Ever imagined jumping from your backyard trampoline at the age of five to representing your country in beach volleyball on a global platform? That's precisely the thrilling journey of our guest, Christie Jenkins, an extraordinary athlete and motivational speaker. She's a trampoline champion, a pro beach volleyball player, and a CrossFit Games athlete, who at 23, decided beach volleyball was the sport you could play in your 30s and within three months, was playing with a top Australian player.
What does it take to transition from non-revenue generating sports to venture capital? Skill, courage, and a few different types of confidence, according to Christie. We dive deep into these intriguing concepts - temporary confidence, confidence based on competence, and meta-confidence. We unpack how Christie harnessed these insights from her athletic career to navigate the world of venture capital. Reflect on how these experiences can help you approach life with confidence and develop critical people skills for business success.
Retirement from sports - an emotional roller-coaster, a quest for new passion, or an opportunity for reinventing oneself? Christie shares her heartfelt experience of retiring from not one, but three sports. She delves into her process of untangling her passion from progress and how she redefined herself post-retirement. And finally, we underline the power of action, its potential to solve anything, and how courage is all about taking action despite fear. Join us for this compelling conversation with Christie Jenkins, and let her life journey inspire you.
Check out our Website | Twitter | LinkedIn | Instagram | Tiktok | Spotify | Apple | Google | Youtube
Ever imagined jumping from your backyard trampoline at the age of five to representing your country in beach volleyball on a global platform? That's precisely the thrilling journey of our guest, Christie Jenkins, an extraordinary athlete and motivational speaker. She's a trampoline champion, a pro beach volleyball player, and a CrossFit Games athlete, who at 23, decided beach volleyball was the sport you could play in your 30s and within three months, was playing with a top Australian player.
What does it take to transition from non-revenue generating sports to venture capital? Skill, courage, and a few different types of confidence, according to Christie. We dive deep into these intriguing concepts - temporary confidence, confidence based on competence, and meta-confidence. We unpack how Christie harnessed these insights from her athletic career to navigate the world of venture capital. Reflect on how these experiences can help you approach life with confidence and develop critical people skills for business success.
Retirement from sports - an emotional roller-coaster, a quest for new passion, or an opportunity for reinventing oneself? Christie shares her heartfelt experience of retiring from not one, but three sports. She delves into her process of untangling her passion from progress and how she redefined herself post-retirement. And finally, we underline the power of action, its potential to solve anything, and how courage is all about taking action despite fear. Join us for this compelling conversation with Christie Jenkins, and let her life journey inspire you.
Check out our Website | Twitter | LinkedIn | Instagram | Tiktok | Spotify | Apple | Google | Youtube
And so action is the antidote.
Speaker 2:You're the most decorated racquetball player in US history, world's strongest man, from childhood passion to professional athlete, eight time Ironman champion. So what was it like making your debut in the NHL? What is your biggest piece of advice for the next generation of athletes, from underdogs to national champions? This is the athletes podcast, where high performance individuals share their triumphs, defeats and life lessons to educate, entertain and inspire the next generation of athletes. Here we go. Kristi Jenkins, thank you so much for coming on the athletes podcast. Thank you Pro beach volleyball player, crossfit games athlete, world Top 10 for trampoline. Keynote speaker, vc investor. Anything else I missed on your list of titles?
Speaker 1:I think that pretty much covers it Okay.
Speaker 2:okay, there we go. Hey, I just maybe want to give you some space to share a bit about your background in the sport. I know you started at age five trampolining first national title at nine years old. No big deal, I mean. Where do we go from there?
Speaker 1:Well, my parents actually met on a trampoline, if you can believe that story. My dad taught my mom a backflip while they were at college and you know love from there, so I think that one was in my blood. Hopefully I was not conceived on a trampoline. Okay, I am who knows, never, never heard the full story. But yeah, I was a trampoline athlete from age five to 23, won 12 national titles as top 10 in the world for that.
Speaker 1:And if you don't know what that sport is, just imagine jumping 10 meters in the air and doing triple somersaults. So it comes under the umbrella of gymnastics, but you know it's up in the air, way up in the air. And in my early 20s I had sort of done everything I wanted to in trampolining and you know it's a gymnastics sport. You do age out a little bit and I just wasn't ready to give up being an athlete.
Speaker 1:It's very tough to give up that identity and so just jump straight into another sport and I made a list of all of the sports you can play into your 30s I was already 23. I was like, okay, if you start something now, it will take you a decade to get good. And what are the sports you can play into your 30s. You know you could probably do rowing and sailing and equestrian and martial arts and beach volleyball was on the list because all of the Olympians were in their 30s at that time and you know we knew a couple of coaches in our area. I was like I'll just give it a crack and I went from never having played a ball sport to training eight to 10 times a week in that new sport and I was very bad to begin with.
Speaker 2:Didn't it take you six months to get an invitation from a top volleyball Australia player?
Speaker 1:About three months actually Cut my guess.
Speaker 2:Yeah.
Speaker 1:I think I was already athletic right, so I had that going for me and I already had the mindset of being an elite athlete from my previous sport of trampolining. And so you know that player looked at me and she's like, well, I need someone to, you know, be my blocker this season and I can see how hard your training and the rate of improvement. And you know I'm going to back that in nine months time you'll be ready for a season.
Speaker 2:Holy dine. So she just could see the ability, the natural talent, the athletic desire that you had to compete at the top level and she believed the fact that you'd be able to do it.
Speaker 1:I think natural talent's a little far Like if you'd seen my first lessons, I would like jump in the air and swing my arm and just miss the ball completely and super embarrassing right. And I was surrounded by all these athletes that you know, maybe weren't as athletic as me but were much more skillful with the ball skills. So yeah, natural talent is a bridge too far.
Speaker 2:Well, clearly it worked out because you were able to represent Australia multiple times. Obviously, when you have one of the best on your continent seeking you out, that's pretty damn good, no matter who you ask. How did you ever imagine you doing that at 23, being able to bring that to fruition within three months, like you thought it was going to be a 10 year, decade long process.
Speaker 1:Yeah, it took five years to play on the national team, like to represent Australia on the world tour, which was a little quicker than I expected. But I somewhat accelerated the process by doing double seasons. So I would play the summer season in Australia and train here, and then I would go to California and play their whole season and live there for six months in the Australian winter. So I sort of speeded up the process a little bit by doing that. You're at Manhattan.
Speaker 2:Beach right.
Speaker 1:Manhattan Beach, Hamosa Beach, the birthplace of the sport and all the top players in the US just live in these two cities and the density of talent there is unbelievable and you could play every day with a different player and never run out of players to train with. We just had Zana Muno on the podcast. What a legend, right? Yeah, it's like we you know back to back.
Speaker 2:not back to back, but you know volleyball athletes summer months here in Australia are coming to be, so we figured while we were in Sydney trying to get you on, share what you're doing, because not only are you come from three sports seemingly able to, I feel like you're going to end up doing some masters competing too. I know you say you're retired, but I just don't believe you're done. I figured there's still time to make it in golf.
Speaker 1:That's an old person's sport. Right there you go. See, I love it. I love it. How did you?
Speaker 2:okay, so you did the double summers, and that was how you were able to expedite it. Do you have a preference of playing over here in Australia, or do you have a preference over here, or do you prefer playing in Los Angeles US?
Speaker 1:Definitely California. Really.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I think because there's so many good players and the quickest way to get good at something is to just surround yourself with people that are better than you. And you know, in Australia we have some incredible players, but we don't have the same depth of talent and just like sheer volume of players. Like, the population of Australia is the same as LA. Yeah, there's 400 and something million people in the US and so just the number of players they have there. Now, with Beach Volleyball being in the college system there, you just have so many people going after that sport to train with and it's much faster to improve.
Speaker 2:Yeah, we've been just enamored with the Australians here, mix. We came into Brisbane, went down the coast Gold Coast, servers Paradise was beautiful and obviously there was a ton going on there. But when it comes to Australia, you brought up the population aspect, which is wild to me. And growing up was there always that desire as a child or a young adult to get to the US to compete internationally.
Speaker 1:I mean I love travel, and not just to the US, to everywhere. My parents put me on a plane with the Australian trampoline team to do interstate travel from sort of age 10 on my own. They just they didn't come with me. They're like you're with the team, you'll be fine. And then I did my first international competition for that in Europe in I was 14. And so and same they were. Just like you know, that's an expensive plane ticket, we're not coming like you're on your own. And so I just picked up this sort of love of travel and being overseas and being in a different culture and having that broaden your perspective and your mindset about not just sport but the world, and I think I've been to 50 countries now. I went about seven years without having a winter, which was amazing because I just did somewhere in the southern hemisphere and somewhere in the northern hemisphere back and forth.
Speaker 2:What was that like at 14? Traveling to Europe on your own.
Speaker 1:Like unreal You're just like see you later, mum and dad, and you know I'd always kind of been like a pretty serious and like disciplined athlete and you know I was there for the sport, like I was there for World Championships. I want to win that and you know so I'm not out there kind of misbehaving and running rogue. And I think that age as a teenager is when you I certainly like listen to my coaches a lot more than my parents at that age, and getting to hang out with your teammates and your best friends for like two weeks while you're in Europe is what an adventure Right.
Speaker 2:Yeah, absolutely. Was there ever a moment a doubt, a concern, like intimidated by that adventure at that young age?
Speaker 1:Yeah, I was pretty introverted as a kid. Like you would find me with a book and not at the party, right, like that was how I grew up. My mum's an author. We had books everywhere in the house and I think what actually made me be much more confident with people was going away on those trips and like if you don't make friends and you don't talk to people, you will be very lonely. And the very first time I went to California for beach volleyball like I was in my early 20s but I was still like very task-oriented, not people orientated quite introverted, and I was like I want to get good at volleyball, I need to be with the best players in the world and I quit my job in Australia. I had two grand in my bank account and I just booked a one-way ticket to the US. Whoa.
Speaker 1:Had two nights of accommodation in a hostel and I was like you've got to find a place to stay because you cannot afford to pay for accommodation here. And I remember just walking up and down the beaches there and if you've been, there's hundreds of beach volleyball courts and looking for a court that had three people on it that needed a fourth and I was like that's going to be my way, in no way.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I mean we literally a month ago recorded the Xana on Hermosa Beach and we're overlooking all of these volleyball courts. Yeah, and that would have been a little intimidating as an interviewer.
Speaker 1:It was so intimidating but like my goal for sport was like stronger than sort of the fear of being rejected by people and I just made it work. End of saying eight months.
Speaker 2:How'd you afford it with two grand in your bank account? Two days accommodation yeah.
Speaker 1:Well, I just met the most incredibly wonderful, generous people. Like, I met, you know, this player and she was like well, I'm going away next week, you can crash in my bedroom for a week. I met this couple that were like oh well, you know, we've got a spare room, you can stay for a few weeks and then I'd trade beach volleyball lessons for accommodation and do a bit of cash jobs on the side and like I just kind of made it work.
Speaker 2:Dang, that's. That might be one of the most insane stories we've heard on the show, almost at two over 200 episodes in here Like that's insane to be able to do that for eight straight months. Ever a doubt in your mind afterwards that you could do anything after that? Or was that where your mindset was like I can take on anything?
Speaker 1:Yeah, that's a great question. I think you do develop this type of meta confidence, right, like I can do hard things or I can figure it out, even though I don't know how to do it now. I do think each sport I've done has required different things and that's been challenging in its own way, like trample-eaning is. It has the element of fear, right, you know, it is terrifying to be 10 meters in the air and upside down doing an unfamiliar trick for the first time, and it can go very, very, very wrong. One of my teammates when I was a teenager ended up quadriplegic. So that is so tough for that sport, right.
Speaker 1:But then you come to beach volleyball and the pressure is not so intense. It's not like your routine is 20 seconds and like one little finger out of place like costs you the gold medal with that like sort of intense pressure it's, you know, much more spread across the whole game and a match. But you have the challenge of the partner dynamics there. For me, one of the big challenges was like how do you be loose under pressure, like as a gymnast, if you are nervous, you squeeze every muscle in your body as tight as you can, and that will improve your performance. If you do that in a ball sport like the ball will come to your arms and just like ricochet off in a random direction, and so I had to untrain all of those things. So each sport has had its own challenges.
Speaker 2:Yeah, you brought up meta confidence. I was reading your newsletter, your blog, and I was trying to think about how to bring up the unwarranted confidence, temporary confidence, and, like you know, there was a few years ago a British poll showed that one in eight men thought that they could win a point against Serena Williams. There was a clip recently that had Andy Roddick on live TV talking about the fact that 25 or 40% of men thought that they could win a game or a match against Novak Djokovic and I was like, oh man, he was. He said it. He's like man. I've been retired for a couple of years and I couldn't even win a point, let alone a game. And this part of it.
Speaker 2:That's probably your only shot that was what you brought up is like, maybe if they screw up twice, that's the only way you can do it. But I thought it was such an interesting way to talk about confidence because so many people in life go through with different levels of confidence and they don't necessarily have the mindset to be able to approach the situation where you're exposed to traveling across the pond with two days and you're not just trying to make it work, but you're trying to make it work.
Speaker 1:And you were able to. Yeah, should we go through it? Yeah, okay. So I think about confidence in four levels. The first is unwarranted confidence, which is kind of your brash swagger, like overconfident, egotistical, I don't know you can think of like maybe a teenage boy just being like, yeah, I got this with all the girls or something Test and ask Exactly which is not the kind of confidence you want really.
Speaker 2:So we'll leave that one aside, maybe at like a teenage dance or something, just when you're yeah, you need a little swagger.
Speaker 1:The second type of confidence I would call kind of temporary confidence, and you can think of giving yourself affirmations before you go on stage or like as a gymnast. You know, before I got on the trampoline I was like, okay, you can do this trick, or you've got this, and you kind of temporarily talking yourself into it. Motivational speakers will be like you know you should do this before everything, hard right, and that will solve all your problems. It's temporary but it can give you the sort of extra nudge you need to get started. So that's the second type, kind of short lived confidence, but useful in certain situations. The third is like confidence based on competence. So I've done this before, I can do it again. Like I've driven a car, I'm confident when I get in the car to drive again.
Speaker 2:Even if it's on the wrong side of the road.
Speaker 1:Yeah, LA was a little terrifying, honestly. You know I know how to do a double backflip. I can do it again. I've beaten this team before. I can do it again.
Speaker 1:So you're going into those situations with confidence because you have competence right. Most people tend to stop there, so we are scared of things we don't know how to do and we're confident with things we do know how to do. We spoke about metaconfidence and this is the confidence that I will be able to figure it out. I don't know how to do this thing yet. And you back yourself in to be like, hey, there's all these other things in my life I didn't know how to do or I wasn't good enough to do and I got good enough and I learned how to do that.
Speaker 1:And I can look back at that history and be like you know what, like I'm a capable human that can learn new things and figure new things out, and I should be confident that in this new situation that is scary, that I've never done before that I can figure it out. You know I can beat that team for the first time. I could learn how to do a triple somersault, even though I can only do a double. You know I could tackle that new career. I could go into the workforce, I could go up to that person that I'm a little intimidated by. You know you should back yourself with that metaconfidence.
Speaker 2:I was thinking about this last night. I'm like every time I have a new guest coming on the show I'm slightly intimidated because I'm like holy dine of this woman's done three separate sports. She's traveled the world, 50 plus countries. So I was looking back and like, okay, even if I screw up right which is part of that metaconfidence where it's like looking back, reviewing what's the worst thing that can happen I forget your name.
Speaker 2:I forget what sports you play, but I'll figure it out Right. And that's where that metaconfidence comes through. I've done this with 200 people. I feel like I should be capable about doing this.
Speaker 1:You are capable, and if you fuck it up, you can edit it out.
Speaker 2:But when I think about, like, the mindset that you've approached your life with, you don't come across as someone who's introverted, obviously because you've exposed yourself to these situations time and time again. Is there a moment in time that that switch flipped for you outside of LA, traveling across? Are there other pivotal moments that you look back on that you bring yourself to think about, so that you have that metaconfidence?
Speaker 1:Actually in work life. So you know I didn't really get paid to play any of those sports. There's not a ton of media coverage and sponsorship and money in those games. So I worked and had a career whilst I was being an athlete and early on in my management consulting career. You know I was pretty comfortable with like an Excel spreadsheet and like making it PowerPoint slide and things like that. What I hadn't really understood was actually all the stakeholder management is the real part of your job.
Speaker 1:You know you have to go and speak to the leaders and be like what is your problem? I need to understand. You need to go and speak to other people in the organization and be like what ideas do you have? You need to go and speak to other people in the company and be like we're coming up with this plan. You're going to be the one to execute it. Like how do you convince them it's a great idea and get them on board so that they're going to go into all the change management later.
Speaker 1:And I had a great manager one time who could kind of sat me down and he's like You're kind of underperforming on the people side, right, like you're great at the hard skills, but your job is actually to get people to execute these plans. And that was a little bit of a light bulb moment for me and I kind of realized all business is done by people and if you don't get good at that skill set like, you're not going to be good at business. And you know that has proven true in my career. And the further I go into the career, the more and more people orientated I become. Because now I work in venture capital and my job is literally to find, like entrepreneurs with incredible ideas and just back them. And it's all about your people judgment. And I probably open Excel seven times a year now, wow, yeah.
Speaker 2:I was going to bring up. It's like EQ versus IQ is a big one that I constantly think back on, and like you could score 1400 on the SATs, but if you don't know how to communicate properly, you're probably not going to succeed in life. It's also interesting that someone who was in volleyball, trampolining like not revenue generating sports ends up in VC, like kind of ironic.
Speaker 1:Yes, I'm not deploying my own money is the answer to that. So, you know, I work for VC funds who raise money from other, you know, institutional investors, and I'm the one making the decisions on how to where to allocate that money and which entrepreneurs to give it to. But sadly I did not play, you know, in the NBA or on the tennis world tour and I don't have, you know, mega millions to invest.
Speaker 2:Not not too much, angel, investing specifically from your own personal accord?
Speaker 1:Yeah, I've done a tiny bit, but you know it's tiny.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I'm always curious because it's for you. You're looking at athletes, entrepreneurs, founders we've talked about it on the show in the past, but there's such a crossover between the three. And having that similar mindset, are there specific qualities that you look for in individuals, that you seek out in entrepreneurs, people in general?
Speaker 1:This is why I love my career so much in VC, because it is so similar to sport. So similar to sport. If you think of the mindset of an athlete, like your odds of making it to a professional level a tiny like point zero two percent of athletes have a. Make it to a pro level, I think you're more likely to get struck by lightning than make it to the Olympics and so your odds are awful. And yet you are setting this goal to. You know be national champion, be world champion, go pro, and you're willing to dedicate decades of your life to achieving that goal and many early mornings and sacrifices and giving up sugar and your social life and alcohol and, and you know, spent I've spent thousands and thousands of dollars on sport, right, and you're willing to make all of those sacrifices For that low probability of success goal.
Speaker 1:And then, if you look at a founder, like, well, your odds of getting venture funding, like you know, probably less than one percent. Like the fund I worked out last year we looked at three thousand companies and we made like 15 new investments. It's low odds, right of kind of making it on that route and you still have that same mindset you're like I care so much about solving this problem that I'm going to go after it regardless. So there's definitely that part of the mindset. The other thing I index super highly on as an athlete is feedback. You know all day you have your coach being like no, that's wrong, do it again. You know your left leg was like two degrees in the wrong direction and so you're just like constantly getting feedback and you know it's coming from a place of wanting to improve and the very best, like founders and entrepreneurs Also index like very highly on, like I want to get better, give me feedback, tell me more, give me advice, and they're just like iterating so fast and improving so quickly because of that trait.
Speaker 2:I mean, that's the only way you become better at anything realistically is learning, getting feedback, iterating, going through that same process again and again.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I mean, I think what I noticed in the work situation is we're bad at feedback in general, like people a take it very personally. They're like this is a personal attack that you're giving me feedback and it's you know. To me apathy is much worse than feedback. If someone doesn't tell you anything, they just don't care about you and they don't care about your improvement, whereas if they've taken the time to give you thoughtful, specific feedback, you know that is a sign of care and love and they want you to achieve your goals. And then I also think there's different kinds of feedback and usually people tend to be like good at one and bad at the others.
Speaker 1:Like there is coaching feedback. Obviously you get a lot of that as an athlete. There's like a value to feedback like here is how you are performing relative to other people and the expectations of this role, and that's pretty clear in sport as well, because it's wins and losses. And then there's like appreciation feedback, which sometimes that's all you get in the workplace. They're like oh, thanks so much for your work on that, or I really appreciated your help on that task. And they skip the other two and it's probably the one that's like missing most in sport and the one I see the most in the workplace. So I feel like people are usually just kind of specializing one kind and they probably need to do all that's interesting.
Speaker 2:I'm thinking back, like personally, what I specialize in, and I'm probably more on the coaching and not enough on the gratefulness appreciative aspect. I'm saying this as I look at Phoenix. Yeah, as you look at your girlfriend, I should probably work on that so, as a as someone who needs to work on that, what are some strategies or things that I could be doing if I want to expand, to ensure that I am getting all three or covering all three of those pieces?
Speaker 1:Well, in a work situation it's pretty clear, like if you had a one on one template, put it in the template. Then every week you're like what's something I can say that's appreciative, what's something I can give that's coaching, what's something that I can give an indication on a value, and then you just start to look. As soon as you know you have to write that every week you start to look and notice those things during your week.
Speaker 2:I'm also curious that you've played both individual and team sports very different dynamics, with both having to manage. One side, it's just you yourself taking care of business, the other side dealing with a partner, dealing with multiple people on a team. How do you balance that? Whether your strategies, do you prefer one or the other Small?
Speaker 1:team sports.
Speaker 2:You got 150 people at athletic ventures. Organizations are big teams.
Speaker 1:They are big teams. I like individual sports because of the accountability If you win or lose it's all on you and it's 100% your responsibility. I love team sports, a because you get to specialize more in your strengths and B because you get to share the joy of that sport with someone else. It's much more fulfilling to like celebrate a huge point with a partner that's there to like hug you and high five you. Then it is to kind of be like silent fist pump on your own, like I nailed that trick it is. There are much more dynamics with a team, like a partner or teammate.
Speaker 1:You know being in a team can help you relieve your own pressure. You know you're kind of in a bit of a funk mentally. They can get you out of it or you're not touching the ball so smoothly and they can kind of lift themselves and like carry the team for a little bit while you get back on track. When you're individual, it's all on you. But I early my sort of team career. Like you know I was in my 20s.
Speaker 1:It took me a while to realize that not everyone thinks like me. Right, I love pressure, right. Like you know, it's tied at 20 all at the end of like the third set in Beach Volleyball and you say to me Christy, you have to make this serve. Like I'm like all right, like I love that pressure. Well, I said that to one of my partners and she said that thing three meters out of the back, like, which is very different, right, but she is like she was a natural player and she played her best when she just felt like she was playing well and found joy in the sport. So I had to learn okay, for this player, I need to talk like wow, you're playing amazing, what a great hit. Like, yeah, you're smashing, it Isn't this fun? Like we're having the best day, and just remove all mention of the score and pressure. Right, and every athlete is different and you have to talk to everyone differently to bring out the best in them, and took me a little while to figure that out.
Speaker 2:Again bringing it back to like business. I equate it to being the founder, either individually building up a startup on your own or doing it with the team surrounding you, and you have to figure out the dynamics involved with those individuals and how to motivate them to see the most success as a team. Yes, it's so difficult to try and manage all of those different emotions, different relationships. When you look at the best athletes, the best entrepreneurs, are there specific qualities that you see time and time again that, like for lack of a better term the cream rises to the top. So there are specific things in that cream that are consistent.
Speaker 1:I mean, I have my view.
Speaker 2:I don't know if it's the right answer hey, this is why we've got you on the show today, right?
Speaker 1:So ambition, which, especially in Australia, is a little bit of a dirty word, it's like you don't want to be too ambitious here. Why have you heard of tall poppy?
Speaker 2:syndrome. Teach me.
Speaker 1:Okay, I mean it's kind of an Australian cultural tradition in many ways. If you were a gardener and you had a field of poppies that you were looking after, you would trim the tallest poppies to make the field even right. So the person that is the tall poppy that has the most ambition or the most success, we cut them down, which is a very Australian cultural thing. But the highest achievers have really out their ambition and there is sort of a threshold of credibility. It's like, okay, cool, I want to be good at sport, or I want to be Olympic champion. And or you're a founder, you're like, you know, I'll be cool to like build this app. Or Elon Musk, I'm going to send people to live on Mars. Right, like, what kind of company do you want to work for?
Speaker 1:So, like ambition, more ambition is actually makes your goal easier to achieve, even though you've set a harder goal, because it catalyzes people to want to help you. That attracts more funding from investors. It attracts more people that want to work for you. It motivates more people to work on that goal because it's hard and challenging and will make an impact. So ambition is definitely one trait and then, just like the drive and the capacity of top performers is on the next level.
Speaker 1:Like I'm sort of not one to promote hustle culture and like never see your kids and work all the time right, I don't do that. But what you see elite performers do is they become incredibly efficient. So in high school, you know, in the final years of school, my friends were going home and studying for like six, seven, eight hours. I was like, well, I'm going to trampoline training and then when I come home it's already 830 at night. I've got an hour to study. So you just learn to condense your study into an hour, right. You become very efficient because you have these sort of like other goals and ambitions and I think in work we are kind of expecting ourselves to give the same level of output every day right.
Speaker 1:In sport you would know this, you're kind of black. You over train for a period, then you like taper off and then you like ramp up to a tournament and then you have some time off. Like there is much more Periodization in your training. We don't have that in work, and so it is hard to increase your capacity without periodization. An example here is like when I started in VC, yeah, the fund I joined was like it would be great if you could meet five new founders a week. Like that is the level we sort of want from you. I was like cool. I was like boy, five is good. Like more would be better, yeah. And so every week I would like add a couple extra meetings and I got all the way up to like taking 15 new founder meetings a week, which is a ton because there's a lot of pre-work for every meeting.
Speaker 1:Take the meeting, give the feedback to the founder, like make the investment decisions right. And that was too much. Like I was just like Running between meetings and like my brain was kind of like overflowing trying to grasp all the different ideas these founders were pitching me. But the process of going all the way up to 15 Means like I had to develop much more efficient systems. It's like okay, how do I take notes? How do I prepare for a meeting? How do I like send feedback, update the CRM? Like do all of that work? How do I run a better meeting? Yeah.
Speaker 1:To condense the time, and so then, when I dropped it back to like cool, I'm gonna do seven meetings a week, I was like I'm much more efficient at the seven now than I was when I was ramping up. Oh, there's a breeze now, right.
Speaker 1:Yeah, so you. It's like an example of periodization at work. And so the best founders and entrepreneurs like sprint at something and then, you know, go and focus on something else, but the the sprint on the push Improves their capacity over time and they do that again and again and again until you, just a decade down the track, you're like their output is insane compared to someone that hasn't done that.
Speaker 2:I love that. I'm smiling because I can see that like my wheels are turning footed that way. And the other thing I've heard you talk about is the Ability to increase that capacity and not necessarily, like you hear the term, all you're born with this or like you're born with that Passion, that drive and I think some people are, but I think there's that also can be taught, and I've heard you blog about that and I think it's To me personally something that directly applies, because growing up I Was a decent athlete, I played every sport, but I didn't have that same ambition now that I maybe do today, or you know, starting four years ago, when I Set out on this mission to educate, entertain and inspire the next generation of athletes Over the course of, you know, half a decade here, it's like, okay, I can do this, I do have like this lofty goal, but we're well on our way and we're making strides in that you know sprint, I will say and we've been able to return back to a bit more of a Easier pace.
Speaker 2:I don't know Phoenix might describe it as something else but I wanted you to share, like that, maybe nature versus nurture aspect, or the coaching, or the fact that this can be taught and learned. Not necessarily you either have it or you don't.
Speaker 1:Yeah, okay, that's a Multi-layered yeah, I'm sorry a few parts of it. I love your ambition, by the way.
Speaker 2:Thank you.
Speaker 1:Okay, first, I think like find your passion is some of the worst advice of this generation. It's completely useless like imagine that you're 16 and someone's like just find your passion. You'll never work a day in your life like, where do you start? Yeah and how do you find it? Just sitting around thinking about it. That's completely useless advice and I Laugh because people have come up to me so many times as an athlete. They're like you're so lucky, you found your passion and. I'm like, well, yeah, maybe the first sport was lucky right.
Speaker 1:Yeah but then the second sport and the third sport, and you know I picked up beach volleyball. I picked it off a list, mm-hmm, I didn't care about it, I was not passionate about it. And what you find is Passion develops alongside skill. So the more time you put into something, you're telling your brain I value this activity, the better you get at it, the more rewarding it is. You know, like progress is very fulfilling right.
Speaker 1:You go to training every day, you make all these friends and suddenly you love being in that environment and that increases your passion for it, and so my passion for the sport developed alongside the skill and time I put into it. So I think that's awful advice that we give people like what you should do is like go out and try a bunch of things, see what you have some talent or aptitude for, and like double down on that and get good at it. And in the process of getting good you'll probably find the passion.
Speaker 2:Gary Vaynerchuk talks about it like tasting. You know Tasting different things.
Speaker 1:That's a great analogy, right. And you go through, you know, I go through seasons of my life where I like taste a lot of things, and then you double down on one. So you know, three years ago I had a career change from consulting into venture capital, but it kind of took me a year of tasting To be like, okay, this is now the career path I want to do and I'm gonna double down and get skillful at that. So that's an amazing analogy.
Speaker 2:You can steal it, it's okay. Okay, thank you. Yeah, thanks, gary.
Speaker 1:Actually I give you permission, yeah and then your second part of the question was can this be taught in terms of that growth mindset and the discipline and the passion for something? I Think it probably can in some ways. I was lucky in my early life, so at eight I had won the state championships for like the under-12s or something and Qualified for national championships and I was the youngest ever to do it. And I show up to the competition and I'm like flush with confidence Maybe some unwarranted confidence and I Came dead last.
Speaker 2:In my first nationals like so brutal. Do you think that helped you though?
Speaker 1:Yeah, yeah 100%, because I was crushed. I just remember like sobbing in my dad's arms and I was like I never want to feel like this again. And so I went back to training and I was like coach, you got to teach me that trick I'm terrified of. And Then she put me in the squad of like athletes the level above, like the age group above. That's how I started training with better people and like I added more sessions, I was like I don't want to come last again. That sucked. And the next year I won. And it's like this lesson that I was lucky to get super young, that hey, if you put hard work and effort in, you will improve. You kind of get the results you want.
Speaker 1:So more effort equals more improvement equals more results, and you learn this flywheel right pretty young, so you obviously can teach that like that lesson can sink in for everyone and that's basically what a growth mindset is.
Speaker 2:Yeah, so so cool. I I think back when you were 23 years old. You've established this list of Potential sports you could pursue into your 30s, given the 10-year time frame you set out to see success. Looking back, is there a sport you wish you had pursued?
Speaker 1:Yes, okay, and sometimes I think I made the wrong choice. So I my second choice was martial arts. Okay and I kind of want to be a ninja.
Speaker 2:I did not peg you for a martial artist.
Speaker 1:In many ways, it probably would have been a better choice because, um, in trampolining, you develop a really good sense of where your body is in space. If you're like move your elbow like this or you're, you know you're upside down like this, but you still understand like how your knee should move, and things like that, um, I had a really good sense of that.
Speaker 1:I had a really bad sense of like sinking my body up to an external thing like the ball in volleyball, and that's probably still the thing I'm worse at in beach volleyball, and so it might have been a much better choice for me in the end. We'll see.
Speaker 2:Hey, I'm still looking for a dear golf career, Honestly. I think you're going to crush that little, whether it's seniors tour or whatever the case may be. I think the LPGA has got to watch out. It might be in trouble. Um, do you have a favorite company within the athletic ventures portfolio or any of the company that come to mind when I bring that up?
Speaker 1:Oh, there's so many great founders. It's like asking me to pick my favorite child.
Speaker 2:We asked the barn burning tough questions here on the athletes podcast.
Speaker 1:Thank you, um who? I think we're doing a new investment at the moment that I can't talk about yet, which probably will be my favorite, but in lieu of that, I really love the company Eucalyptus, which is an Australian. I'll call it like a house of brands company, in that it's direct to consumer healthcare. Okay.
Speaker 1:And you know they have brands around different demographics, so like they have like a men's brand and a women's brand and like a menopause brand and um, you know, you know they took a really different approach to healthcare in that you're going to have telehealth, we're going to like ship your medicine to you, um, but we're going to make the customer experience incredible. Cause, healthcare kind of sucks Right.
Speaker 1:Like you're going to your GP, who's always running 45 and it's late, and then they don't care about you and they're just like yeah, here's another prescription, like get up and um talk about a vicious flywheel. Yeah, exactly, and it's interesting cause. In venture capital you're looking for companies that could be worth billions of dollars down the track right.
Speaker 2:Disruptors.
Speaker 1:Exactly. And then you look at the Australian market and you're like well, healthcare is one of the only sectors that is maybe big enough to you know produce a venture scale company, but it's also got so much regulation and people have so many hangups and it's health. You know you don't want to mess that up. Um so what an ambition from the founders and they are currently doing hundreds of millions of dollars in revenue. They've expanded to the UK and to Europe and just an incredible founding team, an incredible company.
Speaker 2:Amazing Shout out to the Eucalyptus team. That's awesome. Um, speaking of health, just last year you retired from sport temporarily. I'm going to say put it in there in quotations maybe yeah, until golf. Uh, can you share the six steps that you shared via your blog Around retirement? Maybe just condense it for podcast version, but I think it was. It was really well put and I think we're not only here to educate that next gen, but I think it's also important for coaches, for future athletes, for past athletes, to also come to terms with the retirement process and how to go about it.
Speaker 1:Yeah, you think I'd be better at retiring after having retired from three sports. Yeah.
Speaker 1:Um, I still found it very challenging and I did not find there was much content or help out there. Like, people went openly speaking about what it was like to retire from being an athlete Um, so I went out and interviewed a whole bunch of athletes and, with the suspicion that founders would have a similar mindset If they had stepped away from their startup, I also interviewed a bunch of founders and they have eerily similar mindsets. Um, okay, so there's six blog posts. The first is about the decision. How do you make the decision to retire?
Speaker 1:For me, that was really unpicking. What is your passion for the sport tied to? And for me, I realized passion is tied to progress, and I was in a situation with Beach Volleyball where my beach volleyball partner had moved away, my coach had moved away. Um, we'd just come out of COVID and the level of players I was training with in Australia were not better than me, and I was like you don't have any of the conditions. You need to keep improving, and if you are not improving, you will probably not enjoy the sport much, and so for me, that was the catalyst for the decision. Um, it was tough, though, like, and who do you talk to about that and some. I really know that, like there's two camps here, like some people talk to the people closest to them first and really talk that through with people that know them. I know that they know them. My family was the last to know because I felt they were so invested in my career. Um, so, yeah, sorry, sorry, mom.
Speaker 2:She probably was okay with that, looking back, realizing why you didn't share it with her, though, right.
Speaker 1:I hope so. Yeah, I think so. She hasn't told me otherwise.
Speaker 2:Anyway, Miss Jenkins was okay.
Speaker 1:Yeah, Um, okay, cool. The second thing that actually quite surprised me, um, in retirement, was this sense of unfinished business. So, as an athlete and a founder, you are incredibly future orientated, like you have these big, ambitious goals that you're going after and you sort of like win one tournament you're already like, okay, what's next? Yeah.
Speaker 1:And the unique thing about athletes, is you not just like hope for that goal, like you know that in order to achieve it you have to have a hundred percent conviction that you will. It's almost like a certainty in your mind before it becomes a reality, um, in the real world. And then what happens is, whenever you decide to retire, there will always have been something in front of you that you felt you could have done and haven't. So every single person that you speak to will had this sense of like unfinished business, which was quite a surprise to me, because I thought I was kind of unique in feeling that and turns out I'm just like everybody else.
Speaker 1:Um, okay, the third thing is probably the emotion of it. Um, there are very few realms in life where you get to stand on the baseline of the court holding the ball and knowing you know, this one tournament and this one match and this one point, like all comes down to a single serve and the pressure of that. And there's very few sport. You know very few activities in life where you get to walk into a stadium full of thousands of people, like chanting your name and screaming for your country, and there's very few moments in life where you get to the emotion of standing on top of the podium and they're playing the national anthem. And what scares me about retiring from sport is I feel like my brain is hard wired to go after those moments and to want to experience them. And I'm looking around at the rest of life being where do you get the same intensity of emotion? And I don't know. I haven't quite worked that one out. So if you have any tips, I'll take them.
Speaker 2:Okay, okay, I'll chew on it. Some unfinished business there, so technically a little bit. Um, it's tough, though I think that's maybe you can probably get that. When you get, when you invest in a company right, or when you start working with new founders, there's probably a bit of that adrenaline that comes through. Again, not the same degree.
Speaker 1:It's like more diffused over time, right? Like to do a deal takes you like a month or two, right? It's not like the pressure of like these 10 seconds matter the most. Right. And so yeah, the intensity of emotion I feel is missing in other endeavors in life. Yeah. And that's what I miss from sport.
Speaker 2:I think that's why athletes tend to have like whether it's substance abuse or whether it's whatever the case after sport occurs. Right, yeah, yeah. Exactly Um we'll figure that out.
Speaker 1:True. Yeah.
Speaker 1:Uh, okay, what else? Mastery was sort of another thing that came through for me. So I love being really good at something and you know, I've obviously been a serial specialist in my life or I'm like, okay, I'm starting this sport, I want to be world class at that. Start the next one, try and be world class at that. Um, when you retire, suddenly you are no longer good at anything and in fact, whatever you do next, um, whether that's a career in business or coaching or whatever, you are starting right at the bottom and you look around you and you're like, damn, everyone else in this career has a 10 year headstart on me. There was so much better than me and I suck. Um, now, obviously you have the advantages of being an athlete, like you're going to learn fast, you're going to pick it up quickly, like you've got the discipline and drive to stick at it, resilient, yeah, but right now you suck. Yeah.
Speaker 1:Um, so this sense of mastery, you know it's just gone. You're like suddenly I'm not good at anything anymore. So that was pretty tough. Um, and then I think you know most people you know I'll just wrap on this, but, like most people, really struggled with what's next, um, and what is my identity, now that I'm no longer an athlete? And the challenge for me is like, athlete means so many things. It means I'm disciplined, it means I'm competitive, it means, um, I, you know, respect my coach and I have great relationships with my teammate and I'm world class at something and kind of makes you special in many ways. And then the challenge for me is okay, I'm no longer an athlete, so who am I and do I still matter? And I think the lesson here has been can you unpick those traits you know disciplined, competitive, great teammate from the label of being an athlete and just own them as like your own?
Speaker 1:label right, Like I'm Christie, I am still those things, and you know I don't have to just apply those traits in a sporting context. Um, and then how do you take that identity and decide what you're going to do next? It's very hard. I think it takes most people at least a year of sort of downtime to be like what's next.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I've, uh, I've loved this conversation, christie. I gotta tell you I'm like could probably sit here and ask you questions for hours. Um, I kind of loop you also into a group of like Mitchell Hooper, world's strongest man, rhonda Racich, who's the U S's most decorated racquetball player kind of these individuals who could take on whatever sport they want and achieve excellence mastery in your case. I know that you've listened to Mike Givera's episode and you know that the way we wrap up every episode is we ask our guests their biggest piece of advice for the next gen. I'd also like to give you space if there's anything you'd like to share before that, because you've only been on four or five podcasts, as you mentioned, and I know there's always opportunities to get in that last little piece. Is there a specific people, a place you want people to go to? There are aspects with athletic ventures. Where do, where should people be seeking out more of Christie Jenkins?
Speaker 1:We've spoken a lot about mindset today, which is one of my favorite topics, and if you want to know more about that, you can find me on sub stack. Just Google my name. It's my blog on the sub stack. We'll link it in the show notes below.
Speaker 1:And if you're a founder and entrepreneur and you're looking for investment at athletic ventures, we do series A and later investments and we're we're generalists. You don't have to have a sports tech company, so the best place to find me for that is LinkedIn, and then the best piece of advice yeah, the way we wrap up every episode Tough question.
Speaker 1:I think my advice would be like action solves everything. Action is the antidote. You love that, yeah. When you feel doubt, you can't think your way out of that. When you're hesitating, like waiting longer you're not going to be able to make it, longer will not make it better. You can't, you know, develop confidence or overcome imposter syndrome by not doing anything, Action solves all of those problems. And I think we have to remember that courage is not the absence of fear, it's taking action in the face of fear. And so my advice is like if you're scared, if you're hesitating, if you're doubting, just do the thing and next time it will be easy. Like you only need courage the first time. The second time you've got that sense of competence. I've done it before. And so action is the antidote.
Speaker 2:What a great way to end it. Thank you so much for coming on the Athletes Podcast. I really appreciate it. I can't wait to follow along your golf journey when that starts up, but in the meantime, we'll keep following along on LinkedIn and seeing all the incredible ventures that you accomplished with athletic ventures. Thank you.
Speaker 1:I'm so stoked we did this in Australia too, I know.
Speaker 2:Sitting here in Sydney, I do actually have to ask 50 plus countries do you have a favorite place that sport took you in this world?
Speaker 1:I have played in the most amazing places, like the beaches of Turks and Caicos.
Speaker 2:I've been there.
Speaker 1:You know, like a field in the mountains in Nepal, or like the town square in, like European cities, like, in front of you know, thousands of year old churches. It's taken me everywhere in the world and I couldn't be more grateful for my sporting career.
Speaker 2:But you can't narrow it down to one eh.
Speaker 1:How do you pick one?
Speaker 2:thanks, I have to ask you know, Turks and Caicos is pretty incredible, I can say that, but I haven't been anywhere else. Bondi here is amazing.
Speaker 1:Yeah, Like Well my favorite place is Senecaot. Oh, okay, there we go. See, I squeezed it out of you.
Speaker 2:There we go. Thank you, I really appreciate it. This is awesome, thank you.