--:-- Ryan Hanley: Hello everyone and welcome back to the show. We have a tremendous conversation for you today with Steve D'Agostino. He is the founder of Dags Basketball, of Maximize Basketball. Steve is a high-performance basketball coach and trainer. He works with kids all the way as young as kindergarten up to NBA players and everyone in between.
--:-- Ryan Hanley: He is a big part of the renaissance that has happened in my local community. This is the best part about this podcast. Steve lives here in Albany, New York. His business is based here in Albany, New York, and he has been a major part of the sports renaissance that is happening in our area. We are consistently sending high-level basketball players to Division I schools like North Carolina, Syracuse. We currently have four local kids in the NBA. And so much of that has to do with Steve and his training.
--:-- Ryan Hanley: I wanted to bring him in because he has a particular mindset, methodology, thought process that I find to be refreshing. It is a refreshing way of approaching this. I'm a former high school basketball referee. I did some college basketball as well. I played sports in college. I've seen the brilliance of youth sports as well as some of the nightmares that can come with youth sports. And currently I coach my kids in both baseball and basketball as well.
--:-- Ryan Hanley: What I wanted to get into with Steve was how, as parents or as coaches of youth athletes, do we align our mindset so that we can help them become what they want to be? It's an important framing, and so much of this comes out of Steve's mindset. I love this episode. Whether you have kids and use sports or not, you are going to enjoy this because of concepts that Steve talks about, like creating chaotic drills and the importance of training yourself for chaotic moments.
--:-- Ryan Hanley: Now, you can have kids or not have kids. You can have kids in sports or not have kids in sports. The idea of inserting yourself into chaotic situations, preparing yourself for chaotic situations so that when they happen out of the blue, you are ready for them and can perform inside of them is wonderful and powerful. With all that preamble, let's get on to Steve D'Agostino. In a crude laboratory in the basement of his home. Steve, appreciate you making the time today, my man.
--:-- Steve D'Agostino: Yeah, thanks for having me. I'm excited to be here. It's not very often that I get to interview someone from my hometown. We're both Capital Region guys. It's pretty cool that we're not sitting too far apart and getting to have this conversation.
--:-- Ryan Hanley: One of the reasons I wanted to have you on the show—and I brought this up before so the audience has heard me talk about it—I coach my own kids in sports and I was a basketball referee at a fairly high level, both at the high school and the college levels for 12 years. I've seen that every year the relationship between the adults and the kids becomes more toxic. You've accumulated an incredible following, not just in our local community with your coaching program, but nationally as well. You're working with incredibly high-level players. What that tells me is the way you are talking about the relationship between coaches and kids, the way you're addressing that relationship, how you're speaking to these young athletes is really resonating. I'd love to start with where did your core philosophies come from? We can get into exactly what they are, but what were the inputs into your life, into your career that helped you develop those and to be such a positive influence on kids?
--:-- Steve D'Agostino: 100%. I've been lucky. My dad was a high school coach forever before I was even born. He coached youth, he coached my brother all the way up, and then was an assistant on our high school teams. Once we graduated high school, he went back to being a varsity head coach. I've always had a good perspective from him on the youth basketball landscape and the high school basketball landscape. My brother went on to be a college coach locally at UAlbany, Hudson Valley, and then down in Florida at an NAIA school. I got the insight for the college stuff through him.
--:-- Steve D'Agostino: In my own career, having played elite AAU on the Nike circuit and then Division II basketball and then overseas for six years, I went through all that as a player. When I transitioned to being a trainer and a player development coach, typically what happens is these development coaches are in one level. You'll see their college MBA or their youth high school. I have two businesses. One, Dags Basketball, we do kindergarten all the way up through 12th grade. My national brand, Maximize Basketball, focuses on our NBA clients, all of our national camps and clinics. I literally get every single level that I get to work with. I'm able to see the craziness of youth basketball, the high school recruiting college landscape, and the professional aspect as well. There are so many different variables that go into it. I've been lucky enough that I have experience in all the different levels.
--:-- Ryan Hanley: One of the things that got me out of reffing basketball—I'll explain to you, you'll maybe find this funny because you'll know the teams. I was 12 years in reffing. I've been to college camps. I'd done Division III. I'd done clinics at Division II level. I'd gone all the way to Glens Falls and done semifinals for state championship games for high school. Loved it, loved every second of it. The last two or three years that I was reffing, probably 2010 to 2013, I noticed a severe shift in the overall attitude that people had. It went from winning but in the way that I was raised up and through it—there's always the competitive nature, there's always your rivals and your local communities—but it became much more combative, much more individualistic, much more the parents yelling from the stands.
--:-- Ryan Hanley: I had an experience at Rensselaer High School for a freshman basketball game. Most of you listening will not know Rensselaer High School, but it is a Class C school in our area. It's fairly small, and it's a freshman basketball game. It's like a 4 o'clock game. One of those pickup games you get as a ref. It ends up being a 30-point loss for Rensselaer High School. No big deal. This stuff all happens. It's all part of the game. I'm walking off the court after the game, and a parent walking through the crowd catches me with their shoulder and spins me around. I turn and look at this guy. I'm 6'4", 200 pounds, and this dude makes me look like a smurf. He's looking at me like, if you take one step towards me, I'm going to take you out. Then he says, "This is your fault." A 30-point game on a freshman towards the end of the season. At that moment, I lost all love for reffing basketball. It killed it for me because of that accumulation of events.
--:-- Ryan Hanley: My question for you is where did that transition start to happen? I'd like to talk about some of these root issues and some of the negatives, and then we can layer in where we feel the solutions are and working with our kids and finding performance in our lives. What have you seen that maybe started to make that transition? Because it happened. There is absolutely a different attitude in the way parents—and not so much coaches, but especially parents—interact with this game.
--:-- Steve D'Agostino: 100%. At the youth level, it's different now. I'm a player development coach, so I do a lot of the training. I can see that parents are a lot more invested in their kids' youth sports now than maybe they were 20, 30 years ago. I'm not saying emotionally invested as far as wanting your kid to play sports and be well, but the time and money that goes into it. Both of those lead into stress. I'm investing this time, I'm investing this money. Now everything is on social media. If you're a parent, you go on social media during AAU season, your kid's on one team, and all these other teams are posting their championship—I'll put it in quotes—t-shirts and pictures. Now you're like, "Man, I wish my kid was on that team." There's all this fear of missing out and trying to keep up with the Joneses. It really takes away the best thing about youth sports: it teaches kids how to be accountable, how to handle adversity, how to be part of a team, how to sacrifice. Like you were saying, we've lost a lot of that for this manipulation of trying to win games or having to be on the best team. It leads to a ton of stress. That stress is mostly there because of the adults. It gets taken out on a coach taking it out on the players, a parent taking it out on a coach, the parent or the coach taking it out on the refs. It manifests in all this chaos. It's like, yo, just let the kids play.
--:-- Ryan Hanley: There's a local guy, you probably know him, Danny Barbero, a local baseball trainer and performance coach. My kids play baseball as well. One of the parents of our team asked a question—an honest question about performance at the age of 11. He's a particular guy, but he looks at her and goes, "He's 11." It took her—this is nothing against her because her question was honest and not meant to be persuaded—but you could see it hit her like, "Oh yeah, they're just 11." My question is, at what point, as a parent, if you have a kid who is dedicated to a sport and has made a commitment to being good, when do you think that age is that you shift into fifth gear with them? When does that moment happen?
--:-- Steve D'Agostino: When they're younger—take basketball for instance—typically these kids will be on teams starting in third grade. From third grade to seventh grade, it's very much the parent kind of leading the way a little bit. "You're going to be on this team, you're going to go to this camp, this might help you." You're leading the way. But when they get into eighth, ninth, tenth grade, the kids are going to tell you by their action. I can't tell you the amount of kids that come into our gym locally and you can tell they don't want to be there. It's extra work, so I get it. At some point, the kid is going to lead the way. You're going to be spending all this time and money and the kid's not even going to want to be there.
--:-- Steve D'Agostino: There was a study I was listening to on Malcolm Gladwell's podcast. They studied elite runners in the UK when they were 15 and what they did by the time they got up to 22. The smallest percentage of those elite runners at 15 ended up being elite at 22. We sit here with all these elite middle school teams traveling all over the country. You can pick out the one or two kids. Andre Jackson's in the NBA for the Milwaukee Bucks. In fifth grade, you're like, "Whoa, that guy moves different." Kevin Huerter when he was in seventh grade, you're like, "That kid's got a chance." What we do is the intention behind it. "I'm going to invest all this because I want my kid to be great and they want to play college sports." That shouldn't be the intention because all of that is just a byproduct of how productive the kid is when they're on varsity. If the intention was, "I'm going to invest in my kid in basketball training because they're going to learn how to be dedicated to something, be disciplined, wake up early, go hard in training sessions, fight through adversity, struggle, learn how to come out on top," then whatever they end up doing in high school, college, and beyond, this is going to help them there. That's how my philosophy has always been when we're training people. When they come in eighth, ninth grade and they're talking about college, we lose all the crazies because we're not on the same page. That's not what we're looking to do.
--:-- Ryan Hanley: One of the things I preach to my kids constantly is attitude and effort. That's what we're learning at fourth grade baseball, at fifth grade basketball. We're learning skills. We're learning how to show up. We're learning how to be proud of our performance. I literally don't give a shit if you miss all 10 shots you take today. It's meaningless. I want to win, but I literally don't care if we win or not. In my brain, walking away from the field. What's been interesting is the feedback I've gotten from parents is, "You don't push them to win enough." I'm like, you don't want that. If I push them to win, you wouldn't like that side of what this looks like. In fifth grade, half of these kids just learned to tie their shoes. When you got to run out in the field and tie a kid's shoe, we should not be concerned about winning.
--:-- Steve D'Agostino: I coach my daughter's fifth grade team. I also coach third grade. The third grade is just learning whatever. But fifth grade, I've had them now for a couple of years. I am the same way as you. We're going to compete to win, but I don't care whether we win or lose. I actually prefer we lose. Over two years, we probably lost seven games by one possession. Part of the problem with our team is we're not focused. We come in practice and they have a hard time. You're not going to win close games if you're not focused. I actually like it because they're learning now, "You don't like losing by one point, two points, three points. We missed 10 foul shots. We didn't run this play and execute." It's helping us fight through adversity, lose, and now come back and practice and work on those things. I'm the same way as you. I do this for a living, so I could be as crazy as you need me to be. But in fifth grade, the biggest thing is not that we win games. It's not that we run a million plays—we have one play that we run. It's that your kid, by the time they're in eighth or ninth grade, if they want to do basketball, they're ready to be in the gym all the time and compete.
--:-- Ryan Hanley: I do think, unfortunately for a lot of these kids, it's so much luck of the draw. You call it dad ball. In baseball, we call it dad ball a lot. You see the teams that hit the jackpot because there's a dad who actually gets it, maybe played at a high level, understands the perspective of what we're doing here at this fourth, fifth, sixth grade level. Then you got these dads that maybe never played on their varsity team, didn't get to where they thought they should be, and now they're taking it out on the kids. That experience is very difficult. Just wrapping up maybe the youth side of this, if you're a parent and your kid is on a team where the head coach—that dad, God bless him for putting his time in—just doesn't get it, the win at all costs, over-indexing on these five kids that in fifth grade are just a little more athletic right now, do you recommend them looking for other teams? How do you address that? Because I do think this team hopping so young that happens in all these sports is not necessarily a positive. It seems to happen way too much. How would you approach that as a parent if you knew this coach just doesn't get it? He's too aggressive. He's yelling. It's the win at all costs kind of stuff.
--:-- Steve D'Agostino: Obviously, that's never a good thing. You don't want to rail on volunteers because they are giving their time. I've always said, if you're going to complain about the volunteer coach, then you go coach. Go do it. That stinks. But kids are going to play sports and it's going to be competitive. They're going to have to deal with all different types of coaches. You get a coach that maybe is not your style for a year. It's a good thing for your kid. It's a good thing. How can you support your kid? Maybe they don't like it and that coach is a yeller. How do you support them to get through it? Once they get through it, they'll be able to deal with people like that.
--:-- Steve D'Agostino: As far as finding another team, the team hopping is crazy, especially in basketball. I'm sure it's similar in baseball.
--:-- Ryan Hanley: It is.
--:-- Steve D'Agostino: Not having the continuity of players and coaches is not a good thing for development. But if you are lucky enough to have options, you got to balance it. What happens now is parents want the perfect situation. They want the best coach. They want their kid to play a ton. They want their kid to be the best player on the team. You're almost never going to have that. You have to sacrifice in some areas. If you're going to prioritize the coaching over everything, you can't all of a sudden come back and be like, "My kid's playing half the game," when he could have played on this team where the coaching might not have been as good and he would have played the whole game. But you prioritized coaching. There's no perfect scenario. The parents have to really decide what they prioritize. If they're not in a great situation, maybe their kid's not playing a ton. Great. Support him through it. He or she should be stronger because of that, and they got through it.
--:-- Ryan Hanley: I love that response. I think one of the things I've seen, particularly with this generation or the past couple generations, they couldn't survive the way we were coached. I had a football coach pick me up by my face mask and shoulder press me into a fence because I got a personal foul. This is the crazy part. This is what I tell my kids. I'm flying through the air, literally slamming into a fence. I step up and I'm like, "I deserved that." That was my mentality. Not even that he was wrong for doing it. Today, he'd be in jail and be a national news story. This was just a Tuesday afternoon game. My point in saying that is I love that answer because I feel like we don't take as parents the ownership of "I'm going to help my kid work through this tough situation." Instead, it's "I'm going to bitch to the league. I'm going to bitch to the coach. If none of that works, I'm going to take my kid out of this program and stick them in another program and expect that to be better." What the kid learns is if I don't like what's going on, mom and dad will come in and solve all my problems for me.
--:-- Ryan Hanley: Operating with high performers at the levels that they're at, or kids striving for high performance, and seeing that full spectrum, can you start to pull out a few of the core mindsets that these types of kids tend to have versus those who fall away over time?
--:-- Steve D'Agostino: We can get into the talent levels later because obviously the more talented you are, the more opportunities you're going to have. But this is what I've come to realize with this generation. If everybody had this mindset of what you're trying to build in your kids with youth sports—if you can get your kid to be competitive and resilient, you've done your job. Doesn't matter how many games you've won, what sport you're playing. When they get to college and beyond for life, if they're competitive and they're resilient, they're going to have a good chance to succeed. For our development and our training, how do we put them in situations where they have to be competitive? Wins, losses. Go as hard as you can. Put them in adversity so they learn that failing is a good thing. They're going to build up that resilience within themselves. Then go let them play whatever sport you want. Start a business. You're competitive. You're resilient. You're going to figure it out. That's really what the mindset should be for youth sports and beyond.
--:-- Ryan Hanley: How do you manage the competitiveness without over-indexing on the winning? I see some kids who are hyper-competitive, but they also do not understand how to handle a loss. They're crying on the basketball court on a Tuesday night in the middle of the season because you lost a game and they're in fifth grade. You love the competitiveness. You love the fact that they care. But they've so over-indexed on winning. How do you address that?
--:-- Steve D'Agostino: Clarity. In fifth grade, sixth grade, they may be too young to completely understand it, but they'll get it. Competitiveness is not the result. It's the action. What does that mean? You're focused. You're engaged. You're giving 100% effort. You're being physical. You're trying to do everything that you need to do to win the game. The result is separate from that. You could be more talented and not compete in a game and still win. That's not a good thing. Them understanding that the result of winning is separate from the action of being competitive is key.
--:-- Ryan Hanley: How do you train resilience into a kid or coach resilience into a kid?
--:-- Steve D'Agostino: I think you put them into challenging situations. In our area, we've been lucky. We had a ton of really good shooters come out of this area. Joe Girard was at Syracuse and Clemson. Kevin Huerter's in the NBA. Joe Cremo was at Villanova. What we do is try to get them in a situation—let's say they come in and we're doing shooting stuff—where they're not going to win every drill. As a coach, you want every drill a lot of times to be clean. You want your kids to do it really well. Part of what I've started to embrace is chaotic drills where you're going to lose. It's going to be messy, but you've got to figure out a way to get through it. Inherently putting them through more adversity in everything that they do, they tend to start figuring out, "I haven't beaten this shooting drill seven days in a row." Then on the eighth day, they get it. Boom, you did it. We put that into all of our development stuff.
--:-- Ryan Hanley: I love the idea of the chaotic drills. It's funny. I played basketball in high school, but only because I was the punching bag for the guys that were actually good. I was the 12th man that just showed up with the jersey and the starters just beat the shit out of me in practice. That was my role. In football, you see this a lot. I was more of a football and baseball player. In football, this is a given. You're going to get knocked down. You're going to be bleeding. You're going to be bruised. But in a lot of the other sports, I hadn't framed it in my head as chaotic drills. I love that. I'm going to put more thought into that idea. I think that's a good life lesson. Handling chaos is a life skill, not just a sports skill. I really think that's wonderful.
--:-- Ryan Hanley: Let's say you have a kid who's never been exposed to this before. They hit eighth, ninth grade. They have some talent. They may have some drive to be good, but they have been sheltered or maybe moved around to places where they could be successful without real challenges. How do you introduce them to it? Is it just throw them to the fire? Do you have a methodology that you take them through? How do you get them introduced to this chaotic nature? To me, it feels fairly unique.
--:-- Steve D'Agostino: It depends on the kid and how opposed to contact they are. But we throw them right to the fire. Most of the time, especially when they're in eighth, ninth grade—younger kids, you ease them into it. But most of our drills, when we're doing finishing drills like layups around the basket, we'll work on some on air, meaning just reps one on zero. But most of them are live. They're one-on-one. It's a defender pushing you out. It's a rebounding drill where two guys or two girls are pushing against each other. The more they're exposed to that contact, the more comfortable they get in it. You can't talk your way through that. You have to experience it. That's my biggest thing with youth kids and high school kids. I always hear a coach say, "Well, I told them." When you were a kid, you didn't listen to any adults. You learned from experience. As coaches, we want to keep telling them and telling them. They're hearing the same things over and over again so that once they do experience, they're like, "Oh crap, that's what he was talking about." They don't just learn by "You got to be more physical." No, throw them in a physical drill, be physical, get beat up for two, three, four, five days, and then you figure out how to be comfortable with it. We throw them right to the fire. It's the only way.
--:-- Ryan Hanley: I want to transition to someone who really does have talent. I reffed Kevin Huerter, and it was obvious. When he was playing in seventh grade at the seventh grade Capital District as a fifth grader, he was playing on the seventh grade team and he was the starting point guard competing at a high level two ages above him. It was obvious. How do you make sure that kid doesn't flame out, fizzle out, ego doesn't get too big? How do you keep that hyper-talented individual focused on the task at hand and moving forward? There are almost as many or more pitfalls that player can fall into than the kid who's 12th on the bench trying to make the team.
--:-- Steve D'Agostino: People think it's such a good thing for their kid to be the best player in middle school. I would almost argue that it's not. You're better off having them not be the best player and be chasing. That best player can be complacent. How do you fight complacency? The kid has to constantly be challenged. They have to not only play in a space where they can go be the best player and kill because they are the best player, but then go play against older kids too, where they get beat up a little bit and they're not the best player. It's hard. Again, the kid's going to lead the way. A lot of these kids, when they're in middle school and they're the best player, you don't even know what hard work is yet.
--:-- Steve D'Agostino: And so you're just talented. When you get to high school, some of these kids, they're not that personality where they're going to put in the extra work, especially as others keep catching up to them. What you're trying to develop is that competitiveness, the resilience, and then that work ethic. That comes from the people that you have around them and the perspective that they have.
--:-- Steve D'Agostino: In our area, Ryan, this is crazy. I did it with my camera guy the other day. There's at least 16 other trainers and player development coaches that do workouts. Dude, I'm all for it. There's enough kids. I don't care. But a lot of times you're going to work out with these people, but now you're listening to them too. If you're not hearing the right things, your mindset when you go back to your high school team is going to be off. Your mindset on how the world actually works, the world of basketball, whatever sport, is going to be warped.
--:-- Steve D'Agostino: I think that's what ends up happening. Not only do the players not have clarity on how basketball works, these kids when they're freshmen are like, "Offers, offers." Dude, unless you're a top 100 player, you're not getting a scholarship offer as a freshman. Colleges aren't recruiting freshmen and sophomores unless you're the best player in the country. But they're hearing that, and that's what they're focused on. Then the parent gets hyper-focused, then they get more stress, and it's that whole snowball.
--:-- Steve D'Agostino: I think it's not only the training, it's the perspective. You have to have somebody that's giving you the right information. Because if you don't have the right information, you're going down the wrong path.
--:-- Steve D'Agostino: The other thing too is playing Division III sports is pretty fun. So many people think we shouldn't shoot for as high as we can possibly go. I'm not saying that. But I've heard from parents about this. I played Division III baseball. I loved it. I played against a couple guys that ended up going and playing AAA. It was good baseball. I had a fun career. I played a little baseball after college as well. To me, it's not a miss. I came from Nassau, a tiny town of 900 people. Escaping that town was the best thing that ever happened to me.
--:-- Steve D'Agostino: My point is we put these expectations on our kids that if they don't go to a name-brand Division I school, somehow their sports career has been less than it should have been. If your kid gets the opportunity to play college sports, they're the best of the best at the high school level. There's going to be the best of the best of the best playing at the Kentuckys and North Carolinas. That's great. But how many players on those teams? 12? 15 if you count the practice players? Maybe 20 with a practice team? That's 20 guys for maybe 150 schools that have a chance of making the NCAA tournament. That's not that many kids out of all the kids that play the sports.
--:-- Steve D'Agostino: I feel like we put so much pressure on these kids to reach these levels. There are so many avenues for them to take these skills that they're learning and make successful, rewarding lives out of them. I don't ever want to tell anybody that they shouldn't shoot as high as they possibly can. They absolutely should. But I think we've lost perspective a little bit on what a win actually looks like out of all this effort that we put in.
--:-- Steve D'Agostino: The expectation of Division I college basketball is so blown out of proportion that people don't even know what they want. Where you play in college is a byproduct of how well you do in high school when you're a junior and a senior, whether it's high school or AAU. The focus now is, "We got to do this to go to college." No, you have to try and be the best high school player that you can be. There's not many players that should be playing in college that weren't good high school players, because when you're in high school, if you're the best player, it's going to show.
--:-- Steve D'Agostino: We have this expectation from when they're younger: Division I, Division II, Division III college. Why not just try to be the best high school player you can be and develop all these life skills? Then if your talent raises and you're productive, all that other stuff is going to come.
--:-- Steve D'Agostino: The second part: I'm a junior national team coach with USA Basketball. There's about 15 or 16 of us. During COVID, we had all these Zooms. One of them was with a Harvard professor. She was saying how they've been doing a study on student athletes at the college level. Over 60%, I want to say it was like 70% of the student athletes, had some form of anxiety and depression. For those people that have played college basketball or college sports, it's hard. It's really hard. You're not going to be happy most of the time, unless you really, really love what you're doing and you can handle the adversity, those hard times.
--:-- Steve D'Agostino: I always say when these people are chasing this, "Would you rather your kid be a college basketball player or would you rather him be happy?" They say, "Oh, happy." Well, then wait. You're pushing college over happy. You don't even know if you want college basketball. You don't even know if your kid wants college basketball. Yet you're pushing this notion.
--:-- Ryan Hanley: To your point, I play Division II. I don't care what level you go to. For all these organizations and businesses that have players, you want them to go to the highest level. I'm the opposite. We had a kid who's probably the best player in the area right now. He was choosing between Johns Hopkins and Tufts. I think he's a Division I player. Those are high academic Division III schools. We had a conversation. I'm like, "Dude, you're going to go to Johns Hopkins. In 10 years, you're going to be looking back and be like, 'Oh my God, I can't believe I was going to go to a low Division I school.'" It doesn't matter. I don't even want to name any because I don't want to disrespect anybody. You're looking at it from such a short lens. Johns Hopkins, man. Are you crazy? You got to go to Johns Hopkins.
--:-- Ryan Hanley: If the focus was just be the best you can in high school, if you're productive enough and good enough, somebody's going to want you. Then hopefully you choose that right situation that's going to benefit you the most for your future.
--:-- Steve D'Agostino: Yeah. I can tell you as a Division III player — I got a couple opportunities to play Division II as a baseball player. I ended up going to the University of Rochester. Johns Hopkins is one of the schools that we played against for baseball. Division III sports are fun. Guess what we did the night before games? We went out and chased women and drank beers. Then we showed up the next day and played a double header. I'm not saying to take away from it. We trained hard. We practiced every day. It was a full-time thing. We took it very seriously. But the point is we had fun. After a double header, if we were sleeping over in that town, we would hang out with the other teams and go out to their bars and have a good time. You can't do that at the Division I level.
--:-- Steve D'Agostino: I'm not saying you can't have fun in Division I. I got plenty of buddies that did. I'm not knocking that. I'm just saying that Johns Hopkins is a meal ticket for a career, for having a job the rest of your life. A good job that's going to make you money, let you provide for your family. It's there. I want people to push as hard as they can and be everything they can be with an understanding of what you're actually going to get out the back end of making that decision.
--:-- Ryan Hanley: It's framed to these kids by the parents and the AAU coaches, trainers, decision makers, that the college level is like good, better, best. It's not the case. Everybody's different. So you get a Division I scholarship to a low Division I school. That's better than going to a Tufts or a Williams or a Johns Hopkins? Not in 20 years it's not.
--:-- Steve D'Agostino: Again, the perspective. This goes back to the right information. Do you have somebody that can frame it in a way so that you, the kid, and the parent can still make the choice on what they think is better for them, but they have all the right information? You have all of it.
--:-- Ryan Hanley: Let's transition to your actual business. One of the things I've noticed, living in the same community, our kids go to the same school, watching your brand and your business grow. I was watching one of your Instagram videos the other day. I clicked on your profile. I like the way you talk to the kids. I follow you because I'm interested. I go, "Holy shit, this dude's got 120,000 people that follow him on Instagram." Numbers are numbers, but dude, you're a basketball trainer and player development coach from upstate New York. You have 120,000 people that find your content. The engagement's incredible.
--:-- Ryan Hanley: You've been consistent. You've dialed in on a message. You're delivering a product that's incredibly valuable. How does someone who's from a small town — Albany's not a big market. We're the 154th largest market in the country. How does someone who has a message, who could be coaching, who played sports, loves kids, wants to do what you're doing but they're 15 years behind you, how do they start delivering a message? How do they start building their business so that they can have greater impact than just the kids that they're coaching?
--:-- Steve D'Agostino: When I started Dags Basketball, the local business, I was just reacting to what the market was. There wasn't a ton of honesty and value. What I've always said is whatever we do, we're going to try to provide the most value. We're going to mess up. We're going to have days where we're not great. But for the most part, we're going to try to provide great value. Then we're going to be honest. We're going to be honest with the players. We're going to be honest with the parents.
--:-- Steve D'Agostino: I think that social media following is there because of those two things. People see, "Whoa, there's value in this. And it's honest." It's not some unauthentic thing where somebody's doing it because they want to be famous. If I could not do social media, I would not do social media. But the fact of the matter is that the people who get more opportunities are the ones that have a great social media following. So I have to do it. All you're seeing on there is actual conversations that I would have with our parents and players and during our training sessions.
--:-- Steve D'Agostino: The other thing is our area has as many high level players as we have right now. Andre Jackson with the Bucks. Kevin Huerter with the Sacramento Kings. Boo Buie just signed with the New York Knicks. I know I'm missing a handful. We had guys at Villanova, Syracuse, North Carolina. In that small period of time in Albany, New York, I was able to work with all those players. It wasn't anything that I did, but they were all around each other. They all had a similar perspective.
--:-- Steve D'Agostino: When Andrew Platek played at North Carolina, before he went there his freshman year, I remember being in the gym with Joe Cremo and Kevin Huerter, both high major players. Platek was saying what he thought North Carolina would be like. We were all sitting there like, "You're going to learn, buddy. What you think it's going to be like and after your freshman year is going to be different." You have all these people that have real life experience. It's not somebody spewing crap so that their business makes more money.
--:-- Steve D'Agostino: I always say this: it helps when you have NBA players. If I was in New York City or Los Angeles or Miami, I'd have triple the amount of NBA players that I work with now. But I'm home in Albany, New York. So whoever comes in the gym, we're going to do the best job. It's been crazy to see the success of some of our players. It's on them because they're the ones who have to decide who they listen to and how they go about their business. It's been cool to be a part of it.
--:-- Ryan Hanley: For the parents listening, what's the filter you can recommend for someone who's trying to bullshit them to sell a $300 program versus the coach who's there to really help their kid get better? How would you filter that out?
--:-- Steve D'Agostino: It's so hard. I've been doing this for a long time. This is not what we do, but I could double my revenue easily. Ready? "Hey Ryan, Duke and Colton are some of the best basketball players that I've seen. If they really locked in and trained a couple times a week, I think they could end up being some of the best players in the area." What are you going to do? You're going to say, "Oh no, this guy's BSing me"? I was reaching for my wallet. I was like, "Is he serious?" It's so hard for the parents. Somebody wants to compliment your kid and say that they're doing really well. You're going to be like, "Oh man, I knew my kid was pretty good."
--:-- Steve D'Agostino: The BS filter is hard because that's all you have to do. Over time though, you figure out a lot of the trainers. I think there's two things. One, a lot of them do it because they want themselves to be famous. They want more for themselves. The other ones are good-hearted, but they might not have the background and the capabilities to really help a kid. They think they're helping them, but they're maybe not as much as they think they are.
--:-- Steve D'Agostino: At the end of the day, your kid's in middle school and they're putting in extra work. No matter what that work is, it's a good thing. I've been doing a lot more consulting now. The number one thing a person could do if you're going to spend money on anything is find somebody that's been through it and knows what they're talking about. Invest the money and let them give you an honest opinion of your kid. "Here's an honest opinion. Here's what the landscape is."
--:-- Steve D'Agostino: We had a guy from Massachusetts who hopped on a consultation the other day. His son's a really good baseball player and a really good basketball player. He's in ninth grade. He doesn't know which one to choose. We went through the whole landscape. He decided, "You know what? We're going to stay with baseball. We're going to train a little more for basketball in our hometown, get in the gym with our high school coach. Then when he gets to 10th grade, maybe 11th grade, see how things shake out. See how tall he ends up being. A six foot guard. He started on varsity baseball in eighth grade." I don't think you got to choose right now. At least he's got better clarity. "Oh wait, I don't have to go to every AAU tournament as a ninth grader because I'm not going to be seen." Dude, nobody's looking for you in ninth grade. That's the one thing I would do as your kid gets up there. Then you're operating with the right information.
--:-- Ryan Hanley: Steve, I love the way you approach this. For someone listening who wants to — guys, I'm going to have links to Steve's Instagram regardless if you have kids in youth sports or not. I highly recommend you follow his Instagram. I'll have links to his website in the show notes, whether you're watching or listening. Just to see the way he presents himself, the way he presents his product. If you don't have kids, if you do have kids, the way he talks about the sport — I can attest to the honesty, the authenticity, and the directness of how you approach certain topics. It's phenomenal.
--:-- Ryan Hanley: If someone's listening and wants to work with you or wants to come get a consultation because they have a kid that might be at an age and has a tough decision like the one you described, how do they get a hold of you? What's the best way to get into your ecosystem?
--:-- Steve D'Agostino: If they're outside of the area, Maximize Basketball is the name of that company. MaximizeBasketball.com. All the information for the consultations, online courses, to come in if they want to fly up here and work with us or need us to come down there. If they're local, DagsBasketball.com. All that is on my Instagram. If they follow my Instagram, SteveDags0, they'll be able to get all that information.
--:-- Ryan Hanley: Awesome, brother. I appreciate you and I appreciate the time.
--:-- Steve D'Agostino: Yeah, thanks for having me. It's fun. Let's go.
--:-- Ryan Hanley: Make it look easy.
--:-- [Outro music begins]
--:-- Ryan Hanley: Thank you for listening to The Ryan Hanley Show. Be sure to subscribe and leave us a comment or review wherever you listen to podcasts.
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