Alright – so today we’ve got the honor of introducing you to Jeff Heggie. We think you’ll enjoy our conversation, we’ve shared it below.

Jeff , thanks for joining us, excited to have you contributing your stories and insights. How did you come up with the idea for your business?

Athletics have always been a part of my life. From a very young age I was involved in different sports from hockey, baseball, boxing and others. The two sports that ended up taking center stage in my life are basketball and rodeo.

For many years I competed as a professional rodeo cowboy and also coached basketball for 20 years. It was during that time that I saw that there was more to becoming successful as an athlete than just working on the physical aspect of your sport. I started to realize the importance of the mental game and how it could be the differentiating factor between a good athlete and a great athlete. But I didn’t know what I needed to do to master my mental game.


My older brother, Todd, gave me an article one day that talked about the importance of visualization. I started to practice visualization when I competed, and I also started to implement it with my basketball teams. It was definitely a great first step, but I was still a long way from gaining the knowledge we now offer in The Confident Athlete Program.

From that time of my life, if I jump ahead a number of years, I was still learning more and more about the importance of your mindset in success. In my studies of the topic, I came to meet Tami Matheny, who is a mental game coach and the author of The Confident Athlete.

Tami and I started to share out thoughts and ideas with each other so we could both help the athletes and teams we were working with individually. Then we decided the best way we could have a positive impact on more athletes and have a further reach, would be to join forces and create an online program to help athletes develop a strong mental game and reach their full potential.

Tami and I started The Confident Athlete Program (http://www.confidentathleteprogram.com/) and we are seeing amazing things with our athletes. We have a membership area where they can go through some powerful, self-paced training, but then we add in our live group coaching calls. We also have our Expert Series, where we will interview successful athletes and coaches to teach our athletes how they found success.

This program has been a great way for us to reach more athletes, coaches, and parents of athletes. The tools and resources we offer has had a great impact on all of our members and has been an incredible opportunity for us to work with great people who want to become the best they can be in their sport.

As always, we appreciate you sharing your insights and we’ve got a few more questions for you, but before we get to all of that can you take a minute to introduce yourself and give our readers some of your back background and context?

Entrepreneurship and athletics have always been my passion, and I’ve always seen a connection between both of them.

I graduated from college with a major in entrepreneurship. After college I got into the banking industry as well as real estate (duplexes and mini-storage facilities). One day, while visiting with a banking clients, I decided to leave the security of a great job to partner with that client and start a new business. That business was a manufacturing and retail sales company in the home building industry that we operated for 16 years.

In addition to running the business, I had many opportunties to mentor and coach other entrepreneurs in different industries. My love for running my own businesses and coaching others lead to my coaching business that continues today (www.CoachHeggie.com/Entrepreneur).

As I’ve previously mentioned, during this entire time I was also involved in athletics both as a participant and a coach. I was a professional rodeo cowboy for a number of years and have 20 years of coaching basketball at different levels. I love the opportunity that sports have given me to be part of my kids lives. So in addition to basketball, I’ve coached baseball and football as well.

My passion for helping athletes achieve their goals and reach their full potential is what fueled the desire to start The Confident Athlete Program (http://www.confidentathleteprogram.com).

One of my biggest rewards is to see someone I’m working with, whether they are an entrepreneur or athlete, achieve their biggest dreams. To do this, it all starts with the right mindset, mentors, and accountability.

Can you tell us the story behind how you met your business partner?

As I continued to study all that I could around mindset and the mental game so that I could help the athletes and entrepreneurs that I worked with, I had an opportunity to meet Tami Matheny. Tami is an amazing mental game coach with her own athletic and coaching background. She turned into an amazing resource of knowledge and her book, The Confident Athlete, taught me a lot.

I was working with athletes and had an online course called The Confident Athlete Program. Things were going well, but I felt like I needed some changes to allow me to have a bigger impact and help more athletes. My idea was that I needed to create a membership program where my athletes could have a solid Success Path that would train them in all the most important areas, but I could also implement live group coaching.

As I was planning out my membership program, I remembered a conversation I had with Tami a few months prior. She had made the comment that we should work on a project together that would have a positive impact on athletes. That’s when I realized that Tami was the missing piece to my puzzle in making the membership site the best it could be.

I asked Tami to join me in The Confident Athlete Program and fortunately for me and any who have been involved, she agreed. She has been an amazing partner and resource for our athletes. We have more big plans with our programs, but overall we are having a lot of success in helping athletes grow their confidence and have a powerful mental game.

Alright – let’s talk about marketing or sales – do you have any fun stories about a risk you’ve taken or something else exciting on the sales and marketing side?

We know that The Confident Athlete Program is a game changer for those who get involved. Coaches, athletes, and parents all benefit from our program and achieve goals that otherwise would have never been reached if they didn’t learn the things we teach in our program.

But there are still many athletes and coaches that are serious about their sport and are dedicated to achieve big goals, but they don’t realize how important the mental game actually is. They don’t recognize that an athlete that has trained and worked hard, who is very good and is having a lot of success, can be great if they just figure out the mental game.

So our goal was to get more athletes, coaches, and parents just to give our program a try so that they knew what it was and could benefit from the things we teach. So we created an irresistible offer.

We created our Mental Strength Success Secrets and gave it away for free! The Mental Strength Success Secrets were resources that focus on 5 important mental game areas for athletes (self-talk, body language, visualization, preparation, and knowing your personal why). We offered this valuable resource PLUS a free 14 day trial of The Confident Athlete Program to any coach, athlete, or parent that wanted it.

This gave us the opportunity to provide some valuable resources that they could implement immediately, but also let them try-out and learn about The Confident Athlete Program… All For FREE!

Anyone that takes us up on this offer can cancel their membership before the end of the 14-day trial. They get to keep all of the tools and resources we gave them, plus they’ve been able to access everything in The Confident Athlete Program for 14 days, it’s a big win for them and it was all for free! But for many who take us up on this free offer, they see the value of the membership and continue with us long term. (http://www.confidentathleteprogram.com)