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Teaser:

Kate Hughes was unbelievably shy when she was younger, but grew up into an amazingly charismatic woman who was able to succeed on the LPGA Tour and help youth golfers develop a strong mental game.  Learn more about Kate and how you can break out of your shell in Episode 26 of the Defining Success Podcast.

Recap:

Kate Hughes is a former LPGA Tour Player with 2 top 10 finishes and 1 victory in Japan.  She’s now mentoring, counseling, and guiding young men and women golfers to become great High School players, top student/athletes at all collegiate levels and by those who want to become Tour Professionals.

Kate Hughes picked up golf at an early love for sports.  Her parents would often bring home sports equipment for her brother and she would always end up playing with those.  Her first experience golfing, she took a swing and connected and fell in love with the game at an early age.

She used to be a professional LPGA player, and could have been a lot better but had to have five surgeries during her time as a player.  She played golf in Minnesota at the collegiate level and broke several records while she was there and they encouraged her to go out on tour and she made it in her first try.  As a result of making the tour she gained self-confidence, maturity, friendship and camaraderie.

In golf, you’re your own business and in the end you’re the one that’s responsible for your own destiny and it’s a great mind game.

In college, Kate was playing in the NCAA Championship and on her last shot everything just stopped.  It was an uphill shot and Kate visualized herself shanking the shot.  For whatever reason, she turned her back on the hole and took five steps away and looked up at the sky and saw a plane flying through the clouds and it calmed her.  She told herself she was going to knock it next to the pin and make the putt for a birdie and she did and finished in third place.  To her, it didn’t feel like anything.

Kate is the owner of Vision Fore Success.  Vision Fore Success helps younger players with their mental game to help them improve their golf game.  Kate has been on the journey from High School, to College, to the Professional tour and she wants to help young players make the transition from High School to College to the Pros as well.  She helps players get in touch with their anger, frustration and get them into a better frame of mind.

Kate also does a lot of networking to help her golfers get more exposure and she also shares every bit of knowledge she has to help them “play from inside out.”

Kate belongs to the Aliso Viejo golf club and a lot of her friends at the club recommended she pursue this path.  A young person at the course continually lost her cool on the golf course and she sat down and chatted with her and her handicapped dropped and she become very successful.  That student then began telling others and word of mouth helped her decide to turn Vision Fore Success into a business.

Word of mouth and social media have really helped her grow her business.

Young golfers have a lot of pressure.  They often have a lot of external pressure from parents and the parents want their kids to achieve certain things that their kids don’t wan them to achieve.  The pressure and stress are huge for students competing to make teams.  At times, Kate has had to sit down with parents to teach them how they can help their young player.  Sometimes they get so frustrated that they start to give up.

If you look at scholarships there are six scholarships for women and four for men, because there are more scholarships available for football.  The pressure, intensity and stress they put on themselves early on is too much.  One experience Kate had was with a player who could have been a top 10 player in the world, but her father would stand behind her and yell at her for not being able to execute a shot that he wanted her to take.  She left the game because it wasn’t fun for her.

Kate used to be very, very shy.  She could not speak in high school and college classes. And to graduate she needed to take a speaking class and getting inside the ropes and helping to find her own person she was able to blossom.  She learned self-respect and confidence.  She learned that people can literally do anything they put their minds to.

Engaging Discussion Questions:

• How important is the mental game in business?
• How do you think you can help others “break out of their shell?”

Links to Great Stuff:

• Vision Fore Success – “Kate’s experience and success enables her to provide real world expertise to the next generation of World Class golfers. She utilizes her knowledge and Mental Training Certification to assist her players in developing skills sets to optimize their playing potential into the collegiate golf arena and beyond.”
• Bunkers Paradise – “To provide a community to give golfers the ability to learn from other golfers who enjoy and love the greatest game in the world!”

Success Quotes:

• “Success is something that you make on your own, you can have help, but it’s really up to you.”
• “Being successful is going to bed every night knowing that you’ve done everything you can to achieve your goals.”
• “Building the confidence with younger players from the inside and projecting it outwards so they can be and do anything they want.”
• “With the iPhone or the Androids . . . we can continue to stay connected, but we’ve got to shut it off at some point.”
• “Social media is where this world is going and it’s going to continue to grow.”
• About golf – “I just love the fact that everything you do comes from inside of you.”

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