From Pro Tennis to Coaching: Lessons in Resilience with Jeff Salzenstein

Jeff: I wasn't in alignment. My head and my heart weren't aligned, and I kept pushing and grinding and hustling.

Melissa: Yeah.

Jeff: And my body said, "No más."

Melissa: Yeah.

Jeff: You are done.

Melissa: Yeah.

Jeff: You're not listening, buddy, so we're going to make you dizzy.

Welcome to The Law Firm Owner Podcast, powered by Velocity Work, for owners who want to grow a firm that gives them the life they want. Get crystal clear on where you're going, take planning seriously, and honor your plan like a pro. This is the work that creates Velocity.

Melissa: Jeff Salzenstein, welcome to The Velocity Work Podcast.

Jeff: I'm so excited to be here. Thank you. And you pronounced my name right.

Melissa: I— yeah. Well—

Jeff: It's like a 20% success rate, maybe. Most people just completely butcher my name.

Melissa: That's what they do to my son, Lachlan.

Jeff: I know. You got it right, so thank you. Salzenstein.

Melissa: I'm— I, yeah. That feels normal to say it that way. Okay, that's great.

Well, you are a full-circle moment. We're recording on the anniversary of six years since the first episode aired of this podcast, which is The Law Firm Owner Podcast. And that… that's awesome. So I…

Jeff: I'm honored to be here.

Melissa: I'd rather have nobody else.

Jeff: Oh, thank you.

Melissa: So, yeah. I'm very— Uh, what I should say, because no one really knows this yet, you are my coach. And that's been a cool journey. And I feel like we're just getting started.

Jeff: Yeah, thank you. Thank you for trusting me, by the way. Yeah. Thank you. For believing in me.

Melissa: Well, later— later, we'll get into the story about why I trust you. But—

Jeff: Okay.

Melissa: I chased you down. That's how we met. I'll start there. I literally chased you down at a conference. I will give the backstory later, but I realized that's my guy.

Jeff: Okay, so before I tell you my perspective, what I want to know about that situation is they go on a break at this conference.

Melissa: Yep.

Jeff: And you see me walking outside, and you're thinking in your mind, I got to go get this guy.

Melissa: Well, I knew I was going to look for you at the conference. Day one, I didn't see you, which is wild because it was easier to spot people the first day.

Jeff: And I was there all day.

Melissa: Outside?

Jeff: I was everywhere.

Melissa: Yeah, you know what I'm talking about, the amphitheater.

Jeff: Oh yeah, yeah, yeah.

Melissa: Yeah. I can't believe I didn't see you there. So, okay, and actually, oh, that's funny. There was a guy I thought was you, and I was like, hey. And so I was going to go talk to him, but he, I— what I didn't expect was he was like a meathead. And I was like, oh, that's not what I thought. Anyway, it wasn't you.

Jeff: That's right. I'm a tennis head. I'm not a meathead. And, yeah, I have a lot of doppelgangers as well. I get people that come up to me and say, you look like so and so. I'm like, great. I just don't look unique. Okay.

Melissa: That's funny. So, so day one, I didn't see you. Day two, I spotted you halfway through the day, and they took a break. And so I turned to look where you were, and you were heading out the back doors. And I thought you were just going to the restroom or something. But then, when I got outside of those back doors, you were going outside. So I thought you were leaving. And you basically—

Jeff: Little did you know I was doing a little performance hack.

Melissa: Right. Yes, which I didn't know. I thought you were you were bolting. And I, so I chased after you. I was like, “Jeff.”

Jeff: So I'm walking outside at this break because I want fresh air. I can't sit in one place. The ADHD part of me is like, I got to move. I go outside. There's this little grassy area. I'm on my way to it. And before I can get halfway there, I hear this voice behind me, “Jeff, Jeff.” I'm like, who is this strange woman chasing after me?

Melissa: It's exactly what I was.

Jeff: Literally, like jogging. Like, like full clip.

Melissa: You know, Giselle was with me, and I was like, I got to go, there's my guy. And so she didn't see that part, but she felt the urgency. 

Jeff: And so I turn around, and before I know it, we're this far apart from each other.

Melissa: Yeah.

Jeff: And you're like, I need a coach. I think you're my coach. I'm like, okay, tell me more. I need to understand what's going on here. I do not know who you are.

But you know, usually in the world of, let's say coaching and sales, people find you, there's referrals. You know, they hear about you. Or sometimes you're like kind of going out there to find it. This was like the biggest layup of all time. Like this is what you want to do. When you want to enroll a client, you get them at a Conscious Entrepreneur Summit to chase after you because they've studied a spreadsheet. And that's how you found me. And that's how our beautiful relationship started.

And I am, I mean, you're like already one of my favorite people in the world because of what you do and your commitment to yourself and your family and growing your business. And so, it is just an honor that you tracked me down and you believe in me to do the coaching. And for the reasons that we're going to get into in a minute.

Melissa: Yeah. For the— yes. So I will get— I can say more later, but I just want to know you were a tennis pro.

Jeff: I was a tennis guy.

Melissa: So, can we just start like, get into all that?

Jeff: Let's go.

Melissa: Okay.

Jeff: Yeah. One of the reasons you hired me is because I was a former professional athlete.

Melissa: Correct.

Jeff: I played pro tennis for over a decade. And I always like to start in the middle of the story. And the middle of the story is actually about a year into my pro career. And I'm playing a second round US Open night match, Friday night match, Arthur Ashe Stadium. It's 1997, so you can do the math on about how old I am now, but I'm twenty-three years old. It's 1997, and Arthur Ashe Stadium at the US Open, Flushing Meadow, it's its first year in existence.

Melissa: Oh, wow.

Jeff: Yeah. They had just done the opening ceremony on Monday night. And I'm playing him on Friday night, Labor Day weekend.

Melissa: Who?

Jeff: Michael Chang. He was number two in the world. I left that little detail out. So Michael Chang's number two in the world. He's an American.

Melissa: Okay. Okay. Yeah.

Jeff: And I'm an American. I'm one year out after graduating from Stanford. And I had won my first round at the US Open, and I drew Michael Chang. And I actually remember a few days before this match, after I won the match, I go in the locker room with my coach who was from Colorado. And he goes, "Great job. You won your first round." I'm so excited, my first major win, you know, Grand Slam match win. And he goes, "You know what's next, right?" And I'm like, what? He goes, "Michael Chang Friday night on Ash." And I'm like— part of me is like, oh my gosh, this is the coolest thing, and part of me is like pooing in my pants because I'm literally— Yes. I just said poo.

Melissa: You can, you can cuss if you want, but you don't have to.

Jeff: I got gun shy of like, should I say shit?

Melissa: That's fine.

Jeff: So, I pooed in my pants, literally thinking, oh my gosh. And so I'm playing Chang, and I'm super nervous, lots of anxiety, all the feels. I'm playing great tennis. I'm 140 in the world. I'm going like this, my pro career is going up. And so I get out on the court, and I am so nervous. There's 24,000 people. It is a packed house. This is on USA Network. John McEnroe is announcing the match. He went to Stanford. He's one of my idols. And I don't think I took a breath for the first twenty minutes. I'm just like holding my breath out there. But somehow because I have this massive serve. I'm serving left-handed 125 miles an hour. I'm jumping out of the gym, really good athlete, blessed by my parents' genes. I get it to two all in the first set when I finally take my first deep breath.

Melissa: I don't know what two all means.

Jeff: Yeah, well I'll explain it.

Melissa: Okay.

Jeff: So in tennis, you're playing three out of five sets, okay, and one set you play to six games unless it's tied, and then you play a tiebreaker. So I come out at the very beginning, it's 0–0 or love-love, that means 0–0. If you win a game, then it's 1–0. And then you win the next game, the other person wins the next game, it's 1–1. And you're playing to six, win by two to win a set. So it's early in the match when I get it to 2-all. So Chang had won two games, I had won two games. We're tied, and it's early. It's fifteen minutes in. But I'm nervous, and somehow I get it to 2-all even though I'm nervous, and that's when I took that breath.

So I physically took a deep breath. I didn't take a deep breath before the match started. I didn't take it in the first four games. I took it then. And in that moment, I dropped in. Sometimes they call it the zone or the flow state. And for the next fifteen minutes, I'm absolutely kicking Michael Chang's ass. It looked like I was the number two player in the world. That's how great I was playing for about fifteen minutes. McEnroe's like, “Who's this guy? Where did he come from?” Because everyone thought I was just going to get wiped, right?

Melissa: Yeah.

Jeff: And the crowd's starting to like cheer and kind of like point like, where did this guy come from? Because they had nobody had really heard of me before, unless you'd really followed college tennis.

Melissa: Yeah.

Jeff: And so I get it to five games to four in the first set. And I get to set point. So I'm one point away from winning the first set, which is a big deal.

Melissa: Okay. Okay. Yeah.

Jeff: And I'm left-handed, I hit a wide slice, pull this guy off the court. I serve and volley, I come to the net, I hit a backhand volley to the open court. Chang's one of the fastest guys in the world, and he couldn't run it down, and I win the first set.

Melissa: Okay.

Jeff: The crowd, like standing ovation. I've got people pointing at me like, “Who is this guy? Where did he come from?”

Melissa: Yeah.

Jeff: And I'm strutting back to the baseline. Yes, it's true. I strutting back to the baseline, and the cameras pan on me and McEnroe's like, oh my gosh, the young American, he won the first set. And the cameras pan on me and I got this little smile on my face because I'm looking at my box. I got my parents in the box, my coach. I've got all my fraternity brothers that lived in New York, people flew in. I got my ex-girlfriend in the box. She now wanted to be my girlfriend again because I was playing at the US Open. And I got this smile on my face, and that's when the match ended.

The reason that the match ended was that the dominant thought in my head, in that moment was Jeff, thank God you didn't embarrass yourself tonight. I couldn't overcome my limiting thoughts and beliefs. I couldn't overcome the waves of pressure just coursing through my body and my mind. I was afraid I was going to cramp because I had cramping issues earlier in the summer, so physically, I didn't know if I had the endurance. So my physical, mental, and emotional state, it wasn't at that optimal stage for four hours. I could do it for that twenty-minute stretch, but I couldn't maintain it.

So I end up losing the next three sets in the match. So I lose in four sets. The crowd still thinks I'm amazing. And the next day I'm signing a contract with IMG with Pete Sampras's agent, who was the best player in the world at the time. And my career is about to take off like a rocket ship.

And I always like to share that story because it speaks into here I am on this big stage, extraordinary, right? Extraordinary, top one percenter, high achiever, best in the world at his craft. And internally, I've got all these limiting beliefs, all these little voices in my head saying, you can't beat Michael Chang. Even though for that stretch, I proved to myself I could, but I couldn't maintain it. I couldn't sustain it. I couldn't own it for a longer stretch of time.

Melissa: Yeah.

Jeff: And so that's just one example of kind of who I am, why I'm doing what I'm doing now, because those limiting beliefs really shaped my career. It got me to a certain point. And so obviously, I'm on the other side of it, helping people with that.

Melissa: Jeez. How did you end up— okay, you went to Stanford.

Jeff: Yeah.

Melissa: Did you ever see Michael Chang again, by the way?

Jeff: Oh, yeah.

Melissa: Oh, okay.

Jeff: Yeah.

Melissa: Okay, so there's there's there's more.

Jeff: There's a little bit more, but not much.

Melissa: Okay, okay. Well, you went to Stanford.

Jeff: I did.

Melissa: Which I didn't— I didn't know until after I chased you down. I went home, I was telling my husband, I think I met my coach. And it's an investment to work with you. So I was— we needed to chat.

Jeff: I'm not kidding around.

Melissa: Right. So we needed to chat.

Jeff: And we mean business, right?

Melissa: Yes, exactly. So he, um, we were looking you up on LinkedIn. I don't know why, I just didn't pay attention to your education when I was looking earlier. I that— I just didn't. So when we were looking, he said, he played at Stanford. And I said, no way. And I one— you are about our age. Like, did you know him? So then we started looking deeper. Anyway, long story short, you were in the same fraternity, which was sort of known as the athletes fraternity.

Jeff: Yeah.

Melissa: And he's a soccer guy, you're a tennis guy, but you know a lot of the same people, which is just super small world.

Jeff: Yeah, we're different classes. We weren't in school together. He's a little bit, you guys are a little bit younger than I am.

Melissa: Yes.

Jeff: But yeah, Stanford, yeah.

Melissa: Same. And I thought that's— that there's a— that means something to you all.

Jeff: There's a little cachet.

Melissa: Yeah, well there's cachet, but also just to you all, like, oh, he's good. Like we got like— he's good. He was in when he saw that.

Jeff: Right. We were struggling. Once he saw Stanford, SAE, he's like, oh, he's a Phi Alpha bro. He's in. We don't have the best reputation, by the way.

Melissa: No, I know, didn't the house get closed down?

Jeff: Oh, yeah. I think it was because of your husband. I think it's his fault.

Melissa: No, it's not.

Jeff: Oh, okay.

Melissa: So anyway, yeah, so you went to Stanford. What— I don't know where to start. How early back? I mean, tennis has been— I remember hearing you say at one point, “My dad put a racket in my hand at four.” So you've been a tennis player since you were really little.

Jeff: Yeah.

Melissa: I mean, I don't know, what do you want to share that gives people a sense of— 

Jeff: Yeah, great. I mean, I think it's important to realize, you know, you start, you talk about this Michael Chang match, and how does a kid from Colorado— I mean, Colorado does not groom tennis players. They groom skiers, maybe you get the off basketball player that plays in the NBA or football, but like tennis players?

And so, the fact that I even was playing Michael Chang at the US Open at age twenty-three, one year after graduating from Stanford, is pretty cool. Like the little kid from Colorado. It's also the very reason again, why I didn't win, do better is because I was the little kid from Colorado.

But yeah, my father put the racket in my hand early. It's funny, even when I was born, I found this out a couple years ago. I was born in Peoria, Illinois. Midwest kid. My dad was teaching tennis, he's my first coach. But when I was born, my parents created a birth announcement. And the birth announcement wasn't your standard, Jeff was born at 4:25 p.m., Peoria, Illinois. It was all those things, and they fast forward to 1991. So I was born in 1973. You can do the math on that. So 1991 would put me at eighteen years old. And on the birth announcement, I'm holding a tennis racket as a baby, and they've got me playing Davis Cup for the USA in 1991 as the joke that they sent out to everyone.

Melissa: Wow.

Jeff: So it was already like, this kid's going to be a tennis kid. And if you don't know what Davis Cup is, it is kind of like the Ryder Cup for golf.

Melissa: Okay.

Jeff: So it's like the international tournament that the countries play every single year. And it's it's you play for your country and you're best in your country.

Melissa: Yeah.

Jeff: And so my father and my mother made a birth announcement around me playing Davis Cup eighteen years later. Ironically enough, I never played Davis Cup, but I was a practice partner two different times. I wasn't good enough to play, but I was asked to be a practice partner.

So, so pretty much out of the womb, I was going to play tennis. And my mom played tennis. They're both great athletes. I had a racket in my hand, like dragging it around on the court when I was walking. My dad tells the story of when I was four or five, he would throw tennis balls up in the air, and at five years old, I'm running and catching it on the fly at five. And my dad's going, this kid's a little like wonder kid with his hand-eye coordination. So clearly it was in the genes or in the stars for me to play.

And what was interesting at that time in my life, you know, you're four years old, I'm an only child, and my parents weren't getting along. My dad didn't want to be married to my mom anymore. And so they got separated, and we moved to a different state. And now I'm five years old, my mom's a single mom working full-time. I'm a latchkey kid. But I remember walking up to this tennis club at six, seven years old, to take tennis lessons and to play in the groups. And then I remember going to visit my father in the summers in St. Louis, Missouri, and I played five hours of tennis. It was like a dream. Like most kids have to go visit their dad, and he goes to the office. His office was the tennis club.

Melissa: Wow. Yeah. 

Jeff: So I'm playing five hours a day. I'm playing with people that are two, three years older. I'm kicking their butts at six, seven, eight years old. And so it was kind of again, it was just in the stars. My dad was an unbelievable coach, just fundamentals, sound. He made it fun. He never put pressure on me. But I just had this internal drive. I think it came from the divorce. Um, really hard on myself, perfectionist at a very early age, got to do everything right. Maybe we'll get into the trauma stuff at some point, but that was the beginning of like, okay, there's something here.

And then my mom marries my stepdad. I'm nine years old when they get married, and he played for the great Trinity University team. So now I've got two dads. I got one dad that played Division 1 college, and another one that played Division— a stepdad that played Division 1 college. They're both tennis guys, and my mom's living with, you know, obviously, we're living with my stepdad. And when I was nine, he was like, you're going to be number one in the state. And I thought he was crazy. And uh, I ended up being number one in the state.

Melissa: Wow.

Jeff: And then by the time I was twelve, I was number one in the country.

Melissa: Wow.

Jeff: So, a lot of kind of expectation and results early.

Melissa: Yeah.

Jeff: But here's what happens. Here's what got really interesting with my career, and it speaks to kind of the reps that I've gotten around resilience and bouncing back. At fifteen, I was 5'4, 102 pounds. Like barely see over the steering wheel with my learner's permit that I have.

Melissa: Fifteen? 5'4? Only knowing how tall you are now. That's what I'm thinking. Yeah.

Jeff: Yeah. And so, I went from number one in the country at twelve to number sixty-nine or seventy in the country. So that's just like a plummet. And usually, kids, teenagers, you're going to quit. If you were number one and now you're seventy. And so I dreamed from the time I was twelve years old to go to Stanford. That was my dream. The coach was the arguably the greatest, he is the greatest college tennis coach of all time. He won seventeen national titles in thirty-nine years.

When you're ten, eleven, twelve, your dream is to play for Stanford. But if you're fifteen years old and you're losing first round in the nationals after you were winning nationals three years earlier, if you're seventy in the country, Coach Gould does not call you. Like, you're not getting recruited to go to Stanford.

Melissa: Right.

Jeff: And so at that point in my career, I had to make a decision, and I basically quit everything that I was doing. I quit skiing. I was— I loved basketball. I just focused all in on tennis. I started growing. I got another coach, a different coach, and I got back to top five in the country the next year.

And so then Coach Gould, he called me and he wrote me a letter and he started recruiting me, and next thing you know, I'm going to Stanford on a half scholarship. And the interesting thing about my experience at Stanford or at least going to Stanford, deciding to go, is there was a decision between Notre Dame and Stanford. And I had a full ride to Notre Dame. And I had a chance to be a bigger fish in a smaller pond, even though Notre Dame was awesome, too. They were a great program. There's no guarantees I was going to start at Stanford.

And ultimately, I decided to go to Stanford because if I could never play tennis again, if I had an injury, where would I rather be? And I decided Palo Alto, California was better than South Bend, Indiana.

Melissa: You are correct. And I'm from Indiana.

Jeff: No offense to my friends that went to Notre Dame, but like, so I go to Stanford not knowing I would be able to even start there. That's how good they were. And then I had this incredible journey in college where I was number five singles my freshman year.

Again, you when you come from Colorado, you come from public high school. I had three stepsiblings. I played an hour, hour and a half a day. I wasn't again, I wasn't groomed to be a pro. I wasn't even really groomed to go to Stanford at like that elite level. But when I got there and I'm playing five singles, if you're playing five singles at Stanford, you're going to get a real job when you graduate.

But something crazy happened at Stanford. In between my freshman and sophomore year, I transformed my serve. Pretty important uh, defining moments in my— defining moment in my story. I transformed my serve. I grew three inches. I put on fifteen pounds of muscle. And I went from having the worst serve in college tennis to one of the best serves, if not the best serve.

Melissa: Okay, wait, stop. Okay, you put on fifteen pounds of muscle. Is that because you tried to? Or that's just—

Jeff: I wasn't using steroids either.

Melissa: Well, I didn't think that. But is that what you were— you were working out to put on muscle?

Jeff: Well, listen, when you're 5'4, 102 pounds at fifteen and a half, and then by the time you graduate from high school, I was about 5'10, 140 pounds. I was just a late bloomer.

Melissa: And then by the time— between freshman and sophomore year though, you said you put on fifteen.

Jeff: I went from about 150. I was probably 150 soaking wet my freshman year. I looked like I was twelve, you know, baby face. And then sophomore year, I was, yeah, 6'1, 165 pounds. And I just like grew— like and then I started like the serve was huge and I'm like coming to the net and the coach is like, you're not playing five anymore, you're playing two. And then my junior year, I'm playing number one. And then my senior year and I'm team captain. It was just this like this blossoming that happened, this unexpected blossoming and— And you know, there's many lessons, and I skipped through a lot of details, but there's many lessons to all of this in that we can transform at any time.

You know, like it's never over. Like when you're when I'm nineteen years old and I can't even get a world ranking point because I'm small or my serve's not that good, but you transform your serve, if you transform some form something in your life, personally, professionally, you make a different decision, you go on a different path. And I made some different decisions to create an environment for me to transform my serve, and it was a lot of it was self-discovery.

If you know yourself, if you are willing to experiment, if you're curious, you can change your life. And I think I was doing that at a young age, not knowing that I was doing it. I mean, at twelve years old, my dad, my stepdad, wrote me a champion's poem. And that's the thing that all these executives and high achievers, they want the champion's poem. Well, I'm reading that every single day at twelve.

So at fifteen, when I'm going through that slump, I got that resilience built. I got that muscle building at a young age. And then when I'm nineteen, I'm willing to not follow the herd and transform my serve. When everyone was playing tournaments, I came home in the summer, and I started tweaking my serve. I modeled Goran Ivanišević, who had the best serve in the world at the time, and I copied his serve, and something clicked. Most people wouldn't do that. Most people would just go play tournaments and be like, oh, I'm just not that good or I can't get better or my serve stinks. I was like, no, I got to figure this serve thing out.

And so I think it just speaks to, I didn't know what really what I was doing at the time, but I was doing all these things that I'm teaching all these years later around bouncing back and resilience and transforming and staying open and being curious. And it really just my junior career and even my college career from the setbacks and the growth, it set the tone for my pro career, and then and then of course, what I'm doing now.

Melissa: Mmm-hmm. That's so interesting. I mean, because also your story isn't just about— you don't have to be young to make these changes or to be curious enough or open enough or in a discovery zone for yourself enough. You can do that anytime. It doesn't— I mean, you got that early, even though you were not really awake to what was happening from that perspective, but you got that early, and you learned early to repeat that— to model what you had been through before.

Jeff: Now I understand all of those things that I was doing. Juniors, I mean, even in college, my sophomore year playing two singles, we got to the finals of the NCAA Championships. And it came down to the last match, my match, to win the national title. And it was 3-all in the third set and I end up losing. I broke a shoelace. There was a ten-minute timeout. Coach Gould's giving me his shoelace.

There's a thousand people watching, all eyes on, and I froze and I choked and I lost 6–3 in the third and I ran in the woods that night and my parents are chasing after me thinking that I might harm myself. Like that's how traumatic it was to lose the national title when you put everything into it and you lose it for your team. Could have gone one of two ways there, right?

Could have been like, you know what, I just don't have it. I'm a choker. I'm not great. Or it could be like, let's double down and let's get better the next year. Thankfully, I had a lot of support around me. But it just speaks to like all these stories that were accumulating from age five to age, even up to the Chang match, and then all the things that have come after my pro career, like just you're laying down reps. You know, you're laying down reps. You're laying down, hey, I can do this.

And heck, I've had times in my life the last three or four years, like life's been hard the last three or four years for different people, for you, for me. But whenever I'm doubting, I'm like, okay, well, I've done this before in some capacity and I and I know kind of the formula. And so, I think we have to just keep— like you said, you can do it at any time. You can make these changes at any time. It's certainly it helps that I had this foundation early on, but you can develop the foundation at any time.

Melissa: Do you think every everyone who's great at something has choked when it mattered? Right?

Jeff: Yes.

Melissa: Yeah.

Jeff: There's more failure than success in the people that do it.

Melissa: Like in the moment, like there's failure at points, but almost I don't know if I can think of someone who's who's been a great at whatever they're great at that hasn't choked in a moment that it's not the moment, you don't want to choke in that moment and you do and you learn. I don't know, the growth that comes out of that is it's it's painful.

You know what that pain is like. I can't really imagine what that pain is like from your shoes. I know my husband knows what that pain is like. But we all have our own versions of that. Uh, so I don't know. That just came to me because people are really afraid of choking in an important moment and so they won't do stuff. So anyway, that just hit me when you said that because you've choked.

Jeff: I have. I'm a choker up until now.

Melissa: Okay, up until now.

Jeff: But, uh, yeah, I think, and that's the thing about tennis too, is you're on an island, you're all alone.

Melissa: Yeah.

Jeff: And you got to you got to learn to problem solve. You got to learn to like come up with things on the fly. You have to be able to emotionally regulate, you have to channel your mind and your body more than any other sport. You know, the team sports, you always have someone like to your left, to your right, or if you're having a bad day, you can go sit on the sideline. But in tennis and singles, you can't do that.

And I think if I look back on my career, you know, and I know we're going to talk a little bit about after the Chang match, but like there were a lot of injuries and there was a lot of I wouldn't say like full on choking, but I would say like in the moment like about to break through and beat someone like five in the world like Chang and others, the level drops. The level drops like 3 to 5%. I always say like 3%. But if your level drops 3 to 5% in that big moment at that level, you usually don't win because the other because the other guy's raising his level at that moment.

Melissa: It's about what you can hold. It's like your capacity.

Jeff: Your capacity to hold. We've talked about that.

Melissa: Yeah.

Jeff: Your capacity to hold stress and pressure.

Melissa: This, this, Jeff Salzenstein, this is why I knew I wanted to hire you. This is a specific language. It is a specific understanding that you cannot have if you haven't experienced it. I— that's that's why if I didn't find my pro athlete coach, I probably wasn't going to find one.

Jeff: Here's what's even— here's what's even— I mean, let me toot my horn just for a moment here. It's again, it's that sounds terri— like it sounds so cocky that I'm just let me toot my horn, but I guess that's what we're doing here today. I'm tooting a little bit.

Melissa: You're just sharing your story. You're sharing your story.

Jeff: But it's like here's what's really interesting about that is you say, I got to find my pro athlete, right?

Melissa: Yeah.

Jeff: But think about that. I didn't say those words before, but okay. There's many pro athletes that don't go on the personal journey that I've gone on to like to try to understand myself. So it's the pro athlete thing gives me the credibility of like, oh, he's lived it, he's been in it.

Melissa: Correct.

Jeff: Then you also need to find out is there substance underneath instead of just surface because kind of I like it to like tennis coaches. You can have a tennis coach that never played on the pro tour, but he can be incredible at developing a player. But you could have a player that won Wimbledon and can't explain how to do anything because they just, they're like, well, I just do it naturally. And I was on this journey to be like, okay, I am pretty good at what I do in tennis, but I'm not like Roger Federer. So I've got to work that much harder than those guys to understand what is happening.

Melissa: Right.

Jeff: And it was that cerebral analytical nature. I remember Jim Courier, who got to number one in the world. He had dropped about twenty in the world. And this is funny. I was coming back from injuries which we'll again, we'll get into that as well after my Chang match. And we were practicing and we were sitting at a changeover one day and he said, "You know what your problem is?" I'm like, oh gosh, the number one player in the world is about to tell me what my problem is. He goes, “You think too much.”

Melissa: He could tell by just watching you.

Jeff: Well, we were practicing together every day for a week.

Melissa: Oh right, okay.

Jeff: And he was seeing like probably how I was choking and like all the things I was doing not well or whatever. But he said, “You think too much. You're just the Stanford guy that overthinks”. And he's right. Some of the best athletes in the world, they don't overthink it. They just go out and they do and they be and they're in the present moment. And because I was too smart for my own good, I had a tendency to overthink things.

That's the negative. That would cause me to choke or drop my level because I'm in my head. I'm not embodied. I'm not in the present moment.

Melissa: Drop my level. I haven't heard that, but I like I understand completely what you're saying, and but I haven't thought of it like that.

Jeff: Yeah. But here's the positive of thinking too much. It's making me the coach that I am today, because I had to understand everything. Part of it's a trauma response of understanding everything. But like how to hit a backhand, how to understand strategy, how to see patterns on a court. It's a very analytical, cerebral thing. And it's it's that it's that active mind that has also is part of my genius. So at the time when he told me that, I looked at it as like a bad thing. Like, you think too much, what's wrong with you? And now I know that it was actually, if it's if it's used right, it can be an asset.

Melissa: Yeah.

Jeff: And I just didn't use it right all the time in the moment. Um, yeah, so tennis teaches you a lot and it taught me a lot.

Melissa: Yeah. The night that I was talking to Derek and we were looking you up, he was looking at your journey. And he said, "That is hard. That is hard. Like, you know, he was a great athlete himself, but he was on a team.” And that's he spoke to how lonely the journey can be for a pro tennis athlete.

So I, I mean, here's the part that I want you to be able to get to, but I don't know what order we need to go in. When you told— I asked you if you had a coach when you were pro. And you said, "Sometimes." I was like, what? I thought for sure you would have a coach the entire time. And you're on the pro— what do you call it? Pro circuit?

Jeff: Yeah, pro circuit, pro tour, the ATP tour. Okay, okay.

Melissa: You were on that for over a decade. And I was totally blown away that sometimes you had a coach and sometimes you didn't. Most of the time you didn't. And how lonely— so then you started sharing, there was I think this is a back and forth messaging, and you were saying like how what it was like. You were on the road a lot. Just when you told when you said that, I made a note to myself that we have to talk about that. I think it's a part of that chapter of your life is such a part of who and why you are the way you are today and the work that you're doing today. So, I don't know what you need to do to back that up.

Jeff: Oh, I know what to do. Oh, yeah. I know where to go here.

Melissa: Okay, good.

Jeff: So, so my pro tennis journey, we've touched on it a bit, but I played that match against Chang, and I'm signing with an agent with IMG. They're like the preeminent tennis agency. They're repping, they're like, this, he's one of the next great American stars.

And I remember playing in some, we'll call them minor league tournaments to try to get my ranking from 140 inside the top 100. I remember doing that after the US Open. And I remember like really putting a lot of pressure on myself because I now was playing at that kind of AAA tier in like equivalent to baseball, like minor leagues, almost to the top leagues, like the US Open. And I'm trying to break through and I'm losing to guys that are like 150 and I'm putting pressure on myself. And that just speaks to like it's easy to play loose against Michael Chang at the US Open and lose to four sets and lose in four sets. But it's really hard to day in and day out beat the best players in the world.

And I get to December of ‘97, and I'm playing pickup basketball at Greenwood Athletic Club here in Denver and I come down for a rebound and I feel a sharp pain in the front of my ankle. And that began an eight-month journey of we'll call it misdiagnosis, we'll call it not really sure what was going on. And I was in and out of a boot for eight months and every time I'd play tennis, my foot would start to hurt.

And we might touch on this in episode two or three at some point, but I now know that it could have been mechanical, but I think a lot of it came from my subconscious. And you can sometimes create injuries or even illness or disease or things can prop up if you're not clearing all parts of yourself.

But I hurt my ankle and I had surgery, you know, eight months into this. And then in my first tournament back, six months rehabbing, I had pain in my bicep. My shoulder was hurting. I cleared that a little bit. I'm like, I got to get back to the tour. My ranking was just plummeting.

My first tournament back, I feel a click in the back of my knee. Six weeks misdiagnosis. I'm like, I'm not waiting eight months for this. I'll go back to the doctor that figured out what was going on in New York, Dr. Alchek. He does a knee surgery on me.

So now I have two surgeries before the age of twenty-five after signing after playing Chang, signing with IMG, everyone thinks, and now nobody's calling me. Like nobody's like saying, hey, we got this deal and this clothing deal and they're like, we can't do anything, you're damaged goods. You got two surgeries. Most people would say you're done. And it was at that point where, you know, I'd go into doctor's offices, I go for appointments. I'd say, gosh, am I going to like work behind a desk next? Is this what's coming?

And I had to make a decision at that point. It was a major decision, another defining moment. And so again, we're getting experiences and defining moments at these younger ages. Now I'm twenty-four, twenty-five and I made the decision to go all in to study high performance.

That is when I went to my first yoga class at twenty-four years old. So we're twenty-seven years ago. I'm walking in, I'm doing hatha yoga. I'm reading articles about organic food. I'm looking up mindset and trying to find sports psychology books. I'm studying spirituality, Kabbalah, and you know, Buddhism, astrology, like, and I'm doing this in my mid-twenties in 1999 when it, you know, we didn't have the internet the way we have now. We didn't have social media where you can find everything. We didn't have Chat GPT, right?

And so that was the beginning of my high performance journey. I was already performing at a higher level. Now is like the study of it. Like, how do I apply these things so that I can actually play in my thirties and have an incredible career. And so, I basically started over at twenty-six. I'm like 800 in the world. And it was harder, the second comeback was harder than the, you know, climbing from 800 to 150 in the world, the first time was like fast. This time I'm like losing to people younger than me. I'm doubting myself. But man, it was hard.

Like you said, like I'm traveling alone. I don't have the money to pay for a coach. I don't have the money to travel with a physio or a girlfriend. So when you're when you're a pro tennis player, you only make money if you win. It's kind of like being an entrepreneur. You only make money if you get deals, right? You're not 9 to 5 salaried.

In the NBA, you can be out for two years and get paid $50 million a year. You can be out for three weeks and everyone's paying for your food and your physical therapy. I pay for everything. Pro tennis is the most ridiculous sport of all time. It is the worst business model, I you're hearing me saying it, it is the worst business model for someone who's not top twenty in the world. It's incredible.

And so not only are you not making money, but you're sitting on the sideline and you lose your ranking. It's not like you come back and you're in the starting lineup. It's not like you come back and they pay you your full salary like you got a real job. Like you start over. And it is the most brutal, ruthless experience to try to make it on the pro tour. Everyone loses every week. There's only one winner. You lose either in the first round, second round, you know—

Melissa: So there's no prize for second place, third place.

Jeff: You get prize money, but like if you're playing at the levels I was playing at, you're barely even covering your cost.

Melissa: Right.

Jeff: So yeah, there's prize money.

Melissa: You need to be number one if you're going to make any money.

Jeff: I mean, you got to like if you got to be, nowadays, you could be top fifty and do pretty well, but back in the day, it was like top ten, top twenty. But I just went on this incredible journey traveling most of the time alone. Sometimes I had coaches, but you know, there was a money play and then it was just like finding the right coach was really hard, but like yeah, the loneliness.

Like I remember one time I was I was in Wroclaw, Poland in February.

Melissa: Sounds terrible.

Jeff: Wroclaw, Poland in February. Like, God bless Polish people in Poland, but like February, like oh my gosh. And you lose and you don't know anyone. You know a couple of tennis players, but you're not like friends with them. And you're laying, you're staring in a you're in a sterile hotel room and you're staring at the ceiling and you just lost and you're like, what the F am I doing? Like seriously, like what am I doing? And that happens the next week when you're in Joplin, Missouri and you lose.

No, seriously. Like Joplin, Missouri. Like we're not at the US Open, everybody. So it was it's so painful. Your identity every time you lose a match, it's on you. You know, you're trying to pay the bills. You're losing. Uh, you see your friends like moving up the corporate ladder, starting businesses, getting married, having kids. And I mean, this was the choice I made. I made the choice. I made the choice to go on the hero's journey. Like this is the hero's journey.

Melissa: Yeah, 100%.

Jeff: And I think that's probably why I'm uniquely qualified to when someone tells me they're struggling, I'm like, listen, I got you.

Melissa: Oh, I thought you were going to say, listen, you don't know what struggle is.

Jeff: No, no, I don't say that. But I say, listen, I got you because I know what it's like to lose. I know what it's like— like in tennis, you lose every day. Roger Federer as the number one player in the world, Novak Djokovic, they win 55% of all the points they play. And they're number one in the world. That means they're losing 45%.

Imagine if you go through your day and you lose 45% of the time, if you felt that. You have to bounce back in thirty seconds after you lose a point for the next point. You don't have time to be in your feelings. Like I'm all about somatics and emotions. You know that, like… But like when you're in the moment and you're competing, you don't have time to feel sorry for yourself. You have to be able to process, you have to be able to come back, you know, right away.

And so my lifetime record on the pro tour, the top level, when I played in the tour level, not Challenger, which is a level below, I was sixteen and forty-one. My win-loss record was sixteen and forty-one. My career prize money was about $500,000 over eleven years. Do the math on that.

Melissa: Wow, yeah.

Jeff: People think, oh, top 100 in the world, he was this and he was that and he went to Stanford and he was an All-American. I lost my ass. Like I that if you want to call that my first business, it effing failed. Like I didn't scale it and I didn't exit. Okay, everybody? It didn't happen. It did not happen and it was painful and it was hard. But I tell you what, I could serve 130 miles an hour. I mastered that skill and I mastered mental and emotional— didn't master it, but like I got better at it. And I it planted all the seeds for me to be the coach I am today.

Like all that all the thoughtfulness that went into it and all the like mistakes that I made, whether it was nutrition choices or like when I hear your stuff with like what you're working on with your nutrition, I'm like, oh, yeah, I've tried that one and done that diet and I've done that plan and whatever. And I've tried a lot of things. I've seen a lot and I can really relate to people. But yeah, my pro journey was incredible. And I found a coach when I was twenty-eight years old.

Melissa: Is this before or after you were top 100?

Jeff: Before. I hadn't broken it yet.

Melissa: Okay.

Jeff: Yeah. So I found a coach. I was living in L. A. at the time, and I moved to Atlanta to work with this coach.

Melissa: I didn't know you used to live in L. A.

Jeff: I made it six months in L. A.

Melissa: Did you— and I didn't know you lived in Atlanta.

Jeff: There's a lot of things you don't know about me yet.

Melissa: That's true. Well, that is true.

Jeff: Cuz you're the client and I'm not like we're not supposed to be friends. Right? Remember we established like—

Melissa: Yes, yes.

Jeff: there has to be a hierarchy, otherwise you're like, I don't want him to coach me anymore. But like, yeah, you're going to learn a lot about me on this.

Melissa: Yes. This is great.

Jeff: So yeah, I lived in L. A. for six months.

Melissa: Get you in this seat.

Jeff: Uh, and then I moved to Atlanta to work with a coach that had developed two players into the top 100 within a year of playing on the tour. And I had been on the tour for five years and hadn't done it yet. So I was started to hang out with this coach. Turned out he wasn't the right fit for me. Funny how the universe works because I go to Atlanta to work with this coach who would help the top 100. But he didn't, I didn't really click with him.

Great coach, good dude, but and I remember one day this other coach said, hey, you need to go work out with this guy named Joseph. Like okay, he's over at this racket club. He's a quirky coach. He's very interesting. I think you'll find him fascinating and fun. I'm like, fascinating and fun. Like I'm used to like coaches being like, you know, analytical and like, so I show up at this club, his name's Joseph O'Dwyer. He's Irish. He was born on St. Patrick's Day, March 17th. He's from Dublin, Ireland. We call him the Celtic warrior. I show up and he has a William Wallace sword that's like three feet long. Yes. And he's playing U2 music, Where The Streets Have No Name, blaring it.

Melissa: Where is this?

Jeff: This is at a club in Atlanta.

Melissa: Like a club like athlete club?

Jeff: Like outside like at an athletic club, but it's outside in a corner somewhere. No one's, and he's working somebody out.

Melissa: Oh.

Jeff: And he's playing U2 Where The Streets Have No Name. And he's got the William Wallace and he's got these funky shorts and his funky walk. And he walks up to me and I'm I walk up, I'm all laced up, Mr. Stanford guy, hair parted down the side, shirt tucked in. And he's just like, “Hey mate, I'm Joseph.” And I'm just like, oh my god, this guy's so weird.

Like and that began this incredible relationship of this really uh, artistic, creative genius of a coach. And it was it was exactly what I needed. I needed a person that could help me see tennis from a different— in a different way.

Kind of like if you help someone see business or their life in a different way. I was the analytical type. I am actually left-handed. I'm supposed to be more artistic and creative, but I was raised in a right-handed world and like I just had to figure things out with my head. And he taught me how to visualize. He taught me how to see the track of the ball.

He was like tennis used to be called 'jeu de paume' in France. That means you play the game in your hand. And so when everyone's telling me, you know, turn sideways, step into the ball, rotate your hips. He was like, just play the game with your hands. Just like the Italians would do or the French would do or an artist would paint.

So I learned, I was like, oh my gosh, I can play with more feel. And I have an incredible feel, like I have great hands, but I wasn't using them. I was like, you know? So he taught me how to relax. He taught me how to see my targets. And he was just a great motivator. He was just always like this great boundless energy. And he started calling me Seagull. He gave me a nickname, the Seagull after the book, Jonathan Livingston Seagull by Richard Bach.

Melissa: Mm.

Jeff: You've never heard of it? No. Oh my gosh. You're now reading this book next. It's your assigned reading. It's this great read about a seagull that doesn't fly with the flock. And he dive bombs, he tries new things, he tries to fly in all these different ways. And I guess he saw that in me. Like he was like, this guy's different.

And so he gave me, at twenty-eight years old, I was already doing quirky things, right? I was into all the spirituality and the emotional stuff and but he got me to— he gave me permission to be more of myself on the tennis court and even off. And we just, we had so much fun together. And he taught me so much.

And he was the guy, he showed me this shot called the buggy whip forehand. Nobody showed me the buggy whip forehand. He showed me how to hit low volleys. He showed me how to get the inside of the ball, like all these little techniques that no one had showed me. And I still like I became a tennis coach after my pro career. I was like teaching these things and always giving him credit, but he was the guy that instilled and infused energy and passion and got me to love the game and love the learning even more and these shots and we just had this beautiful relationship. And I look back on that time over twenty years ago, it was a life changer to have someone like that.

Melissa: Yeah.

Jeff: Now, he had some challenges off the court, and it was hard for us to like do it full-time. 

Melissa: Yeah.

Jeff: Um, I think he would admit that he's a handful. But um, the time we spent together was just, it was beautiful. And I've many fond memories.

Melissa: How many years?

Jeff: Pretty much from twenty-eight to thirty-three when I retired. And it was interesting, the second to last tournament I ever played, he came to watch me.

Melissa: Aw.

Jeff: Do you want me to tell that story?

Melissa: Well, I have questions. Okay. I do, I do. I how long did you coach with him was one question I had. Um, what did what did you have to pay him?

Jeff: Uh, I paid him a lot less than you pay me. But you know, we're professionals.

Melissa: I'm asking because I'm just trying to think of... What do pro athletes who are broke, I mean, they're trying, but what do you… I don't know.

Jeff: I think I was paying them like $1500 a month. I mean, sorry, $1500 a week plus expenses.

Melissa: Okay. Oh, well that's that's not nothing. Jeez.

Jeff: But he was probably, you know, if he taught lessons at the club all week, he'd making more. So he was probably taking a pay if he went to Mexico with me to a tournament, he was probably losing money.

Melissa: I see, yes.

Jeff: Um, but you know, yeah, at the time is probably $1500, but like these days, you know, really good coaches are going to get paid, you know, 3 grand and above probably, you know, uh a week. It's usually a weekly plus expenses.

Melissa: Yeah.

Jeff: It's a tough life because like if you're even if you're like if you're a pro tennis player and you're making $500,000 a year gross, you know, if you're paying a coach $150,000 a year, if you're paying expenses, if you have a physio paying him $100,000, if you're paying for your girlfriend to travel with you. Like I remember seeing Jo-Wilfried Tsonga who he got to top ten in the world, saw Instagram video and he was saying how if he went to Wimbledon and he took five people with him, coach, let's say parents, physio, whatever comes with that, nutritionist, chef, whatever. If he lost first round, he lost money that week.

Melissa: Yeah.

Jeff: You're not making money.

Melissa: Yeah.

Jeff: And I remember when I played Wimbledon in 2003, excuse me, 2004, the prize money then was $15,000 for first round. So if you got into the four majors, you made $15,000 four times. So you were guaranteed $60k.

Melissa: Okay.

Jeff: Right? And that's a decent chunk of change. You want to be in the top 100 in the world to make that $60,000 because if you don't, you're not getting that big paycheck. Well, now first round prize money, I think is like $75,000 for one for one event. So now you're making $300k just by getting to those four tournaments. So in twenty years it 5x’d. So it's much more greater chance of making a living now than when I was even when I was playing.

Melissa: Oh, wow. Oh wow. I know what I wanted to ask you. What was what was your ranking before you started working with him and then after?

Jeff: Yeah. So with my career, I got to 150 when I was playing Chang. I had the injuries. Then I make this comeback. I start over and I get back inside the top 200. So I was really having a hard time uh breaking that 150-ish mark. I kind of hovered around 150 to 200.

Now again, context, if I'm 170 in the world in tennis, and we just take that ranking and we put me in the NBA, I'm the sixth man off the bench. I'm sixth man. I'm making $25 million a year right now. Okay? If I'm in the NFL, there are 50 players on a team, there are thirty teams, there are 1500 players in the NFL. Now, granted, they play individual positions. So, I understand. But like if you're 175 in the world at what you do, it's pretty good.

Melissa: Yeah. Yeah.

Jeff: But in tennis terms when they look at that, they're like, no, you're a minor leaguer. You're a journeyman.

Melissa: Right. 

Jeff: How could you be a journeyman at 175 in the world? At anything. I'm sorry. That's freaking good. But your persona and your identity is being just told that you're a journeyman, you're not very good. You know, if you lose first round in a Challenger, you make $500. $500. If you lose first round, you could I could play a Challenger event and lose first round and make 500 bucks, so I lose a couple grand because I had to fly there and pay a coach.

The next week I could go play in the main draw of the US Open and make $70,000. That's the yeah, the discrepancy in the range. So when I get to Joseph, I'm about 150, 150 in the world, 180 in the world. And I was just looking for that edge to get to 100. And he helped me with the things I talked to you about.

And then there was another mentor of mine, John Yandell, who was a master on uh video analysis. Video analysis was starting; he was like the pioneer of it before it got popular. And we started breaking down my strokes and started breaking down my serve. And he really helped me with my serve.

And I remember going to the US Open in 2003, I was twenty-nine years old, and I was about 130, 140 in the world. And I took Yandell, and I took O'Dwyer, and I took Jeff Greenwald who was a mental coach. So I had three coaches with me for the qualifying of the US Open and I qualified there. And that was kind of my run that I made to break the top 100.

So Yandell helped me with the serve. O'Dwyer helped me with the feel and the visualization and the fun, and the artistry. And some of the techniques and I really started putting it together and broke the top 100 when I was thirty. And at the time, I was the oldest American to ever break the top 100 for the first time after the age of thirty. Which basically means you just weren't good enough when you were twenty and you were good enough when you were thirty and you just stuck with it a really long time.

Melissa: Yeah, yeah. That's great.

Jeff: Kind of crazy.

Melissa: It is crazy. I feel like it's just— I don't know. I mean, of course, looking back, you can see how all these things link up to what you're doing now. There's so much there. There were other catalytic events even after everything you've just said that have added a lot of substance to your story. Share a bit about those.

Jeff: So my coach, O'Dwyer, helps me break the top 100. And what was really crazy about my journey is that he… okay, I sometimes get emotional about stuff. So just stay with me. We go to Mexico. We go to León, Mexico, a small town Challenger event. He goes with me there. And that tournament, I believe I needed to win it to be main draw at Wimbledon. I had I had never been main draw at Wimbledon straight in, which means you have to be top 104 in the world to get directly in. Otherwise, you try to qualify. I had played in Wimbledon ninety-seven by qualifying in. I had played at the US Open by getting a wildcard, but I never had direct acceptance because I had never been top 100 yet.

So we had, we knew that I had to I think win it to get in. And I got to the semifinals and he had to leave. He had to get he had to go back to Atlanta or do something. So he leaves. And at this time in the tournament, I start developing plantar fasciitis in both feet. So I'm taping my feet, you know, before each match. And somehow, some way, I won that freaking tournament. And when the rankings came out on Monday, I was 100 in the world on the nose.

Melissa: Wow.

Jeff: On the nose. And now I'm main draw at Wimbledon. And the irony, and so then I win that tournament and then that's in Mexico and that give me a special exemption into the next tournament which was in Bermuda. So I finish a tournament. You think about this, you win a tournament, you get to the top 100 in the world. You know, if you do that, if you win NBA or whatever, you celebrate with your teammates. I'm on a plane in Mexico City. I'm flying to like Charlotte or Atlanta and then I'm flying to Bermuda. I'm getting in at 2 in the morning and the next morning I have to like practice to get ready for this next tournament.

Like there's no down time. There's no like because you have to go to like keep the momentum going. But I had plantar fasciitis in both feet. And so, isn't it interesting that the highest moment that I achieved in terms of ranking, I was injured. I was hurt. And so the kind of the counter of the highs and the lows of pro tennis and of life of like you can have these big highs and then you can have these lows. It was happening at the same time.

So, the next couple years were tough because that summer, when I was top 100, I was main draw in all the hard court tournaments, the US Open, leading up to the US Open, you have all these hard court tournaments, but I was hurt and I couldn't capitalize because I was injured.

So by the end of the summer, my ranking had dropped back to like 120. I'm thirty years old, and for the next two or three years, it was more of that. It was more of like stop and start and stop and shoulder and groin and foot. And so I never really solved my body. Like I kept trying all these different things and I learned a lot of a lot of cool things.

Again, I was kind of ahead of my time there. I was drinking green drinks before everyone else and I was going to do active release technique and muscle activation and acupuncture and drinking alkaline water. Like I was doing all this stuff and I still couldn't quite figure out what was going with my body, which we both know that can be related to subconscious and things that are stored in our bodies. And I'm even working on that right now.

So I get to thirty, thirty-three. I'm living in Atlanta. And I remember playing a tournament in Palm Springs, California, in the BNP Paribas Open, which is the fifth largest tournament in the world. And I got my butt kicked by an Italian guy.

And after the match, I'm sitting with an ex-girlfriend that I lived with for a stretch in Palm Springs, and we went to lunch together and I'm crying, and I'm like, I don't think I can do this anymore. Like I think I'm cooked, like burned out, cooked. You know, we think about leaders and high achievers who struggle with burnout. Like I was done. And she kind of consoled me.

And then I fly to Florida for the next tournament and I'm housing with someone in with a family. And my dad lived in Florida, my grandma would vacation in Florida, and my grandma helped raise me. You know, she lived in Denver, and they were two really special people in my life. Of course, my father and my grandma, Nana we call her. And I remember driving down the Florida Turnpike and I just started bawling because I was like, I think this is the last time my dad's ever going to see me play pro tennis. It started when I was four and I'm thirty-three and he didn't know. Like I knew.

So I go play and I lose. And then a week and a half later, I go play in Tallahassee, Florida, a tournament that I had won before. And I qualify into the Challenger and I'm in the first round and Joseph O'Dwyer was living in Alabama, the next state over, in Gulf Shores, Alabama, Fairhope, Alabama coaching a player. And he drove over to watch me play.

And I lost in the first round and we're sitting in a racquetball court. And he's like, "Hey mate, you're playing amazing. Like you can make another run." And I can't do the Irish accent, but it's it's classic. And I looked at him and I got tears streaming down my face. I'm like, I don't think I can do this anymore.

So I cried three times within a three-week span knowing that I was done. I drive back to Atlanta. The next morning I wake up, full-blown flu. Like I am like my body is cooked. I've got the flu. I feel terrible. For three days I deliberated in my mind and I called Joe up and I was like, “Joseph.” And he's like, “What, Seagull, what?” I'm like, “I'm going to keep playing. I know I can do this.”

Melissa: Why? Wait, what?

Jeff: Yes. I definitely thought you were done. You got you— Well, I was. I get on a plane. I go to Houston. I go to sleep. I wake up the morning of my match and I'm dizzy. Like I'm dizzy. Like lightheaded, like my head's in the clouds. Like you can't explain it type of shit. Okay, all right? And I play the match in a fog, in a daze, dizzy. And it was the last match I ever played.

Melissa: Huh.

Jeff: So what ended up— what the way that I've sorted all this out is my heart was done. My head said keep going. I wasn't in alignment. My head and my heart weren't aligned, and I kept pushing and grinding and hustling. And my body said, "No más. You are done. You're not listening, buddy, so we're going to make you dizzy.”

Melissa: Yeah.

Jeff: Literally physically dizzy. Like you can't— and so I went on for eight months. I went on all these tests. No one could figure out what was going on. Virus, vertigo, no one could figure out any of it. And I know it was because of stress. It was because my cortisol levels were through the roof, all the stress, all the things I teach now. I was in it.

Even after studying all of it for eleven years, I still was struggling. And it was at that point where I was doing a little bit of coaching. I couldn't quit. If you've never had a real job in your life and you're thirty-four years old and you got no money in the bank, even though you're, everyone perceives you as being the best, like amazing and you're so successful, it messes with your head.

So I went to go visit uh my family, my father, my stepmother, and my three siblings. I have two families. I have a Colorado family and a Florida family. And it was December 30th, 2007. And I remember uh going to visit my family and I always looked forward to going to see them, but particularly my younger brother.

My younger brother, Eric, was a high school senior at the time. And he loved basketball, great basketball player. And my first— I mean, I love basketball. It's my favorite sport. The Denver Nuggets, all day long. And I go to visit and I'm looking forward to seeing him. He looks up to me as the pro tennis player, and you know, he's seventeen years old. I'm thirty-four. And we're half brothers.

So it's it's more than just brother. It's like mentor, I'm his I'm his godfather. And I walk into his room, and he's passed out. There's foam coming out of his mouth. He's overdosing from a cocktail of drugs. And in that moment, I was like, I've got to do something. And you just go, in that moment, it's kind of like the mother that maybe sees their child like laying on laying and they can pick the car up, like 500 pounds and they don't know where it comes, the strength comes from. That's basically what happened.

I was like, I got to do something. Pick him up, put him in the car, take him to the hospital. They pump his stomach, whatever, he survives. And you know, super traumatic experience, what came after it, it got really ugly that night because they let him out of the hospital. He came back to the came back to the house and was destructive because he was he was using drugs. And um, basically from that moment on, I put a plan together to help him.

I borrowed $18,000 from a wealthy friend. I borrowed money from my grandmother and I found a rehab facility in six days. I found an interventionist. I flew an interventionist down from Chicago, sat with my parents, sat with me, to this is the plan. This is what we do. And just like that, I moved back to Denver. I called a couple of my friends. I said, hey guys, I just retired from the tour. I'm a coach now. And that's how I started becoming a coach.

It was this traumatic event with my brother's mental health and addiction struggles that got me into the world of coaching. Otherwise, I didn't know how to quit from pro tennis. It was like impossible to like find, like to quit because I'm not a quitter and most people that are high achievers, they're not going to quit until they get sick or they freaking die or like something bad happens.

Melissa: Yeah.

Jeff: And so that was such a pivotal moment, another defining moment, that shaped me and what I realized when I moved back to Denver, I started coaching tennis players, junior players, because when you come back to Colorado and they hear the former top 100 guy, Colorado Tennis Hall of Famer's back, all the parents are like, we want him. They're like sprinting after me.

Melissa: Yeah, exactly.

Jeff: We want you to coach our kid.

Melissa: Yeah.

Jeff: Totally. And I'm like, you need coaching more than your kid does. ‘Cause you're the one messing them up. Let me help you. If you're listening to this podcast and you're a parent of a kid who's an athlete or a performer, you're probably messing them up a little bit, so you might want to talk to me to like help. But in all seriousness, I start coaching and within a month of coaching, I'm like, OMG, I love this so much.

Melissa: You’d never done that before.

Jeff: No. I'd coached myself. And it's interesting because I look back now and like, ah, I wasn't very good back then. But I was pretty good considering because like, again, you think about you have to coach yourself from age four on a tennis court. I was so cerebral. And I always had this thing of like, someday if I'm ever coaching, I'm going to be so good that like I make a difference. because I didn't have great coaching.

Melissa: Yeah.

Jeff: And I was like, I want to be able to lead and I want to be able to coach at a deep level and help people because I didn't get it's like kind of like if you don't have the parent that you wanted, you overcompensate to be like, if I ever have kids someday, I'm going to be present with my kids because my mom or dad wasn't. I felt like that with coaching. I'm like, I didn't have the best coaching. They were doing the best they could. They helped, I was able to pick out what they could help me with. But I didn't have that kind of like all-in-one like Obi-Wan Kenobi. I didn't have Yoda.

Melissa: Yeah.

Jeff: I wanted freaking Yoda to like guide me because I was hungry for it.

Melissa: Yeah.

Jeff: I felt like I had to be my own Yoda, which is great for self-development, but you make a lot of mistakes going on that journey and maybe I wouldn't have learned what I learned if some Yoda just told me what to do.

Melissa: Right.

Jeff: So, anyway, I just wanted to make sure that I was the best tennis coach I could be when I came off the tour. And so I started working with all these kids. And I realized in the first month, helping someone else gave me more fulfillment than doing— I wasn't fulfilled playing tennis.

And I think that's the struggle high achievers have and leaders have is like, you try to scale this business and you wake up one day and you're like, what did I just do for twenty years? And so, just having that outlet to make a difference in other people's lives. It happened fast and I found my love for coaching. And so then, you know, I go on this journey in coaching and entrepreneurship. And at the same time, my brother is going through rehab and all these other things that happened that are, you know, we'll get into either today or another time.

But like, man, this body of life, this work of like what it's like to be a pro athlete, and then what it's like to be a coach, and an entrepreneur, and then what it's like to like go side by side with a brother that battles with mental health and addiction. Like I can I can hold space and sit with people in a lot of different ways because of that. And you mentioned like certifications, like you have two coaching certifications. I like to joke. I'm like, I'm like the anti-certification guy.

Melissa: Okay, well listen, certifications are not… people like to hear that you have them, but that's not how I learned my stuff that is—

Jeff: I know. I'm just saying like I've been certified in a couple of things, but like if someone wants to hire me, they're not hiring me because of my certifications.

Melissa: Absolutely not.

Jeff: And you did not hire me because you're like, okay, he's a pro athlete, now I need to get like figure this guy like, okay, he's my guy because I feel something, I know he's been some places.

Melissa: Well, that's— you've mentioned earlier just because somebody's a pro athlete doesn't mean that they're going to be a great coach. I know that, but you were able to articulate through everything I was looking up, your site, social, whatever. You were able to articulate the things that I know matter and you clearly have some grit that you actually don't talk— maybe you do. But I wasn't finding that you were talking about the grit, but I know it's there because you were you got yourself to top 100.

So, so I know that part is there plus you care about how you connect with the people that you are helping and you're focusing on what matters, the fundamentals. So to me, when I saw like there were dots being connected and there were certain things hit that mattered, what more do I need? What like what am I what else— doesn't matter.

We did have a conversation the week after I met you. Maybe you would have said something that you could have made that conversation weird enough that I would have been like, maybe I was wrong about this guy. But I knew that wasn't going to happen. I just knew it.

Jeff: Well here's the interesting thing about that. And I think I told you early on, or maybe that's what you were just alluding to is like because I'm so committed to my own growth, that like I want anyone that works with me to be like, hey, that was weird that you said that or hey, I don't really agree with that or I think we could do it a different way.

Like this is a this is a co-creation. This isn't just coach telling player or client what to do. And so I think, you know, if I can check my ego at the door and be like, this is an opportunity. Like the saying, “When the student is ready, the teacher will appear.” Like I appeared for you, but um, you appeared for me. Like I'm as much— whether you believe this or not, I'm as much the student as the coach.

Melissa: No, I get that. Yeah. I get that only because that's the way I feel with my clients.

Jeff: Like when you hear people talking about the stuff they're doing and then you're just like, wait a minute, like am I doing that? Oh, I've got something to look at. So not having that as a tennis player, not having a coach in the tennis world like that was one of the reasons I didn't get to where I wanted to go ranking-wise, but it was also one of the reasons why it made me go this way to work on myself and then realize, how I now I can like really like at this second season of my life, I can really be out there and like, hey, you're struggling with this. Well, let me tell you what I went through or the analogies we can make to sport. We've talked about that.

And gosh, I mean, there's just so much juice. And then again, my brother's story is one of a kind and uh, the pain that we've experienced as a family individually, collectively, also the triumphs, like I can really speak into that when I'm on stages and when I'm working with people. I can really relate to the very extreme stuff and I can also relate to the subtleties of performance. And again, I think that's what just every coach, every person, every founder is unique because of their gifts and their stories. And I like to think that's what makes me unique is these stories we've we've started to unpack today.

Melissa: Definitely. I, okay, there's so much more I want to cover. We already decided you're coming back. And I, consistently. I think I think you are someone who it's great to bat back and forth about concepts that are important that I can I can share like what I am how I'm thinking about these things, where my walls have been, where you've helped me circumvent some things that I've been dealing with for a long time.

So, I think I'm I'm definitely willing to do all of that. So we'll dig into some of the things that have been most helpful and some of the shifts that I've made. Um, and hear more about your journey as time goes on.

Jeff: Yeah, we'll get into we'll get into we'll get into the entrepreneur journey. Like I've I've I've, you know, we talked again, like pro tennis.

Melissa: Yeah.

Jeff: I think it's the first time I've ever verbally said it, especially on a podcast, that like that, eleven years, and it was a failed exit.

Melissa: Yeah.

Jeff: Like, yes, I won many lessons, but if you look at dollars and cents, it was a failed exit.

Melissa: Yeah.

Jeff: And then I built an successful online tennis program, instruction, that we can get into. So we can talk about entrepreneurship and digital marketing and then coaching tennis and what it's like to work with athletes. And how that didn't successfully scale either. And now I'm just like uniquely positioned to speak into all those failures, but also have triumphed in many ways. And um, we can go to town on all of that and then the Own Your Zone™  framework, of course, how that developed and why I'm speaking, why I'm doing what I'm doing. And yeah, man.

Melissa: Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. This is we just we just got started unpacking this. This is great. I think it felt important to me for you in this first episode to share your story. I think context helps. I think if you're going to be back on, you know, people, I prefer, I think we have a pretty strong listener base. So I want those listeners to have context for who I'm sitting across from on these conversations that we'll have in the future too. And so thank you for thank you for sharing your story.

Jeff: Thanks for having me and I hope whoever's listening that whatever I shared about my story today, they can maybe see a little bit of themselves in my story, the struggle, the setbacks, what's possible, where you can take a left turn or a right turn, how you can bounce back. And that's what happens now when I speak and especially when I speak and do my keynotes and workshops is that uh people can see something in my stories they can relate to because that's really what I want. Like this is not the Jeff Salzenstein show. Even though it felt like it today.

Melissa: Yeah, but I hear you.

Jeff: It's about the listeners, it's about those that you're impacting, like what lessons can we impart from my experiences? And then, you know, again, we'll get into all the all the fun stuff next.

Melissa: Totally. Well, people want to stalk you like I did. What do they how do they do that?

Jeff: Yeah, they can stalk me. Yeah. They can go to jeffsalzenstein.com. They can go to my LinkedIn, heavy story-based and content-based on LinkedIn, and then also on Instagram.

Melissa: Yeah, and we’ll link it all in the show notes.

Jeff: This is my yeah, this is my why, my purpose is to make a difference in the world. This is I know that I know there'll be other things I'll do in the future, but like this is my sweet spot. Like making a difference, coaching, speaking, and really sharing a message because there's a lot of people that are going through it.

Melissa: Yeah, yes.

Jeff: And a lot of successful people going through it. And there are the cool thing is there are tools and strategies and insights that, you know, we can shift and we can live better lives. So, I'm just so grateful that you brought me here. Thank you.

Melissa: Thank you.

Hey, you may not know this, but there's a free guide for a process I teach called Monday Map Friday Wrap. If you go to velocitywork.com, it's all yours. It's about how to plan your time and honor your plans so that week over week, more work that moves the needle is getting done in less time. Go to velocitywork.com to get your free copy.

Thank you for listening to The Law Firm Owner Podcast. If you're ready to get clearer on your vision, data, and mindset, then head over to VelocityWork.com where you can plug in to quarterly Strategic Planning, with accountability and coaching in between. This is the work that creates Velocity.