MasterStroke with Monica Enand & Sejal Pietrzak

Unleashing a Limitless Mindset - Lessons from World Endurance Champion - Robyn Benincasa

Robyn Benincasa Season 1 Episode 26

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Robyn  Benincasa,  World Champion Adventure Racer, a  CNN Hero, a Guinness World Record Endurance Kayaker, a best-selling author,  founder of The Project Athena Foundation, and one of the Top 10 Speakers featured by Harvard Business Review shares her incredible story of resilience and triumph in the tough world of adventure racing. She reveals how her experiences, from grueling Ironman triathlons to the Borneo Eco Challenge, have shaped her understanding of building high-performance teams. Robyn takes us back to her early days with Mark Burnett, creator of the Eco Challenge, whose influence was pivotal in her career. Her insights offer a powerful testament to the impact of mindset—specifically, how being driven by the hope of success can lead to extraordinary achievements.

Experience the exhilarating account of Robyn's team as they became the first American champions in adventure racing in Ecuador in 1998. Fast Company Magazine highlighted their victory, underscoring their extreme teamwork alongside high-profile organizations like NASA. Robyn opens up about her personal battles with osteoarthritis and multiple hip replacements, sharing how these challenges taught her invaluable lessons in resilience and adaptation. Her story is one of overcoming physical limits and embracing new opportunities for growth despite significant obstacles.

Robyn's journey with
Project Athena illustrates the transformative power of blending passion with talent. She underscores how finding what you excel at and combining it with genuine enthusiasm can lead to extraordinary success. We explore identity transformation and resilience, inspired by "Atomic Habits" by James Clear, and hear moving accounts from Project Athena participants. Robyn also offers practical insights from her background in sales and firefighting, highlighting team-building strategies that can be applied in any context. Robyns mission to unveil people's true potential through endurance adventures is compelling, and she invites listeners to embark on their own transformative journey with Project Athena.

This episode brought to you by -
Enjoy the Work

Georgianna Moreland - Executive Producer | Managing Editor;
Matt Stoker - Editor


Robyn Benincasa:

What if I saw this from the perspective of being ruled by the hope of success versus the fear of failure? I'm a person that, like, obsesses about fear of failure, and that's how I operated most of my life was how do I say? One step ahead of losing, one of my teammates grabbed the top of my head and spun it around to face forwards down river. He said, hey, winning is that way to face forwards down river.

Georgianna Moreland:

He said hey, winning is that way. This is Masterstroke with Monica Enand and Sejal Pietrzak and welcome to our special guest host, Ned Renzi. Conversations with founders, CEOs and visionary leaders in technology and beyond. This episode is sponsored by Enjoy the Work. For over a decade, they've helped more than 300 startup founders build successful companies. Many have reached unicorn status, while others have secured meaningful exits. Founder growth is key to company growth, and Enjoy the Work focuses on developing both your leadership and operational skills, From go-to-market strategies to raising capital and scaling teams. They partner with founders ready to take their companies to the next level. Learn more and schedule an intake session at enjoytheworkcom.

Monica Enand:

We are super excited because I don't even know if I can describe who Robin Beninghassa is, but we're going to get to know her a little bit in this podcast and understand why all her crazy adventures I think I can say and how it relates to business and how she coaches business teams to get amazing things done that they never thought they could, and she's one of the top 10 speakers featured by the Harvard Business Review. She is a world champion endurance racer. Business review. She is a world champion endurance racer.

Monica Enand:

She has been highlighted as the 2014 CNN hero and we want to hear more about that. Later We'll dive into more details. She's got Guinness Book of World Record holders for endurance kayaking, which is amazing. She's a best-selling author of how Winning Works, a book that draws on her adventure racing experiences to offer insights into building high-performance teams, and I think this is related to the CNN Hero. She is the founder of the Project Athena Foundation and I assume that that's related to the Hero Award, and I assume that that's related to the Hero Award, which is a nonprofit dedicated to helping survivors of medical or other traumatic setbacks achieve their adventurous dreams.

Robyn Benincasa:

That was quite the intro.

Monica Enand:

Yeah, and as I learned more about you, the more I thought holy cow, this lady is amazing, like you are just incredible, and I'm dying to learn how you became this way but we'll get to that because you know it's just incredible.

Ned Renzi:

So yeah, monica, I think Robin's stated mission is to show people how amazing they are through keynote presentations and team-based endurance adventures. So, robin, super excited to have you here.

Robyn Benincasa:

Thanks, Ed. I'm thrilled to be part of this. Yeah, get to hang out with you guys. We have a few friends in common. Ned's a super adventurer. Monica's going to be a super adventurer by the time we're done with this.

Ned Renzi:

I see joy and fear in Monica's face right now.

Monica Enand:

I mean, I don't know how to swim, but I can no swimming, oh good. All right all right, well, maybe I will.

Ned Renzi:

You won the eco challenge way back in 2000, which was rebranded the world's toughest race. Uh, it's an original successful show that launched mark burnett's career, who went on to do survivor, apprentice, the voice, shark, tank, a whole bunch of things, and so, robin, please tell us about the race and what motivated you to do it.

Robyn Benincasa:

Oh boy, yeah, that was the Borneo Eco Challenge. I ended up there because I had done, you know, you've heard of Ironman triathlon. I'd done you know a bunch of those over the years and I realized that I was really strong but I wasn't that fast and so I'd always kind of been looking for you know, something longer, something crazier. I was like maybe if I could do like three Iron Mans, like maybe I'd be, you know, be able to be with the pros. And so when I read about adventure racing and at the time Mark Burnett had the only American team that was doing the sport he actually was an adventure racer before he created Eco Challenge. I read about it in Runner's World it was one of those moments where I was reading the magazine and I just got chills like wow, this is the sport I was meant to do.

Robyn Benincasa:

It's funny because my career started when Mark Burnett was actually looking for the woman to race on his team. After he won he was ninth in Madagascar. He wanted to win the next Raid World Championships, so he had a big try at his house for the next what do they call it? The next female ultimate, whatever adventure racer. And he bless his heart, this guy back in the day.

Robyn Benincasa:

He got Dateline out there to his house. He got a bunch of TV cameras out there and he put like 14 of us women it was the invitational only he put 14 of us women through a Navy SEAL hell week and it was yeah, it's funny that you mentioned him because that was the start is you know he let me come to this tryout for you know, for his team, he's been integral to my life, to the sport. You know, for his team, he's been integral to to my life, to the sport. You know for for all this time and I'll never forget, after the six days of nonstop racing and we had no idea if we had one or not, cause we had paddled all night and it was daylight when we crossed the finish line and we just hear Mark Burnett kind of at basically at sunrise we pull into the dock and we hear his voice say the world champion, oh wow.

Robyn Benincasa:

Yeah, and I'm like I still get a little floopy.

Monica Enand:

Were you the only woman on the team Is that how that worked.

Robyn Benincasa:

Yeah, back in the day, and the person who actually invented the sport is a Frenchman named Gerard Poussil, and he had this kind of cool idea to make sure that every team was mixed gender, so you had to have one man and one woman on the team, and so there were multiple different mixes over the years, and at first I feel like a lot of people thought, like the women were just a mandatory equipment, you know, like we all, we have to take this, you know, this woman with us.

Robyn Benincasa:

And then, over the years, we discovered how amazing uh, a lot of the women were at um, at just kind of keeping a steady pace, like the men would strut really strong and then they'd lose a bunch of weight and get a little weaker, and the women would just kind of do this. And so we were stronger near the end of the race, we were better in the heat and the cold, we had a different way of reading maps and strategizing, and so we realized over time that a lot of the really good women were really instrumental to the team and had better results almost than results, almost than than they would have if it was an all male team. And in fact we um. We took fourth place at Eco Challenge in Argentina as a three woman, one man team.

Monica Enand:

Wow, that's crazy, that's awesome.

Robyn Benincasa:

Yeah Well, cause, when, when you're, when you're at that ultra endurance state, no one can be good the entire way. You know it's how you strategize together, how you take care of each other, how you even. You know the culture that you create as a team. And you know, when you're in a culture where you're constantly elevating and inspiring each other and know at the baseline that you have each other's best interests at heart, you know there's almost nothing that you can't accomplish. It's when that infighting starts.

Monica Enand:

Going into what we want to spend some of the podcast on talking about. You know the relationship between these teams and building world-class teams in business. But before we get there, I got to know, like, what were you like as a little girl? Like, how did your parents raise you? Like? Were you like what were you like as a little girl? Like, how did your parents raise you? Like? Were you like always a badass, or you just like became a badass later? I don't know.

Robyn Benincasa:

No, I had like totally normal parents. Yeah, you'd think that they'd be like these crazy adventure people. I think my mom's never done a sport. My dad played baseball when he was younger. My mom's never done a sport. My dad played baseball when he was younger and I was just lucky in that I found a flyer for gymnastics school on my front lawn when I was seven and I begged my mom to go.

Robyn Benincasa:

Over the years I had different coaches that were, you know, just brought that real deep inspiration to drive, to drive through challenges, to drive through pain and rips in your hands and to want to be great and to get to the next level. And I had a coach when I moved to Arizona named Stormy Eaton, and he has been an incredible inspiration to hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of especially, you know, girls who've been through his gymnastics program. And he was unfortunately killed in a plane crash and all of us just, you know, kind of continue to remember like that inspiration and that drive that Stormy, you know, instilled in us because he was doing Ironman. You know he was kind of training for Ironman during the days and then coaching at night, and so we all watched him, you know, go through that evolution.

Robyn Benincasa:

Some days he'd invite us to hey, you want to go for a 13 mile run with me? Or hey, do you want to go for a ride with me? And it was just a handful of us, like five or six of us that were always like, whatever he's doing, I'm doing and um, you know so I just grew up wanting to to do whatever he did and, um, my, my dad thought I was going to die. Every time I left the house he's like you can't do it on your bed, you're going to die. And but, yeah, I just. We all came through the stormy eat in school and we just remember those times so fondly as somebody who was such a driver and inspiration in our lives and I think it's important that you know kids have that, whether it's in their parents or in somebody that is a coach just shows them how to be a badass.

Ned Renzi:

Robyn, tell us how you made this transition from world champ endurance racer to the corporate world this being a keynote speaker for some of the biggest companies in the world and maybe just talk a little bit about like the similarities, like you talk so much about your team and people's roles, and how does that translate to running a team in a business.

Robyn Benincasa:

So it's a. It's a funny story Because I'm a like in my real life. I'm a complete introvert and you know you think of keynote speakers. As you know, these extroverted and and I I rise to the occasion on stage just like you would if it were a competition. Um, you're like, we've all towed the line in our lives to competitions and you do. We need to do it and I actually really, really love doing it. Um, but I never would have imagined doing it, and the idea for it, um did not come from me, it came from fast company magazine.

Robyn Benincasa:

And after we had won the world championships in adventure racing in uh, our year of the Lord 1998 in in Ecuador, uh, we were the first American team ever to win a big international adventure race. And so we were contacted by Fast Company Magazine because they were doing an article entitled Extreme Teamwork, and their idea for the article was to take a look at some of the world's most consistently high-performing teams in the craziest of situations, and see what they could kind of glean from our brand of teamwork and apply to fast-mo moving companies in the real world. So they interviewed our team and a team from NASA and Industrial Light and Magic. You know all these teams that were operating in these higher pressure, constantly changing situations, and asked us about you know what made us consistently great. And after the article came out, it was a big success, and they were having a reader conference and they asked someone from our team to speak at the reader conference and I pretty much just drew the short straw. Everyone else was like no way, no way, no way. And it just rolled downhill onto me as the newest member of the team and so I created a presentation. That was pretty cool because when I started writing down what it was that made our team so special and what it was about like like us, I said, you know, we really create this what I called in my brain, you know, human synergy. And then I started writing down what those elements of that human synergy were like, what made us great. And it was almost a perfect acronym for teamwork and I was like, oh, like the angels were singing.

Robyn Benincasa:

And so there I was presenting at a reader conference for Fast Company magazine and they had me even do a little outdoor adventure leadership program, you know, associated with it, and we were doing little beach boot camp together as teammates and we ran into the beach at sunrise into the water at sunrise, you know, on the beach and people were like we've never had anybody do this for us, like people are always so afraid to, you know, to push corporate people a little bit, you know, because you bit, because we're soft, right, not soft, but we're always so afraid of, oh, this person's challenged, or this person won't, or that person.

Robyn Benincasa:

And I just challenged them and said nobody has to come, but we're all running in and if you don't want to run in, just be here with towels when we get back. It's all good. And we just took off running and everybody, just everybody, like all 50 people just ran into the water, like it was awesome. So anyway, after my presentation which I thought I was going to die, my heart rate was so high and it was so meaningful to a few people in the audience that they came up afterwards and one of them, one of the people that came up, was his own vice president from Starbucks and he said I want you to come and talk to all of my store managers. Like what are?

Georgianna Moreland:

you doing the next few weeks and I was like oh my gosh.

Monica Enand:

You also had a setback related to your health, did you not? Um in the last? I don't know exactly when, but um was it osteoarthritis. Is that correct?

Robyn Benincasa:

yeah, yeah, that was a bummer. Um, in the middle of the world championships in scotland, I, um, I suddenly just fell to the ground and I thought I had pulled a hip flexor or something and I had to literally take a piece of bungee cord off my backpack and wrap it around my leg and pull my leg forward physically, because it wouldn't move forward on its own at all anymore. And you know we weren't going to quit the race. I just had to move my leg like I was a puppet, you know, like I was a marionette, just had to move my leg forward, and my teammates had to take all my weight, put me on toe. You know it was horrible and I thought I had just pulled a muscle. We still did okay after all that we didn't win. I think we're still in the top 10 though.

Robyn Benincasa:

But I went home and um and had an x-ray and I had never had like an osteo thing happen in my life. You know, I was just a kid that always, just, you know you work through it, you know you just you hammer on it for a little while and it fixes itself. But this wasn't one of those things. I went to the orthopedic surgeon and he threw the x-ray up and you know, he said, he said, hey, check this out, you're, you're, uh, you're never going to run again. And uh, and you need two full, two complete hip replacements, like you know, just like that. And so I was like, okay, you know, I thought he was, you know, I was like this is a little extreme. And I said, okay, well, how about you just give me some like lots of ibuprofen and I'll see you in a, in a couple of years, I'll see you in two years. And he and I walk out the door and he's going, I'll see you in two weeks. And he was right. So, like I had to just wrap my brain around it and, uh, I had just run out of cartilage a hundred percent on on on both sides and, yeah, it was bad.

Robyn Benincasa:

So, anyway, over a series of many, many years, I went through, at this point, six hip replacements just because the first four failed. A couple of cups failed, I started running on them too soon, cracked my femur, pulled the cups out of place and, yeah, because I was not a person who, in the early days, was following any instructions whatsoever. Oh, my goodness. So that's one of the things I learned the hard way, but yeah, but it did lead me to two really cool things that I probably never would have stumbled upon if I had just kept forward on that trajectory.

Robyn Benincasa:

I still did a couple more races, but I also knew that, you know, I wasn't the same runner I was before and I wasn't going to. You know, hold my guys back, you know, because I need to be on tow right off the start line. You know it wasn't the right thing to do, but instead, kind of over time, I thought to myself well, what if I, instead of not being obsessed with what I can't do, what if I focused on what I can do? And I knew that, even with crutches, I could still crutch down to the side of the side of the bay and sit in a kayak. And you know I don't. I don't need my hips for that as much. I mean you're supposed to push off when you're paddling, but you know, still, yeah, I mean I could paddle.

Robyn Benincasa:

And so I set out to try to do something great in paddling and started looking at like, okay, what's the Guinness World Record for longest distance paddled by a female in a kayak in 24 hours? Like you know, maybe I can do that. And then I ran into another guy on the same mission as I was to break Guinness World Records. He is a freaking world-class paddler, like an Epic paddler, and so we started taking a whack at the um, at the Guinness world records together, like he would set the men's record. Now it's at the women's record. So, yeah, so we set the moving water record 24 hour together. We set the flat water record together Um, I set a 24 hour standup paddling record, you know, just for fun, just to feel like I was, you know, accomplishing something.

Ned Renzi:

You hold every non-hip-related record in the.

Robyn Benincasa:

Guinness Book of Records? Yeah, because I didn't. I was like I'll just, you know, I could just you know, push my butt out of my boat, get back on my crutches and crutch to my car. I was like I'm just going to you know, like why not, you know why, obsess about what I can't do anymore. So, so that you know, not only to lead me to paddling, and now I'm a, I'm a really good endurance paddler still.

Monica Enand:

I just had a big race last month where I'm not going to talk about myself.

Robyn Benincasa:

Okay, Tell us about the race I know I'm like this is too much talking about myself. So I did. I entered the longest nonstop paddling race in the world after I set the first Guinness World Record and that race is called the Missouri River 340. And it's a 340 mile nonstop paddle from Kansas City to St Charles and if you want to win, you do it nonstop. And so I entered that race and in my first whack at it I won the women's division and I had set the women's course record and I was.

Robyn Benincasa:

I was second solo overall out of all 111 boats and I was like, yeah, I have a new sport. Like I was so excited, you know, I was like this could be my new thing and so I started doing you know that race and I had I took second place overall there five times over. Like the next eight years I was always second solo, second solo, second solo. And, um, last year I got a call from two of the men because they were both men that had that had beat me, and it was always a different, a different guy, like I. I couldn't just wait for the one guy to stay home. So I finally got a call from two of the guys who had beat me in that race and they asked me to join them for a team boat for this year's race, a four-man team boat and we just did that last month and we did not break the course record because the river was slow, but we won the race out of all 475 boats as a four-person team, yeah.

Robyn Benincasa:

So I was like oh, the old lady still got it. Congratulations, of course it was the team, but I was so scared, I was so scared. I'm like, oh, the old lady still got it. Congratulations, of course it was the team, but I was so scared, I was so scared. I'm like, am I too old?

Ned Renzi:

for this. Am I still good at this? And yeah, I discovered that you got your answers.

Robyn Benincasa:

Yeah, yeah, I was very excited about that. And then the other thing that the crazy metal hips led me to was starting Project Athena. And that happened after my first trip replacement, and and that happened after my first hip replacement. And I was thinking, okay, well, I'm not going to define myself by this setback, I'm going to define myself by my comeback and the comeback story that I can create.

Robyn Benincasa:

Now I just had this flash of light in the shower one day. I was like what if we do this for other people? You know, like how special would it be to show people how amazing they are by creating their big comeback story through endurance sports? And so since 2008 now, we do five or six five-ish endurance adventures a year and we take survivors and volunteers, slash fundraisers and we train them for four months and we train them to cross crazy challenging finish lines and we do the entire adventure as a team, like all 30 of us or 40 of us stay together as one big team and we do it just like an adventure racing team where the stronger people will go back and take extra weight or tow people or encourage people and the people that need help. They know they let us help them, they ask for help because our strength is collective and you know that's how we're going to all cross the finish line together. And so it's a way for people to kind of live what they hear in my presentation. But it's the coolest thing on earth to take a survivor who's had a big life setback and they leave home as their family's sick person and they return as their family's badass ultra endurance athlete and it's like such a crazy, like transformation for people.

Robyn Benincasa:

Because we do like not kidding around things, like last weekend we just did the rim to rim to rim in the Grand Canyon, which is where I took this photo that is behind me. So we go all the way across the Grand Canyon in one day and all the way back the next day, and then we do 120-mile kayak and bike ride from Key Largo to Key West over three days. So we like take off in Key Largo we never touch a car, you know, all under our own power, riding and paddling. We end up in Key West three days later. We do a 45-mile two-day hike across Zion National Park, called the Zion Traverse. We do a walking marathon up the coast of San Diego and it's really cool for people to get some perspective too on bike to Key West, or you know, or?

Robyn Benincasa:

Or someone who had just had a double mastectomy two weeks earlier, you know paddle in their boat to, you know to, from Key Largo to Key West. You know, people are like I don't have any problems, like you know they're. They're so inspired by, you know, by these people, as am I every single, every single adventure that we have, because we don't just take cancer survivors, we take people who have had any kind of big traumatic life setback. Sometimes it's people who have been in a terrible abusive marriage or traumatic brain injuries, or you know, we've had lots of amputees, blind people, and uh, it's just the most fun thing to just show them how amazing they are Like and they just leave on this cloud of I freaking rock and yeah, it's the best. It does give you perspective, right? Yeah, and none of those things would have happened. You know, I would have never discovered paddling or started Project Athena if I had more cartilage. So, you know, in a way I'm kind of grateful for that.

Ned Renzi:

When you're working with these leaders, you know in the tech companies or other businesses what's sort of the number one mistake you see people making or number one thing you see them dealing with.

Robyn Benincasa:

Well, in the pre-event calls that I have with people, a lot of people talk about culture and about the kind of culture that they want to create, and I think one mistake that people make is realizing that people don't necessarily work for companies. They start out working for companies, but they ultimately work for people. And I mean, like, how many of us have stayed in a job or a role that you know we probably should have left a long time ago, but our leader or our team was so special and important to us? You know that we stayed for them. You know we work for people. So you have to be the person that people want to work with and work for. You have to be the leader that your team needs in that moment.

Robyn Benincasa:

You know whether that's a friend, that's a colleague, that's someone who needs to get out in front and say, out of the way, follow me. Whether that's a visionary leader, whether that's sometimes even a coercive leader that tells you what you need to get done right now. Which is what you respect in a leader is when they're able to adapt to the situation, adapt to the team, adapt to the vibe of what's going on, and I think that sometimes a mistake is made when we're not just talking culture of the organization, but it's got to come from the leaders, like it's got to come from who these leaders are as people. That's what makes the culture.

Ned Renzi:

And if you flip the question, maybe away from leaders and you could talk to anyone. Like Monica and I had a recent podcast where, like, we had some people in their like 20s and 30s who were asking for career advice. What do you wish everyone who wants to have an amazing career? What do you wish they knew?

Robyn Benincasa:

Well, I think one thing I've learned over time and what I've seen in like you know, kind of younger people that I've observed my nieces, my nephews, just people around me, me is that where your magic happens is in sort of that intersection of where your passion meets your talent, and so part of understanding, like part of being really successful, is finding that real vein of gold in yourself. Like what are you really good at? Like that most other people aren't, what comes easiest to you? Like what's that thing? Like, are you a people connector? Are you incredible with languages? Are you great at math? Are you great with spatial relationship? Like whatever it is you know you're really really good at. If you can marry that with a passion that you have, you know, then your success just becomes exponential, just, and and for me that's what happened with Project Athena Like it was my passion to help people and to you know to show them how incredible they are and to to help them realize that you know it's all about your comeback story. And then put that together with my with adventure, racing and endurance background. You know the thing that that I was was best at in my life, and and that success for me is is not about money.

Robyn Benincasa:

I've never I've been a volunteer for the last since 2008,. I've never. You know, I it's not about, I've just it's. I'm a volunteer, you know, ceo of that organization. But like that's like people. That's where your authentic space is and people really like sense that like like this is real, um, where, where this passion this person has meets their, their authenticity, and like boom, you know, if you can, if you can create that in in what you do for a living, you know that's where you're going to be the happiest, that's where your success is going to be exponential and people are going to come, come to you with opportunities when you're really in that authentic space.

Ned Renzi:

Yeah, great advice Thanks.

Monica Enand:

Robin, you kind of talk about like your mindset. It was, you know it sounded like you had to say I'm not going to focus on what is I can't do, I'm going to focus on my comeback story, I'm going to focus on what I can do. You know that's a framing or a shifting of your mindset. How do you think that people in their daily lives or in their lives should think about kind of mindset and how do you advise people to use that?

Robyn Benincasa:

I think it's important to just have a few things almost like go-to, like catchphrase or things you really deeply believe in that you can sort of help redirect yourself a little bit, because everyone's going to have their down moments, they're going to be mad, they're going to be pissed, they've been wronged, something wasn't fair, something wasn't right, they didn't get the promotion, like, whatever it is. You're, you know you're allowed to be bummed because stuff happens, you know, and it happens to all of us, and sometimes really bad stuff happens. Um, but like a few of the things that like once I'm kind of done with my little, you know, circling around obsessing about something for a little while, like obsessing about the you know the bad thing that happened, the thing I don't want to happen, um, one of the things that that I talk about and just to myself is okay, what if I were? I saw this from the perspective of being ruled by the hope of success versus the fear of failure? Cause I'm a person that, like obsesses about fear of failure and that's how I operated most of my life was, was, like you know, kind of not losing. How do I say one step ahead of losing?

Robyn Benincasa:

And and one of my teammates in the middle of a race, when I kept looking behind us to see where our competitors were. We were, we were in a boat, in inflatable, and I was paddling, paddling, paddling. I just kept turning around to see where our competitors were and finally he was so annoyed that he threw his own paddle in the boat and he grabbed the top of my head and spun it around to face forwards down river and then he said in my ear he said, hey, winning is that way, you know. And I was like, oh, you know. Oh, that just really like. I was like you know what? He's right, I'm totally focused on not losing and I'm not focused on what it takes to win, because that just suddenly completely changes your creativity and your innovation and your drive. And it's like I'm not focused back here anymore. What's it really going to take to win? Like I'm not focused back here anymore, like what's it really going to take to win? And there was another guy in the boat that heard my friend Ian tell me you know, winning is that way, and he was a really innovative guy and so he started thinking about what it was really going to take to win. Like this became something contagious and he started thinking about okay, what resources do we have? What can I do to make the next craft that we're going to be in faster? What can I do to make the next craft that we're going to be in faster? What can I do to make us better as a team? And so he started ruminating on this and we got to the next transition area and the race director took away each team's whitewater raft and handed each of us two inflatable canoes. So our competitors grabbed their canoe paddles, jumped in their canoes, they were gone down the river because they were right behind us and they passed us in the shoot, basically.

Robyn Benincasa:

And then Steve said to us hey, I know this is going to suck, this is going to take a few minutes, but I have this idea I want to get our climbing rope. You know he'd been thinking about this for a while. He said I want to get our climbing rope that we use for the mountaineering section, and I want to actually tie our two boats together Like cause they, they, they took off in two separate boats just going down the river. He, he wanted to tire two boats together, end to end, you know, using our climbing ropes for the D rings on the outside of both boats so that he could make you know one big long boat. He knew we'd be faster, as five people paddling one boat versus five people paddling two boats. And then he said and why are we stuck using canoe paddles? Just because they gave us canoe paddles? We're a much stronger kayaking team. So he'd also thought through what's going to make us faster and realize we don't have to use what the organization gave us. We're going to use our kayak paddles that we have for the last section of the race anyway. They're just sitting in our gearboxes. Nobody's telling us we can't use them.

Robyn Benincasa:

So we got out our kayak paddles and made them longer, different on the sides of the canoes, and we ended up creating like what we call the Steve Gurney missile and we put that sucker on the water. We were literally double the speed of of the team in front of us. It took us a couple hours to catch them, but it's funny, cause they actually have it on video where we pass them, they, they you know the TV cameras were there and we pass them in our craft like they are standing still and one of their boats flips around the wrong direction and and it was, you know, it was an exercise in risk. You know, sometimes you take this calculated risk because it did take us 40 minutes to put it together. But you know, he had just been thinking this whole time.

Robyn Benincasa:

We were in that that original raft, like, okay, what's it going to take to win versus not lose? And so when you can switch that perspective and and think about it, opens up your mind, your heart, your creativity, when you start thinking about how can I win, you know, versus how can I not lose, you know. And then then, of course, you know, always being defined by by setbacks, by comebacks versus setbacks, is a big thing for me. I tell myself that every single day, and also that when you're stuck you don't have to be there alone. I think a lot of people don't like to reach out to other people to ask their advice or ask for their help. They kind of like to be their own little island, their own little silo. And I think that people see asking for help as a weakness.

Robyn Benincasa:

And we kind of discovered in this sport that asking for help and accepting help and, in our case, literally and figuratively towing each other, which we did from start to finish, somebody was always on the end of a tow line, whether it was in the hiking and on bikes and boats, who had these little bungee cords with carabiners, you know, on the ends of the bungee cords, and we would just connect the person who was struggling or slowest in that sport to the person who was strongest and instead of waiting for our slowest person, we would just take them with us.

Robyn Benincasa:

And so we started realizing that accepting a teammate's help, letting them carry your weight for a while in our case literally, you know, but in the real world, figuratively it was never a weakness Like it's how we won, it's how we created the consistency of our success, like it made us so even at the highest level in the sport. We were on the podium for 10 years, we were top five in the world championships for 10 years, and it wasn't even always the same people. It was just people with that same mindset of understanding that accepting help, asking for help, reaching out for help, isn't a weakness, it's how we win. And you know so just in your real life, seeing that as a winning move. You know versus you know. This is not me like demonstrating my weakness. It's showing that I want to win.

Monica Enand:

It kind of cracks me up that you keep saying real life, as if work is real life and that what you're doing is not real, where I feel like the real consequences of being out there in the world like this, tracking and doing all of these things sounds pretty darn real to me.

Robyn Benincasa:

Yeah, it's a little too real sometimes because there's really not much. You can't just pick up your phone and order DoorDash or have someone come get you. This team really has to care about each other more than they care about themselves, which is hard to come by when you're not in these crazy situations, but it's such a nice goal to have you know.

Monica Enand:

I have to tell you. The other thing that strikes me in listening to you talk is you use the words like defined by your comeback, as opposed, and what it kind of reminds me of is I don't know, ned, have you read, have you read, robin Atomic Habits? And he talks about your identity and how he talks about like. If you want to make these good habits, you actually have to change your identity. Like. You have to think of yourself as a different identity, as of someone who runs, someone who doesn't smoke, or someone who you know, who does the thing that you're trying to build. And I think you just innately do that Like. You just innately talk about like defined by your comeback. You know you think of it as an identity as opposed to I'm going to do this thing. It's, I'm going to be this person.

Robyn Benincasa:

Right, yeah, that's true. No, I see what they're saying. Yeah About making it your identity, because I'm a person that that does this, that thinks that. You know. Not, it's not just, I'm a runner, not just I injured a 5k.

Monica Enand:

Right, or I did this once or twice, or yeah.

Robyn Benincasa:

Yeah, no, I like that, and that's, you know, that's kind of how I see it too. Like when people come home from our Project Athena adventures, they, they literally have a whole different definition of who they are. And it's, you know, and and so so do their families, and so do their friends, and it's it's not even just the survivors, it's also, you know, the, the volunteers who come. They come thinking that they're going to help their survivors, and the coolest thing is that it's often the survivors helping them. And you know, it's, it's so much fun. But one, one story that I love about you know, it's so much fun, but one story that I love about you know, kind of not only you defining yourself, but the people who care about you defining you.

Robyn Benincasa:

We had a breast cancer survivor that did the Florida Keys adventure and I asked her what her favorite part of the adventure was and she said you're going to think this is weird, but it wasn't actually during it. I loved the adventure, but it wasn't during the adventure. That was my favorite part, she said. My favorite part was when I came home to the airport and my luggage came out. My family was there, my husband, my two kids. The luggage came out and it started going around and around on the carousel and she goes. I didn't even think to grab it because my family had spent the last five years doing everything for me, picking up everything for me, not letting me do anything, not letting me strain myself.

Robyn Benincasa:

I had cancer and she goes. It was the best thing when my luggage went around for like the third time and neither my husband nor my kids lifted a finger to grab it because they knew I could. They're like our mom's back. We don't need to grab her stuff anymore. She's good. And so she was. You know, without, without them even saying a word, they basically you know, we're showing her that, you know that you're, you're our mom again. You're not, you're not our cancer survivor that we have to. You know, fluff over Like you're our badass mom again. And yeah, so she, yeah, she loved that and so, yeah, she, she got her the definition she loved the most back and that was badass mom.

Ned Renzi:

Very cool, great, great way to end the episode.

Monica Enand:

Absolutely Well. Thank you so much, robin, for being with us today. You are really an inspiration to me and, I'm sure, to so many more people, I just think, and the way you've been so thoughtful about taking these team building and thinking about the team and applying it to the corporate world, it's really helpful and it really I did?

Robyn Benincasa:

I worked for a Fortune 500 companies for a few years before I became a firefighter. Yeah, I was in hospital supply sales and pharmaceutical sales and yeah, so I, yeah, I have a little bit of that background and able to relate. Yeah, yeah, yeah. So yeah, I love it. And if you want to come with us on an adventure, projectathenaorg.

Monica Enand:

All right. And how do we reach you if we want to have you come speak to a team?

Robyn Benincasa:

Robin at world-class teams and it's Robin Hi With a.

Monica Enand:

Y Robin at world-class teamscom. At world-class teams, and it's Robin, ben and Casa. So thank you so much, robin, for being here. Thank you, ned, for co-hosting with me. Guest hosting yeah.

Ned Renzi:

I and Ned for co-hosting, with me guest hosting. Yeah, I love that. Great to meet you, Robin. Thanks so much.

Robyn Benincasa:

Yeah, you too, and I'll see you on next year's Canyon, maybe, or Zion, maybe. Yeah, next year's my 16th birthday, I turn 16.

Ned Renzi:

I'm trying to think of something epic.

Robyn Benincasa:

So Kilimanjaro is also on the list, so we'll see what we end up with yeah, Kelly's pretty cool too, I hear so, but we'll see you sometime. Both of you guys, Absolutely.

Monica Enand:

And everybody listening. Absolutely. Who wouldn't want to come on a project Athena?

Robyn Benincasa:

Hell yeah, and I lead them all, so I will see you there.

Monica Enand:

All right. Well, this has been another episode of Masterstroke. Thank you so much to Ned and to our executive producer, Georgiana Marland.

Robyn Benincasa:

Well, thanks, monica, ned Georgiana, entire gang.

Georgianna Moreland:

Thank you for listening today. We would love for you to follow and subscribe. Monica and Sejo would love to hear from you. You can text us directly from the link in the show notes of this episode. You can also find us on the LinkedIn page at Masterstroke Podcast with Monica Enid and Sejo Petrzak. Until next time.