INFLUENCERS
INFLUENCER
“Good Morning Minute of Inspiration”
ff How do you feel like this benefits the player?
Podcaster Jim Pusateri BY DEREK SMITH
A
term coined from the digital age is social media influencer – someone who has built a reputa-
tion for their knowledge and expertise on a specific topic. They post regularly on different social media sites to generate followers that pay close attention to their area of specialty or interest. Kylie Jenner, Cristiano Ronaldo and Taylor Swift are a few that come to mind, but Florida high school football coach Jim Pusateri has thousands of followers on apps and the internet who subscribe to his “Good Morning Minute of Inspiration” podcast. FNF Coaches spoke with Pusateri about his daily messages before the start of the 2021 season.
ff Tell me about your ‘Today’s Words of Encouragement.’
ff These words of inspiration can be common for business people, coaches and athletes?
“It’s basically designed to give people words of encouragement each and every morning and the one minute video I post is a marketing piece for the podcast. The podcast is around 15 or 20 minutes and is a little motivation to get the day going. It was originally for my students, my players, and it’s kind of grown to being heard all over the world.”
“Anybody that needs a little nudge, move forward, is what we talk about. There are always going to be setbacks, always going to be mistakes, challenges. You just have to move forward through them.”
ff So it’s for anyone – coaches, people not involved in football?
ff Is there a mental aspect to it?
“Yes, definitely. My background is a little bit different. I haven’t been a teacher my whole life. I come from the business world. It was originally for the entrepreneur. And then I started to incorporate the students and my players. Right now we’re being heard in over a hundred countries and a hundred percent of the United States.”
ff From a football standpoint, what do you hope players and coaches take from it? “A little direction to get them through their day. Life skills.” “It’s what we call mental training performance.”
ff What is mental toughness performance? “You have to turn the negatives in your mind to positives. When a negative thought pops into your head, write it down and then re-write it in a positive statement. Researchers say you get 10,000 to 60,000 thoughts a day and 80 percent of them are negative.”
COACH PUSATERI’S BIO PUSATERI, 64, COMES FROM A BUSINESS BACKGROUND, NOT
football. After graduating from high school in Oak Lawn, Il., he owned and operated businesses – advertising and marketing, real estate, sporting goods, printing and publishing – for over 30 years before getting involved in teaching and football. “I didn’t go to college straight out of high school. I went into the business world. I’ve had about four or five different companies. Some successful, some not so successful.” Pusateri held a variety positions in high school, college and indoor football in the Chicago-area and relocated to central Florida in 2014.
“If the football player makes a bad play we teach them, instead of dwelling on the negative, you have to create a positive thought in your mind. If you drop the football, visualize catching the football, tucking it. Now it erases the bad moment. Young kids sometimes take that bad moment and it’s going to hurt them for the rest of the game.”
ff What about a coach? How would he apply this? “Pretty much the same way. You can’t let the bad moments in your life control the rest of your life, the next play. You’ve got to let it go. Say ‘what’s next.’ Go to the next step.”
ff Where can you find the one-minute daily message? “You Tube, Facebook, Shout Engine, Pinterest, Instagram, LinkedIn. We’re on everything.”
ff How would someone search for it? “You could search by my name. Or Good Morning Minute of Inspiration.”
ff Tell me about your upcoming book? “I’m working on it. It’s probably six months away. Everything slows down during football season. It’s going to be on mindset and mental toughness. It also gets into my life story.”
ff Tell me a little more about yourself. “I love the challenge of starting something new. And I love mentoring people on how to do it – the day to day operations of business. It took me a while to figure out that teaching and coaching is really what makes me tick. I’ve found my passion in life. It took me 40 years to get to that point. Some days I can’t believe they pay me to do this.”
“When I started thinking about teaching I ended up in Florida because I could get a temporary certificate.” Pusateri taught business at University High School in Orlando and was head coach for three years. Meanwhile, he began offering inspirational messages and mental performance training on multiple digital platforms. He was named head coach at Central High School in Brooksville, Fl., in July of 2021 after four years as a PE teacher, assistant athletic director and head coach at Cornerstone Charter Academy in Belle Isle, Fl. Pusateri holds a degree in Business Management from Benedictine University and Master’s degree in Educational Leadership from Concordia University, and has Florida teaching certificates in health, PE, social science and business.
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