Unlocking the Collective Power of Athletes

[Music]

once upon a time

in 2007 i was

in lower manhattan and i was walking

home

from my job that i could not stand and

as

i was walking i could i had shiny shoes

on but if you looked at the soles of my

shoes i had little holes and my socks

were starting to war

and i would i remember going up into my

apartment and it’s hard to call it my

apartment because it was actually

a little section of a of someone’s

someone’s room that i found off of

craigslist

and i walked into my room like this

because it was a shower curtain rod in

order to get

in and needless to say

it was not the the best existence at the

time it wasn’t a highlight of my life

but one of the things that i did enjoy

uh every day one of my reprieves

was to open up my laptop and go on to

aim instant messenger

now i don’t know some of you may or may

not remember aim but

one of my reprieves during this time was

to talk to my friends that was very

lonely because not a lot of people lived

in lower manhattan

and on this one particular day a girl

that i liked was

on aim and we had been talking for the

past few weeks see this girl

uh her and i went to college with each

other she played soccer and i played

lacrosse

and while we were talking she said you

know i’m actually going up to new york

city this weekend and i’m free friday

night

i said that’s great so leaving me the

invitation to ask her out to dinner

which she said yes

and even though i didn’t have a lot of

money i didn’t like my job and i

couldn’t really afford

nice shoes i decided to go to an

expensive restaurant jules life jazz

which was in the east village

and we were having a great time when the

data actually

came came about and you know our our

chemistry was there

and we picked up pretty much right where

we left off and then

the check came and i gave my credit card

and the waitress came back and she said

sorry sir but your card’s been declined

it felt like she said i’m sorry sir your

card’s been declined

and you are a loser and she didn’t say

that of course but that’s how i felt the

tables were right by i could feel

embarrassment just flood through my body

my face turned red i started to sweat i

said uh

you know the thing about that card is i

i just um

i just had a new card i’m actually

really successful you know i have an atm

uh cash

i’ll go i’ll be right back bye oh my god

i remember walking out of that

restaurant

heart pounding please have money please

have money

i walked furiously to the atm machine as

i could feel my socks going through the

soles of my shoes

i finally got up to that atm machine i

walked up to it like it was uh

like it was zoltar in the movie big and

if you’re under 30 you probably won’t

understand that reference

but i got put my my card in i pulled it

out

long pause please have money please have

money

i started to hear that beautiful sound

yes i had money

thank god i grabbed the cash paid for

the date

the night was over now that story

it ends up being happy i would marry

that that woman

we do have two kids she’s here today so

that all worked out

but i remember that night walking back

into my apartment

opening up the curtain ride and putting

my head in the pillow and i wanted to

bury myself

i remember thinking to myself man what

the hell happened

i used to love my life i was captain of

a division one sports team

and now i hate my job i don’t make any

money

i don’t even have shoes that actually

work

what happened i couldn’t pinpoint it

in that moment where i went wrong but

years later

as a ceo and a founder of a software

company that actually helps elite

athletes

with their professional development and

life skills i can tell you what the

problem was

the problem was passion i didn’t replace

my passion for being a college athlete

with what my next passion was going to

be

and the thing about passion is you

either have it or you don’t you can have

it

and then you can lose it and the thing

that’s really interesting about an

athlete’s passion

is that it’s always partner it’s always

coupled with a pursuit

you have a passion to play you have a

pursuit

to win you have a passion to play you

have a pursuit to make the playoffs

a passion to play a pursuit to make a

championship season

pushing through little individual goals

to get to an

end goal psychologist angela duckworth

defines that as grit and in her book

that she authored

titled grit she says the number one

indicator of who will be successful

successful

is what level of grit they have

the other thing about passion when you

think about

a college athlete or a professional

athlete

is that there is always an expiration

date

their sport will end there will come a

day when it’s over

how are they going to handle that you

know

in my line of work um

i’m sorry when i when i when you talk to

anybody that works with athletes

when they focus on the uh whether it’s

on their development

or if if it’s an employer who

exclusively likes to hire athletes

they will tell you athletes have

transferable skills

athletes know how to manage a busy

schedule

they’re conditioned to manage their

condition to navigate

team dynamics they’re conditioned to

push past

their perceived limits on a daily basis

athletes have vision they are

visionaries

matter of fact my company gave a career

discovery assessment

to 770 athletes and

in that assessment we found that 69

of athletes had visionary as their

number one trait this assessment ranked

their traits from zero

are one to our weakest to strongest so

50 or 69 percent of athletes had

visionary as their number one straight

athletes are visionaries you

it makes sense you have to visualize

yourself playing optimally to win

you have to visualize yourself as a high

school athlete to make it at the college

level

only seven percent do two percent play

at the division one level

the problem is for elite athletes

especially college

athletes in a time when we’re not in

covid is that in-season athletes spend

80 hours a week between school

and sports they’re like racehorses man

they’ve got blinders on and they’re

focused on what they have to accomplish

every day every week to get to that goal

to that pursuit

it doesn’t leave a lot of time to think

about what you’re going to do and how

you’re going to replace that passion

you see what is in front of you coaches

maybe i’ll be a coach athletic

administrator maybe i’ll be an athletic

administrator what are my parents doing

older siblings these tend to be the abs

options that they gravitate towards

now like you my days are filled with a

lot of zoom calls postcovid

and my calls are my zoom calls are

either with employers who want to hire

athletes

or get their information about their

programs to athletes

or it’s with course creators who want to

gamify their message or if it or it’s

with

influencers who want to get their

message in front of athletes public

speakers that want to get their message

in front of athletes in a gamified

fashion

but i also speak to a lot of athletic

administrators and a few weeks ago

i had a conversation that was very

typical the type of conversations i have

with athletic administrators

i got on the phone with this individual

she was a young athletic administrator

just two years

out of school herself and she when i

when we got on the phone i asked her

what do you do

and she said i work in career

development and life skills

that’s great and that’s a role that sits

in most athletic departments

somebody to help the athlete with their

internships and jobs and

and figure out how not to go into debt

and so forth and all the life skills

you’ll need when you graduate

and i asked how many athletes do you

have in your athletic program and she

said 472.

i said whoa that’s a lot and how many

other athletic administrators help you

with the career development and life

skills and she said oh no no it’s just

me

i said wow now of course i would never

say this but i was thinking

are are we putting those athletes from

that school

in the best position

one of my competitors did a survey with

200 athletic departments

and they asked in in the survey one of

the questions was

are you tracking job placement after

graduation

82 percent said they are not

you know here we have the ncaa

is producing roughly 200 000 athletes

full of grit full of transferable skills

but we don’t know where we’re

transferring those skills and we live in

a time when we have problems in society

and we need our best people in front of

those problems see the thing about

problems the thing about

issues is that they’re always a company

with jobs and internships

opportunities apprenticeships we need

these athletes that are high grit to see

that

you know when you’re a college athlete

the athletic department will generally

give you

the best the best of everything so you

can win they’ll give you the best gear

they’ll give you the best coaches the

best personal trainers the best tutors

so you have a high gpa so that you can

be on the field

are we giving them the best to win after

the game

i question that those are the questions

that i ask the thing about being an

athlete

is that you’re used to being measured

it’s kind of part of the gig how fast

can you run

how much can you lift

your gpa how much do you weigh drummond

stop eating so much cheese that’s what

my coach used to tell me by the time

when i was getting the end i was trying

to put in the lbs

we’re used to getting measured why

are we not measuring the frequency of

career

exploration why

why are we not measuring how frequently

an

athlete is looking for the next passion

that they’re going to replace when

the game is over

you know during kovid

i spent a lot of time probably like you

guys watching a lot of youtube

and i remember watching an interview

with comedian kevin hart

and he was on the joe rogan experience

and he said to joe he said you know joe

i’m successful

i have reached a level of success

i know the pitfalls the challenges

of what you got to do to get to success

i’m just going to share that information

i’m going to share it so that somebody

behind me who wants to follow in my

footsteps can take my work and go

further

and those who you know kevin hart he’s

not just a stand-up comedian

he’s not just an actor he knows

broadcasting and producing

he has partnerships with jp morgan chase

on

advancing black leaders he’s passionate

about financial literacy

see the thing about passion is it’s

contagious

it’s contagious so if you’re lucky

enough to be passionate a bit

passionate about what you do you

represent the minority

gallup polls say that only 80 or 85

percent of people

don’t like what they do fifteen percent

you represent that fifteen percent

if you’re passionate share share what

you do share your position share how you

got there share the opportunities

this is a world that i’m looking to

create

and i’m looking to bring in partners

i visualize and i dream about a time

where athletic departments

and the ncaa look at career

exploration as a measurable item that

they must track in order for the

athletes to get on the field just like

they do with gpa

and if we can couple and marry

that concept with bringing people that

are passionate about what they do

to share to share their position like a

lighthouse

and we bring those two concepts together

then we can take the collective

psychology that our athletes

and we can turn that into our greatest

resource

thank you