What Coaches/Mentors Can Learn from Buy Then Build
When the longtime volunteer coach of a youth swim team stepped down, Renee took over a program with a working practice schedule, established relationships with fifteen families, and a reputation the previous coach had built over six seasons. Renee had strong ideas about training methods and wanted the team to feel like hers, so she rewrote the entire practice structure and communication style in her first week, without asking any parent or swimmer what had been working before. Three families pulled their kids out within a month, unsettled by how abruptly everything familiar had changed. Renee later admitted she'd never considered that stepping into an established program required earning trust before reshaping it, treating the handoff as a blank slate instead of something already alive with relationships she hadn't yet met.
The whole book, compressed
This edition works through 4 core lessons — take them one at a time, not all at once.
What's different for your conditions
Tap whichever ones sound like you. Nothing here is sent or saved — it's just for your own noticing.
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The core lessons, applied to you
Questioning the urge to reinvent the program you're taking over
Every new coach or mentor wants their own approach to matter, but that doesn't require discarding everything already in place. Before introducing a new system, it helps to ask which existing routines are already producing good results and simply need continuation, versus which genuinely need to change.
A new coach assumes their predecessor's methods must be inferior simply because they're different from their own preferred approach, and throws out routines the athletes had built real confidence around.
Before changing any part of an inherited program, list what's currently working well enough to leave alone, and start there.
Honestly assessing the program or relationship you're stepping into
A glowing reputation or an enthusiastic handoff conversation isn't the same as verified reality. A new coach or mentor benefits from quietly checking how the people involved actually feel: are athletes engaged, is a mentee actually making progress, or has performance quietly stalled behind an otherwise good name.
A mentor accepts a referring colleague's positive account of a mentee's progress, only to discover the mentee had been coasting for months.
Before taking over any coaching or mentoring relationship, talk directly with the people involved about what has and hasn't been working for them.
Building trust with people who didn't pick you
Athletes, mentees, and clients formed their trust with whoever coached or guided them before, not with you automatically. That trust must be rebuilt through consistency, follow-through, and visible respect for what came before, especially in the first weeks when everyone is watching to see if you'll honor existing commitments.
A new mentor changes session structure immediately without explanation, and the mentee disengages rather than voicing discomfort directly.
In your first month with an inherited team or mentee, keep the existing structure mostly intact while you build the relationship, and introduce only one change at a time.
Improving the program deliberately, season by season
Once trust is established, the best coaches and mentors build on an inherited program gradually, keeping what already develops people well and refining one element at a time based on real results. This steady approach tends to produce stronger, longer-lasting improvement than an early wholesale overhaul that risks losing the people the program was built to serve.
Honestly recognizing that an inherited program has real weaknesses can create pressure to fix everything immediately, but the people being coached need stability to trust a new leader at all. The resolution is to name what needs to change early and privately, while introducing actual changes gradually enough that trust has time to catch up with your judgment.
Name one thing, honestly
What have you inherited as a coach or mentor that you changed too quickly, before earning the trust to change it well?
Good. Now look back at the "Try this" line under whichever lesson feels most connected to what you just wrote, and treat that as this week's actual assignment — not all 4 at once.
The practices from this edition
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Run this for seven days
In your first month with an inherited team or mentee, keep the existing structure mostly intact while you build the relationship, and introduce only one change at a time.