#12: It Takes What It Takes – Mastering Mindset, Pressure, and Purpose
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If you expose yourself to negativity, that also brings negative or bad performance. It starts creating negative thoughts in your own head. So think if you're in a team and you have individuals that are saying negative things out loud. What that does is it starts infecting other team members. They start having negative thoughts. And if they start saying negative things out loud, it creates this downward spiral.

Welcome back to Divot, a community for people trying to make their mark in the world, where each week I'm interviewing the best creatives in business, tech, sports, and entertainment to learn how they've made their mark. You can watch all our episodes on YouTube, Apple Podcasts, Spotify, X, or go to our website at divot.org. Divot. This episode is brought to you by Salesforce. Today, we're in Los Angeles meeting with investor Kobe Fuller.

Kobe is a general partner at Upfront Ventures, one of Los Angeles' premier venture capital firms. He focuses on investing in category-defining technology companies. He's backed startups across software as a service, consumer tech, enterprise, and companies like Oculus, ExactTarget, and my company, BEVY. Before joining Upfront, Kobe was also the chief marketing officer at Revolve, where he helped scale the company into a fashion e-commerce powerhouse.

Earlier in his career, he was also a partner at Accel, Insight Partners, and OpenView. Kobe, while in college, was the captain of the track and field team at Harvard, where he was the Ivy League champion in the 500 meter, 400 meter, and the 4x100 meter. Hope you enjoy it. Thanks for having us here. Where are we?

So this is technically my garage, but this is where I start my day usually every morning, every weekday morning. This is, yeah, my home gym. This is how I get my mind cleared and leveled as I go into each day. And so if you want to go and

Pound some weights and bench press right now or get in some hard work on the treadmill or the VersaClimber. We can do that. Or we can have a conversation. Yeah, I mean, me and you benching and switching the weights for you with me would be a great thing to get on film for the world. Another time. I feel like this was a COVID thing. Yeah, it was. Did it all start during COVID? Yeah, it actually all started during COVID. I still remember the day when...

until everything was getting shut down. I was like, "I'm not gonna be able to go to the Golds. That means I need some weights." And so first thing I bought was this squat machine, squat rack behind me. And then started adding bit by bit. Then I decided to redo the floor, put in some lights, and before you know it, I had this like meathead gym and this is where I spent all my time. You ran track in college and high school and after college.

So now you're, let's say, well beyond those years. Washed up. That's what the words you're looking for. What is the right amount of exercise? What is the right amount of physical exertion that you feel like gets you to where you need to be? Yeah, for me, my standard routine, it all varies based on what I'm trying to optimize for. So sometimes I'm actually trying to optimize for some level of performance. In some cases, I'm just trying to

be fit to a certain degree. But I usually try to get in a good hour of combination of cardio and anaerobic activity. And so that could be a couple miles running on the treadmill followed by a good strength routine. Some days I actually go to the UCLA track

and do intervals far slower than when I was a young lad. But for me, it's just being able to get a good sweat in and push myself to a point where I feel some level of exertion where it kind of like cleared out anything in my head. - Do you actually sprint? - Yes. - You sprint? - Yeah. - Yeah, what sprints do you do? - Depends, my last workout was a 400, 300, 200, 100, 100. - Wow, full speed, 100? - No, you don't do full speed.

I don't want to pop any hamstrings. I'm not getting old at this point. I like to be able to walk after I do these workouts. The thing is, your brain thinks your body is at one point, but then when you actually start pushing yourself to that level, bad things start happening. A year and a half ago, I was doing a repeat 150s. I still remember I was doing it with our mutual friend, Omar Johnson.

I looked at him, I was like, "I'm gonna go fast on this one. Don't try keeping up." And I take... and that was such a... just a dumb statement to make. On any level. Take like five steps and I just feel my hamstring go...

just like massive strain and I was off the track for a good probably three months. So your body is just, once you get a little bit older, as long as, I guess technically if you warm up enough, you stretch enough, you can be fine. But I was just a dummy, went on there, tried to go full on and I thought I was feeling really good and I technically wasn't. What do sprinters consider to be the hardest races? 400 is definitely. Why is the 400 hardest? Because it is an all-out sprint for a full-on lap to a point where

the amount of lactic acid that's building up you're pushing yourself just like fully beyond like just exertion and so the anaerobic intensity is at a level where at the end of a race no matter what level of shape you're in you feel totally totally burnt i honestly though felt the worst race was the 800 because the 800 in my opinion is still kind of like a dull sprint for two laps

Some of the worst pain I've ever felt in my life is after doing an 800. The average person, if you were to insert them into the body of an 800-meter runner after what they've done, they'd probably feel like they were dying. It's that painful. Your young boys have started running and you've been helping them, getting them into it. How does it feel now?

Sitting on the sidelines and watching these things unfold and watching your kids run same two laps three laps four laps my boys

Aldous Jackson is now getting into running the 1500 and his second race ran a 606, which is not bad for a nine-year-old. And Quincy is doing the long jump in the 100 and they're getting into it in just a couple of meets in. So it's pretty exciting. We'll see if they stay with it long term, trying not to force anything, but they're starting to love it. You loved it. You still do it, so you must have loved it. Yeah.

I mean, right now I partially still do it because it's a very good way to stay in shape and not hurt myself unless I'm trying to be an idiot and go way too fast on the track. But I still love it. There's this point where the chances of you sprinting, it's like at a young age, it's like 30 or 35 or something, the chances of you sprinting after that point in your life are so low, which is crazy because when you're a kid, it's all you're doing, right? You're at school, you're...

I mean, you're constantly running all the time, not just running a mile or two miles, but you're running sprints. And at some point, most people just stop running. Yeah, partly for me is...

around longevity. And so if I can keep my body into a point where I can actually run, I can sprint, then that's just, in my opinion, healthy. Keep bone density high and keep my joints healthy. That's not a bad thing to be able to do. Keep up with my kids who are now running. I want to be able to actually, maybe not run next to them, but be able to at least be somewhat respectable while they're there. And

you still see like masters track athletes. If they're out there running at the age of 70, 80 plus, you see those results like,

Why not me? Why not you? It's just because of a desire to actually want to be that person. And for me, even though I'm not going to be timing myself and comparing it to my prime years, I still want to be able to be physically fit. There's a phrase I hear you say a lot, which is it takes what it takes. Where did that come from? What does it mean? So it takes what it takes.

It's the title of one of my friends who passed away during 2021 timeframe, Trevor Moad. And Trevor was an amazing human being. I was able to meet him several years ago, kind of like 2015 or so. And it takes what it takes. If I were to sum it up, if you think about what you generally aspire to achieve in life,

and goals you may set, like ambitious, hard goals. Hard goals, they take a lot out of you. They're not easily accomplished. And there's usually a formula and there's usually a road that you actually have to travel to achieve that goal. And you have very little to no options. And so say in the case of a founder who's trying to build a unicorn or a decacorn,

and the sacrifices they may have to take to actually get to that point. The road they need to travel on, the borderline, just psychotic nature it actually is of being a founder to get to that point. It's just going to take what it has to take.

And if life deals you rotten eggs, if one day you're waking up, you're tired, something's going on in your personal life that's distracting you from running the business, like life doesn't care about that.

Like, it's just going to take what it takes to actually achieve the outcome you want to achieve. Your competitor doesn't care whatever you're dealing with. If you're on the track and you want to go win a gold medal at the Olympics and for some reason you have like a sour stomach that day, like, what are you going to do? Are you going to try and power through it?

Or are you going to just give up? It takes what it takes to actually achieve the outcomes you want. And that's the way life works. And so the way I think about it takes what it takes, it's a method that, or mentality,

oriented this notion around just realizing that like nothing's going to be given to you. And the way you actually deal with life's struggles and life's complexities is one where you have an actual realization of like, that is the road you have to go down. And the thing is, you can choose not to go down that road. That's the beauty of life. You

you can realize that, you know what, that road is way too difficult. There's like coyotes and wolves and all sorts of goblins and gremlins down that road. You know what, I don't feel like traveling down that road to get to that outcome because for me it's not worth it. You know what, I'm going to go down that road and achieve that outcome and that's the beauty of life. And sometimes people don't realize like that is the world we live in and that is life's journey.

Tell me about neutral energy. What is that? So neutral energy or neutral thinking, it's another concept that Trevor loved preaching to his athletes. And if I were to give Trevor's background, he was pretty much the most successful dominant sports psychologist in his last years of life, was the right hand to Russell Wilson,

worked with coach Saban in Alabama where Saban oftentimes has publicly credited him with being their secret weapon during their dynasty. And neutral thinking is a very powerful concept which Trevor used to also refer to as non-negative thinking. And negativity oftentimes is

one of the worst things that you can let infect your life because just negative thoughts and some of these stats that Trevor like to cite are frequently negative thoughts have a four to six impact on performance relative to just neutral thoughts. And so if you're just to think a negative thought, have it roll through your head,

it's going to affect your performance by 4 to 6x relative if you were not to have a thought at all. The articulation of a negative thought out loud, negative statements, studies found a 7 to 10x multiplier on top. So you have a potentially 60x negative impact on performance if you were to say something bad out loud. And so what Trevor used to like to do

with his athletes, just to say, "Stop saying stupid crap out loud because that's going to cause you to not have the performance you want on the field." The other thing that is pretty meaningful is that if you expose yourself to negativity, that also brings negative or bad performance. It starts creating negative thoughts in your own head.

So think if you're in a team and you have individuals that are saying negative things out loud. What that does is it starts infecting other team members. They start having negative thoughts. And if they start saying negative things out loud, it creates this downward spiral. And so for any individuals that could be a part of any team,

be very careful about the language you use because not only will it affect your own performance, it can affect your team members' performance, infect an organization, and then bring potentially an entire organization down relative to where they could be. Which, if you take a step back and process that, it's pretty crazy what just negativity can do. Yeah, and we've all been around negative people and we've felt that effect in our own life of these people that kind of feels like they suck you down into this hole where they are. And

There are these moments where we just try to get away from these situations or away from these people just because we can feel how hurtful it is on ourselves and what we're trying to accomplish. It's the same way, it seems as you're saying, the data supports this, that the way that you talk to yourself, the way that you think, you may think you're

you may think it's not having a big impact to just to be negative or to downplay stuff or to look at the worst side of things, but actually it legitimately impacts your performance. Legitimately impacts your performance. And the one thing I remember asking Trevor was, okay, what do I do if there's someone who's constantly around that's negative? Like, how do I manage that so that

It doesn't impact my own performance. And he didn't have a very great recommendation. He said, minimize your contact, which is like, you think about that, there's nothing you can do. If there's negativity around you, you have to minimize your contact. So some things that we should be mindful of around the negativity that we naturally consume

Social media. There's a lot of negativity on social media. So the amount of time we're sitting doom scrolling on Instagram or TikTok and the more we stop on those posts that could be negative clickbait or whatever it may be, that's just creating those negative thoughts in our head.

Consuming news in the morning. Unfortunately, a lot of the news we're seeing is very negative If you continually consume your night level of news I think studies report that on average individuals that consume news in the morning report their day to be worse than those that didn't because again a lot of the content we're seeing and so just be careful of the thoughts that you let Infect your head the content you're exposed to because the impact it can have on you can be quite substantial How do I balance being emotionally honest and

with my situation or what's going on while also still maintaining positivity and trying to see my way through it. So Trevor used to call positivity, trying to be positive, it's almost like AP calculus where getting to neutral is pretty much all right. Let's just do some basic algebra right now. And so you can't shift into positivity if you don't go through

neutral first, which neutral is a point in which you can objectively assess the situation and be present with the facts, be present with regards to what's actually happening to you right now. Neutral and objectivity

That creates a way in which you actually have this level playing field with regards to what you're dealing with. Where then, if there's the opportunity to be positive, like true positivity, not fooling yourself to be positive. Like, oh, I'll be positive. Today's going to be a good day. But you actually are not dealing with the fact that you're dealing with something horrible. Deal with something horrible by actually facing it straight on and then knowing how to actually turn it into something positive if there's an opportunity to be positive.

But in some moments, like, there may not be an opportunity to be positive. You know what? Like, this is not a good moment to be in right now. I almost said, this sucks. Using the word sucks, that's a negative language. You got to be careful about that too. Saying that something sucks is a negative way of referring to something versus saying, the situation is not ideal, but this is what I'm going to do to actually make it better.

And that's the type of way in which Trevor and others that actually embody this whole notion of neutral thinking, objectivity, and the language you use, that allows you to then have the opportunity to be positive, to be honest with yourself in a moment where you even have...

the ability to get there. Sometimes you hear people say things like that or speak in that way and they're like releases for them. It's like this thing in their brain, like if I say this, I can kind of get it out of my system, but it's negative. And it seems like, I mean, even as you described going from negative to positive, I've got to go through neutral and

There may be some grace period of like you or people who are trying to get into this space to be more positive, to be more neutral, where you kind of have to just stop saying or kind of change the way that you get some of these things out, change the way that how you react, which then I know like in my case, I don't.

I don't really get very negative, but I also don't get very positive. In fact, I get criticized sometimes for not... Something really great happens and I just kind of keep... I'm not Debbie Downer with positive. I'm also not Debbie Downer with negative. I'm just kind of right in the middle. Yes. And that can be seen as kind of lacking emotion or just not celebrating wins. Yes. But...

I don't know. There's some sort of balance here where you just kind of stay in this place where you don't get too low and you don't get too high in any circumstance. And you don't let things...

road rage or yelling at someone or yelling at your kids or yelling at somebody at the store or something. You don't let these things kind of become your release to then move forward. I think the thing I always like to do is as much as possible try to step outside of my own body, try to understand what this other individual could be experiencing, could be doing or what my actions could do to

either positively or negatively affect the individual and so if I'm gonna give someone the finger, how does it make me feel better? Do I feel better because I made that person's day worse? No. And if I do, I don't think that's... For me, the golden rule of y'all is tell your boys, treat others like you want to be treated. And would I want someone to give me the finger? No. So why am I gonna do that? Why am I gonna be nasty to someone when I want someone to be nasty to me?

And that's not ways of solving problems. Yeah. What do you do to teach your kids that neutral? I mean, especially you have young kids, so it's very high and low and up. I yell at them. No joke. Well, sometimes, unfortunately. Yeah. Because not everyone's perfect. I'm not sitting here like I'm always neutral and objective. And every time I see something bad happen, I just diffuse it with this mindset of just

No, this is hard. It needs to be practiced continually in those moments where someone does do something to annoy you and maybe you do do something that's not exactly showing your best self at that moment in time. It's being aware of that and being able to rectify the point in time which you actually misstep. With the boys, I try to remind them

Moments where I hear them use negative talk, negative language, either about themselves or to each other that, again, treat others how you want to be treated. Your words have power. And so if you say negative things out loud or you say something about yourself, be careful how that potentially can manifest it into reality, into real life. Think about yourself.

the world in which you want to see, the life in which you want to see, and use the words that really help bring that into reality. And negativity is not going to do that. How do you navigate failure and really hard things? Do you have a process that you go through when something hits you really hard to not turn negative? Yes. There are a few elements around how I've gone about trying to diffuse negativity.

One way is to actually try to predict those moments in which negativity can occur. And the way in which I've done that is a process actually with Trevor many years ago where we laid out all those moments where negative thoughts can come into play. Emotions can infect my mindset.

in instances where I'm trying to actually achieve some certain objective. So we laid out these goals I want to achieve in life and why, and then these blockers and these impediments that actually could occur towards achieving those goals. And when those impediments occur, what emotions actually play out and how should I be thinking about, from an objective perspective, whether those emotions are valid and how I should actually deal with those. And so, case in point, there could be

There's a goal I have around being the best father and husband and rock to my family. And there can be emotions that play out where I feel guilty around the fact that maybe I'm not present for my family because I'm working too much or I'm not home or I'm off in the corner working on some deal. And so those times when I'm actually feeling that way,

I've pretty much pre-laid out the mindset around, "Okay, my job and the way I actually have other constraints and goals in life has a dynamic where I'm going to have to be doing those things. And as long as my family understands that, that's okay and don't beat myself up." However, if there's moments where I should be mentally present with my family,

on vacations, at dinner, these special moments in time before bed and prayer time, I shouldn't be on my phone. I shouldn't be thinking about, "Wait, am I going to get that term sheet signed?" or "Hey, this company is running out of cash. What do I do?" It's like, no. Those are moments where, yeah, I probably should not be thinking about those things because I'm at odds with the goal of being there for my family.

Having an objective neutral mindset around, okay, should I feel upset about this or not, is one where it's like, okay, what are the conditions with regards to why I feel this way? And if they're valid, then rectify immediately. Put down the phone and be present. If they're invalid because this is actually what I should be doing, don't beat myself up. My family understands. Focus on work, get it done, and then be back present with my family. With work, it's so easy to...

to get this sort of immediate dopamine hit of, "Oh, I got this deal. Oh, I got this meeting. Oh, I got this speaker to agree to do an interview with me." Those things create this surge of energy. It gets you out of bed and excited. And the reverse can happen too. Somebody cancels, you lose a deal, a customer leaves. Those things

can provide such negative energy that it can be, if you have these overwhelming positive reactions, you can have these overwhelming negative reactions. And I think now 15 years into my business career, my own personal business career, 20 years into my overall career, I see now much more that things are like waves where

Where, yes, I can control a lot, but a lot of things I can't control. And I can react in certain ways to the things that I can and can't control.

Or I can accept in some ways like this is what's supposed to happen and I'm working as hard as I can. There's been so many times where I've worked as hard as I can and completely failed and fell on my face. And there have been times, many, many times where I've completely failed, you know, as being a dad or doing this or prioritizing this over something I should have prioritized for my kids. And some of it's my fault and some of it's not my fault.

But just kind of understanding that these are the things that keep me centered. These are the things I can control. I can control how I think. I can control my actions, the way that I react. And I can't control everything else. And I'm going to try to stay in that neutral space as much as possible with knowing that all these outside things. And oftentimes I talk to people that get thrown around by these waves. And it's just like, why are you so...

worry, you have no control over that. And that's easy to say. And I'm not judging. Honestly, in certain circumstances, it's very, very hard not to get thrown upside down emotionally over certain things that happen or just life hits you and terrible things happen. And

How do you not react in some way to it? Just trying to constantly center yourself and say, "Look, I'm going to be here, good and the bad. I'm going to stay here. When the kids are difficult, when the kids are easy, I'm still going to try to stay here. When my relationship with my spouse is harder or when it's better, I'm still going to try to stay in the same place." Yeah. I mean, it's life.

We're not robots yet. And the way in which we actually manage our emotions, we go through those experiences and we react to them as humans is important. And it's being fair to yourself to actually have those emotions and then taking the time

when you're ready to process and then understand what your next step is going to be. Like, what do I do next? The situation objectively is X, Y, and Z. Now, what am I going to do about it to change it for the better? And do it with a level of mental clarity and step-by-step and understanding it takes what it takes in terms of where you want to go, the road you want to go down.

And it's tough. Every day we're dealing with it on micro and macro levels. And how we find ways to get our brain in the right mindset to do so is very important. It's partially why for me, this gym and being able to work out is so important because to take an hour to just totally beat the crap out of my body, it creates almost like this mental reset.

in a way where I can approach whatever's been bothering me with this new sort of clarity and thinking that

I may not have been able to have before because I'm so consumed in my thoughts. I'm so consumed by what's bothering me. What becomes next is I get so consumed with the physical pain that I'm actually doing. Another thing I do every Monday, I don't eat for 24 hours. I fast for 24 hours every Monday. Is that a spiritual thing or is that a physical thing? It's all of the above. What do you get out of that? I get the reset. I get the overall...

focus and comfort with being able to push through struggle in a manner where it creates that overall sort of like re-level and resetting for every given week. So every Monday, I stop eating from Sunday evening and then I eat again Monday evening. I've been doing it now for at least a year. I found it's been helping us manage how I flow through every week, week by week. Food

Food, water? Oh, so water. Zero calories. So I can have coffee with no added sugars or things like that, but it's pretty much water, electrolytes. And at the same time, too, I work out double sessions those days, too. So I'm actually working out in a also calorie-deprived state.

Well, I bet you're really fun during that time. Well, we always have our catch-ups at 4.30 on Mondays. You're always catching me in like towards... Explains a lot. Explains a lot. Yeah, 4.30, I'm probably at my peak grumpiest for sure. So you invested...

in my company in 2018 and every Monday afternoon since basically 2018 we've had a conversation and it's been you know I don't really know how to compare that to other investor

entrepreneur relationships because I don't do that with anyone else. But I think a lot of this, I know a lot of this positive mindset, this sort of neutral energy mindset has

bled into the things that I do. And I try to be very honest with you about if things aren't going well or if they are going well. I mean, sometimes you do check me on it and say, hey, Derek, this is pretty amazing. You should maybe be a little more excited about this. Or hey, Derek, you should maybe have a little bit better energy than you've got. This is a little negative. And it's not that bad.

But I think that's been a really good check for me. And I wonder if you have people in your life that you speak with or that kind of check you on these things. People that, I don't know if it's mentors or if it's peers. It sounds like you work out with other people. But how do you sort of bounce off that feedback of if you're in the right place or not? Yeah, I get a lot of it actually from my wife, Chanel. We're pretty very open with one another. And we can always sense each other's

Energy and so if I'm feeling negative if she's feeling negative, we're very good at helping each other not correcting each other but being there in terms of Counterbalancing whatever force we can see that's taking us down the wrong pathway and then knowing the right things to say which again aren't overly positive to the point where it's delusional and not

grounded in reality with the facts but being objective and neutral around how to assess and move forward with something and so Yeah, she's we are that for each other in a manner. That's quite special as a high-achieving person How do you manage not getting too frustrated with things not happening like you expect or putting in the work and? Everything not happening according to the plan that you had in your mind. Yeah the way I think about is that

It's not my plan, it's God's plan. There's a reason for everything. And so, there's a reason that it's going this way. And I am fully comfortable that the way that life is transpiring is the plan that's made for me and I'm just following through it. Everything? Yeah. That sounds... That's a lot of trust. Yeah. But I mean, like, that's, like, I trust in God. And during the tough times or bad, like...

if you don't have that, then I just don't know what else to do. If I push it on my all and it's like, oh, this is not working, it's like, hey, it wasn't in the cards. I'm not writing life script. I have agency in it and I'm working into it, but I'm doing it with regards to whatever God has in store for my life. And for some reason, if it's not

what I thought it would be. I'm like, okay, God has something else better in store and I trust in that. The way that I heard it said, which has always resonated with me, is God's plan is so much better than your plan. God created the universe. You have a marketing degree from Brigham Young University. Whatever you can creatively come up with, it pales in comparison to what's possible. Also, how much do I really understand about myself?

And having the faith and the trust that someone all powerful, all seeing knows you so much better than you know yourself. And has maybe had a much longer relationship with you than you've had with yourself. Yes. And or that you understand of yourself. And so trying to have a little bit of grace and patience and understanding that this is what's supposed to happen. Yeah. And that makes sense.

It's all so simple in my opinion. It just takes out the complexity. It takes out the friction. It's just like, "Okay, just have faith." That's what it is. It's faith. What's your best advice for accomplishing difficult things? One, take a step back and understand and ask yourself, "Why are you trying to do this?" Why are you going down this journey of trying to achieve something so incredibly hard? For instance, my wife is trying to run the Boston...she's going to run the Boston Marathon in a couple of weeks.

And it's like, why are you running, training to run 26 and a half miles? Like in Boston, which is one of the worst, most grueling marathons. And it was because like, oh, I just want to do it because of some totally empty reason. Then you're probably going to crumble under the training that it takes to actually be able to finish the Boston Marathon.

Versus it's something deeply rooted and spiritual around why you're motivated to actually day in, day out, do the training, complete the diet, go to PT, like go on a 21-mile run randomly on a Tuesday, but then travel across the country and then subject yourself to this brutal race.

It has to be something deeply spiritual and mission-driven to the point that you actually are motivated to do that. Because the incredibly difficult things, things that are truly difficult for you, are going to take a lot out of you and command a lot from you. And it needs to be a very authentic, passionate, motivated reason for why you're doing it. Or else, one, you'll fail at it. Or you won't complete it to the best of your potential.

Because it's those things that you truly love in life that you're passionate about, that you're so maniacally focused and mission-driven to accomplish, where you'll achieve the best results and where you will accomplish the most hardest of tasks, in my opinion. When you think about some of the hardest things you've accomplished, what comes to mind? Where do you go when you try to get the energy to go do something difficult? Again, I think about those things that I'm deeply passionate about. So whether it's

physical fitness and training. I remember we talked about early as a high schooler winning state championship in the 600 and running at the time, one of the fastest times in the country. I wasn't the best athlete growing up. The story was I tried to make my high school basketball team got cut freshman year, was told by the coach, you have

heart and speed, but you got no skill, like do something else. Then they go from that to being one of the fastest runners and, you know, folks not thinking that, oh yeah, you can be state champion. No, I just went out and I did all the hard work. I did the training because I wanted the best and was able to do so. And yeah, that's

That time broke a division record and stood for a good almost 20 years post that, which is crazy. So I've been able to achieve, in my opinion, multiple sort of really hard things as an athlete. Even thinking back to at Harvard, sophomore year, we came in last in the Ivy League. Half the team quit. I could have quit. I stayed with it and then really gave my all to it.

Junior year was rebuilding year, senior year was voted captain and a lot of the team that quit that sophomore year came back. I helped lead them and we at that time had the best finish in the Ivy League for since like a 30-year period prior to that and I won multiple Ivy League championships and a lot of that I look to less was me but the ability for me to actually find something

in myself that was more than just physical, it was this leadership ability because at the time I didn't really look at myself as that type of leader but my peers voted me a leader and then the way in which we came together and you know kids that literally were like some of the slowest on the track that year were able to actually get their own Ivy League championships which I think was amazing. So I look at from that to just being a father just the challenges day in day out year as well that

It's always a struggle and pressure as it relates to trying to just have the best for your kids and give them a life that allows them to be whatever they want to be. In my opinion, also, the biggest thing I want for them is to be able to grow to make the world a better place. And the thing I think about some of these moments that I mentioned in terms of things that are difficult and very hard,

And I can mention a bunch of stuff in the actual formal work setting that I won't even go into because we all have them. But there are moments of pressure. And the one thing many people can get lost in when they're in high pressure situations is that you can become negative. You can be so just down on yourself and lose a sense of awareness with regards to the position you're in.

which in most cases is a privilege. It's a privilege to be a father. It's a privilege to be on the starting line of an Olympic final and potentially have the ability to go up and have a gold medal. It's a privilege to be going on an IPO roadshow to see what potentially could happen. Those moments are things that people can be so stressed out about that they lose track of, like, I'm privileged

to even actually be in the situation, even though it may feel bad, it may feel tough, it may feel stressful, take a step back. You're privileged to be a founder. You're privileged to have a passion

penny in your bank account to even have the ability to go on another day to achieve your dream and that's something that I think that anyone is trying to achieve something difficult needs to realize that in most cases you are probably in a privileged situation to even have an opportunity to go across that journey across that road regardless of how objective you see your state is

It can feel bad. Like the fact that you have the ability, it's a privilege that you're able to walk. Like there's so many privileges that you think about, you lose track of, where just going back to the overall notion of just like basic health, if you compare yourself to those folks that don't have that privilege, sometimes you can just lose track of that as a basic human being. Yeah, it's a privilege to live in America. It's a privilege to live in 2025. It's a privilege to...

have the technology that we have to do the things we want to do, to travel the way we travel. There's all these things that never existed. Or it's a privilege to be living. It's like a privilege to be alive. Yes. Yeah. Outside of family, who's the human being that you most admire? I really do admire another mutual friend, Jim Lowry. He wrote the book Change Agent, which I think about someone like Jim, he's devoted his life to helping others. And

First black consultant hired by McKinsey several decades ago. I won't age him. But what he's done for not only the black community, but the community at large, the people of large, where he's really dedicated his life to helping others, I think is incredible.

truly admirable and inspiring and one where I think about how I want to live my life being able to Dedicate as well to helping others is something that I think was in it there and it was inherently in me but I think he Inspired me to actually try to be more focused on how I can do that continually day in day out What accomplishment are you most proud of? I am proud of just the family and

having such a grounded, tight-knit core unit from my two boys, my wife, my parents now live here in the LA area, and that way in which now in my mid-40s, I won't fully date myself, just being able to have that home unit

is something that I feel honestly privileged to be able to have and be able to come home to every day. If when you die you meet God, what do you hope he says to you? I hope he says I made the world a better place and I was able to help others in a very material manner. And

build something very far beyond my own self. I want to make the world a better place. Whether it's on a grand scale or small scale, if I can actually leave the planet better than how I entered it, I feel good. And finally, how will you measure your life? How I helped others and the manner and level by which I've helped others. And for me, the more people I'm able to help, the more fulfillment I have in life.

And that's what I'm wired by. I'm wired by helping others. Awesome. So we can work out or? Let's do it. Thanks for having me. Divot. On next week's episode. The jobs we need to do will be done, but don't want to do will be done by an AI. And then humans will do jobs they want to do or pursue other things they want to do. So I think it will be truly empowering for human beings after a chaotic period.