September 5, 2025 • 12 mins
For Shop Talk, Coach Bill dives into a powerful column from Andrew Peters that's titled "The Standard, Or How You Do One Thing". It'll move you to reflect on how you do everything in your life!
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Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:01):
Hello, everybody, it's Bill Courtney with an army of normal folks.
Welcome into the shop.
Speaker 2 (00:08):
How do you like that introut that tells me you're
getting delirious and start switching it up like that?
Speaker 3 (00:15):
Well, you never know how you doing? How's everything going?
It's going?
Speaker 2 (00:21):
Well, it's always weird because we're recording these like three
or four at a time. So well, it's kind of
hard to like comment on the present moment where we're
not living in the present three weeks out.
Speaker 1 (00:31):
Why don't you come on over to the counter, put
your elbows on it. How's that's that work? That's that's
the uh. That's the nineteen forties radio version of Shopped
Off UH Today. Shop Talk number sixty eight is I
don't know what is it about? What are we going
(00:51):
to call this?
Speaker 2 (00:52):
I think I put a title in there.
Speaker 3 (00:54):
The standard or how you do one thing? Right? Yeah, okay,
the standard or how you do one thing?
Speaker 2 (01:02):
It's vastly interesting, number sixty eight, Bill.
Speaker 3 (01:07):
That's what I said. Chap Talk number sixty eight.
Speaker 2 (01:09):
MLKA was shot and killed and RFK was shot and killed.
Speaker 3 (01:12):
That's right, nineteen sixty eight.
Speaker 1 (01:14):
That's uh sobering, So chap Talk number sixty eight, The
Standard or how you do one Thing. Right after these
brief messages from our general sponsors.
Speaker 3 (01:41):
All right, welcome back everybody.
Speaker 1 (01:42):
I won't say hello and my deep voice because it
freaks Alex out. So we're going to talk about the
Standard or how you do one thing. Andrew Peters and
his substack, which you can find at Andrew Peters dot
substack dot com. The Standard or how you do one Thing.
(02:03):
Rachel and I were both out of town for a
couple of days this week for business, and one of
our kids made an easy decision sleep in skip training.
It wasn't just any training, though, it was the lacrosse Academy.
He had self selected, fully committed to, and told me
he was all in. That's in quotations. He was all
(02:24):
in for the next day yesterday. He did show up.
When I got home late last night, I heard him
call out Dad. He wanted a chat, and I was
happy to. After a fist bump and a hug, he
told me what happened. In that moment, I felt tempted
to give him an out. It's been eight am to
twelve fifteen pm, five days a week all summer. Good Lord,
(02:47):
eight am to twelve fifteen pm all summer. That's a lot,
five days a week, all summer long, not how most
kids choose to spend their summer break. The commitment has
been there, But before I could speak, he added this
little jim. The coaches at the academy had made sure
he knew that they knew he had chosen sleep over
showing up, No yelling, no theatrics, just a clear signal
(03:11):
across multiple coaches. We hold the kids who say they're
all into a standard and that decision didn't meet the standard.
It's rare in life to find people, coaches, bosses, even friends,
who will actually hold you to the standard you set
for yourself. It's uncomfortable. It's so much easier to let
things slide, to make allowances to tell ourselves this one
(03:32):
doesn't matter. But when someone looks you in the eye
and says, in effect, this is not who you said
you wanted to be, it will change you. There's a
phrase I've heard a dozen ways over the years. Nick Saban,
the goat of college football coaching, calls it the standard.
Others say, how you do one thing is how you
do everything. Either way, the meaning's the same. You don't
(03:54):
get to pick and choose when you're being your best,
the standard is the standard, whether the it feels big
or small, whether anyone's watching or not. Listening to him
tell me the story, I was and am so grateful
for the men who run the Cincinnati Across Academy for
creating the kind of place that calls a kid to
a higher standard for themselves and for those around them,
(04:18):
not just for my kid, but for my friend's kids
who have chosen that path, and even for myself, because
it reminds me that my own standard gets fuzzy in
certain places, especially when the moment seems small. This morning,
we had a five minute finisher in our gym, the
Pirates and I, and among other things, we had to
complete fifty push ups. I kept up at decent pace,
(04:40):
but when JB three to one yelled over how many petas,
I was a tempted to say forty, although I knew
I just completed thirty seven, but in the ask was
the opportunity. I grunted thirty seven and finished the next three.
This morning, as we were walking up to the house
for coffee post workout, I saw my bike thrown casually
(05:02):
into the flower bed. No malice no grand statement, just
lazy placement by the kid who'd ridn't it?
Speaker 2 (05:08):
Do you remember that at all with your kids?
Speaker 1 (05:10):
Bill, No, I wouldn't put up with it, but it
was enough to make me stop and think about the
same conversation I've been having with my kids for years.
The life you choose to lead is reflected in the smallest,
easiest decisions. Where do you put the bike? What happens
to the grocery card after the bags are in the car?
What does on time mean? How do you speak to
the person who can't do anything for you? Because how
(05:33):
do you do one thing is how you do everything.
I don't think it's about perfection. If so, then I'm screwed.
It's about consistency. It's about refusing to departmentalize my efforts,
my attitude, and my commitment to only one domain of
my life. I think it's about keeping my promises to myself,
even when there's no scoreboard, no audience, and no direct consequences.
(05:54):
I've been reminding myself this week that nobody drifts into
a life lived at a high standard. You set it,
you keep it, you start over when you miss it,
and you do it again tomorrow. The standard isn't someplace
you visit, it's the place you choose to live every day. Wow,
do I agree with every single thing that he wrote.
Speaker 3 (06:21):
Time is an interesting one to me. He mentioned it because.
Speaker 1 (06:25):
The hands on a clot are really a scientific actuality.
And if I say I'm going to be somewhere at
PICKADM eight, I kill myself to get thirt eight. Now,
there's not times that I've late or missed or whatever
everybody makestakes. But it is a standard that you get
(06:47):
where you're supposed to be on time as best as
you possibly can. And if something's ten minutes away, you
don't leave ten minutes before, you leave twenty minutes before.
But because as my football used to coach, you say,
early is on time, on time as late, and it is.
Speaker 3 (07:07):
It's a simple standard.
Speaker 1 (07:08):
But if you think about it, it's actually rude to
selling selfish to make somebody wait on you because you
just didn't have the decency to leave on time or
to show up when you said you would.
Speaker 3 (07:21):
To me, it even says a lot about your character. Time.
Something as simple as time should be a standard. Service
should be a standard. The way you approach everything should
be a character driven standard, And to your question, my
kids got ripped if they let their stuff out because
(07:43):
I'm a knee freak, and one of the standards around
my places you can use anything I have, but put
it back where you got it, and if you don't
put it back where you got it, you will never
ever be allowed to use it again.
Speaker 1 (07:56):
And that's the reality. And I'm still that way about that.
I just I think it's rude, and I think it's selfish,
and I think it's ridiculous to use somebody else's something
and they do not return it the way you found
it or in better condition than you took it. It's
just ridiculous, like if you borrow something. In college, I
(08:18):
remember borrowing people's car and I always would make sure
there was at least that much, if not more gas
in it when I returned it than when I got it.
Some jerk brought my car one time and I didn't
even check the gas gauge, and two miles down the
road I brought out of gas because the jackass ran
(08:39):
a whole quarter tank out of my gas tank and
didn't have the deccy to fill it back up. That's
kind of a standard. So anyway, I really appreciate all
of this content.
Speaker 3 (08:51):
What's your standards?
Speaker 2 (08:53):
So three things come to mind. Somebody once told me
the story like, hey, if you move your golf ball
at all, you're going to well, like, look, if you're.
Speaker 1 (09:03):
Hang on now, not if you're foursome agrees that you
can roll the golf ball with your club.
Speaker 2 (09:09):
It's making a point. If you're willing to cheat a
little bit in that case, are you going to cheat
in the rest of your life?
Speaker 3 (09:15):
Right? How you probably?
Speaker 2 (09:16):
And that's his point. How you do one thing is
how you do everything.
Speaker 3 (09:19):
That's a really good point. That's right.
Speaker 1 (09:21):
That is absolutely right, like showing up time, putting stuff up,
caring enough about somebody else's stuff. If if you do
those little things that way, you're probably going to do
them on the big things. It's good.
Speaker 2 (09:33):
Another story, Actually, I was talking to my kids about
this the other day. So one of my friends is
friends with Michael Jordan, and they had offered for me
to caddy for Jordan one day.
Speaker 3 (09:43):
Are you kidding me?
Speaker 2 (09:44):
And my dad said no, why because I had football
practice that day. Your Dad's right, because I had made
a commitment just like this. And Sophia was like, why
didn't you like blast him or say no, And I'm like,
he's my dad. I didn't have a choice, like word.
Speaker 1 (10:00):
More importantly, your dad is dead nuts, right, it's right,
it's uh.
Speaker 2 (10:06):
My friend got to do it instead and got a
thousand bucks and the experience of cutting from sortan.
Speaker 3 (10:12):
Well, he's probably a loser today. Go ahead.
Speaker 2 (10:16):
I think My third thing is I'm also reminded of this.
Have you heard of the America's Cup. It's the sailing
world championship. So Dennis Connor is one of the famous
coaches from it.
Speaker 3 (10:26):
Yeah, it's not a sailing thing. I mean it's yachting
and they got.
Speaker 1 (10:29):
These huge crews and they they sing flock across the water.
Speaker 2 (10:34):
But like, actually I interviewed somebody won the America's Cup
and their team practiced like every single day except three
days in the year. I mean literally like New Year's Eve,
New Year's Day, Christmas Eve, Like I mean they were Yeah,
And so Dennis Connor's crew had this line that they
ought to be committed for their commitment to the commitment.
(10:54):
They ought to be committed to jail for their a
mental institution for their commitment to the commitment.
Speaker 1 (11:00):
And I still wonder that guy's won more America's Cups
than anybody else because that's that's the standard.
Speaker 3 (11:06):
That's how they approach it. Yeah, it's good stuff, all.
Speaker 2 (11:09):
Right, everybody writing from Andrew Peters, What do you think?
Speaker 1 (11:12):
Yeah, I mean pretty good stuff, you know, But Andrew's
pretty sharp guy. So all right, everybody, that's shop Talk
number sixty eight. The standard how you do or how
you do one thing? I kind of think the subtitle
should be how you do one thing is how you'll
do all things. But I kind of get what he's
getting out there. But everybody get it. We got to
have we got to have a standard in our life
(11:33):
how we approach everything. And wouldn't it be magnificent if
the standard for all of us was to employ our
passion and our discipline and areas of need and serve
in order to lead. If that was a standard, our
entire culture changes. If you like this episode of shop Talk,
(11:54):
please rate it and review it. You can write me
anytime at Bill at normal Folks dot us, send me
ideas for shop Talk, send me ideas for an army
and normal Folks, or just reach out.
Speaker 3 (12:03):
Send me an email and I will respond. Join the
army at normal folks dot us, what else. That's it.
Speaker 2 (12:11):
We're good.
Speaker 3 (12:12):
Okay, that's it. We're good until next week. Do what
you can. That's shop Talk number sixty eight.
Hello, everybody, it's Bill Courtney with an army of normal folks.
Welcome into the shop.
Speaker 2 (00:08):
How do you like that introut that tells me you're
getting delirious and start switching it up like that?
Speaker 3 (00:15):
Well, you never know how you doing? How's everything going?
It's going?
Speaker 2 (00:21):
Well, it's always weird because we're recording these like three
or four at a time. So well, it's kind of
hard to like comment on the present moment where we're
not living in the present three weeks out.
Speaker 1 (00:31):
Why don't you come on over to the counter, put
your elbows on it. How's that's that work? That's that's
the uh. That's the nineteen forties radio version of Shopped
Off UH Today. Shop Talk number sixty eight is I
don't know what is it about? What are we going
(00:51):
to call this?
Speaker 2 (00:52):
I think I put a title in there.
Speaker 3 (00:54):
The standard or how you do one thing? Right? Yeah, okay,
the standard or how you do one thing?
Speaker 2 (01:02):
It's vastly interesting, number sixty eight, Bill.
Speaker 3 (01:07):
That's what I said. Chap Talk number sixty eight.
Speaker 2 (01:09):
MLKA was shot and killed and RFK was shot and killed.
Speaker 3 (01:12):
That's right, nineteen sixty eight.
Speaker 1 (01:14):
That's uh sobering, So chap Talk number sixty eight, The
Standard or how you do one Thing. Right after these
brief messages from our general sponsors.
Speaker 3 (01:41):
All right, welcome back everybody.
Speaker 1 (01:42):
I won't say hello and my deep voice because it
freaks Alex out. So we're going to talk about the
Standard or how you do one thing. Andrew Peters and
his substack, which you can find at Andrew Peters dot
substack dot com. The Standard or how you do one Thing.
(02:03):
Rachel and I were both out of town for a
couple of days this week for business, and one of
our kids made an easy decision sleep in skip training.
It wasn't just any training, though, it was the lacrosse Academy.
He had self selected, fully committed to, and told me
he was all in. That's in quotations. He was all
(02:24):
in for the next day yesterday. He did show up.
When I got home late last night, I heard him
call out Dad. He wanted a chat, and I was
happy to. After a fist bump and a hug, he
told me what happened. In that moment, I felt tempted
to give him an out. It's been eight am to
twelve fifteen pm, five days a week all summer. Good Lord,
(02:47):
eight am to twelve fifteen pm all summer. That's a lot,
five days a week, all summer long, not how most
kids choose to spend their summer break. The commitment has
been there, But before I could speak, he added this
little jim. The coaches at the academy had made sure
he knew that they knew he had chosen sleep over
showing up, No yelling, no theatrics, just a clear signal
(03:11):
across multiple coaches. We hold the kids who say they're
all into a standard and that decision didn't meet the standard.
It's rare in life to find people, coaches, bosses, even friends,
who will actually hold you to the standard you set
for yourself. It's uncomfortable. It's so much easier to let
things slide, to make allowances to tell ourselves this one
(03:32):
doesn't matter. But when someone looks you in the eye
and says, in effect, this is not who you said
you wanted to be, it will change you. There's a
phrase I've heard a dozen ways over the years. Nick Saban,
the goat of college football coaching, calls it the standard.
Others say, how you do one thing is how you
do everything. Either way, the meaning's the same. You don't
(03:54):
get to pick and choose when you're being your best,
the standard is the standard, whether the it feels big
or small, whether anyone's watching or not. Listening to him
tell me the story, I was and am so grateful
for the men who run the Cincinnati Across Academy for
creating the kind of place that calls a kid to
a higher standard for themselves and for those around them,
(04:18):
not just for my kid, but for my friend's kids
who have chosen that path, and even for myself, because
it reminds me that my own standard gets fuzzy in
certain places, especially when the moment seems small. This morning,
we had a five minute finisher in our gym, the
Pirates and I, and among other things, we had to
complete fifty push ups. I kept up at decent pace,
(04:40):
but when JB three to one yelled over how many petas,
I was a tempted to say forty, although I knew
I just completed thirty seven, but in the ask was
the opportunity. I grunted thirty seven and finished the next three.
This morning, as we were walking up to the house
for coffee post workout, I saw my bike thrown casually
(05:02):
into the flower bed. No malice no grand statement, just
lazy placement by the kid who'd ridn't it?
Speaker 2 (05:08):
Do you remember that at all with your kids?
Speaker 1 (05:10):
Bill, No, I wouldn't put up with it, but it
was enough to make me stop and think about the
same conversation I've been having with my kids for years.
The life you choose to lead is reflected in the smallest,
easiest decisions. Where do you put the bike? What happens
to the grocery card after the bags are in the car?
What does on time mean? How do you speak to
the person who can't do anything for you? Because how
(05:33):
do you do one thing is how you do everything.
I don't think it's about perfection. If so, then I'm screwed.
It's about consistency. It's about refusing to departmentalize my efforts,
my attitude, and my commitment to only one domain of
my life. I think it's about keeping my promises to myself,
even when there's no scoreboard, no audience, and no direct consequences.
(05:54):
I've been reminding myself this week that nobody drifts into
a life lived at a high standard. You set it,
you keep it, you start over when you miss it,
and you do it again tomorrow. The standard isn't someplace
you visit, it's the place you choose to live every day. Wow,
do I agree with every single thing that he wrote.
Speaker 3 (06:21):
Time is an interesting one to me. He mentioned it because.
Speaker 1 (06:25):
The hands on a clot are really a scientific actuality.
And if I say I'm going to be somewhere at
PICKADM eight, I kill myself to get thirt eight. Now,
there's not times that I've late or missed or whatever
everybody makestakes. But it is a standard that you get
(06:47):
where you're supposed to be on time as best as
you possibly can. And if something's ten minutes away, you
don't leave ten minutes before, you leave twenty minutes before.
But because as my football used to coach, you say,
early is on time, on time as late, and it is.
Speaker 3 (07:07):
It's a simple standard.
Speaker 1 (07:08):
But if you think about it, it's actually rude to
selling selfish to make somebody wait on you because you
just didn't have the decency to leave on time or
to show up when you said you would.
Speaker 3 (07:21):
To me, it even says a lot about your character. Time.
Something as simple as time should be a standard. Service
should be a standard. The way you approach everything should
be a character driven standard, And to your question, my
kids got ripped if they let their stuff out because
(07:43):
I'm a knee freak, and one of the standards around
my places you can use anything I have, but put
it back where you got it, and if you don't
put it back where you got it, you will never
ever be allowed to use it again.
Speaker 1 (07:56):
And that's the reality. And I'm still that way about that.
I just I think it's rude, and I think it's selfish,
and I think it's ridiculous to use somebody else's something
and they do not return it the way you found
it or in better condition than you took it. It's
just ridiculous, like if you borrow something. In college, I
(08:18):
remember borrowing people's car and I always would make sure
there was at least that much, if not more gas
in it when I returned it than when I got it.
Some jerk brought my car one time and I didn't
even check the gas gauge, and two miles down the
road I brought out of gas because the jackass ran
(08:39):
a whole quarter tank out of my gas tank and
didn't have the deccy to fill it back up. That's
kind of a standard. So anyway, I really appreciate all
of this content.
Speaker 3 (08:51):
What's your standards?
Speaker 2 (08:53):
So three things come to mind. Somebody once told me
the story like, hey, if you move your golf ball
at all, you're going to well, like, look, if you're.
Speaker 1 (09:03):
Hang on now, not if you're foursome agrees that you
can roll the golf ball with your club.
Speaker 2 (09:09):
It's making a point. If you're willing to cheat a
little bit in that case, are you going to cheat
in the rest of your life?
Speaker 3 (09:15):
Right? How you probably?
Speaker 2 (09:16):
And that's his point. How you do one thing is
how you do everything.
Speaker 3 (09:19):
That's a really good point. That's right.
Speaker 1 (09:21):
That is absolutely right, like showing up time, putting stuff up,
caring enough about somebody else's stuff. If if you do
those little things that way, you're probably going to do
them on the big things. It's good.
Speaker 2 (09:33):
Another story, Actually, I was talking to my kids about
this the other day. So one of my friends is
friends with Michael Jordan, and they had offered for me
to caddy for Jordan one day.
Speaker 3 (09:43):
Are you kidding me?
Speaker 2 (09:44):
And my dad said no, why because I had football
practice that day. Your Dad's right, because I had made
a commitment just like this. And Sophia was like, why
didn't you like blast him or say no, And I'm like,
he's my dad. I didn't have a choice, like word.
Speaker 1 (10:00):
More importantly, your dad is dead nuts, right, it's right,
it's uh.
Speaker 2 (10:06):
My friend got to do it instead and got a
thousand bucks and the experience of cutting from sortan.
Speaker 3 (10:12):
Well, he's probably a loser today. Go ahead.
Speaker 2 (10:16):
I think My third thing is I'm also reminded of this.
Have you heard of the America's Cup. It's the sailing
world championship. So Dennis Connor is one of the famous
coaches from it.
Speaker 3 (10:26):
Yeah, it's not a sailing thing. I mean it's yachting
and they got.
Speaker 1 (10:29):
These huge crews and they they sing flock across the water.
Speaker 2 (10:34):
But like, actually I interviewed somebody won the America's Cup
and their team practiced like every single day except three
days in the year. I mean literally like New Year's Eve,
New Year's Day, Christmas Eve, Like I mean they were Yeah,
And so Dennis Connor's crew had this line that they
ought to be committed for their commitment to the commitment.
(10:54):
They ought to be committed to jail for their a
mental institution for their commitment to the commitment.
Speaker 1 (11:00):
And I still wonder that guy's won more America's Cups
than anybody else because that's that's the standard.
Speaker 3 (11:06):
That's how they approach it. Yeah, it's good stuff, all.
Speaker 2 (11:09):
Right, everybody writing from Andrew Peters, What do you think?
Speaker 1 (11:12):
Yeah, I mean pretty good stuff, you know, But Andrew's
pretty sharp guy. So all right, everybody, that's shop Talk
number sixty eight. The standard how you do or how
you do one thing? I kind of think the subtitle
should be how you do one thing is how you'll
do all things. But I kind of get what he's
getting out there. But everybody get it. We got to
have we got to have a standard in our life
(11:33):
how we approach everything. And wouldn't it be magnificent if
the standard for all of us was to employ our
passion and our discipline and areas of need and serve
in order to lead. If that was a standard, our
entire culture changes. If you like this episode of shop Talk,
(11:54):
please rate it and review it. You can write me
anytime at Bill at normal Folks dot us, send me
ideas for shop Talk, send me ideas for an army
and normal Folks, or just reach out.
Speaker 3 (12:03):
Send me an email and I will respond. Join the
army at normal folks dot us, what else. That's it.
Speaker 2 (12:11):
We're good.
Speaker 3 (12:12):
Okay, that's it. We're good until next week. Do what
you can. That's shop Talk number sixty eight.
Host
Bill Courtney
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