Mike Neighbors is the Head Women's Basketball Coach at the University of Arkansas. He is a father of four (Abby 26, Alec 20, Bowen 2, Barrett 9 months), a husband to Jayci, and a coach to 277 former players. For the last 29 years he has been paid as a Coach, but if you ask his lifelong friends and family, they will tell you he has been doing it since he was 9. So, he has really been a Coach for the last 43 years.
Whether it was a neighborhood backyard game of tennis ball or the Final Four in 2016, he has approached every game as an opportunity to compete, learn, and grow. He has remained a learn-it-all/share-it-all ever since a life changing heart attack at 29. Before then, he was a know-it-all/hoard-it-all.
He hopes those in our orbit learn for the experiences we share.
Mike had a number of amazing insights during our conversation. Some of them include:
“Had [I not had that heart attack at 29], I was probably heading down the wrong path… I think I was lucky” (6:45).
“Those processes that I learned to survive [when I was younger] have helped me to survive in this very competitive world of college athletics” (16:15).
“Get out of their way when they don’t need you” (18:00).
“That’s one of my favorite parts about coaching. They don’t need you for the celebration, they need you when we lose” (18:40).
“Only when they need me are you going to notice me” (23:50).
“Without the heart attack, without those experiences, I probably would’ve been using ‘I’ a lot more than ‘we’” (24:05).
“You don’t have to be relatable with somebody to be inspired by them” (41:10).
“I wanted to believe as many true things as I possibly could” (48:30).
“’It depends’… I say that all the time” (50:20).
“You need to be compelled to be great at what you’re doing” (1:00:50).
“We create better basketball players when they find that there are other things that basketball is going to create for them” (1:02:10).
“I worry about being wrong” (1:06:40).
“Until you’ve done 40 hours of research on something, I don’t want to have a conversation with you about it” (1:09:00).
“[I envision myself coaching] forever” (1:16:45).
“I probably wouldn’t take a job where all it was was win at all costs” (1:21:35).
Additionally, make sure to follow Mike on Twitter @coachneighbors and to check out his website coachneighbors.com!
Thank you so much to Mike for coming on the podcast!
I wrote a book called “Shift Your Mind” that was released in October of 2020, and you can order it on Amazon and Barnes and Noble. Additionally, I have launched a company called Strong Skills, and I encourage you to check out our new website https://www.strongskills.co/. If you liked this episode and/or any others, please follow me on Twitter: @brianlevenson or Instagram: @Intentional_Performers.
Thanks for listening.
