Career Clarity with Athletes: A 2ndwind Podcast with Ryan Gonsalves
Former professional footballer Ryan Gonsalves dives deep into the unique challenges and triumphs of transitioning from elite sports to fulfilling careers. Through candid conversations with athletes, the Career Clarity Podcast explores their inspiring journeys, uncovering lessons on identity, resilience, and reinvention. Whether you're an athlete or simply seeking inspiration for your next chapter, this podcast will empower you to unleash your second wind.
Ryan Gonsalves transitioned from professional football with Huddersfield Town in the English Footbaal League, to a career in financial services by leveraging his adaptability, transferable skills, and willingness to embrace new opportunities.
While playing semi-professional football, he pursued education and began working at GE Money Capital Bank, where he gained global experience and developed expertise in Lean Six Sigma and process improvement. His sports background often helped him stand out during interviews, creating memorable connections with hiring managers.
Later, Ryan joined HSBC in Hong Kong, where he worked for nearly a decade in consumer banking, focusing on global projects such as researching homeownership behaviors. His ability to understand consumer insights and behavior became a cornerstone of his success in the financial sector. After over 20 years in banking (including back in Australia at AMP, Westpac, COmmenwealth Bank and NSW Treasury, Ryan transitioned into career coaching, inspired by helping fellow athletes navigate their post-sports careers.
Ready to take the next step? Connect with Ryan at letschat@2ndwind.io.
Career Clarity with Athletes: A 2ndwind Podcast with Ryan Gonsalves
164: Emmanuel Smith - From Superbowl LIV winner to Sales winner - You are more than your jersey number
Emmanuel spent years chasing a dream that so many young athletes grow up holding: making it in the NFL. But behind the highlight reels and ambition was a quieter story. One of internal pressure, identity struggle, and eventually, the courage to say, this isn't who I am anymore.
In this episode, Ryan talks with Emmanuel about what it really takes to walk away from the game, and what happens when you do. From his early years creating "The Brotherhood" in high school to reaching the highest levels of competition, Emmanuel was seen as a leader. But inside, the weight of expectation and a growing disconnection from himself took a toll.
He opens up about reaching a breaking point, experiencing suicidal thoughts, and how faith, mentorship, and deep reflection helped him rebuild a new sense of identity beyond sport. One key idea that shaped his journey was the concept of “Edging God Out,” a mindset he now works hard to avoid, both personally and in his work with other athletes.
What You’ll Learn:
- How chasing the NFL dream became part of Emmanuel’s identity
- Why creating “The Brotherhood” gave him a sense of purpose early on
- What it's like to carry leadership on the outside while struggling on the inside
- The quiet crisis many athletes face when their sport no longer fits
- His experience with suicidal thoughts and how he got help
- How the idea of “Edging God Out” changed the way he saw his path
- What helped him redefine success after stepping away
- The mindset shift that now guides how he supports players in transition
💎 GOLDEN NUGGET:
“There was a point where I felt like I had nothing to offer. Like everything that made me valuable was tied to my sport. But that wasn’t true. I just had to find my way back to it.”
If you’ve ever wondered what happens when an athlete lets go of the only identity they’ve known, this is that story. It’s raw, reflective, and ultimately hopeful.
Connect with Ryan and Second Wind Academy:
- Website: https://www.2ndwind.io/
- Instagram: @2ndwind.academy
Credits:
- Editing: Nancy at Savvy Podcast Solutions
- Design: Claire at Betty Book Design
- Show Notes: Cerise from Copy & Content by Lola
Do you remember what you had to do differently or did you have to?
Speaker 2:do you remember having to say no to things. I mean, that was one of the. I'm still proud to this day that I want my kids to still do the same things and think the same way. I thought and it started. We got in high school and we realized like, hey look, our goal, our brother and I goal is we want to go play college football so we can be on the college football game. That was like our main goal at the time.
Speaker 2:We wanted to play college and we realized like at an early age, after my dad kind of told us that like we wanted to figure out who else wanted to also play college ball and who was willing to go work. We didn't care about the party, we didn't care about the extra things and like if that made us weird at the time, that's fine. I'm not going to expect people who don't understand my vision and my dream to see the life that I'm trying to walk out. So what we started to do is like we started. We made a group in high school called the Brotherhood and it's like five guys all five of us wouldn't play college football on scholarship.
Speaker 3:Hi, I'm Ryan Gonsalves and welcome to a Second Wind Academy podcast, a show all about career transition through the lens of elite athletes. Each week, I invite a guest to the show who shares their unique sporting story. Please join me to delve into the thoughts and actions of athletes through a series of conversations. Don't worry, there's plenty to learn from those of you that aren't particularly sporty. Elite athletes are still people after all.
Speaker 1:Let's be inspired by the stories of others emmanuel, thank you for joining me today on the second man academy podcast. Looking forward to our chat yes, sir.
Speaker 2:No, thank you for having me. I'm pumped to have it yeah, this is good.
Speaker 1:so now I'm noticing a few things that you're wearing as well on your head, so I'm curious what's this dad got?
Speaker 2:Oh man, no, I am a proud dad of four kiddos. So you know, I try to wear it proudly and let the world know like, hey, my kids mean everything to me and so does my wife. But I just want to make sure, like it's just subtle, subtle messages, you know, especially in today's day and age, where it's not always from the mountaintops.
Speaker 1:OK, especially in today's day and age where it's not always from the mountaintops. Okay, I like that, I like that. Well, I've got three boys myself, so tell me about your, tell me about your children.
Speaker 2:Okay, so I have a six-year-old son His name is Owen Four-year-old son named Ezekiel, a two-year-old daughter named Felicity, and then I have a three-month-old named Zachariah.
Speaker 1:But I got to say congratulations.
Speaker 2:But also, oh my gosh, you guys are crazy. We don't realize it until we get there. And it's like man, this is definitely something that we're doing here. I think our boys was easy, you know, because like, oh man, so it's like I can just raise myself Now my daughter, man myself, now my daughter, but she's the one that's man. She's like has my stubbornness, my strong will. She's like I'm not backing down from you. So it's just like. I'm like babe, you gotta get with your daughter, because I'm like we might, we might end up going at it. Right now it's the only two.
Speaker 1:So that's good. That sounds like. It sounds like a whole lot of fun going on in the house there.
Speaker 2:Oh yeah, how old are your kiddos?
Speaker 1:oh I'm what. 17, 15 and 10, so three guys, yeah, so where I'm at the I'm, I'm moving out of the pure child and they're all starting to, but the big ones are definitely becoming men. I mean that we. The dynamic and conversation is certainly shifting yeah, that's cool.
Speaker 2:That's a I know when I had my dad. That's one of those things. It's kind of cool to like watch the relationship shift now because you become a man and like understanding the deeper conversations that come with that. It was very it's cool to watch now, knowing that I have little kids seeing that dynamic shift yes, yeah, tell me about you.
Speaker 1:So I guess, for everyone who is watching and tuning in, give us that short introduction as to who you are and what's going on.
Speaker 2:Yeah, no for sure. So my name is Emmanuel Smith, originally from Murfreesboro, tennessee. If you don't know where that's at, just say Nashville. I'm about 30 minutes outside of Nashville, the Country Music Hall of Fame. I grew up there. My whole life I played college ball at Vanderbilt, which is also in Nashville. After I finished playing ball at Vanderbilt, I had a chance to go play in the NFL for six years. So I bounced around from Atlanta, tampa, kansas City. I did a little bit of time in the XFL league that the Rock started down in Seattle and down in Texas, and after that transition now I'm into legal technology. If you ask me how I got there, I don't know how I did it, but I somehow managed to pull it off right. That's the athlete mindset in this. So that's a little bit of a quick introduction to who I am. I was with the four kiddos and happily married.
Speaker 1:Yeah, good man. Well, thanks for that quick intro and what we'll do is, I guess, through this conversation, just step a little bit through that, because a bit of the pre-chat and some of the research suggests you've got quite an interesting approach to stepping through all those different journeys that you've gone through. Well, let's start at the beginning. So we talk about family, we talk about our children as raising For you. Growing up, what was your family dynamic like and where did sport really start to kick in for you?
Speaker 2:Yeah, great question. So growing up I have a younger brother. We're two years apart, but in school we were a year apart. Growing up, I think sports started for me at the age of four. Like my dad played college football, my mom played college basketball, so that kind of the athlete world was kind of just born into us. And say so, as soon as we can start running, I remember it felt like a bobblehead. I put a helmet on, I'm just out here like, oh, I can't stay up straight figuring out how to run.
Speaker 2:To me it was a very, very fun thing, fun time in my life, especially having my younger brother. We played together all around middle school, all of our high school, except for one year, obviously. We went to the same college and played together in college. We had a lot of time to grow with each other, have fun, and I remember us being outside in the front yard throwing the basketball off the roof, acting like we're Michael Jordan and like whoever you know who want to be if we're going against them, trying to beat them in a basketball game. We went from there, man. It just really just stayed to us Like our parents was like, hey, we're going to keep you guys in sports. One because it keeps us. The idol mind is the devil's playground, so it kept us cool, always busy, always something to do and always strive for. But it's also a lot of lessons that I think everybody needs to be able to learn. I think sports is a great way to learn a lot of those lessons, especially with teamwork, character, accountability, integrity.
Speaker 1:A lot of those things kind of get engraved into you at a young age when you get introduced to sports. I think you've you know, you called out some of those key aspects of sport and perhaps having two parents who are quite athletic themselves, that just sort of fed through into you as well as a player, but perhaps off field as well.
Speaker 2:Yeah, off field man, it was one of those things. I remember, my dad, as we were kind of growing up we were trying all the sports right. We did everything, figuring out kind of what we liked, and we ended up playing basketball and football all the way through high school. But I remember in middle school a certain time I actually tried to quit playing football and my dad was like no, not in this house. Not in this house, we're going to play both sports until you leave this household. Because you don't get to decide whether or not you want to quit or something, because you don't know what your future can hold.
Speaker 2:Right, you don't get to decide whether or not you want to quit or something, because you don't know what your future can hold. And I appreciate that If I would have quit middle school, I never would have been able to go play in the NFL or the Super Bowl All the things that my young self didn't see down the line. But he had the authority and the passion and the love to let me know hey, you're not going to quit because you don't want to do something right now. I carried over into school. My dad always told us and we got to see a lot of times my dad, coach Meade, from 2004. All the way up to middle school he was still probably one of those sideline coaches. You know we'd get in the car. We're breaking down film regardless, even through college and the NFL, right?
Speaker 1:It never stopped we laugh about it now. Hold on, it never stopped, it never stopped. So you're telling me coming out of the NFL, you're getting coached. You know what I mean? Full coach is there and you're getting in the car and he's still saying okay, let me break down a few things.
Speaker 2:Yeah, he's like hey, you missed this time because you did this right here wrong, you got to take an extra step. I'm like appreciate you.
Speaker 1:Dad, listen, I need to get it back up again. I'm like I'm going to keep going all the way through, yeah.
Speaker 2:So he came in on us and I really, really appreciate it. That's something I respected about him. He was very active, very present in my life and to the point I got to the point where we watched him coach other high school kids. We were just little ball boys and we got to see, kind of behind the line, behind the while we were still in middle school, what high school looked like and how guys were trying to prepare themselves right, and what we got to see is like man, you have a lot of people who have a lot of talent that are probably way more talented than us, but they couldn't figure out the things off the field right. And my dad was like I'm never going to let you be one of those guys who don't know how to figure out life off the field. And so growing up that was huge for us, but it's like we going through high school.
Speaker 2:My dad told me like, hey, if you want to go to college or, I guess, uni I listen to the color over there we got the three a's athletic, academics and armed forces you got to pick one.
Speaker 2:You can be good at most all three of them, two of them, but you got to pick one if you want to go to college, and I appreciate that respect because that lets me know like I can't just be an athlete, I still got got to be smart, right? I understand those both go hand in hand and that's how I went through the recruiting process. I realized coaches were even asking teachers hey, what is this Grace like? How is this character in the classroom? He's not around the football team, right? All those things I didn't understand when I was younger, but now I'm like man. He really set us up on the path to go like hey, you're going to be different than what everybody else is trying to do. And it worked out. I mean my brother, both both played the nfl, both won the college pool ride, right like. So he knew what he was doing to help us figure that part of life out yeah, he helped you it sounds like it helped you prepare for it.
Speaker 1:You didn't even realize he was preparing you, but he was getting you ready to to have both sides not just be a one track. You know, yeah, I'm just about the sports. So you mentioned the academic side. You know, how were your grades doing? Where did that? When you look back then, yeah, where did you prioritize your academics?
Speaker 2:man, that's a great question, so we don't really go into it. So I said kindergarten, through about fifth grade grades was nonexistent. I was like I don't care, I got recess and I run it around, that's all I care. To go to the point, Like it's sometimes. Like early on, early early in my childhood, they had me tested for just like special education classes. I just wouldn't. I was a boy, it wasn't focusing, but they was like hey, he's having issues, Right. I was a boy, I wasn't focused, but they were like hey, he's having issues, right. So they kind of labeled me off as a problem child, to say the least. My parents were like no, he just doesn't want to focus. Obviously I had to learn how to focus. But from that point on I had a teacher in fourth grade actually.
Speaker 2:Her name was Miss Jackson and every time I go back home I still try to see her. I gave her a Super Bowl Jersey. She's probably one of the most influential people outside of my parents and my early childhood. Because growing up I had a thing I love people, but I love animals more, right, Because I didn't understand people that well growing up. So I was like I'm really going to be with my dog outside and they ate ball run around. If I had a rough time I would cry and talk to him about it, right, but I wouldn't talk to people because I just didn't understand that.
Speaker 2:And she kind of picked up on that really fast and got into class and she was putting on movies like Old Yeller, where the red phone grows, all these movies where all the animals keep dying. So I'm like, look, you keep playing these movies in class. I'm going to leave, Like I can't stay in here. I just can't physically handle it. But then she really sat down with me and she was like me and she was like I actually want to know who you are.
Speaker 2:Who are you as a person? What are you passionate about? What do you care about? Right, and that was the first time in my life that I had a teacher actually want to invest into me, to want to see me grow, what I cared about. It's one of those things. When that happens, you realize like when someone actually wants to invest into you, you want to pour that much more into them in that relationship to help them like do whatever they wanted to do. So so from that point on I really started understanding, like man grades are important. I think my brother was better than me in that because he learned I got a lot of butt beatings for not getting my grades right, so he was a straight-A student all the way through school. He learned from my mistake. He learned I'm not doing that.
Speaker 1:I'm not going to follow him, no.
Speaker 2:I'm sorry the the academic parts. It really hit hard. And then, as we kind of got to middle school, we realized hey, we want to keep going, we want to keep playing sports High school came along, and that's when we really saw separation.
Speaker 2:You got to start taking like SAT ACT to make sure you want to go play college ball. You had to have the academics part figured out. And for us like my dad always told us to stay and that kind of just stuck with me still to this day he's like you'll never see an eagle flying with doves, because eagle and doves out soar at different heights. And I was like that's true. So he was like who do you want to be? Because that's who you want to soar with, right? So I always saw myself as the eagle trying to soar to the highest heights. So I had to get around other eagles who were actually doing the same thing. It's me. I didn't want to be pulled down, or you know, the crab in the crab or crabs in a bucket analogy Like I didn't want that. I wanted to be able to run with people who actually were running faster, harder and stronger than me. Then I could continue to elevate myself. So I did the same thing with school and I ended up going to Vanderbilt University. Go ahead. So.
Speaker 1:I'm curious. So how did you do that? Right, Because, look, we're going to have, well, listening to this, watching this, there are going to be some I'll say high school, well, kids coming through college, right, and they're going to be listening. They're going to be saying to themselves, right, well, I want to soar. I want to soar with an ego, I want to get up to the top. Do you remember what you had to do differently, or did you have to do?
Speaker 2:you remember having to say no to things. I mean, that was one of the. I'm still proud to this day that I want my kids to still do the same things and think the same way. I thought and it started when we got in high school and we realized like, hey look, our goal our brother and I goal is we want to go play college football so we can be on the college football game. That was like our main goal at the time.
Speaker 2:We wanted to go to college and we realized like at an early age, after my dad kind of told us that we wanted to figure out who else wanted to also play college ball and who was willing to go work. We didn't care about the party, we didn't care about the extra things, and if that made us weird at the time, that's fine. I'm not going to expect people who don't understand my vision and my dream to see the life that I'm trying to walk out. So what we started to do is we made a group in high school called the brotherhood and it's like five guys. All five of us wouldn't play college football on scholarship because we were also the ones staying after practice doing extra work. We're good up on saturdays after game going to do extra drills, film studying, like we wasn't going to where the masses are going. We figured out, like man, what we want to create. Not everybody's going to be able to create, so we need to walk a different walk and, like that, got through us to high school, put us in college and then we got to college.
Speaker 2:It was the same thing. They just had a smaller, I guess a bigger level. But you start getting around people like they've made it to college and you're playing really well and you're I'm biased. The SEC is the best conference in America. I have all the college football and I'm going to continue to say that. And we got a chance to play in the SEC and we realized now, everybody here is talented. What's really going to separate you? Who am I hanging out with? Am I going out right around the bars all night trying to chase people and have fun, or am I looking at how can I push myself forward to get to the next level I want to get to? For us, in every group setting that we went to that my brother and I and myself, that we moved on to, we always found a small group of people who thought the same way we did and we were like you know what, we're going to be in it together. We don't care if everybody else is doing?
Speaker 2:what if you see you working out at 6 in the morning and I'm not there? Call me, hold me accountable.
Speaker 3:We found those groups and it's funny even in college, the group that we all worked out with together all those guys wouldn't play the NFL Right.
Speaker 2:So it was like to me that's just the pattern, like you got to find out who you want, who has the fruit that you want, also who's there with you, and let them, like y'all, get together and move forward. Like some days, you're going to feel weak.
Speaker 1:You found that accountability group, you found your people who had those similar dreams, similar ideals as you, and you know what. You kept one another honest throughout that working out, doing the extras, doing the film, but then also limiting those distractions that could deviate you or take you off that path.
Speaker 2:Yeah, no, 100%. That was the main thing and I think that was what separated. I think that separates a lot of people Like if you look at anybody successful, they've probably walked a different path than the masses and why they got around people who actually did what they wanted to do. So now that I'm an adult, I look at people. I'm a man of faith, obviously. So I tell people I look at people as a fruit inspector. I look at people's fruit on their lives. Do you have the fruit on the tree that I want to eat from right? And I always heard, like the fruit that you produce is not for you, it's for other people. So now I'm looking like who has the fruit that I want to take in and be able to continue in my life, and I've done that. Now, looking back, I've been doing that since middle school, to high school, to college, to NFL. It's always been an aspect of my life that I've always leaned on.
Speaker 1:Aspect of my life that I've always leaned on, yeah, you know and that's the beauty of these conversations is take for us really now taking the time looking back and actually seeing, like you said you can. You can see now these patterns, the habits that you formed early, and they follow you, they come through you, through your life.
Speaker 1:right, they do, they really do yeah, well, and now well, yeah, well, and now well. And now you have your own little troop at home who, hopefully, are going to be doing the same, so you're going to be keeping you very busy.
Speaker 2:Yeah, they already. It's fun. My wife played professional volleyball. She was a high level athlete too. It's fun that we get to watch, and we got to watch them kind of grow. Right now it all gets into, all get to the point where, like, all they want to do is work out. Let's go to the track, dad, let's go run. Can we go practice football? And I'm like, yeah, uh, yeah, I maybe go. That's my daughter right there, but yeah, so it's one of those fun things you get to watch yeah, well, I think it's gonna be.
Speaker 1:They're gonna keep you fit as well. So you're not retired yet. We're gonna, we can. I think it sounds like you're gonna get your second win in your career keeping up with the four children.
Speaker 2:Oh yeah, I definitely know how to say that. I hung up the cleats and now my head's full for a different reason, because I'm trying to find where all my heels are going.
Speaker 1:I like that, I like that one. So, listen, coming back into you at college, we've got this shift. You mentioned that. You know, coming from school, high school yeah, coming from school, high school yeah, you've got your crew. But when you get into college, suddenly that level's that bit higher. You're in, I'll say, arguably the best comp at a college level. I just got to be careful of who else has been on the show, but you're now playing at that top level. What shifted for you in terms of where you wanted to go next? Or did anything shift for you, to be honest, with you.
Speaker 2:I actually struggled a lot my freshman year in college Because one of those things you come from being the big fish in a small pond. Now you're a little fish in a big pond, right. So now you've got to figure out how to refine your identity in the sport and to me I struggled that that a lot in my freshman year. I was playing but I wasn't playing as much as I wanted to. I wasn't performing like I wanted to. I had all these lofty goals that I wanted to go and aspire to and accomplish and some of those I was not being able to do.
Speaker 2:My freshman year and I think my strength coach came in my sophomore year, coach Dobson. He came in and he saw me kind of struggle with this a little bit. He actually gave me a book that I recommend to all young athletes Now it's called Mental Edge and that book it radically changed the way that my sophomore to my senior year, how I saw the game, because physically, as athletes, I think, and just people in general, they have the, I guess, the discipline, the consistency of the work ethic. They can overcome a lot of things. We can push our bodies to phenomenal events. I talked to somebody today who's training for a marathon that runs 240 miles. I'm like you're crazy. But we can push ourselves to those extents because we lock in A lot of people.
Speaker 2:We struggle with the mental gain when it comes down to it and that cites us out. That's what gets us out of our flow and he realized that. So that book it taught me how to self-talk. To myself when I was like struggling how to handle the adversity of a quick change in a situation, I'm like, hey, this is how you keep your mental strong so you can go out there and still continue to perform, even though if something just bad happened or something unexpected happened, you still are calm about it and peace to be able to rap the right way. So that was one of my like one of the most influential books that I got when I was playing ball in college was the mental edge, because it really taught me how to actually play the mind game in my own head, to where I could get okay and that's good and that's so.
Speaker 1:It's not the straight. You know this linear path where you're going middle school, high school, college, boom, off we go. But as you're hitting that point, becoming like you say, suddenly you're feeling like you're a small fish in a big pond, yeah, and you've got to prove yourself again. So this book helped give you that mental edge, but then also, I guess the advice from coach also just gave you that little push to be able to, well, keep believing, perhaps, in where you yeah, you know that you're in the right spot.
Speaker 2:They keep believing to know like, hey, like you have everything you need to have to go be successful already in you. Like it's there. You just got to figure out in your head how to continue to show those things right. And that was huge, because I was like I think people stop. I mean, you lose belief and you lose hope. That's when you really get to a place where it's just darkness and sometimes we'll probably talk about this later.
Speaker 2:But your identity for me. I was tied up in like I've got to be a freshman that's playing. I've got to be a freshman that's starting. I've got to do all these things right now, early on, so I can show the world that I'm somebody. And when it wasn't happening, I was like dang, like am I as good as I thought? I really was Like what's going on here? And that coach right, I tell people all the time I think a coach, if you have coaches, mentors, however you want to call them, they're in their reason, they're in their life for a reason, because they can see, I call it a little bit farther down the line, they can see the first and ten notes you need to get to to get that 10 yards right.
Speaker 2:Well, we might not be able to see the first three yards, but they can see past that and give us that perspective to help us pull our stuff out to go actually hit that first down.
Speaker 1:Yeah, so what changed for you then between that freshman to sophomore? How did you shift mentally ethic people around you to try and start moving your forward again?
Speaker 2:Yeah, no. After I finished reading the book, what shifted I was like, no, I'm gonna leave, leave myself first. I got the book talked about self-talk, right. So if anything ever got hard in the workout we were in spring practice, I would self-talk to myself first. Um, after that and talk about a vision like write your goals down and speak them out loud, right? So I wrote my goals. I had in my locker right taped up inside my locker, so before every practice, every workout, anything I was doing in my sport, I would look and be able to read those to myself before I even started. So I was able to go ahead and start to speak that life. Hey, this is going to happen, this is what I want. So I wrote those down ahead of time.
Speaker 2:So when I started coming my sophomore year and I was like, hey, I know who I am, I know what I'm trying to accomplish, it's going to happen. I've got to keep believing and continue to play the mental game knowing that I'm going to be able to get to where I want to get to, and that allowed me to play a lot more my sophomore year and I enjoyed my sophomore year. It was a lot of fun when you're playing against some great talent and seeing like man, this is a game that's hard. You and this is a game that's hard. You go in different environments, which I think is the best thing about sports. It's like when you travel to the different stadiums and the fans get involved and like they're throwing stuff at you and like it just makes the environment so rich, right, and it's just so fun to be a part of.
Speaker 3:But sometimes they can also rock you because you might be like, oh my goodness.
Speaker 2:I'm not. I wasn't expecting this and, like in the game, your head is your shot right and I wanted to be able to continue to always stay calm, and my coach Mason, who's my coach at the college at the time he called it surfboard shoulders.
Speaker 3:He's like you just want to keep your surfboard shoulders going because if you get on too high, you're going to fall back, because if you get, too far you goal yeah, I like it well, being in australia, I can see the surfing I'm wondering.
Speaker 1:I'm wondering for you. Surely you're not a surfer, so he must have explained it real good, yeah he put him on a skateboard.
Speaker 2:We fell off real quickly we figured out okay, this is uh, this is what you mean yeah, yeah, very true, very true.
Speaker 1:So what did? What was that college experience like for you? Because I'm interested to understand at what point you started to realize, hey, nfl, this is an opportunity here. This can happen.
Speaker 2:Yeah, no. So, honestly, junior year went decent. Senior year I actually made a move and changed positions and I was doing really well. When I changed to play linebacker I was even getting projected to be drafted in the early rounds and then I ended up having an injury that put me out for more than half the season. So then I was like, all right, well, it's one of those things, I'm still going to be around the team, I'm still going to be present, I still want to be, you know, just locked in.
Speaker 2:But one of the things like I still my in my heart as an injury, like man, do I want to go back out there and risk being injured even more? And like not being able to throw my kids up? I had a stinger that kind of went down, so I had nerve damage in my shoulder and I was like I'm going to be able to do it because I want to do later in life. I was like do I want to rest and let that be able to go? So I battled that for a while. I was like you know what, like I came here to go see something through to completion. I wanted to do it. So I got cleared from our last two games of the season and played those, had fun, and I'm glad I did.
Speaker 2:But I realized like after that, obviously my stock had dropped tremendously because I missed more than half the season. So when that happened I was like, all right, cool, we'll figure it out. Didn't kind of know what was next actually in the books. I was like, hey, cool, I'm at college, I'm getting a degree that's paid for, that's checked off. But I was like I don't really know what I'm passionate about to go do for a job. I had the next steps, like what's been my life? And so I actually had some time.
Speaker 2:I was just figuring out. Going back and talking to my dad, he was like, man, what you don't want to do is look back later in your life and be like I wish I should have tried it. I should have tried it for it. And I was like, all right, I'm going to try and see if I can make it to the next level. Didn't know, right. I was like injuries happen. So I didn't know what was going to happen. It was going to turn out and end up having a chance to go from college to NFL. I went undrafted to Atlanta and it was a blessing right and that came as we kind of transitioned more into that season of life. That came with a lot of struggles that I was not expecting to struggle. I think a lot of athletes struggle when they're transitioning.
Speaker 1:Yes. Yeah, so talk to me about those struggles in that transition. What were the but first, what were the big changes that took place?
Speaker 2:Yeah, the big change was, like you know what, Like, at this point I'm betting on myself, right, I've been doing it, but now I'm really going to bet on myself. I'm going to put everything I got in this one basket and see if I make it. If I don't, obviously I can go figure out what's next in my life, but I'm going to put everything I got for it and try my hardest to see if I can do it. I ended up testing really well. My numbers were good. I had a lot of fun.
Speaker 2:Then getting that chance remember, teams can work me out privately. You get the chance like hey, can you get on the whiteboard? Right? And I think this comes back to the education, because as you move up in the higher levels of sports, the game doesn't become so much physical, it becomes a lot more mental and the playbooks and the things they're throwing at us. Like we were sitting down on the whiteboard and I remember, like we had just met the coach it was for the Falcons, Brickus' name. He came and he worked me and another teammate out and we were sitting there. He said all right, I'm gonna give y'all three plays. So we have to draw three plays of their playbook, draw on the white board. He was giving us motions and adjustments. We had to figure, we had to make our correction on the whiteboard on what we would do if that happened and I'm like thank god, I actually paid attention in school which took my education seriously.
Speaker 2:Right, I'm like I can now start to put things together, compartmentalize what's going on in this play. This play's like this, right, so I can actually have that mental part of the game down where I'm not struggling so much, and that let me see right there. So I was like, oh, I can do this, I can understand and play. Look at that point it's just ball right, see what will get balls down. What I always said. But it gave me confidence, knowing like, hey, this coach is walking me through this stuff. Obviously they can see I have talent. Two, they want to see how much can I actually hold in and understand to be able to talk back with them about. And I said, all right, I can do this. That point that clicked in my head I can play professionally at this level because I know what it looks like.
Speaker 1:So at this, at that sort of moment, was there a? Were you celebrating? Were you thinking, man, I've made it. Boom, I'm a pro, I've made NFL. This is it, or was it more? Oh man, I've got a lot to do if I want to stay at this level. No, no, it was more. I've got a lot to do because I ended up getting a call after draft day like hey, I'm getting undrafted, going to Atlanta.
Speaker 2:I'm like sweet. Call after draft day like hey, I'm getting undrafted and going to Atlanta, I'm like, sweet, I still got an opportunity to play, when a lot of guys are not getting that same phone call right. So I was just excited, like hey, I get to say I'm playing in the NFL. That initial excitement like as a kid growing up, like hey, cool, I can actually put on a real NFL jersey.
Speaker 2:But when I got to Atlanta it was different. Like I realized like there's a difference between professionals and there's a difference between, like amateurs, right, and I got to start seeing, like this is what pros look like. I got to start seeing what the business side of things was and it really stretched me because I'm like, hey, I'm putting everything I can into this game. I don't have a lot of control over whether or not I make the team or not, right, I can put the best thing. I make it. And that was hard for me because I was like I'm doing extra walkthroughs, I'm meeting with the coaches early, I'm doing like all the extra things A lot of guys are trying to do to figure out how to solidify them on a team or make a practice squad, and I remember my first two preseason games in Atlanta were trash. I played absolutely awful.
Speaker 2:And I made that kick. I was just so nervous being on that stage and I was just so nervous being on that stage and I was like, okay, I got to be perfect, don't know, what's going on?
Speaker 2:Okay, I messed up here Like I just started getting in my head and my dad called me. He's like bro, just go in there and relax and play. What are you stressing about? And my third and fourth game I played to the lights out. I was having so much fun, I was beating around the ball making plays, but I still ended up getting cut and I realized I got that call we call him the Grim Reaper in the leagues.
Speaker 2:Like you see that man coming, go ahead, grab your stuff, bro, you're getting out of here, right. So we got that call. They tell us hey, everybody, go back to your rooms, we'll call you. We're on the campus per se, we'll call you. Guys up, if you make it, if you don't make it, you'll find you'll know. So I got the call the last day. They're like hey, we'll let you go. And I was like hey. I was like all right. So I had to go, walk my iPad back, turn all my stuff in. They gave me a black garbage bag and I started putting all my stuff from the locker in there. And this might be my last time ever playing football, because I've nothing else I've ever promised.
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 2:And then I also. So I got in the car, drove home four hours that same day and I remember I was like, I got home and I was absolutely destroyed. I was lost. I mean, like that was the first time in my life I was ever told like, hey, you're not good enough to play this sport, go do something different, right. Like that was the first time in my life I've ever been told like, hey, you can't do this.
Speaker 2:And, man, I think, like the identity that people always grew up to, like hey, I'm not just a football player, like that's not who I am, like I'm more than that. But I realized, man, after I got cut for the first time and I actually lost football, I thought I was. I thought I was Emmanuel Smith, the football player. That's all I knew. I lost my identity. I always had faith, but I kind of lost my walk with my faith, the belief, the hope. All that went out the window. I was at home and all I did was work out, come back home and stay at my parents' house. I didn't have a house at the time. I stayed at my parents' house and just stayed in the room. I wouldn't go out nowhere because I was like I don't want people to see me because I fail and in my head.
Speaker 2:I was a failure because I didn't have to go there. I was a real competition and one of those things is like my dad broke his neck twice in college and so he went down a similar path of darkness and he saw that coming to me and he was like bro, you got to get out of the house. He's like all right, whatever, I'm going to figure it out. So I became a substitute teacher.
Speaker 1:What made you do teaching? What made you think teaching was the right thing to do? For that?
Speaker 2:period of time in my life it was still flexible.
Speaker 3:So if I needed to go somewhere, I could get out the door.
Speaker 2:I had no commitment to it.
Speaker 2:My dad also did it. He said, hey, go be a substitute for a little while, they'll help you out. I was like, yeah, whatever, these kids ain't going to help me out. So I go and I'm substituting T-shirt and I'm like I'm not telling these kids anything. They're like oh, mr Smith, nice to meet you. Here's the work today. Let's get this done.
Speaker 2:The kids the kids started to figure out that I played in the NFL and they went around the school and they're like what should you have kids? You know kids, once they kind of figure out like, oh, I want to know. They're never going to stop asking the question Like it's nonstop. So every day for about two and a half months, three months, they asked me why are you here, what are you doing, why are you not playing? And I would tell the kids the same thing like man, like y'all get away, y'all focus on the work, right? Because they didn't know I was battling suicide and just depression. At that time I was like man, I really failed in my life. Like the person I was is no longer here, right, and I got a chance to.
Speaker 1:You know, they finally got me to open up, because they never stopped asking.
Speaker 2:So they finally opened up and I told them I'm here because I wanted to give you guys hope that you don't have to go to college to be successful. There's a bunch of other ways to go do something to actually help the people you want to create. So I was just trying to give them just guidance and let the people who care about them.
Speaker 2:And they turned around and flipped it on me. They asked me questions and the perspective they gave me coming out of that was like dude, you made it like you're still part of the world, percent, like you didn't fail. And I just talked to those kids I tell them all the time that was probably the biggest thing in my life and I was, I was lost.
Speaker 1:It saved me because I didn't know where I was going, right and uh, getting teary-eyed thinking about it, because this is one of the seasons that was awful yeah, I mean, you know and thanks for sharing that, because you know that those are dark times and walking down that that path isn't a it's not a fun place to be. Yeah, what you've described is probably is unique for me. I haven't, I haven't heard a story where it's great that you were, you went out, it's great that you were in a place with children who their naivety, their natural curiosity, inquisitiveness, nosiness, sort of just forces you, because of the simplicity of their questions, to answer it, to vocalize, as you were starting earlier with the mental edge, to vocalize what you were thinking, what you were feeling.
Speaker 2:Yeah, it impacted me so much, like because I realized like man, I didn't fail, like I didn't hit the level that I wanted to my goals, but I still did something impressive. And from that point on, like my perspective moving forward completely changed. I'm like no matter where I go, what team I'm going on, I'm going to be smiling, laughing, having and having a great time out there, because I'm just going to be thankful that I have an opportunity to continue to be doing this.
Speaker 2:And I started rubbing off on people. They're like why are you always so happy? I'm like, bro, when you battle depression and suicidal thoughts and you just think like life is over and you see the other side of the road, it changes a lot for you.
Speaker 1:So to me I want to say you chose to be happy at that point. Yeah, Because the circumstances, physical movement where you're living, that didn't change, but you chose to be happy at that moment.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I chose to make the decision to be happy and didn't know what that was going to carry on to right, and so it's one of my favorite parts of my story. I don't know if I relate, because I think a lot of athletes personally, when we get to that point in our life, when we have that, you have the split in the road it's like which way am I going? Who am I going to be? We all struggle with that, I think, because we're so used to competing in our arena and being successful in that arena that when that arena is taken away, or that helmet, those shoes is taken away from you, your identity a lot of times goes with it. I mean, you're trying to figure out how do I pick up the piece of who I, my broken self, to be able to mend that together and go find out how I can be successful somewhere else. And that's the hardest thing for athletes to figure out and like.
Speaker 1:For me, that's one of the biggest things I love helping young athletes figure out how to do about their life. But you didn't feel you have a lot of things that can translate Quite right, and so I'm keen to get onto those pieces. But help me then. Choosing happiness, choosing to be happy, choosing that, that path. Like you say, you didn't know where it would take you, so tell me, where did it start to take you then? What started to open back up?
Speaker 2:Yeah, no, so I mean the mindset, the perspective changed. Everything I had was always I was grateful, I was grateful and I was thankful for what I had, and so that opened the doors. I was substitute for three months. I got a call. I was doing workouts in between that, but I got a call from Tampa Bay and they were like hey's go.
Speaker 3:This is great, I'm still getting. I'm back in the game baby right.
Speaker 2:So I'm flying out to Tampa and that was a whole situation too. But I was literally. They called me. I was in the airport for Chicago to go do a workout with the Bears that like within like the next five, six hours. But my agent had called me, they had called me, so I didn't even leave Chicago's airport, turned around, got a red eye, flew down to Tampa and signed that same day. When I got there I was pumped Like you know what. I don't even care what it is, I'm just happy that I actually have the chance to continue to play ball. So I was in Tampa about a year and a half. This team was one of the funniest teams I've been on. Just the characters you meet, the people you see, right, like you just have so much, so much fun.
Speaker 3:But you also get to meet so many different backgrounds, and that's what I really love Like.
Speaker 2:I'm going to be present in every moment I have. I remember I was with Ida Bayon and we were drinking a cava which is like a root from his culture, Like they grind up tastes like muddy water, but it's one of those things like it makes the body know that I feel as good as we just drank out of a coconut. I'm like you know what. This is great. I would have never done this in any other place. Having a chance to do that, I'm present, I'm having fun. I loved it, Talked to everybody a year and a half, Got cut or got released from there.
Speaker 2:Cut same thing, Left there. Then I got called to Kansas City, which was crazy. Kansas City actually called me after I left the Falcons, but I had to sign with Tampa. So Kansas City had been chasing me for about two years. At this point I didn't know about this, but then they continued to pursue me After I got cut from Tampa. I'm laying in my apartment room at the time because they'll call you and you've got 24 hours knowing that, hey, we're signing you, you get up here tomorrow, so they get you a plane ticket in 24 hours. You're on a plane out, right.
Speaker 1:So my hotel, my apartment, was not even unpacked at the time, so I'm like oh Lord, I had to call my mom and dad Like, hey, y'all come pack my stuff up for me. I'm like I got to catch a flight across the country right now. So they came down. How prepared prepared were you for all that bouncing around? So you know you talk through that sort of six or so years, six, seven years in nfl. How were you? Because I'm guessing that isn't what you expected from the nfl?
Speaker 2:it was not. I was not prepared for the amount of bouncing around you do, especially until you find someone you stick. So I remember, like I remember, when I was transitioning, before I got picked up to tampa, I had a double bag with a pair of cleats, a pair of tennis shoes, three pairs of nice shirts, a pair of pants, and the underwear came from the facility that I was getting picked up at.
Speaker 2:I was going to keep buying y'all's underwear until I figured out where I'm going, but that's all I carried around. So I'd be at a team for a week, week and a half, get cut, fly back home. Get back home, fly to another team, we'll do a workout, fly back up. So I was like I remember you would literally go from place to place bouncing around. I went to Tampa. My first workout. Didn't get picked up there, injuries happened. Flew to Indianapolis, did a workout with the Colts. They were taking too long to decide what they wanted to do. So I had another workout the next day in Seattle. So I had to turn around from Indy fly, get to the airport, fly to Seattle, stay in the airport about a week and then figure out, hey, what am I going to do next? Right, and then got sent back home substitute teach. Then I got picked up to go play back in Tampa. So I was like I was not. I mean that duffel bag. I still have it.
Speaker 3:That was my life in a bag, I would literally just walk wherever I needed to go through the airport and that's the bag I was carrying.
Speaker 2:I don't need to pack heavy because I don't know how I'm going to be somewhere else, right? So I never got to really establish roots until I got to Kansas City. And Kansas City was such a shock because I thought there was nothing in Kansas City. First off, I was like Kansas City. Now I get here and I'm here, get picked up by the team and I'm like, ok, this is a cool place, it's not bad. But I was like man, I came from Florida to Kansas and it's about to be like the wintertime. I'm like, oh, I had shorts, y'all got snow. I am not ready for this right now.
Speaker 2:I ended up with Love in Kansas city because the culture that andy reed created here is something that was special, right, and it was one of those rare things you get to be a part of. By the time, he was great because the coaches that came in spagnola, loving the deaf you know big red, right, how they came about. The culture of the team, everybody. We had a lot of people who could have had a lot of big egos, but nobody had those egos right. Everybody was such like a family-filled and oriented type thing, but even the coaches. I remember Andy Reid coming down and we would be at the breakfast table in the morning and I just got here he came in and sat down and said how you doing, how is your team about you, how's the family? Right, like he was actually trying to get to know me, which goes back to like my fourth-grade teacher who was actually taking that time to know me. It's like I want to really play for you as hard as I possibly can because you're actually investing in me as a person, not the jersey, and it just makes you feel loved up here, right, and that's one of those things like I love. Like his son coach was brit reed was there too. He was one of us that had a huge impact on me when I was up here because I was like, hey, coach, I don't know what's going on five, six in the morning, can we meet? Yeah, let's go, let's go to the office, right, they were willing to help me figure out how to find myself, to make myself stick. Then I got a chance to stick here for a while.
Speaker 2:I don't know. Just the culture here was. I mean. I think it's something that a lot of athletes have went through. They found a culture that they fit in, a culture that they went in. They know what a good culture looks like. A lot of times when you leave sports, a lot of people don't know what a culture looks like. They don't know how to create a culture. They don't know how to establish a culture or maintain a culture. They don't know how to do that. That's a lot of. I think we can come in and we can actually point out like, hey, this is a good culture, fit, this is what's going to continue to help us win off the field or on the field right. This is how we continue to develop that culture.
Speaker 1:And so what do you think those because you know, I know what you mean from a sport perspective, especially in team sports, we get this sense of culture. In fact, it's it's what, pre-season, I know it's about getting fit, but it's also about creating this culture, getting those standards together. What do you think are, I guess those? What are those key parts or key points that help us to build a strong culture?
Speaker 2:I mean, I think what comes from a lot of our background, because we're used to having standards right, like I don't think standards are a bad thing, I think standards are a great thing. Like we have a standard that we're used to always achieving or being at. So we everyone below that is like, hey, we're not doing our best, right, so we have a standard set in place and we're okay with having those tough conversations, right? A lot of people nowadays don't want to have those crucial conversations with somebody or have those like, hey, we might butt heads, but we're still working this together to go one way, one direction. We can figure out how to get over this, overcome whatever we're going through, and work together. A lot of people don't understand how to do those things. It's communication. Golly. The amount of lack of communication you can see on teams and organizations is completely crazy. I don't like this guy because his favorite color is pink. What does it do to anything?
Speaker 2:about the team or about the job we're here for a mission and for a goal, it has to win or help the company become profitable. The other stuff, hey, that's off the field Balloons, white lines or the office space. We have a mission. How can we work to achieve this mission and not be taken off the beaten path? That's why I think we bring a lot of those traits, the soft skills that people don't know how to highlight.
Speaker 1:Yeah, in that culture, having that shared mission, having those standards that we all buy into, and then having a simple communication plan, knowing how to communicate on field, off field, but it'd been open.
Speaker 3:I've been able to say no. No, that wasn't good enough. We know our standard.
Speaker 1:Let's get there, come on, but we do it together with that. I guess that accountability group sort of gets us up to that point.
Speaker 2:That's huge. And one of my coaches always told me he said look, everything I tell you it is never anything personal to you. What I tell you is about the jersey number on your back. Separate those two things, right. So for me, I do that at work, my boss ever does something that I did wrong. He is not talking about me as a person, he is talking about me and my work outfit. That's who he's talking to. So what does that person need to do better? And that, to me, was such an easy thing to be able to put in my head, cause I'm like, my jersey number was not who I was, it was just the player I was when I was playing. I take that jersey number off. I'm a different person, same thing that we had to figure out how to transition into, into the real world. It's true, isn't it?
Speaker 1:It is true, I guess as a player we don't take it personally, typically we don't take it, you drop the ball. It's like, yes, actually I dropped the ball, okay, so so you've got to pick it up, I do.
Speaker 1:Okay, all right, so let's work it down so often it's. It's not as easy to sort of wiggle our way out of it yet, kind of. But yet the that the shirt or the jersey number or the jersey is still important. Because, a bit like how we described that at the end of that your college to nfl transition period, when you think you don't have it anymore, we realize actually we are still tied to it as much as we don't want to be. It is still a part of us.
Speaker 2:Yeah, all the way through and through, right, I don't think that ever leaves you either. I think you just figure out how to juggle that now to your new environment or your new opportunity. Yeah, and that was something I had to find like and I talked about time like I football ended after I tore my achilles and injury happened. Um, I had to figure out like what do I want my life to go? One thing I realized that I was missing that I've had from the age of four to about 28 was a mentor or a coach. I had that.
Speaker 2:No matter what I was doing in sports, I always had that coach or mentor who's guided me down the next step. Right. Then, for a lot of athletes, as we lead the sport or we walk away from it, the idea of a coach or a mentor also gets pulled away from with us too. And for me, I was like I wanted to find somebody who actually could be a mentor and coach me on the areas that I needed to improve on in my life. Right, like the financial part. I kind of figured out. I was like I don't know, I don't have it down completely, so you probably could teach me that stuff too. I was like, hey, marriage. I didn't know, like my parents are still married today, but I was like I don't know what marriage was, but I thought it was a title change when we first got married. Like, hey, this is what marriage looks like, this is how you uphold a marriage, this is how you continue to live with your spouse, right?
Speaker 1:Being a father.
Speaker 2:I think my first kid I was like I'm not ready. I don't think you ever be ready. Right, I'm still not ready. And I got four of them.
Speaker 2:It's just like figure out how to take the audibles and the adjustments on the fly right. But you have people who've already done that, that's been there, that can give you a little bit of perspective, different books to speak into your life, to help you out. Man, that made such a difference, because now it's like, oh, I'm not doing this by myself, somebody else has done this, they can teach me, they're helping me navigate the same struggles and that was one of the biggest things that I've had in my life to this day. And I still have people now who mentor me and coach my wife and I a business that we're doing ourselves, but also just in our marriage and our relationships and just our finances and our faith. That's one of the things I was like. I'm extremely blessed and proud to be able to have that coach relationship still, even though sports is gone.
Speaker 1:And do you think and it's interesting because I'm listening to you and the coach and the description of that the further we move away from sports, the further we move away from the concept of having a coach? And so why is that? Because I look at it and I think, as a player or an athlete, as good as we are, there's a level of humility that comes with it to learn and be open, to be my best, to get better Advice. Coaching is going to help me get there. So when we step away from sport, why does that change? I've got this life gig.
Speaker 2:My honest opinion on that man. I actually read in the book and it was one of them. It changed how I saw the word ego. I think a lot of times we I mean I think all athletes have an ego. You have to have ego, yeah right, because I think it's a part of who you are, like you just you just know how to juggle it and turn on, turn on one of those things that we have, the ego and all that stands for is edging God out. And I remember reading that and I was like I feel like when we walk away from our sport and play at such a high level, it's like I got everything figured out. I don't want to ask for help or be that person who needs to look like, hey, I don't know what's going on. And that to me, is like you got to drop your ego right.
Speaker 2:And a lot of times it's hard for athletes to drop that ego and let it down and be like, hey, look, I'm humble, I'm lost, I need help, I don't know what's going on, right. And I think that's one of the biggest reasons why we find like we leave sports and the coaching of that. They kind of have that, that hierarchy as coaches here. They at least know what we can do to continue to continue to perform, continue to play. Once you leave that setting, it's like who's going to coach me?
Speaker 2:I've already done the thing that I wanted to go accomplish, right, and so I was like you have a chip on your shoulder and so, like you got to figure out, you got to really let the ego go. Like if you let the ego go and just be humble, like still walk around with that quiet confidence, right, like hey, you know who you are and I want to wear myself proudly. But I'm never going to be like I got it all figured out. I'm like man, people who play with me they call me Smitty. They were like Smitty, you are the nosiest person I know. I'm like dang right, I am.
Speaker 2:I'm like I'm trying to figure out how to continue to improve my life, like I want to continue to get information that help, and I'm not afraid to ask questions. Right, it might be a dumb question to you, but if I don't know, I need to know it. Right, it's like I'm dropping. I'm dropping the ego. I don't need to be the one who's getting all the praise in the world, I just want to be sure that I'm being driven the right, driving the right car on the right terrain and so did that, or how did that help you post your professional career?
Speaker 1:that dropping the ego, reducing the ego and starting to look forward, or to figure in fact, and starting to figure out what comes next. Starting to figure out your second win, yeah, how?
Speaker 2:did you do that? No, that's a good one. Honestly, I tell people I think networking is one of the best things you can do in the world, no matter what you're doing. I think the world works more so based off who you know, not really what you know, because a lot of places they can teach you the what, they can always teach you how to do the what, but it's who you know that can open doors for you right? And I tell people all the time I thank God he answers your prayers and forms of opportunities. A lot of people don't want to walk through the door of opportunities to go actually live out the bread that they asked for.
Speaker 2:So for me, I had a mentor tell me. He said all that poor stands for is passing over opportunities. Repeatedly I was like that's true, a lot of people do that, right, and that's why they're poor. So for me, man transitioning out from football to figuring out what was next, I got transparent. I, Transparently, I don't have a legal degree, I didn't go to law school, but somehow I found myself in legal technology of all things.
Speaker 2:Right, like people who have the highest of the highest degree that's been in thousands of years in school. You understand, and they're very intelligent, very smart, and they actually, like their minds is like how do you understand all this? Right, I'm still picking it up and I tell them. I always come in every conversation Like, first, off the door for me, I'm like thank you, I always give them appreciation, thank you for even thinking about me or opening that door for me to be able to walk through or see, see that opportunity right. Second, I'm like I'm not gonna act, like I know what's going on. So I'll tell them straight up like hey, look, even when I'm like you are what I would call a teacher or the master sensei, I'm the student, I'm here really to just pick your mind, learn your journey and learn what you overcame and how you found the stones that actually put you on the path to where you are now. That's what I want to come here from. I want to be a student. I never want to let the student mindset or the student perspective leave me, because I always want to learn. I always want to figure out how to continue to grow and I think that allowed me to go from being what I'm doing from football transition to nothing that my major did with, to legal technology. So now I've been doing that and it's a lot of fun. But I get to create those relationships and the ego drop.
Speaker 2:I think it also like people understand that they see your background. They already know you've done things that are pretty impressive. They know that by looking at your background. But when they meet you and they can see man, he's actually one of the humblest guys I've met. He's so friendly, he's so nice, that right there is what attracts them to actually want to talk to you, not your background. Your background just puts you on the stack. Okay, let's check this, let's see who this guy is. And they get to meet you and they see like, oh man, he cares about me, he's humble, he's not like walking around on his feet, he actually wants to be there with you.
Speaker 2:Changes so much that people now feel like you're a real person and they actually want to, actually want to relate, they want to talk to you, they want to hear about you because you want to invest in them. And that's the biggest thing to me is like, how can you invest into other people? Like, as long as you're a student and you're asking questions and investing in other people, I don't think anybody's ever going to tell you to leave them alone. Like, obviously you might have some people who are doing it, but that's just a far few between. But majority of people are not going to be like, all right, you're asking me questions, then you're going to walk away, and if they do, that's fine.
Speaker 1:Do what you're supposed to do in your life.
Speaker 2:And so how do you think that you managed to find your way, man? So it happened. Funny enough, it happened after I got cut from the Chiefs. I got cut, I got blessed to bump to a man out here in Kansas City. It's one of those things I remember getting cut, picked up. My son and I just prayed to God. I was like God, just give me an opportunity, just show me something where I can continue to invest in my life, to set my family up, but also put me on the right path. I didn't know where it was going to take me, I didn't know where I was going to go, but I just knew I needed something else outside of football and I ended up bumping into this man out and about. We hit it off and I got a chance to know him. He got a chance to know me and he's like I can teach you some things. You're actually open to learning and being a student.
Speaker 2:And he started getting I never read books Like I was a spark noter. If I had chatted GBT when I was in college, I would have been chatted GBT all the way through college. Right, that just wasn't me. When I actually met him, he started giving me books like Crucial Conversations, don't Eat the Marshmallow Yet, how to Win Friends and Influence People. He started giving me books that actually helped me develop as a person. There's a bunch of other ones that helped me as a man, because a lot of things I struggled as a man that I didn't know how to express. He gave me books and just gave me perspective on how to overcome those things. So now I was like man. I literally tell him every time dude, you were a blessing. You were a blessing in my life because you saved me from going down a path where I didn't know I was going to go.
Speaker 1:And it seems you know we speak about coaches and mentors, but that's a key theme through your life, through how you've managed to actually, I guess, deal with the change there's always been. There's been a mentor who's come through, there's been someone who sat down and spoken to you, wanted excuse me, wanted to know who you are, wanted to sort of help you to express yourself even better.
Speaker 2:Yeah, no, there has been, and I think that's. I love it. I think God works in mysterious ways. He knows it. I took a lot of time. If you ever hear somebody saying that they're self-made by themselves, that's never the case. You'll never hear me say that, because that's just you're discrediting everybody who came before you to set you up. You'll always have somebody who's had a hand on your life at some point that steered you in the direction where you're going to be successful, or whether or not you're doing it right. So I don't ever believe anybody's self-made.
Speaker 1:So tell me how did you get into the job you're doing today. You know you talk about no experience. Hadn't done this before, so you know everyone's now like okay. So come on, tell me, how did you make this happen?
Speaker 2:No, it's a great, great question. So actually, ironically, I tore my hamstring so I had some time off. While I was playing and one of my wife's college teammates' mom actually reached out to me and was like hey, are you looking for something else? I'm like you know what Opportunity comes.
Speaker 3:I'm like yes, what is it?
Speaker 2:I'll never turn it down. Opportunity comes I'm like, yes, what is it? I'll never turn it down. You're like all right, cool, we're doing some stuff in dirps and legal, do you know any of that is? I'm like no skipping do I not?
Speaker 2:I can learn to play books, so I can definitely learn whatever you're trying to give me to help sell, right. So and went into that and like, fell in, like in love with the community that that was in legal ops. The people that I got a chance to meet had fun doing that, so I learned a lot. But then I got a chance to go play against our left Left the job field and served about a year and a half. That's when I turned my Achilles. So I came back and one of those things that I think for me I got told I was in sales. Right, I'm in sales.
Speaker 2:During the day I got applied to a job, I had a friend reach out to me. It's like hey, we're hiring a company, go apply, I want you on my team. Right, this is people who all like you, just continue to treat people really well and you are open and you're curious. People want to help you. You never know when they will. They open that door. All right, cool. So I go apply.
Speaker 2:Actually, go through the interview process they tell me like, hey, you don't have enough experience. I'm sorry we can't hire you. In my head I'm like you look at my resume, my experience. In the last six years I've been playing professional football. So I'm like where do you expect me to get experience at? It just didn't make sense to me, right? So I called him and told him hey, I didn't get the job. He was like wait, hold up, I'm calling back.
Speaker 2:So they called back a month later. I'm like, hey, we actually want to hire you. I'm like, sweet, all right, let's go. And I tell them hey, I want to go outside sales. I want to be able to go, do what I'm doing in the outside world and have my own territory, have fun networking, meeting people and just having good conversations. They hit me with you don't have enough experience. I'm going to put you in inside sales. I'm like, all right, whatever, I'll do inside sales to show you a year, I'll buy my time, I'll show you a year and if I do everything that you want me to do in a year, I want to be moved up. And they didn't do it. A year happened. I led the company in the meetings, book revenues, generated, everything else in the inside sales team, and they looked at me and they laid out the whole inside sales team and to me that was my first. I've been fired more times than I've had a job, so getting fired does not bother me.
Speaker 3:I'm like cool, lay it off, what's next? Right, we're going to keep it moving.
Speaker 2:This has been part of my life anyways. That's my first time seeing that actually impact a lot of people who are not used to having that type of interaction the half is used to having, and I realized I was like wow, that's unfortunate, that was scary. But from all the things that I've been doing in the past, in what?
Speaker 1:way you say it was scary. In what way was it scary?
Speaker 2:Yeah, I think it was scary. I think, just from an athlete's standpoint, we're so used to instability or uncertainty because we never know what's going to happen with sports, so we kind of get used to being, I guess used to being uncomfortable. Right, we master how to live in that uncomfortable state to continue to just function successfully. You know, it's scary in a sense because that was the first time I've seen people who were not used to living uncomfortably or having unexpected change or curveball come at them out of the complete blue and they had to adjust their entire lifestyle. Everything changed and I was like that was the first time I've seen that and I've seen it from a company like they just put us on a zoom call like hey, molly, let go. I'm like wow, there was no, I was, at least I had the grim reaper.
Speaker 2:When I got cut, we got to talk, walk into the locker room and we were having the time, but like this is like hey, let go pop. The call ended I I was like wow, that's a heck of a turnaround. So that's why I think it was scary. But for athletes, man, we're so used to having that type of life. I got laid off today. She's like okay. I was like yeah, we're used to it. Right, we've been living that life the last six years before that.
Speaker 2:So it was nothing for us. It was a flip on the dime, we'll find something better. We trusted the process. Funny enough how that worked out. I had somebody else. I got let go. Somebody reached out to me and was like hey, you should go reach out to this person here, they're actually hiring and I told them about you. I was like all right, I'm going to do that Next thing. You know I'm doing what I'm doing now at Carntox with the consulting and one of those things. Like I didn't have any experience in any of these fields, any of these things. But what I did have was I had relationships with people who actually got to know me and I got to cultivate. They were able to open doors for me that I had to walk through first, but they were willing to open the door for me to go see what's next for my life.
Speaker 1:And so with those changes I mean, like you say, we're used to this instability, because that's just what sport is you saw that impact on other people. So now, when you move into this role, or as you think ahead about being part of culture and teams, does it, does it change it in any way when you realize, hey, there's this athletic edge that you have actually means you deal with this sort of corporate situation differently.
Speaker 2:Oh man, it's one of those things. I'm like athletes. I love being able to have athletes. Why? Because we have so much that we don't know, because it's our normal but it's not the normal to the world that we have this the skillset to handle that adversity, to handle sudden things with pops up. It might be a disaster. How to communicate when things are going tough or when things are going well right.
Speaker 2:We also understand how to make somebody. We understand how some people might need to be pushed to help leadership, but also some people might need to be pulled, and we know how to recognize which ones need to be pushed and pulled to help them continue to grow and move on in the company. So we're able to actually help people lead right help to continue to grow and move on in the company. So we're able to actually help people lead right.
Speaker 2:We're so used to being on teams and doing all these things together that once you get into a spot where you can lead people, you can start calling out greatness in people, like, hey, this is like you might have made a mistake here, but you still do this really well, right, and you're building their confidence up so next time they come into something like that much more excited and their culture is now starting to grow.
Speaker 2:They know like, actually I am somebody, I can do great things right and like those things that somebody believes and their belief is high, people can do anything in the world. I actually believe that, so that's why they're athletes and we have such a unique perspective and power and gift from our backgrounds, no matter what sport it was, that we can utilize in any setting that we go into, any room that we can utilize in any setting that we go into, any room that we go into. We can be a light, we can be a beacon and we can understand how to actually make a room grow and bring people out of that and uplift it, because that's what we've been doing our entire lives yes, that's right.
Speaker 1:When you think about the role you're in now, what, in fact, the roles you've had after sports? What do you think you've had to stop doing as an athlete? What, which of those traits have you had to put to the side?
Speaker 2:yeah, I guess the trait that I probably had to put to the side. I had to learn some people skills. I'm used to in sports, like we get custody, we get custody out. We can talk reckless to each other between the white lines, but we step off the white lines like bro, I love you, like we are, and say, bro, I love you, like we are best friends. In the real world, if you cut somebody off, they might be like I'm going to HR.
Speaker 2:So that I had to learn like how to if somebody makes me upset that I can't just talk how I'm thinking in my head to them. I got to realize like, hey, this is a different setting, this is a different environment. I got to realize like, hey, this is a different setting, this is a different environment. I got to carry myself a little bit differently in that sense, right. So that was one of the main things and just the competition aspect of it. I thought that was one of the things that I realized, like being competitive is fun, I love being competitive, but sometimes people are competitive to where they backstab you. They got to do everything they can to win and I'm like, for, personally, I don't operate in that way, I'm like. I'm not going to backstab you, I'm not going to lie, I'm not going to deceive you. I'm just trying to put myself in that man's life. Unless, sometimes in corporate America, a lot of times people will do that to make themselves look better. Right, I'm like man, I'm competitive, but I'm competitive on my morals. I'm not going to just slouch on my morals to make me make more money. I think one thing money's always going to be here. Money's always going to come back to you. As long as you're investing in yourself, putting the right things in your mind, money will come to you and it will be attracted to you. If we keep chasing the money, you'll never get enough of it. For me, I want people who come in contact with me one thing they don't say. I want them to say this every time they leave me.
Speaker 2:Whoever that guy was, he inspired hope. He really wanted to know who I am. He believed in me. That's all I care about, because I believe that hope is the seedbed of faith. If I can give you hope, you'll go out and do a lot of things. So I want everybody I come in contact with, I want you to believe like hey, no matter what, I don't care what they're doing. This man preaches hope, believes hope and he believes in me and it's one of the things I've carried out.
Speaker 2:It was one of the side note weird things that I've always done. When I first got to kansas city and I was playing with the chiefs, I would go downtown, the plaza and, uh, there's a park and a lot of homeless people say this park. I would go down there in the snow middle and I would just sit down in the park on the bench of homeless people and talk to them and I'm like I don, I don't know who you are, I don't really know your story. I would love to know your story, but I just want you to know. Like you might be in a tough season, but people still do care about you.
Speaker 3:I don't ever want to see somebody get to the point where, like, they feel like nobody cares about. But you're going to know I have love for you and I care for you.
Speaker 2:And that came from my fourth grade teacher because I got bullied growing up. She helped me. She showed me what caring looked like. Then I got to a good coach. He showed me what caring looked like. So now I know what the benefit of caring about somebody and showing them what that can do with somebody else, what that can spark in them, just what they can spark in them. So I want everybody I come in contact to have that spark, that glimmer like man.
Speaker 2:I want to be around that guy and I think a lot of athletes have that too, because when we've seen the dark days, the sin dog days, of whatever you want to call it, we've been there and you lived it. But you've also overcome it. So if you overcome it, you now know what it takes to help other people overcome it. So all you got to do is just share your story, share your testimony right and like be able to spark life, speak life with other people. But a lot of times I believe whatever you're going through is not for you. A lot of times, if you're going through this for somebody else, they need to hear it because they can look at you like this person. He or she. They did what I've been struggling with, so I know it's possible and I know it's the way out. I need to figure out how I can do that and then just allow your testimony to speak.
Speaker 1:Yeah, so when you think of a young athlete now coming through the game, wanting sport, wanting to achieve, get to the highest level, from your experience, what guidance would you give to them?
Speaker 2:Man as a young athlete coming to the game. Now my perspective of what I tell kids one and two by your high school have fun and have fun. Enjoy the game like I think high school is probably still the most fun I have playing the sport and I play professionally because that's when you're just the most carefree. Enjoy the moment that you have playing with that. But also know what you want to get right. Like, hey, if your goal is to do this, find people who actually have the results you want and have them teach you. That's the only reason people have made it. They don't have the results you want and they don't have the resume that they can show you. Like, hey, I've helped kids go do this and this I'm not going. I'm just not going. Your fruit inspector, your fruit is not for me, right? So like I'm going to go find the fruit that's for me and just find the right people to actually help in that process. But also, man, like I want the younger generation.
Speaker 2:I think a lot of times now because social media and even our generation social media pushes so much of us like the highlight reel of what life looks like, right, that a lot of people don't see the ugly dog days of sports, like I'm being cut. I'm traveling the airport, I'm over here depressed, I'm having suicidal thoughts. They don't. A lot of people don't see that stuff. They see it's like, man, I got the millions of dollars. I'm driving around, I'm on the nice boats and like doing what I want to do. Right, that's what they're seeing. I want them to understand that's a glimpse.
Speaker 2:There's another side of that coin, too, that I want you guys to be prepared for. I want you to understand what it looks like to make a lot of money, but also to be financially smart about that money, because I think a lot of people make a lot of money and go bankrupt. I want you to understand like, hey, you can make a lot of money and have all the money in the world, but your wife and your kids might hate you. I've seen that too. I want you to understand what success looks like and don't base success based off the money principle. I want you to base success based off every aspect in their entire life.
Speaker 2:They're married. What's their marriage look like? They have kids. What's that relationship look like? If they have a successful business owner, how do they interact with their employees? How do they interact with people around them. I want success in every area of life, not just one, because you can find a lot of people that have a lot of financial success and they're morally bankrupt and morally poor and that really hurt in a lot of areas. But I'm going to do it slowly and to me. I don't want kids. I don't ever want anybody else to be in that situation.
Speaker 1:Listen, Emmanuel, I want to say massive thanks for joining me on the show today and bringing your perspective to the athletic life, but also this transition after the game as well. Thanks a lot for your time.
Speaker 2:Thank you for having me, man, it was great. I'm excited to continue to share my story and help anyone. I can any athlete out there.
Speaker 1:Thank you for listening to the Second Wind podcast. We hope you enjoyed hearing insights from today's athlete on transitioning out of competitive careers. If you're looking for career clarity for your next step, make sure you check out secondwinio for more information or to book a consultation with me. I'd like to thank Claire from Betty Brook Design, Nancy from Savvy Podcast Solutions and Cerise from Copying Content by Lola for their help in putting this podcast together. That's all from me. Take it easy Until next time.
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