Mental Toughness in Business: An NFL Agent’s Pro Mindset Playbook | Craig Domann

SPEAKER_00 0:03

Business with our servants' hearts. Servants home. Welcome to the podcast. Inspiration, motivation, takes. Servants home. Listen to the podcast. We're all about to talk about life. Our guests will share their life story. We want you to success in life and business. We're ready and we will start shortly. We're gonna talk about life. We're gonna speak on business. You're gonna shine bright. We all are gonna win Business with our servants' hearts. With hosts, team from modern ready Inspiration, education, false. Listen to the podcast from over

SPEAKER_01 0:58

Welcome everyone to doing business with a servant's heart podcast. I'm your host, Steve Ramona. I am thrilled to have you join us today. This podcast is dedicated to exploring the idea of doing business and living life with a purpose, serving others, and yes, achieving success. We believe that when we approach our work and our lives with a servant's heart, we truly can make a difference. So we created this show for you because we want everyone to be motivated, inspired, and educated to make an impact in your world. Whether you're an entrepreneur, a community leader, a business owner that's made millions of dollars, or just want to add purpose to your daily life, this podcast is here to support you. And oh my God, this guest is gonna rock your world. He's in two areas that I love the most. So you'll hear about that in a second. But while you're listening to him today, I want you to think about who you serve today and what impact you'll create today with that service. And I want to thank today's sponsor, uh Pantheon Alliance. Picture yourself joining an elite community of high-income and highly successful business owners and entrepreneurs from a very variety of industries all working together to create a powerful referral marketplace and to get educated. If you want more information, just reach out to me and I'll get you all connected with the Pantheon Alliance. So, with that being said, you know, impact and a service heart go together. When you do service, you're impacting either small, medium, or large. This gentleman's impacting in the sports world and life itself. And I'm so excited to welcome Craig to the show.

SPEAKER_02 2:29

Thank you very much, Steve. I'm ready to roll.

SPEAKER_01 2:32

Talk about your background, where this all started.

SPEAKER_02 2:35

Okay, so my background is I'm a sports attorney and I've represented NFL players for more than 30 years. I had over 100 NFL draft picks, represented over more than 300 players. And I have a son that plays in the NFL at the moment. He's with the Titans going into training camp here next week. And I have a son that's a starting quarterback in the German Football League for the Dresden Monarchs, and we're headed over to Europe for a few weeks to check him out. So my background really is about helping young people navigate the obstacles of the real world after coming from college where they were pampered and you know their hands were held. They it was very difficult to fail in college because they made sure you went to class, they made sure you had food on the plate, they had everything for you. And then when you get out in the real world, you start getting money and you got to do your own thing. So being an agent is more than just negotiating a contract. It's really about being a dream coach and helping these guys accomplish their dream without stubbing their toes.

SPEAKER_01 3:37

And that's what I love about you as an agent. You're just not taking the money and running, taking your percentage, going, okay, contract signed, move on. You work with these athletes, like if you work with a client outside of athletics on a monthly, yearly, whatever that time frame is, all the time. And they can come to you and ask you a question. Hey, I just got a $10,000 check. What do I do?

SPEAKER_02 4:00

Absolutely. I think what happens is you have to build a team around your athlete, whether it's a financial advisor, a trainer, you know, um, people in the health field that can help them stay on the field and stay healthy. But it's you wear lots of different hats because it's not just negotiating a contract with the teams. It's really mentoring these young men as they navigate through money and relationships, whether to buy or lease a property, um, you know, what to do about cars, what to do about friends and family that want 50K to start a business or put their name on a restaurant, things, things of that nature. But it's really about helping them become men and smart businessmen. So over time, they really don't need you. They can consult with you, but they don't need you. At the beginning, they need you.

SPEAKER_01 4:53

Servants heart. That's what we do. We don't say you're signing a long lifetime contract with me and you have to be with me forever. I think any business across the board, there's gonna be an end point, an exit point. People go, Well, what do I do then? You get more clients because you treated them with value, with service. They're gonna refer other athletes to you as well. Is that what's happened to you as well?

SPEAKER_02 5:16

Oh, no question. The best, the best clients are referrals. Yeah, you know, the recruiting part of the business is probably 80% of the business. And if you're getting referrals, you can spend a lot, a large majority of that 80% on servicing, developing, challenging your clients as the post as opposed to chasing new ones.

SPEAKER_01 5:35

This is a selfish question because I'm as I've told you, I'm big in sports NFL. What's the biggest challenge for these young athletes right now?

SPEAKER_02 5:45

I really think it's about being in the moment. The NFL entices you to think ahead. You know, guys that are going into their contract years, they're already thinking about what that dream's gonna look like. They're, you know, what where they're gonna buy a property, the vacation home, the new car, who they're gonna take care of, what they're gonna do with their investments, all those types of things. And then they end up getting hurt and never getting the contract. You know, college kids are told right now, during the summer before their final season, hey, you're projected to go in the first round, second round. A lot of those players are not gonna go in the first and second round. Some of them, most of them won't get drafted at all because their head is not in the moment. And I think to truly be successful and excellent at what we do, we have to drill down into the moment, not the not tomorrow, not what the what the outcome is gonna look like, not what the the rewards and recognition are gonna look like, the paycheck's gonna look like. Anytime any of us have ever done that, we miss some things.

SPEAKER_01 6:49

Yeah, it's interesting because the way you're talking is no different than the business life. We'll transition to that. As I've hear people all talk, I've got the greatest idea. People are going, oh my God, like I'm gonna be a first-round draft pick, I've got the greatest business idea in the world and never, never uh comes to fluorishing. Talk about that, how it's such a nice bridge between athletic, the athletes, and the business owners and entrepreneurs.

SPEAKER_02 7:15

Well, football is a special sport, and I love all sports, you know. I played lots of different sports and I watch a lot of sports, but football is the only sport where people knock you down and you got to get back up. Okay. And football is a game, like in the coaching, the coach player relationship, it's it's a very negative relationship because coach doesn't talk to you, never puts up on the video on the big screen in front of everybody on the team, the great place. It's the ones that screwed up, and so it's a very like debriefing, reviewing type industry that you have to have thick skin. And so a lot of the traits, characteristics, values, principles that you learn in football apply to running your own business. You know, you're gonna get told no, how many times going and getting a business loan. You're gonna you're looking for investors, you're gonna make those presentations over and over again, and people are gonna go, oh man, if it you just got to me a month ago, I just wrote my check, I just allocated my budget, you know, last week to another investment. Yours is probably better, but I've already I'm already committed. Hit me up next year. And so the ability to be resilient, to recover, to bounce back, to not let yourself take an identity hit when people don't like your idea, like your business, like your product, or like your service.

SPEAKER_01 8:40

I love the phrase thick skin. It's the first time I've heard it. A lot of my guests, your 450th show for whatever. I like that because it tells the image you have thick skin. You just next, I tell people, next, didn't work out here. Next. What is the mindset that's really similar with in case this case NFL players and business owners and entrepreneurs that they could really help? Uh help them.

SPEAKER_02 9:06

Well, let me let me share with you that I've got a book coming out next week called Pro Mindset. And the framework of that book is built on three things your story, your standards, and your stage. And I reverse-engineered my relationships and my clients' journeys for the ones that overachieved, the ones that made it, the ones that were successful that weren't supposed to, the ones that scouts told me, hey, he's not fast enough. Oh, he's just not big enough. And that dude plays for 10 years and makes millions. And what I what I distilled out of those relationships is the fact that your story starts first. Your story is your identity. Most business owners are still carrying around their their previous failures, their past disappointments, their past rejections. And so they can't get out of their own way because they're still living in the past. And just to kind of look in in sports again, speed coaches use resistance parachutes so that when the athlete feels that resistance, they take the parachute off when the the athlete runs the real race, they feel lightning fast. Well, what do we do as normal Joes? We carry around and drag around a resistance parachute all the time. So you show up at the business meeting already defeated before you've even had an opportunity to make a presentation. And the other and the investor, the banker, whoever it might be, they feel your energy. They know they're not going to do this deal after two minutes. You might give them a 30-minute presentation. They made a minute, they made a decision 28 minutes ago. They were they weren't in the moment anymore because they were thinking about their next meeting because they shut you out. Because you showed up with a defeated attitude, with your old story, with your backstory, with your parachute, all those things that describe you didn't show up being your best in your biggest moment.

SPEAKER_01 11:14

I want to thank you for doing all this because, audience, he did all the work for us. I'll be your first. If it's not available yet, I'm gonna jump on and buy it because I tell people all the time, and people that are really successful in business, go, look at what I've done, learn what I've done, because I did it like you've done. You took these athletes and learned how they were successful, and now you're sharing it with us and audience. I can't think of a better book. Really practical play. What was the um mission of the book uh when you first started to bring it all together?

SPEAKER_02 11:50

I think it was driven by two things. One is survival. When you go out and sign clients, you said you invest a lot of money in those guys, and you want them all to maximize their success. So you're stealing and learning from previous clients and passing that wisdom down. And then I had two boys that played football, and I wanted them to understand that college football's hard. You may not even play college football. Football's hard, period. You're gonna get you're gonna get ear holed, you're gonna get blindsided, and you've got to be able to understand. That's coming. You have to keep your head on a swivel. And you know, I taught my boys how to be tackled, not just to tackle, but how to be tackled so they could live to play another play. And so both of my boys excelled in high school, and then both of them went to college. One played at Louisville, one played at Nebraska, and now one of them's in the NFL and with the Titans, and the other one's in the German League. And it's it's been hard. It's hard when we see Patrick Mahomes and we see Brock Purdy, we just think it's easy. Christian McCaffrey is one of the hardest working persons on the planet. That the his workout routines are absolutely amazing. And our families know each other, my sons are friends with their family. Bottom line is he deserves every penny he's getting. And he's so good because he's put in the work. He just didn't wake up one day, decide I want to play video games and shut up for practice, and he was dynamic. No, Kristen McCaffrey's an amazing worker in the dark. He does his work when nobody's watching. So when he gets on stage, it's show time.

SPEAKER_01 13:33

That's so take it from a business standpoint. What you're saying is, Steve, you own a business, work as hard as you can to be successful. It's just not going to be handed to you. Don't let other people do the work, have a good team behind you. All those sports analogies fit with your business, right?

SPEAKER_02 13:50

No question. No question. And I want to go back to the framework of the book Pro Mindset. It's about your story and rewriting a new story and letting go of your past. The second element is your standards, it's your strategies, it's your systems. And you can't use old standards, low standards, old strategies to get new results. And so I tell my clients, your standard has to be higher than your coaches. So, coaches, what do they do? Training camps coming up. They're going to have these meetings, they're going to tell everybody, hey, these are my expectations. These are my non-negotiables. This is what I'm going to accept, but this is not what I'm going to accept. If you do this over here, I'm calling the GM, tell them to get your butt out of town. Standards. Your standard has to be higher than your coaches. If you're in corporate America, your standard needs to be higher than your boss and higher than your company. Because then when you fall short, what you're going to do because you're human, you're good. Because you were shooting so much higher than your company was, your boss was, your coach was.

SPEAKER_01 14:57

Yeah, that that's we'll talk about a value add to your life and business. Let's talk about desire. Let's go back to Christian McCaffrey. Desire, purpose, and why they've got to be huge for him that's put those extra hours in to be a top NFL player. How's that relate to business as well?

SPEAKER_02 15:16

I think the one thing that's unique in sports is that the dream's always been there. And Christian having a father that played in the NFL for the Broncos and having a mother that was a soccer player at Stanford, he from a little boy always thought he was going to play in the NFL. But there's a lot of kids that thought that that didn't happen, right? But what Christian did is his why was it was just who he is. There was no other option for that kid. I saw him play in high school. He was a man among boys. The bottom line is as a business person, you have to tap into your purpose. So if you have a business idea, wonderful. You think people are going to buy it, people are going to want it? Great. But what is your purpose in sharing this with the world? How are you going to make an impact on this world by sharing it with people? And once you pipe into your purpose, you can establish your standard, you can cast your vision. Now you've got willpower and discipline that you didn't have before. So what happens is everybody, I lost my willpower in my 50s. Okay, low 50s, I lost my willpower. I had to get it back. And a lot of businesses have a lot of piss and vinegar for like, you know, three months. And I was like, well, hey, it's not, we're not getting the sales we thought, we're not getting the awareness, we're not getting whatever metrics they use. And they start thinking about another idea. So number one is you got to plug into your purpose before you can have a vision. And if you don't have a vision, you can't have discipline. And you got to have discipline and willpower for to sustain an idea, to sustain a business, to sustain a career, to stick to a workout regimen, to stick to a um a nutrition plan. Doesn't matter what it is. So all those, all three of those things. Purpose starts with purpose, vision, and discipline are all connected.

SPEAKER_01 17:25

What I'm hearing, and I I'm just realizing this can fall down to the janitor at Apple, the engineer at Oracle, the you know, sales guy at Amazon. This works for everybody, not just the business owner and entrepreneur, right?

SPEAKER_02 17:41

Pro mindset works for everybody because everybody has a story, everybody's living a standard. And the last element is everybody has a stage. So as an NFL player, you're playing in front of 65,000, 70,000 people, you're playing in front of millions of people on TV. The stage is very obvious. But if you're trying to get in the NFL, your stage may be a trial, it might be a practice, it might be a weight room session, it may be a position meeting. But let's go a little deeper. Let's say you're a business person, you think your stage is when you're giving a sales presentation in a conference room with the C-suite people showing up. But your stage is an email, is a phone call, is a is when you rub elbows with somebody at the water fountain, or you're at a you're at a conference and you meet somebody at a booth, that is your stage. How do you show up when you're on stage when you don't know when you're gonna be on stage sometimes? If you're an actor, a politician, a musician, an athlete, you kind of know when you're gonna be on stage. But all of us, we're on stage right now.

SPEAKER_01 18:50

Yeah, yeah. And it's interesting, Craig, you're bringing up such you're incredible. I'm just gonna say this audience. Craig's incredible because he's really breaking out. Because I'm looking as a janitor, his stage is that bathroom he just cleaned. The CEO walks in, it wasn't clean, right? He didn't do a hundred percent his stage. Uh it's it's so big and so easy. So talk about that mindset. It sounds so simple, but it's not easy. How do we get past that?

SPEAKER_02 19:20

It is simple, and it can be easy if you uh if you play the inside game. So the most people are playing the outside game. The outside game is what am I supposed to do? Look at Instagram, look at social media. What am I supposed to look like? What am I supposed to talk like? How am I supposed to dress? Where am I supposed to go? How am I supposed to talk? It's an outside game. No, it's an inside game. And the inside game is are you working on yourself? Do you really believe in who you are and what you're capable of? Have you really forgiven the people that have rejected you and harmed you? Because if you don't, you're carrying them with you. Have you forgiven yourself when you've done done dumb things, made bad decisions, um, self-sabotage? If you have, great. If you haven't, you're bringing that with you. And then you have to have those high standards. And part of those standards is your preparation, your practice, your pit crew, and producing a movie and your preparation is everybody knows what preparation is. Practice is, you know, maybe you might want to do it before you actually do it. Your pit crew is your support team. You know, for athletes, it's your chiropractor, some massage therapist, it's a speed coach, it's a quarterback coach, it's all these people. But in business, it might be your speaking coach, might be somebody that helps you with your your calendar, your organization, somebody that helps you with your energy, could be somebody that helps you with your meditate, all those, your morning routine. And then, regardless of what you do, if you can't see yourself doing it before you do it, good luck. Yeah, that's the mirror is a key. My son scored a touchdown as a rookie for the Colts on a special teams touchdown. And the Wednesday before, he saw himself scoring a touchdown against the Vikings. And there are a zillion stories. The Olympics is coming up, people seeing themselves, they can they can they can feel the gold medal being put around their neck. They hear the national anthem before they're ever on the podium. So as a business person, you have to see yourself being successful with people investing in you, with uh companies or distributors wanting your product on the shelves, whatever it is. If you can't see it, nobody else is going to be able to see it. And then when you have those stage moments, guess what? You can really show up when you've got your story right. Got your standards right, and what I call you create a performance bubble that you step into on game day on stage where you can be your best in your biggest moment. Because in that performance bubble, you got anchors and boundaries. The anchors are what you'll die on the hill for. The boundaries are the things that don't serve your best interest. So your doubts, your fear of failure, your what happened last time, what your dad told you, what your what your what your colleague told you, what the last banker told you. It none of that stuff gets to come in. What your wife told you if you got in a fight that morning, none of that stuff gets to come in. So all you want in that performance bubble is peace. Tell me if you don't want this. Peace, freedom, confidence in what you do, and belief in who you are. Those are the four cornerstones inside. And when you've got belief in who you are, confidence in what you do, peace about what you're doing, and freedom and clarity, you can get in the flow, you can be in the zone, you can talk, you can just you don't even know where it's coming from. You're making free throws you've never made before. You're you're you're selling products, you're hitting the you're hitting the marks you need to hit.

SPEAKER_01 23:19

Yeah, that's count me in, Craig. I I want all those. Your life will be so much better. We're getting close to the end here. Where can we find the book?

SPEAKER_02 23:29

The book is gonna be on craigdoman.com. And then it's gonna be um, I may have to send you a um a follow-up because my publisher is handling all that stuff. Yeah, um, it's gonna be on other sites too, but uh it's coming out in about seven, eight days.

SPEAKER_01 23:48

So, audiences will probably be out in a couple days on YouTube. So I'll put the link in there once Craig gets to me so you can access, and I'm uh I'll be your first buyer. I'm I am so fired up to get this book because not only can I learn, but a servant's heart, which you truly are, I can share it with others. Not only the book, but what I'm learning, and that's what you're doing. Real quick, let's talk about your podcast. I was just on. Thank you. You're the podcast is unbelievable. Talk about your podcast.

SPEAKER_02 24:17

My podcast is titled Pro Mindset, and I appreciate you being on. All I'm doing is asking people about their story and how they got from point A to point B. And everybody that everybody has this inner tension between where they're at and where they're trying to be. That is called growth. That is called uncomfortable. And you go, you lean into it, you go through it to get to the other side. And so, pro my my my podcast, I have no idea where it's gonna go. I have no idea when I'm talking to a guest where we're gonna end up. Basically, I don't have scripted questions. It's just the idea of let's go on a journey. And based upon what information is revealed to me, tells me where to go next.

SPEAKER_01 25:04

Audience, that's a my podcast you need to listen to because you'll learn, you'll be motivated, you'll be inspired, which I was being on, and the questions were incredible. Uh, how can people reach out to you, Craig?

SPEAKER_02 25:16

Okay, so you can find me on social media, Pro Mindset, uh, or my name, Craig Doman, D-O-M-A-N-N. I'm on LinkedIn, I'm on everything. Um, I've got my own website, Craig Doman.com. Um, if there's anybody that wants to uh potentially have me be a keynote speaker or uh check out my information about my um pro mindset courses, you'll find them on that website.

SPEAKER_01 25:43

And podcast hosts, I have a lot that listen to this show. Reach out to him too. He's an as you can tell, he's an incredible guest. And I want to get this message out to millions of people because if we do, we're gonna change the world. Well, you're gonna change the world. I'm gonna support you on that. So before we end, I like to have a fun question to end this show because it's serious, but it was fun. Let me ask you this. You're at a restaurant, there's a table of four, you're gonna sit in one chair. Who are gonna sit in the other three chairs, dead or alive? Why are they sitting there? And what food would you order?

SPEAKER_02 26:17

Unbelievable question. Holy smokes. Well, one person that would be there would be Jesus. I would want to, I would want to ask him some questions about life, the meaning of life. Um, and then I would love to go instead of going to somebody famous, I would like to go back in my in my generations and to talk to some of the patriarchs of my of my family and ask them about you know what their challenges were, what their successes were. I'm talking 1700s, 1800s. And just because that stuff gets passed down. We have generational curses, but we also have generational blessings. And I would love to understand more who I am, what why I have the challenges I have. We all have challenges, why sometimes I am the way I am, and I do know that to a certain degree from my parents and and whatnot, but I think it'd be really interesting to go deeper. And then as far as um favorite food, I don't know why, but I love lasagna. And you know, everywhere I go, I mean, it doesn't matter what city I travel a lot. I hit an Italian place, I get their lasagna, I make notes on Yelp. Hey, this is the best. This is a five-star, four and a half star, this is four star. Um, so that I know when I come back, if I want to get lasagna again, I know where to go.

SPEAKER_01 27:41

You're my new best friend before the show. Now you really are, because I'm with you on lasagna. You give me a good lasagna, I'm full and I'm happy. Craig, thank you so much. Uh your servant heart comes out, your passion, not only for the athletes, but to really just serve and help others. I really appreciate you being on.

SPEAKER_02 28:00

Steve, thank you very much. Nothing but the best of luck for you and your listeners, and uh God bless you.

SPEAKER_01 28:07

Thank you. And don't forget my TV show, Together We Serve every Friday at 2 p.m. Pacific, uh, 5 p.m. uh 2 p.m. Pacific or 5 p.m. Eastern. Really bad with time zones. I'm not a fan of them. Um, come by, take a look. We're on uh Apple TV and Roku. See my big old head on your 70-inch screen TV. You'll look at the guests more than you'll look at me. But it's a cool way of getting a little more depth. And Craig doesn't know this, but I'm gonna do it on public recording. I'm gonna invite him to my TV show. He's gonna be an incredible guest there as well. And me and Craig, thank you so much for watching and listening to this episode. We'll see you in the next episode of Doing Business with a Servant's Heart. Take care, all.