Athletes to Business

Count money, man, money that grits is fine.

Trying told trying told him I'm a beast.

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Welcome to the grind cast.

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Welcome to another episode of The Grind cast.

Get ready.

It's a new day.

And we're going to talk a little bit about the similarities that I've noticed from athletes

in sports and why I think a lot of athletes transition well into not only my business,

but business in general, but specifically, I love working with athletes.

And so I started to think about how can I articulate this and maybe people that weren't athletes.

Maybe they could start to adopt and adapt some of these principles that I think would

help them go to the next level.

When I think about sports, I think about the key thing, one of the key things is I think

you have to learn playing sports that while you may love the game, there's going to be

things in that game in the process and preparation of it that you don't love.

So I'll give you an example.

I remember in college, we would have to run in the off season in Erie, Pennsylvania,

where I played at Mercyhurst University, Division II, four-year starter at Strong Safety.

And we would have to walk to the gym, the basketball gym, in the snow, which is about

a five, 10 minute walk and then change shoes and be ready to run by six o'clock in the

morning, sometimes five, 30 in the morning.

And so that alarm clock's going off, five o'clock in the morning, 430 in the morning in college.

And then after that, we had to go to eight o'clock classes, a lot of us.

And continue to go to school where later on in the day, we would have to do some more things

for sports.

And so I think what sports teaches people is that if you're looking to get a result, even

if you like something, if you don't start the understanding process of there's things

in the process that you're not going to feel like doing, what you want versus what happens

is not going to pair up because if I wanted to play and I wanted to be a starter and I wanted

to be a captain, but I wasn't willing to walk to that gym at five o'clock in the morning

or six o'clock in the morning, I couldn't play on that team.

I couldn't expect that result.

I couldn't expect to lead others.

Do you think I wanted to do that?

Do you think we wanted to do that as a team?

No, we didn't want to do that.

Hector coaches had to be there.

You think the coaches wanted to do that?

The coaches wanted to be there.

The leaders of the team were there.

I remember my head coach being there at 50 years old with a family early in the morning.

You think he wanted to do that?

Those are things in the process that you learn to do in sports that if you don't lose that

and you allow it to transition into the world and into business, people are going to be

a lot further along.

Somewhere along after you graduate high school or college or you stop playing sports, people

lose that feeling of, even if I don't want to do it, I'm going to do it anyway.

People start to just do what they feel like doing, even if they know it's getting them

further away from the life that they want.

The next thing is, and I remember learning that there was times that my coaches would

say things to us, and I'm going to ask for any kids out there.

I know there's some folks, my girlfriend, Cheska, listen sometimes, and she's not even

in high school yet.

I need an excuse.

An excuse me to the parents out there, but I got to use the F word.

I remember my coaches saying, what the fuck are you doing out here?

And cut the bullshit.

I mean, just in our ass as coaches.

And I'm talking about from time that I played Pee Wee football all the way up.

And what I'm grateful for and thankful for as a young person, I remember having, I think

one of my hardest coaches on me when we were eight, nine, ten years old, which I think would

serve to prove to help me in college as a college athlete because he was so hard on us.

And so I think you learn in sports at times how to accept hard coaching.

And then in business, people start to get soft or weak.

If you're in sports and you can't take hard coaching, very few people are going to be able

to make it.

If you can't get coached hard and you can't take what your coach is saying to you.

Also in sports, the sports don't play the person that's been there the longest.

And sports they played the best player available.

If you're a coach and you're only playing the seniors, even if they're not the best, you're

not going to have a job very long.

You have to play the freshman if the freshman gets better results.

You have to play the freshman if the freshman has more talent and they can get the job done.

And in sports, you can get beat out.

There's times people where they're the starter as a sophomore, but they're not the starter

as a junior.

This will teach you how to compete and that transfers over into the business world where

you have to get rid of this mindset and mentality that, oh, I've been here for five years

or I've been here for 10 years that somebody owes you something.

Success is rented.

You can't own it.

You have to pay the price and the rents do typically on a daily or an annual basis.

You have to be able to compete mentally as an athlete, even if these are people around

you that you like or that you love, you know, playing sports, you have to beat people out.

You have to be able to compete whether you like it or not.

If you don't like it, then you shouldn't be playing sports because you're playing and they're

judging you based off wins and losses, which is a competition.

And so you have to learn being a part, especially being a part of a team.

And even individual sports, you're a part of a team.

You have coaches that help you, teammates that help you, people that you drill with, it's

a team.

And so as a team, we got to practice and we got to compete and then we got to collectively

compete against others.

I'm telling you, you got to be able to bring that mindset and what I did in business is

I would find people and I would say, all right, this is the person that I'm compete.

I'm going to beat this person.

I'm going to beat that person.

I'm going to go, even if I didn't say it to that person in my mind, I'm thinking, I'm

going to pass up this person in sports.

You also have injuries.

I don't think you can play sports your whole life and not have any, any injuries.

Well, guess what?

In business, in the real world, you're going to have things that injure you.

Maybe it's not your ankle or your knee, but maybe you lost your best person and you're

injured.

Maybe something happened to your business and you're in a lawsuit.

So that's you're an injury.

You got to bounce back.

There's things that happen in business that a cause that may set you back six weeks,

eight weeks.

Sometimes you'll see people get hurt and they're out for the whole season.

They're out for 12 months.

Your business may get set back six months or a year.

You need to rehab, rehabilitate and come back stronger.

In sports, you learn that you win and you lose.

When you lose, you learn from it.

You watch the film, you watch the tape and you get better.

You don't quit.

In business, you're going to have wins and losses.

There's going to be times where you lose and you got to grow from it.

You got to get better from it and it's all fricking mental.

You can't quit as soon as you start to lose.

In sports, if you're a winning and you come off a win, that's why you have people on

upset alert.

When you think that you've arrived, you're about to get knocked off.

It's difficult.

This why I have so much respect for the New England Patriots because everybody's gun

in for them.

People are all rooting against them.

They're sick of seeing them win.

They're been on top and they continue to play at a high level and find a way to win.

In business, in life, you got to learn how to win and get to the top and stay on top.

Stay hungry.

Focus of keep working.

Keep pushing.

Very often, people get there and they fall off.

They get there and they fall off because they stop having that hunger that they had when

they were an underdog.

They stop working like they were working as a rookie when they become a veteran.

I want you to learn how to, we got to transfer that from the playing days, the athletic days

into our business days.

In sports, when you look at people in high school or Peewees and college all the way up, they

do it broke for years before they make it big.

They play for free and don't make a lot of money doing it before they start to make all

this other money.

You'll see people at times, maybe they're not making a ton of money in the process and they

get discouraged in their first year or in their second year.

Then you'll see people, he's playing for a 16 million contract or this person, this

is bullshit.

This box is just fought in a one fight.

He made $10 million or $5 million.

Were you there 15 years ago when he was broke and could barely eat and pay his bills because

he was boxing and working out for free when nobody was paying him shit.

There's things in the process that you got to do broke.

You got to do when you're not making a lot of money.

That will equivilate to you making a lot of money.

In sports, you have to learn discipline.

I remember no matter how good I was, matter of fact, if I was the captain or the starter,

it was even harder on me.

I couldn't be late for practice.

Anybody back in the day, I remember a little little plan of playing Peewee sports.

You were late to practice the culture just be doing this.

That means just run laps.

Just get to get to stop and get to running.

If you jump off sides, there's a penalty.

You can't give an excuse.

This person did this or this person in the middle of the game.

Nobody gives a shit.

Just move your ass back five yards.

We learn discipline and accountability in sports and then we move over into business

and we got excuses if you're late or if you jump off sides and have a hard time with being

held accountable for those actions.

In sports, I learned the best players, the coaches with the best players typically won

more than they lost.

So you learn from sports recruiting in business.

You got to be able to recruit and have the best players as well.

In sports, you got to be obsessed.

Round the clock.

You ask people that play college football or college sports.

This ain't a 20-hour work week.

This ain't a 30-hour work week.

Kids that are playing college sports, they're probably putting in 50, 60 hours a week to

that sport on top of being a student.

In business, if you want to be great, you got to be obsessed and you're not going to be

able to do it in 20 hours, 30 hours.

If you want to be the star player in sports, you want to be the pitcher, you want to be the

quarterback, you want to be the head coach, you got to be able to handle the pressure that's

put on you.

In business, you want to make the money, you want to be the president, you want to be

the CEO, you want to be the top leader, you want to be the boss, you want to, you better

be able to handle the pressure that's on your shoulders if you want to be the quarterback.

You want to make the 17 mil, you want to make the 5 mil, you want to make the 10 mil, that

means when there's 100,000 screaming fans and it's fourth and five in the whole country's

watching, you got to be able to deliver and not panic.

And so in business, it's the exact same way.

People start shying away from the pressure, but they want the money that pressure brings.

You got to understand that in sports, when you really look at the percentages, people

talk about turnover a lot or not a lot of people can do it, well, guess what, something that

a lot of people can do, you're not going to make a lot of money yet.

And that a lot of people can do means it's easy, probably not a lot of value.

News flash, anything in life worth doing, that's going to be great, is going to come with

obstacles, adversities and difficulties.

How many people make it out of high school?

I saw a statistic that, and I think this was more football related, but 7% of high school

athletes make it to play college sports in general, 7%.

So that's not 10, that's not 50, that's not 80, that's not most kids, 7%.

Less than 2% make it in D1, less than 2%.

So when you look at business, if you want to play at the elite levels, you got to understand

maybe 7% are going to make it.

7% if you want to play D1, if you want to do things D1 in business, that means 100 people

are going to try your job and 1 or 2 of those people are going to make it, that's playing

D1.

So that means, if you look at, and I think I saw, I think it was 1500, don't quote me,

1800 high school athletes, 100 of them go to college, and 1% of them end up playing

pro.

So that basically means out of 1,500 people,

one of them makes it to the pros.

In the NFL,

only 2% of the seniors get drafted.

So all college football players

playing around the country,

morning, noon, night,

2% of the people get drafted.

So if you look at the statistics,

less than 1% a fraction of a percentage of high school players ever get drafted.

A fraction of a percentage.

Oh, and then by the way,

when you make it to the NFL,

a lot of people will tell you the NFL stands for not for long.

Average 10 years, 3 and a half years.

Things that pay well are hard champ

and you learn that in sports.

But somehow in life you get into a life

or you get into business and something in your mind thinks,

oh, this is hard.

This ain't as hard as sports was.

You'll just stop being an athlete in your mind.

Things that pay well are going to be hard.

Things that are hard are going to do by you well at times

and you'll be more well to do if money is your goal or money.

One of the things that you want is financial freedom.

You got to understand probably 1%

are going to be able to,

you got to be able to fight through that.

In sports, you learn that if I make it to college,

I'll make it to the NFL.

That's just, you just got there.

And if you think you made it to play college ball

you're going to stop grinding and stop putting in the work

that you did in high school or even more, you're done.

If you made it to the NFL and you think you made it now

that you're in the NFL and you stop working hard there

and you don't do what it takes to go to the next level,

you're done.

And then what else do you learn in sports?

How often do we see things on ESPN

where people are making bad decisions

and they lose their contract or they lose their opportunity?

Sometimes talent will get you to a place that your character

cannot keep you.

You learn that in life and in sports.

And so we got to keep our character in line.

If you want a 10-year career, if you want a 20-year career,

if you want a 30-year career.

And so I just want to,

as I wrap this up over the next few minutes,

I want to just encourage you out there

to start playing wherever you're at,

whatever business it is that you're in,

whatever it is that you're doing.

If you're a student in school, if you're playing sports

or whatever it is,

if you want to be a beast,

get comfortable doing shit that you don't feel like doing.

Get comfortable mentally, understanding most people

are not going to be able to do what it is that it requires.

Mentally, most people are going to break

but that's the good news for the mental beasts out there.

And I want you to ask yourself a question,

whether you're working out right now,

you're driving somewhere right now.

Do I have the mindset of a champion?

Am I developing my mind?

You know, people train their legs

and they train themselves in sports all the time

because that's their money maker in sports, in your body,

in your mind but it's your physicality.

When you get into a professional career,

the new tool becomes your mind.

It's not punching a bag, it's not hitting myths,

it's not moiety, it's not a great leg kick,

it's not a great rear necked choke,

it's not benching, power cleaning, deadlifting,

and I love all those things I just name.

But when you get into the business world,

when you start doing things like that,

that new professional career,

the development that you need,

the practice that you need is in your mind.

Whatever your mindset believes,

you'll get close to getting,

if not getting it all.

But guess what?

Your level of accomplishment is going to mirror

your level of adversity that you can handle.

If you can't handle no adversity,

you can't handle the 1% accomplishment.

It's easy for people to understand,

yeah, out of 1,500 high school athletes,

1% of them play pro.

Or 9 out of 10,000 high school seniors

eventually get drafted.

That's like 0.09%.

It's easy, but then you get into business,

and you're like,

well, how come these people didn't make it?

Or how come these seven people didn't make it?

That we're in my training class,

or that we're in because it ain't for everybody.

Being a 1% or 8 for everybody.

Being a professional means that not everybody's

going to be able to do it.

You've got to become a beast.

And you've got to be able to be a beast mentally

when your ass is down.

You can't just want the rewards

and not handle the obstacles and adversity

that comes with it and before it.

It's a climb to the top.

You can't get their own accident.

It's a grind to the top.

You can't get their own accident.

It's a war to the top.

You can't get their own accident.

It's a mental fight to the top.

You can't get their own accident.

And you're going to want to quit.

You're going to want to give up.

You're going to want to tap.

And I'm telling you, don't.

You're going to be sleeping with the fishes.

When you start quitting and giving up,

you start to become like everybody else, a robot.

You ain't listening to this.

If you wanted to be like everybody else.

You ain't putting time and energy and effort into listening

what it is that I'm talking about right now.

That's one percent.

If you want to be a part of that one percent,

I'm telling you, I'm telling you,

you've got to start developing your mind

and you cannot get down and negative

when things don't work out your way.

Next week or next month,

something's going to happen.

It's going to cause you to not work out your way.

If you start getting negative and you start getting down

and you start doubting yourself,

you're going on your way to quitting.

And if you keep on quitting,

you're going to have to keep on starting over everything in your life

and you never have a chance to climb to the fricking top.

The people that are at the top, they got their ass beat.

You can't only want the rewards.

You cannot be afraid to get punched in the face.

You cannot be afraid to get hit.

In sports, you got to take a charge, playing basketball,

run into the contact, going into the layup.

Shit, even playing soccer, you got to get physical now.

Can't box if you're afraid to get hit.

Can't play football if you don't want to get hit.

Playing baseball, your ass is going to get hit

by 90 mile an hour fastball.

What makes you think that you can approach greatness

and the rest of your life

and you want to do something great in your ass

and get a get hit?

Stop crying.

Put some ice on it.

Have your mommy or your boo-boo kiss it for you.

And get your ass up and start fighting.

That's what's going to win.

That's what's going to get you to where you need to be.

And it starts in your mind.

You start feeling bad for yourself when you get injured.

You start feeling bad for yourself

when things don't work out the way that you thought

that they were going to work out immediately.

Temporarily something might happen

and you start feeling bad for yourself.

You start to get down and then you start to pile,

then you start to doubt yourself, then you start to look elsewhere,

then you start the whole process over again

and the people that don't quit

that keep on grinding through the process

and they can take a hit,

they're either going to beat your boss

or going to be looking up at them.

Wishing that it was you,

wondering how they are where they are.

I got the news for you.

The reason why they are where they are

is their ass did not quit.

They did not tap out under adversity

and under extreme circumstances

and the people that are where you want to be,

whether they look,

they graduated from Yale, Harvard

or they look like they got a perfect smile

and a nice suit, they're warriors.

Mentally, they were able to get through some adversity.

And then you got to keep the same mindset

to stay on top until you retire.

When you get there,

if you plan on staying there,

you better keep on working.

You better keep on grinding.

You better stay humble.

You better be coachable.

Keep working on your craft.

The minute that you kick up your feet,

the minute that you start thinking you've arrived

is the minute that your ass is going to go

from Super Bowl champion

to not even making a playoffs.

As the leader,

you know, I mentioned my coach

in college would be there early in the morning

while we were running sprints,

you think he wanted to be there?

As the leader,

you're given people's lives in your hands

to who much is given,

much is required.

If you have a leadership ability

and capacity you've been blessed with,

help other people's lives become better because of you.

Care about them.

Be patient with them.

Lead by example.

But sometimes, being a great leader means

you've got to pull more out of people

and make them uncomfortable.

But it starts with you.

Ask yourself right now.

Am I being outworked?

Am I putting more time into things

that are not going to make me any better in my business

or what I'm trying to be great at?

Am I putting more time into that

that I could be putting into myself or into my business?

Are there people in my current position

that are outworking me?

I pride myself.

I've always pride myself.

High school.

Ask a player.

Ask a coach who worked the hardest around you.

I feel like my name's going to come up.

College.

Same thing.

Business.

Same thing.

To this day.

Why?

Because that's one thing that you could freaking control.

You can control that.

If you're being outworked, why?

What excuse are you making it makes you think

that this shit is okay?

Who in your position

is outworking you?

And why?

Are you giving it everything you got?

Are you obsessed?

Are you focused?

Or are you expecting to sit at the table

with people that gave all when you gave half?

Is that what you're expecting?

You're expecting to sit at the table

with people that gave everything they got

in your ass give half.

Here's what I know.

If it ain't happening to you now,

it's on its way.

You reap what you sow.

If you're taking the easy route,

you may get away with it for a minute.

You're not going to get away with it for a lifetime.

You're going to get caught.

You're going to get found out.

It'll be karma.

You have to either hold yourself accountable

or somebody else is going to hold you accountable.

And so as we wrap this up today,

as we close this out today,

I want to encourage you

to perform like an athlete,

like a business athlete.

This is your new field.

This is your new arena.

Give everything that you got.

Be obsessed.

Don't look for the easy way out.

Understand that greatness is coming to you.

Don't quit.

Don't give up when things get harder

when you get down.

When the mental battles.

And you'll be on your way to greatness.

Keep grinding.

If this helped anyone out there,

please do me a favor.

Share this with somebody

that needs to hear it

that we can impact their life.

That's it. We ain't charging nothing for this.

If you got any value,

share it with somebody else.

And let's let's impact other people's lives together.

Thank you for the investment of your time

to listen into the grandcast.

Looking forward to having another one.

Appreciate all of you.

Let's get it. Get ready as a new day.

Count money, man. Money back riches.

I'm trying to talk, trying to talk to my beast, bud.