[00:00:00 - 00:29:16]
Brandon Joyner:
Think a lot of us, especially when it comes to goals, we let a lot of people into that process, and sometimes they can try to they're probably not going to make you go away from your goal by any means, but they can kind of put their two cent in and then it can kind of make things a little messy. So while you're making your goals, just remember that they are your goals. It doesn't have to make sense for other people. All right. Today is going to be a little different. It's just going to be me. Mark is currently driving across the country back to California. We just wrapped up our camps here at St. Pete beach. Things went about as well as we could hope. But yeah, we're done. So we have another camp coming up in April going to be April 3 to the 10th. And that camp is actually already sold out. So if you are interested in joining us in April, we have had some cancelations in the past. So the only way that you can get a spot in our April camp now is if you join the Waitlist. And the way you join the Waitlist is by emailing support at betteratbeach.com, and we will add you to that waitlist. So what we're thinking about doing today was kind of going back a little bit and talking about goal setting at the beginning of the year. A lot of us have probably already decided what our New Year's resolution will be or we've kind of started thinking about the next season, but we haven't really jumped all in quite yet. And what we talked about was kind of how to get the most out of your athletes. And I think whenever we're thinking about getting the most out of our athletes, a lot of it or ourselves, a lot of it does come down to what you are doing to prepare for your success. And I've been very good at this in times of my life, and I've been very bad at this in times of my life. But one of the first things that Carrie kind of talks about and Luckily I wrote some notes down, she talks about taking chances. I think a lot of us, whenever we decide that we're preparing for season or we're deciding what we want to do as far as chasing dreams or going playing on the ADP or deciding that you want to move up a level in your local organization, is that a lot of us are so comfortable with what we've been doing in the past that we forget that we need to make changes in order to get better. And I think one of the things that really stood out to me with Carrie when she was talking was the amount of time that she took into not only creating goals for herself, but creating benchmarks for herself as well. So I think if we're thinking about goal setting, a lot of us will set a goal. That is something like, I want to win three tournaments this summer, or if you're in California, I want to earn my A rating, my AAA rating, whatever rating you're thinking about. And that is great. Being able to do that is awesome. And I think Carrie would agree with that. One of the things that I really enjoyed about her is she had just come off of hurting her knee, and she was working her way back into what she thought was going to be her professional indoor career. And while she was doing that, she just took a volleyball. And I think you can all imagine what a volleyball looks like. It has all the panels. And on each panel, she had a goal that she planned on accomplishing. And not only did she have that goal written down, but she also had a time period of when she planned on accomplishing that goal. And it went from something as simple to getting back to walking to being able to swim to being able to run to being able to play volleyball. And then it just happened to be that one of the things that she wrote down was that it had just come out that I think it was the 96 Atlanta Games was going to have beach volleyball in the Olympics on one of the ends. Actually, it was the part of the ball that she always had faced down. And she said that she did this because she wanted it to be a goal, but at the time, she was like a little embarrassed of it herself, so she kind of wrote it underneath. And all she wrote down on the panel was beach volleyball. And then once they came out and said that it was going to be a sport in the 1996 Olympics, that's when she even wrote 1996 Atlanta. And I just think that that takes a different kind of character and kind of adventurous mindset of your own to not even really be playing the sport that much at that time, but just knowing that if you put your mind to it, then there's a really good chance that you're going to get closer to that goal. During that process, she had to go through a lot of ups and downs. Obviously, she was still recovering from her knee injury that happened while she was playing indoor. And you guys don't have the story, but it might even be on YouTube. But one of the things that she has to decide to do, and it kind of leads me to my next point is she had to make a partner switch. I think they were three years out from the Olympics. And normally, if you guys don't know, it takes a lot of the four years between Olympics when you team up with someone to chase the Olympic dream. If you play a year or two with one partner, and then you decide to switch partners, it lessens your odds a lot. And at this point, when Carrie is talking to us about this, she says that I think they're about just under three years out from the Olympics. And she decided that she wanted to have a partner switch. And she kind of goes into this whole big long debate about why is she doing this? Is it the right move? And she was asking everybody. And one of the things that she says that really kind of grabbed my attention when she was having this conversation with us was that she is always going to listen to her gut. And I think a lot of us, especially when it comes to goals, we let a lot of people into that process. And sometimes they can try to they're probably not going to make you go away from your goal by any means, but they can kind of put their two cent in and then it can kind of make things a little messy. So while you're making your goals, just remember that they are your goals. It doesn't have to make sense for other people. A little personal story about myself. When I decided that I wanted to move to California and I was teaching, I did some things well and I did some things wrong that I would change. The things that I did well was that I made this choice on my own. I kind of realized that I was talking about it a lot. And I knew that if I wanted a career to last longer in the world of beach volleyball, then I needed to be surrounded by the same people that were chasing that exact same goal. And really the only place that I saw that being an option was in Hermosa Beach, California. So I took the chance. I stopped teaching in Virginia Beach, which was a profession I loved. And a lot of it had to do with Mark, making me feel good about the fact that I had a grander vision other than just going to play beach volleyball. I knew that we were going to be working together with what was volleycampermosa and now is better at beach. So it's kind of crazy to see where we've come. And in the beginning of the video, Mark talks a little bit about his grand dream. And it's kind of crazy looking back on this two and a half years ago and seeing how much closer he's already gotten to that. But Mark, when I was teaching, I was teaching 8th grade civics, so I was in 8th grade history, social studies, government, Econ teacher, a little different than what I'm doing now. But one of the things that I did wrong when I decided to chase my goal is that I wasn't completely honest with the people that were close with me. I know for sure all of my friends in Virginia Beach, they were a little blindsided. And I had my reasoning as to why I did it. But looking back on it, I wish I would have trusted those people right away, knowing that they were my friends, my family that were going to support me no matter what. And I wish I had told them right away. I didn't find out at the end until I told them that they wish they had known sooner, but it was something that I wish I had done. So I think that listening to your gut and then being honest is just a really good thing, not only for you to do for yourself, but with other people, especially when we're chasing goals, when we're trying to figure out how we can get closer to becoming our ideal self, you need help, you can't do it by yourself. And I think a lot of us, we try to take that burden on by ourselves. So kind of very quickly, I've already been talking on here for about 25 minutes. The goal setting, something that I've started to do and actually I started doing it after I had this awesome conversation with Kerry was that I made my goals, but I made a weekly goals. I made monthly goals and then I made season goals. And the cool thing about that is that when you are creating those weekly goals, maybe it's something like this week, you need to get in a gym a certain amount of times, you need to train a certain amount of times. For me, it goes as deep as skill specific techniques that I need to focus on throughout that week. Also, we talked a little bit about it last week. I'm doing a little challenge called 75 Hearts. And now I have built in disciplines that I have to follow each day that are already helping me stay on track. And it is unbelievable. I was telling Mark this the other day, I've been doing this for a little over a week now. I think this is the 8th day and I already feel better. I already feel a little bit healthier. I already feel stronger. I feel like my willpower to go work out and go do these things is back, which a couple of months ago, I cannot say that it was. And so these weekly goals have definitely helped me. And then those weekly goals will help you get closer to those monthly goals. And then you know, the good thing about making these weekly monthly goals is that you can always adapt them a little bit. You can change them to the circumstances. Maybe you're not playing the tournaments that you thought you were. Maybe you're playing more tournaments than you thought you were. So those things have to be able to you have to be flexible with them as well. So I think making sure that you're doing it and then make sure sure you're being honest with yourself. If you're a B level player and your goal is to win an open level tournament, I'm not saying that you shouldn't have that goal, but that might be a two to three year goal. It's something that you have to be honest with yourself. And then once you say it, you need to be able to kind of understand the work that is going to kind of go with it. You can't just write these goals down on paper and hope that one day you're going to wake up and they're going to be accomplished. You got to kind of know what you're getting yourself into. And then another thing that Kerry talked about was finding the right help. One of the things that she kind of goes into a lot towards the end of her interview that I was going to show with you guys is she talks about how when she decided that she was going to be going to play beach volleyball and she was going to make a run at the Olympics, she talks about how her next goal was just to surround herself with greatness. She wanted to put somebody on her side of the net that she thought was phenomenal that she could envision herself winning a gold medal with. And they did. She talks about how when she was deciding that she wanted to go to play beach volleyball, that her first move was to Southern California, Hermosa Beach San Diego, all these hotbeds for beach volleyball because that's where everybody was that was as close to being a professional at it as she wanted to be. And then once she got out there and she started practicing with all these players, she started eating up all this information. Then she realized that if we're going to make this next step, I have to get a coach. And it really is crazy. I don't think there is any level that you are at or any profession that you are at where you are too good to be coached. I know I can think about my first year of teaching. By the time I'd finished teaching, I was very confident in my abilities to be a teacher. But my first year when I went in, I was very unsure. My first substitute job that I had that was long term. I did not get any help and I was pretty poor. I've always been confident, but I was not able to teach anything very well. But then when I got to Great Neck Middle School, I was lucky enough to work with a teacher that worked at that school, and she was phenomenal, actually. I had two teachers that I worked with every single day. I had as many meetings as I could with them, and I just tried to soak in everything that they said, how they did it, and then that allowed me to kind of be my own teacher. And it's the same thing when you're talking about really anything. But when we're on this podcast, we talk about beach volleyball and it doesn't matter if you're a beginner trying to learn just so that you can have fun with your friends, or if you're someone like me who has these goals and aspirations to still play on the professional level, there is always somebody that is willing to help. And as long as you are willing to put in the work and kind of one of the big things is paying for that help, then there's always going to be somebody there. And one of the things that I love that Carrie even brings up in the interview that we did with her is that she talks about the fact that if Mark didn't text her or email her, if she wanted to come on a webinar with us, then she would have never known. But we asked and she said yes. And now we're going to have to share this with you guys at some point because the interview truly is special and we wouldn't have gotten it and we wouldn't have learned ourselves if we hadn't just been bold enough to kind of just pick up the phone and ask. So one of the things that I would highly suggest, if you are in a local organization where your goals are just to do better in that area, or if you're a tournament player that's hoping to have better finishes, or if you are somebody who's trying to make it on tour, one of the things that you have to do is surround yourself with greatness. I think Mark says at some point he said that it's normally seen that you are the average person of the top five people you hang out with. And I think if you can think about that idea and regardless, even if you're a little bit higher than the average of the top five people that you hang out with, that kind of sentence alone really grabs my attention. And it was one of the main reasons that I kind of took a chance and moved out to California. It took Mark asking one simple question to me that had to do with if I felt like I was still learning and growing as a teacher. And unfortunately, at that time, the answer wasn't what I needed to hear in order for me to stay in that profession. So what did I do? I knew that I wanted to be a part of the beach volleyball world. I knew that I wanted to get into coaching again. And so I surrounded myself with somebody who was absolutely crushing it at that time and still is, in my opinion, even with a little bit of help from me. But I put myself out in Southern California just so I could be around Mark. And I knew that the learning that would take place and everything like that would set me up for the future. And it's pretty cool to see where we've kind of taken it from. So once again, guys, I know I can see a couple of you guys still stuck around and hopefully you were able to get a little bit out of that. If I can kind of recap, what I would say is that it's be okay with taking chances, set some goals, right? That's how you're going to see that. That's how you're going to see the progression. If you don't set goals for yourself, then you're going to kind of just stay on the same route. Trust your gut. Whenever your gut says something, listen to it, chase that feeling, and then try to figure out why you're having that feeling. And then the last thing is just be okay with surrounding yourself with people that are going to make you a better person. I think that those four things, if you can really think about them, can make every single person out there a better person. So once again, guys, I am sorry that I dropped the ball. Being able to listen to the interview with Kerry, it truly is phenomenal. I will try my best to put it online and give you guys some access. It is also part of our Beach Volleyball Mastery program where you get the opportunity to work with coaches that can help you. Kind of like what I was saying in the past and a little bit ago where you can work with a coach that has been trained in this. If you have a goal of getting better at beach volleyball, the Beach Volleyball Mastery program is kind of the way for you to go. If you're interested in doing that, make sure you send us an email [email protected], or you can just go to the Better Beach home page and you can find all that information there as well. I will stick around for a little bit. I see a few questions, but they're kind of very specific to my past. But other than that, I will answer some questions. So if you guys have any questions about goal setting, about kind of how to get the most out of your athletes, we can go down that road. And then if you have any questions that you wanted to ask in the past that I haven't gotten answered, I will stick around for about five more minutes and answer anything that we need.
Okay? So I will kind of start up at the top. Matteo hopped on. Okay. A lot of no audios. I appreciate you guys letting me know that because I happen to look and if I hadn't, then I probably would have just let that play forever. So once again, I apologize, but I'm glad we were at least able to talk a little bit. All right. How old were you when you made that choice to go for pro volleyball? You know, for me, Mark, it was a little interesting. So I started having role models and beat indoor volleyball when I got to College. And funny enough, I had seniors and super seniors on the team named Hudson Bates and Mark Burke, who were my role models. Those were the guys that pushed me in the gym, and then they went and played pro overseas. So I knew that whenever I was done with indoor volleyball in College, that was my route just because that's what those guys did. So I think it was 2012 was the first time that I played professional indoor volleyball overseas. My first year was in Slovakia. Very fun. Interesting experience. I was in a little town called Miyaba, and then I was lucky enough to play a year in Finland and in Sweden as well. Then once I was done with that. So I was probably around 26 when I moved back to the States, and that's when I started playing on the NVL. And then I played on the NVL for about four years until it folded. And now I'm on the AVP. So it's pretty fun. Were the 8th graders so bad you had to switch to Vball? No way. My 8th graders were phenomenal. I tell people a lot that even if I never made the move out to California and I was still teaching, I would still absolutely love my life.
Okay. Getting some more questions. Where do you see yourself in ten years? Oh, man, that's a big one. I have had this conversation a little bit with Mark, and obviously I would love to see this company grow into something magnificent in ten years. But I would also like to make it something that can be turned into some form of nonprofit where I think one of my bigger goals is to bring volleyball and other necessary educations, like cooking, water, whatever it may be. It's definitely in the raw stages of thought in my mind. But to some type of third world countries, inner city schools, wherever I felt they could use the help the most, I think that's kind of where I would like to see myself moving in the next five to ten years.
Okay. Is there an average age when to start thinking about pro beach volleyball? It's kind of tough. I think that if you are and this is a question for Martin's, it's crazy. You have people that are starting beach volleyball when they're in their teens and they're finding success. You have the women's side that a lot of them are going to College and they're playing so well, and they're getting to be so good that it doesn't really make sense for them not to play professionally. Beach volleyball. And then you have males who don't have this opportunity for beach volleyball in College quite yet. I do think that it will come, but I think the males are a little bit later. We're starting to see that kind of in the average age of male athletes versus female athletes on tour. I think that the average age for females has to be a lot lower. I haven't done the math, but with all these kids coming out of College, then the age is a lot lower, but kind of going back to Carrie. And I'm sorry, I keep bringing her up because the interview is really great, but she didn't make the transition to beach volleyball until she was 30 years old, and then she won a gold medal. And so I think this whole conversation about age doesn't really need to happen anymore. I think people are changing that dynamic of how you talk about age. It just has to do with how you take care of yourself, what you're willing to put in, because especially in professional sports right now, old people are killing it. You have LeBron James, whose numbers and his 37th year, he's 37 years old, but are amazing. They're almost the same, if not better than his other seasons of when he was winning Championships. You have Tom Brady, Aaron Rodgers, Ben Rossesberger, all these football Legends that are absolutely killing it. So I don't think it necessarily has to do with age. I think it more just has to do with just if you're willing to put yourself in the right community and put the work in to go, I don't think there's an age too young or too old to kind of work towards that. Okay. Is Anders Mole and Christian Serum greatest beach volleyball team ever assembled.
They have to be considered one of the best. I'm not going to be the one to go live saying that there's a team that's better than them or that they're the best. But I think right now, in the last decade, they're arguably in the top three very easily. I think that they have a strong argument, especially with their last five season results and saying that and the fact that they have a career that they're still like, these guys are still going to be playing for a long time. So I could see them falling into that category very well. All right. Okay. I'll answer one more so many clubs that are expensive, and I think we miss a lot of talent because of the financial component. Yeah. So Mark just kind of touching again on the nonprofit side of thing, and who knows, maybe I'm waiting too long for that. So if anybody has any ideas and they want to talk to me and they think I can help in any way for a nonprofit that you're thinking about starting or something like that, please reach out to me. It is a passion of mine. So if we can do anything to kind of help you on that front, then we'd love to. Okay, last question. What do you think about the King of the court format? I think it is extremely entertaining. I think it is something that it is a good change for the sport of each volleyball because it allows people to see constant, important points every single time that a ball is served. I haven't had a chance to watch a whole lot of the events recently, but I think as far as it moving forward, I see it having just as much relevance as some of the tour stops that we see. Just because they're bringing in big names, they do big setups, they make it a big grand show and I know that the players absolutely love the format. I know I haven't had a chance to talk with either of them yet but I know Karen Quiggle and Sarah, Shermerhorn just got back from I think it was cutter where they are Doha. I'm not sure where they just got back and every post that I've seen them make they are talking about how fun it is and I think that that's a pretty common theme from the athletes and from what I've heard too. I've had a couple of friends message me if I'm watching and I know that they enjoy it as well. All right, so once again, guys, that's all we have time for today. Once again, I am extremely sorry for kind of dropping the ball on the video but hopefully you guys got at least a little something out of today about goal setting. If you are a coach or a player, I challenge you to come on Wednesday with some goals that you've either made your team create or that you've created on Wednesday. I'm not 100% sure what the topic is. We will be more prepared. I promise I'll be back in California. Mark will be somewhere closer to California than he is now and we'll see if we can get him back on here as well. But if not, I will see you guys on Wednesday. If you have any questions please reach out to us and I hope you guys have started your year off strong. You got an idea of where you're going and if you need some help getting there, let us know. The worst thing you can do is not ask so I will talk to you guys soon. And once again, I appreciate you guys sticking with me today. I'll see you next time. Bye.
