The John R. Wooden Course

In July of 2000, Lynn Guerin , President of Guerin Marketing Services, wrote a heartfelt letter to legendary UCLA basketball coach, John R. Wooden. It was a humble beginning, full of hope and vision.

The motivation for the letter was a challenge proposed by Neville Johnson, a self-styled Wooden autobiographer and successful Beverly Hills lawyer who spent nearly twenty years writing a 500+ page epistle of Wooden’s life. Johnson wrote: “spread John Wooden’s ideas and values. Pass along the ‘Pyramid of Success!’ Think about it. Talk about it. Practice its tenets. Teach it to your children.”

As a 29-year veteran consultant and trainer with some of America’s most successful companies, Guerin knew that people today were still searching for a “success formula” similar to Webster’s definition, “the accumulation of material possessions and wealth, or the attainment of a position of power and prestige.” Yet that definition stood in stark contrast to Wooden’s, “Success is peace of mind, which is a direct result of the self-satisfaction in knowing that you made the effort to do your best to become the best of which you are capable.” Touched by Johnson’s challenge, Guerin felt that the work Wooden began in 1934 was unfinished, chiefly because it had only directly reached a few hundred young men at UCLA. The vast majority of society had simply missed out on the benefit of John Wooden’s tutelage, and one more book written about his amazing life could only accomplish so much.