Win like Tom Brady? Take 5 key steps towards your “discipline bridge”

I developed the idea of a Discipline Bridge through building my first training experience as part of what would grow into my present-day, multifaceted training company, Game Changer Performance Group. For years, I had been speaking to audiences around the world as a keynote speaker. As a former sports agent, I usually found room for a couple of negotiation stories from the stage. They were helping people. The stories, but more so the philosophy, tactics and methodology I had deployed over almost two decades in one of the world’s most competitive businesses. You can only say so much in an hour, so I wrote a book about it called A Winner’s Guide to Negotiation, and I learned firsthand about the discipline it takes to write a book. Writing a book is all about putting in the work day after day, even when you’re not feeling it. It took me about one year of writing to finish the manuscript, leaning into my purpose to help people and share my message more broadly.

Once it was published, I appeared on radio shows and podcasts, and wrote articles sharing my methodology, tools and frameworks. I saw my discipline and purpose come to life. People were getting better results, they were building better relationships, they were seeing more opportunities to ask for what they want — and getting it, too. From there, I started with a vision for how I could make a bigger impact and got to work.

(1) Identify: I pictured the future, helping people on a larger scale, creating valuable programming that would take each individual to the next level in their lives and careers. I knew this reality required me to create scalable materials and methodologies that would allow me to reach more people than I could physically touch. I needed to reverse engineer the path to achieve it. I knew what I wanted to do, and I was confident that I brought a unique perspective to the category as someone who lived in negotiation daily as a former sports agent.

(2) Seek Success Models: I began by asking for advice. I needed help building out a framework from people who understood adult learning and corporate training experiences. I did a listening tour with friends and colleagues who were working and innovating in a similar space to learn what they wish they knew now, mistakes, market landscape, and competition. I hired an instructional design team to help develop the framework.

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(3) Scrutinize the Gap: I piloted the negotiation training experience personally multiple times in different industries for feedback. We measured it. We measured everything from real time feedback from the group that day, to longer term key metrics like speed to close, margin percentage increase and deal size.

(4) Put in the Work: How do you build something so big? Bit by bit, day by day, through hard work and curiosity. By seeing a gap in the market and closing it with something you are uniquely positioned to solve and scale. There are a lot of levers to building a company that is profitable, but one thing is for sure, it takes consistent focused collaborative work.

(5) Repeat: We needed scale to make our greatest impact, more facilitators and technology. In less than one year after setting out to make my vision a reality, our coaches were training people in Russia, London, and Dubai — all over the world. We launched an application that lives in a CRM (Customer Relationship Manager) to enhance the experience and provide metrics. Today our training experiences —offered in person, virtually, and on demand— are creating meaningful change in people and organizations’ bottom lines.

The Discipline Bridge serves as a motivation multiplier, a life regulator, and focus guardian to make you indestructible in pursuit of your purpose. It shrinks the distance between who you are and who you want to be. Without discipline there’s no way to get there.

I don’t think I have to work hard to make the case that Tom Brady is one of the most accomplished and disciplined athletes in the world. Just check out his seven Super Bowl rings if you need a reminder. Tom Brady’s career in the NFL spanned twenty three seasons, and he attributes that longevity and success to discipline. He enjoyed the process of working out, of practicing and improving, and he knew that he couldn’t cut corners.

I spoke to Alex Guerrero, Tom Brady’s longtime trainer and business partner on my podcast. Their partnership has been central in Tom’s incredible approach to mindset, energy, and discipline— which all played a key role in the success and longevity he maintained.

It’s clear that one of the characteristics that separates Brady from the rest is discipline. Brady does the tedious, monotonous training, getting in the reps. Brady’s throwing coach Tom House has observed: “What separates these elite athletes, the Hall of Famers, is that they try to get better every day not by 20 percent but just 1 or 2 percent.”That’s what sets Brady apart— the willingness to work hard when the daily reward is so small. It’s about incremental improvements over time.

Brady himself famously said: “If I don’t really work at it … and if I don’t play to my strengths, I’m a very average quarterback.”

Guerrero and Brady talk about goal setting all the time, and the way they approach it is very much a Discipline Bridge mentality. Brady trains in the present to support long-term goals. They set goals three years out, and work backwards to determine what they need to do to reach them. Guerrero suggests asking yourself what you want to accomplish, not what you think you can accomplish. This distinction makes all the difference in achieving the lofty goals that will fulfill you at the highest level.

Brady’s longtime teammate Julian Edelman recalls seeing this discipline and focus firsthand. A loss in the AFC title game at the end of the 2013 season only intensified Brady’s offseason preparation. “We started training in February,” Edelman recalled. “He had the location of the Super Bowl on his whiteboard in his gym… I was like ‘What’s this?’ and he’s like ‘That’s where we’re going to be the last game of the season, bro.’” That city was Glendale, Arizona where (you guessed it) Brady led the Patriots to a Super Bowl victory the following season. 

It’s easy to imagine Brady could slip into complacency with such a high level of sustained success. But Guerrero says they never look in the rearview mirror. They look forward to new goals and new opportunities.