Building Athletes for Life Beyond the Game: The Seven Pillars with Nick & Michael Ahmed

In this powerful conversation, we sit down with brothers Nick and Michael Ahmed, the co-founders of Seven Pillar, a revolutionary approach to developing athletes that goes far beyond performance metrics. After witnessing firsthand the mental health crisis affecting one in three high-performing athletes, these former professional baseball players created a holistic framework designed to build champions in life, not just in sport.

Key Discussion Points:

[02:00] The Genesis of Seven Pillar

• How organic conversations between teammates evolved into a comprehensive athlete development system
• The decade-long journey from personal struggle to purposeful solution
• Why traditional athlete development falls short of preparing players for life

[06:13] The Identity Crisis in Sports

• Understanding performance-based identity and its devastating effects
• How comparison culture and external validation create unstable foundations
• The transformation that happens when athletes discover their true worth beyond the scoreboard

[11:37] Sport as Life Training

• Reframing athletics as a vehicle for character development
• Why winning isn't everything, but competition still matters
• Building skills that translate from the field to family and community

[15:52] The Seven Pillars Framework

1. Identity - Building unshakeable self-worth independent of performance
2. Mindset - Developing mental resilience for competition and life
3. Lifestyle - Creating sustainable habits that support long-term success
4. Relationships - Fostering authentic community and accountability
5. Nutrition - Fueling both body and mind for optimal performance
6. Fitness - Physical preparation that serves athletic and life goals
7. Recovery - Understanding rest as a competitive and personal advantage

[22:25] Faith and Community in Athletic Development

• Why relationships matter more than individual achievement
• The role of faith in creating lasting identity and purpose
• Building teams and communities that elevate everyone

[26:45] The NIL Generation Challenge

• How modern athletics has shifted toward individual focus
• The recruiting crisis facing college sports
• Developing intangibles and "it factor" in young athletes

Connect with Seven Pillar:

• Website
• Instagram
• Twitter/X

Creators and Guests

Host

Eric Brown

Co-founder of Whiteboard

Producer

Nick Blackmon

VP @ Whiteboard

What is Visionaries?

On Visionaries, we dive deep with today’s boldest thinkers—leaders, artists, and entrepreneurs—who are crafting the next chapter of our world. How do they see what’s coming? How do they make the impossible, inevitable? And how can we learn to think like them?

Eric Brown (00:00)
Well, gentlemen, I'm so glad that you're here. I think one of the things that just to sort of tee up this conversation is your devoted husbands, dads, ballplayers, and brothers starting a venture together called Seven Pillar. And I want to know what moment or experience sparked this vision.

Nick Ahmed (00:18)
Yeah, it's a good question. So I guess I can jump in first and then Mike can share his side of it. for me, kind of the middle part of my playing career, I started to just dive into all things that would try to give me that extra edge. And even before the middle part of my career, just early on in my minor league playing days after I got drafted, just trying to look for that next step to kind of give me that edge on the competition and help me keep getting better. So it was things like nutrition and recovery and then

As I got older, learning to be a better leader and a better teammate and help my team achieve the goals that we're hoping to achieve. And as I continued to learn those things and apply them to my life and see the real transformation that it was having on the field, but not only that, but off the field as well too, there became people that started to come to me with questions, right? It started with conversations that Mike and I were having as we were both playing and trying to push each other and help each other both get better.

whether that was in season phone calls or training together in the off season. And then it was other teammates and other family members just coming with questions of like, hey, I see you're doing this, why are you doing that? And what do you got on this supplement and this nutrition protocol? And it just kind of grew from there and turned into an idea that my financial advisor, I'll give my shout out here, Eric Averill with AWM. You know Eric pretty well.

He gave me the idea, was like, hey, you need to scale this thing and get this to the next generation of athletes and coaches. And we've since morphed it now into seven pillar and we have our seven pillars that we think are extremely vital and crucial to success in your sport and outside of it. So that's kind of the origin story. And we started version 1.0 a few years back and now we're on 2.0 ready to get out into the world.

Eric Brown (01:58)
Love it. Bye.

Michael Ahmed (02:00)
Yeah, I mean, I think like Nick said, this was something that came about pretty organically. You know, we both lived a pretty similar life lifestyle in terms of being in professional baseball. I got to kind of see it firsthand too as a coach in 2021, my first year with the Mariners coaching professionally. And from that perspective, like was able to see to, you know, the need for this kind of holistic coaching enterprise and making sure that we're kind of.

incorporating the mental health side of things in addition to, you know, the in-game mental skills and nutrition and recovery. So this has kind of been a long time in the works. I think Nick actually, a couple of weeks ago, he sent me a note that he found in his desk drawer from 2015. And he had a note basically saying like things to share with the next generation. And so this goes back 2025 now almost a decade, if not more than that. So

It started organically, but it's been in the works for a while too.

Eric Brown (03:03)
Yep, it's awesome. for those who don't know, so Seven Pillar is the name of the organization, but Seven Pillars is also a big cornerstone of this work. What are the Seven Pillars? Why do they matter? Would love to hear y'all's perspective on that.

Nick Ahmed (03:04)
Yeah.

You wanna see that one up first?

Michael Ahmed (03:22)
Yeah, sure. So, 7 Pillars, again, like we're basically sitting down and I think it was 2022 trying to figure out, how do we deliver this content? And so, you over the course of several times sitting down and having these conversations, we came up with these pillars as like, okay, this is the baseline. This is what really works and this is what we've been living. essentially, it's identity, mindset, lifestyle.

relationships, nutrition, fitness, and recovery. So those are the seven pillars. And essentially, like, we don't want to think of those pillars as any one individual standing by itself. It's how do we, you know, use these as one complete program or system or process, kind of hover the word that you want to use, you know, to help give athletes and coaches success on the field. So those are the main seven pillars. don't know if you have anything to add to that. We can kind of get into more detail, but

That's the main thrust of it.

Nick Ahmed (04:21)
Yeah, it's a great point you made Mike about how they're not individual and everything comes together and kind of going back to the original question to Eric, why did we start it and how did this come about? For me, especially as an athlete, I was always having multiple different people in multiple different arenas helping me throughout my career. It was a mental performance coach. It was a nutritionist. It was doctors for blood work and regenerative medicine. It was physical therapists and strength coaches and

Not that we are gonna do all of those things because a lot of them require years and years of school and education and specialty, but the ability to kind of curate a lot of that information and bring it to the next generation of athletes is something I didn't have, right? And I had to go out and do all my own research and Mike did as well to find out the best ways to do things and the best people that teach us how to do those things. So that's kind of it for us. It's just like we wanna take all of these concepts and bring them together into one.

and be this one trusted place for the athlete and the coach to come to get better in a variety of areas that are gonna help you in so many ways as you compete in your sport and then outside of your sport in your general life as well.

Eric Brown (05:27)
love that. think one of the things I love y'all's perspective on, I was reading a report a few weeks ago on one out of three high performing athletes struggles with mental health and anxiety. And when you think about the long-term sort of effects that from youth sports all the way to getting the minor league contract, then getting the invitation to the show, y'all the first pillar

is identity. And I think one of the biggest things that I think is really captivating about this vision is y'all talk a lot about on and off the field as an embodiment of what Seven Pillar is. Why is identity so important and sort of that first understanding for this work?

Nick Ahmed (06:13)
Yeah, that's where I was gonna go first when you talked about the mental health crisis. And not that there aren't great professionals out there doing amazing things with athletes and coaches and people in that space, but a lot of what I experienced and Mike as well was very, very surface level. It didn't get below the surface and get to the root problem of what's actually going on. And for us, I had an identity crisis myself. I had a performance-based identity, which meant that I put all of my stock and worth

and self-esteem and value in who I was as an athlete and how I performed. And then when I didn't perform well, when I went through a slump, when I got injured, when I got traded, when I got cut from a team, all these things started to come crashing down and they did create that anxiety and those mental health issues. when I started to learn how to get out of that performance-based identity, everything just started to change and the trajectory of my life took off in a completely different way that never would have happened without that.

We want to train these athletes and these coaches to get off this comparison trap, to stop worrying about what other people think about you, and to create this foundational identity that can withstand the storms of life, because they're going to come to everybody, right? You're going to go through difficult times during your sport, during a game, during practice sessions with injuries, and dealing with difficult coaches and people, and bad breaks and things like that, but also off the field and off the court. You're going to go through all kinds of difficult problems and struggles as well.

And if you define yourself by your performance, you're going to ride this roller coaster up and down of highs and lows. And it's going to be a really, really tough way to live.

Eric Brown (07:43)
Yep. think one of the things to add to is I think a lot of a lot of the general public doesn't realize that when you when you make it to the pros, the average 10 years, three years for most players, you know, and Nick, you're you're a decade long player, which is an anomaly in the sport. But there's a lot of life to live after those three years, you know, and so a lot of what you're thinking about mindset, thinking about lifestyle, thinking about relationships, how all these sort of things.

happened after the game. And one of the things that I think is was so compelling about talking with y'all as well is, you y'all always said we want to create the platform that we wish we had when we were sort of in that. We're stepping into a more serious game. We're stepping into more opportunity, but still that performance based identity is still dictating the day. You know, when you look at the formation of athletes today, where do you see the biggest gaps?

And what are the long-term consequences of those gaps, do you think?

Nick Ahmed (08:36)
Yeah, I think from a coaching perspective, at the youth level, especially in high school, there's a lot of volunteer coaches out there that are doing their best, right? But competitively as athletes and people who want to compete and do a good job and coaches who want to do the same thing, right? There's things that get put up on a pedestal and elevated. And the number one thing is winning, right? And advancing and moving up the ladder and going to the next level.

And what that does is it creates transactional relationships, right? And there are people's identities get messed up. So I think if, if we can just help coaches and help athletes just understand a different way of doing things and that winning isn't the most important thing, right? Like what we do as well at seven pillar is not just take that out of the equation, right? Because we are athletes and we played the game professionally and at the highest level for a long time. We do value winning and we do value.

on field and in your sport performance at a high level. So we're not saying we're gonna not focus on that and take that away. We just wanna do it in a way where it doesn't become a detriment to your life off the field as well. So just trying to train people to understand like, when you interact with someone, whether it's a teammate, a coach, an opponent, your family member, we're gonna do it in a way that's gonna create this relationship, that's gonna help everyone flourish in a different way, right? And we're not gonna just...

have these transactional relationships where we elevate winning above everything and then people get kicked to the wayside when they're not performing well.

Michael Ahmed (10:01)
Yeah, I mean to piggyback on that too, coming from my own experience as a player and then seeing at the youth level, high school level, college level and professional levels like, know, the way that we're forming athletes, especially nowadays with social media is like, it's all about external image. And I think, you know, especially with younger generations, see a lot younger kids, I see it a lot. It's like,

we're playing and performing just so the world can see us in a particular way. And so I think like if we get to the root of our identity, understand who we are, we can play for something that's bigger than this image that we've kind of created, this false image really, right? And we can play in freedom and live in freedom and enjoy the things that God's given us. So it's really more about big picture and like, how can we live our lives

in a really good way, but how can we compete in the field too at the same time?

Eric Brown (10:56)
Yeah, no, I love that. think so. Y'all know I'm a nine, new baseball coach. And so what we're trying to do as for our little rec team is just sort of elevate their imagination around. Yes, there's all the rules and the facts and the learnings of the game itself. And the game is hard enough. But all the principles, you know, if you know, if I hit the ball three out of 10 times in the major league in the major leagues, you know, that's a Hall of Fame baseball player. Right. And so.

For us, it's sort of like, are we talking about failure and how are we talking about character development? How are we talking about leadership? How do you see Seven Pillar reshaping the way coaches and athletes approach growth, not just in performance, but in character and leadership?

Nick Ahmed (11:37)
Yeah, that's really good. I'm glad you're focusing on that. We need more of that out in the world. The first place I would go is it just as a question. I'd say what is sport, right? Why do we all love sport and why are we gravitated towards sports? You know, some people aren't, but the vast majority of us are, right? And sport for me is something that we all love. It's something that we enjoy. It's something that we play first and foremost. So it's this fun thing that we do.

But then sport is also something else, right? It's a vehicle and it's a tool to help us become the type of person that we're meant to be. Right? That's the beautiful thing about sports, right? It's a microcosm of life and the adversity we face, the way we have to deal with conflict, know, becoming a good teammate, all of these skills that need to be developed that are going to serve you as an athlete. But then after your athletic career is over, because it comes to an end for everybody, whether that's at the high school, college or professional level.

we're all gonna have a lot more life to live and we can take these skills and tools that we've acquired and then just apply them to the rest of our lives. So everything that I've learned as an athlete, same thing for Mike as an athlete and a coach, right? We're trying to apply these things not only to our professional life, but we're applying them to our home life with our wives and our kids and how we're raising them and interacting with our families. So just trying to reshape and just understand that sport is this vehicle that's gonna help us become the person that we're meant to be.

Michael Ahmed (12:56)
Yeah, I couldn't say anything better than that. mean, using sport as a tool is kind of something that I've looked at really like since I became a coach and started doing lessons even when I was 21 years old. So if I can incorporate those life skills and anytime I'm working with a player, that's a big win and that's really my focus whenever I'm doing that. So we take an idea like seven pillar and now we can.

focus on all these other things and not just specifically the sport. But now we've created something bigger that can really affect generations on the road.

Eric Brown (13:30)
Yep, absolutely. Mike, I'd love for you to sort of expand just knowing that you've done a lot of coaching over the past several years. How have you sort of wove Seven Pillar into coaching? And what's your favorite example of Seven Pillar actually making an impact on somebody who's growing tremendously in the game, but also growing in other areas in their

Michael Ahmed (13:52)
Yeah, I mean, I think, you know, like we discussed, it all starts with identity. So, you know, if I'm working in cages with somebody, it's not just swing focus. It's not just, you know, their mechanics. It's how do we understand ourselves as a player? How do we understand ourselves as a person? So number one, like I can, I know how to work. I know how to create the standards that I want. And that's a big question. like, you know, once we, once we,

define ourselves, we start to figure out what standards we wanna work by and live by. How you see yourself as a competitor is a huge part of that. And if you can see yourself as a competitor, not only on the baseball field, but in other areas of life, I think that's a huge indicator, or at least a starting point of success, right? And success can take on a number of different definitions, which we can talk about, but I think sometimes it gets lost, especially with younger players, like, okay.

Even if they're good competitors on the field, that kind of falls by the wayside when it comes to their relationships, when it comes to forming their mindset and their approach to the game, when it comes to nutrition and recovery type stuff. helping guys to really develop that competitive edge, just when they're athletes, not just when they're in the field, and not just when they're in the cages, but in all aspects of their lives as well.

Eric Brown (15:13)
I love that. Nick, you want to add to that?

Nick Ahmed (15:16)
Nah, it's good. mean, after Mike finished his playing career, he became my coach, right? Not in the dugout on the field, but he became a guy that I would call not just as my brother, but as somebody that could pick his brain about mindset and pick his brain about, you know, dealing with a difficult teammate and being a better leader and, you know, nutrition side of things and just learning different things that are going to help me in my game.

Yeah, Mike has incredible experience as a coach not only learning and teaching the skill but also within all these seven pillars because he had to do it for me because I put that pressure on him to help me continue to elevate my game all those years. Yeah.

Eric Brown (15:52)
Yep. Yep.

I was in a barber shop a couple months ago and the guy who was in the chair before me, we started talking about baseball. I think his kid was like in uniform or whatnot. I've got one son and I think he had multiple sons and he'd done the travel thing and he'd done the rec thing. And I'll never forget when he looked at me, he was like, hey dude, I just want to tell you. He's like, this is my hot take around you sports.

I think all these kids have 300 games in them. He was like, and you can use them all up in a very short amount of time, or you can spread those 300 games as long as they possibly can. And he was like, after doing the travel thing, he was like, I know people are going to go down that road. He was like, but try to spread, spread the love of the game as long as you can. And I think one of the things that's really interesting about seven pillar is like,

Y'all are asking the question of what does success look like for an athlete shaped by this sort of idea that, we're looking five, 10, even 20 years down the road, right? Like I was not a professional ball player, but now I'm a coach of a kid that I'm hoping, hoping, because I don't remember every game that I've ever played, but I do remember tiny memories of those big moments, right? I love that y'all are casting a vision around.

the long-term effect of this moment that we have, whether you're a serious athlete and you do have a shot to make it to the bigs, whether you're in a college ecosystem, you know, whether, I mean, there's all sorts of shapes of this game that we play. But I think for y'all, what makes you so different is you're thinking about the whole, not just the part of the things that youth sports

and college sports can be. Why is that? And why do y'all see that as sort of a differentiator in this space?

Nick Ahmed (17:53)
Yeah, it's so important. I've had more teammates over the years than I wish and care to remember or can remember that I've had incredible success athletically. Right. But that didn't fulfill them. Right. At the end of the day, we can succeed as much as we want in our sport, as a coach and our professional life. But if we're not fulfilled and we're not satisfied holistically as a person, our entire life off the field,

outside of our sport, it doesn't matter, right? We're gonna deal with these mental health issues. We're gonna have broken relationships. The amount of athletes and people that I've seen that have coping mechanisms, you know, with alcohol and drugs and different vices and things to deal with their problems because they've never faced them head on and never built that foundation that's gonna help get them through the storms, right? It's tragic, right? I've seen marriages fall apart, know, family dynamics be completely destroyed.

And it matters, right? It really matters more than the box score and more than the championship. It's people's lives. So we've seen the fruit of it on our own lives, right? To have thriving marriages and relationships with our kids. And we know the impact that can have outside the game and just propel people to have a life that they love, right? And a life that they love living. And, you know, again, using sport as that tool to help them get there and help them grow. And we want to share the experiences that we've had.

and help people just to move past and not have the same failures and difficulties and things that we went through and just try to provide them that opportunity beforehand.

Eric Brown (19:26)
Yeah.

Michael Ahmed (19:27)
Yeah, just to piggyback off that, I I think you have to ask the question, like, what is number one? What's the number one most important thing in your life? mean, if it's baseball or sport, whatever it is, eventually at some point, not that it doesn't matter while you're playing, but again, at some point you're going to be done playing, at least at the high performance level. So at the very least, you you're 40, 45 years old, hopefully you're gonna have a long life ahead of you.

I think that gets lost even all the way down to the youth level. Like it's okay. I'm playing baseball. I'm a baseball player first. I'm an athlete first. And then all this other, all these other things in your life kind of take a second seat or the back seat. And, know, again, Nick's seen it. I've seen it. There's, there's been plenty of instances instances in my, you know, professional playing career and coaching careers. Like, you know, maybe this guy performed well on the field, but is it going to last?

because he doesn't have the foundation to make sure that it lasts as a minor leaguer, as a big leaguer, and then off the field as well. again, there's so many different aspects to living and performing well that we don't want to just focus on the field. Again, even though we think that's really important, that's not number one, that's not what life is about. So we want to do both. We don't want to sacrifice one or the other, but if we can do both and we think we found it with 7 Pillar, we're going to help guys really get end-girls go to the...

know, get through.

Nick Ahmed (20:51)
The amazing thing too, if I can just add to that, is that when we do focus on creating that right foundation for life off the field, it doesn't take away from your sport. It doesn't take away from succeeding. It actually supports it and helps it and holds it up. I was at a crossroads in my minor league career about two years after I got drafted. I was playing double A baseball for the Arizona Diamondbacks. I had just got traded to them. I was hitting about 130 after a month and a half in middle of May. I was playing every day.

Eric Brown (20:51)
I love it.

Nick Ahmed (21:19)
Every day I show up to the field. basically thought I was gonna get released and the dream was over, right? And I didn't have this foundation. I had anxiety. I couldn't sleep at night. I was being a horrible teammate. This was before 7 Pillar and while I was dealing with the performance-based identity stuff. So I didn't have this foundation at all. And every day I thought the dream was gonna get ripped away from me. But once I started to create that foundation, right? That foundation of non-performance-based identity.

I put my faith in God. I started to build these blocks on top of each other and create success in a different way, not just what the box score said or what this person thought about me in the front office, right? I got way better off the field. I started to sleep at night. I started to become a better teammate. And then the performance actually started to take off and I started to become a way better player. So it's not one or the other and it's not one that takes away from the other. It's actually, hey, let's build this foundation for success in life.

And that's actually gonna help you become a better athlete and help you become a better coach. So that's the beauty of 7Pillar and what we've built is that it's helping two things and two things that are really important and they go together so well.

Eric Brown (22:25)
Yep. think one of the great things about 7th pillar is it's obviously something that should be done with others. And I think you and Mike embody that sort of like, we're doing this together. We did this together. We've lived this together. I'd love to sort of trail into the how has faith sort of shaped your imagination around the vision for this organization and why is that important along the way?

Nick Ahmed (22:36)
Yeah.

Yeah, mean, human beings, the way God has created us, we are wired to be relational, right? We're wired to be in community with other people, to be in a tribe, to be in a family, to be in a group, on a team, to be able to help support each other, to push each other, to keep each other accountable, to hold each other up, to fight for each other, to love each other, all these things that humans need, right? No matter if you're on one end of the spectrum of very introverted or on the other end of very extroverted.

We all need people, right? We all need people to help us to be the best versions of ourselves. So Mike and I have been blessed to have that. And we've been blessed to have relationships with other people throughout our careers that we found that with as well. So, you know, we built seven pillar now and we're trying to build it in a community way where teams can jump on this and do this together. And friends can help each other do this. And this is something that can be a community movement, right? And people can just...

hold each other accountable to the principles and to the pillars and just to help each other all grow in the same way. Because that's how God's created us, right? Like that's the difficult thing of technology and how social media has evolved, right? There's a massive correlation and spike between when social media and the internet have been introduced and then the mental health crisis. So what that's done is that's pulled people in isolation and taken them out of community, right? And we want to help bring that back. And it's obviously a technological

thing that we're doing and using to help push this message out there, right? But we want people to do it together. We want people to do it in community, on their teams, in their schools, and different things like that. They're gonna, to help support each other.

Eric Brown (24:27)
Yep. Yep.

Michael Ahmed (24:28)
Yeah, mean, when we experience things together, the fulfillment that we get out of it is exponentially more than doing things on our own. And I think you get a good grasp of that when you talk to guys who retire and say, hey, what do you miss most about the game? And I would say probably 99 % of them are not gonna say getting a double or hitting a homer. It's the relationship they had and the interactions they had in the clubhouse and on the field, even with the fans sometimes too.

So, you know, it's those types of things that are probably the most important thing and help bring us the fulfillment that, you know, like Nick said, that we're meant to have. It's not just doing it on our own. It's doing it community with other people.

Nick Ahmed (25:08)
Yeah, when we're doing that together, when we're living life together, like Mike said, the joys and the triumphs are exponentially better. But at the same time, the trials and the difficulties aren't as hard either, right? Because we have people to help us and support us and get us through those times. So community, having people that you trust and can lean on and you do the same for them is incredibly important. And we're weaving that in through 7Pillar for sure.

Eric Brown (25:31)
I that. a couple years ago I was touring SEC school that we would all know, their training facility, that they were in the middle of like a phase one through five sort of construction on. And I was talking to one of the recruiters there and I was just like, with so much of the conversation being oriented towards NIL, what's the impact on your job then, like in terms of just recruiting? And he honestly was like, it's actually kind of been terrible.

Because the orientation that these students, these 16, 17, 18 year old college players have is this me focused mentality. Where he said, 10 years ago, seven years ago, even five years ago, the conversations with these kids was, can I be a support to the team? How can I help the team win?

And now everything's sort of oriented towards what's in it for me. That's been the shift of the conversation. In the next generation of athletes, if they were formed the right way, what kind of ripple effect would that have in homes, schools, teams, and communities beyond playing time?

Nick Ahmed (26:45)
That's a great question. think there's two things that come to mind. Two key phrases. When people talk about athletes a lot, right, there's talent that's obviously talked about and you need talent to be successful. But there's two kinds of things that athletes who do it at a high level for a really long time have. They have intangibles at a very high level and they have an it factor, right? People talk about intangibles and it factor.

And people are gravitating toward those things, I think now more than ever, because like you're saying, there's so much focus on the individual and the social media and the NIL and the individual nature of things. When someone has those things, man, they just stick out, right? And people are attracted to those things. And I was talking to a coach recently and he was just saying the same thing. He's a college coach and talking about how he's going after kids who aren't in it for themselves and the data and the information and the numbers, but the team.

Right? And in order to have success in life, right, you need those things. You need those intangibles. You need that it factor. So if we can help athletes in this next generation to be able to achieve and attain those intangibles and learn to live by them, the sky's the limit, right? It can change families. It can change generations and legacies. It can change communities. It can be an incredible movement and tool to help this next generation really just change the landscape of our country.

Michael Ahmed (28:06)
We've had so many discussions too based on legacy. like what is as seven pillar as individual coaches, like what is our impact on athletes and coaches? And we kind of always have a little bit of an eye toward the future in terms of like, okay, what are we gonna build with this? Like what does the future look? What kind of impact we can have? What kind of legacy are we gonna leave not only with our families, but with the individuals, the teams, organizations that we're working with?

Like we want to be able to, know, part of our mission is to impart the knowledge and the wisdom and everything that we've learned over the past, you know, decade to 15 years of our professional careers. But how does that, what does that look like in terms of legacy? What does that look like in terms of impact? And how can we actually apply that to the world and help individuals and teams get to their potential? And I think, you know, that energizes us, that makes us excited and that's...

kind of the genesis of Seven Pillar right there.

Nick Ahmed (29:03)
Yeah, when you live with the end in mind, it changes today, right? It changes the present moment. And when you have that perspective to think long-term and not just be in the short-term gratification mode at all times, you're gonna think, okay, when I get to the end of my applying career, when I get to the end of my life, what's gonna matter? What's gonna be most important? And then once you understand those things and you have those ideas of, this is gonna be most important at the end of my career and at the end of my life, then you can live backwards from that.

and focus on those things today. So nobody's gonna get to the end of their playing career and nobody's gonna get to the end of their life and like, man, like I really wish I, you know, hit five more three-pointers or, you know, had 10 more strikeouts. Like no one's gonna say that, right? They're gonna say, man, I wish I was a better teammate or the memories on a positive side I do have interacted with the joy of doing something together as a group or, you know, the long bus rides or the time in the clubhouse. Like those are the things and the-

Eric Brown (29:43)
Yeah.

Nick Ahmed (29:58)
relationships that are going to carry on and matter. So in order to do that, right, you have to focus on it the present moment. So we want to teach athletes and coaches how to do that in the present moment and live with this long-term vision of success in mind and let that just infiltrate their today's.

Eric Brown (30:14)
I love that. Last question. If I'm an athlete, coach, and I've just learned the name Seven Pillar today for the first time, how do I get involved? Tell me why. Tell me why I should join up.

Nick Ahmed (30:28)
Yeah, first you can go to our website, find out more information, sevenpillar.co, social media on Instagram and X, have plenty of information there as well. And we have all kinds of ways you can work with us. We built out an app, a subscription based app where this is the thing that I'm most excited about, to be able to scale and get the information out to as many athletes and coaches as possible. We're building all these different rhythms and habits to be able to come to the app as a daily touch point, to be able to train your mind, train your identity.

and learn in all these different pillars how to be the best version of yourself as an athlete, a coach, and off the field. So we're gonna have this app out in the world very, very soon. If not, when you're hearing this, it might be live already. But that app is gonna be huge and important. We have speaking engagements, we have one-on-one coaching opportunities, we have group and team coaching. So plenty of different ways to work with us, but it's just super important to get involved and set the right foundation when you're young.

And even if you aren't young, even if you're older or professional athlete, at this point in time, it's still never too late, right, to go and set the right foundation for success in your sport and outside of it.

Michael Ahmed (31:33)
Yeah, we're doing all this again in community. We want this to be not just one individual here, one individual there. It's great to sign up, but bring other people along with you. We want this to be a movement. want teams, college, athletic departments, everybody be involved in this because again, we see this as a movement. We see this as a way to impact not only your life right now, but in the future and then generations after that.

doing community and yeah, we're excited to get rolling.

Eric Brown (31:58)
sevenpillar.co and gentlemen thanks so much for making time here and that's a wrap.

Nick Ahmed (32:05)
Thanks, Sarah.

Michael Ahmed (32:06)
Thank you.