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Elite Relationship Building With Coach Jabbar Juluke

Get ready for an amazing episode with Greg Taylor and Jabbar Juluke. Jabbar is entering his third season with the Florida Gators where he serves as the Associate Head Coach and Running Backs Coach for the offense. A native of New Orleans, Jabbar’s passion for football and dedication to coaching began early in his life. He is known for his commitment to building and nurturing relationships both on and off the field.



His leadership philosophy emphasizes trust, positive reinforcement, and the importance of supportive relationships. This approach has not only driven his teams to success but has also inspired and shaped countless players’ lives. Coach Juluke is married to his wife, Denise, and they have three children. His journey from a dedicated player to a revered coach is a testament to his enduring passion for the game and his unwavering commitment to excellence and leadership.

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Everybody, give Coach Jabbar Juluke a big round of applause for coming on the show. Welcome, Coach Juluke.

Thank you for having me. I appreciate you.

We are happy to be here. I’m going to encourage everybody to make sure you have a pen and a piece of paper because if it’s not on paper, it’s vapor. If you don’t summarize, it’ll vaporize. Get a pen and paper because I’m going to challenge you at the end. Coach Juluke is going to drop a bunch of nuggets in here to help you become that inspirational leader that you are or that you’re becoming.

Get your pad and pen ready. I want you to be able to have three things at the end, and I want you to be able to take those three things and turn them into one thing. It will be the most effective thing you can do that’ll knock the rest of the dominoes down to help you become that inspirational leader that your team, your family, and your company need you to be. Are you ready to have an awesome conversation?

I am. I appreciate you.

For our audience, to make sure everybody understands the premise of this show, we’re here to build leaders. A leader is a person who can inspire another person to take a journey that they’re not willing to take by themselves. The first question out of the gate is who is your best leader and why?

I have multiple leaders.

This is Coach Juluke's hour. You’re free to move about the country.

Jabbar’s Mother: A Pillar Of Strength

That’s right. I have multiple people that have inspired me to want to be a leader. The first person I would talk about is my mother. She’s a great leader in the aspect of raising seven kids, five boys and two girls, without a father. My father passed away when I was three years old. We had to endure a lot of hardships during that time but she was able to keep the family together.

We talk about someone inspiring someone to do things that they don’t want to do. She was very inspirational in regards to getting an education and how important it was because she was a woman who lacked education. She dropped out of school when she was in eighth grade to have my oldest brother. She was fifteen years old. She continued on her journey to not allow that to stop her from being the person that she wanted to be. Her strength trickled down to where I am and helped me be the person that I am, leading young people to be successful.

She made sure that we all went to school. She has 5 out of 7 college graduates. That was very important for her to do. She has 7 out of 7 high school graduates, 5 out of 7 all graduated from college. Growing up in New Orleans and housing developments, that wasn’t the norm. She had to continuously push us to be great. One thing she always said and it always sticks with me, is, “Do not let your situation dictate your outcome.”

Even though we were in housing development, that didn’t decide where we needed to go. Our attitude was always our altitude, as she would put it. If you have a great attitude, it could take you wherever you want to go. She was always teaching us manners to be respectful and be able to put ourselves in positions to continue to succeed. She’s the first person who inspired me to want to be a leader, whether it was at my home or in sports. She kept us into sports.

Once we got into sports, the next people who inspired me were my coaches because I didn’t have a father figure. I wanted to make sure that my coaches were leading by example for me. During the tough days, they were hard, but they were fair if that makes sense. They knew that life wasn’t going to be easy, especially coming from where we came from.

Once they identified that I was talented at playing sports, they pushed me even further. They made me do things that I didn’t know I was capable of doing. When I was tired, they pushed me harder. When I was not giving my all or playing to the best of my abilities, they showed me ways to pull that out of me. All those guys were very important. I can go on and name them all. Coach Melvin Bush, Coach Anthony Williams, Coach Bernard Griffith, Coach Anthony Biegas, Coach Burton Burns, all of those guys were important to me in my life. They helped me become the man that I am.

What are some of the things that you know about them? What did you see them do in their lives? How did they make you feel that they could pull that out of you?

The dedication, the love, and the care. It was knowing that the tough love that they gave sometimes was coming from a place of love. It wasn’t coming from malice. It wasn’t because they wanted to force authority on me. They wanted the best for me. Some days, I didn’t understand it. I didn’t know where it was coming from. I thought maybe they were being too hard sometimes, but it put me in a place of teaching me how to be tough physically and mentally.

When someone’s getting onto you, your first recognition is “They don’t like me.” They did something for you that you looked at them as “They got my best interest at heart.”

I had to learn it. It was tough. Let’s go back. There was no male figure in my life. I had no father. When you were chastising me, I thought you were criticizing or trying to challenge me in the way that I needed to defend myself. At first, I didn’t understand what they were trying to do. Once I saw where they were coming from with the intent of pushing me to my max and they were trying to get the max out of my abilities as a ball player, eventually, I understood it. I didn’t always understand it in regards to why they were doing it the way they were doing it, but I conformed to what they were trying to get me to do.

To me, a little bit of that comes back to what your mom was teaching you. You said the words honor in there and hard work. Your mom laid some good groundwork of principles, which is your foundational life. You can move that foundation anywhere into a circumstance where those gentlemen brought that hardness on you because every child thinks, “They don’t like me.”

I thought my mom didn’t like me a few times.

I know you pretty well. You and I are a lot alike. We were probably both a handful.

I trust my mother. I had to trust my coaches as I was going through this thing called life, especially in sports. Sports was the avenue for me to continue my path to succeeding and surviving and to have an opportunity to get free education because my mom couldn’t afford for me to go to college.

Where did you go to college?

First, I started at Tyler Junior College, and then I went to Southern University in Baton Rouge. I graduated from there in 1999 with a Sociology degree. I got my Socio degree as well from Delgado. I played ball at Tyler Junior College. Those were some very vital lessons that I learned. I keep them in the back of my head. I remember those lessons because I try to apply them to the young people that I’m servicing.

Trust: The Foundation Of Leadership

You said the word trust. In the winning edge world, trust is the electricity to the inspiration, which leads to transformation. Without trust, you have nothing. 



That’s right. I 100% agree with that.

You trusted your mom because she has shown you trust. She’s been there consistently, day in and day out. You trusted it because you fully depended upon her character and/or her abilities to help you get what you desire. She’s forming you. You then moved into this situation. Think of a young man or a young lady who has never had anybody they could trust. You put them into that push-and-shove environment. What do you think they’re going to do?

They’d be like, “I’m not doing this.”

That’s because they never trusted anybody. Your mom built you an engine where other people put all the pistons on it. I don’t even know anything about an engine, but to build that is so it can run smoothly because you run smoothly.

I appreciate you.

You’re a very calm individual.

I try to be.

Throw that out the window. You are. We’re going to run an option. Pitch that to the side. You are a calm person. That’s why I trusted you when I met you. You’re always smiling.

Life is good.

That’s a safe harbor. When you see someone smiling, you’re not going to run from that person. You’re going to go to that person because you want to know why they’re smiling.

It’s inviting.

To me, that’s your special sauce in my personal opinion watching you for four years.

I try to be an elite relationship builder.

Our audience is supposed to be writing things down. I’d write that one down. You’re coaching at a Division I Florida Gators, one of the best programs in the country. You’re talking about, “I’m going to be an elite relationship builder.” They think everybody who comes into Florida is the greatest player and they do everything you tell them to do.

It’s about relationships. Life is about relationships. We have been in a relationship since 2013 and ‘14. Here we are still building on the relationship that we have. I tell people all the time, “You can say I’m a bad ball coach. You can say that because I don’t know a lot about football, but I take pride in saying that you will never say that I’m a bad person.”

Good people last in this business. When you are a bad person, bad things are going to happen to you. It may not happen immediately, but eventually, it’s going to catch up with you. You can’t keep stepping on people’s fingers and toes as you’re climbing the ladder of success and not helping someone on the way up. You need to lift as you climb and bring someone with you. If you don’t do that and you keep shunning people away, when you’re falling, you better pray somebody sticks their hand out to try to grab you before you hit that ground. That’s important. Relationships are extremely important.

Life is about relationships. How did you learn that? When did you figure that out?

I’ve always done that.

As a child and teenager?

Yes.

It’s a little bit of a part of your personality and your hardwiring.

When I was a younger man, I was fortunate enough to be one of the better players. My teams were not always great, so I had to find ways to get my teammates to play to the level at which I was playing and not criticize them. I’m like, “You can make that shot. You can get that rebound. Get it next time.” I try to do that. Also, I have an outgoing personality. I never had a lack of confidence in anything that I did. We could play spit to the line, jump rope, or hopscotch. It didn’t matter. That’s where it comes from.

As I got older, I started using this analogy here. How do you know if someone is hiring if you never put in an application? I have to see if I’m a person that you want to be around. You have to show yourself as friendly to befriend a friend. You’re not walking up to somebody that’s grumpy and be like, 
I don’t want to be around that guy. That person has a nasty attitude.” If somebody has an inviting attitude or a smile on their face, you are going to go talk to them.

I’ve never met a stranger. I have no problem with talking to anyone consistently. Sometimes, the conversations are good, and sometimes, they’re not. If they don’t want to be bothered, I’m like, “Have a great day. I wanted to say hello.” If you spark up something, we may have something in common that we can build on to be able to create something better for everyone else. Those are some of the things that I try to do.

To build on something, we can create something better. You’re out talking to people with hope and trust that we can make things better.

We have to have a better world. We want to leave every situation we enter better than what we've found.

You said you started to sound like Mama. She said, “Greg, don’t you ever go anywhere and you don’t leave it better than what you found it.”

You’re going to form an opinion about me after we interact with each other. You are going to say, “He’s a prick,” or “I like that guy.” It’s my job to make you say, “I want to get to know that guy more. I want my son to play for that guy.” I’m in a service business. How can I provide the best service to someone if I am not friendly when you meet me?

Life Lessons From South Louisiana

If you are walking in the grocery store, what’s wrong with saying, “How are you doing? Hello.” Being from South Louisiana, having manners is something that came quite naturally to us. Especially in my neighborhood, you couldn’t walk past an elderly without saying, “Hello. Good afternoon. Good morning. Good night. How are you doing?” They’re going to call your mom and you get a smack. They’re talking about, “Your boy down here is being disrespectful.”

You might need to get back to that. That’s a community holding each other accountable to a standard.

I remember that we didn’t have a lot of money, but we had a lot of love. I remember knocking on the neighbor’s door and asking, “Do you have any extra eggs? My mom is not going to get off work until XYZ time.” We were talking about neighbors being able to knock on their door to get eggs or whatever you may be short on without having any issues.

My mom used to work at the community store for certain days, not every day when she was off from her other job. She would tell me, “Go see Ms. Sylvia and make a bill.” I didn’t know what that was. I had no clue what making a bill was. As I got older, I would go to the store and get cold cuts from the meat man. I would get eggs, milk, water, juice, chips, snacks, and whatever. Ms. Sylvia would ring it all up, put my mom’s name on it, and put it in the drawer. My mom would either pay her or work to work the bill off. I didn’t understand it until I got older as to what we were able to do.

Since we were able to have good relationships with people and people trusted us, we could do things. We can have a better way of life. Society isn’t like that. We have people, for whatever reasons, who may have issues with people being too friendly, people talking too much to them, or whatever. I like to have constant communication because that one conversation can spark something that can benefit both of us.

I hope everybody is getting these nuggets down that you’re dropping out of the air.

When you can be a blessing to someone and not always receive a blessing, it’s good. I’m not a big Bible thumper, but I know it’s better to give than it is to receive.

That makes no sense to your brain because it’s doing something hard. The most blessings I’ve received in my life, I had to go through something hard to get that blessing. Everything is hard. Everything that you want in life is on the other side of fear and the other side of hard.

Monty Williams said, “The thing that you want is on the other side of hard.” I’ll never forget that.

Until you’re willing to go through that, you’re not going to get what you want. Don’t be mad that you didn’t get it because you weren't willing to take the journey that was needed to get to where you wanted to go.

Without a test, there isn’t a testimony.

Tell me about a leader that demotivated you. Don’t say their name. Tell me about their behaviors. We’re trying to teach people how to inspire. You got a bunch of good stories there and a bunch of good nuggets. Tell me someone who drained you and drained your energy and why.

Balancing Critique With Support

There was this selfish person. He was very selfish. Everything that we established that was good, he thought he did it without the help of others. It’s one thing to give constructive criticism and it’s another to criticize. If you continuously tear someone down, when are you going to build them back up? This guy never built them back up. He was always hammering down. At some point, we got to try to take the nail out of there and give it some relief like, “I beat you down, but now, I want to show you the support that I have for you.” There wasn’t a whole lot of positive reinforcement.

Positive reinforcement optimizes behavior. Negative reinforcement solves a problem. It’s like when you touch the stove and it’s on. You may not touch it because it’s negative. Positive reinforcement gets scary in life because you can get a hold of the wrong thing that gives you immediate positive reinforcement. You want more of that, but long-term, it traps you. My mom did a great job teaching me, “You got to understand that short-term pain becomes a long-term gain. A short-term gain will become a long-term pain. Hard work is a short-term pain but there’s a gain to it long-term.”

No quick fix.

If it’s a quick fix, you need to take a step back and go, “Everybody, stop. Let’s think about this.” A quick fix is like, “I don’t know about that one.”

If someone says, “I got a chance for you to make $1 million in a month,” I don’t want that $1 million.

With another speaker and a coach, we were talking about all the information out there in life. Whatever information you want, it’s out there to take. Until you sit down and have a conversation with someone, it’s hard to have a transformation.

A guy told me, “A conversation rules a nation.” You have to be able to converse with people and make sure that you don’t ever want to get too high and think that you have arrived. I’m 52. I’ve been coaching for 30 years. I’ll be starting my 30th season.

Congratulations.

Thank you very much. I am an active seeker of knowledge. I am always trying to find best practices to enhance what I’m doing for the young people that I’m servicing. I’m not afraid to tell you that I don’t know something because I’m going to go research it. There’s a lot of information out there. I’m going to go research it to make sure that I give you the best answer that I can give to you from what I’ve learned. My experiences have helped me to be where I’m at, but I’m still seeking knowledge. I’m still trying to get better.

You’re a lifelong learner. You can’t survive in our economy and highly competitive environments if you’re not a seeker of knowledge. You can’t make it because what you were good at today doesn’t matter tomorrow. The people who get frustrated with learning and growing, it’s life.

You have to continue to evolve. The day you are stagnated on learning is the day you’re done. You can’t survive if you don’t have a growth mindset. You have to have a growth mindset to continue to succeed in life. The fixed mindset, you’re done learning. It’s over. You’re like, “This is what it is. I’m done with that. I don’t need to build on it.”

In our profession, we are always evolving, especially with young people. These young people spend over 50 hours a week on their cell phones. We used to give out papers for tips and reminders and then I was like, “I’m going digital.” I make my boys their tips and reminders as their screensavers. I’m like, “They’re going to pick this phone up.”

It’s a shrewd move. When I played high school basketball as a point guard, my coach said, “Take what they give you. You’re trying to force yourself down the lane.” That’s what you’re doing. What are the circumstances? What’s the end game? You’re taking the circumstances and playing to the end game through those circumstances. You’re not complaining about the circumstances. You’re going to figure out how to deal with the circumstances to get to where you want to get to. That’s a leader. That’s good. I like that.

You better find a way. When we have our dinners for team meals at our table, everyone has to put their phone in the middle of the table. They have to put it in the middle of the table so we can have some conversation. During that time, we are talking about financial literacy. We’re talking about real estate. We are talking about girls, marriage, and family. It becomes a melting pot of things that we can talk about. We have to put the phone down for a 30-minute window.

Who is your unsung hero?

My older brother. His name is Byron.

Lessons From Jabbar’s Older Brother

You didn’t flinch on that one.

He’s a guy that I wanted to emulate. His standards were worthy of emulation in the sports world. He was one of my coaches as well. I’ll give you a quick story about him when he first coached me. The coaches ride me already. He rode me even harder. I was like, “I’m going to tell my mama.”

Byron rode you even harder?

Yes. I get home and I tell my mom. She says, “He loves you.” I was like, “I don’t know if there’s love right here, Ma.” She told him what I said, for sure, but I don’t know if she told him to ride me harder than what he was doing because he came back the next day and wore my butt out. He also was the guy who would go in the courtyard and work on things with me one-on-one.

I wanted to be a coach because he was a coach as well. He was the reason why I went to San Augustine High School. I wanted to be like him. He’s a guy that did everything in my eyes that could not be wrong. I wanted to be like him. He’s no longer with us, but I can remember all of the lessons that he gave and all of the examples that he led for me.

You’re keeping his legacy alive with your behaviors and actions. That’s good. Good for you. How do you take another step when you get stuck?

I take a step away from the circumstances or the situations that I’m in. I try to make sure that I’m taking every step possible to recuperate and figure out what are the things that I’m doing correctly and what are the things that I’m doing incorrectly so that I can have a better understanding of what I’m doing. I step away from it for a moment.

It’s almost like sitting at the computer all day and things start to get crossed on you. You shut it down for a minute and come back. When you look at it again, you’re like, “There it is. I needed a timeout. I needed a 30-second timeout to figure it all out.” I try to relate everything to playing ball. When the moment shifts, great coaches call the timeout to try to figure out how to get the momentum back. When you take a timeout, you get to reflect on the things that are taking place right in front of you.

Somebody needed to know that right there. When things change and things get chaotic, that’s when a leader’s got to step back and go, “What’s going on here?

We assess it.

A leader is like, “Is it me and my emotions? What’s going on here?”

That’s right. Let’s get a timeout.

We call it a TO. Mickey has called a timeout with me many times. Mickey’s my wife, if you didn’t know that.

She’s the real coach.

That’s exactly right. What would you tell your 21-year-old self?

The Importance Of Patience

Be patient. At 21, I wasn’t patient. I wanted things immediately. I wanted success immediately. Anything that I did, I tried to skip steps sometimes. Don’t skip steps. It’s like when you’re doing algebra and you try to skip steps. There’s a negative somewhere in there and you forget it because you skipped a step. Don’t skip steps. Trust what you’re doing. Trust the people you are around that they’re going to help you become the best version of yourself. I would also say, “Surround yourself with good people. Everyone cannot be on this journey with you. Sometimes, you have to take this ride by yourself. You might have to meet some new people for the journey to continue to go where you want it to go.”

People come in and out of your life for a reason. If you’re not open to everybody, you’re going to miss the person that God sent you.

There is a reason for everything. Be patient. Surround yourself with good people. When you surround yourself with good people, make sure you have some people telling you when you’re wrong. You don’t want to surround yourself with a bunch of yes people that tell you, “Yes.” You need a no every now and again. You need someone that says, “That isn’t good. We’re not doing that. Let’s go this way. Don’t do this.” When you have that village or you have that community to help you become the person that you are and continue to water that seed so you can continue to grow and you can be oxygen for someone else, that’s important for us to be able to continue to do.

We’re put here to build each other up, not tear each other down. That doesn’t mean telling people a lie to build them up. Tell them the truth, but you do it in a heart of love to build them up, not to tear them down. You can speak the truth to me and hurt me, but if your heart says, “I love you,” and if I can’t see that, that’s on me. You have to present it in a way that inspires me to see what you’re saying and that you’re trying to help me. That’s a slippery slope. Instead of saying what you’re doing is right and I think it’s wrong and I know and believe that it’s wrong, that’s ambiguous in its own manner.

You have to have conviction.

The goal in my heart says, “I love you so much. I don’t want you to stay where you’re at. I believe in you that you can go to another level, but if you don’t stop doing this, you can’t get there.”

You have to surround yourself with like-minded people and like attainment.

This is the last question. What’s your winning edge? What’s your special sauce?

Relationships and building and earning trust from people. Trust is earned. It’s not given away. I have to show people that I genuinely care about them outside of the sport. I believe that when you have someone who knows that you care, they’ll run through a wall for you.

That’s inspiration.

Building Lifelong Relationships

They’re going to run through a wall. I want people to run through walls and create opportunities for themselves. I want to make sure that the relationships that I have built in the past are lifelong relationships, even the bad ones or the bad relationships.

You want to help them too.

At some point, whether it was my fault because I’m not saying that it was their fault the whole time that it became a bad relationship, eventually, we are going to take that time out, sit back, and say, “I screwed that up. I need to go make that right with GT.” They may be receptive or they may not be receptive, but my conscience in my heart is going to be clear because I came back and said, “I made a mistake. My bad. I apologize. Hopefully, we can continue to move forward.” When I was 20 to 21 years old, I was not that person anymore. I hope that someone can see good in everyone. You have to find the right buttons to push to get it out of them.

That’s a great way to close this session. That’s awesome. I’m honored that you would spend an hour with me and the community. We’re very thankful for you. Good luck this season. Go Gators. This could be aired when the Gators are playing, whenever that is. Thank you so much. I may be your biggest fan from afar.

You and I connected back at Louisiana Tech in 2013. That’s when we first met each other. We’re both rockheads but we love people and want the best for people. Thank you so much. God bless you. For everybody tuning in, I hope you got three things down because he dropped about 50. I got a whole list of things that he told me that I need to straighten up and get after it or I’m going to be on the bench.

Thank you.

Thank you all for tuning in. Come up with that one domino effect that can knock the rest of your dominoes down so you can have a very long-lasting career of being an inspirational leader. You had something to say. Go ahead.

I want to say thank you. I appreciate you having me.

You’re welcome.

I hope that this helps someone. I have an opportunity to inspire others to be great in their own way, whatever that looks like. Thank you again. I appreciate you and I appreciate our friendship. We never talked about the COACH acronym the whole time.

Do you want me to go ahead and say it? Coach is the one who taught me about COACH. It is Called Out As Christ Helper.

That’s the name of the foundation too.

We were playing North Texas in Dallas, Texas in 2013. In the hotel, you told me about that. You were so fired up about that because your pastor gave that sermon out the week before.

That’s right. I appreciate you.

I love you. Thank you very much.

I love you too.

Thank you all for tuning in. As we always say here on the show, let’s grow. Thank you.

God bless.

Important Links

• Florida Gators
• Jabbar Juluke