EP41: Derrick Furlow - Helping Athletes Impact, Inspire and Empower

The “Get Out of Arkansas” Plan! Nothing against Arkansas, but my guest today on the #MakeYourMark podcast, Derrick Furlow Jr., made a commitment to overcome a severe injury in football, attend a top college program, and be able to provide for himself and his family for years to come. Hear about the obstacles he has overcome to become a leader in helping athletes transition out of their sport.

 

“Getting out of the operating room, I had this brace on my left leg, and when I touched it I asked, ‘Hey doc what’s this brace on my leg?’. His reply changed my life forever, ‘the brace is for your ACL’. It wasn’t even torn! In that moment I became obsolete on the football landscape; my dreams, my goals, everything I’ve been working on had been taken away. I remember one day crying, sitting on my bed, using this machine to rehab, and I heard this voice saying ‘I gave you this football stage for the glorification of my kingdom and you are using that stage for your own purposes, so I had to take it away to get your attention’, and that moment my life changed forever, because it gave me a different perspective.”

 

If you join Derrick and I in a room full of current and former athletes, we’ll show you how to leverage your athletic skill set into business success. Derrick can show you the mindset needed using his college football background experiences, and I’ll follow it up with the how to’s on getting in front of the right people in business and entrepreneurship to get you to that higher level. Make sure you give this one a listen, it’s non-stop energy and advice!

 

“The crazy thing is that I was with the number one recruiting class in the country. I had to prove why I was there.  This was not the road I thought I was going to take, there were a lot of undefined things I had to redefine. I hadn’t played a game in a year, the stadium seats 107,000 people, and I have to prove this to myself and to the coaches. I didn’t have the easy route. I knew what I had to do to get to that point, I had to do what I expected to do, and I exceeded it.”

 

Derrick is such an engaging, funny, caring and knowledgeable guy, and has lots of great advice for you, happy listening!

 

“I sat down and asked myself, ‘What made me a leader in sports? What did I do to make me one of the best of the best?’ And I thought, we learned our playbook and we studied our opponents. So we’re going to see different scenarios and we’re going to practice it, and it is going to be recorded. While we watch it we’ll make adjustments and corrections, and then we’re going to go back and practice again. So the next day we know what to say, or not to say. I started doing this on a regular basis, I became really good at selling, and I could duplicate it. Sure enough my sales started to go up, my sales team started to go up, and it became really easy.”

 

“Sports gives you the opportunity of controlling the environment. You watch it and you can take things from it. Athletes who people look up to and admire, you can take things from them and apply them directly to your life and achieve the same level of success in your life and your business.”

Some Topics we talk about in this episode:

 

• Introduction - 01:24
• Growing up in Georgia - 03:23
• Rapper or Sports? - 06:35
• Rush for 2200 Yards, and Live Happily Ever After - 09:40
• To control Freedom and Control my Happiness - 12:50
• Junior to Senior year - 14:35
• Obsolete on the Football Landscape - 16:38
• A Different Perspective in Life - 17:50
• Deciding My Future after the Injury - 20:45
• Taking the Difficult Route - 21:54
• Focusing on Something Bigger than Me - 26:26
• Start Preparing Before the Moment Hits - 32:55
• Torn ACL Leads to Uncertain Future - 36:19
• Relevant tools, from Sales to Real Life - 38:00
• What the Game Taught Me vs What I Gave the Game - 40:35
• Decode Your Own Message - 44:45
• Struggling After Sports - 47:48
• What Athletes Bring to the Table - 49:13
• Wrap-up and Takeaways - 52:24

How to get involved

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• If you’re looking for ways to Make Your Mark, send me an email [email protected] and I’ll get you going right away.

 

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