An Underdog Story with Former NFL Wide Receiver Andrew Hawkins

Andrew Hawkins joins us on this week’s episode of the podcast. Andrew, who goes by Hawk, is a former NFL Wide Receiver, sports executive, Emmy award winner, Oscar award winner, and he’s somebody who is a life long learner. He’s a former NFL team captain, he got his master’s degree from Columbia University, and he has become synonymous with creating cultural content and digital media that goes well beyond the playing field. After his playing career, he began his media career with ESPN and is incredibly thoughtful and bright when it comes technology. He is currently an on-air talent for NFL Network and Uninterrupted. He has written and produced award winning comedy sketches and was the Executive Producer of Hair Love which won the 2020 Academy Award for best animated short. For the past three years, he has simultaneously served as the Director of Business Development for the media marketing companies of LeBron James and Maverick Carter.

In this episode, we discuss his upbringing (5:40), where he’d be without his brother and grandpa (10:15), his athleticism and self-talk growing up (14:30), his experience at Toledo playing both ways (18:20), how he thinks about adding value (20:10), his mindset in preparation vs. performance (24:30), specialization vs. generalist (30:00), if he’s mentally quick (32:40), his story after graduation (34:10), if he loves football (38:00), his rookie minicamp in Cleveland (45:50), getting on Michael Irvin’s show (48:20), what it was like to not be the underdog (54:30), his desire to go back to school for his masters (56:50), and why he likes entertainment (1:01:40).

Thank you to Andrew for coming on the podcast. We encourage you to check him out on all social media @Hawk.

I wrote a book called “Shift Your Mind” that will be coming out in October 2020, and you can pre-order on Amazon and Barnes and Noble. Additionally, I have launched a company called Strong Skills, and I encourage you to check out our new website https://www.strongskills.co/. If you liked this episode and/or any others, please follow me on Twitter: @brianlevenson or Instagram: @Intentional_Performers.

Thanks for listening.

-Brian