3 common misconceptions you have about recruiting that are costing you scholarships

All right, so I was thinking about, what video am I going to put out today? What am I even going to talk about? And I was like, you know what? It could be a good one. I wrote this good email about some misconceptions about the recruiting process. Figured I'd break it down for you guys, kind of talk about it, explain some more of my thoughts to hopefully help you guys give a better mindset on this thing. Because I think that's half the battle in recruiting is just like, probably more than half the battle is just like, understanding how it actually works. That way you're not stressing yourself, frustrating yourself over stuff and knowing that I'm doing the right things. And, you know, I just need to keep trusting this process because it's like, everybody knows, hey, trust the process. But it's like, how do you know the process is actually working? So hopefully this helps. Super excited to do this. So I just. To kick this off, I. I mean, going through the recruit process, there's plenty of things that I heard from friends, I heard from coaches, and you believe them for so long, or you have just certain thoughts about the recruiting process that you believe throughout this whole thing. And then you don't realize until your senior year, your junior year, if you're hopefully realizing in sophomore, freshman, you're ahead of the game, that, oh, shoot, this thing that I thought for so long is just completely, completely wrong. And it happened to me so many times because, you know, you get eighth grade, seventh grade coaches that, you know, they're not trying to. To be harmful in any way. It's just, you know, either they didn't go through the process themselves or they just have a misconception that's just not true because they saw one kid do this thing, and so you take it as fact, and then you just realize completely later that it was just. It was completely wrong. And so here are some, like, three big ones that I see from other people that I had myself as well. And hopefully I can kind of show you why it's just not completely true and what you should be doing otherwise. So I think the big one, number one, and I get it, like, I get the point of it, but the number one is play well and they will find you. And it's just not true because there are thousands and thousands of high school recruits out there. More than that. There's 10,000 plus. Ultimately, I mean, I don't even know how big the overall signing class was. I imagine it was massive, you know, thousands and thousands of signees. When there are Tens of thousands of recruits that want to play college football. And so just playing well is not going to guarantee you get recruited. Now if you're at a type of high school and you play well, I'm sure you'll get recruited then. But just playing well is not going to get you recruited. And so I've seen it too many times on my own high school where a kid has great film, great stats, great grades, but the recruiting is just silent or there's a little trickle here from there, but there's nothing really turning into anything. And so ultimately, like, if they just increase that exposure a little bit to a little bit of stuff on their own, I bet their phone would have been blowing up. And I've seen it with some of the people that I work with is like, they're, you know, they got, you know, not even great film or great stats or great grades, just like, decent. And they just didn't. Coaches just didn't know about them. And then we reach out to coaches and then boom, their phone's blowing up. They have like 20 interest of coaches. So if you're just relying on playing well and being found, then you're relying on luck, you're just relying on hope. And instead you should be thinking, how can I make it impossible to not get recruited? And that's kind of like the mindset I had with I recruiting. I mean, I didn't realize this until like my junior year because I was always, I mean, I wasn't like of those stud kits to where it's like, oh man, we should really figure out how to get Trenton to D1. It's like, let's just focus on getting Trenton to, to be able to like, play on varsity because that's more the challenge. And for some of you, that might be the case still. So, like, worry about developing before anything but, you know, playing well and they will find you is just, it's just honestly a lie to an extent. And so, and I get it, like high school coaches know, are saying this because they've probably seen that with some kids, so it's not completely wrong. But also they have an incentive to tell you that because, hey, they, they want you to play better and not worry about the recruiting stuff because that can, can distract you and ultimately you don't want it to be a distraction either. So there is, you know, I understand that, but it's just a complete misconception. That's just not true. Playing well does not equal that you will get recruited. If anything is just relying on luck. So make sure. That you're not relying on luck, because you don't rely on luck when you're on the field either. So number two is it's not what you know, it's who you know. This one kind of bugs me a little bit because, like, I get it. There's a connection game in recruiting. It's definitely a. A part of it, and it can work. I definitely won't say, like, that's not true. No. Like, connections don't get you recruited. They will. They'll definitely get you recruited. But I don't think it's the game that you want to be playing because I think there's, you know, two scenarios that play out. You play the connection game. You get recruited by a school coach goes, oh, yeah, yeah. Someone look good enough, we'll recruit them, we'll offer them whatever. And cool. You get the offer. You go to the school, and then there's another kid, and he was recruited by the staff, and he put himself out there. He built a real relationship. He did everything he had to to get recruited at school and then some. And they feel a little bit closer to this kid. I mean, who's gonna have the better chance at having a better experience having, you know, just better chance of play? Who's gonna be more closer to the coaching staff? Obviously, that second kid who organically built that relationship. And so that's kind of My emphasis on that is, like, the connection game won't work. Absolutely. I think it's best if, like, you. Your best combo, and I was telling this to some people I work with, is like, the best combo is you do all this organic stuff as far as reaching out the coaches, doing a lot of work on your own, then you have a high school head coach who can connect you with some coaches. Obviously, that's not the case for everybody, to be honest. It's a rare case. So, like, realistically, hoping to find a connection somewhere is not going to help you. And like I said, it can. It can definitely build some false places where, you know, hey, maybe the staff wasn't as apt to you as before. And just because you had this connection kind of got you in. And so that's. That's something I feel like you want to avoid. If anything, again, not saying it doesn't work. I just think that it's definitely not who you know. It's. It is a little bit of a combination of both. But knowing what to do will help you more than anything, because you can know everybody in the world. But you start talking to college coach and you don't know what to say. It doesn't look good either. So it's not solely a connection game, especially if you want to actually play and have a great college football experience. So and then number three is coaches don't recruit through email. So is a big thing. And I think this is, this is probably caused a lot by, you know, recruiting services out there emailing coaches and people use those and then they don't get recruited. And everybody knows that these services use email and then they don't get results. Thus they say I use this recruiting service that did not use, that used email. Thus recruiting does not work because I did not get recruited using the service. But that's because they do certain things that just get their emails thrown right in the trash. They group a bunch of prospects together, send lists out to coaches, and those coaches just ignore those lists. Um, or for example, I was just learned this through a buddy of mine's content D1 scholarship and he was saying that he learned that NCSA essentially CCS every coach in the email. So when you send it to a certain school, say you're sending it to San Jose State, it's not individual emails going to each of those coaches, it is going, it's one email going to all their coaches. So that's something you want to avoid, something we definitely don't do with our recruits. And so I proof just pictures of some stats, some analytics that we have from our stuff. For example, one recruit got 18 replies from D1 schools. These are like legitimate D1 schools that are responding to these emails from college football coaches. In this other case we got seven replies. You can even see the open rates on these things. 67% from D ones, 82% from this campaign here with seven replies. And then 300 emails sent, nine replies from those emails sent. So coaches are opening, clicking and responding to emails even at the B1 level. Like anyone telling you that email just does not work. It does now. Not does every coach open up their email? No, definitely not. Some coaches probably don't, but there's a good percentage that do over what? Well over half. Especially if you're doing the right things. So most people will tell you, hey, it's a waste of time, don't email college coaches. Didn't work for, you know, John, Joe, whatever. But it only is if you're doing it wrong. And so the four keys are you have to write an attaching, attention grabbing subject line to get the coach to open the email. Because that whole goal of the subject line is just to Stand it out in that inbox where there's a bunch of other recruits, bunch of other emails in there and you're trying to get that click. And so once you get the open to email, you already have their attention. So now you just need a quick email to lead the coach to your highlight link where you're trying to get them to click that highlight, make the evaluation and you might not respond the first time. We do a lot of follow up. So that's kind of the third piece is just following up the coach repeatedly whether they respond or not. And then the fourth is making sure to track your numbers. If you don't know your numbers then like how can you change anything? That's like running your 40 continuously and saying I'm getting faster or I'm getting slower, but not even knowing your time and just going off of feel it will not work. You can't know if something is working if you are not tracking it. And so you should be tracking the opens, clicks and the replies to know if it's working or not. Because if you're not doing that again then like how do you know it's going to work? It's Same way with 40 time, bench press all that. You're tracking those numbers, you're knowing you're getting bigger, faster, stronger because you're tracking those numbers. But you want to get recruited and you don't know how many times your emails are getting open, clicked or replied to. So you have to track that stuff. And so those are three misconceptions. Hopefully this was, you know, shining some light on some things, hopefully get some realizations or just further prove some things that you're starting to realize with the process and hopefully I opened your eyes on this Tuesday afternoon. So I appreciate you watching, appreciate you guys enjoying the content and I will see you guys later. Peace.