The Success Nuggets

Success Nuggets - #31 Cultivating Greatness and Mental Strength with Rick Macci

• David Abel • Season 2 • Episode 11

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Renowned hall of fame tennis coach Rick Macci joins us in a truly inspiring episode, sharing his incredible journey from a promising golfer in Greenville, Ohio, to coaching Tennis legends like Venus and Serena Williams. 

Rick captivates us with tales of his extraordinary 1 AM routine, revealing the meticulous dedication and mental toughness that have defined his career. Drawing upon his vast experience, he emphasizes the transformative power of coaching, where life lessons and mental agility take precedence over mere technical prowess. 

This conversation promises to leave you with a renewed sense of motivation, as Rick shares his philosophy of positive reinforcement and the unique methods that help young athletes unleash their full potential.

Throughout this engaging discussion, we explore powerful concepts such as visualization, smart effort, and the significance of a positive mindset in both personal and professional spheres. 

Rick encourages us to embrace our own potential every day. Whether you’re an athlete, a coach, or someone looking to harness mental strength, this episode is packed with valuable lessons and insights that promise to inspire and uplift. Tune in and uncover the secrets to cultivating greatness within yourself and others.

Speaker 2:

Amazing amazing wisdom. Entrepreneurs, success, success around the world.

Speaker 1:

This is the Success Nuggets podcast. Have you ever wondered what you could learn and how inspired you'd be if you asked incredible people from around the world about the patterns that drive progress? Get ready to dive into a world of insights and inspiration, of insights and inspiration. This is the Success Nuggets Podcast, with the founder of the Digital Lightbulb and your host, david.

Speaker 2:

Abel. When it comes to professional sport, being inducted to the Hall of Fame and then winning 52 Grand Slam singles titles is something special. My next guest is not just any coach he's the world's greatest tennis coach, rick Macy. Hello.

Speaker 3:

Good to be with you. It's going to be a lot of fun.

Speaker 2:

What about your schedule? You're a morning person, I guess.

Speaker 3:

Yeah, yeah, I get up every morning. Someone asked me I get up every morning at one o'clock. It's pretty much known around the world, you know, and somebody I was doing a podcast, they go. I got to ask this question why in God's name did you get up at one o'clock in the morning? And I said 12 o'clock's a little too early, Okay, so that kind of that kind of went a little bit viral. So that was kind of funny.

Speaker 3:

But no, I've always gotten up early and I got an office at home. I answer all the emails. No, I've always gotten up early and I got an office at home. I answer all the emails I get back to people. Then I usually start teaching at five o'clock and I open up the park where I live, a half mile from Rick Macy Tennis Center and I'm a park ranger. At 69 years old, I'm a park ranger, you know. I open up the park, I start teaching at five but, like this Thursday, I got a Zoom at four in the morning with someone from, I think, Slovakia or somewhere like that. So I do a lot of Zoom videos early in the morning because of the time change. They put the camera on the cord and I put Humpty Dumpty together. I put the technical part together.

Speaker 2:

Awesome, awesome. On your website for your academy it says there's a 10 10 am gathering the academy goes 8 to 11 and then 8 to 10.

Speaker 3:

Everybody picks up balls, they go into bleachers. And I deliver a blast from the past, whether it be a venus, serena, caprioti, roddick, sherpova, or just about the game of life, about attitude, about motivation, about looking through things with a different lens, and it's powerful. And I mean all the phones are on and all the parents are locked and loaded and ready to launch. I could just see that it's powerful. Sometimes I might do a technical thing, but it's more about other things and it's always connected back to the mental, where it's a game of inches from one ear to another. You know, and it's just powerful because young kids are so impressionable. You know what I mean. If they're a little lazy or they make excuses, I get them just to look at things different and obviously because of the track record or the pedigree, I've just been able to change the mindset of so many young kids, to get them to think differently before it really gets serious. You know, if they go into pro tennis.

Speaker 2:

Yeah, that's a great foundation. And do you think up that speech in advance or do you just go for it on the spot?

Speaker 3:

Yeah, I just have one of the parents I say if I want to record it. I said can you turn your phone on? I don't know what I'm going to say until I walk up there, depending if there's 10 kids or 60 kids and it depends on the audience a little bit, because we have some younger kids that are there. I can't like talk over their head. They all got their journal. I make them write them, write it down. You know, if you write it down you'll be all right.

Speaker 3:

If you look at it every day, you become that and I think the parents appreciate more than anything because it's almost like another parent teaching life lessons. You know what I'm saying. They like the technical part because some of them maybe can't pay 800 an hour for a private lesson with me. So I do some technical things too that very few people around the world understand the biomechanics but it's more about the other stuff Attitude, work, ethic, you know, desire, commitment, just things like that and being dedicated and committing to things. That's what I like to do and I can tell by the look on their faces if I'm connected.

Speaker 2:

What age did you become a coach, Rick?

Speaker 3:

Good question. I think when I was born believe it or not, even though I didn't get paid for it growing up I was always kind of a leader. I always liked to figure things out. I was always an organizer. You know what I mean. I always liked to figure things out. I tell people this story. I'd go to the movies with my friends and we'd sit down in the first five minutes I'd be trying to tell them how it was going to end. I always wanted to figure things out, like that, you know, and that's probably why I was a good point guard in basketball. I could kind of see things. But once you get into something and then you really like doing it, as you know, it takes on a life of its own. So I got better at analyzing things and being like a woodpecker and being relentless. But I've always I love helping others more than myself. You know I've always had that cornerstone.

Speaker 3:

I grew up in a small town, greenville, ohio, 20 miles southwest of Dayton 10,000 people. My father passed away when I was 10. This is crazy. I picked up because I'm answering the coach question I picked up a racket. I was a very good golfer, but we couldn't afford to join the country club anymore. So I picked up a tennis racket. I lived a half mile from a park. I went down I now live a half mile from a park. My whole life's come full circle and I started hitting against the wall. It always came back. I liked that, you know no arguing and I fell in love with the game. So I listen to this.

Speaker 3:

I coached myself at age 12. By 18 years old I was the number one player in the Ohio Valley Okay, beating a lot of all Americans. I got because I was athletic and competitive and had to do it on my own. So I always had that cornerstone of work ethic and stuff like that. But you need the instruction to really go far. But I got pretty good.

Speaker 3:

But I knew that I wanted to get into coaching because I had a gift to communicate and educate and I was always very motivated to just help others. And I still have that same passion. I started at 22. I still have the same exact passion as I do at age 69. I feel the exact same way. I can't wait to get on the tennis court when I get up and help others. Forget the people you know of all, the people that won Grand Slams and over 300 national champions. It's not even about that. If I was coaching you, I coached the number one 80-year-old in the United States. How crazy is that? He goes, rick, you got to get me better real quick. I don't know when the end game is coming. So that's my favorite student that hour, that minute, that second, and that's the way I feel when your students feel that that's when you can extract greatness.

Speaker 3:

Like Venus and Serena said, they go, rick. At the after party, at the King Richard thing, they said Rick, daddy, and you just brainwashed us to become number one. Now you got to have some goods, you got to be able to run and quick and you got to have other genetic qualities. But listen, you know a lot of people that have all that, but they don't have this. They looked at it differently, you know, and when they said that that was probably the best coaching compliment I've got in my whole career because I wasn't trying to do anything, I was just explaining things differently. And the impact, like I said, I sometimes have a bigger impact than their parents.

Speaker 2:

Yeah.

Speaker 3:

But my coaching started at 22.

Speaker 2:

Okay, wonderful, wonderful, wonderful. Have you coached business people across disciplines?

Speaker 3:

Not really, because I don't really promote that I could have. I really feel I could run a Fortune 500 company if that's what I wanted to do. I've given motivational speaking I've done to some corporate people. This is a great story. I got invited a while back to Greenwich, connecticut. It was a Sunday morning. They wanted me to do this big clinic at the same time the US opened. So I went there and there was no one there to help me and I had 40 kids all dressed in white. I thought someone would be there to kind of help me so I improvised. It was all demonstration blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. Wasn't a lot of moms there because it was a Sunday and a lot of dads were there. And it was so crazy because when I got done with the hour and a half clinic, many of the fathers who are all Wall Street guys they've come up to me and said listen, I don't know if my kids learn anything, but I'm going to fire a few people tomorrow or we're going to have an attitude adjustment meeting tomorrow and that. No, it was crazy how all these guys came up to me and were talking like this. So I was talking about visualization and I was just talking about all these crazy gold nuggets. They put the cherry on top of the ice cream.

Speaker 3:

Later that day I was waiting to get a flight and we, we went to the driving range and the guy next to me was one of the guys that was at the tennis clinic and he said I didn't know it was him. He came and started talking. He goes, you know what? This is the best I've ever hit the golf ball in my life. He was visualizing, he was trying not to try. He was doing things very different, because when we fail we try harder and we sometimes should try smarter, and there's a whole secret sauce that I get into. But when he said that, I thought it was just hilarious. I said, all right, I'll send you a bill. But I never sent the guy a bill. It was kind of funny.

Speaker 3:

I help everybody, you know, and one of the things I also do, I lead by example, as you probably figured out, anybody that gets there that early and I work that much, you know, and I still pick the balls up and I sweep the sidewalk in the morning. Why didn't the guy do this? I look at his exercise. I look at things differently. I tell everybody. The most important thing always I appreciate what you have instead of what you don't have. Appreciate what you have instead of what you don't have. And I try to tell that to the kids all the time, because when kids have money and they're spoiled and they take it for granted, you get on that hamster wheel and you've got to take a step back. But the key is to think like that every day and to put positive things into your head. And that's why there's standing room only when I give that 10 o'clock speech, because there's more parents there than anything, because it's powerful and I like doing it because I'm making a difference in the world, Definitely.

Speaker 2:

And the parents and the kids as well. They can go and talk like that positively to each other and probably have a better relationship through their life as well. I would imagine life as well?

Speaker 3:

I would imagine Absolutely, because, listen, everybody's aware. You know what you mostly put into your mouth, but nowadays we're not really aware of what we put into our brain. You know, and there's so many distractions just in the game of life, the minute you go out the door, how you respond, it's all perspective, it's how you look at things. My favorite quote of all time is what you may see is different than Rick may see. So I look at this very differently and it's through a foundation of positivity. You know, we all have the same problems, we all deal with the same stuff, but how we deal with it is very, very different. You know, and it's better for your health, get more things done. There's many different ways to deal with this and but you got to want to, you got to want help. Some people like negativity, some people like problems, some people they like to train wreck. Ok, those are people harder, but they're the ones that always complain. But if you want to change, anybody can, can, can look at things very differently. Everybody deals with the same stuff Now, maybe at different levels financially and stuff like that, but still it's the same. Everybody deals with the same stuff, but everybody handles it very, very differently.

Speaker 3:

And in my world, you got 20 seconds to flip it in your mind to come back up here and serve or to return serve. And if you're in the past or your history, you are history. You know. I mean you are history, you got to be there. And that's the mind control of a Djokovic, a Nadal, a Federer, a Serena. Ok, easier said than done, because we're all human. We all have an emotion. Ok, easier said than done, because we're all human, we all have an emotion. We all then have a reaction, but the reaction is very, very different with almost every human being. And tennis, if you got, you have to remember to forget. You know, just like any, any sport, and it's the hardest thing, that's what separates great from good. And I really believe that even even in business, you know, because you get bogged down in the wrong thing, even though you might think you're successful, you could be even more successful.

Speaker 2:

Absolutely Learn, change, grow. What's the billion dollar mindset then? What does mental paralysis look like? That fascinates me.

Speaker 3:

Well, no, it's like okay. Well, first off, I got to back the truck up talking about Billion Dollar Mind, the doctor that I wrote this book with. She reached out to me I'm glad you're sitting down. She was my student back in the day and I got her and her twin sister into Harvard. She's one of the best doctors in the world. She's like a wizard. She's one of the best doctors in the world. She's like a wizard. I think she made the right choice, even though she was like the number one player in the South Very good player, but she's like a wizard.

Speaker 3:

She approached me about the book on mental strength. Now, when she asked me about this, it was like two epic minds with two different backgrounds coming together. You got the medical and the science and then the everyday. You know not only what I do, but extracting greatness and developing champions through the game of tennis. So it was crazy when we started doing this and so many things were validated about what I always thought.

Speaker 3:

But now, coming from the neuromuscular point of view and just all these like mental loops that you get into, where you get paralyzed, and this is what people do, and that's why it's very important that you surround yourself with positive people, hear positive things. It's I cannot stress it enough but people don't do that. It's easy. And the book goes in great detail with all these scientific analysis of how this all works. Okay and gratitude is a big part of this, appreciation, such a big part of this. And but people, they get caught up, they let everything control them instead of you controlling this situation. And the thing about the billion dollar mind is there's about 40 hours of rick macy gold nuggets. If you read the book, bang and you can always go back to it. It's like a journal of the gift that keeps on giving. It's a shot of adrenaline.

Speaker 3:

But here's what I feel the best about when people say this book changed my life. That's crazy. I mean, I changed tennis strokes and games and say that. And Dr Niv, you know she's working with people that are in wheelchairs, people that have all these deficiencies, people are going to die in a month and she gives them joy. And many of her patients have said how the book has changed their life, even though death is on the horizon. That's crazy and that's how powerful it is, because when you hear it it's one thing, but when you can read it and look at it and go back and have it saturate the mind.

Speaker 3:

You can get out of that, like you said, negative loop or paralysis, that you're in for everyday people. But you got to want to change and you can't say, oh, I can't do it, but you're the first one to say I want to be like them. But they got it. You got to understand that guy up there he took the stairs, he didn't take the escalator, he was right where you were at that one time. But people don't look at it. They want it right now, especially in today's world. It's brutal. It's brutal Even with kids that I coach. You know it's instant gratification. They don't understand. It's little, brick by brick. They have no idea about self-discipline, they have no idea about hard work. But that's my job to at least put it on the menu. So it's like the number one thing they got to order.

Speaker 2:

Excellent, I'll serve a golden nugget and you, you return it for me, okay, okay. So just before my head hit the pillow the other night, this word came to me. Head hit the pillow the other night, this word came to me gratitude is attitude, and it meant like a free thank you. It doesn't cost anything to say thank you. So if I serve to you, gratitude is attitude. How do you slam that back to me?

Speaker 3:

well, first off, you're. You're in the neighborhood, because when you appreciate, okay, things will just come your way. That's what people don't understand, but people, that's the baseline, that's the starting point, you know, because we all say, well, if I could do it over again, everybody would like that one. You know what I mean. Or if you have something happen to you, it's like, okay, well, I would like to do that again. You know, if I had an injury or whatever. But every day and you'll just fill your heart with love and joy and more people will come.

Speaker 3:

And that's another reason why I mean people not only come to me, not just because of what I've done my whole career, but the energy, the positivity. You know it's more than the game of tennis, it's a game of life and people want to be around. That you know. And I have all these motivational signs all around the facility and people take pictures by it. One word, as you know, can change someone's life. But that's how I would throw that back at you. You're in the neighborhood if that's the way you feel.

Speaker 2:

Cool, I almost felt like I aced you there. Okay, it's a really short show. Going to finish with two more questions. What is the key pattern that creates progress and what's your one golden nugget for life?

Speaker 3:

First off, I love that question. It's a very simple answer. Greatness is consistency. I don't mean, like tennis, keeping the ball in play. You got to be consistent. You know people start, they stop, and that's okay if you're going to do something else. But you got to stay consistent. People are impatient and if you look at the greatest of all time in anything, you'll see a consistency of work, ethic and dedication and self-discipline. They're not in and out. Anybody can get there. I'm talking elite now, I'm talking rare air. Anybody can get there. But can you stay there? That's different, that's great, we're all good, okay. So that would be the most important thing consistency.

Speaker 3:

And then that kind of ripples into being in a routine. Hopefully it's a positive one. If you're in a routine, you become a machine. Okay, that's what I tell everybody Like every day. It's like kind of what I do. I get up at the same time. I don't need alarm clock for 30 years, run a half mile, eat the same stuff, pet my cat I do the same thing. And when you are in a routine, you optimize and you maximize the work and it doesn't seem like work. It's not hard work. It feels like you're hardly working and that's why you need that in the workplace. Ceos and other people need to kind of talk to the people like this, instead of saying, oh, you need to do a better job, you're late. You know there's many different ways to get the message across, but if it's positive and motivating, you're going to get a lot more out of your employees. Trust me, a hug goes a lot farther than a kick in the butt, because if you got to keep kicking in the butt, you got to get rid of.

Speaker 2:

Well, rick, it's only a quick show, so thank you so much for coming in.

Speaker 3:

I enjoyed it and the one you know. Gold nugget, that I would say, and you kind of said it before attitude really determines altitude. If you want to go far, okay, you just got to have a positive attitude and it's easy to get. It's a choice. And always remember the most important conversation, even though the one we're having right now is the most important, the most important conversation you'll ever have your whole life is every day in the mirror. Talking to yourself is huge and that's in the billion dollar mind book. To empower, I am good, I can do it, you know. Motivate yourself. Don't just rely on everybody else to lift you up, you know. And don't say, thank God, it's Friday, thank God, it's every day.

Speaker 2:

You're a star, rick. It's been a real pleasure having you on again. All right, we'll do it again For all the listeners out there. You heard the man. There must be 2025 nuggets in there. Replay this episode again and again for a better life. Thanks for tuning in. Join David and his incredible guests next time on the Success Nuggets podcast and to find out more, visit onegoldennuggetcom. Thank you for listening.