Skillr Profile: Keith Hunter

Keith Hunter is a Golf Instructor, Motivational Speaker and former NFL player. Now, he’s sharing his skills with the world on the SKILLR App. We sat down with him to discuss how he got into golf, skill-sharing and more. Check out the interview below to get to know him. 

Keith Hunter: My name is Keith Hunter. And ultimately I'm a golf instructor and that's what I'm bringing to SKILLR, but on a regular basis, I am a motivational speaker and I'm an ex-NFL player. And so that's what I do basically. I've been an entrepreneur for a long time and doing many things. And then I have two daughters who are division one ballplayers.

Mariama Hutson: What did you say your skill was in the App?

Keith Hunter: Golf instructor. I've been teaching golf for a long time. I've played professionally on the Sunbelt Senior Tour. And I've done golf clinics around the country for Fortune 500 companies. I'm located in New Jersey. And then I've done golf camps. I've owned golf driving ranges myself. I own three golf driving ranges and I've sold those. And one was in Pennsylvania, and one was in North Carolina, Winston-Salem. And the other one was in Kernersville, North Carolina. 

Mariama Hutson: Did you get into golf after you got out of the NFL? You retired?

Keith Hunter: Out of football. Yes.

Mariama Hutson: Was golf something you've always done?

Keith Hunter: No, I got into golf after I got out of professional football and then I went to the PGA school. I didn't finish the PGA school, but I worked in the industry. I used to be a rep selling golf clubs and then I used to have my own golf clothing line, men’s and women’s lines. [It was called] KGH Clothing Line. I enjoyed doing that for a while. So I've been in the golf industry for a long time and I'm doing a lot in the golf industry, yes. Even though I'm known for football. Golf is my money maker.

Mariama Hutson: Well, it is Black History Month. So, How are you celebrating Black History Month?

Keith Hunter: Well, I'm always thinking about the guys who were older than me, who didn't have the opportunity to play golf as much as I did. Right? Or who couldn't, they didn't have the privilege of going to a country club, playing and stuff like that. So I'm always honoring the older black men that didn't have the opportunity, that gave me the opportunity to play and to be on a senior tour like I was the Sunbelt Senior Tour. And I used to play 250 rounds a year. That's a lot of golf and it takes a lot of money to play golf. And so I'm always honoring those people. A friend of mine just did a Black History Month thing for her father because he was a semi-pro golfer. And so he enjoyed the game and to pass the game on to younger black guys like myself was an honor.

Mariama Hutson: How do you feel like the skill, the expertise that you share, how do you feel like that can benefit our community?

Keith Hunter: Well, it really benefits kids because it's almost like karate or Taekwondo. The discipline that it takes in the game, it helps kids and golf is one of the only sports where it's demanded that you are honest, right? So if you hit the ball too many times, you call a penalty on yourself. Not too many sports do that.

Mariama Hutson: I didn't know that.

Keith Hunter: And so the penalty, the discipline, I mean, that comes with golf of knowing the etiquette, of being on the golf course, because it's a privilege to be on a golf course. So when you're on a golf course, it's important to know the rules of being on a golf course. Not walking across somebody's line where their ball is going to track to the hole. You got to know that. You got to know how to walk around the ball. There's a lot of things in golf that you have to be aware of before you go out on a golf course to play. And so in my summer camps in a week, kids who'd never touched a golf club, I have them on the golf course at the end of the week, playing and actually knowing how to keep score, knowing how far away they are from the hole and knowing all the rules that it takes and the discipline that it takes to be a part of the game.

And so that's really cool, but the best part of golf is I was going to start this caddie program. And what a lot of people don't know is that caddies make a lot of money in professional golf. They make just as much money as some players do, depending on who their players are. And so knowing the game, I was going to do a curriculum on how to caddie for kids. Then take them to a golf course and let them caddie for people who give them $10 to carry in their bags or whatever, and teach them the game and the rules. Because when I used to do the camp and those kids who didn't know how to play at the end of the week, they were able to go home and talk to their parents about golf, about the golf course, about caddying, about yardage. And now if their father played, now that kid was able to play with their father and understand the rules and things like that.

So it's just a family game as well. And that's one of the ways to bring the family back together. And well my girls are, one is a basketball player and then the other one is a track runner. And at age five, I taught both of them how to play. So even though they don't play golf, they really know the game, they know the rules, they could tell you about the game, they enjoy the game. And so that discipline and TaeKwondo and all the things that go along with being disciplined, I'm sure those things help them to be the athletes they are today.

Mariama Hutson: Yeah. Because that discipline, you can carry over into any sport and just even in your life in general. I feel like that's a great skill to have.

Keith Hunter: Absolutely. Absolutely.

Mariama Hutson: I have to ask you, are you a Tiger Woods fan?

Keith Hunter: Well, yeah. I mean, I'm a Tiger Woods fan but I love the aim and what I appreciate the most about him is the skill that it takes to be able to hit the shot steady. I mean, if you really know the game and study the game, you see how creative he is, but more importantly, everybody can't pull off those same shots that he's hitting. And it's not something that just happens in your mind. You actually have to get your body ready for it as well. Your mind, your body, everything, the mental part of the game. And then that's the other part that I think that I appreciate about him the most, is that mentally he was stronger than everybody else, but that's that discipline again that his father taught him who used to be a military guy, who found the guy who taught him mentally how to stay tunnel vision. Tunnel focus.

So that's a skill that is very, very hard to teach because I've played as a professional athlete. I mean, I'm a professional athlete, in golf and football and to play at that level and stay that focused that long is very hard to do. It's even hard to teach somebody to be that focused.

Mariama Hutson: And you brought up mental, not really mental health, but the theme for Black History Month is Black health and wellness. What comes to mind for you? And how do you think that relates to what you do?

Keith Hunter: Well, it all goes together, right? So mentally, physically, health-wise. I mean, if you really want to play this game at a very high level, you must do those things first, not after. Right? Some sports you can go ahead and you can work out and you can get yourself ready as you're doing them, right? But golf, you have to do it ahead of time. Right? You got to get your body probably done first and the health part of it, and then get your body ready for the type of shots and the how long you will be walking. And that you are going to be on the golf course and then the mental side of it. Right? So that's what makes this game, is this is probably the hardest game in the world that you will ever play because you can't control it. Right? You can't come and throw a football or hit the golf ball the same every day. Because when you go to sleep, your body changes. Right?

So a lot of times people don't know that when you go out and play and you hit a golf ball and now my ball might be going left to right, right? I'm hitting a left to right ball all the time. That's because my body changed over the night, but I want my ball to go right to left instead of left to right. But being able to play that left to right and stay with it and stay focused would be the same if mentally and physically you are where you are supposed to be. So it doesn't matter. Right? If it goes left to right or right to left, it's the same.

Mariama Hutson: Wow. I'm learning a lot about golf on this call.

Keith Hunter: Well, to be able to pull off those shots that you are trying to hit. Well, a lot of what kills me about the average person is that they don't go to the driving range and work on their game. And the people who do, they just pull out their clubs and they pull a ball up and hit a ball. They don't even see the ball landing. They hit another ball. They're not really working on their game. And those guys who believe that they can play, they think, I mean, they don't practice that much, but they think when they get on a golf course, that they still should be able to pull off the shot. Well, this game don't work that way. And so you can't just do it mentally. You have to be able to pull it off with your body, with your hands, with your body, with things like that. But most importantly, you got to know how to do that and to pull it off. Not make it a hope and a wish.

Mariama Hutson: What initially drew you to SKILLR?

Keith Hunter: Well, because teaching. Teaching is what I do, right? I've been teaching a long time and if I could have thought about the app myself, to be able to do something like that. There was another app where they have instructors come on, they send you people, but you had to pay them up front and then you might get the customer or you may not get the customer. So I didn't like that. And then as many people as you can give me, I can handle, right? Because that's one thing I've been doing for a long time is normally when I go working at a golf course, I mean a driving range, they don't even give me people. I get all my people off the line. So I go down the line, give somebody a 15 minute free golf lesson. If I touch you, I'm going to keep you. Right? So, that was my mentality.

If I get to show you for 15 minutes, then I got you. And then that's how I get my customers. So people don't know how to do those types of things. A lot of people just want you to give them people. They don't know how to create it themselves. 

Mariama Hutson: Do you have any snippets from that that you wanted to share [from your Ted Talk]? How could you sum up, how do you win the day?

Keith Hunter: Well, yes. You win the day. You don't just win the day. You have to win the day. You win the day actually before you even put your feet on the floor, when you get out of the bed, right? It's more mental than it is anything else. Right? So when I want to conquer the day, I'm going to make sure whether anything goes wrong or not, it doesn't matter. Right? I'm still going to win the day. So if you are a student and you get a bad grade, you don't let that affect you. There's a bigger picture. Right? You're looking at the bigger picture. So winning the day takes mental strength to be able to feel like you won the day, no matter what has happened. Right? And then you will play it out in your mind. Right?

And things are going to go wrong as you already know. Right? But who's in control of that? Who's in control of that? You are. So if you let somebody else or something affect you, then shame on you. So winning the day means that you have won it the day before the day even got started because you are in control of it.

Mariama Hutson: I like that.

Keith Hunter: But that's on that Ted Talk as well. But if you punch my name up on YouTube, you'll find a number of podcasts and webinars on me as the guest speaker.

Mariama Hutson: Okay. Have you ever thought about starting your own podcast?

Keith Hunter: Oh yeah. Well, I'm normally on them a lot. I'm working on something big in that, a television show.

Mariama Hutson: Okay.

Keith Hunter: So I'm normally the guest speaker on people's podcasts. So I'm good with that. And then I can be creative and do other things that I do.

Mariama Hutson: This is probably just a more specific question. But what advice would you give to young black men in their 20s?

Keith Hunter: Right. Well, I would say that you normally hear people say that they won't let us get ahead, whoever they are.

Mariama Hutson: It's a mysterious they.

Keith Hunter: That's correct. And that's not true. I did a speech for a church, a men's group, a men's day. Right? And one of the things that I showed them, I can't, I was going to show you is this. I showed them my documents. Right? All of my documents on my phone. Right? I showed them all my documents on my phone. So what I said was the only difference between you, they, and me is that you have your idea or your thought in your head, when I got it all on paper already. So when somebody asks me something, I don't have to say, "Well, wait a minute, give me a couple days I'll get back to you." Everything that I think about, every separate group thing that I can think about  is on paper. So I took it out of my head and put it on paper. So now if somebody asks me for an idea, I already have it in the document. You feel what I'm saying?

So if I was talking to those 20 year olds, that's what I would tell them. That they need to learn, to get all the ideas that they have and put it on paper and stop holding things in their head. And so the only difference between me and them is that I have it all on paper. So now somebody says something that I already have an idea about. I could say, "Wait a minute, let me show you right here. It's already done. It's fully done and already on paper." 

So I don't think anything is more powerful than that. I don't think anything is more powerful than that. And so then nobody can take anything away from you if you have your possessions on paper. Feel me? And then the other thing I tell them is this. If you have an idea to create something, something that you came up with and you don't have the money to produce it, right? It doesn't belong to you anymore.

Because even if somebody else gave you the money, it's their money that made it happen. That even though you had the idea, it doesn't mean nothing. It doesn't mean anything. So once somebody gives you the money or has the money for it, even if they stole your idea, it doesn't belong to you anymore because you can't afford it anyway.

Mariama Hutson: Do you think so, even if a person gets a loan? Or, are you speaking in a general sense like the money in your pocket or borrowing money?

Keith Hunter: Well, no, I was just talking about if you have a great idea that needs to be on the market, and somebody else's money paid for it, it doesn't belong to you anymore, even though it was your idea. So you have to be able to get a loan yourself or create that thing yourself, or add partnerships to your organization the right way, the legal way and everything else. Because if you start telling somebody your idea and they haven't signed any documents to hold onto that, then now that they have the same idea, ain't nothing you can do about it. Especially if they have the money and you don't. You can sue them all you want.

Mariama Hutson: You don't have enough money [crosstalk 00:28:49] to sue them.

Keith Hunter: Right. So I gave you two things for those 20 year olds. Right? One is to take the stuff out of their head and learn to put it on paper. Right? And put everything on paper.

Mariama Hutson: It was great talking to you.

Keith Hunter: Yeah. And take care of yourself.

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