EntreLeadership - #237: Dr. Michael Gervais—The Mental Game, Part 2

Episode Date: December 12, 2017

In part two of our interview, Dr. Michael Gervais dives deeper into the fascinating connection between our mental state and our performance—or as he calls it, “our thinking and our doing.” While it is possible to transform an anxious, unorganized mind into one that is highly disciplined and focused on the moment, there isn’t a quick fix or an easy hack. It’s takes commitment, relentless energy, and a willingness to get way outside your comfort zone. Join us to find out what Dr. Gervais says is the root cause of anxiety—and his proven protocol for overcoming it. entreleadership.com/podcast Decision Making Checklist Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

helping business leaders grow themselves, their team, and their profits. This is Andre Leadership. Now, here's your host, Ken Coleman. Coming to you from the Music City, this is the broadcast of leaders by leaders for leaders. Thank you so much for joining the conversation. All right, folks, special episode this week, part two of my conversation with Dr. Michael Gervais. And today, really diving into this idea of controlling fear with a specific example of Felix Baumgartner breaking the sound barrier, jumping from space.

He starts to get a little bit wigged out. Who do they call? Michael Jervate. Great, great story. Great, great teaching. Hey, but before we get to that, this is a reminder. We've been giving you a new resource, Entree Leadership's Tool for Decision Making Checklist. I talked about this yesterday again. 12 specific items on the checklist that you must review. It will really help you get ready for a new year. So don't miss out on it. Text decision to 33444. That's decision. Text that word to 33444 or click the link in the show notes at entreleadership.com. Well, here we go. It was so good part one. We had to get part two for you. More of my conversation with Dr. Michael Jervais. Well, Mike, good to have you back again. I must tell you that I was having so much fun, really

nerded out on our last conversation, and we ran out of time, so thrilled to have you back in studios. I want to pick up, because obviously we're talking about high performance. That's your world. So I want to know, what are you excited about? What are you learning about in this field? What's new? What's fresh? Okay, so there's three things. When we think about high performance, there's at least three variables that we pay attention to. As humans, there's only three things that we can train. You can train your body. You can train your craft, and you can train your mind. And I'm going to put an asterisk next to spirit because there are some conversations that you can train your spirit. But the science around that is wanting.

But the ancient traditions would suggest otherwise. So my conversation is really pivoted inside of like how do you train the mind and how do they affect the other variables. So what's exciting right now? The science is becoming much more clear about best practices on how to train your mind. So long ago, 30, 40, 50 years ago, people would sneak into a cycle. psychologist's office with their head down a little shameful because they were going to go work on a disorder. That's not the case anymore. High performance psychology and positive psychology and sports psychology have shifted the conversation because now we've got world leaders and we've got

exceptional performers in sport and otherwise saying, hey, listen, I want to be great. And so I'm not going to just leave up the mind part to chance. Let me find people that understand the science of how to condition my mind. So it's a very exciting time right now for people that are deep in the weeds on how the mind works, how it works under pressure, how to dissolve pressure. And that now is becoming a very exciting conversation. That being said, the stuff that's on the frontier is the interface between technology and the body as a way to better understand how the mind is impacting the body. So I know that's a mouthful, but let's remember that if you think about how performance takes place is that we want to create patterns in our body and our craft, our technical part of

what we're doing in such a way that they're highly proficient and repeatable under many conditions so that we don't have to think about them anymore. We want to do the same for the mind as we want to have highly conditioned, well-oiled ways of thinking during moments of success and moments of failure, if you will, so that we know how to think. So we don't have to think about our thinking either. Right. And then when those two happen and we're in just the right type of risk environment and we begin to trust ourselves and let go, which all of that is trainable, trust of self is trainable, confidence is trainable, knowing how to find a sense of calmness is trainable, deep focus in any environment is trainable.

When we get into that right space, and I can talk more about it, then we get into a very exciting performance state. And what we're finding from technology is part of our thinking impacts are doing. And doing also has an interface and impacts our thinking. But from a leverage standpoint, we want to make sure that our thinking is impacting our performance in a positive direction. Technology now is getting so, so refined that we're able to notice optimal patterns in thinking and how they affect our body. So that's an exciting area that's taking place as well now. Okay, let's talk about the leader that's listing in and they're watching as well. And they're thinking, all right, Michael, I want to be an optimal performer. I want to perform in my absolute

highest potential. And let's just say that they get a chance to sit down at lunch with you. What are you going to share with them? Okay, so the first, let's assume that they've already articulated their personal philosophy, and they've written that down. They know what they stand for. They know what their guiding principles are, and they could get those guiding principles out of their mouth under duress, under knife point or gunpoint in a dark alley. Okay, let's assume that. let's also assume that they're really clear about the vision that they have for their future, like what they want to experience and do in their life and how they want to experience themselves doing it. Let's assume both of those are done.

And if they haven't been done, we'd start there. And then if those are both done, then we'd say, okay, great, describe to me times when you're at your best. And we would start with an understanding of what it's like, what are the conditions internally and externally. In other words, what is their psychology like when they're at their best? and then what are the external conditions that support that? And I get really clear with what those are because I want to build a strength-based approach with them. Then I would also ask, like, what's it like internally and externally?

What are the triggers when you're struggling, like really struggling? And we'd want to be able to figure out how to think more like the first condition than the second condition. And then from there, we would back in a suite of mental skills that they could develop and challenge. And we would find daily challenges that involve risk, maybe danger, where they could push into those on a regular basis. So it's like these two parts. The first part is, what's it like when you're great? What's it like when you're struggling? And then let's figure out the skills that you need to speak to yourselves in ways more like when you're great. And what are the environmental

risk things that we can pull on so that it really gets your heart rate up. And it really feels as though there's something on the line. That's when it matters. That's when it matters. So we have to manipulate our environment sometimes to create those poignant training experiences. And then last thing I would suggest to somebody is, if you really want to do this,

if you really want to become your best, whatever that means to you, then what we need to do is learn from the best in the world. How do they organize their life? And let's not put athletes up on a pedestal. What they do is extraordinary. If we really decode what they've done is they've organized their life to get better as fast as they possibly can. So that means they get uncomfortable often, physically, mentally, emotionally.

They have feedback loops to help them understand if they're doing well internally from a psychology standpoint or doing well from a biological or biomechanical standpoint. And the rest of us can do the same thing. Truly, we have to fundamentally reorganize or organize our life structure to be able to get better. I know you know this. There's no hack. There's no shortcut. There's no one tactic that's going to be the godsend, right? It's an overall journey of self-discovery, and that requires uncomfortableness, and it requires

commitment, and it requires a relentless amount of energy to do it over and over and over it again. So the last piece of the puzzle here is to better understand the person I'm speaking with, to better understand their recovery patterns and how well are they recovering if they're truly kicking ass and getting after it on a daily basis, have they put in the recovery strategies so they can wake up in the morning with the appropriate amount of zest and zeal and vibrance to be able to do it again and again and again. Speaking of getting the heart rate up, you've had two great experiences around fear, and fear is certainly one of the biggest issues that all leaders face. So one of these situations is Felix Bumgarner.

If you don't know, folks, this was the Red Bull Stratus jump from an altitude of 128,000 feet. Now, I just, Michael, I want to let you run with this because then you actually coached a guy by the name of Luke Aiken, and this blew my mind when I were about this. This is the first skydiver to jump out of a plane at 25,000 feet. without a parachute any lip. This is crazy. Yeah, into a net that he and his engineering team built in 16 stories high. Absolutely marvelous, extraordinary, both events. And I love to talk about people that do extraordinary things and what parts of those stories are you interested in? Would you like me to go down? So here's the part I want to hear a little bit more about.

So Bumgarner, this guy has to overcome a high level of anxiety and claustrophobia. And he's having this happen every time he puts the jumpsuit on. Now, this is probably a thing you don't think of. Like, when I saw this in preparation for a conversation, I went, why would this guy have this fear? He's the one putting himself in this situation. And the point is, he still did it. He pressed through it. What did you work with him on? Okay, so let's go back and just re-context for just a moment, is that, and I'll set the big stage and then dive into the tactics that we used. Okay. So the big stage is that for about four years, before I entered the project, some of the brightest minds in aerospace got together, supported by Red Bull,

to be able to create something that's never been done before, which is to see if a person could pass through the sound barrier, to travel the speed of sound and pass to the sound barrier without any sort of apparatus. So to do that, he had to go so high up into the atmosphere to have a frictionless, near frictionless fall to pick up enough speed to travel Mach 1. So it was a real aerospace engineer mission to understand what happens to the human body. And if you think about maybe why, it's because if we're going to get off this planet at some point and at 130,000 feet, if people need to press the eject button, can they survive?

So that's what this was about. And four years into the project, they built the capsule. They had support from aerospace partners unofficial and some official where he had the spacesuits tailored to fit him to be able to do this. So it's a full helmet, full space suit, exactly what you would imagine in your mind right now. A large helmet, gloves and boots with what would look like a NASA spacesuit. Matter of fact, it was the exact same type of materials and people that made it. So the technology was on point, the strategy was on point, the physical conditioning was on point. They're four years into the project. And Felix calls

the director of the project from the airport in Los Angeles as he's heading back to Europe where lives. And he says, guys, I hate to tell you this, but I can't do it. I know that we've invested our four years of our lives. I know that there's tens of millions of dollars invested from our funders and sponsors. And I'm sorry, but I can't do this. I've run out of mental skills. I've run out of the emotional ability to stay in the suit for what, you know, for five minutes. And I know I need to be in it for five and a half hours on the day of the jump. So it wasn't, that he was afraid he was going to die from the jump. And mind you, the brightest minds in aerospace didn't know that once he traveled through the

sound barrier, if his arms and legs were going to rip off from a double potential double sonic boom. There were some real dangers outside of what we first started with is that if he went up in the capsule above 500 feet and had to, for some reason, jump out, there wouldn't be enough time and falling from 500 feet, potentially catastrophic. If he were to get all the way up to 130,000 feet and the capsule couldn't open because of the extreme temperatures, that's a problem. Coming back down when we tried it on a previous training environment, the capsule didn't make it. It busted.

And if he would have been in it, it likely could have been severely damaged or even died. As he were to jump from 130,000 feet in near zero gravity, if he went into a flat spin, and that's his body spinning horizontally, that there's a potential that all the blood could run to his head. If he can't get out of that flat, it's been fast enough. All the blood could run to his head and his feet, and he could land as a vegetable. So, you know, those are real deals. Yeah, he has to go into this, right, Michael, thinking this all could happen, but he said he wasn't really worried about that as much as he was.

Right, and that's what's heavy about this, is that. So he raises his hand. Now, I want you to think about this for a minute. This is a man who is an extraordinary base jumper. and skydiver, one of the best in the world. And so to be an extraordinary base jumper and skydiver, that means that he's been in it and done many, many, many thousands of jumps. Not everybody makes it. It's a dangerous sport. It's a dangerous lifestyle that he's in. And many of his people that he know have not made it. So what is exceptional about people that stay in that craft and become one of

the best for a long period of time is they know how to say no. They know how to push to the edge and deeply, deeply focus in the present moment in some of the most dangerous environments in the world. Jumping from high altitudes with just a net in your hand against a sheer cliff that has odd wind patterns and tunnels that you got to navigate or you land and break all your bones or die or whatever. So he knows how to say no. He knows how to assess a situation. and he knows how to trust himself completely. He puts his life in his own hands. Now, the rest of us, we don't have to ever do that.

The thing that we're most afraid of in modern times is what other people think of us. So his level of commitment to real danger, not perceived danger, but real danger, is extraordinary. Now, in that, though, there's one thing that I'm missing in the equation. He didn't have to trust other people. So now flashback to Red Bull Stratos, four years into the project, he's in a crisis because he can't be in his suit. Now, to be in his suit means that he's literally disconnected from Mother Nature. He's disconnected from all of the other normal senses in which he thrives in, in which he

intimately knows how to operate in dangerous, dangerous environmental conditions. Okay. And then he has to rely on the sturdiness of the capsule built by other people, the durability, of the oxygen and gas exchange that he has to get just right for him to survive up at 130,000 feet on the ascent. So there's lots of trust of others that were coming to play. So what ends up happening is when he would get into the suit, it was the emblem, just like snakes or small places are an emblem for feeling out of control for other people. Okay. So this was really a small space trigger for a mini panic attack. Clusterphobic was the feeling and sensations that he had.

And as I'm sharing all this, it's all public. I'm not sharing anything that has not been approved. There's a documentary coming out later in this year, 2017, on ESPN that is going to feature the psychology of this experience. So we're at the five-year reunion. So they're celebrating that piece of it now. So what took place? He put up his hand and he said, I have run out of skills. for me, that is the most extraordinary thing an alpha man or woman to be able to do is because what happens for most people is they grit it out, they tough it out, they want to look a certain way, they make excuses for how they feel, and they blame other people. And that blaming of other people, this is a massive takeaway for me,

for all people potentially listening to the story, is that when you feel a certain way and you've got some anxiousness, you've got some doubt, you've got some self-crity, you've got some irritability or frustration, all of those internal feelings that are difficult to deal with. Most people, if not the majority of people, what they do is they don't know why they would put themselves in such an irritable situation. So they look outside to their external world and they find a reason. They find a reason why they're irritated. And they say, well, it's because she cut me off. It's because he didn't put the milk on the right way in the carton. And they find like almost kind of legitimate reasons.

But the truth is we are responsible for our own experience. And so he took accountability, put up his hand, and he said, I'm scared. That's awesome. Then once we get to the truth of something, then we can figure out who in our community can help us through this path. And so that's when I was introduced to the project. And, you know, it's one of those projects that the stakes were really high. and what we needed to work on was from great science,

because you don't just go into these environments and make stuff up and become an artist in these environments. It's great science that we work from. So we work from the science of extinguishing fear, and there's good, sturdy science in the field of psychology that will hold up. And so there's a very simple protocol that I'm happy to walk you through, but there's a very simple protocol for people to go through if they really want to extinguish fear.

It's not easy. I really do. I know it's not, and there's a lot of work here, and we have limited time, but I do think it'd be so great. This is one of the most important conversations leaders can listen into. How do we at least, what is the process for walking into this extinguishing of fear? Okay. Now, let's make this relatable to everybody else as well, is that every human alive has fears. And so fears are those thoughts that get in the way of us being grounded, of us being eloquent, of us being able to execute on command at the highest level in the present moment. So fears are those things that are sometimes very appropriate, but sometimes irrational. Sometimes the fears are triggered from an old operating system that your mom, your dad,

your early Pop Warner coach, your peer at age 12 fed you. And they said one statement or 100 statements over the course of time that you've adopted, that you can't do public speaking because people are going to judge. you, you shouldn't wear purple shirts because you look weird in purple shirts, whatever those statements are, that there are ways to release yourself from that fear. So here's the first step. Do you really want to do the work? Because if you want to do the work, it's hard. It's simple to understand, but it's hard. That's the first. And that was the first question to ask Felix. Like, what do you want out of this project? And he says, I would rather figure out how to give it a real

go to face this fear I have and die than to know that I give. into the fear and I became a shell of myself, a smaller version of myself, someone who was not able to do the thing and to create the vision that was right at the tip of his fingers. So that's a powerful statement. Okay. Now, for the rest of us, what do we do? Learn from that type of commitment that, and I'm going to pull out of this conversation for just a quick second.

There's a SEALs operator and a special operator in our military said a phrase to me that is intense. And he looked at me square in the eyes, and he had been to seven tours, and he was the tip of the arrow for one of the teams. I won't mention the team. And he looks at me square in the eyes, and he says, bike, it's really simple. When something matters to you, when it really matters to you, you'll do whatever it takes. Think about it from a business frame.

Making money is not enough. It doesn't matter enough. So people won't change just to make more. money. They'll work harder. They'll figure out a new tactic. They will work, but they won't make the fundamental change for more money. There's something underneath the money that we have to get into that is the real drivers for change. Right. Okay. Now back into this training methodology, first order business is to write down from a scale of one to ten. Ten being the most intense fear that you feel. Okay. Like what is that? For Felix, it was being in the suit,

visor down and relying on oxygen. That was a 10 out of 10. Then a 9 out of 10 was something different. Eight out of 10 all the way down, a 1 out of 10 on that scale was pulling into the parking lot, getting off the off ramp of the freeway and pulling into the parking lot of the training facility. Okay? So a 5 might have been walking into the training facility.

A 6 might have been looking at the suit. Just looking at it. His heart starts to pound. His thinking begins to change. So there's a whole cadence of physiological and mental changes that take place when we're experiencing fear. So just list them. Then the next thing to do is backfill yourself with the mental skills that will allow you to take command of yourself in those 10 environments. Okay, so what are those?

So confidence. So having great self-talk, knowing exactly how to speak to yourself in a way that builds space as opposed to constriction. Right. Making sure that you have a real skill. of being able to breathe to find a relaxed, a more relaxed state. And remember that every deep breath is about 10 to 12 seconds. You want your inhale to be shorter than your exhale. So you want your exhales to be long.

And when you do that, at about 18 breaths, you start to trigger a physiological response of relaxation. Now, when you get better at it, you can shorten it from 18 breaths to maybe 10 breaths to maybe five breaths. But you have to practice that skill for it to work. We want to train up the capacity to focus deeply in the present moment because the anxious mind is worrying and thinking about all the things that it can't control in the future that could go wrong.

And a deeply disciplined focus mind, and that's a trainable skill, helps people become snapped into this moment. And we want to be on time in this moment. And that's where great performances take place. When we're on time with the heartbeat of this moment. Okay? musicians talk about being on time. And, you know, you can't, if you ever heard a musician in an orchestra ahead of time or

behind time, it's a mess. Okay. So we're talking about being on time. That's a trainable skill. Focus is a trainable skill. So quickly, how do you train focus? I think the most advanced way without technology to do focus training is mindfulness work. And so literally, it's spending time focusing on just one thing.

Maybe it's your breathing. If you want to cross-reference a couple of our trainings here, just one breath. at a time, focus all of your attention as if a loved one's life depended on you getting your inhale right. Yeah. Yeah. Then all of your tension, all of your essence at the pause at the top of the inhale, as if that pause was potentially going to put your loved one's life in danger, then the same on the exhale

and the same on the pause at the bottom. If you do that, you're training focus and calm. And then the third that we talked about was the confidence piece. The way do we train this is to write down all the phrases that you say to yourself when it's good to be you. Write it down. Okay, let's come up with a list of like three to five, maybe seven of those and just write those down. Now, if we're not careful, this will sound very much like a seventh grade exercise. So we have to take it one step further.

And that one step further is for every epic thought that you have, every great productive, you know, kick-ass thought that you write down. Right next to that, have three thoughts that back it up. And this is where you make it real. So if I'm going to say to myself, I'm thinking right now of a UFC fighter that I was working with. It was a championship fight. And he says, hey, listen, there's a lot of money on the table. The guy that I'm going against is highly skilled. I've got to get this thing right. Like, I've done really well in the UFC and I want to double down and make sure that I'm training my mind. So, okay, let's go to work. I said, what does it sound like in your head when you're feeling great.

He goes, there's no thoughts. I said, of course. I go one click below that, because that's talking about flow state or the zone. One click below that when you're working, but it sounds good to be you. He goes, oh, it's simple. I'm a tough.

I said, oh, okay, looks me square in the eyes. And I said, can you back it up? He says, yeah, I can back it up. He says it like with disdain. I said, well, okay, what gives you the right to say that? And he says, what my dad's ass when I was 14. is that enough? I said, no, keep going. He said, okay, my last fight, I was being finished in the cage, I got out of the chokehold, I wrote it out, I put him on my shoulder, I'd carry him across the cage,

dumped him on his back in front of my corner, and beat him up until he submitted. I said, cool. All right, so that's kind of how this works. If you're going to say something to yourself, it better be real. Because at the moments in which you're going to be tested, and if you want to be great, you've got to push into those moments every day, if you're going to say, can. So Felix's story and developing these 10 conditions that were triggers of fear for him was him purposely organizing his day, organizing a couple weeks that we spent together, to run to the edges of his instability, his emotional instability. Okay. So then what we do is we say, okay, great, let's go through this list together just in your imagination. So imagine, close your eyes. Now we're

going to train the skill of imagery. Some people call it visualization. but we're going to train the skill of imagery. So just see the first condition in your mind that trigger just a small uptick in your heartbeat. And then when you're ready, when you put your thumb up, when you feel exactly calm like you've mastered that condition, then we'll move to step two. You have no business going from step two to step three until you've mastered step two. And if we spend too long and you become exhausted because you can't get your heart rate down at step two, and we'll use a heart rate monitor for this. If you can't get your heart rate down, and then we'll call it quits. We'll call that training for the day.

And then the next day, we'll pick it back up or later in that evening. Well, in his imagination, see step one, see all the conditions of step one. Once he masters that, go to step two. If he can master step two with his heart rate being calm and his mind being clear and focused and confident, then we go up to step three. Then we go to four, five, six, seven, eight. And then in his imagination, he is creating full command of step 10, where people make them a mistake is when they feel the fear, let's say it's public speaking. And they feel their heart rate. They feel that sweat, that familiar sweat and that light tremble. They interpret that instead of

being excitement as nervousness. They start to doubt themselves. They say to themselves, why am I doing this again? I don't even wear suits on a regular basis. Why am I in this suit on stage? Why do I sign up for this? And they start to go into that spiral. I'm not prepared enough. Johnny from whatever XYZ companies here. And I know I got to impress that guy. And your mindset is all wrong. All of that is flat out wrong, is that we fight it out, we grid it out, or we make excuses that don't show up, but most people fight it out, and then they leave, but never have mastered it. So when you leave the experience in a heightened state, you've actually made your precondition worse. So if Felix were to leave and rip off his helmet, which he was doing for years, with an elevated heart rate

and say, I just got to get out of here, I got to get out of here. Then we're actually making that a stronger condition of panic in the suit, as opposed to extinguishing the fear. So I hope I didn't get too technical with you, but this is something that every one of us can do. We got to let you go in just a minute, but take us right back into that public speaking analogy, because I think that's so understandable for our audience. When you're done, it should be a calm, a contentment with, hey, this was a worthwhile process. Everything leading up to it, those butterflies weren't negative. They were the fuel that made us heightened and alert.

and it's the exhilaration. Your heart beats not racing, but emotionally, it's exhilarating as opposed to exhausting. Is that fair? Oh, yeah, a thousand percent. That's the idea. Like, we never want to create a situation in our life where the environment dictates our internal experience. Okay. So if being on stage dictate your internal experience, you're at the whips end of the world. We want to flip that on its head and really adopt this idea that I am responsible. I dictate my own experience, anywhere I go, whether that is about to be in some sort of combat as the UFC fighter or walking on stage or saying something emotionally vulnerable to a loved one, is that once we have a sense of mastery of our own inner experience, our entire life changes. Like, it's phenomenal how powerful this is, but it sounds almost cheesy saying it. It sounds like it's 1980, you know, rah-rah, you can do something. It's not that. It's fundamental work. And that work that we just layered out is

hopefully very concrete and it's doable for everybody. And if it's public speaking, that's your thing that you want to do more at. And you know what? There's also one more thing. So Felix was looking at the suit as a thing that was causing pain. Mind you, this is something he wanted to do, but he was seeing the suit as something that was causing him discomfort and pain, as opposed to flipping the model and saying, this is the thing that's going to help me get closer to my life dream. Okay. So same with on stage is that people see that as like a threat. a potential threat because they're seeing other people's opinions of them being the real trigger for danger.

It's not. It can never really be that. But if we start to see it as the stage is the opportunity to share ideas that have been powerful and important for your life, then it starts to flip a little bit more, as opposed to if I'm great on stage, I get more business. It might work that way for you, but it's never going to be meaningful and fulfilling at the deepest level. Exactly.

That's it. That's it right there. And that's why I love your work so much, is that it's not just science. You always tie the science of the brain into the heart. And when you said meaningful, significant, fulfilling, those are the things that every human being craves, whether we can articulate it or not. We all want to matter. Hey, before I let you go, I want you to just tell our audience, where can they engage with you?

What books, other stuff, big believer in what you're doing. I want these folks to be able to find more from you. Thank you. Yeah, I've had a lot of fun studying this over the years, and it's been a joy. It's a really exciting time because alpha males and females and people that have deep joy in their life, they're saying, by the way, joy is a birthright. And it's available for all of us. And 15 to 30 percent of us are struggling with anxiety.

And you can't have joy and anxiety in the same moment. Anxiety, people are born with it or they earned it by speaking to themselves in scary ways. You can earn joy as well. And it is our birthright. But you've got to figure out how to have that sense of joy and purpose. So thank you. Thank you for this time. Thank you for this conversation. I hope you can tell. I love talking about this. I spoke for the last X number of minutes. So apologize for not being able to learn from you in this conversation. It was great. Great stuff, my man. So here's how, like if you want to a little bit more of this stuff, is that Coach Carroll, the head coach of the Seattle Cioxx, he and I built a business together on how to do just this inside of corporations. So we took his intellectual property about how to switch on a culture, my intellectual property about how to train the minds. people that want to pursue their very best. We put that together. Our working laboratory is the Seattle Seahawks. And we've had some wonderful success there. And so we figured out how to do this

at scale. We've got partners at Microsoft that have helped us with us to scale this out to, well, their organization is over 100,000 people. So we're on that path to do that there. We've got a four-week online course. We've got a significant, robust, very sturdy app at the end of it. during the experience when we challenge you, we teach you the fundamental ways to train your mind. And then when you're inside of our experience, we have Olympians and sports psychologists that support you and kick your ass to help you really do the work. That's one way. That costs money.

And there's some stuff behind that. Obviously, there's a business there. And then the freeway is that we've also fired up a podcast as well. And so it's called Finding Mastery. And you can find that on all the players, but it's Findingmastery. dot net is our website. So those are the two ways right now. And then on social media, it's at Finding Mastery for Instagram.

And on Twitter is at Michael Gerva, G-E-R-V-A-I-S. Michael, thanks for being with us. This has been a lot of fun. We'll have you back on, I'm sure, very, very soon. I know you're busy, but leaders that are listening in or watching us, I can guarantee they're better for it. And we really appreciate you. Thank you.

Hope you enjoyed that as much as I did. And again, we'd love for you to connect with Michael online and on social media. I think he's worth the follow. A lot of great stuff, a lot of great resources and tools you're going to get. I love his podcast as well. Again, terrific resources to keep that mind at peak performance level. Well, folks, hope you enjoyed our bonus episode this week. On behalf of Eric the producer, our engineers, Will Rutter, and Jim Bab, and the entire Entree leadership team.

Thank you so much for listening. We'll talk with you again very soon. I'm