I recently started my own NP17 Academy within Liverpool Community College, which gives 16-19-year-old girls an opportunity to embark on a sports career, whether it be as a coach, player, physio, or nutritionist.
It was tennis that got me started in business. When I was 16 and about to embark on my A-levels, I set up a tennis academy and became one of the youngest qualified tennis coaches in the country. It did well; by the time I was 19 I was able to buy my first house.
I don't think there is any 16-year-old who is going to embark on the sort of career that Sachin Tendulkar has had and walk away from the game at 40 with such great achievements. He's the Muhammad Ali and the Michael Jordan of cricket.
I began my journey as a 16-year-old boy at the Arsenal's academy, trying to one day become a first team player, going out for evening runs in East Barnet with Jack Wilshere.
The videos have given us a younger audience. You know, our audience grew up with us until the videos, and they were beginning to get a little long in the tooth. Then the videos came along, and now we've recaptured the 16-year-old girls. The 16-year-old girls!
Girl Up gives girls an opportunity and gives them a platform and starting point through which they can take it and run with it and help give girls the opportunity to have the freedom, independence and the ability to get an education.
It doesn't matter which year a player is born in, whether you are 19 or 20 - you have to be agile. You have to accept your shortcomings.
I signed with a club when I was 12. I started living by myself at 14. I turned pro at 16. I grew up playing nothing but point guard, and suddenly, I was a 16-year-old small forward matched up against 35-year-old men.
I was chomping at the bit to get my career started - so after I took all the theater courses at Brooklyn College I enrolled in a two year program at AMDA in the city (The American Musical Dramatic Academy) I was there for 6 months and loved it.
The 16 years have gone so fast. I came to Minnesota as a 19-year-old kid. Marv Grissom was the pitching coach, an old-timer who taught me quite a bit. Marv didn't like the way I stepped toward the plate. I had a tendency to throw across my body. So, he took me off to the side at Met Stadium and put a chair on the mound. If I threw across my body, I would step on the chair. Marv was trying to hurt me. I fooled him. I started stepping the right way.
As a 26-year-old player I had tried to understand why I was doing certain things and why the coach was telling me to do certain things. I started to view myself as a coach would.
I changed my diet drastically. In college, I was a typical college guy who ate junk food all the time. When you're in college, your metabolism is through the roof. I felt like my body started to change when I was 22 or 23, so I started meeting with a nutritionist and it completely changed everything.
At 16, I got housing benefit, and I had my own flat in an old woman's house. I was the only 16-year-old I knew living alone.
I have an opera coach who I went to as a teenager, when I was 15 and 16 years old. When I went to college, I forgot about it.
I basically modeled my way through college, doing local runway shows in L.A. that don't pay a lot and a couple of shows in N.Y. and S.F., and I probably made the same as the average 19-year-old waiter; I just worked less and was around beautiful girls, so it was nice.
I was given an opportunity to do sports in college and get a degree because of it. I ran track for the University of Texas and was studying to be a petroleum landman. And I was gifted an opportunity to audition for a film during my last semester in college, which I discovered while jogging around campus.
I started young in my profession, in my second year of college. I had to make a career choice. College life is the best time when you can hang around and do all kinds of crazy stuff. Everything clicked so well that the films started coming in bunches.