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How can athletes turn setbacks into opportunities for growth?

Former professional snowboarder and entrepreneur Barry Hartman joins Mariel to share how the lessons learned through sports can shape success beyond competition. After a broken ankle sidelined his snowboarding career, Barry shifted his focus to building a business. He reflects on the importance of self-belief, learning from failure, staying open to change, and finding purpose beyond athletic achievements. In this episode, you’ll learn about:

• How Barry went from professional snowboarding to entrepreneurship
• Why failure is feedback, not the end of the road
• How focusing on enjoyment can change your performance
• The value of reviewing mistakes and making adjustments
• Why athletes need an identity beyond their sport
• How attitude and body language affect team performance
• What sports teach us about leadership and personal growth

For youth athletes, parents, coaches, and former athletes, this conversation offers valuable insights into overcoming setbacks, embracing change, and developing the resilience, confidence, and leadership skills that extend beyond sports.

Barry's journey is a reminder that an athlete's growth doesn't end when their playing career does. The lessons learned through competition, failure, and perseverance can open doors to new opportunities and help shape who they become beyond the game.

About Barry

Barry Hartman is a Canadian entrepreneur, former professional snowboarder, and founder of multiple companies in the junk removal industry.

Before building businesses, Barry spent part of his early career as a professional snowboarder, an experience that shaped the way he thinks about discipline, confidence, risk, coaching, and personal growth. Competing at a high level taught him that success is never just about talent. It comes from repetition, resilience, great mentorship, and the ability to keep showing up after setbacks. Those lessons became the foundation for how he leads teams, builds companies, and mentors other entrepreneurs today.

Barry is the Co-Founder and CEO of 505-Junk, a multi-million-dollar junk removal, recycling, and donation pickup company based in Vancouver, Canada. Since launching the company in 2011, he has helped grow 505-Junk into one of the most recognized independent junk removal brands in Western Canada. The company is known for its pay-by-weight pricing model, strong culture, professional approach, and commitment to recycling, donation partnerships, and responsible disposal.

He is also the Founder of Bolt Accelerator, a coaching and training company that helps junk removal entrepreneurs across North America grow stronger, more profitable businesses. Through Bolt, Barry coaches business owners on leadership, sales, marketing, operations, hiring, pricing, and long-term growth.

Barry’s journey from professional sports to entrepreneurship gives him a unique perspective on youth development, performance, and leadership. He understands the role sports can play in building confidence, identity, work ethic, and emotional resilience. He also believes that the lessons learned through athletics can carry far beyond competition, helping young people become better leaders, teammates, entrepreneurs, parents, and members of their communities.

Today, Barry is passionate about helping people see what is possible when they combine ambition with discipline, values, and strong support systems. Whether he is leading his team, coaching entrepreneurs, creating content, or speaking to young athletes and business owners, Barry brings a direct, energetic, and optimistic style rooted in real-world experience.

At the heart of Barry’s story is a belief that sports, business, and life are all connected by the same principles: show up, do the work, learn from failure, surround yourself with great people, and keep growing.

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Why can you absolutely crush it in practice, but the moment the game starts, everything changes? Suddenly you're second-guessing decisions, worrying about mistakes, and thinking about things that normally come naturally.

In this Forged Youth Q&A episode, Mental Performance Coach Mariel Anderson and former professional hockey player Jordan Owens tackle one of the most common struggles athletes face: game-day anxiety and overthinking under pressure.

Jordan shares what it was like playing in the American Hockey League, where one mistake could mean spending the rest of the game on the bench. He explains how simplifying his game helped him rebuild confidence, one shift at a time, and why even becoming a top player didn't make the pressure disappear.

Mariel brings the mental performance coaching perspective, explaining why trying to focus on everything you've practiced can actually work against you during competition. Instead, she shares a simple strategy to help youth athletes stop overthinking, lean into their strengths, and create the conditions for flow.

You'll discover:

• Why athletes can perform confidently in practice but struggle with anxiety and overthinking during games
• How Jordan handled the pressure of making mistakes when his playing time was on the line
• Why simplifying your game and making small, successful plays can build confidence
• How focusing on your strongest skill can reduce mental overload during competition
• The difference between deliberate practice and a competition mindset
• How visualization can help you reconnect with the freedom, looseness, and joy you felt playing sports as a kid

Jordan also shares a powerful strategy he used later in his professional career: mentally returning to the feeling of playing hockey as a 12-year-old, before expectations and pressure took over. By bringing that feeling back into his body, he could release tension and return to simply playing.

Whether you're a young athlete who freezes under pressure, a parent watching your child struggle with game-day nerves, or a coach trying to build confident competitors, this conversation offers practical ways to shift from overthinking to trusting your abilities.

Because sometimes the best way to elevate your game isn't to do more. It's to get back to what you already do well.

About Your Hosts

Mariel Anderson is the founder of Forged Youth and a Mental Performance Coach who works with professional athletes and developing youth athletes. A former elite volleyball athlete, Mariel combines her competitive experience with practical mental performance strategies to help athletes build confidence, resilience, and the skills to navigate pressure in sport and life.

Jordan Owens is a former professional hockey player with a 12-year career that included time in the New York Rangers organization and professional hockey in Europe. As Head of Mentorship & Mindset at Forged Youth, Jordan brings firsthand experience navigating the expectations, challenges, and mental demands of high-performance sport.

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Most athletes think one setback ends the story. In this episode of Forged Youth, Canadian Bobsleigh Athlete Luke Puto proves the opposite and shares how a broken hockey path, a Google search, and three tries to make Team Canada led him into one of the most intense sports on earth. Mariel digs into what it really takes to start over in your 20s, stay curious after disappointment, and build a career by choosing joy over ego. Luke opens up about getting cut twice before making the national bobsleigh team, why he kept going when the outcome was uncertain, and how the best athletes in the world balance looseness, intensity, and trust. You’ll discover:

• Why Luke chose bobsleigh after hockey ended on terms he didn’t control
• How “exposure therapy” helped him train for competition without tying his identity to winning
• The high-performance habits he learned from medalists and multi-Olympians in Calgary
• Why fun, not constant seriousness, became the key to longevity and better results
• How elite teams communicate, compromise, and stay synced in a sport where five seconds matter
• The simple reflection tools Luke uses to capture ideas, lessons, and performance notes without turning journaling into a chore

Mariel also connects Luke’s story to the bigger athlete journey: injury, identity shifts, burnout, and the fear of leaving a sport that no longer fits. Luke explains why those same experiences can become a career advantage, not a dead end, whether you’re chasing the Olympics, coaching, or building a life around sport in another way. If you’ve ever wondered whether your athletic path is “over” because one door closed, this conversation is your reminder that there are many ways to stay in the game.

About Luke

Luke Puto is a Canadian bobsleigh push athlete training toward the 2030 Winter Olympics. His approach to the sport is methodical. Luke runs a structured strength and speed program built around classical periodization principles, with a heavy emphasis on data tracking and long-term progression. He came to bobsleigh from a competitive hockey background and has spent years studying the science of explosive performance. That foundation shapes how he trains today: patient, measured, and grounded in the belief that the right work, done consistently over years, is what separates good athletes from great ones.

Off the ice, Luke is an Accountant at Deloitte, where he works in professional services. Balancing a demanding corporate career with elite athletic ambitions has shaped much of how he thinks about time, energy, and priorities. He has become something of a student of high performance in both domains, and is interested in what the worlds of sport and business can learn from each other. Luke is also the author of The Examined Start, a Substack publication where he writes about athletics, professional life, philosophy, and what it means to live a serious and considered life. His essays draw on classical sources, modern performance science, and his own experience navigating two demanding worlds at once. Beyond sport, work, and writing, Luke is an active hunter, a chess player, and a home cook with a long-standing interest in history and classical thought.

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