You Don't Have to Do It Alone | Bob Kesling on Teamwork, Trust & Financial Planning

Even the best individual performers need the right team around them.

Bill Waltman of PYA Waltman Capital sits down with longtime Voice of the Vols Bob Kesling for a conversation about teamwork, resilience, execution, and why success rarely happens alone.

Bob shares stories from Tennessee athletics, beginning with quarterback Jeff Francis and the 1988 Tennessee football team. After starting the season 0-6, the Vols could have packed it in. Instead, they regrouped, won their final five games, and helped set the stage for the success Tennessee would experience in the years that followed.

The conversation also explores different styles of leadership through Tennessee quarterbacks Casey Clausen and Andy Kelly, and how consistency, humility, trust, and simply doing your job can make an enormous difference to the people around you.

Bill connects those lessons to financial planning. Successful professionals may be exceptional at what they do, but that doesn't mean they should have to navigate every financial decision alone. A coordinated team of financial planners, investment professionals, CPAs, and estate planning attorneys can help turn individual goals and values into a plan that can actually be executed.

Bob also reflects on Chris Lofton's remarkable perseverance while privately battling cancer during his Tennessee basketball career, along with Tennessee's unforgettable 52-49 victory over Alabama and the preparation and execution required to make that final game-winning sequence possible.

The conversation closes with a story from Tennessee basketball's 2008 trip to Memphis. On the day of one of the biggest games in program history, Bruce Pearl invited his players to join him for a visit to St. Jude Children's Research Hospital. Every player got on the bus. Hours later, Tennessee defeated No. 1 Memphis to become the top-ranked team in the country for the first time in program history.

It's a reminder that success is about more than individual performance. It's about perspective, resilience, having the right people around you, and executing together toward something that matters.

Watch more: Explore more conversations with Bob Kesling and the PYA Waltman Capital team in our Bob Kesling playlist.