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