Effort Over Results: Quinn Magnuson’s Journey from CFL to Leadership Coach

In this inspiring episode, we sit down with Quinn Magnuson, a former CFL player who has successfully transitioned from professional sports into business advising and leadership coaching.

Quinn shares his remarkable journey from growing up on social assistance to earning a football scholarship that changed his life path. His unique philosophy of “Effort Over Results” emerged from his experiences in sports, teaching, and business ownership.

Today, Quinn helps business leaders understand that true growth comes from valuing process over outcomes, creating psychological safety, and prioritizing self-care to avoid burnout.

Show Notes: Effort Over Results: Quinn Magnuson’s Journey from CFL to Leadership Coach

Zena: Hey there. Today I’m thrilled to welcome Quinn Magnuson to the podcast. Quinn is a former CFL player who has successfully transitioned from professional sports into business advising and leadership coaching. He’s here to share his personal journey with us. It’s a powerful reminder of the importance of preparing for life’s transitions, not just financially, but also mentally and emotionally.

Welcome to the show Quinn, a former CFL Pro turned leadership coach who’s mastered life’s big transitions. Thanks for joining us today, Quinn. How are you feeling?

Quinn: Pretty good. When you say I’ve mastered life’s transitions, I had to giggle at that one because I don’t think anybody ever does that. But you try your hardest and I found some tricks that work for me at least. And hopefully, I can expose that to other people and it helps them.

Zena: Oh, fantastic. So share a bit about your early life and how football became your passion. Because, you know, our listeners can’t see this. But you’ve got behind you all football, and I know it’s in the family right now, so share with me about how that passion started.

Quinn: Yeah. So, I think for me growing up, every kid in Canada watches hockey and my uncle Keith played for the Chicago Blackhawks for 10 years, from ’69 to ’79, and then he coached them ’79 to ’81, or ’80 to ’82.

And so hockey was everything in our family. And so I grew up playing hockey, watching hockey night in Canada and Uncle Keith and the Blackhawks playing Montreal in Toronto and so forth. And so hockey was always an influence, but when I was growing up, I played baseball, hockey, soccer, I did track and field.

I threw shot and discus starting in grade six. I didn’t play football until eighth grade, and even then it was because all my friends were doing it. And that was Kinsman football league. And I went out and I was actually too big for the league, so they had 135 pound weight limit. And they weighed the kids.

And I ended up being, I think, in eighth grade at the age of 13 or 12, I was 150, 160 pounds, which I guess is big for that age group. So I wasn’t even able to play that year. I ended up going to a school in Saskatoon, a high school that had a legacy of fantastic football team. So I went to Holy Cross High School and they were always in the city championship, 13 city championships.

They had won four provincials by the time I had gotten to Holy Cross and I. To me, it just felt like it was almost sort of like a box to check off. I’d never played football really before I knew a little bit about the game. My cousin Steve Zurich played for the Riders for a bunch of years back in the seventies.

And so I thought, well, I’ll go for the football team because if you can make the football team at Holy Cross, you’re doing pretty well. And so, played junior football and still, growing up I was a bit, a little bit awkward like I was tall, but also kind of chubby, a little bit overweight, but had a little bit of an innate athletic ability.

And my brother saw that in me and he said, “Yeah, you really should play football.” Because he goes, “That’s what your size is gonna dictate in the future. You’re not gonna be a hockey player.” And I knew that so. It was at Holy Cross really where I became better. But it wasn’t until, to be honest, it really wasn’t until I started throwing shot put and discus in track and field and doing the training for track and field and throwing that really made me a better football player.

I became more athletic, stronger, faster. I started working with a strength coach and throws coach in the 11th grade and that’s really where everything kind of changed for me. And then in grade 12, senior year I had scholarship offers from the states for both track and football.

And I really just had a phenomenal senior year. But to be honest, at that time I really didn’t enjoy football. And I think a lot of kids who play sports growing up, they enjoy it more when they’re good at it. But it’s the kids, we call them the three star, you know, out of five stars, the three star kids, who are the grinders, the ones that go to practice every day and do the work even though they’re not very good. Those are the kids you want on your team as a coach. And I was a, I guess you could say a four or five star kid. So I had all the talent and ability. I had the size. I was 6’5″, 270, coming outta high school. But I really didn’t fully enjoy the game.

I just knew that it was an opportunity to get a scholarship, because when I was growing up, and I’ll be a bit vulnerable here, is that my mom raised three of us on social assistance. We grew up with nothing. Even just paying registration fees for all the sports that we were in. She had my grandfather help with that. Her brothers help with that. And so I really give her a lot of credit for keeping us in sports, despite the fact that she had really no money to help us. And so coming outta high school, I knew that the only way that I was gonna go to university is if it was paid for.

Zena: And it worked for you.

Quinn: Yeah. And so even staying at the University of Saskatchewan wasn’t really even an option unless I was gonna take student loans, which is something that I didn’t really want to do. I didn’t wanna put my mom in more debt. And so I thought, okay, well I have the size, I’ve got a few offers, I’m gonna go to the states.

So I ended up going down to the United States on a full scholarship for football to Washington State University, which obviously paid for four years of college and I played division one football and then again. Playing in front of anywhere from 40 to 90,000 fans during my four years at Washington State. And just playing at that level is exciting. But it’s hard work. It’s a grind. My son went through it this past five years at Arizona, and I still really wasn’t enjoying football. I was doing it because it was paying for school and at that point in time, it was maybe I can make the CFL and then help my mom with bills and helping her with the financial situation.

And that really was my motivation. And I don’t think a lot of people know that. I’ve never really explained that story to a lot of people. That for me it was more a means to an end financially than it was anything else. It was paying for school. It was an opportunity to make some money in the CFL.

And at the time, CFL salaries weren’t phenomenal. Like the league minimum was $26,000. And even the best players were only getting about a hundred grand or 150, and those were the quarterbacks. So, but even in the four and a half years that I played CFL, I was able to put a little bit of money away, pay some debt off, help my mom out. But I still left the league really nowhere, not really ahead or behind in terms of financial stability and injuries really knocked me outta the game. So that’s the.

Zena: Yeah. Hearing you tell this story though is that I can’t imagine though the lessons when you look back, do you think that that is where you forged lessons? I mean, you’ve owned a franchise, you’ve been a business owner, you’re leading people. So do you think that’s where that started?

Quinn: Yeah, I mean obviously growing up with nothing is one already sort of survival mode you go into and you build resilience from that, but you also have a bit of trauma from it too. And so I think there was both good and bad and I truly believe that we’re always in the place that we are meant to be at any given point in time. And I believe that God has a path for all of us. Whether you believe in that or the universe or whatever your beliefs are, it’s.

It still feels like you make your choices. You do the best, you put the effort in, you worry less about the results. And that’s really where we’ll talk about that in a second, but it’s what really forged me as a person was those high school years, the training I got with my strength coach, becoming a man. Really learning how to go down to the United States live on my own for four years. After leaving home and being far away from home. Resilience was definitely built and one of the family values that my kids even know to this day is, don’t quit and you finish strong.

So even if you’re in the middle of something, a middle of a season, middle of, if you’re at a place of employment. There is always an exit strategy at some point, but you don’t just up and quit that day. You try to find ways to make it work. You try to work through it. You try to understand whether it’s you or them that’s causing the angst, the pain, and you work through that. And that’s something that my new philosophy of after overall results really comes from, it’s. Putting in the effort because that’s all you can control and you can’t control how it comes out on the other end. Everybody else controls that. So definitely did build that in me, build that resilience in me, and it did carry through, owning, being a teacher, then owning a company, and then into my current job now.

Zena: So do you feel that you were prepared for life after football? Tell me about that.

Quinn: Yeah. It’s something, here’s something that I’ve learned and really only in the past five to 10 years with, and it’s having kids that taught me this, that. I don’t know if anybody really, truly knows really what they want to do, where they’re gonna end up. I mean, my path has been so varied and erratic.

You know, leave high school, go to college. Didn’t get my degree at Washington State University. I left a year early, so I didn’t finish my degree. Go to the CFL, play four years, work some odd jobs in the off season. Finished my CFL career, which was short, four and a half years. What am I gonna do now? Go back to school at the University of Saskatchewan and get my education degree.

You know, my wife put me through school that time and then, well fiancé at the time and then become a teacher five years. That really didn’t work out. I love teaching, I love coaching, but for reasons that I could explain later, but that didn’t really work out. We decide to own a business and become entrepreneurs. That works out, but it led me to my current job at BDC and so forth. So what I love to tell kids who, and my children are 22 and 25 now, I go, you’ll figure it out.

Zena: That’s right.

Quinn: Just putting the effort in. You’ll figure it out. Find things you love, find things what you don’t like. Try different jobs, and just really just figure it out.

And this generation, I feel, I feel really bad for Generation Z for Gen Z because they basically were told by US Gen X parents, you know, you can be anything you want. And the lessons that, with that, the messaging that was told to them in the 1990s and two thousands was. You know, you’re so great and you’re so, we kept feeding them.

I hate to say, I don’t wanna use the term lies, but we. The psychological messaging that we were told as parents to feed our children was to keep building their confidence. And so we took that as, keep complimenting them and keep building their confidence whether they had, whether they were good at something or not.

Let’s give a medal for every child who shows up. You know, and it’s participation medals now, and it’s things like that. And my belief is we created a generation of kids who have no resilience, they lack the ability to go through adversity. When something goes wrong, they basically give up.

And I’m not saying all of them, but I’ve seen it happen in my own children to a certain extent. And it’s because our generation, Gen X kept telling them things that weren’t truly true. Whereas when I was a kid, it was like, listen, pull up your bootstraps, you know, suck it up, put the work in and things will work out now.

Having said that, I think Gen Z definitely is smarter. They’re more exposed to everything, which maybe is not a good thing sometimes, but they can be very, very powerful employees for businesses today. So, yeah, I kind of rambled on there. I apologize.

Zena: But, no, I actually agree with you and Nina. We’re a family of sports and so my oldest was a national level athlete, a swimmer. And so there is something about winning and losing and picking yourself back up after, and having to show up again at the field or in the pool and doing the hard work and the grit, and then realizing that like, yeah, you didn’t win the race, but you still gotta show up tomorrow. And so yeah, there is some resilience there.

Quinn: Well, you’re always just competing. You’re really always just competing against yourself.

Zena: Yeah. Yeah.

Quinn: Like you can’t perform any better on any given day than what you did that day. And it’s not the competition that causes the problems. It’s not the environment. It’s how much work did you put in to prepare for that particular event, competition or what have you. And if you had a bad day, you had a bad day, move on, work on it, learn from it, and get better the next time. And that’s the lessons that I’m trying to teach now, my children.

But then anybody I work with, it’s like, it isn’t always about whether you reach that goal, pinnacle result. Win or lose. It’s about what you learned along the way and how much better you are for going through the process.

Zena: And you probably as a business owner, so, myself in running a business. But you have to pivot and you have to, you know, you focus one foot in front of the other and there’s highs and there’s lows. And so I imagine that that resilience too, because you’ve worked with business owners as well, and that’s something that doesn’t always, you know, we’re not just born with it. So there’s some work in there that has to be built, but that helps people be successful in business as well.

Quinn: Being a business owner is not a zero sum game and there’s no winners or losers. Because it never ends. Business is an infinite game. In sports, it’s a finite game. You have nine innings, you have four quarters, you have, and it ends, and there’s a team that wins and a team that loses.

In business, there’s no such thing. As long as you own the business and you continue to push that business forward, the game never ends. So there’s no real wins or losses. There’s only the effort you put in daily to try and continue to get better. And that’s the biggest lesson that I think business owners need to learn is that they see it.

And I did too as a competition cause I came from an athletic background. So everything, I turned into a competition for me and my company. But in the end, I had to realize that there was no real wins or losses. It was only did you reach your targets. Okay, what did you learn from it? How do we adjust next year? And you create, you know, budgets and systems and whatever to keep doing that. So what business owners need to learn is that the only time they ever really fail is if they quit.

Zena: Yeah. So that’s your message efforts over results. Right? That’s where that. Yeah.

Quinn: Yeah. I mean, and I’ve had people challenge me and they say, well, you don’t want people to set goals or I said, no, that’s not what I said. I don’t want people to be so fixated on the goal that they lose sight of opportunity, that they lose sight of things that they’ve learned along the way that they lose sight of the lessons and the education they got during that process and see those as wins.

And then if you didn’t hit your actual target, okay. What did we learn from that and how do we adjust and keep going, but it can’t be, we didn’t hit our target. Okay, we quit and we’re done. And this is why, you know, even the book that I’m writing, self-titled well entitled, Effort Over Results. It applies to education in the classroom. It applies to sports in the arenas around us. It applies to business, it applies to parenting. If you continue to deliver the message to the people you’re leading. That effort is more important than the ultimate result. They will get the results.

Zena: Mm-hmm.

Quinn: It’s the activities they do daily. It’s the effort they put in daily, it’s the process that they just, the plan that they create and follow. That will get them to the end result. And a great example of this is this. I had a leader about 10 years ago who kept reminding me that I had to do $30,000 a year in sales because my target was 360 for the year.

I’m like, thanks. I can do math. That doesn’t help preaching at me the result that I needed. It’s like, I know what I need to do. How about, talk about all the activity that I put in, and it’s just a bad month. It’s a weak market. It’s, you know, clients aren’t buying right now. Things like that. You have to take a look at the effort, your students, your children, your athletes, your employees are putting in knowing that those efforts will get them to the results they need.

And then the result doesn’t matter in the moment. The time the result matters and you can check in, but really is at the end it’s like, did we hit our target and what was the effort put in to get it? So.

Zena: So you’ve had a couple of careers and so tell me about going forward then. So you’re writing a book, but then I envision, I just get this sense Quinn, that you’re not the guy that’s just gonna press that magic button and retire and be, you know, that’s it. Not doing anything right?

Quinn: No, no. And it’s funny, even when I take a vacation and it’s longer than two weeks, I’m like, okay, I’m getting antsy. I need to do something. And so you’re right. You know, if and when I leave BDC and what that looks like, yeah. I’m not just gonna sit on a deck and drink beer all day and watch the deer walk by. It’ll definitely be something where it’s helping people. And it’s interesting.

When I was hired at BDC, they asked. One of the questions they asked the day I got hired, back in 2010, was, you know, we noticed that you kinda last four to five years at each, you know, the last few stops, which now would be considered long, but, and I said, what I recognize my answer to them was what I recognize that everything I’ve done in life has always revolved around helping others get better.

So as a teacher. As a coach of youth sports. Even when we owned our company, my wife and I wanted to grow young employees up and out of the company and help them. And we have four ex-employees that are now either running companies, are like high level managers or producers at the companies they’re at. And we’re so proud of that.

And then even after that, you know, being a teacher. It’s all about growing people and helping them get better. So even in my role in my current job, it’s always been about helping business owners and their companies get better. And that’s what’s gonna be my path, you know, after this is gonna be continuing to help others get better.

But it’s only because now at 54 I’ve learned a ton of life lessons. I’ve learned a philosophy that works and I think is very applicable to anybody and everybody. So that’s gonna be the plan, the plan moving forward.

Zena: So share where we can find you. Where can we get some of this wisdom? Where can we soak it up?

Quinn: Yeah, so, still continuing at in my current job. But the website is effortoverresults.com. There is an Instagram account, but very few followers in the moment. Just started it up, but it really is more inspirational and motivational quotes that you would find there.

The podcast, though, you can find on YouTube. Apple and Spotify and you just Google, or just search effort over results. And it should come up in all three of those platforms. So the podcasts that we do are all about human growth. It’s about health and wellness. It’s about psychological safety in the workplace.

Why people and leaders need to take care of themselves first before they can take care of others effectively. And it really is that full 360 of human development, which I believe is more than just coaching one-to-one from a business perspective. I want my clients to also be in the gym. I want my clients to also go see a breathing specialist. I want them to have excellent health and wellness protocols in terms of supplementation and the food they’re eating because there’s so many different ways to improve yourself, and I think the greatest mistake that business owners today make, and especially small business owners, is that they don’t feel that they need to take care of themselves because their job is to take care of others.

That results in burnout, and that results in loneliness at the top. And that results in people who are now agitated and stressed and so forth, and they come to work and then their employees feel it. And that’s not helping the entire company culture. And so I keep telling my CEOs that I meet with you. Like how often do you go out during the week by yourself and just take time for yourself, meditation, a walk, anything. And they’re like, I don’t have time for that.

Zena: Yeah,

Quinn: That’s trouble. That’s burnout. That’s a red flag immediately right there. Well, sorry. I was gonna say, and the ones that I have that have listened to me and actually started doing something said it’s been life changing for them.

Zena: Well, you know, we’re also in the age now of the sandwich generation, and so we’ve got, you know, we’re looking after our kids, but we’ve also got parents and other responsibilities and then we’re being the CEO and so you’re exactly right when you said the caregiving and the burnout. Yeah.

Quinn: Yeah, there’s a book, Kevin Lawrence’s book Your Oxygen Mask First that basically talks about you cannot take care of others effectively in any arena without making sure you yourself are at the top of your game. And this isn’t meant to be selfish. It’s not meant to be, you know, arrogant about how, look how great I am and I go to the gym every, you know, it’s like, no, this isn’t it.

It’s about having growth personally, professionally and physically and spiritually. And when you have those and you take time for yourself, your employees will respect you. But there are far too many business owners out there that are worried that their employees see them taking a morning to go to, you know, to do breathing, exercise or yoga, meditation, something that just helps them feel better and, but they feel guilty about it cause they feel like as the owner, they’re not supposed to be doing that.

And I’m seeing the younger generation of business owners move towards health and wellness, which is great, but show me a Gen X or a boomer business owner that’s doing anything as far as health and wellness goes in that kumbaya bull crap that, you know, they would say. So yeah, take care of yourself so you can take care. And that goes for parents, that goes for coaches, that goes for teachers. Same thing.

Zena: Do you wanna, do you have any words of wisdom? I think you’ve summed it up pretty good, leaving our listeners. I, you know, my takeaway, I have lots of takeaways here, but the big one too is that this is a marathon, not a race. And so by taking care of everything, emotionally and then resilience will kick in through our transitions. And we’re no longer just pressing the stop button at a certain age, like you’ve got a lot of get up and go where taking care of yourself to last another 20 years of

Quinn: Well, and if you don’t do it now, if you don’t spend the time and money now and invest in yourself now you’re gonna be spending time and money in a hospital later on and suffering later on.

And a lot of people don’t realize that, if, you know, I feel pretty good right now. It’s like, yeah, but your health protocols are horrible and it’s eventually gonna come back to bite you in the butt. But the piece of advice that I would have right now is, and this goes out to parents mostly.

And, but it can once again apply to educators and employers and whatever it’s. When you see your kids succeeding, acknowledge the success, but praise the effort that went into it. So you can acknowledge that your child won a race, but the messaging behind all of it should be. It’s almost like, there’s the filling of the donut and there’s the donut, and the filling of the donut is the result. It’s like, great, you know, you won, but really the entire messaging should be, I love how hard you worked this past week, getting ready for this race or getting ready for this game. And I saw how hard you prepared and the work you’ve put in has been incredible because that helps them understand that even if they don’t win, even if they fail.

There’s still a dopamine hit. There’s still a reward of, yeah, but I put work into it and mom and dad appreciate that. My teacher appreciates that. My coach appreciates, my employer appreciates it. That is what people need. And if you take a look at Maslow’s hierarchy needs, that’s the security they need.

And the psychological safety they need is knowing that they can fail forward. They can fail, and it’s okay that they can learn from mistakes and people are there to pick them up and help grow them. Employers make the mistake too often of telling people how they failed to make a result, or a budget or a target.

Same thing with teachers. It’s like, well, you’re failing this class. It’s like, well, there’s probably a reason for that. So the message is effort over results. Keep praising the effort, acknowledge the result.

Zena: Love it. Thank you for joining Quinn, and I’m looking forward to checking out the new book.

Quinn: Yes. Excellent. It should be coming out, I’m hoping fall, late fall, early winter this year.

Zena: Okay, we’ll watch for it. And in the show notes I’m gonna send your links and podcast. Thanks so much for joining.

Quinn: Thanks very much.