Listener note for today. The majority of this audience are ladies, but this might be a show that you wanna bring your husband or your spouse or your partner in on. Getting on the same page with youth sports is such a vital conversation to be having in your homes. Honest conversations about the pressure, the cost, the identity stuff. It could be one of the most important conversations your family has this year.

Youth sports in America has been hijacked. What used to be kids playing in the backyard has become a $40,000,000,000 industry, and families are the ones paying. Did you know the average family now spends over $1,000 per child per year on their kid's primary sport alone, and that's up 46% in just five years. Some families are shelling out 10,000, 15,000, $25,000 a year chasing travel teams and elite programs. And for what?

For scholarships, professional contacts, the dream of going pro? My guest today is Jonathan Carone. He's the founder of Healthy Sports Parents, and he's been in youth sports for decades from division one athletics to coaching. He's gonna share some numbers with us that might make your jaw drop about the statistics of the percentage of kids that actually end up getting d one scholarships and going pro, and it might make you rethink some things. What are the actual odds of this happening for your child?

And the gap is staggering. Again, a $40,000,000,000 industry banking on us never doing the actual math. And meanwhile, who's paying the price? It's our kids. So who stole the fun, and is it possible that it could be us?

If you're a parent who wants to learn about how to navigate youth sports in a healthy way and to not lose your kid's heart in the process, this episode is for you. Alright. Welcome back. I have to be honest. I have so much to learn about this topic today, and I am thrilled that Jonathan happened to be available when I was available for us to film this conversation today.

Thanks for having me. I appreciate it.

Yeah. I'm so glad that you're here. So you are in the trenches. Will you tell us a little bit about yourself and your background and what got you into Healthy Sports Parents?

So I have a bachelor's in sport management with a minor in coaching and then a master's degree in student ministry. So when I was in school, I worked for the football team where I went to school. I worked for the athletic department as a grad assistant. When I left seminary, I was on staff at a large church in Tennessee for a little while in student ministry. So I got to see high school kids and their parents kinda walk through this, on the ministry side of it.

But then I've coached the high school baseball level as an assistant. A few years ago, we moved back to my hometown, and my high school baseball coach came out of retirement, asked me to come get involved again. I'm the PA announcer for our high school team. But where I used to coach with him, I kinda get to be in the dugout when I want to and be around those guys, kind of an off the field capacity. But then my kids are knee deep in this forge right now too.

We're third and fifth grade. And what really pushed me over the edge to start this, there's a couple stories, but the big one happened about a year ago. My daughter who was nine at the time, we had a soccer tournament. We rec soccer is the lowest level. We did an end of season tournament just to kinda cap off the season and see where we were.

And I'm standing there on the sidelines of a game, and I see a dad yelling at his daughter to the point that the daughter starts crying and leans into mom, and he's still going. And in that moment, I had sympathy for the daughter, but I had empathy for the dad. Because just looking at him, I could kinda see some of his background. I could kinda see where he's coming from. And I guarantee you that dad didn't wake up that morning saying, you know what sounds really good?

I wanna make my daughter cry today. That sounds like a ton of fun. I I guarantee you that wasn't his thought as he came to this game. And I know without some of the training and the research and the background that I have, I very well could have been that dad because in fifth grade, I had to yell at my dad on the sideline of a basketball game to have him stop yelling at me because he was yelling at me so much. I just don't think most parents have been taught better, but I think most parents wanna do better.

And there's just a gap between what we know and what we feel and what we do. So I asked a couple people about it. They said yes. I reached out to people I knew, recorded the first three episodes of the podcast, did some stuff on Instagram. It took off, and we're almost a year later, and we're here.

That's amazing. And you know what else I think that why I think your job is kinda hard and why you probably get some resistance is don't you think that, especially with parents, a lot of it is unresolved issues for them? Yes. Yeah. Would you speak to that a little bit?

So I think it comes down to like, it's a combination of a few things. The first one is youth sports shine a light on all of our deepest insecurities without us realizing it. Like, we're sitting on the sideline, all of a sudden, feelings start coming up inside of us that we didn't realize. We're still there. They remind us of when we were in fourth grade and we didn't get picked at recess and the feeling ahead there.

So we want our kid to not have to feel And it's all motivated by love. So please hear that when you hear me. It's like Yeah. All of this is motivated by wanting to love our kids and make their life as good as possible. So first off, it shines a light on our insecurities.

But the two pieces of this that I come back to over and over and over is the idea of self love and self glory, which are natural, normal feelings that all of us have. Every single person on this planet is motivated by self love and self glory in some ways. And what that means at its most basic level, self love, we want other people to like like us. Us. And self glory, we want other people to think we're competent in what we do.

And that goes back to, like, way back in history when we were worried about people coming and attacking our village. We wanted the people around us to like us and to think we're good so that they would protect us as well. So, like, these are normal natural feelings. But when we think other people will like us more because our kids are more successful or if people think we are better parents because our kid has performed well on a field, then that's where it starts getting a little toxic. And that leads you combine that with our insecurities, and you combine that with external societal pressures.

And it's just this combination of junk that no one asked for that takes good things, turns them bad, and ramps up the pressure to make us do things that we would not do in any other point in our life.

Yeah. Isn't that so true? Yeah. And so how did we get here? You know, when I was growing up, I was I was an athlete, and I remember my coach was really mad at me when he had a conversation with me when I was a sophomore.

Hey, Christy. We can try to get after a d one scholarship for you. And I was a basketball player. And I said, no. I said, no.

I actually really did not enjoy playing basketball. I felt obligated because one, my parents really liked me being good at something. Right? So I had that pressure from my parents, but also I was tall. Oh, tall people have to play basketball.

That was a math equation. The history is when I was little, my mom put me in gymnastics, and I was very athletic and talented in gymnastics, but I was towering over. I'm almost six foot tall Okay. Which is short for women's basketball, but tall, you know, very tall when you're growing up. And the coach came and and he was very kind.

He goes, you know, I normally this is not about money for me. The you know, this is my studio, but I really don't think this is the right sport for her, and she's really athletic. So the conversation kinda was like, you're wasting her talent. Like, early on, was that.

Who cares what she enjoys?

Yeah. Exactly. Yeah. So my mom was like, well, we'll try basketball. Right?

So then I was good at basketball. But, how did so here's my here's what I wanna get back to is still when I was in high school, we all played, you know, on the volleyball team, and we still had time for playing, you know, capture the flag in the yard and all of that. How do we get from multiple sports, just kids enjoying their childhood to taking out second mortgages for travel ball? Have you thought about I'm sure you have, but I would love I'm a little bit of a history geek. Like, how do we get here?

So the most basic answer to that is capitalism. Like, that, like, that that's at the core of it, that's what it is. But Well,

and no shade and no shade, but when I when I look at, like, cheer, like, competitive cheer, I am like, cha ching, cha ching, cha ching, cha ching, ching, and these parents are, like, shoveling money.

Yep.

You know, no shade if your if your daughter or son loves that. No shade at all. But, like, it feels like that. It feels like capitalism. Anyway, go on.

At its core, it is capitalism. It's capitalism using all of the dirty little tactics it can use to make money for a small group of people. And the way we got here like, let's let's let's back up. The story I often tell is I had a neighbor growing up. His name was Zach, and Zach was a year younger than me.

This is in the late nineties. I'm class of o four high school. Zach was class of o five, so that gives you the timeline here. We're in middle school, and the way Zach's birthday fell, he was a year behind the kids he was in school with on the baseball field because, he was on August birthday. So he was the oldest kid in his age group.

But going into seventh grade, he was a year behind and still on the smaller field. He hadn't played on the big field yet. So his dad, knowing that Zach was a pretty good baseball player and wanting him to have the best opportunities, wanted Zach to have a chance to play on the big field before he got to seventh grade so that he could make that seventh grade team. And he joined up AAU baseball. This was in '96, '97, maybe '98, somewhere in there.

And at the time, AAU baseball was the best kid from this town with the best kid from that town, the best like, they practiced thirty five minutes away. And it was literally the best of the best. You play tournaments. You got to, like Zach got to compete for a state championship, ended up playing for a national champ. It was the coolest thing in the world, but it was literally like Little League All Stars on steroids.

It was the best of the best. Fast forward a few years and, like, I'm pretty sure every kid on that team got a college scholarship to to some level. Couple guys even got drafted. So you have parents and and club owners saying, hey. This is the way you get to college.

This is your kids gotta do this in order to play for college. So now we're in the early two thousands and showcase ball or there's versions of this for every sport. But it starts popping up, and you have these club owners saying, hey. If you wanna go to college, this is the way to get exposure in the sport. And so the a tier that was playing it, they're they were already there.

And so b tier and below, rec leagues were still fine for them, but they wanted to be up there. They wanted to be liked. They wanted to be seen as good. And so that next level of kids started going to travel and showcase and club ball, whatever it is. Over the course of now twenty five, thirty years, you had these clubs saying, hey.

There's these parents who are willing to pay us to put their kid on a travel team. So let's make this team the national team. We'll call this one the elite team, and then we've got gold, silver, bronze, rust, like, all the way down to dirt because parents are willing to play. And so what happened over time is, initially, it was just the top level recreation kids that were leaving rec sports. But then you have the next level, and with them leaves their parents who are more often than not the better coaches, the adults who know the sport and who can coach it.

So over time, you have this vacuum of the best players are gone, so the competition at Rec League isn't there as much, But, also, the parents who can coach the sport are now gone. And now we're relying on Phil, the accountant, who's never played before but wants his son to have a good experience to try to learn this game through YouTube and be able to teach it. And it's not a great experience for a lot of people. So it's become a self fulfilling cycle of if we wanna play, we gotta do this to the point that club coaches are now coaching middle school and high school sports in a lot of places. So if you want to make the middle school or high school team, you need to be in their ecosystem, especially if you're at a large high school.

Yeah. Other thing to think about, like, if your high school has over 1,500 kids, which the average high school in America is 12 to 1,500 average public school. I know that's not this audience, but just just to give an idea. Yeah. Five to 10 kids per grade level per gender are making the are making the baseball team or making the basketball team or making the softball team.

So if your class 1,500, let's say that it's 350 kids, there's only room for 10 per gender per grade on the team. Where are the rest of the kids gonna play? So if I'm not good enough early enough, I'm not gonna get the chance to play. So all of this has come together to long windedly answer your question of pressure, capitalism, and the cost of college.

Absolutely. Yeah. And I see it. And that's where you're getting now specialization so early, and now there's even doctors that specialize in sports specialization injuries. I mean, it's just it's it's wild what's happening.

And as you know, the homeschooling audience, I feel like we kinda fall into two camps. There's we generally are a little bit we use this term called, like, we're a little bit deschooled where we kinda don't trust any system. We don't trust the government. We don't trust right? We don't trust anybody.

And so we're kinda, like, side eyeing this, but yet we have these kids that we want them to play team sports. Right? We want them to. And in a lot of states, like in my state of Colorado, we can. And then there's the camp of homeschooling parents that I've known my whole career, and that is they are homeschooling because of sports.

So we used to homeschool pre pro athletes. We had a we had a professional surfer. We had an ice skater. Who else did we have? We had a bunch of child actors because we ran a center in Los Angeles.

And these were very wealthy parents. And I remember there was this one kid, oh, a tennis kid. We didn't homeschool this kid. He went through, you know, the private school route, and the parents just paid for all of these private coaches.

Mhmm.

He ended up getting a scholarship to Stanford. And then this was just so sad. His and I remember he would come in for tutoring, you know, if his grades started to slip a little bit because it's so much time, you know, dedicated to his tennis playing. And I remember hearing he went off to Stanford and he blew his knee. Mhmm.

Scorched the gum. Yeah. And then my initial thought was his childhood. Like, his entire childhood revolved. I wanna cry for this kid actually because I then heard he went into a really deep depression.

It's like, what am I gonna do with my life?

Who am I?

Who am I? Yeah. And I know we're gonna get into a little bit of that later. Yeah. What would you say to the mom right now who just dropped $3 on something just so her kid could play?

She's not really necessarily buying into it, but she doesn't necessarily have a choice. That's the position we were in this year because my son is now in high school. So there aren't really a lot of when you get to high school, there aren't a ton of rec leagues. There aren't really a ton of club sports. We're kinda stuck playing for a high school team right now.

Or or a travel team that's costing crap ton of money. Yep.

Yeah. Or a travel team, and we're very protective of we have three other girls. We don't want their you know, our son's one sport to dominate their lives and their childhood and drag them. Right? I think there's even a term for them like gym rat kids or something where it's like

Sideline siblings.

Yes. Sideline siblings. Yeah. So anyway, I just threw a lot out at you right now, but I'm just I'm just eating up everything that you're saying because these are such important conversations. So what would you say to a mom like me or a mom who I have to drop $3, Christy.

Otherwise, my kid can't play anything.

I would start with asking the question why.

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Why are you doing this? Is it because like, that's the why am I doing this is the foundational question because you gotta ask yourself, is it because it's what my kid wants, or is it because it's what I think my kid needs in order to keep up? Yeah. Because what's happening is or is it or let's go deeper. Is it because I want my kid to be something, so I'm going to push them in that?

Screw it if they're not if they Christy, you're a basketball player because you're tall. No one did anyone ever stop to ask, hey, Christy. Do you enjoy playing this game? Never. Do you wanna practice five days a week?

Like so there there's a piece of this that we gotta ask, like, why are we doing this? What is the motivation behind this? Okay. You see some potential in your kid, but is is it what they want? Yeah.

Like, are you are you are you assuming that they want to because they're good at it? I I see so many kids all the time because they're good at something, their parents push, push, push, and it's like, I'm good at it, but I actually think I'm best at soccer, but I actually enjoy basketball more. But they end up quitting basketball because to go all in on soccer because that's what they're best at, but it wasn't what they want. So I would first ask why. And then that why question is going to help you determine, like, what you should be doing.

Because if the kid just wants to play for the heck of it and play with their friends, go find, like, find a low pressure way to do that. I I had a friend of mine. Her son's in eighth grade this year. He's a every sport kid, and baseball's always been his main sport. But sixth grade, seventh grade, pressure got ramped up a little bit.

They, the boys that he was friends with just wanted to play one more summer before it got serious in high school. So they grabbed 10 kids together. Like, the boys picked their team. They went to their dads and said, hey. Can we do this?

And they just went out and played a summer of they they played travel ball, but they pick and chose their turn pick and chose their tournaments. They didn't really practice much. They didn't they put no pressure on themselves. They just went out and had fun for a summer because that's what the boys wanted to do. And in most systems in sports, you can probably do a version of that if you really want to.

It's there. I I I have a video popping off right now on social about how teenagers don't have recreation options. And Yeah. That's one that's one of the bigger issues. Like, I wish we had more rec leagues for teenagers.

I think we need more rec leagues for teenagers. The reality is we don't in a lot of places. Mhmm. So there's not a I hate to say this. There's not a great solution for parents of teenagers

Yeah.

At the rec league level. Intramurals in public schools have all but died, so there's not the intramural option there. So many of the travel teams are dominated by school teams. So for listeners here who are homeschool families, in terms of team sports, you all have it so much harder. What we see more often than not in the homeschool space is its individual sports.

It's tennis. It's BMX. It's Golf. Golf, gymnastics. It's it's the individual sports.

Yes.

The teams like, in North Carolina, homeschool kids can't play with the public school. It's it's against our regulations. The team sport aspect for homeschool families is really, really hard, and I don't have a great solution for it. Yeah. I just wanna acknowledge that because I I'm empathetic too.

It's like that that should that that it's sad. Like, you know, there there there are consequences with every choice. Yes. Natural consequences by no fault of anyone. One of the natural consequences of homeschool is team sports is go are going to be a little harder, especially as your kid gets older, which is super unfortunate.

Yeah. Yeah. And, you know, I remember some words of wisdom. A friend of ours, he wasn't even a a homeschool dad, just a really well respected guy in our community. I'll never forget.

We went out to dinner with him and his wife, and he had teenagers at the time. And our kids were still little, and he was talking about his, like, philosophy of sports. And he goes, you know what? I realized, like, our kids have an entire life to live. He goes, sports is really only tricky.

Really, if you think about it. When you get right down to it, it's really only tricky for the four years of high school. Like, once they turn I mean, in terms of his world and his perspective.

But That's that's dropping the middle school a little bit too, unfortunately. It's it's dropping down to seventh. But seventh, I'll take what he said. I'll I'll agree with it and expand it down to seventh grade.

Yeah. And then but this was his point. He goes, what what I wish someone told me earlier, and I would it would save me a lot of stress. He goes, once my kids turn 18, the world is open to them with adult leagues. They can do anything.

They can do pickleball. They can do basketball. They can do it all once they turn 18. And that was just something a little nugget that I remembered along the way. I wanna talk to you about an issue that I am seeing that is really frightening to me, and this is a proper philosophy around winning and losing.

So I witnessed in just this past season, and I don't care if the dads are listening because maybe they should be listening, but I bet you they're probably not listening. But just in the last six months, three of our dads, our dads on our Christian high school basketball team get kicked out of the game by a ref. And I was so embarrassed. I was so incredibly embarrassed. And what startled me afterwards is the blindness and the self justification of themselves when they were getting kicked out.

And I know people need to protect their egos and stuff like that, but it is literally just and they got kicked out because they were yelling at players on the opposing team. They were yelling at their own kid. Pass that. Shoot that. Why didn't you see the lane?

And they were also yelling at every single one of the refs call that wasn't in their favor. And I'm just sitting here observing this going, what in the world did I get into? Like, what what is this? It's a really cool experience for my son because we are having such great conversations mid you know, between practices and games. Like, I actually I I'm loving this for him.

I'm loving this for our family, but yet I'm my heart is broken for these men and their their the prison that they are in because of unresolved issues in their own lives, but also aren't they damaging, like, their future relationship with their kid? Can you talk a little bit about that?

Yeah. And I I will expand at the moms too because we've unfortunately had a couple experiences with some moms who took it way too far on that end in the spectrum as well. So it is predominantly a male thing, but it's it's a human thing more than anything. And I'll save there there is a faith based critique of that that actually so

I have can we? Oh, go there. Go there.

Okay. So so I have I have a bachelor's in sport management from Liberty University.

Okay.

So conservative Christian university. So hear me when I come that is my background. There is a correlation between a faith that says you have to earn things that no one's good, and you have to show yourself by being good enough in terms of following certain rules based on your salvation, and that virtue is tied to rule following. That mindset can seep into sports as well. If you are not playing thing if you're not doing it correctly, you are not as good.

It is it's not it's not a one to one correlation, but it's a mindset that says if you're not acting, being, doing a certain way, you are not as good here. So that thought process goes, if you're not acting, being, doing a certain way over here, you are also not as good. So the way you show it is by performatively playing and having success on the field. So that's the high level version of that from a faith based standpoint. But you talk about winning.

And so many people, especially adults, they they say that winning is everything and nothing else matters. Or if you're not first, you're last, if you wanna go Ricky Bobby. But there have been multiple studies. The foundational one is called the fun map study by Amanda doctor Amanda Visick. It was done in 2015.

She's repeated it multiple times across multiple sports from ages six to 17 at the recreation level all the way to the competitive level. So the entire span. And her goal was to find out what makes sports fun for kids. Of the 82 things that they categorized, winning never ranked above 40 for kids in terms of what makes sports fun. The biggest things that make sports fun are playing with their friends, competing, not not winning, competing Mhmm.

Learning new skills, and having adult super adult influence, so parents and coaches who support them when they try new things and fail. Ugh. Those four things are what makes sports fun. It is not winning. Additionally, winning is an outcome, and outcomes are not in your control.

Yes. You cannot control if you win or lose, especially in sport. You can't control if you get the job. You could be the best applicant, but Susie in HR knows Timmy's grandma, and so she wants to hire Timmy. It's no fault.

You could have done everything right and still lost the job or lost the game. Yeah. So Nick Saban says that outcomes are a distraction.

It's so true.

And so what we know to be true is that kids enjoy the process more than the outcome. Now hear me when I say this because the the biggest pushback is, well, my kids never cried when they won a game. They only cry when they lose a game. I'm like, okay. That's an emotional reaction to an outcome.

Mhmm. But once they go get their slushie from the concession stand and they run around with their friends again, they're enjoying the process again. So we can let our kids have emotional experiences through outcomes while also separating the outcome from the overall experience. Because the reason we play on the playground, we want to win. We try to win, but do we quit if we lose, or do we go try again and keep playing because we enjoy playing?

And the healthiest kids are the ones who understand the process of I'm going to try my best. I'm going to try to win. But at the end of the day, winning does not define who I am.

Right. I'm loved no matter what. It doesn't matter. And and, you know, do you think that part of that too is because the a certain kid's parent cares so much about winning, they want to please their parent as well? That

that's absolutely a lane of this. If mom and dad always talk about winning, if they're always asking, is your first question, did you win today, or is your first question, how'd you not not did you have fun. How did you play? Are you more concerned about the result or the effort that went into it? So that's one side of it.

But there is a type of kid who, because of their emotional immaturity, because they're kids

Mhmm.

They focus on the results so much because that that in their immature, that's not a negative. That's just a Yeah. A descriptor, immature adolescent brain, they equate performance to winning Yes. And acceptance to winning. In those cases, it's up to us as parents to say, like, hey.

Hey, buddy. Like, no. You you did your best out there. You did x, y, and z really, really good. This happened.

That was out of your control. So I am so proud of you for the effort that you put in, and they're not gonna get it the first time. They're not gonna get it the tenth time. But if we can reinforce that over their elementary ages, then as they grow and develop and mature into middle school and high school, they'll start to learn that, oh, maybe, like okay. And maybe it's not so much about the result.

And, like, we're happy when we're winning when we're winning. That's great. My pastor, his daughter's a division two basketball player. He said that when she was younger, he had a dad tell him, like, you need to take your kid to get ice cream even when she loses, even when she plays bad. Mhmm.

That she doesn't equate the only thing we celebrate is the winning and losing.

Right.

And so that that way that the kid knows I am loved no matter what. My performance does not impact my parents' love. And what I want you all to hear from me is that none of this is intentional. Yeah. None of us would say we love our kid more or less when they win or when they lose.

But our actions to adolescent brains who have not been fully formed, who are still emotionally immature, they we're their heroes, guys. Mhmm. We we like, these little kids look up to us, and they see us only as these good things. So the little actions we do have so much more impact than we realize. So we may not be intentionally doing it, but we're we're sending a message that they're receiving.

And what I'll last thing I'll say on this before I let you go somewhere else. Our brains need to hear a positive thing five to 10 times to make up for a single negative thing.

Mhmm.

Christy, if after this conversation we've had a great forty minutes even before we started talking. We've been talking back and forth. I've been smiling a lot. You've been smiling a lot. But if I say one thing about your appearance right now or one thing about the way your voice sounds, you're gonna be thinking about it all day.

Mhmm. And we just met. We don't know each other.

Yeah.

So think about it in the weight of your kids. Yeah. If you're critiquing or criticizing their play without being obnoxiously positive in the opposite direction, what do you think they're gonna be thinking about in terms of how you view them?

Right. Well and I think that, you know, children are naturally wired for you know, seven we have seventy years of research in child development and psychology that supports what scripture says in the bible is that our kids need a healthy attachment to us. They need an unconditional love because, ultimately, how we love them is how they will eventually, like, view god the father. Right? And things that we tell them end up being voices in their own head.

I I have a phrase that I say that, when I'm in when I'm speaking in faith spaces, it says that for dads, the way your kid views you is their default for how they're going to view god the father. Yes. For moms, the way your kid views you, that's often how they view Jesus. Yes. So there's there's not a ton of science to back that up.

That's purely conjecture and, like, anecdotal over my experience and talking with a lot of other people in the faith space. Yeah. But it tracks. God the father, usually dad, Jesus, mom.

So how you goes, I mean, even on a in a secular sense, it goes to, like, trauma and how we digest that trauma in our adult years. Now here's something that I think I don't think any parent listening, if we say, like, oh, you know, we're talking to overbearing sports parents, or we're talking to parents who criticize their kids from the field. We're talking to kids who parents who they all they want is their kid to have a d one scholarship, and it's that or nothing. I would think that most parents listening today would not categorize themselves as that. Correct.

And I love one thing that I love that that I noticed right away when I got on your socials, that's why I had my assistant, like, reach out to you right away, is how grace filled you are. Because, ultimately, we need to heal ourselves so that we can be the parents that we wanna be. Right? That's what this whole story is about, whether you're faith based or not. So I I wanna

talk human. No matter Yeah. Just a human going through life.

And I wanna talk about this one story because it's this one this one kid on a football team that my my son played on for many, many years. It was like the team was all together. It was it was great. It was one of those I nine leagues, so it was not really competitive. And the coach was healthy, and it was everything was just so fun.

But one of the kids on the team, he was whenever he did something great on the field, the dad would say, good job. Now do it again. Good job. Now do it again. Now I bet you the story he's telling himself in his head is that he's an encouraging father.

K? Right? Now secondary, that same child who no way was the best kid on the team, not even in the top five, honestly. When it came to vote for MVP, it broke my heart. He voted for himself.

And to me, I'm gonna cry even saying this, it just spoke to the approval he needed from his dad. And it it was heartbreaking that that title mattered so much that that's what what he was gonna be praised for at home. And so how do you how do you get through to parents where it's subtle? Sometimes it's very subtle. You know, we can talk about those parents that get kicked out of the games all day long, but, really, I think the majority of parents really do think they're being encouraging.

They just want their kid to be a better player. All I care about is your effort, which actually that's praising an outcome too because now the kid is always expecting a 100 a 100% effort. Right? You have to be careful with that phrase even. What's going through your mind right now when I'm sharing this, in terms of the parent who might not consider themselves in this category of, like, an overbearing sports parent?

I think the phrase to answer that question directly is this is so freaking hard.

I know. Right?

Like, I I Yeah. Because every everything we do has the potential to have a negative side behind it. Yeah. Like, even, like, even the let's take it the whole opposite end of the spectrum, the just have fun whoop dee woo parent.

Right. Yeah.

There are downsides with that too. We want our kids to learn how to compete. We want them to care. So what what talk about is we are living in attention. On one end of this pendulum or one end on on this pull is the overbearing, too hard, comp overly competitive results are what matter, blah blah blah blah blah.

On the other end is that just have fun whoop dewoo parent who competition doesn't matter. We're just out here to have fun. We wanna run around. We wanna be with our friends. We wanna smile.

We wanna like, of those things in the extremes are bad. Yes. And chances are, as as humans, we're going to naturally lean one of those two directions more than the other. Yeah. So we're always going to be drifting to one side of the and so if our if naturally we are the competitive parent, but we're trying to do better, we're gonna drift too far towards that that whoop dewoo side and have to come back to the middle.

So, like, what I tell people is most of us are getting this wrong most of the time. Yeah. And that's okay. Yeah. Just like the results and the performance are not what is important with the kids, are we trying to do better?

Are we being self aware enough to say, you know what? Like, I didn't mean anything negative by that's great. Now do it again. Like, I'm not trying to tell my kid that nothing's ever good enough. Like, I I want him I want him to have the confidence that he did well that time and go do it, like, so he knows he can do it again.

That's my intention. Yeah. But crap. I'm telling him he's never good enough. Yeah.

So, like, can I be self aware enough to guys, I'll I'll be the first to admit, I get this wrong with my kids too?

Mhmm.

Like, there are times I've had to apologize to my kids, like, I'm coaching them or when I've been a parent on the sideline. Like so I I use this story as an example. My couple years ago, I was not coaching my daughter's team. I was coaching my son's team, and they're both soccer players. Olivia has asked that I not yell out to her during the game.

Like, she doesn't she doesn't want any tit which I I don't think parents should be coaching on the sidelines anyways, but, like, she doesn't really want me saying anything. Even, like, the congratulatory stuff, she she doesn't want me saying a ton on the sidelines. We had a game where I was coaching my son who was younger. Kids need a little more direction. I had just come from his game.

Me and my son sprinted down the street to my daughter's game. So I get on the field on the sidelines. I'm still in coach mode. And couple times in the first half, I yell out a couple things because that's what I would have done with my team to help my younger kids, and she gives me a look. And I'm like, god.

You did it. And so, like, I had to tell her in the cards, hey. Hey, Kayla. Like, sorry. I know we've talked about this.

I was still, like, I was still in coach mode. That does not excuse it. That make it okay. I just hadn't flipped the gear yet. I'm sorry about that.

She forgave me right away. That example of showing our kids, hey. We're human too. We can get this wrong. But you know what I'm gonna do?

I'm gonna model emotional maturity. Yeah. And I'm going to apologize to you even though you're my kid to show you that you you matter like, your request matters to me. And I got it wrong. I'm gonna get it wrong.

But when I get it wrong, I'm going to apologize for you. I'm gonna ask for forgiveness.

Mhmm.

And we're never gonna get it right a 100% of the time, but can we also model to our kids how to respond when we get it wrong? Every kid will play their last game at some point. 70% of kids, it's by the time they're 13. 98% of kids, it's by the time they're 18. After that, if we are lucky, we still get to be their parent for another forty years.

So the way we model our relationship in this five years old to 18 year old span is going to be the foundation for the next forty years once they're done playing. So even if we get it wrong, imagine if our relationship with our kid is based on this trust and this forgiveness and this

Yeah.

Always taking ownership for what we do. I want my kid to do that in their life. So if I model that to them, then maybe we're creating great humans and not just great athletes.

Yeah. Well and, you know, this is you know, my show is all about game changing ideas and how that impacts our everyday lives. And one, hearing you talk about that tension, I wrote it down even. We all live in this tension with youth sports because you're right. If we are, like, too permissive, too, it's all about the fun.

What if you have a kid that loves competition? What if you have a kid that loves to learn and grow and challenge themselves? Then you're not giving your

kid a teammates good who wanna compete, but you're not there? Are you being a good teammate?

Right. Exactly. And so one thing that I found very freeing, and this is just good in psychology anyway, is once you can name something, then you can really start to it's like freedom. Right? But I think that when you said there's just no way about it, we live in attention.

We are always with sports. I found that so freeing, Jonathan. Like and I'm gonna have a conversation with my son after this. Like, you know what? As long as we play sports, we're gonna be living in this tension.

And we just gotta keep having conversations about how we're all feeling about this tension. And I think checking in with our kids, and you can check-in with even young kids in in speaking a language that they can understand about how they're feeling about our conversations around the sports, the the coaches that they're having, and things like that. So I find that really, really powerful. I have to go into the next topic today because this is what stopped me in my tracks, your the social media post. I wouldn't be it probably was one of those that went viral because it was the the post with all of those dots.

And I ran, and I said, Lincoln, you have to see this. And and I showed this to him. I showed him again. I like we I most of the views are probably from me because it was, like, on repeat to the whole family. But what a powerful post.

It's about the percentage of parents who think their kids are going pro to the actual statistic. And to me, what's really great about that is it's giving parents permission to question their investment of time, money, effort, and am I investing in the right things? Does this align with my family's priorities and the likelihood for my child's future? And it really hit home because Lincoln, when he started doing development with this particular high school team over the summer, he came home the very first day. He goes, oh, yeah.

This kid, this kid, this kid, and this kid, they're they're getting d one scholarships. These kids are in seventh and eighth grade. So he even the the even the language around these particular kids, they literally think they're getting d one scholarships. What are the actual percentages? I cannot wait to hear you say it on my show.

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So this comes from a survey from BSN Sports and Talker Research. The actual answer that 17% of the parents answered was, my child was meant to be a pro one day. So that that was the actual the of the multiple choice answers, that's what they asked. And these numbers are a little skewed. I will admit that because it's based off of NCAA data and sports that the NCAA sponsors.

Because that when I talk about pros, it's what the NCAA sponsors. So what we know is that seventy percent of kids quit their sport by the time they're 13. So let's let's take a picture. We got a 100 elementary school age kids on a soccer field standing side by side. By the time they turn 13, seventy of those are gone.

So that's seventh grade. By senior year of high school, if all 30 of those keep playing, which we know they will not continue playing, 6% of high school varsity athletes will play in college at any level. That's division one, division two, division three, NAIA, NCCAA, and junior college, any level. Two and a half percent will go division one. So of the 100 elementary aged kids that we lined up on that field, two of them are going to play in college, and half of one of them will get scholarship money to play.

So that's what that is.

Well and, also, I once did the research on what the actual scholarship money is, and I think it's only around $5 a year. It's not even, like, full rides. Right?

So there's a ton that's changing right now. In the past, in the current system we're under, only, like, four or five division one sports were full scholarships. The rest of them were partial. So, like, let's say baseball. You can have 35 kids on a team, but you only have 12.8 scholarships or 11.8 scholarships.

So you're not getting a full ride from athletics. It was like basketball, football, volleyball, and tennis, I think. There there may be one other that were full scholarships, but most sports are partial scholarships. Also, scholarships are one year contracts.

Mhmm.

So if you get there and you don't play well, the coaches can take away the scholarship. What is changing at the division one level is they're moving from scholarship limits to roster limits. So if a college has enough money to pay for this and can fund it, then every kid on the team can have a full scholarship. That's not gonna be every school, and that's only at the division one level. Division two can offer about half athletic money.

The rest has to be academic. Division three is only academic. They're not allowed to to offer athletic money. NIL, I know is the big thing that people are talking about now, but like, oh, you don't even have to go pro to make a bunch of money. Sixty seven percent of college athletes this year make less than $10,000 in NIL money.

Only 2% will make more than $50,000, and that's usually your football and basketball. It's occasionally some of the other sports if you're the best of the best of the best. One example I will give you is in your home state in Colorado, there was a soccer program that did an end of the year celebration with their seniors. And they put this out on the Internet that they had x amount of kids get y amount of scholarship money. When you do the math, those kids got on average a one year scholarship of $11,000 towards school.

Great. Sounds awesome, doesn't it? If you go to that club's website, their club fees for the top level are $8,500 a year, and they say that families should expect to spend a thousand dollars per national trip weekend. And there's, like, eight of them per the year. So families are likely spending 15 to $20,000 every year, and they've probably been playing at that level for three to five years.

So these families have put in 60 to $70,000 in these travel sports to get on average an $11,000 scholarship. That will change with the new. It'll be a full it'll be a full ride under the new rules. You're spending a crap ton of money on the chance of getting something that if you get hurt, sorry. Your money like and so the goal cannot be the financial aid.

Right.

If it's the scholarship and getting into a college that maybe you wouldn't have gotten into. Like, I've talked to people who they would not have qualified for this great school on their own if they didn't if they weren't an athlete. Mhmm. That's worth it for the academics. But just know you still may have to pay for it.

Your kids still might have to get student loans. And so, like, there's this tension that there's this idea that if I get the scholarship, it's all gonna be taken care of. It's getting better on that front, and, hopefully, more kids will have more financial aid in the future. But the flip side is there's gonna be less roster spots.

And and I know right now. And the other thing I know, because I've been in these conversations, is when these sports cost so much, you better believe parents are telling their kids, we spent all this money. Yes. You know? This cost so much, and the kid feels that pressure to perform to keep this going because the parents have invested so much.

I really think it's too much. Now if you listen to my podcast or anybody reads my book, homeschooling in in the way we do it, though in Christie faith land, is not about sheltering kids. Right? We but we also don't well, we believe in more of a greenhousing, where, you know, we don't want to it it's damaging for kids when you put too much pressure on them that they really developmentally are not ready to handle, cannot handle that type of pressure. You know, that's why they talk about you cannot parentify your children.

It's not a healthy thing for them. And I think that kids are feeling financial pressure regarding their sports really early because parents are talking about it, and they're making incredible sacrifices.

If we're oh, here here's what I'll say with that. Like, more often than not, parents are signing their kids up for travel ball in these expensive clubs before their kids are ready because they want them to be a part of something or they're afraid they're not gonna make the high school team or whatever it is. Yes. And then they say, well, we're spending all this money. My kid's not putting in the effort.

Kids should put in the effort, and then we reward that effort by going to the next level of of play. If they're not already asking to do the extra work at home, they're not ready to move past rec league. If they're not in the garage kicking the soccer ball against the wall and doing touches on their own in the backyard, they're not ready for private lessons. Like, I'm a giant believer that kids have to have a stake in this. Yeah.

If they don't have a stake and we're just spending all this money, then we're not teaching them anything. But if they have done something to earn the like, let's say the the club is a thousand dollars a year, whereas rec league is a $150 a year. What are they going to do to earn the extra $800 it costs?

I think that's such a good point that that you're making. Like, the the child has to show interest and and a desire to you know, we have we live on a cul de sac, and all the kids play. And I'm in Colorado. It's a big sports state. Every single one of these parents are sports parents.

They are never home on the weekends. I kinda like it. It's it makes for a quiet cul de sac. But I remember the kids were playing a big neighborhood game in the cul de sac, and one of my daughters is a pretty fast runner. And one of the dads who played college soccer said, you're a fast runner.

You should be running track. Right? And she came in, and she said, mom, don't make me run track. I just wanna run. Like, I it'll take the fun out if you make me run track.

Like, she was kind of in a in a panic. Like and so I also wanna wanna say the message that we have to remember that really highly competitive sports, if we're not careful, it can take the fun out of it, especially if you're a performance oriented. It takes all of the fun out of it. This is from a recovering perfectionist speaking from for myself here.

So the Aspen Institute, they do, something called project play every year, and they just released it. And there's a really interesting piece of this out that says that they study, like, how what percentage of kids are getting their primary sport are doing more play based in that sport versus training based.

Right.

And 46% of boys and 35% of girls regularly participate in their primary sport through play. That means that 54% of boys and 65% of girls are getting the most of their time in their sport through a formalized training. And, like, it like, if we go age based, it's 55% of kids six to twelve, and sixty three percent of kids thirteen to eighteen are getting their sport primarily through structured, formalized training. So kids aren't playing. But to your daughter's point

Yeah.

Kids are healthier when they play. And Yes. There's research that's showing us that these overuse injuries are coming because kids are doing too much structured training and not enough unstructured play.

Yeah. What would you say to the parent right now who has a really talented athlete? Like, you know, star high school player who just thinks they're the exception, that their kid really will get the scholarship, and we have to do this because he god gave him this talent or gave her this talent. We would be wasting it if we didn't aggressively pursue this. What would you say to a parent like that to, free them maybe?

There was a study that came out December 18. So I'm not sure when this episode's coming out, but literally this week, yesterday as we're recording, called most top achieving adults weren't elite specialists in childhood. And they looked at 30,000 people who ended up becoming elite adults, Olympic athletes, world class musicians, top chess players, and even some Nobel Prize winners. The research wanted to find out how many of these people were actually elite when they were kids. The answer, only 10% of the adults who reached the highest levels of their fields were standouts as kids.

And at the same time, most kids who were elite at young ages didn't end up staying at that level as they grew up. What separated the people who eventually made it to high levels was time. Time to grow. Like, time to grow, time to figure things out. So, okay, let's say your kid has some potential.

They're showing some stuff at these young ages. If they burn out, it doesn't matter how good they are because they're done.

Yeah.

If they get hurt, it doesn't matter how good they were because they may never be the same again. So a slow and steady pace. I I, interviewed, Stacy. I know her as coach Noovie, but she was one of the best softball players of all time. She played at UCLA.

She's the head coach at San Diego State. She's been, like, a two or three time Olympian. So, like, best of the best of the best is coach Noovie. She told me in the interview, if you have a kid that's supposed to get there, they're gonna get there. Like, if you have a kid who has the genetics, who has the drive, they're gonna get there.

So let's take a step back, dial the pressure down, and try to enjoy this a little bit because, I mean, the dirty side of this that we don't like to admit is if they don't have the genetics, it doesn't matter how hard they work.

It's true. Yeah.

If you're if you're five foot four, I'm sorry. You're probably not playing division one basketball.

Mhmm.

It's it's just the reality of the situation. Know, well, Spud Webb did it and Muggsy Bogues did it. That's called survivorship bias. You need to Google it. Survivorship bias is a real thing.

And so that that's one of the pieces of this whole conversation that we probably don't have time to get to is Yeah. The survivorship bias around youth sports. Well, we can point to x, y, and z who did it because we didn't see a through x that failed miserably, and they now have a kid with a terrible relationship with them or a kid with a terrible mental health state or a kid who got hurt or whatever it is. We don't see those stories. Mm-mm.

We see the results of the few that actually get there. So the survivorship bias in all of this is a huge piece of the toxicity.

Yes. Yeah. And there's a couple more things. I we're running low on time. You're I'm definitely gonna have you back because I feel like we could talk about this forever, and it's such an important conversation to have, especially for homeschooling parents where we are really mindful about we generally are a population that believes in preserving the wonder of childhood.

We tend to be a little bit more careful about what we kind of have our kids do and who they hang around and things like that. So here's the one thing though that I think is a benefit to homeschooling parents that I know that you can speak to. Because I have a friend whose daughter plays softball on a travel team or did. She went through a pretty gnarly divorce. She can't afford to have her daughter play that ball again.

And it has cost her daughter socially because her entire childhood was this one softball team. And she's just really grieving for her daughter who's had to kind of put together a new friend landscape because she's not and she's having incredible FOMO because she sees these friends at school. They went to this. They went to that. To which I would say because this happens a lot with homeschooling.

When a mom and a and a dad or a family, when they decide to homeschool their kids, I always tell moms, prepare yourself for your friendship landscape to change. Not everyone's gonna be able to handle the fact that you're doing this now. They're gonna have strong opinions about it, or they might if they're unhealthy, they might view it as you judging them in some way even though you're not. You're just doing what's best for your family. And I always say, your friends are on the other side.

But I think that when we overspecialize and have our entire social lives around one thing and we don't leverage our relationships, it adds a layer that we can maybe try to avoid where, like, hey. So say your kid is really talented, and I would love your thoughts on this, but here's where I'm going with it. Say your kid really is talented, make sure that team is not their only friends. Make sure they have the youth group. They have the this.

They have friends that, you know, they go to chess club. Well, one of my daughters is really into chess. I don't want all of her friends to be the chess friends. Right? So leveraging them so that when you do have to say goodbye to something, it's not devastating.

Right? Have you seen this before where it's not just leaving a sport, it's leaving an entire and even for the parents. It's their friends too. Right?

So I think for your guests or for your listeners, that's an even bigger deal. Yeah. Because we spend so much time at these games and these practices that the people on the sidelines can become our best friends. Yeah. So what happens let let's go the positive route.

Yeah. What happens when our kid chooses they've gotten to the end of their journey? This isn't as fun anymore. I don't love this enough to put in the work that I've been wanting to put in that it's gonna require to keep going. I wanna go find my next thing.

That sounds like a great idea for kids. Like, that's what we want. Like, for them to be self aware. But when we hear that as like, I'm gonna lose my friends. I'm not gonna get to see them.

Or when my kids like, I wanna change teams. I'm not like, maybe this level of of program is too hard for me. I'm not getting enough playing time. I wanna keep playing, but let can I drop down a level so I can get more playing time? Well, then you lose your status as a parent because your kid's not on the elite team anymore.

Mhmm. And you don't get to be around your your friends anymore. What happens then? So, like, yes. Yes.

This is a kid issue. Like, I fully acknowledge that. But I think for parents, it's a bigger issue than we realize it is. Yeah. And it's it's an issue in a way that sneaks up on us and we are all biased.

We all have our issues that we talk about and that we think through and that inform our decision making and all. I just want you to list as as mom and dad, like, I want you to try to have some friends outside of these sports as well. And I recognize how hard that is because of how much time you're spending on these on these sidelines, but your identity can't be in your kid's team either. You you can't see yourself as a softball mom or a tennis mom or a tennis hockey dad or whatever it is. Like Yeah.

That's not what you are. And so that's not what you asked, but that's where I felt like I I probably needed to go because

What? I did we should we end with identity? Should we end with that?

Let's let's do it.

Let's do it. Yeah. Because I this is a huge one for me. It's actually been, in becoming Christie Faith and being really successful, I just did a six part series, like a vulnerability series where, like, this this this kind of I didn't pursue, you know, this. I Samesies.

Yeah. I popped off on social media. Nine months later, I had a book deal. All of a sudden, I'm a thought leader in this space. And, you know,

they're you so much right now. I've been trying to get the book off this off the thing for, like, six months, and I can't get an email back.

Okay. Okay.

In fact, you got it in nine months, I hate you so much.

No. No. We'll talk about this after. When we stop recording, I'll talk about, like okay. But can we first talk about identity?

Because if we are not careful, we we gravitate towards we we humans search to find their identity in something. Right? Mhmm. And there's I've even heard this thing where gold medal athletes, they fall into a depression after. Is that true?

That that actually happens? Yeah.

Okay. High not not even just gold. High level athletes at whatever level it is.

Yeah.

So it can be a it can be a varsity baseball player who graduates and doesn't know who they are as a freshman because they've only been a baseball player for the last eight years.

Yes. Well and I know it's not just athletics. It's really any type of vocation when you kinda, like, reach a pinnacle of some sort or you get a certain level of success.

Let's let's change our terms a little bit.

K.

Let's change to tribe. When we identify with a tribe and then that tribe is no longer with us, we feel lonely and isolated.

Mhmm.

So we see that in faith. We see that in youth sports. We see that in politics. We like, when I have identified with this thing, whether it's a voting block, whether it's a denomination, whether it's a youth sports sport or team, and that changes, I no longer have my tribe. Mhmm.

So on the like, that's the surface level. Like, I no longer have the people I identified with. You nailed down one deeper because I identified as a Baptist. I identified as a Republican. I identified as a homeschool mom.

Mhmm. I identified as whatever it is. You see yourself as that thing. So when the thing goes away, you don't necessarily know who you are anymore, and you don't know your not only do you not know your place, but you don't also know where you belong or who you are. Yeah.

And when you start asking those levels of questions, that's a quick way to spiral into some mental health issues. Mhmm. Spoken to someone who's been there multiple times. Mhmm.

Oh, yeah. A thousand percent. You know? And especially for those of us who make like you like you and me where we make social media, like, don't even look at how well my posts are doing. I can't.

Like, I

You're better than me.

It's it's really hard to not be wrapping our identity around something. So why is that why is that empty? I'm sure you've parked there.

Trying to decide how which direction of the of the lanes in front of me do I do I take that answer. It's empty because we will never find fulfillment in things we do

Yes.

If we are not confident in who we are. And if you have a faith background, you go to the idea of I am loved by God no matter what. I am a child of God. Nothing I can do can separate me from the love of Jesus. Boom.

Boom. Boom. Boom. If that if that's your faith background as as a Christian. Secular background.

I'm a human being. I'm deserving of love, grace, and acceptance just for being a human being. I am a human being who I enjoy these things, but these things are not who I am. I am worth it outside of those. And this can feel like Manby pamby, like, affirmation garbage that it's like that people take it too far and make it too whoop dewoo.

But, like, you can take that too far. But at a core level, the reason people take those too far is because they're true. Again, it's too much of a good thing at times. But we are humans who are worthy of love

Yes.

Based off of who we are. We are worthy of grace based off of who we are. Yeah. We are worthy of acceptance based off of who we are as humans, not out of performance, not out of tribe, not out of anything else. But first and foremost, we are human beings, and that's enough.

Mhmm.

It takes work to get there. It takes constant work to stay there.

Mhmm.

But that's where our identity comes from. And as parents, let's let's take it to the sports conversation for just a second. You are not a basketball mom. You are not a football dad. You are a human being Mhmm.

Who loves a child who enjoys playing basketball.

I love that reframe.

Like, it's it's simple, but it's it's one of those things that, like, it's a one degree shift

Yes.

That on the surface doesn't seem like much. But if we take it down the road

Yes.

We get to completely different places not too long from now.

Right. Well and to me, that's a helpful tool with this big idea. To me, this is the big idea of the show is that tension. That tension. Because that will be a guiding light in navigating this tension.

But you know what? This is so huge because I think ultimately and, you know, I I think that I have you know, because I I am what I am and I overthink everything, you know, I can easily fall into, like, judgmentalism of, like, the dads are yelling at the refs and things like that. And I've been convicted myself, like, wait. What what's going on with you, Christy, that you're so upset at that one dad? Like, you know, he's just not getting it.

Like, a lot of pride there. Ultimately, what I think that what we all struggle with in different ways, and I think it rears its ugly head depending on our own stuff going on, is what you said, worthiness. Are we worthy? Let's make sure even with with when we struggle ourselves with feeling worthy, there are things we can do so that our kids don't struggle with that like we do. And even, you know, this is your first day today just like it's, you know, it's my first day being my age today talking with you.

It's my kid's first day being 14.

Time parenting 10 year old Olivia. I've never had a chance to do that. And, Liv, you've never had a chance to be 10 year old Olivia before either.

Right. Yeah. I actually told my son that the other day.

I say that all the time to my kids.

Yeah. When we were navigating something really difficult with basketball, I said, you know, Lincoln, I gotta tell you, like, I'm really struggling with this. I've never parented a 14 year old boy in a school sport before. Like, so let's just take a step back and, you know, and that whole tension. What I wanted to do that we don't have time for today, so I'm definitely inviting you back, is I would I wanted to hear, like, some scripts of what, you know, what we can say in the car afterwards.

Maybe, like, a little bit of say this, not that. Could you off the

top of head? There's only three things you you should say in the car after a game.

Okay. What should we say in the car after a game? That's a perfect place to end.

I loved watching you play. What do you wanna listen to, and where do you wanna eat?

I love

Those were the only three things you should ever say after the game. If your kid wants to talk about their game, they will bring it up. But unsolicited feedback in the car ride home is the worst thing you can do for your kid in the moment.

Thank you for that. I think that's gonna be a gift to so many people. But, I know that you are there's a way that we can help you because you wanna write a book, and I think you have it written already. Right? But what did the publisher do?

Chapters written.

Okay. So how could we help you?

But a publisher at a place that you know very well told me that they love the fact that I've got all these followers, but until I can show that the followers will be customers, they can't take the risk on the book. So I've started selling merch for that reason. I've got T shirts. They raise good teammates. Those are the most popular.

Got T shirt, hoodie, hat with those. Literally, the reason I'm selling it is priced as cheap as humanly possible, but I wanna be able to go to the publisher and say, hey. I've I've turned this many people into customers. I think you should publish my book. We'll see where it goes.

But if if it doesn't happen soon, I gave myself till the end of this year to do the to pursue traditional publishing, and then I was gonna start writing and go down the self publishing route. So the book's gonna happen regard the book's gonna happen one way or the other. It's just a matter of And I much do I gotta pay out of pocket?

Right. Yeah. And I have so many friends who had publishers, and they've gone self published route

Yeah.

Because of all that rigmarole. But we wanna support you regardless. You guys, we're gonna put in the show notes a link to buy a T shirt or a hat or something so that he can prove that he can turn followers into customers. That's oh, it's always money, isn't it? And then also, I want I'm gonna be listening to your podcast.

So, I wanna put a link to your podcast. Is there any other link that we should put in the show notes so that we can support you?

So the the other thing that I've got, is called the weekend playbook. It's my Friday newsletter that I send out. It's just a quick hit tip to help you, like, show up in a different way on on your weekend games. So just, like, things to think about to be more present as you're going like, it's a sequence, but I got it today based on when I signed up. And today, it was like, you need to cheer for the other team.

Yeah.

Just like your kid your kid needs to see you tell another kid on a different colored jersey that they made a good play. So think about and it's just little stuff like that every single week to hopefully keep you showing up in in healthy ways so that we can raise great humans, not just athletes.

Awesome. Hey. Thank you so much. This was a fun conversation. Never had this conversation on the show before, and I really appreciate all of your wisdom and insight.

Thank you so much for coming on today.

Thanks for having me. I appreciate it.