Cindra Kamphoff: Recent Episodes
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In this powerful episode, Dr. Cindra Kamphoff sits down with internationally respected sport psychologist Dr. Richard Thelwell to explore the psychology behind high-performance coaching. Drawing on decades of research and applied practice, Dr. Thelwell shares why coaches must see themselves as performers and how their emotional intelligence, communication, and self-awareness directly shape athlete performance and team culture.
Richard is a Professor of Applied Sport Psychology and currently serves as the Executive Dean at the University of Portsmouth. He’s a Chartered Psychologist with the British Psychological Society and his groundbreaking research has helped shape how we understand the coach-athlete relationship, emotional intelligence in sport, and how coaches thrive under pressure.
You’ll learn:
- Why the coach-athlete relationship is central to consistent performance
- The surprising impact of nonverbal cues on athlete engagement and confidence
- How coaches can manage pressure, burnout, and organizational volatility
- Why rest is a psychological skill—and how coaches can develop a rest strategy
- Practical strategies to help coaches stay composed, reflective, and effective under pressure
Dr. Thelwell also offers insights from his research on coach stress, organizational change, and the powerful role of emotional regulation. Whether you’re on the sideline or in the boardroom, this conversation will help you lead with more purpose, presence, and performance.
HIGH PERFORMANCE MINDSET SHOWNOTES FOR THIS EPISODE
LISTEN TO OUR CONFIDENCE FOR ATHLETES FREE WEBINAR
CONNECT WITH RICHARD HERE
MENTIONED RESEARCH DOCUMENT (Psychology of Rest in Athletes)
REQUEST A FREE MENTAL BREAKTHROUGH CALL WITH DR. CINDRA AND/OR HER TEAM
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In this episode of the High Performance Mindset Podcast, Dr. Cindra explore the impact of setting stretch goals – ambitious, meaningful targets that push us out of our comfort zones and closer to our potential.
Backed by research from Harvard Business School, they explain how high-effort goals can fuel innovation, focus, and sustained performance when they’re supported by belief and purpose.
You’ll also learn why writing down your goals matters, how to break the habit of playing small, and how to shift your thinking when self-doubt shows up.
Power Phrase of the Week: “I pursue bold goals because greatness lives just beyond my comfort zone.”
Quote of the Week: “Shoot for the moon. Even if you miss, you’ll land among the stars.” — Norman Vincent Peale
“I pursue bold goals because greatness lives just beyond my comfort zone.” @Mentally_Strong Tweet Quote “Shoot for the moon. Even if you miss, you’ll land among the stars.” — Norman Vincent Peale @Mentally_Strong Tweet Quote
Today’s episode features a powerful conversation with two standout leaders in sport and performance—Melissa Hager and Brock Thompson.
Melissa is one of the only women in Minnesota coaching boys high school basketball and brings a wealth of insight on leadership, resilience, and building trust with athletes. Brock is the Head Women’s Soccer Coach at South Dakota State University and a seasoned leader with over 25 years in college athletics. Both are certified Mentally Strong Coaches and bring real-world perspective on what it takes to develop confident athletes and teams.
Together, we discuss:
- Why confidence is the most fragile and most essential performance skill
- How to help athletes recover after a setback or tough feedback
- The different ways confidence shows up in male and female athletes
- What mentally strong coaching really looks like—and how to model it
- Why relationships are foundational to performance and growth
We’ll also share a sneak peek into our upcoming free webinar on June 10—Building Confidence for Athletes and Coaches—and the exciting launch of the Mentally Strong Academy for Athletic Coaches, starting June 19.
To register for the webinar or learn more about both opportunities, visit mentallystronginstitute.com.
If you’re listening after June 10, head to confidenceforathletes.com to catch the replay.
REGISTER FOR THE WEBINAR
LEARN MORE ABOUT THE COACHES ACADEMY
In this episode of the High Performance Mindset podcast, Dr. Cindra shares how the way we talk to ourselves can shape our confidence, performance, and leadership.
Drawing from Serena Williams’ affirmation practice before winning Wimbledon in 2015, we explore how powerful self-talk can override doubt and pressure—especially when things aren’t going perfectly.
You’ll learn how thought patterns are formed early in life to protect us, and how those same patterns can now limit us unless we choose to rewire them through consistent mental conditioning.
This episode covers four tools you can use to shift your mindset, respond to challenges with intention, and talk to yourself in a way that builds strength instead of stress.
Power Phrase of the Week: “Speak louder than your doubt.”
Quote of the Week: “I am strong. I am a champion. I’ve got this.” – Serena Williams
“Speak louder than your doubt.” @Mentally_Strong Tweet Quote “I am strong. I am a champion. I’ve got this.” – Serena Williams @Mentally_Strong Tweet Quote
I’m incredibly excited about today’s guest—Sylvie di Giusto—who is a globally recognized expert in personal branding, leadership presence, and first impressions.
Sylvie helps professionals and organizations explore how people make decisions about them—and what they can do to influence those decisions effectively. With a background in corporate training and a multicultural career across Europe and the United States, she brings a unique and powerful perspective to leadership development.
She is the author of The Image of Leadership and Fair Advantage, and she’s worked with some of the world’s top organizations, from the U.S. Air Force to Google, McDonald’s, and the NBA. Sylvie is also a CSP—Certified Speaking Professional—and a highly sought-after keynote speaker who combines psychology, strategy, and practical tools to help leaders take ownership of their personal brand.
In today’s conversation, we talk about how to craft a powerful presence, why first impressions matter more than we think, and what it means to lead from the outside in.
Key Takeaways from Sylvie di Giusto
- Perception Drives Opportunity
Sylvie was inspired to focus on perception because it’s often the silent deal-maker or breaker. The way people perceive us influences the decisions they make about our credibility, leadership, and potential—often before we speak. - First Impressions Are Fast and Lasting
First impressions are made in seconds and are difficult to reverse. They impact sales, leadership trust, and client relationships. In high-stakes environments, your visual and behavioral cues can speak louder than your resume. - Unconscious Biases Are Always at Play
Every human has cognitive shortcuts (biases) that affect how they perceive others. Professionals and leaders can’t eliminate these, but they can become more aware and intentional in how they present themselves to mitigate misperceptions. -
The Five Cornerstones of Decision-Making
Success today requires mastery of five key areas:- Visual intelligence – how you look
- Behavioral intelligence – how you act
- Verbal intelligence – how you speak
- Digital intelligence – how you show up online
- Social intelligence – how you connect with others
- Perception Can Be Reality
While perception isn’t truth, it influences how others treat us. Therefore, managing perceptions is not manipulation—it’s leadership. - Balancing Authenticity with Professionalism
Professionals often struggle between “being themselves” and meeting organizational expectations. Sylvie suggests “authenticity within context”—knowing your audience and adjusting your expression, not your values. - Rebuilding a Damaged Reputation
To recover from a misstep, be transparent, consistent, and patient. Rebuilding trust is a process—and how you communicate and behave over time tells your story more than any apology. - Managing Difficult Conversations
Leaders must be mindful of the perception ripple effect. Sensitive conversations should be clear, kind, and anchored in purpose, recognizing that how something is said often matters as much as what is said. - Technology + Human Connection
Embracing tech doesn’t mean losing the human touch. High performers must use digital tools to amplify trust, not replace it. Leaders must be intentional about showing up in real and relational ways—even in virtual spaces. - 3D Immersive Keynotes
Sylvie is known for pioneering the first-ever 3D immersive keynote experience, combining storytelling with cutting-edge visuals. Her goal? To not just inform—but transform how audiences feel, think, and act. - Final Message to High Performers
Perception is your silent business partner. Take ownership of how you show up in every setting, every platform, and every interaction. You don’t have to be perfect—but you do have to be intentional.
HIGH PERFORMANCE MINDSET SHOWNOTES FOR THIS EPISODE
CONNECT WITH SYLVIE HERE
REQUEST A FREE MENTAL BREAKTHROUGH CALL WITH DR. CINDRA AND/OR HER TEAM
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In this episode of High Performance Mindset, Dr. Cindra dives into the science of worry—and how to take back control of your mind and energy. Drawing on research from Dr. Robert Leahy, she shares that 85% of what we worry about never actually happens. Even more powerful: when our fears do come true, we tend to handle them better than expected.Cindra unpacks why our brains are wired to worry—usually about the people and priorities we care most about—and how unchecked worry can steal our joy, drain our energy, and keep us stuck in the future. She then shares three practical strategies to reduce worry: Notice and label your thoughts instead of reacting to them. * Schedule a “worry window” to contain anxious thinking. * Let go of perfectionism* and the need to plan for every possible outcome.
The episode closes with a calming power phrase to carry with you: “I quiet my mind and return to the present.”
I’m thrilled to bring you a high-energy, insight-packed conversation with the dynamic and fearless Anne Bonney. After moving 27 times, attending 13 different schools, living on four continents, and navigating six distinct careers, Anne has turned change into her comfort zone.
She’s a keynote speaker, leadership trainer, and emotional intelligence expert who helps individuals and organizations embrace discomfort, lead courageously, and ignite positive momentum in their teams.
In this episode, Anne shares her personal journey of mastering change, along with actionable strategies to lead through transition, elevate emotional intelligence, and conquer tough conversations.
- How to turn discomfort into a leadership advantage
- The three steps every leader needs to navigate change
- What emotionally intelligent leadership looks like during tough transitions
- How to handle difficult conversations without avoiding or escalating them
- Ways to build a fired-up team culture that performs under pressure
Anne’s energy is contagious, her insights are practical, and her message is clear—growth comes when we get uncomfortable on purpose.
HIGH PERFORMANCE MINDSET SHOWNOTES FOR THIS EPISODE
CONNECT WITH ANNE HERE
REQUEST A FREE MENTAL BREAKTHROUGH CALL WITH DR. CINDRA AND/OR HER TEAM
TO LEARN MORE ABOUT THE MENTALLY STRONG INSTITUTE
Love the show? Rate and review the show for Cindra to mention you on the next episode.
This week when you notice yourself overthinking or believing a thought that doesn’t serve you, use The Truth Meter. Your mind tends to lie to you to keep you safe and small. Instead, take control of your mind and choose a different thought that would serve you right now. Your mind does not control you, you can control your mind!
Power Phrase of the Week: “I choose my thoughts. I create my reality.”
Quote of the Week: “You don’t have to believe every thought you think.” — Byron Katie
“I choose my thoughts. I create my reality.” @Mentally_Strong Tweet Quote “You don’t have to believe every thought you think.” — Byron Katie @Mentally_Strong Tweet Quote
Dr. Amy Climer teaches teams and organizations how to increase their creativity so they can maximize innovation. She works with forward-thinking organizations such as the Mayo Clinic, Stanford University, and the U.S. Department of Homeland Security.
Amy is the author of the best-selling book Deliberate Creative Teams: How to Lead for Innovative Results. She is also host of The Deliberate Creative Podcast, where she shares practical advice and strategies to help leaders build innovative teams. Amy has a Ph.D. in Leadership and Change and is a Certified Speaking Professional.
In this episode, Amy shares her powerful “Deliberate Creative Spectrum,” and she unpacks her three-part model explains how psychological safety fuels innovation.
Amy and I discuss:
- Why creativity is essential for organizational relevance and survival
- The Deliberate Creative Spectrum: from destructive to scalable teams
- The three essential elements of creative teams
- Brainstorming guidelines for creativity: suspend judgment, combine ideas, aim for wild ideas, prioritize quantity
- Tips for fostering psychological safety and handling conflict in teams
- The leadership insight: to do something new, leaders must intentionally let something go
HIGH PERFORMANCE MINDSET SHOWNOTES FOR THIS EPISODE
CONNECT WITH DR. AMY CLIMBER
REQUEST A FREE MENTAL BREAKTHROUGH CALL WITH DR. CINDRA AND/OR HER TEAM
TO LEARN MORE ABOUT THE MENTALLY STRONG INSTITUTE
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In this episode of the High Performance Mindset podcast, Dr. Cindra explores the power of belief and how it shapes our future.
Using Simone Biles’ inspiring story as a launch point, we discuss how your vision for your life begins with what you choose to believe about yourself.
When you get clear on your vision, you can align your daily actions and mindset to match that future.
This episode encourages you to replace self-doubt with empowering beliefs and reminds you that your potential is limitless when you believe it before you see it.
Power Phrase of the Week: “I am becoming the person my dreams require.”
Quote of the Week: “Create the highest, grandest vision possible for your life, because you become what you believe.” – Oprah Winfrey
“I am becoming the person my dreams require.” @Mentally_Strong Tweet Quote “Create the highest, grandest vision possible for your life, because you become what you believe.” – Oprah Winfrey @Mentally_Strong Tweet Quote
Paul Juda started gymnastics at the age of five after friends of his parents suggested it to help him burn off his extra energy. He was fortunate to live near the Buffalo Grove Gymnastics Center, where he trained with renowned coaches Leo Krivitsky and Yevhen Vovkiv. These coaches played a key role in both his gymnastics and personal development.
After high school, Paul received a full scholarship to the University of Michigan, where he has been studying since the fall of 2019. He completed a Bachelor’s degree in Psychology, earned a Certification in Sales and Marketing from the Ross Business School, finished a graduate program in Real Estate Development, and is now working on a Master’s in Accounting, also from the Ross Business School. Paul’s career goals focus on entrepreneurship.
Paul is currently the captain of the Michigan Men’s Gymnastics Team. He is a three-time NCAA Champion, a World Championship Medalist, and the winner of the prestigious Nissen Emery Award, which is the top honor in collegiate men’s gymnastics and equivalent to the Heisman Trophy. 2024 Olympic Bronze Medalist
In this episode, Cindra and Paul discuss:
- Why he didn’t make the Olympic Team for Tokyo
- How he performed his best when it mattered most to him at the Paris Olympics
- How the team mentally prepared at the Paris Olympics
- The mental skills he uses to perform on demand
- What he has learned from working with sport psychologists
HIGH PERFORMANCE MINDSET SHOWNOTES FOR THIS EPISODE
FOLLOW PAUL JUDA ON INSTAGRAM
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Our focus determines our feelings. If you want to change how you feel, you can change your focus. Your focus is like a mental spotlight. Your attention is always on something; it’s not really ever lost. You can choose to shine your focus on what helps you at any given moment.
Power Phrase This Week: “I protect my focus. I choose to ask myself powerful focus improving questions to change how I feel.”
Quote of the Week: “Only one thing has to change for us to know happiness in our lives: where we focus our attention.” – Greg Anderson
“I protect my focus. I choose to ask myself powerful focus improving questions to change how I feel.” @Mentally_Strong Tweet Quote “Only one thing has to change for us to know happiness in our lives: where we focus our attention.” – Greg Anderson @Mentally_Strong Tweet Quote
Dr. Laura Gallaher is a professional speaker and organizational psychologist who inspires driven self-starters to transform their relationship with themselves and accomplish more than ever. She combines insights on radical self-acceptance with humor to create a unique connection with her audience.
Despite being a national best-selling author, Dr. Laura stands out from the typical “academic” personality of her PhD peers. Her notable achievements include being hired by NASA to reshape organizational culture after the Columbia accident, leading significant changes in performance management at Disney, and inspiring Yahoo’s global teams to pursue transformation from within.
In this episode, Cindra and Dr. Laura discuss:
- What is radical self-acceptance
- Why radical self-acceptance is difficult and important to practice
- Strategies to grow in your radical self-acceptance
- How radical self-acceptance relates to culture and leadership
HIGH PERFORMANCE MINDSET SHOWNOTES FOR THIS EPISODE
LEARN MORE ABOUT DR. LAURA
TO TAKE DR. LAURA’S SELF-ACCEPTANCE QUIZ
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Your goals and dreams should be just a little scary – meaning a little outside your comfort zone because when you dream big, you grow into who you can become. Most people dream too small or lose the ability to dream because of limiting beliefs or listening to other people’s disbelief. Make dreaming for a living part of your daily mindset practice.
Power Phrase This Week: “I dream big to help me reach my best and my potential. I have everything inside me to make my dreams happen.”
Quote of the Week: “So many of our dreams at first seem impossible, then they seem improbable, and then, when we summon the will, they soon become inevitable.” – Christopher Reeve
“I dream big to help me reach my best and my potential. I have everything inside me to make my dreams happen.” @Mentally_Strong Tweet Quote John Maxwell said, “So many of our dreams at first seem impossible, then they seem improbable, and then, when we summon the will, they soon become inevitable.” – Christopher Reeve@Mentally_Strong Tweet Quote
John is a marketing enigma, a “direct response customer attraction expert” who thinks way outside the box. His marketing consultancy business is called The Institute Of Wow – & John’s mantra is that one’s marketing needs to “wow” prospects. He’s also the guy who shocked the marketing world some years back when he convinced Jerry Seinfeld to come out of retirement.
John helps business owners understand how to exploit platforms like Facebook, Instagram, YouTube and LinkedIn. His client list includes 7 Eleven, Walt Disney, KFC and BP to name a few.
In this episode, Cindra and JD discuss:
- What marketing has to do with mindset
- How to craft campaigns that grab attention
- His top 3 strategies for incentive-based marketing offers
- How he got Jerry Seinfeld to come out of retirement
HIGH PERFORMANCE MINDSET SHOWNOTES FOR THIS EPISODE
LEARN MORE ABOUT JD
TO LEARN MORE ABOUT THE MENTALLY STRONG INSTITUTE
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As humans, our default is to focus on the uncontrollables. It is much easier to blame, complain, and make excuses than to take a close look in the mirror and examine ourselves and our actions.
In this episode, Dr. Kamphoff shares how to focus on what you can control and the importance of dominating the controllables.
Power Phrase This Week: “I dominate the controllables.”
Quote of the Week: John Maxwell said, “Life is 10% of what happens to me, and 90% of how I react to it.”
“I dominate the controllables.” @Mentally_Strong Tweet Quote John Maxwell said, “Life is 10% of what happens to me, and 90% of how I react to it.” @Mentally_Strong Tweet Quote
As a certified executive coach, with experience as a change management consultant, Vered has helped hundreds of individuals adapt more successfully to change. She has over 13 years of training and certifications in numerous modalities for change, including HeartMath®, Neurolinguistic Programming (NLP), Time Line Therapy®, Hypnosis, Brainspotting®, Havening Techniques®, EFT Tapping, Rapid Transformational Therapy®, and Psych-K®.
Vered is the host of the popular podcast called The Mindset Game® Podcast and CEO of the Momentum Institute.
In this episode, Cindra and Vered discuss:
- How emotions impact your results
- Her PLAY Framework to increase your resilience
- How a leader’s mindset impacts the change process
- How you can navigate change more easily
HIGH PERFORMANCE MINDSET SHOWNOTES FOR THIS EPISODE
LEARN MORE ABOUT VERED
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If you are not using imagery consistently, you are missing out on a powerful way to improve your performance. Include imagery as part of your daily routine. It will help you think like the world’s best and accomplish even more than you thought was possible.
Power Phrase of the Week: “I imagine success. I create success in my mind first and then I live it.”
Quote of the Week: “If you can imagine it, you can achieve it. If you can dream it, you can become it.” — William Arthur Ward
“I imagine success. I create success in my mind first and then I live it.” @Mentally_Strong Tweet Quote“If you can imagine it, you can achieve it. If you can dream it, you can become it.” — William Arthur Ward @Mentally_Strong Tweet Quote
High performers in sport, business and life use pressure to be at their best. They use natural tools inside of them to see pressure as a privilege. They POP the Pressure.
Power Phrase of the Week: “I see pressure as a privilege. Pressure leads me to greatness.”
Quote of the Week: “I don’t feel pressure. I apply it.” Justin Jefferson, Wide Receiver for the Minnesota Vikings
“I see pressure as a privilege. Pressure leads me to greatness.” @Mentally_Strong Tweet Quote ““I don’t feel pressure. I apply it.” Justin Jefferson, Wide Receiver for the Minnesota Vikings @Mentally_Strong Tweet Quote
Sam Bishop has a decade of experience working with elite performing athletes and professional sports teams. His client base ranges from Premier League and Women’s Super League footballers, to Premiership rugby players, Professional Golfers and Cricket players.
Over the last 5 years, he has also worked as an Executive and Performance Psychology Coach adapting his performance coaching style from the sports fields to the boardroom. He regularly delivers performance psychology keynote talks and masterclasses to companies such as Hewlett Packard, Nestlé, Citibank and Microsoft.
In this episode, Cindra and Sam discuss:
- The #1 thing holding us back
- 3 key core principles of performance psychology
- How change is a personal journey
- What the best of the best do differently
With a Master’s Degree in Psychotherapy and accredited by the British Association of Counselling and Psychotherapy, let’s welcome Sam to the show!
HIGH PERFORMANCE MINDSET SHOWNOTES FOR THIS EPISODE
LEARN MORE ABOUT SAM
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In this episode, Dr. Cindra Kamphoff shares the history of the Impostor Syndrome, what to do when you experience it, and why many high achievers experience feelings of an impostor.
Power Phrase of the Week: “I believe in myself and my ability.”
Quote of the Week: “Believe you can and you’re halfway there” – Theodore Roosevelt
“I believe in myself and my ability.” @Mentally_Strong Tweet Quote “Believe you can and you’re halfway there” – Theodore Roosevelt @Mentally_Strong Tweet Quote
Are you dealing with any physical pain in your body?
Pain from an injury, an accident, an operation, or some type of physical trauma?
If so, you’re likely wondering if there’s a better, faster way to heal. Today, we’re going to talk about that better faster way with our guest, Garrett Salpeter.
Garrett is a nervous system expert. Using his formal training as an engineer and neuroscientist, Garrett has created a patented device called THE NEUBIE. This amazing invention is used by doctors, therapists, and professional sports teams around the world, including by over 3,100 professionals certified by Garrett and his team at NeuFit. He’s the best-selling author of the book The NeuFit Method and host of The Undercurrent Podcast.
In this episode, Garrett and Cindra talk about:
- How the brain’s main purpose is survival and what to do about it,
- Why it is important to treat the hardware of the body with a method addressing the body’s software,
- The applications of the nervous system for fitness and long-term health,
- And, what THE NEUBIE is all about.
LEARN MORE ABOUT DR. CINDRA
LEARN MORE ABOUT NEUFIT
BUY GARRETT’S BOOK ON AMAZON
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Limiting beliefs hold all of us back. They make you feel like you’re not enough in countless ways— smart enough, successful enough, or talented enough.
But these are just illusions. When we give into these lies, we fail to embrace our true strengths and value.
You must address your limiting beliefs because they hold you back.
Watch this week’s video and discover how to let go.
Remember, you are enough just as you are. You have the power to address and overcome these limiting beliefs.
You were meant to adapt and adjust. You were meant to be resilient and bounce back. You can get through anything you are going through right now! The key is to intentionally reframe your experience and remember resilience has been part of your history.
This Week’s Power Phrase: “I can see the opportunity in every difficulty.”
Quote of the Week: “Success is how high you bounce when you hit rock bottom.” – George S. Patton, US Military General
“I can see the opportunity in every difficulty.”@Mentally_Strong Tweet Quote “Success is how high you bounce when you hit rock bottom.” – George S. Patton, US Military General @Mentally_Strong Tweet Quote
Rob Dube is the co-author of Shine: 10 Disciplines for Maximizing Your Energy, Impact, and Inner Peace with Gino Wickman, the bestselling author of Traction. Rob is the cofounder of imageOne, Visionary and CEO of The 10 Disciplines for Managing and Maximizing Your Energy, and cofounder and podcast host of Entrepreneurial Leap. He is also the author of donothing and host of the Do Nothing retreat. Through his work, Rob challenges business leaders and entrepreneurs to look inward with mindfulness and meditation by sharing his own mindful leadership journey.
In this episode, Rob and Cindra talk about:
- The 10 Disciplines that lead to maximizing your energy and impact
- How outer success can take a toll on your inner experience
- How to write your 10-year vision and keep it in mind each day
- Why saying no and taking time off is important
- And, how to make decisions out of love over fear
LEARN MORE ABOUT DR. CINDRA
LEARN MORE ABOUT THE 10 DISCIPLINES
LEARN MORE ABOUT ROB
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To reduce overthinking, self-doubt, and fear – our inner limits – starts with self-awareness. Self-awareness includes understanding yourself, your emotions, and what drives you. Dr. Cindra challenges you this week to notice yourself – how are you feeling, what are you thinking about, and then use the PCR strategy to keep increasing your own awareness of yourself.
This Week’s Power Phrase: “I choose to lead the hardest person first—myself.”
Quote of the Week: “Everything that irritates us about others can lead us to an understanding of ourselves” – Psychologist Carl Jung
“I choose to lead the hardest person first—myself.”@Mentally_Strong Tweet Quote “Everything that irritates us about others can lead us to an understanding of ourselves” – Psychologist Carl Jung@Mentally_Strong Tweet Quote
Coach Kyle is a Video Marketing Therapist. No matter what he’s doing, he always finds himself talking someone off the ledge when it comes to how they show up online. He simplifies the process of creating videos and empowers people to recognize the significance of their unique voice. As an unwavering supporter, Kyle guides Realtors, Lenders, and other entrepreneurs in expanding their businesses organically through social media.
Kyle is an Amazon Best Selling Author of “Rethink Everything You Know About Social Media” and is the CEO of Content Compounding, Partner/Co-owner of The Collective Coaching and CEO of Hire Culture Virtual Assistants.
In this episode, Kyle and Cindra talk about:
- How social media can change your career
- How mindset is everything when it comes to social media
- The biggest mental hurdle you might have about social media and how you can overcome it
- Why story telling matters on social media and how you can tell a great story
- And, more best tips and tricks for social media
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LEARN MORE ABOUT KYLE
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In this week’s 5-minute episode, Dr. Cindra shares that failure is inevitable and when you define failure on your terms, you are able to see failure as an event, not who you are. You are able to keep pushing outside your comfort zone because that is how you learn and grow. Remember you want to fail. That means you are pushing yourself to be all you can be and stepping into your potential.
This Week’s Power Phrase: “I see failure and mistakes as opportunity to learn and grow.”
Quote of the Week: Zig Ziglar said it best, “Failure is an event, never a person; an attitude, not an outcome; a temporary inconvenience; a stepping stone. Our response to it determines just how helpful it can be.”
“I see failure and mistakes as opportunity to learn and grow.” @Mentally_Strong Tweet Quote“Failure is an event, never a person; an attitude, not an outcome; a temporary inconvenience; a stepping stone. Our response to it determines just how helpful it can be.” – Zig Ziglar @Mentally_Strong Tweet Quote
On our top-rated podcast, The High Performance Mindset, I’ve had the privilege of interviewing hundreds of experts.
One of my favorite questions is to ask them is, “What does failure mean to you?”
What’s wild is there’s not one single definition of failure. A best-selling author and a trailblazing pilot each have their own unique takes on failure.
And why does this matter? Because how we define failure shapes our ability to work through it.
I’ve have learned that failure isn’t something to fear, but a powerful tool for growth.
Watch this week’s video to define failure on your own terms, in a way that empowers you, not limits you.
Annie Hyman Pratt, Founder and CEO of Leading Edge Teams, is an integrative business expert with decades of distinctive experience. She has dedicated her career to providing, trusted, high-level executive consulting and training. Annie develops and leads change regarding a company’s business strategies, leadership, teams, and operations. She is a sought after C-Suite consultant for CEOs, CFOs, and COOs.
Annie is the author of “The People Part: Seven Agreements Entrepreneurs and Leaders Make to Build Teams, Accelerate Growth, and Banish Burnout for Good.”
In this episode, Annie and Cindra talk about:
- Her 7 Agreements
- The CCORE Empowered Process
- How to Build High-Trust Relationships
- Why it is important to “Recognize, Regulate, and Resolve”
- The ACE Agreement-Making Process
- And, new strategies for your Leadership Toolbox
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LEARN MORE ABOUT ANNIE
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In this episode, Dr. Kamphoff shares the 3Ps of Optimism and how you can use this concept to better your life. She also shared her tool called the Three OPP Strategy to get out of a pessimistic perspective and choose optimism.
This Week’s Power Phrase: “I choose optimism. I believe the best is yet to come!”
Quote of the Week: “Turn your obstacles into opportunities and your problems into possibilities.” – Roy T. Bennett
“I choose optimism. I believe the best is yet to come!”@Mentally_Strong Tweet Quote“Turn your obstacles into opportunities and your problems into possibilities.” – Roy T. Bennett @Mentally_Strong Tweet Quote
At the age of 7, our guest today was selling greeting cards door-to-door. By age 14, he owned a small international import business. By age 21, he was teaching at the University of Minnesota, and during the next 15 years, he was selected as the “Outstanding Faculty Member” by two different universities.
At age 36, our speaker retired from teaching and opened his own speaking, training, and executive coaching company. That position has allowed him to deliver more than 3000 programs around the world.
Of course, you may already be familiar with Dr. Zimmerman. You may have heard him speak at a conference, or perhaps you’ve seen him on Fox News, CNN, on the CBS Morning Show. And you may have read his books, several of which have become #1 best-sellers on Amazon.com.
In this episode, Alan and Cindra talk about the:
- The 12 Keys to Peak Performance and Extraordinary Relationships
- Why most people live smaller than they should be
- His LASTING acronym and how it can help you to be your best more often
- His 3 legged stool to help you understand your purpose more deeply
- And, his 8 parts of balance.
HIGH PERFORMANCE MINDSET SHOWNOTES FOR THIS EPISODE
LEARN MORE ABOUT DR. Z’S JOURNEY TO THE EXTRAORDINARY – Remember to use the code “CINDRA” for $100 Off
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The World’s Best choose courage instead of fear. They feel the fear, but don’t let it keep them from doing what they want to, have to, or were designed to do. As Jimmy Johnson, the coach who led the Dallas Cowboys to two consecutive Super Bowls, once said, “Do you want to be safe and good, or do you want to take a chance and be great?”
This Week’s Power Phrase: “I embrace my fear and choose courage.”
Quote of the Week: “Do the thing that you fear to do and keep on doing it…that is the quickest and surest way ever yet discovered to conquer your fear.” – Dale Carnegie (American author)
“I embrace my fear and choose courage.” @Mentally_Strong Tweet Quote“Do the thing that you fear to do and keep on doing it…that is the quickest and surest way ever yet discovered to conquer your fear.” – Dale Carnegie (American author) @Mentally_Strong Tweet Quote
Flying an airplane is a challenging activity, even in clear skies and perfect weather…
Now imagine you are flying a plane in combat. The enemy on the ground is trying to kill you by shooting down your plane. All while you are trying to save the lives of YOUR TEAM on the ground who are under attack. That’s exactly what Martha McSally did as an A-10 fighter pilot in the Air Force.
Martha’s life has been spent overcoming things like fear, self-doubt, trauma, adversity, and obstacles.
After arriving at the U.S. Air Force Academy for basic training at 18, she was told that it was against the law for women to become fighter pilots.
So what did she do? She decided that’s exactly what she would do and became the first woman in U.S. history to fly a fighter jet in combat!
Plus, she later became the 1st woman in U.S. history to command a fighter squadron….which meant, in combat, she was the first one in and the last one out! She deployed 6 times to the Middle East and Afghanistan, flying 325 combat hours, earning the bronze star and six air metals.
After serving our country for 26 years in the Air Force and retiring as a full Colonel, Martha was elected to Congress. She served 2 terms in the U.S. House of Representative and was appointed to the U.S. Senate after Senator John McCain’s passing. As you can imagine, she has had a front row seat, and been an active participant, in shaping the world we live in… always in service to others.
Now, Martha continues to serve by sharing her hard-learned life and leadership lessons through keynote speaking, online courses, and beyond.
In this episode, Martha and Cindra talk about the:
- The ways fear holds you back from your dreams
- How you can “Drop the Drag”
- How to intentionally shape your identity
- And, she openly shares how she has worked through trauma in her own life to help us understand how we can work through ours.
HIGH PERFORMANCE MINDSET SHOWNOTES FOR THIS EPISODE
LEARN MORE ABOUT THE YOU 3.0 RETREAT MARTHA IS HOSTING
MARTHA’S WEEKLY COACHING ON FACEBOOK
FOLLOW SIGN UP FOR THE FREE MENTAL BREAKTHROUGH CALL WITH CINDRA’S TEAM
TO LEARN MORE ABOUT THE MENTALLY STRONG INSTITUTE
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Every challenge you’ve faced has the potential to become a powerful catalyst for growth.
Authentic leaders recognize and reframe these difficult moments which are called your “crucibles.”
If you don’t reframe your past challenges, you risk feeling trapped by shame, guilt, and powerlessness. But by understanding your past, you can see how these experiences have shaped your present and future.
Watch this week’s video to learn how to rewrite your past to empower your future.
In this episode, Dr. Cindra shares how everyone has limiting beliefs that hold us back. We explore in this episode how to recognize your limiting beliefs and the steps to address your limiting beliefs.
This Week’s Power Phrase: “I choose powerful beliefs about my future.”
Quote of the Week: “If you accept a limiting belief, then it will become a truth for you.” – Louise Hay
“I choose powerful beliefs about my future.” @Mentally_Strong Tweet Quote“If you accept a limiting belief, then it will become a truth for you.” – Louise Hay @Mentally_Strong Tweet Quote
You are here because you want to be the best that you can be. You have high standards for yourself. You want to gain the competitive advantage.
That is what Lynne Jensen-Nelson is here today. After earning her master’s degree, she rose through the ranks from front line sales to corporate executive leadership.
Now through her skills in keynote speaking, workshops, and business strategy, Lynne transfers key lessons learned from years of experience to organizations across the country.
Lynne founded Conversion-omics Speakers & Consultants to help organizations create true competitive advantage.
Today this company has grown to 90+ professional speakers and consultants who are experts in virtually all topic areas. Her goal is to bring the INFORMATION, MOTIVATION, and INSPIRATION you need to take your event or project to the next level.
In this episode, Lynne and Cindra talk about the:
- 4 components of Competitive Advantage
- How to consider your mindset, skillset, and toolset to gain a competitive advantage
- The 4 P’s of Confidence
- The 2 most important things you should do for those you work with
- And, language to use and language to lose
HIGH PERFORMANCE MINDSET SHOWNOTES FOR THIS EPISODE
LEARN MORE ABOUT LYNNE AND CONVERSION-OMICS HERE
FOLLOW SIGN UP FOR THE FREE MENTAL BREAKTHROUGH CALL WITH CINDRA’S TEAM
TO LEARN MORE ABOUT THE MENTALLY STRONG INSTITUTE
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Have you ever considered the power of your own story? Your understanding of your story creates your reality about your life.
Your story is made up of countless moments, challenges, and victories.
But here’s the thing – owning your story isn’t just about acknowledging the good parts. It’s about making sense of the times you’ve struggled and became stronger because of it.
This week we dive into why your story matters and how OWNING your story can not only change your life but also inspire those around you.
Watch this week’s video to learn why your story is your greatest asset to connect, inspire, and lead.
As a high achiever, it is good to strive for success and have high expectations. These high standards keep you going, striving to be your best. When you strive to be your best, you help others around you do the same. But perfection is unattainable. Instead, consider striving for excellence instead and Dr. Cindra shares with us how to do just that.
This Week’s Power Phrase: “I am kind to myself when things don’t go perfectly moving on quickly to protect my confidence.”
Quote of the Week: “At the root of perfectionism isn’t really about a deep love for being meticulous. It’s about fear. Fear of making a mistake. Fear of disappointing others. Fear of failure.” – Michael Law
“I am kind to myself when things don’t go perfectly moving on quickly to protect my confidence.”@Mentally_Strong Tweet Quote“At the root of perfectionism isn’t really about a deep love for being meticulous. It’s about fear. Fear of making a mistake. Fear of disappointing others. Fear of failure.” – Michael Law @Mentally_Strong Tweet Quote
Finding your flow zone starts with your mind and channeling your focus to the present moment. Your mind is a muscle; it takes daily practice to master it. Flow is like a muscle—the more you train and experience flow. In this episode, Dr. Kamphoff shares the 3 barriers that get in the way of flow for you.
This Week’s Power Phrase: “My mind is like a muscle. I train my mind to increase my chances of finding flow.”
Quote of the Week: “Flow is being completely involved in the activity for its own sake. The ego falls away. Time flies.” – Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi
“My mind is like a muscle. I train my mind to increase my chances of finding flow.”@Mentally_Strong Tweet Quote “Flow is being completely involved in the activity for its own sake. The ego falls away. Time flies.” – Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi @Mentally_Strong Tweet Quote
You’re here because high performance is one of your mindsets. You’re already good at what you do and you know there’s still more that you can do on your journey both personally and professionally. One of the most famous high performers in the world of business and finance is Warren Buffett. He is ranked as the number one investor of all times and is now one of the world’s richest men. Warren said, “You can improve your value by 50% just by learning communication skills and public speaking.”
That’s why I wanted you to meet our special guest, Joel Weldon. Joel is my personal speaking skills coach and a Hall of Fame professional speaker, He is the creator of the Ultimate Speaking System for entrepreneurs and business owners as well as executives to speak even more effectively by following one of the most important mindsets ordinary speakers just don’t have.
If you rated yourself using a 1 to 10 scale on your ability to speak in front of a group, made up of your ideal audience members, what would that number be right now? It can be anywhere from one which would mean, I’m terrified to speak and I hate it to 10 which would be, I love to speak and I’m amazing at it.
Wherever you are on that scale, the mindset that Joel is going to share with you can help you be an even better speaker and communicator. Joel has been paid to speak at over 3,000 events and has personally coached well over 10,000 speakers. He is considered one of the highest performing speakers and speaking skill coaches in America. I have seen how he can turn an ordinary presentation into an extraordinary one. You will too.
In this episode, Joel and Cindra discuss:
- How to start and end a presentation or speech
- His NFV Formula to connect with the audience
- How ordinary speakers get it wrong
- How to choose the best story to tell
- And, how to start a story
HIGH PERFORMANCE MINDSET SHOWNOTES FOR THIS EPISODE
LEARN MORE ABOUT JOEL WELDON AND HIS ULTIMATE SPEAKING SYSTEM
FOLLOW SIGN UP FOR THE FREE MENTAL BREAKTHROUGH CALL WITH CINDRA’S TEAM
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Your big dreams allow you to step into your own unique potential. And when building your career and pushing forward, it’s easy to spend too much time thinking about and planning the future. In this episode, Dr. Cindra shares when to focus on the process vs. your destination, or the outcome.
This Week’s Power Phrase: “I take my goals on step at a time focused on the process.”
Quote of the Week: “If you focus on the process and not the outcome, you’ll have better results.” – Joe Madden
“I take my goals on step at a time focused on the process.” @Mentally_Strong Tweet Quote “If you focus on the process and not the outcome, you’ll have better results.” – Joe Madden @Mentally_Strong Tweet Quote
Maura Nevel Thomas is an award-winning international speaker, trainer, and an author on individual and corporate productivity and work-life balance, and one of the most widely-cited authority on attention management.
Maura’s clients include the likes of Google, Old Navy, L’Oréal, and NASA. She is a TEDx speaker, and author of six books on the topics of attention management and personal and organizational productivity. She has columns in Forbes and Harvard Business Review.
Maura earned an MBA from the University of Massachusetts and has studied the field of productivity all over the world for more than two decades.
In this episode, Cindra and Maura discuss:
- How productivity advice gets it wrong
- Her Empowered Productivity System
- 10 signs that you need to master attention management
- When multi-tasking works and doesn’t work
- And, her communication guidelines for leaders
HIGH PERFORMANCE MINDSET SHOWNOTES FOR THIS EPISODE
LEARN MORE ABOUT LAURA
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You can use the ABC method to increase my self-awareness and change my thoughts, emotions, and actions when needed. Consider what people or situations push your buttons? What can you do to stay in control in those situations? When you feel pressure or stress, you can pay attention to what led you to feel that way? In this episode, Dr. Kamphoff talks about how to increase your self-awareness and why it is important to your performance.
This Week’s Power Phrase: “I master myself to master my life.”
Quote of the Week: “There are three things extremely hard: steel, a diamond, and to know one’s self.” – Benjamin Franklin
“I master myself to master my life.” @Mentally_Strong Tweet Quote“There are three things extremely hard: steel, a diamond, and to know one’s self.” – Benjamin Franklin @Mentally_Strong Tweet Quote
When we mindfully and purposefully practice authenticity, we invite peace, gratitude, and happiness into our lives, and this impacts our performance. In this episode, Dr. Kamphoff shares 4 ways to be an authentic leader. To be successful in your career, you must be yourself.
This Week’s Power Phrase: “The world needs me and my gifts. I will show my authentic self to the world through my leadership.”
Quote of the Week: “Authenticity is the daily practice of letting go of who we think we’re supposed to be and embracing who we are.” —Brené Brown, researcher and author
“The world needs me and my gifts. I will show my authentic self to the world through my leadership.” @Mentally_Strong Tweet Quote “Authenticity is the daily practice of letting go of who we think we’re supposed to be and embracing who we are.” — Brené Brown, researcher and author @Mentally_Strong Tweet Quote
As Founder/CEO of the Intrigue Agency, and the Tongue Fu! Training Institute, Sam helps people create respectful, intriguing, proactive communications that are a win for all involved.
Sam’s 3 TEDx talks and 10 books – including Tongue Fu!, POP!, Talking on Eggshells, SOMEDAY is Not a Day in the Week – have been featured in NY Times, Fast Company, Forbes, Readers Digest, TED.com, NPR.
Sam’s IKIGAI – and one of her great joys – is helping people crystallize a meaningful message/mission that puts the light on in their eyes and creates a rising-tide LEGACY that adds value for all involved.
In this episode, Cindra and Sam discuss:
- “Words to Lose, and Word to Use”
- Her AIR acronym
- What to do when you disagree with someone
- Tools to deescalate a situation
- And, why her PLAN tool can help you prepare for any conversation
HIGH PERFORMANCE MINDSET SHOWNOTES FOR THIS EPISODE
LEARN MORE ABOUT SAM
FOLLOW SIGN UP FOR THE FREE MENTAL BREAKTHROUGH CALL WITH CINDRA’S TEAM
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Love the show? Rate and review the show for Cindra to mention you on the next episode.
Timestamps:Introduction to Sam Horn: 00:00:02-00:00:14
Discovering the IKEA Guy: 00:00:47-00:00:58
The Importance of Making Messages Repeatable: 00:03:13-00:03:24
Creating Sticky Communication: 00:03:57-00:04:07
The Power of Alliteration: 00:06:05-00:06:15
Utilizing Iambic Meter: 00:06:47-00:06:57
The Significance of Rhyme: 00:08:01-00:08:11
Words to Lose and Words to Use: 00:17:04-00:17:14
Using the AIR Concept: 00:05:16-00:05:26
Implementing the Plan Concept: 00:31:25-00:31:35
Handling Challenging Conversations: 00:38:44-00:38:55
Introducing the Age Agency Concept: 00:44:11-00:44:22
Working with Sam Horn: 00:45:37-00:45:47
Leading yourself can be very difficult because our brain is hardwired to see what is missing. Instead, you can lead yourself to your own personal vision by remembering:
- What you think about yourself, you become.
- Thoughts only have power if you believe them.
- You can act independent of how you feel.
Chance thinking doesn’t lead to success – instead, make time each day to master your thoughts and lead yourself even more deliberately.
This Week’s Power Phrase: “I lead myself today.”
Quote of the Week: “Work harder on yourself than you do your job.” — Jim Rohn
“I lead myself today.” @Mentally_Strong Tweet Quote “Work harder on yourself than you do your job.” — Jim Rohn @Mentally_Strong Tweet Quote
Allistair McCaw is recognized as one of the world’s leading figures on team culture, leadership, and mindset. For over 25 years, he has consulted and worked with numerous Olympians, Grand Slam Champions, Fortune 500 companies and NCAA Colleges including LSU, SMU, Duke, and the University of Minnesota.
An author of 7 best-selling books and a keynote speaker, Allistair consults and mentors leaders, coaches, teams and organizations. A 29x marathon finisher and former 5-time World Championship competitor in the sport of Duathlon, Allistair resides in Florida.
In this episode, Cindra and Allistair discuss:
- 7 Types of People You Should Surround Yourself With
- The 90/9 Rule
- 3 Steps to Achievement
- The Power of Your Story
- And, 10 Things You Should Let Go Of
HIGH PERFORMANCE MINDSET SHOWNOTES FOR THIS EPISODE
LEARN MORE ABOUT ALLISTAIR
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Timestamps:00:00:03 – Introduction to Alistair McCaw and his Books
00:05:30 – Alistair McCaw’s Passion for Mindset Work
00:10:04 – Discussion on the Importance of Surrounding Yourself with the Right People
00:21:54 – The 90/9 Rule for Building and Losing Habits
00:25:34 – Letting Go of Negative Habits and Thoughts
00:36:06 – Alistair McCaw’s List of 10 Things to Let Go Of
00:42:57 – Alistair McCaw’s Process for Letting Go of Negative Habits
00:45:57 – Three Steps to Achievement: What I Want, What I Need to Do, Why It Matters
Confidence is a choice you make daily. Your belief and trust in your ability is your choice. Don’t overthink the feeling of confidence – you might feel nervous and unconfident when you are trying something new. Keep building the foundational skill of confidence. Intentionally decide today to take control of your confidence. Believe and trust that you can!
This Week’s Power Phrase: “I choose confidence today!”
Quote of the Week: “You don’t become what you want, you become what you believe.” – Oprah
“I choose confidence today!” @Mentally_Strong Tweet Quote “You don’t become what you want, you become what you believe.” – Oprah @Mentally_Strong Tweet Quote
Much of our happiness can be changed by engaging in daily, intentional activities that impact how we act and think. In fact, happiness also comes from the relationships we develop. This week be even more deliberate about building relationships and being present in them.
This Week’s Power Phrase: “I choose happiness by building relationships around me.”
Quote of the Week: “Happiness is not the goal…it’s a by product of a life well-lived.” – Elenor Roosevelt
“I choose happiness by building relationships around me.” @Mentally_Strong Tweet Quote “Happiness is not the goal…it’s a by product of a life well-lived.” – Elenor Roosevelt @Mentally_Strong Tweet Quote
You can never outperform your self-image. Your self-image is your view of yourself. Be careful what you say to yourself about yourself. To level of your self-image, consider the beliefs you want to hold about yourself to reach all of your goals and dreams.
This Week’s Power Phrase: “I talk to myself powerfully today.”
Quote of the Week: “People are never able to outperform their self-image.” – John Maxwell
“I talk to myself powerfully today.” @Mentally_Strong Tweet Quote “People are never able to outperform their self-image.” – John Maxwell @Mentally_Strong Tweet Quote
Dr. Nick Holton is a Co-Founder of The Antifragile Academy whose work focuses on helping individuals, teams, businesses and organizations become better versions of themselves through the application of the cutting-edge science of human flourishing – a synergistic development of both peak performance and overall well-being and fulfillment.
He also runs a podcast alongside the Human Flourishing Program at Harvard. Nick has also directed multiple large scale implementation projects oriented toward human flourishing for schools and organizations around the globe, and has delivered talks and trainings across the US, Europe, India, Hong Kong, Australia, Uganda, Singapore, Mexico, and South America.
Dr. Adam Wright is a Co-Founder of The Antifragile Academy who is a high-performance and executive coach, consultant, and educator who supports a broad range of elite performers whose craft demands their absolute best in volatile, high-stakes environments.
He consults with clients in such disparate performance arenas as the front office of the NFL, MLB, the European PGA, MLS, Hollywood, and Wall Street. As a practitioner-scientist, Adam draws from decades of practical experience as a coach and athlete, as well as lessons learned as a researcher and professor.
Adam currently serves as Major League Mental Performance Consultant for the Washington Nationals.
In this episode, Cindra, Nick and Adam discuss:
- What does it mean to be antifragile
- 4 Thinking traps that get in our way of being antifragile
- Their “Top Down” and “Bottom Up” approach
- How to create an antifragile environment in sport, work and at home
HIGH PERFORMANCE MINDSET SHOWNOTES FOR THIS EPISODE
TO LEARN MORE ABOUT THE ANTIFRAGILE ACADEMY
FOLLOW SIGN UP FOR THE FREE MENTAL BREAKTHROUGH CALL WITH CINDRA’S TEAM
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Timestamps:00:00:00 – Introduction to Antifragility
00:05:30 – Fragile, Resilient, and Antifragile: Understanding the Spectrum
00:09:22 – The Inception of the Anti-Fragile Academy
00:11:08 – Addressing Mental Health Issues in Young Athletes
00:13:35 – The Difference Between Grit and Antifragility
00:15:19 – Thinking Traps and Antifragility
00:17:50 – Building an Antifragile Environment
00:19:31 – The Importance of Flow State in Antifragility
00:22:06 – The Role of Environment in Antifragility
00:25:02 – Strategies for Creating an Antifragile Environment
00:37:34 – The Connection Between Flow State and Antifragility
00:42:06 – Pursuing Excellence Through Antifragility
00:44:06 – How to Engage with the Anti-Fragile Academy
Today on the podcast we talk about not taking things personally. When you decide to protect yourself and not take things personally, you avoid needless suffering. You cannot be hurt by others. Your anger, irritation, jealousy, frustration, and conflicts with others lessen. You are happier and at your best more often. Now, does that sound good?
Power Phrase this Week: “I care what I think about myself more than what other people think of me.”
Quote of the Week: “Not taking things personally is a superpower.” – James Clear
“I care what I think about myself more than what other people think of me.” @Mentally_Strong Tweet Quote“Not taking things personally is a superpower.” – James Clear @Mentally_Strong Tweet Quote
In this episode, Cindra talks about the power and benefits of optimism. She also describes a strategy to help us choose optimism called the Three OPP Strategy. The Three OPP Strategy helps you look at the glass as half-full, not half-empty, and continue to see the opportunities in the difficulties, setbacks, and adversity. This Week’s Power…
Jack Stahlmann’s entertaining and informative presentations are built around his experiences in Los Angeles as an actor, producer, director — and of course, a waiter.
In Hollywood, he launched his own production company which created several films that enjoyed international success and was an Assistant Director for the Margaret Cho stand-up show, Cho Revolution.
As an actor, his shining moment came in a co-star role on the CBS drama Cold Case, where he played a wimpy park ranger. He also appeared briefly – very briefly – on Days of Our Lives and several commercials.
Jack has been a business and pop culture contributor to The Huffington Post and currently resides in St. Paul, Minnesota.
In this episode, Jack and Cindra talk about:
- What Jack means by the “Intangible It”
- His story about meeting George Clooney
- What he means by the “Upside”
- And strategies to find the “Upside” more often
HIGH PERFORMANCE MINDSET SHOWNOTES FOR THIS EPISODE: www.cindrakamphoff.com/563
FOLLOW CINDRA ON INSTAGRAM: https://www.instagram.com/cindrakamphoff/
TO FIND MORE INFORMATION ABOUT JACK: Don’t Flinch Guy | Informative and educational presentations (dontflinchguy.com)
FOLLOW CINDRA ON TWITTER: https://twitter.com/mentally_strong
Love the show? Rate and review the show for Cindra to mention you on the next episode: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/high-performance-mindset-learn-from-world-class-leaders/id1034819901
http://thehighperformancemindset.com/
“Find one thing you want to change, and then within that one thing, find just one thing that you can do every day to drive that change and see, what happens… 5 swings with a sharp axe to a tree every day, I mean eventually that tree is going to fall.” -Jack Stahlman@Mentally_Strong Tweet Quote “They say he (George Clooney) makes you feel like the most important person in the room,,, and if you’re regularly making people feel that way, you eventually become the most important person in the room.” -Jack Stahlman @Mentally_Strong Tweet QuoteCindra Kamphoff: Welcome to the High Performance Mindset. I’m excited to have Jack Stahlman here today on the podcast… I think we’re going to laugh and have some fun times today, Jack, because my stomach already hurts from smiling and laughing with you.
Jack Stahlmann: Well, I wasted all our good material off air here, so it’s all down hill from here, but glad to be here. Thank you for having me Cindra.
Cindra Kamphoff: You bet! I am fellow speaker, and I have seen you speak multiple times. I was trying to kind of think yesterday, as we are preparing for this, how many times I’ve heard you and I don’t know… 5, 6, 7, maybe. Could it be…
Jack Stahlmann: Yeah, maybe.
Cindra Kamphoff: …something like that?
Jack Stahlmann: We have had some amazing crossover which is interesting in our world because it doesn’t always work that way. We’re often ships passing in the night. So, it’s nice that… we each can kind of talk about what we both, you know, sort of speak on with some with some knowledge.
Cindra Kamphoff: So that’s good, exactly. Exactly.. and so, for those people who are just listening, and they haven’t heard you speak before. Tell us a little bit about what you’re most passionate about and what you’re doing now.
Jack Stahlmann: Yeah. So, you know, kind of my whole shtick is… in a former life I used to be an actor, a producer, a waiter… excuse me, and there’s something in my throat there… I was a waiter for a little bit in Los Angeles, and I learned these lessons that… I think I learned them the hard way, right? I learned these lessons the hard way… that I deliver to audiences in a really light and fun way. And so, what I did is I sort of just… when I started my career. I sort of was like, okay, I have these weird encounter stories with Arnold Schwarzenegger and with George, Clooney…
Cindra Kamphoff: Exactly.
Jack Stahlmann: Winnie Cooper from the Wonder Years… and I’m like, these are really interesting stories at the bar… how could… how can I, you know, kind of make them interesting at the workplace, and I realized that in each one of them there was… some sort of message, and some sort of moral. And so, I created my first sort of “baby”, and still sort of my… to you sports analogies, I think that’s safe here in this…
Cindra Kamphoff: Yes you know it.
Jack Stahlmann: My fast ball is the intangible it… and it’s the it factors that a movie star has. You can’t quite put your finger on what that is… I sort of break it down for audiences and several steps, and we have a lot of fun along the way. So, my whole… formula is that I hope it’s really fun and light and so, people leave smiling, laughing, and then… walk up the door and get a little upset like, hey, that that guy just fooled me because I just learned something that I can, you know, use in terms of interpersonal relationships at the workplace and beyond. And so… that’s kind of how I came to be, and now I have a couple of other topics that I’ve sprinkled in, but that’s truly my baby, and really, with all… everything I do, I always make sure that the personal story is in there, and a lot of the Hollywood stories… because people I’ve noticed just kind of want to hear them, you know, that happens.
Cindra Kamphoff: Yeah, I want to hear them, and I think that’s what we’re going to dive into today is like this, “invisible it”. What that actually is, we’re also going to talk about the upside, which is one of your keynotes. So, we’re going to dive into that, and I’m just curious about… you know, as I think about your time in Hollywood. Gosh! How much of a grind that can be, and how competitive it is, and how difficult it might be from a mindset perspective… to believe that you deserve to be there and get some of these roles that you’ve been in… some commercials and cold case, for example… gosh! What mindset do you think it takes to be really successful there?
Jack Stahlmann: Well, I think that’s a great… you know, I feel like, if you came into my life 20 years ago, I might have had a more successful acting career, because it really… it was a grind, and ultimately that’s why I stepped away and without… well, maybe just a small tinge of bitterness, but I would say less bitterness than most people walk away from, because I did get the opportunity to do a few things. I acted in some stuff that people know is on TV.
Cindra Kamphoff: I know! Day of Our Lives, my mother-in-law is going to be like… they still record those and watch them on… their VCR!
Jack Stahlmann: Yeah, no, that one is big… I tell you what, you know, because now I’m a little bit doughier… I’m older now in my forties, and it’s funny when that line and my intro gets a little “ooo” I feel like the audience thinks I’m going to be some plastic hunk… and then I get up there and I’m just this average guy. But that is one where… when I was on it, so many friends came out of the woodwork, male and female alike where I was just like, oh, you watch that, you know… they’re kind of busted watching it.
Cindra Kamphoff: Yeah, yeah. Well, watching a soap opera.
Jack Stahlmann: Yeah, watching a soap… but that was really the launching point for me, in my acting career. I kind of… a weird story, I don’t tell this one on stage, but I was working at Sears big time job at $8 an hour at Sears and in Burbank, and this gentleman came in with a complicated return. He was returning a phone like, not a smartphone, this was before that… I had to call like the headquarters, and every salesperson hates returns because it doesn’t help your, you know, bottom line… and but I… it worked out really well for me, his wife was there, and at the end of this conversation, where I’m helping him, his wife says, “oh, Roy, give him your card”, and it was Roy Steinberg, the executive producer of Days of Our Lives.
Cindra Kamphoff: Oh, my God! That is not how you got on Days of Our Lives!
Jack Stahlmann: That’s how I got on Days of Our Lives.
Cindra Kamphoff: That’s amazing!
Jack Stahlmann: Yeah, it just, you know, a nice lesson in, you never know who you’re talking to, you never know what the benefit can be. So, you almost always want to be on you’re A-game, or at least always be a nice person, right?
Cindra Kamphoff: Yeah.
Jack Stahlmann: You just never know the person who can… really help you out.
Cindra Kamphoff: And give you opportunities, right?
Jack Stahlmann: And that’s going on… so, he put me in as an extra, you know it’s just a background person, and then… but in soaps, it’s kind of weird, in soaps it’s a good thing to be an extra. It’s first of all, it’s Union… it pays really well, and they promote from within. And so, I did get a speaking line and quotes not much of one, but if that’s what got me my union cards and everything else, and then fast forward, 15 years later, I’m writing a book with a co-writer, and we decided we wanted to call it Days of Our Work Lives.
Cindra Kamphoff: That’s awesome.
Jack Stahlmann: So, I called him up… I called Roy up and I said, first of all, do you think we can use this title… I’m pretty sure we’re safe under parody law. Second, will you write the introduction? And he did so.
Cindra Kamphoff: That’s amazing.
Jack Stahlmann: Really fun relationship I’ve had with him. He’s now out of the soap opera business he’s now doing… theater out east summer stock kind of stuff just kind of a passion project for him. So, it’s been really fun to stay in touch, but that’s… was part of it, you know, and it just… sometimes it goes your way, sometimes it doesn’t. Lots of failed auditions out there in LA.
Cindra Kamphoff: Yeah, yeah.
Jack Stahlmann: Took me a couple of years before that… before you become know to that.
Cindra Kamphoff: Sure.
Jack Stahlmann: … but fast forwarding that into the real world. I have no problem on a cold call having somebody tell me, “no”, because that’s… I’ve heard “no” my whole life as an actor… it’s kind of nice, you never really know why it’s a no. You could be 2 inches too short, 2 inches too tall, your hair color could be wrong – it might have nothing to do with how much your talent is. So, you just start to learn how to take those things… but I will say, after 5 years, I could see that I wasn’t going to be the next Brad Pitt, I was going to be this character/actor, and I just… I did kind of lose the passion but the good news for me is that’s… I was in tune with that I think a lot of people out there are not, and then they just end up being, you know. 50/60-years-old, doing something they don’t want to do, you know, whether that be in casting, or you know, they wanted to be an actor, and it didn’t quite work. And you know it was… almost a relief for me to be like, you know what – I don’t want to do this anymore. And it was… you know, a whole bunch of a life reset to figure out what it is I did want to do, but it was nice… it was also nice to be just done and walk away with no regrets.
Cindra Kamphoff: Well what I’m hearing is just the process of becoming an actor/actress is, you know, so much resilience. And I think about how we all need lessons about moving on and failure… and how are we making sense of failure, and do we believe that it’s personal, right? And what I heard you say is… I might be 2 inches just too short or too tall or whatever… and so, I mean, I think when we take failure really, personally that’s when it really does impact our self-esteem and our confidence. And really, you know… and negatively impacts our performance in the long run and in the short term.
Jack Stahlmann: Oh totally, you know, and I even… I talk a little bit of this on stage, once in a while I try to sprinkle it in… that I’m very much a process/ goals guy, not a results/goals guy.
Cindra Kamphoff: Good.
Jack Stahlmann: The difference in my mind is… the process is, I need to make X amount of phone calls today to get the sale, all right… you know, whatever it is in your life. You know, what’s the task that you have to do, right? So, I’m kind of addicted to… I have a CRM, and I’m addicted to like getting those tasks done as quickly as I can.
Cindra Kamphoff: Cool.
Jack Stahlmann: Because that’s the goal, the result… will follow if the process is correct, right?
Cindra Kamphoff: Right.
Jack Stahlmann: So that’s different in every field, I don’t want to pretend to be a process expert, but from a mindset, you know that way… you’re not really down in the dumps if you didn’t book a a gig today, or if you didn’t, you know, if you’re in the interview process and you didn’t get that job. So many reasons that are outside of your control, where, if you are doing the process right. It still may not have mattered… you may have been the most qualified for that job, but the bosses, you know… applied, or whatever happened, or you know, one that’s crazy to me the more curtains I look behind in corporate America, and it does sort of make sense… sometimes people, if they’re looking for a promotion, they don’t get it. It’s because they’re too valuable at their current role.
Cindra Kamphoff: Sure.
Jack Stahlmann: And that… you know, and so, the employer is thinking kind of selfishly like… I need this person in that role. So… a million reasons that things can’t go your way.
Cindra Kamphoff: Yeah, yeah.
Jack Stahlmann: And way easier said than done, but to remind yourself like, well did I do everything that I can do? And how can I make an adjustment from there?
Cindra Kamphoff: Yeah, awesome lesson… and when you look at the research and high-performance, process focus is more… is more valuable than outcome focus. And so many times we attach our… our own value to the outcome – like I am a terrible blank because I didn’t get blank, right? And really, so many things are outside of our control when it’s related to the outcome. So, I think your message is really on point there. Let’s dive into the “intangible it”, and maybe start off with what does that actually mean?
Jack Stahlmann: Well, I like to, you know it all kind of the whole episode of the intangible. It… the whole presentation has a fulcrum point around an encounter I had with George Clooney, which I was with him for 13 seconds. 1, 3, 13 seconds with George Clooney.
Cindra Kamphoff: You got to tell us about it, because I’ve heard it, and I want to hear it again.
Jack Stahlmann: Okay. Well, let me get on stage really quickly…
Cindra Kamphoff: Okay, perfect.
Jack Stahlmann: So I was driving in in Burbank, California, getting off a little exit ramp. It was a little too laner, you know, one lane going left, one lane going right, and it was a a red light, I’m trying to take a left. And up alongside me in a convertible drove up, you know, George Clooney… and he was looking all Clooney, he was looking great. And yes, listen…
Cindra Kamphoff: Sexiest man of the year, 19 whatever.
Jack Stahlmann: Yeah, a couple of times wasn’t even?
Cindra Kamphoff: Yeah.
Jack Stahlmann: Like… I’m a happily married man, but even my wife knows a small piece of my heart drove off in that car that day with George… so, you know, I’m sitting there. And I’m like, it’s George Clooney. So I decide, you know, he’s… I’m talking on the cell phone with my mom, and just I’m like really peaking over at him, right? And I decided this isn’t good enough, so I… lower my window to share the same air as George, right? I want to just share that air and I mean I’d drive in a 2001 Saturn, if you’ve ever been in one of those you know that nothing on it is quiet, right? So when the window… I tried to like lower the window right, and when the window went down, it just sounded like a cat dying right? Just meow… and then, like the… it got jammed a little bit, and George looks at me… and he goes, who you talking to? And I said, “I’m talking to my mom, telling her I’m looking at you.” And he just smiles at me, and he says, “say hello to Mom for me”, and then he drove off.
Cindra Kamphoff: That’s awesome.
Jack Stahlmann: And that was it… you know, there was nothing really to it, but I even remember at the moment having this sort of thought like being a little depressed, almost… because I felt so giddy, you know, and then it like, slammed it really quick because I realized… something I shouldn’t… I should have known that George Clooney was cooler than me. But when you’re around it, when you see that little, just “it” thing. Just a little quick quip is all it took for him to be, you know, engaged in the moment. And I realized I really wanted that, you know, not just necessarily as an actor, but as like a human. How do you… what is that? And so, I I’ll start with this George Clinton story for audiences, and then I’ll take him back a step, and I’ll say I’m going to tell you a bunch of celebrity stories, but I want you at this moment to think of somebody who has “it” for you. That, like that thing you can’t describe that like magical, and it’s… a little bit different for everybody, I’m sure, but we all have these people that like we just like to be around, right? They just have this engaging quality. And so, I imagine… think of that person in your mind, and then imagine, you know, having that skill with everybody you encounter in your life, you know? Can you… can you bottle this? And so, I step them through me going to my spacious 200 square foot apartment, doing my soul searching about what it is, and then in, you know… depending on the length of my presentation, a little inside trick here. It has multiple steps… 4 and a half is what I’ve landed on is really the… sweet spot of what that magical “it” thing can be, and that’s what we talk about for a while.
Cindra Kamphoff: That’s fun.
Jack Stahlmann: And we talk about that for while – what is it that people have, that we want? Cindra Kamphoff: Yeah.
Jack Stahlmann: And yeah, I can oversell it. I can’t, I won’t promise that after our hour together you’ll be the next George Clooney, that ship has sailed for me, but you could be George Clooney to someone, right?
Cindra Kamphoff: Yeah, cool.
Jack Stahlmann: So, it’s a nice thing whether you’re customer facing every single day, or even if you’re in the back room counting beans, you still have to interact with people. And having that, “it” thing makes your life a little bit easier, because people want to work with you, and they’ll be a little nicer to you if they like you, and not have that whole thing. So that’s… where we landed with the intangible “it”.
Cindra Kamphoff: That’s awesome. Well, when you ask that question… well when you asked it for us, I thought about me, you know, what does this person who has the “it” factor have? And I think they have presence, I think they also have fascination, like, I’m just fascinated by them like I’m intrigued.
Jack Stahlmann: Mm, I like that.
Cindra Kamphoff: And I like watching what they’re doing, and how they’re interacting, and like, I’m learning like… so, there’s a lot of like intrigue when I think about someone who has the “it” factor, and for some reason I’m thinking about speakers that I know, who I just want to keep watching. You know, like, what are they going to do next? Or how are they going to interact with people offstage, right? So tell us… can you share with us the 4 steps, 4 and a half? We can’t forget the half.
Jack Stahlmann: Sure, well it’s funny… it’s interesting that you have hit on a couple of them…
Cindra Kamphoff: Oh, cool.
Jack Stahlmann: …as you’ve been talking here, because presence I really like to call it the gift… and what I’ve learned in talking to people through the years, everybody I’ve encountered who has had an encounter with George Clooney says the same thing about George Clooney. They say he makes you feel like the most important person in the room… and if you’re regularly making people feel that way, you eventually become the most important person in the room, because people just want that… they want to be engaged in that. And what’s great about it is, it doesn’t take like a ton of time, but George Clooney took 13 seconds… you know, he could have just waved, he could have done nothing, but for 13 seconds I was the most important… and he was locked in, and what he was doing. So, presence exactly what you’re talking about, and we can accomplish that in very, very simple ways in our workplaces, just in terms of having a thank you note, or having a unique way to give someone a promotion. I tell a story sometimes about a… I was at a company, and the gal across the table was telling me she was, she was my point person, you know, I like to at least hear a little bit about the company before I put my foot in my mouth in front of an audience, right? Now this is the day before I was going to speak, and
she was talking about their culture, and sometimes… that’s a warning sign for me in my earballs…
Cindra Kamphoff: Sure.
Jack Stahlmann: When I hear people say the word culture a lot, because this isn’t always true, but sometimes… you know, people just say that word over and over again to fake it till they make it. I feel like a lot of companies don’t need to say it. It’s not necessarily a hard and fast rule, but it just is interesting to me when I hear it. And so, anyway, I kind of called her on, I said, “well, what are you doing to drive your culture?” And she said, “well, can you stick around a second?” I like, “yeah”… she goes, “Great. We’re going to promote Robbie today, and you’re going to be there, and I’m like, “Oh, okay, so it’s like going to be you, me and Robbie in the office and I’m just going to give him a thumbs up like good dude, great job.” She’s like, “no, we do… we do it differently every time”, so, this kind of this company’s MO… is that they do a different way of promoting people from within… and so, we go into this big conference room, and she points out who Robbie is, so I’m looking at this guy, and he’s a skinny kid in his twenties… and she’s like, “yeah, he’s got kind of a a tough exterior, but he’s got a heart of gold, and he’s great worker, and we’re going to promote him”… okay great, fine whatever, we’ll see how this goes. And she gets up in front of the room… and, by the way, this pre-COVID, I think that’s an important detail here. She gets up in in front of the room and says, “thank you everybody for coming to this last-minute training session”, which, of course, was all a ruse… you know, she just set this whole thing up. She goes, “before we get to that, though, I want to take a minute to acknowledge Robbie” and then the screen drops down, and she goes, “but rather than take my word for it, I thought there were some people who might have a greater impact”.
Cindra Kamphoff: Wow.
Jack Stahlmann: And again pre-COVID, his sister, 7 states away… gets to make the announcement that congratulations Robbie, on your promotion, and then the camera, Robbie’s twin nieces with the message, and then it cut to Robbie’s mom, who said, “I’m so proud of you”, ” and then told a pretty embarrassing story about Robbie, and it was a great moment, you know, it was really fun…
Cindra Kamphoff: Yeah.
Jack Stahlmann: And I look over at Robbie, this tough guy, and he was like… he was a puddle. Just crying, sobbing because for that moment… and this cost this company nothing, he was the most important person in the room. And so, it’s just one of those things where 100% presence being there being locked in with people making people feel special in just small little ways doesn’t have to be a a big thing. And then…
Cindra Kamphoff: Yeah, what a great… hold on, time-out. That was awesome story, and I just got goose bumps as I was listening, and I was thinking about Robbie… like the people that are most important to you, right? Saying congratulations, how cool is that? And you know, when I think about what I feel like I’m the most important person to somebody… so, I think about, you know, as a speaker you go and meet a lot of different leaders. You might meet superintendents or CEOs, or whoever, and you can tell when they have the It factor just by the way they interact with you, the speaker. Because if they kind of blow you off, or if they’re like, they see you, and they shake your hand, and they look at you… and they’re listening, and they might ask you a question, and you know… you know that they’re present, and they might even ask you something you didn’t expect, you know, like more detail.
Jack Stahlmann: Yeah.
Cindra Kamphoff: So that’s when I feel like… I know that I am an important person to other people. I think we could all do that more.
Jack Stahlmann: Yeah, or they actually read your bio and knew something about you too. Where you’re…
Cindra Kamphoff: It’s true.
Jack Stahlmann: … what the heck.
Cindra Kamphoff: Oh, you’re the speaker?
Jack Stahlmann: Yeah, that was… that’s always in a fun way, very startling for me when somebody’s like, oh, I love… you know I worked with Margaret Cho, the comedian…
Cindra Kamphoff: I know, so good.
Jack Stahlmann: Some people just know some of… these little weird, quirky things that I did, and these little indie films that were like, nothing burgers, but they knew somebody who was connected to it… so those, that’s always fun for me as well, but yeah, you do get that. But the other thing you sort of hit on… not accidentally, because hopefully, we are describing what the intangible “it” is, but you talked about intrigue.
Cindra Kamphoff: Yes.
Jack Stahlmann: Right? And that’s the half lesson.
Cindra Kamphoff: That’s half of the lesson, okay.
Jack Stahlmann: Well, I call it mystery… because it… and it’s a half lesson for me, because I can’t really tell you what that is. Sometimes it just happens, you know, this magical sort of mysterious thing just sort of develops, but you can see it in successful people out there, in the world. I tell a little Barbara Streisand story about it… because she, I mean if you look at her whole career, she’s always been mysterious, right? She sells out arenas coast to coast… and then disappears for 10 years.
Cindra Kamphoff: Yeah.
Jack Stahlmann: And then like… does it all over again. Like she really understands the rhythm of not having over exposure, and I’m not saying that’s what mystery is, but she is a very mysterious person. She never goes on talk shows, and she’s always kind of had this. Her first big audition in New York, a very famous casting director brought her in, and casting directors don’t actually cast… this is something that a lot of people are like, oh, really? Casting directors, what they do is they narrow down the talent, so that the producers and directors don’t have to look at 1,000 people. So, this casting director, Michael Shurtleff, brought her in and put her in the coveted spot because he really liked her… gave her the last audition. So, she was going to be the last impression.
Cindra Kamphoff: Okay.
Jack Stahlmann: Which is part of the mystery, right having that one.
Cindra Kamphoff: Yeah.
Jack Stahlmann: And she walks in… well, first of all, she didn’t walk in. He calls her name… she doesn’t come out, like they call her name again, they’re finally like last chance… and she comes out chomping gum with a hideous fur coat on, and she’s like looking around… and they’re like, what is she doing? She drops this fur coat, she puts the gum under a stool that was out there, and then she stood on her mark and sang beautifully… and then she recited her monologue perfectly and said, “thank you very much”, and she left.
Cindra Kamphoff: Wow.
Jack Stahlmann: And the producers were dumbfounded by this whole thing… this fur coat behind this… horrible fur coat, and like they felt underneath the stool, and there was no gum. It was all just kind of a ruse. She wanted to create this experience because she know she hit her mark and said, “I’m Barbara Streisand and auditioning number 427”… like, how does that land?
Cindra Kamphoff: Right.
Jack Stahlmann: You know it just doesn’t.
Cindra Kamphoff: Right.
Jack Stahlmann: And she knew how to package that a little bit differently. And so, I really dive into, you know, what mystery is, how we can create a little bit… one tip I do give people, is you can create mystery when you’re out networking, and the way you can do that… every conversation that you have, be the first person to leave the conversation. Don’t be rude about it, you know, you can be a lot of things… you can be like, this was a great conversation, right? Or leading with the grin which maybe I can get to in a second, that’s one of the other steps, you know… I feel like we connected on a lot of things, you know… we can hype it up like that… but I got to, can I get your card? I got to, you know… and then people say, well, what if I’m not leaving the networking? But I say that’s even better, because now they’ll see you from across the way and say, hey, I thought Cindra was leaving… and now you’ve created a a thwarted lover sort of feeling, right? And you can call them in a couple of days, and I know it’s a little silly… it’s kind of a silly exercise, but… you control the end of the conversation, because so often as I’m reminded by my wife, you know, you get boring after a while. So, you say this, is it… this is the end, this was great, I loved it, give me your card, now we’ll talk later… it creates… it’s almost like a dating concept, you know, like where you don’t call after a couple of days, whatever that was, I don’t know… it’s been so long since I dated. I don’t know how it works anymore.
Cindra Kamphoff: Yeah, I have no clue.
Jack Stahlmann: But there was that wasn’t there?
Cindra Kamphoff: There was for sure.
Jack Stahlmann: Like you get their number… and you couldn’t call them
Cindra Kamphoff: And there was mystery.
Jack Stahlmann: Yes, we needed to create a little mystery.
Cindra Kamphoff: Well cool. So, we got the gift.
Jack Stahlmann: We got the gift.
Cindra Kamphoff: Is the lesson one, we got the half-lesson of mystery. What are the other 3?
Jack Stahlmann: We’re going out of order…
Cindra Kamphoff: We’re going out of order?
Jack Stahlmann: But that’s all right, because… and now you’re challenging me to see if I even remember them all. So, there’s the connect, right? And that to me… and we were talking a little bit about this off air. Some of this is just repackaging some stuff that that that people know. The connect, I would say, is, is akin to… and maybe an added step, but it’s akin to personal brand… like when people leave your presence, what is it that they take with them?
Cindra Kamphoff: Yeah.
Jack Stahlmann: How do they… how do they remember you? What is the stamp that you leave in their minds? And there’s lots of ways… lots of ways that one can do that. But there’s also fun ways, and it should be as personal to you as possible, and it’s as simple as… well you were asking about my background here. I know this is a podcast, but my background in my office had this boring gray wall, nothing really going on in it, and I also have these baseball cards sitting in a box that were worthless from 1988. So, I decided to glue them to my wall, and then you know what, it’s a talker. Like when you start the zoom call, it’s just something that people can connect to you… so they might not remember exactly who they are, you might be like, do you remember, Jack? No, not really… he was on that zoom call, yeah there were a lot of people on that. He had the baseball cards behind him… oh, Jack! You see?
Cindra Kamphoff: Exactly.
Jack Stahlmann: You see how… those steps go through, and lots of different ways. People can do it. A friend of ours, Holly Hoffman… has she been on this podcast?
Cindra Kamphoff: She has, yeah a while ago.
Jack Stahlmann: She wears head to toe red, right?
Cindra Kamphoff: Yeah.
Jack Stahlmann: And you know when Holly Hoffman walks in that room.
Cindra Kamphoff: Yeah.
Jack Stahlmann: And so, there’s lots of ways that people can create that… and that’s just one of those special things, so there you have it.
Cindra Kamphoff: Got it, the connect… and you’re right, like I think about the ways I’ve thought about my personal brand over the years is like, what do I want people to say about me when I leave the room? How do I want to be described, right?
Jack Stahlmann: Yeah, yes.
Cindra Kamphoff: And being intentional about that.
Jack Stahlmann: And it is challenging, I do warn audiences that your connect is not often what you say it is. You connect is how other people perceive you, essentially.
Cindra Kamphoff: That’s true.
Jack Stahlmann: So the more you think about how to get outside of your own eyeballs, and you know, because we know ourselves so well, it’s like a… it’s a problem, right? We’ve lived with ourselves… I’m 43, I’ve lived with myself for 43 years, so I don’t even notice some of the big things, but I’ll the small things I will, right? Like I had a zit the other day, there was a zit… I’m 43 years old and I had a zit on my face… trying to like wipe it off, you know, like that’s going to work. And then I thought to myself, well, wait a minute, if you met me today, you’d be drinking in all this doughy goodness, right? You would be… the zit would just be part of… that is Jack, right? But we get obsessed with these small things when we’re… or maybe you’re fixing the hair in the public restroom, and you’re really working on that one piece of hair for like a minute, and then you walk out, and you have a giant roll toilet paper in your shoe. You’ve missed the big picture, you know, we get so into the small things about ourselves… that we sometimes can miss that.
Cindra Kamphoff: Yeah, absolutely. Okay… we got… this so good. So, we got the gift, the mystery, the connect, the shift..
Jack Stahlmann: The shift.
Cindra Kamphoff: The shift.
Jack Stahlmann: Does that get us all of them?
Cindra Kamphoff: That’s 4. Is there 4 and a half, or just 4?
Jack Stahlmann: There should be one more. Yeah, yeah, wait for a gift, the shift… okay, so let’s talk about the shift. So, the shift to me essentially is my take on a change management.
Cindra Kamphoff: Okay.
Jack Stahlmann: But it’s… it’s a little bit more than that, because sometimes I tell audiences, you know, change is easy. Sustaining that change… that’s a whole other thing., right? So, and this is pot calling a kettle black here. I struggle… I love horrible, unhealthy food for me… and so like…
Cindra Kamphoff: Me, too.
Jack Stahlmann: So I’ll go on these little…
Cindra Kamphoff: Chocolate would be great.
Jack Stahlmann: Oh yeah, Arby’s.
Cindra Kamphoff: Cheese curds.
Jack Stahlmann: Oh, you’re speaking my language… and so like I’ll have a a lunch… I’ll have a salad for lunch maybe, great good for me, I made a change. And then dinner comes around and it’s like, oh, I have to do that again?
Cindra Kamphoff: Mhm. Yeah, it’s hard.
Jack Stahlmann: Like it’s sustaining, and so, I really use the theory of, you know, just one thing… is kind of my mantra when it comes to change, find one thing you want to change, and then within that one thing… find just one thing that you can do every day to drive that change. And see what happens, 5 swings with a sharp axe to a tree every day…. I mean eventually that tree is going to fall, if we would just consistence… it’s not about the change, it’s about consistency.
Cindra Kamphoff: I love it. When I think about the invisible “it”, right? Like what we’re talking about, and all these things that we’re even describing…. I’m thinking about as athletes or leaders or parents or coaches who are listening, right? I’m thinking why do we want it? And I think the reason we wanted this to stand out. I think the reason we want it is to connect with others. I think the reason we want it is… maybe good for business, you know, if you’re an entrepreneur, and if people are intrigued by what you do, and who you are, right? You stand out… are there any other reasons why you’d want it?
Jack Stahlmann: I think there’s just a… and I alluded to this a little bit earlier, but I think it actually makes our lives simpler, if there are… so for example, I hate to say this this way, but
we’re in the trust tree, right? We’re amongst friends here…
Cindra Kamphoff: Yes, always.
Jack Stahlmann: But you can get away with some stuff if you… if you have a a thing about you. Where it’s like, oh, that’s just that’s just Jack, you know, like… oh, I didn’t turn in my assignment on time… oh, that’s fine, you know. I feel like, I went to a a smaller liberal arts school, which I probably shouldn’t name now, but I do feel like the smaller class sizes… and I loved my education, by the way, but I just don’t want to slam… but the smaller class sizes allowed me to have that personal relationship with my professors, and I think I got the benefit of the doubt on like a lot of things.
Cindra Kamphoff: Sure.
Jack Stahlmann: I was… I did pretty well as a student, but there were students that didn’t do as well as me… and I think there that were smarter than me, if that makes sense, and the grades at the end of the day. I think there were times when I got that little edge… by having “it” and that’s ultimately what I’m trying to give people… I don’t bluntly say it like that like, hey, you can get away with stuff now, but if you do it, gives you a longer leash if you do happen to screw up, right? I mean…
Cindra Kamphoff: Sure, and I think also, it’s like, okay, when I’m connected with people, right? And I think that’s what we’re talking about here, that invisible “it” is like… that you have… there’s some connection, you know, and it’s like when I’m connected to people, I’m more likely to remember them, but it’s probably true… I’m also more likely to say, you know, get it to me tomorrow.
Jack Stahlmann: Oh okay, yeah. Right, right? There’s just some people that you don’t jive with very well. You find reasons to be kind of… maybe it’s a boss or something, you find reasons to be mad at that person, right? Whereas if you do like that person, that boss, and maybe they implemented something you don’t like… you’re more likely to be like, well, I like the boss, so I’ll trust the boss on this one, you know? There’s… it works both ways.
Cindra Kamphoff: Sure, it works both ways. So, I know you also speak about this idea of the upside… and I’m curious, Jack, what inspired you to speak about the upside, and what does this have to do with Yale?
Jack Stahlmann: Well, you know what? Again, we’re in the trust tree here, right? So, I got to be honest… so I do have the Yale thing in the in the description, when I have it in there, because it’s a… It’s a talker.
Cindra Kamphoff: Yeah.
Jack Stahlmann: I get to this right away, that I have a certificate from Yale… for $25 on Coursera.com.
Cindra Kamphoff: That’s awesome… because it did get my attention…
Jack Stahlmann: It does get your attention.
Cindra Kamphoff: I was like, woah, Jack went to a course at Yale… of a happiness.
Jack Stahlmann: And it’s not a lie, it’s not a lie, but it’s not exactly truthful either and I am… I actually am very honest with clients when we get down to the brass tax about it too. So, that all started… I don’t know… do you remember the year 2020? Does that ring a bell?
Cindra Kamphoff: I remember some parts of 2020, I don’t remember everything about 2020.
Jack Stahlmann: Oh, okay… nobody does.
Cindra Kamphoff: I don’t want to.
Jack Stahlmann: No, no. There was a little bit of time for speakers to… redevelop our messages. And so, I did, so I took this class on… well I think it was called wellbeing or happiness they kind of work hand in hand, and I had some great takeaways. So it is… I think it is still on Cousera.com and I think that if you don’t get the certificate, I think it’s free. I could be wrong about that, it was at one point. And so, it is a really interesting course.
Cindra Kamphoff: Cool.
Jack Stahlmann: That sort of got me thinking about a lot of different things in my life like, was it all as bad as it seemed? Because it was a really easy time to get down.
Cindra Kamphoff: Yeah, super down.
Jack Stahlmann: And then I read another book called Factfulness by Anna Rosling.
Cindra Kamphoff: Factfulness, okay.
Jack Stahlmann: Factfulness, and I cannot recommend it enough, there’s a newer version that I think came out right after the pandemic… they’ve been updating this thing, and what Factfulness does is it takes all of these stats, and just complies them for you. And you think, well what’s so fascinating about that? Almost every one of these stats is jaw dropping, you know, so they… they ask people these same questions that they’re going to find facts on… I’ll get to the point here in just a second. And they found that chimpanzees answered better than humans when polled on questions about worldwide hunger, on questions about high school graduation rates, on questions about deaths by natural disaster.
Cindra Kamphoff: Wow.
Jack Stahlmann: Really major huge things, that people think are trending in the wrong direction that actually are amazingly trending in the right direction.
Cindra Kamphoff: Wow.
Jack Stahlmann: For example, worldwide hunger… I’m butchering some of these stats, because I don’t have them in front of me, so I apologize if they’re slightly wrong, but… the general gist is there. In the last 50 years, 5, 0, years, worldwide extreme poverty has been cut in half… cut in half.
Cindra Kamphoff: Wow.
Jack Stahlmann: And most think that it’s on the rise.
Cindra Kamphoff: Right.
Jack Stahlmann: High school graduation rates, people think that they’re on the decline. In the last 50 years, high school graduation rates are up by 8%, they’re on the increase. You know, people talk about deaths by natural disaster, most people think that those are rising, and there is some evidence that there is more natural… I’m not going down that path… but actual deaths by natural disasters are down by 90%+ since 100 years ago, because our warning systems are better… and people just think that things are getting worse when many many things, not everything in the world… and I’m very clear about that in my presentation, not everything in the world is getting better.
Cindra Kamphoff: Yeah, right.
Jack Stahlmann: As a matter of fact, some people… you know… some stats are showing that violent crime is on the upswing. It is. But if you look at that big chart, and I know that this is an audio thing and not a… if you go to the FBI website and you go to violent crimes over the last 40 years, you will see that it peaked in 1992. So while we’re on the rise… so your local news will tell you, and they’re not wrong, that crime is up by 10% or 15%, whatever it is… that’s true, but it’s still down 30% from where it was in 1992. So if you look at that big chart….so even with some news, that’s bad. We need to zoom out a little bit, right?
Cindra Kamphoff: Yeah, right.
Jack Stahlmann: We need to just zoom out and have some context with it.
Cindra Kamphoff: Right.
Jack Stahlmann: And so that was really the inspiration for me of… and I love giving this particular… because I’m kind of at a a tipping point with the age 43 years old, I like giving it to people who are older than me because their jaws really drop… when I do this for, like college kids or something… they’re not as impressed with these stats because they’re more in tune with how it actually is today. But, as Hans Rosling tells us in Factfulness… we remember that the past is more rosier than it actually occurred,
Cindra Kamphoff: Right.
Jack Stahlmann: And that is… they’ve done studies on this over and over again. And so, I tell audiences I’m like, I’m sorry if you had that game winning goal in soccer in high school that you thought was so awesome it should have been on Sports Center… it wasn’t that awesome. But here’s the good news, remember that that love of your life, the one that got away because your times together were so special… they weren’t that special, right? I mean, if we can just remember that… that we remember in the past… so many people say, oh, TV is so much, you know better and so much better back in the day. And I’m like, is it? Because my TV at midnight turned to snow and static… remember that?
Cindra Kamphoff: I do remember that.
Jack Stahlmann: It just went off the air…
Cindra Kamphoff: It did.
Jack Stahlmann: Like you’re telling me that was better than… we had 5 options as a kid, we now have millions of options, you know… like it’s just no way that TV was better, that it’s so much better now. There’s so many other ways to do it, but we view these things… cars is another one, you know, I like going to car shows it’s fun, you know… but you see, some of these old timers who are like boy, they just don’t make them like they used to. And I’m like… really, because a 100,000 miles, you know, that used to be like a hooray moment for a car… and now it’s a midlife crisis, you know.
Cindra Kamphoff: That’s true.
Jack Stahlmann: And they’ll come right back at you, they’ll say, oh, yeah… but the chassis, you know… like it used to be steel frame indestructible car… I’m like, yeah, because we make cars now when they crash the human survives and not the car… like it’s not… cars are way better than they used to be, you know, it’s not even close… but we remember the past, we love the past, and I don’t want to diminish that love for the past, but we also have to be real, that the fact is, there’s a lot of upsidey type things going on well.
Cindra Kamphoff: Yeah, and I I’m hearing that it’s like, you know, it’s about perspective. And I’m curious about what does the upside, in your opinion, have to do… well, tell us, maybe, what the upside is, and then what does that have to do with perspective?
Jack Stahlmann: Well, I think the upside, really, isn’t… it isn’t a hook quite like the intangible “it”, it’s not like the upside is this one thing… what I’m trying to demonstrate to folks is that there’s so much more upside than we’re actually observing.
Cindra Kamphoff: Yeah, nice.
Jack Stahlmann: And so, I kind of break it into 2 parts. Part one is, shock them with these stats and these things that they thought were going bad in the world. Okay, now, we’re all on the same page, right? It’s not that bad? Okay, great… but guess what everybody we encounter in our lives who isn’t in this room right now thinks that all these things are bad… so, everybody out there, I don’t want to make it like an enemy thing, but they’re all going to be negative.
Cindra Kamphoff: Yeah.
Jack Stahlmann: They’re all coming into your life with negativity, because as we get older, we just take that baggage. We think it was better in the past, you know… so now, how do we combat that? That’s what part 2 is, you know, and it’s and it’s using very similar things to the intangible “it” about how, when negativity comes in your life, what’s the… how do you take on those battles?
Cindra Kamphoff: So yeah, well, let’s dive into that for just a few minutes before we close, if that works for you?
Jack Stahlmann: Yeah, sure.
Cindra Kamphoff: Because I think that’s really helpful for people to understand… I think that has everything to do with mindset… when these negative things come in, how do you handle them? And do you freak out, or do you maybe… in psychology you might say that catastrophize it, right? Or do you use like language that it’s like… it makes it even worse, such as, oh, my goodness, that was so devastating. When really, maybe it was just… you know, something that happened today, and it we attach a label or meaning to it. So, I’m curious what would be something like one thing that you would share with the audience about what to do when negativity comes in?
Jack Stahlmann: Well, I would say… there’s something to be said for, considering all things in everybody’s life. And I’m not saying that we need to assume the worst, but we often jump to conclusions when we don’t know the full story, right? If somebody comes into work and they’re grumpy today, maybe daycare drop off was just a nightmare, you know, if one of your coworkers has been kind of gloomy for a week or two, you know.. maybe their dad’s in the hospital. There’s lots of these, there’s lots of these things… one of the ways I illustrate that is… through the story, a buddy of mine worked for Arnold Schwarzenegger’s campaign for Governor and this was back, a lot a while back, you know, this was before 8% approval rating Arnold. And it was it… and I don’t usually get into politics. I think that belongs on Facebook… but he’s like, do you want to meet Arnold? You know, and I was like, okay, yeah, I get, I guess I will. He said, great, come to this call center, pretend you’re making some calls. This is right before the election Arnold is going to come by… shake hands for the cameras and stuff… it’ll be a lot of fun. So okay, so I show up to this thing, and my buddy is like, white as a ghost. He’s like Arnold’s going to be here. In the second… we need him to make a phone call, because… know the local TV crews are here, can he call your cell phone? Because he… we don’t want to call him some crazy person and… can he just call you? And I’m like, sure, so I step out of the room and into this garden, and there was windows. So I can actually see… because it was like a big ballroom, right? So, I can see Arnold like dialing my number, which is really weird, and he says to me, Jack… oh, by the way, I do terrible impersonations on my resume bottom line, world’s worst Impersonations list available upon request… Jack, we need you to volunteer. Will you volunteer? You know I’m like, I don’t know… but I’m already there, right? I’m already there. Sure, yeah, I’ll volunteer… he put the phone down and gets everybody’s attention… everybody, everybody, Jack agreed to volunteer. And the whole place goes crazy with like high fives and stuff, and then I get a chance to sneak in and say hello to Arnold, and I shook his hand. A really cool day… and that night, on the nightly news, there were 2 clips of Arnold doing this… one clip was Arnold and I shaking hands, and the other clip was, Jack agreed to volunteer…
Cindra Kamphoff: No way.
Jack Stahlmann: And who knows that it’s the same guy in both clips… so I just thought to myself, my gosh, we just duped the most powerful man in California, very innocent doping… nobody got hurt in the duping, right? But think about all the layers that even he, the most powerful man in California, didn’t know was going on… and it’s just a microcosm of what we have in our workplaces, or even in our lives. You know, there’s this place… I live in St. Paul here in Minnesota, and in kind of a busy neighborhood, and there’s a place where people double park all the time… and one time I jumped to conclusions somebody was double parked right there, and I just lay in my horn as I’m driving by, and almost hit them, and this poor girl in this car was sobbing, and I look at the front and she had gotten in an accident… she wasn’t double parked at all.
Cindra Kamphoff: Oh…
Jack Stahlmann: But I jump to conclusions like a real…
Cindra Kamphoff: Yeah.
Jack Stahlmann: And that’s just something that I think it’s so vitally important when we’re talking about the upside and dealing with negative people… is that there may be something else going on much deeper, not always… but let’s just cut to leading with, you know, kind of a smile that doesn’t cost us anything to do that’s…
Cindra Kamphoff: Isn’t that so true? And we might make assumptions about that has to do with us when really what their behavior likely doesn’t have to do with us. Here’s like one example, yesterday I called my husband on my way home from speaking… and I’m like, hey, what do you want for dinner? And he was like, I don’t care… I was like, whoa, he’s really short, and then he hung up. And I was like man… I think normally I would have been like, why was he acting that way to me? But I took a step back, and I was like, what’s going on with him that he might have reacted that way to me, and I heard later on right that he just had this little spat right before I called him…
Jack Stahlmann: Oh.
Cindra Kamphoff: You know, just like a quick disagreement with somebody.
Jack Stahlmann: Yeah.
Cindra Kamphoff: And then it was like, oh, yeah, had nothing to do with me. And I’m glad that I didn’t take it personally, right?
Jack Stahlmann: Yeah, really good. You know, the semantics matter. I know we’re speakers, so we should really be caring about semantics a lot… but it’s funny the phrase, I don’t care, got me in trouble once, a long time ago with my wife… because when you’re planning a wedding.
Cindra Kamphoff: Oh, sure.
Jack Stahlmann: It was 11 years ago, 10 years ago… and she asked me about something, and I just said, okay, you know that… and she said, for the in the future… please say I have no preference. And to me that was the same thing in my mind… I had no preference about it. I guess I did care, but I didn’t really care… does that make sense?
Cindra Kamphoff: Yeah, I think that’s actually better for us to say anyway… I don’t have a preference instead of I don’t care.
Jack Stahlmann: I don’t have a preference, yeah.
Cindra Kamphoff: Because then it is like, maybe I don’t care about you or something… so yeah.
Jack Stahlmann: Oh 100% and we joke about that all the time now, it’s become like whenever it’s just like… I have no preference. If we see the other person, maybe teetering a little bit, you know…
Cindra Kamphoff: Oh, Jack, so good! Well, so tell us how we can find more information about your speaking. If you want to pick up your book that you co-wrote, tell us about how we can do that.
Jack Stahlmann: Oh, 100% I am at dontflinchguy.com, dontflinchguy… all one word, no apostrophe… and on there… that has everything, so I can send you to Amazon, too, but you the links right on that website, my videos right at the top. You can scroll on down, find me on other channels… although I don’t do much social media which I know cost me business Cindra, I know, I know, I know… every speaker in the world like you need to do more social media… but it’s just not…. it’s not great for my mindset to be on social media.
Cindra Kamphoff: Yeah, I’m not sure you do. So there’s that.
Jack Stahlmann: And but I do check the website a lot… I feel like an old man, I’ve become an old man. I’m off with that social media that those kids do, and but yeah, dontflinchguy. That’s always part of my message, I always say, you know… there’s no… I close just about every speech with this – there’s no silver bullet for success, I wish there was, I wish I could tell you that, but what I will say about every success story, every success story begins where they don’t flinch moment. There’s a moment in which you went for it, right? So, if you love your job, there’s a moment you applied… if you loved your wife, there’s a moment you asked her on a first date. If you can tolerate your husband, there’s a moment you said, this is fine. There’s don’t flinch moments. That’s kind of what every presentation for me is anchored in is not just knowing is half the battle… that GI Joe thing is a myth. That’s a myth… you know, knowing is not half the battle, knowing’s like a little bit… the rest is us doing it and not flinching… so, there you go.
Cindra Kamphoff: Awesome, so dontflinchguy.com. Check it out… you can get his book over there and learn more about his speaking. I loved that you talked about today in terms of the invisible “it”, the George Clooney story… awesome, he totally has the “it”, and we talked about 4 steps.
Jack Stahlmann: And a half…
Cindra Kamphoff: The connect, the shift, and the mystery… and at the end we are talking about… I like, I’m going to check out that book, Factfulness, hat’s super interesting and fascinating.
Jack Stahlmann: Yeah, they’re really fun. It’s really a fun to read with a lot of just surprising basic stats of things that you think aren’t going all in the world… they actually are going better than we think.
Cindra Kamphoff: Yeah, I love it. And at the end, not jumping to conclusions or making assumptions if people are having negative energy… so, Jack, thanks so much for being on today. I appreciate you, and I hope you have an awesome day. Thanks for making us laugh and smile today.
Jack Stahlmann: It was my pleasure, thank you for having me Cindra.
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This Week’s Power Phrase: “I am gritty. I am passionate and have a clear vision of the life I am building.”
“I am gritty. I am passionate and have a clear vision of the life I am building.”@Mentally_Strong Tweet Quote “Grit is sticking with your future day in, day out and not just for a week, not just for the month, but for years.” – Angela Duckworth, Professor at University of Pennsylvania@Mentally_Strong Tweet Quotehttps://cindrakamphoff.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/04/4.17.23-Cindra-on-Grit-over-Gift.mp3
When you decide to protect yourself and not to take things personally, you avoid needless suffering. You cannot be hurt by others. Your anger, irritation, jealousy, frustration, and conflicts with others lessen. You are happier and at your best more often.
Quote of the Week: “Quit worrying about what other people think and follow your heart.” —Jack Canfield
This Week’s Power Phrase: “I don’t take what other people do or say personally. I decide to protect my confidence and grit.”
“I don’t take what other people do or say personally. I decide to protect my confidence and grit.”@Mentally_Strong Tweet Quote “Quit worrying about what other people think and follow your heart” – Jack Canfield@Mentally_Strong Tweet Quotehttps://cindrakamphoff.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/04/4.10.23-Cindra-On-Not-Taking-Things-Personally.mp3
Self-compassion is a practice; it is not a switch we can just flip on. Self-compassion is a habit we form by practicing kindness in the moment many times throughout our day. When you are kind to yourself, then you can be kind with others. As the Dalai Lama said, “One must be compassionate to oneself before external compassion.”
Quote of the Week: “A moment of self-compassion can change your entire day. A string of such moments can change the course of your life.” —Christopher K. Germer
This Week’s Power Phrase: “I am kind to myself. I am doing the best I can. I got it next time!”
“I am kind to myself. I am doing the best I can. I got it next time!”@Mentally_Strong Tweet Quote “A moment of self-compassion can change your entire day. A string of such moments can change the course of your life.” – Christopher K. Germer@Mentally_Strong Tweet Quotehttps://cindrakamphoff.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/04/4.6.23-Cindra-on-Self-Compassion.mp3
Jake Thompson is a keynote speaker and Chief Encouragement Officer at Compete Every Day, a brand he started in 2011 by first selling t-shirts out of the trunk of his car.
Jake works with organizations and individuals around the country, teaching how they can develop the focus, habits, and culture in order to grow their businesses and their individual lives.
It’s through his entrepreneurial sales experience, client work, and research that he’s built a proven CE³ Model to help people build their grit, better block out distractions, and create more influence as an impactful leader.
Jake is a third-generation entrepreneur, the youngest strategic advisory board member at the University of Dallas’ College of Business, and a graduate of both Texas Christian University (B.S.) and University of Dallas (M.B.A.). He lives in Dallas/Fort Worth with his wife, Elena and their three dogs, Sugar, Biscuit & Donut.
In this episode, Jake and Cindra talk about:
- What it means to Compete Every Day
- His “CE3 Model”
- How our choices determine our fate
- How we can “Outwork our Talent”
- His “Midnight Rule”
- Why Discomfort Comes Through Growth
HIGH PERFORMANCE MINDSET SHOWNOTES FOR THIS EPISODE: www.cindrakamphoff.com/539
FOLLOW CINDRA ON INSTAGRAM: https://www.instagram.com/cindrakamphoff/
TO FIND MORE INFORMATION ABOUT JAKE: Jake Thompson | Motivational Speaker on Grit, Mindset, and Leadership (jakeathompson.com)
FOLLOW CINDRA ON TWITTER: https://twitter.com/mentally_strong
Love the show? Rate and review the show for Cindra to mention you on the next episode: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/high-performance-mindset-learn-from-world-class-leaders/id1034819901
http://thehighperformancemindset.com/
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‘We have to grow through the days, not just go through the days.’ -Jake Thompson@Mentally_Strong Tweet Quote ‘Your talent and potential doesn’t matter. It’s all about what you do with it.’ -Jake Thompson @Mentally_Strong
Tweet QuoteCindra Kamphoff: Jake. I’m so excited that you’re joining us here on the High-Performance Mindset Podcast, how is your day going?
Jake Thompson: It’s fantastic. Great start to the week, incredibly excited to be here, especially as we finally got to meet in person after years of zoom and social media. And so i’m stoked to hang out with you today and honored you asked me on.
Cindra Kamphoff: Absolutely. So Jake and I just saw each other in San Antonio. We were at the National Speakers Association, Winter Conference there, and I was like. I know you. And then there was really cool, because some of your fellow chapter members was like Jake is crushing it as a member. So they had so many great things to say about you. So i’m excited that you’re here joining us today. Thank you. Yeah, No excited for the conversation. You’re someone who I continue to learn from and love watching everything you’re doing. So this is a treat for me.
Cindra Kamphoff: Well, awesome. Well, Jake, just to get us started. Just so everyone can learn more about who you are and what you’ve been up to. Tell us what you’re passionate about right now, and what you’ve been up to.
Jake Thompson: Yeah. Passion, I think, is a pretty easy one for me is all around competition. And really the lens of how do we truly have the discipline and mindset to compete with ourselves? And so that has been something from me since the youngest of ages grown up in East Texas. Friday night lights everything. I love this idea of competition, but I had a really unhealthy view with it for so much of my life. And so over the last, you know. 1011, 12 years running my company, it’s been. How do I actually reframe that and help others? And so anything competitive. It gets me going whether we’re talking about cornhole boards or watching march madness, which is going on right now. I just love the thrill of competition and what it does for us. But more importantly, what it can do for a lot of other people.
Cindra Kamphoff: I love it. So, your book Compete Every Day. Here we go. I got it with me. Tell us what it means to actually compete every day.
Jake Thompson: Yeah, it’s waking up, making the choice to be intentional and look for opportunities of growth. And I think that’s sounds easier than it actually is, because we know one growth is uncomfortable. We know to. It’s really easy to get caught in the busy schedules. The soccer practices, the meetings that we just start going through the days instead of intentionally trying to grow through the days. And so it’s really waking up and saying, how am I going to push my comfort zone a little bit? How am I going to force myself to find an opportunity to be back.
So that I give tomorrow something to stack on top of, and so that’s really it is intentionality, and a little bit of forward movement every single day.
Cindra Kamphoff: Yeah, I love it. And I think about what you said about competing with yourself. That to me means. You know. How can I be better than I was yesterday? And how can I learn and grow? Well maybe learn more about myself, or learn more about my trade or my field.
Jake Thompson: Yeah, it does. Because let’s think about this. You talk about this all the time, like we only control us. We can influence. We can respond to other things, but we really only control how we show up. And so, when I look at it from a competitive standpoint, teammates rivals on the sports field. They push us to a new level because of the opportunity at hand. But still it is our choice of. Do we rise to the moment? Do we? Do we push ourselves harder when we’ve got that person next to us or not? And so learning to do that with yourself, and learning to kind of almost imagine yesterday’s version right alongside of you, and say, how am I going to be better than you today? Puts us into a consistent state of growth, and I think that’s very different than a lot of people have this idea of burning out of like exhausting to always compete it is if you’re always chasing other people because you’re never going to catch up there’s always someone ahead of you. There’s always someone behind you, and so it’s great to have targets ahead to say, what do they do? Well, how can I improve? How can I get to that level on certain things? But understanding it’s really about how am I competing with myself? Which is kind of what we laughed about. You Got your CSP. Which is freaking, amazing as a speaker, and looking back at all of the reps you put in along the way of like, and I can crush it now. I even thought I was good when I started, like we are like we go on the first stage. You’re like, okay. That was fine. I did it. And now you’re looking back at it like, look at all these reps, I put in. That’s what it’s all for me.
Cindra Kamphoff: Yeah, absolutely. And so, before we hit record. I just got certified speaking professional, and most people outside of speaking probably don’t know what that is, but it means that you’ve done 500 speaking events in the last 5 years. So basically 100 a year and a you know, part of this is you have to submit videos for other CSPs to watch, and you have to get meeting planners to give you get feedback about you, and you also have to submit. This includes, like really comprehensive spreadsheet of all the things you’ve done, and it actually improved my confidence, because I thought well, you know. So even you and I sometimes can. Our confidence can be shaken, and it’s. It’s helpful to know that. All right. Just look at progress, and that’s what i’m hearing is what compete every day is.
Jake Thompson: Yeah, it’s all about progress and to your point right there, I think when we fail to write it down, it’s like when we go to work out, and we fail to actually track what we’re lifting, or how fast we ran over time, we start to kind of take it for granted, we think. Well, i’m not making that much progress. I’m not getting better versus when we write it down, we can always look back. Say, here’s where I was. Here’s what I’ve gotten better at. Here’s how I handle that difficult conversation at work that 3 years ago I walked out of it was like. Oh, why did I say that this time I’m walking in with confidence, and so to your point, where we can track things where we can set targets daily so crucial for us in the long run of mental health, of understanding where our progress is made, and being able to really more than anything is as you talk about, as much, enjoy the journey, enjoy the process as much as we do. The outcome, which is what, unfortunately most everybody tends to focus on, instead of who they’re becoming in the process.
Cindra Kamphoff: Absolutely. And so, Jake, when you, as a keynote speaker, and you go on and you speak to different associations or conferences or corporate organizations. I know you speak on this idea of this CE triple. Oh, tell me if I got that right. C3 model. All right. Tell us about what that is, and how you would describe it.
Jake Thompson: Yeah. So what I did is started looking at what could give us competitive advantages in life. And how does that break down? And so that competitive edge model is 3 big picture pieces of like our inner game. The outer within our company, and then kind of our side peers. And then internally, really a lot of my focus from my keynote speaker, is it’s the mindset the focus on the systems like we have to adjust our belief system and our mindset. We then have to learn how do we focus on the right things, such as being mindful, focusing on what’s in our control, setting the right targets. And then last, creating those systems to help build and reinforce that. So what do our habits look like? What is our time management look like? And then, really, the big piece that I love is the accountability. What are Our accountability systems in terms of externally, internally with ourselves, is also with the people we run with, so that we’re truly setting ourselves up for success. And so that’s a lot of the keynotes we focus on that of like, how do you shift your mindset? How do you shift where we start focusing? And then how are you linking arms with the people on your team in your organization, instead of doing what’s so easy of like, let me just focus on my silo, my work. Let me not talk to anybody else. Let me keep my guard up, and that’s really where companies can start to thrive is when everybody lets that guard down just a little bit, and starts talking and collaborating and working together. Because, you know, we see it in sports, it doesn’t matter how great one person is. It takes a team to win. And so you need everybody on board linked arms. And so that’s where I start to talk about that advantage, because we become more and more as a society about me, me, me, me. And what we understand like, we do the work individually to bring a better me to the we and the we starts to work the other really cool things start to happen for us personally as well as collectively. Our teams.
Cindra Kamphoff: I love it. And so, when you think about accountability, and how that works with the best of the best, could you give us a tip or two on how we should work that into our lives. And this idea of what competing against you know the last version of ourselves, and having a person in your life that you can utilize, and it’s a free app.
Jake Thompson: What I actually do with clients have Some people in our community is set 2 to 3 daily habits, and it could be a drink. A gallon of water could be to make 3 sales calls. It could be spend quality time with my spouse or journal, and then, when they check in, they do the activity they have to check in, and it sends me a notification so I can immediately see every single day. Did you hit the mark, or did you not? And if I see you miss it? 2 in a row, I can say hey, what’s going on how, what, what’s happening here. I see you miss this a couple of days talk to me about it, so what it does is one. It ties in somebody in your life that wants to see you succeed. And then it creates a really easy way instead of me having to go every day in text check. Hey? J. To go work out today. Hey, you go do this today. It’s hey? I’m gonna own it. I’m gonna take accountability for my actions. I did it. I didn’t. But what I found is knowing somebody else is counting on you to send. It increases your level of accountability. It’s like if we were going to get up and go work out this morning at 6 am. And sure it’s really cold up in Minnesota. It’s a little chilly here in Texas today. What 70 degrees, you know I mean, we’re like in the fifties today, but it’s like, you know my bed so much warmer, and then you’re like No, I have a somebody’s waiting for me. I have a workout partner that’s at the gym counting on me, and so that’s the best one I love to do. If you’re trying to start a new habit, get somebody who’s also trying to do it with you, or who already does, that. The other piece on the accountability is, as we know, your teammates really determine your trajectory in life, and so are you hanging out with the people that have the habit or building the habits that you desire.
Jake Thompson: If you are someone that maybe in January you wanted to do dry January because You’re like. I’m having too much wine at holiday parties I need to cut down, but everybody you hang out with is still going out still doing Happy are still drinking on the weekends. You’re going to have a really hard time breaking that habit, because everybody around you is already doing it. They can’t really hold you accountable as easily because they’re engaged in it versus if you’re like, hey? I’m hanging out with people who just don’t really drink, or maybe they just have a glass of wine once every so often it’s more likely they’re going to be able to hold me accountable. And so, having tips like a habit shared to where you know somebody’s counting on you and being intentional with who you’re surrounding yourself with is so crucial for that, because it’s really hard for us to hold ourselves accountable. It’s a lot easier if we know other people are counting on us in that path.
Cindra Kamphoff: Yeah, love it. So that app is called habit, share good tool. And I think, as we think about just continuing to push ourselves to be the best version of ourselves, right. There is something in the beginning of your book that you talked about, and you said through discomfort comes growth, and I’ll read for those who are listening. A few sentences where you wrote discomfort sets in when we experience something we’ve never felt before. We move outside of our comfort zone into the unknown, and our body response is, if it’s threatened. Success lies in our ability to mentally manage the discomfort and still lean into it.
Cindra Kamphoff: So tell us a little bit about Jake like how discomfort, you know, you know, moving towards growth. How does that relate to competing every day, and being the best in in your opinion.
Jake Thompson: It’s something when I was young. I wish I better understood. I thought, when you got that pit in your stomach, that it is assigned to run. To avoid that situation. And what happened is, I ended up walking away from goals and dreams that I had, because I was too afraid in that moment of that pit in my stomach versus realizing this is a signal that you have a growth opportunity. And so every single day we’re presented with moments of discomfort, and our bodies. Our brains are going to tell us of what Don’t talk to that stranger. Don’t. I know there’s like 10¬†s left on the clock at the gym. Why don’t you just coast? Because we’re really tired right now? Versus how do I push for 10 more seconds? How do I have an uncomfortable conversation with a co-worker, instead of trying to sweep it under the rug and so we we’re presented with these moments every day, and what we find is when we avoid it. When we do always what’s comfortable. We never build that new skill. We never start to develop. When you ever get stronger. We could pick up a guitar today, and I don’t know about you, but I’d be horrible at it’d be, and I would not want to play it in front of people. I’d be terrible at the skill I would have to spend every day 30¬†min a day working at it watching YouTube videos hiring a coach doing things that I’m not very good at that are really uncomfortable. Figuring out how my hands work on that guitar over time. I’ve become a lot more comfortable with it, and I may never get to the point where I’m. Gonna play as well as Metallica or Eric Clapton or somebody like that. But if I could play a song or 2, and my hands get more comfortable in that position, then what I’ve done is expand that initial discomfort that my body doesn’t move this way to something i’m more comfortable with and can perform, and it works that way in our relationships.
Jake Thompson: Our thrive relationships can’t drive without those tough conversations, and so we have to be willing to lean into discomfort to have them. We don’t get stronger in the gym. If we’re always going super light, and we’re never getting our heart rate up, we have to push ourselves out of our comfort zone. And so that’s why I think it’s a really important part of life, and the visual always give folks is the idea of, you know, a bamboo tree, and we know the bamboo tree. You plan it, and you look above the ground. You see nothing for years all the while it’s forcing and fighting and growing, calling through the dirt and soil downward. And eventually it starts to shoot sky high, and everybody thinks for like 4 or 5 years something happened. But in that fifth year the bamboo tree shoots out of the ground, and so it 60 feet or so in the year.
Jake Thompson: All the while it was growing deeper and deeper into the ground to build stronger roots, to be able to support its upward growth. And our lives are a lot like the same way. The discomfort is like our roots growing into the ground, forcing its way through soil and rock to be able to sustain us. And where we’re trying to go long term. And so that’s always the visual I go back to especially talking about like. Did you break some soil today? Did you get to that idea of pushing a little bit of dirt to try to strengthen your foundation, so that who you become that soaring through the sky is much higher, and you have more opportunity to fulfill your potential.
Cindra Kamphoff: I love it. I completely agree. I like what you said about that. You wish you would have known earlier that that that feeling in your gut means that you shouldn’t just throw on the towel. You should move forward regardless of how you feel right, and I think about how courage isn’t the absence of fear right? And I know there’s a famous quote, I think, by Teddy Roosevelt. It’s like it’s the rather the assessment that something is more important than the fear, right? So courage can start us in. A new habit can keep us going, and no one can be courageous for us. It’s really up to us.
Jake Thompson: Yeah, no. But nobody can make that decision for us. And the beauty to your point is without fear. There is no current, and there’s always a fear. Sometimes it’s our for your failure. Sometimes it’s a fear of other people’s, opinions. And what I love as we were just talking earlier of, like the track record of all the talks and the confidence in that reminder. Sometimes we have to remind ourselves, when we’re going through that discomfort, that this is a courageous choice.
Jake Thompson: And just this simple reminder versus like i’m scared. I don’t know what i’m gonna do. What if I fail? What if i’m? Not even very good at this? What if we just remind ourselves? I’m putting it a rep and becoming more courageous in this moment, and reframing that discomfort as a chance to build courage, and we know nothing great in life is built without courage, because nothing great is done without some sense of fear that has to be overcome.
Cindra Kamphoff: Yeah, absolutely. And the way I think about courage is like a muscle, right? The more i’m courageous the better I get at it, and the more I can do it in the moment when I do this, the fear. Yeah, there’s some there’s several points i’m gonna make in your book, and one of my favorite things that you shared was about this idea of like outworking our talent. And you provided some examples. If you look at the rounds where the top 15 all time quarterbacks are drafted, and I like football. Jake. Okay. So I pull these out, and how many others were drafted ahead of them. So you give an example of Tom Brady. He was the pick 199, 6 quarterbacks drafted ahead of him. Joe Montana was picked 82, 3 quarterbacks were drafted ahead of him in Brett Farve you know pick 33 3 quarterbacks drafted ahead of them Tell us a little bit about how you see people what you know you, Tom Brady, Joe Montana, Brett Farve, who
you know people like that. How do you see them respond to this type of adversity. And what does it really mean to outwork our talent?
Jake Thompson: Yeah. So I love football too, as a football guy for me too played quarterback like that. That is a passion point. But what I see is out-working your talent is talent. We don’t control. We do not control our own ability. We do control what we do with it. And every year you see this, I see this. There’s phenomenal football, basketball, baseball players who you look at them physically and think that’s magical talent. But it’s wasted because their work ethic, and their consistency is in the dumps. They’re not consistent. They don’t show up. It’s the things in our choices that are more important in the long run. Angela Duckworth talks about this. I know the topic grit so passionate for you. But in the long game in the in the big picture it’s about your effort, and your consistency is twice as important as your talent. And what that always spoke to me is a smaller athlete, is I was never going to be the most talented quarterback on our roster. What was I going to outwork you, and I’ll smart you to get on the field? Absolutely. Was I going to find a way to be more accurate, to know everything better, absolutely. And so when I talk about out at work your talent, it’s getting away from the idea. And really the excuse that I just Don’t have the talent as so and so. And waking up every day, and saying whether I have great talent, good talent, average channel or below average time. I’m going to give 100% best effort. I’m going to find a way to outwork it. I’m going to be the for basketball fans. I’m a JJ. Berea guy. I know he played with the T Wolves for a little bit, but he’s 5, 1511, but he was crucial in the maps championship run. He went undrafted. 60 guys got drafted this year that he did, and I think only 6 played as many games as he did. And maybe 5 made as much money as he did, because he was someone that says, hey, what do I control? How hard I work? A great I practice what kind of teammate I am. How consistent I am. Those are the things in my control that allow me to outwork this talent ceiling that everybody else is kind of put on me, and so I use it more as that reminder. Especially with athletes like it really doesn’t matter your talent or potential it’s what you do with it, and that’s rings true for a high school athlete all the way to a 40 year old. Sales, professional man or woman, who is like you could have a teammate who’s way better at quote the gift of gab or building some connection on a sales call. But how much harder are you working your pipeline? How much longer consistent are you picking up your phone and making calls? How are you doing the things that are in your control to outwork any level of talent you have. And that seems to be a big piece of success. And to your point with those quarterbacks like Malcolm Gladwell talks about it in in one of his YouTube videos of that theory of compensation. Well, if I don’t have the talent, I have to work harder.
And if I really embrace that idea of instead of ‘I don’t have the talent I should quit.’ But I don’t have the talent I need out, work everybody. It changes your whole perspective.
Cindra Kamphoff: Yeah. And it’s interesting, because when I think about Tom Brady in the psychology of someone like Tom Brady. I wonder if he would have been picked, his number one if he would have been as successful. And what I mean by that is, I think, that likely fueled him, you know, and one of the things I see, and just working in the NFL. And really great athletes, the ones that can tear an adversity on its head and say, like, you know, I’ll prove you wrong right. They just have this different fire in their belly that I think it’s the motivation, the fire that allows them to be one of the greatest of all times like, for example, in Tom Brady. Right, it’s all about his response to the adversity.
Jake Thompson: I love it, and that goes reminds me of a story about Michael Jordan, where Jordan they were playing the Washington bullets on back to back at night and the first night, Jordan, you know. Okay, game like maybe 20 or 22 points. But some rookie for the bullets had just a light’s out game. Best game of the guys correct rookie season, and after the game Jordan tells a reporter that the Rookie came up to him and was like, hey, good game. MJ.
Jake Thompson: Kind of like laughing your game. And the next night, when they played him, the Rookie had like no points, and Jordan scored almost 50. Well, years later, come to find out. The Rookie never set a thing to Jordan at all. Never approached him, never talk to him. The kid knew, like don’t fire up Jordan. But Jordan manufactured this chip on his shoulder after that night to fuel his next performance, and as we saw in the Last Dance, he did that time and time again of like, put little chips on his shoulder. And I think to your point, Brady, and those folks they play with that little bit of an edge, and they put that of doubt. Me doubt me, doubt me, but they also pair it with uncanny work ethic, and that’s what I always find fascinating, because, like Cliff Kingsbury was on the flying coach podcast with I want to say it was Shawn Mcvay and somebody else, and they were talking about when Cliff was in New England with Brady. and they were all in Mexico. It’s somebody, some patriots wedding. And they were out drink until 2 in the morning, the night before the party and Cliffs, as he wakes up at like 5 am. Can’t sleep, gets in a golf cart and he’s driving the island, and he drives by and sees Brady out on the beach with his trainer training. Even though Brady had been out all night with him, he was up before dawn on the beach, working out working drops in the sand. All of that on a quote Unquote vacation. And that’s when you just you knew he has a different switch in terms of a work ethic. And to your point it goes into that psychological edge.
Cindra Kamphoff: Yeah, yeah, I like how you connected that with the you know. Watch me kind of mentality plus the work ethic, because you don’t have the work ethic, you know you. You don’t necessarily have the base of the bamboo to grow and I think it can be a little dangerous to always be like. Watch me watch me watch me, but I mean some of the best, have done that right. Michael Jordan is just one example of like creating this edge. There is one other thing that I really liked about your book, Jake again. It’s called Compete every day. and you talk about this idea of Clutch. So this is something we talk a lot about in sports psychology.
And you gave you gave some examples of, like Michael Jordan and Kobe, Bryant and Lebron James. And when you compare their clutch shots as defined by hitting the go ahead shot in the final 5¬†s of the fourth quarter over time you’ll see their stats below. So Michael Jordan missed 53%. Kobe Bryant is 77. Lebron, James missed 48. I wish my son. Actually, I’m going to show this to my son tonight, because he’s the best of player, and he gets so hard on himself when he misses a shot, and it’s like, Look at these greats. They didn’t say, you know they’ve missed 0.
So tell us what about this idea of Clutch, and why you provided these stats here in your book?
Jake Thompson: Yeah, I think it’s most important to understand a lot of people think. Well, just certain guys are collections, certain art, and you’re either born with it or you’re not. And what I wanted them to see is the best. They failed. They missed multiple shots, but what they had was in those moments with the game on the line. They had the confidence and the competence to say, I can take and make this shot. And Kobe was an example interviewed years later, like he didn’t want to pass it to certain teammates if he saw their practice habits, because he knows their competence level in those moments was low, even if they had extreme confidence, I can hit it. He had seen him practice and work ethic, and so why would I trust you when I know you haven’t come close to working as hard as I do. On the flip side. You can have the people with extreme competence. They can hit killer, shot after killer shot, but they start focusing on the moment, and how big the moment is versus just the play.
Jake Thompson: And so their confidence level drops in those moments. And so when we talk about, collect it’s more about being in your control of. Have you put in the work? And then in the moment, do you have the confidence that I’ve made this shot a 100 million times, whether there’s
12 min left on the fourth quarter, or there’s 12 secs. And understanding, not letting the size of the moment become too big for you, because you’re just focused on executing the thing that you’ve done over and over and over again for you and I. It’s like getting up on a stage getting from the stage of 40 people, or we can go into an arena of 40,000 people, and you can wither in those moments because you’re focused on the size, or you can say I’ve done this time and time again. Here’s my track record. There’s how many talks I’ve done. I know my talk. I’ve prepared a rehearsed. Let’s go. Then you look at that moment with more excitement, and it’s. Probably you talk about the difference between going into those moments with gratitude for the opportunity, instead of fear of messing up the opportunity.
Cindra Kamphoff: Isn’t that so true? And I think that confidence in yourself is so important in that clutch moment and it’s easy to stay focused on the outcome. All right. Is the shot gonna go in or what’s gonna it. It’s easy to focus on the future, right? And the things that are distracting you, and how big the moment is right. All those, all those thoughts can’t allow you to be at your best, or it’s if you’re focused in the present on the process, the small things you have to do. You’re more likely to make that game winning shot. But the belief in yourself, when I think about what you just said about Kobe like he didn’t want to, necessarily, you know, pass the shot because he saw their work ethic, but he believe in his own work ethic.
Jake Thompson: It’s easy for us to become outcome biased. And in those moments, we make the wrong. We guarantee the wrong decision. So your football fan i’m a football fan. Our teams have won games that they’ve played horribly and had no sense. 20 teams have also lost games that they played out of their mind. And it just didn’t work out that day. And if we only focus on the game through one where we didn’t practice that. Well, we may not practice that hard the next week, because we’re like, hey? We’re good enough. We can go through this. We can win. We do this in life. And we have this by. And so she talks about it really through the lens of the Patriot Seahawks super bowl and the decision at the end of the game to throw the ball and patriots picked it off and ended up winning versus run it with a Marshawn Lynch, and she talked about all the statistics and all the numbers and everything that goes into it, to your point. We become so outcome, obsessed in those moments that if you look at Jordan and Lebron and Kobe, the shots they missed. The next 9 are going to take the same shot.
Jake Thompson: They’re going to shoot it again. They’re going to have extreme confidence that i’m going to make it like I have 50 a shooter. I’m gonna make it again. I am not getting. I’m not living and dying with that one outcome. I’m going back into saying, okay, what do I need to do tomorrow to better improve my chances of making that specific shot in that angle, not taking anything else into it. And so those guys I would love to just sit and watch the night after the next morning their practice, because they probably went back to that spot and shot. It made it 100, 200, 500 times, and the next time they’re like, let’s do it again, and maybe they missed it again that night. But they’re gonna keep refining that craft and getting focused on the on making the shot and what they control versus kind of letting their confidence only be controlled by the outcome
Cindra Kamphoff: Absolutely. And I think, Jake, the reason that we’re so outcome biased is because that’s what we feel like. We’re judged. And if you look at ESPN, or I mean right now, March Madness is going on, but it’s the highlights of who won. Who didn’t win, you know, and so that’s also what celebrated. But the outcome focus can create so much anxiety and pressure for us, and especially in those clutch moments that you’re just describing.
Jake Thompson: It does. I actually heard Charles Barkley talk earlier this week on March Madness about that. And he said, you know we post all the big 3 the Dunk. But he said, we’re not showing the highlights of the guys diving on the floors, the guys taking charges, the things that are winning teams games. And I remember, years ago it was before Jerome tang took over at K. State. Maybe it was his first year, but they put a scoreboard in their locker room of charges, dives on the ball on the ground. Jump ball. It’s like, where were you doing the things that most people overlook is outcome, but are processed pieces that stack, and where can we celebrate those. And so for our own life, in the book I created that kind of scorecard, is it’s a way to score yourself every week on process pieces because we don’t control the outcomes. But how are you showing up consistently in the process and understanding? If I stack a Lego block every single day of progress over the course of the next decade. I’m. Going to create something incredible, even if in this moment it doesn’t look like an outcome. That’s great.
Cindra Kamphoff: Absolutely. And i’m thinking about those people who might feel like they fail right? You have something in the book that it’s called the Midnight Rule. Tell us about that, and how it fits with our conversation so far.
Jake Thompson: Yeah. So I learned the midnight rule from a guy named Nate Smith that pitch for the Los Angeles Angels of Anaheim, for in their minor League system for years, and it’s the idea in baseball you fail 70% of the time, if you’re really good, like the best batters in the game are going to fail to hit the ball 3 out of 10 times to go up to plate. And I wanted to ask somebody that plays the game. How do you constantly step on the field to give your best effort to give your best attitude, knowing you’re gonna fail like it’s inevitable in baseball. And he talked about for him a midnight rule. And he said, regardless of how the game goes after the game I give myself to midnight to celebrate or more. so i’m gonna go back and watch tape later. But emotionally my emotions end at 11:59, because at that point it’s behind me. The next day I show up to the ballpark If i’m still thinking about what happened yesterday, and the bad pitch, and I’m beating myself up, i’m unable to be at my best in the present, where my teammates need me, for my friends for my family. And I talked about like we all need some version of that. For some people they need a laugh. They go sit in their car. They crank up Metallica, or you know, some heavy rock a/C. DC. They listen to one song, maybe yell at their steering wheel. They get out and they go. Some people. It takes a full day. But what happens is when it’s like us trying to run 100 200 300 meters looking behind us over our back shoulder. We’re never going to run in a straight line. We’re never going to be at our best. We’re never going to run very fast if we’re constantly turn looking behind us or dragging something behind us. And so we have to get in this routine of when something happens. What did we do? Well, in those months that game that you went over for. What did you do? Well, that day, did you? Did, you field grounders? Were you a great teammate, would you not do well? I chased a few bad pitches.
Jake Thompson: How are you gonna get better tomorrow? And so that’s where our focus becomes in life, and we’re able to not only let go of some of that emotional pain, but if we’re that, go through the pain, let’s learn something from it. Let’s use it. So, starting to go through those processes of even the worst experiences, what did I do? Well, I lost the sale. I bomb the keynotes. We lost the game. What did I do? Well next time what do I want to do better? And how will I do better with it?
Cindra Kamphoff: Yeah. So good. I think the midnight rule is a way to reset, because you know, if you’re learning in your what, how I would describe it in my book beyond grade is, I have a tool called learn, burn, return. It’s like when something doesn’t go well for us. We ask ourselves, what did we learn? But we ask it objectively, but then we gotta burn it. We gotta let it go, and ultimately, I think maybe that’s what the midnight rule is all right reset. But then the return is, how can you build yourself back up right? Tell yourself the truth, because so many times we’re just, we make meaning based on the past, but it’s always. It’s not always like very accurate, and it’s not always the truth. Like I love that idea of just the ashes are left. You remember it.
but you’re not hanging on to it. To me it means let it go. So towards the end of your book, Jake, you talk about how important it is to help and support others, and I thought that was a really good way to end the book that you can’t do it alone. So as we think about everyone who’s listening today, and the people that you surround yourself with are really important. Tell us why it’s really important to help and serve other people.
Jake Thompson: Yeah. So Dr. David Mcclellan, from Harvard estimates that 95% of our successes and failures in life are influenced by the people we habitually associate with. It ties into the old gem. Ro. You are the average of the 5 people you spend the most time with, and what I believe in what I’ve seen is, it’s really hard to be a higher, cheaper unless you’re hanging out with high achievers. And if you are someone who is not chasing greatness and trying to be your best. The people that are chasing greatness and trying to be their best and grow and chase goals aren’t going to want to hang out with you.
Jake Thompson: And so there’s something about the people you surround yourself with. But at some point, it’s more important, maybe more of what are we doing to help others grow into their best self?
Jake Thompson: And when I started my career, I used to think leadership was like being that influential, charismatic person. You had a great following. People wanted to follow, support you, and over the years when I learned it, it’s about. How do you build other leaders?
Jake Thompson: How do you help people shift their mentality? They’re thinking because that’s really what legacies are made up of. And that’s he it in the book a little bit that when we get to the end of our lives, they’re not going to talk about how many books we’ve wrote. Maybe not going to talk about our social media following, or how much money we need. They’re going to talk about how Dr. Kamphoff changed my life, and she changed how I saw this, and when we get to the end of our career, we don’t talk about how much money we made. We talk about that manager that helped open the door, change our perspective, that that CEO that took a chance on us when nobody else would hire us after we did 100 interviews.
And for us the most meaningful path is, how do we help build others? And that’s a kind of backwards thinking in today’s world, because it’s all about us. How do we build us? But the Zig Zikler old quote of, ‘If you want to find success, help other people be successful.’ It’s so true.
because the most successful people I know are not about. How can I get more? How can I help more? And building that, and pouring into others. And so I wanted to wrap the book up that way, because most all of the book is, how do I build me to bring a better version of me to my goals, to my friends, to my work, to my family. But at the end I wanted them to realize the reason. We bring a better me. The reason we go through all the discomfort of growth, and being consistent in discipline, is not really about us, but about making sure we bring the best version of ourselves to everyone around us, because otherwise we’re cheating them
out of how much better we could be for them.
Cindra Kamphoff: Yeah, awesome. And you said, 95%.
Jake Thompson: Yeah, Dr. David Mclean estimates 95%.
Cindra Kamphoff: Yeah, I mean, that’s a lot, right? And so when you think about, how can you give, and you can serve other people. I think about the abundance mindset, and you know, how can I serve and give others? And then the energy comes back to me. Jake, this was outstanding. I i’m gonna summarize here as a way to just so people can. If they weren’t taking notes, they can write a few things down, so you mentioned the app the Habit Share, so you can check that out as a way to increase accountability in your own life, you are talking about how every day we get to be uncomfortable. So continue into develop that Kurds muscle is really important, and because we can’t control our talent, right? We can only control our effort and our and our consistency towards going after our goals. And I loved at the end, when you talked about this clutch moment where your focus should be, and the idea of the midnight rule.
So, Jake, tell us where we can find more information. I got your book here, compete every day. Where can people buy this book and learn more about your speaking and coaching?
Jake Thompson: Yeah, so best place is gonna be our website compete everyday.com. You’ll find us on social media. I’ve got my own spin off. I spend most of my time on Linkedin or on Instagram, as Jake Thompson speaks, and so would love to connect anything we talked about today. You have a question on you want to dive further. I’m always game for it. But thank you so incredibly much for having me here and just getting the chance to hang out with you today.
Cindra Kamphoff: Yeah, it’s always fun, and I know I’ll see you the summer at the National Speakers Association.
Jake Thomson: Can I say something on that real quick because you this up beautifully the abundance mindset that you talked about, and I think
you and I, and there’s a number of other speakers that I learned dramatically different than when I came into the industry that speakers get other speakers opportunities which sounds so weird because it’s like, oh, you 2 are fighting for gigs. I’m like we are, but we aren’t because we want to help people when and I know i’m not going to speak in an event the next year that I did this year. So who can I refer? How can I help a client? How can I help a great speaker? And having that mentality and the speakers and professionalism outside of our space that have that mentality, especially in the middle performance of like. We just want to help people when there’s enough space for all of us to win individually if we help enough. Other people win is a game changer. And so, if you’ve ever been on the fence feeling like there’s not enough out there for me.
I want to challenge you over the next 30 days to follow Dr. Kamphoff. Practice that abundance mindset, and see how your perspective changes which will ultimately change your world without changing anything else.
Because that was a game changer in my life and my career of like. There’s enough out there. It’s all about having that rising tide raising all the good ships of people who actually care about helping other people succeed. It’s a game changer. So I wanted to echo what you said there, and challenge them to keep diving into your stuff on that, because it it’s such a key piece.
Cindra Kamphoff: It is a key piece, and I appreciate you saying that. And I think about all the people in the world, all the opportunities out there, and I think when we get really in the scarcity mindset, we’re more likely in fear, right. But if we’re just thinking about, how can I help? But how can I serve? It? Does come back to us, and I love the National Speakers Association, NSA. For that reason, because it is like the spirit of Cabot who started the NSA. And it’s very much like just giving and serving. And you know, how can we make the world a better place? I think all of us regardless of if we’re athletes or business people or leaders.
We give right, that that just comes back to us twofold. Yeah, absolutely. So. Jake, outstanding today. Make sure you follow Jake and check out his book compete every day. Do you have any final advice or thoughts for us as we close?
Jake Thompson: Yeah, competition. When I think about it, always go back to the Theodore Roosevelt man in the arena. That the credit does not belong to those in the stands, but the ones on the field, bloody, sweaty tiers fighting valiantly, some winning some not; and when we get to the end of our lives, I think all of us should strive to be that person on the field. Even though it’s dangerous, even though it’s scary, even though there’s a chance we’re gonna lose, because it’s a far better place to rest at the end than sitting in the stands wishing you’d stepped on it. So that that is my encouragement to send this office. Get in the arena.
Cindra Kamphoff: Outstanding. Thank you so much for joining us today, Jake.
Jake Thompson: Thank you.
Erik Westrum is a former professional hockey player, author, motivational speaker, leadership coach, and entrepreneur at heart.
During his hockey playing years, he faced daily challenges to make it to the top. By implementing the tools and strategies discussed in his book, Becoming Elite, he was able to consistently perform at the top of his game.
After retiring from hockey and trying to figure out the next step in life, Erik struggled with finding out what success looked like being off the ice. He shortly realized the steps and tools he used as a high-performing athlete could transfer to many other areas of life. And once again, his life changed dramatically.
After coaching hundreds of people over the past 22 years, Erik has helped people break through the obstacles that seem to be holding them back. Through this process, he has established the principles and processes of Becoming Elite and what it takes to transform your life using 4 proven pillars of performance. Life’s too short to not try and become elite.
HYPERLINK “https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0BSXQKGFQ”
In this episode, Erick and Cindra talk about:
- What it means to “Becoming Elite”
- How to take failure in stride
- The 4 shifts to develop to become elite
- Why it is important to fall in love with the process
- His “reset strategy”
HIGH PERFORMANCE MINDSET SHOWNOTES FOR THIS EPISODE: www.cindrakamphoff.com/538
FOLLOW CINDRA ON INSTAGRAM: https://www.instagram.com/cindrakamphoff/
TO FIND MORE INFORMATION ABOUT ERIK: https://erikwestrumbook.com/
FOLLOW CINDRA ON TWITTER: https://twitter.com/mentally_strong
Love the show? Rate and review the show for Cindra to mention you on the next episode: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/high-performance-mindset-learn-from-world-class-leaders/id1034819901
http://thehighperformancemindset.com/
‘You have to give yourself grace and forgive yourself.’ -Erik Westrum@Mentally_Strong Tweet Quote ‘If you fall in love with the process and you have a process. you can use it in every aspect of your life.’ -Erik Westrum @Mentally_Strong
Tweet Quotehttps://cindrakamphoff.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/03/cindraerik.mp3Cindra Kamphoff: Thank you so much for joining me here today. Erik Westrum on the High-Performance Mindset Podcast. I’m so excited to talk to you today.
Erik Westrum: Yeah, I’m really excited to like we talked about before I did a little Google search. And the stuff that you’re doing is amazing, and that you’ve been doing. I’m honored, and it’s a pleasure to be here.
Cindra Kamphoff: Well, thank you, Erik. I’m excited about You know, talking about your new book becoming elite, and maybe just to start before we dive into that. Just tell us what you’ve been up to, you know lately. Obviously, you’ve played in the NHL. For 12 years, which we’re going to give it get into today. But what have you been up to lately?
Erik Westrum: I think for me I always kind of start with the 2¬†min drill. Right. Keep the sports analogy alive. So for me, growing up in Minnesota and being able to be around hockey sports and just helping people for myself, especially where I’m at now is just being a servant leader. So if you look at you know the history of playing hockey, the things that I’ve been taught the ideas, the concepts probably about 9 months ago. I kind of made that shift June first, to be exact of kind of getting out of the corporate consulting business ownership side of things in kind of mainstream business. Decide to write my book, open up a charity, help hockey players, athletes, business leaders, just kind of small pockets of test samples of, you know, speaking and coaching and leadership. And now I’m here today, and you know 2,023, with a lot of different ideas and concepts and groups that I’m working with, and I’m just really excited to continue to push like. I said, that servant leadership forward, and in a lot of different areas of sports, business, community faith and kind of the list goes on.
Cindra Kamphoff: Absolutely, well, I mean, I think, to play professional sports, for you know I know at least in the NFL. It’s like 2.3 years isn’t it the average career, right, you know, to play it for over a decade is really incredible. So tell us a little bit about what you think we’re the psychological traits and characteristics that it took to either, even, you know, get to the NHL. And then just stay there for that long.
Erik Westrum: Yeah, I think when you look at it, you know, even right now. So during March right March madness and hockey, it’s the Minnesota State High School hockey tournament. So for me, and I talk about it in my book. It started in eighth grade getting cut from a team, so you either have the ability to rise and learn, or you can blame other people, and I just made a post about like Michael Jordan. Right? He gets cut from his team. His mom says, hey. you got a couple of options, you know. What are you gonna do? And I think in today’s world you push the easy button, and for me I was blessed to be around my mom, who was a teacher, my dad, who played professional hockey. So I had kind of that dynamic of, you know. Paddle me and say, hey, Eric, it’s okay.
Erik Westrum: And my dad saying, what are you gonna do next? So for me that mindset started in ninth grade, right? Putting in the extra work shooting parks, you know. Goal setting, watching what I ate, started to write and work out programs. When I was 16, being able to be in a successful situation with players that were better than me. And for me that’s where the mindset started right, doubt creeps in fear creeps in kind of the impostor syndrome, and to be able to take the things that you’ve learned and prepare. And I’m sure you see it. You know, with the athletes you work with the preparation in the process.
Erik Westrum: That’s what gets you to the ultimate destination. So for me, I fell in love with the process. I fell in love with all the day-to-day operations. So goal setting, writing down what my meals were writing, how I felt after a certain game, how I felt after a meal. What was my mindset going into it? Did I visualize? You know what was gonna happen, so I visualize the good, and I visualize the bad right when I win this game, or when we lose this game. What’s my reaction? So I already had that, you know I wasn’t a kid. I wouldn’t cry after a loss. I would take it, and I’d say, you know what Kobe Bryant talks about that, in in his podcast that he didn’t, you know, before he had passed away. Is he learned so much from failure that I think that’s what prepared me all of the failure. I took it in stride, and that’s where I learned the most. And then when I got into playing professional hockey, it was I mean it was a roller coaster, right? You get sent to the miners you play in the Nhl. You get traded, you move cities, I mean. I played in, I think, 7 8 different cities played in. You know the Us. And Canada played over in Switzerland, and you have to have that mental make-up. And you have to have your toolbox ready for anything. So I think to that point, you know, the simple answer is with people like you, with strength, training with skating, with the hockey dynamic. That’s what prepared me, because I knew I had the tools. I knew I had implemented them, and I knew I had put in the hard work to get there, and I knew I deserved to be there.
Erik Westrum: And that’s when that’s when that confidence it’s not arrogance, but it’s confident in your preparation and the love for the process. So I think that’s the biggest for me, even getting into life after hockey that can help make anybody successful.
Cindra Kamphoff: Yeah, Well, excellent, EriK. I obviously what I’m hearing is Really; you had a lot of self-awareness, you know, even as a high schooler, that you were writing things down, just being aware of what you are thinking and what we are consuming, and I think that’s the first step in actually, high performance is understanding yourself and watching yourself, and then I hear just like a lot of flexibility, particularly.
Cindra Kamphoff: Oh, when you got to the NHL and just being traded a lot, you said failure and taking it in stride, and I wanted to talk a little bit more about that. What do you think has been your biggest failure. Let’s say, in your career in the NHL.
Erik Westrum: Yeah, I mean, I think the biggest failure for me was probably giving up on the NHL: too soon, right, I think, for me it was
going in. So when you’re going into professional sports, as anyone will tell you right if you’re in the NFL. And NHL. Any. If you’re not a top draft, pick a lot of times you have to work your way up right. So you got to be on the practice squad, or you got to be in the miners, or you have to get into certain situations. So for me, I grasped that I graphs the identity of being in the fourth line, third line guide role player. And then, as you work your way up, whether it’s in the miners or whether it’s in the NHL. I felt like I belonged right. I felt like I was elite. I felt like I should be the guy I felt like I should be that first line goal score, because that’s how I that’s what I accomplished in home, school and college in the miners. And now it’s the pinnacle, and I probably didn’t give it enough time. and I started to blame people. I started to blame management. I started to blame coaches and started to blame others in that journey. So even the extent of you know, blaming my wife for holding me back in certain situations into your point of the self-awareness. I wasn’t looking at myself right. So all that work that we just talked about to get there. And now you’re at that point, and if it was that easy everyone to do it was that easy? Everybody would play in the nail. That’s why I actually have a Stanley cup behind me because I never won one. So it reminds me of that ultimate goal that I quit. We quit on myself to a certain extent, and I took the easy road to go play in Europe, to go to a different team, to ask to be traded, to be put in a better situation, that I felt I could control, and that never works that never works. And that was probably, you know, outside of losing games or situation. That’s where I said going and str that stuff you can deal with right. But when you don’t pursue your passion and your purpose and you’re on that road, and then you hit bump after bump after bomb, and you try to push the easy button. That’s when you know you see yourself as self-employed: right. That’s where you talk about athletes, and I’m vulnerable. When I talk, you talk about right, whether it was alcohol, whether it was addiction, whether it was, you know, in fidelity what all the stuff you talk about on pro sports. Unfortunately, it’s true. And that’s when that starts to kick in, and then that failure even becomes greater because it starts to blow up in your own face. And I, you know, with concussions and different things going on in my life. That’s where I look back to your point of that was the biggest failure for me was giving up on my dream because I thought I knew better, and I started to blame other people. And that never that never works, whether it’s corporate, whether it’s school, whether it’s marriage, whether it’s friendship. To your point, self-awareness is what I had and what I started with. And then once you get to a certain level and you see it in the news all the time athletes think they’re bigger than the team. They think they’re bigger than the community. And that’s when you get in trouble.
Cindra Kamphoff: Well, I appreciate your vulnerability, Eric. You know I think it’s hard to talk about, you know, just, and being so open with what you just described. I also know that you know blame is how what I would describe as an automatic negative thought like it’s not always something we choose, but it’s a lot easier to, you know. Focus on things that you can’t control. Then to look inside and say, well, what can I do and take responsibility? And I think you know that a lot of people can relate to what you just said, because I know in all of our lives my life, I’ve blamed people from time to time right? And so it’s about noticing when you’re doing that and just realizing, okay, you know. Can you take some responsibility and really take control of what you want
Erik Westrum: When you take responsibility and you take control of that. If you’ve worked on it right and you have that toolbox, right and have assets and resources to put you through, you can identify that and grab it and be like No. right. This is me. I own it, and I have to continue to do that, and that’s what I talk about in the book, too, is like rituals talk about. You know the daily check in the recount all, all of the content and all of the deliverables that you want in your life. It starts when you wake up, and it’s looking in the mirror and the self-reflection to your point of like.
Erik Westrum: You can blame people, but at the end of the day I mean it’s a free world, right especially here in America. You wake up. You know most people have the choice of. Do they want to go on the left? Do they want to go to the right? And you gotta make that up in your mind, and you gotta accumulate step by step what you want. And how are you going to become successful?
Cindra Kamphoff: And what I’m also hearing in your answer is the importance of having the toolkit right? The mental toolkit of these skills in in high school and college before you get to the pros, because there’s so much change in adversity, and I’m curious, Eric. Why did you decide to write your book becoming elite like right now?
Erik Westrum: Well, I think for me to that point. I have a mentor that I talked about between the age of 40 and 50 is kind of your sweet spot right you’ve learned from a lot of failure.
Erik Westrum: And that was just the tip of the iceberg that we just talked about, and you’ve had a ton of success, right or hopefully, you’ve had a ton of success in your life. So for me, I look at that in a book I’ve read numerous times in the second Mountain, and it’s by David Brooks, and it talks about the first Mountain is about Ego. It’s about self. It’s about fulfillment. And it’s almost about like being a false You right, not authentically, you like. I would have never been as vulnerable or talked about, even if Stoic, and I’m strong, and I don’t get phased, and I have never dealt with anxiety or depression, or any of that right. And then, all of a sudden you get to this next phase in this next mountain.
Erik Westrum: And I felt like I’ve been called to it like the last 2 years, 2 and a half years, and it was like calling me, and I kind of push it back like I don’t know. Am I qualified enough? Am I? You know the imposter syndrome right to think like, Can I do this? Can I do that? And as I started to do different you know jobs and consulting and be around more people. I notice that you know, not a lot of people are qualified like you go to church right the past year or the they’re probably not qualified right, but they’re comfortable, and they’re authentic, and they share these stories. You go to, you know a keynote speaker. You go to an event. You go to an experience, any of that. People that talk and are vulnerable and have those experiences are the qualified ones because they’ve learned from failure. They’ve had success so for me now going in. That’s why I have a molten on the now. My cover of my book is, I’m in that second month right. It’s servant leadership. It’s following my purpose and passion. And as I’ve been writing this over the last 2 and a half years, through mind, map through an outline first draft, second, draft everything that you go through to get the content where you want it and deliverable. And I started to find these little nuggets of information, and I wanted to put it into a book that was easily digestible that you could put into your person to your backpack. Throw it on your dashboard. Throw it on your side of your bed, and you can go back to it right? So it’s like a guide. You can easy read. You can read it, you know, probably on a one-way trip on an airplane, and then you can take it highlight certain areas.
Erik Westrum: My wife’s a highlighter in the book, right? I’m a memorizer, and I’ll go back and you can pull out those resources. So for me I felt like it was my calling to go share this information. No matter if you played sports. No matter if you’re a parent, no matter if you were in the workforce, and whether you were an employee or a CEO, you know anywhere from the admin assistant to the owner of a company, whether you were the ball boy to the star player to the GM. This all this information can apply, and my goal always. I always talked about the 1% impact. If you can take one out of this to change your life.
Erik Westrum: The dramatic effect that you’re gonna have is exponential, right? One or one thing you add one thing you know 3 365, you know, added Value. And you take away 365 negatives that’s 730 steps in the right direction, and it shows over time, and that’s what I learned through hockey. It’s the same thing working out with you. You put the work in into your to the point we made before you’ve prepared, and you love the process so much that when you get into the big game you get into the big meeting you get into the big keynote you get into the coaching atmosphere. You’re not nervous. You’re excited to share that, and that’s why I wrote the book I’m excited to share what’s worked for me, and to connect with people because my story I mean you could tell me something about you that went well, and that didn’t go well, and I guarantee I can connect to it right in one way that, or whether it was through sports, family, business, community, faith, any of those topics. You know the psychological, physical, spiritual, emotional shift we talk about.
Cindra Kamphoff: Yeah, yeah, thank you and Eric for those who maybe want to check out the book you just referred to with the ego itself and the servant leadership. Tell us what the name of that book is called.
Erik Westrum: So it’s The Second Mountain, and then it’s by David Brooks. Yeah, so I’d say it’s Game changer for me like I said, about 2 2 and a half year ago, years ago 2 of my mentors had kind of talked about that book, and I read it and read it again. And that’s what I started doing the outline of the book, and that’s what’s kind of drove me to that second one.
Cindra Kamphoff: Yeah, I love that I love that analogy, and you know, and also the other books inspired you. You know the same thing that happened for me is, I love this book by Jack Canfield and I would read it and read it and read it and read it right. And then, finally, I was like, you know. Could I? Could I do this too, you know, and I appreciate you to saying that even you had doubts that you were. You qualified enough because I think everyone can relate to that, even with someone with a PhD. I thought of that a long, long time before I wrote my book. Like, do I even know enough.
Erik Westrum: And when you go into a room right, I always tell people that even I was in insurance and finance and education and real estate, and like almost everything from a consulting ownership standpoint. And when you go into that, the first part I was, as you listen and you learn, and the more you do, the more you realize, not from an egotistical standpoint. Right? I’m like for you right. I have my MBA. So I’m like, oh, I know my business, and that’s not applicable until you’ve experienced it. And once you do you realize, you know, 98% more than most of the people you’re talking with right, and if you go in with that confidence, they’ll be able to still learn and listen. But be able to be authentically you.
Erik Westrum: That’s when you make a complete shift in a mindset, and you can. I could speak in front of 5 people or 500,000 people, and you’re still delivering the same message to each individual or through the book like you talked about. Right you get that. Am I good enough? Do I know enough, right? If you have confidence because you do, right, because you do, because you’re here in this situation, and you’re doing it right. And I think that’s the thing. I even remind myself that on a weekly basis, right? It’s center yourself where you are and how can you continue to deliver what you’re trying to through purpose and passion.
Cindra Kamphoff: Yeah, absolutely. And I actually think that confidence is a choice. It’s really easy to give into those automatic negative thoughts that just you know, you’re questioning, if you really know enough, and when you take a step back right, you can give yourself evidence on why, that’s actually not true, Eric. I was curious about these 4 shifts you talking about in the book, and I love the I love this, the hockey analogy of shift, you know. But you talk about the psychological shift, the physical shift, the spiritual shift and the emotional shift. Tell us a bit about why you chose the word shift, and why you chose these 4 shifts in specifically.
Erik Westrum: Well, and that’s exactly why I did. Right is the hockey shift, right? So if you’re familiar, you’re not familiar with hockey, right you go. It’s different than a lot of other sports. Right? You go out for anywhere from 30 to 55¬†s, in, you know. Normal hockey for a shift, and then you come off. And what do you do?
Erik Westrum: You re-energize right? Grab a drink of water. Your coach might talk to you about a play or an in, so you might talk to a lineman, right? So now, all of a sudden, you’re going into that psychological shift, and you’re trying to get your mindset. Okay, what did we do? Well, I noticed the defenseman went here the forward to the Goalie. So now I’m you know you’re getting your mindset ready, your physical shift. You’re resting your body to go out there next the spiritual shift for me as I phone later in life. Right. But that’s kind of centering yourself, knowing that whether you have a higher power, whether it’s Christianity or right, Whatever religion you are, the spirituality portion is okay. I can control this portion, but there’s something greater even within my team. The coach. Is he going to put me out there next different aspects? And then the emotional part is, you can’t get too high, and you can’t get too low right? So that’s exactly where the whole concept came from. Was when I come off the ice, what was I going through? Right? You’re going through a shift consistently, and you’re trying to take those good things out and do it again. You take those bad things for those learnings, and you try that. Put them into. I always, when I work with athletes, or CEOs, or any type of leadership coach, and I always say, hey, take this virtual box a baggage, put it in here, put it under the bench, and then at the end. If you have a sports psychologist or a High-Performance coach, you can address it. So if we’re sitting in there, I can up, open my box and be like, hey here’s what I got for you after this shift. I started it really because I was doubting this. I was doubting that. So that’s where kind of the 4 pillars of performance I looked at. If you have those 4 pillars right centered, or at least trying to, because there’s no possible way, you can be 100% centered in all 4 of those aspects. Right? I think the part of it is the self-awareness of knowing when you wake up in the morning, and that’s where I get into that disciplined routine is that I would have to work out right. I’ll go through my Bible app. They go through my emotional checkpoint of like, where am I with myself? Where am I? With my 4 kids, my wife, people that I’m surrounded with, and those are the different aspects that now I used to look at. Oh, my gosh! I gotta do this for 15¬†min I did like sit with myself and think about it, and recalibrate and check in, whereas now I’m I won’t stop at 6, am. 5 am. For him. It’s like I don’t. I feel like I don’t even have enough time to do that, and it’s the same thing in a hockey shift. Right? You only have a couple of minutes.
Erik Westrum: So you have to have back to the toolbox, right? And those resources you have to have kind of those easy buttons. But the reason they become easy is because you’ve done it over and over and over again, and you can realize what are your triggers? What are your traumas? Everything that brought you to a place of negativity or not being productive. And that’s what the shift is all about. Like we all have a shift consistently every day. I mean even talking to you. I’m having an emotional shift like I love talking about this. It’s exciting. It gives me energy. It gives me purpose. It gives me meaning. Whereas if I’m talking about something else in a negative aspect, it’s gonna in my shift in that is going to go down.
Cindra Kamphoff: Yeah, yeah, absolutely well. I definitely see. You know, psychological, physical, spiritual, emotional. They all connect to high performance. And you know, just in terms of you’re saying, okay, we can always keep on growing on. It needs every day. I like the different tools that you had in your book, such as like the 10¬†min daily check in, or the midday recalibration some of these other tools. What! What have you found to be like? The most useful tool that you wrote in your book that can help people with one of these shifts.
Erik Westrum: I mean, I think when you look at it, everyone’s gonna find something different right? Some people like for me early on it was the N. The 10 min morning check in right the daily check in, because I would then reassess and kind of look at. Okay, what while yesterday? What could go better today to get to what my goal is for tomorrow? Now that’s kind of an automatic, right? I get out of that, and it just automatically like moves throughout my body in my mind, and I can kind of it’s kind of weird right. It just becomes automatic. It’s kind of like warming up before hockey, and you could ask me what I did. I won’t even know, because I just do it. It becomes a routine then at midnight recalibration. That is probably by far what a lot of people talk about. I had a meeting this morning, you know, with the financial planner that I’m coaching and working with on different aspects. And that’s what we were talking about is the recalibration. You get so caught up in the day that if you don’t bookmark 5 min, a half hour, 10¬†min to look back at what? What did you want to accomplish today? Did you follow that, and if you didn’t, you gotta remember you still have a half a day to accomplish that, and if you did accomplish that right, continue to do it 10x and you’re gonna have even more success. And then then 5¬†min nightly pulse that that for me is. You know it was a game changer, and the fact that celebrating wins I still have a really hard time, and I don’t know if you know, I think a lot of high performers right. You get to that goal, and you celebrate it for about a minute and a half. Right? So I write. I write my book every like. Oh, my gosh, that’s awesome. And I’m like, yeah, whatever you’ll have some dinner. You have a glass of wine with my wife to celebrate. And then I’m like, okay, what’s next? And then I start thinking about my charity events in May and start what’s the next big thing? And I and I’m sure you can relate to that when you coach and athletes like. Oh, you just you know you just got the receiving record for your team, or for this game, or whatever it’s like. Yeah, okay, great, awesome. How can I do it again?
Erik Westrum: How can I do it again? So that’s the midday for me is probably the most impactful still today, because in full disclosure. I struggle to do it sometimes right. The nightly check in is, you celebrate your wins and see what you did, and you have to give yourself grace
right. You have to forgive yourself if you don’t, and I had a hard time with that for a long time, and that’s where the spirituality piece came in for me as that fourth pillar throughout that process, and I think that is all 3 of them are game changing, and it’s not a lot to add like you don’t have to sit down and write it, and you know you just if you’re cognizant about it, you actually pay attention to it. That’s what makes the difference, and there’s other tools and step by steps that go in. And the reason for that is something might stick out to someone
Erik Westrum: That’s more influential to them, and that’s why I put a lot of different information. It’s not like, hey? You have to go through all 42 of these steps, and go through all this process. It’s. You read it, it’s your journey. It’s your version of becoming elite. It’s not mine. This works for me different times. I took some of those different tools, but I think those 3 main daily guides have, or game changing for me, and it can take you 5¬†min a day. It can be 20¬†min. It’s not a lot. But again that 1% increment 1% of a day. It’s about 15¬†min. It’s not a lot to ask.
Cindra Kamphoff: Yeah, that’s great. And what I like about the morning, the midday and the end of the day again helps you increase your self-awareness right? So you can even check in with yourself. And I think so many people just kind of get up, go through the motions. They’re not really intentional with their mindset, and where you know, with their productivity and what they’re thinking about. Tell us a little bit more about Eric, that the 10 min morning routine you might call it, or you call it the 10¬†min. I’m just going back to daily check in. Okay, so it tells a little bit more about it. You said what went well, and then what else would you do in those 10 min.
Erik Westrum: Yeah. So a lot of times right. Wake up and like for me a lot of times. My number One pillar is the physical. If I don’t work out, I can’t think right. So that’s a non-negotiable for me that will start my day, so whether it’s on pilot’s reform or a bike or anything I’m doing, just getting movement, blood, flow, energy, and then that the check in for me is looking through that so like from a psychological standpoint. What did I do yesterday that worked or didn’t work?
Erik Westrum: And then what can I do today to help that? So for me? One of the big things I use mindset apps. I’m huge into like motivational speakers and informational resources. So for me, let’s just say, yesterday I didn’t, you know. Listen to a motivational speaker. I could mark that. What am I going to do today? Actually, what I’m going to do today? Is I’m actually going to record my own 1¬†min motivational topic, right? Because then I can look at me. Am I doing it, or what works? And maybe that helps me. And then, at the end of the day. I can look at that so for me it’s kind of looking from the it’s just like a little one. Of what can I do to improve in all 4 of those categories? And it’s not game changing it’s not like spiritual. I’m going to go to mass, you know, for an hour. It’s not emotional. I’m gonna go check in, you know, with my psychologist, for you know, 30 min and talk about my feelings from yesterday, so it’s not like where you’re encompassing 3¬†h of your day. It’s just small incremental things, and I think at the beginning took me more than 10 min, right? Because I started to want to be perfect right. I wanted that perfect outcome in all 4 of those pillars. Because when you are at a high performer. You always are looking at the end goal, and once you dumb it down, and that’s why I have those tools to your point to 10 min is you have to look at what’s ahead only in small increments, because if you start to look at the final destination right, and I was just in Arizona, and a short side story, as we were doing malt biking with my son and the guy. The guys like, hey, look 10 feet in front of you what’s coming up? And I started to get confident. I’m like with sunset, and I’m like there’s beautiful desert and cactus, and I started going like this, and I start looking like that before I know there’s like 3 huge cacti in front of me. I turn. You can see my hand. Here it’s all chewed up over the handle bars, and I thought of that like I told the guy after I go, because we were talking about my book, and you know different concepts. And I said, that is a great story that I’m going to start to share, because I started to look at the destination, right? I starting to look at the NHL before I even played high school hockey.
Erik Westrum: So it’s the same thing. You have to look at those little incremental things, and that’s for me with what you want to accomplish even today, with my family, my friends, my career, by start to look at that insurmountable huge mountain. It looks like it’s i’m going to step down. I’m not even going to move forward today, and i’m just going to do what i’m doing because i’m comfortable. Everybody wants to be comfortable. And if you’re comfortable you’re not going to do your 10 monthly to check in. You’re not going to recalibrate, and you’re not going to celebrate your wins and check in at night, but when you dumb it down, it’s pretty easy. But to your point. You know I love how you keep bringing in the self-awareness piece, because that’s the key. I mean to any of this, and you can’t blame other people. Oh, I didn’t get this done because my daughter woke up at 20’clock am. Because she had an ear infection I can still work out. I got 24 hours; I can find a half hour to work out. That’s not an excuse. I can’t blame her. I can’t blame other people.
Cindra Kamphoff: Yeah, absolutely good. All really good points that are helpful for people. And I loved the different topics in the 4 different shifts, and that at the end you are talking about the ultimate shift. So tell us a bit about what that ultimate shift means to you. And I thought it was the really powerful idea.
Erik Westrum: Yeah, I think the ultimate shift is almost you know, the ultimate goal. And that’s why, like I said, I have a Stanley cup here, because even when you talk to. You know someone who’s want a Stanley cup. I have a lot of friends or people I played with or against.
Erik Westrum: It’s short-term fulfillment, and you’re actually not at your ultimate destination. Right? So I think that’s part of it is. I talked about 2 things. One is everyone has their own version of becoming a lead, and the second is the ultimate shift, is it’s not attainable right in the big picture. It’s not attainable. But that’s what you’re training, and you’re trying to achieve because it keeps you outside of your comfort zone, and it keeps you in that growth, verse fixed mindset that I talk about at the beginning, and it that’s where it kind of Originated. They came up with the concept of the shift in the book, and it talks about that at the end. Is that bridge? Right? So you have your past. You have to address your pass. You have to. I can talk about it. You gotta like Kiss the wave, right? It’s gonna come and hit you. You got to accept it. Learn from it, and then you have to have goals for the future. and then you spend a ton of that time on that branch. If you spend too much time here, or too much time here.
Erik Westrum: I mean, I just did it 3 what? 5 days ago I just did that, and I spent a ton of time here ruminating on all this my event, and trying to change the world and do all this, and there’s 0 actions taken; whereas when i’m in the present that’s when you can try to get your ultimate shift and your ultimate shift in the bridge, and everything always consistently changes. And that’s why I talked about even that incident in Minnesota when that bridge collapsed right if you’re not paying attention to that foundation and that structure consistently, and those 4 pillars it could be, you, Rody, all 4 of them, and before you know it. I mean you’re down right. So if you can just put a little bit of time into that, the ultimate share I mean realistically, and I talk about that, you know, I said, you’re gonna fail right. You’re not going to get to an ultimate shift, so to speak. But you’re going to get continuously closer and closer to your version of becoming a lead, and I think that’s kind of the key right to the whole picture and kind of the whole book and all the concepts is to take out, you know what if it’s the whole saying right? You, whatever you put in is what you’re going to get out of it. If you don’t put anything into it, you can’t expect to shift in any of those pillars. You can’t expect to be a high performer. You can’t expect to change your life in a positive direction, and the ultimate goal is to help other people become better, because what happens when you do that
Yourself?
Cindra Kamphoff: Yeah, love it. And I love how you’re describing like falling in love with the process. I find young athletes, you know, and we I mean I even have a son who wants to play in the NFL someday, and sometimes actually thinking about that creates a lot of anxiety and frustration for him because he’s. You know he realizes all the work that he has to do, and I love the idea of like falling in love with the process, because it’s like when you’re loving the working out, and when you whatever the goal is, if you’re in insurance, or if you’re in sales, or you’re a teacher right like falling in love with the process is what inspires you and fulfills you, and ultimately helps you get to that
destination, and I think sometimes goals are meant to just keep us motivated and keep us moving towards it, and it’s okay. If we don’t reach it right. It’s more about like. Who can we come in the process of reaching that ultimate shift?
Erik Westrum: Well, I totally agree with that, because I think the process, and I’d sorry I always talked with players about all the time. Everybody would love to right when a super bowl or play in the Nhl, or win a state championship, or when a national title and the reality of it is not a lot of people do.
Erik Westrum: If you fall in with the process. If you have a process, you can pick that up and move it into business. You can pick it up and move it into your family. You can pick it up and move it into pretty much any aspect of your life, and that’s what I find. Now I’m almost addicted to process in a way where my wife’s like, you’re not alright. You’re so process oriented. But and then once I accomplish that, it’s like, okay, let’s start a new one. And just like I said. I’ve shifted in different careers and different paths and different journeys, because as I go through different process, and I check that box of the cool. It’s not satisfying that it the satisfaction comes in the training, right? I For some reason i’m not built to be a runner by any mean as a hockey player. And I decide. You know i’m like i’m gonna run a half Marathon and Marathon. So I did the half Marathon. I love the process, and then once I did it after I was like what was the point of this? Right like the goal? Whole part, I mean. I did it by myself. I didn’t tell my family. I woke up to like 4, am. Went to a place to run quick! Came home. They’re like oh, we’re you. I’m like I just want to ran a half marathon!
Erik Westrum: That’s what I’ve been training for and that’s the point I fell in love with. Like waking up. I fell in love with like kind of the diet the water intake like you know i’m fitness app what I did. How much I did that’s the that’s what I fell in love with, and the goal was like the half. Marathon was easy right. You can go run for whatever an hour and something, and then you come home and they were like oh that’s cool, and then a process for something else, and then it became mountain bike, and then it became something else. So it’s, an it’s an addiction almost, and you probably see that from high performers, and if you don’t have that, that’s when depression, addiction, anxiety, all that starts to kick in and people right, no matter if you’re a pro athlete or your business person right or like, in the sports world. You call it your you become civilian, right? If you don’t have a purpose and passion to you and your statement around the process, you get lost. To help people and help guide them of like. We all have a purpose here, and it’s in it’s in your head, and it’s tapping me on the shoulder. What do you follow it? And that’s you know June first for me. I like. You know what i’m gonna follow this. See where it takes me, and see what I can do with it.
Cindra Kamphoff: I love it. I love it. Well, Erik, you’ve provided so many great things for us to think about. I appreciated your vulnerability of just describing like a tough moment for you, and how you blamed others. I feel like we can all relate to that. A few other things I wrote down that were really helpful was just the idea of taking failure and stride. I do find high performers are very hard on them. Suppose so, you know, just having some self-compassion, and I liked your different routines in the morning that you could use the 10 min daily check in and the midday recalibration, and then the 5 min nightly routine that you shared, and the different shifts you can make to help you fall in love with the process, and really, you know, continue to be elite and be a high performer. So what? Tell us first where we can get the book?
Erik Westrum: www.erikwestrumbook.com, so as long as I always joke my parents went to Scandinavian route. So it’s E R I K. W. E, S. T, R. U. M. book.com. So Erikwestrumbook.com, and it has all the information on there about the book about speaking, about coaching all the content, everything kind of i’m up to, and we’ll be adding, you know, the charity and kind of the experience that we’re creating for me as well.
Cindra Kamphoff: Awesome. Yeah. And I know you’re looking at an event in May to increase awareness of mental health. That’s going to be incredible. So i’m going to encourage everyone to follow Eric on social media and just watch out for that.
Erik Westrum: Yeah, no, I appreciate it. I think that’s where I said. A year ago I created the charity and didn’t really do anything with it, and felt called for some reason, and all of a sudden fast forward the last 9 months you know personally, and in close family members, kids, i’m coaching all of a sudden it just started to pop up everywhere, and I know you’ve seen it, you know, because you’re in it. You’re in the field. And then I started after the book. I’m like, you know, I’m gonna create an experience, an event with pro athletes, with resources to come together to talk about it and to teach people like, hey? It’s okay. It’s okay to not be okay, as they say. And what are those resources and tools? So yeah, we’ll have it. It’ll be May Seventh working on kind of the guest list of a lot of the sports figures, and we’re gonna have some pretty awesome people sharing some pretty neat stories, right? They’re gonna They’re gonna share some stories about what worked for them and be able to. They’ll be an intimate, you know group of people with, you know. Some meet and greet opportunities, autographs, pictures that’s always the conduit to spread the message and then get some information. So yeah, i’m excited again. Yeah, Eric Westrum book.com. That’s where everything driven out of for that. So i’m excited, and I appreciate you having me on here because I think, like I said, looking far from what you’ve done is pretty amazing, and I think that you know each person you help hopefully, they can help another person. And just what we’re talking about today, you know that’s the goal for me is just to continue to spread the word of what you can do to better yourself and make sure you’re taking care of yourself to become elite.
Cindra Kamphoff: Absolutely well. Thank you so much for joining us, Eric. We really appreciate it, and thanks for everyone who’s listening today.
Erik Westrum: Thank you.
We all experience automatic negative thoughts because our brain’s role is to keep us safe, not to help us perform well or be happy. To reduce our automatic negative thinking, we first must notice our thoughts. An important part of reaching your greater potential is recognizing that you shouldn’t believe everything you hear—you want to recognize the ANT, label the ANTs, and then question your ANT.
Quote of the Week: Rick Hanson, PhD said: “Our brain is like Velcro for bad experiences and like Teflon for good ones.”
This Week’s Power Phrase: “I am not my thoughts. I will not believe everything I think!”
artist=”Cindra Kamphoff” social=”true” social_twitter=”true” social_facebook=”true” social_gplus=”true” ] “I am not my thoughts. I will not believe everything I think!”@Mentally_Strong Tweet Quote “Our brain is like velcro for bad experiences and like teflon for good ones.” -Rick Hanson, PhD@Mentally_Strong Tweet Quotehttps://cindrakamphoff.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/03/3.13.23-Cindra-on-Negative-Thinking.mp3
We are meaning making machines and we create stories around events all day long. The important point for today is that we can intentionally choose the stories we create. When we do that, we have more energy, creativity, and passion to keep going.
Power Phrase of the Week: “I intentionally choose the story I am creating today.”
Quote of the Week:“Changing your story is as simple as choosing better stories to tell yourself.” Kindra Hall
artist=”Cindra Kamphoff” social=”true” social_twitter=”true” social_facebook=”true” social_gplus=”true” ] “I intentionally choose the story I am creating today.”@Mentally_Strong Tweet Quote “Choosing your story is as simple as choosing better stories to tell yourself.” -Kindra Hall @Mentally_Strong Tweet Quotehttps://cindrakamphoff.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/03/3.6.23-Cindra-on-Choosing-Your-Own-Story.mp3
We all experience automatic negative thoughts because our brain’s role is to keep us safe, not to help us perform well or be happy. To reduce our automatic negative thinking, we first must notice our thoughts. Question those thoughts you have and ask yourself, “What data do you have to support your interpretation?” Power Phrase of the Week: “I am not my thoughts. I will not believe everything I think!”
Quote of the Week: “You are not your thoughts. You are the OBSERVER of your thoughts.” Amit Ray “artist=”Cindra Kamphoff” social=”true” social_twitter=”true” social_facebook=”true” social_gplus=”true” ] “I am not my thoughts. I will not believe everything I think!“@Mentally_Strong Tweet Quote “You are not your thoughts. You are an observer of your thoughts.” -Amit Ray @Mentally_Strong Tweet Quotehttps://cindrakamphoff.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/03/2.27.23-Cindra-on-Dont-Let-Your-Negativity-Grow.mp3
In 2015, Joe Ehrmann and Jody Redman, with a grant from the NFL Foundation, implemented a statewide pilot program in partnership with high school athletic associations, educational leadership associations, and the Dallas Cowboys and Denver Broncos. Since that time, the InSideOut Initiative has partnered with 20 NFL teams in 17 states. With the support of the NFL Foundation, the InSideOut Initiative is creating a national movement to transform interscholastic athletics.
Joe Ehrmann, All-American football player played professional football for 13 years and was the NFL’s first Ed Block Courage Award Recipient. Joe is the author of the highly influential and popular InSideOut Coaching: How Sports Can Transform Liveswhich provides the basis for purpose-based athletics: connecting student-athletes to transformational coaches, in a nurturing community for their social, emotional and character development.
Jody Redman is a nationally recognized speaker, facilitator, author, and thought leader on strategic planning, organizational design and transformation, and leadership development. She is a former collegiate basketball stand-out, high school teacher, head coach, and Athletic Administrator at both the high school and collegiate levels. During her nineteen-year tenure as an Associate Director for the Minnesota State High School League, Jody authored, developed and produced cutting edge online education that supports the social-emotional and character development of school community stakeholders.
In this episode, Joe, Jody and Cindra talk about:
- Why it is important to be purpose-driven
- What it means to be an inside-out coach and leader
- How leaders can become transformational
- What healthy masculinity looks like
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‘Understanding what your passion is allows you to be totally transformational, as opposed to transactional.’ -Joe Ehrmann & Jody Redman @Mentally_Strong Tweet Quote ‘Athletes are being praised for having physical courage but they can’t stand up to some basic peer pressure. We’ve got to raise up a generation of men and women who’ve got the moral voice to speak truth in this culture.’ -Joe Ehrmann & Jody Redman @Mentally_Strong
Tweet Quotehttps://cindrakamphoff.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/02/Cindra-Inside-Out-Final.mp3Cindra Kamphoff: Thank you so much for joining us on the High-Performance Mindset Podcast, Joe, and Jodi. I’m so grateful that you’re here with us. So, thank you so much for joining us today.
Joe Ehrmann: Well, we’re thrilled to be with you. And uh really appreciate the work that you do in the impact you’re having across the country and in Minnesota. So uh, wonderful to be with you.
Cindra Kamphoff: Thank you, Joe. Um, I appreciate that. And um what? When I was thinking about this interview. I was really pumped because I’ve got to see you both live. Speak, and Jody, I think about uh the reputation that you have in the state of Minnesota and all throughout the Us. Um and I’m just thinking about all the things I’ve heard people say about you, and the impact that you’ve had in our high schools and other organizations. So, I’m like just excited to share your work.
Cindra Kamphoff: And um, Joe, I’m thinking about the time I got to hear you speak was at the Minnesota athletic uh directors, this Administration Conference and I couldn’t believe, like uh the vulnerability that you showed. And then also how you got mostly men to talk about and share their life story and their crucibles, and their difficult moments in these small groups and these small tables, and I was My mind was thinking that you could just have such an incredible impact. So, I’m grateful that you’re here um with both, with us today and all the all the thousands of people who are listening so like to get us started. Maybe what we should do is just tell us a little bit about inside out, and why you’re both passionate about what you’re doing right now.
Joe Ehrmann: Well Inside Out is at a systems level. It’s a catalytic organization organizing uh principles that the uh address large systemic issues which is the best way to address them. So, two thousand and fourteen uh I have been in around the NFL for uh gosh! Forty years, two thousand and fourteen. There was a spike of NFL. Players that were arrested for domestic violence or sexual assault.
Joe Ehrmann: Uh, I was called in as part of an ad hoc committee to help define what the appropriate penalties. And rules there should be, and also how to what is this corporate social responsibility? And addressing these issues? Uh, in the midst of that meeting or object, turn to me and ask me if I would speak to coaching character in the context of Can you coach character in a way that would not only address issues of mal violence toward women, but all the other social issues that we have in every community. And the NFL Is certainly a microcosm of that, and my immediate response to him was I don’t think so. There’s not enough space in high school sports today to really develop a character.
Joe Ehrmann: Uh, there’s a lot of character programs. A few of them have very little impact. So, I left that immediately, and I’ve been doing coaches training for probably thirty years at that point in time,
and it was really kind of devastated by the lack of infancy. I felt that the sports were having, and the moral social development. So, I left that meeting frustrated. I ended up calling Jodie, and I asked her if she would partner with me because I had heard her recently talk about.
Joe Ehrmann: You can’t address this through coaching along. It has to be a systemic approach. So, Jodi and I collaborated, and we started in two thousand and fifteen, with in the State of Colorado, with the uh Denver broncos, and with the uh State of Texas, which is Dallas Cowboys. Um, so, we’ve started on this long, deep process, and I’ll let Jody share the rest of that story.
Jody Redman: There we go. I’m sorry about that. So, we uh, as you know, as Joe mentioned. Uh, he, he! He left that meeting and called me and I actually if I went back three more years previous to that. Uh, I’d let a book discussion around Joe’s book inside out coaching, how sports can transform lives, and I that with about twenty athletic administrators. And then, as in my role at the State High School League of Minnesota, went out and started teaching and delivering that content to coaches and What we realized after a year is that we were really setting coaches up for failure There wasn’t anybody that was back in the school community who was talking about transformational purpose questions, and Joe’s big four questions of Why do you coach? Why do you coach the way you do? How does it feel to be coached by you. And how do you define success? So went back to the drawing board and started to look at our systems in Minnesota. So, School Board associations, principals, superintendents, and parent organizations. How could we take the philosophy that’s contained in Joe’s book, and really move it across all layers of an ecosystem to see if we align that ecosystem around a shared value or a shared purpose, that then we could really um garner the support necessary for coaches to be transformational.
Jody Redman: Um. Our culture today has really become an industry. The use for culture specifically, has become, I think, it’s now a twenty-five- or thirty-billion-dollar industry. And so, when we look at that, all of those individuals who participate in a youth, sport, experience, understand what sport is about. Right? You go out. You travel internationally. You win national championships. You have lots of coaches and uniforms, and then they get put into a middle school program that’s education based and purpose based. And so, you begin to see where the descent begins to occur With What is the reason for this? Why do sports exist? And so, as Joe mentioned, we went back to the to this uh collective. Um, he is looking at his best practices. Some of the practices that I put in place here and looked at the systems level, approach to try and transform lives through what we call purpose-based sports, which is connecting student athletes to transformational coaches in a culture of belonging for their human growth and development.
Cindra Kamphoff: Wonderful! Thanks for the back story, and just like learning more a little bit about how you both got partner together to do this work, and that was going to be. My next question is, give us a little sense of in your opinion what it means to be purpose-based purpose-driven, and what do you see the impact? You know what I’m hearing you say is that it’s not just a coach understanding uh, you know why they coach, and that was that’s a really powerful question to think about. Um. How does it feel to be coached by you, right? And I’m thinking about um. How does it feel to be led by you, you know, for those people who maybe aren’t coaches here, and that’s a really powerful question makes you really take a step back. I’m curious what does it mean to be purpose-driven and purpose based in your opinion. And what is the impact that you’re seeing in a school like level a system level when um they go through your training.
Joe Ehrmann: Well purpose-based is again connecting student athletes to transformational coaches. So, we believe that you can grow and develop transformational coaching that starts on the inside works its way out uh It’s about being about to be a better coach to be a better leader. You’ve got to be a better. You’ve got to have some of your own personal growth and development disciplines, and always be working on creating the best version of yourself. So, we do a lot of internal work with coaches, helping them to clarify what their purposes, their passions, what their values and virtues are creating. A community of belonging. Most coaches all talk about culture, but few know how to create one. Is there anything more important to a pre-adolescent or adolescent boy or girl than being part of belonging to something to be loved, to belong to you, participate of something that is a recipe for mental health, wellness, and an adult for much of what’s taking place in this society. So uh, and then the human growth and development which is really the social, emotional character development of student athletes and foundationally. What we do is teach you coaches that you want to talk about the power of high performance.
Joe Ehrmann: Well, the foundation of high performance is secure relationship between that coach and student athlete when that soon after we feel safe, seen, and supported by that coach, or that opens up the platform, not only for higher performances, for deeper personal relationships which is foundational to all transformation. All of our transformer’s work is based on science. We’ve got eight years, almost eight years of evaluation we published that. But our work is built on a thing called Attachment Research, which is the capacity to build and maintain relationships.
Joe Ehrmann: It turns out that the single biggest predictor of your ability to build reciprocal positive relationships is when you’ve made sense out of your own life when you have a coherent number, an autobiographical history, and data that’s incorrect, autographed by autographical order. It’s the integration of the good and bad and the ugly. The second thing is social neuroscience which shows us that because of neuroplasticity of our brains, relationships plus experiences can change the form and function of the human brain. It can do that at any age. Then the third thing is just an integrated spirituality that we use
to really understand self-understanding self-compassion, mindfulness, and meditation. Those are the transformative pieces that we use to help coaches. Ah really be able to maximize the platform, the power position that they have in the lives of young people.
Cindra Kamphoff: Yeah, powerful.
Jody Redman: Yeah, I would add that as we look at that coach relationship, certainly, then our work also centers in preparing athletic administrators and or school principals to lead, meaning that you have to go on as Joe mentioned that inside journey and make sense out of your own life, your own narrative. Understand where your values came from. Why did you, if you’re choosing a moral value to really build your culture around well, that you chose that for a reason that came from somewhere in your own life experiences in your own narrative. And so, we spend a lot of time working with athletic administrators because they can help to what we call lead from the middle. They can lead both up that chain in the ecosystem to their principal superintendent and school board, and They also then have direct influence and leadership and responsibility for their coaches who are under them, and then student athletes, parents, and community members. And so, it’s really equipping that athletic administrator to sit in that middle of that space and do their own work to prepare their own voice around. What purpose based is how they can connect to that, and then how they can stand up and communicate that vision within their own school community.
Cindra Kamphoff: Yeah, Excellent well. And I’m thinking about Joe when I heard you first speak, and you had us do this like lifetime exercise where we identified our highs and lows. And then the degree of impact. Right? Um! And really being able to understand yourself and your struggles, I think you wrote about on inside out. Coach means turning your struggles, errors, and misfortune into lessons that will make a coach who can instill a sense of community and be a better leader. Right? Um, and tell a little bit more about why that’s so important to understand yourself and your own struggles, and then how they impact your leadership or you’re coaching.
Joe Ehrmann: Well, I think it’s critically to understanding why you coach, why you put yourself in a position while you make the sacrifices. Well, you give up your own family opportunities in order to coach. So, I think it’s imperative. You understand What’s the deep seed uh notions? What is eccentric? And what is other centric? What are you trying to get out of this uh relationship as well.
Jody Redman: Yeah. So, the narrative work is so incredibly important in that journey, and to your question syndrome about uh, you know, doing that exercise of uh elevating and air highlighting. Who are those people that positively influenced you? We. We talk about our life as a tapestry
where there are people that actually have woven their values or their tendencies; how they respond in certain situations, how they’re triggered. All of that is woven from those individuals who had influence over us positively or negatively. And so, we respond in similar ways to how we were responded to. And so, it’s critically important to take a look, to go in, to look deeply at what those things are, what are those values? What are those tendencies that we have? Because the only way that we change them and intercept them is to address them, make sense out of them. Uh bring them into some kind of coherence.
Joe Ehrmann: So, as a high school coach, my purpose was, I coach that help boys become men of empathy and integrity or lead, be responsible and change the world for good. That’s why I showed up every day. That’s why I was willing to make the sacrifices. Now that was my purpose, and it was a passion for me that allowed me to be transformation on the wise of other people, because I had already done my inner work. I was a board that was always looking for the affirmation, the validation of other men. I was always trying to figure out what it meant to be a man. So, when I became a coach, I became a coach because I had men that built into me that spoke into me and did validate me. So, I understand what my purpose was, and what my purpose comes of passion, and the passion is what it allows you to, uh compensate for the sacrifices that you make in order to do what you love to do.
Cindra Kamphoff: Yeah, Excellent. So, I’m thinking about maybe leaders and coaches who are listening that say, I already have so much to think about, right. I got the game plan, and I really wanted to get my team to win right. And so. And I think about this winning culture that we live. And you turn on ESPN. And it’s all about. You know who won last night, and who lost right? So, what rebuttal might you give to people who say, uh, you know, Is this really important? Or um? Gosh! I have so many other things to think about besides my own inner work, and why I coach and these relationships with what I’m really hearing you say is like foundational, which I agree with.
Joe Ehrmann: Yeah, I think relationships is a foundation for all transferring issues and personal transformation always precedes social.
So, at the core. You know, our system allows us to address hazing, bullying, racism, sexism uh gender violence. Our system allows that whole process to be taken in.
Jody Redman: Yeah, I always add that it’s not an either-or perspective, and many in our culture believe that it is either you’re about winning, or you’re about what they call a soft skill. And what our philosophy looks at is that the goal is to try to get a group of students to achieve a win. That’s the curriculum, right? That’s where all of the teachable moments that exist in sport, and vice versa is so valuable because of those teachable moments.
Jody Redman: But if I’m not aware of the purpose of why I’m showing up if I’m not aware that that’s that. That is the human growth and development that I should be focusing on. Then I will most often do anything. I It will be at the expense of the student athlete. Right, it will be. I will. I will center on that goal of winning, um, and for goal, capturing those teachable moments when I’m a coach who understands that the goal, I’m going to play plan and prepare to win every game that I’m in. But I also understand that I have a higher calling or a higher purpose. Now we’ve got kids that because of that secure relationship are going to perform better. They’re going to do better because they know it’s safe to move outside of their comfort zone. They know that it’s safe for them to take risks right if you’re not in an in a culture or an environment where you feel like, it’s safe for me to do that. I’m going to stay locked into what I know right now, because I’m fearful of the consequences. I’m not going to play. I’m going to get yelled at. I’m going to get benched, or whatever those consequences are.
Cindra Kamphoff: So again, the goal is to try to win the game, particularly my fifteen-year-old. He really needs to feel loved and belonged right like he belongs. And I think when he doesn’t have that, he holds himself back. He doesn’t really, you know, take the shot at the last minute that he could. He passes it right, and I see him thrive when he has really great coaches that care about him That doesn’t matter if he makes a mistake. Hey? I love you, anyway, Carter, right? Um. So, I’m seeing it even what you’re saying and seeing it in my boys, and how it plays out in them. And that’s what we want for parent as parents. Right? We want our kids to feel supported and like they belong on a team.
Jody Redman: If the minute a coach doesn’t win on the scoreboard but is the best person that we can put in front of our students if we’re going to fire that teacher coach, who is the best person that we can put in front of our students, because maybe they didn’t have a successful or season, or came up against teams that were just better than they were. That becomes like the I think, the demise of the of the culture that becomes the demise of those coaches who are transformational. So, I think we have to be very conscious about putting support systems around transformational coaches so that they can coach in that way they can coach from that place of wanting to grow and develop that student or child into a better human being, which is really the whole reason for it should exist in our culture.
Cindra Kamphoff: Yeah, exactly so, Joe. I’m thinking about something you just said previous, and you said you know that um part of your purpose, and you’re talking about being a man and your understanding of that. How? Tell us a little bit about that?
Joe Ehrmann: Yeah. So, we’ve changed that phrase, you know, as things get politicized in this country. So, you know I’ll call that heroic masculinity uh masculinity really is a social construct. So, every socio-economic group cultural, ethnic has their own kind of fluid definition
of their own masculine. But we define masculine based on five criteria. One is self-understanding. You’ve got to understand who you are, what your own passions, what your gift strength, what you need to develop. The second thing is self-management. How do you control emotions? How do you make beck’s, decisions? The third thing is relationship development. You know the key to every uh, every transformational leadership is Grant is leadership. But how do we teach is meant not to be relationally connected to be open and honest with who and what you are. The force thing is social learning, understanding, group differences that we’re uh, we’re individual people, it would that come in different color shapes, orientations. What have you. We’ve got to be aware of our understanding, the inherent dignity and value of all human beings, and the last thing is the more character of empathy, integrity, and moral courage. Uh, we teach those of the three really to personal transformation that will lead to social transformation. Uh, because when you’re empathic with other human beings that drives kindness, that’s an engine for kindness. Kind of sun moves toward compassion that demands some kind of integrity between your actions and your belief, and more courage is the critical component we’ve got all these athletes that are being praised for having physical purge, but they can’t stand up to some basic peer pressure. We’ve got to raise up a generation of men and women that have the more voices speak truth into this culture. So, when we talk about healthy masculinity, it really
is those five competencies, but it comes in two buckets, and one is relationship relationships. Uh: at the end of the life. The only thing that really matters is relationships. What kind of mother, what kind of father, son, daughter, how that leader, what kind were you? And the second question is, what was your purpose in life? Uh, did you leave the world a little better place. So that’s not only a definition or a criterion for masculine, but feminine as are the five competencies, because at the end of the day it’s about our core humanity as men and women.
Cindra Kamphoff: Powerful and say a little bit more about why you chose heroic, and neither of you Yeah, I can speak on that versus another word. What does that mean to you?
Joe Ehrmann: So, an African elder was once asked, what makes a good man? And the elder’s response was one who can laugh, cry, and protect, and does each one need it. So, there’s a holistic development, or one that need to take place. So, we’re all agreed to. You have strength and capacity beyond for just yourself. Your other centered other focus and assume both responsibilities as well.
Jody Redman: So, we’ve just developed for learning modules for USA football. Um. We’ve trained one hundred thousand youth coaches in the first two of transformational coaching. So, looking at Joe’s four questions and a transformational purpose uh statement of I coach with empathy and integrity to create secure relationships where every student is seen safe and supported, what are the actionable steps that a coach would take to create that culture on their team. The third is around uh healthy and heroic masculinities and femininities. How do we instill that and give the adult the perspective of how socialization impacts our youth from the time they’re born, until they reach us as coaches, and what we need to be um aware of in our own journey, so that we don’t damage our students further. And then the fourth is on parents’, partners.
Jody Redman: How do we develop uh coaches who can create partnerships and collaborate with parents instead of seeing them as an adversary, but that we’re all on this journey to again grow our students, and the better for the best people that they can be. So again, really exciting to see these concepts from where we are to. You know now that we’re able to scale and be able to deliver to large populations to national governing bodies. Um. And really, I think, get into the systems that sport um is structured under and impact those systems across all of participants within the system.
Cindra Kamphoff: Yeah, and what a unique way to talk about these ideas, you know, and in an impactful way, because I don’t think that
youth really talk about this much often, right? And so, I could see this, the power of your work. And I’m thinking, Joe, about when I heard you speak, you’re telling a little bit about your story, and maybe the messages you got about being a man and um, how does that? You know you’re you and Joe? You can ask the same answer, the same question about your own background. But how does your own background, Joe? Impact what you do today?
Joe Ehrmann: Well, I was as a boy I had two major wounds. One was a father wound experienced as a year-old boy that I never deal with for forty-seven years. So, my journey really was marked by my wounds and trying to heal those. So, it turns out there’s two kinds of wounds in this world two kinds of wounded people, one is wounded people that ignore and deny their own wound, and what they do is keep wounding other people, their wounded wounders. The second kind of person is a wounded healer, and they kind of take their own rooms, heal them, and in the process of learning how to heal them, they then can take their heeled ones and help heal others. So, when you think of young boys in America today for the greatest one of the greatest quests to this question, Man, but who gets to validate that? Uh, every boy is still with this insecurity about being a Mac. It’s part of our culture that’s spread into young boys. So be able to have a man outside of the home, whether boy has a dead or not, but to be able to stand up there, and just to look a young boy to Ai, and say, I believe in you. I see you and you have what it takes. You’re on the right path the right road, or that’s very validating near the essence of masculinity, and the beauty of sports is that a team is nothing but a set of relationships for common purpose. So, when you think of masculine or feminine, we as relationships for a purpose. It’s the ideal place to help develop that. The problem is, uh, we have to walk in, particularly whole young boys’ hands, as we help them, develop their own social, emotional uh language and capacity to express that, and teach them how to build authentic relationships. We live in a world of single community. But how do we, in the context of sport, build authentic community where everybody’s known and accepted? For whom and what they are and that’s where the power lays.
Cindra Kamphoff: Yes, thank you. Um. And I know if people want to pick up your book, you talk a little bit about um. Your experience and inside out coaching out sports can transform lives. Um, Jody, how would you? How would you answer that question? How does you know maybe um your experiences impact you today and impact your purpose.
Jody Redman: Well, I again my journey um, especially around Joe’s book, and that this idea of sport. It was the first time that when I sat down and did read his book, and then led that book study with those athletic administrators that I ever went inside and looked at the people who influenced me. I don’t. I think we’re so busy today. We’re. We never really stop and spend too much time reflecting on our journeys, and or even where we want to go, or how present we want to be today. And so, it really it forced me to look at as I was leading this my own experiences, and you know I, too, had an adverse childhood experience that really left me wounded, and I think that is kind of the nature of for all of us. It’s the same for all of us. I think we all have um things that we’re really challenging in our youth, and I think it’s when we’re um awake enough to look at it, and then look at who helped us along the way.
Jody Redman: Um, and how we recovered from that experience. Um, it takes time and reflection to do so and so out of my own wounds came this need to create community and to create a place where everybody belonged and where we could create community where there was this growth. And there was this energy, and people wanted to be a part of it, and I think that is really fueled. Not only my journey as a teacher, a coach, an athletic administrator, and certainly in my role in a purpose driven life right, it’s being awake and aware, and it’s understanding our journey, it’s understanding what we learn from it, and then it’s taking that and making something better for our world with it. So, my passion has always been about leading to change the arc of others’ lives to create this place of belonging where we’re awake and aware and conscious of the power of adults in students’ lives, and the impact of either making it better or making it. You know an experience that is damaging.
Cindra Kamphoff: Yeah, excellent. Well, I’m feeling like you’re speaking to my soul today. So, I’m feeling like this is very impactful and meaningful, and I know um when you’re speaking in front of uh, you know, coaches and leaders, they feel the same. Um. So, I’m curious. How can people get involved and reach out to you? Uh, and just if they want to learn more about what you’re doing, and just inside out in general, and how um they could, you could, you know you and your team can come and work with their team.
Jody Redman: Well, I think the best way is reaching out to our info at inside out Initiative Org. We have an admin that will work with you to schedule and to bring and look at all the possibilities. I think the other part is that we have now a need platform, so inside out, community of practice. So, we have courses and resources and ways to really scale this within your school community. And then, you know again. I think it’s a matter of we’re not a cookie cutter. We’re not. We don’t live in a box at all. Um, whatever the needs of that group might be. Um, we really tailor Our message in our process, based on how you’re showing up um and what your needs are um from a from a community perspective.
Cindra Kamphoff: I was looking on your website. Um about the impact of this work, and I know that UNC Greensboro has been the center there of athlete wellbeing, I think, has been doing some research on um your program. That’s where I went. Well, that’s where I got my PhD. So really excited to see that you’re working with UNC Greensboro. I love Greensboro, I lived there for seven years. So, um one of my favorite places on earth um, and I’m just curious. You know um what. Tell us a bit about high level on that study, and what you found there?
Jody Redman: Well, we uh so we were fortunate enough that when we met with Uh. Alexia Gallagher, the director of the NFL Foundation, back in two thousand and fifteen. In April of that year we met up at the uh NFL office, and she said, here’s your evaluation team, and that’s literally followed us with clipboards and kept notes like every thirty seconds they were writing down engagement based on you know what we were teaching at the time, And so we’ve been on this incredible and blessed journey with them, not only to inform our work from a data perspective of impact, but also to help us to really focus on. And um now publish, we’re we’ve published into uh two educational journals that really will help to elevate the educational value of what sport can be. Uh, I think people see it, and I think there was a huge impact in sport when we started defining it as extracurricular. I know, back in the I think, late seventy s early eighties. That change in kind of how we talked about sport in our school communities, and so I think that there’s been a real push for us, and especially with the University of North Carolina at Greensboro, and our evaluation team to look at sports as being as important as math and science and English. It is teaching and learning, and if it’s not, then it really does not belong in our school communities. Um! What are the educational? What is the educational value that comes from sport?
Jody Redman: You know we uh, as Joe mentioned, we’re going to be meeting with them next week. We’re going to spend a lot of time uh mapping out our de I work uh within section one of New York. Uh, we’re going to We’re working on a masculinity paper looking at uh masculine uh tendencies around uh some of what Jar Joe shared in our podcast today. So, we’re really spending uh an awful lot of time looking at and mapping out our growth um, and also trying to bring and elevate the value of what sports can and should be in the lives of our students.
Cindra Kamphoff: Yeah, excellent, excellent. Well, as we wrap up today. I’m grateful that you’re both here and just shared more about your passions and you and your work, and how this really think a lot about why we do what we do. Um and how we can. I think the biggest message I’m really hearing is just continuing to create lasting relationships and keeping that front and center. Um, Joe, what final thoughts are um advice Maybe we do have for those people who are listening, and everyone who’s listening is really working to be the best version of themselves. So, I’m curious what thoughts final thoughts do you have?
Joe Ehrmann: Well, I think my final thought is just. All of us have to assume responsibility for other human beings and in that responsibility, it demands that we be the best version of ourselves. We live in a world that’s still with pain. I mean sports. Coaches, leaders have a tremendous opportunity to make a difference. But unless we step out of our own legal centric mindsets. Uh, it’s not going to happen. So, I again want to just thank you for your work uh warm and friendly you are. And I’m really looking forward to listening to your podcast.
Jody Redman: The only thing I would add to that um one it’s been just. I’ve been blessed by this journey uh with Joe. It’s been so impactful in my own life. And you know again, we always try, as in these leadership roles, to um expand our territory, so to speak, and to ensure that we’re reaching and growing ourselves every day. So, it’s that, being intentional component of, you know we could be happy in status quo and just kind of continue down the course and the path that we’re on. But it really uh leadership, effective leadership. Um Impactful leadership requires us to continue to grow and elevate um every day and to be awake. So, I would leave it at that and again bless to be with you today. It’s always good to see you Cindra.
Cindra Kamphoff: Thank you, Jodi, and thank you, Joe. I’m really grateful for your time and your energy today and keep doing the incredible work that you’re doing in this world. It’s much needed.
Joe Ehrmann: Thank you very much.
Your inner critic is your disempowering inner voice that can sound scared, angry, or judgmental. We want to be aware of our inner critic to reduce it. We all have an inner critic inside of us. Remember our inner critic tends to lie to us. We want to respond to our inner critic by challenging it, and choose a more empowering and truthful statement to tell ourselves instead.
This Week’s Power Phrase: “I talk to myself powerful instead of listening to my inner critic.”
This Week’s Quote of the Week: “It is not what you say out of your mouth that determines your life, it is what you whisper to yourself that has the most power.” Robert Kiyosoki
” artist=”Cindra Kamphoff” social=”true” social_twitter=”true” social_facebook=”true” social_gplus=”true” ]
“I talk to myself powerful instead of listening to my inner critic.“@Mentally_Strong Tweet Quote “It is not what you say out of your mouth that determines your life, it is what you whisper to yourself that has the most power.” -Robert Kiyosoki@Mentally_Strong Tweet Quotehttps://cindrakamphoff.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/02/1.30.23-Cindra-on-Quieting-our-Inner-Critic.mp3
You’ll have more energy to sustain you and your goals over years and decades when you cultivate your grit. Success is about sustained performance over time, and cultivating your grit each day is necessary to do so.
Power Phrase this Week: “I am gritty. I am passionate and have a clear vision of the life I am building.”
Quote of the Week: “Grit is sticking with your future day in, day out and not just for a week, not just for the month, but for years.” Angela Duckworth, Professor at University of Pennsylvania
“I am gritty. I am passionate and have a clear vision of the lift I am building.“@Mentally_Strong Tweet Quote “Grit is sticking with your future day in, day out and not just for a week, not just for a month, but for years.” -Angela Duckworth, Professor at University of Pennsylvania@Mentally_Strong Tweet Quotehttps://cindrakamphoff.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/01/1.25.23-Cindra-on-Grit.mp3
This week on the podcast, we talk about various ways to adopt a growth mindset vs. a fixed mindset. When we adopt a growth mindset, we see challenges as exciting and find optimistic ways of explaining adversity. A growth mindset has been linked to achievement, more happiness, healthier relationships, and a higher motivation.“Quote of the Week: “I’ve missed more than 9,000 shots in my career. I’ve lost almost 300 games. 26 times I’ve been trusted to take the game-winning shot and missed. I’ve failed over and over and over again in my life. And that is why I succeed.” Michael JordanPower Phrase of the Week: “When I get frustrated with my progress, I will remind myself I just haven’t done it yet.”
“When I get frustrated with my progress, I will remind myself I just haven’t done it yet.“@Mentally_Strong Tweet Quote “I’ve missed more than 9,000 shots in my career. I’ve lost almost 300 games. 26 times I’ve been trusted to take the game-winning shot and missed. I’ve failed over and over and over again in my life. And that is why I succeed.” Michael Jordan** @Mentally_Strong Tweet Quotehttps://cindrakamphoff.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/01/1.9.23-Cindra-on-Adopting-a-Growth-Mindset.mp3
In this episode, we encourage you to think about what you really want in 2023. High performers set goals because it gives them direction and focus. They write their goals down. They follow through with their goals and keep them in mind during the year. They write down the steps to reach their goals, and then are flexible along the way. Power Phrase of the Week: “I am focused on my goals in 2023.”
Quote of the Week: “Your goals are the road maps that guide you and show you what is possible for your life.” Les Brown
“I am focused on my goals in 2023.“@Mentally_Strong Tweet Quotehttps://cindrakamphoff.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/01/1.3.23-Cindra-on-Goals-for-2023.mp3 “Your goals are the road maps that guide you and show you what is possible for your life.” -Les Brown@Mentally_Strong Tweet Quote
Angie Bastian, along with her husband, Dan, are the founders of Angie’s BOOMCHICKAPOP, one of the most successful homegrown snack food stories in the 21st century.
Angie and Dan Bastian were looking to put aside some money for their kids’ college fund when they started a small kettle corn business out of the family’s garage. They sold the popcorn at festivals and sporting events, eventually becoming the official popcorn of the Minnesota Vikings after delivering several free bags of popcorn to the players to eat while they watched film during training camp. Eventually, Angie retired from her work as a nurse practitioner and Dan from teaching history to run their company full-time.
The ultimate game changer took place when Angie’s Kettle Corn became BOOMCHICKAPOP, and the rebranding took place. Several years later, Dan and Angie, sold the business in the fall of 2017 as a part of a $250 million dollar buyout by Conagra Brands.
In this episode, Angie shares with us:
- How the popcorn company started,
- The behind-the-scenes story of the naming of BOOMCHICKAPOP,
- The strategies they used to overcame setbacks to build the company,
- Why we should not discount our own unique perspectives, and
- Her personal passions driving her today.
“Don’t discount your own unique perspective.” Angie Bastian
HIGH PERFORMANCE MINDSET SHOWNOTES FOR THIS EPISODE: www.cindrakamphoff.com/529
FOLLOW CINDRA ON INSTAGRAM: https://www.instagram.com/cindrakamphoff/
FOLLOW CINDRA ON TWITTER: https://twitter.com/mentally_strong
TO READ ANGIE’S PREFACE IN DR. CINDRA’S BEYOND GRIT FOR BUSINESS BOOK: https://www.beyondgrit.com/
Love the show? Rate and review the show for Cindra to mention you on the next episode: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/high-performance-mindset-learn-from-world-class-leaders/id1034819901
http://thehighperformancemindset.com/
“ Don’t ever discount your own unique perspective on anything, no one will ever think like you.” -Angie Bastian @Mentally_Strong Tweet Quote “In every moment in life, there is something to be grateful for.” -Angie Bastian @Mentally_Strong Tweet Quotehttps://cindrakamphoff.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/01/CindraAngie.mp3Cindra Kamphoff: Well, I’m excited today to have Angie bashed in today on The High-Performance Mindset. Angie is the founder of the best popcorn in the whole world., Boom Chick-A-Pop, which is the only one that I eat, and I’m a fan. I’m a huge fan. White Cheddar is the best just to be clear. And Angie also wrote the forward of my new book Beyond Grit for Business. So, I’m really excited to have you, Andy. I’m grateful that you’re here just to help inspire others and to give them some real strategies about mindset of business growth, and just to the mindset to allow people to thrive. So, thank you so much for being here today.
Angie Bastian: Well, thank you. Cindra. It’s great to be here with you and it was an honor to write the forward for your book.
Cindra Kamphoff: It was an honor for you to do that, and I was thinking, as I was preparing for today, I was thinking about the first time I know that we met, and you heard me speak at a high school. I actually clearly remember that little keynote. It was when I had just started kind of doing more mindset training and so it was pretty cool. And then obviously, you know, we’ve interacted lots of other different times, and our friendship has grown so much for me. I think you’re a strong woman that I admire so much. And I think about what can I build in my business? And you’re just one of those roles models the role model that. I’m continuing to consider and think about. So, thank you so much for being on the podcast today.
Angie Bastian: Well, Thank you. It’s funny, because if you live long enough, you’ll become somebody’s role model.
Angie Bastian: That’s awesome. Let me do something. You know somebody’s bound to notice Say, hey? I want to kind of do that, you know, or be like that that makes me so happy. I want my kids to, you know, to also kind of like, learn something or grow, or you know, as a parent. You just want what you’re doing to be relevant to your children and have them, and to have that go beyond your circle of you know, family or life. It’s really extra special to have an impact on the world in a way that’s positive. So, thanks for noticing.
Cindra Kamphoff: Oh, my gosh, yeah. And I think about the impact that you’ve made in so many different ways, right, not only with this like incredible popcorn, and now, seeing it all over the world, you know, whenever I travel and my mom picks it up, you know, because she’s so proud of you.
Cindra Kamphoff: Let’s get started with your story, and you know you started popping popcorn in your garage to really fund your kid’s college education, and so you know, tell us about what that was like at the beginning.
Angie Bastian: Sure. Well, my husband was a schoolteacher, and I was a psychiatric nurse practitioner? We were all fully employed, but we had 2 little kids, 3 and 5 and you know we just had a little freak out, and that we hadn’t started saving for their college, and we were just kind of restless, and wanted to do something that was together as a family. And also, we thought, well, we could teach our kids how to do it, too. And our motivation was really very sort of small. In the beginning. We didn’t set out to create a global popcorn brand. What we set out to do is do something for our family and to teach our kids. you know, maybe the value of work, and learn how to make change and smile and say Thank you to a customer. So, we bought a tent and some equipment off the website in 2,001 of a couple in Gig Harbor, Washington. that was building this equipment. We got a little recipe, and we started popping kettle corn in first time in front of rainbow foods in Mankato, Minnesota, and then we just went everywhere we could those first 3 years to pop kettle corn on, you know street corners and fairs and festivals, and dragging our kids along. And you know I don’t know it was. It was kind of craziness, and we just put everything back into that business, and we were able to get connected with the Minnesota Vikings at Training camp and we gifted the Vikings some bags of popcorn on a Sunday night when they were watching film, and the next thing we knew their sales and marketing team. I asked us if we wanted to be the official kettle corn and the Minnesota Vikings, and that gave us a whole new platform and a larger audience, and from that we got a meeting with the lungs and buyer leaves buyer, which is a specialty grocery store chain in the Twin Cities area, and we move the operation indoors. bought a bought some new equipment rented about 150 square feet in a grocery store kitchen that was vacated, and Dan quit teaching, started building and delivering, building this little business, and delivering into the backs and grocery stores, and that was in 2,004. We started at St. Peter Food Co-Op, one little co-op store and 3 lunch and Buyer Lee stores. we are making everything by hand. I could.
Angie Bastian: I continued to work in my job as a nurse to support the family and we went all in and for him in 2004 and by the time we were at I’m going to say, about 2010. We have probably about 80 employees. We had outgrown to production plants. We had settled into and built out another construction or another production plant, and we attracted the attention of private equity because we had grown, and we were in Costco. We were in testing and Target, and we were in a lot of grocery chains in the Midwest, and private equity out of Boston invested in us, and 2,011 in a minority position. And they helped us grow, and in 3 years we had a liquidity event including our employees and a new private equity came in out of San Francisco, TPG. Growth, and they invested in 2014 and Dan and I stepped out of the business became board members. We’ve hired a brand-new leadership management team and built the company again and sold to Konaker brands in 2017 and had yet another liquid of the event for some for our employees. And you know it was. It was quite a journey, but the Boom Chick-A-Pop was a rebrand in 2011. That we worked on and over the years. It proved to be, you know a brand and a product that could stand on its own. And you know I like you go into the grocery store and see it, only you probably buy it. I fixed the shelves because they’re messy, and so I fixed the bags, and so I still can’t help being Angie to fix the bags on the grocery store shelf wherever I am.
Cindra Kamphoff: Oh, I love it, Angie. Well, thanks for that, you know. Quick rundown of actually how you built it because I know people have to be wondering what were the different steps you took actually to build it, and then, you know, sell it to Kanangra for a quarter of a 1 billion dollars, right? When you kind of think about that, it’s pretty mind blowing to think that it started in, you know, in 2004 into just for grocery stores, right popping it by the end to 16 years later. This brand that is recognizable, and that you could, you know, sell.
Cindra Kamphoff: I think that’s really incredible. How does that you know when you think about what that moment was like for you to actually sell it, and completely, you know. step away. What was that like for you?
Angie Bastian: Well, it was dramatic. Let’s call it that, but it wasn’t that we weren’t prepared for it, because we came to understand that you know 7 years before that when you enter into a relationship with private equity. You know you switch from sort of a family-owned business to an investor engaged business, and investors want to realize gain. So, in the way they do that is often is in a brand or in CPG. Is to is to sell. So, we kind of knew that would be what would happen along the way, and had, I would say that first engagement with private equity, had we sold that, you know, without being involved, and had to step away entirely in 2,014. It would have, I would have felt, both in and I would have felt relieved, but really sad, I think, because I don’t care if you are ready to be done. but then when we had the second private equity, come in, buy out build again. we reinvested in the company. sat on the board, built this team. That was just this a plus team, and then it was fun, you know. It was just really fun, and the whole I mean it wasn’t without its turmoil and difficulty. But it was more fun for Dan and that point, and you know when it’s sold in 2017, you know I just felt like my kid just graduated from college. That’s what it felt like to me. I was happy, and we well, we felt like we did it, but you know it was still ours, that it still feels like it’s ours, but I know it’s not. You know it’s the business going on to thrive and live independently and honestly. I have had a non-compete that just expired October of 2022, so I was still tied to the success of the business in in in a very loose way, but still connected legally to the business, in a sense, you know. And so, you know I’m just getting used to not being connected anymore. And it’s it was a slow process of untangling that intense connection, and I think Dan and I are just getting used to that now.
Cindra Kamphoff: Yeah. Well, I could imagine it’s, you know it’s your baby. It’s like your kid graduated from college, and I could imagine the investment like the emotional investment that it took just to build this. And I’m wondering, Angie, what I really want to kind of dive into and focus in on is the mindset it took because, I mean, even as you are going through the different steps and the risk taking that it took. When you take a step back and say what allowed you to take the risks the way that you did.
Angie Bastian: What I would say is that you know we took incremental risks.
Angie Bastian: In the beginning, I would say, and you know the first investment for us was, you know, about 8,000, some or $10,000 on a credit card, right? And that’s how we paid for our first investment, and then the risk was the time that you use to build the business, and that risk of what you’re giving up instead, you know, of building a business which is you know it’s TV time when it’s early on, you know, like, okay, I I that’s no risk out. We’re just out chugging away building. So those first couple of years it didn’t feel risky.
Angie Bastian: It just felt like we were doing something, you know. But then, as we continue to commit to a greater degree, and every time you commit to a greater degree, what we came to understand is that there’s larger risk associated with that and its financial risk. It’s more time. it’s. It’s more identity risk like okay, I guess we’re all in now, I guess. I’m, you know, like when I retired from nursing I didn’t retire from nursing until we took on private equity, and then we were both like it just felt like suddenly there was no safety net under us. We are all in now, but that didn’t happen in the first 3 years, you know we didn’t
take that kind of risk. I think we took financial risks that were significant in 2007 when we built out a production plant and you know more depth than we ever expected that we would take on, and in my whole life. I never expected, but it didn’t feel ominous to us. I mean it was. It was significant, you know. But you know we were of the mindset like, okay, this is what we gotta do. We got it If we want to move forward. We have to take this risk, and we’ll just we’ll hold it. We’ll just have to hold it and act, you know. Just make sure it doesn’t fail, you know, or just and you know, every day we have little failures. I would say that, but the whole thing can’t sail right like we can’t have a recall. We can’t fail on the product. We can’t sail on certain things, but we could sure fail like on a lot of things which we did because we didn’t know how to do it right, or we didn’t know how to do this. And so, it was just about like we had had enough experience up until that point, to know that when we fail, we would know what to do, to fix it, and to make it right, or to learn from that, and move on, or get this resource to the table. Or and so every time we did that it was like we grew a little bit more. We understood the business a little bit more, and we felt a little bit more confident. Whenever we did have those kinds of failures. And then, when we, when we started looking at like this, could be a really big failure like we could owe people millions of dollars.
Angie Bastian: If this whole thing if the whole thing would fail, and that felt like a pretty big risk.
Angie Bastian: But what I would say is that we have. We have built that confidence in ourselves that like that we didn’t take that big of risk the first the first decision we made we took that risk. When had we built confidence in ourselves that we could we? We could do this, and you know what there’s a lot of things out there you can’t control. And so, we are like, well, okay, if for whatever reason, there’s something happens like a tornado hits the plant that we can’t get like. And we end up like losing this business. Will all a lot of people a lot of money but will be fine. We’ll be fine. We’ll just pay them. We’ll pay back the money for the rest of our life, but we’ll be fine because the things for us that really mattered. Were us for the people that we loved and cared about, and you know, and our reputation. And you know we weren’t just going to walk away from. You know that risk we knew that it came with strings attached, and you know we would never cut those we would. We would honor those, and because we knew who we were, and so we wouldn’t abandon who we are, just because there’s risks there. And so, it would just mean that you know our lives might have gone in a different direction. and so that’s how we talk. That’s how we kind of settled in our mind that risk, and I would also say we didn’t dwell on the risk we just we do. We knew it was there, but it wasn’t like something that that you know.
Angie Bastian: No, no, it’s like you’re like, okay. We know it’s there. We signed it. We know how much we owe people. Let’s go. Let’s go. Let’s go focus on what we can do. Let’s go. Let’s go, fill this thing, and that’s and that’s why I think we handled risk.
Cindra Kamphoff: Yeah, thanks I really appreciate that answer, because I think about how it was. It was like calculated risks. It was like, slow, you know, slow risks over time, and it wasn’t just like it went from your garage buying something for a 1,000 to you know the next day selling it to Conagra right like it’s. It was small risks that the smaller risks of the time, but it was like the confidence that you had allowed you to take those risks, and I think about people who are trying to build something, maybe building their career, building their own business, and building. Their confidence is really important to continue to believe that they have the skills, and what you said is like you weren’t dwelling one of the things that could go wrong. It’s like. Well, what can I do to create this?
Angie Bastian: Exactly. I mean you know there’s enough that can go wrong in a production plant every single day. You can’t just focus on that, you know, and you get a lot of notes like when you’re early, and you’re an early entrepreneur. You have a new product, and you get an appointment with a buyer which you think victory. I’ve got an appointment with a buyer, I’m like I’m. I’m in, you know, and they can still say no, and but for us it was always you know. It’s not that we expected. We kind of
came in expecting them to say yes, because we had, you know, in our own we had such great product. We had all this stuff, but they would say no, you know they would say no, and for us you know it’s as an entrepreneur that’s like getting punched in the face a little bit. and you, you kind of take a step back, and then the goal, I think, in those situations is it is to never ever react in anger or burn a bridge or do something like it just. We just never did that, because you know, we were as gracious as we possibly could be, and for us it was also a more about connecting with another human being, and making sure that, like they liked us, or they they cared about what we were doing, or that they carried about the business. So maybe, you know, in 6 months, when they maybe wanted to give us a slot in the shelf, and they thought about like you know somebody that they want to do business with it. We were hoping they would think of us, you know, and so we would keep in touch. And we would, we would, you know, always treat them like we would want to be treated instead of like
that sort of reactive, like dejection and rejection that you get, and how you can react and say, Well, you know forget that I’m going on to the next store, you know, and see if they want us, because that could be the reaction, and then being, and it’s kind of how you can feel sometimes after you get a bunch of those, you know. And you know for us. We just tried never ever to do that.
Cindra Kamphoff: Well, I appreciate that answer, because I think you know that he goes involved when we feel defeated, or we get angry or frustrated right? And then I’m thinking about some of the people that I coach one on one Angie who are maybe entrepreneurs or their people in sales or financial planners, and they can. You can easily be easy to react with like frustration.
Cindra Kamphoff: You know what’s you know or take it personally like. There’s something wrong with you when really it might not have just been a good time for them to put popcorn on their shelf at that point.
Angie Bastian: Right? Right? I do think we always try to kind of take in
feedback on. You know we could do better to, you know, because maybe we did come into hot and heavy, you know. Or maybe we did, and come in too aggressive, or I don’t know I’ve been in. I’ve been in plenty of buying offices with professional salespeople that they act so salesy. I can just see the buyer shutting down, you know, like the buyer doesn’t want to hear kind of their approach. And I always felt like, you know, and we always encouraged our people to just be people, you know, just you know, and we have a product, and we know how to ask for the sale and all of that. But I just, I think if I always tried to put myself in that buyer’s chair.
Angie Bastian: and they’re seeing like every half an hour every hour. You know all of these people coming in and telling them the same thing. We have the best product that you’ll ever it’ll ever have, you know, because we say it is, and all you know, and we’re the best thing this year, and we’ll. We’ll do all these wonderful things for you; you know they hear that like 10 times a day, you know. And so, you have to distinguish yourself.
Angie Bastian: Maybe in a relationship, you know, or in in that, that that that you get with someone, or in building that relationship. And I think you know and presenting a brand and a product that’s of interest to them. And you’ve got it. I also think one of our keys was thinking about like sitting in the buyer’s chair ourselves and thinking about how they would respond, and how I’m looking at this product and this person to help me do my job better as a buyer, you know, and that was, I think, helped us in a lot of ways, you know, to make them look better, because that was our goal. You know they they’ve got their job is to get as much revenue out of the real estate. They’re given on a grocery store shelf and let’s help them. Do that, you know. Let’s help them do their job better if we can. You know, if we’ve got something that we can offer them to make them look good, not just us, you know. So that was important for us.
Cindra Kamphoff: It makes sense, Angie, that you know your message to your people is just. Just Be a person, just be a human right like, connect with them personally, because I think that that’s also who you are, you know, really authentic, and just like a connector, you know I know early on there was some disappointments, and I think about when you first told me about how that you were going to. You asked the Minnesota State Fair if you could, if you can, if you can have a booth there, and they turned you down and so it kind of makes me laugh now. But I’m curious about how did you deal with those setbacks, and what was the mindset that you dealt with? How did you actually deal with something that didn’t go great?
Cindra Kamphoff: And what advice? Maybe you would you give for others who do experience setbacks, you know, maybe small or big.
Angie Bastian: Yeah. Yeah. Well, you know, we were, I would say we were pretty far along in our business when the Minnesota State Fair opened up
like an RFP for cattle corn because they had apparently someone. They had been there for a long period of time, and they were very loyal, and we understood that we weren’t trying to, you know do that. But when they opened up the Rp. We’re like, oh, let’s go. We’ve got to be in, you know we’re already a well-known brand in in Minnesota, and it made so much sense to us. And we were going to invest and build a kiosk and everything like that and then they turned us down which didn’t make sense to us right like we know why, right? It just didn’t make sense to us. They have their reasons, but I think, very quickly. We just walked. We are just we are like, okay, all right. That’s not where we’re going to be like they don’t.
Angie Bastian: That’s not it for us. Let’s go. Let it, and really let’s just let’s not invest any more time and energy into that situation, and in fact, we use the investment that we would have otherwise used to do that to build another portion of our business which was in the branding and CPG space. And so, you know, had we been distracted, and we stayed there exactly like to get in there.
Angie Bastian: We might not have had the energy and resources to focus on this other direction which we are like. Fine, you don’t want to. Okay, Great. We’ll go. We’ll go. We’ll just keep going, and we kept in touch with the State there, and I think they eventually kind of reached out to us years later, and we were like Well, we don’t really do that anymore.
Angie Bastian: Had had we had we stayed there, I think, Dan and I we saw the steak there is like, Whoa! That would be. That would be the hallmark of success for our business if we would have kept that definition as the hallmark of our success. Dan and I would still be hauling our kettle corn maker up there every year, and you know, we wouldn’t have realized the kind of success for our investors and our employees, and we it just
this other whole thing probably wouldn’t have happened.
Cindra Kamphoff: Yeah, isn’t that incredible, like as I’m listening to this, I think about you know this phrase like, how are how do things happen for you? Not to you? And I think about how, maybe not getting into the State fair was a gift in some way. Yeah, and you wouldn’t be it or distracted you from what ultimately you could build. And I think that’s a great reframe that people can have when they’re going through. A disappointment or difficulty is, ask yourself. Well, okay, maybe this is I’m just supposed to be meant. I meant to go on a different career path
or maybe there’s something you know better at the end of this tunnel than it than right now. What seems to be the thing that I really want, or we desire.
Angie Bastian: Well, and I think the key to that. Is that what you just said, I, I think this thing is going to something else could be better, I think, in the entrepreneur’s mindset is like I’m going to go make something better. Then love it. I’m going to go this because you, because you kind of feel like you have to prove something to yourself in a way I felt like, or we felt like.
Angie Bastian: And so yeah, and maybe that’s a dysfunctional way that that entrepreneurs work, I don’t know. But you because you’re trying to prove to yourself, and you’re trying to prove to everybody else that what you’re doing is relevant and matters and you can, you can, you know, and that you can get validated out there. And so, but it it’s a drive that that you know we always felt like you know rejection, or whatever was
with motivation or competition. Same thing, motivation to go be better, and we are going to make ourselves better. It doesn’t just happen. I don’t think you got to make it happen.
Cindra Kamphoff: Yeah. And I think that’s so much about mentality, you know, as I work, Angie with some of you know, really great professional athletes. That’s actually what I see is a differentiator is when they’re faced with a disappointment or difficulty or rejection that they have this sort of like sort of maybe watch me mentality. You know that it’s like, oh, I’m going to go make it happen. And I love the way that you just tweak to that is in a, from the entrepreneur standpoint that I was like, okay? Well, that door closed. How can I go make something better
and be motivated when you’re faced with rejection, instead of just giving in and saying, well, okay, that’s not for me or doubting yourself in some way, because can. I just tell you, and this may be there’s a little there’s more than a little satisfaction that that in a couple of years I think
Angie Bastian: You know, after we got the rejection is they’re going to wish they would have chosen. And then they came back and asked you, I think you know. But we just didn’t do it anymore, you know. So, it was. We were beyond that, you know, and you sometimes outgrow your rejections that you’ve had in the past, you know. So, if and if you didn’t, you might end up getting stuck there. So, you know we just never.
Angie Bastian: Never really dwelled on any of the rejections that we had, and just moved on quickly.
Cindra Kamphoff: Yeah, I think that’s hard for people to do. Angie. Was there anything that you did specifically in your own mind. Do you think that came natural to you? Do you think it was helpful to have you and Dan together like what allowed you to actually move on quickly.
Angie Bastian: Well, you know, I think the first time I mean, you know, everybody is experienced personal rejections in their lives, broken relationships, things in the past, you know that. Look, I wasn’t always
capable of moving on quickly when it came to rejection, because I at my heart broken like everybody else, probably in their lives. We’ve got, and you know, as a young woman and you know everything is there to learn, you know I mean I Every experience I felt like was for a reason for me to learn or to grow, and you know, even personal experiences of rejection. you know I had enough space to look back, and I think, Dan, in the same way we had enough space to look back on things like that, and just say it’s. You know we know what that’s like, you know. We know what we know what you know really feeling stuck in a place feels like, and here we don’t want that like I don’t want that in my life. I don’t want that in my career. I don’t want that, and you know, in in our partnership. And so, I think you know that that growth happens through it for me at least, happened through experience. And it just didn’t make sense in a business
to stay stuck in anything, you know. And so, because I knew what that felt like, and I knew that kind of you know that circular down the drain so that could feel like, and it just didn’t it. It’s just didn’t make any sense to take that mindset into building something. It just it’s an opposite. It’s pulling in opposite directions. And so, you know, I would say you know both Dan and I together were like we were already in agreement like this is not how you live, your, how we would live our life. We don’t want to get stuck in anything, and so it just made sense to us. It felt rational to just move forward. Let’s go. Let’s I love Lizzie’s song. You know that one song about I don’t know it’s, you know. Walk I push and swear and walk your ass right out the door, you know, you know. Put your head. You know all of that. Some shoes. That’s exactly right, like, okay, deal with reality and go move on. Do what you gotta do, and that’s truth in business, too. You know it just is. It’s like it is.
Cindra Kamphoff: Yeah, there’s a strategy I talk about in the book called Learn Burn, Return, Angie, and it’s just this idea that this I mean, it gives you a structure, and how to do that. It’s asking yourself, what am I learning? And then, literally, once you take the lesson, you can burn it. You can move on, and I think it’s easy. Sometimes it’s easier for some people than others. But I want to hear is what you both did the decided on you. You know your conversations with you and Dan that it was like, All right. We’re this is how we’re going to live, and we’re going to we’re not going to dwell because you’re right. We just kind of get this in this circular cycle.
Cindra Kamphoff: There was a moment that I remember when I was interviewing you for the book, and you said like the best for the best moments was, You know, those times where you could give your employees a check right after you sold it, and what that was like just to be able to give the people that supported you into making this brand, and I want to talk a little bit about
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Cindra Kamphoff: the people that you had. And you were talking in the in the preface of the book that you know, creating a culture where people felt liberated to be of their authentic selves, to share their ideas and perspectives was really important, because it allowed people to like to unleash their creative energy. Tell us a little bit about how you built that culture, and how you think that culture ended up helping you be successful in the end.
Angie Bastian: Yeah. Well, you know it’s a culture that you know didn’t get created in a day. I’d say that you know it’s a foundation. I think that Dan and I built on in the way that we first tried to treat each other, you know, being married, building this, you know, like at which is the very basic premise of that is, expect the best out of someone, not the worst, you know, like you just like, even though you might be upset, you know if but just kind of go with that. Go with your best instincts about that person, not your worst, you know, and so that that kind of I would say that kind of culture of collegiality and looking at someone
with the intent that their intent was for good, and not to be destructive in any way, you know.
Angie Bastian: And I don’t, and I do don’t mean that in terms of like this toxic positivity because we all make mistakes, you know. I just mean like. But when somebody makes a mistake, you know it that it’s you know they might not have meant to. You know they were trying to manipulate. They were trying. They like to look at something like that. It’s an opportunity for growth. It’s an opportunity for us to learn more about each other, like there’s room for people to be human in this system, and to make mistakes and like I have your back on this in, or I’m here to support you, and that’s really important when you’re on a production floor, working with you know, equipment that is dangerous. And you know, I think the way that we talked about it is OSHA comes in, and they make sure that you have a standard of safety for your employees. And then we took that mindset of safety, as you know, that physical safety that OSHA really requires to keep people safe physically safe. we took that into. Let’s make sure people feel you know, safe, but everything about them is safe like who they are, who they are, in their in their choices of religion, or their social groups, or their ethnicity, and that everybody has something unique to offer, and let’s make it safe for them to be expressive of who they are. And you know, in our production, plan it wasn’t easy, because sometimes we had.
Angie Bastian: We had people that were dealing with drug and alcohol issues with drug Court. We had people that were immigrants. We had people with none of that, you know they were college students, and so that there had to be there had to be some give and take, and some latitude for people to be human. And yet, grace, I would call it grace for each other; and I think that when people feel safe emotionally, and bottom-line physical safety, you know nobody is getting hit. Nobody’s getting burned with the you know all of that stuff that can happen in production plans that people feel physically safe and emotionally safe. Their anxiety, energy, just kind of drops.
Angie Bastian: And there’s a lot more space and room for problem solving and empowerment and visibility to see things that maybe, you know anxiety makes some tunnel vision, you know, or if they’re just trying not to make a back, you know, not trying to get fired, you know, or whatever that is that that people experience at work, or whatever fears it is. What we just try to do is have accountability here. The guard rails. Here’s the structure here. Here are the rules of operation. You can’t treat each other badly. You know there’s rules about working to like the switch from where the switch can’t wear this. You keep the food safe. All these things work within these guard rails, and then bring your best self to work. And you know we have. We’re all here together, and it we might as well make it fun. We might as well make it a community where you feel like you’re in it, together with somebody, even though you’re just making popcorn to sell. You’re really doing much more than that. You’re building bridges with the people you’re standing next to, or sitting next to at a desk, believe me, we had people at desk yelling at each other. It wasn’t always peaceful, but know, if there was room for a dynamic exchange of ideas and personalities within it, you know. And then sometimes you’d have to just say, really back a little bit, let’s, you know that was maybe inappropriate and but every, but people were clear about what was inappropriate. And what was it? And yet. I think that culture is hard to manage in a way, but as that culture kind of evolved it, it became really very much easier for our Hr. People to manage to manage the business, you know, to manage human resources than it did without those that dynamic sort of changing sounds kind of Lucy Goose environment. But it became. It became really an enjoyable place for so many people, and we still have a Facebook page of Auntie’s alumni that we go on, and people connect their cause they miss each other.
Cindra Kamphoff: They do? That’s awesome. Well, I think that was an incredible response. Angie and a couple of things that I wrote down that I just want to. Highlight is like expecting the best of the person, and I think sometimes we don’t always, and maybe our default is to expect the worst to protect ourselves. So, expect the best you, said Grace, and like, I think, ultimately, it’s like acceptance of people to create this environment of safety. You know, as we kind of as I keep on thinking about what your you know what you continue to be passionate about. Tell us what about? I know you’re really passionate about just like helping women and helping them grow their business. Or, however you might, you support them, and so tell us what? Where? You where you’re spending your time now, and what you’re passionate about.
Angie Bastian: Well, actually, you know I do some mentoring for women who are in business and entrepreneurs. I also am a chairperson of the Board of Directors for a company called Prosper of Food, and it is a vertically integrated benefit corporation with a non for profit that, is supporting shareholder farmers in Central America. And we’re bringing their products to market to the global market and through the benefit corporation we are able to get profits to flow back, to create a middle class. and to elevate farmers. And these are these are farmers that are used to living off of $2 a day, you know and so we are. We are selling cassava flower. we have a production plant that’s produces that buys Yuka from farmers, and we have been able to stabilize the Yukon market in Nicaragua. Which is a second poorest country in the in the Western Hemisphere behind Haiti and it is it’s a place where there’s a lot of room for growth, and you know, and the people are wonderful. And there’s a school. We just got back from Nicaragua that we’re educating. There’s a school that’s now graduated 7 classes and you know there there’s a lot of impact that can happen in a place like this. And so actually, I’ve spent a lot of time. I still am very passionate about supporting women. But I’ve gotten involved in in international economic development and using my contacts from my CPG: world and food world to open up markets for people where global markets were inaccessible in the past.
Cindra Kamphoff: Well, that’s incredible, Angie. I think. you’re I can hear just so much of your heart right like your heart, and in terms of building boom, take a pop, but also in your heart. in the things that you’re continue to be passionate about how you spend your time now. there is one question I wanted to ask you is about the name of boom tick a pop, and I think that’s such a cool name and such a sticky name. I remember the first time I saw it, and it rebranded from Angie’s Boom Chick-a-Pop, and I was like Well, that’s cool. Tell us how that came to be.
Angie Bastian: Well in 2010 we were Auntie’s kettle core and still, and we wanted to expand product offerings beyond sweet and salty. We I wanted some plain I’ll see salt popcorn plus skinny pop. It just gotten launched on the market, and it was really eating our lunch because they had a position that they had position the popcorn as a as a diet and snack play, and the consumers are responding to that. I was personally annoyed by it because I felt like it was sort of reductionistic in a way, and
it maybe gets back into the stores and look at how are we talking, how our marketers talking to consumers about food, and what I noticed at the time is because we were in the natural and organic snack aisle is that they were very permissive color palettes, very masculine looking color, palettes, and very permissive messages about eat. This food is really good and then there were other brands that were using more playful, more colorful wording and language, and those appeared to be aimed at children and adolescents. And then the food that seemed to be aimed at. Women was
more in line with their assumption that we were all in on, on a diet or something, or that we were all supposed to look a certain way, or you know I don’t know it just personally annoyed me. And so, we you know we were trying to figure out a strategy how we compete in the marketplace, how we launch some new products and so we hired a creative agency, Mono out of Minneapolis and their creative team took our problem. and we were like we really want to do this in a different way. We really want to come into the marketplace. We’ll, we’ll give the consumer the product they want. But we’re going to do it in a little bit of a different way. And Here’s how we want to do it. We want it to come from a position of empowerment. We don’t want to be our sales guys honestly kept saying, can’t you just name it, Angie Skinny or Angie is, you know, nearly naked, or and I was like No, we are not doing that, and nearly naked because there was out there called there like it was something near, and they were. That was the language. That was because it was, you know, very little fat, very little. So, all of that. But it was. It was really it was really like; you know. What. Why are we talking like this to about food, you know. And then I started looking at advertising and the advertising seem to position women with food as a moment of conflict or as a sexualized behavior. That’s what it looked like to me at the time, and I was like we are not going to do that. That is not how we’re going to talk to people about women and food. And, in fact, let’s do something where at women are actually eating, where we show up on the shelf in a way that celebrates the feminine. That is clearly feminine energy. that captures the attention of consumers, and especially women like they’re going to stop in front of it and go. Hey, I like this. I don’t know what it is, but I like it. I don’t know why, like it, but I like it like, can you help us do this? And can you?
Angie Bastian: Yeah. And so, we were going to name this product something different and they came up with a couple of names and boom! Chick of Power pow was one of those names, and we all started laughing right and we are like because there was this immediate energy in the room. But we had. We had an analyst at the end of the table. This is. These are the days that we all sat around a table and worked on one table in this big kind of room, in a garage in Eden Prairie, and after these you know 24-year-old brilliant marketers left. he said, you don’t like a palpal is seventies and why don’t take a PAL palace 70 is for? Well, we can’t have that, you know, but it also made me think. Well, let’s take that energy back like it Really, let’s take it back. Let’s do something with it. Let’s connect it to the let’s connect it to the product a little bit closer, and they did that. They came back with Bo to the pop. We are like, let’s go you know I was. I was even a little too afraid that that bright yellow bag was too much. And I said, let’s try why they go. No, I really think we should do yell, and we’re like, okay, you let’s go like I knew it was right. I was kind of scared, but knew it was right. They knew it was right. We launched it in May of 2,012, and by August the bright yellow boom, chicken pop back, and she’s going to pop by August of 2012.
That grocery bag was our number one selling grocery stores after 4 months, and that was after being a business for 9 years. So amazing, so consumers voted right, and they voted with their pocketbook, and we got we got distribution on the coast that we never would have got. Have we not been sort of provocative like that? And I would just say the design of it of the package was really out of necessity, because we needed that package to do a lot of work for us because we didn’t. We didn’t have the money to do advertising at that time. So, we knew we had 2 and a half seconds to capture someone’s attention.
Angie Bastian: So how are we going to do that? And you know this is the brilliance of creative people when you give them. You know a brief about this is what we want to accomplish. We don’t know what that looks like they bring it to life, and they brought it to life. And that’s how it came to be.
Cindra Kamphoff: That’s awesome. I love that it was. You know we’re going to be boom chick of Powell, but the Pop isn’t so much better. I love that story, and what I love mostly about Angie is that it came from a place of like empowering women. And you know I mean first of all; your product is incredible. I do think it’s the best popcorn that you can buy. But then also to know that it came from like the packaging was more about like empowering women and not making women feel like. They’re not enough or right. They don’t have this this perfect body or that. They needed to eat it to be skinny right? And so, I love the heart of how it came to be, which is empowering women.
Cindra Kamphoff: So good. Well, I know there’s so many different things that we could talk about. But what I want to finish up with is just tell us what your advice would be for people who are maybe trying to build something. Maybe they’re entrepreneurs, or you know, maybe they are listening because they’re inspired about building something bigger in their career. What advice would you give to people who want to build something bigger, maybe as a business, or just in their career.
Angie Bastian: Well, I think what immediately comes to mind is Don’t ever discount your own unique perspective on anything or your own unique purpose in the world, whatever that is, you know. And you know you built you, you know just no one ever thinks exactly like you think, and the way that you think might feel obvious to you, or the way that you might see the world might feel like it’s obvious, but it it’s probably not. And you know we might be you know, an example of, you know just the way that I saw something in the marketplace that was maybe a little different than anyone else was able to help us create a brand that was worth 250 million dollars, you know, and that was just built. I mean, we did execute product and everything. But you know it’s clear the 2 together. It’s the execution and the perspective together. Building. That is what created this value, both tangible and intangible. And so Don’t ever discount that the way you see things in the world might be valuable as you build your career or build your business.
Cindra Kamphoff: Outstanding. And you well, I so much appreciate
the whole hardness that I think you and Dan live with, and I can see you know, how you’ve built this, and you know that your heart was so in it. And here’s a couple of things that I want people to remind themselves of. As I kind of summarize today. I love what you said about when you’re when you face with a rejection just to never react with anger, frustration, keep those bridges open, and instead ask yourself, you know. How can how can you grow? What can you learn? How can you take this as a motivation? To continue to be your best right. And you talked about like not dwelling on the negative.
Cindra Kamphoff: And when we’re talking about the culture you said, expecting the best out of people creating that emotional and psychological safety. And then your last comment about owning that unique perspective is really powerful. So, I know. I’m hopeful that you and Dan are going to write your own book coming up sometime soon. But if you’d like to read Angie’s forward in my book beyond grit for business. You can hold over to beyondgrit.com, and it’s free shipping right now.
Cindra Kamphoff: Angie, how would you like to end today and what’s the thing you’re thinking about?
Angie Bastian: Well, I just have so much gratitude for everything that our life has become, and you know all the all, the good and all the bad, because it all put together. It created, you know, the life that I that I have now, which is given me the opportunity to meet so many wonderful people. And I, you know, just to be able to meet you Cindra.
Angie Bastian: Learn from your wisdom and your book. I learned stuff reading your book beyond dread for business, and I was like, oh, that’s how to describe what maybe what I was sort of thinking I didn’t know how to say, but she knows how to say it, you know, and so I just I just every moment in life is there’s something to be grateful for, and you know I’m just so happy that that my life is come to a place where I get to be around people like you Cindra, and you know, and other people that we get to meet in the world it’s where it’s that where the energy is great things happen when there’s vibrations between people and I just it’s so. True it’s so, true and I just think you know, building relationships is one of the most important things you can do in in any part of your life, whether it’s personal business, social, collegial. It’s just so important. And I just appreciate this relationship.
Cindra Kamphoff: Well, thank you, Angie. Thanks for being such an incredible role model. And for all that you do in the world, and for inspiring millions of people. And I think, after hearing this today, people will see Angie’s Boom Chick-a-Pop differently, because they hear the back story, and then it’s you know it’s I would just say like more than popcorn if you were the top part or the popcorn you hear, like the real person behind it. So, I’m grateful that you spent some time with us today. Thank you so much for being here, Angie.
Angie Bastian: Thanks, thanks for having me. I appreciate it.
Our negativity bias keeps us safe, yet it can prevent us from leading ourselves and others, forming relationships, and taking risks in the pursuit of our dreams. In this episode, we talk about why we have the negativity bias, and how we can handle negativity from others.
Power Phrase of the Week: “ I level up my thoughts to level up my life.”
Quote of the Week: Willie Nelson said: “We create our own unhappiness. The purpose of suffering is to help us understand we are the ones who cause it.”
“I level up my thoughts to level up my life.“@Mentally_Strong Tweet Quote “We create our own unhappiness. The purpose of suffering is to help us understand we are the ones who cause it.” -Willie Nelson @Mentally_Strong Tweet Quotehttps://cindrakamphoff.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/12/12.12.22-Cindra-on-Dealing-with-Negativity.mp3
Gratitude is connected to better health, more optimism, and an increased in resiliency. This week you could start using a scientifically proven tool to increase your gratitude. Three tools we discussed are starting your day with gratitude, using gratitude language, or trying the Grateful Flow exercise.
This Week’s Power Phrase: “I choose to intentionally practice gratitude daily. I focus on what I am grateful for to stay fueled and excited for my life.”
This Week’s Quote of the Week: “Acknowledging the good that you already have in your life is the foundation for all abundance.” Eckhart Tolle
[tweet_dis2] “I choose to intentionally practice gratitude daily. I focus on what I am grateful for to stay fueled and excited for my life.“ @Mentally_Strong [/tweet_dis2]
[tweet_dis2]“Acknowledging the good that you already have in your life is the foundation for all abundance.” –Eckhart Tolle @Mentally_Strong [/tweet_dis2]
https://cindrakamphoff.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/12/12.19.22-Cindra-on-Gratitude.mp3
Your mindset drives everything – how you live, the stress you feel, and how you lead. Remember all of your emotions are valuable –emotions are not good or bad. By labeling your emotions, you can understand what led to that feeling with curiosity and openness.
Power Phrase of the Week: “I respond with purpose and intention. I master my emotions.”
Quote of the Week: “Life is 10% of what happens to me and 90% of how I react to it.” John Maxwell
[tweet_dis2] “I respond with purpose and intention. I master my emotions.“ @Mentally_Strong [/tweet_dis2]
[tweet_dis2]“Life is 10% of what happens to me and 90% of how I react to it.”@Mentally_Strong [/tweet_dis2]
https://cindrakamphoff.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/12/11.21.22-Cindra-on-Master-Your-Emotions-1.mp3
Today we are talking about 4 mental strategies that allow you to remain optimistic and see life with a clear lens. Why is this important? Because the future of your career and life is directly tied to your expectations and the ability to see the opportunity in the difficulty.
This Week’s Power Phrase: “I level up my self-talk to level up my life.”
Quote of the Week – “Work harder on yourself than you do your job.” —Jim Rohn [tweet_dis2] “I level up my self-talk to level up my life.“ @Mentally_Strong [/tweet_dis2]
[tweet_dis2]“Work harder on yourself than you do your job.” -Jim John@Mentally_Strong [/tweet_dis2]
https://cindrakamphoff.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/12/12.5.22-Cindra-on-4-Ways-to-Level-Up-Your-Self-Talk.mp3
Dale Carnegie said it best, “Fear doesn’t exist anywhere except in the mind.”
The World’s Best choose courage instead of fear. They feel the fear, but don’t let it keep them from doing what they want to, have to, or were designed to do. High performers know that when they feel fear, it means they are doing something important and meaningful.
Power phrase: “I embrace my fear and choose courage.”
[tweet_dis2] “I embrace my fear and choose courage.“ @Mentally_Strong [/tweet_dis2]
[tweet_dis2]“Fear doesn’t exist anywhere except in the mind.” -Dale Carnegie@Mentally_Strong [/tweet_dis2]
https://cindrakamphoff.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/12/11.28.22-Cindra-on-Saying-Hello-to-Fear.mp3
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“You have to believe you’re good enough to excel at the highest level if you ever expect to get there.” —Pat Summit In this episode, Dr. Cindra talks about research-backed ways to build confidence. Confidence is a choice you make daily. Your belief and trust in your ability is your choice. Intentionally decide today to…
Dan is a Managing Director and Wealth Management Advisor for Northwestern Mutual. He has nearly a decade of experience in corporate business to business sales. He holds a Masters in Business Administration (MBA) and is a Certified Financial Planner (CFP) and Retirement Income Certified Professional (RICP). He is married to his wife Melissa and has…
It is easy to care for other people more than we care for ourselves. In this episode, we talk about 7 types of rest to combat burnout and stress. Consider your rest as you are listening. Which type of rest would be most important for you to implement more often? Power Phrase this Week: “I…
Finding your flow zone starts with your mind and channeling your focus to the present moment. There are three barriers to flow which we discuss in this episode. In this episode, we refer to these 3 barriers as The Three Fs: 1. Focusing on the outcome, 2. Forcing flow, and 3. Focusing on yourself. Your…
Corey Perlman is a speaker, consultant and nationally-recognized social media expert. His latest book, Social Media Overload!, ranked #1 on Amazon.com in every major business category. Corey’s spoken for brands such as General Motors, The PGA Tour and Sysco Foods on how to drive business results through social media. His company, Impact Social, Inc., employs…
“Beware of the thief in your mind that’s after your promise and purpose.” Jim Rohn Think of your inner limits like thieves in your mind. The thieves take away your power, motivation, and a connection to your purpose. Your thieves are inner limits. Today we are going to talk about three – the three biggest…
Dr. Rob Elliott Owens, CMPC, CSCS, BCC is a leadership and mindset performance coach trained in the mental and physical aspects of human performance. He currently consults with healthcare and business executives. He is the former chair of the Association for Applied Sport Psychology (AASP) Diversity Committee, and co-facilitated AASP’s Diversity in Sport and Culture…
Think of your mind as having two parts: the observer mind and the thinking mind. The thinking mind is the monkey mind going from thought to thought to thought. In this episode, Dr. Cindra talks about how to thoughts to be your best more often. Quote of the Week: “Observe your thoughts and actions so…
Becoming happier and being your best self means learning how to disengage from overthinking. Every day, in all parts of our life, we can experience minor setbacks and hassles. Learning to stop overthinking about them will help you reach your highest level of performance and think like the world’s best. Power Phrase this Week: “I…
Thinking about your big vision to give you energy and motivation. But day to day we also need to stay focused on the process because it allows us to be in the present moment. It’s important to stay focused on the daily process and the present moment, as it decreases stress, pressure, and anxiety. Plus,…
Dr. Britt Andreatta is an internationally recognized thought leader who uses her background in leadership, neuroscience, psychology, and education to create brain-science based solutions for today’s workplace challenges. Britt is the former CLO for Lynda.com (LinkedIn Learning) and has over 10 million views worldwide of her online courses. She regularly consults with organizations on leadership…
In this episode, Dr. Cindra talks about how it’s going beyond grit that leads to mastering your mindset and reaching your potential, to realizing your bold vision and building the business and career of your dreams. The ten practices she shares in her new book, Beyond Grit for Business, leads to greatness, realization of potential,…
Dr. Alex Auerbach is the Director of Wellness and Development for the Toronto Raptors. He joined the Toronto Raptors after serving as the Director of Clinical and Sport Psychology for the University of Arizona. Dr. Auerbach has worked with NCAA Division-I schools in the Pac-12, ACC, Big 12, and Conference USA.Dr. Auerbach earned his doctoral…
A stretch goal helps you move beyond your current capabilities and performance. It requires sacrifice, dreaming big, and grit, and it should push you toward new possibilities, feeding the fire in your belly. A stretch goal may even be a little uncomfortable to pursue. It might include a new approach or a brand-new path. What…
Today on the podcast we talk about taking 100% responsibility for all areas of your life. This is essential for our success. At the end of my day, you could take the Responsibility Test. As you lie in bed, ask yourself, “Did I take 100 percent responsibility today?” If the answer is no, show yourself…
Dr. Doug Gardner has spent twenty-four years working with athletes, coaches, executives and organizations throughout the athletic and performance spectrum. Doug brings on-the-ground experience, in addition to a theory-to-practice common sense approach to improvement in preparation and performance of both the person and the player. Doug is a respected member in the industry of Applied…
We all have the need to matter. How does what you do help, inspire, and provide for others? We achieve our deepest satisfaction when we desire to make a difference in the world. When we understand and express our gifts in the interest and for the sake of others, we feel fully alive. Dr. Cindra…
In this episode, Dr. Kamphoff shares 5 ways we can develop our grit. High performers are gritty. They know what they really, really, really want. They get clear on why they do what they do. They also choose to feel good each day, and give themselves some grace and compassion along the way. Power Phrase…
For 20+ years, Fabienne Fredrickson has powerfully mentored thousands of women business owners to grow, then scale their businesses, earning them tens of millions collectively each year, while increasing their time off to enjoy lives they love. Her Leveraged Business methodology is based on her nearly 15 years of experience in generating multiple 7 figures…