If such an area exists in on the west side of Indianapolis, Andico Road is the industrial hub of Hendricks County.  The Complex (home of PANKO Strength & Speed to the ill-informed) is right in the middle.  There are seven factories and/or machine shops, two excavators, and three garages.  The other half of the Complex is storage for one of the plastics factories and is the setting of this encounter.

Monday marked second confrontation I have ever had with scrappers – scavengers who dig through trash to find metal so they can turn it in for some (emphasis on some) cash.  Just about any stereotypical rodent analogy can be drawn to describe these two.  They had the appearance one would expect – sharp, narrow, rat-like features.  They were listening to Johnny Cash (no shame there) and they were smoking Marlboro reds.

I happened to walk outside as they were making their way towards the open door of the storage unit next door.  They asked if there was anything in there they could have and I said “no.”  They asked if I was the owner and I said I was not.  His next reply was to ask me, “Who are you to say we can’t have anything?”  I responded that I was a business owner and my business was my livelihood, and if someone attempted to steal my livelihood I would defend it until somebody was carried away on a gurney.  I told him it was inconceivable he was attempting to subsidize his livelihood by stealing cast dyes from a business owner who carried the burden of providing for every single employee, and their family, on his payroll.  The two got in the car and left.

Wealth, well-being, and success can’t morally be attained by taking from others.  It can be earned, it HAS to be earned.  But success can never be stolen.  Success should not be measured on an inter-personal scale.  Success is intra-personal.  It’s not person to person, but it is within.  Success should be measured on small scales, whereupon, an individual makes sure they are taking small, progressed steps forward daily.  Putting their head on a pillow better than when they woke that morning

This vulture believed he could steal (“from someone who could afford it”) and achieve some sort of wealth, success, or happiness.  When in reality, he will never be successful because he is always going to place blame on someone else.  He won’t take steps forward because he will always be concerned those around him will be taking greater steps forward.  He will be diving in dumpsters and sorting through people’s trash until he is put in the ground because he was never given a “fair shot.”  Unfortunately too many share his opinions.  Success comes at a price, but it’s not someone else’s price, it is the individual’s price to pay, and it is paid with sacrifice, persistence, blood, sweat, and, sometimes, tears.

Sports performance training, at all levels – high school, college, private facilities, has become a commodity.  Everyone does things the exact same way.  Actually, almost everything has become commoditized in the big-box-over-saturated-everyone-sell-everything-damn-customer-service-for-the-economical-cookie-cutter-run-through-they-built-one-over-there-so-we’ll-build-one-over-here world of retail/products/service.  Without sounding duplicitous, sports performance training is being described to the “T” by Dan Kennedy.   Coaches, trainers, owners are reading the same regurgitated information, being consulted by the same people, hobnobbing at the same conferences, attending the same seminars, and getting the same results.  They have passed on self-endeavor!

Resembling a Soviet (ne, new American) style trickle down bureaucracy, the masses are timid enough to follow the oligarchical few.  Once connected, they hope to be passed a scrap of this or a nibble of that, living safe on their knees instead of chasing exception on their feet.  This is all done in anticipatory delight of being recognized on a Facebook page or in a blogosphere blast.  At best, the followers are sitting behind a computer screen, fingers-crossed, that their own videos, ideas, blogs/articles, forum posts are not getting blasted by arm-chair quarterbacks.  Here is the secret to success, but this stays between author and reader: push away, turn off, follow instincts, implement with conviction, lead with passion, don’t give a damn, take people who invest their trust to the top, and build a culture.

There is nothing hypocritical here.  This is not an attack on those oligarchical few, but there has been a commoditization of the product.  People get comfortable not taking the required risks to blaze a trail, and become comfortable heading down the path of others.  Like the NFL, everyone follows the same skeletal rubric.  Contrary to political ideology, in this case, kudos should be given to those that are constantly re-setting the bar; it is ingenuity.  Their hard work, research, and results have made their businesses successful.  Businesses are in place to make profits and they fulfill that obligation to themselves, their partners, associates, investors, shareholders, and employees, and rightfully so.   They have independent people buying into dependence, be the wizard but beware the wizard.

What’s the purpose of all this?  Blast followers for following, praise leaders for success.  The world needs leaders and the world needs them people to lead.  What is the point?  Commodities know no differential bounds – grain, corn, livestock, oil, cotton.  It is all the same everywhere.  Performance training is entering that paradigm; it is being overtaken by the overeducated and undertrained, researchers and not executioners.  Those that lecture yet don’t implement those that study the statistics, probabilities, trends, past circumstances and outcomes, to look at what they may be but certainly never having the stones to take risks to figure out what they can be.  These individuals place more worth on information than action.  It’s becoming dominated by people placing limits on an environment because the “book” said to do so.  Its auto-bots, all stamped from the same mold that have only the rationalization that the PowerPoint/PDF said “to do it,” the DVD “looked cool doing it,” and the alphabet of accolades that follows their name entitles them to do it.

Read and re-read this statement: a good program does not deal in sports performance training, but makes people more successful, more successful in every phase of their life and becoming more successful at something every day.  PANKO Strength & Speed is a SUCCESS program.  There has never been any doubt that the strength training aspects, speed training theory, application, and implementation, force production/reduction uses, and injury prevention courses of action executed within the program will build the best athletes.  But that is just one (1) distinction of the success program at PANKO Strength & Speed.

A good coach will teach athletes/trainees/program participants to break down the false limits they place on themselves.  Teaching individuals that they can overcome and then showing them how to overcome ALL artificial, self-built, walls between the current and success.  It is showing young people, parents, anyone they can get close to the edge, their edge, whatever that may be and benefit physically, psychologically, and emotionally instead of dwelling upon the sacrifice of effort and the pain that may bring, then teaching them to re-set the edge daily.  Set a big goal, implement to achieve the goal, set a bigger goal – REPEAT.  It is proving that the best version of oneself is infinitely better than the best impersonation one may attempt of someone else.  As a success coach, the greatest aha moment, comes when a person figures out that cliff, or any obstruction in their path, is not as high as they previously perceived.

As a business owner, it would be wonderful if people really cared about the business, and to some extent they do, some.  But what people really care about is how they benefit from the business.  They do not care about the place as much as they care how they feel when they leave (empowered).  They don’t care about the x’s and o’s of becoming successful only that they become successful.  They don’t care what it takes to be successful, only that they stay successful.  The success platform is the most important part of the program.  The passion for empowering individuals, the conviction with which a change is made in people lives, attitude, outlook, performance etc., and the efficiency in the way the physical, psychological, and emotional aspects of the program are coupled CAN NOT BE COMMODITIZED.  They are not anywhere else, the way they are at PANKO Strength & Speed.  The part of the program that, at the beginning, can be uncomfortable for individuals; finding their reasons for self-doubt, lack of self-confidence, self-efficacy, and increased activity in self-destructive actions is the true asset of the experience.  Grow or die, get better or get worse, but staying the same is not progress.

PANKO Strength & Speed, Stewards of the American Dream