Kelly Minds Her Manors
Kelly Minds Her Manors… and sometimes her manners. Kelly Robinson is a top ranking senior real estate broker and founder of The Kelly Robinson Team at Compass, a serial entrepreneur, and a dog mom. Join Kelly as she interviews other entrepreneurs & business professionals from around the world! Kelly Minds Her Manors is the perfect blend of real estate and entrepreneurship with a twist.
Kelly Minds Her Manors
Game Changer: Mastering the Mental Edge in the MLB and Business (Ft. Geoff Miller)
Game Changer: Mastering the Mental Edge in the MLB and Business - Ft. Geoff Miller
The Power of Mental Coaching
In this insightful episode of 'Kelly Minds Her Manors,' host Kelly Robinson engages with Geoff Miller, a trailblazer in sports psychology within Major League Baseball. The conversation covers Geoff's pioneering journey, from proposing mental skills coaching to MLB teams to his impactful career with the Pittsburgh Pirates and Philadelphia Phillies. Geoff shares personal stories, including overcoming setbacks, the importance of authenticity, and influential figures like Dennis Rogers and Jim Colborne. He discusses his mental coaching firm Dots Miller, approaches like the 'hold the ball' technique, and applying sports psychology principles to corporate settings. The episode explores broader mental health issues, the pandemic's impact, and supporting retired athletes in finding new purpose. Lastly, Geoff's empathetic coaching philosophy, challenges, and innovative methods offer listeners valuable lessons in resilience, persistence, and leveraging mental strength.
Show Notes and Time Stamps
00:00 Welcome to Kelly Minds Her Manors
00:26 Introducing Geoff Miller: MLB's Mental Skills Pioneer
02:40 Geoff's Early Influences and Passion for Baseball
06:58 Challenges and Lessons in Corporate Coaching
08:24 The Job Paradox and Overcoming Self-Doubt
11:01 The John Smoltz Story: A Career-Defining Moment
13:56 Persistence Pays Off: Breaking into MLB
20:55 The Turning Point: Meeting Brian Graham
29:42 From Winning Minds to Dots Miller: A New Chapter
35:35 Choosing a Business Name: The Story Behind Dots Miller
36:45 Incorporating Sports into Corporate Coaching
38:05 The Power of Holding the Ball: A Lesson in Patience
43:31 Writing Intangibles: Inspiration and Process
49:31 Applying Baseball's Mental Game to Life and Business
56:13 The Role of Technology in Mental Coaching
59:34 Helping Retired Athletes Find Purpose
01:03:09 Fearless Five Questions: Insights and Reflections
01:08:20 Final Thoughts and Farewell
Closing
Thanks for listening! If you liked this episode, don’t forget to subscribe and give us a thumbs up! Tell us what you think in the comments below.
Connect with Geoff Miller:
Dots Miller, LLC
https://twitter.com/WinningMindGEM
https://www.instagram.com/dotsmillerllc/
https://www.linkedin.com/in/geoff-miller-cmpc-9a646/
Intangibles book
https://www.bytelevelbooks.com/books/intangibles.html
Optimize Mind Performance app
https://optimizemindperformance.com
Connect with Kelly:
@KellyMindsHerManors @kellyrobinsonnewyork
www.kellymindshermanors.com www.oneglobaladvisory.com
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[] Welcome to Kelly Minds Her Manors, a podcast about real estate and entrepreneurship with a twist. Here's your host, Kelly Robinson. Hi, everyone. Welcome to Kelly Minds Her Manors. Today I am thrilled to welcome Geoff Miller, the go to expert in the field of sports psychology and a pivotal figure in Major League Baseball's approach to mental skills coaching. Geoff Miller's journey in MLB began with a unique vision. After completing his master's degree, he reached out to all 30 major League teams proposing a new position focused on educating high school draft picks on mental skills, a concept he mastered during his graduate studies. Despite early challenges Geoff's persistence and innovative thinking gradually caught the attention of MLB executives. Our episode today will explore some of Geoff's pivotal moments and the meeting which set the stage for his eventual breakthrough into MLB. We'll delve into how this opportunity and his subsequent role with the Pittsburgh Pirates reshaped the landscape of mental skills, coaching and professional sports. Geoff Miller's contributions extend beyond the diamond. He has worked with various athletes, corporate clients, and real estate professionals, applying his extensive knowledge to help them excel under pressure and find their ultimate purpose. His book, Intangibles, Big League Stories and Strategies for Winning the Mental Game in Baseball and in Life, And its Spanish translation has become a cornerstone on and off the field. Please join me as we uncover the story of a man whose dedication, adaptability, and belief in the power of the mental game have left an indelible mark on sports psychology. Geoff, thank you so much for being here. I've been so excited to speak with you and ask you so many questions that we'll probably have to do another podcast just to get through all of them. I just have so much interest in what you do and I could go on forever. I hope I can, I hope I can deliver on that. I am fully confident in you that you can. Let's get started with the first question. I like to start from the beginning from childhood. And I know you probably understand where that comes from being a psychology person yourself. I love psychology, so I like to start from childhood. So were there any formative experiences during your youth that contributed to your deep understanding of the mental aspects of sports? I'm not sure. I think, actually, I think when I heard you starting to ask that question, I was thinking you were going to ask me about something in my childhood that, rooted me to baseball. And I definitely can point to that moment, but I don't know on the psychology part, I think maybe the easiest way to explain that is I think, one of the things that I do with my clients is try to help them understand what their natural gifts are. And I think at some point early in my academic career, I had a really great teacher who pointed that out to me, and it was just like a light bulb. And so for me, it was about really having a knack for understanding people and having a fascination with people and really wanting to be connected to their stories and helping them understand what those stories are. On the baseball side, when I was eight years old I grew up in Southern California and we would go to Corona del Mar every year for a week long vacation at the beach. And we went to a little restaurant that was like a hot dog stand. And every hot dog was named after a baseball player, and so there was like the George Brett dog and the Pete Rose dog and all these things. And they had a trivia question on their chalkboard. This shows you how long ago this was. And my dad didn't even really know that much about baseball, but he answered the trivia question correctly. And they gave him a little mini Louisville slugger bat as a prize. And I remember thinking that I had to learn everything I could about baseball. In the next year, so next summer I can go win a bat. That was like, I love that. That was really where I think I started like learning about the history of the game. I love that. So you had a goal in mind from a early age and you went and did you achieve that goal? Did you go and learn everything about baseball that year? No, I think what I've learned in my adulthood is that you can't learn everything. But I certainly became passionate about baseball. And really that's, I think my journey, the reason I'm sitting here talking to you today is. I wanted to work in major league baseball somehow. I knew at a pretty young age I wasn't going to be a big leaguer. And I was looking for a way into the game. And as a freshman in college, I found out about this thing called sports psychology. And the moment I heard it, I said, that's what I'm going to do with my life. I love that. I love it when somebody goes into college and knows what they want to do, because then you can really get into the courses that get you there, right? So many people decide in their junior year. So have the child experiences that you talked about your love for baseball, your You're wanting and trying to learn everything about it in a year. Have those experiences and exposure to sports and psychology shaped the way you work with athletes and corporations today? Yes and no. I think something that the baseball people have always appreciated about me is my reverence for the game, my respect for the game. I, I think there's just something about that. And really, my first year in baseball was 2005 and it was. It was really at a kind of a fledgling time for mental skills in baseball. There were only two or three people doing that kind of work and it was still very, an old school kind of a crowd. And so I would have these, crusty old ballplayer, retired ballplayer coaches and staff around that were looking at me funny. And I would, ask them about when they faced, a certain pitcher or a certain hitter. And I would really just be sitting and listening and respecting what they had done in the game. And I think that helped a lot rather than just coming in and. Trying to tell people that I knew something that I was talking about. So I think that reverence for the game has always helped. It's interesting on the corporate side. I actually get the opposite a lot. I get people saying, I don't like baseball at all, or I don't know, I don't, and I'm like, we don't have to talk about baseball. So I think the, the, what I learned though about myself and coaching was I, I started doing corporate coaching, In my mid twenties, and I was, I was young, I was inexperienced and I like to think I still look young now for my age, but when I was 25, I looked like I was 16. And I'm like walking into this team program with VPs that are, have kids my age, and they're what is this kid going to tell me about anything? And. I started to realize at some point in my career that there might be a lot of executive coaches out there, but there were no executive coaches that had the kind of big league experience that I had and after a few years of doing that, people would ask me at breaks, at team programs or something like that, they'd be able to tell us about the big leagues, tell us what it's like. And so I started to just refine my own coaching to, to really transfer some of those lessons from the major leagues into the corporate setting. That's really interesting. So what are some of the challenges you faced in your early years, especially looking so young for your age and how have those experiences and challenges shaped your approach to coaching? I think my biggest challenge was something that I help people with a lot now. And I like being able to tell this story to my clients. And I have a concept that I call the job paradox. And it's a chapter in my book and it really starts out talking about ping pong rather than baseball. But the job paradox in very cliff note fashion is I saw baseball players playing ping pong and they were competing and, really getting after it on the table. And then they were hesitant on the baseball field because they were putting too much pressure on themselves. And so I started asking them, why, Why is it different when you play ping pong versus when you play baseball and they would laugh and they'd say it doesn't matter when I lose in ping pong. But if I, if I don't perform on the baseball field, this is my job. I have to do well. And so to me, that concept that I think was born out of that was that we take the thing that we're best at in life and we turn it into a job. We put all this pressure on ourselves to do well and then we don't do as well as we would if we were just having fun with it. And so in my early 20s, I was working with a really talented group of, coaches, consultants, sports psychology, professionals. And I was trying too hard to make it sound like I knew what I was talking about, and so I would get up in front of groups And really just fumble on my slides and, not be connected to the audience. I was just way over aware of myself. And so I think at some point I started to realize that I was. Trying too hard. And there were a lot of volunteer opportunities that I was involved in at that time and I could stand in front of a room of 300 people at a Rotary Club and not be nervous talking about an American Cancer Society event or something. And then I'd be like why am I not nervous in front of 300 people, but I'm nervous in front of 10 people. And it was because I was trying to provide value. And so I think that was probably the biggest lesson that I learned in my own work was that, I had a lot to offer people and I didn't have to try hard to provide that value. It's a good lesson. It's an important lesson. I've struggled with that too. I can throw a party for hundreds of people and work the room like it's nothing. But if I go to a networking event by myself, until I started. saying, Kelly, you have to do something that scares you every day. I would just be standing next to the cheese table because going up to one stranger was like terrifying for me. But it's true. It's because you feel like you have to add value and you don't want to have the small talk. I get it. So the story of John Schmultz's turnaround with the help of a sports psychologist was a pivotal moment for you, right? Can you share how that story influenced your decision to pursue a career in sports psychology? Or was this decision made, like you said, right when you got to school? No, it's that's actually the moment. Oh, okay. And so you're, you've done some good research there. But yeah, so when, and interestingly, you said, when I started college, I didn't know what I wanted to do. I was an undeclared natural science major. And, the only thing that I could think of for a path to the big leagues was to be an athletic trainer, because at the time, it wasn't the money ball era yet. It wasn't, you couldn't be a 20 something with a college degree who hadn't played in the big leagues and work in a front office. It was just, it wasn't happening. So I didn't know what I wanted to do, but I had this amazing English teacher. His name was John Kirwan and and he looked really young too. So like my first day of college this young looking, I didn't even know he was the teacher at first. I saw a bunch of people talking at the front of the room and. The hour turns over and then he just walks up and starts talking about English and I'm like, Oh, I guess that's the teacher. So he's, the John Smoltz story is that, John Smoltz is now in the Hall of Fame, but in his third full season in the big leagues, he started out the year winning two games and losing 12 and started working with a sports psychologist at the all star break and went 12 and one in the second half. And. When the MVP of the national league championship series and even pitched nine scoreless innings in game seven of the world series and the Braves lost in the 10th to Minnesota. But so during that world series, this English teacher and I had already formed a friendship and we were talking about baseball and he was having me write about baseball a lot. And. And so he just said, did you see the World Series game last night? And I said, of course. And he said did you see the pregame? They were talking about John Smoltz and the sports psychologist. And I said, tell me that again. Say what was that again? And so he tells me the story, but I hadn't seen it. On TV. He told me about it and he just said, I think you'd be really great at that. You seem to love baseball and you seem to really have a knack for understanding people. I think you'd really like that. And that was that light bulb moment. And I think the thing that. I don't think I got this at the time, but, looking back on it a long time later, I think just that idea that someone saw something in me that I didn't see in myself, I think was really important. And it's something that I've always kept with me in my own coaching is just even just telling some, telling a minor league baseball player. You know you're gonna play in the big leagues, right? Because there are times when it doesn't feel like that for them. Yeah. Yeah, everybody needs reassurance. Okay you then with the inspiration and the motivation of this English teacher you then went and wrote letters to all 30 major league baseball teams after completing your master's degree. What motivated you to propose a new position to the Major League Baseball Executives, and how did you frame its importance to the teams? I'll start by saying it didn't work. Think I just, I was just driven. I said, to myself I'm going to write to every team. I'm going to find someone in every team that I can send some kind of a packet of information to. And Ironically now they have four different jobs that do what I was proposing then. And I called it education coordinator. They're still not doing some of the things that I was thinking about back then, but it was combining mental skills coaching, which is what I've done my in my career, but it was also teaching English to Spanish speaking players, which is there's an entire industry around that now. And lots of staff, it was helping. get their college degrees, which we're still not doing enough for baseball players to do. We give them money for college. We don't do anything to help them use that money. And they're really on their own to, to go back to their schools. If they went to college and, go back to an academic advisor and say, I, I need to do another year and a half. Can you help me do that? And so that was something that I always wanted to do and I feel like Major League Baseball is still lacking in that. But it was combining a lot of those different ideas. So when you saw that didn't work and that, did that feel like a failure to you or did it just feel like a bump in the road? Like what did you do next? I got a real job. I always say I've only had one real job in my life, but it, I don't want to say it didn't work because one, one person called me. His name is Allard Baird. He's still in baseball. And he hadn't become a GM yet. He, and then he became a GM and now he's worked as a senior advisor to a number of teams, but he was the farm director that oversaw the minor leagues for the Kansas City Royals at the time. And he called me and he said, I really like some of these ideas. I don't think we're ready to do any of these things right now, but, keep in touch with me. And again, like we're talking about, like how do latch onto something and have some hope. And Allard Baird was a guy that didn't ever have to call me back. And I took him at his word and I kept in touch with him and I would call for no reason other than just to stay in touch and see maybe I can, meet him at the winter meetings this year because it's in Anaheim and I'm, just down the road. And he would call me back like a month later and he'd go, Hey, I'm really sorry. I was in the Dominican Republic. I was doing all this stuff. I'm like, you don't have to apologize at all. But the fact that someone like Allard Baird would call me back and would listen and say, you're on the right track here, that kept me going. And so I would just, I was guerrilla emailing people I would, if it was the, the GM of the Dodgers, let's say, and I didn't know what the email address was, but I knew his name. And so I'd say like for you, it would be like, I'd go kelly. Robinson at Dodgers. com and it would bounce back. Kay Robinson at Dodgers. com and it would bounce back. And then I would just keep doing that until the email didn't bounce back. And then I knew that I had the person's email and they, again, they've gotten smarter than that. Now they put in like middle initials and they put in stuff but that's how I got in touch with a number of people in the game and over about a seven year period, I ended up. Having conversations with 17 different teams, but I never had an actual interview. I never had someone say, we have a job that we want to consider you for. It was just getting people to say, I think you've got something here, but they never really had the authority to hire me. So how did you stay motivated and persistent? I didn't always. I felt like sometimes it was never going to happen, and But I, there's a natural cycle to when I was trying to contact people. I was trying to contact people before the winter meetings. I would try to contact them before spring training, before the draft, and right at the end of the season. So it was I didn't have to believe it all the time. I just had to believe it the week before I had to start pushing out, more information. And, I think that's a lesson that I talk to people about all the time is, I think there are these stereotypes that have come out of, Whether it's sports psychology or self help or, just the, I want to be better movement. And one is that you have to be confident all the time. And I don't think you do. I think normal human beings will doubt themselves and I think it's okay to feel that way. And I think sometimes you just, take a little break and then you come back when you have some inspiration. Yeah, I agree and I also agree with you like I don't necessarily believe in the whole fake it till you make it thing I think you should be authentic You know because then you're always living up to some version of yourself. That isn't real 100 percent agree with you. I Just had that conversation this week about how I hate fake it till you make it. I want people to be genuine I want you to be like we're trying to help people be honest with themselves You So fake it till you make it doesn't work for me. Like I would much rather have someone say, I'm not where I wanna be right now. And that's okay. And here's what I'm doing today about it, but I don't have to fake anything. Yeah, no, I was actually in my morning meditation like devotional yesterday was a story about that and why. It's just so wrong to fake it till you make it like how it just doesn't help you at all to give you an example though and even in real estate because i've done some coaching with real estate agents now and that's where one of these stories came up recently was Had a real estate agent who's trying to establish himself and you know Gets into an open house and gotta get people to sign in and gotta get people to want me to be their agent Right and you can feel that in a room you can feel when someone's trying too hard, right? And even the like kind of the lack of sales the lack of experience and then he's fake it to make it I'm like no look Here's what you're great at right? You don't have to fake that right? Nobody cares how many sales you had last year Nobody cares. They want to buy a house And if you can help them buy a house and you can just be genuine with them and not try to make it seem like you're perfect or more than you are, they're going to smell that out much more than if you're just real with them. Absolutely. I agree. And people want to connect with you authentically with whatever it is that, their interest is in your interest is. And so pivot to that, pivot to something authentic. Okay, so tell us about the turning point that helped launch your career, were there influential people that you haven't mentioned yet who played a role and what led to the meeting that changed everything? Yeah, there's a lot. Too many for a podcast so I grew up in Riverside, California, and the English teacher I mentioned, John Kerwin, was at UC Riverside, and but there's another person in my life named Dennis Rogers, and Dennis Rogers is like this mystical I don't even know how you even describe him, but Dennis just has this magic about him where he can see the future. And he was a legendary junior college coach at Riverside Community College. He's in the Hall of Fame at the American Base. He's got a coaching tree that is, longer than Bill Belichick's. There's probably 50 of his former players and assistant coaches who are coaching in college or coaching in pro ball. There, there's just so much success that has come from people who have been mentored by Dennis. And I never played for Dennis. But just happened to connect with him because Riverside's kind of a big, small town and Dennis asked me to come speak to his program and talk to some of his players individually and I, was living in San Diego. I spent most of my adult life in San Diego, even though I'm from Riverside. And so I drove up from San Diego to Riverside and spent an afternoon, gave a presentation, had some individual conversations. And, go to shake Dennis's hand as I leave. And it's a little bit of the, I don't want to offend anybody, but I call it the Italian handshake where there's like a couple hundred dollar bills in here. And I'm like, Dennis, I don't want any money, Dennis. I, I didn't ask you for any money. He's no, you need gas money. And I'm like thank you. I'm not going to argue with you over this, but I said, what I'd really love is I'd love for you to introduce me to some people in pro ball. And he said, I'd be happy to do it. And he was, he had a great life. He was managing, coaching this junior college until school got out. And then he got to go up for the summer and manage. Rookie ball for the Oakland A's in Vancouver. So he had a pretty good thing going. So he gets to the end of the summer and we're talking and he's saying, I just don't know if this is the right spot for you right now. And just talking about different people and names and people that he thinks might be good for me. And I just had this hunch based on some places he had been. And I said, do you happen to know Brian Graham? And he stops and he starts laughing. He's Brian Graham's one of my best friends. I managed him in rookie ball and Brian Graham was the farm director for the Pittsburgh pirates at the time. And he said, yeah, Brian Graham be a perfect person for you to talk to. You should call him. And I was like, he's do you want me to call him? I go, I don't need you to call him, but it would mean more if you call him. I think that's always the case that someone that you trust has to do that. And so he says, I called a week later. He calls me, he says, I called Brian. Brian wants to talk to you. And so I get on a phone call with Brian and he's got a million things going. And, farm directors are always going to the Dominican Republic. That's something that's like always on the itinerary. So I miss Brian a couple of times. But I ended up meeting with him at the winter meetings and also the scouting director for the pirates, whose name was Ed Creech. And and then I don't hear anything for three weeks. And I feel like this has been a really good conversation. And he even says, like we're looking to hire someone. So I don't hear anything. And then I finally call him. I'm like, Hey, I thought we had a pretty good conversation. I just want to follow up. And he says, I'm glad you called me. I've been calling you for two weeks. I must have had the wrong number. Oh, we're looking to hire somebody. Are you interested in this? I'm like, absolutely. I'm interested in this. And Brian Graham was really the guy that, that gave me my first chance. And I met Brian because I went back to my hometown and Dennis Rogers put me in the right place. That's amazing. That's a great story. Serendipitous. And I'll tell you the other thing that's really interesting about Dennis is I've had a number of players that I've worked with over the years and different teams, but if I walk into a clubhouse and I say, Dennis Rogers is one of my best friends. Every time I've said that to a player I've never met before, they first they're like, no way. And then they say, Dennis Rogers had the biggest impact on my life of anyone in my life. Not baseball, the biggest impact in my life without me asking that night unsolicited. And so I think that's just how powerful this guy is. Wow. Okay. So you then became a partner. You partnered and started winning Minds LLC for many years and you held roles coaching MLB teams, including the Pittsburgh Pirates and the Atlanta Braves. Can you share a standout moment or success story from your time with those teams? Wow. That's like my whole career, but I guess maybe I would just say Oh no, I don't mean like my whole career was standout. I just mean, it's it's a lot to think about. But maybe to pay tribute to someone else who was really helpful to me and the pitching coach in Pittsburgh, yeah. In 2006 and seven was a guy named Jim Colborne, another just magical kind of person in my life. And he really loved and was interested in the mental game and had always dabbled in it himself and tried to teach it as a pitching coach. And so we just clicked right away. And he put me out in front on the first day of our mini camp, which was like his first day of being the pitching coach for all these players. And I think that was a, I don't know. I'd like to think my career would have gone the same way it went, but in 2006, Jim Colborne made me a part of the pitching staff. He had me involved in all of their meetings. He had me speak, before what we call advanced meetings at the beginning of a series. And even a couple months into that, he just said, what we're doing here is too important. You need to go talk to Jim Tracy, who was our manager. You need to go talk to Trace. You need to be doing this for the whole team. You can't just be doing this for the pitching staff. And so I showed some stuff to Jim Tracy and then I started presenting to the whole team instead of just the pitching staff. And so I think that was, I think that was the moment where I felt like I knew I was going to make it. It wasn't just going to be a couple year thing. I knew I was going to be good at it. Yeah, so when you're working with pitchers or baseball or any baseball player What is like the most common? Mental block that you come across Yeah, so I get this a lot. I don't know now before I even say that I would say I think there's a lot of What I would call role confusion in just this Area. People look at it sometimes as mental health work, which it's not for me. There are people in the game that do clinical kind of mental health work. And then there's also the what's the problem kind of thing. And really, that's what I was taught in grad school is figure out what's wrong and then go fix it. And so I don't think it's a block so much or a mental block in the way that people are thinking about a slump or a throwing problem. I think it's that everyone I work with, it doesn't have to be an athlete, but the athletes I work with, the executives I work with, the real estate agents I work with, they have talent and they have ambition and they want to be better. They want to be great. And they know they can and something about their current situation is keeping them from that. So I don't think it's so much a mental block as it is. It's our own ambition and expectations that gets in the way. Yeah. And you have a golf story too, about a golf game that you played, where you were putting and you were having trouble with this putt. Can you share a little bit about that? About your own mental state. I don't know. I'm not, I don't know what, where you got that. I don't know what that is. There was, you were on a golf trip and I read about it. You were on a golf trip and and you came to the final putt and your mind was everywhere, right? You don't remember? Oh, you know what? I think that was Vince. I think that was Vince Gennaro wrote the foreword for my book. Oh. And so I think that was Vince's story. That was him? Yeah. Oh, sorry. I what? I don't, I like, I know you're doing good research, but I'm like, man, I don't know who you interviewed, who you found to tell that story. But I, I didn't. We'll cut that out then. Okay. I'm sorry. Okay. So you did, you worked with winning minds for a long time. And you also, like you said, you worked with corporate multiple corporations and executives and big named corporations. What inspired you to transition from winning minds to establishing dots Miller? And how did the shift represent a new phase in your career? That's a good question. It was a it's, it was an important moment in my life and my wife's and my kids lives. And I guess to give you some perspective on that too. It wasn't just changing jobs. It was leaving California. It was leaving San Diego and and I'll also say and I don't even think I can do justice to this, but it wasn't, winning mind was, the partners at Winning Mind are like my brothers, and so it was very difficult to leave them and to leave something that I had built that felt like my own identity. But the first four major league teams I worked for the Pirates, the Nationals, the Braves and the Angels I was never actually an employee of those teams. I was an external consultant, even though, if you had been on one of those teams, you wouldn't, unless you were in the HR department, you would have never known that. But the arrangement that I had was that all went through Winning Mind and I continued to be a partner in that group and, You know do other kind of work. But in 2016 we had just had our second child and my wife For whatever reason I met the only girl in san diego that didn't want to live there and so she always wanted to live somewhere else and we just started talking about like maybe we need to go live somewhere else and we were exploring different places on our own. And then I got a call from the general manager of the Philadelphia Phillies. His name is Matt Klintak. He's no longer the GM of the Phillies, but he called me and said, I want to know if you're available and if you're willing to travel East again. And I, went out to Philadelphia for an interview and met. All of the front office, Matt and I had worked together in Anaheim and we knew each other before that anyway. So we had a pretty strong bond, but I'd never met the rest of the front office group and gave a presentation. And I just said, I don't want to travel East again. I can't be gone because traveling East meant, Be not just in the big leagues, but go to AAA, go to AA, go to the Dominican, go to low a, go, go to the spring training complex. And that's just not easy to do with a family. It's not. And so having two young kids and. Just knowing what that life would be like being gone weeks at a time and home a couple days and then gone weeks at a time again, I just wasn't willing to sign up for it. So I said, if you can make this work for us, I will become an employee. I'll leave Winning Mind and we will leave San Diego. We'll move to Philadelphia. And then, and that's what ended up happening. Yeah, you were on the staff that, at that point, you were a member. Yeah, and that meant that, I could go see the big league team or see the triple A team or the low A or the double A team and commute those instead of getting on a plane and be home at night. And it ended up meaning it didn't mean that I saw my family much more because I'd get home at one in the morning and everybody was asleep, but yeah, at least I'd see them for an hour You know before school and that kind of thing and and then starting dots miller I left the phillies after five years of working with the phillies and this is The arc of a lot of careers. And, I've been fired three times in baseball and every time it's been after the GM that brought me in has been let go. And so that's, regime change is pretty common in sport and it's never fun when it happens. But, after my time at the Phillies, I considered going back to winning mind and we talked about that, but, it was difficult for all of us when I left and. I don't know if I'll ever work for a major league team again, but I don't want to have to impact someone else's life if I decide to do that. I just felt like I needed to start my own business, so if there was ever another major league opportunity, I didn't have to extract myself from Winning Minded. Yeah, you seem like you're an incredibly empathic person. That's what I'm getting from which is great, especially if you're working on mental coaching because you have to be able to feel what other people are feeling and understand them and empathize with them. As far as dots Miller is concerned, there's a really fun story behind that. Can you share that about the naming of the firm. Yeah, I'll try to make that short, but so Dots Miller was actually a second baseman for the Pittsburgh Pirates in the early 1900s and his real name was John Miller and he shows up for spring training as a rookie and the great legendary Honus Wagner is playing shortstop for the Pirates. And after one of the workouts, the reporters are all gathered around Honus Wagner and they say tell us about your double play partner. And Honus Wagner with his thick accent just says, Oh, dot that's Miller. And he was saying that's Miller, but they heard dots Miller. And so John Miller became dots Miller and that connection of, I'm, I, you can probably see in my background, I love, Sports memorabilia and really old historic sports memorabilia. And so if anybody out there knows about baseball cards the crown jewel of baseball cards is the Honus Wagner card from 1909. And it's millions of dollars and I'll never own one, but I was sitting in my sister's kitchen early on when I was still in my twenties and, struggling with my own value. Looking at some of those cards and thinking how cool they were. And one of the things I thought was cool that it just said Wagner, it didn't say Honus Wagner. And I thought I wonder if there's a Miller in that set. And I found dots Miller and I bought a dots Miller card and bought a dots Miller poster and ended up having that dots Miller poster up in, in my office everywhere that I've been. And so as I was thinking about starting my business, I thought I spell my name with a G. It's always butchered. Nobody ever gets my name, and I thought, I can't put Geoff Miller LLC, or, I can't put my name in my URL because people aren't going to find me. And so I started just thinking about if I were going to name it something, what would I name it? And I thought, I wonder if I could call it dots Miller. And that's what I ended up calling it. And I think beyond that, I think dots Miller was. A great chemistry, a player. He became a manager very young in his life, which was lucky because he didn't live very long. I think he died at 39 or 41 was someone that really embodied the kind of leadership principles that I try to embody and teach myself. And so I just think, I think it's a nice personal connection. It still says Miller it, is that reverence for the history of the game. And it's also. A very underlying rooted in the kind of values that I want to be teaching people and it's a fun story, which I love, so many people are so serious about naming themselves. You made it fun. You made something fun about it and it's got a great story and I feel like a great name Or a great logo always has a great story behind it. Thank you, and it's turned out to be that for sure It's definitely a good icebreaker But again, it's like there are a lot of people that do executive coaching and there are a ton of people I know in the real estate world that are doing some kind of sales coaching or real estate coaching and I don't have that kind of technical background But I think there are not very many people out there that have the kind of sport experience I have and that are bringing that to corporate settings. Yeah, I mean, I think that's really interesting so the Sorry, i'm, I just lost my place in my notes. Okay, so you So talking about this with regards to bringing the sport into your coaching for whether it's real estate or corporations you've worked with Pandora, you've worked with MetLife, Chick fil A and, a lot of real estate professionals now. So and you built the mental coaching team for the Phillies. So what are some What are some ways that you incorporate sports that maybe somebody who's not a sports fan like you were saying before in these corporations can understand and relate to their job and how to, mentally prepare for whatever it is that they need to get done? Okay, so I'll give you This is a fun one. I wouldn't say this is more of the scientific side of it, but this is a fun example. So I was doing a team program for a marketing department one time. And, marketing people are so creative and they're just like bursting with ideas all the time and everybody's busy. And so they're taking a full day out of their schedules to meet with me and, do some kind of planning. And every time we have a break, it's okay. We'll take 10 minutes, go to the bathroom, get another drink of water, whatever it is. And I come back up to the front of the room at 10 minutes and everybody's still on their phone calls and on their emails and talking amongst themselves. And I'm like, I'm not going to be the substitute teacher here. I am not gonna, I'm not going to be like, okay, everybody, let's go. And so I just stand there and wait and smile a little bit and people are like looking up and they're going, okay, we have to be quiet. And this goes on all day long. And so finally, near the end of the day, I'm standing there and I've got my little presentation remote in my hand and I'm just watching everybody, but I, some, something about it, just as I'm standing there, I do this. I don't know if you can see my hands, I do, I do this, which is like a pitcher doing what we call coming set. So like when there's a man on base. The pitcher, instead of being out of the windup, he's got to go out of the stretch and he brings his hands to the set position and when he breaks his hands, he's either got to go to the plate or he's got to throw to the base to try to pick them off. And so I find myself coming set. I don't know why, but it just gave me this idea. And I was like, Hey, do you want to hear a fun story from the big leagues? And everybody stops and yeah. And I'm like, okay, you probably know about stealing bases, and maybe you know about picking off a runner, or a pitch out, or something like that. But there's another technique that we use, and we call all this controlling the running game. And so this technique that we use is called holding the ball. And it's as simple as that. Actually, I'll have a baseball in a minute. It's as simple as that. All you have to do is hold the ball. And so the pitcher gets up on the mound and he comes set with the ball in his glove and he does nothing. He just stands still and does nothing. And you wait to see if that runner flinches a little bit. And you basically do that to upset everybody's timing and you do it until the hitter calls timeout. That's all you have to do. Stand there. You can't do it anymore because of the pitch clock but this was a technique that, that we used for decades and in baseball, and it's just called hold the ball. And in practice in spring training, we do all these different moves for pitchers to practice them. And they can't do it. They can't stand still. It's the hardest thing for them to do because they want to move. They want to do they've got all this energy and excitement. And so it's just stand here, peacefully don't move and they can't do it. And so the lesson that day we were talking about was like, For me, that became something that I did in my speaking was, again, early on in my career, if I would ask a question to the audience, I would say who knows the answer to this question? And I'd stand there for a little bit. And if I felt like nobody was volunteering, nobody was willing, it wasn't even a hard, it was just like, nobody wants to say anything. Then I would answer it for them. And I hated myself for that. I was like, at some point I decided I'm going to hold the ball here. And I'm going to wait. If I ask a question to this audience, I'm going to stand here just like this, and I'm going to wait until someone answers. I don't care how long it takes. And there was so much more power in that, I had much more control of the room when I did that. And so I explained that whole thing, and all these marketing people who are all not just marketing people, they're managing teams and they're, there's lots of people in each of their departments. They're going, we need to do this with our people. We're answering questions for people. We're over managing them. We need to be patient and hold the ball. And it turned into this slogan that became like the moment of the day was. If we want our people to grow and if we want our people to develop and we want them to fail a little bit and even figure some things out for themselves, then we can't answer the problem all the time. We have to let them figure it out themselves. And so that's an example of just a simple little moment in baseball that turned into this really valuable. Lesson with this marketing team and I love that too for sales because that's such a great analogy for sales when you're having it when you're pitching you know in my business anyway for a property listing And you know so many sales people just want to keep talking because like the baseball player who can't stop moving people start to feel weird when There's silence But that's the best thing you could do is just stand there and ask your question or you know Don't answer it for the seller Just stand there and wait and be silent because somebody's gonna end up speaking to break the silence and it's not it shouldn't be you Correct. So I love that. I love that analogy and I love that you use that in your coaching Thank you. And bring that to corporate coaching. So now I want to discuss your book. Okay. What inspired you to write Intangible's Big League Stories and Strategies for Winning the Mental Game in Baseball and in Life? Which also is surprisingly the only book of its kind translated in Spanish, which is so surprising to me, right? I agree again. That's what I'm saying is from we're doing more for helping Spanish speakers but all of these books should be in Spanish at this point, of course. Especially with baseball there are so many people from Spanish speaking countries who come here to play baseball Yeah So what inspired me is I think ambition, right? Again, it goes back to, I wanted to make a difference in the game. I wanted to be part of the game. And I thought, and that's true in the sports psychology world too, right? I was reading mental game books, whether they were baseball mental game books, there's a, the kind of the Mount Rushmore for baseball, there was a man named Harvey Dorfman who wrote the mental game of baseball. Ken Raviza wrote a book called Heads Up Baseball, and I, this is, as I'm learning about it, I'm reading these books, and I'm saying someday I'm gonna write one, too. I felt like I didn't know, and I didn't know how that was gonna happen either. And, but I felt like I wanted to write something different. I felt like most of the books on sports psychology follow the same formula. There's like a chapter on self talk and there's a chapter on deep breath and there's a chapter on routine and they're all a different version of that. And I said, I'm not going to write that. And also had early on in my career, I had a player like jump into his locker and pull out a book called mind gym, which is another baseball mental game book, which is I think a good book, but again, kind of like the others. And I'm talking about it with this player and he's you don't love mind, Jim, I'm like, no, mine Jim's fine. I just feel like they're all the same. And when I do mine, it's going to be different, like just that kind of ambition. And he's that's fine. But look at this is a chapter. And mind Jim is these like one and a half page chapters. It's very digestible. And he's I can read that chapter. Mental note, I got to make this very, smooth and easy to read. And so I started working in baseball. I actually had some, sometime in the summer of Oh five, I had a conversation with the hitting coordinator and a guy in rookie ball, and we all walked away from it going, wow, that was really cool. And I remember going back to my hotel that night and thinking. I don't know what my book is going to be about someday, but maybe that could be a story in it. And so I just wrote myself an email with the details of that conversation. And this was, like, a really important moment. I made a little folder on my Outlook that said book brainstorms. And over the next five years, any time I had a conversation like that, that I thought really got me in the chest. I would write a little email to myself and put it in that book brainstorm and I didn't even look at it for five years. And then I was pretty sure that I was going to get fired in Pittsburgh. And so I was like, I think I'm going to get fired here. Maybe I should start writing this book. And so I looked at that folder and I had 75 emails to myself. And then I had no idea what the book was still, it was like just a bunch of these anecdotes. And this is again another lesson that I think that I try to teach people is, instead of feeling like I had to have the book mapped out, I said, what if I just wrote up one of these ideas? What if I just wrote a short story, On this one email. I don't have to know it doesn't even have to go in the book It could just be like an exercise and help me with my writing skills And so I write this story about a pitcher named chris hernandez and this ended up being in the book. And Wrote it up and really liked it and I showed it to chris and he loved it And I said can I show this to some people and he said yeah And so I showed it to a couple pitching coaches And they loved it. And I said, if I had a whole book of stuff like this, would you read it? And they were like, absolutely. And so then I wrote another one and then I started getting good at writing short stories about these ideas. And so then I thought it's a little Seinfeld in where it's maybe it's a book about nothing, right? Like it's, it doesn't have to be like this perfectly flowing thing. It could just be short stories. And and then I got an editor and a publisher and he helped me form it a little bit more, but that's really what Intangibles is and I feel like it hits on a few different levels, it's, certainly if you're a baseball player, I think it can help you but I really think it's just a beautiful baseball book, and if you're just interested in baseball and you want to hear some of the things Behind the scenes. What really goes on and in a player's life on his way to the big leagues. I think it's great for that. And then, I've been lucky enough to have some corporate people. Use it to start off all hands meetings. And I do think there's some really good stuff in there. That's transferable. Yeah. You also have tips in there in addition to stories and other things. And you have some incredible reviews from some really important people in baseball and otherwise. So I think everybody should pick up intangibles and you can you can find the link to where you can get the book in the show notes. For readers who have engaged with your book that you've spoken to, what's the most surprising or unexpected feedback you've gotten? I know that's an odd question. Oh, that's a tough one. I don't know. Guess I'm always surprised at how, what people get out of it and like how they apply it sometimes. Don't know, I guess I think what I've always expected is that people were gonna, Enjoy the reading. But I think people find meaning and stuff that I didn't realize there was going to be meaning in it. So you discussed the mental game in a sport like baseball. How can the principles of teamwork be effectively applied into a corporate setting or personal relationships in life? I think baseball is an interesting sport in itself. It's a little bit different than the other sports and I think maybe this is why some of the lessons do transfer better or at least the way I try to do them. But, there's so much individual performance in baseball that leads to team performance. And there are certainly moments where you need to be on the same page and there, the shortstop needs to be in the right place for where the ground ball is hit and those kinds of things. But really the main parts of pitching and hitting are so individual. And so I think when you talk about a team, I think this is where you have to start is what are we talking about when we're talking about a team? Like I've seen, and in the sales world, especially sometimes sales teams aren't really teams other than they all report to the same manager. But they're not really working together necessarily. So I think you have to try to get an understanding of how much does one person depend on the other in this team in order to achieve a goal. And then it's about how much does my individual performance. Either hurt or help the team. So how do I use the mental game in a sport like baseball to win an argument with my spouse? I'm just kidding. I'm just kidding. I'm just, I'm joking. So have you noticed any recent trends or shifts in the way individuals or corporations approach mental coaching, like with regards to technology advancement or anything? Yeah I think the pandemic has changed everybody. So I think that has changed a lot. I think. In general the conversation about mental health is much more discussed. And again, I think what I do is not, it's not mental health from a, let me help someone who's in a mental health crisis. But again, to me where I see a lot of role confusion is when people start talking about mental health. They immediately go to depression, anxiety, suicide, and those are all incredibly important. But what I find, especially in the corporate world, is most people are not suffering from depression or clinical anxiety, But they are stressed out, and they're overworked, and they are overscheduled, and they're burning out, right? And I think mental health needs to be about how do I do something that's going to give me the right perspective so I can be successful over the long term, because in the short term, I'm just trying to get through the days and survive. Yeah. Yeah, no, it's true. Mental health is a lot of different things other than those big three or four. And I actually You know, everybody's told me my whole life, you need to meditate. And I'm like, I can't even not Twitch during Shavasana yoga. Like I can't. So I finally decided, okay, I'll make a new year's resolution, which I don't usually believe in, but I did it. And I made this resolution. I'm going to do this like meditative prayer 10 minutes every morning. And I, what I love about it is that it's meditative, but you're active you're working with some sort of a devotional or a prayer or a quote or something that is affirmative. So for, affirmations and that's actually really changed my whole day every day for the past, month. And it does affect your mental health in a great way, in my opinion, something that I was never willing to try because I couldn't sit still. But mental health could be something so little as just taking a few deep breaths in the morning and Thinking of something positive or saying a quote that you really inspires you So if you don't mind maybe I could ask you a few questions right now then So like you so people have told you to meditate, right And so what I'll say to you is this is something that I'm think proud of in my coaching, but it's just like the point of those, the other books I don't feel like there's a prescription for everyone for this, but I do think as I think about how my framework works and what is the same for me, it's not like I'm going to tell everybody, let's do this breathing exercise or this, but it's, yeah. I want people to know who they are, and to know what they want, and to know what to do when they don't get it. That really is my framework. And so you're saying I want to meditate but I would want to know why do you want to meditate like what do you want To get out of meditating because maybe we can get that without you meditating. That's true well, I think what i'm doing is more of an active meditation because i'm And, focusing on something instead of just trying to clear my mind of everything and not think of anything, which makes me want to think of everything. People have just always said, I meditate every morning. You should really try it. Or this is how I set up my day. Or, this has changed my life. You should try it. So I've always felt like I should try it because why not try something I mean, it can't hurt unless it's drugs. But So I just decided, okay, maybe this type of meditative, morning routine will work for me. And I think for me, it's I want to get up and get going, but I'd stop myself and I do something that's therapeutic in a way and makes me think positively for the rest of the day. I think that to me is my version of meditating. That's great. Okay. And there are plenty of physical and mental benefits to meditating, but I think what I would challenge you with is to know why you're spending that 10 minutes and also be able to understand like if meditating is hard for you because you feel like your mind and body are always on the move and it's hard to be still. Practice will help that of course, right? But also thinking about what am I trying to get out of this in the first place? And, are there some other ways that I can do that? So meditating can just be this thing for my own physical wellbeing instead of having to be problem solving for me also. Yeah, that's a good point. That's a really good point. We should talk more about that. We'd love to. So You have an app as well. How has technology impacted the field of mental coaching as far as apps are concerned? Like you see people using those, psychology apps to get a psychologist or, dating or relationship hero or whatever those are. As far as You know coaching for executives and coaching for sports has that happened yet? And is your app doing that same thing or what's different about it? Yeah, it's not quite placement app or interactive app like that. And I let me make sure i'm clear this it's not my app i'm part of this app. It's called optimized mind performance And the CEO of the app is actually a really great story and he's in Manhattan and maybe he should be a guest for you too, but he's a retired cricket player from Australia. Awesome. And during the pandemic, he realized that his career was about to be over. And he was thinking about what he was going to do next. And he started thinking that, as he was coming up into professional cricket and like national cricket in Australia these are very serious programs in the same way they're serious here in the United States and other sports, but he never had good access to mental skills and he felt like I, I want to develop something that's going to provide mental skills coaching to any athlete who wants it. And so that's what optimized mind performance does. We have seven or eight other mental skills professionals like me that, that have expertise in different sports. We've actually got two cricket psychologists. We've got one in Australia and one in the United Kingdom. We've got a woman in the UK who works with premier league. Football soccer players, and we've got a woman in Canada who works in the NHL and a number of other good people around the United States who either specialize in something or also do a lot of general things. We've got a great woman in I think in Palm Desert who was an Olympic field hockey player herself and has like a whole series on field hockey in the app. So it's a combination of, I'm an athlete and I want to learn about the mental game. And so here's all this content. It's all audio. You download it on your phone and you can listen to whatever stories you need to hear at that moment or lessons you need to hear. But then it's also building out each of the sports. And so when they came to me, they wanted me to do the baseball psychology. And I've done a number of lessons that are just for, or, primarily for baseball, but I've also started doing some other things. I did a series on routines and one that I think is really important about identity, about like separating. The person from the athlete and being able to move on when you're done with the game. And so that's really what it is. It's a lot of content and developing interactive information and programs for mostly young athletes, high school age, who are trying to become collegiate or professional athletes or people who are already there. Yeah. So I, it's funny that you mentioned the, when the game, when the career is over, because I know you and I spoke about that and you are really trying to help people find their overall purpose. Yeah. And so tell me a little bit more about what you're doing. Yeah. So this is like the, for me, I think this is the next chapter. This is what I want maybe the rest of my professional career to be about is helping retired athletes figure out what they're going to do with the rest of their lives. And I, and I've heard on some of your podcasts and I want to hear more about, you talk about educating athletes in real estate. And so I think what must happen is some of these athletes that are working with you know that they want to have a career in real estate or in real estate investing or something. But, what I think I have seen over 20 years of working with players is, seeing guys that, that I was very close to retire. And come back a couple years later and really not have any purpose or have anything in their lives. And usually when I talk to people about helping with this career transition for retired athletes, they're like, Oh, that's really important. So many don't make it. And that's true. And we need to help those people. But my contention is that the, the guy that makes it to the big leagues for two or three weeks, it's And doesn't make millions. He's going to be okay because he's going to find a job because he's got to put food on the table. So that survival instinct will get him somewhere, but I've worked with lots and lots of guys that have made, tens of millions of dollars that they'll never have to work another day in their lives. And those are the ones I worry more about because they don't have to work. And so how do they find something that's, that they're passionate about? And there, there's this kind of career transition life cycle that I see where it's like, at first they're really happy to be out and, they attend birthday parties and they go on vacations and they drive carpools and coach little league and all the things that they missed. For all their careers and then after a while that just doesn't it's it keeps them busy And it keeps them connected to their families, but they don't have anything that's fulfilling and They're great athletes who have always been competitive and had some kind of challenge in front of them and they have no challenge And so it's about helping them take some of the things that made them great as athletes and then finding a way to transfer that into the corporate world. And again, I think that's the same playbook that I've used is taking the things that, that I see in the game and moving them into a different environment. And most of these people they've been in the game their whole lives. And so they don't really know what it's like out there. They don't know how those skills can transfer. Yeah, it's really, I think it's really important. So what legacy did you aim to leave with winning minds and what are your future goals for Dotz Miller aside from helping people find their purpose? I'm not sure I've thought that far ahead myself other than again, I like, I, I think more in terms of, I wanted, for myself, I wanted to get to the big league someday, and I did that and then I wanted to make a difference in the game, and I feel like I've done that and now I want to make a difference after the game. And so I think that's really, I want to keep helping people in all three of those areas. I want to keep helping executives. I want to keep helping athletes that are competing now. But I think for me, the next thing is how do I help make a difference in the way that, that people leave the game? That's awesome. So now it is time for my fearless five questions. So there are five surprise questions and you get two passes. Are you ready? I think so. I'm not sure I'm fearless, but I'm ready. You get two passes. Okay. So what is one thing you think most people place value on that you don't necessarily value or subscribe to and why? Confidence. I do not believe you have to be confident to be successful. Not overall, but more in the moment. I think all of I don't want to name any brands but, most of the last 30 years of advertising for sport apparel has given us all these slogans and cliches and things about no pain, no gain, and you got to do more. But so the sports psychology world has taught us all that we have to be confident. And if you're not confident, let me take my little deep breath and that'll help me be confident. And what usually happens is when I'm not confident in a big moment, the routine I'm doing might not help me. And so what I find is that it's not that we're not confident in those moments. It's that we panic when we're not confident because we think we're supposed to be, and that panic distracts us. And so I think what I try to teach people, and I need more than a couple of minutes to really flesh this out but I think if you are able to stay focused on your job and focus on what matters in that moment and back to fake it till you make it it's okay that I'm not confident. Cause I know what I'm supposed to do right now. And I'm just going to focus on that. And I think it turns out better. And most of the time you get the confidence after you make the sale, not before. And so you have to be willing to go into that knowing that you're not going to be confident. It's a great answer. That is, I think that's probably my favorite answer. I ask that question of every guest that comes on the podcast because I think the answers are also interesting. I think that's the best one I've heard. So thank you for that. What is one daily habit you would recommend to everyone? I think I'll say the opposite of how you started your meditation. Yeah, I think people don't review their performance enough at the end of the day. And I think having a very simple 10 minute process of let me think about what went well or what went wrong or let me just be angry for a few minutes and then put it down. I think that would help people a lot. I have a lot of baseball players that come to me and tell me they're having trouble sleeping and there's a whole industry of kind of sleep science. But I think a lot of the time, if I can get them to stop thinking about baseball ten minutes after they leave the ballpark, then they're going to sleep fine. I like that. And it's funny because a lot of people, like myself, would probably say, Okay, but I'm so tired at the end of the day, I don't want to go back through my list. But then you can't sleep. I wouldn't do it. I don't think I would do it before bed though. I would do it at the end of work. I think it's a routine that needs to happen to signal I'm done working for the day, whatever that is. Okay. I like, I see you just let it go after that. You process it and you say, this is what I'm going to work on tomorrow. And now I'm done. It's akin to saying I've got this big report due on Monday, or like I've got homework that I have to do. And I feel like it's looming over my head and so I'm always thinking about it But if I just spend a little bit of time working on it, then I feel okay I did something and now I don't have to worry about it again. I like that What is the best piece of advice you've ever received? It would be from john about Going in into sports psychology. Yeah I think I think I would just generalize that more to just If someone tells you they believe in you, just listen to that and know that there's a reason for that. What do you think is the most essential quality in a leader, like a team captain? Honesty. I think it's being able to be honest with yourself, because I think the people that you lead know when you're not doing that, even for yourself. So true. And what is one thing you cannot live without? My, I guess my simple answer would be ice cream. But right there with you. Yeah, maybe Diet Coke. But yeah, look, I could go so cool and, say my family or, I can go sport and say baseball and, but I don't know. I honestly, I don't know if there's anything I couldn't live without but ice cream and Diet Coke are pretty strong addictions for me. Yeah. I'm pretty addicted to the ice cream too. And this Celsius. Celsius just got a free ad for me. You're welcome. Which I don't even know. It's supposed to be good for you, but it's probably not. Okay. So last two thoughts. Number one, is there anything you wish I had asked you during this interview? And if so, what would it have been? I think we hit on a lot. I guess maybe I would just, we didn't really get into that formula for success. That's really the framework, but that, know who you are, know what you want, know what to do when you don't get it. That actually does come from Pittsburgh also, that The first group that hired me got fired. And I spent a little bit of time with the next management team and the farm director who replaced Brian Graham said to me that first winter, he said, I want you to write a mental skills manual. And I said, I can't do that. And he said, why not? I said, because I can't write something that 200 different people are going to follow, right? It's going to be different for everyone. He's I don't care. I don't care what you write. Just write me a mental skills manual, whatever you want. And so I pouted about it for a month and just folded my arms and I said, I'm not doing this. And then I started really being critical of myself and thinking if there's something that I would want every single person to do What is it and I realized it wasn't the answers. It was the questions and so it's you know Do you know who you are? Do you know what you want? Do you know what to do when you don't get it, which is really can you self evaluate? Do you have the right goals and how do you deal with failure? And so those three things I think I'm working on with every single client not just baseball players, every executive I work with it's one of those three things that's really causing the pressure. I like that. It's like a, it's like a personal intake. And I think, it's a great way to, to learn about yourself and what you need to work on. Okay, finally, what message would you like to leave our listeners with? Regarding mental strength and resilience or anything. Like mental strength and resilience again, I think that goes back to some of the things I'm really trying to break down stereotypes and in the sports psychology world, mental strength to me doesn't really mean anything. It's and for that matter like my definition of having a good mental game is know what to do and do it when it counts and that's it. It's very simple. If you know what to do and you can do it when it counts. You may not need a coach. You may not need to meditate. You may not need a deep breath. You may not need to visualize. I don't know. But what I do know is that's what I want people I'm working with doing, is knowing what they're supposed to do and doing it when it counts. And I just don't, I don't see that as mentally strong or mentally weak when people fail. Cool. And then I think, I was going to say, I think maybe just in general, I just think more than any of those kind of taglines, I think for me, it's just, I absolutely love it. Cool. Helping people figure all this out and I think that's the thing that maybe that's the thing I can't live without is just being able to help unlock it for people and Find where that puzzle is and put it all together. That's the thing that gives me the most joy in all of this. That's awesome well, we're gonna have to have you back to ask you more questions and anybody who wants to find you can find your website and all of your social handles and everything in the show notes. What's your Instagram? My Instagram is just dots Miller LLC. Yep. And your website is dots Miller. com, right? Yeah. That's Miller. com. Yep. And there's a link to where you can buy the book, which I started reading and I really liked. And obviously I got the forward part wrong, but that's okay. Anyway, but I really appreciate your time and your insight and so many of the things that you said resonated with me and I really I'm grateful to have met you and I hope you will be on the show again. And yeah, I'm looking forward to next time. I would love to thank you for having me. Yeah, of course. Stop recording. Thank you for watching and listening to Kelly Minds Her Manors. Make sure to subscribe to the show and don't forget to leave us a review to tell us what you liked about the episode. You can connect with Kelly at Kelly Minds Her Manors on Instagram or on her website, www.kellymindshermanors.com.
