00:00Our skill and talent can take us to levels of success our character can't sustain.
00:04And because you have elite talent, people assume that you know how to manage life's challenges.
00:10And so the assumption of that, that's the thing that separates high performers, specifically athletes, from everyone else.
00:20The one and only Dr. Sherry Riley, life coach, the success whisperer, as I like to call her.
00:28I'm a bestselling author, an incredible woman of God, an amazing person I've got to know over the last several years.
00:35I'm so glad we're here in Vegas. Yes. Together. Last time I saw you, we were in the ATL at my house, at your house and in her house.
00:43Everybody, there's all of these plaques. There's jerseys of different NFL players she's been connected with.
00:49There's plaques of different records with artists you've worked with.
00:53You literally, it's interesting, like you're under the radar, but you're so like above it as well.
01:00I've never really seen anybody function in the duality of that outside of you.
01:03So kudos to you for all the amazing work you do. Thank you.
01:06I'm glad we're here because it's interesting. You have a really rich sports background that I don't think a lot of people really talk to you about.
01:12So the first question I will ask you is, when did you fall in love with sports?
01:17What sport? Although I know the answer to that. And what was the feeling that you got when you experienced that?
01:21When I first fell in love with sports, I grew up in Richmond and my dad was in Cincinnati.
01:26And me and my dad watched sports together, the Bengals, the Reds.
01:30But then my grandfather, when my parents got divorced, my mother and I live with my grandparents.
01:34And my grandfather built a basketball court. It was our dirt backyard with a tree, with a rim in the tree, with roots all in the dirt.
01:45Sounds like a court to me.
01:46Yes. And I would be out there by myself playing. And I would literally play for hours with the dirt, you know, all over the basketball.
01:54And that's when I fell in love with basketball and sports with me and my dad. Up until he passed, we always talked sports.
02:02Yeah. And I want to stick with sports. And now you, beyond just being a child on the dirt, on the dirt court, just how you've been able to impact the lives of professional athletes.
02:13For those who may be unfamiliar, what has been your history with that and how are you continuing to help them get to the exponential level of elevation that they desire?
02:21Yeah. So what I found on my journey is you can have the world screaming your name and still be unfulfilled and still be empty and still have that feeling of being stuck.
02:30Yeah. And so I serve as a high performance life coach. My whole thing is I want you to win in life and the game.
02:36And so I've been so honored to be able to work with high performers when they get to that place of whether it's broken relationships, whether it's in lack of confidence, but anything that's affecting their peak performance in all aspects of life.
02:51And then from that work of working to help them grow personally so they can dominate professionally, they end up working at their highest levels of peak performance.
03:00OK. What challenge like what what's a big challenge that you have seen athletes face and have to you've had to help them work through that you haven't necessarily seen from people who are not athletes?
03:12Oh, that's a good one. Oh, my God. You know, our skill and talent can take us to levels of success.
03:18Our character can't sustain. Well, because you have elite talent, people assume that you know how to manage life's challenges.
03:26And so the assumption of that, that's the thing that separates high performance, specifically athletes from everyone else, is people assume, oh, you're a great athlete.
03:36You can handle life's challenges. And that's not true.
03:39And that's where we come in and really help level the playing field of giving you the skill set to not only have this elite talent, but also be able to make quality decisions.
03:49Basically, how do you manage the internal and external chaos that comes with being a high performer?
03:56Yeah. So I want to talk about mental health because it's obviously been a big conversation piece, probably bigger than we've ever known it to be up top over the last several years.
04:04Let's just say COVID-19 pandemic and up. Yeah. Now, let's connect that with sports and then let's connect that with your experience when it comes to mental health,
04:12when it comes to those the ebbs and flows that may happen within an athlete's psyche.
04:18What have you noticed is something that might be concerning?
04:22And what what have you as a black woman felt compelled to help them work through in that respect?
04:27Wow. Working with the younger athletes, elite college athletes, I've really, really uncovered how impactful the pandemic and that isolation was.
04:39Yeah. And what's happened is there's this assumption that because we've grown in age and years that we've grown socially and they haven't.
04:48And so working with our college athletes, working with our young pros, we've really uncovered this low level of confidence that and anxiety and stress that's clouded by the success of how they show up in the game.
05:02And so there's such this challenge with confidence that we've really been working on with our younger athletes.
05:09And it was coming through that pandemic. People don't realize that just because they were still playing the game doesn't mean they were growing and developing internally.
05:17How to manage the struggles of what's happening around them.
05:22And so it's been it's been challenging because it is such a when you have the world screaming your name because of your athletic ability,
05:31but you literally inside are crumbling. That's a very tough dichotomy.
05:36Yeah. And so I'm so committed. They call me auntie.
05:40And I think that's a unique difference that I have as a woman in sports is there's a guard that comes down.
05:49And the reason I highlight that is because for the longest, people told me that I couldn't do this work.
05:54I couldn't serve as a high performance life coach in professional athletes or with elite athletes because they don't need it.
06:02But what I found is the exact opposite.
06:04There's such a migration to this work because there's such a safety net.
06:09And a lot of times it we diagnose it as mental illness when really it's just how do I manage life's challenges?
06:18So there's definitely a place where we need that psychiatrist, that psychologist.
06:21We need that work. But a lot of times it's how do I just manage the conversation with my mother?
06:28How do I manage the conversation with my father?
06:30How do I stop biting my nails? How do I? Because that comes from anxiety and stress.
06:35Yeah. And so that's the work that we do to really couple with those who need more mental illness work, more mental health work, and also just dealing with the life challenges.
06:45Now, let's move to the mentorship piece really quickly.
06:48You are our ushers. One of his closest confidants.
06:51You have been there really at the inception of his career because also Dr. Sherry Riley was in the, you know, on the music side of things, on the label side for many, many years.
07:00What is that feeling like for you to say, I'm going to witness Usher perform at the halftime show?
07:09I'm so proud. I go back to the 15-year-old who had lost his voice through the puberty, who had acne,
07:17who had this magnetic energy as a 16-year-old, but was still 16, and we're trying to find song that would work for a 16-year-old.
07:27I had 40-year-old women. We're walking through Lenox Mall in Atlanta, and 40-year-old women are like, hey, I'm like, he's 16.
07:33But I'm so proud, and I'm proud because the things, the dreams, the hard work, the ideas, the vision, the concepts that he had as a 16-, 17-, 18-year-old,
07:45he worked on those things during that time that he's doing now and on the stage.
07:49I'm so proud because when I resigned from LaFace, I always said to him, I'm more concerned with you, the man, than you, the brand.
07:56I'm so proud of the man that he is. I'm so proud of the humility, the humble confidence.
08:01He's so committed as a performer.
08:03I tell you this, one time when he, last year when he was doing his show here in Vegas, I went to practice, and I had to rehearsal,
08:12and he was working for an hour and a half on one part of a song, a song that he's been performing for years.
08:18He worked on it for an hour and a half. That's the commitment to excellence.
08:23That's the commitment to excellence, that all these years of performing a song, you still put that hour and a half in that one piece.
08:30So I'm so proud. I'm a proud big sister.
08:32I love this. So as we're closing, we've had all our amazing black women in sports write down their secrets to success.
08:39We have a playbook that you guys get to write down, you know, your notes and secrets to success.
08:44So what did you write on your card that is there beside you?
08:48Yes, I wrote, own your greatness with humble confidence. Be kind and gracious to people and work in excellence.
08:56Well, you're the personification, the epitome of everything you wrote down in your playbook.
09:00And I just wish you continued success. Have so much fun.
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