Your job is to be the best version of you. And it's your job to understand the life you want and the circumstances you're in, and to develop a mindset, a winning mindset, a competitive mindset to live that life. And that requires competing against things inside of you that will hold you back. And now, in my ultimate competition, to live against this disease trying to kill me, I love it, it's awesome. I get to compete for living, to be alive. It's hard. Hey, once again, it's another great day to get better. Welcome to Becoming Undone, a podcast for those who dare bravely, risk mightily, and grow relentlessly. Join me, Toby Brooks, as I invite a new guest each week to examine how high achievers can transform from falling apart to falling into place. For Columbus, Ohio native Tim Kite, an early love for the sport of football was overshadowed by his performance on the track, where success as a hurdler led to multiple state and national championships, and eventually a scholarship to compete and study at nearby Ohio State University. After one year though, he opted to transfer to UCLA in California, where he continued his pursuit of athletic achievement. Exposed to a new world and new opportunities, he flourished, ultimately laying the groundwork for what will become his lifetime of study and practice in, as he says, observing, curating, and documenting the behavior patterns of elite high performers. Over time, he developed his unique system, Focus F3, where he and his team today teach and practice how our response to things that happen in our life is the most important thing we can actively choose to help influence our outcome. Today Tim also serves as a consultant to some of the most prolific leaders and organizations like the USC Trojan football team, Ohio State University, and former college and NFL coach Urban Meyer. And in the past few years, Tim's had to live out his own teachings as he wages battle against stage four cancer. Here Tim tell his story of choosing his own response, owning his 20 square feet of influence and how we can do the same in episode 46, Hurdles with Tim Kite. This week we're fortunate enough to have guest Tim Kite with us. Tim is the founder and CEO of Focus 3. He was a track athlete at UCLA where he also got to witness firsthand the tail end of Coach Sean Wooden's career. I'm a huge fan of Coach Wooden and his message of better every day and incremental improvements and that Kaizen philosophy. But Tim has carved a niche for himself and has become kind of a go-to expert for not just individuals but organizations looking to improve and become high performers. So, Tim, it's great to have you. Welcome. Toby, thanks for having me. It's a privilege to be on your show. Oh, I thank you. So I usually start off with a little bit of a softball. What did you want to be growing up? That's a topic I've addressed a lot with people over the years. I had several streams that I pursued, particularly as I got into college. I wanted to be either a coach or a professor or teacher of some kind, either high school or college. I wanted to be in business or I wanted to be in ministry. I was passionate about all four of those. And at some point I pursued all of them. And I still do in a way pursue all four of them. That's really, really for a long time what I wanted to do, all four of those things. That's great. So I read from your bio that you were a track athlete and ended up out at UCLA in those pursuits. Talk to me a little bit about your athletic career growing up. Yeah. Well, I grew up in Columbus, Ohio and was passionate about football in particular. Then I discovered just by accident that I was fast, so I did track. Then I discovered the hurdles, which I actually taught myself how to hurdle. I think in seventh grade it was, I had my mom drive our Volkswagen bus to the school and we brought hurdles home. I put them in the backyard and taught myself how to hurdle. Now I'm gonna jump in a little earlier than normal here but Tim's story and his message to me are both an example of how our pasts and our presence can prepare us for our futures. In Tim's case he loves sports and he grew up near the epicenter of American football in Ohio only about a hundred miles from the Pro Football Hall of Fame but it wasn't football that changed his life forever. It was track and field. And what event is befitting a man who would one day become one of the most sought-after speakers, coaches, and development experts on how you and your team can overcome obstacles and face events head-on in order to improve outcomes? Fittingly, the hurdles. Tim's ability to fly over the barriers in his path may have started as a literal one, teaching himself the discipline in his own backyard, but the lessons sank in deep and helped him to one day become an expert in doing it figuratively as well. And then so in middle school, I had some success and when I got to high school, I discovered that that was really a track event that I excelled in. So I played football and ran track all four years of high school and ended up the state champion my senior year in the hurdles. And then my senior year, I was fortunate enough to be national champion in my track team. So there were two national championship meets. I won both of them and then just the 330 intermediate hurdles was the actual race. And then I went to Ohio State as my freshman year and then discovered that Ohio State was not a track-oriented school at the time. Now they've got a great track team, but back then not so much. So then I transferred to UCLA, which was the track and field center of the universe at that time. That's what got me out to the West Coast. Yeah, interesting. Sometimes the abilities and skills that we have just kind of make themselves known. You started off in football and probably discovered that speed. I don't know how often you hurdled opponents on the football field, but becoming proficient and as a national champion, hurdling, what kind of opportunities? When you went to Ohio State, it was probably relatively close, one of the larger programs that showed interest in you, but what was that recruitment process you were encountering that success in high school? Yeah, I mean, I think we all go through this, looking back, reminiscing, if I knew then what I know now kind of thing. I'm 70 now, and what would 70-year-old me, and I thought this all along the way. I look back, because I do so much work with collegiate and professional athletes and business people who, you know, we look back and have a similar conversation. When I get to know a client, like, tell me about where you came from. Tell me about your family life. Tell me about your background, what were you interested in. I engage that way with all of our clients. When I look at my own life, I look back at that and my real passion and love was football. Track was not something that I did because I really loved it. Track was something I did because I was really good at it. I'm not saying I would not have run track had I known then what I know now, but what I would have done, and this sounds weird, I probably still would have run the hurdles, I guess, because it was an athletic track event. You're running over hurdles rather than just running, but I love football. I knew so little about football back then. When I played in high school, I had relative success, but now I learned later on how the game is actually played and what's required to be great in the sport. And then recruiting wise, when you're the state champion your junior year in a sport and track, and they want speed of course, and then you have a similar if not greater success your senior year. I had offers from every school in America, but it's pretty simple. My dad was an Ohio State grad. My great-granddad and great-granddad were Ohio State grads. So my father said, hey, you can visit any school you want. You're going to Ohio State, more or less. So the recruitment wasn't certainly what it is today. But yeah, I'd locked into Ohio State early on. I grew up a Buckeye fan. I went to all the games, the football games. And it was not pressure-filled at all. I did not feel pressured, honestly, when I say that about my dad. There's almost tongue in cheek. I really did. I still do have tremendous affinity for the Buckeyes and what they do. I worked with Urban Meyer. I was the leadership coach for Ohio State football during Urban's time there and still maintain a very close relationship with Ryan Day and Mickey Mirati, the strength coach and other coaches on the staff. And so, yeah, I love Ohio State. But that's where I went, and it was close to home. I mean, it was 30 minutes down the road for me. But it was right to go to the West Coast for me. Yeah. I think it will be telling to hear this, because it sounds like you encountered a lot of success early. And it was a pretty steady uphill climb. You were state champion as a junior, national champion as a senior, and kind of following in the family footsteps of Ohio State, but then you veer off and do your own thing. What was that transition like for you mentally? Were you concerned about disappointing your father? Were you pulled toward UCLA or pushed from Ohio State? What was that like for you? Yeah, you know, a couple of things I think when I look back on it. I had a pretty serious hamstring injury my junior year on my lead leg and hurdles and was not expected to have recovery in time for the post, you know, the conference championship, regionals, district, stuff like that. And I recovered in time to compete in a, you know, conference district and then win the state and had the same injury my senior year later in the season. And they were saying, okay, if any state champ, he's not going to make it, right? I was able to limp my way to placing in these various events, got third in the state meet my senior year because I wasn't fully healthy and then did get healthy the following week, won what's called the Ohio Track Classic. I learned a lot and then obviously went on to win the national events. I learned a great deal about resilience, about overcoming injury, and it's something I work with a lot of athletes today on what do you do when you're injured? What's your mindset when you're injured? How are you handling, what are the opportunities that injury affords you? Me again, I absolutely love this thought, and it's one I've preached to my athletes and my students who work with athletes of their own for decades now. Injury sucks, especially when time can't be recovered. If you're a senior in high school or wrapping up your college career and you get hurt midway through your season, that could be it. You either compete or you don't, but the chance for many will never come around again. Tim's word choice is perfect here. Instead of crying and complaining about what injury or setback has taken from us, we're better served to look at what it's giving us. Literally every day is a chance to get better. In many ways it's like Eminem said best. Look, if you had one shot, one opportunity... Because there are opportunities, there are things you can do while you're injured that you didn't have time to do when you're in the middle of competing. That same hamstring injury ended up ending my career at UCLA. Injury is part of life. It just is. I'm currently battling cancer, stage four cancer. I'm in my fourth year now of this battle. That's part of life, Toby. That kind of adversity, those kind of things happen. Mindset and mentality is everything. It is everything. When I went to UCLA, I was excited. I didn't feel pressured to leave. I didn't feel pressured to go. It was something I wanted to do. My dad was supportive. My mom was supportive. I ended up rooming with a fraternity brother who left. He was at Ohio State, but his parents lived in California. He and I roomed together in Westwood right by UCLA that first summer. I think I went from the fraternity house at Ohio State to an apartment in Westwood Village right away. I just got to work on campus, got a job, and just started carving out new stuff. It was an adventure, and life is an adventure. That was a new step for me. So no fear, no concerns, let's go do this. And it was, you know, challenges and all that, but it was fun. I loved it. Yeah, I can certainly relate. I didn't go alone, which kudos to you for packing up and going as a college sophomore. I went to grad school at Arizona. I grew up in the Midwest in Illinois and we loaded the U-Haul and went out to Tucson. There's just something about that feeling that I'm the only person in this city that I know at the moment. That's exciting to get to flip the page and start fresh. Something you mentioned about injury, I've been an athletic trainer for 20 plus years, worked at collegiate level. I think that we miss the mark and a lot of rest when there could be alternative approaches to getting better. I'm a big fan of on-field rehab and mental reps and, like you said, things that you can do that aren't limited by a physical injury. So often we just kind of wait for the page to turn on the calendar. Okay, well, I'll be better in a week. Well, you'll be a week older, but you won't necessarily be a week better. I think a lot of healthcare professionals miss that. I love to hear you say that. Have you been able to leverage that growth that you encountered as a person, as an athlete into your business, those lessons learned about competing through injury? How has that impacted you as an entrepreneur and as a professional? Well, I think just competition overall. The notion of competing is something that is timeless. You go way back in human history, at any era, wherever it would be, Greeks, Romans, the Germanic tribes, Asia, African continent, North American continent, you want to live? You better compete with nature, whether you're a hunter-gatherer or you're farming, agricultural. You didn't have electricity, you didn't have roads, you didn't have all, you'd better compete. So competition is something that successful humans have always had to do. And at the end of the day, and it'd be awesome to have a time machine and go back and be able to speak their language and how they thought, like what was their mindset. I think we discover if we went back in history, and you can read the Greeks, right? You can read the Greeks and the Romans because they've written about what they were thinking. You can read Indian philosophy and I'm speaking North American natives or Indians in India or Chinese. We've got writing, but those aren't necessarily the average person. The people who wrote were the thinkers, but the average person in those eras of human history, they had to be competitive and they had to wake up in the morning. You've read some proverbs around this. You had to wake up in the morning ready to go. There was no laziness or you didn't survive. I think with modern conveniences and modern comforts, it's easy to get into a mindset that's kind of soft and expect life to go the way you want it to go. When adversity or difficulty or challenges strike, it's going, ìWoe is me and why did this happen to me?î Like you say, just, ìOkay, I'll sit back and I'll just wait and I'll get better and I'll turn the pages of the calendar and the doctor said, give it some rest and I'll wait some time as opposed to what's a proactive approach to life every single day. The bottom line I think is this Toby, and I don't care if this is business or basketball or no matter where it would be, the number one person you compete against is the person you look at. You're competing, your job is to be best version of you. And it's your job to understand the life you want and the circumstances you're in, and to develop a mindset, a winning mindset, a competitive mindset, to live that life. And that requires competing against things inside of you that will hold you back. You know, we talk about it discipline over default. We draw a line, and below that line is what we call default behavior. That's stuff in your life that doesn't work. And above that line, we call discipline behavior. That's stuff in your life that does work. And what's interesting about the word discipline is it's Latin for student. It means it's learning. Discipline isn't natural. You're not born with discipline. You have to acquire it. You have to develop it. You have to build it. Default, on the other hand, easy and socially popular. But again, back to the world history, again, just to put this in context, and this is a bit redundant here, but world history most of the time was not comfortable and convenient for human beings. The societies were not comfortable and convenient. And so if you are not discipline driven, if you're a default driven, you probably didn't survive. Right. So yeah, I think the competitive spirit, the competitive mindset that I began to experience through athletics, a little bit through academics, and then a lot through academics as I matriculated through life, it's been huge and now in my ultimate competition to live against this disease trying to kill me. I Love it. It's awesome. I mean I get to compete for living to be alive and it's hard, right? I mean all the all the treatments and the drugs and stuff they give you is I'm starting new treatment now I got a whole bunch of new tumors growing inside of me trying to take me out Awesome. Now as I'm editing the show, I realize that somewhere around the eight-minute mark of our conversation Tim dropped a bomb on me without skipping a beat as he was winding down a thought he slipped in that he's currently dealing with stage 4 cancer now in retrospect I was probably looking at my notes for the next question or something, but it literally sailed right over my head I didn't acknowledge it, but he just said it matter-of-factly and moved right along Friends, there are only four stages of cancer. The bigger the number, the further along. But in this soundbite, Tim goes further still. He doesn't just have stage four cancer. His mentality is that it's a privilege to compete against it. Suddenly what I'm complaining about today seems pretty doggone insignificant when I can hear someone like Tim battle with a terminal disease and choose to be thankful for the opportunity to fight it and for the change that it can create within him. If that isn't somebody that's figured out the undone mindset, I don't know who is. I get to compete against that and I consider that a privilege to be honest with you. Such a powerful mindset and we know that our mental approach to injury and disease actually has a physiological response in our healing. If you choose to focus on the negative, guess what happens? Bad things happen. If you choose to focus on healing, healing occurs. That's science. There's evidence to support that. Super inspiring just to hear your words in the midst of this battle. that if you have a very, very, because you're 100% correct, there's a relationship between the mind and the body, right? So the brain sends signals to the body and the body listens in response. We know that to be science. Hormones and other things. So if you're awash in negativity in your mind, you're sending hormones, stress hormones to the body which lowers your immune system and makes you more vulnerable and susceptible to disease and lowers your body's ability to fight some disease that you currently have. If you've got a positive and productive mindset, you're sending not just positive thoughts, you're sending productive hormones to your body and you're enhancing your body's ability to fight disease. I've got to say this though because this is something that I'm in the midst of it now for three and a half years and it's fairly well known. The fact is, you can have a very, very positive mindset and do everything exactly right and die very quickly. Yeah. I mean, the notion that, because I had some people call me and say to me, and this is very irritating by the way, and it's quite presumptuous, and I think extremely unkind for some person to call me up and say, go on this diet, chant this mantra, and you're gonna be healed of cancer. And then give me two or three, my uncle or my, okay, but I know people who have a better mindset than I do, men my age, who have a better mindset than I do or similar to mine, who got diagnosed the same time I did. And they died in six months. And I know some men who got diagnosed the same time I am, who are in a worse condition, that they got more tumors and their numbers are worse than mine, they're still alive. So there are no guarantees. And this is why, to me, the ultimate competitive thing, Toby, this is, man, I hope everybody gets this. You know what you need to win in order to be great at life? You need to win today. I know people think that's a cliche, like win the moment or win today. It's not a cliche. Well, it could be a cliche for some people. It ain't for me and it's not for my clients. Literally, literally, the only day you have available to you to compete for what you want in life is today. You can't compete yesterday, it's gone, right? So if you wanna win, you better win, and not just today, the moments in today. So yesterday, learn from it Tomorrow's coming prepare for it, but the only day available to you to compete Is right now, holy cow. I hope you're taking notes, but just in case you aren't here's that again Yesterday is gone learn from it tomorrow is coming prepare for it and today The only day available for you to compete is right now. I don't know about you, but I needed to hear this. Yesterday, today, and tomorrow. I told my wife the other day, you know, we're talking, we're driving away from this immunotherapy infusion that I'm now getting, and I said, you know what's awesome about the last three and a half years? We've won every single day. We've won every single day of the last three and a half years. Cancer has taken nothing from us in the last three and a half years. It will, ultimately it will take my life, but between now and then it takes nothing because we give it nothing. And so when I think about parenting or athletics or business or whatever, whoever's listening to this, whatever you want in life, figure out what that is in your family, your relationships, your health, your finances, whatever you want, athletics, whatever it is, and then what does today require of you. And then go win today. And when today's over, get a great night's rest and go win tomorrow. Right. Toby, does that make sense? So inspiring, absolutely. And I think maybe I overstated it, but you said it so much more eloquently than I could have. It isn't about manifesting healing. It's about optimizing the healing environment, making it the best it can be. As an athletic trainer, oftentimes we'll use therapeutic modalities, ultrasound or electrical stem or heat or cold or whatever. We're not causing healing. We're trying to make that environment as optimal as it can be so that the body either heals itself or it doesn't. your opening statements, you're a man of faith, oftentimes we're not privy to the grander plan and so there may be factors in play that we don't necessarily understand. Not every prayer I've ever uttered has been answered and sometimes thankfully, right? But at the same time, you control your controllables. That's a thousand percent in line with your teaching professionally is that if mindset matters, I'm going to do the best job I can and have the best mindset I can have today. That is the start and stop of your assignment. If you can max that out, man, you've done all you can do. I love it. That's awesome. When we teach resilience in our workshops, here's the mindset of resilience. I think you'll find this helpful. Number one, do not be deceived by excessive optimism. Number two, don't be defeated by excessive pessimism. Number three, don't be distracted by things you cannot control. Have a plan, set a goal, have a plan, execute, monitor what happens, adjust accordingly and always maintain a productive mindset. That's awesome. And so if you think about that, and again, don't get defeated by excessive pessimism, don't get distorted by excessive optimism, don't get distracted by things you can't control. Set a goal, have a plan, execute the plan, monitor the results, adjust accordingly, and then always maintain a productive mindset. And I can say with tremendous certitude that that mindset works. Yeah, absolutely. And that's all you can do is max out what you can control. There's nothing new under the sun. I have this mantra I try to share with my students, strategic and purpose, relentless and pursuit. You plan your work, and then once you've planned your work… Slow that one down. Say that again. Strategic and purpose, relentless and pursuit. Strategic and purpose. Be strategic about it. Know your why. Know what you want and why you want it. That's the strategic and purpose. That's the idea. Yeah. And then be relentless in the pursuit of that. I like that. Once you've identified what that goal or that mission or that why is, then all that's left is the execution. You're going to do what you need to do today, like you said. I'm not worried about what I have to do tomorrow. Maybe I've got a long-term plan, but the execution doesn't occur in 365-day chunks. It probably occurs in 12-hour chunks, honestly. And if I get so overwhelmed. Or even smaller than that, by the way. Right, yeah. You have certainly worked with some high performers, lots of high performers, as a matter of fact. What role do you think failure plays in the life of a high performer? Well, similar to what you just said about strategic and purpose and relentless in pursuit, one of the things that I've discovered about development and growth and achieving something, well, there's a diagram that we have that we call the edge. And so imagine, Toby, on the left is a box that says where you are now. And imagine on the right is a box that says what's possible. And you can say, you know, like current state, future state, or now and then your goal. And so there's a gap. So there's a now and there's a not yet. And then between those two boxes is a horizontal line, which represents the work that you have to do to go achieve what it is that you want. That's a great simple diagram for everybody. Everyone has that diagram in their life, whether they know it or not, they have a current state. There is stuff in their life that's possible, and there's work that needs to be done if they want to get to that current state. That's just a fact. There's no debate in that. Along the way, though, what we do in this diagram is we draw a vertical line somewhere along that horizontal line, the vertical line and fairly thick. We call that the edge. And the edge represents a spot on your journey to best version of you is the spot, a, a, a, a place on the journey where you're trying to get to some future state, trying to achieve some kind of a goal where it gets really hard, where you run into adversity, where you have to build skill that you don't really have. Maybe it's a talent that you don't have, but you need a skill associated with that, but you didn't get born with that genetic wiring, or it's a level of skill you've never had in the past and building that skill is difficult. I've observed myself and others, and what is it that achievers do to get past it? What do they do to get a breakthrough at the edge? What is it that happens at that, and I call that a decision point. And there's many edges, there's not just one, but the first one is always the one that's most dramatic. Like, oh, wait a second, oh my gosh, I didn't expect this. I got this injury, or I got that this happened, or oh my gosh, this requires more than I thought that it required, or I can't do this, or I'm not very good at this. What do you do? So what I've discovered is there are five choices that achievers make to get a breakthrough at that edge. Five choices. And what's really cool, Toby, is no talent required. You don't have to have any genetic predisposition. You don't need to have high IQ. In fact, the most talented people tend not to make these five decisions, most talented people don't make these five decisions because they've always relied on their talent. When confronted with a non-talent related discipline, they shy away from that because failure is involved. So here you go, here are the five decisions. Is number one, and this is frankly a combination of your two, be relentless and focus and effort. Or to phrase it, be strategic and purpose and relentless and effort. It's the same two things you just said. So be relentless in your focus and effort. Know what you're supposed to be doing, know why you're supposed to be doing it, and absolutely be relentless in the doing of it. And when I say relentless, I literally mean relentless. Do not quit. Okay? Well, number two is embrace productive discomfort. It's going to be uncomfortable. In fact, if it isn't uncomfortable, you are not at the edge. If it's not uncomfortable, you're still in the classic phrase comfort zone. And if you are in the comfort zone, the best you can hope for is to reinforce existing skill. You're not getting better. And again, talk about brain, body, that's the fact. If it doesn't challenge you, it ain't gonna change you. So that's the second decision in this edge. Number three, use mistakes as feedback. If you're not making mistakes, you're not at the edge. If failure isn't there, you're not at the edge. You're going to make mistakes, because it's a new level or a new competency or a new skill, or it's an adversity that's revisited you, or it's a new one, but it happens. And number four is a big one, defeat fear. The edge is scary. It is scary. And again, I'm going to say what I said again, if it's not scary, it's probably not the edge. Yeah. And then number five is be coachable. You can't do it by yourself. You need people around you, observing, giving you feedback. And here's my definition of being coachable, and that is the passionately desire, teaching and instruction without getting defensive or making excuses. Don't just accept it, seek it. Passionately seek feedback and instruction and don't get defensive or make excuses. So those five decisions, be relentless and focus and effort, embrace collective discomfort, use mistakes as feedback, defeat fear and be coachable. I can honestly say to everyone listening to your podcast or your show, you make those five choices at any edge in your life and you are going to at some point get a breakthrough. Let's go back to the first one, the relentless. You better have patience and perseverance because this does not happen quickly. There's no magic in this. There's no magic. It's not the decision to start that matters. It's the decision to keep going. That's the one. So many people listen to the quitting voice. They say, oh, I heard Tim talk about the edge and those five decisions. I made the five decisions for an entire month one time and I didn't get the breakthrough. I said, yeah, because what you're after, the edge that you're at, that's a six-month process or a one-year process or a three-year process. You didn't have enough perseverance. So that's what I would say, Toby, in context of how failure or mistakes fit in. And it's one-fifth, it's 20% of the formula in my mind. Yeah. And to go back to your previous concept of the above or below the line behaviors, those are all above the line. Those are discipline skills. You have to choose those things. They're not default. Blame, excuses, and denial are all default, and those are easy. What I've found lately, I've been on this pretty persistent growth journey for really five years. I've really committed to growing in wisdom, stature, favor, God, and man, mental, spiritual, social, physical. And I've sought, like I want people to give me feedback, and not just pats on the back, like, what you're doing is good, that's fine. What I really want to know is what am I doing that's undermining our relationship? What am I doing that is not pushing us forward? And people don't often like to give that. It's not a comfortable conversation, but you mentioned it. It's not about being comfortable. Like I want to be fully aware because you can't solve problems that you're unaware of. Is this any different in teams? I mean, we were talking really about high-performing individuals. What role does failure play for high-performing or high-achieving teams? Oh, it's the same thing. I mean, it doesn't change. Theoretically, a coach's job is to observe the team and give the team feedback. You know, that's what practice is for. That's what game film, that's what practice film is for. And you know, teams, football as an example, and I'm currently working with USC, Lincoln Riley and his staff. I go there twice a month. Started last year, helped them do the culture turnaround. Had a great year last year, not what we wanted. We ended up on a sour note, you know, losing the Pac-Tro championship game and losing in embarrassing fashion to Tulane and the in the cotton bowl. But those are lessons. You know, and the question is why? I'm a big fan of what I call leaders are experts at cause and effect. You know, why? Look, Urban would call it look under the hood. You know, why did we play well? Let's go repeat that. Why did we play okay? Let's go enhance that. Why did we play poorly? Let's go fix that. And so that's a team thing. Individual coaches, the position coaches, it's their job to do that with their units. The head coach's job to do that with everyone. My job as the coach's coach, as the leadership coach, whatever my title is, Coach TK they call me, my job is to help them all do that to whatever extent that I can be a catalyst for them to understand. Let's understand why the team performed well, or performed average, or performed poorly. So yes, absolutely. John Wooden was master of that. John Wooden would look at individual players and let them know why they played the way they did, good, bad, or average. He would look at the whole team and say, why are we performing like that as a basketball team? So yeah, I think the same thing in the business, right? Why are we getting the numbers we're getting? Why? I've been on this mission for 40 years of getting the executive teams to stop obsessing over the numbers and understand the behavior and the culture that produces the numbers. It's just amazing. If you want the numbers to get better, the behavior has to get better. Every single number you track in a business is produced by the decisions and actions of people. If you want better numbers, you need better decisions and better behavior. The only way the numbers improve is the behavior improves and the behavior isn't going to improve until the culture improves. The number of executive teams that hide and the numbers are trailing indicators. The numbers are a reflection of behavior and decisions made a while ago and it's like, what football coach would stare at a snapshot of the scoreboard three days after the game is over? They don't do that. They say the game film. What did we actually do that produced those numbers on offense or allow those numbers on defense? What do we need to do better so in our next game, we produce more numbers and we allow less? Yeah. It's amazing to me where people don't understand cause and effect when it comes to human or team performance, but it isn't sophisticated. There's complexity involved, but the core of it is relatively simple. It's relatively simple. I always come down to E plus R equals O. It's event plus response equals outcome. The O that you get is determined by the R that you choose. The outcome is determined by your response, not the event. The event is what events and circumstances and situations, they happen. And you do not control them. It's how you choose to respond that produces the outcome. And the R in that equation is the only thing that you can evaluate, improve and change to produce better outcomes in your life. The only thing, it's the only variable in the success of your life. Does the event matter? Yeah, it matters. Yes, circumstances matter. Yes, situations matter. Yes, context brings constraints, but if you want to read a great book on this, read Man's Search for Meaning by Dr. Victor Frankl. Yes, that actually, that transformed my life. I read that maybe six months ago. I had this long wordy purpose statement that I would parade around to my students. We would do purpose, mission, and vision statements. And when I read Frankel's work, and at the end, it's in a newer edition where he talks about how he was teaching in class, and he asked his students to tell them what his purpose was. And as an educator, I've been a professor for 20 years now, I thought, first of all, how powerful that his students knew him well enough to know it word for word, but how succinct that his purpose in life to help others discover and pursue their own. I think that's it. Like that's what it was. I don't need to make it into some grandiose thing. Frankel understood better than most how critical it is to some of the things we talked about before. He took control of his mindset, his thoughts. He took them captive. In the midst of unspeakable adversity and pain. Yes. And keep in mind when Franco was arrested by the Nazis, his wife was pregnant with their first baby and his parents were arrested along with him. He never saw his parents again. He never saw his wife again. He never saw his unborn baby. And they put him in a concentration camp. In the midst of that, he would say things like, if I survive this, I want to be found worthy of my sufferings. They could take away my liberty, but they could never take away my freedom. Man's final freedom is the choice he makes of his attitude in response to any given situation in life. When I say E plus R equals O and that the key variable is your R. It's the one thing you can evaluate, change and improve to produce better outcomes. I am not for a moment diminishing the challenges of the E. Here I am with stage four cancer. I get how constraining and challenging and difficult the E is. I get it, maybe as much as anybody. It doesn't change the fact that I'm responsible for my R-factor. It doesn't change the fact that I'm the one that chooses. My purpose statement, I think there's a couple of ways to go about that. I have shied away from a singular purpose to a multifaceted one that I developed many, many, many years ago. My purpose in life, and I give a lot of thought and prayer to this, my purpose is several. Honor God, number one, love my family, number two, master my craft, number three, be a good friend, number four, and serve my community, number five. My purpose is those five facets. Honor God, love my family, master my craft, be a good friend, and to serve my community. My community service has expanded over the years to national slash global in the sense of I get to serve a lot of people through social media. I'm writing the Artifactor book right now. Obviously, we do workshops and keynotes. I'm building a business. I've been building a business for a while. One of the cool things about a number of those, particularly the fifth one, is I get to serve the global community after I die through what I write in the business that I build so that other people at Focus Sheet will continue on with the legacy as well as my family. Absolutely. So you've become this highly sought-after speaker. You work with some of the most elite teams that our country has. Honestly, if I'm really honest, that purpose statement I mentioned previously to help others discover and pursue their own. Inherent within that is a yearning within my soul for reach, for impact. I want to help people deeply but I also want to have breadth to my influence and that's not coming from vanity. It's coming from a place of genuinely wanting to help. You've built that. You have breadth as well as depth in your business and as an entrepreneur, you've certainly grown this. So can you talk me through how you've turned these ideas into something tangible, like you said, that will outlive you, that will be a legacy for you along the way? Well, it's an interesting topic because that's a very interesting topic for a number of reasons. There are a lot of people out there a lot more famous than me that have a lot wider reach than I do, who have a great deal more notoriety and touch a lot more lives than I do. There are people out there that don't have my reach. I don't know where I fall on that spectrum. I'm definitely not one of the guys or people at the top. The thing for me that's been good, bad or indifferent, I think I've been heavily and justifiably criticized for this, is I don't self-promote much. I've never aspired to notoriety. I probably have failed to be more strategic about how I go about promoting myself and the message. Part of that is I'm not driven for that but as I face now my mortality and I'm 70 and have this cancer battle and My doctor said that last I'll share with you. He said my life expectancy is now my life expectancy is now about two and a half years Which I don't accept or believe but he may be right right and it may be less hopefully more I look back and I go Have I reached enough? What more can I do? I should have written the book 20 years ago, books 20 years ago. My motivation for writing the book is reach, not notoriety. When the book is finished, which it will be finished sometime this year, hopefully published next year, and let's say I die in two and a half years, I will not see any of the quote unquote notoriety or boom that comes from a boost that comes from the book. I won't see it. My firm will. My folks on my team will. I'm probably not a very good person to ask that. I've always wanted it to be organic. I have a candidly an antipathy for all the self-promotion stuff out there for people, people who call their companies by their names, that they're just always promoting. Every time I post something I have done or where I've spoken, there's a significant degree of discomfort for me when I do that. I do it for the reason you said, which is people need to know and they need to hear this. They don't need to know me. They don't need to hear me. They need to hear the message. When we hire people for our company, one of our core principles at Focus Free is we are not the message. It's not about you. And this is a hard thing to hire people for Focus Free because I tell them, you gotta be clear when you get to do a keynote, you do a workshop, you gotta have a degree of charisma and passion, but you aren't the message. And I tell this all the time to our facilitators, get out of the way of the message and yet deliver the message in an engaging, effective fashion. So I'll coach and train and our people will coach and train each other and we'll say, hey, no, you didn't say that very well. That didn't come across with a degree of clarity and passion that it needed to come across. At the same time, please don't be self-centered. So many people, Toby, in my business, they got big egos, man. They love to be – and don't get me wrong. I love to be on stage, too. But I love to be on stage because of the message. I gave a message the other night at Westerville Central High School in Columbus, Ohio. It was a community thing and it was a couple hundred folks and it was in the auditorium. And I'm up there and the lights shine in and there's community people and students and coaches and teachers and administrators. And I'm just, and as I'm presenting E plus R equals O and discipline over default, 20 square feet and managing your mindset and sharing this message, all that's going through my mind is, are they getting this message? Who in that audience needs to hear this? Like increasingly, I'm asking this question in my keynotes. I did this the other day for an 1800-person keynote. I said, let me just stop for a second and just ask you a question, each of you. What is something in your life that's really important to you that you started to work on a habit you needed to change or something you needed to build into your life and It got hard and you quit Don't raise your hand Don't don't talk to the people around you just you inside you What is something in your life that you started to do that you want to do accomplish? That's really important to you And maybe to the people around you a habit you needed to change or something you needed to build in your life and you started working on it and it got hard and because it was hard, you stopped doing it. And I said, today's the day. I want you to go revisit that thing and get back to work and embrace the discomfort and go do what you need to do and don't stop until you achieve that or you build that habit or you make that thing happen. So that's maybe a long answer to your question. There are some things that we're doing right now that I think are going to scale our company and build our brand more. Like we were doing a podcast and it was going great. My son was on it and he left the company and so Irvin was on it with me and then he went to go to be with Jacksonville and stuff happened there where that didn't work out and then I got this cancer stuff and so our podcast is kind of, I was doing two minutes with TK and that was going great and then I got the cancer and so there have been these things, these obstacles have gotten in the way. But I mean I just, I guess for me it's more, I just have this deep desire to have an impact like you're speaking about and to have reach and got to be strategic about it, to be strategic in purpose like you said. I'm not the person to go to to say, Tim Kite is the best at that because I'm not. I am not the best at that. Tim, I will tell you with full transparency, that's what drew me to you. There's an authenticity to what you do. You're not self-aggrandizing. You're not looking to impact lives with the message that you've refined and crafted and built over years. This wasn't just something that you just pulled out of thin air. These are experience-proven strategies. You've implemented these in countless organizations, and you can tell that. That shows in a way that, let's face it, the Internet has made it easier to enter spaces than ever before, but there's also more noise than there's ever been. So the truth, the reality stands out. You alluded to owning your 20 square feet, which is a concept of yours that I absolutely love. Tell me a little bit more about that. Yeah, I developed this metaphor of 20 square feet. It's just literally, Toby, a metaphor. It's not literally 20 feet. People ask me because they know I'm research based, how did you land on 20 square feet? And I said, 30 sounded big, 10 sounded small, 20 sounded just right. I don't know. And then when we teach this in Europe or other places outside the US, it's not even square feet, it's metric. It's a metaphor for a person's sphere of control. That's all it is. And the fact of the matter is, is every single person has a sphere of control, that is to say an arena where they are the only one who decides what they do or don't do. Like I said from Dr. Frenkel, they could take my liberty away, but they can't take away my responsibility, my opportunity, the reality that I get to choose my attitude and my action in response to what's going on. Situations can severely limit and constrain me, I still get to choose. I'm the one who chooses. And when you stop and think about that, about how I am the one who decides what goes on inside my 20 square feet, me and only me, and you'll let you this and take complete ownership of that, that's where life success and frankly, mental health begins. Because outside my 20 square feet, I've got influence and impact. And inside, I've got control and ownership and responsibility. And I say this all the time. The problem today, and it's been this way forever, people have a tendency to be more focused on frustrating things on the outside than owning themselves on the inside. And so my big message is, yeah, it's true. You see it all the time. It's like, I get it. And often the frustrating things you're talking about outside your 20 square feet actually exist and they are irritating and frustrating. But that's not the point. The point is what are you doing inside your 20 square feet? So here's a big message. Don't let the frustration on the outside diminish the fire on the inside. So good. And you are responsible for your energy. I've seen this in elite people. They create their own energy. I made this decision many years ago. I wanted to untether my emotions from my circumstances. I wanted to be somebody who brought a productive mindset to negative things. There's tons of negativity in the world and increasing exponentially. We don't need one more cynical person. We don't need one more negative person. We don't need one more person piling on, calling people names. We don't need that. Now, I'm not talking about naive optimism. I'm not talking – no, I'm talking about problem solvers. I'm talking about people who come to the situation and say, tell me about it. Let's understand it with all of its complexities and difficulties and pain and what can we do to bring something productive to that situation. I want to become that person, one of those people and for the most part that's happened for me because I made the decision And when negative things happen, I don't get upset I mean, I rarely rarely get upset about anything because when something happens, I'm a solution mindset How what can I do to help the world doesn't need my opinion on lots of stuff I mean I read stuff and I and I thought so many times I'm gonna create a burner Twitter. I'm gonna create a, you know, there's a man, here's what I think about them. I'm thinking, wait a second, we don't need one more of those. Plus, what's it gonna do? Because all it is, is below the line default impulse. And my part, I want to declare something that came from an emotional impulse from it. The world doesn't need that from me. Yes. At all. And when I really stop and think about my, if I were to post that, then it's like, that's not helpful. Yeah. It doesn't help anybody. It's just me indulging in an emotional impulse. That's all it is. He's talking about take every thought captive, you know, which actually is from the Bible. Yeah, absolutely. Take every thought captive. Yeah. And so 20 square feet is the real, and that's a fact, by the way. You've got 20 square feet of the highway when you drive. You got 20 square feet of the airport when you fly. You got 20 square feet of your community where you live. You got 20 square feet of the school if you're a teacher or a student or an administrator. You got 20 square feet of a team if you're on it. It's your sphere of ownership and control. So own it. It's interesting to me, the things I learn from disparate places, completely different things, they come together and there's this natural melding. So what the world would tell me is emotional intelligence and controlling, not letting that amygdala hijack occur, using your higher centers as opposed to a measured response as opposed to an emotional response. Well, that's taking every thought captive. It's not a sin. It's not a problem to have a thought. It is a sin or a problem to act on it. Giving yourself the grace to understand that, oh, I've got this great tweet for my burner account, but your reason tells you, okay, I know better than to actually put that out into the public sphere. I love that. There's something very practical for people. I tell them, you're not responsible for your first impulse. You're responsible for your second one. Yes, absolutely. I mean, I certainly learned this. I've worked so hard at all this stuff in my own life, and I have lots of below-the-line impulses all the time. But I practice the system. I press pause and get my mind right, and I consider it. I've got self-awareness. I'm going, okay, all right, that's a negative impulse. That is not helpful. Don't indulge it. Don't feed it. Don't cultivate it. Don't give it any space or room. Replace it with something productive. Go from default to discipline. We live in a world that's been socially engineered to elicit as many of those responses as can happen because that creates engagement, and engagement is a fundable thing. You can sell that engagement. Clicks, baby. Clicks, baby. Exactly. And so this isn't a problem that's going to get less. This is a message that is going to be needed more because each successive generation has grown up in this dopamine-soaked, quick response, just share your mind, be authentically you. Well, you can be authentically you but still be civil and still have measure in your response. And so owning that 20 square feet, I think that's a powerful analogy. I'm going to share it with my kids later today. Awesome. So, we'll wrap it up here. My next to last question, I love the insight that it gives me. If we were to play a montage of your life, what song would we be playing in the background? Huh. Montage of my life, so this is my either walk up or walk away song. Yeah, yeah. Showing these things like, ooh. Honestly, it would have to be a worship song. It would have to, because my faith is so important to me. My current favorite worship song is There is a King. There's others that I love, so that would be one, for sure. And because I seek to live a Christ-centered life, if I can, which I can sometimes. What would another one be? Oh my gosh, I'm going to be funny here, this would not be what it would be, but I love karaoke and my wife doesn't like the real twangy country song, so I sing Amarillo by Morning by George Strait. So maybe that's what it would be. She would laugh at that. But no, it would be a worship song. It would be a worship song. That's awesome. I'd have to honor God. Yeah, that's very cool. I'm a drummer in our church. I'm not familiar with that one. I'll look it up. I'll look it up. Well, this one is, you've kind of alluded to it with the book, but it's the question I always end with. What for you, what for Tim Kite remains undone? The book. 100% the book. Yeah, that's my ability to reach beyond my current footprint. It can be translated into languages. It can, because E plus or equals O, discipline over default, 20 square feet, and the disciplines that go along with it, it's a game changer. And I made a statement a while ago in this show with you, the R is the only thing in your life that you can evaluate, improve, and change in order to produce better outcomes in your life. If you want a better O, you need to choose a better R. The more we understand that as individuals, as communities, as nations, we're going to get better. For those that listen to this and say, again, I care about the E, I care about the E dramatically. The best way for a better E is to create a better O because today's outcomes are tomorrow's events. So yes, the environment, the E, the event, the situation, the circumstances matter. But when I understand the E and I want to affect it, then the best way to affect the E is to maximize my R-factor capability. And so the book would be a way to do that. So good. Tim, it's been a real pleasure, a real honor to get the chance to speak with you. So appreciate your transparency. Your message is powerful. It's impactful. I follow you relentlessly on social media. I always deliver thought-provoking and sometimes ouch hallelujah kind of reminders that I need to be back on task. You're not being relentless in pursuit today and you give those reminders and they're loving nudges to get me back on track. How can listeners connect with you? Yeah, so our website is a great spot to go, focus3.com, and it's the number three. They want to email me directly, it's tim at focus3.com. I'm on Twitter, which you alluded to, and at Timothy Kight, K-I-G-H-T, at Timothy Kight. And then I'm on LinkedIn as well, Tim Kight, but on LinkedIn, so I'd love to have some follow. Awesome, well Tim, we really appreciate your time. Thank you so much. Awesome. Thank you Toby. I appreciate you having me on. For Tim, despite setbacks, adversity, and now a diagnosis that will most likely eventually take his life in the form of stage 4 cancer, he remains steadfast and focused, not on what he's lost, but on what he's gained through the journey. His book project, Important Before, has become his assignment of impact and of legacy. It's his way of leaving the world a better place than he found it. I cannot help but be inspired, motivated, and awestruck by Tim Kite and the way he leads, loves, and serves with steadfast commitment and iron-willed determination. Thank you, Tim. For more info on today's episode, be sure to check it out on the web. Simply go to undonepodcast.com backslash ep46 to see the notes, links, and images related to today's guest, Tim Kite. If you enjoyed the show, I've got just one simple request. Would you be so kind as to share it with someone else? I know there are great stories out there to be told and I'm always on the lookout. So if you or someone you know has a story that we can all be inspired by, tell me about it. Surf on over to undonepodcast.com, click that contact tab in the top menu and drop me a note. On deck I've got legendary University of Washington strength coach Ron McKefree, one of the original six American Gladiators, Darren Malibu McBee, and cancer researcher and friend Phil Anton. So stay tuned. This and more coming up on Becoming Undone. You or someone you know has a story of resilience and victory to share for Becoming Undone? Contact me at undonepodcast.com. Follow the show on Facebook, Instagram, and LinkedIn at becomingundonepod and follow me at TobyJBrooks. Listen, subscribe, and leave us a review at Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you get your podcasts. Until next time, everybody, keep getting up. Until next time everybody, keep getting up. You