JJ Birden Former NFL Pro & Motivational Keynote Speaker

Spot the openings. Close the gap. And deliver results. Every time.

Today’s professionals face relentless pressure, tight competition, rapid change, burnout, layoffs, and uncertainty. Most people respond by working harder, but hustling without a strategy leads to burnout. Without a clear framework, people stall, overthink, or give up when things get tough.

JJ Birden knows pressure. As one of the lightest players in the NFL at 5’10”, 157 lbs., he overcame the odds to play 9 seasons at the highest level. After football, he built a successful business, raised a family of eight, and continues to train leaders across industries.

Beat The Coverage comes from JJ’s NFL days as a wide receiver. In every play, his job was to identify the defensive coverage, whether it was man-to-man or zone, and find the hole. That mindset helped him have a much longer career than the NFL average of less than 2 years.

Today, it means something much bigger. In business and life, we all face Coverage: such as competition, economic pressures, customer behavior, self-doubt, personal setbacks, and even internal challenges like complacency due to success.

Sometimes the hole is in the market. Sometimes it’s in your weaknesses. His message helps leaders and teams recognize the gaps (or holes). And understand the importance of practicing or getting in the reps to master their strengths to help overcome or exploit them and execute with precision.

Beat The Coverage is not just a sports metaphor; it’s a system for staying one step ahead under pressure and creating wins in any environment. It’s battle-tested in sports, business, and life. Audiences will walk away equipped with a strategic mindset to win in adversity. They’ll learn how to anticipate challenges, lead under pressure, and turn uncertainty into advantage, with repeatable tools they can use immediately in their business and life.

Key Takeaways

Six Strategic Steps to Win in Business and Life

1. Know the Field - How to assess your environment so you lead proactively, not reactively.
2. Find the Holes – The skill of spotting hidden opportunities in chaos.
3. Play to Your Strengths / Cover Weak Spots – Maximize your edge while managing risk.
4. Draw Up the Game Plan – Strategy beats hustle, build a repeatable system that works.
5. Put in the Reps – Consistency under pressure is what separates amateurs from pros.
6. Execute & Adjust – Why adaptability, not perfection, is the key to sustained success.

A call to action to individuals to recognize and maximize opportunities!

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:

Being an underdog gives you a STEALTH opportunity to win!

In today's fiercely competitive landscape, organizations often find themselves at a perceived disadvantage when pitted against industry giants with larger market shares, extensive budgets, and formidable resources. However, this perceived weakness can be transformed into a strategic advantage with the right guidance. Rather than limiting their growth potential, these organizations can harness their unique strengths to foster alignment, momentum, and ultimately, sustainable growth.

Drawing inspiration from his own journey as an underdog, JJ Birden, a former NFL player and successful business professional, shares invaluable insights in his compelling keynote, "Winning as an Underdog". Despite facing odds stacked against him—where the average NFL player towered over him by 43%—JJ mastered the "underdog mentality," leveraging his perceived shortcomings to fuel his success both on and off the field. Through over a decade of experience in the medical and fitness equipment industries, JJ continued to embody this mentality, defying expectations and achieving remarkable success.

In his captivating keynote, Winning as an Underdog, JJ empowers attendees to embrace their underdog status and capitalize on every opportunity. With a blend of undeniable truths, actionable strategies, and inspiring anecdotes, JJ guides participants through a collaborative experience, showcasing how underdogs can not only thrive but also revolutionize established business norms. Join JJ Birden as he reveals how underdogs are the true catalysts for innovation and change in the business world.

Key Takeaways:

• Recognizing the strategic benefits of embracing underdog status.
• Knowing how to cultivate a mindset that thrives on challenges and adversity.
• Implementing JJ's proven framework for narrowing the underdog disadvantage.
• Maintaining unwavering determination and resilience on the journey from underdog to industry leader.

**Available with polling.