Transitioning From Gymnast to Investor with Aly Raisman
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And you're copying ing at the olympics, if I am jet lag or if I don't feel well, it's not like the judges care. So I eight years old, I started to get really intense, and I would spend six days in the game at sundays off, and I between somewhere between four, seven hours a day when I was training for the olympics. Like if I was tired, I felt like almost my coach was harder on me.

On the days where I didn't sleep. Wealth IT took me so long because diagnose, because doctors would say to me, we just have anxiety and depression and I D say, well, I didn't mention anything to about aniele depression why I need say they, you know, i've read your story in the news. What if you have an underlying issue that could have been six? What if isn't underlying issue that's been a problem for ten years.

Building a successful business can feel like landing a backflip on a baLance beam, which impressively enough, some humans have figured out one fit wrong and IT all comes tumbling down and get IT right. And you might just see gold with the greatest event in sports. Just weeks away, we're sharing an epsom that bridges these two worlds of elite t athletics and elite entrepreneurship, straight from a two time olympic athlete herself.

This episode, originally published on our sister podcast, raising health, features the one and only ally raceme ali has six olympic metals under her belt, and she's recently pivoted her pursuit of excEllence, health in the many forms, a bit a momentum, and fertility to mental help. Here, ali also discusses with basic things to partner and investing partner daysi wolf, the parallels of being a founder and an olive yan, requiring consistent performance at a light level, but also the intensity of being judged against the best in the world, and equally, what is like to transition from that lifestyle to investing so that he can scale her impact. Now for more episodes just like this, don't forget to search raising health wherever you get the podcast, and we should to look out for future olympic theme episodes in the weeks to come right here on the excuse podcast. But for now, we bring you two time olympian alive stand.

Hello, and welcomed the raising health, where we explore the real chAllenges and enormous opportunities facing entrepreneurs for building the future of health.

I'm malaya and i'm Chris. Today's episode is with alerts ema, two time olympic gymnast, investor and part of a sixteen. These cultural leadership fund, SHE is joined by Julie and Daisy wolf of asic, tz bio and health.

Ali chats about her background, how SHE thinks about health and fitness now that she's no longer competing, and a few of her passion projects, including financial literacy.

Ally also talks about her latest forests into investing and how SHE appreciate that empathises with founders, tunnel vision and work ethics.

And I just really respect founder, is because they're working so hard and I can imagine how stressful IT isn't. I think it's cool that they are seeing something is locking or seeing something they want to do differently and they are solving a problem and fixing IT.

You are listen to raising health from .

a 6 health ali rice men， no introduction needed.

Obviously you are a total star, and everyone obviously knows you as being one of the most decorated american olympic jimnez of all time. And i'd personally believe that gymnastics is just the extreme elites of elites of all professional sport. So first and pharma s congratulations on an amazing career and just inspiring ing so many folks, including ourselves. And and thank you for being .

with out here today. Oh, well, thank you so much that so sweet. I am so excited to be here with both of you and thank you both also for all of your support. You've been so helpful in my new investing journey.

absolutely. You have really been campaigning for many, many things, amongst which is health, and that you've been really a strong advocate for everything from from mental health to physical health and body positivity for women, improving healthcare overall at the system and even something that's never need to our heart, which is financial health for all consumers.

And so we're having to do today is just walk through tremendious as and really just hear you're perspective on all of these different flavors of help. Let's start with physical health. Ali, as an olympic athlete, you've spent a lot of time thinking about how to stay healthy and maintaining a sense of well being. And we're curious just how this Carries over into your life. Now what are wellness strategies that you employ in your post gigantic s life?

yeah. So i've learned a lot last several years about my own mental health, and also just my own physical health. I think that mental health is much more of a conversation now than I was when I was training.

And I was competing in genetics, however, even so, they're still such a statement. There are still so many people that are suffering in silence. I do reflect a lot and wish that a lot of the tools that i've learned now and am still learning, I wish I had when I was Younger.

It's really interesting because when I was training and competing, you know, for example, if I had an ankle injury, I would do whatever I could to kill my ankle. I would do recovery at what I said. He did whatever I needed, and I also did a lot of physical therapy, but there just wasn't that same emphasis on the mental health aspect of IT, which I think was a huge problem.

And I didn't know that at the time. But you know, competing at such a high level, I was obviously so nervous and so stressed. And it's kind of crazy to look back. I didn't really have any tools to help me calm down in those moments.

So I have been on this journey of just really trying to figure out how to just become I kind of like of this idea of like one day i'm going to feel perfect. I'm going to feel happy all the time. I think that's extremely take.

There's so many things in life that can happen. And so I guess the way that I take care of my mental and physical health is that I see a therapies weekly, which has been super helpful, and I planned to do that for a long time, that so, so fascinating to me. Because when I really take care of my nutrition, and I feel like my mental health is so much Better, even if something my friends make fun of me, even if something taste disgusting. But it's really good for me and makes me feel good, i'm gna eat IT. I do wish that I had this when I was competing and when I was training.

What kind of exercise do you do in your post elastics s life?

I get asked this a lot, and I think people would be really shocked. I think people think i'm being like modest or i'm kidding, but I honestly don't work out that much. So first of all, I spent most of my life in a jam.

I started to osc s, and I was two years old. And at the age of eight, I was so busy with my genoc ics car that my coach is said that if you want to go to the next love and you want to get Better, you have to stop everything else. So I, eight years old, IT started to get really intense, and I would spend six days in the gem.

I had sunday's off and I between somewhere between four to seven hours a day, and I was, like, really intensely training. I still feel like i'm recovering from IT because I was exhAusting. So in part of that is it's nice now to be in control and to not have to go to the gym every single day.

I will also say that I believe that working out can be really good for mental health. So i've kind of had to learn how to like we enjoy working out because I feel like for so long I was so just intense. I did the same thing every single day.

And I felt like no matter what I did, there was always something that needed improvement, which i'd never got boring. But IT was just a lot of pressure. My workout mostly consisted of walking a lot.

And people always lack, when I speak at events, because I say a walk on the child water incline. And people think that so funny, because I think people expect me to do more. However, I experience like such major burn out when I finished competing.

You know, I don't have a goal of like looking a certain way when I work out. I just want to feel good. And that was also chAllenging for me going for working out seven hours to actually working on the mental side of that and being okay with, okay today. I just walked for twenty minutes, but i'm doing the best I can.

Hey, I think it's super fun that we just learn that ally rise man, he walks up hill on a tread male. So now that when I go to do that at the gym, i'm just gonna all that the ally rise band we're going and we're going to make Better thing. So thank you for Normal alizon that you mentioned. You know the kind of the change that from like being in such a high pressure environment from a work of perspective, and then sort the opposite of that. The other thing we sometimes hear from asleep after they retire is that that the kind of motion of having a data coaching regime as well, of just having so much structure in your life and then going into an environment where you don't have that, do you feel like there's a boy in your life of someone who is going to, you know, every day when you wake up, tell you, okay, here are the ten things you need to do.

So so funny. It's like if I may go to class, like I don't want the teacher to tell me anything, like i've had enough coaching in my life work. I think that IT depends on what the coaching is when IT comes to working out.

Like I don't want any coaching if I am like doing a cycling class or if i'm doing yoga, something in the teacher cracks me, they try to push. I like, I ve had enough of that in my life. I love being able to just go to a class. And if I just feel tired or I don't feel well, I can just like sit there and relaxed because when I was training for the olympics, like if I was tired and I felt like almost my coach was harder on the, on the days where I didn't sleep well, he'd like, okay, well, too bad. If you don't sleep well, then I before the olympics, we need to push you more today so that you feel more prepared because when you're competing at the olympics, if i'm jet lag or if I don't feel well, it's not like the judges care if i'm like, hey, can I do this tomorrow and set its on an option you've got, you know, you're one opportunity. So I actually, if you will, be opposite where I love sort of having the flexibility and I love being in control of doing what feels right for my body and and .

we're also so inspiring hearing you talk allies. You could have done anything with your time once you retired from journey s. The fact that you're putting so much energy into multiple ways to make an impact that different levels is really incredible. And the fact that you also have time to invest is even more incredible because we know how much work that is as well. We all do investing for different reasons.

Folks like this in myself, we and builders in companies before in a past life and after building one company for a long period of time, I think many of us recognized that there's this sort of horizons ono opportunities to really build a ortons lio of opportunities to make an impact at the industry level versus just as one individual company. Can you share with us what was your inspiration with the why behind your time that you're spending on the investing side? And and what's IT .

been like it's been so fun. And I really love the experience of learning about investing in meaning with founder, I became really passionate financial literacy. I think the financial literacy and my alt are very correlated because I feel like I don't know if I know anyone who like doesn't feel stressed about finances capacity and our system is kind of set up to make IT really confusing and hard to understand.

I'm very, very passionate about pushing that conversation because I think that in schools as early as kids can really understand, I think that they should be taught about like finances, the importance of speaking up and asking questions. I know so as when you're in a classroom, I can be intimidated, asked questions. And I kind of just told myself that i'm gonna get into this like financial world.

There are this investing world. I'm just gonna make a pack with myself that i'm not going to be afraid to ask questions. But I think that I found out really quickly when I started to learn about my own finances.

I felt like I was like being put in this box of a dumb athlete. And so I just felt very overwhelmed. And I also realized how much anxiety was giving me not understanding.

And I really believe that, like. Acknowledges power. And I think why I say it's create to mental health because the more that I learned about finances, the more confident I became. And there's so much shame around talking about money.

And so I just became really interested in that idea, like why is IT so hard to talk about? And if IT was more Normalized, would more people be able to understand how to Better save their money? And if people felt less shame on asking questions, I think I could really make a big difference.

And i've been fortunate since I was about seventeen years old, getting to work with a lot of different companies. And so I got me really interested in learning more about like that behind the scenes of how these companies Operate. And then I got excited about this idea of meeting with founders where they are seeing something is locking, or seeing something they want to do differently, and they're solving a problem in fixing IT, similarly with my genuine spirit, was like the same thing all the time.

You're so focus. You have this like tunnel vision. And I just really respect founders because they're working so hard and I can imagine how stressful at. And just like the whole process of raising money, and there is probably so many different stresses that I don't even know the first thing about, but I just really admire and respect their work ethic and their passion.

I'm sure the fighters were listed to this. Will absolutely appreciate your last comments there. And perhaps on that of future podcast, we can debate whether it's harder to raise capital in this market or win a gold medal at the olympic dynastic CS competition.

But I actually that is what we hope to achieve with our health care system at some point. But we all know that the system fills every day in many, many ways um to to achieve anything close to that. So curious, well, what are some of the areas that do inspire you to invest in from a hope care lens?

Yeah well, it's interesting. I mean, I am obviously a patient and so I have you know seen a lot of different doctors over the years. A couple of years ago, one of my best friends, abby, had staged for cancer and SHE, thankfully, is in remission, and he has a beautiful, healthy baby.

So i'm so thankful, just forever grateful, to her doctors for truly saving her life. But her and I, we've had a lot of conversations around just watching her go through that horrific experience and just anxiety, the mental health side of having cancer. And he talks about how there are some doctors who are amazing, and then there some that are not amazing.

And you know, when he was in the hospital, he told me that there are certain instances were like, he could hear the doctors or nurses like making fun of patients when she's resting and laying in bed. And I think that the patient experience should be more frighten center for doctors because you, I obviously of the utmost respect for. But as a patient, a lot of people I don't think are comfortable speaking up for themselves, are advocating for themselves.

And so you know, while I talked about mental health of law and how it's more Normalized, they're still a stigma and actually found IT took me so long to get diagnose because doctors would say to me, well, you just have anxiety and depression and i'd say, well, I didn't mention anything to about ani's idea depression. What IT why do you say that they say, well, you know, i've read your story in the news and i'm like, okay, now I feel like you're not really paying attention to me as the patient and you're like making an assumption based of what you saw on the news. And so that was really chAllenging for me.

And I find that incredibly unprofessional. And even if somebody is you, they are feeling sick from mental help. I feel like the doctors are just like, oh, just go to the therapies like see you next year, but there's like no step to help somebody get the therapy.

But back to your question about what i'm really incident. I find myself at the age of twenty nine and really interested in women's help, but particularly the fertility space. And I P.

H. Or some of my friends of a baby, some of them are pregnant, some of them are freezing. Their eggs were kind of all in different stages. And I just find IT a very odd that so many women, we don't realize if we're gonna a have trouble getting cragged ant until we actually want to start getting.

And I just think like if there was something that when whatever age doctors think is appropriate, whether is in your early twenty years or in your late teenagers, I don't know. I'm not a doctor, but I think that this idea of just what if you have an underlying issue that could have been fixed? What if is an underlying issue that's been a problem for ten years? And if you fix IT ten years ago from a blood tester, something then I wouldn't have affected to do.

And I think in this role where miscarriage and infertility is so common and post part on, there's so many things that women suffering go through and there's just not good solutions. And then also, we get our period every single month. And i've know a lot of women that like at least one day to multiple days of the month, we feel terrible. I just don't think there is enough conversation and research into women's health. And I don't think it's acceptable that it's Normal ize that so many women have post part time and there's not a solution to help women as they are navigating that huge change in their life.

Yeah, that's incredible. I mean, you touched on like access issues, referred issues, variance and care delivery across doctors. And so much of when you described as kind of the chAllenges of help care also boiled down to the payment model and kind of the payment and that drive all these irrational behaviors um that we we think are are completely insane, but are sort of like the way the system was designed.

And so I would just say that now we know that the future is bright. We get to meet with these amazing entrepreneurs who are chAllenging the state play every single day. And so I think there's a lot to be excited about at the chance to do clinical rotation during great school and happened to get match to the breast cancer radio, gic clinics and one of the major hospitals of boston.

And as I was being, my rotation saw all these procedures being done, a mamos M, A biopsy, IT said. A, we had to write a report afterwards as kind of a thesis. And mine was, effectively, it's very clear that all of these devices and machines were designed by men and not taking into account at all what that user experiences is as a female subject to these procedures. So and there's a ton of opportunity.

Yeah, i've done a lot of calls and work with a lot of companies over the years where I might be like a company that's around women's health. But then a lot of the exact are men and men are welcome.

I think there are so many amazing men in my life, and i'm really grateful that if you're doing a product that's for women, it's really important to also talk to women and have them be a huge part of the conversation to make sure making a product that is helpful and feels good for them. A man, okay. This is amazing, ali.

because with my past entrepreneurship on and taking about like you as a potential investor in my company, you've already showing that like you're a patients and you can bring that perspective. You are survivor, you can bring that perspective. You are star athlete and you can bring through that brand and start power to to the table as well. What do want entrepreneurs to know about your unique value proposition and and maybe the broader set of value proposition that professional athletes can bring to entrepreneurs when they invest in their companies?

Yeah well, thank you. And as my perspective as like being a survivor abuse and how that might be like trigger ing or easier for someone to use, I have sort of brought that perspective of its in the healthcare space. And then of course, as an athlete and very fortunate to have the platform that I have.

So I think where IT makes sense, most of the companies I invest in, I do IT privately, but there are some that we decide together that makes sense to do a partnership to promote IT. The campaigns that I do publicly that are just like pushing a product that don't talk about like something filename pic, whether it's abuse prevention for me or mental health, they don't really do well. And I onesta friendly don't do that anymore, which just like a specific product, like we always try to make IT more of a conversation.

And how is IT authentic to me, as is something that I really use is is something that really alliance and fittings with my values. And I seen first hand how my most successful campaign, i've actually been able to be apart of the marketing side of that, where I can like meat with, like the C. M.

O or the C E O. And there's been many campaigns i've been a part of where i've actually been able to be apart of those like brainstorming, marketing conversations, which is just so fun. This generation really votes with their dollar.

And people really want to support companies that they believe in that are doing good and aren't just like trying to sell a product. I also found the more honest i've been. I've been so surprised so many people can actually relate to what i've experience.

Well, I you are, to use the technical term, freaking amazing. Thank you so much for spending your time with us today. You are a truly inspiration to everyone. And on behalf of everyone in healthcare, we are just incredibly grateful that you are bringing your energy to our space. Could be we definitely needed.

Thank you so much. Thank you both.

Thank you for listening to raising health. Raising health is hosted and produced by me Christa .

tio sian and me Olivia web.

With the help of the bio and health team at ash T. Z, the show was edited by phil heggs.

Eh, if you want to adjust topics for future shows, you can reach us at raising health at a sixteen z 点 com。 Finally, please rate and subscribe to our ship. The content here is for informational purposes only, should not be taken as legal, business tax or investment advice, or be used to evaluate any investment or security, and is not directed at any investors or potential investors in any sixteen. Please note that sixteen, six and its civilians may maintain investments in the companies discussed in this podcast. For more details, including a link to our investments, please see a 6C点 com slash。