Taking Your Athlete Mindset Into the Business World, with Chris Smith

Welcome to the Athletics of Business, a podcast about how the traits and behaviors of elite athletes and remarkable business leaders frequently intersect the real stories and hard lessons to help you level up your leadership and performance. Now your host, Ed Molitor.

Welcome today's episode of the Athletic of Business podcast and our guest today is Chris Smith, founder of Athlete Network. Chris started Athlete Network because he believes once an athlete, always an athlete. The challenge for athletes is they will not always be on a team or involved with a competitive athletic pursuit, but their athlete mindset never shuts off. Athlete Network's goal is to help their members understand and leverage the athlete mindset throughout all aspects of life. They do this by connecting athletes to right employers, mentors and motivating content or which allows them to stay focused, leverage their athlete mindset and keep competing in life. Born and raised in Hawaii, he not only grew up in one of the most beautiful places in the world, but one of the most diverse as well.

The aloha spirit of being friendly and willing to help anyone is in his DNA. Chris played football for the University of Hawaii and was part of their championship season in 1999 as well as for Missouri State University where he earned his degree in entrepreneurship management. Prior to Athlete Network, he gained extensive operational and sales experience within the pharmaceutical, finance and investment banking industries. Still a competitive athlete, he recently completed his first Tough mudder race. Chris founded Athlete Network because he believes athletes are at their best when constantly immersed in a challenge. Today's online platforms are too generic and fall short at inspiring athletes to push past the status quo. By focusing on the right athlete attributes, Athlete Network is able to inspire and fuel the members driven lifestyles. Chris, thank you so much for joining us today.

We are very excited to have you here. I'm humbled by you joining us and I appreciate you carving out some time for us today.

It's great to be with you this morning Ed. Thanks for having me.

And you know it's funny Chris, we've been trying to connect for a while now. I followed the great work you've done first when you were career athletes and then you transitioned over to Athlete Network. I want you know, let's start by you sharing your journey with us, taking us all the way back to growing up in Hawaii, playing football in the way, then going to, I believe it was Southwest Missouri State. Okay, Missouri State, let's go ahead and start there.

Yeah, I'm the product of two crazy parents from the east Coast. My dad played football at the University of Maryland, was living in New York. It's probably 50 years ago and started snowing and they packed up and moved to Hawaii. So I ended up being born and raised in Hawaii, which was a extremely unique upbringing. Unfortunately, I didn't know any better, so I didn't realize how unique it was because I was on a tiny rock. But growing up in an athletic family, I played every sport I could play. I played baseball, soccer, I wrestled, I raced sailboats, track and field. And then as time went on, football kind of became my sport of choice. Got a full ride scholarship to the University of Hawaii, was the starting center there for a couple years. And that's when my first real adversity hit me.

My coach got fired and our new coach, June Jones, came in. He was the head coach of the San Diego Chargers at the time. It was funny because the very first practice I had with him, he told me he was going to find me. I was like, you can't find college.

You can pay us, but you can't find us. No, I'm just kidding.

Yeah. So it was a humbling experience because we shifted offenses from the running or from the options, the run and shoot. And my first game in that offense was against usc and I just wasn't good. It was the first time anything in athletics I'd ever done I wasn't good at because you have to pass, block, you have to. It's a totally different skill set. And I struggled that season. I had a year of eligibility left and, you know, they did it the right way. He said, look, you know, you can transfer or you can stay, but you're not going to start next year. He goes, we would really love the scholarship because we're trying to build some here.

And, you know, I just talked with my family about it, prayed about it, and my old coach was friends with the head coach in Missouri State who ran a very similar option. And, you know, I just trusted that it was the right decision and transferred to Springfield, Missouri. Never had been to the Midwest in my life.

How was that?

It was a culture shock. You know, the. You remember, I was a center. So instantly the food was amazing. I never had biscuits and gravy or.

You didn't know what you were missing. You're so used to all that pineapple and stuff on the island, huh? Yeah.

I mean, everything's so expensive in Hawaii. The concept of a buffet offensive lineman was like these. You know, you have no money back then. So I remember the first time I went into Golden Corral, I was like, what's all this food? I can keep going Back.

I thought you were in heaven, didn't you?

You know, everything happens for a reason. You don't really know it at the time, but ended up starting there. We had a pretty good run. It's. It's funny because our opening game was against Arkansas and I actually went down from 1A to 1 double A in football. But I played in the biggest stadium I'd ever played in. Right. We're in the locker room and I just kept hearing this. I didn't know what it was.

It's bizarre, isn't it? It's awesome.

But anyway, so that's kind of just. That's how I got to the mainland. A quick upbringing of my past.

So did you ever think. And I was. I've always been curious about this as I followed you. Were you curious or were you interested in going back? Or did you. Did you meet your wife in Missouri? You did? Okay. Yeah.

Usually it has to do with a girl, right? I. I honestly thought that. Yeah, I. I honestly thought I would end up going back. Graduating from the University of Hawaii. They told me I could come back. You know, I was a local kid who chose to stay home. I had a pretty big following, so they treated me really good and I just embraced the culture. I really, you know, I was 22 at that time, and the open land, the ability to drive in your car and just drive, it was so cool to me. And I ended up staying on the mainland, met my wife there, and I just, I mean, I go back to visit my family in Hawaii, but at this point, I have no desire to move back there.

Right. So football ends, and we're really going to dive into, you know, your whole purpose and the vision of athlete Network. But football ends and then what happens to. What happens to Chris Smith?

Well, football ends. Even. Even when it was ending, I still thought it wasn't going to end. I considered playing arena football, but I was interning with Wells Fargo and started to get some pretty good interviews, lined up and got a job offer with Eli Lilly. It's a Fortune 200 pharmaceutical company.

Great company.

Yeah, it's really a company and I just had to make a choice. And I was lucky enough to have a dad who kind of helped me hang the cleats up and ended up going into their management program there. I started in sales and worked my way up with them.

And how long were you with Eli for?

Two years.

Okay, so what was that like? Let's just get right to what was that like in terms of you go from every day and recently, I Interviewed Hunter Goodwin down at Texas. You know, a great former Aggie played for the Vikings, the Dolphins than with the Falcons. But we talk about that transition out and what was that like mentally and emotionally for you? There's, there's no locker room to go to. You know, there's no weights required at 5, 5:30 in the morning. There's no conditioning, there's no the fellowship. Even though you are going to develop the fellowship in corporate America, there's not the, hey, we're going to battle every single day with each other. How was that?

You know, in the beginning, the honeymoon phase of a job was awesome. I had to wear a suit every day. I was making good money for a kid out of school. There was a six month period there where I was feeling good, I was really feeling successful. But then all of a sudden my athlete mindset started kicking back in and that competitive outlet, being surrounded by other people who want to win at all cost. I didn't realize at the time, but some started to not feel right. I started working out at the gym where I lived at the time and met some other guys who played college ball. But I started to go into, I don't want to call it depression, but I started to get really frustrated because on paper things look so good.

I had a good job with a Fortune 500 company, good benefits, I was doing good. I started my career path really good. But something wasn't right. And my girlfriend at the time, now my wife, she was like, what's wrong with you? This is everything you said you wanted. And then it happened. I got the opportunity to go to headquarters and my boss said something to me that to this day I'll never forget it. He goes, chris, I just want you to know half the people that are going to love you and half the people are going to hate you. And I had no idea what he was talking about. But the half that hated me is because I'm an intense guy, I'm still a college football player in my head and I wasn't going into work to get through the day.

I was going into work to kick ass and try to make a difference. But this is a multi billion dollar company that's been around for 100 something years. I was a young arrogant guy and I had the opportunity to meet the CEO and I opened my mouth and told him to keep his seat warm for me and I got reprimanded by it.

So self confidence isn't an issue, which was good.

It wasn't, but sometimes you can Be overconfident. Right?

Right. Yeah. So you got self, you got reprimanded.

I got reprimanded. And that's where I realized this isn't a great company. I have nothing but good things to say, but I've got to do something different because I can't just coast through the day. I need to be stimulated. I need to have an ambitious goal constantly in front of me and I need to have the outlet to go purs it and I need to be surrounded by people that want to pursue something big. And a lot of companies in America, if you just kind of show up, you're ethical and do your job, they're thrilled. They don't want you doing more than that. So that was a struggle with my transition.

And as we both know very well know, the athlete and the entrepreneurial mindset go hand in hand so well. If you had to do that situation with your CEO over again, how would you have handled that?

I would have requested a meeting from him. I've learned if you can get people talking about themselves and trying to become a champion of you, that they're very open. It's kind of the secret that's out there. But successful people want to help others be successful. You just have to be willing to be considerate of their time and ask the right questions.

Right.

So I knew the CEO was going to be there. So what I would have done is prepared myself with maybe three things to ask him when I met him to get him to agree to meet with me on a future date instead of being a pompous ass like I was.

Well, and you had the right intention though, you know, you did have the right intention. And that's a great lesson. I mean, really, it's a great lesson for young people or anyone climbing the corporate ladder or, you know, pursuing the position they want to. But we've all been there. I remember when we got fired at Texas A and M, I was ticked, you know, and you know how it is. It's just, I mean, you live through the person that recruited you and signed you and was, you know, was family to you. You know, that world, what happens? And I was 28, I didn't want to be known as a survivor, you know, me, you know, irresponsible, immature, self centered. I thought the whole world revolved around people that were college basketball coaches. Right.

So I went back to Chicago and went in the mortgage industry. And I hey, I remember first Friday at work, my buddy comes over, he's a vp, comes over, he goes, what are you doing? You know, I'm in my suit, I'm like, I'm supposed to be here, right? He's like, come on. 305 start Wrigley Field, let's go. I love. But you know what? I was miserable because I totally lost my sense of direction, my sense of purpose in my why. And I got into that whole AM that you talk about and I want to talk about and I was going to compete my lips off and I was going to do things 110 miles an hour and bounce off the walls and just do it. And I didn't find other ways to. You know, I was used to.

I was used to for the last few years of my life, fighting for our lives and going to the office every day at 5:30, 6, 6:30 and stay until whatever time. And, you know, every phone call that you had was. Was significant. I didn't know how to. I didn't know how to adjust that. Do you see that a lot with the athletes that you talk to and work with?

Oh, absolutely. I mean, we athletes are. And I, I have the utmost respect for our military. So I'm not saying it's even comparable from a patriotic or what they have sacrificed. But athletes like military, we are warriors. And if we don't have a battle to fight, we don't feel we have a purpose. And that's where the struggle in lies is a warrior needs a battle or they feel trapped. And that's the mistake I think a lot of companies make with ultra competitive people. You can create battles. It doesn't have to be physical battle. You can create battles and goals and pursuits, but it gets misinterpreted and it ruffles feathers the wrong way. So I believe the majority of highly competitive people struggle because they're a warrior without a battle to go take charge in.

So how do you, when you talk to these athletes, how do you direct them in terms of. I hate to use the term picking your battle, but how do you design it? You know, I'm so focused on goals and projects and tasks in every single. What's the process today and what are the battles inside my process? That's how I go about things. But when you have these younger athletes that don't know any better. Right. How do you address that with them?

I first try to get them to understand that they are different and acknowledge it. If you made it to the collegiate level, especially the Olympic or pro level, a lot of athletes had some talent, but most of them that made it had talent plus work ethic. The Exception are the superstars. But that's not the majority of athletes. Most of those athletes, yes, they had God given talent, but they also had an insane intense workout or work ethic to them.

So I try to get them to understand that this mindset they have, and you alluded to it, this athlete mindset is a part of their DNA and it's a true double edged sword and it's what allows you to get up at 4am it's what allows you to be in that pain or deal with emotional issues of a coach or a teammate and allows you to succeed. But it also is what tells you're never good enough. It's also what beats the mentally. You beat the heck out of yourself all the time. You never are feeling successful. So step one is just getting them to try to understand that. Once they understand, okay, I have athlete mindset, I have AM which I need to be self aware of if I don't have an ultra competitive pursuit anymore. I need to redefine success. Right.

We all, when you're an athlete, going back to, you know, I'm coaching both my son and daughter soccer games. These kids are 6 and 8, 9 years old and they have a goal in front of them. They know what practice, they know we're going to run drills, they know we're going to play in a game to win the game. If you don't have that definition of success anymore, where are you going? And that's the problem with the transition. Most of them have not taken the time to understand who they are, redefine what success is going to be, then put the goals in place. So what happens is they put society's goals, they put what their parents or their partner or society thinks they should be doing as successful. I did it, you know, I was supposed to be this Fortune 500 guy.

My parents were proud. Oh, my son works for this. That was society's goals and I was fricking miserable because of it. So understand yourself, redefine success of who you are, know who you are and then put goals in place to achieve your new definition of success. And then the final piece is find someone to share them with. How many times did I want to lay? Especially during two days. You know, they don't even do two a days. We had three a day sometimes. Back when I played, how many times did I not want to get out of bed? What's the reason I got out to practice? Was it because I'm just this great guy? No, it's, I don't want to let My teammates down, man. I don't want to let my coach down.

Right. You're a part of something bigger than yourself.

Exactly. So you got to share these goals and be with people who are going to achieve them. And those are the steps that I think a lot of athletes don't do in the transition.

Well, it's funny you say share your goals because it irritates me when I read. I mean, anybody can write a blog these days, which is awesome. You know, anybody can write articles, but you'll see so many people say, don't tell anybody else your goals. Don't share your goals to me. To me you're letting, if you follow that advice, you're letting someone else's self limiting beliefs be projected onto you and you now have your restraint holding you back. I mean, I just. And it's not even so much an accountability partner, but it is, but it's. You know, sometimes you get so caught up in the minutiae of your process that you forget what you're doing and you need someone to remind you. You need someone to be a part of that with you.

And to be on that journey, you need to have a responsibility because it's like anything we can tell story after story about, you know, when someone else is involved. If I'm trying to save someone's life after a car accident or something like that, all of a sudden we get these superpowers, you know, we tap into a potential that we never, I mean, do you find that people are afraid to share their goals?

I think that if it's a big ambitious goal, they are because so many people shut them down. Goals do need to be checked sometimes because especially as athletes, we're creatures of success. We need to see incremental successes. So I think what happens, yeah, some people hold their goals back because they get so many people, you know, saying, oh, you can't do that instead of saying that's a great goal. And I do this all the time with our young athletes. You know, everyone wants to be a millionaire by their 30 when they graduate. And I said, okay, that's a great goal, but what's your income going to be when you're 25? Like, I don't tell them they're not going to be. I try to bring it back to a big goal with incremental goals to get there.

That's great. We spend so much time staring at the mountaintop, you know, we forget about the process and we don't run the feedback loops and that's it, because in athletics, you have a championship every season. You know, there's always, there's a conference championship, you know, the ncaa, whatever. There's. There's always something that's in that short term. And when you're, you know, an athlete, you get into that corporate world. It's. It's a bit of a challenge. So speaking of challenges, how was it so you leave Eli, and how did you come upon this incredible organization that you have founded and that you run now?

Yeah. So the journey all kind of actually started with Eli Lilly. I was fortunate to do pretty well. And my bosses would ask me, what are you doing? And I always tell people, they hated my answer. I said, I just work hard. You gave me a goal, I want to achieve it, and I want to be coached. So when you're in the big companies like that, when you're in the top, you get invited to president councils, just different opportunities. And I started to notice a trend that most of my colleagues that were at these were either former collegiate athletes or they were marathoners or they were ex military. They all, almost all of them were part of something bigger than themselves that had some kind of pursuit to it. So it started to trigger. Started talking to my boss, helping him hire my teammates.

And that's when the idea first kind of popped in my head. I got an opportunity to come to Kansas City and do M and A work. One of my former teammates was doing it, making a killing. And I decided the corporate world was not for me. It wasn't conducive with my personality. So I came to Kansas City doing that. And the exact same thing happened. Top performers, ex military athletes, just these warriors. And I was able to make some pretty good coin to save up to start building my business model. Because everyone told me, I can guarantee you two things, Chris. If you start a business, it's going to take longer than you think and cost more than you think.

And they were right.

They were right. So I had one guy who said, I've seen so many great ideas that the entrepreneur didn't have the means to keep it going. So I really wanted to kind of build at least a year Runway for myself and my wife. So was able to do that and eventually decided to just make the jump and start the business.

What did your wife say when you told her this is what you were going to do?

She was supportive of it because I didn't do it. I didn't just make a rash decision. I actually wrote the business plan out. I sent it to six of my mentors with a red pen and a $25 Starbucks gift card. And I said, hey, man, can you go to Starbucks and just mark the hell out of this thing. Where do you think I'm missing it? So she saw me put the effort into it. It was calculated. And then when I started to get a little timid to should I do it? Because she saw me put that work in, she was encouraging and said, you need to go now. On the flip side, my athlete mindset was driving her nuts because she was sick of hearing me bitch and complain about not pursuing something.

You know, I'm very blessed because my wife's a former athlete. And by the way, she is the athlete in the family, not me. So long as the kids have her athletic ability, we're in good shape. Okay, but so I was, you know, she understood where I was coming from. But it was funny because when I launched the Molitor group, we just had our second kid and we just bought a new house and she had just started a new job. She was in the mass layoff at Sprint after a ton of years there. And she looked at me, she goes, okay, so let me get this straight. You have a really good job right now that you enjoy. You know, you love working with the military, you love your team, but you have this dream and you want to pursue it.

And we just bought a new house. The market's awful. We still have the other house. I just started a new job and we have a six month old. She goes, you're a genius. So, no, but she's been very supportive and that's important. And I think what you said though, and what you did is, I mean, you took your time and you did your due diligence and you put your plan together and you asked people to, hey, I love the $25 gift card, by the way. That's a great idea. And a red pen and go to Starbucks and mark it up. So that initial vision that you had for it was career athlete, then has that changed? Just evolved? Grown? What has happened?

It's evolving. So originally what happened was I had some teammates of mine that were unbelievably bright guys who were really struggling. And I almost became a quasi mentor to them, even though we're the same age. And I was blessed and fortunate. I had a good dad that helped me guide. Not everybody has that kind of support structure. And when you graduate and we're trying to remedy this right now, when you're a competitive athlete, a collegiate Olympic, when you leave, you're done there's no support. The coaches go away, the services go away. And they kept coming to me. And I would help them with their resumes. But more importantly, I'd give them the confidence that you are prepared. You're prepared more than most. No one's had a more difficult boss than a college coach.

No one's had more pressure and accountability than the wins and losses we had. And you just need to learn how to cross pollinate that. So I'd have these conversations with them and they would get reinvigorated. They were like, oh, I'm not just a football player. I actually can bring a lot to my next endeavor. And I learned that companies value that. I didn't invent companies wanting to hire athletes. They've been doing it for years. I just made it more efficient to connect the two. So for years, that's what we did. We went around colleges, we did seminars. I mean, we've done probably over a thousand seminars at colleges to seniors, preparing them, teaching them this. Then what happened, Ed, is we would get them the job and the athlete mindset would kick in just like it did to me back at Lilly.

They'd come back to us and I'd have to bring them back down to earth and say, no, keep going. You can't let your mind take you on the wrong path. So we decided, can we build a community here? Can we build a network that continues to provide services to athletes? Not really trying to be a social network, but more of a network that helps the athlete mindset. Do you need content written by other athletes? Do you need access to employers? Do you need access to mentors? So that's where the pivot came in. Instead of just being more of a headhunting firm to a true network. And what happened was the colleges and the United States Olympics and everyone came to us and said, can we have what you're doing, but make it our own? So we started essentially White label Athlete Network.

And today where it's really gone is it's become a software where we give collegiate athletic departments, Olympic committees, pro sports teams. We give them the software to be able to provide and continue to provide services to their current and alumni athletes with the goal of helping them advance themselves. Because you know this better than anyone. If you've got support from your alumni, your current athletes are focused, they're not going to get in trouble as much, you're going to win. And that's what we have become, is more of a software company than anything.

Yeah, how do you like that? Did you like that?

Evolution it was a challenge. I got an unbelievably talented CTO two years ago, and he's really helped. It's a lot more expensive. We've had to invest a lot of money into this. But we've been providing this software to the United States Olympics for three years now, and we've seen the impact it's had on those athletes. So from a worthiness, it's going to be able to help a lot more athletes. From a business, it gives us a lot bigger scale because the cricket clubs india have the same problems as the clubs here.

Right. You know, you just. I want to get to. When you presented at the Athlete Career and Education Ace Olympic and Paralympic summit in D.C. in April, that's incredible. I want to get to that, but I don't want to forget, you know, in old age, we get hit in the head a lot. I don't want to forget this point. I want to ask you about that. Going into the software business, so to speak, that had to push you way outside your comfort zone. And that taps into being an athlete and living outside your comfort zone. Can you talk into that just a little bit?

Way outside? Because I'm a biz dev guy, I'm a sales guy that had it become tech. And being an athlete and going through my transition from, to Missouri State, I know and believe if you don't have the skill set, don't try to fake it. Be great at what you do, and then give props or acknowledge people who are great at what they do. So I knew the very first thing I was gonna have to do is get a CTO. Well, CTOs are not cheap. Good ones. Better raise some money to do that. The second thing is my mentors share with me that a business is like a child and the employees are at shoes. As the child grows, it's going to need different shoes because the child is going to be doing different things.

I had a bunch of phenomenal people in my organization that were not going to be able to perform in a software company environment. And these were good people that did their job well, but we had outgrown their skillset for where we're going. So I had to make some pretty critical changes, which that's tough also, because if someone's doing their job good and you're succeeding at it, but the company is pivoting some of its outcomes, and then you've got to go to these people and be like, hey, I love you, but we're changing. And it's exactly what June Jones did to Me way back in the day. Right, right.

What happened to those people?

You know, a lot of them have gone on to great careers with other companies.

Okay. So it wasn't like you tried to restructure their role or do something different. It's just the capacity wasn't there, the ability wasn't there. So that had to be for you. That had to be really difficult.

It was difficult. And some of it kind of, you know, once I started doing it, some. Some naturally saw the writing on the wall and made it easier on me and left on their own accord. But I really try to be transparent. It's kind of like sharing goals where you alluded to as a younger entrepreneur building this, I wasn't as transparent with the company's goals to our employees. And I've just learned when you're small, you need everybody so dialed in on your mission that you can't be scared to be transparent with everything with them. So when I started doing that, some of them started to kind of see the writing on the wall.

You know, you say the word transparency, and that brings me to another one. Vulnerable. How important, how key is it to success, individually and collectively? Is it in your mind to be both transparent and vulnerable?

It's the utmost. You've got to be. You've got to be willing to make some mistakes or, you know, you hear it all the time. And I think as athletes, we call. We want to call BS on it, but, you know, you do have to fail. You do have to be vulnerable, because if you're open to those, it is going to guide you in the right path. So I'm learning, and I challenge myself to listen our people, but also, we're not, you know, we can't have everything so predicted to a T. We got to take some chances, and we're going to screw this up somewhat, and that's hard, especially when you don't have unlimited.

Resources, you know, and this may be a very poor analogy, but I remember when I first was old enough to start going to basketball camps, and I grew up a coach's son and greatest thing in the world. And I'll never forget the first day I was doing a figure eight, and I'm trying to hang with the big boys. I'm in fourth grade, and I was with like, the seventh and eighth graders, and I, you know, I think my poop don't stink. And I'm. I'm not making any mistakes, right? And he just jumps because I'm not going hard enough. I'm not trying hard enough. I'M thinking, like, look at these clowns. They're kicking the ball all over the gym. What do they know? And that's, you know, through athletics, I started learning.

If you want it, if you want to get better, if you want to improve and you want to really develop a skill set, you have to kick the ball all over the gym. You have to, you have to make mistakes. And that was kind of a, you know, an aha moment for me. You know, as an entrepreneur, there's a little bit more freedom. Maybe not financially in terms of making mistakes, but I, I can remember, first time I, you know, the president of our company in the mortgage industry jumped my ass about something I didn't do. And I'm like, come on, seriously, you think there was, you're not a coach, you're not, you know, whatever.

But that was when I realized, you know, pick up the phone and call the top producers in Chicago, you know, see if you can get referrals, things like that. But, but do you see like that light bulb going on in athletes has heads and do people come back and tell you success stories? Athletes that have. Are in your network.

Oh, God, yeah, All the time. It's awesome. That's what.

Yeah, I was gonna say that's gotta be pretty cool.

That's what keeps us going. I mean, they're not just professional success story, they're personal. I mean, it's. I struggle with this daily. I mean, we talked about it. Athlete mindset AM is a disease, and if it's not provided therapy, it's going to challenge you. Not all athletes are this way, but a lot of us are. I mean, a lot of athletes try to suppress this with drugs, alcohol. A lot of us can get nasty with our spouses because we can't shut it off. So when we help athletes understand all this, find that purpose and that worthiness, they'll come back and talk how it's changed their marriage. They'll talk about how it's changed their outlook with their professional career. Because we're trying to give them a battle again. We got to give these warriors battles, redefining it.

And it's just like in sport, my best football games were not the ones where I was nutted up. They're the ones where I was like, in that zone. It was easy. And we're trying to give them. Yeah, it was slow motion. And we're trying to give them that feeling again of you're prepared, you know, your succession plan, you know what you're trying to do. Give it your best every day and go through it and see your goals being accomplished. And it's hard work, but it changes. It changes them.

It does, it does. And how hard was it for you? And not hard. That's tough for the challenge of self awareness, you know, because in athletics you're constantly told what you're doing. I mean, every day you're being held accountable by teammates, by coaches, you know, what have you every single day. So you know where you're at, you know where you stand with the coaches, you know, you know where you stand with your teammates. You get into the corporate world and this is something I really work with clients on, is developing their self awareness. Okay, how do you do, like we talked about, defining success? Where. Where are you right now? Where do you want to go? And that gap, what are we going to do about it? Did. Do you find that athletes miss being told where they stand?

And they have to now they have to be very honest with themselves and develop that self awareness?

I think they miss it. And then I think it takes them down a rabbit hole where it becomes a deep, dark place for them because they start doing it to themselves. They start beating themselves up and that. Because, as you know, it becomes counterproductive, negative energy, especially in business, it's a waste of energy. So what happens is now that they don't have a coach or if their bosses don't understand that about them, their athlete mindset starts telling them, you're not doing good enough, all those things, and then you start to believe it. You start going down this very dark path where all the company has to do is realize you've got a warrior here. Give them, give them incremental goals. Give them a visibility, those goals. Give them coaching. So, yeah, it's tough, but it's who we are. We always had film on us.

My first college game was against University of Arizona, and as a center, I was our offensive player of the game on Sunday. In film study, do you think I got praised? No, I got ripped.

I hope you enjoyed that Saturday night because it wasn't Sunday.

Even when you're successful, you're not successful with your coaches. And then, you know, you go in a professional career and you're probably doing a good job, but your mindset's beating yourself up and it's just, it's wasted energy.

I still, to this day, I have a hard time when people will call me. It happened to me yesterday, all right, had a old teammate of mine call me up and says, hey, I listened to this podcast, the Hunter Goodwin episode. He's a college football player as well, and my buddy. And he said I loved it. I didn't know what to say. I was waiting for some. I was waiting for a punchline. Right. You know, to this day I have a hard time taking compliments or trusting the fact that you are being sincere when you might keep a little bit of praise my way. I still have a hard time with that. But you have a great self awareness story. You have a great story that you talk about. You're on Southwest Airlines, you were flying and you came across something.

Yeah. On Southwest they always have their magazine and Gary Kelly, the CEO, always writes a letter. And on this flight he talked about being a former collegiate football player. So I immediately wrote a handwritten note to him and didn't know what was going to come of it, but got reached out by their and in my note I told him I'd love to sit down and interview him for our blog. And then about three or four days later after I sent it, I got called by Southwest. They flew me down to Dallas. I sat with him for an hour in his office and it was just phenomenal. I asked him in the blogs on our website, I asked him what lessons he can share, what he did to get to where he is, how he contributed being a former collegiate athlete to his success.

And I've done that with the CEO of Royal Caribbean. I've done it with several other leaders. And it's amazing because when I left, a reporter with the Wall Street Journal was sitting in the waiting room and went way over and I could tell she was looking at me like, who's this guy with?

What does he have that I don't have?

Because he's good and I'm just this little podunk startup company. But it's because we have an authentic mission.

And.

If people out there listening to this want to start some or do something, people want to help you just got to do it the right way.

Right. Who have been your best mentors?

Well, I know this in the purpose of the show, but I am a spiritual guy so I look to my faith to guide me. I also have a mentor named Rusty Roof. He was an investor in EA Sports. He was on the board of director of Glassdoor. The reason I think Rusty is one of my best mentors is he's very different from me. He enjoys different things of the world. He's very into art and he is an athlete. Though he's an avid runner. We have different political views on A lot of things. And I think it's so valuable because if you can get someone who thinks very different from you, has been successful, but truly understands your mission, those conversations every time within about 15 minutes seem to bring light out there.

And I think that's a miss most people make when they look for a mentor. They want to go to someone that they're a fan of. And typically, if you're a fan of someone, it's because they're just like you, just doing something way better than you. I think sometimes it's important to try to find really successful people that aren't really like you to get that different feedback.

Right. Well, and I'll tell you what, you just said something that resonated with me. So your spirituality, you are an offense alignment. So you have that with the former athlete. Okay. So you absolutely have the servant mindset. I mean, it's a perfect entrepreneur. Right. And now how have you taken the way Rusty served you in terms of being a mentor? How have you turned that around and mentored other folks?

I mentor a handful of people. I try to teach people how to be mentors. In our software, we launched a mentoring program that the schools can put their alumni athletes with current athletes. And I think most mentoring programs are backwards. The number one reason a mentoring program fails is not because of the mentee. It's because of the mentor. And we made it very.

How so? How do you mean that? That's interesting.

So what I found is if you need a mentor, you don't have everything figured out. And a lot of times we would hook these young senior athletes up with a mentor and the kid would miss a call or they would make a mistake. And the mentor, like, I don't have time for this crap. No, that's why they need you.

Right, Right.

If they weren't missing these calls, if they weren't screwed up, they don't need you, my friend. So I really check our mentors on that piece. Don't just say you want to be a mentor because it sounds good. Understand that your job here is to help this person get better. And they're going to screw this up. Go into this knowing you're going to get disappointed, but realize that's the opportunity. So I'm very. I've put a lot into our software. We've created videos where most mentoring programs are all on the mentee trying to over prepare them. I try to over prepare our mentors to be able to deal with this.

That's cool. That's really cool. That is. So when you sell a software to a school. What's the process of that? Okay, whether. Let's say you just. Let's just say you sell it to give me one of your clients, Clemson. See, they just got a gift two weeks ago against am. But anyways. Yeah, so, but, so you go to Clemson. All right, sell the software. What's the process? And by the way, that's an awesome client. I'm sorry, that is.

Yeah, yeah. So the sales cycle is we usually are dealing with alumni association. Most schools want to have a varsity club. They want to. Then you have the current athlete side. So the process is we establish three goals, three primary services they want to help their athletes with. It's always enhancing the current athlete experience and it's engaging and creating a relationship with their alumni athletes.

That's great.

We define those three goals. Then the tech team and implementation team build out a six month game plan. We start building out the software. It's completely their brand. They own the data and it's a couple month turnaround and then they can launch their network. K State just launched theirs yesterday to their athletes. Their alumni athletes now have a place to request tickets to games. If they didn't finish their degree, they have a place to come back and get their degree.

That's amazing.

There's all these services available to athletes. The problem is they've always been decentralized. No one knew where to access them. Since I played at Hawaii, there's been six ads. If they're coming to play KU or something. If I was typically not in the space, I wouldn't even know how to get a ticket. Now on their site I can request a ticket. They ask, do you have kids? Yeah, I have a daughter this age. So when I show up, they got a little pom for my daughter. What do you think that does? Has her dad.

To me it's a big deal.

So when they ask me for that donation check, what happens? It goes up. Right?

I was going to say, what do you mean? That's all you want? Yeah. Here, let me throw five more bucks in there.

Yeah, it doesn't take much. The problem is these schools have never had the ability to offer these services or use data to track them. So that's what we're giving them.

That's so cool. That is really cool. Well, Chris, this has been phenomenal and I hate the fact that we're already out of time. But tell us where to find you, where to find you on social media, where to find your website, how to Best reach you and your folks.

Yeah, the best way to reach us, you can go to athletenetwork.com, create an account. If you're a business, get involved. We'd love to make your opportunities available to athletes. There's a contact us form on there. We also have a Twitter handle, it's athenet. And we also have a LinkedIn page so you can get ahold of us through those means.

Well, you know, and I mean this sincerely, thank you for what you do. It's, it's really cool. It probably would have helped me tremendously when I first got out of coaching, but it's really, I hate to use the word neat, but it's really awesome what you do.

I mean, I appreciate that.

Keep doing that great work. And to find out more about our athletics of business brand, you can go to the molitor group.com follow. Follow me on Twitter themolitor Group Facebook. We have a couple different pages. We have obviously my personal page on Molitor, we have the Molitor Group and we have the athletics of business community which is a public group. You do have to request to join, but it's pretty dynamic. And again, you know, our brand, Chris, which you are so aligned with, is the leadership mindset that the same skills and traits deployed by and behaviors deployed by elite athletes and high performing teams aren't just applicable in business, but they're key to your success. And Chris, again, I cannot thank you enough and I would look forward to doing this again soon if you have the time.

Absolutely. Thanks Ed, and good luck.

Take care.

Thank you for listening to the Athletics of Business. Be sure to give us a rating and review so we know how we're doing. For more information about the show, visit theathleticsofbusiness.

Com.

Now get out there, think, act and execute at the highest level to unleash your greatness.