How to Take Advantage of Your Amazing Network as an Elite Athlete

The Sports Backdrop

Helping Elite Athletes Transition to a Productive Sales Career | with Founder and CEO of Shift Group, JR Butler

The greatest achievement–pulling off one of the more incredible upsets in your sport. In sports, it is so much about moments like these. But then how do you continue to achieve in other areas of life including your work career? In this episode, we talk about that incredible hockey upset moment, building a career outside of hockey, and then helping others do the same.

JR Butler is a former star hockey player who was on the Holy Cross team that beat the Minnesota Golden Gophers in the 2006 Midwest regional to deliver one of the biggest upsets in college hockey history. After going through some challenging times that JR talks about in this episode, JR finds himself helping the elite athlete transition to sales as the founder and CEO of Shift Group.

We talk about the anatomy of an upset, the growth of hockey, and supporting other athletes with their transition out of sports.

One key takeaway from this episode is for all athletes to take advantage of their network while they are still playing.

Topics discussed in this episode | How Take Advantage of Your Amazing Network as an Elite Athlete:

• Build a Team Culture for Athletic Success | Psychology Today
• Remembering the Holy Cross Upset
• The blame game in sports
• Out-of-Control Parents In Youth Sports: Symptom Or Disease?
• Hockey is a fast-growing sport worldwide (with youth)
• Advice from JR | If you can keep playing, do it. And talk to as many people as possible. And learn about as many career paths as possible.
• The Stigma around the word “sales”
• Why are athletes good at sales?
• The Influences of Social Media on Athletes’ Mental Health and Performance: A Literature Review
• Self-awareness
• Why podcasting

In case you haven’t noticed, we love podcasts. In fact, we love building podcasts. Everything from development to production. Because of all that, we’re building a one-of-a-kind podcast network. If you have a podcast or are looking to launch a new podcast then we should talk. You can message me on Twitter @eric_kaz or hit us up any way that works for you. Let’s talk about your podcast joining this one-of-a-kind podcast network.

SE+ Guest: JR Butler | CEO and Founder – Shift Group | How to Take Advantage of Your Amazing Network as an Elite Athlete

Shift Group & JR Butler on LinkedIn

Athletes spend their lives engaging in team-based activities where they are rewarded for performance-based outcomes. Competitive drive, work ethic, and the desire to win are innate qualities of those performing at elite levels. Athletes at this level must have discipline, resilience, and grit. These are the intangible parts of any elite athlete’s identity. When combined with confidence, curiosity, and coachability, these traits separate great athletes – and great salespeople.

Salesmanship can be taught. It requires the right attitude, habits, and skills – learned, practiced, and repeated in the right environment in order to be mastered.

Shift Group has taken decades of knowledge in building elite sales organizations and an intimate understanding of the key skills needed for a successful career in tech sales to build a best-in-breed curriculum. On top of that, Shift Group provides hands-on training and prep that helps to produce some of the best salespeople in the world.

Once an athlete finishes Shift Group training, they provide them access to hiring managers at Startups, Fortune 500’s, and other organizations building out sales teams across the globe – coaching them through every step of the interview process.

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Websites you should definitely check out:

• SportsE+
• KazCM Podcast Production

More content related the transition out of sports:

• Chimdi Chekwa | Ohio State Buckeye For Real
• Jimmie Bell: “I Got the Courage to Start Over” | Buckeye Focused 4
• SE26 | James Cotton | A Buckeye Transitioning in Sports, Life, and Business

Meet you on social media:

• SportsE+: Twitter, Instagram, TikTok
• Eric Kasimov: Twitter, LinkedIn

That’s a wrap:

• Thank you for listening to this episode on SportsE+ titled, “How to Take Advantage of Your Amazing Network as an Elite Athlete”.
• Follow this podcast on Apple Podcasts
• Follow this podcast on Spotify
• Intro Music, “escape” was provided by Pluto Tracks.
• Check out more from our content platform: SportsE+. A digital media brand where the content = sports + entrepreneurship + web3.

Eric Kasimov

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