A former professional baseball player, McMains pairs his sports psychology education with extensive experience as a mental performance coach for Major League Baseball teams, including the Arizona Diamondbacks, San Francisco Giants and Seattle Mariners, as well as top-tier organisations. He leverages his past experience to train Reliaquest on using the power of mindset to drive desired outcomes.

Using proven psychological theories and applied mental skills practices that helped the Giants win three World Series championships in five years, McMains focuses his mental conditioning work at Reliaquest on three key areas:

Teaching the psychological components of high performance, centred around Reliaquest’s core values of adaptability, accountability, focus and helpfulness;

Driving mindset messaging across the organisation, including finding creative ways to communicate the mindset professionals should strive for each day, and being intentional about setting our minds to focus on the controllable;

Supporting Reliaquest to clarify strategy, processes and communications to achieve goals, while developing long-term habits that drive consistency in execution.

“Whether in sports or business, a mindset-focused approach to performance simply works, and it’s an initiative that has fuelled Reliaquest’s rapid growth,” said Brian Murphy, CEO of Reliaquest. “After consulting with us and driving impactful results, it’s a natural progression for Derin to join us full-time. This will allow us to take our performance to an even higher level."

As a former professional baseball player and manager, McMains realised the importance of mindset in sports and further built on his learnings by establishing mental conditioning programmes for the San Francisco Giants, Seattle Mariners, and the University of Notre Dame. He is a Certified Mental Performance Consultant through the Association of Applied Sport Psychology and holds a Master of Science in Psychology as well as a Master of Arts in Sport and Exercise Psychology. As Reliaquest’s Director of Mental Conditioning, McMains will be reporting directly to Murphy.

“I’ve spent the last 20 years in some of the most high-pressure environments and I’ve learned that it’s your mind that takes you from good to great. Training your mind is the separator at the highest levels,” said McMains. “Whether in professional sports or a technical business environment, my goal is simple — help individuals and teams stay focused on what’s most important to give them the best chance to dominate their space. Every day is game day at Reliaquest. As the company continues to grow and solve one of the largest modern-day technical challenges, my contributions will continue to focus on sustaining elite performance across the entire organisation.”