Podcast appearances and mentions of cindy kuzma

"I never once felt like myself while I was running in college," shares Val Rubio Meza on the Lane 9 Podcast. But she certainly found her stride with running groups, and longer distances, after her collegiate running days were over. While she specialized in the 400m in high school and college, and couldn't fathom doing a 6 mile training run, she eventually gravitated toward 13.1 and 26.2 mile races. She found running groups in Denver that she connected with, and felt supported by, which helped her find joy and fun in the sport again.  Val shares how she increased her endurnace to run longer distances, the story of her first marathon in Indianapolis (where she ran a 3:02), and the three world majors that followed. As she shares, she learned "to respect the marathon", and eventually ran a 2:55 at CIM in December 2024.  Follow Val @valrunsdenver on IG.  Mentioned on the show: SELF article by Cindy Kuzma, "Sorry, but running without energy gels isn't the flex you think" Go to Lane9project.org/directory to find a clinician or coach to work with as you navigate post-collegiate running, REDs, and/or fueling for your sport. Our directory includes RDs, DPTs, MDs, therapists, and more.  Get in touch via Lane9Project.org/contact to bring Lane 9 resources to your team or clients. We'd love to work with you! Follow @lane9project on IG, and get all show notes at Lane9project.org. 

This week Women's Running Stories is taking a break and bringing you an episode of Starting Line 1928. This outstanding podcast features in-depth interviews with women running pioneers. The episode I chose features Cheryl Toussaint, the meet director of the Colgate Women's Games and an Olympic silver medalist. Toussaint grew up in Bedford-Stuyvesant, Brooklyn, and began running with the Atoms Track Club at age 13. There, Coach Fred Thompson nurtured her athletic talent—and encouraged her academically. Cheryl earned an academic scholarship to New York University and kept training with the Atoms, eventually making the Olympics in 1972; she competed in Munich in the 800 meters and 4x400 relay, where she helped the team make the final—and eventually, win silver—despite losing a shoe. She also began assisting Thompson with his other venture, the Colgate Women's Games, and took over as meet director when he retired in 2014. It's the longest running track and field series for girls and young women in the United States, open to all young women from elementary school through college and beyond, and has launched the careers of many other Olympians and successful women in other fields.  Starting Line 1928 is an oral history project dedicated to preserving the stories of women pioneers in distance running. The project chronicles the individuals who paved the way for a post-Title IX world. Guests have included Olympians (like here), steeplechase pioneers, ultrarunning champions, coaches, and those who fought hard for women to have new opportunities in the sport. Starting Line 1928 was founded in 2020 by Cindy Kuzma, Cara Hawkins-Jedlicka, Freddi Carlip, and Johanna Gretschel and is supported by the Theodore Corbitt Institute for Running History Research. Learn More about Starting Line 1928 Website: StartingLine1928.com Instagram @startingline1928 Twitter @startline1928 Email: startingline1928@gmail.com Learn More about the Colgate Women's Games Website: colgatewomensgames.com Listen to the Live Episode featuring the Native Women Run team and NWR Founder Verna Volker womensrunningstories.com/live-event-native-women-run-team-at-the-2024-chicago-marathon-expo

This is a live recording from Saturday, October 13 at the Chicago Marathon Expo. WRS host Cherie Turner teamed up with Cindy Kuzma of the Starting Line 1928 podcast to co-host a conversation with members of the Native Women Run (NWR) running the 2024 Chicago Marathon—Angel Tadytin, Birdie Wermy, Jessica Louis, and Amber Henderson—along with NWR founder Verna Volker. We heard the running stories of these women: why they run marathons, what inspired them to want to run as part of the NWR team, the importance of representation and community, and what their strategies and goals were for the 2024 Chicago Marathon. The conversation was thoughtful, insightful, and inspiring. Verna Volker is from the Navajo Nation, and she is the founder of NWR. She grew up in the Blanca canyon area of New Mexico, but currently lives in Minneapolis, Minnesota, with her husband and four children. She founded NWR in January 2018 due to the lack of representation of native women in the running world; her aim is for NWR to create space for and elevate native women runners. Jessica Louis is a Navajo woman from New Mexico. She is a stay-at-home educator, and the Chicago Marathon marks her second 26.2-mile journey. Amber Henderson is from the Turtle Mountain Chippewa tribe in South Dakota, Henderson is a tenured associate professor of management and interim department chair of Finance, Banking and Financial Services, Accounting and Business Law at Northern State University. The 2024 Chicago Marathon was her debut in the distance. Angel Tadytin is also from the Navajo Nation and works as a school social worker. She is also part of the NWR leadership team. The Chicago Marathon was her third marathon, after Boston and NYC. Birdie Wermy is a member of the Cheyenne and Arapaho Tribes of Oklahoma now residing in Oregon. Wermy serves as a behavioral health project manager at the NW Portland Area Indian Health Board. The 2024 Chicago Marathon was her seventh marathon. Starting Line 1928 is an oral history project dedicated to preserving the stories of women pioneers in distance running. Through longform interviews and profiles, the podcast chronicles their fight to break down barriers and achieve equality. It was founded in 2020 by Cindy Kuzma, Cara Hawkins-Jedlicka, Freddi Carlip, and Johanna Gretschel and is supported by the Theodore Corbitt Institute for Running History Research. How to Keep Up with Native Women Run Instagram: @native_women_run Website: nativewomenrunning.com How to Keep Up with Verna Volker Instagram: @hozhorunner4 How to Keep Up with Amber Henderson Instagram: @amber_amh How to Keep Up with Birdie Wermy Instagram: @redrace_oregon How to Keep Up with Jessica Louis Instagram: @_tso.lo_ How to Keep Up with Angel Tadytin Instagram: @angels_ventures How to Keep Up with Cindy Kuzma Instagram: @cindykuzma Ways to Connect with Starting Line 1928 Instagram: @startingline1928 Twitter: @startline1928 Website: startingline1928.com Support Our Supporters This episode is supported by Lagoon, maker of exceptional pillows: lagoonsleep.com. Use the code WRS15 for 15% off your first Lagoon order. Ways to Connect and Engage with Women's Running Stories Instagram: @womensrunningstories Twitter: @WomenRunStories Website: womensrunningstories.com Email host Cherie: clouiseturner@gmail.com Women's Running Stories is a member of the Evergreen network: https://evergreenpodcasts.com/ Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

In this episode, Amanda, Nick, Carrie, and Cindy discuss the importance of mental skills coaching in athletics, emphasizing the need to coach the whole human. They explore the role of mental resilience, the significance of support systems for injured athletes, and the importance of celebrating milestones in athletic journeys. The conversation also touches on the journey of writing the book 'Rebound' and the various mantras that can help athletes maintain a positive mindset. Ultimately, they highlight the essence of resilience in sports and the need for a supportive community. -------------------------------- (00:00) Introduction and Banter (04:35) The Importance of Coaching the Whole Human (19:38) The Journey to Writing 'Rebound' (24:58) Collaboration and Storytelling in Recovery (26:55) Understanding Athlete Needs (29:43) Mantras for Mental Resilience (35:27) Coaching Mindset and Athlete Support (39:27) Supporting Athletes Through Injuries (47:04) Celebrating Milestones in Athletic Journeys (52:19) The Importance of Resilience in Athletics (58:05) Interview Questions --------------------------------------- Carrie Jackson is a performance and mental training expert, a Certified Mental Performance Consultant, and the author of On Top of Your Game: Mental Skills to Maximize Your Athletic Performance. She's one of the world's foremost authorities on the mental and emotional challenges of recovering from injury. She co-authored the book Rebound: Train Your Mind to Bounce Back Stronger from Sports Injuries, and is the co-host of the widely regarded podcast The Injured Athletes Club.    With a bachelor's in psychology, a masters in sport psychology, and over 2 decades of experience in sport and performance psychology, Carrie's thought leadership on mental training is the gold standard in the athletic world. Her insights have been featured in multiple media outlets including Runner's World, Outside Magazine, New York Times, Washington Post, U.S. News and World Report, and Huffington Post to name a few.     Carrie works with athletes and exercisers of all levels from recreational athletes to elite and professional athletes competing at national and international levels. Between her one-on-one coaching and team consulting, she has worked with thousands of athletes and coaches on mastering their mindsets so they can perform with less pressure, more consistency, and enjoy the process. Through her coaching programs she brings mindset training tools that help shift focus from anxiety and self-doubt to resilience and confidence impacting business and life too! Athletes experiencing performance anxiety can put so much pressure on themselves that they sabotage their own performance. Carrie is on a mission to help athletes challenge their limiting beliefs, regain confidence in their gifts and fall in love with their sport again.  Cindy Kuzma is a Chicago-based journalist with a specialty in sports, fitness, and health. Her work has appeared in Runner's World, SELF, The New York Times, Women's Running, Chicago Magazine, and many other print and online publications. In addition to Rebound, she's the co-author (with Neely Spence Gracey) of Breakthrough Women's Running: Dream Big and Train Smart. She's completed 23 marathons and also likes to lift heavy things or fumble awkwardly through yoga classes every once in a while. She studied journalism at Baylor University and has a master's degree from Northwestern University's Medill School of Journalism, along with additional coursework in anatomy, physiology, and biology. She lives in the Andersonville neighborhood with her husband Matt and two cats/interns, Mushaboom and Tuna. Carrie Website Cindy Website Injured Athletes Club Carrie IG Cindy Kuzma IG ---------------------------------- Contact us: Amanda - ⁠@amanda_katzz⁠ Nick - ⁠@nklastava⁠ Buy Me A Coffee Email - betweentwocoaches@gmail.com

Injuries happen to most athletes. And when injured, it's not just the physical recovery that can be challenging, but also the mental load of navigating that injury can be just as difficult.  Authors Cindy Kuzma and Carrie Jackson have created one of the best resources for helping athletes bounce back from injury with their book "Rebound," and their online group and podcast entitled, "The Injured Atheltes Club."   In this episode, we talk about their own experiences with injuries, how they came up with their famous tagline "Recovery is Now Your Sport," as well as review mental skills and tools to help guide you from injury to a comeback.  Have a listen! https://injuredathletesclub.com  

“ A lot of times you're stronger than you think you are. You just keep going. You don't necessarily have to see all the way to the finish line. You just keep finding that next step.”   In the seventh season of The Injured Athletes Club podcast, we—mental skills coach Carrie Jackson and journalist Cindy Kuzma—continue to delve into athletes' resilience in overcoming injuries.    We kick off with a can't-miss interview with pro quarterback Alex Smith, who shares his journey of returning to football after a severe leg injury and life-threatening infection—and then, a few years later, taking on the 200-mile Pan-Mass bike ride with Team OOFOS, raising money for cancer research.   Alex underscores the vital role of emotional support amidst the recovery process. He discusses the key moments that shaped his trajectory, including his stay at a care facility for wounded veterans. He highlights the power of setting attainable—and even seemingly unattainable—goals. And, he shares the symbol of resilience his wife presented to him after his return to the sport: a Lombardi trophy replica made out of his leg's metallic fixator.   Resources/links: Alex's Instagram More about him from OOFOS The trophy his wife gave him   You can subscribe to The Injured Athletes Club on Spotify, Stitcher, Apple Podcasts, Audible, Amazon Music, or wherever you get your podcasts, and if you like what you hear, please leave us a rating or a review in Apple podcasts. That helps other injured athletes find the show.   To access more resources for injured athletes: Buy Rebound: Train Your Mind to Bounce Back Stronger from Sports Injuries —now available as an audiobook! Access webinar videos, injury sources, and more great resources for injured athletes while supporting our work Join The Injured Athletes Club mailing list, for news and updates Join The Injured Athletes Club Facebook group, for support and camaraderie Like The Injured Athletes Club Podcast Facebook page, for the latest episodes Email us at hello@injuredathletesclub.com with questions, guest suggestions, or other feedback   DISCLAIMER: This content is for educational & informational use only and & does not constitute medical advice. Do not disregard, avoid or delay obtaining medical or health related advice from your health-care professional because of something you may have heard in an episode of this podcast. You should not rely on this information as a substitute for professional medical advice, diagnosis or treatment. Please consult with a qualified medical professional for proper evaluation & treatment. Guests who speak on this podcast express their own opinions, experiences, and conclusions, and The Injured Athletes Club podcast hosts nor any company providing financial support endorses or opposes any particular treatment option discussed in the episodes of this podcast and are not responsible for any actions or inactions of listeners based on the information presented. The use of any information provided is solely at your own risk.  

In this episode we sit down with the brilliant health journalist and seasoned marathoner, Cindy Kuzma. Together, we unravel the insights from Cindy's recent New York Times article, "Running vs. Walking: Which Is Better for Lasting Health?" Dive deep into the discourse surrounding this age-old debate and discover the surprising truths about the impact of running and walking on your overall well-being. Gain exclusive behind-the-scenes perspectives from Cindy herself and explore the science-backed benefits that can transform your fitness journey. Don't miss this exclusive conversation that promises to reshape your understanding of the age-old question: to run or to walk for lasting health?SPONSORS: New Balance released the Fresh Foam x 1080v13 with a new outsole design to increase forefoot stiffness and enhanced the rocker profile for the smoothest transition ever. You can benefit from their innovation by getting yourself a pair which uses a new Fresh Foam X compound. I've noticed an increased energy return, with more cushion and less weight making my long runs more comfortable. Comfort aside I also love the look and how versatile this shoe is, check out the 1080v13 at newbalance.com.Runners, get ready to go the extra mile on the Peloton Tread with walking, running, hiking, bootcamp classes, and more. Whether you want cardio or strength training, Peloton Tread will get you moving toward your next goal. Now up to $500 off Peloton purchases. Shop Peloton Tread today at onepeloton.com.FOLLOW NYRR: Instagram | Facebook | X | TikTok SUPPORT: Support the Set the Pace podcast! If you enjoy the show, please subscribe and leave a rating and review on Apple Podcasts or Spotify. The content of the podcast is provided for informational purposes only and is not intended to serve as medical or professional advice. You should consult your physician or other health care professional before starting any fitness program, particularly if you are pregnant, you have a chronic condition, or if you or your family have a history of heart disease or high blood pressure or have ever experienced chest pain.DISCLAIMERSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

WOW. It's been a WEEK. We are excited to welcome Mental Performance Consultant, Carrie Jackson, the co-author (with previous podcast guest, Cindy Kuzma), of Rebound, who shares her tips on managing stress and challenges in running and beyond. We hope that runners and non-runners find this conversational helpful. Here's a little about Carrie: Carrie Cheadle lives just north of San Francisco, California and has been working on the performance of teams, organizations, and individual athletes and exercisers since 2002. She is a Certified Mental Performance Consultant through the Association for Applied Sport Psychology and author of the book On Top of Your Game: Mental Skills to Maximize Your Athletic Performance and co-author of Rebound: Train Your Mind to Bounce Back Stronger from Sports Injuries as well as the co-host of the podcast The Injured Athletes Club. She has been interviewed as an expert resource for articles that have appeared in publications such as Outside Magazine, Shape Magazine, Men's Fitness, Women's Health, Runner's World, Women's Running Magazine, Bicycling Magazine, New York Times, and HuffingtonPost. She is a sought-after speaker and has spoken and consulted with many collegiate teams, cycling teams, and triathlon teams, as well as corporate organizations including CamelBak. She's also been featured in the TrainingPeaks blog and webinar series as an expert in Mental Skills Training. Carrie has worked with athletes of all ages and at every level, from recreational athletes to elite and professional athletes competing at national and international levels. Carrie also specializes in working with athletes and exercisers with Type I Diabetes and she's the director of the Mental Skills Training Program for Diabetes Training Camp. She received her Bachelor of Arts degree in psychology at Sonoma State University and her Master of Arts degree in sport psychology at John F. Kennedy University. Carrie has taught both undergraduate and graduate levels for psychology classes and is currently adjunct faculty for John F. Kennedy University. --- Send in a voice message: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/runfartherandfaster/message

On this episode, we're joined by Cindy Kuzma. Cindy is a freelance writer based in Chicago and her primary beat is running. She's written for several magazines about the subject. She's also co-authored books and co-hosts the podcast, The Injured Athletes Club. And she does write about other subjects too. Cindy graduated from Baylor University with a masters degree from the Medill School at Northwestern.Cindy talked about how she makes a career out of freelancing and gave examples of the many different types of projects she's worked on. Notable recent stories include news stories about issues with body composition testing, pieces related to running, health, and personal wellness, and coverage of marathons from both an elite athlete and human interest perspective.Cindy's salute: The Daily Northwestern and the students who investigated the team's football programExamples of stories-Top college programs moving away from body composition testinghttps://www.runnersworld.com/preview/news/a42437488/body-composition-testing-college-programs/-Coverage of the 2023 Boston Marathonhttps://www.runnersworld.com/preview/news/a43581068/boston-marathon-2023-american-women/-What COVID Surviors Knowhttps://www.chicagomag.com/chicago-magazine/may-2021/what-covid-survivors-know/Thank you as always for listening. Please send us feedback to journalismsalute@gmail.com, visit our website thejournalismsalute.org and Mark's website (MarkSimonmedia.com) or tweet us at @journalismpod. And find us on TikTok at @journalismsalute.

Alison McGill has made history this year, not only did Al win the 2023 Women's West Highland Way Race in 19:02:41, she is also the very first guest to record a full episode with the Young Hearts Run Free hairy toy! There is some background noise to this episode, it's real authentic and quite magnificent. The North Inch in Perth was the setting for our meet-up and chat for over an hour about everything really, all of the lessons learned and preparation for this years West Highland Way Race. We speak a wee bit about Als experiences representing Scotland at three Anglo Celtic Plate events, and what these experiences have brought to Als running toolbox. We often use the term 'golden nuggets' here at YHRF, and Al delivers those nuggets big time in this episode. Mindset features a lot in the chat, and how we can pick up 'one little thing' from a variety of sources, and all of these 'one little things' can turn into an unstoppable force. How many of us actually listen to our body? You might listen a wee bit more after this episode. Did we mention the power of smiling? We're sure there's loads more to come from Al, but for now, let's embrace the opportunity to listen in to what Al put in place to travel on foot from Milngavie to Fort William, and how it feels to be the winner of the West Highland Way Race 2023 Some reading resources Al mentions in this episode: Training Essentials for Ultrarunning by Jason Koop Rebound by Cindy Kuzma and Carrie Jackson Cheadle

Statistically, there's a good chance you will get injured this year.  Even if you do everything right, like eating and sleeping well, and keeping up with your strength training. It can make you feel helpless when your physical and mental health as well as your identity are defined by running. But if you get through the injury process well, you might even be better off than you were before you got hurt. Welcome to the Planted Runner.  I'm Coach Claire Bartholic and my mission is to help you improve your running, your mindset, and your life with science-backed training and plant-based nutrition. Today I'll be talking with Cindy Kuzma and Carrie Jackson who have devoted their careers to helping injured runners. You'll learn: Specific mental tools and techniques for getting through an injury with your sanity, How to stay active and keep your fitness even if you can't run, and How you can get through an injury and come back better than before. Cindy and Carrie co-host the Injured Athletes Club Podcast and are co-authors of Rebound: Train Your Mind to Bounce Back Stronger from Sports Injuries.  Cindy has bylines in Runner's World, SELF, The New York Times, and more.   Carrie is a Certified Mental Performance Consultant through the Association for Applied Sport Psychology. She's been featured as an expert in numerous publications such as Outside Magazine, Men's Fitness, Women's Health, Runner's World, and the New York Times. Cindy and Carrie have talked to runners at all levels who've been injured and have bounced back.  Their stories, tools, and community are an important resource that you won't know you'll need, until you do. Don't forget to stay tuned all the way to the end of the episode for another Mental Strength Minute.  Fortify your mind in 60 seconds or less. LINKS: Support for this episode is brought to you from my friends at Previnex.  They make my new favorite premium, plant-based protein powder called Nourify Plus. I'll explain more later in the show or head to https://www.previnex.com now and use the coupon code PR15 to get 15% off. ▶️The Planted Runner is now on YouTube! Click here to subscribe and be automatically entered to win a FREE custom training plan.  Winners chosen each month. ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐The Planted Runner Podcast is your perfect running buddy! Subscribe, follow, rate, and review now wherever you get your podcasts.  This is the #1 way to support this work for FREE. ➡️FOLLOW The Planted Runner on Instagram @theplantedrunner for more running, plant-based nutrition and mental strength tips. 

Carrie chats with Neely Spence Gracey and Cindy Kuzma! The co-authors of "Breakthrough Women's Running: Dream Big and Train Smart" discuss their book, their journeys into running, Neely's adventures in coaching, Cindy's adventures in writing and podcasting, and so much more!

“It's been really interesting, this journey with the left shoulder, because I think finally, one of the things I've come to realize is that maybe I've been a little too patient with the process, sort of comparing it to the right shoulder. With my right shoulder injury, it was a different injury, and there were different things going on. And I knew it was going to be a minimum of a year of PT and that I really had to commit and dive in and trust that it was going to be a long recovery, but that it would pay off and it would work out and it did. And so I took that same approach with the left shoulder and I think I'm realizing that's not the only thing that's it's going to take to fix this.” —Carrie   After posing her own question two weeks ago, co-host and journalist Cindy Kuzma turns the tables on mental skills coach Carrie Jackson for this, the final podcast episode of season 5.   Carrie reveals that, while she's been coaching all of us through our injuries, she's been coping with her own roller coaster of a journey. Clearly, being a professional doesn't mean she's immune from emotions—but she does have the tools to cope, and she shares how she's been navigating the uncertainties and setbacks.   Listen to the show for more—and to submit a question for a future episode, email us a note or a voice memo to hello@injuredathletesclub.com.    New this season: We're asking listeners to support the show directly, which you can do at buymeacoffee.com/rebound. Make a one-time donation or download extras like webinar recordings and resource sheets. Or, you can join as an ongoing member; for $10 a month, you'll get goodies like podcast extras, live monthly Q&As with Carrie, and discounts from great companies like Fluid Running, Lever Movement, Netic Health, and Reflex Health.    You can subscribe to The Injured Athletes Club on Spotify, Stitcher, Apple Podcasts, Audible, Amazon Music, or wherever you get your podcasts, and if you like what you hear, please leave us a rating or a review in Apple podcasts. That helps other injured athletes find the show. Resources/links: The Injured Athletes Club Buy Me a Coffee site, where you can download the webinar video on navigating the medical system   To access more resources for injured athletes: Buy Rebound: Train Your Mind to Bounce Back Stronger from Sports Injuries —now available as an audiobook! Join The Injured Athletes Club mailing list, for news and updates Join The Injured Athletes Club Facebook group, for support and camaraderie Like The Injured Athletes Club Podcast Facebook page, for the latest episodes Email us at hello@injuredathletesclub.com with questions, guest suggestions, or other feedback   DISCLAIMER: This content is for educational & informational use only and & does not constitute medical advice. Do not disregard, avoid or delay obtaining medical or health related advice from your health-care professional because of something you may have heard in an episode of this podcast. You should not rely on this information as a substitute for professional medical advice, diagnosis or treatment. Please consult with a qualified medical professional for proper evaluation & treatment. Guests who speak on this podcast express their own opinions, experiences, and conclusions, and The Injured Athletes Club podcast hosts nor any company providing financial support endorses or opposes any particular treatment option discussed in the episodes of this podcast and are not responsible for any actions or inactions of listeners based on the information presented. The use of any information provided is solely at your own risk.

Therapist (and triathlete) Sara Davis is back to talk about anxiety in sport.  From training to racing to injury, many athletes struggle with fear and anxiety.  We share stories and Sara gives concrete advice to help anyone (triathlete or not) “train your brain” to perform at your best, in life and sport. Some topics covered: What is anxiety Are certain people prone to anxiety How anxiety spills into sport  Fear of the DNF Train your brain to race  Keep your ego in check Manage expectations Nobody cares  Other people's perceptions How to overcome imposter syndrome Anxiety over training/ workouts  Rituals Anxiety with injury Radical acceptance  Strategies for getting back on the bike after a crash Top 3 things people should know about anxiety  Books: -10 Minutes to Mental Toughness by Jason Selk - The Dialectical Behavior Therapy Skills Workbook for Anxiety by Alexander L. Chapman PhD RPsych (Author), Kim L. Gratz PhD Podcast: The Injured Athletes Podcast with Carrie Jackson and Cindy Kuzma

Breakthrough Women's Running is a guide written by Neely Spence Gracey and Cindy Kuzma to help get female runners to their next breakthrough in running, regardless of their running ability. The book is divided into 4 parts and covers everything from goal setting to training plans you can follow for the 5k through marathon distances. In between it covers female specific challenges like training at different times during your menstrual cycle, running through pregnancy, and coming back to running post-partum and while breastfeeding. The book also covers a lot of the basics like recovery and strength training.Neely Spence Gracey began running in eight grade and quickly saw success, which deepened her motivation to pursue big goals. At the high school level she won four Pennsylvania state championships. Upon graduation, she attended Shippensburg University (SU) and became an eight-time Division II national champion. During Neely's time at SU, she studied human communication with a coaching minor because she knew she wanted to become a pro athlete and start coaching other runners toward their goals. In 2012 Neely signed her first pro contract and married her husband Dillon, in 2013 Get Running Coaching was born; Neely and Dillon are now also the proud parents of 2 boys: Athens born in 2018, and Rome born in 2021. Neely is inspired by the running community to keep working toward her goals as an athlete, coach, and mother.Cindy Kuzma is a freelance writer, author, and podcaster; a regular contributor to Runner's World, Women's Running, and a wide variety of other sports, fitness, and health publications; and the coauthor of Rebound: Train Your Mind to Bounce Back Stronger From Sports Injuries. Cindy specializes in covering injury prevention and recovery, everyday athletes who accomplish extraordinary things, and the active community in Chicago. She has run 22 marathons—including seven in Boston—and she never gets tired of plotting her next breakthrough.If you are looking to get a copy of this book, it can be found on the Human Kinetics Website: https://us.humankinetics.com/products/breakthrough-womens-runningIf you are interested in a copy signed by Neely, you can get it on her website:  https://getrunningcoaching.com/shirts/autographed-copy-breakthrough-womens-runningIf you would like to follow Neely, she is @neelysgracey on Instagram and Twitter.Cindy Kuzma can be found at http://cindykuzma.com or on Instagram and Twitter @cindykuzma. On her website you will find a full portfolio of articles, podcast appearances, and books!Big thank you to Human Kinetics for providing review copies of the book. And an even bigger thank you to Neely and Cindy for spending time with us to record the podcast.Any feedback or suggestions on this review or any of our other podcast episodes would be greatly welcomed. Leave us a review using your favorite podcast player or contact us on social media.Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/runningbookreviews/Twitter: https://twitter.com/reviews_runningInstagram: https://www.instagram.com/runningbookreviews/Podcast webpage: https://runningbookreviews.buzzsprout.com If you have been enjoying the podcast and are wondering how you can help us out, you can now buy us a coffee! https://www.buymeacoffee.com/AlanSupport the show

"We know you can push through. We know you're capable of that. A sign of your mental toughness isn't pushing through — it's can I hold back?" On March 5, I went out for a 13.1-mile run. A few miles into the run, my lower left leg started to hurt. I cut the run short and limped home. By that night, I could barely walk. I was dealing with my first real running injury. Two months later, I'm back on the run — but I never received an official diagnosis, I'm a bit trepidatious about running again, and I'm overwhelmed trying to remember how I even fit running into my life pre-injury. I thought I would be itching to get back on the run, but I'm...not? Enter Carrie Jackson. Carrie is a certified mental performance consultant with a Master's degree in sports psychology. She's the author of On Top of Your Game: Mental Skills to Maximize Your Athletic Performance, and co-author of Rebound: Train Your Mind to Bounce Back Stronger from Sports Injuries. She and Rebound co-author Cindy Kuzma also host The Injured Athletes Club podcast (and check out their Facebook group). This conversation is akin to a live therapy session with Carrie, where I'm the patient. If you've ever wondered what it's like working with a sports psychologist or mental performance coach, consider this an intro for all of us. (And I'm thrilled to report that this past weekend, I raced a 5K, had a blast, and am slowly starting to feel reinvigorated about running.) SPONSOR: New Balance — Go to newbalance.com/beyondtherun to learn more about how New Balance is supporting the conversations around mental wellness in running. (And check out my current favorite pullover, crop top, half-zip top, quilted pullover, and jacket.) Follow Carrie: Instagram @feedtheathlete The Injured Athletes Club Website Follow Ali: Instagram @aliontherun1 Join the Facebook group Twitter @aliontherun1 Support on Patreon Blog Strava SUPPORT the Ali on the Run Show! If you're enjoying the show, please subscribe and leave a rating and review on Apple Podcasts. Spread the run love. And if you liked this episode, share it with your friends!

Ready to focus on a running goal like your first half marathon or a Boston qualifying time? This podcast is for you! Dimity and co-host Sarah Wassner Flynn talk to two running experts: Neely Spence Gracey and Cindy Kuzma, co-authors of just-released Breakthrough Women's Running: Dream Big and Train Smart, a comprehensive how-to guide on finding your own breakthrough as a runner. Among other things, the conversation covers: —The ideal timeline for achieving a goal (hint: it's likely longer than you think!); —How setbacks often set you up for a breakthrough; —Why social media can actually be advantageous as you consider goals and dreams; and —The progress we're (slowly) making towards giving pregnant runners sound advice. When you shop our sponsors, you help AMR. We appreciate your—and their—support!   Feel supported: Save 15% at Handful.com with promo code HandfulAMR15 Pretty as…: Save 15% off your first order using promo code AMR at Framebridge.com Hop to it: Save 25% off your first purchase at jiminys.com/AMR25 and use code AMR25 at checkout Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Neely Spence Gracey and Cindy Kuzma know a thing or two about setting and achieving goals.  Neely is a three-time Olympic Trials qualifier and has her sights set on qualifying for the Trials in 2024.  She was the top American at the 2016 Boston Marathon and has broken 70 minutes in the half.  Cindy is a writer, author and podcaster who has helped countless athletes come back from injury with her book Rebound and her Injured Athletes Club podcast. They've teamed up to write Breakthrough Women's Running: Dream Big and Train Smart, drawing on their personal experiences and those of the successful women runners they interviewed.  Their objective is to help women achieve their running goals and to recognize the ways that those goals can - and should - change throughout their lives. For complete show notes and links, visit our website at runningforreal.com/episode289. Thank you to Athletic Greens, Allbirds, and InsideTracker for sponsoring this episode. AG1 is a simple and easy way to get 75 vitamins, minerals, and whole food source ingredients to help strengthen your immune system. It's simple to make and it tastes good! Go here to get a FREE year's supply of Vitamin D and five FREE travel packs with your subscription. Allbirds is all about doing things better, like collaborating with Adidas to create a performance running shoe, the FOOTPRINT.FUTURECRAFT, with only 2.94kg CO2 per pair.  Their products are made from natural and recycled materials, and best of all, they know who they are. They are confident in what they do, and are changing the entire running industry before our eyes. You can see their entire collection on their website, and since the FOOTPRINT.FUTURECRAFT is still in limited supply, you can subscribe to our weekly newsletter and we'll let you know when they become more widely available. Have you not been feeling yourself lately? Gone down a lot of avenues but haven't really found clear solutions? That is where InsideTracker can come in for you.  I have trusted this company for years to show me where I may be lacking and if I need a few tweaks here and there. I count on InsideTracker to help me decipher the science behind it all. Go here to get 25% off site wide. Thanks for listening! We know there are so many podcasts you could listen to, and we are honored you have chosen Running For Real.  If you appreciate the work that we do, here are a few things you can do to support us: Take a screenshot of the episode, and share it with your friends, family, and community on social media, especially if you feel that the topic will resonate with them.  Be sure to tag us on Twitter, Facebook, Instagram If you are struggling through something a guest mentions, chances are others are too, and you will help them feel less alone.  Leave an honest review on iTunes or your favorite podcast player. Your ratings and reviews will really help us grow and reach new people. Not sure how to leave a review or subscribe?  You can find out here. "Thank you" to Neely and Cindy.  We look forward to hearing your thoughts on the show.

Hello Runners, How are you? We are now in December, the final stretch of 2021, and smack dab in the heart of the holiday season. And this is the time of the year where we may eat a little more than usual. So running is more important to burn those calories. Right?  Since it is December, there's probably some Jingle Bell run close to you. Sign up for one to keep a goalStaying motivated this time of the year can be rough with the shorter days and possible winter weather where you live. Here in Denver, we've not had our first snow of the season. The temperatures have been warm, with lots of sun, and no snow. Hawaii is getting snow! Not in Denver. I'm not complaining. I like running in the cooler temps but am not a fan of snow. Please keep it in the mountains! I feature three stories that I know you will enjoy in this episode. First is an article about the high expectations of athletes to perform at the expense of their health. This article was written by famed runner https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Molly_Huddle (Molly Huddle). The second is about https://www.khon2.com/kupuna-life/72-year-old-manoa-resident-prepares-to-mark-3-decades-of-running-in-marathons/#:~:text=Regional%20News%20Partners-,72%2Dyear%2Dold%20Manoa%20resident%20prepares%20to%20mark%203,decades%20of%20running%20in%20marathons&text=Manoa%20resident%20Mike%20Kasamoto%20laces,the%20challenge%2C%E2%80%9D%20Kasamoto%20said. (Mike Kasamoto), who has a goal to run marathons into his 90's, And, finally, https://www.runnersworld.com/runners-stories/a37907746/jeff-kaplan-runs-chicago-marathon-after-brain-injury/ (Jeff Kaplan), not expected to live due to a traumatic brain injury after being hit by a car while out running. Enjoy this episode. If you know someone with a unique running story, please feel free to share it with me. You can Email it to me at jim@feelgoodrunning.com Thank you for listening to the Feel Good Running Podcast! If you like it, please consider sharing this podcast with your running friends and on your social media platforms. I would very much appreciate it, and it will help the show grow. Keep the holiday spirit, everyone! And remember, especially during the holidays, to be kind to others, even if some are not kind to you. It's good for the heart, mind, and soul. Peace everyone! ~ Jim   Show Timestamps [00:30] - Host Jim Lynch [05:09] - It's Time to Stop Glamorizing the 'No Pain, No Gain' Mindset [12:05] - Mike Kasamoto [15:55] - Jeff Kaplan  [23:04] - Inspirational Running Quote Poem/Jim episode close   Show Notes https://www.runnersworld.com/health-injuries/a37961164/stop-glamorizing-no-pain-no-gain-mindset/ (It's Time to stop Glamorizing the 'No Pain No Gain' Mindset) - Runners World Article written by https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Molly_Huddle (Molly Huddle) https://www.khon2.com/kupuna-life/72-year-old-manoa-resident-prepares-to-mark-3-decades-of-running-in-marathons/#:~:text=Regional%20News%20Partners-,72%2Dyear%2Dold%20Manoa%20resident%20prepares%20to%20mark%203,decades%20of%20running%20in%20marathons&text=Manoa%20resident%20Mike%20Kasamoto%20laces,the%20challenge%2C%E2%80%9D%20Kasamoto%20said. (Mike Kasamoto )- Khon 2 Oahu  - Video Story by https://www.khon2.com/author/kristine-uyeno/ (Kristine Uyeno) Jeff Kaplan - https://www.runnersworld.com/runners-stories/a37907746/jeff-kaplan-runs-chicago-marathon-after-brain-injury/ (Almost died training for the NYC Marathon) - Runners World Article by https://www.runnersworld.com/author/210065/cindy-kuzma/ (Cindy Kuzma) - https://www.loveyourbrain.com/blog/community-stories/runningforattention (Running for attention by Jeff Kaplan) - https://www.runwithtfk.org/ (NRYY Team for Kids)   Inspirational Running Quote Poem Poem by Traumatic Brain Injury Survivor Jeff Kaplan 5 seconds, I look, 15 miles in the rear 5 seconds, I'm heading home, this training's sincere 5 seconds, I'm in a crosswalk, I'm in the clear 5...

Cindy Kuzma is a freelance writer, author, and podcaster in Chicago. She joins Bob Sirott to discuss her latest piece in Chicago Magazine. Kuzma says she wanted to honor stories and experiences of those who have had the most severe cases of COVID and discuss the often lasting effects that experts are still working to understand.

The Injured Athletes Club Injuries affect nearly every athlete, and the impact is mental as much as it is physical. Right now, you’re likely feeling isolated, disconnected from your team or training partners. You’re stressed out by dealing with this setback—and at the same time, robbed of one of your main coping mechanisms. You may even be feeling a loss of identity—who am I if I can’t train, compete, or move my body in the way I’m used to? We’re here to tell you: You’re still an athlete. You’re not alone in feeling this way. And you have a critical advantage: All the time, skills, and energy that have propelled you forward in your sport can also help you overcome this setback. Carrie Jackson Cheadle lives just north of San Francisco, California, and has been working on the performance of teams, organizations, and individual athletes and exercisers since 2002. So you know she's legit: She is a Certified Mental Performance Consultant through the Association for Applied Sport Psychology and author of the book On Top of Your Game: Mental Skills to Maximize Your Athletic Performance and co-author of Rebound: Train Your Mind to Bounce Back Stronger from Sports Injuries as well as the co-host of the podcast The Injured Athletes Club. She has been interviewed as an expert resource for articles that have appeared in publications such as Outside Magazine, Shape Magazine, Men’s Fitness, Women’s Health, Runner’s World, Women’s Running Magazine, Bicycling Magazine, New York Times, and HuffingtonPost. She is a sought-after speaker and has spoken and consulted with many collegiate teams, cycling teams, and triathlon teams, as well as corporate organizations including CamelBak. She’s also been featured in the TrainingPeaks blog and webinar series as an expert in Mental Skills Training. Carrie has worked with athletes of all ages and at every level, from recreational athletes to elite and professional athletes competing at national and international levels. Carrie also specializes in working with athletes and exercisers with Type I Diabetes and she’s the director of the Mental Skills Training Program for Diabetes Training Camp. She received her Bachelor of Arts degree in psychology at Sonoma State University and her Master of Arts degree in sport psychology at John F. Kennedy University. Carrie has taught both undergraduate and graduate levels for psychology classes and is currently adjunct faculty for John F. Kennedy University. Cindy Kuzma is a freelance writer, author, and podcaster in Chicago. She first moved there to earn her master’s degree from Northwestern University’s Medill School of Journalism. Once she saw the Lakefront Trail, she decided to stay. There, she’s trained for and completed 22 marathons, including seven in Boston. Her six years working for medical journals taught her the way around a research paper; now, she’s fascinated by exercise science and how findings in the lab can help everyday athletes improve their performance, prevent injury, and live healthier lives. She also writes frequently about elite runners and Paralympic competitors; everyday athletes accomplishing extraordinary things; and the active community in Chicago, where winter forges deep bonds between those brave enough to train through it. So you know she's legit: Cindy writes regularly for Runner’s World, Chicago magazine, Women’s Running magazine, SELF, and more. She’s also written for Men’s Health, Furthermore, University of Illinois alumni publications, The New York Times, Outside online, Health.com, EatingWell, Women’s Health, Prevention, SELF, VICE, USA Today magazines, and many other digital and print outlets. Her latest book Rebound: Train Your Mind to Bounce Back Stronger from Sports Injuries, with mental skills coach Carrie Jackson Cheadle, is out now from Bloomsbury Sport. Together, they host The Injured Athletes Club podcast and moderate The Injured Athletes Club Facebook group. Cindy is also the co-author, with her husband Matt Kuzma, of Marathon Spectator Guide—aimed to help those who, like Matt, tirelessly follow their runners around 26.2-mile courses—and also contributed to The Superfood Swap: The 4-Week Plan to Eat What You Crave Without the C.R.A.P., by Dawn Jackson Blatner, R.D.N. She’s a member of The American Society of Journalists and Authors. And, she’s certified as a running coach by the Road Runners Club of America and USA Track & Field (Level 1).

There are so many definitions floating around in the fitness world about what a successful workout looks like. If you aren't careful, you can end up applying standards to yourself that may not be the most effective. In this episode, Tom welcomes writer, author and podcaster Cindy Kuzma to the show fresh off the heels of her new book, Rebound: Training Your Mind to Bounce Back Stronger from Sports Injuries to talk about the approach, mindset and way of being that works for everyone, and that will help you put into focus exactly what a successful workout is for yourself. Learn more about your ad-choices at https://news.iheart.com/podcast-advertisers

“I keep showing up so that people know that a Pakistani Muslim woman can be a marathoner. But just because I am there doesn’t mean the work is done.”   Aisha Qamar cares deeply about her community and the people around her. She earned her master’s in public health at Columbia University, and has used that degree to learn more about and to give back to people in need. She volunteers with South Brooklyn Mutual Aid, delivering food to her neighbors in New York City, and on this episode, Aisha explains how delivering supplies on the run has brought meaning back to her running during the pandemic. She talks about finding her people and making friends when she didn’t think she belonged in the running community, and she talks about being a Muslim woman, and explains what running looks like when she is fasting during Ramadan. Aisha is on the Global Womxn Run Collective steering committee, she runs a 3:02 marathon, and she is on a mission to make sure every runner knows that you do, in fact, belong.   Thank you to AfterShokz for sponsoring this episode of the Ali on the Run Show! Go to ontherun.aftershokz.com for 15% off wireless headphones!   What you’ll get on this episode: Aisha’s take on the global pandemic, from someone with a master’s in public health (4:00) Aisha talks about what her family was like growing up (8:40) All about Aisha’s job, and her career path in healthcare (15:00) Aisha shares her running story (23:30) How Aisha found running friends, and how she went from a 3:53 marathon to a 3:02 (32:10) On running the L.A. Marathon earlier this year (41:30) Running with purpose (47:00) How Aisha got involved with South Brooklyn Mutual Aid (51:25) How Aisha sees her role in helping work toward more diversity and representation in running (1:02.00) The role religion plays in Aisha’s life right now (1:05.00)   What we mention on this episode: South Brooklyn Mutual Aid Global Womxn Run Collective Banker to the Poor Mountains Beyond Mountains "Food, Clothing, Shelter: These NYC Runners Are Helping Their Neighbors Survive," by Cindy Kuzma for Runner's World Whitney Hu on Twitter @whitney_hu   Follow Aisha: Instagram @aishaq Twitter @aishaqamar   Follow Ali: Instagram @aliontherun1 Like the Facebook page Join the Facebook group Twitter @aliontherun1 Support on Patreon Blog Strava   Listen & Subscribe: Apple Podcasts Spotify SoundCloud Overcast Stitcher Google Play   SUPPORT the Ali on the Run Show! If you’re enjoying the show, please subscribe and leave a rating and review on Apple Podcasts.

This week’s digital content is sponsored by our friends at Lifeway Foods, the leading US supplier of kefir. Kefir is a cultured dairy drink with protein, vitamin D, and 12 live and active probiotics, which may support a healthy digestive and immune system. Show your guts some love with Lifeway Kefir! Welcome to the Daily Distance, a new daily series from the creators of #WeGotGoals. In these short episodes, we’re bringing you one daily goal you can set for yourself during this chaotic time- one actionable thing you can do to move your body, connect with a friend, prioritize your mental health, get some work done, and practice a little bit of self-care. Today, Kristen brings on Carrie Jackson Cheadle, a past guest and co-author (alongside Cindy Kuzma) of Rebound: Train Your Mind to Bounce Back Stronger from Sports Injuries. Carrie is a Mental Skills Coach and Certified Mental Performance Consultant, and she has tons of mental tricks up her sleeve to help you build resilience, whether you're an injured athlete or dealing with a global pandemic. Her recommendation: try using a pen and paper to write down your daily schedule. Here's why she recommends it, how doing so affects your brain, and how you can still show yourself grace and flexibility, even while following a pseudo-schedule. Resources: Carrie's website Carrie's Twitter and Instagram The Injured Athletes Club Rebound: Train Your Mind to Bounce Back Stronger from Sports Injuries [mc4wp_form id="42712"] 

Welcome to the Daily Distance a new daily series from the creators of #WeGotGoals. In these short episodes, we’re bringing you one daily goal you can set for yourself during this chaotic time- one actionable thing you can do to move your body, connect with a friend, prioritize your mental health, get some work done, and practice a little bit of self-care. In this podcast episode, author, podcast, and freelance writer Cindy Kuzma recommends slooooooowing down. Listen to hear what specific incident (and minor injury) led her to realize she needed to slow down and how she's incorporating that mental cue into her everyday life. Resources: By Cindy: How to Find Credible Information in a Pandemic Also by Cindy: A Bioethicist's Guide to COVID-19 Want the Daily Distance in your feed? Subscribe to the #WeGotGoals podcast wherever you like to listen to podcasts, including on Apple and Spotify (and hey, leave us a rating while you’re at it!).

WOW. It's been a WEEK. After Lisa and Julie talk about how to approach training during this time of uncertainty, homeschooling, and social distancing, they welcomed Mental Performance Consultant, Carrie Jackson Cheadle, the co-author (with previous podcast guest, Cindy Kuzma), of Rebound, who shares her tips on managing the stress and anxiety during these unprecedented times. We hope that runners and non-runners find this conversational helpful. We are all in this together. Here's a little about Carrie: Carrie Cheadle lives just north of San Francisco, California and has been working on the performance of teams, organizations, and individual athletes and exercisers since 2002. She is a Certified Mental Performance Consultant through the Association for Applied Sport Psychology and author of the book On Top of Your Game: Mental Skills to Maximize Your Athletic Performance and co-author of Rebound: Train Your Mind to Bounce Back Stronger from Sports Injuries as well as the co-host of the podcast The Injured Athletes Club. She has been interviewed as an expert resource for articles that have appeared in publications such as Outside Magazine, Shape Magazine, Men’s Fitness, Women’s Health, Runner’s World, Women’s Running Magazine, Bicycling Magazine, New York Times, and HuffingtonPost. She is a sought-after speaker and has spoken and consulted with many collegiate teams, cycling teams, and triathlon teams, as well as corporate organizations including CamelBak. She’s also been featured in the TrainingPeaks blog and webinar series as an expert in Mental Skills Training. Carrie has worked with athletes of all ages and at every level, from recreational athletes to elite and professional athletes competing at national and international levels. Carrie also specializes in working with athletes and exercisers with Type I Diabetes and she’s the director of the Mental Skills Training Program for Diabetes Training Camp. She received her Bachelor of Arts degree in psychology at Sonoma State University and her Master of Arts degree in sport psychology at John F. Kennedy University. Carrie has taught both undergraduate and graduate levels for psychology classes and is currently adjunct faculty for John F. Kennedy University. --- Send in a voice message: https://anchor.fm/runfartherandfaster/message

We came across registered dietitian, Laura Moretti Reece,  after reading an article in Runner's World about Amelia Boone , which was written by previous podcast guest and friend, Cindy Kuzma,   We loved what Laura had to say and once we saw that she was a Boston Marathoner herself with a wealth of expertise on fueling athletes, we knew we had to reach out and ask her to join us on the podcast.  We were so lucky to talk with Laura for over an hour on all things nutrition and marathon fueling.  She talked about how to fuel for marathon training and on race day, diet trends, including Keto and intermittent fasting, and how we can all use a few simple rules of thumb to fuel our engines for marathon training.  Take notes and enjoy our conversation with Laura. Laura can be found on all social media platforms.  She provides virtual and in-person nutritional counseling for athletes of all ages. Special thanks to Run Farther & Faster Podcast editor, Erin Bryant. Music credit: Room 69 by Electronic Senses | https://soundcloud.com/electronicsenses Music promoted by https://www.free-stock-music.com Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/deed.en_US --- Send in a voice message: https://anchor.fm/runfartherandfaster/message

Eddie Sandoval set out to bring a traditional food from his homeland to the masses—while supporting those who shared his heritage. Betina Gozo has used her influence as a celebrity trainer to marshall resources for children in need, through the Dance With Mweyne Foundation. And Steve Umberger, co-host Maggie’s dad, used his theatrical talents in an entirely new way, inspiring dialogue between very different communities in their hometown of Charlotte, North Carolina. This past quarter, we talked to these inspiring guests—and more—on the #WeGotGoals podcast, as we explored the theme of Contributing Generously. Along the way, we were struck by the way these big thinkers followed their guts to big-hearted accomplishments, and found more than a few gems that changed the way we thought about our own altruism. We discuss: 2:26: The powerful moments that stood out for us from our interviews 6:40: The way intuition guided guests to worthwhile endeavors 10:40: How some of their efforts had multiple layers and dimensions 11:33: How they knew when it was time to dig in on a goal—and when it was time to move on 14:46: Why giving back sometimes requires separating yourself from the outcome of your efforts 16:20: Why, and how, to make an impact in your own backyard 18:02: Specificity, and how it can help you achieve somewhat nebulous-seeming aims 19:06: How we fared on our own goals for contributing generously last quarter (and the help we’d like moving forward) 20:06: What you can expect in season 4 of the #WeGotGoals podcast, heading your way after a short break! 26:51: Some news from me, your co-host Cindy Kuzma, about that next season. My heartfelt thanks to the team, and to you, our listeners, for your support these past three years—and I look forward to joining you. Links/resources we mention: Previous episodes: Roundtable reshare of Chicago fitness equity guests; Sarah Larson Levey from the #SweatWorkingSummit; Anne Mahlum of [solidcore];  Mind-Body-Soul Connector and former dancer Robert Brace; Pinole Blue’s Eddie Sandoval; theater director Steve Umberger; celebrity trainer Betina Gozo; Alison Rootberg, founder of Wellness4Every1; Sarah Neukom and Matt Woodburn of ESP Presents and Exchange312; and our previous hostful episode If you love this episode as much as we do, subscribe to the #WeGotGoals podcast wherever you like to listen to podcasts, including on Apple and Spotify (and hey, leave us a rating while you’re at it!).

According to some statistics 75% off runners will experience a running injury at some point. When it happens it can feel like a huge part of your life is in disarray. In this episode we speak with Carrie Jackson Cheadle and Cindy Kuzma the authors of the book Rebound about tools and perspectives that will help you bounce back mentally during periods of injury. Interview with the Authors of Rebound This was one of my favorite reads from 2019 and I’ve been recommending it to anyone who is injured. Carrie Jackson Cheadle M.A. is a mental skills expert who specializes in the psychology of sport performance. Cindy Kuzma is a Chicago-based journalist and contributor to Runner’s World. Check out there podcast The Injured Athletes ClubAlso Mentioned in This Episode Athletic Greens -Go to www.athleticgreens.com/mta and claim your special offer today – 20 FREE travel packs valued at $79 with your first purchase. The Pittsburgh Marathon -Angie and Autum will be running it on May 3rd. Let us know if you will be there and want to attend the MTA Meet Up. Send us a link through the contact page. The post Rebounding from Running Injury appeared first on Marathon Training Academy.

Runners are a different species.  Not only is running our sport but it is our passion, our mental break, our chance to distance ourselves from the world and the stressors of everyday life.  However, as a runner, I am sure you have suffered injuries and setbacks.  You are not alone.  According to Cindy Kuzma, journalist for Runner’s World, and Carrie Jackson Cheadle, mental skills expert and nationally recognized for her expertise in sport’s performance, about three quarters of runners will suffer an injury within their first one to two years of running, and an even greater number will suffer some form of injury throughout a running career.  Kuzma and Cheadle, authors of the book Rebound: Train your mind to bounce back stronger from sports injuries, have studied injuries and the mental toll that can take on your mind and have sought out to educate people of the importance of your mental health during times of injury. Is There a Good Time to Take Time Off and Reset Runners are stubborn and do not like taking time off from their sport.  However, after sustaining an injury, rest will become an important part of your recovery.  Cheadle says, “It takes more mental toughness to stop and to take that break and to focus on your recovery then it does to push through.  A true sign of mental toughness is wanting something so bad but willing to back off for a little bit to give your body what it needs to hit your goals.” We tend to focus so much on the now and the current situations we find ourselves in.  But, when we goal set, we focus on the future and where we want to be one month, six months, or even one year from now.  The same should be said for our injuries.  We have the amazing gift of internal knowledge.  We know more about our bodies and how are bodies are feeling than anyone else.  One benefit of tapping into the psychological aspect of recovery is we allow ourselves a chance to conduct a “self-inquiry.”  As you proceed to heal from a running injury you can ask yourself, “Is it time to push hard or is it time to rest? Will pushing now benefit me three months from now or will it hinder my recovery process and push my goals back further?” Running Becomes Our Identity Running, or being an athlete in general, can provide you with a high athletic identity.  We all have different identities and play different roles in life, whether it is the role of a mother or father, an employee at our place of employment, or a student.  At times our feeling of self-worth may be more connected with one identity than another.  This tends to be especially true with high endurance athletes.  When we sustain an injury and are unable to train or compete, we lose a part of ourselves when we lose that athletic identity. It is in these moments where your true identity will come out.  As opposed to looking at the situation through a microscopic lens, we need to pull back and view the bigger picture.  You are still an athlete; however, recovery just becomes your new sport.  The time and energy you used to put into running now gets put into your recovery.  This is the time to mentally reset, work through the healing process, both physically and mentally, and learn something from the experience that will make you a better runner as you begin to train again. The Hero’s Journey What is a hero and how does a hero become a hero?  If we think about heroes, both fictional and real, these individuals suffered major setbacks and had to overcome them in order to obtain “hero status.”  For example, arguably one of the greatest athletes of all time, Michael Jordan, did not make his high school basketball team.  This devastated him.  So, what did he do?  He got in the gym throughout the course of the next year and worked hard every day, letting that experience motivate him to be the best.  The same should be done by each of us as runners. There are mental drills that can help us push through the mental agony that comes with being unable to perform the sport we love.  Kuzma said following an injury we each have the natural human reaction of, “Well this sucks!”  But if we change our thinking, we can come out on the other side stronger than before. Change “this is going to suck” to “this is going to be hard,” and see how that makes you feel.  Then take, “this is going to be hard” and change it to “this is going to be a challenge.”  Now, how does that make you feel?  Then you can eventually change “this is going to be hard” and arrive at, “this is going to be an opportunity.” See how that makes you feel?  Do this with small situations and practice it so that it becomes easier to do with bigger obstacles.  Obstacles can be opportunities and you get better as you practice. Being Disappointed is Alright, but Don’t Let it Consume You As runners we belong to a very unique community.  We train hard.  We push ourselves to the point of exhaustion. We get excited when we set personal records and we get excited when our training partners set personal records.  But what happens when we sustain an injury and we can no longer train with our training partners or friends? As someone who has experienced a runner’s high and who loves to run, it is a common reaction to become angry, not only at yourself, but at your training partners who are still able to run.  Those same training partners who are still setting personal records while you are unable to run.  Being unable to train with your team or your friends may make you feel isolated, whether it is real or perceived.  For this reason, Cheadle and Kuzma founded The Injured Athletes Club podcast and The Injured Athletes Club Facebook page.  One of the hardest parts about being injured is the comradery that you feel your missing out on.  However, The Injured Athletes Club podcast will provide you with the necessary mental skills to cope with sports injuries and the mental side of rehabilitation and recovery.  Kuzma and Cheadle will also provide you with tools you can use to stay positive and resilient during your recovery. The Injured Athletes Club Facebook group allows you to interact with other runners who are dealing with injuries of their own.  It is a chance to talk about how you are feeling, both mentally and physically, and receive support from other runners to assist you in your journey. Sometimes all we want to do is talk.  The Injured Athletes Club Facebook page is a great place to vent your frustrations or, even better, share stories of your successful journey. Whether we be elite athletes, endurance athletes, or your Saturday 5k runner, we are not immune from injuries.  At some point during our career it is very possible we may sustain an injury or a setback.  The most important thing to remember is, it is not the end of the world.  While it may frustrate us, aggravate us, or downright cause us physical and emotional pain, it is a journey.  It is your journey.  Every hero suffers a setback before they reach their full potential.  With that being said, remember, it may suck, it may be hard, and may be a challenge, but in the end it’s an opportunity to grow and come back stronger and more determined then you would have been had you not sustained the injury.   Resources:  Carrie Cheadle Twitter  Cindy Kuzma Twitter The Injured Athletes Club Facebook page (Book) Rebound: Train Your Mind to Bounce Back Stronger from Sports Injuries   Thank you to my wonderful sponsor Vital Farms for sponsoring this episode of the Running for Real Podcast. I have been a BIG fan of Vital Farms for years for their eggs, because they truly do care about their products and where they get them from. It is a brand that I trust, it is Lactose and casein free! With a new product of Ghee butter, it is a clean and versatile butter oil for all your culinary needs.  Go Here for a chance to win a year supply of Pasture-Raised Ghee.   One of the things that I truly LOVE to do every week to get to know my audience better is my Newsletter I will cherish and guard your email. It is a way that I can get to know you all and to build a true connection with you, as social media has been tough on me lately. I know how annoying it is when you sign up for something and suddenly find yourself on 50 other email lists. This is just you and me. I promise. If you are interested go here to sign up! Thanks for Listening! I hope you enjoyed today's episode. To share your thoughts: Leave a note in the comment section below. Join the Running for Real Facebook Group and share your thoughts on the episode (or future guests you would like to hear from) Share this show on Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, or Pinterest. To help out the show: Leave an honest review on iTunes. Your ratings and reviews will really help me climb up the iTunes rankings and I promise, I read every single one. Not sure how to leave a review or subscribe, you can find out here. Thank you to Cindy and Carrie, I look forward to hearing your thoughts on the show.

During this quarter of the #WeGotGoals podcast, we've had the opportunity to interview guests who have big goals to contribute generously to their respective communities. I couldn't help but recall an impactful episode we shared last season - a round table discussion among four separate guests about making wellness accessible and inclusive for all. On this episode, Cindy Kuzma chats with Caullen Hudson, Tanya Lozano, Allison Rootberg and Ashley Rockwood - all fitness movers and shakers in Chicago who are doing big things for their communities. From this episode, you'll hear them talk about the uphill battles they've faced (and continue to face) in their pursuit to make lasting contributions to the organizations they run. Alison Rootberg is the Founder of Wellness4Every1, which aims to provide quality wellness programming to corporations while giving back to the community. These programs aim to educate and increase the health and productivity of everyone participating. Caullen Hudson is the founder of SoapBox Productions, a film and social activism non-profit which utilizes media to power and sustain social movements for a more equitable and creative world. His team produces scripted narratives, documentaries, promotionals, written articles, educational initiatives, and Caullen himself uses his own fitness platform to reach even more individuals to start important conversations. Tanya Lozano is the founder of Healthy Hood, which was created to address the 20-year life expectancy gap in Chicago between communities such as Pilsen and other, higher income communities. In partnership with the Youth Health Service Corps, Healthy Hood provides quality fitness and dance classes at an affordable price to the underserved. Ashley Rockwood is the founder of Free MVMT Shop, first a pop-up space in Chicago and now a brick-and-mortar location in the heart of Lincoln Park. It is a space built to make people feel totally comfortable to come in, drop their expectations at the door, and just move. Remember you can subscribe to the #WeGotGoals podcast wherever you like to listen to podcasts, including on Apple and Spotify (and hey, leave us a rating while you’re at it if you can! It helps others find us!). And stay tuned for next week when we wrap up Season Three of the #WeGotGoals Podcast and let you know where we're headed in Season Four!

In this episode which was recorded live at Rogue, I interview Carrie Cheadle and CIndy Kuzma on their new book - Rebound: Train Your Mind to Bounce Back Stronger from Sports Injuries.  Carrie, who is a certified mental performance consultant through the Association of Applied Sport Psychology, shares strategies for harnessing the power of your mind to run your best race, from connecting to your own hero’s journey to visualizing both success and setbacks. Carrie and Cindy also discuss their new book, which explains how similar strategies can help athletes bounce back from injury stronger. Carrie Jackson Cheadle lives in Northern California and is a mental skills coach and certified mental performance consultant through the Association for Applied Sport Psychology. She is author of the book On Top of Your Game: Mental Skills to Maximize Your Athletic Performance (Feed the Athlete Press, 2013). A popular source for media, Carrie has been interviewed for publications such as Men’s Fitness, Women’s Health, Outside Magazine, Shape Magazine, Runner’s World, Bicycling Magazine, and Huffington Post. Carrie received her bachelor’s degree in psychology at Sonoma State University, California and her master’s degree in sport psychology at John. F. Kennedy University, California. She has been teaching and supervising masters students in the sport psychology program at that same university since 2006. Carrie consults with athletes of all ages and at every level, from recreational athletes, high school and collegiate athletes, to elite and professional athletes competing at national and international levels. In addition to being known for her expertise in sports performance and psychological recovery from injury, she is also one of the foremost experts specializing in mental skills training for athletes and exercisers with type 1 diabetes, and is the director of the Mental Skills Training Program for Diabetes Training Camp. Carrie has her own personal commitment to lifelong fitness and when she isn’t working with athletes, you might find her running on a trail, playing guitar, or hitting the slopes on her snowboard. www.facebook.com/MentalSkillsTrainingforAthletes Twitter: @feedtheathlete Instagram: @feedtheathlete Cindy Kuzma is a Chicago-based journalist with a specialty in fitness and health; a contributing writer at Runner's World magazine; and a runner who's completed 22 marathons, including seven Boston Marathons. She earned her master's degree from Northwestern University's Medill School of Journalism and has spent the past 15 years writing for national print and online publications, including Men's Health, Women's Health, Prevention, espnW.com, VICE, SELF, Outside, and USA Today magazines. She has also contributed audio reporting to The Runner's World Show and Human Race, podcasts produced by Runner's World. https://www.facebook.com/cindykuzmawrites Twitter: @cindykuzma Instagram: @cindykuzma Together, they’re the co-hosts of The Injured Athletes Club podcast and moderate an online support group for injured athletes. You can learn more about all these efforts through their website, www.injuredathletesclub.com.

Following a recap of Julie and Lisa’s Boston training week, they welcomed Chicago- based journalist, Cindy Kuzma, who shares her perspective on the running world, injury, the impact of social media on running and of course, the Boston Marathon. Cindy is a prolific health and fitness writer with articles in Runner’s World, Outside Magazine, and so many more. She recently wrote Rebound: Train your mind to bounce back stronger from sports injuries with co-author, Carrie Jackson Cheadle. She is also the co-host with Carrie of the Injured Athletes Club podcast. Cindy is a seven-time Boston Marathon finisher and just an awesome person.  Rebound by Carrie Jackson Cheadle and Cindy Kuzma  The Extreme Boston Marathon Ritual That Shows I've Completely Lost It!  by Cindy Kuzma  Run Farther & Faster Virtual Coaching Injured Athletes Podcast Injured Athletes Facebook Group --- Send in a voice message: https://anchor.fm/runfartherandfaster/message

This time of the year there’s a lot of attention put on goals, resolutions, getting motivated, and having the best year ever. I think there’s every more hype about it this year because we’re starting a new decade. The title of this episode is based on a book I read recently called How to Have a Good Day-Harness the Power of Behavioral Science To Transform Your Working Life by Caroline Webb. I have to admit that when I’m reading a book I often apply the principles to long distance running. Because we all know that training for a marathon holds a lot of parallels to life. Caroline Webb says, “One of the traps that people fall into is not just trying to do everything in one day, but also feeling that being an ambitious person means pushing yourself super, super hard. What we know about human motivation is that you do want to set purposeful, inspiring goals, but we make more progress by setting tiny interim goals that allow us to feel like we’re making progress, step by step, day by day.”How to Have a Good Decade In order to have a great decade behavioral science gives us some clues as to what will help us accomplish this.1. Be intentional Don’t let the day simply happen to you (or year for that matter). Set intentions and priorities for the day because it is these priorities and assumptions that set the tone for the day. Your mind is always busy sorting through endless amounts of information (it’s even processing when we sleep). Caroline Webb says,“The things that get through the filters are strongly influenced by the priorities and assumptions that we take into the day.” The three ways to be intentional are aim, attitude, and attention Aim Plan out the most important things in your day. Make a list of your priorities. This will be things that really matter most to make this day successful. Even though I’ve been in the regular habit of exercise for years I still schedule time each day for my workouts. That way it’s top of mind and I’m intentionally making time to do it. Schedule a block of time to achieve your 1-2 most important priorities. In order to get more done and stay focused it’s important to reduce multi-tasking and interruptions. Science tells us that we really can’t multi-task effectively. This will mean that you turn off notifications on your phone during productive periods, be more intentional about when you check email, and help others respect your priorities. According to behavioral science your intentions for the day should be: Positive– Think about what you’ll do instead of what not to do. For example, I will eat 100 grams of protein vs. I won’t snack between meals. Or I will strength train on Tuesday and Thursday this week vs. I won’t skip strength training. Personally meaningful– If you’re going to work hard toward a goal it’s important that it be meaningful to you. You must find your personal why. It’s great if your best friend is fired up about doing a 50k but unless that goal fires you up then you’ll probably hate the process of training. Feasible– Keep in mind that you have limited time and energy each day so don’t over-schedule yourself. For example, don’t schedule your long run on a day when you’ll be attending kid’s sporting events from dawn to dusk. It’s just not feasible if you plan on watching their games. Another example is not to schedule your long run immediately after coming off a string of night shifts when your energy levels will typically be low. Situation specific– Approach goals are better than avoidance goals (not doing something) which depresses performance. A positive approach goal for training for a marathon would be to feel strong and healthy. An avoidance goal would be to not feel fat and lazy. An approach goal could also be to prioritize cross training to stay healthy and injury free. An avoidance goal would be to stop dealing with plantar fasciitis. Attitude Practice gratitude. Much of how we experience life comes down to our attitude. To work on having a successful attitude use mental contrasting to increase the odds of having a successful day. Mental contrasting is all about looking at realities and obstacles and then making a plan to achieve your goals. It’s not that we never admit that there are unpleasant things in our life or obstacles that we face. But it is about coming up with a plan to overcome these obstacles and be successful anyway. Former POW James Stockdale said this, “You must never confuse faith that you will prevail in the end…with the discipline to confront the most brutal facts of your current reality.” Don’t be afraid to be realistic about where you’re currently at but at the same time be sure to project hope for the future. Caroline Webb says, “People are far more likely to achieve their goals if they think hard about both the outcome they want and the obstacles they’re facing, and plan for both.” For example, if you find that you’re rarely able to get up and run in the morning (you use the snooze button without even realizing it), set your alarm away from your bed so that you have to get up to turn it off. If you’re truly not a morning person you may want to consider working out over your lunch break or in the evening. There’s no one-size-fits-all routine that works for everyone. But if you’re really intentional you’ll find a solution that works for you. Attention We need to prime our brain with the images or words that we want to focus on. I mentioned earlier that the brain is always sorting through so much information. It’s vital that we be intentional about where we want our attention to go. For example, if you’re thinking about buying a certain type of shoes it’s on your mind and you’ll start seeing them everywhere. If you’re a runner then you’ll start noticing all the people who are out running or be looking for new running routes. Prime your brain with images of your goals and intentions for the day and you’ll find opportunities to advance the goals and come up with creative solutions. Ways to prime your brain to achieve your goals are to put sticky notes with your written goals where you’ll see them (bathroom mirror, refrigerator, computer, etc). You may choose to display your running medals, wear your race shirts, or have exercise equipment around the house to cue your brain.2. Find a personal why It’s clear that intrinsic motivation leads to higher performance as opposed to extrinsic motivation. If you’re doing it for yourself then you’re more likely to succeed. Some motivations to run your first marathon are more meaningful than others. If you’re training for a race because someone else is excited about it or pressuring you or you’re trying to impress other people it will be tough to keep going when things get hard. Other more helpful whys include focusing on who you want to become and how you’re going to start living into that identity. If you start seeing yourself as a runner and as a marathoner then your daily actions will reflect that identity and it will change the choices that you make. A marathoner runs regularly. They take care of their bodies in ways that will keep them strong and healthy. They’re smart about their training in order to avoid injury.3. Think big but start small I 100% love it when people have big goals. But sometimes people never get past the big goals to see the smaller actions that they need to be taking. Daily goals should be focused and achievable. The book Atomic Habits by James Clear addresses this topic so well. An atomic habit is a small routine or practice that’s easy to do and something that creates compound growth. We often get stuck in bad habits not because we don’t want to change but because we often don’t have the right system in place to achieve change. Maybe your goal is to stop snacking after dinner. But if you eat sporadically through the day, don’t prioritize eating protein with dinner, and keep snacks in sight you’ll probably find yourself on a feeding frenzy late in the evening. Or maybe your goal is to qualify for the Boston Marathon (or BQ in runner lingo). It can be a big goal that takes time to achieve. Progress toward this goal is achieved through the training you do day in and day out. You build strength and speed over time. We often underestimate how much little changes can result in big growth over time. James Clear talks about the 4 Laws of Behavior Change in his book. They are: make it obvious, make it attractive, make it easy, and make it satisfying. He says, “Success is the product of daily habits—not once-in-a-lifetime transformations….Breakthrough moments are often the result of many previous actions, which build up the potential required to unleash a major change.” We can often look at someone’s breakthrough moment and feel a little envious. We think, “why isn’t that happening for me?” But what we don’t often see is all the tiny steps and all the hard work and effort that led to that breakthrough. Breakthroughs don’t usually happen by accident and sometimes we can’t predict when they’ll happen for us. For example, I ran 25 marathons before I qualified for Boston for the first time.4. Identify Keystone Habits Keystone habits are changes or habits that unintentionally carry over into other areas of life. Charles Duhigg talked about keystone habits in his book The Power of Habit. Keystone habits are things that positively or negatively affect other areas of your life. They include positive habits like sleep, exercise, mindfulness, and healthy eating, etc. When you look at keystone habits it’s important to identify the things that bring you energy and also try to identify the energy vampires in your life. Here are some examples of each: Energy givers– sleep, alone time, meditation, exercise, reading, eating balanced meals, time in nature, massages, etc… Energy vampires– Here are some of my energy vampires: getting less than 7 hours of sleep, too much screen time (watching TV, spending excess time on social media), not setting priorities for the day, too much sugar, going long periods between meals, not exercising, not drinking enough water, caffeine, and alcohol. This will vary from person to person depending on whether you’re an introvert or extrovert and a morning or night person. Many people find that certain music can bring an energy boost so it can be helpful to keep a playlist of songs that you can turn to when you need a power up. You may also notice that certain people in your life are energy givers while some are energy vampires.5. Harness the power of environment. We want to recognize that it can be tough to make changes and stick to goals on your own. That’s why tapping into the power of environment can fast track you to achieving goals. James Clear says, “We tend to imitate the habits of three social groups: the close (family and friends), the many (the tribe), and the powerful (those with status and prestige.)” This is why I’m careful about who I follow on social media. You may find that certain people give you a kick in the pants and are motivating while others just make you unhappy with your life. You have limited time so make sure that your environment is working for you. James Clear goes on to say, “One of the most effective things you can do to build better habits is to join a culture where (1) your desired behavior is the normal behavior and (2) you already have something in common with the group.” That’s one of the reasons why we created MTA and more specifically the Academy. We know how important it is to be surrounded by supportive and encouraging people who are achieving the things you are (or want to achieve). If you find that the majority of people in your life respond to your running goals with “that’s crazy (and not the good kind of crazy)” then it may be time to add in some people who think you’re a badass. One of the things I love about long distance running is that all you have control over is the work you put in and your attitude. You can go out each day with the mindset to “always do your best” (that doesn’t mean go hard every day and run yourself into the ground). Anyone who’s run for any length of time knows that you can show up to a workout or race and have the best day of your life or the worst day of your life or maybe something in between. You really can’t control all the variables. All you can control is your preparation and attitude. Let’s make this new decade one where we approach it with the right preparation and attitude.Books I Enjoyed in 2019 My 2019 reading round-up: 268 Total Books 133 Fiction 135 Non-fiction 31 (Number During Top Month of January) Here are the 16 Running Related Books I Read: Hanson’s Marathon Method by Luke Humphrey Can’t Hurt Me by David Goggins A Beautiful Work in Progress by Mirna Valerio Run the Mile You’re In by Ryan Hall (podcast interview) 26 Marathons by Meb Keflezighi (podcast interview) To be a Runner by Martin Dugard (podcast interview) The Long Run by Matt Long You (Only Faster) by Greg McMillan The Running Man by Orville Rogers Run or Die by Kilian Jornet Running- A Love Story by Jen A. Miller 14 Minutes by Alberto Salazar Running Outside Your Comfort Zone by Susan Lacke (podcast interview) Running to the Edge by Matthew Futterman (podcast interview) Rebound: Train Your Mind to Bounce Back Stronger From Sports Injuries by Cindy Kuzma and Carrie Jackson Cheadle Kicksology by Brian Metzler (podcast interview) Here are my 28 Favorite Non-Fiction Books of 2019 How to Have a Good Day by Caroline Webb How to be Here by Rob Bell Bury My Heart at Wounded Knee by Dee Brown Let Your Life Speak by Parker Palmer Atomic Habits by James Clear Tribe by Sebastian Junger Judgment Detox by Gabrielle Bernstein Inheritance by Dani Shapiro Girl, Stop Apologizing by Rachel Hollis The Lost City of the Monkey God by Douglas Preston American Wolf by Nate Blakeslee Maid by Stephanie Land Big Magic by Elizabeth Gilbert Half the Sky by Nicolas Kristof and Sheryl Wu Dunn Meditation for Fidgety Skeptics by Dan Harris Extreme Ownership by Jocko Willink and Leif Babin Cozy Minimalistic Home by Myquillyn Smith Make Your Bed and Sea Stories by Admiral William H Mcraven Running the Books by Avi Steinberg The Vietnam War by Geoffrey C Ward Tribe of Mentors by Tim Ferriss Thank You for Your Service by David Finkel Strays by Britt Collins Endurance by Scott Kelly The Moment of Lift by Melinda Gates The Body Keeps the Score by Bessel Van Der Kolk Everything is Figureoutable by Marie Forleo Here are my 13 Favorite Fiction Picks Fools and Mortals by Bernard Cornwell The Circle by Dave Eggers The Light We Lost by Jill Santopolo Dark Matter & Recursion by Blake Crouch Eleanor Oliphant is Completely Fine by Gail Honeyman The Count of Monte Cristo by Alexandre Dumas The Bonesetters Daughter by Amy Tan The Women in the Castle by Jessica Shattuck Revenger & Shadow Captain by Alastair Reynolds The Revenant by Michael Punke Great Expectations by Charles Dickens The post How to Have a Good Decade appeared first on Marathon Training Academy.

Now that Thanksgiving has passed and the calendar reads December, there’s no denying the holiday season is upon us. In the spirit of gratitude and giving, we at the #WeGotGoals podcast have chosen to focus our fourth, and final, segment of season 3 on the theme of Contributing Generously. It’s not really a stretch for us—all along, we’ve noticed most of the goal-getters we have on the show aren’t motivated by merely money, fame, or prestige. Nearly all have a bigger picture in mind, a vision of some way they can leave the world a better place than they found it. This quarter, we’ll bring this element to the fore, focusing on guests who have philanthropy, service, or selflessness at the core of their efforts. We kick things off, as we always do, with a hostful episode. This week, the four of us—me (Cindy Kuzma), Jeana Anderson Cohen, Kristen Geil, and Maggie Umberger—first recap some of the lessons from our past segment on Better, Faster, Stronger (including how we netted out on our goals for those few months). Then, we delve into what Contributing Generously means to us, and how we’ll make it a priority as we explore the topic with our guests in these upcoming months. Check out this episode to hear: 1:33: What we learned about the importance of recovery 4:19: Why getting better, faster, and stronger is often as much psychological as physical 5:55 Why progress comes under stress, and how high achievers overcome obstacles along the way to achievement 7:39: Our top takeaways from our guests, including having flexibility in your process; using all the resources at your disposal; and working in sprints 10:53: How we fared on our own better, faster, and stronger goals—including some unanticipated obstacles and pleasant surprises 16:13: Why we decided to focus our final segment of season 3 on contributing generously, and how we define that 16:49: The goals we’ve accomplished along these lines in the past, including fundraising on relay teams and supporting aSweatLife ambassadors in their charitable efforts 20:07: Our hacks for making service a priority, even when life gets busy 22:26: Where we find inspiration for giving back, including a touching story about Maggie’s father 24:21: The big, generous goals we’re setting for ourselves this quarter Links/resources we mention: Episode 123, on which Kristen interviews me and Carrie Jackson Cheadle Episode 118, with Tevia Celli Episode 128, with Autumn Calabrese Episode 124, with Jay DeCoons Episode 121, with Jillian Bell and Paul Downs Colaizzo The Greater Chicago Food Depository An article about how the Chicago Public Library eliminated most fines Mission Propelle   If you love this episode as much as we do, subscribe to the #WeGotGoals podcast wherever you like to listen to podcasts, including on Apple and Spotify (and hey, leave us a rating while you’re at it!).

Recovering from Injuries: Body, Mind, and Spirit Are you currently injured? If not, lucky you! Injuries affect every athlete, from the elite Olympian to the weekend racer. When it happens, it can feel like the most devastating event possible. While some athletes are destroyed by the experience, others emerge from their recovery better, stronger, and more confident than ever. How? Rebound, a new book co-authored by Carrie Jackson Cheadle and Cindy Kuzma, offers a roadmap to work toward a swifter, stronger comeback from injury using mental skills and psychological tools that allow you to take control of your recovery and ultimately, use the experience to your advantage. In this episode, we talk to Carrie and Cindy, both runners, who collaborated on this book. Sharing their own personal experiences and stories from close to 50 other injured athletes who came back strong. They will inspire and educate you about the psychological and mental aspects of coping and recovering from being injured.

Chances are, if you've been a runner, a cyclist, or even a studio fitness-er for a decent amount of time, you've battled injury at some point. In their new book Rebound: Train Your Mind to Bounce Back Stronger from Sports Injuries, Carrie Jackson Cheadle and Cindy Kuzma address not just the physical side of recovering from injury, but also the mental side. Calling this a book doesn't do it justice, though; Rebound is really more of a resource and a workbook, with nearly 50 thought-provoking exercises included that are designed to give the reader tangible ways to mentally rebound from injury to come back better, faster, and stronger. Listen to this episode to hear all about how Cheadle and Kuzma came up with the concept of the book, how they made the most of the injured athletes community while writing the book, and of course, what their big goals are for the future. Here's what you'll hear in this #WeGotGoals episode: 4:26: How a sports psychology class in undergrad led Carrie to realize the strategies discussed were just as useful for athletes as they were for practitioners, and ultimately planted the seed for Rebound. 6:05: A big goal Carrie and Cindy have achieved in the past, why it was important to them, and how they got there. 10:00: Why Carrie and Cindy decided it was important to write a book expressly for athletes using research on mental strategies for recovery. 13:15: The stories of injured athletes that stood out, including Jacki Gemelos and Kevin Ogar. 17:15: How community played a role in Rebound, both in the research discussed in the book and in the actual writing process. 22:00: Carrie and Cindy's favorite mental exercises from the book, including the emotion decoder, energy conservation, and good news/bad news. 27:50: The surprising thing Cindy noticed about the phrase "everything happens for a reason" among injured athletes. 32:00: Carrie and Cindy's big goals for the future. Links and resources we mentioned: Rebound: Train Your Mind to Bounce Back Stronger from Sports Injuries The Injured Athletes Club website The Injured Athletes Club Facebook group The Injured Athletes Club podcast If you love this episode as much as we do, subscribe to the #WeGotGoals podcast wherever you like to listen to podcasts, on Apple, Spotify, and more (and hey, leave us a rating while you’re at it!).

As we dive into the heart of fall running season, we're pumped to bring you Episode 164 of The BibRave Podcast, and our conversation with author and Runner's World contributor, Cindy Kuzma!  This week's episode is sponsored by our friends at AfterShokz and their newest product - AfterShokz Xtrainerz. Now enjoy swimming, showering, or running in the rain with ease with these waterproof bone-conduction headphones. Save $50 on your Xtrainerz Adventure Bundle when you visit bibrave.aftershokz.com and use code “BRBUNDLE”! This week's podcast was recorded in front of a LIVE studio audience in Chicago with our special guest, Cindy Kuzma. Cindy's new book, Rebound: Train Your Mind to Bounce Back Stronger from Sports Injuries, is the center of our chat and Cindy begins sharing why talking about the mental side of injury is such a relief for runners. Cindy shares some highlights from the book, including interviews with notable athletes like Amelia Boone and Kaitlin Goodman on how injury became an opportunity for improvement. They explore the idea of “recovery as your sport” and how to navigate and track what pain is OK or not OK. Finally, they end with some important takeaways on how to mentally manage your way through injury. Pre-order Cindy's book today on Amazon! For a deeper podcast dive, check out this week's show notes

We're sorry you're here, but we're glad you're here, too! Welcome to the third episode of The Injured Athletes Club, a podcast about how to cope with sports injuries. We're your hosts, mental skills coach Carrie Jackson Cheadle and journalist Cindy Kuzma. This week, the two of us are here to talk you through a mental exercise Carrie recommends to work your way through sticky situations during your recovery. This one's called: Go FAR. You can use it anytime you feel trapped or are facing a bump in the road you just can't see your way through.   On this episode, we discuss: -What the acronym Go FAR stands for: Feel, Accept, Recover -The types of situations in which it's useful (hint: just about anytime you feel stuck or in denial) -What your feelings can tell you—and why it's so important to listen to them -Why we tend to clump emotions together or rush either through or away from them (there are actually biological reasons for these tendencies) -Why getting really specific about what we're feeling helps to break this cycle -The “beautiful release” that can come just from being honest about your emotions -When stepping back and gaining perspective or context can help—and when it's counterproductive -How journaling can help, and an alternative if you don't love writing -Why actually scripting out—and practicing telling—your own injury story is important (including the magic of the word “prefer”) -How to recover—to plot your next step once you've accepted reality   Resources we mention: -Emotion lists: one html, one pdf -A journaling exercise from Carrie's website -Mindset, by Carol Dweck -The Insight Timer app   And, as always: -Our website, www.injuredathletesclub.com -The Injured Athletes Club Facebook group   Thanks for listening, and please reach out anytime at hello@injuredathletesclub.com with questions, guest suggestions, or other feedback. DISCLAIMER: This content is for educational & informational use only and & does not constitute medical advice. Do not disregard, avoid or delay obtaining medical or health related advice from your health-care professional because of something you may have heard in an episode of this podcast. You should not rely on this information as a substitute for professional medical advice, diagnosis or treatment. Please consult with a qualified medical professional for proper evaluation & treatment. Guests who speak on this podcast express their own opinions, experiences, and conclusions, and The Injured Athletes Club podcast hosts nor any company providing financial support endorses or opposes any particular treatment option discussed in the episodes of this podcast and are not responsible for any actions or inactions of listeners based on the information presented. The use of any information provided is solely at your own risk.

We're sorry you're here, but we're glad you're here, too! Welcome to the first episode of The Injured Athletes Club, a podcast about how to cope with sports injuries. We're your hosts, mental skills coach Carrie Jackson Cheadle and journalist Cindy Kuzma. We'll be right there with you through this 12-episode season. We've both been there—sidelined—and we know how frustrating rehab can be, how slow your progress can seem, and how the entire experience can leave you feeling isolated and alone. On this initial episode, we discuss: -What The Injured Athletes Club is: “It might not be a club that you originally wanted to be a part of, but it's a way to reframe it—to go, ‘Ah, this actually can be a really powerful experience,” Carrie says -Some of the most common psychological consequences of injury, including loss of identity, lack of confidence in your body, fear of reinjury, worry about falling behind your competition, and disconnection from your tribe -Why it's so important to do mental rehab along with physical rehab when you're injured -How social connections and support—including in groups like The Injured Athletes Club—are critical to the recovery process -Who can benefit from mental skills training/mental rehab from injury (hint: It's not just elite athletes) -What to expect in this upcoming 12-episode season: shows that alternate between interviews with guests—including athletes, researchers, clinicians, and more—and episodes where Cindy and Carrie break down the tools you can use to cope with injury and recover faster and stronger -How the mental skills you practice during rehab can benefit you long after you've recovered from injury -What it means to rebound from an injury and come back stronger -The way we hope to change the entire perception of injury: “When you step back and look at your entire athletic journey, this is just going to be one point that maybe provides a really powerful opportunity for you to learn more about yourself and come back even stronger, both mentally and physically,” Carrie says -One mental drill Carrie recommends to any injured athlete (get out your pen and paper for this one)   Resources we mention: -Our website, www.injuredathletesclub.com -The Injured Athletes Club Facebook group Thanks for listening, and please reach out anytime at hello@injuredathletesclub.com with questions, guest suggestions, or other feedback. DISCLAIMER: This content is for educational & informational use only and & does not constitute medical advice. Do not disregard, avoid or delay obtaining medical or health related advice from your health-care professional because of something you may have heard in an episode of this podcast. You should not rely on this information as a substitute for professional medical advice, diagnosis or treatment. Please consult with a qualified medical professional for proper evaluation & treatment. Guests who speak on this podcast express their own opinions, experiences, and conclusions, and The Injured Athletes Club podcast hosts nor any company providing financial support endorses or opposes any particular treatment option discussed in the episodes of this podcast and are not responsible for any actions or inactions of listeners based on the information presented. The use of any information provided is solely at your own risk.

Prior to Thanksgiving week, aSweatLife hosted a breakfast-and-learn focused on gratitude practices - a buzzy topic to be sure, but one that we were excited to talk about in a very different way. Editor In Chief Kristen Geil led us through a few gratitude visualization exercises, and we all went into the day feeling all kinds of warm-fuzzies alongside the rest of the 50 attendees. On this episode of the podcast, the four hosts break down what we did during that breakfast-and-learn and why we did it, as well as what our own gratitude practices look like. A few weeks before the breakfast-and-learn, we asked attendees to do the following: Submit three photos from your camera roll on your phone that make you feel grateful. As you're searching, look for the hidden gems, and make sure you select at least two photos you don't mind sharing with the group. Together, Geil led the group through visual gratitude exercises, and if you're looking for a way to bring your family together this upcoming holiday week and beyond, you're going to want to jot down these notes, too. 3 gratitude exercises to try this Thanksgiving With Photo #1: Take 3-5 minutes to jot down any notes about one of the photos you selected. Depending on how big your group is, you can have everyone share one thing they wrote down. Answer the following questions to get the creative juices flowing: To someone who doesn’t know you, what does this image show? What does this image represent to you? How did you feel at the moment this photo was taken? How do you feel looking back on it today? Why did you choose to print this photo? With Photo #2: Select a photo you don't mind having others look at and write notes about. The second exercise is a group activity. You'll spread out photos next to a slip of paper around the room. Each participant will walk around and write down what he or she sees in the photo. It could be a guess as to why you think someone selected the photo, or just jot down what you observe and what you find to be extraordinary within the shot. Fellow podcast host Jeana Anderson Cohen watched this exercise unfold and told us on this week's #WeGotGoals episode, "Everyone was just completely delighted when they got back to their photos. I was overcome by the amount of positivity that came through the room." "it was a good way to stretch those gratitude muscles," Geil added. With Photo #3: Practicing gratitude is never a one-and-done deal, it's a muscle you have to continue to work on. So with this third photo, we offered a few ways to allow this exercise to live and breathe outside the walls of the breakfast-and-learn. Either share the photo on your favorite form of social media along with the reason why you're grateful for the moment, or start a separate album in your phone of the photos you don't plan to post to Instagram, but the ones you want to save for the moments you need an extra mood boost or reminder why you do have so much to be grateful for. Listen to the podcast to hear why we loved the element of the visual exercise so much, and how different the different the exercise felt when we could actually hold a 4 x 6 print of some of our most cherished photos from the past year. What else we talked about on this episode On this episode, we also share what we learned from some of our previous guests this year and how we have implemented some of their gratitude regimens in our own daily routines. Anderson Cohen pulls from Laura Vanderkam and Stephanie Izard in her amalgamation of different practices which culminates in writing three separate lists every day. Each morning, she writes what makes today different from other days, because as Vanderkam explains in her episode, creating special moments deepens memories and makes time feel like it's literally expanding. Anderson Cohen also writes three things she's grateful for to start out each morning. At the end of the day, she writes an accomplishment list (or as Danni Allen likes to call it, a "ta-da list" versus a to-do list). For Geil, the Five Minute Journal is a current favorite each morning, but she's also a fan of The Happiness Planner (and hey, we heard from the founder of this brand on #WeGotGoals, too)! Cindy Kuzma celebrated her seven-year anniversary in going full-time free lance this past year, and to commemorate, she thought about the people who helped her along her journey and wrote dedicated emails to someone different each week. "I got to reconnect with people, and think back on those moments when someone believed in me ... I got to make their lives a little bit better, too," she said. Beyond how a gratitude practice can improve your own health and happiness, Kuzma reminded us all of something. You never know how you can help others by telling them you're grateful. Ready to gather your people for the gratitude exercises we talk about on today's episode? You can listen to #WeGotGoals anywhere you get your podcasts — including Spotify! If you like what you hear, please leave us a rating and a review. Make sure to listen all the way through, because at the end, we heard from a real-life goal-getter just like you – Sarah Russo. (Want to be featured on a future episode? Send a voice memo with a goal you’ve crushed, a goal you’re eyeing, or your best goal-getting tip to Cindy Kuzma at cindy@asweatlife.com.) Oh - and if you listen all the way through this episode you'll hear us give a shoutout to Lil Jon for this particularly uplifting track. If it gets stuck in your head this upcoming Thanksgiving week then, well, you're welcome.

We're thrilled to bring you Episode 116 of The BibRave Podcast! We start with a quick recap from Jessica about her 2018 Chicago Marathon experience. Then we get into the meat of our conversation with Matt Kuzma, co-author of Marathon Spectator Guide.  His co-author and wife, Cindy Kuzma, has written numerous pieces for Runner's World and also interviewed Tim and Jess for the #WeGotGoals Podcast. She's also run numerous Marathons, which has made Matt - who also has a background in urban planning and operations - a spectating pro! After hearing Matt's tales of seeing runners six to SEVEN times during MAJOR Marathons, I knew we had to bring him on the podcast. We talk about how he discovered the “sport” that is Marathon spectating. He shares some key tips & tricks (Yes! There IS an approach to fuel and hydration for the spectators, too!) and also some key things to avoid. If you're running a large Marathon soon (or have friends that are), you won't want to miss this episode. As always, you can find us on Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram! And, if you enjoyed this episode (or any other episode) we would love it if you could leave us a review on iTunes!   Show Notes: Ian Sharman on The BibRave Podcast: Ep 46, Ep 54, Ep 88 Marathon Spectator Guide Follow Team BibRave on social! Jessica: FB, TW, IG Tim: TW, IG   For those digging the sweet ukulele intro music, that comes to us from the talented musician and running coach, Matt Flaherty. Check out his site for more audio goodness!    If you like what you hear and want to get more, please subscribe in iTunes and leave a review. That pleases our overlords at iTunes...

For so many of us, setting SMART goals feels natural. It feels like the most promising way to achieve success. For Paddy Spence, CEO and Chairman of Zevia, there's a time and place for time-boxed, specific goals, but there's also room for much, much more when it comes to goal setting. On this episode of #WeGotGoals, I got a dose of Spence's refreshing take on non-binary goal setting, and heard how it played into his business journey that led him to purchase the massive sugar-free soft drink brand. "You plot your course, but you just don't know where you're going to go," Spence said. "I knew I wanted to run a business, I knew I wanted to be in the natural foods industry, and didn't know much beyond that." His first post-graduate school job was with Kashi cereals, a time he describes as "constant discovery, learning, and trial and error." Spence explained further his non-linear journey, with steps forward and equal or more steps backward, while exploring the natural foods industry. But he attributes his outlook on goals in a non-binary way as what really led him to success and helped him stay sane along the way. "Accomplishment is never linear. It's a zig-zag, it's lumpy. There were so many twists along the way." And if you only see goals as black or white, achieved or not achieved, those twists along your journey can be quite de-motivating. So Spence uses the words "more" and "less" to define some of the things he works toward. Like "Spend more time with my kids, or floss my teeth more. What's more? it just means 'more.' The finish line type of goals are satisfying, but so many of the things we try to do on a daily basis, there's no finish line. There's no finish line to being a good dad. There's no finish line to being healthy. It's all about continuous improvement." But Spence also has this keen awareness that success can be both a continuous journey and, simultaneously, something you've already achieved. "We don't tell ourselves that enough," Spence noted. Too often, he told me, he sees young people that believe "'If I don't do steps X, Y and Z I won't have succeeded.' "I tell people, you know what, you've already succeeded. You're a college grad, you're in a job, you have a roof over your head, you have a paycheck. That sounds pretty good to me. Success isn't something that's out in the future, it's within our grasp today." This summer, Spence suffered from a detached retina, an experience that, although necessitated an eight-week intense recovery period, allowed him to ultimately see clearly what was most meaningful in his life. Post-surgery, Spence couldn't read, write, lie down, exercise or travel for eight weeks. "I had to sit in a dark room for that period of time and really couldn't do much. One of the things I realized is how much I was missing, how much I missed the interaction with my family and co-workers ... It made me so much more grateful for everything - to be able to see, to interact with people, to be able to take my kids to school." And during that time, Spence did what he could: he meditated. "It's a joke to say you're good or not good at meditation, but I know I got a lot better of those eight weeks." Of the things Spence values most, his family is at the very top. In fact, one of the biggest goals he's proud to say he's achieved is all around his connection to his family. In this episode you'll hear just how much he values it, the steps he's taken to keep his time and attention prioritized on family, and how he continues to use meditation to set his daily intention on what's most important in his life for his family and for Zevia. Hear the full episode with Paddy Spence on #WeGotGoals anywhere you get your podcasts — including Spotify! If you like what you hear, please leave us a rating and a review. And remember, if you're working on a big goal, small goal, or a new goal setting method for yourself, we want to hear about it! Send your stories and lessons learned as a voice memo to Cindy Kuzma at cindy@asweatlife.com and you could be featured on a future episode of #WeGotGoals.

“There’s something about the power of a group to push you to your limits so that even when you're on your own, you're stronger,” Cindy Kuzma astutely summarized the theme of community through the lens of the marathon world record holder Eliud Kipchoge. And on this week's episode of #WeGotGoals, we talk through community and how a supportive group can help one person achieve bigger things than he or she thought possible. And that's the way community manifests itself at aSweatLife - the support of the group enhances the goals of everyone. We're constantly beating the drum of "everything is better with friends" and we took the opportunity to say that phrase at least a dozen times on this week's episode.And on a host-full episode, you'll also hear stories from inside the walls of aSweatLife, in particular, how we learned to not only embrace a community, but to start to make it a part of the fabric of everything we do. And community is especially top of mind as we close the aSweatLife Ambassador applications. "The ambassadorship has allowed us to walk the walk," Maggie Umberger, Director of Communities at aSweatLife said, talking through how the ambassadorship came about and where it is today. But building community is not without its challenges when you're a team of introverts. All four of the hosts on #WeGotGoals, while they may love people, need time to themselves to charge their batteries. We talk through our individual strategies for recharging throughout the episode. We also took this chance to revisit stories from high achievers who achieved their goals with the power a community. Kurt Seidensticker, Founder and CEO of Vital Proteins told us in episode 39 about how his team worked to support the vision he'd set forth. Tim and Jessica Murphy of Bib Rave told us in Episode 53 that their network of ambassadors helped to create the vibrant community that now reviews races across the nation and supports the brands that power running. Jim Huether, CEO of HyperIce sees the power when a group is unified in its goals, he told us in episode 59. “I’ve learned that you have to make sure the entire team is always on the same page. You have to foster an environment within your company where people are working together collectively and not against each other," he said. "If you do that, you set up the whole organization for success.” Caullen Hudson told us in episode 68 about how he uses his company Soapbox Productions and Organizing to empower a community to take action for social causes.   You can listen to #WeGotGoals anywhere you get your podcasts — including Spotify! If you like what you hear, please leave us a rating and a review. Make sure to listen all the way through, because at the end, we heard from a real-life goal-getter just like you - Kristen Wilk. (Want to be featured on a future episode? Send a voice memo with a goal you’ve crushed, a goal you’re eyeing, or your best goal-getting tip to Cindy Kuzma at cindy@asweatlife.com.)

From the way he talks, you'd think Devan Kline (co-founder and CEO of Burn Boot Camp and author of Stop Starting Over: Transform Your Fitness By Mastering Your Psychology) grew up in an idyllic suburban community, with plenty of room to play T-ball and adoring parents who cheered him on from the sidelines as he played baseball from elementary school all the way through a minor league stint with the San Francisco Giants. You'd be way, way wrong. As Kline will matter-of-factly tell you, he grew up in an abusive environment in Battle Creek, Michigan. "It was rough, you know? It forced me to grow up really quickly at a young age. Twelve, 13 years old I was dealing with mental and emotional stresses that I see some of my peers at the CEO level in the fitness industry struggle with." But maybe it's a testament to his perspective on life that Kline has grown to appreciate the silver lining in wanting to spend as little time at home as possible. "I pretty much knew what was waiting for me at home on any given day. I used the field to escape. I played basketball and football, but baseball was my passion. I knew that if I left early and got home late, I could avoid some of the turbulence that would be going on in the household." Today, Kline is the co-founder and CEO of Burn Boot Camp, a female-focused gym with 153 open locations (and growing every day). That nationwide phenomenon that boasts over 40,000 clients across 37 states? It started in a parking lot, with Kline handing out free t-shirts to any woman who said they'd work out with him. Glamorous, right? Kline's focus on women stemmed from his days as a professional baseball player, when he was sent to live with host families while on the road (and which you can read more about here). He recognized what the women he lived with often couldn't — that they spent so much time taking care of others, they often neglected taking care of themselves. "Sometimes it was very apparent that there was some unhappiness, and I started thinking... the self-love wasn't there a lot of the time. You largely saw lack of energy, lack of motivation to move their body, lack of nutrition knowledge, lack of desire to even gain nutrition knowledge." After noticing this unhappiness, Kline realized that he could serve as an inspiration for these families he was staying with — and thus, a lifelong passion was recognized. And while the conversation of women "having it all" seems to tend towards a "balancing" metaphor, Kline outright rejects the concept of a balance beam. That's because he sees that analogy as implying that in order to add something to your life, you have to take away something else — and often something you love. Instead, Kline operates from a philosophy of abundance, or what our newly minted improv expert Jeana Anderson Cohen would call "yes, and." His argument? There's always room for more things you love — and often, you feel more energized by adding those passions to your life rather than limiting them in the interest of having more time. Listen to Devan Kline's episode of #WeGotGoals to feel inspired by his journey from an abusive home to CEO of the fast-growing fitness franchise, Burn Boot Camp. Want to see if there's a Burn Boot Camp near you? Check their locations here — and let us know how it went.   You can listen to #WeGotGoals anywhere you get your podcasts — and yes, that now includes Spotify! And make sure to listen all the way through, because we heard from a real-life goal-getter just like you.  (Want to be featured on a future episode? Send a voice memo with a goal you’ve crushed, a goal you’re eyeing, or your best goal-getting tip to cindy@asweatlife.com.)   --- Start transcript: [0:00] Jeana: Welcome to We Got Goals, a podcast by asweatlife.com, on which we talk to high achievers about their goals. I'm Jeana Anderson Cohen. With me, I have Maggie Umberger and Kristen. Kristen: Good morning Jeana. Maggie: Good morning Jeana. Jeana: And Kristen this week you talked to Devan Kline, co-founder of the fitness franchise phenomenon, Burn Boot Camp. Kristen: Yeah. So, I spoke with Devan Kline who've featured on asweatlife.com before. But it was great to get to talk to him. To learn more about how he came up with the idea for Burn Boot Camp. And he's also just come out with a book. So, he's a new author. And he wrote a book called Stop Starting Over: Transform Your Fitness by Mastering Your Psychology. Maggie: And he was pretty open about, you know, where he came from and what his childhood was like and how he ended up where he is today. What can you share about that experience and listening to him? Kristen: Yeah. So, Devan had a really rough childhood and he will tell you very openly that he grew up with abusive parents who were alcoholics and addicted to violence in a really poor area of Battle Creek, Michigan where he's from. And part of the reason he became such a gifted athlete. He ended up playing in the minor leagues for the San Francisco Giants if you weren't familiar. But part of the reason that drove him to that success is because he knew if he left the gym and went home, there was a really solid chance that he was gonna get beat up. So he would stay late at the gym. He would practice. He would lift. He would work on his techniques. And the work that he put in during those hours really affected his ability to play college baseball and get noticed by the baseball professional scouts. So, it was a horrible situation for him to be in. But it was amazing to me how he was able to find that silver lining and connect back to how his childhood had a good impact on him, even when it was such a depressing and traumatic situation for a child to be in. Jeana: And today Burn Boot Camp serves a lot of women across the country. And he found sort of this love and respect for women for a lot of reasons. But mostly one main reason. Can you speak to how he found that reason and what that reason is? Kristen: So when he was in the minor league for the San Francisco Giants, these minor league players. I don't think this is a widely known fact, but they stay with host families to help keep costs down and to assimilate with living in that new area. So, he sort of found his passion for training and for helping others by watching his host moms. And noticing how they spend so much time taking care of everybody else in the family first. That they put themselves last. And he wanted to help his host moms, you know, learn how to take care of themselves first. And he cited the airplane oxygen mask situation. You know, like you need to be able to put on your own oxygen mask before you can help those around you. So throughout that... as he sort of conceptualized Burn Boot Camp and reached out to his first clientele. And even now that they have countless franchises and clients. Women are still his main focus because he feels so strongly about teaching them as he called it, "To be selfless by being selfish." So I thought that was a really interesting way of, you know, viewing taking care of yourself. And a different method of self-care is that it allows you to take care of other people as well, once you sort of get your own self on lock. So today if you go into Burn Boot Camp, you're going to see that the majority of their clients are women. And that's all because of Devan's focus and of his experience of staying with host families. Maggie: And in terms of trying new things or adding to your passions, Devan has a pretty interesting view on what balance means. Can you talk a little bit about that? Kristen: Yeah. And I think this is something that also comes directly from his working with women most of the time. Is that there's this idea of being on a balance beam and, you know, how does do it? How does she balance it all? How does she juggle it all? And a lot of that mentality assumes that if you want to add something in, you have to take something else away. And he comes from what I would call more of a philosophy of abundance. Where he argues that there's always more room for the things that you love without having to take away from other things you love. And I think that's a really important concept. I know we all feel in this room that they are only so many hours of a day and so many hours in which you can accomplish certain things. And I just love the idea of feeling more connected by adding more to your life. Instead of rushing to take away things to make room for something else. So that's definitely something I am carrying with me throughout the rest of my life after working with Devan on this episode. [4:55] Jeana: What an inspiring interview. I can't wait to hear from Devan, author of the new book Stop Starting Over and CEO of Burn Boot Camp. Here is Kristen with Devan. And stick around goal-getter. At the end of this episode, you'll hear from someone who's out there achieving big goals or setting big goals, just like you. Kristen: Welcome to the We Got Goals podcast. My name is Kristen Geil and with me over the internet, today is Devan Kline. The co-founder and CEO of Burn Boot Camp. The fastest ever growing fitness franchise in the nation. And recent author, new author of a book that recently came out in August called Stop Starting Over: Transform Your Fitness by Mastering Your Psychology. Devan, how are you today? Devan: I'm doing fantastic. And thank you so much for having me. That was an excellent intro and I really appreciate you having me on. It's a privilege. Kristen: Of course. We had spoken with you, I think earlier this year. I think Maggie spoke with you about the Burn Boot Camp franchise. And we're excited to dig into that today. As well as, learn a little bit more about how you approach goal-setting. Because you've had a really interesting life. And it seems like you just keep setting this higher and higher milestones for yourself and you keep hitting them. So, I think there' s a lot that we can learn. Devan: Yeah. No, I'm excited. I hooked up with you guys not too long ago. We have a mutual friend and we have some Chicago area locations. And I know that's where your home base is. So, we flew up and met with you guys and had a nice little workout. And we walked around the downtown streets of the windy city and recorded some stuff. It was really, really fun. It's been great to get to know you and the team. Kristen: And if I'm not mistaken you are from the Midwest area originally, correct? Devan: Originally I'm from Battle Creek, Michigan. And I played baseball at Central Michigan University which obviously kept me in Michigan for... in the Midwest. Ended up getting the opportunity to play with the San Francisco Giants which broadened the scope of geography a little bit. I was able to, you know, see most of this country. And some of the Western Hemisphere and that ultimately led me to Naples, Florida where I stayed and began my personal training career. And then, you know, fast forward 18 months after that, I'm 24 years old and starting Burn Boot Camp literally in a parking lot in Charlotte, North Carolina. With no connections, about $600 worth of rusty dumbbells and a whole lot of ambition, that's for sure. Kristen: Well, I want to get in deeper to that story. That was a great overview. Tell me about growing up. Were you always an athlete or was that something that you worked hard at over the course of your childhood and through high school and college? Devan: Yeah. My father and his father were both very good athletes. So, there is some genetics that come. I wasn't as talented as they were before me. So, I really had to work hard. And I had a pretty rough upbringing, you know. And I never tell this story for sympathy. I only tell it to make the rest of the story contextual. Growing up in Battle Creek, Michigan in, you know, what most people would call the ghetto with parents who were addicted to drugs and alcohol. And more of the effect on my life was their physical violence addiction they had to each other and myself and my siblings. It was rough, you know. I mean, it forced me to grow up really quickly at a young age. 12, 13 years old I'm dealing with mental and emotional stresses that I see some of peers now at the CEO level in the fitness industry struggle with. And I was able to... I pretty much knew what was waiting for me at home on any given day. And so I used the field to escape. I played basketball, football but more importantly baseball was my passion. And I used the field to escape. I knew that if I would leave home early and get home late that I could avoid some of the turblance that might be going on in the household. And, you know, but I just thought that's how it was. I thought that's how kids lived. And it wasn't until I got outside of Battle Creek, Michigan and outside of my home til I realized that normal American families problems weren't drug abuse, for the most part. Drug abuse and physical violence. But moreso, lethargy and lack of happiness due to fitness and nutrition. So, I always worked hard, you know. And that, I'll never change my ubrining because it taught me how to be a man. It taught me. Like if I would've had the parents that I wish I would've had now. I wouldn't be the man that I'm proud to be today. And so I'm always, always, always gonna be grateful for that. [9:28] Kristen: Well thank you for sharing with us. It sounds like a very harrowing childhood and it's really amazing to see how you've come from that background to be such a positive influential figure in the world. Not even just in the health and fitness industry. How were you able to stay so goal-oriented when you were growing up in that abusive environment? It seems like it'd be so easy to just do what it takes to skate by, you know. Do the bare minimum in baseball practice or homework or whatever you were doing at the time. How were you able to achieve such great goals when you were growing up that way? Devan: Yeah, and I write about this in my book Stop Starting Over. And it's really a decision that you make and like I said when I was a young kid, I was a little bit more grown up than I had to be. Because of the things I was going through. But life's circumstances, the events that happen to us that really condition who we are. Each one of those events and there's usually a few of them that are significant in all of our lives. I'm sure you can think back and think of a couple events that helped define who you are today. Like all of us can. You know, for me it was about being conscious and understanding that life is a blessing depending on the angle. And I always had the mentality. Like once I found that I was good at baseball, I knew that was my ticket. I knew that my upbringing led me to being on the field. Which led me to, you know, having some baseline talent. But really getting to the level that I played at which .0002% of college baseball players even get to was the fact that I had work ethic. And it was built into me. So I think it was really just a decision that I made at 12 or 13 years old once you start to become conscious about your surroundings and you start to make friends in different parts of the city. You start to take a look at your life and say like what is this... what does this mean. Yeah, this event is happening to me. Does this mean that I'm a bad kid? Does this mean I have shitty parents? Does this mean that I was put in this position so that I could overcome this to then inspire teammates? And inspire other people that I'm surrounded by? And I really took the later and I ran with it. I defined my situation as something that was going to progress me through my life and teach me the principals spiritually, mentally, physically, emotionally. That I needed in order to excel at a rate that was in congruency with my ambitions. And so, I was always a very ambitious kid. An entrepreneur at a very young age. Flipping... you know, I used to flip. I don't know if you remember pogs. I used to flip and sell pogs. Kristen: Yes. Devan: Pokemon cards. I used to sell. When I was sixteen I had a car flipping business. I sold like 5 cars over a summer. And you know, so that's always been in me. And so, it was a combination of things. You know, being broke was never fun and I wanted to utilize the situation I was placed in to do good for the world. And not utilize it to complain. Because that's what a lot of people do. And I wanted to show them there's a different light. Kristen: Well, I think you've done that and then some. I would love to hear a little bit more about your story of being drafted by the San Francisco Giants. Can you tell me a little bit about, you know, maybe that last year of playing college ball? Like when you first started to realize that you had a real shot at this. And then what it was like being drafted, playing and staying with the host families. That I know impacted Burn Boot Camp. Devan: Yeah, so between college and the professional ranks. I played in the minor league system. I just want to make that clear. Some people... Kristen: Sure. Devan: When I, you know. They're like "Oh, you're in the big leagues, I never heard of you." I'm like, "You never heard of me because I played the minor leagues with the other hundred guys that you've never heard of." But, nonetheless, it was a shot that I'm grateful for. And when I got drafted. Actually, when I was a sophomore in college I knew that I was good enough because people were telling me that I was good enough. Kristen: Mm-hmm. [13:21] Devan: And I got the opportunity to travel the country during the summer, every year in college, that I was there. I was there for 3 years. And I would stay with host families and host families are basically, for those that don't know. They're basically a family that will take you in and treat you like their kid. Like their son for a summer and, you know, when you're there half the time and on the road half the time. But when you're there, helping you out with your laundry and making you food and just taking care because we're putting our heart and soul into the game. And I started to realize these people that I'm staying with are so grateful for life and they're so grateful for their family but there's still a similar unhappiness that I'm feeling here that I felt in my family. But it's not apples to apples. Like what is it? What is it that's causing some anger and overwhelm and frustration within the households that I'm staying at. Because you can sense those things when you're staying in someone's house. I mean, you get full access. It's like a reality television show. And you know, sometimes it was very apparent that there was unhappiness. And just started thinking. You know, it wasn't abuse. It wasn't physical violence. It wasn't drug abuse. It was unhappiness. Like the self-love wasn't there a lot of times. Like people didn't... they didn't love themselves. And this is an observation of me staying with dozens of host families. And I have stories traveling around and staying with them. You largely saw like lack of energy, lack of motivation to move their body, lack of nutrition knowledge, lack of desire to even gain nutrition knowledge, you know. And so I realized because I had, had to put that work in. You know, being a less than talented athlete to get to where I was. I had to eat well. I had to hit the weight room. I had to take care of my body and I was just doing it. And my host families, some didn't really care and I didn't really see them much. But most of them who were bought in, who loved the game, who wanted to come and watch our games and be bought into our lives. I was an inspiration to them without really even trying. And that's when I knew that I had a God-given talent to motivate people, to move people to real action and to influence their lives. And so when I got drafted by the San Francisco Giants that same thing continued because you still travel in the summer, you still stay with host families in the minor leagues. And, you know, it wasn't like. They weren't like aha moments as I'm there. Cause I'm focused on baseball, right. Like I had no Plan B. It was like make the big leagues and that's it. And so once I got released. You know, I really reflected on what else I was passionate about. And it wasn't long before I realized that helping people live a happier life was my mission. Kristen: Devan, one of the questions we ask everybody who comes on this podcast is what is a goal that you've achieved in the past, why was it important to you and how did you get there? And I'm really interested to hear your answer considering the past that we just discussed. Devan: So I think the most memorable goal achievement that I've ever had was two of them really. The biggest one in my mind was becoming a nationwide franchise. I think that when I first started Burn Boot Camp in a parking lot like I had mentioned. I had $600 to my name. We had 0 resources in the Charlotte area meaning we didn't know anybody. You know, we didn't have any leverage. We didn't know any media contacts. And you know, to start in a parking lot. Grow a movement, more than. I think it's a movement more than a brand. And grow it to the point where you're talking about 1,000 locations coast-to-coast. And being one fo the most globally dominant fitness brands on the planet that ever existed. I mean, that's my biggest accomplishment professionally. Is finishing what we call the FDD, the Franchise Disclosure document. That creates a platform for you to be legal to award franchises in all the states. That moment in, this was, October 2014. This was about 2 years after I got released. I stayed in Naples, Florida as a personal trainer for about 18 months. Moved up to Charlotte as I mentioned about 8 months, 9 months or so. And we started working on the franchise. October 2014 rolls around, we start it and we finished it in February 2015. And the first, I had a franchise coach who was helping me out with all of my legal documents. And he basically was like, "Yeah, Devan. Your concept's pretty good." And he's like if you do 3 in your first year, you know, you're really, really successful." And in my mind, it's like "okay, this guy is full of shit. I'm gonna do 3 in my first week." So, I ended up actually doing 10 locations, awarding 10 locations in my first, my very first week of announcing. So, it was... it was an incredible jumpstart. It was surreal. It created momentum. It's something that I'm always going to look back on and be like. I think goal achievement exists because of decision-making. And the decision that we made to take this route and to scaling this brand. Not only benefits my wife and I. You know, and able to grow fast and become financially free. But also just seeing how many clients that we impact on a daily basis. Reading all of the emails. Like people who are on the brink of suicide sending me emails and saying a video or a podcast or, you know, a blog post changed their life and shifted their mindset. All of that because of one decision to become a franchise and to scale the experience fast. I'm always going to be most proud professionally of that one decision to go for it. Because it's a scary thing to do. Franchising’s very capital intensive and a lot of franchise systems fail, so. No failure in our eyes though. Kristen: One thing that I think is really interesting too is you balancing, on one hand, you've got this incredibly fast growing franchise with I think over 20,000 clients and counting. But at the same time. Devan: I want to make a correction right there. 141,118 but who's counting. Kristen: Holy cow! Oh my gosh. Well, my stats were outdated so awesome. That is amazing to hear. So, how do you balance that with a strong sense of community and family that I know is important to you and your wife in founding this company? [19:40] Devan: I think the question is great. And I did write about this in Stop Starting Over. And I think the reason, why a lot of the questions I get, and it ended up going into the book is because of our mindset. And it's not of balance. Like we're not trying to balance being a big brand versus being a family-oriented brand versus having our own family versus our work and professional and personal lives. Like we... Morgan and I believe in holistic integration. And it's something Arianna Huffington talks a lot about it. She's well known for this. But it's like taking everything that you care about in your life and making sure that you don't have to put big thick walls between your personal and professional life. We want to have an atmosphere where we love what we do. We love the people that we do it with. They love us back. And every day we can get up. And no matter how big we get, it's not going anywhere. Because everything starts and stops with the leadership of an organization or a family. And Morgan and I are the leaders and we genuinely and authentically believe in our hearts that our members are our family. Like they're our family. In my speech last night at my book launch the last thing that I said was, you know, "Thank you guys for showing me what family truly means because I've never had one like this before." So, family is built into the culture, authenticity is built into the culture. And Morgan and I are leading, and that's just who we are as people. So, I think it really trickles down through our franchise partners to our head trainers to their support trainers to our, what we call, brand ambassadors at our front desks. And through our clients and then even through our clients to their families. Which I think is one of the reasons that we're growing so fast because we're really able to take an emotional and mental approach and spiritual approach. Not just a physical approach. Which creates a whole different dynamic and a lot of people will be like, "I love Burn. I've never exercised before and I don't know what it is. There's something different about it and I love it." And you hear that all the time, over and over and over. And I think it is because of that reason. We just don't, we don't try to balance things. The nature of a balance beam is in order to have, you know, it even, you have to take away or add to. And I want all of the areas in our life to be in the black, if you will. I don't ever want to withdraw too much from my spirituality to run the business or withdraw too much from my family to focus on a book. Or focus on a book so hard that I lose my own fitness. So it's just integrating everything so that, you know, you can do two things at once. I can have a conversation with Morgan at night and bond with her over what's going on in the business and it makes life a whole lot easier. Kristen: I love that. It's a philosophy of adding in instead of taking away things. And I think that's really valuable. You also touched on this when you said the leadership trickles down not just within an organization but also within a family. And I know that a big part of your Boot Camp philosophy is making the moms' health a priority in families. Because so many times, moms have the tendency to be the caretaker for everyone else but not their own physical or emotional or mental strength. So, I'd love to know more about how you came to that realization. What influenced you to make that focus on women and moms, specifically, and empowering them through Burn Boot Camp? [23:06] Devan: Yeah, no it started when I was staying with all of my host families as we talked about before. And I think that was really, like I said, it wasn't an aha moment where I was like man, you know, I want to be a trainer that focuses on families health. And, you know, if you take a look at family dynamics like, as much as us guys don't really like to admit it, our wives and the women in our lives are pretty much the rulers of the world. And they're the leaders. And so, realizing that if you could impact a mom's health. You can impact a mom's mentality. You can impact more so her happiness. Well then you're really able to get through to the family because, you know, they always say, "Happy wife, happy life." It's so cliche but it's so true. And when the mom of a household is living in vitality. When they're living in energy. When they have, when they feel like they're giving and giving and giving but their also filling themselves up too so that they can give more. I think that's really what changed the game for a lot of clients originally here in Huntersville, North Carolina. Just north of Charlotte where we started. Who really helped me create a voice surrounding moms. Like so many, so many moms. Gosh, it's really frustrating sometimes and also an opportunity. But also frustrating to hear moms say, "I'm just a mom." Like, I just want to take a moment to address this real quick. Any moms listening to this because if you think you're just a mom, you have to know that you're so much more than that. You're a caregiver. You're a nurturer, a chef, an entertainer, an educator, a taxi driver. I mean the list goes on and on and on. You do so many things and you excel at each one. That there's no way to justify that thought that you're just a mom. You are a freaking rock star and you need to own that. And when I started leading Burn Boot Camp in the parking lot, I told my clients, I told my moms. I'm going to change the world and I don't care who's in my way. I'm gonna help change this world and leave it a better place than when I found it. And people thought I was crazy. The program originally started as Fit Community of Moms, which we kind of dropped that tagline because now we are accessible to men and women and children. But that was really how it started. That was the grassroots concepts. Just because I noticed how prevalent the just a mom mentality was. So to the women of Huntersville, North Carolina, if y'all are listening to this. Like you guys have created a movement and y'all banded together. And you've gotten rid of those poisonous thoughts for yourself and now you're helping millions of other moms do it. And, you know, moms aren't saying around here that they're just a mom anymore. Now they're like, they're the all star, they're the rock star and I shout them out, put them on a pedestal. And I think every mom who realizes that selfishness is not selfish whatsoever. When you're doing it for the right reasons. You don't have to be a selfish person. You don't have to be, in the truest sense of the word. You can be selfless by being selfish when you are pouring into yourself. When you put your oxygen mask before applying the oxygen mask to other people. You breathe life in your self first, so that you can give energy through them and you don't have to try hard. So take care of yourself. Make yourself the number 1 priority in your own life. Above all else. And I know how difficult that is over spirituality and over family. But you have to because if you don't, how are you ever going to find the energy to give outwardly. Kristen: Wow. I'm not a mom but I feel really inspired right now. To go, go out and take care of myself. So, thank you. Devan: It starts before you're a mom by the way. But it just gets harder when... Cause I have kids now. And I started this movement before I had children. And it definitely gets harder but I know that there's no excuses now. Cause it used to be like, "Devan, okay. I get you can say that. You're a 24-year-old kid that's not even married yet. And you don't have kids, you don't understand." Well, it's all about the paradigm, right? How are you, what lens are you looking at it through? And so, when I started having children. I have two, Cameron and Maxwell. She's 2 and he's 7 months. I felt it. But it was about adjusting and it was about adapting. And so, it's definitely possible and people are doing it all over the place. So don't think you're an anomaly if, you know, you have kids and it becomes a struggle. But, start practicing before kids, alright. Because once you get there, you don't want that radical shift. You want to be able to kind of progressively ease your way into children and healthy lifestyle. Kristen: Yeah, let's go into that a little bit more. Cause that was actually something I wanted to talk to you about because a lot of listeners are women who maybe aren't married or don't have kids yet. So how would you encourage them to set strong goals and habits now to set them up for success, if and when they do have a family down the line? Devan: Yeah, no I think ultimately. And I talk about this a lot in Stop Starting Over. This concept of the North Star. I've utilized this, I actually have a tattoo on my back to prove it. Kristen: Oh my gosh, you've committed. [27:52] Devan: Yeah, I committed a long time ago. As 21 or 22 years old playing baseball. I committed to this concept. And the concept was that I have an outcome, a singular outcome that I want my life to be. And I have, I answered the questions what do I want, as simple as that sounds. And why do I really want it? And create clear definitions surrounding those two questions because that gives you clarity. It gives you a GPS as you're going through your life. On a daily basis, we have the opportunity to create rituals in our lives. And those rituals, which most people call habits, things you do repeatedly over and over as a ritual. And are those in alignment with this North Star concept in your life or are they not. So I've always had kind of top of mind. And I put it in the book literally as North Star. And I branded the book with stars and everything because I thought it was super important to realize that no matter where you are in your life today, you have to be doing things that align with your ultimate outcome of your life. Like there can't be internal conflicts. If there are, then you have to make sure that you're self-aware enough, which is a highly underrated skill. If you're self-aware enough to take a look at your life from a 30,000 story foot view. And say, look dude or dudette this ritual, this thing that I'm doing in this life isn't getting me to this ultimate outcome that I'm after. You can also visual a North Star like a perfect day. Like if you had to live a perfect day what exactly would you do. If you had to live a day over and over again with no limitations, no consequences. What would you do when you get up, what would you do then next, and what you do at lunch and what would you do next. What would your day look like. And that is a great exercise because you get an opportunity to look at your life with no limitations. Like we, some of us struggle so hard to find our passion when it's right in front of us. Answer that question, if I had to live a perfect day over and over what would it look like with no limitations. That will give you an opportunity to define what you're passionate about with you having to ask yourself that weird question, what am I passionate about. Because you're gonna do the things over and over every single day. Only the things that you love cause you're stuck with them. So one of those two things or both and I write about both of them in the book, can give you that guidance throughout your life. So, I can't sit here on a podcast and tell anybody that exercising 5 days a week and eating only plants and a little bit of protein. And, you know, like the generic fitness stuff. I can't tell them that because I don't know if that's what makes people happy or not. I know that my personal decisions align with my outcome and part of my outcome is to live a long time so that I can see my great-grandchildren grow up. But I can't tell people you should exercise 3 times a week for 15 minutes or 6 times a week for an hour. It's like you have to do you. I know people, including myself that you're so freaking busy all the time. And it's a real thing. Like real business. Not like thumbing through Instagram or Facebook or something. And sometimes you can only get 10 minutes or 15 minutes in a day. But it's a must that you do it. That's your own decision. So you, I think people have to work backwards. That's my answer. You have to look at what you want your life to be in 50 years from today. Realize that we all have decades left, we all can grow. None of us are perfect. And you have to reverse engineer that life so there's internal conflicts. So that, you know, you can't complain about your job but then also binge watch House of Cards for 5 hours every night. You can't do that. If you're happy binge-watching House of Cards who am I to tell you that you shouldn't be doing that. And that's what I'm all about, is finding ways to create happiness. But if you're complaining about your job and you're watching House of Cards, now there is an internal conflict. So, I'm just really, really passionate about reverse engineering and becoming self-aware along the way. Kristen: And how does that concept of reverse engineering tie into the Stop Starting Over mentality that you titled your book after? Devan: Yeah. So many people, think about it. You hear it all the time, right? Oh, I'll just start next Monday. Or I'm starting a diet plan tomorrow. Or, you know, it's New Years. It's New Years resolution time. I'm making a new years resolution. But you've made the same one the last 7 years. There's no progression there. So, reverse engineering really ties into Stop Starting Over because what you do is you create this North Star that I'm talking about. Again, what you really want, specific to you. And why you really want it, specific to you. And that becomes, that becomes this outcome. For example, I think, it put it into context. For my life, I want to live past 90 years old because I want to see my children grow. And during my life, I want to be a business builder because I know that it'll provide for my family financially the way my parents could never provide for me. And my wife is the most important thing to me in the world and I want her to feel proud of her life and proud of what she does for a living and what her identity is. And, you know, why do I really want it? Well, because I think that love is the most important thing. And the only asset that we truly own and that we can control. And so then you just got to work backwards from there. You got to say, okay, alright. That's my ultimate outcome of my life. Okay, today is going to the cupboard and eating a whole bag of Oreos gonna help me live til I'm 90 years old. And the answer is no, so there's an internal conflict there. And so, reverse engineering and having that North Star, it's basically a GPS on your way to get to your ultimate outcome. It's giving you a way to make decisions throughout your entire day. Answering the question, does this align with my North Star. And that's all reverse engineering really is. So Stop Starting Over is basically teaching you philosophically how to do that. If you're looking for a 30-day meal plan, 30-day exercise program, don't even buy my book because it's not gonna help you. This is for people who are at rock bottom, who really need direction with their lives and don't have a mentor like I didn't when I was young. Or people who are living life at a really high level that want to take it to the next level. It's not gonna speak much to people in the middle who are just content with mediocre. Kristen: One thing that you've also said across your book and across your platforms that I've really honed in on is that success is 90% psychology and 10% strategy. I would love to hear a little bit more about how you came to realize that and it seems like that ties in perfectly to the Stop Starting Over. Because if you get your mind right. If you get that North Star clarified in your brain then that's got you almost all the way to success already. [34:36] Devan: It's all about belief. I mean, if you really look at successful people versus unsuccessful people it's the amount of conviction that they have in their own belief system. And a belief is nothing more than thoughts you continue to think over and over and buy into. And, you know, 90/10 rule. 90%, you know, success is 90% psychology and 10% mechanics is basically saying that the reason why you're starting over and over and over and over is. Because you're 90% focused on the mechanics and you're 10% focused on the foundational psychology that's gonna allow you to create belief systems and delete old belief systems that were installed into you from a young age. You know, inappropriately by a parent or a teacher. Or you had a dad who told you, you were the fat kid and now you identify as the fat kid and now you think that it's all about losing the fat. When really it's about taking a step back and saying. Psychology is the foundation to success, period. I wish I could say it's 100% psychology and 0% mechanics but strategies do take a part. You know, you have to work out and you have to eat right. But look if I asked a room full of 1,000 people is it true or false that you have to eat healthy often and exercise often to become a more healthy person. How many people would say true? All of them, right. So if 100% of people understand the knowledge and then our obesity rates and our rate of overweight American citizens is nearly 70%, 5% higher than it was 5 years ago. Then there's a serious disconnect there, isn't there. Kristen: Yeah. Devan: Everyone knows what to do but nobody's doing it. I mean, that's a pretty big void. That's a pretty big problem. And that's what I wanted to do with this 90/10 rule is address that. The reason that you know things but you're not doing them is cause you believe in your head, your thought processes tell you that knowledge is power. Knowledge is not power, knowledge is only potential power and unless you take action on top of that knowledge then it's never going to, you're never gonna make any real changes. So it's about putting priorities in order and Stop Starting Over really gives foundational principles spiritually, mentally, emotionally, physically that allow people to examine their own psychology. It's not my job to tell you how you should think. The best leaders in the world ask the best questions. And so, throughout the book, you're gonna to see questions being asked of you and exercises for you to do. There's a workbook that goes along with it that you can download on my closed Facebook page called Stop Starting Over. And, it really is a tool for people to really start to understand 90/10. And if you don't have 90/10 rule down and you don't believe it, well then you're gonna to believe things like it is what it is. I'm just overweight, it is what it is. Or I'm not a fitness person. You're gonna have these types of beliefs because you've never questioned them. So I'm getting people to question the way they think. Kristen: Well speaking of big questions, I think we've got just enough time for me ask you the last question that we ask everybody who comes on our podcast. And that is, what's a big goal you have for the future, why is it important to you and what steps are you taking to get there? [37:52] Devan: I am a big thinker. I think anybody that follows me or is a part of our organizations know that. We have 400 franchise partners, 800 trainers, 36 people on our headquarter team and they all know that the crazy stuff that Devan comes up with usually comes to fruition a year or two down the road. So maybe we should start believing him a little bit more when he's talking crazy. But with my energy, with my wife's energy, with our team's energy that we all have collectively with the momentum of all of our clients out there in Burn Nation. We have this 15 and 15 rule. 15,000 Burn Boot Camps over the next 15 years. And we live by that. We truly believe it. We really believe it with conviction that that's going to happen. We're already legal in Canada. We'll begin awarding franchises in Ontario, in Toronto specifically, in Vancouver. We'll be in the UK, some countries in Europe, Ireland, France, Germany, Spain, New Zealand, Australia. Those things are all coming and they're coming very, very soon. Like within the next year. And so, it's already starting. So for me, I want to continue to impact people and use Burn Boot Camp as a distribution platform for positivity and for kindness and for psychology and for education. I want to control. I want to take the conversation away from big marketing companies, big food marketing companies specifically and big medical companies. And I want to shift the conversation to our side because the number one reason why I believe that, especially America, is where it is today. Isn't because people try to sit around and be fat, sick and lazy. We're not trying to do that. That's not our ambitions. But the conversation, the education, the knowledge that we're being fed is largely misleading. I think Facebook, Instagram, YouTube do a beautiful job of commoditizing distribution platforms to get people's voice, like mine, out there in the world. And I think a combination of wanting to lead the charge conversationally, in terms of health and real change. And having a physical platform for people to partner with me to do so in our Burn Boot Camp franchise system is a perfect storm to create the next biggest franchise that's ever existed, fitness franchise. Kristen: Well I can't wait to see Burn Boot Camp in a neighborhood near me. Devan, thank you so much for coming on today. Before you go, can you tell us where our listeners can find you on the internet? Where they can download your book? And where they can find a Burn Boot Camp? Devan: So, Stop Starting Over right now is on Amazon. If you liked this podcast and you want to dive deeper, my podcast also goes into a lot of concepts. You can search it iTunes, GooglePlay, Stitcher, iHeartRadio, pretty much any syndication platform. I'm really everywhere, Instagram, Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, anywhere, IGTV. Wherever you feel like you hang out the most and content platform that you like, I'm there. The quickest way to get a hold of me is to just DM me on Instagram. I answer a lot of those. I'm pretty active over there. And, you know, I really look forward to helping people. My wife and I sit in bed every night for 45 minutes to an hour and share stories of clients who we're communicating with and help people. And it's just part of our lives and we love to do it. So, chances are... I can't get to all the DMs nowadays. I used to be able to. But chances are that we will have a conversation at some point if you really want the help. So reach out. Cindy: He goal getters, Cindy Kuzma here. Just popping back in to let you know that we are about to play a goal from one of you, our listeners! We would love to hear from you, that's right you! If you'd like to be featured on this podcast just record a voice memo with a goal that you've crushed, a goal that you have for the future and how you plan to get there or your best goal-getting tip. Email it to Cindy@aSweatLife.com. And you could be featured on an upcoming episode. Here is one of you with your goals. Zajana: I'm Zajana Das and I'm from Chicago, Illinois. Ana: My name is Ana and I'm also from Chicago, Illinois. Zajana: So, Ana and I both have a love for healthy foods. And it's something that we've talked about since the day we met. On our first day of adult work. We've been discussing this year about how we can start a brand that really represents us and our passion for health food. Ana: Yes and so we kind of looked at what we want to share with the world and with our community and we looked at it from being active, authentic and ambitious. And then just sharing those three different qualities through a lifestyle and through the food that we put out there. Zajana: And how we plan on getting there. I think it's been a little bit of trial and error. But something that we've come to learn about ourselves and A Sweat Life helped us learn about during one of the Breakfast and Learns is that we have to tell other people about our goals. So you know, I told my goal to Ana and she kind of echoed that was one of her goals as well. So that accountability has led us to really step up and come up with a game plan and a business idea for our goals. Ana: Yes and to add to that I will say that for both of us it's important to be detailed. And not just have a big grand goal out there. But kind of set up steps that will help us achieve that goal. So, you know, whether it is making a big business plan or setting up a marketing strategy, creating a brand image that we believe in. So taking concrete steps along the way to make it happen. Zajana: Definitely. Cindy: This podcast is asweatlife.com production and it’s another thing that’s better with friends. So please, share it with yours. You can subscribe wherever you get your podcasts including on Spotify. And while you’re there if you could leave us a rating or a review we would really appreciate it. Special thanks to Jay Mono, for our theme music, to our guest this week, Devan Kline, to Cathy Lye for editing, to TechNexus for the recording studio, and of course to you, our listeners.

Adam Whiting, now a well-known yoga teacher around the world for his smart sequencing and anatomical focus in class, was at one time just trying to understand what was going wrong in his body. After seeing doctor after doctor in Manhattan, trying to diagnose massive dizzy spells, headaches and seemingly random spouts of numbness throughout his body, he was told by all accounts that his body was "fine." "I was diagnosed with having anxiety disorder and panic attacks," Whiting told me. "And it didn't fit for me, because it wasn't presenting itself as anxiety. I wasn't stressed. I wasn't depressed. And in my mind, at that point, my knowledge about anxiety disorder was so limited that I was sort of in denial." At that time, Whiting was working in New York as a musician. But in order to pay the bills, he worked nine-to-five at an insurance agency - a job which, he describes, was a major catalyst for his anxiety disorder and also the catalyst for him finding what he was truly meant to be doing. "A friend introduced me to asana, to postural yoga. After several months of just doing yoga...I could feel the anxiety start to unwrap itself. It was just the most amazing feeling of actually feeling safe in my own skin again." After feeling how yoga helped and healed him, he knew it was something he wanted to teach. From that point forward, he launched into his first teacher training. He began teaching right away, supplemented that with playing music, and didn't look back. And even though it became a greater hustle to make ends meet, it was all building towards a greater purpose, or Dharma, as you'll hear Whiting describe in the episode. He started teaching more and more classes, then began traveling for workshops, and then started running trainings and retreats, all in addition to playing music on the side and weaving it into his teaching repertoire. He describes it as all part of a tapestry in "whatever this career is." Whiting sums it up nicely, but his tapestry is composed of many moving pieces that all move him in the direction where he wants to take his career and his life. From moving to Australia to lead trainings alongside owner of Power Living Duncan Peak, to hosting retreats across the world, to moving back to the U.S. to lead his first 200-hour yoga teacher training on his own, Whiting lets meditation be his guide in setting goals for his future. And rather than setting traditional, tangible goals, Whiting is focused on following his Dharma. He sees those action items to achieve more as the logistics to align in order to go after something bigger. "I absolutely do have goals of running more teacher trainings, of having my advanced 300-hour training up and running, of having a tour in Australia and running retreats in Australia and Bali. But in my mind, I sort of think of them as logistical things to align so that I can look out past that and set my sails towards that journey with the knowledge that the winds are going to blow me somewhere completely unexpected, but also with the the trust that wherever I end up is where I'm supposed to be." Listen to Adam Whiting’s episode of the #WeGotGoals podcast to hear more about how he views Dharma, his purpose and duty in life, and the way he views goals that ladder up to that. Thanks to Cody Hughes for the photo used in this post. You can listen anywhere you get your podcasts (including Spotify!) and if you like what you hear, please leave us a rating or a review. And stick around until the end of the episode, where you’ll hear a goal from one of you, our listeners. (Want to be featured on a future episode? Send a voice memo with a goal you’ve crushed, a goal you’re eyeing, or your best goal-getting tip to cindy@asweatlife.com.)   --- Start transcript: [0:00] Jeana: Welcome to We Got Goals, a podcast by asweatlife.com, on which we talk to high achievers about their goals. I'm Jeana Anderson Cohen with me I have Maggie Umberger and Cindy Kuzma. Cindy: Good morning Jeana. Maggie: Morning Jeana. Jeana: Good morning. Maggie, this week you spoke to Adam Whiting. And you actually got to do that interview from home. Maggie: I did. I talked to Adam who is a yoga instructor. Who I think started teaching in Charlotte, North Carolina. Where I am from. And then has since moved to Australia and then back to North Carolina. But he continues to lead trainings and retreats and experiences across the world. In Bali. In Sri Lanka. In throughout Australia. He's taught at Wanderlust. He teaches in a lot of places. I've always just really respected his classes. I have loved them and I wanted to know a little more about his journey to yoga. How he got to the idea of wanting to teach internationally. Because that is a whole other track of teaching that I don't know a lot about. So I was really excited to get to talk to him and then I was home. So I got to do it in person before taking one of his awesome classes. Cindy: Oh, that's so great and it sounds like not just what he said but how he said it left an impact on you. Maggie: It did. And I didn't even say this to him after. So if he listens to this episode he'll be like, "Oh, she didn't tell me that." But I was noticing how mindful he was as he was answering any of the questions that I asked. Or response to something he would say. And thinking about that a little bit more. And even like closing his eyes. Taking time to answer mindfully. I don't do that always. And so I think we don't always love silence and we kind of mumble through things until we get to the point. But he was just really thoughtful about what he wanted to say. And then speaking to that versus talking around the point at all. So I thought that was probably a testament to, in general, his journey toward mindfulness as a teacher. He didn't begin teaching yoga with this meditation center. He actually talks about this in the episode of being very anxious and having anxiety attacks and not really sure of what was going on in his body. He was a musician in New York. Doing that grind of working other jobs. Sitting at a desk while he was trying to have gigs at night and make it as a musician in New York. He was getting beat down through that grind. And so meditation actually, when he was introduced to it just had him sitting with his thoughts more. And he didn't really like that. And so the Asana practice, the movement piece of yoga was what keyed him into a different way of life. Or a different kind of thought pattern. And that he could get out of that anxiousness mode. So the meditation piece came later as I learned. But it really is like a stronghold to his practice and how he teaches now. Jeana: And Maggie, Adam almost didn't do this interview at all, right? And this isn't the first time this has happened to us. Can you talk a little bit about why he sort of has trouble with the concept of goals? Maggie: Yeah, he asked me like, "Is it okay if I don't really have goals. If we do this interview?" And I always think any input on how people view goals is beneficial. However, you see it. Whether you notice or, you know, want to kind of go down the path that one of these goal-getters goes down. Or you kind of take that at face value and choose something different. That's what's cool about this podcast is there's so many different viewpoints. And he said that he's worked with brands and at companies where setting goals has been a central piece of the puzzle. And so he understands it. And he knows that there's benefits to setting a ten-year vision and going after it. And then really executing on your one-year goals to make that ten-year vision a reality. But for him, what's he's found along the way is that he is much more in tune with the idea of dharma. Dharma he says is widely known as your calling but really it's more like your duty. Like your purpose. Why are you put on this earth? And you've got to find that. You've got to search for that. And then you've got to do it. And so that's really what leads him. And that seems ambiguous. And that can be scary. Like that's scary for me to think about. Just, oh my god, what is the one reason I'm here on this earth. But that doesn't really scare him. That's more of like what lights him up. And I think when he speaks about that you'll hear just how much of a guiding force that is for and all of the teachers he has learned from and how teaches now. Jeana: Well what a mindful way to think about goals and we're so excited to hear this interview with Maggie and Adam. Keep those earpods in goal-getters. There's more to this episode at the end. We'll hear from people just like you out there achieving big goals or trying new things or maybe just setting big goals. [4:56] Maggie: So I'm here with Adam Whiting. Who I have had the pleasure of taking class from many times before he moved to Australia. He's a yoga instructor traveling around the world teaching yoga. Also a musician. You're many things Adam and I'm really, really excited to get to talk to you about your journey as not just a yoga teacher but I mean really as a teacher. For a lot of different people across the world. It's a pleasure to have you on our podcast. So thank you for joining us. Adam: Absolutely. Thanks so much for having me. It is completely my pleasure. Maggie: So I did take your class probably first six years ago. Before you moved. And I remember it was like a Wednesday night, 8-9pm or something. And it was a class that I felt like changed my life. I loved it. Adam: Oh wow. Maggie: Yeah, it was just like the transitions were so interesting and you had such a unique perspective. And I remember the savasana was like 15 minutes long. And I had never had that before. And I so appreciated it. So before we jump into talking all about goals. I would love for the listeners at home to just get to hear your journey to yoga, just really briefly. [6:14] Adam: Yeah, absolutely. The story sort of starts in New York City. And I was living there. I moved up there in 2001. And lived up there for a few years. While I was up there I started getting some pretty massive dizzy spells. Some pretty massive headaches. Some random parts of my body, my arm, my face, my legs, were going numb at random times. And I really wasn't sure what was happening. And after taking a tour around several medical professionals, neurologists, doctors, general doctors, MRIs, spinal taps, blood tests. They basically all came to the conclusion that my body was fine. And I was diagnosed with having anxiety disorder and panic attacks. And it didn't fit for me because it wasn't presenting itself as anxiety. Like I wasn't stressed. I wasn't depressed. And in my mind at that point, my knowledge about anxiety disorder was so limited that for me I was sort of in denial. Saying no these are physical symptoms. These are symptoms that I'm getting headaches, I'm getting dizzy. This is physical things. Something has to be physically wrong with me. And it took this really compassionate doctor speaking to me about. Well, she actually made a bargain with me. She's like listen. I understand where you're coming from but let's put you on these anti-anxiety medications for just a little bit. And if your symptoms go away then we can talk, right. Then if you come in believing that this is actually what's going on with you then we can work around different ways to sort of treat the symptoms. So I agreed. And lo and behold she was right. And immediately, I started sort of seeking different ways to address the issues. Medication worked wonderfully for me but I also knew that it wasn't something that I wanted to be reliant on long-term. And I knew that there were other answers out there for me. So I started looking at meditation as the means to heal and to move on from this. And to be completely honest with you, meditation in and of itself actually made it worse. Because I was at that point, just in this state of just. I didn't realize how stressed I was. I didn't realize how just overflowing with anxiety I was. This was just post September 11th and the city was in turmoil. And the world was in turmoil. And to be there during that time. I didn't really realize how deeply those rivers of anxiety were flowing. So when I was asked to sit in the stillness of meditation it actually triggered more anxiety. And it triggered more panic attacks. So I moved away from that. And then finally, you know, a dear friend of mine introduced me to Asana, to a postural yoga. And after several months of just doing postural yoga I could finally start to feel that sort of barbed wire of anxiety, you know, start to unwrap itself from my being. And it was just the most amazing feeling of actually feeling safe in my own skin again. But like I said, not realizing how unsafe I felt. And then I started exploring more meditation with the postural yoga. And immediately when I felt how amazing this practice was. And how much it served to help me and heal me. I knew it was something that I wanted to teach. Pretty immediately, I knew that this was calling out to me to share. So after getting my first yoga teacher training certification. I just jumped into teaching right away. And, you know, I was young and fresh and so passionate about it. It's funny looking back on those first classes those, you know, six, seven, eight years ago. I sort of shake my head a little bit. Of like, oh my god those classes must have been awful. But I think that's sort of true in any sort of medium you care so much about. And as you grow and evolve and mature, your teaching and your skill and your craft evolves and matures. So hopefully, eight years from now when I look back at the classes I'm teaching now I'll be appalled because I've learned that much more in the eight years. So after teaching. I was in Charlotte, North Carolina for a few years teaching. And I got this amazing opportunity to teach in Australia. This wonderful man, teacher, business owner. His name is Duncan Peak, owns Power Living Australia Yoga. And that is a group of nine studios around Australia and New Zealand. And after some sort of back-and-forth and a wonderful trip to Australia. I agreed to move out to Sydney and help coach their teachers and lead their teacher trainings. And travel around to the cities in Australia where they have studios. And teach classes, run workshops, run teacher trainings and, you know, also run retreats in Bali for our teacher trainings. So it was an amazing few years of really quick growth. Really rapid education on my part. And just to be in that part of the world was unbelievable. It's still some of the most beautiful places I've ever been are there. So I lived there for a few years and it was absolutely amazing. But towards the end of those few years, I could feel these little strings pulling my heart back to America. My family's here and we'd always been really, really tight. And in Australia, just being able to come back once a year was amazing but it wasn't quite enough. And there were some issues with family stuff that were really pulling me back to be home. To be closer with family. And it also sort of aligned really beautifully with my desire to be an independent yoga teacher. Working out in Australia was absolutely amazing but I was also working for another brand. And it was an amazing brand but it was a brand that wasn't Adam Whiting or Adam Whiting Yoga. It was another brand. And there's always been a craving inside of my journey and my career to just speak from my own voice and teach my own trainings in the way that I've learned. And the way that I want to share. Without really, it might sound blunt, but without really having to answer to anybody else. So in moving back to America and back to Charlotte. And running my first teacher training here which is an independent Adam Whiting Yoga Teacher Training. It feels amazing to be able to, you know, put my stamp on the certificates. And say that, you know, these students learned from me. And to be able to craft my own calendar and run my own events. And just sort of again, it sounds blunt, but not to have to answer to anybody else. To be able to craft my own future in the way that I want it is really encouraging and I'm really excited about the next few years. Maggie: I hear probably something that a lot of people would nod their head at and say that they want to be in charge of their own destinies too. Adam: Absolutely. [14:28] Maggie: And that's a huge, like. I can imagine that feeling, that calling inside you. Cause I feel it in me. And I feel like so many people. Especially now, that there are so many avenues to create your own path. That it isn't the 9-5 structure of jobs as much as it used to be. Especially in the recent years. So I wonder, what for you was some of the helpful guides in pushing along this path. To create it for yourself. Because while I know a lot of people want it. It's another to actually go for it and do it. [15:02] Adam: Yeah, absolutely. It's I think my journey is not quite a typical journey. My journey started playing the guitar. As you said, I'm a musician. And I started playing the guitar when I was eleven or twelve. And I was only playing it for a couple of years. And just by sort of coincidence and I think we'll talk a little bit more about coincidences later. The guitar teacher that I had was graduating from college. And he said, "Okay. I'm leaving you. I can't teach you anymore. But there's this amazing school. And I want you to go down for a summer session." So and that was University of North Carolina School of the Arts. And it was between my eighth and ninth grade year. And I studied there for a few weeks. And it was my first sort of time away from home. And I remember I was really homesick. And I think I cried a lot on the phone with my mom. It was terrifying being away from home that young for me. But then basically by the time I got back home from the training or the summer session, the guitar teacher at this university had called my mother. And said that he wanted me to study there full-time. So I studied at this university, at this conservatory for seven years. Through high school, through my undergrad. And immediately that's when I moved up to New York City. And when I got to New York was the first time I ever had that real 9-5 job. And, you know, like any musician in New York, especially. You're a musician which means you're unloading trucks. Or you're a waiter. Or you're, you know, working data entry at an insurance agency. Which is what I was doing in a cubicle from 9-5. And I think that working that job was one of the catalysts for one. One of the catalysts for my anxiety disorder and my stress because I was so deeply unhappy there. But because of that was the catalyst for me getting out. You know, and I remember the day that I quit and it was. I remember walking around. It was in downtown New York, in Manhattan. And I remember walking around after I had resigned. And I was sort of like halfway smiling, halfway crying, like halfway like I don't know how I'm going to make a living now. But I had no choice. It was one of those things that comes up with me quite often is I don't have a choice right now. So this is the path that I'm going to walk down. So from there on out, I pretty much just started hoofing it as a musician. I started teaching lessons. I started performing as much as I could. I recorded an album. And I was still unloading trucks at a Crate & Barrel in midtown at the same time. So I was still working jobs to pay my rent. But there was always this sort of, just this hustle, of you've got to do this. Because you don't really have a choice. And then I moved back to Charlotte. And when I moved back to Charlotte from New York. One, the cost of living was significantly less. So I was really surprised that I could make a living as a musician at that point. You know, gigging on the weekends and teaching lessons. And then teaching yoga. And all of a sudden teaching yoga so sort of started to take precedence. And I started teaching more and more classes. And then I started traveling for workshops. And then I started running trainings. And then retreats. And it was sort of this beautiful crescendo where more and more yoga opportunities were coming and the music opportunities were sort of fading away. And what's beautiful now is that they've both sort of come together. Like I'm still playing music, we're running Kirtans. This, you know, traditional chants in yoga. And recording a cd. And it's sort of come together in this beautiful tapestry of whatever this career is. But I think what you said is really important. Is that I think the definition of career is really changing. That the idea of that 9-5 job that my dad had where he worked for Federal Express from out of college until the day he died. Really it still exists but it's not. I don't think it's really the stronghold that it used to be. And now there's sort of this freedom of creating what you want to create for your life, for your job, for your career. And it still terrifies me. Because I'm sitting here. You know, meandering into my late thirties. And really happy with my career and really happy with where everything is right now. But I'm also thinking about retirement funds and do I want to be teaching yoga when I'm in my fifties. Or what's going to happen and how am I going to create this financial stability that. You know, if I did follow the path of my father or my grandfather that they had the retirement funds and the IRAs and all of this stuff set up which I don't have. And part of me gets really terrified about that and then part of me also is just sort of trusting, right? Part of me just sort of thinks. Okay, well here we are. And this is the path that I'm moving through in this lifetime. And, you know, these first few decades I've figured it out. So hopefully I'll continue to figure it out. Maggie: I think it's a good mentality. I mean if your past is any track record for the future, you will figure it out. So let's talk about big goals. The biggest question that we ask on the podcast is what's one big goal that you've accomplished that you're proud to say that you did and how you got there? [21:07] Adam: It's interesting. I knew that you were going to ask this question and I've spent some time these past couple of days sort of hovering around that question. And I really didn't come up with one goal. Because I'm not really the type of person that sort of makes a goal list. Or a vision chart. And, you know, through my teaching and yoga I've interacted with several brands who have put me through that sort of, you know, vision statements and ten-year goals and five-year goals and one-year goals. And I think that's very helpful and I think there's a lot to be said for that. But at the same time even when I was doing it. It wasn't really lighting me up. Like it wasn't inspiring me for the future. For creating something that moved me closer towards whatever those goals are. It actually sort of intimidated me a little bit. So I was like well I don't know. I don't want to set this goal that I'm not sure of this house or this family or this career. Like I want these goals and I want these visions but I also want to be able to flow. And if I didn't have that idea of flow in my life. I wouldn't have ended up in Australia or Bali or back here. And I don't think I'd be where I was right now. So there's something to be said for. In yoga, we call it Sankalpa and Sankalpa means intention. In yoga, we speak towards the word dharma a lot. I think it's softly and steadily turning into a phrase that might be a bit overused these days. Or maybe mistranslated is a better way of saying it. But in dharma, a lot of people think of dharma as being your calling. But the more accurate translation actually means your duty. I think that's a little bit more accurate because it's not just what am I inspired to do. It's like what do I have to do? Like why was I put here on this earth? And I have to with everything that I have and with my entire being and with my entire life I have to find that. I have to find my calling. Why I'm here. It's my duty. And for me, instead of charting out ten-year, five-year, one-year. The way that I've sort of navigated through it is more silence. More meditation. More introspection. And when I sort of back away and take those times of stillness and of meditation. I feel like I'm shedding away the layers of the external thought patterns. Of my doubts and of my worry. And of that constant negative chatter that lives in my head and a lot of other people's heads. To just sort of sit in my center. To sit in my being for a little while. And to actually listen. And to listen to what my heart truly wants. And it's in that listening that my compass sort of sets itself. And what the yogic tradition believes is that once you find that connection to your source. That connection to your calling. And you notice, we could several words here. We could use the word the universe, we could use the word divinity, we could use the word grace. But when you start to notice the essences of that force, that power, that energy resonating in your life. That energy starts to notice you noticing her. And she begins to unfold for you. And what I mean by that. One of my favorite quotes which may or may not be tattooed somewhere on my body in some way. Is an Emerson quote which is, "The world makes way for the man who knows which way he is going." It really resonates with the Vedic knowledge, with the yogic knowledge of once you have discovered your dharma. Your path down this life and you set your sails and you start moving in that direction. The world has a beautiful way of creating the path for you. And it's not going to be the path that you think it is. You know, it's not going to be the route that you think you should be going down. But it is a path that if you trust it, it will lead you to somewhere beyond your wildest expectations. So in goals, I absolutely do have goals. Goals of, you know, in 2019 running some more teacher trainings. Of having my advanced 300-hour training up and running. Of having a tour in Australia. And running retreats in Australia and Bali. And these are sort of, I guess we can consider them short-term, one-year goals. But in my mind I sort of think of them as logistical things to align. So that I can sort of look out past that. And like I said set my sails towards that journey with the knowledge and the expectations that the winds are going to blow me somewhere completely unexpected. But also with the trust that wherever I end up is where I'm supposed to be. Maggie: I have a two-part question. Or maybe two separate questions. Adam: Okay. Maggie: First, do you know what your duty is now? [26:55] Adam: Okay, interesting. So good. I'm leading a teacher training here in Charlotte. And we just, and I think a couple weekends ago we just had this conversation. There's this beautiful book. It's called The Great Work of Your Life by Stephen Cope. And it's this modern sort of retelling. Not necessarily retelling but a modern analysis of the Bhagavad Gita. And it talks about all of these characters who've found their calling. And they pursued it. And we had this big conversation with our trainees. And some of them knew and some of them didn't. And some of them were really stressed out that they didn't know. And some of them were really disappointed that they didn't. And some of them weren't sure that it was right. And it was really revealing. And we have a retreat coming up in a couple of weeks where we will go through a process of finding their dharma. Or I don't know that puts a lot of pressure on the retreat. Let's say getting closer to discovering it. In my journey in discovering it and what I've found. And this is through working with an amazing book called the Four Desires written by an amazing yoga teacher named Rod Stryker. He puts you through several writing exercises. In several different manners which pulls away sort of this layered thought of what dharma really is. And I think in Western wrapping we often think of dharma as your career, like your job. And if not that, maybe it's your family. And if not that, maybe it's something along those lines. And when I went through this, these exercises through this book and through working with Rod Stryker. I came upon what he calls your dharma code. And it takes several sort of drafts. And several pages of writing and crossing out and editing and writing and crossing out and editing. And I came upon one, and the person I was working with had me read it out loud. And as soon as I read it out loud. I looked and she looked at me. And she said, "Nope, that's not it." And my feelings were really hurt. And I was like what do you mean, this is it? And she asked me, "Were you editing yourself along the way when you were writing? Were you trying to steer the ship in a different direction? Were you editing along the way?" And I was like "No...yes." And I looked back at what I was writing and I was like totally I was. Because I thought I knew the answer already. And I wasn't leading myself into being vulnerable and open. So we tore it up. We started over again. Rewrote it all over again. And then at the end of this process. She said, "Okay, read it to me again." And the dharma code that I wrote was, "I share my story with the world without hesitation or doubt." And as soon as I said that I saw her face light up. And my face lit up. And she said, "Did you feel that?" And I was like, "I don't know what it was but I felt it." And it was just as soon as I read it, it was this surge of energy running through every cell in my body. You know an energy that we call alignment. And I was like oh, it totally redefined this idea of dharma for me. It's that I've always been a storyteller. As a musician, as a songwriter, as a yoga teacher or a workshop and a training facilitator. It's always been about a story. And sharing a story. And when this dharma code came about saying I share my story with the world without doubt or hesitation. It landed in a way that it didn't define me. In a way of putting boundaries around me. But it defined me in a way of lifting me up and giving myself permission to pursue these dreams with everything that I have. And that's the second teaching of the Bhagavad Gita which we said before. You know, the first teaching is find your dharma. Find why you were put here. Because you being in a body that is breathing and alive right now is nothing short of a miracle. And there's a reason for it. So step one is to find that. And then step number two is to pursue it with everything that you have. With absolutely every cell of your body. And in finding this dharma code. That little, short little sentence. It was, it felt like somebody put a match to my fuse. And all of a sudden just this rocket was about to go off. It felt unreal. Maggie: Like you could almost get out of your own way. Adam: Absolutely. Yes, absolutely. And I was in my way more than I wasn't. And I still am, right? It still happens where I'm just like tripping over myself. Because my mind and my chatter and my doubt gets in the way. But, you know, all it takes is that, those moments of daily meditation and coming back to that dharma code. Which is like, oh yeah. I get it now. Maggie: That actually is a good segway to my other piece of the question. Because I'm interested in hearing you talk about the space in between where you went from being anxious by sitting with yourself and trying to meditate. And then to having such solace with meditation and really cherishing that time. How did you find that? Or how did that progression in your life happen? [33:09] Adam: Yeah, absolutely. For the first several years of my yoga practice, it was really predominantly a postural yoga practice. It was an Asana practice. And meditation was an off and on thing. You know, I would do meditation when I was in teacher training or when I was studying or when I was on a retreat with my teacher. And it was something that I always knew the benefit of. But never committed to a daily practice. And then several years ago, I made a trip to India during a pilgrimage called the Kumbh Mela. And the Kumbh Mela is every twelve years. It's this pilgrimage at the banks of the Ganges River. In a little town Allahabad. Not that little. But it is the biggest gathering of human beings in the planet. I think it's some 80 million people make the pilgrimage to what's known as the Sangam. And the Sangam is the confluence, the joining together of the Ganges River, the Jamuna River and the mystical Sarasvati River. And every twelve years, it's the alignment of the planets is said that that spot in the planet is the third eye of the planet. And every twelve years, the third eye opens. So if you are lucky enough to bathe yourself in the Ganges at this time. It's said it's so holy that your sins are forgiven, your children's sins are forgiven and your grandchildren's sins are forgiven. It was beautiful. It was amazing. It was one of those pilgrimages that words can't really capture. We were staying, our campgrounds for this pilgrimage was about a kilometer downriver from the actual Kumbh Mela. But there were millions and millions and millions of people in this festival ground, pilgrimage grounds and there were 24-hour chants happening. Fires burning. Just millions and millions of people. And that energy was just rolling down the Ganges. The smoke was rolling down the Ganges. You could hear the chants. And it just sounded, in the middle of the night you would wake up and you would just hear [...]. Of just these chants happening and the energy was palpable. It was amazing. And I was there with Rod Stryker and another great teacher. His teacher, Pandit Rajmani Tigunait. And it was there that I really found my meditation practice. We worked a lot with mantra. We worked a lot with different sort of meditation techniques. That finally just sang. You know, it felt like music to me. It felt like a song. And I think, you know, in the years prior when I was working in yoga and trying to find this meditation practice. I couldn't really find it because I didn't really have a teacher. Like I didn't have someone to teach me the technique. You know, it's like trying to do a handstand but you're just alone in your room. And you're just flinging yourself up and down. And there is nobody there to tell you the technique to get into it. Meditation was the same way. So I finally had found a teacher. I had found somebody to lead me into the technique and to guide me and to answer my questions and to relieve my doubt. And so for years after that, I was meditating in this japa mantra practice. Which is a repetition of a mantra. And it's the practice that I've relied on heavily throughout these last several years. And then when I was in Australia I met another amazing yoga teacher, meditation teacher. And his name is Jonni Pollard. And his organization is called One Giant Mind. And his manner and his way of speaking about meditation and teaching mediation is profound in it's simplicity. What he is doing now is he working to strip away all of the pretenses, all of the structure on meditation. That for a lot of people can seem really daunting and really intimidating. And his technique is so simple but it's so refined. So I've started studying with him. And I'm actually right now moving through his teacher training to become a certified meditation teacher in One Giant Mind. And it's this very simple mantra. It's this very simple beautiful process. That you just sit down for twenty minutes twice a day. And right now, that's the practice for me that's having the most profound effects. You know, I will always be a fan of postural yoga. I will always be a fan of moving my body and finding freedom through that movement. But right now, in this sort of journey through the meditation practice which is now spanning a couple decades. Meditation is where I find the clarity, the peace, and the reconnection to myself that I'm so often missing. And in trying to teach others now. In my teacher trainings and in the retreats, the skill and the craft of meditation. It really is learning a new practice and it's creating and cultivating these new habits. But without fail if I can get one of my students to sit down for 30 days straight of meditation, then they're in it. They're in it for life. Because within those 30 days they have noticed such a profound shift in their connection to joy, in their calmness, in their balance, in just their way of being. The way that Jonni Pollack often says it, "You know those points in your life where, you find yourself just happy for no reason. Like you're sitting and watching a sunset. Or you're walking your dog. Or something beautiful happens and just this like really gentle wave of contentment and happiness sort of waves over you, washes over you." He says that's your natural way of being, right? That should not be an anomaly. That should be your regular state of being. And connecting to a meditation practice lets you access that state of being with such ease. And it's been a practice that has saved me several times. And like I've said, I love Asana and I love moving my body and I love sweating. But for me now, the postural yoga practice and the meditation practice are two sides of the same coin that I don't really want to live without either of them. [40:34] Maggie: So the last question which you sort of touched on. And I think maybe it wraps up a lot of the things that we're talking about of kind of getting out of your own way. Or being able to sit to really know where you want to go and where you can live out your duty or your dharma. Maybe that kind of comes up in this question of what's a big goal that you see for the future, that you want and why do you want it? Or how do you plan on getting there? [41:01] Adam: Yeah. About a year ago. Or it's been a little bit more now. A year and a half to two years ago. I had a pretty catastrophic injury. My L4/L5 disc blew and the extruded disc actually wrapped around one of my spinal nerves. And I lost function of my left leg and I lost feeling in my left leg. And coming from a state of yoga aware and movement where I really define myself as a mover. As a postural yoga practitioner. To have that taken away from me was heartbreaking. I mean the pain was excruciating. But it also forced me to redefine where I stand as a teacher in this practice. And after the surgery. And after the rehab. And reintroducing my body into this movement practice was so enlightening. One in terms of what my body was capable of doing. Or more accurately what it's no longer capable of doing. How to be okay with that. But also looking back over the past ten years of moving my body in Asana and being able to see really clearly with. Hindsight is 20/20. Being able to see really clearly the movements that I shouldn't have been doing. The transitions that I shouldn't have been doing. The fighting my body to try to get deeper mobility. To try to get a deeper forward fold. To try to get the legs behind my head. That, you know, in hindsight really was just ego. It was really me just fighting to prove something that was really pointless in the first place. And what I find now that I'm back on the mat, back in my practice. Is that I'm still so inspired by the movement. I'm still so inspired by the Asana. And it is an exploration and it is a joy to find new ways to move. It's an art. It's just like music. It's like songwriting. It's creating a sequence and moving your body through the sequence. It's dance. It's songwriting. It's poetry. But what I've found is that there needs to be science behind the art. There needs to be knowledge behind the art. And in all bluntness and in all openness. I think that is lacking, that knowledge is lacking. Especially in the new yoga teachers around today. Which we were all there. I was a new yoga teacher. And I was just sort of making it up as I went along. But one of my goals now is to. Number one always keep refining the way that I teach. And to keep building my knowledge base so that my knowledge of anatomy, of the biomechanics of the body, of how bodies are supposed to move and how to keep people safe is always growing. But now on top of that. Now that I've become. I've been teaching teachers how to teach. My goal is to educate yoga teachers in how to keep people safe. In how to try to in as many instances as possible avoid the injuries that we all get so often. I mean, yoga is movement and in movement, there is inherent risk. Right, there is inherent risk in hamstring pulls or wrist injuries or shoulder injuries. Like it's going to happen. And, you know, if you compare yoga to American football the risk level is quite low. But what I see is that the level of injuries in this practice is much higher than it should be. And it's much higher than it should be because I think there are inherent flaws in the structure of how we train and certify teachers. Which is a really long conversation probably for another day. But I think it's really important to, number one allow the people who are so passionate about yoga and who really want to teach the yoga to allow them to teach. But I want to in my trainings guide them to teach in a way that is knowledgeable and educated and is capable of moving people through their practice in a safe and empowering way. So in creating my 200-hour program and in 2019 unveiling my advanced 300-hour program. That's really the goal of it. Number one, get people meditating. And as always learn about the philosophy, the vedas, the mantra, learn about the heart of the yoga. But at the same time heavily immerse them in anatomy, in functional anatomy, in alignment. In getting people to understand what safe movements are. What aren't safe movements. What transitions we shouldn't be combining. And how we can continue to watch this beautiful methodology of yoga grow in the amazing expansive way that it has been growing. But to ensure that it's growing in a mindful and responsible way. Maggie: So Adam, how can people find you and listen to you through your new cd? And keep up with where you are and where you're going? Adam: Yeah. So the website is adamwhitingyoga.com and everything on social media. Well, Instagram and Facebook is Adam Whiting Yoga as well. So Adam Whiting Yoga and you can find me anywhere. And the new cd is hopefully coming out sometime in 2019. Fingers crossed. I'm really excited about that. But the partners that I'm working at are touring musicians in Australia. So we have just a little bit to go. So hopefully the stars will align and we'll be able to get that sooner rather than later. Maggie: Thank you so much for joining me on this podcast, We Got Goals. And it was an honor to have you. Adam: The pleasure was all mine. Thanks so much. Cindy: He goal-getters. It's Cindy Kuzma. Just checking in to let you know that we're about to play another goal from one of you, our listeners! If you would like to be featured on an upcoming episode of We Got Goals here on A Sweat Life. You can record a voice memo with a goal you've set, a goal you've achieved, just maybe your dharma, your purpose. Whatever you want to tell us about that's related to goals. Record that, send it to Cindy@aSweatLife.com. And we could feature you on an upcoming episode. Thanks for listening and here is one of your goals. Britney: I am Britney and I am from Southern Indiana. One goal getting strategy that's worked very well for me is keeping my goals to myself. Which is a little different then what some people do. But I've found that it helps me because it helps me make more attainable goals rather than goals I share on social media that maybe are a little more grandious then they should be or aren't quite as fleshed out as they should be. You know, we're in the age where we want to share everything with everyone on social media. And sometimes in my experience, it's worked best for me to just keep it between me and myself. A really good example was when I was finding my new job. I kept it kind of vague when I talked to people about it. And I just said you know I'm hunting. And I wrote down everything I wanted out of my job. I wanted very specific benefits and I wanted a very specific atmosphere and culture. And I just kind of went after it and found it. And it was nice because I wasn't cluttering it with other people's kind of input. And it was just me and my goal. [50:00] Cindy: This podcast is asweatlife.com production and it’s another thing that’s better with friends. So please, share it with yours. You can subscribe wherever you get your podcasts including on Spotify. And while you’re there if you could leave us a rating or a review we would be so grateful. Special thanks to Jay Mono, for our theme music, to our guest this week, Adam Whiting, to TechNexus for the recording studio, and to Kathy Lai for editing. And of course to you, our listeners.

Triathlete and coach Sharone Aharon faced some obstacles en route to completing his first Ironman. First of all, he’d never done any type of multisport event. He didn’t own a bike. His longest run was about 20 minutes, done as part of his training for the Israeli Secret Service. The first time he got into the pool, he swam 200 yards—then went to the locker room and threw up. Still, 10 months later, he finished the 2.4-mile swim, 112-mile bike, and full 26.2-mile marathon at Ironman KONA. As Aharon explained to me on this week’s episode of #WeGotGoals, getting there required a combination of confidence and naïveté. “I didn’t have a doubt in my mind that I would make it,” he says. “Look at little kids—when they fall down, they don’t think, ‘OK, I will not ever try again.’ I think that’s what happened. I was this little kid who found a toy and dedicated his entire being to that.” Plenty of challenges—he calls them “mosquitos,” because they sting but aren’t serious—popped up along the way. Still, so many things fell into place. He immediately got a sponsor, a client who supported his goals despite his lack of a track record. Even the fact that he was able to get into Kona in the first place was unusual and remarkable, he notes. All this validated what seemed like an out-of-the blue decision at the time—but eventually led to to an entirely new career. “It just came up from within, from the core of my being,” he says. “I can’t explain it.” “But at this point, it’s part of the way I coach my athletes, how to really engage with their emotions and their goals, and how to combine them together to produce great training and great racing.” Over the 20 years since that first race, Aharon’s helped thousands of athletes achieve similar ambitious goals through Well-Fit, a triathlon training program he launched in 1998. In 2009, he built a bricks-and-mortar facility. There, at 1700 W. Hubbard St., athletes can strength train (alone or in group classes), swim in Endless Pools, ride bike trainers, and run on treadmills as they train for marathons, triathlons, and other endurance events. “We took an individual sport and we made it a team sport, and we do that at Well-Fit all the time,” he says. “We have a team of people all competing individually, but because they work together, they actually achieve greater success.” Well-Fit does have an elite team, members of which tend to finish races on the podium. But you don’t have to be an experienced athlete to take advantage of all the facility offers, Aharon says. You just need a dedication and a willingness to invest in yourself. At first, “the notion was that Well-Fit is only for fast people. So I said, no … we are making people fast. That’s what we can do. What we realized is that people who come here and get the most benefit are people who care about their results,” he says. How do you go from merely aspiring toward better performances to making them happen? In our chat, Aharon spills a few clues: Don’t skip the tough stuff. Endurance athletes often think long, slow distance will get them through a race. But the top performers stay in touch with high-intensity efforts and serious strength training, too. “We do need to use those high-end muscle fibers and energy systems,” he says. Also, don’t shy away from obstacles like wind or rain during training. Unless it’s truly dangerous to be outside, embracing the elements will only prepare you for what you may face on race day. “Surrender to the training plan,” he says. But don’t make it a cookie-cutter one; if you can, invest in a personalized plan and a coach who knows your life, then put your trust in that system. Don’t overthink your strategy or your workouts—just show up and do them. That said, a coach can help you fine-tune if your life starts to go haywire. During times of personal or professional stress, adjusting your plan to do less may be the best way to perform well without breaking down your body, he notes. Embrace cutting-edge technology. Novel methods and elements keep you mentally and physically engaged. Well-Fit has a brand-new bike room, complete with individual touch screens. Athletes can tap into group classes, choose from hundreds of pre-programmed workouts, or even just stream Netflix. And in a super-cool development, they’ve installed one of the few altitude rooms in the country, which simulates what it’s like to train in the thin mountain air. Athletes who log just one to two high-intensity sessions there per week have been winning races, setting personal bests, and recovering more quickly so they can do it all over again, he notes. “You train less, and you gain more. Who doesn’t want that?” he says. In fact, Aharon’s next goal—besides carving out more time for his own training—is to make his style of altitude training more widespread and accessible everywhere. Seeing others’ success on the program only fuels him to reach higher in business and in the sport. Listen to Sharone Aharon’s episode of the #WeGotGoals podcast for more tidbits on performing your best, and check out the Well-Fit website for more about altitude training options—and all of the group’s other plans and perks. You can listen anywhere you get your podcasts (including Spotify!). If you like what you hear, please leave us a rating or a review. And stick around until the end of the episode, where you’ll hear a goal from one of you, our listeners. (Want to be featured on a future episode? Send a voice memo with a goal you’ve crushed, a goal you’re eyeing, or your best goal-getting tip to cindy@asweatlife.com.) ----- [0:00] Jeana: Welcome to We Got Goals, a podcast by asweatlife.com, on which we talk to high achievers about their goals. I'm Jeana Anderson Cohen with me I have Kristen Geil and Cindy Kuzma. Kristen: Good morning Jeana. Cindy: Good morning Jeana. Jeana: Good morning. Cindy this week you spoke with Sharone Aharon, right? Cindy: I did, Sharone is a triathlete, a coach and the owner of Well Fit Performance. Which is a pretty sweet triathlon performance here in Chicago. It's been around a long time. He's seen countless athletes achieve their goals and he's achieved some pretty cool goals himself. So it's great to talk with him. Kristen: And Cindy you talked to him about the first time he completed an Iron Man. And it sounds like he went in with a level of blissful ignorance, maybe not quite knowing what he was getting himself into. How did that work out for him? Cindy: Well, it actually worked out pretty well. In fact, he thinks that is one of the secrets of his success. He had been in this really secret service which is super fascinating and then he was a personal trainer for a while. He was kind of getting bored and not really sure what direction he was going to go next. So he just decided one day that he was going to train for an Iron Man. He didn't really know how to do it. But he just had this childlike approach to having fun and being excited about the training. Of course then he did some planning and got a little bit more serious about some of the hard work he was going to have to do along the way. But he really thinks that that ability to not even contemplate failure helped him achieve success. He went on to finish that first Iron Man and many more since. And then to build a whole incredible career around the sport today. Jeana: And today he's helping take athletes to new heights in one way or another, right Cindy? Cindy: That's also true. He has kind of taken that same approach. We talked a lot about kind of the ways, the secrets to success for all endurance athletes. And he really does think it's a combination of committing to a goal and also maintaining some of that childlike excitement and wonder. And you can see that in the way that he runs his business. He's focused, he's serious, he's intense, he has a goal but he also wants to do new things that are fun and exciting for both him and the athletes he coaches. So one of the exciting and fun things that he's done is put in an altitude room in Well Fit. I got a chance to try it out. It was a pretty cool experience basically you go in there and you work really hard for a really short period of time. And if you swap out a couple of your hard workouts on flat land for a couple workouts in that room when you're training for a triathlon or marathon, Sharone really thinks that you could do some pretty incredible things to achieve your goals. So it's kind of a cool option for athletes here in the Chicago area. And it was interesting to hear him talk about how he not only wants to use it to help athletes here. It's part of his goal to kind of share this with athletes across the country and really kind of get this idea into the sport. Jeana: It's like moving to Colorado but not actually having to. Cindy: Right, exactly. Although there are mountains painted on the wall so if you narrow your focus a little bit you can pretend. Kristen: Cindy, it sounds like he enjoys coaching not just the elite athletes at the marathon and the triathlon level but anyone who's interested in investing in themselves and in improving. How does he approach training people who are maybe not at the elite level but still want to make a difference in their training. Cindy: Yeah, I would say that he kind of treats everyone the same. Which is, you know, if you are committed to your goal and you really want to improve and invest in yourself. He's going to help you get to where you want to be. And it doesn't matter if you are on they have a Well Fit elite team and you could be a really incredible athlete on that team. Or you could be walking into Well Fit wanting to do your first triathlon. And he supports everyone kind of the same way. As long as you take yourself seriously and take your training seriously and commit to it. He's going to take a holistic approach to help you reach your goals. And my sense from my interactions with him is that if you are coached by him you're going to work hard. But you're also going to feel like you have a community there to support you and you're going to have fun while you do it. So that's really, he views all of those as important elements to success. Jeana: That's incredible Cindy, I can't wait to hear your full interview with Sharone. Hey goal-getters, don't go anywhere. If you stick around to the end of the episode you'll hear from people just like you out there achieving their goals. And here's Cindy with Sharone. [4:53] Cindy: This is Cindy Kuzma and I am here on the We Got Goals podcast with Sharone Aharon of Well Fit. And Sharone, thank you so much for joining us on the We Got Goals podcast today. Sharone: Oh, it's my pleasure. Thank you very much for inviting me. Cindy: So if we have listeners who are triathletes or other endurance athletes here in the Chicago area they probably know of Well Fit. You've been here, you've been around a long time. But for those of our listeners in other places or who don't know about it, tell me a little bit about where we are, where we're sitting today. And who comes here. Sharone: Okay. So we have been operating since '98, it started as a small venture for me trying to make a little bit of income while racing myself. Iron Man races. My sponsor decided that I'm too old to be a sponsored athlete. And they said I should go find a job. I decided to open the Well Fit training services and basically started to works with endurance athletes. Mainly at the quality workouts, we didn't really do let's go run on the lakefront in two rows and support each other this way. But we were focusing more on the bike on trainers, we started that program in '99. And run interval programs on the track which was back in, I believe it was 2000. And then swim technique level 1, 2, and 3 back in 2003. And then in 2009, we decided to open the Well Fit training center. Which was a one stop shop. Most likely the first one in the country for endurance athletes with [...] trainers, endless pool, gym floor. And recently we upgraded all that and added an altitude training facility. Cindy: Yeah, I'm really interested to talk with you about that at some point. And how that's helping athletes achieve their goals. But, you know, I can't imagine how many athletes you've helped over those years. So I know you have an incredible perspective on how they've achieved their goals. But we're here today to talk some about your goals too. So let's just go ahead and start with the first big question that we ask everyone on We Got Goals which is, Sharone, what is a goal you've achieved, why was it important to you and how did you get there. Sharone: So definitely the first Iron Man race that I've done. It was back in '98. Actually '96 I graduated from, did my masters degree in physiology. I quit my last job, a position at the Israeli secret service and then kind of was underpaid personal trainer. And decided I got to do something different. One day I woke up and I said I'm going to do the Iron Man. It's funny because I didn't really think about it much. It wasn't like oh, [...] place or anything like that. It was literally over a weekend, I thought what do I want to do. You know, I had a bunch of triathlete magazines in my apartment. Back then it was like 12 pages. You know, that's about it. And I said yeah, that's what I want to do. And probably 10 months later I was in Kona racing day. The only Iron Man those days in Hawaii. Which was amazing, unbelievable. But I can't say, I can not say that I sat down and really thought about, you know, where do I go and what do I do. And how I want my life to be and my career. It just came out from within. From the core of my being. It just popped out. I guess it was sitting there for a while. And I just didn't pay attention. And one day, boom it came out and it was like probably the best move of my life. And we're twenty years later now from my first Iron Man. And I've done so much within the sport and within the community. It just was an amazing result. Cindy: Wow, so ten months basically from when you decided this is what I'm going to do to there you are in Kona. What did that look like? I mean, if you didn't really think through logically step-by-step. How did you go about making it happen? Sharone: So, the first thing I did is I said was "Okay, I'm going to do this." The next day I went to the pool and swan 200 yards and threw up for a half an hour in the locker room. Cindy: No. [8:52] Sharone: That's a real story. I didn't own a bike and 20 minutes was my long run. Back in the secret service we were supposed to run 2k in 13 minutes. So we thought if you run for 20 minutes that's long enough. And this is where I started. I had the physiology background. I used to work at the Israeli Olympic training center and that was my schooling about. And I sat down and wrote, I think it took me 3 weeks to write a year long training program that will take me through several peaks in the season. And it's all based on a one-pager I found online. You know those days where you click on an address online and then you go to work and at 8:00 at night it finally pops up because it's so slow. That's exactly what happened. And this is how it all started. And there was few obstacles in the way. Not necessarily obstacles but I call it mosquitoes. They bite you and you pay attention to them and then you just forget about them and keep going. But the funny thing is that I didn't have a doubt in my mouth that I wouldn't make it. I was that naive but I think that's what created the success. It was unbelievable. Cindy: Okay, so where do you think that confidence came from? Maybe naivety as you say but it must have originated somewhere. Sharone: I think sometimes, we look at little kids. When they fall down, they don't think okay, I'll not ever try again. You know, I think that's what happened. I was this little kid who used to find the toy and dedicated his entire being to do that. Tell you a little story, three months later there was a seminar produced by I think it was Fleet Feet. Six hours with Mark Ellen who won Hawaii six times after seven times he tried. And he was trying to promote that the Sydney Olympics and a camp to do the actual course a day before the race. And I came to him at the end of the seminar and I said, "Hi Mark. My name is Sharone and I'd like to do the Iron Man." He said, "Great, how many years are you training?" I said, "We'll I haven't really started." And he said well maybe you want to start on the shorter ones and then go to the Olympic and then maybe the half Iron Man and then maybe three years down the road do the Iron Man. I said okay. Then the next question was I would like to have a sponsor. How do I find a sponsor? He started laughing and said "Listen, why don't you start training, get good, win some local races, some regional races, get an agent and he'll find you a sponsor." I said, "okay." The next day I had a sponsor. A full board sponsor that every [...] today will like it. Not because I was so good. I was not. But I told this story to one of my clients, and they said okay we'll sponsor you. Just like that. And I don't know what it is. I didn't even have to convince my client. Just tell the story. And things just got into place along with the entire year. It was just, I can't explain it. We would need more than just this podcast to deal with that. Cindy: I know, right. Sharone: At this point, I mean it's part of the way I coach my athletes of how to really engage with their emotions and how to really engage with their goals and how to combine the two together to produce great training and great racing. Cindy: So for you it sounds like it really started with that passion and excitement. And that belief in yourself. Sharone: Absolutely. I don't know if I had to say, okay I'm believing in myself. It just was natural. It was sitting there and it was again as I said before. I didn't think it would go a different way. And one day I got a phone call, alright you're coming. But that's a totally different story about how I got it and what happened after that. So it was fantastic. Cindy: Okay, well we can go into that story or I don't know. Tell me about some of the other mosquitoes that might have come up along the way and how you overcame them. [13:04] Sharone: You know, I'd been carrying two surgeries with my knees. And I was thinking I don't know how that's going to go. You know, I always ran with some kind of a brace on my knee. But then I decided okay, I'm in a training program. I know that with my profession you need to do swim, bike, runs, strength training. Nutrition is important. So I started incorporating basic strength training exercises into my plan three times a week. I never had to use a brace in my training since '98. Before that I had to run with a brace. So strength training just by doing it and nothing complicated. Today, we have so many different exercises and systems and the core like this and the core like that. Basic strength and conditioning program and it was phenomenal. That took care of my knee problems. You know, one of the races. I think the earlier races, I think it was second year. All of the new equipment come about. We used to race with speedos. I mean we didn't have all this fantastic gear. Wetsuits usually something that we borrowed from surfing. And not necessarily for. But in any event, you go into a race and I think it was in Saint Anthony in Florida. And all of a sudden you have a flat, but it's actually not a flat. You don't have a hole there but the extender of your wheel fell out and took the valve with it. But I forgot to put an extender on the replacement tire. So now, I have a replacement tire but I don't have an extender so there's no way to pump the tire. So here I am walking my bike back to transition and I remember my wife's face was like why are you walking. So this is something. So you learn over the time and I think a lot of the things we did back then. We created our equipment rather than bought our equipment. Because you need to be very creative about how to put stuff on the bike and you know how to carry extra nutrition. My coach was one of the best coaches in the country, Brock Fry. He coached his wife, Heather [...] who won in '98. And then he coached Peter Reed for a few years as well. And he once told me if you want to carry a lot of calories but not a lot of bottles, what you do is, you make a gel. You add more of the powder into your bottle. Said okay, I'll make a gel. So here I am making my gel and the whole day, it was 4.5 hour bike ride. My stomach is just killing me, I just don't understand what's going on. And that evening we had a phone call and he says to me, so what did you with your nutritious. I said, oh I made a gel but it really didn't sit well in my stomach. He says, what kind of a bottle did you use. I said I used a small bottle. And how many scoops did you put in? I said fifteen. He yelled from the other side of the line. My wife was in the kitchen and she heard him yelling 15! It was so funny. So this is another thing. So again you learn. Trips to Kona are phenomenal because they teach you to love wind. Up until that point I was going on lakefront. As a matter of fact, my longest ride was on the lakefront I went up and down three times. Cindy: That's a pretty long ride. Sharone: Right. And today we have other [...]. So that was an interesting day. But I was always trying to avoid the wind. And after my first trip to Kona you realize it's all wind. So that day I made the decision to fall in love with the wind. And just go against it as much as I could. And it's made a huge difference. Cindy: That's is actually an interesting point and I bet that comes up a lot with the athletes that you coach, right? You might have this goal and then you're training to reach that goal. And when you're training sometimes you make a choice that makes things a little bit more comfortable or easier in that moment but maybe that doesn't quite prepare you as well for what you're going to actually face. Sharone: Absolutely, and I think that's another thing. Talking about the being a kid personality. Go try whatever you feel, right. And sometimes, my daughter when she was in kindergarten, every time they needed to put the toys away she would run to the bathroom. You know, it's like very convenient. So, I think that's the approach I took with the wind going into this whole Chicago wind scenario. I think the more you change to rain, change weather condition, you learn a lot more. And then one of the elements that we really work hard on is really learning the races. What is the race look like, what the conditions are, what other conditions you might encounter. Maybe not, they weren't their last year. So for example, we always plan for hot weather and cold weather. You know, because that can change. I mean we had Iron Man Wisconsin, 55 and rainy and we had Iron Man Wisconsin at 95. So you have to prepare and that can change. I mean think about the marathon this year in Boston, a couple years earlier too. It was freezing cold. And this is one of the elements we really work on how to prepare for that. And we do go out in those conditions. I have a statement, I borrowed that from Hebrew, something we use in Israel. You're not made out of sugar. You've got to go out there and do it. If it's dangerous, yes of course back up. But if it's rainy, there's no reason not to train. You know, especially not in the summer here in Chicago. Cindy: Well it's interesting too because it does take that combination of both the passion and the energy and the excitement of the child plus like the logical grown up planning brain too, right? And I imagine you put those both together when you have athletes training. [18:51] Sharone: Of course. So the planning part really goes with systematic planning. I mean this is what we do with everyone. There are certain volumes that we have to hit at certain time during the season. And certain time you just reduce the volume to almost none. And focus on race pace or high intensity stuff. I think as endurance athletes we don't do enough of high intensity and we lose that element. Although high intensity intervals. I dare say cross-fit style training will work really well for us. Because we do need to use those high end muscle fibers or energy systems. My story, I used to play basketball and soccer because I really loved running after the ball. And my first year in Iron Man, I basically did times that it was hard for me to break until my third year. Again, because I came into the sport with fitness that no endurance athlete has which is the basketball fitness, the stop-and-go fitness, which is all your joint basically. And the high end energy system which you do in basketball and soccer and don't really touch in endurance sport. So I had no problem running PR every half marathon I did within a half Iron Man. Which was faster than my only half marathon times. But then you lose that and it took me, I had to spend another two years to gain that back. So just to say how important that high-end exercise and how team sports conditioning could benefit endurance athletes. And we're afraid to touch on it because it's not in the protocol. I actually talked to one of the more known coaches, run coaches in the city. And I talked to them about a certain training method. We're runners, we're not doing that. And that's I think sometimes where the problem is. When you're so tight into that modalities that you really don't gain that extra edge, I would say. That maybe have you PR'd. And we can talk about that maybe later. Cindy: Yeah, right. Sharone: About people PRing with different modalities. Cindy: Right, you get really focused on what you're doing. So for you though, how did that feel? And when you kind of started in the sport and you were doing really well because you had that fitness background. And then you realized okay, wait. And it took longer to get back to that point. How did that feel? And how did you manage that? Sharone: I think the second year of Iron Man racing was really. It wasn't devastating but I was really surprised with what happened. I had more experience, I trained more. I probably trained smarter when it comes to endurance sport. But I lost that high-end fitness. And I was frustrated and I didn't know what was going on. And then, you know, I said let's go back to and analyze what was happening. And then I start to add some stuff. So I start to add playing soccer in the off season. So I gained that fitness in the off season. As long as you don't get injured. You know, you're fine. You know, during a lot of work with a basketball. You're a lot of change in direction, not necessarily playing because that's really hard on your body. Especially as you get older, you know. But I start to incorporate those things into my plan. Not necessarily on a weekly basis. I added a lot more variety into my track workouts. A lot more variety into my bike workouts. That are not necessarily the template of the regular endurance sport. You know swim, bike and run. Cindy: So, I mean this does lead into another question I was going to ask you. Which was, you've worked with so many endurance athletes through the years. What do you see as some of the most common obstacles to endurance athletes achieving their goals. And it sounds like maybe one of them is kind of a narrow mindset or not being open to these other modalities and other ideas that might benefit them in their sport. [23:07] Sharone: I think if they start here then they're already used to it. And I think in trying to draw them in and see that for someone who has experience. And they said well if I hit these three elements, goals in swim, bike and run then I'm set. And I don't think that's usually the case. It's much harder to get them into looking at something different. And it's the same thing with the coaches. Coaches work in a certain way and they have a certain level of success. Sometimes you need to add something else into the element. For example, the first thing is strength training. More conventional. Not just working on the core and the stability. And I think this is like all of a sudden strength training because core and stability. Which is important but what about strength. Absolute strength. You know, doing a squat. You know, year round. Things like that. So again, going back if it's our athletes it's not so hard. The other element is that people need to surrender to the training plan, I call it. Not to overthink it. And sometimes just go do it. While doing it you have to be present and really absorb what you're doing. But you have to surrender to it. Many times, and that's one of the things that we did really well is that we took an individual sport and we made it a team sport. And we do it at Well Fit all the time. We have a team of people that all compete individually but because they work together rather than lonely at their basement. They actually achieve greater success. Everybody pushes each other. Everybody supports each other. One of the elements with these people is how to reduce the competitiveness during training and really focus on what you do and who you are. Get the support from your fellow athletes without mentally get devastated when this guy is so much faster than you are on the track. But you're faster than him in the swimming pool. Or things like that. The other element is how lifestyle, how your life gets in the way of your sport.  And I'm sure a lot of athletes can relate to that. This morning I sat down with an athlete, phenomenal athlete. And she's preparing for the 70.3 World Championship in South Africa in a few weeks. And also life going sideways and everything is overwhelming. Everything, work and training. So we sat down and we just started to move things around. And fix and even let go of some of the workouts. You know what, you don't need that. Let's just focus on these elements and do that. And sometimes the athlete gets up from their seat and says wow. That's really helpful. And sometimes, I don't know if I'm going to be ready if we're going to do all that change, you know. I mean this is the kind of program, course we set up. Now I'm starting to take stuff out and that can be very demotivating for them. So. Cindy: But I do think that, that's so huge. And you see athletes struggle with that for sure. That you know, you're body is one system and it can absorb only so much stress from any source. Whether it's your training or your life. And that is where having a coach and as you say, kind of surrendering to the process or trusting in that individual to guide you through that and adjust. That's where that's really important, right? I'd imagine that's something that the athletes here really benefit from. Sharone: Right, and here's the thing. Going into some of the things, there's a huge trend right now of online coaching. And I think that will work only if there's a conversation. Not an email, a conversation. In my mind, a conversation between the athlete and the coach on a regular basis. Or/and seeing the athlete. And that's why I love the training facility because so many of the athletes that we coach actually are coming and training here. So even if I don't coach them per-say on every individual workout. I get to see them. I see how they look. I don't even have to talk to them. I see how they look, I see how they walk, I see how they interact. And I definitely see how their data looks like and I can that's a lot more. Many more tools that I can use in order to coach the athletes. We try to do send and forget kind of programs. I just don't believe in it. It's not that people can not. I think experienced athletes can do that, highly motivated athletes can do that. I just don't think that this is good for the beginner athletes. To have a program somewhere online and have an email every now and then. I think there's got to be more interaction to coach somebody. It's an active, not a passive event. And I think this is where the facility comes from. The other element of what we did here is secured a community. A family. We [...] changes forever. Once a Well Fitter always a Well Fitter. Whether you like it or not. Cindy: Yeah. That's great. Well no, I know that's such a huge element. As you say, it can be all three of these sports and any endurance sport can be a lonely endeavor if you're out there training for yourself, by yourself. So it is great to have that support system. For sure. So, you know, when I came here and visited you a couple weeks ago. We were chatting then too and you talked a little bit about the kind of athlete that might be a good fit to be coached by you. And the kind of athlete that makes a good Well Fit athlete. Tell me a little bit about what you're kind of looking for or what makes a good fit for someone here. Like could anyone come here and have success or are their certain qualities that make this a better kind of a facility for some people than others. [28:55] Sharone: So it's funny, many. Back I think in 2007, we created the first elite training program. It was the first of a kind in the country and what we did is we saw a lot of programs for beginners. Where you train together and you get the support, you get the coach. But there was no training program for elite athletes, people that already performed really well. I worked with the US triathlon program, initial program for a few years. And I realized that if we compare ourselves to the European. European has a huge pipeline because everything there is club teams. In the US we didn't have club teams. And the recruitment for the training program was through the universities. And usually if you're a great swimmer but not qualifying for the Olympic and you can maybe run, then we'll make you a triathlete. That was kind of the agenda. So I created the first elite training program here in Chicago. And that kind of gave us a bad name. Because here we are coming with the elite program. Which the name was Well Fit Elite which was another bad problem. Because they associate that with, you know, the other things that we do. And we're going to a race and all of a sudden Well Fit Elite take the podium for every age group. And the notion was Well Fit was only for fast people. So I said no, no, no. We are making people fast. That's what we can do. What we realized is that people that come here and get the most benefit are people that care about their results. If you just want to do one triathlon, we can help you. If you want to get the full benefit is you need to care about your performance. I think this is when you're going to get the most when you come here. Many, many times we heard that we charge too little because of how we deliver the program and what the level of the coach is. Not to say that other programs aren't good. There's definitely a fit for everything. And the more program we have the better it is for the industry. If you care about your results, you want to improve. Whether you just started or you're already this is the place for you. We always think about, what is the cutting edge training routine that will get you there. We started [...] about training on bike trainers back in '99. We did track workouts before, I believe, any other marathon program back in the early 2000s. We opened a facility before anybody else for endurance sport that encompass all of the element. That's the way I think. And then we created the community. And it's not that simple. And go back to goals, that was not necessarily my goal but that was my passion. And it become what it is today. People tell me look what you've created. I say what are you talking about. To me it just is. Cindy: Yeah. It's the building years. So you have the strength training facility here. You have the bike trainers, new bike trainers, right. Brand new Bikram. You have all of the training programs. So triathlon programs, elite and non right. And marathon training programs too. And then the altitude room. So tell me more about that and how that is helping athletes achieve their goals. [32:22] Sharone: So it's interesting, I was bored. Truly, we've been doing it for almost 20 years. And I was like okay, there's a lot of people that do that now. There's a lot of coaches and there's a lot of people with studios. And I had to do something a little different that would excite me and maybe benefit the athletes. And what we did, we updated the bike room. So now we probably have the most sophisticated bike room in the country. Where everyone has their own personal screen. Touch screen with their own programming. So they can tap into our entire, probably more than 400 workouts. And do it themselves. They can create a pool workouts that their coach give them. Whether they're a Well Fit coach or not a Well Fit coach. But then if they're bored and they want to do the group workout they press a button and they go into the system. And they see everybody around. And it's all on their private screen. And if they want to watch Netflix while they're working out they can do that too on the screen. So that was the upgrade. We took another 2,000 square foot and we put it in there. The next thing was I needed to do a game changer. And for many years, since the mid 2000s, I was thinking there was more to altitude then just going up in the mountains and training. So I did a little bit of investigation and I realized that Australia has 16 altitude training centers. England has six. US had 5. I've been to 3 and only 1 of them does something with it. So I decided that's it. And we opened the altitude training center. There's such enormous benefit to training at altitude, at high intensity. If I say one sentence about it, you train less and you gain more. I mean who doesn't want that. And since February we had many athletes train there. They are crashing their PRs on a regular basis. They're winning. They're going to a race, do an Iron Man and then a week later PR the half marathon. It's just unbelievable. I'm a little bit, oh my god. What's it, what's in the air, you know. There's a lot of science behind it. There's a lot of research behind it. And like anything else that is so great. Like for example strength training. Back in the '70s the conclusion was that strength training does not help swimmers and runners because it interferes with their coordination. Now we can't even think about doing any kind of sport without strength training. Same thing happened with altitude training, similar to altitude training. Up until I believe 2006 was the first breakthrough research. [...] the only way you can benefit is to go in the mountains. I mean, the answer I was getting from people was yeah, live high, train low. The funny thing about this is there was only one research back in '95 that proved that in Salt Lake City. It's still the gold standard. But how many people can actually do that? And we brought it to the everyday person. We brought the altitude into the everyday person. And we have workouts that are as long as 25 minutes or about an hour. We have nothing over an hour. You don't need to be there over an hour. If you actually do something over an hour in there, chances are you're not going to get as much benefit. So I'm excited as you can see. Right, so the recommend that depending on how much time you have. If you have limited time, we tell you need to be there twice a week high intensity workout. Replace the high intensity workout you have on your program right now. Don't add it to it. And then do it about, up to about a week before your race. The benefits last for about 2 to 4 weeks depending on, you know, who you are. And look at the benefits a little by doing a maintenance program. But the people, some of the people we coach here have been in the room twice a week since February. And let's just say this if you're at more than 4 weeks, go for 1 to more than 4 weeks. Just be there, use it as part of your plan. The biggest market that we're are actually getting into is mountaineers. We are getting a lot of people are going to Kilimanjaro. People that go to any kind of mountain around the world. Whether it's a big hike or a technical climb. They come here and we have a testing protocol for them. And we have a training protocol for them. Or they're just, I just want to do my own thing in the room. Cindy: Yeah, one of our co-hosts on this podcast, Kristen Geil, climbed Kilimanjaro last year. And I think she found out about the altitude room right before she was going to leave. So she's like, ahh, I didn't have time but she would have loved to incorporate that. Well that's great for those athletes and I would imagine too. I mean when I think about it, you know, with my training. I've been marathon training for years now. Even just the idea of having something new and exciting like that is appealing, right? And something that gives you an extra edge. So I would imagine that does feed back into your goal of engaging people's emotions and passions a little bit too. How does that kind of fit together? You know, using that new technology does it help with emotions in that way. [37:42] Sharone: Absolutely, I think one of the things about this trending routine because it's such high intensity intervals. That's what we want to do. We want to trigger the high-end of your fitness in altitude so you actually get two workouts in one. And it's definitely bringing something new into the endurance sport. The endurance sport you have to have your pace. You have to make sure it's tempo and tempo, and 5k is 5k, and 10k is 10k. And here we bring you into a room and says no you're going to run at 5% elevation for 30 seconds as fast as you can. It's not a 5k, it's not a 10k. You're going to get on that bike and you press that lever to level 10 and you spin as hard you can for 10 seconds. And you might do it 15 times. Now 15 times of 10 seconds. About 2.5 minutes of a workout that will give you benefits in 4 week `that you won't gain in a year in training regularly for an hour to an hour and a half for that period of time. There is a lot of research compare protocols like this between doing it in an altitude and not altitude. And you see it, it's like 25% difference. 25-35% difference in benefit between doing the same thing outside and inside. And it's phenomenal. It's great. It brings in, people want to try it, people want to try it. We are pioneers in this and I think once people see the results. And it takes about two weeks to start saying, hmm something is clicking. Like for example, I was working very hard on that 10 second sprints but two weeks later you realize they're recovering a lot faster between those sprints. So you can maintain the power output. Not just get to it and go down. Or you can go and bike another 45 minutes outside of the bike room. So within 2 weeks you can see that. In 4 weeks you can start seeing performance benefits like in races. One of the biggest things we've heard is that the hills are getting flatter. Meaning we don't lose as much pace going up the hill. And then we have a lot more power towards the end of the race. So we feel a lot stronger finishing the race. I'm not going to give my example from this last weekend. Or maybe I should. So I raced in Santa Rosa. They cancelled the swim. And so we started a time trial and my last section which was about 10 miles was the fastest on the bike. Fastest 10 miles on the bike of the entire race. And it's not that we all of a sudden got wind that pushed me. It was significantly faster by like 3 miles an hour, faster on the bike. And I think, I believe it's only due to the training in the altitude room. I came into the race with very little volume. So I can't say that my training was perfect. What I did focus on is purely going into the room twice a week. And I can see that also riding with my friends. All of a sudden then don't drop me like they normally do. Cindy: Well that does lead into the other question we have on We Got Goals which is about your goals for the future. If you had to name one thing that you kind of have your sites set on, it could be a personal athletic goal, it could be a goal with the altitude training room or how many athletes here you want to help. What is a goal you have for the future and how do you plan to get there? Sharone: So can I have two goals? Cindy: I suppose you can. We'll allow it. Sharone: So you know one of the things as a coach that came from being an athlete is one of the biggest challenges I had. Especially with this operation we have down here. Is how you see the athlete that you coach. In the beginning they're becoming at your level and then they're surpassing you because of a lot of different reasons. And one of them is because you lose fitness. And one of my goals is to go back to training on a regular basis so I can go into a race and enjoy racing it. I mean I still race but it's I need to train more. So that's one goal to just get back into being an athlete again. The second goal which is probably more important these days. It would be what am I going to do with a business. And my goal is to incorporate this new concept onto training. Encompass in a training facility like we have here into more locations. Make it a part of people's routine. Make altitude training a part of coaches and athletes template for training. And we do a lot of work with this at this point with a lot of lectures. With a lot of open houses. We just started a beta program. This is phenomenal. I'm so excited about this. It's basically invited, we sent application out to ask people to apply for that beta program. And the beta program basically is a six week program where we take people from different levels, beginner athletes, advanced athletes, cyclists, and triathletes, runners. And we walk them through the training plan and we have baseline training and then post intervention training but testing. And we're so excited we have 12 athletes and 1 junior athlete that are participating. We had more than 50 applicants. And we had to choose. It's hard to say who can not go. But one of the early programs that we did is exactly the program we're delivering in this beta program. We had a marathon runner, she was stuck at 3:45 for 9 marathons. She did 4 weeks in the altitude room, 2 sessions a week in her approach to her marathon which was a spring marathon. An April marathon and she PRed by 9 minutes. Now we know that in Chicago spring marathons are not usually the best marathon you're going to have because it's very hard to train. She PRed by 9 minutes. And now she's not thinking just breaking that 3:45 but Boston. So I'm excited to see how these athletes, what the benefits are. Some of them are going to world championship in triathlon, some of them are going into the marathon, some of them are doing some ultras, so I'm excited. Cindy: Yeah, well and that probably fuels your own goals as an athlete to. I mean it must be hard to carve, especially when you have this new kind of venture that you're trying to get off the ground. It probably is hard to carve out that time for your own training. How is that going to look practically for you? Are you going to block more time for it or what are some of the ways you're going to make that happen? [44:35] Sharone: It's simple, I think I already answered this. Surrender to the plan. It is, it really truly is surrender to the plan. I have a plan, I write my own training program. Sometimes it's a little bit unrealistic but I make the adjustment. But once it's there surrender to the plan. I'm [...] a little less which gives me a little bit more time. But there's always something to do. You sit down and the list is from here to nowhere. You need to first of all find the time that is most comfortable for you to train. For example, I'm an afternoon kind of guy. Not necessarily a morning kind of guy. Sometimes I have to train in the morning. But I train in the afternoon. So I do all of my work until 2:00/3:00.  All my long runs are done at like noon. I go to lakefront at noon, people think I'm crazy. I don't mind, I get a good tan out of the workout. But I think fitting it to where it fits best. And I think when you come to work at some point, the brain stops working. And that's the point where you instead of fighting it, you get up and do the thing. And then you come back and you're a lot fresher. And you can have a little more sense in your answers and a little more sense in your emails and a little more sense in anything else you do. Cindy: Surrender to the plan. I love it. Sharone: Exactly, that's what it is. Yeah. Cindy: Well this has been such a great conversation. Thank you so much for joining us today. And We Got Goals really appreciate your time. Sharone: Fantastic, thank you. Cindy: He goal getters, Cindy Kuzma again here. Just checking in to let you know that you're about to hear a goal from one of you, our listeners! If you would like to share your goal on the We Got Goals podcast, we would love to hear from you. All you have to do is record an audio memo or mp3 wav file. Email it to me at Cindy@aSweatLife.com. And you could be featured here on an upcoming episode. Thanks so much for listening and here is one of you with your goals. Mariah: I'm Mariah Boyd from Chicago, Illinois. I have found that just telling everybody in my life, big people, small people, random acquaintances my goal has really helped me stay accountable. I made a New Years goal this year to reduce my paper towel use at work and I told a random friend of a friend. I saw her five months later and she said hey hows that paper towel goal going? And I said, I completely forgot I set that goal. And so just her bringing it back up made me refocus on the goal and I have successfully reduced my paper towel use. Environmental issues are a really big thing for me. And I'm a dentist so I wash my hands a thousand times a day. So I just know I'm throwing away so much paper and it really kind of affects me and makes me feel bad. So trying to eliminate that as much as possible has just made me feel better about myself and my impact on the environment. Cindy: This podcast is asweatlife.com production and it’s another thing that’s better with friends. So please, share it with yours. You can subscribe wherever you get your podcasts including now on Spotify. And while you’re there if you could leave us a rating or a review we would really appreciate it. Special thanks to Jay Mono, for our theme music, to our guest this week, Sharone Aharon, to TechNexus for the recording studio, to our editor this week Kathy Lai, and of course to your for listening.

Some of the best athletes in the world. Founders and CEOs. Authors of bestselling books, internationally known fitness gurus, even reality television stars. For 62 episodes now, we on the #WeGotGoals team have had the good fortune to interview some pretty impressive individuals. We’ve learned so much about what’s powered them to the top (and we hope you have, too!). But the more goal-getters we talked with, the more something dawned on us. Nearly every single one of them had a failure story, a way they fell short en route to what they viewed as their biggest high. What’s more, they nearly all volunteered to share it with us in a conversation about what was most essential to their achievements. So co-hosts Jeana Anderson Cohen, Maggie Umberger, Kristen Geil and I took a moment to do another guest-less but host-ful episode--we’ll be recording one of these every month or so from now on--to discuss what these failure stories taught us about resilience. Resilience--something Cohen admits she’s “kind of obsessed with” lately--amounts to the ability to recover quickly from difficulties, adapt to shifting circumstances, and thrive despite, or perhaps even because of, setbacks. What enables some people to emerge triumphant from situations that would crush a normal human? Our guests offer us clues. Some leaned on a support network, others took the opportunity to reflect and refocus, and a few stayed laser-focused on a bigger, long-term goal. All, it seems, had incorporated their failures into the narratives that made them the high achievers they are today. We talked through some of the failures that stood out for us over the past year-plus of episodes. For me, it was when Dr. Ari Levy failed his medical boards--then retook them, and now owns a successful practice, SHIFT. Or when Kathrine Switzer nearly got pulled off the course at the 1967 Boston Marathon, but chose to finish instead, and make history. Cohen contrasts these with the story of Lee Kemp. The wrestler made the U.S. Olympic team in 1980; then, the country boycotted the Games. That failure was beyond his control and irreconcilable, and still fuels the way he lives his life today. The setback that stood out for Geil was Jessica Zweig, who’s now the founder and CEO of the SimplyBe agency. Before that, she co-founded Cheeky Chicago--and from all outward appearances, was hugely successful. But inside, she felt so conflicted she eventually became physically sick. For Umberger, Stephanie Johnson’s tale of applying for Survivor for17 years straight--and ultimately getting kicked off before the merge--highlighted the way success and failure aren’t always necessarily black and white. And Maaria Mozaffar, who failed the bar exam five times before moving on to succeed as a civil rights attorney, author, and activist, showed just how powerful persistence can truly be. In the midst of reflecting on what we’d heard from our guests, we shared our own failure stories--career aspirations gone awry, opportunities missed, times we felt like fish out of water. I think we’d all agree those experiences shaped us and led us to where we are today (a spot we all seem pretty pleased with). And, we discussed the ways we’ll continue to build self-care and coping skills into our daily lives so we can nurture our resistance and boost others up along the way. A few things we brought up: The book Grit, by Angela Duckworth The Mind Body Soul challenge on the Sweatworking App Ira Glass on the taste gap Have a failure story of your own? We’d love to hear it. Share it with us in the comments, or--better yet--record a voice memo and send it to cindy@asweatlife.com. You could be featured on #WeGotGoals in the future. Listen to the full episode anywhere you get your podcasts—including, now, on Spotify! If you like what you hear, please help us spread the word by leaving a rating or a review. And stick around until the end of the episode, where you’ll hear a goal from one of you, our listeners. --- [0:00] Jeana: Welcome to We Got Goals, a podcast by ASweatLife.com on which we talk to high achievers about their goals. But this week we are talking about past episodes of Goals and most notably about failure and resilience. I’m Jeana Anderson Cohen, with me I have Cindy Kuzma, Maggie Umberger, and Kristen Gial. Woman 1: Morning Jeana. Woman 2: Hello. Woman 3: Hi. Jeana: So I know that we all have a lot of episodes that were our favorites. And a lot of guests who were highly motivational and have gone through a lot of things. And we wanted to take this time on this week’s episode to talk through those guests. So Cindy, can you tell me about a guest who failed, got back up, that resonated with you. Cindy: Oh my gosh, well I mean the first thing that really struck me when talking about this topic was, I kind of thought back through all the episodes, and pulled out some of the notable failures and there's so many and just that pure volume is really encouraging. Because we have some darn impressive people on the show and almost every single one of them has a failure story and some of them are huge failure stories. It’s just a part of success. And that in and of itself was just something that stuck me when as I was thinking about this. One of the individual failure stories that spoke to me a lot was way back to, I think it was maybe episode 5 or 6. Dr. Ari Levy, now he’s a physician, he owns his own medical practice. Sort of a holistic health practice here in Chicago, Shift.  But he failed his medical boards the first time he took them. And what really struck me about that story was that he realized that it wasn’t. You know it’s one thing to kind of fail when you take a step too far or when you’re really ambitious. And you’re aren’t quite ready for the next challenge. But he realized he failed because he didn’t do the work. He didn’t study enough, he didn’t prepare, he didn’t dedicate the time. And so he had an extra layer of shame and guilt on top of his just plain failing the medical boards. And then with that comes all the questions of what’s going to happen to my career, am I going to lose my job, am I ever going to be a successful physician when I can’t even pass this exam. What he did next, that struck me again was despite that shame and guilt, he really leaned on his support network. And we all need to do that when we fail but sometimes it's extra hard when we kind of realize that we contributed to our own failure. We're so still deserving of that support and we need to reach out to people, kind of get past ourselves, get past that shame and guilt. And connect with the people who care about us regardless of whether we failed because we tried our best and just couldn’t make it or whether we failed because we realized that we maybe could have tried a little bit harder. And then, you know, he harnessed his support system and needed them to take the next step. Which was to retake the exam. And, you know, he had to study when he was like planning his wedding so he really had to rely on the support of people like his fiance, now his wife, to help guide him through that. The end result we know now is he passed, he has a successful practice. Just I took so much from that difference between being disappointed in an outcome and being disappointed in yourself. There are differences between those but you can come back from either one of those. Jeana: And I mean talk about having to get over yourself in order to move forward. Like, what you’re saying in leaning on somebody. It requires you owning up to and really acknowledging those mistakes or failures. And I think that also resonates with me because in general when we mess up we want to quickly get back on our feet and just do the right thing or try to right the wrong without maybe acknowledging, like okay this is was a mistake, what do I have to learn from it. And he probably, you know, took that time to really like learn something from it versus just going forward, powering on, almost like getting up too quickly, I guess without without taking the time to internalize and figure out what there is to learn from the mistake, the stumble, the failure, whatever you want to call it. So yeah I resonate with that as well Cindy. Cindy: Jeana, was there a particular story that stood out to you? [4:21] Jeana: Well I think sort of bouncing off of Ari’s story, Lee Kemp is sort of on the flipside. Ari  knew that his failure he sort of had a part in. He could fix it himself and he caused it in some way, himself. And he took power over that. On the flipside there is Lee Kemp who qualified for the US Olympics and the United States subsequently boycotted the Olympics, the year that he qualified. So to him it was completely out of his hands. He did the work, he tried his hardest and he was totally powerless in that situation. And if you go back and listen to the episode, today he is still not over it. Because of the fact that he couldn’t do anything to rectify it. He’s taken power of his life in a lot of other ways. He’s taken power of his life in speaking to people and he’s really channeled that energy into doing good for the world. But he wasn’t able to go back and undo it. And he wasn’t able to get that original goal. And I think that’s the interesting part of it. Is that sometimes you can go through something hard and still achieve your original goal. And sometimes you go through something hard and you have to change course because there is no other choice. So I think that’s sort of the comparison and the contrast here. Lee Kemp is an amazing athlete, he’s an amazing father, now he’s an amazing coach, speaker and author. But those weren’t probably things that he thought would be his path. At the beginning, at the onset. Cindy: That’s interesting. It’s interesting to think about what resilience means in that context. And what does it mean to kind of let go and accept that past outcome. I mean clearly he has moved on and had incredible success but as you say, there is still a piece of him that still feels that loss. And how do you kind of rectify that? And does it matter ultimately to your future success? Is there some value maybe in hanging onto a little bit of that past regret to fuel you, I wonder. I don’t know, what do you guys think? Maggie: I think this is a really cool example of how success, failure, it’s not black or white. That’s one of the biggest takeaways that I think I’ve gotten from a lot of our guests. Is that there are points of success and points of failure. And sometimes, they’re intermixed and intertwined. And it’s just part of life and it’s almost like the story that you create around it that is what fuels you to go forward. And it isn’t the action or the thing that happens it’s the thing that happens next. And how you handle, how you react to whatever does happen. Kristen: My story that resonated with me is a little bit different than the one that you guys put forward. I was really drawn to Jessica Zweig’s story in episode 40 and her failure wasn't so much a business failure or you know not reaching a certain goal she had set. But it was the fact that she was suffering from a chronic illness so severe that she had to have surgery. And on the inside that's what was happening but on the outside she looks like a highly successful person to everybody else. And I think about that contrast a lot because I'm pretty sure that's something that everyone in this room has experienced it one point or the other. It's that old saying about how like a duck looks so calm floating on water but then underneath its feet are like furiously peddling. And you can't see all the churning and all the work that's happening to try and just keep that duck afloat. And so Jessica, to give a little bit of a background if you haven't heard this episode. She was running Cheeky Chicago. She had a great brand. She had a great team. She was very well known throughout Chicago and was doing amazing. But inside she was really suffering and she was putting herself through the ringer. And ended up really needing to take a step back and take time off. And eventually, she ended up leaving Cheeky Chicago and eventually she started her own personal branding company, SimplyBe. But that’s just something that I think about a lot. It’s just she looked so successful to everybody else, she looked like she was the epitome of one of the goal setting, high achievers we talk about. But inside she felt like she was failing and just that contrast is something that I think affects a lot of us more than we realize or more that we are comfortable talking about. Jeana: I mean that's so true with the the world that is social media now. That we're only showing the highlights or mostly showing the highlights. Or even when we talk about the struggles, we talk about them from you know the lens of a really pretty photo that presents what the struggle is going to be built beneath it. And I think everyone, everywhere can relate to that on some level. Whether it's you're the person who is feeling those feelings of like ahh, I'm really struggling even though I’m going to post this beautiful photo. Or you're the person kind of scrolling through your social channels and you're feeling like why am I the only one that feels left out of this perfect world. Maggie: I think the thing about all of this is it makes it hard to feel like anybody else has failed. Because people don't talk about about their failures as much. So when we’re posting our highlight reels. And we’re guilty of this to at A Sweat Life. When we’re posting our highlight reels. It’s hard to know what else is happening. So I think the world around us and we as well, need to be better about saying what we are going through. And what failures it took or how many failures or the mountain of failures that came before to lead to whatever it you’re showing people. Because we owe it to each other to be honest about the experience that it took to get to whatever mountaintop your shouting from. [9:58] Cindy: And I think equally important too is to kind of give some shout-outs along the way on the mountaintop. There was recently an article on Runner’s World, I didn’t write it. But a runner, an elite runner talked about the fact that she was having a relapse of her eating disorder. And she posted in the middle of it. And she’s like this is unusual. Usually you hear the after I beat this, everything is great now. I went through struggle but here I am on the other side. Which is I think, critical. We need those messages. We need hope and we need to know that even when people are successful, they have gone through struggles along the way. But we also need to be able to stand with each other in those struggles a little bit more, I think. And some openness along the way and showing people what it's actually like in the moment. That if we had a little bit more of that, it would be interesting to see how that affected everyone's viewpoints on all of this. So we can maybe get a glimpse of those legs paddling while the duck was still in the water and not just when it was, you know, flying through the air sitting on the shore. Maggie: Going back to that idea of failure/success not being black and white. One of the stories that we've gotten to share, Kristen was when you interviewed Stephanie from Survivor. She worked so hard, she had this crazy story of trying to get on Survivor. That was a huge goal for her. She applied 17 times and eventually got on the show only to be voted off without getting to the very end. And I think about the stories that we hear. Sometimes these big massive failure stories that turn into success. That's not always a really massive failure or a really massive success on either spectrum. It sometimes just part of life that feels off or feels kind of good. And I think one of my stories of failure is one of those where it was kind of a success but kind of a failure. I don't really know. It's just kind of like how I interpret the way that I left my first job and moved into my second one. Cindy: I'm intrigued Maggie, talk more about your own failure story. Maggie: Well, so when I originally thought I was going to go into advertising. I felt like I had this really cool story of going into my first career where I was not initially asked back for the interview and I kept calling the ad agency saying I would really like this interview. I think that would really do great things at this company. And they eventually called me back as sort of a last minute, someone cancelled. Okay I guess we'll bring her in and then they ended up really liking me and bringing me on board for this program. And I was like oh my god, this is going to be the launching point of being the underdog and then doing great in this career. And then I kind of missed the mark and I was like not doing the things that I thought I was going to be able to do. I had the opportunity to work on a global account where there were not a lot of other planners. And I really wanted to show that I was so good at what I was doing that oh my god she should be promoted to senior planner right away. It was like the opportunity to do really great and then I just was like in over my head. I didn't get to produce the work that I wanted to when I was there. And I battled kind of with myself. Am I not cut out for this because I'm not smart enough for this or is this not really my calling that I thought it was. And so I kind struggled with like, how much do I just keep treading water to do this thing that I set out to do. Or is not that I'm not smart and that it's just I'm kind of pushing my energy in the wrong direction. And so I kind of toyed with that for like a year. Of just feeling like stuck and not sure why and not sure if I quit, if quitting really was quitting and giving up. Or if it was changing course because that's what I felt like I was more called to do and I chose to shift the course. And I still think about that time in those days when I was working really hard but not feeling like I was producing good work and it sort of does feel like a failure. I was like I really wanted to leave a better mark on that time. And it didn't pan out that way but I wouldn't have traded that decision for anything because I am in a much better place now. And so I know that I learned a lot from that. But I haven't really told that story or thought about it until we started thinking about these other failure stories and that black and white. And so I kind of for the first time really acknowledged that kind of feels like a failure but it also feels like a success. So it's like this weird balance for me. [14:26] Kristen: Maggie, our stories are super similar. So I'm going to jump in here too. The job that I was at before this, I was hired as an in house copywriter. So I was working on digital marketing stuff for a company that made travel mugs and water bottles. And it was great, and comfortable and right in my wheel house and I felt like I was doing good things. And then of course something happens and the company gets acquired. And everything changes as soon as your feeling great. And the decision they made was that all copywriters would be located in Hoboken, New Jersey. So I had a few options at this point. I could move to Hoboken which was never really an option. I could take a layoff or my manager really wanted to keep my around. She was like well we have positions opening in this office working on displays. Which like literally that means the things that you see in drug stores and grocery stores that hold our water bottles and travel mugs. And they needed people to be like helping create the displays and work with manufacturers and procurement and supplies. And I was like alright, I'm a reasonably smart person. I should be able to figure this out. How hard can it be if all these other people in the office are doing it too. And I started and it was awful. I had the most anxiety going into work every single day and opening my email would give me anxiety. And I just absolutely hated every single aspect of it. To the point where I would not do anything because I was too afraid to take a step in the wrong direction. And so I would just ignore emails and put off responding to them. Or I would leave a meeting and deliberately not do the action items that I was supposed to. And that went on for a little while and eventually I was like this is not working. I am taking this layoff. Get me out of here. And even though it felt like such a failure at the time, I definitely called my dad crying and upset that I felt like how could I not get this? I'm a smart person, this should not be that hard. It just wasn't even what I wanted to be doing. So eventually I took that layoff and it was the best thing. And that's what led to me doing this podcast. I reached out to you guys about working on the podcast when I was in that period and eventually it set the stage for me to doing some freelance work and building my skills as a writer. And led me here eventually. I feel like it's not really a failure. It was more like a test drive that you could back off from pretty easily. So that god I am not working on displays. Maggie: Kristen, I never knew that part of your story. And working with you now, I just think like oh my god she's so good at her job. I never would assume you would feel like you were bad at your job and I think that's the point of conversation that we don't always have with our coworkers, with our friends. We have a view of someone else and that's just the story you tell yourself and you just don't know the whole story, you don't know the whole picture. So A, thank you for sharing that. And it's just cool because I'm sure everybody has that moment of like ugh, they're perfect or ugh they do everything right to their bosses, to their friends, to their family. And we just don't have the whole story ever. Jeana: I also think it's interesting because Kristen and I. Or mostly I [...] Kristen's sister. So Kristen's sister is entering her career, first time, first job within a similar position to Maggie. Where she was entry level, not really. I mean everyone goes through work before they get to their first job. But I wanted to dole out a piece of advice to Kristen's sister, Rachel, before she figured it out for herself. Because I think everyone deserves to know this before they find it out themselves that you're going to feel bad at your first job, no matter what. You're going to spend months, maybe years feeling like your not as smart as you were before. Feeling like someone else can do it better and just feeling beaten down. Based on what I've seen other people say, based on my own experiences. And I feel like people need to tell college graduates this more. I don't think it's maybe the best graduation speech. But I do think graduate, entry-level employees deserve to know that there not going to feel maybe like their best selves for a little bit. Because they will be surrounded by other people who can teach them and that's the opportunity, is to learn and look at that as the opportunity to find new information. To maybe be humbled a little bit. But it's so hard to do because you come from a world where you're maybe in leadership roles, where you're the best at everything you do, you were the top of your class and suddenly you're surrounded by people with ten years of experience beyond what you have. And that's tough but it's also an opportunity. Cindy: And I think it's interesting in creative fields too because you also get into this, I've heard [...] of this American Life talk about it before. When you're quality standards, you kind of recognize what's good and what isn't. And you realize you're not actually capable of producing something good yet. That you can watch something, you can listen to something, you can read something and recognize this is quality work. And then you can look at what you're doing and you're like this is, this is not there yet. But you don't really know how to bridge that gap and there's going to be quite some time before you get the experience required to get to the level of quality that you know is what is demanded of you or what you really appreciate about other people's works. So I think that's an extra layer of challenge that I think we all face as we continue to go through our careers too. And appreciate the work of our peers and mentors and people we look up to in our fields. [19:57] Jeana: It also takes recognizing your own progress too. And just looking back and saying here's where I was, here's what I was doing and here's the work I'm producing now, wow that's better. If I look back and read a piece I wrote in college, I had no voice at all. And now I read what I write and I enjoy my own voice. Which is a silly thing to say but I like reading my own work back now. Which is fun. Cindy: What I think is interesting about both of your stories Kristen and Maggie is that point where you have to define success for yourself and how do you know when you're letting yourself down versus when you would be better served to move in a different direction. I think that takes some serious self-reflection and I don't know, Jeana have you been in a situation where you had that kind of a struggle and how did you kind of deal with that? Jeana: Have I ever? So I think there are a couple of key points in my career where I felt knocked down. And knocked down is probably the best way to put it. Early on, my first interview I was dead set on working in PR and advertising but I didn't, I don't think I really knew what it was or what I would be doing in particular. I ended up doing social media for large brands for the bulk of my sort of agency life. Which was super fun but over sort of the time I spent in agency world, I always felt like I wasn't a fit. I felt like I was a fish out of water. And what I've learned is that a fish out of water either must change to fit the world or the world must change to fit the fish. There is no other way that that story can end. So I wasn't ready to change to fit the world, so I left it. But I did spend a lot of time in the agency world learning from it. Learning to be better at the work I put out, learning to be more of a perfectionist, learning to take my time on doing good work and really learning what good client-facing work and PowerPoints looked like. Which sounds silly but we actually do produce a lot of PowerPoint decks at A Sweat Life. And I thank I thank you very much agency world for that skill but the cultural thing was never right for me so I sort of had to make a choice to leave that world and focus entirely on A Sweat Life where we can form our own culture. Cindy: That's such a sophisticated view and it's really I think if you can make that shift while you're in the while you're in the middle of a situation, how powerful is that? It makes me think of about Katherine Switzer, which is another kind of failure story that stood out for me. You know, think about this, she was the first woman to ever officially run the Boston Marathon and the way she tells the story, she signed up with her initials K.B. Switzer not because she was trying to fool anyone. Even though there had never been a woman officially running the marathon before she checked the rules it didn't say woman could run it. She didn't think she was really doing anything wrong and then she signs up for the race, she gets there, everyone around is nice. She starts the race and then mile two the race director comes at comes at her at her, leaps at her out of a truck and is like "What are you doing? Give me that number!" I'm sure it wasn't quite so clean even. And if you can imagine, you thought you were following the rules and then suddenly someone came along and was like you did everything wrong and the shame and the guilt that she felt in that moment, really made her almost want to quit. And she almost did. But she really quickly realized the opportunity that okay actually I need to finish this race of people believe that women can do it  and then soon after. That moment changed her whole life. Those photographers went viral as things could in, you know, the 1960s. And you know, she has since then become a true activist. And her entire life, now she's in her seventies. She has been one of the figureheads for the entire women's running movement. So it seems like the more quickly you can distinguish between the parts of if that are true failure or the parts of it that are kind of beyond your control and the parts of it that you can take and apply to something else in your life, the more success you can have in the long run. Jeana: And just building off of that point, Cindy. You know, Maaria Mozaffar who is a political activist failed the bar five times. So she had this vision of this is what I want to do and I think that's something that a lot of our guests have had. It's like this intuition and this gut feeling of this is right and this what I want to be doing. And then any failure along the way is just a little hurdle to get over, a stumble to get over but that is worth it. And the converse side of that we're talking about is when the failure presents itself that shows that like maybe I'm in the wrong place. I've got to shift direction. There's like that intuition, gut telling you to move somewhere else versus whatever those stumbles are along the way. It's just making me stronger to get to that vision. Have you experienced either one of those, like that intuition telling you yes or that intuition telling you maybe no? [24:48] Cindy: That's interesting. That actually leads into my failure story a little bit. Because what I think of as one of my bigger failures in the past few years was the failure to give myself an opportunity that I felt like I should have. I am a freelance writer and I've collaborated on one book before. And I had someone approach me about writing a book of my own that had to do with running which is my favorite topic. And you know I was really excited about it. And I talked about it. And I worked with this person. And you know it got to the point where I had to make a decision and I got advice from other people. And I kind of, you know, wasn't sure because of some things that had to do with the business aspects of it. And I ultimately ended up turning that opportunity down. For reasons that were, some of them were really solid at the time and some of them probably were more related to fear and self-doubt. And, you know, I kind of walked away from it, I felt fine about it. And then they got someone else to write this book. And then when I saw the book come out, I had really severe emotional gut reaction that I was not expecting. It really caught me off guard. I suddenly started to feel like I had walked away from an opportunity that I would never get again. That it was just you know a totally wrong decision and that I had just blown it. I hadn't even given myself the chance to see what I could do with it. So again, you can't go back and fix the past. But what I learned from that was maybe I needed to trust my intuition a little bit more. That even though there are people telling me okay, you have these solid business reasons for not doing this particular thing. But sometimes your gut just has to kind of win out over that. And it also taught me that I really wanted my name on the cover of a book. And so you know, I took that and I pursued that and I collaborated with a new collaborator and now I'm working on a new book that will have my name on the cover and hers. And it's something that I'm really proud of and excited about. And I can't wait to see it come out. So, you know, it took some hard work and some tears to get there but I did feel like I was able to access that. And it did it was like a course correction and it taught me to that it maybe I did need to trust my intuition a little bit more and sometimes it's hard to do. Maggie: That is like the epitome of resilience to me. We talk about resilience in the face of things happening to you and how do you recover, come back from them. And we talk about resilience when you make a mistake and then you have to kind of course correct from that. And then there's the kind of resilience where, you know, you don't act and then you have to kind of navigate the waters around what did or didn't happen after inaction. And I think these are all three different things that happen in our lives all the time but resilience is that thing. It is the ability to grow from it. To notice that time when you're in that churn, when you're in the struggle and not just passively think okay this will soon be over, this too shall pass. But to find the moments that you can learn from, to forgive yourself, immediate forgiveness for whatever has to be, whatever you have to do to feel right for yourself and by yourself. And then to move forward into a more positive place. And that can happen in a short amount of time, it can take years like with Lee Kemp. All of these stories, it's different ways that resilience comes about. But all of our incredible guests have this gut that I think is super strong. And I think that is the essence of resilience to me. Kristen: Yeah, and to really hammer home one of the points that you just made. Jeana and I were talking yesterday about our failure stories and you know, what we were going to talk about on podcast today. And I was telling her, like my memory must just suck because I don't know what I'm going to talk about. Like I can't really think of a failure to choose. And I know I've definitely failed but I'm having a really hard time remembering specific instances. And she looked at me and she was like that's because your resilient. And that's a really interesting interpretation. That I honestly felt like a light bulb had gone off over my head. It was like oh, it's not that I've never failed. It's just that my perspective has shifted. And maybe resilience isn't something that you recognize in the moment or that can even happen right away. It's definitely a time intensive course of action. So Jeana, I know you've been reading about resilience a lot lately. And learning a lot about it. [28:52] Jeana: I'm sort of obsessed with it. So I'm going to read one sentence: "A pair of researchers found that resilience was defined most as the ability to recover from setbacks, adaptable to change and to keep going in the face of adversity." And that was reported in the Harvard Business Review. And what's most important about that is that it's all of the things that Maggie just talked about. It's setbacks, it's actual failure. It's things just not going your way. So I think failure can be defined in a lot of buckets. Choosing to see it as failure is one thing, choosing to see it as a course correction is another thing. I think I've always chosen to see anything going wrong as an opportunity. Which might just be my internal optimism but it also be resilience. Which you can also [...], which is very interesting. So Angela Duckworth wrote the book Grit, and she wrote a lot about gritty parenting, how to be more gritty yourself and how to just define your own grittiness. Her book Grit is worth a read. Resilience in general though is a big, big link to happiness. People who can go through setback and failures and find a way out tend to be happier, science shows that. And resilience is linked to happiness because it also tends to be linked to habits and outlooks that lead you to be happier in general. I know we did a full happiness mantra on the sweat working app linked to resilience. And we created what call the resilience toolkit. If you want to do this exercise at home, you can create your own sort of endorphin building practice that can help you mentally as well as physically pull yourself out of that moment of failure. And there are a couple other things that you can do we'll link to that sort of mantra building in the show notes too. Maggie: And I'll just tack onto the last thing that you said Jeana. When you mentioned how it's resilience is linked to happiness because sort of the habits that you build. And I think there's another link to American Psychology Association that says that resilience is ordinary, not extraordinary. Because it happens everyday. So it's like creating the habits that you can trust. That you, that you will that work for you. Whether it is you know, just a workout everyday, a workout in the morning or workout at night, whatever routine fits your model best. That you can lean on when you need it. And it's like creating the tools like you're saying to build yourself back up when you're faltering. Because those ebbs and flows of life are constantly happening. And I should practice what I preach because I will let those ebbs and flows kind of affect me on a daily basis or on a weekly basis. That I think that's a place for me where I can start to hone those skills a little bit more is finding whether it's a mediation in the morning, or a walk without my phone. Taking the time, carving it out that would really help me build those habits and kind of insert resilience here. Cindy: Right, because it's really easy when things are going well for you to kind of forget the habits that create your sort of coping reserves, right? And all resilience is, is having coping reserves that are greater than the challenges that you face. And recognizing that when those challenges outstretch your resources and your ability to handle them, that you need to reach out for help. But building those habits in every day and remembering to do that, even when we're feeling good I think is a great way to build up our stores of resilience. So that we can not only help ourselves but that we can help those around us when they're challenges outpace what they can handle at that moment too. I will say that listening to the stories of failure and resilience on We Got Goals and talking about them with you all has been just a treat and a really fantastic way for us to all think about and build our resilience too. So thank you all for sharing your failure stories and for being a part of this podcast today. And this podcast in general. Jeana: Thank you Cindy. Kristen: Thanks guys, it felt good. Maggie: I'm about to go take a walk without my phone. Cindy: Bold move Maggie. Thank you again. Jeana: And stick around listener, after this you'll hear from a real life goal-getter taking about their goals and maybe their resilience. Cindy: Hey goal-getters, Cindy Kuzma here. We have a special treat for you. Just like we have been having these past few weeks. It's a real-life goal from one of you, our listeners. If you'd like to record a goal and have it be featured on this very podcast. You can record an audio memo on your phone, on your computer, however you'd like to do it. And email it to me at Cindy@aSweatLife.com. You could be featured here on We Got Goals in the week ahead. Thank you so much for listening and here is one of your goals. [33:45] Kelly: My name is Kelly and I'm from Chicago. A big goal I've achieved in the past year is a career goal for myself. I left a full time job back in August working in the hospitality industry and I have a big passion for fitness and health. So I wanted to start my own company and I did so back in December. It the ultimate fitness experience and I actually have my very first client event next week. So I think a big part of that was being in a career for the past nine years, I was just ready for a big change. And I have this big passion for fitness and health. And I also want to help other people. So you've seen my kind of my contact list of my career skills from event planning and working the hospitality industry. I decided to combine the two of hospitality and [...] fitness and health in that industry. Because I think everyone deserves to take care of themselves and just make a better life for themselves. So working on that together and now the future is just adding more clients to the list and making a career for myself working on my own and maybe building a team in the future. So really excited about it, really excited about these career goals that I've put into this. You can find me on Instagram at KellySnyder_FitLife or FitLifeExperience is company and FitLifeExperience.com is the website which is actually still being built. But it will be up and running. And definitely find me on social media. Cindy: This podcast is A Sweat Life Production and it's another thing that's better with friends, so please share us with yours. You can find us wherever you get your podcast including it now on Spotify. While you're there, if you could leave us a rating or review we would be so grateful. Special thanks to Jay Mono for our theme music, to all of our hosts for being our guests this week on this hostful episode and to TechNexus for the recording studio.

Sometimes, we’ll have a guest on the #WeGotGoals podcast who doesn’t actually like or set goals (I’m looking at you, Dawn Jackson Blatner and Josh Katt). For whatever reason, they don’t connect to the term, or they’ve employed a different paradigm to accomplish great things. Which is fantastic—one of the best things about the show, in our humble opinions, is the glimpse at the wide variety of paths high achievers have taken to reach success. But this week’s guest, Nicole Bernard Dawes, has the opposite perspective. Goals drive nearly everything the founder and CEO does. She aims to set both ambitious aspirations—say, starting an organic snack company, Late July Snacks, that hit $100 million in sales this year—and small mini-targets, including what she wants to get out of each business meeting. And she’s not afraid to lay them all on the line. “If you don’t even know what you want, you’re definitely not going to get it,” she says. “And I think clearly articulating what you want helps people. Setting goals helped Dawes recover from an incredibly difficult year in 2009. First there was the recession. Then her father Steve Bernard—her co-founder (and, before that, the founder of Cape Cod Potato Chips)—passed away from pancreatic cancer. When he died, the bank called the loan, leaving Dawes and her husband/business partner Peter scrambling to raise cash. “Through that, it forced my husband and I to take a hard look at kind of who we were at Late July and what we wanted this company to really become,” Dawes says. What did they decide and how did they pull through? In our interview, Dawes shares seven lessons that kept her moving forward. Find the right people … One of the most critical changes Late July made the following year was to the hiring process. Being qualified to work at the company, they decided, meant more than just having the right education and experience. Dawes began looking for people who’d make a positive addition to the environment, and spent a significant amount of time having multiple team members interview each candidate. In some cases, that meant positions went unfilled for years, a stressor in a fast-growing company. However, the result was worth it: “I truly believe today that we have the most wonderful team in our industry,” she says. “We have a group of people that wakes up every day ready to support each other and believes in the company and believes in the products.” … and a purpose you’re passionate about. Dawes made another big decision in the wake of her father’s passing: to leave cookies behind and enter the tortilla chip market. That was no small shift—cookies made up $2 million of the company’s $9 million in sales at the time. However, Dawes felt strongly she wanted to steer the company in a healthier direction. Of course, she wasn’t satisfied with just any crunchy nibble. She aimed to create the number-one tortilla chip in the natural-food business. “Singular focus on being number one requires all your effort, and all your team’s effort,” she says. “No matter what our team was doing, we always kept that goal in the back of our mind. Start new things small and build. It took a year to perfect and introduce the tortilla chips, and they got off to a rocky start. “That was a little bit scary because we had just bet our entire company's future on this launch,” Dawes says. That taught her Late July needed to build brand awareness in this new space. So, they spent the next year concentrating on a few key accounts, securing a foothold there before spreading their wings to the larger marketplace. That focus helped them course correct quickly. “I think we might have become the number three in the first year,” Dawes says. Deliver quality. That rapid rise was built on superior flavor. As the daughter of a potato-chip mogul father and a mother who owned a health food store in Cape Cod, Dawes prioritizes making food that’s both nutritious and delicious. “I’ve always believed that as a natural products brand, we have an obligation for the entire industry to make our products taste great,” she says. “When a consumer has a bad experience with one natural product, they make an assumption about everything.” And to succeed in the highly competitive salty snack realm requires repeat business: “No consumer is ever going to buy a snack twice if they don't like the way it tastes.” Stay open to feedback. How, exactly, does Late July makes its chips so scrumptious? Besides constant comparison to competitors and making sure the whole team is eating—and loving—them, Dawes says they stay alert for constructive criticism. She applies this philosophy to all areas of her life and business; it’s a key component of her overall positive outlook. “We’re all just kind of learning and growing, and none of us are perfect. The more receptive you are to hearing things that could be done better, the more likely you are to improve faster,” she says. Set goals outside the boardroom, too. Looking to the future, Dawes is aiming for Late July to dominate the salsa category too (they’re in the midst of launching that line, and popcorn, right now). However, she also gives her personal life high priority by setting goals there, too. Her big goal is to be available to her two sons, now ages 16 and almost 12. She puts it in practice by working from home more and eating family dinner together four or five nights a week. And, she encourages her employees to take similar steps. “We all have lives, and when you’re a high-achieving person, you have to not hide that,” she says. “It’s OK—it doesn’t make you less of a productive person to prioritize your private life.” Sweat it out. “I manage stress, I think, weirdly well,” Dawes says. Some of that may come naturally, but she also finds a solid fitness routine enables her to perform her best (a sentiment that makes us smile here at aSweatLife). A couple of years ago, Dawes got a Peloton bike—and thinks they should be standard issue for any entrepreneur. Now, she has no excuse not to knock out a 20-minute ride, even on her busiest days. Listen to Nicole Benard Dawes’ full episode anywhere you get your podcasts—including, now, on Spotify! If you like what you hear, please help us spread the word by leaving a rating or a review. And stick around until the end of the episode, where you’ll hear a goal from one of you, our listeners. (Want to be featured on a future episode? Send a voice memo with a goal you’ve crushed, a goal you’re eyeing, or your best goal-getting tip to cindy@asweatlife.com.)   --- Begin transcript: Jeana: Welcome to #WeGotGoals a podcast by aSweatLife.com on which we talk to high-achievers about their goals. I’m Jeana Anderson Cohen. With me I have Cindy Kuzma and Maggie Umberger. Maggie: Morning Jeana! Cindy: Good morning Jeana! Jeana: Good Morning! And Cindy, this week you to Nicole. Cindy: I did! I interviewed Nicole Bernard Dawes who is the founder and CEO of Late July, an organic snack food company. We have some people on the podcast who are actually not a big fan of goals. Nicole loves goals! She thinks you should set them in every part of your life. And so it was a joy to talk to her for this podcast. Jeana: And her goals are shifting, I know she had big goals built around business but her future goals are built more around her family life. Right? Cindy: Right, and I think she still has a lot of big business goals too. But I was really struck by the way she talked about her intentionality with her family. Her kids are actually a little bit older. Her boys are teenagers now and she’s realizing that they kind of require a different level of energy. Like when kids are little, you have to be around them, you have to take them places, you’re coordinating logistics. But when they get to like the age that which they’re they’re kind of becoming self-sufficient people, they have deep questions about the world. She was realizing that she needs to preserve her energy. She wants to be there for them as they kind of navigate the world and answer those questions for them and be a person who’s present in their life. And she realizes that just like you have to set a goal to reach a dollar amount in sales for your business. If you want that, if it’s a priority for you, you have to set that goal. And then you have to figure out how to make the rest of your life work with that. So she’s done things like work from home more often or structure her day in different ways so that she can make sure that she’s there for them in enough quantity and quality of time to be the kind of mother that she wants to be. Jeana: And as she’s managing all of these areas of her life and continuing to grow this already fast growing company, she’s under a lot of stress as is easy to imagine. But she is pretty good at managing that stress. And one of her key tools to going after her big accomplishments and continuing to manage her stress is buying a Peloton bike, right? Cindy: Yeah, this makes all of our hearts happy at a Sweat Life to hear her talk about how important fitness has been in achieving her goals and maintaining a balance to her lifestyle. Well I say balance, she doesn’t believe in that word balance which is something I think we can all relate to a little bit. Because she doesn’t feel like the person who goes into the office is a different person then the person who sits down at the dinner table with her family. That said, she did notice that when things got really busy, one thing that kind of slipped by the wasteside was her fitness routine. And she started to realize that was affecting her productivity, her mood, her state of mind and eventually would affect her health which would be extra bad for someone who runs essentially a health food company. So she was trying to figure out how to make that work again. She set that goal and worked backward to figure out how to achieve it. And realized that having a bike in her home where she had no excuse to not do a 20 minute ride any day of the week was really important to her. So it was kind of a treat to hear that. In fact, she said she thinks a Peloton bike should be given to every entrepreneur. It should just be like standard equipment when you start your own business. So that was great to hear. Jeana: I’ll take one of those please. What a delight to hear from such a great entrepreneur about her goals and how they’ve shifted over the years. Here is Cindy with Nicole. And stick around, at the end of the episode we’re hearing from you, listeners! Cindy: This is Cindy Kuzma and I’m here on the #WeGotGoals podcast with Nicole Bernard Dawes who’s the founder and CEO of Late July. Nicole, thank you so much for joining us today. Nicole: Oh Cindy, thank you so much for having me. I’m really excited about this podcast. Cindy: Well, I’m glad to hear it! We’re excited too. So most of our listeners are people who are conscious about what they eat and who love a good snack so they probably already know your brand. But just in case, can you tell us just a little bit about Late July and the products you sell? Nicole: Sure, Late July organic snacks is a predominately a tortilla chip company. Right now we make several varieties of organic tortilla chips and range from our most healthy which is a multigrain tortilla chip that has all sorts of wonderful grains and seeds in it. To our more seasoned jalapeno lime tortilla chips which are one of my personal favorites and my kids personal favorites. They’re super delicious and they are a great snack any time. We also make a line of crackers and sandwich crackers. Cindy: And that’s kind of how it all started, right? Way back in 2001 because you couldn’t find a way to fulfill your pregnancy cravings with organic real ingredients. Am I getting that right? Nicole: That is correct. I was pregnant, I actually started this company when I was pregnant with my first son which is one of those things that at the time seemed like a really good idea because you haven’t had a child yet. But I grew up in sort of a unique situation. My mom had a health food store and my dad owned a potato chip company. So I think that I’m the natural product of when those two people have a child, you’re bound to have somebody who could create a natural product that is a little bit more delicious. And that was my experience with my mom’s health food store in the 1970s was that all of the products, you know had the right idea but they really tasted bad. I mean, it was a pretty sad shelf full of crackers that I had in my childhood. But because my father was really into food and he loved to cook and he also started a potato chip company, K Pop Potato Chips. You know, food and health food, in particular, because of my mom was a big focus of my life. But even back then I knew that health food stores could do better. So when I was pregnant with my first son, I was actually living in New York City at the time. And I really desperately wanted a saltine cracker. It was early in my pregnancy. Because I was highly determined to find one, I went to like six natural food stores. And I couldn’t find anything. I mean, all of the crackers were very similar to what my mom had back in the 70s. I mean, that part of the health food store hadn’t evolved at all. I think it’s like people stereotype natural foods, you know they taste like the cardboard box that they’re packed in. That was very true of what I was finding when I was walking around those New York City health food stores back in 2002. So it dawned on me that even though other parts of the health food store had evolved since my mom’s. That part of the store was very much stuck in the 70s and I knew that I had to do something about it. Cindy: So, you’ve come a long way since then. I know you have something like 30 employees and the number one tortilla chip in that natural and organic aisle where you were looking for it before. And a chance to hit $100 million in sales for the year. And that's just professionally. Personally, I know you have the family, the sons that you mentioned and a husband who's your business partner. So I presume that you have a lot of accomplishments to choose from. But as we always do on #WeGotGoals, we’re going to ask you to narrow it down today. We ask everyone two big questions and the first one is the one I’m going to pose right now. Nicole, what’s a big goal you’ve achieved, why was it important to you and how did you get there? Nicole: I just want to mention one thing, we did already pass $100 million in sales. Cindy: Oh, wonderful. Nicole: You know, I love goal-setting. I think it’s a really important part of achieving. And understanding really what you’re trying to achieve is very, very important I think how we got where we are today. And you know those goals have changed so much since I first started the company and I'm kind of constantly checking and updating those goals. You know there's so many that have been a part of getting us to where we are. But you know just narrowing down a couple that I particularly think helped us. One is way back I mean I'm going to stay back in 2010, my husband and I we run the company together and we set a goal for our team. We discovered that one of the things that we love the most about our company was kind of the way our team work together. But we had a couple of people that we really felt weren't as positive members of the team. So we decided that we were going to revamp the entire way that we did hiring and set a goal to have our entire company be the kind of people that we really wanted to be around. That was supportive of each other just to make our company one of the best places to work that we possibly could. What made that goal a little bit harder back in 2010 is we didn't have as much money back then to pay what you needed to pay. There was a lot of challenges to kind of reaching that goal. But ultimately it also meant that would have to leave positions unfilled potentially until we kind of found that perfect fit. And so what we decided to do was instead of just hiring for a position, we started hiring for cultural fit. And completely changed the way that we interviewed people so instead of just posting a position, looking for a set of criteria, having one or two people interview that person and then hiring the most qualified candidate we decided that the term qualified had a lot of other meanings. And you know that stretched far beyond just hitting the the check boxes of right school major, right past experience and for some of the positions it required us leaving them open for a couple of years actually. And I would say that, I can officially say we met this goal about 4 years after we set it. It took that long to finally get all the open positions filled the way that we wanted to fill them. And I truly believe today that we have the most wonderful team in our industry. I mean everybody thoroughly enjoys working together, we have a group of people that that wakes up everyday ready to support each other and believes in the company and believes in the products. Cindy: That's so interesting because so often people think of goals and really hard, tangible, data-driven terms and that's such an interesting one to set. How did you sort of check, you talked about kind of checking for a progress against those things. How did it, I mean other than just filling those positions. Like what are some ways that you sort of really gauged how successful that effort was? Nicole: I think just employee morale and job satisfaction. Just seeing how our team worked together and also it mean really it's it a tangible filling open positions. I mean at the time when we set it we had the open positions that we needed to fill and under our like new new approach. So once those positions were filled and you know all future positions were done that way. It just became our way of life. Cindy: I’d imagine that was a bit of a struggle at first with your existing employees trying to communicate that message and explain to them why it might take a little bit longer to get the help that you needed. But ultimately I'm sure they could come to understand to how important this was for the health of the whole team how did you kind of navigate that transitional period. Nicole: It is, it actually is very hard. I mean still because it typically took us longer to fill positions than we did in the past and when you’re growing fast that can be a huge problem. But I think what everyone came to realize very quickly was it was much better to have a team that we all enjoyed being around and you know really truly supported each other, than just filling a position. And you know, people became believers in the process. Because they were all part of it too. You know, when somebody joined the company they were typically interviewed by five or six people versus just one or two. Anybody that they might potentially be working with and even a few people they wouldn’t be working with on a day to day process. So everyone kind of bought into it and plus they saw the results. Cindy: And when you think about how that affects your day to day business any can you think of some examples where the team has worked together in a way that you think they might not have been able to before Nicole: Yeah. One of the things that I think is really interesting is when I look at I mean our sales team. We, our sales team works very differently than most sales teams. We have a team that completely doesn't compete against each other. Which I think makes us ultimately more powerful. Our sales team isn't kind of bonused individually. We really look at it as we're all in this together. And what that has meant for some members of that team is they might have something come up like a family emergency, for example. And they can’t go to, this is a true life story, it actually happened. They can’t go to like the most important meeting for their most important customer of the year. And so one of their peers will step in and go to that meeting. Now, in a typical company that might be a threat because if that person performs and does well and then there's a chance that that could kind of come back to impact. Particularly in sales where people tend to be a little bit possessive of their customers. And in our case, the way that we work that’s just one co-worker helping another. Cindy: How do you sort of structure things, so that requires both kind of a different attitude and also like a really different incentive system as you say, right? How are some of the, what are some of the ways that plays out in the way that you kind of actually structure the company? Nicole: Well I think it, one of ways that plays out is you know we encourage a lot of cross functionality. People to kind of understand not just their role but how their role impacts the rest of the company. And particularly team members that they work with all the time but even team members that they just sort of brush up against [...] with like the various things that they’re working on. Because I think when you understand your role in greater context you understand how your choices and your decisions affect the people that you're working with versus when you are very siloed you really don't understand and you don't have a lot of concern for how your choices impact the people that you work with. Cindy: So where do you think all of these ideas came from for you? I mean when you talk about it now it it strikes me that some of this must have come out of the very difficult year that that you had in 2009. Which I mean first of all I'm very sorry for the loss of your father, I know that that was a tough time. And that you went through some learnings in terms of getting comfortable with areas of the business that you didn't know much about before that you weren't as involved in before. Is that something that kind of informed the way you've set up this newer hiring structure? Nicole: I mean it is, I mean really as you mentioned 2009 was just an incredibly difficult year. I mean personally, professionally, really in every way. It was the death of my father somebody who you know, hero, mentor, somebody who I kind of looked up to and felt I really needed. To his death resulting in our bank triggering a death of a member clause in our loan agreement. And forcing us in the height of the recession to replace debt and the significant amount of debt for the company. And ultimately kind of through that it forced my husband I to take a hard look at who we were at Late July and what we wanted this company to really become. And a couple of interesting things happened. One, we decided life is short you just don't, you really as an entrepreneur I have an incredibly positive outlook and usually my brain can't even compute failure. I mean it just doesn’t go there and I actually, I manage stress I think kind of weirdly well but kind of even given all that we just took a hard look at who we wanted to be and how we wanted to feel and how we wanted our team members to feel. And out of that we just really needed late July to be a place that. People were passionate about our mission already. But just that people were passionate about the work experience they were having. And I think bigger than that even for Peter and I was deciding who Late July wanted to be as a company. And part of kind of our early days in the cracker side of our business was something that I think was really important to building our foundation and discovering what we cared about from a mission standpoint. But the products were I think, they tasted great but I just I didn't have the passion that I needed to for where our company was headed and we made a lot of difficult decisions that year in addition to revamping the personality side of our company and the culture side of our company. We decided that as a brand we wanted to stand for something a little bit more in terms of health. And we actually decided to get out of cookies which was a significant amount of our business at that time. We were doing probably $9 million in sales and cookies were $2 million of them. So it was a big deal. And go into tortilla chips which was something both my husband and I really really were passionate about. I tried to get my father to launch them at K Pop Potato Chips but he felt pretty strongly that they were a potato chip company and that was sort of out of their area of expertise. But I felt really strongly about them and so did my husband. And this kind of comes to our next goal which I think is really probably a crazier one. But as a cracker company, we decided we wanted to become the number one tortilla chip in the natural business, in the natural aisle. And coming out of this incredibly difficult year, that was what we had decided to become. And in 2010, we started working on tortilla chips. And taking our company in this completely new direction. Cindy: Once you had finally decided this. What were some of the steps along the way that took you from okay we're going to go this whole new way to achieving that success? To being the number one tortilla chip in this aisle? Nicole: Well step one was just launching the tortilla chips, which took us almost the full year. And they officially hit shelves in December of 2010. And they were not off to the greatest start. You know, which I think was a little bit scary because we had just bet our entire company’s future on this launch. You know, and I think that was kind of the first big learning for us. Was okay, we’re going into this new category, it’s much more competitive. You know, you have to sell a lot more tortilla chips to succeed than you do crackers. So you know we kind of dug in to really understand what was causing that and we realized that because we were kind of new to this category we needed to build our brand awareness. So we just picked a couple of accounts, really built up our brand in those before kind of spreading our wings into a broader amount of stores. So we spent that full year just succeeding in the couple of accounts that we were in. And in relatively short order, I think when you kind of put your mind to it like that, we were. I think we might have become the number 3 or something in the first year. So we right away, in the accounts we were in got a high degree of success. And I attribute that to the taste of our products. It’s one thing you really need the repeat consumers and I’ve always believed that as a natural products brand, we have an obligation for the entire industry to make our products taste great. Because when the consumer has a bad experience with one natural product they make an assumption about everything. And in addition to the obligation to the greater industry, no consumer is ever going to buy a snack twice if they don’t like the way it tastes. Cindy: Right, right. So how do you go about making sure that they do taste great? Nicole: You know, I think in addition to constantly testing our products versus our competitors and making sure that everyone in our company's eating them and loving them. It's being really ready to hear criticisms and understand how to make things better. Until you're 100% satisfied never launch a product. So many people launch just to meet deadlines or they need a new item. We've never done that at Late July. Until something is 100% ready it will not be for sale. No matter what. Cindy: That’s interesting to hear you say. And also its interesting to kind of hear you say how you set about launching the tortilla chips. That you really did go deep into a couple markets because one of the things that I was wondering was. You know you haven't necessarily launched a new line since then until now or a major new product anyway. And that seems like different from the way many food companies operate. It seems like for you it’s been kind of an intentional strategy to go slow and to focus more on taste and perfection. Than on just chasing the next new thing. Would you say that’s been part of your success? Nicole: Absolutely, I mean you know the tortilla market is huge and for us there was really no need to expand past that. You know, particularly for the early days of our launch. Singular focus on kind of becoming the number one requires all of your effort and your team's effort. When we felt like spreading ourselves too thin would just kind of deal reaching that goal. Cindy: Are there kind of practical ways as you as went along this route that you kind of reinforce that focus within your team and to your employees? Nicole: I mean, I think it's interesting is that the name of this podcast as #WeGotGoals. And you know I think every meeting should have a goal. And, you know, no matter what our team was doing, we always kept that goal in the back of our mind. In particular, when it came to the tortilla chips. I think that understanding how you’re tracking versus your goal too. So you know in an account or in a retailer, where do you rank? And how are you doing? And making sure that every time you're meeting with someone, you're understanding what you're hoping to get out of that meeting. That sounds very simple but it's also very very important. Cindy: Right, I remember reading an example of one of your early sales calls where someone asked you what is there anything else you want to talk about. And you said yeah I actually just what your answer. It’s so simple but as you say really effective, right? That you just knew what you wanted and you put it on the line and and then you ended up getting what you needed out of that meeting, right? Nicole: Yeah, I mean that’s an excellent example. A lot of that came from just sheer desperation in that meeting. But if you don't even know what you want your definitely not going to get it. And I think clearly articulating what you want helps people. It helps. We’re all in this together, in our industry. And certainly within the company and understanding kind of what your objectives are and how that other person can help you achieve them is really a great step in actually achieving them. Cindy: Right, and it seems like that kind of mindset shift can also help with what you were just talking about in terms of responding to criticism too, right? That if you keep in mind that your ultimate goal, what you really want, is to improve your product. Then you can sort of start to see people who are giving you that feedback even if it's somewhat negative as people who are helping you along the way versus people who are sort of out to get you, right? It seems like that would be a much more optimistic way to look at that. Nicole: Well I think that’s absolutely true and I mean I think that's true for everything. We're all just kind of learning and growing and none of us are perfect. So you know the more receptive you are too kind of hearing things that could be done better, the more likely you are to improve faster. Cindy: So now you are in the middle of launching two new product lines - salsa and popcorn. Why did you decide that now was the time to do that and why these particular products? Nicole: Well the salsa I think is an obvious choice for a tortilla chip company. We're constantly being asked to partner with salsas and plus they're just like right next to the tortilla chips in the store. And I love making salsa at home but it’s not always practical. Sometimes you just need a shelf-stable salsa that you can take with you wherever you’re going. And this is again something that we worked on for many, many years because I was very reluctant to get into salsa because fresh salsa just tastes so much better than jar salsa. But ultimately we determine that there was enough of a need for having a shelf-stable salsa that you can just take with you anywhere that didn't require refrigeration and we were able to come up with one that we were proud of. So we felt it was time to launch it. And I think also with the salsa it’s interesting, not a lot of people are doing certified organic in salsa. And sometimes we feel that that’s our role in a category too. To kind of push people towards certified organic, certainly in tortilla chips. Us coming in as a certified organic tortilla chip has really shifted the category. We’re seeing more and more people experimenting with organic particularly now that we are the number one tortilla in both the natural aisle and the natural aisle of grocery stores. We’re number one in both. People are realizing that the number one can be organic. There are enough consumers out there that do want that, that do care about that. As long as it tastes great, I think in salsa that’s something that people weren’t really pushing that envelope. The majority of salsa out there isn’t certified organic. Cindy: So, this may or may not lead to the next question but it is about the future. What is a big goal that you have for the future and how do you plan to achieve that whether that's salsa related or are completely different? Nicole: I think it’s interesting, I also feel like as an entrepreneur it's important to have goals outside of work as well. And you know as I look to my future, my kids are getting older. I have an almost 16 year old, an almost 12 year old. I feel like kind of stepping back a little bit and looking at my family for personal inspiration for my goals. Is how can I balance a little bit better kind of my two worlds. And the whole idea of work-life balance I feel like is a little bit of a sham. Particularly for entrepreneurs. I never unplug or turn off. Even on vacation but I do feel like it’s interesting. You know you think when your kids get older, it requires a little bit less for parents. But I’m finding the opposite is actually true. That you really do need to be more to available and more present for them as they’re getting into their teenage years. So trying to kind of figure out how to balance everything. And I almost hate to use the word balance just because it’s kind of an unreachable goal. But that’s something that I’ve been personally working on as far as future. And I know that’s not work related but I think it’s very important for entrepreneurs. To kind of have personal goals too. And some of the things I’ve been experimenting with are working from home some days. We have the company set up so that it allows flexibility so that other people can do that too. Making sure that we’re eating dinner as a family if not five, at least four nights out of the week. Kind of mini goals I’ve set along the way for us and with the ultimate goal of making sure that I am present and available as my kids kind of enter this next phase of their life. Cindy: I'm actually really glad to hear you say that. Something that does strike me. I actually don't have kids but when I think about kids growing from small children where they have a lot of physical needs and then when they need to be driven places at cetera to now. Where maybe they have as you're saying like sort of higher-level needs that take more of your brain power to, to serve. Even if they don't always take as much actual time in terms of transit or cooking or or whatever those physical needs are. So I think it's really interesting the way you're thinking about how to make all of this this fit. Nicole: You know, I think it's interesting that even for our employees that don't have kids. I think it's just kind of learning too. That is okay, doesn't make you less successful of a person to kind of prioritize your private life. And that not to make that a conversation that should be hidden away. I know that when we have people who join Late July that come from much, much larger companies,, it’s a conversation people are reluctant to have. People don’t want to say we’ll I’m not available then because I have to go to my kids school or I’m not available because I have to help like an elderly parent. Or I have to take my dog to the vet. Whatever it is, we all have lives and when you’re a high achieving person you have to not hide that. I think we all have to be okay with putting that out front and having open conversations about it. Because the reality is everybody has obligations outside of work and you know it’s not something to be ashamed of. I think it’s something that as long as you’re achieving and getting your job done and it’s not impacting co-workers negatively, we should learn how to accommodate each other in a healthy way. Cindy: And you have sort of some different factors in your particular situation too because, you know, you started this as a family business. An

There's something to learn by listening to any individual's success story, but when the story starts with being kicked out of high school at 15, one can get pulled especially quickly into hearing how it panned out. I found myself at the edge of my seat while sitting across from Pivotal Coaching Co-Founder Scott Hopson for the latest #WeGotGoals podcast episode interview because that was exactly how his story started. If you're in the training industry, maybe you've attended continuing education sessions through NASM, EXOS, The Gray Institute, or Power Plate International; if so, you've probably studied Hopson's material or done a workshop with him. He also helped launch Midtown Athletic Club, Chicago's first urban sports resort with 575,000 square feet of health and wellness amenities. And, as the co-founder of PTA Global, he's coached countless personal trainers in a unique approach focused on behavioral science. Essentially, Hopson has worked his entire professional life on becoming the best version of himself as a personal trainer, but he's also dedicated his life to the fitness industry from a practical coaching, educational, and business perspective. And with the prestigious laundry list of titles he possesses, you can imagine why I found it unbelievable that it all started with being kicked out of school. But, as Hopson told me during the interview, when he decided he wanted to turn his life around, he started at the source where he felt like he was always home, the one place where he felt "in flow" amidst it all - with his coaches when he was playing sports. He held onto the memory of being coached and let that passion drive him forward. Now, helping others achieve their movement goals makes him feel alive, and he's equally passionate about training other coaches to bring out their fullest potential and thus, inspire clients to become the best version of themselves too. The most interesting thing about our interview, though, had nothing to do with fitness and everything to do with the human behind the science of coaching. In order to go after the "what" (whether that's a specific fitness goal or any other transformational goal in your life), "you have to articulate the 'why,'" Hopson said. Ultimately, understanding that it's not about him as a coach at all when he's in a coaching session has helped him understand how to navigate every other kind of partnership and communication in his life. "If I'm going to coach you, I've got to create an environment for you to train yourself, because I can't do it," Hopson said. "That'd be quite arrogant and ignorant of me to believe I can. If I create an environment for you to change yourself, that affects how I communicate to you, how I listen, do I have empathy? And I apply that to my business relationships. Am I listening? Am I willing to consider the possibility that they don't only have a point of view, but they might actually change mine?" Hopson also mentioned that he leans into his intuition to help guide his unique, nonlinear career path and what big goals he goes after. "I'm at my happiest, and in flow, where nothing else matters than that present moment, when I'm being of service to someone as a coach," he said. I commented on how lucky he was to know that feeling - a feeling of just being in total flow. He replied that we all have it, in some way, shape or form. We just have to notice and be open to tapping into it. "It doesn’t happen every day, [but] there are things you can do to connect you back to it if you lose it – whether it’s prayer or meditation, or whatever it is that connects you to that thing," Hopson said. Listen to Scott Hopson's episode of the #WeGotGoals podcast to hear one success story you likely won't ever forget. You can listen anywhere you get your podcasts (did we mention, we're on Spotify now?) If you like what you hear, please leave us a rating or a review! We'd really appreciate it. And stick around until the end of the episode, where you’ll hear a goal from one of you, our listeners. (Want to be featured on a future episode? Send a voice memo with a goal you’ve crushed, a goal you’re eyeing, or your best goal-getting tip to cindy@asweatlife.com.)   --- Transcript: Jeana: Welcome to #WeGotGoals a podcast by aSweatLife.com on which we talk to high-achievers about their goals. I’m Jeana Anderson Cohen. With me I have Maggie Umberger and Cindy Kuzma. Maggie: Morning Jeana! Cindy: Good morning Jeana! Jeana: Morning! Maggie, you talked to Scott Hobson this week, right? Maggie: I did! I spoke with Scott Hobson and he has a lot of roles which I will try to give you in the upfront here but he will do a better job of talking about the many companies that he has started. And from his career trajectory, he’s been a personal trainer, he has coached coaches. He still loves to coach people on how to help other people achieve their goals. He is the founder, co-founder of PTA Global as well as Pivotal Coaching. But essentially what he does, is he helps people move better.  Whether that is individuals or people within big gyms or at really large conferences and for fitness professionals across the world. He’s been to 40 countries to teach. He’s also an author, a writer, and a speaker. And I was so lucky to get to speak to him about his goals of which he has many. Jeana: But he also failed big once, right Maggie? Maggie: I didn’t realize this. I didn’t know this until we were talking for this interview, but he was kicked out of high school. And he kind of tossed it out there and I was honestly shocked because he has done so many things. He is the co-founder of Pivotal coaching which is a world-wide coaching business now. And I was honestly surprised because he is so accomplished. He’s so well spoken, he’s so driven. But I learned that he did get kicked out of high school and it took something for him to realize that in order for him to turn his life around he needed to find the thing that made him feel like he was in flow, is what he calls it. And when he feels like he’s in flow, he knows he’s doing the right thing and the only thing that he felt that kind of sensibility around was when with his rugby team and when he was being coached by his coaches. He felt like he was at home and he wanted to do that more. He wanted to do that in any capacity he could, so he became a personal trainer. He kept going back to school, he kept learning more and his fervor for learning more about human movement and just how people behave around fitness. It’s a much broader topic for him then just like what happens in a coaching session. And he’s really turned that enthusiasm, is what he calls it. This spirit for understanding how people move into his life-long career. Which is huge leaps and bounds away from getting kicked out of high school years ago. Jeana: And he feels like it’s important to coach the humans who are doing the movement and not actually coach the movement. Which is an interesting semantic issue, it’s an interesting word choice. What does he mean by that and how does that fit into his overall philosophy? Maggie: So Scott has the wherewithal to know that what happens in the gym is only a tiny part of your day. And he knows that as long as you just throw anatomical cues at people it’s going to go over their head. They have to find their why. And so he’s become really, really passionate about helping other coaches learn how to speak to people to meet them where they are and to really influence and inspire change for people on a greater level than just going through the motions of a program, of going through the workout. We say this all the time at aSweatLife that fitness can be the catalyst to you living your best life and that what happens in the gym can absolutely affect you life outside of the gym if you let it. If you want it to and he has started to focus a lot of the training and the protocols within Pivotal Coaching around human behavior and how can what coaches do in your training sessions influence how that training session goes. It's so much more of an emotional thing than just a physical thing which is interestingly a large part of the conversation that we had was just about how connected to his own emotional well-being he is. Like when he’s not in flow as I was saying, he knows it and he needs to make a change. And that's what happened when he was director of a really large facility that he's still incredibly involved with and he loves it very much. But when he was doing a role that he could do but he felt a little bit more stressed by being in it. It was apparent to him that he needed to make a change and he could be a better asset in a different capacity. So that when he could actually get back to working with people, for people and helping. Really his passion is working with coaches then he could really feel, do better work, help people on a greater scale. And so that's been his guiding force, like getting within the process, finding the joy, finding the payoff in the process is what he says. Not just that the end goal or whatever the thing he's trying to accomplish gets checked off the list. It's about feeling the way he needs to feel all along the way. Jeana: What an incredible story of overcoming obstacles and finding your true path I can't wait to hear Maggie talk to Scott. And stick around at the end of the episode we’re hearing from you listeners. Maggie: Thanks so much for joining me Scott, on the We’ve Got Goals Podcast. Scott: I'm excited. Maggie: We're excited to have you! So Scott for the listeners at home I know that you do a lot of jobs and that they probably sometimes they overlap, sometimes they’re different. You're a one-on-one coach, your a group coach, you have managed big facilities, you also coached on a global scale and your a founder of a couple companies. For the listeners can you give a little brief description of, I know you said what you do on a daily basis is different, but how you spend your days and what your general title is? Scott: Yeah, it’s wonderful. Well I mean the single biggest thing right now is I’m a co-founder of Pivotal. We’re a development company. And our mission is really simple it's to empower people to fulfill their potential. And our clientele if you will is anyone that has a passion for movement. So what I do on a daily basis could be considered coaching - one-on-one, groups, and teams from everyday people at health clubs to Olympic-level teams I work with all of them. But my real passion is teaching and you could say I coach the coaches. So what I travel the world doing, I think I've been to about 40 different countries by now, I coach coaches on how to be a better coach. We can talk later about what that includes maybe. But I also consult.  Having been an operator for 20 years building health clubs, big beautiful sports resorts around the world. I know what it takes to actually build facilities, operate facilities, manage people, sales marketing, membership and on it goes. But ultimately I think it all comes down to coaching. I’m in the people industry and my job is to build meaningful relationships and I think that’s what coaches do. I don’t know if that makes sense, but that’s kind of what on any given day one of those is what I’m doing or all of those is what I’m doing. Maggie: That’s fascinating.  Not only the breadth of what you do but the depth to which you do it. So like you're talking about working on the business side of the athletic club and building out a club. And then also building out an amazing coaching staff and helping people become better coaches. And then helping individuals also reach their fitness goals. It just runs the gamut. Scott: Yeah, it does. Maggie: Did you start as a personal trainer yeah in terms of profession? Scott: Yeah, in terms of profession that's the first real professional job I had. But I've been in the movement industry my whole life the only thing that's really kept me sane through life's adventures that don't all start out the way you want them to. But that one kind of bedrock of always connecting to why I'm here has been either playing sport, coaching sport, moving, coaching people, something to do with this idea of I'm here to move and I'm here to help people move. Not just physically but towards their dreams in life, you know? So 1998 is when I became a personal trainer and fitness instructor in the UK, in London. But immediately, the minute I was in the industry I knew this was only part of what I was going to do here. And that's when I went back to school to become a physical education teacher. Which is the problem when you get kicked out of high school at 15. Maggie: Wait a minute, should we go back and ask about that? Scott: There would need to be some whiskey in the room.  Yeah you're talking to a guy that didn't even graduate high school at 15. I left and then when I realized “oh, I probably should have stuck around” I was 24, 25 and I decided I wanted to go back and become a coach and a physical education teacher. So the problem is that you've got to graduate high school first. So believe it or not I was a 25 year old in school with a bunch of teenagers. Maggie: Wow! Scott: Yeah, that’s where it started for me. Actually, I answer it that way because that’s where it started, was the realization that I needed to do something different with my life. And I found out pretty quickly it was in this area of movement and coaching. That was my only real love in life, was playing sport and being coached.  So how do I do that, Okay I'll go to university. Okay, how do you do that, you’ve got to graduate high school. Problem, big problem. So I had to go back in order to go forwards and then it's been an unbelievable journey since then just exploring all the possibilities in this industry, you know? And there's multiple Industries- it's not just fitness, it's not just performance, it’s wellness, it's all of it really. You know? Maggie: Oh, yeah. And it’s a huge world. And it can feel, it seems like you have this outlook that is just wide-eyed and excited versus daunted. You know, because you talk about there being so many facets to movement, and to health and wellness. That I can get intimidated by where do I spend my time? Scott: Where do I begin? Maggie: What to learn. Oh my god, there is so much to learn. Scott: There is. Maggie: But, based on what I’ve seen and how you have grown your career. You’ve just gone after the things you wanted to go after. And created your career based on what excites you. Scott: That’s probably quite accurate actually. For me we’ve also got passion. But I’ve kind of shifted. I think passion is a good thing. If you aint got it, it’s too darn hard to do anything. You know? Maggie: Yeah. Scott: But for me it’s become more enthusiasm. And it sounds like semantics but that word. When you’re enthusiastic about something. Like it literally means to be in spirit, right? It means to be, the payoff is in the process. I think you've got to passionately follow where the payoff is in the process. Whatever that is in your life. Like that burning desire to do something just because the act of doing it is the payoff. And that really sums up my career. Every few years there seems to be another door opens or something says no, you should take a left here. When my best laid plans said to take a right but something says in me says no, you’re supposed to follow that. It leads to failure, a ton actually but if your enthusiastic. The saying about enthusiasm, it's the ability to keep falling on your face and not care anyway. That’s a big part of enthusiasm. Maggie: Well, I think that kind of transitions to the question that we ask on #WeGotGoals, which is what's one big goal that you're proud to say you've accomplished and how did you get there? Scott: Wow, that's I knew you were going to ask it and it's surprisingly difficult to answer, right because you don't want to sound trite or have too much levity. But the reality is there's two things that all stand out. One is, one of the company’s that I'm a founder of is PTA Global, Personal Training Academy Global, we launched that out of nothing. We literally traveled the world.  Me and my five brothers who created it. Not biological brothers and we asked every health club we had worked with in 40 different countries. What are your problems? What are your pains? And we built personal training certification to answer their problems. Not just based on whatever we thought was the best way to train. We actually tried to build something on what people needed rather than what we thought. Then we went out and recruited 26 of the best educators in our industry. Many of whom we were told they won’t even be in the same room as each other. They had conflicting opinions, philosophies, they argue. We got them all in the same room to write PTA Global. All of them in the same room and we launched it in 2009 which was the worst economic time. Little did we know what was coming.  And now we're 35, 40 countries, you know? And it all just came from sharing a common purpose, you know what I mean? That drive, that desire to do something. So that stands out professionally as the best thing I've done in my career so far. Is to truly just go all in, we all quit our jobs with salaries and put all our chips in. And said it's this or nothing. Just once we have to try and do the right thing, rather than to do things right and it cost us everything we had. If we didn't sell, we didn't eat. If it wasn't successful, it was on us there was no one to blame, no corporate structure or nothing. It was incredible! I'll tell you that's the biggest achievement in my career other than being in it in the first place. Because it wasn't easy for me to be in it in the first place you know I talked about getting kicked out of school and I had to go back to college. I was the first person in my entire family history that has ever done anything outside of high school. And I think just having to pay for your own way you know what I mean despite life willingness to say you can't do it. Maggie: Where did you learn that? Where do you think that drive comes from? That just openness to enthusiasm and willingness to lean into it. Scott: Truthfully, I think for me it was just not failing a lot, but really discovering who I was in the first. I think some people it's wonderful they seem to have the playbook, they come with it. They can be like oh this is what it's like to be a good person. Or this is what it's like to follow your dreams. But that wasn't my experience. My experience was a lot of failure and a lot of pain and alot of looking at who I was at first. And then finally when you hit it enough bumps you say holy crap I’ve got to change something. The second part is you can’t do it alone. I've been very blessed to have people that showed up right on time. When I needed help so I think surrounding yourself with the people that you hope to become you know what I mean. I mean truly looking at people, I don't know what it is that you have but I want that. Whether it's their spiritual fitness, their ability to be kind, their ability to be successful in business. Like you clearly have something I don't, where I lack or and I'm unable to see. I should probably surround myself with people like you and try to learn it, you know? And it's really those two ingredients and that burning desire. For me to pick up a book and study coaching and movement or isn't a drudge, it's a joy. You know what I mean? When I'm bored it's the first thing I want to do. Wow I’d love to learn more about [...] or how did that Olympic coach win it for the fourth year in a row. Whatever. I'm fascinated with not just human movement but with the human being inside it. So I think when you're fascinated, I think that curiosity, that’s the word. Maggie: Yeah. Scott: You’ve got to have a relentless curiosity for whatever you’re passionate about. You know? Maggie: Yeah, absolutely! Did PTA Global come about, you said you visited countries you visited the big clubs that you worked with and answered some of their problems or their needs. Was it also an equal part you finding those extra elements that you were excited about. Like what's inside a human being and how can we help them feel their best while they're working out. Those little nuances, did that kind of come together as the marriage. Is that what PTA Global is? Scott: 100%, yes. if you're going to solve a problem, you’ve got to first know what that problem is. And the key to getting clarity is to ask better questions. If you keep asking the same questions, it doesn’t matter about how many ways you phrase it. So part of the fascination was what are the real problems of our industry. We’ve got 300 times more education than we’ve ever had, we’ve got more gyms and health clubs than we’ve ever had and we’ve got more billions of dollars invested in health and wellness than we’ve ever had. Yet we’ve got less human beings moving than anytime in human history. We’ve got more disease, disability and dysfunction than anytime in human history. And believe it or not we have the first generation of youth with a lower life expectancy than their parents.  If that don't make you wake up like our kids are scheduled to die younger than we are. It’s supposed to be the opposite. We're keeping old people live longer and sicker and younger people are dying sooner with more sickness. So part of it was that we've got to solve this problem. But the other part wow I've got to go find something that maybe isn't there or I've got to find the missing link. There’s that journey of discovery, right? The merging of that and the guys and girls we did it with are geniuses in their respective fields. Nutrition, behavioral change, movement, anatomy, whatever it is. So to actually go to each of these leaders and get their take on how it answer that. It was, you don't get many opportunities in life to do that to. Say here are the problems let's go speak to the world's best and find out how they might solve it. And then bring it back to the people who asked for it. That really was the journey. Maggie: So for the listeners at home what does PTA Global do or what does that certification earn you? Scott: A couple of things. One, if you woke up today as a fitness enthusiast and said man I would love to become a  professional coach, a personal trainer or a fitness professional, you have to get legally certified. Now you can do it the right way or the wrong way. The wrong way is you could go online trough some swipe your finger, take an exam, call yourself professional. Or you can go study, whether it’s 6, 9, 12 month program. Some of them are two years, actually study the human body anatomy, kinesiology, program design, behavior.  Then you have to sit for an actual exam and there's a practical in a room. One of those companies is PTA Global, we created a brand new approach to becoming a globally certified fitness professional. So if you take our course whether you're in Dubai, London, Amsterdam. You are legally certified anywhere in the world to practice in this profession. So that's kind of a big deal. It very much a behavioral change approach, we say when you find the why, you find the what. Everyone’s got a what, weight loss, weight gain, whatever it is. Until I find the why, the chances are we aren’t going to get you there. So that's how our philosophy is meeting people where they need to be met. And then we have advanced curriculums. One of them is called Exercise and Stress Management. We are nothing but a bunch of cells that get stressed on a daily basis. And how I move today is as much to do with my nutrition, my sleep, my emotions as much as it is my posture and flexibility, you know? So we can go on a very deep journey with you. And that then that leaves into Pivotal, my company now, which is that my passion is to travel the world and connect those dots. With the operators, with the product manufacturers, with the educators, with the certification bodies. We work with all them to bring people together to connect dots. So we travel the world, me and Haley, creating partnerships between global leaders. Delivering education for these people, creating education for them. One of our biggest passions is to teach the teachers. When you're in a room of a hundred coaches you’re really touching hundreds of thousands of people, right? Maggie: Sure. Scott: But when you’re in a room of 50 teachers your reaching exponentially more. So that’s what Pivotal does. We’ve kind of gone even bigger, how do we touch the most people to empower and fulfill their potential. Whether it is the club operator, whether it is the coach, whether it is the educator. And that was really the birth of Pivotal. Was to take everything I learned at PTA Global and kind of go one layer deeper. Which is really connecting people. I can’t think of one single movement in human history that hasn’t come from those first followers finding their fanatical fans and on and on it goes. So that’s kind of our gig now. Maggie: Yeah. So this conversation that is generally focused on goals. Is interesting to me I think to ask this question about how you’ve worked with people in the fitness world, in the fitness realm about how to tap into their why by them articulating their what. And then going through the behavior change process to get them to meet their goals. And how has that potentially shaped the way you view goals? Scott: Utterly, completely. You know one of my most important values to me is authenticity. Sometimes I feel like saying no experience, no opinion, you know? How can you coach someone one-on-one personal training or in small group or large group and hope to not only inspire but guide them to transformation. Because really everyone is looking for a transformation. No one wants to be what they are. You want to be more than they are. You want to be the best version of yourself you can. So if I want to coach you my job really is to create an environment for you to change yourself because I can’t do it. It’d be quite arrogant and ignorant for me to think I can.  So behavioral change, this whole view point is if I create an environment for you to change yourself that affects how I communicate to you, how I listen, do I have empathy can I be a GPS because you're coming today and you're stressed because you’ve had 15 coffees, you didn't eat, didn't sleep, you busted up with your partner. Okay that changed our program like instantly. How do I create on demand based on your behavior. So what that does authentically as coach for me. Man am I applying that to myself? Am I applying that to my business relationships? Am I listening when I’m speaking to my partners? Am I willing to consider maybe the possibility that they don’t really have a point of view but it might actually change mine. That’s empathetic listening. I'm going to listen at a level where I actually might realize that I'm wrong. Do you know how hard that is as a personal trainer because we always think we're right. Don’t eat this, do eat that. Stop doing that, go to bed on time.,   Okay, you just told them to change their whole life and you're there for maybe 3 hours a week out of the 168. So you're like 2% of their life but you've asked them to change a hundred percent of their life. That seems a bit drastic and you're not there to pick up the pieces because there's going to be a lot of falling pieces. When you ask someone to change everything. What if their partner doesn't like that? What if it means now, when everyone else is eating fried chicken. They’re saying “ugh, couldn’t we have grilled it?”. But no one else in the family likes grilled. And on it goes. So it's affected everything I do because it makes me stop and go am I applying that same principle to my life? And is what I'm asking them to maybe consider doing, have I consider the choices in my life today or this week? Am I making the right choices for myself? That's authentic. So when someone says I come in today Scott. No I didn't fix my nutrition plan, I didn't work out three times this week, empathy would say man I know how that feels. There’s no judgment. It’s just like I know how that feels. Now ask more questions. What would your block? What was your break? What do you want to do about it? That's shifted how I am in my relationships and life for the most part this aint about me, right? I wish it was. Then my script would work. Maggie: Well it's interesting because the world of fitness has like you said kind of blown up. And everyone has a place in it in a really cool way. Brands are part of it. Different kinds of fitness have become hybrids and people aren’t just one thing were multiple things. And I think that's an awesome thing that health and wellness has become a little bit more top of mind. But I also think that creates a lot more ego about who is right and who is wrong so the idea of taking it back, maybe I’m wrong is probably very slim to none in the health and wellness world. Scott: One of my favorite quotes I heard was in 2004, it was at a conference I was speaking at called Meeting of the Minds. And it was like TED talks back in the day every presenter got 20 minutes and they were leaders and what they did. It was incredible I got to ask to present, I was the new kid on the block. I heard this guy say, “I’m pretty sure standing here today, after 30 years as a world-class Olympic coach”, which he was and educator. “He said 50% of what I’m about to tell you is complete BS.” So everyone laughs. And he goes, “The real problem is I’m not sure anymore which 50%.” And it really struck me. That’s probably the wisest thing anyone in this room is going to say all day. There is what I think is right and there is what I know, I don’t know. Then there is what I don’t know, I don’t know. And in every area of research in every industry, every few years there’s like wow that changes what we think about technology or medicine. And yet our industry for the most part still wants to practice fitness the way we did 30 years ago. Even though what we’ve learned about the body and the mind is dramatically more evolved. So you go into these operators and you see them building clubs the same way they did 30 years ago. If medicine followed that it would be a problem, right? And so to your point, I think fitness itself needs to be dramatically redefined. Because fitness just means your fit to perform the task that you were here to perform. So what is that? Your a mum wants to pick up her kids is different from someone who wants to look better naked that’s different from someone. It’s just you know? So the industry itself could really do with redefining a little bit of its purpose I think. Because we are more wellness, we are more healthful. We should be. I think fitness itself is what could with a little bit of a tweak. Maggie: Yeah, yeah. So moving forward, as you look down the line. Whether it's tomorrow kind of goal or 10 years down the line. What is a big goal you hope to accomplish? Scott:  I've got too many, I think. Maggie: That's okay. Scott: I think for me, I would love, love for us to get rid of names like personal trainer and instructor. And I’d love for us to get rid of the definitions of I’m a yogi, I’m a pilates, or I’m a [...]. We’re coaches, I know I keep saying it. We’re coaches and what’s fascinating about the word is it comes from the 14th century. Like the stagecoach, it was a vehicle of transportation that carries people from where they are to where they’re going. So I always like to say you can be a personal trainer, you can be an instructor but what people are looking for is to go from where they are to where they want to be. From who they are to who they want to become. When you’re a coach you’re this vehicle of transportation, you know? And you remember your coaches, the good and the bad. I think we’re bigger than just trainers and instructors. But what I would love to see, is if we could all come together to say this is what we agree on this is how we coach the human being inside the human body. These are our ingredients for human movement. The thing about ingredients are you can create infinite different recipes. But we’ve got to agree on the ingredients, surely.  A world class chef can cook all different kinds of cuisines. But they know the food, they know the ingredients, they know their basics. And I don’t think we have that. So if I go to physical therapy [...], there’s not a lot of respect for the fitness professional world or the professional training world. There’s not a lot of respect for the group exercise instructor. You go into mind body and there is a complete dissonance between what you’re do in a yoga studio versus what you do in a swimming pool. Movement is movement. Coaching is coaching. And human beings are human beings, man. I would love for us to just have a commonality around those basic ingredients. I really would and that’s kind of what my journey now of Pivotal is about. Is because I can be in a room with physical therapists looking at movement assessments, joint mechanics, knee pain, back pain. The next day I’m at a conference with 300 people going through small group training. And [..] understand is I’ve actually given them the same ingredients, just a different recipe. It absolutely blows my mind sometimes. People go, “Oh yeah, you do the rehab stuff and you do the small group.” I’m like I do movement and coaching. Maggie: Yeah, and from the consumer side of it. Like, it can be taxing to go to so many professionals. Not only for your own dollar that you’re just doling out to hear the latest and greatest from this party and then you hear a contradictory thing from another person. Then you’re like where do I spend my money? But it’s also like how do I get better from this injury? Or how do I actually perform better in this goal that I’m trying to reach fitness-wise? That can be really hard on the just fitness enthusiast. Scott: Go back even more right. The person who’s not enthusiastic about it Maggie: Right. Scott: So your mom and dad passed away when they were say 55. You’re 53, 54. You’re one year away from the exact age where you might have lost your parents. Your sedentary, you're overweight, you're in pain, you don't move. It's not lack of information or lack of education. You need to move, everyone knows. Exercise is probably gonna do. Going to  bed on time is probably a good idea. You pick up a cigarette packet it's got a picture of death on it with a cross. It's kind of very ignorant of us to think people need more education they don't they don't. They don’t need education. But they haven't found a meaningful and relevant reason to do it that outweighs the reasons not to do it. And so I would suggest that what we need to do as a movement and industry is get back to coaching human beings. Because when you find the what you find the why.  But, we just got back from China, here’s my example. And it blows my mind. It's one of the hottest places to go and travel. I don't speak Mandarin. Very very to no English. Not that there has to be but it makes it hard to even get a cup of coffee let alone eat or move around. And loads of smoking. Loads of pollution. Crazy packed busy. But everywhere you go is movement. I’m not lying, there’s eighty, ninety year old people riding bikes in the middle of a busy cross-section. Music’s playing, you turn around someone’s just doing [...]. You walk to the nearest park, hundreds of old people dancing, doing pull-ups and then they drop, no lie. Light up a cigarette and get back on their bike. No obesity, I don’t see the diabetes. I see people moving in ways that make them feel good. It’s nearly always in a community. They’re not doing it alone. Maggie: Right. Scott: Do you know what I mean? I think we really need to look at that part of it. Is how do people want to move? What's their style of moment? What's emotionally attaching to them? Not just physically but emotionally attaching. And so we put people in boxes and there’s good to that. Chances are they've already had a bad experience most people have exercised their life. Most people have failed at it.  It goes all the way back to that crappy gym teacher who told you we're good enough. There’s a lot of emotional triggers going on as soon as they walk through the door. And they're met by trainers that often are wearing shirts that are 3 sizes too small. It’s not the most enticing model of movement. And I think we can shift it. It wouldn’t take too much. The shift come from the neck up. Not the neck down. So I hope, my biggest goal coming is that Pivotal really, we just would like to leave the world a little bit better than we found it. And so if we could get more people moving more often that’s a win. But more importantly, in ways where the payoff is in the process. They move because it feels good. They move because emotionally connects them. Not, “Oh, I have to do it.”  I've got to do it. Or I’m doing it just for an outcome - weight loss or whatever it is. We know that doesn't work, it never has worked. If it does is short-term. I move because I love to move. Some days I swing a tennis racket, some days it’s playing rugby, some days it’s lifting weights. I move because I just love to move. I think everyone is wired to move, we just haven’t worked out how they want to move. Maggie: So, if we were to imagine that I were coming in for a first time coaching session with you, And it probably begins a little bit more about the conversation and what's happening neck up versus alright let’s do this functional screening and figure out where your compensations are. What would be some of the questions that you’d ask me as the client to tap into something. Scott: Wow, wow, wow. Maggie: A reason for moving. Scott: I love what you said because let’s call that the client intake consultation, whatever it is. There is a movement screening involved. There is a nutritional screening involved. But it starts with a motivational interview. And so one of the first questions we’ll ask. Repeat the questions you feel comfortable with. Because if I create emotional insecurity right out the gate, I’m already a threat to you. So the first questions can’t be too deep or you’re immediately thinking I don’t know if I like you or trust you, why on earth would I tell you that. So we even teach, not just the kind of questions but the sequencing, the language, all of it. But one of the first things would be what is the single most important goal you would like to achieve in your time with me. Okay, there’s a couple of big words in there. Not all your goals, the single most important in your time with me. Another big question right out of the gate is what are your expectations of me in the next 60 minutes. Because I need you to know right out the gate that I am here for you, it’s all about you. But I’m accountable, right? If I go to the doctor and they misdiagnosis me or prescribe me to wrong medicine, I’m holding them accountable.  What are your expectations of me. If I got type A directed, I like just tell them what to do and just make sure I know why we’re doing it and kick my butt. Okay. You’re not a high-five kind of guy. You just told me a lot of information on how to coach you. But someone else might say, I have no idea where to start. So giving you an entire game plan in 60 minutes is overwhelming, confusing and the opposite of what you asked for. The only thing I need to give you is the one next thing, then you do it and you’re going to feel like a success. Another question we might ask would be we get further into the questionnaire and we say 1 through 10, 10 is most important, 1 is least important. How important is it that you are successful moving toward your goal? We don’t judge it. If I say a 5 out of 10, that’s wonderful. Why is it not a 2? We don’t go to how can I make it a 10? Why is it not a 2? Because you’re already thinking that. Oh, it wasn’t a 2 so I’m not bad as I think. I’m not as behind as I think. Yeah, it was a 5 that is important to me. We’re reinforcing in your brain with your words. And you’ll get things, oh it’s not a 2 because if I don’t change now it could be too late. Or it’s not a 2 because I waited to long and my pain has gotten worse. They start to unravel the magic. But then another question and this will be the last example I give you. Will be 1 through 10, 10 is the most confident, 1 is the least confident. How confident are you, you can successfully achieve your goal? If someone says oh, I’m an 8 out of 10. Interesting, because it was only a 5 out of 10 for importance. But it’s nearly a 10 out of 10 on confidence. So you’re really confident about a goal that’s not that important. Or it could be opposite, it’s really important but I’m not confident. Two completely different people to coach. We literally have an entire script of motivational questions that are based in neuroscience and behavioral change. Not just the language but the sequence. So by the time you get to the end and you do a summary, they say how did you get all of that out of me.  Number two, you clearly listened. But most important, they say I just admitted that to myself outloud and another human being. That is the start of a valuable change. Is getting clear on what you’re willing to do and ready to do versus not. So there’s not sets and reps, there’s no calories, or anything. What’s your why? And are you ready and willing to change at this time because if you’re not it’s a trainwreck. And I’d be irresponsible to offer you to do it, quite honestly. Maggie: What I think is really fascinating about everything that you just outlined and all the questions that you brought up the word goal with. Those questions could be transitioned from a pre-coaching session to a goal setting session for your career, for your family, for how you want to set up your life at home or whatever it is. It’s how you do anything is how you do everything. Scott: Yes. Maggie: And so I think, at aSweatLife we do really believe that like what happens at the gym is not just that little box of time in the gym and then you leave and your gone. It’s those things that come up in there can carry out to the rest of your life if you let them. And it’s just about. Scott: It’s supposed to, right? Maggie: Right. And it can in a really positive way if you’re open to it. And if you say. Oh yeah, this small victory I did do this thing that was awesome. I’m going to go carry it into my meeting at work. Then I’m going to do the next thing that’s awesome.  So it’s really fascinating and really cool to hear because it is just a conversation around like how do we feel about goals, in general. Scott: Yeah. And what do I mean by goal? Is that just the outcome, is that the process. How will I know when I’ve got there. Measurably and subjectively. How do I know when I’ve actually got there. Most goals are subjective. I want to be in less pain, I want to feel better. That’s a subjective goal. How do we know when we’re there when you’ve arrived? And finally, how do you want to get there. Are you a kind of person who says I’ve got to get on the freeway and get there as quick as possible?  Okay, but then it’s the freeway and it’s concrete jungle and there’s lots of in and out. No, I’d rather take the scenic route. I’d rather go slow and take in the sights. So there’s where you’re going and then there’s how you want to get there. But invariably there is going to be traffic and roadwork. So as a coach, you’ve got to be a GPS and recalculate the route. Which for me, in my experience is every session. You can just see it emotionally in people when you get used to coaching wise. Something just happened where you stopped enjoying this session, that didn’t feel good. Maybe I said something that wasn’t. You know? Or maybe I didn’t listen to something you needed me to listen. I saw something in my client, the entire posture changed. You better recalculate right now.  And so for us, we’d say most people what they emotionally care about is outside the gym. There is very little emotional connection to the dumbell. So yes, in groups that’s different. Don’t get me wrong. That sense of tribe, community, relationships, being part of something bigger than yourself, agreed. But in one-on-one, I would honestly say that most people what they care about is outside the gym. They’re hoping what they transform inside the gym makes that better out. That’s what they’re trying to improve is their life outside the gym. And the people who care about their life inside the gym are the people who work inside the gym. Quite honestly most clients don’t. Maggie: So, I want to pull it back to you for a minute. Because you’ve talked about going from not finishing high school at first. To where you are now which is cofounder of multiple companies. And a huge contributor to what we know about  modern fitness today. You’ve written 50 or more accredited courses that people now go through to get their own certifications. And how you’ve gone from one step to the next. When you look back on it now, what do you think was your guiding force throughout? Or has that changed? Scott: That’s a really great questions. Today, looking back I’ve got a different lens than if you had asked me a year ago or ten years ago, right? But the common thread is to truly be of service. I know it sounds really cheesy but from PGA Global to Pivotal to coaching people or teams or kids. And a lot of what I do is volunteer work in the community. A lot of the teams that I coach, the high schools and the local soccer leagues. It’s all volunteer work, right.  I find that I’m at my most happiest, in flow. When you’re not thing about the bills or the money. When nothing else matters in that present moment is when I’m being of service to someone as a coach. Whether it’s the teacher coach, the sports coach, as a coach. And it could be 4:00 on a Friday night, pouring rain on Foster Lake shore where I coach soccer. And we’ve got out ten year old kids, our eleven year old kids, our sixteen year old high school girls and it’s pouring with rain and it’s 25 degrees. The time just flies. And you get home soaked and cold and you think I want to do it again. It’s those moments where you feel that in flow there is something going on in you. You know what I mean? There’s an internal something directing you. So the single biggest directive force is that, I find that when I’m of service to people, selfishly it seems to make me feel really great. So maybe that’s one good use for being selfish [...]. And I really do want to know that it mattered, to be honest mate. I want to know that the work I do matters. I guess I can only speak for myself but man some many times you go through life and you think did anything I do today make a blind bit of difference. Do you know what I mean? Or, in some cases made it worse. But at the end of the day you want to know that your life made a difference. To someone or something bigger than yourself. I think that’s the biggest directing force I’ve had is the sense of I think this makes a difference. I just have a feeling this makes a difference. I don’t know if that answered your question or if it was too esoteric. I can make it more pragmatic if you want. Maggie: No, I think that it gives me goosebumps because I think that’s what everyone wants to some degree. And that’s a really special thing to find your flow. I don’t know that we can all say that we have it enough. We have probably been in flow at some point in our lives. But maybe we’re not attuned enough to saying this is it, how do I recreate this. It seems like you do have that awareness sort of around what is the secret sauce to when you’re feeling in flow and how you can keep doing it. Or keep bringing it back as much as possible. Would you agree? Scott: Yeah. I think the struggle for all of us, myself included is I think we do know what that is. There’s just an innate knowing, you know? It like saying I don't know if I love my kids. You know you love your kids. You can’t find the words. You know, right? But life, we allow ourselves to be distracted by what’s urgent rather than important. By what’s demanding. So I’ve often taken jobs that didn’t feel good. Because the money was a safety net. Or the benefits were a safety net. Or whatever it was, even though I knew there was a big [...] I would love and yeah it’s in my industry. And then a year in you’re like, this is not me. But you go along because now you’ve got bills and kids. We do and that’s real man. But at some stage you know you can’t die with your music in you. That’s for sure. Maggie: Yeah. Scott: You know what I mean? Maggie: Right. Scott: It’s like being in flow is when you sit down and you’re writing. I write alot for work and also non-work stuff. And you’ll just be in flow and you have it going you don’t realize 3 or 4 hours are gone and it’s 20 pages on the floor. And you realize crap, I didn’t number them. Because you’re just in flow. It doesn’t happen every day. It doesn’t and there’s things you have to do to reconnect to it when you lose it. You know, there’s prayer or meditation, whatever it is that connects you to that thing. For some people, it’s playing sport. It’s dance. Maggie: Yeah. Scott: When you feel disconnected, you better reconnect. You know. You have to because that is really painful being constantly disconnected from your source, your flow. That’s a really painful existence, for me it was. Often, what sparks me into reconnecting is how much more miserable do I have to get before I reclaim happiness, you know? How much more self-pity, wallowing. Sometimes you have to say hold on, there’s what happens to you and then it’s how you react to it. And sometimes you have to say stop that’s enough. I’m going to reconnect to what makes me feel good. I’m going to go back to where I’m in flow. And it requires a leap very often. And Pivotal started when, two years ago. I had been at Midtown Athletic Club as their national director for five years rebuilding the facilities, re-recruiting the coaches, developing Midtown University, it was huge projects. And I realized I was getting more into operations again. More into PNLs and that’s what the job deserves and that’s what they deserve. But in my mind I thought maybe I could manipulate it to be more education so that wasn’t fair. So I had a wonderful chat with an incredible COO, John Brady. And [...] changed. It was like I need to reclaim and he said Scott just do what you love and you’re great at. That’s why I recruited you in the first place. And I went home and I realized I need to make a change. Loved the club, loved the people but I wasn’t in flow anymore. I made two phone calls on the way home that day to two leaders in the industry that I hadn’t spoken to in years. I said what would you say if I said I was available to write education, deliver education, and teach teachers again. Within 24 hours, I had a plane trip to China and I was in boardrooms speaking to these leaders. And I came home to Haley and I said I think we need to start a company. But you honestly need to stop doing one thing that wasn’t making you happy but do it the right way. Don’t just cut and run. Consider other people. And then took this leap of faith, like these two names came to me and it was like wow, they’re leaders man. Should I really call them. They picked up immediately and said I want you on a plane. And it was that reminder light that when you say yes to life it conspires to help you, you know what I mean? That’s my experience but you’ve got to do the work. It doesn’t just come. It’s not Mary Poppins sitting around and hope that if I meditate good things come. No, you’ve got to meditate but then you’ve got to take action, right? It takes a lot of work. Relentless effort, actually. Relentless effort and I think that’s the final piece. For successful people I see is, if it sounds like a lot of work, it’s because it is. Maggie: It’s probably ten times more than it even sounds like. Scott: Success is always hard work whether in love relationships, raising your kids, business life. To be good at anything is probably going to take a bloody lot of work. But if you’re enthusiastic and you’re in flow more often than not, even on the bad days it’s like you know what, I can do that. Maggie: Well this has been an awesome conversation. Thank you so much for joining me on the podcast, Scott. Scott: Thanks for having me! I hope the listeners get something out of the crazy stuff that comes out but it was an honor. It was really nice. Cindy: He goal getters, co-host and producer Cindy Kuzma here. Just letting you know that we have coming up for you now a goal from one of you, our listeners. This is another one recorded live at the Michelob Ultra Sweatworking Week Fitness Festival last month. If you want to share one of your goals with us, whether it’s a goal you achieved, a goal your setting up to achieve, even a piece of goal-getting advice that you’d like to share you could do that and you could be featured on this very podcast. All you have to do is record it and email it in mp3, wav, whatever kind of file you want to  Cindy@aSweatLife.com. Thanks and here is you and one of your goals. Speaker: So I set a couple of goals earlier this year and I noticed that one thing I didn’t do was have accountability in a plan. So I find myself now it’s June and I haven’t accomplished the goals that I set for myself.  Because I haven’t set those checkpoints to say, hey, you know how are you going to get there? Have you been doing everything on a daily basis, on a weekly basis? And then just that accountability. So whether that’s telling someone and having them check in with you, or just saying by first quarter I’m going to accomplish this and then next quarter I’m going to accomplish that. And then I just found myself not having achieved anything. So, for the second part of the year I’m going to reset and visit some different goals and create strategies that are more focused around holding myself accountable for those specific plans. Cindy: This podcast is produced by me, Cindy Kuzma and it’s another thing that’s better with friends. So please, share it with yours. You can subscribe pretty much anywhere you get your podcasts including now on Spotify. And while you’re there if you could leave us a rating or review we would be so grateful. Special thanks to Jay Mono, for our theme music, to our guest this week, Scott Hobson, and to TechNexus for the recording studio. And of course, to you our listeners.  

Elite runner Jordan Hasay had a goal of winning this year’s Boston Marathon. And she had a good shot—in her first marathon, in Boston last year, Hasay finished third and ran a faster first marathon than any other woman in U.S. history by almost a full three minutes (her 2:23:00 bettered Kara Goucher’s record of 2:25:53, set in 2008). Last fall at the Bank of America Chicago Marathon, she once again finished third, and improved her time to 2:20:57. Magazine profiles were written about her chances. But this past April 16 was not her day—and not, in her case, because of the epically bad race conditions that knocked out so many other athletes. As Hasay explains on this week’s episode of #WeGotGoals, a stress fracture sidelined her the day before the race. “You put so much into the preparation and then I got so close to being able to race,” she tells me. “When you do set a goal and then you're not able to achieve it or even—I mean, not even being able to toe the start line, that's really tough.” Hasay took about a week to wallow (which, research shows, is actually good for you, in moderation). Then, she refocused and moved ahead. She set new goals for improving her weaknesses. She worked on strength in the weight room, flexibility on the yoga mat. She called her dad proudly when she did a 30-second handstand. Eventually, those small goals added up to an emerging comeback. A mile became a mile and a half became 55 per week. That sounds like a lot to us mere mortals, but to someone like Hasay who typically puts in 100-plus when building up for a marathon, it's still far from her normal. But she’s getting there, and feeling good about her prospects. When Hasay started doing faster workouts again, she and her coach Alberto Salazar noticed improvements. “He goes, it's the yoga! Your stride looks so good!” she says. Those of us in Chicago will get a chance to see that stride in action gain this fall, when she’ll be back here with her sights set on placing higher than third and beating the American record of 2:19:36 (set in 2006 in London by Deena Kastor). This injury wasn’t the first time Hasay has overcome obstacles. In fact, her current successes were made possible, in part, by challenges. “You can find the positive in anything,” she says. “I try not to see anything as a negative.” She’s been running since she was 12. In high school and college, she was a legitimate star on the track—at 16, she ran the 1500 meters in the Olympic Trials. But when she graduated and turned pro, in her words, “I wasn’t having the success that I wanted.” Like most elite athletes, she revels in the process, enjoying even the tough days. Still, as much as she loved running, she began to realize she needed to refocus to achieve her long-term goals of winning medals on an international level, at the Olympics or a world championship. “You have to see some outcomes in order to keep staying motivated,” she says. Moving from the track to the roads, and from shorter distances up to the full 26.2-mile marathon, was something she’d always planned on eventually. Actually making the leap was scary. After all, if she hadn’t been any good at it, she would’ve had to refocus entirely. In October 2016, she ran her first longer road race—the USATF 10 Mile Championships in St. Paul, Minnesota—and won. That gave her a glimmer of renewed hope. Now that she has two successful marathons under her belt, she feels confident she’s on the right path. “Sometimes when you are setting a goal that helps,” she says. “If you keep trying to go back to the same thing like I was on the track—I have all these memories where I was trying to hit a certain time or pace and I just kind of failed. So maybe just change it up. It’s still running, but it was just totally different kind of vibe for me." “It’s nice that I found the distance I was really born for,” she says. All this came in the midst of yet another significant setback. In a sad story I’m grateful she was willing to open up about, Hasay’s mother—her best friend—passed away in 2016, after the 10-mile race but a few months before that first Boston Marathon. Though she was devastated, Hasay channeled her grief into greatness in her marathon debut. She visualized her mother there with her, drawing strength from her memories and the foundation her family and faith had given her. In an interview afterward, she cried, saying she knew her mom would be proud. A journal in which she wrote letters to her mother, intertwined with her running log, helped Hasay in the tough weeks and months after. So did spending time with her family—she, her father, and her brother remain extremely tight-knit. “We’re all doing really well, which I’m just thankful for and that kind of propels me forward,” she says. Listen to her on the full episode of #WeGotGoals on Apple Podcasts here. You’ll hear more about the value she places on rest and recovery, what she cooks for dinner, and how much she can deadlift (hint: WAY more than you’d think for a marathon runner—she’s posted her strength-training routines on Instagram to prove it). If you like the show as much as we do, be sure to subscribe wherever you get your podcasts and leave it a rating and a review — it really does help. And stick around until the end of the episode, where you’ll hear a goal from one of you, our listeners. (Want to be featured on a future episode? Send a voice memo with a goal you’ve crushed, a goal you’re eyeing, or your best goal-getting tip to cindy@asweatlife.com.) ------- JAC: 00:16 Welcome to #WeGotGoals, a podcast by aSweatLife.com. I'm Jeana Anderson Cohen, and with me I have Maggie Umberger and Cindy Kuzma. CK: 00:16 Good morning Jeana. MU: 00:21 Hey Jeana. How's it going? JAC: 00:24 I'm doing great and I'm very excited for this week's episode. Cindy, you talk to an incredible athlete, someone who had the fastest U.S. marathon debut, Jordan Hasay. CK: 00:36 I did. I spoke to Jordan, who, as you mentioned, had an amazing debut in the Boston Marathon last year. She also ran the Chicago Marathon last year where she came in third with an even better time of two hours, 20 minutes and 57 seconds, which is blistering fast and she's coming back to run Chicago again this fall, so she was in town and I had a chance to sit down with her and it was wonderful. JAC: 00:58 And Jordan hasn't always had the smoothest sort of training record. There was a moment where she encountered injury, right? CK: 01:05 Yes. She in fact was supposed to run the Boston Marathon again this year and was injured right beforehand. She had a stress fracture in her foot. I mean literally, I think it was maybe two days or even a day before the race, she ended up dropping out, which was really difficult for her. But she-- we talked--you know, how I have a special affinity for injured athletes, it's something that I work out a lot, I'm working on a book about it. And she did something that I think is really common among successful athletes and people who successfully navigate injury, which was she set new goals related to recovering from her injury. So she was of course upset that she couldn't run the race and also disappointed to put a break in her training and found it difficult. But she said, OK, well what can I work on instead. She started trying to address her weaknesses. She worked more on strength and flexibility. She started doing a lot more yoga and then when she started running again, she could really see some of the benefits to that. And you know, we kind of talked a little bit about how she wasn't entirely sure how much of the benefit of the yoga was physical and how much of it was mental. But if it gives you the confidence to continue on toward your bigger goals, like it honestly ultimately doesn't even matter and it's certainly a lot better than sitting around feeling sorry for yourself. So I thought it was really incredible the way she was able to kind of navigate that. MU: 02:17 We hear a lot about her, her resilience across this entire episode, which is really an inspiration to hear, to listen to. She has a few other moments of difficulty and sadness and disappointment in her past, but she uses them to fuel her, to inspire herself into inspire others. Can you talk a little bit about that? CK: 02:39 Yeah. So in addition to just the, the kind of immense pressure that's on someone who's an athlete at this level, um, she had a really sad personal moment right before the Boston Marathon, the first one that she ran, her mother suddenly passed away in November. And I was grateful to, to Jordan for being open and talking with us about this. She really, as sad as she was, and as hard as it was, I mean her mom was her best friend and they used to run together, and her mom was the reason that she got into running in the first place. She really channeled her mom. I mean, during that race she talked about running for her mom so she could be her mom's shining star. She wears her mom's engagement ring on her left hand and she realized she had been practicing, grabbing her water bottles. CK: 03:18 When you're an elite runner, you don't get water from the water table like everyone else says you have like a special bottle with your own special mix prepared in it and so you can reach out and grab it. But she had only practiced with her right hand and the bottles were on the left. So she kind of was like, hey mom, I need your help. Like with these bottles. So even down to like that really small level, she envisioned her mom there with her. And when she finished and had this amazing race, she thanked her mom and, and you know, said that that performance was for her. And that really gave her, you know, I think it gave her not only a way to help cope with her grief, but it gave her goals and her life a new meaning because now she was doing it for someone who, who she had lost. CK: 03:55 So you know, that I know has been really--her ability to talk openly about it too, has been really, I think, helpful for other people who have been in that situation. And I know she hears from other people who have gone through losses and we all go through difficult moments. We might not all lose someone as as close as she was to her mom at such a pivotal stage. But, but I think other people definitely have really gravitated toward that moment of resilience and really taken inspiration from how she's able to still be sad and still be a human being, but also elevate herself to even newer heights and in the midst of these difficult challenges. JAC: 04:31 What a story of grit and resilience. I can't wait to hear your full talk with Jordan and I'm sure everyone at home will love it too. Here's Cindy with Jordan. And be sure to stick around until the end of the episode when we'll be hearing from a listener just like you who's out there achieving big, big goals. CK: 04:58 This is Cindy Kuzma and I am here with Jordan Hasay on the #WeGotGoals podcast. Jordan, thank you so much for being here with us today. Really appreciate it. JH: 05:05 Oh, thanks Cindy. It's great being here. CK: 05:07 So, Jordan, for those listeners who don't know you, tell us a little bit about who you are and how you spend your days. JH: 05:14 So I'm a professional runner for Nike. I run the marathon. I've run two marathons so far. Boston and Chicago and I'll be running Chicago in 2018 again, and that's why we're here in Chicago. Basically my day is run eat sleep. I have the best job ever. I feel really blessed to be able to do what I love as living. So I'm just waking up, eating, do my first run and then maybe doing something in the gym and then uh, having some lunch, taking a nap and then doing another run. Having dinner and going to sleep, so it's pretty simple, but it's definitely a lot of hard work and training and preparation, but I just love the process of it and just, I just enjoy the routine. I enjoy every day. It might get boring for some people, but I just love doing the same thing day in. CK: 06:09 Well, I'm definitely going to be interested in hearing how that factors into your goals because I know, um, it's one thing to have those big goals, right? But it's another thing to be really invested in the process along the way. So we do talk to a lot of, a lot of elite athletes here on #WeGotGoals and that does seem to be something that they have in common. You know, they have big goals but they break it down into step by step and they enjoy the process. So is, is that kind of how you approach those big goals that you have too. JH: 06:35 Yeah, I think that's super, super important. Obviously you want to have your kind of long-term goals that you're looking at. Just to have that, I guess that end motivation, but it's really just about the day to day successes and I, I've been going through an injury. I had to pull out of Boston this past year because I had a stress fracture unfortunately. So it's really just been about the little wins for me right now. Just starting back. I started back with one mile and then a mile and a half the next day and said since didn't really slow slow process. So I just try to focus on, okay, what did I do well today? And uh, seeing seeing that as a win and not getting intimidated by how far you have to go to to get back to the level that I was at in order to reach the goals that I want to achieve. JH: 07:22 So I think just just doing that, breaking it down and then having a routine is really helpful too, so you don't even have to think about it. That's--yeah, I'd say that's my number one thing. Just routine because sometimes you just--yeah, I get tired too, like everyone else. I have--my workouts are hard and the easy days are still really hard, I'm doing a lot of miles so having the routine helps just because it's like a checklist, just making sure you get it done and then you look back and say, okay, yeah, I did all this and that will hopefully just set you up for your goal. CK: 08:00 Yeah. I'm sorry about your injury. First of all, I was in Boston this year too and um, yeah, I know how disappointing that must have been. Um, but yeah, I also write a lot about injury and athletes and I've been talking to athletes who've been injured and that does seem like something that people have in common when they get through injury is they kind of set new goals just like you're talking about. And I've seen you post that, you know, you were kind of focusing on some of your weaknesses while you were injured too and kind of setting goals in that regard. So can you talk a little bit about how that helped you as you were going through that recovery process? JH: 08:33 Yeah, you know, it's been super fun. Uh, I just, I kind of took a week where I was super bummed out just because I put you put so much into the preparation and then I got so close to being able to race and it was my goal to win Boston this year. So that was, that was tough because when you do set a goal and then you're, you're not able to achieve it or even, I mean not even being able to toe the start line, that's really tough. So then take a couple, give yourself time to take a breather. But then yeah, I've been doing a lot of strengthening, flexibility work. I'm big into the yoga right now. So yeah, just like little goals. I would come home. I was in California for my break and tell my dad I did a handstand for 30 seconds today! JH: 09:20 And then just just like mastering the different poses and said it's been kind of a good outlet for me and I think we're seeing it--my coach, I did my first interval workout two days ago and I did the first one and he goes, it's the Yoga! Your stride look so good! So it's really nice if you just kind of stick with it that it does, it does seem like it pays off. You know, it was really, I was so happy that day just because it's, it is frustrating. It's like, Oh, I'm driving to yoga class, JI would much rather be out running but just doing this, I don't know if it's gonna work, but just got to trust it and yeah, I keep saying trust the process, but it really is true. You just got to, got to go through it and you know, sometimes things you try stuff and it doesn't work out but you just just keep trying. JH: 10:10 I guess that's the beauty of it is that--and also I think that you can, you can create, you can find the positive in anything. So I never really see anything as, as I try not to see anything as a negative, you know, so I think half of the battle is mental. So both my coach and I had to that example of the year say, OK, yeah, she did--this is working. Maybe my stride looks exactly the same as it did, but we're just, you know, in our minds we're saying OK, yeah, I do feel better. I feel like I'm getting more movement. So I think you can sort of not trick yourself, but if you're putting in the, like I said, if you're putting in the work then you've got that foundation. So mentally you can have that whether or not it's actually making a 100 percent difference or 50 percent,I think just having that knowing that you did something, you were trying, is important. CK: 11:06 Yeah, absolutely. Because if you take that time when you're injured to kind of build on build on that foundation, like you said, like whether it is truly a physical change in your body or a psychological change that then you're able to kind of view that to tell yourself a story about that time that you spend it the best way you can, right? And that gives you that confidence. JH: 11:25 Right, yeah. It's not like I, it's better than toeing the line thinking, oh gosh, the past seven weeks I've been just sitting on my couch moping around doing nothing. It's like, well, I've nothing else to do in the day, so I'm just going to stretch. It's like, yeah, I just basically telling him that like, yeah, I've been nothing to do all day, so I've just been stretching and apparently it paid off! CK: 11:47 Awesome, well, we look forward to seeing that beautiful, even more beautiful stride here in Chicago in October. JH: 11:47 Thank you. CK: 11:56 So Jordan, on the #WeGotGoals podcast. We ask one big question, or we ask two big questions, but the first big question is what is the big goal that you've achieved? Why was it important to you and how did you get there? And you have so many accomplishments to choose from, but if you had to highlight one, what would you say? JH: 12:12 Yeah, so I guess my biggest goal recently has been moving up to the marathon distance. So I've been running since I was 12 years old and mainly did the track. I was in the Olympic Trials when I was 16 years old in the 1500 meters, so far cry from the marathon. And then ran the 5K and 10K in college and then when I turned professional I just wasn't having the success that I wanted on the track. I finished ninth in the 10 k at the Olympic trials, or maybe it was 13th, I don't remember. It was far back there and I just eventually--one of my goals, I'd like to get an Olympic medal or a world championship medals, so it just didn't seem realistic if I'm not even making national teams. So my coach and I sat down and said, why don't we try the longer distances? JH: 13:03 So I started to train for more of the half marathon type stuff and ran a 10 miler that October and won and that went really well, and then debuted in the half in January in 1:09, 1:08 something. And then, and so that went well and then yeah, just really had to work again, it's all about the process. So I increased my miles, did some longer long runs, some 25 milers--and it was tough. It's definitely different training. And then yeah, just going into Boston though, I felt super prepared. My coach one Boston himself, so he kind of knows what he's doing in terms of coaching the marathon, which is nice and I just had to mentally be really tough and not be intimidated by the distance. But for some reason on the start line I just felt super calm and super ready and I think that going into any marathon you just have to be super confident in your preparation. JH: 13:59 And again I keep saying it but yeah, if you just go through the process then that kind of gives you the confidence that you can at least have the best shot to go after your goal even if it's just all about trying but just putting in the work to give yourself the best chance. So I felt toeing the line in Boston, I felt like that's what I had done. And so I was able to go out with the lead pack because they were going at 2:25 pace, which was kind of what we thought I could run, which was great because if they're going to run any faster, I was planning on kind of hanging back just because it's my first one and I wanted to have a positive experience. And thankfully I did. And was there, uh, the lead pack kept getting smaller and smaller and then there were five of us and um, Edna Kipligat made a big move about mile 18, which I couldn't handle but held on for third and was two minutes ahead of my goal time, 2:23. JH: 14:55 So that's kinda what I also like about the marathon is that you can have a certain time goal. But at least for myself, I've always kind of surpassed it maybe because I just go into the race with like, I don't think you can have like a super specific time goal. You just got to put in all the prep and every buildups different and just be, be as prepared as you can. But it's such a long race that so much can change and the weather can impact it. So it's just really about having your best performance in whatever the time is going to be or the place that's what it's going to be. Well, you can--yeah, I guess everyone has to deal with the same conditions so you can kind of factor in the place more so. I guess that was more my goal and my second one was I got third in Boston. JH: 15:40 Ok, Jordan now, no, no lower than third. So that's kind of the same for, you know, this year I want to keep moving up placewise as well as timewise. But I think that's what was nice for me is that in the marathon I just really had no expectations. So sometimes when you are setting a goal that helps. If you keep trying to go back to the same thing--like I was on the track and I have all these memories where I was trying to hit a certain time or pace and I just kind of failed. So maybe just change it up and it's still running, but it was just totally different kind of vibe for me being on the road and then just having that longer distance. So I think that really helped for me. Just having that change of pace. CK: 16:20 Yeah. What was it hard for you at all? I mean, did you sort of feel sad about leaving the track behind or how did you kind of adjust your mindset and your goals? JH: 16:28 Uh, I. Well, yeah, I mean like I said, I had been doing it for so long that it is, it's kind of refreshing. It's like a different sport. Uh, that's what my coach said after my first half you said we just needed to enter you in a different sport of road racing. So it's just--the track was a lot of pressure and when you've been doing it for so long and then I was so good in high school that people do put a lot of expectations on you and I put a lot of expectations on myself as well. So when you're at the top, there's really no leeway. Like you can go down a little bit bit that you just, it's, it's a lot to be able to stay, stay there for so many years. So it was just nice to sort of have that weight off my shoulders of the track and not have to keep doing the same thing. JH: 17:16 I think we just kept going back to my training and trying different things and it just wasn't working so it's just nice that I can go and I can train for the marathon and I know it works and I know that it translates to a successful race. So you do have to, in terms of goals I think have to have. You have to do see some outcomes in order to keep staying motivated. I mean I love running. I would have. I mean I would keep running. My mom, when I finished the further back in the Olympic trials, she's like, well you know, at least you're out there and someone's got to finish in the back places, and it's fine, like you can keep doing that. And I'm like yeah mom. But like, I dunno if I, I don't really want to keep doing that. Like I would, I enjoy the day to day, but it is nice to finish a little bit higher up if you're more gifted in a certain distance. So I think that it was nice. So they found the distance that I'm really born for. CK: 18:18 Wow, that's got to be an incredible feeling to feel like you've found that for sure. JH: 18:22 Yeah. It was definitely kind of a like excitement and relief at the same time because we had always said again, when I didn't have success at the track, oh, you're going to be great at the marathon one day the marathon is going to be your distance. And that can sort of be like good and bad because it's like kind of a fallback. So one day if I do try the marathon it takes courage to actually try it. And then if I didn't do well at it, that would have been tough. Now it's really nice to say that I, I did do well at it and especially I think my second marathon I was, I was pretty nervous because I was like, oh, you know what, if that was just a one off, whatnot, you never know. So I think that it's only gotten, the third one's kind of nice because I know I've already had two good ones, so it's two I think is enough to say, okay, yeah, I can have a reasonably successful one no matter what, as long as I just go in and try and the preparation goes well. Again, it's all about staying healthy as I learned from Boston and just not overdoing it, so I got to just be really smart in this buildup. But other than that, I'm just thankful that that. Yeah, it seems like that's my, that's my race. CK: 19:36 Yeah. It seems to be working for you. JH: 19:36 Thanks. CK: 19:40 Well, you mentioned your mom and if you're comfortable talking about it a little bit, I know you lost her a couple of years ago before that, that first race and I can't even imagine how hard that was for you, but I know that just like we were talking about with injury, you, you really have used that to inspire you and feel you end. Um, you know, you've talked about how you run to be her shining star and I think it's really incredible, like kind of how you've, you've dealt with that and I wondered if you could talk about that a little bit, if you're comfortable, how that has maybe even given some of your goals that are different and a new meaning. JH: 20:16 Yeah, thanks. I think it's definitely been a super tough. She was my best friend and she's the reason that I started out running. She would run her six-mile route every day and when I started junior high track, not the first couple of years, but once I started to get more serious into it she'd let me run a four mile loop with her. And then Christmas, I got to run the six mile loop one year, so she was really the reason that I gotten into it and you know, why I am as good as I am because talking about goals, um, she taught me everything about that routine. And it's funny because when she passed people would say, well, let's talk about what, what did you guys enjoy doing? Like, what would you do, can you go do that? And I'm like, well, what I do every day is what we would do. JH: 21:04 It just miss having her with me while I'm doing it. So, so I'm just thankful for that. Like it all the foundations that she instilled in me. So in a way it's like just continuing on our, our passion together. So I felt like she's obviously still, still was always with me in, um, it was really, it was in November before and I was stay being in Boston that year. So she had known about the, that I was moving to the marathon. I had just won that 10 mile race a couple of weeks before she passed away. So, you know, we had it written on the calendar to run Boston and everything, so I think in a way that kind of helped me through the loss because I was just so inspired to uh, keep training hard and that just just, yeah, it helped me through it and, but a lot of people I've seen kind of the, the finish of Boston and I was so emotional and I didn't really plan it that way but I just, I felt like in that race she was just really with me and I were her engagement ring on my left hand and I was super nervous about grabbing the bottles and my first marathon ever. JH: 22:14 And so the tables were actually on the left side and we'd only been practicing with my right hand, so I was just thinking, "Oh mom help me." And I didn't miss a single bottles so that was cool. And then just, yeah, just having her in my head and then my dad was there, my aunt. So it's nice to have my family as well who have been just an incredible support as is my brother. Yeah, I just crossed the line and just started her and I knew she'd be knew she'd be proud of me and yeah, for just keeping going and uh, felt felt her spirit. So it was, yeah, it's just super emotional and it's still, you still definitely have your ups and downs, but I think it's important and it's helped me to be able to kind of have this platform people have reached out and makes me realize I'm not the only one. JH: 23:05 Everyone has losses and like I said in Boston, so many people lost loved ones on the day of the bombing, so just really puts it into perspective. So I was kind of running for everyone out there that had lost loved ones and still want to go back and win Boston one day for that reason. Uh, so thankfully I'm young and have several years to try to go back, but yeah, I just, it's tough not having her here and seeing the success, but I know that she's, she would be just super, super proud. I mean everyone around me is just so supportive and has, I mean my dad's great and we've become best friends, snow and no one can ever replace her, but we're all just so close and my brother's, he's two years younger too and he's, he started training for the marathon now, so we're all, we're all doing really well, which I'm just thankful for and that kind of propels me forward. CK: 24:03 Yeah, yeah, yeah. I saw that. He just ran his first half. JH: 24:06 Yes. Yeah. And I, I feel so bad this--so week so I'm coaching him kind of and he, his knee is bugging him so I feel like I gave him too much, or what did I do? It's so funny to like be from that perspective. Yeah, I guess this is kind of, yeah, in terms of goal setting too, it's you are invested in that in your athlete and now it gives me a different yeah, a different perspective from why my coaches are saying, oh, how'd you feel on this run and this and that. And sometimes I feel like it's redundant, but then I realized, well you're not the one out there, so you didn't know how you're feeling. And then when he said he kind of had a pain this week, I thought, oh no, I've injured him. I've really cut back on everything. So it just, it's been fun. CK: 24:54 Probably gives you a whole new perspective on what Alberto does. JH: 24:54 Yeah. CK: 24:58 Oh my gosh. So the second big question we have here on, on #WeGotGoals is about the future, about a big goal you have for the future and how you plan to get there. And you've mentioned some things here and there and obviously you knew you were coming back to Chicago and you have maybe Tokyo in, in your sights, but I don't know if you, if you had to sort of name one specific goal and how you plan to get there. Um, what would you say? JH:

In December 2017, I called Laura Vanderkam to ask her what I needed to know about time tracking if I was going to attempt to do it. What's time tracking? It's exactly what it sounds like - keeping tabs on how you spend your time all day, every day, for as long as you want - and I was intrigued by the prospect of attempting to do it. After reading Vanderkam's book I Know How She Does It, I knew I wanted to track my time for at least a week to see what I could learn (hint: so much). One of my biggest takeaways was that by analyzing the data on how you do spend your time, you can make better-informed decisions about how you want to spend your time and how you're going to do that. When Vanderkam came out with her latest book, Off The Clock, I knew there was no better time to have her as a guest on our podcast, #WeGotGoals. We've interviewed some pretty hardcore goal-setters and getters in the past, and discussed anything from how someone might attempt to sell every cup of coffee in the entire world, to doing whatever it takes to become the fastest woman in the world. Vanderkam is a high achiever whose goals take a different spin: she led the goal setting conversation with what she calls "better than nothing goals" - not Big, Hairy, and Audacious, but incredibly powerful nonetheless. Case in point, Vanderkam has run at least one mile a day for more than 500 consecutive days. She talks about how that wouldn't have been possible if she'd set a goal to run a marathon or even to run 30 miles a week, but that one mile is "like nothing," she says, and she's really content with and proud of that goal and the way it makes her feel. Clearly, Vankderkam is a process-driven person versus an outcome-based goal setter, as proven by her three year time-tracking streak. Prior to writing I Know How She Does It, she set the big goal to track all of her time for one year. Turns out, she liked the accountability it gave her so much, she just kept going. And the lessons she learned over three years of tracking time - plus input from other case studies and experts - make up the newest addition to her collection as an author Off The Clock. What time tracking taught her All of this tracking has helped her as she sets goals and spends her time in two key ways: 1. She remembers how she spent her time more fondly and with gratitude: By looking over her own spreadsheets to reflect back on where the hours went, Vanderkam sees all the things she's done - something our brains don't tend to do without bias. Vanderkam notes that our brains have the tendency to remember the negative over the positive (a phenomenon that's been tested and proven), but she's able to reminisce on her past more fondly and strip some of those negative connotations away. 2. She's able to separate the days from one another: She also took notice of what habits she tends to fall into and asks herself, "How is today going to be different from other days?" Vanderkam does this because it helps her to expand time by making memories more, well, memorable. "When the brain thinks about time, its sense of memory perception is affected by how many memories you have in that unit of time," Vanderkam says. When we talk about time flying by, she continues, we're experiencing the shortcut our brain takes to group similar memories together. "So that's how life starts to disappear into these memory sinkholes." Sure, we need routines to help us make decisions quickly and efficiently, but what are we turning into a routine that would be more fun if we did something otherwise? Vanderkam encourages doing things differently, from trying something new to simply walking a different route to work to make your brain remember days differently and apart from each other.   Ready to hear all of her big goals? Listen to her on the full episode of #WeGotGoals on Apple Podcasts here. You'll hear the big goals she's outlined for the future and why she's still tracking her time down to the half-hour each and every day. If you like the show as much as we do, be sure to subscribe wherever you get your podcasts and leave it a rating and a review it really does help. And stick around until the end of the episode, goal getters. We have real life goal getting to share from a listener.   Transcript: -------------------- C:Welcome to #WeGotGoals, a podcast by aSweatLife.com on which we talk to high achievers about their goals. I'm Jeana Anderson Cohen; with me, I have Maggie Umberger and Kristen Geil.   MU:Morning, Jeana.   KG:Hey Jeana.   JAC:Thanks for joining me ladies. Maggie, you did the podcast today and you interviewed Laura Vanderkam.   MU:I did. I interviewed Laura Vanderkam, who is a writer, an author, a speaker. She's written so many books that just the title alone makes you just think, I need to read this book. Recently she just finished off the clock and so it has just been released. She's a time management expert. She tracks her own time. She helps other people become more productive by analyzing how they spend their time and it's a really fascinating job that she has, that she's also turned into a career in multiple different facets. So companies work with her, she works with individuals and she, she tracks her time personally and kind of describes her experience doing that as well.   JAC:Now when you say time tracking, it gives me flashbacks to agency life, but she means it differently, right? Maggie?   MU:Yes and no. She tracks her time down to the 30 minute increment, which does remind me of agency life for having to remember who you're working with and what clients you're working on, all the way down to the quarter hour. But Laura tracks our time by analyzing where she spends her time with work, with her personal life and doing life admin things. She keeps the categories really broad, but it gives her information about really where she's spending her time and what her habits are and if she is aligning what her goals are with where she is spending her days.   JAC:Super interesting and she even gets right down to the sleep time, which you'll hear more about in the episode. I don't want to blow it for you. But Maggie, I know you tracked your time personally right around the New Year, so you have experience with this.   MU:I do, I got to interview her already for just a phone conversation and ask her how to go about starting to do this task because it seems pretty daunting at first, but she, she told me not to get too bogged down or in the weeds with it. I could keep it really general, but just to keep a log and I did it in my google calendar of how I'm spending my time. And it did a lot of things for me as in terms of showed me where I was spending more time than I thought. Sometimes I would say that I was completely bogged down with some assignment or some piece of work and then when I looked at where I was spending that time, sometimes it was just in the transition of getting from place to place and so it wasn't actually with that task or whatever it was.   MU:It's just a nice way to see where you're actually spending time and then the story you create around that. But it also helped me see where I could be a little bit more productive and so if I would put it in my calendar that I was going to do it. I actually did it during and I try to do that more often than not. But when I was doing that exercise, I was super accountable to myself by saying this is realistically going to take me 90 minutes and then I would make sure it took me 90 minutes and if I needed more time I would carve out a separate hour or whatever it was later in my week so that I could be really realistic about how long things were going to take me. I was checking more things off of my to-do list and I felt like I was actually doing the things I was said I was going to be doing.   KG:Maggie, Laura also mentioned something that I had never heard of before that she called better than nothing. Goals. Can you give us an idea of what that is?   MU:Yeah. So, and I also don't want to spoil it in the episode either, but we could have talked forever about just time tracking because it is really fascinating. But, uh, the idea of looking at time tracking and how it can help you set your goals is something that we kind of focus this episode on. She talks a little bit about those better than nothing goals. And one of those, um, goals that she has was just running a mile every day. She talks about it being almost like nothing. Like she could just slough it off and just that could, she could attain that goal no matter what. But if she set even a medium sized goal of trying to run x number of miles in a week, even that could get too daunting.   MU:Like forget setting a goal to run a half marathon or a marathon, like when we're busy, sometimes our bigger goals that we want to do start to feel like shoulds or need to dos. And then more like burdens. So the goal is that she keeps pretty small and almost like a no brainer achievement are the ones that she can feel really, really proud of every single day. And I totally resonated with that. Like if I think I can't make it to a workout class, but I can do 10 squats, that's better than nothing, and it's a nice, almost refreshing take on feeling accomplished.   JAC:One other concept that I thought was really interesting and I grabbed onto was the idea that time is sort of collapsible and expandable based on the novelty of your experiences, whether you're doing the same routine things every single day or whether you're going out of your way to experience new things. I always talk about how my life every day is a little bit different, so maybe we're living very long days around here, but can you talk a little bit about that, Maggie?   MU:Yes, absolutely. So Laura talks about how our brains condense things and make things a little bit more truncated in order for us to remember things in sort of blocks of time. And when we create habits that's really valuable for being efficient and for getting more things done. Habits are a very useful tool for us, but those habits can then lead to us doing very routine things that our brain starts to chunk together and that's where we start to have those thoughts like, where did the week go, where did the time go? And so she talks about just switching your routine ever so slightly, in big ways if you can, but even if it's just walking a different way to work, it's going to help your brain think differently about a routine thing and then it's going to actually create a little bit more opportunity for you to have memories of that time and so therefore your time becomes more valuable, more memorable. It was a different and unique take on the power of a routine. I think we all agree that they're important to have, but just thinking about how to make today a little different than yesterday and a little different than tomorrow places more value on the present moment.   KG:It sounds amazing and as someone who lives and dies by my planner, my google calendar, I cannot wait to learn more about Laura's tips. So here is Maggie with Laura.   JAC:And stick around listener for the end of the episode where you'll hear from real life goal getters and what they're achieving out there in the real world today.   MU:Welcome, Laura to the #WeGotGoals podcast. I am Maggie with aSweatLife and I'm so excited to get to talk to you today about not only the launch of your new book Off the Clock: Feel Less Busy While Getting More Done, but also about what we love to talk about on this podcast, which is going after and achieving really big goals and getting to talk to high achievers and entrepreneurs and CEOs in different industries about how they think and go after big goals. And so, so this is going to be a really, really fun conversation I feel, but thank you again for, for taking the time to be on the #WeGotGoals podcast.   LV:Thank you so much for having me.   MU:So I know this is gonna sound kind of funny, probably considering your line of work, but I always like to ask the question to our guests, how you spend your days just for some listeners at home who might not know about the time tracking work that you do.   LV:Yeah, so I’m, I write books on and I speak on the topic of time management and productivity. I pretty much work out of my home office most days. That's where I'm recording this from. I live outside Philadelphia. I get up in the morning, get my four kids breakfast and ready and all that good stuff. Three of them go off to school. I have a sitter for the youngest one and then I work during the day. My work is about how people spend their time and how they can spend it better. I probably travel once every week or two to go give speeches different places on the topic, but if I'm not speaking that I'm here writing books and articles and running a podcast and blog and all that good stuff. Kids see activities after school, dinner, homework, you know, all that good stuff. So that's pretty much my life.   MU:And so you've written, you've written many books, but the last book that just came out on the 29th of May I want to hear a little bit about what inspired you to, to talk about how people feel about time and their perceptions about time.   LV:Well, I've long been fascinated by why some people who seem to have a lot going on in their lives still feel very relaxed about time. You know, some people who are, who have a lot going on, run around like chickens with their heads cut off going, I'm so busy, I'm so busy. But some people just act like they have all the time in the world and I say, well, what is the difference? Why do some people feel calm about time while others feel stressed? And so for Off the Clock I decided to explore this question more deeply and I did some research on it too. I had 900 people with full time jobs who also had families track their time for a day, March 27, 2017, and then I asked them questions about how they felt about their time so that I could then compare the schedules of people who felt starved for time with those who felt like time was abundant and the strategies that I learned from those books are what make up the book Off the Clock.   MU:And I'm sure I could ask a gazillion questions just based on that little snippet, but one thing that really sticks out to me is the idea that I think it's prevalent that we think we have to be stressed for time or kind of like we don't have enough time and that kind of sense of urgency in order to feel productive or successful. Did you feel like that coming for, or based on your research or that you maybe saw based on seeing some people that felt more productive versus not?   LV:Yeah, I mean I think time is often just what we perceive it as and there's this idea that if we're not filling every minute we're not being productive, but in fact I think the opposite is often true. Having open space in your schedule is a great way to kind of invite opportunities into your life. If you think about it, you know, having a longer conversation with someone in the hallway might lead to a new way of working on a project or if somebody who reports to you has these great ideas, she wants to come and talk about like you don't want to be like, yeah, I got an eight-minute window at 4:12 come back then. You want to actually be able to have these conversations and I think not filling every available minute is what leaves time for these things to happen.   MU:Exactly. I think about the little time tracking exercise that I did when I actually got to speak with you before I did it, and doing a 30 minute, in in blocks of time of 30 minutes all week long, just for one week I noticed certain things that I was spending time on that I didn't think that I prioritized and somehow I did and then vice versa, the things I thought I prioritized, I didn't really spend time doing so there was some disconnect there, but I think I. I probably said that I was busier than I actually was based on looking at the time, looking at the data, so I think that's one piece of this book that I love getting to read the data behind it. Can you talk a little bit about some of the overarching themes that you saw based on pulling 900 studies per se?   LV:Yeah. No, I mean I think you're not alone in finding that how we perceive time as often not the way we actually spend our time. We all have stories we tell ourselves about where the time really goes and and those are often not based on real data, like not on reality. I don't know a better way to say this, that they're not rooted in reality at all. Which is what always strikes me as hilarious when you read these studies out there and be like, Americans are increasingly sleep deprived. Well where did that number come from? Well you asked a bunch of people how much they think they sleep on a typical night. Well, what is a typical night? Did they actually record it or is that what they thought they slept? Are they remembering like the worst night in the last week or the best night? Are they thinking Tuesday night? Are they thinking Saturday night? Like what? What is this? And and and in fact when you have people keep track of it, like the Americant Time Use Survey, which is this huge study that has thousands of Americans track their time rolling through the year finds that in fact the amount of sleep Americans is getting is going up. It has risen by in a statistically significant amount over the past 15 years. You never read that anywhere like you never actually hear people say, whoa, actually, we're sleeping more than we were in the past, which is actually true. Yet we prefer the story of like, oh, we're increasingly sleep deprived. Anyway. A little bit of my own tangent on this because I, you know, I think that's so much of what we talk about in our modern society of time is not actually based on data. It is based on what people think they do with their time and it is not true.   LV:That's it. Going back to my 900 people tracking their time. I mean, there's some fascinating things, I mean, one is that, you know, people who are intentional about their time, who actually think about what they want to do before they are in that unit of time, are far more likely to make progress on their goals. I mean, that doesn't seem very surprising when you think about it, but I think a lot of people just sort of roll around with time I mean it keeps passing whether we think about how we spend it or not. And so like eventually you're gonna be on the other side of tomorrow. Like tomorrow will have come and tomorrow will have gone. But if you think about how you would like to spend tomorrow, that vastly increases the chances that tomorrow is spent doing things you care about. So not, not surprising, but uh, but you can see that in, in, in how people spend their time.   LV:You know, kind of an interesting phenomenon that is more unexpected is, is that people who felt like they had a lot of time, were far more likely to do kind of fun interesting out of the ordinary things on the March Monday that I had them record. I mean we're talking like a normal March Monday and the people with the biggest highest time perception scores were doing stuff like going to salsa dancing lessons on Monday night and you know, on some of them might say, well, oh, once you put commitments into your time, then you have less time because you've filled your time with stuff and to a degree that's true if you're filling your time with things you don't actually want to be doing. But when you fill your time with things that you want to do and that you find interesting and exciting and novel and all that, you actually feel like you have more time because in your mind you become the kind of person who can go to salsa dancing lessons on a Monday night and clearly you must be the kind of person who has time for that. And so you feel like you have time for the things that matter to you. So I found that kind of interesting too.   MU: That is so fascinating because it really is all about our perception and this kind of leads into the conversation about goals, which is something that we're pretty obsessed with a aSweatLife thinking not just about fitness goals, but any type of goal that you go after. I'm interested to know. I want to get to our big question that I'll ask you, but based on your research and the the countless hours that you've spent studying sort of the process by which people live, has it, does it make you think one way or another about setting goals?   LV:Well, I explore the topic of goal setting a little bit in Off the Clock. I think often the way people go about setting goals is problematic. We have a tendency to focus on outcomes, which makes sense on some level. I mean that's what you kind of. I mean that seems like what a good goal would be. Like I want to, you know, run a mile in 7 minutes or I want to lose 15 pounds or I want to bench press x amount of pounds or whatever it is, right? They seem like very good ways to set goals. They're specific, they're measurable. The issue is that, you know, outcomes can often be achieved by many means, some of which are good and some of which are not. I mean the quickest way to lose 10 pounds is to get the stomach flu, but I don't really recommend it.   LV:And that's not, that's not what you really meant. Like hopefully the, the reason to lose 10 pounds is that it's, it's part of a healthier lifestyle that you are taking care of your body in great ways and so I think focusing more on process goals is better, because those tend to be within your control and when you focus on things that are within your control, you have more of a sense of agency and that's just more motivational in general. I also think that setting very small process goals to the point where I call them like better than nothing goals. They're just better than nothing. They're not huge, but they're better than nothing. Also increases the chances that we stick with them. So. So one example is I've actually been running every day since December 24, 2016, so I've run at least a mile every day, for it's over 500 days now.   MU:Oh my gosh.   LV:If I had, if I had set a goal of saying like, Oh, I need to run three miles every day or five miles every day, there's no way I would've stuck with it, right? And in fact, if I'd even set a goal probably saying like 30 miles a week or something, I wouldn't have stuck with it. But one mile is like nothing, right. You know, it's, it's not that much. I can run it in 10 minutes or less, like I can run it in eight minutes if I'm running fast, but it's, you know, so once I normally run one mile, I'm fine to keep going. It's just saying, okay, well I'm just going to run that. Like it's just a few minutes, I'll run it and then it can go on my day. I can always find 10 minutes in my life to, to run. So, you know, setting a very small goal means I don't feel any resistance to sticking with it and that's what's made it possible to run more than 500 days in a row now.   MU:A small tangential question to that. By running those one mile a day, like making that habit for yourself, did it lead you to setting a goal, like since I already run every day, maybe I'll train for this half marathon? Did it lead to bigger goals?   LV:I don't know that it has per se. I mean partly because I've done races in the past and one of the things I was doing with this daily goal is kind of getting away from the whole race thing. So I was a bit burnt out on that. I can say that since I've started running a mile a day, I’m definitely faster. I've been able to run faster miles. Uh, I recently did a 10 mile race that it was just, I was running with somebody else, so I was running a little bit slower than I would have, but I felt like at the end of it I could have kept going for quite a ways. I mean, it's interesting to run a race and, and feel very strong through it, you know, and I can tell things like that with, with the running, you know, I mean maybe I'll set some other goals for right now. I think I'm happy with a mile a day. I don't know that I need to pile onto that one.   MU:Yeah, no, I, that's, that's a fantastic goal. So getting onto the big question that we ask all of our guests is what is one big goal, whether it's this year or just in the past that you've accomplished and why was it important to you slash how did you get there?   LV:Well, I certainly wanted to write books in my life. I've always wanted to be a writer and I am. And so that's pretty cool and sometimes when I have some issues with like, oh, things aren't going how I want or whatever, you know, I remind myself of that, like I could be doing something totally different with my life that I don't want to be doing, and in fact that I'm getting to write as a living is pretty cool. So I think reminding yourself of these goals that you have achieved can be very helpful for those moments we all have when we're feeling a little bit down on life in general.   MU:I completely agree with that. I think it's also very compelling for me to hear you talk about kind of acknowledging your accomplishments because that is in essence kind of using the data that you've been collecting for more than just seeing the data like you, you're, you're using it in your real life as well to notice those accomplishments along the way.   LV:One of the great things about tracking my time and you're like, wow, okay, so this is one of these kind of funny women. She runs a mile a day, she tracks all of her time, like, you know, okay, I'm a bit of a freak on some of these tracking things, but I, I have tracked my time in half hour blocks for three years at this point. Not that anyone else needs to do that. I do think tracking a week in life is very useful just to see where the time goes, but I have one of the best things about is not just saying, oh well I have time here. I could do x, y, or Z. I also get to look back on these logs and say like, Oh, you know, life, life is pretty good. Like I might feel like, oh, what am I actually doing with myself? And then I look back on a log and be like, wow, that's pretty cool. You know, in one week I gave two speeches and wrote this and also took my kids to an amusement park and went for a good dinner this place, and saw an art museum. I'm like, wow, that's kind of a lot to happen in one week. And I think looking back on my time logs reminds of those sorts of things, that life isn't just whatever your current annoyance is. Um, it's a bit broader than that.   MU:Absolutely. I think there's, I think it's common for us to complain if there, if there's a reason to complain versus think about the good and just project the good and then kind of bring in, bring in more good into your life. It's, it's easier to just lean on something that wasn't so great versus boasting about what is great. But that's what's so cool about the exercise of time tracking because it, it doesn't lie, it is what it is right in front of you.   LV:The brain naturally focuses on the negative. I mean that's just sort of an assumed state in life. And so I think you have to be very conscious of calling your attention to good things because you know, bad stuff will, will kick you in the face, but a good stuff, not so much.   LV:How, how did you, or at what point did you decide to start tracking your time? Was it based off of seeing other accomplished people? Do it or just a curiosity?   LV:Well, I think originally it was more a curiosity and because I've been writing about time management for so long and then one of the exercises I always have people do is to track their time like I, you know, had had hundreds of people track their time over the years and I had tracked various weeks here and there, you know, fair play, right? If I'm asking other people to do what I should do it as well. But, but what happened in April of 2015 as I just had this idea, well what if I undertake this project of trying to track my time for a year is what my original goal was. And it was, I knew it was going to be kind of a busy year. I had a different book coming out then it was called I Know How She Does It in June of 2015. I had also just had my fourth child in January of 2015.   LV:So it was it, you know, and it was gonna be an interesting year in terms of adjusting to having life with four kids, having this book come out, my speaking career was kind of taking off, so lots of lots of exciting things going on and I wanted to see, well what does life really look like on this sort of half hour by hour basis? So I started tracking continuously and then just kept going. I mean I got into a rhythm of it. It doesn't really take me much time. It takes me about three minutes a day. I check in maybe three or four times during the day and write down what I've done since the last time I checked in. At the end of the week. I look over the week and then save it and then I've probably every six months or so I do a bigger, deeper dive into my time log, see where the time has gone. Add up different categories, things like that, work, sleep, whatever time in the car, housework, doing whatever it is I'm doing.   LV:So you know, every, every six months or so, add that up and get the data on that. I guess I just, I wanted to see where the time went and I knew obviously I could write about it being a time management person I could probably turn it into something and I, I did and it was actually a great the project bore a lot of fruit for me, which is, which is wonderful in terms of my professional life, but I found it so interesting that I just kept going and so, you know, in Off the Clock I talk about basically three years of time tracking data and talk about what other people have learned as well.   MU:And, and you also traveled to speak, as you said, and work with companies. I'm talking about productivity and time management and so I'm curious to know maybe in that setting when you're thinking about just the productivity at work and your work life, what are some big misconceptions that companies or people have about productivity at work?   LV:Well, I think one of the worst things that happens is people start to associate work with the term scheduled meeting. Having these two become sort of intertwined with each other and, and it's very easy for companies to sort of slip into this issue of people being booked in constant meetings. Obviously other people have stuff that we need to work with and they have ideas they have, you know, they help us with projects and they don't tend to show up at our desk at the exact moment that we want them to. So hence you schedule meetings. I mean there are reasons that this happens, but when, when people start packing their schedules too tightly, you know, a, everything runs over and so, so then nothing is ever happening when it's supposed to happen. People don't just call each other because they feel like you need to have a scheduled meeting so then you're waiting for two days to get on somebody's calendar to just get a very quick answer for something that probably didn't need to happen anyway.   LV:Like people don't have space in their calendars to deal with things that come up because they're already so packed in. And so, you know, I think you really have to push back against it. The first question should always be not like, oh, are you free to have a meeting then? It’s like, well, do we actually need to meet? And so if people can start thinking about that question first or this, could we just have a two minute conversation right now and solve this issue? Like why do we need to have a meeting? Or do all these people need to be in this room for absolutely every single minute of this meeting and if not like, well why are they there? Are people being able to multitask while they're on this conference call? If so, then they probably don't need to be on the call because their presence wasn't required. All of these are good questions to ask. I think, you know, we can all waste our own time and that's fine, but when you get six people in a room and you're wasting all of their time, that starts to get expensive pretty fast. So treating time a wee bit more preciously would be a major breakthrough for a lot of places.   MU:And, and I hear you talk about, you know, time is money from, from a company or a corporate perspective, but also those realizations or kind of questions to ask apply to individuals as well. And I think about how people go after goals and then are not sure why they're not getting there and probably taking inventory and getting that real time feedback, analyzing like what are you actually doing with your time? Could I be spending it a little bit differently? Is it going in the direction towards where I want to be heading? Can yield faster, more productive results.   LV:Oh definitely. Um, yeah, I think we all need to be aware of where our time goes and when you are aware of where it's going and then you ask what you would like to spend your time doing, you vastly increase the chances that that is what you actually spend your time doing.   MU:And I love that question. Like where, how do I want to be spending my time? And another question that you pose in off the clock is how is today going to be different from other days, which really spoke to me. Can you, can you talk a little bit more about, I guess the power behind asking questions like that and if there are other ones that you typically ask yourself?   LV:Yeah, I mean the reason to ask why is today different from other days is that adult life winds up having a high degree of similarity day today. You know, if you think about when you were a kid and you're experiencing a lot of firsts and new things and you're like a teenager or something, you have a lot of memories of this time because of that novelty. The brain, when it thinks about time, its sense of time perception is affected by how many memories you have of that unit of time. So if you think about like the first day of a vacation to somewhere interesting, it seems very long because your brain is taking in all this new information. It doesn't know what of it is important. So it's trying to remember all of it and that makes time seem a lot faster than if you're just doing the same thing day in, day out.   LV:I mean, if you've commuted to work in the same way for the past like 500 days, you're not—your brain is that remembering each of those 500 days of sort of just remembers one day and and so that's how life starts to disappear into these memory sinkholes that whole years pass by without seeming very different from each other. So, you know, some of this is inevitable. I mean, I'm not saying you need to commute 500 different ways to work because that's not really gonna happen. But if you ask yourself this question, how is today different from other days, then that can nudge you to think about how I could make today slightly more memorable. Like could I plan in some mini adventure into my day? Like let's say you always walk by some little stationery store on your way into work from the parking garage.   LV:And you’re like, oh, I should stop there sometime. Well, why don't you do it? Go in there, explore it, see maybe you'll find something really cool or, you know, grab your colleagues and go have a picnic lunch somewhere. Um, or maybe you go for a bike ride on that trail you've been eyeing after work or try a new restaurant or something, you know, there's just a million ways you could do little tiny adventures into your life or put in some sort of emotional intensity like speak to someone you've been meaning to speak to and actually have a good conversation with them. But doing these things makes a day memorable and when you have more memories of a day, then time seems to expand and that's what keeps time some sort of slipping through our fingers.   MU:That's so, so fascinating to me because that is when I think about wanting to achieve big things, ultimately it's every single day that would get me there and doing something like that means everyday becomes more meaningful. Like you say, like you talk about the process being the ultimate goal, setting yourself up for success when you elevate the process. So I love that because it makes it tangible. It makes it doable every single day.   LV:Yeah. No, I think that that, I mean we can't do everything every single day, but certainly how we live our daily lives is important.   MU:So this leads me to the next big question. What is a big goal now that you want to go after in the future or that you are going after and how do you plan on getting there?   LV:Well, let's see. I mean I do set goals. I think one interesting goal that I'm trying to think about is a philanthropic goal and I know that sounds funny, like I'm not, you know, Bill Gates here, but we could all be more intentional about our charitable giving. Like, what we give money to and what we're hoping to do with it and I would like to spend some time this year thinking about that. I have an interest in new music and I have been a donor for a choir I was part of for years in New York. I left New York but I've still donated money to it that runs a competition for young composers that comes up with new music every year and I've enjoyed doing that and I'd like to do more of that. I'd like to have some more new music come to be, new choral music come to be and you know, it's generally less expensive than you might think to support this sort of thing, but you know, being a real patron of the arts in that sense, would be cool. I want to think about how I want to go about doing that.   MU:Very cool. So, so I want to make sure that people know how, how they can find you. Not only can they now buy your book, Off the Clock, Feel Less Busy While Getting More Done. They can listen to your podcast, Best of Both Worlds. And then how else can people find you and what do you want them to know about all of these different channels?   LV:Uh, yes. You can come find me at my website, LauraVanderkam.com. Listen to my podcast, the Best of Both Worlds and the check out my time management books like Off the Clock, which is recently out now on May 29 and the others as well.   MU:And if people want to start time tracking, you have some sources for them to go about this process on your website too.   LV:Yeah, if you come to my website, you can fill out the subscription form. I'll mail you a time log. You can do that. You can also just Google Vanderkam manage your time if you want to find it directly. But yeah, you can download these timesheets. Use the 30-minute log, which is what I do. The 15-minute log is also there. Some people like to get a little bit more granular on their time tracking details. So yeah, no, I think it's really fascinating to see where the time goes and once you do you can decide what you like, what you don’t; celebrate what's working and maybe change things that aren't.   MU:I love it. Thank you so much for spending the time, the 30 minutes of precious time on your calendar to speak with me for the podcast. It was, it was a wonderful conversation.   LV:Well thank you so much.   CK:Hey, goal-getters! This is co host and producer Cindy Kuzma here. Just checking into the to know that we are once again bringing you a goal from one of you, a goal-getter out in the community, this one we recorded live at the SweatWorkingWeek Michelob Ultra Fitness Festival last month, and hey, if you'd like to hear about your goal, if you have one in mind or one that you've accomplished or one that you're setting your sights on and you want to tell us about it, we would love to have you as part of this podcast. So here's what you can do. You can record a quick audio memo on your iphone, android, whatever kind of phone you have, and email it to me, cindy@asweatlife.com, and you could be on this very podcast. Just say your name, where you're from, and then tell us about your goal. Thank you so much for listening and here is one of your goals.   M:My name is Meg, I'm from St Louis, but I've lived in Chicago for just over two years and a big goal that I have for the future that I'm currently working on is to really dive into fitness and wellness as more of a career path and something that I'm doing currently is I'm studying for my NASM certification, which hopefully I will be certified very soon and then from there just doing more and more events like this, networking with people, meeting with lots of likeminded individuals in both of the industries of wellness and fitness and just learning as much as I can and hopefully eventually creating a client base and just helping people as much as I can with my knowledge and growing knowledge and fitness and nutrition and holistic wellness.   CK:This podcast is produced by me, Cindy Kuzma, and it's another thing that's better with friends, so please share it with yours. You can subscribe wherever you get your podcasts and while you're there, please leave us a rating or review. Special thanks to J. Mano for our theme music; to our guest this week, Laura Vanderkam; and to Tech Nexus for the recording studio.

Julie Smolyanksy is a tough woman to nail down. Not in terms of her schedule — although she is all over the place, having recently published her first book, The Kefir Cookbook, while running Lifeway Foods full-time as CEO and President. Instead, over the course of our conversation on the #WeGotGoals podcast, I found myself trying — and repeatedly failing — to put Smolyanksy neatly in a box that I could easily write 500 words on in a blog post. Smolyanksy is a CEO/President, sure. But she's also been the first female CEO of a publicly held firm (when she took over Lifeway Foods in 2002 after her father's unexpected death). She's a mother and a feminist activist, identities that drive her decisions as a businesswoman who wants to set a strong example for her daughters. She's an immigrant who came to the United States as an infant with her parents, who brought kefir with them as a taste of Eastern Europe and later turned it into a $12 million business (up to $120 million in 2017). She's sharp as a tack and incredibly organized and detail-oriented, but she's a believer in holistic health and says things like "the universe is going to give me what I need" without a hint of irony. Needless to say, my head was spinning as we sat down to talk, knowing there were so many dimensions to this woman. But interestingly, one of the things we talked about was the benefit of ignoring your brain and listening to your gut, something Smolyansky got a crash course in when she lost her phone in Mexico for a few days. "It was like sort of the universe doing a wake up call like 'Julie, stop, stop, slow down, stop, listen to yourself, listen to your body, you're spinning out of control,'" Smolyanksy revealed. Without her phone to distract her outwardly, Smolyanksy spent her days doing yoga, meditating, and journaling, only to find that hip pain she had dealt with since pregnancy had mysteriously disappeared after a particularly cathartic meditation. "I think that was this moment of following my intuition," mused Smolyanksy, noting how after that realization, she was able to look back in her life at times she had ignored her gut instincts only to regret it later. Today, Smolyanksy hones her intuition through regular SoulCycle classes, running, enjoying the occasional glass of red wine — and of course, incorporating kefir into her diet regularly. "What we're learning now about the microbiome, I am blown away by how important it is having that gut, which we call a second brain now, how important it is to have one that's running well. When it's healthy, it's like magic." Listen to Smolyanksy's episode of #WeGotGoals wherever you get your podcasts to learn more about taking over the family business during a tumultuous, grief-filled time, plus how she feels her identity as a feminist impacts her daughters and what it's like to be the only young, immigrant female CEO in a room full of old, white males. To get more of #WeGotGoals, make sure you subscribe and leave a rating or a review so others can hear these stories, too. Psst... don't stop listening when the interview portion is over. We saved a few minutes at the end of the podcast to devote to real-life goal-getters like you, and we'll hear from one inspiring goal-getter each week.     Start Transcript: _______ JAC: Welcome to #WeGotGoals, a podcast by aSweatLife.com on which we talk to high achievers about their goals. I'm Jeana Anderson Cohen and with me I have Maggie Umberger and Kristin Geil. KG: Good morning, Jeana. MU: Good morning, Jeana. JAC: Good morning and today Kristen, you talk to a real boss. KG: Yes. I talked to Julie Smolansky who is the president and CEO of Lifeway Kefir. JAC: And Julie was not the first president and CEO of Lifeway Kefir. She sort of stumbled into or was thrust into that role under some not so ideal circumstances, but really thrived there, right? KG: Yeah, exactly. So Lifeway Kefir is Julie's family business. It was started by her father. Her mom contributed a lot as well, and she and her brother actually both grew up working for her father and learning the ins and outs of running Lifeway Kefir. Then in 2002, her dad passed away very suddenly from a heart attack and at that time Lifeway Kefir was about a $12,000,000 business. Julie took over the next day as CEO and president and began running the company. It made her the youngest female to be the CEO of a publicly held company at that time. She was somewhere around 27, so very young, but since she's been in that role, she has grown Lifeway Kefir to $120,000,000 as of last year, 2017. So we talked a little bit about how tough it must have been to be thrown into the CEO role in such dark circumstances, but she actually had a really unique perspective on it. She thought that having to take over as CEO right away was her father's way of leaving her a project where she could direct her energies and help work through her grief without being totally consumed by it. MU: And we've gotten to speak to many different CEOs and entrepreneurs on this podcast and one thing that has come up as a theme that I found pretty interesting is how certain people have talked about the importance of their intuition and how they have really, really leaned on it and making decisions. And so it's obviously not something that they take lightly and Julie is one of those CEOs as well. Is that right? KG: Yeah, so a little bit of backstory. We obviously talked a lot about Lifeway Kefir and how kefir is so good for your gut health with all of the probiotics, so in the biological sense, Julie's always thinking about the gut, right, but we also talked a little bit about how she's learned to hone her intuition and listen to her other gut, so to speak, and how that served her in the business world and she told a story that you'll hear about losing her phone for a few days in Mexico and how she learned to just figure stuff out without technology and she offers some really good advice for anyone who's looking to disconnect a little bit and really hone in to their inner self and driving their own decision making without outside influences. KG: And I think that's another thing you'll hear come through this podcast a lot is I feel like there's really two sides to Julie. You know, on one hand she's a really sharp business woman. Always thinking about her next move. She just wrote a book that recently came out. So she's very savvy in that sense of the word, but she also speaks really beautifully about listening to the universe and learning how to hone her intuition and she's a little more woo-woo than what you might expect from a CEO, especially someone who is such a young CEO in a tough business world. So I think you'll get a lot out of this interview guys. JAC: And we can't wait to hear Kristin with Julie. It sounds like it was a really great interview. And stick around listener for the end of the episode where you'll hear from real life goal-getters and what they're achieving out there in the real world today. Here's the show. KG: Welcome to #WeGotGoals. My name is Kristen Geil and today I am here with Julie Smolansky, the president and CEO of Lifeway Kefir. Julie, how are you today? JS: I'm doing great. How are you? KG: I’m great. We're so excited to have you on today. Lifeway Kefir has been a friend of aSweatLife for awhile now and we've gotten used to trying your delicious kefir products at all of our SweatWorking events and we're especially excited to have you on today too because we're going to hear more about the book that you've recently published. So thank you for being here today. First of all, we'll start off with the question that we ask everybody who comes on this podcast and that is, what is a big goal that you've achieved in the past. Why was it important to you and what steps did you take to get there? JS: Well, one of my goals for quite a while has been to write a book and I finally did. I just published the Kefir Cookbook and it took me quite awhile to write and it was a challenging for a variety of reasons, but we did it. I'm super proud of it. I share a lot of great stories from my life, my family's life. I touch on a lot of various issues from being an immigrant and a refugee to a female entrepreneur to a mom. Um, so, you know, even though it's a cookbook, it's very personal and I, I think it was sort of like the appetizer to my first kind of entry into publishing and writing. But yeah, that I am right now just kind of sitting back and watching the book have its impact and being able to talk to my customers and various people as I kind of tour around the country and hear about how kefir has improved people's lives. It's been very, very touching to me. So I'm, I'm kind of just enjoying this moment right now. KG: And you mentioned just now that the Kefir Cookbook is more than just an actual cookbook. I've flipped through it a little bit and it seems like there's a lot of stories of your family woven in. How did your family influenced the conception and the actual writing of this book? JS: Yeah, so I mean, you know, my father passed away, which is how I ended up as the CEO of Lifeway. Uh, he passed away about 16 years ago now. And so he, for me, it was sort of writing some of the stories that were important to me to share that I wanted to sort of document and leave for next generations because those stories become diluted over time or lost. And so now these are kind of forever and you know, it seems a very natural platform to use food to tell these stories. It's, it's become natural for me to like share a picture and say something about it. And I actually think social media really helped me kind of find the inspiration and my voice in that. So when I, I feel like I got good at it through social media, then it became very natural to do it in a more formal published way, organized neatly, you know, strategically. And then with my mom, you know, a lot of recipes kind of were hers, you know, there's a handful that were hers that I had to call and ask her, you know, how to make things or I forgot how to do certain Russian recipes that, which is our, our background. We immigrated from the former Soviet Union in 1976. So, you know, kind of grew up with these old old worlds, Russian Ukrainian recipes, and then there were some stories that I'd forgotten that, you know, I didn't even know that she shared with me that were just kind of fun. And you know, and I think about how far we've actually come when I, I'm very humbled by these stories because, you know, my mom and dad both grew up in a country in communist Russia after the war there, experienced lots of challenges, adversities, political persecution, religious persecution, poverty, hunger, sickness. JS: Like when I think about just how far my mom went to the bathroom in an outhouse, you know, and, and when I think about the rooms and the situations I've been so blessed to be in, it's incredibly—I just get filled with gratitude. So to be able to kind of tell those stories. And then like I said, like they’re, I grew up with them, but now they're like neatly organized, indexed official. There's a Dewey Decimal system number two, it, um, it's just, I'm just so proud of it. And then, you know, I think it's a great way to bring attention to certain issues like immigration, like refugees, like why it's important to support diversity and how that impacts and, and you know, the fact that because America, because Chicago opened its arms to us, we were able to bring kefir, which is a staple in eastern Europe here to the United States and the impact of this product have kefir of probiotics, of gut health, of us leading that conversation for the last 30 years. That becomes incredibly rewarding. I think it's a great example. So I think when I think about the conversations that are being had on a kind of a bigger level, I think it's a great example. Hard to argue with it. KG: Lifeway Kefir is a family business. Can you tell us a little bit about how it was founded, what your first role within the company ism and how that has all grown and developed over the past. How many years has it even been? JS: So it's been 16 years. Yeah. My Dad passed away June ninth in 2002. So I'm coming up to his 16th anniversary and my 16 years of being the CEO. So he, he had a sudden heart attack at the age of 55 and died on a beautiful sunny morning in Chicago and the next day my brother and I essentially took over the company. He was 23, he had just graduated college. He had been with us for about six, six months. I had been with my dad for about five years and I had left—I had intended on becoming a psychologist and I was in grad school, but serendipity brought me to the company kind of on a more formal way and I had decided to leave grad school and I didn't come back for my second year and went full time with my dad and worked with him five years side by side, really learned all the elements of business, kind of a lot of his philosophy and whatnot and it was a great time for us because we. I really got a chance to sort of heal our relationship because I had grown up with both of my parents running businesses as immigrants to the new country, they really, you know, they didn't, I think when we talk about balance and whatnot, that's such a luxury because as immigrants you don't even have that conversation. JS: It's just a nonexistent topic because they're just head down working, getting their feet into the country and putting food on the table literally. And I as, as I kind of got to know my dad and some of his challenges I, a different level of respect sort of started to happen or just like an understanding of how much that both him and my mother had taken on. Not that they were perfect, but it's just, uh, a different level of understanding. So anyways, he passed away. I ended up taking over with my brother. I become the CEO. He's the CFO and we just grow it from about 12 million to about 130 today. We're, I feel like on the cusp of another kind of growth spurt right now. Of course, probiotics are having a moment as everyone knows. Gut health is having a moment. I don't think it's going away. JS: We're just learning about the microbiome and the bacteria that that is so critical for our health and wellbeing. You know, it's a 2000-year-old product that's just making its way here to the United States. It's 30 years is nothing actually considering its long 2,000 year history. What our relatives knew in the Caucus mountains in Europe, they said that 2000 years ago when they tried this product that they had a sense of wellbeing when they consumed it, they called it the champagne of dairy and a gift from the gods and they intuitively in their gut, you know, no pun intended, kind of realized and knew that they felt good when they consumed kefir. Well, fast forward to 1908, Élie Metchnikoff did the first science research around kefir and its influence on our health and our wellbeing and he won the Nobel Prize for it. So for now, the last hundred years we've had science and medical research backing up what and our ancestors knew intuitively that kefir is actually really good for you, very beneficial to the body. JS: And so in the last hundred years, we've just advanced on that research and science and it's now, it's like unbelievable what's happening, the incredible breakthroughs that are happening, even we knew that it was good for your digestive and your immunity, you know, your health from a physical perspective. But now we're learning that it's even beneficial for mental health. So we now know that gut health influences your stress, anxiety, depression, all of the mental health and, and like incredible research that's coming out around microbiome and mental health, but all health. And so, you know, we're, we're just really excited about kind of sharing that information. I mean, it survived by word of mouth, by storytelling, by oral history and storytelling, word of mouth. And now with social media, that of course elevates and explodes it and so we can really get the word out around the, you know, when you make certain food choices and certain lifestyle choices, you choose to heal yourself. JS: You choose to love yourself. You choose to love your family or community for a very like, you know, there's no risk. It's not like a pharmaceutical drug that has side effects. There's the only side effect is that you feel good, you know, that's the, that's the impact. So that becomes incredibly rewarding to try to get it into the hands into as many people get this information out and support communities that are trying to do this. Um, I think that's kind of if, if, if that's the purpose, my life purpose, then I think I've lived a good life. Yeah. KG: When you took over Lifeway Foods in 2002, you became the youngest female CEO of a publicly held firm. But unlike most CEOs who have time to grow into the role, you were thrust into it really unexpectedly. What was that like and what did that teach you about your leadership and goal setting style? JS: Yeah, I mean it was incredibly challenging. Of course, on one hand, you know, I was mourning the loss of my father, but it sort of, it gave me a place to focus and put that energy. It gave me an outlet. I almost think like he was sort of looking over me and like handed this project to me. Like here, instead of feeling sorry for yourself, go work on this. That's very much him. And I really was, I constantly thought about this mantra that failure was not an option, that my parents had gone through so much. My family had gone through so much blood, sweat and tears to get to this point that I wasn't gonna let it all just fall apart. And I mean, I had backlash. I had older men who tried to undercut, you know, my role and prevent this from happening. And it took a lot of courage for me to stand up to a, you know, a bunch of older white men and say no, and I'm gonna run it and I'm going to kick ass at it. JS: I mean, I kind of, I knew that I would. And then I think, you know what? I guess what I thought about was that my parents came with no money, no friends, no language. They didn't have a network. Here I was, graduated, uh, you know, schooled in the United States with a network for the most part, access to network already with, you know, a $12,000,000 business now. It's just like, don't fuck it up. I just, I think that was the biggest thing is that I just did not want it to fail and I knew that we were onto something. I mean I had known that we were really on the cost of some major growth, that the country was sort of ready and just starting to be prepared to make big food changes and food habits and all of that, which all came true and being first to market with so important, which we were and I had grown up in the business. JS: So I had sort of, these were normal conversations in terms of business. It became intuitive to me on how to run a business and I had always been a leader my whole life. I mean I watched my parents be leaders and pioneers and pave the path for other immigrants and lead in their community. And of course in their businesses. You know, my greatest role model was my mother and she had started a deli two years after settling in the seventies, opened the first Russian deli, didn't speak English, really, you know, learned English, watching General Hospital actually, and started doing international deals all over the world and she was so brave and courageous. So I had these great examples and great role models. I thought the least I could do is sort of rise up and show them what they had kind of built. And I learned, yeah, I learned what I was made of. JS: I learned that I could really go through the fire and come out of it OK and come out stronger that I can persevere, that I'm tenacious, that I am resilient. All of those things. I knew that I was. I mean I knew that I was in the past, but I, this was like the challenge. You know, it was interesting because I had just run my first marathon the year before my dad passed away and he challenged me. He was like, you know, it started because we sponsored a lot of marathons and races. So I sort of saw, I was always athletic, but I had seen these people, old, young, all different body shapes running this crazy distance and I remember seeing like an 80, 90 year old man running and I thought, my gosh, if he can run a marathon, I should be able to do this. JS: You know, I'd been a figure skater for 15 years. I played tennis, I rode horses, I was super athletic but I'd never been a runner and not that distance. But picked up some shoes, started running and my dad saw me cross the finish line and he didn't believe that I was going to do it. He's like 26 miles, that's crazy. You would never be able to do it. And once he gave me that challenge I had to prove him wrong of course. And, and I did. And I thought that was a great lesson also for me and that, you know, I learned that I can challenge myself, set goals, that I don't have to be the first. You don't have to win the thing. I can still do it and have a great experience. And seeing him see me cross the finish line was very important for me as well. So I'm happy that he got to see that. I think it's probably a metaphor that at that point he knew that I could probably do anything at that point I think is what he realized. And I don't know, maybe it was just his time and mine. KG: I love the way you talked about yourself so confidently just now. Like I am tenacious, I am this, I am that like you seem to really know yourself and have that inner confidence, but I'm guessing it wasn't always that way. Did you ever have imposter syndrome when you were starting out as such a young female CEO? And if so, like what kind of pep talks did you give to yourself to pump yourself up before going into a room of these white American men and what would you recommend for other young females maybe just starting off in business, who have those same feelings of not being quite as confident as you are now? JS: Yeah, I mean, yeah, I had to work at it. I was not always so confident of course. It was a couple things. I had a few series of success, you know, I had a few wins behind me, so when you get good and sort of master something and you can feel yourself master it, that builds your confidence. So I had done that repeatedly over and over, whether that was, you know, public speaking or writing something or launching a new product or selling a new product. All of those things help build my confidence in business and then I started to realize that every person, no matter who they were, had something to offer to being in the room, that we were all there to learn a lesson from each other and so then it, I feel like it got equalized in my head. Maybe the other person didn't know, but all it took was for me to feel confident. JS: That didn't matter really what the other person felt. I started to see that I would show up in rooms and people wanted to hear from me. People wanted to hear what I thought about things. Think about like social media was blowing up, here I was a woman on social media, dominating social media because women were, you know, at the time when social media was sort of happening, and this is about when I was took over Lifeway, we really carved a place. Our voice really became powerful in, in social media. We're creating content, we're selling merchandise, starting businesses, all these things. And so I realized I had this asset to offer that and a certain skillset that all was very like intuitive that sometimes I saw men struggle with and so I started to feel like, okay, we each have something to offer, like you have a great skill in this area. JS: I have a skill in this area. And I felt like there was kind of greater currency in leveraging both of those and that we're kind of all equal. And I, it was these kinds of small thoughts in my head. And then of course having children really exponentially grew my confidence because now I couldn't even live in fear anymore. It was just absolutely not an option. I had to really rise because, you know, I have two little girls that I want to create a better world for them and the only way to do that is completely to let go of all fear and to live out my true life purpose and show them and model that for them because I really want that for them more than I want anything else is for them to be able to really live fearlessly and fiercely with all the power that they can take and to, to ask for as much power that they can. JS: We have a lot of work to make up for here as genders and, and uh, and for power. And so I spent time with various coaches. I had a group of other executives who, you know, gave me accountability that helped me in certain areas where I was challenged. I leaned on friends of course, and I have a really good support around me of people who help me when I'm not necessarily feeling at my best. And then I feel like, again, I've, I've just tried to learn like I don't think anything's really a failure or a mistake if you've learned something from it and I always want to find those lessons and so then it becomes a nice little dance that you do with the universe to keep building on those skills, keep shedding more, you know, more of that fear and just letting it go and really kind of getting to the essence of who you are, what you want to be, what you want to project out into the world, what you want mirrored back to you. Those are all kind of important things. I think that as I kind of think about the next decade, two decades of my life that I want to think about. KG: You mentioned wanting to be a good role model for your young girls in terms of how you grow the business and in terms of how you live fearlessly. Did you have any other female CEO role models that you looked up to when you were starting out or that you've developed over the past 16 years? JS: Yeah. Actually one was actually Christie Hefner here in Chicago. She so, so when was in college and I came home and my dad was watching CNN with a special of her being featured and my dad turned to me and said, look what she's done. She took over her father's company. I want you to do that. I want you to be like her. And I feel like that was a really important statement that he gave me. JS: It kinda gave me a good push to know that I could do it, that he wanted that for me, gave me a lot of confidence and so I did actually look at her life sort of how she carved out her role as a CEO and then we've become friends. So I definitely lean on her just for friendship, but advice and whatnot, mentorship. Um, and I've sought out many kind of female business groups and communities. Like the Fortune most powerful women community is a great one; here in Chicago there's the Chicago Network and C200 as a national one for females and in business. But there's so many now. I mean it's really great. It is so important, I think, you know, if you can't see it, you can't be at. And it's still so rare. I mean, and I think we just dropped 25 percent on the Fortune 500 list of female CEOs and there's only like, well there were 21 last time I looked. JS: I haven't checked the news in the last couple of days that keeps seeing those headlines. I'm guessing we dropped. So that's nothing. You know, we're less than 20 percent in Congress and there's only been like five female governors. I mean we're really underrepresented. Behind the camera, we’re like less than six percent or something. I mean, don't quote the numbers. It's been a while since I looked at them, but we're, you know, our stories are not really told our, we're not really visible. There's no like, like here I'm on the board of the Women's History Museum. There no single standing museum actually that represents the history of women's accomplishments and we've been doing and building this country and the world from the beginning of time. But there's nothing to point to concretely. And so I really start. I started noticing that there is just a lack of women in power, a lack of women in media, lack of women, you know, running heads of companies, a lack of female titans, a lack of women in every single area. JS: I mean we’re there, but our stories aren't told, but, and we're not there at equal numbers either. And likewise, you know, where are the men raising the kids? I mean they're there obviously, but I think when we reach gender parity, where it’s like 50/50 and equal responsibilities in the household and in corporations and whatnot and throughout government and all of these areas that I think we will have a better, safer, healthier world, a more peaceful world, a more, I don't know, meaningful world. And I think the time has come. I think the last eight, nine months have proved that we are not going to take it sitting down and that we're gonna come together, that we're stronger together. That, you know, when our voice collectively it's fierce, it’s unstoppable. The, you know, when many women come together, when the most powerful women come together and share the truth about their lives, about their accomplishments, about their challenges, about all of it, that the world actually stops and listens and starts to make changes. JS: I think we're just at the very beginning of this reckoning. I think there's going to be so many conversations. So I think the next generation, I have personally acted in a way that I have wanted to evolve, not just for myself but for the next generation. I think I, you know, I've personally been an activist since I was 15. I am exhausted. I am personally exhausted for the last 30 some years and I think it's really great that the next generation has been activated and has been empowered with tools, with social media, with role models, with voices, with many of us pulling them up and saying, yeah, go talk, share, go. You know, go do all the really important things. Hold men accountable. I think that is when we start to change the world. And so if I could have just done that for my girls, if they speak loudly and demand for some of these changes, then that's a good thing. KG: When it comes to being empowered to find your voice and listen to your intuition, I feel like that's a lot easier said than done. And I know that's something that you sort of hinted at it at the beginning of this interview was how kefir can actually help you listen to your gut, not just because it's good for your gut health, but it might help you find your intuition and you know, dive into that mental benefit as well. So I'm curious to know what some of the strategies you've developed for actually listening to your gut are in honing your intuition as a woman throughout the years as a CEO. Yeah. I'm really just interested to hear about listening to your gut as it is. JS: Yeah. That actually listening to my gut has become a really fun way to live. More and more, I feel that there are no coincidences, that everything is sort of happening for a reason, that we're living these sort of alternative universe lives, multiple lives, whatever. I know it sounds so crazy, but whatever. I feel like, well, we're so distracted from these, our intuition. We run such busy lives. We're completely on social media or in our electronics, just in our electronics, actually. We, I personally have sort of lost sight of my own intuition and it took me a minute to stop and actually lose my phone for three days in Tulum. I shared this story in the book and it took me these three days where I lost my phone, had to get in touch with myself, had to rely on friends and community to get me from out of Mexico into New York with no money, no phone, no nothing, and for a couple of days just shut down and think. And I healed parts of my body and it was like sort of the universe doing a wake up call like Julie, stop, stop, slow down, stop, listen to yourself, listen to your body, you’re spinning out of control. JS: And I was, I was completely setting and I was processing a lot of things that were kind of going on in the last couple of years. And finally the world took my phone away and made me pause and a lot of things started to come to me. And I started taking notes and I started journaling and went inward. I meditated, I did yoga, you know, over these three days. And I had had this really bad hip pain for about six years and I kept blaming it on my pregnancy and I started realizing that it had nothing to do with my pregnancy but more to do with a whole lot of shame and all these other various issues. And I remember doing this meditation and just this moment of like release and this feeling just left me and it just walked away into the ocean because we were oceanside. And I started to like cry. JS: Like I was sobbing. And the next day I notice I'm walking around through the sand and my hip doesn't hurt. And I'm like, wait, this is so weird. If my hip doesn't hurt. And then it basically has kind of stayed that way and I think that was this moment of following my intuition where I didn't have time to go to this conference. I went to Tulum to do this, this thing. It was like not the best time for me to do it, but I just said, you know what? The universe just is gonna give me what I need. I don't know what I need, but you know, I'm just going to go and I'm just gonna let it happen. And it did and it, the universe gave me exactly what I needed and it's this thing, this is this, this moment of following my gut. And I started realizing that I'd actually done it all all the time. JS: I just didn't know I was doing it. And as I look back now, hindsight 20/20, I see all these moments where I followed my gut were something intuitively something called to me. And every time when I didn't listen, I made a mistake and I started realizing over and over again that the times that I've talked myself out of things that I have wanted to do, that I, my heart pulled me to. I lived in pain and suffering and when I started to get in touch with those feelings, both not living intuitively and living intuitively, it was night and day and the, I don't want to say luck because everything is hard work. And I—somebody just said this, I think it was Shonda Rimes just that, don't use the word luck. It cheapens all my hard work. And that's absolutely true. It's like I worked really hard to get to this point and now it's just continuing to ask myself these questions, giving myself time to think and feel. JS: Mostly, uh, I think I've mostly lived in my mind, in my head and letting my intuition lead me now is so much more intuitive, but it's, it's very natural. It's, and it's, I think a skill set that women have because we have an amazing intuition. We have this maternal female intuition that is very hard to touch and once you realize it, it's unstoppable and it's, I think a skill that will be leveraged and can be monetized. I think corporations want that because you can go to all the Harvard schools and Ivy League schools and you can run every spreadsheet in the world, but there are some things that you need to like know intuitively in your heart. That's a very magical, special gift and I think many of us have it, which is a lot of intuitives in the world. I think that's a skill that will continue to be important in our world. JS: But yeah, so you know, writing, taking time, processing, making positive food choices, you know, living sorta as clean of a life as I could. A couple glasses of wine never hurt anybody. Taking time to exercise and rest. Exercise, like I love running, I love spinning, or you know, I do SoulCycle. These are the times when I do get to focus on my heart and my emotions and my feelings and what I think sort of are, are things that I want to work on, accomplish challenge, learned from all of it. I think that's really what it's all about. That on I, once I started to realize that impact that food had and specifically key fair because it is just the easiest—when I learned about now what we're learning about the microbiome, I am blown away by how, how important having that second the gut, which we call a second brain now, how important when that's running well, when it's healthy, it's like magic the way that you move through the world. It's really, really special and I think it's a lifelong process. I don't think it's like, OK, I'm going to do this for a week. It's forever. It is for me at least that I think it's like healing myself is sort of healing my community. That again, I think about when I, we’re all just like mirrors for each other. So if I crave a healthy, safe world where you know there's love and there's abundance and there's safety and spirituality, then that's what I need to find in myself so that I can see that. So that became really important to me and yeah, I think there's just these basic elements we have to live for lifestyle, forever, and that's it. Leave the next generation with the same, you know, these lessons and tools. Like I feel like I definitely banged my head against the wall for a long time and it took me awhile to sort of learn this, but I've done it actually fairly early. JS: A lot of people do it much later in life. I was kind pushed into learning this probably a lot quicker than many people do. So I think if I can expedite that process for other people, like I just think, think about the evolution that can happen so much quicker. You know, when younger people are at this level already in their teens or in their 20s, what else can they do when they're not spending so much time healing? Because that it is exhausting. It is absolutely exhausting to get to this place, but it's a lot of work, but there's so many great rewards. I'm almost there, almost reached what I wanted to do. KG: Well, you’ve inspired me to go chuck my phone out a window the next chance I get, but in the meantime I feel like we could talk to you forever about your perspective as an immigrant, as a female CEO, as an activist, as a mom, but we have to wrap this up eventually, so we'll have to save some for the next part, the next part 2 of having Julie on the podcast, someday. We’ll close with the question that we ask everybody who comes on this, which is part two of our intro question: What's a big goal that you have for the future? Why is it important to you and what steps are you taking to get there today? JS: Oh boy, there’s, I mean, just one is too hard. I want to write another book. Eventually I want to write sort of my memoirs. There's still a handful of years I feel that I need to live and a few more chapters left to right before I really do that. Mostly right now I'm focused on of course growing my business, but that's, that's actually not that hard. I mean, it is, it's hard. Of course it's always hard, but you know that I feel like I could do with fairly smoothly. JS: I've mostly spent the last 16 plus, even 20 years if you add at the beginning of my career. I've spent the last 20 years focused on my career and then growing my family. I think right now I'm really focused on my heart and myself and healing myself, healing my community of course, um, was a sort of in a lot that's happened for me personally in the last couple of years. I'm just trying to process it. I want to enjoy the work that I've done and the energy that I've put out and sort of sit back and watch how, how that looks and see all of this effort and celebrate it. And I guess I want to just fall in love in the deepest, most sacred way. And that's probably with myself. That seems to be really important to me right now. I think it's time to really, really deeply, I guess fall in love with myself and the world. KG: I think that's a perfect sentiment to end on. Julie, thank you so much for being here today. Where can we find the Kefir Cookbook? JS: So the Kefir Cookbook is available on Amazon, Barnes and Noble, Whole Foods has it on the shelf. Independent bookstores, you know, all the places that you buy your books. KG: Perfect. Well, I know we're looking forward to trying out the recipes and again, thank you so much for being here with us today on the #WeGotGoals podcast. JS: Thank you so much for having me. CK: Great. Hey goal getters. This is co-host and producer Cindy Kuzma here.We’re about to play another one of your goals. This one was also recorded live at the Hotel Moxy. We've got a few more coming up for you in the weeks ahead that we recorded live at the Michelob Ultra SweatWorkingWeek Fitness Festival a couple weeks ago as well. Stay tuned too because soon we are going to have a way for you to email or call us with your goals and you can be a part of this very podcast. Thank you so much for listening. And here is your goal. JB: My name is Jaime black. I am a podcaster based in Chicago. CK: Excellent. And Jaime, what is a big goal that you have accomplished and how did you get there or what is the goal you have for the future? JB: That's a good question. I was just, I was just told about 40 seconds ago that I'm doing this. So, um, you know, for me a big goal that I have ahead of me this year is a—well I guess I should say this, a big goal I had recently in the last year was setting up a podcasting class. I teach a podcasting class through a few different platforms like AirBN&B experiences and Dabble. And so getting that up and running was a goal in 2017 and now that that is running, you know, the way that it works is people physically come to my studio space in Pilsen and take the class in person. So my new goal for this year is to really get the, um, the online component of that class active. I have it on one platform. There's like three or four other platforms I'm trying to get it on. So just building the podcasting class that people can take it in person or online and you know, like we're here today because of all the podcast stuff, everything I do is just podcasts related. CK: So, but ah, getting that online presence. So that's like a multifaceted goal, right? Because first you have to figure out the technology and then you have to figure out the marketing. So what are some of the things that you're doing to, to bring that all together? JB: Yeah, there's a lot of steps to building an online class and I'm very new to it. I have it on one platform called teachable. And that was a learning experience because I do a lot of audio work, but I don't do a lot of video work. So taking a class that I teach, it's three hours long and building video content around that when again, I'm not a video producer first and foremost, that was a learning experience and now now that it happened on one platform, I've got to reformat in and kind of retool it so that it could live on a few different platforms. Each of which have their own format and model and you know, kind of activation level. So, you know, it's just plugging these things into different platforms. And uh, and then once it's even alive, then of course you have to actually, like you said, market it, get it out there. And that's just the beginning of getting it just posted on a platform. CK: So how do you plan to get the word out? JB: I think I want to tell me like, just promoted on youtube and I'm like, Oh man, it's going to be more video work, isn't it? But I think, yeah, I think that's what it's going to come down to as short video clips that are going, like help promote and talk about the class and you know, how it can help people learn how to podcast because we're here today because podcasting is really great. So this is a really good time to learn how to become a podcaster because there are resources like this booth here at the Moxy Chicago. Um, and it's just in general, it's, we're in this time now where people are really passionate about podcasts and a lot of people are really finding them. CK: It's true, it's true. So how do people find you and your classes? JB: Yeah, great question. So you can look at dynastypodcasts.com, it's plural. So dynastypodcasts.com with the s at the end of podcasts. I'm, we've got links to the class there and I'm always active on twitter. My twitter is Jamie black, jaimeblack. So I'm always posting my links. If you see me go six hours, without tweeting, like call my parents, something's really wrong, so yeah. CK: Awesome Jamie, well thank you for all of your help here today and thank you so much for sharing your goal. JB: Well thank you for letting me help with this podcast. CK: This podcast was produced by me, Cindy Kuzma, and it's another thing that's better with friends, so please share it with yours. You can subscribe wherever you get your podcasts and if you have a chance to leave us a rating and a review while you're there, we would really appreciate it. Special thanks to J. Mano for our theme music; to our guest this week, Julie Smolansky; and to TechNexus for the recording studio.  

If there's one thing I've learned from listening to over a year of #WeGotGoals, it's that building a business or achieving a major goal is rarely as easy as these rockstar goal-getters make it seem. But for Katlin Smith, keeping things simple is the secret ingredient to her success with Simple Mills, an all-natural baking mix and foods company that uses recognizable, natural ingredients in place of things like high-fructose corn syrup and artificial ingredients. Smith started Simple Mills in 2012, right after she began cleaning up her diet and cutting out processed food and sugar. Almost instantly, a lightbulb went off in her head. "Growing up, I learned okay, food affects your weight, it affects your digestive system. But never did I think that food could affect your immune system or the other things we're learning about now, like anxiety, depression, or cancer. And it was just stunning to me that food can affect those things." Armed with these realizations, Smith realized she had to do something to change how people eat — and thus, Simple Mills was born. And even though the premise of Simple Mills was — and continues to be — clean, nutritious foods for a better life, Smith has never shied away from a great mission that expands beyond the grocery store aisle. In fact, once she realized how much her health was affected by a clean, unprocessed diet, Smith went home and did something I truly identify with: she made a list. But not just any list. "I brainstormed 10 different ways that I could impact the way that people are eating and what they're eating and how many kinds of whole foods they're eating," Smith shared. "It ranged everything from going and getting my master's in public health to starting a natural food company that would help change what people are eating." (Spoiler alert: that last one is the idea that won out) Recently, Smith was able to participate in a life-changing trip made available through her inclusion on the 2017 Forbes' 30 Under 30 list. With about 85 other attendees, Smith traveled all over Israel, including at the Syrian and Jordan border, learning about all the complexities behind the conflict in the Middle East. Seems heavy for something that looks like a press tour on the surface, right? Yes — but according to Smith, the trip helped open her eyes to the larger complexities facing the world, in addition to sparking ideas for how she and Simple Mills can have an impact in spaces larger than grocery stores. "There were two key realizations for me on that trip," Smith reflected. "The first was that what we have today we can take for granted really easily, and things can change. The other thing that I really thought coming out of that trip was just how not simple conflict is." Even more surprising about the trip? It was entirely paid for by Schusterman, the company who invited Smith and the other attendees. So what was the catch? No catch, revealed Smith — just a firm reminder that with great power comes great responsibility, and all the standout attendees on the trip had the means to truly change the world. Fresh off the trip when we talked, Smith takes that responsibility incredibly seriously and intends to start by using Simple Mills as a platform to change the food industry. From there, the sky's the limit. "I do plan on doing more things with my life than just Simple Mills. There are a lot of problems in the world, and a lot of problems to solve and I think that if you have like the energy and the resources to impact the world, you absolutely should." We can't wait to see what Smith does next. Listen to Katlin talk to me about her goals on this week’s episode of #WeGotGoals by downloading his episode wherever you get your podcasts. If you like the show as much as we do, be sure to subscribe and leave it a rating and a review. And! Don't take out your earbuds before you listen to the end of this podcast — we've got a real-life goal from a goal-getter like you that you've got to tune in for. ------- JAC: Welcome to #WeGotGoals, a podcast by aSweatLife.com on which we talked to high achievers about their goals. I'm Jeana Anderson Cohen; with me, I have Kristin Geil and Maggie Umberger. MU: Good morning, Jeana. KG: Hey Jeana. JAC: Good morning MU: Kristen, this week you got to speak to Katlin Smith, who is the founder and CEO of Simple Mills. KG: That's right. Maggie. I got to chat with Katlin Smith who has been a friend of aSweatLife for awhile and it's been so exciting watching her company grow from when she first founded it back in 2013 while she was still working as a full time consultant at Deloitte. It was really interesting and inspiring to hear her talk about how she would wake up at 4 in the morning, bake for a few hours and then go right to her full time job and yeah, I think we got a lot of great information out of her from this interview. JAC: And we've talked to Katlin a few times just through the years and seeing the company grow, but this is really the first time we've heard her talk about how she's really introspective. Can you speak to that? KG: Yeah, so Katlin is a self described introvert, which I always think is really fascinating for people who are entrepreneurs and CEOs who—she also mentioned she's in meetings, you know, 70 to 80 percent of her day, so I was really interested to hear how she balances that side of her personality with being such a forward facing public persona. So we got to talking about what helps her recharge from being in front of people all the time, always talking, always in conversations and I think the tips that she offered for how to recharge as a business leader who's an introvert will be really helpful for our listeners. MU: Speaking of being a business leader, she was one of Forbes’ 2017, 30 under 30 business leaders. So she just came back from an incredible trip to Israel and you got to speak to her just off of coming home from that trip. KG: Yeah. So Katlin was one of Forbes 30 under 30 last year and one of the perks that she was offered is that another company sponsors a full-blown trip to Israel for anyone who's graduated, so to speak, from the 30 under 30 class. And this company covers everything from airfare to hotels to experiences. And Katlin was talking about how amazing it was and how they kept blowing her mind with all the different experiences that she and I think it was roughly 80 other people got to have. But when she and her other travelers, we're asking the trip leaders, you know, what's the catch? Why did you bring us all here? The trip leaders, were simply saying that they wanted these business leaders of the present and of the future to realize how much power they truly have when it comes to changing the world. KG: And you know, she quoted the old Spiderman line with great power comes great responsibility. And I thought that was really interesting because Katlin started Simple Mills, she said, to change the way people eat, which is not a small feat in and of itself. But now after this trip, it really seems like she's thinking much more globally about how she and her company can impact the world in ways beyond just how we eat and where we grocery shop. JAC: And it's important to note that what simple mills makes is baked goods and sort of the Betty Crocker-esque products that are gluten-free and made out of whole foods and whole ingredients. And as someone who eats gluten free, it was incredibly impactful for me because I am an added Cheezit in years and Simple Mills has a product, a cracker, that's just like a Cheezit. So can you talk a little bit about why she started down this journey to make this gluten-free whole food option? KG: Yep. You'll hear the full story in the interview, but she was suffering from things like joint pain and seasonal allergies and she was trying to think of different ways that she could remedy herself and different ways that she could eat and live her life so that she could feel the best possible. So that's really how Simple Mills started. But she, this wasn't her only idea. She, at one point she said she brainstorm 10 different ways that she could change the way the world eats and Simple Mills was the one that stuck. So it's a really interesting story and I think people are going to love this interview. MU: We cannot wait to hear it. Here is Kristen with Katlin. JAC: Hey, stick around. At the end of this episode, you'll hear from some real life goal-getters who will tell you the goals that they've achieved and the goals they're going after. KG: Welcome to #WeGotGoals. My name is Kristen Geil and I am here with Katlin Smith, the CEO and founder of Simple Mills. Katlin, how are you? KS: Doing great. Thank you for having me. KG: No problem. We are super excited to have you here on the podcast. We've had you on a panel to speak before, we;ve featured you on the blog several times, but this will be the first time that we really get to sit down and hear your story in an audio sense. So we're really excited. First of all, let's start off with the big goal that we ask everybody about on this podcast. What is a big goal that you have worked toward in the past? Why was it important to you and what did you do to get there? KS: Yeah, so that's that. That will probably be a pretty long answer. I think starting Simple Mills was a huge thing for me. So I started this company about five years ago. So around that time I cleaned up my diet. I took out a lot of the processed food, a lot of the sugar, and when I did my joint pain went away, my seasonal allergies went away. I had loads more energy and it really shocked me because I, growing up I, I think I learned about, OK, food affects your weight. It affects your digestive system, but never did I think that food could affect your immune system or that, the other things we're learning about now, like anxiety, depression, cancer, all of these things that we're seeing skyrocketing rates of. And it was just stunning to me that food can affect those things. And so once I learned that I felt a, I felt like I had to do something, like there was just no option about it. It's funny because sometimes people ask me like, oh, how did you decide? Like how did you know if you were going to start it or not? And in my mind there was no option. It was just like I have to do something about this. And so I actually went home one day and I brainstormed 10 different ways that I could impact the way that people are eating and what they're eating and how many kind of whole foods they're eating. KS: And it ranged everything from going and getting my master's in public health to starting a natural food company that would help change what people are eating. So it was the natural food company route that I went. And so the whole idea for simple mills is starting this food company that makes all of these kind of traditional things that you love eating, that are convenient to eat, that are tasty to eat. And instead of making them out of tons of carbs and sugar and processed ingredients and things you can't pronounce, making them out of things that you actually want to be eating more of like almonds or coconut flour or sunflower seeds, but putting it in that same like recognizable shape, texture, flavor, and my thought with that and, and I think what I've seen over the past five years is that by doing that, you're able to slowly change what people are eating so that it's not just, okay, you have to go and follow this, like this polarized diet of gluten free or Paleo, which our products are, but instead it's, here's a product that here's a way to like, eat, eat really great food without necessarily sacrificing the convenience or the flavor or what have you. KS: So yeah, I mean the big goal, it's changing what people eat and changing the expectation of what people eat. The second thing that I'll say about that is that when you change what's out there, and I, I really didn't, I kind of underestimated this in the beginning, but when you change what's out there, you change the average of what's out there. So when you look at the shelf now in Whole Foods or in Jewel or Target or Kroger, which are all places where we're sold. We've raised the average of what's sitting on the shelf and so what that means is that other players who are sitting on the shelf also have to change their game and so if consumers come to expect, OK, maybe this shouldn't have so much sugar or maybe this shouldn't have as many processed ingredients then other players will change what they're doing as well. And so I like to say that a rising tide raises all boats and so part of our mission is not just changing what our consumers eat, but changing what our competitors’ consumers eat as well. KG: Thinking back to when you first had the idea for Simple Mills in 2013, now we're super used to seeing things in the grocery store aisles like ice cream alternatives or dairy free milk or gluten free everything, but that wasn't the case when you first had the idea for Simple Mills. Was that an advantage or a disadvantage being kind of a outlier in the food industry when you started? KS: I think that we came in at just the right time. I think that if we had come in three years earlier, it might've been too early because what really happened and the reason why we, why we see that today is there's this general awakening that's happening, that's happened with me personally and it has happened with a lot of our consumers, which is that people are realizing that the food that they eat affects how they feel and what they're able to do on a daily basis, and this has been in large part enabled by influencers, by people talking online about their diets. This has been kind of something that's come about at the same time that kind of this entire influencer community and people researching, well, what if I, what if I tried this, what happens? And and researching it for themselves versus relying solely on the advice of a healthcare practitioner. And so I think that without that trend, next to kind of putting our products on the shelf, I'm not sure that it would have taken quite as quickly, but now that people are making that association, it's been. It's been a lot easier. KG: Let's go back a little bit. You said that when you brainstormed these 10 ideas that you could change the way people eat, one of them was creating a natural foods company. Were you into baking and cooking growing up, or was this just more of a whim that you decided to act on? KS: Yeah, no, I was not into, I was not into baking growing up, which I feel like is a very unpopular answer to that question. But it, it really goes back to the determination and the belief that this needed to happen. I was and will do whatever it takes to, to make this idea possible and I think that that's one of the things that, you know, you talk about goals, or starting businesses. I think that there's just a lot of determination and discipline required to make any one of these ideas of success and so it takes doing the things that you did you don't necessarily want to be doing. So like for example, I, I'm an introvert. You wouldn't guess it, but I'm an introvert and I, I hate cold calling. It is like the worst, worst, worst thing to do in my mind. KG: I got chills just hearing you say that I'm the same way. It sounds like the worst punishment somebody could give me. KS: Yeah, exactly. And so like for the first year I actually had to assign an entire day per week to cold calling and I think that, not to say that baking was like cold calling, but it wasn't a passion of mine but I probably went through 90 different recipes just to get the first iterations that tasted really awesome on the market. You do what it takes to make it work. KG: When you had the idea for Simple Mills, you were working in consulting and that had been your background for awhile. How did that help drive you and creating simple mills? What traits could you develop? What skills have you learned that helped you when you decided to get this business off the ground from a side hustle to a full time job? KS: Yeah, so I don't think I would be here today or at least be where we are today without my background in consulting. It was just such a fantastic place to start my career. So I started as a management consultant at Deloitte and was there for for three years. I think one, it taught me a lot about hard work, analytics, what it like, just general professionalism, like basic skills that it takes to be a successful CEO, honestly. There’s—I will say that there's other things that I've had to learn on the other side in order to scale past the first point in the business, but I think consulting really got me through the first stages where it helped me attract investors because I had my stuff together. I could develop a model, I could figure out what my cost of goods was. I could figure out a supply chain. So it gave me a lot of the business, the business fundamentals, KG: And at some point you decided to go back to business school to learn the things beyond the fundamentals. What was it like running a company and going to business school at the same time? KS: Yeah. So I, about a year into the business I—well I guess we were just starting in our first stores. Yeah. So when we were starting in our first stores, I started at Chicago Booth to get my MBA and it was—I started out as a full time student and the business just kept getting busier and busier and busier. I think what became really important was having a clear prioritization of what mattered. So I think that a lot of people go to business school and say like, I'm going to start a business while I'm in business school and they try to do the business 100 percent, and they tried to do school 100 percent, and the social component 100 percent. For me it was the business gets number one period, and then anything else on the side that's, that's good too. KG: It’s a bonus. KS: It’s a bonus and so I went from taking three classes to two classes to one class and then that last class I think I attended about half of the actual classes themselves. Yeah, and it's not to say the program’s not amazing because I learned so much in that short time I was there, but I, I really had to focus on the business, and so when it came to, I need to make a customer phone call versus go to class, it was customer phone call every time KG: Last year. You got a really exciting honor in 2017 when you were named to the Forbes 30 under 30 list, what was it like getting that phone call? KS: It was really incredible. I just couldn't believe it. A lot of things. A lot of things that in building the business are very humbling because it at the end of the day, like I think that if I had looked at somebody on the Forbes 30 under 30 list five to 10 years ago, I would've thought, oh my gosh, and put that person up on a pedestal. But I think through this process you, you learn that the CEOs, the entrepreneurs, the people on that list were all just real people. KG: How did things change for you and Simple Mills after that award? KS: It made it a little bit easier to get press, but I don't think that there’s—this goes back to this other theory that I don't think there's any one thing that makes breaks a business. It's really easy to look at things and say, oh my gosh, this is going to be the thing that makes it. Or this is going to be the thing that that breaks it for us. And that actually creates a lot of stress as well but I think that businesses are made by a million tiny good decisions and just netting out on the positive end of that. So you'll still make bad decisions, you'll still have bad things that happen or things that you at least perceived to be bad things, but there's a bunch of tiny little things have to go right. KG: You were telling us before we actually started recording that you just got back from a really exciting trip to Israel. Can you tell us a little bit more about that? KS: Yeah, yeah. So I was out there with 85 Forbes 30 under 30 I guess, winners from the past couple of years. We were there with an organization called Schusterman and we were traveling around all over, all over Israel. We went to the Syrian border, the Jordan border. We spent a lot of time in Jerusalem and we had a, we actually had a guide the entire, the entire trip who was telling us all about the complexity of the region and, and just, it's really stunning because I think that it's really easy to look on the conflict in the Middle East and, and kind of simplify it from over here and also to say like, oh, that's just, you know, they have conflict, we don't have conflict. We're kind of in a way, we kind of look at it as we're above that. We're like, oh no, we know better than to have that level of conflict in our country. KS: But I think what, what really there were two key realizations for me on that trip. The first of which is there was that what we have today we can take for granted really easily and things can change The other thing that I really, that I really thought coming out of that trip was just how not simple conflict is. And for example, in the Middle East, like how much the conflict is connected to personal identity and, and even like the soil itself and the land itself. And it's just very easy to say like, oh yeah, all it takes us like a peace treaty and somebody can just come in and work that out. KS: But even as we're establishing the embassy in Jerusalem and it's causing this uprising, it you can see just how not simple it is, is it's not as simple as drawing lines and boundaries. But just really such a phenomenal trip I was sharing that they Schusterman actually pays for the entire trip, which is just stunning. The entire trip we were sitting there asking, so what is the catch? What is the catch? Why? Why do you bring us out here? And they said really for two reasons, one, for you to understand the complexity and for that complexity to color the decisions that you make, the degree to which you impact the world and, and, and the second is you guys are all poised to make a really positive impact on the world. And with great power comes great responsibility and, and that’s—so go out and do amazing things. KG: No pressure. KS: Yeah, no pressure. KG: Well, with Simple Mills though you had already had a big vision in mind to change the way people eat. Was it interesting to think about how you can change people's lives outside of your products? KS: Yeah, I think for, I think for me, my lifelong mission has always been to to leave the world in a better place than I found it with everything that I do. I think for right now I see so much potential for Simple Mills to impact the food space, which I consider extremely important. It impacts everything that—how we feel, our personal relationships. For example, if you're more anxious, like how, how that's going to impact your personal relationships, your personal happiness. I think that there's so much there and there's also so much left for us to bite off and chew. So first of all going to focus on that. That's my disclaimer, but I, I do plan on doing more things with my life than, than just Simple Mills as well. There are a lot of, a lot of problems in the world and a lot of problems to solve and I think that if you have like the energy and the, I guess like the resources to impact the world, you absolutely should and really take advantage of all of the people who have invested in you that this brings up another point which is there's this experiment out there where they put two people in a room to play Monopoly and they give one person more money and another person less money and we'll just use money as a, as an analogy for now, but more resources and they have them play the game. KS: And inevitably the person who had more money coming into the game wins the game. And they always ask the person who won, OK, so why did you win? And they always point back to, oh, I made this particularly great decision here. Or I got really lucky with that roll of the dice. But they never point back to the fact that they started the game with more resources. And so the interesting lesson there is that we kind of overlook the role that, that resources play in how people arrive at their, at their destinations, and so particularly if you're sitting in a place where you've had a lot of people who have invested in your education, who have invested in, in your learning, you have that much more responsibility to use those resources and, and to kind of bring other people up and along and, and invest in other people. KG: Who invested in you early on? Not moneywise necessarily, but time and energy and support? KS: Oh my gosh, there's been so many people that it's like you can look back to so many people who have, who have changed the way that you operate. I mean, and even started certainly with, with your parents putting in just like so much time and effort. I do remember this point in time when I was in high school and my mom looked at me and she said, You're gonna do, you're gonna do great things. And I think that was actually a self fulfilling prophecy. I don't think necessarily that I was going to do great things. But because she believed in me and believed that I was going to, that I felt like I had to. So I think that's one. I mean I also, I think more recently another, another one has been one of my mentors. So I met my professional coach, I guess I was about a year into the business and we instantly clicked and I realized that she just had such a phenomenal understanding of people and how people operate. KS: And I said, I have to work with you. I, I, I don't understand these things very well. Let's, let's work more on this. And so since then she's actually been my coach and now is a coach for our entire 35 person team. But I think I think working with her, and we can talk more about this, but I think working with her has really helped develop me into a leader who can lead a team of 35 versus lead a team of four to five. But again, there's just been so many people throughout my history that I can look back on. KG: I'm really curious about this professional coach, especially since you have a background in management consulting. Were you just super aware that this existed and this was something you could benefit from or how did you find out about her even? KS: Yeah. I had no idea that that really existed and actually at the time she wasn't even a leadership coach. She was an operations consultant. Today she has a, a very large leadership consulting practice that works for a number of entrepreneurs here in Chicago and other cities. But I think there is—I had a business school professor who said that being an entrepreneur is one of the most downwardly mobile professionals that are out there. KG: That's encouraging. KS: Very encouraging. So I mean I think going in knowing that is actually really helpful because it helps you realize that you shouldn't take being the CEO of a company for granted, that just because you started the company doesn't mean that you stay in that role, and that many, many entrepreneurs don't make it because you have to grow super quickly. So where if you were in a large corporation going from managing, you know, two people to 10 people to 20 people to, you know, maybe 100 people might take a number of a number of years and career moves. Like that might be a 10 year shift. You're making those shifts super quickly as an entrepreneur and so you need something to help accelerate that learning or you just might not make it, and so when I met her I realized that she had the capacity to accelerate my learning and so that's why I started working with her. KG: You're getting a crash course. Sounds like. KS: Yeah, there's something to be said for. I still believe that most things that you learn, you learn off of your mistakes, but there's something to be said for learning off the first time you make the mistake versus the fifth time. KG: Well we spend a lot of time on this podcast talking about your successes and goals you've achieved, but what was the time when you failed? KS: I think for me, the greatest failures in this business have been failures as a leader. They've been places where I've come home at the end of the day and thought, you shouldn't have said that or you shouldn't have said that that way. And knowing too that you impacted somebody else's day. Those are the toughest places because you can't really take it back. You can only move forward. There’s been times where you know, you call somebody out in a meeting and and you know that that wasn't the best way to handle it, for example, and the only thing that you can do is learn from it and say there's a reason why this happened and I'm not gonna do that again, or I won't do it this way again, and then you move forward. KG: You've also mentioned being an introvert just even on this podcast, yet you traveled with a bunch of strangers to Israel and you're the CEO of a 35 person company. What do you do to sort of give yourself that time to recharge when you're spending all of your day in meetings, talking to people like me talking to the press, all of that. KS: Yeah. I think the. I think the recharging is super important and actually a number of my entrepreneur friends are also introverts. It's quite funny that we were like this class of, I’m sure there are extroverts out there too, but we’re this class of people who do spend their entire days talking yet their preference is not to. I think first of all, making sure that you allocate sufficient time for thinking and so I have a couple things that I do to make sure that I fit that in. The first is I love flying and I love sitting on a plane because no one, no one talks to me while I'm sitting on a plane. There's nothing to interrupt me. There's no phone calls, there’s text messages. I can sit there and I can stare out the window and think about what problems we need to solve or how to solve those problems. KS: Another is taking decently frequent but short vacation. I like to think that vacation if done right, is actually something that helps your job versus versus hinders it. And so I'll take for example, a long weekend to somewhere in Arizona where I'll go hiking. I'll spend time reading, reading books that helped develop me professionally and personally and develop the way that I, the way that I see the world. And and so then as a result of that, you can kind of create faster learning cycles so that you can learn from the things that you're doing a lot faster. So I might take a particular concept. So for example, one concept that has required a lot of continuous work on my part is this idea that perfectionism is not on the excellence scale. So … KG: I need hear more about this. What does that mean? KS: It's that, it's basically that if you create a spectrum of from not excellent to excellent, perfectionism doesn't exist on there. And I think growing up in consulting or even a lot of corporations believe this, there's like this belief of no defects. So if you make a mistake, it's not OK. And so then you live your life trying not to make mistakes versus trying things out. And what happens when you try things out is, is you do make mistakes and, and it's OK sometimes or a lot of times you learn from those mistakes. And or you figured you figured out something that you wouldn't otherwise instead of spending your time optimizing something that doesn't need to be optimized. And, but this is like, this is like a lifelong skill, this isn't a OK, just get the concept and all of a sudden it's in place, it's that you have to try it, work on it, go back, relearn it, and then continue to iterate on the concept for, to, to really get it. And so then I'll read books on this topic and then go into real life, try to apply it, and then next time I go on vacation, read more books on it and recognize where I, where I haven't quite lived up to it and figure out ways to do it better moving forward. KG: That idea of embracing mistakes as learning opportunities, is that something that trickles down to your team at Simple Mills? KS: Yeah. We've actually, we've actually done entire trainings on perfectionism, but part of, I mean, part of it there is we are a very, we’re a very high achieving group and so we actually did, we did studies on, on our levels of perfectionism and our levels of perfectionism are actually higher than the doctors going through Harvard Medical School. KG: Wow. KS: So that's a problem. KG: Oh my gosh. KS: Again, not on the excellence scale. KG: Wow, that is crazy. KS: Yeah, and so we've had to. We've put a number of things in place to say, OK, it's OK to skin your knees. It's OK to make mistakes. It's OK to come out and say something, even if it's even if it's in the end, not right. And so really embracing, embracing failure and saying that's OK, or embracing it when somebody goes out on a limb and and not quickly shooting down the idea or saying no and making it a little bit more comfortable to be wrong. KG: All right, let's end with the other question that we ask everybody else who comes on this podcast. What is a big goal you have for the future? Why is it important to you and how do you think you'll get there? KS: So I, I, I am so incredibly passionate about, about changing the way that people eat. It's, it is a huge mission for, for me and and Simple Mills. I think that there's still so much that needs to be done here. We've, we've made such great progress in the past five years, so we're in, we’re in about 13,000 stores. We are the largest natural baking mix brand, the second largest natural cracker brand, which is, which is really neat to see, but I feel like we're just at the tip of the iceberg. There's so much more that we can be doing in terms of brand awareness and getting our products out there, but even more than that, I think there is so much more that we can be doing to to really change the way that people are eating and helping more people eat simple ingredient real food and so while I won't completely share exactly how we're going to get there, I think my mission is really democratizing real food and there's a lot more up our sleeve. KG: What do you mean by real food? KS: Making it something that that's accessible to a lot more people. KG: In terms of accessible at grocery stores, price points, just it being there in general, all of the above? KS: All of the above. Making it easy, making it so that having real food in your pantry is a, is a common occurrence. KG: Well, we can't wait to see how you get there. I know we'll be keeping our eyes on you for the next few years to come and beyond. So Katlin, thank you so much for being on #WeGotGoals today. KS: Thank you for having me. CK: Hey, goal getters. Cindy Kuzma, co-host and producer here just popping in to let you know that we are about to play another one of your goals. That's right. A goal that was set and crushed by one of you, our listeners. This one was recorded during one of our live sessions at the Hotel Moxy and we also recorded a few more at the Michelob Ultra Fitness Festival at the end of SweatWorkingWeek earlier this month. Start thinking about whether you have a goal you'd like to share with us too. Soon, we’re going to have a way for you to send in your goals and you could appear right here on this very podcast. In the meantime, thank you so much for listening and here's our next real life goal-getter. CK: Tell me your name again. J: My name’s Jose. CK: Jose, it's good to meet you, Jose. Jose from Chicago? J: Yeah. Jose from Chicago. CK Okay. Tell us, Jose, either about a big goal that you reached and how you got there or about a big goal you have for the future, one or the other. J: Um, so I guess the biggest goal that I have reached already was I joined the military when I was 18 airborne infantry and I made it back in one piece. So that was a good goal to have. CK: Yeah. Yeah. So where did you, where did you go? J: Um, I was stationed in Anchorage, Alaska and I deployed to Iraq for 15 months and I was in Afghanistan for a year. CK: Oh my gosh. Wow. So how did you do that? You know, I mean, obviously some of it is just being in the right place at the right time, but um, you know, what do you think were some of the things that lead to you having a successful military career? J: Oh, definitely. Um, the team that I was on in the people that I worked with. Working in a team and being able to get each other's backs like that definitely protecting each other when you're not looking, um, helps for survival and also just all the training that we did, like constantly training all the time, all the time for every possible scenario that you could possibly imagine. CK: Wow. And does that training and that experience, I mean as, how long have you been back now? J: Um, I got out in 2010 like late 2010. Yeah. And I've had actually, now that I think about it, every job I've had outside of the military has been like in the service industry, like restaurant or a bartender or a or something like that. So like working in some sort of team capacity I guess. CK: Yeah, and you have to think on your feet and be prepared for anything and react to what's going on around you. So I'm sure that training serves you really well. J: Yeah. CK: Well thank you for your service, first of all, and congratulations on being here and, and on your new job here at the Hote Moxie, right? J: For sure. Yeah. Yeah. CK: Well thank you so much for sharing your goal with us. Really appreciate it. CK: This podcast is produced by me, Cindy Kuzma, and it's another thing that's better with friends, so please share it with yours. You can subscribe wherever you get your podcasts and while you're there, if you could leave us a rating or a review, we would really appreciate it. Special thanks to J. Mano for our theme music; to our guest this week, Katlin Smith; and to Tech Nexus for the recording studio.

As president of the U.S. expansion at F45 Training - the Australian-born fitness franchise - Marc Marano's job is as much sales as it is strategy. He's here to make Americans fall in love with F45 - and to get more franchisees in the process. And as you'll hear Marano talk through on this week's episode of #WeGotGoals, getting to F45 - the big goal he accomplished - required a giant leap away from his family's legacy business passed down from his grandfather to his father and finally to his cousin and him. As difficult as it was for him to leave the business in property, for Marano, it was even more difficult to watch friend Rob Deutsche. He opened the first F45 in Australia in 2014. “He was former banker, but again like me, decided to hang the tie up for the last time because he needed something better in his life,” Marano recalled. After six months of careful deliberation, Marano made his decision. "That goal was achieved only to walk out of a business that I knew everything about to walk into the fitness world that I had only ever been a consumer," he said. Now the he's in the fitness world, there's no turning back and no slowing down as he chases his next big goal - total market penetration. The franchise is in 22 states in two years. "In the last 24 months, we've awarded over 300 F45 studios in the U.S. We have currently, I would say it's just about to topple over 100 studios that have opened," Marano said. "We are awarding anywhere between 20 and 50 studios across the country a month." How's he doing it? "By traveling wherever I have to go, by speaking to whoever I have to." Uprooting his life on one beach in Australia to another beach in the US, Marano moved to spread F45 to the US from Los Angeles. But he isn't going it alone - he noted that his fiancé Emma Rose - also Australian and known for her time on the Bachelor Australia - has been a steadying presence in his life. A big goal he stated for the future was building a family of six kids. But first he'll have to wait for his life to settle down - he spends more time in the air, traveling to new F45 locations than he does on the ground.   ___   JAC: Welcome to #WeGotGoals, a podcast by aSweatLife.com on which we talk to high achievers about their goals. I'm Jeana Anderson Cohen; with me, I have Cindy Kuzma and Maggie Umberger. MU: Morning, Jeana. CK: Good morning, Jeana. JAC: Hello. MU: Jeana, you spoke with Marc Marano, the head of North American Expansion of F45 training this week. JAC: I did. Marc Morano's whole job is to plant as many F45 franchises across the United States as possible, which is super interesting because it's a fitness franchise that comes from Australia, which Marc, you'll hear say in the interview, is not super common for Australia, it's not a franchise sort of country. It's more of like a one shop family owned kind of country. MU: Well, funnily enough, he also left his family business to do this job. Right? JAC: He did, yeah. It was a a real emotional struggle for mark as he sort of looked at an opportunity to work with F45, which was started by his friend and help grow that company beyond the borders beyond the continent and country of Australia. CK: It's interesting too, right, because he kind of talked about even though he had a love for his family business and it was emotional for him to walk away, he had this sense of freedom in doing something that was a little bit more meaningful to him even though ultimately he was then going to be executing someone else's vision instead of carrying his own family legacy forward. Can you talk about how we kind of sorted through all that? JAC: It was a difficult decision, but at the end of it all, he said that he followed his heart, which is important at the end of the day because you have to get up everyday and do a job. You're spending most of your time at a job and I think what it came down to is he surrounded himself in business originally with family. It was the company that he was working for, it was a multigenerational. Companies started in Australia in real estate that was handed down to him and his cousin by his father and his uncle. He has a big family and family is a huge priority to him. So as he was looking at the business and walking away from it, he did so really respectfully and after some heartfelt conversations because he wanted at that point to follow a passion project and to do something different. He didn't really talk through sort of the idea of legacy, but I would imagine that he had to think long and hard about legacy and about what he was walking away from because he talks about how his father is his, his greatest inspiration and I can only imagine how difficult that must have been. But now mark is on an airplane a lot of the time traveling from city to city in the United States. He's based in L.A. now, he and his Instagram famous slash the Bachelor, Australia famous fiancee, get to travel a lot together and get to do some of this work side by side because her job is really portable and he talked about how having her by his side made it a whole lot less lonely. Because again, I would imagine that going from being surrounded by a support system of your family to sort of striking out on your own is totally different and it's sort of a unique challenge, but here he is doing it and he's built his own sort of family and support system within that business as well. CK: So we're really excited about hearing this interview with Marc and Jeana. JAC: And stick around listener for the end of the episode where you'll hear from real life goal-getters and what they're achieving out there in the real world today. JAC: I'm Jeana Anderson Cohen and I'm here with Marc Marano on the #WeGotGoals podcast. MM: Thanks Jeana, thank you for having me on. JAC: So mark, how do you spend your days? MM: Now, I'm very fortunate to be in a career path that um, and we'll go into that a little bit later, but in something that I really, truly love. I felt that for a long time, even though I was working in a position with family and in a family business and you know, putting on that suit and tie every day that I was a corporate refugee, I use the term corporate refugee because I was not working for the man so to speak, but I was working in a career path that was financially rewarding, but it wasn't giving me any soulful gratification. JAC: That sort of tells me what led you to do what you do every single day, but what you do every single day is F45 and you are in charge of ... MM: I'm the president of the U.S. expansion at F45 training, so I try and bring F45, which is the world's fastest growing fitness franchise, to people around the U.S. JAC: World's fastest growing fitness franchise. That is a big title and a big responsibility for someone who's in charge of bringing it to the United States. Wouldn't you say? MM: Very much so. Very much so. JAC: Is it a, is it a lot of sort of responsibility to continue that growth? MM: Yeah, I mean we're not in any great rush. This has been a very organically grown business. To give you a little bit of the history of F45. We were born in Australia in 2014. One studio, a very good friend of mine, Rob Deutsch, opened up a group training facility. He was former banker, but again like me, decided to hang the tie up for the last time because he needed something better in his life. He opened up a group training facility and kept asking me to come along and try it and I was happy in the existence that I was currently living in both work life and in my exercise life, but to support a friend. I said, OK, I'll come and try it. and was immediately addicted immediately. So much so that fast forward a couple of years I decided to leave my family business to pursue journey of bringing F45 to everyone's life. JAC: And before we get into the big questions, obviously F45 is a big part of your life, but it, it sounds like F45. You two were born in Australia and I've had to transport or transplant yourself from your homeland to the US. So what has that process been like? MM: I think Americans and Australians are, they have a lot of similarities and you know, I'm based predominantly in, and I use that loosely, but I'm based predominantly in Los Angeles where our headquarters is in the U.S. Um, the transformation from Australia, Sydney, Australia, which is a coastal city, beautiful beaches, to Los Angeles, which again is a coastal city, beautiful beaches was not a huge culture shock, you know, and I've had the pleasure now of seeing so many different cities of America, meeting so many great people. Every city almost of America for me is like a different country, you know, you have so many different cultures from east to west, north to south. JAC: We are a hardy stock in Chicago where we are right now filming this or recording this. So I hope that we've been friendly to you. MM: Chicago is definitely in my top three cities of America. JAC: Big thumbs up to that. So let's get into the questions. Marc, can you tell me about a big goal that you've accomplished, why it was important to you and how you got there? MM: Yeah, so for the better part of six months, I knew that I wanted to leave--I don't like the term leave because I was working with family, but I wanted to transport myself from corporate Australia, being in involved in property, in a family business, to joining friends and family at F45. It was just a really super difficult decision to make. The process was not easy. My family thought immediately that I was making a mistake. It was a business that was handed down from my grandfather to my father and his brother and then from my father and his brother when they passed to my cousin and I, and we ran the business for almost 20 years. So that was a very--but the goal was there. The intention was there. I was freed almost when my cousin who was my business partner, gave me the keys to the car and said, go for it. MM: You know, if this is the decision you wanted to make, then you know what's right in your heart and that goal was achieved only to walk out of a business that I knew everything about to walk into the fitness world that I had only ever been a consumer. I'd never been somebody that was trying to welcome F45 into or, or any business into their life. I'd never been in franchising. Australia is not a big franchise country, so it was exciting. It was nerve wracking, but that goal was achieved and now when I look back, the obstacles that I had to overcome were not that big, when I look back in hindsight. JAC: So it sounds like there was an emotional obstacle more than anything else because you had to follow your heart out of your family business and into something that was calling to you that you didn't necessarily know that much about. How has your relationship been with your family after? MM: Fine. Fine. I mean family's most important. It's one of my pillars of, of how I live my life. It's family first, always, and now I have another family. You know, with everyone that I've been involved in with F45, all of the I look after the expansion of the franchise, so I try and find people who we are partnering with to open up their own business and a lot of them have shared the same journey that I currently did where they were potentially stuck behind that desk, what I call the corporate refugee, you know, doing something for 10 or 15 years that they did because they thought it was right or because they went to college and they studied accounting or business or banking and that's what they did because it was the natural progression and they ultimately love the fitness industry and they wanted to help change other people's lives as well as potentially owning their own business in the search for that ultimate financial freedom that everyone wants. JAC: Would you say you're very risk averse? MM: Me? No, not me. JAC: It didn't take a lot for you to overcome fear because there wasn't that much there, right? MM: Um, the fear was I think more so letting people down. The fear that I had was, am I, am I not making the right decision for Marc Marano, but am I letting down my family? Am I letting down my father who's not with us anymore? You know, there was still--he still is the one person I look up to in life. He's my mentor even though he hasn't been with us for so long. That was the fear of letting my family down, fear of letting my, my mother and my sister who aren't part of the business, but I'm making a decision that ultimately they're going to have consequences because they're going to have to put up with me if this doesn't work, you know? So that was the, the, the biggest fear I had not in the actual work itself because fitness, anybody who likes fitness, anybody who has an affinity with exercise, you know, it's, we're helping people. So if you're involved in fitness, whether you're on the consumer side or you're a personal trainer or you are a, an owner of a gym, I think the motive there is fantastic because you're, you're looking at helping people. So the gratification you get from that is incredible because you're having somebody say to you at the end of the day, thank you know, thank you for changing my life. Thank you for a great workout. Thank you for helping me on that one exercise that I was having difficulty with. JAC: So it sounds like you changed sort of the expectations that, that maybe you were thinking about. You went from worrying about letting people down to thinking about all of the people who you could help or lift up. MM: Yeah, very much, very much. And fast forward, again after the real estate is I owned and I owned a couple F45s, I started them in Australia and it was from the onset that I saw that change in people, change in not only people's energy levels, the community that were built around it, the amazement people were by the actual product itself and that really inspired me. It really uplifted me to go out and bring this to more people. That's I guess where the journey started in America for me was I have complete belief in it like most people would in their own product, you know, so there's obviously a bias there, but I tell people in the first educational step that they have to take in any career, but talking about F45 is I say go and take a class, just go and see what F45 is. I believe that they will love it, but they need to go and appreciate exactly why the world over has fallen in love with this product is just to go and try the product JAC: sweatlife we always talk about how fitness is the catalyst for living your best life and it sounds like through F45 you're helping other people do that, but you two are probably living a better life. Would you say that's true? MM: I am. I mean I. There are sacrifices in I'm traveling a lot, but greater good is, you know, I am taking advantage of seeing some incredible cities around the country. My health has probably been better now than it ever has been. Working in the fitness industry, it's kind of, they go hand in hand. I am Italian, so sometimes my food deviates a little bit been in. I've been very fortunate in being able to travel. My life is much happier and healthier and I'm so grateful that my partner has been able to share the journey with me. She's been probably my biggest support system since the onset since I was in the US breaking ground, staying in Airbnbs and hotels and getting on a plane and flying people around the country to see F45. That was the extent of what I was really doing was I was literally saying to somebody who I felt could be a great candidate in opening up their own studio was saying, I'll meet you in X, Y, Z, or meet you at this city because there's a studio open. Let's fly there together. We'll take a class together and we can talk about the product and that's how it really started, you know. JAC: And just to touch briefly on your partner, I know that you were mentioning that she's been a great supporter of yours. The entrepreneurial journey is lonely. Being able to bring someone along the way with you is incredible and some listeners at home may recognize your fiance from MM: instagram, instagram, she's insta famous--she's probably gonna kill me if she hears this. She's an an influencer, a blogger and my fiance now. JAC: Congratulations. MM: Thank you. And she's been, as I said, the biggest support system for me and to all of the listeners who have the, the privilege of sharing their journey with somebody else and having that support, it really does strengthen you, you know, to be able to move mountains. JAC: And it probably does help that she can do her job most anywhere so she can really be there with you along the way. MM: Yeah, very much so. JAC: Soet's get to the second question, the future. So talk to me about a big goal that you have for the future and how you intend to get there. MM: Right. So I believe in all my heart that F45 is the greatest training platform on the planet, I really do. So my goal is to bring F45's name into every home in the U.S. especially that's that's my immediate goal. How do I intend on doing that? By traveling wherever I have to go, by speaking to whoever I have to, by making sure that every single one of you listeners out there pick up your phone, Google F45, find the closest destination to where you are. Seeing whether or not it is something that you love as much as I do, as much as the rest of the world do, and I guarantee it'll change your life. There is four, for example, there are four challenges we do a year which is called the Body Transformation Challenge that incredibly changes people's energy levels, their body-- obviously, it's called the Body Transformation Challenge. Where F45 has, it delivers you meal recipes. It gives you a point system on what your daily routine is, your sleep, what you should be cutting out of your diet, and we have people that literally changed their life after eight weeks. You know, we had a studio that I own. I had a lady who wrote a letter to the head trainer to tell her that she had tried everything. She had tried every product in the marketplace. She had tried to do it herself and just could not change. She did two, eight week challenges in a row and she lost over 70 pounds, which was life changing. It truly is life changing, something like that. So what I want to do is I want everyone in the U.S. to try an F45 studio. That might be a big goal, but I believe that we could open three to 4,000 studios across the country and at least give people the opportunity of seeing the success that I've witnessed around the world. JAC: So let's break that down. There are two sort of big goals within that goal and there's one that's sort of the, we'll call it the intangible, 100 percent penetration in the United States, which is lofty, but we like a lofty goal, a big hairy audacious goal here at aSweatLife. And then there was the more tangible goal, which was the 3,000 to 4,000 physical bricks on the ground studios in the U.S. How is it going so far? MM: We have awarded in the last 24 months, we've awarded over 300 F45 studios in the U.S. We have currently, I would say it's just about to topple over 100 studios that have opened. Tomorrow for anybody that's in Chicago, and I don't know when this is going out, but Schaumburg in Chicago, he's actually opening. Very much looking forward to seeing that studio, I hear Schaumburg's a beautiful part of Chicago I've not been there yet. Yeah. We hope to have by the close of 2018, we hope to have 200 studios opened in the US. We are awarding anywhere between 20 and 50 studios across the country a month and the more we open, the more people, as I said it is infectious. It's something that people become addicted to very, very quickly. And it's amazing how many people that go and exercise inside of the studio turn into their own business owner. They turn into franchisees themselves from seeing the magic that occurs inside of a studio, the communities and families that have built inside of that studio JAC: And for for a studio that is franchise driven, there are two sort of audiences. There are the owners and there are the consumers. So for your owners, you're empowering them. With that I a different set of tools and resources and for your consumers, you're empowering them through fitness. When it comes to your owners, what have you sort of seen as far as personal journeys and success? MM: So the owners of F45 studios, if we were to look into in a room filled with people who were the owners of the studio? And I would say the personal trainer who has always had that heart to bring fitness to people's lives to help them along their fitness journey but has never really had a financial roadmap laid out for them. F45 is, we being a franchiser, we've really tried to simplify that for them. There is the, the pure investor who looks at the dollars and cents, you know, they look at 100 businesses and they see the financial sense in F45 and they plug in their employment staff and, and, and away they go. And then there's the, like me, there's the corporate refugee who has sat behind the desk for far too long doing what they do in a monotonous wave for far too long. MM: They're tired of being tired and they want to bring their own business to the market. Something that they believe in, something that they can bring their skillset, whether it's on the floor or behind the scenes, they want to go and open up their own business across the board. So we have now 1100 studios awarded around the world in over 40 countries, about 40 percent, 39-40 percent of our franchisees own more than one location. So the and that, that's a really great success point for me is for somebody who's never owned their own business, somebody who's never been involved in fitness to go and open up a studio and the success that they see there, they call me and then that's the best phone call I can ever have is Marc, I'm ready to open up my second studio. For me, that's it's very empowering. It's that is the gratification that I didn't have in my former life was to have somebody that they're passionate about, someone that has never owned their own business to open up an F45 studio and a short time afterwards call me and say I'm ready for number two and that's shows me the success that we're seeing. JAC: And gym ownership is hard. We hear time and time again from people who start their own gyms and scale them themselves and build number two and number three, that that process is very challenging. So how are you sort of helping these owners go from taking your idea or F45's idea and building a business from from sort of the point where they sign the contract forward? MM: We basically have a five day orientation course to get them from zero to 60--you say zero to 60, here in America we say zero to 100 kilometers and miles. We get them from zero to 60 during that five-day course in everything. Marketing campaigns, client interaction, what the collateral that we offer in our intellectual operations manual that they have access to in how to set up the studio. The biggest access point, the biggest assistance, the biggest tool that we afford our franchisees with is the F45TV. F45 TV is a technology system placed around a studio so that you as the consumer would walk in and you would see nine televisions around a studio of which when you're about to embark into this group training class, you will see each of the exercises actually video taped and displayed on these monitors. MM: You also have timing technology on there. So what it in essence does is your group training exercise program that you're about to embark on, is pre programmed F45 itself three weeks in advance. So you as the owner, you as the trainer, you don't have to worry about that constant headache. How do I innovate my workout tomorrow? How do I create a new product, a new platform that's going to excite my clients tomorrow? So we've already done that for you so that you as the owner building out your studio, building your business, you know, giving, giving everything you can to that investment is, the biggest headache is looked after. We also have a F45 FM, so we have over 800 playlists that have been worked out for you that you can plug in. The way that we have these systems, processes and procedures in place really allows the investor, the gym owner to scale their business, worrying about who in the organizational chart they need to plug in to the respective fields. Personally, head trainers, a membership manager, a studio manager, and it allows them to replicate that very easily. JAC: So you started your journey with F45 and 2015. What has been your greatest learning about the fitness industry in that time? MM: My biggest learning experience in the fitness industry, and I'm going to compare it to my previous world, was, I was in property and property is something that you either can or can't do, that that's it. You either can go and buy a property or you just, you know, you don't have the means to. Fitness is very different because firstly our entry point is very small relatively to an investment and people from all walks of life--it's, that's what the incredible part is, all love fitness in some capacity. I remember high school, college, university, the camaraderie you had in sports and when you went into your working life, you miss that. You miss, you know, the competitiveness, the, the sports I miss that. I missed being able to just go and run around and whatever it was that soccer, basketball, football, tennis, whatever it was. And I think in the fitness world, everyone who is still enamored with health and fitness, love that camaraderie. MM: They love the community. There's a number of fitness organizations around the world that are based the success on that community. You know, F45 now has an incredibly growing, fast-growing community. So that was one of the first things was the biggest thing was that my client, whether it was inside of one of my studios or it was somebody that was looking to to open their own business, was huge. It was anyone could, could go and open up their own business. You know, they just had to have the desire, the passion, and the want that. That's the big thing is for all those people who are motivated by being an entrepreneur motivated by potentially opening up their own business is number one, you have to take that first step from the precipice of the, of that cliff. And number two is that desire needs to be there. And you mentioned how difficult owning gyms were. Not that I disagree with you. JAC: You can disagree. MM: Can I? JAC: Yeah. MM: I disagree. I think that running a gym is not a difficult business. I think that your desire, your want is the same as those people who are coming in there. You don't need, we're not a big box. You don't need 10,000 members to making an F45 successful. Two to 400 members and and you know, you've built your community, your highly profitable and it's a very easy career path to be happy, you know, to have that soulfully rewarding daily wake up as to what you're doing. JAC: It's an. It's an interesting take because I, I guess the reason why I say owning a fitness studio is challenging is because when you're, when you're going from perhaps someone who has a passion for fitness, but maybe you haven't owned a business before or you're starting from scratch, you're starting all of your systems from scratch too, from getting a lease on a property to hiring a staff to marketing that. So I think we're saying the same thing, but I think we're saying them differently. So going it alone ... MM: Going it alone very, yeah very much. JAC: Challenging. But if you have sort of the systems in place and perhaps the help to get you there can be a lot easier. And that's what I think I hear you saying that F45 does. MM: That's I guess at F45 is tested, tried, trued, failed so many times now in the past that we have not the magic recipe, but we understand I guess what, what footpath people need to take to to reach that success point and any business is not going to be a walk in the park. Anybody that's opening up any business, whether it's a retailer, a fitness business or otherwise, you know, there's always going to be obstacles and challenges. But that's what makes the journey so much better. JAC: Well, let's talk about. Let's talk about your big hairy audacious goal now. The goal of 100 percent penetration in the United States. Every American citizen trying F45. We love a BHAG here at #WeGotGoals; we've had other entrepreneurs tell us that they wanted to have a 100 percent penetration in coffee production for example, when we talked to Matt Matros who started Limitless Coffee, that was his big goal. So when you go from saying a goal like that allowed to actually executing the steps to get there, what do you actually do and what? What does it look like for you? Do you set small goals along the way? Do you envision the big goal everyday as you start your day? What? What actually goes into it? MM: My goal, my goal setting techniques is to make sure that it's not a wishlist in any goal setting, whether it's I'm writing my New Year's resolutions, but they were more goals than they are resolutions is there needs to be trigger points, there needs to be milestones that are achieved from go to whoa. So in my hairy--what did you call it? JAC: Big hairy audacious goal. MM: Big hairy audacious goal. Big hairy audacious goal. OK. JAC: BHAG. MM: So in my BHAG my milestones are to number one, open up as many studios as I can in as many states as I can. So we are in 22 states in 24 months, which has been a huge success. It makes it a lot easier for me because of the overwhelming response from people who also want to bring F45 into their journey to call me and say, Marc, I'm, I'm, I'm intrigued. You know, I don't know if I'm interested, but I'm intrigued. Tell me more. And the first thing I say is the first thing I said to you is you need to go and try a class. The more states and more cities that we have it in, which is my small, my first goal, the easier it is to facilitate people visiting a studio and people experiencing it. 40th five, the, the conversion rate of people that go and see a studio to people that want to bring F45 into their life is incredible. Whether it's as a consumer or potentially owning their own it, it is overwhelming. Yeah, and I guess one of the reasons why we are seeing the growth we're seeing so, so rapidly around the world. JAC: So let's talk about personal goals before we wrap this up. We talked a lot about business; I know you're engaged and getting married in the future. Are there any other sort of personal goals or health and wellness goals that you're striving to accomplish outside of work? MM: I'd love to do a triathlon. JAC: Like an Ironman? MM: Yeah, but um, I've never been the strongest of swimmers and I'm Australian, so it's difficult to say to people because we have to swim at school five days a week, but I don't ... JAC: At all ages? MM: From you're, when you're 12 years old you must swim. I can swim, but I'm just not a triathlon swimmer. I'd love to go back to playing sports. Yeah. I had a couple of injuries in, in my youth and through work I just always put them to the side. Um, I feel like F45 is actually made me stronger in the, my knees aren't the best, but F45 was able to, to, because of the functional movement, it was able to strengthen my, my injury. So I'd love to go and play sports again. Personal, which is the most important, is marriage and a hundred kids. JAC: 100 kids! MM: Well I want six. JAC: You want six kids? So what's interesting is I've always wanted to ask this question, but man, so I'm very excited for it. How are you going to balance it all? Six kids and this big career. MM: It can happen. My Mother's one of 20. JAC: One of 20! MM: Yes, same mother and father. JAC: How many cousins do you have? MM: On my mother's side? Just over 50. Wow. First cousins. First generation cousins. Yeah. JAC: Okay. So you want to have a family as well. That's incredible. Is there anything else that you want to talk about in regards to F45, your goal and the future that we didn't touch on? MM: The only thing that I want to say F45 has been a truly life changing experience for me and for so many people. Google F45, go and take a class, I guarantee you'll like it. That's it. JAC: Thank you so much Marc for being on #WeGotGoals, truly enjoyed chatting with you and we hope that you continue down your path towards your BHAG. MM: Thank you. Thank you so much Jeana. CK: Hey, goal-getters, cohost and producer Cindy Kuzma here. Coming up next, we've got something special for you. It's one of your goals recorded live last month at the Hotel Moxy. We also recorded a few more real-life goals last weekend at the Michelob Ultra #SweatWorkingWeek Fitness Festival. We're going to have those for you in the weeks ahead also in the weeks ahead, stay tuned because we're going to give you lots of new opportunities and ways to share your goals and be a part of this awesome goal-getting community on #WeGotGoals. Thank you so much for listening, and here is one of your goals. JAC: David from Chicago. So can you tell me about either a big goal that you set and achieved or a big goal that you have set for the future? D: So, uh, one of the things that I'm really into besides my freelance contracting is competitive volleyball. JAC: I love where this is going. D: Not, not connected at all to have different facets of life course. Uh, so I got it back into volleyball that I'd been playing as a kid and then got back into it as an adult, had some knee injuries and then was like, but I was like really encouraged to like, I want to like be really good at this again. And uh, I got back into playing some leagues. I got back into doing some travel tournaments actually as well. Um, it's sort of a, it wasn't, not a concrete goal, but I was like, I want to be, even though I'm like about to turn 30 years old, like I want to be the best volleyball player that I can right now and keep getting better at it and I'm, at least right now, I feel like I've certainly succeeded in it and gotten better. Um, and one of the ways that I've done that is crazily finding a gym that specializes in kettlebells, so they operate under this thing called strong first. D: Um, so it's all kettlebell technique. And when I went in the first day had no idea what I was doing. I walked in and was just like, why not? Let's give it a try. This place is around the corner from my apartment and I have just been now going for almost two years consistently, like three times a week and like my body feels completely different than it did two years ago. No more knee pain. I have like lost 30 pounds and I'm just like in the strongest, best shape of my entire life and I'm like, had my 30th birthday a couple years ago. And I'm also like feeling like I'm at the best peak volleyball that I've ever been at in my entire life. JAC: Well that is fascinating, first of all because it's, it's sort of like, most people share goals that are professionally linked and I love, I love hearing that your goal is sort of outside of the four walls of work or probably for you sometimes four walls, sometimes coffee shop walls. So I'm interested to hear how people in your life react to you saying I want to be the best volleyball player. D: Um, it's interesting because I think I grew up in my sister's footsteps. She was a volleyball player first and I think um, she has been really encouraging about it and um, is really proud. Um, and I think, uh, the people that I played volleyball with are also really excited and they've even been the ones to tell me actually that they notice my improvement more so than I have, like I was at a tournament last month and someone just stopped me that I'd been playing with for years and they're like, I just want to let you know, like, you're not only playing better physically but also mentally like I can tell you're just making better decisions on the court. So actually everybody around me has been really positive and pointing it out and maybe even more than I realize JAC: This is incredible. Last question and then I'm going to set you free. Have you noticed that your ability to crush it on the volleyball court has impacted your ability to crush it at work? D: You know, not that I've seen yet, but I have, I can tell that I'm at least an entertaining thoughts of taking a step forward and like doing things that I wouldn't have tried before from a career standpoint or at least even like putting myself out there to find another client and I think it is all wrapped up in this same sort of mindset of just like I'm succeeding at what I set my mind to. Everything's going great. Like, what do I have to lose? JAC: So the work that you're putting in in the gym is impacting the rest of your life. That's incredible. So thank you for sharing your goal with us. D: Yeah, my pleasure. CK: This podcast was produced by me, Cindy Kuzma, and it's another thing that's better with friends, so please share it with yours. One of the best ways to do that is to listen wherever you get your podcasts and then leave us a rating or review in Apple Podcasts or iTunes. Special thanks to J. Mano for our theme music; to our guest this week, Marc Morano; to TechNexus for the recording studio and of course to you, our listeners.  

Chef Josh Katt, the founder and CEO of Kitchfix, isn’t a goal guy. In fact, when I posed the first of our two big questions on #WeGotGoals—what’s a big goal you’ve achieved, why was it important to you, and how did you get there?—he couldn’t really come up with an answer. Don’t take that to mean he’s achieved less than other guests we’ve had on the show. In about five years, Katt has built Kitchfix from a small personal chef business into a citywide meal delivery and catering company. He has more than 60 employees and a Gold Coast storefront, not to mention packaged products like Paleo granola and waffles available in-store and online, nationwide. Maybe it’s just a matter of semantics. Katt prefers to discuss things in terms of passions and beliefs, guiding principles he aims to follow. Eating a healthy, nourishing diet. Knowing where your food comes from. Treating your customers well at every step of the transaction—while also doing right by your employees. Those core elements have taken Katt far beyond where he might have dreamed when he first moved to Chicago from Michigan in 2006. Back then, he thought he’d cook in fine-dining restaurants. Soon, though, he realized the late-night, hard-knock lifestyle just wasn’t what he wanted in the long term. Katt explored a number of different food-related jobs throughout the city, including catering and retail. He worked with a non-profit called Common Threads that taught kids about healthy dishes from around the world. There, he met a woman who asked if he could work as her personal chef. He jumped at the chance, but there was a catch—she was recovering from cancer and eating an anti-inflammatory diet. Katt dove into reading and research, and realized his farm-to-table cooking experience in Michigan aligned perfectly with the type of nourishing dishes her recovery required. What’s more, his heart and soul became part of the recipe. “I really took to the idea that food is very powerful,” Katt says. “It can heal your body.” One client became a few became a few more. Katt eventually realized he could bring costs down by investing in a kitchen—then, of course, he needed a few more clients to make the rent on that space. He worked with gyms to spread the word about his healthy, convenient options. Each step was essentially guided by combining financial practicalities with his guiding principles. “How am I going to make my paycheck? I don’t want to go work in a restaurant. I love cooking, I love having flexibility, so what do I need to do to make that happen?” he asked himself. Kitchfix became the answer. And though he didn’t always know he’d start a company, he did know he’d work hard to help make peoples’ lives better. Now, he does that not only by feeding customers nutritious, delicious meals—he also aims to correct some of the imbalances he’s observed in the life of food-service workers (and the bigger-picture economic disparities he saw in the city). So, he offers jobs to those with criminal records and others who might not be able to find work elsewhere, paying them fairly and including benefits. The stories of transformation, both among those who prepare and devour his meals, fuel him. One woman received thousands of dollars of Kitchfix funds as gifts to sustain her through chemotherapy. Another family was able to delay putting their father in assisted living thanks to the availability of meal delivery. “Now I'm a little removed from the day to day, but I get to see these cool things my team is doing for people,” he says. “This thing that I created five years ago is now doing those things for people; people are using it for good and I'm not really partaking in the actual cooking as much as I used to. It’s a pretty cool feeling.” Katt continues to learn in his transition out of the kitchen and toward scaling his principles into an expanding enterprise. In addition to business development, “part of my growth is really establishing some systems and structure for the team,” he says. “Communicating the vision and communicating the passion that we're talking about is important. Hiring the right people is important. We do food service a lot differently than the average restaurant.” He's coming to appreciate the need for strategy and using terms like “10x” and “BHAG.” But Katt’s goal-getting advice for anyone else who has a deeply held conviction and a desire to make it something bigger remains simple. Don’t think too hard, he says—just take the leap. “I may be on one end of the spectrum of not thinking first or setting a goal and just going for it; there’s certainly room for goals and thought,” he says. “But a lot of people get hung up on that stage, right? Like it's too cerebral and they're not just doing it. So I would say just take a chance, go for it. You'll regret it later if you don’t.” Listen to this week’s episode to hear more about Katt’s own eating habits, the one thing he’d change about the Kitchfix menu if he could do it all over, and his big, ambitious goals for the future (one will make you toss your nachos and hot dogs in surprise). And stick around till the end of the episode to hear our first installment of your own big goals! If you enjoy it, subscribe anywhere you get your podcasts and leave us a rating or a review on Apple Podcasts. ------- JAC:Welcome to #WeGotGoals, a podcast by aSweatLife.com on which we talk to high achievers about their goals. I'm Jeana Anderson Cohen; with me, I have Kristin Geil and Cindy Kuzma. CK:Good morning, Jeana. KG:Hi Jeana. JAC:Good morning. And Cindy, this week you did the podcast live recorded from the Moxy Hotel. CK:I did. So again, you might hear a little bit of background noise. It was a really exciting evening at the Moxy Hotel, but I spoke with Chef Josh Katt of Kitchfix. JAC:And Chef Josh Katt of kitchfix has been evolving the way that he sets goals over the years. Wouldn't you say that's right? CK:Absolutely. I mean he is one of the few guests that we have who has come on and said, yeah, I don't really set goals. Um, that's not really my thing or that hasn't been my thing. Yet he's managed to build a pretty successful business despite not having really intentionally set out with a goal to do so. He works really hard. He has these sort of guiding principles and passions that he's followed and the opportunities have found him, but now that he has kind of stepped away from the chef role and into the CEO role, he's definitely thinking that he needs to focus a little bit more on goals. He's using terms like BHAG and 10x and things that we hear entrepreneurs and ceos talk about when they talk about goals. So I think he has recognized that the way he has done things in the past worked to get him to a certain point and now that he's responsible for a big company and lots of people, he's. He's adjusting his approach to goals and exploring how these new options might work for him. KG:And one thing we know about Kitchfix from working with them and sampling everything on their menu for so many years is that they really care about their customer and being transparent about what food they're serving you, what ingredients they're using, where they're sourcing things from. So we know that they care about the forward facing aspect of the company. But Josh spoke a little bit to how he also makes sure his back of house staff and employees are taken care of as well. CK:Yeah, I thought that was a really interesting and compelling--I mean, one of the reasons honestly, he started the company in the first place was he found restaurant life to be a lot harder than he had anticipated. There's late nights, there's low pay, there's no benefits. It's a lifestyle that can be really hard on people and in addition to building a business that serves healthy food to people who have had cancer or people who are sick, anyone who wants an anti-inflammatory Paleo Whole30 compliant diet, he's also really focused on making life better in all aspects for those workers. So you know, he wants to hire people who maybe don't have a good chance to get a job somewhere else. He wants to give them regular hours and pay and benefits and just create opportunity in the restaurant and catering and food service world. That makes life a little bit better and a little bit different. It's almost like the antithesis of the gig economy right now, which is really kind of refreshing because you have a lot of workers who are not being treated well, but so it's really great to see a company starting from the beginning with that passion and that responsibility to to workers as well as customers JAC:And we know and love Josh Katt and I've had his food over the years and have seen the company grow so we can't wait to hear this interview with you, Cindy. And stick around listener for the end of the episode where you'll hear from real-life goal getters and what they're achieving out there in the real world today. CK:And I am Cindy Kuzma and I'm here with Josh Katt who is Chef Josh and CEO of Kitchfix. Josh, thank you so much for being with us today on #WeGotGoals. JK:Thank you for having me. Love being here. This is great. CK:So for those of our audience here at the Moxy and also our listeners at home who don't know Kitchfix, I was a little bit about what it is. JK:Sure. Kitchfix, I started it as a meal delivery service. So we serve fully prepared, Paleo, Whole30 meals. You don't have to prep or anything, you just throw them in your microwave or oven. We deliver those all over Chicago. We have about 55 items on our menu every week. We also sell some granola, all Paleo. We sell Paleo waffles, Paleo granola bars, and those are available in Whole Foods and Sprouts around the country. And then we do catering as well.  So we got a bunch of things going on. Really everything is founded on the healthy food philosophy and sourcing philosophy. CK:You do have a lot going on these days at Kitchfix and I know you've had quite a career path from, from chef to CEO. Did you think back in 2006 when you moved here to Chicago that this is where you'd be sitting today with all of this happening? JK:Yeah, I know. I came to Chicago really to focus on cooking. I really wanted to learn from some of the best chefs in Chicago. We have an amazing talent pool here of chefs, so after culinary school I'm from originally from Michigan, came down to Chicago to work in a fine dining restaurant where the chef had experience working at the French Laundry and just decided that I wanted to like commit my life to learning all about fine cuisine and all the techniques involved in that and actually pretty quickly in that experience here in Chicago, I realized that wasn't the life for me and I started looking around in different parts of the food world for something that I had a little bit more work life balance. JK:I didn't love the idea of spending my whole life working 10 a.m. to 2 a.m. every day and falling asleep on the train and all that sort of thing that the guys around me were doing because it was such a hard life. So  started exploring other things and ended up in tons of different food businesses throughout Chicago. It was pretty interesting. CK:And I know the genesis of Kitchfix came out of some, an experience you had as a personal chef, right? JK:Yeah. Yeah. So I decided to explore catering and sort of like retail outlets that served prepared foods. I ended up partnering with a nonprofit, working with them called Common Threads and teaching kids how to prepare healthy food from different countries throughout the world. It was like an afterschool program. So I would go and entertain these 12 year old kids, get them to eat pad Thai or peanut soup, all these really kind of cool dishes. And really it was like the food was great that we were making and it was a blast. And during that time someone needed a personal chef, someone that was involved in the nonprofit actually. And so I was like, yeah, I got some spare time I'd love to, I'd love to do that and she said, OK, I'm recovering from cancer and you know, can you make the antiinflammatory diet for me, can you learn about it? JK:And so I started exploring that and really took to the idea that food is very powerful. It can be functional, it's not all about just, you know, consumption. It can, it can heal your body and really realized that my background at farm to table cuisine really lent itself well to that style of cooking and so, started making her food and you know, my, my heart and soul was in it and she loved it and loved all the food I was doing and ended up telling all of her friends. And soon as I was going house to house to house to house and one day I was like, you know, I should get my own kitchen and start doing deliveries. And that's, that's really like the genesis of, of Kitchfix was, you know, that whole process. CK:Fascinating. So how do you go about that? I mean, obviously you knew a lot about food and you were already teaching these children about some healthy, delicious things by the anti inflammatory diet is like a whole other kind of ballgame. How did you educate yourself? JK:Reading a lot of books, anticancer, Dr. Weil is another author. He's actually one of the founders of True Food Kitchen. So at the time there was only one of those restaurants, now there's probably 15 and so yeah, I mean really back then there wasn't a lot--there wasn't really, I don't think Protein Bar was around. There was just nothing. And so today it's pretty commonplace. We probably all drink something with turmeric in it, you know, at least once or twice a week and that just wasn't there then. And so you know I had a big opportunity and got to kind of ride the wave of health and nutrition early on. CK:Yeah, yeah. You definitely seemed to ahead of the curve there. So this kind of leads into it, you know, we've talked about this long way you've come and this amazing company you've built, but Josh, if you had to answer our big question--which you do because you're on #WeGotGoals ... JK:Wait, what is this called? CK:Our big question, our first big question on #WeGotGoals is what is a big goal you've achieved, why was it important to you and how did you get there? So how would you answer that? JK:I was thinking about this question prior to coming on here and I realized that I just am not a big goal guy. I don't really operate like that and I and I don't necessarily think it's a good thing, but personally and kind of how I've gotten to this point is just I'm all about passion and belief and really about getting excited about doing things that are good and good for people. And so personally I think now as I move out of chef and sort of, you know, this art more artistic side and getting more into the CEO role, which I'm in now, it's, goals are a little bit more important. So I'm learning how to apply that focus that I think a goal gives you to my life and the business that I'm running, so I actually couldn't, can't really think of a big goal that I've really like strived for and checked off my list, but it's something that I'm certainly looking to embrace in the future. CK:Interesting. I'll be interested to hear how you're going about that, but let's talk about that. That passion and that belief. So obviously if you built this great company without necessarily setting out to do it, where did you feel that passion and that belief and how did you kind of know that hey, this is something bigger than just this one person or just these few people that I'm cooking for, starting out cooking for people in their homes and seeing that people were willing to pay me. I think at the time I just needed to charge $40 for a meal, which is outrageous, right? So seeing that people would pay for that. I was able to sort of leverage those clients of mine and eventually I was like, OK, if I got a kitchen, I could charge them less, they could eat my food more consistently and that was sort of like, it was almost like early on I needed to do it just to survive. I needed to make money and so, you know, it's like, how am I going to make more money? How am I gonna make my paycheck? I don't want to go work in a restaurant. I love cooking, I love having flexibility, so what do I need to do to make that happen? JK:And I always just kinda growing up, always thought outside of the box and never really wanted to be a um, never really wanted the corporate life I guess. So it made sense to me, just kind of do my own thing and that's ended up getting my own kitchen and so forth. And then it was all of a sudden I had my own kitchen and it was like, Oh man, I need to pay rent now. It's crap. How do I find more customers? And so again, early on it was like this, everything, like I needed to do these things and, but it was all founded on a passion for making really good food and, and not only just, I mean this, this is like where the chef part comes out and the artist I suppose. So it's not about just good food, it's about good service, it's about positive energy in everything that you're doing and you can make good food but just throw it on somebody's table and walk away or forget to follow up on something. And that's part of, that's part of the whole experience, right? So I've always been passionate about start to finish of the whole eating process. I guess the feeding window. I could go on and on about it. So it's just being passionate about every single step and yeah. CK:Yeah. That's interesting. So it sounds like, I mean, again, part of what you're saying is each step in your company's evolution was sort of driven by financial incentive, but, but in a way, OK, well how can you make this work financially in a way that also upholds those values and beliefs? And passions that you had. JK:That's right.  Yeah. That's been, that's been something that has kept us set apart from others too, is that we had a really high standard for the sourcing of our ingredients, the limited use of things that are inflammatory or sort of, you know, just things that can be shortcuts in some kitchens. And I think as I've evolved over the last few years and you know, it's tough to really say like all of these foods are bad and Kitchfix doesn't use them because they're awful because that's not always the case. And we didn't use oats for a long time and oats are great. A lot of things that we do are Paleo and so you don't really put oats in those things, but I just think, you know, everything in moderation is, is really what it's all about. But still, I think there's so much in our lives, there's a lot of opportunities for excess and there's a lot of opportunities to eat things that are bad. And so the thing I love about Kitchfix is we provide like a really healthy, you don't have to think about it solution for your life that is like primo healthy really does something for you so you don't have to, you know, you can go eat pizza on the weekend and you can enjoy yourself and know that you're kind of going back to like a really healthy, clean lifestyle, you know, Sunday through Tuesday or Wednesday, or Thursday. CK:So that's interesting that you mentioned that about the oats, because I was curious how you keep tabs on the nutrition research and the science of how you're sort of nutritional philosophy at Kitchfix evolves or if it does, JK:We don't really, for our meal delivery service and for the products we're selling to Whole Foods and sprouts, like we've kind of taken a stance of Paleo and in a sense, you know, we do some grains on our prepared foods menu, so we'll do, we'll do your, like local and organic brown rice and quinoa, we'll do. That's really as far as we go in terms of the grain realm, but we could certainly--like, cheese is OK I think for some people, I think there's things that are fine for people, but I think sort of what we go back to at Kitchfix is like do we really need to include it or can we just make good food without it and why not fill your body with clean, delicious vegetables and high quality proteins and good oils and herbs and spices. That's fine. We don't need to be everything to everyone. You can get all that stuff, you can get cheese and bread and good other grains elsewhere. Just this is what we are. So that's kind of how we stay grounded. I think the one thing I would change is having corn like in our, like fresh corn. That's the one thing I'm like, man, if I, if I'm ever going to change one thing about our meal delivery is some good summer corn. CK:Yeah, there's something special. JK:But we're like corn-free. CK:So talk to me, Josh, a little bit about Whole30 because I think  that's, it seems like  that's been a pretty important part of the development of Kitchfix. So how did that relationship come about? And I guess maybe we can start by explaining to people who don't know what Whole30 is a little bit about it, but how did that relationship come about and what role has that played? JK:Sure. So Whole30, if you're not familiar, it's really like an amped up Paleo diet. It's no grains, no gluten, no dairy, no soy, no corn, no added sweeteners whatsoever. And then they really take it a step further and really challenge you to eliminate things that you kind of use as a crutch. So if you were to find a donut, for example, that had Whole30 compliant ingredients, they would advise you do not eat that because it's similar. It's very similar. And you can make, you can make a donut taste really sweet and delicious without sugar. You can use apple juice concentrate or things like that. So really Melissa, the founder, is big on stop--it's really like about food freedom and getting away from things that you're bingeing on. So that's Whole30. And I met Melissa at an event we were doing. We did Whole30 appetizers for her, she was speaking and we went out to dinner and a couple of others and really just I had heard about it. I had done research. People had asked us about it and hadn't really considered going out full force with Whole30 in terms of changing our menu, but so after talking with her and hearing her passion and seeing the influence that she had, it just made sense for us to really start to provide that because I think it's a resource for people who don't cook, don't have time, but want to change their life, their dependency on certain foods that it was a cool solution that we can provide for people. CK:Did that make a big difference in your business too, in terms of calling attention to it? JK:Yeah. No, it's been great. They're a fantastic partner. They really care and they're really, I think with power, which I think Melissa and the brand has, comes a lot of responsibility and I believe that they handle that pretty well, so it's been cool to be a part of that. Yeah, it's been good for us, but I think yeah, I mean it's been really cool to see people respond and be able to come to us for that solution in their life, which wasn't totally available before from our menu. CK:Yeah, so I am curious, do you have like stories of people who had transformations among your clientele at that kind of inspire you to keep moving? JK:Sure, yeah. We have stories, yeah, we get testimonials quite a bit from people who are coming to us for Whole30 diets. I mean people come to us for all sorts of solutions in their life for people who are going through an illness that need to eat really healthy to people who want to lose weight. We had one customer who was given a gift card by about 20 or 30 people and they ended up giving her like thousands of dollars. JK:She was going through chemo, just so she could have healthy good food. We had another family who provided food for their, I think it was their dad and because we could provide him food regularly, he was able to not go into assisted living right away, you know, he was able to kind of stay out and I think one of the coolest things about running your own business is as you grow you get to like, because now I'm like a little removed from like day to day, right? But I get to see these cool things that my team is doing for people, right? And so like they're providing like this thing that I created five years ago is now doing those things for people, that is people are using it for good and I'm not, you know, really partaking in the actual cooking, you know, as much as I used to. So I don't know, it's pretty, pretty cool feeling. CK:Yeah. That's, that's incredible. Oh my gosh. What incredible stories and also what a great idea for like someone to who knows someone who's going through something like that for them. So yeah, let's talk about that a little bit more because as you mentioned, you're not cooking as much day to day and you talked about kind of the challenges in transitioning and learning more of the business side and the goal side. So what are some of the ways that you're doing that? JK:Naturally when we, when I first started the company, I started to separate myself from the kitchen. I can't, I don't know why It just felt natural in some ways. I think cooking is so, it's very, it's a riot, but it's also a lot of hard, hard work and I knew that in order for me to grow the business I needed to use my brain in a different way and so I knew that I needed, I could communicate well my passion to others and then I could go out and try to grow the business. And so that's kind of what I started doing pretty early on, but I'm still involved regularly with the whole food process, you know, meeting with our chefs, talking about menu items and what, uh, what is the, what are the latest trends, what can we do to improve certain parts of the operation. Honestly, like our meal delivery service is basically run by our amazing staff. JK:They can do every part; they're brilliant people. They come up with amazing food and I and I really can kind of step back and work on other parts of the business so we have catering that we're doing and kind of building this unique offering of really healthy food that we serve to sports teams, we serve to backstage for artists. And that's a whole different world. It's not necessarily Kitchfix per se all the time, but it's, it's still very passion driven and all about health and wellness and really good service. So like I kind of am starting all these little businesses within Kitchfix, which is pretty fun, yeah. CK:So how do you, how does that scale, like how do you make sure that commitment to service at every step along the way is a part of all of these businesses when you can't obviously be hands on in every single aspect. JK:I mean that's part of my growth is really establishing some systems and structure for the team to say to them, hey, these are the things that I really want to see on a regular basis and this is part of your job. So doing things like that, communicating the vision and communicating the passion that we're talking about is important. Hiring the right people is important. We do food service a lot differently than the average restaurant. You know, kind of my experience in the restaurant world early on was that really like sold-out life or working the line and grinding it out, no time for a family, it's all about the food. I didn't really like that. I felt like this. There's an opportunity for something different and there's like people getting paid, you know, I think when I moved to Chicago I got paid like 80 bucks a day for like 16 hours. JK:It's like, that's acceptable because you're learning from a great chef and you know, maybe someday you'll make it, but like so many people like burnout or become drug addicts or alcoholics. It's like rough life. So at Kitchfix, I always said I don't want to work at night really. Right. I want to have most of my nights free, which sometimes is the case. I want to try to do things differently. I want to pay my workers well, I want to give them sick leave. I want to, I want to just take care of them  because they're the ones that are doing the work and as an owner and CEO they have--yes, my job is hard and it's burdensome and when an employee steals, they steal directly from me. If an employee gets hurt, I pay for it. So I'm ultimately responsible, but at the end of the day like I want to take care of them and treat them really well and so that's something that I think is pretty cool about Kitchfix food services that were all about that. We treat our kitchen staff very well and take care of them and they have I think really good lives and I can't wait to keep improving that for people with, for my team. Yeah. CK:That's really cool. So that your motivation is not only the people that you're serving, but the people who are working for you and making their lives better. I know you too, you hire people too through programs that kind of give people a second chance who might not otherwise be able to get a job. And I was wondering kind of where that came from and now it's a little bit, it's clearer to me where some of that passion comes from. But can you talk a little bit more about that? JK:Yeah, sure. When I moved to Chicago I kind of saw the disparity throughout the city and you know, traveling from the west side to the east side, or south side up here and seeing homeless people on the street and I just never really had that exposure in a small beach town in Michigan. It kind of like, shook me pretty hard when I first moved here and I just knew that I didn't mean I didn't know I was going to start something, but I knew that I always wanted to kind of give back. That was sort of why I got involved in the nonprofit and knew that I could offer food always seemed like an amazing opportunity to get people involved and teach them a skill that maybe they could grow into something really great someday. So at Kitchfix we reserve a few of our spots in the kitchen-- well actually really early on when we first started, we partnered with a church, that was our first kitchen and I made an agreement with them that we would hire people from like second chance programs to help me with, in the kitchen. JK:And so like my first two hires were people, these two women from the CARA program who had no food experience and they were helping me in the kitchen and I was training them and it. And then, uh, my business took off and I was like, wow, I need someone really to help me. Like some real chefs in here and so the vision sort of changed at first and then a year and a half later, we had seven people working and these two ladies were still there with me. I took everyone in this room. We had gotten this opportunity to help out with a sports team and I was like, hey guys, we have this sweet opportunity. I'm so excited to share with you to be that you can be a part of it and you know, you just have to take a background check. JKAnd like everyone in that room was like, I know I can't. I wouldn't pass. And so like it was that kind of at that point that I realized a lot of my team is really, even though I might not have found them from CARA or Growing Home or we just started working with refugee, someone that like basically help works with refugees and now they're placing them in jobs. A lot of stuff that we were hiring was already having issues finding work. Right? So like I had an already a source of people that I could really take care of and mold and not take advantage of. And so I realized that I was already doing that even even though I wasn't like purposely hiring from CaRA for all of my employees. So overall I think that's, and now we have a like our system is for, for prep and things like that and our kitchen like Thursdays and Fridays arem we get in like all of our sweet potatoes and cauliflower, like all of these, like this special is that we're using hundreds of pounds of and you have to peel all those things and it's like very basic work. JK:And so we have those positions reserved for inch, you know, like entry level positions for people that do need the practice of showing up for work on time, standing up all day. Those are things that not everyone know. Honestly. It's hard for anyone that doesn't do that. Right? I mean like if you go to stand up all day and like peel a potato, it would not be fun. You'd be like, I'm losing my mind. But it does take practice. So we give those opportunities, we've had some really cool stories as of late and we're excited to kind of keep growing that part of our business. CK:And you have something like 60 total employees? JK:Yeah, 60, over. Seems like less but our, um, like VP of finance keeps telling me it's more, so I guess we have more. CK:Yeah, so again, you, you've done all this growing. You've, you've taken care of both the people that you're serving food to and the people who are serving the food and the people who are preparing the food and you've done this all without setting intentional goals, many of them. You've said now that you're thinking more along these lines of goals. So that brings us to the next big question on #WeGotGoals. Do you have a goal for the future and how might you plan to get there? JK:Sure, great question. I think, you know, I kinda have certainly have some strategy that we've developed for how we plan to approach the next five years. But I think so, like one of those goals is we want to be in 3,000 stores with all of our products that we have out. So we have Paleo granola bars, we have paleo frozen waffles and paleo granola that we sell and whole foods weren't about with each of those, about 350, 400 stores now. So seeing 10x growth at least in the next four years with each of those products. And then I think another one that's kind of like my big hairy audacious goal is to like take over all of the food service at like a stadium. I know that's not very, it's not very Kitchfixy in terms of what you know about our brand, but we've done some work in that space more so in the realm that we are making healthy really delicious food, but there's like a monopoly on stadiums for food service. It's run by like two or three companies and I think there's some opportunity to do it differently. And so my 10-year goal is to like run a stadium. CK:Do you have a specific one in mind?

Runners on the Lakeshore Path spend miles with their noses down, but starting August 2017, there was a reason to look up just north of LaSalle Street. The Shore Club is an oasis on the Lakefront that Lisa Jaroscak and her two partners - Robbie Schloss and Nick Thayer - helped to create. The day that this location opened its doors, Jaroscak told us that she accomplished a big goal that took months of hard work and endless creativity. She talked through what that meant for her on this week's episode of our podcast, #WeGotGoals (a live episode that we recorded at the new Moxy Chicago). That goal and its achievement may seem like a departure from where Jaroscak started her professional journey. Just five years ago, Jaroscak graduated from college with formal training as an operatic soprano. But as any musician learns, getting paid to perform your craft comes with a lot of hustle. And that hustle propelled Jaroscak to find opportunities - opportunities to book other artists and to eventually produce music festivals and events. When she found the site that would become The Shore Club, her eyes were already open to opportunities and she was willing to put in the work to make it happen. The rest of the pieces fell into place after Jaroscak trusted her gut and charged ahead to bring her project to life. Listen to this week's episode and you'll hear Jaroscak discuss how she met her partners, the inspiration for the Shore Club, and who you should never ask an opera singer to belt out a note for you (she never actually discussed that, but I did ask her to sing a note and realized to my horror that it was like asking a sprinter to run their fastest 40-meter dash, totally cold). And if you enjoy #WeGotGoals, subscribe anywhere you get your podcasts and leave us a rating or a review on Apple Podcasts. ------- JAC:Welcome to #WeGotGoals, a podcast by aSweatLife.com, on which we talk to high achievers about their goals. This week's episode is a special episode. We recorded it live at the Moxy Hotel Chicago, which just opened up so you may hear a little bit of background noise and a little bit of music, but that's really just the ambiance and the fun of the Moxy coming through on this episode. Let's get to the show. I'm Jeana Anderson Cohen and with me I have Maggie Umberger and Kristen Geil. MU:Hi Jeana, how's it going? KG:Hey Jeana. JAC:What's up, goal-getters? MU:Jeana, this week you spoke with Lisa Jaroscak of the Shore Club. JAC:I did, so Lisa does a lot of things, the Shore Club being one of them. And I say a lot of things because it's actually sort of staggering. She currently is involved with, a partner of or leading at four different companies across Chicago. Everything from the seasonal work that's involved in the Shore Club, which is a restaurant located on Chicago Park District land right on the lake shore. It's really beautiful and one-of-a-kind. She's also involved in some planning and event logistics and operations, so her work really spreads from that sort of hospitality mindset. MU:So the Shore Club is newer to Chicago even though people have been running on the lake shore path for a very long time. This is a new addition to what tourists and locals can experience alike, and I think it's a need for the lake shore. So when Lisa saw this space, she almost became obsessed with the goal of creating it and creating that opportunity for people to experience what she had in her mind. JAC:Yeah. She's absolutely a fixator, which I say in a way that is incredibly positive because I too am a fixator and when I say she fixates, she talked about how she saw the space on the lake shore path that would become the Shore Club and at first, she saw it as a perfect venue to host an event for one of her clients and then as she started to dig into the logistics of actually opening a restaurant or an event space on Chicago Park District property, she realized really quickly that it needed to be open and available and accessible to all Chicago residents. So a restaurant was the clear way to go. JAC:The Shore Club is inspired by beautiful beaches across the world, how Lisa puts it, and really when you see it, it makes sense because it looks like something you could find in Greece. It looks like something you'd find in the south of Italy or France or Croatia, wherever you'd want to go to a beautiful beach with great beach food or snacks to share. This place really represents that and I. But I think what's most striking, even though the design is incredible and even though the place is remarkable, I think what's really striking about it is that Lisa is so young. JAC:She's out of college in a handful of years, so she hasn't been in the workforce for a super long time. Her professional training was in music and she sort of had this idea, had this dream, had this vision and found the people to help her execute it. And when that vision was like create this beautiful place that was healthy, that that really reflected the lake rather than taking away from it. What she created was truly remarkable, especially given her age and experience. KG:And it seems like in your interview, even though she's so young and she's already accomplished so much, she stayed really humble throughout it all. JAC:She's super humble and I'm going to point to a couple of things for that, one being just the hard work that goes into event production in general and hospitality in general. Sometimes when you hustle all the time, it's hard to sort of spend a lot of time on ego. And the other one being where we're both from. JAC:So we're from Minnesota, she's from a town that borders mine. I'm from Anoka, she's from Coon Rapids and we are a hardy stock, the Minnesota people, we work hard and we do not take compliments well. So when you hear her sort of speak to her own accomplishments, it, it's sort of those things where it's just she's put her nose down, she's worked really hard probably for her entire life. And now you're really sort of seeing that pay off. MU:On this podcast. We get to talk to high achievers and how and talk to them about how they approach goals in general. And some are really opposed to thinking far ahead and they really like living in the present moment, but it seemed to me like the way that you talk about, uh, how hard she works in what she's doing. It doesn't, doesn't leave her much room to talk about the big goals in the future. It's really just driving forward and kind of digging down into that hard work. Would you say that that sort of her mindset about goal setting in general? JAC:Yes. And she also knows that she wants more of these restaurant brands. She wants to be a restaurant group and have a restaurant brand that's known across the country. So I, I think that she's present in the work that goes into making a successful brand, but she's not removed from the path that leads you to future growth. KG:Another thing Lisa mentioned in the interview was how important it was for her to find the right partner for the Shore Club. Can you talk a little bit more about why this was so important to her? JAC:The partnership was incredibly important to Lisa in creating the Shore Club because she needed help in areas where she hadn't had experience, so when she started to get connections and pointed towards people who were a friend of a friend or were from where she's from or went to church camp with her in one case, she started having these conversations about the vision and the dream and and sort of was able to see the synapses fire in other people and the connections get formed. JAC:You'll hear her talk about the gentleman who would eventually become her partner and how she just knew she had a gut feeling that he would come to this meeting and he would be her path forward. So even though he was an hour late, which I will tell you, does not strike a Minnesotan well. We are punctual people. She stayed. She waited because she just knew intuitively that this meeting was important. Whether he would end up being her partner or not. And he ended up being her partner. MU:We're so excited to hear this full interview with Jeana and Lisa. So here it is. JAC:I'm here with Lisa Jaroscak on an episode of #WeGotGoals. Lisa, how's it going? LJ:It's going good. Pretty busy, but good. ] JAC:And you're busy for a lot of reasons which we'll get to, but we're here actually doing a live episode at the brand new Moxy Hotel here in Chicago. So shout-out to Moxy for hosting us in this incredible podcast studio. But Lisa, you've got a lot going on right now before we get into the big question. So talk me through how you spent today. LJ:Oh Man, today. Well, I got up and I picked up some popcorn from Garrett's Popcorn for a favor, for a wedding that I'm doing this coming weekend. And then after that we moved on and I went to Shore Club. We're opening this weekend on Friday and we're getting ready. We have our friends and family opening tonight and getting the space set and we had a photo shoot today. JAC:It's a busy day. LJ:Yeah, definitely. JAC:And you have not always been in the business of food and beverage and hospitality. Right? You started your career more so in music. Can you talk me through how you made the leap from music into hospitality? LJ:Yeah, so my background being in music kind of started with, you know, I was performing a lot and I did a lot of gigs all around town and I was touring for a little while and then from there it just seemed like a natural progression to get more into the production side of things and booking. So I was working with some other artists and helping them book for like festivals and private events and corporate events, all sorts of different things. And then from there, you know, it was like, OK, so you're getting the artists. So now can you get the sound?  Can you get the stage, can you get the lights, can you get the tent, can you get the mobile stage unit, all of that. And suddenly you're, you're producing the whole event. JAC:And when we talk about artists, you're not talking about just like an artist, no one's heard of, you're talking about Chance the Rapper, you're talking about O.A.R. and some other big names. So you're being very humble about your background. LJ:Yeah, I think working in some of the large festivals--I've worked on Lollapalooza, I've worked on the NFL draft, different things like that that are bringing in, you know, high level talent that are coming in and performing for large masses of people. They are absolutely excited. And, and when you talk about like working with the artists, you are, you know, for me, I'm in the background and I'm setting up the stages, I'm setting the microphones, I'm collaborating with all the vendors that are involved in making it happen. JAC:So talk me through how you started the Shore Club, before we jump into your big goals. LJ:Yeah. So man, three years ago I was working with the Chicago Bears and Soldier Field and I was working on some tailgating events and from there I met a gentleman that was working, working with the Park District and he introduced me to this space. And when I was first looking at it, I thought of it as being an event venue because I thought it would be a great place to host people and as the process kept going, I started realizing it needed to be public and the way to do that is to make it into a restaurant and you know, there really weren't a lot of restaurants on the lake front, especially restaurants that do high end food. And so we started going after it and I got introduced to my partner, Robbie Schloss about two and a half years ago. LJ:So about six months into my process. And from there he and I like hit the ground running, talking to everybody, telling everybody about it and you know, talking with all of the, the people at large with the, with the city. JAC:And I also know that you're from the same place that I'm from. You're from Minnesota and we Minnesotans are hardy stock. We're hard workers. So as soon as I met you and got to know that fact, I figured that it made it a lot of sense that you're going to answer the next question I'm about to ask you the way you're going to answer it. How many businesses do you currently work for or own right now? LJ:Fou. I was counting them. I was like going through the list. JAC:Can you name them and that you do it each? LJ:Yeah, so I obviously am an owner with Shore Club Chicago on North Avenue Beach. I'm the executive director at First in Flight Entertainment and Event Productions, which is the event production festival side of things and entertainment booking and then I am a lead planner and destination wedding planner with Storybook Weddings and Events, and I am the co-owner of Thrive Event Consulting. JAC:So nothing much. LJ:No, I'm. I have a boring life and I sit at home a lot. JAC:You just shared with me before we got started that you grocery shop for the first time yesterday. LJ:Yeah, for like in a month, you know, it's OK. I work at a restaurant. So you use scrap things together. JAC:Absolutely. So let's get down to it. Let's talk about your big goal. Can you tell me about a big goal that you accomplished, how you got there and why it was important to you? LJ:Well, I definitely think that Shore Club is that goal that I've kind of gone after and it's happening.  I did not come from a background in, in raising any sort of venture capital; working in restaurants--I like, you know, waited tables in college. That was my extent of it, but you know, I saw this, this place on the beach and I just, I couldn't let it go. I kept, I kept thinking about it and it started in one place and it has grown into something completely different but still in reference to what it started as. And it just develops because you have to, you have to let it go where it's going to go based off of other people's opinions in order to actually make it happen. You have to evolve your plan and I think a lot of that I, I pay a testament to my partners with Shore Club, you know, their background being more on the restaurant and venue side of things. LJ:They really helped guide me on that side of it. My experience in tenting and poppop concepting really helped Shore Club pop up and so, you know, I think just like never giving up and always being able to be flexible in order to make your goal and your dream come true. And I think for me one of the most satisfying moments was last year we did the grand opening of Shore Club on August 14th. We had over 400 people there and like to see 400 people like of, you know, Chicago socialites and, and PR people and people that are working with major news organizations coming to this place. That was just an idea in your head and like to watch them just enjoying themselves and, and celebrating within it. I mean, it was so surreal for me and you know, I'm really excited going into this season about it being even closer to where I wanted it to be and I'm excited for people to enjoy it again this season. JAC:So you talked about the Shore Club being, your big goal and the vision that you had when you first saw this venue. So can you talk me through what your original vision was and how it evolved as you brought on partners and started getting feedback? LJ:Yeah. So as I mentioned before, it was like, I thought it was just going to be an event venue and I was like, oh, we're going to host weddings and corporate parties and like, we'll be closed when we're not rented out, was kind of like what I originally thought. And then from there, you know, learning from the Park District because I didn't know. It's like it had to be a public entity and the way that we did that was was making it into a restaurant. And so with that comes a whole other slew of issues that you have to tackle. LJ:I mean it's exciting, but for me, you know, bringing in my partner Robbie at the time and later on Nick Thayer, you know, it was like, it was going to be just the outdoor space and the tented area. And then it evolved that we have the, it's called the oasis where people can like rent a cabana day bed or sun bed and they can enjoy like bottles of champagne and bottle service out there and like trays of shared foods. And you know, I think that in the beginning it was supposed to be kind of this blank canvas that people would bring in their own stuff and like decorate it the way they want to like an event space, you know, like a ballroom or, or I dunno Shay down on Orleans or whatever. And it's like now it's evolved into this whole place that people come in and they're like, oh wow, you know, like I don't have to bring anything in. LJ:Like it's all here. It's our, it's already decorated. And, and to watch people everyday, like hanging out in the space and having like regulars. It's so bizarre and exciting. You know, I think that a lot of it too for me in the journey was I, I didn't know everything that I was getting into. I just had this end goal idea and, but like the steps to get there, it takes so much more than I knew at the time when I started, you know, going through, you know, meeting with people from the city and going through permitting and going through meeting with the neighborhood committee and like getting everybody's input and like changing your plans so that it can accommodate what their, their goals are because at the end of the day we want the public to be excited about what we're bringing there. So yeah, that's a little bit about how things started in comparison to where they are now. JAC:And I'm interested too, because I know that you studied music in college. I'm interested to hear how you've sort of learned the lessons in business that you've learned that have helped you be so successful. LJ:Well, I think being in music you have to market yourself and nobody's going to get the gigs for you until you're at a certain level. So, you know, it was about, I, I studied opera performance and you know, people would say, oh, it's a dying art. It's like, or, and, and maybe, maybe it is, but for me it was something I was incredibly passionate about and so it was about getting myself out there, doing the research to figure out like where auditions were. Where, you know, for me, I was a soprano so I was looking for companies that were doing productions that would fit my voice, getting out there for summer programs, getting out there, you know, I, I ended up transferring to a conservatory, you know, like what was the best thing for my career and moving forward and I think that it really, it really takes like you learning that you need to support you in your goals and that everybody else's opinion--take it, but also like don't lose sight of what your end goal is and like let, let opinions help guide you, but don't let them dictate where you're going. JAC:That's great advice and I think it's especially great advice for anyone who's taking on money or partners. Which leads me to my next question about a big goal you've accomplished. So how did you pick the partners that were right for you and for Shore Club? LJ:Well, OK. It's a funny story actually being from Minnesota, so I grew up in Coon Rapids, Minnesota and I went to a good Lutheran church as most Minnesotans do and I went to church camp and a very good friend of mine, Noah Kraft who owns Kraft Lighting here in Chicago. We grew up together going to church camp and when I was, when I had moved to Chicago, he lived here too and he does like a lot of lighting and sound installations across the city in like for Lettuce Entertain You venues and and all over. So he was working on a project with Robbie. LJ:So I presented the idea of Shore Club to him because I knew like he wouldn't steal it. And so then he, I was like, so what do I do now? Like I've never raised money. I don't know anything about like entering things into a POS system. I don't know about hiring staff. Like I don't know these things. And so he ended up introducing me to Robbie. He was like, Robbie's a good guy, you know, he will, you know, he'll help you and he'll give you his ideas. And then I had scheduled coffee with Robbie at the Chicago Athletic Association and he was an hour late, but I stayed because I was like, he's my chance. So I stayed there for an hour and he like, called me in a panic and he was like, Oh my God, my Outlook Calendar, something crazy happened. I was like, it's OK. LJ:It's OK. So he came. I presented the idea and like I think that he, you know, he like played it cool. He was like, yeah, yeah, I think it's a, I think it's a good idea. And then afterwards, like I heard this later from, from his wife being like, oh my God, he came back and he was like super amped about the project. Like he tried to play it totally cool. But then through, through Robbie, so you know, we started hitting the ground running and we were working together. There were other people that I thought would be involved then later weren't. And then like through time I feel like it weeds the wrong people out because you just stay dedicated to the goal and if people aren't dedicated then they kind of drop off. And then from there Nick Thayer was like, he texted the wrong Robbie, so he ended up texting Robbie on accident and then they ended up getting together and he told them about Shore Club. LJ:And then Nick was all about it. Then I met nick and then all of us were, we decided to do this together and then you know, to go full circle. Nick and Noah from church camp had worked together previously so everybody knew each other. And so we opened up things. And I think one of the most amazing things about our partnership is that like we each have our thing that we know that we're really good at and we don't get in each other's way, but we'll come to each other if we have, if we have a question and like we have team meetings and say like, OK, what do we think about this? And, and I love having three because it's like, then it's never one against the other, it's like usually somebody agrees with one of them and then we like convince the other ones that we're right or, or that we're wrong, you know, and I think that that has been such a valuable part. LJ:And like Robbie, Nick and I are like, we're also like, we're really good friends. So outside of work, even though that's kind of like, oh all we do and talk about, it's like I also know that like Robbie would have my back and Nick would have my back in, in life in general too. And I think when you have that trust, it just leads itself to being a great place for a business to thrive and grow. JAC:OK. Two rapid fire questions, before we get into your future goals. One, do you still sing? LJ:Yes. JAC:Can you sing a note for us? LJ:Oh, I don't want to do that. JAC:Don't do it. You don't have. As soon as I asked, I was like, that's probably rude. Two: Do you think that someone who is from Minnesota or who is not from Minnesota would have stayed for an hour for that coffee? LJ:Oh man. JAC:I think that's a very Minnesota thing to do. LJ:Yeah. I mean my friend told me he was a good guy. Like I believed him. He was worth the wait and like I just took out my laptop and got some other stuff done and I was like, if he doesn't show he doesn't show, but at least I got some work done in the meantime and then. And then he showed and it was like history. History was writing itself. JAC:And the rest is history. So let's jump in to a big goal you have for the future. So can you talk me through a big goal you hope to accomplish--you've already done so much--and how you plan to get there? LJ:Yeah, so I think that one of my big goals or I guess a collective goal of Robbie, Nick and myself as a, you know, we're, we want to open more places and that's something that's on our horizon. LJ:And I think, you know, we want to get to a place where we're a well established hospitality group here in Chicago and hopefully nationwide and I think that that's something that we're creating a good foundation in making sure that we have kind of all of our bases covered and through the way that the public has just, I dunno, just captured our hearts and just really taken us in as even though we're like new kids on the block, so to say as a group together, I'm excited for what the future has to hold of other endeavors. I think that, you know, the three of us are pretty creative individuals and we're, all three of us are, you know, we're not afraid to get our hands dirty and so I'm excited moving forward of what those other projects are going to be. And yeah, I mean I hope that we open 20 properties someday. JAC:Get to say those big goals aloud. LJ:Yes. JAC:Well thank you Lisa for joining me on the #WeGotGoals podcast. Before we sign off, would you tell me where you want to open next, if you were to open your second location? LJ:We're looking in the loop or in the Fulton Market area. JAC:Hot. LJ:Definitely. I'm a big believer in like go where the people are. JAC:I didn't know what to say then but hot came out, so here we are. Thank you for joining me. It has been a pleasure and you can find Lisa, by the way, at the Shore Club all summer long opening-- announcing tomorrow its fitness lineup, so don't miss that. LJ:Yeah. CK:This podcast was produced by me, Cindy Kuzma, and it's another thing that's better with friends, so please share it with yours. You can subscribe wherever you get your podcasts and if you get a chance to leave us a rating or review while you're there, we would really appreciate it. Special thanks to J. Mano for our theme music; our guest this week, Lisa Jaroscak; and to Moxy Chicago Downtown for hosting our live podcast event.

A group of deer or sheep is a herd. A collection of ferrets, a business. (Seriously.) But what’s the best term for a community of runners? If you’re Tim and Jessica Murphy, you call them the BibRave Pros. And in four short years, you gather more than 100 of them, working to connect them to each other, to races, and to related brands so the whole sport benefits. For this week’s episode of #WeGotGoals, I caught up with the power couple and BibRave co-foundres before last month’s Boston Marathon. I’ve known them since BibRave’s early days here in Chicago (they now live in Portland), and wanted to learn more about how they’ve built such an engaged, inspiring collective of socially savvy athletes. “I love talking about community and what the word actually means, because I feel like it gets used and sort of abused a lot,” Tim said. Not any group of app or website users, customers, or past participants qualifies. “It’s not a community until there becomes this sort of interconnected fabric where they’re all concerned with one another’s wellbeing, and they’re cheering for each other, and they’re sad with each other. There is a genuine connection between them.” Runners naturally tend to flock together, but Jessica and Tim don’t take the bonds between their BibRave Pros for granted. First, they focus on choosing the right people—not necessarily those with the biggest following, but athletes who are positive, empathetic, diverse, and have struggles and triumphs that everyday runners can relate to. “We want to embody the fun and communal aspect of running,” Jessica said. From there, the BibRave team—five staffers total—works hard to keep these ambassadors engaged. Every Tuesday at 8 p.m. Central time, they host a popular Twitter chat (follow it at #BibChat) about a different running-related topic. They also produce a weekly podcast. And, they work to create opportunities for affiliated runners to interact in real life, at races and other events (starting with signature bright-orange singlets that make them relatively easy to spot). The evolution of the BibRave community transformed the entire direction of the company. When they launched BibRave about four years ago, the Murphys envisioned it as a Yelp or TripAdvisor for races, featuring user-generated content to help runners share and learn from each other’s experiences. Eventually, they noticed how engaged and invested running influencers became in the BibRave brand. Around 2015, Jessica said, they had a light-bulb moment that shifted their business model. “When we were out talking to other partners and other people in the industry, one thing that struck us was people want experts in social media and in community and we have that, but we’re kind of only using it to serve BibRave,” she said. “What if we started to use it to serve other people in the industry?” BibRave pivoted and now works with brand and races to get their products and events into the hands and race calendars of influential runners across the country. Those runners, the BibRave Pros, have the opportunity to try new things. And, the running world as a whole benefits from learning about the latest and greatest from peers they can identify with—a win-win-win that involves transparency, hard work, and lots of moments of celebration along the way. “To become a part of those people’s running lives has just been amazing,” Tim said. “To watch people hitting accomplishments they didn’t think they could hit and bringing everybody along for the journey—that’s very, very cool. It wasn’t something that we could have known was a goal, but I think it’s something we’ve been really proud of so far.” Jessica and Tim had another goal that wasn’t explicit but that they’re proud to have crushed: creating a company that could sustain both of them. While Tim went full-time at BibRave about two years ago, Jessica didn’t do so until early this year, after stints at LinkedIn, Nike, and Runner’s World. That period of time created some stress—Jessica often traveled for work, which limited the time they could spend together both personally and working on BibRave. But ultimately, the lessons she learned in those roles have brought incredible value to BibRave. And now that they do spend what Tim called a “ridiculous” amount of time together, they’ve found they actually feel less guilt and conflict. “We have our moments where we’re in work; we can then more strictly define moments where we’re not,” Jessica said. “I feel like we have a better balance. And we do work really well together because we complement each other with different skills and talents. As we do that more, I feel like we’re hitting a good stride.” We’ve interviewed co-founders before (including Julia Carmona and Lauren Katzberg of Stylisted), but never a pair that were life partners in addition to business partners. (That’s despite the fact that aSweatLife’s very own founder & CEO Jeana Anderson Cohen is married to her co-founder, Justin Cohen.) Tim and Jessica say learning to talk calmly and openly about work has, in turn, improved their marriage. “You have your communication style sort of hard stop, right? That’s just how you most effectively communicate,” Tim said. He now knows the best way to ask Jessica a question—to give her a heads-up and set some context—and employs it whether he wants to inquire about a business deal or where they should go for dinner. Listen to this week’s episode to learn more about the signposting communication technique they use at work and in life, what it takes to become a BibRave Pro, and the Murphy’s big goals for the future, including transforming the road-racing experience for the better. If you enjoy it, subscribe anywhere you get your podcasts and leave us a rating or a review on Apple Podcasts. ___ JAC:Welcome to #WeGotGoals, a podcast by aSweatLife.com on which we talk to high achievers about their goals. I'm Jeana Anderson Cohen; with me, I have Maggie Umberger and Cindy Kuzma. CK: Good morning, Jeana. MU: Good morning, Jeana. JAC: Good morning. CK: Jeana, registration I know has been open for a little while now for something super exciting here at aSweatLife. Do you to want to talk about that a little bit? JAC:I’d love to. So every year, twice a year aSweatLife hosts a week that's like restaurant week for fitness across Chicago. We create a schedule. We challenge people to try new things and to meet new people and you can find that schedule on aSweatLife.com, but every morning we will be encouraging people to set and achieve big goals just like we do on this podcast and every evening we'll be exploring new neighborhoods through the culture of sweat. We will finish the whole week with a fitness festival and we can't wait to see you there. CK:And what are the dates for this week of awesomeness? JAC: June 4th through the 9th. We can't wait. CK: So if you're listening in real time, sign up now and if you're listening to this later on, I know there's going to be another amazing SweatWorking week soon. JAC:Of course, but Cindy, this week you did the interview with two goal-getters. CK:Yes. I talked to Tim and Jessica Murphy who are a couple and they are also the co-founders of BibRave, which is a pretty cool website and community and company focused on runners that started right here in Chicago. JAC:And speaking of couples, I know that Tim and Jessica are married. I too am married to a co-founder of my company. He was my husband before he was a co-founder. Did they have any advice or guidance for couples who work together in that way? CK:It's interesting. We did get into this maybe even a little bit more than they thought. After this interview. They were kind of like, oh, we didn't realize this was going to turn into like a talk about our marriage, but it kind of did and and it was great. Two big things. One was they started the company together, but Tim went full-time there before Jessica did and he said that that was actually really motivating to him, that he wanted to work really hard to make it worthy of her being there full-time, um, because he thought that she was just so good and so talented at what she did, that he wanted to make it a proposition that she was really excited about bringing her considerable skills to that community full time. The other thing that they said was that working together now full time has actually improved their marriage, that they have a specific way of talking to each other about business problems where he kind of sets the tone and gives her some context, lets her know what's coming next and what's required of her to answer a specific question that he's like, I don't need that, but she does. And communicating that way in business has made me realize, oh, the communication that we have in our marriage is so much better when I use that same technique in our marriage too and, and everything just becomes simpler. So it was really interesting to hear them talk about that a bit. MU: Bibrave has an incredible community across the country, not only online but in real life that I had no idea really how big it was until hearing them talk about it and then looking up a little bit more since I'm not a runner myself, but I see how much importance they place on community and then their definition of it was also very interesting. Can you talk a little bit about how they define community and what their standards are for it? CK: Yeah, so when they started BibRave, it was initially just a website for race reviews and now it really has grown into this community. And what they realized along the way was that the idea of community, it isn't enough just to be like, oh, people use the site, they show up, they're the community. They have to be really intentional about building that community online and as you say, offline. So they're always doing things to increase engagement. Like they have this great twitter chat that encourages people to talk to each other and they've really worked hard on giving runners more opportunity to meet up in real life. They've tried to organize meetups at races, they've tried to connect people in regions so that these BibRave pros who see each other all the time online can then solidify that relationship in real life and they've really seen the power of that community, help people achieve their running goals and life goals, and that's something I know you all see at aSweatLife too with your ambassadors, how you bring people together. CK:It's not enough to just sort of text or tweet at people. It's really about coming together and being intentional about talking about your goals and how you plan to achieve them. JAC: It's been so exciting to watch the community that BibRave has grown and I can't wait for this interview. Here is Cindy, with Jessica and Tim. CK:This is Cindy Kuzma and I am here with Jessica and Tim Murphy, the co-founders of BibRave. Tim and Jessica, thank you so much for joining me today on the #WeGotGoals podcast. JM: Thanks for having us. We're super excited to chat with you. TM: It is a pleasure to be on. CK: So I'm really looking forward to talking with you both because I have known you for awhile and I've seen BibRave grow so much overtime and we're here in Boston for the marathon, which makes things even more exciting. There's always such a fun energy around running and around this race and I know it's a place that we kind of get to reconnect every year. So it's so cool. So I wondered if you could start by kind of introducing us to BibRave a little bit, telling us what it is and  the role that each of you play in it. JM:Alright, I'll start. So BibRave started as like a Yelp or Tripadvisor for race reviews. We wanted a place where people could come together and share with other runners their experiences and since then it's grown into this huge community of runners who not only share race reviews, but now we work with different brands. And other races so that we have a community of influencers that can review races and products, share their experiences with others and just bring people together of all experiences and different types of shapes and bodies and sizes and goals and have objectives. TM:Yes, so when we first got started, we were kind of looking at ways that we could establish own social media presence. TM:So we started a twitter chat which became pretty popular pretty quickly. It was centered around the Hashtag #bibchat. And noticed that a group of people coming back week after week, month after month, were running bloggers and so we thought why not bring them all together to use their collective audiences and readers and followers help races and brands to reach more runners? And so that's how we started our community of influencers known as the BibRave Pros. CK: And I definitely want to hear more about the BibRave pros and kind of what it takes to be one. But first I want to talk about the beginning a little bit. I know that BibRave started because of a sub optimal personal experience that you had. Right? I wondering if you could talk to our listeners a little bit about that. JM:Yes, and I feel comfortable talking about this because the race that I had a suboptimal experience is no longer around. It was formerly known as the Suntrust National Marathon. It was, has since then been bought by Rock ’n Roll and obviously they put their Rock ’n Roll footprint on it, so I think a lot of things a bit buttoned up, but it was only my second marathon ever and I trained through the Chicago winters, which was horrible. I paid many and spent time to travel there and I just felt like, ah, if I could have had the experience that I had in Chicago, it would have made this, that much more worth it and so we really wanted to start it so that people could learn from other people's experiences and I was very big into user generated content, wanting to hear from my peers what their experiences were. TM:Yeah. We, if I remember correctly, Jessica had done a good amount of research, but she was only finding like races’ Facebook pages, which are not necessarily like the most authentic reviews because we don't know if any of those were changed by the race or anything like that. Like it's just not something that is owned by the users. And the other option was like forums, which is just a terrible user experience. So I do remember both of us thinking, how is there not a more definitive place to find out what runners think of a race beforehand? And that's kind of the initial phase for the the idea for BibRave. CK: And I know it's kind of grown and changed and you've accomplished so much since then. So what we talk about on the #WeGotGoals podcast, we ask two big questions and the first one is what is a big goal that you've achieved? Why was it important to you and how did you get there? So I figured in the context of BibRave you've accomplished a lot, but is there kind of one, one thing either collectively or individually within the company that you would highlight as something you're particularly proud of? TM: So just sort of like as it relates to Jessica and I have, this is now both of our full time jobs and so that has been really gratifying for both of us because it started as an idea and we both put a lot of hard work into it and just had a lot of challenging situations from that come with starting any kind of business and so just getting it off the ground at all and then having it become like an actual thing so to speak and then something that we can both work on full time and you know, there's, there's five of us now on the team. TM:So that personally has just been really gratifying. And was, it was a goal whether or not we stated it explicitly or not. I think that we both ultimately wanted it to be our thing. And right now it is. CK: Yeah. I think I remember talking to you closer to the beginning, I believe you said that was a goal. Maybe you were like, I think it was a goal, so it is really cool to watch that and to see you and not even just the two of you. Like you said you have five and then you have this whole other community of people supporting you. So it's been incredible. TM: And one thing I would add, like I think if we, I, I kind of wish we had been more honest with ourselves about it being a goal. I think we probably didn't have enough confidence or we didn’t, we didn't really talk about it and we're pretty goal-driven people, we’re very like planning-focused and I just don't know that we were ever super honest about that being a goal and I don't know if it was because we didn't know if it was realistic or we didn't want to face the reality of it not coming to pass. So we didn't talk about it too much, but I still think it was ultimately something that we wanted to do and it's just, I wish we had been a little bit more explicit about it. JM:One thing I will say is I tend to be more risk averse and I feel like Tim is much more willing to take on new risks. So it's no surprise four years into it, Tim went fulltime on BibRave two years ago and I'm just now coming full time on BibRave as of three or four months ago. I think if we were jumping both feet in the deep end right away, we would have both gone full time, but I think we eased into it. The benefit in hindsight is that our business has evolved so much since we first started. What we're doing now is not at all what we envisioned we would be doing when we launched BibRave and to me, one thing that I'm the most proud of is that I think we've evolved our business to mold to needs that we see in the running industry. As we go to conferences and we go to events and we hear the needs of brands and race directors and that's what I'm super proud of is that we haven't said this is our plan and we're sticking to it and we're so rigid in how we've defined our business. We've been able to evolve and launch new projects as a result of needs that we've seen. CK:Yeah. I was interested in kind of how you go about aligning—It seems like you found a sweet spot aligning the goals of your BibRave pros and the brands that you work with and the races that you work with, but it's probably like a little bit of a balancing act to figure out where everyone's goals do align, so how do you kind of navigate that? How do you work with, with everyone to make sure that you keep everyone's goals aligned, if that makes sense? TM: Yeah. I think that it's critical for everything to be very win win, win for our partners, for the BibRave pros and for the brand and I've been thinking about this more and more recently. We're trying to pull together like a mission statement of sorts and I will not try to speak extemporaneously about how that's been going so far, but really like one of the things just sort of like to touch on the BibRave pro aspect and to also go back to goals for the company. TM:It's been immensely satisfying to see this community of not just the BibRave Pros, which are like the community of running bloggers that we have sort of in our in our family, but also the BibRave community in general. To just become a part of those people's running lives has just been amazing and to watch accomplishments, people to be hitting accomplishments that they didn't think they could hit and bringing everybody along for the journey. That's very, very cool and it, it wasn't something that we could have known was a goal, but I think it's something that we've been really proud of so far. As far as like how to keep the balance in act there. It's really just trying to be honest about everybody's priorities and not just like taking things for granted. So never trying to take the brand partners or race partners for granted, never taking the BibRave Pros for granted and really just trying to focus on everything being win, win, win. JM:When we started with the BibRave Pros, at first it was a community just to serve BibRave and I think when we were out talking to other partners and other people in the industry, one thing that struck us was people want experts in social media and in community and we have that, but we're kind of only using it to serve BibRave. But what if we started to use it to serve other people in the industry and that was like the light bulb moment for us probably like around 2015 and when we started to again then leverage our community to help kind of other brands and companies. So I again, I, I pat ourselves on the back in hindsight that we were able to do that. I don't think we knew at that time it would grow into the business that is now. So super excited that it has. JM:And then things like last year we launched the BibRave 100, which again was just seeing a need that there was no place that had a definitive list year over year, the way you think of like the U.S. News and World Report top colleges that was the Bible when we were kids about where you would find like the best colleges to go to and we really want this to become that and we feel like we have the right community to do it. We have the right kind of like social savvy to get the word out and to get people to participate. And again that wasn't part of our original plan, but has become now a pillar of what we do. CK: And the BibRave 100. That's just like a list of awesome races, right? JM: Yeah, it is top 20 marathons, top 20 half marathons, top 15 10Ks, top 15 5ks. And then we have three top 10 lists of categories that the runners get to vote on. So last year it was the best medal, the best scenery, and then best race management. CK:Tell me about these BibRave Pros. How many you have now and what it kind of takes to be one of these days. TM: So there are 100-plus BibRave pros, maybe like 110, 115. But to become a BibRave pro, we don't have like a super specific or rigid or singular requirement. Like when we first got started we thought okay, we need people who have, I don't know, 20,000 followers on twitter and that's a made up number, but it was then too. We were like, we just need size. We didn't know any better and we didn't see the most like genuine content coming out of those people. And that's not to say that it can't exist, but that wasn't our experience. So we started actually like leaning into more of this sort of micro influencer space. People who have had a few thousand followers on twitter, maybe the same on Instagram. TM:Some are much bigger than that, but you know, people who are relatable running personalities, people who struggle with things like weight gain or injury or plateauing or just, you know, burnout. Things that all runners are kind of like dealing with, the BibRave pros are examples of those things and they can help people overcome those difficulties. They can help them feel more empowered to hit their goals. Like they're just a much more relatable and inspiring group of people. So definitely not like a singular cookie cutter. You must fit into this and you must check this box. We have, you know, BibRave Pros apply and we take a look at their entire social profile. Some of them are more influential in real life, they lead running groups, things like that. So we definitely try to look at the entirety of the person. JM:Another big thing for us I think is kind of attitude and personality. Like we want to embody the fun and the communal aspect of running and also being in the running and racing space, we know that there are realities of business that happen, especially for a ton of our race partners. There are things that can happen on a race day that are just unavoidable. No matter how closely you can plan or how detailed you can plan, things are going to happen with any live event. And so we want people who kind of like have empathy that things can happen, who want to know what has happened and are not, I'm just being necessarily negative when critiquing, if it's a race or a product. So we try to imbue kind of like what constructive criticism I guess or like positive thinking and that empathy that comes from knowing what's going on behind the scenes because they're more educated, they kind of know everything that goes on behind the scenes. TM:That doesn't require like a Pollyanna lens at all, but it's much more like a productive approach. And uh, so yeah, it's kind of all ties back into like the, the holistic approach of like who is this person, what are they about and will they kind of fit in with the larger BibRave Pro family. CK: And that makes sense. And as you say, because you're not just building a service for brands, you're building a community too. So that is all so important. Talk to me a little bit more about community and how you all have seen the power of community in running, whether it's among the BibRave pros or even when you talk about your own running goals. TM: So this is actually like I, I love talking about community and what the actual, what the word actually means because I feel like it gets used and sort of abused a lot. TM:A lot of people say, oh, this is our community and I'll ask like, what does that mean when you say your community? And sometimes they'll be like, oh, it's our users if it's like an app company. And I'm like, that always makes me a little uncomfortable because I'm like, there's not necessarily a community. It could be, but just the fact that you have readers or users or even followers does not make them community. Or if they’re your past participants for an event or a past customer, like it's not a community until there becomes this sort of like interconnected fabric where they're all like concerned with one another's wellbeing and they're cheering for each other and they're sad with each other. Like there is a genuine connection between them. They're not just people who happen to call themselves the same thing. So that's kind of how I differentiate it. It's more than just a collection. It's sort of like an integrated collection JM:And I think, you know, Tim was mentioning we're working on this idea of the mission statement. Community is at the heart of that, but I think ultimately defining our definition of community will become critical to that vision because I do think we define it in different ways than a lot of people. CK: That's interesting. And for you all personally, how has having this community, I mean has it kind of reflected back in other parts of your life too? Like in your running or in your personal goals? TM: Yeah. We were talking with some people at the expo today and we're talking with a brand partner and they had somebody who they knew come up and start chatting and so then the five of us, the four of us were chatting or the five of us and it turns out that one of them is next door neighbors with one of our BibRave Pros. So she saw my shirt and she's like, oh my God, guys are with BibRave, my friend runs with you guys. And when we were like, Oh, who's your friend? Like we obviously will know who it is, and she said who it was and it was just like those kinds of interactions are very cool because you get to see more of their life and more of their friends and things like that, but also just watching them run races they didn't think that they would otherwise be running, whether that's a distance they didn't think they could conquer or a time they didn't think they could hit. That has been super cool to watch unfold throughout the BibRave Pro scene. JM:We also have some pros who have become like BRFs or best running friends with other pros across the country and have considered themselves BRFs for years before actually meeting in person, which is like a really powerful thing to think, I can consider you my best running friend but we haven't met and then now we're meeting for the first time in two years. Or just this past spring, one of our BibRave pros was at a marathon and one of our race partners, the race director was there running and trying to run a BQ time and our BibRave Pro is there running the half and so afterwards he was there and like caught a, you know, a picture of the race director on mile 25 and like, and they know each other through BibRave and they feel connected that way. Like that is a really kind of cool thing to just feel the community. It's a very big one, but then it seems smaller in those small moments. CK: That has got to be incredibly gratifying. Wow. To think that you created this and then those kinds of connections happen. JM: Absolutely. CK: So it's interesting and they want to talk about your goals for the future too, but you know, how do you think that you'll be able to keep that kind of community if, if BibRave continues to grow. JM: So we are grappling with this as every I would say company does or any type of community does as you grow. Part of it I think is Tim and I staying involved in the community We have a community manager that manages our pros and we want to empower her and you know, I will say in the past year or two we kind of took a step back because we wanted it to be like her thing. JM:But then we had heard honestly from our pros that they felt like we were not connected to them. So now we're just staying involved and it, and it's a learning for us because at first we thought well we're going to empower you to be the person that manages them, but now we know they still want to feel like we as co-founders and owners are invested in them. So that's part of it. Two, I think with any community, there's one, I obviously like the regional connection, so we have different regions and they have little micro communities within them but also the connections that happen within races. So we're finding different ways for people to meet new people within the community and not just talk to like the same 10 people that they've known for a long time. And I'm hoping that way, even though it's 100 and may become more people, find new ways to connect with more people. TM:Yeah. And I would just say sort of echoing a little bit with Jess said, finding new ways for them to interact with one another and finding new ways for us to interact with them. So part of our own podcast is just our way of sort of putting a voice to the BibRave brand for us to create content. We weren't doing like a blog or anything so we thought the podcast would be a really good way for us to still be communicating with the BibRave community and sort of putting our own content out there. So just looking for more opportunities like that will be, it is in will be important to us in the next two to four years. CK: And yes we should say too, you all have an excellent podcast and we will make sure to put a link to that in the show notes. And on the blog post too. So you've touched on this a couple times, but I want to ask about it a little more explicitly too. You are co-founders, you are married. How do you navigate that kind of relationship? JM: To be honest, it wasn't for me immediately obvious that like, yes, we're going to hit this moment where we're both going to work on this full time. I think as Tim said earlier, we didn't explicitly say that at the beginning even though like in your mind that would be a dream. I will say super honestly, when I was working full time doing different gigs and Tim was working on BibRave full time, I was traveling a lot and oftentimes I would feel like stress because I would call him like after the work day, the 15 minutes we get to catch up and we were talking about the BibRave, like we weren't catching up as husband and wife and that would be really frustrating. And also I would feel almost sometimes a sense of guilt, like I'm not giving as much as I should, but I only have so much time. Now I actually feel that we're both working on it full time. We have our moments where we're in work, we can then more strictly define moments where we're not. So even though we're spending so much time together, I feel like where we have a better balance and we do work really well together because we complement each other with different skills and talents and as we do that more I feel like we're hitting a good stride. So. TM:Yeah, I was definitely like, I'm not like a super possessive person but I was more like possessive just because, so Jessica is like a crazy baller. She's super smart, she's creative as hell. Like she was doing such amazing work for other brands and I wanted her to do that for our brand. So I was always pushing her to maybe find a way and, and you know, at some point it wasn't that obvious like we didn't know if the business could sustain both of us and she like, for her to stop working for another company would mean like an income source for the family goes away. So you have to like, come to grips with that reality, but that definitely was like my big motivator. I wanted her to be putting her talents to work for this thing that we had and it was, you know, I think that the, the tension that she talked about was totally on me, but I do agree that now that we're both like in it full time, it's been a very cooperative—we spend like a ridiculous amount of time together, but we almost had to do a, an impromptu trip to Florida like last week and traveling to Florida from Oregon is a really long way and it's like just a huge pain in the ass. But we looked at it and we're like, okay, it's not that big of a deal. We're just going to be like traveling together. If it was just Jessica going or just me going, it's more of a drag, but we're like, oh, we'll just go together. That'll be cool. The trip didn't even end up happening, but when we realized it wa

One of the more endearing parts of my personality (I hope) is my tendency to go ALL IN on reality television shows, as friends who have been forced to receive my weekly email recaps of The Bachelor and The Challenge will attest to (yes, I still watch The Challenge and am in the Bill Simmons/David Jacoby camp of considering it America's fifth professional sport). But I'm late to the Survivor franchise, which is mildly embarrassing considering it's considered by many to be the greatest reality television competition of all time, with the greatest host of all time (Jeff Probst) behind the wheel. When I began watching this season, I immediately noticed one contestant whose passion and positivity jumped through the screen — and when I learned she was from the Chicago area, a yogi who had quit her job in corporate finance, and a self-published author on the subject of female solo travel, well, I knew I had to talk to her. The first thing you realize when talking to Stephanie Johnson of Survivor: Ghost Island is that everything she says has the subtle hint of an exclamation point at the end of it. That enthusiasm persists even in situations that would leave the rest of us despondent — like being randomly chosen for exile on Ghost Island, a precarious situation that Johnson knew would likely lead to her being voted off at the next tribal council. But instead of wallowing on Ghost Island, Johnson took comfort in enjoying her present and mentally resetting from the 24/7 nature of Survivor's social game. "What I allowed myself to do for that 24 hours that I was out there was to flip out of game mind and just be in Fiji on a beach by myself," shared Johnson. "And so I climbed up on top of the rocks and I watched this sunset. I collected shells, I sat, and I had this cry fest. I just kind of allowed myself to be in the moment and experience it." She continued, "I knew that I was going to be in trouble if we lost, so I really wanted to soak it up, and that ended up being my last sunset in Fiji was alone on Ghost Island. I didn't want to go out, but I'm glad that I was able to at least watch [the sunset] and take advantage of it  — and kind of do that alone." The second thing is that when Johnson goes in on a big goal, she goes ALL. IN. Like quitting her job in corporate finance to immediately travel to Hawaii for a month-long yoga teacher training. Or like deciding to trek and backpack solo through nearly 50 miles of Patagonia, despite never having taken on a journey of that magnitude before. Or, like watching the first season of Survivor in 2000 and deciding it was her destiny to be on the show — and then applying for 17 years in a row until the casting department decided it was time to put her on. Reminisced Johnson, "I was sitting in my college dorm room at Utah State University, and the show came on and it sparked a sense of wonder and adventure in me, and it was something that I didn't know existed until I saw these crazy people out on an island surviving — but for some reason that seemed so appealing to me. And so I started applying season two and I can't even tell you how many applications I have sent in over the years because we used to have to do them on VHS tapes!" The beauty in Johnson's story comes from the fact that while she was constantly applying to Survivor, she was finding fulfillment in her life in other ways — and eventually, chasing those passions became what got her cast on season 36. "At some point you have to just go on and live your life and keep pursuing the dream. You have to carve your own path and your own journey and your own experiences," Johnson believes. And that life event that eventually led to her (finally) getting cast? "Honestly, it happened because of Ironman Arizona — that's when I caught their attention. It's like I said: I needed to build up this life experience, but [the triathlon] was just my passion. I never went in to triathlon or running with the intention that it would get me on Survivor, but by doing what I loved and just following my heart and my curiosities it, [Survivor] came to me. It was just like the domino effect: one thing after the other, after the other, until it finally transpired." And while she may not have won this season of Survivor, Johnson isn't done chasing big goals — and she gave us an exclusive on what's coming up next for her. "I am going to enter the world of real legit ultra running, and I want to do a 100 mile race so I'm going to be planning on doing that sometime soon." Johnson confides. "After being in Patagonia out there in the mountains, it really spurred that desire to do these hundred mile endurance races that I see all my friends doing, and it seems almost like a spiritual experience. I know that sounds really weird, but I really want to tap into that mental strength that it takes to do that." After listening to our interview, you can watch Johnson in the live reunion finale of Survivor: Ghost Island on Wednesday, May 23. And if you enjoyed listening, subscribe anywhere you get your podcasts and leave us a rating or a review on Apple Podcasts. --- JAC:Welcome to #WeGotGoals, a podcast by aSweatLife.com, on which we talked to high achievers about their goals. I'm Jeana Anderson Cohen; with me, I have Kristen Geil and Cindy Kuzma. CK:Good morning, Jeana. KG: Morning, Jeana. JAC: Good morning. CK: Uh, Jeana, I know that this is kind of a big day. It's a big week. You have a pretty big announcement at aSweaLlife this week, right? JAC:Yes. This week we announced our fifth #SweatWorkingWeek. #SweatWorking Week is like restaurant week for fitness here in Chicago. We get really excited about it. We create a schedule, we invite everybody to participate in a week where we invite them to try new things and meet new people. And this time around we'll have breakfast and learns every morning, where we're will help people set and achieve big goals. And then we'll also have big events every evening built around neighborhoods and exploring those neighborhoods through fitness. The whole week will end in a fitness festival which will be announced later this week. CK:And when is this week of awesomeness? JAC:The next one will be in June 4th through the 9th. The 9th will be the fitness festival. So come on down, come on down. JAC: Now let's get to the show. Kristen, you did the interview this week and it was super exciting. I know because you are a fan of reality TV. So talk me through this. KG:Yes, I am a reality TV junkie and this week I spoke with Stephanie Johnson who is on this current season of Survivor called Ghost Island and it's airing right now on Wednesday nights and I think there is a couple of weeks left before the finale. JAC:So she talked to you in real time about how she ended up on the show and how she ended up on the show was a story of not quitting. So tell me how many times did she apply to be on survivor? KG:So Stephanie told me that she watched the very first season of Survivor and applied every single season after that, once, twice a year. I think it ended up being about 17 years that she was constantly applying for this television show and she is the type of person who when she decides she wants something, she goes all in. And that's just another example of how she really sets her mind to something and will work to achieve it. But what I also thought was interesting about her persistence in applying to Survivor was that it was never the only focus of her life. Throughout it, she was finding other ways to fulfill herself, whether it was by quitting her job in corporate finance, becoming a yoga teacher and eventually training for an Ironman triathlon. And it was after she completed that Ironman that the Survivor casting production crew decided that was the special thing that made them want her on the show this time. So by fulfilling her life in other areas, she was actually, although unwittingly working towards her dream of being on Survivor. CK: And it sounds like Stephanie has this really amazing ability to kind of take something that might be difficult or challenging and turn it into an opportunity. And she did that on the show when she was sent to Ghost Island, right? Can you talk a little bit about that? KG: Yes. So on this season, the Ghost Island twist, was that your. At any time, you could be randomly chosen to go to this Ghost Island, which was basically exile. So Stephanie was chosen, she randomly drew the stone that would send her to Ghost Island and it's looked on as a downside because you're taken out of the politicking before a tribal council vote, so it's never an advantage to go to Ghost Island necessarily. And Stephanie also knew that she was sort of on the bottom of her tribe that particular week. KG:So getting sent to Ghost Island was probably the nail in her coffin, but instead of getting really frustrated about how she couldn't do anything about the situation and how she was taken out of the game somewhat unfairly, she decided to turn it into a positive and she focused on the fact that she was alone on a beautiful desert island in Fiji and just really appreciate her gorgeous surroundings and sort of get her mind reset from the constant game mode when you're on a reality competition like Survivor. And I thought that was really beautiful. I thought that was a great perspective shift and it was so, it was done so consciously and so mindfully that I can see how it fits in with her personality that will come through in our interview. CK: I thought this was a great one, and as someone who does not watch Survivor, I was actually really fascinated by it and I think I'm going to have to go back and catch up on the season now, so thanks for doing this interview Kristen, and I am excited to share it. Here's Kristen with Stephanie. KG: Welcome to the #WeGotGoals podcast. My name is Kristen Geil and today I am here with Stephanie Johnson, who was most recently on this current season of Survivor: Ghost Island. Stephanie, how are you today? SJ: I’m great. How are you doing? KG: Oh, I'm good. It's actually a warm weather day in Chicago for once, so I feel like everyone just starts off their day on a better foot once the weather gets up like this. SJ: Exactly. I feel like springtime just popped up and everybody's outside now. It's fantastic. KG: Well, I know who you are. Obviously because I am a Survivor fan and I've been keeping up with the season, but can you give our listeners a quick introduction of just who Stephanie Johnson is? SJ: Um, well, I was, like you said most recently on the 36th season of Survivor, Ghost Island, which was a huge dream and goal of mine since season one, episode one. SJ:So it was an incredible experience to finally live out my dream. I've done two Ironman events, full Ironmen, and a handful of half Ironmen, I do ultra marathons, marathons, and then I'm also a yoga instructor, meditation coach, Reiki Master. I have a female triathlon clothing line. So I'm kind of all over the place. I am most recently an author, writing about travel, which is something that I am extremely passionate as well. KG:  Yeah. It sounds like you have your hands in a little bit of everything, but I know that before you were a yoga teacher, you worked in corporate finance, which seems like the complete opposite of everything you are doing today. SJ: Oh, it's totally the opposite. So I grew up in Boise, Idaho and you know, small town and all I ever wanted to do was move to a big city and work in a high-rise and work in finance. SJ:And so I went to college for it. I moved out to the big city. I got my high-rise, I got my job and I did it throughout my 20s. But then I just realized that, you know, even though I had pursued that dream and made it come true that after doing it for a certain amount of years, it just wasn't my dream anymore and that it was OK that that was my dream, and it was also OK that that wasn't my dream anymore and it was just time to pursue the next thing and what it was that I wanted to do for the rest of my life and create a career. So I quit my corporate job and I went off to a Yoga Ashram in Hawaii for a month and did a complete immersion in yoga and meditation and came back and like you said, drastically different career path. KG: And it seems like you didn't even dip your toe in the water a little bit. Like you went in all out when you decided you wanted to switch things up. SJ: Oh yeah, it was, it was just boom, done. And I had looked into different programs that took a year, but I'm kind of an intense, passionate personality. So for me just throwing myself into five hours of meditation a day and five hours of practice and you know, we had these long, 15-hour days at the Ashram, but that just fit my personality best and it was what was relatable and how I was able to learn everything. It was definitely, you know, that immersion, passionate, intense situation catered to my learning style. KG: And it seems like that's an aspect of your personality that makes you so well suited for endurance races and triathlons. Is that how you found triathlon or how did you get started with those? SJ: You know, triathlon came later to me. I was always active. I did yoga, I went to the gym, but it wasn't until I was later in my 20s and then really it was when I started going through my divorce and I was leaving my religion and I needed some sort of structure in the chaos of my life and I was turning 30 and I thought, you know, running a marathon has always been on my bucket list. I have these crazy runner friends that do it all the time, so why don't I just do a marathon add it into the mix. And it ended up being perfect for me though because for four days a week I had that absolute structure and the great and amazing thing about marathon training, especially when it's your first time and you're really coming from no athletic running base, is you see the improvements week by week. You see your endurance. SJ:You all of a sudden are running 16 miles for a training run and you couldn't run 16 minutes eight weeks ago, you know? So it was an incredible inner strength building and inner confidence building experience for me to train for that very first marathon and I got hooked after that. I loved the running community. I loved the support that I was getting, the friends that I was meeting and so that's when I got hooked is when I turned 30 and I ran that first marathon and it completely changed my perception of myself and the course of my life, to be honest. KG: I’ve had a few marathons under my belt and I can totally relate to what you're saying about how training for that first one, you get addicted to adding a little bit of mileage each week and you're like, I've never done this distance before. I've never run this far. And each week it gets a little bit more exciting to push your limits and see what your body can do. SJ: Yeah, it's. It is. It's a, it's a little bit like you said, kind of like an addiction just to see like what else can I do? What am I capable of? If I can do this, can I do that? And I mean, we definitely all have our limitations, but it's very fascinating seeing that that strength grow and build and like I said, it's just such a confidence booster. And so that's how I got into the running portion of triathlon. I, you know, I was doing the running portion before I even dabbled into triathlon. KG: Well, let's go back. Let's back up a little bit because you've already described so many interesting and varied accomplishments. I'm really interested to hear your answer to the first big question we ask everyone who comes on the podcast and that is, what is a big goal you've achieved in the past, why was it important to you and how did you get to achieving that goal? SJ: You know, it's, it's, I have, I have three that I could, I could say. KG: Let's go for it, why not? SJ: Well then we'll just, we'll just go for it. Like you said. Okay. So the first would be definitely Ironman. And it did come to me later on in life as a goal. You know, it was never a life goal. I thought that people were like crazy who did that type of thing. I didn't know how to swim laps at all, but once I started swimming and I took that chance on myself and I had. I met a friend who was, he was 86 and we just bonded and he, he became my swim coach and we, we just, we had so much fun training that as soon as I caught onto swimming, I knew I wanted to go the full way and it was a huge goal and a huge dream to eventually do a full Ironman even though I had no idea how I was going to physically do 140 miles in a day. SJ:140.6. I guess you gotta add in the .6. Exactly. But it became really important to me because it was like I, like I mentioned with the marathon, it was something that I focused on every single day and it brought a sense of community to me. It brought so many new friends and I loved being able to see what I was actually capable of because that to me was the impossible. It was completely impossible in my head, before I made up my mind that I was going to do it, and even sitting there at the start line of Ironman Arizona in 2015, I thought to myself, this is freaking impossible. What am I doing? I need to run off and go to Denny's and get some pancakes instead of starting this long day that I'm about to have. Like, what am I doing? So until you actually cross that line, it does seem impossible, but you know, it became hugely important to me just on a personal level to, to accomplish this and to kind of prove to myself that I was capable of this and it was important to me to show my children that you can do anything you set your mind to. SJ:You know, I always preach that on social media, dream big. You can do anything. But if I'm not walking the walk, I should not be talking the talk because that's another huge thing with me is I like to be authentic and vulnerable and very real. And I feel like if I'm telling my kids, you know, you can do this, you can do anything. I need to be able to back that up with proof, so on a personal level it was important to me, but then as a mother it was extremely important to me as well. KG: Well, that's enough for one goal. That was just the first one. What other, what were the two other ones you mentioned? SJ: You know, definitely Survivor, like getting onto Survivor was, like I said, a 17 year goal for me, I knew I wanted to be on the second I started watching that show and I remember exactly where I was when I started watching it. SJ:I was sitting in my college dorm room at Utah State University and the show came on and it was, it sparked a sense of wonder and adventure in me and it was something that I didn't know existed until I saw these crazy people out on an island surviving, but for some reason that seemed so appealing to me. And so I started applying season 2 and I can't even tell you how many applications I have sent in over the years because we used to have to do them on VHS tapes. Like, oh my gosh, you know, like you even like, remember, VHS tapes. It was crazy. It was crazy hard to actually get a video into them and you had to mail it in. And so I sent those in. I went to open casting calls, I, you know, and then finally, you know, now they do it on the Internet. So I would have been able to just send things in. SJ:So when I got the call that it was just, it was mind blowing to me that all that persistence finally paid off and it's just, it I can't describe like you know it for 17 years, you think about something most every week because it's on, you know, nine months out of the year and then it finally happens and you realize that, you know, you have this huge dream that you want and you're doing everything you can. But at some point you have to just go on and live your life and keep, keep pursuing the dream. But you have to carve your own, you know, your own path and your own journey and your own experiences. Because in the end, when I look back, you know, the woman that I am today is not the, obviously not the same person I was 15 years ago and the life experience that I have now and who I am now as the person that needed to be on the show and meet the people that I met and so it's just timing is everything, but 17 years is a really long time. KG:It makes me wonder what the casting crew was thinking the entire time we're going to if they just flipped through the applications every year. And were like, Oh, here's Stephanie again. Still at it. And then I wonder what made them decide now was the right time to cast you? SJ: Yeah, it's crazy. And I, and you know it honestly, it happened because of Ironman Arizona, you know, that's when I caught their attention. And so it is, you know, if you look at like the series of events in a life as you know, almost like dominoes falling one after the next. It's like I said, I needed to build up this life experience, but it was just my passion. I never went in to triathlon or running with the intention that it would get me on Survivor, but by doing what I loved and just following my heart and my curiosities it, you know, it came to me, so it was just, it's like the domino effect, one thing after the other, after the other until it finally transpired. SJ:But yeah, it was kind of a crazy, crazy scenario how it all happened. KG: Yeah, that's amazing. It's wild how those things work out, but it seems to show that it was meant to be. And while you were fulfilling your own passions, it was just leading you the direction that you are supposed to be going all along. SJ: Yes, exactly. Exactly. Life has a funny way of doing that. KG: Yeah, it sure does. Well, I want to come back to your Survivor journey, but let's go ahead and knock that third big goal out because I'm super curious to hear what this one is going to be. SJ: Yeah. So the third one is writing and writing. I've always loved to write and I always had this spark of curiosity of what it would be like to be a writer, but I'm not classically trained. I never went to college for it. SJ:It was just something that I, I did and I, you know, I have a blog and everything and I, I write articles and do different things, but I always wanted to write a book on something, but he just never knew what it was. Like what was my thing? And I vividly remember, this happened after I was voted out of survivor and I was talking to one of the other contestants and, you know, I'm like, Geez, like I feel like I just reached my big goal. It's time to set a new one now, you know, because I'm very goal oriented person and it's like I needed something else. And I said, I've been talking about this for years, so I want to become an author. And so when I got home I realized that my thing was solo traveling as a, as a woman. SJ:And I wanted to write about my experience with that. And you know, I tried the publishing route, I tried to go through, you know, different publishers and editors and it's just a crazy process. So I finally said, look, we live in a day and age when you can literally do anything yourself. Musicians can get their music out on Spotify and artists can get their work out on Instagram. And I'm like, why can't I publish a book? And so I researched and I researched and you know, all the backend work that goes into figuring out how do you write, edit and publish a book? And I figured it all out, you know, with it definitely took months and months of research. But I finally did it. And so publishing my first book was a huge goal for me that I reached. And it's only the beginning—I feel that it’s something that I created and it's my, it's like my little baby and now I'm going to fuel that and add onto that and just continue on with it because I really enjoy creating these books, especially on travel. So yeah. So that was a, that was the other one, is becoming an author, a published author. KG:Congratulations on that is someone who makes a living cranking out thousand word blog posts several times a day. The idea of writing a full book is daunting to say the least. So it's amazing that you were able to take that dream and figure out a path to make it happen yourself. SJ: Yeah. Well thank you. KG: Let's go back to your time on Survivor. When the show started, I'm assuming that your goal like everyone else to was to win, and to outlast everybody else. SJ: Yes. KG: But what specific strategies were you trying to go about making that happen? What was your game plan? SJ:You know, you definitely go in with the intention to win. I wanted to enjoy the experience because I had wanted this for so long, but you also like just with my personality, I had such a burning passion to win and you start the game and you look around and immediately I wanted to create strong social bonds with people. I knew that my social skills were going to be what would get me the furthest. I actually didn't tell anybody out there that I did triathlon or that I was a runner. I didn't want them to know my endurance and that I had that mental strength to really push through. So I told them, you know, I did yoga and I lift some weights and stuff, but he really kept a lot of that part hidden. So I knew that I had to rely on a lot of my social strength and building relationships and just being able to relate to people and I did. I mean I created really great bonds with a lot of people out there, very personal and you know, I had a lot of very intimate moments with people. And so that was initially my strategy going in was to create those bonds. KG:And you said it yourself. The social aspect of the game is so big in Survivor. What did you take away from your time on the show in terms of learning how to get along with a group of strangers, especially when everyone's trying to accomplish the same thing? SJ:Oh man, there's so much that I took away. It's, it's hard because you're in a scenario where you are, you know, the first night you all are sleeping in your bra and underwear and in bikini's next to each other for body heat. So you become really, really raw and close with these people very fast and there's like a very intimate bond that you make with these people very quickly and it's very deep and that part is very real. But yet you're in a game setting where it's not real life. And so you have to navigate between what conversations are real and what's not real. And you know, I'm definitely a lover, and not a hater, fighter. So it was hard for me, you know, a couple of the votes to, to vote people out. But you, you realize also you have to flip your mind back that you're in a game for you know a million dollars and if you want to stay, you have to. You have to be able to lie, cheat, and steal to get to the end. Yet you really do create real bonds and feelings towards these people because like I said, you have just this intimate, raw like down to like primal, like eating and, and warmth and sleeping with each other really quick. So I think that it taught me how quickly you can bond with people that you have nothing in common with, nothing, and from all different walks of life, you know, when you're stuck in a very primal situation basically. So it's been interesting taking those relationships also out of the game and how deep those relationships are, friendships that we've made are based on based on that, that connection that you make those first few days. KG:Yeah. It seems like it's something that you guys have in common because obviously so few of the population is able to experience that. So it's a really strong bonding moment between all of you. SJ:Yes, definitely. And that human connection is, it's very real and you know, you're, you're taken away from your phones and you're having real conversations with people eye to eye where you're, you have no distractions, of you know your phone going off or taking care of the kids or you have to do go, go to work or do this or that and so it makes you realize how much technology plays into our relationships and when you come out of the game, I bet it's like I crave more of that, that real relationship with people, you know, I don't want to have an only texting relationship with somebody because I know what it feels like to sit down with somebody without a cell phone and have a really deep conversation and laugh and cry or whatever you end up doing, but without any distractions. And so it does make you want to discover more depth in relationships when you get out of the game or at least it has for me. KG:And that's interesting too considering your scenes and theme was Ghost Island, which plays off isolation from the community and you made a trip to Ghost Island right before you were voted off. What was that isolation like for you and how were you able to navigate it by yourself? SJ:So you know, I do a lot of solo travel so I'm very used to being alone and I thought, no problem, I've got this, like and I was very excited to go to Ghost Island because you get to play for an advantage. And at the time where I was at I did not know that you didn't get an advantage because all I knew from Jacob and Kellen is that you get to at least play for an advantage. Jacob did and got, you know, the legacy advantage and Kellen just decided not to because she didn't want a chance to lose her vote. So when I got there and I got that I couldn't play a game. That is, that was this sinking feeling for me because I knew I was already in trouble and now I'm isolated and now I can’t, I don't have any advantage and now I'm stuck on a freaking island by myself. SJ:And so I just, I had a feeling like I was in bad shape if we lost the next immunity challenge. So what I allowed myself to do is for that 24 hours that I was out there, whatever it was, is flip out of game mind and just be in Fiji on a beach by myself. And so I climbed up on top of the rocks and I watched the sunset. I collected shells, you know, I definitely like, you see me on the show. I cry all that. I, I'm like the resident crier of the group. Like I sat and I had like this cry fest. I miss my kids, but I like was collecting like I said shells and stones and you know, I sat in the water and just tried to like bathe because you know, that's how we, that's how we wash out there and it's just in the ocean. SJ:And the one advantage that we had out there is this massive thing of rice. So I ate until I almost threw up like this rice and yeah, so I just kind of allowed myself to be in the moment and experience it. And I, you know, I did go through my mind any scenario that I could come up with for back at camp when I came back, but I knew that I was, I knew that I was going to be in trouble if we lost, so I really wanted to soak up and that ended up being my last sunset in Fiji was alone on Ghost Island. Well last sunset on the show, last sunset on the show was on Ghost Island. So I really, I really do feel like I didn't want to go out, but I'm glad that I was able to at least watch it and take advantage of it and kind of do that alone. KG:That's such a beautiful sentiment because I can see how being in such an uncomfortable environment would really magnify your feelings. Like the highest would feel really high and the lows would feel really low. So it's really impressive that you were able to tap into some mindfulness to

Four and a half years ago, Jim Huether saw the potential behind a niche industry before it became one of the most sought-after spaces for brands to play in or companies to launch out of. "In 2014, I remember everybody said the recovery and movement space, it's too small ... you can never create a sustainable global business in the recovery space," Huether recalled. But, as he likes to point out, "You have to know that you're going to have naysayers, and if you have naysayers, it usually means you're doing something right." Huether took his passion for working with small, emerging companies and figuring out how to scale them, and he applied it to Hyperice. Hyperice, launched in 2010 specifically for high-performance athletes, produced tools and technology to speed up recovery, prevent injury, and enhance movement through the use of vibration technology, heat, ice, and compression. Today, you can find Hyperice products in gyms, studios, and everyday athletes' homes all over the world. When Huether linked up with Hyperice, he - like Hyperice's founder Anthony Katz - believed the Hyperice product wasn't just an interesting, unique new tool. He believed it had the power to benefit athletes all around the world, professional and everyday alike. Huether was drawn to the challenge of taking a company with a lot of promise and a solid product to the next level: he wanted Hyperice to become the fastest growing company in sports. And when Huether came on board as CEO in 2015 that became his big, hairy, audacious goal. "When I came on, there was one product," he said. "It was a good, innovative product and there were some bright spots around the brand, but we really needed a new strategy, new goals and objectives, we needed a lot of new members to the team that were motivated and creative, and we needed to continue to evolve and build the best products in the world. We had to be relentless in creating innovative products and [we had to] challenge ourselves to continue to come up with those products." Huether attributes a solid strategy that his entire team was on board with, an intense work ethic to strive for the best product innovations in the world, and a healthy sense of competition to achieving that goal. His marker of success? In August 2016, Hyperice was named #96 on the Inc 500 list of fastest growing private companies in America (at 3300% growth). For Huether, the growth of the company's culture (and not just the ping-pong table in the office, he notes, but rather a culture built on work ethic and sense of collaboration) has to remain in lock-step in order to keep growing at this trajectory and to go after those bigger, even hairier, more audacious goals for the future. "I've learned that you have to make sure the entire team is always on the same page. You have to foster an environment within your company where people are working together collectively and not against each other. If you do that, you set up the whole organization for success." He's doing something right and bringing in some good ju-ju for sure, because the company experienced its single greatest success yet with the launch of the Hypervolt. "Probably our biggest success as a company was the launch of of the Hypervolt. We sold out in seven hours," Huether said. "We were sold out all over the world." Huether alluded to the idea that the success of the Hypervolt was in large part because the world was ready for the innovation, and Hyperice is well on its way to positioning itself as a true leader in the recovery and movement space. From serving only high-end, niche recovery tools to professional athletes to offering everyday athletes knowledge, tools and technology about how to move better, warm-up more efficiently and recover more efficiently, Huether has a new goal on the horizon. "My biggest goal," Huether began with excitement behind his voice, "I want Hyperice to be on the list of the world's most innovative companies. "Our vision and mission has evolved into helping everybody move more efficiently ... [and] to change the way people think about movement, mobility, warm-up, health, and wellness, and it's become really exciting." As Huether sees it, helping individuals improve one of the most important aspects of human nature - movement - can change their entire lives for the better. "As science evolves, if we can be that leader, providing people with tools and technology to help people achieve their goals, we can change the world and we can be one of the most innovative companies on the planet." Hear this interview for yourself on this week’s episode. And if you like what you hear, subscribe anywhere you get your podcasts and leave us a rating or a review on Apple Podcasts. --- Episode transcript: JAC:Welcome to #WeGotGoals, a podcast by a aSweatLife.com. I'm Jeana Anderson Cohen; with me, I have Cindy Kuzma and Maggie Umberger. CK: Good morning, Jeana. MU: Good morning, Jeana. JAC: Good morning and Maggie, you spoke with Jim from HyperIce this week. MU: I did. I, I got to talk to Jim Huether. He's the CEO of Hyperice. Hyperice, is a movement enhancement technology company and for anyone who's never experienced a Hyperice device before, it is kind of like a foam roller, but nothing like a foam roller because it vibrates and it is not made of foam at all, but it has grown incredibly quickly in the last couple years and now that Jim is CEO, it's his job to see this company through to become one of the most innovative companies in the world is what he hopes for. JAC: And Jim is CEO but not the founder, which is an interesting position to be in because his job is to take that company, take its innovation and its ideas and make it profitable, but he's super focused on team. Can you talk a little bit about that, Maggie? MU: Yeah. It was a really refreshing thing for me to hear him say because he does come from a background of helping companies grow and become profitable. However, as CEO he sees it as one of his big roles to help his team see the goal and the vision together and to help everyone get on that same page to help this company become what he envisions it to be and it's already one of the fastest growing in America, but to become the most innovative in the world and is what Jim told me he envisions, but part of being growth minded for him, it's not just him seeing numbers on a page and what a title of a company looks like, but really what the entire team is helping create and build together. So it's not as much competitive as it is supportive from the inside is what I took from him. CK: And it's interesting too just the whole industry because it has been sort of niche but recovery. I know I'm a runner and you all know from your experience in the fitness world like it's really moving from high level athletics to the rest of the world. How has, does he see Hyperice’s role in taking recovery to the masses? MU: I think the company in general is really fascinating because I did a little research as to where it came from and we didn't end up talking about this on the podcast, but really Hyperice at first was technology meant for professional athletes and college athletes and it wasn't even the products that we use today as in the Vyper and the Sphere, which we'll talk a little bit about in the episode, but Hyperice has been a part of that journey of helping people become and think of themselves as athletes and I think that we all consider ourselves athletes now and I love that. I don't think there's anything wrong with that just because we don't play on a professional, team but if you are athletic everyday, if you do something that you sweat with every single day, your body needs to recover and the tools that Hyperice created helps athletes everyday athletes and professional alike recover and get stronger over time. So I, I think seeing that a few years ago was almost revolutionary because people didn't see it as a market or see it as a possibility and now we're all kind of getting on board with recovering like athletes make sense if we are pushing our bodies like athletes. CK: Awesome. Yeah. It was really interesting to hear his take on this. It's a great interview. So I'm excited to share it. Here is Maggie with Jim. MU: So I'm Maggie Umberger; I’m joined today on the #WeGotGoals podcast by Jim Huether, he’s the CEO of Hyperice, which is one of the fastest growing companies in America. So thank you so much Jim, for joining us. JH: Thank you. Appreciate it. I'm really excited about this. So thank you. MU: Yeah. So I just, I want to get right into it with you and I'd love to start just by hearing a little bit about your journey to becoming CEO of Hyperice, one of these incredibly fast growing and amazingly niche but exciting companies, tech companies now. Um, so what led you to this spot that you're sitting in now? JH: Yeah. Great question. And I was always very motivated. I went back to business school once I graduated. I was working in sales and marketing for Anschutz Entertainment Group, which is a sports and entertainment company. I mean I went back actually to graduate school, this is probably about 15 years ago, maybe 13 years ago and became really inspired around small and emerging companies and how they scale and I think there are Harvard Business Reviews that we did in school, way back that were really exciting to me. I really enjoyed looking at different companies and figuring out the mistakes they've made or the successes that they had and why those successes or mistakes happen. So I became really inspired early on in the kind of entrepreneurial route and trying to, you know, work with businesses and work with challenging companies and learn how to grow and create opportunities with those. So I'd worked with a couple of startup companies in the concussion space, which is a really kind of a big and emerging field from 2005 and still, I mean it's very topical, people are looking at new innovative ways to create football helmet technology, baseball helmet technology to mitigate concussion. JH: So I worked for a couple companies early on trying to kind of evolve that space and create tools and technology to advance that space and, and really enjoyed it, but started to hear a lot of information from athletes and influencers about how big recovery, health and wellness was becoming in the space. So I got really inspired around the recovery space and actually was mutually introduced to the founder of Hyperice about four and a half years ago. We had very similar visions on where we could take Hyperice. At the time the was company was struggling a little bit and needed some, a little bit more leadership and strategy. But there were some really great bright spots so we were able to join forces in 2014 and you know, really kind of turn the tide of this company and turn it into one of the fastest growing companies in sports, which has been a phenomenal journey. MU: Incredible. And I think it's in sports and it's in everyday athletes’ lives now and for people who might not know Hyperice, it's a global recovery and movement enhancement technology company. So you're creating products for people to feel better and do whatever they're doing, whatever sport that is better and more effectively. And so growing from working with athletes because Hyperice traditionally or originally was more geared towards high performing professional and college athletes. Right? JH: Yup. MU: And so you've kind of grown to work for the everyday athlete. Is that been part of your journey? JH: Exactly. You hit it spot on. So it's very interesting. One of the goals that I had when I joined Hyperice in 14 and was, you know, I wanted this company to be the fastest growing company in sports and at the time, not to get too into the business side, but the company was losing a lot of money and it just needed to, needed a new trajectory and new strategy, new people, new leadership, all those things that organizations sometimes can shift and grow, so we really focused on being the fastest growing company in sports and we spent a lot of time and energy working with athletes, working in sports performance professionals, working with forward thinking facilities to kind of create that premium awareness in the space. What we've found since then and we did, we did accomplish that goal. We were listed on the Inc 500, two years ago, number 96 fastest growing companies in the U.S., private companies in the U.S. and I believe on that list we were one of three of the fastest growing companies in sports on that list, but what we've found recently is this space as much larger than that. We're now, you know, our vision and mission has really evolved into helping everybody move more efficiently, helping everybody recover more efficiently, which is really exciting because there's so many channels and areas of growth that we can focus on really to change the way people think about movement, mobility, warmup, health and wellness, and it's become really exciting. MU: Has it shifted the way that you think about recovery personally? JH: It has. It really has, you know, and I think for me I'm more excited about opportunities that I never even knew existed when I joined in 2014, for example, massage therapy and physical therapy and corporate wellness, military, those are all channels that really need health wellness improvements. They need new tools and technology and innovations in recovery and movement to help them perform better, whether that be in a workplace or on the battlegrounds. Those are all really important and imperative things and if we can improve performance and we can improve health and wellness in those channels, we can have a drastic effect on the world and how people view health and wellness, which, which is also something that we're really striving towards. MU: I think that's a, it's a really interesting point that it's a trend that recovery has started to seep into everyone's, I guess, forefront of our minds when it comes to, and finally, when it comes to thinking about working out, seeing the other side of it, because I think that we've begun to round the bend of going from hardcore workout, just kill yourself at every single workout, no matter what kind of athlete you are to now seeing how the other side is the most important, if you're going to be able to return to the gym to do what you do every day. JH: Definitely. MU: So, so going back to, to you personally or or within Hyperice, the main question of this podcast is what is a big goal that you've accomplished and how did you get there? So for you, Jim, what? What is that? JH: Yeah, and I think one of those goals, I mean it really was the fastest growing company in sports goal when I joined was something that I thought we could accomplish. When I came on, there was one product and it was a, it was an innovative product and a great product. And there were some good bright spots around the brand, but we really needed a new strategy. We need new goals and objectives. We needed a, a lot of new members to the team that were motivated and creative and we needed to continue to evolve and build the best products in the world, right? We had to be relentless in creating innovative products and challenge ourselves to continue to come up with those products and not rest on our laurels with one or two products. Right? And then we need to work hard. So I think those all were equal contributors. JH: But you know, the first one, setting a strategy that is just so important. You're, the basis of your strategy and you can adapt your strategy, really can be the foundation of your success, knowing, okay, maybe we're doing things we don't want to do things how they've been done in the past, right? We don't just follow what other people have done. We have to look at new innovative ways as time goes on and there's more advancements and tools and technologies to create a model and a structure that works for us and works for our type of business, so we did something completely outside the box in that regards and to to accomplish those goals you have to have the right people. So that was another piece that was incredibly important. Finding a team of people that were highly motivated, had great work ethic and even if they didn't have a lot of experience, which a lot of our employees did not when they, when they joined Hyperice, finding the right people that would want to grow and learn with the organization and that would like to be challenged. So we could accomplish all those strategies and goals that we had put together. So it really, you know, those kind of four things, strategy, team, obviously focusing on building the best products in the world, and then having that work ethic and sense of competition and teamwork within the organization, but trying to put ourselves in a position where we could be the leading company in the space, contributed towards, you know, gaining that notoriety on the inc 500 list and being one of the fastest growing companies in sports. MU: And it's, that's a huge title now, to be one of the fastest growing companies in, in sports and so I'm sure that the innovation that you are pushing for it isn't going to stop, right? So and case in point, the Hypervolt which you just launched, can you talk to me a little bit about that recent launch for the company? JH: Yeah, absolutely. So the Hypervolt is a vibration massage device, it has multiple speeds, you have variable levels of treatment. Can be used either by a practitioner or just self use. Been an incredible success really to help with range of motion, circulation, targeted myofascial release, um really an amazing product that we spent actually three years innovating. So we started this project at the end of actually the beginning of 2015 and about exactly three years later we're able to launch it. One of our, probably our biggest success as a company was the launch of the Hypervolt. We actually sold out in seven hours and oh my God, yeah, had to order a ton of product. We were sold out all over the world too, which was amazing. Companies like Japan, China, Korea, Hong Kong, Canada, sold out all over the world, ordered more product and got on the line with our manufacturers. We have to speed up production, sold out of our first batch of product in 16 days. JH: So it's been really fun and I think it's, it's been the perfect storm for us with this product launch because the product is amazing, really is, and you know that that goes to the team and our technology team really focusing and our engineering team, making sure it was the best product possible. Um, but really you have an amazing product with an evolving brand. Our team here has done a lot of work creating great relationships and creating a brand around leadership in, in recovery and movement. And then the market was really excited and ready for a product like this, a portable device that was technologically oriented that you could use in a clinic or at your home and the relationships that we had as a company were evolved. So I think all four of those things came together and created this perfect storm. And the buzz and awareness worldwide was beyond what we had forecasted that it was really incredible to see. MU: So I'm thinking about how when you're innovative, when you are this forward thinking there's got to be a little bit of lag time to get people on board. Would you say that there are, or what are some of the barriers that you've experienced since you've been onboard with Hyperice too? To get people to see things from your more forward thinking perspective on recovery? JH: I think we've been able to foster a culture here where we encourage every member on the team to think outside the box. I know that sounds cliche sometime, but, but we really mean it. We really encourage our team members to throw ideas out there, throw ideas that may be way too far in the future, but crazy concepts that we can consider and keeping in our mind and any idea could come to life in this company. There's been times where people in accounting or people that had nothing to do with the sales or product or marketing teams have came up with a great idea that we've put into effect immediately and that's one of the benefits of being a small, hard working team. We're adaptable and we’re nimble, so I think, you know, really creating the foundation of a culture within the organization that people feel like they can always contribute new ideas has really helped. JH: And a great example of this is our engineer or our VP of Product and Engineering. We had him joined one of our marketing and sales meetings about let's say three months ago and we were talking about ways to show and demonstrate vibration and he came up with an idea. He said, hey, why don't we use this thermal imaging technology on some new technology where you take a video of a human and as the product is going over the body, it shows the temperature changes in your body. So very technical looks really cool. And we ended up trying it, it was very visually stunning and it became the lead in our marketing campaign, but that was somebody who had zero marketing experience and was more of a product development expert. So you know, those types of things only happen when the culture is right and people feel as if they can collaborate and share their ideas. So that's something that we've really worked on within this company. MU: That's fantastic. I love that. I mean it's, it's the idea that. What is the saying about rising boats lift? Oh no, I'm going to mess it up. A rising tide lifts all boats, but just that everyone can bring something to the table. So for you, I'm really interested to ask you more about where your passion lies of kind of solving problems and putting puzzle pieces together to help this company grow in a way that is sustainable and that you can think on the cutting edge of technology and then bring that to the world. Like how do you stay fresh for yourself and to see problems as exciting versus as daunting because that can get to be the case for big companies? JH: I'm really inspired, you know, with business growth and sometimes it seems strange like when I tell people this, but to me I played a little bit of baseball back in the day and there's that competitive edge that you have in that sense of competition to overcome challenges and adversity and I think that was kind of ingrained in my DNA and I kind of took some of the things I learned there, some of the successes and failures I had there into the business world and I really enjoy it. I really enjoy finding challenges and creating strategies to overcome them and trying new things that may not work or have never been done before and seeing if they work and if they don’t, adapting them. When it goes back to what I mentioned about business school and it was really those Harvard Business Reviews that we did in my MBA school that really inspired me to look at different companies and, and find new ways to, to spin or find new ways to adapt and create new opportunities to create your own business model. JH: So that's been really exciting for me and it's been something that, you know, I kind of get inspired by the challenge. When I joined Hyperice again, it was a, there were some great spots. The founder is very brand oriented, creative and we work very well together. There were just, there was some issues with the strategy and some issues with things within the organization that we had to fix and it took us about two to three years to go from losing millions to making millions and it was a long, hard road. But we built the company the right way and because of that, it's one of the reasons we're having so much success now is we built a great foundation. We are flexible, we're able to adapt, we are creative and those types of things. As any small emerging company, you have to have confidence in what you're doing, you really do. JH: And you have to know that you're going to have naysayers and if you have naysayers, it’s, it usually means you're doing something right. I remember in 2014 everybody said, Oh, the recovery and movement space, it's too small. You know, it's never going to be, you can never create a sustainable global business in the recovery space. That's just not going to happen. Well, no one thought an online bookstore could do $178 billion and no one thought, you know, an executive at Paypal could, could send an electric car into space on a rocket. So I think, you know, having confidence in what you're doing and staying true to the vision is really important. MU: Yeah. Yeah. And being okay with kind of stepping into a place that doesn't have all the steps laid out for you. It seems like a place where you really thrive. JH: I agree. Yeah. It really is. Trying to find areas and things that have never been done before and not being afraid to fail. And if you fail a little bit and a project or, or a strategy doesn't work, then you learn from it and you try something else and you go after it, you know wholeheartedly and give your best in one of those items will work. MU: Do you have an example that you kind of go back to as a learning moment for you that kind of gave you that confidence to pivot and to get excited about challenges versus getting worn down by them? JH: In one of my previous companies, which you know I was an executive and I was on the management team in a leadership position, but I was not the chief executive officer. I learned that you have to really make sure that the entire team is always on the same page and you really have to foster an environment within your company where people are working together collectively and not against each other and I think if you do that, you know, you end up setting the whole organization up for success and you know, something we've done here with our team who are all very highly motivated. We have a lot of just unbelievable team members here that are young, hungry, motivated, work hard, maybe don't have a lot of experience, but everybody's incentivized for team goals. Everybody's working towards the same goals and achievements. So that competition we create is actually competition not within the organization. It's external, right? Everybody here, there's no competition amongst each other and I think that gets more minds and more creativity within the organization. So that piece of it I think is, has been really important and I've learned that from the past where I've seen organizations that, you know, maybe pit people against each other or don't have everybody bought in to the same mission and vision that can kind of tear apart a company culture and tear apart the direction of the company. So I did. I think I learned that in some experiences in the past. MU: Glad to hear you say that I think because in my mind that makes total sense that it doesn't matter what your goals, visionary, you know, dreams for a company are, it's the people within the company that are going to be together in getting you there. So it has to come back to who is in the office every single day making the machine run. JH: Exactly. Exactly. MU: So going forward, our next big question for this podcast is, what is a big goal that you have on your horizons is whether it's right now in the future or down the line in the future? And how do you plan on getting there? JH: Ah, OK. So I would say that my biggest goal, something that I really want to achieve, I want Hyperice to be on the list of the world's most innovative companies and you know, that list, FastCompany has a list, I believe; Fortune also has a list. But being able to achieve that would be, would be amazing and I think it's possible. It may take us a couple years, but really you know, to be on that list for me would mean that, you know, we not only had an amazing product, an amazing set of products, but we had an amazing strategy. We had an amazing team for us to be able to position ourselves that way and scale globally and I think that would be an amazing accomplishment. That is doable. Because when you look at this space, how important is health and wellness? I mean it's one of the most important aspects of human nature, so to speak. JH: So if we can help people move more efficiently, if we can help people recover more efficiently, if we can help people perform, whether it be at the workplace or on a football field, whatever it may be, you know, we can change people's lives for the better and if we continue to advance that as science evolves and people learn more about the human body and they learn more about health and wellness, if we can be that leader providing tools and technology to help people achieve their goals within health and wellness, I mean we can change the world and we can be one of the most innovative companies on the planet. So that's something that we're really, really striving to do. And me personally, when that day happens, I'll be pretty pumped up. MU: Oh man, OK, I want to throw a curve ball question at you, but if you don't, if you don't have an answer, that's absolutely fine, but do you have a story of someone who has used like the Sphere or the Vyper or maybe it's the Hypervolt now, it's just this incredible recovery or like athletic story, more like everyday athlete story that is just like, wow, we are changing the world based on this one person's story. You know, there's gotta be more than more of those out there. JH: I would say it was really, really great to hear that both Steph Curry and Lebron James took our, our Vyper product with them basically to practice on the plane to the location like they actually had their own personal unit that they took for mobility and warm up. That was pretty cool to hear. We had am athlete in Japan, very famous pitcher who actually played for the Red Sox here and then also played in Japan, who basically said that it completely enhanced his rage of motion and fixed a shoulder surgery that he had, so the vibration therapy used in the HyperSphere helped him recover. When you had seen multiple physicians and could not get his shoulder right, so that was a really awesome story. We have members of the US military, write us all the time and say that they have more energy and you know they're able to move more efficiently in that space, which feels really good that we're doing something for our soldiers, so that's been amazing. We have just the general fitness enthusiasts. We had one the other day who said that his back had been locked up for months and he was using the Vyper on his lower back and it freed him up and he was able to move more efficiently than he had in 10 years. That was incredible. These are all stories we share within our team just to get people more and more inspired and motivated about what we're doing. Yeah, I think those would be three that to me are pretty cool. MU: I love that. It’s true though. I think people don't expect it when when they try it out the first time and they're like, oh my gosh, what is this? And then they kind of like get used to it and now I have people in my classes all the time saying like, can you bring that to class next time? So it's like kind of addicting, which is really fun. So is there anything else I didn't ask you, goal wise, things that you guys as a team or just you yourself are going after? Personally? JH: I would say I think you covered a lot. I mean I think that it's exciting to be able to have a company that is very successful on the business side that aligns with something that you're personally passionate about. And I think that's very rare, but I think for all entrepreneurs or executives or just you know, people in the workforce, it's easier to be very passionate about something that you enjoy every day. JH: Like Sunday nights come and I'm ready to go, I'm ready to be in Monday morning. I'm chomping at the bit to get after it Monday morning. And that's because I was able to choose kind of a space in the area of business that I really liked. But I think it's rewarding to be in a company that we worked really hard to make sure that financially it was secure and thriving, but is also having this dramatic effect on the world as it relates to health and wellness. Both of those things to me are really inspiring and I hope that we can kind of inspire others to find different areas of business that you're passionate about and go after those and commit your energy to it. Because when you do that, good things generally happen. MU: So that is the perfect segue to one last final question that that's on my mind. It's that when you have an idea, if you have a, a nugget of, an idea that you're passionate about, but you're not really sure. Like say you are that visionary type that doesn't necessarily know how to get from A to B to Z in the growth minded perspective that you have. Do you have a piece of advice to share with someone who's at that stage of just vision? JH: Yeah, I definitely do. I think everybody should—you know, ideas. There's a big difference between coming up with an idea and making it a reality, right? And there's a, there's a big difference between coming up with a great concept and then building a, you know, a strong business around it and sometimes people with great ideas who are very innovative and forward thinking can execute great ideas and maybe they need a partner to take that idea or that product or whatever it may be or a concept and bring it to reality and that's okay, right? There's strength and weaknesses out there and sometimes partnerships can be very effective if people are, are aligned on the vision and the mission and they kind of see the same end game. So you know, so I always tell young entrepreneurs like go after it, like definitely go after it, but create a strategy first, right? JH: Make sure you have a plan and if you need to find great partners who may be strong in areas that can compliment what you're doing and make it more of a reality, then go, there is nothing wrong with that. You know, find a great team. Like this company. Hyperice would not be nearly what we are without the great team that we have, right? And that's been one of the things that, that, uh, I'm maybe most proud of is that we were able to instill a culture and a culture is more than having a ping pong table or a coffee machine in the office. It's really about that work ethic and collaboration and you know, people being challenged daily so that they aspire and grow. So to answer your question more succinctly, I would say that you can find a partner in something, somebody that you can kind of bounce ideas off that helps a lot of young entrepreneurs who maybe are not sure whether or not to dive into something or not. MU: That's amazing. Thank you so much for joining me and for sharing your story. I can't wait to see Hyperice on the world's most innovative companies list. {robably sooner than we all think. JH: I hope so, I hope so. We’re—It won't be from lack of effort if we don't make it. That's for sure. MU: Well, thank you very much, again, Jim it was an awesome pleasure to speak with you. JH: Likewise. Thank you for having me on. Keep up the great work. Really appreciate it. CK: This podcast is produced by me, Cindy Kuzma, and it's another thing that's better with friends. So please, share it with yours. You can subscribe wherever you get your podcasts, and if you could please leave us a rating or review on apple podcasts, we will be so grateful. Special thanks to J. Mano for our theme music; to our guest this week, Jim Huether; and to TechNexus for the recording studio.

Some people would view the loss of a leg as a tragedy, or at least, a significant obstacle to pursuing the path they’d painstakingly planned out for themselves. For Melissa Stockwell, my guest on this week’s episode of #WeGotGoals, losing a limb offered a second chance at a lifelong aspiration. As a young gymnast, she’d always dreamed of going to the Olympics. She practiced twice a day. Her walls were covered in Team USA posters, her entire life decorated in red, white, and blue. Her love for her country eventually took her to the Army and to Iraq, where in 2004 a roadside bomb took her leg. While recovering at Walter Reed Army Medical Center, she learned about the U.S. Paralympics. That, she knew, was where she needed to be. “Here I was, an athlete with a physical disability, and I was being told that I could compete on the world’s biggest athletic stage and represent a country that I defended over in Iraq,” she says. “What greater honor would it be to wear that USA uniform on that stage?” Stockwell picked a sport—swimming—and trained hard. She made it to her first Games in 2008 in Beijing. The experience was incredible but the results, not what she’d hoped. So she transitioned to triathlon, stayed dedicated, and won a bronze medal at the 2016 Rio Paralympic Games. Standing next to her teammates on the podium—Americans took all three medals—was the ultimate payoff for all her challenges and sacrifices, she says. And it was all the more meaningful for having come after another major feat—having her son, Dallas. “To be in Rio on that podium as a medal-winning mom was really just really one of my greatest accomplishments,” she says. “I mean, when I think of that moment, I think about everything that went into it and just how amazing it was to be there.” Her path to the medal stand offers one compelling example of the way she digs deep to find the positive in any situation. But it’s far from the only way she’s wrested control of her own narrative, turning challenges into opportunities to transcend them. Sure, balancing training, speaking gigs, her role with the Dare2Tri Paratriathlon Club (which she co-founded), and two kids under the age of 4 often proves tricky. But rather than bemoan her lack of time, she maximizes every 15 minutes, and draws a deeper motivation to push ahead from her children and the athletes who come through the Dare2Tri program. Of course, training comes with its peaks and valleys, days of exceeding your expectations interspersed with not-so-great rides, swims, and runs. Each day, she pinpoints one thing she did that drew her closer to her goal, even if was as simple as getting off the couch. And yes, she’ll be 40 by the time of the next Paralympics, in Tokyo. Her competitors are far younger, have fewer responsibilities. But age has brought her wisdom and a desire to show her children—she now has two, including eight-month-old Millie—that hard work pays off. So she’ll do everything she can to make it there. We won’t be surprised to see her on the podium again in 2020. Hear more about how Stockwell is working to involve women in the sport as chair of the USA Triathlon Women’s Committee, what tips she has for other busy moms trying to achieve big goals, and the special way she commemorates the day she lost her leg on this week’s episode. And if you like what you hear, subscribe anywhere you get your podcasts and leave us a rating or a review on Apple Podcasts.   --- Episode transcript: JAC: Welcome to #WeGotGoals, a podcast by aSweatLife.com. I'm Jeana Anderson Cohen; with me,I have Kristen Geil and Cindy Kuzma. CK: Good morning, Jeana. KG: Hi Jeana. JAC: Good morning. And Cindy, you did the interview this week with Melissa Stockwell. Isn't that right? CK:Yeah, I'm Melissa Stockwell is a Paralympic triathlete. And she's also a veteran, she started an organization called Dare2Tri that helps other athletes with disabilities get into the sport of triathlon and fall in love with it as much as she did. She's an incredible guest and I was so excited to talk with her. KG:Melissa lost her leg in Iraq and throughout it all she's remained incredibly positive. How was she able to do so with such a traumatic experience in her past? CK:Yeah. I wonder how much of that is sort of integral to her personality and how much of it she learned along the way, But she really focuses a lot on finding the silver lining in difficult experiences. In fact, there's a great story about how she kind of has turned the loss of her leg around. I don't want to give too much away because it's, um, pretty fantastic the way she's turned that into a positive for herself, but really she just focuses on finding whatever she can to kind of make the story her own out of whatever obstacles she's faced and overcome. And you know, you can't control everything in life she talks about, but you can control your reaction to it. And she has really tried to do that to make her reaction in a positive one. JAC:And along the way, going through that experience in them becoming an athlete, she adopted this sort of interesting way to set and achieve big goals. Can you talk about how she uses small steps to achieve big goals? CK:Sure. Like many of the accomplished athletes we have on the podcast, you have to have a big goal, right? Like you want to be a Paralympian, an Olympian, and you want to be the best in the world, but it's pretty hard to just set your sights on that and then wait for it to happen. Right. You have to do a lot of work along the way and she talks about how she every day just tries to do whatever she can to achieve that goal. And then at the end of the day she writes down one thing she did that took her closer to her goal. So even if things didn't go exactly the way she planned, even if she had a run that wasn't great, at least she got out there and ran or she did something she didn't want to do and that took her a step closer to our goal and then she can reflect on all of those accomplishments later on and realize how much hard work she really did and how she's prepared to achieve what she set out to achieve. KG:And her life would be easy enough if all she had to do was train for triathlons or whatever sport she's competing in. But of course, that's never the only thing you're doing with your life at one time. There's always other things that demand your attention and your time. So how is she able to manage her priorities with a family and with a career? CK:So, she definitely has a lot more responsibilities now with the family, but that actually has helped her connect to a deeper motivation to her sport so she can't always do as much training, but she is really motivated to stay active and to show her daughter and all the other women out there that you can continue to have a career and a full life and be an accomplished athlete. So I think connecting to that really helps her continue to achieve. JAC: And here’s Cindy, with Melissa. CK: All right. This is Cindy Kuzma from aSweatLife and I am here on the #WeGotGoals podcast with Melissa Stockwell, who’s a Paralympian, and the co-founder of the Dare2Tri program. Melissa, thank you so much for joining us on the #WeGotGoals podcast. MS:Thank you for having me. Excited to be here. CKNow. Melissa, you just came back from a couple of trips I know, including to Sarasota for the American Championships. Is that right? MS:I did. I, um, in my first race back kind of post having my baby Millie who is eight months old today. So yes, I was down in Sarasota doing a race and it went quite well, much better than I expected it to. CK:That's always awesome when we have those victories when we don't even expect them. Right, right. Exactly. So Melissa, I know you were an athlete from an early age, you were a gymnast growing up. Right? MS:I was. So I was a big gymnast, so it was kind of my definitely my thing growing up, you know, I think as all young aspiring gymnasts do you know, dreamt of going to the Olympics and being an Olympic gymnast and had posters all over my room and you know, red, white and blue everywhere and gymnastics before school after school. And that was definitely what I hoped to do. CK:Yeah. I often think that people who have that early experience of being an athlete that really often shapes the way you think about goals and opportunities for the rest of your life. Do you think that that was the case for you? MS:I definitely think it helped. You know, obviously when I was younger I had had two legs, I had both of my legs. I didn't really know any different, I’d always been kind of goal-driven, so wanting to dream big and reach high and my parents kind of let me do that, which I think has shaped my life kind of this many years later and as I've grown up it's kind of allowed me to do, to do just that and just to keep going with it. CK:So how did you get from those early days to Iraq? What, what led you to service and what goal did you hope to accomplish there? MS:So I realized at a young age kind of, you know, how lucky we were to live in the country that we live in and always wanting to be in the military and to be in the Army. So I made that a reality in college when I joined ROTC and then, and when I graduated in 2002, I was commissioned as an officer and two years later I ended up being deployed over to Iraq. So, you know, I joined, I joined the army, I mean pretty short and simple. I love our country. I wanted to give back. That was really my, my main reason for, for putting the uniform on CK:And I know it didn't take too long after that before you had a change of plans. I know it was April 13th, 2004 when your convoy hit an IED and, and you lost your leg and we're talking now a little bit before that day in 2018 and I know you have a special tradition for our commemorating that, which maybe we'll talk about later. But what I'd kind of love to hear about first is, is how you shifted your goals and your mindset while you were recovering. Talk to me a little bit about the moment you kind of set your sights on the Paralympics and what effect having a big, audacious goal like that had on your rehab, both physically and mentally. MS:So. So after I lost my leg, I wasn't, you know, I was 24 years old, didn't really know what my life would be and I did all my recovery at Walter Reed Army Medical Center and being there and being surrounded by so many other soldiers who had worse injuries than my own kind of helped me realize how lucky I was. So I wanted to kind of live my life for them and that those, that no longer could and have given that ultimate sacrifice. So after I learned to walk and wear a prosthetic, I learned about the US Paralympics and you know, having dreamt to go on to the Olympics as a young child and that never happened and it was almost like I had a second chance because here I was an athlete with a physical disability and I was being told that I could compete on the world's biggest athletic stage. MS:Represent a country that I defended over in Iraq. And I mean, what greater honor would it be to wear that USA uniform on that stage. So a dream was born pretty quickly of wanting to be a Paralympian and you know, I kinda set right to it, you know, somehow, some way I want it to be a Paralympian and it was kind of a natural goal I feel, you know, I think just having been an athlete growing up, been an athlete in the past, it was just kind of something that fell into my lap and the realization that if I worked hard enough and picked a sport and dedicated myself to it, that I could actually get there. CK:and, and you made it not once but twice in two different sports and I know you took home the bronze medal in triathlon in Rio in an American sweep, which was so incredible. And those are just two of the many things you've accomplished since then. So this kind of feels like a good time to transition into the first big question we always ask on #WeGotGoals and that is what is one big goal you've achieved, why it was important to you and how you got there? MS:So definitely when I think about the past many years, the one that stands out is winning a bronze medal at the 2016 Rio Paralympic Games in the sport of triathlon. It was— everything that came with it. Everything from losing my leg over in Iraq to competing in the 2008 Paralympic Games in swimming, but not doing as well athletically as I thought they could, and then continuing with it and turn into the sport of triathlon, having my son Dallas and then trying to come back from that to make it to Rio, kind of everything that went that moment. All the dedication, the hard work, the sacrifice of having to be away sometimes from my family for training, for racing, the team that I was with, my coaches, my, my mentors, my family, everyone that kind of believed in me to get there, to be in Rio, on that podium as a medal winning mom was really just really one of my greatest accomplishments. I mean, when I think of that moment, I think about everything that went into it and just how amazing it was to be there. CK:I'm getting chills hearing you talk about it. We've talked to several elite athletes on this podcast and I'm always so curious about how they approach goals because it seems so overwhelming to say, like, my goal is to win a Paralympic medal be a world champion or be the best in the world and it seems like most people kind of break goals down into smaller chunks and maybe make them process goals versus outcome goals. Um, what did that look like for you when you were training hard for that, for those games? How did you approach goal setting? MS:So you're right, so goals, I mean you have this huge goal, like if you have a huge goal, it doesn't, it doesn't happen overnight. You don't. I don't say, Oh I'm going to qualify for Rio in the Paralympics and then wake up the next day and do it. It takes days and months and years of training and really believing that you can. So really, yeah, kind of taking it down into, into each day. So, you know, every day I wake up, I do my training and at the end of the day I kind of look back and I say, OK, what's one thing I did today that got me closer to my goal? And some days it's something as little as, I didn't want to go on my run, but I got up off the couch or I, I, I did what I had to do to make it happen. Whether the run was a good run or not, it doesn't matter some days. MS:What matters is just that you got out there and you did it when you didn't want to do it that day. Another day you look back and you say, wow, that run was amazing. I had this time goal and not only did I make it, but I surpassed it, and then that kind of makes all those other days of training that didn't go so well worth it and it kind of pushes you for the next block of training. So goals I think have to be broken down into little chunks and little steps at the end of every day. You can look back at your day and I guarantee you that whatever it is, even if it's the smallest little thing, there's something in that day that got you closer to that goal and some days they’re hard to find, other days are easier, but at the end of the, at the end of the day, you didn't have a good day. If it's a bad day, find the positive in it, find something that got you closer to that goal because it's there. Sometimes you have to just look a little bit deeper. CK:I love that so much and I can see how if you kind of stacked those moments on top of each other, you would also really stoke your confidence. Like you say, that is such an important of it too. Not just the physical preparation but the mental preparation. MS:Exactly, and you know, I think everything in life and especially goals as well. It's not this, it's not just an upward trajectory, right? I mean there's dips and there's valleys and there's peaks and—but it's a gradual, if you stick with it and if you stick with believing in yourself, having a team surrounding yourself with people that want you to get there, want you to, you know, reach those goals. The gradual trend is up, but it might, it’s all about when it does dip down, when you do have those valleys about not getting up and keep moving forward. CK:So how do you keep track of this moment? Are you a person who has a paper training log? Do you do it online or do you have some way that you are really capturing all of this to use later on? MS:So I used to have it written down where every day or either every night before I go to bed, I would write down what I did that day or the three good things that I did. And then every morning I would write down three things that I wanted to achieve that day. Since my daughter was born eight months ago. I have yet to continue that because I was kind of busy with, you know, middle of the night feedings and not, not a lot of sleep, but something that I should definitely start now that that’s getting a little bit better. I should start again because I think having it written down and being able to go back and look at that and you know, six months down the road, going back and looking back at the things that I achieved six months prior and realizing how far I've come from them can really help. CK:Yeah, absolutely. Well, I think that's what's so powerful about having those little rituals too, is that sometimes life does get crazy and you kind of move away from them. They give you something really sort of tangible to get back to, right. Like, you know, you can do that again. MS: Yeah, absolutely. CK: Let's talk a little bit now about Dare2Tri, which is an organization I know helps so many other athletes achieve their goals. What motivated you to launch it and how has it grown since? MS:Yeah, so back in 2011. Two of my friends, Dan Tun and Keri Serota and myself co founded Dare2Tri Paratriathlon Club. Obviously I'm an athlete with a physical disability and both Dan and Carrie are able-bodied athletes, but they’ve had worked with adaptive athletics all their life. So all of us were triathletes and kind of realized how much sports can impact somebody's life at all, but especially somebody with a disability. So we decided that we're going to start Dare2Tri and get however many athletes we could find that had physical disabilities and show them that they could do, not only be an athlete but they could be a triathlete. So we launched it back in 2011. It's based in the Chicago area and we had the modest goal to get eight athletes to do a triathlon that first year that had, where there was a amputation, visual impairments, spinal cord injury, and really provide the athletes with everything they needed to do a triathlon. MS:So expensive adaptive equipment, coaching, training and really helping them get to that starting line, so we started it and it grew faster than we ever could have imagined. Not only did we get eight athletes to that starting line in the first year, I think we were upwards in the, in the mid twenties, 24 athletes and then this many years later, seven years later, we have over 300 athletes on our roster. We have year round programming, we have camps, we had clinics, we have two, three-day camps, one that's for military, one that's for anybody with a physical disability and it's been really impressive and incredibly rewarding just to see how many lives we've impacted. Because you take somebody who has a disability, you know, take a youth athlete who's eight years old, they're in a wheelchair. Neither they or their families, you know, they're not sure kind of what their lives can be and how, that it doesn't matter if you’re in a wheelchair or not you can still accomplish whatever you want and you see them get to that starting line, cross the finish line and just kind of see that self confidence not only in them but in their families as well. And it, it's, it's really incredible. Our motto is one inspires many and our athletes inspire both on and off the race course. CK:Oh, that's got to give you fuel for your own accomplishments too, just seeing these athletes do things that they didn't think were possible for them. MS:Oh yeah, 100 percent. I do a lot of speaking around the nation and I get asked a lot like who inspires me and I am 100 percent inspired by our athletes. You know, anybody that doesn't think they could do something and they decide to go and try it and they realize that not only are they good at it and can they do it, but they actually enjoy it and then they continue on with it. So you know, our athletes in swear, anybody that sees them, but they help with my own goals and my own motivation as well. CK:I know that that's not the only way that you're working to help other athletes achieve their goals. You're also chair of the USA Triathlon Women's Committee. Tell me about that role and what goals do you hope to accomplish through that leadership position? MS:So USA triathlon has a good number of committees and the women's committee, which I recently the chair of, our goal is to get women into the sport of triathlon. So if any triathletes are listening, especially female triathletes, I think somebody asks you, Oh, what do you do and you say, Oh, I'm a triathlete, I swim, I bike, I run. And a lot of the response you get from women are, Oh, I could never do that. But the reality of it is actually yes, you can do that. So it's really what we hope to do as a committee is to really kind of break down those barriers. And when somebody, when a woman says, oh, I could never do that, you say, actually, yes you can. And this is why you can because there is a community of women athletes that are going to help mentor you to get there because there is a race you can go to and to start your career in triathlon. You can start out in a women's only triathlon or a women's only race and this is a uniform that, that you can wear and isn't it cool? You can pick from these colors and you know, it's not about winning the race, it's just about being out there and doing the race, so really kind of trying to break down those barriers on why women can be a triathlete and really to help them achieve it and to get to that finish line. CK:That's such an incredible goal. What does that look like in terms of like how you go about that? I mean are there conferences or is it just like individual outreach or group outreach? How, how practically speaking are. Is that committee working to make this a reality? MS:Yeah, it's kind of a combination of. So we have some partnerships with various other foundations kind of around the nation where each one of us has an athlete that we're mentoring to become a triathlete this year. We also provide grants, so grants to individuals that want to do their first triathlon to kind of help with travel or to help with coaching or to kind of help initiate the process on getting to that starting line. We also have grants that we give to women that are triathletes that are kind of looking to expand their leadership capabilities within triathlon, so if they’re a triathlon coach, but they want to take it to the next level and become a, get certified to coach athletes with disabilities or become a coach at the collegiate level to really kind of help women become advocates kind of within their own lives and kind of take that next step just so there's more females on the coaching level as well, so we provide resources on our Facebook page, it’s USA triathlon women's committee tips for women on how they can get into the sport and just hoping that women will take a liking and realize that they can do it also. CK:That's great that there's both informational and and financial support. I know that those are both really big needs for women who may be considering this kind of a sport. So that's, that's incredible. And thanks for giving the facebook page too. Because, yeah, I was going to ask how women can find out more about this. So that's perfect. The second big question that we always ask and #WeGotGoals is about a future goal you have and how you plan to get there and you've touched on some big goals that you have for the different organizations you're involved with. But I wonder what's, what's next for Melissa Stockwell? What's a goal you have personally? MS:So I have two young kids. I have an eight month old and I have a three year old and my husband Brian. And my kids motivate me to want to be, to dream even bigger and I want to kind of dream big and hopes that they see me dream big and they had big dreams of their own someday. So you know, I'm very athletically driven. I've found I have a passion behind sports and just the way it really makes me feel and just kind of proving to myself that I can still have these big goals, athletic goals, whether or not I have one leg or two. So for me, 2020 is the next Paralympic Games for triathlon and it is definitely a goal of mine in coming back from after having my daughter Millie eight months ago is not an easy thing to do, you know, a lot of my competitors are much younger than I am, no families, so the training dynamic is very different but the goal of showing them that I will be 40 years old, and as a 40 year old triathlete that has two young kids and I can still be out there on the course and not only that I can still be out there and be fast and keep up with them as well. MS:So that is definitely one of my big goals is to try and make it to Tokyo and kind of have that be my final Paralympic Games and just to do it to prove that I can and to challenge myself and just to show my kids that you put in the work and dreams can come true. CK:That's incredible to hear. And so interesting to hear too about how your motivation has changed a little bit or at least maybe expanded. I feel like often when I do talk to athletes who have long careers like you, they do find that like as life goes on, they find even more reasons to get out there and more fuel for the fire and, and more ways to stay motivated. So it's fantastic to hear that that's the case for you. MS:Yes, definitely. CK:And obviously that is like sort of a logistical challenge too, to train with the family. What are one or two of the things that have shifted for you and what advice do you give other people about fitting it all in when you have a family and, and want to train at a high level. MS:It's hard. There's never enough hours in the day, there weren’t before I had kids and now there definitely aren't. So I think fitting in what you can when you can and my coach had taught me that, that if I have 15 minutes to go on a run before kids, I would've thought that's not even worth it. Why would I even go for 15 minutes? But you go and you run a mile or a mile and a half, and instead of doing nothing that day while you've just gotten a mile in and those miles add up and they make a difference. The other things I've had to do is just kind of adjust my time so you know, instead of waking up and having breakfast and then doing whatever I do and then doing my workout, I again, I had to do what I can when I can. So in the summer when it's not cold and icy, I was known to put my kids down to bed because of course you want to spend as much time as you can with them. So I put him down to bed, 8:30 PM, put on a reflector vest, put on my headlamp and actually on my run around the neighborhood. Things that I never thought I would do that in order to make it work. It's things like that that you have to do. So get that headlamp, get that reflector vest.  Use, if you have 15 minutes, take those 15 minutes and do what you can with that much. Really just any little time that you have throughout the day, just doing what you can when you can. CK:Yeah. I think it's just like we were talking earlier about, you know, noticing your accomplishments for the day like that—all those little bits definitely add up to something much greater in the long run. MS:Yes, yes they do. CK:When you speak or give advice to others, what are, what are one or two of the key lessons you share about overcoming obstacles that come up in route to your goals? MS:When we're younger, we have, you know, you have these dreams of what you want your life to be like, right? Like you want be a doctor, you want to live in this area, you want to be married, you want to have kids, but it never happens that way. I think the older we get, the more we realize that you can't really plan your life because you can plan it to an extent, but there's so many obstacles and kind of twists and turns that happen that you're not prepared for because you don’t, there are so unexpected, but I think knowing that those things happen, that those roadblocks come up and that there's going to be diversions you know, to get to where you want to get and just the ability to really accept them and to really, to overcome them and to find a silver lining because it's hard to find a silver lining, but it is there. MS:And to really kind of dig deep and find a way to make whatever difficulties come your way, like to make them almost desirable and to make it so you end up even better. On the other side, you, you learn from your challenges and you make, in turn, they make you better in the long run. Another thing is to do that, you have to. You have to believe in yourself, but you also have to, you know when these obstacles come your way, you, you have the power to choose how you want to react to them. So that's kind of the beauty in life, right? You can choose for them to get to you and put you down or you can choose to help them make your life even better. So to try to choose to take the high road and you know, to help them make your life as good as you want it to be. So we can all choose what we want our life's path to be like. And just to try to choose to make your path to good one. CK:Those stories we tell ourselves definitely so powerful and can really shape our experiences and our future. I know. So I mean along those lines, April 13th is coming up and we mentioned this earlier, but talk to me a little bit about how you commemorate this because I think that it's such a great example of what you were just talking about. MS:Yeah. So, um, it is coming up, but I'll just a few weeks now. So every April 13th, which is a day that I lost my leg over in Iraq, every year we actually celebrate the day. So I named what’s left of my leg Little Leg and we have a birthday for Little Leg. So this year will be Little Leg’s, sounds kind of crazy to me but 14th birthday, which, I can’t believe it’s been 14 years. But it's really a celebration, so family and friends drive in or fly in. We celebrate the day. We celebrate not just Little Leg’s life or my life, but really everybody's life because in the day to day lives that we live, it's easy to get kind of caught up in everything that's going on, but when you take a moment or a day to kind of take a step back and to think about your life and it’s, we’re all very lucky to live the lives that we do. So just to take a day to celebrate that and to be with your loved ones and to celebrate, to dance, to, to eat cake, to, to share some drinks and just to kind of enjoy, enjoy life. CK:Well Melissa, that's such good advice and thank you so much for joining us on the #WeGotGoals podcast. Before I let you go, how can people find you and keep track of you and keep tabs on the celebrating that you're doing and all of the accomplishments that you have in the future? MS:Social media is obviously the best way. I do have a website that's melissastockwell.com. On Facebook, it’s Melissa StockwellUSA and then on both Twitter and Instagram it’s mstockwell01. So I encourage everyone to kind of follow along. I promise that there is never really a dull moment CK:And lots of adorable baby photos, that's for sure. Well thank you again Melissa. It's been great talking with you. Really appreciate your time. MS: Thank you for having me. I appreciate it. CK:This podcast was produced by me, Cindy Kuzma and it's another thing that's better with friends, so please share it with yours. You can subscribe wherever you get your podcasts and if you give us a rating or review while you're there, we would be so grateful. Special things to J. Mano for our theme music; to a guest this week, Melissa Stockwell; and to Tech Nexus for the recording studio.  

"The one with the hair" is a moniker she's come to embrace. In 2015, Heidi Stevens considered her then-new photo for her Chicago Tribune column "Balancing Act" unremarkable - until her inbox flooded with commentary from her readers. She shared a few in a piece for the Chicago Tribune, with gems like. "For heaven sake, comb your hair." "My neighbors and I give you permission to shoot your hairdresser." While Stevens was taken aback by this overwhelming response to a style that is arguably on-trend and beach-y, she took it in-stride and sought to learn why readers were so quick to comment on her appearance along with that of her female colleagues. She wrote this of the surprising responses: "Each one takes me aback. Not because my hair is above reproach, but because my hair is completely beside the point. It's unremarkable in appearance (not dyed fuchsia, not shaved on one side) and has no relevance to my job: I'm not a model; I'm not selling hair products; I don't work at a salon." She continued, "Is this really where we're stuck as a culture? At a place where we drown out women's voices with critiques of their hair?" It was this delightful refusal to be put into an Instagram filter that caught national attention - Today.com, NY Daily News, and AOL - and landed Stevens squarely in my Facebook news feed. She quickly became one of my feminist icons and her column a must-read. She's written about numerous topics besides her hair (like parenting, the #MeToo movement, health and her reactions to what's happening in the world around her), but people like me keep bringing up the hair incident. And through her writing, I feel like she and I are on grab-a-coffee terms, but I've never gotten to ask her the most pressing question we have around aSweatLife: What are her big goals? This week on the #WeGotGoals podcast, Stevens popped by to answer that and she shared her 20-year journey with the Chicago Tribune, working across the publication - from an intern to a section editor to a columnist. As we talked through her tenure, she shared that landing her column was the goal that made her the proudest. "I found myself really called ... to help other people and women especially feel less alone in whatever they were going through," she explained why it means to much to connect with readers week after week. With an extraordinary tenure, Stevens clearly loves the Chicago Tribune and the field of journalism. It struck me that this was the tone as I talked to Stevens just before she and 45 other Chicago Tribune Journalists announced they were forming a union, The Chicago Tribune Guild. It's a brave move that has been historically unsupported by a consolidating journalism industry - at least leading to the sale of a publication (the Los Angeles Times) and at-worst the scrubbing of the web of any trace that the publication ever existed (Gothamist/DNA Info).   Listen to this week's episode of #WeGotGoals, and follow @HeidiStevens13 to feel more connected and @CTGuild to support Stevens' brand of journalism.   ---- Episode transcript: JAC:Welcome to #WeGotGoals, a podcast by aSweatLife.com. I'm Jeana Anderson Cohen and with me I have Maggie Umberger and Kristen Geil. MU: Good morning, Jeana. KG: Hi Jeana. JAC: Hello KG: Jeana, this week you spoke with Heidi Stevens. JAC: I did. I spoke with Heidi Stevens, who's been someone I've looked to for advice, for guidance, but she just didn't know it until recently. She has a column in the Chicago Tribune. MU: nd can you talk a little bit about what that column is because it's incredibly interesting for us at aSweatLife and really for women in general. JAC: Heidi's column is called Balancing Act and it is a daily column, but she has a few online days and then two print days in the Chicago Tribune. She talks about everything from parenting to feminism to her reactions to news. And it's been incredible to sort of watch her along the way. I started reading her column about three years ago after I caught wind of it when she had this interesting incident with her hair of all things and her readers’ reaction to her hair, but she's been writing the column specifically for five years and she's been a writer in some capacity or working with the Chicago Tribune from for 20. KG: And Heidi is somewhat of a veteran in the industry. She's seen journalism go through so many major changes over the past several years. How has she adjusted to those changes? What changes has she seen as the most impactful? What in general did she have to say about how journalism has changed? JAC: Heidi has been a part of the Tribune in some capacity for 20 years. She started as an intern is done everything from copy editor. She said something about being on the mail room at a certain point all the way up to columnist with a daily column, which was her dream that you'll hear about. So she on the inside has seen a lot of changes and she's become a sort of ninja within journalism in that she's able to respond to changes. She's able to adapt to them. She's now producing online content. She has incredible editorial skills, but after our interview, Heidi was part of the organizing committee that announced a guild within the Chicago Tribune, which is another word for a union, so I think she's seen a lot of changes within journalism and she's probably bracing or is embracing more changes as a part of this group as well in the future. MU: We're thrilled to have Heidi on the podcast. So here is Jeana with Heidi. JAC:I am Jeana Anderson Cohen on the #WeGotGoals podcast and I'm here with Heidi Stevens of the Chicago Tribune. Thank you for joining me, Heidi. HS: Thank you for inviting me. JAC: I have known you through your column for as long as I've been reading it and I've been reading it since I think someone posted to my news feed a few years ago, probably related to the hair incident and I've been following you closely ever since. So I'm excited to talk to you about your, about your goals. So can you first tell us sort of how you spend your days and where readers can find you? HS: I am at the Chicago Tribune as a full time staff columnist. I write five days a week on ChicagoTribune.com, the digital version of the newspaper and then you'll find me in the Sunday print edition and the life and style section and the Wednesday print edition in health and family. HS:Those are sort of the two guaranteed print appearances now throughout the week I might here and there show up in arts and entertainment or metro or the Op Ed page, but I'm consistently on the website five, five days a week and then in print at least two days a week. I’m on twitter of course @heidistevens13, I'm on Facebook. I'm a pretty pretty big fan and avid user of social media because I feel like it keeps me really connected to readers and stories and just kind of what people are talking about in that moment. JAC: And you have been at the tribune since 1998, is that right? HS:  I have, I’ve been here forever and ever and ever in journalism years. That’s, like, centuries. Yeah, I started here as a 23 year old intern, it was a year long internship and when it ended they hired me on full time and I never left, so I've done a little bit of everything from like page design to working over in the paste up room when we used to have one at our printing plants and then freedom center to copy editing. HS:I ran a section for awhile called on the town and the column that I write now has been my favorite gig. I've been doing this for five years but. But yeah, at the trip for 20. JAC: And before we jump into the first big question, I guess we should pay off the hair incident. So about three years ago and I'm sure that you're not sick at all of answering questions related to this. HS: I’m actually not. I promise. JAC: Good.  Because I never tire of telling people why I love you and this is why. About three years ago, I know I caught wind of you because a certain photo of you went viral. Can you take it from there? HS:Oh sure. Yeah, I had a column photo. You know all columnists at the Tribune have their photos run with their reports, with their columns. I had one that was apparently not at all controversial. I really never heard much at all about how I looked in it, so I don’t know if people thought I looked  good or bad or just not remarkable enough to decide. We all as a staff got new column photos. My hair was shorter in my second column photo, it was, I don't know, like beach wavy curls is how I would have described it on a positive note. That’s what I was going for anyway and I mean the hate mail like just started flooding in about how awful I looked in this photo, I had this terrible hair. I looked like I rolled out of bed and came to work and I looked like a messy greasy tramp and you know, what sort of pride did I have in my appearance that I would dare to come to work looking like that, let alone have my photo taken looking like that. HS:There was just a whole bunch of hate mail from men, from women, from young people, from old people. And I, you know, I, I started asking some other columnists, it's like, do you ever get hate mail about your hair? And to a one, all the women said, oh, sure, yeah, all the time. And all the men said, uh, no. Uh, no. Chris Borelli, a columnist, a features report here at the Tribune who had his photo in the paper for awhile, said, he had a baseball cap on, in his photo. He said, sometimes I get people telling me I should wear a Cubs hat instead of a Red Sox hat, but that's about it. Mary Schmich, you know, Pulitzer Prize winning columnist. Said, oh, that's the majority of my mail is for sure about my hair. So then I was like, you know, I'm going to go ahead and write about this because I think that's interesting. HS:I interviewed like a gender studies professor at DePaul about, you know, just what our hair kind of represents in this culture sort of appearance-obsessed culture. And I thought she had interesting stuff to say about it. So I wrote a column about it and that just sort of took on a life of its own and I, you know, I got interviewed by Huffington Post and the New York Daily News and today.com and I was on TV and I was on the radio and everybody wanted to talk about this hair hate mail and in a way, you know, and you even made reference to it like, you know, it seems like something you'd quickly grow tired of or find to be a little frivolous. It has been fascinating to me, I would say even three years later, mostly because of what different people bring to that conversation. So somebody might feel ostracized or othered to rely on a little bit of a cliché because of their skin color or because of the shape of their body or the way their, the way they choose to dress or the way they present their gender. HS:You know, there are just a million different ways in which people feel judged and written off based on the way they look. And so all of those sorts of conversations were coming up from, from readers that I was hearing from and callers and so I just found it to be kind of endlessly interesting to talk about and I was grateful that the Tribune let me kind of go there, about something as seemingly trivial as hair. I still get the, I still got the notes. I still have readers who like literally take the time to cut out my photo. I have a new photo now, it's not that same one, but it's sort of now I've sort of become, you know, the one with the hair so people will cut my photo out and send it to me, get a haircut, you know, why can't you do your hair like Ask Amy? A lot of advice. JAC:Well, isn't that nice of them? HS: It's so nice. I know to take the time out of their busy lives. JAC: Well I know, I know that you, you write about so many things from parenting from a feminist perspective to just commentary on what's happening in the world. But I want to get to your goals and how they've come to life to before I go too off track about hair and my feelings on it. So can you tell me about a big goal that you've accomplished and how you got there? HS: Yeah, for sure. I, you know, I would say that having, having a column at the Chicago Tribune has been a goal of mine since college and I've always loved to tell stories, you know, true stories, either my own or other people's. That's what I wanted to do more than anything. HS:When I decided to pursue journalism. At the same time I found myself really called, I would say in my mid- to late thirties really called to help other people and women especially feel less alone in whatever they were going through. And at the time I was going through, you know, I went through a divorce, single mom with two little kids and I'm trying to work full time and pursue this career that I loved and felt lucky to have and live in this crazy city that I love but can sometimes feel a little broken. Navigate the Chicago public school system, just a lot of things that can seem a little daunting to go through and I was going through all of them at once and my editor at the time, thank goodness said, you know, why don't you write about that once a week in a column? And I started to, and it was kind of this perfect marriage of two goals which, you know, were to tell stories, mine and other people's. HS:And make people feel less alone by telling those stories and, and so that's kind of both my mission and my goal I guess if those aren't exactly the thing. JAC: And what's interesting as I read your columns, there are a few that sort of stick out to me. I don't have kids, but I know that you have two children and a stepchild and when I read the columns you write about being a mom or even the one you wrote on your birthday. I feel like I'm experiencing a piece of parenting that's almost like, I feel jealous to put it in the best way. I feel like you’re savoring parenting in this way that I don't think I could fathom unless I read your column and it's so interesting to me even what you just wrote about going on the road trip with your son. So do you see it from that perspective? HS:Well, first of all, thank you so much. That's just a beautiful thing to say. Second, you know, yeah, I, a lot of people who I hear from are not parents or they're done with the kind of day to day work of parenting, their kids are grown or you know. But, but not, not everyone who writes me about my parents had columns in the thick of it the way I am, kids 8, 12 and 17. My stepson’s 17. And I just think that, you know, there's a lot of commonality in the way I kind of struggled to find the best way to relate to my kids that's not so different from the way we all struggle or take joy from or you know, find meaning in the relationships we have with our partners and our siblings and our dearest friends and our parents. And I just think, you know, there's, there's a way of relating to other people that really makes life rich and worth living and for some people that's kids and for some people it's not. HS:And, and still we all, we all want to feel a connection to other humans, you know? And so I don’t know, I hope that when I'm writing about some of my adventures and fears and triumphs with my kids, people can see themselves in those adventures and, and trials and triumphs—is there a plural for triumphs?  Triumphs? That’s a hard word to say. You know, in their own lives with, with other, with other humans that aren't necessarily children. Yeah. JAC: And what I love is now, even though you're totally opening—I’m sure you're not opening your life up totally, but you are revealing these sort of raw moments, your divorce, moments with your children and people look to you for advice. I know I saw you on a local TV show here in Chicago after the most recent school shooting and people look to you for those moments to just sort of see what another parent is thinking, and what they're counseling their kids to do. Do you feel like you're an expert? HS: Yeah, that's such a good question. I, you know, I always shy away from that title because I'm like, ah, I don't have any sort of particular degree or license in anything that would make me qualified to give out child psychology level advice. I think I'm happy, willing and happy to talk about what I try, what I've read, what I've tried, what has worked, what hasn't worked. I'm equally, if not more willing to say here's this thing I tried that really spectacularly failed, including, you know, my first marriage. I just, I don't see any. I suppose it’s naive to say I don't see any stigma. I don't think there should be any stigma. I would prefer to push back against the stigma in you know, trying something and having a network when that comes to parenting, working out, marriage, you name it. You know, try it and if it doesn't work, try a different way. HS:And so I'm always happy to say here's the thing I just read about it in a book by so and so, and maybe you could try that. Or here's a thing that occurred to me the last time, one of my kids was going through that and here's what I tried and here's how that went. And so I, you know, I very much hope to position myself as somebody who's sort of down in the trenches trying this stuff with you rather than handing advice down to you. Does that make sense? JAC: Absolutely. And I think that's why you're so approachable and why I think I gravitate towards your writing is because when I read it, I feel like I could one day had children or I could one day navigate these, these hurdles that everyone faces. And that's, that's honestly why I wanted to talk to you. HS: Well thank you. HAC:So let's talk about the future. Is there a big goal that you want to accomplish in the future and how do you plan to get there? HS: Yeah, I, you know, I really want to write books. I think that's, that's a pursuit. I would really enjoy doing, the physical writing of it and I also just love the idea of reaching a totally different audience, not necessarily a newspaper reading or website reading audience. And then engaging in a dialogue with that audience. I mean that, that to me is half the fun of this work is hearing from the people who have read something and then getting their questions or even their criticism. I just, I like that dialogue. I like hearing what, what you related to and what you couldn't at all relate to and I think that would be really fun on a book tour or you know, long after the book is released and people are, you know, hopefully buying and reading it. HS:You don't want to write a book that no one reads. You know, to be able to share my stories and stories of, of people who I've been inspired by and learned from. Um, and a book is something I, I really hope to do. How am I getting there? That's a great question. I have a little word document file on my laptop that I, you know, go to and jot down notes. And, you know, I have sort of a loose introduction to a book and I'm at this point, I'm in the note taking phase, that note-taking phase might last a decade. I, you know, I don't know, I, I have a pretty, pretty specific way that I want to parent my kids and that requires me to be around and present with them a lot. And I, you know, I just don't, I don't want to hole myself up in my room and write while they're 8 and 12] and want me around and want to play with me in the basement and want me to come to all their lessons and I want to do that stuff. HS:So, so I don't think it's something I'm going to get to in the next couple years because my kids, they're just the ages that, you know, they need, they need me around a lot. They want me around a lot and I want to be there. But down the road I think I'll collect all those notes and all these life experiences and put them in a book, you know. And it's um, well it's a balancing act to quote the name of my column. To decide what is fair game for me to write about and what is not fair game in terms of like, you know, my kids’ experiences and their right to a private life and, and, and it's not so much like, oh, what stories should I tell and not tell about them because I think I have a pretty good sense of that already. I don’t—I don't tell anything about them. I don't write anything about them that I wouldn't say out loud in front of them to like company in our kitchen, you know what I mean? HS:I'm not telling stories about bed wetting or crushes or puberty year things that they would be like, oh my God, how could you. I would never do that to them. But there are stories about my first marriage, about dating as a single mom about, you know, things like that, that, that feel very much like my stories. But, but once they're out there for people to read, you know, then there are also stories about June and Will's mom and, and so that's a, that's a tricky thing to navigate and I want to make sure I do that well. And that means not doing it like rushed, you know. JAC: So I, I know that I read, I've read several column in which you've mentioned your ex husband, the two of you are co parenting, correct? HS: Um, to a degree. Yeah. I mean he, yeah, he lives in Valparaiso, Indiana. So he's two hours away. It makes the day to day co parenting. Not really possible. He doesn't, he's not, he's not around physically to co-parent, but we share custody of them, and you know, talk through decisions and stuff like that. JAC:  And as, and as you write about him in that divorce, is that something that you're sort of comfortable sharing or are there sort of boundaries that you don't cross it with that? HS: Yeah, there are mostly because I'm really protective of my kids’ relationship with him, you know. I just, I want them to have the opportunity to develop their own relationship with their dad that's not colored by something I've written about him or said about him in public. I don't ever want them to feel like they have to choose which parent to be loyal to. I just sort of, I don't say much about my relationship with him other than kind of the broadest terms that the kids already know. HS:You know, that we, we struggled on division of labor at home, it always felt a little—more than a little, awfully unfair to me. My kids know that, so I'm happy to say that. And I like his new wife a lot. I've written about that. That is something that I think people should feel like they have permission to do and to talk about, you know, liking their ex's new partner. I think that if you can work on doing that, it's really good for your kids. So I’m happy to talk about that. I just, yeah, I just haven't felt like it's right to bash him or, or going to a whole lot of detail about, you know, what, what drove me to end that marriage for, you know, for my kids’ sake. JAC: So in lieu of advice. So if someone were to ask you what is one question you should ask someone who is going through a divorce, what piece of advice would you give to them? HS:So, so your friend is going through a divorce, what should you say to them? JAC: Yeah, because I feel like people struggle with how to have conversation with someone who's going through a hard time, whether that's divorced or whether that's losing a parent. And when, when people say nothing, it can often just still feel like they're alone. You're, you're sort of sharing your story and people are feeling less alone through you sharing, but how can I help my friend or what can I talk to my friend about who is going through a divorce for example? HS: Yeah, that's such a good question. I remember when I was first starting to open up to a couple of friends, you know, I did that thing that a lot of us do for a long time where I put, you know, a really happy face on it. Or, it wasn’t a really happy face—I tried to make it look really happy. A false happy face on and everything and I wasn't talking to anybody about what I was struggling with. HS:And then once I started I had a few friends who would sort of talk me out of what I was saying I was feeling or sort of try to make it seem not that bad. Well, like I'm sure what he meant was blah blah blah. And it took a friend of mine who was just really candid to say like, you know, this is bullshit, you know, you deserve better than this. And it's hard to know what your friend needs or wants to hear. I'm a big fan of asking really directly. Do you want me to listen right now or do you want me to try to coach you right now? That's like one of those management books things, but I think it's really good advice in a friendship, in any relationship really to let, to be clear about what the person wants. Do they just want a sounding board? Do they just want someone to listen and commiserate? Or do they want someone to offer them some advice and some real steps to take. HS:So I liked, I liked doing that and conversations like, Hey, do you want, do you want me to just sit here and listen or do or do you want me to kind of coach. You tell me I'm happy to do the thing you need right now. I don't think that comes across as really like contrived or phony. Especially if you mean it. And then I would say the second thing is to not, not receive it like terrible news. I mean, if someone's presenting it to you as terrible news, like I'm devastated, my husband called off the marriage or I'm devastated this is happening, you know? I don't think it's OK to say like, that's not devastating. That's wonderful. But I think if you, if you haven't been given the very clear signal from your friend, that this is a terrible thing, don't assume it is. I mean, I wrote about this, but when I went to Chase the bank one day to get a cashier's check for a closing, I was selling the townhouse we lived on together. HS:The nice little person handling the cashier's check said, oh, are you moving? And I said, yeah. And she said, you’re moving to the suburbs? And I said, no, I'm getting divorced. And she was like, oh, congratulations. And I was like, wow, I haven't had someone say congratulations to me before. And she was like, well, it usually means a better life is ahead. And I was like, oh my God, I loved that. Maybe other people wouldn't. But I loved it because a better life very much was ahead for me. And even if I didn't know it in that moment, it really helps to hear someone believe that and say that out loud to me. So I think to not spin it as like, wow, this is the worst thing that could ever happen to a person. I'm so sorry for you to not have that kind of, you know, in the air is good, you know, to, to be able to say like, I think this, this could end up being really good for you. HS:This is probably going to bring some peace into your life that you haven't had for a while or, or maybe this is a chance to feel like your life is a little bit more like authentic or a little bit more yours. I think a lot of, I think a lot of good can come from divorce. I mean that's kind of a controversial thing to say. I wouldn't like you go around trying to cause divorces, but I don't, I don't think they're universally, you know, a terrible, terrible thing for someone to go through. I think, I think it can be the beginning of a better life. Like that woman at Chase told me. JAC: That’s, I actually spit out a little bit of water as you expressed that because it was so surprising, but the sentiment is really lovely. So I guess as as we wrap this up, is there anything that you've sort of learned over the years with Balancing Act that you could condense into a parting phrase? HS: A parting phrase. I would say shut up and listen is that good? I think in almost every one of my relationships when I've learned to shut up and listen, the relationship has improved and I've improved and I've become a better person, a more understanding person, a more empathic person by listening to other people instead of kind of waiting my turn to talk and you know, that's what you want is to go through life, always getting you know, a little bit better at it. JAC:That's wonderful. I'm so happy that I got the chance to chat with you and I'm excited to see what that book turns into and to continue reading your column. Thank you for joining me, Heidi Stevens. HS: It was my pleasure. Thanks so much for having me. CK:This podcast was produced by me, Cindy Kuzma, and it's another thing that's better with friends, so please share it with yours. You can subscribe wherever you get your podcasts, and if you get a chance to leave us a rating or review, we would really appreciate it. Special thanks to J. Mano for our theme music; to our guest this week, Heidi Stevens; and to TechNexus for the recording studio.

When we bring guests onto the #WeGotGoals podcast, we know they aren't just inspiring individuals because of what they've accomplished, but because they have a unique perspective on goal setting that we can't wait to unpack. Lee Kemp, seven-time wrestling national champion with three gold medals in the World Championships, four in the Wrestling World Cup and two in the Pan-American Championships, might just have the most fascinating outlook on setting goals we've ever had the privilege of sharing on the podcast. In 1980, Kemp was headed to the Summer Olympic Games in Moscow when he heard the news on television: President Carter announced America's boycott of the Olympics. This news, which may have sounded like a disappointment to avid sports fans at home, changed the course of Kemp's life forever. "That was going to be the launching pad for my success," he told me during our interview. "Well, that launching pad wasn't there. That flight had took off and I wasn't on it." Kemp is one of the most decorated athletes we've interviewed, but this defining moment in his career, which he describes as akin to a death in the family, propelled us into a deeper conversation about setting goals - how you respond when the one thing you're fighting for doesn't come to fruition. Although many of us don't face literal Olympic-size disappointments, Kemp's story is relatable to every up and down we experience in our careers, relationships, dreams and goals. "Sometimes life throws you something that you can't really understand, like a death, like a sickness, but you still have to, to move on," he says. That's just what Kemp did. Two phrases that Kemp's role model and fellow wrestler told him in a high school wrestling camp fueled his fire throughout his wrestling career: "anyone can be beaten" and "anyone could be a champion." He took those two pieces of advice to heart at this inflection point in his career and created a fresh pathway to becoming a champion, even if his view of what "champion" meant changed. "I went to graduate school ... I got an MBA and I went to work in New York City in marketing and start[ed] to focus on just developing other skills." Kemp describes owning his own car dealership for 14 years like being in the ring. "I felt like I was in a wrestling match every day trying to tackle all the things you tackle [owning a business]." Although Kemp is grateful that wrestling made its way back into his life - he coached at the 2008 Olympics and now helps out coaching his son - he recognizes the lessons he was forced to learn may be more valuable for life than what any Olympic victory could have done for him. "I'm kind of almost glad that things didn't go the way I thought, because I would have just been very satisfied in all my success in wrestling ... I wouldn't have [had] to really venture out to gain other skills to learn how to do other things." Kemp's unique perspective in the professional, corporate world and as a professional athlete allowed him to see that across every industry, there are days when you have to dig deep, pull yourself together and make it through something tough. "I realize is that every industry and discipline - sports, business, anything - there is this overwhelming drive on how can we be successful no matter what discipline that we're in," as Kemp puts it. The 1980 Olympics were, of course, a disappointment and an unfair turn of events for Kemp. But his story of resilience is far more impactful, far more resounding, to the rest of the world than any gold medal. Listen to how this Olympic athlete's goal setting mindset changed based on one life event, and how he's taken success into his own hands for the present and the future. And if you like what you hear, subscribe where ever you get your podcasts and leave us a rating or a review on Apple Podcasts. --- Transcript: JAC: Welcome to #WeGotGoals, a podcast by aSweatlife.com. I'm Jeana Anderson Cohen, and with me you have Kristen Geil and Maggie Umberger. KG: Hi Jeana. MU: Hi Jeana. JAC: Hi Ladies. How are you? MU: Doing well JAC: And Maggie, you interviewed Lee Kemp this week, right? MU: I did, I interviewed Lee Kemp. He's a world champion wrestler who has a story unlike any we've ever heard from an athlete before, and it was not only eye opening, but really inspiring to talk to him this week. KG: One of the things with Lee is, unlike every other guest that we've had here on aSweatlife where we focus on goals that they've achieved. But with Lee the conversation, always has to include a goal that he actually missed out on, not through any fault of his own. Can you give the reader a little background of what goal he had to miss, not because of anything that he did, and maybe how that's still affecting him today? MU: Lee is an incredibly decorated athlete. He has won so many titles as a world champion wrestler and so he has so many accomplishments that he can speak to and that are really inspiring to hear as someone who would be a guest on our, on our podcast anyway. But the main story that we ended up talking about is one that was defining for him because it was a goal he missed out on. He did not get to go to the 1980 Moscow Olympics because of the US boycott. And that was a goal for him and just hearing him outline it from his perspective of being such a world-class athlete and having the chance to go, to compete at an Olympic level and he didn't get to go and it wasn't his fault and so the aftermath of that was what we ended up talking about as a story of resilience, a story of finding a new path to success when what you thought was going to be your launching pad and envisioning some goal, having to rewrite the script and find success in another way. JAC: And to hear Lee speak—it’s sort of interesting because this is such a defining moment for him and it is a defining topic when he speaks to young athletes when he speaks to athletes who are adult age. Maggie, do you think, do you get the sense from him that he ever got over it? MU: I'm not sure that he did and I don't even know how I would either, like putting myself in those shoes to be at that level of athleticism and be deprived of the opportunity to compete is a huge loss, and he talks about it as such as a loss for him because he never—it wasn't like he competed and lost the Games, he just never got the chance to go. And so I don't think he's gotten over it, but where he's pivoted and the things he's done since then have truly proven that he doesn't take no for an answer and that he's going to write his own success story no matter what, and I think that was the most inspiring piece of this talk. And so hearing that he went to grad school, hearing that he started his own business and that now he helps coach his son in wrestling. He's been to the 2008 Olympics as a coach and he's written a book. He will have a movie produced about him. There are so many avenues that he can still say are success stories for him. But I think the biggest takeaway really isn't even in a tangible goal, but it's the way that you have to respond to failure. And we all in our lives deal with that on a small scale and on a huge scale. We don't always talk about the things that go wrong. We talk about the big success stories and just looking at that as holding it up as this amazing accomplishment. And sometimes it's those moments of falling down that are way more defining and way more empowering to an individual. And so that was what I was so grateful to talk to Lee about so openly. JAC: And it sounds like he learned a lot from that. And so did you. So here is Maggie with Lee Kemp. MU: So I'm here today on the #WeGotGoals podcast with Lee Kemp, and Lee, I'm going to try to say all your titles, but I might get it wrong, so please correct me if I am, but you're a seven-time national champion who won three gold medals in the World Championships and four in the World Cup of Wrestling as well as two in the Pan American Games. So you're a champion wrestler. LK: Yes, I got that down. MU: So how did you find that sport and when did you realize that you might have the potential to be very good at it? LK: You know, that's a good question because I started out playing basketball, you know, in seventh and eighth grade and I started wrestling really late by today's standards. You know, most athletes or even people that are good at anything, you know, they start when they're six, seven, you know, four or five if, if, whatever, you know, whatever sport, gymnastics, swimming, wrestling. But I started only in ninth grade. Prior to that, I played basketball and the reason why I got into wrestling because I wasn't very good at basketball and I made a good choice. I didn't grow, didn't get any taller, and maybe I wasn't, uh, I just wasn't very good. And so I found wrestling through some friends in high school who were wrestlers and the high school gym coach, he was the wrestling coach, so he was recruiting people to come out for the wrestling team. And back then we had wrestling in gym class. I don't think they do that anymore. I got in and the one lure that got me in is that the coach needed 138-pounder and I weighed 138. So he threw me out there right away on the freshman team. So that's how I got started. MU: The magic number 138. So usually on #WeGotGoals, we ask two big questions, one of them being, what's a big goal that you accomplished and how did you get there? Your story is very interesting because at the point where you earned your spot at the Olympics in the 1980 Games, you couldn't go to those Games. They were boycotted. So I think that this is a really interesting point to talk about a, the achievement of getting to that level and B, how did you handle and how did you deal with that shift in your plans that totally wasn't your fault. LK: You know, that's a complex question because of the boycott. The boycott just changed everything. I’m still not totally over that. But anyway, when I got into wrestling, I was an average wrestler, as you can imagine. I just started, so I was just average. I had a 500 season the next year on varsity and that summer I met Dan Gable and Dan Gable was like the Michael Jordan of wrestling. He was, he was just, you know, he was the best wrestler in the world and the unique thing of that meeting him, it was the summer of 1972. That summer he went on to win an Olympic gold medal and I had the chance to meet him when I was just my summer after my 10th grade year in high school. And he was so good that the Russians had made a declaration that they would find a Russian to beat him cause they were the best in the world at wrestling and here this American was beating them and that was a big deal, that they were going to find a Russian restaurant to beat Dan Gable. And I was at this wrestling camp and there was Dan Gable and that was one of, I was like 14 or 15 years old and he talked about that a little bit. The pressure about that. And the thing he said that stuck with me, he said that anyone could be beaten. Doesn't matter if it's the Russian or not, you know, anyone could be beaten. So I'm setting my goals to beat this Russian and to win an Olympic gold medal. Doesn't matter if they're scouring their entire country to find a person to beat me. So that stuck with me. And the other thing that stuck with me was that he said to all the wrestlers there, any one of you could be champions and so I’m like, even me? Wow. I mean we all hear that, when we go to listen to motivational speakers or whatever, you know, they always say, if I could do it, you could do it right? It sounds like a cliché now. But there's always one or two people in the audience that will actually believe it. LK: And I was one of those people and it's like, I could be a champion, Dan Gable said it. And the second thing he said is anybody can be beaten. And the reason why that's important is because right then I set my goal to be like him, like Dan Gable. So I went home after the camp, it was just a week-long camp and so I watched him win his gold medal on TV, on ABC. He was over in Munich, Germany. He beat that Russian and he won the gold medal. No one scored a point on him, so he was just invincible in my mind, so I said, I want to be like him. I don't want to lose any more matches. I’m going to be just like Dan Gable. That was my goal and the next two years I went undefeated in high school and won the state title and when I talked to wrestlers and when I give speeches and stuff, I talk to people. LK: It's like, it's not. I didn't find a Superman cape in my closet when I got home, you know, it just didn't suddenly discover I was Superman. What happened was my thought process changed. My attitude changed. I started to act like Dan Gable, but when you do that, there's a lot of work that goes along with trying to be like him. There's a lot of wrestlers I coach and I try to show them what they need to do to be a champion and they look at me and go like, well, I don't want to do that. I just don't want to commit that much to it. That's fine. We all pick our place in life where we want to be. Dan held nothing back in his training. I had a chance to watch him train at the camp too. That's by the way, too. I watched him run, lift, while the other kids after the session they would go to lunch or whatever. LK: I said, forget lunch. I just wanted to watch this man train and so I took in all that just, I don't know what you would call it, but it's just by watching him train and I, I started to understand the intensity that it took because I watched him. I could see his face, I could see the sweat, I could see the toil. I just started to understand what it was going to take to be as good as him. So when I went back right away, right when I got back from that camp I started training, I started running lifting and doing everything that I saw him do it and it allowed me to win and go undefeated the next two years, get a scholarship to college and all that. But the important part of this story is that I wrestled Dan Gable less than four years after I met him as a sophomore in high school. LK: We fast forward to the 76 Olympics. Uh, I was in college then, Dan had won it four years earlier in the 72 Olympics. He had retired but he's making a comeback and he entered this college tournament that I was in and it was in November, so at the very start of my sophomore year and Dan Gable is in my weight class. It was like a David and Goliath type of scenario. He was 26 or 27 and I was 18 and um, I wrestled him. And I used those two statements he made at that camp through my whole life after I met him and I used those statements to beat him. He said, anyone can be beaten. It doesn't matter if it's Dan Gable, and he said Lee Kemp, he didn't use my name, but he was telling all of us campers, any one of you could be champions, any one of you could be just like me. So, so I, I approached that match with that mindset. MU: And then going on to earn your spot at the Olympics when something seemingly unthinkable happen and President Jimmy Carter decided to boycott the 1980 Olympics. So how did you find out about that and how did you react to that moment? LK: I mentioned Dan Gable again because he was the coach of that Olympic team, so Dan had the opportunity and I had the opportunity to be coached by him to be mentored by him. That one match was just what it was. It was just one match. We became really good friends. He didn't wrestle anymore after that. He coached me a lot after that, but after I met Dan Gable, I wanted to be Olympic champion, so at that moment I knew I was going to be an Olympic gold medalist. Everything else was just stepping stones along the way, so I had a successful college career and all that and Dan coached me to two world titles prior to the Olympic Games in 1978 the year, my senior year in college, Dan was our USA coach and I made our world team and our national team that competed in the world and I won the World Championship. LK: I was the youngest American to ever win, I was 21 when I won the world championships then and so for over 30 years it took someone to win as a younger person. Kyle Snyder was that individual, so he's one of our phenoms in wrestling today. And I want it the next year. Dan coached me. He was in my corner. I trained with him every day so 80, he was the coach and we were focused. I was focused. It was before the Internet obviously, and all that, so just heard about it on, on the news and Dan reached out to all of us and said, don't watch the news, we're, we're, we're going to Moscow. Don’t—just focus, stay training. So I listened to him and I said, OK, I just stayed focused on stayed training and um, I couldn't in my wildest imagination think we were not going to go to the Olympic Games. LK: That's unprecedented. I mean, even during one of the World Wars we had the Olympic Games, even when Hitler was doing, you know, all those horrible things. We still had the Olympic Games in Germany, you know, so with all that knowledge and Gable kind of informed us that, hey, we're, we're, we'll, we'll find a way to get there, just keep training. And um, and so I did. Eventually the inevitable happened. Our country, through public statements that Jimmy Carter made, I watched it and it was incredible. I mean, it was a big deal because he convinced not just, you know, America and the U.S. Olympic Committee because there was a vote that was taken, but he convinced like 20 or 30 other countries to not go to the Olympic Games. So one of my competitors, a West German, I had won it and he was second in the world championships. LK: He was a very formidable opponent and he couldn't go either as an example in my particular weight class. It was a lot, just was, it affected a lot of people. It was just horrible. But, and you know, I equated, I guess there's a lot of analogies you can make, but probably one of the strongest ones that I use and it's pretty strong, it’s pretty harsh, because I have children. You know, it's like losing a child, losing a loved one or I mean it's even stronger than a divorce because at least a divorce, that person is still alive and they're physically there. When there's a death, when you lose a child or lose a spouse or lose a loved one, they're no longer there. Well, the Olympics was no longer there. It was gone. There was no getting it back. You can't get the time back. LK: You can’t get the years back. You can't get the training back in. And the Olympics is gone. I missed my opportunity. In my mind, I think of it as a loss. I have people, they have to remind me, Lee, you didn't lose the Olympics, you just didn't go. And I still say why I wasn't an Olympic champion. There's times I'm in groups of other athletes that are Olympic champions and you know, and there’s photo, photo, you know, let's take some pictures, all of us Olympic champions get a picture together. And I'm there and I, and everybody kinda goes and I'm just, I can't go because I'm not Olympic champion. And sometimes they say, oh Lee come on, you can get in the picture too. I’m like, nope, I’m—it just circumstance, circumstance could've been, I could've got hurt and couldn't have gone. Or I could've got beat, which was hard for me to conceptualize at that time because I just felt I was ready and all that. LK: But, uh, sometimes life throws you something that you can't really understand, like a death, like a sickness, like any of the things I've just mentioned, but you still have to, to move on. I would say I've learned more from that. Obviously it sounds corny, but by that huge disappointment because it forced me to have to figure out what to do and go on. And what I did is I trained for another four years and at that time there wasn't any way to support yourself. We were true amateurs. When I was competing, Michael Jordan wasn't playing in the Olympic Games and Serena Williams wasn't. And I'm not criticizing that, but that just didn't exist. The tennis players were the college players, the basketball, Olympic basketball team were the top basketball players. The moment you became a professional, you could compete in the Olympic Games or any amateur—I mean, the Olympic Games is for amateur athletes. But I guess when America started to lose in basketball, they decided. we've got to recruit some of our star athletes to play. But, but anyway, that, that was, um, you know, it, I just can't even … well, you never get over a death. You never get over a loss like that, but you just still move on. MU: Well, and the lesson that you had to learn, that you were forced to learn that because you were presented with a scenario that was totally out of your control, probably carries over into every other aspect of your life I imagine. And so I think about how we all have to deal with all these struggles in life. Like nothing is constant but change and how you can have goals, you can set goals but things will change and you'll have to navigate those waters when they do. And so if you were to give some kind of advice to others who have wrenches thrown in their plans on route to their goals, what would you share with them based on what you learned? LK: Well, the first thing is you can't quit. And when I say quit, I mean it's a pretty broad term. I've seen people quit in the main thing they were trying to achieve, but they quit like in everything. You know, it's like, just because you didn't win that Olympic gold medal doesn't mean you can't go on and maybe go to graduate school or maybe go set another goal or maybe, I mean, you can think of, you know, maybe start your career, whatever it is. And it's not all about making money. I've got some really good friends and good mentors that were great high school coaches. I mean they mentored young men and women through lots of different things. So the thing I had to figure out was that I needed to be successful still, I thought of myself as a successful person. The hard part was, is that my image was this wrestler that was going to be an Olympic champion. LK: That's how I envisioned my success story was going to start and not there, but not stop there. But that was going to be the, the launching pad for my success. Well that launching pad wasn't there. That flight had took off and I wasn't on it. So I had to figure out another place that I could be successful. And I went to graduate school. I worked hard at that. And school wasn't really something that I worked hard at when I was an undergrad. So I, I got an MBA and I went to work in New York City in marketing and start to focus on just developing other skills. I was a business owner. I owned a car dealership for 14 years and I used wrestling a lot to tackle those challenges. All the employees there knew I was a wrestler and I was an athlete, I was a former wrestler. And just some relationships that I made when I was in the car business was pretty, pretty amazing. LK: I felt like I was in a wrestling match every day trying to tackle all the things you tackle, trying to be successful in, in, in the auto industry. It’s a really tough business and I kind of have come full circle because I was in the car business for 14 years, never thought I'd ever come back to wrestling. I kind of walked away from wrestling and the thing I left out probably conveniently was when I trained for those four more years in 84, I didn't make the team. I got beat by David Schultz, another great American wrestler who's younger than me. I lost and I couldn't fulfill that dream even though that was, that was. So I lost twice kind of in my mind. Dave went on to win a gold medal. I watched him win his gold medal in L.A. The boycott screwed up two Olympic Games because in 84 the Games were going to be in Los Angeles and guess who boycotted. The Soviet Union or Russia and all their allied nations. But, but still, I mean it was like a double disappointment that it didn't make the team. So I had to go forward still in my life and that's, you know, where I previously talked about getting my MBA and working in business and having the auto dealership and all that. MU: So when you did go to the Olympics to coach years later, what did it mean to you and how could you use your experiences to help other individuals go after their goals? LK: Well, you know, it was 38 years later actually from the 80 games I think something like that, to 2008. Quite a lot of years later. That all came about through another disappointment, I guess you could say. The auto industry took, was taking a huge downturn in 2007. In 2008 when Obama took office, he bailed out the auto industry. That's how bad things were getting. I went through a horrible divorce then. I mean it was just a lot of things were crashing in my life at that time and a good friend reached out to me and said, Lee, why don't you come to the National World Team Trials? And it was kind of a homecoming when I went to the World team trials and I, you know, I kind of got that fire back, I guess have that feeling that I had when I wrestled. LK: I connected with all the athletes, they remembered who I was, even though I was older, so I got back on the national coaching staff. I coached the junior team that went to China and competed, some of those wrestlers are current stars now. I coached one of our senior teams and then I, um, I got to be the Olympic coach in 2008. So that was an amazing experience. I got to march in the opening ceremonies 38 years after I missed my opportunity. And I've kind of been around wrestling ever since, you know, I do clinics and coaching and I try to motivate young men and women, you know, women are wresting now and they're doing an amazing, amazing job. And now my son is wrestling. So that was another thing. My son's a senior in high school, so I'm trying to mentor him and guide him a little bit. He's a good writer too. He's a good, uh, a very good in English, very good in storytelling and story writing and all that. MU: So these points in your life that you're sharing that you say are disappointments, but. You know, you'll, you'll start saying this was a disappointment, but then—it shows to me like this overwhelming sense of resilience and moving forward, which is a quality I think we're all working towards and so I can only imagine that there are great things in your future. So the second piece of this equation of our podcast is asking you what is next? What's a goal that you're working towards? How do you want to get there? LK: That's a great question because I have had to think about ,what, what am I going to do with my life now? And I'm kind of almost glad in a way that things didn't go the way I thought because I would have just been very satisfied in all my success in wrestling and there would've been some avenues maybe there that I could have earned some money, would’ve been because of that success that I wouldn't have to really venture out to gain other skills to learn how to do other things. I never would have went into the business world as I had to. I worked in New York City for four years and that was pretty competitive for a major consumer packaged goods company, forced me to learn new skills. But right now what I realize is that every industry and discipline, sports, business, anything—there is this overwhelming drive on how can we be successful no matter what discipline that we're in? LK: So a person like myself, I've found a way to motivate people, not just in athletics. I can motivate people in business. I can people that are maybe in music because it all, it all revolves around talent, but once you have talent, you've got to do something with that talent, and it requires the ability to be motivated. So the area that I am moving into now is motivational speaking. I find that that's an area that that I think I could be very good at. I've listened to and studied and still study, just like I studied Dan Gable, I study a lot of great speakers. I love their messages and I think I could be a good motivational speaker. I've got a lot, a lot of experiences, not only as an athlete but in business because I can remember some pretty tough days in business, in the auto industry of trying to, you know, keep that business afloat over those 14 years. LK: You know, there's, it just reminds me of the toughest day I had in the wrestling room, you know, and even in school, I remember some of those days where you have to pull yourself up. I can remember, you know, when I went through my divorce it was, you know, I mean, what divorce is a good divorce I guess? And my kids were small at the time and it was about a five year period I wasn't with my kids, so that was very difficult to have my daughter and son. My older son was—he didn't come live with me, but my younger son and daughter came to live with me when they were 10 and 16. And now my son now is wrestling. The last thing I thought ever that I would be coaching and being around my son as a wrestler. So we, we were developing that relationship together. LK: Uh, we've got a trip planned to the UK where I'm going to be doing some speaking and coaching, wrestling, so I'm kind of moving that whole direction in my life now being able to motivate other people based on my life experiences. And there's a, there's a science to it as well to success and there's a common thread to all of it. And, you know—I wrote a book called Winning Gold and it's just a book of 75 messages, motivational messages. And in the very beginning of the book. I have a quote by Michael Jordan and you know, he talks about, you know, practice like you've never won but play like you've never lost. And that's a quote that, that opens my book. So I have quotes from myself that I kind of thought of based on my career, other things that motivated me. And so I feel like no matter what setting I'm in, the conversation always leads to how can I be more successful? LK: And then when I hear, when I hear the conversations moving in that direction, I'm like, well, I can help you with that because I know what it takes. And I've been there. I've been, I've been at the top and I've been struggling too, and I've kind of been able to figure out how to get myself moving back up toward the top again. And you’re never there permanently. It's just a constant—it’s like paying your rent, you know, if you don't pay your rent, you're going to get evicted. Just because you have the rent money this month doesn't mean you're going to have it next month. So it's a constant battle really to stay where you want to be. And that's hopefully on top. MU: So how can people find you and learn more about your background and your current work or speaking engagements now? LK: My website just leekemp.com and all the information is there. I try to, um, when I, when I do speak in venues, I mean I try to promote them on Facebook and Twitter and my Facebook and Twitter and Instagram and all that is on my main webpage. You can find links to those from leekemp.com. Mu: Well, it's been an honor to hear your story. I'm by no means any kind of athlete, but the lessons that you've learned and that you shared resonate with me, I think they'll resonate with all of our listeners, so thank you so much for joining me, Lee. LK: Oh, awesome being here. I appreciate it. CK: This podcast was produced by me, Cindy Kuzma, and it's another thing that's better with friends, so please share it with yours. You can subscribe wherever you get your podcasts, and if you have a chance to leave us a rating or view an Apple Podcasts or iTunes, we would be really grateful. Special thanks to J. Mano for our theme music; to our guest this week, Lee Kemp; and to Tech Nexus for the recording studio.

(This episode has some explicit language)   Peter Rahal, co-founder and CEO of RXBAR, didn’t set out to build a multi-million-dollar company. But he had goals, both large and small. Practically speaking, he wanted a clean, healthy protein bar to fuel his workouts. On a bigger scale, he sought freedom and fulfillment. “Prior to working at RXBAR, I'd always had a normal job. I felt really handcuffed and I wasn't in a position to be successful,” Rahal told me on this week’s episode of #WeGotGoals. “And so a goal for me early on was always to really flourish and have freedom and achieve success for myself.” Those dual quests took him and co-founder Jared Smith farther than they could have imagined. In 2012, they began pressing dates, almonds, and egg whites into bars in Rahal’s parents’ basement. From the beginning, they established high standards and lofty values. The product had to be excellent. The process, collaborative. And even as they glimpsed glimmers of progress, they stayed humble, knowing they didn’t have all the answers. Those years weren’t easy. In fact, the pair suffered. “It was miserable,” he says, “pressing bars with your thumbs in your parents’ basement when you’re 26 and while your friends are doing great things and having dinner in the city.” But Rahal likens the experience to a grueling fitness routine. “The hardest workouts are where you stimulate the most growth from,” he says. “And work is the same thing. The most discomfort you have, the harder it is, the more you grow.” And grow they did. Rahal remembers telling Smith early on that if they did things right, this could be a $10 million business. Last year, Kellogg bought RXBAR—which now sells 120 million bars per year—for $600 million. Rahal and Smith stayed on to lead what is now a standalone unit in the larger company, a critical component of the deal, he says. “We were looking for the right muscle, and to protect our people and our culture. So those are kind of two objectives or goals that we were looking for in a partner. Kellogg fit that perfectly and now we have resources to continue to achieve our business objectives.” Armed with Kellogg’s expertise in areas like international distribution, contract negotiation, and performance management, RXBAR will continue its ambitious quest to transform the way food is made and delivered. That starts with shifting the corporate approach, Rahal says. Even big companies can innovate and relentlessly drive to improve. Employees who are valued and respected can truly achieve their potential. Systems codify these values, ensuring businesses continue to serve the right people in the right way. For those of us not in the food industry, who just buy bars at the store or the gym—we’ll see the results on the shelves: “More access to food that’s better for you, that's delicious, that saves you time and that you can trust,” he says. And of course, as the RXBAR package famously proclaims, “No B.S.” And is Rahal now free? Well, yes and no, he says—in fact, he’s not quite sure of the answer. What he does know is that he’s found a deeper satisfaction and a whole new set of priorities, ones he feels he can pursue to truly leave a legacy. Listen to this week’s episode to hear more about what freedom means to Rahal, the reason his partnership with Smith works, and a little bit—but not TOO much—about what it takes to get hired as part of the RXBAR team. If you like what you hear, subscribe where ever you get your podcasts and leave us a rating or a review on Apple Podcasts. And if this post or anything else we’ve created impacted your life, please support our Kickstarter. --- Transcript: JAC: Hey, goal getters, it's Jeana Anderson Cohen from aSweatlife.com, and if you've been listening to #WeGotGoals over the last month, you know that we've been running our Kickstarter. And right now we have just five days to fund our big dream for $20,000 to help grow our ambassadorship to reach women across the country. We’re helping them set big, hairy audacious goals and form a network to achieve them. If you want to help out, check the link in our show notes or go to aSweatLife.com. Here's the episode. JAC: Welcome to #WeGot Goals, a podcast by aSweatlife.com on which we talk to high achievers about their goals. I'm Jeana Anderson Cohen; with me, I have Cindy Kuzma and Kristen Geil. CK: Good morning, Jeana. KG: Hi Jeana. JAC. Hi Ladies. So Cindy, this week you talk to Peter from RXBAR. CK: I did. I spoke with Peter Rahal. He is the co-founder and CEO of RXBAR and he is a very focused, intense, high achieving person and it was great to kind of crack his code just a little bit. JAC: One of the things that I found super interesting was sort of the driving force behind his goals: freedom. Can you talk to me a little bit about how freedom has shaped what he's done through his life and where it's taken him? CK: Yes. He started RXBAR, not necessarily because he wanted to be an entrepreneur, but because he saw a problem that needed to be solved and also because he felt trapped in a job he didn't love, under leadership he didn't respect and he just really wanted to break free. What was interesting, and you'll hear this toward the end of the interview, was kind of how that has played out for him. He doesn't necessarily feel free, but he maybe has a little bit of a new definition of freedom or a new thing that he's seeking in its place. So a pretty interesting to hear how that all unfolded. KG On the podcast recently we did a live recording with Julia and Lauren who are the co-founders of Stylisted. You spoke with Peter about his co-founder. Jared. One of the things I was interested to hear about was how these two different co-founders might approach goal setting similarly or differently. For example, Julia and Lauren spoke about the importance of having the same long-term vision and goals for the company, but at the same time celebrating the little wins and the small goals that you achieve along the way. Did Peter talk about how he and Jared have any approaches to setting goals as partners and working towards them together? CK: Yeah, so like Julia and Laura and Peter and Jared were friends first and Peter talks about how important it is to have that rapport with someone that you're starting a business with. That way you can kind of tell early on when something is amiss and you can take steps to work it out before it becomes an actual problem. He said they've also worked hard not to fight about things like titles or things that were insignificant. They kind of set their egos aside and really focused on what they thought was best for the business and yeah, in terms of setting goals for the business, it's interesting. They didn't really have specific goals in terms of the money that they wanted to make or units sold or anything like that. They really just looked at making the best product that they could to fill this hole in the market and then when they got to a bigger place, finding the best people to help support them in those goals. That's really what carried them to a level of success beyond what they even could have imagined. JAC: Well, I've certainly loved watching the story of RXBAR unfold and especially with this acquisition by Kellogg recently, so excited to hear this interview. So here is Cindy with Peter. CK: This is Cindy Kuzma and I'm here with Peter who is the CEO and the co-founder of RXBAR. Peter, thank you so much for joining us here today on the #WeGotGoals podcast. PR: Thank you, Cindy. I appreciate you coming to our office. CK: It's great to be here and great to see so many people working hard. I'm wondering, Peter, I want to ask about your goals, but I'd first love to hear a little bit about what your day to day is like here at RXBAR. PR: So my day to day first, I'm not like a routine person. I like to think of myself as highly adaptable and I always start each week with like what's the most important thing I need to accomplish. I'm really motivated by accomplishment, so like what I need to, what do I need to get done this week? So I really think about my year through weeks, everything's through weeks and I accomplish as much as possible in each week. So that's like the first half of the week, Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday is very structured in terms of like what am I looking at, what's important, regular information. And then Thursday, Friday is typically like, I like think of the Wild West where I tried to leave it open and react to and be able to get some work done. CK: I like that. It sounds like you have a nice blend of a very loose structure that you work within that helps you stay somewhat organized, but then you really leave room for creativity and inspiration and doing the work. PR: I think I’m very unorganized, but yet organized if that like there's a paradox or I don't know what the right word is, but … CK: Well, it seems to be working for you. You've accomplished some pretty big things in the past five years or so. Our big question on #WeGotGoals always is what is one big goal that you've accomplished that you're particularly proud of, why was it so meaningful to you and how did you get there? PR: So goals, I guess, goal I had early on in my life, I guess career. I've always wanted freedom. I guess the outcome I wanted was always to be successful and I really wanted to be free. Not freedom in the sense of do whatever I want, but like to be able to make decisions and grow. They have kind of kind of control of my own fate. And so prior to working at RXBAR, I'd always had a normal job and whatnot and I felt really handcuffed and I wasn't in a position to be successful. And so a goal for me early on was always to like really flourish and have freedom and achieve success for myself and I guess I didn't know what that looked like. So it was really just discovering that in my early twenties and then I guess I found it with creating, creating the company with Jared, my co-founder. CK: So you didn't really know what freedom would look like. I mean, how did you sort of take the steps to uncover that? PR: I guess early on, early on in my life, I've always rejected poor leadership and I mis-associated with authority. Like I've always like, oh, I don't like authority, but actually I just didn't like, I shunned bad leadership and I never really had great leadership in my work experience. So that's where I felt like it didn't have freedom, right? Like I needed freedom to think, to grow, to challenge, to do. So creative freedom, work freedom, not go do whatever you want type of thing, but like to be challenged to think differently, you know, to define your own path. CK: So that's a really interesting insight. That freedom maybe was freedom, not from any leadership at freedom from poor leadership. PR: Yeah, for sure. Good leadership allows that, allows an individual to flourish and grow. I never had that, so I was yearning that ability and I didn't realize that until I started working here and moved into like a leadership position that like that's what I was really seeking and yearning early on. CK: So, I mean, you have grown in the company and by leaps and bounds in the past five years and when you were started making the bars in your parents basement, right? And now you're part of a huge national company and you're selling a 120 million plus bars a year. Are those goals that you could have even foreseen back when you first started out? PR: No, absolutely not. So I mean those were like outcomes we never planned. Jared and I were never like, oh, we're gonna build the business to sell it or like having an outcome like that or whatever achieve that. We were, our goal was to make the best product possible, our goal was to make the best company possible. And those were some of our how our approach was and those are really like our strategies and what happened is that great company, those great products, the financial financial performance and those things were really all outcomes of that. So no, and to be honest, I remember sitting back with Jared like really early on and being like, you know, if we do this right, this is a $10 million business and you know, I'd be lying to you if I said how we had planned all this out. We got lucky and we've, we've, we had the right values guiding us and we did what was important. CK: So talk to me about some of those values. What do you think were the important step are the important values that took you from a to b to Z. PR: That's a good question. So I guess the values that were most where I would say like humility, both we like to think of as emotionally and intellectually like, right. We didn't have all the answers. We knew we didn't have all the answers. We stayed curious. We asked for help. And then for Hared and I are working together as co-founders, we never fought over titles, we never fought over responsibility. We did what was in the best interest of the company early on. So that requires a lot of, you know, you have to free yourself of your pride and arrogance. So that was really important early on you see a lot of people fighting over this and that. And like I always say, like if Jared and I were building a house, we never fought over the color of the house, you know what I mean? It was just like we went. So humility is number one and it's both emotionally and intellectually. PR: And then second is excellence. Just like constant improvement and entrepreneurial, like a real entrepreneurial mindset and growth mindset of like, this can get better. We've got to figure it out because you think about a company, all it is, is a group of people that are formed in teams that have to make decisions and those decisions usually are around problems, right? Or opportunity or problem, whatever way you want to look at it. And so doing that really, really well is important, people decisions and problems. So that, um, and then other one is like tenacity too, I don't know if that's an actual value, just grit, but like it was miserable like pressing bars with your thumbs in your parents basement when you're 26 and while your friends are doing great things and having dinner in the city, whatever it is. You can't, you know, it takes a lot of grit. And there wasn't like, you know, you look at the company today and it's like, ‘Oh, it's great. You guys are successful.’ It wasn't like that a while ago and it was actually quite miserable and Jared and I  actually suffered a lot in a good way. I think suffering is good, but so you have to prepared to suffer in a good way. CK: Knowing that you sort of had this idea that maybe you hadn't experienced good leadership before. Did you have other examples of leaders that you've found along the way who kind of helped shape this as you went along? PR: Not necessarily like I'm never had great, I never really experienced great leadership. I've experienced great parenting. I have amazing parents and that is a form of leadership I'd argue, but I know I never, I never had it. When I played sports I had a coach that like was involved in practice run with us. Like was a great leader and I mean it was amazing how it worked, but I know I never had anyone, like oh, that's what great leadership looks like. I didn't realize what it was until like in action here in this company. Like I realized how important it was. So. No, but I know, I know, I yearned it. I yearned it. I never necessarily had it I would say and I didn't know what it looked like either. CK: What's an example of kind of what it looks like now on a day to day basis here and how do you, how do you kind of know that you're here exemplifying it? PR: So I, I think presence is super important. So being available, being around flying in and solving problems, you know what I mean? Like if there's an issue going in and helping fix it. Um, so like, can I call it, like I think of it as like reactionary, reactionary leadership support is super important so you're there and you react to the problem and go down to help fix it. And then also being super proactive in terms of breaking down potential barriers. So you're being there, you're having the vision to help break down a potential problem so it doesn't happen. So that, that's great leadership. PR: Yeah, I mean that, I mean for us, the way we lay out the way we meet, I mean we've systemized that really through our structures. So example, if like a service call comes in and there's an issue like in I can tell, I can hear the, someone struggling with a customer, I can go in and like pick it up and help. Like that's great leadership. Presence is important, is really important. Being consistent, you know what I mean? Like not coming in moody, not, not really self regulating yourself is important. So how you show up consistently articulating the vision and where we're going and why we're going. We're making value-based decisions so being consistent with decision making, not just like arbitrarily, right? So those are all things that are important and being approachable, you know, and also there's another like knowing the business too, like I think there's a level, like a lot of times you hear EQ and like these softer skills are really important and they are absolutely empathy, understanding the business and just everyone's position and situation, but actually like having knowledge and actually experiencing and be able to like tactically help out. I think it's really important and having knowledge of the business uh, is important because imagine if someone came in from here to be a leader here but like didn't know shit about the food business, you know, it'd be hard for them to have credibility. And that's the advantage I have as a founder. Like shit I've came from the beginning, I have this knowledge from experience, like it's really helpful for people. So I think that's important too. CK:  I'd imagine that gets challenging to stay on top of as you grow, and I mean how many people work here now? PR:  I think a hundred 10? CK: How do you kind of keep tabs on that and keep in—it sounds like some of just jumping in and solving the problems and keeps you connected to the front line. Right. What else? PR: Well, that’s, I mean, we’re 110. So I've, I've read a lot and like I know we're on the inflection point where like, I know everyone's name, right? And now we're going to be like 140, 150, 200. At some point that's not scalable, right? Like we exceed every, every individual's capacity to know everyone's name and who they are and how they work, etc. So here it right now sub 120, whatever, it’s easy. I know everyone's name, I know how they work, I know their personality type, I know. PR: But in a year that's going to be totally different. So I, I'm actually, I don't know the answer, but uh, you know, for me it's not necessarily about me knowing it's really about our leadership here in the different teams and the groups of teams and how they work and what is the leadership look like on those teams. So scaling, like what we do in systemizing it so it permeates the whole organization. CK: So as you've grown, how important would you say that the type of people that you've hired has been to your ongoing success? PR: We have the best. The amount of people we’ve accumulated is unbelievable. So I say like where like one of the companies we're in, the people business, the company's responsibility to, to ensure every individual’s achieving their goal and flourishing. So that's probably the most important thing we do is hire people; I’ve said that. We have a good process and a lot of our success actually all of our success is due to the fact that we've been able to build an awesome team. PR: So we at the highest level, like I said, we're a group of people who make decisions and solve problems. Like we are in the people business, the highest level. At the end of the day one of the things we do is make a bar and we make food and we do other things. Um, but that Is what business we're actually in. Ao it's the most important thing. Any business that involves people. CK: What would you say is kind of different about your process or superior about your process for finding these people. PR: We have a very, we have a culture that people were, where the company is aligned on. We’ve defined the competencies that are great with individuals. The question is like, what competencies do individuals possess that make them successful and flourish? So we asked that question and we've really laid it out there and we, you know, we look through those in candidates and also like it's important I think, I don't know other companies like this is the biggest company I've ever worked for. So I don't know what it looks like in other places, but you know, everyone, you know, It's not like P&O or HR does the hiring. It's, it's a very cross-functional process. Our goal is to hire the best people and make sure they're, they're in a position to be successful. And then we put a, a soft process around it. CK: So any tips on what those competencies are for people who might be looking? PR: something that's. I don't want to like you, you have a lot of people listen to this and I don't want to tip our hands. CK: You don't have to give out trade secrets. That's ok. PR: Yeah. Just know that like we want our job is to make sure anyone who has it sits here and is a part of the team is in a position to flourish and achieve what they want to achieve and that's what we look for and that's the most important thing. There is no, lIke if that's not there, then it—you're just going to leave. You know what I mean? So it's actually a, it's a very mutual process. We're not just doing this for us, it's actually like in the interest of the candidate. You know what I mean? CK: That's always, I think as it, you know, when you're a job seeker, that's a really nice feeling have when you enter into an interview and feel like it is a mutual search. PR: To be ultimately successful. I believe it has to be. But at the same time, if there's an individual doesn't know what they want to achieve, that's ok, that's the right answer. They don't have the goal, right, like what their career goal is. It's ok, we can, as long as you have the right mindset and approach, you can discover it and that's our job then for you, to discover your passions and what are you good at. So that's a lot of times younger candidates don't know what the hell they want, which is totally normal. You know what I mean? I don't think anyone coming out of school is like, oh I want to be this. They just want to join a great team and great company and really learn and grow. CK: What has this process been like with a partner? PR: Kellogg? CK: Well, I mean, even to start—starting the company with Jared. How do you two balance each other out? PR: It's been, It's been good. So I always think of like Jared and I are like totally different birds. You know what I mean? Like, so that helps. Like we're—one of our values is collaboration and that's like we not I, right? And not seeking credit. So our relationship is like super collaborative. If you look up any personality test we’re literally the opposite ends and he has more of a financial background and he values stability where I'm more commercial facing and value action. So we're like total yin and yang. So like in the beginning when we first started, I'm remember like, we've been incorporating a company, this is a long time ago. And we're going over like, what is your role? What's our role? You know what I mean? Sometimes it's an uncomfortable conversation. PR: It was like, ok, well you should be the CEO and I should be the CFO. And like that was from the get go really easy. So the role and responsibilities is very natural for us. So It's been amazing. And we wouldn't be here today If we didn't have that balance. For example, when a task, when it was just us and when a task came through, it was very obvious who did what. So yeah, it's been everything in, you know, I don't know what other co-founder relationships are like, but I imagine if you get to like people with the same, two types of birds that are the same, there's holes In the business and things fall through the crack. Where for us it was, we move faster. We didn't fight. I don't think we had one fight. CK: That’s pretty amazing. PR: I mean we've had disagreements but not like an actual like fight. Conflict is normal but not like bad conflict or like ugly conflict. CK: Can you pinpoint any ways that communicated effectively that have prevented that. Or is it just the personality? PR: The advantages that Jared and I have—is when you hire a, like when you work with friends, like you see this a lot with businesses early on, like where they’re, like friends starting it together, you know what I mean? And the reason why is because we have rapport. I've known him since first grade. He's known me since first grade. He knows when I'm pissed. I know when he's upset. So it actually causes us, the rapport and history we have together causes that causes us address things earlier rather than them just boiling or whatever. Like, I didn’t know you were pissed, I couldn't tell like, well no I can actually, I can smell, I can smell when he's pissed off or upset or disappointed. PR: He can smell when I’m—you know what I mean? It's more than. It's like this feeling, this intuition and instincts that you have just because you have rapport with is another human for so long. So that's a huge advantage we've had. And that's why you see like early businesses like you think about, it's all friends usually starting it because you can't be like, hey, want to. Like you can't go to the market place and be like, hey, you want to start this business with me? I don't know you. You want to start this? I don't fucking trust you. I trust Jared, he trusts me. We’re aligned. And you think about the values of our company really stem from our relationship because those are the two people that are at the two inputs that effect how we work here early on. It's shaped it in a totally different way because you know, the next new people come shapes it in a good way. Right? CK: That's another huge phase that you're in now. So how—you're set up as kind of as a company within Kellogg, is that right? PR: Yeah. So like a standalone business, a different business unit in a way. CK: Was that kind of an important goal to you when pursuing this kind of a deal? PR: Yeah, for sure it was table-stakes. Because people use the word exit—like we never actually exited, you know what I mean? As shareholders, we show sold their shares. But um, so for us we were looking for the right, the right muscle, and to protect our people and our culture. So those are kind of two objectives or goals that we were looking for in a partner. And Kellogg fit that perfectly and now we have resources to continue to achieve our business objectives and, and flourish as a company. CK: So the resources is obviously that's a, that's a big change. I mean, what else has changed so far? What else do you predict will change? PR: So change. As a company, we’ve changed a lot and that's just the nature of, of a, of a business. So it's all been good change. I would say in terms of, as it relates to Kellogg and being owned by them. They're, I wouldn't say there's any significant change. It's all good stuff in the sense that like, you know, we have some things we're navigating through in terms of some legal stuff for, not legal but like contracts that we need their expertise. Like, talk about performance management or like how to operate or how to manage channel conflict as we grow. Like there's a lot of expertise that we have in internationally, the global expansion, like that's something we wouldn't really be able to do on her own very quickly. And so with their leadership and their expertise and access, we've been able to move that up on the calendar significantly and go after new opportunities like that. PR: So there's been a bunch of good stuff. But like as a company, I wouldn't say we've changed our, there's been any change. Um, so the, the thing is, I always tell our team this, like we're gonna grow to, you know, we're gonna grow the business to 200 people and whatever—hopefully, you know, 400 people in a billion in revenue in these are things we want to achieve. We're going to change, like, you know what I mean? Change is a good thing and we, we have to fix our processes or improve our processes or whatever and let's not associate any sort of negative part of our size. Like, right, we're growing, we're getting bigger and there's some compromises that come with that. Meaning not everyone has all the information sometimes. That's part of it. Like I can't know what's going on in the social calendar. I just can’t. And mis-associating that change with new ownership or anything. Like that's, there's, we're growing and that's part of the, it's part of the territory. And um, we have to adapt in an intelligent way. CK: Right, so there’s changes that just come from growth and there’s changes that come from the partnership from the acquisition. PR: But like those changes are just things … ike there's really no changes so far. So it's all opportunity to be honest. CK So the second big question that we typically ask on #WeGotGoals is about a goal you have for the future and how you plan to get there. PR: As a company? CK: Well, I mean that's up to you. You can answer it as a company or you can answer it as an individual. PR: Yeah, I mean I think one of our goals is to really change and influence our legacy in the food business and really set the new standard for how food is designed, marketed and done. And so I really like remove the bullshit in big CPG and really restore confidence in different stakeholders from farmers, brokers, distributors, customers, consumers, et cetera. So we always pioneer our own path and, and so I guess the goal longer term or to really leave the impacting legacy on food and how things are done. CK: And CPG? PR:  Consumer packaged goods. So it's a monsters industry in a good way. It's huge. Everything. everyone needs food. CK: That's a pretty ambitious goal to change the way the food system works. I mean, what do you think are the biggest problems and how do you think you can have an impact on them? PR: Like one of the biggest ones is like, you know, as you get bigger, you, why can't big companies innovate in a, in an authentic and effective way? So that's one problem we approach and also how organizations are built or you know, it's totally different today. So I think organizationally through different design and tactics and systemizing things, you can change it in serving, ensuring, making value based decisions in ensuring you're serving the right people in the right way and not not, you know, I think there's a great quote, I actually think it's a Martha Stewart, but power—someone's character is best measured when you give them power and influence. Um, So like when you get powerful and in positions of influence, like how do you treat people is a real test of how you work. CK: And you mentioned that kind of no BS, which I know is on your label and something that, I mean from a consumer perspective, like what do these, what might these changes look like and what does that no BS mean. PR: No BS really just means, like, nonsense. It's not so literal, just like nonsense, like bad, like overly marketed to, gimmicky stuff. So it's across the board, across the business and of course in the products like right, we don't want nonsense ingredients or nonsense stuff, so that's how we, how we think about it. CK: So what can people who are out there buying RXBARs now, like what kind of change my base fee in the long term in the food system, if you are successful? PR: More access to food that like it's better for you, that's delicious. It saves you time that you can trust. So that's how I would think about it or how we think about it. CK: Back to thinking about your corporate path and your, your journey again from the basement to do this nice office to what I understand is going to be in an even bigger office coming soon. When you think back on your journey and if you—I’m sure you often give advice to other entrepreneurs, if you have one or two key pieces of advice that you'd offer people, what might they be? PR: Oh, there's a lot, there's so much, and it’s so situational. A motto I always live by is like, do what's effective and what feels good for me. That’s like, for me, important. There's a ton. Be proactive, not reactive. And like solve a problem, right? I feel like at least in entrepreneurship, a lot of like—Jared and I did this because we saw a gap in the market, like a problem. Like there wasn't a product that fit our needs. It wasn't like—we didn't focus on the outcome, we're not, you know, we were like, oh, we want to start a business and grow a business and do that. It was like, well, here's this opportunity that there's problem in the marketplace and do that. So that, that's important. You know, in a lot of people, like on the surface you're like, oh I want to have a nice business. I'm going to be an entrepreneur one day, like I never, we never were like, oh, we're going to be an entrepreneur one day it was just like, hey, there's this product we didn't, um, we want to make. And like, knowing what's important, doing what's important is important. CK: Like you said, maybe be willing to suffer a little bit along the way. PR: Yeah, suffering’s good. Pain’s good. As long as you learn from. CK: One of those things like, in fitness as in life PR: Well, yeah, think about fitness—there’s actually great parallels. So think about fitness, the most painful brutal workouts, not overused of course, but like the hardest workouts are where you stimulate the most growth from, you know. And work is the same thing. The most discomfort you have, the harder it is, the more you grow. And that's what I tell people, like I've been miserably uncomfortable since the day I started this. Vulnerable and uncomfortable. But that's part of growth and it's not. There's a stupid analogy, but I like to think about it—you know when you like wake up in the morning and you're in bed and it’s like so comfortable, especially in the winter here in Chicago, like. You never, if you take the sheets off, it's like oh, it's freezing and it's uncomfortable. You can just like stay in bed. That’s comfort, is just staying there. But like ripping the sheets off, being cold. Like that’s how you get going and that's how you start. You don't want to just stay in bed all day. CK: Just get out there, get started. Excellent advice. You mentioned early on that one of your goals was freedom. Do you think you have it? PR: That’s such a good question. No, I feel like a slave, but I do have creative freedom, but I'm a servant a hundred percent, but I like that. CK: So do you think your idea of what freedom is has just changed. PR: Yeah. Yeah. I don't have absolute freedom. I guess I need to define what freedom is. I mean, I love my job. It's not a, it's not even a job. It's like what I do. I, you know, I guess to give context, when I was prior to working at RXBAR, I was in a miserable spot, like I didn't like my job. I wasn't successful, I was insecure, I didn't have any confidence and I, I wanted to be successful. I wanted freedom to pursue my talent, whatever I was good at and, and grow and so I guess I needed to do to find what freedom meant. But back to your original question today am I free? No, I'm a servant to the company and I'm not free on paper, I guess. I don't know, that's a great question. I need to reflect on this. I don't have the answer. CK: Yeah, maybe you’re a servant, but a happier one. A servant to a good master. PR: I think what gives humans such satisfaction in serving others actually like for me, like watching all these people grow and achieve their goals is like—I’m high as a kite. Like there's nothing more gratifying than watching someone change and grow and achieve their goals and the way I try to do that is through serving them and serving their interests and whatnot. So I guess my priorities have shifted. Like my original goal was get out of misery and find something that I was good at and be successful and that's what I kind of maybe me my freedom. And now my goals are, or what makes me happy and goals are different. CK: Peter, I can’t thank you enough for joining me. PR: Thank you. No, I appreciate your time and I'm always here. CK: This podcast is produced by me, Cindy Kuzma, and it's another thing that's better with friends, so please share it with yours. You can subscribe wherever you get your podcasts. And while you're there, if you could leave us a rating or review, especially if you're an iTunes or Apple Podcasts, we would really appreciate it. Special thanks to J. Many for our theme music; to our guest this week, Peter Rahal; and to Tech Nexus, as always, for the recording studio.

Back the Kickstarter. Celebrating a close family member's 50th birthday in the ICU is a worst-case scenario for most people — but for Danni Allen, watching her father battle (and then overcome) weight-related health issues proved to be the catalyst that inspired her to audition for "The Biggest Loser." After beating out 300,000 other applicants to be one of the final 15 featured on the show, Allen showed up to set and was immediately faced with the harsh new reality of her next six months — namely, the signature tough love of trainer Jillian Michaels. "When you meet Jillian Michaels, she gives you no second to think," shares Allen. "There wasn't  a minute to think before she had you on the treadmill." And that first workout? Yeah, it lasted four hours. Jillian Michaels, at the time, "was not my favorite person," Allen says tactfully. But eventually, the trainer wore Allen down. Or as Allen laughingly confides, "she literally beat it out of me!" "Plus, my entire team got kicked off in the first four weeks - so I was riding solo with [Jillian] for the next six months of the show," ultimately setting up a close post-show relationship that Allen says they maintain to this day. As Allen describes on this week's podcast — published nearly five years to the day after her win — Michaels helped her break down goals and re-define them in different ways beyond the show's narrow focus. "At the time, it was definitely about a scale, but [Jillian] helped me find successes outside the scale." Running, doing her first-ever push-up, and practicing yoga all became staples in Allen's workouts. Once off the show and back to real life, Allen was able to translate some of the strategies learned from Michaels into maintaining her healthiest weight. "I took it one day at a time, one minute at a time... Being on the show helped me choose smaller goals and hit those. Find those successes, because that's what's going to launch you into the next goal." The show also taught Allen the importance of a strong community supporting you — a philosophy Allen promotes in her work with Planet Fitness, the fitness chain known for their Judgment-Free Zone®. "We [the cast members] created a family on the show. I think it's different than other reality TV shows — we're not there to take each other down. We are actually there to support and push each other... we wanted to be there for each other." As far as Allen's takeaway tip towards living your best life, she encourages a twist on a gratitude journal. "I keep a journal, and I always write down three things that I did well that day. That shows me that I'm making progress. You always get bogged down by the negativity or the things you wish you could have done or the "supposed to be's" — instead, it's about seeing what you did right." Sounds like Allen is right where she's supposed to be. This episode is presented by Chicago Sport and Social Club, reminding you that summer is just around the corner. Get into a summer volleyball league now and use code “GOALS” to get 5 percent off through March 31. If you like what you hear, subscribe wherever you get your podcasts and leave us a rating or a review on Apple Podcasts. And if this post or anything else we’ve created impacted your life, please support our Kickstarter. --- Transcript: JAC: Hi listeners, it's Jeana Anderson Cohen from aSweatLife.com, and I am here to talk to you quickly before we get to the high achievers who will share their goals with you. But if you have big goals or if you've been watching us help others achieve their big goals through our ambassadorship, we're asking you to help fund our Kickstarter. So if you check the link in the show notes today, you'll see that we are raising $20,000 between now and April 9th to help fund the expansion of our ambassadorship to help women set and achieve big goals in Chicago and across the country. Again, check the show notes or aSweatLife.com to learn more. Thanks so much. Let's get to those goal getters. JAC: Welcome to #WeGotGoals, a podcast by aSweatLife.com, on which we talk to high achievers about their goals. I'm Jeana Anderson Cohen;  with me I have Kristen Geil and Maggie Umburger. KG: Morning, Jeana. MU: Morning, Jeana. JAC: Morning. So Kristen, this week you talked to Danni, who many listeners may remember from The Biggest Loser. KG: Yes, I spoke with Danni Allen who won The Biggest Loser five years ago. She is from Mundelein and she won The Biggest Loser a few years ago and now she has completely transformed her career and is working with Planet Fitness, helping them open new gyms across the Chicago land area and we actually spoke to her right before the opening of one on the Broadway location up in Wrigleyville. JAC: And what's incredible about Danni is how she has sort of managed the change in her life. Starting first and foremost with The Biggest Loser when she had this catalyst in her life.  And then Jillian Michaels was introduced into the fold. What did she have to say about coach Jillian? KG: It was really clear throughout our interview. She references Jillian several times and the impact that Jillian had on her life and encouraging her and scaring her a little bit in really getting that tough love mentality instilled in Danni so she could push herself harder in and out of the gym to really live up to her full potential. And one of the interesting things that she really retained after meeting with Jillian for so many weeks and days in a row was the importance of breaking your goals down into bite size pieces, which is something we have heard over and over again on this podcast. Danni referred to it as Eeyore, the idea that there's this huge seemingly insurmountable goal that you have in the future. Whether it's, you know, losing half your body weight or climbing a mountain, let's just say, and it's really clear that she was able to win The Biggest Loser not by thinking about, I have to lose 120 pounds, but thinking I have to lose five pounds this week. And then just focusing and building it from there. MU: One thing that is so fun about this podcast is that we get to interview these high achievers and talk about something that they might not always get to talk about on interviews or or with the people in their daily lives. We get to ask about how they set goals. And then one element that often comes up about goal setting is how people express gratitude for where they are and that helps them set goals for the future, but Danni has a really interesting take on gratitude, which is something that we love here at aSweatLife. KG: Yeah. One of the things I really loved was when we talked about this, I asked Danni what her best life looks like because at aSweatLife we're all about helping our readers to live their best life and she responded that she took the time each night to write down three things that she had done well that day, not just three things that she was grateful for, but three areas where she specifically thought she had succeeded and she said, you know, at the end of the month you look back and you have 90 things that you did well and that's a huge confidence boost for yourself and helps fight that feeling of the imposter syndrome so many of us have, whether it's in the workplace or in our personal lives. So I thought that was a really great twist on a gratitude journal. Just making it a little bit different and really helping boost your confidence in a new and interesting way. JAC: Chris. We're so excited to hear this interview with Danni, thank you so much. Here's Kristen with Danni. KG: Welcome to the #WeGotGoals podcast. My name is Kristen Geil and I am here today with Danni Allen who is now working for planet fitness and is the former winner of NBC's The Biggest Loser. Danni, how are you today? DA: I am doing fantastic. How are you doing? KG: I'm good. We are so excited to have you here because we know that you are all over Chicago, which is our home base working with Planet Fitness, helping engage their new members. Can you tell me a little bit about what that role is for you and how you're working for it? DA: Yeah, absolutely. If anyone has been to a Planet Fitness before, I mean I'm really, really passionate about making sure the brand stays here in Chicago as well, but we're 1500 locations nationwide and the best part about Planet Fitness is it's the home of the judgment free zone where anybody and everybody can feel comfortable in their own skin. And myself, who used to be, you know, almost 300 pounds at one point felt really intimidating going into a gym. So when I started working with Planet Fitness and seeing the culture that they allow everybody to feel like they belong, I had to dig in deeper and that's why I'm really excited to be part of the branding here in Chicago. KG: What does that mean exactly that Planet Fitness does to make their members feel welcome in that judgment free zone? DA: Well, the first thing you do when you walk into a Planet Fitness, is you'll see, purple and yellow plastered everywhere, which is always fun colors to have and make you just feel excited, but we always have really friendly staff that's always at the front desk to say, welcome you in. Always give you a tour of the gym. But the biggest piece of the puzzle with planet fitness is unlimited fitness training is included for only $10 a month, which is your membership cost. So included in that membership cost is unlimited fitness training, so that way you can have someone to be on your side and help you with your goals and you know, there are different workout sessions--over 40 of them actually every single week that you can be a part of at no additional cost to make you feel comfortable when you first walk in and that's a big goal of ours to spread that word. KG: And let's back up just a little bit. Why don't you tell us a little bit about how you got to be on The Biggest Loser, what prompted you to try and get on that show and then what was your journey like once you're on there? DA: Yes, so about almost, oh, wow, this is at six years ago, almost to the day. Unfortunately my Dad  got really, really sick and was put into the hospital and a lot of his health concerned attributed to his weight and we actually had a very close call there. I really thought there was a moment there. I wasn't going to have my dad with me. We were celebrating his 50th birthday in the ICU hoping that things would turn around and thankfully they did and my dad had lost about a hundred pounds.  He was doing so much better and really getting his life back at 50. I was 25 and just realizing, you know, as a wake up call for me that I needed to get my health in order. I was definitely tipping the scale very close to 300 pounds and knew that I needed to change something so I wasn't 50 and in the ICU and you know, hoping that I would have a longer life. So with that I started Weight Watchers and started to lose a little bit of weight with a girlfriend at work that was helping me while my dad was recovering. And then she happened to call me one night. It was like, Hey, you know, the TV show, The Biggest Loser? They have auditions tomorrow, let's go. And I was like, yeah, I don't really. I've seen what they do on that show. I'm not really sure I could quite handle it.  And you know, the Jillian Michaels is just scary enough as it is. KG: I hear that. DA: Um, and so, but, you know, we bit the bullet, we went the next day and the funniest part was this audition started at 10:00 and I always love when they call it Chicago, but it was actually Lombard. I'm like, this isn't Chicago people, but ... KG: It's false advertisement. DA: Exactly. But we got there at like 7 in the morning thinking, oh, we'll be at the front of the line. No big deal. We were sadly mistaken. We actually had to wait in line for almost eight hours because there's over 3,000 people already in line waiting to get in. But we did. And this was mind you at this point. Now we're in July of 2012. Right. And you know, summers here are just excruciating. And so I came all cute because I'm like, I'm meet some producers or I really didn't know what was going on, but it's eight hours later I got to the front. DA: I was like a sweaty mess. My hair was. I was like, well, there's no shot of making the show. And we were in and out in a matter of 10 minutes, interviewed as a group and I'm like, well, you know, I'm sure they've seen thousands and thousands of people. There is no chance here. But I went home later that evening and I got a call on my phone and it said Los Angeles. I'm like, who's calling? And little did I know it was a call that changed my life and they, I answered the phone and they said, are we speaking to the next biggest loser? Three months later of auditioning, I got to meet my trainer, Jillian Michaels, whom, um, at the time was not my favorite person. But after, after, you know, working sometime with her and she literally beat it out of me. KG: Tough love. DA: Exactly. Exactly. But we created a bond. DA: My season was quite unique where, you know, we were definitely slapped right in the face of working out eight to 10 hours a day, which I do not condone for the average person every day. So we were on a reality televislon show. But I got to know Jillian more and more. And unfortunately my season, my, my entire team got kicked off in the first four weeks, so I was riding solo with her for the entire remaining six months of the show. But I really got to see a side of Jillian that she truly cares. She's hard for a reason and you know, 3,000 people just in my Chicago audition came, but over 300,000 auditioned that season alone. So we had, I was the miracle 15 that actually made the show and she just wants to make sure you work for it. And you know, six months later I was being crowned the champion dropping 120 pounds and you know, having a lot of fun over the last five years. KG: Was there any hesitation on your part at all when you got the call or were you, did you have a gut feeling that says I have to do this for me? DA: Oh, absolutely. I was terrified. And especially I told you, I actually went to the audition with a friend and we thought we were auditioning together and I was the one that got the call back and she didn't. So there was a part of me and you know, my mom always says I have the disease to please, I worry about everyone else before I take care of myself and I know I'm not the only one that's like that. I was ready not to do it. And then I'd seen, you know, my first after my second call audition, you know, they make you do the awesome turnarounds with just like a sports bra showing off your belly KG: Oh, I have nightmares about that. DA: And they're like, oh wait, no, we need to pull it out a little bit more and you can't see my hand gestures right now, but they're literally like pulling your tummy fat out of your pants so you can like see how much weight you truly need to lose. And it was quite a mortifying experience if I might say. And it really made me question. And then of course, you know, day one you're slapped in the face with our first workout doesn't end for four hours. So. And Jillian was just a spitfire. So I didn't even know once I made the show if I could even last more than one more day. But I did do, I took it one day at a time, sometimes one minute at a time, and then we created a family there on the show, so I was thankful for the contestants that were on our season. I think it's different than other reality TV shows. We're not there to take each other down. We're actually there to hopefully support and push. And then every once in a while you hope you've got five extra minutes in the gym just to get that leg up. But we wanted to be there for each other. KG: That's amazing. CK: Hey, it's Cindy Kuzma, the co-host and producer of #WeGotGoals. We'll get back to Kristen's interview with Danni in just a minute, but first I want to say a special thank you to our sponsor this week, Chicago Sport and Social Club--and want to let you know that they're special discount code for beach volleyball. It's been extended through March 31st. That is good news because with Chicago Sport and Social Club, it's more than a game. It's a social sports experience. When this Chicago winter finally ends, you're going to have a lot of reasons to play. It might be feeling the sand between your toes and maybe meeting people and moving your social life outside for season. Whatever your goals are, whatever your reasons for playing. There is a beach volleyball league at Chicago Sport and Social Club for you, so to sign up you can do it as a team of all women, a team of men and women, or you can sign up on your own and get set up with the team. Do that by going to www.chicagosocial.com and use the code goals. That's g o a l s when you register, you'll get five percent off now through March 31st. Thanks so much to Chicago Sport and Social Club. And now let's go back to Kristen and DannI. KG: This is a good time to ask the first question that we ask everyone who comes on our podcast. What is a big goal that you've achieved in the past and why was it so important to you and how did you get there? DA: You know, since winning the show, my life has flipped upside down and I think in a generic sense, what I've learned is that there's no supposed to be. That was like my biggest thing to realize is, you know, I think we matriculate through school, we go from high school hopefully to college, then you get a job and then what the show taught me is things can shake up that you need to take your life and your personal story in your own hands and it might not go the direction that you want, but to take it and, you know, just kinda jump with it. DA: So immediately after the show I ran the Chicago Marathon, which I never thought I would do. Everyone's like, oh, did you want to be a runner? I'm like, no, I thought running was stupid. I really did. Um, but you know, I found one goal with this show and I liked the finish line analogy, is that, you know, as you're running, you can always go a little bit further. So it started with a 5k and then a 10K. And I really wanted the opportunity being from Chicago to run that marathon and the funny part is I did sign up in their lottery and I didn't get in initially and so luckily if you're ever having trouble getting into the marathon, just win a national television show and tell Savannah Guthrie on NBC Today Show that you didn't make it in and then you'll get calls the next day, so. KG: That seems like a reasonable way to get in. DA: Everyone can do that, right? No problem. So that was one of my biggest goals just as far as being a Chicagoan and feeling like I embraced something that is so huge and culturally diverse here, running through all the neighborhoods that Chicago has. So that was one of the big things I had. But also secondly, which is also my future goals, is working with a company like Planet Fitness that really gets the opportunity to change lives and make people feel more comfortable. And I think especially in today's day and age, we need to make sure that we are doing our best to have as many people feel comfortable in their own skin. I like to work with a lot of programs that help people just feel unique and great in their own bodies and though I lost 120 pounds, that doesn't mean that I am defined by my weight. DA: I am not defined by my scale. So over the last five years it's using platforms like Planet Fitness to help people realize that, you know, scale weight tells you the relationship with gravity and that's, that's about it. And since then I've had great opportunities to work with other platforms like Girls on the Run, which is great here in Chicago as well. And if I can continue doing that, I think everything will be great. KG: You mentioned Planet Fitness as being a judgment free zone, which is something that we don't feel oftentimes when we're walking into a gym. How did you feel that first day when you walked in to The Biggest Loser workout warrior coliseum is how I think of it. DA: So I will say I didn't know it quite at the time until I first walked in, but it's actually a Planet Fitness. So yes, it's The Biggest Loser private gym, but it's supplied by Planet Fitness, so it hasn't the gears and the purple and the yellow, so you'll see that. DA: So I wish I had known that at the time. I might have had some sort of comfort level with that, but walking in for the first time now, mind you, I was an athlete my whole life. I wasn't oblivious to what equipment and gyms were, but I had been over 200 pounds since I was 14 years old. I was heavy but I knew how to move it. I was all state in, in Illinois for soccer, I was a goalkeeper, you know, and I was getting ready to go college bound and I think I disappointed my poor father's heart, but I ended up playing water polo in eventually in college as well. And so I was really extremely athletic. I just could never figure out why my body wasn't losing the weight. So when I walked into that gym for the first time, I kind of knew what everything was. DA: And I think if anything it was more impactful because I'm like, I also know what these things can do. KG: Yeah, you know what you're in for. DA: Exactly. And then you know, when you meet Jillian Michaels, she gives, you know, second to think. In all honesty, there wasn't a minute to think before she had you on the treadmill running. People were falling off. It didn't matter. You just had to stay on and pray for the life that she was going to go away soon. KG: You said that you guys spent eight to 10 hours in the gym a day when you were on the show, but at the same time we call this a reality show and that is not realistic for most people. So once you got out of that environment and came back to the real world, how did your personal fitness and health goals for yourself change then from what they had been while you were on the show? DA: Yeah, I would hope to say like it was simple and easy, like a light switch. Turn it on and turn it off. With the show, like any reality show, you're not watching a TV show to see someone lose one or two pounds a week, right? That's the safe and more healthy way to do things, but at the end of the day they want to make an impact and a splash and you want to see the most extreme makeovers, which is great for that scenario, but that's not real life. So after the show, it did take me some time to realize how much can I work out to try and maintain and in all honesty, maintenance wasn't even an option for me right at the beginning because I lost so much weight so quickly. Your body needs that time to adapt. So luckily I did create a great relationship with Jillian and I actually joined her on her tour for a little bit, so she was able to give me that mental strength that I needed, knowing that I didn't need to spend that much time in a gym and she was trying to dwindle me down to about 45 minutes to an hour at a time though, you know, it took time to get to that. DA: That's what I've gotten to today. If you can work out about 45 minutes to an hour, four to five days a week and it doesn't have to be in a gym. Trust me, I work with the gym and I love going to the gym, but just going outside like for the first time here in Chicago, it's what like 50 degrees out? KG: It feels like spring outside. So I saw a guy in shorts and a tank top riding his bike last night. DA: I didn't bring my jacket. It was fantastic. So utilizing just your basic scenarios, going out for an extra walk or instead of you know, if it is nicer like it is today, you know, taking that opportunity to, to move more and at the end of the day move more and watch what you eat. That's the real, you know, the real solution to what we, we've got to get to. KG: What else do people not see happening on The Biggest Loser that might surprise them? DA: Oh, there's a lot. We always said we wanted to have a show called The Biggest Loser After Dark and there are little things, like you said, I can say what I want. We had a, we had a food porn jar so when anyone talks too much about like, oh, I could really go for a chocolate sundae with some--you had to put money in the jar, so we called it our food porn jar, so we would have food porn our where we could talk about it for just an hour, get it all out there, all the foods that we thought we were missing, but I will say as it started to evolve it and go in your body change and your taste buds honestly do change. It will happen. It's not overnight, but that food porn jar got less and less and less and we always said whoever was going to win the show is going to get the pot in that, in that jar. But I never saw any of that. KG: Someone broke a promise. DA: Exactly. But you know those. Those are the little things and at the end of the day, I don't think what they necessarily showed is all the different ways that we worked out. Yes, we definitely went to the gym, but we're lucky enough to be in Calabasas, California, in the in the valley, which was beautiful, so we went hiking almost every single day so that I said we were working out eight to 10 hours a day. It wasn't always in the gym, so we went hiking. I got into yoga and that's actually how I met the love of my life now, David, he was a yoga instructor here in Chicago that I met, so all you ladies that go into those fitness studios and see that cute instructor, it can happen. KG: Like a fairy tale come true. DA: But what they also don't show, like I said, it's a lot of the nutrition as well.  Many people think we have a chef on the show. That is not the case. We have to cook all of our own food. In the beginning they did bring a nutritionist in to kind of help us. We also had Devin Alexander, who's a great chef out of LA as well. She came in a couple of times just to show us a few things, but really at the end of the day, if they could've shown what we were eating now, sometimes it was very basic and boring because all you have time for is-- KG: Chicken and greens. DA: Exactly. But she taught us. Things like spaghetti squash pizza casserole, and you know, turkey roll ups. All these different things that you could eat and kind of have variety in your food because you're eating the same thing everyday. Now some people are black and white. They can do that. I'm not. I needed a change, so when I learned how to make sushi out of cucumbers, right? DA: All these little things that you can still indulge, it's really good food, but it's. It's not. It's not bad for you. Those are the things that I wish they would show in the show because I think I would say you get the size you want to be from what's on your plate. You get the shape you want from the gym. KG: Oh, that's interesting. I'll remember that. What was your approach to goal setting like before The Biggest Loser and how has it changed since then? DA: Oh man, before The Biggest Loser, I think I was so lost in the world of what's the right thing to do, right. And I would try so many different things and probably not give it the length that it needed before I was ready to give up and try something else. So before the show, at least when it came to my health and health and fitness, I was always trying to figure out what's the quickest way for me to lose this weight and if I had just taken a step back and realize that weight was something I struggled with my whole life. DA: So it wasn't something I was going to fix overnight. And that's why like I actually really do appreciate kind of the mindset that Weight Watchers comes from. I think it comes from a good angle, but I was all over the place. I was trying one thing and then jumping to another and then doing this or setting myself up. I kind of call it the Eeyore effect where you set this goal that is just so unattainable. I knew I had well over a hundred pounds to lose, but if I had taken it like five pounds at a time, I probably would've been more successful than realizing, you know, that cloud is following you, that Eeyore cloud, saying a hundred pounds, a hundred pounds, you gotta lose it. And then before you know, losing five pounds at a time, I was actually gaining five pounds at a time. Where after Biggest Loser and especially like I will always, you know, talk about how much Jillian was a big part of, of changing my life. DA: She really helped me break down goals and finding goals in different ways. You know, at the time it definitely was about a scale. We were weighing, you know, in those cute little outfits on this show in front of millions of people. But she, she helped me find successes outside the scale. So like I said, running became a huge part of why I was doing what I was doing because I felt like the easiest thing you could do is put on a pair of gym shoes and just go. And with that we started to focus on those goals. You know, when I did my very first push up, that was huge for me because I didn't think I could ever do that. I'm like, my butt's too big, my stomach's huge. There's no way I can push up and down a 300 pound body. But actually it wasn't very long until I was able to. DA: And I was still probably like a good to 60 pounds when I did my first push up. So your weight doesn't define you and being on the show, it helped me choose smaller goals, hit those, find those successes because that's going to launch you into the next goal versus thinking, what's the big picture goal? Let's find the little pictures and make a movie out of it. KG: I love that. You also mentioned that the group you were with, your other classmates were really impactful in helping everyone work towards that goal rather than be competitive. How did that group mentality and the community support drive you guys all to the finish line of your own stories? DA: You know what I think it was, I was so grateful for it because at the end of the day we are removed from reality. I know it's called reality tv, but we are taken out. There was no TV, no cell phones, no Internet. You're completely cut off from the outside world. Everything that you knew that was home to you was ripped away and when you met 15 or 14 other strangers, you got to know each other pretty quickly and because we had that support and we were all taken out of our own elements, we were really able to support and I think push each other as well. There was one of the contestants Francelina that was on my show is someone that I'm still very close with to this day and she and I, we, we really bonded in the beginning and so when we wanted to get to the gym a little bit extra earlier and then wanted to stay a little bit later, she was always there. She was a driver. She had a force that just like, it was slightly competitive but in the best way, right? DA: Because we wanted to outdo each other, but like strengthening each other at the same time, so when we're in that environment, it really helped knowing that you had a support system because in all honesty there were producers, there's film, everything's going on around you. You felt like you had no control. We were the ones that felt like that constant control. KG: Let's switch gears a little bit and talk more about how your professional goals have changed. So coming off The Biggest Loser as the winner, you have a ton of opportunities. You can really sort of change your life's direction, not just in terms of your physical fitness, but also how you want your professional life to go. Can you talk a little bit about what you wanted to do coming off of that show professionally and how you've worked to achieve that since then, and what goals you've set for yourself in that arena? DA: Yeah. Not too much prior to the show, I had graduated from Clemson University with a degree in architecture. I was ready to be an architect. I was so excited, but I definitely, I think bit off a little bit more than I could chew. When I was in college. I did a five year program in four years, so when it came to that, I was so burned out, but I did have the opportunity of, you know, right away after college you got to start paying those loans off as soon as possible. So I started waitressing and I ended up working for a great restaurant company that I became very quickly the national trainer and got to travel all over the world, opening up restaurants in London all over the US, which was really great as well, and using my architecture degree to help actually do the floor plans. DA: They would send me to a new location and I would be the one to draw that up and then also be the one to train a train the entire team. So it was kind of a little bit of a basket in each. And then after that I started to be a working on the marketing team for Camping World and Good Sam, which was a really great opportunity for me to really dive into marketing and graphic design, which I didn't realize how much my architecture degree would really impact that. I'm like, Ooh, I've really love graphic design. So that's where the trajectory was headed when I had the opportunity of Biggest Loser. Now mind you, when you're in the audition phase of Biggest Loser, they make you sign a contract that you're liable for up to $1.5 million if you say anything. So I was terrified, right? DA: But I did have to tell my boss that what was going on because I had been taking a lot of time off. And then I got to the point where I'm like, I need the next 10 days to six months off is that going to be OK? And my company in Camping World was so supportive of it. They let me do what I had to do and told me I would have a job when I came back and you know, after the show and the confetti fell, you, like you said, I had the world in front of me. So many opportunities, but it actually got almost too overwhelming. You're like, what do I do? What's my next platform and how do I not make this, you know, wasted effort, right? Where can I go? So luckily I met an amazing publicist, Daphne Ortiz, who I still work with today, and she really helped me find goals that I can put my platform before Biggest Loser because I was a good person before Biggest Loser, you know, I was on the trajectory of really making some, I think impactful things and when I got the chance to work with Girls on the Run and specifically Planet Fitness at this point, I've actually helped open over 200 gyms across the country and even at the lowest end of maybe, you know, working out with 30 to 40 people, multiply that by 200 and I've had the opportunity to impact thousands of people. DA: And in doing that I knew that's what I wanted to do and it's only been the last couple of years that those two things kind of came together for me. They allowed me to take my creative direction with graphic design and marketing and merge that into an opportunity to help more people. At the end of the day, like I said before, Biggest Loser, I was so overwhelmed by what's the right decision, what's the path that I need to do to lose weight or to get healthier or--not everyone has to lose weight. They just want. They want to feel better. I always say there's something called skinny fat too, it doesn't--you don't have to look a certain way not to be healthy and what I think Planet Fitness affords people to do, especially like I said, it's only 10 bucks a month and I'm not trying to sell here. I'm just saying it's so affordable for you to do that it just gets you the step in the right direction and whether it's, you know, Weight Watchers or South Beach Diet or all these different things that are over, you know that you can choose from. Pick one thing and that's what I think Planet Fitness helps you do. Pick one thing, let that settle and then find your next ambition instead of being overwhelmed by all these opportunities that you could do. And I think I very long windedly just said that like, you know, over the last five years it's been a great, great run on March 18th is actually exactly five years since the confetti fell. So I'm really excited to cross that finish line and see what else I can do. KG: You mentioned that planet fitness was the sponsoring gym for The Biggest Loser and here in Chicago you don't necessarily see a lot of people gravitating towards big box gyms. There's a lot of studios. How have you seen the balance of studios versus gyms play out in terms of, are people heading more towards these big box gyms that were recently out of trend? Are they stepping away from the more expensive classes for the more affordable? How have you guys seen that reflected in Planet Fitness's popularity or their representation here in Chicago? DA: I actually welcome studio fitness to the areas because I think studio like select fitness can go really, really well with the big box gyms. The problem with that is how do you afford both. And I think Planet Fitness gives you that great alternative. Like I said, it's only $10 a month, so you can still go to that boutique studio. We actually have one in Lincoln Park, SoulCycle is one of my favorite studios to go to right on Clybourn over there, but even though I go to a boutique studio, I go to Planet Fitness as well because I can choose anything there, right? There's a big open platform and you know here in Chicago we're expanding tremendously. We just did our big grand opening at Broadway and Addison, kind of an iconic area of Chicago near Wrigley and we're doing really, really well there. We're headed to Crestwood and a few other neighborhoods in Chicago as well, just expanding, so I hope that shows that, you know, Planet Fitness is doing pretty well in the world of boutique fitness and I think they go hand in hand together for 10 bucks a month. You can still afford to do those boutique fitness, or ClassPass is a great opportunity for it as well. KG: Let's go into the second big question that we ask everyone who comes on the podcast, and you've kind of touched on this a couple of times, but we'll make it explicit. What is a big goal you have in the future and how do you plan to reach it? DA: Oh, man in the future, I definitely, I mean, I think I'm making my footprint here with Planet Fitness, especially in Chicago and across North America and as we expand into Canada as well, but what I really want to make sure I do is keep my platform of I'm the girl from Mundelein, Illinois and though I appreciate being here to help be a spokesperson. I still want to always stay that real person that was able to get her life changed. Whether it's weight or finances. We all have our problems, right? If I could help be that advocate that you can do it, that's my biggest goal. It's not a personal goal. That's, you know, maybe a little geared towards, uh, you know, selfish ambitions. It's really there to help as many people as I can and be real about it. By no means have I ever said I've kept the same weight from when I lost the show. DA: I've always been very real and honest that it's been a struggle in every day you make a decision and if I can help other people see that as well, that'd be a great goal. But, and you know, on a personal level, the more I can travel, the more I can impact, but honestly just see beautiful places, something I've done in the past as well as with Run Like a Girl, which is different than girls on the run. I did host a yoga retreat in Costa Rica so that twice. So that was amazing. So being able to like just see the cultural differences that we have across the world. I would love to just travel more and more and see new places and show people that health and wellness is not just about the food on your plate and the exercise you do. It's about discovering new places and discovering different things that you and your body can do once you hit those goals. KG: That leads in perfectly to another question I had for you. On aSweatLife, we try and show our readers different ways to live their best lives possible. What does that look like for you? DA: Oh, that's a loaded question. Um, you know, I think at the end of the day, you live your best life possible when you can sit down at the end of the day and say, I did one thing right. I think we get so consumed by all the things that we should have done that we didn't get to or you know, you started your day with a list and you got through the first three things when 10 more things got added. But if you could at the end of the day, just take a deep breath and look at what you did well, that's going to help advance you into the next step or the next day or on the next hour, whether whatever's getting you to that next step. DA: And I think that will really help. That's what I tried it. It's not perfect, right? It's idealistic, but at the end of the day I keep a journal and I always write three things down that I did well that day because I think that shows me that I'm making progress. You always get bogged down, like I said, by the negativity or the things you wish you could've done or the supposed to bes, you don't see my air quotes on the "supposed to bes" KG: She's doing air quotes, you guys. DA: It's about you know, seeing what you did right? Because everyone is. It sounds silly, but everyone is amazing in their own unique way and if you could remember that and be reminded and a month later, look at that journal that you wrote down to the three things every single day. That's 90 things that you did well and it hopefully will make you feel better about the person that you are and what you can bring to this world. KG: I love that as a twist on a gratitude journal because that's something that we hear recommended a lot and we hear a lot of our high achievers talking about how important gratitude is as a part of their life and of course still is very important, but I love the like self props that you get by listing things that you did well because I think a lot of people suffer from a minor case of imposter syndrome and comparing themselves to others and that's such a tangible way to have a record of yes, I am just as great as everyone thinks I am. I'm not fooling anybody. I'm not faking anything. DA: Absolutely. And I think you brought up to the point like authenticity is key and it's really hard to feel like you're an authentic person when you're trying to figure out who you are. You're like, what is my mold? DA: And I think that was a thing, a struggle that I had with the show is like how am I Dani Allen, Biggest Loser and how am I just Danni? Right? And how do I, you know, eat a cupcake from Sprinkles down the street and not feel the most guilty about it because honestly that's happened to me before someone takes a picture and posts it on Instagram is like, well, look at Danny eating a cupcake and I'm just like, I'm the most terrible person. I'm supposed to tell people to eat healthy. But you know, every once in a while eat a damn cupcake. It's OK. And so that's where I, I try to find the balance of authenticity of who I am and also know that I'm going to screw up and make mistakes too. And I think you honestly, you learn more when you fall. KG: I love that. I think we can end on that note. Danni, thank you so much for coming in to the #WeGotGoals podcast today. DA: Thank you. And it's been a lot of fun. And to meet you guys as well. CK: This podcast was produced by me, Cindy Kuzm. And it's another thing that's better with friends, so please share it with yours. You can subscribe on Apple podcasts, stitcher, overcast, wherever you get your podcasts, and if you could also leave us a rating or review on apple podcasts, we would really appreciate it. Special thanks to J. Mano for our theme music; to our guest this week, Danny Allen to Texas for the recording studio.

Note: This episode contains explicit language   Prior to having Michelle Davis and Matt Holloway, creators of New York Times Best Selling cook books, Thug Kitchen, on our podcast, I wanted to know, "Do they curse as much in real life as they do as a brand?" The answer was - not surprisingly (and yet still delightfully) - of course. This episode of #WeGotGoals is marked E for explicit, and in it we dove into the "why" behind the profane language. As lighthearted and fun Davis and Holloway are to chat it up with, they mean serious business when talking about eating healthy and taking care of yourself. "Take that shit f*&$!#% seriously," Holloway said. "We want to grab the audience and shake the s*#$ out of them and say, 'Eat a f*&$!#% salad, I'm worried about you!'" Davis interjected, "The swearing levels the playing field." She emphasized that you don't have to change who you are or completely change your life if you pick up healthier and smarter eating habits. In creating The Official Cookbook, Party Grub and 101 Fast as Fuck (I know we have a strict one-swear-word-per-post policy on aSweatLife.com, but these two make it impossible when the title of their Best Sellers also happen to be curse words) Holloway and Davis became leaders in the world of eating for your health on social media and IRL. But that's not what they initially set out to do. In fact, before the Thug Kitchen brand, the two were posting to a Tumblr page for fun, with no idea who, if anyone, was reading. "A big reason our blog went viral was because Gwyneth Paltrow talked about it on The Rachael Ray Show," Holloway said. "We don't have any connections with either of them, but that was like a boom in traffic for us." But the reason Paltrow probably took notice, Davis notes, is because they were already doing the "unsexy work" and were committed to it. Her advice to goal setters looking to achieve big things? "Work as hard as you can and perform at the highest level you can regardless of who's looking because when they crack that door open for you just a little bit, you can be ready to shove your f*&$!#% foot in and make the most of it." Based on the nature of their content and lack of censoring on the regular, I wasn't surprised but I still appreciated how refreshingly truthful, open and honest these founders were about the ups, downs and lessons learned over the past few years during their Thug Kitchen journey. From the outside, when we see people achieve amazing things, we see what they have. Davis pointed out, though, that she learned going after what she wants means other things in life have to give. She begged the question, "What are you willing to give up in your life that you also love to get what you want?" She added, "You have to be willing to not be caught up on Game of Thrones and to not be able to go on dates and to not see people as much as you want to because you are pursuing this dream. It's not always adding stuff to your life, sometimes it's taking away." But for these two, the give and take has been worth it. From the recipes in the best selling cook books to the Forked Up podcast, to the direct messages you'll receive on Instagram, all things Thug Kitchen come directly from the dynamic duo. Davis creates the plant-based recipes, Holloway photographs them, and the two together are in charge of the bluntly witty brand voice that stands out among any other plant-based cook books and blogs, making this company so unique. And based on their goals for the future, I don't think they'll be going anywhere anytime soon. This episode is presented by Chicago Sport and Social Club, reminding you that summer is just around the corner. Get into a summer volleyball league now and use code “GOALS” to get 5 percent off until March 15. If you like what you hear, subscribe where ever you get your podcasts and leave us a rating or a review on Apple Podcasts. --- Transcript: JAC: Hi there, it's Jeana Anderson Cohen from aSweatLife.com. We're going to get to the high achievers in just a minute, but first we want to tell you about something we're doing over at aSweatLife.com, Until April 9th, we’re running a kickstarter, so if you or anyone you know has ever been impacted by any of the work we do at aSweatLife.com, whether it's the podcast that you're about to listen to here, the ambassadorship, or the content we create on a daily basis, or even the events that we host here in Chicago and across the country. We’d love for you to help us fund the growth of our ambassador program, helping women set and achieve big, hairy audacious goals. So if you'd like to contribute, check the show notes for this episode or aSweatLife.com and you'll find a link to fund our campaign. Thanks so much. Here's the episode. JAC: Welcome to #WeGotGoals, a podcast by aSweatlife.com on which we talk to high achievers about their goals. I'm Jeana Anderson Cohen; with me, I have Kristen Geil and Maggie Umberger. MU: Morning, Jeana. KG: Hi, Jeana. JAC: Good morning. This week, Maggie, you talked to Michelle and Matt from Thug Kitchen—and for our listeners at home, be sure you take your kids out of earshot. There will be swearing in this episode. MU: Yes, I did speak to the founders of Thug Kitchen, Matt Holloway and Michelle Davis. I was fortunate enough to get to hear a little bit about the behind the scenes of Thug Kitchen, how it came to be and how these two have created an incredible brand, multiple best seller cookbooks and now a podcast called Forked Up. JAC: So what's interesting and has always been sort of a part of the brand is that they sort of use swear words to punctuate their language in different and interesting ways. It’s their way of sort of staying authentic. We have a policy on how we use swear words at aSweatLife, it’s one swear per post, but they clearly adhere to a different policy. Maggie, do you care to elaborate? MU: Yeah, so I even asked them, you know, why swear what's the, the need to do it and for them it, it isn't necessarily a distinct desire to swear. It's just the response to being a little bit more frank about what their business is. It's a cookbook, it started out as a tumblr page and then became this best selling cookbook, Thug Kitchen, but they use swearing to cut through the clutter of beautiful photography that is just fluffy language and they saw good food on the pages, but they didn't relate to the words behind how it was portrayed and so being very candid with their audience about how they view the importance of cooking good food to be healthy and to take it very seriously, but it is just that. It's just the importance that it is and and because they developed this brand that is so honest and open, they're running with it and people are loving it to the point where all of their growth through social media has been organic because they can't promote their posts on Facebook because they're explicit, but they've chosen to go that route, to be authentic to who they are and to trust that their audience is going to respond the way they're going to respond and follow them or not follow them and they're cool with it. KG: You mentioned their Tumblr page just now and they had a stroke of luck when celebrities like Gwyneth Paltrow and Rachel Ray noticed their hard work and promoted it themselves because they thought it was something authentically cool. How does this tie in to how they view goal setting? MU: The more we talked about goals, the more I could tell they were lighting up about talking about them and about their experience with going through the journey of starting a page for fun, not really thinking anything would come of it and then they were putting in a lot of hard work and that's when they got noticed by Gwyneth Paltrow and that was part of their. their points that they made to me as advice to other go-getters and people who were setting goals for themselves, is to know that you're going to work hard and to put in that hard work when no one's looking because you never know when someone is going to be looking and then you have to be ready when they are looking so that you can take flight and run with it and that's really what they've done from cookbook to cookbook and now to podcast. They are very much in the weeds, working day in and day out to produce everything that you see through the Thug kitchen brand. JAC: And here's Maggie with Michelle and Matt. MU: Awesome. So I'm here today with Michelle Davis and Matt Holloway, the authors and creators of Thug Kitchen. Thank you guys so much for joining me. MH: It's great to be here; thanks for having us. MD:  Yeah, we’re stoked, thank you. MU: And it's really fun too, because this conversation is about setting goals and I get to talk to both of you as individuals and as the co-creators of a brand that some people don't even know who created, but we get to, I get to hear the backstory and a little bit of the behind the scenes from Thug Kitchen, which I'm really excited about. So before all of the Thug Kitchen craziness, before the official cookbook and Party Grub and 101, Fast as Fuck, which there we go, now we're explicit. Um, I would love to hear sort of a day in the life of how did you spend your days before thug kitchen? MD: I worked full time at a grocery store. And so that was legit all I did, like anyone who works in retail knows you don't really have set hours, they change your schedule all the time. So it felt like I lived at the grocery store and then if I wasn't working I was cooking dinner for myself, for myself and Matt, and just trying to figure out what the hell I was going to do with my life because I had been there for eight years. MH: I was a production assistant, so essentially fetching meals for executives. I would have to arrange travel, it was just sort of like … MD: Lots of diet coke and coffee runs. MH: A production week—anybody who's in entertainment understands it like it's a least a 12 hour  day. So you know, my, my work week was like 60, 70 hours, like every week. MD: For like a lovely, like, what? $12 an hour? Like what were you making? MH: I wasn’t making any money, I was broke as shit. MD: Same thing with me. I was making at most $12 an hour at the grocery store so. MH: So we were broke as fuck and Michelle was trying to get me to cook more on my days off and I'm like yo, I just want to sit on the couch like I don't want to cook. Like, so I get that immediate sort of like knee jerk response and be like now's me time and I don't want to cook. And I was having to like battle that as Michelle was like, dude, you should learn how to cook and like take care of yourself. MD: It’s an important part of being a full fledged grown-up. MH: Yeah. And she was being very encouraging with that and I was trying to, I was looking at everything, I was looking at cook books. I was looking at other websites and YouTube videos and I don't know, we just, when Michelle and I got in the kitchen together and start cooking and doing photos. Like I was just like, I don't, I don't fucking identify with these people who, you know, wrote this cookbook and they live in Malibu and have all the fucking time in the world to source their ingredients MD: And all the money. MH: Yeah, and all the money. It's like they take, they take literally half a day to cook lunch. MD: hat obviously wasn't our fucking lifestyle. And so we created Thug Kitchen, because that's what we wanted to read and thought it was like a fun thing to do when we happened to have the same days off together. MH: It was a very selfish endeavor. MD: Yeah. But it wasn't even like we, we didn't think anything was gonna happen of it. I mean it was a tumblr account. MH: Yeah, I mean we didn’t—it was just food memes. And we were just trying to encourage people to eat more vegetables and describing why they should eat those vegetables and like, you know, the health benefits that go along with adding this to a dish and it just fucking blew up. And like we're like, oh dude, like what does this mean? And we got, we got like some national press and then we got a book deal and we didn't even, even when we got the book deal, we didn't think was going to perform well. So Michelle and I like to sort of a hiatus from our day jobs. MD: Yeah, we didn't burn any bridges. MH: No, we were so ready to go back to our jobs because we're like, well it will be that thing. Where we were like, hey remember that time that we wrote a cookbook? MD: That was so weird! MH: But it sold like gangbusters MD: And here we are. MH: And we're very fortunate for it. MU: I can totally identify with the not relating to the beautiful Instagram-worthy photos of the food, even when I cook it and it tastes fine, it's never like gorgeous and I'm definitely not going to spend time to plate it and take a photo of it before I eat it. But I also like, I don't really know how to cook that well. It sounds to me like you guys sort of, you were teaching ourselves how to cook as you were going through this process of building the tumblr and or did you have like a— MD: I'm the cook. Yeah. I've always known how to cook; I’ve been cooking since I was a kid. It's always been like a hobby of mine. Also a way for me to eat, so. Because I’ve always been broke so I've always had to cook my own food. MH: And I’ve just been like the echo of a thousand excuses. MD: So it's more like I was teaching Matt how to cook through the process. MH: And all the fucking tropes that people are used to telling themselves like, oh well I can't cook because you know, I don't have time to grocery shop. Like isn't eating healthy super expensive or like, so I was like, I was the embodiment of all those things and Michelle just kept nudging me and nudging me and yeah, I just, after awhile it was like, man, that is just a bunch of bullshit. MD: And so we put it in the book. MU: And then it became an explicit cookbook. Partially. I mean why, why the explicit cookbook? I get the, the idea to do it very simplistically, but then to just go all out with it. I love it. Walk me through why. MH: Yeah, we wanted to be really aggro with like the, the tone because like, I mean we uh, we, we say this all the time, but like eating healthy and taking care of yourself and cooking a meal for yourself, like take that shit fucking seriously and we, we want to grab the audience and like shake the shit out of them and be like, eat a fucking salad, like I'm worried about you. MD: But also it shows that you don't have to be like, I feel like eating healthy and the idea of eating like a plant based diet, people think they have to be a totally different kind of person from who they are now. And I think the swearing really levels the playing field and like let you in, like—we’re not taking this shit super seriously. You don't need to take yourself super seriously MH: You can have some fun with it. Yeah. I feel like I was reading everyone else's cookbooks in like a hushed NPR tone, you know what I mean? MD: That's not how we talk to each other, that’s not how we talked to our friends growing up, that's certainly not how we talk in the kitchen, especially when we fucking burn ourselves. MH: Like, yeah, Michelle's from the Bay and I'm from Houston, like the, these, these sort of like Malibu cookbooks are not like reflective of us MD: Or anyone we know. MU: Yeah. I mean and, and now you have best sellers on your hands, which is incredible. So I love it. MD: It feels very surreal. MU: Was there a moment that you realized we're onto something, people people really love this or is it just that, that process of going from getting the book deal to it catching on fire. MH: I mean Michelle might think differently, but I still to this day I don't know what the fuck we're doing. MD: Yeah. Every time you know, a new book comes out or honestly anytime we post anything, I'm fucking delighted that anyone gives a shit. Like, every single time. I don't think. I mean, you know, just recently, last October we found out we've sold more than a million books in the US, but still when I meet someone and they've heard of the book, I kind of can't believe it. MH: I don't know, I guess in those moments that we see as sort of exists in the real world that, you know, it's not just me and Michelle in the office trying to crank out food puns and jokes like, yeah, like I was in Houston just a few weeks ago and a woman came up to me and asked to take a selfie with me and that fucking blew my mind. And then she talked about how she was like, she's not vegan, but she eats more vegetables because of our book and everything like that. It's like in those moments, that's when it's like, Oh wow, this is like a, this is like a thing. I mean, most of the time it's just, I feel like we're just kind of writing jokes in the ether. MD: Yeah. Just putting them on the Internet and just like, we’ll see what happens. MU: I love it. And then you launched a podcast? Yeah, that was kind of, that's actually been a really big goal of ours. Our last book came out October 2016 and we wanted to kind of diversify how we interact with people and kind of try to find new mediums to further our message, but we kind of couldn't figure out a good way to make that work. You know, we really didn't have time when we were writing, we wrote three books in three years. Matt does all the photography. I do all the cooking. We write all the jokes together, like we couldn't really brainstorm for future endeavors while we were doing that. And so we really took the last year to kind of figure out how we could interact with people and, and give a bigger platform to some of our opinions in the food space. And we finally got to realize that with the podcast. MU: So. So yeah, that's a huge goal and I think that what's something that's really cool that you were talking about is that it, it does open up the conversation about something a lot more than just food. Even though you could talk about food forever and I would love it, but you, you talk about politics and you talk about pop culture and so talk to me a little bit about how, how you want to keep sharing your viewpoints and those different endeavors in your life. Like through the podcast. MH: Maybe it's just me, but I feel like a lot of podcasts are sort of … I, I enjoy podcasts are very conversational and I like to maybe think of what other people were sort of like, you know, their point of view and that's, that's kind of what, I mean I'm aiming to do with the podcast is that we want to have conversations with people. And food is an anger, you know, it unifies all of us. MD: Yeah. It's like it's a really good inroad into a lot of different things MH: and it, and it weaves through everything, like you said, from like politics and pop culture and like we just want to have like constructive conversations with people who are in these spaces and just use food as that anchor. MD: Yeah. And I think that we want to keep bringing our different viewpoint to these conversations, the food, because I think a lot of people who are kind of the tastemakers and the big top line food writers and all that stuff kind of come from a homogenous background and you know, being the kind of kids who grew up with, you know, frozen dinners and living on a budget and buying cereal in bags like we, we want to bring that perspective to this conversation about food and healthy eating that we don't think gets a lot of representation. MH: Yeah, I mean I'm just tired of seeing the same fucking 10 people in the food space. MD: And everyone just talking about turmeric. MH: Yeah, just talking about the same shit. Michelle's right. There's, there's a lot of different perspectives and backgrounds out there and we want to have those conversations so that the audience is like, yeah, identify with that. MD: We want to, you know, kind of shine the spotlight on those people and also kind of vocalize that stuff ourselves. CK: So we’ll get back to Maggie, Matt and Michelle in just a minute. But first we want to thank our sponsors this week, Chicago sports and Social Club. With them, it’s more than a game it's a social sports experience. Whatever your personal goals are, big or small, Chicago Sport and Social Club that can list many reasons why you should play. It could be the sand between your toes, or meeting people and moving your social life outside for a season. Whatever your goals are or your reasons for playing, Chicago Sport and Social Club has a beach volleyball league for you. Go to www.chicagosocial.com and use code GOALS, that’s G-O-A-L-S when you register to get five percent off MU: When—if we take a step back and I hear what you say about you had to spend the first three years just really like making those cookbooks, spending that time and now you get to diversify and talk to more people and talk about different things. And it seems like that's sort of the way that you set goals is based off of what you see in front of you, what you can accomplish, and then going forth with enthusiasm and passion, is what I see. Talk to me a little bit about just your perspective on maybe how goals have shifted or how you think about goals now that you have multiple platforms, multiple cookbooks under your belt. MD: I think something we always keep in mind as we're moving forward is, are we creating content or a product that we ourselves would consume? MH: I wouldn't dare anyone spend $16 on a cookbook that I wouldn't buy myself. MD: Yeah. And so that is always been one of the guiding principles as we set goals moving forward is would we want this? Like as just regular fucking people, would we be interested in this? Would we feel comfortable, you know, spending our hard earned money on something like this? Are we presenting quality or are we just trying to like toot our own fucking horn? And that has really helped us kind of knock away opportunities that have come our way that really didn't serve us. MH: Oh there's been a lot of nonsense that’s come our way, with opportunities for like TV shows and shit and we're just like, no, like we're gonna, we're gonna do a book and we want to do, I'd rather do a good job on one thing than a mediocre job on three things. You know what I mean? MD: Yeah, and something that I would be embarrassed to be a part of just to do it for the money. Like we, we really have let that idea of us as consumers of our own product push us forward and help us find kind of the right path. MU: Yeah, your true north. MD: Yeah, exactly. MU: So where does the kitchen go from here? MD: You know, we want to keep, you know, normalizing plant based dining. MH: Yeah, I mean I would say that a big goal of ours going forward like is just giving plant based options in as many restaurants as possible. Nothing drives me more fucking crazy than going to a restaurant and I see six or seven gluten free options and like the only plant based options is a fucking salad. MD: Or a hummus plate. MH: So like yeah, we just want to normalize plant-based options in the eating space. MD: And in all the eating spaces, you know, we, we do that for people eating at home and we also want to make it more available to people who are dining out too. MH: Yeah. Most of our audience, they're omnivores and they want to eat more plant based dishes. They just don't know how. So yeah, a big goal of ours is to continue to normalize that just in the food space in general. MD: So, yo know, working with restaurants, helping them develop menu items that are delicious that anybody would order regardless of their dietary preferences. That just happened to be vegan and ideally one day opening our own space. MU: I was going to say, that sounds super intriguing. I think even just to be able to define what is plant based because we slap labels on so many things now where I don't even know what gluten-free really means. I don't even know, you know, people are semi plant based or like vegans on the weekends or like whatever it is. It's I feel like there's just so much room to clarify what's out there. MD: Yeah, absolutely. Clarify and hone and also just show that you know, it's good food that happens to be vegan. It's good food that happens to be plant-based, it’s not a different kind of food. MU: Right. In your cookbooks, do you have a favorite recipe? MH: Spaghetti pie! Hands down, that's one of my favorites. Is is great because not only does it tastes fucking amazing because it does, but like it's a great party trick. People fucking lose their minds over spaghetti pie. MD: Yeah. That's our third book, but for me, I love the spaghetti pie. It’s like choosing a baby. I like the Tex-Mex queso in our third book a lot too and I have a really special place in my heart for the chickpea dumpling soup that is in our first book. That was my take on my Nana's recipe of chicken and dumplings. I made it a fuck ton more healthy and threw in a ton more vegetables because hers was just like gray and white chicken and just like gray—it was not visually appealing. MH: No, you're right. That's that soup is something that I have served my family and friends who are not vegan and they're like, there is no better than this? I'm like, there’s none, none whatsoever. MD: Yeah. It's really hearty and super comfort food MH: It’s like velvety. MD: Yeah, it's. Yeah, that is a. That one has a really special place in my heart. MU: Oh my gosh. I have to make this, it sounds so good. MD: And the recipe makes a fuck ton. MH: Yeah, every I give someone that recipe. They're like, oh, you know, it takes like a couple of hours to make. MD:  It doesn’t really. MH: I’m like, yeah, but did you have soup for the rest of the week? Yeah. MD:  If you're terrible at chopping stuff, it's going to take you a minute. MH: It’s worth it, it’s so worth it. That's a good recipe. MU: Duly noted. Page marked. So I'm, I'm interested in knowing since you talked a little bit about how people aren't always sure like where, what the, the world of vegan dining is or where you can you go to get simple good food as one obstacle. Maybe as far as your journey has been so far, another obstacle along the way that maybe has tried to hinder you in attaining any of your goals? Have you encountered anything like that? MD: Um, yeah, I would say actually our swearing, while I think it's brought a ton of people to the audience, sometimes has hindered us in growing our audience. Like we can't promote any posts on any social media accounts. So all of our growth on any account you see has all been organic all through peer to peer sharing because we can’t advertise. MH: Yeah, we didn't find that out until like we were trying to um, advertise the first cookbook. And what was it like facebook, instagram, twitter, like all the social media platforms flagged us for language. MD: So even if we write a clean post, we can’t boost it. MH: There’s nothing we can do.  So, we, that just like we were like, all right, well fuck, I guess people will just buy the book. MD: You know, it really puts us at the mercy of our audience to share it with new people. MU: That is really fascinating. I know from being on the media side of things that that is true and that can be a huge, huge hindrance. MD: Yeah. But you know, luckily we have a really passionate and vocal fan base and so they’ve really stepped up and this shared it with people. I don't even think we've ever told them we can't advertise, but they, they're always tagging new friends and you know, sharing our posts with people and really that's what's made us survive as a business and we're so fucking grateful for it. MH: I mean it's, it's, you know, it's helps when we have a fucking book come out, but like going out and meeting people and speaking and like, like connecting with our audience like that. And that's why like with the podcast we can like, you know, we tell people on twitter like, hey, you got somebody or something. You want us to talk about fucking Tweet us, let us know. And that dialogue and that, that communication we have with our audiences has been so key to our survival. MU: And you guys together, you talked about it already, Michelle, you, you do everything yourselves together. You write the jokes, you do the photos, you create the recipes. How does your partnership help you guys go forward and keep chugging along and building this brand? MD: Yeah, sure. I mean I can't imagine doing this by myself. It's so great to have a sounding board and a different perspective, you know, we don't always agree but 95 percent of the time on our plans for moving forward like I'll vocalize something, and Matt’s like, I was thinking that same shit. And so it's really great to have that built in support and also this has been a weird couple of years for us and you know like this wasn't necessarily what we planned for ourselves to get to do all of this. So it's great to have somebody to talk to you that completely understands what you're going through and so it really helps keep the business anchored in reality and we just, we are each other's cheerleaders and taskmasters and I'm really grateful for it. Yeah. And we're, I mean we're still totally involved in every facet. Like if Thug Kitchen likes your post on Instagram or Twitter or anything, I mean, that’s us. Like we don't have anybody else. So you know, we know we get retweeted on our twitter account and somebody writes something funny like that's probably Matt. And like if someone's liking your photos on Onstagram and we repost it like that's me. MH: Yeah, we want to not like, it feels weird to hire someone to handle social media. MD: But it also goes back to that interaction with our audience that’s so important. Like we want to see what recipes people are responding to, to what jokes people think are funny and the only way for us really do that is to be in the fucking weeds with everybody. MU: And if you had some advice to give to either friends or significant others that wanted to launch a business or start something together as a partnership, what kind of advice would you give to them? MH: Don't. Don't do it. MD: I would say if you're in a romantic partnership, be willing to lose the romantic part of that partnership. If that's what this business idea of yours or whatever it is is that important to you. You really do have to prioritize what you want from that person and have realistic goals because it is really hard to work so close to someone and to be like, you know—we talk business 24-7 with each other. So it's, it's hard to then have space for whatever your personal relationship is and so you guys need to be upfront and honest with your expectations and what you want and I'm just always be super transparent with each other. MH: Yeah, I think that there—I was joking earlier. I think people should absolutely, if you've got an idea fucking chase it, like and if you got someone you care about like do it with that person because you trust them. MD: Yeah, trust is the partner is probably the most important. MH: But like just make sure that you care about it as much today as you do in two years or if things go great or if things don't go great, like you have to care about it and if that's what you want to do then fucking chase it. But I think that with Michelle and I specifically a lot of people, because Michelle and I get along so well and everything, I think that when we've talked about dating in the past, like Michelle and I separated before the first book came out. MD: Yeah, we weren't romantically dating before the first book came out. MH: Yeah. And you just have to, like Michelle was saying, it's just like you have to trust that person and you got to care about what you're doing. MD: And you might have to make a choice. MH: Yeah, you might have to pick that your project is priority over, you know, your love life and you have to be OK with that. Otherwise don't do it. MD: Yeah. There's a good quote I heard from, I can't remember who now, but it was like, you know, if you have this dream or this goal, like what are you willing to give up in your life that you also love to get what you want because it's not always going to be like, oh, now I have all of these things that I’ve always wanted. It's like, no, you have to give up things you also love. You have to be willing to not be caught up on Game of Thrones and to not be able to go on dates and to um, you know, kind of maybe not see people as much as you want to because you are pursuing this dream. Like it's not always just adding stuff to your life. Sometimes it's having to take stuff away. MU: It can take you to places that you didn't foresee. Like you say, you didn't think that in the last couple years would be as they are and here you are. So if you have maybe one last piece of advice for others that are, that are going after a goal and they're not really where they're going to end up. How do you navigate some of those dark spaces? MH: Just be ready to power through the valleys. You know it's going to be peaks and valleys and you can't have any ups without any downs and when, when you have the downs, like just power through it and just keep going like that. MD: And you also don't know who is reading your stuff. So work as hard as you can and perform at the highest level you can regardless of who's looking. Because when they crack that door open for you just a little bit, you can be ready to shove your fucking foot in and make the most of it. Because if you're not doing the work when no one's looking, it's going to be really hard to keep doing it when everybody's fucking looking. MH: A big reason that our blog went viral is because Gwyneth Paltrow talked about it on the Rachael Ray show, we don't have any fucking connections with either of them, but like that was like a boom in traffic for us and if you had told me to write like Gwyneth Paltrow, Rachel Ray were reading it, I would stop posting immediately and probably go back and like edit all the posts. Like they were all riddled with typos and shit and the photography was like whatever. MD: We were ready when someone said jump, we were fucking ready. And so it's about doing the work, putting in the hours during the un-sexy stuff of just doing the ground work for when that peak comes for you. MU: That's awesome advice for whatever goal you're going after, whether it's a new business or just doing your job well. MD: Yeah, exactly. Just do it for this sake of like accomplishing something that makes you feel proud about yourself because you can't always control what people's reactions to you and you can't control who's looking at your project, so you really want to just be able to be satisfied with the product yourself. So always perform as best you can regardless of who's patting you on the back or not. MU: Absolutely. So people can find you on the apple podcast for Forked Up. They can find you throughout social media. It's you. MD: It’s us, we’re just @ThugKitchen, we've never over-thought any of our tags. MU: And they can get any of your books through your website or through Amazon. MD: Yeah. Through, um, Amazon, Barnes and noble. Anywhere books are sold. MU: Amazing. Thank you guys so much for joining me. MD: Thanks for having us. We really appreciated it. MH: This has been fun. Thanks for having us. CK: This podcast is produced by me, Cindy Kuzma and it's another thing that's better with friends, so please share it with yours. You can subscribe wherever you get your podcasts, and if you could also leave us a rating and a review in Apple Podcasts, we will be so grateful. Special thanks to J. Mano for our theme music; to our guests this week, Michelle Davis and Matt Holloway; and to Tech Nexus for the recording studio.  

By now, runner, author, and activist Kathrine Switzer has logged countless miles. Most famously, she completed 26.2 as the first official female in the Boston Marathon, in 1967. The stunning photos of race director Jock Semple nearly pulling her off the course made history and cemented her life’s purpose of empowering women. But like any others, her journey started with a single mile—one she’d run, on repeat, at her dad’s suggestion beginning when she was 12. He told her it would improve her performance on the field hockey team. Ultimately, it transformed her life. “Every day I felt like I had a secret weapon, a magic that nobody could take away from me,” she said. “It was just amazing to have that under my belt. So by the time I was 19 and training for the Boston Marathon, I felt like I could do anything.” Switzer’s goal of sharing that power brought her to Chicago earlier this month to speak at a fundraising luncheon for the Midtown Educational Foundation (MEF). At the MEF’s Metro Achievement Center for Girls, Switzer explained to #WeGotGoals the immediate connection she felt to the organization, a message she’d echo at the luncheon later that day. Just like her father and her school hockey team gave her the opportunity to navigate the challenges of teenage and young adult life with confidence, MEF’s mentoring programs support low-income students in Chicago in achieving their potential. “Nobody understands what they can do unless they have those opportunities,” she said. Switzer’s pioneering Boston run was only the first of many incredible goals. From there, she aimed both to improve her own running performance—she eventually ran a time of 2:51:37 and won the New York City Marathon in 1974—and also to help bring the women’s marathon to the Olympics. That, she did by partnering with corporations like Avon to start women’s marathons around the world, until the International Olympic Committee had no choice but to say yes, in 1984. “I felt that if we could do that, we could level the playing field completely, and in many ways we did,” she said. “When that happened, I said—that’s it.” But as long as injustice persisted, Switzer couldn’t sit out the next revolution. As she approached 70, she started receiving messages from women wearing her original Boston bib number, 261, saying it made them feel fearless. “When people started sending me pictures of their tattoos, I realized I had to do something with it,” she said. “It was more than kind of synchronicity.” So, she and her colleagues launched a non-profit called 261 Fearless, which unites women around the world with the opportunities running brings. Each goal they achieve on the road or trail, each fellow athlete they meet, inspires confidence and a sense of accomplishment that carries over throughout their lives. “It’s like, I’m going to take you by the hand and we’re going to put one foot in front of the other, we’re going to walk, to run. We’re going to forget all the junk that went on during our day and our week and our lives just for an hour, and you’re going to find your fearless.” As a young runner, she set out to prove that women could handle long distances. Now, she’s motivated more by a sense of responsibility to the next generation. She still runs at a high level—an endeavor that energizes rather than depletes her. Last year, she ran the Boston Marathon again, 50 years after her first time. “When I crossed that finish line, what I felt like I had done is pass the torch to the next 50 years. It was a great feeling,” she said. “There were with me 125 women who ran in Boston and who raised substantial money for the global launch of 261 Fearless, who are full of passion. And I said, you know what, it’s in good hands.” Not that Switzer’s retiring anytime soon. Listen to this week’s episode to hear more about her future goals—which involve, yes, more running, along with another book—her perspective on why running matters more than ever in this particular social moment, and why she hopes people will support (or start) organizations like MEF in their communities. This episode is presented by Chicago Sport and Social Club, reminding you that summer is just around the corner. Get into a summer volleyball league now and use code “GOALS” to get 5 percent off until March 15. And if you like what you hear, subscribe where ever you get your podcasts and leave us a rating or a review on Apple Podcasts. Also, join the Kickstarter to support the aSweatLife.com movement. --- Transcript: JAC: 00:16 Welcome to #WeGotGoals, a podcast by aSweatLife.com, on which we talk to high achievers about their goals. I'm Jeana Anderson Cohen. With me, I have Cindy Kuzma  and Maggie Umberger. MU: 00:16 Good morning, Jeana. CK: 00:29 Morning, Jeana. This is Cindy. Maggie and Jeana, you guys have some pretty exciting stuff happening at aSweatLife this week, right? JAC: 00:31 We sure do. We launched a Kickstarter this month. Our goal is to raise $20,000 with the help of anyone who's ever benefited from anything that aSweatLife does, from the podcast to the ambassadorship to the events, to the content. We're relying on people who like us the way that we like them to help fund growth projects. We're working on expanding our ambassadorship, which helps incredible women here in Chicago right now, set and achieve big goals and support each other along the way and we've seen such magic happen, right Maggie? CK: 01:07 So much. I mean, the past year of getting to know all of our ambassadors really well and get to see them actually accomplish goals. We did a little bit of a survey to ask people what have you actually accomplished and would like to share with us. And we were really overwhelmed with how many people said like, I finished this degree. I've been accepted into this program. I have written a book, I have, you know, bought a condo. None of them necessarily like fitness goals. Although those are always peppered in with the things that we do. But life goals and the way that people attack their goals in the gym are the way that they're attacking them in the rest of their lives and other aspects of their lives. And it's been really fun to watch that happen and to kind of get to support everyone along the way. JAC: 01:48 And so if you want to support that growing network, check the link in the show notes and on aSweatLife.com. CK: 01:48 Awesome. JAC: 01:58 But on the same note, Kathrine Switzer is a big achiever who sets big goals outside of the gym. And inside it, wouldn't you say, Cindy? CK: 02:10 I would say that is absolutely the case. She is one of the pioneers of the women's running revolution and I was so thrilled to get to speak with her. She was the first woman to officially run the Boston Marathon. And that's a race I've run a few times myself. So what an honor to speak with her and how insightful and open and honest she was about her experiences. MU: 02:29 So when I listened to your interview, Kathrine's passion for running made me want to sign up for a marathon. And I've never thought that I would want to run any kind of distance before. But the way she talks about her fuel for life and everything she goes after and how she has used running to help her tackle her goals outside of running. It sounds infectious to me. And she talks about that being like her secret weapon. Can you talk a little bit about that experience for her? CK: 02:59 Yeah. I mean her dad encouraged her to start running a mile every day when she was 12 and if you think about someone encouraging you to do something like that that you didn't think you could do when you were 12 and then you did it every day and you kind of gained this physical confidence in yourself and you navigated your preteen and your teenage years and you just really had this feeling that, hey, I can do this thing that I never thought I could do and that no one else thought I could do. CK: 03:24 It really would just give you that power to think that you could do anything. And that's what it did for her. And she believes that running can be that secret weapon for so many people and it's a gospel that she preaches. You'll hear her talk about, especially in these sort of divided times, how running can really bring people together in addition to bringing confidence to each individual. But we heard her speak, Jeana and I went to hear her speak at a lunch for the Midtown Educational Foundation later the same day that I interviewed her and she also talked about the fact that everyone has a secret weapon. It might not be running for you--it might be running for you, Maggie, you might have to try it, but uh, but whatever it is, there is something that you didn't think you could do and someone gives you the opportunity to do it and you do it and you take that with you. CK: 04:05 And it's just a matter of aligning the opportunity with setting that goal and accomplishing it and thinking about that carrying over to the rest of your life. JAC: 04:14 And what's incredible about seeing her speak is how energized she is still to this day about the cause of women running and about how women who run can change the world. When she started this, when she took up the Boston Marathon, she was in her twenties and today she's in her seventies. Can you talk to me a little bit about how she's staying energized or why is she staying energized? CK: 04:40 Yeah. Running, she says, gives her energy, you know, people who don't run sometimes think running makes you tired, but once you sort of tap into that secret weapon of it, it really does give you energy and fuels you. But it's certainly her motivation to, to do all the things that she does has changed in the 50 years that she's been doing them. CK: 04:58 When she first started, she had something to prove both as an individual and as, as a woman who wanted to show people that women's bodies could handle the distance of running the marathon. And she was instrumental, you'll hear her talk about this as one of her biggest goals in getting the women's marathon, um, into the Olympics, which happened in 1984, which is not very long ago, which is crazy to me. But now she still feels the same energy and passion, but her motivation has shifted a little bit. Now she feels a responsibility. She started this non-profit 261 fearless, which is based on her number from the Boston Marathon, not because she thought it would be a good idea, but because of what she was hearing from women out there who were motivated by her to continue spreading this movement. MU: 05:43 261 Fearless. It gives me chills to hear her talk about it in the, in the episode, and I'm sure all of our listeners will also feel that same way. So here is Cindy with Kathrine. CK: 06:06 This is Cindy Kuzma and I am here with Kathrine Switzer on the #WeGotGoals podcast. Kathrine, thank you so much for joining us today. KS: 06:08 Oh, Cindy I'm so glad to be here to be with you and to talk about so many really great things that are going on. CK: 06:15 Yeah, so Kathrine, you are here in Chicago. Welcome to Chicago, first of all! We're here at the Midtown Educational Foundation's Metro Achievement Center for Girls. Could you tell me a little bit about why we're here, why you're here today? KS: 06:27 You know, I was asked to speak today to a big fundraising luncheon for the Midtown Educational Foundation by a friend of mine who knows me through running and he said, your goals, your persistence, are so similar to what this foundation is all about. The more I heard about Midtown Educational Foundation, I really, really wanted to do the speech, so I'm grateful for being here. KS: 06:50 It is a wonderful organization that addresses the needs of low income average students with a mentoring program after school where these kids can get the tutoring and the help and the encouragement both for character development as well as academics to make them exceptional. And I'm so pleased to be a part of that because we all need an opportunity in life. That's what my speech is going to be all about. It's all about very similar things to my running career where I began as a, I would say less than average runner, a no talent and worked really hard and trained really hard and then also saw in the course of the way inequalities that existed for women and it developed into an entire career and life goal. So that's why I'm here to take those similarities into another area, which I'm very excited about. CK: 07:48 Let's talk a minute about how it all began. You are known for so much now, but this started in 1967 when you signed up as K.V. Switzer, you pinned on that bib 261 and you became the first woman officially to run Boston. And you finished the race that day, but, but you almost didn't because of what happened with Jock Semple and how he tried to pull you off the course and those photos are just astonishing still. And I'm sure you've told this story a million times, but I think it cannot ever be lost to history. So can you tell me one more time and how you reflect on that moment now? KS: 08:19 Yes. First of all, Cindy, it didn't start with pinning on a bib for the 1967 Boston Marathon. It started when I was 12 years old. It started with a dad who encouraged me to run a mile a day, and so I grew up running a mile a day playing on the field hockey team and my high school, I was lucky to have a field hockey team and I had an incredible sense of empowerment from running this mile a day. KS: 08:40 I mean every day I felt like I had, you know, a secret weapon, a magic that nobody could take away from me, um, and what a way for a little 12 year old to grow up and go through all the crazy behaviors of, of high school. It was just amazing to have that under my belt. So by the time I was 19 and training for the Boston Marathon, I felt like I could do anything. That's also why I'm here in Chicago, as you know, to talk to the Midtown Educational Foundation people and their donors and to let them know that every kid out there just needs some kind of encouragement. If my dad hadn't started me with that mile a day, probably I would've discovered running much later. And I just hate to think if I hadn't just picked up that one thing that he said, run a mile a day, my life would've been so completely changed. KS: 09:28 Anyway, so here we are. Now. I'm a student at Syracuse University. I'm working with the volunteer coach. He's not even the real coach at the university, who is an ex marathoner who was really ancient, you know, he was 50 years old and to me I was 19. He took me under his wing and we just jogged together everyday and you know, one mile became three miles, became 10 miles, became 15. And then I told him I really wanted to run the Boston Marathon and he didn't believe a woman could do it anywhere at anytime. And I said, hey, come on. There's been about six or seven women who've run marathons, you know, with no fanfare. And there was a woman at Boston, Roberta Gibb, who jumped out of the bushes the year before and she ran. Well, he exploded in rage. And he said, "No dame ever ran no marathon." KS: 10:15 He just couldn't believe a woman could do it even though he was so caring about me and believing in me, and so he he challenged me and said if if I showed him in practice that I could run it, he'd be the first person to take me. Which again, what an opportunity. My goal was always to show him, his name is Arnie Briggs, that I could do the distance and so in practice one day we ran 31 miles. I told him we're going to keep going another five miles and he fainted at the end of the workout. Then he was utterly convinced. An absolute evangelist and really helped me sign up for the race, insisted that I follow the rules to the letter. I was a card carrying member of the Amateur Athletic Union. You have to sign up for a race, you have to pay your entry fee. KS: 10:59 You have to you get your medical certificate, you have to get your travel permits. It was a real nightmare of organization. Right? And I kept saying, well, you know, no other woman has done that. And he said, well that's, they should have, these are the rules and there's nothing in the rule book and there's nothing on the entry form about gender, and I said, oh, we're pushing a point, and he said it's not on the entry form, so I signed my name. Of course I signed my name K.V. Switzer, which was another amazing coincidence. I signed my name that way because I wanted to be a journalist and I thought and also I wanted to be J.D. Salinger, if you want to know the truth, it's embarrassing to say, but my also because my dad had misspelled my name on my birth certificate so it was always misspelled and I got tired of it and I started signing my name K.V Switzer. KS: 11:42 Anyway, changed history because officials thought it was from a man, so the whole incident at Boston was really about wearing a bib number. Roberta Gibb was also in that race and she was not bothered. The official was furious because I was wearing a bib number and he thought I had pulled a fast one over on him and he attacked me in the race and tried to pull that bib number off. I mean, he was out of control. I mean, I'd never seen anybody so angry and it was out of the blue, so it kind of caught me completely off guard. I didn't panic, but I certainly tried to get away from him and my coach was screaming, "Leave her alone. She's OK. I've trained her." And my boyfriend decked him. And so I, you know, at that point, you know, I had that, that horrible moment of sinking fear and dread and I thought, should I get off the course, have I done something terribly wrong? KS: 12:35 And then I decided if I do that, then nobody's going to believe that women can do it. So I've already got myself in enough trouble. I'm going to just finish this race, which was a really amazing decision for a 20 year old to make under fire like that. And then I got really angry and I said to my coach, I'm going to finish this race on my hands and my knees if I have to, because I was so determined that women were no longer marginalized and I hadn't felt political at all up to that point. I thought other women just didn't get it, you know, how important fitness and running was and suddenly it all came down like an avalanche and you know, we'd lost a lot of adrenaline and had to push through. Marathon's hard enough and your first one at Boston for God sakes. KS: 13:18 The cool thing was this, is that all the guys were wonderful to me. Every guy who was around me or who passed me or who I passed said, you go for it. We're with you all the way. It was terrific. I'd like to fast forward for a minute on that note because I might forget this. Right now in this era of sexual contentiousness, I think running stands as such a beacon of gender equality, of motivation, of nonjudgmentalness. We're out there to support each other, not as males and females we're out there to support each other as runners and I don't know who you are next to me, sir, what color you are, what race, what religion, what language you speak, but I'm going to hug you at the end of this race and I and I trust you with my life. And where else are we going to find that? And so running can help everybody so much and we've learned so many lessons from it and we've seen this sport transform our major cities. KS: 14:14 But anyway, back to the race, you know, so I finished in and the rest is history as they say. I was determined to become a better athlete and I was determined to create opportunities for women. And so a life plan was laid out in front of me. CK: 14:25 Yeah. I just looked back at your memoir and reading about that event again. What struck me in addition to that emotion of it, the fear, I mean I can't even imagine being at the beginning of a marathon and dealing with all of that, was that realization that you seemed to have right then like the sense of your life purpose to show other women that, that they could have the secret weapon that they could feel this sense of physical accomplishment that seemed to have guided everything that you've done since. KS: 14:50 Yes. But of course, you know, first of all I wanted to finish the race because I, I knew also if I stepped off the course and didn't finish it, I'd regret it my whole life. KS: 15:01 And I said, I'm already here. I mean, how am I going to get home? Sort of like many runners say I couldn't quit because I had to get to the finish because that's where my clothes and my watch and my money is. That's the joke part of it. But it's true. You know, the other thing is you can't, you can't run a marathon and stay mad. And so by Heartbreak Hill, I'd even forgiven old Jock Semple. You know, he's a product of his time and overwork race director or you know, what the hell. But I was saying, why aren't women here? And that's when the realization came that they needed the opportunities. You know, I wanted to prove it for them, but it was then I realized you can't blame them for not being here if they've never had the opportunities. Nobody understands what they can do unless they have those opportunities. CK: 15:51 Hey, it's Cindy and we'll get back to my interview with Kathrine in just a minute, but first I want to let you know this episode is brought to you by Chicago Sport and Social Club. With them. It is more than a game, it's a social sports experience and hey, maybe running isn't your secret weapon. Maybe it's beach volleyball. There are a lot of reasons why you should play. You might want the feel of sand between your toes. You might want to meet people or you could just want to move your social life outside for a season. Whatever your goals are or your reasons for playing, Chicago Sport and Social Club has a beach volleyball league for you. You can do like Kathrine does and create a team of all women. You can grab a group of co eds or you can sign up as an individual and get set up with the team. However you go about it, if bump, set spike or the words that punctuate your summer, you will want to register around the league built for you. To do it. Go to www.ChicagoSocial.com and use code goals. That's G-O-A-L-S when you register. You'll get five percent off now through March 15th. And now it's back to our interview. CK: 17:04 So what we typically ask on the #WeGotGoals podcast is about one big goal that you've achieved and how you got there and I mean you have so many to choose from. I wonder if there's one that stands out to you as being a primary accomplishment for you. KS: 17:17 Yes, for much of my life, a big goal, a life goal was to get the women's marathon into the Olympic Games. I felt if we could do that, we could level the playing field completely and in many ways we did. When that happened, I said that's it. Take Me God, I can go. You know, I was young, I was only 33 years old and we did this and we got the women's marathon into the Olympic Games, you know, less than 10 years after this getting official at Boston. So that was incredible. We worked five years to get women official at Boston, that took place in 72, and then the inclusion into the Olympics was voted in in 81 for the 84 games. KS: 17:59 But life throws you some funny things. Who would have ever believed that in my sixties, my bib number 261 suddenly becomes this kind of a cult number, this magic number meaning fearless in the face of adversity. This is a number that is only been three digits to me, never had any resonance except for the fact that it was my first bib and suddenly people are saying this number makes me feel fearless. You know, and the reason is I suddenly thought is because everybody relates to a story like mine in their own way. They've been told they're not welcome. They've been told they're not good enough. They don't belong or they're the wrong race color, whatever. And then they run and they do it anyway and they become fearless and they were wearing it on their backs and inking their arms with 261 in the letters and the pictures were coming in. KS: 18:46 What am I going to do with this? I said, finally when people started sending me pictures of their tattoos, I realized I had to do something with it. It was more than kind of synchronicity and we formed a non-profit called 261 Fearless, where we take the simple act of putting one foot in front of the other out to women around the world who have no opportunities or are fearful and show them that they can find their fearless. So it started like in a funny way. It's like the mentoring program here at the Midtown Educational Foundation. It's like, I'm going to take you Cindy by the hand and we're going to put one foot in front of it. We're going to walk, run. We're going to forget all the junk that went on during our day in our week and our lives just for an hour, and you're going to find your fearless and you do. KS: 19:33 It is magic. Running is transformational. It changes our lives in fundamental ways because it gives us a simple sense of accomplishment. So 261 Fearless is launched as a series of global clubs where individually in different communities, towns, woman by woman, community by community. We're showing them just to get out and run and move together. We have a wonderful training program where we train the mentors, the coaches on how to create a non-judgmental environment, which is the toughest part. Learning to run is the easy part. Being non judgmental is not easy for some people. Also, we have a wonderful communications program at 261fearless.org website where women, when they join 261 Fearless also can have a closed portal and talk to each other. Sometimes in life you just need to know you're not alone out there and women can come in and say, Hey, I'm from Saudi. Can I talk to you from Canada? KS: 20:31 You know, or hey, I'm in Iran and I'm running alone and I don't know if somebody wants to come to this race. If you come with me, I'll feel a lot better. You know, that's wonderful. And you say, Oh, come on, running can't do that. Running has changed the world. Running has become a social revolution. Already, North America, there are more women runners than men and those women are not, they're not running to be Olympic athletes, as you know, Cindy. They're running because they're empowered and the same as in Canada, France, Japan. You look at the, you as a runner yourself, understand. The Kenyan women runners, look what look what they have done. They have changed their status from third class people to esteemed revered people in their communities, the women who have been lucky enough to get out and run and come back with prize money are building schools and inoculating kids. KS: 21:23 That changes the social fabric. So you know you change women and you've changed the world and I sincerely believe that 261 fearless is going to do that. It's amazing. CK: 21:33 It's incredible to hear about the genesis of that basically coming from the community and you being in that prime position to to see that and realize all of these big goals. KS: 21:45 It's scary though. I gotta tell you, it's really scary. You know, when we started forming this non-profit, I was 68 years old and I sat down with my team and I said, I don't want to do it. I don't want to do it. I'm too old to start another revolution, they said, no, no, no, we can do it. We could do. And I have a wonderful team of women who are like between 40 and 52, who are the core people they're at the top of their game. KS: 22:08 They want a legacy. They're going to make it happen. They're full of passion. And when I crossed the finish line, I think we're going to talk about this, you know, I ran the Boston Marathon again for my 50th anniversary and when I crossed that finish line, what I felt like I had done is passed the torch to the next 50 years. It was a great feeling because I kept saying, you guys, I'm not going to be around the next 50 years. You've got to understand. And it's hard for me because I didn't even realize I was 70. You know, I kept saying I'm not 70, I'm 25. And there were with me 125 women who ran in Boston and raised substantial money for the launch of 261 Fearless. The global launch essentially who are full of passion and I said, you know what, it's in good hands. CK: 22:54 It's amazing to think about the arc of your story from a woman almost not a lone woman, but a lone woman with a personal goal that was always bigger than you, but still, you know, to kind of being a part of a committed group of pioneers who worked to make things like the Olympic Marathon happened to now being basically like the leader of a movement. And so it's fascinating to hear that motivation for you of that idea of passing the torch because I do wonder how your drive and motivation changes through the years and I also wonder if you still feel like you have something to prove. KS: 23:26 Yeah, I, it's not that I have something to prove because I know running works. OK. You know, I, you know, I just say it works. It works all the time. What I have, unfortunately, I guess is this huge sense of responsibility. CK: 23:38 If you have the vision to see inequality and you walk by and you don't pick it up and do something, then I think you're doomed. And we have to do that. And that's why I kept saying to the team, I don't want to do this, I will don't. I mean I'm too old for another revolution. And they said, no, no, no, we'll handle this, you know, and thank God because, you know, I'm just, I'm too disorganized personally to, to really make another global program go. But they are wonderful and I have the voice and the vision and can see the direction. So as long as I'm able, I will continue to do this. But yeah, I do have that sense of responsibility and sometimes you know, you go to bed at night and you think, do I have the energy to carry on? And so far so good. KS: 24:27 You know what's great though is running gives it back to you. You know, I've been running pretty hard lately and that running in pe people say, don't you get tired from the running? I said, no, they're running actually refreshes me because the running, relieves the stress and gives the creative process. CK: 24:43 MMM hmm. I know that to be true to that is for sure. So the other big question we ask on #WeGotGoals is about a goal you have for the future and how you intend to get there. And you know, you talked about this idea of starting the movement and passing the torch, but you know, whether it's a, it's a goal for that you'd like to see happen with 261 Fearless or a personal goal of yours. What would you say is in the future? KS: 25:06 You know, the darndest thing about having a goal is once you achieve it, you go, wow, I did that. Speaker 3: 25:13 And then you look around and you like any athlete. Let's say you finally break three hours in a marathon as an example. You say, wow. Then you look around, you see people who are running like 2:18 and you say, oh, I have a long way to go, but yeah, do I have some more personal goals? Of course 261 and its success in changing women's lives is a huge goal of mine. But there are other goals. I have personal goals. I mean there's some broad ones like making women aware of taking control of their own health, of working with companies that that also helped people, like, I'm working with Humana for instance, in letting people know that we're on the verge of another threshold, another revolution which is aging and that people, you know, 60, 65 think they need to sit down and take it easy when the opposite is the case and they need to know that the more they more activity that they can embrace that the better their health is going to be. KS: 26:06 This is true with my work with Go Red for Women, the American Heart Association and letting women know that heart disease is your number one killer and yet you can prevent 45 percent of your cases of heart conditions, heart disease by simple exercise, not a marathon, a walk every day. These kinds of things are are so important for me to get out there. Personally on a personal goal. I got to write another book and you know, Marathon Woman ended essentially in 1984 and it was always proposed as a two volume book. The publisher said even Bill Clinton can do it in one, so I had to shelve that, end it in 84 thinking maybe that was the culmination in my career, but it wasn't so now we have a whole other book about the evolution in the revolution of these women and how. And then the next goal I would think personally is frankly I'm fascinated with being older and running, running the Boston Marathon 50 years after I first did my first one and which made me the first woman in history to run a marathon 50 years after she ran her first one, which is not testimony to my greatness, trust me. KS: 27:12 Trust me, it's testimony to how few women ran 50 years ago. It's going to be common place soon and there are plenty of women who are 70, 80, even 90 years old who are running marathons, which is wonderful to see. So I've enjoyed running Boston and in a, in a moment of hypoxia and delusion. I said, I'm in great shape. I'll run New York. I ran New York again last year, 43 years after I won it and people hundreds coming by and just slapping you on the back saying way to go. Now I'm running London on April 22. I'm not nearly as good as shape, but that's OK, London's just for fun. But I helped create that race in many ways and I've always wanted to run it. And then I'll run Berlin again. I've run before, but I'll run Berlin again in September and then maybe I'll do something, you know, you know, like cliché, like run the big six and I, I'll put this out there, but I don't want my husband to hear it, which is, I've always wanted to run Comrades. I've heard about that race and applied to for a sponsor to help me with in 1966. Even when I was training for Boston, I heard about Comrades and I said, I know I can do that. And so I went to a sponsor and ask if they would send me. And of course they thought I was smoking poppy. KS: 28:32 So it's gone by the wayside all these years and it's kind of rankled me, it's kind of been in the back of my mind. I'd like to try that as well. CK: 28:38 And for those of our listeners who don't know Comrades, it's a very famous ultramarathon in South Africa. That's some years uphill, some years downhill. KS: 28:47 I don't know which one I'll take you to sometimes downhill's harder than uphill, especially as you get older for sure. But for right now, the wheels haven't fallen off and how grateful I am because my husband, Roger Robinson, one of the, one of the greatest runners in the world actually for many, many years has had now double knee replacements, transformed thinking about actually running on them because he ran very, very well on the first one. And now he's struggling with the second one. We'll see what happens, you know, you know, we're hoping for a miracle here and um, but, but science has changing amazingly. KS: 29:21 But I don't know if the wheels do fall off or if they will. But let's go right now. I don't want to wait. CK: 29:31 Well, we will be watching you every step. I know. So tell me, you mentioned where the website for 261 Fearless. How else can people follow you and keep tabs on the important work that you're doing? KS: 29:40 Well, I mean I have somebody do Facebook for me and Twitter and stuff because you know, I'm so technophobic and idiotic with that stuff, you know, and I don't have time. I mean they get hundreds of emails a day, so shall I have somebody do that and so it's not huge, but you know, I'm on Facebook but really I think the best thing for them too, and they can always go to my website, MarathonWoman.com. Real easy to remember, but I really would love them to consider becoming a friend of 261 Fearless. KS: 30:05 And that's again 261fearless.org or starting a club in their community and all that information is on the site. So tune in there. That's, that would be the best thing. And the last thing I'd really like people to do is support in their own communities. Things that give kids opportunities. My life was changed by a dad who told me to run a mile a day and like here in Chicago, the Midtown Educational Foundation is doing great things for kids. Everybody has something in their own community, and if you don't, why don't you create it? CK: 30:39 That is a inspirational call to action for us all. Well, I can't thank you enough, Kathrine, for joining us today and thanks to the Midtown Educational Foundation for bringing you here and I'm, I'm just so grateful. Thanks for your time. KS: 30:51 You're welcome, Cindy. Thanks for all you do. CK: 31:00 This podcast is produced by me, Cindy Kuzma, and like so much else in life, it is better with friends. You can share it with yours by telling them about it or by subscribing yourself wherever you get your podcasts and then leaving us a rating or review while you're there. Special thanks to J. Mano for our theme music; to our guest this week, Kathrine Switzer; and to Tech Nexus for the recording studio.

This episode is presented by Chicago Sport and Social Club, reminding you that summer is just around the corner. Get into a summer volleyball league now and use code “GOALS” to get 5 percent off until March 15. We've evolved into a team that's obsessed with goals - how people think of them, how they set them and then how they ferociously pursue them. When we set out to ask people about those things, we thought we'd given our #WeGotGoals podcast guests the perfect platform to talk about their life story. What we actually found was that we'd created a master class in goal-setting with high achievers across the country and the team that produces the podcast each week learned a whole lot along the way. As we cross into our second year with the #WeGotGoals podcast, all four hosts look back on the two big questions we ask all of our guests and we threw in one extra question. And so, hosts Cindy Kuzma, Maggie Umberger, Kristen Geil and I all took a dose of our own medicine and put each other on the spot to say our big goals aloud. In this episode, you'll hear us discuss three big questions: What's a big goal that you've accomplished over the past year? What's a big goal you're striving to accomplish in the future? What's one big takeaway from any of our guests on the #WeGotGoals podcast? Which episodes did we really learn from? The episodes that really changed our views on goals span the year and come from incredible people. Kuzma recalled her interview with sports interviewer and reporter Taylor Rooks who was excited by the distance between herself and her big goals, rather than dismayed by it. "Instead of thinking, oh gosh, I have all these things I want to accomplish, I'm so far from my goals. I don't know how I'll ever get there. This is really overwhelming and disillusioning," Kuzma recalled of her interview with Rooks. "She looks at that and thinks, wow, how exciting that I get to work toward that big goal." Umberger brought up an early episode with Dawn Jackson Blatner and a quote that is often referenced at HQ. "If you're enthusiastically doing the work, the opportunities will come," She quoted."If I'm doing the best I can and if I'm doing that authentically, there's nothing more than I can do than that." Geil referenced a recent episode with Jessica Zweig who touched on the art of trusting your gut. Geil astutely took away, "I feel like with goal setting, a lot of people are so driven by achievements and watching the numbers grow and hitting certain milestones that it can be really easy to ignore your gut or your intuition along the way in favor of going after what you think you should be doing. For me, there were two major takeaways, one on the art of visualizing and dreaming big from Matt Matros - founder of Protein Bar and Founder/CEO of Limitless Coffee and Tea - and the art of dedication I learned from Jen Ator, Director of Fitness at Women's Health, who set out to accomplish something absolutely ridiculous at the IRONMAN World Championship at Kona. Of Matros' interview, I remembered: "Visualization, as we know and as science has shown us is a powerful tool to help you prepare yourself for coming up against an obstacle, a goal, a situation. Athletes use it. CEOs use it because it prepares your brain to actually encounter that thing. It prepares your brain to encounter success. It prepares your brain to encounter failure. So if you're thinking about success every single day, you're more prepared to succeed." And when it came to Ator, I marveled at the joy she experienced during something so grueling as crossing the finish line at the IRONMAN world championship. "She loved that experience, but it was also the hardest experience she'd ever been through and I think that if you talk to anyone who's accomplished anything great, that is something that they have in common."   Thank you for joining us for a year of #WeGotGoals - we can't wait to see what we'll learn from goal-getters next.   --- Transcript: JAC: Welcome to #WeGotGoals, a podcast by aSweatLife.com on which we talk to high achievers about their goals. With me, I have Kristen Geil, Cindy Kuzma, Maggie Umberger, and myself, Jeana Anderson Cohen on this very special podaversary episode. It's our first anniversary of hosting the #WeGotGoals podcast and in celebration we are going guestless, hostful. So around the table you will hear us answer the big questions that we ask our  very impressive guests, but today it's all about us. KG: Yay. CK: Love it. KG: Finally. JAC: We've been waiting for an opportunity to talk about our goals. So our first question that we want to talk about today is a big goal that you've accomplished over the past year. Kristen, would you like to start? KG: Sure, I would. So over the past year I have gone through a couple of major career transitions. For a long time now. I've been dabbling in the thought of going full time freelance writing and also getting my personal training certification so that I could start to teach group fitness classes in gyms, which I actually started doing back in like 2014--and then I just stopped going to the classes that I was taking at DePaul and decided, no, I don't think I want to do this right now. But luckily I had a nice little nudge when my full time job back in June decided that they wanted to send all of our copywriters to Hoboken. And I said, no, thank you please. So it was the perfect--Noboken, yes, it was a hard pass. But luckily that gave me the little push that I needed to actually start being more aggressive about looking for freelance clients, which included ramping up my work with aSweatLife and starting to work on the podcast. And I was also lucky enough to be a part of the sweat life group that got their personal training certification through NASM. So for about eight months I really was doing the full time freelance writing and working in the gym and it was a really exciting time in my life and I learned that I loved working for myself and making all my own decisions and you know, not really having to answer to authority that was six levels above me in the company hierarchy. So yeah, it was really exciting. Although health insurance sucks always, always. JAC: What about you, Cindy? CK: Sure. So one goal that I achieved in the past year was requalifying for the Boston Marathon, which I've done for a few years in a row now. I've been fortunate enough to accomplish that, but this year it was a little bit different. I had a little bit of a wrench thrown in my plans when I had to have emergency surgery in February. And my best opportunity to re qualify for Boston was in Boston, which was in April two months later. So I've written and talked a little bit about this before, but in the context of goals, the way that I was able to accomplish that--to go to Boston to run fast enough to, to go back there--was really something that Yael Shy talked about when when Maggie interviewed her a couple months ago was kind of holding that goal with a loose hand and recognizing that just because things might not work out exactly the way I planned, they might still work out. CK: Being OK with the fact that I wasn't going to be able to do exactly the training I thought I needed to do or wanted to do to make that race my best ever. But just approaching it day by day, doing what I could every day to speed my healing and get back to training and running. And that really just allowed me to do it. You know, like when, when I needed to rest, when my doctor said to rest, I rested. When my doctor said it was OK to run, even though I was scared to run, I ran. And just day by day, step by step, I got there. And what's great about approaching goals in that way is that you have the big target, but if, if then after you set that big target, you think about what you have to do every day to make it happen and you trust that you do that, even if you don't achieve that goal--like if I hadn't made it, I would've been disappointed, but I wouldn't have been disappointed in myself. I would've known that I had done all I could. So it was made the victory extra sweet. JAC: I love that. OK, sorry to interject there. CK: Jeana, what goal did you accomplish this past year? JAC: So I, whenever I'm asked about my goals, I struggled to think of a goal that lives outside of the walls of aSweatLife. And this year is the first time I really actually did something in, in quite a few years, in the past five years that wasn't related to aSweatLife that I was extremely proud of and that was running a marathon for charity and actually unplugging to do it. And the reason why it was so prideful and just wonderful was because I actually unplugged for a day and it took a marathon for me to unplug, which is crazy and I've been saying it ever since. But it was such a wonderful experience. I mean, I'm getting emotional just thinking about it because for the first time in maybe two, two and a half years, I spent the day just thinking about what was ahead of me, what was to my right and my left and where I was at that moment, and I'm not going to cry. You are. JAC: But the magic was in the fact that when you really stop and think about a marathon, you can be at any point in that race. You can be first or you can be last and someone is still cheering for you. And that's such a powerful metaphor for life and such a powerful metaphor ... oh my gosh! (Crying) This is like when I talk about my parents. That's such a powerful metaphor for life and such a powerful metaphor for what we're doing at aSweatLife, which is building a community that is cheering for you. Whoever you are, no matter where you are in the race, and I just spent the entire day in love with that fact and this city--it was the Chicago Marathon, by the way. And and the sounds of it, the sights of it, the friends that I got to hug along the way. I wasn't married to my time, I wasn't married to where I placed. I just wanted to finish, be happy about it and give people hugs as I did it. So that was my favorite achievement this year. KG: Maggie, how about you? MU: So this is an exercise in practicing what we preach because when I had to think about a goal that I accomplished this year, I was like, I don't, I don't know. It's not something in my blood to do. I, I do. I'm a doer. I work hard, but I really don't celebrate my own accomplishments that often. And so I salute all of our guests for getting on this podcast and doing that because it's hard. It's really hard. And if I really think about it, I would probably take a small step back from just the past actual 12 months, like from March 2017 to right now. And I look at the leap that I made from advertising to the world of aSweatLife and jumping in headfirst. I think so many people that have congratulated me on that, I have just passed it off as like, oh, it was no big deal. MU: I just did it. But it was hard and I am proud that I did it and I'm so proud that I followed my gut and that it, it was never a choice of like, should I do this or should I not do this? It was like my gut was screaming to do it and so I just made it happen no matter what. And then over the last year, getting to experience all of the things that, that we have as aSweatLife, as part of that team has been unreal. And I'm only 25. So to be able to say that I've done the things I've done in the last year, which had been so full and getting to start the ambassadorship alongside Jeana has been unreal cool. To first see 26 people over the last year, go on a journey to live their best lives and then bring on another 30 plus, so now we have more than 60 ambassadors and 10 across the country on this journey with us. It speaks volumes of what aSweatLife stands for and I'm so grateful to be in the place where I am that I said yes back in 2016 to all of these new opportunities and then just kind of jumping in headfirst saying yes, making it happen. I'm very proud of it. I'm proud of what we've accomplished and I'm, I'm proud of myself for making the leap. JAC: I'm proud of you too! MU: OK enough about me. JAC: I knew that was going to happen. I get to see Maggie every single day and she is a workhorse and she does big things. Then she always moves right along and she just did a crazy thing and then it's time to go. MU: But now we look ahead at the goals that we're setting in the future.  So Kristen, a big goal in the future, what is it for you? KG: So this is more of a a fun goal for me. I say fun now. I might say not say the same thing later, but back when I first started writing for aSweatLife, I was known as the runner person, I think. I went through a year where I did three marathons and I really poured every part of my spare time and my being and my personality into like running with friends and setting these goals and putting the work in and making a schedule and sticking to it and for various reasons I've gotten far far away from that over the past two years I guess. But this year I want to get back to running for fun. I've signed up for a half marathon in September to help motivate me a little bit, but this time I want to make it a very different experience, which is maybe not quite in line with the goal setting that we talk about here. I just want to have fun. I just want to enjoy it and not worry about time and not get competitive with myself because that's when I start to lose the joy in it. I just want to enjoy going out for the lakefront path, being out there for a couple of hours and then enjoy race day. Maybe bring my dad and my sister along, explore a new city, see a beautiful course. Just get back to the fun of it and start reclaiming that part of my personality that I've kind of let go for the past couple of years. Cindy, what about you? CK: Well, first of all, I think that's a fantastic goal and I mean, I think if we've learned nothing from from #WeGotGoals, it's that goals come in all shapes and sizes, right? And faster is just one goal when it comes to running. So that sounds awesome. One of my goals for the year ahead is to write another book. I have collaborated in the past with the fabulous Dawn Jackson Blattner, who we've had on the podcast before on her book and I'm just about to sign a contract to start a new collaboration and I can't talk too much about it yet, but you know, I'm really excited about making it happen in the next, gosh, six months or so before we turn it in. And I think the way I'm going to accomplish that is just the same way I talked about training for Boston. We've broken it down into what needs to happen month by month, week by week, day by day. CK: So while writing a whole book seems like kind of an overwhelming proposition, you just focus on what you can do that day and that week and then you hope that you end up with the, the end product that you're going to be proud of. And I trust that we will. And, uh, I know that when we get to the point where we're publishing the book and we have to launch it and market it, I'll have to rely on another piece of advice from #WeGotGoals about asking for help from friends and other people, but that's a, that'll happen in 2019. So maybe that'll be what I talk about on the podaversary round table next year. JAC: That's a very big goal, Cindy. And we cannot wait to read your work on this mysterious future book. MU: Yeah. OK, Jeana, big goal. JAC: OK. So I'm going to go back to aSweatLife because I can't be too personal, right?  So my big goal for the year ahead is growing aSweatLife--I am very growth-minded right now. When I think about the company and the way that I want it to grow, my biggest concern and my biggest focus is on growing it in a way that is consistent with our values. So making sure that everyone who comes on board is sort of enlightened in the ways of everything is better with friends and is excited about creating content that helps people live their best lives and then from there, my key challenge is empowering people to do big things that they have only dreamed of doing before and getting out of their way. That is the one thing I've worked on the most professionally over the past year and a half when I went from doing it alone to having Maggie and now to having Kristen by my side. When other people are basing their personal happiness and a lot of their time on the job that you give them. JAC: It is so important. I have learned, I do not know this implicitly, but it is so important to ensure that they are actually satisfied by the work that they're doing. So if I am the roadblock, if I am the person standing in the way of the actual job they want to be doing, then it's me. I'm the problem. So my key objective is making sure that I'm not the block, I'm not the problem and that people are empowered to do the work that they love while still growing in places, in readers, and in people we empower. CK: Hey, it's Cindy.  And we'll get back to our special podaversary round table episode in just a minute, but first a word from our sponsor this week, Chicago Sport and Social Club. With them it's more than a game, it's a social sports experience. So you're listening to us talk about our goals, but you certainly have goals of your own big or small and whatever they are, Chicago Sport and Social Club has a lot of reasons why you should play. You might love the feel of the sand between your toes. You might want to meet people or you know it's been a long winter in Chicago, as always. You just might want to move your social life outside for a season. So whatever your goals or your reasons for playing Chicago Sports and Social Club has a beach volleyball league for you. You can create a team of all women. You can grab a group of men and women or you can sign up on your own and get set up with a team as an individual. Whatever your situation, if bump set and spike are the words that punctuate your summer, it is time to register for the league built around you. To do that go to www.chicagosocial.com, and you can use code goals--that's G-O-A-L-S when you register to get five percent off from now through the 15th. Thanks to Chicago Sport and Social Club and now back to our episode. CK: Maggie, how about you? What's up next for you? I MU: I'll go back to more of a personal goal, since Jeana covered a career goal, I'll kind of bounce it back to a personal one, which I think is totally related to just how you live your life as a whole, is if you don't feel good, like how can you produce good work and I feel like I've had injuries over the past year where I'm just like, so over having the injuries and so I would, I would love to get back into a routine for myself. I feel like I have had the great privilege to experience all kinds of different workouts with aSweatLife and I love that. But I think having a couple of different injuries has made me need to go to physical therapy and that's been a smart thing for me to do. So I want to keep those things I've learned in physical therapy and implement them into my new routine and kind of carve out time for myself. MU: Not every day of the week, but you know, three to four days of the week where the workouts that I do are the best ones for my body. Because I think another thing that we see at aSweatLife is the fitness trends. We get to cover them and talk about them and they're exciting. But if you don't listen to your body then you'll end up getting injured. And so one of the biggest takeaways that I've taken from the podcast was with Shane Emmett, the CEO of Health Warrior, and he kind of takes inventory of his calendar where he blocks out all of his time and he sees where he's spending his time and if and if I've spent all of my time during the week just teaching versus taking classes or doing my own workouts, I want to take note of that and make a couple changes for the next week and so constantly improving and optimizing my schedule so that I feel the best on just a personal note than I'll be able to produce the best work possible. But I think it's that constant balance that we're all striving for of how do you fit it, fit it all in the week, everything that you want to. It's just going to be kind of a week by week reassessing, reoptimizing so that so that I do feel the most rested and best every single every single week. When I start out. KG: Maggie, you kind of touched on this just now, but over the past year we've been fortunate enough to interview dozens of goal-setters and go-getters and we've gotten to hear the tricks of the trade straight from their mouths. So one of the final things we wanted to talk about in this podaversary was our biggest takeaways from one certain episode or trends that you saw over all of the ones that we've done so far. So Cindy, you've heard every single episode several times over with your editing. What's one big takeaway that you took from any of our guests? CK: Oh my gosh. I feel like it's been kind of a master class in goal setting and I feel so fortunate to have been able to help launch this and work on this and get the chance to learn from these guests  and from you all every week. So thank you. There are actually two things that Taylor Rooks, who I interviewed not too long ago. She's a young sports anchor and journalist. Two things that she said really stuck with me in terms of kind of mindset shifts that have helped me think about my goals a little bit differently. And the first one is to remind yourself that you are where you are for a reason. That it's easy to doubt yourself. We touch so many times in so many ways on impostor syndrome. But you know, she really has this, this confidence that that's not ego. It's not off putting, but it's like the sheer, like confidence that just like inspires you and attracts you to her. And she said, one of the practical ways that she works on that is reminding herself that she wouldn't be where she was if she didn't have the skills and the talents and the ability to get there. CK: And I think we all kind of look for these data points that, that enforce to us that we are worthwhile and we actually have them. And we just need to step back and look at them and pay as much attention to those as we do to the negative voices in our heads and in the comments and wherever else we encounter them. The other thing that she said, and I am sure she wasn't the first person to say this, but she talked about being inspired by the distance between where she was and where she wanted to be. That instead of thinking, oh gosh, I have all these things I want to accomplish, I'm so far from my goals. I don't know how I'll ever get there. This is really overwhelming and disillusioning. She looks at that and thinks, wow, how exciting that I get to work toward that big goal. I'm here where I am now and I can see the path forward and I just get to do the work. And how exciting is that? So those, both of those things have been really helpful in helping me kind of refocus on the positive and view my journey as one that has already lots of things to celebrate and a lot more to look forward to. So that is something I've learned. Kristen, what have you learned? KG: I think I can take two viewpoints here. The first and the simpler one is what we heard from Jessica during the live podcast recently during SweatWorkingWeek and she talked for a couple of minutes about the importance of trusting her gut and her intuition and I think that is something that all of our goal-getters have in common but maybe didn't explicitly say. I feel like with goal setting, a lot of people are so driven by achievements and watching the numbers grow and hitting certain milestones that it can be really easy to ignore your gut or your intuition along the way in favor of going after what you think you should be doing. And I think just hearing that explicitly said from someone who is so in tune with herself, but admits to still making mistakes. You're, I mean you can misinterpret your gut intuition. KG: It was just a nice reminder to maybe look inward instead of looking for outward proof of hitting your goals or setting your goals. So that's something that I'm going to try and keep in mind more as I go through my 2018. The other, and I think it was just a recurring theme across so many of our episodes. Even the ones where we didn't talk to co-founders or partners is that everyone goes further together and you know, we heard that with several people mentioning that you have to be willing to ask for help from others, especially during the early stages of a startup or you have to have a support system who's going to understand that when you're really working towards the goal, maybe you have to be really focused on that for awhile and you can't go out for dinners spur of the moment. But at the end of the day, you know, like we say, everything is better with friends. And I think that was something that all of our goal setters, even though they've got such amazing individual achievements, they never forget the people who helped them get there. Maggie, you look like you want to say something right now. MU: Yeah. I'm just like nodding my head in agreement. And I, I really think I have to say that this statement, I think actually once a week and it's from Dawn Jackson Blatner's episode, like number three, a long time ago, when we started the podcast. When she says, if you're enthusiastically doing the work, the opportunities will come and that statement means so much to me and it, it just rings so true to me because I know I don't have all the answers and I'm, I'm one  to look outward for affirmation and to wonder if the work I'm doing is worthwhile. But really it comes down to if I'm doing the best I can and if I'm doing that authentically, there's nothing more than I can do than that. And that's what people will ultimately notice and see. And we've, we've heard a lot of other guests talk about not really being sure and jumping into a world that they weren't completely sure if they should be in or if that, that whole word should, could be like a death sentence, but they just choose something else. MU: They choose to be authentic, to go forward as best they can to enthusiastically do the work is like the biggest motivation I have on days when I'm not sure how to move forward or if I've made the right choice or you know, whatever that might be. I think it's like a little mantra for me. So I, I so appreciate her saying it for putting it into words that I can just quickly think of. Even if it's like in a workout, like if I'm here enthusiastically doing these bicep curls and then then I'm sure the muscles will come, you know. CK: Oh my gosh, I have this awesome image of Maggie enthusiastically doing bicep curls. MU: I smile when I work out. I do. So, so that, that's by far the biggest takeaway I have just because I think of it every single week. And Jeana, what about you? JAC: I personally learned something from every single episode of the #WeGotGoals podcast, but I think  two points in particular have stood out to me recently as I listen and re-listen to episodes. One of those being Matt Matros and the way that he talked about visualizing goals. Visualization, as we know and as science has shown us is a powerful tool to help you prepare yourself for coming up against an obstacle, a goal, a situation. Athletes use it. CEOs use it because it prepares your brain to actually encounter that thing. It prepares your brain to encounter success. It prepares your brain to encounter failure. So if you're thinking about success every single day, you're more prepared to succeed, which is insane, but hearing the detail at which he visualizes his day and encourages other entrepreneurs digitalized. There's inspired me to start using that exercise in my own life and it is also a case for not worrying. Worrying is wishing for a failure, but that's the last time. I'll preach that at Justin Cohen. But the other major takeaway that I had over the course of the year was the way that Jen Ator talked about her time with Ironman and the Ironman world championships at Kona because it became this, this great big thing that she--it became a journey that she went through and overcame and it became the thing that really punctuated her life. JAC: Whether it was her goals at work or whether it was her goals out on the field, she loved that experience, but it was also the hardest experience she'd ever been through and I think that if you talk to anyone who's accomplished anything great, that is something that they have in common. They loved that experience. They came out on the other side, but it was incredibly challenging and difficult, so it's just a testament to the fact that doing the work, there's just no substitute for it and the emotional and physical and professional rewards that come with doing the work will be equal to the work that you put in. And here's to another great year of the #WeGotGoals podcast. Anything you want to say before you go? CK: Thank you all for, for your amazing work. It's been awesome to see you guys on a monthly basis and to hear you in my ears every week. It's been incredible. JAC: Thanks to the listeners and thanks to the hard work of Cindy Kuzma who produces this podcast this week and every week for the past year. We'll see you on the other side. CK: This podcast was produced by me and it's another thing that's better with friends for, so please share it with yours. The best way to do that is subscribing wherever you get your podcasts and then leaving us a rating or a review while you're there. Special thanks to J. Mano for our theme music and to our guests this week, the #WeGotGoals aSweatLife team. That is Jeana Anderson Cohen, the CEO and founder; Maggie Umberger, who is the director of community and content innovation; and Kristen Geil, the editor in chief, and of course thanks to you our listeners, we wouldn't have been doing this for the past year without you and we hope you'll stick around while we keep doing it for the next year.

  Thirteen years ago, when Augie Nieto learned he had the progressive neuromuscular disease ALS, he and his wife Lynne were told to put his affairs in order. Most people live only two to five years after diagnosis, as their brains lose touch with their bodies and their muscles atrophy. But Augie—who founded exercise equipment company Life Fitness in 1977—wasn’t one to simply accept his fate. First, as Lynne explains on this week’s episode of #WeGotGoals, the couple “tried to find somebody that would tell us we didn’t have ALS,” she says. “We traveled the country to the ALS specialists all over and unfortunately got the same answer six more times.” Once reality set in, Augie was devastated. Lynne became his caregiver, a role that nearly overwhelmed her. But eventually, it became clear Augie just might beat the grim statistics. Over time, Augie and Lynne found balance and a new purpose: Curing the disease that threatened to kill him. Because ALS affects the muscles in his mouth and diaphragm, Augie can no longer speak. He breathes with a ventilator and communicates with assistive technology he controls with his feet. Still, Lynne says, he works as hard as ever. Together, Augie and Lynne co-founded Augie’s Quest, a non-profit that has raised more than $62 million. That money—and millions more—has gone to fund research at the ALS Therapy Development Institute, where Augie’s chair of the board. These efforts are beginning to pay off. Already, the institute has a drug nearing phase 1 clinical trials, and two more promising compounds in the pipeline. Considering that there are currently only two FDA-approved treatments for ALS, that’s quite a feat. “What we’ve really shown here is that ALS is not an incurable disease—it’s just underfunded,” Lynne says. Working together “in lockstep” toward these goals has—incredibly—deepened the Nietos’ partnership to the point that Lynne says their marriage is stronger than ever. Raising their four children, and showing them the true meaning of “for better or for worse,” ranks as Lynne’s proudest accomplishment. “Before ALS, I think you had two of the most independent people on the face of the planet that probably in our heads thought we didn’t need each other that much. And that’s not always a great way to go about a relationship,” she says. Now that they’ve had to slow down and be more thoughtful in their communications, “I think we’re better people.” Lynne has also learned to step into the spotlight, speaking in public and to the media. The self-professed introvert admits it’s still a struggle. “I am not comfortable, but I have learned to be in discomfort and just lean into the discomfort,” she says. “I know that if Augie could, he would be the spokesperson. But now I feel that sense of responsibility to being his voice.” On Augie’s urging, the Nietos welcomed a documentary crew into their lives. Initially, Lynne resisted the idea. During filming, which proceeded on and off for a year, the lights and boom mics in their bedroom were certainly intrusive. Now that the crews have left and she’s watched the resulting film, AUGIE, many times over, Lynne says she’s glad they did it. “My deal with Augie was that I would agree to go through with doing the documentary, but we weren’t going to sugarcoat our lives; we were going to share the bad as well as the good. And that was very cathartic in many ways,” she says. And she’s proud of the end product: “I feel like now we have something that can shed some light on ALS, on trying to find treatments and a cure, on others living with the disease and how we really can make a difference.” Hear more of their incredible story on this week’s episode—and beginning March 20, watch AUGIE on Netflix and Amazon. You’ll hear Lynne mention more ways to get involved, including joining Team Quest for ALS and raising money while running a 5K, 10K, or half-marathon. You can also contribute just by working out at OrangeTheory Fitness from now through March 8, including a special 90-minute Augiethon at all Chicago and suburban locations on March 3. Listen to this week’s episode, produced by Cindy Kuzma and presented by Chicago Sport and Social Club, reminding you that summer is just around the corner. Get into a summer volleyball league now and use code "GOALS" to get 5 percent off until March 15.   And if you like what you hear, subscribe where ever you get your podcasts and leave us a rating or a review on Apple Podcasts.   --- JAC:Welcome to #WeGotGoals, a podcast by aSweatLife.com on which we talk to high achievers about their goals. I'm Jeana Anderson Cohen; with me, I have Cindy Kuzma and Maggie Umberger. CK: Good morning, Jeana. MU: Good morning, Jeana. JAC: Good morning. Cindy, you talked with Lynne Nieto. CK:I did. I spoke with Lynne Nieto, who is the wife of Augie Nieto and also an incredibly accomplished person in her own right. She is, of course, many more titles than just wife, but her story is remarkable because Augie is the founder of Life Fitness, a manufacturer of fitness equipment that's based near here in Chicago. He was diagnosed with ALS 13 years ago and the journey that they've been on together since then has been really incredible and I'm so grateful to her for sharing with us. MU: So the Nietos are doing a lot for ALS research and more than just fundraising, right? CK: That's right. I mean they have raised a ton of money, like more than a hundred million dollars, so they've done that, but they've gone farther. Augie has really brought his entrepreneurial spirit to trying to find a cure for this disease. So they have built a research institute called the ALS Therapy Development Institute that is set up to streamline the process of finding a cure and they already have one drug that's in clinical trials. It's really exciting what they've been able to do. JAC:It's interesting to speak with someone who's going through something like this because as a partner of someone who has a disease or who sort of has their freedom taken away, their movement taken away by a disease, it's easy to lose hope. Did you get a sense from her that she has that sort of positivity and hope that's carrying her through? CK:I certainly did, but it was really interesting to talk with her about how she got to that place. It was definitely an evolution for both of them. It's a heart wrenching story to hear her talk about how they both reacted to the diagnosis. Augie took it very hard and she kind of went into fix it mode and was just like, how do we fix the house to make us able to stay here? How do we fix our finances? And she became his caregiver for a long time too and was really doing those day to day tasks every day. It wasn't until two key things I think happened. One was that his disease progressed very quickly and then he eventually got a tracheotomy, which is where they put in a tube to help him breathe and eat and that seemed to slow down the progress of his disease and that gave them a little bit of hope. And, she also actually stepped away from being his primary caregiver and they were able to hire people to caregive so she could go back to her role as as wife, partner, supporter. And those two things helped them adjust to this disease being kind of their new normal instead of being a hopeless, devastating experience for them. And what's really interesting too is that she talks about their relationship actually being better now because of the way they've had to solve these problems together. And obviously I don't think she would wish this kind of a diagnosis on anyone. But wow, what a powerful message of positivity to be able to say that something in your life is better after something like this has happened to you. And one other thing I'll say too, we mentioned the documentary in, in this interview, AUGIE is the name of the documentary and it's going to be on Netflix and Amazon beginning on March 20th. So if you are interested and inspired by their story, which I'm certain you will be, you can check it out. MU: Here is Cindy with Lynne. CK: This is Cindy Kuzma and I am here with Lynne Nieto. Lynne, thank you so, so much for joining us today on the #WeGotGoals podcast. LN: Thanks for having me. I appreciate it. CK: Lynne, the first big question we usually ask people on, #WeGotGoals is about a big goal you've achieved, why it was important and how you got there and we'll kind of get to that. But you know, first of all, you're a person who's had your life and presumably your goals within that life kind of upended. I had the chance to see the incredible new documentary, AUGIE, about your life and your husband's. But for those of our listeners who haven't had the chance to see it yet, I wonder if we could start by filling them in a little bit on the basics of your story. LN:OK. Well, about 14 years ago, Augie—who started Life Fitness when he was in his early twenties—super great athletes, very, very fit, began feeling, actually could see tangibly that those weights when he was lifting weights was he was less able to do the same amount of weight. And about that time he kept telling me that and I’m, I was basically saying, hey look dude, you're getting older, you know, things like that not work quite as well as they did before. And he noticed some twitching and some they call them fasciculations, which is basically twitching of your muscles in his pec region. And then kind of the real telling thing was he was having a hard time putting shaving cream on with his right hand. And so coming up, this is coming up March, 13 years ago, we went to the Mayo Clinic in Scottsdale and received the first of seven diagnoses of ALS. And for, if you're not familiar with ALS, it is a progressive neurological disease that's typically fatal and two to five years. The brain works fine and it's basically almost like an electric cord gets cut where the brain is sending the impulse for movement, but the voluntary muscles aren't receiving it. So in Augie, it started out in his arms, progressed to his legs, progressed into his bulbar area, his in his mouth region where he could no longer speak and then finally into his diaphragm and he was trached, is on a ventilator, has been trached for six and a half years now, so about halfway through his diagnosis and he uses his computer and does all this business work using his feet. So he has a roller ball on his right foot. He has a left click on his left foot and he has his computer mounted on his wheelchair in front of him and he basically works a lot now. So he always worked a lot. His golf game sucks now so he doesn't spend time playing golf that. But that being said, I just left him a few minutes ago upstairs and he was working out in our garage, so he about three years ago, four years ago, he started working out again with special coaches that up until Augie, had only worked with spinal cord injury patients. So he does three, three hour workouts weekly and that's just been really special for him to go back to something that was so core to his life before. CK: Did you say the first of seven diagnoses? LN: Yes. We kept going to try to find somebody that would tell us we didn't have ALS. We were unsuccessful in that. Yeah. My brother, who's an oncologist really kind of took us under his wing when we got our first diagnosis and we traveled the country to the ALS specialists all over and unfortunately got the same answer six more times. CK: I can't even imagine what that must've felt like for you. How did you process this and how did it change the way you looked at life and at goals and at the future? LN: It's I think any time you receive a life altering message, whether it's health or it's, there;s sort of just the shock factor that you can't quite wrap your arms around. In Augie’s case, he went into a deep depression. Couldn’t—here's this highly functioning guy, started the world's largest health equipment manufacturing company and he basically couldn't function and ultimately tried to commit suicide about three months into the diagnosis. About that time—we live in a home that’s down the side of a cliff that has at least three to five stairs in and out of every room and I kind of went the other direction to hypervigilance mode of trying to figure out how we could remain in our home and get an elevator installed and so I went into kind of fix it mode and that was sort of how I tasked myself through it and it was almost like you were trying to just keep your head above water. That's the only thing. I look back at that time as a real just kind of foggy time, really like, stopped working out, stopped of doing everything that was positive and good in our life and just trying to stay on top of things. CK:How and when do you feel like the kind of—because obviously you all have accomplished so much since then. I mean, how did that start to shift for you, do you think? LN:It started shifting probably about five years into the diagnosis. Actually, no—it really shifted about the time Augie was trached and put on a ventilator. Up until then his disease progressed in a pretty, a slow clip for ALS, but it was definitely, Augie was going downhill and a lot of things were thought of in terms of, you know, is this the last birthday, the last Christmas will he ever get to see our kids graduate from college? So a lot of things were kind of looked at it that way. Then in that last six and a half years since he's been trached, his disease seems to have stalled out. He's healthy with the exception of ALS. So now this is just sort of our new normal and we've lived with it so long—we were fortunate enough or we are fortunate enough to have lived this for so long that this is sort of normal. It's our normal, at least. CK:We’ll get back to my Interview with Lynne in just a minute, but first a word from our sponsor this week. This episode was brought to you by Chicago Sport and Social Club. With them, it's more than a game. It's a social sports experience. Whatever your personal goals are, big or small, Chicago Sport and Social Club can list many reasons why you should play. It might be the sand between your toes, meeting people and moving your social life outside for a season. Whatever your goals or reason for playing, Chicago Sport and Social Club has a beach volleyball league for you. You can create a team of all women. You can grab a group of co eds or you can sign up as an individual and get set up with the team. In any case, if bump set and spike are the words that punctuate your summer, you're going to want to register for the league built around you. To do it, go to www.chicagosocial.com, and use code goals. That's G-O-A-L-S when you register for 5 percent off and hey, that's good through March 15. And uh, now it's back to my talk with Lynne CK: So let's kind of then go, go back to that big question, what a big goal that you have accomplished is why it was important to you and how you got there? LN:It’s interesting. When you first posed that question in the email, I was thinking back to career goals and that— as the more I sat and thought about it, the more it, it occurred to me, it wasn't my career goals that really are today the things I'm most proud of. It's our personal, our family, our four kids there who are all married, all have kids, all graduated from college. They're happy, they're fulfilled, they're productive, they're smart. That, that goal I think is probably my proudest and that we’re responsible for another human being's life and that that's a pretty hefty thing to take care of. And so I think that's, even though I'm not certain that was a conscious goal, it ended up being that way. I think how Augie and I were able, not that we can take all the credit because they're just great, great individuals, but kind of living our life by example and invest in their lives. So I think that would be probably, you know, at almost 60, that would probably be my proudest goal to date. CK: Remind me, how old were your children when Augie was diagnosed? LN:Our youngest was 17 and our oldest was 21. So we had three in college, one in high school, CK:And I know it's touched on in the film, but what do you think are some ways that, that this diagnosis and the way that you and Augie have dealt with it, how has that affected your children's lives and do you think that they have taken some examples from the way that you've dealt with it? LN:I think I'm most proud of personally of showing how a marriage can go through struggles and face very difficult times and still come out the other side in a in a good manner. I think I've been a good example to our four kids of what for better or worse means and for staying. And as I touched on in the documentary, I'm not really super certain that Augie and I would be married today without having gone through what we've gone through. Honestly, I know it sounds really weird, but we are the best part of our marriage we've ever been. So if having lived that example for our kids makes—that's a huge goal too. I'm not certain again, was a goal as much as an outcome. CK:Yeah. Sometimes the most compelling goals are ones we didn't necessarily intend to set out for us specifically, but ones that we just reach. Lynne—you did mention, and I thought that was a fascinating part of the documentary that your partnership with Augie has changed through all of this. Can you talk a little bit more about about what you just said about how it is that you two have been able to work together and how your relationship has changed as you've, as you've grown to face these challenges? LN: Well before ALS, I think you had two of the most independent people on the face of the planet that probably in our heads thought we didn't need each other that much. And that's not always a great way to go about a relationship. So we went from Augie being on the road all the time to us being together all the time. I became Augie’s caregiver as he needed more help. We were never apart, so that was quite the transition and never expected that to be that way and I think just in general through the struggles that,  and and through the communication difficulties, we've had to learn to be more thoughtful in what we say to one another because Augie’s having to type it with his feet. I've had to learn to listen and be patient and in that quiet thoughtful time, I think we're better people. It’s so much easier to fly off the handle and it's say things without thinking. CK:And obviously you have these common goals now with the foundation, with Auggie's Quest and with the ALS Therapy Development Institute. I wonder, does having those sorts of goals jointly also change the your relationship and the way that you work together? LN:Absolutely. I think that’s, we're in lock step together now and have a common goal and not unlike being a proud of having taken care of our kids as individuals and and hope to have formed them in some manner into the people they are today, I think we carry that same spirit of because we are the lucky ones. We've been able to live with this disease a lot longer and adjust and we really feel like we have a responsibility to take care of those suffering with ALS that can't because of either their family situation, their progression rate. That we need to make a difference, and so we are solely dedicated at the ALS Therapy Development Institute to finding effective treatments and ultimately a cure for ALS. And we have a unique situation in that we can, Augie can bring his huge sphere of influence to bear. The fitness industry has been behind us since day one. They continue to do that, so I think we have a sense of responsibility. CK:I know that the ALS Therapy Development Institute is a little bit different from the way a traditional academic medical center or research institute is set up. I wondered if you could talk a little bit about how you worked to find the right people and resources to to go about this goal of a cure in a slightly different way. LN:Well, I think what's been really fun for me to watch because I wasn't around when Augie was starting Life Fitness, was to see his entrepreneurial spirit and how how he looks at things differently. He runs the institute as if it's a for profit business, it’s the world's largest not for profit, ALS only research institute, and he's gone at this as if it were a business and with the same laser focus and consideration for needing lightning speed in a disease that kills people in two to five years. So that's where I think he's done such just a unique approach to it because he is approaching it as if it's a business. CK:And for you, I, I've read, I know that you had to get a little bit more comfortable with, with being in the spotlight then you might have been before. So I wonder if you could talk a little bit about that and how you've sort of worked on that aspect of all this. LN:Well, I can't say I am comfortable. I'd like to say I was. I am not comfortable, but I have learned to be in discomfort and just lean into the discomfort and be okay with it and not to worry so much about how something's perfect or not perfect and just try to speak more from the heart. Sometimes I'm better at it than others, but um, and, and I know that, um, if, if Augie could, he would be the spokesperson, but now I feel that sense of responsibility to being his voice. CK:That so clearly comes through in the documentary too. And you and I were talking a little bit before we started recording about what, what it was like to, to go through that process of making the film and, and watching the film. And could you talk a little bit more about what that, what that felt like and um, you know, you mentioned that your opinion on it has changed a little bit now that you've seen it a few LN:Yeah. I think this was something that—Augie really wanted to do this. I being pretty much an introvert, this isn't something that would be on my radar screen and my deal with Augie was that I would agree to go through with doing the documentary, but we weren't going to sugar coat our lives that we were going to share the, the bad as well as the good. And that was very cathartic in many ways. It was also really strange to have people in your bedroom with booms and lights and cameras and, and trying to, I guess just ignore them the best you could to try to be genuine. And that was interesting at times. I'm glad in retrospect we did it. It took a year in chunks of time. It was intrusive. On the other hand, I feel like now we have something that can shed some light on ALS, on trying to find treatments and a cure, on others living with the disease and how we really can make a difference. I do believe that we will have, we know we will be in phase one trials with our first drug in the first quarter of 2018, money willing. We'll have it in phase 2A trials in the third quarter of 2018, where it's actually in people with ALS. That's huge. That's huge in a disease that's an orphan disease only because people die so quickly with it. That's so exciting. I can't tell you. It felt like we felt like we were kind of like the little little train that could going up the hill, going up the hill, going up the hill, asking for money and just telling people to trust us that we'll do well with it and now we have something tangible and that that's, that just makes it all worthwhile. And we have two other drugs in the pipeline that look promising. So I think the difference today versus when we were diagnosed 13 years ago is that there's hope today, you’re not necessarily told to just go home and get your affairs in order like we were. CK: I mean, it seems clear that watching Augie fight must have changed your kind of perception of what's possible, right? LN: Absolutely. It's, it's exciting. It. I have a big smile on my face right now and there's nobody here mean it's just. I mean, you talk about goals, we get this accomplished, we get a treatment and ultimately a cure for ALS? That's a lofty goal and uh, we're, that we quite possibly will get there. CK: As I said, I mean, that's the other big question we ask on this podcast #WeGotGoals and I'm, I'm not really sure you could come up with a more compelling goal than, than curing this disease. What else do you think it will take to get there? And what else would you say about your plans to, to continue this effort in the next, you know, five, 10, few years, however long it takes? LN:I hope it doesn't take that long for those living with the disease. What we've really shown here, Cindy, is that ALS is not an incurable disease. It's, it's just underfunded. So when you ask what we need, it's all money. It's money, it's a plan to accomplish what we're looking to accomplish at the institute, which is treatments and ultimately a cure for this disease. So right now that's the only thing holding us back. If we had a huge windfall of funds coming into the institute tomorrow, we have a plan in place to spend it. So we wouldn't be scrambling around trying to figure out what we're going to do with it. So that's how forward thinking our institute is. CK:You all have raised a pretty incredible amount of money so far. Right? What have your total's been? LN:So Auggie’s Quest has raised about $62 million in the last 13 years and Augie as the chairman of the ALS Therapy Development Institute overall during that same period of time has, has raised total between Augie’s Quest and the institute. $110 million. That's huge. It’s the biggest thing that's ever been done in ALS and we've spent it all. Yeah. CK:What I do and I think that helps people get their, wrap their heads around a little bit. What's, what's required here. How can people. I mean, I know that everyone listening is going to want to watch the documentary as soon as they're able to. Um, what are some of the other ways that people can keep tabs on the work that you all are doing and get involved? LN:Well, Augie’s Quest is part of the ALS Therapy Development Institute, we’re a fundraising arm of it so you can see the work that we're doing and events that we have coming up at www.augiesquest.org, and for specific things at the institute to see AT-1501, which is a drug name not too sexy, but something better will come up in time at our website at als.net. Takes you to our institute's website and I think just to see the things that we're doing and even see other people living with this disease, to put a face on it. So we also have a program within Auggie’s Quest called Team Quest for ALS. Uh, it is, we've done. We just finished our fourth half marathon, Rock ’n Roll half marathon. They’re around the country. We did our first one in Brooklyn, followed by Philadelphia, Denver and just recently in Las Vegas. That was crazy. And we've so far through those four by getting thorough our fitness industry contacts, getting people to get teams together, we've raised over a million dollars. So if you have people that are interested in participating, you can see that on augiesquest.org website for future ones, we're doing one in San Diego, Nashville and Denver again, and New Orleans. It's a cool program. CK:Lynne, it's been so wonderful talking with you and I can't thank you enough for sharing your story and sharing a, a glimpse of your, of your life through the film and, and through this talk today. I thank you so much for taking the time. LN:Well, thank you for having us. And thank you to the listeners for anything you can do to help us get to our goal of finding treatments and a cure for ALS. CK:This podcast is produced by me, Cindy Kuzma, and it's another thing that's better with friends. So hey, share it with yours. You can subscribe to it wherever you get your podcasts and please while you're at it, leave us a rating or review. Special thanks to J. Mano for our theme music; to our guest this week, Lynne Nieto; and to Tech Nexus for the recording studio.

Todd Uterstaedt interacts with high-powered leaders all day, guiding them as they build their teams, create their company culture, and practice the productivity hacks that help them transform from founders to CEOs. But ask the founder/CEO coach and "From Founder to CEO"podcast host just how he stays focused on his priorities as he juggles a family and demanding clients, and his answer may surprise you: pool walking. Yup, you read that right. Uterstaedt's secret to being a high achiever hinges upon whether he can get to his local pool and unplug for an hour while walking laps. "Productivity and mental clarity are intimately connected,"Uterstaedt explained to me. "You have to exercise, right? You have to do things that give your mind peace and clarity so that you know the single biggest thing to do as it relates to productivity, which is appropriately prioritize. "You can't prioritize things if your mind is racing and you haven't given your mind the opportunity to be clear about exactly who you are, exactly what your company's doing and exactly what your responsibilities are within that company." Uterstaedt experienced a major moment of professional clarity during his time in the Army. He was stationed in Berlin just after November 9, 1989 — a.k.a. the date the Berlin Wall fell. "I was enlisted at the time and watching military officers do their work as intelligence officers. I was doing well and heard about a "Green to Gold" scholarship, in which an enlisted individual can apply to go back to school, finish their degree, and become army officer." Not one to back down from a challenge, Uterstaedt decided to go for it, and got it. Now, he credits that year in Berlin and the amazing things that were happening there with him going after his first big professional moment. And the achievements have only piled up since then. Today, Uterstaedt brings people together through his peer group for founding CEOs, Trail Team 10. Recognizing that founders need a group of peers to bounce ideas off of, Uterstaedt launched Trail Team 10 about a year ago to help a group of founders from different cities come together on a regular basis and solve practical problems. And despite being from different cities, Uterstaedt helped this group foster a distant intimacy that felt real and authentic. But whether you're a founder/CEO or a regular 9-5er trying to grow professionally, Uterstaedt has one piece of advice for setting and achieving your goals. First, he suggests setting six month goals instead of annual goals, reasoning that a year is too long for most goals and a June check-in can be much more valuable. Second, Uterstaedt recommends sharing that goal with two key people: one who knows you personally and "just gets you," and one professional acquaintance who "knows the industry" and can offer their perspective there. To hear more of Uterstaedt's tips for founders and CEOs and apply them to your own goals, listen to our episode of #WeGotGoals. Don't forget to rate and review on iTunes. --- JAC: Welcome to #WeGotGoals, a podcast by aSweatLIfe.com on which we talk to high achievers about their goals. I'm Jeana Anderson Cohen; with me, I have Cindy Kuzma and Kristin Geil.   KG: Good morning, Jeana.   CK: Good morning, Jeana.   JAC: Good, morning, Kristen and Cindy.   KG: So this week I spoke with Todd Uterstaedt, who is the founder and CEO of a company called from Founder to CEO. He's got a podcast of the same name and his goal is to help level up your leadership. So he's a founder and CEO coach and he has a lot of really interesting insights into productivity and the sort of ways that you organize your day and the small changes you can make to make you not only a better more productive manager but a better leader and a better CEO.   CK: There were so many things that I thought were interesting about this interview, Kristen, and one of them was the way that Todd uses both old school techniques and technology to achieve his goals and to help others achieve their goals. I thought his workout of choice was particularly fascinating, pool walking, because this is something that as a runner who has been injured I have forced myself to do when I've been hurt but the idea that if somebody does that as their workout of choice it's fascinating and I think some of the reasons were really interesting. Can you talk to me a little bit about that.   KG: Yes absolutely. So Todd, as you will hear in this podcast, he loves technology. He is all about using technology strategically to help us replace time-sucking administration tasks. One he mentions specifically was the act of scheduling a meeting. You know there's always a lot of back and forth about. No I've got this time at this time.   But what about location and he mentioned a technology that specifically takes that back and forth out of scheduling so all you have to do is sign up for a time slot and you are good to go with your partner that you're trying to meet with. However, when everything's getting to be a little too much and he needs to clear his head his favorite way to do that is to go completely off line for some pool walking. And he said that he loves the Zen aspect of it. He loves the fact that he physically can't have a phone or an iPad or a computer with him obviously because of the water. And he said it's when he gets some of his best thinking done. So I think there's other ways to do it if pool walking has bad memories for you Cindy, I'm sure you know running without technology could be something similar. Any way to unplug throughout the day and really sort of get into a flow state where you can let the ideas come to your mind more naturally instead of having a brain that works on overdrive trying to solve every one of the world's problems in the next 24 hours.   JAC: He talks to a lot of people who have gone from starting their own company to really moving into the role of CEO. And one thing he sort of preaches is the act of accountability. Can you talk a little bit about that?   KG: Yes. So one thing that I thought was really interesting. We've all heard about accountability buddies. You know someone that you text in the morning to make sure that they're going to the gym at the same time as you or someone who is maybe trying to reach a similar goal to you at the same time so you can work on it together. And he encourages his clients to do that as well of course but with a slight twist he wants his clients to share their goals with two people. One person that you know personally and who gets you, who sort of understands the way that you're wired and maybe why you're choosing to accomplish certain goals and maybe how you'll stand in your own way or what particular strengths you have that will help you in that process. But aside from that personal friend he wants you to share your goals with one professional acquaintance who can hold you accountable while knowing maybe more about your industry and you know wha tips and tricks you can use, other people in your network who might be able to help you and sort of having this dual accountability really keeps your goal well-rounded and makes it more of a focus because you're not just segmenting it off until like this is a professional goal or this is a personal goal. It really helps to incorporate it into your whole life.   CK: Yeah I loved that and I think that that is just one of the pieces of practical advice that people are really going to be able to take away from this interview. So here is Kristen with Todd.   KG: Welcome to the #WeGotGoals podcast. My name is Kristin Geil and today I'm here with Todd Uterstaedt, the founder and CEO of From Founder to CEO. Todd, how are you doing today?   TU: I'm doing great Kristen, how are you?   KG: I'm good. Thank you. We're so excited to have you on this podcast because leadership and goal setting is something that we're very passionate about over here on aSweatLife and we've loved hearing from you about how you take people to the next level especially when they're cofounding and founding their small businesses and really going through that process to become leaders. So to kick us off can you tell us a little bit about yourself and where you got the idea for From Founder to CEO?   TU: Yeah. So I'm a former Army intelligence officer who kind of transformed myself into a management consultant at one point in time. And we started our own executive coaching firm and along the way we started getting lots of phone calls from startup CEOs who said, hey, Todd can you coach us? And Kristen, our business model was not set up for them. It was usually it was set up for mid-sized companies and for corporations. So I got the crazy idea saying well why don't I do a podcast interview successful founders about kind of their personal leadership transformation into CEO because it's really hard to scale a business and scale yourself at the same time. And so yes we started this podcast called from founder CEO and it just took off.   KG: Who was a recent guest that you had on? Anyone interesting?   TU: Yeah. Do you know Adam Braun of Pencils of Promise?   KG: No. Tell me more.   TU: So Adam wrote this book a New York Times bestselling book called Promise of a Pencil. And it describes his journey from starting Pencils of Promise, which builds schools around the world in underdeveloped areas and they've built over 400 schools now. And Adam is just a rock star. He's really great guy and he's starting a new company called MissionU. And his book is really about the transformation of him of founding Pencils of Promise into a real organization. And so it was really a joy to have him on the show because I'd read his book and he's really a good guy.   KG: That's awesome. I can't wait to check it out. One of the things we asked everyone who comes on the #WeGotGoals podcast is, what is a big goal you've achieved in the past and why was it so important to you. And how did you get there?   TU: Yeah that's a big question. I love how you guys ask that question because it's so fundamental to our lives don't you think.   KG: Yeah yeah. Really getting into the deep stuff right away here.   TU: Yeah well when we started the podcast maybe I'm a little bit ashamed to admit that we didn't really come up with a monetization version of it. We just said you know see if we can build an audience and help people around the world and now we're listened to in over 100 countries around the world. And so at some point in time I said, Well you know this is a lot of work but at the same time people started asking us well what else could you do for us? You know they would e-mail me and say we like to podcast but we need a little bit more help. So I had this goal of creating a group of founders from different cities to come together on a regular basis to really help them solve their practical problems while simultaneously helping them navigate that road from founder to CEO. And so a year ago we started it and it was a lot of work, Kristen. I mean from the branding of it into a setting you up in marketing the marketing of it was a big deal. And a year ago we launched our first group. And in the first 48 hours we got like half of our members right away. And it was just so gratifying to know that we listened to our audience and we created something that they said yes we need this. And then a couple of days ago we had a reunion. They missed each other and we had a reunion and hearing them all described their 2017 and how powerful it was and how well they were doing really made setting that goal of creating what we call Trail team 10. That's the name of the group. really kind of come full circle. Wow I'm so glad that big crazy goal to create this group called Trail Team 10 actually not only came true but also has so impactful in people's lives   KG: Ah, that's so fulfilling. I'm sure that must've been a really big moment for you.   TU: It was you know it didn't really hit me until we had this reunion call and everyone was saying it had their best year yet 2017 was their best year yet and they just were so excited to see each other again and they missed each other and it was gratifying to see them all doing so well. Because all I did was bring them together and facilitate a dialogue and help keep them focused and really bring them together in a way. It's funny that a friend of mine said to me, well Todd, how are you going to get all these people to connect with each other in a group when they don't know each other. And one of the requirements is they have to be from different cities. And I found that I didn't have to worry about it because they had what we call now distant intimacy. Because they were in different cities they felt real and authentic about sharing. And it worked out really well. So it was very gratifying to answer your question yes.   KG: You mentioned right at the start of the interview that you were an army intelligence officer. And I know that you were in Berlin soon after a major moment in human history. Can you tell me a little bit about what that moment was like and how it impacted you as a young man and still today? Not to imply that you're not a young man but it's been a few years since you were in the army.   KG: Yes yes that's true. No that's OK. You call me an old man. That's all right. No, you know, it was you know at the time I took it for granted. I was stationed in Berlin Germany just after November 9th 1989 when the wall quote-unquote came down. But it took a while to take the wall down. And I was there after November 9th 1989 and it was really a pivotal moment in my life and it actually turned out to be one of my big first goal setting kind of experiences because I was watching all the military officers and I was enlisted at the time, enlisted in the U.S. Army. And I was watching the officers do their work as intelligence officers. And I was doing well as an enlisted soldier kind of in Berlin Germany when a lot of historical things were happening so it was really interesting time period and they had this thing called a green to gold scholarship. Where basically an enlisted individual can apply to go back to school, finish their degree and become an Army officer and at some point in time I said wow you know I think I really want to strive for this really big goal of competing for this scholarship to go back to school and then go back in the Army as an Army officer. And Kristen, I had no idea whether or not I would get it or not but it was a lot of work to put out the application again and get all the recommendations and just a lot of work.   And lo and behold I got it. So I credit that year in Berlin and all the really amazing things that were happening there with me kind of getting my first big professional career goal and accomplishing it.   KG: Wow that's amazing. It was such a transformative moment in human history and it's interesting to hear about how it impacted the world at a macro level but then also how in you on a micro level and then came right back out as you work to transform other people as well.   TU: Yeah it's funny you haven't thought about that way that way until you just mentioned it but there were so many people's lives that were transformed in that year. I mean East and West Germany came together, East Berlin and West Berlin came together. Families that were separated for decades and it just was really impactful on me to see the power of the human spirit overcome oppression, overcome difficult circumstances. And it just reminded me that gosh my goal was to compete for this scholarship and go back in the Army as an officer. That's a pretty micro goal compared to the big goal of reuniting two countries and it just put things in perspective for me you know.   KG: Yeah I totally get that. As you said just now you saw a lot of people overcome huge challenges and obstacles during this time in history. But you also help founders, new founders of emerging startups face their own challenges. What challenges have you found that the founders that you work with face typically that slow them down on their way to becoming an effective CEO and leader?   TU: You know it's funny because it's my intention to go back and kind of mine our podcast episodes and pull together kind of an empirical research project and just go back to all of them and kind of catalog all of that.   But off the top of my head I would say probably the biggest issue of a founder moving to CEO is being self aware enough to know at the different inflection points the new type of leader is that they need to be for their company. It's hard because it's a constant self-awareness and you have to start off with being someone who is very in tune with who you are and that's not easy to do when your company is growing fast. You know what I mean?   KG: Yeah, absolutely. I was thinking when I was brainstorming questions for this interview I thought that maybe a ton of founders that you work with might tend to get caught up in just the small day to day administration of running a new and fledgling company which sort of leaves them hanging when it comes time to big picture and more strategic thinking.   TU: I think you're right that exactly it is exactly one of the things that happens because when you are a founder maybe there's you know three or four people on your team maybe they're all cofounders. You tend to wear many hats and it's very difficult to know which hats to begin to take off per se and give those responsibilities to someone else. And so many of them I mean the phrase, the so common phrase Kristen that all of them say is it's hard letting go right? But it means different things at different points in time in that journey. But it's a common phrase because to your point they get used to doing things and now the organization requires them, is asking them sometimes is demanding them to be a different leader and kind of rise up above some of the tasks and focus on larger issues like for example hiring key people and establishing the culture of the organization and managing the culture of the organization which is often kind of the differentiator between a successful startup and scaleup and unsuccessful one.   KG: You know that reminds me of one of our favorite things that we say at aSweatLife and that's that everything is better with friends. I also tend to think of that as a way to remind me to keep key people around me. I think of it as like my personal cabinet right. The people that I go to for advice or for help with major decisions or just when I need like a good slap on the face be like wake up a little bit. This is what you need to be doing. So what sort of advice you give the people that you work with for finding those people and maybe not just defaulting to the people who make you feel good but the people who challenge you.   TU: Yeah it's a great question the way that those people around you they serve different purposes for you personally right?   KG: Right.   TU: So I think the same it's the same thing for a founder It's realizing that you need different types of people around you to support you for various different reasons and that takes the shape of many different resources for a founder. So for example if you if you're a funded company your board obviously plays a big role in that. If you're an unfunded company you can create your own personal board of advisers to be a board for you. A lot of founders will join an organization. There's Young Presidents Organization, there's EO. There's an array of organizations to your point to bring people around you and that's why we created Trail Team 10 too because we saw a need for startup CEOs to different cities to kind of be able to come together and challenge each other kind of sharpen each other to be better. But I think it's important to remember that it's okay to have different people sort of different roles so someone could be a really good expert on you have someone who's a mentor about financial issues and you know you get together with him maybe twice a year and it could be a friend it could be a relative or it could be somebody you pay it could be just somebody who takes an interest in you in your business. But bringing those types of people around you is so important. Everyone talks about that and every interview that I've ever done and I know that there's a lot of there's like CEO roundtables that are part of a lot of chambers in different cities that are a lot of people joined as well so I think it's important. You're right not only just from the professional perspective but from a friend perspective to know other people are kind of experiencing some of the things same things that you are.   KG: Yeah it gets lonely at the top I hear for CEOs.   TU: It does. I just had a lunch appointment today with someone who literally is three doors down from my office who listens to my show. I had no idea who he was and we were just talking about that I said and he was working on some issues as you know my company really knows about all the decisions they have to make on this as it's pretty lonely isn't it he says. You don't even know, Todd. I said, of course I know. He says, oh yeah that's right. So yeah it gets very lonely but it doesn't have to be. And that's one of my kind of mantras to people is it doesn't have to be lonely. Most teams want you to be transparent with them share. Tell them what you're how you're feeling. They can't be overly maudlin about it because then they'll get scared. Right. But you have to share your emotions and how you're feeling about things.   That's the pathway for the most successful founding CEOs that I've worked with and I've interviewed.   KG: That's awesome. Let's pivot a little bit and talk about productivity. Your website and your podcasts tend to focus on practical, actionable tips that founders can take to follow their dreams. What have you found that works personally for you in your daily life?   TU: Yes so there are a lot of things now that technology wise that don't necessarily make you more productive. Like, they don't make a task for you more productive they actually replace tasks which makes you more productive. So we're used to doing things. So maybe I'll be able to do this faster. Well nowadays for example there's an x.ai which completely takes the task of scheduling meetings with people out of your list because it talks to a computer with some artificial intelligence that looks at your calendar and their calendar and sets up the meeting for you without having to do a thing but CC Amy at x.ai. And so that's an example of productivity where founders nowadays are not saying Hey I just want to be able to faster X Y Z they say no I want to use some technology and some other things that replace some of the activities that I do. I think that's the first major insight that many of them have taught me as I've interviewed them. That's number one. Number two is I personally believe that productivity and mental clarity are intimately connected. That you have to have you have to exercise. Right?   KG: Right.   TU: You have to do things that give your mind peace and clarity so that you know the single biggest thing to do as it relates to productivity which is appropriately prioritize. If you can't prioritize things if your mind is racing and you haven't given your mind the opportunity to be clear about exactly who you are exactly what your company is doing exactly what your responsibilities are in that company. And that requires you know sometimes I'll go to I work at Lifetime Fitness in Cincinnati and I'll go pool walk because it's mindless and no one bothers me and that sounds silly. But just walking back and forth in the pool because it's mindless. Instead of walking outside where there's no resistance it's walking in the pool. But that for me clears my head so that I can then prioritize correctly and then that affects my my productivity.   KG: And with that pool walking you have the added bonus of generally not being reachable by phone. You actually have to unplug unless you've got some really fancy waterproof case that I just haven't heard of yet.   TU: That's my favorite part. Next time you said I was in the pool and couldn't call you back.   KG: Well that is a lot of technology. But you use any fine tools as well.   TU: Absolutely. I still use it right here next to me a little notebook. My favorite version is the Moleskin. I love the Moleskin little books, do you know what I'm talking about?   KG: Yes absolutely.   TU: And every night before I go to bed I write down what are the top three things that I need to get done and the next day. And I do that the day before and I put it in my moleskin notebook in the morning when I wake up I'm I'm able to focus on the things that I need to do in the morning, which is take care of my family get my kids off to school make them breakfast make benefits my wife breakfast. I'm not worrying about having to prioritize what my next day's going to look like. So I do that in my little Moleskin notebook handwriting. I used to use technology for that but I find that doing that and notebook is much more KG: I'm the same way. I still use pen and paper planner which are redundant because of course I've got my google calendar my icalendar all synced up. But everything has to be written down in a paper planned as well just so that I it gets it into my memory a little bit better right like I can remember my appointments easier if I find that I've written down beforehand.   TU: There's something about handwriting isn't there?   KG: Yeah yeah. Plus not to mention the satisfaction of actually crossing something off your list.   TU: My favorite part.   KG: And it's off your plate for at least another few days.   TU: Yeah well plus you know I don't know about you but like when you do something or computer it feels ephemeral, it feels ... but in my notebook I keep my notebooks and sometimes I go back and look in them. Oh yeah I actually did get a lot accomplished.   KG: Yeah absolutely it's a great way to actually track the things that you did get done. I mean who hasn't written something in their notebook that they've already done just so that they can cross it out and feel that sense accomplishment. Right.   TU: Yes. Yes Will I also use that notebook too once a week I'll journal and I'll say hey what's bothering me right now what am I grateful for and what will bring me joy in the next couple of weeks and I just do that once a week in my notebook with my other tasks because it gets me kind of thinking bigger picture and the handwriting part I think is to your point is key because it kind of engages my brain differently.   KG: We are also big believers at aSweatLife in starting your day off strong especially starting your Mondays off strong. We started carpe Monday. The idea is just to start your week off strong so that your set the tone for everything else that you're going to accomplish the rest of the week. And I feel like that's something that everyone asks CEOs right. So I was wondering if you had a strong morning routine and noticed that the founders and CEOs you work with have similar routines or they have quirky little differences that help set them up for success for the rest of the week or the day?   TU: Yeah. So I think I'll put them in two categories and I fall into one category. One is those that have kids and those that do not have kids because for me personally I'm the mom with kids. My wife is a physician and so I always want to give her the gift in the morning of peace before she sees 30 patients in a day. And so I make breakfast for her. I make sure the kids are downstairs eating breakfast and make sure they're ready to go out the door because she brings them to school. So for me my beginning of my morning is about making three other people's lives better and that actually makes me feel good. And I can focus on the rest of the day because I know they're off to a good start. So my getting off to a good start is actually about getting three other people off to a good start. That I think gives a lot of entrepreneurs and founders and founding CEOs who have kids there's usually somehow involved in that. But for those that don't often find a lot of them will meditate or pray. Many of them tell me that they will work out. First I think many of them work out in the morning because they find that the endorphins and everything else that kick in makes them sharper during the day rather than working out at the end of the day. But I think the other thing that they often do is they have a huddle meeting with their team. This is becoming more and more common where it's not one of these big overarching meetings. It's especially for a lot of the virtual ones. They will have a huddle meeting hey here's the three things that I'm focusing on today and here's something I may need help with. Some of them will do. Hey what's your one minute win from the previous day so that they all have some sort of positivity in their lives as they start their day. But usually it's just huggle meeting. That's not long it usually last 10 15 minutes. It's not over. You think that sets the course a lot for many of them.   KG: And with those huddle meetings do they find that accountability is a key part of that you know announcing to the group what you're working on helps you sort of stay true to your tasks and maintain that focus during the day?   TU: Absolutely. And it does. Another thing I think because of that it helps the founder hear from others so they can in their mind overlay the things that they're doing with the current priorities and strategy of the company since things change so quickly. They're listening to what people are putting their efforts in and then they're able to go back and help them make adjustments. If for some reason something's changing so again it's not heavy but it gives them the kind of that touch base to be able to say oh yeah you know what my team is still focused on the things that we all agreed are the priorities or someone has something personal going on that we need to help them out with. And also maybe rise to the occasion and do their work for them so that kind of alignment with the team is a big factor in addition to the accountability piece.   KG: It sounds like it also helps keep the CEOs grounded in terms of being up to date on what exactly their employees job descriptions are and what they're having to do everyday because I know in those companies world can shift really quickly right. And sometimes a CEO might not necessarily know the many hats that someone under him is wearing.   TU: Absolutely. I think you're right. And you know they don't talk about it that way mostly but I think the roles and responsibilities is something I often talk with him about. And now that I'm thinking about some of the stories I hear on the course of time some of them actually have a chart. In fact many of them are doing this now. You know they kind of. who has primary responsibilities in this area and who is their backup and they use that conversation to figure out whether or not the backup person needs to move in to their primary role. If as you say a role is changing.   KG: Interesting. Yeah that's a great little system for people to start right from the beginning.   TU: Yeah I think you're right.   KG: Well of course not everyone who listens says podcast is a founder or a CEO. But they are probably taking this month of January to evaluate their new goals and habits that they want to set for the rest of the year. Which of your favorite productivity hacks can be adopted by non CEOs like me?   TU: That's a great question. You know I find that sharing your goal with two types of people. One a family person or someone who knows you personally could be a family person could be a friend could be someone that just knows you as a human being rather than a role and then a second person is someone who really knows you professionally. Sharing with them your first six months goal. I don't think it should be an annual goal because it's too far, too many things happen in a year. But I do think between now and the end of June sharing that that goal with two key people. It's hard when it's the same person for the personal professional that's why I think it's important to have to kind of break that out a bit. You are much more likely to accomplish that goal if you told those two people because at least one of them is going to ask you in the next two to three weeks Hey how's it going with x y z. Right. Because they're just curious. And you've stated to them unequivocally and with intention and purpose and so they are naturally going to be interested because we all kind of want to know how we're doing and you know what happens mid February the gym drains. Right?   KG: Right. There is a literal day on the calendar called quit day or quit your resolutions day.   TU: Is that what it is? I didn't know that.   KG: Yeah, it's sometime around the sixth week of the year. Sometime in mid February. I've seen it happen.   TU: It's so interesting I did not know that. It's the same idea with any other goal. You know? Whether it's fitness or whatnot if you tell at least two people then you increase the odds that you'll follow through with that six month goal in the new year.   KG: It's interesting that you break it down into six month goals instead of a full year goal. Do you envision people reevaluating that goal of the six month period to adjust their course or just hoping to be accomplished within that time frame?   TU: No definitely reevaluating definitely. In fact when I worked with founders I always tell them hey you should be having offset from your quote unquote performance evaluation conversations, offset from that you should have your career and goal setting conversations with individuals on your team because the two are very very different. And when you conflate your performance with your goals and your aspirations and hopes it's too difficult to get down. If for example you're not performing well in certain areas will you want to make sure you keep that positive energy.   And so I recommend they offset those conversations--and it's the same thing with us we have to revisit the goal setting conversation kind of separate from other things in our lives so that we can look at it and kind of give ourselves the attaboy if we accomplish it or to retweak it right because it may change because something happens between now and June. It's too long ago here.   KG: You know you sort of touched on this just now but I imagine that in your work with founders a lot of them are probably focused on very tangible results that they want to achieve for their company. Right. You want to hit this metric you want to hit that. But at the same time as you help them on their journey to becoming really effective leaders and CEOs there's some what I call fuzzy things that they're going to have to change about themselves right? Like how to become a better leader. Well how how can you really measure that? So how do you help reconcile the differences between a less measurable goal with something maybe a little bit more tangible?   TU: There is a great question and that is actually the secret sauce about what we do at from founder to CEO because we really help the individual as a human being transform themselves into someone who has more responsibility for more people. And you'd be surprised about how you can actually measure the immeasurable, or the things that you see that are appeared to be measurable. For example one way to measure. You mentioned leadership is to do a quality qualitative or quantitative 360 degree feedback with an individual at the beginning of a time period and later on in the end of a time period. And what that does is you crowdsource feedback from the key stakeholders around you. It could be friends, direct reports, peers, customers, family and you get a really good sense of self awareness around your effectiveness and some of those more intangible areas. And if you do a qualitative interviews with those individuals as well it really adds to a robust set of measurements, quantitatively and qualitatively around those issues. And then you redo that in maybe six months and you can see a shift. It is very clear whether it's just leadership or self-awareness in general.   KG: General that's a great idea. It sounds like it must be pretty humbling for the people seeking that 360 degree feedback too.   TU: You know there are times people tell me they never got so much feedback all at once about themselves.   And it can be overwhelming but at the same time to so many people tell me when I do that exercise with that it is transformational not just to them as a leader or as a founder,  founding CEO but as a person because it's about quality feedback. We all get feedback on a regular basis but frequently it's reactive. And that's important that's you know. We want to give an individual an opportunity to fully think through who we are and how we lead etc. And when we do that in a more formal way the richness and robustness of that data produces patterns that are very clear.   KG: Interesting. And once you start to recognize those patterns you can start consciously putting in the habits to change them.   TU: Absolutely and that's what we do all the time. We help create development plans from that information that get to the heart of an individual's journey from founder to CEO. Because it can be disorienting because especially a fast growth company where you know a year from now there's 25 employees and you had two at the beginning of a year and 25 is the magic number where a lot of the wheels fall off the organization for a lot of different sociological reasons and you have to rethink who you are and how you're leading. Dan Shapiro, the founding CEO of GlowForge told me in his interview--and he has a book called the Hotseat, it's a really good book. And he said a lot of founders will hire someone who is not very good at some of the jobs you're giving up to hedge their bet about if when they get like 25 employees if they're not good at leading that number of people they can go back into what they were doing before. Because they're kind of concerned about their ability to lead. And I found that so interesting that and I see that now kind of how we sabotage ourselves because to your point we're not quite certain we can do these things and we don't have any measurements around them.   KG: It sounds like you work with a ton of interesting people and you know really put in the legwork in helping them accomplish their goals. Let's circle back to our second big question that we asked everyone who comes on our podcast. What is a big goal that you have for the future and how do you plan to reach it?   TU: This is hard for me because we're just talking about this right now and we're struggling with it. Our Trail Team 10 program is pretty successful and we're proud of it. And it's really producing great results not only for our customers but also for our company. But I think it's time to create a membership program for founders at a price point that is not overwhelming to them so that they can come and go into the membership when they have needs without it being a six month commitment which is what our Trail Team 10 program is. And so my goal is that by June we will have mapped out what that looks like. Got enough feedback about it we can launch a beta membership for founding CEOs. And it's a lot of work you know and I'm a little bit cautious about bringing it up but I figured if I don't talk about it, if I don't share it with you then you know and so I wouldn't be practice what I preach. But that's our big, as Collins says, are our big hairy audacious goal is to kind of create that membership platform and program that can really serve our audience of founders around the world in a different way so that they can really take advantage of democratizing what we call executive coaching for leaders who are growing fast and help them grow faster because businesses are just crazy now and they're growing faster than ever before but our ability to grow as a leader at the same speed is lagging in a membership platform where people can get what they need without having a long term commitment and a larger price point is something I'm really passionate about.   KG: While I look forward to hearing from you in June about how successful you were.   TU: Yes, holding me accountable.   KG: Just like you said. Todd, do you want to tell us where we can listen to your podcast or check out anything else about from Founder to CEO?   TU: Absolutely. We invite you all to check us out at FromFoundertoCEO.com. We are on Spotify. Super excited couple weeks ago Spotify invited us to come on their platform. We're on iTunes or on Google Play. You can pretty much find the podcast on any service that you use to listen to podcasts and I'm also probably more active on LinkedIn than any other social media platform. So feel free to connect with me on LinkedIn and if I can help out in some way I'm happy to do so.   KG: Awesome. Well thank you so much for taking the time to talk to us today, Todd. We really appreciate it.   TU: It's my pleasure Kristen you take care. Thanks for the opportunity.   KG: Thank you.   CK: This podcast is produced by me. Cindy Kuzma. And it's another thing that's better with friends. So please share it with yours. You can subscribe whereever you get your podcasts. Hey while you're at it please leave us a rating or review. Special thanks to J. Mano for our theme music and our guest this week, Todd Uterstaedt.  

Before Yael Shy wrote What Now: Meditation For Your Twenties and Beyond, she founded MindfulNYU, the largest campus-wide mindfulness initiative in the country. It's hard to imagine a time when Shy struggled with meditation, but to hear her tell the story of accomplishing this big goal, being mindful wasn't always easy. Shy had reservations about meditation when she was first introduced to the practice in college. But a few factors during Shy's years at NYU led her to feel she was lacking the tools to cope with her stress; anxiety from 9/11, a break-up and her parents' divorce made Shy hunt for a solution. Everything changed when she decided to go on a meditation retreat. "It transformed my life," Shy explains. "It helped me see the roots of a lot of what my anxiety was built on." From that retreat, Shy grew her own practice. In 2009, she co-launched MindfulNYU as a small group that met to meditate. Every week, that group's numbers increased and today it's become something special. Mindful NYU offers classes every day of the week, offers sub-groups, retreats, workshops and yoga twice a day every day. I've never really committed to a regular meditation practice. Sure, I enjoy five minutes of meditation at the end of a yoga class, but I'm not one to throw down a meditation pillow on my own. The growth of this community at NYU makes me wonder - What don't I know about this practice that seems to be so eye-opening for everyone who makes it a habit? The biggest misconception about meditation, Yael says, is that it's about being Zen. "It can be excruciatingly difficult to be with what is, even if you don't like it," Shy said. "Even if you want to escape with all of your mind, it's a commitment to come back. Because that's where there's a chance for healing and freedom." The analogy Shy uses is one in the gym setting. In the same way the gym doesn't always feel great when you're there - we've all had those workouts that level us or make us think we're weak and over-exhausted - you know that you're ultimately getting stronger with every workout. Although meditation can be difficult when you're doing it, you're strengthening a different muscle by making the commitment to sit through the tough stuff, notice your thoughts and when your thoughts stray, set the intention to come back. Practically speaking, she also knows how hard it is to show up for meditation. A regular practice can easily be interrupted by life, but Shy offered a two tips to establish the habit for yourself. 1. Create a checklist: Because we're wired to want to see the fruits of our effort - and meditation doesn't easily lend itself to that kind of sense of accomplishment - create checklists for yourself that help you feel accomplished. That comes down to the logistics of meditation (i.e. where you sit, when you'll sit, how you build your schedule in a way that gives you time for it every day). 2. Understand why you're meditating before you start The second piece of the equation is to write down why you think it's important to meditate. Write that down on a piece of paper when you're invested in spending the time. That way, when the thought comes to mind that something else is more worth your time, you'll have your handwriting ready to help you remember why you're committing to the practice. Listen to the episode of #WeGotGoals and redefine how you see meditation for yourself. And if you like what you hear, be sure to rate it and leave a review (then hop on over to Amazon and grab a copy of Yael Shy's book). --- JAC: Welcome to #WeGotGoals, a podcast by aSweatLife.com on which we talk to high achievers about their goals. I'm Jeana Anderson Cohen; with me, I have Maggie Umberger and Kristen Geil. MU: Good morning Jeana. JAC: Good morning KG: Hi, Jeana. JAC: Hello Kristen. JAC: Maggie. You talk to Yael Shy. MU: I did. I got to speak with Yael Shy, who is the author of What Now: Meditation for your 20s and beyond. And she's also the founder of Mindful NYU, which just happens to be the largest campus wide mindfulness initiative in the country. And we got to talking about what is mindfulness and how do we define that in this day and age where it really is important, but we talked about like the should of feeling like you should meditate and what are those expectations and really what you can get out of making a commitment to do it. KG: I know I'm not alone when I say this but in theory I would love to have a meditation practice, it sounds very relaxing. But in reality I always find that I want to do something else. I want to be more active. And it just seems a little boring to be honest. And I know that’s something that Yael has dealt with when trying to bring this to campuses because sometimes it just seems like I don't want to do it task. Can you talk a little bit about how Yael views meditation and how she's sort of reconciled that to make it more accessible to everybody? MU: She came up with this really cool analogy for me to hear where you go to the gym all the time because you know you're doing something good for you but you don't always have a good time when you're at the gym. Sometimes you really hate that five minute plank that the instructor asks you to hold. And it can get really uncomfortable and really agitating and frustrating. And she equated meditation, like the actual time that you're sitting down to do it, as that potentially agitating and frustrating. But you have to have this belief and this understanding within you that you're doing something good for you that will benefit you down the line. And so that put it in perspective for me is because I think I have this really not so realistic perspective of what meditation is, that it's a Zen environment and everyone who does it is incredibly happy and just calm. But that was a cool point for us to talk and sort of jump off talking about goals with, because she did mention saying like just because you meditate doesn't mean you are Zen and calm and have no direction and goals. It's just a mindset and frame of how you approach those goals which which she then continue to talk about in the podcast. JAC: And she had one key piece of advice for people who want to start a meditation practice. Can you talk a little bit about that. MU: She gave some really sound advice about lots of steps within our interview to take to make sure that you can hold yourself accountable. But the one piece that really stuck out to me was something I've never thought to do before, which is to write down for yourself why you're doing this. So in the moments when you aren't sure that it's worth your time or that you know there's something more fun to do. You can look at that piece of paper and you can read what you wrote about what that meditation practice, and why you're setting that as a goal for yourself to stick with it. JAC: And here is Maggie with Yael. MU: Great, so Yael, thank you so much for joining me on the #WeGotGoals podcast. It is so wonderful to get to talk to you. YS: I’m so happy to be here. Thanks for having me Maggie. MU: Absolutely. So Yael,  you are about to launch a book called What Now: Meditation for your 20s and beyond. And you're also the founder and director of mindful NYU which is the largest campus wide mindfulness initiative in the country. That’s huge. I'm very interested how you came upon mindfulness and how it started at NYU which is in the middle of the biggest craziest busiest city in the world. YS: Yes, so I came to mindfulness meditation from I was actually a student at NYU many years ago and I was feeling the stress and the crazy of the city. I was in a very difficult place in my life. I was in college and it felt like the first major time in my life I was asking a lot of questions like, what is important in this life? If everybody dies then why am I alive? And it was this  really formative moment. And at the same time I was just broken up with my parents were getting a divorce. It was around September 11th and I had some you know PTSD from 9/11 that was happening like, in my neighborhood. And it was just like a very difficult time, a lot of suffering a lot of anxiety. And I just felt like I didn't have any tools to work with any of it. And so I ended up going on a meditation retreat that really transformed my life and helped me to see a lot of the roots of what my anxiety was built on. And a lot of the roots of my suffering. And it certainly didn't solve everything in one retreat but it led me down a path where meditation and mindfulness have really completely transformed my life. And so now at the Center at NYU, which we created in 2009—a student named Elizabeth and myself basically got it going as just a little sitting group that grew and grew, and now has meditation every single day of the week and it has advanced practice, it has sub groups for our LGBTQ community and our people of color community. It has retreats and workshops and yoga twice a day every day and just a lot going on. So it’s really blossomed into a really thriving place. MU: Incredible. That's amazing to have done in not a lot of time because meditation is a buzzword and I think people have certain reservations about it. And I think that it's pretty incredible that you sort of cut through that clutter and just made a statement like this is important and people are getting on board. MU: Yes well, and I kind of get it. I've had a lot of the same reservations. I did have when I first started meditating I had no connection to it at all. When I went on my first meditation retreat I had no idea what I was getting into and I thought meditation was boring and I thought yoga even was like pretty boring. It was not in my frame of reference. And over the years it's just really to me it's a buzz word for meaning, learning to open up to life to be with what is and to be with oneself and in a way that helps me to really experience life in a richer way and to have more compassion for myself and for others and that connects me to this larger vitality that is life. Whereas like the everyday can sometimes feel dry or meaningless or just disconnected. Meditation to me feels like a way to connect in. So that's really how we teach it and what it means to me. MU: And I I want to say that I get that but I am also like in that camp of I know I say I should meditate more but I don't do it. It's like I want to roll out my mat and do it and then I don't. One thing that really sticks out to me that that you say is that essentially what meditation is is being here in the present and happy or just content with what is which is really interesting in the context of this conversation around goals because it almost is counterintuitive because goals is all about not where you are but where you're going. So I'm I'm interested in your take on goals in general. 08:16 YS: Yes. It’s such a good question and such a good insight. I wouldn’t say that meditation is about being happy or even—others might say this, but I'm not sure I would say it's about being content with what is because sometimes what is, what's going on in the present moment, is extremely painful or really difficult to be with. And in meditation, like, we make the commitment and we make the effort to be there anyway to bring our attention there to breathe through it to soften with whatever is going on, and you know it could be emotional pain it could be physical pain it could just be like a really scary moment. And to really try and drop into what is happening but it might be excruciatingly difficult. And so I guess I would just kind of readjust that to just say, to be with what is even if you don't like it and if it's like I want to escape this with all of my mind and all of my being. It's a commitment to keep trying to come back because there in the present moment, being with whatever is happening, is I think our chance for healing and our chance for freedom in that in that moment. But then to go to the question of goals and kind of connect it to goals. For a lot of people I think their kind of resistance to meditation—and I have this as well—is, oh, it’s going to make me be kind of like a lump like a lazy happy with what is kind of person. And I'm never going to accomplish the things I want to accomplish. I'm never going to amount to anything if I just like sat there and breathed and was happy all the time. **And I don't mean to be flippant about it it's a real struggle of like how much do we need to push ourselves and drive ourselves forward and how much do we just need to be still and to not be doing any action and to just be rather than to do? And on the one hand I do think that it's a slightly false split because the goals that I've been able to accomplish like I would say starting the meditation center or like writing my book, I had to actually create this idea in my mind before actually doing it so I had a goal or a kind of direction I wanted to go in and I thought about it and I shaped it and I dreamed about it. And all of the stuff that one does with goals that you're excited about and at the same time I think what the meditation practice has helped me do—and I’m definitely not always successful at this but it's helped me to hold that end result with a loose hand so that if my goal was to finish this book by January, which it was originally last January, and it did not get finished by January. It's not like a tragedy of epic proportions. It’s not like frustrating and painful it might be for a minute but it's the idea is that once you set the goal, if things come in that change and the world has a role to play in sending you deviations or sending obstacles and those obstacles and deviations might be exactly what you needed to produce something even more beautiful than you had originally thought. And the only way you can know that is if you're holding your goals with kind of flexibility and looseness and remaining light on your feet. And so that's sort of how I operate in relation to goals, like it's almost like, you know you you set an intention in your mind I'm going to go to the store today and you're walking in the direction of the store and you know what you want to buy when you get to the store. And then somebody stops you on the way to the store and you can just you know be angry or try and get away from the person to get to your goal or let's say that person stopping you would tell you that there's a much better store in a different direction and that's the way you need to go. MU: That's super interesting for me to hear because I definitely resonate with that line that you walk between being too flippant about just not caring about your choices and then being ok with what happens and unfolds and just being with what unfolds. I think that is something that I learned or that I was conditioned in college to go after a big goal and to have huge aspirations and to work really hard and stay up really late. So I think that you working in the realm of a university has probably lots lots of rich territory to explore. Would you agree? YS: Yes absolutely. My students constantly are in various stages of both the excitement of that realm, and being like, you know I'm chasing my dreams or working towards my dreams and I'm exploring new territory and it's all there, that like pregnancy of possibility. And I think just like you know anyone else I think it's a time of like a lot of pressure and a lot of stress and some people don't exactly know what they want to be doing and that’s its own sort of suffering just not knowing what your should be. And or just feeling like, I have a student that's on them premed track and it is just one crushing week after another. He's struggling to make these grades better, just working so hard and still struggling so much. And so it's really both sides of the equation, it’s everything at that time when you're really in a university setting, I think, trying to really figure out who you are and what your future is going to look like. MU: Can you speak a little bit about all of the different types of students that come in that maybe have the really stressful tracks versus the less stressful tracks. Because it runs the gamut I'm sure. And how do you speak differently to people that have it in their head that they're going to go through med school and law school and it’s, the odds are against them versus those who are already open and primed for meditation. YS: Well it's interesting. I think the Buddha had a line that said meditation is sort of like playing a stringed instrument. If the strings are too tight on the instrument and you start to play it the strings are going to snap. If they're too loose and you try and play it, there's going to be no music that can come out. You know, you can't play anything. So what you want is to exactly tighten the strings to just the right level that you can play music and it's sort of the same with ourselves in our bodies. It can be true in each person just like it's true, different types of people that were sometimes going too hard and clutching too tightly to a world that we can't control and we have to learn to loosen or we're going to snap. We might have already snapped. And so it’s just this practice of like constantly practicing letting go, constantly practicing softening and easing and being kind to ourselves and relaxing. And then the other side is the other place where we've all I'm sure been to some degree or another where you're just too loose and you're not—you really need to tighten up a little bit of a discipline so that you can go to a place that you know is better for you. Like the equivalency would be to people—I’m like this constantly where a couple of weeks will go by and I'll be like I haven't been to the gym in like a month and I know I feel better after going to the gym. I know it's so good for my health. I just, am too, I've loosened up to a degree that it's not good for me and I know I can do better. And then it's time to not beat myself up about it but just tighten the strings a little, to build it into the schedule and to follow that path. So I think the teaching changes based on the person but it also is based on the moment that that person has been at that time. So you started this meditation center, you started Mindful NYU and you have now written a book. These are all really big goals would you say that these are the big goals that you would really want to say aloud that you're proud of? Is there anything maybe more personal or something different that is something that’s happened for you because of or through meditation? YS: Well to be totally honest with you these things are wonderful and I do feel like they're the fruits of the practice for sure. But I actually think maybe the biggest goal that I had that was even bigger than like a goal it was like the biggest dream of my life was to meet a partner actually and to like be with someone like a life partner. And for years—I got married very late. I met my now husband. You know not very late but a little later in life. I was 33 and I just never thought it was possible. For so many years I didn't date anyone. I was so closed and scared and carrying just so many blocks to love and to intimacy and then that I believe is like a direct correlation to meditation and to therapy that I could work with those blocks and work with all of that pain and fear around dating and all of that and then to find someone and someone I love so much that I'm currently married to and that we have one baby and another baby on the way. And so I think like that was probably, if I had to point to one piece of evidence, like if you had met me ten years ago and met me now that that would be the most major thing that has changed, that I think I've let love into my life in a bigger way. MU: That is so awesome that simply doing less can lead to so much more. YS: Yeah, well, and the process is not easy and I want to kind of like support people that like you mentioned people that they like oh I want to meditate. And I just haven’t, or I’ve tried. And it's so hard. I feel like it's just a failure because I was really in that boat and I know that it is really difficult process and takes a lot of like continually coming back and learning to really forgive yourself over and over again. But it really bears fruit at least it has for me and for a lot of the people that I know. MU: You bring up a very good point because when I think about how I say this in my head and I know a lot of people do because there is more focus around your whole health and wellness. Today the people that do say I should meditate and I want to meditate more but because I believe we are pretty goal focused people in terms of tangibility—what can we say we've done and see that we've accomplished. Mindfulness isn't something you can really see and check off the list. And so people that maybe meditating regularly is a goal or mindfulness is a goal that almost flips it on its head, like how do you accomplish that versus even how do you use that to accomplish your goals? And so in your experience what are the things that people get tripped up on or where can people practice and sort of start to feel the success? And I'm sure it's different for everybody. So that's a hard question YS:  But it's a really good question and a fair question because we're wired to want to see the fruits of our action. It makes perfect sense. And so I think that the where people get tripped up, it is different for everybody but I think it seems to fall into two main categories. One is the logistics of it, the feeling like I have no time when am I going to do this. And that is really a question of how can you build it into your schedule and into your life that will make sense and that will fit as much as you can into your day. So for instance when I had lapsed on my meditation my regular meditation for a while I said to myself, okay where can I put it, actually physically put it into my calendar as if it was a meeting so that it would pop up and I had to go, and it is isn't meeting it's like a meeting with me and the world that is my time to say hello to myself and to open up to the world. And so first I started there. Then I asked myself, what can I do to make that time the most easy. So I place my meditation cushion in exactly the place where I needed it to be every day at that morning for meditation the night before. And I would get my slippers next to the bed, so all I had to do was put my feet in there and walk over to try to make the situation as easy as possible to make this thing happen and then I had to write out and articulate for myself, why do I think this is important? So that I can hold that really close because those times when it was I was so tired or just felt like there’s a million other things I could be doing. I had to look at that and say I believe this is important because it leads to greater wellbeing and greater happiness in general. I know that is true and therefore I'm going to go do it. So I sort of had to do this a lot of this work and that's what I really recommend doing, just to logistically build it into your schedule and build a habit out of it. Then the other place where I think people including myself get tripped up or resist meditating is that it feel I want to say hard. But the reason why it feels hard is often because the voice that comes up in our minds when we're trying to pay attention to our breath or pay attention to our emotions and we, our minds wander away which they naturally do. The kind of judgmental and cruel voice that comes in can be really really harsh and can say like you're failing you're not good at this, you're not a good meditator. Fill in the blank of how your own critical voice sounds. You know you'll always fail at everything whatever it is. And that for a long time prevented me—I just couldn't handle it because I could only stay present for let's say a few seconds out of an hourlong meditation and then I just felt like such a failure afterwards. And not only do I feel like a failure, I felt like I had to sit with this voice that was like yelling at me about it and I just didn't want to do it anymore. And so from that side I think really trying to redefine meditation that it is not about clearing away your thoughts and it's not about going, you know, staying focused on your breath which is a nearly impossible task to do because we're not in charge of our minds our minds wander. And so instead of that, to really redefined meditation as it is this process of the mind wandering away and us waking up to look at the contents of our mind. Oh it's interesting. I'm thinking a lot about you know this thing I'm planning I must care a lot about that. OK that's what I'm thinking about coming back. I’m thinking about what that person said to me and I'm really hurt by it. Come back and feel the hurt. You know whatever it is that you're thinking about, these are not, your thoughts are not the enemy. It’s a matter of continually bringing your attention back now and that’s the practice. Going away and coming back going away and coming back and really strengthening that muscle of being with what is there, what’s there in the present. So those are sort of my two big tips. There's a lot more in the book to help surmount a lot of the obstacles because I'm telling you I was never like a star meditator. I've never gotten to a place where my mind is completely cleared and so I try to write the book from that place from the place like fidgety anxiety difficult stress place and still sitting through it. MU: I like hearing the exercise of it being like a muscle to exercise because I can relate to, the more pushups I do the stronger my arms get. And then I have to take the time to get through some of the the bad workouts to get to some of the more fruitful ones. YS: Exactly. And I think it's sort of we've sort of done a disservice in the public way of talking about meditation as just this like really relaxing activity. It can be relaxing but in my experience it can also be extremely agitating and just understanding that the same way the gym does not always feel good when you're doing it, sometimes meditation can really be difficult and agitating and just really believing, same thing with therapy that that going through this process will bring more healing more love more connection. MY: Yes absolutely. So one last question I guess then it's even though we talk about holding goals with a loose hand if you're looking ahead after the launch of your book or beyond that, what do you have in your mind that you'd like to go after? YS: Well my next baby is due in March. So I think from now till March I kind of have a shorter term goal of working hard to try and get the book out there and to let people know about it and to talk about it and write about it so that it can get out there and help as many people as possible and sort of has its own life and after March I think I'm setting my goals on just like keeping the kids alive just keeping myself and my husband like as sane as possible in this crazy crazy process. And beyond that, I’m not really sure. I’m kind of I'm waiting to see him opening up to what feels like the right next step the right next project to be working on. But I'm not really sure yet. So have to stay tuned for that. MU: Well we will be looking forward to hearing what you do next. And people can buy What Now: Meditation for your 20s and beyond, starting now. YS: Yeah, it’s out there, it’s on Amazon it's anywhere your books are sold. So definitely check it out. MU: Awesome thank you so much Yael for joining me and for talking about meditation in a very accessible way. It's been it's been a treat. YS: Thank you so much, thanks for having me. CK: This podcast is produced by me Cindy Kuzma and it's another thing that's better with friends. So please share it with yours. You can subscribe where ever you get your podcasts. And if you get a chance leave us a rating or a view on Apple podcast we would be so grateful. Special thanks to J. Mano for our theme music; to our guest this week, Yael Shy; and to Tech Nexus for the recording studio.

Oprah herself may be mulling a bid for the presidency—but if you’re looking for the next Oprah, look no further than this week’s episode of #WeGotGoals. Taylor Rooks is only 25, but she’s already a sports journalist and anchor in the number-one market in the country. She has her own podcast, Time Out with Taylor Rooks, where she’s interviewed the likes of Kevin Durant, John Wall, and Snoop Dogg. And she knows what she wants for the future—a talk show on which she’d have real conversations in the style of Ms. Winfrey or of Barbara Walters. “I always think of Barbara Walters’ Whitney Houston interview. The way she spoke to her and the way that Whitney opened up … you leave that thinking, whatever you think of Whitney, you felt like you understood it more,” she told me. “I wish to one day be able to do something like that.” If her past performance is any indicator, Rooks will go for that goal with full gusto. She set her sights on sports journalism early and spent her college years at the University of Illinois working hard, breaking stories for scout.com and reporting from the sidelines for the CBS Sports Network. That hustle allowed her to achieve the big goal she talks about on the episode—landing her first job out of school at a network rather than a local TV station. “We do this thing where people kind of say, OK, this is the track you're supposed to go on. You do this. You start local. And then you eventually work your way up,” she says. “But I think that by telling people that, you’re almost conditioning them to think that that’s the only way.” She saw a different path, and followed it, landing a gig as an on­air host, reporter, and correspondent for the Big Ten Network immediately after graduating. She has nothing but positive words about her experience there—“I would have been content if it was my last job,” she says. But when an opportunity came up a little over a year ago at SportsNet New York, she realized she couldn’t pass it up. “A really good friend of mine said, OK, this isn’t about ego or money, which place will make you better in two years? And I knew it was SNY. I kind of try to think that about everything,” she says. She told herself: “You have to do those things that make you uncomfortable and put you in uncomfortable situations to reach that ultimate goal of having a talk show and being able to have those long conversations.” All this takes major confidence, something Rooks has in abundance. Her family—which includes accomplished athletes like a pro-baseball-playing uncle and a father, Thomas, who was a top rushing leader for the Fighting Illini—instilled it in her from a young age. And she continues to foster it by owning up to both her strengths and her weaknesses, and always doing whatever she can to improve her skills. For instance, she loves basketball and football most, but has been learning baseball to cover the Mets and Yankees. She spends her downtime watching SportsCenter or TedTalks instead of, say, reality shows. And while she uses social media to connect, she knows not to let either the praise or the criticism she hears there creep into her psyche. Instead, she relies on feedback from people she truly trusts, and never forgets how she’s gotten where she is today. “You have to believe that you’re here because you're supposed to be,” she says. “You don’t really luck your way into successes or luck your way into positions. It may help get you there but it's not going to keep you there. And it’s just kind of reminding yourself, you belong there and no one can take that away.” By the way, she wants YOU to feel this confidence, too. “I think I know what every single human can accomplish—I know that we all have this limitless potential. Every single person can be what they want to be. I truly believe that,” she says. Listen to the episode of #WeGotGoals and you’ll finish feeling like you just got a pep talk from your kindest, smartest bestie. And if you like what you hear, be sure to rate it and leave a review (then hop on over to listen to her show).   --- JAC: Welcome to #WeGotGoals, a podcast by aSweatLife.com on which we talk to high achievers about their goals. I'm Jeana Anderson Cohen; with me, I have Cindy Kuzma and Maggie Umberger. MU: Good morning Jeana. JAC: Good morning Maggie. CK: Good morning Jeana. JAC: And, good morning Cindy. This week you interviewed Taylor Rooks right? CK: I did. Taylor Rooks is a sports journalist. She was based here in the Midwest and she recently moved to New York and she's been able to accomplish quite an impressive list of things at a relatively young age and it was fascinating to hear how she did it. MU: She talked about—she told you about how she did the legwork to find out what her strength and her weaknesses are at a really young age so that she can have time to work with those. Can you talk a little bit about that process for her? CK: Yeah I mean she's always known that she's been really good with people. And so she identified that from an early age as a strength. And so she tries to put herself in positions where she capitalizes on that. But she also thinks that it's really important to have self awareness of your weaknesses and so she thinks that a lot of people maybe are kind of afraid to admit to a weakness because it will mean failure or it might mean you have to do something to change it. But she sees it as one of her—I don't know actually if she sees it this way but I see one of her strength as the ability to recognize her weaknesses and see them as opportunities versus obstacles JAC: And that sort of points to something too, her confidence. She's overwhelmingly confident. Did you get that sense from her? CK: I did it sort of exudes from her. She says that her parents told her from a young age that she could do anything and she believed them. And I think I've heard that from from someone else before that you think Jeana has said that before too JAC: Once or twice. CK: And she continues to sort of remind herself and this was something that really resonated with me too. You know as you kind of go through your life and your career it's easy to second guess yourself or doubt yourself or get a little bit of imposter syndrome. But she tries to constantly remind herself that she is where she is for a reason that she wouldn't be doing her job if she weren't good at it. That luck can maybe bring you an opportunity but it's a reflection of your good work and your hard work that you are continuing to have success. JAC: Big snaps to that end her future goal is really big. Can you talk about that? CK: Yeah she wants to have her very own talk show a la Oprah and I don't know. I think she just might be able to do it. MU: All right. Here is Cindy with Taylor. CK: This is Cindy Kuzma and I am here with Taylor Rooks, sports journalist anchor reporter. Taylor thank you so much for joining us on the podcast. TR: Thank you for having me. I'm excited to be here. CK: So Taylor You have been pretty incredibly accomplished from a young age. I mean I know as an undergrad at the University of Illinois you were breaking big stories about recruiting for scout.com, by 19 you were on the sidelines for the CBS Sports Network and now you're 25 and covering sports in the number one market in the country there at SportsNet New York. I mean would you say you were kind of a fairly goal oriented and driven person from a young age? TR : Yeah I mean I definitely have always set my mind to something and then said that I was going to do it. I think it's very important to have your eyes set on something and lock into that thing. I don't think that it's possible to really accomplish something if you aren't fully dedicated to it. So I think it's just kind of having even sort of a kind of a vision board in your head of the things that you want to do and how you want to accomplish them and then trying to stick to that path and not stray from it. And I think that I've always had in my head what I wanted my future to look like. And the steps that I felt were necessary for that future to kind of manifest itself. CK: That's really impressive because I feel like there are so many of us who spend some of those years that you've been focused on accomplishing all these goals. I'm trying to figure all that out. TR: So yeah I mean there is definitely a time where you're still figuring out you know OK how am I gonna do this? Do I want to do this? Can I do this? And I think that's kind of the blessing of being young is figuring out the things that you're really good at but then also figuring out the things that you're really bad at. And I think sometimes people are scared to find out the things that they aren’t very good at because that maybe means you have to tweak something in that journey or tweak one of those goals. But I think that the end product is that much better if you know your strengths and you also know your weaknesses because I think that that's just as important. CK: That's really interesting. What have you found to be your biggest strengths and maybe a weakness that you identified that you've worked on? TR: Yeah I mean I would say my biggest strength is people. I mean I think that I'm just genuinely a people person. I love talking to people, I love getting to know people and understanding why people work the way they work. I enjoy having conversations. I don't think that people have enough conversations these days. Everything is quick and high and by and people only ask about how you're doing so you can ask them how they’re doing, you know? But I think that that is something that's always been my strength is just really I think that I'm just a warm person in general and I've tried to harness that whether it's me interviewing me, hosting I always want that to come across whether it's in my podcast whether it's me on TV that's something that I always want to translate to people and I think that you know one of the many weaknesses that I've realized that I have is, it's very hard for me to be content with where I am. I'm always thinking ok like what's next what's next. And it's hard for me to appreciate that moment in time and learning from that moment and being in that moment because I'm always just looking forward to the next thing. And that's something that I really really had to work on is you know just embracing the time that you're in in the space that you're in and becoming better in that space that you're in. Sometimes you can kind of think that the place that you're in is a waste because you're just thinking about the next thing but every kind of moment, every experience is something that's really really vital to the next thing. And I also think that a weakness that I had that I really worked on is making sure that I spend all my time or at least all my downtime I becoming better at the things that I need to get to get better at. Like for example I love TV. I still love TV. I'm always going to watch TV but I think that at times I would I would be wasting time watching things that weren't going to better me. You know if a show was on that I just enjoyed watching but also like a SportsCenter was on and I could watch the way that Cari Champion hosts or I could watch the way that Scott Van Pelt hosts to me that's a priority. So I would want to watch that and then watch the thing that maybe just gave me some joy at a time that there wasn't something more beneficial on for me if that makes sense. And always just trying to soak in knowledge like I tried to turn off the TV at least by midnight and read a book until I go to sleep, just to kind of soak in knowledge that way. Every morning when I wake up I watch a TED talk just because it kind of puts me in a good space for the day just because time is so fleeting and you just kind of have to spend it whatever way you can just trying to be better and trying to learn more because there's just so much to learn. So I definitely had to get better at time management for sure. CK: I love both of those. I think that those things that you mention has weaknesses are sort of like parts of the human condition that we all struggle with. I know being mindful and appreciating the moment are things that are hard for a lot of people. So what are some practical ways that you cultivated that or worked on that? TR: I really think it was a symbol as just like slowing down. I think I’m—I move so quickly my mind moved so quickly that I don't just stay in the moment of what's what's happening, it's just like really taking time sometimes to just reflect looking around you and just saying OK it's really amazing that this is what I'm doing right now and I need to appreciate this, I need to soak in the things that I can. It's seriously as simple as just stopping and taking it in. But then also realizing, I remember write once so quote that it wishes. It basically said that you have to let the space between where you are and where you want to be inspire you. And so I let like this kind of middle part more so drive me to the next part more than I let it discourage me that I'm not at the next part so I get to just kind of changing your perspective on your day to day. And I think that that that certainly helped me. CK: Such a simple mindset shift but I can see how that would be really powerful. TR: Yeah, definitely. CK: So we touched on some of the pretty amazing things you’ve already accomplished. But I mentioned to you before that there are two big questions that we ask people on the #WeGotGoals podcast and the first one is what is a big goal that you've achieved, why was it important to you and how did you get there? So out of all those things that you've accomplished, what would you highlight? TR: I would say the big goal, mostly just because it was a goal of mine since like freshman year of college was, I wanted my first job to be at a network. It was so important to me that I worked hard in college to make my first job something that I loved, something I would feel fulfilled doing and mostly because I didn't want to limit myself. I think that we do this thing where people kind of say OK this is the track you're supposed to go on. You do this. You start local. And then you eventually work your way up. But I think that by telling people that you're almost conditioning them to think that that's the only way and it is important to me to not put myself in that box just because you know starting local or starting in a certain market is the norm, I never wanted to feel like that was necessary. I wanted to be able to be working in college to be able to show something when I graduated and say I spent these four years basically like I was working at a local station. I was breaking stories I was covering stories I was doing actual journalism my four years in school and I did that so that I had something to show for it once I graduated. It wasn't even just about being at a network it was about not allowing myself to be put into that box or not making myself feel like I had to take a certain path because I wanted this to be about me. I didn't want to have to follow what anyone else did or feel like I had to do something that I just truly didn't want to do. It's like I always tell people, like, everyone has to one-man-band. I totally get that. But I genuinely did not want to do that. I was like you know what I am not going to be able to carry this camera, do my live shot, edit my stuff. I want to be good enough that I don't have to do that. And even that some of it is just like OK not wanting to you know I have to do that work. I totally get it. But it was just something that I I knew I wanted to be able to skip to get to a different destination. And so I decided to work really hard to be able to to go to that next level you know I did a lot of that one-man-banding while I was in school. I wanted to learn those lessons, I wanted to make those mistakes. But yeah I just think my goal was to make my first job something that that I mean I would have been content if it was my last job. I mean Big 10 Network I'd be content if I was there right now but it was very very important to me. CK: How do you think you got the confidence to know that that could be a possibility for you? TR: I think the genuine answer is that I don't know. I have just always felt like I'm a person who really thinks that if you want to do something it can happen. And probably, I probably think that too much you know. Like I I think that I know what every single human can accomplish. Like I know that we all have this just like limitless potential like every single person can be what they want to be. I truly believe that. I tried to tell all my friends everyone I know that whatever it is you want to be you can be that. And I think I've just always believed that and because I've always felt that there’s just never really been like a doubt that I could do it or that anybody could do it. It's just I think that the thing that scares people sometimes is just like starting or just like putting your all into the thing that you want to do because putting your all into it, that means that you know if it doesn't happen you may be upset and you know if you put your all into it you may be disappointed or frustrated but you're going to be much more disappointed or frustrated if you never take that step. And I just always I think kind of think that just the limits to what we can all accomplish— there are no limits. And I just, I want everyone to just like tap into that potential and fight for whatever it is they want to do and try to accomplish that goal. And I just I don't know. I just think I've always felt that I've always been really confident in that belief. I think that the limits to what we can all accomplish—there are no limits. I want everyone to tap into that potential and fight for whatever it is they want to do and try to accomplish that goal. CK: So I'm inspired just hearing you talk about it. That's awesome. CK: I did wonder too. You've always had sports around you. I know your mom is a huge sports fan and you also have some pro athletes in your family your dad Thomas Rooks is a fantastic football player for the University of Illinois. And your Uncle Lou Brock was a major league baseball player in fact a Hall of Famer for the St. Louis Cardinals. So do you think being around people who worked really hard and achieved pretty incredible things played a role in that belief that you have? TR: Yeah I mean that's not even just because you know they played baseball or played football. It's because of the things they would tell me. Growing up literally every day, my dad would say, you can be whatever you want to be if you put your mind to it. So I've always felt that way. I hear stories from my uncle Lou just about hard work. Just about the trials and tribulations that he had to go through and that's something that sticks with you because you're surrounded by people that not only tell you but they also did it. Words hold a little more weight when there is also you know action behind or just like an actual experience behind it. So I just never thought a meeting was off limits. Everyone in my family I think worked extremely hard and they try to instill that hardworking mentality into me and my sister. Sol my sister is like she wants to be the president you know. But she says it and she really means it. And that's really what she wants to be one day. I don't think that I will hear anybody tell me a goal and I'm like, whoa that's a hefty goal. I'm like no, well, you have to say that you have to believe that for it to be a thing. You know you're not going to be the president if you don't say hey I want to be the president. It's like when people ask athletes hey do you think that if you played LeBron one on one would you win?  Why would they say no? You know, you're supposed to believe in yourself and have like a very strong conviction and your beliefs and your abilities. You're supposed to think that that's what you can do eventually that's what you can do one day and if you don't have a full conviction in that, then the likelihood of you being able to do it is going to be a lot less. I think you have to be like your biggest advocate, your biggest supporter and just really think that you can get there. CK: So how do you kind of maintain that when you do face obstacles or reason you faced people who are not your biggest advocates. How do you take those steps to maintain that confidence? TR: I think that that is actually something I struggled with as well especially in college maybe my first year out of school is you want people to think you're doing a good job. I think that's just a natural human desire. You want people to think you're doing a good job you want people to tell you you're doing a good job. You want everyone to you know enjoy watching you or enjoy listening to you or whatever it may be. And I think for a while I started to find like my fulfillment or my happiness in feeling like other people enjoyed listening to me or watching me. But I think the flipside to that is if somebody doesn't enjoy it or like it it kind of brings you down a lot more because if you're living for like the praise you're also going to live for the criticism as well. So I just kind of had to unplug from that and say you know it doesn't like this doesn't matter. You have to be content with your product—you know your producers your friends your family, people that matter and that are gonna be honest with you, that's who you have to really really do this for and not let somebody who doesn't believe in you or doesn't like you bring you down. Because you know they don't understand they don't truly know you. So that is definitely something that that I struggled with. But now it's just, I really don't pay it any mind I think that comes with time especially like you said being a woman in this field there's always literally always going to be somebody that has something to say and if you pay attention to all that if you give it any mind it will wear you down. It will break you down you just like you have to be happy with what you're doing and you just have to feel fulfilled kind of on your own, if that makes sense. CK: It does and I always wonder how people in a position like yours handle social media. I know you must get positive reinforcement of course but also just—the world is just crazy out there with some of that stuff. And how how, like, on a practical level do you deal with that? TR: I just I don't read the comments. Don’t read comments. Don't become too invested in it. That's the thing, social media is both the best invention and the worst invention it brings out the best in people and it really brings out the worst in people as well. And you can't let it become too much of your world. And I think right now a lot of us do, including me like like I said there was a time it really either made me or broke me that day. But it’s just letting social media be social media. Like it's not real life the people on there aren’t real life the things you see on there aren’t real life. It's just— you have to let it be what it is as hard as that is. You just have to be that way and half of the people that maybe say mean things to you would never say that to you or act that way if they saw you in real life. It's just kind of the allure of the keyboard and the screen and who you can be when you're behind them both. So you just have to kind of remind yourself of that. And I think also you have to believe that you're here because you're supposed to be. And that's something that a lot of people struggle with like no matter what your job is you know whether you're a teacher or a doctor or a salesperson a journalist whatever it is you're in that room because you belong in that room. And so it's not second guessing yourself. You're there for a reason and you can't allow the words of other people to second guess your strengths and why you're there and where you've been and how good you've done like that’s—you don't really luck your way into successes or you know you don't like luck your way into positions it may help you know how they say I may get you there but it's not going to keep you there. And it's just kind of reminding yourself, like, you belong there and no one can can take that away. CK: Right. I knew so many of us do struggle with that imposter syndrome and that way of reinforcing your own belief in yourself. Seems like it would be really helpful. So Taylor I know too because you and I have talked before. And just from what I've read about you that you have some deeper motivations in your work whether it's having these really authentic conversations on your podcast or just being the voice of a black woman who has different experiences than some of your colleagues and making sure that you are that voice in the room when you're talking about cultural or political issues in sports. So does connecting with some of those deeper motivations also helps you get through some of those tough challenges? TR: Oh definitely. Yeah because you know I I feel like I have a responsibility. I think that it's so important to have black voices and to have female voi

In 2004, then-18-year-old sprinter Allyson Felix went to the Athens Olympics aiming to win gold in the 200-meter dash—and took silver to Jamaica’s Veronica Campbell. In Beijing in 2008, the two lined up for a rematch, with the same result. But Felix never took her eyes off the ultimate target, an individual gold medal in the 200 meters. In 2012, she finally achieved it. Of all her accomplishments—her eight other Olympic medals (including five other golds), her 11 World Championship victories—that one holds the most meaning, she told me on this week’s episode of #WeGotGoals. “It was eight years of being dedicated and sacrificing and having doubts—you know, is this ever going to come together?” she said. “So being able to accomplish that goal represented so much for myself, and also all the people who supported me.” Few mortals can even fathom the type of success Felix has seen in her sport. How is it even possible, I asked her, to work toward goals that are so audacious, so otherworldly? Her answer: one day, one hour, one track session at a time. “Whether that looks like getting through a workout in certain times for a specific day or even to the sense of, I want to do something that takes me out of my comfort zone, I want to try a different event, something I’m not as comfortable with—those are all smaller goals that help me reach some of the bigger ones that can feel just a little harder to achieve,” she says. It’s a mindset that’s obviously paid off, making her one of the most decorated athletes in track and field history. Along the way, she’s faced setbacks and obstacles, including those early Olympic defeats and a serious hamstring injury in 2013. “I don’t think I ever really get over those moments,” she says. “But they’re always fuel. They’ve taught me so much.” Felix also finds energy and inspiration in aiding others—especially children—in achieving their goals. She spoke with me on the phone from Abu Dhabi, where she was working to help athletes with intellectual disabilities prepare for sprint events in the upcoming Special Olympics World Summer Games, to be held there in 2019. “To me, this kind of work is just so meaningful. It truly changes lives. And so to be able to be a part of that, to see people reach their individual goals—it’s a different type of rewarding,” she said. After all the hardware she’s earned over her 15-year career, Felix isn’t anywhere close to hanging up her track spikes. She’s still looking to compete at the World Championships in 2019 and even to earn a spot on her fifth Olympic team at the 2020 Summer Games in Tokyo. Getting there will require just the right balance of hard work and recovery to keep her body healthy, a line that shifts along with her physiology as she ages. She knows the barriers will be significant—but that’s exactly why she keeps at it. “I love to challenge myself, I love to do something that doesn't come easy,” she said. “I'm looking forward to the whole process and journey.” You can follow that journey—along with Felix's work with organizations like Special Olympics—on Twitter and Instagram. ---   Show transcription: JAC: Welcome to #WeGotGoals, a podcast by aSweatLife.com on which we talk to high achievers about their goals. I'm Jeana Anderson Cohen, and with me I have Kristin Geil and Cindy Kuzma. KG: Good morning Jeana. JAC: Good morning. Cindy you talked to Allyson Felix this week right. CK: I did. Oh my gosh it was such an honor to speak with her and I apologize for the quality of the audio. She was on a cell phone. But what a treat to talk to this multiple gold medalist, Olympian, and World Champion. She's had an incredible career as a sprinter, and I was so glad to speak with her about her goals. KG: Well, what kind of goals is she working on right now? CK: She is still—believe it or not her first Olympics was in 2004—and she still has her sights set on the Tokyo Olympics in 2020. So if you do the math there, that is incredible. She’s also taking a long term view thinking beyond her career as an athlete. And some of the work that she’s doing right now she was in Abu Dhabi to work with the Special Olympics and really doing a lot of work to help children people with intellectual disabilities and others get a lot out of participating in sports as well, and so that is something that she is working on in the long term too. JAC: Recovery is really important to her. How does she balance the hard work she has to do to achieve these big physical goals with getting rest and recovery? CK: Yes she made a point of talking about recovery and rest and how essential it is to have that balance as a high level athlete. She builds in a couple of weeks of rest  after every season. She makes sure that after a competition she gets enough rest. And really every day she has to balance the work that she needs to do with the recovery that her body needs. And she notes that that equation has kind of changed as time has passed too, that the older you get the more you remember the harder work outs you did when you were younger and you think you have to do those you get the same results. But that equation just changes your body changes your physiology changes. And she's really conscious about maintaining the right balance as she continues into the later stages of her career. KG: When you were training for any big goal but you know especially something like the 2020 Olympics that seems so massive and so high up on the mountain top that taking the first step could be really daunting or you wouldn't even know where to start. So how does Allyson Felix balance those huge goals with smaller more tangible ways to break it up? CK: Yes she definitely breaks everything down year by year month by month day by day workout by workout she's focused on what she has to do that day. When she gets out of bed in the morning she thinks about that and I'm sure she keeps her sights set on those big huge goals too. But she really also makes sure that she has a clear focus on the steps along the way to get there and those process goals I think can be really served her well obviously in the long run. JAC: And here is Cindy with Allyson. CK: Well Allyson thank you so so much for joining me today. Now you Allyson Felix have 25 medals in total, nine Olympic medals six of them gold 16 World Championship medals 11 of them gold. If I got any of that wrong feel free to correct me, I think I counted right. AF: It’s all good. CK: On #WeGotGoals we typically ask people about a major goal they've achieved and how they got there. But those kinds of goals are just so so out of this world. I mean how do you even approach massive goals like those and how do you do it in a way that’s helped you sustain a successful career for so long? AF: Well, I think that for me it's really helpful to break a goal down. Because even for myself you know when I think about the things that I want to accomplish I’ve always been someone who set my goals really high. But I think at times you know, you can set a goal and it can just seem a bit overwhelming. And so that, I have noticed that in my career and so I've always tried to kind of work backwards and think about you know how am I going to accomplish this? What does that look like? How can I break that goal down into what I need to do each month or each week all the way down to something, a week, or even setting a daily goal. And so that's always helps big goals to seem more manageable and just more of a reality. So that's something that I’ve done over the years to help me get through. So whether that look like getting through a workout in certain times for a specific day or even to the sense of,  I want to do something that takes me out of my comfort zone. I want to try a different event, something that I'm not as comfortable with. Those are all smaller goals that help me reach some of the bigger ones that can feel just a little harder to achieve. CK: Oh, that makes so much sense and I feel like a lot of times when I’ve talk to accomplished athletes I feel like they do, they have process goals like that that take them to those bigger goals. When you think back over all that I mean can you pinpoint one accomplishment that’s been the most meaningful to you? Or do they all have their own special meaning? AF: I think they definitely all have different meanings, different parts of the journey and different times in life but one that immediately comes to my mind is within my first individual gold medal at the Olympics. And that happened for me in 2012. But before that it was actually at my third Olympics. I had been to two games prior and had gotten silver medals to the same person and so to me, accomplishing that goal really just meant a lot because it was eight years being dedicated and sacrificing and having doubts, you know, is this ever going to come together? So being able to accomplish that goal represented so much for myself and also all the people who supported me, you know. All the people who were on my team and who helped me to get to that moment. It's just, it was such a group effort as well. So that's one that sticks out in my mind as being a huge accomplishment. CK: You mentioned the support of your team and also some of the challenges that you faced. Right. I know you've you've had injuries you've had defeats, but obviously those haven't stood in the way of your incredible success. How do you overcome those to stay confident in your abilities and focused on the bigger picture? I’m guessing your support system plays a role in that, but what else would you say about how you overcome obstacles in that way? AF: Yeah for sure. I mean I think there's no easy way around it. Sometimes you’re just in a tough situation and it's just difficult and it just can take some time. I think taking a break always helps, refreshing my mind. After each season I try to take a good six weeks away from the track, and so when I've dealt with—whether it's not achieving goals, dealing with disappointment and failure—I’ve always tried to just take a lesson away from it. You know, learn something, give my mind a break, give my body a break, so that I can come back to it refreshed. And that’s always helped when I've had you know whether it's a devastating injury or a devastating loss, you know sometimes you just need time to process that. I don’t think I ever really get over those moments, but they’re always fuel. They’ve taught me so much.  I can look back on some of the worst losses that I've had and the biggest moments of my career. And I can be thankful for them because through them I have learned the most about myself, about character and integrity and doing things the right way, that I feel like in the end have allowed me to see success later on. CK: So it's almost like they weren't necessarily setbacks but maybe sort of like essential fact in their eventual journey forward. AF: For sure. You know it's hard to realize that in the moment you know, I think that’s for anyone in the midst of you know the trenches of going through something. It's hard to have the vision to be able to see past that. But I think you know a lot of times it can be necessary. CK: Well, I know your trip right now is on behalf of Play Unified and Special Olympics, which create opportunities for individuals with intellectual disabilities and that you've also done some work in the Middle East with Right to Play which helps children facing adversity. So I wondered if you could tell me a little bit about why it's important to you to help other athletes especially those who are facing some significant obstacles in their way to achieve their goals? AF: Yeah to me, it’s—I really love to do things I’m passionate about and sport has really just changed my life, it’s given me so many opportunities. And so for me it's a privilege to get involved with some of these different organizations that are close to my heart. And as you mentioned Special Olympics is one of them and it’s the reason that I'm here and I'm really excited that Abu Dhabi is going to be the host in 2019 of these World Games. And I think the biggest reason is just the lasting legacy that I feel it will have on this part of the world. I think it's just such a movement and we're talking about really changing perception of people with intellectual disabilities and giving them and their families a sense of pride. I think a lot of times these individuals are in a sense hidden here. And these games are really changing that and allowing just greater inclusion. And so it's a cause that is really close to my heart and I'm just excited that I think that this will have a huge impact on the world. CK: Well that's a huge goal. And I mean it must be really rewarding to work with people who are sort of reaching their individual goals and in pursuit of that really big goal. Do you kind of see that—you see like that individual involvement in sports helping these people achieve other goals in their lives too and then having that bigger impact? AF: For sure. To me, it's like, it's really, I love what I do. I love to be able to compete and you konw know something I'm passionate about. But to me, this kind of work is just so meaningful. It truly changes lives. And so to be able to be a part of that, and as you mentioned see people reach their individual goals—it’s a different type of rewarding. And you know we were able to see it up close and the impact not only on one individual but their family and in a sense a whole culture of people is very very special. CK: Now there is a small element of competition for you here too, right? Or a challenge, at least from Kobe Bryant? Is that is that how some of this came about? AF: Yes this specific trip—yes it did. I had been involved with Special Olympics before. But yes he did challenge me to specifically coach some Special Olympic athletes in my expertise area of sprinting so we were able to make that happen yesterday. We held a clinic and got to do some really cool work so have to accept the challenge. CK: In your athletic career—I know 2018 isn't on championship year and your next major event then might be the World Championship in 2019 right. AF: Yes correct. CK: That's a goal that's a little bit farther away. So how will you be motivated and focused to work toward it? AF: Yeah can be it can be challenging because you know sometimes those goals that are further away it's harder to be in touch with them. It feels like you have time, and it can be a little more challenging. So for me you know again going back to breaking those goals down and that each year, each season is really a stepping stone to the ultimate goals. Like you said the 2019 World Championships or even the 2020 Olympic Games. So I really do look at it as that. I look at it as an opportunity for me to work on some of the smaller things, some technical things as well to give my body a little break of just the intensity of year after year of the championships. Especially now, I’m getting older and being in the 15th season of my career. It's an opportunity to get training and compete smarter and focus on quality over quantity has been another goal that as an athlete can be challenging but that this year is helpful to do that. CK: Yeah, that was another question I had for you too, whether that sort of equation of balancing hard work and rest has changed a little bit and your career has progressed and it sounds like it has and you're always fine-tuning that. AF: It is. It's probably one of the hardest things, though, as an athlete. And I think you know just competitive people in general. You know you have this idea of you know, the more work you do, the harder the work is, the more progress you’ll see. And you know as time goes on you learn that that's not always the case. You have to definitely get wiser with the work that you do, and get creative. Recovery is important. And there’s all these other aspects.  It can be challenging because you know it's not the way you traditionally think but it is very beneficial getting that part of the game right. CK: So you mentioned Tokyo 2020, and we certainly hope we’ll see you there! Besides this sort of balance that we've talked about you know what do you think will be the most important—how are you aiming to achieve that big goal and what do you think will be most important in getting you there? AF: Yeah I mean it's definitely a big one. I mean, it would be my fifth Olympic team. So for me it would be a drea come true. But there’s definitely challenges in the the way. I think the biggest thing is staying healthy, taking care of my body and just making sure all those things are in line. And just staying you know as competitive as I can, you know, training wise and so I think it’ll be kind of a combination of all those things. But I'm really excited. I love to challenge myself, I love to do something you know that doesn't come easy and so I'm looking forward to the whole process and journey. CK: And then I'm curious to you know even if that happens then they'll still be a time in the next phase for you right, a career beyond sport, or in sport in a different way. Do you have in mind goals right now for that future or is that something that you will think about more when you when you're when you're getting there? AF: Yeah definitely been thinking about it of course and just really wanting to do things I'm passionate about and so you to kind of do more of the work that I've been doing with organizations like Special Olympics, like Right to Play. I have a passion for children and so I want to definitely work with kids in some capacity and so yeah, right now kind of get together what that will specifically look like. But definitely it's on my mind and thinking about you know the transition to the next journey, during the next phase of my career. CK: Allyson, I can't thank you enough for talking with me today. Really appreciate it and I know we're about out of time. Before I let you go how can people follow your training and all of your important work with organizations like the Special Olympics? AF: Oh sure! Well, it’s been great to talk to you. You can definitely follow me on social media. On Twitter I'm just allysonfelix and on Instagram I’m af85. And so yeah I'll definitely be keeping everyone posted with all the things that I'm up to. CK: Excellent, wonderful—well, we look forward to keeping up with you, not that we could really keep up with you. But following along. Thank you so much. AF: Thank you, take care.   CK: This podcast was produced by me, Cindy Kuzma, and it’s another thing that's better with friends. So please, share it with yours. You can subscribe wherever you get your podcasts and while you're at it please leave us a rating or review. Special thanks to J. Mano for the music; to our guest this week, Allyson Felix; and to Tech Nexus for the recording studio and technical support.

File this one under "things you don't want to hear while recording a podcast entitled #WeGotGoals": We've actually stopped using the word "goal" at The Junto Institute. "Cool, cool," I thought to myself, as I mentally face-palmed during my interview with Raman Chadha of The Junto Institute. "This is fine. Everything is fine." Chuckling a little at my dismay, Chadha went on to explain that his team had shifted towards using the word "priority" in place of goal. They'd found that their apprentices viewed goals as "far out in the distance," while priorities had a greater connotation of urgency, and gave their apprentices something to work on that very day. The language nerd in me sat with that thought for the rest of the day, debating the hidden meanings of goal versus priority, and how using one word over the other shifted your focus on a daily, weekly or annual basis. It's what I call a "fuzzy concept" - an idea that you can grasp, but that doesn't always have tangible, actionable deliverables attached to it. And fittingly, that's exactly what Raman Chadha specializes in every day. As the co-founder of The Junto Institute, a leadership revenue accelerator for growth stage companies, Chadha helps leaders and entrepreneurs improve their leadership skills and their companies' bottom lines by developing emotional intelligence skills, which they then apply to their companies for a higher probability of success. And as anyone who watched Nick Viall's season of The Bachelor knows, emotional intelligence is another fuzzy concept that's difficult to understand, let alone apply in a high-stress environment like a growth stage company. (FYI, Chadha and Junto define emotional intelligence as "the ability to recognize and regulate the emotions in ourselves and in others, and how we use that information/data to guide our thinking, actions and behaviors by progressing through self awareness, self management, social awareness and relationship management.) The Junto Institute is based on the belief that emotional intelligence is the single biggest contributor to leadership effectiveness and job performance - crucial factors for growth stage companies in the "sink or swim" phase of entrepreneurship. Chadha also highlighted two common traits of leaders that he's observed throughout his time working with entrepreneurs: tenacity and the ability to cope with ambiguity, uncertainty and chaos. "In entrepreneurship, there are more lows than there are highs," Chadha said. "So [you need] the ability to bounce back on a regular basis, the ability to power through a rough day." Similarly, since no two days of running a company are the same, you need to get comfortable with the unknown and operating without a fully-fleshed out path of how you'll get from Point A to Point B. For those of us not at the helm of a growing company, we can still develop emotional intelligence in our everyday lives. One specific way to do that: work on becoming increasingly aware of how you're feeling in as many moments as possible throughout the day. Try it right now: how are you feeling? Push yourself further than "fine," "tired," "happy" or any other generic adjectives; try using the most specific word you can find (need inspo? Check out this emotion wheel for ideas). By becoming uber-familiar with your own emotions and feelings, you develop self-awareness AND empathy for those around you (which in turn helps you become a more effective leader).   ---   Show transcription: JAC: Welcome to #WeGotGoals, a podcast by aSweatLife.com on which we talk to high achievers about their goals. I'm Jeana Anderson Cohen; with me I have Cindy Kuzma and Kristen Geil. KG: Hi Jeana. JAC: Good morning Kristen. You talked to Raman this week, right? KG: I spoke with Raman, who founded the Junto Institute, which is a really interesting company here in Chicago that helps growth stage startup companies and takes their leaders and their key employees and helps them develop their emotional intelligence skills through a sort of nine month cohort program. So it's really interesting because they're learning about their emotional intelligence, how it's important in the workplace, how to become better leaders and better read the emotions of other people—which is a very what I call a fuzzy goal right? It's much more of a process oriented goal. But he and his co-founder have found that in doing so they're really helping these companies with their outcome oriented goals, you know, increasing their bottom line and improving their profitability and lowering employee turnover. So I thought it was really interesting, the juxtaposition of the vagueness and sort of intangible quality that I think of emotional intelligence as and how it contrasts with the black and white numbers on a page. CK: And he had some really interesting insights about how this applies on a personal level too. Right. And I loved his tangible tip for squaring up with someone when you're listening to them. What else did you get out of that transition from what they do on a corporate level to how you can apply things like this to your personal life? KG: Yeah, one of the things Raman talked about that I love and like, need to apply more in my everyday life is just the practice of being self-aware, really being aware of how you're feeling in every moment. And he pointed to the use of something called an emotions wheel. Where, instead of just saying yeah I'm doing fine when someone asks how you are you can use this emotions we to actually point to a very specific adjective whether it's tense, surprised, excited. And that really helps you ground yourself in your emotions and in turn prompts the other person to be more empathetic which I think is great just being a little more in tune with your emotions through the power of language. He also talked about the skill of listening and how you can become a better listener and how important that is with leaders especially. And he gave some really tangible takeaways through just making eye contact putting down your device squaring your hips pointing your toes in your knees towards the person that you are paying attention to, all these small non-verbal cues that really signal to the person you're having a conversation with: You have my entire attention, I am focused on you. Let's go. JAC: And so these skills that he's teaching others and practicing himself haven't always been sort of a part of his life. He learned them along the way. Can you talk a little bit about that? KG: Yeah. One of the things that we talked about I asked about qualities and personality traits that are common in leaders. And he immediately pointed to tenacity and in a sense being comfortable being uncomfortable right? Being comfortable with that you might not know the exact outcome of a situation. And he said that these traits can be both inherent, he's seen them straight up and people. Or you can work to develop them over time and how that sometimes happens with certain sort of entrepreneurs. He pointed to himself—he said he didn't think that he had always been a tenacious personality but he learned it just by getting thrown in the fire over and over again and realizing, hey, this is a situation where I can't give up, I have to persevere. And in that way he was able to develop a certain personality trait which not everyone thinks is possible. CK: Well it was a fascinating conversation and I'm can't wait for everyone to hear it. So here is Kristin with Raman. KG: Welcome to #WeGotGoals. I'm Kristen Geil here with Raman of the Junto Institute. Hi Raman. RC:  Hi Kristen. KG: Raman, can you tell us a little bit about yourself and what the Junto Institute does and your role in it? RC: Well I'm a lifelong Chicagoan; went to college here at the University of Illinois, went to Kellogg for my MBA. I've spent my entire career in Chicago. I founded the Junto Institute in 2012 with my co-founder Catherine. The Junto Institute is a leadership and revenue accelerator for growth stage companies, and we believe that companies and their leaders can become infinitely better at who they are and what they do through developing skills that relate to emotional intelligence and business savvy and so we designed a program through which they can learn those and ultimately apply them to their companies for a higher probability of success. KG: On the #WeGotGoals podcast we start off by asking a couple big questions of every one of our guests. First one, and we'll start with thatm is what is a big goal that you've achieved in the past? And why was it so important to you and how did you get there? RC: Yeah that's a really interesting question. I don't know if I can say that I've had a big goal that I wanted to achieve but one thing that I'm very proud of recently is, my wife and I have two daughters 19 and 17. And about 20 years ago I remember sitting on the couch when we were expecting her first child. And I read a column that described the difference between career oriented families and family oriented families and asked my wife what she wanted us to have. And she said family oriented and I said, me as well. Didn't mean that we weren't going to have successful careers or want to have successful careers it was just which one were we going to choose over the other. And at the time I remember saying to her, we're only going to have 18 years to be parents but we have our whole lives to build, so to speak, a career. Most recently in the last year and a half our oldest has gone away to college. So she's you know becoming a young adult. Our youngest is a senior in high school. And to see what they have become as young ladies has been incredibly gratifying and fulfilling and more so because it was an outcome of us paying attention to being family oriented and devoting as much time as we could to being active parents with them, being in a position where we feel really good about where our kids are knowing that there's still obviously a long way for them to go. So that's as close as I can get to a big goal. KG: That's wonderful; I’m sure you guys have had so many strong family memories made because of those choices that you and your wife made. Can you think of any specific examples of when you knew that you were choosing your family over career? And do you have any plans for how that's going to change now that your youngest is almost out of the house and it's maybe time to shift towards that career focus again? RC: So again we've always been very career driven. Both of us went on to get our graduate degrees. We both have what we would like to think are successful professional careers, but we've been very mindful of the need to devote time to our kids and for us that has been the single biggest metric is, is not the amount of time just time in general. We don't believe there's such a thing as quality time we just believe there's time. And so it is little things such as even when there was a pressing issue at work at 5:30 or 6:00 knowing that we had to delay addressing the pressing thing because it was something else and need to be paying attention to and then holding each other accountable. My wife has traveled pretty regularly over the course of her career. So part of it is for me to let her know when there were times where it was important for her to devote time to the kids. But then also for her to ask me to hold her accountable too. So those are a couple of little examples. Maybe not you know very specific and concrete ones but kind of general practices that we followed. KG: It sounds like a true partnership. Right. Working with someone else to achieve those even if it wasn't outwardly an explicit goal. You know you were doing it for the best of your family. Of the things we were talking about before we actually started recording was the difference between process oriented goals and outcome oriented goals and I can see how putting the conscious choice to put your family first above your career is more of a process oriented outcome. You also work with Junto about developing emotional intelligence in business leaders. And that seems like a process oriented goal to me because it's a little more hazy, it’s a little more fuzzy not as tangible in terms of results but you're working with business leaders who care about the bottom line. How do you take such an intangible quality like emotional intelligence and deliver measurable results to those business leaders helping them to further their business? RC: Yeah that's a big question and a great question. It's not unlike how we take care of our health. Many of us have tangible metrics to measure our health, whether it's our weight or whether it's our body fat whether it's our heart rate that I think most of us know that it's going to take a process for us to get there. And that's what developing emotional intelligence and leadership is also about. That yes, do do these companies and their leaders want to be more profitable? Absolutely. Do they want to have lower turnover? Yes. Do they want to have more credentialed people coming to work for them? Certainly. But they recognize that there is so much work that has to be done in order for them to start seeing those types of outcomes and they recognize that it all begins with them as leaders. So they—it's not so much about what we do for them but more about their willingness to enter into an experience where they are going to be learning new things, being made uncomfortable, being forced to be vulnerable. And again I run a parallel to us becoming healthier as human beings, that we all know that it takes so much work and effort and devotion and time to work out on a consistent basis, to eat healthy on a consistent basis. And hopefully if we demonstrate that we're able to do that and we do do that, we start seeing those outcomes occur. So it's not unlike that in that regard. It's not for everyone. You know we like to say that Junto is not for 90 percent of the companies that are out there because they're looking for more shorter-term results and shorter-term outcomes. But most of our alumni tell us that where they start seeing the real results of Junto is the year after they graduate because they're able to put into practice everything they've learned. KG: Before we get too far in this interview I think would be great to hear you define emotional intelligence. Again like I said earlier it's kind of a fuzzy term. Everyone might have a slightly different idea of what it means but what has the Junto Institute defined emotional intelligence as? And how do you apply that lens to what you do everyday? RC: So we actually have adopted a common definition of emotional intelligence, which is our ability to recognize and regulate the emotions in ourselves and in others. And then perhaps even more importantly is how we use that information, how we use that data to guide our thinking, actions and behaviors. And that I think is the part that most people in my experience don't pay enough attention to. It's one thing to recognize and regulate our emotions personally and in other people but then to do something with it especially in the workplace is where the rubber meets the road. And that is where we also see its relevance to leadership. So that's how we define it at Junto and how we kind of wrap our program into, how we use emotional intelligence to kind of put a wrapping around our program. KG: Junto works a lot with leaders in developing emotional intelligence in the workplace. But do you have any suggestions for how listeners could apply emotional intelligence practices to their everyday lives, whether it's in the workplace, out of the workplace, in their relationships with their family and friends anything like that? RC: Absolutely. We have a whole array of leadership skills that our apprentices learn and practice and the programs so I’ll kind of refer to a couple of those. Well first of all let me also add to the definition that I referred to that we also have adopted Daniel Goldman's construct of emotional intelligence, which is four components: self-awareness, self-management, social awareness, and relationship management. And we have also taken the liberty to almost use them in a linear fashion that developing our emotional intelligence starts with self awareness. So part of it is to simply increasingly become aware of how we are feeling in as many moments as possible during a day. At Junto we use something called the emotion wheel as a prompt for that. Someone like myself, I used to not be able to get very specific about my emotions. I was someone who would say I'm feeling fine I'm feeling good. I'm not feeling good today. The emotion wheel allow me to pinpoint very specific words that otherwise wouldn't come to mind on my own. And so that's the beginning. That's one thing that people can do and you can find an emotional wheel on the Internet. People download them, use them. They're very effective. We use it in my own home. We've got a bunch of companies that use in their homes around the dinner table. It's a great place to initiate conversation. It also then allows us to by doing that have empathy for other people because if you tell me that you're feeling surprise right now or angry or you're feeling a lot of love I can then understand where you're coming from. I may not know why but now I know how I can guide our interaction as a result of that. Second tip that we can all do better at In my opinion is just listening better. We live in a distracted world. And so yes putting away the devices is real helpful. At Junto we use a very simple framework of Stop Look and Listen. Stop everything that you're doing. Look at the person because the only way that we even have a sense that someone might be listening to us is by eye contact. So therefore it's important for us to give that signal to other people. And then listen with your full mind and body. And what we mean by that is we talk about squaring up in Junto, whereby we are squaring up our shoulders and our knees to people so that way I'm less likely to be distracted by something else and the other person again is receiving a signal that they have my full attention. KG: You have a background in entrepreneurship and building companies from the ground up. What have you observed from leaders and other hustlers trying to reach their goals? Have you seen any strategies that work out particularly well, any common obstacles that come up, any personality traits that leaders tend to share personality types that they tend to be? RC: Yeah absolutely. There are two that are in my experience are most common—I won’t go so far as saying essential but I've found them to be very important. One of them is tenacity, is just having that ability to not always take no for an answer. Having the ability to pick yourself up when you've been beaten down. In entrepreneurship there are more lows than there are highs and so the ability to just bounce back on a regular basis, the ability to power through a rough day. So tenacity is one import one. The second one is a little bit longer and that's the ability to cope with ambiguity, uncertainty and chaos. Our days are completely unpredictable. We also encounter like I said more lows than highs and so just that uncertainty of what's going to happen tomorrow or the next day, despite our best efforts just being able to cope with that is an important attribute. And then once companies are up and running and the founders are starting to hire other people. That's where leadership becomes perhaps the most important trait or attribute. And at Junto we define leadership as moving people in the direction you're going. And that's really hard. It's really hard to inspire people, to influence them, to communicate effectively to encourage teamwork and collaboration so that people are achieving common objectives and that's what where emotional intelligence comes into play because the whole idea of recognizing and regulating emotions and other people and then using that information to guide our thinking, actions, and behavior comes into contact then with moving people in a direction you want to go. So that's why as a part of our program but you know back to your question of the attribute that leadership becomes so critical during the period when companies, when founders are starting to hire more and more employees in their businesses because they're growing. KG: Do you see a clear difference between being a leader and being a manager? RC: Yes. In fact we rarely even talk about managing, managers or management in Junto. Management in my view and in our view is something that is dealing with more of the known and has constraints around it. Management then in my experience and in my view is more relevant in larger organizations where there's plenty of history there's more predictability there's more definition. Leadership is more related to the unknown the uncertain. And back to our definition of moving people in the direction you want to go. We believe that leaders can't motivate people but they can inspire people. Motivation is an internal, is an intrinsic characteristic. But that inspiration can actually occur extrinsically and so that's a key distinction is management in our view doesn't incorporate that element of inspiring people or pulling them in the direction that one wants to go. KG: The two traits that you mentioned earlier, the tenacity and the ability to cope with the unknown. Do you find that those are just inherent in people? Or is it something that you can work to develop if you recognize it as a weakness in yourself? RC: Yeah, both. I think some people are wired and I'd like to think that I'm wired with the ability to cope with ambiguity, uncertainty and chaos. But I wasn't born with the tenacity. That's something that I acquired over time and I've seen other people flip, I've seen people who are what we call the accidental entrepreneurs that they lived a life that was very privileged and comfortable, they had everything they needed and wanted. They then entered large organizations where things were fairly predictable and stable and then boom all of a sudden at the age of 35, 40, 50 they became entrepreneurs and they all of a sudden discovered they had to have tenacity. They had to deal with the uncertainty and ambiguity and they've been successful. So I think that yes it can be acquired. It's a little bit harder perhaps, it's a big transition, it's far more uncomfortable but it can be both something that you're born with or something that can be developed. KG: And if you're developing it is the only way to do it to just get thrown in the water and run with it and swim with it as it is? RC: Certainly I think that is without a doubt one of the ways if not the most important way but the other one also is to recognize that this is normal and the only way to do that in our view is being around other people who are also experiencing it because we talk about how being an entrepreneur, it’s lonely at the top and there's so much truth to that. And so all of a sudden when one surrounds themselves with others who are going through the same thing no matter what business they're in or how old their businesses are or how big it is they realize that we're all going through the same things. And so that all of a sudden gives us greater encouragement and drive to power through and it helps increase our tenacity because we're inspired by other people who've already done it. KG: You just touched on the importance of leaders having people around them and how that can help make it a little less lonely at the top, help you go further than you would alone and that seems to be a big principle of the Junto Institute. Junto means together in Spanish, correct? RC: Yes. KG: One of the things we say at aSweatLIfe all the time is, everything is better with friends. Seems like a similar principle. Can you speak a little bit to how bringing these different companies together in a cohort for nine months really benefits each of them more so maybe than it would if you were working one on one with them? RC: Back to this whole idea of lonely at the top is that any time that we're doing something on our own we're in our own head and sometimes we develop a narrative that is self-defeating. And this idea of doing it with other companies, this idea of doing it with your full team and then the idea of doing it with people who've been there and done that we have found to be just exponentially powerful. First of all they're just learning more and they're learning more because of the diversity that everybody brings to the table and I don't mean diversity in the common sense, I’m talking about diversity of industry diversity of product diversity of backgrounds in the people diversity of backgrounds in the companies. A tech company actually can learn a lot from a food company, or a food company can actually learn a lot from a manufacturing firm, and a manufacturing company can learn a lot from a services based company. And we  validate to that because they've all told us that. And then to add to that the fact that they learn together we call it growing together that this program is not focused on just the CEO or just a founder, it's the whole leadership team as well as key employees. They are building alignment and cohesion as they're going through this program together which then leads to greater alignment and greater cohesion in the future, which allows them to make better decisions faster ultimately leading to accelerated growth for the business. KG: Though Junto you've had the chance to mentor some amazing entrepreneurs and watch some really incredible companies grow. Do any particular stories or companies that you've worked with stand out maybe in terms of what they learn from the program or how they changed after completing the nine months? RC: Well I'm not going to name specific companies because everybody has their own stories. So I'll share maybe a couple of things that have been said by our graduates which we find to be fairly compelling and oftentimes humbling for us, needless to say very fulfilling and gratifying. In our very first cohort, our first graduation ceremony, we had a CEO get up on stage. At the time I want to say he was about 40 years old and his line, this is verbatim because I've repeated it so often was not only did Junto make me a better CEO, it made me a better hockey coach,  a better husband, and a better father. Another one has said that Junto didn't change who I am but it has allowed me to become who I was supposed to become sooner. Another one has said that Junto—literally these were his words—literally saved our business. We didn't know if we were going to make it and we didn't know that until we were in the program. And then we've discovered since then that some of the things that we did as a result of the program allowed us to not make mistakes we probably would've made otherwise. And that was two years ago and the COO attended our session this morning and they have almost doubled in size since the time they graduated. They have no worries about their survival. Now it's more about growing and optimizing their success. KG: Raman, you just mentioned the graduation program you have for the cohort. I noticed on your Web site pictures of people wearing leather aprons at a graduation ceremony. What is the significance of that? RC: So even though Junto means together in Spanish the name is actually inspired by Benjamin Franklin. And so Benjamin Franklin had a group of 12 artisans and tradesmen, when he was 21 years old  in the year of 1727 and they would meet every Friday night for the purposes of mutual improvement and philosophical debate. And he called this group the Junto it's believed he called it the Yunto, almost like a Y. But the alternate but he had for that group was the leather apron club because back then, 1700s, these were blacksmiths and cobblers and lithographers. Men—and at that time it was all men—who literally wore leather aprons to work. So when we were planning for our first graduation ceremony I told Catherine my co-founder that I didn't want to kind of give conventional diplomas and certificates to our graduates. So we were debating for a couple of days on what we could do and you know let's do a trophy let's do a plaque and those were all boring. And then one day just out of the clear blue I said to her let's see if we can find leather aprons, in a nod of Honor to Benjamin Franklin. And sure enough Catherine found this incredible organization in Guatemala where these women artisans hand stitch leather aprons. So it's a social venture to boot which makes it even more special. And we get them in laser engraved with the company's logos and our logo. And now it's become a thing. People, we’ve had, I’ve had several people ask me how they can buy them. I've said sorry they're not available for purchase, they're only bestowed to the companies that graduate from the program. So that’s story. KG: I love that that is way more exciting than my diploma which is gathering dust at my parents’ house in Kentucky as we speak. But I love this idea that you mention of Benjamin Franklin bringing together you know a dozen different people to talk about all different topics and it makes me think about how whenever we're faced with a big decision or you're trying to reach a big goal you maybe tend to go to the same people over and over again whether it's people in your workplace or friends that have similar mindsets and similar personalities to you. And I'm wondering what you think about the value—when reaching for a goal or making a big change in your life of reaching outside your comfort zone or your normal circle of go-to people and getting a little more diversity in your inner circle or in your tribe. RC: Yeah there's a lot of power to that. We actually in a very direct way we address that through our mentor program and our mentors are volunteers, they're not compensated by us nor are they investors in the companies so they're not being paid to be there and they don't have skin in the game. And that's a reflection of what we believe is true mentorship which is purity and objectivity in the learning and discovery process. And so I believe that even on an everyday basis while it's important and valuable to get insight and input from friends and family members or loved ones it's also invaluable to get it from people who don't have any vested interest. They don't love us like our friends and family do. So they can see an issue for its truth, for its purity and offer up experiences that relates to that. And on that note I think that's another important thing that I want to emphasize is we don't allow advice giving in Junto, we only allow shared experiences and questions. And so the idea is that who am I to be telling you what you should do. Instead it's far more helpful to you in our opinion if I tell you what I've done in the past or what I know has worked or hasn't worked in the past or to ask you questions because that helps spurs your thinking ability and allows you to make a decision of your own based on what you're hearing from me as opposed to you doing what I tell you to do. And I think that that's something that's real powerful with people who are a little bit removed in our lives who aren't you know who don't love us who we don't know as well is if we rely on their shared experiences or ask them to ask questions they're going to be coming from a much more genuine place in wanting us to just address the issue and overcome our challenge versus wanting us to just feel better because they love us. KG: Are there any other specific qualities that you think are crucial in a mentor-mentee relationship, for anyone who's looking to maybe find someone to act as their spirit guide, so to say? RC: I’ll go back to what we were referring to earlier with regards to emotional intelligence. I believe that the mentor-mentee relationship is built on questions and listening. And I believe true mentorship is when the mentee brings really big important questions for that person and the mentor is able to ask big questions that he or she believes are important and that each side listens to the other. I don't believe mentorship is advising or counseling or coaching which to me is more directional and instructional and prescriptive. I believe mentorship is a discovery based activity and so that it helps being fed by questioning and listening. KG: Through your work with Junto you spend a lot of your time mentoring other entrepreneurs and focusing on their goals. Do you ever have a hard time keeping track of your own personal goals in the process? Or would you say that you've learned anything about your own goal setting strategies through working with others? RC: Yeah it's funny we in the last two years in Junto have stopped using the word goals. KG: Really. Were you like, why am I on this podcast? RC: No, no. And the reason is is because we learned that everyone defines differently, defines goal differently. So we actually started using the word priority. KG: Interesting. RC:  Part of it also is from a timeliness standpoint that we discovered that a goal tends to be something that's far out in the distance whereas just changing the language to it, it could be the same goal. So my goal could be that I want to achieve 50 percent more profitability this year. But goal, from what we learned it just conveyed something that was further out in the distance versus a priority being 50 percent greater profitability gave me something to work on today and it made it more, there was a greater level of urgency around it just by changing the language so the idea is the same, that metric or quote unquote the goal is still the same. It's just using a different word created a different sensibility in people around us and it's worked. That's what we're hearing now, people use more than goals or objectives is the work priority. KG: That’s really interesting to me as someone who is a former communications person and language nerd. The way that you choose a certain word can make all the difference. RC: Yeah. Now I don't think I answered your question though right? KG: Continue please. RC: I don't have a hard time keeping track of my goals. And that's also because one of our core values at Junto is we practice what we teach and preach. And we've become very good as a business at developing our strategic plan and our annual plan that is built on priorities and we have a very limited number of priorities. And then each person has his or her own priorities that are tied to the company's priorities. And because every week we review our progress against those, it's embedded in our day to day operations. So I've become much better at that I no longer have an issue like a lot of people I have in the past. I have become as a result also better at my personal priorities if you will just because I spend obviously like most people more of my waking hours working. So it bleeds into my personal life too. KG: Well you could not have led me into our last question any better and I will shift the wording a little bit to reflect your language preferences. But what is a big priority that you have for the future and how do you plan to reach it? RC: So actually I'm going to borrow something that has the word goal in it. You’ve probably heard of BHAGS before? KG: I have not actually. RC: So this is a term that's more in the business in the business world but it refers to a big hairy audacious goal. KG: Oh I've heard that, I just hadn't heard it termed BHAGs. RC: And so we have at Junto our vision is to be a global ecosystem of growth, humanity and virtue. And our BHAG is to have a tribe 1 million strong and our tribe consists of people who are alumni apprentices and mentors in our program. So as of today I think our tribe our tribe is about 230 or 240. I haven't counted it recently but it's in that range. So we have a long way to go. But what was really inspiring was yesterday we had a group of mentors come together for a meeting and one of them said, you will achieve that BHAG. With where you guys are at and it was great to hear that because this is someone who's far more experienced than any of us are. So that's our big hairy audacious goals is to have a tribe 1 million strong. We're not hung up on it. Our big thing is focused on the priorities that are in front of us right now and if we keep staying focused on those and keep hitting those we know that BHAG will take care of itself. KG: That must have been incredibly validating to hear someone else just say oh yeah you can do it. Have someone else in your corner. Well thank you so much Raman for being with us today. Before you go, can you give us a little more information about anyone out there who's interested in Junto, how they can learn more about it, maybe a little bit about what they would need to do to apply if there if it came to that, anything else we should know? Sure. We currently operate in Chicago and we are launching in Los Angeles in 2018 as well. So those are the two markets that will be running our program. Our Web site is thejuntoinstitute.com and Junto is JUNTO, there is a link to apply to the program. And so we encourage anybody who runs a company that has 10 to 100 employees, one to 10 million in revenue. And they've been growing and want to grow. They also acknowledge that what got them to where they are isn't going to get them to where they want to be. So back to this idea of goals and priorities, they have an idea of where they want to be but they've recognized their limitations and now they want to tap into something that's far bigger than themselves. So we'd love to be able to talk to them and see if it's the right fit. KG: I love that. All right well thank you so much for being with us today Raman and thanks for being on the #WeGotGoals podcast. RC: You’re welcome, thanks for having me. I CK:  This podcast is produced by me, Cindy Kuzma ,and it's another thing that's better with friends. So please share it with yours. You can subscribe wherever you get your podcasts and if you get a chance to leave us a rating or view while you're there we would be so grateful. Special thanks to J. Mano for our theme music; to Raman Chadra, our guest this week; and to Tech Nexus for the recording studio.