10 Lessons on Identity, Obsession, and What It Takes to Be Elite - AJ Shavell

Coach AJ Shavell and I argue that identity beats motivation under pressure and that real confidence is earned through evidence, not affirmations. We share how to raise your floor with small wins, balance gratitude with ambition, and build systems that match your values.

• identity as evidence built on actions
• training on bad days to earn confidence
• reframing stories, values, and self-image
• raising the floor through small, repeatable wins
• balancing gratitude with rising expectations
• growth mindset, focus, and humility in practice
• labels versus processes and systems
• bridging confidence to belief across domains
• MJ five-star story as a proof example
• obsession, sacrifice, and environmental alignment

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Transcript

Identity Beats Motivation

SPEAKER_01 0:00

Identity always outruns motivation. Who you believe you are under pressure predicts more than what you say you want on a good day.

SPEAKER_00 0:07

You know, I I think that sentence right there, that there's a lot to, there's a lot to unpack, Colin. You know, when I when I think about that, you really don't outrun your own self-image. And I don't think people think about like, what is my self-image? What am I actually trying to do? What am I trying to really project? And then how are my actions aligned with that?

Self-Image And Evidence Under Pressure

SPEAKER_01 0:32

When you look at identity and what our identity is comprised of, you can't lie to yourself. And so who you are is the combination of the way that you act, your behaviors. It's the combination of the way that you think. It's the combination of the way you reflect, the combination of the way that you speak and talk to yourself. And so in these moments, you know, I think a lot of this is we want to believe that we can self-affirm or speak things into existence that aren't necessarily true. And we can unpack that deeper, that specific manifesting conversation unpack that a little bit deeper. But in the realm of identity, is you can't fake it. And so when you get into these pressure moments, your belief in yourself is going to be generated based off of evidence. And your identity is at the end of the day, all the evidence you need. What type of person are you? Are you the type of person that succeeds in pressure moments? Are you the type of person that is resilient? Are you the type of person who can be trusted upon? Are you the type of person who can be someone that comes through when it matters most? How do you know that? How do you generate that belief by having evidence, whether it's in the particular domain you're competing in, or whether it's evidence in other domains that you can use to bleed into a current domain? And there's no amount of just training on good days that you can do. It's about training on your bad days. It's about training when you don't want to. It's about showing up when it's the hardest. And the more that you can do that particular when it's the hardest, when it's the least, the last thing that you want to do, that is when you really earn your identity. That is when you really prove to yourself that you are who you are. And then you just create this compounding effect of confidence, belief.

SPEAKER_00 2:23

Yeah. I think I think you hit on two words and it makes me think of a few other things. So, number one, like the word confidence, like that is absolutely earned. So, what have you done to actually earn the confidence of being being able to go back and look historically? And I think for me, when I when I work with people, it really is the question of what are we trying to do in terms of your overall story and really reframing the story that maybe you are telling yourself that you don't want to tell yourself, those self-limiting beliefs overall. And so when it comes to confidence, it's where do you have wins? Where do you have the discipline that you did show up? What are ways that we can really reframe it and say, you know, you are, you don't want to lie to yourself. But in a way, you lie to yourself a lot in terms of kind of the ways that you're actually not thinking about this from a self-awareness and from the right perspective. And that's why sometimes taking a step back and building that habit of self-reflection and awareness becomes so important. I think the other piece is when we start to think about the identity and the belief, the question I'd ask people is what do you want to accomplish? Like what is it that you want your ultimate identity to be reflecting on in terms of what are your core values, what's most important to you? And then the key question is, how are you living that out on a day-to-day basis? And it's not just asking that question once. How are we asking that question on a weekly basis? How are we asking that question on a monthly basis in terms in terms of ultimately how are you holding yourself accountable to those key pieces? The first time I ever heard that self-image piece was probably a decade ago or more. And it came from one of my favorite books because people always ask me for book recommendations. And it was With Winning in Mind by Lanny Bassum. It's probably one of my favorite books that people don't know about that talks all about mindset. And it really gets to the core of that first sentence you said. You can't outrun your own self-image. You can't be greater than the image you have for yourself. You're ultimately going to fall back to that line. And to me, it's how do I have a vision of that line that maybe is above where I am? And ultimately taking my actions to move it up as I go through. And going back to Colin, what you mentioned, it's like I'm raising the floor every single day. And that was what I was thinking as you were talking. Because ultimately, it's like to grow, you have to keep raising the floor.

Training On Bad Days Builds Confidence

SPEAKER_01 4:50

Yeah. And there's a lot of goodness that you just said. And the important piece there, the latter part of like raising the floor, it's biting off a little bit more that you can chew every day. You don't want to do an insurmountable amount of things, but to be able to do just a little bit more. I think weights are a really good metaphor. If you've never benched in your life, you don't want to go put 225 on the bar. Right. But maybe you start with the bar. And maybe the next week you do two and a half pounds on each side. And maybe the next week you do five pounds on each side and just incrementally grow and watch the compounding effect to where you can go from day one, just the bar, how much you can accomplish in a year. Maybe you have 200 on the bar. I don't know. That acronym, whatever, however you want to play that out. But in your own individual life, in your own type of identity, in your own personal evolution, where you start and watch how much you compound over time, to where going from one to two is really, really hard. But then going from 50 to 100 happens so much faster.

SPEAKER_00 6:01

Yep. It's one of those things like we, our memory's awful. Let's just be honest. Like we can't go back and look historically and really think about that, think it think about it rationally. Like we think everything was that's that's why you've got words like nostalgia. Like people look back on the past and they look back and oh, it was amazing. But then when you actually sit back and if you had a journal that you were writing on, or you've got family members and it was like, no, it was not that great. Do you not remember A, B, C? And how many conversations have you had specifically about that? So it's one of the reasons I mean, you think about weight loss programs. Why do people take photos of themselves to go along? Because they can't go back and look historically to think about what did I actually look like in that moment? And what is that, what is my body like thinking about as you go through? So for me, like there's a few key pieces I think about in terms of like as you go, the giant steps you make from giant step one to step two to three to four aren't as big in terms of like the large gains as like 50 to 51, as we talk about like words like excellence and mastery and being able to go that, go through it. But ultimately, it's like for me, how are you having gratitude about what you've already done while also balancing the hunger you want to have for the future? And I think that's really the human condition ultimately. It's like, how am I grateful for the moment I have and the present moment I have? But how am I also really embedding the habit of growth and being able to want more while being grateful for what I have? And I think that's ultimately the struggle we have every single day. And I think about a lot of the athletes you and I talk about, it's like, how do you balance those two every day and get up and really being able to make it a system, make it a habit overall?

SPEAKER_01 7:48

You know, you bring up the point here, and it's right here the better you get, the more you normalize success until winning feels like the minimum and anything else feels like failure. And it's that, you know, uh, the synonymous connection I make is it's that balance between gratitude and heartache. You know, being grateful for the wins, the things that you've done, where you've come from. But with success comes higher expectations. With higher expectation, usually comes lower joy if you don't rationalize it properly. And there's nothing wrong with wanting to grow and wanting to get better. I believe everyone should want to grow and get better. But that doesn't mean you throw away everything that you've accomplished. It doesn't mean everything that you've done up to this point means nothing. It's finding those small, tedious ways to appreciate what you've done and remind yourself of how far you've come in the good that you keep doing while still wanting to pursue more without the sacrifice of identity.

Reframing Stories And Values

SPEAKER_00 8:44

Yep. And the there's a word I don't think we've brought up yet that that I think is so important to all this. It's it's humility. Like ultimately having the humility to say, hey, I can grow, I can get better, and I can think about it in a different way in terms of the perspective. I think the book Mindset is such a phenomenal book. And I mean, it the core principle is just there in terms of being able to think about how I have a growth for a fixed mindset across what I'm doing day to day. I think the biggest lie people tell themselves is that, oh, I have a growth mindset for this, this, and this. But I don't think they're actually honest with themselves about how they are living it day to day and that perspective in terms of what you said. I get to the mountaintop and it's more about the expectations than it is about the mastery and the growth. And that's a fine line and a balance ultimately, because it goes back to the identity question. If your identity is fully based on the outcome, well, it's really hard to have a growth mindset and the pressure is ultimately going to build because that's where your mind is focused on in terms of ultimately where you're going. And that's where like I think about I don't know if you you play Madden 05 where they had like the QB cone in terms of like the focus right there. Yep. I just visualize that like with people and their lives of like where am I focused on in terms of what I'm ultimately doing, and thinking about where my blinders are in terms of I was having a conversation this morning with someone about like, you know, when you open that can of worms, like your blinders are going to move from here ultimately to there. It's like why people talk about, I mean, eliminating distractions, why Nick Saban used the word rat poison at least 10 times every single year ultimately, because it does come down to focus and thinking about like you might live in a growth mindset today, but are you living it tomorrow? You living it every single day. And to me, one of the things you need to think about is like your life, your day to day, it's more of a wave than anything else. So you think I am this, but like that's a label in a way, in terms of it. It's like the real question is, are you living this today ultimately? And that's why people love journaling and reflection and really asking themselves the question, because you're only going to be as great as the questions the people around you and yourself are consistently asking.

SPEAKER_01 11:03

You know, I think an underspoken downstream effect of like the curse of competence, which is basically what this is, is responsibility that comes with your own personal growth. And you become the person that needs to solve everybody's problems. Everybody starts coming to you. The responsibility that you bear to help others, you know, in your space, in your family, your friends, and it can be one of those things where if you're not accustomed to it, it's not something that you anticipated or sought out, that it can feel overwhelming, you know, having to pick up and you and you want to be that for people. You want to be someone that they can vi confide in and trust in because you've been given gifts and then you've worked to develop those gifts and become more of a certain type of person. Well, with that becomes more responsibility, more people start coming to you, whether it's from a working relationship or a personal relationship, you start to become something and then you have to live up to that. And then you have to keep doing it. And there's this constant tension between virtues. And when you're looking at how can I care so much but care less? Right. How can I be something but also be this? And working and fine-tuning your decisions, your behaviors, your actions, depending on how deep you think about these things and how you want to deepen your relationship and how on a continuum you want to be a kind person, you want to be a disciplined person, you want to be a relentless person. Well, how deep on this continuum do we want to be? And that is the beauty of life is finding a way to work through these virtues and these tensions. Because you could make the argument at the end of the day, none of this matters because we're all going to the same place, right? I mean, depending on what your religious beliefs are, I just mean in the general sense of one day the lights are going to be out for all of us. Right. And so you can make the argument none of what we do matters. And so there's these conflicting and different viewpoints and ways that you have to orchestrate in your own life. At the end of the day, that's going to bring out the best of you, and that's going to enable you to serve not only yourself, but those around you as well and serve a greater purpose than just you.

SPEAKER_00 13:14

Yeah. Yeah. Well, well, I think about death in taxes, and that's definitely a topic uh for another day.

SPEAKER_01 13:19

No, don't get me started on taxes now.

Raising The Floor Through Small Wins

SPEAKER_00 13:22

So, I mean, when when you when you say those kind of things, I mean, to me, it's it's that the direction you've set for yourself. Ultimately, it's the direction you set for yourself. And every day it's like, am I still on the road? You know what I mean? Like, you know where you want to head, you know where the road is. And if you haven't, that's where you you just need to set the goals of what you want in terms of the vision. But if you have the vision, it's like every day you're you're just looking at your road and you're saying, Am I still on the road? Like ultimately, that's really the question. Like, maybe you didn't move as far today as you did yesterday, but ultimately am I still on the road? And to me, I think people get so focused on the labels that go along with it. Like, let's be honest, what you were just saying, the curse of confidence, like no one likes being a white belt. Like, no one likes not knowing things. No one likes like wading through the forest and not being able to actually see the road that we're talking about right now. Like it sucks. Like it does. But when you start growing and then you start changing, I think the key thing is like for yourself and the people around you, are you define yourself by the labels that people are putting putting onto you? So it's like, for example, like I think about, I think about youth I work with, and it's like, I'm not good at math. And it's like, well, is that true? You know what I mean? How are we actually challenging these labels? How are we ultimately challenging these thoughts? And it might be the self-limiting beliefs that we're talking about, or it might be at the high level is like, I'm the person who has to get the straight A's in terms of like that, in terms of another school example. But it's like, what is it ultimately in terms of what you are driving? And the label shouldn't be the can't or can, or it shouldn't be the outcome that's driving it, but who are you trying to be in the process? That's the biggest thing about goals is at the end of the day, the goal gives you a direction of where you want to head. But it's become who you become in the process along with the goal that really is the most meaningful thing in terms of it. Like you might have some outrageous goal, but like you became a great person in the process. And isn't that the ultimate win of what you're trying to accomplish? I mean, there's a lot of things that go into a goal that might be out of your control, let's be honest.

SPEAKER_01 15:31

That's my favorite part of identity, is you're always in the constant process of becoming. You never solely become something because in order to just be that thing, you have to essentially be dead and you're constantly becoming something new. And you're constantly, like you said, as long as you're on that trajectory, you're on that road, parts of your identity are going to change based off of what you want, life experiences, different desires that occur over time. So you're constantly in the process of becoming. That's why I say it's a continuum. How far down the line can I go on this? And that is like what is so exciting about the identity piece and engineering who you are, because you're exactly right. When you're chasing a goal, it's a it's about the meaning that comes with the goal. Because eventually, if it's just about the goal, when you hit the goal, then it's gonna be like, well, then what? And if you're not paying attention to everything leading up to that, then it is a goal that is not going to give you what you're looking for. You think just that certain goal will give you something. And maybe it gives you something for an hour or 24 hours, but that'll fleet away. And then again, you know, I think going from zero to one is super hard. It's nearly impossible. And so then when you get to that one, and then you're like, well, what now? The last thing you want to think about is going from zero to one again. And it can't be zero to one. It has to be what am I engineering throughout this process? And then once I hit one, cool, I'm still becoming right. The goal was just this outlier thing that I was chasing, but it wasn't the entire fiber of who I was. And it's so like I hate I just because it's become cliche, like it's about the journey, but it it's truly about what are you doing in that process? What are you proving to yourself? Who are you engineering? Are you engineering someone that can show up for their family, that can show up for themselves, that can do the things that they strive to do? Are you building a more resilient, robust personality and really just identifying, which most people struggle to do? Who's the type of person I want to be? How do I become that throughout this entire process? How do I keep becoming more of those things?

SPEAKER_00 17:46

Yeah. So it makes me think of a few things. So, like when you work with people, Colin, like I'm gonna throw out three words and you take it wherever you want, but standards, habits, and systems. Like, what are you thinking about in terms of engineering? What are you thinking about the questions you're asking people and some of the things that people should be putting into place for that in terms of engineering? Yeah, great question.

Gratitude Versus Ever-Rising Expectations

SPEAKER_01 18:06

So a little bit different, like with every athlete person that you work with, but the big thing I lean into is like behavior systems processes, right? Like that is ultimately what we're looking to do. And that goes into building your standard. Instead of standard, I just use the word like identity. Like to me, your identity is your standard. And so we look at, okay, you say, you tell me you want to be these values and characteristics. You tell me you want to be this type of person. Okay. Well, now it's like, well, let's downstream this. Let's define it, make it super clear and clear, or super clear and have complete clarity, right? Because once you define something and understand deeply what it is, then we can then build the behaviors and the processes that get us there. Right. We need a behavioral protocol. We need a system here that's going to help us understand and rationalize our internal dialogue when this situation happens. Right. And then by creating those behaviors and having those systems, then when you get in different life scenarios, it's less about thinking so much and more just about acting in alignment with who you're striving to be and who you're becoming.

SPEAKER_00 19:20

So, like what's one quick win someone can do right now in terms of like thinking about their day-to-day to like live this?

Growth Mindset, Focus, And Humility

SPEAKER_01 19:28

Okay. So, you know, very nuanced. We'll pick an arbitrary example. We use an athlete athlete, right? Athlete wants to become resilient. They want to become relentless, they want to become tenacious. Okay. What is one thing that you can start doing to getting to those depending on your variable definition? Okay. Define one or two actions that are repeatable that you can do every single day that prove you are a relentless person. Okay. Can be in any domain of your life. If it's easier to be relentless in your personal life, and your definition of relentless is relentlessly maintaining relationships with people that you've lost in contact with, reach out to three people a day. You prove you're relentless in that domain. And it's like, okay, if I can be relentless here, I can be relentless in my training. Okay, what is relentless in my training like? Okay. If it is, I want to train every single day, I want to recover every single day, I want to, you know, be relentless in my diet. Okay. Then it's start by just incrementally small steps to begin. One, it's starts with texting a couple people a day. Then it starts with getting an extra workout in, getting an extra recovery session in. Start with five minutes, get on a foam roller for five minutes, right? And then you just build and compound and stack on top of those. Identify it, create a system, create a habit, start small, expand deeper. It's it's really from a planning perspective, simple, hard to execute. And that's where we we can go down the path of like discipline, obsession, callings, what's pulling you, you know, where are you pushing, and kind of understanding that's landscape of it a little bit. But it's hey, you want to be something, understand what it would cost, and start, you know, paying those dividends.

SPEAKER_00 21:22

Simple, but not easy. People, people forget that. Like just because it's simple doesn't mean it's it's easy. Everyone knows what it takes, like new year right now. Everyone knows a new year's resolution. What does it take to lose weight? Eat less than I'm burning, yep. Eat healthy, exercise. Like it's not rocket surgery, you know. You know what to do, but that doesn't mean it's easy. I think that the interesting part of what you said right there is it's all you're making it visible and you're making it action-based. Like it comes back to what am I consistently doing? And I heard the term leadership is action-based. I forget who it was from, but I was like, no, like everything is action-based. Like everything we are talking about ultimately is going to go back to are you the type of person that does that? And what are my actions that ultimately do to align with it? And it's like it brings up another word we haven't really talked about, which was character, which kind of flowed all the way through the identity. It's flowed through a lot of the examples you've given and the ones I've given as well. But like, why do you think the definition of character is what you do in terms of what you consistently do? It's like, it doesn't matter what you say you're gonna do, it doesn't matter what you want to do. It comes down to what are you actually going to do in terms of it? And that's why I think when you talk about discipline and you talk about the identity and having the discipline to do it, maybe even on those days that you don't, what you're proving to yourself is being able to show up. And I think for me, when I think about growth with people, it's one of those things that, like, if you can grow in one area of your life, I really think it permeates to other areas of your life because you've given yourself the proof of it in one area. Now it's like it might be a little bit harder for me in this other area, whether we're talking about social, financial, athletic, like health-wise. But like if I did a win here, why can't you do it in other areas of your life? So it does start to, in my mind, permeate.

SPEAKER_01 23:24

It's the gap between confidence and belief. Okay. There's confidence, which is based on evidence. You build confidence, you do something enough time, you have your confidence in that. Then there's belief. Okay. And how do we bridge that gap? And I think you articulated very well right there. I can use confidence that I've generated from evidence to then show myself that I can have the belief to be able to do something else. And so I've seen this example twice in the last two days. So I'm going to use it. So if you're someone who's going to run a 10K, you've never run a 10K before, but you've run a 5K before, it's much easier to believe that you can do that versus the person who's never run at all and they want to do a 5K. And so you can reasonably deduct from, hey, I've run a 5K, I ran it at this time period, I did this amount of training. Hey, I have to show up here. I haven't fully trained for a 10K, but you know, if I ran a 5K at a six-minute mile, if I just run a 10K at a nine-minute mile, again arbitrary numbers, I can reasonably do that. I can reasonably predict that I'm going to do that. I know what it's going to feel like. I can push through some of that pain. Versus someone who shows up, never run before, like, I got to run a 5K today. How am I going to do that? And so it's using evidence in one domain or one sector and saying, I can reasonably predict that I can do this because I've done this. And the ability to connect those dots is a skill set and one that you have to work, but eventually it begins cyclical in your life where you can pull evidence from different parts of who you are and parts of how you live. And then it just flows and compounds and just builds, like again, and go back to that word, that just your full robust identity of these different domains of which you've built upon and stacked upon one another.

The Curse Of Competence And Responsibility

SPEAKER_00 25:15

Yeah. It's uh, you know, we weren't getting out of here without me telling a story. Have you heard the Michael Jordan five-star story? Probably, but I want to hear you tell me it. So Michael Jordan went to five-star basketball camp. I think it was after his junior year of high school, and he was a relative unknown. And the only reason he got into the camp was he went to UNC camp earlier that summer. Roy Williams thought he was amazing, and they brought him to the five-star basketball camp. And so he goes to the five-star basketball camp, and you've got like the top players across the entire country with everyone ranked, and he's not ranked at all. And you got a quote from him where he's like, I'm just this kid from Wilmington. Like, what am I doing here? How am I actually able to do this? And he's played at that point, like all the time, like in terms of really competing. And like, we all know Michael Jordan's competitive nature in terms of he had an older brother and everything that led up to that moment. But even in that moment, he he was scared. You know, that that comment right there, that was Michael Jordan as we know it today. That's him as 16 years old with that self-talk. But ultimately, he gets in the game and he just blows out the entire camp. He becomes MVP of the camp like that, in terms of being able to start winning and just scoring and everything else that goes along with it. But to me, you see his confidence builds over time in terms of not only that, but then you hear the stories about him in college, the stories of him at the Olympics, the stories of him ultimately, and he was consistently doing the work and giving himself the proof. But those wins along the way is ultimately what compounded over time. And to me, is one of my favorite stories about the link between confidence and belief in terms of what you have. And sometimes, like, that's where if we talked about self-image and identity, your self-image and identity grows in those moments overall in terms of what your overall capabilities are. And he just kept raising the floor.

SPEAKER_01 27:18

That that reward system is addicting. And you look at the Michael Jordans and the obsessive personalities in the world, and that's you know, I do always say that you cannot beat obsessed. And certain people are more prone to that obsession than others, but it's that that reward system. You do something, you get better, you get proof of concept, it's just lights you up and you keep going. It keeps pulling you, you keep driving, you keep going. It's it is just so fascinating. And I obviously the athletic world is a little bit different than other worlds of life, but just what actually goes on in those moments in high performance is super special and fascinating and amazing to listen to the Michael Jordans, amazing to study the science behind how these things work. It's it's a it's it's special.

SPEAKER_00 28:14

Yeah, no, it it absolutely is. It makes me think of a few different things. So, number one, when I start to think about obsession or we start to think about the Michael Jordan mindset, because let's be honest, people love listening to those stories about Michael Jordan and Kobe Bryant and the Mamba mindset. But ultimately, what is your optimum zone of performance in terms of how you are going to perform at your best? And to me, that's all self-awareness because when we talk about the word obsession, let's use another basketball example, Stephen Curry. There's no doubt this guy's obsessed with the way he needs to shoot, the way he needs to perform, the way he needs to play at his best. But his zone of performance is completely different. You watch him play and it's it's about joy. It's really about being able to test himself, whereas Kobe Bryant and Michael Jordan wanted to rip your heart sound. Steph Curry wants to do that, but it's in a completely different way and it pops open in a different way. So you have to figure out what is the optimum place for me to hit my flow state, to hit my goal in terms of what I'm ultimately accomplishing. And then the next piece is I was having a conversation with a college coach about this literally last week. And it was the word obsession was what we were talking about. And to me, it's being honest with yourself about what it takes. Because if you want to be great at something, you can't have a balanced life. Like let's be honest, you can't live in a balanced life. There might be seasons of balance that you have, but to be the absolute best at what you want to accomplish, like there is going to be sacrifice. And you can't be living balanced because you need to be obsessed with what your goal is. And to me, there are good parts of both aspects in terms of it. I think the key thing is are you being honest with yourself about what you want and what it actually takes? Like, are you willing to pay the price for the goals and the life that you want? And some people aren't. And that's fine in terms of ultimately what you want. And some people want to live a balanced life in terms of what they want. Everything is fine in terms of what you set as your map. But just be honest about what you set as your map and what the sacrifices are in terms of if I live a balanced life, I might not have that eliteness that I was originally looking for.

SPEAKER_01 30:26

That's the part you have to be truthful with yourself on judgmental. And you have to answer those questions. Am I willing to pay the price? Am I willing to sacrifice this? Are the people around me conducive in creating an environment for this to happen and for all of us to have the same expectations? Not to say that there won't be hardships or hard conversations or arguments, whatever may transpire, but everybody in my environment is fully aware of what I'm pursuing and what we collectively need and what collective roles we need to play in order for this to happen. And that's where you see a lot of high performance derail is lack of honesty, lack of willingness to be truthful with yourself and those in your environment and being willing to curate your environment that is going to allow you to pursue the things that you want to do with as little friction as possible.

SPEAKER_00 31:14

Yep. Exactly. And then the other piece is like for people that are high performers and they want to be great, it's not all sunshine and roses every single day. Like you think, you think like Michael Phelps wanted to get into the pool for 700 straight days in terms of not taking days off. Like it goes back to that question of am I being honest with myself on what it's going to do.

Labels, Goals, And Becoming

SPEAKER_01 31:37

To wrap this along those same lines, it is so easy to misunderstand the unglamorous, unsexy, sucky work that goes into being great. The bare minimum to be a coach, a competitive athlete is hard in a grind. To just show up when everybody else is showing up is insanely hard. And then when you look at the ways to build incremental advantages and what's required to go up each rung of the ladder, it can't be understated. The turmoil that you go through to climb those ladders and what you sacrifice, what you commit to is a reason why there's only a select few that rise those ranks.

SPEAKER_00 32:20

Yep, absolutely. Absolutely. Perfectly said right there, Colin.

SPEAKER_01 32:25

Well, I appreciate you. I love our new segments and quick hitters here. Listeners get used to this. Um, it's some of my favorite conversations. Jay, appreciate you. Shout out what you got going on right now.

SPEAKER_00 32:37

Hey, very grateful to be here today, Colin. You can always follow me on Twitter at coach AJ Kings. I've got a free playbook that you can download for some of the best coaches and some of their frameworks and systems. And then once you can go take a look at my site, thegrowthcompass.beehybe.com. There we there I've doing one-on-one coaching. I'm doing culture coaching for coaches that go along with it. And then I've got some products and systems available. But basically, my goal is to help people reach their full potential and whatever that means to you, because everyone's got different definitions, but ultimately helping you reach your full potential.

SPEAKER_01 33:13

Heck yeah, brother. Appreciate you. Listeners, thank you for tuning in. Tune in next week. Download the pod, subscribe to our YouTube channel. Five stars only, baby. Appreciate you, AJ.