Brain in the Game | Sport Mind Coaching Podcast
Dave Diggle
Episode Twelve – Moving Athletes from Amateur to Professional Thinking and How to Build the Team to do it
Hello, and welcome back to Brain in the Game – the podcast for athletes, coaches, and parents looking to do their sport smarter. BITG is the hub where we focus on the mental, emotional, and cognitive development of elite and professional athletes, and their coaches. I'm your host, Dave Diggle.
In this episode, we're going to focus on how an athlete moves from being an amateur to a professional, and how they build that team of people around them to do that. If you think about the majority of amateur athletes, they do everything themselves: managing performing, training, diet, physical prep, emotion, marketing, media, sponsorship, and their recovery. They often have a generic coach from their club, and their parents as their team around them. When we think about that athlete and a professional athlete where everything is done for them, there's a vast difference between their world as a professional, and the world of an amateur.
When you're an amateur, everything you do has massive potential to traverse from the amateur world to the professional one. You need to make sure you don't make mistakes. Predominantly, it's your parents that are there for you if something didn't go right – but they're probably not the best people to be managing your emotions. They have the investment and the passion for you, but they don't have the correct skill set in order to manage you in an efficient way; to get you out of that depression you could have fallen in to from a poor performance. It's the same when we’re talking about media – most media exposure for an amateur is their local newspaper, someone saying “I hear you did really well, let's get a photo, can I write an article?” That necessarily won't paint you in the best light if you want to become a professional athlete.
When we talk about recovery, there's a huge thing here in Australia about athletes who take substances trying to recover far quicker, often not knowing what the content of them are. If you're an amateur athlete trying to break into the professional world, and you're willing to traverse from that amateur world of you paying for and doing everything, to the professional world where you're paid handsomely and everything is done for you, you may be more willing to take things that you're not 100% educated on.
All these mistakes that can be made are being made on a scale every day around the world in many different sports. When we look at professionals, and their world – I heard a statistic that over 35 professional support staff support every athlete. This is in a high-demand sport, something that had a lot of money and sponsorship involved – but still, 35 people for each athlete. The hands-on staff like the doctors, scientists, managers, sponsors, media traners, coaching and technical staff, to name just a few. When we think about the difference, there's a huge void between the amateur and professional. The amateur who's getting up at 4 AM and doing the extra work to fit it all in, and the professional athlete who has their entire world managed for them and get picked up and dropped off, with a health paycheck in between.
That area between is where most of our talented athletes lie. Not just being a weekend warrior, and not being a paid professional, but in a limbo stage between. Because this is where our biggest hub of elite athletes are – winning competitions and producing performances that the world wants to see, and probably on the precipice of becoming a professional – if you want to move from this limbo into the professional world, there are a few things you'll need to do. You have to invest in yourself and take the step to increase the world around you who are in charge of your outcome.
This is where we in the Smart Mind Institute built a template called “The Entourage Circles”. This is how we build our team around us as an athlete to get the most optimum performance out of us and let us focus on performing. The right people doing the right task. When we look today, there's a great opportunity for elite athletes in the middle to tap into great resources. There's a lot of professionals who prefer working with those athletes on the precipice. I have a lot of athletes who get paid tons doing what they do, but I think I get the most buzz helping athletes just on that tipping point.
This entourage circle system we've built has a few key steps athletes need to follow. We're going to walk you through this system in the episode today, and give you an opportunity to download the template at the end of the program. There's going to be certain parts that you do as an athlete that no one can do for you – parts of the performance, mental preparation, physical welfare – and what you need to do is focus on those tasks. In order to optimise your input, you need to focus on what you do well. The rest needs to be manage for you by the right key staff.
How do we as an athlete know who those people are? We've probably never thought about who would manage me, or our media; all these things you've innately done to utilise the talent you obviously already have. But if you want to maximise on that, you need to let go of the tight grip you have on yourself.
The first step is to make a list of the roles that you require right now, and into the future. We don't want to create a team that feeds only the now; then in six months time, completely reshuffle it. We want to future-pace ourselves and make sure the team we create will take us forward. But, that doesn't mean once someone is in a role, they're in for life – it's a performance-based role. If someone you bring on board doesn't work specifically well with you as an athlete, don't feel you need to keep them in. You owe it to yourself to make sure you have the best team around you. I said at the start we need to invest in ourselves, and that managing costs is always a massive part of maintaining you in your sport. When you're paying for everything, it can be very expensive – but you need to invest in the right people. Cost shouldn't be the inhibitor to you being a professional. It may need you to scale back in other areas to afford the right people now; or have someone in place for now, but someone in the future that you're “saving up” to bring on-board. Have that foresight to say “at some point in the future, I'm going to need to spend more time, money and effort on me.”
We need things like physical coaches, the right people who understand the sport we're in, and the kind of coach that works well with us. The right technical team around us – biomechanics, nutritionists, sport scientists. We need to make sure those giving us technical advice are those who understand the sport to the enth degree, get us over the hump and take us into the future, and see the big picture. We also need to think about preventative measures – doctors, scientists, acupuncturists, therapists. We need to make sure the machine we have, the tool of our trade, is looked after – this includes recovery. If we're going out on the weekend performing in a high-impact sport, we need to make sure on Monday morning that we rock up for a good recovery session to get back into prep for next weekend's game.
The physical demand on athletes these days is greater than every before. I worked recently with MMA people, and the impact on their bodies from a fight was horrendous; yet they were expected the next day to rock up and recover for the next round. We had to make sure we had the right people around them to look after their muscles, the contusions on the body; to make sure the physical side was taken care of.
We also have to think about the development team, to invest in now for the future. People like myself who are mind coaches and help the whole athlete, looking at the mental and emotional management aspect of these athletes. To make sure they're balanced athletes who can think clearly under pressure. And their cognitive developments, to make sure their left and right hemispheres are working correctly. All these aspects to the development our performance need to happen to make sure the athlete, as a whole, is taken care of.
We also need to think about roles like the manager, people who have the foresight and outlook to plan with you. To make sure the decisions you make today will pay dividends for you in the future. Someone who will market you in the vein you want to be seen. A lot of times you see marketers marketing “the bad boy” of a sport, because that pays, but it doesn't have longevity. Often people get to a stage where the bad boys are ousted. You may not want instant financial gratification, but longevity – from being a player, to a coach, to a consultant. You want someone who will market you as that kind of commodity.
You need someone who will manage your media. When we look at today's media, it's not just newspaper and TV, it's social medial like Twitter and Facebook – instant media where a lot of the fan base is located. A lot of fans who tweet want to be able to tweet their stars and join them on Facebook. If you're a professional athlete, you probably won't have time to build those platforms yourself. You need someone to manage that for you. You need someone to handle your sponsorship so you can go out and perform, and not worry about affording the entourage or career you're trying to forge. Someone who will go out and target local, national, or international media to get you on front pages and under good sponsorships, so that you can give yourself the best opportunity to be that athlete.
Once we have that identified, we need to fill it in with people. Fill it in with people you have already. That will help you filter out what you need to focus on or look for. Once you have it filled out or at least earmarked with people you think might be interested and get on-board, you need to describe the roles very specifically. It's like a job interview where you need to sit down with that person in your team and say “this is what I want you to do for me as an athlete.” The parameters of their role, how it's going to play out – what areas of media you want to be in, the persona you want to portray, the kind of media you will and won't do, etc. You give very specific guidelines. If you give someone a specific role, that's their role – you don't go “that's your role, oh and if so and so is on holiday, do this; oh and if I'm really busy, do this...” If we're going to be a professional athlete, we need the right people for the right task.
Once we have those really defined roles and the people in certain roles already, and the gaps that need to still be filled are understood, we also need to circle the names of the people we have who may not be ideal. You may have a coach already, where it's like “he's great in the amateur world, but clearly not cut out for what I need in the professional world.” That doesn't mean you rock up the next day and say “sorry Jon, I know I've been with you 10 years, but you're gone.” It's “what kind of strategy do I need to put in place to manoeuvre from the great foundation Jon's given me, into the professional world that maybe 'Eric' can give me.” Once we know what skill set needs to happen to enable us to move from a Jon to an Eric, it enables us to have a clearer picture and more productive progression.
You may have someone in a role by default. This could be a parent, managing your emotion. But in professional sport, it's unlikely – and lots of cases where parents do try to manage their athletes emotions (some tennis players come to mind) and it went terribly wrong. You need someone who's connected with you and invested in your outcome, but disconnected enough to tell you how it is. Often, parents don't have that objectivity. If it is a parent's role that you want someone else to fill, there may need to be that difficult conversation.
Once we have this picture of the role, role requirements, the people we have, the people we need to replace, the job descriptions we need to go out and advertise and search for; then you need to look at the relationship dynamic between you and those roles. Whichever role it be, the relationship needs to be sustainable. You don't want to be a leech. It's not “oh, you're my mind coach, I want this and this and this, I'll just pay you and you do your job.” Whereas technically that's right, you want someone who's invested in you and will go that extra mile, and have an emotional, professional investment in you. If you just have a one-way relationship where “I want this from you and I'll just give you money”, then you'll get that kind of outcome. If you want someone who will buy into you and what you believe in as an athlete, you want to understand the relationship dynamic.
As a mind coach, I'm looking for openness. I want them to ask me specific questions, but also be open to me asking very specific and honest questions. The investment for me is the internal relationship of honesty. I want to have an impact on them where I can get to those tough questions, give them directions, and know they're not going to have a fit and say “that's it, you're gone.” This symbiotic relationship is vital in all roles. Every role we have, we need to identify the relationship within. With that comes accessibility. The reason we have entourage circles is so that the person the closest to you in the centre has the most access to you, and vice versa. The persons on the peripherals have less access to you, and you'll probably have less need for them. Your masseuse may be somewhere closer to the outside, yet your manager or mind coach are probably close to the centre.
Having that understanding of accessibility enables you to create boundaries, so that people don't cross them. If you have a masseuse that you see once a week, they're not going to appreciate you phoning up at 2 AM and saying “my neck and back really hurt, can you get ready?” Yet if they're in that really close entourage circle, and you rock up and say “I'm in a really bad place, please”, then that's part of that other person's role, and they would rock up in return to help you. Understanding the relationship dynamics and the two-way accessibility is important to understand. The vice-versa happens too: you don't want a masseuse knocking on your door at 2 AM saying “I just saw you play a couple hours ago. I know you're asleep, but I reckon you're a bit tight so I'll just give you a bit of a massage aye?” You want to create those avenues of access properly.
Now we've identified our team with the roles, the people, the access, the relationships, the specificity around what they're required to do. We need to make sure that hums along efficiently. We do that by meeting frequently. The entourage groups I'm part of, we make sure we meet every single week – that's people in the first three circles. The people outlying those first three probably meet once a month. What we want to do is create a direction we're all travelling in, so we're all on the same page – when my athlete is performing, he'll know that I know what he's thinking, what his plan is, his next step, and his short- and long-term goals are; so that I can manage him/her in the most optimum way. The frequency needs to be something everyone buys into. That might mean you as an athlete investing into that too. You may need to invest in making sure you have the right people around you at the right times.
The last step of the process is the calibration, making sure that when you look at your entourage, you calibrate them. That doesn't mean “oh, it's been a month with these same people, I need to oust someone and get someone new in” or “I didn't connect well with ____ last night, so let's consider someone else for that”. You need to manage it better than that; but you may need to look at your team as “up to this point, this team has worked perfectly – however, I can start to see gaps forming. I can see someone's skill set won't enable me to move into the next phase of my career, and I have to start managing that person out and putting the right one in.” Constantly calibrate your team, making sure everyone is on the right page, singing the same song, doing the right job with the right specificity.
Our entourage template is available on our website when you sign up to receive our weekly information. When you do sign up, we'll also send our five-minute coaching clinics – a set of videos that come out every week where I teach you one thing you can add to your program. When you go to www.BrainInTheGame.com.au, you'll get access to all the templates we've talked about in our podcast series, as well as these five-minute coaching clinics. I hope you've found this entourage program interesting. It's an incredibly vital part of creating you as a professional athlete, and can be a very difficult step to go from “I have control of everything” to handing that control over – but it's vital. I can't emphasise enough that the sooner you invest in yourself, the quicker and more sustainable results you'll get.
Until the next episode, train smart and enjoy the ride.
Copyright 2012-2022 Dave Diggle
https://www.smartmind.com/
