Start With A Win - Transforming Fear into Power with Adam Hill

Episode Date: October 12, 2022

As CEO of a 4th generation family business, elite triathlete and author Adam Hill has led his century-old family company through economic, cultural, and leadership changes on the path to long term sustainability. After overcoming more than a decade of alcoholism and unhealthy life habits, Adam transformed his inner fear and anxiety disorder into a superpower. Today he is a highly sought after international speaker and Amazon bestselling author of Shifting Gears: From Anxiety and Addiction to a Triathlon World Championship.How can a crippling anxiety disorder actually be a superpower? Adam Hill has proven that his greatest weakness isn’t actually a weakness. Instead, he sees it as a launching pad into a life of inner healing and dynamic leadership. After years of using alcohol to cope with debilitating fear and anxiety, Adam bravely pursued recovery by asking himself how he could turn his inner enemy into his friend. By shifting his mindset, he now recognizes the value in using fear as an encouragement to lean into challenges. Constantly pushing himself out of his comfort zone, Adam is able to have hard conversations with compassion and has built a team that transcends fear of the unknown into clarity in business. He encourages leaders and entrepreneurs to accept personal struggles as gifts. This shift from judgment to acceptance leads to growth and big wins, allowing people to achieve more than they ever dreamed possible. Main TopicsCoping with the cultural norms of anxiety and overstimulation (03:38)Using anxiety as a superpower and learning to “party with the beast” (05:40)How facing fears in leadership positively impacts business (09:26)Having difficult conversations with care increases confidence in leadership. (13:30)In his book, Adam uses his story to encourage others to courageously step into their power. (17:48)  Episode Linkshttps://adamhilltri.com/Shifting Gears: From Anxiety and Addiction to a Triathlon World Championship by Adam Hill Connect with Adam Hill:https://www.youtube.com/user/TriFundracinghttps://www.facebook.com/adam.hill.39982https://www.linkedin.com/in/adamchill/Connect with Adam:https://www.startwithawin.com/https://www.facebook.com/AdamContosCEOhttps://twitter.com/AdamContosCEOhttps://www.instagram.com/adamcontosceo/Listen, rate, and subscribe!Apple PodcastsSpotifyGoogle Podcasts

Welcome to Start With A Win, where we give you the tools and lessons you need to create business and personal success. Are you ready? Let's do this. And coming to you from Brand Viva Media headquarters, it's Adam Contos. Let's start with a win. Producer Mark, we got some good energy going here. Oh, yeah. I'm feeling good. Oh, right on.

I mean, it's Monday. That's right. It's Monday in our world here today, even though you might be listening to this on Wednesday. That's right. And I live every day like it's Friday, so it doesn't matter which day it is. Awesome. I love it. Hey, what do you get when you have two Adams together? You get a great podcast. Yeah. You get a molecule. Oh, good one. Oh, bam. I don't know. This is going to be an awesome Adam interview here. That's right. Speaking of Adam, we have Adam Hill on the podcast today. Adam is the CEO of a fourth generation family

business and has led his hundred year old company through economic change, cultural change, and leadership change on the path to long-term sustainability. Adam has also been passionate about helping people overcome anxiety and fear. After overcoming more than a decade of alcoholism and unhealthy life habits, he reframed his inner fear and anxiety disorder and transformed it into a superpower, becoming an elite long-distance triathlete and qualifying for the Ironman World Championship. Today, he is a highly sought-after international speaker and the Amazon best-selling author of Shifting Gears, From Anxiety and Addiction to Triathlon World Championship.

Adam, welcome to Start With a Win. Welcome, Adam. Thanks, guys. Thanks, Adam. Thanks, Mark. It's super easy to have two Adams on this show, so thanks for being an Adam. I love it. The only other name we need to remember is Mark today. That's right. That's right. Mark, you can remember that one. It's pretty easy because, you know. Awesome. Hey, this is, I love this. You know, the story, obviously you hit some low points in your life, things of that nature. But ultimately,

you know, we're talking about leading yourself, leading others, leading a lifestyle and, and picking a path that is productive in doing so. Take us through a little bit, your, your CEO life and, and your life yourself. How did you get from where you were before to where you are now? Yeah, it's a, it's a long gap. And, you know, I wasn't, when I was in my, when I was living in my anxiety and drinking, which is how I coped with my anxiety, I coped with alcohol and that led to problems. I mean, I wasn't a leader at that time. I mean, you can't be a leader and serve that kind of God, right?

So it took a lot of healing, a lot of recovery to get to a point where I could start to empower myself and become a leader within the organization that I'm stressed out, I need a drink. How did we get to that point for crying out loud? I mean, what is your, obviously, you know, there's history and all this other stuff. And then you've got other pressures that people have. But, you know, if you met somebody and they're like, I'm stressed out, I need a drink, what would you say to them? Well, for most people, for many people, that might not be a problem. And, you know, I don't want to judge people who are drinking to ease some tension or anything like that. For me, it's a real problem. Like I take one drink and I just go down a rabbit hole of I can't stop. And that was something that developed over a decade. But when people do say that, I would invite them to self-reflect on what's bringing them to that point. Because we are in a society where we're just overstimulated by everything. Everything is in our faces, social media, news, all of this stuff. We're not evolutionarily conditioned to experience this much stimulus and to experience this much stuff. So yeah, maybe it's not necessarily needing a drink, but maybe just taking a break, putting the phone in the cabinet and walking outside and just taking a breath. And obviously anxiety is not decreasing at this point in people's world. No, absolutely not.

You look back, you go like to 2019, you're like, whoa, the world was such a better place before the pandemic or something like that. And really, it wasn't. There were a lot of people that faced horrible addictions and tons of anxiety and mental health and everything else at that point. Also, we've just continued to do this pile-on situation where we add and add and add,

and they either have an addiction that kicks in or look for escape or whatever it might be. Who knows? But we have to have, I think we have and we have to have a greater awareness of this. As business leaders, it used to be a stigma where you're like, oh my gosh, that person, you know, suffers from alcoholism. Or instead of saying suffering from alcoholism, they were labeled an alcoholic or something like that. But the reality is, you have an illness there, a disease that people are battling, and we need to recognize it and be able to peel back that wrapper and help people. So let's just kind of attack anxiety from this perspective. And it's a problem for many people, but I like your view of it. You consider it a superpower. And I think if you consider it a superpower, you charge towards it instead of

try to hide from it or cover it up with, or you develop an addiction that you assign to it or something like that. How do you explain anxiety being a superpower? Help us with that. Absolutely. Yeah. It, it, it took me a while to, to come to that realization because fear for me and fear and anxiety, they're, they're cousins. They're not, they're not the same thing. Right. Right. Anxiety is more of the unknown, but fear is more pointed towards something that is specific. But for me, when I was growing up, anxiety or my fears were just so much bigger than me. They were just so big and I was looking at them and I couldn't get a good picture of what it was, but it was always there and it was causing me pain and I just wanted to get rid of it. And so that's why I led into drinking because

drinking gave me this outlet to just say, to eliminate it right away. As soon as I took that drink, it was just like, no, I got you. Alcohol, you know, says I got you. But when I started to heal, when I got sober, I realized that that was the healing part. There's two types of psychology, right? There's the negative psychology and the positive psychology. And I hate those terms because it makes it sound bad, but I would call it just healing and empowerment.

And that was the healing stage. That's where I rose from this big monster of fear facing me to, I rose to the level of my fear. That's where I faced it. That's where I healed. That's where I learned that I will never get over this thing called anxiety. I will never, I'll never be able to suppress it or push it out. It's going to be with me. And so now what can I do to turn it into a friend, to turn it into something that helps me? And fear is there to help us. Fear actually tells us good things. It's not bad or good. It just tells us something. And it's how we listen to it that how we appreciate it. So when we can rise above our fears, that's the next step. After we rise to face it, we rise above it.

And when we rise above it, we have a new perspective on fear where we can look at the whole picture and say, you know, how can I benefit from this? What is it telling me? And should, is it telling me that I should, is it challenging me? Or is it telling me you should probably avoid this?

Because many times fear is telling us the right thing. Like, yeah, you should probably be careful or tread lightly. But a lot of times it's challenging us. It's saying, Hey, you see that thing, see how it's making you feel. Maybe you should lean into that. And that's how, you know, you can kind of change your perspective and that's how it becomes a superpower is it's challenging you to push yourself a little bit past your comfort zone. I like that. And I mean, I tell a story in my book, Start With a Win, called Party With the Beast. And the beast is that fear, doubt, and overwhelm that we all have inside of us. It comes back to, you know, you look at the Pixar movie of Monsters, Inc.

You know, it's the monster under the bed or the monster in the closet, and you can be afraid of it or you can party with it. And that's where you come with Party with the Beast. And that was a story that I was taught by an amazing man who was an incredible SWAT commander. I used to run a SWAT team. And there's a beast behind every door when you're about to make an entry as a SWAT officer. You know, there could be gunfire. There's a great deal of danger. That's, you know, actual true danger.

That's for sure. But are you going to let that stop you from doing your job and moving forward to party with the beast? So it's fascinating when you take and you overlay this with leadership, though. And this is something I want to dive into because this podcast is about being better for ourselves and being better for our businesses. And that's what we're talking about here is taking an internal challenge and overlaying that with a business opportunity here of leaders dealing with fear and anxiety. How did your anxiety and fear impact your leadership? And how did you overcome these things in leadership? Yeah, it's something that affected me tremendously when I first started out as the leader of this company or the CEO of this company, because I'm a young guy and we always tend to look at the limitations or the perceived limitations that we had.

So I was 38 when I took over the company, you know, and it's an old school company. It's a company that's got a lot of, you know, it's a chemical company. So it has a lot of that old school mentality. And so having to overcome a lot of that was difficult. Having to find my voice, find that courage, really discover my vision. It took a lot of patience. It took a lot of, you know, and it took many years. And the one thing that I didn't want to do at that beginning stage was try to force my

way into, you know, any level of respect or anything like that. I just wanted to be patient and listen and open my ears and figure out what was happening. So that was kind of the approach I took. But it certainly wasn't without fear. There was a lot of that running through my head. As I said earlier, it's something that stays with me, but I had to learn to dance with it, as my business coach would say. And it was a long process, but it eventually kind of caught my own and I became part of that team and that leadership. How did the fear and anxiety impact your business itself? I mean, for those people experiencing it, you don't understand that it is actually something you wear on your sleeve that a lot of people can see and sense.

If they don't see and sense it, they're probably in the middle of it themselves. And then they kind of feed on it, I guess you could say. But ultimately, it does have an adverse impact on how you treat your employees, how your leadership carries itself. Really true, your transparency in your organization. What happened to your business when you started to have a very good understanding of that and develop ways to harness certainty and building more certainty in the business in terms of what are our expectations? What really is our vision? How do we know that we're going in the right direction? Because when we have those measurables,

when we have that level of clarity in front of us, then the anxiety is, it may still be there, but at least you have the certainty of knowing, look, we're meeting this or we're not meeting this. This is what we have to do. So difficult conversations are simpler to have. They're easier to have in that instance. And that's really what I was afraid most of starting out was having those difficult

conversations with people, as many of us are, maybe afraid of confrontation. But finding that voice, finding that clarity made that easier. And we're still going through a lot of that process of, of trying to, you know, get up, get our true direction, but we're getting to that point. We're seeing that, that evidence. And now everyone's starting to get aligned. And when everyone gets aligned, especially on the leadership team, that's when you start to make progress and you start to really transcend the fears together and hopefully show everyone else the same thing. I want to double click on this for a second because I have a question for our listeners. So many of them are business leaders, entrepreneurs,

and if you're not, you lead yourself. So let's call you a leader for all intents and purposes here. But the question I have for you is, do you have that trouble with those difficult conversations? Because that could be a window into your heart and soul when it comes to your anxiety and fear, meaning essentially you're fighting against that clarity, that certainty that Adam's talking about here, that confidence in your leadership. And if you have that anxiety, think about that. How can we essentially party with the beast here? How can we accept that and just move forward with those? Because I can tell you one thing. Those difficult conversations are not going to be easy, but when you put them in the rear of your mirror, meaning you've had them,

they become experience, and that experience lowers that anxiety and that fear for the next time. It's interesting. Adam is an Ironman triathlete. I'm sure your first time you've ever done that was extraordinarily scary, difficult, overwhelming, things like that. You're like, oh my gosh. But you, you know, obviously you train for it. You just didn't go, oh, I think I'll go do this today. But business leaders train for this. And I don't want to ask you, Adam, how do we, how can we help our business leaders train for dealing with the fear and anxiety? Yeah, that's a, and you made a really great, you know, point there that, that, you know, when, when we're having those difficult conversations, you know, how are it, it, it kind of pushes us past that because I couldn't agree more that when we, we, we have that anxiety about these conversations because we don't know what's going to happen. We don't know what's going to happen in those difficult conversations.

The biggest fear is, oh, we're going to get punched in the face or somebody is going to throw us out or the board of directors is going to oust us from the business. But, you know, are those things really going to happen if we really think those through? Just having that conversation. And I will tell you when you have the difficult conversations, when you have them with compassion and care and you build clarity and the goal is this alignment toward building clarity, you're going to feel much better. That sense of relief that comes after having that conversation is going to be really, really good.

So yeah, that's what I would say to anybody trying to have those difficult conversations. And then, yeah, so I guess the following part, the follow-up part to that was- How do you train for that? How do you train for that? Yeah. Yeah, so I guess the following part, the follow-up part to that was, what was the follow-up to that question? How do you train for that? Yeah. Yeah, so the training is difficult because really it's through experience.

You have to push yourself beyond your comfort zone, meaning you have to experience the fear, you have to analyze the fear without judgment, and then just say, what is this fear trying to tell me? And then push beyond it. And the important part is, don't throw yourself way, way out beyond your comfort zone. Just 5%, just 5% beyond your comfort zone is enough to make it interesting, to help you grow, but not so much that you're going to overwhelm yourself. So I would train yourself by approaching those conversations, approaching those activities with compassion, care, and the goal of wanting to grow from it. Not thinking of confrontation as a bad thing. Right. So you've got people that – and this is an interesting mindset shift I want to double-click on here.

You've got people who fight that tension. I mean, tension is good. Rubberband is designed to be under tension. Spring is designed to be under tension. We're designed to grow through tension, which means like what you just said, getting out of that comfort zone, the cliche that we all hear. And a lot of people say it, they don't do it, but ultimately we have to continue to push ourselves. And I love of people say it. They don't do it. But ultimately, we have to continue to push ourselves. And I love your 5% better piece. It's fascinating. People, reflect on yourself. Think about it. But don't get defensive. The difference here is accepting and being excited about it versus being defensive about it. Because when we're defensive about it,

we fight it. When we're excited about it, we grow with it. And it's the same thing. I mean, it's the same situation we're in. Some people are like, defensive. As soon as you're defensive, you're going to start losing. As soon as you're excited, you're going to start winning. You just have to understand, either way, it's going to take that growth in the process. And frankly, defensive hurts more than excited. I'll just say that. So I mean, yeah, absolutely. But I want to dive into the book here, uh, shifting gears from anxiety to

an addiction to a triathlon world championship. Um, tell us about your journey briefly from, you know, the anxiety and addiction to where you became that champion. And how did you get there? Yeah. So, uh, I, as I mentioned, I grew up with an anxiety disorder. So, and, and when I grew up with the anxiety disorder, we didn't really talk about anxiety disorders. We didn't know what those were. We didn't talk about that. I just, I was just considered a worry ward. You know, I didn't want to, I tried to play sports and I quit sports because I was afraid of getting hit, those kinds of things. But as I grew up, as I mentioned, that anxiety started to overflow in my mind and it became so overpowering. It became panic attacks. And not knowing what it

was, I didn't want to talk to anyone about it because I felt like I was just crazy, like everyone would think I was crazy. And I knew I was crazy. And so I used alcohol to suppress it because I immediately found the first time I tried it, it pushed down that. Fast forward, the first time I saw the Ironman World Championship on television, I saw all of these seemingly normal people, you know, doing this amazing race and all through the landscape of Hawaii. It was on the NBC broadcast on a Saturday morning. They were racing through, you know, swimming 2.4 miles, biking 112, running 26.2. And I was watching these people finish with these smiles on their faces. And I was thinking to myself, man, I would love to do that.

And that, that, that moment stuck with me because it was such a powerful, like that would be so great, such a powerful draw. And then the second that that popped up the same, that fear popped up too. So it was fear and excitement, both popping up, but the fear overpowered it. And the fear just said, now you can't do that. You're not one of those people. You can never, ever do that. And so I, you know, cracked another beer, went on and feeling sorry for myself. something that I never thought was possible. I got sober. I never thought that I could get sober and manage my anxiety in such a way. And with that mindset shift, I was looking for another physical challenge now because I spiritually and mentally healed, but I was still physically in a bad place. And so I, that, that created the environment for that thought to come into my head again, that Ironman, you know, and I was, and so the fear and the excitement both popped up again in equal measure. And, you know, it,

it gave up this reflexive, like, oh crap. And I call that the old crap factor. You know, I don't call it that. I call it something else. And I don't want to say the old crap factor, you know, where it's like, you know, you get that equal measure of fear and excitement. Right. The fear didn't overpower it this time, though, because I had a shifted mindset. And so I thought I entertained it. And I said, maybe I should. And that kind of got the snowball rolling. And I never swam, you know, more than 25 yards in a pool.

I'd surfed, but I never really swam in any organized way. Never even owned a road bike, but I signed up for an Ironman to happen a year later. And that started my journey toward eventually qualifying four years later for the Ironman World Championship. Wow. Incredible. And that's what the book is about. Yeah. What a journey. I mean, I kudos to you for doing that, man. I mean, it's, that is to throw that, that the BHAG as you know, the big, hairy, audacious goal out there. Like we like to say it, you're like, I think I'm going to go do the iron man. Bam. I don't even have a bike, you know, that type of thing. Who knows if he even had running shoes and, and I mean, you know, can't swim across the pool, but good for you. It's, it goes to show you, you can do anything you put your mind to. And, uh, I'll tell you what, that is very, very inspirational. Everybody

make sure you check out Adam at Adam Hill. Try that's Adam Hill, H-I-L-L-T-R-I.com to find out more about his book, Shifting Gears. And this is a great story. Adam, you've done so much both personally and kudos to you for your recovery and battling addiction and becoming a champion as well as a great CEO. You're doing a fantastic job.

I have a question for you that I ask all of our amazing guests on the show, and that's how do you start your day with a win? I start my day every single morning with a two-hour ritual that begins with Wim Hof breathing and reading, empowerment, making sure my – and a cold shower. Those are the things that I do in the morning first thing. Yep. Awesome. Awesome. Adam Hill. Uh, by the way, I think your middle name is C something, right? Adam C. Yeah. Clifford. Clifford. All right. Adam Chill. I was just going to say that, uh, Adam was on LinkedIn at Adam Chill, which I think is really cool.

So anyhow, uh, make sure you check out Adam. Check out his book. Adam is also a keynote speaker and does a lot for the community and businesses out there. Adam, thank you for being on Start With A Win. Thank you. It was a pleasure. Hey, and thank you for listening to Start With A Win. Remember to head over to adamcontos.com,

find out more great information, what's going on, social content, and great downloads to help you become a better leader. And until next time, remember, start with a win. Bye.