“Don’t chase the money. Chase the dream.”

These words of wisdom stuck with Jehue Gordon, and have served him well in his ten years as a professional athlete. The man giving the advice, back in 2010, was Gordon’s manager, American lawyer Emanuel Hudson. The Trinidad and Tobago athlete was 18 at the time, and had just inked a deal with Hudson’s HSInternational Sports Management (HSI).

“The Diamond League pays pretty well,” said Gordon. “If you go running down meet after meet after meet, you’re going to start burning out yourself. Then, for the major championships, when you’re expected to perform, you just don’t have it. You need to be smart. Fall in love with the dream, fall in love with the process. The money will come to you once you do what you’re supposed to.”

One month after turning pro, Gordon captured the men’s 400 metres hurdles title at the IAAF World Junior Championships. And in 2013, the Maraval athlete struck gold in the same event at the senior version of the global championships.

Gordon spoke about Hudson’s wise words last Wednesday, during the first episode of “Athlete Talks”, a new online series featuring Gordon, reigning Commonwealth Games men’s 200m champion Jereem “The Dream” Richards, and retired national athletes Jamaal James and Zwede Hewitt.

James, who coaches at University of the West Indies (UWI), said the best advice he ever received came from the late Nestor “Tom” Brown, his coach at Phoenix Athletic Club.

“He told me, at a young age: ‘Nobody owes you a damn thing in life. Whatever you want, you have to work for it.’ A lot of times we see young athletes who have that entitlement syndrome where they feel like they make one Carifta or they make a national team or they run 10 whatever or 46, and they feel like the world owes them something.

“The truth of the matter,” James continued, “is no one really cares, and you have to make them care over and over again. You don’t get a degree for doing good in one test. It’s multiple courses and multiple tests for years on end. Then you are presented a degree.”

Richards said he was grateful for the input he received from Quantum coach Trevor James.

“I remember when I made my first team, and I was banking on relays. Mr James quarrelled with me. He said: ‘Pick yourself and don’t let nobody pick you’. Really and truly, if you make it an individual event, they have no choice but to pick you.”

Hewitt, the developer of network sharing app LUHU (Let Us Help U), got his best advice from legendary American coach Clyde Hart while he was on scholarship at Baylor University in Texas.

“It was in the form of a workout,” Hewitt explained, “and was called ‘Speed Makers’. It was intermittent sprints with periods of very slow jogging, and the purpose was to show that in life, just like this workout, there are times where you could go as slow as you want but just do not stop. Sometimes you’re aware it’s time to slow down, but you never give up. That was the lesson.”

The next episode of “Athlete Talks” Ñ featuring Sparkle McKnight and Rae-Anne Serville–takes place from 8 p.m. tomorrow (Wednesday) at www.zoom.us