Christopher Cramer Discusses the Fact That If You’re Not Genuine, You’re Going to Fail.

Christopher Cramer, maybe better known as Topher or @thisguytoph, joined me in March of 2018 to record for a second time on this podcast.

This guy has a special place in my podcasting heart.

Topher was one of the very first people that I interviewed when I started my podcast. In fact, he is the very first person that I actually planned to bring on the show. The only guests before him were three people that I ambushed in a park after a soccer camp in Downtown LA.

One of those people was Ben Lederman’s dad. The other two were coaches from Spain that were brought over to lead the camp. In 2016, I unexpectedly crossed paths with one of those coaches during my trip to Barcelona. I did a recap of that trip. One episode is still one of the most listened to and talked about episodes that I have ever recorded. You might remember it… the one about waves aka passing patterns. If you’ve never heard it before, or just want a refresher, you can check it out by clicking this link.

Getting back to Topher…

He and I have been connected for a number of years now. We’ve stayed connected mostly via Twitter, but also because of the member forums and in-person events that 3four3 has provided.

In fact, when Brian was still at Chivas USA, Topher and I both went down to LA at the same time to watch some games and practices. And it was during that week that Topher and I invited Gary to get dinner with us and it was at that dinner that the idea for our in-person coaching summits was born.

I decided to break our conversation up into a couple different parts. We touch a lot of important topics that need to be highlighted and there is a chance some of the messages might get lost if I gave you all of this in one sitting.

In this episode, we do a little bit of catching up before we start talking about the need for coaches to be genuine, which is a key ingredient to success on and off the field. Topher also starts talking about his experiences with coaching different demographics, their different needs, different qualities, and specifically his observation that he now has to coach players to be more gritty.