Elite Series
The platform you have right now is connected to the career you have right now.
When the career ends — and it will end, sooner than most athletes expect — the platform will change. The followers who came because of the performance will not all stay for the person. The voice that people are willing to hear right now, because of what you do athletically, is a different voice than the one you will have as a retired athlete.
That is not a threat. It is a fact. And it is one of the most important facts about the window you are currently in.
Read this passage slowly.
Be very careful, then, how you live — not as unwise but as wise, making the most of every opportunity, because the days are evil.
Ephesians 5:15–16 — NIVLet that sit for a second before you move.
Making the most of every opportunity. The instruction is about the deliberate use of the time and capacity available — not allowing the window to close without having been intentional about what it was used for. The elite athlete’s platform is the specific opportunity that Ephesians is describing: a window of genuine influence that is open right now and will not always be open at this size.
The question that the platform demands is: what do you actually believe, and does your platform reflect it? The athlete who has genuine convictions — about faith, about justice, about the community they come from, about the causes that matter to them — and whose platform is simply a content stream that manages their brand without expressing those convictions is using the window to look out rather than to say something worth hearing.
The platform is not primarily for brand management. Brand management is a tool in the service of something. The something is the question. What is the platform for? What are you trying to say to the people who are listening right now because of what you do on the field? Those answers are worth knowing before the window starts to close, because the post-career platform is built on what you said and did when the career was happening.
What is the platform for? The post-career platform is built on what you said and did when the career was happening. The window is open now. Say something worth hearing.
If you could use your platform right now for one thing that actually matters to you — not what manages your brand, what you actually care about — what would it be? Are you using it for that?
The gap between the brand management answer and the genuine conviction answer is the formation work.
The window is open. Use it for something worth the opening.
This devotional is for athletes with genuine significant platform. The window question is proportional to the size of the platform.