⏳ Read Time: 4 min

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

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

📌 What’s inside:

• 🔁 Why It Matters: Don’t start fast—start aligned

• 🧠 Core Insight: The first 30 days shape everything

• 👟 Anecdote: One coach’s intentional launch (and one who didn’t)

• ✅ Five Action Steps: How to launch your team or program on purpose

💡 Want a practical tool to help you launch your season?
We’ve included a one-page checklist below to make it simple.

🏠 House-Keeping:

We’ve revamped our website!

If you’re reading this, then our website is not necessarily for you. We want this website to serve as the “front yard of our BETTER house”, directing leaders in athletics to get involved.

We’re excited for people to check it out and give us feedback!

🔁 Don’t Start Fast—Start Aligned

You’ve built your leadership. You’ve shaped your culture. You’ve made performance intentional.

Now your athletes are back. The season is starting. And you’ve got a choice:

The first few weeks will either anchor the culture you’ve built—or drift you away from it.

🧠 Why the First 30 Days Matter

In psychology, it’s called the primacy effect—our brains give disproportionate weight to what happens first.

This isn’t about winning early. It’s about creating a repeatable identity that players trust—even under pressure.

👟 Anecdote: Two Launches, Two Outcomes

Last August, two head coaches we work with were launching their fall seasons—one in women’s soccer, one in men’s basketball. Both had returning talent and high expectations.

• Coach A opened with three-a-days: film review, conditioning blocks, and install meetings. The tone was intensity-first: “We’ve got to get everything in early.”

• Coach B opened with a different approach. Her first team meeting wasn’t about tactics. It was about identity.

We were there when she stood in front of her team and said:

We strategized with her on how to follow up on that identity in practice by measuring behaviors that aligned with their values. She backed it up with a simple practice format: short reps, shared leadership, and player shoutouts to close each session.

Three weeks later, the difference was clear.
Coach A’s team had good structure—but little connection. I even think it’s safe to say they were performing better than Coach B’s team starting Game 1. “We’ve been going hard,” one player said, “but I’m not sure we’re together yet.”
Coach B’s team? “It feels like we’ve already been through a season together.”

We’ll let you guess which coach’s team’s performance progressively built across their season and sustained into the postseason and which team’s performance seemed to flame out.

Coach A’s players seemed relieved when the season ended.
Coach B’s players said they were just as devastated that they weren’t going to get to be together any longer as much as they were devastated by their final loss.

They weren’t just running practices—they were launching their identity. And performance followed that clarity.

🛠️ Putting It All Together:

✅ Five Ways to Launch the Season on Purpose

1. Open with a Clarity Talk

Use your first whole team meeting to cast vision:

2. Create Weekly Bookends

Start every week with a tone-setter (1 min message).
End every week by asking: “How’d we live our identity?”
Build rhythm and reflection.

3. Teach, Don’t Test

Use early-season time to install behaviors and habits, not just systems. Be explicit about how you will measure behaviors that align with your values, the same way you would important statistical metrics.

4. Model First, Correct Later

Make sure your leadership behaviors match your message.

5. Establish Cultural Rituals Early

Pick 1–2 repeatable actions that reinforce your values:

• Shoutouts for unseen effort

• Rotating leadership in warmups

• Shared language or pre-practice reset

💡 Want a System Built to Help You Do This? This is where the work we’ve done in our Culture Playbook Community pays off.

Culture can’t be vague this time of year—it needs to be visible, repeatable, and felt.

🧱 Bonus Tool: Season Launch Checklist

We turned today’s ideas into a one-page, printable checklist for coaches and athletic departments.
Use it this week to get aligned—and build the tone your team will follow all season.

👇 Download the PDF Checklist

🏁 Conclusion: Don’t Just Start. Launch.

Every team starts the season.
But not every team launches it on purpose.
Set the tone. Reinforce what matters. And create early experiences that lock in the identity you’ll need when things get hard.

Because what your team believes in Week 1 is what they’ll return to in Week 11.

🧱 Build Your Culture on Purpose

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 used by programs like Mississippi State, Florida State, and even teams at Microsoft and Google.

👉 Want to see how it works? Access a free trial explicitly built for:

No sales pitch. Just the system that backs up what you’ve been building.

🛠️ 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.