The Fearless Warrior Podcast

127: The ONE Thing High Performers Focus On with Kim Zuroff

• Amanda Schaefer

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On this week's episode of the Fearless Warrior Podcast, I interview Kim Zuroff, a seasoned executive coach and keynote speaker, who helps high-level professionals cut through the chaos, gain clarity, and lead with confidence. We explore how to build sustainable high performance through clarity, one keystone habit, and consistent action, without burning out.

Episode Highlights:

• Defining a clear vision to avoid the wrong ladder
• Consistency over intensity as a winning strategy
• Boundaries with technology as performance tools
• Mindfulness practices for presence and focus
• Playing the long game and enjoying the process

Connect with Kim:

LinkedIn: Kim Zuroff

IG: @kimzuroff



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Meet Kim Zuroff And Her Mission

SPEAKER_00

Welcome to the Fearless Warrior Podcast, a place for athletes, coaches, and parents who know the value of a strong mindset. I'm your host, Koach AB, a mental performance coach on a mission, former softball coach, wife, and mom of three. Each episode, we will dive deep into all things mental performance, mindset tools, and how to rewire the brain for success. So if your goal is to gain the mental edge and learn the secrets of mental performance, you're in the right place. Let's tune in to today's episode.

SPEAKER_01

Tan Zuroff is a seasoned executive coach and keynote speaker known for helping high-level professionals cut through the chaos, gain clarity, and lead with confidence. She currently serves as the director of growth at The One Thing, where she champions focused strategies that fuel impact without burnout, encouraging people to achieve big goals without sacrificing what matters most. Not only does she do this work with her clients, she lives and breathes it herself. She's a lifelong endurance athlete. You can find her crushing races, trails, hikes, like a rim to rim in the Grand Canyon, and more recently scaling the side of a building so she could lean over 100 plus stories above New York City. Kim, it has been so much fun getting to know you, and I'm honored to welcome you to the Fearless Warrior podcast.

SPEAKER_02

Thank you so much.

SPEAKER_01

I'm so happy to be here. I am so excited to get the opportunity to share you with the Fearless fam because what you are doing, and truly writing your bio makes me giggle because your whole career has been asking other people to go outside of their comfort zone and to just live bigger than your nine to five. Like there's so much more to life than just your career. And instead of just coaching them and telling somebody this, you're you're literally living it. You're living proof of what you're trying to teach others, which is so cool.

SPEAKER_02

Yeah, we we have to lead by example, right? Right.

SPEAKER_01

I think a lot of people say that, but they don't actually do it.

SPEAKER_02

Yes. And it's also too, if I'm not continuously going out there and finding the curiosity within myself of like, what's the next possible thing? The people that I coach, they're gonna outgrow me. And so it's like I'm on this pursuit of self-mastery, per per se. And it's like my goal early on, I've been in the coaching space for a long time. And yet my goal was just to not have any of my clients ever catch me or pass me. And if they do, that's that's great. Me, it's because they're like, that's incredible. And yet, as coaches, we have to keep growing.

Endurance Feats And Mental Fortitude

SPEAKER_01

I love that. And as an example, I wanted to touch on this rim to rim. Did you do rim to rim to rim? Rim to rim to rim. Okay. So you guys can Google this. You need to hear, you need to hear what Tim has done. So you get up at what time? Or do you start at what time did you start?

SPEAKER_02

Well, so we got up at like three, three in the morning, so we could fuel before we go out to the trailhead. And so then we get out to the trailhead by four, you know, four a.m. And obviously black, piss black, right? So we have headlamps, all the things. And we start at the south rim of the Grand Canyon. And then the way the canyon is structured, right, is it's like six and a half miles down to the base of the canyon, and then it's like nine miles across, and then it's six miles up, and then six miles down, nine across, six up. Right. So it was a total of 44 miles. If those numbers don't add up to 44 for the analytics, it's it's somewhere around there, but it's 44 miles, a total of 11,500 elevation climb, a total of 22 five-ish total elevation change. So which is so cool.

SPEAKER_01

Yeah. And grueling. And just I wanted to touch on that because we have a lot of athletes, whether it's baseball, softball, basketball. I just wanted to give a little bit of conceptualization to what we're talking about here. And Kim, just I had to touch on that. I would love to be able to say to do that one day, but that takes a lot of prep and a lot of mental fortitude to accomplish that.

SPEAKER_02

Yeah. And I think it's just, I think it's just so funny because I was a high school athlete. I was a college athlete, you know, and looking back then, I I grumbled about going on the two or three mile runs for training. And, you know, now I'm out there doing ultra marathons and and beyond. And it's just it's just amusing how life evolves.

From Real Estate To Executive Coaching

SPEAKER_01

Yeah, I love that. Well, take us to where you are today. Where are you? What's a day in the life as an executive coach?

Clarity, Vision, And Priorities

SPEAKER_02

Yeah. So I started off my, I guess, my life career, entrepreneurship. I built and scaled several different companies in the real estate space. And, you know, doing that for a specific franchise. And, you know, I was performing at the one of the best doing it. So I was invited to become a coach and to start helping other leaders build and scale their franchises. And so that's kind of how I got into the coaching space per se. And then back in 2024, I made the leap to just have a little bit of a life transition in terms of career. You know, I decided to step away from the day-to-day of all things real estate and really lean into executive coaching of all industries inside of the corporate space, you know, with entrepreneurs, with founders, with leaders. So that's kind of you know where I got started and and how it's evolved. And so, like, what does my day-to-day look like right now? Well, every day, like I wake up and I do my training for my for my endurance events. And, you know, then I have coaching clients. I have calls spread throughout the day. I do a lot of teaching and training. So I lead workshops, I read, you know, I lead different sessions. So I travel a bit. I'm always on the road. I'm typically somewhere, you know, delivering content. But when I'm not doing that stuff, I'm creating content. I'm pouring back into learning myself, growing, listening to podcasts, reading, you know, and and different things like that. So that's kind of what a day in the life looks like is every day does not look the same. And because I work with all different industries, like it's it's it's pretty fun.

SPEAKER_01

That was my next question is give us an example of, you know, on one client call, you might be working with a C-suite, on one call, you might be working with a sales rep. Like, who are those demographics?

SPEAKER_02

Yeah, so it's mostly people that are in the leadership space. So I work with a lot of C-suite founders, entrepreneurs, leaders, right? They're typically leading people. So, you know, when it comes to the different phases of companies, right? You've got companies that are in, you know, the startup phase. So they're just getting off the ground. You've got the scaling phase, which they're really leaning into massive growth. And then you've got the stabilization phase. You know, so every client that I have, no matter what industry, they typically fall into one of those buckets. And everybody's challenges, I mean, they're unique to themselves, and yet they're always typically not that unique, right? So a lot of times I'm helping people with with clarity and focus of what's the vision that we're working towards. Because if we don't know where we're going, it's really hard to have a plan of how to get there, right? So clarity and where we're going is the first step that I help people identify of we're not just what do we want this year, what do we want five years from now, 10 years from now? Because like we don't want to be that person that is climbing a ladder and then you wake up five years from now and realize that you climbed the wrong ladder. Right. And so to slow down, to speed up, which was really hard for me to do, you know, is getting clarity on where we're going. That's kind of the first thing that I help people with. And then I help people get really clear on their priorities of what are the most important things they need to be doing in order to reach their goals? You know, what are the challenges, you know, habits, right? So it's like, what are the habits they need to integrate into their life to be able to get the goals that they desire? Not just what habits do we need to integrate, what are the habits that no longer serve us? Which I don't think is a talked-about enough thing of, you know, there is certain things that I do that served me really well inside of the growing and scaling phase of businesses. And yet they don't serve me very well for right now, right? Or they don't, they don't parlay into, you know, it's like some habits, they need to be broken. And, you know, so that's kind of getting clear on what habits we need, what do we need to break, prioritization, focus, clarity.

Habits That Help And Habits To Drop

SPEAKER_01

Those are all the things that I coach too, which is phenomenal because relating that to the sports side of things, we know, parents, if you're listening to this, your daughter's gonna enter the workforce. And what is the what is the point of sports? You touched on vision. Where are we going? When you're on a team, we know the vision. Our vision is to win, our vision is to make it to the championship game. That's easy. What are your habits? We know that we need to practice our sport. If I'm gonna prepare for an ultra, I know I need to be getting my miles in. Or habits, what are the habits aligned with an ultra or the habits aligned with winning on a softball team? And then you get into your career, and all of a sudden, what are those things, especially if they're athletes? I have to look this up. There's a percentage of C-suite. Do you know the stat? It's like the percentage of female C-suite um professionals, like 73% of them played competitive sports. And it makes sense.

SPEAKER_02

It makes a hot, it absolutely makes sense. And I actually look for it in in my hiring when I hire people. Why? Because if they've played sports at any, you know, high school level and if they played collegiate level sports, like it tells a lot about them as a person, right? Like their grit, their willingness to do whatever it takes, their mindset, their ability to be a team player. You know, it's just like, are they gonna show up and want to be part of a team or are they gonna work in a silo? Right. So if if if people, if if students have come out of college and they've been an athlete, they've been part of sports, they've been part of things, like that's a very attractive thing for an executive looking to make a hire.

SPEAKER_01

I would agree. And as you were kind of diving into that, I don't know if this is correct, we'll have to vet it, but the stat that Google is giving me is 94% of women in C-suite executive positions played competitive sports during their upbringing. Now, some of that might be, you know, a smaller percentage played college, but I think that that's incredible research of when we say this is so much bigger than softball. This is exactly why I brought you on the podcast. So let's dive in. The first question I wanted to ask you is okay, Kim, can you just define high performance? What does high performance mean to you?

SPEAKER_02

Yeah, so high performance is defined differently by everybody. And the way that I define high performance is being your best. Who is that? Yeah, it's it's being your best. And if I walk off the field knowing I gave my best, then I'm happy. But if I walk off the field knowing that I could have done a little bit more, then I'm a little bit frustrated with myself. And yet high performance is being your best because that's, I mean, that's what it is. You know, and I think, you know, when I when I lean deeper into high performance, it's like, you know, who do I need to be to do that? Right. And what does my best self look like? And and being really clear on what that looks like, how am I showing up emotionally? How am I showing up, you know, when things get hard? You know, it's it's being your best self in any condition. And I think that that's that's high performance. And I also think the other important element of that is sustainable high performance, right? Because like I know for me, it's like in my career, especially, like I rode a burnout roller coaster. Like I performed, perform, perform, perform, but I didn't take care of my wellness, right? And if if we don't make time for wellness, we're forced to make time for illness. And, you know, burnout is an illness, right? And so I think, you know, how do we just be our best sustainably? And I think that's a lot of the work that I've done a lot of research on and continue to lean into as well with with clients and people I could work with.

Consistency Over Intensity

SPEAKER_01

So it's incredible. And I think from the perspective of being your best self, I just saw today someone, a great softball mom just posted about this today of even in the workplace, we can strive to be our best self. But the likelihood of us being 100% when we reach burnout, it's that expectation that we have to be at 100%, 100% of the time. And is that at the point in which we reach burnout? And if that's what's happening in careers and adults, and we don't even work 52 weeks of the year, we work nine to five, we clock out at five o'clock, we take a week off for vacation, we take a week off for Christmas, and yet we go to athletes and we say, Oh, you don't need an offseason. Let's grind, let's go 100%, 100% of the time. And what I'm hearing you say, say that quote again about illness.

SPEAKER_02

If we don't take time, yeah, if we don't say time for wellness, we'll be forced to make time for illness.

SPEAKER_01

So good. This is what the youngins are doing. Clock it, clock it, Kim.

SPEAKER_02

It'll a lot of times though, right? It's a lot of times people don't choose to change until something really bad happens in their life. A catastrophe happens, right? And the one of the things that I always coach to is like we don't have to wait for a catastrophe in life to choose to change. We can choose to change now. However, whether it's, you know, somebody getting super, super sick or they have a heart attack, or they have some major life event happen, that's their catalyst for change, but we don't have to wait for a catalyst to choose to make a change. And I think that that's something I always want to point out. It's just like life is a choice, you know, and and we can make a different one and anytime, any day. We can just choose.

SPEAKER_01

So I love that. So your kind of zone of genius is is habits, and you kind of already touched about this. I want you to talk about habits and just share your wisdom around the psychology of habits, how you're coaching around habits. We've kind of touched on it with, you know, who do I need to be? A lot of that ties in with what habits you're choosing, your behaviors. So can you dive into that?

Parenting, Seasons, And Support Systems

SPEAKER_02

Yeah. So relative to, you know, relative to habits, like there's so many different elements and lanes that we could walk down. And, you know, I've read countless books on habits and done a lot of research around it. And yet I think one of the things that I guess one of the pitfalls that I see happen very frequently with habits is people try to do too much too quick. Right. So let's just say that they have a goal of waking up at 5 30 in the morning and they currently wake up at eight. Now, for them to go from an 8 a.m. wake up to 5 30 overnight, the chances that I'm succeeding probably slim to none. They might do it for a day and then it's gonna, it, it's gonna fall off, right? And so if somebody is looking to make a really big change in life, I always say, okay, the first thing we need to do to have it be successful is it needs to be very small. And a lot of times people try to go too big too fast, right? And so it's just like, how can you break down the habit? So it's literally something that it's so easy to like not miss. Like it's just so easy that you just like you just do it without even really think you're doing it, right? And so it's like, so it's the one of the pitfalls is people try to do too much too fast. And so it's like, how do we break down the habits small enough to get them into bite-sized chunks? Right. And and this kind of parlays into the second thing that I was going to share of just like, you know, consistency is more important than intensity. And when you put the habits compounded over time, consistency is intensity. Because if you do that small thing every day consistently for, you know, 66 days or longer, right? There's so much, there's so much research on is it 21 days? Is it 66 days? The one thing, it's 66 days to form a habit. And yet, what's the micro thing that you can do for 66 days so that it just becomes part of who you are? Right. So a lot of times people try to go too big, too fast with habits. I would say that's the, you know, that's the first thing I like to point out. The second thing I want to point out is how do we prioritize which habit's the most important to pick? Right. Because when we think about, when we think about a goal and all the things that we need to integrate to be able to get it, what how do like how do we prioritize what's, you know, what's the one habit I need to do to get where I want to go? Because we can't form multiple habits at the same time. If you try to form multiple habits at the same time, one's gonna, one's gonna stick, maybe, or they're all gonna drop, right? Because we can't do multiple things really well all at the same time. And so, so it's prioritizing your habits in order of priority of, you know, what's the one thing that I could do that when I do this, it's gonna make everything else easier or unnecessary, which is actually the focusing question in the One Thing book, right? Is what's the one thing I can do such that by doing it, everything else would be easier or unnecessary. So when we're forming the right habit, it's potentially the catalyst for other things to go off as well, right? So imagine you're lining up like a sequence of dominoes and the one flick of energy, right, is like one flick of that domino, all the other things are going to become easier or unnecessary. Right. So it's just like, so my whole morning routine, it's like, I don't want to say it's down to a science, but it's kind of down to a science. You know, it's like I wake up at a certain time, the first thing I do is my gratitude journal. I used to be one of those that I couldn't journal, but now it's three to five minutes in the morning, three to five minutes at night. It's it's a habit, it's ingrained, right? And then I'm going and getting my workout in. Then I'm doing some time in the sauna, then I'm, you know, fueling up with some protein, then I'm getting ready for work, then I'm doing this, then I'm doing like, so it's like it's down to a science. But what I'll say is all of those things didn't, I didn't just wake up and say, here's my new morning routine. I'm going ham. I'm doing it all. I'm going, I'm going ham. I'm doing it all. I had to, I had to break it all down, prioritize it, and just start with one thing at a time.

SPEAKER_01

So you and I kind of touched on this when we first connected. And this is what's mind-blowing to me is I'm in my new office, you can see my new bookshelf, and I had all of these amazing books. I'd read the first chapter, kind of highlight some things, and then I would put it down. And Kim, the Amanda of three years ago probably read three books in three years max. I've now read three books alone in the last two months. And the one domino for me that I kind of giggled with you about was I just decided that I wanted to start working out again. And then that means that if I'm getting up early, I have to go to bed earlier, which means I have to put my phone down, which means if my phone's in the kitchen, what am I reaching for? A book. And then lo and behold, I'm working my butt off. I'm getting stronger. I'm starting to see my muscles pop. And how am I gonna eat? So so I love that you said this. It either makes it easier with going to bed earlier or unnecessary. All of the extra junk food became unnecessary, alcohol became unnecessary, and then I look at my life, Kim, and I go, Oh my gosh, I decided to work out. I'm eating healthier, I'm reading at night, I'm journaling at night, I'm waking up earlier, I'm sober. That's six things that came from one decision. That is the coolest psychological research, and this is the work that you do. Yeah. Is the one thing.

Playing The Long Game And Presence

SPEAKER_02

Yeah, I mean, it's the habits that I've integrated in the last 18 months, you know, everything from the the boundaries of my phone, right? You know, the first boundary I created with my phone was it went on do not disturb at 8 p.m. However, my phone still came to bed with me. And, you know, when I started working with a high performance coach 18 months ago, about, you know, one of the first things she, you know, she asked me was about my sleep. And I was, I was a person that I used to take pride in little sleep because I was like, look at all that I'm doing. Yeah, I I can thrive on two hours of sleep. And uh, one of the first things this coach said to me is she said, Kim, you are overworked and chronically underrecovered. And if you don't fix something fast, you're gonna die before you turn 40. How do you feel about that? That was our first coaching call. And so, you know, so learning how to integrate mindfulness routines, boundary with my phone, like my phone does not even come upstairs anymore, you know, when I'm going to bed. Like, and so it's just like it really depends on the vision of where you're going with life and being wildly clear on why that's important to you. And then the habits will become very clear of what like what choices I need to make to be able to get where I desire to go in the future.

SPEAKER_01

So good. So good. So one of the things that you mentioned that I wrote down is consistency over intensity. I would love for you to go a little bit deeper on that.

SPEAKER_02

Yeah, I mean, this is something that's been evolved, you know, because when we think about performance, right? Of just like we think about I'm just gonna go in and go hard. Go hard, go hard, go hard. And then you burn out, right? Then you just like you you work yourself so much. Much that like one rest day becomes two rest days, becomes three rest days, but becomes wow, I haven't worked out in a month. Right. And then they get back on the train and they go really intense. And so the idea is to not go intense, it's to be consistent with it. Like, what is it something that you can stick to consistently so that you can build and make it a lifestyle shift? And I think, you know, that's the kind of the thing that I battled with with, especially my 20s. I'm closer to 40 now than I than I than I am 30s. And yet what I've learned is that the microhabits compounded over time lead to the biggest impact over doing something for an intense period of time and then kind of get off. The better long term is consistency, right? And when we think about the microactivities, consistency is intensity because if you show up for 20 minutes a day, every day, every day, that's you're gonna put in a lot more effort over time than if you show up for five days at an all-out intense rate, right? And so I see it with people in business, I see it with people in athletics. You know, they go all out and then they can't, right? Their body revolts. And so it's like breaking it down and into bite-sized chunks until it becomes a habit, right? So it's really consistency over intensity. It's, you know, it's how can I show up consistently so that I can get better results than what it what I would have otherwise.

Mindfulness, Boundaries, And Tech Breaks

SPEAKER_01

And a great example of this is a mutual friend of ours, Jesse Hitzler. And what immediately flashes in my mind is his vision on soccer, the story that he tells about one of his friends and the perception of youth sports, of we send them to practice, they're at soccer practice for two hours. And then what do we do the rest of the week? Hardly anything. Versus Jesley Itzler, I love this story. He says, I just started playing soccer with him five minutes a day after dinner or five minutes a day after school. And then when you start to think about, okay, five minutes, ten minutes, fifteen minutes every day times a whole week. I don't know what the math is on that, but it's close to two hours. You're doubling your practice time simply by spending a few minutes each day. And then parents, please hear this, please hear this. Five minutes in the backyard hitting with your daughter or playing catch with your daughter is way more fun for them. And it doesn't feel like you're asking them to practice. It just becomes part of your family life. And then they fall in love with their sport because we're just doing it for five minutes with my favorite people, and then maybe one of those nights it turns into 50 minutes because you're all hanging out as a family. It's a win-win for everybody. And it goes back to this perfect example of consistency over intensity.

SPEAKER_02

Yeah, absolutely. And also, too, that's part of the reason why like the 75 hard challenges are as successful as they are, right? Because like if you look at a lot of those tasks that I call them tasks, things that you know people are doing every single day as part of that challenge, like they're not huge things. Read 10 pages a day, right? And if they're reading 10 pages a day for 75 days straight, that's hundreds of pages. That's 700 pages. They're reading four to five books, right? And so it's like all these small things compounded over time. And a lot of times people haven't done those micro things consistently for a month, more or less 75 days, which is why people, if they stick to the program, see the results, right? And I'm not an advocate. I've actually never done 75 hard or you know, the 75 hour challenge, like just because it's not been for me, but that's like another example though of consistency over intensity. Like some of those things, they're not like they're not hard. You just need to do them. And when you show up and you do them, you're gonna get results that you probably never before imagined.

SPEAKER_01

It's interesting, it has piqued me. I think the one thing that has stopped me from doing a 75 hard is no sugar. That sounds hard. That sounds hard to me. Everything else I think I can do.

SPEAKER_02

Well, I mean, with that's a whole separate conversation.

SPEAKER_01

Yeah. Where do you want to take this conversation next? A lot of this I'm I'm trying to relate to our audience too. Um it's fascinating to me. And again, this is my own personal journey, but I almost felt like some of these things that we were talking about were so much easier as a youth athlete. I kind of want to flip the conversation to the parents who might be thinking, wow, Kim, like I need a high performance coach. I feel like some of these things are much harder in adulthood because we have so many more responsibilities. We're raising children, we're chasing our careers or chasing children, building our careers. What's kind of your advice to parents as they're trying to coach their athletes to be high performers? And again, at the very beginning of this, we talked about how you don't want you, you want to have your clients chase your level of success. You never want them to catch up to you, and that motivates you. What would that look like for a parent and their their athlete relationship?

Best Advice: Action Expresses Priority

Where To Connect With Kim

SPEAKER_02

I think everybody, you know, like for parents that, you know, that have athletes, like everybody is in a different season of their life. And so I think that it's just being a being appropriate in the moment, appropriate in the moment, and figuring out, like, you know, what does it look like to be appropriate in the moment of this season of my life? Because if you, I mean, if you are in the middle of, you know, raising three kids and they're all athletes, they're all doing multi-sport, right? Like you are busy. And so it's like relative to all that stuff, I think it's it's zooming out a little bit, right? Because when we're when we're in the thick of things, it's hard to see outside of the forest that we're standing in. And so I think it's zooming out a little bit and understanding like if they're in middle school, cool. You don't have many years of them being at home. And so, like, what's important to maximize the time while they're home? Like, if you know, if they're in eighth grade, you've got you've got four summers left with them. What do you want those, you know, summers to look like and that would make them great? And so I think it's getting really clear on, you know, what you choose to stand for as parents. And, you know, because you're in that season of of raising kids, that's okay. Like there's, I mean, there's absolutely no judgment. And for, you know, for me as a coach, like I work to meet people where they're at. Like I, you know, I coach people that are parents. They run multiple different companies, they're athletes, they do like all these different things. And people ask, well, how do you how do you how do you do it all? Right. And the simple answer is they don't, and I don't, right? No one succeeds alone. And so if you're, you know, if you're a parent that's coaching athletes and you do have desires to grow yourself as an athlete yourself, or you have businesses, or you have other things that you're focused on, it's getting really clear on, you know, no one succeeds alone. So it's like, what are the things that you can prioritize? What are the things that you can leverage or, you know, pass off to somebody else to support you with? You know, one of my hardest things that I had to learn was asking for help. And I know that I'm not the only one that's struggled with that, right? Just like there's a lot of pride in doing it yourself, or we're not superhuman. So if if there's, you know, parents listening to this right now and you have your own goals and pursuits, and yet you've got kids you're raising that are athletes, it's like, well, figure out like what the what the bigger objective is. Like, how many years do we have left? What's it's what's success look like in those years? What are my goals that I desire? And then prioritize like, how do we make it all work? And if something has to be put on pause for the time being, okay, cool. Like the thing is, is just like how long is that thing gonna be put on pause for? Because it's so easy to push off ourselves to give to other people, and at some point in life, you do also have to be loyal to your own ambitions as well.

SPEAKER_01

I love that. Yeah. And it's great, great segue for the third point that we had talked about that we wanted to get to is you said it's it can be on pause, right? To come back to you. Playing the long game. I would love for you to talk about what that means to you.

SPEAKER_02

Yeah, so playing the long game is really appreciating the journey and every part of it. Because a lot of times we can get wrapped up in success after success, achievement after achievement, summit after summit, like what's the next big finish line you're crossing? And there's so much more joy in the journey of the long game, you know, and so I think for me, it's like, what does the long game mean? It's just it means that I choose to be present, I choose to really appreciate the process because I know that the event is very short-lived. And so it's figuring out like what does the, you know, what does your game, what does the game look like, right? Like I look at the finish line, the finish line to life is death, right? And I'm not in a rush to get there. And so it's being being appropriate in the moment, in the moment and really appreciating the journey. Cause like I look back on, you know, all the things I've done, like I've done some crazy, crazy things, right? And I didn't start appreciating the process until I was in my in my 30s. And before my 30s, I mean, I finished in Iron Man when I was 29. I summited Kilman Jara when I was 28. You know, it's like I did all of these really big things that I didn't I didn't appreciate enough. And so I think it's a long game. And I think it's it's important to not get stuck on the next finish line or the next championship or the next big win. It's just really being appreciative, like appreciative of the entire process and who you're becoming along the way. One of my favorite quotes is it's not about what you get, it's about who you become. And, you know, it's not about the the money, it's not about the success, it's not about the finish lines, it's not about the championships. It's about who am I becoming along the way? That's going to be a better, that's that's a better version of myself without the journey.

SPEAKER_01

So I love the analogy of the next finish line and the next finish line and for our athletes, the next season or the next team, where a big thing that's on a lot of parents' minds right now is I gotta get my daughter recruited. She's coming to me saying she wants to play college softball. And now they're entering the recruiting journey. And I think a lot of parents, I've had some really cool conversations in the last two weeks of parents that are looking for more support because the recruiting journey is so secretive and so draining. But then what do we see on social media? So-and-so's daughter's committed and the post on X, and they're, you know, holding up their t-shirts or their sweatshirts. And I love, love, love who you become. And Kim, what what just dropped in was we lose perspective as parents because as our daughter is becoming, we're also becoming ourselves. This is the first time we're living through our 30s. This is the first time we're living through our 40s. And if we wake up one day and realize at the end of our career, the end of motherhood or the end of whatever journey, what was it, what was it all for? What did we grind for this? So, what are what are some of your tips to really find yourself saying, you've had some really cool experiences, you know, whether it's skiing or, you know, New York City or rim to rim to rim or Thailand? Like, how, how can like answer the question how? That's great. I want to be more present. I want to enjoy the process. How are you doing that, Kim? How am I doing that? Yeah. How do you stay present? How do you enjoy the moment? Like, what's your mindset around that?

SPEAKER_02

Yeah, so I think I, you know, I I struggled with it for a long time. And I would say that I don't have it fully figured out or mastered. One of the things that my high performance coach did help me do, though, that has changed my game in a lot of ways is develop a daily mindfulness practice. And it's really just, you know, it's it's nothing complicated, you know, besides being present in the moment. Instead of getting in the Uber car and scrolling your phone, getting in the Uber car and just taking a moment to breathe. Listen to your breath, right? And so I've integrated a lot of things like breath work and meditation into my life. And we're talking about somebody that I couldn't sit still and my brain wouldn't shut down for 10 seconds, more or less five minutes. You know, now I can do 20, 30 minutes of breath work and, you know, do just fine. And yet I started off in one-minute increments. Because so I think it's just it's got to be something you desire to do. Being present, you know, it's one of the things that's helped me is developing in mindfulness practice. And that looks something a little bit different for everybody. It could be a little bit of, it could be a minute of meditation, it could be some breath work, it could be journaling, it could just be sitting still and listening to your breath. And when you do that, those little things compounded over time, right? That consistency over the intensity, you just find yourself like being a little bit more present. You know, it's just like for families, I always suggest like, can you have like a phone-free dinner, phone-free night, phone-free Friday, right? Like, what are the things that you can do that can make everybody more present? I just went to this wellness retreat. And I went to this wellness retreat in Arizona, and it was, I didn't know it was a tech-free wellness retreat. And we're talking, like, I'm an executive coach, I have clients, I had scheduled clients before the event got started, like before the day started. And literally a couple of days before I fly out to go to this event, they're like, it's tech free, so be prepared to turn in your phone, like when you get here. And I was just like, I like I lost it because I was just like, and I responded back. I was like, I can't do that. I invested a lot of money in in coming to this thing. And then I just like I paused and I'm just like, okay, I invested a lot of money to come to this thing, and I need to be present at this thing. And so, like, I turned in my phone, I turned in my computer, I turned in all of my technology for four days. I didn't have access to the outside world for four days. And and what was really beautiful about that retreat is how present everybody was. When you remove the distractions of the outside life, it's beautiful what can happen in such a short period of time. The relationships that were formed, the vulnerable conversations that were had, right? So it's just like, what does school drop-off and school pickup look like? Is it phones? Like what, like we're talking about the micro moments that we can be a little bit more intentional. And so I think it's like those micro moments can have such a massive impact. And so, yeah, sorry I went off on a bunny trail, but that retreat relative to presence, like that was the most present I've ever been. And what I walked away with, like it was a game changer.

SPEAKER_01

And I think that that's a beautiful way for you to discover the the impact of why we're putting our phones down and why mindfulness is so just a stark, you you notice it, you noticed it at the retreat. And if we crave more of that, if you'd never experienced it, you have to put the phone down to actually experience it, which is the hardest part. And I tell my clients all the time, I'm working with teenagers and I'm telling them to put their phone on a desk or across the hall from their bedrooms. And here I am scrolling at night, thinking, oh my gosh, I'm telling my clients to do this. It matters, it matters.

SPEAKER_02

100%. You know, I think you don't know what can come of something until you you give it a go.

SPEAKER_01

So what an awesome, awesome experience. Well, the question that we've been asking everyone to kind of put a bow on all of this is what's the best piece of advice you received that has stuck with you?

SPEAKER_02

Yeah, I think there's so much because I, you know, I have had some of the best coaches, you know, from my mental performance aspect to endurance coaches. Like right now, I have several coaches that I work with for myself. So it's hard to identify like one thing, right? Like, what's the one piece of advice that that has paid dividends? And I think the, you know, I think the one piece of advice is actually hanging on my wall. So I see it every day. And it's a simple thing from Mahatma Gandhi, action expresses priority. And, you know, I wake up every day knowing that like I kind of reflect, like, did my actions today like did it express my priorities? And if somebody was auditing me for the third party was following me around, would they be able to tell what my priorities are?

SPEAKER_01

Right.

SPEAKER_02

And so I think, you know, from a from a life perspective, you know, it's just like, if I say my family is important, do my actions express that? If I say my relationships are important, am I making the time for it? If I say my business or career is important, do my actions showcase that? If if endurance sports world is, you know, important to me, am I showing up in that space? And so I think, you know, that's just some of the something that's stuck with me, that's been inside of my space since I've been like 20, you know, just like action express priorities. Like, you know, it's just like how who I like who I'm being and and what I'm doing shows the world, you know, like I haven't my leadership style is I lead by doing. And it's inspired a lot of people along the way. Like, I don't tell people what to do, I show them. And so I think, you know, from a from a parenting perspective, I don't tell anybody what to do. I show them I am relentlessly curious and I make sure that I follow up. So as a parent, if you can show them versus just telling them, you know, telling them to eat a certain way, but you're eating the opposite way, telling them to do this, like, come on. Kids, kids see it, they see and they see right through it. So action expresses priorities. If you want a different outcome, take a look at your priorities.

SPEAKER_01

Mike job. So good. And it's the whole reason why you and I are connected, you know.

SPEAKER_02

I think again, I love how we connected, by the way. You know, you you randomly message a stranger on Instagram and here we are.

SPEAKER_01

Yeah, I'm like, you look like you're doing epic things. We need to be friends, and here we are. So, where's the best place? Is it Instagram? Where's the best place to connect with you and continue to follow your journey?

SPEAKER_02

Yeah, if you were to stay connected, you can follow me on Instagram. It's just my name, Kim's are off. That's my handle for everything. So, Instagram, LinkedIn. I do a lot of content on LinkedIn. I'm building stuff out, like I'm building out a newsletter for for people to read. And because I love to research and study all this kind of stuff. So, but yeah, LinkedIn, Instagram, however, I can support, I'm super happy to answer any questions.

SPEAKER_01

So good, Kim. So good. Thank you so much for your time today. It was so fun to hear your wisdom and your your examples and your stories, and uh we'll stay in touch. But for now, thanks for being on the pod. Thank you so much for having me.

Contributor

Amanda Schaefer

Host