Hamish Kerr | Why I Stopped Being "Happy to be There."

And what I realized once I started, you know, working with her a lot and turning my head more to to coaching was the thing that really drove me was progress. As long as the person I was working with or team I was working with was making progress, then it was a just a brilliant job. Welcome back. It's great to have you here again and it's flip the mic time and it's your chance to ask me a few questions and you've chosen to bushwhack me, which seems to be a common been these days. No prep for questions, but I look forward to them.

Yeah, you won't need it, don't worry. Yeah, I I have a little bit of a mix of generic and slightly more non generic because I I thought potentially some of these questions might have come a few times, but I guess I also kind of want to start at the start with you. What inspired you to get into coaching? It's a good question. And I, I, I don't think there was sort of one instant where I thought, oh, I want to be a coach. I kind of fell into it because I was playing for a Dutch club and they asked me to be player coach.

And, and I did that for the first three teams. And then the following year they said, could you be player coach for the first three teams and do the the the two top junior teams? And, and then in one of the one of the teams, there was a young girl called Amy Van Buren. And she was definitely gifted, but very introverted and not really expressing her talent like she could. And, and her dad asked me if I would help her. So I started helping her and, and then, you know, she decided she wanted to try play pro And then her dad asked me if I would, you know, do some of the travel with her.

And so I was still playing quite a bit myself and enjoying that. So I kind of had to make a decision to cut back on playing and, and see what we could do together. As you know, I felt like I wasn't going to go much further in my career. I mean, with experience, it's just kind of crazy curve. With experience, you always get better and then you get to an age where you can't just get better on experience and, and you know, age starts to, to play his part. So I thought I was kind of, yes, I could get a bit better, but almost purely through experience.

And so it was an opportune moment to kind of filter back on the player and take that. And what I realized once I started, you know, working with her a lot and turning my head more to to coaching was the thing that really drove me was progress. As long as the person I was working with or team I was working with was making progress, then it was a just a brilliant job and, and progress. You know, I remember speaking, you know, to Marx about this. Some of the, the great moments in my coaching career have been like, you know, late afternoon at Wimbledon on the grass, just the two of you doing work and, and you just know that the game is starting to come together, that that you're making progress.

It it kind of gets to this place where you feel with a player or with a person, if it's outside of tennis, that you're on a mission and, and that mission is something that I love. It's kind of like you're marching towards something and, and making progress. So that is what inspires me and still inspires me to this day. You know this that's feeling that suddenly you're on a mission and things are slowly clicking into place and sometimes the results are not showing, but you just know inside yet. And that's where I've coined the phrase, you know, do the work and good things will happen.

You just never know when. So yeah, that's that's what inspires me. Great, that's a very good answer. I I'm fascinated by that, that element of progress. I think it rings very true to me as well that that idea that so long as I'm getting better, I still want to wake up and just just try my hardest. If, if that's all I get out of it, then I still know that is something that's very, very worthwhile. Cool. My next question is, as you have progressed through your coaching journey, what are some of the things that you have learned and has your approach changed as you have become older and wiser and and more developed as a coach?

Yeah, definitely. It's strange. I mean, I think I've learned this, that when I first started coaching, I had this idea that I could prepare athletes and players for the journey. And that I think got in the way. And I started to realize that you kind of have to have a dream, which is great, but you know, it's, it's, it's not really real when you're a long way from it. So, you know, you can have a dream maybe one day to be in the Olympics or whatever it is, but then kind of shelve it, forget about it.

You know, you, it's there, but you forget about and really focus on the next step. And as a coach, I learned that if you're trying focus on, you know, three steps at a time, it just doesn't work. You literally have to take the focus on the next step and allow the step after it to reveal itself to the athlete. Because I think athletes get very, very motivated when they know what it is that they need to do to improve and and that it's the obvious next step. That's what I need to get better AT. And so once I learned that, I stopped trying to prepare athletes on 3 or 4 fronts and really just focus, even though I could have them in my head, don't verbalize it to the athletes, allow them.

And, and I had to be patient as a coach, allow them to discover in a way, or sometimes I could influence like by talking to them, But what do you really think we need to do next? And, and they'd be like, I'm not sure. And I'd imagine 3 or 4 things I was like, well, for me, I'd kind of bring out the thing that would give them the most bang for their buck and say, well, how about we focus on X and see where that takes us. And that again, would narrow their focus to what was really important. So I'd say that is one thing that definitely improved a lot.

The second thing, which I think I've always had pretty good timing, but to realize when to have the longer deep conversations and when to keep it very, very short and not confuse the athlete or put too much in their head, You know, very close to calm competition, whether we, if you have that long deep conversation, you know, the afternoon before competing, whether you like it or not, maybe there's too much going on in the person's head then. So, you know, when, when you're in competition, keep it very, very simple and, and less is more.

And you know, you know, unfortunately, I have made that mistake many times where I've had too much of a conversation either during competition or just prior to competition. And that's a discipline that that I've really had to work on. And make sure that, you know, if the timing is right, understand what you need to give. Sometimes it's very, very little. Sometimes there's nothing. You know, I know if an, if an athlete's in flow, your most important job is to stay out of their way. And it's, you know, I think I think younger coaches tend to sometimes feel like they need to justify the reason for being there.

And therefore I need to give the athletes something. When you've got a self responsible athlete who's flowing, just step out of their way. Don't give them anything, you know, other than, you know, good stuff, you know, keep going, nothing more. So, yeah, that's that's probably the other big thing that that I've learned. And the last thing I've learned is the right question at the right time is more powerful than telling somebody anything. Sounds like there's a lot of almost empowerment and and becoming less of a a coach per SE or like a less of someone who's telling someone what to do and more enabling them to do what they need to do.

That'd be correct. Yes, yes, I think and I think, you know, age has something to do with this, the age of the athlete and stuff. But once an athlete is, you know, at an elite level, I think it's all about facilitating rather than telling them to do anything. You and and I think also you there is a bit of a check for their more sounding board, you know, where they can say, what do you think about this? And you can Give your opinion or you can ask them the question that's going to make them reflect and think about what they need to do.

And yeah, so I think the more mature the athlete is, it almost gets to a point where you, you know, you never tell them anything. I mean, that doesn't mean that occasionally somebody doesn't need to kick up their ass. And then you're going to just be like, you know, But it's very, very, very, very, very rare. Awesome. I love that. My next question is what key traits do you see crossing over from the athletes you work with and the business leaders you work with? I think, I think enthusiasm and, and what you said is a love for what they do think if, if what I've, what I've come to realize is, is business leaders who are humble enough to and smart enough to have a coach.

And I really think that in life, everybody should have, whether it's a coach or counselor or something, somebody outside of their family and friends and everything to talk to honestly and find somebody who can, you know, be honest with you. I think the ones that hire a coach are the ones who are curious and, you know, want to get better. And therefore that alone says they love what they do because they want to get a lot better at it. So I think, I think curiosity is a big trait and, and humbleness that, you know, however successful they are, there's always room to get better or room to have better ways of going about things.

And I think, you know, that that's another common trait. I think really, really top athletes are very curious about what they can achieve. And yeah, I think, I think resilience is also, I mean, it's a very common word that but the idea that setbacks aren't just part of life, part of the journey. And, and I think people who get totally devastated by setbacks waste a lot of time because they, they tend to stay in the set back too long rather than say, OK, this has happened. You know, how do I move on from it very quickly?

You know, and, and, and you know, people do move on from it. But you know, if it takes you 2 weeks to do that, that's two weeks where you're where you're not doing your job as well as you can do because your mind is still, you know, in the shoulda, woulda coulda and at the end of the day it's gone and there's nothing you can do about that. So I think. I suppose those those setbacks are inevitable as well. Yes, yes, I mean, nobody succeeds all the time. It's impossible. And I do think it's kind of right because if the most talented person on the planet, you know, was, you know, on every time they they competed and never had any setbacks in their life or whatever, it was always just there, life would be very boring because just the most gifted people who worked hard would always win, you know.

Yeah, with young kids often say it, you know, say, would you like to win every match? And they go, yes, I go, no, you don't. Because you do realize that you'd kill the sport if some person won all the time. It would kill the sport. You know, when you do lose, you're helping the sport because you know other somebody else has got a chance. So, you know, that's just a game to get their head away from the fact that, you know, you're supposed to win all the time. And I think in in every walk of life, it's the setbacks that that force us to reflect a bit more.

And in those reflections, you grow more as a person, and then you probably grow more in your job, whatever that is. Absolutely. And I suppose in the next challenges, how do you, how do you grow from success just as much as setbacks, right? Yes. And that's a, it's a much tougher one because if you're the best at what you do, the challenge is so much internal then. And if you can't really internalize that Channel completely, it'll be very easy to get just a little complacent. But then of course, the set back will happen.

What if you go and you're going to get back on it? The set back will make you honest again. But yeah, it is a little harder. You know, when when things are going really well to sit and go, what's the next step? I think that's a great question that no matter how well things are going, you go, what's the next step? And I think if you can keep on that pathway of, you know, what's the next step that can that prevents complacency. Break it down to day-to-day, brick by brick, isn't it? Yes, yeah, yeah.

Because there's always something in life that you can improve. So, you know, what's the next step for me just might be organizing my time better or doing interviews better. I mean, there's always something that you can do better. And these things are also intertwined into, you know, how people present and how successful they are. Like you said, there's no one thing. It's it's everything. Absolutely. My final question and this is a little bit off track so you can answer or not, but I feel like there's a big obsession these days with child prodigies and very successful startups.

And I am interested in hearing your thoughts around whether very successful startups slash child prodigies first, first and first and foremost, are they the same thing as one, a business term, as 1A sport term And how do we treat these? Do we celebrate them or do we do we try and nurture them? And are there any themes that you've seen with successful child prodigy slash startups who have been transitioned into great elite, you know, athletes or businesses per SE? So you're talking about successful prodigies?

Yeah, is is what makes a successful prodigy and is it despite being a prodigy? Is it in spite being a prodigy? I'm I'm I'm interested to know if you've had any thoughts around this stuff. Yeah. I mean, this is a very interesting question because kind of comes to, you know, a question that I've asked often, which is, you know, for prodigy, you know, are they so confident because they win all the time or do they win all the time because they're so confident? Think when you've got prodigies that succeed, a lot has to do with the people around them where they very gifted and obviously being very successful.

And if they don't buy into the hype and all this, and the people around them can keep them focused on the next step and keep them focused on, you know, the love of the sport or the business, they have a chance of succeeding and, you know, being good people as well. I think one of the big dangers which I've seen often is a prodigy who does succeed where the parents become fans, their friends become fans, and everybody around them is kind of a fan and not doing their job really, which is to be a parent.

And I think this is important for, you know, people that are brilliant at what they do to always realize they're brilliant at what they do. But if, if I'm ill, I don't want Roger Federer showing up as my Doctor Who doesn't know anything about medicine. I want a good doctor showing up. And so everybody in their field could be a star. And, you know, you mentioned your father as basically being a star in his field. Nobody will ever hear of him. And I think the media is something that creates A myth that somehow prodigies are superhuman beings when the reality is they just incredibly good at what they do.

But there are many things in life that they probably do very and for sure will do very poorly. And that perspective that it's great to be excellent at what you're doing, but you need to respect the fact that, you know, there are people putting, you know, rockets into space. There are people who are inventing, you know, new medicines. There are people who are, you know, changing the world one life at a time. Maybe, you know, somewhere in a village in Africa. I mean, or, you know, there are so many people doing amazing things in the world that because the TV isn't on them or the media is not on it, nobody ever knows about her.

But they're no less special in their field. So I think having people around then that can kind of keep some kind of balance because very, it's very difficult. I think for an 18 year old who's maybe close to the best in the world to, to have a life perspective. It's impossible. Not very good at sport, but not very good at living potentially. Yes, yes, yes. And I think that's why sometimes you'll see, you know, child prodigy actors or whatever, you know, even in business, you know, believable startups.

And then you find out after it's about, you know, the the drug addictions, the alcohol addictions, all, you know, all of these things because they're a bit lost because all they have around them pretty much are fans who are worshipping them and not giving them that perspective. Of course, there are people that are prodigies who who don't want that perspective and they will sack anybody who tries to give it to them, including maybe their parents. So you know that that's a a different personality.

But I think, you know, Boris Beck has actually said it is, you know, that maybe winning Wimbledon at at 17 was not the best thing that happened for his life because he didn't really know how to deal with such fame and such such a change so fast, so young. So, you know, I think, I think it's a very delicate thing for prodigies because there's a lot of living after success. You know, it's not, it's not, you know, there can be more and more success and stuff like that. But there's a lot of living. And at the end of the day, you know, no matter how good you are at anything, you're still living life.

You still got to go to the supermarket or have somebody go for you, but you still got to be around people who still got to live life and, and, and you need to be equipped to live life. And I think that's the danger of prodigies. The great thing about prodigies is sometimes they are the people who can really move things forward because they are geniuses. What at what they do. And if you know for their sake, if they can keep their feet on the ground and do that, then these are often amazing people that do, you know, move the dial forward in the world.

You know, I don't know if that really answers your question, but I did. No, it's fascinating. Thank you for entertaining my tangent. I hear a lot of interesting kind of things coming out there around what is someone's purpose and how do you break down that purpose? And also how do you define that success? And I think that potentially is a mature athlete or a mature person that success can be defined better than when you're young and and you potentially connect that to your whole life rather than just being one small facet of your life.

Yes, like I said, there's a lot of living around what you do. And I think sometimes people forget that they get so consumed in the little bubble that they're in because it is a bubble. Remember, that's a little bubble in the humongous bubble. It's just a little, little, little bubble. But it's it's very easy in that bubble to become totally consumed by it and feel like that's the whole world, and especially when you're young. If you're not happy before you win the Olympics, you're probably not going to be happy afterwards.

Yes, yeah. And I think there's a there's there's a couple of amazing stats. I mean, there's a lot of research that athletes that specialize very young are not often the most successful athletes that those who have, you know, do a lot of sports and different things are in general more successful than the the specialist. And the other one is I think it's something a ridiculous thing about the percentage might be wrong, but I think it's it's around 70% of, you know, Olympic medal winners get depressed after the Olympics because kind of what next?

And if they can't find what's next, then it's, you know, that's not pretty depressing state. But I think that's because of that total obsession and not being aware of a wider perspective as a person. Absolutely. And the reason being too much, just the outcome. But I mean, we also know that sport is a results business as well. Business is a result of business. It's that you know, dichotomy that you need to do it from intrinsic motivation and and and do your best, which is the the the goal, But you know, you're also competing to succeed.

Fascinating it is. Those are all my questions, so thank you for entertaining me. Yeah, thank you for for some great questions and for hopefully we entertain those who watch this. But yeah, I've really appreciated your time and good luck with everything that you do going forward. And one thing I do have an inkling that once you done with your sport, I'm fascinated to see what you do next because I think there's humongous potential there and I think you're going to do some great things. Well if you've got any any ideas let me know because I I have no idea what I'm going to be doing after sport but I am sure excited to find out that's for sure.

Remember, wait, the next step will reveal itself when when you're. Very true. Very, very true. Brilliant. Take care. Thank you very much. And we'll post all of your your details with with the show notes. But it's been great meeting you and good luck and continue becoming the best that you can be. Awesome. Thanks for hearing me on David. It's it's been a great chat and yeah, just keep keep finding the next thing to chip away. Exactly. Thanks. For watching Locker Room Power with David Samuel, if you enjoyed the episode, hit subscribe and leave a comment on your favorite platform.

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