021: Olympic Gold & Staying Relevant with Kerri Pottharst OAM OLY

Kerri Pottharst’s journey from Olympic gold to relevance. Volleyball champ turned inspiring speaker, sharing lessons and empowering others.

Staying Relevant

Olympic gold is a coveted prize for elite athletes who have dedicated their lives to striving for excellence. But the ability to play – and win – at an elite level is not a life-long plan, so how do athletes stay relevant after achieving an Olympic Gold Medal?

 

In this episode of Raise 1000 Voices, Kerri Pottharst lets us into her amazing athletic journey and how she managed to stay relevant even after her professional career in volleyball. Kerri is known for being Australia’s most decorated Indoor and Beach Volleyball player who represented her country for over 20 years. 

 

Kerri showed the world that with strong dedication and hard work, exceptional outcomes will manifest. Her winning partnership with Natalie Cook resulted in 2 Olympic medals – GOLD at the Sydney 2000 Olympics and Bronze in Atlanta in 1996 – laying the groundwork for Australians to recognise beach volleyball as an elite sport.

 

Kerri has also earned another accolade through transitioning to a successful speaking career – still in demand more than 20 years after winning the Gold Medal.  She’s able to transition and apply learnings and experiences into awesome storytelling that’s relevant to the audience she speaks to. Moreover, she’s helping her tribe – fellow athletes – share their stories because their unique journeys to resonate and inspire others. 
As a bona fide ace Olympian, Kerri is often asked about the secret to her successful career and she describes this in a way that encompasses her personal life as well  – being passionate about what you do, doing all the hard work, and building the belief that you can do what you’re aiming for.

 

WHAT YOU’LL DISCOVER IN THIS EPISODE:

 

• Kerri’s athletic journey and discovering her love for volleyball (02:00)
• Career and life transformations after winning Olympic Gold (06:30)
• Topics and stories that make a great impact on her audience (09:40)
• The influence of her partner Natalie Cook’s mindset shift on Kerri (12:40)
• The greatest lesson she learned and passing it on to the younger generation (17:57)
• The importance of women’s voices in sports (24:05)
• The pressure of having a celebrity status before being able to tell a story (28:10)
• What she does differently in speaking (30:38)
• Feminine voices Kerri admires (32:35)
• The secret to her successful professional and personal journey (36:45)
• Lessons learned from confronting challenges 40:22)
• Three ingredients to success (50:19)

 

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QUOTES

 

“You don’t have to know exactly how you’re going to get there. You just have to start with a vision in mind and craft out a few little steps.” -Kerri Pottharst 

 

“The more I talk about setting a goal, the more important it becomes and the more I do it myself.” -Kerri Pottharst 

 

“People have goals and dreams in their minds, but they forget about them because life is so busy.” -Kerri Pottharst

 

“Even when the story is all about you, it’s never just about you. You have to make it about the audience.” -Jacqueline Nagle

 

RESOURCES MENTIONED

 

Raise 1000 Voices Episode 009: Why You MUST Become A New AND Better Version Of Yourself with Stacey Currie

 

WHERE TO FIND KERRI POTTHARST

 

Website
LinkedIn
Instagram
Facebook

 

 

ABOUT KERRI POTTHARST

 

Kerri Pottharst is Australia’s most decorated Indoor and Beach Volleyball player, having represented her country for an incredible 22 years. Renowned for being one of the fiercest competitors in the world of Volleyball, Kerri  is now also known for her successful speaking career. Together with storytelling, she also MCs, facilitates workshops, coaches athletes in her sport, mentors athletes in other sports and is a published author.  

 

Kerri shares her Gold Medal Excellence strategies with unforgettable tales that combine motivational messages with fun. She brings her hard earned skills of leadership, teamwork, communication and more to Australia’s corporate audiences. 

 

Using entertaining anecdotes from her experiences as a competitor, and as a regular commentator at the Olympic Games and other sporting events, Kerri motivates and inspires her audiences to overcome their fears and self-doubts, to set goals and to push through the barriers to achieve them. An expert at reinventing herself time and time again, Kerri can relate to the constant need to deal with a changing world to stay successful and reach even greater goals.         

 

Kerri’s unique message is as relevant to high level executives as it is to more junior teams. Her in-depth research and preparation ensures the content is relevant and specific to each audience, every time. A consummate professional and experienced presenter, she is as quick-thinking on her feet now as she was on the courts.                                            

 

Amongst Kerri’s many skills is her innate ability to connect with the audience in a way that is warm, authentic, and most importantly, relatable. The same strategies that took her to Gold are easily adapted by audiences to achieve their own corporate and personal goals.

 

For many, the highlight of Kerri’s presentations is the once in a lifetime opportunity to hold her Olympic Gold medal for themselves – a unique experience to inspire everyone to become a champion in their own right. 

 

A highly accomplished and experienced speaker and presenter, having spoken to 100,000’s around the world, you will be delighted with Kerri’s presentation, especially at the end when she invites members of the audience to push their personal boundaries by walking on broken glass, in doing so reinforcing Kerri’s inspiration.