Student athlete

CJ Smith is a former Division I football player who competed at both the University of Minnesota and Campbell University before earning his master's degree in clinical mental health counseling.

Today, he's dedicated to helping student athletes bridge the gap between performance and mental health so that they can both thrive... on and off the field.

His work focuses on helping athletes develop a healthy sense of identity, strengthen their mindset, and recognize that who they are is bigger than what they do.

Today, we're talking about sports, mental health, pressure, performance, and what every athlete and every parent of an athlete needs to know.

Right.

And I think now with the whole players are getting paid now, they're being scrutinized more than ever.

Like now guys are, well, athletes are no longer student athletes.

They're more so being employed.

That's a specialty of his.

And also with working with college athletes and NIL, written about that.

He most recently, just a few days ago, released a TED Talk, which has already had 100,000 or so views.

So it's amazing.

He's the president of a company called April that's doing a lot of work in the RIA space with tax software and so forth and tax planning.

I want to switch gears a little bit because I think we've talked about how you've approached working with clients and helping educate children and your passion about that, which is very smart.

Now you're spending a lot of time with college athletes.

And NIL, you're teaching at the university.

No, well said, well said, well said.

So for you, my friend, going back to university, so you're a student athlete.

I think that's always important to put that student thing in front because sometimes that's a little dilute, convoluted.

So you were Teachers College teaching track, right, for university? And how do you maintain that as you're doing meets and high-intensity training and commitment to track?