Animal Spirits Podcast - Talk Your Book: Coaching the Yankees

Episode Date: November 11, 2019

On this Talk Your Book we sat down with Dana Cavalea, former strength & conditioning coach for the New York Yankees to discuss his book Habits of Champion and how he got the job of a lifetime at age 23. Find complete shownotes on our blogs... Ben Carlson’s A Wealth of Common Sense Michael Batnick’s The Irrelevant Investor Like us on Facebook And feel free to shoot us an email at [e-mail] with any feedback, questions, recommendations, or ideas for future topics of conversation. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Welcome to Animal Spirits, a show about markets, life, and investing. Join Michael Batnik and Ben Carlson as they talk about what they're reading, writing, and watching. Michael Battenick and Ben Carlson work for Ritt Holt's Wealth Management. All opinions expressed by Michael and Ben or any podcast guests are solely their own opinions and do not reflect the opinion of Ritt Holt's wealth management. This podcast is for informational purposes only and should not be relied upon for investment decisions. Clients of Rithold's wealth management may maintain position, and the securities discussed in this podcast.

We're sitting here with Dana Kavalea, author of Habits of a Champion, worked for the New York Yankees for how long are we talking here, that you were the Yankees? 12 years, total. All right, first one, because I'm a West Michigan guy like my pal Derek Jeter, or your pal Derek Jeter, give us your best Jeter story. Man, you're putting me on the spot, right from the jump. So he's from about 45 minutes away from my hometown.

So Jeter has a big presence in West Michigan, So I want to hear one of your favorite Jeter stories. Yeah, well, you know, the thing is people, when you talk about Derek Jeter, they're looking for these amazing stories. But what you're dealing with is like a typical classic introvert from the Midwest. So Derek, you know, this guy's so simple. All he else to do is watch movies, you know, go to great restaurants and sit at Starbucks and watch what's kind of going by and seeing what he may want to introduce himself to here and there.

But I really don't have any unbelievable Derek stories that I can share here with you. So you became an intern for the Yankees at 19 and at 23 you were hired to be the assistant strength and conditioning coach. Not bad. At 23, well, you don't want to know where I was at 23. But tell us just a little bit about your background and how did you get there? Yeah. So for me, I was a New York kid, grew up big fan of the New York Yankees organization,

aspiring baseball player myself. And I quickly realized that my talent. level by my own standards and the standards of Major League Baseball was not at the level that it needed to be to play in the big leagues. So I still wanted to be involved. And I decided to leave New York and go to the University of South Florida down in Tampa. I knew there was a lot of professional sports, a lot of professional baseball specifically in the area. So I moved myself down, started really interning with the football team there. I wasn't really a football guy, but I knew I had to cut my teeth in the world of performance and training.

So I started interning, working for free. And here it is now in February, and I hear the Yankees are coming to town for spring training. So I drive over and one of my old beat-up cars, park about a mile and a half away, walk up to the field, and I start taking pictures with my flip phone back in the day through a chain link fence of players like Jeter, Mariano, Andy Petit, you name it, they were there. And later that day, I went back to my internship at the University of South Florida, and the head coach there calls me in the office and says, hey, I'd like to.

talk to you. I said, I just got off the phone with the head strength coach with the New York Yankees, and he wants to know if I have anybody here that basically have an interest in handing out water bottles, handing out towels, and watching the weight room while the players are on the field. And I said, you know what? I just got back from there. You know, I would love to do that. And literally the next day, I drive up, got a parking spot right up front the day before I was about a mile and a half away because I couldn't afford to pay for the parking. And I walk in, You Dana Cavalier, yeah, they walk me into the clubhouse, throw a credential around my neck, C for clubhouse, F for field access in the corner, throw me in Yankee gear, and literally that

same field I was taking a picture of a day earlier. I'm now in the middle of Team Stretch, you know, where all the players are out there getting stretched for the morning. And that's how quickly, you know, I went from just being a college kid trying to figure out how to pay my way and make my way to having an opportunity of a lifetime. So it was pretty quick and pretty cool. Once you got in there and you talk in your book about how we're in this era of the guru, which I really love because we're anti-gourouro.

Yes, anti-guru podcast here. But obviously all those players had to be hearing people chirping in their ear about all the different things they should try, the different diets or supplements or workout routines. How did you keep all those gurus away and keep them on a routine that you wanted them on that would help them become better players? Yeah, well, you know, when I first started, again, talking about being 19, I had a really unique opportunity. I knew what I didn't know, which was a lot. I didn't know much, but what I did know is, you know, I was from New York.

I was a kid that had to rely heavily on Street Sense, and I said, if I could build relationships with these guys, they'll allow me to basically introduce them to my own techniques and my own concepts. So we didn't have, believe it or not, it was before a lot of this guru culture really exploded. It's much different. What year are we talking? We're talking 2002. 2003, four, five. So it was kind of like core training, functional training. That was about as guru as it got as it related to training high performance athletes.

But there was nowhere near what there is going on today. I didn't contend with it as much, to be honest with it. One of the reasons why we both liked your book so much is because it's sort of in the self-help genre, but without the fortune cookie bullshit. And so I guess we'll get to that a minute, but maybe just to get to where you were. like, how did you, so you were 19, how did you learn, how did you grow into the role to become, what was your ultimate role with the team? Yeah, so I became the director of straining conditioning and performance for the Yankees. So where did those chops come from?

Like, how did you grow into that role? The chops come from initially, you know, again, it's fake it to you make it. And again, I also believe in differentiation. You have to differentiate yourself from everybody else and everything else. So when I first started, like I said, what were the hot topics? What were the buzzwords of the time? So for athletes, I'm telling you, core training, functional training, those were words and phrases that were just beginning.

Nobody really knew much about them. So here I went home and studied everything I could about the core, everything I could about functional training. And I became, believe it or not, a semi-gourouro in that category, in those categories when I first began because it was all I had. I didn't have anything else to lean on. So a player would walk in, I'd say, hey, let me take you through some core. Boom, took them through some core, and then we'd move on to the next thing.

But I had to rely on basically relationship building and introducing something that was somewhat of a new concept to these players. But it wasn't really new. It was still an old concept. But I took advantage of the times, we'll say. So I love the line you had in your book about how you saw yourself as this asset manager of over $300 million in human capital, which is the players and the value of their contracts or whatever. Why do you think that that hasn't, and you talk about it in your book, why that sort of

position hasn't made it into something like a corporate culture. We see like there's the therapist or psychologist on a show like billions that is watching over these hedge fund managers. And that was the first thing that came to mind. But you talk about the need for someone like that, something of a performance coach at one of these bigger firms. Where's the disconnect there? Why hasn't something like that come to the business world yeah it's an interesting question it's something i've been thinking about for years but i think wendy from billions is the first time we saw any sort of figure you know as a coach or really like you said a therapist you know move into that space and and create somewhat of a mainstream discussion about wow what would it be like to have somebody on staff where you know

those that make up the firm can go to get motivated become inspired and get focused because what i find is you know, when we go to work every single day, it's really hard to keep your energy, keep your poise, keep your habits where they should be in order to get these predictable outcomes that we're looking for. And just like in pro sports, people think Derek Jeter, he's a great player, so he'll be great every single day. A-Rod is a great player, so he'll be great every single day. But these guys relied heavily, heavily, heavily on coaches in order to maintain their performance

every single day. Not just to point out their blind spots, but also to keep them moving towards the target, you know, and identify little things that they may be presenting in terms of mood, attitude, energy that we could work on to keep them moving through. Can you talk about, like, what did you actually do on a day-to-day basis? What was your role with the team? So I always say very simply, I was a risk manager. So when you oversee that level of human capital, it's dynamic. It's not static. It's always changing day in and day out.

So when we begin our season, what we do is we assess and we evaluate our players, not just for strength, but most importantly, their weaknesses. So when we figure out where they're weak physically, where they're weak mentally. From there, we begin to put together protocols and plans. In season, what we do is we have programming that focuses on those deficits and we check that player every single day to say, you know, what are the checkpoints? Are they in check and what's off? And then we go ahead and we execute on our program day in and day out. Is that you or is there a team of, is it like a staff?

So from the physical side, it's me in terms of physical performance. In terms of the rehabilitative side, you know, we had trainers that oversaw the actual physical break, you know, rehab in case there was a breakdown. And then myself and the trainers were worked together to put together a return-to-play plan or a pain management plan that we would put in place. And that's from the physical side. But when a player's dealing, when you're dealing with a player's physical, it's amazing how much you learn about what's going on in between their ears, too. Were you there?

Who was the second basement that was throwing it into the stands? Knoblock, right? Chuck Knoblock. I had just missed him. But, you know, what was going on with him was a lot of, you know, behavioral issues. if off the field that were contributing. If you were there, would you have dealt with something like that? Or do they have like actual psychologists trained to do that?

We have, here's kind of how it works. There are people there that do mental conditioning and there are psychologists that are outsourced. But what happens is oftentimes the players don't always feel comfortable going in that direction. Like these guys don't want to become medicated for a situation. A lot of it just through talking to them and giving them support because they're on an island when they're out there playing. that is the responsibility of all the coaches on the staff. And what I found is unlike the hitting coach who just works with the hitters, pitching coach who just works with the pitchers, my position, I was fortunate enough to work with every single player.

So they're coming in daily. And what I said was I had a buddy of mine as the equipment guy there. He said, listen, you build relationships with these players outside of the field. So I would always schedule breakfast, schedule lunch or dinner after a game. to get to actually understand what these players were dealing with day in and day out. Because we think that they're just heroes, and they can go out and play and be great every single day. But it really doesn't work like that. You talked about the importance of routine and how you walked us through, like,

here's a typical, you know, when people go to bed and then what they do and they get up in the morning and their typical game day routine. Obviously, for 160 plus games, you have to have that routine down. But how did the players get out of the mindset of just becoming, sort of mechanical with that? How did they, how do they keep things fresh? Did you have to keep things fresh for them so they didn't get in sort of a rut of us doing the same thing all the time? I think maybe Mariana would be a good example. Yeah, well, let me tell you something interesting about that. What you're explaining is what the general population wants and needs, which is

variety. I'm telling you, when it comes to a professional player, we play 162 games, 30 in spring training, and whatever there is in the playoffs. These guys could do literally the same thing every single day. That's what actually makes them great. They're not looking for variety. They're saying, what works, this is what I need to do. And whatever doesn't work, we quickly eliminate. So more than just throwing a bunch of different things at them for variety purposes, it's actually the opposite of what we do.

So you want that routine. You want it the same every day, almost, if possible. Same. Monotonous, just reoccurring. And what I found is even in a lot of the business execs that I work with, it's the same thing. That's where they actually find their comfort. is the repetitiveness of routine. It's not about constantly changing. It's about repetitiveness. See, Ben, that's why they wake up at 4.15 every day. Yeah. So people always want

like the secret. How did they do it? But I think consistency, maybe maybe the secret. So can you just talk about like what was your routine with Mariano on game day or during the games? So, so the secret is, by the way, there's no secret. But when it comes to a guy like Mariano, every day, fifth inning, like clockwork, when when that inning would turn over, Boom. He'd be in my training room, getting ready for his, we do massage work, we do mobility work, we do his stretch work. And what also we would do is we would watch the game and talk about the sequences that the pitcher's throwing, both of the opposite team, as well as our team. So he could start to get his mind into game mode and start thinking strategy and also watching the tendencies of the opposition. And the score did it matter? You did that every game?

every game. Even if we were, if we were getting blown out, it was the same thing. It was the fifth inning. And in addition to that, you know, the little funny part is I'd have to have a green tea with honey waiting for him and one of those old Nature's Valley green granola bars. That was like, it, and if I was running late, man, would he flip out? Well, I love that you talk about like how there is no secret of those, there's no steps. It's like some people, would want to try to take that routine of his and turn it into theirs. Like, that's going to make them excel at their job. But everyone, you make the point, everyone has their own little routine like that. And it's more about finding your own path in a way. So 25 players, 25 different

routines. Like I say, some guys before a game, they want loud music, they want to get charged up. They run. They do med ball work. They lift. Other guys will literally, there's a player by the name of Raulobanias who had a 20-year career in the big leagues, will literally lay on the floor. and breathe and relax and just Bartolo Cologne before a game would walk around with a heavy ball, literally throwing it up in the air for 25, 30 minutes walking through the clubhouse. That was his pre-game prep work where other players would have to do something much more intense. So you've got to find the routine that works for you. And a lot of it's through trial and error.

What works? What works? What doesn't work? And what are my outcomes? And you package all that up. And ultimately you create something that works for you. It's like today, you know, when you go to Guru Land, if you're not up at 4.30, you're a loser. Well, I know multiple billionaires that don't wake up until 7 o'clock.

So that theory is bullshit. It's gone. It doesn't work. It's whatever. If you're a morning person, that may work for you. If you're a night person, you may do your best work later in the day. You've got to know who you are. So you were very candid about dealing with your own issues.

When your contract wasn't renewed, what was your thought? process like did you try and stay in the league like how did you transition from that life to where you are today yeah so you know for me luckily i i did this i had this whole career through my through my 20s and early 30s and i'd be lying to if i if i didn't tell you that my my mind was like what else is there for me you know i had the greatest gig in the world i traveled the country with the rolling stones of baseball i saw them starting to wind down in their career a lot of the players that I really loved and built great relationships with. And I said, like, what else is out there for me? And actually a few years before my contract was up, I started to build out

a training brand. You know, we were going to create these franchise facilities. So I had a business in addition to what I was doing with the team. Ultimately, as I came to the conclusion of my career, I said to myself, do you want to just be one of those guys that bounces from team to team on two, three year deals? And what's my maximum income potential here? That was a question I had for myself. Do you still enjoy this with the same passion that you once did? And if you could stop on any team and have a brand that's associated with you for life and you with it for life, what would it be? And I said, the Yankees would be it.

I love Derek Cheater, and I think the Marlins is a great organization. But I think from a branding perspective, it's much better to have the Yankees next to your name for the remainder of your professional career than the Marlins. And that was a decision that I made. And my executive coaching business somewhat started organically because on the field every single day, we'd have the red carpet, we'd have the statute set up, and all these wealthy, you know, business folks would call me over. Hey, coach, can I ask you a question, whether it was mindset, whether it was about their physicality.

And they asked me, hey, do you work with old guys like us in business? And I would joke around with them and say, yeah, how much do you pay? And they were serious. I thought they were just kind of joking around, but it actually kicked off, you know, my professional career and working with executives as well. So what do those engagements look like? They go one, really one of two ways. Either I go in and I work with their companies to help them with some strategy and what

they're actually, you know, having a need for. Part two, really, and this is the primary, is when you're at the top of your food chain, you know, if you're the guy running a hedge fund, who do you go to? Who do you talk to where it's safe and it's secure? When Derek Jeter has someone to talk, need someone to talk to, who does he go to where it's safe and secure? And that's really what I provide for these guys and gals is a personal coaching experience where they have somebody that they could lean on. And I tell these guys, you're brilliant. You're a lot smarter than I am.

But I'll ask you the right questions to stimulate the right thoughts so you could then go make the right decisions. And alongside that, most people, as they get towards 40 and above, they start to feel their physical self eroding a little. bit. They start to see their body change. They're holding that extra 15, 20 pounds. Their energy's starting to go down. They're not who they were in their 20s and 30s. So I put them on a physical plan, much like I would a professional player. So they have a physical plan. They have a personal coach to go over strategy and talk through things with. And then the support and the ass kicking that they may need along the way. So it's all of that together is what I focus on now. I like how you talk about the need for a time to like decompress and take a break. Did you

have to, with the players, did you have to sort of force them to do that? Or was the off-season is enough where they had so much time spent in the season for that eight months that they really wanted to decompress? Because you talk about the fact that you can just have this burnout if you don't take a little break every once in a while. The way our season is sequenced is amazing because it gives you that three months to actually unwind. So if let's say a team that doesn't make it to the playoffs, they're off from basically October through the end the end of January, early February. Now, I say off because their commitment is about an hour to 90-minute workout,

sometimes upward of two hours, and they're done for the day. So they're off-season. These guys want those two hours to get out of the house, and then usually they lounge and relax the rest of the day. So players are really good at taking care of themselves and relaxing in the off-season, but what they're also really good at is doing that during the season as well. And that's also one of the biggest differences I've seen between folks in business, especially in the New York metro area, and players. Players value rest, and they know what it does to stimulate themselves mentally and physically.

In business, we just go until we can't go anymore. We have panic attack. We have a cardiovascular episode. We get sick. That's the only way that somebody gets derailed typically in business. Right, because there's no off season there. There's no off season. But if you look at the calendar year of most executives and most people in business,

you know, we know that going the two weeks before Christmas is typically winding down. There's different phases. August is pretty much a slower type month. So we have these mini off seasons throughout the year. And if we understand our calendar and we understand, you know, kind of how things played out the year before, we could start to see when we can grab a day, grab a three-day weekend, build that. wrap around Friday off Monday off Saturday, Sunday in the middle. I got my four days, you know, we can create that for ourselves. Just going back to the end, because I forgot to ask

this earlier, how did you know how to stay in your lane? Can you talk about like what team culture was like? In other words, did you ever step on Gerardi's toes or get into any, like, you know, anything like that? You know, Joe and I, I worked with Joe when he was a player. So, you know, I trained Joe back in the day when he was a player. And then actually, we had some major philosophical differences in terms of training when I was a part of his staff. We were still friends. We'd go to breakfast and work out almost every morning together. We still work out now together.

But he was a big CrossFit guy. Pitchers should be lifting heavy for their shoulders. And I'm like, Joe, these guys will break. These players are not Joe Girardi, who's an animal. They're not you. They're not built the way you are. If you take a pitcher and have him go through CrossFit, he's got so much laxity typically in his shoulder, he'll sublux and blow out his,

his arm, and then I'm responsible anyway. So I have a saying, I say, die on your own sword. I wasn't going to go ahead and take on that mentality, because I knew it wasn't right for the players. But yeah, sports is great because it's raw. You and myself and Joe, we could bang heads. I could bang heads with a player and be a dinner with them or breakfast the next morning or that evening.

It's just, we're not afraid to call each other out. I think, like, pitchers in particular are so interesting because you look at Bartola Cologne or Cici or people like that. you're like, that guy's a professional athlete. Like they don't have the sort of bodies that Gerardi does or some other athletes. That's true. But what they have is a skill and they have a talent where they could literally, you pick a target in your office somewhere, give them the ball, and they'll hit that

target nine out of ten times, where we may hit it once out of ten times. They have such precision and accuracy and control of their body. That's like I like to go golfing with these guys because a lot of them are amazing golfers. It's just, it's like, the hand-eye stuff. Yeah, that makes sense. They put the ball, amazing. Wherever they want to put it, they put it. So it's pretty fun to watch. So you talk about this idea of like the energy vampires and getting rid of negative people in your life, but how did that work in the clubhouse where they've made a big investment in some of these people and there may be a person with a ton of talent, but they are on the negative side. And short of

cutting someone or trading them, you still have to integrate those people in the team. You do. You do. And that's, you know, I would always say that for me, I always got along with the misfits. The worse, the reputation, the more, the more I actually got along with the guys. Because you think about what do they really want? They want to be heard. They want to feel like, you know, they actually are calling out for attention. So I gave them the attention. And what I learned very quickly is players will act differently one-on-one than they'll act in

the group. So you've got to be careful who you judge, the group player or the individual player. and that's where they're going out to lunch going out to dinner getting to know these guys as real people you know going to see them in the off season you know whether it's going fishing with them going on the boat and getting to know who they are that's the best way so you can't judge good player bad player positive player negative player until you really know who they are because most of these guys come with a reputation a rod has had a horrible reputation most of his career one of my closest friends you have to connect with him in a certain way it's very important or you'll turn them

and then you'll have lost the player. So in finance, we talk a lot about, like, behavioral economics. And I think that this is very prevalent in sports. So, like, as an example, one thing called sunk cost. So you draft a player high and he's really not panning out, but you keep investing good money after bad and more times. So like an example today is Mitch Trubisky, sorry, Chicago fans, where it's like, when do you cut bait?

And how do some of these sort of biases manifest himself in the clubhouse? Yeah, I think there's formulas that guys like Brian Cashman, you know, the GM of the Yankees that they use and say, hey, we may have to take a loss here, but at what point is it best for us to take that loss? You know, it's saying, we're going to take a risk on this guy. He may bring in X amount in fanfare and attendance, and it may be a good offseason drop where it's like, man, we got so-and-so coming. And they underperform, and there is a period of time in which they can perform and underperform for. and then the organization starts to say, okay, it's time to let this player go. Or there are also ways that they could put them on the DL

and actually get an insurance payment to cover some of that as well. So there are times. But what I found is you'd have players in our clubhouse that made $300 million and you'd have players that made $3 million and you'd have players that made $500,000. And there was never jealousy

and there was never envy over contract. How is that possible? I have no idea, but it's true. And you'd see players integrate. And what you did see oftentimes in sport, at least in our sport, is that the guy that made the most, there were some written, you know, unwritten rules. He would buy players, I mean, Arod, for example.

He bought me five custom suits, you know, early in my career. You go to dinner with these guys, you never pay. They're always looking for ways to make life easier for those beneath them. It's, and it's amazing because these guys get classified as selfish. But often they're very good at and helping younger players and those that are below them and even financially, you know, get through. So one of the reasons why I don't love the self-help stuff is because it's sort of prey on people's like the least common denominator, people that are desperate for help and they'll read anything. But like I believe that a lot of mistakes you have to learn on your own and you can't tell people what not to do and what mistakes to avoid. You yourself have made mistakes in business, for example.

And if somebody said to you, whenever this happened in your life, Dana, slow down. You're growing too fat. Like, would you have listened to them? No, I didn't. Like I said, I wrote in my book. I have a client. He's building his fifth billion dollar company right now. And he said, hey, I was watching every move you were making.

I was watching you fail. But I knew I couldn't say anything. I knew you had to actually crash into the wall. This is you talking to him? No, no, no. This is him talking to me. Got it. Yeah.

So that's the other thing. You know, when you work with these sort of people, it's a great back-and-forth type relationship. It's definitely not one-sided. You're giving to them in the way you know how, and they actually naturally want to give back to you in other ways outside of compensation financially. But he said, you had a crash into the wall. You're building these facilities too fast. Your processes, your operations, you're hiring.

None of it's going to be able to keep up with the speed in which you're building out. And for me, I had all the answers, right? Five billion-dollar companies, zero-billion-dollar companies on this side. but I had all the answers. So I smacked the wall, bounce off the wall, and even today, we're great friends. We still work together, and I learned that if I didn't take that hit, I wouldn't have learned. So there's obviously the stigma between a lot of athletes being poor money managers, and I actually did some research for my upcoming book about this,

and I think it really wasn't as bad as people make it out to be. But how did you find that these athletes were with their money habits in terms of saving, investing, and maybe spending their money wisely? You had some that were really good and you had some that were really bad. What I found, like a player like Arod, when I said the wealthier players typically give back, he would literally hold almost financial seminars in our lunchroom with a lot of these typically younger Dominican players that come from nothing talking to them about how important it is that they realize what they're making today may not be what they're going to make tomorrow. also their spending habits also have to be based more on what they're going to make tomorrow when they're not playing than today when they are playing.

So that, you had a gap. You have some very smart players and you have players that have great guidance. And oftentimes that goes back to how they were raised and how they were brought up. But also a lot of agents today, there are some that are somewhat, you know, delinquent criminal. But there are a lot of agents out there that really care about their players and putting some great people around them to help them manage their finances. And some of them don't allow their players to get to their own finances as a way to protect them from themselves.

So like I said, you were very open in your book about some of the experiences that you went through. Did you ever have a coach yourself or do you have a coach today? Like I sort of joked a few years ago, like who are these self-help coaches coaches? Like who's Tony Robbins coach? But do you have a coach? Yeah. I mean, I don't know who their coaches are. But yeah, I have a woman that I've worked with for years.

And she's actually, it's not even a coach. I mean, she works as a coach, but she's a social worker. She's done different things. So I've done that. You know, that was something that I've done for years. But really, for me, like I have my parents. I have my wife's parents. I keep it kind of close to the vest.

And I have a lady here in Florida. She's 90 years old. Who better to talk to about life than someone that's seen, you know, 50 more years or 40 more years than you have? So that for me, I believe that, Coaching is everywhere. It's everywhere around you. But there are times when it's worth it to look into bringing somebody on and it's more of a professional decision. But we all have coaches around us every single day. So your primary business right now is working with people primarily in business? I still work with athletes. But a majority of my business now has shifted to where I saw a hole in a need in the executive space. So like this past weekend, I just talked to 50 surgeons. about this sort of stuff.

What do I do as a coach, how they could benefit from coaching, how it could benefit their practice, working with people, building culture, all that. So that's what I do now. I really enjoy that. It's so easy. Like here's another thing. Maybe I'm projecting. Maybe it's just me where you read something like this and you get so fired up and it fizzles

out the next day, right? You get like a shot of adrenaline. You read something like this. You're inspired. How do you like soak that in and not make this so ephemeral? Yeah. Well, you realize that there. I don't think you read something and get an immediate result.

You do something and get an immediate result. It's like you want to lose 10 pounds. I do. Yeah. You have to be ready to endure three, six, nine, 12 months. It's just what I find when it comes to coaching, when it comes to getting the most out of a resource, you're just exposing yourself to a new process. And once you get your process right, that fits for you and is built for you,

you just execute on that and the results take place over time. But if you think you're going to read something, eat something, go to a seminar, watch Tony Robbins bang his sticks together with fire behind them, it's not going to give you the answers that you want because you need a process. And then what coaching really is, ultimately is holding you accountable to an agreed upon process that's built and is specific to you. And I never tell anybody I coach what to do. We talk about it together and come to an agreed upon, you know, system and process.

That's it. and we hold each other accountable to it. We speak with Dana Cavaliyah, author of Habits of a Champion. Dana, thank you so much for coming on. Thanks, guys. I appreciate it.