Dr. Julie Gurner: The Unglamorous Truth About Ultra Success

Dr. Julie Gurner and I weigh mortality against ambition and land on a clear thesis: courage is the keystone habit that lets you live on your terms. From chronic pain to scaling companies, we show how small wins, clear thinking, and the right kind of pressure build momentum and optionality over time.

• courage as the core virtue enabling aligned choices
• compounding small risks to reduce fear and build momentum
• translating elite habits across domains like dating and business
• cognitive chain from event to interpretation to emotion to action
• reframing injuries and chronic pain with “just for today”
• running a dual track: daily compounding plus a big swing
• internal pressure as fuel, external noise as drag
• boundaries for social media and brand without the doom scroll
• the unglamorous grind and family alignment behind success
• urgency, competition, and pacing in high-stakes fields like AI
• optionality as a modern definition of a good life
• pattern matching what great looks like and getting out of your own way

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Transcript

Mortality And What Really Matters

SPEAKER_01 0:00

You know, it's it's funny how I know we were just off air talking a little bit about life and death, but in general, how you see death and it changes your perspective on your own behavior. So I was just talking with an an older couple yesterday who the wife was diagnosed with cancer. Recent retirees, they were like, we're gonna travel the world, do all these different things. Wife gets cancer, they can't do any of the things that they want to do. Another one of my former teammates found out recently car accident. And you think of how finite life really is, and the pursuit of what's meaningful in life changes over time and when to act and when not to act. But the thing is, most people walk around and even seeing these events and their behavior still doesn't change. And they go back to living the lifestyle that they don't want or failure to pursue the things that they do want. And what is it about the human condition that prevents us or inhibits us from really chasing an ultra successful lifestyle?

SPEAKER_00 1:13

I think one of the things, I think that's so well put, and one of the things that we know from a woman named Bronnie where she wrote a book about the regrets people have on their deathbed. She had, you know, kind of interviewed and kind of worked with a lot of dying people. And the number one regret was just not living true to themselves, not having the courage to live true to themselves. And I think, you know, that really accounts for the range of experience. You know, if you're someone who wants a particular type of life, you're someone who, you know, wants a particular type of career, whatever it is and whatever that means for you, having the courage to live life for the things that you want or that you believe in or that are important to you versus other people, I think is really a cheat code, whether you're an ultra ambitious, successful person, or you're someone who just wants, you know, something that maybe you don't have the courage to try for. Maybe you want to have a family and, you know, kind of run toward a different frame of what success means to you. And I think, or you want to both. So I do think that sometimes when we look at what makes humans not do the things that would give them the deepest satisfaction, it's really around courage. There's a saying that, you know, courage is the most important virtue because without it, none other can exist, right? And so I do think it's really about courage at its core and what people have the courage to pursue, to do, to try for. And that's true for very successful people. I think it's true for people who are just walking around in life and not trying for the things that they do want that may not be out of reach or particularly challenging to get. Courage is a big one.

SPEAKER_01 2:53

Where can you curate some of that courage with within yourself? Where does it come from?

How To Build Courage In Small Wins

Translating Elite Skills Across Life Domains

SPEAKER_00 2:59

You know, courage, it seems like with anything else, you know, courage compounds as does hesitation. And I think a lot about how, you know, when we hesitate on something and then we watch someone else do that thing, it can almost give us a real kick in the side. You know, like it makes us more likely to hesitate. We watch other people getting ahead, gives makes us even more hesitant about ourselves. And so, you know, but courage compounds as well. So taking small risks and things that you can win and even things outside of the area that makes you nervous, right? Like let's just say that business risk makes you really nervous. So you decide, hey, I'm gonna enter a 5K, right? And doing something that's completely different challenges yourself a bit, takes a bit of courage. And completing that task, oddly enough, slides courage into other areas of your life. It builds, it compounds. So I would tell people if it's something that you struggle with, try something small that you can build toward and get yourself some wins because wins compound. And usually people who aren't taking those chances are hesitant because they haven't really felt like they were winning. People who feel like they're winning feel like the wind is at their back and they can, you know, fail at nothing and they're gonna try. And sometimes they try more than they probably should. But these are individuals, I think when you start getting a little momentum, it gives you a lot of courage and you can even take more hits because you feel like, hey, I'm winning. Like, you know, I don't know if it's fine to talk about, but you were saying you just had your third child, right? Like, so you have a great family that you're building, and that can make you feel like, wow, well, you know, I want to take this other risk in my podcast, or I want to reach out to so-and-so because I just want to keep building. I want to keep growing. These things can translate in ways that um I think most people underestimate.

SPEAKER_01 4:44

One of my good buddies is an executive in the NFL and like by all measures obsessed, like sleeps probably like three hours a night maximum, where he's just studying film, studying players, relentlessly getting after it. It's unbelievably successful. And his personal life doesn't have a significant other. And he frequently vents to me about that side. And I will repeat back to him like his daily routines, his daily schedules dedicated towards football. I'm like, you talk frequently with me about players, yourself, other executives in the NFL, and what it takes to be relentlessly successful. I was like, you've proven over and over again that you can do these things. But for whatever reason, it doesn't translate that mindset, it doesn't translate into his personal life where he's nervous, doesn't know how to approach the situation, has all these thought, like periods of self-doubt. And it's like, how like as a person can you use proof in other domains of life and transition them into others where you feel nervous or you have that fear?

SPEAKER_00 5:47

I guess that I wonder, I would start first with, you know, how motivated is he to have that thing? And what does he expect, his own effort, the effort on his part that will be required? I think that sometimes what we hope when we're anxious about things is that they somehow work themselves out, right? Like, you know, he'll go to a game or he'll go to someplace and he'll meet someone and magic will happen. And, you know, I think that sometimes we carry those thoughts because they're easier than diving into the actual actions that it takes. He knows that he can't operate that way in his career. You know, it's very, very clear he would not be great at what he did if he just hoped that he would stumble upon the best player out there and just see something no one else does in that very moment and never have to watch tape or do any of those things. And so, you know, I would ask if you're really motivated to have these things, what do you think it would take to kind of take the first steps to have those things? And I would bet that there's some magical thinking about how these things will transpire that is kind of keeping him paused in the lane he's in and keeping him feeling a little bit more comfortable. Because when you're really, really good at something, the other, the flip side of that is that being a novice sucks. You know, like, and if you're not really, if you're really great at your career and you get, you know, pats on the back and you're fantastic at what you do, and then you're kind of awkward with women, you can feel like, oh, I just I feel like such a loser here. I don't want to feel like a loser. Like people know that I'm a winner and I want to feel like that. It's so attractive and appealing. And so I guess that, you know, some of the ways of making that a little bit easier, and he has to be careful not to lean on his career too much as evidence of like how fantastic he is and kind of lead with his personality maybe a little bit more. But, you know, to be able to just start taking those actions of like, hey, why don't we throw something? You and I sit down, we'll throw something up on a dating site, just see what happens, right? Like we won't even, we won't even list what you do for a living. Um, we're gonna keep that off of it entirely. Let people get to know you for you a little bit, just see what happens. And he's gonna have some, if he's like anyone on dating apps, some monumental failures and weird experiences. And he's going to have some people he meets where he starts to practice some of the skills that gets him maybe to have coffee with someone or start out really small. And then with a little bit of confidence, you know, he'll take those further steps. But sometimes it's just the first step of being a novice when people are really, really good at other things.

Fear Fades With Reps And Feedback

SPEAKER_01 8:16

When does that fear typically go away? I've seen you talk about fear with obviously ultra successful people, where you'll describe it as at some point that fear goes away. And you shouldn't, you're probably maybe not as competent as you think if you're experiencing fear before a certain event.

Chronic Pain, Identity, And Reframing

SPEAKER_00 8:34

I think that the fear tends to go away the more reinforcement you get for the risk, right? Like the more you get great feedback for the risks that you take, the more the fear dissipates because the what is the worst that could happen? Right. You start to see that the worst that could happen isn't really insurmountable. It isn't really all that bad. And I think that we build it up in our head. So, in your example with the friend dating, I think being rejected or feeling like ridicule or feeling ineffective feels like we're gonna get a lot worse feedback than we probably will, you know. So I think that in his professional career, what he probably finds is that he takes a lot of risk, he reaches out, he, you know, is very active in that because to him, he's had such great feedback, such great results that even when the blips happen, he can absorb them. They're not a big deal. And I think that's the place you get to. And that's what happens with a lot of momentum. That like even when you're not great at something, if you're confident running ahead, you can absorb it. It's not a big deal. So I think the fear tends to go away. It's it's like the person who's never run before is going to be a lot more fearful on that 5K than the person who does the 5K training for the 10K, right? They're like, well, I know I'm gonna like everything isn't going to go perfectly. My times probably won't be ideal, but I'll get through it. And they have this self-belief that they will get through it. There's a belief in themselves to figure it out that is from experience in figuring it out many, many times before. And so it's a process, I think the first hurdle is always the hardest. And then you get in it for a while and you kind of have to force it initially. And then after a while, that action feels a bit more natural. And I that's a really common pattern, whether we're talking about dating or training or our personal lives or any sort of thing, is that getting into it relieves some of the anxiety because almost all anxiety is anticipatory, right? Like it all is anticipating a bad thing happening or an embarrassing thing happening or whatever it is that the interpretation is. So you can start to kind of squash that by just engaging.

SPEAKER_01 10:44

Do you think the belief, self-belief, if you have a very strong will towards negative biases happening, do you think you can actually will certain events to occur in your own life, whether it's health, giving yourself some type of illness, or giving yourself some type of injury if you're an athlete who's been injured a lot, or outcome-based, like can you actually will negative things to happen in your life?

Just For Today: Managing Expectations

SPEAKER_00 11:09

I'm sure that Colin, you have seen because you work with athletes, that when people have an anxiety about a certain thing happening, they behave differently, right? Like if I'm afraid I'm gonna, you know, re-injure my knee, I'm gonna be very protective around how I operate on the field that I wouldn't have been previously. And that protective behavior has its own consequences, right? I mean, so I do think that there's some amount of what we look for and how we behave shifts. I don't know whether or not it causes the actual problem to occur, but it certainly changes us in a way that makes us less effective than if we are able to get to the other side of it. And you know, like those cognitive, the way in which we think about things is just it's it differs from person to person, but it changes the way that we behave. So the way in which we usually think about this, at least in my work, is that an event happens, how we think about that event and the thoughts that we have create the emotions that then we experience. And those emotions drive the behavior that we do. So, for example, if let's just say that you had a terrible injury, you may be someone who has all sorts of thoughts about it, like my career's over. I'm never gonna be able, like, I can't believe this is this has happened. Everybody else who's had this injury, they never really come back. This is something I'm gonna have to worry, like baby or rap or worry about for the rest of my career. But then you may have another person, and I've certainly seen this happen where they get injured and they're like, nothing can hold me back. This is just a blip. I'm gonna heal faster than anyone else out there. I'm gonna make sure I hire the best people. They're gonna be shocked when I come out there. I'm twice as strong as before. It's the emotions are very different. The first person who's so anxious about it and feels like things could be over, they're careful. They don't play with the same abandoned, they're not as confident. You know, they have all these other things that are going on and interfering in their way in which they engage with the world. The second person almost has a chip on their shoulder that they're gonna prove them wrong and be a monster out there and they're gonna show them all the things they can do. And they tend to be all right. Like sometimes they'll re-injure themselves. I mean, you never know. But usually the behavior shifts so much. So I guess the thing that I think about, whether you're tackling something in athletics or you're tackling something in business, is be really aware of how you think about that risk or how you think about that event, or how you think about the thing that's happened in your business that didn't work or that did work, because all of those thoughts set you on a path or a pattern that is going to determine, you know, your level of motivation and engagement and risk taking and all of those other things. And I think people don't recognize that, you know, most people believe that, like, oh, my business, uh, we had a bad sales day and that caused me to be upset. It didn't. Nothing causes your emotions but your own thinking. And so if your business had a bad day in sales, how you interpreted that caused you to be upset. But what you could have done is seen it as, man, we got to figure out this problem, or once we figure this out, we're gonna be no twice as many sales. And that person feels completely different. So think about how you think. I think how you think is the most important habit you can fine-tune. And people focus on all of these other things. Focus on how you think because everything else hinges on that very thing.

SPEAKER_01 14:34

I always talk about athletes. I care less about the emotion from something happening and how you use that emotion to be productive with it. It's great. It's, you know, and uh, it's funny we talk about injuries. So I can't remember how much we've talked about it, but so I've had a number of injuries throughout my athletic career in my life. And uh, my left knee, I've had five knee surgeries, cartilage replacement. And now I was just talking with my trainer about it. I'm like, my biggest fear is popping my Achilles because my left leg isn't as strong as it used to be. You know, I'm in some type of chronic pain. And so, like when I lift sometimes and I'll be going hard, my calf, and particularly in that Achilles, just there's like a weird sensation in it, knowing that the ankle ability is not as good and there's things I have to work on. But then when I go out and compete, similar to like how I work with athletes, it's I reflect back on the patterns, the hours I've spent training, the not even just since the injury, but my life, the people who don't train nearly as hard as me, they're fine. And really just work that conversation in my mind and show that proof of concept to myself that, you know, hey, it may happen. But the reality is my body's primed for this moment. I'm going to be okay.

Short-Term Steps And Big Swings

SPEAKER_00 15:45

I think that's great. And oftentimes what I've seen too is that people, I mean, you're testing it a bit out in training so that you know what you can do when you get to the moments that matter. Um, and so hopefully you build a lot of confidence there too, where you're like, okay, I'm gonna test it a little bit with my trainer, you know, see how it how it functions and how I how I move and how I feel. Chronic pain is hard because it keeps refocusing your attention there. And that's hard to get away from. So, I mean, that's always like a little sticking point for folks. But I do think that, you know, how you think about that's really productive. That like, I've done the work, I've done the training, I've tested it out a bit. I'm just gonna kind of see what happens and I know that rely on the work. Easier said than done. And I'm sure that a lot of people, you know, are still challenged by that.

SPEAKER_01 16:29

It's funny how like it evolves over time too, from when I actually competed versus when I now like compete in my own way and do recreational challenges. When I played, there was almost this, even though I had just piles of evidence of injuries, there was almost this like invincibility feel that I still had as a younger athlete, where I was just like, I'm gonna get back as fast as possible. I do not care. I'm gonna come back and be better. And that worked. You know, I tore my ACL. I was back in five and a half, six months. You know, I tore it in, you know, had surgery in September, was playing in spring ball in March. So like I had just like evidence of that. Now in my later life, you know, that invincibility feels like it's gone a little bit. So it's a different conversation. But it's funny you bring up the the chronic pain because you described it perfectly. Like my mind goes back to it in my knee. So every, like every day, more or less, I'll do something. Even sitting here, I'm just like, you know, I feel like I feel my knee. Like it doesn't feel right. I have pain in it. And it is a constant work in progress in my mind of how do I deal with this? How do I deal with this? Where sometimes with my wife, I'll just be sitting there, I'll be like, you know, I'm really depressed about my knee. Like this sucks. Going from being as fast as can be, jump as high as possible. Now it's like I do one box jump, I can't jump for a week. So it's like the transition is completely different in my mind. Now, this is an athletic landscape, obviously, but how do I deal with that versus how I dealt with the ACL when I was, you know, 18, 19 years old versus now I'm 30 dealing with you know chronic knee pain and trying not to put all my attention on it, not overly think about it and just try and direct my energy into the right things. And, you know, for the most part, I'm really good day-to-day, but sometimes I'm just like, this sucks.

Pressure: Internal Drive Vs External Noise

SPEAKER_00 18:24

I can totally understand that. And I think, you know, the first thing to get your mind away, because when your mind is constantly kind of being drawn to that sensation, if there is, you know, second, third, fourth opinion on how to really make sure that you're shoring up that, you know, you're not experiencing that pain all the time, um, could be really important to even if the musculature and everything else doesn't really change much, it would help you, you know, like cognitively probably move forward and at least feel a little bit less down about it. I think that it's easy to get stuck there because then people will, you know, like you start to think like you're too young for this, you know, you're 30 years old, there's so much you want to do. And also your body isn't matching your mind. Like it's not like you're 70 and you know, you're having some aches and pains, and you go, well, you know, I had all this life behind me. So I completely understand that. So that would be, you know, trying to figure out how you get to that pain-free place would be a definite like point of push.

SPEAKER_01 19:21

My least favorite thing is when people will say, like, oh, wait till you're my age. And I'm like, you know, like again, no disrespect. It's someone who didn't play high-level athletics, someone who's just aging, hasn't taken care of themselves. I'm sure they're in lots of pain. Like, no doubt about it. But I'm the I call it the confidence side, like the competitor side in me is like, you and I are not the same. Like, we're not the same. And it's I saw read something today, Justin Sua. I don't know if you know him. Um, I've been he was on the podcast too, but I've been referencing him a lot recently. He had this thing where an athlete and a coach had a conversation, athlete had super high expectations, and he Was looking at it and he was like, You know, my whole life, I wasn't the best athlete in the world. Now all of a sudden I'm having a ton of success just from grinding, working really hard. Now all these expectations are coming with it. And I don't know if I can handle the rest of my career, knowing I have to live up to these numbers. And the coach just said, What about just for today? And like those three words, like just for today, like to me, like is like a perfect like mindset shift for like what I'm going through too. It's like, you know, when I think about it, like I can't go play basketball anymore. Like I can't do the different things I want to do, like not super important, but things that bring me joy. Yeah, of course. But I'm like, can I do it just for today? I'm like, yeah, I cannot play pickup basketball today. I could not, you know, do my box jumps for today. And just that constant reframe mindset is something that just struck me deeply today.

Social Media, Brand, And Boundaries

SPEAKER_00 20:52

That's it's it's so important. And it is that kind of anticipatory thing. Going down the road keeps you stuck today. And so it's so much better to just focus on the now. That's great advice that you've gotten.

SPEAKER_01 21:03

Is there, I mean, even in the business perspective, when you're viewing long-term goals and ambitions versus short-term, what is the healthy tension between long-term outlook, short-term decision making?

SPEAKER_00 21:17

I think that most of the people that I work with, a really interesting dynamic is that they always have something, they're both doing something to kind of inch forward every day while also simultaneously having kind of a big swing that is in process, right? So like the nuts and bolts of the business are incrementally moving. A good example would be like, hey, they know that the core business that they operate is going to grow at like 15, 20%. And they're doing all the things that get that core business to grow. But on the side, they're working on, you know, contracts or partnerships or something else that is kind of a big swing that if it worked out, may cause a big influx, like another, like a 30% growth in the company. And if it doesn't work, I mean, the growth is still happening. So I think there's always this simultaneous, like building the, I don't want to call it the sure thing, but like the stow, slow, steady, incremental progress that's going to get you where you want to go. But to continue to have kind of this audacious big swing item on the side all of the time that could really like infuse the business or change everything and continue to have those because I think that they're so exciting and engaging. And then if they don't work out, I mean, you're just fine. But if they do work out, and they do work out every now and again, that like they provide this big infusion of momentum and, you know, funds and, you know, the business really wins. So I think there's a short-term, you know, kind of like big swing, but long-term, like progressive progress focus on making sure that you do like the basics are done well, that everything is moving forward. So I think those two things are always kind of coexisting. And I think for most people, they only have the incremental thing. And so it's it's a really great idea for anybody out there that if you're only doing the incremental path to get where you want to go, and hopefully you know where you're going, that's also usually a big problem. But that you also have kind of big swings on the side that you're trying, testing. And I think that oftentimes you could be very surprised at how often those things pan out.

SPEAKER_01 23:24

How do you work with even your own relationship with internal, external pressure that comes with high performance? How do you work your relationship with that pressure?

The Unglamorous Grind Behind Success

SPEAKER_00 23:34

Think that you have to name what the pressure's kind of about. That's always very helpful. So is it the pressure like because usually the pressure that people feel that is exciting is the pressure that you give yours, at least in my experience, is the pressure you give yourself. And the pressure that is oppressive is the pressure other people try to hoist upon you. Right. So, you know, when you want to perform, I I've seen people, whether it's like in business, my clients are always very excited to like get to a certain number or get something, a certain thing happening in their business, or achieve a certain type of get a product that's in a certain form or capacity to release to the world. And I think that those are things that are pressures, but they're exciting and they're kind of watching them craft and you know, they can get very upset by certain things that happen, but really exciting. I think the pressures from like the external world or other people can be the things that are really oppressive and negative. And it's why people will shield themselves from press or from, you know, what's written about them and they often don't even read it. It always kind of makes me laugh because one X or other platforms, people really ratio each other and they say such negative things. Uh, but oftentimes the people that are getting ratioed really hard don't even see it. I mean, they have other people reviewing social media who just make sure that that stuff is off of their radar entirely. So they they really don't see it that much. And I think that's a probably a really a great way to operate.

SPEAKER_01 25:05

I can't remember the athlete recently, a reporter asked him a question about some tweet that was said about him, and he was like, I have no idea we're talking about, I don't even have Twitter. And it is such a unique dynamic in athletics, particularly right now, I'm sure the high performance companies as well, where sometimes you kind of have to have not have to, but it benefits you to have the social media presence from an economic perspective in your own life, building wealth through that, those channels and recognition, but to learn how to navigate that space in the sense of you don't need to be down Twitter threads of people ripping you apart. But it's funny because you you see guys like Kevin Durant who are openly having these discussions of people ratioing. Right. I think it's such an interesting internal dichotomy, the balance with social media and yourself and how you handle that space.

SPEAKER_00 26:01

I think that a lot of people, like if it serves you, you engage. If it doesn't, you don't. And, you know, with Kevin Durant, you've yeah, I think it does serve him and it serves his brand and it it serves a lot of I think that it does serve him. With a lot of my clients, it kind of doesn't serve them to get too in the weeds of those things. Sometimes they'll like craft the tweets and then somebody else will send it out or post it or manage it or what have you. And sometimes they do it themselves and then they just kind of post and ghost, right? Like then they're out of there. Personally, I spend like periods where I engage very strongly and then other periods where I don't. And it usually depends on busyness or other things. I try very hard to follow kind of a Gary Vaynerchuk model where he says, you know, look, you want to give and give and give and give. And then when you have an ask, people are excited to do it because you try to give away genuinely things for free. And I think that I've tried to curate my feed so I get less, I guess, less ratio, although I think we all get some. X is really brutal. It's like jumping in the mosh pit of humanity. But if you can navigate that and you're fine with it, and to me, it just, you know, they're a bunch of strangers I don't know. So, you know, it doesn't really matter a lot in that in the negative. But it also allows you to connect with people who think like you, who share your perspective. I think you and I may have met on X. So, like, I I do think that, you know, you get gems every now and again as well, and people that you really connect with. So to me, finding those gems is kind of worth wading through. I think for others, it may not be worth it. And I love like, you know, my mission, everybody's mission is a bit different. And the way in which I see my own mission is that, you know, you can influence a few top people, or you can influence a few top people and then bring those insights to everyone. And if I really do believe that like greatness can come from anywhere and people have the potential to be great, then I need to walk that talk. And so for me, that's part of me walking that talk. And and I see it as part of my work and my job to show up.

Competition, AI Pace, And Urgency

SPEAKER_01 28:03

Not to glorify the like unglamorous parts, but you know, going in the lens of like pressure and you know, when you get to a certain level, not seeing everything that happens behind the scenes, you know, I think of the unglamorous work that it takes to be a high achiever. And like football, it's easy like to describe. You see the game day Sunday, which is the highlights, and but what you don't see is, you know, we'll just use Sunday as an example, but you know, Monday to Saturday of the hours in the training room, the hours watching film, the injuries, the tough conversations with family, like not going to be around. Clearly, you know, might might get to give my kids a kiss on the head at bedtime. That's it. And people don't see that. In your field with the execs that you work with, what does the like unglamorous side really look like in ultra success high performance?

What Sessions Really Solve

SPEAKER_00 28:58

I think that, you know, you you give a great description of kind of how it's so different from what people see, right? And for me, I think it starts with much similar to probably what you find in successful relationships in the with the people you work with, is that it's a team effort. Like behind the scenes, their spouse is on board, their kids understand, like everybody understands the mission that dad or mom is on in doing the work that they do. And they're all supportive of it. They understand the sacrifices it will take, and they're all on board to make those sacrifices if their relationship's successful. And so oftentimes the ugly work of it is that they're kind of living it at first, they're often living a very different life from their peers. So while other people are like, well, we're going to France on our vacation, or we're gonna, you know, like buy our first home, or, you know, we're going to buy this really nice car. You know, you have a family who's putting everything into this business, who's maybe living in a smaller apartment, doesn't have a home yet, not going on fancy vacations. It looks, you have to be okay being different than your peers because, you know, and then your spouse is always working, that's long hours while other people are spending family time and posting their pictures together. And, you know, when the holidays come, they're totally off work and you're not. There's all of these other these, there's kind of these little sacrifices that are happening all the time in the building process. And then when things start to take off a little bit, it's all reinvested back in the business, right? So even then, you're not really getting the rewards yet. It's it's a real kind of patience marshmallow test kind of life for a while where you can see that this thing could happen now and you've just kind of have to be hands-off about it and let, like, okay, so we're gonna hire our first person. And then, you know, like you scale from there and you continue to scale. It's a lot of hours, sometimes depending on the business, away from home. It's a lot of hours like networking and sometimes doing things that look like play but aren't. You know, like I have uh clients in real estate that, you know, part of their job is making sure they go to dinners or, you know, do some of these things. And then their spouse, who's never going to those dinners or going to these events, can feel pretty, you know, kind of put off by that from time to time because, you know, they're taking care of the kids and it doesn't feel particularly glamorous the life that they're living at home. So I do think that there's a lot to navigate on the home front. There's a lot to navigate financially at first, but if you're on the same team, it's a joint sacrifice. So the person who's making working the long hours is sacrificing. The person at home, if they're at home with kids, also sacrificing, and they're both kind of working together and touching base and having really solid communication until they kind of scale up a bit and they can kind of get out of that. And I think the only thing people do see is kind of their game day Sunday, right? Is there's they see eventually they get to a beautiful home or a lovely life or they have nice things, or you know, they post things on Instagram or or X, but what they don't see is like the 15 years of real grind that built that. And it is unsexy, it is really hard, and you know, there's a lot of just kind of grinding it out to get where you want to go. And it takes a long time. Um it's uh it's not the overnight thing people talk about, as you know, much like training, right? Like you're not gonna get, you know, a perfect build or be an incre an NFL athlete in, you know, two months of work. It's just not gonna happen.

SPEAKER_01 32:26

It's funny you bring up the where you say some things that look like play. So one of my buddies is in the non-athletic world, but in a corporation like higher up, and his now wife is a teacher. And we were just talking the one day in I was in New York visiting them, and she's like, Oh yeah, you work so hard, you get to go to dinners and golf all the time. Now he does really enjoy the golf. That is play and business. But he was like, Do you really think I like getting in the car, driving, you know, two hours just to go to a dinner like every night? You know, it's like sometimes I just want to sit and do nothing on the couch and watch TV, but you know, it takes what it takes. And I think that they're in they have like a really good relationship. Like it was playful joking, but that line where it's like it does look like play sometimes, but it's not play. Sometimes it's your focus. It's not like you're just sitting at a restaurant, you know, throwing back six drinks and laughing, it's focus, intent, like purposeful meetings that just so happen to be at a restaurant.

SPEAKER_00 33:28

If there's an outcome you want from it, it's not play, right? Like, I mean, if there's like you're going to that dinner because you want to, I mean, sometimes the goal is to get to the next meeting, but the the goal is probably around, you know, securing a contract, developing a relationship, nurturing something four or six months down the road. Like if there is a goal, it's not play. Otherwise, if you're just kicking back with your friends, like that's a very different thing. And if you go out with your friends, you don't have a goal. You don't say, hey, I'm going out with Colin because, you know, we're just gonna kick back and have a few drinks. That's not business related. But if you're going out and you say, Well, we're gonna have a few drinks and then we're gonna talk about maybe there's some commercial deal, maybe there's something else happening. You know, those things really do move the needle. And uh sometimes it's hard to understand that when you're outside of it.

SPEAKER_01 34:14

You talked about, again, going to the holidays. You had this tweet on December 23rd that fired me up. It was, it's so funny to me that people are off of work already and think they're going to lap their competition. You sent that at 9 48, December 23rd, a couple weeks ago. And I love the comments. The comments always make me laugh, but I feel like people have reading comprehension issues because it's the latter half of that statement to me that is the most important, where you say, and to think they're going to lap their competition.

SPEAKER_02 34:50

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 34:51

And that's the important piece of that is you can take off work, you can do whatever, but don't believe that the competition isn't doing something, or that you're just going to take them over.

Talent, Obsession, And Outworking Comfort

SPEAKER_00 35:07

It's absolutely true. In areas where we have our highest competition, like right now, if you look at AI companies and you ever have the opportunity, I mean, you would love it, you ever have the opportunity to go and visit and spend some time at any of the top AI companies, the thing that you find is that it is so fierce. The work ethic is, it's just unreal. People are working nonstop, but they're utilizing tools so that they're the tools are also working nonstop. But like people are coming in, like they're either coming in on weekends, they're certainly working weekends. People, I had one company reach out to me around pacing their engineers because they they are overworked, right? Like they're they're working nonstop, they're not sleeping well, they want to preserve them, they have really high-paid, high-caliber talent, but they understand the race that they're in. I think most of us don't understand the race that we're in. And so then we kind of just like take it easy, kind of reflects back on our earlier conversation. We just kind of take it easy. We think we have all the time in the world. With AI, I mean, they get to see all the time because their competitors are like, look, we're doing this thing that you can't do. And, you know, someone else says, look, we're doing this other thing that you can't do. And it's very public and it's, you know, very, you know, kind of fires everybody up to kind of release the next thing. In life, that's happening all the time. And you have a very limited window to do the things that you want to do, but what are you going to do with your window? And uh, I have one client that I I think this would make me a little crazy, but it's something that works for him, is that he said, Look, this, these are how many weeks if I go with the average male lifespan I have left to live. And then he says, So I only have X amount of weeks. So how do I want to use them? And he he crosses them off his calendar and he does all of those things. And that would give me incredible anxiety to say, oh my God, I'm gonna live like however many more weeks. You know, for him, it's incredibly motivating because when he goes to the office and he doesn't feel like, you know, like, you know, doesn't feel particularly like as engaged as he could be that particular day, it's a real fire. And most of the days he's very motivated, but it keeps him really focused. Like, you know, I don't have this much time. And I want to spend, you know, maybe a week with my kid or I want to take a family on a vacation. So I have to really make sure that I'm making up for that. So people, I think, game it in a variety of ways. But um, but yeah, if you go on really high competition environments, it is all gas, no breaks. And they're actually, instead of hiring someone like me or or reaching out to someone like me because they want to push performance, they're actually saying, hey, how do we pace performance so that we can keep it over the long run and we don't actually lose these folks because they burn themselves out.

SPEAKER_01 37:46

What does sessions with you look like? Because I assume you're working with people who experience challenge, but aren't necessarily challenged directly for their own accountability of performance, if that makes sense.

SPEAKER_00 38:01

Yeah, I think that everybody uses me a little bit differently. And I think that that's a really fun aspect of my job, right? So that some people will have a particular challenge. Maybe, you know, they're uh they have some challenges, specific challenges in their leadership. And so we're kind of working on those things specifically. And there's like almost like a specific mission. For some people that I've worked with over a period of time, it's actually have me almost as a like, I know what they're gunning for. We've worked together for a while. If they start to go off track, like perhaps they have patterns where they're gonna kind of go off track and meander a little bit. They want someone who's gonna call them out and be like, are you really sure you want to go and take, like go into that venture? Because you told me we're we're heading toward X, Y, or Z. So it's almost like a focus, focusing mechanism and challenging them because other people don't. If they decide they want to, you know, with a lot of people who steer companies, if they decide they're gonna like take on a new initiative, no one is going to say, hey, should we really take this on? Or you shouldn't be doing that, or, you know, that's really not the goals that you have for yourself or for the company. So for some people, it's a focusing mechanism. Some of it really is around making sure that they like personally aren't getting in their own way. And I think that's probably the most common use for me is that all of them are at very high levels and they feel like they have more in the tank, but they're not really sure why they're not there yet. There's like almost like this internal pressure that they feel like they could do more. Why aren't I already there? What are the things that are holding me back? And so as we kind of talk about where they're going and what they're doing, it's it's like you can see the blocks that they're imposing on themselves. Um, and I think that's something that comes from almost like pattern matching over time. You know, like if you're working with someone, I had a client uh in India who had a very successful company. I have the clients in Singapore that had a very successful company and like, you know, people here. And I think that all of them in some Ways are, you know, they have similar, you know, personalities. In some ways, they have similar things that hang them up. And you see what it takes to reach a certain level. And people who are gunning to get to that level, I think that you can already see that, like, hey, you're not going to get there if you continue to do X or if you continue to, you know, do Y. And so it's really my job to kind of call it out, challenge it, work with it, and get them over that hurdle. So that's kind of the typical thing is really getting people out of their own way. I think that's probably the best use that I have across the board.

Authentic Ambition And Audience Fit

SPEAKER_01 40:36

I think about like the some of the athletes I work with, and one of the because it happens frequently, you know, athletes in it's one of those unique scenarios where you are born with a pretty advantageous gift. You probably don't have to work that hard when you're younger because you're just naturally better than everybody. And then as you climb the ranks and you start to get some of that realism of like, okay, there are some really good, talented people out there, and you start meeting with them and they're really unaware of what it actually takes. And working with that like realism of you aren't working one-tenth of as hard as you need to. And dealing with that kind of blissful unawareness, is that something you see as much with the demographic you work with, or are they pretty aware of what they're getting themselves into?

SPEAKER_00 41:28

I think that they have no idea what they're getting themselves into at first, but some people, once they start to see it, love it and can't wait to go deeper. And other people realize it's not for them. Right. I mean, it was interesting. I mean, not to use this as an example, but like if that Netflix documentary, I think it was quarterback. It was, and you look at Johnny Manzell, so talented, so fantastic. And then you look at Patrick Mahomes and like behind the scenes there, and you see that like Manzel had so much talent, running really hard, gets to a place, but he's not reviewing tape. He's not like really doing all the kind of like back-end work, or at least not for the Netflix. So not to speak to him, maybe he was doing all those things. But Netflix didn't capture it. And when you see Mahomes, how he's approaching his work, how he approaches, you know, like his profession and things he's doing on the back end. And it's like you couldn't have painted, and again, perhaps it's just for entertainment, a more stark difference in the approach to the very same job that operates at an elite level. And you see the results of one versus another. And, you know, like I think that it's similar in business where you're gonna get people who are incredibly talented, who are gonna make it at to a very high level and be very successful, who don't do all the hard things that a lot of people do, but they will never get to the place of like ultimate, like ultra success if they don't do those things, right? Like they have to have a level of obsession with their craft. They have to have this like deep care, this deep um like investment to their bones. It's like who they are, what they do, and they are all in all the time. And you're not gonna beat a person like that. And eventually, if you're not that person, that person is going to beat you. And I think that's true when you see it very clearly in sports, but you also see it in in business. And the people who are just moving ahead and consistently moving ahead are the people who are engaged like that. And there are so many people who get to a point in business where they go, you know, everything's going well. It's very comfortable. This is kind of enough. And that's absolutely fine. But the people who end up, you know, continuing onward are the people who are just driven to build something larger. It's not about the money, it's about what they can do, see, achieve, and create. And I think sometimes people see that as greed because the money comes, but it's actually not about that at all. It's it's about, you know, if you know you can have, you know, a kind of a world-changing technology or you know you can have an impact on society or even about one product that you get obsessed with, you know, some people just want to take that all the way. They don't want to just, you know, the people who aren't going to do that because they'll sell and have no problem with that. You want to sell your company, make a few hundred million dollars, like that's amazing. But if you're at that point, you also probably could take it to a billion dollars. You could take it to the higher level of operation. And some people don't, you know, genuinely don't want to do that. They were in it for a different reason, and that's totally fine. But the people who maintain the path are the people who are going to create these massive things that we all admire.

Redefining A Good Life As Optionality

SPEAKER_01 44:38

That maniacal approach is like, you know, thinking about Patrick Mahomes and just like that relentlessness of the, you know, pursuit that they take in their sport. And in the business world, I think of someone like Alex Ramosy, who is really good at like the marketing, sales, and crafting words and putting it together how he works. And whether you, you know, like him or dislike him, someone who you see a ton of ratio in his like comments, the way he speaks. One of my biggest critiques, not of not of him, of people who ratio him, where they say, oh, this is not the way to live life, is he's speaking to a certain demographic where he's, I'm trying to scale this from he started at zero, he's at a hundred million, he's like, I'm trying to go to a billion. And it takes like what it takes. And if you don't agree with his messaging, that's fine. It's he's not speaking to you. And I feel like we lack the self-awareness. I'm we, generalizing population, we lack the ability to discern who's speaking to whom when they say something. It's not necessarily all people should be this way. It's the people who are this way, this is what it's gonna take.

SPEAKER_00 45:46

I agree. I think that Alex does a great job of just being himself. Like he believes what he believes, he's gonna do what he's gonna do, and he's gonna take you along for the journey if you want to come. And you may not want to come, and that's totally okay. I think that a lot of people are like that, and then people rage against it, right? Like, and that's fine too. Like, if that's not what you want to do, then you know, don't do it, and that's totally okay. But I agree with you. I think that we don't understand that the thing that it comes back to is that there are so many people who are gonna do this thing that is authentic to them. You don't have to love it, you don't have to be a part of it if you don't want to. But if you do want to, there is so much to learn if people are willing to open themselves up and share it. And, you know, he does share a bit about his own life and what it takes. His wife is certainly very on board. They work a lot, um, and they have worked a lot to kind of get where they're at. There's no lack of work ethic there. And so, you know, I think that there's a lot, a lot happening there that's actually quite admirable. But it's true for a lot of people. There's uh there are other people who take folks on the journey of what it takes. And then there are people who kind of keep it behind the scenes because it doesn't invite as much uh criticism. But Alex uses that to his advantage. Um, and I think it it gains him a wonderful following.

SPEAKER_01 47:02

Now, having been in, you know, working decade plus in working with top percentile people, how have you, or how has your view of a good life changed? What is a good life to you now and how has it changed?

SPEAKER_00 47:16

You know, it's a good question. I think that the thing that I love that one person had shared with me that I now use as kind of a definition of success is do you have the optionality that you want? And I love that because it really accounts for what like more money, more options. So he would always say, you know, if I make an extra$30 million, well, now I have more options. I can, you know, buy different things, I can do different things than I could if I didn't have it. But, you know, some people don't care about those things. And that's okay too. So for some people, the optionality they want is, hey, I just want the option to buy a house, have, you know, have groceries, and have a solid retirement. That's amazing. Other people want other options. They want the option to have, you know, a great sports car, maybe extra money, maybe the ability to help their family, maybe the ability to retire their parents, right? Those are different options. And then there are even larger and larger options. Sometimes the options are around philanthropy, right? Like I really care about this cause. And I certainly have one client who's done this that I think is really cool, is that he's built a company that was a regular, I guess like I can say like a SaaS company. There's so many of them. So he's built a SaaS company, did very well, sold it, but now is building the thing that he truly cares about that is going to be really a project of giving back. And you he couldn't have done it without making the amount of money he made on the sale. So I do think that there are ways in which everyone strives toward optionality. So for me, I think that it's made me think about what kind of optionality is important in my own life. What are the options I want to be able to do, you know, either with my family, with my mom, with, you know, like my own household, with how I live or where I live or what I purchase, or, you know, my own retirement at some point in the future. Like, what kind of optionality is important to me? And so it does make me reflect on that. And some of the things that are very important to others aren't important to me, but the thing that I learn and I really calibrate to is that every one of the people I work with don't really care about judging themselves by someone else's barometer. It's about what they want for their lives, what they want to build, what they think is important, and really having of like putting on blinders and going for that. And what other people think about it is what other people think about it. And people can call it greedy if they see that money comes with it. They can call it a number of other names. But I think people make a lot of mistakes in how they think about them. For example, in relationships, we know statistically that those who make over$500,000 have almost half the rate of divorce of people who make$50,000. But we always say, oh, if they're really wealthy, you know, people are just going to leave them and people are in it for the money. But like a 22% divorce rate is pretty great compared to what we see in the majority of the population. But we don't think about those things. We also don't think about the fact that like there's a lot of other kind of like misnomers, like that men who divorce will marry a very young woman. But in truth, very wealthy men tend to marry women who are more age-appropriate than younger women, which tends to happen more in, you know, middle class or or kind of lower. So it's a really interesting the things that people put on them almost to denigrate the places that they go. But money brings a lot less stress. It certainly can make life a lot easier for you. And I don't understand why people would not want to be successful in on some level just because it makes your life so much easier in poverty is really, really hard.

SPEAKER_01 50:53

Do you think you'll work forever? Do you think there'll ever be a day where you're like, uh, I don't work at all?

Working Forever And Loving The Craft

SPEAKER_00 50:58

I don't think there's a day I'm not going to work unless maybe I'm impaired in some capacity. But I but I do think that for me, um, I love what I do. And at this point, I think I would always carry a few clients, even if I wouldn't have like a full load. I think that it would be important for me to to keep on it and keep at it just because I enjoy the thing I enjoy, it maybe like you as well at this point, is really being kind of behind the scenes of things that happen. I don't need to be the front person. I don't want to be the front person. I think that the best thing that I can be is kind of an assist to the things that I see as possible in the world and that other people see as possible and to help enable great outcomes and help people achieve the things that they really want to achieve in this world that I think in many aspects we all benefit from. I mean, I don't know of anyone really doing anything that's particularly harmful or, you know, I think maybe when people reach out to me, they self-select because I I don't think that people who want to be better inherently would would kind of be on a poor mission.

SPEAKER_01 52:06

My grandfather died at 92. He died on, I believe it was December 29th. This is a couple years ago now. He worked December 27th, whatever it was. He died on like a Monday, he worked on a Friday. Yeah, you know, we have like a small family gear shop um out in my hometown, and he literally worked until the day he died, and he loved every bit of it. And it's amazing. One of the just most inspiring things in my own life, and him and I are very similar in just kind of our makeup and how we are. Uh and it just for me, like I asked that question too to people because I'm just curious because that's ultimately I want to get to that point where really I just kind of work forever, like just because I want to, right? The optionality going back to what you said.

SPEAKER_00 52:59

But yeah, it it's amazing. I I would see it seems like you love what you do. And I would assume that that's not a far reach. Do you think you're at that place yet?

SPEAKER_01 53:10

I do. If you know things keep going in the direction that they're going, uh I could do this forever unless, like you said, unless some impairment, God forbid, you know, I'm directionally aligned with where I want to be for a very, very long period of time. Obviously, things happen in life, things change. I'm still young, but directionally aligned with, you know, in perpetuity until the day I die.

SPEAKER_00 53:34

I think the one thing that you have that that I also have is that, you know, the amount of experience you gain from being in a particular niche for a long period of time is something that's really hard to replicate because you're able to pattern match when you see what great looks like. And you're able, I bet, I mean, because I do this myself, is that like if you see someone that you're working with and they're coming in, they're like, oh, I want to be like some great NFL star or some great whatever, you can tell immediately if they've got that thing or not. Whether or not you share that with them is a different thing. But you can tell, right? Like you can see and then when exactly, and you see when they have it. And I think there's nothing more exciting than seeing someone early who you can already see, like maybe they're four levels below where they need to be. But if they just keep at it and they're on the path, like they can be great. It's the best thing. It's the best thing in the world. And I don't know what makes that so invigorating and so exciting, but if you can see it and then you can help them kind of get to that place, knowing what great looks like, knowing what it takes, knowing what gets people there and keeps people there is almost like holding a secret that you get to reveal in stages and in different ways over and over again. And that's a, I think, absolutely addicting in doing the kinds of work that we do.

SPEAKER_01 54:56

Heck yeah. I can't thank you enough for for coming on again, round two. You know, if you're working on anything you want to promote, please take the time to do so. Can't thank you enough for for coming on again.

Pattern Matching What Great Looks Like

SPEAKER_00 55:05

It was absolutely fantastic to see you again, Colin. If anyone wants to read some insights, do publish ultra successful, it's a newsletter on Substack. Feel free to subscribe and to check it out.

SPEAKER_01 55:17

Heck yeah. Thank you. Again, thank you so much. Listeners, tune in next week. Download the pod, subscribe to our YouTube channel, five stars only. Appreciate you, Doc.