Alex Auerbach, PhD, CMPC
Co-founder of Advantage
Licensed sport psychologist currently with the Jacksonville Jaguars, previously with the Toronto Raptors. AASP-approved mentor and recipient of AASP's Kate F. Hays Distinguished Mentor Award.
A mentorship cohort for STUDENTS & EARLY CAREER Performance Coaches
Your training taught you the craft. It didn't teach you how to build a career out of it.
Limited seats. A structured program in leadership and business fundamentals, delivered every other week by mentors who've built the career you're building, alongside a multidisciplinary room of early-career performance coaches.
Apply for one of 10 seats
10 seats · this cohort only
The Gap
Graduate programs and certification tracks teach you the craft. Few of them pair you with someone senior who watches your actual work and tells you the truth about it. Fewer still teach you anything about building a career out of that craft, pricing your time, or making your first professional decisions with any confidence.
Most early-career coaches are also isolated inside their own discipline. Sport psychologists talk to sport psychologists, S&C coaches talk to S&C coaches. Rarely does anyone build the cross-discipline relationships a real performance environment actually runs on.
The Room
A Multidisciplinary Room
Mental PerformanceS&CPhysioNutritionEarly Career
This program isn't built for one discipline. Cohorts bring together mental performance coaches, strength and conditioning coaches, physiotherapists, nutritionists, and other early-career performance practitioners, all serious about the work.
That's deliberate. Athletes don't experience these disciplines separately. The S&C coach, the physio, and the mental performance consultant are all working with the same person. Learning how other disciplines actually think, and how to work alongside them well, is part of what makes a practitioner effective later.
The Structure
This Quarter's Focus
This quarter runs on a fixed structure: every other week, alternating between leadership and business.
Leadership
The first three habits in The Seven Habits of Highly Effective People: Be Proactive, Begin with the End in Mind, and Put First Things First. The private-victory stage — the work you do on yourself before the work of leading others.
Business
Niching, pricing and positioning, and the difference between what you do and what it actually means for a client — the fundamentals most training programs skip entirely.
Everything is facilitated live by a mentor. Future quarters build further into the framework for anyone who continues.
The mentors watching your work.
Logan Hartnell, PsyD, HSPP
Director of Student-Athlete Wellness, Clemson
Licensed clinical and sport psychologist and UNC Charlotte's first embedded sport psychologist. "The exact inflection point this program exists for."
Rob Davies
Performance & Pathways Advisor, Sport Wales
Sport and performance psychologist (SEPiT). Performance and Pathways Advisor at Sport Wales, and former Head of Performance for Team Heretics in esports.
The Commitment
What This Actually Asks of You
This isn't a passive program. Some of it will be uncomfortable. It is designed to push you.
Complete a real baseline self-assessment.
Ask the people who work with you for honest feedback about your blind spots.
Bring real cases and real client work to the room — not hypotheticals.
Plan on roughly two hours a week on average, including the live session and prep between sessions. Built to fit around a working coaching practice, not compete with it.
Where This Leads
This isn't a standalone program. At the end of the quarter, graduates get a direct path into Advantage:
A preferred, graduate-only rate for membership. This rate must be claimed within 30 days of the quarter ending. The standard Advantage application is waived.This is where you start. Advantage is where you go next, and you've already done the work to get in.
$75 / quarter
How it works
- Apply for one of 10 seats.
- We review fit for the cohort.
- First session begins the first week of the quarter.
Includes
- A live session every other week, facilitated by a mentor.
- The chance to run a coaching call or presentation.
- Access to community spaces for questions, resources, goal-setting, and announcements.
- Business and career-building content & curriculum.
Does not include
- Full access to Advantage's live event calendar.
- Access to Advantage's library of 50+ hours of expert-led recordings.
Honest accuracy: This is real mentorship from experienced practitioners, not certification hours. Confirm formal (CMPC) eligibility directly with AASP.
Questions
What happens on the calls?
Every other week, the cohort meets live with a mentor. This quarter focuses on the first three habits in The Seven Habits of Highly Effective People (Be Proactive, Begin with the End in Mind, Put First Things First) alternating with business fundamentals: niching, pricing and positioning, and translating what you do into what it means for a client.
Do I need to already be certified or in school?
No. This program is built for early-career practitioners, whether you're finishing a degree or a few years into practice. If you're accumulating hours specifically for CMPC certification, this program can cover part of your group mentorship requirement. It won't cover your individual mentorship hours or your direct client contact hours on its own. Check with AASP on how it fits into what you still need.
Is this affiliated with AASP or any certifying body?
No. We're not affiliated with or endorsed by AASP as an organization. Alex Auerbach is a CMPC and an AASP-approved mentor, and Advantage's broader community includes several other AASP mentors as members.
- What may count: group mentorship hours, if your mentor is on AASP's official Registry of Approved Mentors.
- What does not count: individual mentorship hours or direct client contact hours on their own. AASP caps group settings at 20 of the 40 required mentorship hours.
- What to confirm with AASP: your specific eligibility, before relying on this program for certification hours. appliedsportpsych.org/certification/become-certified
Is this only for sport psychology or CMPC-track practitioners?
No. Cohorts are intentionally multidisciplinary: mental performance coaches, strength and conditioning coaches, physiotherapists, nutritionists, and other early-career performance practitioners, working through the same curriculum together. If you're pursuing CMPC certification specifically, see the certification questions above for what does and doesn't count toward AASP's requirements. Everyone else gets the same mentorship and curriculum without the certification-specific hour tracking.
How much time does this actually take?
About two hours a week on average, including the live session every other week and anything to prepare in between. It's built to run alongside a working coaching practice, not on top of a second one.
What happens after the quarter ends?
You'll be offered a direct path into full Advantage at a graduate-only rate, with the standard application waived. This offer must be claimed within 30 days of your quarter ending.