JJ Birden

Former NFL Pro Turned Motivational Speaker

Nancy's Note:

“JJ Birden is an enthralling speaker with a heart to match. His powerful talks are filled with success principles anyone can apply to their personal and professional lives. I’m so impressed by him.”

JJ Birden

Former NFL Pro Turned Motivational Speaker

Nancy’s Note
“JJ Birden is an enthralling speaker with a heart to match. His powerful talks are filled with success principles anyone can apply to their personal and professional lives. I’m so impressed by him.”

JJ Birden

Former NFL Pro Turned Motivational Speaker

Nancy’s Note
“JJ Birden is an enthralling speaker with a heart to match. His powerful talks are filled with success principles anyone can apply to their personal and professional lives. I’m so impressed by him.”

Expertise

Motivation, Leadership, Teamwork, Resilience, Change, Adversity, Overcoming Obstacles, Success

Travels From

Phoenix, Arizona

Speaking Style

Empowering, Captivating, Compellin

About JJ...

Like a fabled long-shot and underdog tale, JJ Birden was “The Small Man in the Big Man’s Game of Football” who now motivates and inspires others to also achieve greatness.

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Presentation Topics

Businesses have always aimed to get more out of their people, but it is becoming increasingly hard to provide resources, instruction, and encouragement that actually motivate employees to show up and give their best. To truly succeed in today’s extremely competitive business world, organizations need employees who are genuinely motivated to give their best, improve each day, and do whatever it takes to win. Unfortunately, not everyone has this capacity; JJ Birden does, and he can help anyone develop it, too.

Seize Your Opportunities focuses on the individual and what one must do for success as part of a larger group—no matter the odds, and no matter how much hard work it requires.

As a former NFL wide receiver, JJ knows what it takes to reach the highest level of performance and have the capacity to maintain it. Many of the success principles he learned as a professional athlete have helped him thrive in the business world as an entrepreneur and professional speaker. In this presentation, JJ shares his winning principles and strategies and teaches audiences how to maximize and seize the opportunities in their lives.

Success is not going to be given to you. You have to achieve success; and once you have it, you can’t stay at that same level. You have to continue to work to fight mediocrity and complacency. JJ will show you how.

Key Takeaways:

  • Finding, defining, and defending your Why
  • How discipline and self-motivation lead to success
  • Achieving your breakthrough through adversity
  • Developing championship focus and resolve
  • How complacency can destroy momentum
  • Avoiding complacency by continuous self-improvement
  • The Joe Montana Effect – what JJ learned playing with one of the greatest athletes of all time

To get the future you want, you must bring your best EVERY day.

Every Day Is Game Day is the perfect presentation for high school and college students and student-athletes. In this presentation, JJ helps our millennials understand the importance of giving their best every day in life. Developing the right habits will contribute to success in academics and athletics. Those same “game day” habits will carry forward to create a more successful life after their school days. In this presentation, JJ shares eight strategy tips including:

  • Mastering your thoughts is the beginning of your success
  • Avoiding the entitlement trap
  • Benefits of creating the right “positive” social media trail
  • How you to react to F.A.S.C.O. (Failures, Adversity, Setbacks, Challenges, and Obstacles) can lead to either a breakthrough or a breakdown
  • Why having a mentor is the ultimate shortcut to anything you want in life
  • Even though you may be winning now, complacency can cause you to lose

Before you can lead others, you must have the ability to lead yourself.

Leadership is a popular term and hot-topic in the business world, and rightfully so. Leaders have a direct impact on how successful an organization is; unfortunately, not all leaders naturally have the skills to set the pace, set the bar, and drive a group’s collective efforts towards accomplishing the most important goals. As impactful as good leadership is, poor leadership can be equally impactful, albeit in the opposite direction. Leaders who fail to recognize the role they play or the impact they have on others can leave employees feeling lost, unmotivated, and paralyzed to step outside their comfort zones. The results? Decreased revenue, low morale, and poor performance overall.

In There Better Be An “I” In Team, JJ Birden explains the principles of leadership and team dynamics he learned playing at the highest level in the NCAA and NFL. The heart of his message is clear: “To lead a team, it’s imperative you can lead yourself first. The team’s success is dependent on your success!”

This dynamic, engaging keynote presentation will help develop and strengthen the leaders within your organization.

Key Takeaways:

  • Defining your personal leadership style and communicating it to your team
  • Clearly stating your expectations as a leader
  • Creating a championship environment
  • Identifying “star players” on your team and elevating their game
  • Empowering and inspiring your team to do whatever it takes to win

The key to success is seeing obstacles as opportunities.

Low productivity is a recurring issue for businesses and organizations of all sizes. Keeping employees motivated to give their best is a challenge even for the best leaders; however, it’s not always up to leaders to inspire their teams, and even if it was, it’s not always possible. Unbeknownst to supervisors, managers, directors, and other leaders, employees may be dealing with their own deficiencies which can prevent them from raising the bar themselves. They may feel they don’t have the skills, talent, or abilities to succeed, or they may be experiencing the lingering self-doubt that comes with failure. It’s called the “underdog mentality,” and it’s held many back from reaching their true potential.

The difference between the victims and the victors in life, between the underdogs and alpha dogs, is not a lack of adversity but rather how they approach adversity. This is the key to JJ’s message, and it’s why he resonates so well with audiences that feel they don’t have the time, the training, the education, or the resources to succeed.

In this inspiring keynote presentation, JJ shares the winning principles and strategies that helped him achieve success in spite of unbelievable adversity, heartbreaking failure, and herculean obstacles. Audiences learn that no matter what they are dealing with, if they want to win badly enough, they too can succeed in spite of everything (and everyone) against them.

In Spite Of… is an empowering message that helps audiences develop the habit of conquering the “setback” moments in their lives and seeing them for what they truly are: opportunities for growth.

Key Takeaways:

  • How to master your thoughts and avoid the underdog mindset
  • Overcoming F.A.S.C.O. (Failures, Adversity, Setbacks, Challenges, and Obstacles)
  • Dealing with dream stealers, haters, naysayers, and adversaries
  • Determination and self-discipline in the face of failure
  • Doing more with less (“the 42% dilemma”)
  • Doing whatever it takes to turn a “no” into a “yes”
  • How to approach each day and every opportunity like an NFL Pro

Books