The Trent Merzon Story: Leading Communities, Building Men and Breading Success

Hosts: Soren Dickens and Eriksen Dickens

Guest: Coach Trent Merzon

Podcast Summary:

In this episode of the Scaling Creator podcast, hosts Soren Dickens and Eriksen Dickens interview Coach Trent Merzon and share their stories of being the Oakdale Kind of Guy (OKG) whereby community means more than individuality. From their shared experiences in both sports and growing up in Oakdale, they review the importance of sports in raising champion athletes, champion husbands, champion fathers, the definition of being a champion being a person who does what is right when no one is watching and when it gets tough and the easier thing to do is to give up.

Main Topics:

1.     What it was like growing up in Oakdale.

2.     Coach Trent’s journey through sports and ending up to being a coach.

3.     The role of sports in raising tough men.

4.     Wins and Losses in coaching that are off the scoreboard, the kind of men that kids turn out to be.

5.     The role of Christianity in focusing perceptions of what is within one’s life control.

6.     Understanding and managing expectations both in sports and in life.

7.     Being ready to a be a leader who is not liked because of directing people to the direction that is right which might be different from their current trajectory or where they want to go.

Key Lessons:

1.     Life ought to be about the wins that happen off the scoreboard.

2.     Becoming a champion athlete, a champion husband, and a champion father is hard but necessary.

3.     A leader does not have to be necessary liked. Leadership not about being popular, but it’s is about doing the right thing and guiding people down the right path even if it is not where they want to go.

4.     People have to be in check with reality. Reality is not about the short highlight videos. It is more about what people do not get to see. Highlight videos just takeaway a lot of the majority stuff that goes on that eventually mean more.

5.     Success depends on being hard on yourself, in terms of putting in the others, taking not to do the same mistakes, or at least not the same mistakes in the same manner.

Notable Quotes:

1.     I don’t think things are accidents in this world, I think that everything happens for a reason. Timestamp (23:25)

2.     When you are young, you think you have all the questions…It is just that you do not have all the answers. Timestamp (24:21)

3.     All the stuff that people don’t see, and it fills up the whole calendar a year [is what really counts]. Timestamp (45:23)

4.     We sit in the stands and high-five people that we don’t even like, because we have a common bond. Timestamp (49:03)

5.     They lost half a year of their lives [referring to the half a year that kids lost countrywide and worldwide due to COVID-19]. Timestamp (56:25)

6.     I don’t think I have ever, ever, coached a game that I thought I was gonna win. Timestamp (57:25)

7.     Social media is destroying people, it’s destroying how we communicate [referring to how highlight videos paint an incomplete picture of the real thing]. Timestamp (01:12:57)