High Performance Mindset | Learn from World-Class Leaders, Consultants, Athletes & Coaches about Mindset - 104: Conscious Coaching with Bestselling Author, Brett Bartholomew

Episode Date: May 1, 2017

In this interview, Brett Bartholomew, provides us a preview of his new book, Conscious Coaching: The Art and Science of Building Buy-In which achieved “Best Seller” and was ranked in the “Amazon Top 100 Books Overall.” Brett Bartholomew is a strength and conditioning coach, author, consultant, and founder of the performance coaching and consulting company, Bartholomew Strength. His experience includes across 23 sports at levels ranging from youths to Olympians. He’s supported Super Bowl and World Series Champions, along with several professional fighters, including those competing in the UFC. Topics we discuss in this episode include: The difference between exposure and experience 3 things world-class athletes do differently Ways that he had dealt with critics and how he helps his clients do the same 3 stages of internal identification (reflection, inspection, and progression or questioning who you are, examining who you are, and owning who you are) How to own who you are His journey to get out there with your message You can find Brett and more information about his book at ConsciousCoachingBook.com You can also find Brett on Twitter and Instagram at @Coach_BrettB.

Welcome to High Performance Mindset with Dr. Sindra Kampoff. Do you want to reach your full potential, live a life of passion, go after your dreams? Each week we bring you strategies and interviews to help you ignite your mindset. Let's bring on Sindra. Welcome to the High Performance Mindset Podcast. This is your host, Sindra Kampoff, and I'm grateful that you're here ready to listen to an interview with Brett Bartholomew. You know, the goal of these interviews is to learn from the world's best leaders, athletes, coaches, and consultants, all on the topic of mindset to help us reach our potential or be high

performers in our field or sport. And today I'm going to start with an iTunes review. This is from yours in IT. He says, be the best you, five stars. I am an IT consultant by trade, but a member of a cycling and soccer club. I love to compete, be in the workplace or on the track or in the soccer field. And the podcast, Be the Best You with Dr. Vernice Richards was very eye-opening and empowering for me.

Definitely a must listen to podcast. Thank you so much, yours in IT. Really, really appreciate the five-star rating and the comment. Now, as I have told you at the beginning of each of these interviews, I have a goal of doubling the downloads podcast in 100 days. And I just pinch myself every time I have an opportunity to interview one of these world-class leaders or consultants. And I think more and more people could benefit just from listening to these interviews. And so I'm wondering if you could help me, if you could today tweet about the podcast or

maybe an episode a previous episode that you found helpful or you could head over to iTunes like yours and IT did and you can provide a rating there if you click on the show notes page on your iPhone if you just click on the podcast episode you'll be able to find a link that can connect you to an opportunity to rate the podcast. You could try that or tell a friend about the podcast. That would be incredible and would help reach more and more people and keep these interviews free. So today's episode, episode 104, bestselling author Brett Bartholomew. And in this interview, Brett provides a preview

of his new book, Conscious Coaching, The Art and Science of Building Buy-in, which just achieved the bestseller ranking and was rated as the Amazon's top 100 books overall. So Brett is a strength and conditioning coach, author, consultant, and founder, and a consultant company, Bartholomew Strength. His experience includes across 23 sports at levels ranging from youth to Olympians. He's supported Super Bowl and World Series champions, along with several professional fighters, including those competing in the UFC. So I really, really, really enjoyed this interview with Brett. I found it insightful.

What I really liked is these three things. We talk in this interview about three things that world-class athletes do differently. We talk about what he describes, the three stages of internal identification. And specifically, we talk in depth about the third stage, owning who you are. We talk quite a bit about how to deal with negativity and criticism and what the best do. And he says this, dogs always bark at what they don't understand. There will always be people who will criticize, condemn, and complain. All right, super good interview today.

I think that you're going to really enjoy it. Place it over to Twitter and let Brett and I know what you thought about the interview. You can tag myself at mentally underscore strong or Brett is coach underscore Brett B. All right, without further ado, let's bring on Brett. Brett, welcome to the High Performance Mindset Podcast. I'm excited to talk with you today. Yeah, thanks for having me, Cinder. I appreciate it. You bet. All right, well, so we're just going to dive in and tell the listeners a little bit about your passion and what you do. Yeah. So I'm a strength and conditioning coach. Really, the longer I do it, I consider myself more a human performance coach or specialist. You know, part of that nomenclature, right, is when the field started, it was primarily strength and conditioning. It's physical capacities. But then the longer you're in it,

you realize that really training is nothing more than a tool to teach everybody what they're capable of. So there is a strong psychological component in that as well. You know, having worked with military operators and special forces veterans that, you know, again, they have to have the confidence that they're ready to be deployed. If they came back from being injured, they have to know that they're back just close to full strength or full health as they can be. Injured athletes, healthy athletes, all these things,

there's very much a cultural, psychological, and physiological component to everything that we do, which is how I really look at the human performance field and the nature of bridging the gap between the science and research of not only training, but also the mental capacities also.

So I work with athletes specifically in, I would say, what, now 23 different sports. Right now it's primarily professional, but I've worked with college, I've worked with high school, I've worked with youth, kind of all ends of the spectrum and proud to have been able to do that because it teaches you a lot about the psyche of different ages, genders, backgrounds, and what have you. So yeah, I work with elite level athletes and performers of all levels. Well, we're going to have a lot to talk about because I completely agree that it's cultural, physical, and psychological. It's a lot of different components of human performance. So just tell us how you got into the field of strength and conditioning and kind of what happened to lead you to where you are today.

Sure. Yeah. So and as you know, from reading the book, what really I've always had a fascination with the human body. I was an athlete growing up. I really liked the idea of being able to push myself to my limits. Unfortunately, at 15 and being miseducated, I pushed myself a little too far at one point in my life and ended up hospitalized. That was a combination of kind of

an obsession and infatuation with training. My parents were getting divorced and I had a lot of friends that turned to drugs. So I turned to training as a really potent outlet for me to kind of expunge or expel all that anxiety or even kind of anger that came with and confusion that came with those kinds of things. I didn't know a lot about nutrition at the time. So I, you know, followed a low fat, low carbohydrate diet, really focused on getting lean and strong and powerful pound for pound. But eventually, again, stress my body too much. I was working out three times a day, barely eating enough calories just because of the types of foods that I was eating to support that

and ended up hospitalized for nearly well all in all over a year of my life. So after that, I really wanted to learn about, you know, how I could optimally fuel and enhance the body. So that took me down the path of studying kinesiology at Kansas State University. After that point in time, I went and worked or interned for a company called Athletes Performance Institute. They were based out of Phoenix. I was at the Florida location. They had several satellite facilities. So there you'd work with elite level athletes of all levels, military service men and women, tremendous, tremendous opportunity and tremendous company. I then decided I wanted to take a stab at intercollegiate

athletics. So I went to the University of Nebraska and worked with their football team, which, you know, was kind of like viewed as the, at least in my view, as the Harvard Business School for Strength and Conditioning Coaches. It was one of the first programs to really use strength and conditioning back in the 70s in the collegiate setting. Of course, there were some others, but Nebraska was kind of where home and hearth of some of these techniques were really being utilized in that particular setting. After that, I went and pursued a graduate degree at Southern Illinois University and got my master's in motor learning and exercise science. Specifically, I wrote research on how what we say impacts performance. So it's the process of what's called attentional focus and internal and external cues.

Worked with collegiate sports there independently, in addition to helping with basketball and football. And then went back to athletes performance as a full time staff member, and worked with pro sport, military service men and women, again, youth high school, the whole piece and, and ended up kind of spearheading that campaign. So I know that's a lot. And it's pretty inveterate in strength and conditioning to move around quite a bit, because you do have to do a lot of unpaid volunteer work. You usually have to get a master's degree and then you have to take jobs as they come up. So I am now on my ninth state, my 15th. Wow.

15th. Wow. Yeah. In the process of opening my own facility out here in Atlanta, Georgia. Well, that's awesome. So you had to stay resilient as you move to different location and just continue to stay passionate about what you do. Right. Tremendous word choice on your behalf. Resilient and persistent would be appropriate words. Well, tell us why you do what you do, you know, because we believe here at the High

Performance Mindset that knowing why you do is really, you know, why you do what you do is really important, but owning it as well. So kind of what I mean by that is reminding yourself every day, why you do what you do. So how would you answer that, Brett? Yeah. That's a great question. I think it's pretty easy for me to say, Oh, I want to make a difference. And I think that's really surface level. It's good, right? It's all puristic, but it's surface level. You know, I do what I do because I really like the idea of attaining mastery at a craft that matters. I don't know in my field, if you can ever really attain mastery, because

there's always different situations and circumstances. What I think you can do is become more conscious. And that was kind of the namesake of the book conscious coaching is I thought that mastery is kind of a facade. We're always learners, right? Like, hopefully, all of us are lifelong learners. I don't know it all. I'll never know it all. I would imagine most of your listeners and you included don't think that you know it all, but we can enhance our awareness and understanding of things. And so I think that as humans, right, we're always trying to become that ideal Vitruvian man that Da Vinci kind of promulgated. And so I think to really try to

help people realize what they're capable of, and to be able to see the butterfly effect of that is really, really potent and powerful. So I like the idea of being able to chase mastery of a craft that really matters, that has an impact on others, that keeps me humble and honest, because there's always more questions as it pertains to the mind and the body. So every day it makes you feel like a beginner and it's easy to stay passionate about a craft where you're constantly putting your own foot in your mouth and more and more to learn.

So much so, Cinder, that I think the challenge becomes later on and correct me if I'm wrong here, I think it's less about information acquisition and more about making sure you filter that information. For sure. And that's something I struggle with even now. Like at one point I'm reading a research article, there's other things on Twitter and I'm really trying to distance myself from a lot of this now because it's too much. Yeah. And it can distance you from, okay, what matters? What's the problem we're trying to solve? Because there's all this urgency of, we need to learn more, we need to learn more. Well, yeah, but

sometimes you just need to filter better. So that's something I'm trying to challenge myself on now. For sure. And I also think you have to apply it. And, you know, my own experience in sport, and even now is a, I run marathons pretty competitively. But if I don't practice what I preach, then I'm not going to really see the results that are possible. And so I might have all this information, but if I actually don't do it, then I don't really see any changes. And that's an interesting point you bring up.

There's a difference between exposure and experience, right? Exposure means you've subjected yourself to kind of an influencing event. So you're watching, you're observing all these kinds of things. You're kind of out in the fringes. And then experience is actually leading and directing and being involved with that influencing event. So you're the one out there doing it. You're organizing it. There's direct participation, right? Like I lived in LA for about a year and a half. I could watch traffic go by on Sunset Boulevard. It does not mean I know how to drive in traffic, right? I think right now we're having kind of that problem in every field is we have people that think just because they have the requisite information or what they

perceive as knowledge that they translate wisdom. It does not. You have got to be out there. It's the difference between a painter and an artist. You've got to be out there practicing it daily. You've got to be out there implementing it. And that helps you filter what really matters versus what is just nuance for the sake of nuance. Yeah, that's super good. Super good, Brett. Well, you know, I know you have the opportunity to work with some Super Bowl and World Series champions, professional fighters. What do you see, especially in pro sport, what do you see those people doing that are really successful versus others? What separates them? What are maybe the mental attributes or what do you see them perhaps doing every day or thinking every day?

Yep. So I think one, and it's a nice segue, the really world class athletes, the ones that last in it, um, are a filter out the noise, right? Whether that's noise of the media, whether that's being able to deal with, um, all the distraction of, of, of what goes on with trades and different contract agreements and what have you, um, the world class tend to know that there's no secret, right? They just need to show up every single day. There's an author that came out with a book called Chop Wood, Carry Water. And I think that's great, right? That's really what it is, that consistency element of it. And then I, you know, really, I just think the humility piece as well. And it's tough. So dealing a lot with NFL athletes all have guys every year that are, you know, in their

first year contract, signed for a bunch of money, second year, third year, what have you. They're having great, their body's still relatively healthy. They're producing and they're living that life, right? But it's really the guys that have been in the league five, six, seven, eight, all the way to 10 years if they're so blessed, especially because league average is around 2.67 years. That's always changing, right? NFL means not for long. But the guys that have really been in it long know that, you know what, there's a humility to this. I could get chopped at any day. The NFL draft is coming up as you and I are talking. And I have to

remind guys, listen, there's always another number one draft. Enjoy being the number one pick or number two pick or number three pick now. But next year, don't forget, there's somebody else that's number one and they're coming for your job. And so if you think there's a secret sauce or that your abilities aren't going to diminish as your body takes a beating in the league, you're wrong. So you need to come up with some consistent element psychologically and from a training standpoint that's going to give you an edge while all these other people are enamored with this training and now they're traveling here and now they're doing that. So I really think the ability to filter, the ability to be consistent,

and the ability to be humble are really, really important qualities for a world champion. So filter, consistency, and humble. And I know I work with lots of different NFL athletes and one NFL team. And I would agree with you on all of those things. I think it's really easy to get distracted and caught up in the negativity that might come at you on social media or just in media in general. So how might you work with people? Let's say one of your clients is really caught up in like, let's say a tweet or just somebody who's coming after him. What do you think about that? So I've had, I've experienced this a little bit myself. So I'm kind of like my own client on this one too. Yeah. Because in

strength and conditioning, we are, we're kind of in a weird space. Um, growing up in the field, we were taught to not get on social media. And if we did that, we were kind of sellouts that we were internet charlatans and gurus, you know? And, and so eventually, you know, I just kind of said, you know, what, whatever, I have some things that I think I could share that could be helpful. And for me, it's usually just sharing what I wish people would have told me, right, and helping our industry try to think bigger. Because we're obsessed with kind of staying in the trenches and being these martyrs, and, you know, no notoriety is bad. And so my point is, is eventually like I started dealing with some people that would say, Hey, why are you doing this for white? Just like athletes will,

right? Athletes will put out a dumb tweet inevitably, or they'll share their, and people will just come at them from all angles. I think, you know, the one thing I had to learn personally is dogs always bark at what they don't understand, right? So somebody's always going to criticize, condemn, and complain. That's human nature. It's really sad. Human nature, you know, of course, there's a sense of altruism to what we do. We, you know, that's why tribes existed. We wanted to help each other. But part of that was also to ensure our own survival. So people are always going to criticize, condemn, complain. They think they're going to know more. And you just have to realize you have to remind people, listen, if somebody reacts a certain way, that's a snapshot.

They don't know you. It's 140 characters by and large. There's no context to your tweet. They have no idea what you mean by it. So, you know, you can't take these things personally when people are chirping from a distance. It's very different if a loved one that you trust, know, and respect, you know, says something to you. But even then that can be complicated, Cindra, right? Some of these people don't have great relationships with their families, right? Like I have a strained relationship with my brother, right? We all have sibling rivalries and what have you. So you've

just got to say, does this matter now? Distance yourself from it. And I think research supports that. They say by and large, when you take people that are suffering from depression in this research, and they say, hey, give yourself the advice that you would give a best friend or a loved one or what have you. And they typically, it's very helpful for them because they distance themselves. Emotion trumps logic, as you know, and they're able to take the immediate emotion out of it. And they're able to see things as they are a little bit more clearly. And that's what you really try to get them to do. Awesome. Awesome. So three things that separate world-class athletes, they can filter things, distractions, consistency, and then humility. So Brett, let's, let's dive

into your book, Conscious Coaching, the Art and Science of Buying, Building Buy-in. Tell us why you started writing this and why you wrote it. Yeah, I tried to keep it really simple. In strength and conditioning and human performance right now, especially with technology where it is, we have a lot of coaches and organizations turning to data. A lot of things are data-driven. So there's technology now that can measure velocity on the bar, which is important because they find that if we can produce

force at a certain rate, right, that is a higher likelihood of transferring to a sports skill, whether that's a jab, whether that's swinging a baseball bat, whether that's making a cut, what have you. So this gives us more objective data to say, are we actually working on the skills that we think? There's GPS units that are attached to wide receivers that are telling them, you know, how many miles per hour they're running, the nature of the cuts, how much volume. And so coaches are using data more than ever to direct performance. The problem with that is we're not dealing with Toyota Camrys. We're dealing with, so we have coaches on the floor that are using iPads or their phones

or whatever to sit there and give them feedback, give them feedback. And they're not interacting with the individual. And so anytime we try to promulgate, listen, any good science is comprised of both the art and the science, people inevitably would chirp back and say, well, the art of anything is a soft science. It's not as objective.

And I disagreed. I think there is a science to observable human nature. I think there is a science to the art of communication. I think there's a science to engagement, building trust and all those things. And so I wanted my book to kind of fill that gap and say, you know what, there is a science to the art of connecting with people, knowing what drives them, knowing what directs them, knowing what unifies them, and knowing how to communicate with them in general. And so I wanted to write the book essentially that I wanted to read and that I thought our field needed in this uber tech savvy part of life where information is readily available. But like you said, you said it perfect. You've got to be able to utilize that information to be world-class at what you do and do so in a skillful manner. Absolutely. So tell us, Brett, why do you call it conscious coaching? And what does conscious coaching mean to you? Yeah, so conscious coaching, again, I didn't want to use the term master, right?

Like I think none of us, I think that's illusory. I think we can chase mastery. And that's great. There's a nobility in that. I don't know that any of us will ever become a master. I do think that we can achieve a higher level of 360-degree awareness. So you know how to adapt. You know how to deliver. you know how to implement. You can understand the big picture of everything that you're trying to do,

how to operate in the black and white areas, as well as in the fringes and the gray area. Cause the best of anything inevitably from an effectiveness standpoint is done in the gray area of life, right? Like by and large, we live in a society where you don't get what you deserve. You get what you negotiate. And, and a lot of that, a lot of that is inveterate in what we do as professionals. So that was the ideology behind the term conscious, which to me is just somebody that can do those things. Whether they're operating, you know, in a corporate environment, in a team environment, in a more kind of niche environment, they know how to operate on the fringes. They know how to see the big picture, but more importantly, they know how to communicate it, connect it, and convey their

message in a way that is very unique, purposeful, and powerful to the individuals in which they're hoping to lead. So that was the idea with that and the namesake. Well, and what caught my eye when I read it was just the importance of really seeing the big picture, but connecting to the person as well. There was a part in the book that you talked about finding your true north. Tell us what that is about and how does that connect to being a conscious coach? So I think a lot of what goes into that, and you're asking really good questions, it leads to a lot of detail.

I think that sometimes we try to influence others without knowing what's influential about ourself. I think that we can say we're great. Somebody can say I'm a communicator or they can say I really, you know, I'm great at logistics. I understand this and that. But OK, how does that help? How does that really define who you are as a leader and how does that transfer? So I think self-reflection is incredibly important in being able to be more efficient and effective. I think a lot of times we look at, you know, Brenda Shoshana says all conflict is conflict within ourselves. And I think a lot of times people think, oh, this guy or this individual is not given,

they're not listening to this or they're not doing what I want. And you may think that you're delivering that message in an effective way, but you're not looking at it from the outside in or the inside out. You've really got to excavate from all avenues in terms of what you're doing. So if you don't know your true north, if you're not operating off of a visible constellation of traits, how are you ever going to make it through the forest of emotions that cloud everybody's judgment and reason on a daily basis? And how do you suggest that we work to find our true north? So in the book, I talked about the three stages of

identification model, right? And in this three stages of identification, I talk about there's three steps that you really need to be able to take, right? There's reflection, there's inspection, and then do you remember the last one? I have owning who you are. Is that right? Well, no, there's going to be identification. There's reflection. There's, there's all these pieces that say, listen, you've got to sit there and think about who am I, right? Which is part of owning who you are. What's the good, the bad of that? Cause we don't have a hard time telling ourselves good things about ourselves, but we also don't look at kind of the bad or the muddier traits. Thinking, why am I that way? Okay, now, and I think you have to sit there and say, okay, I'm stubborn sometimes. Well, why am I that way? What lends itself to stubbornness? How can that lead to both effective coaching, ineffective coaching, good relationships,

bad relationships? Because there is an upside to your dark side, right? Like, we can't just be sunny, happy, always positive versions of ourselves because that's just not the way the world operates. We need to be different versions of ourselves in a strategic manner at different points of time, right? Imagine I get on your podcast and I'm like, hey guys, very excited to listen to you, right? Like you'll be like, who the hell is this Tony Robbins-esque kind of person, right? Like, you'll be like, who the hell is this Tony Robbins-esque kind of person, right? Like, I need to find a way to convey an authentic message that aligns with who I am naturally as a person, or everybody else is going to tune it out. And then after you've reflected, after you've identified, you've got to be able to leverage these traits and say,

what's the DNA, so to speak, of the population I'm trying to influence? And how can I leverage these traits and the desires I have as a leader, as a teacher, as a guide, as a communicator, to be able to put them in place? So I'm going to use a dirty word here, so I can manipulate them more effectively. People think manipulation is a bad word. It's not. You manipulate things on a daily basis. You manipulate your loved ones. You manipulate employers. You try to show them versions of yourself, you know, one, that are commensurate with who you really are, but also with what they want to see. And I think people need to get out of this wishy-washy self-help guru kind of idea that manipulation and adjusting and adapting to your environment, which is a Darwinian trait, right? It's the nature of the survival of the fittest quote is a bad thing. It's not. It's effective leadership.

Well, in the three stages that you talked about, so reflection is questioning who you are, inspection, examining who you are, and then third, progression, owning who you are. And that's part of the leverage piece that I was talking about. We have to be able to progress and leverage those things. Nice, nice. Okay. And I really like how you outlined them, like questioning who you are, examining who you are, and then owning who you are. Because I think if we don't go through all those steps where we're really examining and questioning who we are and what we're about, you know, how do we really live on purpose and how do we do the good work that we're intended to do in this world? No, that's top shelf. And listen, that book, I'm not a writer by trade, right? Like I don't blog,

I don't do a lot of those things. Not that there's anything wrong with it. I just value more face-to-face human interaction. Speaking comes more naturally than sitting. There might be a little bit of a hyperactivity associated with that because I'm a coach and what have you. But the book is an accurate representation of how I did those things. So I think sometimes people can read books myself. And the process that's laid out doesn't seem intuitive to me. I was writing out this book, which is comprised of thoughts and strategies and issues and examples. I thought about, okay, where do I start? Three stages of identification is how I started in the book. Nice. Awesome. Now, other

things you talk about in the book are your, the archetypes. Do you want to tell us a little bit about that? And I know, you know, you obviously can go to the, you can, you can buy the book, which we'll talk about at the end of this interview, but tell us a little bit about that and how you came up with them. Sure. So an archetype is a typical example of something, right? Just to consolidate that in a, and maybe oversimplify it for the, for the collective understanding. But if you think of Facebook, right? We all get on Facebook and we know the person that's always sharing pictures of their family or their baby or maybe their cat. Then there's always somebody

that's going on a political rant. Then there's always an example of like five friends we can think of. There's that person that interrupts every conversation. There's the party pooper. Well, when you deal with people, you can find archetypes pretty easily. And this isn't judging. This isn't typecasting. This is just suggesting and saying, hey, you're going to deal with typical examples of certain personalities. Nobody's ever won completely, but you are going to see trends and traits that mix together here. So what I wanted to provide coaches and leaders of all kinds with is kind of a guide of how they can identify or quickly scan the room and identify

certain personalities and traits that they may deal with on a daily basis and then give them an idea of, okay, what's an overview of this archetype? So for example, the royal. The royal is an archetype of a pretty entitled personality. It's that, you know, they may have a natural skill set at whatever they're doing. In the book, I give you athlete examples, but these exist everywhere. They exist in corporate domains and anywhere. He was a naturally talented athlete. He's typically been lauded by the media or organizations he's been a part of. He doesn't really like to get his hands dirty, right?

If there is an issue where it requires getting his hands dirty or some kind of struggle or strife, it's usually somebody else's fault. You know, so here's one example. There could be the crusader who's kind of that enigmatic spiritual leader of whatever the domain is. There's the wolverine who's kind of that rogue-esque loner. They can have altruistic tendencies, but they have a very irascible demeanor. You kind of have to approach them with patience and caution. There's so many others. I think there's 15 in total. So we give an overview of how to identify certain traits that characterize that behavior or that archetype, strengths and weaknesses, because there are great things about each archetype and there are bad things about each archetype depending on the situation or domain.

And then there's an example of how to connect with them how you can leverage certain types of behavior in order to kind of interject or inject yourself and and manipulate that environment in a more favorable way to your overall goal or domain lastly i recruited 15 other coaches from around the world that work with everything from military to different levels of sport to share their stories of how they dealt with each archetype. Now, partially is because I am not egotistical enough to think that anybody wants to read a book comprised of only my thoughts. You know, I get annoyed with the sound of my own voice and my own thoughts, right? Like you always listen to, I'm sure you listen to your own podcast sometimes just to check quality and you can't. Right. I can't listen. I can't listen. It's hard.

Yeah. I hate it. I'm like, turn it off, turn it off. So I wanted other voices to be in there. And then also to provide audiences involved with a variety of different kind of perspectives, right? Because they can appreciate those. So that's kind of an overview of what we want to do with the archetypes and the nature of it. Cool. So there are 16 archetypes. And what I'm really hearing is just when you learn more about the archetypes, perhaps that you can really see yourself in those, but also how you can really manipulate would be the word that you would use, how you interact with people so you can do your job more effectively and you can be more of a conscious coach. Yeah, exactly. And I know a lot of people, again, may not like that word manipulate.

You can say manipulate. You can say adapt. You can say adjust. But at the end of the day, right, if we're being honest communicators, there's manipulation. There is manipulation. And I just think that that's important nomenclature because we've got to get away from this kind of ideology that, oh, everything has to be clean. It all has to be politically correct.

How are you being an authentic version of yourself if you're not calling things what they are? And then the last part of that is, yes, giving people a tool. It's one thing if you read, I'm sure you've read countless books that say, look people in the eye, be friendly, be warm. Great. Where's the beef? Where is really what we're trying to sink our teeth into? So I wanted to take a scientific approach and say, there are different personalities. Being one way is not going to work, excuse me, in the world that we live in. You have got to be able to adjust yourself. It's the difference between weather and climate. We need rainy days, we need sunny days, and we need to be able to do that for everything to take full bloom. Awesome. And one word that you said, Brett, that really caught my attention with was authenticity and being your authentic self. Tell us how you see maybe the

world's best or the world-class athletes or the others that you work with in consulting. How do you see them do that? And then perhaps connect that to the archetypes if you can. Yeah, I think they've gone through that stages of identification, not necessarily mine, but in their own way. And I think they get really good at owning who they are. I think, you know, and again, simple example here, but think of the awkward teenage years of our, you know, of our youth, right? We're trying to figure things out. We're very influenced by social norms and what have you. College, you start to get a little bit more independent, but eventually it's really not until your thirties or maybe even your forties or fifties that we really own who we are. Now,

part of that is, you know, the development of the prefrontal cortex, which really doesn't happen around 24 or 25, right? So by nature, you can't really be or own who you are until, you know, you're a quarter of the way into your life, assuming somebody lives 100 years. I know that's the biggest hope. But I think people just realize that eventually there's enough failures, there's enough successes, you know, whether that's in terms of their own relationships or success in business or sport or life or what have you, that they're really good at owning who they are. And they become a little bit more unapologetic, right? Like you have a better idea of what you stand for. And you have to, because when when you fail or when you deal with enough hardship

and you've really had to stand your ground for something that matters or you've had to promote yourself in a certain way for these athletes a lot of times they have to do that for certain contracts they just get to a point where they're tired of playing the game and they say this is who i am this is what i'm about and i figured that out now so i think the owning who you are piece is the progression that they've really locked in. They're still able to adjust it because they do have to maintain a brand and what have you, but they don't run from it. I think we spend a lot of our lives running from who we are. I think that's the nature of a lot of issues we have in marriage. I think that's a lot of the nature of the issues we have in business. You have people that are scared of success, people that are

scared of a variety of things in life. And it's because we're told how to behave now. We are. By and large, we're told how to behave and what the ideal is and that noise and that inability to filter affects our relationships and our effectiveness. Absolutely. I really like the last stage of internal identification, the owning who you are. So I think that's so important. Can you paint us a picture of somebody who you think owns who they are? And maybe it's a client that you've worked with or somebody who's been influential in your life to try to get us to allow ourselves to kind of wrap our idea or mind around this idea of owning who you are. Very easily. Richie Incognito, who is a pro bowl offensive lineman for the Buffalo Bills. Somebody, even if they're not familiar with sport, listening in right now might remember Richie Incognito for a tremendous media, and I say

tremendous in terms of magnitude and scale, media kind of blow out about thinking he was a racist, and he was this and that. So he used to play for the Miami Dolphins. He had an altercation with a teammate. I'll let your listeners read into this for the details for more out of respect to Richie. But basically, a series of texts and behaviors were taken out of context. This gentleman and Richie had always interacted in what we would perceive as an inappropriate way in terms of language, word choice, or what have you. But a lot of Richie's teammates said like, no, this was how we all were, right? Locker room humor is very, very different than what us outsiders, right, would deem acceptable or appropriate, right? And Richie would tell you there were some things that were out of good taste or out of character and what have you. But Richie, despite being one of the best offensive linemen or

best players in the NFL in general, and we're talking about the 1% of the 1%, was basically, you know, he was expelled from the league for a full year. No team would touch him. The media was having a heyday releasing very personal texts, communications, phone records. I mean, very personal things. And I worked with Richie for a full year when nobody else would touch him. Nobody else would touch me.

And the things were pretty bad. But you know what? He got the help he needed. He got the treatment he needed. And he came back after that and not only had another Pro Bowl season, one of the best years in his career, but the way he addressed every single question in the media and the way he did not take the bait, but at the same time didn't run from these things. He really owned it. He said, listen, what I did was unacceptable. At the same time, there's things that perhaps you guys don't understand in the nature of the environment.

I'm not running from it. But at the same time, just understand at a certain point in time, I'm going to be done answering these questions. I'm going to let my actions on the field speak for themselves, which they have. I can't even tell you how many Pro Bowls he's played in and he owns it. Whether it's political support, whether it's things he believes in, he says what he means. He does it in a tasteful manner that he's learned from. And that's why I say, Cinderette, you can't own who you are without first being exposed. I mean, he was a bear. I don't care who's listening to this. Imagine having all your texts read. There are things that we say that all could easily be taken out of context. It could be horribly damaging or embarrassing. And you know what, he had to deal with that. And that helped him find more clarity within that. Same thing that happened with me going to the hospital. I was put in an eating disorder hospital for over a year of my life when I didn't have classical eating disorder behaviors. I didn't binge. I didn't purge. I wasn't scared of being fat. It was a manifestation of OCD and depression and what have you. But I had to walk back into

high school that year after. People know when I was in an eating disorder hospital, I was scared to talk about it for a number of years. And now I put it in a book that fortunately enough has been a bestseller. And so, you know, it's out there now. People know I was in eating disorder hospital, you know, so owning who you are comes from being stripped bare. And I also think like it makes people connect with you and people see kind of your vulnerability and see that you're a person, right? That you're not this perfect person. What, what kind of degree do you think exposure comes in? So maybe people are listening and saying, well, I haven't had this big event in my life where I've been exposed in the media or been in the hospital. Do you think that there's various degrees of exposure? No question. And I'm glad you brought that up because somebody,

you know, even though I've had a lot of messages and emails of people saying, hey, I've struggled with drugs or, you know, my relationships, or I too had this issue. And that's really insightful and inspiring and awesome for people to come out and say that. There are some people that haven't had to deal with that. But you have to keep in mind that struggle is relative, right? And you don't have to have this huge, damaging, near-death event to have that. That just goes in how you approach day-to-day life. That comes with a level of resilience and just doggedness, right? Of pursuit of long-term goals, what Angela Duckworth would call grit, right. That passion pursuit of long-term goals. So I think anybody that exhibits that

is exposure. You're out there daily fighting for something you believe in. And, and I do think you have to have skin in the game. I don't think people that are just sitting back and not involved in their industry in some kind of way, or putting examples of their work out there or sharing and you do have to have an element of vulnerability. Sure. I think there is a limit to how just much in the shadows you can be and still act like you understand the nature of exposure. I do think you have to put yourself out there. I was very worried and obsessive about this book coming out, you know, like, because I knew there were people, you know, I'll speak to, I'll speak to sports scientists, I'll speak to psychologists, I'll speak to athletes, coaches, that if one word is taken

out of context, and I just, you know, it wasn't until one of my editors said, you know what, you have skin in the game, somebody is always going to have a criticism of this, tell them to write a book, you know what I mean? And then if they have written a book, you think every review they have. And it just kind of reminded me like, shut up. You know, you're putting work out there. And so I do think there's value in that. You do have to find a way to get out of your comfort zone a little bit. If you're always in the shadows, I don't know that you have it to the degree that you should.

Yeah, for sure. And, you know, for you, do you think that owning who you are became at a sort of like a higher level once the book was published? Because, you know, you had to be out there with what you're saying, get out of your comfort zone and just put your words on paper. Yeah, no question. You really ask tremendous questions. Yeah, absolutely. The book being out there, I mean, and again, my early experiences, I was taught to be a coach that I was not on social media the first part of my career. Even putting myself out there and doing a daily or bi-daily Instagram post or Twitter,

every time I put that out there, and that's why you see research suggests anxiety in our country is at an all-time high. And there are times where I put a tweet out there and I'm like, oh, God, I should have worded that differently. But you know what? That becomes part of how you brand it and leverage it. You just say, I'm not perfect. These are my thoughts and my views.

It comes to my head as tremendous clarity, okay? Like, but you put things out there and thankfully the response has always been more favorable than not. And I think that is something that's worth telling people is, you know what? Like you put yourself out there,

you're always gonna have, you know, I'm not religious, I'm spiritual, right? Like, so this isn't a religious thing. But Jesus, people could say Jesus walk on water in today's culture and say it's because he couldn't swim. Right? And there's always a detractor, you look on YouTube, you find your favorite musician, comedian, there's always a million thumbs downs. But you will find that if you put yourself out there, by and large, more people are far more supportive than they are hurtful or damaging and I think there's value in realizing that and understanding that so share your message you know putting it out there has tremendous value

and you've got to not worry about perfection yeah and I think what Brett Worley what you're talking about is that we can feel so much fear when we're getting out there with our message. Posting on Twitter or with your book is an example, but I think that holds you back. It holds the field back. I think it holds the impact that you can make back, meaning like you don't serve the people that you can if you don't get out there with your message. And I know there's a lot of people who listen or listening who are maybe just early career professionals, you know. So what message could you give them about like why you should get out there with your message, either write a book or go on social media, or maybe there's other ways that you can think of? Yeah, I mean, right off the bat, I'll just say, I think there's inherent value in having skin in the game, it forces

clarity. And usually humans really do best when they're pushed against the wall. That's why you see that kind of what exists in the literature known as tragedy to championship phenomenon, right? Where, you know, whenever there's a cataclysmic event in a community, you usually see that community rise up and do something really special. Examples briefly being, you know, when the Joplin tornado hit, the St. Louis Cardinals won the World Series, Hurricane Katrina hit, New Orleans Saints won the NFL or the Super Bowl, you know, the Boston bombings, Boston Red Sox won the World Series, right? There's so many examples. So putting skin in the game is micro trauma, right? It forces clarity and forces you to think a little bit more deeply about what you're doing and what you're trying to target. I do think when you're

a young professional, there is inherent value and just shut up for a little bit and observe, you know, like don't don't just start going out there with a bullhorn. There's too many people doing that. I was, I was not on social media for the first five years of my career, right? You need to observe and you need to find it. You need to, we don't need more echoes. So you need to observe and find out what voices already exist and are doing a really good job so that you can find something very unique. If I were to just post on training, which I did when I first got into social media, right, what led to a higher vertical jump, what helped people run faster, what helped the athletes become more durable, that had value then. If I did that now, I'm drowned out

by the countless voices that are doing that, or very few, I can't say nobody, I'm not going to act like I have that kind of, you know, omnipresence or omnipotence, even not very many people were talking about the science of coaching and connecting with people. So that was my way of trying to be an authentic voice. So I do think you have to observe. And the last thing is, I think that comes from finding uncommon mentors. I think that if you just look to people in your field or surrounding fields, you're doing yourself an injustice because real wisdom comes from the ability to understand that everything is inextricably linked. So I derive a lot of the sound silly. It may sound silly. But one of the presentations I give is, you know, I find I find great examples in musicians oftentimes. So specifically, and I like all kinds of music, but I'm very much a jazz guy and a hip hop head.

I love good hip hop. So I like artists like Eminem and Dr. Dre and 50 Cent back and Jay-Z, because I look at people that they're either completely dedicated in being a craftsman or they've done unique things from an entrepreneurial standpoint or they've done unique things as a composer, right?

You look at Dr. Drain, if you've seen Straight Outta Compton, this is a guy that came from a tremendously damaging background and ended up falling in love with the sound of music and the nuance of how every beat and loop and everything came together. Eventually created a product, Beats Headphones, that sold to Apple because he changed the way that people listen to music. So being able to involve myself and immerse myself in a craft that deeply and change the way that people see things or perceive things is very important to me and is inspired by people outside of my field or my domain. You have got to have people that see beyond what's right in front of them if they want to be true, impactful, and insightful leaders, I think. Awesome. That's really, really insightful. You know, as we kind of wrap up the interview, I'm thinking quite a bit about just all the value that you've provided the listeners today.

And tell us a little bit about how some of the content that you talked about, how you might use it in your consulting. I know we've been talking a lot about your coaching in terms of strength and conditioning, but I know you do some consulting as well. So just tell us a little bit about that and how you incorporate some of the content that you talked about today in that. Sure. So I've started to work with a variety of firms. These, I can't mention, but firms that I never thought that I, or companies I never thought I'd be involved with. And it's cool and it's insightful because you realize how they got to where they are. They could ask anybody in the world to be a part of it.

And many of them have had people that are far more recognizable names than me. But the book has, you know, gotten to their hands somehow, what have you. So many of them want to talk about whether it's stages of internal identification, right? Like in the book, I mentioned psychometrics, things like the disc assessment, things like the kind of Jungian archetypes, things like, you know, strengths finders, all these other, and businesses have

always invested in those. I think they spent $110 billion or out of $110 billion spent on staff development in terms of many of these organizations worldwide, 60% of that is spent on like these personality assessments, right? But many of them have failed people because these personality assessments weren't supposed to be used in that manner, right? They're not supposed to be used to tell you who to hire or to tell you this or what have you. They've had to really do more of an internal audit of going in and doing a more in-depth stages of identification model of saying, okay, these forced choice questionnaires don't really give us insight into the best DNA. How can we dial it back and go back to the most human, banal, even, or elemental piece of who we are, what we do, and what we're trying to achieve. And then not only that, the biggest piece, Sindra has been what I refer to in the book as educating them on dark sided leadership traits, and how not only are bright sided traits, but dark

sided traits can really be effective in dealing with variety of archetypes. So I've kind of come in. And that's why I use the term human performance in my new venture, which is called the bridge human performance, we try to bridge that gap. And then it is about how do you optimize human performance? Well, there's the physical domain, but there's also these elements of how do I match dark and bright-sided leadership traits with certain archetypes with these stages of identification model and enmesh those within organization and practice strategies. Tell us a little bit about how we can get the book.

So the book, again, is called Conscious Coaching, the Art and Science of Building Buy-in. Yeah, the book's available worldwide on Amazon. It's in the process of being translated into four additional languages, but you can buy it on Amazon. It's available on Kindle as well for anybody that likes e-readers. You shouldn't have trouble finding it on Amazon, but if you do, you can always go to consciouscoachingbook.com. You can download a free excerpt out of that website. But of course, there's the Look Inside feature on Amazon as well. So consciouscoachingbook.com or direct from Amazon. Awesome. And Brett, I know I follow you on Twitter actually and appreciate

the value that you provide there. So tell us a little bit about how we could follow you as well. Yeah. So as you alluded to, I'm more active these days on, on Instagram and Twitter. It used to be just Twitter and kind of Facebook, Facebook. I phased out a little bit. I just think that Twitter is a more effective medium and, and Instagram, despite how cautious I was of that, we know that pictorial examples and images are really, really powerful. So you can find me on that at, at coach underscore Brett B that's at coach underscore B-R-E-T-T-B as in boy. And I try to be fairly active on that. So I appreciate the support.

You bet. You bet. Well, so you've given us so much value today. The three things that I really most enjoyed, Brad, that I want to just, first of all, I just want to thank you for your time. No, thanks to you. Yeah. And here's the three things that I really got from today.

I love that you said that world-class athletes are different in three ways. They have a filter. They're consistent and that they're humble. So important. I loved our discussion of the three stages of internal identification and specifically about owning who you are and how really to own who you are, you have to have skin in the game and you have to be out there with either your message or out there in a some way.

But I really just enjoyed your insight on that. And I just really liked the idea of just owning who you are, maybe because I'm on my own journey to do that, but the importance of being authentic as a leader and as a conscious coach. So I thank you so much for your time. Do you have any other kind of final advice for those people who are listening? First off, no, thank you for a recap. I've been on a lot of podcasts now and I don't think anybody's ever done a recap like that in terms of what was most valuable. That helps me. So thank you first and foremost, and for even

reaching out. I see the final advice. Listen, there's nothing proverbial here. I just think you need to stay diligent. More people do need to own who they are, get involved in your field. Really, our society is lacking in good mentors, authentic mentors, people that are actually developing tomorrow's professionals to be even more competent than they themselves are. Like give, give that aspect of yourself because we're going to either fall victim to this kind of consumer society that we're building, or we're going to be able victim to this kind of consumer society that we're building, or we're going to be able to lead and direct it more effectively. And I think that comes from great mentoring and the art of apprenticeship. So thanks again to everybody.

I really appreciate it. I hope the book provides value. Awesome. And you can head over to cindracampoff.com slash Brett, and I will have all of the show notes there that will link up to everything that Brett talked about today. So thank you so much for your time and your energy today. My pleasure. Thank you. Thank you for listening to High Performance Mindset. If you like today's podcast, make a comment, share it with a friend and join the conversation on Twitter at Mentally Underscore Strong. For more inspiration and to receive Sindra's free weekly videos, check out DrSindra.com.