, you got to work with clients, it's not easy, you got a lot stress and pressure there—you are also trying to be a high-achieving man for your romantic partner, for your family. You're trying to not have too many habits that screw you up, vices, or negative talk. It's a lot.
Sometimes in that high-achieving pursuit, something's got to give. Usually, what ends up happening is it's ourselves. We self-harm, we make some silly mistakes, or we sabotage a relationship. That's where Men We Admire came from, just guys being able to talk once a week for an hour just about what's going on in life.
Think about a timeout. Not a kid being punished, but you're in the game, and it's super intense. It's a playoff game. This is the game of your life. We just call a timeout and we're like, hey guys, how are you doing? What's going on? Do we need to make any strategic choices? Okay, ball in, let's go.
It's been a really beautiful thing to share and realize you are not alone. You're not alone if you've been quite questioning yourself. If you make mistakes, if you've got a relationship that's frayed, if you're still making a bad choice, if something in your career is causing you stress, you're not alone.
Kirk: That's awesome. I really appreciate you explaining that. Just get on with my last few minutes. I'm going to ask the unanswerable question. I say it up front because I want you to know going up to it. I'm setting you up. Really, it's an unanswerable question.
It's a restatement of a previous question, but I'm just going to add some weight to it. Like you just said, as from Men We Admire, you have to go slay the dragon and be there as a good husband, good father, good provider, good employee, good manager, good householder, good everything. Over here, we have the world changing faster than anyone has ever seen in the last 150 years, and we have to navigate unbelievable things.
We have a generational shift, we have the unions. The unions are both declining and rising at the same time, which is a really interesting paradigm to be in the middle of. We have all of these different things. It would seem almost impossible to succeed, but you are the guy about Fail Proof. How on earth do we not fail at threading all of these needles at the same time?
Alex: I love it. I'll give my short answer. We fail when we stop. If you throw your hands up, you quit the job, you quit the relationship, you quit on yourself and your life, you stop, yeah, then it's a fail. Write the chapter, close the book, put it in the history books. It's done. Boom. Cement it. It's over.
If you decide that no matter what comes our way, we are committed, we are all in, and knowing you're going to screw up, you're going to think you did the right thing but it ends up being the wrong choice. That is okay because if you are all in, if you're committed to this, look at the stat sheet at the end of the day, you're going to be winning.
You're going to make the right choices more times than you make the wrong choice. You're going to outlast the challenges, you're going to bond with your teams, and you're going to get closer to your goal. If you stop, we fail. But if you keep going, growing, and getting better, I think that's when you're unstoppable. It's just knowing the challenges don't stop, but we don't stop.
Kirk: I'm not even going to try to follow up with that. That's the best following and conclusion to that question I think I could expect to get.
Sir, thank you so much for joining us today. I really appreciate your time. I'm looking forward to getting to see your talk with us here at the SCLC in a few weeks.
Alex: Thank you so much for having me. This is awesome. I can't wait to be there with you all.
Kirk: Awesome. Thank you so much.
