Get Coached to Win at Your Life by the Winningest Coach in Ivy League History and Me
We Want to Be Your Coaches
and
Convince You that You Can Do Anything You Want
Kathy Delaney-Smith was a rock star when I was in high school. She was cool. She was well-dressed, had perfect hair, hollered at people until they hustled, and worked her butt off as a gym teacher, swim coach, and the basketball coach. She led our girls basketball team to Guinness Book of World Record number of wins while using Title IX to get them out of the used field hockey kilts and into green and white tear-away sweats. Game days, she had the gym full of fans listening to Earth Wind and Fire blasting away while her players intimidated the opposing teams with the impressive choreography of their warmups.
Then she went to Harvard and became the winningest coach in Ivy League history. All sports. Men and women.
Chew on that for a moment.
I drove from California to Massachusetts over two years ago to help Kathy write a book about leadership. In order to create winning teams, you have to be a strong leader. A funny thing, though, is after talking to many, many of her previous players, very few (if any) mention the word leader. I heard the words mentor, friend, teacher, and, of course, coach. That, I think, is one of the amazing things about Kathy. She leads but her players feel somehow like they made the decisions, and so they feel less led than cheered-on, encouraged, seen, inspired.
I asked her if she would teach a class on excelling in your life with me because I wanted other people to learn some of the things I learned from Kathy while working on this book. I have become tougher, more disciplined, more self-confident, more aware of others. I am both a better leader and teammate in the groups that I am part of. I have become more aware of the power of having people over to your house for dinner, something Kathy does on the regular.
Kathy and I both have the gift of being able to see potential and strengths in people that they might not see in themselves. She does it as a basketball coach, and I do it as a writing coach. In this class, you’ll get an overview of Kathy’s book, Get Your Head Out of Your Ass/Perfect Is Boring (we’re waiting for the publisher to decide on the title) and learn the core values that got her, for example, awarded the prestigious W. E. B. Du Bois Medal from Harvard this past year. She’ll coach you on things like toughness, selflessness, and discipline, and I’ll give you writing prompts to do in our time together so you can incorporate her lessons into your own thinking and life.
The goal of the class is to get you feeling really good about who you are and what you are capable of doing and to motivate you to go for something that has felt, for some reason or another, out of reach. In the class, you’ll be part of a team of like-minded people: people who like to win.
We’ll meet once a week for four weeks in a row via Zoom Monday nights from 6:30 ET-8:00 ET starting April 29th (and going on to May 6, 13, and 20). The limit is 25 people, and the cost is $100.
To save your spot, Venmo $100 to anne-heffron with the note “coach” (the last four digits of my phone number are 6404). If you have any questions, send them to me at anneheffron@gmail.com.
If you think getting coached by Kathy for four weeks sounds too good to be true, it sort of is. I am thrilled beyond measure she said yes to this. I get to share her with you! In other words, don’t delay in saving your spot.
