New year, new podcast. Welcome to the pilot episode of the Success for the Athletic-Minded Man!
Welcome to Success for the Athletic-Minded Man (SAM)! A real talk on harnessing your athletic drive for clarity, focus, and consistency in business and life. But we’re not just tossing around buzzwords— we’re unleashing the secrets of elite athletes and world-class personalities right at the comfort of your podcast player.
If you’re new here, SAM is the upgraded version of the Success Through Failure podcast. So why the shift? Let me paint the picture— from my ringside seat as a Division 1 All-American wrestler to coaching elite athletes and navigating diverse businesses, I’ve cracked the code on athletic mindset success. Now I’m bringing that championship mindset directly to YOU.
But this isn’t just a simple podcast shift; I made sure that SAM is a powerhouse of insights and strategies tailored for champions like you. Still curious about why we hit refresh on our podcast game? Stick around, and let’s unfold this new chapter together!
If you don’t have time to listen to the entire episode or if you hear something that you like but don’t have time to write it down, be sure to grab your free copy of the Action Plan from this episode— as well as get access to action plans from EVERY episode— at JimHarshawJr.com/Action.
Download the Action Plan from This Episode Here
[00:00] Welcome to the first episode of Success for the Athletic Minded Man. Real talk on harnessing your athletic drive for clarity, focus, and consistency in business and life. This is your host, Jim Harshaw, Jr. And today, in this very first episode, I’m covering three Things number one, why the change, why kill success through failure podcast and move into this new niche.
[00:31] Actually, it’s not a new niche. It’s a sub niche, really. So number one, why number two, what to expect. And number three, I’m going to give you a few doses of actually what you’re going to be hearing more of in this new iteration of my podcast. And so let’s start right in this jump right in. Number one, why, why change?
[00:49] I am uniquely positioned to lead a specific group of people. I’m not the best at speaking to everyone, a general podcast, general coaching, speaking to everyone about everything, which is a little bit of success through failure. What that was, it was very broad, but I am the best, probably the best in the world or one of the best in the world at speaking to a certain subgroup of listeners.
[01:18] And this subgroup of listeners, you’ll know if this is you, you have an athletic mindset, you’re a man and you want to succeed in business and in life. Why am I the best at speaking to that small, narrow group as opposed to everyone? Well, Number one, because of my athletic background, I was a division one, all American wrestler in Olympic hopeful.
[01:39] Uh, I was a division one head coach. I was the youngest division one head wrestling coach in the country at one point. So I have this unique, deep athletics background. Second, I have a vast business background. I’ve owned multiple businesses, two local home service companies, just kind of local companies.
[01:58] And one was a technology company and we had customers all across the United States. And even internationally, I have a broad work experience beyond entrepreneurship and business ownership. I was a leader of a nonprofit. I also worked at a large university. In addition to a small university, I raised millions of dollars.
[02:17] And so. That’s sort of some of my other professional business background, but you go deeper into my business background. I’ve poured concrete. I’ve split wood. I’ve worked on a framing crew. I worked in in sales doing cold calls up to 50 calls per day. So I have this broad business and professional background in addition to my unique athletic background that positions me to be the best or one of the best in the world at speaking to athletic athletics.
[02:46] Minded men who want to find clarity and consistency and focus in balance in their lives. I’m also a father, a father of four. So there’s a, a small group of people in the world. It’s actually a large group of people, but if you really define this niche, it’s, it’s a narrow niche of people. There’s a lot of you out there listening who I can speak most directly to you.
[03:10] And relate to you and bring you insights. Now, listen, that’s not to say that I can only bring value and insight to that narrow group of people, but that’s who I’m among the best in the world at providing value to. And that’s who I’m going to focus on moving forward. And, you know, listen, I said this on the last episode of success through failure.
[03:32] If you’re for everyone, then you’re really for no one. Uh, there are plenty of broad, you know, grocery stores out there for everyone, but then there’s whole foods. It’s narrower. It’s not for everyone. It’s for certain people who really want to, who are willing to focus on spending more money for higher quality food.
[03:52] You know, there are plenty of gyms out there, local gyms where you go in and there’s treadmills and weights, and then there’s CrossFit. For the serious CrossFitter, that’s the only place that they want to be. I use this example of festivals as well. There are plenty of festivals, arts festivals, and music festivals out there.
[04:09] And then there’s Burning Man, right? There are plenty of sort of people out there speaking broadly to everyone. And if you have any sort of You know, questions about, Hey, Jim, why are you excluding women? Or why are you, or why are you excluding men who don’t really have this athletic mindset? I hope you listen as well.
[04:28] If you’re a female, if you’re a man without an athletic mindset, that I hope you’re listening. I hope you’re tuning in. I hope you can continue to get value from me. Um, but if you’re in that niche specifically of athletic minded men, and you’re looking for personal and professional development, I’m your guy.
[04:45] For sure. There’s few, there are few people in the world who can do that better than I can. Quick interruption. If you like what you’re hearing here and you want to learn how you can implement this into your life, just go to Jim Harshaw, jr. com slash apply to see how you can get a free one on one coaching session with me.
[05:04] That’s Jim Harshaw, jr. com slash apply now back to the show. The other example I used in the last episode was if you’re a retired military and you’re looking for a financial advisor and you find one who specializes in, in working with retired military, you’re going to be much more likely to listen to that man or woman who can serve you.
[05:23] This is about me. Making a greater impact in reaching more people, not fewer people, because I’m speaking directly to an audience that I have something in common. That is what this is about. That is why I am making this change. I want to grow. I want to broaden my impact through really serving a specific.
[05:43] Group of people who I can really speak directly to. This is like I said, real talk on harnessing your athletic drive for clarity, focus, and consistency in business and in life. Now I want to share with you a clip from episode 252 of success through failure to give you a little bit of an example of what I’m talking about.
[06:01] This is Jim Hensel. He’s a mindset coach for elite CrossFit athletes. Coincidentally, I just mentioned CrossFit a few minutes ago. But one of his clients is for example, Rich Froning. He’s a multiple time world champion. And this is what Jim Hensel said about the importance of language and that importance of language is really what I’m getting to in terms of how this podcast is going to be structured moving forward.
[06:24] And why we’re making this change. Okay. So here’s a clip from my episode with Jim Hensel. Another CrossFit example would be the term AMRAP. If we show up to the gym and I say, we’re going to do a 20 minute AMRAP, and you don’t understand what an AMRAP is. How are you going to be successful even if you’re super fit amrap stands for as many rounds as possible You have to understand the language of the workout to be successful It’s the same in school if you can’t pass the test and you can’t answer the questions on the test in the language That that professor has taught it to you and I’m not talking about English.
[07:06] I’m talking about whatever that subject is You don’t pass the test. And so this idea of values, if you haven’t done the work to really write it down, and you can’t articulate it, you can’t speak it out of your mouth, then it’s not really a tool. It’s just some idea. And if it’s just some idea, In those big moments of adversity, it won’t be there for you if you don’t understand the meaning of that value and the meaning of that word, and you’re not authentically connected to it, and you haven’t defined it in a way that means something to you, then it’s really not a tool, and you can’t use it.
[07:48] In times of adversity and, and honestly, they’re not even there for you when you’re successful. Okay. So that is from Jim Hensel and he’s talking about that common language. What is an AMRAP? If you know what an AMRAP is, then there’s this common shared lingo. There’s the shared language. There’s going to be a lot of shared language that I have with athletic minded men from my background that I’m going to be using in the podcast, moving forward in success for the athletic minded man.
[08:14] Okay. Three things I said, we’re going to share. Number one, why I just gave you why. Number two, what to expect. Okay. What to expect here. This is short and sweet. Expect conversation about approaching life with the mindset of an athlete. For example, the characteristics of elite world class athletes, world class performers, they have very clear goals.
[08:36] When you’re an athlete, success is very clear to you out in the real world. It’s not always clear when we start with clarity, that is so important to have in the real world. You want to succeed in business. You want to succeed in life. You have to have absolute clarity in what success looks like. For when I was wrestling, it was earning the starting spot.
[08:57] It was winning the match this weekend or the tournament. It was winning the conference championship, winning the national championship. Those were very crystal clear goals. That’s a hard thing to do in the real world. That is specifically what I coach around and what I can help people. Number one, clear goals.
[09:14] Number two is being mission driven. Like a world class athlete is mission driven. We have a purpose and that’s what I bring. To my clients in the real world as well. Number three is about consistency. World class athletes are consistent. They are consistent in what they do. They do it day in, day out. They do the hard thing, right?
[09:36] They’re consistent. They’re focused. They’re disciplined, right? They do the hard thing, even when they don’t want to. That is what I bring you. That is what I bring my clients. And that is what I’m going to bring more of to this podcast, how to do the hard thing, even when you don’t want to. And listen, of course, the last thing is failure.
[09:56] We’re going to still talk about adversity, setbacks, failure, and how we move through that, because we know the best in the world, the best athletes in the world have to move through failure. How can we bring that mindset to you, the performer? In the real world, whether you’re trying to perform at sales, growing your business, getting that promotion, waking up early and getting in your workouts and being more consistent there, uh, being a more consistent father or significant other leader in your business and your company and your community, that is what we’re going to bring doing that.
[10:31] Despite, and sometimes because of failure. So that failure theme will still be recurrent and underlying this. Like I said, I’m really going to be focusing on, on men because we’re in a unique place in the world, separate from women. There are plenty of women. Driven podcasts, women driven coaches out there who have primary females who have primarily work with females.
[10:52] I’m a man who primarily works with men. We do have women in our program. I actually have a female coach, a business coach who she focuses on coaching women, but, uh, but I’m one of her clients. So, um, and that will be the same with my coaching program as well as this podcast moving forward. All right. So I told you three things.
[11:09] Number one, why? Number two, what to expect? I gave you those three, those two things. Number three. Is let me give you a couple of doses of what to expect moving forward. I interviewed an author named Don Yeager, and he is a sports writer, sports author, and he’s talked with some of the most elite athletes in the world.
[11:28] And this is a clip from success through failure. And what we talked about in that episode about being intentional. This is a small dose of what to expect in success for the athletic commanded man. You have to be intentional with who you surround yourself with. That is intentional discussion. That’s an intentional process for you.
[11:50] You don’t let people wander into your inner circle. You’re intentional about who’s there. You don’t just randomly watch whatever YouTube tells you comes next on your feed. You’re intentional looking for what it is that you want, how you want to inspire yourself or how you want to feed yourself. Right.
[12:10] That’s what this is. And being intentional. That’s hard work, right? Because it’s easier to let the world feed us. It’s easier to let the world come to us. Be intentional. Okay. That’s Don Yeager about being intentional. This is so important. This is about being intentional. This is what world class athletes do.
[12:28] World class performers do. They are intentional in their approach to life. And if you’re not intentional in your approach to life, you know, athlete, world class athletes are intentional in their approach to athletics and sports and competition. We have to bring the same. To the real world, to business, to life right now, back in episode 219 of success through failure, I interviewed Patrick Cone.
[12:51] He’s a sports psychologist and he talked about tactics for better mental performance. And we’re going to talk, I’m going to share this with you a short clip where we talked about. Different aspects of mental performance as it relates to athletes and as it relates to you, the performer in the real world.
[13:09] Here we go. A clip with Patrick Cohn. Well, let’s start with a big four. You know, I often talk with my certification students about the big four that we teach. Number one is helping athletes manage expectations. Where they have such high and strict expectations that it ends up sabotaging confidence and their composure.
[13:31] Number two is teaching athletes how to focus on the process. How to be more, as you say, present or more engaged in what they’re doing. And be able to deal better with distractions. That’s number two of the big four. The third is having proactive confidence. That means being able to take a healthy level of confidence with them into the game.
[13:55] And then number four is trust in their skills, being able to trust. What they’ve been learning in practice and be able to take that out to competition where they’re not performing tight. They’re not performing scared, tentative or fearful. So I break it down, Jim, into kind of lessons. If you can think about it that way, and a lot of the lessons I teach.
[14:21] I would say 90 percent of our students are perfectionist. And as you know, with perfectionism has some real advantages, but it also has some real disadvantages. So the big four that I just mentioned are really, really important for that type of athlete, very motivated, committed, but extremely high expectations can be.
[14:43] Self critical and over analytical. So part of it is understanding how is the athlete tripping themselves? How is the athlete getting in his or her way when they go from competition to practice, being able to unlock that or unblock that certainly as part of it by teaching specific lessons that they’re going to help them get over the hump.
[15:08] Okay. That’s Patrick Cohen. He talked about helping athletes manage expectations. What about you managing your own expectations? Talked about athletes having a focus, having to focus on the process. And it’s the same with you. There’s so much more at stake in the real world than there was back when you were competing as an athlete.
[15:26] Number three is about being Proactive with your confidence, right? Having a healthy level of confidence as you bring that into your game or into your performance in the real world. And number four is trusting in your skills. You have experience you’ve practiced. How do you have confidence and how do you have trust in that?
[15:44] So these are a couple of doses of what to expect in this new. Podcast in success for the athletic minded man. I hope you love it. I hope you’re as excited as I am. Please give it a rating. Please give it a review. Please share it with your friends. That’s how these things grow. Tune in for my next episode, the second episode of success for the athletic minded man with Ruben Gonzalez.
[16:07] We’re going to deconstruct how an Olympian approaches. Failure and setback. Yes, this is a hearken back to the old days of success through failure. We’re going to call these old days already because it was a couple of weeks ago. We’re going to talk to Ruben Gonzalez about how he, a successful businessman who was an Olympian is an Olympian.
[16:28] Really? Uh, he is an Olympian in the past four time Olympian, how he is approaching a huge goal that he has in his life with his Olympic. Mindset. This is success for the athletic minded man encapsulated into one episode. I can’t wait to kick this off. The first interview episode of success for the athletic minded man with Ruben Gonzalez.
[16:53] Tune in. Thanks for listening. Here we go.
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