It's everything that happens between the ears for a lot of athletes.

I try to tell them it's strength and conditioning from the neck up.

So what would be, if you could, for the viewers, a couple ways of improving psychological flexibility.

Oof.

That's always a great question.

That's exciting.

From my world, I spend a lot of time helping athletes kind of build that confidence, that clarity, that purpose beyond the game that they play.

We've done work within the NBA for testing, pre draft and clientele and stuff like that.

We're touching three different continents, almost 10 different countries right now of collegiate or professional basketball players all over the world.

All right, welcome to the Evolving Potential podcast.

This is episode number 32.

I'm Todd Smith and today I have on the show Aaron Ulmer.

Aaron is a former college basketball player and coach in his current role as a certified mental performance coach for Cortex Performance as well as img.

I just found out he consults with high school, college and NBA athletes.

His research and expertise is in holistic development of amateur athletes as well as psychological flexibility and how it affects performance in basketball.

And yet his skills allow him to help nearly any sport or profession, from corporations all the way through education.

Aaron currently lives in Atlanta, Georgia and also offers expertise in social media and brand development.

I personally wanted to interview him from a LinkedIn post I saw of his where he talked about retention through relationships and trust over simply providing tools or a program to somebody.

So this is huge and I want to jump right into it, like, first and foremost.

Thank you for being here, Aaron.

No, absolutely.

S. Super excited.

Appreciate you reaching out.

I mean, I definitely look forward to just having a great conversation.

Excellent.

So we're going to start off with.

I. I like to ask everybody this because mental performance is.

Is a.

A loose topic.

Like I say mental performance to people, some people know exactly what I'm talking about.

Some people have no clue.

Some people have some sort of twisted edition of it.

So what do you say mental performance is?

I. I think like you said, it's such an evolving answer.

I think part of me is actually figuring out like my own concrete answer.

But in a nutshell, it is really the mental side of everything we do.

Things like confidence, focus, concentration, but it's everything that happens between the ears.

For a lot of athletes, I try to tell them it's strength and conditioning from the neck up.

It's one of the best things that I've heard that described it.

But it's finding ways to really be at your best, really own who you are in and out of different adversities or successes.

And it's just something that we talk about a lot.

Few athletes actually train, but the performance side of it, everything we do, everything everyone does is a performance to some extent.

So making sure that we are our best, we feel our best, and I think that allows us to perform our best.

That's fair, that's perfect answer.

And so in mental performance, how do you go about keeping clients when it comes to mental performance, you've got clients, you've, you've got a good platforms to work for, but you've got to do the work to build those relationships and actually keep them.

Because I think that a lot of it can be brought down to like, okay, I'll just provide them with tools, I'll just teach them this lesson and now they can go off on their own.

But if you built a relationship with them, that's something different.

Yeah, I, I really work my practice around like building those intentional and trust center relationships.

I think that's super important for me.

I think growing up, I've always been, quote unquote, a people person and can be able to have to empathize with individuals and really give them the, I mean transparently, like the trust to be someone you could be with long term to talk about.

It's something I talked about in the very beginning of my sessions with players.

It's like, look, we can do this in a very short term fashion.

We can check off some boxes and you can be good to go.

That's great.

But we can also do this long term because as you evolve, different variables, variables come into play, situations evolve.

And this is an ongoing process.

So I think part of it is also just, you know, being aware and knowing that not all of the relationships and clients you have are going to be long term.

There's finances that play into it.

Players get traded, different agents.

Like, there's a lot of factors that really go into it.

But from what I can do and what I can control, I really just want to be a person that all my athletes, all my clients can come to and just confide in when needed.

Right.

And we have the counseling, the psychological background from the work that we do through my PsyD, through my master's program.

But at the end of the day, being a former athlete and coach, nine times out of 10 athletes want people who can relate to them, who can.

They can sit there and explain what's going on.

Not being judged, not being taken advantage of.

And that starts early on, whether they're in high school, college, pro I honestly treat all of them the exact same.

And I think that's really just played a part in it.

Being able to speak their language, being able to articulate the things that they're putting into.

And there's a science behind it, obviously.

Like that's where I mean, I was able to present at a conference on how to build these types of relationships.

But that's something that I really do spend a lot of time focusing on is like, look, I just want you to be able to trust me that I have your best interest in mind.

I'm not trying to get over on you, I'm not trying to use you for what it is that you got going on at the end of the day.

I just want you to be in a better position when you leave working with me than you were when you came.

That's just helped keep the relationship long term.

Because I just like to be very real, very transparent, be very honest with them.

Sometimes people sugarcoat things or they wanted to stay on the athlete's good side.

I'm going to challenge you.

And that's what got me into this field.

That's what I really developed my why on was I wanted to be someone that I wish I had when I was playing.

So once I kind of took that perspective into mind and kind of approached my work from that lens, it allowed me to retain those relationships from shorter terms to now I have multiple clients I've been with for three, almost four years now.

So it's crazy.

There's always new things to work on.

So let's say if someone's not a people person, they're more of a bookworm.

They know all the tools, they know all the science, but they don't know how to build relationships.

What would be some advice for them?

That's a tough one because obviously there's, there's personality feats that kind of go into it for one.

And I think even in that world you're allowed to still have long term relationships.

I'm not saying just because you're a people person, you have long term relationships.

I think when we look at things like empathy mapping and being able to understand what an athlete sees, what they think, what they do, what they feel, their pains and gains.

You can use the education side, you can use the bookworm side to really start to just pinpoint certain things.

Right.

I think the way I look at it, the athlete is the center.

Everything that goes around around them, how they get influenced, all those different things, their wants, their needs, their fears, I think that's Just the world you have to take yourself into, you have to go beneath the surface of whatever like the surface level concern is.

And I think as.

As long as you kind of take those times to put yourself in their shoes, you under, like you take the time to understand really that their thoughts, their emotions, the challenges that they go through, you can do that from a bookworm kind of perspective or kind of that world that you're in.

But I think just what you start looking for and how you start helping these clients and athletes, that's where we get to.

Whether you do it from a textbook way or a very unorthodox, unconventional way, how I mostly approach it, the end goal is.

The end goal is still being able to understand who it is you're talking to, to help them through the normal challenges, but also the unique challenges.

That was a really good answer.

And so as far as, like when you were used to be a player, what.

What did you not have that you wish you had now?

In hindsight,

I think for one, someone to just talk to outside of the organization I was in to, it could just understand what I was going through.

I mean, when I was a player, I mean, I talk about all the time.

I. I had 43 different.

42 different teammates in college.

As a college basketball player, geez.

Each roster was pretty much a new team, two different head coaches, and between my sophomore year and junior year, I was literally the only returner.

So every year was trying to learn everybody else, and I was a point guard.

So your role as a point guard is quite literally to know everyone else.

So having to learn everyone else, never really taking the time to develop and work on myself, not having anybody to explain what I had going on.

I've.

I always struggled with confidence as a player.

Being a very.

I was a skilled player, but was never able to actually unleash everything right.

I was able to show up, do what I needed to do and be fine.

And I think the type of consultant I am now, I really do attempt to empower athletes to start to open those doors, to be able to put themselves first, to give them the confidence to either speak up for themselves or to even just take a shot when they don't know what the result might be.

So I think in that lens, that's where I see myself.

There was things off the court I was dealing with that they don't have anybody to really tell them about.

I can't really go talk to my coaches or teammates.

They can kind of help from their perspective, but someone with the actual experience or with the professional background or the educational background to help in that sense and actually relate and empathize and all of those things.

I think that's something that would have been extremely helpful for myself probably dating back to probably around from like my sophomore year of high school all the way through college, honestly, because there was peaks and valleys depending on where I was playing.

There was a different version of myself.

I could play in a local rec team league and be a star averaging 20, 30 points in a league.

But then I get to my high school team and things are very different.

But there's variables that come with that.

Different coaching styles, different teammates, all those things played into it.

But at the end of the day I allowed my performance to constantly change.

And I think someone who was a CNPC sports side could have at least helped develop just that consistency that I would have wanted and that could have taken my career from a basketball standpoint in various different directions.

So now as we move forward, do you think that you're seeing mental performance being offered far more schools?

You know, do you think that people are getting more opportunities now?

Yeah, absolutely.

I think it's still a world between the clinical sports psych individuals and the mental performance people.

We are seeing it offered a lot more.

I think at the university level you're going to see a lot more of the clinical counseling, social work, sports psychologists type of individuals.

They're duly trained, they can handle the clinical side, they can handle the mental performance side.

At the professional level, we're starting to see that a little bit too.

But we are seeing a growth in the mental performance consultant.

Only practitioners involved.

There's NBA organizations who have hired directors of mental performance.

There's collegiate teams.

But then the private practice route.

I know sometimes there's so many private practices, it doesn't seem like there's this big input that's being placed out there.

But behind the scenes there's really a lot just from the private practice I work with alone, like we're touching three different continents, almost 10 different countries right now of collegiate or professional basketball players all over the world.

Like so those are the types of statistics that I really aren't putting out there to show the impact of what we're doing.

But the accessibility, the knowledge of it has drastically increased in the last, I mean 28 now.

So last 10 years from when I was in college, I mean I had no idea about this until I actually got into the field of it.

But I think now it is a lot more accessible for athletes to find these types of services.

That's crazy about, about Cortex.

Four different continents.

So can you talk about how do you get involved with Cortex and, and what do they really do?

I guess what's the breadth of what they do?

Yeah.

Okay.

How I got involved with them.

It was my last semester of grad school, I had two classes left.

And long story short, my professor is the director of assessment and skill acquisition at Cortex on an early semester discussion board.

I mentioned I was a college basketball player.

I had coaching college ball at the team.

And he was just like, yeah, I've.

My company, we've done work within the NBA for testing, pre draft and clientele and stuff like that.

So like that's, that's fantastic.

Dave Laughlin, great guy.

We set up like an informational interview because at this point I'm just trying to learn what's out there like beyond graduation.

I got a couple months to graduate, got to figure out what world am I going to navigate.

So have an informational interview with him just to ask what his company does, what opportunities are out there, just not specifically with the company, but just in general, what did he know?

One conversation led to the next.

He then introduced me to Reiner Mean, who's the founder and CEO of this company.

And then honestly from then, what was supposed to be a 30 minute conversation turned into an hour and a half conversation.

And now we look back four years later and we're still here.

Yes.

But ultimately Cortex is, it's a mental performance and culture development company.

And we really look at the intersection of person, performance, personality.

We really like to empower individuals to own their mental game.

That's the slogan is to own your mental game.

So basketball, business development, anything in between and beyond is, is really where we spend a lot of our time focusing.

We have a really big imprint in the international FIBA market because Reiner is European, he's German by trade and by trade he's German by nature.

I think a better way of saying it.

So we have a lot of connections there and where a lot has evolved.

So me in particular, I mean I have clients that are in Spain, I mean Turkey, Greece, Italy, uk.

Like kind of spread all over.

He does as well.

And then we have a couple other individuals on our team who do work within the business space, who do work in the collegiate space.

So it's expanded.

I think the company's been around since 2013 to where we are now 13 years later.

I think that's 13 years later.

Yeah, yeah, it's, it's continuously growing.

I think we've taken some really big steps within the last couple of years, just expanding where we've gone to.

To now where we're the consultants for national teams like Canada Basketball, covering their entire youth development program, as well as their senior national teams.

So the imprint is continuing to grow.

We're obviously trying to continue to make it and become one of the most impactful basketball mental performance and culture development companies in the world.

And we're just trajectory.

We're on the right path of it for sure.

So it's a very exciting time for Cortex as we really are about to take that next step to going from smaller company to a large, massive company that I think does really great work because we genuinely care about the work that we do.

Geez, what an awesome opportunity to get involved in that right at the end of master's.

At your master's degree.

And.

And now you're coming up at the end of your.

Your PsyD, your PhD, and.

And so what.

What's next?

What's that open?

What doors does that open for you?

I think that's a.

That's a great question that I'm.

I'm kind of curious to see.

I. I can't say I. I stepped into it really knowing kind of where that would take me.

I mean, like, backtracking to even getting into this field.

Like, this was one of those things that I didn't plan for.

Like, I got my undergrad in public relations, mass communications with a sport management minor.

Like, that's what I got my degree in.

As soon as I graduated, started working at the PAC12, PAC12 network at that.

I was in media management and then moved up to strategic partnerships.

Oh, wow.

That took us to March of 2020.

We all know what happens once March of 2020 hits.

Yeah, Kobe kicks in.

PAC12 furloughs about 75% of the company.

And then I was.

I mean, I'm less than a year post graduation, world shuts down.

Then there so happens to be a university back home in California that added a new program.

And I was like, I don't really want to go back to school.

Like, I was very clear grad school was not something I wanted to do.

And I was like, okay, I'll look at this opportunity.

I'll see you kind of learn more about it.

And that's when it kind of clicked.

I was like, wow, that's interesting.

That's something I would have loved to have as.

So it was like, okay, I'll look into it.

I'll apply as a backup.

Because Covid was supposed to be two weeks long.

Right.

And it clearly was not two weeks long.

So I applied as a backup and then they gave me a phone call.

And the way the school worked, the only full time staff members on the sport programs were the head coaches.

Everybody else were grad assistants.

So they were like, we see your background as a player, we would love to bring you on as a grad assistant.

If you do that, school is kind of, it's considered almost like a scholarship.

You're working for your tuition.

I was like, I can't turn down a master's degree.

I don't have to necessarily pay for.

And I get to be back in the basketball scene in a different role, but back in the scene, finish grad school.

And I was like, okay, I'm done.

School's over with, not have to worry about it.

And then I meet a whole bunch of people at the annual sports site conference that I can genuinely say inspired me to be like, this journey isn't done.

I met some great people who recommended the school that I go to.

And then here we are.

I went back again November of 2022.

And to think now that we're actually at the finish line.

So I'm not really sure because there isn't a license track.

So I'm not getting the licensure to be count like a counselor on the clinical side.

Like I'll just have my side leaves still be mental performance and kind of looking at the performance psychology side of things.

So we'll see kind of what doors open for it.

I think it's now just an add of credibility and a testament of the work that I've done to learn this field and to have better help and serve the clients that I work with.

So it's, we'll see, we'll see what's on the horizon.

This is, this is going to be an interesting year.

There's a lot of travel for work that's involved, which is exciting.

But I think once school is done, I think I'm really just going to take a step back and just like breathe for a minute and be like, okay, I'm actually done with school.

I've hit the terminal degree.

I don't need to go back ever again.

But to join that very, very small percentage of people who have their doctorate, but then also a very smaller percentage of African American males who have their doctorate as well.

I think those are things that I'm gonna be able to sit back on, reflect on and then obviously allowing things to kind of take it where they may be as present as I can and if opportunities do kind of continue to arise based off of that, cool.

We'll sit down and evaluate those in the best way we can.

But for now, I just, like I said, want to defend in a couple weeks, put that to the side, and then we'll just kind of see where everything takes us.

I love that.

And I have to mention the energy at which you talk about this with man, hold on to that.

Because, you know, we finish things and we go straight into the next thing and it's just like, man, like this feeling of feel goodness that I can see coming from you.

I know.

I know how much work you've put into this.

So that's.

That's amazing.

I want to hear about the, the concept of psychological flexibility and some of the work you did for that.

For that Ph.D. like what.

What would you consider?

How do you explain psychological flexibility?

How does it help performance or hurt it?

Like, I don't think it does, but go ahead.

Yeah, absolutely.

I mean, that construct that comes from acceptance and commitment theory, the whole idea of it is just being able to stay true to your values, being able to stay true to your performance despite different adversities and variables that affect your performance.

So I decided to create a study within the collegiate basketball world to see if psychological flexibility became a performance predictor, if we can actually create a relationship between a psychological construct and objectable performance outcomes.

So we are able to administer the Acceptance and Action two questionnaire to a bunch of Division one athletes.

And then I was able to pull their player efficiency ratings, which is a calculation of points, assist rebounds subtracted from turnovers and creates a consistent score despite the minutes played.

So whether you play 30 minutes, I played eight minutes.

My efficiency of being on the court versus your efficiency get put on an even plane.

So that was a statistic we were able to pull that puts everyone on one plane.

We were trying to look at it.

The higher your flexibility score, the higher your player efficiency rating, the lower the lower.

Seeing if there was actually a direct relationship between the two.

Based off of our study, there is a positive trend towards that, actually.

And again, there's so many different factors that go into it.

The system that you're in, your.

Your, what you have going on off the court, the role that you're given.

Like, if you're a defensive shot blocker, you're obviously not going to get a lot of extra points added to your player efficiency for scoring and assisting and things like that.

But there is a positive trend to see that the players who are a lot more flexible within their Psychological constructs or how they show up.

There was that trend towards positive performance.

So the whole point of it is like, look, we.

I want to continue to find a way to simplify the work that we do within these environments if it is a very, very significant, like, relationship.

Cool.

Now, coaches, mental performance coaches, you have an answer.

Let's just find different ways to develop psychological flexibility.

Because now there's research to show that the higher you increase these levels to be flexible, to still be attuned to yourself despite what's going on, your performance is going to rise.

It's simple as that.

There's obviously various different ways where people can put their unique touches or different types of mental skills that get involved in it.

But at the end of the day, if the goal is to just increase flexibility, it makes it a lot more simpler.

Now we don't have to take intake as much and really try to figure out what's going on.

We can keep things within this one big silo.

So obviously I have a whole bunch of recommendations for future researchers to really expand this because again, this is just Division 1 basketball.

Is that the same for Division 2, Division 3 for pros, for football, for soccer?

We don't know.

But for this particular population, that's what I wanted to spend a lot of my time on.

I know they say a good dissertation as a done dissertation, so just to get it done.

But I did want to kind of walk away with something that I will personally be able to invest in.

I will personally be able to use and kind of champion to know that, hey, look, we have some concrete evidence of what we need to spend our time and energy on.

Let's just focus on that and then adjust to everything else from there.

I love that.

And for all the bookworms, they do need that science to know, like, okay, that's an actual thing that works.

Like, this is an actual thing you can focus on and really move the needle forward.

So what would be, if you could, for the viewers, a couple ways of improving psychological flexibility?

Oof.

That's always a great question.

That's exciting.

I mean, bookworms, like we say, dive into acceptance, commitment, therapy.

Being able to reframe self talk is obviously always going to be a huge one.

And that's a little bit more on the CBT side, but being able to just accept kind of what's going on and commit to the next action.

So whether it's next play speed, that's obviously a great skill that I love working on.

That's simply defined as the speed in which you move on to the next play asking yourself what's important next.

Right.

Being in that way, being in that mindset to know when an event happens, adversity is going to strike.

Being able to move on and evaluate time later because right now isn't the time to really evaluate what it is that's going on.

Especially in game find times where there's half time after the game to spend time doing that.

Another big one I love to do, I work with athletes is helping them pre plan for adversity.

If we have, if let's say there's 10 adversities you're going to face in a basketball game and if you're out there in the game and all these 10 hit and you've never planned for them, you're going to spend a lot of mental energy trying to figure out how to get through these.

But let's say we plan for eight of them and we have our script when this happens.

I'm going to do this.

Well, now you get to the game, you just have a choice to make.

So we've already pre planned for those.

So when we run into those two adversities that we might not have planned for, we have a lot more mental energy that we can spend to make sure we do that the right way.

So next place speed.

Asking ourselves what's important following kind of acceptance and commitment, pre planning for adversity all different ways.

I would say that increase that psychological flexibility to be able to absorb the punches and jabs that adversity and performance throws at us to keep us true to our values, our goals, our role, the things that we are actually trying to obtain.

I love that and I love the little simple things that we can hold on to like next play speed or what's important next.

I heard those from Graham Bettner chart.

Are you familiar with who that is?

I'm very familiar.

Graham is a great, great mentor and friend of mine that, who, who's helped me a lot get to where I'm at.

Clearly I'm still using a lot of stuff that he's taught me or utilized in the past.

But yeah, I was actually just talking to him last week to be honest.

But Graham's a great guy.

Yeah, I interviewed him at one point and he did, yeah, he did an amazing job of simplifying everything.

I just, I love that.

And then I'm hearing you talking a very similar way.

I was like dude, I yes, I love that.

And so it's easy, it has to be retainable.

Right.

If we give you these long Things to remember when you're on the floor, it's hard to remember those.

But if I could just remember key little things like identifying your core values and designing your, your behaviors, your actions to those core values.

Those serve as focus points, those serve as little reminders for yourself, and they could all be one word.

I think the more that we can simplify it, that's a big thing.

I, I do a lot.

I do it in my own world.

I do it with my athletes.

Let's just simplify things as much as possible, because if we're in our head too much, there's too many things to think about.

We can't direct attention, we can't apply our attention in specific and targeted ways.

So we can simplify it as much as possible.

You're going to remember it, you're going to apply it a lot easier, and then you can evaluate it even better.

If I can only have to evaluate three things versus 15.

Yeah.

Makes it a lot easier to grow and develop if I'm staying within those simplified terms.

Yep, that's huge.

So I know that there's a lot of commonalities, you know, huge commonalities between anybody.

You said kind of everybody does these same, the same concepts.

It works across the board no matter which industry you're talking about.

But yet let's say someone has been working with high school and maybe even work with college.

Where does it differ when it comes to working with pro athletes?

Is there, is there some sort of significant difference in the way you have to handle them?

I. I would say yes and no.

I mean, like I said, I treat them the same, just as people.

At the end of the day, whether you're 17, a basketball player, 25 as a pros, basketball player, from a performance standpoint, at the end of the day, you're doing the exact same thing.

You're bouncing a ball, you're putting into a basket, you're wearing a jersey with a name on the front.

Like in its simplest form, it is the same.

Where it starts to differ is now everything that's also happening off the court.

So in terms of, instead of a scholarship, you're now playing for a contract that's going to put food on your family's table.

As a pro, you might actually have a family and kids that are at home that may serve as distractions or motivations, whatever it might be.

So I think the external world changes a little bit.

Student might just have class nowadays, obviously very different in the college level with nil and things of that I'm sure We can spend an entire pod episode on that alone.

But on the pro side, it's, how do I maximize with all the time I may have?

People don't realize professional basketball players are at work for like two hours a day.

Like, that's it.

Like, require two hours a day.

Show up, you go to practice, you go home, you're done for the day.

So now we work is how do we organize the time?

How do we balance our mental wellness?

Are we doing things outside that are going to benefit our performance?

Are we journaling?

Are we going on walks?

Are we prioritizing recovery?

So sometimes with the professional athletes, a lot of our work is helping them just organize their world around them so they are in the most prime and opportune position to perform when the time is needed.

High school, your life is a lot more structured.

College, it's still a lot more structured.

When you get to the pros, that structure is gone.

And you've now lived an entire life of being very structured for you to now learning how to have that structure on your own.

And there's a lot of different ways you're going to get tugged and pulled to do everything else but helping them be able to stay present, to bring themselves back to remember their why, why they're doing the things that they're actually doing.

Still trying to develop without the pressures of I got to get to the next league, I got to get to the next level.

So I would say those are kind of the biggest differences I've seen from, like, the amateur side to, like, the professional side.

That's huge.

And that's.

That's kind of similar to the concept of, like, leaving the military and having to figure out, you know, entirely, okay, what am I do?

I'm in civilian life now.

No one's telling me what to do anymore.

And that's not.

That's not an easy thing to traverse.

And so I'm glad you brought up the nil, though.

So I've.

I've actually had several conversations with people, you know, when I.

When they find out I'm.

I'm studying sports psychology and, and want to talk about the nil and want to talk about the fact of how that's going to change young men, you know, coming up.

And then all of a sudden it's like they're looking at a bunch of money.

It's either.

It's either standing to make a bunch of money, but it's also saying to lose a bunch of money when they do something wrong.

And so have you.

Have you seen the Impact of that firsthand

a little, I have to say directly I've seen it a little bit.

I feel I hear about it a lot more from individuals who are in that space.

They'll tell like, they'll tell me stories of like teammates or I'll speak to agents who will tell me kind of some of the stories.

Not directly like spilling out all of their business, but I think indirectly I have a lot.

Some of the college players I worked with at the time, I would say they're more so unlike the middle tier, some of the upper tier again of receiving kind of those nil funds earlier on and not to where it is currently.

I think earlier on, before when it was just kind of the financial piece, here's some funds come play versus now where they're aliens getting country club housing and scholarships for siblings and things of that.

And it were completely gone off the rails.

But we do see an increase now of pressure to perform.

All right.

We were now seeing coaches who have no choices to play certain rosters players because they are receiving higher funds.

So again then like I said then we now have to kind of put them into that professional bucket.

Right.

It's now there's so many external things that are going to take your attention away from doing the things that you need to do.

How do you play with that pressure?

How do you remain psychologically flexible when now the entire city expects you to perform because you're getting paid a check.

And it's all public information at this point.

Right.

So I think we've seen where this is continuing impact.

It's funny enough, me and a handful of colleagues are actually currently putting together an abstract for the ASP conference, the Sports Site conference this fall, talking about nil, talking about how we.

They've all work in the collegiate space.

Right now they're embedded at collegiate universities.

But how us in our role can help athletes continue to find their worth when their worth is being defined for them from an nil perspective.

So from our side of the world, how do we impact and enhance the, the environment, the world of these athletes whose lives are changing like that.

So I, I can't wait to hear the information that they put together that we designed for this.

I mean those are some great people that I work with are doing great work at multiple high level universities who really do see this impact.

I mean we're talking smu, Mississippi State, Arizona, uga, like those are big nil schools.

So the work that they do is phenomenal when it comes to really building that trust with athletes to understand the pressures, the internal and external pressures, they're dealing with how to maximize, you know, even your own growth.

Like do you stay at the same school or do you just bounce to another school to get a bigger check?

Like that become.

The priorities have now changed.

From like when I was a student athlete, like we just wanted to get better and win like that.

That's all there was to that nowadays is how am I going to be as a teammate to someone who I might feel better than, like I'm better than, but he's making a million dollars more than me.

So now we gotta talk about interpersonal dynamics and things of that nature.

How do I listen to a coach who's making less than me?

So like there's a lot of these things we deal with.

I think the athletes I've personally worked with, these weren't concerns that we had to worry about, but there were now the pressures of I'm now a provider for my family back home and I feel like my performances impact that they're looking to me to play well so I can continue to provide from them.

I think that we see that and it's hard for 18, 19 year olds to deal with that.

So that's where I've seen personally a lot of the college athletes I've worked with from this nil space.

But from the things that I've heard and read on and things of that, it, there are very dark roads that this has gone down.

And so I'm curious if you have any sort of opinion on, I guess, identity and moving into a place of, let's just say like someone is making a million dollars.

Like now you go from, you know, that I know what to call it normal to now you're a millionaire, you know, and, and that is a certain identity piece.

And I know there's a lot of self sabotage involved with stepping into these new roles, not being ready for them.

And so have you.

Do you feel like you could describe in your own words, you know, some of the self sabotage you've seen, why it might happen and then how you might help people to really embody that, that new identity of something bigger and greater that they want to step into?

Yeah, I think from my world I spend a lot of time helping athletes kind of build that confidence, that clarity, their purpose beyond the game that they play.

I think sometimes when you instantly, like you said, you become a millionaire, like those words alone just instantly change you.

Right.

So I think when we really can find that purpose and be really true to our identity, that's what I really like to help athletes continue to develop, understanding who you are without all of this, because again, it is an external thing when we don't really want to necessarily allow the external things to really influence and impact who we are internally.

Staying true to yourself, staying true to your craft, understanding why you're being given this opportunity and how we can maximize it, and being unapologetically yourself throughout it, not allowing these things to change, because like you said, there's, there's a great side to it.

Being a millionaire is an amazing thing.

I think we all want to reach that, but I think in the wrong settings and wrong context, it can be very detrimental to you and your future.

I mean, we're seeing a lot of kids now who are coming as freshmen getting all this money and then we never hear about them or the money's gone.

So I would say really helping athletes find that identity of who, who they are, once all of this is removed in the process of.

It allows them to, you know, find that purpose, to stay true, to stay comfortably themselves in their own skin despite the external things, because we lose sight that college is a stepping stone.

The goal might have changed at one point was to reach the pros.

That's the goal, right?

Is to be a professional athlete.

Now some of those might change, maybe now the goal is just to get to college.

You can get to college and you can change your life for you and your family.

But I think as these athletes continue to go down this journey, I think it's a learning opportunity for everyone that's involved.

The entire ecosystem now of college sports have to learn and understand the benefits, the repercussions that come with it.

But my goal at the end of the day, from the work that I do is allowing athletes to still stay true to who they are and not lose sight of the things that they have control over, the things that they need to do their why, understanding the reasons that they do everything that they do, like that motivational side of it to making sure it's still from an internal aspect and not fully into the external sides of things.

And so you show with your own identity then moving forward.

And you know, as you said speaking at the conference, so developing your own brand, that is.

And so how do you feel like you're able to stand out amongst all these other mental performance coaches?

I mean, I think just the relationships that I build with even people within our field, I'm never going to be the one to say athletes should work with me over anybody else.

That's never a world I'm going to be in.

I work with who I'm supposed to work with and that's kind of what I let guide kind of how I've built my brand to just continue to be unapologetically myself doing different things that are again lower populations do.

I mean I got, I mean, I guess honestly this is the first time like publicly like even announcing it.

Like I have a book coming out in two months that's about being unapologetic athlete and it uses my stories, it uses some of my close friends stories who are all athletes from college to pro football, basketball.

It's just creating a space for athletes one to share their story but be more comfortable about it.

But that's just kind of what the brand has kind of built itself to be.

It's.

I'm not, I don't really have plans for things.

I kind of just let things happen to where they do.

And if that's led me to speaking at stages from a national conference or being on podcast or working with the Canadian national team or whatever comes from that.

I spend my effort on just building the relationships in the best way I possibly can.

I think what inspired me to do that was I was in Fort Worth, Texas for the ASP annual conference.

It was the first conference I ever went to.

And someone, I don't even remember who said it, but it was a room with a bunch of individuals and they said, look, the goal should just be for your name to be in rooms that you're not even in once you know that's like you're doing something right when you kind of reach that.

So I was like, okay, how do I do that?

I guess my goal is now to just meet as many people as I possibly can, get my story out there, get some of the work that I do out there and just really foster kind of those relationships.

Because then you want to be at a place where people are referring, you people are calling you and like hey, we want you to work with this individual.

So like I said, it's, it's building intentional relationships, like genuine ones.

I'm not saying I'm out here building relationships with people just for a business side of it.

Like I honestly could like care, I can honestly care less about it.

Like I just want to be in a space where I can give back, where I can serve, where I can help athletes have a voice, where I can help anyone just simply have a voice or empowering people to be better than what they see out there.

Because like you said, there's, this is a, a big field with limited opportunities.

So a lot of us are, yes, we're quote, unquote, fighting for a lot of small opportunities that are out there.

But at the end of the day, as long as I can look in the mirror and be like, okay, I was genuinely about, I was genuinely approaching everything that I'm doing, I can feel good about that.

And the result is the result of that.

So that's what I foster a lot of just my energy into.

It's just, like I said, it's building relationships.

That's something I've done very well my entire life.

It's something I'm going to continue to do.

But if that helps continue to push the field forward, if that continues to help put other people in opportunities to succeed, I'm all for it.

So I wish I had a more direct answer, but I feel like that's the honest truth of I don't necessarily try to put myself in situations to be looked at ahead of other people.

I just genuinely show up as myself, be vulnerable and authentic about the work that I'm doing, opening the door to just share stories and storytelling and letting people learn and enter different worlds that they might not have ever explored.

And if that leads to me continuing to grow as a middle performance coach and being in different rooms, hey, that's just a byproduct of the genuine work that I'm attempting to put out there.

I love that.

And if you can get in front of those people and speak confidently about a couple topics, what do you like to go speak on?

Well, I think now that when the book comes out, I think that's going to be the primary topic with just identity and like I said, confidence, clarity and purpose kind of beyond the game.

That's going to be the big thing.

I wasn't even big into identity until I did a podcast.

I believe that was a year ago.

It was about a year ago and I was on the 80% mental podcast and Pete was like, hey, I think this is going to be a really good topic.

I think you should talk about of athlete identity.

So, okay, I guess I can.

Little did I know, once that came out, I became like the athlete identity guy.

So now a lot of presentations became about that.

That then also inspired me to shape the book in that manner about athlete identity.

So I think that's going to be the big one.

I think just athlete worth mental wellness utilizing mindfulness.

I really enjoy working with coaches, educators about how to create environments for them to do the work.

So I've spent some time with the Golden State Warriors Community Foundation.

We put on a whole series about literally teaching nonprofit within the school districts the mindfulness strategies to employ with students.

So helping really just create environments.

So I think between that, the athlete identity, confidence in who you are, I think those are probably the three big ones that will take me through this next stretch of years until something new comes about.

And so you're obviously building your own brand then.

Do you have, do you have desire to produce courses or digital products, coach under your own umbrella?

Do you do that right now?

Honestly, I don't do that now.

Honestly, I don't have the plans for it.

I mean, I'll be very transparent.

I wouldn't say I, I directly have the entrepreneurial mindset.

I just love doing the work.

The business side of it, creating kind of like a company to them, private practice.

I mean, Cortex creates a beautiful platform for me to do the work that I do and.

But as things kind of grow and evolve, like, who knows, kind of what happens in the future.

But I think right now I spend a lot of my time focused on helping develop the company that I do work with to where I still get to do what I love to do under a different umbrella.

I mean, we, we're very open about the individuals.

We have a small team, so when one of us wins, we kind of all win.

If I have to be the public face of it.

And hey, well, that's something what we can do.

But down the line, who knows, Like I said, maybe everything takes off to a point where we can then step aside, absorb, or whatever comes in that world.

But as of right now, I think I'm, I'm just doing the work and I'm just serving.

I'm not really planning much about it.

I'm just allowing kind of life to kind of take its course and, and whatever doors open from just doing that.

Obviously, we'll approach each door, evaluate the best needs for my family and myself, and then go from there.

But as of right now, that's not really a. I don't know if interest is the right word, but we'll.

We'll just see how things evolve over time.

It's not within the plan in the next 12 months, I can tell you that.

So it's that we always are, are evolving.

And I know that you're going to finish your PhD, and I know that's going to be.

You're gonna, you know, want to be.

Wash your hands of it.

And at the same time, though, do you feel like there's something that still, you're still itching to learn more about that would.

That would take you to the next level as a coach?

I think the next area I think is more so being embedded with individuals like every day.

I think I've done a lot of my work remotely to this point where because again I got into this field during COVID since that like 2020, fall 2020 is when I got into this field, the world obviously changed from a very virtual state.

So now those are some of the relationships that I am building to learn from.

That's a big goal of mine this year is to continue to learn of now what this does look like in person.

Because I believe that is kind of the next step for me is being embedded somewhere, whether it's in the collegiate space, whether it is in the professional athlete space.

How do I now create environments?

Being on the ground 24 7, what does that look like?

What resources make most sense to develop the wellness and performance side of athletes or whatever that might be.

So talking to individuals who are currently embedded in those places within the NBA, within the NFL, I think that's my big next learn.

And that yes, is an educational piece to it, but I think more so that happened that learning happens outside of education.

It's learning from the people who have had successes and failures doing those types of things.

Is creating a wellness room with the environment beneficial or not?

What do we look like when we're on the road?

How do we utilize the hotel to maximize this work?

So I'm learning a lot of that now before the summer hits and I fly off to Istanbul with Team Canada for the U17 World cup where we'll have 10 days out there together or I'll be in Toronto for training camps like that for I think a total of almost like 30 days this spring.

So now those are the types of things that I'm eager and continuously attempting to learn.

Just so when I do step into it, it's not so much of just trying to figure everything out.

I have some evidence based work that I can immediately bring and provide value from.

So I would say that's the next big step.

Honestly is, is now really learning how to be an embedded performance consultant and be able to maximize the work that we do.

So.

Have you seen the movie Coach Carter?

Absolutely.

Okay, so.

So let's say you get into a Coach Carter type situation.

Do you.

What do you feel like you would do?

A first couple steps like you're, you got to change around this whole culture.

Everyone is in a, in a funky place.

Like let's just say you get a really Crappy job, but it's a great pay.

And you got to figure this out.

Like, what do you think your.

Some of your steps are?

Oof.

I think there's a lot of pieces going to it.

I do want to mention first, Coach Carter's fantastic.

I'm from the Bay Area, so that movie actually does hit home.

Richmond High, we played against in high school, so big fan of that.

Yeah.

But in terms, I think there's so many different directions that we can honestly go to it.

But I think the first one is getting everyone on the same page.

I mean, I think identifying even just what the goal is for everyone is a huge first step.

I think if sometimes when we see dysfunctional organizations, it's because people's priorities are very different from the GMs to the coaches, to the players or athletic directors, to the coaches, to players, the school, whatever.

In my.

Whatever division or level that we're at.

I think the first thing is helping people get organized with being on the same page from a performance standpoint, making sure that how players perceive their performance isn't in line with how the coaches have perceived their performance.

So, I mean, we've created some tools that we've.

I've learned from some people, but have helped evolve to track player perception from both the players and the coaches.

So I think there's that and I think honestly starting to build, just like the cohesion, kind of build the chemistry from that point and understanding just awareness.

I think by building awareness or opening the door to awareness, you can start getting people on the same page.

People sometimes need to hear what other people are going through to understand, to be able to empathize, sympathize, to be a brother or sister, whatever it might be from a team perspective.

So I'd say those were kind of the first things.

Let's get everyone on the same page.

Let's see if everyone just.

If we're completely at different angles, those are going to tell you also what it is you need to work on.

Because if everyone's on the same page, great.

So now let's figure out why this is a dysfunctional organization or why this isn't working.

But I think, yeah, to immediately start, I think that's the biggest thing is let's get everyone on the same page, whether we're brainstorming, whether we're setting goals, whether we're going through these activities, whatever it might be.

But let's create a sense of alignment first and then let's go from there.

And I think it's a simpler thing to do because it's objective information.

It's not necessarily a subjective thing.

And then I think once we do that, I think we're already.

Immediately we're taking the positive steps into fixing all of this.

So I heard you mentioned that you have been working remote for quite some time now.

And I know that there's two sides of the coin there where some people would love to be remote.

Absolutely.

That'd be their dream.

Right.

And then for others, like, they.

They want to be embedded somewhere.

And I like that.

And so I'm kind of curious about.

About your.

Your feelings around the lifestyle of that.

Because I've interviewed people who have private practice.

I've interviewed people who travel 200 days out of the year.

You know, they're.

They're all over the place with baseball teams and stuff.

And.

And so do you feel like that is the lifestyle you're trying to.

You're gonna go on is be embedded, be traveling, be.

You know, is that.

Is that what you're shooting for long term, or what do you think is the most ideal lifestyle for practicing this for you?

For me, I think my perfect world would.

To be embedded with the team where I don't have to travel or just selective travel.

I've seen different setups, especially like across the NBA, because that's the goal I want to get to is obviously working within the NBA.

So when team is home, being at all the home games, being at practice every day, things of that nature, having constant, consistent touch points is fantastic.

Selective road trips, maybe the longer road trips, you know, actually travel with the team.

As we go through those changes, I think that would be the most ideal, practical for me, just so I get to still be home.

I value family and my family, my wife and daughter, my world to me.

So being there, seeing her grow up, being able to help out, I think is huge.

And that's the advantage of obviously living in a virtual world is I'm here 24 7, where I selectively might have to leave to go travel for a particular contract or whatever that might be.

But that's kind of the setup.

And what I see instead of just my office here, my office, that actual facility, and get to come home every day still.

But I'm not opposed to having the experience of being on the road all season.

Like I mentioned, I'm only 28.

If there's a time to do it, the time is to do is now, when I am at a younger age and where that it's feasible to do so.

But I would say the dream would to be embedded within an organization with flexibility around travel and being able to kind of pick and choose or coordinate ahead of time, which makes most sense to travel to versus just being on the road every.

All 82 games plus playoffs.

It seems fortunate to be there.

So I would say there's, there's that.

Yeah, that's perfect.

So I'm curious then let's say that someone is a mental performance coach for high school and college athletes and their dream is also to get to the NBA or, or NFL or you know, the professionals.

What would be some, some.

What's the route you're taking?

I guess how do you, how do you break into that world other than just like you know, trying to get a psychology degree and all those things?

Obviously we know credibility is a big part of that and that's kind of the reason I was getting my degrees originally and then I wanted to potentially go into like private practice.

But I'm curious if you are trying to become, you know, working the professionals.

What, what is the, what's the steps you're taking?

I think like, like I mentioned earlier, it's putting myself out there to meet the right people, build the right relationships.

I mean, I hate to say it the, the not hate to say it like the God honest truth, like it's not really what you know, it's definitely who you know.

Like that's the world that we do live in.

So making sure that I am meeting the right people, I'm having the right conversations, I'm getting connected to the right people.

But then again, like I said, I'm doing the work that I just genuinely care about.

If my, if the plan for me that God's chosen is not such mba, then it is what it is.

But I am going to put myself in or attempt to put myself in positions to do that.

So meeting people who are under the mind health umbrella, being connected to the basketball world, the athletes that I work with, that's why I take.

So I mean it's a.

You have to care about every single athlete because one, you don't know who they know, the agencies that work with them.

But then also just covering my basis with my degrees and stuff like that.

So I'm not, I mean I always tell myself limit the number of reasons somebody can tell you no.

So that's why I got my cnpc.

That's why I went back and got my doctorate.

That's why I'm putting out material and things of that way.

So the reason is never.

You just didn't fit like you didn't have enough here.

Like, that's not the reason.

Like, obviously there's something very.

That's out of my control.

So networking is, is honestly, it's the God honest truth.

Like the, the biggest thing that I spend time doing and connecting with the right people, whether it's coaches, whether it's agents, people embedded with teams already and then just doing good work.

I think you continue to do good work, the work will continue to find you.

Having the basketball background as a player, as a coach, still fully invested in that at all levels from WNBA G overseas.

Having those experiences I think have helped streamline to where I'm at at this point.

But the best I can do now is just continue doing the work I have, the education, the credentials, continue to meet the right people.

So when job opportunities do open again, having my name in rooms I'm not in, I'm not in.

It's not even externally posting the job.

It's okay.

Hey, I know a guy who I think you should talk about for this job.

That's, that's the goal.

That's the benefit from knowing as many people.

Because everyone's trying to get into the NBA, everyone's trying to get into professional sports.

It's not a secret, but there's not really a secret formula also to make that happen.

Sometimes it's just time and place and situation, but the best I can do is control what I can control.

Keep relationships with the right people and just be curious.

Continue to observe and acquire information that you need.

So that's kind of my plan as I go through all of this.

And like I said, we'll, we'll see what happens just as the future kind of continues to evolve.

I love that.

So I, I found you through LinkedIn.

Obviously you're doing some networking on there.

So I'm curious, what is, is there a strategy behind your posting?

Who are you posting for?

You know, you caught my attention with that post.

I don't know if that was any intentional or not.

If you're just sharing things that are interesting to you, like, is there a strategy there?

I think you said it at the end.

It's.

I've seen a lot of people use LinkedIn for various different reasons.

I think now I'm just in a spot of just sharing what I know and being very vulnerable about it.

So I think the post that you're talking about was right after I hit my 100th session with one of my clients.

So I was able to write a post just about kind of what that means to me.

How we can continue to, to motivate other people within our field, to kind of continue to grow from it.

Because when I was in school, I mean, it was.

People kind of tell us our job was to get fired.

And I mean, again, to a degree it makes sense at the time, right?

It's.

That means you've worked with an athlete, you've addressed their concerns, they've graduated from that, now they're good to go.

Yeah, but then, now how am I gonna, you know, live and stuff like that?

So.

So I think then just getting into the field and now seeing long term relationships that I'm developing, I was seeing that, okay, there is another side to this that I've learned now being actually in the field, so hitting that milestone, I mean, I think that was probably the fourth or fifth time I've reached that milestone with the athlete.

It kind of just allowed me to kind of sit back because we were joking.

Like he, he's currently a high school junior.

But I started working with him when he was in eighth grade and he said something.

I forgot what he said that day.

He was telling me something about.

He was like, I had to tell the underclassmen how to do something.

I was like, what do you mean underclassmen?

I was like, aren't you only like in 10th grade?

He's like, what?

I'm halfway through my junior year.

And I was like, that's crazy because we started when you were in eighth grade.

So now like literally watching this kid grow up, go from an 8th grader to being a freshman varsity to now being a leader, teaching these kids skills that I've worked with him on.

So it allowed me to kind of just sit back and be like, I saw kind of the impact of the work that we've done and it kind of made me feel a little full circle, which is what kind of led to that post of.

I really just kind of.

I kind of just use it now to just get thoughts off my mind.

I wanted to be a lot more involved.

So beginning of last year, I started into the article writing a little bit.

So it was kind of a way to increase kind of my credibility within the field of now allowing people to see my thoughts, how I connected certain things, how I've created different examples.

I probably did about four or five of those, but then I realized they were all on.

On a similar theme of, again, identity, the performance aspect, without even realizing it was that.

And I took a break from the articles because those articles then turned into what the Unapologetic Athlete book turned out to be.

So those articles then translated into becoming a published piece of work that will be coming out in a little under two months.

So I think now, this year, it is kind of figuring out what Strategy to utilize LinkedIn on.

Whether I have the time to do it or not.

That's going to be its own challenge in itself.

But I think right now it's given me a space to connect with a lot of up and coming practitioners, which has been.

It's been an internal battle for me.

Just from like an imposter syndrome standpoint, it's like there's so many great individuals out here who do this work much longer than me.

Like, why are y' all reaching out to me?

Like, to figure out how I got to where I got to.

I'm like, bro, I can give you 15 other people that I look up to that you should probably talk to.

But then it also, I looked aside.

Okay, cool.

I'm creating a brand where individuals are comfortable enough and desire to kind of reach out and there's information I can give them that's going to help their journey, that's going to help them again.

Back to me kind of being a player, being somebody that I wish I had right When I was in grad school, I wasn't out here on LinkedIn reaching out to people and stuff like that.

That kind of happened after the fact that.

So I think I still kind of have to figure out what I genuinely want to use LinkedIn for, how often I want to use it.

But as of right now, sometimes it's just a space to let people know I'm still here, but also just to give people a glimpse into the world in which I operate.

That's funny how sometimes just.

Just us being vulnerable, being honest and sharing what's on our mind is actually the most valuable thing that we can see, especially in the world of AI now, dude, it's unreal lately how much stuff you see that's just fake.

And so I thought it was a really cool story though.

Like, if you talking about your.

Your client who's a junior, and that that's a perfect example of you being in rooms you're not even in, right?

Like, he's teaching your lessons to a room full of people.

Like, they're gonna go on and they're gonna, most likely, at least a few of them are gonna teach those lessons.

Other people, like, that's.

That's exponential.

It's huge.

And so, and I really like the fact that you mentioned it actually gave me inspiration because I've been Doing my newsletter for quite a while now, but I was like, probably same thing, like five or ten episodes in newsletters, in, if you will.

And it was like, man, I feel like I'm kind of actually writing my book right now.

And so I kind of just kept going.

But I'm like, I know there actually is people who will take their newsletters and just kind of like formulate it into a book, but at the same time, like, I don't want everyone to have already read all my.

My stuff.

So, like, I really like your idea.

You were just like, okay, yeah, boom.

Turn this into a book immediately.

Don't even let anybody else see it.

Like, very smart.

Very, very smart.

So I'm curious now, like, with.

With all this experience you have, like, what have been some things you've noticed mental performance coaches doing?

I mean, that's tough because I wouldn't say I'm necessarily in those rooms to see that I think being remotely right.

I, I don't.

We don't see the interactions that other coaches are having with their clients or workshops they're doing from that degree.

So I. I can't really say I see what people are doing wrong or not right or wrong.

I mean, even within my own company, like, I. I don't know what those client sessions look like, even from the people that I work with.

So I think because this is such an.

It's not necessarily a new field, but it's a new field.

Like, the importance of it is now growing to becoming a priority, that there isn't really a wrong answer right now.

Right.

Like, I mean, somebody might assess a situation incorrectly, but I wouldn't say there's really a streamlined process to be like, yeah, this mental performance coach is doing this completely wrong.

I think there's just so many different ways because people have to play into their strengths.

Right.

Like you said, the way a bookworm is going to approach a session in workshop is going to be very different than the way that I approach it.

Because everyone who knows me, I'm very transparent about it.

I am not a bookworm.

I'm not going to be the person that's going to recite theoretical foundations and summarizes back to you.

That's just not me.

Do I know the information?

Absolutely.

Like, I had to.

I learned it in school.

But my skill is being able to take that and make it sound like it's an everyday conversation with the athletes I work with.

So I. I wouldn't really say I can.

Yeah, I don't know if I could really pinpoint that where coaches are doing things wrong.

I think coaches just do things differently.

Whether they structure certain curriculum when working with athletes or teams, whether they're loosey goosey about it and just approach what's currently happening in that moment, I think there's benefit for any of the coaches that we do or the clientele that we work with.

So, yeah, I don't know if I can say I see other coaches doing things wrong necessarily.

So, yeah, that's still a perfectly good answer.

I heard you mention God earlier, and I've personally was on a path of spirituality, and then my son got diagnosed with autism, and I was going through a lot of stuff and, you know, trying to, like, I was dealing with a lot of frustration from the symptoms of that and grief obviously as well, from, you know, what I thought it might have been or expectations I might have had.

But ultimately I came to realize, and I'm curious about your opinion on this now, is that a lot of what's being taught as sports and performance psychology is really just spirituality in the performance context.

So I'm curious.

There's obviously more to it that there's more tools, there's more things like that, but like mindfulness and purpose and values and all those things.

So do you feel like your spirituality, your own sense of spirituality comes out in how you coach or that you find that being a topic of conversation or.

Or just your personal opinion on.

On spirituality in sports?

Yeah, I. I think it's.

It's obviously a very tricky conversation.

It's a fine line for a lot of individuals, I think directly.

It's not something that I put on to athletes.

Like my beliefs are my beliefs, your beliefs are yours, and we can keep not way if you feel the need to share it and that becomes a priority.

Absolutely.

Let's rock with it.

Whatever your religion might be, I think again, I'm a big fan of owning who you are and what you believe in and how we can tailor your performance identity to fit that.

I'm a big spiritual person, Christian.

I've been in Methodist churches my entire life.

Like, that's a big part of who I am, what I believe in, the principles that those have taught me over the years.

It's something that I definitely exude in who I am and how I carry myself.

And I feel I can do that without having to vocalize it in kind of that setting.

Because we do live in a world where cultural sensitivity is extremely important.

So with certain athletes who do vocalize that and that becomes a priority.

Yes, let's 100%.

Dive into that on the purpose of you being very comfortable in your skin of who you are.

Because if we can do it at that level, we can then take that same like, formula of getting to that to do it for your confidence on the basketball court.

Right.

You can own who you are within your role.

So I would say, in a way, the work we do, yes, the spirituality of sport or performance, in a sense, but it is more so just like having certain guiding principles and values.

So I think like, the process to that way is very.

Or the spiritual way, the process is very similar, kind of in a performance standpoint for whichever kind of spiritual background that, that you do have.

But it is definitely something that, that guides the work that I do.

How I want to show up for others and serve in, in that capacity as well.

Yeah, I think so.

In my mind, George Mumford's a really good example of.

It feels like it's just spirituality and mindfulness and things like that.

He's teaching and I'm like, this is so cool to see so much value come from that.

You know, in a high performance environment, everyone be like, oh, settle down and take some breaths.

And you know, and people get really good results from that.

Obviously there's a lot more to it than that.

But yeah, I'm curious.

I'm curious about your time now at, at img, because I've asked.

I've.

I've probably interviewed four or five people who have worked there.

I just love hearing the perspective of going in there and seeing like, and just having no idea what to expect and being very impressed with it.

I'm.

I don't know if you actually got to go to the physical academy or you only worked online, but I'm sure you had some sort of awesome experience with IMG as well.

Yeah, so I, I work with the IMG Academy plus division, which is the remote branch of it.

It's been a great experience because just like you said, the network of IMG is massive.

So there's a lot of good work that we do there in partnership with ncsa, which is one of the biggest, like, recruiting platforms for, you know, high school and youth athletes.

So the influx of.

Of athletes that I get is.

It's very eye opening because I work with every sport there, from volleyball to baseball to softball to soccer to basketball to football, whatever it is.

These are athletes who are all over the world.

The athletes I work with don't actually attend IMG Academy.

They're individuals all over the world who want the IMG Academy service.

So it's been great.

I've been able to develop some great relationships with managers, with, you know, other mental performance coaches, with dietitians, putting together, you know, workshops for 2, 300 athletes at one time, talking about the mental side of the game paired with nutrition and things of that nature.

It led me to an opportunity to work with Atlanta United for a year.

So I was able to oversee their academy.

So it was like five or six different teams oversee all the mental performance and wellness, which was a direct relationship from img where I was able to get that.

Funny enough, the one time I've been to IMG's campus was actually for a tournament when I was working at Atlanta United.

So we had a tournament and it was at.

I was on IMG's campus.

But it's a totally different.

There's not as much co like connection between the on campus staff and the remote division.

But when I was able to reach out to some people that I did know, I was like, hey, we have an off day.

This day.

I would love to spend, you know, just come tour, see what the facility's like.

Because I've always heard of img.

Like they're big basketball, so I've known about it since I was in school.

So I kind of hit them up and the reception was just like they had a full day planned.

Well, you have to have a full day because the campus is massive.

But being able to then be on campus and see all the work that they're doing, from strength conditioning, from sports science, from leadership development, mental performance, the resources they're all allotted, I think it was just amazing work that they're doing up there.

Being able to expand the reach of the work that we do, it's a beautiful thing to just touch.

I mean, like I said, to expand the reaches is outstanding.

So love the work that they're doing there.

Trying to find ways to simplify it and provide access to people who might not be in positions to receive like private practice or personalized developed training and things of that nature.

So yeah, it's been a great experience working with them.

Nothing but good things to say about how they've operated from an on campus standpoint.

The work that they do in the mental performance space, as well as even from the remote space, they have some highly qualified coaches and practitioners who are spending their time also giving back to athletes who are a lot younger, who need the work just as much as the collegiate, just as much as the professional athletes.

And so having worked with all these different sports you mentioned, I'm curious, you know, and I like to ask this question as well.

Is fast paced sports like basketball versus a slow paced sport like, you know, golf, how do you approach them differently?

It's funny you say that last night I was actually working with one of my golfers and we were making the comparison between basketball and golf because they have so much time on their hands.

So after a bad shot you got, depending on how many people you're playing with, you got almost five minutes between your next shot.

So how do you organize your thoughts to where that next shot is not affected?

Basketball, it happens like that, you don't have as much time to think.

So we just have to make sure our thoughts continue to be productive.

I don't necessarily like to treat them as differently as you might think.

Again, the internal work in the mental performance game, the internal work remains the same.

The only thing that changes again is the external constraints or environments that we're in.

But developing confidence, developing focus, developing motivation, developing all these different aspects or mental skills, they're all the same, right?

At the end of the day, performance is performance.

Whether you're a salesperson, whether you're slow paced athlete, fast paced athlete, whether you're a doctor at the same day, at the end of the day, your ability to believe what you're able to do, like the definition of confidence, believe in your ability is going to be the same.

So that's what we're working on, that's what I'm working on with athletes.

So, so that kind of remains on the same plane versus approaching things differently based off kind of the externals.

Because that goes against even what I, I preach to them.

Whether you're in practice, whether you're in a regular season game or a championship game, who you are and how you show up wants to be the exact same.

Just the externals are changing.

Right.

There's a trophy at the end of it, but the skill set still remains the same.

Yeah, I love how that, I love how you come back to that.

Because like that was the same answer for, you know, talking about college versus pro versus high school.

And then you're talking about fast paced versus slow.

It's all the same internally.

And then there's external conditions that are going to change and those really aren't supposed to at least affect you that much.

And, and so I'm curious when it comes to like focus, I, I interviewed another gentleman named Tuck Taylor.

I'm not sure if you've ever heard of him.

He's out of Florida, owns a gym called Neurobeast and He does a lot of, I guess it'd be called cognitive training.

So he's using like light up balls and like all these different things.

Like are you familiar with any of that and what are your, what are your thoughts on that stuff?

I'm familiar.

I've never actually used it.

I think I've used it once and I'm.

We're starting to see a lot more of it again.

As people are expanding the science of these things and finding tangible ways to have engagement and train these things.

I think there are traditional ways or older ways to do it.

There's newer day and age ways to do it as well, which is we're seeing with that type of stuff.

I'm a fan of it.

I think finding ways to integrate that type of stuff within our world is huge.

I mean, I think we're in the mental performance space can start to serve as kind of the concierge for development.

Especially when we're embedded in places we're having the relationships and knowledge to know that someone like the person you just mentioned, hey, we should bring them first, we should bring them in to develop this.

I'm never going to be the one where like I got to be the only one to develop all of these different aspects that nah, if I can say, hey, bring this person in for this, this person in for that, we're good to go.

That's the world I want to, I want to be in.

So I mean we are seeing that.

We're seeing a lot of this AI supplementation as well like that.

That's a world that's starting to quickly, quickly grow.

I mean, we get messages from AI companies all the time that want us to kind of test their products or help navigate like their language models and things of that nature.

So it's all this is growing, it's growing very fast.

And as technology and all these things continuing to increase, we're going to see more and more of it.

But I still think even with that, those are supplemental to still it's great you can train your cognitive mind to do this, but do you actually know how to apply it?

How do we take what we learned in there into actual settings?

And I think that's where we'll continue to have our impact by being able to vocalize it and help them really paint the pictures from the skill that they just learned how to actually apply that into the performance world.

Yeah, true, true.

So when it comes to focus, if we're not going to use some fancy new tech and stuff, and the fact that tech is Taking over, if you will.

I don't say that.

But, you know, taking people's attention, taking people's focus.

What are some tools that you use to help with people's focus?

There's multiple different things.

The visual cues, auditory cues, vocal cues, the core values I mentioned earlier, for a lot of our my players, we establish those core values as focus points.

So let's say your core values were confidence, motivation, and purpose, right?

We've defined what those look like.

We've added certain behaviors and actions to what those look like.

So now when you're in game, the focus is just those three points.

When you know you need more of one, let's push this one.

Let's push confidence.

And we already know what comes from that, but that just allows us to direct our attention, I think from even a practical standpoint.

And honestly, this isn't even something that I've done right before this, I was actually on Instagram.

There's a company called Utah Sports Psych.

First time I've ever seen them.

They were running this activity where they were using a concentration grid.

And each team member of the it was a basketball team.

Each member on the team had a partner.

The objective goal was to find every number one through 99.

Your partner's goal was to distract you, whatever ways made sense to distract you.

So now you are teaching focus.

You are teaching how to still accomplish a task despite the distractions that are being added.

So I think anytime we can do things like that are definitely more traditional ways to enhance confidence.

I mean focus, like you said, mindfulness, like you mentioned, being able to focus on your breath despite external distractions.

Can you bring yourself back to the present moment?

So I think those are a couple of ways that I would immediately look to increase focus without other contexts obviously involved.

And then another huge one I wanted to talk about was, was goal setting.

So obviously goal setting being incredibly important.

What would be some of your, your basic tips on someone who is a goal setting and B, another thing I wanted to talk about was the flexibility around your goals.

Because I know a lot of people and I've done it to myself where I set a goal, if I don't accomplish it, feel like shit, you know, and stop setting goals as much and, and you know, like, how do you kind of help people traverse that world?

I think the big thing one, first versus identifying and helping them know the difference between process and out outcome goals.

That's like bottom line for me, that has to be identified because everyone wants to place the outcome goals first.

Right?

I want to win a championship, I want to get a scholarship, I want to finish first.

Okay, great.

So now what are the goals to get to that point?

So that's a way that I always do.

Let's, let's identify what that outcome is.

But we're going to spend more time focusing on the process goals along the way, which then like you said, I mean this, the answers kind of blur together.

That's where the flexibility can jump in.

Right.

Because now it's okay, we have this one outcome goal, but now we got 10 different goals here.

Let's, let's deviate these if needed.

Right.

We can go the smart goal route to be specific, measurable, attainable, time bound strengths that come with it.

But just, that's where now I teach the importance of just being flexible with your goals.

Because if we have 10 listed out, if you don't reach your outcome, let's look back and look at the seven that you did accomplish.

And let's be, let's be okay, let's be proud, let's be good with that.

So that's where I would go with it immediately.

I would say understanding outcome versus process.

But then we're going to spend a lot more time and attention on the process ones of how to actually obtain the things that we are trying to obtain ultimately reaching the outcome because we can't necessarily always control the outcome.

You want to win a championship, great.

There's nine other players on the court, three referees, coaches, who all impact the game more than just you do.

So let's focus on your development in the process of what you need to control to get to that point or what you need to accomplish to get to that point.

And that sounds like it would kind of be a similar concept for the, you know, one of the questions I'd want to ask was overcoming failure.

You know, I would see it as failure as feedback.

So how I've learned it.

And so for you, if like you're really focused on this, this process instead, do you think that that kind of helps people to overcome their feeling of going after it again, you know, going like again.

They've, they failed, they've, they've maybe embarrassed themselves.

I'm sure you've had clients who just like, holy, I never want to play again.

Like, and you have to like, no, no, no, like you're, you'll be okay.

Just focus on whatever it is, you know.

Yeah, I think you hit the nail on the head.

I mean we look at, we look at Ls as lessons and not losses.

One of my Clients, I need to tell them to trademark that because I use it all the time ever since he mentioned it to me.

But yeah, I mean, that's exactly it, right?

Sometimes when we jump to those conclusions of like, I never want to play again, that's cool.

But the emotions are all into it right now, so.

So let's just take a minute, let's look back and see actually what we've done, what we've accomplished.

Like you said, I might not have reached that goal, but now let's look back and realize that you've increased your averages, you've performed better, more consistently, you have a different opportunity now that you didn't have before.

Right.

So it does allow us to kind of look at failure a little differently when we have all of those steps.

We within the process of, okay, that might be one loss, but you took 10 wins to get here.

Like, let's appreciate those and change kind of our attention to those things rather than the one loss.

So, yeah, it definitely does help from that standpoint.

Love it.

So then what's your process now for promoting your book over the next two months?

I'm not.

I think that's kind of what I'm.

I'm figuring out.

I think we're going to wait until after.

Right now I'm finishing that dissertation that I'm defending that and then once that's done, we'll, we'll shift into kind of the.

I don't even think I'm doing a pre order or anything like that, but then just kind of getting the marketing materials to kind of put it out and then even announce it for one.

I, I do have a book release event that's going to be held in April here in Atlanta.

I have some great connections and partners at Clayton State University, which is a D2 nearby, who wanted to host it.

And I was like, okay, great, like let's do it again.

Kind of like what we talked about earlier.

Like when you ask like with my PsyD, what's the plan?

It very same with this.

I don't really have a plan.

Like I wrote it, it's done, I published it, I have some couple printed copies, but kind of whatever happens happens.

And that's kind of where I'm keeping it for now.

But we'll definitely kind of start to put it out there leading up to it.

It's actually gonna publicly release on my birthday.

So it's kind of like my gift to myself.

So April 16, 2026, unapologetic athlete will be released.

So prior, probably a month before it's funny, I actually kind of have to announce that I finished, I defended my dissertation first because everybody knows that I'm still in school.

And then they'll see the book and they'll be like, you're not a doctor.

So, so I kind of have to announce that.

So I think kind of by the middle of March, I'll probably spend three weeks kind of leading up to the release, kind of just putting out there, explaining what the project was about, kind of building some momentum and then kind of just releasing it and then letting it do what it does.

Like if it blows up, like that's, that's great.

It's just reaching more people if it doesn't.

I've had some early readers who it's already impacted and that's all that matters to me.

There are some people who were part of the project that have been inspired to now work on their own projects, who are former athletes.

That's a win.

That's all I necessarily wanted from this, which is being able to put thoughts and ideas into something and be able to share it.

So I'm very, I'm very new to it.

The second book, if I ever, ever go down that path, will be a lot more organized that time.

But this time I, I, it's really just, it's going to be putting out there and then whatever comes from that comes from that.

And that's honestly as simple as I want to keep it.

But in about a month or so we're already, shoot, we're already at February 21st, so probably in a couple weeks, probably around like the 18th, 19th of March, I'll probably put it out there, maybe even like the 20th, somewhere around there.

It's when I'll kind of make the first kind of public post about it just to kind of generate the excitement about it before I'm releasing it.

Because this is the hardest part, like the easiest part of writing this book has been writing it ever since I finished writing it.

That has been the most stressful now that it's been done, just sitting here waiting, thinking about it and all the different like things that could happen.

That's been the biggest challenge.

But it was a great challenge for myself.

I mean, to write a book the same time you're writing a dissertation.

It's yeah, geez, insane.

Would not recommend it for anyone to do that, but we'll see where it goes.

Super excited about it and super excited to share.

Just kind of pieces of my story, pieces of some of my closest friends stories.

And this with the goal of Just helping anybody who.

Having a voice for the unspoken, that's the whole point of this.

There's.

I hope it's relatable for some people and they're like, wow, there's someone else who's going through a lot of the similar things I went through.

And this is how they got through it.

Let me try this.

And hopefully that helps.

That's the whole purpose of it.

I love that.

And I think it's funny that I really caught the.

The fact that you said that you were not sure if you ever have a second book, but then you also said you're not sure if you're ever gonna go to grad school.

So, you know, we'll see what happens.

Exactly.

Who knows what's gonna happen?

I love that man.

I love that man.

Well, I'm gonna wrap it up here, man, and I'm grateful for you being here.

I'm grateful for the viewers for watching.

I want you to take a second to let them know where they can find you.

LinkedIn, Instagram, YouTube, whatever.

Whatever it is you gotta got.

Feel free to plug it now.

Yeah, I think every.

It's very simple.

On all platforms.

Aaron Ulmer, the way it's spelled, is going to take you to everything that you need from the Instagram to LinkedIn.

Actually, funny enough, my Instagram name is actually going to change in a couple of weeks, so depends on when this comes out.

For right now, it'll still be Aaron Omer.

You'll still be able to find me through that.

So if you put those in, you'll be able to find me on all platforms.

So please feel free to reach out if you ever need any mental performance, performance psych work, or if you just want to talk, please just reach out and I'll be more than happy to.

I love that.

And what he's discussing about his name change is my guy's about to be a doctor, if you haven't heard that already.

So congratulations again, man, and thank you for being on the show.

Greatly appreciate you.

Thank you, Ty.

I appreciate it.

Sa.