Sport Coats Podcast

024: The World's First Sports Stock Market - with Deven Hurt

Devin is the co-founder and CEO of Prediction Strike, a fantasy sports stock market that allows users to buy and sell shares of pro athletes as if they were stocks. Starting in 2018, Prediction Strike has already completed over $5.5 million worth of transactions on their network. Prior to co-founding his company in 2018, Devin worked for Nike as a cyber security analyst. Deven is a 2018 graduate from Harvard with a degree in bioengineering. Join Deven and host Will Jurgensen as they discuss the world's first sports stock market, its creation and its future!

023: Pumped To Be A Pro - with Duncan Littlefield

Meet Duncan Duncan, formerly a professional golfer currently serves as CEO of Littlefield, a company that owns a variety of other companies as well, such as the Littlefield Company, Paper Airplane, Large Forests, Sidecar, and is a critical equity partner contributor to profit focus startups. Duncan's mission is to always be a part of a larger conversation and to support everyone to become obsessed with their life. Since we’re in the middle of the Olympics, I’d like to start off by asking you about your opinion on golfing in the Olympics. Initial thought on golf in the Olympics is I love it. I think it does so much to expand the game because it connects to audiences. You look at players in there that have recently said that it's one of the coolest things I've ever been a part of. Because you look at the team sports where they represent their country, Ryder Cup, Presidents Cup where it's a 12 man team with a captain and vice-captain. It's really fundamentally different. I don't think that they have the correct format. That's my opinion. I think the way they source players is a very fascinating way to look at it. and I know a lot of people on the back end when they were first bringing it to Rio spent a ton of time examining it, where they went through going, "Hey, if we went this route, who would be in it?" I think they have it close, but I think there are a few ways to make golf better in the Olympics, to embody the game of golf, but also to embody the Olympics as an overall organization. So I think they're close, but it's a pretty special space. Again, using the example of 2020 Tokyo is you watch seven guys go into a playoff for the bronze medal, and they fought for that. That was amazing and I'm not saying like Xander taking gold was not the highlight because I think the storyline for Xander was just spectacular. But the reality is seven guys going into a playoff to fight for the bronze medal was riveting, like absolutely riveting. I'm so, I don't wanna say happy that it came out this way, but I think for C.T. Pan to win in the fourth playoff hole, taking down Rory, I think it's awesome. So the game of golf is in a good place, but I think golf in the Olympics is really special and it's only getting better. If you were on the Olympic Committee, how would you improve the golf event? I would take it into a five-day event and I would model it after what they do at the USGA, US Junior Tournament, where they play a 36 hole qualifying stroke play to then go into singles match play. I would really like to see that the only other kicker because they also do this with college golf now, in the playoff where they take all the teams, they go match play for two rounds, and then they go down into an eight-team match-play bracket. I think if you do a very similar structure, then it offers everything you want it to, but also it keeps some core, old school golf tradition in the mix, but then it also kind of embodies a little bit of the Olympics as well. You look at swimming, for example, how you go qualifying down into the major heat, and I think it keeps aligned with it. But then you can also crown a team champion as well, long term. So I think a 16 man field or women's field is good. I think that you potentially could have it where you have a team event attached, where you at least have two representatives from every country, and potentially an A and B team, from the major countries that would represent. But then at that point, I think you can also play a team route into this if you even open it up to maybe 80 players in that space to then get it down to a field of 16 to play match play after. Not often have I heard about the process of someone going from a professional golfer trying to achieve their amateur status back right. How does that work? The process is you write the USGA saying, "Hey, I would like to receive my amateur status back," and normally, depending on where you sat in the world rank you go into a two-year waitlist. So you have to kind of say that you're taking a two-year ban from playing competitively and from there, then you receive your amateur status back. So you get a letter from the USGA saying, "Hey, we've recognized that you've really committed to taking your amateur status back, you have gotten your amateur status back." Now, if you ever want to go professional again. So if I went from a pro to an amateur, and then went pro, again, I can never go back to being an amateur after the second time I turned professional. So that's the kicker, but it's a two-year process you write to the USGA, you do all the paperwork, you fill out when your last tournament was, what your world rank was if you get if you received one, all that, and then two years and you're back on it. Could you tell us a little bit about your golfing journey? I mean, the reality is that when you're trying really hard to achieve something really big, and you have to go through the ups and downs like you have to go through it. But when you put everything on the line, and you bet the house on your game, you put the house in yourself, there's really nobody to turn to but yourself. I had a phenomenal support team around me, my parents were so encouraging. The only time it was negative was when I wasn't putting the effort in. Like that was the only time it was ever negative, or not positive. My coach was great. Yeah, I had a great group of people, like  PGA veterans that were mentors of mine. I got really lucky and I truly say that I feel like I'm one of the luckiest people to ever walk this earth and I'm definitely not letting it go to waste. But the peaks and valleys were amazing and I say that with a laugh, because the reality is that as a Mini Tour player, when you're driving cross country, you play a tournament in Georgia, and next week, you got to get to Washington DC, or you got to get to Bangor, Maine there's a lot of windshield time. There's a lot of road time to think about life, your game, what's bad, what's good, all the above and I think that's really helped me become the person I am today and not so much of what happened on the course, but what happened, when I actually had time to process it. I took the traditional Mini Tour route. The reality is back in the day, everyone goes like, "Alright, what would you have changed?" And I said, I would have changed two things: I wouldn't want a few more times, no question about it. But the only other thing I would have changed is how I invested. So now looking as a business owner, I recognize the differences of how I would have invested into my last career of being a professional athlete, compared to what I did. So right now, like when you get on to the Mini Tour status, is the only thing you hear is just make your dollar last the longest. Just make it last because the reality is that the average PGA Tour pro is about 31 years old. When you look at that, when you walk out of college, when you turn professional, whatever it is, it's like you're sitting back, you're going, Okay, I gotta make this last the longest. You know, it's peanut butter and jelly sandwiches, it's sharing a hotel room with four guys, it's cutting my costs down as much as I can to get to the 38th tournament of the year to give myself one more chance compared to investing a little more and not having the entry fee for that 38th because you can only get to 35. So for me now recognizing how I invest in the business here, I would have put a little more into myself. I would have eaten a little better, I would have stated a little nicer of a hotel, maybe had three roommates compared to four, or vice versa. Because then at that point, I would have been able to maybe show up a little better compared to just absolutely grind it out, I maybe would have shown up a little better. That's where I would have invested in myself a little differently and I'm recognizing that in business now, where I don't hold on to big money. I definitely don't spend it like it grows on trees, but I'm a little more aggressive right now than I was back in the day and I wish I recognized that earlier, where I could have invested a little more of myself. What kind of recommendations do you have then for being money conscious, but at the same time, not holding on too much that you're actually doing yourself a disservice? At 25 or 24, you think you know everything about the world. I did. Like when I was 23, and professional golfer, like, I thought I was the guy. I thought I was the guy who was just gifted and talented and I was bound to be great. I worked really hard at it. When you're 23 years old, and a professional golfer you have to have a little bit of cockiness to yourself. But like, most 23-year-olds don't know who they are. So it's like, for that same point, I didn't know who I was. I thought I needed to walk into the room and have everyone recognize that I was a professional golfer. It didn't matter who Duncan was, what mattered was I walk in the room, and they go, "Oh, he's sponsored." I did a lot of things really well. Now, if I went back into the game right now, I really believe that. I feel like when we talk about investing in ourselves, it's so easy to think of it as a monetary thing, as opposed to an investment from so many other grounds. Right! Right now, one of my favorite quotes that I've really held on to recently states, "Just because you can carry the weight well, doesn't mean it's not heavy." So for me, I know I carry weight well because around my company, I have to carry the weight like no one will outwork me and my company. No one should ever outwork me in my company and I own that fully. It's not a pissing battle, but the reality is that I should outwork everybody in my company and I'm happy to because I love what I do. I love who I get to serve, I love the stories we get to tell, I love building the business that I see. But to carry the weight for everybody else is a lot, to carry the weight for my team members, to carry the weight for my wife, to carry it away from my family and friends. It's a lot when you're trying to grow business and you also have families who really rely on your vision and rely on your leadership. So what I found is that if I give myself about two to two and a half hours in the morning, for myself, I'm good for the rest of the day no matter what. So what my routine is I get up at 4 am. I'm in the gym by five, at that point I work out for anywhere between 30 and 60 minutes. Now at that point, I get into a sauna for 15, I take a cold shower, I have breakfast, and I am ready to rock by seven and I can carry the weight for everybody else. But if I'm not selfish enough to do that every morning, I'm not going to carry the weight as well as I should and that's where you have to be selfish for yourself because that is arguably the least selfish thing you can do because you're showing up for everybody else in the best way possible. So you know the investment into yourself is the least selfish thing you can do. Even if it's five minutes a day, if it's 10 minutes of meditation, if it's a journal, if it's prayer, whatever you want to call it, if it's legitimately a $6 cup of coffee every single morning because that sets your day correctly to show up for everybody else for the other 23 hours and 55 minutes, but you have that five minutes of a $6 cup of coffee that you enjoy thoroughly, then it's worth every $6 cup of coffee every single day of the year, because you're showing up the right way for everyone around you. So you can carry the weight of other people. The world's heavy right now. COVID has been heavy. Everything going on, it's changing, it's evolving and if we can't show up for ourselves, we can't show up for our people, then you know what? If a $6 cup of coffee is the best investment that you can make and just make it a priority for yourself and own it and just know it. Call it as you see it be vulnerable and budget that $6 cup of coffee every single day because it is the exact thing I need to show up and I will do everything in my power to work around it to make sure I can get that for myself. That's called investing in yourself. It doesn't matter what investing in yourself looks like for you, but know what you need to show up. Know how you get to that start line every single day. And make it your own, right? Absolutely! And so much more...

022: The Journey of A Sports Professional: A History Lesson - with Charlie Larson

Meet Charlie Charlie Larson serves as the Vice President of Communications for The Milwaukee Admirals. The Admirals are a member of the American Hockey League, equivalent to  AAA baseball for those who are trying to understand and serve as the farm team for the Nashville Predators of the NHL. Charlie has been working hard as of late launching a brand new website for The Admirals, premiering the brand new third jersey that The Admirals will be wearing this upcoming season, and the schedule is out preparing for puck drop on October 16 against the Grand Rapids Griffins at Panther Arena in downtown Milwaukee. On your LinkedIn, it looks like you went straight from college to working with the Admirals. How long have you been with The Admirals? I will celebrate 21 years on August 23. So I did work for a minor league baseball team, the Michigan Battle Cats, which are now defunct, and probably the worst run professional sports team in history! I'm not joking, it was a race to get your checks cashed because if you were last it might bounce. Luckily, I was making so little money $233 after taxes every two weeks as a full-time job, that it didn't really matter that much. But I had to send my checks back and I had to put it in along with the deposit slip, I'd sign my check, mail it to M&I bank in Milwaukee and they would deposit it. You couldn't just take a picture of your check and deposit anymore. I knew I wasn't going to be there for too long after a couple of days so I didn't want to get a bank there. So I kept M&I, which doesn't exist anymore. It was interesting without a doubt. So how often would that happen where checks would bounce and your counterparts would come in shaking their head and be like “Nope, this week’s check isn’t going.”? As far as I know, it never happened during the season when there was a little bit of cash flow. It was the offseason and I wasn't really there for much of any offseason. They were in the same league as The Wisconsin Timber Rattlers, who are now the Class A affiliate for the Brewers. Back then they were the Class A affiliate of the Seattle Mariners and I had worked for them as well the year before. It was a wide discrepancy. The Dayton Dragons hold the most consecutive sellouts in any minor league sport. They've sold on every single game since the year they were formed and they're in the Midwest League with The Michigan Battle Cats when I was there, and we averaged like 300 fans a game and could barely even function. It was just this weird discrepancy. But I'll tell you this, living in Michigan, a couple of times a year we would have firework games on Saturday nights so we get big crowds of about 5000 fans which would have bumped our average attendance up to close to 1000. They would buy their sodas and their bottles, and they would drop them under the stands and if you ever lived in Michigan, or if you've seen Seinfeld, you would know that you get 10 cents per bottle and I was making so little money and so were the grounds crews that we would go underneath the bleachers after those games, and it was so disgusting, but it didn't matter. Then we go across to the Meijer store and we throw them in the little chute where you exchange your cans and I come out there with like 100 bucks 125 bucks. It was great cause that's literally half of my paycheck! Did you know when you were at Ripon College that you wanted to get into the business side of sports? Not really. I was at the NCAA Division Three Tennis Tournament my sophomore year, and if you know, tennis tournaments, have a lot of downtime, right? I got to talking to the NCAA Rep there because the NCAA sends a rep to every church championship. This guy played basketball at Brown. Let me take a step back. I worked for the sports information director at Ripon so that was sort of my introduction. I liked it but whatever, I never thought about that as a career. Then I got talking to this NCAA rep and I was like this actually sounds pretty good. From there, I applied with her for a job with The Timber Rattlers as an intern and got that and spent my summer up there working like 80 hours a week. No pay, none! I loved it though, I was like, "This is what I want to do!" But at the time, the only school in the state of Wisconsin that offered sports management classes was UW Lacrosse. So Ripon didn't offer a sports management class much as a major. It was right at the beginning of sort of the sports boom if you will and I was a history major, philosophy minor. I tell kids all the time, it doesn't matter what you major in. Do what you want to do, find your love and you'll get if you have that passion for it, you'll find a way to make it work. How then, do you find your way to The Milwaukee Admirals? Honestly, it's as simple as my girlfriend at the time was living in Milwaukee. We had dated for three years at Ripon and I moved to Michigan, and she moved to Milwaukee and her mom was like, "What the heck is going on here?" So she was there and I was like, "Well if we're gonna if we're going to make a go at this, we could at least live in the same timezone," and so I just started emailing and calling all the teams and I had actually called The Admirals once, they said nothing's available and then I call them back and they said, "Oh, yeah, we've got a sales job open, send in your resume." I did and I interviewed some time, at the beginning, August, and I got offered the job a couple of days later, and then I started August 23. Was the league The Admirals played in called The AHL back then? It was the IHL. It would turn out to be the last year of the International Hockey League. It was an interesting time because both the IHL and the AHL developed players for the NHL, but the AHL had branded themselves as THE Developmental League. They weren't bringing in guys that were on the downsides of their NHL careers and that's what the IHL was doing. The IHL made some atrocious business decisions expanding all over the country. In the NHL lockout of 94-95, the IHL decided that they were going to replace the NHL and that they were going to compete with the NHL. That was a bad move because yeah, they had a TV contract and games run ESPN and it was cool at the time and San Francisco spiders, got some really cool jackets, but there was no vetting process for the ownership. It was just really about getting the initiation fee if you will and we'll go from there. There wound up being teams that were folding midseason, and it was bad news. By the year 2000, it was clear that the AHL, their business model was gonna win. Was that a fascinating time to be around the game where some of the IHL teams were folding? Yeah, so we had 11 teams in our league that year and six of those teams were absorbed into the American Hockey League. So it was us, Chicago Wolves, Grand Rapids Griffins, Houston Aeros, which no longer exists, Utah Grizzlies and they are now in the ECHL, and the Manitoba Moose. So now that those teams go into the AHL, and that's we've been there ever since. What did your job look like the first year working with The Admirals? So I was a Sales Account Executive and I did that for two years and then I was promoted to Director of Ticket Sales. Also, Jane Pettit, who is The Admirals owner and the greatest philanthropist the city of Milwaukee has ever known probably one of the greatest philanthropists ever died on September 9, 2001. This was the beginning of my second year, and it was almost fitting because two days later, September 11 happens and so her death was overshadowed and that's sort of the way I think she that she liked it, that's how she lived her life. She built so many buildings in Milwaukee, I mean think of all the buildings that have the name, Pettit or Bradley. So Jane dies and she leaves The Admirals in her estate and she leaves basically a set amount of money. So once we blow through that money, that's going to be about it. So when I started with the animals, we probably had 15 full-time people and by the time our current owner, Harris Turer bought the team in April of 200 we were down to four full-time employees. What's sort of a shame is those were the best teams that The Animals have ever had. We won tt Caler Cup in 2004 with six full-time people, and I was doing things that I had no business or idea what I was doing. It was literally flying by the seat of my pants. Where were The Admirals playing then? They were at the Bradley Center. So The Bradley center was built by the Pettits to attract an NHL team. Bradley is Jane Pettit's maiden name and she built the Bradley Center for 2 reasons; because The Bucks were gonna move because they were playing at The MECCA right which didn't have the revenue streams that they needed and because they wanted to lure an NHL team to Milwaukee. The Bradley Center when it opened in October of 1988 was the best arena in the country. The Bucks moved and The Admirals, it was a hockey game that started it. So the Edmonton Oilers vs. Chicago Blackhawks and The Admirals had been averaging about 3000 fans at the mecca they didn't know how this was going to go and so they've really been pumping Wayne Gretzky coming in. Wayne is coming in he's gonna play and in beginning August Gretzky got traded to Edmonton which is crazy because the Bradly Center had a contract that said Gretzky and a bunch of other big players had to play in the game. So they sold out the building and it was a spectacle. It was awesome, but it was like a real snake bit and Wayne was supposed to be there and he wasn't. Now coincidentally he did play next year. Wayne did come and play the next year as a member of the Kings. The Kings played the Blackhawks in a preseason game that year. So The Bradley center is where we were playing and the NHL team never happened for a couple of reasons. It's not because of the Blackhawks, everybody thinks it's because of the Blackhawks it is not because of the Blackhawks, so please get that out of your head! So we came into the league at the same time as Tampa Bay and we were up for expansion that same time as Tampa Bay and Ottawa and those were the two teams. Eventually, Milwaukee dropped out and a couple of other cities dropped out of the expansion bid and those are the only two teams left. So the NHL really only had the choice to give them to Tampa Bay and Ottawa. I think the admirals dropped out of the bidding in 1989, somewhere and there were a couple of reasons they did it. One was the expansion fee the NHL had pitched was $30 million and that's nothing compared to Seattle who just paid $600 million. But then The Animals General Manager had gone to Quebec City to see a Nordiques game, ostensibly to see sort of how they ran or how they were running their operations, and it was really because he was meeting with some of the owners on the expansion committee, and they told them like, "Hey our math is a very good and that $30 million expansion fee so sorry, it's actually $50 million." So basically doubling it. The Pettits had a lot of money and they could have paid it, but they also saw that the team was going to be really bad to start the year because the way they did the Expansion Draft and if anybody hockey fans out there, they know how the Seattle and Las Vegas have done it over the last couple of years. But the way they did the Expansion Draft back then was gonna make the team really bad for a really long time and they didn't know if Milwaukee would support a bad team for seven or eight years. As it turns out, Ottawa and Tampa were horrible for the first few years. But by 2004, Tampa had won it and I think in 2003 Ottawa made it to the finals. So we never got the team and it was very sad. It was a tough thing for the Pettits to admit, especially Lloyd Pettite as a Hockey Hall of Fame announcer with the Blackhawks, that was his goal and it just didn't work out. So Jane died and we had no money and we had no employees and we had this great team. Three times we had been this is the last season of The Admirals, your health insurance is gone and we're done. So it was a challenge, but it was a blast because every day was different and it was an adventure and we had an awesome team. So we just kept putting one step in front of the other end, you can only take it one day at a time, like literally one day at a time. What was it like winning The Calder Cup with 6 full-time employees? It was crazy! We win the Calder Cup, we had no money so we had to rent a 15 passenger van to drive out two of our staff out to Wilkes-Barre, Pennsylvania. So Mike Wojciechowski, who has been with the animals for 40 years, he's driving it. Funny story, we get pulled over and driving through the mountains out in western Pennsylvania and we get pulled over go like 95 miles an hour in a 15 passenger van. Woj, as you can tell by his last name, he's Polish and the officer is Polish to it and Mike says something like, "Come on, can't you help a fellow countryman out!" So we got the ticket and went on our way and we won it and had a turn around the next day and get right back in the 15 passenger van. We won it on a Sunday, June 6, 2004, and had to drive back because on Tuesday night we're having a party at the Bradley Center. So we met the team at the airport because they flew because that was actually paid for by the league, the league pays for travel in the playoffs. So we met the team there and it was awesome because there were so many fans at the airport. Back then, sure it was a thing for major league sports, but that didn't happen in minor league sports. 26 years, The Admirals had been a professional team at that point and never won anything made it to the finals and it was so cool. The next night we had a big event at the Bradley Center and it was just amazing. Then the following year Harris Turer bought the team and literally saved The Admirals. If it's not for Harris Turer, The Admirals are gone, there are no Admirals, and he led a consortium of about 15 local business people and hockey people to buy The Admirals and, and he realized this is a community and we were a community Now we're back up to over 15 or 16 people, it's crazy! I think to myself sometimes like, "How did we possibly do it?" And it was different to like, there was no social media, we had a website, if you updated it the next day, that's fine. So there wasn't as much immediacy, but still, there was a lot, a lot, a lot to do. When did you officially move into the role of Vice President of Communications? So I was a Director of Ticket Sales for one year and then the next year, the PR guy left and so I had to take over his duties. So I really never got the official title of Communications Director and then after Harris bought the team, I knew I wanted to do communications, that was what I was passionate about. So I went and saw John Greenberg, who was brought along as Team President by Harris and we had some chats and he said, "Well, let's take the ticket sales off of your plate, and you can go be the Vice President of Communications." And so much more... Be sure to click the link below to check out The Admirals’ website! https://www.milwaukeeadmirals.com/ [https://www.milwaukeeadmirals.com/]

021: We Not Me: How Teamwork in Sports Correlates to The Business World - with Kevin O'Hare

Meet Kevin Kevin is joining us today from Des Moines, Iowa where he has lived, worked, and coached most of his life. During work hours, Kevin serves as an Account Manager for AssistRX which is a specialty therapy initiation and patient support company delivering informed access and improved outcomes for their customers. After the work hours or potentially sometimes before the work hours, you can find Kevin in the gym, teaching the game to the next generation of players and mentoring those players to become even better men and women away from the court. When Kevin isn't working, coaching, or playing uncle to as many nieces and nephews, you can find him searching for his golf ball in the woods to the right where he typically slices. I want to start out with just the evolution of the high school player because you have been a high school basketball coach for 20 years now. In your opinion, what has been the evolution of the high school player, not just on the court, but also off the court throughout that those 20 years? Yeah, so it's been very interesting to see firsthand way back 20 years ago, where, when you thought kids were bigger, faster and stronger, and they were at the time, and then you fast forward 20 years, what that bigger, faster, stronger looks like, it's insane. Back then, I would say the game was kind of an inside-outside game where you're trying to hit the posts and you're trying to get double teams in the post to kick out to guards for shots and stuff like that. Over time, the game has evolved. I mean, we literally in our practices, now we spend so much time shooting threes, and it's free throws, layups, and threes. We will shoot mid-range shots and stuff like that, but we spend a ton of time on threes because the game, not that it's not post oriented, but it's extremely guard-oriented where way back I would say you needed one or two really solid big men to play the game and to have a good opportunity. Now, you still need that and you saw it with Baylor a little bit in the championship game where they have guards for days and strength and conditioning programs, they're insane now. Two or three days a week, our kids are up in the morning, and they're doing speed and agility drills from boxes, to cone work, to jump rope, and then they're lifting weights a couple of days a week. It's just crazy where the game was, and where it is now. You talk about off the court and stuff like that and back then there weren't the distractions of social media and things like that or your phone. These kids nowadays are on Twitter, Instagram, YouTube, Facebook, and if they're not watching somebody else, or posting something about themselves or someone else then something's wrong. They spend so much time on their phones these days and they're always trying to see the next highlight or become the next highlight. There's a lot of distractions that I think take kids away from what they need to be spending a lot of their time on, whether it be academics, or their craft, or skillset, so we emphasize that and talk a lot about that stuff. It seems like your game might have been better suited for today's style of play a bit. Has it ever clicked for you in your head where you wished you could play in today's game with the style being more guard-oriented? So the funny thing is when I was about 25 years old, my best basketball that I've ever played in my life was 25 to 35 without question. These were competitive leagues that we played in, and I think you hear a lot of guys talk about that nowadays is, I think the game slows down a little bit for you, you're more mature, you figured out the ins and the outs, you don't have a coach screaming at you and telling you this or that. But I mean, 25 to 35 was my best basketball by far. You're not running plays, there's not all this structure, and then to come back to it, I think the game just slows down and you figure things out a lot more as you get older. How do you transfer that knowledge that you have to your current players? So we talked about it a lot. For me, conditioning has always been a huge thing. It was funny, we'd go play these pickup leagues, my brothers and all of our friends and I would walk into a gym, this is no joke, people were like, "Oh, no, there's O'Hare, I'm not guarding O'Hare." The thing was that it had nothing to do with me being good, nobody wanted to chase me around. They just knew I was going to run nonstop, whether it's off a bunch of screens or constant defense. You think about it, when you get older people aren't here to guard you or work hard, they're just there to get some shots up. So the conditioning was huge. So we condition a ton at Dowling Catholic High School and the kids ask if I'm the basketball coach or the track coach, that's kind of the joke at the school. In order to do what we want to do, which is put a lot of pressure on the other team by pressing, or trapping, we need to be really good in the second half, and we need to wear people down and I can't guarantee wins and losses, but I can guarantee that we'll be the most conditioned team. More times than not, it has worked out on our behalf. That was something that I learned later in life, understanding why I'm doing all the movements and why I'm reading this screen like that. So we talked about that stuff daily so we aren't just doing these things to do them, but also why we are doing them. How important was life after basketball for you while you were in school and playing at St. Ambrose? The second aspect of that question is how much emphasis did St. Ambrose put on that and what kind of support did you feel like you received in college to prepare yourself for the next step? The short answer and listeners want to learn from my mistakes is I probably didn't put a lot of emphasis on what's gonna happen after college while I was there. I just always thought I would find a job and life would be great, blah, blah, blah. I can honestly tell you, I thought I was gonna play in the NBA all the way up until my senior year when I was only playing 17-20 minutes a game on my college team. I still thought somebody was going to pick me! Where does that mindset come from for you? Jordan and Kobe, man, like I followed Jordan and Kobe and Jordan like crazy. Their mindsets and their mentality on everything, like it didn’t matter if there was any truth to what you're thinking, nobody cares. If you don't believe it, or if you don't have it then you're behind the eight ball. So just following those guys, and watching them, and listening to them, my confidence was through the roof, whether it should have been or not. But Ambrose was huge for me. When I went there I thought I was the best thing since whomever and you get there and you realize there's a lot of people from a lot of different states that are a lot better than you think. Every year I was a backup point guard and so the next year is going to be my year because that guy's going to graduate and all of a sudden, here comes the new junior college player who's a stud that wanted to move home and be close to family. Then he graduates and now it's like, oh, my God, this is my team, I can't wait to take this team, we're going to do great things, and here comes this other transfer from a D1 school. So that was the challenge of that. These guys just easily put me in my place left and right, but it was great for me. You learn so much from the struggles, and the adversity, and the challenges of trying to accomplish something bigger than yourself which was huge for me. But so I was a business management and economics major and my senior year was probably when I really had to start my plan B. I wish that I would have done internships and all those things in college, and I would 100% recommend that to kids nowadays. I mean, just to get the experience, to build the relationships, and add it to your resume then maybe those companies are going to ask you to work for them full time when you graduate if you're doing what you're supposed to be doing. But those things would be huge, where I was just a gym rat all summer focused on this and that. I don't take it back, but that's a mistake, I probably would have gone back and spent a little more time on my studies and looking for experience. I wish I would have put a little more time and thought into my future plans when I was in college. Did what happened to you on the court and on the team with feeling like you were number two translate then to the professional world as well? I think anytime you go into the real world and start working with companies, everybody has a role. We talk about this with our high school players, you have to play your role and you have to do your job, whatever that is in order for the company or the team or whatever to succeed. So translating that from high school and college sports where you learn so much from teamwork and what it takes to accomplish the end goal, and it takes from a sports perspective 15 people to accomplish that. Then when I got into the data processing world, I was on a team of eight and if somebody wasn't doing their job, then our team would struggle. So you find other people helping each other reach sales goals and stuff like that, you know, it's the old, "You can't drive a car with three wheels." I mean, it takes literally everybody on your team in the real world, or on your team in sports, to accomplish goals and there's no one person bigger than the other. So I didn't come into the real world and think that I would head straight to the top right away. There's always a process, and there are always steps before you get to wherever, you're shooting to go to, or you're trying to get to. What I've had to find in coaching, is that you have to take your own experiences and take your own mistakes, and find a way to slowly implement them into your coaching philosophy and your team's culture so that if nothing else you're adding tools to your players' toolbox, so when life gets a little bit harder, they're more prepared for that. What kind of things have you put in place there at Dowling that you're super proud of that you see? So here's what I've learned. Being there for 20 years, I think at the end of the day, and I just had this conversation with our athletic director the other day who has done unbelievable things at our school, and he's also our football coach. But if you can get kids or people to understand what they mean to you, from a love, care, and respect standpoint, I think more times than not anything you tell them is going to go even farther than what you would think because they know that you're only there to help them at the end of the day. Everybody's sports career is limited, whether it's one year after your freshman or four years after high school and if you're lucky, you get another four years of college. I try to build and create these relationships with players from day one and even in the summer before they're starting to come in, whether that be with their AAU programs, or with our grade school programs. Again, I'm trying to show them the ropes of basketball, but I'm also very genuinely concerned with what's going on in the classroom and their personal life, like asking what their dog's name is, and things like that. You say those things and it seems kind of funny, but there's 100% genuineness in reality behind them and I don't ask things just to ask them because if I ask somebody something it's because I care. I've found that when you do that with kids, they're gonna run through walls, and they're gonna do everything in anything they can because they believe you and they know you're not trying to steer them in the wrong direction. If they look good, you look good, and if you look good, they look good. So that's gone a long way and some of the things we talked about a lot are the whole "We not me," process. We talk about we not me a lot. We also talk a lot about accountability. That's going to translate to the work world too. Commitment, like, you can't just be interested in doing something and being interested in something doesn't cut it anymore, it might have 15-20 years ago, but if you're not committed, you're doing yourself and your team a disservice, you're going to get passed by other kids. Work ethic, again, you take your work ethic from the sports world, and then you take it into the real-world environment. If you can't hang your hat on your work ethic, you're in trouble, and you're struggling at some point. So those are a couple of things that we talk about daily. Grades are huge and if you don't have the grades, you can't play sports. So we can talk about sports till we're blue in the face, but without grades, you can't play and then without grades, you can't get into the school that hopefully, you want to go to and at the end of the day without being at school, you want to go to your employer more times than not isn't going to give you too much of a look, if you haven't done all these things leading up to the end result. So a lot of steps throughout the process, can't skip one to get to another, details are super important, it takes time, and it takes a ton of work. The steps to get there are insane, and everybody wants to skip one or two to get to three or four, and you just can't do it if you want to be great. And so much more...

020: Win From Within: Transform Your Mindset To Awaken Your Hidden Potential - with William Deck

Meet William William is the founder of Mind Business, LLC, and his calling is to help individuals and organizations remove their own success barriers. How the heck does he do that? Excellent question! He does so by educating them on the mental foundations for success. He has many years of leadership, sales training, and consulting experience and he has come to understand that the most common causes of personal dysfunction within an individual are thoughts and feelings of unworthiness and unforgiveness. Let's get the show kicked off here a little bit by talking about your sports career! What got you involved in sports and how far did it take you? Yeah, so for me, sports have been a part of my life since I was nine years old. I began to play basketball watching Michael Jordan back in the mid-90s. I also grew up in Houston, Texas, so I was watching the Houston Rockets win championships with Hakeem Olajuwon, Clyde Drexler, and all those guys. So my very first love as far as sports was basketball. My neighbor had a basketball hoop and I was over there pretty much every single day, hooping and putting my skills together and learning how to do layups from different corners of the backboard, and all those things at nine years old. When I was 10 years old, I tried out for football and made the team and the interesting thing about football is that for whatever reason, it just was something initially that I did not really take to a whole lot,  I would say I was a little timid. I had tons of physical strength and I was physically stronger than the other kids my age, but I was timid and so even though I lived in the suburbs, my mom took me to play with this inner-city team and these guys were knocking me around and things like that. It wasn't that I couldn't hang, I just had that timidity. So long story short, one day I came home from practice, and I had my head, "You know what? I'm done, I'm going to go ahead and hang them up and go back to the basketball court," and my mom was in the kitchen cooking so I kind of walked in there to let her know I'm quitting. So I went there, I said, "Hey, Mom, I don't think I want to go to practice tomorrow, I think I just kind of want to quit, this is not working out for me." She basically said, "You're not quitting," and she turned back around and kept on cooking. She let me know that if you quit with this one thing, then you will basically think that it's okay to quit with other things. So I went to practice the next day, pissed off at her and what I said to myself was, "You know what? I'm going to prove her wrong and I'm going to take out my rage on all these guys out here because this is ridiculous." So I went after that practice, and I was fired up so I went out there and I just started lighting people up. After that day of practice, the defensive coordinator had never seen have from me and they wanted me to bring that same energy to practice the next day. After that, I never looked back with football specifically. I continued to play basketball, but with football, it was just so exciting. It was something that I was good at and so I defensive MVP as a 10-year-old and our team won the city championship! Then after that, I really begin to lose weight. I was a little husky when I was younger and I slimmed off and eventually made my way to running back by the time I got to middle school and did really well in middle school with football. So I got to high school and during my senior year, I'm being recruited by some schools like Kansas State, Rice University, Tennessee, and a few others and I tore my ACL halfway through the season, on this crazy play. At that point, I had to make a decision as I was doing rehab for an ACL tear, am I going to continue to train to try to get back out there by the next fall. I got back to about 90%, but the schools that I was talking to many were trying to do partial scholarships, preferred walk-ons, and many of them were out of state that was still potentially considering a full scholarship, but it was going to be a long shot. In my head, I think it was a combination of being a little immature, but also thinking about my parents are going to have to pay state tuition, which I think was a mature decision and I made the decision to go to university, Houston. So I play some Semi-Pro Football after that, but I never end up playing at the collegiate level. So it was just really interesting how I knew that I could have played at the college level because I was getting recruited to do so, but life had a different path. It really began to force me to think about what I wanted to do beyond sports because I was totally identified with being an athlete. That led me on this life journey that has led me to now being a mindset coach. I began to have this mental transformation, especially in my mid-20s. I just had a calling that there was something more that wouldn't let me go back to the mindset that I am an athlete because there was something deeper within me that was saying that you're so much more than that and you have a different destiny. How would you describe the switch that flipped that transformed you from a timid little kid into the athlete you became, and how do you carry that same mindset into what you do in your professional career? I think ultimately, what that moment as a 10-year-old showed me is that there was so much potential within me. Now, of course, this was specifically around sports, but it opened up my mind to where there was more potential and power and ability within me that I have not figured out. It's in there, but I just had to bring it out and I think for me, that experience as a 10-year-old really helped to spray my confidence in many things, not just sports, but with everything from academics to overcoming the adversity that I've had to face in my life. Everybody faces adversity, but it's how you deal with it and so that's really what opened up to me. I could never look at myself as being this limited person that can only do so much because I saw something absolutely explode within me which was a big motivation for me to help to inspire my siblings to really push themselves in whatever they do because when my younger sibling wanted to hang out with me, I was always training so I would be doing cone drills, doing agility work, doing explosive work all the time because I really wanted to be this great athlete and have my mom not have to pay and worry about me going to college. So I did not know that at the time but it actually really lit a fire within them to become competitive and to do their very best and whatever they set their foot in. That one day in practice lit a fire inside me and now it's being transferred into helping to support people to become the best version of themselves. But the energy is the same, it's this unwillingness to compromise, unwillingness to say "this is all I have, this is all I can do, this is all I can become," and because that light burns within me, I have an affinity to do that for other people. When I see people doubting themselves, underestimating themselves, I already know that that's a false sense of self and I always encourage others to be able to find that power within themselves because ultimately when you do that all the things that you need in life are within that space of realizing who you are. Do you ever find yourself looking at your mom and thinking, “Hey, thanks for making me stick out,” since she was the catalyst for your transformation? We've actually had that conversation many times so I definitely attribute my mom as a catalyst for my overall success and just ability to stay focused. Her voice has always been echoing in my head. First and foremost, she still reminds me to this day, that from the first time she laid eyes on me when I was born, she knew that I was going to be someone special, she knew that I was different and she knew that I had a great destiny and a great calling on my life and she's always told me that she's always envisioned me being up on stage. She says she would actually have visions of me being up on stage talking to millions of people with them chanting my name, over and over again. It's very interesting to where now I'm on the path of actually utilizing the spoken word to inspire people. She had this vision of me being this great speaker and influencer many years ago, way before social media, anything like that. So who would have guessed it? Of course, we have many years to come to see all those things through, but I think that also just is another indicator of how important parents are when it comes to kids, whether it's involvement in sports, or whatnot, your voice will echo through their heads for their entire lives, good, bad or indifferent. As I teach a whole lot about, subconscious programming is powerful which is your habitual behaviors, thinking, and actions. That's based on what you believe to be true and the first seven years of life is when you're being programmed into that default, whether it's positive, negative and parents have almost complete control of that outcome, and that is carried with children for their entire lives. Even as adults, we are the older version physically of those children and so if we're broken as children, until we wake up, we have no opportunity to become the best version of ourselves, and to let go of those childish thoughts and belief systems that are keeping us held back. You can be in an adult body, but not have an adult mind. To me, an adult mind is any individual that can think for themselves and galvanizes the courage to be able to take action when they have a vision, no matter what. That is something that I've had to learn very early in life, and I struggled with it until probably about age 30. But to be able to think for yourself, and be willing to take action when you have a vision, and you can trust that small voice is overwhelmingly powerful, but it can be scary as hell. So of course, you have to do that in life all the way up, even in sports, as a kid, when you get knocked on your butt and get back up. That decision is made in a split second, but as you get older, as an adult, there are more strategic decisions you have to make that can scare you away from your destiny. If you have a little bit of practice when you're young, you have an opportunity to be able to have some subconscious programming that will support that. Parents are extremely important to kids’ development, and not just to be able to perform on the field, but also in life. Because one day, no matter how you live as a parent, you're not going to be there and your voice is still going to be with your children, and will many times be spoken to their children. So make sure that those words count, because they can be a star athlete, great attorney, or just a great human being, which you're going to help to determine that. Switching gears here a bit, but you’re very active on social media which has garnered you a large network of followers. How much do you attribute that to your success, the relationships you have been able to create, and Young Guns? I would say that the single greatest thing that I have accomplished over the past four months has definitely been the Young Guns main event. Being in the final three initially, and having to compete and get over 2000 votes, and being able to come out on top and have the opportunity to then present my message to the world about the power of the subconscious mind has been the high as far as a singular event. But overall, I would just say, when it comes to the whole social media space, I've been very pleased to have done a deep dive in three different platforms. So it's been on Instagram, LinkedIn, and Facebook. On LinkedIn specifically, I've gained huge momentum and it's been really awesome to be able to see the feedback that I've been able to get from people, whether it's direct messages or otherwise, as far as how the content is being able to support them, has been a great reminder to stay focused, to stay encouraged to, and to know who you are, as far as the power that you hold within to become anything that you want. I would say overall, it's been exciting and it's been invigorating, because it lets you know that you're doing something right to help support people and it gives me a tremendous opportunity to give out good energy to as many people as I possibly can touch, knowing that that energy is going to come back to me and manifest in beautiful, wonderful ways that I won't even necessarily even know for some time. But I'm building up tremendous good karma for myself, but also passing it on to other people so that they can be the light for other people in their own lives. Social media gives you an opportunity to get your message out there. Of course, you have a decision on what that message is going to be and mine has just been one of transformation and empowerment. I know people need that anyway because I've needed it many times over the years and I think in a way I'm giving other people what I wish I had at certain points in my life. Thank God I made it through! But if I was able to connect with certain individuals who were publishing this kind of content, it would have helped me so much in times past so I'm also making sure that I'm doing that for that reason. Now, don't get me wrong, I was able to go to YouTube and find some great pastors and other folks who really encouraged me, but there was not anyone that was individual as like a content creator who was like this bigger than life figure, it was some of the more preeminent names, which still helped me a whole lot. So every time I post, I try to think about it from the perspective of what can I present to the world today that is going to help someone? So I have curated content three days a week, but the other one or two days that I post it's literally me sitting in my office or in my room first thing in the morning, and just kind of taking a moment to meditate and say, "I am trusting that the words will come to me that I need to say at this moment for somebody." This may only need to be for one person and that's okay, but it also could be for 10,000 and that's also pretty dope. Either way, I am willing, so let's go! Many times, those messages have been the ones that have impacted people the most. I don't necessarily have this secret formula, it's literally being available and being willing to speak truth, willing to put myself out there, and people may or may not love what I have to say, but I'm willing to do it. I'm betting on myself that this work that I'm doing is going to not only be able to inspire people and to build them up but also build a strong financial future for my family and I firmly believe that both can get accomplished and still be pure. This show is all about bridging the gap between sports and professional careers and there are a lot of athletes out there who are constantly in this battle of having to figure out how to prioritize themselves. You yourself are working full time while running your business full time as well so what has the journey been like for you? What are the tools that you have put in place to balance those two worlds to ultimately set yourself up for success? One of the best things that I can respond within that regard, is what I do each and every day when I wake up first thing in the morning. Most days, I don't have my mind racing with tons of things flying through it. I cannot say that until maybe two and a half to three years ago as far as waking up with a clear mind and I would say that, because I've gotten to this space, it's a little easier to kind of plan my day. But I know most of us to wake up in the morning with racing thoughts about all we have to get done and stress and so on and so forth. There are days that I have that too because I have a lot to get done and I'm balancing two worlds, not even including being a father and a husband and all that. So waking up with a daily practice has been most helpful, meaning what I do every morning, I wake up, I have written affirmations that I've written out that talk about things in the areas of business, of family, and of relationship building that I want to accomplish over the next year. I rehearse that script or those affirmations and speak them out loud to myself every single morning. I also take some time just to pray and meditate to clear my mind as opposed to trying to envision how am I day to go, which is very effective, I try to just clear my mind first. I try to have my mind clear and get some feelings of love and excitement in my energy and then I began to meditate specifically on things that I want to see like envisioning my day, envisioning specific conversations, envisioning this podcast and how it's going to go. It's really about being able to take some time to meditate for me, and envision positive outcomes for my day and positive outcomes for my week, because each and every day, we have things that have the opportunity to distract us. The only question that we have to answer in that regard is how we're going to respond. That is something that's very, very important for me. So having those written affirmations or reading them, taking some time to pray and meditate, specifically on positive outcomes that I want to see come to pass in the next day or the week is also important. Then I end that meditation session with two questions before I get my day started. What do I see for myself and my life and what do I believe to be true for myself in my life? You can believe something to be true, but if don't you have a vision for it, you're in trouble. That's why it says in the Bible, without a vision, the people perish. So I need to be able to see it in my mind and also affirm it through words. There may be something a little different each and every day, but it's consistent with abundance, health for myself, and my family, and peace and goodwill to everyone around me. Now to be a little less complex, especially for those young people who are in sports, one of the best things that you can do to help put yourself in a position mentally to be successful, is to expand the vision that you have for yourself. So if you have specific goals, you have to be able to envision yourself accomplishing those goals in order to get there. All the great athletes specifically at the top of my sports have done it and they talk about it very openly. Whether it's after winning a championship or after winning a big game, they always talk about things like we prepared all week, we knew what the team's defense's weaknesses were and we knew if we execute our plan to perfection, they couldn't beat us. What are they talking about? Not just practice, but they had a vision for what they believe to be true what was going on, and the outcome, right. Michael Jordan talks all the time about he knew where he was going to hit the shot on the court, he practiced this specific shot at the end of the game, it just so happened he got to a spot he knocked down that shot. Kobe and LeBron talked about it as well, they're talking about having a strong imagination and being able to see themselves there in advance. So young people, if you can see it in your mind's eye, you can accomplish it. That also applies to adults. But more than anything, if you don't see it, you can't be it. If you do see it, you have an opportunity to accomplish it and it is very strong from a possibility perspective, that you will do those things, you will accomplish those things in your life. I don't care how big the goal is, that is a formula for success that goes back to the beginning of time. Whether you are a young person or an adult, if you read any of these spiritual books, whatever it is, go back and read it. What are they talking about all the time? Having a vision! God gave Moses vision, God gave all the prophets of vision, a mental picture of what was going to happen, and then it happened because they took action to follow through and believe that it was possible. I don't what the story is, and what the background is, the core understanding is they had a vision and once they got that vision, they were able to accomplish it. There are infinite possibilities within you so there's a whole nation of infinite possibilities, which could be represented in a nation of people who are all unique as individuals that are possible. But if you don't have a vision, a plan, and the ability to see something happening before it happens, you basically disqualify yourself from accomplishing it and if you don't know where you're going, how are you going to get there? And so much more… Connect with William on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/williambdeck/ [https://www.linkedin.com/in/williambdeck/] Follow Mind Business, LLC on social media! Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/mindbusinessllc/ [https://www.facebook.com/mindbusinessllc/] LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/mindbusiness-llc/ [https://www.linkedin.com/company/mindbusiness-llc/] Instagram: @mindbusinessllc https://www.mindbusinessllc.com/ [https://www.mindbusinessllc.com/]