for incremental improvement. No matter what industry you're in, innovation is critical to your business operations. In rapidly changing environments, it's not enough to be the best. You can't rely on yesterday's performance; you need exponential growth and constant improvements. Your teams rely on you to do it smarter and better each day than the one before. We are all relying on your work, on your genius—on you—to have the next breakthrough that will revolutionize the way the job is done.
I'm not here to hand you your next breakthrough. You are the world's foremost expert in you—what you have accomplished, what you are capable of, and what you dream of doing. You're going to blow us all away with your breakthrough, and I can't wait!
No, literally—I can't keep waiting around for you to have a sudden jolt of inspiration, some happy accident that reshapes the world. So I'm going to teach you the system to build, schedule, and achieve your next breakthrough.
I've relied on breakthroughs throughout my career. Before I could even tie my own shoes, I was determined to make a name for myself in basketball. I set my heart on a game where the primary offensive focus was to get the ball to a dominant big man (aka Shaq) in the post and let them go to work. When I graduated college and started my professional basketball career, nearly every top draft pick was a seven‐foot‐tall giant with promising upside.
I was never going to be tall, fast, or athletic enough to achieve my dream. But I was still positive I could break through. I just needed to change the way the game was played.
There was one thing I could do on the court—shoot three‐pointers. I watched my uncle, Nick Nurse, become one of the best three‐point shooters in college basketball, and I grew up down the road from Kyle Korver, who would become one of the best three‐point shooters in NBA history. I put in my 10,000 hours (and then some) developing my shot from beyond the arc. I was convinced three‐point shooting was the future of the NBA.
The NBA disagreed. They treated three‐point shots (really, any type of volume shooting) more like a party trick than a serious skill … until the seventh pick of the 2009 NBA draft came along. Steph Curry's scouting report was infamously weak: “Tweener, small frame, not explosive, bad shot selection.” He was too short, too slow, and not nearly athletic enough—and those weren't the only things we had in common. Steph got out there and played his game, shooting threes. A lot of threes.
Overnight, the entire paradigm shifted. The big man quickly went the way of the dinosaur. Now, every single NBA player had to shoot threes. The NBA finally needed me as much as I'd always wanted them, because if there was one thing I did better than shooting, it was teaching others to shoot. After years of running shooting camps all over the world, living out of rental cars and airplane terminals, I became one of the top shooting coaches in the country and through an email in my junk box I nearly clicked ‘delete’ on, landed a spot with the Brooklyn Nets.
At first, I thought my breakthrough was lucky. Who am I to deserve this? Working with NBA players, though, I realized that my “luck” was a combination of factors—and that those factors were universal. Through in‐depth trials (and a lot of errors), I pieced together the simple, tried‐and‐true, four‐part formula that any athlete could employ to spark their own breakthrough. It worked flawlessly, turning elite performers into breakthrough impact optimization machines—what I call BIOnic leaders. Just as long as they committed to it.
But who has time for another commitment? Top athletes have nearly every millisecond of their day scheduled and planned—every bite they put in their mouths, every play they make, practice they do, sleep they get, everything. They couldn't choose between playing at their peak and working through the breakthrough formula. Breakthroughs and performing at the top had to work in unison. While I saw some incredible breakthroughs from players able to commit to the formula, I knew I was missing an important piece—the piece would enable every BIOnic leader to lead a breakthrough day on and off the court.
As I searched for this important piece to make my formula truly universal, I became obsessed with what exactly makes an elite performer an elite performer. I was on the search for greatness. My business morphed as I did, from professional basketball player to NBA shooting coach to leadership motivation expert. It's an unusual background for corporate boardrooms, but the mindset and the systems I established in the NBA outshine any I learned in my MBA. In all my consulting work, I've yet to find a business challenge, leadership initiative, or mental training that didn't have a direct parallel in basketball. No matter where I've gone or who I've coached, the breakthrough formula worked—but no elite performer had the precious time to spend on the treasure hunt.
Even in my own life, the notion of a bad quarter seemed like a luxury—one lousy week could have (and sometimes did!) ruin my business's reputation, kill any hard‐won momentum, and financially destroy my shareholders (aka me). Staying competitive meant constantly innovating—doing it better and smarter than my competition and than myself the day before. In order to integrate the formula into my own life, I needed a structure. I needed to be able to schedule my breakthroughs, to actually stick them in my calendar.
To conquer the complicated, we must first bring it back to the simple. I deconstructed my own formula and everything I knew about breakthroughs, and started beta testing new systems. When I started quickly, painlessly, even joyfully delivering breakthroughs on a rapid‐fire schedule, I knew I had the perfect formula anyone could use to become a BIOnic leader.
The formula is failproof and infinitely scalable. It will not consume your time, energy, money, or any other resources. This book explains the seamless system, and walks you through the process of building your own breakthroughs. You'll be given the questions and tools you need, as well as examples of these breakthrough components in action. Strong emphasis on the word action. Our brains are filled on a daily basis with knowledge from nearly every media medium on the planet. Sure, we know, but how many of us actually do? You’re the only one who can take action and apply it to your own life, and it won't be easy. You'll have to challenge your own “best practices” and learn more about yourself, your team, your world, and your purpose. You'll need to pivot your approach, your perspective, and the ways you measure your success. You'll need to tap into every resource you have. I can show you how to think differently, but you're the only one who can do differently.
Living the breakthrough mode doesn't necessarily make any of the challenges you're facing any easier, but it does make tackling every one of them fulfilling. I'm positive you can do it. I've been incredibly fortunate to live and work in spaces where I see breakthroughs—game‐changing, world‐altering breakthroughs at the highest level of human performance—happen every day. I've learned from the best of the best getting better, and I'm here to guide you along your beautiful journey. We'll warm up with the Breakthrough Impact Optimization (BIOnic) Tools you need to embrace, then we'll launch into the most important questions—the who, what, where, and why—that are standing between you and your greatest breakthrough. By integrating finding answers to those into your day, you'll organically conquer the “when,” scheduling your breakthroughs right into your day, no matter what roadblock you're facing.
No more hoping and wishing and waiting. It's time to take action and become the breakthrough!
CHAPTER 1 Warm Up: The Breakthrough Formula
Between playing professional basketball, winning two Guinness World Records, training a few hundred NBA clients, and coaching so many basketball camps across the globe that I've literally lost count, I've earned a reputation as one of the best shooters and shooting coaches in the world. Trust me—I can tell the difference between a good player and a breakthrough performer before we even step on the court. If you want to do differently, you have to prepare differently.
That's something we've all internalized already, right? You stretch your hamstrings before you hit the
