#3 Possibilities With Tonja Hadley Performance Coach & Former Division 1 Softball Coach

Welcome to the Mike Hartman show. Mike is a performance coach and former Stanley cup champion with the New York Rangers. Topics on this show are focused around stories, mindset and champions. Mike will also go into details about helping you with your pain points and struggles and finding motivational solutions on how to have the mindset of a champion. Now, here's your host, Mike Hartman.

Welcome to another episode. Today I have Tonya Hadley and we are doing the Possibilities series. And I'm really happy to have Tanya. She has a great story, has done many things, done things in the athletic world, to the business world, helps people out and I'm gonna bring her on and so happy to have her. Tanya, how are you?

I'm great, Mike. Thanks for having me today.

So we're doing the Possibilities series and we have many different guests and I personally went out and I hand picked these guests. I know your background. You have a development background, working with athletes. You have, I think it's the highest, not a certification, like the highest training program degree you could have. Right. With the CSCS as far as that goes. Working with athletes at every high level. And then you've been in the coaching role, Division 1 coach. Why don't you share a little bit about yourself?

Sure. Thanks, Mike. Yeah, I was really excited to be on today and to be talking about possibilities. I think it's a theme that's sort of been a part of my life throughout my career. I think you and I share the, at an early age, sort of having the understanding that if we worked hard and put our mindset to it, that really, you know, there was endless possibilities in terms of what we could do. And I think that certainly is a common thread throughout my career. I started right out of the gate in college. I fell in love with coaching. We were a program that didn't have a lot of money, so we had to do camps and clinics to fund, you know, simple things like road trips and food on those road trips and things like that. And we, you know, right away, my first, my first camp that we did with kids, the first time I was sort of tasked with teaching a kid a skill on my own at a station. I was hooked by coaching and fell in love with the process. And I've sort of been coaching ever since. So it's been a wild ride. And throughout that process, I've boy, I've worked in professional sport, I worked in college sport, I've worked in the sporting goods industry, the exercise equipment industry, and health club. And you name it, I've sort of has to do with Sports, I've probably done it. And I think throughout all of that, it just was. This seems interesting to me. And I feel like if I can go in and learn about it and dedicate myself to owning that skill or that craft, that I could be pretty good at that. And so that's just sort of led me from one thing to the next.

Well, that was a major reason why I wanted you on, because I knew your background. I know, especially lately we could say without getting into too many details, you and I talk quite a bit, and I know so much about you and what people have to understand. The major thing is drive and determination. Can we teach that? Because we say anything is possible, but you have to work at it. But as a coach in a Division 1 college coach, can you teach drive and dedication?

That's such a great question, Mike. And it's probably, you know, the million dollar question, right? I mean, from. From coaches out recruiting athletes to join their program or scouts out there looking for the next. The next phenom. I think that's the million dollar question. And the answer is, do I fundamentally believe that, yes, it can be taught? Absolutely. Do I feel like you better know the science of the mechanics of the mind and behavior change in order to help a person make those leaps, if they're not inherently driven? Yeah. You better have some skills and some know how to help them through that process, because it's not an easy one. Right. Our brains have us ingrained into habits and patterns of behavior, and they can be broken 100%, but it's a difficult challenge to do so. So you've got to be that support mechanism for those. For those athletes to get them to make that leap.

Yeah. And a lot of it is drive. And sometimes, you know, with a player, it's not. The easiest thing to do is teach, like heart and determination. And I thought of you and I'm going to share this story because a lot of this is around stories. I have a young friend, friends with his dad. This is a young hockey player. I never say names. He plays College Hockey, Division 2, still called Division 2, in upstate New York. He great kid and he wants to be in professional sports at the highest level. And he has a dream of being in professional development, like player development, let's say, in hockey. And I told him, you have to start at the bottom. You just can't start at the top. Like I knew with you. I mean, you bounced around. And not to say that disrespectfully, but look what you did to make it. I mean, you Even worked with the San Jose Sharks to start their off vice roller hockey program or street hockey program.

Right. Yeah, yeah. And I, you know, I, I have bounced around. I mean, if you, I think if you were to look at my resume, you'd think, you know, every couple of years she's doing something different. And that's absolutely true. It's my personality. If I find something that I'm interested in, I'll go for it and I'll, I'll get in and try to do and be the best that I can. They used to call me Dr. Defense in my coaching days because they, you know, want me to come in and fix something and then I'd move off to go do something else. So, yeah, yeah. I think drive is such an important thing. And you know, to your point, with this kid that you're talking about, you know, you can't really measure heart, but you can certainly look for some of the values and characteristics and their behaviors, their motivators, thing like, things like that. That can help you get a pretty good indication where a kid is at. Yeah.

And he has a lot of heart. But a lot of the. Today, a lot of the kids want to start at the top where somebody like yourself, I don't know, if you have a story, I'm putting you on the spot, you just don't start at the top. Tanya, you just didn't walk in and say, hey, I'm a Division 1 coach. How did you get there? What were some of the struggles getting there?

Oh, gosh. And, you know, I think everybody that's gotten someplace has those stories. Right. I went from college right into coaching and then did a lot of different things. But yeah, you know, I worked for Easton Sports for a while and I started out as a customer service rep there and I hated it. I mean, I hated it. Right. You're at a computer, you're at a cubicle, you're solving problems for people, which was kind of fun, but I just wasn't a desk job kind of, kind of person. And. But I had to wait and buy my time. And sure enough, a position opened up that I was wanting, wanting to have. And that was the first promotions manager for the Fast Pitch softball line. And you know, back then they had slow pitch products and they had little league baseball products. But, you know, girls. Fast Pitch was one of the up and coming, fastest growing sports in the US at the time. And Easton had fallen behind their competitors by not having a full line of products. So I was the first person hired for that role to build out that, that. That product line and help with marketing and sales guys, which were incredible. But there's an example of sort of having to get in and start. Start where you can. Right. And then use your determination and your grit and your. Your willingness to get where you want to go, to eventually get there.

Yeah. And anything's possible. Right? That's what we say. We call it possibilities because we want people to know that there isn't anything that is. That is easy. You talk to anybody that plays like, even. Even a chance, even like a person like Michael Jordan, not speaking for him, but you look at him, he'd always say, okay, we're going to win the next one. But it's tough. You have to win that, that last game seven. And the same with you. You're always striving to get better. And I know we talked about, especially in your performance and leadership coaching business, you're always striving to help people to maximize their potential. Can you give us any tips that we could take along the way that's going to help out somebody within. Let's start with business.

Yeah. You know, I really think that when we talk about possibilities, it really comes. There's really two foundation, foundational pieces for me. And one is experience. And you get that from rolling up your sleeves and jumping in and getting to work. And so I suppose tip number one would be if there's something you're thinking about wanting to do or a big change you're wanting to make, you got to get in there and do it right. You can't spend so much time planning or thinking about it. At some point, you got to jump in and roll up your sleeves and get to work, because experience is going to allow you to have a greater understanding of what's possible. And then the second piece to that is perspective. And perspective is huge. And until you have some experience under your belt, some knowledge under your belt, it's hard to have a bigger, broader perspective. So I would say for both athletes as well as business owners, those are two critical components that you just have to have in order to sort of push the needle forward.

And I know we're a lot alike. We have a lot of similarities, and I know that we both work hard. I'm not afraid to say that. And I think we work smart or we try. But I've also learned from you that you apply your sports background even to helping businesses or people within business or individual businesses. How do you do that? How do you apply the sports, what you've gained, and all that knowledge to Business.

That's a great question. And I think that for me, it comes down to the world. I know. And you know, if you look at, I have this, this, this program called Sport of Fours, right? And they're, they're metaphors from sports. And I can't tell you how many of those words, those metaphors, those thought processes are already in business. So it's sort of a common language, especially here in the US And I think it's a way to bridge gaps or connect or expand meaning for people. And so, you know, in the sports world, it's really easy to take a concept in sport and adopt that to, to the business setting.

Wow, that's so true, isn't it? And you wonder why a lot of companies, I talked to so many different businesses, I've done some speaking and they'll usually not all the time. I mean, they bring in Navy seals, they bring in different people to help with the motivation. I don't think we could just motive. I don't think our job is just to motivate people and we'll get into that in a minute. But what you do in helping people strive to become their best. Do you help them with goal setting?

Absolutely. You know, I, I think you've, you've got to have a vision of where you want to go. That's sort of the North Star, right. It points you in that direction. But when it comes to goal setting, it's sort of the gps. Right. So the North Star is where we're going. The GPS is sort of the practical. I'm going to put where I am in right now. No matter where it is, start where you are. I'm going to put that coordinate in as the starting point and then I'm going to, you know, set the course through a goal plan towards the destination. So with goal planning for businesses and for athletes, especially in development, you've got to have a plan that you can stick to that's constantly going to push the needle forward, that's going to continually push you towards growth.

Well, great. The reason I jumped to the goal setting and I didn't finish, what I was going to say is because a lot of times these companies will hire a former champion that won the World Series or somebody that has done something like have been in the Olympics or rep represented the company and they bring in these athletes, but it's so important. It's great that we, they bring them in, but what happens, there has to be a fall like when they're done, they just can't bring them in. And say, okay, our team's going to do this. They have to follow up with a process and a goal. So that's why I jumped to the goal setting right away, because I find that frustrating. Oh, we brought in so and so. It was great. Now, do you think, and I'm not putting you on the spot, do you think. Think it's our responsibility to motivate somebody or should they be motivated on their own?

I think we, I think coaches, this is my personal philosophy, Mike, and I'm sure there's others that have theirs, but I think we're there to plug the gaps. I don't think a coach, a parent, a leader can provide the motivation for another person, for another athlete, for a, you know, salesperson, whatever that position is. They have to bring that themselves. It has to come from within. And those that reach great success have. Have great internal or intrinsic motivation. Right. But I think what coaches can do and what the great ones do is they sort of help foster that. They help, you know, fan the flames and they're there to fill the gaps when. When perhaps we've got a down moment or a downtime or after a loss kind of thing.

And we talk about that too. And how about these tough times, especially with. With COVID and I just talked to a parent today, so I'm shooting it right off the cuff to you. And they're telling me that some of the colleges are not spending the time to help out our players, go through what they're going through. They're sitting at home, they're sitting in their dorm right now, and they are. A lot of them are not going to classes or doing it all online. Their seasons are done. How do you. How do you. What message can we relate to the players and the families? That there's a lot of possible opportunities out there and not get frustrated right now because this is for the short term.

Absolutely. You know, there's so much that happens behind the scenes. And, you know, just speaking from experience as a college coach, you at times feel like you never have enough time to implement the entire game plan of what you'd like to implement. And what I mean by that is there's, you know, there's times where we might want to have a little bit more of our sports psychology or a little bit more of our values based learning or training, a little bit more about how we think. Right. How we make the decisions that we make. These are exceptional opportunities right now when you can't maybe have as much of the physical connection to work on some of that Individual, I'm going to say, you know, mental muscle building for these athletes. It's now a great time to work on some of that.

So work on your mindset, work on your mental performance. They said, I heard one side, I was watching the baseball game and John Smoltz was talking about mental gymnastics. And I got to ask you this question. If you think about it when, why? Because you have, what's amazing with you is you have both ends of it. So you have the physical because you have the, you know, the highest background with what is called your cscs. So people want to look that up and you have your performance leadership background. And so why do we spend so much time on the physical and not enough time on the mental?

Again, a great question. And I think a lot of it has to do with, and I think, I think in college ranks especially, you know, there's been a big increase in that. In fact, most universities have a sports psychology, if not more than one sports psychologist on staff. So I think the mental training has become a much bigger part of it. We know this because, you know, you think about the fantastic performances of the past. Think about Michael Phelps in the Olympics when he won all those gold medals. Visualization and being mentally tough was, was just a bigger part of his preparation, as was the, the physical training. You know, we do the physical training so when, when we're not thinking, when we just need to react, we can automatically fall into those movement patterns without thinking about it. We do the mental training so that when we start thinking we can control those thoughts in a way that allow us to continue to, to play and to, to move in accordance to those. So, you know, we used to have a saying called trust your training. You know, trust the fact that you've mentally visualized that skill enough times in your head. Trust your training that we physically have done that enough times that you can do it without thinking about it. So it kind of goes hand in hand.

It doesn't. So that's where things can be possible. Because without the physical. The thing with the physical too is also you get really, people see those immediate results where the mental, sometimes it may take a while, but without the physical, without the mental, it might not be. Especially for athletes, things may not be, the possibilities may not be there because you're not putting that time in correct?

Absolutely. You know, we're a multi dimensional species, right? Human beings, we've got all kinds of layers and things to us. And so the more we can train our athletes through those different dimensions, the more they're going to be able to apply those in a competitive setting. And I think that's the biggest lesson for all coaches and athletes and parents of athletes that they could take away from this is, you know, train for all the possibilities that can potentially happen in a game and in competition and work on those because that's going to make you a more complete player and it's going to allow you to really draw on some of your inner talents and strengths that you might not even know that you had.

And we talked about this, you and I have talked about this a couple times. And one thing that we're going to talk about now, the person in corporate America or somebody who's a business, women or businessman or anyway, corporate America, how important is it to work on the mental side and the physical side of who you are so you could be successful on the overall projects that you're doing or whatever you're doing in corporate America?

I think it's equally as important, you know, and I tell people all the time that I work with, look, you need to treat your business like it's your sport, right? And you need to treat the day to day operations like those are your games, your competition. And so, you know, there's an inner athlete in all of us. It's just a matter of what's your sport. And so the more that we can think about things in those terms and those ways, the more that we're willing to expand and train the different dimensions. There's no reason why a CEO or a sales manager shouldn't be equally focused on the mental side of what they do. Are they putting themselves and their team in the best situations to win and be successful? And how do you know what those best situations are? So I think that there's a lot of room for growth there, but I definitely think it's equally as important.

Well, Tanya, you brought a lot of great information to us. And in order to have, I try to tell people this and it's great to have somebody like you on that was a Division 1 coach that has worked in all areas of business life and even in sports. And it's important for people to understand that for things to happen or if you want things to happen and go your way, you have to focus on the physical and mental and you bring that out. So can, is there any way that where people can get in touch with you? I know people are going to ask me to is there a website or where can people get in touch with you?

Absolutely. I'm on LinkedIn. So you can certainly reach out to me there my website and I'll give this to you is www. Here the number two thrive.com so here the number two thrive.com so either one of those options would be just fine and I'm happy to chat with people and answer any questions they might have.

Yep. And I've also added you to the hartman.academy site and you're there under professionals. And I brought on professionals. Now, they don't work with me, but we have a little resource page of people that we work with, people that we have strategic alliances work, people that come on the show. So Tanya, I've added you there. So you're on there today and it was so great to have you. Thank you very much. This is greatly appreciated. A wealth of knowledge and I highly recommend people reach out to Tanya. We talk for hours. It's funny, we're talking here for a quick 20 minutes, but Tanya, our conversations have gone like 2, 3, 2 hours at one time.

Yeah, they sure have. It's a pleasure to be here, Mike, and I thank you for having me on there. And certainly anybody that's a member of your audience is more than welcome to reach out to me.

Thanks, Tanya.

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