The Knowledge Project with Shane Parrish - #125 Paul Rabil: Confidence and Competition

Episode Date: November 30, 2021

Paul Rabil knows what it takes to reach the top in both sports and business. In this episode, he teaches us the mindsets to succeed, where confidence comes from, and even tells us about the time Bill Belichick recruited him to play in the NFL.   Rabil spent 14 years as a professional lacrosse player in the United States and in 2019 co-founded the Premier Lacrosse League, where he played for the final three seasons of his career before retiring in 2021. He was a 10-time All-Star in Major League Lacrosse, where he also won two league titles. He also won two World Lacrosse Championship gold medals.   -- Want even more? Members get early access, hand-edited transcripts, member-only episodes, and so much more. Learn more here: https://fs.blog/membership/   Every Sunday our Brain Food newsletter shares timeless insights and ideas that you can use at work and home. Add it to your inbox: https://fs.blog/newsletter/   Follow Shane on Twitter at: https://twitter.com/ShaneAParrish Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

To have that endless competitive streak, you've got to have a fire in your belly morning, noon, and night. The trait that I'm describing to is really the 1% of the 1%. And you know it when you see that competitive, because it's kind of a competitive asshole is what you have to become in sports, at least. And what I've learned in business and in life is you've got to be a competitive compromiser. And that requires kindness, empathy, ingenuity. But this. same level of like aggressive competitive spirit but it's shifted in sports it's binary you can just tackle someone and win can't do that in life welcome to the knowledge welcome to the knowledge project i'm your host Shane Parrish the goal

of this podcast is to master the best what other people have already figured out so you can unlock your potential. We interview world-class doers and thinkers so that you can better analyze problems, seize opportunities, and master decision-making. Every episode is packed with lessons and insights that never expire. If you're listening to this, you're missing out. If you'd like special member-only episodes, access before anyone else, transcripts, and other member-only content, you can join at fs.blog slash membership. Check out the show notes for a link. Paul Rabel is here today.

Paul is the Michael Jordan of lacrosse. Not only is he the face of lacrosse, he's literally the best lacrosse player to ever exist. He's also a gold medal winner. He's also one of the co-founders of the professional lacrosse league, which is heading into its fourth season. I wanted to talk to Paul

because I'm interested in how the best become the best and how they stay the best. I want to know the mindsets, the competitiveness, the drive, and all the things that make that possible. We talk about how Bill Belichick tried to make him a safety in the NFL, where confidence and competitiveness come from, the business side of sports, the mental tools to recover after making a mistake, how to handle stress, and so much more.

It's time to listen and learn. I think the place I want to dive, in is tell me the story of how Bill Belichick once tried to make you a safety. He is a lacrosse player. He grew up playing lacrosse in Annapolis, Maryland, and he played lacrosse in college. And his father was the football coach at Navy. And that's really where he cut his teeth, literally in the film room cutting tape. And that led to where he is today is, I think, the football coach giant of the world. And even like in a micro setting for Coach Belichick, he started cutting tape.

And I think in the world of sports, I'm in the sports business, a lot of the best executives, commissioners, owners started selling tickets for, if that lands for anyone out there listening. Then Bill, because of his fandom of lacrosse and his allegiance to lacrosse in a way, he would come to Johns Hopkins practices, which was the school I attended 2004 to 2008, and I built a relationship with him. And my junior and senior year, I was the captain. And I remember asking my coach at the time, Petramala, if I could get 10, 15 minutes with Belichick when he would come to Baltimore. And then he granted me that. I graduated from Hopkins. He sent a box of Patriots

swag to my home at the time because he knew that I was a Washington football fan. growing up in the DMV, and he was like, now you can support the Patriots. I had a really good rookie year playing professional lacrosse, and I continued to build my relationship with coach. And we would go to dinner a couple times a year, and he would invite me to a Patriots game and spend the weekend with him. And then I started turning into conversations. And I would suspect that for players that he has either drafted or signed,

more likely signed that aren't football players or non-traditional SEC recruits, it started with the conversation that we had, which was, I think you could play in the NFL. And I was like, I want to play wide receiver. He was like, I think you'd be a strong safety. And I was like, why? He was like, because you have the size and speed of strong safeties and you have the work ethic in our league. And we went for about six months of deliberating that. And then we both came back together.

He was like, you know what? Things are tracking really well in lacrosse. I was just the MVP at the time and playing with Team USA. And we just had a practical conversation weighing risk reward. and never pursued it. Well, talk to me about that, because you would be going from the top of the lacrosse world to, I'm assuming, on the bubble of the NFL roster.

For sure. The bottom of the football world, I guess, to your analogy. You know, we just had a guy play for half the season in the PLL. NFL fans know him. His name's Chris Hogan. Chris is two years younger than me. And literally took the path that I was contemplating. He was an All-American at Penn State.

And he did take a fifth year because you're given five years of athletic eligibility, the NCAA level, four of them to one specific sport. So he took his fifth year and played football at Monma. And he went the NFL route. And he was like jumping from training camp to training camp roster roster. It really took him eight, nine years to break through. Then when he broke through, he had big moments, big Super Bowl moments that led to an 11 million dollar a year contract. But not every path goes like Chris's. It was just really significant for me

because we shared in so many similar traits. He was a college midfielder as I was. And Bill ended up trading for him. But there's just so much risk. And I don't regret it at all because of where I am in my career on the professional side, on the ownership side of a sport that continues to emerge. And what I really love doing, which is storytelling and building businesses, I'm not sure if I would have been able to protect my head, to be honest. It's such a violence for it. And I wonder if you would have looked back and sort of, you know, life expectancy of an NFL player is not really long and miss this opportunity or regret becoming the greatest ever in your sport. I mean, the thing about sport that I don't think people realize,

And it's the same in any industry. There's a reset button at every level from junior high to high, high to college, college to pro, pro international, meaning you can be the best in class. And when you go to the next level, you're then at the bottom of the roster. And the difference between amateurism and professionalism, I know amateurism is changing now with name image and like this regulation at the college level, but just call it amateurism as college and below versus professional is you have people looking after you and holding. your hand as an amateur athlete. Professionally, no one does. And no one talks about it either. In fact, all we talk about is the path to pro.

We don't talk about the path as a pro to 35. And that's really what athletes want. They don't want to fall into the expected two and a half year cycle that all pro sports have. So it's uncharted territory and remains to be that way. But the reason I share that story is like, it just doesn't matter how good of a college player you are. What matters is like what you do and how you apply yourself consistently in your headspace

at the professional level. And that's what Bill has a sense for. And he was like, this guy didn't play college football, but he's got this work ethic that translates to longevity. And I think that we see, again, we see that in business. But that was, that's been a glaring characteristic that I try to identify even with the next-gen lacrosse player or athletes that I see today in other sports. How do you maintain that level of work ethic and sort of dedication and love for the sport through the grind, through the years? Yeah, it's, I think a lot of it is in eight, to be honest, and it's a dangerous path because to have that endless competitive streak, you've got to have a fire in your belly morning, noon, and night, and that's hard to reconcile

with because most of the time in sport, most of the time in life, you fail. And so those that have that competitive streak and that desire to be the best and that relentlessness, the doggedness, they also sit in that seemingly black hole of failure more than others. But that's also why they come out better more than others. And so you need therapy. You need like good sports psychology. And the trait that I'm describing to is really the 1% of the 1%. And you know it when you see that competitive because it's kind of a competitive asshole is what you have to become in sports at least. And what I've learned in business and in life is you've got to be a competitive compromiser. and that requires kindness, empathy, ingenuity,

but the same level of like aggressive competitive spirit, but it's shifted. In sports, it's binary. You can just tackle someone and win. Can't do that in life. Reading, playing, learning. Stellist lenses do more than just correct your child's vision. They slow down the progression of myopia.

So your child can continue to discover all the world has to offer through their own eyes. Light the path to a bright, future with stellar lenses for myopia control. Learn more at slur.com and ask your family eye care professional for SLR stellar lenses at your child's next visit. Talk to me a little bit more about what did you call it competitive? Competitive compromise. But yeah, I think the difference between sports and real life is compromise. And, you know, my position's unique because I got to build a league and play in it. Most athletes play in leagues, and then when they retire, they transition.

So the conversation is always transferable skill sets between sport and business, sport and life. I got to see, oh, damn, I actually think there might be better transferable skills in business back to sport. It's just that's reverse order that most people don't get. And it really helps with leadership. And essentially, what I'm referring to in sports and why people love it is that we get to sit for two hours and count on a binary outcome. Someone's going to win, someone's going to lose. And it's usually a derivative physicality. And then there's community and engagement tied to which team or which players you're

backing. So it's these like exits that we get from the reality of life. And we get to know that we're going to either win or lose. And life, if you approach it with a win or lose mentality, you're always going to lose. Because in business, put it this way, the network deal that I'm structuring right now, If we feel as a company that we won, that means that they lost. And there's certain aspects of the deal. You know, it's nuanced.

Same thing in sponsorship. Same thing with employment structured of agreements. And so you actually just want to build towards win-win. And that requires sometimes more conversations. It also requires more concessions. And that's what I mean by compromise. But if you think of that, like the only sustained. relationship is win-win.

If somebody's losing, if one party's losing in a relationship, it can't exist across time. And what will exist is resentment, which inevitably comes to the surface at some point, unless there is a, unless there's like narcissistic relational tendencies or manipulation that is also unhealthy, and I think that's your point. You know, you look at romantic relationship with platonic relationships, the compromise to me prevails. we're going to jump around a little bit here in terms of the podcast but you're the only player I can think of who started their own league what sort of surprised you the most about that journey how I got there I think because it was never part of my plan I wanted to model and emulate

my career really around Michael Jordan that's where competitively I ran into some challenges and I referenced sports psychology and therapy earlier to help get through it Michael Jordan, I think, was the greatest athlete, greatest competitor of all time. What makes you say that? Well, having read most of his biographies, having watched every piece of media around him that's been published across traditional mediums, I can't say I've watched every YouTube highlighted his, but knowing his team and then his track record. So if you just look at success side by side, every championship he was in, he won, and he was the MVP

of that championship. No one's ever done that. He was six for six at the highest level. And he probably would have been eight for eight if he didn't take a short sabbatical to go play baseball. That feat, to me, is just sheer dominance that you can win every championship you're in and be the MVP of that in a two-way sport where he plays offense and defense, where he was also a defensive player of the year, offensive player of the year.

So he just dominated. And I think those that are close to him, which I am not, would say that that was through his sheer competitive level day-to-day and everything that he did. Yes, I wanted to be Michael Jordan on the field and I want to be Michael Jordan off the field, which meant I was going to take an ownership position of professional lacrosse. But I thought it would be through the existing league. And then over 10 years of playing, I have this like, I think it's probably more innate than it is learned, but learning has really sparked that passion over the last 10 years.

years from me more than anything else is for media and storytelling and then what soon became business. And I think business was by necessity because professional lacrosse players don't make much money. So you have to figure out ancillary income streams. But I became a student of sports and sports business and sports media. And I kept running into almost at every turn obstacles and questions as to why Major League Lacrosse at the time was not doing what the U.S. FC was doing or MLS was doing or MLB was doing or MBA was doing and I would have those conversations with leadership and they were met with a lot of resistance and over 10-year period I had I think lobbied enough support from players and respect from players and even different you know outside

interest and then the intersection of my brother and I my brother's a serial entrepreneur and him finishing really his like third cycle of building businesses looking for a new one, we decided to look at the intersection of sports and entertainment, in particular a sport that I think I have subject matter expertise on and that's lacrosse. And that was how we got there. What are some of the lessons that you've learned about the business of sports that most people in the industry mess? If I could just say lessons in the business without really knowing if people miss

or I could refer to where MLL was missing is that we're actually just in the media business. It's all about distribution. You can have the greatest product in the world agnostic of industry. If no one sees it, it doesn't matter. And so if you want to monetize your product in the commercial space, which we're a commercial business, you've got to get the core audience eyeballs on it and engaged. And then you've got to go after net new eyeballs. And so everything starts with your distribution deal. Professional sports, team sports in America, dating back to the early in 1900s in our past time

as Major League Baseball. That was a ticket business, and that was an event business. It was just printing radio at the time. Television era of the 60s uplifted the NFL. Now you could say sports, especially emerging sports, are transformative because of the digital and social era that we're in. That's our media.

But you still have to access. the knowns of media, which are television, print, and call it audio now. Because that gives you, maybe not the scale that digital and social does, but it gives you the gold standard of respect and almost like eligibility of mindshare for sports fans around the world. I want to come back to a little bit about you as a player. I mean, you achieved basically being the Michael Jordan of your sport, right? How did you handle the pressure that comes along with that?

Or did you ever feel that pressure? Well, based on my standard of Michael Jordan, I did not achieve that. I've lost championships. And I certainly wasn't the player that he was relative to his sport. Well, just to put it in context, the greatest lacrosse player of all time. We can consider MJ the greatest basketball player of all time. Yeah. The unknown for me at the time, at the trick in a way, is that I never, I never focused on getting too far ahead of where I was at the time. And the time for me and the lessons in sport are really meditative. It's being present and completing the task at hand to the best of your ability. And so whether that was like every day against the wall shooting on that, I would have this approach that I wouldn't stop until I felt like I got as close to perfect as possible.

And so it wasn't like timed. It wasn't a number of reps. It was just out there because I wanted to be great. And then when I was playing, whether it's high school college professionally internationally, I always wanted to be the best version of myself and then the best version on that. on that team, and then the best player on the field, which then quickly became best in the world or best in college or best in high school. So it was like that process to me unfolded organically, if that makes any sense. I didn't, because I do see kids that say, I want to be the best in the world, or I want to be the best player in high school. And they're not even close to being

the best player on their midfield line yet. So I stacked them. think appropriately. It's not that I ignored or I never put a, you know, a goal that I wanted to be the greatest player ever. I did. But I focused on how to get there versus just saying, I want to be there. Were you always the hardest worker on the teams that you were on? I mean, I think that's, that's relative, or I shouldn't say it is relative, but mostly subjective. I believe that I was. And there were probably guys that thought that they worked harder than me, but they maybe only thought of it linearly. They worked harder than me in the weight room and worked harder than me maybe on the field. But why I think that my meter was always full is I never

stopped thinking about it. And even to this day, I think what helps drive our business is that Mike and I think about it all the time. And it's a blessing and a curse. But I'll be watching, you know, Squid Game and thinking about how Squid Game became the most popular title on Netflix, I immediately started thinking about the business, and I'm reading about it and seeing a simultaneous release in 190 countries and 31 different closed captions and 13 different dubovers, all that once. First time they ever did that, so they eliminated the language barrier, it became a universal title overnight. What are the lessons in sports? And so that's what I mean. Whether I was playing, I was like watching Chris Paul make a pass

with his weak hand off balance, what's that lesson in lacrosse? How can I emulate that? It wasn't just what I was doing on the field. It was what I was doing really in everything in life. I think that's so important. I don't think you'll ever be exceptional at anything you're not sort of thinking about constantly. When you were practicing, was it sort of regimented or was it more creative? It was creative at first and then it became very regimented. The way that I think about my career is actually in three phases, I started playing the game when I was 12, and all the way up until my sophomore year in high school, I was playing because I had a passion for it. It was fun. I loved it. The fun and the love didn't go away. It got superseded by competitiveness. And my sophomore year,

I started getting a lot of eyeballs and recruits, recruiting letters and stuff. And so then I started really like regimenting gamifying in many cases doing whatever I could timing counting everything that I did and that was both tiresome but it was also in my opinion the fastest path to like high growth improvement and that lasted really all the way until I was about 28 to 30 in that range that's when I started getting injured and I think what would happen is like sustainably you can only be that competitive in a contact sport the way that I played for so long without finally breaking down. And the breaking down was my body and then my mind because of my body. That's what I got in, you know, had surgeries, got the sports psychology, got into therapy. And then the back portion

of my career, called it 31 to 35, has been more reflective and more appreciative. I've had to recharge that compete level at moments, but I could also shut it off. And I could also play for fun and shut that off too. And so you think about athletes when they're at their best is maybe the ability to have an overarching approach that is within their control. You're still going. I mean, you're still playing. What things do you sort of do to take care of your body now? Like what nutrition habits do you have? What do you do from a physical standpoint to keep it going? Is there like a Tom Brady stretching sort of pliability regimen going on here. What do you have on the back end here?

Well, I just retired after the season. I had a really good season, which actually didn't make it difficult to retire for me because I had made that decision at least personally in advance of the season because of the toll of building the league and playing in it. Physically, my body continuing to break down. And just mentally I was, I was not there as I used to be. Coming out of the pandemic and building the bubble and playing in that was difficult as well. But I felt like it was time to really, like, centralize my efforts and drive lacrosse forward.

So it turns out I had one of my best seasons as a 35-year-old plane injured. And that's, I think, largely because I knew, and I was the only one who knew that I was emptying out the tank every week. weekend. But to sustain a career into your 30s, even into your 20s as a hard charging professional athlete that's in a contact sport, you always have to take care of your body. Sleep, number one, hydrate, number two, eat number three, stay on your workouts, number four, stay on your skill, number four, four point two. And the reason I say that is like, you know, as you get in your late 20s and 30s, the margin for improvement on skill is really thin. And in fact, like, you're able to tap into skill better if you're smarter that you weren't able to utilize. You didn't even

know you had, so to speak. But to be able to play well in your career, you just have to care your body in your mind. In season and off season, always omnipresent there. How do you take care of your mind? Go deeper on that. Well, taking care of your mind starts to taking care of your body, because your body will let your mind down as an athlete. And I think that's probably the case for anyone, really. So there's like, there's tactics, tangible steps that will help your mentals by eating well, sleeping while, staying hydrated. That's one.

Number two is, you know, really understanding why the way you are. and in particular I find it very relational like what makes you happy what makes you sad it makes you agitated what gives you your anxiety and stress and understanding whether that's attachment theory whether that is the way that you know you have overlapped your career with your life and what are the upside and downsides there the way to unpack it the best way to unpack it is with counsel, whether that's for athletes in sports psychology and therapy and couples therapy, I think that in sports, it's a great place to analyze how we improve. No one that's an eye at having a shooting coach, a head coach, an assistant coach, a strength coach, a medical team,

doctors, physios, physical therapists, trainers. They're all there to help because they're experts. Why not tap into if we want to improve our mental health experts in that field? Well, it's been stereotyped and stigmatized through modern media and, you know, slower turn advancements as to why. But I think we're close to breaking through that obstacle. When you were playing, did you ever feel like somebody else was better than you? Like there was a better player than you? That's a great question. So the truth is that I didn't. But I always felt threatened by that. And I was always comparing myself to others. And that was the bad side of it. The comparison was the bad side. Yeah, because you're constantly a being. You're constantly

like judging other people and, you know, looking at their stats versus yours. And it's like unhealthy because that wasn't the best path to continued growth personally, which is what I was describing earlier. But that was just there because I was a competitive asshole. And, uh, and so the, you know, the tricky part about sports is, you know, the balance of confidence versus cockiness versus, you know, hints of narcissism around I am the best and I'm the best because I just believe I'm the best or I'm telling you I'm the best. Like, it's highly subjective. You can't get there without like fully buying into that. And you can't fully buy into that without really putting in all the work that you can and having the results on the field. So, you know, I see, I see, you know,

people trying to convince others that they are or convince themselves, but it's, it's a holistic approach. And then, and then irrational belief because a lot of times I wasn't, probably very few times I was. But if I didn't buy into that belief, then I wouldn't have continued to improve like I did. So almost sort of like, if I were to paraphrase, confidence comes from putting in the work and the results and at times having an irrational belief in yourself. Yes, that's right. And the ability to persevere through failure, I think there's a misconception out there that successful people have faced fewer obstacles than most. It's quite the opposite.

I think what makes successful people or successful athletes, I'll just use that as an example, is they have failed in many cases more than most people because they've had the audacity to try things that are out of their wheelhouse more regularly. They take up, they have high risk. You know, we'll continue with Michael Jordan famously cut from the varsity team. He was a sophomore. That's not not the part of the story.

in a time where like no sophomores made varsity. But like the story is like, oh, he was cut from the basketball team. Well, he played JV and he was the best player in JV. But he had the audacity to try out for the varsity team, then get cut, take it personally, and come back way better than had he made the varsity team his sophomore year. So in hindsight, it's actually those high risk, the volume of risk taking met by the resilience and the ability to get up and be better because of that failure, a lot of great

athletes take it personally. And those are things that you also have to shed when you get out of sport and into life and business is take things less personally. But in sport, things are very personal. And I think that, in a way, drives that outcome that we see with a lot of athletes. How do you do that in a game or sort of after a game? Like you make a mistake. How do you put that out of your mind, go on to the next play, the next series, or the next game? Like how what is the mental process you go through to sort of, you know, in Belichick's words, we're on to Cincinnati, right? Like what is that process that you're sort of drawing? I think every athlete will tell you it's easier said than done. But it is the key to success and consistency over time is your ability to

have resilience in a game. I think what makes sports great is that you can have a poor game and then use the week to recalibrate. So you go back and you practice and then you get the benefit of time, which time is a healing mechanism. To do that in a 60-minute game is a lot more difficult. It requires, I think, a high level of mental aptitude and mental training. So I'll give you one example. It's called a rebound goal. I think golf gets it right, because golf is a really challenging sport, and that's the genesis of rebound goals. An example of a rebound goal in golf is an up and down, where literally Phil Mickelson has made tens of, if not hundreds of millions of dollars being famous for hitting miraculous shots, which, by the way, it's a miraculous shot because he had

a shitty tee shot. But they celebrate an up and down and that's a rebound goal because it's coming off of a bad shot. In most sports, if you have a bad shot, what do you think the next shot is going to be? Bad again, bad again, bad again. And that's what we're trying to fix is your suggestion. So creating in team sports a lot more difficult than golf because they, because of what kind of just said in team sports, there's more people on the field and there's there's, there's more actions and reactions that are out of your control. So I always focused on what are my rebound opportunities off of a bad play that are within my control. And it's like a lot of it was like effort getting back on defense. I took a bad shot or turn the ball over. I would stay on the

field to try to like get that mental rep back where a lot of people make a bad shot or turnover and they run off the field and they sub out. So not knowing that I can't count on the ball will be back on my stick, again, can I go stay on the field and play defense against the guy who does have the ball in a stick and build that confidence back up? That's a rebound goal. Control the controllables, right? What can I do right now? What's the next sort of thing to get me back on track? It's almost like remembering the basics, right? So it's like you get lost, you make a bad play. And then it's like, okay, I don't want to get fancy. I don't want to get complicated. I just want to get back to like what are the core things I need to pay attention to you.

Yeah. But, you know, the other thing is, you know, step one is that awareness. Step two is then adjusting the neuroscience. And that's where athletes really struggles. Like, I know, you can almost zoom out. I know what's happening to me right now. I'm losing confidence because I made two bad plays in a row. And I know that I can turn this around. But I have this feeling in my body. I'm running hot and I'm ruminating and I can't get out of it. That's like real biochemical takeover. There's science behind that. So there are also techniques that you can do breathing, you know, actually getting an ice towel on your neck to like shift the chemistry that's happening in your body. Your body actually is getting hot when you're getting angry. And I found that those tactics actually resemble a lot of in basketball when you get on the free throw line. You go through your routine. That is meditative. It's a reset for everything that's happened up to that point. So you can just put the ball in the hoop from close range,

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I want to come back to MJ and sort of competitiveness and getting cut. Like, where does competitiveness come from? It seems to a lot of people, I mean, Tom Brady might be the counter example to this, but, you know, it seems to come from anger in a lot of people. Or, I mean, even Brady, a huge chip on his shoulder, right? Like gets to Michigan, can't even, you know, start. Drew Henson comes in. he's like switching duties with him like talk to me about where that drive comes from for you

and where you see it come from for other people I don't think that it comes from anger because I think operating with anger isn't the best path and if you look at best in class in theory operating from anger I have a hard time thinking that that was the source I do think that mentally elevating doubt and fear is probably the better way to describe how these top athletes think. They're fear motivated, fear of not being the best, fear of losing, and fear of not performing well. It's a huge motivator.

And so I think that that's probably it versus anger. And I think that that can come from a number of things. It comes from the way that we're raised, product of our environment, socioeconomic disparity from athlete to athlete, again, like all things that differ from one person to the next. And then I think there's, I think there's gene pool as well, whether you're a, you know, a descendant from a conqueror or an emperor like Genghis Khan or not. that's a crazy theory, but like that, like, I think that that conquering spirit performs quite well in sport. Where did yours come from? I think it's probably a combination of kind of like the Rabel family tree coming over from Lebanon as immigrants and the work ethic of my great grandparents, my grandparents into my father that was demonstrated to me as a kid.

kid all the way through to today. The fear-based motivation really began to trigger for me in that high school kind of phase two that I had mentioned. And so I think it began to form as I started tasting success because success was so good and failure was so bad that I really wanted to skew toward the former as much as possible. And that was binary for me, because in sport, you can block out of everything else in life. And so it's like a breeding ground for that type of motivation. So that's where I think is a combination of having supreme work ethic bestowed upon me from my family heritage, blessed with strong athletic genes. And I celebrate the notion that I have performed beyond my, probably like my projected capabilities.

You know, when my younger self may have taken offense to it. Like, what does that mean? I'm not as good of an athlete as I think I am. But I think that we should all feel good about our lives if we out kick our coverage or punch above our weight class. Well, one of the challenges in a team sport is that you're sort of defined by your wins, right? And the greatest players get paid the most and they also have to mesh with their teammates. How do you think about contracts that sort of incentivize individual success and

not team success as a player being on the team and the best in the league, but also as an owner of a league and trying to create the best product on the field? I mean, it's a huge dilemma in sports and teams and ownership groups do it differently. But I totally see the paradox of incentivizing why receivers based on number of catches and touchdown scored and then trying to address the sideline issues of the quarterback not throwing to them and then, you know, having a temper tantrum. Like you get, you understand it. And then it's distracting to the overarching goal of the team, which is winning. I think the Patriots do a really good job of building incentives around starting and playing in games and they don't incentivize based off

of number of catches or touchdowns or yards past. So you can still build, an incentive structure to performance, which is kind of the business behind the scenes and what agents are going to want to push for. So as an athlete being represented by management, you want them to create best in class terms in your contract. And then you walk away and you go, well, these might be at odds with the team. So that's just pro sports. And frankly, there's that in business too. Sales figures within your BDorg are incentivized. And you want the, entire sales team to collaborate and share on deals and share contacts and so on and so forth. So that's where like good managers and good leadership comes in, whether it's the head coach,

assistant coaches to, you know, your executive team down and like building a really strong culture so that you celebrate individual performance, but individuals widely recognize that their success contributes to the companies or the teams. Talk to me a little bit about what it means to be a captain of a team, like leading a team as a player. Well, the person you should interview who's best suited for this is Sam Walker, who wrote the captain's class, and he's studied the best teams and dynasties in the world. And he'll tell you that the best captains are most responsible for the success. of dynasties and the best teams in professional sports history around the globe. So he ran this study around the best teams ever, most championships, dynasties in

eras across sport, across gender. And he came down to like 10 teams and he found something he wasn't looking for, which was a singular captain across each of those teams that was a water bottle carrier, which was often not the person responsible for top performance. And he references Pele, for example, that never had or was never given the responsibility to Captain Brazil because they always viewed it as like, why give him that extra responsibility when he's got enough pressure?

He's got to score three goals a game. Like, let's get out of his way. Let's get out of his way. Yeah, it doesn't mean you're the best player. Yeah. And I think like Western culture gets it wrong in sports for that, for that reason. Like, I grew up in a system where best player was captain. And we should think critically around who is best to be captain, where you're leading the team, you're empathizing with the team, you're bridging the comms from the coaches to the teams, in some cases, teams to coach to GM. And that requires a lot of time and a lot of individual and group conversation. And time must not be discounted because time is at a premium when it comes to pro sports and individual performance and all the stuff we just talked about. It's,

it's a really important question because your team's success relies on your choice for captain. I want to switch gears a little bit and get into a little bit more personal questions if you're okay with that. Sure. What have you struggled with in life? A lot. I struggle every day. So there's not one thing I can think about. The first word that came to mind was balance. And I've thought a lot about it. Spent a lot of time around balance. What does that mean to you? Well, it means that like happiness, there isn't a moment or a time in your life or a place to be where you'll feel more balanced than you do now. I think the perspective, at least that I subscribe to around balance and happiness, it's more of the frequency of those moments, small moments. It gets you feeling whole in the intensity of one.

You win a championship, it's amazing. but it's actually just not as great as it's led up to be. And most athletes and coaches, like a day or a week later, like, okay, on to the next one. So it's a frequency of moments of happiness, a frequency of moments of feeling balance and secure. And frequency, meaning that there are a lot of moments where there isn't. But if you can get more than half, then that's a good place to be. So I think where I struggle with the most probably just talking this out is dealing with the lows and knowing that there's always going to be the other side of it if you continue to persevere.

When do you feel the greatest sense of inner peace? In the morning, I think, before the day starts. And then sometimes mid-morning, after the day is started and I get a break, that's probably like the time where I feel the most inner peace. Are you alone? Typically, yes. And it doesn't matter where you are, like in nature, in your car. It's just that inner, like you're alone inner peace.

That's right. It's the reset, the start of a day. You know, sleep is really important in that regard. And it doesn't happen every morning because there's sometimes where you wake up with your head on fire with a bunch of stuff to do. But in those moments where you do have time and space and using it wisely, that's where I have the most innerpiece. When are you most likely to lose control of your thoughts? Pretty regularly, actually, I struggle with ADHD. In today's technological, world, there are things happening to me, not just in my own head, but around me with hardware that distracts me. It's a big challenge of mine is being present. And then the flip side, embracing some of the benefits of the way that my mind tends to work, which shoots off and sometimes a dozen directions at the same time, helps me. these solve for problems that I think are multi-dimensional or abstract. So it's, again, that

balance of what got me here is also making me feel this way. And so let me use the strengths and also acknowledge the weaknesses and care for those and help cure those. It's so, like ADHD in society is so strange to me because we tend to focus only on the weaknesses without the corresponding advantages that you gain from that? Yeah, no doubt. So I grew up learning differences and I believe that my learning differences ended up being a gift because the way that I've had to learn in a traditional education model, which is very linear, was almost through R&D, like a, and course of action. And in some cases, like acting out. a history lesson helped me retain the information. And so schools that specialize in educating

children with learning differences, whether it's somewhere on the spectrum to dyslexia, to ADHD, to auditory processing disorder, I think they actually get it right. And it's led to a very entrepreneurial environment for me, where I actually love to problem solve, and I like to question the status quo. Even like the quick snare at like I retired and you know maybe i'll come back is a challenge to the status quo like why in sports if you if you want to take a break do you do you have to like end it all well it's just because it's all it is a commoditized business athletes are commoditized however like it just doesn't need to be that way like gronkowski needed two and a half seasons to heal and now he's playing great again yeah and i'm not for the

record i'm not planning to come out of retirement but i do think that the systems arcane um and it's worth talking about. So, so that, I'm constantly, and I think it's because of the way that my brain functions, constantly challenging status quo. What are you afraid of? I'm fearfully motivated on the field. I think fear kicks in in a lot of other aspects of life. I feel that it is more unhealthy than motivating. I'm not afraid of anything at the moment. But I've spent seven years in therapy, I do weekly therapy. I think that I have the mammoths on my shoulders that we all do, critical negative self-talk, etc. What therapy does is just kind of like dissipate a lot of that or lower the volume and gives you perspective that like those mammoths never go away. The goal is to

actually just shrink them in size. And that I think helps with fear of one thing. or another. What habits are you trying to break right now? Phone habit, maybe some caffeine kicks, critical self-talk, those types of things. What are you most stressed? I'll stick with time and space. Usually like the three to five o'clock range in the afternoon, because I never get everything done in a day, never. And I think that's just, that's okay. It's called entrepreneurship. And I'm at this stage of my life, I'm really trying to explore relationships more and the enjoyment of life more, which conflicts with, you know, 80-hour work weeks.

So that like bottleneck is at 3 to 5 p.m. range because I don't stop work at 5. But like you start thinking, all right, if I need to get out of here by 6 or 7, I've got to start jamming now. And then looking at a calendar from time to time where there's 12 or 13 meetings in a day, then you're like, fuck, this is. going to be a stressful one. What's most important to remind yourself in those moments when you're feeling that stress? That there are tactics to get out of it. I mentioned, you know, meditation, breathing, accessing cold ice. Yeah, that was an interesting one. You mentioned putting cold ice

around your neck. So similar to schools that specialize in educating children with learning differences, I think that certain therapy that is focused on working with certain people on the DSM call it, it's actually like really good therapy for anyone. So example is dialectical behavioral therapy. It's called DBT. It is a process often worked through with people with personality disorders. But it's very tactical because people with personality disorders are often dealing with disassociation. But the difference between a personality disorder and someone who doesn't, at least from a prescription standpoint, non-medical, is like we have the same thoughts. We just are able to step away from it. It's that critical inner voice that I was just

mentioning. Someone who experiences disassociation has that same thought that we do, and then it becomes reality. So DBT will give tactics to stepping out of it. One of them, is changing your body temperature. So, like, putting your hand in the freezer or, like, having an ice pack and just cooling off your head, taking a walk. And, you know, meditating, things like that. What does a walk do?

Reactivates your biochemistry and your body. It's, like, begins to release endorphins, which helps shift some of that mindset. Some of the most stimulating, and I think breakthrough thoughts that Mike and I have are on hikes. Yeah, I find it's a great way to think. reflect and also just generate new ideas. I love walking meetings. It feels it feels so much

healthier and just looser and more natural. Yeah, the only thing you have to be careful of is meetings running long and then all of a sudden you're you're missing others. I was there during COVID. I would take most of my meetings walking with headphones in and then I found out I was bumping up against other meetings so I had to be more thoughtful. What keeps you up at night? Fortunately, not much. I can sleep really well. It's a benefit. I can go to sleep really well. Oh, you don't stay asleep? I don't stay asleep.

So maybe the question is, like, what keeps you from sleeping? Do you have the entrepreneur's curse of, like, waking up at 4 a.m. or 3 a.m. and just being ready to go? Literally, you should have stopped at 4 a.m. like, I did it this morning. I did the morning. Like, I can count on waking off at 4 a.m. almost every day. And I think it's for different reasons, but at different moments. Right now, a lot is going on in my life because I've retired. I'm bi-coastal in a big moment for our business in transition from year three to four. So I'm having trouble staying asleep.

But going to sleep, again, has never been an issue. Luckily. What are you most optimistic about? The future of our business right now. I'm really optimistic about where the PLL is going and the people that we have here, the talent, it's not just in the workforce, but on the field. It's what I spend most of my time thinking about is our business that we're building. And final question, I always try to end with the same question, but what do you want other people to say about you when you're no longer here?

Oh, man, that's really difficult. It's like writing your own obituary. I think that the one word comes to mind, it's impact. And impact, fill in the blank, but I hope. to have an impact on the next generation, impact on the current, I don't want to call it current generation, I just want to call it, impact on people that I know and people that I share an experience with. That, to me, is at the highest level what we're hoping to do in business, relationships, interactions of all sorts. That's a great place to end this.

Thank you so much, Paul. Yeah, thanks for having me. I enjoyed it. The Knowledge Project is produced by the team at Farnham Street. I'd love to get your advice on how to make this the most valuable podcast you listen to. Email me at shane at fs.blog. You can learn more about the show and find past episodes at fs.blog slash podcast. To get a transcript of this episode, go to fs.blog slash tribe or check out the show notes. Can you do me a small favor?

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