⏳ Read Time: 3 min

We’ve seen some of the fastest growth this newsletter has ever had in the past two months. Thank you for being here and for being a part of our mission to elevate the level of leadership in athletics.

Want to know more? Read about the BETTER Team and Mission here.

📌 What’s inside:

• 🏈 Adversity Comes for Every Team: Florida State’s Resilience

• 📊 Research insight: How self-regulation fuels team resilience

• 🛠 Five ways to help your team navigate the Pit of Despair

This tool above is one of our favorites.

If you want a full explanation, call, text, or DM Kevin or I.

What we want to call your attention to is the bottom right corner. We call it The Pit of Despair.

It’s the point that every team hits between Conscious Incompetence (You’re bad and you know it) and Conscious Competence (You’re growing and getting better). The Pit rests at that corner because it’s the point where it becomes clear just how far you are from reaching your goal.

And it’s the place where most people quit.

⏱️ Anecdote: Florida State’s Resilient Return

Adversity is guaranteed. Even great teams hit the Pit of Despair.

Florida State’s football program is a case in point. After going undefeated in 2023, they were left out of the College Football Playoff — becoming one of the most significant talking points in CFP history. Then, the following season, they became one of the most criticized teams in the country. For months, the narrative around them was about what they weren’t instead of what they were.

We had the opportunity to work with FSU Football leading into their 2024 season. Kevin led a series of team retreats for their position groups in July, just weeks before they lost to Georgia Tech in what seemed like a major upset at the time.

Norvell told Kevin that he knew he was going to have to double down on leadership because they were preparing to face adversity after going undefeated in their 2023 campaign. That stuck with us. Their leader was preparing their leadership for adversity.

It was their commitment to process, to togetherness, and to preparing for the inevitable adversity ahead.

Fast forward to their 2025 season opener: they didn’t just win — they won impressively over one of the leading brands in NCAA football, the Alabama Crimson Tide.

One headline read, “After 18 months of disrespect, FSU evens the score.”

Now, whether this game will become a pivotal point for FSU football remains to be seen.

But it begs the question: What are you doing to prepare your team for adversity?

The point: You can’t escape it. Even all-time great teams hit adversity. It’s what we call the Pit of Despair — that moment when togetherness is tested and doubt creeps in.

This team endured the Pit and doubled down on their identity, unity, and culture — and it showed when the lights were brightest.

📊 Research Insight: Self-Regulating Resilience

A 3-month European study on elite military training found that individual self-regulation skills (staying calm, focused, and adaptable) were critical for performance. But the real breakthrough came when these skills were integrated into the team context.

In other words, resilience starts with the individual, but it’s multiplied through the team. A leader’s job is to prepare people to self-regulate—and then connect those habits inside the group.

It paints a blueprint for how we should prepare our teams for adversity. You model it. Then help others do it for themselves. Then, create connections between teammates.

And of course, it always starts with you.

🛠️ Putting It All Together:

🛠 Five Ways to Help Your Team Navigate the Pit of Despair

1. Normalize Adversity

   • Make it clear: the Pit of Despair isn’t failure, it’s part of the process. Every team, every leader, every season faces it.

2. Build Relationship Rhythms Early

   • Don’t wait for the crisis to connect. Establish regular check-ins with key staff and players before adversity hits.

3. Keep the Vision Visible

   • Write it, speak it, reinforce it. When the “why” blurs, your reminders keep people moving forward.

4. Encourage the Core

   • Don’t just encourage them for performance. Know your people deeply. Affirm their strengths, their unique contributions, and who they are beyond performance.

5. Model Your Own Self-Regulation

   • Your calm sets the tone. Practice your own coping habits so your team sees resilience, not panic, when things get hard.

🏁 Conclusion: It’s In the Prep

The Pit of Despair is inevitable. It’s where talent gets tested and where teams either fracture or forge deeper bonds.

Leaders can’t avoid it — but they can prepare for it. By teaching self-regulation, building strong rhythms of connection, and keeping vision alive, you give your team the tools to turn adversity into alignment.

Greatness isn’t just about avoiding the Pit. It’s about walking through it together.

🧱 Build Your Culture on Purpose

Just in the past two weeks, we’ve added over 100 coaches and ADs to our Culture Playbook Community.

Most coaches know the kind of culture they want.
But when is it time to teach it, reinforce it, and make it visible?
That’s where it breaks down.

That’s why we built the Culture Playbook—a simple, customizable system you can use to make your culture clear and coachable from Day 1.

It’s packed with short, practical tools and team exercises that take your values off the wall and bring them to life.
The same tools are used by programs like Mississippi State, Florida State, and even teams at Microsoft and Google.

🛠️ Want to win more? Know Yourself First.

Just last week, nearly 60 leaders signed up for our 5-day leadership course based on your Voice!

It will be sent to your inbox starting the Monday after you take the assessment and run for that week.

The assessment takes 10-15 minutes. Take it below.

A Quick Word

About this time last year, we decided to be as clear as we could in our marketing, so we “stopped” marketing any product other than the Culture Playbook and our Coach Community. That being said, we’ve had a couple of dozen asks about our Team Talks.

For the new folks, we developed a series of Team Talks, 18 in-season and 18 out-of-season talks, designed to help coaches meet their team where they are, regardless of what challenges they face during a season. The coach can put the talk up on the screen and hit play. Or use the video to prepare themselves to give the same talk to their team.

We still have them! We don’t market them nearly as much anymore. If you’d be interested in purchasing for your Department (ADs) or your program (Coaches), just DM Seth or Kevin on Twitter or reply to this email.

Back to our regularly scheduled programming!