The Derivative - Expect the Expected and Control the Controllable with Russ Rausch of Vision Pursue

Episode Date: August 20, 2020

We’re leaving the fire of hedge funds and jumping headfirst into the frying pan of……performance mindset? Yep, from pro athletes to pro traders, everyone needs a performance mindset, and  today’s guest founded his firm to help get those who need to perform, ready to perform. Russ Rausch (former Trading Technologies/Emil Van Essen exec) refocused his passion from the trading arena into training automatic thought and emotional patterns to improve; performance, resilience, and engagement to anyone from the Atlanta Falcons to Chicago prop firms. In today’s broadcast we’re digging in with Russ about Kansas life, how hedge funds influenced Vision Pursue, changing your thought pattern, working with big names from finance to the NFL, Balboa Island, highs and lows of the hedge fund business, expecting the expected, “coming across” neuroscience, background of Vision Pursue, controlling their controllable, the life experience test, paddle boarding, separate – embrace – evaluate, fish tanks, and how Vision Pursue can help you perform better. Chapters: 00:00-1:20 = Intro 01:21-14:44 = Background 14:45-30:59 = Transitioning & the Development of Vision Pursue 31:00-49:06 = Clientele & The Three Pillars 49:06-1:03:30 = The Takeaways from VP Training 1:03:31-1:08:32 = Favorites Follow along with Russ on LinkedIn and with Vision Pursue on Twitter, LinkedIn, and Facebook. Or – book Russ for your next keynote speaker or town hall here. And last but not least, don't forget to subscribe to The Derivative, and follow us on Twitter, or LinkedIn, and Facebook, and sign-up for our blog digest. Disclaimer: This podcast is provided for informational purposes only and should not be relied upon as legal, business, or tax advice. All opinions expressed by podcast participants are solely their own opinions and do not necessarily reflect the opinions of RCM Alternatives, their affiliates, or companies featured. Due to industry regulations, participants on this podcast are instructed not to make specific trade recommendations, nor reference past or potential profits. And listeners are reminded that managed futures, commodity trading, and other alternative investments are complex and carry a risk of substantial losses. As such, they are not suitable for all investors. For more information, visit www.rcmalternatives.com/disclaimer

Thanks for listening to The Derivative. This podcast is provided for informational purposes only and should not be relied upon as legal, business, investment, or tax advice. All opinions expressed by podcast participants are solely their own opinions and do not necessarily reflect the opinions of RCM Alternatives, their affiliates, or companies featured. Due to industry regulations, participants on this podcast are instructed not to make specific trade recommendations nor reference past or potential profits, and listeners are reminded that managed futures, commodity trading, and other alternative investments are complex and carry a risk

of substantial losses. As such, they are not suitable for all investors. Welcome to The Derivative by RCM Alternatives, where we dive into what makes alternative investments go, analyze the strategies of unique hedge fund managers, and chat with interesting guests from across the investment world. If I actually want to get better, I have to know that I have weaknesses and blind spots. I have to be open to them. I have to not only not be defensive when people come, I might feel defensive, everybody does, but I have to rise above that and be able to take the criticism and the feedback. Otherwise, how am I going to

improve? And then the other thing that happens once I'm open to your feedback, well, then you become open to my feedback. Okay, welcome back to another episode of The Derivative. I'm your host, Jeff Malek. And it's not often you come across a person who's been on the technology side of the investment space, the hedge fund side, and now has turned to the mental side with a firm doing performance mindset training. Mindset training, excuse me. But then again, most people aren't Russ Rausch.

We're talking today with Russ, founder and CEO of Vision Pursue, a company that provides training to help companies and sports teams create a performance mindset. Welcome, Russ. Hey, Jeff. Thanks for having me. No worries. Thanks for being on. So I'm hoping we'll cover today your transition from some of the top trading companies in the industry, well-known names in Chicago, for sure, to founding this company and kind of getting out of the rat race that we're still stuck in so congrats on that um and all the lessons learned along the way yeah great well you're just training one rat race for another that's all but thank you for that uh so we've known each other quite a while um from back at your days at TT and I was telling someone the

other day of that great Batman party we had up at I can't even name remember what you remember the name of that building well now it's called the Wyndham oh yeah that's what it used to be called but yeah the Wyndham Hotel and we had you were were head of marketing at TT or something, and it was one of those early Batman movies with Christian Bale in the penthouse. They filmed his bachelor pad, and then shortly after that, we had the party in there. So that was a lot of fun. And so you're in Chicago now? Where are you living these days? Yeah, still in Chicago. I live in the Barrington area. I've been here for a long time, since 2005. Okay. I grew up, actually, my dad lived on Honey Lake

for a while, near Biltmore over there. Okay, yeah. On Signal Hill Road. Is that close to you? Not too far away. We're on the southwest side, Barrington Hills area. What's the COVID like out there? People being strict about it or not so much? It's evolved. You know, what I noticed, I have two high school age kids. And what I've noticed is everybody's being pretty strict. And about three or four weeks ago, I noticed it loosened up a little bit and people are younger kids are getting together. That's what I've noticed. But for a long time, you know, we're really holding the line out here, but it feels like a little bit has changed recently. Yeah, I can't imagine have been a high schooler with this situation. I would have been breaking through barriers left and right.

So, but you're originally from Wichita, right? Yeah, near Wichita, Kansas, small rural farming community about 20 miles outside of Wichita. The closest neighbor was like a half mile away. And then are you a Shockers fan? I am, yeah. When I was growing up, it was the heyday. So that's when Xavier McDaniel, Antoine Carr, and Cliff Levingston were all on the same team, believe it or not. Really?

So that was even before they were like the mid-major powerhouse they are now? That's right. So that was kind of – they had a lull in between where they're at now and when they were there but i think they went all the way to the elite eight uh one year when i was either in high school or college nice i didn't know um and then so wait you grew up where did you go to college again i went to kansas state in manhattan the wildcat wildcat so bill Bill Snyder was there during that time. They were, was he probably in the beginning? You're not that old. I am that old.

He came in 91 and I graduated in 87. Oh, was it 91? I felt like he was there from like 78 or something. You know what? It may have been 89, but I definitely missed him. Although I've worked with K-State and with Coach Snyder since then through Vision Pursue. So I've gotten to know him and got connected. But when I was going to school, he was definitely not there. All right. And so did you pick up paddleboarding back in Kansas or that's been a more recent thing? Yeah, that's been recent. Really about a year ago, I really got into paddleboarding. I've been watching it for a while. And on vacation, I would do it. But last summer, I went a ton out on the river, you know, four or five times a little disgusting and makes sure you don't fall. But it was fun. And so let's get into a little of your background. So when we first met, we said you were at TT. What were you doing there? Or tell us the whole background.

Yeah. So real briefly, I started out in accounting for one of the big firms, EY. Then I was self-employed for about six or seven years. And maybe it wasn't that long, four or five. And then I got an opportunity. I got called as a consultant to go work for a software company to help them out to be their temporary CFO. I happened to be trading technologies in 1998. And there were about 20 people total.

So I came and I met Gary Kemp, the founder. I really hit it off with him. And he asked me to be his full time CFO. So I joined the firm pretty rapidly. And that's how I got to Chicago in 98 and into the industry and into TT. Nice. And then that went through how long? That was were pretty good run yeah i left july 2011 so okay quite a few years yeah so and you saw him kind of bow out and the rest the new we had guy scott on a podcast a couple weeks ago a month or so ago telling us about the history of tt but you really saw that whole growth in electronic trading and everything yeah i lived through all of it. So I remember when we were courting Harris Brumfield, you know, the current by far primary owner, he was a customer and he came on and then saw that transition and really saw us go from, you know, 20 some people to 650.

And then, you know, go through a lot of, a lot of gyrations and different things in the years I was there. So yeah, it was really a great experience, really a cool company. And I look back at it, you know, when you're in, when you're in something like that, I don't think you ever fully appreciate it. But really great, outstanding, hardworking, committed people. I learned a lot from Gary Kamp. I learned a lot from Harris Brumfield. Tim Giannopoulos is another person. Just a lot of people really had an impact on me. And that whole experience was an amazing experience. And then you got to meet a bunch of people like me and a lot of people much more exciting than me of hedge fund billionaires and that kind of ilk, right? Yeah. So when I started as a CFO, then I was global head of support. And then they moved me over to head

up this new area they wanted to get some traction in was the buy side sales. So most of our sales was directly to banks and FCMs who are then extending our product out to the hedge funds. And, you know, TT just made the decision, hey, let's get some direct interaction in the hedge fund space. So they asked me to do that. So I had a team, a great team of people that I worked with. And our whole mission was to to make sure the buy side knew who we were and what we did and develop relationships there. And that's how I got to know you and and many others. So that was a real cool part of my tenure at TT for sure. And it seemed like the model was find attractive men and women and put them in a same room as some hedge fund honchos and see what happens. Well, but maybe that was half of the formula. But yeah, it was really, you know, what we saw was when you went to these conferences, people would spend a lot of money

doing hosting things. But what we thought would be the best for everybody was trying to put allocators in touch with managers and facilitate that through an environment that would be fun and interesting that people would want to go to. And so that's how we spent our marketing dollars. And that's how we got to know people and people got to know about what trading technologies was. So then 2011, one of those hedge funds came calling. I can't remember. Was there a transition there? It was right out of there into your next venture. Yeah. So I went straight to work for Emil Van Essen as the chief operating officer in July of 2011. And I would say for about a year to middle of 2010, I started to be attracted to the buy side. And once you develop a network of allocators, you become sort of attracted to them, attractive to them. And so I really wanted to go to the buy

side. It felt like it was time to leave TT, even though TT had been great to me and it was a great place. I wanted to do something different. I wanted to go to the buy side. And so I ended up talking to a few firms, but I ended up going with Emil in Chicago. Yeah, which we know well as well. And he's an interesting guy to say the least. We've had him on one quick podcast talking negative oil,

but we haven't done the full pod with him, which we'll do somewhere down the road. And so they were going through some ups and downs during that whole period, performance, new programs. So you saw the full gamut of all that, right? Yeah, when I joined Emil, he was on a real high. And by the way, he's just a really, a remarkable human being, just really smart, but also just a great person. It was a real privilege working for him and I learned a lot from him, but really a good person. But yeah, when I joined, he was really on a roll and he continued to be on a roll for a year or so.

But then like a lot of the industry, you know, it got tough. It's, it's been tough. I'm not as in touch with it now now what's going on in the ct industry but like everybody else it was a tough period and i was there for all of that and what was cool about emil is watching him really be the same person and treat people the same way regardless of kind of what was going on externally which is a great quality in my opinion and in in terms of, you said you haven't followed along. I tell, which I've said before here, but I tell my 11 year old son that we've been in drawdown his whole life. So that's how good it's been in the management space. Funny, but true.

But at the same time, there's been, there's been winners, there's been standouts, but on average it's been middling at best. So what were some of the highlights and lowlights inside the hedge fund space that you found once you switched over to that side of the biz? Well, again, it was interesting and exciting to be in that part of the industry instead of on the vendor side for a change to do something different.

It was exciting to raise capital and get and go on the trips where you'd meet investors and around the world and learn how to be able to talk about an investment strategy, learn more about risk management and investor relations and also getting a organization investable to make it toward the back office and everything that had to happen to institutionalize it. You know, that was a lot of work and a lot of effort. That was all interesting part of the job. So and again, getting to work with Emil and learn from him. Those are all the highs. I mean, the lows is it's just hard. It's a hard business, especially going through the period that we've been talking about. So it's been a difficult period to raise money and for returns and so that that's the hard part but you know like we talked about earlier any industry any

job you get into there's there's the hard parts but mostly it was good right but would you say it's like the ultimate performance business right like either perform or you're out yeah I think I think so. And in the work I do in pro sports, it's very, now that I do it, it's very analogous to that. Like it's totally transparent. Everybody can see, and it's not tolerated if you can't perform over time and the competition's immense. So I think there are a lot of parallels there. And I think doing the work in that industry prepared me for some of the work I do now in sports. Definitely.

I joke around that we should have been in private equity instead, where you could mark to your own marks. The investors are locked up for years. Takes away a lot of that, like, day to day. Like, right in the managed futures, people see their performance every day. You're getting calls every day. Why did you put on those crude contracts? Why did this happen? Why was I down 1.2% versus 1.45%? Like there's so many other asset classes that just kind of shove that out of the side, give you a quarterly statement, tell you to have a nice day.

Yeah, it's very true. And when you talk about that, it does bring back memories of the emotional roller coaster of being there for sure. And having that kind of scrutiny, especially after you raise a lot of assets and everybody's looking and going through that, especially when you're trading when a mill trades and spreads, because spreads by their nature are going to be volatile. I mean, you're signing up for that, but it doesn't always make it easy for investors, even though, you know, they were warned about it and they signed up for it. And he had that great fish tank in the old office, right? Yeah, that's right. The fish tank.

That was my favorite part of coming over there. I used to have a huge one in my old condo, like 180 gallon reef tank. It was a labor of love. And when we moved to the new house, my wife's like, that's not coming. That's staying behind. So then both those paved the way and you started your own firm, Vision Pursue. So give us the quick elevator pitch on what you're doing there and then we'll dive into the details. Yeah. So maybe how I got there is interesting. There's a lot about what the business is. So when I was in my early 40s at TT, TT had grown and done all these things, and I've been able to

sort of travel the world and be part of that whole experience. It really dawned on me that I was not enjoying myself. And I remember sitting in my office, had a nice office, looking down the Chicago River at the Merchandise Mart, Great View, and thinking, man, I'm like really unhappy. And when I thought about it, you know, and I couldn't figure out really why. But the way I would describe it is a feeling of why am I doing I'm doing all this work and all of this stuff but I don't really enjoy it and so what's the point I just kept thinking what's the point and at the time I think you remember this at our at our party Chris Getz I had become friends with Chris Getz who was the Chicago White Sox player and and met

some of the other players and they had a similar experience in that they weren't enjoying, you know, life as a major league baseball player as much as they thought. And I think a lot of it is you just feel a lot of stress. You feel a lot of anxiety. It's hard to sleep. It's hard to focus your attention. You're replaying things over and over in your mind that have already happened, sometimes five years ago, and you're pre-playing your to-do list and things that might happen in the future. And so all of this mental activity, I think, makes it not a great experience. And so I was really noticing that in my early to mid-40s and wanting to do something about it. I didn't have any solutions for that. And then a lot of what I thought then was it's

all external. So I thought, well, you know, I just need a different job. I need to make more money. I need to be part of a hedge fund, which is more prestigious than a vendor, whatever was going through my mind. And so that's part of the reason why I joined Emile. And you jumped out of the fire into the frying pan, right? Yeah. Well, like I said before, you know, it's like, we all think the grass is greener and sometimes the grass is a little greener, but if your brain is replaying stuff over and over and pre-playing stuff and kind of seeing what's wrong with everything, which is kind of brain naturally does, it doesn't really matter what environment you're in or it doesn't matter as much. So when I went to a meal thinking that was going to solve it, and even though a meal was a great person and it was a great experience, I kind of felt the same.

And then I just came across some neuroscience. I started studying neuroscience and started to understand how the brain works, these thoughts and emotions that we're having. Well, let me pause you there. You came across some neuroscience. Who comes across neuroscience? Yeah, I guess it wasn't quite like that. So what I came, well, here's the best way to put it. I started reading these books that talked about automatic thought. And that's something I hadn't thought of. I just thought, well, I have control over my thoughts.

They're like self-help books? Yeah. So the first book. Very broad category, but yeah. Yeah. So really the story was when I was sitting in a meal, I remember it was October of 2011. And I'm thinking, wow, like I don't feel any better than I did before, you know? And so I want to do something about it. I thought I haven't read a book in a long time.

I'm just going to order a book. And so I just randomly started looking and I came up with the master key by Charles Honnell. And I read it. And basically what it said was, you're having all these thoughts, you're not picking them, they're automatic. And I started really noticing that, like how my mind is constantly wandering. There's a non, there's a nonstop narrative going on. and it basically said hey notice how you feel and when you feel something go back to what you're automatically thinking and so this really tipped me off like i started notice i'm having these crazy thoughts about stuff that's not even a problem and yet it's making it a problem in my mind and so that opened me up to hey my problem isn't so much external, it's internal. And these aren't like dreams.

This is conscious thought. You're saying like you're sitting there working and you're thinking about like, oh, I got to, I'm worried about the mortgage or whatever, not the mortgage, but I'm worried about some other thing that I shouldn't even be worrying about. Well, that's exactly right. And most of us have the experience when you drive somewhere, you know, when we used to drive. Yeah.

Well, you drive there and not even know, not remember the drive at all because you're in this automatic thought space. And when I train people, I always go, hey, for 30 seconds, stop thinking. And then they can't do it. You're showing them that they can't do it. You can't even stop it for a few seconds. So this automatic thought, I got turned on to this automatic thought and the emotions it produces. And so that took me down a different trail of this isn't about succeeding my way out of this or finding the perfect job or finding the perfect this or that. This is about getting my mind under control. And then that led me down to the neuroscience path. Okay, good. So I wanted you to say like you're in the doctor's office and there was a neuroscience weekly there and you picked it up and started thumbing through

it and said, oh, I get it now. So then the neuroscience path led you to what you're doing now. Yeah, what I noticed is there's a few thought leaders out there in neuroscience and psychology and what's happened because of brain imaging they know a lot more of what's happening in the brain than they ever have in the last 15 years and so there's these silos of neuroscientists uh joe bolte taylor is one dr kelly mcgonigal's another john cabot zinn is another he's not a he's a molecular biologist but you know what i'm saying, like really great scientific minds. And they're starting to provide insight into how the brain's working.

And so I became infatuated with this. I started studying this, reading their books and watching their videos. And I would start applying what I was learning. And it was having this impact that I was looking for. And so it started to change my own brain, my own mind. It started to change the way I was feeling about things, the way I was thinking and emoting. And then I just started paying attention. I need to start writing this down and trying to create a system around this because everybody I knew needed something like this, but nobody was doing anything like this.

And so that's how I tried to bridge it from something I was learning into trying to make it into a business. And that was a period of years while I was at a meal, kind of putting this together on the side. And then did you feel like you were like depressed or it was just like a splinter in your mind that you couldn't get out of there? What was the how did it feel like? How would people identify if like if they have the same thing in their brain? It's a variety of emotions. And as I've been doing this for years now and train thousands of people, you see these common patterns where you have to know them, but yeah, everybody gets depressed. Everybody gets anxious. Everybody feels like, does my life have meaning and maybe it doesn't everybody gets frustrated and so there's all these emotions that you're having

and they can really be strong and sort of become your life experience and so I find that to be quite common you know in fact one of the things we do here's how we measure our success we call it a life experience test. And we ask people to think about a typical work day, time you get up to the time you go to bed at night, and break it down into four categories. How much of your day is stressful and annoying or frustrating? What percentage? The second one is how much of it's boring or monotonous? The third is how much are you doing escape activities? And that would be smoking, drinking, watching TV, Netflix, social media, kind of when you just say, hey, I've had enough of this,

I just want to shut it off. What about Rubik's Cube? Is that an escape? Yeah, maybe, maybe. But maybe that's the next one. But bottom line is when you survey people, what you find is that 80% of a day or more feels like that. Not for every person, but if you get a statistically relevant sample, that's where you're going to end up. So most people are having an experience like that. And that's what I was having to answer. They're in that stressful, their highest percentage is the stressful part, you're saying? So I'm saying about 30%. If you look at the averages of everybody we've asked this question to, which is about 4,000,

but roughly it's 30% stress, 20% monotony, or maybe 25% monotony, and then 20-some percent escape. But if you add those three categories up, it's 80%. Got it. Versus what's the rest supposed to be productivity that feel good without escape activities right just the the yes um so then you said hey i'm gonna uh you're writing down these notes you're coming up with a plan and you said i'm gonna make this into a business yeah so my first job was to try to make it into a business? Yeah. So my first job was to try to make it into a training program. And I thought about a computer program. This is a little bit before apps were big. I mean,

I think they were there, but they weren't as big. And so I thought about, I created a computer program, hired a developer to take people through a training process to go through what I'd gone through to start to change my mind or my brain. And then it became an app. And then I developed a training program. And then I started marketing it and getting a few customers. And that's kind of how the evolution worked. And along the way, I met a couple people too that joined me and that were instrumental in putting this together. And so what's the mission statement now? What's the, we've kind of buried the lead there, but give me the, now the quick elevator pitch on what

Vision Pursuit does. It changes the way people feel about their life. It changes their life experience. So that test that I talked about, when people go through the training and through the app program, stress goes down dramatically. The monotony goes down, escape goes down, and that feel good without doing escape goes up and it doubles would be the average. And so you're changing the way people are really thoughts and emotions because you know, 60 days of training, your life doesn't usually change like that. It's your repetitive thoughts and the chemicals that are your emotions start to change. So you feel differently about your life. And that so that's our whole mission is to change the way people feel about their lives. And as a result of that, too, not only do you feel better, usually sleep better, you're more resilient.

You can focus your attention better. You know, all these other things that are all part of that same mental change. And so basically don't change everything else. Don't get divorced, get a new job, move to Colorado. Like fix it up top before you fix it everywhere else. Yeah, that's it exactly. And when you fix it up top, yeah, you still might want to get a divorce or you might not have any choice in it.

Or you might want to move to Colorado or you might want to get a new job. But you're doing it not because you have to, but because you want to. And there's a huge difference. So who are the customers of this? Like CEOs, trading firms? Most of what we do is group training. And so one of our earliest customers was CME Group. And they've been a great customer for me for years.

So they were an early adopter. Another early adopter was a pharmaceutical company called Teva. Another early adopter is how I got into pro sports was Dan Quinn, who was with the Seattle Seahawks. I'm going to call them the Mariners, the Seattle Seahawks at the time. And his sister, believe it or not, worked at Trading Technologies, Mary Beth. So I was telling Mary Beth about what I was doing. It's long story short, she made the intro to Dan. And so I started working with him when he was at the Seahawks and had a great impact on him. And so when he got the head job for the Falcons, he brought me and VP along with it. And that's kind of what got me into pro

sports and led to the Seattle Mariners and the Miami Heat and the University of Michigan, University of Alabama and some others. Alabama, right? So you've been down there with Saban and all the rest? I've been down to Tuscaloosa many times. I've done some work with the football team. They're not my primary client there. What I've done there is more one-on-one work with certain players. But I'm all in with some of the other teams. Gymn a great gymnastics women's gymnastics team there baseball swimming and others and a great relationship with their athletic director Greg Byrne. I just I feel like Saban kind of was born

with the mindset already probably or he might be so far on the other side that he just blocks everything else out and so laser focus Yeah, I think he's pretty extraordinary in terms of the way his mind works and the way he can focus attention and stay on point and work on what's controllable. And what's interesting if you, you know, there's some speeches he makes, he's very much in alignment with many of the VP principles, which is, you know, just to give you an example, which is put more focus on your process and your system than on the results and the process in the system applying consistently to it really in a high in a really a great way is going to create the results and also things about

expectations expect difficulties and challenges because you're gonna have them so we're very aligned with his way of challenges because you're going to have them. So we're very aligned with his way of thinking. And you're right. I think he kind of gets there naturally. What, so before that, I mean, so other people are doing this, right. And especially in sports, especially in golf, I think maybe it was one of the first to, you know, kind of say you need process over results, right right the ball might bounce the wrong way or something it wasn't the fault of your swing or whatnot so is that if I had to boil it all down into one sentence is that it process over results no uh I and I feel like I do this

every time we talk I say got it it's process over results and you say no and I go okay explain it again that's a byproduct I mean that's where your brain ends up but what you're trying to do what got it. It's process over results. And you say, no. And I go, okay, explain it again. That's a byproduct. I mean, that's where your brain ends up, but what you're trying to do, what it's all about is changing that automatic thought pattern. So if I say, don't think, you know, and when you sit there for five minutes, where does your brain go? What if we could change it where it didn't, where it went to more productive places, not completely, you're never going to stop it. So it automatically is going to more productive places not because you're trying to do positive thinking or whatever because your brain just naturally doing that and so once you do that that change your chemical flows that becomes your emotions that's really

what we're all about and there's three things that really cause that to happen but once that happens then you're able to do that you're listen if you're not able to do that really cause that to happen but once that happens then you're able to do that you're listen if you're not able to do that you're going to be so caught up in results because of your thinking and your emotions you don't have any chance of sticking to the process right as soon as you go through a difficulty you're so caught up in that difficulty it's really hard to get back to the process and you're using willpower all the time to correct yourself versus your brain just sort of being on a better path. Not that it's all never gets, you never get triggered. That's not the point. It's just that triggering is really different and your brain can

stay more level through everything. I had a quick thought when you mentioned CME, I want you to go in there and do another panel or whatever and throw in some hypnotism and get them to remove the data fees. Could you do that for all our listeners? They'd really appreciate it. Hey, I'm really pro-CME, so I'm just going to take their side. Take the fifth on that. We are too. They do a great job. But those fees. So it would have seemed like a natural fit to you to start to go around to hedge fund managers first right and say like hey live a better life don't be waking up at three in the morning checking quotes and all this and was that a natural path did you first go down that path or and or have they been clients?

I haven't done a lot in the hedge fund space. I've done more in the proprietary trading space in Chicago. And I don't mention their names because they don't want to be mentioned, but there's three firms that, you know, most everybody's going to know one in particular. Everybody's going to know that I've worked with and still do work with. In the hedge fund business,

for whatever reason, I haven't gotten a lot of traction. And really, when I think of the hedge fund business, they're really not oriented that way. A lot of it's not oriented towards training. There's not a huge headcount usually. And so where we've really ended up, Exelon's a big customer, Mylan, Big Pharma is a big company, Splunk, which is a big technical company, is bigger companies that have training budgets and they're more oriented towards leadership development and training. And I find that hedge funds aren't so much oriented that way. So I've really not done a lot of work in the hedge fund space.

And or you've run into the quant revolution too, right? Like if the computer's not going to have a bad day and have bad thoughts as it's crunching all the data, I feel like it may have been a better fit back in the day when there was a desk full of traders, portfolio managers. If one was having, you'd have to get their head straight to make sure they kept trading optimally. Yeah, I think that's true that when you talk about trading decisions, but when it comes to technology, TT is a customer of mine, for example.

Software developer, really it doesn't matter what you're doing. I mean, I train high school students. I've trained stay-at-home parents, trained pro football players. I've trained you name it. We're all having thoughts and emotions that are affecting

our life experience, they're affecting our decision making, they're affecting everything. And so it's really relevant no matter what you're doing. But yeah, I agree. Listen, if you're making these big decisions on a discretionary manner, you have to have a clear mind, you just have to. And didn't you have one rather large, well-known hedge fund guy though? Yeah. So I think you're speaking to Ray Dalio. So Ray has not been a customer, but he's been a relationship. I was able to, you know, get to know Ray and that, you know, every year I go to the combine in Indianapolis for the NFL draft, and I always get to meet up with Dan Quinn there and other coaches because they're all there.

And I was having lunch with Dan, and I was telling him about the book Principles, and we came up with the idea, like, hey, let's invite Ray down to training camp. So I literally called Bridgewater, the front desk, Ray Dalio. They were quite polite, and they said, well, what's your name, and what do you want? And so I told them, and then a day later, his PR guy called me back. And long story short, he ended up at training camp, spent the day at the Atlanta Falcons training camp in 2018 with myself, Dan Quinn, and then Eric Spolstra, who was a coach in the Miami Heat, came up. He's a big Dalio fan. And so we spent a whole day. I mean, it was literally like 7 a.m.

to 5 p.m. talking about mental training and kind of Ray's whole thing. And he was teaching us and it was a really incredible day. So I've stayed in touch with him off and on since then. I mean, his PR guy probably doesn't get much sleep. He's everywhere all the time. And what's his thing? Radical transparency or radical candor? Yeah, so I'd encourage everyone to look at his TED Talk that he did. I think it's amazing.

And I love his book, too. But the TED Talk's like a no-brainer. The book's a big read. I highly recommend it. But his TED Talk, you've got to watch it. It's amazing. And I love his book too. But the Ted talks like a no brainer, like the book's a big read, you know, I highly recommend it, but it's Ted talk. You got to watch it. It's what is it's 15 minutes. He talks about radical candor and transparency, but you know, and that freaks people out because they think about, you know, you hear stories about Bridgewater. I used to hear them.

Oh, people don't like working there because like, anybody will call you out about anything. You just feel like you're constantly under attack. And so it's from the outside, it sounds weird. And even I think you can go like request and watch a video of any other meeting. Right. Right. Yeah. What other stuff have you heard about it? Yeah. Like you could just be like, I, I want to know what was talked about in that meeting.

And if they mentioned me and you can go pull up the tapes and they video the meetings and they might be like, Jeff's been an asshole all week. And we got to get control of this and boom. All right. You're on the same page. Yeah, that's what they do. Right. But to me, I'm like, there's, there's no way that would work in a lot of situations. I mean, you'd have to just rip the bandaid off and go for it. Yeah. So I agree. And that's why people hear that. And you think, well, this sounds crazy. But when you understand what's behind all of it, it makes a lot more sense. And this comes down like right. I don't think he calls it this, but I thought of what he talked about that day were three steps. Like number one, if you go to Bridgewater, you're signing up for is do you want to get beyond your ego and your thoughts that you're right about everything and your defensiveness and that you don't have blind spots? And instead of being open to all that, you're defending yourself constantly. So if you come at me and Jeff and say, well, I don't like the way you did this or I think BP is doing this wrong, right? Automatically shut you off and I don't want to hear it.

And I'm defensive and I think I'm right. That's Ray's whole thing is everybody's brain naturally does that. But that's not productive. In fact, it's stupid. Yeah. If I actually want to get better, I have to be, I have to know that I have weaknesses and blind spots. I have to be open to them. I have to not only not be defensive when people come, I might feel defensive. Everybody does,

but I have to rise above that and be able to take the criticism and the feedback. Otherwise, how am I going to improve? And then the other thing that happens once I'm open to your feedback, well, then you become open to my feedback. And so I look at a lot of what happens in companies and sports organizations, there's just none of that's happening. People are defensive and walking on eggshells and coming up with all these ways to give people feedback that won't completely piss them off. When you think about that, that's stupid. It's an incredible waste of time. Yeah, I agree. So anyway, I'll let you comment on that. And I'll kind of tell you.

Well, my brain went to how do you square that with like, you're working with a NFL wide receiver, they're generally thought of as the biggest egos, but right. They need that ego almost to be at that top, top, top level. But then at the same time, you're trying to train them to be able to accept the criticism and change their mindset around. Do those, are those in conflict or you can square those? You can square. It's a great question.

So one of what the Ray Ray says is I need humility to go with my audacity. So I am audacious. I am a big thinker. I'm highly confident. But I also know that I have to acknowledge that. And I have to, I can still think, Hey, I'm great, but I'd still know I have weaknesses. And so my thinking that I'm great doesn't not allow me to be vulnerable and say, well, Jeff, how can I improve? I mean, that's not in conflict and it feels like it's in conflict with most people. And so Ray's trying to get beyond all this shit. He's basically saying, if you come here, you got to want to be the best version of yourself. And here's what it looks like. Right. That's step one.

And then you mentioned before, I just want to circle back to the, I can't remember what you called them. There were three pillars to the vision pursue or three, whatever you said. What are those three? Were there more than three? Oh, for VP or Ray's deal? For, there's, there's three main things that start to shift the brain. The first one we call expect the expected. And all that means is, you know, Jeff, if we, if I got together with you and some of your colleagues at RCM, and we had a whiteboard and I said, Hey, whiteboard out and forget about COVID, right? COVID's kind of changed a lot of things, but it's still the same,

but I don't want to complicate it. Let's go back before that. And I said, Hey, tell me, let's write down all the triggers and challenges you guys are going to have over the next 10 months. You could name them. We'd write them all out. And then, and then expect the expected is okay. Don't be surprised when these happen. You know, I was training some salespeople today and they were talking about, well, I was on with a customer and we were doing great and we were right on sync and we're supposed to have the call today. He

totally blew me off. And then he went cold for three days. And I'm like, yeah, no shit. Like that happens to every salesperson. Yeah. In of mankind in the history of mankind and so everything that's bothering us if we really look around whether it's in our marriages or raising kids or having jobs or all this stuff it's all completely predictable it's all completely normal it's happening to everyone can i add an addendum to expect the expected yes don't what's i i don't know how to say it but i always tell my someone that lives in my house and maybe married to me that she'll get pre-upset i call it i'm like don't get pre-upset like if the thing happens then get upset like right it's like oh if we don't do this and don't do that and don't do this then this is going to happen i'm like well if that happens then let's

get upset about it let's not get get pre upset. So that kind of, that kind of meshes with expect the expected, I think. Well, it's, it's a great point. So expectations happen two ways. And I think everybody will resonate with this one. We lie in bed and think of worst case scenarios. It's a little bit like you're talking about, here's all this bad shit that can happen. Like we all do that. And so those are really low expectations.

And then the next day we're surprised when everything's not perfect, you know, traffic, weather, and I always think about like difficult people. Everyone has a difficult person or multiple difficult people in their life. And you can sit there and think about how bad they are all night. And the next day they do exactly what you think they're going to do. And you can't believe it. Right. They did it did it again so you know that's the crazy thing about the brain and so expect to expect it is like get your get in sync with reality what's it like to be a human being you can predict all this stuff's going to happen and then it calms your brain down a little bit. So that's step one. And then step two is embrace these emotions. You know, we're not taught even what emotions are and what emotions are chemical projections

in your brain. It's exactly what they are. So when you feel envious or jealous or resentful or anxious or pissed off or happy it's because your brain has projected a chemical to make you feel that way period and so when you start to realize that you start to look at your emotions differently as what they are they're a temporary experience caused by your brain to give you a message right instead of the thought of I screwed up my whole life I should have never done that of switching to no it's just a chemical that just got released in my brain like it's not because of any past things I did there's just this chemical

going on you know it could be because of past things and it could be you know because of presence things or future things right because the Cause the mind's gonna react to all of that. I could be thinking, oh, that person did me wrong two years ago and I get a chemical projection. Or I could be thinking that person is gonna do me wrong or I might get fired or how am I gonna pay for my college education from my kids? Or how am I gonna take care of my aging parents?

Like all these automatic thoughts, then we'll create an emotion or a chemical projection got it and then number three so expect the expected two is you can't help it it's chemical what was what'd you call it yeah it's actually we call it separate embrace evaluate so you have to know it's a chemical you separate from your emotions. You embrace them. I should feel some anxiety about COVID-19. I should feel anxiety about the economy opening up. Of course I do. And so I embrace it. It's okay to feel that way. You normalize the emotion and then you evaluate, which is, okay, what do I need to do about it? Which flows into control the controllable, which is the third one. And most of us put a lot of attention

on what we can't control versus what we can control. And if we can't control something that we're trying to control, the brain produces anxiety. And the brain also produces anxiety when something happens that we don't expect. And so that's why expect the expected and control the controllable are really powerful for changing your brain's stress response.

And then C, the middle one, is the way you respond whenever you get a stress response. Those are the three things that really start to shift the brain. And don't get rid of all your emotions. You're not trying to. It just levels them out and puts them, the duration, frequency, and intensity is more productive. Got it. It's not going to sidetrack you for hours, days, weeks. You can see it, deal with it, move on to the next thing.

But do you feel like you'll, right, it seems a perfect adherence to this. You. But do you feel like you'll, right? It seems a perfect adherence to this. You'd become a little more robotic or something or, or no? No, you know, you'll feel the full range of emotions. You're just not, you know, you're just not owned by your emotion. And a crazy thing happens, you know, when you do this, because that's why we say embrace the emotion, because most people are trying to suppress the emotion. I should just be positive all the time, or I shouldn't feel resentment. I shouldn't feel jealousy. Yeah, you're going to feel all of that. So you embrace it. That allows the chemical to

flow through you so you don't become a robot. You're feeling the highs and lows, just not at the same intensity. And then the brain goes to a place that it can be a natural state that's a good internal state regardless of what's happening externally. And that's so far from being a robot. You just become a more productive human being and you tend to be a more empathetic and feeling and deferential towards other people. Cause you're not caught up in your own caught up in your own head all the time.

Right. And I was going to ask that. Does a lot of this, there's some studies and papers and Google and Amazon are all hiring based on EQ, is it now? Instead of IQ, which is the, as you said, empathetic quotient, I guess. I don't know exactly what it stands for, but you feel like this helps people get to a better place in terms of their EQ? Well, I know it does. I mean, we and we measure that. So when we go into any company or any organization, we do that life experience test I told you about before, and we do it after. And we shift it dramatically, you know, consistently over and over again. So yeah, you're changing the thought and emotion pattern, you become its EQ

stands for emotional quotient emotional intelligence is what they talk about yeah yeah but you know more importantly than that you know again ability to focus my attention to be more resilient to sleep better to have a more fulfillment over what i'm doing versus thinking oh it's just my job or it's my spouse or it's this or that you actually can start enjoying everything more the you're really going to kill the uh mattress economy if people are right they're going to stop running out and buying new mattresses and you could you could still do that but well i'm always i'm like there's a mattress store every 10 feet in downtown chicago here i was going to say so what's what's the

difference between doing this program and what's your time better just going to therapy? Like, I'm just going to go to therapy and have this therapist work with me to get in a better spot. Yeah, that's a great question. So, you know, we're not therapists. We're not therapy. We're mental training. So this mental training will impact anxiety and depression and all those sort of things, but we're not geared up nor do we bill ourselves to be somebody to help somebody with acute depression or anxiety or anything else.

Although some people go through the training that habit. So, you know, that's really one-on-one by a professional who's, who's been educated and trained to do that. I'm training groups of people to just change their thought and emotion patterns that can help anybody, not, you know, not for somebody who's necessarily clinically depressed or needs professional help like that. So it's more of this, I want to perform better. I'm going to go take this training just like, Hey, I want to learn Excel better. I want to learn how to paddleboard. I'm going to go do some training. This is saying, hey, for my day in, day out of the most important thing I have, my brain,

I'm just going to do a little training on that. Yeah, that's right. Yeah. If you want to change the brain, just like if you want to change the body, you can't just read a book or hear a great speech or be motivated. You have to train. So this is training your mind. And just like, you know, you might go work out out not because you're really sick but because you just want to improve your body and your health and you might want to do training to improve your mind not because you're mentally ill but because you just want to improve it so that's a good analogy right of the therapist is to the or the vision pursue is to your brain what the gym is to your body and therapy is to the doctor

right like you're the gym therapy is the doctor in terms of improving your body yeah i think that's a decent analogy you know although you know a lot of people who aren't mentally ill still go to therapists because it's helpful to them. So I point that out too. So what do you, what's the most important takeaway for people you think, or is each person kind of has their own path when they do the training? Yeah, it's really pretty standardized. I mean, what we offer is a little bit like a diet and exercise plan that works. I guess the best way to describe it is, you know, if you're an athlete,

and it's all about speed for you, maybe you want to train a certain way. But if in general, you want to be stronger, have more endurance, more flexibility, more durability, BP is going to help all of that. It's a very comprehensive way to help your brain in these different areas. And so it, we really have built this very specific, this program that we apply consistently to, again, whether it's a high school student, you know, the Miami Heat basketball team, if we went into RCM or anything in between, it's the same principles that we're training on. So it's a little bit like if you stretch and if you run and you lift weights a

certain way, you're going to improve physically. So that's what we do. Now we contextualize the training. So it is relatable to people based on where they're at in life. You know, it's going to be different for a high school kid. And then for guys like you and me, but it's the same principles and concepts that are going to change the brain. Do you get like favorite teams depending on who you're working with? So as the NBA starts back up, you're going to be rooting for the Heat?

Come on, that's not even, are you kidding me? Of course, like whoever's paying me is my favorite team for sure. It's not even close, not even close. And by the way, I have to say, you know, I'd probably say this anyway, Miami Heat, Coach Spolstra, that whole organization, just pure class. I mean, just a classy organization. And same with the Atlanta Falcons, like Seattle Mariners, the teams I work with, Jawan Howard at Michigan,

like really top-notch great people. Yeah. And Spallestra, I always thought when he was hired, right, wasn't he hired right at the same time LeBron came down there? I think it was just before, but it might have been the same year. You know, I wasn't paying that much attention back then, but I know he was there and it was probably recent. Right, but it seemed to me at the time like, oh,

they just got some young pushover that LeBron. But now he's since, right, LeBron's been long gone and he's proven his mettle. Yeah, it's funny. We laughed about that before because I, like a lot of people, was totally against the Heat. I hated the Big Three. Like, I hated all that, and I looked at Spolstering, oh, he's just a young guy.

They plugged in there. Anybody could cut. Like, everything he was talking about. and we were laughing about it you know but no he's a badass badass guy great person great human being great coach I mean he's a hall of fame coach hall of fame coach all right yeah I believe it when it's all said and done for sure he's going to the hall of fame uh and what do you what do you think about what i was going to say their bubble plan and all that but i'm just in general is that covid like this is probably even for the most well-trained it's kind of blown everything out of proportion right i've set them back so you've been doing a lot of covid specific training So one of the things about COVID that's been helpful for my business is doing things like

this. The fact that this video conferencing has taken off and that really helps me because I've done a fair amount with the sports teams I work with, including them, because I can do it like this for 10 or 15 minutes as opposed to trying to be there. So, yeah, we've done quite a bit over the last few months since this hit. And, yeah, we'll see how they do. You know, I believe they'll do well. I just, you know, regardless of vision pursuit or anything like that, they're just a mentally strong team, well-coached. They've got great players.

They're really connected as a team. I think that's obvious. Jimmy Butler has it's been a great addition and just a great team player. So I think they'll do well, but we'll see. But I'm also asking on the COVID in general, you feel like not with the heat, but across all your clients or just your family or your friends, like, do you think it's really shifted people's mental, right? You hear people like schooling from home. I'm losing my mind.

I can't handle it, right? Because there's none of the expected is now the unexpected. So you're getting a lot of these different inputs. Although now you could probably say like, hey, this has been going on since March. It's now the expected. Don't stop getting all upset about it. Yeah, I think it's a good point. Yeah, people are, it varies, right?

But there's no question. A lot of people are struggling from this. Some people because they're isolated. Some people because they're isolated with their family and it's been too much of that. And there's a variety of reasons. So we've all been dealt the hand, but the hand's a little different for everybody.

Everybody's experiencing it differently. But I think it has exposed a lot of what's going on with the brain. And as we lose control, the brain kind of goes crazy. And so these techniques that I'm talking about are really important. And you're right. At this point, like, there's a lot of things we know to expect. And one of the things we can expect is the unexpected that there's going to be twists and turns.

And so these are the things that talk about with all my clients. Like you got to sort of let go and let it be what it is and keep playing the hand you're dealt. Because if we're sitting there bitching and whining about the hand we're dealt all the time, there's no good poker player in the world who does that. And so you have to take the hand you're dealt and play that hand and uh expect the expected and see and control the controllable i think helps people get there mentally i was just gonna do you deal with any poker players i know i haven't they're pretty good at that i mean they

get it like you just said like that's their only choice they can't complain and you got to get in that mindset you have you have to play the card in your hand yeah i haven't had anything though in their personal lives they're not as good at that i see that a lot of times with military personnel navy seals and the like they're great when they're in mission and on it but outside of it then they struggle with dealing with the way the world is yeah that's been pretty well documented right if they come back from those missions, they don't have their tribe and all their guys and they struggle. Well, thanks again. You got any other VP thoughts before we wrap up? Well, what I would say is I would encourage everyone to figure out, pay attention to what's going on with the mind and don't discount that. Thoughts and emotions are huge. And so I would tell people to research, you know, like I did, research what the brain's doing. And there are so many ways you could start to impact that

with COVID, outside of COVID. And so I would just encourage everybody to figure out how the mind works and start coming up with a mental training plan and looking at training the mind like you might try to train the body do you have any thoughts on people getting like there was that tragic kid that killed himself because he lost money on robin hood and stuff like that's the extreme example of emotional response to investing like what are your thoughts on being able to control not control the greed control the fear i mean that all ties into the same thing as a investor yeah you have to train your mind so if you want to be mentally stable through the ups and downs of training you have to train your mind uh trading yeah trading and so and when i train traders we talk about that expect expected you know what

what's trading look like what's gonna happen like what's gonna trigger you what's gonna be difficult all right so you should expect it and then when you feel the emotions you separate from you embrace them and you keep controlling the controllable and it's funny some of the great traders I've worked with and I've worked with a few that are really top notch, they don't get so tricked. Where they get triggered the most is when they feel they left it on the table. I got out too soon. It isn't that I had a loss.

It's like I could have made more money. And so. Right. That upsets them more than the loss, which there's a couple million of us in that boat now with tesla and amazon and yeah so that's a perfect example of you know you're not always going to get out on the right time obviously if it were that easy everybody would do it and then you're going to feel emotion you embrace that emotion it's okay to feel that way uh and then it subsides and you keep controlling the controllable like what did i learn from this how do i get better i feel like the investor has an extra, right?

They always lie to themselves and to us as advisors sometimes of, okay, you're investing in this program. It's max drawdowns, 20%. Are you comfortable with that? Can you handle that? Yeah, of course. Of course. And then it's down 8% over three months, right? And they're freaking out and they're going to sell everything and get out. And we're like, we had this discussion. We talked about it could go down 20%. Like, well, I didn't know that meant this year.

So that's the expected in terms of investments of like, it's right there in black and white what this could lose. And train your mind to know that that could happen tomorrow. It could happen tomorrow it could happen 10 years from now i think people read that and they see it but they don't expect it to happen anytime soon or to happen to them which is a recipe for failure i think that's right and you know and they're not taught to embrace their emotion because if you did embrace their emotion it would pass through quicker and they get more to a logical place of, OK, what does this really mean?

Should I get out or shouldn't I? I'm not just acting on the emotion. I'm acting more logic. And then also, I think for people like you, advisors, you should expect that this is going to happen. You know, this is going to happen. And one of the ways you can help people through it is not going straight to the logic of, well, this is just part of it. You know, whatever, whatever you might say, you'd probably say it in a definitely nice way, but still, it's like helping them through the emotion. Go. Yeah. I can tell you're really upset. You should be upset. Like I get it. Like that validating of emotion is very powerful because when you validate emotion and embrace it, it tends to calm down and people tend to get to their logical mind if you can't deal with the emotion it's very hard to get people their logical mind

i'm bad at that i'm like with my wife or daughter like what that's a stupid thing to be upset about that's the wrong answer it's the wrong answer but you know me too like i still suck at it like i have to totally correct myself because i you want to jump in and tell people you're looking at it like i have to totally correct myself because i you want to jump in and tell people you're looking at it wrong here's what you need to be focused on yeah and it makes them more upset uh as opposed to validating how they're feeling and then they'll then you can gently move them that way and we all need it it's not just like we all need it but we can't see it when it's happening to us we can only see it when it's happening to others right i just did it there live right i said oh this is so this makes me so upset these clients do this thing and you're like i know it's gonna happen i expect it then i'm still getting upset about it you're like

i'm getting upset that they don't expect the expected when i should be i get it i get it now and you have to embrace that emotion that you're feeling it's just because you expect it doesn't mean you're going to get upset. So when you get upset, you go, it's okay to be upset. I should be upset. It's just temporary. I got another question just popped in my head. Do you have any thoughts on how Donald Trump handles his emotions? Could he do with some training?

You know, when I look at the whole political landscape i find it all i don't really like any of it and so uh i don't even want to comment on it other than uh i find politics in general is no matter what side you're on is all about manipulation and trying to get people upset i mean news cycles are about upsetting people, no matter what news channel you're on. And so it causes a lot of problems with people. So yeah. I'll switch that question slightly.

Do you see social media as an issue with triggering people, right? Because it's kind of the algorithms are built in such a way, right? That anger and people being upset drives more engagement, drives more of that content. So the algorithms are just going to serve up more and more of that content. You're going to get more and more upset.

Like, how do we combat that? That's your next business. Combat the tie in the training with a technology piece that can combat that. Yeah, what you're saying is exactly right. So whether it's news cycles or Twitter, whatever, everybody makes money and draws attention based on getting people's dander up. And so in the damage that that does is it cut us a lot of stress and anxiety.

But I also think there's like, I don't know what the percentage is. There's a big percentage of our country that could agree agree on things even though they see the world differently like we could come together and come up with policies and stuff that will work but we're so caught up in the 10 percent extremes because it seems like everybody's on those extremes that that's not happening yeah the extremes are driving the narratives that are making the extremes more extreme. And it makes puts everybody it polarizes everybody in the middle. And the brain is really kind of set up to be polarized to do in group out group to tribalism, the brain's totally wired for that.

And so they're playing on all of that. And so the way I would look at all that is like, you have to expect expect it's going to happen when when you feel emotion, uh, like whatever political side you're on, when you get really triggered by the other side, I always like to tell people you could completely have the opposite opinion you have right now. If you hate the left, you could completely love the left, depending on how you were brought up in your experiences and vice versa and so when you can start to get past your emotions and see the logic it doesn't mean you know there is no right or wrong or i'm not saying that what i'm saying is you start to get more clarity that goes

beyond my emotions that are being manipulated by the media and by twitter and everybody else yeah that's that's a big problem moving forward. So I'm glad you're sort of on it. All right, let's move on to our favorites. Running out of time. Thanks again for joining us. This has been fun, hopefully informative for everybody. So you ready? We'll just quick fire through some of these. Favorite investing book?

I would say Principles by Ray Dalio, that portion where he talks about investing. Yeah. Favorite mind book, using that term loosely. I like My Stroke of Insight by Joe Bolte-Taylor. My Stroke of Insight. All right. Favorite Wichita State Shocker of all time? The X-Man. The X-Man.

Xavier McDonald? McDaniel, yeah. McDaniel. That's close. Favorite Chicago athlete. You going to go with your boy? I'm going to go with Charles Leno Jr. He's a left tackle for the Bears, and I do a lot of work with him with VP.

I love that guy. Great guy. Yeah. All right. Who do you think is going to start? Foles or Trubisky? Can you get Trubisky as a client? We need him to

do a little better you know i have no idea on that uh uh you know i i don't know i like both of them they both seem like really good human beings but like who's gonna beat the other one out i i don't know and they'll both love leno because he's protecting their backside right that's right. Favorite vacation spot? I like Balboa Island in Orange County. It's a little area in Newport Beach, California. It's an actual island? Yes, it's a little island.

If you know where the peninsula is off of Newport Beach, it's in the peninsula in the mainland. There's a little island called Balboaaya island you can get out small house there and it's just really laid back and chill and you can paddleboard around and i love it there we did paddleboarding up we had friends in mill valley so we were on the north side of san francisco bay and what is that south salita and paddleboarding in there and there's seals coming up beside you and everything that was super cool um you probably can't answer this but favorite coach you've worked with or player you know spolstra dan quinn like i said both really great human beings i want to pick one

over the other and there's been many others too like in college you know juan howard dana duckworth at element i mean i want to start naming them because it's hard, but that's been really cool. How do those coaches handle the, right, like being on the hot seat, especially in the NFL, right? You could just get fired at any moment. Like that's got to be always weighing on them, or do you think they've gotten to the point where they're just like,

hey, I'm doing my business. If it doesn't work out, it doesn't work out. No, it weighs on them. You know, I did a podcast with Dan Quinn earlier this year. You could check it out. He talks about some of that. And he also did a podcast with Michael Gervais, who has a podcast, and he talked about some of that. So yeah, they feel that, of course, you know, everybody in the, so many people, can you imagine the transparency of everybody criticizing you and it's on the news and you're going to get fired.

Everybody's watching. Yeah, they for sure, they feel it, no doubt. And lastly, favorite Star Wars character? Chewie. Chewie, all right. I would go maybe a Jedi because they can control the mind and control other people's mind. If you were a Jedi, you could just reach in there and just super.

I guess you're right, but it's a little bit like VP is all about. Like it's not really trained and like, you know, I don't even know how to describe it, but I guess it says a lot about me that I just like a hairy Wookiee. All right. This has been fun. Tell everyone how to find out more about you and where to get all that good. Yeah. so thanks. Yeah, thanks for having me.

I enjoyed it, Jeff, and always enjoyed you. And visionpursue.com is the best way to get information about us. And you can always email me at russatvisionpursue.com and follow us on social media as well. I mean, we didn't do a lot on social media for a long time, but we are now. So if you want to learn more about us, you can follow us there and get information as well. Cool. And we'll throw it on the show notes. All right. Thanks again, Russ. Thank you, Jeff. Stay safe. You too. you've been listening to the derivative links from this episode will be in the episode description of this channel follow us on twitter at rcm alt and visit our website to read our blog or subscribe

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