Today we’d like to introduce you to Stuart Singer.
Stuart, can you briefly walk us through your story – how you started and how you got to where you are today.
For as long as I can remember I’ve had a passion for sport and for helping people. As a high school basketball player my coach handed out an article from a magazine about the use of visualization and how it helps sports performance. It immediately drew me in and sparked an interest. Fast forward a few years during my last semester of college I stumbled upon a job coaching middle school basketball. I was hooked. I decided to go back to graduate school and get a master’s degree in counseling and pursue a career as a school counselor and coach (what I thought was the perfect marriage of passion for sport and helping others). However, what I soon realized was that I was becoming more and more interested in the mental aspect of coaching and performance. Fast forward a few more years my wife encouraged me to pursue my doctorate and really make the full-time leap to becoming a sport psychologist.
We’re always bombarded by how great it is to pursue your passion, etc – but we’ve spoken with enough people to know that it’s not always easy. Overall, would you say things have been easy for you?
While I can’t say that it has been a perfectly smooth road I also wouldn’t say that I’ve faced a ton of struggles either (knock on wood). I am so passionate about what I do, and I feel absolutely fortunate to wake up each and every day to do this work that it’s impossible for me to call anything a struggle as it relates to my practice. However, what I would say is that developing this work took a tremendous amount of time each week, and that meant time sacrificed away from my wife and kids. I also travel a good deal with the teams that I work with so that is even more time away. Additionally, it took a lot of offering of free presentations at camps and clinics in order to get myself out there and to develop a network. As with any start up you have to be willing to invest – time, money, or both – without a ton of return initially.
So let’s switch gears a bit and go into the WellPerformance story. Tell us more about the business.
WellPerformance is a consulting practice that specializes in sports (performance) psychology. I have clients from pro athletes, to division 1 college athletes and teams, to high school and even middle school. I also have companies and business leaders that take part in developing the same skills we use with athletes. The name WellPerformance was developed based on the concept that I believe that an athlete can both perform at a high level and do it in mentally effective and healthy way. Too often the focus is only on the performance success, and little attention is given to the development of healthy, strong mental habits and skills within the chaos of the performance environment. That alone makes WellPerformance unique, but I think what truly sets us apart is the focus on teaching athletes “how” to develop these skills so that they there are applicable on the court, field, track, classroom, and in the board room. Too often I hear coaches, parents, teachers and other performance psychologist talk about “what” mindset the athlete/student should have, but don’t know how to actually teach them to have the mindset. I’ve been fortunate to work really high-level athletes – pros, Olympians, etc – and they don’t care as much about the what and the why, but they really care about how to go about implementing the skills when they need them the most. That focus is really the relentless pursuit we have at WellPerformance. To that end I’ve developed an app (for iPhone or iPad available on the app store) that athletes (or anyone that needs to perform in their career) can use 10-12 minutes per day to train their mind in the most effective mental habits available. The app serves as a “mindset workout” between team or individual sessions that I provide to athletes.
Has luck played a meaningful role in your life and business?
I definitely feel fortunate and lucky to have had some great connections in my life and that I was in the right place at the right time. The luckiest part of the development of my business was really through connections from my brother and niece. My niece played college basketball with the daughter of the head coach of the Connecticut Sun of the WNBA. My brother (a basketball player development business owner) hosted a coach’s clinic at his facility. He asked me to speak at the clinic, and he also asked Coach Thibault to be the headline speaker. Coach Thibault happened to listen my session, and must have liked it, because he ended up asking me to come do some work with his team. Having that opportunity really ended up opening up doors for me and created connections with other teams and organizations. The one thing that I will say though is when those “lucky” moments present themselves you really need to be prepared and you better bring something to the table or that “luck” can leave you just as quickly as it presented itself.
Contact Info:
- Address: 500 E. Washington Street North Attleboro, MA 02760
- Website: http://wellperformancecoach.com/
- Phone: 508.838.8306
- Email: ssinger@wellperformancecoach.com
- Instagram: wellperformance
- Facebook: @StuartSingerWellPerformanceCoach
- Twitter: @wellperformance
- Other: DoSo app: https://appsto.re/us/O-mOgb.i
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