The Story of the Man : Matt Mounier
What's going on everyone. My name is Matt Mounier. I am a former athlete and owner of the untold 98% I work with transitioning athletes who are at the college or pro level and work with them on getting ready for their life after sports by being able to capitalize and continue to use their athlete mindset long after the ball stops bouncing.
My story doesn't start in poverty. It doesn't start from a broken family. It doesn't come from living on the streets. Having to figure out my way. I was definitely a privileged child growing up in middle-class America and I was completely focused on my future. I got great grades. I was a basketball player and I made a decision to end up going to play division three basketball at Whitman college, which is considered Harvard of the West and it was because I was going to have a chance to be able to go play pro overseas if I wanted to. Still playing at that level and I was going to get a phenomenal education and I felt like this would just be the platform for me for the rest of my life and really be the trajectory. And I figured even if I didn't play overseas, I was going to have a awesome job.
I was going to be middle management before I was 30 and I was just going to slowly move up, maybe, you know, get to high middle class and have an easy go lucky life. What I didn't realize was that that was farther from the truth and it was going to be way more difficult to get into that job market from being so focused on basketball my entire life. And this is a common misunderstanding that athletes have when they start to kind of move in to life after sports. And so I thought that I was going to be a financial planner. And the reason that I thought I was going to do that was because one afternoon I started looking at how much these players overseas were making and I realized that I was going to come back at the age of 26 or 27 and still not really have done anything with my life.
And so I figured that I was ready to move on. And so what I did was for the first time in my entire life, I didn't ask anyone for help, but I decided that I was going to figure this out on my own. And so I put all of my faith and trust into none other than Google. And so I type in how to make the most money with a bachelor's degree. And probably like five of those jobs had to do were just awful few of them. You had to be like in it or an engineer, a probably a little bit smarter than I was or you know, kind of above like what I wanted to do for the rest of my life. And so I finally landed on being a financial planner and then I said, okay, this is it, so what's the next step?
I then Googled how to make a resume, how to write a cover letter, and I was off and running within 45 minutes to an hour. I was now applying to all of the firms that I could get my hands on that had opening positions all over the West coast and slowly and surely I started getting calls back to kind of go start the interview process and it was a complete disaster and slowly, you know, I started learning myself like how to navigate these interviews and how they all seem to end was that, you know what, right now it doesn't seem like a good fit. What we need to do is you need a little bit more experience and you probably need a network wherever it is that you're going to move to. I started kind of designing a business plan around how I was going to be successful as a financial planner and I started, it started getting more developed and more concise and like, here's how I was going to meet people.
Here's how I was going to study, here's how I was going to bring my prior experiences to the table. I was basically down to my last interview chance I was living in Washington and this interview was down in Phoenix and one of my buddies said, you know what it would be really cool is if you went down, if you flew there and did the interview live to show them that you're really serious about doing it, and so I bought a plane ticket. I hopped on a plane and I drove down. Well, I flew down to Phoenix and presented my business plan. I told them that, you know what? I'm going to wake up in the morning, play round a golf, meet a bunch of people, come in here, I'm going to study for the first few hours. It was a part time position for the first three months for the actual work.
And then I was like, at the end of the day, I'm probably going to have another job where I want to continue to meet other people. This is my plan. Here's my network. And I left that interview really positive. I was like, you know what, this might have been it. I might've actually finally cracked the code on this whole thing. And so as I arrived to the airport, my phone rings and I pick it up and they're like, Hey Matt, you know, everything that you came in and told us was awesome. We think you have a great plant. Like we haven't seen anything like that ever before. We know that you're serious about it, but you know what, just right now you don't have the network or enough experience and so completely defeated. Uh, I flew back to Washington and on that trip I had a lot of thoughts around, you know, this wasn't the way that my life was supposed to go.
You know, I was supposed to figure this, this whole thing out. I thought I cracked the code on how to get ahead in life and now I was struggling to get a job and I was going to be about, I was about to be that athlete that walked the stage with his diploma, had no idea what he was going to do. And so I land and as I'm landing I reminded about this piece of paper that I was asked to fill out for one of the applications that I had. And it was about all the people that you had connected, connected with and was in your network. And it was meant to sell life insurance to them when I actually came on. But I decided that I was going to start calling these people. And so I went to my head coach and I was like, I just like opened up and I let them know that I was really struggling to get a job.
Here's what I wanted to do, here's why I wanted to do it, can you help me? And that day he gave me three numbers. He's like, you got to call these people today and get the ball moving on this. And so I called these three people and all of them different positions in the financial world, all of them planning or advising. And they started either giving me counsel guidance or they gave me new numbers to call and figure it out, you know, to start moving the ball a little bit more. And within that week I probably learned more about the industry and met more people than I had trying to do this on my own for about a month and a half. One of the things that I completely learned was that there's so much power in your network, there's so much power in the people that love you and care about you and are willing to do things for you.
Like don't ever forget about those people that are willing to help you get to that next level. And especially without the network, without the experience you might need to have someone help you open a few doors. And so I ended up getting a position in the mortgage world working with a former athlete who had worked for the same coach whose business was just growing and booming. And I was so excited. It was an awesome opportunity. I drove down to San Diego got my little place and I was now in the mortgage world and for the first six months to nine months or so, I was getting in there at five 30 reading through guidelines, trying to figure out the entire industry and you know, starting to work on files, emails, just getting immersed into the entire business and culture of the business. And after nine months, you know, it felt like I was grown up enough to finally start moving into being able to network and being able to get out there and like start my own business, which was the ultimate goal.
And that's really where people start making more money is when they're the originator, they're the people making those connections and building that network of people. And so I go in, I'm in a, you know, a pretty Calvin Klein blue suit, totally fitted and I'm walking into this networking event and I'm like, life's about to change. Like this is going to be it. All that hard work that you put in, just like in sports is finally going to change it. So I walk in and I'm, I can guide it over to this little section and the room is full of people in the real estate industry. And I like, I've suddenly realized that I have no idea what to do and my mind starts racing and I'm like, okay, well what do you, what do you know? And I was like, maybe this is kind of like, like a party or something.
And so I walk in and I start making my way around the room trying to make eye contact with someone and maybe like start a conversation and no one makes eye contact with me. So I do my first lap around the room and no one really looks at me. So I decide I'm going to hop on my phone. Maybe you look like I'm busy. I was like, all right, you know, maybe it's been enough time, maybe I can do another lap. So I do another lap again. No one really wants to look at me, talk to me, and I'm like, all right. I guess it's time to go. So I was at that networking event for probably less than 20 minutes and for all that hype. I come back and I sit down on my car and I'm like, what is going on? Like what happened to that confident, determined, disciplined individual that I once was in sports?
Like where did that person go? Like how do I find that person again? And so what I realized is that the one thing that I was missing was like my fundamentals, being able to practice. And I started to believe that like any skill like out there, like you can learn it if you are determined. And so I cracked open a book and everything that I started reading, I tried to start implementing as fast as I could. And so I started following people around people that were really good at starting conversations, people that were able to build rapport quickly, people that were able to do better cold calls in me surrounding myself and then actually starting to implement practice on myself. You know what questions are going to spark conversations, what you know is the way to properly handle a cold call. All of these things.
And after, you know, another six months to a year of doing that, I suddenly saw myself to starting to grow. And I realized that I was on a trajectory that I actually wanted to be on. And so one of the biggest things that I started doing, and one of the things that really changed my life was that I started realizing that all of these things that I was bringing back into my life, I once had when I was playing sports. And so I started comparing these beliefs that I had where I wasn't, I didn't feel like I was good enough. I felt like I was too young and I felt like I wasn't capable of a lot of these things. And I was like, okay, how do I take this feeling of rejection or this, this failure and turn it into, you know, compare it to something that I've been through, something that I've experienced.
And so I slowly started going through this. And this entire time during this process, I felt completely alone and isolated in my mission. And it all changed. One day when I threw out one of these blogs that I had written on Facebook, and all of a sudden these people that I hadn't talked to since high school these people that I played against in college, people on my team are reaching out to me and they're like, I am completely going through the same thing. Like we need more of this. And so since that time I started realizing that maybe I wasn't completely alone. Maybe this is actually bigger than just me. And so I started interviewing a bunch of transitioning athletes to try and figure out like what it was that they were going through and how they could get from being this, this confident athlete and just move their way into the real world and still continue to be successful.
And so from doing that, you know, it's become an incredible passion of mine. Um, I like am so like in love with this trajectory of like the athlete leaving the athletes space. And being able to use this athlete mindset for the rest of their lives and the entire thing. LDS people that I talked to, if you do it alone, like if you didn't know these things, everyone has all of these speed bumps along the way. Like I'm talking about the times where you didn't know that you needed to be ready to go to the networking event, the times that you believe that you were too young. All of these things are the speed bumps along the way, and like my job now is to get rid of them, to start moving you back into that area of confidence and determination and helping you continue to grow and develop as an individual because life isn't over after sports is really just beginning.
-Matt Mounier