Month: December 2019

Volleyball Coaching Wizards at the 2019 AVCA Convention

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Volleyball Coaching Wizards made it’s first public appearance at the 2016 American Volleyball Coaches Association (AVCA) Convention – in a manner of speaking. We’re back again for 2019!

For those of you who will be attending this year’s convention, John is presenting a session titled Wisdom from Some of the World’s Best Coaches. It’s scheduled for Friday the 20th at 11:45 in DLCC 303–305.

John’s presentation will be based on material from our second book, Volleyball Coaching Wizards – Wizard Wisdom. That’s the one where we share the views of the Wizards on a variety of coaching topics.

Special Convention Time Offer

While John’s at the convention (December 17th to 21st) you can get the print version of Volleyball Coaching Wizards – Wizard Wisdom for just $9.99 on Amazon (or the equivalent in your local Amazon store). This is only good during the convention, though!

If you see John at the convention, definitely feel free to say hello. Connecting with new people – and old friends, of course – is a big part of what theses events are all about.

If you can’t be at the convention, make sure to follow John’s updates about the event on his blog.

Wizards on the Web: Jim Stone

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Wizard Jim Stone has a website you’ll want to check out – https://jimstoneconsulting.com/. Definitely worth giving a read. He earlier had a different site, though, which featured an article titled The Man (Coach) in the Arena. It doesn’t look like it’s available anywhere any longer. It was based on a quote from Theodore Roosevelt on the subject of critics, however, which comes up in a video from Brené Brown.

If you’ve read Craig Marshall’s interview in our first book, you’ll know he talks about Brown’s discussion of vulnerability with respect to coaching skills. We used those comments from Craig in our second book as well.

Here’s the TED Talk referred to by Craig.

There’s also a longer presentation on Netflix titled Brené Brown – the Call to Courage. It runs 1 hour 16 minutes, and is a good watch.

From a coaching perspective, there’s an interesting podcast episode worth listening too in conjunction with the stuff above. The podcast is called EconTalk, but don’t be put off by the name. This particular episode specifically links to what Brown talks about with a really interesting twist. It’s one that we need to think about as coaches.

Here’s the link: https://www.econtalk.org/david-deppner-on-leadership-confidence-and-humility/

Milestone: 1000 books sold on Amazon

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According to the reporting from Amazon, at some point in October 2019 we surpassed 1000 total books sold on their global platform.

This includes all three of the books we currently have available. It doesn’t include sales from other platforms, though, so in reality we actually reached 1000 books sold a bit earlier.

Still, a pretty cool achievement.

Not surprisingly, the first book leads the way. It’s been out quite a bit longer than the others, after all. The second book – Wizard Wisdom – has been steadily gaining ground, though. There’s a good chance it will eventually take over the lead.

Of course we wouldn’t have reached the 1000 unit mark yet without the Spanish translation of the 2nd book – Magos del Entrenamiento de Voleibol – Sabidurías de los Magos. It’s done very well in Spain. Curiously, though, we haven’t yet sold any through Amazon’s Brazil or Mexico sites. In fact, we need to find a way to get the book in front of Latin American coaches generally. That’s an on-going challenge, and suggestions are most welcome.

Look forward to updates on new books in development soon. We have some ideas in the works. More information on that as things firm up.

Meanwhile, if you’ve read both Wizards books so far and are looking for more good stuff to read, check out our Recommended Reading List. It’s titles the Wizards suggested.