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Explore your curiosity - Interesting people with fascinating stories.
Life consists of three things:
-The stories we tell others
-The stories others tell us
-The stories we tell ourselves.
TC, welcome aboard to the show. Thank you so much for joining us today.
Speaker 2:You're welcome, Ari. I'm looking forward to the conversation.
Speaker 1:TC, tell me what makes athletes tick and what do you do when they break?
Speaker 2:Well, an athlete breaks, usually that's an orthopedic question.
Speaker 1:Fair enough.
Speaker 2:Actually the way I used to differentiate whether something is a true mental problem or a coaching, a physical coaching problem with an athlete is were they better in practice than when they were competing? And when I got referrals, didn't matter whether it's in high school, college or pros, I would always ask the coach or whomever was referring, you know, how are they in practice and how's that compared to performance? If performance is less than practice, then obviously it's a mental issue than it is, a coaching physical issue.
Speaker 1:What was driving that? What's special about the performance itself? Is it the crowd? Is there something else at work there?
Speaker 2:Really, you're talking about young people. They don't have a fully developed brain yet, right? We don't develop our brains till we're 25 fully. And so the prefrontal cortex is still not fully developed yet. We're asking them to perform in front of lots of people.
Speaker 2:And so there's the embarrassment and everything that goes along with that fear of embarrassment, the fear of failure in front of people is huge. And so if they don't have strong emotional control, that's always a liability.
Speaker 1:Is that, how do you work with them? How do you kind of improve that skill? That sounds kind of difficult.
Speaker 2:Yeah. And what's interesting is usually when somebody comes to me, it's because they've had something traumatic happen. And I'll give you a really simple, example. Very young swimmer. She, I think she was 16 when we're working together and junior in high school and great kid, smart kid, sort of did everything right.
Speaker 2:And her mom sat in and talked with me a couple of times. She said, TC, you had to see her swim to practice. And she was referred by her coach and, you know, but her mom said, ought to see her swim and practice. She is beautiful and graceful and she's like a bullet in the water. And when she gets to competition, it looks like she's wrestling an alligator.
Speaker 2:I'm like, woah, that's the clearest pictures I've ever heard. So, so actually I'm, I'm trained unlike most people were, weren't trained in sports psychology. Was trained in clinical work as well. So I had some really pretty powerful clinical tools, including, EMDR, which is eye movement desensitization reprocessing.
Speaker 1:For most of us here in the audience, tell us what that actually means and simplify it
Speaker 2:Yeah. For So it's, the technical name is bilateral brain stimulation. But what it is is, if you think about all the things they say when somebody isn't making progress, like in their brain, they're stuck and things are frozen, they're not moving. And it literally is true airy. And it's like, you know, when you when you get a traumatized brain, your brain's just a bunch of neural networks, which is just neurons connected to other neurons.
Speaker 2:And, when you have a trauma, what happens is like you have fear, you have anger, you have hurt, any combination of those, any one of those, if it's big enough, it kind of glues that into place. And so that neural network becomes the driver. So anything that comes close to thinking, imagining that I'm going to be exposed to that same thing again, that drives them into that anxiety. So that becomes performance anxiety in this case. And it's true of all anxieties, but in this case, performance anxiety.
Speaker 2:And so what eye movement desensitization reprocessing does is it literally, literally figuratively, literally, actually not figuratively, literally moves information back and forth between the sides of your brain, right and left side, as you're thinking about it and allows you to reprocess it. And it was developed for post traumatic stress disorder because they're the biggest traumas. But I'm like, boy, if I can use this for sexual abuse, which I was doing a lot of at the time, and people have been in traffic accidents and post Vietnam war veterans are still having trouble twenty years later. Like, my gosh, I imagine that I, you know, it's going to help my athletes. And then later my work with the business people overcoming their smaller T traumas.
Speaker 2:And sure enough, it's like we did some traditional work and it didn't help at all. And I kept saying, I'd like to do this. And she thought it was like the silliest thing she'd ever heard of is like moving her eyes back and forth while she's thinking. It was just what it looks like from the outside. She's finally just said, whatever, I'll try anything.
Speaker 2:First five minutes in the first session we did that found the trauma from about nine months prior to when she started her struggle. Some coach, she was 14 or 15, criticized her for a swimming event in front of the whole team. And that was enough trauma for her to create this kind of glued in neural network. And so when she got into a performance, she was so into fear that she couldn't swim her normal stroke.
Speaker 1:Is it enough to kind of just give the monster a name or is there kind of work that needs to be done to unstuck yourself?
Speaker 2:You know, the give the monster a name is a very superficial treatment of it. It's like, you know, if you have a, let me use a physical analogy, you break a bone like, or you have a deep cut. It's like, well, you could put a bandaid over it and that might help heal it. But you know, maybe if you stitch it up, it would heal a lot faster. So, you know, this, we, we identified it and literally resolved it in sixty minutes.
Speaker 2:And in sort of a traditional approach like that, a very superficial approach may never work and may partially work, but it's going to take months and months and months.
Speaker 1:When you're going through a longer process to kind of deal with the trauma that's holding you back, what does that work look like? What does the process look like?
Speaker 2:Well, with EMDR and brain spotting, it goes very rapidly, so you don't have that. That's the whole point. Like, I remember when I learned it, you know, the, the person who invented the technique Francine Shapiro was teaching it to me. And she said, it breaks all the rules of therapy. Now from Boulder, we love breaking the rules in Boulder, right?
Speaker 1:This is true.
Speaker 2:You spend enough time here to know that. And I'm like, okay, cool. And she said, you know, therapy is supposed to be slow and painful. Right. Well, this is rapid and complete and only hurts a little.
Speaker 2:So I'm like, okay, gotta learn this. That took over my practice. I still use that even with my business leaders, when they're facing stuff that are challenging to them and they've all got stuff attached and it's anything for not, they're not performing and their teams aren't performing. You know, it's a way to dig into the mind.
Speaker 1:So you kind of alluded to this already. Keep me honest here. About thirty years ago, you moved from athletes to entrepreneurs. What prompted that change?
Speaker 2:Well, I was so I started my practice while I was still in graduate school and working with lead athletes and Boulders filled with them. So that was nice. And then, you know, then I studied the clinical work and added that in. And then two of my best friends were business consultants with entrepreneurs. And they said, TC, you know, entrepreneurs are kind of like athletes.
Speaker 2:And, you know, they lay it on the line all the time. And I'm like, and I think they would love the stuff you're doing with athletes of how to create success with your mind. I'm like, really? And they go, yeah, really. And they drugged me into entrepreneurial organizations and they were right.
Speaker 2:My baby was born. And I've stayed with entrepreneurs since then.
Speaker 1:So how are, so now with decades of experience, what are the differences that you see between entrepreneurs? And we didn't mention this, but you worked with Olympic players as well. What's the difference between these elite players and entrepreneurs, if any, or what are the similarities?
Speaker 2:Well, you grade entrepreneurs in terms of sustained success, and you know this really well because you live in the entrepreneurial world, Sometimes you hit an idea at the right time and it's just the right idea and the right time and you do great. You know, that company usually thrives and gets sold for a lot of money. But then there's also the entrepreneurs that just develop a great company that doesn't didn't have the luck of it being exactly the right time. So it's those entrepreneurs, I'm going say that keep developing great companies, but it takes some time and they have lots of ups and downs in that process that sustains success. That's what it takes to be a great athlete.
Speaker 2:You can't be a great athlete, you know, by getting lucky. You just can't, you know, it takes, you know, years of training and devotion. What's what separates greatness is, is pretty similar. Think in athletes and entrepreneurs, tenacity is part of it. Coachability is part of it.
Speaker 2:It's a really big part of it, actually. Some younger entrepreneurs kind of think they know it all and they don't really want help. And I really love it when entrepreneurs being successful and they're just a sponge anyway. And you know, those, those are the people that are long term successful. And I remember this really distinctly.
Speaker 2:I was presenting at the Olympic training center and it was, it was teams from all over the country being represented there, but they're all in the same sport and which was interesting. So there are competitors, if you will, to become the Olympic representatives. And what I noticed in the room was the athletes that had already had long term success, they would take notes. The other athletes were like, I know this stuff. I'm not going to admit I don't know anything.
Speaker 2:And they'd literally sit there with their arms crossed like this. And it was really distinguishing to me. You know, I think, and some of them would have short term real success, but they didn't have the sustained long term success. And I think that's also true with entrepreneurs or anybody else. It's like, you a continuous learner?
Speaker 2:Are you continuously challenging yourself and having other people challenge you in a way that you're really listening and taking it in and considering it. It doesn't mean they're right or wrong, but you got to consider it. Those are a couple of differentiators.
Speaker 1:If you had to just pick one kind of characteristic that contributes to success of entrepreneurs, what would be your number one?
Speaker 2:Credit, I don't know.
Speaker 1:No, the one I say, and I don't know if there's a right answer here, but the one that I say is mentorability, it's this ability to listen and learn and kind of pivot your opinions into something new based on what you've learned. I, you know, I'm, I'd be interesting to know, know from a, from a doctor, not just, from my own experience, if you have a perspective.
Speaker 2:Well, that's what I just said about coaching. They're coachable. You called it mentoring. It's like same thing in my mind. Mean, there may be slight differences, but not really.
Speaker 2:It's a learning process. So that's huge. I think the other piece is you have to have good emotional intelligence and a good ability to handle risk and anxiety or handle things that people, other people might react to in a real high level of anxiety, but you don't. And also the risk tolerance is really important. I got a great entrepreneur right now and he's he's being successful quickly in a traditional business, not a high-tech or real innovative business, but in a traditional business.
Speaker 2:But he doesn't have a lot of risk tolerance. So he has trouble sleeping at night and he's always kind of anxious. So that's really hard. I think risk tolerance is really And then as opposed to entrepreneurs with last week, she's like, you know, I'm just so used to risk. I've been doing this for twenty three or twenty four years now.
Speaker 2:It's like, I'm good on risk. It's like, I like it. It kind of fuels me and doesn't make me anxious and makes me more excited and enthusiastic.
Speaker 1:Is more risk tolerance a good thing or do you need somewhat of a balance in the middle?
Speaker 2:That's a great question. And it's a depends answer. In my world, I'm now implementing EOS, the entrepreneur operating system. And Sheena Wickman developed that and he did a really nice, really brilliant match. And we call it a marriage.
Speaker 2:The founders and your founder, you know, this most founders are very visionary, right? And visionaries are like, I got 20 ideas and then I got 20 more ideas. Here's another 50. And that stuff drives people crazy and crazy chaos. And so what we do and what Gino did when he set up EOS is like, let's have a marriage of a founder, which is a visionary mind, which is let them focus on all the ideas and be out there.
Speaker 2:And they often pretty often the face, almost always the face of the company, but let's marry them with a COO type of personality. And that person is going to be logical and linear and not so emotional because founders typically tend to be pretty emotional people. That's just part of the brain. So, and let's marry them in a way that, you know, that COO or what we call the integrator personality can channel their energy. And when they come up with 99 ideas, they can pick the one or two that they can actually do something with now and then, you know, listen to the visionary.
Speaker 2:So they're happy that they've been heard and then table those other ideas until the right time. Then we have the founder looking outward, the visionary looking outward, and then the integrator, the COO, running the company and looking inward to help getting everybody running correctly. And that's, that was such a brilliant idea when I ran into EOS. It's like, oh my gosh, that makes so much sense. Does that make sense to you?
Speaker 2:You're a founder?
Speaker 1:I've definitely seen the different personality types. What I think is incredibly interesting is this idea of people balancing each other out. Is this also to a certain degree of framework for entrepreneurs to think about building their team?
Speaker 2:Yeah. Building, building, if you want a high performing team, the only way you get there, unless you're just lucky, but high performing sustainable team and a company just got lucky with the idea at the right time is you have to have a great leadership team and they have to become a high performing team. And I referenced that team last week where the woman been there for twenty some years. She, you know, I presented this idea when we started working together two years ago and she developed, she now has a great integrator. And what that's allowed her to do is like totally exit all of day to day functions.
Speaker 2:And she's actually starting a whole nother. So she's going into not just leading this, but she's going to franchise their concepts. So she's going to be doing the whole franchise business and not present at all with day to day, because now she has this great integrator COO running day to day. And she has a person in finance. She has a person in operations and, you know, and those are the most, those are the four seats that you have to fill.
Speaker 2:Well, you have to have sales, marketing ops, finance, and did I miss one sales operation, finance operations. I'm missing on, I'm missing area.
Speaker 1:If you're a tech company, the CTO,
Speaker 2:There you go. Yeah. And sometimes, you know, we have, you know, sometimes my bigger companies have HR in there. Yeah. Yeah.
Speaker 2:And all the structure's a little bit different, but you have to cover basic areas.
Speaker 1:Yeah. Is from your experience and research, is there a role that's more ideal to be the CEO as opposed to other roles? I mean, does your CEO have to be the ideas person? What if you're kind of that COO type that you described in the CEO seat? Does that create a problem or does it just create a different dynamic?
Speaker 2:It creates a little bit different dynamic of a company. And you know, lot of companies just have one person in that seat. And about half of my companies have one person that fill both seats. But the reality is their brains are built for one versus the other. What a lot of founders do is because they have to do everything for a while, they get pretty good at a lot of the integrator stuff.
Speaker 2:But it's not their DNA, if you will. And if you really want to be in your brilliance, you got to be in your DNA. What are you built for? And it's like my favorite example is I can do math, I can do statistics. I did one of the most difficult statistical dissertations during the time I was in school, which was a meta analysis.
Speaker 2:And I'm not going to date myself too badly here, Arie, but it was like the beginning of computers. So I didn't have full computer help. I had to do a lot of stuff by hand and figure out a lot of stuff by hand. Phenomena analysis, we integrated the data of 300 studies. Yeah, that's a task.
Speaker 2:And without the sophistication that we have today, this was back in '19, okay, all data, nineteen eight of eighty six when I was doing that piece of research. And so I can do that stuff, but it hurts my brain quite frankly. I won't tell you how many times it took me to my knees and in literal pain and frustration. So I can do it, but it's not my DNA. The coaching, the consulting, the teaching, that's just, that's my sweet spot.
Speaker 2:I'm just built for that. That fits my personality. It's very natural to me.
Speaker 1:It almost begs if you're an individual, is there an easy way to kind of self diagnose and be like, okay, this is my sweet spot. So this is where I want to be because that's where I'm going to be successful. How could somebody kind of get to that reflective state?
Speaker 2:You know, if you have some experience, would just look at what are all the things you've done in the different roles that you've absolutely loved? You know, if you have sort of a couple of questions, know, make it break it down into four quadrants, you know, what do you love and what you're great at? What'd you like and you're good at? What'd you do that you're good at, but you didn't really like? And then what did you not like and you sucked at?
Speaker 2:And, you know, kind of go through and give them a one, two, three, four and you know, your ones and twos, are you going to be a brilliance? Your ones are your true brilliance and your twos are close to it.
Speaker 1:Is there, is there a problem here where you might be good at something that you don't necessarily love or, or in your experience, do those things usually go together?
Speaker 2:No, that's the threes and things that you do well, but you don't really like doing. And the reality is because we, especially when we're in a startup or early phase company or young phase company, even you are doing stuff that maybe you're good at because somebody needs to do them, do it, but you may not love it.
Speaker 1:Wonderful. TC, what's the, if you kind of have to think back, athletes, entrepreneurs, what is the most memorable story that you can share with us? Maybe the biggest kind of change that somebody made. What's the story that stuck with you?
Speaker 2:I can only tell stories about people I name most obviously that I can't identify.
Speaker 1:No problem.
Speaker 2:And for this, I think, let's go to an easy one because there's lots of complicated ones that are harder to decipher because there's so many variables. But I had a college golfer back in my sports like days. And, you know, there's a lot of etiquette around golf and very talented young man. And he was, he was an out, I'm being careful here. He was in the SCC and playing for a team in the SEC, which are the best golfers in the country at the college level.
Speaker 2:But he'd never placed in the top 10, but he had the talent to place in the top 10. And like a lot of young men, a lot of young men haven't quite learned how to control their anger yet. And what would happen was he would not make a good shot or he actually hit a bad shot, and he couldn't recover emotionally from it. And he wouldn't throw his club. He wouldn't be inappropriate because he was very good about the etiquette, but it was killing him inside and it was affecting his neck shots and maybe for even the next hole and which kills you.
Speaker 2:Right? And you don't, you can't make too many mistakes in golf and end up in the top 10. And so I kind of listened to him after we'd gone out and I'd watched him hit on the range and stuff. And it was just beautiful to watch him. He could hit anything that I asked him to hit any kind of shot.
Speaker 2:And so clearly I knew something was going on. And I said, so what do you do when you, when you hit a bad shot and you get angry? He goes, I just want to throw my club. I said, okay, how about if we take a modified version of that, that can be within the ethics of golf? I could tell I had his tension with that one.
Speaker 2:And so we went outside, because we were sitting in my office when we were having this conversation, said, Go to your car, grab a club. So I just said, Take a swing and imagine hitting a bad shot. And he was very visual, so he did. I said, imagine the anger that you'd normally have with that. And he did.
Speaker 2:And I said, I want you to take your club and I want you and actually, I gave him these instructions beforehand. So he was doing this. Sorry. I missed that step. And so he took his the the instructions were, when you're angry, I want you to take your club.
Speaker 2:I want you to walk like if you're on the tee, walk off a tee. If you're not on the tee, you can do it wherever you are, but I want you to take it and I want you to put your club down and I want you to press hard into the head. Not so hard that you hurt the club. And then I want you to say all the things you want to say out loud, but Sam silently, your eyes closed to the club in less than five seconds. He did that two days later, he went out and won an SCC tournament.
Speaker 2:Holy shit. Yeah. That was holy shit.
Speaker 1:What's the magic that drove that such a significant change? Is it just letting go? Is it just having that moment of like, okay, I have something, I'm letting it go, and now I'm moving on. Like what's driving that?
Speaker 2:Well, so beliefs drive thoughts, thoughts drives emotions, emotions drives a physical reaction, right? So when, when you're thinking a thought, an angry thought, any kind of negative thought, if there's a bucket of negative thoughts, it tends to have you do this, right? It's like, if this is relaxed, shoulders down, this is not relaxed. Breathing changes, breathing goes into your upper chest. Your shoulders tend to rise.
Speaker 2:I can't hit a good golf shot like this. It interrupts my swing. So that's how thoughts translate into emotions, translate into your muscles, change you physically as an athlete, back to the swimmer and this example of the golfer, both of them, their thoughts were changing their physiology.
Speaker 1:I think the amazing thing about this is that what you're describing maybe is akin to the self fulfilling right? You think a negative thought and it manifests a negative outcome. It's absolutely amazing. You let go of the negative thought and you can manifest a positive outcome. It feels almost magical.
Speaker 1:It feels like something that shouldn't real, but it's quite amazing. D. C, what are the sorry, you wanted to add something?
Speaker 2:No, I just wanted to reiterate the importance of really understanding how simple that is, because when you understand how simple it is, you can actually learn to control it. And, and that's a very powerful and most people don't have a clue how to control their mind or their body. It is true. Your body is always reacting to what you think and you're thinking. And then the step before that is you're thinking what you believe at a deep level.
Speaker 2:And going back to the trauma stuff, if the trauma's driving it, even if it's subconscious, sometimes you don't even know that. In fact, most of what we're being driven by, we have no clue because it's in our subconscious mind and it's just, it's the supercomputer driving everything all day long, the traffic.
Speaker 1:So I'm wondering, these are powerful tools or techniques that high performing athletes and entrepreneurs are using to do better at their job. What are the lessons that the everyday Joe can take out of this in changing their own behavior and their own processes?
Speaker 2:Yeah, I think we everyday Joes, because we're all everyday Joes in some parts of our life, even elite athletes and everyday Joe in every other part of their life, right? Yeah. So we're all everyday Joes to start with. What I think is really valuable is to understand that you actually can gain control of your mind and you can. And when you gain control of your mind, you actually gain control of your life.
Speaker 2:And you know, there's, there's only two things that we actually have 100% direct control of. Do you want to take a guess at those areas?
Speaker 1:Hard question. I would, I would want to say our actions.
Speaker 2:Bingo. You got one.
Speaker 1:I want to say our thoughts, but I'm not entirely sure that's true.
Speaker 2:I said you can have 100% direct control of. Not that you do. Yes. So you got it. You're 100% direct.
Speaker 2:You get gold stars. Yeah. Those are the only two things you can actually have 100% direct control of is your thoughts and your actions. And I've done, I started teaching this like over thirty years ago, especially sales teams back in the day. I'd have, I'd meet people two, three, five, seven years later, sometimes I would even a social thing.
Speaker 2:I did workshop with you all these years ago and it was great. And so I'd say, well, do you remember anything? Go, yeah. I want to control my thoughts and my actions. That is so awesome.
Speaker 2:I'm like, you make me so happy when you say that. Like, if you never learned anything else from me, that is amazing because not only did they learn it, but they were working with it. You know, to become, most of us are not even aware of most of the thoughts they're just going on. Right. They're going, we got thoughts going on all day long, going through our head and even at night when we're sleeping.
Speaker 2:And so if you can learn to pay attention and notice when a thought is not a helpful thought to have and reframe it to something that is helpful to you, That has to be true. You can't make stuff up. Brain knows when you're making stuff up and you can't do that. So it has to be true. Then, you know, that changes your whole physiology and it can change your actions and it can change how you feel about yourself, about others and parenting.
Speaker 2:Oh my gosh. You know, all parents, it's the hardest job ever. Know, every kid is different. Every situation is different and you're always trying to figure it out and you make a thousand mistakes and you just hope you make more than that, you know, good decisions with your children. Think, you know, one is learning to give yourself a break.
Speaker 2:You know, it's okay to make a mistake. And as long as it's not abusive, of but you make a mistake, correct it. That's all. Just go back and say, sorry, and correct it. But again, you have to pay attention.
Speaker 2:You have to pay attention to how do you feel? How do they feel? And five years from now, was that the right thing? Or is it just you out of frustration? And we all have those moments.
Speaker 2:And so you just correct it. Just apologize. That's a little thing. Those little things can go a long way to take stuff out of the day to day when you're frustrated and maybe you came home frustrated and then your kid does something that kids do as toddlers or teenagers that drive you crazy. And it's like, okay,
Speaker 1:today. I had a guest very recently drive this point that you're making home with me. She was stuck in an airport with a delayed flight. She was incredibly stressed and she had this moment of brilliance where she was like, okay, I'm just gonna play a game with my kid. She had a small child, think four or five.
Speaker 1:What she learned through that is the kid had no idea that something was wrong. The kid had no idea that they were delayed. The kid had no stress. But if she would have gone down the stressful path of like, shit, shit, shit, shit, shit. And the kid would have seen that, felt it, and would react to it.
Speaker 1:But because she took that other path of like, we're just gonna play some games and have fun, the kid was completely oblivious. And I think what's interesting is not only do we control our own kind of emotions if we work on it and our behavior, but we're also controlling our environment to a degree because what we're putting out there, we're getting reflected back at us in many ways. Tisi, what a brilliant conversation. Thank you so much for joining our show. We do have a difficult question.
Speaker 1:It's the only one that's scripted on the show, and it's difficult because it's personal. If you had to go back to the most difficult, painful part of your life, whether it was, you know, two years ago or twenty years ago, what advice would you give yourself?
Speaker 2:You said there are no scripted questions. You fooled me.
Speaker 1:Just one. Just one.
Speaker 2:It'd have to be my divorce. Advice would be, this is going to sound bad. Know that lawyers are not fair. It's a win lose situation. And I was trying to play a win win game.
Speaker 2:That aside for me personally, I'd say keep focused on creating a great future because you got a great future coming.
Speaker 1:TC, thank you for your time today. This has been wonderful. I appreciate you joining the show.
Speaker 2:You're welcome, Eric. Very much enjoyed the conversation. You're right. Great conversation. Wonderful.