Here is why strategically investing in big picture focused mentors for your kids matters more than anything else:
“The best coaches your kids will ever have are the coaches who are hyperfocused on who your kids are as people and how they can mentor & add value to their global life experience.
Anybody can churn out 30-minute ‘lessons’ focused primarily on the repetition of the Venmo jingle.”
-Ray Zingler on X
People First.
Athletes Second.
Along with “Hammers Only.” This motto is the one that is most important to me not only in our business at Zingler Strength, but anytime I interact with kids.
It’s because when I am blessed with the opportunity to reach kids, and it’s been thousands over the years, I am not training baseball, softball, or lacrosse players.
I am training Ben, Griffin, Michael, Grace, Bronwyn, and Ellie, too.
And yes, those are actual names of actual clients, whom I care actually deeply about.
Far deeper than the run of mill people they’ll encounter who are more focused on how they can make money off the jerseys they wear without caring about how they can develop them as people beyond them.
It’s because sports are not who these kids are, they are merely something that they do. And the window of time they will be playing these sports is likely going to be very brief.
However, what they will be playing a lot longer than sport is the game of life.
And if I am who I say I am, would it not behoove me to focus on “life development” more than “sports development”?
If you work with kids for a living, I don’t care what it is, coaching, teaching, music instructing, or mentoring of any kind, when you get to the brass tacks, if you’re impact is going to carry any lasting weight, it’s going to have to be focused on far more than “what you do”.
Again, I don’t care if you’re a math teacher. Anybody can teach them math. If you want your position to have value, you’re going to have to focus on far more than formulas they can find on their phones far faster than you can teach them to them.
The most influential people I have in my life, are not the smartest.
They didn’t “know the most” about sports, life, or science.
But the reason they carried and still carry so much weight in my life is because they care.
Your kids and mine are growing up in a broken world, you owe it to them to place big picture minded people in their lives.
They will make all the difference in their world.
