How ‘spiritual soundness’ led Joe Moglia from Wall Street CEO to college football head coach

Sticking his head underneath his desk for a moment, Joe Moglia popped back up holding a heavy binder.

“See this file?” he said. “I have three of these.”

Thousands of versions of Moglia lie between the lines of those pages: A 19-year-old college sophomore supporting his wife and newborn daughter by driving a cab and post office truck in New York City while also working at his father’s fruit store in the Bronx. The successful CEO of TD Ameritrade. An award-winning head football coach at Coastal Carolina.

The connective tissue weaving all of those wildly different selves together is his “private notes,” a series of journal entries of over 50 years’ worth of attempts to peel back the layers of his subconscious. The notes represent a process Moglia believes anyone can use to learn more about themselves and make big decisions.

The process is straightforward. First, Moglia sits down in front of his notepad and prompts himself: What’s my favorite music? Do I like Bruce Springsteen? Why do I like him? What are my skill sets? What am I good at? And what am I bad at? What does my career look like right now? And what do I want it to look like?

The point of asking increasingly specific questions is to have them add up over time to answer a bigger and broader question: Who am I?

Most importantly, Moglia refuses to tell anyone what he wrote, especially if he uncovers a realization about himself. The goal is to pinpoint exactly who he is and how he feels without the judgment or influence of others.

That way, when big decisions are required, he knows himself well enough to understand what choices will serve him best.

“Any time I do anything major in my life,” he said, “I’ve gone through that.”

How did he know he was ready to leave New York and try coaching? What made him realize it was time to leave coaching and go to Wall Street? Why did he feel comfortable leaving TD Ameritrade to give college football a final shot?

“I went right to the legal pad,” he said.

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In 1971 Moglia was majoring in economics at Fordham and coaching football on the side. As graduation neared, so did his first big career decision.

“If I can get a head high-school coaching job, I’ll pursue a career in coaching,” he told his wife. “If not, we’ll try and go to Wall Street.”

He applied to 100 schools and received a call back from Archmere Academy, a Catholic high school in Claymont, Del. He knew he loved coaching, and he knew the plan was to take the job if offered, but there was still a lot to consider. He kept asking himself: What’s driving me?

“I just started writing s— down,” Moglia said.

He wrote down every thought and feeling he had about his life, prompting himself with questions about his interests, ambitions and personal life.

“Just keep writing,” he told himself. “Don’t stop. Just keep writing.”

The first part of his process was born, and Moglia took the job at Archmere Academy.

Later that year, Moglia was on the New Jersey Turnpike, en route to meet his new team. He felt excited and wanted to make a good first impression, so he decided to introduce his new journaling exercise to his players. He called it “spiritual soundness.”

He told his players about the first part of his self-discovery process — about why it’s important they “stand on their own two feet” and “take responsibility for themselves.” He explained how that becomes easier if you take the time to prompt yourself with questions and write enough to learn exactly who you are and what you believe in.

But he also stressed an important point: They needed to make sure they didn’t share their notes or realizations with anyone.

“The whole idea here is this is your examination of conscience with yourself, with God, with whomever, but it is not somebody else’s,” he said. “We tend to become a composite of the people around us. The first time you go to anybody else, the closest person in your life, subconsciously what you’re doing is you’re looking for them to affirm what your thought is. That’s the whole point. We’re not looking for that. We’re looking for you to figure out who you are.”

It wasn’t long before Moglia climbed his way to collegiate coaching, helping guide the Lafayette College football team before becoming the defensive coordinator at Dartmouth in 1981. It was there, in his first season, that he received divorce papers and moved into the storage room above the football offices.

A couple of years later, he says, he received a dream offer to coach at the University of Miami, home of the reigning national champions. Once again, Moglia returned to his spiritual soundness journal: Professionally and personally, what are the pros and cons?

Professionally, he was sold. It was, he said, “the most perfect job I could possibly have.” If he accepted it, he believed he would succeed and could one day fulfill one of his dreams: to become the head coach at a major school.

Personally, however, he was unconvinced.

He remembered the first step of the spiritual soundness process he established with himself: Take responsibility for yourself. He thought about who he was as a father, who he wanted to be as a father and how the job would impact that part of his life.

“How can I do this and not live up to my responsibilities as a father?” he said. “I’ve got four kids. I’m OK making decisions. I’m not OK feeling guilty.”

He called turning down the job the “toughest career decision I have made in my life.” But that was the whole point of his journal process.

“You get to a point where you go, You know what? This is me,” he said. “This is the truth, this is who I am. These are the good points and the bad points, but this is who I am. Once you understand that, now your ability to make the right decision under pressure, the probability goes up significantly. And the more times you can make the right decision under stress, critically, then you increase the probability you’re going to feel good about who you are. You’re going to feel fulfilled.”

Soon after, he took to his journal again with a new realization. He still had a lingering interest in Wall Street. It kickstarted what is now the second step in his process: Have courage and know you’ll need to live with the consequences of your actions.

So he began to network.

In the 1980s, without contacts of his own, he approached alumni groups at Fordham and the two schools where he had coached, Lafayette and Dartmouth, and asked for names and numbers. Slowly, he built a list of people who worked on Wall Street and began to cold call.

“I had a one-minute pitch that said something along the lines of, ‘I recognize I don’t have an MBA from Harvard, however, I do have this,’” he said. “‘I’ve got a PhD in life stuff. And I do think I have the skill sets that you’re looking for.’”

He spent about three months chasing leads. Eventually, he ended up in Merrill Lynch’s MBA institutional training program. He said he was the only one in the program without an MBA. He spent the following 17 years at the company.

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In 2008, Moglia stepped down as the CEO of TD Ameritrade after seven years.

“I was never more in demand in my life,” he said.

But he realized he still had a lingering interest in coaching college football again.

He knew what he wanted to do was unusual. And he knew he was fortunate financially; he didn’t have to worry about money. He also wondered: Am I going to get a job? That thought was followed by another: I would be good at this. Maybe someone, my background, it’s so unique, somebody might give me an opportunity. 

Through his spiritual soundness process, he uncovered exactly why he wanted to go back to football. It wasn’t that he was such a big fan; he said he’d rather watch TV shows than a game. But he enjoyed football strategy and believed in his ability to impact players.

“The real game of football is like master’s chess, but with 22 people moving at once. I’m very good at that,” he said. “The ability to put together an entire program. I’m very good at that.”

He thought: Maybe I do have a chance to go back and see what I could do.

His journal process made it clear: He should go for it. Moglia began in 2009 as the executive advisor to Bo Pelini, then the head coach at Nebraska. A year later, he was named the head coach of the Virginia Destroyers, a new team in the upstart United Football League. He then became president and head coach of the UFL’s Omaha Nighthawks.

Finally, in 2011, he got his chance: Coastal Carolina, then a Football Championship Subdivision program, made him the school’s second head coach in history. Moglia won 72 percent of his games, including back-to-back 12-win seasons and four consecutive appearances in the FCS playoffs.  In 2014, Coastal Carolina started the season 11-0 and was ranked No. 1 for the first time in program history. He brought his “spiritual soundness” with him and to his players.

To this day, Moglia still leans on the process. Over the holidays, he reviewed all three binders filled with his thoughts from over the years. He sat there and re-read past versions of himself, hoping to learn more about who he is.

(Illustration: Dan Goldfarb / The Athletic; Jason Smith / Sports Illustrated / Getty Images)

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