April 20, 2025 • 17 mins
SEASON 2 PREVIEW
Welcome back to The Nail the Recruiting Process podcast! Jared here, and I’m excited to kick off season two.
In order to best set up the interviews ahead, we’re going to use today’s episode to dive deep into the single most significant challenge I see in recruiting today: the massive information gap between high school athletes and college coaches. The recruiting landscape is shifting rapidly, and the information gap also impacts the landscape. College coaches are increasingly prioritizing transfers over high school recruits. We’re going to focus on how we can bridge this gap by teaching high school athletes what coaches are really looking for, and how they can show that they “get it.”
Your habits in high school will set you apart. And this season is all about showing you what those habits need to look like if you want to compete at the next level. It’s not just about your skills anymore—it’s about how you handle adversity, make decisions, and show up with consistency. Simply put - You’re going to learn how the best push through their toughest moments, both physically and mentally.
We’re going on a wild hike, and I’m pumped to be your tour guide. Let’s dive into the foundation of everything we will be talking about this season
__________
Download the NTRP x Athlete Narrative Recruiter App:
https://signup.athletenarrative.com/ntrp2?am_id=ntrp
To obtain more information about my coaching services or to check out the book, visit www.nailtherecruitingprocess.com
Have a question that you’d like answered by me or a guest? Have an idea for an episode topic? Have no suggestions but just want to say hello? Email me at RecruitingGEAR@gmail.com
Follow me on social media!
Instagram - @NailTheRecruitingProcess
TikTok - @JaredTheCoach
Mark as Played
Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
(00:01):
Long time no see information superhighway.
Welcome to season two of the Nail the Recruiting Process podcast.
My name is Jared Zeidman and I apologize for being absent from class.
If you were with me at the end of season one, you knew that I was taking a break to do asmuch work as I could while also raising my baby boy Miles during the women's basketball
(00:28):
season.
If you know anything about me, you also know
that I am limited to three to four hours a day total of exertion or focused activity aftergetting COVID really badly.
So it turns out that balancing working with college programs and trying to have a smallbusiness where you teach recruits how to navigate the recruiting process and raising a
(00:54):
child makes it so that hosting a podcast
and consistently uploading content are really hard.
So those two things had to go for a little while.
And now that the college basketball season is over, we are back.
I'm very, very excited to share a lot of information with you.
(01:15):
And I also, even though the spacing and the lessons I learned in terms of time managementwere unintentional, didn't really have much to do with one another in the beginning.
It turns out that what I learned in working with programs and athletes this past season isgoing to largely navigate our conversations and our guests for this season of the podcast.
(01:42):
And I want to start with one very specific thing.
And now that I'm a little further into meeting high school athletes and parents andcontinue my work on the college side, I can tell you that
What I am about to share with you by far is the biggest problem impacting both sides ofthe recruiting process for high school athletes and their families and for college
(02:07):
coaches.
Here is an important data point for you.
I asked 50 college coaches on a scale of one to 10, how well do you think the average highschool student understands the scope and magnitude of being a college athlete?
The average response from college coaches
was a 3.5 out of 10 of note.
(02:29):
There was no statistical difference between division one and non-scholarship coaches.
So how do we address that huge information gap?
We start by understanding one key fact.
The rules of college basketball are rapidly changing.
(02:52):
There were more kids this year in the transfer portal than there ever have been.
Almost a quarter of division one men's and women's basketball in the transfer portal.
That's piece one.
Piece two, NIL and collective funds have made it so that people aren't just transferringlaterally or down anymore.
(03:12):
People are transferring up.
It's almost like searching for a new job.
I performed in a certain area and now I get a pay raise.
What I'm seeing over
and over again is because of the prevalence of the transfer portal combined with thatinformation gap that 3.5 out of 10 that high school students really don't get it.
(03:36):
College coaches are consistently reaching for transfers before they recruit high schoolathletes.
That is our if we're looking at the scientific method that is our problem.
My hypothesis through this is if we teach high school athletes what college coaches arelooking for and show them specific strategies that they can execute at the high school
(04:06):
level to show more maturity, to show more readiness, and to show college coaches, hey, Iget it, I'm not a 3.5 in getting it.
That can even the odds a little bit.
So my goal
is to address as much of that information gap as humanly possible.
This season, you're going to be hearing from high-level D1 coaches, from non-scholarshipcoaches, from athletes that transferred, from athletes that went straight away.
(04:37):
You're going to be hearing from so many different people who are all going to bedelivering a very similar message.
Your habits at the high school level are going to be what differentiates you.
and more and more as the transfer portal becomes more prevalent, college coaches arevaluing decisions and resilience more than they are valuing specific skills.
(05:05):
I want to talk to you about that for a moment.
I got a very good question during a session in the fall and it prompted me to make acouple pieces of social media content.
The question essentially was,
do I really know what college coaches are looking for?
And it prompted me to design something really, really simple that I can help you visualizeright now.
(05:27):
If we boil down most of what college coaches are looking for on the recruiting process, wecan boil it down to four things.
College coaches are looking for four things that I like to call the recruiting quadrant.
Top left, your skill level.
Top right, size, speed, strength.
(05:49):
Athleticism.
Bottom left, your decision making on the court and off the court too.
And your last one, your attitude and engagement, especially on your quarter field of play.
I put that parentheses next to it because the word you'll commonly hear about attitude andengagement is motor.
(06:11):
That attitude engagement piece is really important because I'm discovering more and morethat high motor kids can make up
for a lack of skill, a lack of size, speed, strength, and athleticism, or a lack ofdecision making.
What it really comes down to is certain college coaching staffs are going to have morepatience with part of the quadrant than others.
(06:33):
Some college coaches are more equipped to teach you decision making on the fly, on thecourt.
Or maybe they have a ton of confidence in their strength and conditioning staffs or theirability to coach your conditioning, right?
So maybe they'll take someone
that is more skilled but less refined, what we would call a raw athlete.
(06:54):
Other college coaches are confident in their ability to teach you everything X's and O'swise, so they just want the high motor kits.
I've also seen some coaches that have said, and I've heard them, give me the rawestathlete you can, but as long as they're taller than other people at their position, we can
field a really, really size advantage team.
(07:15):
and be super disruptive on defense and everything takes care of itself.
So the real challenge you're facing is there's more than one way to skin the cat.
My hypothesis, again, going back to that scientific method is we focus on developing allfour areas of this quadrant.
You will hear over and over again this season discussions about developing all four ofthese quadrant areas.
(07:40):
Now, I want to talk to you specifically about the biggest thing
I see as a challenge.
And to end this introductory podcast, this little like mini episode that's gonna prime youfor what comes next, I wanna share a very, very impactful science experiment that I think
(08:01):
parents, coaches, trainers, and athletes can all learn from.
First, let's talk about the problem.
I believe at the high school level that skill specialization is leading young people tooveremphasize
the specific parts of a game or a specific role.
And then all of a sudden, they get to a point where all those skills they built up, one onzero, just ball handling or certain mechanics with no live defense, all of a sudden they
(08:31):
hit a wall and to steal a racing term, they bonk.
And what I mean by that is they don't just crash in terms of their ability, but they alsohave a mental crash.
because all of a sudden the thing that they've identified with the most, they've put thework in the most, isn't working against live defense and they don't know how to fix it.
(08:53):
And all of a sudden they identify themselves with that skill and that role and they wantthings simplified for them.
And unfortunately, on the other side of the horizon is college basketball, which isexponentially harder and of course not going to be simplified for them at all.
The teaching is more complex.
(09:13):
There are more details.
The defense is of course significantly harder.
There's more consistent rotations.
And I know I mentioned motor before, you're going to be counted on to motor througheverything even when you're not performing at your best.
I am seeing a lot of high school athletes and their families struggle to overcome thatstep.
(09:37):
And I'm going to say things that might come off as a little counterintuitive.
I've talked a lot of high school kids and their families into not switching schools.
I've talked a lot of high school kids and their families into not switching AAU programs.
I've talked a lot of high school kids and their families into doing more strength andconditioning work and more basic fundamental basketball stuff.
(09:58):
And those kids,
that have started doing more strength training and started working more on their motor andtheir resilience are climbing the ladder further than some other students that I'm working
with.
And I would say the reason is pretty simple.
When you are at the high school level, there is no expectation that you are a perfectbasketball product.
(10:18):
We do not recruit perfect basketball products.
There are maybe 10 to 15 kids, the Cooper Flags, the Caitlin Clarks, the Page Beckers ofthe world that get recruited off the rip
in high school because they are a prodigy.
There's like 15 of them.
Everyone else is an incomplete product.
They're getting recruited on the quadrants and their resilience, their willingness to dohard things.
(10:43):
How do we teach younger people to do harder things?
Well, in my opinion, you start by rewarding different things.
We're not rewarding one on O skills.
anymore.
We're rewarding decisions and resilience.
And to close, let me tell you about that science experiment.
(11:06):
This is one of my favorite books ever.
I've had former captains read this.
I've shared this with some former players that have become coaches.
The book is called Mindset.
It's by famed psychologist Carol S.
Dweck, who's a professor of psychology at Stanford and does some of the most uniquepsychological evaluations and experiments to help explain
(11:27):
why we're wired the way we are wired.
She has done a number of experiments with adolescents and children, and I want to talkabout one of
There are 400 young students gathered to do puzzles.
Essentially, this is the way the experiment is broken down.
(11:49):
Half of the students who all have very similar backgrounds, they're from different partsof the country, but they all have similar aptitudes, are doing a simple puzzle, right?
And as they are completing the simple puzzle that all of them have the ability to attain,they are exclusively being complimented by the evaluator for their intelligence as they
(12:14):
complete the puzzle.
The other half are doing the exact same puzzle, but as they start making the rightdecisions to complete the puzzle, they are not being complimented on their intelligence or
their decision-making.
They're being
complimented on their persistence and their resilience.
(12:34):
And the facilitators are saying things to the effect of, know this has been hard, you'redoing a great job sticking it through.
Now, why does this matter?
Because here comes the variable of the experiment.
Now there's a really hard puzzle.
There is no expectation that the kids complete the puzzle and something very interestinghappens.
(12:57):
The overwhelming majority
of the young students who were praised for their intelligence in completing the firstpuzzle.
Not only do they not complete the second puzzle, but they ask to go back to a puzzle thatwas closer to the first one.
They can't get out of the comfort zone.
(13:19):
They've been told they're skilled.
They've been told they're intelligent.
And now that's their identity.
And they don't really want to deal with the consequences of not being skilled or not beingintelligent.
Now let's take a look at the other side that was getting praised for their grit and fortheir resilience.
And remember, these are the exact same pooled kids.
(13:40):
There's no actual difference in their aptitude, none whatsoever.
The kids on the other side struggle at the same rate to complete the puzzle.
The difference is they want to stick with it.
They ask the facilitators for more time with the puzzle.
They ask the facilitators if they can keep trying.
(14:02):
And most importantly, they tell the facilitators they're enjoying the challenge.
They're enjoying the hard.
Our job as a collective is to breed section B, young people that enjoy the challenge.
(14:24):
And I believe with every fiber of my being that if we reward decision-making, if we praisedecision-making, if we praise resilience, if those are the things we call out, instead of
telling kids they're the best or telling them they're better than their teammates or whenwe see some kid that got an offer before they did,
We say, you should have gotten that offer first, because that kid isn't shit.
(14:46):
That doesn't help us.
And that certainly doesn't help the kid.
So everything, and I mean everything that we talk about this season, is going to talkabout why we reward grit, resilience, and decisions before we reward aptitude.
I have a lot of things up my sleeve for this season.
(15:08):
I can't share them just yet.
but I'm very excited for you to stay tuned on social media.
Anytime you see a post, it means a podcast is launching within 24 hours.
As often as possible, I'm gonna try to stick to a Tuesday evening launch whereverpossible, but also understand that this is a huge recruiting season and I'm gonna take
coaches whenever I can get them to launch episodes.
(15:31):
So I'm sacrificing a little bit of consistency for a lot more quality in keeping with thatmindset example.
Thank you again for your patience with me.
The first season was amazing.
And if you need to get caught up before we really kick off the second season next week, goget caught up.
But boy, do we have some treats in store for you.
(15:51):
Enjoy, take care, we'll see you real soon.
Long time no see information superhighway.
Welcome to season two of the Nail the Recruiting Process podcast.
My name is Jared Zeidman and I apologize for being absent from class.
If you were with me at the end of season one, you knew that I was taking a break to do asmuch work as I could while also raising my baby boy Miles during the women's basketball
(00:28):
season.
If you know anything about me, you also know
that I am limited to three to four hours a day total of exertion or focused activity aftergetting COVID really badly.
So it turns out that balancing working with college programs and trying to have a smallbusiness where you teach recruits how to navigate the recruiting process and raising a
(00:54):
child makes it so that hosting a podcast
and consistently uploading content are really hard.
So those two things had to go for a little while.
And now that the college basketball season is over, we are back.
I'm very, very excited to share a lot of information with you.
(01:15):
And I also, even though the spacing and the lessons I learned in terms of time managementwere unintentional, didn't really have much to do with one another in the beginning.
It turns out that what I learned in working with programs and athletes this past season isgoing to largely navigate our conversations and our guests for this season of the podcast.
(01:42):
And I want to start with one very specific thing.
And now that I'm a little further into meeting high school athletes and parents andcontinue my work on the college side, I can tell you that
What I am about to share with you by far is the biggest problem impacting both sides ofthe recruiting process for high school athletes and their families and for college
(02:07):
coaches.
Here is an important data point for you.
I asked 50 college coaches on a scale of one to 10, how well do you think the average highschool student understands the scope and magnitude of being a college athlete?
The average response from college coaches
was a 3.5 out of 10 of note.
(02:29):
There was no statistical difference between division one and non-scholarship coaches.
So how do we address that huge information gap?
We start by understanding one key fact.
The rules of college basketball are rapidly changing.
(02:52):
There were more kids this year in the transfer portal than there ever have been.
Almost a quarter of division one men's and women's basketball in the transfer portal.
That's piece one.
Piece two, NIL and collective funds have made it so that people aren't just transferringlaterally or down anymore.
(03:12):
People are transferring up.
It's almost like searching for a new job.
I performed in a certain area and now I get a pay raise.
What I'm seeing over
and over again is because of the prevalence of the transfer portal combined with thatinformation gap that 3.5 out of 10 that high school students really don't get it.
(03:36):
College coaches are consistently reaching for transfers before they recruit high schoolathletes.
That is our if we're looking at the scientific method that is our problem.
My hypothesis through this is if we teach high school athletes what college coaches arelooking for and show them specific strategies that they can execute at the high school
(04:06):
level to show more maturity, to show more readiness, and to show college coaches, hey, Iget it, I'm not a 3.5 in getting it.
That can even the odds a little bit.
So my goal
is to address as much of that information gap as humanly possible.
This season, you're going to be hearing from high-level D1 coaches, from non-scholarshipcoaches, from athletes that transferred, from athletes that went straight away.
(04:37):
You're going to be hearing from so many different people who are all going to bedelivering a very similar message.
Your habits at the high school level are going to be what differentiates you.
and more and more as the transfer portal becomes more prevalent, college coaches arevaluing decisions and resilience more than they are valuing specific skills.
(05:05):
I want to talk to you about that for a moment.
I got a very good question during a session in the fall and it prompted me to make acouple pieces of social media content.
The question essentially was,
do I really know what college coaches are looking for?
And it prompted me to design something really, really simple that I can help you visualizeright now.
(05:27):
If we boil down most of what college coaches are looking for on the recruiting process, wecan boil it down to four things.
College coaches are looking for four things that I like to call the recruiting quadrant.
Top left, your skill level.
Top right, size, speed, strength.
(05:49):
Athleticism.
Bottom left, your decision making on the court and off the court too.
And your last one, your attitude and engagement, especially on your quarter field of play.
I put that parentheses next to it because the word you'll commonly hear about attitude andengagement is motor.
(06:11):
That attitude engagement piece is really important because I'm discovering more and morethat high motor kids can make up
for a lack of skill, a lack of size, speed, strength, and athleticism, or a lack ofdecision making.
What it really comes down to is certain college coaching staffs are going to have morepatience with part of the quadrant than others.
(06:33):
Some college coaches are more equipped to teach you decision making on the fly, on thecourt.
Or maybe they have a ton of confidence in their strength and conditioning staffs or theirability to coach your conditioning, right?
So maybe they'll take someone
that is more skilled but less refined, what we would call a raw athlete.
(06:54):
Other college coaches are confident in their ability to teach you everything X's and O'swise, so they just want the high motor kits.
I've also seen some coaches that have said, and I've heard them, give me the rawestathlete you can, but as long as they're taller than other people at their position, we can
field a really, really size advantage team.
(07:15):
and be super disruptive on defense and everything takes care of itself.
So the real challenge you're facing is there's more than one way to skin the cat.
My hypothesis, again, going back to that scientific method is we focus on developing allfour areas of this quadrant.
You will hear over and over again this season discussions about developing all four ofthese quadrant areas.
(07:40):
Now, I want to talk to you specifically about the biggest thing
I see as a challenge.
And to end this introductory podcast, this little like mini episode that's gonna prime youfor what comes next, I wanna share a very, very impactful science experiment that I think
(08:01):
parents, coaches, trainers, and athletes can all learn from.
First, let's talk about the problem.
I believe at the high school level that skill specialization is leading young people tooveremphasize
the specific parts of a game or a specific role.
And then all of a sudden, they get to a point where all those skills they built up, one onzero, just ball handling or certain mechanics with no live defense, all of a sudden they
(08:31):
hit a wall and to steal a racing term, they bonk.
And what I mean by that is they don't just crash in terms of their ability, but they alsohave a mental crash.
because all of a sudden the thing that they've identified with the most, they've put thework in the most, isn't working against live defense and they don't know how to fix it.
(08:53):
And all of a sudden they identify themselves with that skill and that role and they wantthings simplified for them.
And unfortunately, on the other side of the horizon is college basketball, which isexponentially harder and of course not going to be simplified for them at all.
The teaching is more complex.
(09:13):
There are more details.
The defense is of course significantly harder.
There's more consistent rotations.
And I know I mentioned motor before, you're going to be counted on to motor througheverything even when you're not performing at your best.
I am seeing a lot of high school athletes and their families struggle to overcome thatstep.
(09:37):
And I'm going to say things that might come off as a little counterintuitive.
I've talked a lot of high school kids and their families into not switching schools.
I've talked a lot of high school kids and their families into not switching AAU programs.
I've talked a lot of high school kids and their families into doing more strength andconditioning work and more basic fundamental basketball stuff.
(09:58):
And those kids,
that have started doing more strength training and started working more on their motor andtheir resilience are climbing the ladder further than some other students that I'm working
with.
And I would say the reason is pretty simple.
When you are at the high school level, there is no expectation that you are a perfectbasketball product.
(10:18):
We do not recruit perfect basketball products.
There are maybe 10 to 15 kids, the Cooper Flags, the Caitlin Clarks, the Page Beckers ofthe world that get recruited off the rip
in high school because they are a prodigy.
There's like 15 of them.
Everyone else is an incomplete product.
They're getting recruited on the quadrants and their resilience, their willingness to dohard things.
(10:43):
How do we teach younger people to do harder things?
Well, in my opinion, you start by rewarding different things.
We're not rewarding one on O skills.
anymore.
We're rewarding decisions and resilience.
And to close, let me tell you about that science experiment.
(11:06):
This is one of my favorite books ever.
I've had former captains read this.
I've shared this with some former players that have become coaches.
The book is called Mindset.
It's by famed psychologist Carol S.
Dweck, who's a professor of psychology at Stanford and does some of the most uniquepsychological evaluations and experiments to help explain
(11:27):
why we're wired the way we are wired.
She has done a number of experiments with adolescents and children, and I want to talkabout one of
There are 400 young students gathered to do puzzles.
Essentially, this is the way the experiment is broken down.
(11:49):
Half of the students who all have very similar backgrounds, they're from different partsof the country, but they all have similar aptitudes, are doing a simple puzzle, right?
And as they are completing the simple puzzle that all of them have the ability to attain,they are exclusively being complimented by the evaluator for their intelligence as they
(12:14):
complete the puzzle.
The other half are doing the exact same puzzle, but as they start making the rightdecisions to complete the puzzle, they are not being complimented on their intelligence or
their decision-making.
They're being
complimented on their persistence and their resilience.
(12:34):
And the facilitators are saying things to the effect of, know this has been hard, you'redoing a great job sticking it through.
Now, why does this matter?
Because here comes the variable of the experiment.
Now there's a really hard puzzle.
There is no expectation that the kids complete the puzzle and something very interestinghappens.
(12:57):
The overwhelming majority
of the young students who were praised for their intelligence in completing the firstpuzzle.
Not only do they not complete the second puzzle, but they ask to go back to a puzzle thatwas closer to the first one.
They can't get out of the comfort zone.
(13:19):
They've been told they're skilled.
They've been told they're intelligent.
And now that's their identity.
And they don't really want to deal with the consequences of not being skilled or not beingintelligent.
Now let's take a look at the other side that was getting praised for their grit and fortheir resilience.
And remember, these are the exact same pooled kids.
(13:40):
There's no actual difference in their aptitude, none whatsoever.
The kids on the other side struggle at the same rate to complete the puzzle.
The difference is they want to stick with it.
They ask the facilitators for more time with the puzzle.
They ask the facilitators if they can keep trying.
(14:02):
And most importantly, they tell the facilitators they're enjoying the challenge.
They're enjoying the hard.
Our job as a collective is to breed section B, young people that enjoy the challenge.
(14:24):
And I believe with every fiber of my being that if we reward decision-making, if we praisedecision-making, if we praise resilience, if those are the things we call out, instead of
telling kids they're the best or telling them they're better than their teammates or whenwe see some kid that got an offer before they did,
We say, you should have gotten that offer first, because that kid isn't shit.
(14:46):
That doesn't help us.
And that certainly doesn't help the kid.
So everything, and I mean everything that we talk about this season, is going to talkabout why we reward grit, resilience, and decisions before we reward aptitude.
I have a lot of things up my sleeve for this season.
(15:08):
I can't share them just yet.
but I'm very excited for you to stay tuned on social media.
Anytime you see a post, it means a podcast is launching within 24 hours.
As often as possible, I'm gonna try to stick to a Tuesday evening launch whereverpossible, but also understand that this is a huge recruiting season and I'm gonna take
coaches whenever I can get them to launch episodes.
(15:31):
So I'm sacrificing a little bit of consistency for a lot more quality in keeping with thatmindset example.
Thank you again for your patience with me.
The first season was amazing.
And if you need to get caught up before we really kick off the second season next week, goget caught up.
But boy, do we have some treats in store for you.
(15:51):
Enjoy, take care, we'll see you real soon.
Popular Podcasts
Stuff You Should Know
If you've ever wanted to know about champagne, satanism, the Stonewall Uprising, chaos theory, LSD, El Nino, true crime and Rosa Parks, then look no further. Josh and Chuck have you covered.
Dateline NBC
Current and classic episodes, featuring compelling true-crime mysteries, powerful documentaries and in-depth investigations. Special Summer Offer: Exclusively on Apple Podcasts, try our Dateline Premium subscription completely free for one month! With Dateline Premium, you get every episode ad-free plus exclusive bonus content.
On Purpose with Jay Shetty
I’m Jay Shetty host of On Purpose the worlds #1 Mental Health podcast and I’m so grateful you found us. I started this podcast 5 years ago to invite you into conversations and workshops that are designed to help make you happier, healthier and more healed. I believe that when you (yes you) feel seen, heard and understood you’re able to deal with relationship struggles, work challenges and life’s ups and downs with more ease and grace. I interview experts, celebrities, thought leaders and athletes so that we can grow our mindset, build better habits and uncover a side of them we’ve never seen before. New episodes every Monday and Friday. Your support means the world to me and I don’t take it for granted — click the follow button and leave a review to help us spread the love with On Purpose. I can’t wait for you to listen to your first or 500th episode!