We’re excited to introduce you to the always interesting and insightful John Wilkins. We hope you’ll enjoy our conversation with John below.

John , thanks for joining us, excited to have you contributing your stories and insights. What’s the backstory behind how you came up with the idea for your business?

Hi, I’m Master Tennis 🎾 Coach John Wilkins I’m the former number one player from the USVI and top 3 in the Caribbean. While on the ATP pro tour I found that every player I spoke to no matter how enthusiastic or intent to get better would loose focus during long training sessions on court. So I thought of and came up with a method to keep and sharpen an athletes focus. I created SpotSports for sports training and a SpotSportsScholastics curriculum for early development in schools both based on signal detection using color. .. the easiest way to explain Spot Sports training is like driving your car, you see a red light you stop green light go giving instructions from a distance using color. I was amazed at the high level of focus and sharpened length of concentration when training with SpotSports Training. Not only did the athletes increased their focus time but their improvement level exploded exponentially!!! SpotSportsScholastics was created for early developmental education incorporating sports into the curriculum. I hold the US patent and copyright for SpotSports and SpotSportsScholastics for the first integrated fitness in education curriculum in the world. Using signal detection and color with sports to educate students in math and language arts. Check us out on Instagram @spotsports1

As always, we appreciate you sharing your insights and we’ve got a few more questions for you, but before we get to all of that can you take a minute to introduce yourself and give our readers some of your back background and context?

My name is John Wilkins. I am the former number 1 player from the US Virgin Islands and top 3player in the Caribbean. I started tennis very late at age 14yrs. I was a baseball player first but stopped after my mother wouldn’t let me travel with the National Team. Was looking for a job when I fell into tennis 🎾 No one would hire me because I was to young. I went to the hotel next to my house hoping to get a job in the kitchen. The chefs laughed and advise I try the tennis pro. So, I made my way to the tennis courts and met Coach Cecil Phillips that gave me a job on the requirement that I learned tennis. What the heck , nothing else to do on the island so I took the job. Wash his truck, clean the leaves daily on court from the massive trees, take guests reservations for $2dollars a week. Yup 2bucks a week in 1984. He threw in 2 30min lessons and access to equipment. After my dad passed away shortly after we were homeless for a couple years. So tennis a wealthy kids sport was a stretch in my mind. Played my first tournament after 2months learning and got to the finals upsetting a few seeds on the way to the final. Played a 10yr old. So I’m my mind I got this. Lol this little guy ran me ragged , I had not idea what topspin was and that this little guy has been taking private lessons daily since he was 2yrs old. I lost badly. My pride was crushed I broke the runner up trophy 🏆 walking through mountain to go home. That day lit a fire that allowed me to train so hard I got a scholarship to Miami Dade Wolfson NJCAA1 and won a state championship went to Nationals made top 10in the nation. I later turned pro made it to the US Open Qualifying but got stuck in St Lucia training with no monies to make it to the GrandSlam. I went back to Coach under my college Coach Alan Chevel. We took the team to a State Championship and placed in the top 3 in the USA .. Coach Chevel retired and I took over. That year as head Coach we sweep Nationals with 7national Champions and 9All Americans. Out of events we won 7 and one final one semi finals. I am still the youngest Coach in history to do this. After coaching college I created SpotSports Training and SpotSportsScholastics using signal detection and color which holds US patents and Copyrights . SpotSports Training is used for sports training to increase focus and level. SpotSportsScholastics is the first integrated fitness in education curriculum in the world

Can you share a story from your journey that illustrates your resilience?

Resilience well, I been researching and working on SpotSports and SpotSportsScholastics for 3decades. I mortgaged my house three times to keep the company going. I arranged a Coaching tour throughout the Caribbean with all the Davis Cup Teams and their sports psychiatrist. When I started the tour, it rained thunderstorm in every single location as I got there or as we were about to start the training on each and every island I lost all of the monies I invested at that point as well.to add a sucker punch to the summer schedule American Airlines lost my equipment from the special color coded training balls with matching targets to all my equipment for the training. I always kept a mini pack of balls for just in case. I went to the island local store and bought targets and spray paint to make it happen. But the rain 🌧️ just kept following me around the Caribbean. As a player I got a wild card to the US open qualifying and didn’t make it because of lack of monies and got stuck in St Lucia where I was training. By the way I was in the best shape and playing level of my life. Serving over 130mph consistently, could run for 9hours , hit all out 5hours straight. I was gonna win the US Open that year but never made it because of lack of money:( Scholastics story. The director I worked with at the University died in a traffic accident which halted my curriculum from being done for years but I finished it in spite of.

What’s a lesson you had to unlearn and what’s the backstory?

I had to unlearn the lesson that not to be naive and to trusting in business. My former patent attorneys ran me for a loop. They would let my patent go into abandonment so they could charge me a full charge write over instead of just making the minor adjustment in time to re submit to the patent office. I lost over 80k and in spite of I got the copyrights and patent with my new team

Contact Info:

• Website: SpotSports.net
• Instagram: SpotSports1
• Facebook: SpotSports
• Linkedin: John Wilkins
• Twitter: @spotsports
• Youtube: SpotSports
• Yelp: None
• Other: Instagram : @JonIslandMusic Or @rally4love

Image Credits
Credits to me John Wilkins