Dale Carnegie wrote the classic personal development book, How to Win Friends and Influence People. Don’t have the book? No problem. Just take a look at the University of Kentucky’s brand new basketball coach, Billy Gillispie. Kentucky fans love him as if he has already won a title, before the season has even started. His influence has already made its impact, especially among recruits and his team players.

The fans at Kentucky are not easy to please either. They are used to greatness. Their team is one of the most prestigious teams in college basketball. They have won seven NCAA titles and have won more games than any other team in history. So who is Billy Gillispie to create all this excitement at Kentucky? Perhaps if you understand why he was called a “miracle worker” by ESPN commentator Steve Lavin you will understand why the fans throughout the state are giddy.

Miracles? Can he bring the dead back to life? Sure. He brought a dead basketball program not only back to life, but then into greatness. In his first year as head coach at Texas El Paso the results were dismal and his team ended up with a record of 6 wins and 24 losses. Was this a crisis that became an opportunity for greatness? The next year was considered the greatest turnabout in NCAA basketball history. His team won 24 games, losing only 8 and advancing to the NCAA tournament and winning the Western Athletic Conference championship. It was the first time in 35 years that a team went from finishing last place in the conference one year and winning the title the next.

What happened to make that possible? What created that kind of transformation? What created it is the stuff that legends are made from.

His turnaround at Texas El Paso captured the attention of a lot of people in college basketball and he was awarded a new assignment – head coach at Texas A&M of the Big Twelve Conference. They were picked pre-season to finish last. What happened? Same thing, almost. They began the season going a perfect 11-0 start and went on to finish 21-10, again he was coach of the country’s most improved team. Gillispie became the only coach in history to lead the most improved team in consecutive seasons. In that season, they went on to win two games in the post-season National Invitational Tournament, a feat that had not been accomplished at A&M since 1981-1982.

The next year his team did even better and he led them to the NCAA tournament where they knocked off heavily favored Syracuse only to lose to eventual Final Four participant LSU on a last second three point shot.

And in the 2006-07 season he became a finalist for the 2007 Naismith National Coach of the Year and Jim Phelan National Coach of the Year. Why? Because he led his team to a school record 27-7 season which included a school best No. 3 seed in the NCAA’s. It was their first advancement to the Sweet 16 since 1980.

Now, at the University of Kentucky, he says he has more talent to work with than ever before. Experts aren’t picking Kentucky to even win their conference but he told the team he expects them to win the NCAA championship.

“He expects us to win a national championship,” UK freshman A.J. Stewart said this summer. “Every time he talks to us he’s just like we’re going to win a national championship and I guess he’s trying to instill it in us that that’s got to be our goal.

“That’s pretty much our only goal this year and if we don’t win a national championship then we’ve failed as a team.”

His first priority, it seems, is to make the players feel like champions so that they will play like champions. That is the alignment of consciousness so necessary in achieving greatness. Belief in yourself. The Law of Attraction.

This year he has worked his players into better playing shape before the season began than the players ever thought possible. The end result is that the players, within themselves, already have a victory – a victory over self. This makes for a whole new set of possibilities.

I posed a question to the fans at the Kentucky.Rivals basketball forum, asking what they felt was his greatest attribute as a coach. Here are some of the responses:

• He has tremendous work ethic, along with the determination of a champion. He will not let himself fail. This man has worked his way up the coaching ladder, with no handouts. He coached high school, junior college, and then college. He understands hard work and what it takes to get there. These are his best attributes, the rest of his positives all feed off of these things. Another quality I admire is his ability to relate to the common fan in this area, mainly because he is one himself. He knows his roots, small town boy who had big dreams, and saw them come true. He seems to have climbed the ladder of success, but his feet are firmly planted on the ground.
• I think its his ability to make every player feel like he matters as a person, in addition to his performance as a player. The father* of Ohio State football coach Jim Tressel, who was a division III coach himself, once said, “Players have to know that you care before they care what you know.” I think that is overlooked by a lot of coaches, but not ours.
• His passion for the game leads to everything else he does so well and gives him an advantage over other coaches. This passion leads to an all world work ethic which leads to better recruiting which lends itself to a good system and a hard working team…
• What I am enjoying is the combination of good ole boy southern charm mixed in with a very 21st century hipness. Pulling that off is an accomplishment in itself.
• Ability to teach and get it to stick.
• He just seems to get the most out of every player… It will be a joy to watch him coach out there and change the players he works with, he can do more with less than just about any coach in the country and now he’s getting talent…
• I followed Texas A&M closely last season, so I’ll chime in. I think Gillispie is under appreciated as a bench coach. Everyone talks about the A&M victories over Kansas and Louisville last season, and they were indeed well coached games (for Gillispie). But the key to me is that, less than three days after the win at Allen Fieldhouse (Kansas), Gillispie had his team ready to play Texas. Winning two big conference games in a row shows that Gillispie can flat out coach AND he can keep his team motivated and hungry to win. I cannot say enough good things about our Coach G.
• I would have to say his intensity and knowledge of the game. These attributes also help with recruiting, I’m sure.

Need anymore tips on how to influence people? Last spring the highly coveted McDonald’s High School All-American recruit Patrick Patterson revealed that Gillispie did things in his home visit recruiting effort he had never seen before. This included not only telling Patterson that he would be a big impact on the program, but showing him. Using charts. Showing how the offense would operate with him in it. Showing him how many shots a game he would get. And telling Patterson what classes he would be taking. And telling Patterson that they would win a championship. Patterson was impressed and picked Kentucky over two-time reigning National Champion Florida.

If you want to follow the Billy Gillispie school of winning friends and influencing people, then do what he does. Be a winner and make those around you winners as well. The key: hard work, passion, motivation, and high expectations.