In Search Of Excellence - Apolo Ohno: From Last Place to Olympic Gold | E25

Episode Date: August 2, 2022

Apolo Anton Ohno is the most decorated Winter Olympian of all time. Between the 2002, 2006, and 2010 Winter Olympics, Apolo earned eight Olympic medals in short-track speed skating. Even as a child, Apolo’s athletic ability was evident, at the young age of 14, Apolo won his first major speed skating title, after just six months of training. But, despite his incredible talents and drive, Apolo faced setbacks and struggles from managing his mental health, navigating adolescence and his rocky relationship with his father, to tuning his competitive spirit. Apolo attributes his massive success as a speed skater and athlete to his fear of failure.In this episode, Randall and Apolo talk about what it takes to succeed at the highest level, and Apolo shares how the struggles he faced growing up and his unique relationship with his father shaped him into the athlete and man he is today. Apolo talks about what he learned from his failure at the 1998 Olympic trials, talks about the four foundations of mental health, and shares tips on how to set a regimen for mental health. Topics Include: - Advice to people afraid to fail - Winning his first big race- How to sustain performance level after success- Advice for parents navigating relationships and experiences with their children - The role of genetics in sport and excellence - Experience of 2002 Olympic Games - Going the extra mile and the role of extreme preparation - Elements of success- Passion and money's role in success- Five golden principles for overcoming challenges- Philanthropy and the importance of giving back- And other topics… Apolo Ohno is America’s most decorated Winter Olympian of all time, earning eight Olympic medals in short-track speed skating across the 2002, 2006, and 2010 Winter Games. He was an NBC sports analyst for the Sochi 2014 and PyeongChang 2018 Winter Games and is a global ambassador for the Special Olympics and the Winter Olympics. Among his other athletic accomplishments, Apolo won season 4 of ABC’s Dancing with the Stars and participated in the 2014 Ironman World Championship Triathlon in Kona, Hawaii.  Apolo is also the author of the New York Times best-seller, Zero Regrets, A Journey, the autobiography of Apolo Anton Ohno, and his latest book, Hard Pivot. He is a regular speaker at hundreds of organizations from Fortune 100 companies to nonprofits. Resources Mentioned:Sandee.comApolo Ohno WebsiteSponsors:Sandee | Bliss: BeachesWant to Connect? Reach out to us online!Website | Instagram | LinkedIn

The aha moment was that I needed to just put forth effort in a way that the outcome was not indicative of my happiness. Very, very hard to do because we are all so tied to that metric. There's a really powerful fulfillment inside all of us that comes from when we know we've maximized and exhausted all options in that chapter of our life. Welcome to In Search of Excellence, which is about our quest for greatness and our desire to be the very best we can be, to learn, educate, and motivate ourselves to live up to our highest potential. It's about planning for excellence and how we achieve excellence through incredibly hard work, dedication, and perseverance. It's about believing in ourselves and the ability to overcome the many obstacles we all face on our way there. Achieving excellence is our goal, and it's never easy to do. We all have different backgrounds, personalities, and surroundings,

and we all have different routes on how we hope and want to get there. My guest today is Apollo Ono. Apollo is a motivational speaker, philanthropist, entrepreneur, and former short track speed skating champion. He is the most decorated winter Olympian in U.S. history with a record eight Olympic medals over three Olympic games, including two gold, two silver, and four bronze medals. In a career that spanned more than two decades, he won 12 national titles, three overall World Cup titles, and a total of 21 world championship medals. He is also a 12-time U.S. champion. In 2017, he was inducted to the International Sports Hall of Fame, and in 2019, he was inducted into the

U.S. Olympic Hall of Fame. In 2007, Apollo won the TV competition Dancing with the Stars. He has also served as a commentator for NBC's coverage of the Winter Olympics. He is a partner of Tribe Capital, an early-stage venture fund, which has $1.3 billion in assets under management. Apollo is also passionate about giving back to his community and is the author of four books, including the recently released Hard Pivot, Embrace Change, Find Purpose, Show Up Fully, an awesome self-help book about his struggles and fears after his skating career was over, and which

is designed to inspire and motivate others, which is the main goal of my podcast and why I started it. Apollo, it's an incredible pleasure to have you on my show. Welcome to In Search of Excellence. Thank you, Randy. Thanks for the amazing intro. I always start my podcast with our family because from the moment we're born, our family helps shape our personalities, our values, and the preparation for our future. You were born in Seattle to a Japanese father

and American mother. Your mother, Jerry Lee, was 18 years old when she married your dad. And when you were a year old, your parents got divorced and you never saw or talked to your mother again, except for a few photographs, you've never seen her. Your dad, Yuki, has played a huge role in your life. He was a Japanese immigrant who came to the US when he was 19 years old. When he came here, he couldn't speak a word of English, didn't have any money, and had no extended family here. He did have a camera around his neck, but he had to sell it for food and living expenses. He studied accounting. When that failed, he tried every single job imaginable and then got into hairdressing, first studying at a

Vidal Sassoon salon in London and then traveling all over Europe into New York City to work the hair shows. In 1980, he opened his own salon in Seattle called Yuki's Diffusions, where he worked 12-hour shifts, balancing his career as a single father. We're going to talk a lot more about your dad and the incredible influence he's had in your life. But I want to start with Halloween. Can you tell us about the picture of you as a baby holding his pant leg? And can you also tell us about how you used to sit in his salon in your Halloween costume, waiting for him to take you trick-or-treating and the feeling you had when he couldn't because he had to keep working late into the night to put food on the table and support you? And as part of that, can you tell us about the impact that had on you at the time and the lessons it taught you for your future?

You did a lot of research. That's amazing. So a few things. One, growing up on the carpet floor and the hardwood floor of my father's salon, I spent so many years there crawling around and really growing up in that salon. And my dad has this hair salon and stylist that you have to do as many haircuts and styles as possible per day. And that was the only time he didn't have enough money to hire a babysitter or trust the ones that he did. And so I grew up in that salon. And there was many times where my father would be working very late that he had to clean the salon, prepare for the next day, et cetera, et cetera. And there wasn't very many times. My dad always tried to make time to bring me to these types of things, Halloween, for example. But I think in relation to your question, the attributes that

I had seen in my father at that early age, and I didn't know it then, by the way, I can only articulate this many years later, but I had just seen someone who was so relentlessly driven by showing up his maximum intensity every day. And my father doesn't make a ton of money. He's not like a wildly successful businessman in his salon ownership, but it's ownership of some capacity. And he took it very seriously. And that's what he did. And he knew that I became the purpose in his life. And so he needed to do whatever it took to get there. So I always look to my dad as that amazing prime example that the world gives you these external signals that tells

you this is what you must have, this is what you must do, and this is what you must be in order to be a happy or have the term successful. But that's an internal process and goal. And for my father, that was extremely apparent where he pursued this because this was a part of his life. And it didn't wildly financially give him these wild financial successes that I think many of us maybe are chasing or driving towards. But it gave him a sense of ownership and I think purpose. And that purpose was in me and raising me. So I was a kid like anyone else. I was highly rambunctious and a lot of energy, but that's kind of the lessons that he taught me just by visual appreciation. Let's talk about your childhood.

And I want to break that into two parts. First, your athleticism. And second, your troubles and challenges and how you overcame them. We'll start with your athleticism. When you were three, your dad said you had an unusual talent, especially in your mind, to be very, very daring, that you had a lot of energy. When you were six years old, your dad put you in daycare and you would climb over a fence and eat rocks and dirt.

You liked sports. You played basketball, baseball, and football, but your dad got you involved with competitive swimming and quad speed roller skating. You did both at the same time. Your days were crazy. You'd start your mornings with swim practice, then go to school, then go to skating practice in the afternoon. And you excelled at both sports. On the swimming front, you won the Washington State Championship in the breaststroke when you were 12 years old, but you preferred inline speed skating over swimming. And that same year,

you also made the local roller skating team as a quad and inline skater. You told your dad that the sport was kind of fun, that you didn't really enjoy it that much. And he said to you, oh no, you have to work really hard. And that there were kids who lived in Florida and in other parts of the country where unlike Seattle, they didn't have as much rain and can trade outside significantly more than you. Because of this, he'd wake you at 3.30 to four o'clock in the mornings when it wasn't raining, take you to empty school and church parking lots, put on a miner's light on your helmet, turn on the headlights of your old Volkswagen Rabbit while you skated around as your dad would sit there with a little wooden clipboard and take

lap times. You were only 12 years old at the time. And at one point, you told them that you were so tired and that you hated it, that it was painful and that you didn't want to do it anymore. Can you tell us what you learned from this brutal schedule and the trauma you suffered and what you've described as feeling like shit as a 12-year-old? And can you tell us about your dad stopping his car and making you explain to him why you wanted to quit and how this led to you having a fear of failure and the impact all of this had on the rest of your life? Yeah, that was a great summary. So that's exactly what happened with my father. He had always been trying to give me these life lessons that were embedded in the hardship or the challenges or the failures or the successes that I would go through and experience. Here I was, this young

kid, and I think that perhaps waking me up at 3.30, 4.30 in the morning is not the most optimal way to help grow a child's brain. We know physically the kid needs a lot of sleep. But for my father who came as an immigrant to this country, sometimes those things went beyond the kind of science-based approach towards optimal sleep, optimal performance, et cetera. It was just like, these are things that you have to do and there's going to be sacrifices. And so he was trying to embed that in my brain at a very early age that you're going to have to do things in life that you actually absolutely dislike. It's just to make sure that those things are acute in nature. They don't extend for long durations of time. Same thing with stress. Stress in doses is very powerful and important for our growth.

Stress over long ratios of time kills you. Same thing. And so I remember talking to my dad after basically I told him that I wanted to quit. And it was years until I really understood what was happening. He made it impossible for me to quit. He made it impossible for me to articulate the reasons why I wanted to quit. And I think that he wasn't opposed to me. I mean, he knew that like, I'm young, like nobody else was doing this. Number one, there was no one ever there, like in the middle of the night. I think one time, like a police car showed up one time as I was patrolling and they were like, what are you guys doing? I remember my dad was like, we're training. It's like, what do you mean? That kid's 12 years old. He doesn't need to do

training. This is insane. Like, why now, right? But in my head, that became, I was always fascinated with trying to get my father's approval, right? Growing up in a Singaporean household, I always sought the love and affection and affirmation of my dad. That transformed later on in life

from coaches and other things that I've done, right? Get the head nod of approval that you are on the right track. But that's what I had sought and that's what I was seeking. And I was not getting that when I made that decision to basically stop and quit.

And so from there, my father, that was ingrained in my head and that has exacerbated in the way that I've lived my life since. And the traumatic experience is that there was this deep fear of failure and it may not have been particularly

from that moment in time, although I think I can correlate that to that one specific moment. Everything in our life happens around these kind of microtrauma or experiences that then we carry with us for decades. And for me, I think that's the moment where I finally understood that my natural fear of failure was rooted in this disappointment. And by the way, that has, as I've grown older, I've done that in friendships, business, and personal intimate relationships where I have stayed in relationships for far longer than what my heart and my gut was telling me. I know this is not a good match. This is an issue, but you can't quit. And sometimes in life, it's really good to, quote, fail fast, pivot, and then start again. In my head, there was this thing of like,

I'm so afraid of failing and what the fallout would be psychologically of letting that person down, having that semblance of disappointment psychologically that you sometimes start to layer in these self-saboteur mechanisms of behavior. And as I talk through this, I don't know if any of your listeners can relate to something like that, but all of us have a self-saboteur in our mind. It is in there at the DNA level designed to keep you actually safe. This is a hardwiring mechanism that for millions of years, you would never go into these weird environments that felt dangerous because that meant you were going to die. Instead, you want to go to familiar, routine, consistent, and recognizable situations, environments, and places because that signifies you are safe.

Now, the same thing occurs in your life where short track speed skating is an incredibly volatile sport, and there's no reason why the best person wins every single time. It's a matter of chance, luck, preparation, et cetera, all these things. But that was the fascination was with my mentality around fear of failure. And I used it as a lever, by the way. There wasn't a single day from when I joined my first team at 14 years old until when I retired, the thought came in my head in the morning, I don't think I want to go to the ice rink today. I find that abnormal. And I tell my friends that, I even tell my teammates that, they're like, what do you mean? How did you never have that thought? And in my head, it was so secondary because the priority was like, you are so far behind.

You have so much work to do. You don't even have the luxury of having this conversation. That part of your brain, Apollo, doesn't get a vote. Therefore, it was just shielded. It was just like, get up, robot, machine, repeat every day. And then the self-saboteur in my life, you start layering in these speed bumps or unnecessary challenges and obstacles in your life. these emergency exits in the event there was an emergency or a situation where I didn't perform well, even though I was prepared and everyone thought I was going to win, in my head, I could somewhat say to myself, well, you waited too long in the race to pass and that's why you didn't do it. Oh, well, you didn't eat as healthy as you could during the last two weeks of preparation for that, or you didn't sleep enough, or whatever the excuse was. It was giving me an excuse to basically say, yeah, that wasn't your best. But there's something much more commendable to show up and say,

I did my best and it wasn't the best on that day. And I accept that and I surrender to that. And I learn from that. And I use that as a catalyst of action for reinvention, recalibration. And then I go back out on the road for whatever goals I'm trying to attack. That's really hard to do because we hate losing. My fascination came with just fears of disappointment, which was rooted deep in fears of failure. So I think fear of failure is one of the great motivators to everybody. And most people I know, 99% of us have it. It sometimes discourages us from even trying different things. We don't want to fail. We don't want to let ourselves down. We don't want to let the people near us down. It

could be parents, colleagues, et cetera, et cetera. What's your advice to people who fear failure and don't want to do something because they're afraid to try and they're afraid to fail? I think my advice is you can think about these experiences or traumas or chips on the shoulder in your life as either paralyzing or they are the levers to give you the leverage to really accelerate your purpose, your goal, your fulfillment, et cetera. It's only when you are doing things not knowing that you've been on the treadmill the whole time that you understand you can get off of that life treadmill whenever you want. That's up to you as a decision maker. So I think separating them is really important. But also, if you're driven by fear of failure, and it causes you around this paralysis because

you demand perfection in some capacity, you need to remove that aspect out. The self-imposed limitations are there for safety mechanisms, right? You have that in finance, with trading, managing money, with all relationships. You have those mechanisms that are kind of formed around the way that you want to see your visible bubble. But true growth and experience comes from acceptance of what that is. And so using fear of failure as a great motivator and tool, it's going to keep you up at night in a good way. It's going to make you consistently get up early in the morning in a good way. It's going to keep you steadfast and focused and head down, eyes to the front on the target and the goal because that's what the lever is supposed to be used for.

It's when the lever starts to use you, which is dangerous. It's the same thing for our personal devices. These personal devices allow us to reach thousands and millions of people, branding, access, much more efficient, communicate, all these amazing things that we know. But if you're being used by your device to mine your data and time and energy, well, that role is reversed. You are actually the machine. The person handling that is almost like a puppeteer and master.

We are always in control over the decisions that we make, not maybe the reactions because we're hardwired in a way, but we can pause and have a response. Oh, I'm doing that again. Oh my God, I just scrolled on Instagram or I was on TikTok for an hour and a half and I have no idea what I just looked at. If you give me a quiz, I couldn't tell you what I looked at for the past 90 minutes. These things are happening on a societal perspective. So do not allow yourself to be hijacked by those fears to the point where it's crushing. And I think it's going back to the basics, and I'll keep it simple, understanding what

the purpose is and the reasons why you're doing this, to identifying the mechanisms of action that you're trying to use to get your to your goal, which is process overpriced. If you only focus on the target, you forget about reverse engineering. What are the actual mechanical steps that I need to do on the daily to make me feel my best that makes me perform my best? Break it down in a very simple way. Fear of failure is a powerful motivating tool. It allows you to do and create extreme performance, but will require you to do extreme things at times. It's all about making sure that you remain in the driver's seat.

Don't let it go the other way around. You kept skating, and when you got better, you started entering competitions. Your dad would still be working his 12-hour days in his salon and would drive you thousands of miles to rollerblading competition, once driving you from Seattle to a competition in theon Redford National Training Center before switching to a place called Patterson's Team Extreme, where you became a national inline speed skating champion and record holder. We're going to talk and get into your troubled relationship with your dad next, as well as the crowd you were hanging out with. But I want to freeze frame it here for a second. You're 12 years old, and now you're a national champion. What were you feeling when you crossed the finish line and won that first big race? Did you raise your hands and pump your fists in the air? Was that feeling so amazing that you wanted more of it to the point

that you were dreaming about and motivated to find out what you could conquer next? And as part of this, in our search of excellence, do we need to keep pushing ourselves after we have achieved a taste of success, especially when we've achieved massive success? So I do remember that race of winning. And I remember it was a feeling of relief more than it was of hunger and desire. I can tell you that my first inline skating, roller skating race that I actually had competed in and received a worthwhile trophy was I got second in the race. And I remember looking at the other kid's trophy and how he was celebrated. And then looking at my father and my father kept telling me how proud he was of how hard that I had tried. And he was just so proud of me. And then he kind of ended it by saying,

but let's figure out what we can do better next time. That to me is where that competitive drive had started. I was about 12, by the way, when I got that silver, whatever that silver medal was. And then fast forward to like, how do you sustain the performance level? I think it, after you've had success,

so in business, let's say you have a big exit or a massive promotion, it's really important to maintain the course if the course is best suited for your life. Hard to know and understand because there's many times we're faced with pivots or forks in the road. But I have found all of my friends, all the people that I have been around who have reached a massive level of success financially, at some point they say to me, I need something to get my fire going again. That's a part of living as a human being. So your point of living is not to make a lot of money and then retire. That means you make a lot of money and then you die because retirement is basically

dying unless you're spending your time doing passions. This is my view, whether it's giving back to people, helping people, whatever those things might be. So I think it's very important to figure out what are some of the fundamental truths that are within you, that ikigai mentality of finding the middle of this Venn diagram that crosses over of what you think the world needs, what your professional skill sets are, your strengths, what you can get paid for, what is the vocation, and all these things. You want to be right in the middle is where your purpose is. Some of my friends exited their companies, these tech startups. And I remember them telling me, after the first year, they had all this money and a different lifestyle.

They asked themselves, they're like, well, what the hell do I do now? This can't be the end of the, this can't be the top of the stairway. It doesn't, what do I do? Just jump off the stairway now? And I was like, no, man. sometimes you have to go back down the stairway and go back up or if you go down the stairway and find another one and so that is the human experience which is this glorious adventure and you have the pen and pad if you are unhappy to the point of real suffering in the current trajectory of your life make the change do it don't be afraid of it and if you are afraid do it anyway these are things that you want to be able to look back on your life in 80 years and say that you have lived a very well-lived life. That to me is the ultimate goal, is to be able to maximize these seconds per day,

these minutes per day. When our company went public, I was 31 years old And it was a crazy day. Our company had a $14.4 billion market cap, even though we had $3.2 million in revenue for three months of performance. I remember sitting there. I was in my broker's office. I was with my wife at the time. And we're just looking at one another. It was hard to believe. But I had left the company right before that. I had started my own VC firm, and I never paused. I want to keep going. That's just part of my DNA, and I know it's part of your DNA as well. Let's move on. You win a national championship, which is awesome, but it also had a negative side to it. You and your dad were spending an unusual amount of time

together. On weekends, the two of you would often get out of Seattle and go to a beach resort on Washington's Pacific coast called Iron Springs, where you'd go hiking and biking and drive along the Pacific Northwest rivers, lakes, and streams. But when you became a teenager, you struggled with balancing your desire for independence while trying to reach your potential as a young athlete, and you no longer appreciated the outings with your father. Your attitude changed toward him so much so that your dad later said he felt like he no longer knew you. By the time you were 13, if you didn't have competitions on the weekends, you'd go to parties with older teenagers and would often sleep at friends' houses on weekends and stay up all night. Your friends weren't good for you. They discouraged you from continuing in a special program at school because they thought

it was uncool, and they also introduced you you to lifestyle involving smoking, drinking, and sex. There were a lot of fights at your school and you fell into a crowd of petty criminals and juvenile delinquents, kids who are proud of their time in juvie and who plotted to blow up toilets at their school. And even though you were only 13 years old, you were spending time with guys nearing their 20s. Your dad knew you were hanging out with a bad crowd, but he didn't know how bad these guys really were. One guy was in the newspaper every week for the houses and cars he robbed, and people also got shot, stabbed, or went to jail. Your dad was worried that you would waste away your life, and at one point he threatened to send you to military school. At a young age, my parents taught me they were a reflection of the company we keep,

and I think they're right. I know a lot of kids, some very close to me, that have been in the same situation where they're either going to go down the right path or the wrong path. What's your advice to the millions of parents out there whose kids are hanging around with the wrong crowd to try to get them to go straight and not sideways? And what's your advice to those listening

or watching this podcast who are at that point and who with or without parental influence are trying to figure out which way they should go? This is a great question. And I think a lot of us at that age are just trying to figure out who we are. And we're seeking something that we don't want from home. We don't want it from our parents. My dad told me all the right things, but I just didn't want to listen. He could say something. I just want to do the complete opposite. I do think that we are somewhat a byproduct of our environment. And if that environment is negative or detracting or is not uplifting, it's going to be hard to break free out of that environment. Not impossible,

but it just makes it much harder. And I know, I get it. Not every family has the luxury to move to a new city, to go to a new place and a new school and start all over again. But it is really important. And so we are the company we keep. Even as we grow older, we really, really want to focus on how do I surround myself with the right types of people that believe in me, that care about me, that want the best interests for me, but also help me grow. And I don't know the advice that I would give, but I would for sure try to give my son or daughter experiences that I could not teach them. Instead, they could be taught what was possible

on the other side. So for example, post-2010, I was doing this tour to talk about very young kids drinking and using drugs. This was like in elementary and junior high school age groups, right? So basically ninth grade and younger, seventh, eighth, and ninth grade, and fourth, fifth, sixth grade, which you'd think like, why would kids be drinking it? But you'd be pretty surprised the access to some of these kids and how early they start down these paths, especially in some of these areas of these states and cities that don't have the best education systems on the public side. And so I remember going to this one school, there was five of these schools that used to be in the South side of Chicago. And all four had closed down due to

lack of employment. Teachers just didn't want to show up and the schools had no money. So everyone was crammed into this one last public school. I remember walking in and talking to the principal. And I had heard as we were driving to this place, I was going to go talk to these kids and take them through some physical exercises, et cetera. Because I'd heard stories that this guy, this principal, had reinvigorated a sense of confidence from the community again to help these kids think bigger than just the local community they lived in. And he said that, well, the first thing he did when he was principal, he took all these kids out every half an hour. He took a group up to like, there was this playground area that had this really interesting view of the Chicago skyline

in the background. But also you could see like where the local neighborhood was. What do you guys see? What does everyone see? Most of them say, oh, it's my house is over here. We eat at that restaurant. That's the playground. My brother got shot here. Or this is the corner store. That's a liquor store. This is where we hang out. Those are the comments.

No one said, I see the beautiful buildings and skyline in Chicago. And I'm sure someone did at some point. But the story to me is meaningful because of that exploration. So we sometimes are surrounded by these environments because it blinds us and it keeps us in this state where we can't grow. It's not necessarily our fault. And so if you are that father or that mother who deeply wants a different trajectory for that kid's life, they may not listen to you. That's just the reality. I think that's a byproduct of going through that process. And it's probably really scary. It was my father. He felt like he was losing me. And I had such a strong personality that I was willing to lose myself just to spite him, completely willing. And so he didn't even recognize me as his blood at one point

because I was so defiant against any form of authority. Sport helped change that immensely, obviously, because it gave me a chance. But if you don't have sport, what do you do? I think it's all about creating new experiences for that child. And you could try to give it to them and you can teach them yourself. And some may listen, some may not. And for those that do not, how do you put them in an environment where maybe someone else is teaching them? Someone perhaps that they would look up to or think is cool or can relate to. That's where I think you need to get creative because we all need to be met at where we are in that current time. And I'm sure when I have kids, I will face the same struggles that my father had with me, but he was just relentless.

He never gave up. And he made hard decisions for me and sometimes forcefully because he felt so strongly that I would make the wrong decision over and over again. And as you grow older, you're just much more wise. You know the long-term trajectory of where you need to be. Before we get into your career as a short track speed skater, let's talk about what short-term speed skating actually is. It's a form of competitive ice speed skating where several skaters race around on an oval track that's 111.12 meters in length. The skaters are going around turns at 35 to 40 miles per hour. What you've described as human NASCAR. It was a demonstration sport at the Winter Olympics in Calgary in 1988 and was upgraded

to a full Olympic sport at the 1992 Games in Albertville, France. Before you came along, no one cared about it or watched it. You became interested in it for the first time when you watched the 1994 Olympics with your dad. This was the first time you'd ever seen it or heard about it. You're 12 years old at the time. And when you saw these guys wearing these super aerodynamic tight racing suits that looked like Superman or a superhero figure to you, guys who are whipping around the small ice hockey rink of 40 miles per hour, leaning into these impossible angles that looked fake to you.

You said to yourself, I want to lean over these impossible angles myself with that cool skin-tight racing suit. At that point, your dad was looking for any outlet he possibly could that would give you a positive direction where you could channel your energy. He did care what sport it was so long as it wasn't football or boxing. So when you told him that you wanted to try, you started skating at a local ice hockey rink with old mattresses from the junkyard that were taped together on the outside to provide a padding system when you fell. You were getting ice time at midnight because that was the only time your dad could afford. And you're also trying to recruit all of your friends from the roller skating rink to come and try speed skating with you.

Your dad would drive you to the rink, and then he started driving you to other places across the border in Canada, and that same old Volkswagen Beetle to places like Vancouver, Burnaby, which is the city in British Columbia, and to Calgary, all of which are very long drives. And when you saw it done in a professional atmosphere, that's where you fell in love with the sport. It didn't take you long to recognize you had a special gift for that one either and an incredible amount of talent. Six months after you put on skates for the first time, you won your first major speed skating title at the US Championships and were the number one ranked speed skater in the United States. There are a lot of factors evolving your immense success in speed skating. We're going to talk about some of them later, but you were obviously born with the

very special DNA that led to an incredibly successful career to be the number one athlete in your sport of the world. In our search of excellence, how important is our DNA and natural-born talent? Do we have to be born with a type of special DNA like yours or have a natural-born gift to be the best in the world at something? I think there's genetics in regards to sport that are really important. They're not everything, but you need some fundamental baseline there.

For other areas of life, I don't think so because it doesn't require physical actual movement or hand-eye coordination as much. But there are mental and cognitive differences or experiences that one must go through to create their own mechanisms of chip on the shoulder or drive or resilience and relentless approach towards business or goal setting, et cetera. There's something that happens to everybody. And sometimes some of the highest, most success storied individuals on the planet, whether in careers or wherever,

we look back on their upbringing and it was rough. It was hard. It was calloused. And that is what I think has caused them to create this immense ability to adapt and reframe those challenges in their life. So I think it's important. It's not everything. I think it's how you deal and how you play with the cards that you have been dealt is the most critical place in this game of life. So you're brand new to the sport and right out of the gate, you're killing it. And in 1995, a guy named Patrick Wendland, who was then a development coach for speed skaters at the Olympic Training Center in Lake Placid, saw you racing in the junior national team trials in Saratoga Springs. He was impressed by your strength. And when your dad saw his interest in you, he asked Patrick to admit you to the Olympic

Training Center, which was a long way from home, 2,800 miles, where you'd have to move there if you went there. Your dad said he knew what was best for you and he wanted you to go and he pushed you to go. But there were several problems. First, you were just shy of your 14th birthday and the minimum age to train there was 15. No one that young had ever been admitted, but Patrick talked with the U.S. Olympic Committee and pushed very hard asking them to let you in. The second problem was bigger. You didn't want to do anything that anybody said. You were ultimately accepted though, but unknown to Patrick, you had no interest in going there. But once again, like you had done so many times before, your dad pushed you and you went. It was June 1996, just after your 14th birthday when your dad dropped you off at the

entrance to the Seattle-Tacoma Airport. So what did you do? You took 14th birthday when your dad dropped you off at the entrance to the Seattle Tacoma Airport. So what did you do? You took your bags, watched your dad drive away, walked out of the airport, went to the first payphone you saw, called a friend and told your friend that you were no longer going to New York for the training program. Instead, you're going to hang out at friends' houses, going from house to house, week to week, until you figured this thing out. At this point, your dad's fuming. You spoke with him by phone, but you wouldn't tell him where you were. And after a week, your dad was so desperate that he called your mom's sister in Portland and begged her to come and talk sense to you, which worked. You returned home, but you still resisted going to

the training center. Once again, your dad pushed you and you did go back. And this time, your dad came with you. When you arrived in Lake Placid, your dad startled Patrick by assuring him that you were going to pull some stunt to get yourself kicked out. And he wished Patrick luck with that. You hated it there. And your first month there was a dud. You didn't talk to anybody. You didn't want anybody to help you.

You had little interest in training. And whenever your coach led a five mile run to the lake, you would drop out with a buddy and head to Pizza Hut. We're going to talk about the Olympic trials next, but before we do, can you tell us about the results of the group's body fat test two months after you got there, where you placed, what your nickname was, and how the results were a huge transformational moment for you and what you told your coach. Yeah, I was the highest fat percentage in the skinfold test on my team for all the men by a lot, not by like a few percent. I was by a lot.

That was deeply concerning to me because I was just insecure. And my nickname that carried over from my roller skating days was Chunky because I was like a chunky kid because I had this crazy voracious appetite. But more importantly, like psychologically, I knew somewhat how to eat healthy, but I just didn't do it consistently.

And so something had clicked there to where I deeply wanted to change what that felt like of feeling like I just was less than, and it felt really horrible. That was a big catalyst. That was the spark was that moment. I started actually taking the, and it felt really horrible. That was a big catalyst. That was the spark was that moment. I started actually taking the training seriously from that point forward. Fast forward to 1998 and your training for the Olympic trials. And before we get into it, I want to start with two statistics. According to recent data from the National Weather Service, the odds of being struck by lightning in your lifetime are 1 in 15,300.

According to a guy named Bill Mallon, who is the co-founder of the International Society of Olympic Historians, which I know you love and we all follow that, the odds of becoming an Olympian are roughly 1 in 500,000 or 37 times harder than to get struck by lightning. In other words, it's insanely difficult to be an Olympian. Making the Olympic team in 1998 was a huge deal for you as an athlete, but there was also a very personal element to it as well. The games were taking place in Nagano, Japan, which was a big deal to your dad because your grandmother and grandfather were living there. You were expected to win the trials, but you didn't. You came in dead last. 16th out of 16, and you didn't make the team, and you left Lake Placid shattered. You and your dad flew back to Seattle together,

but instead of going home, your dad drove you three and a half hours southwest of downtown Seattle to this cheap, rustic cabin that he had rented in an area called Copalas Beach. And when you got there, he looked you in the eyes and told you that you're going to stay there alone while you figured out the next step and path in your life. You had food, clothes, but no cell phone, no TV, and no car. And there's nobody there around you. It's December in the middle of winter, and it rains hard every single day. You'd run barefoot every day on the rocky beach and along on a nearby highway, so much so that you had a hole in your shoe and a massive blister on the bottom of one foot, but you kept running anyway. Then one day, you're running on the beach in a

thunderstorm. You stopped in your tracks. You asked, what am I doing? And you realized that if you didn't want to end up like your friends in Seattle and you had to get more serious about your life and your skating career, on the ninth day there, you called your dad and said, I'm ready. Can you tell us exactly what you were thinking at the time, what the aha moment this time was for you, and what happened the following year? And as part of this, can you tell us about your favorite quote by the American poet Douglas Malick from his poem, Good Timber? Yeah, I'll start with the, I'll finish with the Good Timber quote.

So what I was thinking when I called my father was that I was willing to take the gamble and the chance at being and giving my best at the Olympic sport again of speed skating. I had no idea what I wanted to do. I was mindlessly training when I was there, as you mentioned. The aha moment was that I needed to just put forth effort in a way that the outcome was not indicative of my happiness. Very, very hard to do because we are all so tied to that metric. But I think there's a really powerful fulfillment inside all of us that comes from when we know we've maximized and exhausted all options of leaving no stone unturned in that quest or in that chapter of our life. And so that's exactly what happened. And the American poet, Douglas Malick, Good Timber, effectively just talks about the ways that we

have become scarred, what we have gone through in our lives, the hardships, the weathered tree, all of these amazing, beautiful redwoods that are there, or you see something growing in the middle of nowhere and it's so powerful and strong because it's weathered that storm. It has reached and been forced to reach for sun where others didn't have to. Human beings are like that. And I think we sometimes look back on our traumatic experiences as these paralyzing states, which they can be for sure, but instead they are some of the most powerful tools in the world.

And I think as a part of that powerful tool is recognizing that we can use that and take that at our will if we want to. And so if you've not heard the quote, go look it up on Google. It's a powerful quote, one that I read probably at least two or three times a month to remind myself that anything

is possible if you want to continue to live this life as a gift that's been given. That's been my motto for years. Anything is possible. And the quote from Good Timber, Good Timber does not grow with ease. The stronger the wind, the stronger the trees. Yeah, I love it. Talk about the Olympics. You're 19 years old when you went to your first Olympics in 2002. This is post 9-11. And it was a special moment in US history where everybody was hungry and looking for solidarity.

And they found it in Team USA. So you're at the Olympics and to start it off, there's President Bush sitting a few rows in front of you at the opening ceremony. After the game started, you won your first gold. What were you feeling when you stepped on to that podium for the first time and the great American flag was hoisted above you? That was powerful. The entire experience was powerful. That opening ceremonies were powerful for all the reasons of being six months post 9-11, of the country coming together and the solidarity and unification of one common goal and purpose, which was to show up and be our best, regardless of result, to show that we

could persevere and we could weather the storm, the good timber quote. It also of seeing my first gold was, it just was powerful because it just felt like for the first time in my life, it felt like I had been doing something that was much larger representatively than just me. It was much less selfish than I had been taught to compete in. I want the gold medal. This is for me. I want to do it for myself and for my own dreams. And that's true. But there was this eerie, unexplainable energy that was reverberating through the arena and the atmosphere at those Salt Lake City games in 2002. It was mind-numbing. It was incredible. People wanted so badly to see Americans win and see Americans carry themselves when they lost through as if they had won.

We had yearned for that, that sense of class, that sense of sportsmanship, of respect. Because in this country, we watch the Olympic Games. Typically, if you have kids, you try to watch them with your kids. And the reason why we watch them with our kids is because we fall in love with these incredibly powerful stories of triumph and failure. And then in between the lines is how those things are explained, how they operate, all those things. If I show my kids someone who just lost and that person is real and is authentic and is powerful, I can say to my son or daughter, you see, you can work a lifetime for something and you may not get anything close to what you thought that you deserved and what you wanted. And your ability to surrender to that outcome. You may not be happy with it. And that's, oh, that's totally fine. Use that as fire for the next time or the next race or the

next whatever it is. But you will have to surrender that outcome and you will have to give respect to those that won. It's hard to do, right? But when we see that, we all see some sense of authenticity that we all want in ourself and we want to carry that to our kids. So those games were so special in so many ways. Let's talk about the importance of preparation in search of excellence. One of the main ingredients that got me to where I am today is that 99.99% of the time, I'm always the most prepared person in the room, which means that when someone prepares one hour for a meeting, I'm usually preparing for at least five hours for that same meeting. We recently had the biggest meeting we've ever had for my beaches company, Sandy, www.sandee.com, for those of you who want to go check

it out. And my team and I spent 70 hours preparing for that meeting. When a podcast host prepares 30 minutes to one hour for a podcast by reading a website or a bio, then a blog or two or watching a podcast. I'm preparing on average 22 hours for each of my podcasts. In your own search of excellence, you've talked about the hacks and the shortcuts to achieving success. And I've said that the work is always a shortcut and the lowest hanging fruit. And that preparation gives you confidence, gives you grit, reminds you that the path isn't easy, and showcases to you that overnight success, which is what a lot of young people want today, is actually peeled back by a 10 to 20-year journey.

You said that doing the work is the lowest common denominator for an advantage today. You've also said something else, something that I've been teaching and preaching for years, that the last mile is not crowded. It's the least crowded because people who want the results today aren't willing to go that extra mile. Can you talk about that last mile, the extra mile, what I'm going to call extreme preparation, the kind of preparation that only 0.00001% of people do in its role in your success. And what advice do you have to others to get them to reorient their thinking about what they believe and have been taught is normal preparation versus what is considered extreme preparation and how extreme preparation will get you to places that would not have otherwise been possible? If you want outsized results outside of the normal scope of what we

would think is successful, if you want something that's outsized, it's going to require a retooling and rethinking of how you prepare. That's the bottom line. There's no way that if I did the same training program as my teammates, who genetically sometimes were actually superior to me physically, that I could expect a different outcome of racing. I had to figure out another way. So for me, the preparation, and even today in venture, for example, it takes me way longer to understand a business or concept than some of my partners. They just get it. They've been in the game for 25 years. They've seen a thousand of these pitches. And I have to do three times the amount of work to get to the same answer. That's just the reality that I've been in.

That's what it is. I say the lowest hanging denominator or the last mile is the least crowded because it's so much easier to begin on a journey, entrepreneurship, et cetera. I know this from both experience, et cetera, than it is to execute upon that all the way through with the same intensity that when you started that business, when you started that goal until that last chapter. That last chapter is when everyone has dropped out. And that's the beautiful thing is when you stick with it, after you have knocked on 99 doors

and every single one of them never opened and they told you to go away, some reason, maybe that 100th door or that 101st door or the 2000th door, you knock on it and someone opens it up and that happens to be a life-changing catalyst, an event. So that last mile is because you are willing to do one more. You are willing to go the extra mile. You are willing to stay consistent and have that mental discipline in your life. That's really, really important. I want to switch gears and talk about mental health.

Until recently, athletes lived in an archaic world where as long as you could perform, nobody questioned if you were okay. In July 2020, HBO produced a documentary called The Weight of Gold that explored the internal struggles and mental health challenges of Olympic athletes. One of the central questions was how much Olympic athletes should suffer so people can enjoy their performances. Michael Phelps is featured prominently. He's the most decorated Olympian of all time with a total of 28 medals, 23 of them gold medals. In the documentary, he explains that once competitions end, athletes have nothing left and have no clue what to do after they have focused for years on a single event. And he

talks about how lost he was and how he suffered from deep depression when his career ended. He also estimates that 80% or more former Olympians go through some kind of post-Olympic depression. And in his case, he turned to alcohol and drugs. He was arrested twice for DUIs. At some point, he committed suicide. Most recently, there's SimoneStar and then Cleveland Cavaliers player Kevin Love wrote a personal essay for the Players' Tribune outlet titled, Everyone is Going Through Something, where he addressed his past struggles with anxiety and panic attacks and how for almost three decades, he had kept them private due to the stigma attached to mental health issues. Then you have Naomi Osaka, who I know you reach out to. Then the number one

ranked female tennis player in the world who wrote on Instagram, the truth is that I have suffered long bouts of depression since the US Open in 2018, and I've had a really hard time coping with that. We're going to talk about your awesome book, Hard Pivot, in a minute that discusses mental health and many other important issues. But right now, I want to focus exclusively on mental health for a moment. You said that regardless of your economic status or athletic status, the human mind is still the most powerful asset in the world. You're seen by other athletes and people as someone who's always happy. And you said that sharing your own self-doubts has been humanizing and important to others. Can you tell us about your four pillars to mental health? And in our search of excellence, should we be setting up

a daily regimen for our mental health in the same way that we make a regimen to eat healthy and go to the gym? Well, I think eating healthy and going to the gym is actually directly conducive and has direct benefit on your mood and how you feel and how you think. So the four pillars of, the four foundations that I feel deeply rooted in, and when one of them or two of them or three of them are off for long periods of time, I am so far away from land. I look up and I don't know where I am. You feel burnt out. You start questioning the path. You start questioning yourself. You don't have confidence.

You're irritable, short-tempered. Mood swings are crazy. You just, you feel down. You don't want to do anything. You don't want to be social. You make bad decisions. It cascades. This is a waterfall effect.

Just keeps going down. Number one is how are you sleeping? Number two is how are you eating? Number three is how are you moving? Number four is how are you thinking? Not just about yourself, but thinking in your social environments, your close peers and groups, family. How is that interaction? Are you getting enough of that? Are you getting the stimuli from meeting new people or new experiences? Are you eating well? Are you fueling your brain and your body in a way that will give you the types of nutrients

to make you feel good, to help you perform good? Are you moving your body in a way that helps create these amazing chemical releases and responses in the body that helps it adapt to stress, create better, deeper levels of sleep? All these things are tied intrinsically. How all these pillars are connected to one another. The sleep to me is a really important part is I fundamentally think it's overlooked. And I think we're paying attention

to it today, but we have overlooked sleep for so many years because of the culture that exists in the Americana capitalism system, which is just get it done under any circumstance and pain. And that will have a toll at some point. And you just don't want that. And everybody is different. I have friends of mine who sleep like four to five hours a night and they look incredibly rested. They're just built different. They can't even sleep six and a half hours. If they tried versus someone like myself, I need seven hours to eight hours. I need it. And I can operate on five to six, but I am like 50% less productive and happy than I am. I'm just a couple more hours sleep. So it's not that I'm sleeping for myself.

I'm also sleeping for everyone around me. I'm just a way better person to be around. I would always tell people, prioritize those things in your life first. And again, there's different layering and aesthetics associated with how you approach your life, whether it's through the physical performance, the mental performance, the eating and sleeping and drinking, the social environments, pharmaceutical, there's all these different mechanisms of action that make it much more complex and just our conversation. But I, for someone who doesn't require pharmaceutical medication, my pharmaceutical medication happens to be in those four pillars. And I really, really prioritize them.

And so I've noticed even like this past year that towards the end of last year, we were sprinting so hard for so long that I really started to forego a lot of those pillars of priority of the foundations of things that make me feel my best, which then makes me perform my best. And I just suffered across the board. I felt unhealthy. I looked really tired. My brain wasn't working. I had bad kind of negative self-deprecating thoughts often versus you're way more resilient, way more willing to take on challenges, accept, embrace, and lead with empathy and vulnerability while also being strong. That's the stuff you want.

I have a personal business plan that I make each year. I revise it. I look at what I accomplished, what I still need to. And I advise everyone, and for listeners and viewers, I encourage you not just to think about your goals, but to write them down. Treat them like it's work or homework, that you really have to do them and check them off.

I find the results that you get from writing them down and monitoring them and trying to achieve them are much, much greater than if you just think about them. I think a lot of us will put into the calendar, I'm going to the gym Tuesdays or Thursdays at eight. And like so many things, we often only make things a priority when they become a problem. I think mental health is one of these issues as well, where we really don't say Tuesdays and Thursdays, I'm going to do meditation or something designed to make sure my brain is healthy and that I'm mentally healthy. I think mental health, in many cases, is more important than your physical health.

If you have a problem medically, you may be able to treat it 100%. Mental health, it's much tougher to treat. The success rate is actually much lower. How do you get people to actually set a regimen on the mental health side? Should we be putting the time into our calendars? What you just said is phenomenal, but it's hard to write down sleep, nutrition, and to follow those things on a daily basis. Is there something we can do to actually put something in the calendar proactively and to get people to recognize that this is as important and more important than our mental health? Should they just be putting

something down every day or carve out time to do this every day? I create a small journal that takes me less than five minutes to write in the morning and evening. This is what has worked for me. Hopefully, this resonates with the audience, but I find that the tactile writing style is something that really helps me also look back on a later date. What are some of the things that I'm deeply grateful for in the morning that puts me in a present state of appreciation? What are three priorities of things that I need to accomplish or I want to accomplish today? These are the three things that I'm going to do today that's going to make it amazing if everything else fails. It can be very simple things. Three things or four things of positive affirmation or manifestation,

things that I desire to be, desire to become, or am striving towards, whatever that might be. Those are important to say them, believe them consistently, write them down. They can be the same thing every single day as long as you feel it. You start to become immune or jaded because you've done it so often, change the vocabulary, find another one that feels and gives you the same resonance as the original one. So like the word focus for me, I used to say it so much that it no longer meant anything. Then I changed it to concentration. That somehow changed just the way that my body responded to hearing that word, concentration. I like verbal cues to myself as trigger therapy as well. And then at the end of the day, I try to list what are the three things that was surprising and amazing and went really well today. And then the last part, introspective, this is what I write at the end of the day is, what are some

improvements? Maybe I drank too much caffeine. Maybe I snapped at someone. Maybe I wasn't myself. Maybe I wasted a lot of time. Maybe I actually fell so far off the nutrition wagon, I don't even know how I'm going back. These are moments where you're being your most authentic self. And they're not to degrade or berate or gut punch yourself. But they're just like, hey, here's some things I need to work on for tomorrow. And you do that repeatedly. And I think it's repeatable because it's easy.

It's simple. It doesn't take a lot of time. And I found that out of all the things, at least for me, everyone's a little bit different in terms of how their brain retains and use information. But if it's not short, simple, and easy for me, I won't do it. I'll do it for like two weeks and I'm done. I need something that's consistently repeatable. And that to me is shortened duration.

And so the meditation side could be, hey, I need to set aside X amount of time for meditation. I need to set an X amount of time to spend with my dog, to go for a walk, my loved one, talking with my phone down, not looking at it. And you'll notice, you'll have an urge to want to pick it up. Someone goes to the bathroom at the dinner table, right? Let's say you're going with your spouse or something or your kids and they go to the bathroom. Tell me you can't stay there without picking up your phone until they come back. And just be observant of your mind and how it's trying to hijack control because you've been conditioned to do these types of things. So these are things that you can implement on a daily basis.

You want to do these tools to remind yourself of the power you have within. And that's how I think about it. So the four pillars can be used every day. Everyone's form of exercise is different. Everyone's form of thinking and being around people is different. Everyone's form of dreaming and sleeping is different. Everyone's form of eating, although to me, I would argue a bit, the macro consumption of our nutrition is really important. And if you're eating poorly, it's going to have an impact on your brain. It's just bottom line over time, which is going to

have an impact on your body, which is then going to may have an impact on the way that you see yourself, which is then going to have an impact on your sleep. So it's like weird recursive cycle that occurs. So just start with one or two of the pillars. Don't do all of them perfect. You're seeking progress, not perfection here. Let's talk about success.

I want to break this down into two parts, the elements of success and what success means to you. Let's start with the elements of success. We've already talked about work ethic and preparation. What else does it take to be successful? I think it takes resilience, grit, the ability to pivot and adapt. Adapt is a really, really important part, right? So it's very easy to scale and grow when everything is rocking and rolling and you're getting something and signals that you're doing the right thing. When you're getting signals that you're losing or you're not doing well, that's hard. You start to question the path, start to question the overall goal. So you can imagine an Olympic

athlete wants to have success, but it's over a four-year journey. How many times and how many months and how many weeks and hours you spent questioning yourself if this training method, this training cycle, this coach, this equipment, this strategy, this food is not working, working. I mean, mind will play tricks on you. So staying to the course is really, really important while being dynamic and nimble enough to be able to adapt. So success to me is in the definition of reaching success, I think is in really, truly maximal effort in giving of yourself.

Everyone's version of that's different. Sometimes we need to be around others, not from a competitive comparative analysis perspective, but purely so we understand what's out there. If you don't know what the other competitors are doing around you, we always say like, well, you're only racing against yourself. And that is true. But I needed to see or hear what the other world competition was doing in terms of lap times so I know how far I can go from my own bar to set them. If they were always so far below when I was skating so much faster, setting your own cadence is tough. And yes, you are the governor of your own speed limit. But again, these things are not to be used as comparative tools. They're used as

analytics to show you how far you can go. And if there's no metrics to use, benchmark them against other different cohorts that maybe are operating or behaving in a similar fashion. Growth of a company, different CEO, different business, different nutrition goals. There's always something they use. Your dad imparted in you and never talked to you about making money as a primary motivator to what you're doing in life. But I mentored hundreds of students, athletes, CEOs, founders, kids right out of college. And money is often the number one motivator for what they're doing. It's not to be the best. Where does money rank to you? And where should people think about it in terms of what they want to do in the future?

And where does passion and its role in success? It's interesting. I'm one of those people. I can get passionate about things that I don't necessarily think are my own strengths. I don't have to love something, but I can be really passionate about that. I think money is important. Business is always one of the greatest catalysts for change on this planet. It also can

be incredibly addictive in a way. So I don't disregard anyone who says that the reason why they're doing it is for the money, which gives them the lifestyle and or access to their family to provide for them in a way that makes them feel secure. There's nothing wrong with that, I don't think. I just want to make sure that we are not a slave that in a way that really detracts away from our health and from overall wellness and relationships of our friends and family. It's important. And finding that balance is tough because sometimes having balance means not having extreme performance. I fully get that. There's going to be some trade-off, but as long as you

can cycle those things, again, extreme, never see your family, never see your kids, completely absent for years and years and years. That may be great when you have money and those kids have something to fall on, but now you have such an estranged relationship that rebuilding that's going to take a lot of time, energy, and resources. Life is somewhat always fair in a certain way. In that way, it was always like a push and pull. For me, money is important for sure. And I believe that capital is an incredible way to advance people's success, knowledge, help, and other things.

And I also believe that if appropriately used, financial incentives are very powerful for people to grow internally as people, as long as you're not chasing the almighty dollar for the purpose of chasing the almighty dollar. There's got to be a bigger reason there. Let's talk about your awesome book, Hard Pivot. And I want to start by explaining what a pivot is in speed skating. A pivot in speed skating is when you're skating in one direction going 35 to 45 miles per hour, and then you lean over on your right inside edge, you have to perform this pivot

on one leg, balancing on one hand around the corner in the complete opposite direction. And to perform it successfully, you have to carry that momentum and go hurling down the straightaway towards the next corner. Many times you complete it successfully. And when you don't, you crash into the path, which is quite painful, both physically and mentally, and you have to figure it out. In life, it's very similar. You're going along and you try to set up this pivot. You were 28 years old when you retired from speed skating. And at that point, skating was all you knew. And you faced a hard pivot from your previous identity as a decorated Olympian as you search for who Apollo 2.0 would be, something for which you had no idea. You felt confused, vulnerable, adrift without purpose. You had to go through a process that was incredibly challenging and filled with a great amount of self-doubt. And that takes us to your book, which is a self-help book about

your fears and how you overcame them. It's about times in our lives where we need to reinvent and adapt to overcome our fears and have the resilience and understanding about going into the unknown to be our best. Can you tell us about your five golden principles for overcoming the challenges all of us face and how we need to have resilience, creativity, and purpose in search of excellence? The five golden principles are gratitude, giving, grit, gearing up, or setting your expectations for yourself. And the last one is go, getting into action. And these principles are rooted from also the thousands of people that I've met in my life and curious around how would they got to where they are, how they live their life today, and what their goals and dreams

would be if they could look back on their life when they were 90 or 100 years old and say, I've lived an amazing life. Not a fully successful life, but an amazing well-lived life. And gratitude is the foundational start to those pillars and to those principles because of the state that it puts you in from an appreciative and being present and thankful mindset. Giving is powerful, not just to the communities and groups and others that are in need or coworkers, et cetera, but also giving yourself the best chance of having happiness, fulfillment, and success, which is removing the self-saboteur. Three is grit. That's the quote, good timber. Read the quote, read the poem over and over, and grit to me is established in that. And on the other side of that, it's just

powerful resilience that occurs. Four, of setting your expectations or gearing up. At times, when we seek a real change in our life, when we say, I'm sick and tired of being sick and tired, it's going to require some changes, both in the morning and the evening, is what I've found to be the most conducive to change. How you start your day and how you end your day. How you start your day and putting yourself in the right type of mental strategy and mindset to tackle the challenges that will come your way and the volatile environment that life gives you. The end of the day gives you time to reflect to see if you've hit those goals, et cetera. And go is no more perfectionism paralysis syndrome. You have to just go out there and test it. Preparation's

important. Do the work. It is always the shortcut. Leave no stones unturned. And then you got to go do it. And then you'll realize that maybe you needed another five hours of preparation, another 10 hours, or maybe 100 hours. Who knows what that is? But until we go test the water, we may not actually know. It's just like if you have a business presentation and you pitch the first five investors or investment banks, by the sixth one, you have learned so much that you didn't know when you thought in the very beginning, before the very first pitch, you had all the answers and it was perfect. And you realize how far it actually was.

And you would have never known that had you not gone through those experiences. And so we live and learn so much by doing. Those principles I have found to be recognizable in every great story. And hopefully they are relevant to everyone. It's easier to pivot, I think, when you're younger and you have fewer responsibilities. You may not own a home yet.

You may not be married. You may not have kids. We have a lot of listeners and viewers who are in their 30s, 40s, 50s, and even 60s. What's your advice to those who are a bit older and want to pivot? I think pouring the cup of knowledge out is really important. Reminding yourself that no one wants to climb to the top of the mountain and then go back down again.

I can relate to that and start all over when maybe perhaps your peers are 10, 15, 20 years or more younger than you. But that's life. There's something that allows you to adapt to these environments. And my advice has always been is to be and learn with the beginner's mind. Lead with that. It's okay. Your wisdom and experience is going to be the powerful tool, but there's nothing wrong with relearning. If you can keep that childlike play, your growth is infinite in potential. Awesome. I want to talk about philanthropy, which is extremely important to you. You've supported the Salvation Army, the Ronald McDonald House, the Clothes Off Our Back Foundation, which gives celebrities

a donate what they were wearing. You've worked with A Gap as part of the Project Red campaign. You've helped raise knowledge about AIDS in Africa. You're a global ambassador to the Special Olympics. You created your own foundation to discourage underage drinking and promote a healthy lifestyle. In search of excellence, how important is it to give back to others in our community? I think giving back, whether it's categorized as philanthropic, whether it's your loved ones, your family, your local community, it can be of any size and scope, but it is important. I think during the height of the pandemic in this country, we realized the silver lining was how much many of us needed help. And when we received it, the deep gratitude that existed there, not

only for the person receiving the help, but also the person giving help in whatever that was. Doesn't have to be money. Doesn't have to be food. Doesn't have to be money. It doesn't have to be food. There's nothing resource. It can be time. To me, time is everything. The time that someone's spending is tough because it's just such a finite amount, but it's a critical piece of living. And I just know the impact that it has psychologically on the human brain. I felt it myself in the way that I give. And I try to make time wherever I am in the world to do things like that. It's really important. So if you have not implemented that into your life, it's time to start researching some ways in which you can impact your local community

or maybe your family or that loved one or friend that you've not talked to for a long time and having a real, true, heart-to-heart, uninterrupted conversation of, are you okay? Can I help you? Let's do some fear-setting exercises of what are you the most scared of?

What's the worst that could happen? Someone's going through something every day, every minute of every day in all of our lives. And so the quality of our relationships is really important. And I think by giving those energies and systems and times to that person to help them process and go through those issues

or challenges, or maybe we see something they don't see is a huge part, I think, of our overall happiness. And I would want the same for myself, people to give me the same. Paul, you've been someone I've admired for a very long time. I remember watching you for so many years and rooting for you and being incredibly happy when you won all those medicals, being a proud American when you did. I remember watching profiles about you on TV when I was younger that showcased your challenges, how you overcame them to become a champion, to be the best in the world. And it's something and how your story helped inspire and motivate me to try to be the best in the world, whatever I did. You've been a phenomenal role model and inspired millions

of other people with your success, humility, and your ability to share what so many others are going through and inspire them to be the best they can be. That's the goal of my podcast, In Search of Excellence. I'm very grateful to you for your time today. Thank you very much for sharing your story with us. It was awesome. I do a lot of interviews and it's always very surprising to see someone who has spent the time and passion and energy doing the research and sometimes can tell the story in the exact same way that I've told it in the past. So just grateful. And I hope you guys enjoy. Appreciate you.

Thanks. Thanks. Bye.