Chris Kiefert was a huge success at the poker tables, but he needed something more to be truly happy. He’s since transitioned to being an Executive Performance Coach and you can get his assistance at christkiefert.com. To understand why he made the transition, and what advice he can offer others, our Becky Liggero Fontana caught up with him after his talk at iGaming NEXT Online.

[youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_XNvlZoDraM?feature=oembed]

Deciding to pursue a new passion didn’t happen overnight, Kiefert told us. “This was a long transition, it was exactly like when I first started playing poker; it took me a while to realize that that was what I really wanted to do, he said. “It started when I was coaching poker players, and I enjoyed doing that, but again I hadn’t made or connected the dots yet. And it was quite strange because I was struggling for a while being unfulfilled in poker. Actually I was sitting every day, going through the solvers, you know all the problems, and it just didn’t feel I was adding any sort of value or, to society in any way, it was just you know using this intelligence in a way that wasn’t very useful anymore. Like my life ethos had surpassed the profession really.

Kiefert was focusing on improving himself, and realized he was happiest when he was helping others. “And with all the videos, I was learning at self-development and, you know it was something that I was just naturally very passionate about without almost realizing,” he said. “And I was lucky, I had a few moments where I just got very emotional when I saw other people happy or achieving their goals, and it happened once and I didn’t really realize what was happening. Then it happened again and I thought, ‘Alright this is really strange, what’s going on here,’ cuz I’ve never felt this joy whenever I’ve achieved anything. So it was a very strange revelation, and I thought, ‘Okay well how can I get paid to help other people, that’s what I would like to do.’”