Transcript of The Mental Edge That Separates Great Leaders From the Rest | Dr. Michael Gervais | E18

I think that big sport is about 10 to 15 years ahead of big business.

How does a psychologist end up embedded with an NFL team for 9 seasons, help a man jump from 128,000 feet, and train 50,000 Microsoft employees? My next guest has done all of it.

How many of you have formally trained your mind? And they kind of nod their head like, I'm not really sure how to answer that, which means that you haven't done it.

So how do you price your services when your client list is that elite?

The client that I work with just signed a generational third contract. And when I say generational, meaning grandkids are taken care of and I got paid a nice rate. They're buying yachts and I'm still rowing my dinghy.

So across everything you've built, what's the biggest mistake you've made and what did it teach you?

Selfishness. You know, it takes a lot to do some extraordinary stuff, and the price of that is—

How does a psychologist end up embedded with an NFL team for 9 seasons, help a man jump from 128,000 feet, and trained 50,000 Microsoft employees? My next guest has done all of it. Dr. Michael Gervais is one of the world's top high-performance psychologists and the founder of Finding Mastery, a company he co-founded with Pete Carroll that's gone from the Seahawks sideline to Fortune 500 boardrooms. He's also a USA Today bestselling author of The First Rule of Mastery. Today, we're talking about something nobody asks him about, the business behind all of it. Dr. Mike, welcome to Business MVP.

Great to be here with you, Sammy.

Thank you. So, Michael, people think of you as a psychologist with a podcast, which is not inaccurate, but you co-founded Finding Mastery with Pete Carroll and built it into a real company. So what is it as a business and how does that partnership work when your co-founder has been coaching in the NFL?

Yeah, I, well, you know, it's funny because it started as an idea And turned into a business. So I'll, I'll bring you back into the origin story. So we were about 3 months before, 2 months, I think, before we were heading into our first Super Bowl. And we didn't know, of course we didn't know we're gonna make the Super Bowl and eventually go on to win it. So he comes, Pete Carroll comes flying out of his office and Mm-hmm. he, he, he walks into my area and he says, Can you feel this? And he had such energy and enthusiasm, and my eyes lit up because his eyes were lit up. And before I could say anything, he goes, we gotta figure out how to write this down. Now, what he was asking was, can you feel what it's like to have 70, 71 alpha competitive athletes and another 30 to 40 alpha competitive coaches and support staff with their noses pointed in the same direction? When you're in that type of environment of sustained excellence, you can feel it. Mm-hmm. And that's what he was pointing to. So his next question was like, you know, let's figure out how to get it down on paper.

And what he meant was his best practices for switching on a culture of high performance and my best practices of how to train the psychological skills for excellence. And so we had like one and one, and we put it together and it felt like, you know, 3 or far better than 3. And so we ended up archiving on a back of a napkin to a whiteboard, you know, to a deck. And, Somewhere after winning the Super Bowl, Satya Nadella gave us a ring. And Satya Nadella is the CEO of Microsoft. And he says, I've been watching. Congratulations. Amazing job. You know, do you think you could do some of that work here at Microsoft? Like, I'm 4 weeks into the, into my role as CEO, and I've got some deep ideas about the culture that I'd like to create. Mm-hmm. And the idea of training the psychological skills in aspiration or to support the aspiration of the culture. We'd love to get some of that. So that's, that was the origin story. It was an idea. We wrote it down and then we had an opportunity. We were ready for the opportunity, if you will.

And—

Got it. So the Microsoft opportunity kind of accelerated getting it onto paper?

No, no, no. The, the idea was let's archive what we're doing. So we put it on paper and it was just sitting there. Right. But we did, we did the scrubbing and the deep work to really make sense of what we were doing. for no other reason that we wanted to be able to repeat it and to run that process and not it just feel like we're making it up as we're going. Like, what were we actually doing? And then when Satya called, he, you know, we looked at— Pete and I looked at each other and said, I think this could be a good business. And so that's how that happened. It was organic in that respect.

Yeah, that's really neat. So once you kind of signed on with Microsoft, how do you deliver your methodology to 50,000 people? You know, that's not the one-on-one coaching or even the 1-to-71 that you described. So how did you scale what you were doing without losing the quality?

Well, it started small. We incubated it first. And so Satya said, okay, nice that you've done it for 120-some people. Can you do it for 220,000? I mean, no, like we didn't know how to do that. And so the opportunity was like, let's just start small. Let's incubate it. Let's see if we have something. we did, it worked. And the mechanism— the, the, the business is like a pretty simple business to understand. It's— there's a, a classic stack, if you will. There's some high-end consulting that we do with senior leaders and, you know, CEOs. And then underneath of that, there's some direct services, which are both live and, you know, remote. There's some trainings, if you will. And underneath of that is scaled motions, um, courseware and AI solutions. So we just kept running that until we ran out of bandwidth. And then we brought on— we only hire Olympians and sports psychologists, and they are— they express the core IP across the organizations. And so that's the kind of forward-facing part of the business. The guts of the business are the planners, the strategists, you know, the financial motions. But those are the 2 mechanisms.

Yeah. So, I mean, I think a lot of people, you know, have the challenge where they want to scale, but they don't know how to deliver the same methodology, the same quality without, you know, the originator being in the room, right? So, you describe, you know, you hire Olympians and other high-caliber psychologists, things like that. So, but how do you actually, do you train them, you know, 'cause the business is your expertise, right? Like you and Pete Carroll. So, how do you get the team up to speed to deliver your methodology without, you know, missing a beat?

I think it's hard, you know, like scaling a service business is really hard. That's not new to anybody. I'll, I'll tell you how we've done it. And actually, I should back up that just to be super clear. Okay. The, the 9, the 9 years with the Seattle Seahawks, it ended at COVID because I live in LA, the team is in Seattle, there was a bubble. So at that point Pete said, hey, listen, don't come in the bubble. Like, go take this business and, and make it special. And so there was a moment where we, we change kind of the way that we were working. I was no longer part of the team and he was no longer part of the business. So we did like an equity swap, we made it work. And so,

Mm-hmm.

from that point, since that point, Pete has been the greatest champion and supporter of Finding Mastery, but is no longer actively in the business. And so I went to Formula 1 for 3 years, and then I went back last year with the Seattle Seahawks, and which ended up being another great season. We, we won the Super Bowl again, different coach, different structure. So just to be clear on the timeline, Um, for your community. Now, to answer your question, how do you scale? Mm-hmm. Well, we were really clear on our first principles. And so when you reduce all of the potential choices that somebody could make, including he and I, on how we would express ideas, we needed to boil those things down to first principles. We did that, which was not easy to do. And then we layered on how would we express those first principles, you know, to executives. And the, the, the crosswalk from athletes to executives is an important crosswalk for consideration. 'Cause there's, there's different kind of rules in how we engage. Like, in a locker room's very different than a boardroom. A locker room is incredibly honest, and a boardroom, not so honest.

Could be. Yeah. Yeah.

Yeah. Yeah. Not, not, I don't think that they are very honest. And I know that, Maybe that is striking for some people, but when you've been in locker rooms of winning organizations, they don't let anything slip. They are incredibly honest about the standard. Okay. All that being said is that we worked our process to get to first principles. We're very clear on the mechanisms to be able to express those over time with great consistency for ourselves. And then we went and hired and found people, hired sons, you know, to top down. We scoured the world for, like, the best exemplars of that. Yeah. Olympians lived it. They understand it. They had to metabolize all of the psychological skills of excellence, and they understood bad culture and good culture intimately. So they were the best exemplars. And then we wanted to pair them with scientists that could back the second kind of second click, if you will, about how does that really work? Like, what's the science that supports that idea?

Right.

So we had to get it down to first principles and then a clear methodology. And then the standard of holding that, you know, and the fidelity of holding that is— it's tireless. It's not an easy task, but it is worthwhile when you think about the ripple and knock-on effect it's had for so many people. And so that $50,000 that you referenced at Microsoft was probably 5 years ago. I think it's at least, at least double that at this point.

I believe it. Yeah. So we'll get into the podcast piece of it, but in addition, you know, it's a consulting agency, right? So can you tell us a little bit about like what your ideal client is? How does the business actually work? You know, where does the revenue come from?

Yeah, this is so fun. I don't, I don't talk about this much. And so thank you for asking. I'm classically trained as a psychologist with a specialization in sport and high performance and a subspecialty in consequential environments. And nowhere along the way did I learn the classic ways to start and run a business.

Right.

But my, in my PhD, I will answer your question clearly, as clearly as I can at least. Yeah. But when I was in my PhD program, my, the, the dean of the school said, hey Mike, for every 3 books that you read in your craft, read at least one in business.

Mm-hmm.

And I, I loved the idea, and that was 20-some years ago. And so since then, I have been a student of business. The ideal client is a CEO and a leadership team that really wants to invest in their people.

Mm-hmm.

And that is like table stakes in sport. And I think that big sport is about 10 to 15 years ahead of big business because in big sport, the only product is the human. That's it. And so in big sport, we know how to help a human be their very best. We understand the science and the art of it quite clearly because that is the business. In elite business, like enterprise companies or even small, medium-sized businesses, they've got products and services, and they've got other things that are the thing that they're selling. Right. So we are less— sophisticated in understanding what it takes structurally and from a skill standpoint, what it takes to help humans be their very best. So the ideal client is somebody that intimately gets that the real game is investing in the human capabilities. And then from that point, products and services are elevated.

Mm-hmm.

And so that's the one. Now, how do we find them? It's all word of mouth. The podcast is interesting. Like, it's not really a sales motion, it's just a familiarity and it's a learning curve for me. And people like to hear, just like you, like, what are the questions that Sammy asks? And, you know, that's how they get to know you, if you will. But it's word of mouth is our business and it's a small world of high performance, both in sport and in elite business. Mm-hmm. And so news travels fast. And so that's the ideal client, somebody who fundamentally wants to make a real investment in the capabilities of their people. And they understand that there's only 3 things as humans we can train. We can train our craft, right? We can train our body, and we can train our mind. And in sport, the best of the best of the best don't leave one of those up to chance. They wanna invest deeply in all 3. Right. So in business, like, it feels like this easy layup, easy lob, which is like, How many of you have formally trained your mind? When I ask that to a senior leadership team and they say, what do you mean?

And I say, well, how many of you have formally trained your craft? They all raise their hand. They're like, oh, yeah. How many of you have formally trained your body? And they go, I don't know, 3/4 of the room, half the room goes, oh, well, I have a trainer, or I had a coach, or I played sport. Like, I know what that means. And then when I go back to the question again, how many of you have formally trained your mind? And they kind of nod their head like, I'm not really sure how to answer that, which means that you haven't done it.

Mm-hmm.

So it's this easy lob to walk into successful businesses and say, right, we're gonna show your people and you how to be calm, how to be confident, how to dissolve the pressure that you have created, how to be great with high-speed and high-stress environments, how to frame your future in a way that gives you the best chance for success, how to work through invisible limits, how to be a great teammate. And everything that I just mentioned are psychological skills that are 100% under a person's control, and with just a little bit of training can be developed. And so, you know, if you want a great team, you need to be great teammates, full stop. Yeah. And so we're in the business of helping people be their best so they can be great teammates for each other.

Yeah, I love hearing that from you because we talk a lot about that on this show from, you know, people that have become, you know, business leaders. But it's amazing hearing it also from somebody with your background because it's true, right? We hear it over and over and over from every different angle. So

what do you, what do you hear? I'm curious what, what you hear.

Well, you know, we hear a lot about, you know, well, and I don't think everyone practices what they preach, right? But how culture is super important. You know, it's top-down leadership. You know, you have to invest in your people. It has to be about them, you know, not you. Right. we all have to be learning-based and, you know, all the kind of the things that you said, right? And I think it's easy to talk about, but it's really hard to instill. And I don't think a lot of leaders really know how to do that. But, you know, culture's like a buzzword right now, and there's, you know, there's captains of culture in different enterprise corporations and things like that. But, you know, it's also, you can say all those things, right? But are your people really buying into it? Are they practicing it? Are you practicing it and setting that example? So, you know, everybody likes to talk about it, but, you know, because they read about it and they hear about it. And I love hearing about it from your perspective with, you know, the science behind it.

Yeah, I think you're, you're right.

But the reality, right? Like,

there is such a difference, Sammy, between walking the talk and talking the walk. And like, yeah, there's such a difference. Coach Carroll, uber successful coach in the NFL and college, won a lot. You know, one of the only 3 coaches in the NFL that also won a championship in college. Mm-hmm. He said something once to a small group that we were working with that stuck with me. He said, as a leader, if you don't have a clear vision and you don't really understand the way you want the culture to feel, and, so there's 2 ands, and you are not the emblem of that, you are not the epitome of that, you will be exposed because People are watching. Players are watching. Your employee base are watching. So if you don't have a clear vision, you don't have an understanding of how you want it to work, and you are not the living emblem of that, he says, I, I don't know how you last. And so having a vision is, uh, intellectual. It's some, you know, creative and intellectual. What is your compelling future that you're working towards? How does it feel to be us?

Yeah. And then to walk that talk, you have to invest in your psychology because you are exposed at the moment of high stress. Do you snap at people? Do you belittle them? Do you constrict them? Or do you open up the aperture of potential? Do you see what they could become and who you could become and hold that as the standard? I just don't know how to do it without, like, if you want to be physically fit, Sammy, like, you want to be, like, really fit. How much time do you need to spend in the gym per week? Just what do you think?

Hours. Yeah. 10, 15 hours, probably.

Yeah, right? Like, elite athletes don't—

Yeah.

Elite athletes do not spend more than 4 hours doing the physicalness of their job per day. That's the upper limit. But for the rest of us, like, I think— I actually think we can get away with, like, 20 to 40 minutes of doing some physical work every day. But let's say— let's say we did, um, Let's say we did 90 minutes a day. That would be outrageous. That would be a lot for most people that are— Okay. Okay. If you did 90 minutes a day, you would be one of the most physically fit people on the planet. If you did 45, you'd be on it now. I think for psychological skills, to be calm and confident and deeply focused and high trust of self and others, be a great teammate, all that stuff we talked about, I think it's like 8 to 20 minutes a day. This is not a lot. This is not a ton. So why would we not?

Yeah,

really?

It's funny. Yeah, because we don't know how. Yeah,

we don't know how.

I mean, we— I talk a lot about this in terms of reading, right? Like, we always talk about, like, being learning-based, and people are like, I don't have the time, I don't have the time. It's like similar to what you're describing. Like, just read 5 pages a day, right? If you just read 5 pages a day, you know, by the end of the week, you know, you've got like the 35 pages, you know, that adds up, right? You just compound and eventually you'll read a book, right? And that's better than nothing. Yeah, right. So it's just like, and, and, and what's the reality of that is if you tell somebody just read 5 pages a day, well, there's gonna be days where they only maybe read 3 or 4, right? But then there's gonna be days where they hit the 5 or they actually are like, oh, I can actually read 10 or 20 pages today. But, you know, more than that, it just becomes a habit. Right? And so, that's kind of what you're describing. Okay. And it's just starting somewhere, right? So—

So, so let's go back to early in my career. It was professional hockey, NHL. And this is a simple question I've been asking for 20, 30 years just to kind of get a temperature from the coach. At this level, how important is the mental part of the game? And most of the elite operators, the, the coaches and whatnot, they say, oh, at this level, It's 50%. It's 75% of the game. It's 90% of the game. 'Cause everybody's got the physical technical skills. That's how they got here.

Mm-hmm.

But at this level, the separator's the mental. And then here's the easy second question. Okay, great. If it's 90%, be dramatic for a moment. If it's 90%, what does your curriculum look like? What does your training program look like to teach those skills?

Mm-hmm.

20, 30 years ago, coaches were like, man, What do you mean? I don't know. I think we're always teaching mental skills. I go, no, no, no, no, no. Saying be focused and saying be confident is not teaching, right? Saying, like, strike with your left hand with a little bit more aggressiveness is very different than slowing the motion down, having a clear target, then training all of the psych— all the physical skills to have a stronger kind of push motion. So they said, oh, right. Okay, so how, Mike, show me how to put it in the curriculum. How do we put it in the 9 to 5? And so that was like 20 years ago. So big business now, it is so sloppy to say, I, as a leader, to say, I think you guys should all meditate. I'm meditating. Okay. All right. One, first show me how. Two, create the time for me to do it. Right. Because after the whistle blows, I go home. And I'm, you know, ripping and running to find 20 minutes with my kids before dinner. You know, I'm, I'm making dinner or I'm whatever, whatever it, there's no time before my second shift at work.

Mm-hmm.

Right. You got the second shift, which is the emails that you wanna get done, which is, don't get me started on that. It's not sustainable now. So what, what am I pointing to? I am pointing to what great leaders are doing in business right now is that they are putting psychological skills training in the rhythm of business. And when you put 20 minutes, 8 minutes, 5 minutes in the agendas, or in— or asking people to schedule time in their day to make sure that they are doing A, B, and C mental skills training, you've now got a culture that is investing in the psychological development, psychological skill development of the employee base. Different game.

Yeah.

Totally different game.

Totally different. I love this. So let's shift a little and talk about your podcast. You know, and I kind of, for those listening, I think, you know, everybody's interested in doing a podcast these days because people hear like, this is a great marketing tool. It's a way to bring in clients, even if you're not going to go do something that's on a massive platform, right? Just reaching like your niche audience. So for you, you know, you have, you know, over 300 episodes. You, you know, you talked about it.

We're at 600. Okay.

So I've like totally undershot it. So yeah. So at what point You know, and I think I've heard you say like it's a marketing tool for like all the other things that you do. But, you know, at what point did the podcast become more than just like content and did it start generating like real revenue for you? Because I think, you know, a lot of people are curious about that, right? Am I just talking and it's not really generating revenue or what can this really do for my business? So I'd love to hear, you know, how that's helped Finding Mastery.

Yeah, it's good. I mean, super thoughtful. I, I'll tell you how it started. It was 10 years ago, and I love learning. So easy, easy to say, you know?

Mm-hmm.

I, I, I do love learning. And this was a learning platform for me. I got to sit down with people that I was interested on how they saw the world, how they made decisions, how they dealt with mistakes, how they dealt with stress and pressure. And I'd sit with them. So for 3 years, um, I hired a part-time editor-producer, you know, like 20 hours a week or something. And for 3 years, I just, I just poured into it as, Uh, kind of clocked it as a, a learning mechanism for me. So it lost a ton of money, but I gained, I gained a lot.

Oh yeah. Right? Yeah.

So what did I gain? I got to learn from world's best. Um, I got to have really stimulating conversations. It, um, I read every book that, uh, a guest has had. So it, it, it kind of put me on that structured learning path. I got to build a community of like-minded people that I feel part of. I don't feel like I'm leading it. I just feel like I'm part of it. So for the first 3 to 4 years, I made $0. It cost me a lot of money. Okay. I gained way more because of the, the learning arc and the community piece. And then, then I said, oh, well, this is actually like, I could sell some ads again. The producer was like, hey, I want to do this full-time. Like, what are we doing? Sell some ads. I was like, really? And so we sold some ads. It was good. Kept building the community. And, uh, and It just kind of incrementally grew. I would not recommend that. I would not recommend that as a, as a second go. I would recommend that first phase. I want to be really clear. I would recommend if you want to be a learner, you, you like learning and you want to build a community, um, it's a great forcing function to do both.

I really appreciated that and I was not interested in the financial spoils of it.

Mm-hmm.

That being said, what I would not recommend is incrementally growing. I would invest, if I were to do it over again, I would either take on an investor or I would invest deeply in the growing of the community. So be ridiculous for a minute. If you, if you had $1 million and you were going to invest in a business that had a community and had a potential product on the back end of it, which is media and/or courseware or best practices about something, Mm-hmm. you need to Figure out how to grow the community. And you can go broke investing in, you know, ad spends. So I would be uber thoughtful about how I invest capital against it. But if you can invest capital against it, you've got an upper hand in kind of getting the community going. Again, I didn't do it that way. Still to this day, we're not investing in that way. But if I were to do it again, that is how I would do it.

Yeah, no, that makes sense. And I think that's great advice. 'Cause it can be very expensive. And so you have to try to think about like, what's the, what's the outcome, right? What are you trying to get from it? So I agree. I think, you know, one of the best parts of podcasting is the community. So I definitely—

And it's hard. I wish that every show was, uh, live and in person so that I could hang out with people and talk and feel it.

Yeah.

But like this show is you and me just, you know, chopping it up and doing whatever.

And

man, I wish I knew your community. Like, I don't, you know, how do you stay connected to your crew?

Yeah, I mean, it's tough. Like you said, like, I would also love to do it in person, right? I don't think I'm quite there yet. I would love to get there though. But how I stay connected is really just through socials, right? So interacting with people on LinkedIn, Instagram, comments, you know, however I can. For me, ultimately, I would love to do that in person though, right? Like, same, same as you. It doesn't feed me either. So for me, you know, I think where I'll really feel it and feel rewarded is when I get to go have that impact in person. So whether, you know, it's like a speaking engagement or something of that nature where I can, you know, I can feel the energy and actually connect physically, you know, I think for sure right now, you know, the world has become so digital and so it's trying to figure out how to also conquer it that way.

I know. Yeah. So the community piece is tricky because it feels flat. So anyways, I'm working on trying to figure out and solve that. And it's— what I don't want to do is I travel too much, so I don't want to do another mini tour. And so we're going to do something in LA this year for, um, as a gathering. But we'll probably do, um, in the next 12 months, we'll probably do 2 or 3.

Yeah, that's a fun idea. Yeah, I hear you on the traveling. It's tough for a lot of us, right? Like, we have kids, we have families, we have all these responsibilities. It's tough to live on the road too. So, it's trying to, we're all trying to figure out the same thing, I think. So, I wanna pivot a little bit. So, you know, there's a lot of people out there consulting, coaching, kind of similar to what you're doing. And so, pricing is always a thing, right? So, you have a really diverse client list. You've got MVPs, Olympic gold medalists, Fortune 100 CEOs, the man who, you know, basically jumped from space. Yeah. So, how do you price your services when your client list Is that elite, is that elite, that diverse? And, you know, how does, how has that pricing evolved from when you started?

Yeah, cool. When it started, I'll, I'll tell you, um, kind of the very origin story, but let me go contextually first, is that I have maybe, maybe 8 clients a year that I see. And, uh, it's a full month contract. We spend 8 hours in 1 day. and we go to work and we're both exhausted by the end of the day. And then the remaining 29 days is like, it's very clear what the work is, what the psychological skills training is. The plan is built from those 8 hours and there's a ton of discovery that happens. NFL coach, we did a fireside chat maybe about a month ago, and he says to the audience, he goes, can you imagine sitting with Mike for 8 hours and there's nowhere to go? It's a forcing function, to be honest. So I do about 8 of those a year.

Okay.

It's awesome. And because I love it. Now, it's expensive because my best leverage is investing in the business of Finding Mastery, where we're a small shop, so we're still adolescent in a lot of ways. We've got 42 people, but, you know, we're, we're really spread out across the planet, and there's a lot of leadership that goes into running that organization. So I get to do my craft 8 times a year, if you will. Now, those 8 clients, I have 1 project. So 8 individuals in 1 project. And the project is, right now it's the Seattle Seahawks. Sometimes it's an Olympic team. Sometimes it's Felix Baumgartner jumping from the edge of space with, you know, Red Bull Stratos was the name of it.

Right.

So I have 1 project, about 8 clients, and then the full business that we're talking about. Okay, so when I first started, I charged what I thought my time was worth. And I was a little nervous because I, I thought highly of myself, but I was also kind of moving it, balancing it up against like the market. And I was just at kind of above the market rate. And the client came in and it was a great conversation. It was good. I don't know, call it 6 weeks of work. And I felt great. He felt great. He went on and signed like a multimillion-dollar deal. And I was like, this is incredible. It works. Like, this works. Right. Oh my God. Like, so I was, I was dealing with all the imposter syndrome, all that stuff. I think,

okay.

Which, if you or your community relates to the imposter thing, um, welcome. Like, it's— I

think we all relate.

Yeah, I think it's part— it's a requisite to, to, for growth. Okay, so that happened a second time, a third time, a fourth time. On the third time, I was like, wait, this doesn't feel right. On the fourth time, I was like, ooh, this really doesn't feel right. The, you know, the client that I work with just signed a generational 3rd contract. And when I say generational, meaning grandkids are taken care of. And I got paid a nice rate. They're buying yachts and I'm still rowing my dinghy. No problems. Different industry, different craft, but it just felt totally out of sync for me. Yeah. On the 5th one, the manager called and was like in tears, like, Mike, oh my goodness, thank you so much for being part of what we just built. This— I— we can't believe We set the standard for like the highest paid athlete in the league. This is amazing. We wouldn't have done it without you. Thank you so much. The wife called crying. The athlete called crying, the, in, in great gratitude and thankfulness. Then the girlfriend, figure that, also called. And so this was a very complicated ecosystem.

And again, go back to the idea, it's not just a yacht, but it's yachts for the next generation and helicopters and the whole thing. Everything.

Yeah.

And I, I'm still rowing my dinghy. So I said, I can't keep doing that anymore. So how did I price it? Um, pain changed my algorithm and I'm not part of their contract, but I am a seat at the table. And so that's how I sorted it. And the simplest way to think about it is that when you are building a, like a direct services business and you are the, you're the host of that, meaning you're the psychologist or coach or whatever, at some point you'll say, oh wait, this doesn't feel right. And then you up it a little bit, and then you up it a little bit, and you up it a little bit, and you just keep going on that path. And what I needed to do is feel that pain and those thresholds. And then what I needed to do is make the decision that it's not about what my time is worth, it is the value of the service provided. And I say that with great humility and compassion because who am I to determine that? Right. So I needed, I needed like, I needed to know that if I charge a little bit more or a lot more, and if my entire business fell off a cliff, that I've got something else that I'm, that's got some, some real tailwinds.

And that something else was the Finding Mastery business, you know, or the, um, working with a, a professional organization. So it really, I got some, uh, a billionaire when I was a kid, I was in high school. Mm-hmm. And he, he was talking to me about business. I didn't come from any money. I didn't know he had money. My family did not come from money. And he was a kind of a neighborhood guy that had the biggest house and, um, but super humble. Like, it was a big house, but it was still like a 3-bedroom, 2-bath, you know, um, super humble. And come to find out after he, he, he passed, he had so much money. But that's not the point. The point is he had a deep understanding of how to turn services into revenue. And so he said to me, Mike, I think entrepreneurship is a bit like riding a bunch of horses, and you ride a bunch at the same time. You got one butt on one horse at a time, but you keep your hands on a few others. And as you're riding, you're gonna feel that some of those look like horses, but they're kind of donkeys.

Yeah. And some of those are like real stallions. So you gotta figure out how to keep your hands on the horses of your pack. And what he meant was ideas that you're investing in. That was the horse. And sometimes you got to jump off and, and, you know, get on what you think is a stallion, but hold your hands loosely amongst the other horses. So that analogy has really worked well for me. Yeah. And I don't, I don't hear how this works for other people. I intellectually can understand it, but I can't hear how it would work for me. Burn the bridges, burn the boats, go all in, no plan B. I'm like, fuck, that's reckless. I don't—

Yeah, I agree.

I don't— okay, so now you're gonna work outta desperation. That's right. You'll make it happen. I'm like, oh my God. Like, I don't, I don't vibe with the hustle hard grind, burn the boats survival mechanism. I, I think we can be much more intentional, thoughtful, and resourceful. Then back yourself into a corner and work from desperation. I don't find that to be the way. It's certainly not my way.

Yeah, that's great advice. So I wanna touch on something that you talk about a lot around mindset, and I would love for, to make sure that my audience hears this. So for the listeners who aren't familiar, what is F-O-P-O, or I dunno if you refer to it as FOPO, and why do you believe it's the number one thing holding people back?

Yeah, so Okay, FOPO, fear of people's opinions. The origin story, again, I'm, I'm like a lot of origin stories with you right now, but I was 16 years old and I was, I saved up for my first car. It was $2,000. And, um, I'm in Southern California on Pacific Coast Highway and I'm driving and I'm gonna pass a car going in the same direction as me. And I'm 16, I just got the car, right? And I thought, oh, this is gonna be a cool moment. Like, I'm gonna pull next to this person. They're gonna look over at me and be like, yeah, good job, kid. Right. I see you. So I had one, One arm on the steering wheel. I'm kind of leaning on my— kind of the door and the window. And I had all of the cool kid thing going. Okay. And I look over to try to catch an eye. They had zero interest in me. Zero.

Yeah.

They didn't look. They— and I thought to myself in that moment, I was like, what am I doing? So the word in my vocabulary at that time is, what a tool. Like, you were trying to look cool. rather than just be you. And I knew in that moment I was changing and contorting and configuring myself to look good in the eyes of somebody I didn't even know. And I knew that that was a corruption. I knew it. But I didn't know that it was an actual thing that was going to show up with world's best across from me for the next 20 years. I did not know that. Mm-hmm. And they don't say— like, the best, I don't know, baseball player in the world does not say, Mike, I'm afraid of people's opinions. What they say is like, man, I don't know. I just don't want to let people down. I'll tell you what, like—

Mm-hmm.

So, athlete X, why is your heart rate pounding out of your chest? Like, why are you not sleeping? Why are you really so nervous before you go out and do the thing that you're literally— you're a Cy Young Award winner, like, or you have the gold medal already. Tell me what's happening. And they say, I don't want to look stupid. I don't want to embarrass my coach, my manager, my parents. Like, I don't want to let my teammates down. All of that type of thinking—

Mm-hmm.

Evidenced by that they have an elevated heart rate and sweat and nervousness before they do the thing that they are simply one of the best in the world at. Why does it feel like it's such a threat? Because it— that's a threat response. Okay? Like, as we all know, the sympathetic nervous system kicks on for fight or flight. Why are you going into that flight response? It's because it feels like it's a complete threat to what? Not their physical safety. It's a threat to their identity. It's a threat to their position in the pack. And when I, when I put it together— Took me too long. But I put it together. I was like, oh, I'm not alone in this.

Right.

This is like this universal thing. And I wrote about it in a Harvard Business Review post, an article, if you will, on HBR. They called me 12 months after the release of the article and they said, hey, you are the number one downloaded article for the last 12 months. You're talking about this thing called fear of people's opinions, FOPO. Like, I think you should write a book. And I said, oh my God, I'd love to, but I only, I wrote a 3-page article. That's all I know about it. And they said, no, no, no. That's everything. Yeah, go to work. Like, this is, there's a, there's a formula here. When you hit a nerve like that, you brought something to the surface that we all wrestle with. And, um, you named it and you've got some science behind it. Like, take it further. And so that's why I wrote the book, The First Rule of Mastery. Come to find out they were right. It hit all the big lists and, um, was a nice success. And so I just think I exposed something that was true for me. I, I've been afraid of people's opinions too much of my life.

And so I just described me and a bunch of elite world best, uh, that struggle. And I think people that read it go, yeah, me too. I just didn't, I didn't have a way to talk about it. So that's what that is. Yeah.

I love that. 'Cause I think there's a lot of people out there though that have concepts or ideas, maybe not, you know, exactly the same as yours, but some sort of concept or idea where they have a deep expertise in something and they don't know how to package it. So

Yeah,

it's cool that you just kind of went with it, right? Took the concept, turned it into a book, didn't care, right? And then, you know,

the thing that is most obvious to me, and I don't know if I can repeat it, but I wrote an article and then there was metrics on it. That's the thing that was a separator. I didn't just have an idea and hope somebody would buy the, the, the, the idea.

Inclination on it. Yeah. Indication that people were going to like it.

As it was the foundation, it was the most downloaded. And they said they do top 3. Top 3 is kind of a, a, a deal opportunity. So if you could write for another, your website or your Substack or another external agency that's keeping track of like how well people vibe with it, they told me exactly what the trail was. They said, not, not the 2 other articles you wrote, but this one, it was the best one we had. So I think that that's, uh, important to pay attention to.

Yeah, great advice. So across everything you've built, what's the biggest mistake you've made and what did it teach you?

I don't think it shows up in, um, a P&L. The greatest mistake that I make, I'm not free from it, is when I get, when I get to a place where I'm fatigued and I've got more plates that I'm spinning than I'd like, and more of them are wobbling more than I'd like, and I feel The impact of chronic stress, even though I teach the, the best practices to be great with stress, I, you know, I'm skiing downhill as fast as I possibly can. So when I'm in that place where I feel overwhelmed, and then I call it like there's a nincompoop moment, like in the, in the forest of, of opportunity, and there's a nincompoop forest that I walk into, I, I'm, I just like get irritated. And when I get irritated because of, um, where I sit in as the founder of the organization, I know that that constricts people's potential, their vibe, their like ability to dream and go after it. Like, and I'm like, what is this? You know? And, and then they're like, ah, it's, uh, I'm like, damn it, I'm doing it again. So I'm better at it now than I ever was.

It's not something that I don't want to go to the grave with it. I just, I really. Um, wish I had a better way. So that's where I make my mistakes. And I have great teammates, you know, people that I work with, and they, they square up with me and they're like, hey, chill out, you know? Or they're like, hey, okay, I see that you're a little whatever. I gotta get better on this thing. And I, I need to tell you that, like, when you say that, I, I get all hemmed in. So I think that that's the piece that, um, that's the mistake I make. I like that. I, what I'm saying to you right now is that's the mistake I'm, I'm aware of that I'm making right now. And

yeah,

what's the biggest mistake I've made? Um, selfishness, you know, is, um, it takes a lot to do some extraordinary stuff. And the price of that is I love my wife. We've been, we've been married since I was 24. We dated in high school and, um, we are business partners. Mm-hmm. She owns 50% of everything I own, and we have different roles. And when I'm on the road trying to, you know, generate revenue, solve problems, close deals, it's all very fun. Like, if you look from a distance, my life is, it's really fun. But there's a selfishness in how much time I'm away. Yeah. So that is like the largest mistake I made. And the small mistakes that I make is when I get tired, I get irritated, and that's not the man I want to be.

Yeah, that's interesting because you're really coaching the best in the world on performing under pressure, right? But you also feel that, you know, pressure and performance. So it's interesting. I like that perspective.

I wish I was a sage. I'm not, but I'll tell you what I, the kind of the upside is, I know I can see the dashboard and I can tell when certain things are out of tune. Whereas 20 years ago, I was just beginning to understand, like, what are the core elements for me to be my best? And I was just kind of making up the dashboard as I was going. But now I know, I really do. I see it. And now I need to make sure I'm deeply tuning my awareness and deeply tuning my relationships so people will be radically honest with me. So that's— so I'm a mess in progress, a little messier than I was yesterday.

No.

Yeah.

So, I wanna, I wanna talk about the Felix Baumgartner thing a little bit just because, yeah, that's really, it's really cool and different, but I think it speaks to people taking risks on clients, right? So, that was sort of out of your normal wheelhouse. It was a little more extreme than I think you normally, you know, take part in. So, what did, what did being part of something that extreme do for your business? And then, you know, did your phone ring differently after that? Were you getting a different client base? You know, like, how do you, What would you be your advice for, you know, taking a risk with a client like that? And like, what was the aftermath of that?

Um, I spent 10 years working in what we would consider the most da— some of the most dangerous environments in the world. So I, I did get 10 years of environments that force honesty. Felix being one of those.

Mm-hmm.

My phone. Yeah. Like he goes on, um, Jay Leno, which was a, a nighttime show, and he says,

oh yeah.

I'm about to do this thing. I wouldn't be here if it wasn't for Dr. Gervais. He does a post-interview with, um, it was like 200 media outlets, and he says, yes, I wouldn't have gotten through this thing if I didn't have, you know, the psychological skills. Thank you, Dr. Gervais. Did my phone ring differently? No. Um, not like you would imagine.

Mm-hmm.

Um, but everything was different after that. And so the phone doesn't ring, but there is an instant understanding that I understand the consequence, how to operate, um, in an excellent way in the most stressful, dangerous, consequential environments on the planet, how to build the psychological capabilities for that. So there's a, that understanding carries a lot of weight. Yeah. And in the world of psychology, most of what psychologists do are nested in a private room. What Felix did is he took the work and brought it to the public view. I have such regard and respect for how he lived his life. He's no longer with us. He passed away doing what he loves doing. But one of the things that he took— he went to the stratosphere, and he took so many of us with him because he kept pointing to the people that he was grateful for. And he took psychology up there with him. Because it still has a taboo around it. It still has— we still have the hangover from, you know, the, um, the boomer generation, my parents, the boomer generation saying, um, I don't know about that stuff.

Yeah.

If you grew up in my family, Sammy, if you grew up in my neighborhood, no chance do you go see a psychologist. No chance. Right? Like, no way. That is for those people. Not us. Toughen up. You know? What do you mean you need water during practice? What do you mean that you're gonna cry? You know?

Right. And now the world's gone the other direction where that's like, yeah, that's the norm now, right? Yeah.

So, I say all that, he took psychology up there. So, my bit— my, my business and my life fundamentally changed because of Felix. But the phone didn't just blow up. It was just, it was incremental.

Yeah, I love that. So where is Finding Mastery headed now? Like, what's the vision? You know, are you trying to expand internationally? What does the next chapter look like? Give us some insight.

Yeah. So that classic stack consulting services, courseware and AI solutions for scale, that's the core of our business and that is not changing. We are figuring out how to best leverage the integration of our media. And so I think what we're going to look like in the next 18 months is we're going to have a modern media component that is obviously dramatically integrated with our enterprise client base. So we're excited about capturing the integration piece in a way that just we could do it, telling the stories of the psychology of world's best, whether it's behind a gated wall of an enterprise company or forward-facing to tell the world.

Fun.

And then we also have whole set of AI solutions that we're building to help people at deeper scale. We have had a significant partner that spent over 7 figures to build us a Gervais coach, and we gave it back. It's not good enough. So AI coaches, in my lens right now, are not even close to good enough. So it'll get there. Yeah. And I hope that we'll be on time with something that is properly warm and not radically confident. And so dangerously confident, I would say. So it, and we will hopefully arrive on time with that as well.

Yeah, I love that. So I wanna talk about another thing that we haven't touched on yet that you talk about a lot, and I love this, and I think it's great advice for anybody, especially, you know, entrepreneurs. But what's the 90-second morning routine that you teach? And I know you teach it at Fortune 100s and Super Bowl champions, so Does it actually work for a busy entrepreneur who doesn't have a performance psychologist on speed dial? Like, tell us about it. How do you make it work?

Okay, I'll give you the resource and then I'll explain it to you, and then I'll give you the resource again. Okay, so findingmastery.com/morningmindset. If you go to that, you'll get everything that I'm saying if you like the ideas of it, and it's a way for us to be in touch with you, you know, in our community. Okay, 90 seconds. The first time that I was working with executives, I thought, okay, so they don't have a rhythm to do this work. So we need to be very— we need to have a minimal effective dose to make some real changes. So I took 4 components to light up particular parts of your brain, this neurocircuitry across your brain, to give you a great starting point so that you don't start the day stressed, fatigued, agitated, irritated. You start in a more kind of open aperture way. So here's It's a 90-second drill. It happens with your sheets are still on. The first thing that you do is, uh, you start with breathing. So it's one long exhale. And when you send a long exhale to your brain, it's a signal that we're safe and we're in control.

Okay? So we're not going to get whipped around by the world around us. If you did 2 or 3 or 13, it'd be better. Okay? Long exhales. But one is a first commitment. The second is one experience of gratitude. And this is not a check the box. I'm grateful that I have 2 eyes. That's cool. But feel it. Like, really feel it. So this is— we call it an embodied experience of gratitude. Mm-hmm. Um, for me, like, my wife, we've been married for a long time. Like, I take a moment to be like, I am so grateful that I've got a partner like her. I'm so grateful that she's alive. But I'm feeling the whole thing. And that takes a handful of seconds. It takes 2 seconds to check a box and say it out loud or feel it, to think it out privately. But it takes more time to really feel it. And that takes practice. The third is a clear intention. So this is using mental imagery, which elite athletes use all the time. So you're just close your eyes. You're not going to fall back asleep. Okay? Close your eyes and you see yourself being great.

at a particular part of your day. Okay? You're still in bed, sheets are on. You're just closing your eyes and running a movie of how you walk into your studio, how you enter into a boardroom or a pitch room, or the way that you're going to greet your children after school, whatever. You just run a movie. That's what this intention stuff is about. You're just using mental imagery to see yourself being great later in the day. You wake up those 3 circuitries, you got something. And then we add one more 4th step, which is pull your sheets off and just take a moment to be where your body is. So literally, you're practicing in reverse order, being present, mental imagery, gratitude, and breathing for being calm and in control. You wake up those circuitries in your brain, I think you got a good chance of giving yourself the best chance to be good, great in that day. So that's it. Morning Mindset is what we call it, and it's findingmastery.com/morningmindset. We'd love to Share it with you.

Yeah, it's great. So thank you so much, Michael, for all your time. Last question, what does it mean to you to be a business MVP?

It means investing in being my very best. And that is where the whole mechanism begins, is running the right set of practices for me to be well aligned between my thoughts, my words, and my actions, and to line up thoughts, words, and actions in any environment. so that I am not whipped around by all the stressors of the world, but I am, in an honest way, being my very best so that I can be the greatest teammate, partner, collaborator with other people. Nobody does the extraordinary alone. We need each other. And that means that I need to be part of something special. I need to bring my very best to that mix. And so being an MVP really does mean being my very best. so that I can help others do the same.

Yeah, I love that. Thank you so much for your time.

Sammy, thank you for including me in your community as well.

And that's how champions think. Here are the key takeaways from my conversation with Dr. Mike today. If you have expertise, you have a business. The gap is packaging. If it works for one person, it can work for 50,000. Don't undersell what you know. And Pete Carroll didn't stay a client, he became a business partner. Look at your best relationships and ask what you could build together. If you got value from today's episode, share it with someone who's ready to think bigger, compete harder, and win in business. Make sure you're subscribed so you never miss an episode. And if you haven't, leaving a 5-star review goes a long way in helping us grow and reach more leaders like you. You can also watch every episode on YouTube and follow along on Instagram and TikTok. @TheSammyPeterson for more behind the scenes and insights. I'm Sammy Peterson. Thanks for being part of the Business MVP Community, and I'll see you next time as we continue building you into an MVP in business and in life.