[00:00] Jim Harshaw Jr.: Welcome to another episode of Success for the Athletic Minded Man. Real talk on harnessing your athletic drive for clarity, consistency, and focus in business and life. This is your host, Jim Harshaw, Jr., and today I’m bringing you a solo episode where we’re going to highlight our black guests who we’ve had on in the past.

[00:21] Jim Harshaw Jr.: And share with you just the biggest takeaways from some of those episodes. We’ve had some amazing individuals on, and this is a celebration for Black History Month and a recognition of our black guests. We’ve had six in particular who I want to highlight in this episode, and I’m going to tell you who those six are here in a second, but I want to share with you the four topics that we’re going to cover.

[00:43] Jim Harshaw Jr.: So we went through and listened to each of those episodes and found four specific topics that we had in common, that we talked about in common. That are really powerful that we’re going to bring you insights from each of those episodes that are around these topics. So the four topics are this number one, the role of mentors.

[01:00] Jim Harshaw Jr.: Number two, the role of failure in growth, right? That’s a shout out to the old podcast called success through failure. The third topic is mindset and mental toughness. And the fourth and final one is the power of visualization in goal setting. All right. So those are the four topics. And let me tell you who the four guests are, who we’re really highlighting in this episode.

[01:19] Jim Harshaw Jr.: So the first one is three time world champion wrestler, Lee Kemp. I remember growing up hearing his name and he was kind of one of the biggest names in wrestling, never did get to compete in the Olympics because of the boycott, but one of the greatest American wrestlers of all time. The next one is Ryan Leake.

[01:35] Jim Harshaw Jr.: He’s a motivational coach, speaker, and author. Incredible story. As a matter of fact, his story around how he proposed to his wife was just phenomenal. You gotta, you gotta go back and listen to that episode. Uh, and by the way, I’m going to have a list of all the episode numbers of each of these Leake camp, Ryan Leake and the others.

[01:52] Jim Harshaw Jr.: In the action plan, go to jim herschel, jr. com slash action. But the next one is Jamaican Olympic bobsled team. Captain Devin Harris. Now, if you have heard of the movie cool runnings, or maybe you’ve seen the movie cool runnings, it’s about the Jamaican Olympic bobsled team. Well, Devin Harris is actually the guy.

[02:08] Jim Harshaw Jr.: He was actually the team captain of that team. Incredible story. Fascinating backstory and fascinating individual, not only in his own bobsled career, but also personally and in his military career. The next is performance coach and author Nicodemus Christopher. Nicodemus has worked with some of the highest performers, some of the biggest names in the NBA and brought his wisdom to us.

[02:31] Jim Harshaw Jr.: Just a fascinating conversation. They’re a deep thinker, really great guy. Next is Maurice. Ashley, he was the first African American grandmaster in chess history. The first ever get that the first ever African American grandmaster in chess history. Think about. The limiting beliefs and the barriers that that guy had to break through.

[02:51] Jim Harshaw Jr.: Unbelievable. And last is knee showboat. I’ve had knee on a couple of times. He’s a, he’s become a friend, um, gotten to know him over the years. His son became a wrestler and we talked about that and bonded over that, but he was a former NFL player, or he is a former NFL player, and he’s now a performance coach, super inspiring, just an incredible, incredibly inspiring guy.

[03:11] Jim Harshaw Jr.: So we’re going to talk about each of the four topics that I shared there earlier. And at the end of the episode, I’m actually going to tell you which episodes those guys were into. So if you get to the end of the episode, you’re like, Hey, I want to listen to so and so jump right into that next episode.

[03:24] Jim Harshaw Jr.: I’ll at the end of this show, at the end of this episode, I’ll just tell you the links or I’ll tell you the, uh, the next episode number to go to. So you can jump right to that. If you want to listen to one of those next. So before I get into sharing these topics here. I want you to think about who would value this, who would benefit, who would enjoy.

[03:40] Jim Harshaw Jr.: This episode or this podcast, just in general. So share this with a friend, share it with a colleague. Obviously this is always free for you. I mean, that’s the only payment that I ask, right? Share it with somebody, uh, or subscribe on Apple or Spotify that lets those platforms know that there’s more subscribers, more listeners and, and in their algorithm will tend to share the episode more as well.

[04:01] Jim Harshaw Jr.: And then also on social media. Right. If you want to engage on social media, you can share like any of the episodes or just contact connect with me on social media. I love to connect with my listeners. Love to hear from you and love to engage with you. So just go over to any social media platform and search for Jim Harsha and you’ll find me.

[04:16] Jim Harshaw Jr.: So, all right, let’s dive into our first topic. The first topic is. The role of mentors and trusted advisors. Let’s first hear from three time world champion wrestler, Lee Kemp.

[04:30] Lee Kemp: You know, the first thing I tell people who, who say to me that they want to improve their situation, no matter what it is, is you first have to be committed.

[04:38] Lee Kemp: And the word committed means a lot of things to a lot of different people committed to some people just means showing up every day. Well, that’s not enough. Sometimes you don’t, you wish those people didn’t show up because they don’t add, they don’t add any value to being there. There’s a level of commitment that has to happen.

[04:56] Lee Kemp: And that level means you have to accept all the aspects. Of the job, whatever it is, whether it’s wrestling, whether it’s business, whatever it is, and, and the way, you know, what all the aspects of the job is, you have to have a mentor and I could not have been a great wrestler without a mentor like Dan Gable when I went to that camp and I saw all the stuff he was doing, it was way more than I ever dreamed that I could do, but in order to be great, I did without hesitation.

[05:24] Lee Kemp: And became very committed to all the aspects of the things that I saw him doing. To give you an example, there’s some athletes that I coached that I’ll show them the things that I think they need to be doing. And sometimes they say to me, coach, you know, I really don’t really feel I can do those things and you know, if that’s what it takes to be great, then I just, I just, I won’t be great then, you know, I can’t believe I’m hearing that sometimes, but, but that’s sometimes people make that decision, but, but the people that.

[05:54] Lee Kemp: Just make the decision blindly to follow in faith, blind faith, I call it. Do all the things that are being asked of them and required of them. That’s true commitment. And acceptance follows right after that. You have to accept all the aspects of the things that you’re doing. There’s so many times you’re with people that are doing things.

[06:19] Lee Kemp: You know, begrudgingly, you can tell they don’t really want to be there. They don’t want to do it, whether it’s a sport they’re running, they’re not doing the runs hard, they’re coming in last or just, they’re just putting in time sort of, and in their minds, you know, Hey, I was there. I did all the drills. I did all the, or in business, Hey, you know, I’m, I’m showing up every day at work and I’m, I’m doing the bare minimum of what’s being asked of me.

[06:41] Lee Kemp: Well, that’s not what it takes to be great. You gotta do all the things that the great people do. And what I notice is that great people are constantly looking to get better, actually. To find other ways to get better. So they’re constantly finding

[06:58] Jim Harshaw Jr.: new ways, new things. to get better. Now let’s hear from Jamaican Olympic bobsled team captain Devin Harris.

[07:04] Devon Harris: First of all, do a check to make sure that this goal is one you really want. So let’s say you have done that, you know, okay, this is what I really want. So what is a stuck? Where are you stuck? What’s preventing you from moving forward? Okay. So once you have identified that stuff, it’s clear that you don’t currently have the skill to get past it.

[07:28] Devon Harris: Otherwise you would have. So who can you go find to help you? It’s okay to ask for help, man. It’s okay to be vulnerable. It’s okay to say, I don’t know. We all need the wisdom to know what we don’t know. And we need the humility once we have identified what we don’t know to go find somebody who knows what it is that we don’t know and have them advise us, have them coach us, have them help us.

[07:58] Devon Harris: There ain’t no shame in my game if I don’t know, I’m going to do that. I don’t know this. How can you help me? And that’s been my secret, man. I, every time I get stuck, yeah, so I’m very independent and I’m going to try them, but you can’t keep hitting your head against the wall, expecting different results after a while you realize, you know what, what I’m trying isn’t working, I need help.

[08:22] Devon Harris: Where can I go find that help?

[08:24] Jim Harshaw Jr.: Now let’s hear from performance coach and author Nicodemus, Christopher, we

[08:29] Nicodemus Christopher: all have blind spots in life. Like pride doesn’t want us to admit that, but I’m sure you both you and I, I know I do for sure. I’m sure you do. I have someone that’s coaching me. Right? Because I have blind spots in my life that I just can’t not see.

[08:46] Nicodemus Christopher: So I need someone who can hold me accountable, who can be transparent and authentic and help me grow. Right? Because that word peace prospered to move forward. I want to continue to move forward in every area of my life. So having someone in your life, that’s why I admire the work that you’re doing, Jim.

[09:02] Nicodemus Christopher: Having someone in your life that can see what you can’t see, help you process that, help you come up with solutions to it. It’s invaluable. That’s what, that’s your finding piece.

[09:12] Jim Harshaw Jr.: Yeah. So many people think that number one, I shouldn’t need that. I should be able to do this on my own. What’s wrong with me if I need to hire a coach or a therapist or, you know, there’s other people on the team too, like a financial advisor.

[09:25] Jim Harshaw Jr.: Like you think you need to be able to do it on your own. Like, no, you don’t. Now let’s hear from the first African American grandmaster in chess history, Maurice Ashley. It is extremely difficult

[09:35] Maurice Ashley: to do it on your own. Don’t get me wrong. I don’t pretend that I went on a journey by myself and I was so smart and so tough that I figured it all out.

[09:46] Maurice Ashley: I had coaches, I had role models with the black bear school, whether we’re seeing my family members who were excelling at what they did, whether it was hiring a coach, a grandmaster coach to come and talk about. These difficult games that I had, the journey is so much easier when you have trusted advisors in your corner.

[10:08] Maurice Ashley: And I think that a lot of people try to do this stuff on their own. So they’re sitting back thinking I just suck or what am I supposed to do? But if you have somebody or the more, the merrier, frankly, but people you can trust who can look at it and say. Yeah, I see where you made a mistake there. What you should have done is this.

[10:28] Maurice Ashley: Where you can change is this. Yo, I understand how you’re feeling. You know, we’ll get through this. Those, that’s huge. And I just think on so many of the journeys I’ve seen, people have made it an individual thing, an isolated path to greatness, and virtually no one

[10:48] Jim Harshaw Jr.: does that. You talked about Tiger Woods. I mean, Tiger Woods didn’t do it on his own.

[10:51] Jim Harshaw Jr.: He had coaches, he had people working with him. When he reinvented his swing, he didn’t say, you know, I’m going to go lock myself in a room and reinvent my swing all by myself. Didn’t happen. And it doesn’t matter

[11:00] Maurice Ashley: what it is in your life, by the way. It’s not even about improvement. Just, you know, you talk about your skill set in a sport.

[11:07] Maurice Ashley: It’s not just your job, even your personal life. A lot of us men don’t want to go to therapists, right? When they’re challenges, well, that therapy stuff is not for me, right? But Maybe just having somebody listening alone, just you getting your voice out there and somebody asking good questions so that you can provide.

[11:28] Maurice Ashley: Uh, sort of, they can provide a reflection for what you’re saying. And that alone, just talking to somebody solid can be a difference maker. So you’ve got to look for that in any areas you have difficulty. I always highly recommend stress. Make sure you have trusted advisors in the areas where you’re trying to improve.

[11:49] Maurice Ashley: All right. So some fascinating

[11:50] Jim Harshaw Jr.: takeaways and insights there on the role of mentors and trusted advisors. Let’s talk about our next topic. The next topic is the role of failure. First, let’s hear from former NFL player and now performance coach, Niyi Sobo.

[12:05] Niyi Sobo: Yeah, man, failure is obviously, and I don’t want to spit out a bunch of cliches, but we all know that failure is part of the game.

[12:11] Niyi Sobo: You’re not going to win every time. You’re not going to reach every goal, but I want to share some realities, kind of some unspoken. I feel like reality is about failure that hopefully will give people some proper perspective. And I know that when I get this perspective, it makes me feel better. Cause a lot of times.

[12:28] Niyi Sobo: We learn things and we’re told things and we watch people. People may listen to you or listen to somebody else that they admire and just think that you’re always doing the right things and winning and that every time you fail, you just get right back up and brush off your shoulders and, you know, get back on your dump.

[12:44] Niyi Sobo: It’s like, nah, it doesn’t work like that. So I’m gonna take you back to one of the biggest failures for me is post NFL. You know, like I’m two years in the league first year, you know, I’m starting as a rookie. I’m starting to get to San Francisco 49ers. I get hit so hard. My shoulder pops out. My knee kind of hyper extends.

[13:02] Niyi Sobo: I have season ending surgery. Come back to next season, playing against the Miami Dolphins. Like, this big old D lineman fell on me, separated my shoulder. You know, so halfway into that season, I’m let go, you know, and that was the year they won the Super Bowl. I had to watch that Super Bowl at home. Do you know how sick to my stomach I was?

[13:20] Niyi Sobo: Like, it was really tough. And not only that, I was kept trying to get back into the league. I had a, you know, a couple of tryouts. I had, you know, Denver Broncos was like acting like they was going to bring me. I just, just didn’t hit me back. Like I was ready. I packed in everything, you know what I mean?

[13:33] Niyi Sobo: Like, and I was ready. So. There is this period of time and where I drifted, I was lost for a period of time, you know, and I’m not suggesting that that always has to be the case after failure, but I do believe in my own experience. There’s a period of time after failure and the more significant the failure, the more intense.

[13:54] Niyi Sobo: That period of time is, I’m not saying it lasts longer necessarily, but there’s a period of time. You can call it grieving. You can call it just recovering. You know, it’s like when you get knocked out in boxing, man, like the guys they take as many of that 10 count as they can. It was like, yo, man, I’m, I need some time to catch my breath for me, man.

[14:13] Niyi Sobo: That was a period of time where I was drifting. Like I said, I was working at this factory. I just didn’t know what I wanted to do next. And for anyone experiencing that right now, My goal for you is to realize that number one, this is an important part of your process. I’m not suggesting that you need to wallow in self pity or, you know, lay in bed all day, right?

[14:34] Niyi Sobo: However, you will be wallowing in some pity, but that’s an important part of the stage. You will be laid up in a bed. For some degree of time now, because you’re a competitor, you’re going to have that voice in your head, kind of that overly critical voice. And I’m not going to tell you to quiet that voice necessarily, but I do want people to understand that there’s a period of time where you do have to grieve.

[14:54] Niyi Sobo: You just lost something. You know what I mean? Like you just lost something. And if it was really important to you, it’s important for you to give yourself time to grieve and to not beat yourself up. for being down, you’re already beat up. So just allow yourself to be beat up, you know, and allow yourself to kind of get your bearings about you.

[15:14] Niyi Sobo: For some people that may mean months or some people may mean weeks. I’m not going to tell you how long that takes. And ultimately you are going to be the one to determine whether or not you’re ready to go back to it or not. But at the end of the day, We always got to re up and re up means you just got to set a new goal.

[15:28] Niyi Sobo: You know what I’m saying? The faster you set a new goal, the more purposeful that grieving time becomes, and it doesn’t turn into like this, like you just fell off and you done, you know what I’m saying? Like, because if you just failed. The quicker you just say, okay, what’s my new goal now? Like what’s the new goal?

[15:45] Niyi Sobo: What now? Right. It is always true with my son. Anytime my son is dealing with a loss, I let him grieve. Like I comfort him as much as I feel like he needs to be comforted, but usually he needs some space. And then when I see him kind of make dragging it out too long, I’m like, all right, son, so what’s next.

[15:59] Niyi Sobo: You know, and now, now it’s kind of like a system. Like I told him after the season was over, you know, cause he wanted to win the championship and he fell short of that goal. I asked him, what’s the date on a calendar where like, you could just take a break from wrestling, you know, where I don’t want you to worry about working out, eating right, nothing.

[16:16] Niyi Sobo: If you want to work out, work out, but just a period of time where you have no demands on yourself. And he chose a date. You know what I’m saying? It was like, you know, two, a week and a half, you know, whatever. And by like day five or six, he was ready to get back at it. You know what I’m saying? At which point I asked him, I was like, what’s the new goal?

[16:33] Niyi Sobo: What’s your goal now? Like, cause now it’s about, you’ve got to go to college. What you want to accomplish in this next stage of your career. And that helps give that period of time, some meaning. Failure is inevitable. It’s going to happen way more often than you’d like for it to happen, but you could start if, and again, anyone could look back at all of their failures in life and just reflect on the process.

[16:56] Niyi Sobo: And you’ll find like with any failure, there’s always that, that little period of time where you, you know, whether it’s a breakup, you kind of, and again, how long it lasts. is very well determined by how quickly you can read. And if you could also, like I mentioned before, display more compassion and understanding and self love.

[17:16] Niyi Sobo: And it’s something that comes difficult for, I think, a lot of competitors because part of competing is, is putting pressure on yourself and we got to get the most out of ourselves. But one of the things that I’ve learned at this stage of my life is the value of just allowing yourself to grieve. It doesn’t mean you have to, you know, tell yourself everything’s okay.

[17:37] Niyi Sobo: Or even talk to yourself a lot. Just allow yourself to go through your process. Trust that whatever feelings you’re going through now, they won’t last forever. And I know that’s hard, especially if you’re dealing with the failure that you’ve never dealt with before, but I will tell you, you will get through it.

[17:53] Niyi Sobo: It is important to allow yourself to feel those feelings. And then also just set a new goal as quickly as possible. And then just start again. Life is going to be a series of games. If you will, if you want to look at life as. You know, a seven game series or an entire season or whatever, however, whatever analogy you want to use, there’s always going to be another game.

[18:14] Niyi Sobo: So just learn whatever you can feel, whatever you need to feel, and then re up, you know, re up, re up, re up, create a new strategy. And then you will then learn the things, take the things that you learn and apply them to the next one. That’s what evolution is, is about.

[18:28] Jim Harshaw Jr.: Now let’s hear from motivational speaker, coach and author, Brian leak.

[18:32] Ryan Leak: People ask me about failures. One of my, you know, tell me about a failure. So it’s like, you want me to tell you one from today? I don’t need to go to the past to do that. I can give you week by week, play by play of my failures and they’re embarrassing, but they helped me get better and they helped me improve.

[18:51] Ryan Leak: You said that chasing failure took you further than chasing success every day. Absolutely. No question about it. I mean, I have succeeded in a lot of areas, none of which have landed me on an NBA practice score and now in NBA locker rooms and NBA executive conference room.

[19:11] Jim Harshaw Jr.: So, for the listener, you know, we’re not talking about sleeping in tomorrow or skipping your workout or eating a bunch of junk food and go, man, I’m doing it.

[19:19] Jim Harshaw Jr.: I’m doing it right. I’m chasing failure, right? What are you talking about?

[19:22] Ryan Leak: And I’m talking about being willing to. Stare fear in the face and go, you will not steer my life. I will not let the fear of failure steer my career, steer my family, steer my decisions. I’m okay. Here’s what I truly believe about failure.

[19:42] Ryan Leak: I don’t think our real fear is the fear of failure. I think our real fear is the fear of rejection. Because in our world, when we look around, we think of who is accepted, who is loved, who’s admired. It’s the people who are the most successful and what we fear when we fail is my parents won’t love me as much, my wife will think less of me, my friends won’t, won’t want to hang around me.

[20:08] Ryan Leak: I’ll get less likes. I won’t be able to get followers. That’s what’s really associated with. I did not write a book called chasing foolishness. I’m not saying you need to go be an idiot. No, I’m saying you should be willing to fail and learn from that and live with the results. Here’s the reality. You do everything in your power to succeed in any event that you fail that.

[20:33] Ryan Leak: Okay, we’ve been taught, you know, especially some people that grew up in some really, really competitive environment. Where failure is not an option. Uh, it is. How many NBA champions are there this year? One. So you’re telling me the other 29 NBA organizations are failures? Yeah, they’re failures. Oh, that’s right.

[20:56] Ryan Leak: Those owners who are billionaires and those players who are multimillionaires with deals all across the world who are playing in the Olympics right now. It’s like, Who’s making this standard that are making people feel less than because they haven’t won a ring. No, you’re actually doing pretty good. And I’m pretty sure you’re in, like, the top 0.

[21:19] Ryan Leak: 1 percent of people in the world, but it doesn’t always feel that way because it’s championship or bust. It’s like, well, actually, it’s not championship or bust. You can actually be an amazing basketball player. Amazing athlete. Amazing business man, business woman. Whether or not you get these accolades or not.

[21:37] Jim Harshaw Jr.: Now let’s hear from the first African American grandmaster in chess history, Maurice Ashley.

[21:42] Maurice Ashley: Failure is a funny word because the path to success is often littered with failures and it’s really. Your attitude that dictates whether or not you’re going to call an individual action, an individual loss, a failure, or you’re going to call it a stepping stone because nobody wins right away.

[22:09] Maurice Ashley: And all the time. Nobody. I mean, if Michael Jordan did not make his high school basketball team, you’re allowed to fail. It’s okay. It is a stepping stone. It is a learning tool. Every single loss, every single so called failure, every single mistake is a potential learning tool. And the real failure is not learning from the loss, is not.

[22:37] Maurice Ashley: Extracting all the lessons possible that you can get from a loss. Because in fact, humans learn best through failure. I mean, when we were trying to learn how to walk as babies, you got up and you fell down. And what did you do? You got up again, and then you fell down again. And it kept happening over and over until finally you walked.

[23:01] Maurice Ashley: You’ve got to get back to that baby’s attitude that said, it doesn’t matter if I fall down, I want to walk. That’s what I want to do. The more you do it, the better you get at it. And so for me, it’s really important that people understand the idea of incremental improvement. You’ve got to do everything step by step slowly, one little bit at a time.

[23:24] Maurice Ashley: And many times you’ve got to go backwards so that you can go forwards. If you’re learning a new skill, You’re trying to master something that’s different from the way you’ve always done it. It means that you have to revamp, rejigger everything that you know sometimes in order to get to that new place.

[23:44] Maurice Ashley: It’s like Tiger Woods back in the day when he was on top of his game and decided to reinvent his swing. You’re the best in the world. How are you reinventing your swing? Losing tournaments now. So that you can do what? Be the better, best in the world? And that’s exactly what he did! So That idea of continuous improvement, the idea of being willing to learn from loss.

[24:09] Maurice Ashley: Some of the toughest losses that have happened to me have been some of the greatest in my life. They showed me so much about the game, but it also showed me so much about myself. And that is a willingness and openness. So learning, but it’s very much on openness to losing and learning from those losses.

[24:29] Jim Harshaw Jr.: So amazing stories of failure and how we need to value failure as, as part of our growth process. All right. The third of four topics is mindset and mental toughness. Here we go. Let’s first hear from motivational coach, speaker, and author Ryan leak. So this researcher

[24:45] Ryan Leak: has her patients jump out of an airplane over and over again, and she would basically put them through a stress test.

[24:53] Ryan Leak: To see how stressed out they work each jump. So the 1st jump, the stress is through the roof. By the 3rd jump, their stress was on par with someone that was simply running late to work. And so what I love about that is I just tell people if you just keep doing it, it gets a little easier. Like, man, are you afraid?

[25:11] Ryan Leak: Are you scared? You nervous? Yeah, just not as nervous as I was. A year ago, but it doesn’t mean that I’m not nervous or that I’m not stressed at all. And I just don’t have that mindset that I’m ever going to arrive. And I don’t feel the pressure to ever arrive. It’s like, I have this freedom of going.

[25:31] Ryan Leak: Failure isn’t going to have a hold on my life. And mistakes happen. You learn from those mistakes and you just keep going. You just keep jumping out of the airplane. Am I going to be a professional skydiver? Probably not. Am I going to be? A skydiver instructor. No, but I can jump out the airplane every now and then.

[25:53] Ryan Leak: And I think sometimes people see me at an event and think, man, you were so smooth. I’m like, dude, I was falling from the sky the whole time. You just couldn’t see it. You know, it was a nice shirt, but that was about it. And so I just encourage people to keep jumping out of the airplane in ways that they can afford to do.

[26:14] Ryan Leak: I don’t tell people to bet the farm. Don’t get a second mortgage out on your house. Don’t be foolish, but be willing to take some risk at the level that you can take it.

[26:25] Jim Harshaw Jr.: Now let’s hear from Jamaican Olympic bobsled team captain Devin Harris.

[26:29] Devon Harris: I remember years ago, I was speaking and this one guy asked at what point back in 88, did you guys think you couldn’t do it?

[26:37] Devon Harris: And I’m like, well, you know, I’ve never been asked that question before, but actually never, we never once. Doubted that it wasn’t going to happen. Were there times when we thought, man, this is really hard? Absolutely. So I think you, you start out with this belief that it can be done and there’s this expectation.

[26:55] Devon Harris: And I know for me personally, I kind of fed into the expectations that Jamaica has for its athletes. Like, it’s like, you’re on the national team, you better perform, boy, or else, you know, kind of stuff, I think, and it’s a lesson for all of us, you know, on our respective teams, I think people rise up to the level of the expectations that are there for them.

[27:17] Devon Harris: And so, in our mind, as long as we had on the black, green and gold of Jamaica, we kind of had to rise up to the level. And so it, so it, it calls you to work and to compete and to perform in a way that transforms into the results that you see. I talk about Calgary in particular and how we work. Working overtime.

[27:38] Devon Harris: I describe it. We’re always on the push track when the other teams worked. I guess they really didn’t really need to be on the push track. They have been doing this for five years. We’re doing it for five months when the other teams were on the ice on the start line, getting ready to go down the track.

[27:54] Devon Harris: My friend from Australia, Adrian, the Piazza. He has two pictures on Facebook that demonstrates this. Devon Harris is standing behind him. Uh, the line watching the Swiss team go down the track, and I’m standing there watching the Australian team go down the track. Always watching, trying to learn, trying to see, you know, what tip can I pick up that I can apply.

[28:18] Devon Harris: And so it was just that kind of all in attitude that I think Translated into the results that you saw

[28:25] Jim Harshaw Jr.: now, let’s hear from performance coach and author of Nicodemus Christopher.

[28:29] Nicodemus Christopher: So, when I ask myself, how did I get here? I always ask myself, what are my principles, right? What are the principles that govern my life?

[28:35] Nicodemus Christopher: And then, because I know the principles that govern my life, I ask myself, have I violated one of those principles, right? And there’s, there’s a million ways to teach that there’s a story that comes to my mind. I have a three and a half year old. And he just started playing soccer probably about a month ago.

[28:52] Nicodemus Christopher: Is he on track for professional? He’s really good, right? And I hate to be that dad. He’s really good. But three weeks ago, he had a hat trick. He scored three goals. The team won 3 2. The next game, they got beat 6 0. And he stops in the middle of the game. They’re down five zero that he stops in the middle of the game and he is hyperventilating crying.

[29:15] Nicodemus Christopher: Right? So then he comes over to the bench and I just say, son, use your words. What’s wrong? He said, dad, dad, they keep scoring and I haven’t scored. So later in the later on in the day, we get in the car and we go home. And this is my advice. I said, I want you to do three things. Whenever you feel like you’re about to be emotional like that.

[29:32] Nicodemus Christopher: Right? I want you to a stop and take a deep breath. Right? So that productive pause, just stop, just stop everything, stop and take a deep breath. Number two, I want you to go give a teammate a high five, right? Gratitude, happiness, joy. And the third thing that I want you to do is stop and think. Period. Stop and think, right?

[29:55] Nicodemus Christopher: So there are ways, even my three and a half year old, I’m taking these principles and I’m finding ways to break them down to him. But the principle of stopping and thinking, right? Giving yourself time to breathe, giving yourself time. It’s invaluable.

[30:08] Jim Harshaw Jr.: All right. We’ve heard our three first topics, the role of mentors and trusted advisors, the role of failure and growth mindset and mental toughness.

[30:16] Jim Harshaw Jr.: Now, fourth and finally, is the power of visualization in goal setting. Let’s first hear from three time world champion wrestler, Lee Kemp. You have to believe in the dream.

[30:27] Lee Kemp: Cause when I started in wrestling, I didn’t wrestle varsity to my 10th grade year and that record was 11 wins, eight losses and three ties.

[30:35] Lee Kemp: That was my entire record as a 10th grader. So what would. Make me believe in any stretch of anybody’s imagination that I could be a state champion the next year Yeah, it would only come from the dream could not come from reality if I would have been in reality There’s no way I could have done it. I talked to wrestlers all the time.

[30:56] Lee Kemp: They tell me coach, you know, I just you know There’s no way I can be a state champion this year, you know, and I try to tell them my story but I dreamed of being a state champion and the way I got that dream was in 1972 and Uh, after that 11 wins and eight losses and three ties season, my high school coach, who also was a guy who was an overachiever.

[31:19] Lee Kemp: I mean, he wasn’t, uh, I’m not even sure if he’d been wrestling, but if he, but, but he just studied the sport and redeemed the years himself and became a great coach because he coached me to greatness without him. I would never have been a great wrestler because he gave me my start, but he took me to a wrestling camp that summer.

[31:37] Lee Kemp: And it was the summer of 1972 where we had, you know, that great performance by Dan Gable, Wayne Wells, and Ben Peterson and others, you know, Rick Sanders was on that team and, and others. But, uh, so they were in their final stages of training. And back then an amateur was truly, truly an amateur. You know, there was no training camps like they have now and things like that.

[31:58] Lee Kemp: So these, these wrestlers were there. Uh, They were making money the only way they could is like in a wrestling camp type of situation. So, uh, I had a chance to watch Dan Gable in his final stages of training, which was amazing to see him and Ben Peterson and Wayne. Wayne wasn’t there, but then Ben Peterson and, uh, and Dan Gable were there.

[32:23] Lee Kemp: And Les Anderson, uh, Gable’s coach, uh, Harold Nichols, Gable’s coach was there too from Iowa State. So, I was probably One of probably 300 campers there, and I would say out of the whole room, I was probably one of maybe two, if not, maybe the only guy that was totally, totally immersed in Dan Gable and what he was doing there when he, when he would, um, Train, it would, after the session, everybody would go to lunch, I would sit there and miss lunch just to watch him work out.

[32:56] Lee Kemp: In the mornings, I’d get up early enough at six to watch him go out and run. I mean, I’d see him getting up and heading down the trail. That imagery of him working and training and preparing. And listening to his words carefully, because Dan was pretty, you know, he’s, I mean, that was a long time ago. He was really shy back then.

[33:14] Lee Kemp: He didn’t say much, but what he said was really important. I heard him say that there’s a Russian out there training to beat me, and so I’m going to out train that Russian. Yeah. And so there was a book written about it, how he would get up in the middle of the night because he knew the time change. And he said, you know, the Russian’s probably training now.

[33:32] Lee Kemp: I want to make sure that he’s not out training me. So it was that obsession. That I learned from him, that obsession of preparing and creating the condition for success. I noticed how strong he looked, his physique was amazing, just the way he trained. So anyway, I took that back with me, uh, when I left that camp, it was just a week camp.

[33:53] Lee Kemp: So when I got back home, I started to train the way I thought Dan Gable was training. Without going to that camp and seeing it. Firsthand, which gives me another plug I can say, by the way, to any person who thinks they can learn something just by watching it on TV or maybe, you know, going to a church sermon by watching it on TV rather than going, you miss things by not being there live and seeing it.

[34:20] Lee Kemp: So there’s other situations. I can examples I can give of being there live, taking advantage of the live situation I took, I took advantage of it. One other thing I took advantage of is, uh, when Dan Gable needed a, uh, drill partner to drill the moves on, uh, I would, you know, guess who was the drill partner?

[34:41] Lee Kemp: It was me out of the 300 kids in the room. I knew, I knew very little about wrestling, but nobody was going to get up there before me to be his drill partner. So for the week. That he was demonstrating holds. I was the guy that he was demonstrating the holds on. I felt that just by him being near me, touching me, growing, you know, doing the moves on me, I would learn somehow the moves a little bit better because he was actually demonstrating on me.

[35:05] Lee Kemp: So you can kind of feel the passion even now, as I talk about it, you know, when I, so when I left that camp, I was. You know, in all intent and purposes, I was Dan Gable. I mean, that was the reincarnation of Dan Gable in Chardon, Ohio. So the next year I was undefeated and won the state tournament. So

[35:25] Jim Harshaw Jr.: that’s the dream.

[35:27] Jim Harshaw Jr.: Now let’s hear from motivational speaker, coach and author, Brian Leake. The

[35:31] Ryan Leak: way I deal with big goals is I, you know, you, how do you eat an elephant one bite at a time? And so I like to talk about daily wins. Daily wins are the idea of just gone. I just need to get one win today. Just get one win today when I’m talking to somebody who’s really down about their career, really down about how things are going.

[35:53] Ryan Leak: I’m like, you just need to W. You need a W that can start to snowball where you can start to get the confidence that, hey, I can win. And so I just encourage people. Hey, you try and get a W this week. If you can get one W a week, you’re gonna look back a year from now and realize you got about 50 wins. And sometimes that W might look

[36:14] Jim Harshaw Jr.: like I emailed the Celtics and they just responded and said, no, I mean, you felt like even that was a W, right?

[36:20] Ryan Leak: Yeah, I mean, some, sometimes what I’ll do is some people, man, I, you know, we live in a world where everybody kind of needs a website. People get a website idea. I’m like, okay, go to go daddy and see if your website is available. You did that great W. Next day, buy it. W number two. Do you know how to build websites?

[36:40] Ryan Leak: No, but you’re two steps closer than the person that doesn’t do anything. And so you’ve got to just get some W’s under your belt. What’s the next thing? Well, you should probably post on Facebook. Anybody know how to build websites? Or what you’re probably going to find out is you probably don’t have that great of a budget to get the website you really want, which means you might have to learn how to do that yourself.

[37:03] Ryan Leak: You can build a website on Wix for free. You can start a podcast on Anchor for free. You can record it on your iPhone. Do I recommend that you do that? No. But if that’s what you need to do to get started, great. Then you can figure out, okay, what kind of microphone should I get? Oh, is it going to be video?

[37:24] Ryan Leak: Is it going to be audio? All of those are little wins that you got to get under your belt. And so I think people just gotta, some people think it’s gotta be perfect before I go for it. It’s never going to be perfect ever. So you’ve got to start taking those little steps one step at a time. Again, books are written one paragraph at a time.

[37:48] Ryan Leak: So people, how do you write a book? I don’t want one word at a time, one paragraph at a time. We just kept adding, there would be days. All I got done for the whole day was a chapter title, three words, 12 hours, three words, W I’ll take a W again. I am one step further than the person that’s doing nothing.

[38:10] Ryan Leak: And so I just encourage people. You got to get a W.

[38:13] Jim Harshaw Jr.: Now let’s hear from former NFL player and performance coach, Niyi Sobo.

[38:18] Niyi Sobo: Create what I call your target practice plan, right? And that’s basically your series of control wins. Monday through Sunday, all right, a recurring game plan. So whatever your game is, whatever your sport is, whether it’s business, whatever, identify what all the things that are in your control that you can do, that, you know, contribute to the outcomes that you want to accomplish.

[38:40] Niyi Sobo: Right? So as an entrepreneur, you mentioned eating that big salad. That is one because that affects your energy, right? And you need your energy. So it doesn’t have to be all just related specifically to that. Create your target practice plan, a series of action wins. Monday through Sunday and start keeping track and start winning where it’s easy to win.

[38:59] Niyi Sobo: And then when you start noticing the, the, the things that you’re not winning, right, the losses, then every week take some step back, say, okay, I noticed that, you know, I’m really struggling with eating a salad on, you know, Wednesdays and Thursdays. Okay. Problem solved. Right. Ray Dalio talks about that in his book principles.

[39:16] Niyi Sobo: Okay. What’s the, what’s the issue? Not eating it on Wednesday and Thursday. Why root cause? And then what do I need to do about it? It’s really simple. Right? You do that. We’re talking about the makings of an unstoppable career. And that’s no exaggeration. If you can do that consistently, if you can have your game plan laid out, if you can problem solve consistently and win where it’s easy to win there, I will put my money on you in whatever sports you’re in.

[39:43] Niyi Sobo: You know what I mean? I will do that. The more consistently you can do that. So believe that do that. You don’t need no fancy system. Just get a basic spreadsheet, lay it out. And get to work, man. It’s about that work.

[39:54] Jim Harshaw Jr.: All right. So I hope you enjoyed all of these great lessons from these amazing individuals.

[39:59] Jim Harshaw Jr.: Again, this is a celebration of black history month. And if you want to roll right into another episode and listen to the interview with these guys, I’m going to share with you the episode number. And, and by the way, if you’re listening on Spotify or Apple, uh, most platforms only carry the prior 300 episodes.

[40:18] Jim Harshaw Jr.: And so the first one I’m going to tell you about is, uh, Lee Kemp. And that’s episode 25. You won’t find that on your podcast player, most likely, but you can go to jimharshojr. com slash 25 and, and you can find that episode that goes with any episode ever. So if you type in jimharshawjr.com/pick a number, you will land on that episode.

[40:39] Jim Harshaw Jr.: All right. So, uh, Lee Kemp was episode 25, Ryan Leake episode 318, 318, Nicodemus Christopher. Episode 456, 4 5 6, Niyi Shobo, Episode 415, Devin Harris, Episode 327, and lastly, Maurice Ashley. The chess player 458, right? 458. All right. So if you want to roll right into one of those, otherwise take action. If you want to join me over in the free community to have a conversation about what we just talked about here today, about what you learned, just go to jimharshawjr.com/free and you can join right into the community every week. We have a discussion on these podcast episodes. So if you’re not taking advantage of that, this is something totally free. There’s also a seven day course in there titled seven days to clarity, how to set the right goals and achieve them faster.

[41:33] Jim Harshaw Jr.: And you’ll get access to that course as well. So I look forward to interacting, look forward to talking with you there. Take action.

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