Scott Talks with David Prokop About Leaders Lead & Why Leadership Matters

Scott Feld: We always talk about how on a team everyone has a role and they're some people call ⁓ role players. Every role matters because you don't need five LeBron James on one team to bat there's not enough basketballs. And so you don't need five Steph Curry's. There's not enough. Yes. But but you need the person that wants to pass the ball to everybody. You need the teacher that is coming in Welcome to the Power Up Universe Podcast, where we talk about different ways to help our kids build confidence and resilience so they can feel unstoppable in their lives. I'm your host, Scott Feld. Let's get right to the Power Talk. Welcome everybody to the Power Up Universe Podcast. It's your host, Scott Feld. And today I have David Prokop. He's coming to us from Indiana. David has a new exciting program. It's called leaders lead as you can see in his background and he's going to tell us all about that. He's also an out a high school athletic director and a girls basketball coach. So welcome to the show, David. Thank you very much, Scott, for having me. I'm excited. Yeah, it's good to have you. So let's start with a little bit about you, how you first maybe got into being an athletic director and a coach, because I'm guessing what you saw in doing that ⁓ had you start leaders lead movement, right? There was something there. Is that right? Okay, so good. Let's start with you then. How what's your a little bit about your background? Let's get to know you. Yeah. So I went to ⁓ Manchester University, which is here in Indiana. And during that time, I was going there for education. And then my senior year, I actually switched majors and went into sport management. So did the sports management my senior year, graduated, and then I went to Valparaiso University and got a master's in sports media. And that was the idea that I was either gonna, you know, broadcast or write, ⁓ covering sports, did that there at Valpo and had a lot of fun. ⁓ but during that time, ⁓ the high school there in town, ⁓ they hired a new basketball coach. And that basketball coach in Valpo was actually my basketball coach in Fort Wayne. And so he was there. ⁓ we got connected and so I started volunteering ⁓ as a coach for the boys basketball program and One day during that time, the principal came up to me and said, Hey, what are you doing tomorrow during the day? And I said, I it's Friday. I don't have any classes. He goes, I need you to come in and be the ISS substitute teacher for the day. We just removed our sub our ISS teacher. I need someone in there. You'd be perfect. So I go in, I go for the day. He hands me the keys and says, This is yours for the rest of the year. And I ⁓ I took all took that on and ⁓ I really that was a surprise for you then. ⁓ yeah, a very surprising day. Okay. No expectations. Very surprising. Came down to practice. And next thing you know, the next day I'm I'm the ISS in school suspension teacher. ⁓ okay. That's what I wanted to make sure we all knew what that was. That's a tough one, man. In yes. Okay. And ⁓ so I finished that was in February, finished out the school year for a couple of months. And then ⁓ during that time I really got connected with some of ⁓ my repeat ⁓ classmates, I would say. And but just connecting with them and trying to figure out like what was going on, what was causing them to maybe, you know, say get in trouble in class, were they trying to avoid class, things like that. So is in school suspension like detention or is this bigger than that? What is this? ⁓ yeah, it's essentially d ⁓ detention, but it's during the school day. So it's from when they get there in the morning till the end of the day. Basically, they're not going to class, they do all their work in this one confined room. ⁓ teacher can handle them, they're like disrupting class so this is the and so you know they get there sent there for a day and then we regroup and then we get them back to class and got it but they don't want to do OSS which is out of school. They don't want to send them home because typically a lot of kids don't mind that. I mean Yeah, yeah they get to go home. It's a vacation. So it started there ⁓ and then the summer came and ⁓ the they hired a new special ed director and she kind of got connected with me. I didn't have my teaching license. I went for three years but then switched and ⁓ she asked if I'd be interested. I applied and then I was a special ed teacher, I think was for about five years there, I think I wanna say in Valpo. And ⁓ I was in charge of our ⁓ E D population, so our students that were having some higher behaviors. ⁓ didn't like school having a lot of higher behaviors and that was What does E D stand for for everybody? ⁓ emotional disability. Yeah. ⁓ And so ⁓ you really have to connect with those kids, build the relationship with those kids in order to make any kind of difference. ⁓ they don't care necessarily about school, they don't care about sports, they they you gotta get to know them first before you can get them to tell you what they even care about. Okay. Now I'm not asking you to ⁓ diagnose or anything, but what what is classified as an emotional disability, right? ⁓ that's That's like that's a big word. Yeah, absolutely. It's ⁓ typically so it's ⁓ a student that has gone through some type of trauma in their life that has then changed the way they react, the way they handle things. I think that's the best way I try to explain it to people. ⁓ and so whether that is they've seen something dramatic, had a passing of someone close to them, went through an unfortunate event themselves, something that has changed the way. They view things, affected their mental health. And so ⁓ those are the those students that I got to work with. And they're all they're also probably in therapy then as well in some sorts. ⁓ some are, yeah. Absolutely. Not all. Some are. ⁓ some some students that have maybe that label or diagnosis, ⁓ you might not even know it until you actually get to know them a little bit and see them a little more often. And then you might occasionally see it. But you were saying that you really have to get ⁓ get to know ⁓ before I kind of timed in there so please continue from there. ⁓ yeah, no, absolutely. Yes. If you can build a relationship with them, then you're able to connect with them and sh and make changes. And while doing that, I realized like that's everybody though. That's that's not just students with a disability. That's that's everybody, whether it's a kid, a high school student, another teacher, an adult, your your grandparents, if you get to know somebody and build a connection Whether you have things in common or not, but actually get to know who they are as a person, it's amazing what you can do with that person and and what you can build and what you can see and fix and help and change. And so that's kind of how I got into the teaching world. ⁓ and then I ⁓ did that for about six years, and then I got a call from a summer camp in Fort Wayne where I worked as a counselor myself, and they called me and said, Hey. You know, the assistant director position opened up. We'd love to see you come back. Me and my wife started a family. Me and my wife met there at that camp as counselors. And so we were like, let's do it. We just full circle moment. Yes. And so we we go back, ⁓ and I oversee all of our college counselors. And having been in that role before, I knew what I was like when I was a counselor when you're 21, 22-year-old college kid in the summer working. And so Just connecting with those kids. ⁓ and that's where the leaders lead kind of started. I used to use that as a saying for those ⁓ my counselors of just like, hey, when things aren't going right, leaders always lead. And as a counselor, we're all leaders. So I do that for a year and then I missed basketball coaching. And ⁓ school got connected with me. I went into coaching. ⁓ and then the following year, another school reached out about athletic directing and I went down that route. I I kind of met with education and sports media and brought them together. And so ⁓ just finished up my second year doing that ⁓ at Hamilton Community Schools. And I'm also this past year I took on the girls' varsity basketball coaching as well. So that's kind of how the team work how'd the team do? Have you had a season yet or are you doing it now? We played last year, yes. So ⁓ the school I'm at is an extremely small public school, and when I say extremely small. We have 107 high school kids. ⁓ wow. So very, very small. And unfortunately, athletics has been neglected for a while. And so now my goal was to come in and just kind of revamp, change, get kids excited about playing. and so my first goal was to to grow numbers in all of our sports, and we're slowly doing that. And so ⁓ success, we had a successful year in our eyes in terms of what we've had in the past. ⁓ however, there is still a long way to go. And ⁓ but we're going that way. We got kids coming to the gym now that they didn't do in the past. And so it's it's exciting. They're getting into it. All right, that's awesome. All right, so let's get into leaders lead. All right. So you started leaders lead. You use this as a as a it's not a slogan, but as a motivational term, right? ⁓ and it had a me has a meaning behind it. So let's just talk a little bit behind that because words without meaning kind of can just go in one ear, out the other. Leaders lead. ⁓ that's that's nice. But it really means something. So talk talk to us a little bit about what does leaders lead mean? What's behind it? Yeah. So like I said, I when I was a know overseeing my counselors, I said it one time to my lead supervisor. Because she was struggling. It was a rough day. In the summer it was probably, you know, 90, 100 degrees. Everyone's tired. It's been a long week. And a task came up. That she didn't necessarily want to do and the counselors didn't want to do, but it had to be done. And I simply just said leaders lead. And at the moment, I didn't think anything of it, but like, hey, in this time right now, I know we don't want to do it, but as a leader, we got to lead and we got to get the job done. And we all face those situations in our life where we don't want to go to work, we don't want to get out of bed, we don't want to, whatever it is. But as a leader of whatever job, whatever situation team. We have to lead. And so I started saying that a little bit more. Let me jump in real quick on what you just said, just because I want to ⁓ I I just want to dig deep into each little part of it. Yeah, absolutely. So this so this worked out great with this girl because she obviously took that and said, I want to be a leader. Let me step up my game a little bit. There's people who don't want to be leaders, right? And if they're tired and they're bothered, whatever, and you're like, Leaders lead and they're like, Well, I don't want to be a leader, right? I don't want to go to bed. So you have to be speaking to the right person. And then in addition, I was thinking it's not just profession or like sports, it's life. Like lead your life. You could be a leader of your own life and direct it the way you want it to go. Right. So let's just talk a little bit about those two things or continue where you were, but getting into the right listening. And then also other ways that leaders lead, which might be your own life, if you don't mind. Yeah, no, absolutely. ⁓ not everyone wants to have that role as the the leader. ⁓ so you you know, there's natural born leaders where you can just tell like that person wants to take over, take control, and that's great. But I also think that everyone has the ability to lead in some way, and not everyone agrees with that. I think that there's so many different ways you Lead. You can be the outspoken rah-rah, let's go get him leader. You can be the leader by example, whether it's on the team and you're just the best player. And so everyone thinks that's the leader of the team. You can be the quiet one that simply just shows up early, gets the job done, and goes home. You can be the the the leader that doesn't say a thing, but at the end of practice, they're the ones putting the ball away. They're the ones putting the cart away. ⁓ you can be a leader. You don't have to be great. You can be the last person on the bench, but you can be the leader because hey, I'm making sure that coach just changed practice time. I saw it on the message. I know our leader who doesn't pay attention to anything, organization wise didn't see it, but I I'll go tell them. And you can be that that could be a leader spot. There's different ways you can do it. ⁓ we always talk about how on a team, everyone has a role. And they're some people call role players. Every role matters because you don't need five LeBron James on one team. The bat there's not enough basketballs. And so you don't need five Steph Curries. There's not enough. Yes, you do. But you need the person that wants to pass the ball to everybody. You need the the the teacher that is coming in. And has the lesson plan ready, the one that's checking in on the teacher next door because they know they had a a a rough night last night or yesterday was a rough day in the classroom. You need that principal that's coming down the hallway, checking in with every single teacher just to make sure they're ready to go because it's the first day of school. There's different roles in different leadership ways. I think everyone always thinks it's always the person that's the loudest, the talking the most. And it's not. There's really good there's different styles of leadership, there's different ways to lead. Yeah. And you you kind of mentioned like there's those people that say, I don't want to be a leader. Yeah. I don't I don't want that role at all. And you're exactly right. And when it comes to a team, they might not have to play that leadership role. But you also mentioned in life, yeah, you're the leader of yourself no matter what. You are. And nobody can change like you are in control of the one thing is yourself. And so you have to be able to lead yourself to do the right thing. You gotta lead yourself to get up in the morning. And sometimes that's hard. Sometimes you don't want to wake up in the morning. Yeah. You gotta lead yourself. There's a couple things here, right? So how old are how old are your is your kid or your kids? How old are you? ⁓ I have a daughter that's four and a half. Okay, four and a half. Okay. And I have a son who's ten. So there's a couple things here, right? So at ten, nine, eight, maybe not at four, not I don't know. It's d different kids, different strokes, different folks. But sometimes my son does not lead himself. And so we either have a choice as parents in that moment to get him to go do something, but he didn't lead it. We led him. And we have to get really good at showing them that look, you can do this yourself because one day, not too far off, right? You you're going to need, like you said, to be able to lead yourself. I had set you up before we started the recording of this interview, and I said we're going to tie this all back into confidence. I think this is a great point to do that, right? A great place to do that. So what we want to do is talk a little bit about how we develop that leader based on kind of what I just said with my own son. And then by doing that, what do you think how how are we building confidence? Just your view of it. Yeah. I so in order to to to build leadership skills and and with confidence, I think the biggest thing is experience. And having those experiences. So those situations where you are put in a situation where you can grow your leadership skills, which then also will grow your confidence level. You are always going to be more confident things that you have taken on multiple times. Practice makes perfect. And so going back to the leadership, how do we get ourselves how do we get kids to grow leadership skills? I think we have to challenge them and put them in situations and and Not always give them the answer, but put them in a spot where they can find the answer, especially if they're younger, you know. Give them in a put ⁓ in a spot where they can make the obvious choice and that's the right choice and they did it on their own. And then we kind of start building on that. ⁓ I with my with my ⁓ athletes, I like to put them into spots that maybe they don't want to do. For instance, I can I yesterday sounds silly as this is, we have our ⁓ summer conditioning and ⁓ I have a sophomore on my basketball team who is just putting a lot of hours into the gym. And at summer conditioning yesterday, which is for all of our athletes, ⁓ we did our end of the group stretching and we have someone lead it every single time. It's usually a senior, sometimes a junior. Yesterday we were outside and I said this person's name, sophomore, and she froze for a second and looked at me and I was like, Go ahead. And she led it. And although that sounds silly and you're like, You're just stretching and cutting. There's juniors and seniors there. Are you kidding? That's big deal. That could be a scary stage you have to step into. Absolutely. But she did it. And so if I can put her in those situations, that gives her the opportunity to although although small, that's a small opportunity as a leader. But everyone else notices that that person's put in that spot. And so the next time she's put in that spot, soon it becomes kind of just normal. And so then she gains a little confidence about herself. And can lead bigger things and at the same time though, and we kind of talked about this before the recording too, is that the right relationship with if you lead but quote unquote fail, do not achieve the goal, right? You could be the one who gets the blame because you're the one that's kind of risen above the others. So you have to have this relationship with making mistakes, failing as it all being part of it. And I know you said practice makes perfect. We like to say practice makes progress. I don't know what perfect is. ⁓ but yes but it makes progress and it grows, like we were just saying. How do we make sure that when we put our kids in leadership positions, that they have the right relationship with, hey man, it's not always gonna go right. And that's okay because there's progress in the learning. Talk a little bit about that, if you will. Yeah. And ⁓ you mentioned it's it's based on the relationship that you have with that person. And so I don't want to put a student, a teacher, anybody in a spot where I feel like they're going to fail. And the way I know whether or not they're going to fail or or if they can succeed is I should have a connection with that person. I should have a relationship with that person. And with my girls' basketball team and with also other student athletes in my like they I have an open door policy as an athletic director. Which means they can come down and see me whenever they want. And it doesn't have to be about sports, it can just be about life. ⁓ I'm going to always try to build that connection with them first because if you build a connection with them, trust they trust you. And then they know that you're not gonna put them in a spot to fail. Or if they do fail, they have someone to talk to about it. They feel, you know, yeah. Yes, absolutely. So I need to know and the viewers Audience needs to know what's the business of leaders lead? We know that you're an athletic director and a coach, but what's the business? It's new. How does it operate? Yeah. So I got this all started within the last month. And congratulations. Welcome to entrepreneur world. Yes. and so the right now we're still in our growing stages and we recently started posting more on social media. This started on TikTok kind of. But now we have our Facebook page. Now we have our Instagram page. and then we just recently ⁓ launched some merchandise as well, some apparel ⁓ that's ⁓ is getting out there. I like the I like the ⁓ the I want to say slogan, the logo. I love the logo. Cool. Thank you, thank you. and so now that my goal, my job, my the the my vision, my purpose is just to talk with people about what leaders lead is. But not sell I'm I'm not trying to sell them a program, a software, anything like that. I'm trying to talk to them about like, hey, as people, we have to know what it takes to be a leader. We need to know what are the right things to do. What does it mean to be a leader's lead member? And things like that. And that that's my goal is just to have that conversation of like, we need more leaders in today's world. And and is it a business though? Is it is it Does it have a product or a service behind it? As of right now, it it is not. Right now it's just a mission. It's a it's just it's it's a mission. It's a mission ⁓ that we're trying to get out there in the long run. Will it? It might. It might not. I'm not exactly sure. ⁓ right now my goal is to talk to people about being a leader because I I think we need better leadership in today's world. I think kids need someone to talk to, some support, ⁓ an ability to learn what it means to be a leader. I think sometimes we tell kids, you know, to fill this role to be a leader, and they're like, What I don't we want to go talk with this mom and she has a nine year old and she said that she'd been doing research and reading books about how the best role models or those to to teach kids to lead are adults because their friends are not always the best leader. Role models, right? And that becomes almost a peer pressure model instead, right? Do what I say or do what I do. So what you're doing is really, really, really important. What are your Instagram face? Where would you like people to go and find out more about you? Yeah. So to be able to find more about me, it is so it's A D Coach ProCon. ⁓ and that that's my username for everything. That's kind of what would started everything was just me posting about being an athletic director. ⁓ so I'm still using those social media handles, but just simply AD for athletic director and then coach pro cop r-r-o-k-o-p. Okay, got it. And is there a leaders lead website, did you say? ⁓ as of right now, there's not, but all like if you look at our Facebook page, our TikTok, our Instagram page, it has links to our apparel. It has links, it has our mission statement, our vision statement, my goal. Everything is on there. And then people can reach out to me directly too as well. That's awesome. That's great. Okay. I'd like to ask three quick questions before we conclude. One is what's going really well right now? What do you love about what you're doing? Number two is what's challenging or difficult. And number three, which kind of goes with number two, is where do you need any help or assistance in case somebody's listening and they love your mission? And they want to know how can they help? So, first of all, what's going really well? I would say is there's there's a little bit of buzz around this idea of what leaders lead is. I think me, I think others probably all have an idea of what they want to do. Maybe if they want to try something new, but they're scared because they're like, What if I try it and it just fails and it looks dumb and I wasted time? And so I kind of threw this out there and then ⁓ I've had some people reach out to you know social media across the United States and they're like, hey, I just bought a hat. And it's someone I don't know, but they follow me on TikTok. And so now they they like this idea. So I would say that the fact that there's a little bit of buzz. ⁓ we are getting ⁓ my school is getting some apparel made that has our school name and everything, but it has leaders' lead on it as well. So that's kind of cool and exciting. ⁓ you know, the students, high school kids, they ⁓ tease you a little bit, but they're excited about it. And you know, I'll be walking in the gym, leaders lead, AD coach pro cop. And so that's fun. It's exciting. ⁓ so that's what's going well. In terms of what did you say? Challenge challenges. Yeah. Yeah. I I would say that the biggest challenge right now is just like I don't exactly know where I want this direction to go necessarily. ⁓ I know the there's an idea of maybe starting a podcast and and bringing guests on to talk about leadership. And I think that's gonna that's definitely gonna happen. ⁓ but the idea of starting maybe a business side to it involves money. ⁓ and so do I want to get into that? ⁓ I'm not sure yet. I like what I'm doing now and just having conversations with people a lot. ⁓ I'm running a tournament, basketball tournament coming up and I since I'm running it, Leaders Lead's gonna the main sponsor. And so I think that's an opportunity I'm gonna get to talk to some of Fort Wayne's best basketball players about what Leaders Lead is. ⁓ and so I think the challenge is just like with no sponsorship, no money behind it, it's just kind of it's it's gonna be a slow progress of what we want it to be. We call it grassroots. Yes. The grassroots effort. All right. Any requests, any needs? ⁓ the biggest it just have gaining more followers, understanding what I the what the mission is of Leaders Lead, and that's just to develop leaders, ⁓ to make people better and to leave the place that they were interacting with better. And so my goal is just to continue to develop leaders, build leaders, ⁓ and just have those conversations with people. And so it doesn't have to be like you mentioned, sports based, school based. It could be any career, any job, any group, club. There's leaders that need to be had. And so I just want to have those conversations with people about what it takes to be a leader. There you go. So if you want to have that conversation, reach out, give us the handle one more time across all socials. Yep. A D coach pro cop. Got it. There it is. And it's the last name, not pro like cop. Yep. T-R-O-K-O-P. Yeah, got it. Perfect. Well, David, thank you so much for being on the show here today. I love it. Leaders lead everybody. ⁓ could grow into something big. So once again, reach out to David if you'd like to get more information on his socials. And ⁓ yeah, great information. Thanks so much. Thank you everybody for tuning in to the Power Up Universe podcast. We'll see you on the next episode one more time. Thank you, David. Take care. Thank you, Scott. Well, that certainly was powerful as always. Thanks for joining. And remember, we all together can make a difference for our kids. They're counting on us to help power up their lives. next time right here in the Power Up Universe.