Show Notes

• What it’s really like to be a sports agent
• The evolution of Craig’s career
• Reasons agents tend to focus on one sport
• The ideal client
• Pay scale in the NFL
• Support agents provide to players, both on and off the field
• The Pro Mindset®, and why it’s important
• Strategies from sports management that can be applied universally

Connect With Craig Domann

Website: http://www.360sportsrep.com/
Website: http://www.promindsetpodcast.com/
Website: http://www.craigdomann.com/

Summary

As an experienced sports attorney, Craig Domann represents successful NFL athletes, as well as a number of pro and college football coaches. His experience working with high-performing individuals has given him valuable insight into what he calls the Pro Mindset^®. Craig discusses the skills and mindset needed to succeed in the sports industry and beyond.

Full Transcript

Brian
Welcome to another episode of LifeExcellence with Brian Bartes. Join me as I talk with amazing athletes, entrepreneurs, authors, entertainers, and others who have achieved excellence in their chosen field so you can learn their tools, techniques and strategies for improving performance and achieving greater success.

Craig Domann is a sports agent, keynote speaker and podcast host. As an experienced sports attorney, Craig represents successful National Football League athletes, as well as a number of pro and college football coaches. Since becoming a registered NFLPA member contract advisor in 1990, he has negotiated more than a billion dollars – that’s billion with a B – in contracts for more than 200 NFL athletes. Craig’s experience working with high performing individuals has given him valuable insight into what he calls the pro mindset and he shares that insight to help his clients and business people achieve success. As a keynote speaker and podcast host, Craig shares powerful messages and knowledge that helps his audiences to develop the skills and mindset needed to be their best in the sports industry and beyond. Craig’s educational background is in business and law and he utilizes those skills to advise and counsel his clients, helping them to maximize their opportunities and achieve their dreams. Welcome, Craig, thanks for joining us on LifeExcellence.

Craig
Thank you very much, Brian, I appreciate it. Looking forward today to our conversation.

Brian
Likewise. Let’s jump right in, Craig, and talk about the stereotypes of being a sports agent. First, sports management is a cutthroat dog-eat-dog business but second, it’s also a glamorous one, given that millions – well, apparently billions – of dollars are at stake for both athletes and the agents representing them. What does it really take to be a sports agent?

Craig
That’s a wonderful question. Now that I represent my son, who’s with the Colts – probably the only agent that’s ever had a client be a family member – you get a really good perspective on the impact that you make, the role that you play, the input that you can provide that you can basically share with these guys; places that they can’t see, things they don’t expect. Most players, when they come out of college, they know what to expect. They’ve got former teammates that are doing well in the NFL, but there are always things that they’re not ready for. I would say the most glamorous part about being a sports attorney and representing players is the ability and the opportunity to work with these guys side by side within their dreams; you’re walking hand in hand with them step by step by step. You might be talking to them the night before the game, and then you understand they’re dealing with an injury or a fractured relationship with one of their coaches, or they’re not really comfortable with the game plan, or they’ve got some family issue going on off the field, that the fans in the stands that paid all this money to come and have fun and drink some beers and root for their team have no idea that this player is dealing with something bigger than football.

Brian
What do you tell them when you’re in that situation, as an example?

Craig
Well, I think a couple things. One is you’ve got to keep the main thing with respect to your career. If you work at a law firm or you work at a bank or insurance company, typically the television crew is not following you around at your job. Any mistake that you make is not publicized on national TV. But as a professional athlete, the the media loves to find the nuances, the failures, the disappointments, the all the things that make people feel like hey, these guys are real people too. So I tell guys to keep the main thing [the] focus on their game, compartmentalize their career from the other things that are going on in their lives.

Brian
That’s good insight. Craig, you mentioned your educational background in the bio. When did you first become interested in representing athletes and tell us how your career evolved?

Craig
Well, I was a really good high school football player, but wasn’t a super athlete. I was recruited as a walk-on at University of Kansas. When I was there, I soon realized within…doesn’t take long to realize that some of these guys are different than you. They don’t even have to work out and they can jump higher than you. They can skip workouts in the weight room and they can lift more than you. My passion has always been competing and coaching and winning and the camaraderie and the brotherhood that comes with team sports. After three years of college football, I realized that it wasn’t going anywhere for me and I was getting my head beat in a few too many times. I decided to step away and got an accounting degree. But I didn’t…there’s a…like, you probably love your job being a podcaster and interviewing different people all the time…sometimes you wake up before your alarm. Well, when you have a job you really love you wake up before your alarm. That’s always been something related to sports. I wanted to combine sports and business so I went to law school with the idea that I wanted to be a sports attorney, wasn’t 100% sure if I was going to go into athlete representation or sports management, like athletic administration. Then Teddy, my wife, was working on the McDonald’s All American game when Shaquille O’Neal was a senior, Grant Hill was a senior and I was going through law school. So I met all these guys when they were 17 and 18 years old. These guys are wonderful human beings with so much God-given talent, bright futures. Who would have known that Shaq would have become Shaq, and Grant’s in the Hall of Fame. But the bottom line is, they had people helping them, coaching them, guiding them, advising them. When I got out of law school, I had the opportunity to meet with David Falk out in Virginia, who represented Michael Jordan and a number of top NBA guys. It was like, hey man, I’ll give you a job but you’re going to be in the back room. I didn’t want to be in the backroom, I wanted to be in the front row, so to speak, and have the relationships with the players. The biggest gratification I get is not the compensation, it’s the relationships that you build and the impact that you can make on these guys’ careers.

Brian
That’s super important, I think, when – and I’m going to ask you about the world of sports representation, sports attorneys – people think about representing athletes in contract negotiation the reality is, there’s so much more that goes into it, so much more support that can be offered, much more than than just – and probably you do a lot of the actual contract negotiation – there’s other support that you offer. Tell us…first of all, I’m a huge sports fan. I love all sports and football in particular, but I don’t know a lot about the world of sports representation, sports attorneys, sports management. For folks our age – and I think we’re a similar age, maybe my only reference is of a movie that’s probably almost 30 years old now called “Jerry Maguire” that gave people at the time some insight into at least Hollywood’s perspective of what that looks like – help us to understand and appreciate that. How many sports agents, sports attorneys are there? What is the particular accreditation you have? How do people get into it? How did how does all that work?

Craig
Well, I think there’s between 800 and 1000, NFLPA certified registered agents, and probably a similar amount for baseball. Basketball has fewer than that. Some agencies and agents do multiple sports, but most people stick to one sport. The intricacies of the CBAs in each sport is much different so if you want to be a pro at your career, you really almost need to focus on one sport. There have been a few people that have been successful in multiple sports, but they tend to gravitate towards one before it’s all said and done. Really, the only qualifications to be a contract advisor with the NFLPA is you have to have a master’s degree, graduate degree of some type, so JDs, a juris doctorate, certainly qualifies. When I first got in the business there was a gentleman that was very, very competent, but he only had a high school degree, did not have an undergraduate degree. I think the NFLPA was worried about the narrative and the look of it and wanted to create a higher standard for the representatives for their players.

Brian
I was actually going to ask you about that. You mentioned that even if people are spread among different sports that eventually they come to focus on a particular sport. Why is that? Is it a higher level of knowledge of the industry or focus on the nuances of it, say the NFL or the NBA or the MLB? What causes representatives to focus on a particular sport?

Craig
I think there are a multitude of reasons. The first reason is that every professional sport today is a 12 month sport. At one point in time, it might have been six months but now it’s 12. If you look at the NFL calendar, there is literally something going on every single month between the draft, free agency, June cuts, OTAs, training camp, and then the regular season plus the playoffs and the Super Bowl, you tell me a month where there’s not NFL news, you tell me a month where there’s not NFL activity, and organization signing and waving players; so you have to be ten toes in, you have to be all in, you can’t take three months off and go do a different sport. So just by virtue of the calendar, it kind of lends itself to being in one sport. Then the second thing is, as I mentioned before, the collective bargaining agreement for each sport is a little bit different, the salary caps are different. There are hard caps or soft caps, and there are different calculations for how a contract is calculated for the cap. Then I would say the third thing is relationships. There are 32 GMs in the NFL, there are 32 directors of college scouting, and there are numerous positions in their personnel departments – it’s important to have relationships with those people. In recruiting, you’ve got to recruit new clients. So when you’re recruiting, typically, an agent is not known by his name, he’s typically known by who he represents. Probably in the mid 90s, I was recruiting some young man and I’d be like, hey, give me a call and he’d say, I got some good news and bad news. I said, what’s the good news? I really like you. What’s the bad news? I’m going to sign with somebody else. I was like, well, who are you going to sign with? So and so’s agent – and so and so was a player. And so I asked, like, who’s the agent? He’s like, I don’t know, I just know it’s so and so’s agent. So our identities in the industry are almost more about who you have than who you are, which to me sometimes causes friction in my mind, because it’s more important who I am than who I represent.

Brian
It also shows the importance of relationships. You’ve mentioned that word a couple times, and relationships are critical I think, not only in developing relationships in anticipation of dealing with – whether we’re talking about athletes or potentially doing deals with GMs – your clients – I’m assuming as they hire you and you start to get to know them and they get to know you and how that plays out through their career. Craig, at what point do prospective clients appear on your radar? Walk us through what that looks like from ,say, initial awareness and when they finally sign with you?

Craig
It used to be about a six month recruiting process, but I think it’s turned into about a year recruiting process. In some cases, for players that…take Caleb Williams, for USC. He won the Heisman as an underclassmen. He’s not eligible for the ’23 draft, the first NFL draft he’s eligible for is 2024. There’s a very strong possibility he already knows who his representation is going to be. The advent of the Name, Image and Likeness possibilities has also made that whole process a little bit different because you can technically be a marketing agent for a player and develop a relationship with him, help him make money and not have any contractual arrangement with him about representing him after or when he’s eligible for the draft. But if you do a great job, what’s going to happen most of the time is that agency is going to represent that player. So you almost could take it to the recruiting process now; could be five years long because some of these high school kids in certain states, especially California, they can do an NIL. So if you identify a player – especially a quarterback or let’s say he’s an elite athlete, he could be a junior in high school – and you could develop a relationship with him, help him earn money through the NIL, and have a five year relationship before even representing him for professional purposes.

Brian
Are you utilizing current clients to nurture some of those relationships or do some of your prospects come through your existing clients, given that you’re known through your clients, not necessarily as Craig Domann?

Craig
Absolutely. I think that most of my clients come from coaches. There’s a phase in this business where you’re a bird dog; you’re out recruiting, you’re out hunting, you’re cold calling, you’re knocking on doors, you’re sending texts, you’re making contact with people that you have no connection to. Those days for me are gone. I’m at a point in my career now where I don’t do any of that. I don’t waste any…I don’t spin any wheels. I don’t chase, I’m not out. If I see a kid that’s really, really good on TV, I’m like, man, he’d be a great fit. I might think, do I have a connection to him? And if I do, I’m interested. If I don’t, I’m not going to waste my time because I know too many people and have too many relationships that I can just rely upon that natural stream or funnel of people; I don’t have to go out and chase.

Brian
I want to go back to something that you said earlier, the Name, Image and Likeness change in college sports. Can you talk about that just for our listeners and viewers who might not know what that is?

Craig
All the things that were illegal before July 1 of 2022, like giving an athlete a car in college when he’s an amateur, maybe paying him to do an autograph signing, or doing a product endorsement, do a sponsorship relationship with a company – all those things were illegal. They were a violation of the NCAA rules, basically the amateur provision and the NCAA. That’s what really separated the pros from the amateurs. Then on July 1, because of legal pressure against the NCAA…Ed O’Bannon started a lawsuit a number of years ago – a former basketball player for, I believe, USC – and they won. The NCAA basically said, Name and Image and Likeness now is legal with some parameters and guidelines. We have a son that was going into his final year of eligibility at the University of Nebraska and because my wife’s a marketing person, we caught wind that this thing was going to come down. He did a football camp within two weeks after July 1, with a teammate, and they both made between somewhere north of five grand each; nothing crazy but that’s a lot of money for a college kid. Then he did a podcast where he had sponsors and made money. So the guys today, it’s a little bit of the wild, wild west with the Name, Image and Likeness. But also companies might be fooled once, from the standpoint that they think they’re going to get some value from this relationship from this college athlete. But if they don’t get it, they won’t do it again. The athletes are now having to do more than just, hey, this is who I am, give me some money. Now it’s like, hey, you’re going to have to do some social media posts, you might have to do some videos talking about the company’s products or services or your relationship with that company. There’s a quid pro quo that wasn’t there before. The players also have to be mindful that if they don’t take care of their sport, they’re not going to have their scholarship and they’re not going to have an opportunity to go to the pros, regardless of the sport. They can spend a lot of time chasing these things. So if it’s not convenient in the off-season, not easy, a lot of these deals you read about them in the news, but there’s not that many of those deals.

Brian
How do you see that playing out in the long run? It sounds like it was an idea that sounded really good and very lucrative and now that we’re in it, not quite a year – but probably enough to test the water a little bit – that we’re finding that it’s probably not something that impacts all college athletes.

Craig
There are a lot of non-revenue sport athletes that get zero. There are a lot of football players that get zero depending on the program they’re with. What’s happened is – let’s look at this from the institution’s perspective – let’s say you’re a Big Ten school, SEC school – you see it as, hey, we’ve got rabid fans, we’ve got great boosters, we’ve got great donors, we’ve got great support, let’s take advantage of that. Let’s create a collective – it has to be outside the university – it’s called a collective and that’s where the money flows in and then they do the relationships with the players and the money flows out. There was a period of time, maybe an inflection point about a year ago, where schools were trying to buy players. They were doing it legally because they weren’t giving the money to the players, they were using their collectives to do it. But then it became fool’s gold because some of the guys that got the money weren’t on the field. Some of the guys they gave the money to transferred after they got the money to somewhere else trying to get money again. So the coaches now are kind of…they gained a lot of wisdom through this process. A lot of the power five head coaches are putting their foot down and saying, if you’re going to pick a school based upon money, go somewhere else. What they’re doing is they’re creating these tier one NIL benefits – $25-45,000 is kind of in the range – where if you come to our school, you’re going to get that if you’re playing. And we’re not going to discriminate, because you’re a four star, and this other young man’s a two star – your quarterback and your offensive lineman – everybody’s going to get the same. Tier two money might go to the quarterback, and that’s going to be more money that’s flowed through the collective. And then tier three money is, hey, if you want to do something on your own, it’s totally legal, go out and see what you can get. Then it’s on the shoulders of the athlete, or the athletes representation, marketing representative, to go out and see if there’s any interest in the community or with that particular school’s fan base, for any opportunities. At schools where the fans are crazy, there are a few. But most places, there’s no tier three money. So that’s kind of where we’re at now.

Brian
It’ll be interesting to see how that all plays out. I mean, when you think about it, even pro sports, not all professional athletes have a whole bunch of non-sports revenue. Some do, some are in local commercials and that kind of thing. But you don’t see everybody doing it, you see the best player on the team or a couple of the best players and really, that’s about it as far as that goes. Maybe that ends up being the case in college sports as well.

Craig
I fully expect that. I also think that companies like, let’s take car dealers, at some point in time in the past, they might do a deal with a professional athlete and then the car may come back with a little bit more wear and tear than they anticipated. Because the athlete didn’t own it, maybe the athletes posse or friends or somebody didn’t take care of it, or the athlete didn’t take care of it and it was a financial hit for the dealership. So when the next athlete comes in and says, hey, I’m looking for a car deal. I’ll give you some promotion in exchange for letting me drive a car for a year. The dealers are saying, hey, appreciate it, man, but no, thank you. That whole evolution process is taking place at the college level as well.

Brian
We’ve been talking about money in college sports. Let’s talk about pro sports now. We always read, Craig, about the big multi-million dollar contracts, the multi-year contracts. Help us to understand the reality of pro sports. You focus on the NFL, so let’s stick with the NFL. What does that look like? What does a contract look like for the average NFL player; not the first round draft choice or the Heisman Trophy winner or those people that we read about in the papers?

Craig
Well, I think what we have in the NFL right now is we have guys that are on rookie contracts. Anybody that gets drafted signs a four year contract and they’re controlled costs. Except for guys drafted in the first two rounds, pretty much everybody else has minimum salaries for the first three years of that four year deal. Then in that fourth year, there’s an escalator depending on how much they play and it’s universal around the league. So if you’re the salary cap person for a particular team trying to manage the money, trying to manage your cash flow for your ownership, and also trying to keep your contracts in such a place that you’ve got maneuverability under your cap to go out and sign people when you need people – you’ve got to be able to control costs. I don’t know exactly out of 53 players on an active roster how many of them are on rookie deals, but I would say for sure the majority of the players are on the rookie deals. What happens is kind of an apex point for players. Once they get past three or four years, then teams start looking for somebody younger, cheaper, and healthier; so there’s a big turnover. That’s constantly going on every year. There are approximately 256 draft picks every single year that are coming in and they want those players to win spots, because then when you get a special player, like Patrick Mahomes, or whoever it may be – Joe Burrow with the Bengals – you’ve got to pay him a lot of money. They’re taking the lion’s share of the cap, that’s why it’s really difficult for NFL teams to have a top quarterback and have a top team. Because once you have a top quarterback and you pay him appropriately, you don’t have enough money left to get him receivers and offensive linemen and tight ends or a defense so you can win a championship. I just saw today, where at Kansas City – reigning Super Bowl champs – their starting left tackle, Orlando Brown – terrific player – they traded for him with the Baltimore Ravens a couple years ago, they gave him the franchise tag last year. They elected today – or probably made the decision before today, but it was announced today – that they’re not going to give him the franchise tag again. So he’s going to have an opportunity to go somewhere else, get paid crazy money. He’ll probably end up leaving because it’s going to be in his best interest because he’s going to get more guaranteed money. They can’t say he’s got to replace the blindside tackle for Patrick Mahomes and they’re hoping that either somebody out in the roster’s going to develop into that guy, or they’re going to go draft some some player that they think can be the guy. But we won’t know until the season starts.

Brian
It’s going to take a few sacks for them to find that guy.

Craig
Oh, always. It’s funny how teams that have already paid their stars almost challenge the teams that have a rookie quarterback that haven’t had to pay him yet. I say let’s see how good they are after they pay him. The teams right now that are like that are Baltimore with Lamar Jackson, Burrow at Cincinnati, you’ve got Herbert with the Chargers, and I’m probably forgetting somebody, but it’s those kind of guys that are going to get paid. When they get paid, the salary cap person is going to have a big challenge to try to maintain and retain their talent because they’re not going to have the cap space to do it.

Brian
That’s interesting. Craig, I know there’s so much more to professional sports than just signing a contract and playing; the things that we’ve been talking about. From your standpoint, other than contract negotiation, what additional services and support do you provide for your clients or what do representatives in general provide for clients?

Craig
I think there are two really important groups of people that are the support for professional athletes. The first one is the pit crew. The pit crew are the guys that are everything related to their health, whether it’s massage people, chiropractic people, ARP people and MAT people, PT people, just chiropractic people. All these industries that are mainstream, when professional athletes find out that they’re special, these guys can really give you the edge physically then athletically these guys start working – and ladies too – for people all over the league. So you help your players find those people. When your athlete has, let’s say, Lisfranc injury, there are a handful of doc’s that’s what they do and that’s what they’re known for. They’ve got a strong track record for doing that type of surgery for professional athletes. ACL, same way, there’s a handful of ACL docs, does that mean that there’s…who knows how many orthopedic surgeons in the country who do ACL surgeries – maybe 50,000. I’m just making [that up] I don’t know what it is but there are less than ten that professional athletes use. It’s because of trust and track record. So if you want to help your client feel at ease when they’re in probably a very bad spot because they’re dealing with an ACL tear, you’re wanting to get them second opinions and appointments with people that they can trust. Sometimes they can trust their team docs and sometimes they can’t, depending on the experiences of their teammates. Then the second group of people that are really important for your client include the accountant, the financial advisor, the marketing person; it’s all those ancillary services – can’t have your guy not file his taxes, you can’t have your client not have some type of financial guidance. As contract advisers, we have to be very careful about providing financial advice. We can give life advice, but unless you’re qualified as a financial advisor, you shouldn’t be giving financial advice. But you want to have somebody that’s worked with professional athletes that knows the challenges, knows the pay, the pay schedule, the typical pitfalls that can blindside a professional athlete financially, so that they can avoid those things.

Brian
You talked about surgeons, doctors that do ACLs and that there are a handful that are known within the league. Doctors who do other types of procedures, I think there are probably physical therapists or, remember Patrick Mahomes pointing out his physical therapist and saying, if it wasn’t for her, he wouldn’t have been able to play – literally. I’m wondering in your part of the business what differentiates the top 1% of sports agents or sports attorneys from the other 99%? How do you set yourself apart from the hundreds or maybe thousands of other people competing for the athletes that you’re looking to represent?

Craig
I think number one is you have to take care of who you have. Secondly, I think that what ends up happening in the industry and all different sports is if you happen to have an offensive lineman that’s really good, you’re going to attract more offensive linemen. There are quarterback agents, there are tight end agents; it’s segregated by position, segregated by schools. University of Iowa had a relationship with a couple of different agents. If you went to University of Iowa, most of the time, you’d get beat by one of those guys. It is just coincidental that those agents also represented the head coach. So there are those kinds of backdoor relationships that make an impact on where an agent can go. If you’re new in the business and you don’t have any relationships, you don’t have a track record with players, it’s tough. It’s tough, because I’ve got relationships with certain coaches and they call me and say, hey, you interested in this young man? I’m like, well, tell me more. Tell me what he’s really like, does he really love the game, is he dedicated, all those types of things. So the thing that separates you is that you’re going to find a niche of some type. It would be fantastic if your niche is with a group of schools that are the best schools in the country. If you’re in it with Dabo in Clemson and Kirby Smart down in Georgia, and Saban at Alabama – their sixth best best player is going to be a second rounder – you’re going to be okay. Then when you get in with certain players, let’s say quarterbacks, they all want to train together in the off-season. They all want to compare notes. They all want to be the best and to be the best, you’ve got to work out with the best. There are all these camps that go on. Tight ends Travis Kelce and George Kittle do a tight end camp down in Texas, this started a couple years ago. So guess what? These guys all get together, they bring resources in to help the young guys; they go, hey, if you want to play in the league for a long time, if you want to be the best, you’ve got to do these things on the field. You’ve got to do these things and have these relationships off the field. There are times where players will switch agents because they meet somebody else that’s more successful and they figure that if that agent’s representing him, I want them representing me

Brian
That seems like a grass is greener situation. So how do they balance that? Is there a lot of that where they’re flipping representation?

Craig
There did, it used to be, but I would say over the last ten years, it’s pretty…there are a lot of agents swapping. I think the root cause of it is because to really be a good agent, you have to tell your client the truth and sometimes the truth is not positive. The players don’t want to hear it because it’s one of those things where they want to shoot the messenger. So you have to be really careful about how you posture and position messages that you receive from teams because if you’re too blunt, they don’t think you believe in them. They don’t think you’ve got their back. They don’t think you’re being their advocate. So it’s a delicate balance because you’re dealing with young men that are very smart. They’re the best of the best. These guys have jumped over more hurdles that trip so many players along the way, whether it’s in high school or college. These guys are the ones that survived, so they’re very smart but they also have egos and they will they want people that believe in them. It’s very difficult at times, even if you do believe in them, to communicate in such a way that they understand you believe in them, even though may be the teams that don’t believe in them.

Brian
In those situations, are you communicating with, say, family members or other people around them? Because you mentioned the two things that I thought of: one their age, they’re 23, 24, 25 year old kids, young men and young women in other sports, the egos because of what it’s taken them to get to where they are. Like you said, they’ve gotten through every hurdle, hurdles that have blocked everybody else except them from their town or their high school or their college to get to that point. There is a little bit of ego involved. How do you walk that line when you need to tell them the truth and you need to convey something but you’re doing that with somebody who has a big ego and is 24 years old?

Craig
Well, the way that I do it is I don’t wait until that big moment, I start from the jump. I share with them that hey, I could tell you this, but I’m going to tell you that, which is the truth. And the gap between what they want to hear and the truth, sometimes at the beginning, is smaller. Then when you get to that point where maybe they’re a veteran free agent, they’re four years in the league, and they’re thinking they’re going make 20 million a year and you’re talking to teams and finding out that their value is like ten million a year, that’s a big gap. So when you get to that point, if that’s the first time you’ve had a conversation, where you’ve told them something that they didn’t want to hear, you’re probably not going to be representing him the next day. You have to build a relationship over time where they see that there is a gap between the truth and what they hope for sometimes, and that you are going to look out for their best interests, and you’ve got their back no matter what. So that when you do get to that point where it’s kind of like not fun news to share, they know you shoot them straight, because it’s in their best interest. A lot of times what happens is, let’s say for example, a guy wants 20, the market’s ten and there are only a few spots for that ten but there are four or five guys that could fit those two or three spots. Because you’ve allowed your client to overestimate his value, and you haven’t told him the truth – he still thinks he’s worth 20 – well, then when the few teams that are willing to pay ten have already signed somebody, now it’s down to seven. Now you just cost your client three million by not telling them the truth.

Brian
That’s tough, that’s interesting. Craig, as you reflect on your career, can you share a story about a particular player that you’ve represented, that you’re especially proud of the value that you’ve added to that player?

Craig
Well, one of the things I would share with you is that I think there are a lot of my clients that I’ve helped in a variety of different ways. I’ve never put on a helmet to play for them. I’ve never gone to the weight room and got on the bench and lifted weights for them. It’s the idea of – I’ve got a book that’s coming out called “Unlock the Pro Inside You” and this book is about how do you have a pro mindset. The meaning behind it is really simple. Most guys have a lot of God-given talent. Most professional athletes are incredibly hard workers but the differentiation is not talent or work ethic. The differentiation is how do they perform under pressure? How do they perform when it matters the most? How do they perform when they get demoted? How do they respond? How do they perform when they don’t get repetitions and opportunities in training camp when in the last pre-season game they get thrown in and they didn’t get the reps in, and their minds are going, I’m not going to do well because I haven’t practiced this position. So what I do is I prepare the guys for anything’s possible, all circumstances that are foreseeable, so that they can be a pro when they get their shot. Because we don’t know and sometimes they don’t know when they’re going to get that shot. There are really three aspects to the pro mindset playbook to unlock the pro inside you. The first one is you have to discover what is going on in your mind, what triggers you. When do you feel bad emotions? When do you feel disconnected from your motivation and your passion? When do you get frustrated? When do you have doubt in yourself? You have to be a one hundred percent-er in belief to make it and perform and play in the NFL. So if you’re a 99.9 percent-er, it’s only a matter of time before they find your weakness and then you’re going to be gone. So it’s all that stuff, that discovery stuff, and I call it tackle, block and hold, because you have to tackle your past. Coaches tell players all the time when they’re in the 7th grade, 12th grade, dads tell people, Pop Warner coaches tell them, basketball, other sports coaches tell them, hey, man, you’re not as good as you think you are, if you don’t work…all these things, and the athletes don’t remember them until they’re under pressure. When they’re at that point…the most revealing time for professional athlete is one of two situations: a week before final cuts and training camp. You feel like your career is slipping away; might be third or fourth on the depth chart and think you should be second and you’re not getting as many reps and you’re laying in bed in your dorm room, or in your hotel, and your roommate goes, hey, Brian, you think you’re going to make it? I don’t think I’m going to make it. I still don’t know how I could make it – last year they only kept two, I’m number four. All of a sudden that kid is doomed because that young man doesn’t even believe he can make it. So it’s that point in training camp, when it doesn’t look like you’re going to make it. I had a young man who played ten years, wasn’t the most athletic guy in the world. This was about year seven. He had developed such a strong relationship with his coach that his coach came to him and gave him a heads up the night before cuts, saying, hey, you’re getting cut, just want to let you know, man, I really love you. I really appreciate everything you’ve done but you know, we had our staff meeting tonight and you didn’t make it. He calls me and says, hey, man, got the bad news. I said, what do you mean, you got the bad news? He said, I’m going to get cut. I said, I want you to show up tomorrow like you didn’t have that conversation with your coach. Because you have different energy showing up that next day if you carry that with you than if you don’t. Ironically, after that next day’s practice, his coach came up to him and apologized to him and said, hey, we changed our mind. That wouldn’t have happened if he would have shown up with the energy, believing the message that the coach gave. I didn’t tell him that the coach lied to him, I just said, you still have a shot, you’ve still got to hang in there. That’s number one. Number two is when they get the big moment in the game. For different players it is different times. For some players, it’s their first start, for some players that may be the first game where they are the receiver and the go-to play on third and long is them. They’re running the route. Do they have alligator arms or do they think about scoring before the ball is secured and it goes between their arms? Can they make the play in the biggest moments? So if a young man can survive training camp, and – unfortunately for a lot of guys, they’re rookies multiple years, because they don’t have guaranteed contracts, they’re not starters, they’re not a nucleus player. So they have to have a rookie mindset as a year two player, a rookie mindset as a year three player – that’s hard to do. When you get your shot, you’ve got to perform. So that’s what pro mindset’s about.

Brian
I appreciate you sharing about the pro mindset. I was going to ask you about that. Along those same lines, I want to ask you about a quote that I read that you said: “If you really want to be successful in life, it’s always the things behind the scenes that are more important than what everybody tells you it’s going to be.” Can you share more about that?

Craig
Well, I think the message behind that is really simple. There are so many things off the field and things on the field that have nothing to do with your performance on the field. They’re all connected. You could take two players on tape that look the same; they both catch the same block, the same tackle similar, maybe not identical, but which one does the coach trust more? Which one has the better relationship with his teammates, which one’s got the bigger upside? Those things are all intangible. Those things are invisible to the fans. So how a young man handles his business and showing up early, staying late, not sleeping in meetings but paying attention, being ready, being that player that’s going to be hanging on special teams. One guy pulled a hamstring and he’s not out there, they say, hey, we need somebody – you’re there – you don’t have to go find your helmet, you don’t have to think about it. Because if we think about it, another guy is already in that position before you make the decision to go. You have to anticipate it. Those are the things behind the scenes that are critical to the success of a professional athlete, but they’re also critical for our success too. Everybody’s got measurables, everybody’s got criteria that they get judged on. But it’s all those little things behind the scenes that make the difference.

Brian
That’s a great segue into my final question, because you mentioned application outside of pro sports or outside of sports in general. Craig, what tools or strategies can our listeners and viewers adapt from your world – the world of sports management, sports representation – that they can apply in their own careers, in their businesses, and also in their personal lives?

Craig
Okay, well, I’m going to give you three, all out of the pro mindset playbook. Number one is that you really have to understand what blocks your career, what blocks your advancement. For some people, it’s distractions, some people it’s entitlement so they don’t work hard at work, because they think they deserve it. Or I’ve got a bigger, got a better title than you in the company so I don’t work as hard and then I don’t understand why you got promoted over me. So it’s like the mental aspects of knowing who you are and why you do what you do. Understanding that sometimes you do things out of fear, sometimes you do things out of unworthiness and doubt, entitlement, expectation, things people told you, a lot of those types of things. The second thing is, and this is especially true for athletes, but it’s true for everybody. I mean, in the Super Bowl 32, Nick Bolton for the Chiefs, at 5am on the Monday after the Super Bowl, without any sleep because he was partying and celebrating with his teammates, was on Good Morning America with Michael Strahan talking about the dream he had two days before the Super Bowl, a dream that he would get a defensive touchdown. What did he do in the game? He had a defensive touchdown. After celebrating with his teammates in the end zone, he was on the sidelines sharing, I didn’t know if I was still in my dream or not, or if it really happened. So visualization is really critical. You’ve got to visualize yourself before the big presentation, before the business meeting, before the sales opportunity, being successful in all situations, before you get there, so when you get there, it’s the second time you’ve been there. It’s not your first time there. You’re meeting a new business opportunity, when you meet that person, it should be the second time you’ve met that person because, in your mind, you’ve already rehearsed it. And the third thing I would say is that in the moment of “suck” – there’s always a moment of suck in competition, in performance. Maybe you get some bad news, maybe you throw an interception if you’re a quarterback, maybe you miss a tackle if you’re a linebacker. You’ve got to take a breath and reset, relax, and reconnect to your passion, your motivation, your belief and your confidence. Because if you don’t, it’s like a slippery slope and we don’t know where it’s going to go but it’s going to keep going, getting worse. How do you shift the tide, so to speak, you’re having a bad day, you’re having a bad day with your spouse, you’re having a bad day with your kids, you’re having a bad day at work – take a breath and connect to your purpose, connect to who you are and why you do what you do so that you don’t make it worse. I think there are a lot of people that shoot themselves in the foot. Athletes shoot themselves in the foot all the time, they self-sabotage. The way you stop that is by taking a breath and reconnecting.

Brian
Thank you for that. That’s all great advice. I think if we were in the locker room and you were the coach giving that speech, we’d all be ready to run out onto the field and win the game. I appreciate that. Craig, thanks for joining us today, it’s great to have you on the show.

Craig
Brian, thank you very much. Have a great day.

Brian
You too, Craig. Thanks for tuning in to LifeExcellence. Please support the show by subscribing, sharing it with others, posting about today’s show with Craig Domann on social media, and leaving a rating and review. You can learn more about me at BrianBartes.com. Until next time, dream big dreams and make each day your masterpiece.