Richie Contartesi

Richie Contartesi is the Founder & President of Next Play™, an accountability system for sales leaders designed to drive retention, profitable growth, and consistent peak performance. He combines his extensive experience as a former Division-1 football scholarship athlete at Ole Miss and a professional Arena football player with his expertise in performance coaching to deliver transformative results for companies.

Contartesi's journey began when he transitioned from a 5’7”, 150-pound walk-on at Ole Miss to earning a full football scholarship in the prestigious Southeastern Conference, demonstrating remarkable perseverance and dedication. This experience, coupled with receiving the SEC Scholar Athlete award, laid a solid foundation for his later achievements. After graduating, he continued to exemplify his commitment to excellence by playing professional Arena football, authoring his #1 bestseller, "In Spite of the Odds", and being featured in the movie "Rudy Ruettiger: The Walk On".

In his professional career, Contartesi has excelled in developing and implementing the Next Play™ system, which has not only revolutionized his performance coaching business—achieving a growth of 2,600%—but has also been pivotal in helping other companies enhance their sales teams' performance significantly. For instance, one company reported a 24% increase in revenue and another a 55% increase in sales year over year after adopting his methodologies. His keynote presentations, such as "Next Play™: The Accountability System That Results In Retention, Profitable Growth, & Consistent Peak Performance" for leaders, and "Next Play™: The Accountability System That Eliminates Complacency and Results In a Profitable Growth" for teams, are highly sought after for their practical insights and immediate applicability.

Today, Contartesi is renowned for his ability to inspire large audiences and work closely with major corporations worldwide, including IBM, to cultivate high-performance cultures through clear goal-setting and robust accountability mechanisms. His presentations are celebrated not only for their motivational content but also for their strategic insights into leadership, personal growth, and overcoming adversity. Whether sharing success stories or introducing the Next Play™ challenge and playbook, Contartesi's presentations are consistently recognized as pivotal to organizational transformation and sustained high performance.