Mental Toughness For Mavericks

Today’s guest is Sean Iddings, a micro-cap investor, co-founder of the Intelligent Fanatics brand and a fellow musician. Sean is fascinated by the world’s great business builders — entrepreneurs who may not be household names like Steve Jobs or Jeff Bezos but who have built sustainable, long lasting organizations while treating their employees well. They did it through a focus on “win win” and attention to detail and, if we’re aiming for mastery, we need to become “fanatics” too.

Rich Diviney is a former Navy SEAL commanding officer with more than 20 years of experience, including 11 deployments to Iraq and Afghanistan. He shared with me what he loved most about being a SEAL, and this led into a discussion about how the SEAL teams create such incredible trust and lifelong bonds, how he uses micro-recovery to stay resilient and his take on why leaders have to show vulnerability.

Today’s guest is Greg Kuhn, a professional educator and futurist who has a knack for translating the laws of quantum physics into simple and practical techniques that are easy to apply in everyday life. He's written seven books in his "Why Quantum Physi

Jiro Taylor is a fellow flow junkie and founder of the Flowstate Collective. Jiro splits his time between Bali and Australia, truly living a life in pursuit of flow, whether it’s surfing, snowboarding, practicing Qi Gong or leading adventure retreats. We talked about the different phases of flow and what keeps us from accessing it, how to use nature to get out of survival mode, and a cool breathing technique to access flow when there’s a crisis at the office.

As an international brand strategist Andrea Shillington built brands for Fortune 500 companies, seven star hotels and governments including the United Arab Emirates. She then pivoted, launching Brands for the Heart to help visionary entrepreneurs develop authentic brands. We talked about her journey to living a more authentic life after she achieved all the markers of success early in her career and found they weren’t satisfying, how it takes courage to show up authentically and, how being authentic — whether with clients, investors or your team — actually helps you be more productive and build your business more quickly.

In 1972, when Lanny Bassham failed in his attempt to win the Gold Medal in International Rifle Shooting at the Munich Germany Olympic Games, he started searching for a course on controlling the mind under pressure. When he couldn’t find one, he began to interview Olympic Gold Medalists to discover what they were doing to win and went on to create a system of mental control he called Mental Management®. Within six years, Lanny Bassham dominated his sport, winning 22 world individual and team titles, setting 4 world records and winning the Olympic Gold Medal in Montreal in 1976. For the past 34 years, Lanny has been teaching Mental Management® to the elite of sport and business, including Olympians, Fortune 500 corporations and the Navy SEALS. We talk about how winners never try to win (and what they do instead), what it takes to change your self image and how to see everything that happens to your advantage.

This episode takes a cross-cultural approach to the mental game of entrepreneurship. My guest is Tim Romero, an innovator, author and entrepreneur who\u2019s lived in Japan for 20 years. He believes in the potential of its startup community, which is partly informed by his experience in the big earthquake in 2011 and observing how resilient the Japanese were. Tim gives us an inside view of recent examples of disruption in Japan (and his opinion of where potential innovation lies), the surprising trend of female entrepreneurship and how he sees entrepreneurs managing failure in a culture that has traditionally been very risk averse.

Today's guest is John P Morgan, a deep thinker and coach of leaders and entrepreneurs, who has a vision for a more connected and loving world. Among his many talents and adventures, he's travelled the world and lived nomadically for three years, recorded and toured as a band musician, competed as a black belt and triathlete, and performed as a professional magician. He’s interested in creating miracles, acting on what is seemingly impossible and we talked about the dangers of focusing on probability to achieve success. Like me, John is interested in bringing clarity through distinctions — is vision a path or a destination? — and the difference between taking action to create what you want and doing things to make things happen.

Jennifer Love is a serial entrepreneur and advisor who has been been involved in raising $100M+ and helping her clients get high-profile exposure on shows like Shark Tank and Biz Fix with Marcus Lemonis. Her latest initiative, and what she sees as her life calling, is One More Woman, and her vision is to help 10 million female entrepreneurs build $1M+ businesses by the year 2030. We talk about what it means to be a maverick and what makes it challenging in today\u2019s society, how to develop a tolerance for uncertainty and risk \u2014 and her very practical approach to learning from failure. Jennifer Love is a serial entrepreneur and advisor who has been been involved in raising $100M+ and helping her clients get high-profile exposure on shows like Shark Tank and Biz Fix with Marcus Lemonis. Her latest initiative, and what she sees as her life calling, is One More Woman, and her vision is to help 10 million female entrepreneurs build $1M+ businesses by the year 2030. We talk about what it means to be a maver

An entrepreneur who has cofounded and built billion dollar businesses like Hotjobs and TheLadders, Dave Carvajal now advises the leadership of some of the most transformative, disruptive companies in the tech space. We talk about how doing an Ironman race is like building a startup, what it takes to build a team of A players and what many CEOs get wrong about building for culture.

Dr. JP Pawliw-Fry, performance coach and co-author of Performing under Pressure: The Science of Doing Your Best When It Matters Most, explains We some of the common misconceptions about performing under pressure, why you need to understand the difference between pressure and stress, and how women and men handle pressure differently.

Art Turock, author of Competent is Not an Option: Build an Elite Leadership Team Following the Talent Development Game Plan of Sports Champions and world class masters pentathlete explains what teams can do to gain a competitive advantage, how to "Practice While Real Work Gets Done," and how he maintained mental toughness to go on and win a silver medal in the pentathlon after his performance unraveled days earlier.

eff Spencer, an Olympian and advisor to Lance Armstrong, Bono and Tiger Woods, says that much of the conventional advice around success doesn't work. He shares insights into the champion's blueprint and why we can't let human nature run the show.

Psychology professor and coauthor of the book Peak: Secrets from the Science of Expertise, Anders Ericsson explains the real difference between experts and everyone else. Highlights: Why talent is much less of a factor than we think and what experts do to practice better.

Veteran jazz pianist Kenny Werner explains the mindset of mastery, why we need to get over our addition to "getting better" and how we can be more improvisational in our daily lives.

Career coach, recruiter and extreme career changer Caroline Ceniza-Levine shares why evidence of resilience is increasingly important to employers, how to handle both the short and long term pressure of negotiation, interviews and prolonged job search.

Paralympian and member of the United States wheelchair basketball team, Matt Scott shares his personal story: how he thinks about goals, the importance of humor and responding to adversity.

Jason Selk, performance coach and mental training director for the St. Louis Cardinals, breaks down his 10-minute training plan for mental toughness. Highlights: Use a performance statement to stay focused and build confidence What is channel capacity and why three is the magic number for focus Why you need both process and product goals The importance of self-assessment and why you’re not doing it