50. Retiring at 24 with Symone Speech

To celebrate our 50th episode, Real Ballers Read had a special guest on today’s podcast: Symone Speech!! Symone is the Executive Director, college advisor and NCAA specialist for @ccachicago , a volleyball coach, retired pro athlete extraordinaire, and Jan’s fiancé. In this episode, we hear Symone’s incredible story from not making tryouts as a 7th grader to making it as a pro volleyballer in Italy and Germany – with a super successful D1 college career at Georgetown University in between. Along the way of her athletic career, self-help and fantasy books helped her navigate many challenges and triumphs. The main one that we discuss in this episode is Stillness Is The Key by Ryan Holiday, which helped her define her values and commit to serving others in her post-pro athlete life. This is a really fun family episode so make sure to check it out asap!! Everywhere you listen to podcasts and on YT.

:30 Symone’s Intro

1:33 Books that Symone grew up on

2:30 Symone’s first time playing volleyball

4:00 Symone’s recruiting process

6:31 Committing to Georgetown

9:00 Playing professional volleyball overseas

13:00 One of Symone’s biggest challenges

15:51 Where Symone feels she is in her growth journey

16:58 Shameless self-promotion

17:55 What Happens when you gift books…

19:03 Subtly Not Giving A F*K

21:34 Balance

24:25 Retiring from the game

26:00 💍

27:35 What’s sticking from Stillness is the Key

30:00 Symone’s advice for high performance

32:39 American volleyball

34:00 Slam ball 🤝 Volleyball

35:20 Coaching Volleyball

37:39 Being Black playing volleyball

39:45 Transitioning into Work-Life

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