Start With A Win - Habits for High Performance and Success with Coach Dana Cavalea

Episode Date: August 5, 2020

In this episode of Start With A Win, high-performance coach, Dana Cavalea, talks with Adam about the habits, routines, and planning that set people up to reach their goals and optimize their potential. Dana was working as a trainer for the University of South Florida football team when the New York Yankees came to Tampa for spring training. One day he was watching the Yankees play as a spectator, and the next, his boss at USF asked him if he was interested in a trainer job for the Yankees. Before long, he packed up and moved to New York, where he had a front-row seat to the lives of professional athletes.Over the years, he has coached dozens of professional athletes by helping them set up the right habits and routines to get them the results they desired. He says everyone should come up with the 3-5 non-negotiable daily habits that will lead them to greatness and take a hard look at the bad habits in their lives and take the necessary steps to eliminate them. One of the biggest indicators of your performance and effectiveness is how you spend your time. Ask yourself what you are trying to achieve and what is stopping you from getting there.Establishing and maintaining healthy routines is reliant on proper planning. Dana says if you own your schedule, you will own your life and your results. He recommends that you split up your day into blocks, starting with self-care and exercise, working for a few hours, blocking out time for lunch, working for a few more hours, taking a snack break, working for a few more hours, and then having a hard stop for dinner and family time. He also talks about focusing on your income-producing activities (IPAs) versus your energy-draining activities (EDAs), particularly aiming to get one big thing done per day. Taking charge of your schedule is a process, and you will find that success and failure travel together. The most accomplished people in the world would tell you that they got where they are because of their experiences with failure and overcoming adversity.Connect with Coach Dana:https://danacavalea.com/https://www.amazon.com/Habits-Champion-Dana-Cavalea/dp/1641840382 https://twitter.com/danacavaleahttps://www.instagram.com/therealcoachdhttps://linkedin.com/in/danacavalea Connect with Adam:https://www.startwithawin.com/ https://www.facebook.com/REMAXAdamContoshttps://twitter.com/REMAXAdamContos https://www.instagram.com/REMAXadamcontos/ Leave us a voicemail:888-581-4430

Every day is filled with choices. You're here because you're choosing to start with a win. Get ready to be inspired, learn something new, and connect with the win nation. And coming to you from Start With A Win Studios, Adam Conto, CEO of Remax, here on Start With A Win. Good morning, producer Mark. How you doing, buddy? Good morning, good afternoon, or good night, depending on when you're listening to this podcast. There you go. You should be listening to it three times per day. That's right. It's only 20 minutes, so breakfast, lunch, and dinner. There you go. You got a little catching up to do if you haven't been on here for a little while.

We're coming up on episode 100 here pretty soon. I know. I'm super stoked. We've got a super secret guest coming on who will be exciting to have on the show and it'll be a fun celebration. Oh, dang. Okay. Well, I'm super stoked about today's guest because you know how I feel about performance coaches and just habits of champions. You know how I feel about that, right, Mark? Oh, yeah. You feel very strongly about it. All right. Well, today we have Coach Dana Cavalia, who is the former strength and conditioning and performance coach for the New York Yankees, led the team in the world championship in 2009. Coach Dana, glad to have you on the show. Hey, thanks for having me, Adam. Appreciate it.

You have trained some amazing greats in sports like A-Rod, Derek Jeter, Mariano Rivera. How do you like sync with these guys? I mean, this is really cool to have you on the show because you're kind of the guy who gets in high performers' heads and gets a little more out of them, right? Isn't that what you do? I call it wrestling the alligators. Some of these guys, they're so tough mentally, physically, but there's always another gear. And it's my job to help them find that gear and activate it within them. Because, listen, high performers are like everybody else.

There's days when they just feel like the wheels are spinning. They're still pressing the gas, but the wheels are spinning. They're still pressing the gas, but the wheels are spinning and they're not going where they want to go. So that's where, you know, being a high performance coach comes in. We give them that kick in the butt, mentally, sometimes physically to get them going and moving in the right direction. Man, I love that. And you wrote a book called Habits of a Champion. And I love the, the catch line to this. Nobody becomes a champion by accident. Tell me about, how did you come up with that particular title?

Well, you're going to laugh. The original title was going to be Becoming a Champion. And I was at a Yankee game, actually, a couple of years ago with another author, John Gordon. And we were sitting and talking. And I said, hey, John, what do you think of my title, Becoming a Champion? He goes, I don't like it. I said, all right. He goes, what if you go with Hab title becoming a champion? He goes, I don't like it. I said, all right. He goes, what if you go with habits of a champion? And then we started talking about, you know,

how champions become champions. And we decided that it was nobody becomes a champion by accident. It's not, you can't be a default champion. You don't just wake up one day and you've had crappy results your whole life and say, okay, today's the day, you know, July 16th, that's my day when maybe the champion dust falls on me and I become a champion. It is definitely a planned sequenced event to take yourself from mediocre average to becoming a high performer. I love that. I love, I'm looking around my desk here. I don't see my champion dust anywhere. Where can you get some of that? Yeah, I don't see my champion dust anywhere. Where can you get some of that? Yeah, I don't know.

I've been looking for it for a lot of years, man. And I got to tell you, the wake that most champions leave behind them, it's often one that is filled with everything from excitement to heartache and frustration. And there's a lot of walls that may have broken sheetrock. Just frustration, like I said, takes them over. So whenever I see somebody that's made it, whether it's in sports or business, I always tip my cap because they've probably been competing for a lot of years. And although, you know, they may look pretty, you know, because they've made it,

what they've gone through to make it is definitely not, not pretty. All right. Let's talk about that a little bit. And, and first of all, before, well, before we get into that, I have a question for you. How do you become a performance coach for a professional sports team? That sounds like one of the coolest darn jobs ever. You put a lot of pressure on yourself as a young guy. No. So anyway, I grew up in New York. I was always a big Yankee fan. I was a baseball player myself. And I decided to go to college at the University of South Florida down in Tampa, leave the Big Apple for the land of palm trees and beaches. And I started, I was pursuing a degree

in sports medicine. And I started as an intern working with the football team at USF training these football players. I was always a baseball guy. And it's a really interesting story because the Yankees happen to have spring training in Tampa. They come down every February. And one February day, I drove my beat up Mazda 929 up to the stadium. I parked a mile and a half away

because I couldn't afford to park any closer. And like every other fan, I have a flip phone. I pop that sucker open and I'm taking pictures of Jeter and Posada and Rivera and all these guys through a chain link fence, you know, that little square. And I'm sending them home to my family in New York. And literally later that day, I head back to my internship at USF working with the football team and the head coach calls me in his office and says, hey, can I talk to you?

And that's never a good thing when someone says, hey, can I talk to you? Especially with the tone he used, but it was actually a great opportunity. He was about to present to me and he said, listen, I just got a call from the coach with the Yanks. And he's looking for a guy to hand out towels, hand out water and watch the weight room and training facility while he's out on the field. Would you have interest in that? And I said, absolutely. And the next day he said, you start tomorrow. So I drove back to the stadium the next day. This time I parked right up front because I had my own spot and walk into the main office. They say, are you Dana Cavalier? I said, yep. They walked me into the clubhouse, throw me in Yankee gear, put a credential around my neck that says C for clubhouse,

F for field access. And the next thing you know, I'm on that field. I was taking pictures of a day earlier and I'm on the other side of the fence. And literally in a 24 hour period, my life changed. I was 19 years old. So I had to make a big choice. Do I want to embrace the opportunity that I have? Or do I want to be like some of my derelict friends that want to go just chill in bars and hang out every night? And I made the right choice, I think. That's awesome. And you basically, you look at your book and there are some very key aspects to building high performance out of these super achievers. And by the way, these super achievers are, they're people. They didn't get dropped on this planet from some alien spacecraft and said, you're now a high performer. They worked to get there. And one of the things you, you really talk about is, is a huge focus of mine and something that I truly believe in and that's habits, habits. Can you break that, break that down a little bit for us? What does that mean to you? And what does that mean to

these, these super achievers? Yeah. So that's funny I was talking to kevin eucalyptus last week who's with the red socks and he played for us a little bit And he's like literally my day is nothing but a series of habits and routines I do the same thing every single day. It makes me feel calm It makes me feel comfortable within myself And I realize that if I have the right habits and the right routines over time I will achieve the outcomes I desire Now that's the key is you got to be doing the right things. So the habits for me, those are the daily action steps, the daily activities that you are participating in every single day that will lead you towards that big goal,

whether it's selling X amount of houses for your industry, whatever it may be, we must do the same things every single day, provided they work to get us to where we want to go. And I think too many people wake up every day and saying, you know what, I'm going to try to hit a home run today. And for me, I look at it like I'm just trying to hit a single every day and high performers, you got to determine what your single is and your habits and your routines are what gets you there. So I have a line. I say, what's your big three? What's your big five? For some people, it's three things they need to do every day to be great. For some people, it's five things they need to do every day to be great. But what is it for you? And when you execute on those things, those are the things, the habits, the action steps that will bring you

closer to your physical goal, your mental goal, your professional goal. And that's the way I look at it. People have habits. Smoking's a habit, right? Or eating junk food's a habit or whatever it is too. Procrastinating's a habit. There you go. People build these habits that create tailwinds. They're like, all right, this is going to make me successful. But they don't get rid of these habits that create tailwinds. They're like, all right, this is going to make me successful. But they don't get rid of these habits that are headwinds. How do you find the ability with people for them to be honest with themselves and get into their head and say, look, this is great.

You're doing these three or five things, but this one, two, or three other things that are just crushing those three to five. How do you deal with that emotional resistance? Yeah. Well, your first thing is you got to be real with yourself and you have to look at every activity. See, there's a couple of things that I do with people when I coach them. Number one, we got a time map. Where are you spending your time? What are you doing? And you'll see that most people that are low performers, they don't utilize time very well. There's no clear start and there's no clear ending to their activities. There's no clear start, no clear ending to their overall day. And that's a big problem.

And I always say, with every one of your activities, you got to ask yourself, what's my ROT? What's my return on time? Is it positive or is it negative? And we evaluated, hey, if I'm going to put the time in, is it moving the chains closer to the touchdown? Is it getting me closer to what I set my vision, my mission, and my goal to be? And if the answer is no, you need to cut that habit. And here's the crazy part.

You may have habits that are really good, but they're good for you. That doesn't mean they're good for me. So when I coach people, coaching is an individual process. You got to meet people where they are and help them to understand their time utilization strategy and what they're doing with the time that they have. Very simple, actually.

That is incredibly amazing. Because everybody tries to put these habits together where they're like, okay, here's a good habit. Go do it. Go drink two gallons of water a day, whatever it might be. And some people are going, how do I fit that in my day? I drive for a living. I have to stop every 10 minutes and go to the bathroom, whatever it might be. They try to build these habits into their day and they're unable to do those. And it just crushes their ability to go build more habits. How do we get this momentum going of good habits? Is there a process you go through where you start small and work your way up? Or do you just throw them all out there and go after it?

What I do is I ask people, number one, what is it that you are trying to achieve? And in your mind, what is it that is stopping you at achieve? And in your mind, what is it that is stopping you at this current juncture, right? And then when we get the answer to those questions, we start to understand where they're spending their time. We could sort of find the leaks, not just in their professional achievements and what they're trying to achieve, but we could find the leaks in their overall life. And here's the thing, not everybody's meant to be a champion. I always say that. Not everybody's meant to be successful because they've made the decision day in and day out that they don't want to be, right? So, I just look at people when I work

with them, it's about really breaking down and understanding who they are. And what I always say to folks is this, don't fall for the absolutes, right? Reading 10 minutes a day, reading an hour a day, reading 56 books a year. If you're not a reader, that's a bad recommendation for you because you're not going to do it. If you don't like kale, you're not eating kale. When I put dietary programs together for people, I got to put foods on there that you like, right? Or else I'm giving you a poor prescription. That's the problem I find today

is that a lot of people are looking at what everybody else is doing and they start doing things that they know that they're going to fail at because they don't like that. So how do we build things that you like, right? Some people are good at video. Some people are good at audio. Some people are good at cold calling. Some people are better at writing. So you build a success strategy for somebody based on what they're good at. I love that. And for the record, no kale in my household. It doesn't work. Yeah, me neither. I don't like it. I just don't like it. It's gross. And my wife trains constantly. In fact, we're right in the middle of a very deep habit process

for leaning out lately. So it's, it's been fascinating, but her big thing is, you know, what's good on kale. Oh, coconut oil, because it allows it to slide right off the pan into the trash can. So, um, it's, it's interesting how you look at these high performers and what little incremental things go on in their lives to, because climbing Mount Everest is one step at a time, right? You mentioned it. It's not like one giant habit. You go, oh, poof, there, I'm successful. It doesn't work that way. But it seems like you do a lot of planning ahead of time. And that's something that you talk about is planning. Can you get into the mind of why is planning important for creating success? Ready? I'm going to give you a power statement.

Own your schedule. Own your life. Own your schedule. I like that. Own your results. So think about it. If you just allow time to tick and you're an unplanned individual, it's really difficult to go where it is that you want to go in a calculated fashion.

So you'll never have time to work out. You'll never have time to do things if you don't plan them out. So I look at it like when I get up, I have my AM routine. I have, you know, what I call my morning block. So from the time I get up till the time I work, that space is my block. What am I doing with that space? Okay. In that space for me, you know, I have to get my workout in. I have to make sure I eat. I write a daily blog. Those are my big three things that I have to get in, in that first block. Then it's like I shower and now I start to approach my next block, which is my first, what I call work block. Now what happens in that block? Right. And they take that block till lunch. And then I give myself a lunch.

And then I start my afternoon block, number one. And then I have like a snack around three o'clock or whatever. And then I have my last block, which takes me till I'm done working for the day. And then I turn it over and I got my last block, which is when I'm home. And I know everybody's home now, you know, but I'm home and I get to chill. And all that's behind me. And I look and I'm like, wow, I got a lot done today. And if you just get one thing done a day, let's say one big thing that

you have on your list at Power Play, that big single for the day, that's five a week. Over the course of the month, you're getting some pretty big objectives, John. So I keep going back to the plan. It has to be simple. And people will say, well, I'm not a John. So I keep going back to the plan. It has to be simple. And people will say, well, I'm not a planner. And I can't tell you how many athletes I've worked with that say, I don't like a plan. I don't like structure. But when you go into a Major League Baseball team and organization, you know what's on

the board right when you open the door from the parking lot. It is a master schedule that says, hey, three o'clock, you're here. 335, you're here. 415, you're here. 530, you're here. And National Anthem, it's 707, first pitch, 710. It is itemized. And where every single one of these guys struggle when they're done, they don't know what to do with time. They're freaked out. There's no structure. Where do you go from there then? Let's say, Coach Danny, you're a professional athlete leaving being a professional athlete and going into the corporate world. Is that the first place you tell people to start is focus on your schedule? Yeah, schedule design. Because if you design your schedule correctly,

you're going to achieve your objectives, right? And at the same time, you're going to have control over time, over your time. Again, I coach people for a living. I see people float. And I also see a lot of distracted individuals. And I see a lot of folks that are focused on not what I call your IPAs, and I'm not talking about beer, but your income producing activities. They're more focused on their EDAs, which I call your energy draining activities. And social media is a drainer. If you're using it outside of the purpose in which, unless it aligns with, again, moving your needle forward, it shouldn't be in those blocks. It has to have its own time. So people are just wasting time everywhere and they're losing energy and energy wins. I love that. IPAs and EDAs, income producing activities and EDA energy draining activities. It's simple. You work out

every day, that's an income producing activity, right? That's an energy producing activity. So that's great. But what are the things? And again, they're different for every person. We each have our little things, right? When we don't want to get that workout in today, we know that we have our own little things that we do that are probably not too good for us. Okay. I got one for you. Yeah. I run a company, actually four companies, and I'm into being a super achiever, and I've got my schedule. I get up at 4.30 every day. I hit the gym exactly the same time. I've got my blocks like you talk about. I'm curious about, you talk about the mindset behind top CEOs and how they work less and achieve more. Give me perspective on that,

because I'm going to take something away from this that is going to make my company better and make me better, I'm sure. So what do you think about that? How can CEOs do better, achieve more, work less? I think the first thing is you have to have a clear start and a clear stop to your day. It's that floating time where you're hanging out at night and you flip the phone open, let me do more. And it's more, I look at people much like an electronic. If you're on all the time, eventually you burn out and burnout is a big thing. You know, maybe, you know, this COVID thing and working from home has helped a lot of people with burnout, but I don't think so. I believe that we're just constantly draining our own batteries. And, you know, the typical CEO, there's a level of obsessiveness that they have. I work with type A, high horsepower, overachieving renegades, but I have to also pull them back.

And it's not saying don't do anything. It's just refocusing them on some other things. I can't tell you how many guys I'm dealing with now that I'm telling them to take a couple days off over the summer, and they're just so caught in the loop of the routine. So habits and routines could also become toxic because you can't get out of it. And when you don't do it, you feel like a lost soul. So clear start, clear stop. And I also believe in, I'm really big on the wraparound, a Friday and a Monday off and hit it hard that Tuesday through Thursday. You got to build those wraparounds in. If you really think about what we're talking about, this whole conversation so far,

it's time and schedule management, which will help you manage yourself. So I look at it the other way. Everybody's trying to manage themselves. I'm saying here, here's a safety for you. Manage your schedule and manage your time. And in turn, you will manage yourself. It's like trying to make money. I want to make money. That's probably not the first thing you should lead with, lead with your process, which makes you money over and over and over and over again. The wheel keeps creating the money for you. Man, there's a lot of gold in this interview. If this interview does not make a lot of people a lot more money, I don't know what will, but they got to do it, right? I mean, that's the interesting part. I'm going to hit your audience with this because I believe you're in one of two states at all times. You're either in contemplation and strategy or you're in action. And action either leads to a

positive result or a negative result. And oftentimes if you're over-strategizing and you're over-contemplating and you get a negative result, most people revert back to strategy and contemplating again, where we got to keep people in action mode. And that's what I always say to people. Action is at the center of the bullseye. Focus on action. Even if the action is incorrect, if you keep taking action and weighing out, did I get a positive result or a negative result? You will get yourself moving more towards positive. If you're constantly evaluating what you have going on, I do this as a positive or negative, it's negative. Let me get back to action and let it take me to positive. And that's the way I look

at it. It's just, you got too many people drawing charts, circles, bubble charts, whiteboards. It's everywhere. Meeting, talking about things they talked about already. And the problem is they need a kick in the butt to just get going. I love it. Get out and do it, right? Yeah. Have fun making the mistakes. That's what I say. Because I was talking to Mariano Rivera a couple of weeks ago and he told me this. Every time you speak on an interview, share this this for me let people know that success and failure travel together and you can't have one without the other and don't look at it like you're avoiding failure because that'll put you in a defensive posture failure is a part of success so you're always playing offense this is awesome I'm taking a few notes here.

I'm going to have to go back. The producer Mark's going to send me this recording and I'll have this on the Stairmaster tomorrow morning probably. I love it. I love it. So Coach Dana, there's a ton of great information in here. And I know our listeners would love to find out more about you. Where can they find you on social media? Yeah. Well, my website is danacavalier.com. I do more about you. Where can they find you on social media? Yeah.

Well, my website is danacavalier.com. I do a daily blog. You can check that out. Instagram, TheRealCoachD, Twitter, Dana Cavalier. I'm on LinkedIn too. So say hi. And my book's on Amazon, Habits of a Champion. And everybody, I encourage you to check out that book.

You know, I am a fan of books that make an impact on your life. And this certainly is one of those. So please, please check it out. Coach Dana, big question for you here. And I know you're going to knock this one out of the park to use a term from your world. We ask this question of everybody on the show. I look forward to hearing your answer. What do you do to start with a win? Well, for those of you that are watching this, if it's on video, you'll see me wiping my brow. I say I'm coming in hot right now. So my morning, I train in the morning. I have, again, a clear start and a clear stop. I do a 45

minute constant circuit bootcamp sports specific. And I beat the hell out of myself in the morning with that because I'm training for confidence and I'm training for self-belief and physicality comes along for the ride. But when I train, nobody trains and looks in the mirror and feels worse about themselves. Right? So I train because I want to compete every day. I want to go up against the best in the world at what I do. And I want to make sure that I'm at the top of there because I want to compete every day. I want to go up against the best in the world at what I do. And I want to make sure that I'm at the top of there. I want to be able to have the energy, the endurance to compete. Because if I have more energy and endurance than you, even if you're smarter than me,

I got a real good chance of beating you. You know, listen, I come from sports. I bring sports and infuse it into business. It's a competitive event. Don't be afraid to play to win. So I train to win every day. I Don't be afraid to play to win. So I train to win every day. I love that. Train to win every day. Coach Dana, thank you so much for being on the show. We appreciate all you do. I am fired up, man. And I already got my workout in today,

but I'm ready to hit this business day hard. So thanks for being on the show today, buddy. Good to see you. Hey, thank you so much for listening to Start With A Win. If you'd like to ask Adam a question or potentially be on our next episode, give us a call and leave us a message at 888-581-4430. Don't forget to go into iTunes and subscribe, write a review, and rate the show. For more great content, head over to StartWithAWin.com, follow Adam on Instagram, Facebook, and Twitter. And remember, start with a win.